In: Shannon, Scott (ed), Handbook of Complementary and Alternative Therapies in Mental Health , San Diego, CA: Academic/Harcourt 2001, 258-267.                                           
Posted 2/26/02

 
I. Overview
 A. Introduction
 
Spiritual healing (abbreviated in this chapter as healing ) is probably the oldest known treatment. It has been practiced in virtually every culture in every part of the world, throughout recorded history. In traditional cultures, it is administered by shamans and medicine men, and is very much a part of the fabric of the culture. In the Western world, material interventions have been emphasized by conventional medicine and healing has been viewed with great skepticism. Most physicians believe (as I, myself, did) that this could be no more than a suggestion or placebo effect. Recent research suggests there is as solid a basis for accepting healing as a legitimate and potent treatment intervention.

Spiritual healing is defined (Benor, 2001a; 2001b) as “a systematic, purposeful intervention by one or more persons aiming to help another living being (person, animal, plant, or other living system) by means of focused intention, hand contact, or passes to improve their condition. Spiritual healing is brought about without the use of conventional energetic, mechanical, or chemical interventions. Some healers attribute spiritual healing effects to God, Christ, other “higher powers,” spirits, universal or cosmic forces or energies, biological healing energies or forces residing in the healer, psychokinesis (mind over matter), or self-healing powers or energies latent in the healee. Psychological interventions are inevitably part of healing, but spiritual healing adds many dimensions to interpersonal factors.”

Laying-on of hands treatments may last 15-60 minutes, and are commonly given at weekly intervals. Distant healing may be sent as a mental intent, meditation, or prayer by an individual or by a group of healers. Healing may be given more often for acute or severe problems, less often as conditions improve.

B. Varieties of Healing

Healing is given in many ways, under many names, through various traditions and schools. Here are a few:

1. Therapeutic Touch (TT)
TT was developed by Dolores Krieger, PhD, RN, Dean of Nursing at New York University, along with Dora Kunz, a gifted, intuitive healer (Krieger 1979; 1993). It is practiced by hundreds of thousands of nurses, other health caregivers, and laypersons worldwide. TT is given with a laying-on of hands, practitioners very lightly touching the body or holding their hands near to but not touching the body. Mental imagery may be projected by healers to focus and direct the flows of healing energies through their hands or within healees’ bodies.

2. Reiki
Reiki is derived from Japanese healing traditions, practiced by hundreds of thousands of lay and professional healers worldwide (Barnett, 1996; Rand, 1998). It may be given through a laying-on of hands, or may be sent as a wish/prayer from any distance. Healers hold the intent that whatever energy exchanges or transformations are needed should occur under the direction of a higher intelligence.

3. Qigong
Qigong healing, of Chinese origins, encourages the healee to practice meditation, gentle physical exercises, and imagery of shifting healing energies within their own bodies and in relationship to their environment. Qigong masters give healing as external qi (Cohen, 1997; 2000).

4. Prayer
Prayer healing is practiced universally, with uncounted millions of laypersons, clergy, and growing numbers of health caregivers sending healing to those in need (Randall-May, 1999).

Many prayer healers believe healing is granted through a religious figure or by the God to whom they address their prayers. Some prayer healers feel that healing is effective only when sins are repented and when sent by anyone outside of their own church is suspect of being the work of the devil.

C. Healing Treatments

 There are no standard treatment effects with healing. Healing has been reported to alleviate almost every known symptom and illness in some people, some of the time. Various practitioners may elicit different responses in the same healee, and the same healer may find the same healee responding differently from one treatment to the next. Some healers are particularly successful with given illnesses but may have no response when treating other problems. Some healers have told me that diabetes mellitus does not respond to healing, while other healers report that diabetes responds regularly to their treatments. This unpredictability of treatment response has contributed to skepticism about the benefits of healing. Anyone working with healers should seriously consider consulting one or more opinions and therapists if no responses are obtained after a few treatments ( Benor, 2001a ).

