How We Heal

by Patrick Quanten MD

Within the traditional medical model, healing means, quite simply, treating a disease until the disease is cured. Cured means successfully treated with drugs and/or surgery until the symptoms disappear.

The holistic model of health has introduced the study of the relationship among the mind, the body and the spirit. Recognising the influence of the emotional, psychological and spiritual factors is redefining the nature of the healing process. Studies in this area strongly indicate that the healing process must be expanded to include giving much-needed attention to the inner life of the human being.

The holistic model of treatment has brought to light the need to help a person heal the stresses of his/her life as an integral part of healing the body. In order to do this, a person must be willing and able to look at all of the pieces of his/her life, including emotional injuries (both given and received), unfulfilled emotional needs, disappointments in relationships, broken promises, unfulfilled ambitions, disappointments in oneself, and other patterns of unfinished business that form a person's inner grief.

In accepting the necessity of doing this quality of inner work, you are acknowledging the need to change or transform the areas of your life that are not conducive to regaining your health. As you do this, you alter the relationship you have with your disease. Rather than considering disease as a "condition" that has spontaneously manifested in the midst of your life, you are able to think of it as a "messenger". The transformational process, then, becomes the experience of understanding the particular messages that the experience of illness brings into your life and the challenge to act on those messages in ways that are productive to your health.

Disease is unconscious change (or choice by default) manifesting in a person's body because the individual either 1) lacks the courage to look clearly at what is not working in his/her life, 2) does not believe that stress affects the body, or 3) lacks the skills of introspection and self-examination that allow the analysis, and thus the dissolution, of stress to take place through positive channels.

We are used to the idea of disease as a punishment or a failure, but disease can be seen as a gift also. It gives us an opportunity to evaluate our lives, and what has brought us to this particular point, a point of pain and suffering. It hands us a good reason for wanting to change, whatever it is we are doing, in order to change where our life is going. It may even give us the courage and strength required to look in dept at what is not working in our life.

Instead of judging the events in our lives as good, bad, right or wrong, we must recognise that of itself nothing is good or bad, right or wrong, (See Good and Evil) and everything has the potential to help us get back on the universe's schedule. This does not mean that we have to like what happens, simply that we must remain open to the uses, even of adversity. A disease may serve as a redirection, a reset button.

All of this strongly suggests that healing is a very personal matter. Nobody can do it for you. It is all down to the individual to do some personal work. Help, however, can be obtained. If you want to learn to heal, you must begin by working on yourself. Use the following basic concepts and assumptions.

1. The human body is not a machine. Our medical model keeps insisting that the body functions like a machine. The truth, however, is that we cannot learn healing methods if we remain within the narrow framework of these mechanistic views. A holistic view of life considers the cosmos a constantly changing dynamic whole, where everything is interlinked and interdependent. It is the interlink and the interdependence between the fundamental cosmic energies which is the basis of healing. A disease is not simply a malfunctioning of a body part; it is an expression of all of the influences on life, over a period of time.
2. We humans are capable of enhancing our sensuality. We can enhance the use of our senses with conscious effort. This does not mean we learn only to enjoy more with our senses; it means that we widen the experience of our senses to develop an extraordinary sensibility. To enhance sensuality, we must savour all in life, not just the sweet and the nice. This widens our mental capabilities through experience and gives us a keen sense of observation in relation to the body. More highly tuned senses will provide us with the capacity to detect ailments at a more rudimentary stage. We may even get a "sense of what is to come"!
3. Each part of the human body is equally important. All parts of the body are holy and sacred, and hence worthy of respect. You must make sure that each part of your body is well nourished. For that, you should make sure that all the energy channels are open. This essentially means that we should be using all parts of the body and give them the attention they deserve. With the enhanced sensitivity, and with the help of some yogic practices, one is able to detect imbalances and can take steps to re-establish the lost harmony.
4. The inner energy and power is not only to be used to heal, but we must also learn to maintain a state of health. We have to learn to make an armour of this energy around ourselves to protect ourselves from external attack. We must also learn to protect ourselves from disturbing qualities of mind, such as greed, jealousy, anger and hatred, as they are the cause of many serious diseases.

All this may sound very complicated and difficult at this stage. Indeed, to evoke your inner power, you need to make tremendous effort in the beginning. The time and effort required to achieve this goal will also vary from person to person. Relatively quiet people, who are not restless and are able to concentrate easily, will need less time than those who are agile, talkative and nervous.

To put this in simple words, if you want to learn how to heal, first you have to develop your intuitive capacity. Guided by this intuitive capacity, you will have to diagnose the root cause of your ailment and then enhance the process of healing by consolation, encouragement, and by providing extra energy to the ailing part. Actually, all living beings have a natural gift of finding their troubles and acting accordingly, so that they are rapidly healed and do not suffer. This gift springs out of the innate desire of all living beings to remain alive and to save themselves from death and suffering. However, in humans, the capacity to establish harmony within ourselves (and with nature) has been lost due to our conditioning and life circumstances. Free animals in their natural environment are healthier than we are, they cure/heal themselves without doctors and hospitals. They know how to keep an equilibrium between food and activities. Similarly, they have an intuitive power to be selective in their nutrition for curing themselves. They use their inner energy to heal themselves.

People who have healing capacities to use for themselves and for healing others are just like you and me. Basically you have the same capability, but this energy lies dormant in you. Awakening this energy is possible; it needs a strong sense of goal, perseverance and discipline.

The premise that we create our own realities as individual parts of an interconnective force field of life represents a higher order of reasoning that is capable of producing solutions to the challenges of our world. That all systems are interdependent is a perception that is now filtering into our world through every possible channel: health, science, ecology, economics, world government, as well as international movements on behalf of saving the planet from nuclear and ecological disasters.

This forms the very basis on which personal transformation will take place; and vice versa, it is because of personal transformations that the wider perspective is penetrating the whole of our world.

Personal transformation and world transformation go hand in hand. Your personal change will change you personally, and will change the world forever.

October 2003