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Massage relaxes aching muscles, brings the body back into balance and helps relieve stress and worry–if only for the hour you spend on the table. But what happens when sound becomes an active part of the treatment?

“You get a holistic spa experience that brings you to a deeper state of relaxation than that reached through massage alone,” explains Kevin MacDonald, spa director at the Claremont Resort and Spa in Berkeley, Calif., which offers the sounds-on healing shown here, It’s one of our two favorite melodious massages:

* The Claremont Resort and Spa offers the Tibetan Sound Massage ($120 for 50 minutes; claremontresort.com). Throughout the soothing full-body rubdown, imported Tibetan bowls, which have been expertly crafted to “sing” when the rims are rubbed, are placed on or near the body’s various chakras, or energy centers. Each bowl is then “played,” and the resonating vibrations travel through the body to enhance balance and create a deep sense of serenity.

* At the Sea Change Healing Center in New York City, calming music and nature sounds are played during the Sea Note Musical Massage ($125 for 60 minutes; seachangehealing.com); each stroke of the masseuse’s hands is performed in rhythm with this orchestration. But it’s the subliminal track of tones and vibrations, played at a frequency lower than what the human ear is trained to hear, that’s designed to affect brain waves to promote feelings of peace and relaxation.

When a pastor who is also an internist, and a “Christian who happens to be a physician” get together, their conversations begin with medicine but always end on religion, says Dr. Valencia Clay of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta.

All those months of talking about what, to some, may seem like an unlikely intersection of faith and medicine paid off this past summer for Clay and Dr. Marvin Crawford, a professor of internal medicine at Morehouse. Clay and Crawford applied for and won one of eight Faith and Medicine Curricular Awards given by the National Institute for Healthcare Research (NIHR) and the Philadelphia-based John Templeton Foundation in August.

The $25,000 grant, makes Morehouse one of the nation’s first medical schools, and the first historically Black college or university (HBCU), to offer ground-breaking courses that explore spirituality and religion in patient care.

The award-winning courses, which begin this school year, range from African religious beliefs, death and dying to taking religious and spiritual histories. Crawford who co-designed the program with Clay, says the courses will be integrated into the required curriculum for second- through fourth-year medical students.

While Morehouse may be the first HBCU to formally offer such medical courses, the institution joins the ranks of a growing number of medical schools that are crossing the boundary that has long existed between science and religion. Courses on spirituality are being taught at nearly twenty of the nation’s 126 medical schools, according to NIHR, a non-profit healthcare institute that collects research on religion and medicine. The growing number of medical schools offering such courses represents what NIHR president Dr. David B. Larson calls “a new era in medicine” - one that focuses on the treatment of the whole person: body, mind, and spirit.

Studies show that 80 percent of Americans want doctors and other health care providers to include religious or spiritual concepts in their treatment, but only one out of ten doctors ever asks their patients about spirituality.

The Safest Medicine

Homeopathy is the safest form of medicine you will ever find, plain and simple. Safe for pregnant moms, for newborn babes, for debilitated, elderly folks at the end of their lives, patients who are hypersensitive to other medications, and for animals of all sizes and species. Homeopathic medicines are made from any substance in nature. You name it and it’s a potential homeopathic treatment. Honeybee, table salt, sea water, every flower, plant or tree you can think of — they’re all potential homeopathic medicines to treat a variety of physical, mental, and emotional complaints, either acute or chronic.

Pregnant women, with good reason, are wary of conventional medications. Some, such as thalidomide, have been clearly and publicly implicated in serious congenital malformation. Others, including Prozac, have been shown to cause minor birth defects but they are so well-advertised that you would only discover such a problem by carefully examining the scientific literature as we did (Reichenberg-Ullman and Ullman, Prozac-Free (Prima, 1999, p 23). Many other pharmaceuticals have not been adequately tested during pregnancy. Although, in general, herbs are gentler and safer than prescription medications, many are contraindicated during pregnancy. Not so with homeopathy. A pregnant woman can rest assured that homeopathic medicines are absolutely safe.