The gifts of healing may arrive in many types of vessels. Most healers are warm, intuitive, supportive caregivers. However, I have known very successful healers who had quite limited social skills or were even gruff, lacking in emotional intelligence, and very self-seeking.

Healing is most often a holistic, global intervention rather than a treatment for specific problems. Many healers direct their treatments to the whole person. It is not uncommon for someone to come for healing — for instance, of an infection — and to find that there was only a limited improvement in their presenting problem, but a major response in another problem that was not even mentioned to the healer.

Healers and healees often report they experience heat, tingling, vibration, electrical sensations, or cold during treatments. These sensations suggest that an exchange of energy is occurring between healers and healees. However, no conventional energies have been identified that correspond to these sensations.

The term spiritual healing derives from spiritual awarenesses that may spontaneously arise in healees and healers during treatment. These may include a deep sense of peace, acceptance, and unconditional love; awareness of being a part of a collective consciousness; feeling one with Nature, a religious figure such as Christ, or God.
 

II. Relevance for Mental Health

A. Healing is an excellent complement to most forms of counseling and psychotherapy (Benor, 1994; 1996).

During healing, memories may surface of physical or emotional traumas that contributed to current problems, bringing about a cure for the symptoms.

John suffered severe neck pains for over a year, following an auto accident in which he was rear-ended at a stop sign. No physical cause could be identified that would account for the persistence and severity of his symptoms. Pain medications, muscle relaxants, and massage gave little relief, and side effects of medications were troublesome. He obtained the greatest relief in wearing a neck brace, though again there appeared no adequate justification for this. In his first healing treatment, John was startled to recall how frightened he had been at age seven when his father, an otherwise hale, hearty and loving man, had had a severe auto accident and came home with his leg in a cast and wearing a neck brace. From that day forward, he suffered severe neck pain and headaches, was irritable, and no longer cuddled John or played with him. Psychotherapy helped John understand the buried childhood hurts — of his father’s essentially having abandoned him — that had been awakened by he injury and by wearing a neck brace. Further healing helped him relax his tense neck muscles and relinquish his pain.

B. Healing may release emotional conflicts that then require sorting out in psychotherapy.

Donna, a 35 year-old nurse, came for healing of a backache that had not responded over two years to physiotherapy, pain medications, diaazepam, and musle relaxants. Chiropractic provided relief that lasted one or two days but the pain always recurred. In her second healing session, Donna recalled a period of repeated sexual abuse at age seven by an uncle. The pain was markedly reduced following this session, but sevral months of psychotherapy was required for Donna to work through her feelings of betrayal, and to deal with the revelation of these experiences with her family.

C. The opposite may equally occur. In counseling, intense emotions may be released . Healing can help people to tolerate intense emotions more readily.

Sam had a severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from Vietnam War experiences where he had participated in brutal jungle warfare. Brief engagements with various forms of psychotherapy over two decades did not diminish his night terrors, panic attacks, and disabling headaches. He repeatedly left therapy because his symptoms began to worsen after one or two sessions. When healing was introduced, along with self-healing techniques that helped Sam control the anxieties released by therapy, he was able to persist in treatment and obtained marked relief of most of his symptoms.

D. Healing may help to resolve relational problems.

This may occur spontaneously or when relationships become a focus for the treatment. Healing is limited only by the beliefs, disbeliefs, and intents of the healers and healees. The following is an unusual, but not uncommon, example of this class of effects.

