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Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine
This influential book shows how the systematic use of mental imagery can have a positive influence on the course of disease and can help patients to cope with pain. In Imagery in Healing, Jeanne Achterberg brings together modern scientific research and the practices of the earliest healers to support her claim that imagery is the world's oldest and most powerful healing resource. The book has become a classic in the field of alternative medicine and continues to be read by new generations of health care professionals and lay people. In Imagery in Healing, Achterberg explores in detail the role of the imagination in the healing process. She begins with an exploration of the tradition of shamanism, "the medicine of the imagination," surveying this time-honored way of touching the nexus of the mind, body, and soul. She then traces the history of the use of imagery within Western medicine, including a look at contemporary examples of how health care professionals have drawn on the power of the imagination through such methods as hypnosis, biofeedback, and the placebo effect. Ultimately, Achterberg looks to the science of immunology to uncover the most effective ground for visualization, and she presents data demonstrating how imagery can have a direct and profound impact on the workings of the immune system. Drawing on art, science, history, anthropology, and medicine, Imagery in Healing offers a highly readable overview of the profound and complex relationship between the imagination and the body.
253 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1985
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January 19, 2014
Wild and wonderful. Excerpts:
There is little argument about the negative power of imagination on health..... What has not often been proposed in modern times is that the reverse must also be true.
Asclepius, Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates, regarded as the fathers of medicine, used imagery for both diagnosis and therapy.
In each instance of history, the gifts of the imagination took primacy over pharmacy and surgery, and those who were skilled at wielding the powers of the image were awarded the greatest stature in the healing hierarchy. The scientific age brought this acclaim to a screeching halt.
The healing techniques of the shaman have always existed side-by-side with a medicine of a more mechanical or technological nature. A good shaman, noting that the patient had an arrow sticking out between his shoulder blades, would not likely have ordered up an altered state of consciousness at least until the intrusion was removed, available medicines were applied to staunch the bleeding, and others used to halt infection and pain.
Typically in shamanic cultures, a healing hierarchy exists, with those whose singular talent rests in physical manipulation or prescription at the bottom, followed by specialists in diagnosis, and then crowned by the shamans and their use of the imagination to intervene with the supernatural.
According to an Eskimo shaman, "Every real shaman has to feel an illumination in his body, in the inside of his head or in his brain, something that gleams like fire, that gives him the power to see with closed eyes into the darkness, into the hidden things or into the future, or into the secrets of another man."... The advanced [Tibetan] yogins are said to be able to produce psychic heat that renders them impervious to temperature extremes, even to long-term exposure to snow while wrapped only in sheets dipped in icy water... [by] visualizing a sun in various parts of their bodies and the world being permeated by fire. It is said that, as a result of practicing these exercises over a long period of time, the yogin has the ability to learn of past, present, and future events.
Typically, the shamans fast before doing difficult work. The fast may include dispensing with food, or salt, or even water. Other deprivations include going without sleep for several nights, which may happen anyway in the process of a lengthy ritual.
Abstinence from sex is universally used to alter the realms of consciousness. This vital life energy is redirected toward healing, or to produce states of bliss (as in the Eastern practice of kundalini). The novice Jivaro shaman, for instance, must abstain from sex for at least five months to gain enough power to cure, and for a whole year in order to become really effective.
...for shamans of all genres, the distinction between body, mind, and spirit is nil. Body is mind, and mind is spirit.... Self is stone, and the stone is the universe.
...the Hippocratic Oath, the ethical code of honor still taken by every practicing physician today, is a dedication to the mythical founding family of medicine, whose contribution was a method for healing with imagination. It begins: "I swear by Apollo the Physician, by Asclepius, by Hygeia, and Panacea and by all the Gods and Goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant."
Aristotle, Hippocrates, and even Galen were trained in the Asclepian tradition, and all of them were able to articulate the role that the imagination played in health. Aristotle believed that the emotional system did not function in the absence of images.
Prodicus made a statement in the fifth century, B.C.: "That which benefits human life is God."
Estimates are that anywhere from a few hundred thousand to nine million women were murdered between the years 1500 and 1650, many of them for the suspicioned practice of medicine.... The women were accused of causing all the ills of Europe, England, and America.