If a woman wants to self-treat during pregnancy she needs to make sure that the condition she is treating is uncomplicated and acute, rather than chronic, and needs to follow the guidelines carefully. (Our book, Homeopathic Self-Care: The Quick and Easy Guide for the Whole Family, and other books written by experienced professionals rather than writers with no clinical experience, are what we recommend.) The most trouble she can generally get into by treating herself with homeopathy is that an incorrectly chosen medicine will have no effect or, by taking a medicine far too often one can (rarely) develop symptoms of the remedy (proving symptoms). These will go away rapidly when the homeopathic medicine is discontinued. However, many pregnant women and new moms prefer treatment from an expert, which is often the best course of action.

The biomedical model we have used for the past century has reached its limit of effectiveness. The word “healing” is not used in medicine today, with one exception. The first-year histology course includes some talk about wound healing, But outside of that, the word healing is not used in medicine. One of the points that I made in Spontaneous suggest that the human body has a healing system. Not a very radical idea. All you have to do is watch cut finger heal to see very clearly that the body has a capacity for awareness of troubles and the mechanisms for repairing tissue. Yet it is discouraging to find that it’s much easier to talk with children about the body’s healing capacities than with most of my colleagues. If a kid gets an “owie” you say watch what happens. If you try to talk to most physicians about the body’s system, it’s easy for them to dismiss this as more New Age fluff. It is not New Age fluff, it is physiological reality. Any level of biological organization that we examine, from DNA up to the most complex body systems, shows the capacity for self-diagnosis, for removal of damaged structure, for regeneration of new structure.

Why are medical students never taught that the body has healing functions or healing systems? First, consider the great lopsided emphasis on disease processes rather than on health in the pre-clinical years of medical school. Second, when medical students get to their clinical years, they are seeing very sick people, hospitalized people, a population in which healing responses occur less frequently than in the general population. If your whole world of illness is hospitalized patients, that tends to make you more pessimistic about possibilities of healing.

But there is a deeper problem here with the nature of western science and medicine in general. We are very locked into looking at the body as a set of structures and structural systems rather than functional systems. The healing system is not a structural system. I can’t show you a slide of it, the way that I could show you a slide of the circulatory or digestive systems. In some cases, as with circulation and digestion, structure and function are relatively synonymous. But other cases, notably healing, demonstrate no neat correlation of a function with a set of body structures. The healing system makes use of all of the structural systems — the normal operations of the circulatory, nervous, immune, and endocrine systems, and more, for its operations.

In response to over 5 million Americans who suffer from chronic heel problems, DeRoyal has developed a healthcare kit to treat them. The self-care kit contains a recovery handbook that discusses heel pain, signs and symptoms of an injury, treatments, protection, stretching, foot muscle and ankle strengthening, eversion and inversion exercises, physician/podiatric follow-up and orthotics. The kit also includes a plantar fasciitis night splint, foot control strap, silicone heel cups, exercise band and ice pack.

Each piece addresses a point of heel protection. The night splint holds the foot in a healing neutral position while you sleep. The foot control strap is a pronation strap that reduces the heel’s movement, while preventing the plantar fascia from over-stretching. The silicone heel cup improves the shock absorbency and cushioning of shoes, while providing pressure relief to the tender spots of the heel. The exercise band is designed to strengthen the muscles around the ankle and foot which help control foot pronation. Lastly, the ice pack reduces inflammation and swelling of the plantar fascia in the injured areas.

Ayurveda is India’s 5000-year old science of life, health, and longevity. According to Ayurveda, there is no separation between body, mind, and consciousness. Therefore, the concepts of health and disease must address all of these aspects. The mind is organically related to the physical body. Any imbalance of the doshas (psycho-physiological principles, or humors) will create signs and symptoms at all levels. The doshas rule and regulate all functions of the organism and determine disease proneness at the physical level and emotional response at the mental level. They are known as vata, the energy of movement; pitta, the energy of metabolism and transformation; and kapha, the energy of lubrication and cohesiveness.

