This issue of IJHC features reports of several people who have had remarkable recoveries from varieties of physical problems. This aspect of wholistic healing that is grossly neglected by conventional medicine will hopefully become a regular feature in IJHC.
This subject has held great interest for me for decades. My initial focus was on remarkable recoveries produced by spiritual healing. These often have been labeled 'miraculous' healings in the popular press. Healers with strong gifts of healing may find them occurring too regularly in their practices to label them as such.
I have also been interested in the vast potentials of human capacity for self-healing. To some extent, all healings, by any modality, must involve activation of self-healing potentials and abilities. I was excited to learn of an annotated bibliography of three thousand reports of spontaneous remissions, gathered from 3500 references in over 800 journals in 20 different languages. I found this collection utterly fascinating. There were tantalizing medical notes on remarkable spontaneous recoveries from cancers, skeletal deformities, hormonal abnormalities, and hundreds of other types of physical problems. However, these reports almost never included considerations of psychological or spiritual issues that might have contributed to the unusual remissions from diseases that in many cases were expected to be fatal; and conversely, reports from psychological literature rarely included details of associated physical problems...
A sixty-seven year old woman came to my office for a first visit in the spring of 1985. For anonymity, I will call her Helen B... Though she had previously had a total hysterectomy, it was as if part of her cervix had been left behind, or that she had formed an excessive amount of scar tissue. At this time her liver tests were abnormal, indicating compromised liver function; her tests also showed she was noticeably anemic
Extensive cancer mass was present in the left and central pelvis, extensively involving the small and large bowel. In the face of a lack of a bowel preparation, definitive surgery was postponed. Widespread 1/8" to 3/8" sized masses were studded throughout the pelvic and abdominal cavities, exceeding one-hundred in number... The pathologist's final diagnosis was: "Large mass, terminal ileum and sigmoid colon: poorly differentiated carcinoma, of probable ovarian origin."
A holistic program including meditation, dietary changes, vitamin supplements, psychological interventions, and exercise were instituted. Marked changes were noted on subsequent surgeries, with disappearance of the cancer.
Protocols to treat veterans with brief courses of therapy are required, in light of the large numbers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with depression, anxiety, PTSD and other psychological problems. This observational study examined the effects of six sessions of EFT on seven veterans, using a within-subjects, time-series, repeated measures design. Participants were assessed using a well-validated instrument, the SA-45, which has general scales measuring the depth and severity of psychological symptoms. Participants were assessed before and after treatment, and again after 90 days. Symptom severity decreased significantly...
Modern medicine has not explored the issues of self-healing and of patients who exceed survival expectations. The reason is that we either give the treatment the credit or dismiss them as miracles or "spontaneous remissions." Medicine does not study successes like these because it believes that one cannot learn from spontaneous events. However, when we think of these cases as unique to the patient and self–induced, we are more likely to ask patients for their stories and learn about survival behavior.
It has been known for a long time that psychological factors can contribute explanations for so-called "spontaneous" remissions. Psychologist Bruno Klopfer, back in the 1940s, was given 24 personality profiles of cancer patients and correctly predicted 19 times who would have a fast or slow growing cancer. In one case he couldn’t decide and his predictions were wrong four times (Klopfer, 1957). Yet when patients enter their doctor’s office and are given a diagnosis, they are not handed a list which tells them how to behave and act like a survivor or a list of questions to determine their personality profile and find who is more likely to become a spontaneous long-term survivor and who needs psychotherapy.
Few in-depth writings explore the anomalous remission or healing of symptoms and disease that defy the physicalistic explanations of allopathic medicine. This issue of IJHC features the reports of several people who experienced these remarkable recoveries from several physical problems.
I present here a broad spectrum of psychological factors that get in our way of considering remarkable potentials for transformative remissions from illness with spiritual healing treatments, as found in Therapeutic Touch, Healing Touch, Reiki, Qigong, prayer healing and related approaches. The mind is the most complex computer yet developed, having an incredible capacity to modulate self-awareness. Often, these self-reflective abilities lead us into self-perpetuating loops of beliefs. These articles of faith, in science, religion and other areas of our lives, shape our consciousness in ways that can hinder us from an open-minded stance in new observations and in learning valuable information. This self-blinding process obscures our recognizing remarkable recoveries, impedes our explorations of them and thwarts acceptance and integration of spiritual awarenesses and healing into our healthcare system.
False Hope: Real or Imaginary? [1] Rob van Overbruggen, PhD
In dealing with cancer, many people use the term 'false hope' when they criticize complementary therapies. The concerns about false hope are often exaggerated. Hope is real, Hope heals. Hope is always real, and there are always possibilities of healing. With every disease there are people who have somehow healed themselves.
Women for Women International (WFWI) helps victims of war become self sufficient in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Kosovo, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Sudan. WFWI conducts year-long programs for participants, providing financial aid, job training, rights awareness and leadership education. They also want to help participants deal with the often severe trauma they experience during war. I have adapted my Energy Psychology methodology called Clearing Limits Energetically with Acupressure Release (CLEAR™) so that it may be used in groups in short, onehour sessions as a part of WFWI’s program. In July 2008, WFWI sent me to Nigeria to test CLEAR with its participants to see if it could translate into other cultures and to see if the women would accept it. In this article, I explain CLEAR and the pilot program in Nigeria with WFWI facilitators and participants.
I was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1961. I am a Cranio-sacral therapist, EFT practitioner, and a Biomedical Scientist. In the past 27 years I have mainly been working in hospital labs doing physiological examinations. Although that gives information on how certain organs perform and is an aid for the patient´s doctor to determine what kind of treatment to give. I felt there was much more to take into account for a patient's wholeness on all levels. On my soul journey to find answers I was led to vibrational medicine - a fascinating path that has a start but no end to it.
My work with essences is based on my intuition. Intuition has played huge part in all my work as a healer, cranio-sacral therapist and biomedical scientist. In the setting of a medical exam room my intuition has directed me to check out arterial sites for atherosclerosis, using Doppler ultrasound. These sites were not in the protocol. Often times it helped to identify a lesion. In my life, following my intuition has become my daily practice. Taking a different route then usual to work or phoning up someone when I felt I should is part of such intuitional activity. In this way I often connect with people who are in need of my help or who are helpful to me.
As cranio sacral therapist intuition has many times helped me to aid my client in very profound ways. Sometimes, the day I see a client, I pick up a book with information that is relevant to the client´s problem. The treatment then is more focused and I can guide the client in ways I would not have done otherwise. I also always follow my intuition in all my healing work, when I move my hands to different part of the clients body where energy is needed and get very good feedback on that afterwards.
I work with children from infancy through age 5 years, helping them accommodate to or overcome musculoskeletal, sensorimotor and/or neurological problems that have often defied correction within conventional medical treatments. For more than thirty years I have studied and practiced mainstream approaches to physical therapy for children. I follow or am involved in research on child development. I have learned to work intuitively, helping children connect with their inner wisdom that guides them to normalize their abilities and differences.
After thirty years of photographing sacred landscapes on all seven continents, in the past nine years I have focused my camera in one place – my swimming pool. I now have more than 40,000 images of this 20' x 40' space; they are all different, and the project shows no sign of coming to an end. I am constantly amazed at what I see, which for me is an endorsement of philosopher Marcel Proust's statement that "the real voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
