In the last decade, C. Helen Chen had a series of crises for which her University of Chicago MBA provided few answers: A sister was diagnosed with cancer, her husband returned to Taiwan leaving her to raise their son, and she had her own breast cancer scare. Chen, who is a Buddhist, says, "This caused me to think deeper what is the meaning of life."
In the midst of these other problems, she suffered the severely pulled arm muscle that led the Taiwanese native back to her roots. The 45-year-old Chen found that most exercise, including jogging and aerobics, did more harm than good. She then remembered the slow, serene pace of Tai-chi and began practicing it again. Together with physical therapy she received for her pulled muscle, Tai-chi helped heal both mind and spirit.
C. Helen Chen
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Today, she is probably one of the few graduates of the prestigious business school who is not only a certified Tai-chi instructor, but also a holistic healing educator.
In traditional Chinese medicine, the body's underlying "life force" is called chi. For Chen, Tai-chi not only involves self-defense, meditation, and graceful body movements, but it also creates harmony in body, mind, and spirit.
Chen, who has a doctorate in holistic health education from Union Institute in Cincinnati, firmly believes "we all have the power to heal ourselves" by harnessing this life force. An educator affiliated with the White Crane Wellness Center in Chicago, Chen is developing a curriculum for Tai-chi instructors. She thinks traditional Chinese medicine has a lot to offer conventional medicine: "Western thinking is very linear and traditional Chinese philosophy is more dynamic — and we pay more attention to nature."
The clinical research published on the health benefits of Tai-chi is limited, but Chen believes that in her own work with senior citizens there are indications it helps reduce the occurrence of falls. "People are very rooted so they need to strengthen their feet, which helps their balance," she says. "When you're more balanced, you don't fall."
Holistic Trends
Chen's mind-body experience in healing is hardly unique. From well-known holistic healing authors Deepak Chopra and Andrew Weil, both M.D.s, to neighborhood chiropractors and healing centers, alternative therapies are becoming increasingly popular. Many interested in such therapies seem receptive to the message that good health — and spiritual enlightenment — are within everyone's grasp.
But, as a subset, there seem to be several more difficult questions raised by the popularity of alternative remedies: How do people heal? What is the relationship between health and spirituality? Does this movement represent the medicalization of spirituality or the spiritualization of medicine?
Browse through the hundreds of magazines and books devoted to health, read the newspapers, scan the medical journals, listen to the radio, search the World Wide Web, watch the late night infomercials: By whatever name, alternative, complementary, natural, or traditional therapies — and their close cousin, spirituality — are everywhere.
Take a sampling of magazines alone. Common Boundary (September/October) offers an article by Mirka Knaster extolling the virtues of Buddhist "lovingkindness meditation" or metta. She writes, "When we're angry or sad about something, we can send metta to ourselves. When we're stopped in traffic, we can extend loving kindness to all other drivers in their cars. When we're waiting impatiently in line at a supermarket we can wish well to those ahead of us and to the checkout clerk.
"Doing so won't make the cars or the line go faster, but it will keep us from poisoning ourselves with the hormones and enzymes generated by stress."
In general, advocates of alternative therapies do not dismiss modern medicine, but they are deeply skeptical about its ability to treat all diseases well. An alternative healer, for instance, might look at a cancer patient and say, "Sure, continue with the chemotherapy. But you also need good emotional, spiritual, and nutritional support. You might also try acupressure. This may lessen the amount of chemotherapy needed, and the side effects are less serious."
Alternative therapies are increasingly attracting attention from the mainstream media as well, albeit in a cautious tone. A recent New York Times article (Sept. 9, 1997) reported how St. John's wort (Hyperticum perforatum), an ancient remedy widely used in Germany to soothe nerves and relieve melancholy, outsells the anti-depressant Prozac by a 4-to-1 margin. The article reported that German researchers surveyed 28 clinical trials and "concluded that the herb had clearly outperformed dummy medication in relieving depression [mostly of the milder type] and showed very few side effects."
