Wholistic Healing Research » IJHC Editorials

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EDITORIALS BY DANIEL J BENOR, MD

Volume 1, No. 1, September, 2001
Editor's Musings

Welcome to The International Journal of Healing and Caring - On Line.
The IJHC is a reader-friendly forum for exploring issues of wholistic, whole-person care - harmonizing body, emotions, mind, relationships (with other people and with your environment) and spirit. Perspectives of caregivers as well as those of the recipients of treatments will be shared, in the context of conventional and complementary/alternative medicine (CAM) therapies that are moving towards integrative care. Both research and clinical articles will be featured, including medical, psychological and spiritual studies.

Taking advantage of on-line facilities, for our lay readers we link more detailed explanations for key words that may not be familiar. For our health care professional readers we supplement basic materials with references and links to more detailed presentations. Extensive discussions on research, reference lists, and articles on wholistic healing are available on a sister website, www.WholisticHealingResearch.com.

The FAQ link explains unfamiliar terms.

The IJHC is a forum for sharing personal, clinical and research observations about wholistic healing - the growth and development of body, emotions, mind, relationships (within yourself, between you and others, and between you and your environment) and spirit. Our focus will be particularly on issues in bioenergy medicine, spiritual awareness and healing, within the frameworks of integrative care.

Wholistic healing addresses "the person who has the illness, not just the illness the person has" (Osler). We tend to think of wholism as a modern innovation, but this is the common view of both traditional Chinese and Indian medicine and is familiar as well in many less known traditions. It is of also of note that what we have commonly called Western Medicine is not really Western - but would be more properly called European. Numerous indigenous medical traditions of the Western hemisphere also address the person who has the illness and prescribe on that basis.

The IJHC also promotes healing for problems in our conventional medical care system. Doctors chafe over pressures to see more patients in ever-briefer time frames. Patients complain that their doctors don't spend enough time with them, don't listen to them, don't understand them, and don't explain their interventions.

Large numbers of people are turning to complementary/alternative medicine and energy medicine. This is both to fill in the gaps they experience in conventional medical services and to broaden their therapeutic options (Eisenberg 1993; 1998). This is also an increasing acknowledgment of the safety of CAM and of the dangers of conventional medicine.

Wholistic treatment means that we seek the best and most appropriate treatments wherever they are offered - in some cases it is through CAM, in other cases it is through standard allopathic procedures such as surgery, and in still others it may be a combination of the two.

Recent studies have shown that over 100,000 people die annually of side effects of medications. Lazarou, Pomeranz, and Corey reviewed 39 prospective studies from U.S. hospitals 1966 and 1996, summarizing the incidence of negative drug reactions leading to hospital admissions, or occurring while people were hospitalized - many of these reactions serious enough to be permanently disabling or resulting in death. They did not include errors in medication administration, overdoses, abuses, or allergic reactions.

They found an incidence of 6.7 per cent serious adverse reactions, and 0.32 per cent fatal reactions in hospitalized patients. They estimated that in 1994 there were 2,216,000 serious adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients, with 106,000 deaths.

Dr. Barbara Starfield (2000) at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health added to this estimate, pointing out additional deaths annually due to medical hazards:

This places adverse drug reactions between the fourth and sixth most common causes of death, and the total of medical deaths as the leading cause of death. This number exceeds the annual fatalities from highway accidents, breast cancer, and AIDS. Perhaps even more sobering, you are 9,000 times more likely to die under medical care than from firearms (Mercola). In contrast, the annual anticipated death rates from vitamins, herbal products, energy medicine and spiritual healing are zero.

CAM offers an enormous spectrum of treatments for physical and psychological symptoms and illnesses. CAM also offers new perspectives on promoting and maintaining health. For instance:

Acupuncture can hasten recovery from strokes, relieve asthma, and alleviate pains (Birch & Hammerschlag). Acupuncture, within the framework of Chinese medicine, is a complete system of therapy that goes far beyond symptom relief (Kaptchuk 1984).

Qigong, a form of healing developed in China, can promote self-healing through gentle exercises and meditation, and can be supplemented with external-qi healing from a Master (Cohen 2000). Qi (sometimes spelled Chi) is the Chinese word for biological energy.

Homeopathy is another complete system for treating illness (Linde et al 1997; Vithoulkas 1980). It can address many aspects of illness that conventional medicine has difficulty treating. For instance, homeopathy considers lack of motivation to be a treatable symptom.

Homeopathy (Whitmont 1980) and flower essences (Kaminski and Katz 1994; Scheffer 1987) can also reach deep into your being to release blocks that create illness, and may open into spiritual awareness.

Craniosacral osteopathy (Still 1992) can improve symptoms of neurological problems such as post-traumatic head injuries, cerebral palsy, and more. John Upledger (1995a; b), the founder of this approach, reports that experienced craniosacral practitioners can identify obstructions in chakras and acupuncture meridians and can use energy release techniques to correct these.

Spiritual healing can be a primary treatment as well as a complement for almost any illness, and often opens into personal spiritual awareness (Benor, in press b).

Acceptance is growing in many parts of the world that CAM/ energy medicine and spiritual healing are potent and effective. Integrative care, the harmonizing of CAM with conventional medical treatments, is developing rapidly in the Western world. The IJHC supports and promotes these shifts towards whole person care.

People with physical and psychological problems need no further proof of the efficacy of CAM and energy medicine than their personal experiences of feeling better after seeing a CAM therapist -- but scientific study requires firmer evidence. Skeptical scientists are finding reassurance in the numerous randomized controlled studies that show spiritual healing (Benor 2001) and other CAM therapies (Benor in press, a) are effective. Open minded doctors are pleased when problems that have not responded to conventional therapies are helped by healers and other CAM therapists. Evidence that complementary therapies are widely used (Eisenberg 1993; 1998) and are cost effective (Pelletier et al 1991; 1993; 1999) is drawing attention.

