I've been in health care for over thirty-one years now. The first twelve years were spent entirely in the world of mainstream Western medicine. The rest has been a continuing journey in the true paradigm of healing. For the first twelve years, I helped people manage their sickness. Since then, I've been helping people reach a state of wholeness as a Doctor of Chiropractic and as a Reiki practitioner. After all, "wholeness" is what healing is all about. To prove this, you have to know the original meaning of the word "healing". It derived from the Dutch word heelen which means "whole" and was translated in Old English to mean "restoration to wholeness".
So what does "whole" mean? From Old English we have "entire, unhurt," from German, "undamaged," and from Slavic, "complete." The "complete" person is made up not only of a body but of a mind and Spirit as well. When these three manifestations of the individual are in a state of balance, of wholeness, of completeness, a person is experiencing HEALTH.
Over the years, I've heard arguments from various points of view over the cause of a state of un-health and of how healing should begin. Conservative people, who rely solely on science and pragmatism, tend to balk at the more spiritualistic healing practitioners who place any bit of emphasis on the nonphysical manifestations of the individual, the mind and Spirit. Lately, though, fields of study have been emerging such as psychoneuroimmunology and noetic sciences that do indeed see healing as involving the whole person. Many great healers during the course of the past 200 years or so have said that illness, disease, and greater proneness to injury all begin with the state of one's own mind. In just the past 20 years, we have great visionaries such as Drs. Bruce Lipton and Wayne Dyer saying that not only can we restore health by correcting the state of mind, but we can also change our very genetic disposition to various diseases in the same way.
To understand how all this is possible, we have to examine how the body, mind, and Spirit work and how they are all interconnected. In my book "The Doctor Is In," I dedicate an entire chapter to this very topic. To sum it up, the Spirit is a pure manifestation of the divine power that created all there is. (In contrast, it is the soul that makes us an individual.) The physical body is the means by which we experience the universe around us. While the Spirit enlivens and animates the physical body, the mind is what thinks, perceives, judges, rationalizes, contemplates, forms opinions, feels emotions, etc. When the mind produces samskaras (Sanskrit, "impressions") that are not conducive to a state of wholeness, stress results, and stress can eventually lead to physical illness. These samskaras also cloud the awareness of our own connectedness to the divine source that created us, our Spirit. Once the mind is brought into alignment with holistic (from "holism" (Greek, "holos" meaning "whole")) thinking, true healing can take place.
Healing doesn't mean that the physical or mental pain or illness will magically disappear. It does mean that one lives in the awareness of the perfect union of body, mind, and Spirit and strives to keep this union in balance by maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Pain and illness can and do disappear in the process. But what is most important is that one will live their life fully. In my book, I talk all about how my spiritual path helped me to deal with chronic illnesses and to deal with the samskaras created in my own mind. When I was finally able to see the light of my own Spirit blasting through the mind itself and bringing the body to a greater state of functionality, an experience I continue to behold when in deep states of meditation, I realized how I, an "individual", my mind, others, the "mind" of others, and Spirit are all manifestations of the same divine Source. In this experience, I enjoy and carry with me a state of bliss, the bliss of the Play of Consciousness (Sanskrit, chidvilasananda) that we are all a part of. Thus, we have the nature of healing.
So what does "whole" mean? From Old English we have "entire, unhurt," from German, "undamaged," and from Slavic, "complete." The "complete" person is made up not only of a body but of a mind and Spirit as well. When these three manifestations of the individual are in a state of balance, of wholeness, of completeness, a person is experiencing HEALTH.
Over the years, I've heard arguments from various points of view over the cause of a state of un-health and of how healing should begin. Conservative people, who rely solely on science and pragmatism, tend to balk at the more spiritualistic healing practitioners who place any bit of emphasis on the nonphysical manifestations of the individual, the mind and Spirit. Lately, though, fields of study have been emerging such as psychoneuroimmunology and noetic sciences that do indeed see healing as involving the whole person. Many great healers during the course of the past 200 years or so have said that illness, disease, and greater proneness to injury all begin with the state of one's own mind. In just the past 20 years, we have great visionaries such as Drs. Bruce Lipton and Wayne Dyer saying that not only can we restore health by correcting the state of mind, but we can also change our very genetic disposition to various diseases in the same way.
To understand how all this is possible, we have to examine how the body, mind, and Spirit work and how they are all interconnected. In my book "The Doctor Is In," I dedicate an entire chapter to this very topic. To sum it up, the Spirit is a pure manifestation of the divine power that created all there is. (In contrast, it is the soul that makes us an individual.) The physical body is the means by which we experience the universe around us. While the Spirit enlivens and animates the physical body, the mind is what thinks, perceives, judges, rationalizes, contemplates, forms opinions, feels emotions, etc. When the mind produces samskaras (Sanskrit, "impressions") that are not conducive to a state of wholeness, stress results, and stress can eventually lead to physical illness. These samskaras also cloud the awareness of our own connectedness to the divine source that created us, our Spirit. Once the mind is brought into alignment with holistic (from "holism" (Greek, "holos" meaning "whole")) thinking, true healing can take place.
Healing doesn't mean that the physical or mental pain or illness will magically disappear. It does mean that one lives in the awareness of the perfect union of body, mind, and Spirit and strives to keep this union in balance by maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Pain and illness can and do disappear in the process. But what is most important is that one will live their life fully. In my book, I talk all about how my spiritual path helped me to deal with chronic illnesses and to deal with the samskaras created in my own mind. When I was finally able to see the light of my own Spirit blasting through the mind itself and bringing the body to a greater state of functionality, an experience I continue to behold when in deep states of meditation, I realized how I, an "individual", my mind, others, the "mind" of others, and Spirit are all manifestations of the same divine Source. In this experience, I enjoy and carry with me a state of bliss, the bliss of the Play of Consciousness (Sanskrit, chidvilasananda) that we are all a part of. Thus, we have the nature of healing.
