Abstract

The efficacy of spiritual (psi) healing has been reported for many centuries.  It is claimed to accelerate recuperation from a wide variety of illnesses and occasionally to produce instantaneous cures.

Research evidence supports these claims. Out of 191 controlled studies of healing, 124 show significant effects — on humans, animals, plants, bacteria, yeasts, cells in vitro, enzymes and DNA.  Selecting out the more rigorous studies, 25 show effects at p< .01 and another 12 at p< .02 -.05.

Despite this impressive body of evidence, healing continues to be ignored by conventional medicine, or worse, denigrated and denied to sick people who might otherwise enjoy its benefits. This paper examines some of the reasons spiritual healing has not been accepted by the Western scientists. The parallels with other psi (parapsychological) phenomena are obvious.
 

Background

 Spiritual healing (which I shall abbreviate as ‘healing’) has been recognized as an effective mode of therapy in most cultures, with recorded observations dating to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. I define healing as the intentional influence of one of more people upon one of more other living organisms, without intervention through physical or chemical means. Healing may be done through the laying-on-of-hands or through mental influence alone. It appears to be effective form a distance of a few inches to thousands of miles.

I have identified 191 controlled studies of healing, of which 124 show significant effects — on humans, animals, plants, bacteria, yeasts, cells in vitro, enzymes and DNA. Selecting out the more rigorous studies, 25 show effects at p < .01 and another 12 at p < .02 -.05 (Benor 2001a; b).

William Braud (1989) considers 149 experiments with living targets.  (He includes experiments on telepathic influence over movements of humans, mammals and fish, as well as imagery projections, all of which are bio-PK but outside the category of psi haling.)  He finds that “53 per cent of these ‘bio-PK’ studies yielded significant outcomes, as judged buy the original experimenters.”

Despite these many experiments, dating back to the early 1960’s, there has been little recognition according to spiritual healing as an established phenomenon — even among parapsychologists.  Healing continues to be viewed by most scientists as a ‘fringe’ phenomenon and most of them avoid having anything to do with it.
In part this derives from the practitioners of healing.  Most healers are strong on intuitive faculties and weak on linear functions.  They keep few, if any records, while making broad claims for their successes in treating any and all of the ills of man and other living things.

In part this shares a common problem of devaluation of all psi phenomena.

I am not saying that healing practice and research should not be criticized.  Critical analyses of healers’ unsupported claims, of research methodology in healing, and of weaknesses in theories are salutary.  As James Lovelock said, “Good criticism is like bathing in an ice-cold sea.  The sudden chill of immersion in what seems at first to be hostile medium soon stirs the blood and sharpens the senses.”

I criticize those who reject healing out of hand.  I hypothesize that many critics would cloud the evidence with any excuses to support their disbeliefs rather than examine either the phenomena or their own discomfort with them.  In this paper I emphasize my area of expertise: psychotherapy, spiritual healing practice and research, leaving the reader to draw the parallels with the rest of psi research.
 

Fears of Healing and Psi

Various fears are aroused by the assertions of healers that they can perform accurate clairsentient diagnoses and that they can influence the body by touch or by intention from a distance:

1. Healing conflicts with prevalent paradigms , forcing us to re-examine our basic hypotheses about how matter, energy and mind interrelate (LeShan, 1974; 1976); similarly with psi (Tart, 1984). Healing suggests we may have to postulate new scientific paradigms which include information transfer and action at a distance without physical interventions.

Modern physics took several decades to demonstrate through experiments and mathematical formulae that rules of classical physics do not apply in the quantum physics domain — however counter-intuitive this appears when translated in to everyday language (Benor, 1994/ 2003; Capra, 1975). Healing is currently facing a similar struggle.

2. Our material culture shrinks from non-material interventions. Western medicine has been particularly stringent in avoiding Type I research errors, fearing to accept as being valid any treatments which might possibly be mere placebos.

Modern psychology, dealing in non-material, in intrapsychic and interpersonal problems and interventions, has denigrated parapsychology lest it have greater difficulty itself in being accepted by the dominant medical establishment. Parapsychology has been uncomfortable with healing for the same reasons.

We forget a truth elucidated by Francis Bacon: “…all the perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the universe, and the human mind resembles these uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects…” This was restated by Albert Einstein: “it is the theory which decides what, we can observe.” A placebo actually represents a combination of clinical suggestion and of self-healing. Viewed in this light, it is not to be avoided, but rather explored, refined and utilized to maximum benefit — especially as it has no known dangerous effects.

