On Healers and Healing

On Healers and Healing
Larry Dossey has stated that the term “healer” had not been in his lexicon in medical school “If my medical colleagues and I had been called healers, we would not have known whether we were being praised or damned. We were training to become surgeons, internists and pathologists, not healers.”[i] Medical students are provided with a huge amount of information about the mechanistic nature of physiology, anatomy and pathology, but often, little true knowledge about the subtle processes underlying the existence of human beings. Medical students are given information concerning the assessment of affective disorders, yet little knowledge concerning the emotional state of a patient. “Bedside manner” is thought to be dependent on the individual doctor’s personality and little can be done to improve it. A search in Medline using these terms results in relatively few citations, with a number referring to the inverse relationship between perceived good “bedside manner” and fewer malpractice lawsuits.
The most gifted healers, in general, are less concerned with cure and more with well-being and balance, less concerned with ego and more with self-discovery, less concerned with the end and more concerned with the process. They are concerned with restoring the whole person, and not the organ. Healers are not in a battle or war against disease. Healers are more concerned with the diplomacy of peace and balance and the meaning of the condition. Illness is viewed as an imbalance. The illness will have greater meaning when one looks at the whole person. The angry person may contort their body with rheumatoid arthritis. The great orator may have throat cancer. The obsessive-compulsive business person with a cold, calculating personality may have cardiac problems….but, an early relatively mild MI might finally make that individual realize that their life may not be going in the direction they would prefer, and ultimately, be a rewarding and useful experience. The healer who looks at and understands the possibilities of healing in a holistic way can benefit the process. Moreover, a healer has a moral and ethical responsibility to do so. Ultimately, as the principles of Reiki state, the energy is for the patient’s Greatest and Highest Good.
One also needs to be aware of the differences between healing and curing and that one does not necessarily accompany the other. It is important to understand that our perceptions of healing are not always true. We are all born and we all die. Death is unavoidable on the physical plane. Healing is reflected in how we live our lives and sometimes in how we face our deaths. If an individual can face their death with dignity and strength, then that is perhaps the healing that was necessary and sufficient for that individual. It is neither the healer’s responsibility nor their right to take upon themselves decisions that belong solely to the patient.
Some healing is always possible and is always to be striven for. It is also important to remember however, that in some cases, illness can bring balance to a situation that is otherwise unsustainable. A child may develop multiple personalities to save themselves from a traumatic and dangerous home. A business person may develop cardiac problems when their bodies have reached a breaking point and must rest. Carolyn Myss has developed the concepts of Shadow and Light archetypes[ii] as tools for self-awareness and cultivation. One can also look at illness as a process with both Shadow and Light aspects. Every action brings a reaction: the reaction should be the result of conscious choice and knowledge from both the healer and the healee, rather than a reflexive attempt to “save” a patient. Balance is again the key. Can one learn a lesson and develop from the experience of the illness or will one choose to let the disease process become the motivating force in one’s life? Can one find wisdom and joy in terminal cancer or does one necessarily merely deal with the suffering? The choice may be between Shadow and Light archetypes; the choice may be Victim/Survivor, Warrior/ Defeatist, Teacher/Student or, the choices may be acceptance versus rejection, forgiveness versus blame, amends versus continued hurtful behaviors.
Healers are also, ideally, concerned with their own process of growth and spiritual and emotional evolution. The archetype of the “wounded healer” is often evoked, but it is in the process of wounding where those that choose growth can seek it and those who seek growth can overcome and out-grow the wounding. It is not the “wounding” that gives an individual any special “powers’ or abilities---it may be that those who have been wounded and survived and have chosen to become healers have a broader space of self-knowledge and experience to understand about themselves and to share that understanding and healing with others. The “wounding”, especially if it occurred in early childhood, often leads to a sort of hypersensitivity to extrasensory signals, born of the necessity for survival. This hypersensitivity may extend into adulthood and manifest itself through intuition and finer perceptions of the energy fields that surround us all. The wounded healer must first heal themselves internally and cultivate the healing intent in order to truly honor the healing process.
The “inner state” of the healer is of paramount importance. Mindfulness, compassion, intent, love, acceptance, self-cultivation and intuition are all vital. The healer should also be always aware that Ego interferes with the healing process. The healer needs to have a belief in his or her own abilities, but this belief cannot overcome intent and empathic compassion. One must always be aware of the Coyote, Heyokah, the “trickster” in oneself. In Native American healing arts, Coyote medicine often uses laughter and humor, but the coyote can also teach us “how silly we look to the gods when we take ourselves too seriously.”[iii] In his book, Coyote Medicine, Lewis Mehl-Madrona tells of a medicine man who told him that in order to be healed, one needed to answer three questions: “Who are you”, “Where did you come from” and Why are you here”.[iv] Ultimately, it is the patients’ choice to be healed. A cure may or may not be possible, depending on the particular situation, and this must be faced, accepted and honored. Finally, a healer must always be aware of the inherent healing power in the patient/client and the ultimate role that the patient’s own choices have to play in their healing process.
One of the main concerns in energy medicine is the re-balancing of the individual, whether one views it as a re-balancing of chakras, meridians, organs, hormones, neurotransmitters or physical anatomy. “Bedside manner” and knowledge of human emotion and behavior in general and the specifics of emotion in a particular patient/client is paramount in energy healing. The healer must know, or become “entangled” with the “healee”. This often requires more time, more conversation, more communication, more information and more attention on the part of the healer than is often seen in mainstream medicine. Empathy, often confused with sympathy, is also of paramount importance in energy healing. Because of the confusion between empathy and sympathy, conventional medicine practitioners may often be perceived as too distant…and energy practitioners may be perceived as too close. The medical student is warned not to get too “involved” with the patient because of the perceived detriment to both the patient and the doctor. This warning however, may be better applied to noting the difference between empathy and compassion for the patient which is a healing process and allows the patient dignity and freedom of choice as opposed to sympathy and enabling the patient which treats the patient as an object of pity and conversely limits dignity and choice.