This, the first issue of the International Journal of Healing and Caring - On Line features:

Healers' Reports from Several Countries
It is both reassuring to note the similarities between practitioners from various cultures, and informative to learn of variations on the themes of wholism, healing and spirituality. Ancient therapeutic wisdom and newly developed treatment methods may be helpful to many more people if transplanted and cross-fertilized across national boundaries and cultures.

To see entire editorial of Volume 1, No. 1 click here

Volume 2, No. 1, January, 2002
Healing Potentials in Our Words

The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head. Often the best part of your work will have nothing to do with powders or potions. . .
- Sir William Osler

The words and labels we learn to use come to identify who we are, what we do, how we do it, how we relate to each other individually and collectively, and how we interact with to the environment.

We take our perceptions of the world for granted because our family, friends, and nation validate our perceptions by consensual agreement. It rarely occurs to us that there are many other ways to perceive the very same world we inhabit, and even more ways to interpret our perceptions and to act on them.

International Enrichments
Having lived in Israel for four years as a child and for six as an adult, in England for nearly ten years, and in many parts of the US for the rest of my sixty years on this planet, I have a keen sense of diverse words that indicate differences in ways of dealing with the world. I have often wondered why some of the rich, warm and juicy expressions in other languages have not enriched my native tongue of American English.

For instance, I'm surprised we have no equivalent of "Bon appetite" (French) or "B'tay-avon" (Hebrew) - friendly acknowledgements of shared repasts. "Happy appetite," "Good appetite" or "Have a good meal" just don't seem to ring as warmly. Perhaps it's because we're largely a nation of fast food dining and often don't seem to care about the quality of what we're eating, as long as it's cheap and served without too long a wait.

Chutzpah (ch = gutteral sound, as in clearing the throat prior to spitting) is a juicy term from Hebrew that has no adequate equivalent in English. It is somewhere in the range between spunk and gall, perhaps better explained by example than by other terms, as in this apocryphal story: A man who killed his parents had the chutzpah to plead for mercy from the judge because he was an orphan. Chutzpah gives acknowledgment to daring interventions, as well as to outrageous ones.

British English can be a foreign language to an American. Living for those many years in England, I never found explanations for why they chose torch for flashlight; bonnet for the hood of a car, boot for the trunk; spanner for the tool we identify as a wrench; nappies for diapers; and keep your pecker up for "cheer up" or "be of good cheer" or "don't despair" - or, convesely, how we Amercians missed learning these.

Of greater import, in Britain and the rest of Europe, a summer holiday isn't just an elective trip to the shore or to a foreign destination, as it would be in the US. A holiday is a sacred annual ritual, never to be ignored or neglected. There is almost nothing that will have a higher priority in planning and budgeting than the summer holiday. This is a time for the family to be together, to have spirits refreshed and regenerated. It is an excellent form of relaxation therapy.

Words are manipulated for political effects. The people who hijacked four planes on 9-11 are terrorists in America, but are martyrs in parts of the Muslim world.

Neglected Opposites

What ever happened to -
"gusting" - pleasing to the tastes (opp: disgusting)
"sheveled" - neatly, tidily dressed (opp: disheveled)
"gruntled" - satisfied, happy with a situation (opp: disgruntled)
"fuscating" - making oneself absolutely clear (opp: obfuscating)
"tankerous" - pleasant, cheerful (opp: cantankerous)

What is the opposite of a vicious circle? What a commentary it is on our culture that we have no opposite for this term. We focus much more on the weeds than on the flowers in our relational and therapeutic gardens. In a vicious circle, one negative interaction stimulates a responding negative, which in turn re-stimulates another negative. The alcoholic husband sets off the nagging wife who sets off the drinking behaviors, etc. etc. The hurt and anger from a terrorist action begets vengeful violence, which begets more terrorism, etc. etc. etc.

I often suggest to clients that they would do well to work their way into a sweetening spiral - as in offering a kindness, reaching out in love (sometimes as tough love), extending forgiveness, and reaching into acceptance. Positive actions beget positive reactions, which encourage us to again offer kindness, etc. etc. etc.

I have puzzled over why we focus on the negatives more than on the positives. Perhaps it is our "fix-it" mentality. We want to identify the problems so that we can correct them. We don't focus as often on the positives, to build more positives. This seems to be a natural human tendency, as in being more attracted to violence and crime in the news media. News stories that focus on positive behaviors and events get little attention.

We give more attention to the weeds in our gardens than to the flowers.

Misleading Words

Language can bias us towards accepting certain beliefs and rejecting others - without our awareness that we are being propagandized.

Full editorial of IJHC Volume 2, No. 1 Click here

Volume 2, No. 2, May, 2002
Intuition

Overview

This issue of IJHC focuses on amazing research exploring spiritual intuitive awarenesses of children and on clinical intuitive experiences.

Intuition is the inner knowing that comes without outer sensory stimuli. It is the modality that senses most deeply, yet one that our society has valued least. We invest most of our efforts in educating our children to use their outer senses, ignoring and even denigrating the inner ones.

Intuitions surface to consciousness from unknown sources and through channels that are usually below our everyday awareness Intuition is often perceived as or accompanied by an inner uneasiness, a sort of spiritual itch that invites us to scratch below the surface of our ordinary perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. If we respond to this itch, this inner ring on the intuition hotline, if we invite our intuition to speak, we are often rewarded with important messages.

Commonly, intuition visits us spontaneously in many ways, minor and major. You may know who is ringing your phone before you answer it, or think of a long-forgotten friend on the morning of the very day you run into her on the street. You may have a hunch about choosing an unknown road, job opportunity, or restaurant that turns out to be hugely right for you. You may be one of the lucky people who had a bad feeling about going to work one day, so strong that you simply stayed home - avoiding a serious disaster. (I have heard of several people who worked in or regularly visited the World Trade Towers who intuitively stayed away on September 11.)

