Heal

Heal Documentary: Mind-Body Medicine

Holistic medicine is breaking the rules and facts of western medicine and modern science. It’s a controversial topic and it’s hard for many people today to believe in something they can’t see and touch and that’s what mind-body medicine is all about. The documentary “Heal” is an informational film about how much our mind really has to do with our physical well being. This goes against a lot of modern medicinal practices which can be hard for people to face. “Our body’s ability to heal is greater than anyone has permitted you to believe''(Noonan-Gores, 2017).

According to Mental Help, “Mind-body medicine focuses on the interactions among the brain, mind, body, and behavior, and the powerful ways in which emotional, mental, social, spiritual, and behavioral factors can directly affect health”(Mind-Body Medicine: An Overview, n.d.). It can be as simple as yoga, meditation, imagery, and going to the chiropractor. We all have heard the studies and benefits that have been published over these simpler practices which leaves us wondering how far this medicine can go. This practice goes along with many traditions that have been around for thousands of years like herbalism, Buddhism, and environmental and natural holistic medicine. 

More and more people are using these techniques every day. According to Very Well Mind, “Meditation can be defined as a set of techniques that are intended to encourage a heightened state of awareness and focused attention”(Cherry, 2014). Meditation has been used for thousands of years and sparked back up around the ’70s as part of hippy culture. From 2012 to 2017 the amount of people meditating tripled. Research suggests that practicing meditation may reduce blood pressure, symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety, and depression, and insomnia (Meditation: In Depth, n.d.). 

Yoga may be the most popular practice in the mind-body medicine field. “Yoga is a type of exercise in which you move your body into various positions in order to become more fit or flexible, to improve your breathing, and to relax your mind” (Yoga, n.d.). As of 2020, over 30 million people were using this 5,000-year-old practice. The benefits of this technique are grand, including changing brain chemistry, relieving pain, improving posture, and decreasing symptoms of mental illness and cholesterol. 

Dr. Joan Borysenko said that 90% of what takes people to the doctor is stress-related illnesses. They leave with anti-depressants and every kind of medication which all have side effects that can end up leaving you worse off than you started. Dr. Jeffery Thompson is also convinced that the ultimate cause of disease is stress. A long time ago, if we were being chased by a wild animal we would want to make all of our energy available to run away. Now in modern days, our fight or flight response is being activated by the rent that’s due or your boss, which isn’t healthy for us. We’re taking energy away from all of your systems which makes our bodies less efficient. Stress knocks our body out of rhythm which causes issues. 

This documentary is jam-packed with information and words from the biggest practitioners of mind-body medicine. They all have different ways to heal and different perspectives than western medicine. We see PhD’s, Energy healers, Christian Healers, and other gifted healers throughout the film. It really takes in all religions. There is a practitioner who believes he has been given a gift from god. He is able to heal people through energy and it’s almost unexplainable and hard to believe due to the fact we don’t quite know for certain how this is possible. Then there’s Anthony William who woke up one morning at the age of 4 with a voice he calls spirit. He is able to diagnose people and tell them their illnesses by just seeing and feeling them. He has yet to be wrong on his diagnoses which is so hard to wrap your mind around. The common denominator in all of these practices is that the forces we can’t see and often don’t give credit to, can be the most powerful forces out there.

Now, let’s dive into the examples of this extraordinary medicine within the film “Heal.” These real-life experiences push the bounds of western medicine and make you question the possibilities of healing. As Deepak Chopra said, “The mind-body emotions sensory experiences are all windows to our inner pharmacy” (Noonan-Gores, 2017).

The first example we are taken through in the film is the story of Dr. Joe Dispenza. He was cycling and was hit by a car and ejected from the bike. The force compressed 6 vertebrae in his spine and the diagnosis was that he’d probably never walk again and would need radical surgery. He decided to check out of the hospital and decline the surgery, which felt like his only option at the time for recovery. Instead he focused on his one strong thought, the power that made the body heals the body. He then sat for 6 weeks for about 3 hours a day imagining reconstructing his spine. After he could do this without breaking thought he started to notice significant changes. He was back on his feet in 10 weeks without surgery which is absolutely unheard of. He has now devoted his life to studying this connection and is one of the pioneers of mind-body medicine. 

The next example is Elizabeth. She was the perfect example of health and always tried to better herself by eating and exercising very well. But, her mind was struggling as she was going through some very hard times. She then was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, which was considered terminal at the time with barely any documented cases of survival. She used many techniques in the mind-body medicine field along with chemotherapy to completely heal herself. This is unheard of and still confuses the experts in western medicine. 

Lastly, we have Kelly Brogan who was a western medical practitioner herself. She says, “The body has a capacity to heal that I was never informed of as a medical student” (Noonan-Gores, 2017). She was diagnosed with an incurable illness. Once she was told by the western medical field that she would have to take a pill for the rest of her life and that’s all they could do for her. She went to a naturopath. This was very unlike her as she is a western medicine practitioner who was trained to dismiss natural medicine. She then put an illness into remission in six months that should’ve been a life-long diagnosis. 

