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photo © 2003 Allen Holmquist
HEALING AND INFINITY
During my research, I found that there is a difference between curing and healing. Curing is remedial and involves fixing whatever outer problem arises, such as patching a tire if you have a flat, or treating snakebite, or using chemotherapy to control a tumor. It does not help to avoid the nails on the road, the snakes in the woods, or the disease that caused the tumor. Healing is broader, more global, and complete. Healing transforms one’s life, and often, though not always, produces a physical cure. Healing results from an experience of infinity. While healing, we measure success by increased well-being, by a sense of newfound peace, empowerment, and a feeling of communion with all life.
The very real effects of the mind on the body have been confirmed by research. In a sense, we all became experts at developing psychosomatic disease very early in life. At the age of six I could create the symptoms of a cold in minutes if I did not want to go to school. Psychosomatic disease goes against every survival instinct programmed into the body by three hundred million years of evolution. How powerful the mind must be to override all of these survival and self-preservation mechanisms. Imagine if we could marshal these resources to create psychosomatic health!
In the last few decades the field of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), which studies how our moods, thoughts, and emotions influence our health, has matured. PNI investigators discovered that the mind is not localized in the brain but rather is generalized throughout the body. Neuropeptides, which are molecules that continually wash through our bloodstream, flooding the spaces in between each cell, respond almost instantaneously to every feeling and mood, effectively turning the entire body into vibrant, pulsing “mind.” Our body as a whole, experiences every emotion that we have. The rift between mind and body was resolved with the discovery of a single molecule. We also discovered how psychosomatic disease works. We know that when we become depressed every cell in our body feels it, our immune defenses are lowered, and we are more likely to become ill. We know that laughter, if not the best medicine, is near the top of the list. Years after I left the laboratory, PNI investigators discovered what shamans have long known, that the mind and the body are one. But investigators missed one element that is the crux of all shamanic healing: the Spirit.
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