Holistic Health and Healing

   To begin with, there's the problem of spelling. Is it "wholistic" or "holistic"? Jack Gordon, editor of Training magazine, says it depends on what you're talking about: "If they bring in a motivational speaker who tells you how to accomplish anything you set your mind to, at work or in life, that's wholistic, with a "w." If they bring in an Apache medicine man and live eagle, that's holistic."1

   Holistic medicine, to say the least, is a complex and controversial topic that includes a baffling grab bag of quasimedical therapeutic techniques. But it is also an emerging force in medical practice, based on the concept that body, mind, and spirit are interconnected and that true health — being whole, from the Anglo-Saxon word haelen — results from the proper interaction and alignment of all three.

  New models of wellness and healing are being popularized by many in the mainstream medical professions and by people who are sick and tired of finding conventional medicine all too impersonal, expensive, and ineffective.

   Even in the 1970s, the mushrooming of holistic health centers and networks testified to the vulnerability of traditional health care. In her 1980 book Aquarian Conspiracy, Marilyn Ferguson noted that "Within a few short years, without a shot's being fired, the concept of holistic health has been legitimized by federal and state programs, endorsed by politicians, urged and underwritten by insurance companies,

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co-opted in terminology (if not always in practice) by many physicians, and adopted by medical students. Consumers demand health, a whole new assortment of entrepreneurs promise it, and medical groups look for speakers to explain it."2

   The Association for Holistic Health describes the holistic approach as "person oriented rather than disease oriented," having "full vibrant health (positive wellness), not symptom amelioration" as its objective, and "primary prevention rather than crisis intervention" as its focus.3 And the American Holistic Medical Association reported that 2%, or about 10,000, of all doctors in the United States practice some form of holistic medicine.

   "Our approach is to do the least that we can, and to have the patient do the most that he can," said Steven Finando, associate director of the Wholistic Health Center in Manhasset, New York, which reportedly treats 1000 patients a month. Finando told a Forbes magazine interviewer that the treatment "might involve diet, biofeedback to control stress, acupuncture. We prescribe medicines, but that is seen as a dramatic thing, something not done lightly."4

   The cause of holistic healing was given a major shot in the arm by the classic case of Norman Cousins, well-known editor and publisher of Saturday Review. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Cousins told the world how he was apparently cured of a strange Asian disease by megadoses of love, laughter, Vitamin C, and the will to live. Every other method failed until he began viewing his favorite film comedies from his hospital bed and reading books on humor.5

   "The belief system is a prime physiological reality," Cousins wrote. "The greatest force in the human body is the natural drive of the body to heal itself — but that force is not independent of the belief system which can translate expectations into physiological change."6

   When health practitioners talk about such things as "the natural healing powers of one's intuitive mind" and "the healing depths of one's own soul," they are — whether they know it or not — treading on the edge of New Age concepts about mind, body, and cosmos.7 For the underlying assumption of a host of new diagnostic and curative consciousness techniques is that reality is one and manifests

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itself as universal spiritual energy in the body. That perception is also as old as the most ancient system of mind-body healing known to humans — the shamanic methods of persons previously known as witches, witch doctors, medicine men, sorcerers, wizards, and magicians.8

   Said to be omnipresent, spiritual energy supposedly flows from the universe into living beings, circulating within them in an orderly and discernible pattern, and then flowing out again. In Eastern religions this impersonal energy, or life force, is the equivalent of "God." The Chinese call the dynamic energy field "Chi"; the Japanese call it "Ki." It is known as "prana" by the yogis, and by a variety of names in other cultures.9 However, New Age strategists seeking to import the concept into the West prefer the term "bioenergy" because it avoids the Eastern mystical connotations.

   Whatever you call it, it is not a recognizable force like gravity or electromagnetism. Supposedly it is generated by the interplay of the "yin" and the "yang," which represent the opposing male and female dimensions in the Eastern religion of Taoism.