The bond between body and mind can be easily observed when physical fluctuations disturb our mental state, as when we have a flu and aren’t able to concentrate, or when our behavior changes depending on diet and lifestyle habits. This is one of the reasons why Ayurveda places great emphasis on diet and lifestyle for preventing disease and restoring health through balancing the doshas.

The body-mind complex is an organic unity, but mind and body are not the same. The mind appears to be wherever we direct our attention. It can function apart from the body consciousness, as when we are dreaming. The physical body is primarily an organ of perception and expression through the senses and motor organs. We could say that the body is a gross form of the mind, as it serves as a vehicle for the mind to perceive, act, and express itself. On the other hand, the mind is influenced by the impressions of the world we receive through the senses and motor organs. So body and mind work constantly together. Yet what gives us the sense of who we are is not the physical body. It is what we think and feel, how we perceive and experience the world and others around us. So let’s look at the mind in more detail, from a philosophical and yogic perspective.

Although described in its title as a “history,” this work is a series of eight intelligent interlocking essays on traditional herbal remedies as used by non-professional healers in mainland Britain, rather than a history which tells a story starting in the past and progressing towards the present. The information which survives from earlier times is fragmentary and unsatisfactory, so Hatfield is wise to avoid a strictly historical approach. Much of her information is recent, and includes the results of her own fieldwork.

Herein lies a problem. Most of Hatfield’s collecting was done in East Anglia, particularly Norfolk, and one wonders how representative her findings there are of Britain as a whole. For example, yarrow, a plant of major importance in herbal remedies, gets only three rather insignificant mentions. On the other hand, it is interesting to learn that the field poppy, widely known as “headaches,” and said to cause headaches, was used in Norfolk as a cure for headaches.

Hatfield concentrates on the herbal remedies used in rural areas, which utilised easily available local or cultivated plants. She considers the remedies used in urban areas, where a variety of exotic plant materials were available, to be beyond her scope. Even in the most urban areas, there were many people who had moved in from rural homes, and there is much evidence that they frequently used remedies which they had learnt from their families, who collected country plants and despatched them to their urban relatives.

The whole of Hatfield’s study shows a great deal of common sense. She does not consider the users of her remedies to be noble savages with abundant instinctive wisdom, neither does she belittle the work of domestic healers. They were simply ordinary people, doing their best with what was available. Sometimes this common sense, and her examples, are repeated too frequently, so that the reader develops a sense of deja vu. However, despite this, it is worth persisting, and all readers will gain worthwhile insights from the work.

Western medicine is experiencing a consumer-driven transformation. There are three distinct stages to modern medicine: Era I dates to the mid 1800s and encompasses the beginning of medicine as a science. Man is viewed as a machine and mind is considered to be a property of the physical brain. Any therapy that focuses on the effects of material things in the body such as the many forms of modern medicine: drugs, surgery, CPR, are included.

Era II is the period of mind-body medicine which encompasses Era I and moves beyond. Mind is a major healing factor within individual people. Examples of Era II medicine include therapy that emphasizes the effects of consciousness: psychoneuroimmunology, counseling, hypnosis, biofeedback and relaxation therapies.

Era III includes the best of the previous two eras and moves way beyond. Mind or consciousness is nonlocal; that is, it is not limited to brain and body. “The brain breathes mind like the lungs breathe air,” says Huston Smith. So the brain, rather than producing the mind, interacts with the mind.

“The imagination of man can act not only on his own body but even on others and very distant bodies. It can fascinate and modify them; make them ill, or restore them to health,” said the Persian physician Avicenna (980-1037C.E.)

These Era III ideas are not new. Popular interest in all things PSI, however, is manifesting in the world of medicine, the world of healing.