If you have ever worried about coming out and admitting your intuitive abilities, you should know that you are certainly in good company. Many famous people have acknowledged their intuition, including Socrates, Joan of Arc, Carl Jung, and Adolph Hitler; among others.

While you might question or even dismiss some reports as simple luck or exaggeration, here is a typical story that stretches such explanations (Inglis 1989, p.10-12).

Winston Churchill, who was reputed to have had a charmed life, related that he had always felt he had a protector. "I sometimes have a feeling - in fact I have it very sstrongly. . . a feeling that some guiding hand has interfered." At another point he credited "that Higher Power which interferes in the sequence of causes and effects more often than we are always prone to admit."

Churchill gave the example (in My Early Life) of his escape from captivity during the Boer War in South Africa. He failed in his plan to hop a freight train to Mozambique, and was left with only a hope and prayer that the local Kaffirs might help him, as he had heart that many of the Kaffirs hated the Boers. . . He could see the fires of a Kaffir settlement nearby. The difficulty was that he had no way to distinguish the potentially friendly from the unfriendly Kaffirs, and a wrong guess could prove fatal. He sat down to ponder his options.

Suddenly, without the slightest reason, all my doubts disappeared. It was certainly by no process of logic that they were dispelled. It just felt quite clear that I would go to the Kaffir kraal. I had sometimes in former years held a "Planchette" pencil and written while others had touched my wrist or hand. I acted in exactly the same unconscious or subconscious manner now.

Reaching the fires, he saw furnaces situated around a coal mine. He had no choice but to make a guess as to which house he would approach. He knocked on a door, excusing his disheveled clothing by saying he had been in an accident. He was admitted by a man who held a revolver and seemed obviously skeptical about his story. He felt compelled to tell the truth.

My companion rose from the table slowly and locked the door. After this act, which struck me as unpromising, and was certainly ambiguous, he advanced upon me and suddenly held out his hand.

"Thank God you have come here! It is the only house for twenty miles where you would not have been handed over. But we are all British here and we will see you through.".

His host hid him in the mine until they could smuggle him to safety.

These sorts of stories are typical of intuitive awareness. Guided by an inner knowing that is not reasoned, but seems to arise from a deep source that carries its own certainty, people find that they know information which is of great help to them - particularly in times of need.

Many doctors, nurses, and various therapists have told me of clinical "hunches" that proved extremely valuable, sometimes even lifesaving, to people in their care. The following is a story I have heard in many variations.

Doctor Sam, on his way home after a long day's work, had a hunch he ought to stop by and see how 68 year-old Miss Jennifer was doing. He hadn't thought of her in several months, since her last annual checkup, when he had found her to be suffering much less from her arthritis. Sam struggled against the hunch, thinking of his wife and children waiting for him to arrive for dinner, but it simply would not be dismissed. Sighing, and preparing in his mind the possible excuses he might give his family for being late yet again from work, he turned up Miss Jennifer's street and rang the bell of her apartment. There was no answer, but the door was not locked and opened when he turned the knob. Miss Jennifer was lying on the floor, unconscious. A quick examination suggested she had had a stroke, and a call to 911 brought an ambulance in time to rush her to the hospital, where she fortunately recovered after several weeks.

More than one nurse has told me of an inner urge to stop by the room of a patient who was recovering without apparent complication from surgery - to find that patient in shock from internal hemorrhage (or with other urgent problems), just in time to call the crash team and save his or her life. Doctors have told me how they sometimes intuit that a person has a tumor, a metabolic problem, or some other disorder that showed no outward symptom, which is confirmed on subsequent laboratory exams. Some doctors are so gifted that they regularly diagnose their patients' problems intuitively. They reluctantly order lab tests - for medicolegal reasons as well as to avoid criticism or censure from their colleagues and supervisors. Some are able to identify intuitively medications or other treatments that will help.

Intuition Research

Science for me is very close to art. Scientific discovery is an irrational act. It's an intuition which turns out to be reality at the end of it--and I see no difference between a scientist developing a marvellous discovery and an artist making a painting.
- C. Rubbia (Nobelist and director of CERN)

Nurses have been discussing and exploring intuition for the past 25 years, acknowledging that this is a valid modality for clinical assessments and decision-making (Benner 1982; 1984: Benner et al 1999; Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1980; King and Appleton 1997).

Nursing definitions have focused on various facets of intuition, witnessed by a range of conceptualizations.

Full editorial in IJHC Volume 2, No. 2
Click here for subscription details

Volume 2, No. 3, September, 2002
THE BODY: Physical Entity, Bodymind, Bioenergy, and Potential Doorway to Spiritual Awareness

In conventional medicine, the body is the starting point for addressing most of people's ills. Many in this tradition believe that we are the physical products of our genetic inheritance, shaped by the physical environment, and slated - when the physical body releases its hold on life - to end our existence and return to dust. There is no purpose to life other than reproducing the species, plus that which an individual chooses to make of her or his existence.

These assumptions have significant implications for caregivers and careseekers. Within this belief system, good health ranges from the absence of dysfunction to optimal function. Deviations from health are considered malfunctions of the body or illnesses, for which cures should be sought in order to return the body to health.

Within the prevalent Western mechanistic worldview, we simply address the physical body dysfunctions, applying various physical interventions to deal with these, according to our mechanistic diagnoses. In a large percent of cases we are successful with medications, hormones, surgery, and in recent years with genetic manipulations.

While stress is acknowledged as a contributor to many of these problems, we tend to relegate stress factors to a second tier of assessments and treatments. Most doctors give pills first and ask questions about stress only if the pills are not working satisfactorily. Economic factors of time and monetary resources favor these simplistic approaches. It takes a doctor only a few minutes to make a fairly good educated guess about medications that could relieve symptoms. It takes much longer to delve into the details of people's lives in order to figure out what stressors might be contributing to or causing various symptoms and illnesses.