Though the research on St. John's wort — an over-the-counter drug — is still largely inconclusive, the article points to a reality faced by many physicians: alternative remedies cannot be ignored, primarily because people are asking about them and using them.
$11.7 Billion and Counting
A widely quoted New England Journal of Medicine article ("Unconventional Medicine in the United States," Jan. 28, 1993) signaled the arrival of alternative therapies by pointing out that in 1990 one-third of all Americans used "unconventional" therapies. That included 22 million who saw an alternative therapy practitioner, such as a chiropractor, for back problems or arthritis, or a spiritual healer for allergies. About one-fourth of all Americans seeing a doctor for serious health problems — such as HIV/AIDS, chronic renal failure, gastrointestinal problems — also are using alternative therapies.
In addition, the journal reported that alternative therapies cost $11.7 billion for services only, excluding expenditures for books, medical equipment, and herbal remedies — such as ginseng (used by some athletes and stressed-out executives) and St. John's wort. The alternative remedy marketplace is hardly a cottage industry: Chopra, according to a recent Newsweek article, brings in more than $15 million annually from his books, tapes and other ventures.
What was eye-popping for some in the New England Journal article was an out-of-pocket-cost comparison among alternative therapies and supplements ($10.3 billion in 1990), hospital care ($12.8 billion), and physicians' services ($23.5 billion). In other words, Americans spent almost as much of their own money on alternative therapies as they did for hospital care, and they spent nearly one-half the amount for alternative services and products as they did in direct payments to physicians.
The good news, at least for the physicians, is "unconventional therapies are generally used as adjuncts to conventional therapy rather than as replacements for it," says the article. "Users of unconventional therapy were more likely to see a medical doctor than a provider of unconventional therapy, and visits to providers for serious medical conditions in the absence of contact with a medical doctor were rare."
Or as a Richard J. Sandore, M.D., who practices Andean shamanism (a combination of traditional healer and spiritual seer) and energy healing in the Chicago area, puts it: "When I get into a car accident, I want to go to a hospital. But I'll ask a shaman, 'Why did I get into the accident. What happened to me?'"
Near-life Experiences
Sandore, a former obstetrics and gynecology specialist, seems typical of the new breed of healer. He combines ancient healing traditions and spirituality with a certain business savvy. His Soaring Spirit, Inc., works with corporations to "foster intuition and creativity" and "boost the bottom line." He was among more than 60 speakers at a recent three-day Whole Life Expo at the Rosemont Convention Center near Chicago — one of a series held throughout the country.
About 18,000 people spent a sunny, warm fall weekend inside a drab convention hall listening to an array of lectures on topics such as Siberian shamanism, near-death experiences, Native American healing, Tibetan Buddhist spirituality, Indian Ayurvedic medicine, homeopathy, nutrition, contacts with extra-terrestrials, creativity, brain longevity, trance-channeling, indigenous healing, and astrology.
There was even the occasional skeptic among the crowd. "What we need are not near-death experiences," says one participant. "We need near-life experiences."
For a first-time visitor, there was much to offer, hear, and see. Religious symbolism and language, in particular, seemed to be everywhere. "People are afraid to talk about their spiritual experiences," says Dennis Gersten, M.D., a San Diego psychiatrist. "A lot of people have had them, but they don't want to see them."
Some speakers even sounded downright traditional — at least at times. Lecturing without notes for 2 1/2 hours straight before a rapt Saturday night audience of more than 1,000, author and motivational speaker Wayne Dyer was a mixture of charm, new age philosophy, Indian guru wisdom, and old-time religion.
In concluding the first part of his talk — Dyer was to speak for 45 minutes more after a break — he told the story of John Newton, the slave trader who, after finding grace, returned his slave ship to Africa. Then he wrote the hymn Amazing Grace. Dyer played a recording of the song by a female Norwegian folk singer, who was accompanied by instrumental music and the sounds of crying whales.