...the Church saw its attack on the witch healers as an attack on magic, but not on medicine. "The greater their satanic powers to help themselves, the less they were dependent on God and the Church and the more they were potentially able to use their powers against God's order."... It seems that one could readily distinguish God's cures from the devil's, because God worked through the priests and the doctors rather than through the women.
When the world view changed to incorporate the Cartesian model of dualism—the separation of the functions of mind from the stuff of the body—the holistic approach became logically inconsistent.... Now implicit permission was given to dissect, bisect, examine, and otherwise invade the human body without fear of damage to the soul.
...those who cannot comprehend the messages conveyed by society and its medicine die of different causes that [sic] those who can.... [Many emotionally disturbed and mentally retarded people] often do grow lumps of one kind or another, but by the time the lumps are biopsied, they're found to be benign.... Is the natural course of disease different when there's an absence of fear and no images of death?... If people are dying from the diagnosis of the disease and not the disease itself, should they be kept in the dark regarding the condition of their health? ... Emphatically, no.... It's not what the patients are told that is so critical to health, it is how they're told, how they are assisted in dealing with the diagnosis, and obviously how they choose to receive the message within the context of their own belief system.
Images are also created by statistics... Patients nearly always ask, when given a diagnosis of severe disease, "How long do I have?" First of all, that's not a fair question to ask of any mortal. But secondly, answers need to be carefully couched to reflect the truth. Usually, a range is given that is crudely derived from median life expectancy, or the point at which 50% of the patients have died and 50% are still alive, given the variables in the condition. "You have six months, maybe a year at the outside," is a common phrase. In my experience, patients tend to comply quite well with their personal sentence. The tragedy is that a range around the median is an absolutely incorrect picture. The statistics that get reported are often collected from charity patients who subject themselves to studies in order to get free medical care. Poor people with cancer simply don't live as long as the well-to-do, and the statistics are therefore skewed. Furthermore, using the range around the average is only part of the description of the course of the disease.
The placebo effect comes about because of the imagination; but it isn't synonymous.... Every thought is accompanied by electrochemical change; that's what thinking is... if you take a pill, and you feel that it's going to cure you, the pill is metabolized in a very different environment than if you think the pill is poison.... The magic is clearly not in the sugar pill or in the water injection, but rather in the belief attached to them.
Placebo treatment works for problems other than pain... reported to account for healing in from 30% to 70% of all drug and surgical interventions. Even repair of injured tissues has been encouraged with the use of placebo.
Producing convincing research on the efficacy of using imagery in the general practice of medicine has remained an unmet challenge. First of all, physicians are rarely trained as researchers (the Ph.D., not the M.D., is the research degree), and the few that do have research skills have assiduously avoided the complicated business of mind/body interactions. Furthermore, physicians who are interested in the applications of imagery to clinical practice are busy treating patients, and rarely have either the funds or inclination to pursue research. Government or private foundation money, which would allow physicians to devote time and energy to such study, has never been available. One of the biggest impediments to understanding the effect of the imagination, in and of itself, is that when imagery is used in general practice, it is rarely employed in isolation from other types of medicine, or even from other nonsurgical, nondrug therapies such as biofeedback.
Some of Samuels' general suggestions for healing imagery involve "erasing bacteria or viruses, building new cells to replace damaged ones, making rough areas smooth, making hot areas cool, making sore areas comfortable, making tense areas relax, draining swollen areas, releasing pressure from tight areas, bringing blood to areas that need nutriment or cleansing, making dry areas moist (or moist areas dry), bringing energy to areas that seem tired."
If specific images can result in a corresponding physical change, then damage may also inadvertently occur.
Biofeedback requires the persistent involvement of highly motivated persons, who are able and willing to spend time and effort on their own health... the ability to learn to consciously regulate physiology appears to vary across the population like any other human trait, with some people naturally very able, and others who have extreme difficulty in performing the task.
Those individuals who were unable to fantasize, who seldom remembered their dreams, and who were not regarded as particularly creative, had the most difficulty in learning the biofeedback response.
Sometimes the first clue that a disease is going away comes in a dream, or in a state of reverie. A kind of "knowing" is described that accompanies a successful treatment (and I am using the word treatment here to include nonmedical procedures such as religious experience, vitamins, exercise, and meditation). The treatment is often said to lead to a sense of calm and diffused warmth and comfort as the disease is released. People describe being filled with white light, or of seeing an incandescent globe hover over their bodies right before they have the sense of being healed. Patients who recover quickly from surgery often talk about having done significant mental work while lying in bed, assisting the healing process with their imaginations.