Lorna left home and school when she was sixteen, lying about her age to obtain work as a waitress. She could not stand to live with the constant bickering and arguments of her alcoholic father and her bitter, long-suffering mother. She was further embittered by a marriage that ended with separation and an acrimonious divorce due to her husband’s drinking. Left unsupported with two young children, she struggled for several years to survive. She was plagued by endometriosis, which eventually led her to receive healing. She was surprised to find that the healing not only relieved her physical pains, but also brought about heavy sobbing, with releases of feelings of abandonment by her husband and of neglect and emotional abuse by her parents. Her pains recurred several times during the course of treatment, each time preceding an emotional release. Though she released much of her angers and resentments towards her parents, with whom she had kept contact only through a token Christmas card for over ten years, she was in no way inclined to contact them again. Two days after her last emotional release of angers towards her parents, as she was working on termination of therapy, she was utterly surprised to receive a call from her mother, telling her that her parents were separating and that her mother, contrite over having not been available to her in childhood, wanted to re-establish their relationship.

While this may sound like a mere coincidence, it is not unusual to find healing unexpectedly improving relationships, even when this was not a primary focus in the presenting symptoms. The fact that such shifts occur not infrequently in relationships without physical and social contact is further evidence suggesting the action of healing through non-local consciousness (discussed below).

E. Some healers have gifts of extrasensory perception (ESP).

Healers may perceive deeply meaningful experiences of a healee from many years earlier. Such experiences may contribute significantly to the healing. They may also address memories as bioenergetic entities within the person that they can heal, just as they might heal a disorder of functions in the physical body.

Tom, a 42 year old, twice-divorced father of three, suffered from severe, chronic, recurrent depressions that had not responded well to a wide variety of antidepressants or to several years of psychotherapy with two therapists. Electroshock therapy had been recommended but he refused. In his first healing, the healer reported an intuitive awareness that Tom’s mother had felt she had to marry his father because she was pregnant. She deeply resented the pregnancy and did not want the marriage, but her religious beliefs and family pressures left her feeling she had little choice. The healer addressed these issues both cognitively and energetically with Tom. Within a few weeks his depression was markedly improved.

F. Healing may awaken intuitive, spiritual, and healing awarenesses and abilities in healees.

Wise healers will encourage healees to connect with these aspects of themselves — often ignored, neglected, or even dismissed and disparaged in Western society. It is commonly estimated that only five percent of the capacity of the brain is available to the conscious mind. Intuition extends our awareness into this rich, untapped resource of repressed memories and creativity.

Intuition also reaches beyond the individual, into what is commonly termed a “higher self.” This is a non-physical, non-local aspect of consciousness where psychic and spiritual awarenesses can be accessed.

Healers often have intuitive gifts that help them assess the types and severity of presenting problems. They simply know, with an inner awareness, what is wrong and how to address this through bioenergy treatments.

For use in medical practice, intuition is a gift that requires experience, refinement, and thoughtful balance. I learned a lot from a pilot study in which I explored the degree of congruence of the intuitive diagnostic assessments of a panel of eight healers who simultaneously observed the same patients (Benor, 1992; 2000; 2001). These healers made their assessments through visual perceptions of aura (the bioenergy field) around the patients. Each healer drew the colors perceived, and wrote down their interpretations of these. Each then gave their interpretation of their perceptions to the patient.

No one was more surprised than the healers when they found their perceptions were like those of the blind men examining an elephant. Each appeared to be describing an entirely different patient. The second surprise came when the patients were asked for feedback and reported that seven out of the eight intuitive readings were relevant to their conditions. (The eighth healer was found by all patients to be describing depression that was not present.)

It was as though each were looking into the same house through a different window. My understanding of these findings is that each healer resonated with a different aspect of the patient’s biofield. The eighth healer seemed to be projecting here own depressed emotional state on the patients.

This is a caution to anyone engaged in healing to be aware that healers may resonate with only part of the presenting problem(s) and may be blind to others.

G. My personal experience in developing my own healing gifts

Spiritual awareness that accompanies giving and receiving healing has given me perspectives that are deeply meaningful and helpful to me in dealing with my personal and professional relationships. The practice of medicine and psychiatry under managed care can be soul-destroying. There are constant pressures to be efficient within constraints of time, budgets, and the regulations of treatment settings, insurance companies, and governmental authorities. Being aware of a broader, spiritual connection introduces a sense of meaningfulness and purpose in life, even when I do not have words to adequately explain or even to articulate how I know this or what the purpose of these frustrating and depressing situations might be. It also reconnects me with my original intention for becoming a physician and psychiatrist: to help people who are suffering from disease and dis-ease.

