Spirit
Gather wisdom from your experiences, then lend it stability from your core; let your spirit soar and unlock remarkable new sources of healing.
The following techniques are offered as stand-alone therapies or as additions to previously described therapies:
A group of researchers from St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago looked at the link between church attendance and physical health. It found that those with a regular spiritual practice were more likely to be healthy and had a lower mortality rate.
Powell, L.H., Shahabi, L., Thoresen, C.E. (2003). Religion and spirituality: linkages to physical health. American Psychologist. Jan58 (1), p 36.
A similar study at the University of Texas Medical School led by Thomas Oxman examined the effects of spiritual or religious practice and social support on people undergoing heart surgery. Their findings revealed that patients who possessed a large and deep social network, or were devoted to their religious or spiritual practice, exhibited just one-seventh the mortality rate of those who did not.
Oxman, Thomas E., et al. (1995). Lack of social participation or religious strength and comfort as risk factors for death after cardiac surgery in the elderly. Psychosomatic Medicine. 57:5-15.
Many more examples like these exist, validated by studies. Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Prayer is Good Medicine, (1997, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco), points out that there are more than 1,200 studies that show the connection between religious and spiritual practice and its effects on health and longevity.
Research conducted at the Institute of Heartmath in Boulder Creek, CA, measured changes in protein structure when it was exposed to the intentions of individuals. When volunteer study participants entered into a state of “heart coherence” (a measured calm, meditative state), and held an intention directed at a DNA sample, changes in protein structure did occur. Results were replicated even at distances of fifty miles between volunteers and samples. The researchers concluded that their data supported the concept that human intentions, mediated via energetic interactions can affect cell structures and processes, and made the further implication that by changing our consciousness, we can change the very blueprints around which our physical bodies are constructed.
Institute of Heartmath (2003). Emotional Energetics, Intuition and Epigenetic Research (Boulder Creek: Institute of HeartMath), p 1.
Physicians, scientists, physicists, and researchers are all presenting evidence that we can intervene in our own thinking, more than we ever imagined, to affect healing in our own bodies. And although unlikely that we will ever be able to forego drugs and surgery in every instance, we are being shown repeatedly that spirituality is perhaps the starting point for our physical or emotional healing. “It’s free. It’s not under the control of an HMO, doctor, hospital, or spouse. It usually feels good to great. It places awesome power over our own healing within us. It returns the responsibility for our well-being to our own doorsteps, rather than displacing that responsibility onto some outside agent of healing. And research is screaming at us with the urgent message that consciousness can harness the powerful healing forces of a quantum universe, forces far more potent than pills in a bottle.”
Shealy, Norman, M.D., PhD., and Church, Dawson, PhD. (2008). Soul Medicine (Santa Rosa: Energy Psychology Press), p 20