What's New on IJHC (May 2010)

Table of Contents 10-2

Editorial Musings

Oneness: A healing chorus unifying our levels of beingness
Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABIHM, Editor in Chief

Research

'Placebo' Is the Medical Term For Self-Healing
Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABIHM

Abstract

This article is inspired by a fascinating series of YouTube videos on studies of the placebo effect on pains and other problems. A high-powered team of eight academics from various disciplines discusses research on many ways in which placebo reactions can be stimulated. These videos are most interesting for the self-healings they reveal. More fascinating yet are the limitations of the vision and comprehension of the conventional medical establishment about possible mechanisms of action for these processes. As I, myself, was taught in medical school, conventional medicine perceives people to be bodies with brains that may alter responses to physical conditions in rather limited fashions. Within this framework of explanations, self-healing is something of a mysterious surprise. In contrast, self healing is a very natural and common process within a wholistic perspective – where people are understood to be composed of body, emotions, mind, relationships (with other people and with the environment) and spirit. From a wholistic perspective, individuals are expected and encouraged to generate self-healings through varieties of mind-body and bioenergy mechanisms. Within this perspective, symptoms are reflections of a person's state of being in the world. When we address all levels of their being, not just the physical, then self-healing is a natural and frequent occurrence for most people.
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Remarkable Recoveries

Healing People with Schizophrenia through Shared Acceptance of Clients' Realities and Shifts in Bioenergy Fields
Yuliya L. Cohen TDCE, BACS, ERT

Abstract
The field of psychotherapy holds to the basic premise that what is experienced by people with schizophrenia is not normal or real. As a result, in psychotherapy there has always been a major emphasis on trying to help clients give a full account of their inner reality in words, pictures or other symbolic representations, admit they were delusional, and through learning to measure reality with the yardstick of the therapist to regain full grasp of normal reality.  Bruce W. Scotton (2002) points out that “Although traditional psychiatry and psychology have made impressive strides in the understanding the human mind and the brain, they adhere to an unnecessarily restrictive view of the psyche and its functioning, and in doing so they refuse to follow the scientific method.  Specifically, our current sciences of the psyche fail to examine the data concerning, build theories to explain, and work therapeutically with spiritual experiences and experience of nonordinary reality."

The goal of this article is to expand the existing model by questioning and rethinking assumptions about the basic nature of client’s non-ordinary experiences. This article describes a non-traditional approach to treating people with schizophrenia that involves authentically accepting the person's story and symptoms as a valid reflection of an inner crisis, and treating the person's positive symptoms by respectfully using each aspect of their story as a direction from which healing can proceed towards spiritual integration and symptom resolution.

The starting point of all these stories is the healing professional asking the person to describe their inner reality and then engaging and treating them from within that reality. 
 
This report is divided in the following sections:
1. A brief overview of the challenges and perspectives on treating people with schizophrenia.
2. A story of my personal path to healing
3. A discussion on shared intentional focus and the validity of inner reality
4. Case examples describing the challenges of reframing and resolution in achieving a successful treatment outcome
5. Discussions of bioenergy field alterations that facilitate healing for these people.
6. Summary of the approach and conclusions.

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Living with Life Challenges

This Is Your Brain In A Mine Field: Diagnosed with PTSD - the Challenge to Be Objective
Rick Adair

Abstract
This article is written in response to a request by the IJHC to share my personal experience of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and subsequent treatment with Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and other modalities that involve meditation and music. My experience as a combat medic in Vietnam and as a professional civilian paramedic are given a face to help facilitate this study. Included are issues from my childhood that contributed to my PTSD.

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Variations on the Theme of Healing

The Benefits and Potentials of WHEE:
    Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT
Anita Baisley, MA Ed/Admin, Reiki Master

Abstract
I am currently the principal at a high school on a Native American Reservation in New Mexico. As part of my work for my Doctoral degree I took a course on WHEE: Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT. WHEE has proved to be transformational in my personal, family and professional life. This article details ways in which WHEE has been helpful in clearing current-life stresses; residues of recent and past traumas in myself and in family members; and in starting to transform the fears, angers, low-self esteem and other manifestations of the history of societal traumas experienced by the Native Americans over many generations.