Karl Pribram has proposed that the brain operates like a hologram. Essentially, a hologram is a specially processed photographic record that provides a three-dimensional image when a laser is beamed through it. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that, should it break, any part of the hologram is capable of reconstructing the total image, but with reduced clarity. Like the holograph, the brain also stores information redundantly. Each part of the brain has some data on every other part. A shattered piece of the holographic picture can recreate the whole image; the brain areas left intact after damage have the potential for functioning like the missing parts.... The holographic model, as proposed by Pribram, does not contradict the traditional neuroanatomic description of the brain.
People don't have much ability to establish healing patterns once they're diagnosed with serious illness. If they don't believe in anything besides modern medicine, when that fails there is nothing else stored in the brain that has been rehearsed sufficiently enough, in the context of health, to effect physical change.
Through many complex and varied processes, then, the filters that normally prevent direct mental access to the physical body can be lifted. Most of the ways have in common a means of either removing, or significantly altering, or even competing with, the demands the external environment makes on the brain.
Torrey cites several characteristic factors that serve to engender trust in healers of all types: the trip or pilgrimage to visit the healer (distance seems to be important here); the impressiveness of the building or edifice and the contents therein; the distinctiveness of the healer's demeanor; his or her training credentials; and a pervasive air of power and mystery, even fear. The esteem of the patient is increased by merely being in the presence of and receiving the undivided attention of such an impressive, important person...."[The shaman] is readily distinguishable from the laity by his taciturnity, his grave and solemn countenance, his dignified step, and his circumspection. All of these peculiarities tend to heighten his influence, and, by rendering his appearance impressive and suggestive of superiority, serve to increase his control over the people."
Helplessness can literally be lethal... Distinctive behavioral changes have been noted in several species when they were confronted with a situation over which they had no control. The changes could be anthropomorphically described as "giving up," and are accompanied by evidence of physical deterioration. Helplessness in humans is normally associated with severe depression, apathy, and loss of energy, even before the clinical manifestation of disease.... The purveyors of hope, in this context, are offering a healing commodity.
The shamans, many of them, had come face to face with death before their vocation became apparent. No doubt their credibility was in part a function of some immunity gained through their illness.
A physical therapist told me of a time in her life when she was about to finish her master's degree and was suffering from massive uterine hemorrage. All the usual treatments had been tried: hormones, dilation and curetage, bed rest. The only treatment left was hysterectomy.... She begged off her surgery for a week and went into seclusion. During this time she visualized a white light shining its healing rays into her uterus. At the end of the week, the bleeding had stopped completely. That was five years ago, and no similar problems had occurred since. She hadn't told her story to many people and, being in a medical profession, she was just a little embarrassed about the circumstances of her recovery.
[Populations] such as the mentally retarded and emotionally disturbed, have a selective protection from cancer, as well as from autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis, but not from infectious disease such as upper respiratory problems. The percentage of deaths from cancer for the mentally handicapped population is only about 4%, while 15-18% is the usual rate. And, as the mentally handicapped approach normal intelligence, their cancer rate increases also.... [many] are unusually protected from cancer, despite poor health habits, such as heavy smoking.
Tumors can change as rapidly as nightblooming flowers, growing, shrinking, perhaps changing shape.
The symptoms were symbols, the symbols symptoms. (The two words have essentially the same meaning—a concrete or tangible object that stands for an intangible idea.) And they both deserve equal respect for influencing the course of lives.... Archetypal figures who fought for God and country and who were protectors of their people, such as Sir Richard, the knights of the Round Table, and the venturesome Vikings, were nearly always associated with a positive outcome. Animals with killer instincts such as sharks, bears, and mean dogs were sometimes, but not always, associated with good responses. Some people tried to force these images because they thought they were the most likely killers, but at the same time, they got disgusted with the gore. Very poor responses were associated with vague, weak, amorphous symbols for the immune system such as snowflakes or clouds. More often than not, those with the worst prognosis just couldn't draw or describe anything at all related to the immune system, but had vivid images of their cancer.... A truly poor outcome was forecast when the cancer cells were seen as immutable, grasping, or ineradicable, when symbolized as lumps of coal, crabs, ants, or submarines; a better outcome was likely when they were described as weak animals or even as the actual cells as one might view them under a microscope. Interestingly enough, the insect images are a grim omen of disease in the shamanic system as well.
