This week: What is spiritual healing? Spiritual healing can lay claim to being the oldest form of medicine. As a modern, complementary form of medicine, it encompasses practices as varied as Japanese reiki, Tibetan pranic healing and Chinese chi medicine. What do its practitioners do? They take a tripartite view of the human whole, believing it is composed of mind, body and soul, and say that physical or mental illnesses can best be healed through an approach that is spiritual as well as physical. In essence, spiritual healing is the application of "healing energy" to a patient. What kind of illnesses do healers believe they can treat? According to Ian Scott of the National Federation of Spiritual Healers, "almost everything" can be treated using spiritual healing. "The human body has tremendous powers of self-healing", he says, "and the job of the spiritual healer is to unblock things like emotional problems or stress in order to allow the body's own healing energy to flow." While the laying on of hands is often associated with this kind of treatment, Ian says that nowadays it is generally believed that physical contact is unnecessary - although the comfort of human touch can act as an aid to stress relief. Do you have to be religious? Spiritual healing differs from faith healing in that you don't need to follow a religion to undergo treatment. But a study by researchers at the Oxford Centre for Science of the Mind suggests faith can also alleviate pain. They gave electric shocks to a dozen atheists and a dozen Roman Catholics as they studied a painting of the Virgin Mary; the Catholics were able to block out much of the pain.
This week: What is spiritual healing? Spiritual healing can lay claim to being the oldest form of medicine. As a modern, complementary form of medicine, it encompasses practices as varied as Japanese reiki, Tibetan pranic healing and Chinese chi medicine.