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Being Here
Mary Ann Wallace, MD

I’ve been resisting doing energy work, lately, preferring to focus on simply being present with myself in life.  Not doing for others.  Not “serving”– which feels to me like a laden word and concept these days.

So I was surprised the other day when I felt compelled to 'do energy work' with a woman who was a participant in a class I was teaching.  I had been asked to teach a workshop for cancer patients who are experiencing chronic pain, helping them deal with their situation in ways other than by taking medication to numb it all.  At the end of the workshop, a woman approached me asking for information on a personal level.  Begging me, really.  She was so distraught under her impeccable makeup and professional dress.  Her situation was that, following surgery to remove a brain tumor, she had lost all sensation from one half of her face. Except for, as she described it, a relentless, stabbing pain nested right behind her eye.  Relentless.  Her face revealed the agony behind that simple word.

I felt the familiar electric current in my spine alerting me to 'be there'...

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Wholistic Approaches

The ‘Sickening’ Search for Health: Ivan Illich’s revised thoughts on the medicalization of life and medical iatrogenesis. 
Francis C. Biley, RN PhD

Abstract
Ivan Illich’s claim that the medical establishment has become a major threat to health as a result the medicalisation of life and the development of medical iatrogenesis (negative medical effects on health) appears to have been accurately prophetic. Expensive, specialised, intensive, technological and professionalised care has developed to the point that the general community is now unable to understand and deal with ordinary life processes such as pain, suffering and death. Although the medical profession is closely implicated in the development of this situation, along with capitalist and financial imperatives and institutional domination, ”Today’s major pathogen…[is] the pursuit of the healthy body” (Illich, 1986, p. 1325).

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Poetry, The Creative Arts and Humor are Healing

Tango: A Deeper Look 
Sharna Fabiano

One of the incredible things about tango is that it is so multi-dimensional: art, hedonism, competitiveness, healing. Its all there.     
                     – Daniel Trenner     
                        Tango Maestro and Revivalist,     
                        Northampton, Massachusetts      

Tango is a strange beast. Its intimate embrace and intertwining legwork prove as irresistible for some as they are intimidating for others. Erotic images typify the portrayal of tango in popular media, but curiously, experienced social dancers tend to liken what they do to mind-body practices like yoga or martial arts, highlighting experiences of connection and creative flow.

What is it about tango that cannot be perceived from the outside? It would seem that this dance, while being sensual, romantic, and intimate, also demands a great deal of focus and discipline. Devotees the world over have left their jobs, emptied their living rooms, and changed their wardrobes to study and dance tango. On the other hand, many try tango once and never return, citing it as “too difficult, ” a judgment rarely made of other partner dances.

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Student and healee experiences of healing
Bailey
Benor-Research
Cohen

Wholistic News Reviews

Traditional, complementary, alternative, and psycho-social modalities of treatment
Larry Lachman, PsyD

Heart Disease and Anger

Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Psychotic Disorders

Cardiovascular Disease, Medication and Interactions with Herbal Products

Cancer and Liver Disease-Causing Agents and Diet

Questions Pertaining to the Protective Role of Vitamin-D and Ovarian Cancer

Book Reviews

Richard E. Cytowic. The Man Who Tasted Shapes: A Bizarre Medical Mystery Offers Revolutionary Insights into Emotions, Reasoning, and Consciousness. 

Jack Kornfield. The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace.

David Hamilton. Wired for Compassion.

Yekutiel, Lea. Making the Breast of It: Overcoming Fear of Intimacy After Mastectomy.

Christopher K. Johannes PhD & Harry E. van der Zee MD Hom, (Editors). Homeopathy and Mental Health Care: Integrative Practice, Principles and Research.

John Pollard. The Self Parenting Program – Core Guidelines for the Self-Parenting Practitioner.

Mary Ann Wallace, MD. Mindful Eating, Mindful Life: How to Change the Habits That Sabotage Your Health.

Joanne Wannan. New Lives – Stories of Rescued Dogs Helping, Healing, and Giving Hope.

Nick Trout, DVM. Tell Me Where It Hurts: A day of humor, healing and hope in my life as an animal surgeon.

Maria Becker, MD. No More Fears for Maddox.