In my practice of psychotherapy combined with spiritual awareness and healing I explore these dimensions with clients and encourage them to find their own spiritual awarenesses and meanings for their existence. Problems take on a much less onerous proportion from such a perspective. Spiritual dimensions also introduce elements of intuition and creativity that help to understand, deal with and resolve problems.

H. The personal growth and development of the therapist is vital to the process of healing.

In healing, perhaps more than in most other therapies, the person who is the healer is the instrument for the treatment. There is no mechanical, chemical, or social intervention that can adequately account for many of the problems successfully resolved by healers.
 

III. Issues of Safety, Compatibility with Conventional Care, Contraindications

A. Safety

There are no known deleterious effects of healing.

Some people experience mild to moderate worsening of symptoms following their initial treatments. This is considered a positive prognostic sign, as it appears to represent a release of blocked energies, along with physical and emotional tensions.

B. Compatibility with Conventional Care

Healing is an excellent complement to many other therapies. Practitioners of massage, aromatherapy, shiatsu, reflexology, and the like may notice that their hands feel unusually hot during treatments. Many don’t even realize that in addition to their physical manipulations, spiritual healing is also occurring spontaneously. When this occurs, patients often report that their treatment felt particularly helpful.

Healing may markedly diminish side effects of medications. Sue, a British nurse, is a strong healer on an oncology unit. Her supervisor would not agree to her offering healing to the cancer patients because she felt healing that was not done in her church was suspect of being evil. As Britain has no Bill of Rights, and Sue didn’t wish to alienate her boss, she reluctantly did not press the issue. Frustrated, she meditated and prayed for inspiration. She was pleased when she was intuitively guided to give healing to her patients’ chemotherapy IV bottles. Her patients then had little or no nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches or other side effects from the chemotherapy. Other nurses, including her supervisor, noticed this and suspected she was not administering the medications correctly, but could find no such fault when they supervised her treatments.

Some healers regularly produce dramatically positive effects. They may note that people with diabetes need less insulin following healing. They have learned to caution diabetics and the doctors they work with that they may be at risk for insulin shock if they continue on their usual insulin dose.

Some healers caution that healing may lessen the effects of cancer chemotherapy and radiotherapy, as they believe healing strengthens the immune system. While there is early evidence to suggest healing can enhance immune system functions, I know of no evidence to support these cautions with cancer patients.

C. Contraindications

There are no medical contraindications to healing.

Some patients object to healing, either categorically or as offered within particular healing traditions.

Healing should not be given instead of ongoing conventional medical care without the consultation of a physician. Patients on insulin or steroids have occasionally suffered the effects of injudiciously stopping treatment in the belief that they were healed.
 

IV. Research/Experience, Level of Scientific Documentation

A. Overview of Research

Out of 189 randomized, controlled studies of healing, 122 demonstrate significant effects that exceed a probability of 0.05 or better (Benor, 2001a , 2001b ).

Until recently, medical journals routinely rejected studies and articles on healing and most healing studies had to be published in parapsychology journals. Fortunately, this is changing. In the past dozen years, some of the most impressive studies were published in respected medical journals. Here are a few of these.

Randolph C. Byrd (1988) explored intercessory prayer in a coronary care unit (CCU). This double-blind study included 192 patients randomized to the prayer group and 201 to the control group. “There were no differences between groups on admission in degree of severity of myocardial infarction or in numerous other pertinent variables.” The experimental group received prayer sent by Christians praying many miles from the hospital. The prayer group scored significantly lower ( p < 0.01) than the control group on a scale for severity of problems devised by Byrd. “Significantly fewer patients in the prayer group needed intubation/ventilation ( p < 0.002) or antibiotics (p < 0.005), had cardiopulmonary arrests ( p < 0.02), developed pneumonia ( p < 0.03) or required diuretics ( p < 0.05).” However, “the mean times in CCU and durations of hospitalization between groups were nearly identical.”

