What does healing mean?
There’s a saying within Chinese medicine that roughly translates as: there are no incurable diseases - only incurable people.
What this captures well is that, very often, it is a person’s mindset and beliefs that determine their capacity to heal.
And that therefore, healing is something that comes from within - rather than from any one particular system, agent, clinician or intervention.
To reflect critically on this important issue, I often ask myself the following questions:
What is the actual role of the physician, practitioner or healer?
What is the actual nature of healing?
Is ‘health’ merely the absence of signs and symptoms?
Must healing always involve an external agent or intervention?
How precisely can healing emerge from within?
I encourage patients, practitioners and students of all systems of medicine and healing to reflect seriously on these. And not simply to satisfy their intellectual curiosity, but to establish what it means for them on a personal level.
This is important because the system of medicine we instinctively turn to when we’re sick tells us much about what we believe ‘healing’ to be - deep down.
Many people believe in allopathic medicine and are happy with the results. Others believe in non-allopathic medicine and are happy with the results. This indicates that there is no one system of medicine that is ‘better’ or more effective than another.
Unfortunately, many clinicians - from all systems - cling onto the belief that theirs is the most objective one. They often go further and berate other systems, despite seeing patients healing with that other modality.
Many practitioners believe so strongly that their system is definitive, that if their patients don’t get better, they would rather invalidate their patients’ experience rather than question the limitations of their own system.
It requires genuine humility to change this unhelpful attitude. And that humility can only come from an appreciation of the limitations of one's belief system and a corresponding openness to other possibilities.
This is not always easy, but it is absolutely vital if clinicians are to bring greater benefit to those seeking relief from sickness and suffering.
In a previous article, we explored how all medical systems are themselves expressions of an underlying belief system. Each system is underpinned by a specific paradigm or worldview - which can never be regarded as objective or definitive.
Different socio-historical paradigms have given rise to the various different medical systems available today. And these systems have endured because they adapted to changing needs of humanity.
Throughout 3500 years of continuous practice, Chinese medicine has continually refined it’s thinking to develop myriad strategies for dealing with both acute and chronic illnesses and epidemics.
Every medical system has a core ‘physiology’ (a view of how the body works), a core ‘etiology’ (a view on what causes disease), a core diagnostic methodology, and various treatment options.
But, as mentioned above, in spite of the rigour with which these are thought out and developed, many people will not heal within a particular system. While others will experience deep and lasting healing from shamanic interventions - which don’t have any obviously rational or reproducible systems.
Even more bizarrely, there are those who, despite being given a poor prognosis, experience a spontaneous healing and outlive the prognosis by several decades without any obvious interventions at all.
These phenomena have been named the ‘placebo’ and ‘nocebo’ effects and show up in all systems of medicine and healing.
A placebo is a beneficial effect produced by the administration of an external agent - a drug or treatment that has no known effects. The nocebo effect is the opposite phenomenon, where a negative outcome occurs due to a belief that the intervention will cause harm.
These two effects significantly influence the outcome of any healing or medical intervention.
To conclude then, upon careful reflection, it is demonstrably the case that an individual’s beliefs strongly affect the outcome of any intervention or otherwise.
And thus, it is not so much the system that heals them - but the ‘faith’ the patient has in two things: the underlying paradigm or worldview upon which that system is based, and their own capacity to heal.
So pause now to consider these questions very carefully:
What is the actual role of the physician, practitioner or healer?
What is the actual nature of healing?
Is ‘health’ merely the absence of signs and symptoms?
Must healing always involve an external agent or intervention?
How precisely can healing emerge from within?
What comes up from reflecting on these questions depends upon your personal cultivation. You’re strongly encouraged to listen to these insights and to revisit these questions after a period of cultivation to see what changes in your perception. The system that you turn to when you’re sick reflects what you believe can heal you.
The Classics encourage all practitioners to investigate and to come to an experiential knowing that healing comes from within, to see this possibility in their patients, and compassionately and appropriately guide them to their own healing.
This unseen component significantly contributes to an individual’s healing. I call this a transformative attunement.