The power of the imagination makes warts go away... My own daughter once had warts, so many of them that the dermatologist said freezing them or surgery would leave too many scars on her little hands. He said, "Maybe they'll go away. Try some magic." We did, and they didn't. By then it was time to go visit her grandparents for the summer. What a treat was in store. They were keeping a big white horse for her to ride as long as she was there. A ten-year-old's veritable dream come true, and no one had ever seen her happier. After the first day, the wart infestation disappeared completely. She knew instantly that the horse was responsible.... "This is not the sort of confused, disordered process you'd expect at the hands of the kind of Unconscious you read about in books, out at the edge of things making up dreams or getting mixed up on words or having hysterics." ... this Person or Tenant in charge of healing must be a surgeon, a skilled engineer and manager, a chief executive office [sic], and a cell biologist of world class.... "a kind of superintelligence that exists in each of us, infinitely smarter and possessed of technical know-how far beyond our present understanding."
When very small electrodes that could measure the electrical activity of a cell were inserted into a motor nerve cell, and auditory feedback was given to the person whenever that cell would fire, he/she could quickly learn to fire it at will. They could even learn to fire long bursts that sounded like drum rolls when they came across the speakers, or short bursts, or patterns of their own choosing.
There has not been a body function that couldn't be controlled to some extent once it was adequately monitored and information provided to the subject through rapid feedback. The immune system should prove no exception.
There is little argument about the negative power of imagination on health..... What has not often been proposed in modern times is that the reverse must also be true.
Asclepius, Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates, regarded as the fathers of medicine, used imagery for both diagnosis and therapy.
In each instance of history, the gifts of the imagination took primacy over pharmacy and surgery, and those who were skilled at wielding the powers of the image were awarded the greatest stature in the healing hierarchy. The scientific age brought this acclaim to a screeching halt.
The healing techniques of the shaman have always existed side-by-side with a medicine of a more mechanical or technological nature. A good shaman, noting that the patient had an arrow sticking out between his shoulder blades, would not likely have ordered up an altered state of consciousness at least until the intrusion was removed, available medicines were applied to staunch the bleeding, and others used to halt infection and pain.
Typically in shamanic cultures, a healing hierarchy exists, with those whose singular talent rests in physical manipulation or prescription at the bottom, followed by specialists in diagnosis, and then crowned by the shamans and their use of the imagination to intervene with the supernatural.
According to an Eskimo shaman, "Every real shaman has to feel an illumination in his body, in the inside of his head or in his brain, something that gleams like fire, that gives him the power to see with closed eyes into the darkness, into the hidden things or into the future, or into the secrets of another man."... The advanced [Tibetan] yogins are said to be able to produce psychic heat that renders them impervious to temperature extremes, even to long-term exposure to snow while wrapped only in sheets dipped in icy water... [by] visualizing a sun in various parts of their bodies and the world being permeated by fire. It is said that, as a result of practicing these exercises over a long period of time, the yogin has the ability to learn of past, present, and future events.
Typically, the shamans fast before doing difficult work. The fast may include dispensing with food, or salt, or even water. Other deprivations include going without sleep for several nights, which may happen anyway in the process of a lengthy ritual.
Abstinence from sex is universally used to alter the realms of consciousness. This vital life energy is redirected toward healing, or to produce states of bliss (as in the Eastern practice of kundalini). The novice Jivaro shaman, for instance, must abstain from sex for at least five months to gain enough power to cure, and for a whole year in order to become really effective.
...for shamans of all genres, the distinction between body, mind, and spirit is nil. Body is mind, and mind is spirit.... Self is stone, and the stone is the universe.
...the Hippocratic Oath, the ethical code of honor still taken by every practicing physician today, is a dedication to the mythical founding family of medicine, whose contribution was a method for healing with imagination. It begins: "I swear by Apollo the Physician, by Asclepius, by Hygeia, and Panacea and by all the Gods and Goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant."
Aristotle, Hippocrates, and even Galen were trained in the Asclepian tradition, and all of them were able to articulate the role that the imagination played in health. Aristotle believed that the emotional system did not function in the absence of images.