The results might be more significant than they appear because, as Byrd notes, some of the patients in the control group may have had outsiders praying for them, which presumably would have reduced the differences between groups.

William Harris et al (1999) replicated Byrd’s study in another randomized, controlled, double-blind, parallel-group trial of 990 consecutively admitted patients on a CCU. “There were 466 in the prayer group and 524 in the control group. No significant differences were noted in age, sex or in comorbid conditions between the groups.” Informed consent was not obtained and neither patients nor staff knew this study was being conducted. Prayers were sent in the 28 days following admission, covering the patients? entire hospitalization in 95 percent of the cases.

The researchers developed their own assessment scale because no standard scales exist for assessment of CCU cardiac status or progress. The prayer group showed significantly more overall improvement than the control group ( p < 0.04). No significant differences between groups were evident on the scale devised by Byrd, although there was a trend in favor of the prayer group. Again, no significant differences were noted between the two groups in length of hospital stay.

Fred Sicher, et al (1998) arranged a randomized, double-blind trial of distant healing on 40 volunteers (37 men, 3 women) who had advanced AIDS. They were classified in category C-3, including CD4+ cell counts of less than 200 cells, a history of at least one AIDS-defining disease, and taking prophylactic treatment against Pneumococcus carinii. “Volunteers were solicited through local advertisements. Diagnoses were confirmed by standard criteria for HIV+ disease. Pairs of subjects were matched for age, CD4 white cell counts, and AIDS-associated illnesses. They were randomly assigned to receive either distant healing or no healing. All received standard medical care from their own doctors, at several different medical centers.” The treatment and control groups did not differ significantly on demographic and study variables prior to the start of healing.

Distant healing was sent for ten weeks by 40 healers in various parts of the United States. There was never any contact of whatsoever between healers and patients. “Patients and doctors were blind to who received the healing and to when the healing was sent.” Assessment of severity of illness was also done on a blinded basis.

At six months following the initial assessment, the prayer group “had significantly fewer AIDS-related illnesses (p < 0.04) and lower severity of illnesses ( p < 0.02). Visits to doctors were less frequent ( p < 0.01), as were hospitalizations ( p < 0.04), and days in hospital ( p < 0.04).”

Mood, assessed on the Profile of Mood States scale, showed significantly more improvement in the prayer group ( p < 0.02). CD4 counts and scores on the other psychological tests did not differ significantly between the two groups.

The authors point out that the overall improvements appear to indicate “a global rather than a specific distant healing effect.” They suggest that measures of viral load and activity of natural killer (NK) cells may be more useful measures of healing effects than CD4+ counts.

Although treatments were given by different doctors in different medical centers, an accepted current standard of treatment was presumably followed. This factor was not examined by the authors of this study to verify that there were in fact no differences in treatments between the healing and control groups.

These are three of the best published healing studies. It is also of note that these were published in respected, conventional medical journals.

B. Healing for Anxiety

Of particular interest in this chapter are studies of healing for anxiety. Here are two classics in the healing literature.

Patricia Heidt (1979; 1981) studied effects of Therapeutic Touch on anxiety in 90 patients hospitalized on a cardiac intensive care unit. “State anxiety was measured prior to and following the interventions given to each of three matched subgroups: 1. Five minute healings that were given with the hands touching the body; 2. five minutes of mimic healings (“casual touch”); or 3. no intervention.”

Subjects receiving Therapeutic Touch experienced a significant reduction in pre- vs post-treatment state anxiety ( p < .001) and had a significantly greater reduction in post-test anxiety scores compared to those in the casual touch or no touch groups ( p < .01).