Larry Dossey, MD experienced a trio of dream premonitions that sparked his interest in what is often referred to as The Sixth Sense; a ‘knowing’ that goes beyond our five senses. Evidence for the existence of this 6th Sense or nonlocal mind consists of (1) the everyday experiences of millions of people and (2) scientific findings. Reinventing Medicine: Beyond MindBody to a New Era of Healing features impeccable research into both as they apply specifically to the healing of human beings.

Intercessory prayer and distant healing intentions have been rigorously studied. The capacity of human consciousness to function outside of the confines of individual brain and body is the issue.

WHEN IT COMES TO HERBS, we Westerners like to keep things simple: For this ailment, take this herb. Catching a cold? Take echinacea. Feeling stressed and anxious? Try lavender. Migraine? Feverfew! In fact, we often refer to our herbal cures as “simples.”

The herbs of the East, on the other hand, seem more complex. Instead of our one-herb-one-cure approach, Traditional Chinese Medicine and India’s Ayurveda–two of the world’s oldest healing traditions–tend to approach herbs as team players, creating complex formulations that sometimes contain as many as 40 discrete ingredients. Both systems consider patients to be more than the sum of their symptoms, using methods like acupuncture, yoga, and diet to help unblock and rebalance energy to correct illness. And both systems are best accessed through qualified practitioners who can tailor a treatment plan to your own unique, exact needs.

But you don’t necessarily need the ongoing supervision of a professional to tap into these potential treatments. Asian herbs are some of the most powerful remedies out there, and they can be just as easy as Western herbs to use. Some have already become Westernized–consider ginger, now considered the premier natural remedy for nausea caused by motion sickness or morning sickness.

Others are still unfamiliar to Americans, especially as health aids. But while you may eventually want to graduate to a more comprehensive use of Eastern practices, you can still get the “simple” head-to-toe benefits offered by the dozen powerhouse herbs described here. All are considered safe when used as recommended, though you should always consult your physician when starting or altering an herbal regimen. (NOTE: The recommended dosages are for typical extracts and formulations; when using commercial products, follow package directions. Talk to your health-care practitioner to fine-tune dosages based on your specific needs.)

elements of india

AYURVEDA AND Traditional Chinese Medicine evolved in fair proximity over thousands of years. “As one might expect of geographic neighbors, Ayurveda and Chinese medicine share many concepts,” says psychiatrist Alan Brauer, M.D., director of the TotalCare Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif. One is the idea of life energy–qi in Chinese thinking, prana in Ayurveda; another is the view of the body as a microcosm of the world it inhabits.

It is a pleasure to review this delightful book co-written by Alice Snow, a woman in her seventies who has spent much of her life using her Seminole knowledge of medicinal plants, and Susan Stans, an anthropologist who has lived as a friend in Alice’s community for two years. The result of this collaboration is a book rich in ethnobotanical information, well and clearly presented, and enhanced by the introductory chapters giving the social history and background of the Florida Seminole Indians.

The story is told simply and with no attempt to idyllicise a way of life that is rapidly disappearing. Effects of Westernisation, both good and bad, are remarked on. Alice Snow herself is a woman of few illusions, anxious to preserve the old knowledge while accepting that change is inevitable. As a child, she had the foresight to appreciate the importance of learning to speak English, despite being discouraged by her parents’ generation from attending school. Her resulting knowledge of English has enabled her to act as interpreter and go-between for her people during a lifetime that has witnessed enormous changes. In addition to rearing her family, Alice has worked in a large number of jobs, apart from her unpaid work with herbs.

The materia medica that Alice draws upon is more limited than that reported a generation earlier by Sturtevant, a fact that emphasises the importance of preserving such knowledge before it is all irrevocably lost. Her knowledge of healing plants has been handed down from her mother and grandmother, and she has been determined to preserve it. This book was written despite some opposition from older members of her community. As Alice herself says, all she is telling is the names of plants; she does not claim to convey the whole system of healing. Her own role is that of assistant, collecting the plants that are then taken to a medicine man who empowers them. The overlap that is reported between Western medicine and the traditional healing methods is interesting too: sometimes one is used, sometimes the other, and sometimes a combination of both.