Prodicus made a statement in the fifth century, B.C.: "That which benefits human life is God."
Estimates are that anywhere from a few hundred thousand to nine million women were murdered between the years 1500 and 1650, many of them for the suspicioned practice of medicine.... The women were accused of causing all the ills of Europe, England, and America.
...the Church saw its attack on the witch healers as an attack on magic, but not on medicine. "The greater their satanic powers to help themselves, the less they were dependent on God and the Church and the more they were potentially able to use their powers against God's order."... It seems that one could readily distinguish God's cures from the devil's, because God worked through the priests and the doctors rather than through the women.
When the world view changed to incorporate the Cartesian model of dualism—the separation of the functions of mind from the stuff of the body—the holistic approach became logically inconsistent.... Now implicit permission was given to dissect, bisect, examine, and otherwise invade the human body without fear of damage to the soul.
...those who cannot comprehend the messages conveyed by society and its medicine die of different causes that [sic] those who can.... [Many emotionally disturbed and mentally retarded people] often do grow lumps of one kind or another, but by the time the lumps are biopsied, they're found to be benign.... Is the natural course of disease different when there's an absence of fear and no images of death?... If people are dying from the diagnosis of the disease and not the disease itself, should they be kept in the dark regarding the condition of their health? ... Emphatically, no.... It's not what the patients are told that is so critical to health, it is how they're told, how they are assisted in dealing with the diagnosis, and obviously how they choose to receive the message within the context of their own belief system.
Images are also created by statistics... Patients nearly always ask, when given a diagnosis of severe disease, "How long do I have?" First of all, that's not a fair question to ask of any mortal. But secondly, answers need to be carefully couched to reflect the truth. Usually, a range is given that is crudely derived from median life expectancy, or the point at which 50% of the patients have died and 50% are still alive, given the variables in the condition. "You have six months, maybe a year at the outside," is a common phrase. In my experience, patients tend to comply quite well with their personal sentence. The tragedy is that a range around the median is an absolutely incorrect picture. The statistics that get reported are often collected from charity patients who subject themselves to studies in order to get free medical care. Poor people with cancer simply don't live as long as the well-to-do, and the statistics are therefore skewed. Furthermore, using the range around the average is only part of the description of the course of the disease.
The placebo effect comes about because of the imagination; but it isn't synonymous.... Every thought is accompanied by electrochemical change; that's what thinking is... if you take a pill, and you feel that it's going to cure you, the pill is metabolized in a very different environment than if you think the pill is poison.... The magic is clearly not in the sugar pill or in the water injection, but rather in the belief attached to them.
Placebo treatment works for problems other than pain... reported to account for healing in from 30% to 70% of all drug and surgical interventions. Even repair of injured tissues has been encouraged with the use of placebo.
Producing convincing research on the efficacy of using imagery in the general practice of medicine has remained an unmet challenge. First of all, physicians are rarely trained as researchers (the Ph.D., not the M.D., is the research degree), and the few that do have research skills have assiduously avoided the complicated business of mind/body interactions. Furthermore, physicians who are interested in the applications of imagery to clinical practice are busy treating patients, and rarely have either the funds or inclination to pursue research. Government or private foundation money, which would allow physicians to devote time and energy to such study, has never been available. One of the biggest impediments to understanding the effect of the imagination, in and of itself, is that when imagery is used in general practice, it is rarely employed in isolation from other types of medicine, or even from other nonsurgical, nondrug therapies such as biofeedback.
Some of Samuels' general suggestions for healing imagery involve "erasing bacteria or viruses, building new cells to replace damaged ones, making rough areas smooth, making hot areas cool, making sore areas comfortable, making tense areas relax, draining swollen areas, releasing pressure from tight areas, bringing blood to areas that need nutriment or cleansing, making dry areas moist (or moist areas dry), bringing energy to areas that seem tired."
If specific images can result in a corresponding physical change, then damage may also inadvertently occur.
Biofeedback requires the persistent involvement of highly motivated persons, who are able and willing to spend time and effort on their own health... the ability to learn to consciously regulate physiology appears to vary across the population like any other human trait, with some people naturally very able, and others who have extreme difficulty in performing the task.
Those individuals who were unable to fantasize, who seldom remembered their dreams, and who were not regarded as particularly creative, had the most difficulty in learning the biofeedback response.