Other studies confirm healing is helpful in treating anxiety in a general medical practice (Dixon, 1997); in premature neonates (Fedoruk, 1984); hospitalized children (Kramer, 1990); post-hurricane stress (Olson, Sneed, et al., 1992); Veteran’s Administration psychiatric inpatients (Gagne & Toye, 1994); oncology patients (Guerrero, 1985); terminal cancer patients in palliative care (Kemp, 1994); institutionalized elderly (Simington & Laing, 1993); and in unspecified subjects (Ferguson, 1986);

C. Healing for Depression

Several studies have explored healing for depression. The most rigorous is that of C. Norman Shealy et al. This is also an interesting study because it examined the benefits of quartz crystals in focusing the self-healing abilities of depressed people, showing significant effects ( p < 0.001).

A study by Catherine Leb (1996) explored the effects of six sessions of Healing Touch (HT) on chronic depression over three weeks. HT is an extension of TT, including longer sessions and focusing on the chakras (major bioenergy centers on the midline of the body). As part of the assessment, the healer used a pendulum to check the degree of openness, which is taken to be a measure of health, of the seven major chakras (energy centers on the midline of the body). The pendulum is used like the dial on a meter. It amplifies minute, unconscious movements of the healer’s hand, thereby externalizing the healer?s intuitive impressions, making them clearer.

The Beck Depression inventory showed significantly greater decreases in depression for the treatment group ( p < .001), sustained at one moth post-treatment. Chakra pendulum assessment scores for change in all seven chakras were significantly higher for the treatment group ( p < .001).

Healing may also be of help in bereavement. Loretta Robinson (1996) studied a convenience group of 22 adults who had recently been bereaved. “She assigned them randomly to receive either three TT or three mock TT treatments.” The brief dissertation abstract states that a Grief Experience Inventory “confirmed that TT was significantly beneficial in helping people deal with grief.”

D. Healing for Pain

Pains of many varieties have responded to healing. This is the symptom that most often brings people for healing. Two rigorous studies (Redner et al.; Slater, 1996) and another seven of lower standards (Dixon, 1997; Dressler, 1990; Gordon et al., 1998; Keller & Bzdek, 1986; Meehan et al., 1990; Peck, 1996; Sundblom, Haikonen, et al., 1994) show significant effects of healing in treating pain.

Healing most commonly brings about immediate modest to marked reductions in acute and chronic pains. As with other healing effects, there may also be gradual and modest improvements that continue to accrue with repeated treatments over time.

E. Distant Healing

Distant healing, probably more than any other aspect of spiritual healing, challenges our credulity within Western scientific paradigms.

A meta-analysis of distant healing research was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine authored by respected researchers. Three types of studies were included: prayer, Non-Contact Therapeutic Touch, and other types of distant healing. Literature reviews of available databases through 1999 produced 100 studies of distant healing. “Of the 23 studies that met their inclusion criteria (including 2774 participants), 13 studies (57 percent) demonstrated positive treatment effects, 9 (39 percent) showed no effect, and 1 (4 percent) had a negative effect.”

“This meta-analysis is of great significance for several reasons. The reviewers were very careful in their selection of studies and in their application of methods of mets-analysis. One of the authors, Edzard Ernst, is known to be very conservative in assessing studies of CAM reports. Their conclusions that further studies of healing are warranted is a vote of confidence in the distant healing research they reviewed.”

This meta-analysis also lends credence to the anecdotal reports of a large number of people availing themselves of healing treatments and praying for healing, as well as the growing numbers of anecdotal clinical reports from doctors referring to healers. It suggests that they are engaging in a beneficial therapy, not just wishful thinking, religious ritual (as rote) practice, or placebo therapy.

In Healing Research (Benor, 2001a; 2001b), my analysis of 52 rigorous studies of both touch and distant healing found 39 (75 percent) demonstrating significant effects.

F. Surveys of Healees

While randomized, controlled trials are considered the gold standard for research, patient satisfaction with treatment is another important measure of its benefits. Reviews of five patient satisfaction surveys in England, Holland and Iceland showed that 79 to 91 percent of respondents felt healing was of some benefit. This clearly exceeds the percents that would be expected if healing were merely a placebo.