In all of these stories, we see evidence that backs up mind-body medicine. This is hard to do with this field because the methods are intangible.  Dr. David R. Hamilton has some of the most scientific explanations for this medicine. He talks about when you break down our bodies to the smallest thing, you get an atom. If you break down an atom you can see that there’s really nothing there. Inside an atom, there is 99.99% open space. These particles are essentially just waves of energy that science doesn’t understand and that we can potentially control. He also speaks about the Placebo effect. It is proven to be almost as effective as an actual drug which makes you wonder if the drug is even doing anything. This proves that belief in healing can make you physically heal. He goes on to talk about people in chemotherapy and how they imagine the radiation going in and eating away the cancer until the tumor is smaller and smaller and then it’s gone. Is this the medicine working or our thoughts?

This adds to the perfect example of controversy on this topic or cultural criticism. We know that natural holistic medicine has been around longer but, we also know that western medicine has the biggest following of all. We can look at other cultures and see that in the countries that have more natural approaches, they live longer. But, in our country, we are always wanting the quick fix that doesn’t require a lot of effort. Healing in the mind-body medicine way is definitely a challenge to understand, but if it’s better and more permanent, why are we so quick to dismiss it? “Western medicine is so quick to throw everything at a problem and see what velcros the best. It only looks at the physical body. Our representation of what is physical is an illusion because it’s all energy” (Noonan-Gores, 2017). Bruce Lipton believes that Western Medicine does amazing things with trauma. If you need emergency treatment, then western medicine might be the best option. Then the documentary goes on to listen to another expert, Micheal Bernard Beckwith who says that our care system focuses on symptoms rather than route causes. They give out drugs to help which then has side effects which then creates an endless cycle of toxicity. When this happens, people are quick to give themselves over to a diagnosis or prognosis and then they can’t see a way out. 

Now, Mental Help has an article covering mind-body medicine from a different approach than “Heal.” It’s a proven fact that the mind is a very important part of our bodies that we don’t completely understand. Many parts of our consciousness are unknown. As we take in the history of medicine we can see the division of these practices. As previously stated, natural medicines like mind-body medicine have been around for thousands of years. By the 16th and 17th centuries, western medicine began to emerge and caused a separation. In the East these old practices of nature continued as out west a whole new practice was created. Western medicine “led to a separation of human spiritual or emotional dimensions from the physical body. This separation began with the redirection of science, during the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras, to the purpose of enhancing humankind's control over nature” (Mind-Body Medicine: An Overview, n.d.). This is where people began to doubt what they couldn’t see and touch. As this continued people began to look at healing as a matter of science instead of healing within the soul.  This lead to the division of the body and the mind. 

This article has the same findings within “Heal” to make it more reliable. They found the same results for stress and with flight or fight response and also with the Placebo effect. In the 1920s during World War II they found that morphine and saline injections had the same effectiveness for relieving pain in wounded soldiers. Once the world entered the 1960’s the field of mind-body medicine had been researched more and more. The study that this article presents showed that “Over the past 20 years, mind-body medicine has provided considerable evidence that psychological factors can play a substantive role in the development and progression of coronary artery disease. There is evidence that mind-body interventions can be effective in the treatment of coronary artery disease, enhancing the effect of standard cardiac rehabilitation in reducing all-cause mortality and cardiac event recurrences for up to 2 years” (Mind-Body Medicine: An Overview, n.d.). 

Overall, we can all see why this topic may be controversial. This is because mind-body medicine relies solely on belief without tangible evidence. Healing can be natural if you are able to put aside your doubts and truly allow yourself to be vulnerable. The documentary “Heal” provides common people today with the information and proof they need to learn about the practice and take it seriously. Although it’s hard to change the way we are conditioned to think about healing, mind-body medicine opens a whole new, or old, tunnel for healing that may benefit us more than we could ever imagine. 

References

35 mind-bending yoga statistics to merge your body and soul. (n.d.). HealthCareers. Retrieved December 2, 2021, from https://healthcareers.co/yoga-statistics/

Cherry, K. (2014, June 13). How meditation impacts your mind and body. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-meditation-2795927

Gores, K. N. (2019). Heal: Discover your unlimited potential and awaken the powerful healer within. Atria Books/Beyond Words.

Mattingly, C. (2009). Reading medicine: Mind, body, and meditation in one interpretive community. New Literary History, 37(3), 563–581. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2006.0050

Meditation: In depth. (n.d.). NCCIH. Retrieved December 2, 2021, from https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/meditation-in-depth

Mind-Body medicine: An overview. (n.d.). Retrieved December 2, 2021, from https://www.mentalhelp.net/alternative-medicine/mind-body-medicine-an-overview/

Noonan-Gores, K. (Director). (2017, October 20). Documentary. Adam Schomer, Richell Morrissey.

yoga. (n.d.). HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. Retrieved December 2, 2021, from https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/yoga