IONS: INNER DIMENSIONS OF THE HEALING RESPONSE...

Healing involves far more than the mending of broken bones. The studies in this research module explore a variety of individual responses to the challenge of illness and ask which features chart a course that ultimately leads to healing. Such a "healing response" is likely to include dimensions ranging from the "quick fix"--go to the doctor, take a pill--to the most encompassing forms of individual and societal transformation. At a personal level, it may include behavioral, psychological, and spiritual shifts in perception which radically alter the individual sense of identity. At the collective level, it may also include new ways of thinking and the exploration of uncharted scientific territory. Studying "nature's successes," such as people who have lived for exceptionally long periods despite a diagnosis of terminal disease, may help us learn more about how healing happens and what serves to trigger it. IONS' current work in this area delves deeply into the evidence of extraordinary capacities for healing and the study of groups of people with exceptionally long lifespans, and also seeks to understand the nature of the placebo response.

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QUESTION: Can you describe a healing experience that occured to you, or someone you know well, that goes beyond what conventional medicine says is possible? Is this something you even wonder about?

(Or do come up with additional questions, research links, thoughts, ideas, observations... will add my own over this next week).

Diane

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2000

Answers

See also thread...

Some discussion generators, from the Institute of Noetic Sciences...

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 00320L

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2000

Okay - I'll proffer a pair. They are both related.

One is the NLP phobia cure. Ten minute session with someone critically afflicted (i.e. what you'd describe as full blown phobia)and you can test/demonstrate the "cure". "Normal" medical protocol is 6 months progressive desensitization. Done that (as "operator") once on person with fear of water (since childhood incident where was held under water by brother) and once on person who was afraid of flying (witnessed cargo aircraft due cartwheel and explode on impact landing while driving by Toronto Int'l airport). Mine took 30 minutes to do.

Second, is languaging allergy cure. Uses similar formal process to phobia cure. Concept is that allergy is phobia of the immune system. (I believe this mapping was suggested by Linus Pauling to NLP types.) Likely to have occasion to work it - I had hay-fever last summer.

Tom

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000