G. Non-Human Subjects

Skeptics may suggest that healing can be nor more than a placebo, despite the best human healing research to date. This alternative is difficult to maintain in the face of extensive studies of healing effects on animals, plants, bacteria, yeasts, cells in vitro, enzymes, and DNA, many of which show highly significant effects.
 

V. Simple Treatment: Common Treatment Approaches for Depression, Anxiety, ADD/ ADHD, and Addictions

A. General Summary

Clinical experience suggests that healing is excellent for treating stress states and anxiety. Healees almost uniformly relax during healing treatments. They may flush, doze, and lose their sense of time.

As discussed above, research confirms healing is effective in relieving short-term, state anxiety, pain, depression, and grief. Healing may also facilitate releases of repressed emotions that contribute to causing and maintaining anxiety, depression and pain.

My clinical experience is that healing can contribute to medication therapy by potentiating the effects of all medications and by reducing side effects. I often recommend to clients that they pray over their own medications as they are taking them. I have been pleasantly surprised at how well many people receive this suggestion. Part of its appeal may be in introducing a sense of empowerment and participation in a situation where many people feel powerless — even to the point of rebellion and non-compliance. In contrast, I have been disappointed (though not surprised) at the response of physicians and drug company representatives, whose preference in treating side effects of one medication is to prescribe other medications to control the side effects of the first one.

B. Healing for Anxiety and Emotional Trauma

I can share from my recent personal experience with severe hip and thigh pain after a fall from a bicycle, exacerbated by lifting a heavy suitcase. Healing helped directly to alleviate some of the pain. What was far more helpful were the memories, elicited through healing, of early childhood lack of attention from my mother. These feelings resonated with the anxieties I had after the hip injury, which required that I take several days of sick leave at a time when there was no one near to help care for me. I did not make the connection until I had the healing.

In my work as a psychotherapist I often find that behind current problems of anxiety, depression, and pain there may lie memories of earlier traumas that resonate strongly with the current ones. In some instances it seems very likely that patients allowed themselves to develop their current symptoms as a way to release the old, buried hurts. This is seen most clearly in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders. For instance, children who were sexually abused may exhibit grossly inappropriate, provocative sexual behaviors, obsessively and compulsively re-enacting their emotional traumas in various ways. With less intense traumas we may have similar experiences.

In retrospect, I can speculate that my unconscious mind contributed to my hip and thigh injuries as a way of releasing the repressed emotional pains from my childhood.

C. Healing for Depression

Early research of healing for depression is discussed above.

As with any treatment, there are always non-responders. One innovative English healer persisted with several patients who had not improved with healing from several different healers, over many months. He invited small groups of healers to send distant healing to these previously unresponsive patients, while at the same time the patients were also praying for healing. Most of these, including the wife of a physician who had been severely depressed, reported distinct improvement.

While I have no formal data to confirm this, my clinical impression is that prayer may reduce the incidence of side effects from antidepressants.

D. Healing for Addictions

While healing has not been studied extensively as a treatment for addictions, it is so frequently helpful for treating anxiety and depression — both found frequently in addicts — that it is reasonable to expect it should be of help in addictions. A study of absent healing as an adjunct to clinic treatment of alcoholism (Walker ) did not find beneficial effects on drinking behavior. However, a post-hoc finding was that the healing group had a significantly lower dropout rate from treatment ( p < 0.05).

E. Healing for ADD/ ADHD

I have not found healing particularly helpful with ADD/ ADHD, though it also appears helpful here to have prayers over the medications.

F. Healing for Pain

Healing is an excellent treatment for pain. Relief may be obtained within minutes in some cases, even with chronic conditions. In others, repeated treatments over a period of weeks and months may be needed to obtain maximal benefits. Occasionally, pain is increased in the first session or two. This is considered a positive prognostic sign by healers, who interpret it as a mobilization of stagnant or blocked energies that are on their way to being resolved. Healing may significantly reduce the need for pain medication. This is a blessing in itself, and may also reduce the side effects of pain medications.