The physical body is believed to be the source of all of life's phenomena. Our genes determine the structure and functions of the body. From conception through death, physical factors may influence the body, including genetic endowments and predispositions, infections, metabolic and hormonal imbalances, toxins (chemical or radiations), allergic reactions, traumatic (physical) injuries, cancers, and degenerative processes.

The mind is believed to be the product of the physical brain, which is proven by the fact that physical, electrical or chemical stimulation, or damage to parts of the brain causes specific cognitive, behavioral and emotional reactions and dysfunctions. Emotions are the products of bioelectrical, chemical and hormonal activity in parts of the brain. This is proven by altered emotions that result from changes in these factors in the brain. We can stimulate specific areas within the brain and elicit anger, laughter, and joy. In fact, the intensity of joy from brain electrical stimulation may exceed that of sexual orgasm.

Psychological factors influence health through choices of individuals or social groups to alter the environments that impinge upon the physical body. A healthy or unhealthy lifestyle, programs for sanitation and immunizations, and education for safe sex can enhance and prolong life; using alcohol or street drugs, overeating, and limiting governmental expenditures for health care can be detrimental to health.

Psychological interventions are helpful when they lead to healthier lifestyle choices. Their benefits derive from stress reduction and from introduction of a broader range of healthy options.

Body-focused medicine may carry distinct risks and consequences. If we focus only on the body, then physical life is all we know and can reliably count on having, and we must preserve and prolong it at all costs. This belief contributes to the poor ways in which Western medicine often deals with chronic illness, death, bereavement, and spiritual issues.

Doctors receive their education and training in hospitals where acute problems are treated. Doctors are expected to make the correct diagnosis and apply effective treatments. In many cases they are successful, discharging patients from the hospital with marked improvements. This sets up unreal expectations in the student doctors about the practice of medicine. They are poorly prepared to deal with chronic illnesses that do not respond immediately to their interventions.

Death is perceived by many doctors as their personal failure to either make the right diagnosis or apply the correct treatment. About 30 percent of our medical budget is spent in treating people in the last 30 days of their lives. This is often to no avail other than to keep a heart beating those few extra days, frequently with a very poor quality of life during this period - not to mention the discomforts and pains of the terminal illness and its treatments. Many doctors are reluctant to let people die without receiving every last symptomatic treatment possible, because death is perceived as the doctor's failure to conquer disease.

Bereavement is difficult to deal with in any case, but for those doctors who are feeling responsible for people having died, it is often more than they know how to handle.

Modern medicine relegates spiritual issues the most part to the clergy. Historically, this evolved from the mutual fears of science and clergy. The Church was anxious that scientific inquiry would erode its teachings of faith as a motivation for belief in matters of religion. Science was concerned that it might suffer attacks similar to those against Galileo, who was prosecuted for advancing scientific theories that contradicted Church beliefs and doctrines. This conflict continues today in the legal battles over teaching Darwinism and Biblical theories of creationism in public schools.

Figure 1 shows how the body is viewed as being primary in conventional medicine, and all else derives from it.

Figure 1. Conventional medical view of a person

In wholistic medicine, the body is part of a larger system, including also emotions, mind, relationships (with each other and with the environment) and spirit. This tradition acknowledges that the body has its physical functions and processes that deserve full assessment and treatment. However, the body is not seen as the only level of being.

            The mind has great influence over the body,
             and maladies often have their origin there.
                                                               Moliere

Consciousness is an entity in and of itself. Consciousness is a level of being that can influence the body, as well as being influenced by the body. How consciousness comes into being, and how it relates to the physical body is explained in many variations on the theme of mind-body or bodymind approaches. (These are beyond the range of our present discussion.)

At one end of this spectrum are those who hold that mind and emotions are products of the physical body but that psychological factors may be act upon the body. Emotional tensions can activate stress responses that impact the body. For instance, the nervous system tightens the voluntary muscles of locomotion. Chronic muscular tensions can result in tension headaches, backaches, TMJ problems, and repetitive stress injuries. Involuntary muscles can tighten into asthmatic attacks in the lungs, irritable bowel syndrome and other dysfunctions in the gut, and into hypertension and circulatory disorders in the cardiovascular system. Adrenalin and stress steroids also tighten muscles, raise blood pressure, and alter immune system functions. Many conventional doctors accept some or all of these as possible mechanisms contributing to illness.

Some wholistic therapists stop short of hypothesizing motivating forces that extend beyond the body, other than social ones, staying close to the conventional medical model.

Further along the wholistic spectrum, the body is seen as an expression of spirit manifesting into the material plane of existence. Spirit is the primary level of existence. Spirit expresses itself through everything that is. Sub-units of spirit, human souls, incarnate as physical human beings. All of life, every particle and nuances of beingness and relatingness, is a part of the lesson of physical incarnation. Figure 2 diagrams this perspective.

Note that the arrows point in both directions, indicating that events at each level of being can influence our experiences with the other levels. For instance, physical and emotional experiences may heighten our spiritual awareness.

Full editorial in IJHC Volume 2, No. 3
Click here for subscription details

Volume 3, No. 1, January, 2003
CHOICES IN ANGER:
Emotions, Mind and Spirit

Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what
sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.
William James

Introduction

Anger is a natural response to being endangered or hurt. Challenges that commonly elicit anger include:

Being attacked verbally or physically
Being threatened verbally or physically
Intrusion upon or disrespect of our boundaries
     Physical
     Social
Not receiving
     Something in the outer world that was promised or expected (material or benefits)
     Behaviors or attitudes that are expected (respectfulness, courtesies, attention)

Outer responses to hurts may range from withdrawal to verbal and physical attack - immediate or in long-term vengeance. Inner responses may range from feeling overwhelmed through being infuriated. The consequences of our choices in responding to our angers are far-reaching, both for ourselves and for others, as individuals and in our social groups and nations...

