By Marlene Greenspan
Healing involves a wide variety of techniques that enable the damaged or injured body to return to its original level of good health and functionality. Traditional medicine includes plants as well as synthetic applications and new technological releases from current research and development. Spiritual healing techniques today include mind and body connections that have been studied scientifically by modern therapists. Many of these techniques utilize meditation as well as its qualities of visualization and inner aspects of self-understanding. The body knows well how to heal itself, although it may not have the ability or strength to do so without help from medical practitioners and medication that join with meditative tools in co-partnership.
Many ancient healing methods from different cultures are becoming widely practiced in today’s medical world. Places of renown, like Beth Israel Hospital in New York City, allow healers to accompany people during surgical procedures. They discovered that people who enter treatment facilities with a positive feeling have significantly greater success in regaining good health than those that expect a negative outcome. Most important to note is the need to include and combine the different types of healing tools available to each person. Each one has strong benefits to offer. There are a few tools mentioned below that enable the healing procedures to include the strong participation of the individual and their attitude.
The exploration of hypnosis is another type of energy healing that deals with the mind’s influence in curing ailments, whether of physical or mental in origin. Dr. Milton Ericson developed an approach to hypnosis that avoids personal control by a facilitator. It enables people to go within themselves in a self-controlled trance to discover and adjust the difficulty causing the imbalance of health in mind or body. They can be guided by a trained therapist and can also learn how to manage this tool by themselves when needed. A Guide to Trance Land, a book written by Ericson’s student, Bill O’Hanlon, explains, with specific activities, how this method enables an individual to control their own healing in different ways. The trance state is similar, albeit not identical, to meditation. Often physical irregularities or illnesses are no longer present after one or more serious sessions. Ericson taught that the facilitator can guide the patient through visualizations that involve healing without needing to know the details and without encroaching on the patient’s privacy unless the doctor and patient think it is necessary.
Traumatic situations cause illness from still another point of view. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk discusses the body and mind responses experienced by trauma victims in his book, The Body Keeps the Score. He explains how the brain can be approached to heal the negativity trauma causes for individuals and their families. Major trauma occurs from situations of personal danger like natural flooding and fire disasters as well as from terrorist and battle scenes. Returning veterans who try to bury their painful memories and reenter their lives from before their deployment, find that sharing their activities causes painful and frequently unpleasant issues. Dr. van der Kolk describes a number of different types of mind-body meditative treatments that can resonate with different trauma cases and a variety of individuals.
In each of the above theories and methods, there is something that goes beyond practical treatment plans. People have a strong connection to their innermost being as well as to the universe beyond. Rabbi Maurice Lamm, z”tl, discusses this in his classic book, The Power of Hope. He describes the situations of people who suffer from serious illnesses, like Hodgkin ’s disease, and how they take control of their own healing processes with positive energy. They apply both traditional treatments and that extra something called hope. Hope comes from within the person, from inner, intangible feelings of “universal attunement, transcendence, albeit it not necessarily formally religious.” Somehow it reduces the negatives and influences the attitude to produce better health. A teenage girl with Hodgkin’s, for example, was told she could never have children, yet two decades later she and her husband had seven healthy children. Rabbi Lamm pointed out that the concept of “hope” reflects a person’s attitude towards one’s active awareness of the universal consciousness.
Energy healing and its many facets taps into the essence of human living. Individuals can never just sit back and allow the doctors to take over their cures. They must co-partner in their healing process. They must make sure that they have reasons to get better and not just wait and see how things unfold. Consistency and responsible awareness, personal effort through exercise, and medications are also part of this process. In a very high percentage of cases, that can make the difference between life and death. Of course there is no magical guarantee that healing will always occur no matter what healing techniques are applied. However, qualitative living employs energy from within. The co-partnership of energy healing techniques, traditional medicine, and hopeful patient participation must be encouraged to increase success in the healing process.
Marlene Greenspan, MA, LPC, is currently in private practice and the director of Counseling for Better Living. In the yeshiva system for many years, she has taught, created social skills programs, written weekly Counseling Corner articles, given workshops, and published professional articles for Nefesh, ACA, ASCA, and the OU, among others.