There are few dry eyes left in the room when the recording stops. Dyer solemnly repeats the words to the hymn: "I once was lost, but now I'm found." Then he adds an alternative interpretation to what happened to the slave trader who found grace so amazing: "He connected with the power of the source."
What Goes Around....
For many, the confluence of alternative therapies and spirituality (especially the non-mainstream kind) may seem at times to be pushing the frontiers of both medicine and religion. Medicine, in its most rational, scientific, clinical, and mundane form, subsumed areas that had been long-held by religious systems and beliefs (such as the power to heal or make whole).
It's ironic, perhaps, that modern, organized religion seems to have surrendered these areas as primary concerns. Yet the desire for healing both in body and spirit remains constant in the lives of many with religious affiliations and those without such ties.
A growing number of healthcare professionals are beginning to catch on. They acknowledge what many believers have long held — that prayer and other forms of spirituality, as a complement to good medical care, could have a positive impact on physical and mental health.
Some studies, for instance, have demonstrated the positive effects of intercessory prayer. Randolph C. Byrd, M.D., of San Francisco studied 393 people admitted to a hospital with heart attacks and concluded that a group prayed for by Christians outside the hospital recovered faster and with fewer medical interventions than a control group not formally targeted for prayer.
Cardiologist Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words, The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine, felt the study's results got far too little play. He told a 1996 workshop, "If the subject of this study had been a new medication instead of prayer, this would have been considered a medical breakthrough."
Ancients would find the studies about prayer old news. "Originally, religion monopolized medical and many other social functions, as is exemplified by numerous hygienic and civic regulations to be found in the Old Testament," writes Michael H. Kottow of the University of Chile in a 1992 article in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
"From its inception medicine has competed with the traditional healing functions of religious institutions (as shown by the common etymology of the words heal and holy). To achieve its privileged and respected status, medicine has had to show a convincing record of therapeutic effectiveness. . . .Thus, medicalization seems to be a secular invasion of areas that traditionally had been managed in transcendent terms."
Alternative therapies in popular spirituality fill the void on two fronts: Medicine's perceived lack of interest in treating the person as holy and organized religion's frequent inability to make a person whole.
"Alternative therapies are for the most part immersed in a theoretical framework with clear metaphysical undertones that seem to offer a new form of gratifying sacralization," Kottow continues. "Seen in this social perspective, medicine appears to fail in its task of providing an emotional environment of meaning and direction, and alternative therapies can hardly be blamed if they manage to convey a sense of existential protection . . . by means of their soothing and comforting effects."
Changes in Attitude
Fresh out of medical school at the University of New Mexico more than 30 years ago, Martin P. Kantrowitz, M.D., met an older Native American who came to an Albuquerque clinic with pneumonia.
"He was 76 years old, and he responded well to treatment. A week after I met him he was doing better. I told him he was going to be fine and I said I would see him again the next day," Kantrowitz says. "But quite calmly, [he] told me no. 'I will be in the other world.'"
The next morning the patient was dead. But he taught Kantrowitz, now a professor emeritus at the New Mexico medical school, to pay closer attention to his patients' instincts, spiritual beliefs, and sense of self.
As a teacher, Kantrowitz started trying to help students understand their role as healers. He led his third-year medical students in guided meditation when they gathered to talk about their patients as human beings instead of illnesses and encouraged them to be open-minded about their patients' spiritual needs. (Now nearly one-third of the nation's 126 medical schools offer courses and programs in spirituality and healing.)
"We need to remember that when patients come to see a doctor it is often because there is a change in their lives, a change in their bodies and their sense of wellness," says Kantrowitz. "Often when people turn to religion or some other spiritual practice, it is because something has changed for them, as well. They are looking for something or trying to deal with the change."
Some social scientists have even suggested that physicians may eventually inquire about religious involvement of their patients as routinely as they ask about smoking and check for hypertension.