In this editorial we focus on interactions of emotions and the mind, while not neglecting body, relationships and spirit.

The Emotions

Acute anger is usually a visceral, emotional reaction. Our stress hormones kick in, we may flush as blood is diverted from our internal organs to our muscles. Adrenalin makes our heart beat faster and our breathing deeper and faster. We prepare to respond to the challenge.

Many of our anger responses will be based on unconscious habits of reacting to similar stimuli in the past. If we have been successful in reacting with aggression, we are likely to respond again with aggression. If we have had better luck with withdrawing from previous stimuli to anger, we are more prone to withdraw � either from the scene of the challenge or simply into ourselves, either withholding or actually burying our response in our unconscious mind. If we have observed or have been treated with aggression by others when they were angry (particularly our parents and other family members), we are more likely to respond with aggression ourselves.

The Mind: Issues of Choice and Control

Most of the issues around anger relate to aspects of not being in control, feeling out of control, or feeling a loss of control.

Acute Anger

When we are in situations of actual physical danger, anger can be helpful because it activates the stress hormones that facilitate fight or flight. If a man with a gun enters the room I am in, I may react more quickly and forcefully with the help of these hormones, which increase my alertness and enhance my muscle strength. I may be able to duck or run away more quickly, which could save my life.

Chronic Anger

Angry responses may be unhelpful, however, when fight or flight responses are not necessary or appropriate. If I am sitting behind the wheel of my car in rush hour traffic, late for my appointment and unable to see what is causing the traffic delay, my stress hormones may build up and I may have no way to discharge them immediately, and no way to focus my energies in ways that could resolve the outward causes of my frustration. When I finally speed up towards my destination, if a car cuts in front of me and endangers my life, I may be frightened and angry, again without any way of addressing the person who stirred these feelings. My cell phone doesn�t connect with the office, the elevator is out of order when I arrive, already late for my meeting. I get pushed aside in the stairwell by a workman carrying a chair downstairs. The secretary who could smooth matters is away from her desk. My boss may bawl me out for being late, my IN box may be overflowing, and my wife may interrupt me urgently � just as I feel I am moving towards getting matters in hand - to ask what to do about a leak under the bathroom sink.

Unexpressed Anger

Innumerable frustrations, large and small, can build up tensions and angers. Often, we stuff these away because we feel there is no way to express them. Getting angry with a supervisor could endanger our employment. We may sometimes release feelings in verbal aggression towards those who offend us, perhaps screaming at the car that cuts in front of us, growling at someone who interrupts us, or pushing back against someone who jostles us rudely. While these responses may provide some release for the raging temper, they may also aggravate conflicts into more angry interchanges, making matters worse rather than better. Angers may escalate rather than get discharged and reduced.

We often end up stuffing our angers away somewhere inside ourselves. Most of us carry around buckets full of such feelings. When something comes along to anger us, we may respond with an excess of anger. This explains a lot of road rage, office rage, marital discord, and social conflicts. When our buckets are full to overflowing, any little stimulus to anger can give us the opportunity to dump other, stored up angers from our buckets along with the immediately provoked ones.

Furthermore, holding in anger is not good for our health. Chronic stresses and tensions can lead to physical dysfunctions. The neurohormonal, cardiovascular, pulmonary and genitourinary systems are particularly prone to such disorders, but they can occur in any organ system in the body. In the editorial of September 2001 IJHC I explored long lists of body language that reflects this awareness, such as �I got my guts in an uproar,� �I was really pissed off,� �I took that insult to heart,� and many more.

Anger Expression Management

Letting it out in acceptable manners is one way to deal with anger.

Full editorial in IJHC Volume 3, No. 1
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Volume 3, No. 2, May, 2003
DEVELOPING FAITH IN THE TRANSCENDENT:
Approaches and Stages of Development

Abstract

Most of us acquire our faith in the transcendent through our family traditions and through religious teachings. This faith helps us to find our way through life, providing a code of personal and community conduct. Our faith in the rightness of these teachings creates community through common beliefs. These generate collective traditions, with ritual acknowledgments of major life events, such as births, marriages and deaths. Our faith invites us and binds us to communal celebration of seasons and holy days, and to a higher authority for moral and ethical behaviors. It offers us rituals and practices for prayer and for healing of personal, interpersonal, and societal ills.

While faith can help us to develop and deepen our sense of spirituality, it may also hinder us from finding our own, personal beliefs and spirituality. At its worst, it may also lead to conflicts between people of differing faiths. Therefore, understanding how faith develops is of vital importance at this time when there are major conflicts between peoples of differing faiths in various geographic, cultural and religious communities - conflicts that threaten the continuation and perhaps even the survival of life as we know it on this planet.

Faith is based in logical truths and faith is based in the heart - known directly rather than deduced through reason. Our personal and collective challenge is to seek the healing balance between the two ways of experiencing an d practicing our faith..

How do we develop our faith? For many, this is simply an automatic part of growing up, one which we accept without question - just like we accept that we learn to crawl, to walk and to speak. For others, it is process of deliberate study, both intellectual and experiential.

Numerous components of can be identified within the broad contexts of faith:

A. There are three broad approaches for developing faith:

1. Accepting what we are told

2. Logical reasoning

3. Intuitive, experiential knowing

B. James Fowler identifies six stages in developing faith:

1. Basic faith (Fowler: "Intuitive-Projective Faith")

2. Mythic-Literal Faith

3. Faith based on popular idols (Fowler: "Synthetic-Conventional Faith")

4. Faith by personal choice (Fowler: "Individuative-Reflective Faith")

5. Faith through inner knowing (Fowler: "Conjunctive Faith")

6. Faith anchored in transcendent awareness (Fowler: Universalizing Faith)

C. Personality types and stages of faith

D. Societal stages of awareness parallel the stages of faith

Each approach and stage has its advantages and drawbacks. None can be proven as valid beyond question without prior assumptions or. Each of these five stages can be experienced through any or all of the three broad approaches to experiencing faith. Each will be colored by our personality styles.