3. Western materialistic beliefs exclude the possibility of healing. We are indoctrinated in our Western society, which is expert at manipulating matter, to believe that accumulation of material wealth is the primary goal and measure of personal success in life. We build elaborate safeguards around our material possessions, including our bodies. We see ourselves as existing only in the flesh and come to fear excursions outside of or potential intrusions into our bodies, be they through healing, psi, out-of-body and near-death experiences or death.

We have become separated and distanced from that which is not matter. (Even our language prejudices us, telling us that mystical and spiritual things are ‘immaterial’ and that things which are unimportant ‘do not matter.’)

Healing wakens us to the limited range of our material explanations of our world. It threatens our grasp on linear reality. Whately Carington (1946) speculated that people with a grounding in Cartesian, linear causality may fear that if psi is accepted (not having examined the evidence. and believing psi to be a magical belief) then a Pandora’s box of magical explanations will he opened for all science to he attacked on irrational grounds.

**4. It is human nature to resist change. Consensual descriptions of reality provide culturally comfortable norms for relating to our material, social amid psychological worlds. They provide a psychosocial constancy which saves on from frequent readjustments, but at the same time can become rigid and bind one into beliefs and manners of relating to the world which are eliminated, thus distancing one from reality and eventually stultifying. Our materialistic Western world discredits the world of healing and of the spiritual — to which healing opens experiential doors.  Even many of those who might benefit physically from healing shy away from it when they sense it is starting to challenge their agnostic or religious beliefs.

Most people accept the word of authority figures rather than investigate matters themselves, it is easier to reject ‘paranormal’ evidence that to question accepted beliefs.

5. Cognitive dissonance is a perceived conflict between several perceptions or between perceptions and belief systems (Festinger & Bramel, 1962), which often creates discomfort in a subject experiencing perceived differences between reality ‘as it ought to be’ and reality as it is experienced. A person is strongly motivated (often unconsciously) to resolve such tensions. Once having made a choice between the dissonant possibilities, a person then tends further to reduce her anxiety by derogating the rejected option (Brehm, 1966)

Healing realities conflict with sensory reality. Any exposure of a person to such experiences creates cognitive dissonance, with its drive to reduce the inherent tension. The easiest path to a resolution is to reject evidence for healing. Jule Eisenbud (1983), who has studied psi and psychotherapy extensively, commented, “…Let something appeal to us and we will make sense out of it. Let something offend us, disturb us, threaten us and we’ll see that it doesn’t make sense.”

There was another physician with me when I observed a dramatic healing for the first time. Had the other doctor not been there, I might have allowed myself to resolve my cognitive dissonance by convincing myself that I had mismeasured the lesion (which shrank drastically in only half an hour) either before or after the healing.

6. As children we work hard to differentiate between inner and outer realities and then to integrate them (Freud, 1963). In crossing these boundaries, healing revives early childhood anxieties and conflicts associated with such confusions about these boundaries. Once having established a firm foothold in sensory reality, there is commonly a fear of getting lost its the cosmic ‘All’ of mystical experiences and other alternative states of consciousness (ASCs).

**7. Healing/psi phenomena occur without the conscious control of the individual (Garrett, 1949). This is frightening, as our conscious minds do not trust our unconscious minds. *

*8. Fears arise that others might not respect or might violate one’s own physical and psychological boundaries through a misuse of healing powers. With healing there are potential telepathic, clairsentient and PK invasions of our privacy, of out very being, by another person who may do this with the express intention of changing us.  Reassurance that competent, ethical healers only produce positive results may be of little avail against such fears, especially if they are unconscious. We know from studies of non-verbal communication (Weitz, 1974) that in sensory reality people will respond to encroachment on their personal space with anxiety and withdrawal. How much stronger must this anxiety be with potential healing invasion of inner space on various levels of reality. It is far easier to deny and reject these fears than to face them (Eisenbud, 1983).

9. There is a fear of one’s own potential misuse or abuse of healing powers. Being unfamiliar to us, our intuitive and healing powers may appear potentially to approach omniscience and omnipotence. What mischief of nastiness might one’s angers be responsible for if they activate negative healing effects? We are aware (consciously or unconsciously) that our wishes and emotions may influence the world around us (Eisenbud, 1983). It is far easier to deny healing exists and then not have to deal with or take responsibility for one’s negative feelings.

Fortunately, modern societies protect the lives (if not Always the professional rights) of those who believe in and are involved with healing.  In other times, fears of looking inward were projected outward and even led to torture and murder in witch hunts — as ways of eliminating sources of discomfort over these matters.