"I think it's logical that spirituality and religion will be accepted as a field for study," says Lynn G. Underwood, M.D., an epidemiologist and vice president for health sciences at the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Mich., which sponsors research in the area of relationships among mind, body, and spirit. "Measurement is the key," says Underwood. Given convincing data, "physicians may eventually be as inclined to direct people to psychosocial and spiritual resources as to give them pills."
In most cases, researchers are defining spirituality in a traditional sense, presuming a connection to a transcendent dimension of life that exhibits itself in sound relationships to others and a deepened sense of purpose. The growing popularity of such therapies as acupuncture, meditation, spiritual healing, homeopathy, herbal medicine, and massage have increased the call for more rigorous measurement of their effects, both physical and spiritual.
Meditation is one the most studied areas. Historically linked to a diverse variety of religions, ancient and new, it has been shown in hundreds of studies to have positive effects on health."Spiritual effects are one step further out from psychosocial effects on health," says Underwood. "There's still some resistance from biomedical researchers. It's harder to accept."
One possible dark side to the research is the possibility that spirituality might become a pathology. "In my own spiritual tradition, Christian and Roman Catholic, one of the basic major themes has always been the ability to judge between the spirits," says Bernard McGinn, Ph.D., of the University of Chicago. "St. Paul speaks about that in his epistles, the necessity of making judgments about whether a spirit or prophecy is good for the community or not. Almost all traditions have talked about some form of spiritual direction, of testing, discretion, proofs."
How Do We Heal?
Among the seekers and leaders in this new age of spirituality, there are probably charlatans, hucksters and those driven by money, power, and ego. But there are also the Helen Chens of the movement who teach a very simple message: When you're more balanced — and spiritually centered — you don't fall.
Throughout the Whole Life Expo weekend, there seemed to be more emphasis on preventing sickness, infirmity, and old age than actually making the disabled walk or blind see. When illness arrives, however, few in this crowd would ignore spirituality as a resource. Michael de la Cruz, M.D., who has a family practice in Chicago, sums it up nicely: "I love working with people who are spiritually inclined. It's like having a huge bank account where the money hasn't been withdrawn."
Anne Prather, a 33-year-old registered nurse, works in the intensive care unit at Children's Hospital in Chicago. With her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and wearing a Felix the Cat sweatshirt, she looked like an undergraduate. Felix, in this incarnation, had his arms extended wide.
Like Felix, Prather had a certain appealing openness about life and the possibility of miracles. She says she saw three young patients make it through life-threatening illnesses when doctors gave them no chance of making it.
"I have tremendous respect for scientific medicine," she says. "But in these three cases that were considered medically hopeless, they all recovered."
One 6-year-old girl named Nicole had lymphoma. The chemotherapy nearly destroyed her cardiac tissues, so much so that she needed a heart transplant.
Prather, who has no religious affiliation, became convinced of the power of intercessory prayer used by family and friends to save Nicole's life. Prather knew Nicole would be a good candidate for the transplantation because "her faith was so strong, her spirit was so strong." Nicole finally received a new heart. "She's fine now," says Prather. "Her heart is working fine."
Why did Nicole suffer? Why did she live? Was it her faith, the love of her family, the intercessory prayers? Was it luck? Divine intervention or a divine accident? Excellent medical care?
If conventional medicine and alternative remedies do not have all the answers, maybe they need each other — and spirituality — more than each might think.
The French writer and psychiatrist Paul Tournier in Creative Suffering (Harper & Row 1983) writes that part of God's pedagogy may be the use of "random disturbances" — or noise — to produce organization. It was, after all, mistakes in copying the genetic code that created all life, including human beings. He asks, "The production of organization, is that not the very work of the Creator, in the eyes of the scientist as well as in those of the believer?"
Daniel Cattau is managing editor of the Park Ridge Center Bulletin. Free-lance writers Pamela Schaeffer and Judith Cebula contributed to this story.