Our challenge, both personal and collective, is to choose wisely between these alternatives. Our choices will certainly influence, and may even be crucial in determining the future of life on this planet.

Terminology is a challenge in discussing spiritual issues. The IJHC is grateful to Rev. Cay Randall May, PhD, for providing many of the elements in the glossary appended at the end of this editorial.

A. There are three broad approaches to faith in our perception of the transcendent.

1. Accepting What We Are Told

Many of us grow up in families where we are taught spiritual beliefs. These may be presented as absolute and unquestionable truths, as revelations from God through His prophets and luminaries (often from many centuries ago, codified in holy traditions and writings, and reinterpreted by religious authorities through the ages), or as cultural traditions that enrich our existence and provide moral and ethical codes of conduct for our lives. I call these codified, traditional, revealed religious beliefs.

Many will read the above paragraph without pause or reflection. Our language tends to bind us to certain articles of faith, such as the use of masculine pronouns to identify the Divine presence. God as a masculine energy is associated with logic, structures and confining boundaries. On the one hand this helps us to abide by society's rules, with a sense of the disciplining father keeping us in line. On the other hand, creativity, tolerance and love are diminished through our investment in doing rather than being.

When we accept these beliefs as absolute truths, any questioning of these traditions becomes heretical. We are discouraged from even considering the possibility of questioning these truths.

Such unconditional acceptance of social "truths" becomes a "cultural hypnosis" (Pearce 2002). We are so immersed in these worldviews that they appear to many to represent an absolute picture of reality, "the way it is" and/or "the way it is supposed to be."

Where codified revealed beliefs are exclusive, we are bound to a system that is defensive. Our beliefs are right, and therefore all other beliefs are wrong. It is our mission and privilege to bring our revealed light to the darkness of a world in which others have not seen THE light. We may do this by our living example, though more commonly we preach and teach the codified truths in our efforts to convert non-believers.

There is a wide spectrum of approaches for relating to non-believers, both within and between various religious communities. In Christian tradition, proselytizing and actively seeking to convert non-believers is a highly valued mission. Where Church and State are separated, members of other religions are tolerated and are extended equal rights under the law. In Muslim tradition (in many predominantly Muslim countries), non-believers are infidels, and they are not equal under the law to believers. Westernized Muslims are more tolerant of other religions. In Jewish tradition, proselytizing is not practiced, because being Jewish is considered a privilege of the Chosen People. Traditionally, anyone wanting to convert should be discouraged from doing so. In Hindu and other polytheistic religions, beliefs in many gods promote tolerance for other religions (Campbell 1989). Buddhists teach practices that help to overcome self-defeating beliefs and habits, recommending that personal experience and exploration should be the basis for faith (Smith 1965).

Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Advantage of Accepting What We Are Told

Holding to unshakable religious beliefs can be a comfort to the believer. Life is simple and straightforward. Right is right and wrong is wrong. The world is the way it is because it was created thus by God in His omniscient wisdom. Our course in life is clear because there is no question about how it is all meant to be. If we live by the letter of the law, we will be rewarded by God, ultimately with an afterlife that is blissful.

Within some religious systems, if we have faith in our health, we expect to remain healthy and will be able to recover from all illness. Faith in our religious leaders and in prayer workers within our religious frameworks empowers them with the ability to extend healing for our ailments and absolution for our sins. This faith that we have in their power may facilitate our self-healing responses to their treatments.

Disadvantages of Accepting What We Are Told

If we stray from the prescribed paths of our religious teachings, we can anticipate Divine retribution, up to and including eternal damnation in Hell. Life may become focused on avoiding sins and penalties rather than on the good deeds and healings we can bring into the world. Fear of Hell or other punishments after death can be powerful motivation for behavior.

Particularly relevant to the IJHC, illness may be interpreted as a lack of faith or the result of negative thinking - adding spiritual guilt to our suffering rather than providing hope, nurturance and relief.

From the perspective of logical reasoning, accepting what wer are told appears to be unscientific. There is no room here to explore whether the Word as given by God, explained and interpreted by His ministers and priests, passes any tests of reason or explorations through methods of objective research outside of the canon of religious laws and traditions.

God gave us a curiosity to understand his creation. I don't think we need to worry that we will move into an exploration that will embarrass him.
- Francis Collins, Geneticist (p. 38)

From the perspective of intuitive faith, accepting what we are told is based on the original inspired intuitive knowing of luminaries who lived long ago. However, we now rely on various interpretations and reinterpretations of their words over many centuries. This approach allows no room for personal intuitive awarenesses, particularly when these might deviate from or even contradict the established interpretations of teachings.

Accepting what we are told is based on faith in the intuitive perceptions of luminary people many centuries ago, and in the interpretations of their inspirations as they are taught by religious authorities today.

2. Logical Reasoning

Science tells us that there are fundamental laws in nature that determine how the physical world functions (including our bodies). With methodical, step-by-step research, we are discovering how the particles and energies of the universe behave. Ultimately, we are told we will at least comprehend everything there is to know about the visible, physical universe. Based on this knowledge, we will probably be able to control our existence to an ever-enhanced degree through manipulations of our environment and our physical world. Science has become the religion of much of the Western world.

