Healing Wisdom

Think about this: at one time in this life, you were a single microscopic cell in your mother's uterus.. This fertilized cell divided into two identical cells. Then those two divided into four, then eight, then sixteen and so on, until you were a tiny microscopic ball of cells, each identical to all the others. Then, for reasons that no scientist yet understands, one line of cells becomes different than the rest -- a pale streak forms on one side of the ball. This line of cells, the "neural crest", will eventually become your brain, your nervous system and your skin. The side of the ball away from the neural crest folds into itself and then seals over, forming a tube that runs through the ball. The cells of this tube will become your heart, blood vessels, lungs, stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys, pancreas, reproductive and other internal organs, while the middle cells between the inside and outside become your spine, muscles, and connective tissue. All of this happens in an intricately coordinated dance with no visible choreographer, yet it happens perfectly more than 95% of the time. As an embryo, your tiny body goes through phases that mimic earlier stages of evolutionary development, looking at various times like a fish, a chicken, a pig, a monkey, and finally little baby you. After birth you continue to grow and develop new skills and abilities, meeting challenges, infections, injuries, and recovering from the vast majority of illnesses without ever having to consciously know how.

As an adult, you inhabit a body of approximately 75 trillion cells, all alive, all metabolizing, all changing all the time. Every cell takes in nutrients and oxygen and releases waste products so that over time, every cell replaces itself many times over. The body, seemingly so physical, so stable, so solid, turns out to be more a process and less an object. An old Zen saying tells us "You can't step in the same river twice" and this applies perfectly to the body. While there is a form that abides, the material substance is in constant flux. Molecular biologists tell us that the body replaces every molecule it has within six months -- so you literally do not have the same body you had a year ago --or even a day ago. The same intelligence that made your body in the first place directs this constant recreation and repair, as it has for billions of years. Whether you call this intelligence God, life, nature, Chi, genes, DNA, or spirit, it is what guides and animates the process we call healing.

Healing, when I went to medical school, was considered somewhat of a dirty word, unless you were speaking of wound healing. Otherwise, it was considered to smack of mysticism, voodoo, quackery, and the allegedly disproven concept of vitalism. Vitalism is the idea that there is something special about life, that it is an energy that flows through and around us, that it creates and organizes our bodies and guides our ability to heal. Nearly every system of medicine except for our current system, is based on the vitalistic principle, and the idea that it has ever been disproven is nonsense. Whether it is called life, spirit, prana (as it is in Ayurvedic medicine), Chi (as in Chinese medicine), or, as Hippocrates called it, the vis medicatrix naturae, ours is the only medicine that systematically ignores vital energy and considers it either unworthy of attention or outside the bounds of consideration.

In daily practice, however, even modern physicians know that without the healing abilities built into us by God and nature, we are helpless to heal. A surgeon can place the edges of a wound together but without the proper response from the body, the wound will not heal. A physician can prescribe antibiotics for an infection, but without an effective immune response, the patient will not recover. Healing is an innate property of life, and learning to support that property is critical to a truly good medicine. Good medicine requires that we apply ourselves as studiously to the science and art of healing as we do to the treatment of disease, and learn to use natural healing approaches as knowledgably as we use pharmaceuticals. Natural healing approaches need not be arcane and complex. They often stem from simple practices that support the cultivation and expression of the life energy and spirit that is inherent in our nature.

A Tale of Two Gardeners

When my first daughter was a year old, we moved to a new home. In the back of the house, adjacent to her room, were half a dozen plants that were obviously in poor condition. The stems were virtually bare of leaves, and those that remained were curled, browned and discolored. There were no flowers or buds. I am not much of a plant person, but even I could tell that these plants were not doing well.

I called a gardener. A leather-skinned fellow looking like he was in his mid-to-late sixties, looked at the plants for less than a minute and told me that they had four different infestations and diseases. He then recommended treating them with four different pesticides. I told him that the plants were right around our daughter's room and wondered aloud if the pesticides might be toxic. He lit up a cigarette and squinted at me as he took a long drag. "Nah", he said as he exhaled, "I've been using them for years and they haven't bothered me none." Later I learned he was actually in his forties.