   Thus, in Eastern medicine, pain is understood not as a symptom but as an accumulation of energy in some part of the body, which, if correctly redistributed, can restore health and harmoniously "balance" the body. "Energy — psychic energy — corrects or balances organic wrongness."10

   While not all holistic health practitioners base their work on thoroughgoing New Age concepts of energy and the mind, most of the popular holistic therapies are predicated on a spiritualistic understanding of psychic powers. The following are but a few examples:

  Dolores Krieger, a nurse and Ph.D professor at New York University, teaches her system of Therapeutic Touch to a wide following of care givers, and the method is explicated through continuing education courses across the nation. Krieger centers on a "compassionate intention to heal" by achieving a meditative state. She moves her hands over or just above the patient's body, hovering where she senses "accumulated energy." Then, she tries to transmit a feeling of well-being to the patient, channeling "prana" and redistributing the patient's energies.

   Acupuncture and its related therapies of acupressure

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(shiatsu) and reflexology also make use of the belief that energy flow can be redirected to balance healing energies by inserting needles (acupuncture) or by applying pressure (acupressure and reflexology) to specific points on the body.

   Certified "acutherapist" Mark Fingert advertises free energy-balancing seminars that promise to teach "amazing techniques" to:

   But, Fingert advises seekers attending a seminar at the American Red Cross building in San Francisco: "Bring your checkbook: Many unique health / consciousness products will be available."11

   Reflexology rests on the assumption that the foot is the window into internal body parts, and that massaging a precise point on the foot will bring fast inside relief just where it's needed. Increasingly popular, reflexology is now as common at fairs and exhibit conventions as the booths of palm readers and handwriting analysts; for $10, walk-weary sightseers can enjoy a fifteen-minute foot massage that does wonders for the feet — whether or not it balances their bile.

   Iridology, or iris diagnosis, is based on the belief that observation and intuitive skills can discern a person's physical condition and ailments. If the eye is the mirror of the soul, the theory goes, then gazing into the iris can detect what's wrong — or going to go wrong — with a person's gall bladder or whatever. The theory is that each area of the body has a corresponding locus within the iris that undergoes a "microinflammatory" change corresponding to changes in the disordered organ.12

   Reading the auras, or etheric electromagnetic color fields — thought by many New Agers to surround every living thing — is another holistic crowd-pleaser at psychic fairs. Health

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psychics claim they can remedy nearly any ailment by reading the sufferer's aura and then prescribing the correct massage, aroma therapy (the use of scents for healing), color therapy (application of colored lights, clothing, or crystals to restore vibration and balance), or . . .

   Then there's cymatic therapy, developed by British osteopath Peter Guy Manners. Believing that each part of the body vibrates at a unique audible frequency, he devised an instrument which, when placed directly on the body, reputedly transmits the "correct" sound frequency of health to a diseased organ.13

   Yoga, Reiki, Rolfing, and a host of other "bodywork" therapies are based on the assumption that the body needs alignment of its physical parts and vibrational energies. Rolfing, a sometimes painful, deep massage technique, is said to release the negative energies stored in the physical body by tuning it with Earth's gravity field. It also appears to attune many people with the New Age movement by helping them get in touch with their "own physical vehicle and with the past which is stored as energy in it," says John F. Miller III.14

   A regimen of vitamins and minerals, natural foods (often including a vegetarian diet), and homeopathic remedies (small doses of natural medications to stimulate the body's immune system) form additional spokes in the well-oiled holistic wheel of health. The revolution has juiced up business for the nation's more than 6000 natural health food stores, which had sales estimated at $3.3 billion in 1987.15

   New Age health spas have also been sprouting with a fecundity akin to that of the ubiquitous bean sprout. At Anne-Marie Bennstrom's upscale New Age spa, The Ashram, in Calabasas, California, the schedule is rigorous.

   "The day includes yoga, a three-hour hike, fruit juice for lunch, more hiking, weight lifting, swimming, a vegetarian dinner. Then clients meet in the meditation hall for health programs. There, Bennstrom tells her students: 'Your body is crystallized thought . . . If you are in harmony and at peace with yourself, it doesn't matter what you eat, even chocolate cake.' She concludes, 'One day food will give you up, and you will live in the fire of your prana [spiritual life force].' "16

   Of course, the self-help philosophy that eating the right

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stuff will make you live longer, avoid cancer, have a five-star sex life, and get ahead faster at the office isn't a maxim confined to hard-core New Ageism. Nor is the use of hypnosis, biofeedback, yoga exercises, or visualization techniques. For example, biofeedback can be effective in helping lower blood pressure, control headaches, and overcome muscular tics and insomnia. Or vegetarianism may be adopted as a way of life because of nutritional or ecological concerns.