Full editorial in IJHC Volume 3, No. 2
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Volume 3, No. 3, September 2003
COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS:
The Journey IS the Destination
Daniel J. Benor, MD

We are all woven together in a single garment of destiny.
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Carl Jung originated the term collective unconscious, after observing that there were concurrences in imagery appearing in his dreams and those of patients. The dreams included universal archetypal images of people, places, animals and story lines that very often related to mythic characters and stories in oral and written traditions from around the world. Pointing to a truly collective consciousness was the fact that the myths were not restricted to the country, culture or ethnic origins of the dreamer. In many cases, the meaning of the dream imagery was in no way apparent to the dreamer, but when Jung interpreted the imagery to the dreamer there was immediate recognition of its relevance to the person's inner world and a facilitation of progress in therapy,

I vividly recall the case of a professor who had had a sudden vision and thought he was insane. He came to see me in a state of complete panic. I simply took a 400-year-old book from the shelf and showed him an old woodcut depicting his very vision. "There's no reason for you to believe that you're insane," I said to him. "They knew about your vision 400 years ago." Whereupon he sat down entirely deflated, but once more normal.
-- Carl Jung (1964, p. 69)

Jung suggested that the information and imagery common to diverse individuals, both in the present and across vast periods of time, related to a shared, collective unconscious.

While Jung is probably the most familiar modern explorer of collective consciousness, this is a concept that has been discussed through many hundreds of years, as in Plato's "Forms," St. Augustine's "Ideas of God" and the Vedic tradition's "undifferentiated pure consciousness" that manifests into individual awareness (Orme-Johnson).

Explaining Collective Consciousness is a Challenge

To anyone in Western society who has not experienced or read about this, the concept of collective consciousness must seem odd, at the least. How could someone share imagery in her dreams with another person? How could there be images that were recorded in classical Greek and Roman mythology, as well as in mythologies of other diverse cultures spanning many millennia, which appeared in the dreams of people today who had never previously heard or read of these myths?

Extrasensory Perception and Parapsychology (PSI) Research

It is not uncommon for a person to know what someone else is thinking and feeling. This occurs more often between people who have a meaningful relationship, and can happen when they are miles apart and not connected by ordinary means of communication.

The most common of these are psi perceptions of a family member in distress or danger. Numerous reports detail how a mother, other relative or friend had an inner intuitive awareness when someone close to them was endangered, had an accident or died. The closeness of the people involved suggests that intuitive links may be formed between people who feel strongly about each other.

More difficult to explain are apparently random psi perceptions between strangers who have no apparent relationship.

Figure 2. Wholistic View of Beingness and Relatingness

Volume 4, No. 1, January 2004
DARKNESS AND LIGHT: Perspectives on
the Yin Yang Symbol
Introduction

In the middle of winter, with the darkness of night longer than the light of day, our inner selves mirror the world outside and we are given to brooding over dark and sometimes negative thoughts.

While most of us are not happy when dark clouds of negative thoughts and moods cross - or even cover completely - the skies of our awareness, and some become downright cross or even seriously depressed, with a shift in focus the darkness can often be experienced as the good teacher it is, because darkness is necessary in order for us to appreciate light.

Yin - yang contrasts can be identified in every aspect of our lives. Within the cosmology of Chinese medicine and acupuncture, Yin and yang are polar opposites that must be balanced in order for life to proceed in harmony. The term yin denotes the shady side of the slope and may be associated with qualities of femininity, openness, passivity, receptivity, introversion, diminution, repose, weakness and coolness. Yang is the sunny side of the slope and may be associated with the sun, masculinity, strength, brightness, assertiveness, movement, extroversion, growth and excitation.

In the body, the front is yin relative to the back; the upper portions of the body are yang relative to the lower parts; the inner organs are more yin than the outer aspects such as hair and skin. In matters of health, yang disorders are characterized by fever, hyperactivity, heat and strong movements; yin illnesses include weakness, slowing down, feeling cold and lethargy.

Yin and yang complement each other. If yin is excessive, then yang will be too weak, and conversely.

In Chinese cosmology, causality is unimportant. It is the pattern of relationships which defines reality and any part of reality is relative to the context which is under consideration.

I came to this discussion through the invitation of a friend and colleague to discuss at a conference the masculine within the feminine. In preparing for this presentation, I searched for a yin-yang symbol to illustrate my lecture, and was led to a world of discovery about darkness and light through the variations on the theme of the circle of yin and yang. I share parts of that ever-growing awareness here.

The balance of polar opposites in our awareness
Without darkness, we would not understand or appreciate light.

Our world can be perceived and experienced as matter or as energy. Einstein suggested this early in the 20th Century in his famous equation, E = mc2 and modern physics has amply confirmed this theory. Matter and energy are two sides of the same coin. Newtonian medicine focuses on the matter side of the equation and has been slow to absorb that the body can also be addressed as energies. Healers and many other CAM therapies address the energy side of this equation.

1. By sensing the bioenergies in and around the body, healers can perceive what is happening in the body. Most people can sense these energies with their hands. Some see them as auras of color around the body. Others may pick up information from the body as different sensory impressions, such as smell or taste. Some intuitives find that their minds translate this information as words when it filters through to their conscious awareness.

By interpreting their perceptions of the bioenergy fields, healers can identify a person's state of being on several levels: physical, emotional, mental, relational and spiritual. Assessing bioenergy states, they may note excesses, depletions, blocks or energies that indicate states of dis-ease or disease.

Healers report that the bioenergy fields not only reflect the state of the person, but are also templates for what is occurring in the body.

2. Healers can use their own consciousness and bioenergies to adjust abnormalities in careseekers' bioenergy fields. The biofield templates will then alter what is happening in the body, bringing about improvements in health.

Complex combinations of energies recognized by conventional science may contribute to the bioenergies perceived by healers. J. Bigu points out that a very complex set of known energies and fields may emanate from the body to produce the visual aura reported by sensitives. These energies may include: electrical, magnetic, radio frequency and microwave, infra-red, ultraviolet, X-ray, gamma ray, beta ray, neutrino, chemical, mechano-acoustical scattering, diffraction and refraction auras. The perceived aura may represent a sensory or psi perception of these fields individually or in combination(s), perhaps in the form of interference patterns.