Concerned about the potential risks of this approach, I got a second opinion from an organic gardener, a pleasant young man who carefully examined the plants and their environment. He agreed completely with the first gardener about the four infestations, but his therapeutic suggestions differed markedly. He said " You know, these plants haven't been looked after for some time, and they are pretty sick. If they were healthy, they would naturally resist these infections, but they are pretty weak. We might have to use some pesticides, but first, let's give them some help and see what they can do on their own." He then showed me how to prune the deadwood, aerate the soil, fertilize the plants, and get them on a regular watering schedule. He cut the plants down to the ground so they wouldn't be putting energy into non-productive growth. I was amazed that they could survive but he explained about roots -- "There's as much of that plant underground as above ground -- and from those invisible roots the new growth will emerge if we nourish it properly." In the next few months, new shoots grew, and healthy leaves appeared. The next year, we had beautiful blossoms.

I use this story to illustrate two very different approaches to medicine and healing. One seeks to cooperate with, stimulate, and work with natural healing abilities, while the other goes to war with nature, and attempts to conquer her. Sometimes one works better than the other, sometimes both work, and sometimes neither. There is no reason that they need to be mutually exclusive, and there are many times over the past 30 years when I have worked with patients using both approaches side by side.

Of course, while people also respond to good nutrition, adequate water, and elimination of energy wasting efforts, humans have also been blessed with a mind that can allow us to evoke, understand, interact with and cooperate with spirit and life if we so choose. The human mind, especially the imagination, gives us mobility in time, the ability to learn, and the ability to change our course in life. It can be our best friend or worst enemy, depending on how it is used. We can let a runaway imagination worry us sick, or we can learn to use it to take our bearings in life, and set our course for where we want to go.

Here’s a brief example: a young woman named Alexandra developed some breast lumps, and in spite of many assurances from very good doctors that they were benign, couldn’t stop worrying that they were malignant. I invited her to take a few deep breaths, relax, and imagine that she could take her mind inside her breast. I asked her to invite an image to form that could tell her something useful about these lumps, and to accept and explore the image that came, whether or not it made immediate sense to her. She reported that she saw a small stream, with a number of small stones partially obstructing the flow. As she looked more closely, she said that the stones actually looked like pearls, and began talking about how oysters formed pearls as a response to irritation, and that they were an attempt to protect the oyster from these irritations. I asked her if that reminded her of anything in her own life, and she told me about a good number of irritations and stressors she had been experiencing, none serious or unsolvable, but mostly having to do with being torn in several directions by the needs of her family and her charitable interests. The demanding schedule she had been trying to keep in order to meet all these needs had led to her drinking more coffee, eating poorly, not resting enough, and feeling run down, and she saw how these were likely to be at the cause of her developing these lumps. She ended her guided imagery meditation with a feeling of appreciation for the wisdom of her body, and a feeling that she could and would resolve these issues. As she reworked her schedule, balanced her attention between others and herself, ate better and eliminated coffee, the lumps went away.

Alexandra, and other people who stop to consider what life and spirit may be telling them through their bodies, learn that the wisdom of nature is built into their bodies, minds and spirits, and that they can have access to it by taking the time to get quiet and invite its guidance. Symptoms are a way that they life force gets our attention. They are like the oil lights on our cars. We wouldn’t pull our cars into the gas station and ask the mechanic to tape them over, or cut the wires to them – we want to know what’s needed to make the proper adjustments so we can prevent further damage. By respecting the life force, asking for its guidance, and paying attention in this special way, we will often find that illness can teach us about health and wellness. We learn that we can cultivate our ability to care for and learn from the healing nature that lies within us all, and we reown our respect for the healing marvels that we truly are.

Adapted from an article in Unity by Marty Rossman, MD

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