Sometimes the first clue that a disease is going away comes in a dream, or in a state of reverie. A kind of "knowing" is described that accompanies a successful treatment (and I am using the word treatment here to include nonmedical procedures such as religious experience, vitamins, exercise, and meditation). The treatment is often said to lead to a sense of calm and diffused warmth and comfort as the disease is released. People describe being filled with white light, or of seeing an incandescent globe hover over their bodies right before they have the sense of being healed. Patients who recover quickly from surgery often talk about having done significant mental work while lying in bed, assisting the healing process with their imaginations.
Karl Pribram has proposed that the brain operates like a hologram. Essentially, a hologram is a specially processed photographic record that provides a three-dimensional image when a laser is beamed through it. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that, should it break, any part of the hologram is capable of reconstructing the total image, but with reduced clarity. Like the holograph, the brain also stores information redundantly. Each part of the brain has some data on every other part. A shattered piece of the holographic picture can recreate the whole image; the brain areas left intact after damage have the potential for functioning like the missing parts.... The holographic model, as proposed by Pribram, does not contradict the traditional neuroanatomic description of the brain.
People don't have much ability to establish healing patterns once they're diagnosed with serious illness. If they don't believe in anything besides modern medicine, when that fails there is nothing else stored in the brain that has been rehearsed sufficiently enough, in the context of health, to effect physical change.
Through many complex and varied processes, then, the filters that normally prevent direct mental access to the physical body can be lifted. Most of the ways have in common a means of either removing, or significantly altering, or even competing with, the demands the external environment makes on the brain.
Torrey cites several characteristic factors that serve to engender trust in healers of all types: the trip or pilgrimage to visit the healer (distance seems to be important here); the impressiveness of the building or edifice and the contents therein; the distinctiveness of the healer's demeanor; his or her training credentials; and a pervasive air of power and mystery, even fear. The esteem of the patient is increased by merely being in the presence of and receiving the undivided attention of such an impressive, important person...."[The shaman] is readily distinguishable from the laity by his taciturnity, his grave and solemn countenance, his dignified step, and his circumspection. All of these peculiarities tend to heighten his influence, and, by rendering his appearance impressive and suggestive of superiority, serve to increase his control over the people."
Helplessness can literally be lethal... Distinctive behavioral changes have been noted in several species when they were confronted with a situation over which they had no control. The changes could be anthropomorphically described as "giving up," and are accompanied by evidence of physical deterioration. Helplessness in humans is normally associated with severe depression, apathy, and loss of energy, even before the clinical manifestation of disease.... The purveyors of hope, in this context, are offering a healing commodity.
The shamans, many of them, had come face to face with death before their vocation became apparent. No doubt their credibility was in part a function of some immunity gained through their illness.
A physical therapist told me of a time in her life when she was about to finish her master's degree and was suffering from massive uterine hemorrage. All the usual treatments had been tried: hormones, dilation and curetage, bed rest. The only treatment left was hysterectomy.... She begged off her surgery for a week and went into seclusion. During this time she visualized a white light shining its healing rays into her uterus. At the end of the week, the bleeding had stopped completely. That was five years ago, and no similar problems had occurred since. She hadn't told her story to many people and, being in a medical profession, she was just a little embarrassed about the circumstances of her recovery.
[Populations] such as the mentally retarded and emotionally disturbed, have a selective protection from cancer, as well as from autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis, but not from infectious disease such as upper respiratory problems. The percentage of deaths from cancer for the mentally handicapped population is only about 4%, while 15-18% is the usual rate. And, as the mentally handicapped approach normal intelligence, their cancer rate increases also.... [many] are unusually protected from cancer, despite poor health habits, such as heavy smoking.
Tumors can change as rapidly as nightblooming flowers, growing, shrinking, perhaps changing shape.