   However, these become manifestations of the New Age when they are seen as being regulated by some form of mystical, spiritual energy, or when they are adhered to because of a belief in reincarnation and pantheism. Take vegetarianism: If the soul is on an eternal journey progressing through many life forms, then it is wrong to eat the flesh of animals that share a common bond with man in the universal life force or "congealed energy" that is "God."

   "If this is indeed true, then to kill an animal is to tamper with a soul," says John F. DeVries.17

   One of the more controversial holistic therapies is the treatment Dr. and Mrs. Carl Simonton of Fort Worth, Texas, employ on cancer patients. Using relaxation, meditation, and visualization, the Simontons teach that a person's "active imagination: can prod the body's immune system into destroying even widespread malignancies.

   "Force yourself to mentally picture the cancer," says the doctor's voice on a cassette used to instruct patients. "Picture your body's own white blood cells — a vast army that was put there to eliminate the abnormal cells . . . See the white cells attacking the cancer cells and carrying them off . . . See the cancer shrinking . . . . See yourself becoming more in tune with life."18

   Simonton does not eschew conventional methods of cancer treatment, but sees his work as a supplement. Underlying his brand of psychotherapy as an alternative to surgery is the idea of personal responsibility for one's illnesses and injuries in order to learn a lesson in this life, or from a past life, is fairly common among New Agers.

   Although critics scoff, Simonton maintains: "If we are going to believe that we have the power in our own bodies to

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overcome cancer, then we have to admit that we also had the power to bring on the disease in the first place."19

   The list of the most mysterious and controversial approaches to holistic medicine would also have to include psychic diagnoses and healing through trance channeling and shamanism, as well as psychic surgery. These procedures and rituals that critics label "fringe medicine" share much common ground with the paranormal.

   Parapsychologists Alberto Villoldo and Stanley Krippner have detailed their visits to six healers and shamans in Brazil, including Edson Quieroz, a licensed M.D., who practices psychic healing and operates with a rusty knife and no anesthesia. According to Villoldo and Krippner, there had been no reports of any infections or deaths resulting from Quieroz's practice.20

   Techniques such as these are the most open to exaggeration, fraud, deception, and quackery, yet there is little doubt cures have been effected. How? is the question.

   Placebo power, answer many.

   New York psychologist Larry LeShan tells about a woman who once telephoned and asked him to perform a long-distance meditative healing that evening. The next day she called back to say her relief had been immediate. But LeShan had forgotten to do the healing!21

   Dr. Wayne Oates, professor and author, reported on thirteen double-blind studies, in which one group of chronic-pain patients received a placebo while another group received an active pain medication. In the studies, 35% of chronic-pain patients on placebos received at least 50% relief from pain "because they believed they were getting the real thing."22

   Oates and others speak about endorphins, a range of natural pain relievers, or analgesics, that the body manufactures.

   "There is a hypothesis," Oates declares, "that the placebo, thoroughly believed in, kicks on the endorphin system . . . and changes the capacity of the body to actually heal itself. And so now our physicians are talking at med school about the 'biology of belief.' "23

   Many New Agers, like Marilyn Ferguson, carry this out to the fullest degree. The mind, she says, is "primary or coequal

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in all illness . . . . Whether cancer or schizophrenia or a cold [all] originates in the bodymind."24

   Others, like scientific investigator Karl Sabbagh, would say it differently: When they do work, these New Age therapies create psychosomatic improvement through belief in the therapy or the therapist, "enhanced by the full panoply of unusual devices and charts, pseudoscientific terminology, and single-minded concern shown by the therapist for the patient."25

   Albert Schweitzer reportedly remarked that "the witch doctor succeeds for the same reason that all the rest of us [doctors] succeed. Each patient carries his own doctor inside him. They come to us not knowing this truth."26

