Consciousness And Healing: A Call To Action
Healthcare is in a time of crisis. Health insurance costs are skyrocketing while millions of people have no insurance at all. More and more people are seeking alternative treatments that most physicians are not well informed enough about to take part in. And a heavy reliance on technology has served to dehumanize healing. Indeed, there is growing frustration and despair among health professionals and consumers alike. In the halls of hospitals, clinics, and conferences, the question keeps echoing: Has medicine lost its soul?
IONS continues to be a voice for positive change in society, of which healthcare is a vital part. In our efforts to answer the call to action, we have initiated a series of research and educational programs around a consciousness shift in medicine. These include a new book, a series of transformational learning programs, and research that addresses the role of consciousness in health and healing.
In our new book, Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine (Churchill Livingston/ Elsevier, 2005), we offer a possible roadmap for healthcare in the 21st century. Consciousness and Healing is a collection of 47 essays that integrate mainstream medical knowledge with recent developments in the emerging areas of frontier sciences and insights from alternative healing perspectives. It promotes a model of healing in which personal relationships, emotions, meaning, and belief systems are viewed as fundamental points of connection between body, mind, spirit, society, and nature. Integral medicine embraces the recognition that human beings possess emotional, spiritual, and relational dimensions that are essential in the diagnosis and treatment of disease and the cultivation of wellness.
We are also answering the call to action by sponsoring a series of transformational learning programs on consciousness and healing. It is our intention to encourage health professionals and patients alike to consider the view that the scientific quest is incomplete without data from many domains of inquiry, and that human transcendence can occur in the face of illness and disease.
From April 2 to 8, 2005, we will be offering a learning program for health professionals to explore the transformation that is needed to change medicine for the better. Faculty include Dean Ornish, Elliott Dacher, Sylver Quevedo, myself, and others.
We have also launched a new series of online experiments called the "Halls of Healing." Here participants have the opportunity to experiment with their own intuitive diagnostic abilities, intentionality and healing, and the role of attention. Beneath the game-like interface are scientific experiments about the role of consciousness in affecting the physical world. To play these new games, visit IONS'website at www. noetic. org.
Marilyn Schlitz, Ph.D. is Director of Research at
the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Senior Scientist at the
Complementary Medicine Research Institute at the California Pacific
Medical Center. She has published numerous articles on psi research and
psychophysiology, cross cultural healing, consciousness studies, and
creativity.