10. Sophisticated psychological defenses may be activated to deny healing. Michael Balint (1955) points out how researchers in healing may utilize the psychological defenses of projection and idealization in ways which are quite sophisticated — to protect the observer/participant from psychological discomforts of dealing with unconventional phenomena. Projection states that the uncanny power which produces parapsychological phenomena dwells not in us, everyday normal people, but in mediums, in healers, in waters, in woods and caves, or in God’s unfathomable grace.  We research workers must be acquitted without any question, since we are only studying the phenomena, and not producing them. Our interest in them is entirely objective and has nothing to do with our own emotions, our instinctual gratifications, our unsolved problems, or our personal involvements.

…idealization, the second defense mechanism, comes into force… The working of these two defensive mechanisms can perhaps be demonstrated in the case of religious healing as at Lourdes. By invoking unfathomable supernatural forces, i.e. God’s grace, any human involvement is eo ipso excluded, and the religious or scientific research worker can get away with him ‘professional hypocrisy’ unchallenged. However, his guilt feelings compel him to maintain a hyperobjective attitude, demanding unrealistically strict standards…

Balint points out that unreasonably strict criteria have been required by parapsychologists for physical improvements to be accepted as true healing, including instantaneous recovery and permanence of changes….these criteria are grossly exaggerated, i.e. ambivalently idealized. They correspond only to very old and profound human desires, but never to reality…

Thus may researchers intellectualize their ways out of their own discomforts. By insisting, for instance, that healers perform on demand, researchers have assured themselves that they will be unlikely to encounter an event which might upset them.

It is a sad aspect of these defenses that has led parapsychology to respond to its critics’ intransigent doubting with intensified efforts to prove to them that psi exists. They appear to suffer from the same anxieties and activate the same psychological defense processes as their critics. I talked not long ago with a member of the Society for Psychical Research who has patiently searched over many years for evidence of spirit phenomena which would stand up to scientific scrutiny. He recently obtained a proof which no one has been able to refute. Rather than he happy with this, he finds himself uncomfortable! My impression from nearly two decades of association with parapsychologists is that many are not comfortable with psi and actually would rather find reasons to disbelieve than believe in it.

11. Carl Jung (l967) pointed out that everyone has a personality style which is dominant on one or two or four parameters which are paired in polar opposites. (See Figure 1.)

Most people who elect to study and work in academic or industrial scientific pursuits are superior in thinking and sensation functions. These are requisites for their work. This means that they will he uncomfortable with material which relates to feelings or intuitions, respectively, their inferior functions.

This can relate to haling in several ways. First, the thinking and sensation types will have difficulty grasping that which pertains to non-material interventions, and even more difficulties with spirituality, ineffability or noesis. If it cannot be spelled out clearly, measured and repeatedly and reliably reproduced, its existence for them is more than just questionable. It would demand the activation of their inferior (intuitive/feeling) functions to perceive and appreciate. It is thus hard for them to understand that such material has any validity. Second, they would not even want to invest of themselves in exploring these realms, as this would require the activation of those inferior functions with which they are uncomfortable. Third, since psi functions are present in everyone and seeping via unconscious channels into conscious awareness, they are likewise functioning in those whose superior functions are sensation and thinking. These types would then have to work extra hard (unconsciously) to repress and deny awareness of inner aspects of themselves which make them uncomfortable.

It is far easier to denigrate and reject that which a healer presents that to explore within why one is uncomfortable with it (Randi, 1987; Benor 1989).12. Left-brain dominance may prejudice one against healing. Selective openness to or rejection of healing may be associated with right- and left-brained styles of dominance. These have been better studied and validated that the Jungian polarities. The right brain is more specialized in intuitive functions and the left in linear ones. Left-brained dominance is common in males in our society and right-brained dominance in females.  In my discussions over a decade with numerous people about healing, I find that women intuitively accept healing more than men, who demand logical explanations for it.

Studies in which the left brain was engaged (and presumably distracted) with a task during psi testing seem to suggest that psi may be a right-brain phenomenon (Broughton, 1976; Maher, Peratsakis & Schmeidler, 1979). The significant effects were found in males. This is consistent with my hypothesis that left-brain-dominant persons would have more difficulty appreciating psi phenomena.

Studies of C. Maxwell Cade and Geoffrey Blundell with the Mind Mirror (Cade and Coxhead, 1979; Blundell, 1990) show that experienced healers, advanced mediators and yogic adepts have balanced right and left brainwave patterns.