Various energies that are well recognized in conventional science could account for some of the observed bioenergy phenomena. Schwartz et al. (1995) note that direct current (DC) skin electrical potentials can normally be measured on the hands. It's possible that the amount of sweat on the skin could modulate these DC potentials, and this could also alter the amount and quality of the heat radiated from the skin. Blood flow in the skin and muscles of the hands conduct cardiac electrical and sound patterns as well as generating heat, which is radiated as infrared pulses. The muscles in the limbs produce electromyographic (EMG) pulses. Movements of the limbs generate electrostatic fields. All of these energies combine to form a complex, dynamic energy pattern around the hands and other parts of the body.

Chien et al. (1991) also identified emanations of heat energy, which they measured as infrared signals in therapeutic touch healings.

Conversely, the hands contain nerve endings which can detect pressure, temperature, and the stretch of tendons and ligaments. These receptors could, theoretically, also respond to other energies. Electrostatic fields might produce subtle stretches or pressures which these receptors might be able to register. Minute breezes could also be detected through temperature, pressure, and/or stretch receptors. Perceptions of electrical or magnetic signals have not been empirically established as yet.

My own explanation for bioenergies draws on all of the above, synthesized through systems theory.

1. In much of the research and theorizing to date, we have approached bioenergy medicine in a reductionistic way because most scientists have been trained to address research in this manner. We have picked one piece or another of the total gestalt that comprises a careseeking person and have done our best to analyze this piece in a focused, systematic way.

We are gradually acquiring data on electromagnetic radiations measured in various ways: e. g. by laboratory instruments, bioenergy therapists' descriptions of their sensory perceptions and healers' intuitive perceptions of the functioning of the human organism in health and illness.

2. The human organism is an enormously complex system in which many factors combine to bring about any single state of body, emotions, mind and spirit. None of the individual components can provide a full or adequate description for the human organism, nor can a simple combination of factors or layers of explanations begin to explain the functioning of the human organism.

4. The interaction of a caregiver with a careseeker is exponentially more complex than either alone.

5. Each of us is similar to a subatomic particle in the atom of a molecule of a cell of the tissues and organs that make up a whole organism - which is the cosmos. We have the illusion of being separate from the vast All, and we do have free choice which gives us a measure of illusion of being independent, but our independence is still within the frameworks that contain us. There are therefore uncountable intangible factors that influence every aspect of our being.

Considering all of these factors, it is actually a great wonder that we have been able to extract some measures of orderliness in healing research out of this cosmic soup of influences that can shape each subject in an experiment at any moment. The infinite variability of the combinations of factors that can alter the condition of each subject in an experiment is mind-boggling.

There are many moving personal and reasoned discussions of death and dying. (See reading list, below.) While few knock eagerly or even willingly at death's door, all of us will eventually enter there.

I invite you on a brief exploration beyond death because in western society a lot of our fears about death come from our belief that we are just material beings. We are stuck in a Newtonian paradigm of classical physics where we view the body only as matter. Medicine does this regularly. To many doctors we are just a bag of chemicals, and these doctors see their job in terms of helping us find the right biochemical rebalancing in order to get better.

When I was in medical school, I was taught all the wonders of medical diagnosis and treatment. I was not taught how to help people deal with death. In effect, I was taught that if someone had the affront to die under my care, it was probably my fault. I had to look for ways in which I might have contributed to this death by missing the correct diagnosis, as well as by my actions or inactions. On the one hand, that is how we practice responsible medicine � seeking always to learn from mistakes. On the other hand, in putting the responsibility for a patient�s dying on the physician, that is an unnecessary and unwarranted casting of blame. If I hadn�t had any fears of death previously, this certainly inculcated a very healthy avoidance of death at all costs, because death would have been my failure.

In western society,
death is often seen
as the grim reaper.

Credits [1]

This is pretty crazy, because the one condition that every person who comes under my care is eventually going to face personally is death. In most medical schools they don�t teach us as doctors to deal with that very well, nor do they teach us how to deal with bereavement.

I went along believing what I had been taught. I believed that the body was thebasis for life, shaped by Darwinian evolution � from primordial chemicals many eons ago, through selection to the fittest survivors of today. I was taught that the mind and all consciousness were products of the brain because damage to the brain produces disorders of perception, thought processing and action. I was sure that belief in an afterlife and other spiritual beliefs were just wishful thinking or denial of the seriousness of what�s going to happen to everybody when their body dies.If we fear death and believe that there is nothing more after our physical life, we often do our best to avoid thinking about death or dealing with it. Every soldier going away to war knows that death is a clear possibility � an absolutely certain probability for some soldiers� but hopefully not for himself (and in today�s army, also herself).

In clinical practice I have often seen fears and denials of death that were paralyzing to the people who were dying, as well as to their friends and families. By not talking about their feelings, barriers were set up which kept the dying from dealing with their fears and the family members from dealing with their grief. Relationships were strained and tensions were often palpable � with everyone tip-toeing around in fear of upsetting others, and a pall of frozen feelings chilling the atmosphere. If the mutual protection pact is not dissolved, the dying may carry positive as well as negative feelings with them to their grave, and the living may end up with barrels of feelings sealed away in the caves of their unconscious minds � never to be opened but still fermenting a bitter brew of unresolved hurts, resentments, guilts, and gobs of positive feelings that got sealed away along with the negative ones and never reached the ears of those who departed with the pact of silence intact. (Ways to deal with these pacts of silence are discussed below.)

Even though we bury our thoughts and fears of death somewhere deep within our unconscious mind, it is impossible to avoid being reminded of some of the fear because there are frequent reminders of death in our everyday lives.

Full editorial in International Journal of Healing and Caring - On line,
September, 2004, Volume 4, No. 3

- Wholistic healing
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               - Research
                   - Careseekers' experiences with therapy
                       - Humor
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                                   - Societal healing
                                       - Environmental healing
                                           - Networking

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Copyright � Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1994 Reprinted with permission of the author P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099 www.WholisticHealingResearch.com DB@WholisticHealingResearch.com