Can We Heal Ourselves?

My daughter was struggling to get over a lingering winter cold. She had been coughing for almost a month. I suggested she get some blood work done to see if she had an infection. But she had other ideas. One of her yoga students is an intuitive healer. The title sounded suspicious to me I wasn't buying it but I kept my doubts to myself. During her session the healer moved some blocked energy releasing inflammation. My daughter claims she immediately felt better.

I wondered if this was an example of the placebo effect or if this woman truly had healing powers. Medicine is confounded with the placebo effect and why it affects patients so profoundly. Anthropologist Daniel Moerman in his book "Meaning, Medicine and the Placebo Effect" says this effect is a misnomer and widely misunderstood. Moerman believes that the critical ingredient in the placebo dynamic is the doctor. What the doctor believes and how it's communicated deeply affects a patients healing.

So when does real healing begin?

Hippocrates the father of modern medicine was a holistic doctor. He was closely connected with his patients, he knew their dispositions, their families, their dietary habits, even which direction their house faced. He recorded and considered all of these in deciding upon a final diagnosis and treatment. Hippocrates recognized that the essence of medicine is profoundly human. He knew how to communicate with his patients; he understood that healing requires trust.

What all of this implies is that the mind and the body are not separate. Our thinking deeply affects the machinery of our body.

Failure to thrive is a medical term used to describe children who have stunted development. It's unclear why but doctors know this affliction is not a result of any single physical process that science can identify. What they do know is the condition is reversed when children are in a sufficiently loving and nurturing environment. Real healing is not just biological, it is in the contact and the bond.

My daughter's experience might sound light new age babble. A bit on the edge of believability but it's not much different than the patient who goes to their doctor and is prescribed an antibiotic for the common cold. Doctors know that antibiotics don't work for viral infections but prescribe them anyway because it's become the accepted norm for both patients and physicians. It's medical marketing you pay for a cure and get one. What usually happens is within a couple of days the patient feels better. This is owned to the fact that the virus has run its course instead of the effectiveness of the treatment.

Baseless persistent assertions of medical truth are common in the lay world. What's not so common is the power of the intuitive healer. I had to wonder which one made more sense. The overuse of antibiotics has resulted in resistant strains of bacteria the use of moving blocked energy has as far as I know hurt no one.

I'm not suggesting that people forgo sound medical treatment when it's necessary but I do believe there's a certain amount of healing created by positive energy. Perhaps this energy is the mental boost that moves our body's immune system into a higher gear. There's still much we don't know or understand. What's really needed to create a better system for all of us is a paradigm shift. We have to invest in a system that favors human contact and communication. A system that does not respond to a patients demands like the market place. We also have to take more responsibility for ourselves and examine the connections between our own mental energy and how our body feels.