Healing may therefore involve either the right brain alone or the right brain in balance with the left. In either’ ease, the predominantly left-brain linear thinking person will be uncomfortable with healing

13. The lack of replicability of healing phenomena in experiments, and their irregular occurrence in clinical healing settings has been used as a reason to question their existence. In the physical and social sciences we presume we understand an aspect of nature when we are able to manipulate it so as to produce the same results repeatably and predictably under given circumstances.

Healers have not been able to produce results with reliable consistency. Effects are observed in some healing treatments but not in others, with little apparent regularity in the patterns of occurrences. The same healer might succeed a number of times and fail a number of times and we have not isolated the critical variables which can explain — much less predict — when healing will occur or not. Thus the physical scientists claim that healing phenomena are probably due to chance variations in the disease, ‘spontaneous remissions’ or other, unaccounted factors rather than results of healers’ interventions.

Healers claim that skeptical observers may inhibit the effectiveness of their treatments. Skeptics derisively object that healers are evading scrutiny with such hedges.

Though patterns of psi performance in the laboratory have been observed, these may have been discounted as evidence for psi because they do not occur predictably. It is not uncommon to find that the first few trials in a series produce positive results, while subsequent trials produce chance results,

Unusual patterns have been found in areas of conventional science as well (Collins, 1985). New processes for crystallization, developed in a particular laboratory, may be impossible to replicate in other laboratories — until the originator of the process visits personally to demonstrate how to do it. It may be that beliefs and/or disbeliefs of the experimenters facilitate or block the reactions.

It may be found that morphogenetic fields must be built in order to achieve this (Sheldrake, 1988). I believe with Bernie Siegel (1987) that “…all healing is scientific. The problem is science’s inability to measure or document what occurs.” The observed lawfulness of healing requires careful study and clarification on its own terms. My guess is that shifting factors of boredom, beliefs and needs of participants shape the results into these observed patterns, along with numerous external factors.

14. Healing has laws which differ from those of other sciences. Procrustean demands are made of researchers of healing. It is ludicrous than, scientists from other fields should suggest that their rules for evidence should be applied in healing — just because in their owns fields these are the rules that have helped to organize data into comprehensible and predictable units and gestalts. It would certainly he nicer, neater and less complicated if this worked. The fact that it does not work does not mean that healing does not exist or merely represents the esoteric fantasy systems of credulous people. Researcher’s have insisted, for instance, that some clinical studies must provide a ‘standard dose’ of healing, i.e. that healing be applied for a uniform length of time for each healee. It is assumed that giving healing is like providing a dose of medicine or of electrical current. Healers point out that their treatments are administered. intuitively, adjusted by clairsentient perceptions in the unconscious mind of the healer to the needs of each individual healee. Healers cannot say why the length of time required varies between healees and even from session to session for the same healee with the same healer (Quinn, 1989a). Though some studies with standard time-dose of healing have produced positive results (Heidt, 1981; Keller & Bzdek, 1986; Quinn, 1984), others have not (Quinn, 1989h; Schlitz & Braud, 1985).

In experiments of chemistry or nuclear physics, the results are usually given in rates of reaction and percentages of probability of occurrence, covering very large numbers of molecules or particles. If a nuclear physicist is asked about a single particle he is often in the same position as a healing researcher and cannot predict with certainty whether that particular particle will or will not act in a particular way. Even worse, there are aspects of physics which cannot he defined at all. An electron can be defined either in terms of its momentum but not its position; or in terms of its position, in which case its momentum becomes unknown (Capra, 1975). We simply do not apply classical physics rules to particle physics phenomena. As alien as this is to our sensory reality, we have come to accept that this is the way things are.

Since healing does not conform even statistically in regularly repeatable fashion, skeptics argue that claims for healing efficacy must represent chance variations rather than response to healing treatments.

The time has come to accept that healing is the way it is. It appears to be influenced by multiple factors — so many, in fact, that it is virtually impossible to establish a repeatable experiment in which all would occur in the same combination more than once (Benor, 1993). As it is difficult to control any one of these, much less all of them in concert, it is little wonder that only approximately equivalent t results have been obtained in experiments over numbers of trials.

We will have to be content without human limitations and settle for approximate results, measured in probabilities over large numbers of trials. No apologies are needed. These are the limitations of healing.

Hopefully, further research will help establish some minimal laws of healing. I suspect that one of them will be that we cannot know all of them in a given material world.