The symptoms were symbols, the symbols symptoms. (The two words have essentially the same meaning—a concrete or tangible object that stands for an intangible idea.) And they both deserve equal respect for influencing the course of lives.... Archetypal figures who fought for God and country and who were protectors of their people, such as Sir Richard, the knights of the Round Table, and the venturesome Vikings, were nearly always associated with a positive outcome. Animals with killer instincts such as sharks, bears, and mean dogs were sometimes, but not always, associated with good responses. Some people tried to force these images because they thought they were the most likely killers, but at the same time, they got disgusted with the gore. Very poor responses were associated with vague, weak, amorphous symbols for the immune system such as snowflakes or clouds. More often than not, those with the worst prognosis just couldn't draw or describe anything at all related to the immune system, but had vivid images of their cancer.... A truly poor outcome was forecast when the cancer cells were seen as immutable, grasping, or ineradicable, when symbolized as lumps of coal, crabs, ants, or submarines; a better outcome was likely when they were described as weak animals or even as the actual cells as one might view them under a microscope. Interestingly enough, the insect images are a grim omen of disease in the shamanic system as well.
The power of the imagination makes warts go away... My own daughter once had warts, so many of them that the dermatologist said freezing them or surgery would leave too many scars on her little hands. He said, "Maybe they'll go away. Try some magic." We did, and they didn't. By then it was time to go visit her grandparents for the summer. What a treat was in store. They were keeping a big white horse for her to ride as long as she was there. A ten-year-old's veritable dream come true, and no one had ever seen her happier. After the first day, the wart infestation disappeared completely. She knew instantly that the horse was responsible.... "This is not the sort of confused, disordered process you'd expect at the hands of the kind of Unconscious you read about in books, out at the edge of things making up dreams or getting mixed up on words or having hysterics." ... this Person or Tenant in charge of healing must be a surgeon, a skilled engineer and manager, a chief executive office [sic], and a cell biologist of world class.... "a kind of superintelligence that exists in each of us, infinitely smarter and possessed of technical know-how far beyond our present understanding."
When very small electrodes that could measure the electrical activity of a cell were inserted into a motor nerve cell, and auditory feedback was given to the person whenever that cell would fire, he/she could quickly learn to fire it at will. They could even learn to fire long bursts that sounded like drum rolls when they came across the speakers, or short bursts, or patterns of their own choosing.
There has not been a body function that couldn't be controlled to some extent once it was adequately monitored and information provided to the subject through rapid feedback. The immune system should prove no exception.
September 26, 2023
"Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine" is a riveting exploration of the role that mental imagery and shamanistic practices play in the healing process. The book serves as a bridge between ancient wisdom and contemporary medical practices, offering a compelling argument for the integration of shamanistic techniques into modern healthcare. The author navigates this complex terrain with a deft hand, blending scientific research, anthropological insights, and case studies to build a compelling narrative. The writing is both authoritative and engaging, making it accessible to both professionals in the medical and psychological fields as well as lay readers interested in alternative healing methods. The book is particularly strong in its presentation of practical exercises and techniques, providing readers with actionable steps to harness the power of imagery for their own healing journeys.
The author delves into the neuroscientific basis of imagery and its impact on the body's biochemistry, offering a nuanced understanding that transcends simplistic explanations. The book challenges conventional medical paradigms that often neglect the psychological and spiritual dimensions of health, advocating for a more holistic approach. It serves as a thought-provoking read for healthcare professionals, academics, and anyone interested in the intersection of spirituality, psychology, and medicine. The book not only broadens our understanding of what healing can entail but also offers a blueprint for how we might integrate these ancient techniques into contemporary medical practices.
The author delves into the neuroscientific basis of imagery and its impact on the body's biochemistry, offering a nuanced understanding that transcends simplistic explanations. The book challenges conventional medical paradigms that often neglect the psychological and spiritual dimensions of health, advocating for a more holistic approach. It serves as a thought-provoking read for healthcare professionals, academics, and anyone interested in the intersection of spirituality, psychology, and medicine. The book not only broadens our understanding of what healing can entail but also offers a blueprint for how we might integrate these ancient techniques into contemporary medical practices.
April 2, 2023
Inspiring
March 14, 2013
The early chapters had a lot of great information about shamanism in its varied forms and the history of healing with imagery. Much of the book is written as a very technical neuroscience and neuropsychology text with lengthy descriptions of laboratory studies. I most enjoyed the portions with an anthropological bent, and was interested by the modern laboratory findings that demonstrate correlation between thoughts and images and the state of one's health. This was an interesting study of scientific findings. I wished that there had been more information readily applicable to the practices of modern-day healers who work with imagery.
February 3, 2008
Really great material!
May 7, 2015
Terrific book-can't put it down!
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