Practitioners of energy medicine often speak of spirituality, sometimes in contrast to their or others’ religions, sometimes together with religion and too often not defining what spirituality means. William Thompson defined spirituality as a more rudimentary, innate and fundamental aspect of society. "Religion is not identical with spirituality; rather religion is the form spirituality takes in civilization." [v] Spirituality may be regarded as a search or investigation for meaning, values, transcendence, connection with self, a Higher Power and/or Nature and “becoming”.[vi] While spirituality is inexorably connected to healing, it also must remain in balance with knowledge and intuition. The energy healer must always respect anothers’ view of both religion and spirituality whether or not they bear much resemblance to their own.

Finally, there is much about the principles and the mechanisms of energy medicine that we do not yet understand fully. The evidence is accumulating and if we truly consider ourselves scientists and proponents of the scientific method, we must look at the evidence and the ensuing hypotheses with an open mind. The evidence exists and is reproducible. Hypotheses follow evidence. Those that dismiss energy medicine might be well-advised to remind themselves of this, and that it is incumbent on a scientist to view the evidence without bias and derive a hypothesis to explain the evidence. It is not part of the scientific method to dismiss both the evidence and the hypotheses simply on the basis of not matching the current paradigms, however strongly one wants to hold on to the paradigms. Healers and healing occurs and it as much the responsibility of those practicing energy medicine to understand and explain as fully as possible as it is the responsibility of conventional medicine practitioners to fully explain allopathic medicine. We still don’t fully understand how aspirin works: it should therefore not be so surprising that we do not yet understand the full capabilities and capacities of human intent or the role of consciousness on the process of healing.

[i] Dossey, L., Healing Beyond the Body: Medicine and the Infinite Reach of the Mind, Shambala, Boston, 2003.
[ii] Myss, C., Sacred Contracts: Awakening your Divine Potential, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2003.
[iii]Mehl-Madrona, L., Coyote Healing: Miracles in Native Medicine, Bear and Company, Rochester, Vermont, 2003.
[iv] Mehl-Madrona, L., Coyote Medicine: Lessons from Native American Healing, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1997.
[v]Thompson, WI, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality, and the Origins of Culture, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981.
[vi] Martsolf D.S., Mickley J.R. "The concept of spirituality in nursing theories: differing world-views and extent of focus" Journal of Advanced Nursing 27, 294-303,1998.