15. Healing has been practiced in religious settings which emphasize faith and denigrate healing outside of their belief system. Many have presumed that faith is a requisite for positive results in healing. Western science sees itself as weaned from the murky, magical thinking of mystical beliefs.  Healing is rejected because science sees itself as dealing with facts, not faith. It overlooks that it, too, bases its beliefs on ultimately untestable axioms which are as questionable as any other.

It is fascinating that quantum physics is returning us through scientific experimentation and theories to awareness which mystics have reported through the ages (Capra, 1975).

16. We tend to be self-satisfied in our ignorance. As the economically dominant world culture, the West has presumed it possesses a more valid grasp on reality than the rest of the world. People forget that “All information is subjective: The word “fact” is merely another statement of an opinion as to the validity of an opinion” (Ellerbroek, 1980).

In many of the above mechanisms we see self-validating feedback loops. These feel comfortable, as we tend to associate with others like minds and confirm our beliefs and prejudices in their reflections of ourselves. We tend to avoid people with dissenting opinions.

We also have self-validating feedback hoops within our own minds. Francis Jeffrey points out,

A mind operates and defines itself by recurrently filtering out those patterns which are incongruent with its own structure…The principal mode of this behavior is selection of inputs by focusing and directing attention.

Our mind thus defined is essentially a paranoid system. It is a ‘closed system,’ in that its operation is primarily circular and self-referencing.

As a psychiatrist I have often dealt with paranoid patients. It is virtually impossible to change their opinions through logical discussion. An apocryphal story tells of a person who insisted he was dead. His psychiatrist, exhausting all ordinary arguments, asked whether he knew that dead men don’t bleed. He readily agreed they did not. He assented to the psychiatrist’s pricking his finger with a needle, which of course drew blood. “My goodness!” said the patient. “Dead men do bleed!”

I suggest that those who feel the rightness of healing do not spend a lot of time arguing with those who do not, but rather get on with giving, receiving and /or studying healing. This is, in fact, what healers have done. This has led them to distance themselves from a skeptical conventional medicine and science.

17. Careers and financial investments are built on world views. Research grants, professorship and products (such as drugs) are built on conceptual models. If these are threatened by competing models, funding might become scarce. Economic motives and political concerns therefore mitigate against investments in exploration of many new fields, not only psi and healing (Engelhardt & Caplan, 1987).

18. Healing touches upon fears of death.  There is a dire cultural expectation of a steady downhill course in disease such as cancer and AIDS.  We are led to anticipate that such diagnoses are death sentences.  Not only is there little awareness of the newer techniques involving psychoneuroimmunology (which permit people to deal with their own cancers, improve their quality of life and prolong life) but there is also a resistance to even consider a possibility of success in these psychological approaches, much less in healing.  This seems far to exceed the resistance generally accorded new therapeutic techniques.  It is difficult to adjust to such a radical departure from the conventional attitudes toward cancer, perhaps more so that in other diseases.  As an analogy I can suggest the experiment of saying goodbye to someone in an office, but then running into them again and finding it awkward to know how to relate. When someone has cancer, those around him may often start a mourning process (in effect, saying their ‘farewells’) as they watch the illness take it toll.  This then makes it difficult for them to relate to the person if he lingers on, and more so if he frees himself from his illness.  There is thus a social force against accepting healing and against encouragement of healers to treat these chronic illnesses.

Most therapists who have engaged in deep psychotherapy with people with cancers (and other serious illnesses) will attest to the frequent admission by patents that in many cases they are a socially acceptable form of suicide (LeShan, 1977; Levine, 1986; Siegel)

Healing raises fears of death in health professionals, who deal with their own fears of death by denial and repression, thereby colluding with patients having cancer, AIDS and other fatal illnesses.

19. Healing threatens to remove potentially useful symptoms.  When people are confronted with their unconscious motives for becoming sick, many find that their illness is a blessing in disguise, in small and large ways.  It brings all sorts of extra consideration and attention.  It allows excuses for not doing many things.  It may bring about more sincere and heart-felt communication and demonstrating of affection.

More than one person with cancer has said, “Strange as it may seem, I’m glad I’ve gotten cancer.  This illness has forced me to face squarely my problems within myself and between myself and those I love.  My quality of life is incomparably improved since I started working out my unconscious reasons for letting this disease develop.”
 