   Community mental health centers in the state of New York have used spiritism as a supplementary healing system since the mid-1980s. And in the Southwest, Navaho shamans have been allowed to enter hospitals to work with Native American patients, often using herbs and chants.27

   Whatever questionable items are in holistic health's bag of mystical medicine, a promising development is the growing concern in traditional health care circles for "promoting prevention and life-style changes rather than merely treating symptoms or picking up the pieces when the body breaks down."28

   New Age advocates point to what they see as responsible efforts to link traditional and alternative styles of medicine. Examples include the Plane Tree at Pacific Presbyterian Hospital in San Francisco, where a model thirteen-bed wing combining the two approaches was under evaluation in late 1987 by the University of Washington29 and American Biologics Hospital and Medical Center in Tijuana, Mexico. This licensed, full-service facility advertises itself as "the world's first total assembly of all major metabolic/nutritional and eclectic modalities."

   Holistic health may be the most potent force to emerge from the New Age movement.30 The market for the products, as well as for techniques of chiropractic and massage, is likely to endure and grow as more and more Americans become concerned about self-care, wellness, and ever-rising costs of professional health systems.

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1. Jack Gordon, "Training Terms: What Does Wholistic Mean?" Training Magazine (September 1987): 66.

2. Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1980), 242.

3. Elliot Miller, "Tracking the Aquarian Conspiracy," Foreword (Fall 1986): 13.

4. Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Edward Giltenan, "Mainstream Metaphysics," Forbes Magazine, 1 June 1987, 157.

5. Patrick Mahony, "Humor for Health," New Realities Magazine (November–December 1984): 24.

6. Norman Cousins, "Healing and Belief," Saturday Evening Post (April 1982): 31.

7. Lewis M. Andrews, To Thine Own Self Be True: The Rebirth of Values in the New Ethical Therapy (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1987).

8. Michael Harner, Way of the Shaman: A Guide to Power and Healing (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 20.

9. Dana Ullman, "Holistic Health: Friend and Foe of Progressive Health Care," International Journal of Holistic Health and Medicine 2 (Winter 1984): 22.

10. Debbie Alexander, "New Medicine: A New Phase in Cultural Transformation," Spiritual Counterfeits Project Report (1975, rev. 1984), 2.

11. Advertisement for 21 November 1987 seminar at the American Red Cross Building in San Francisco.

12. James T. Carter, "What Is Iridology," New Realities Magazine (November–December 1984), 45.

13. Pamela Bloom, "Soul Music," New Age Journal (March–April 1987): 59.

14. John F. Miller III, "Healing in the New Age Groups," Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 7, no. I (1984): 44.

15. Trachtenberg and Giltenan, "Mainstream Metaphysics," 157.

16. Carol McGraw, "Seekers of Self Now Herald the New Age," Los Angeles Times, 17 February 1987, pt. 1, 3.

17. John F. DeVries with Dean A. Ohlman, Spiritual Dangers in Holistic Medicine (Grand Rapids: Bibles for India, n.d.), 17

18. Jonathan Kirsch, "Can Your Mind Cure Cancer?" New West Magazine, 3 January 1977, 40.

19. Ibid., 43.

20. Alberto Villoldo and Stanley Krippner, Healing States: A Journey into the World of Spiritual Healing and Shamanism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 26–38.

21. Terry Clifford, "Healing or Hoping?" American Health Magazine (January–February 1987): 55.

22. Wayne Oates, "Some Functions of Belief in Illness and Health," Thesis Theological Cassettes (audiotape) 15, no. 7 (December 1984).

23. Ibid.

24. Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, 247, 253.

25. Karl Sabbagh, "The Psychopathology of Fringe Medicine," Skeptical Inquirer 10 (Winter 1985–86): 159.

26. Cited in Harner, Way of the Shaman, 135.

27. Villoldo and Krippner, Healing States, 198-99

28. Paul C. Reisser, M.D., "Holistic Health Update: The Movement Comes of (New) Age," Spiritual Counterfeits Project Newsletter 9, no. 4 (September–October 1983): 4.

29. Roland Mick, interview with author, San Francisco, Calif., 8 November 1987.

30. J. Gordon Melton, interview with author, Santa Barbara, Calif., 16 November 1987.

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