Thoughts on healing

Anyone who is associated with healing will have recently been aware of the new thinking on the effectiveness (or not) of homoeopathy

After much testing it is now being suggested by the medical profession, that homoeopathy is of no use whatsoever, and the successes attributed to it are mainly from a placebo effect, i.e. the patient expects to get better and so they do!  I suppose that this being the case, we will shortly hear similar about many other forms of complimentary healing.

As far as homoeopathy is concerned, I know that there are many many people who were and are helped by this, and it is used extensively in the treatment of animals now too….. (which brings up the point of animals having no expectations of anything at all where external forces and healing are concerned, so there can be no such thing as a placebo effect in their case!)

Let us to take these two points separately…..

 The lack of any tangible proof as to whether homoeopathy actually works and, the placebo effect….

How can it be possible to ‘ prove’ that any form of healing actually works, when for the greater part we cannot actually show how it works or even why it works?

For example Reiki. 

Often when giving Reiki the client is not even touched by the therapist, Reiki can be given 'absently' with great effect.  How would it be possible to prove anything about this at all?

As with many healing therapies, all we can do is go by our own instincts, recognising that there are things that we don't understand and cannot quantify!

And still they work!!!

When will the medical profession be persuaded that we are more than just the sum of our parts, and that it is possible to heal on many subtle levels.

As regards the placebo effect….

"The physician's belief in the treatment and the patient's faith in the physician exert a mutually reinforcing effect; the result is a powerful remedy that is almost guaranteed to produce an improvement and sometimes a cure." -- Petr Skrabanek and James McCormick, Follies and Fallacies in Medicine,

The placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health not attributable to treatment. This effect is believed by many people to be due to the placebo itself in some mysterious way. A placebo (Latin for “I shall please”) is a medication or treatment believed by the administrator of the treatment to be inert or innocuous. A person's beliefs and hopes about a treatment, combined with their suggestibility, may have a significant biochemical effect. Sensory experience and thoughts can affect neurochemistry. The body's neurochemical system affects and is affected by other biochemical systems, including the hormonal and immune systems. Thus, it is consistent with current knowledge that a person's hopeful attitude and beliefs may be very important to their physical well-being and recovery from injury or illness.

 Yes it can be said do that much healing is due to the client's expectation of being healed.  Particularly if they are in tune with their therapist and whatever therapy is being used.

The placebo effect may be a measurement of changed behavior affected by a belief in the treatment. The changed behavior includes a change in attitude, in what one says about how one feels, and how one acts. It may also affect one's body chemistry.

 Is this not in itself a form of healing?

The mind is a very powerful tool, and it is my belief that we can heal ourselves very effectively simply, by knowing that we can do so.

 People have made almost miraculous recoveries from crippling illnesses by simply knowing that they can get better, and refusing to get worse! they appear to have the power to heal themselves.

 What does it matter whether this is due to actual hands-on healing, or the placebo effect?  Surely it is all healing?

 We speak of the 'placebo' effect as if it is some kind of ‘ dirty word’ in healing…. but in actual fact a great deal of healing comes from expectation and trust, the sooner we recognise this itself as a beneficial form of healing, the sooner I am sure that we can progress in a more spiritually enlightened manner where healing generally is concerned.

 Healing conforms to the universal laws of manifestation.

 As in manifesting a situation in our lives through positive thinking and through ‘ knowing’ that that situation can be brought about…. if we apply the same rules to healing we can see seemingly miraculous effects!

 We are more powerful than we know, we do not always need to hand over our power to another as in conventional medicine, but should blend the two... so that each complements the other… perhaps in this way we can move forward into a better world.

Doctors in one study successfully eliminated warts by painting them with a brightly colored, inert dye and promising patients the warts would be gone when the color wore off. In a study of asthmatics, researchers found that they could produce dilation of the airways by simply telling people they were inhaling a bronchiodilator, even when they weren't. Patients suffering pain after wisdom-tooth extraction got just as much relief from a fake application of ultrasound as from a real one, so long as both patient and therapist thought the machine was on. Fifty-two percent of the colitis patients treated with placebo in 11 different trials reported feeling better -- and 50 percent of the inflamed intestines actually looked better when assessed with a sigmoidoscope ("The Placebo Prescription" by Margaret Talbot, New York Times Magazine, January 9, 2000).

With love and blessings!

Crystal

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