Conclusions

Some may object to my making speculative psychological interpretations based on people’s belief systems. Piet Hein Hoebens stated:

Being a moderate disbeliever in extrasensory perception, ghosts, flying saucers and life after death, I do not think that I will learn the ultimate truth about the paranormal by psychoanalyzing those people who are unable to share my skepticism. However well-founded, conjectures about the believers’ motives do not relieve the skeptic of the duty to evaluate the believers’ arguments. (It goes without saying that this also applies to believers’ conjectures about the motives of skeptics.)

I agree with Hoebens about the need to examine the evidence. My analyses have to do with those who a priori reject evidence for healing, believing the evidence must be wrong and unworthy of examination because it contradicts their belief systems.
 
   James Fadiman points out:

A paradigm has hard edges and you can tell where the edges are because anything outside them is automatically suspect. Within the material model it’s fairly clear what is suspect: non-material evidence or non-material events.

    Let me give you an example of what happens when you hold paradigms past the point of usefulness. They’re very handy unless you get stuck in one and can’t break out of the edges… A paradigm past the point of utility becomes solidifying, rigidifying, dogmatic and ultimately becomes a religious, and I mean that in the lowest possible sense, position. Meaning it is an act of faith to which no evidence can be admitted. And when there is evidence, that is called heresy.

We shall have to expect that resistances of the above sorts will continue until there is increasing exposure of the skeptics to demonstrations of the existence and legitimacy of healing and psi. To this end, I am promoting further clinical trials to explore the effectiveness of healing.

Acceptance by laypersons may come faster than by professionals. Average people have only a vague concept regarding their internal organs and the functions of these organs. If a new process such as healing is demonstrated, they have less sensory reality information to contradict the existence of the new process; less to relinquish and unlearn. Health professionals and many scientists, in contrast, know in great detail how things “are supposed to work.” It is far more dissonant for professionals to be exposed to new phenomena which appear to contradict or perhaps even invalidate processes they have studied and worked regularly.
With the questions raised by healing vs. sensory reality it is not a case of either paradigm of reality being exclusively right and the other wrong. Each is correct within the domains it describes. Healing describes a broader range of the cosmos than sensory reality accounts for.

If modern science is slow to loosen and revise its paradigms to include healing, then those who feel these are better descriptions of reality on which to base health care decisions in particular situations must simply pursue healing on their own. This will mean lobbying to convince those in government that freedom of religion should include freedom to practice one’s medical beliefs. We have the model of the Christian Scientists to present to them, so it should not be impossibly difficult.
 
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Resources on spiritual healing

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Popular edition)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007 (Orig. 2001)
   Healers describe their work, research in parapsychology as a context for understanding healing, brief summaries of 191 randomized controlled studies, pilot studies.     

Benor, Daniel J, Healing Research: Volume I, (Professional Supplement)
Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution , Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, 2001.
  Only the annotated, critiqued 191 randomized controlled studies and the pilot studies – described in much greater detail, including statistical information.     

Resources for exploring messages from your body

WHEE: Whole Health – Easily and Effectively®
AKA
Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT
  Potent self-healing method for releasing emotional and physical stress, pains, residues of traumas
  Workbook     WHEE for pain     Articles     

Resources for explaining the mind-body connection

 Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Professional edition)
Consciousness, Bioenergy and Healing , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2004.  
  Thorough review of research validating the efficacy of self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM), biological energies, and environmental interactions with bioenergies.
  “Book of the Year” award – The Scientific and Medical Network, UK
    

Benor, Daniel J. Healing Research, Volume II: (Popular edition)
How Can I Heal What Hurts?   Wholistic Healing and Bioenergies,Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2005  
  Popular edition Explains self-healing, wholistic complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM) and bioenergies, and discusses ways in which you can heal yourself.

Develop and deepen your intuition and personal spirituality

Healing Research, V. 3
   Personal Spirituality: Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul , Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications (November 2006)
   
  Reaching Higher and Deeper
Workbook for Healing Research, Volume 3 : Personal Spirituality: Bellmawr, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2007

*This article was originally published as Benor, Daniel J. A psychiatrist examines fears of healing, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 1990, 56(821), 287-298. It has been updated here with minor revisions reflecting more recent research. An expanded version of this article will appear in Healing Research, Volume IV.

**I am indebted in my discussion of this item to LeShan (1974)

You may quote from or reproduce this article if you include the following credits and email contact:

Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 2004.  Reprinted with permission of the author P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099

www.WholisticHealingResearch.com     [email protected]

  You must also obtain permission from Journal of the Society for Psychical Research to reproduce this article.