G. When to Give Healing

Healing is often given as a treatment of last resort, after all conventional interventions have failed. This is regrettable, because healers uniformly state their treatments are more effective when given early in the course of an illness. It appears that bioenergetic interventions may be able to arrest the progress of an illness or even to reverse it before it becomes chronic. Once it has been present for a long time, it is much more difficult for healers to bring about definitive changes, although they may be able to provide symptomatic relief.

H. Safety

Healing is a safe intervention when used judiciously. There are no known deleterious or dangerous effects of healing. Testimony to this is the annual cost of malpractice insurance for healers in England, who pay less than 10 pounds Sterling for coverage equivalent to that for which physicians pay 1,200 and more pounds per year.
Used injudiciously, healing could be harmful indirectly. There have been instances in which people discontinued conventional therapies such as insulin or hormone therapies, believing themselves to be cured of their diseases by healing, with disastrous results.

Postponing known effective treatments while a course of healing is given might put a person at risk of their illness progressing beyond a point that the conventional therapy could be effective. With integrative care, combining conventional diagnosis and treatment with CAM therapies, this need not be a danger.
 

VI. Triage: Training, Certification, How to Recognize a Qualified Healer

Healing is a gift, like playing the piano. Some are born with strong, innate abilities; most may improve significantly with deliberate practice; others may never achieve success despite sincere desire and intensive efforts.

There is a broad spectrum of courses and schools for healing. At the rigorous end are schools that offer two to four years of instruction, with experiential and supervised learning. At the other polarity, there are weekend courses in methodologies with no supervised practice.

There are no broadly accepted standards for training or certification, and healing is not a licensed therapy in any state.

In healing, perhaps more than in most other therapies, the person who is the healer is the instrument for the treatment. Gifted, natural healers who have had no instruction whatsoever may be excellent healers. Graduates of the most rigorous programs may be mediocre healers.

Selecting a healer is very much like selecting a psychotherapist. It is helpful to have personal recommendations from people you know and respect. No type or amount of training can predict the subtle vibrational resonations that will be conducive to compatibility between healer and healee, nor do we have any way to predict which healer will be the best for any given person. Even healers with outstanding treatment records may have no response in treating some people. Conversely, the most inexperienced novice healer may occasionally produce outstanding results.

Again, as with psychotherapy, minimal or no progress with one healer does not say that working with another healer will produce no results.

Some who offer healing within religious settings claim that faith is required for healing. This may be true for members of these religions who hold to this belief. Repentance and absolution may be necessary for their healing. That this is not universally true is suggested by the highly significant healing effects in studies with mice, rats, hamsters, bacteria, yeasts, cells in vitro, enzymes and DNA.

Another issue raised by healers with spiritual beliefs is whether healing through an intent of “Thy will be done” is broader, deeper, or in some other ways better than healing expressed as “My will be done,” with a focused intent for a specific outcome. While it may be easy to conceptualize a study where the effects of healing by healers holding to these beliefs are tested in a controlled study, it may be extremely difficult to differentiate beliefs from healing expectancy effects.
 

VII. Summary

Spiritual healing offers a safe option for treating almost every known illness. Where there is no urgency for other interventions, healing may be a treatment of first choice due to its lack of side effects. Within the framework of holistic medicine, healing is an excellent complement to other conventional and CAM therapies.
 
References

Barnett, Libby. Chambers, Maggie. (1996). Reiki Enegry Medicine: Brining Healing Touch into Home, Hospital, Hospice. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts.

Benor, D. J. (1992). Intuitive diagnosis, Subtle Energies , 3(2), 41-64.

Benor, D.J. (1995). Spiritual Healing: A unifying influence in complementary therapies, Complementary Therapies in Medicine , 3(4), 234-238.

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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

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