There is an unseen tether that ties the body and the mind to the spiritual, the earth to the heavens, certainty to the unfathomable, water to wet. Can there be spiritual without body, without material? That seems like a stupid question. Of course, we say, spiritual is beyond the body--superior to the body? Inferior? Perhaps anterior or posterior to it? It is without the body, it is no body. Can the same be said for the mind? I don't know enough to confirm or deny that one but certainly the mind affects the health of the body. I remember as a boy once willing myself sick so that my mom's boyfriend would leave early that night. I thought I was faking it until early that next morning when I woke with chills and a fever. What happened? A coincidence? Perhaps. But consider the pains from depression, the weakened immune system associated with stress, or even how the mind can lag and become melancholic when the body is sick. When our body comes to its end we might consider that it is just us, 
a lone consciousness, that remains and that tether, that something unseen that strings this all together now, is a compass to direct us where Nature's considered for us our next stage for inquiry. But in the meantime it is a conscious material self that becomes us, that is because of us that we must work to understand so as to better fully express the quality of what it is to be human. Of course philosophy, literature, architecture and the fine arts of all cultures past and present teaches us that those expressions of humanity are not without their quality and quantity, so what is so special about understanding the whole of the human body? I like to think that this is the apex of human study; the closer we come to unraveling the mystery of the trinity that manages the miracle of the human form and function the easier it can be for us to begin to fathom what we are not, then consider the potentials of what we can be. That's what I'm working toward: to know the body in this living material manifestation so that I may better comprehend the matter of me without. It sounds pretty heavy, but I think the process of every human potential lends itself to a path toward self discovery.
When we study the miracle of body through its viscera and physiology, the strength of its muscles, its vulnerability to disease (consider how something smaller than a single hemoglobin can disrupt the balance of this universe of us as easily as we microbes can interrupt the Earth's homeostasis), through its complex functions to transform matter into energy, its system of defense against these microbial invasions, how can we not consider this phenomenon separate of the miracle of mind and the miracle of spirit? How, too, can we not consider the influence of the cosmic and earthy nature in which all this did manifest? The body is not alone in the process of living. When the body ceases to communicate with mind and spirit and the balance of Nature, this is death.
The University of California San Francisco's Osher Center for Integrative Medicine has a series of televised lectures about current research concerning the science behind the health value of this trinity--mind/body/spirit medicine, for example, or the "truth" behind psychoneuroimmunology (that is, how the body's natural defenses can be compromised and/or strengthened by the various states of our mental and spiritual well being). The Center calls this series a "mini medical school for the public". All videos can be viewed on their YouTube channel uctelevision. Here are links to two lectures in particular that better illustrate mindfulness in healing:
Mind-Body-Spirit Medicine
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UmteTW868I&feature=channel_page
Here Dr. Kevin Burrows, a physician and director of the Mindfulness Programs at the Osher Center, shares his research on mind-body (one word) medicine, and his hopefulness as science begins to corroborate what ancient wisdom had come to understand through thousands of years of study. In the last 15 minutes of his lecture Dr. Burrows introduced another branch of this tree of study that has led me to wonder further into this mystery. It is the work of Dr. Larry Dossey, a physician and proponent of Complimentary and Alternative medicine, and editor of Explore: the Journal of Science and Healing.
I'll be brief in this post about Dr. Dossey and hope to explore my studies of him in a later post. When Dr. Dossey was editor of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, he wrote that there are three eras of medicine. Three eras of medicine? He doesn't mean the history of medicine--western or eastern--that helped to define our concepts of medicine. He means modalities of healing. You can actually find an article of his published in the current issue of Explore titled "Mind-Body Medicine: Whose Mind and Whose Body?" that includes a table detailing these eras from which I've sourced my information.
Medical Eras:
Era I
Space-Time Characteristic: Local
Mechanical, material, or physical medicine
Description:
Elements of Era I are causal, deterministic, and describable by classical concepts of space-time and matter-energy. Mind is not a factor; “mind” is a result of brain mechanisms.
Examples:
Any form of therapy focusing solely on the effects of things on the body are Era I approaches, including techniques such as acupuncture and homeopathy, the use of herbs, etc. Almost all forms of “modern” medicine— drugs, surgery, irradiation, CPR, etc—are included.
EraII
Space-Time Characteristic: Local
Mind-body medicine
Description:
Mind is a major factor in healing within the single person. Mind has causal power and is thus not fully explainable by classical concepts in physics. Era II includes, but goes beyond, Era I.
Examples:
Any therapy emphasizing the effects of consciousness solely within the individual body is an Era II approach. Biofeedback, relaxation, self-hypnosis, imagery, visualization, and placebo effects are included in Era II.
Era III*
Space-Time Characteristic: Nonlocal
Nonlocal or transpersonal medicine
Description:
Mind is a factor in healing both within and between persons. Mind is not completely localized to points in space (brains or bodies) or time (present moment or single lifetimes).
Mind is unbounded and infinite in space and time, thus omnipresent, eternal, and ultimately unitary or one. Healing at a distance is possible. Elements of Era III are not describable by classical concepts of space-time or matter-energy. Era III includes, but goes beyond, Era II
Examples:
Any therapy in which effects of consciousness bridge between different persons is an Era III approach. All forms of distant healing, intercessory prayer, some types of shamanic healing, diagnosis at a distance, telesomatic events, and probably non-contact therapeutic touch are included in Era III.
____________
* There have been scientific studies regarding the efficacy or at least the recordable effects of certain Era III therapies such as distance healing, pranic healing and medical qi gong. Through TheSSEChannel by scientificexploration.org you can view excerpts of various SSE Talks explaining the scientific studies of these healing therapies. The talk concerning the pranic healing is especially interesting. Here's a brief description from the video channel:
Title:
An Extensive Laboratory Study of Pranic Healing Using Cells in Culture Subjected to Gamma Radiation
Summary:
A long-term study showed that pranic healing techniques (believed by practitioners to be "Qi or life-force energy") significantly enhanced the survival rate of cells subjected to radiation.
About the author:
Joie P. Jones, PhD, Department of Radiological Sciences, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA USA.
For more, visit www.scientificexploration.org
The second video of the two I found most interesting to the subject of mindfulness in medicine (Era II medicine) is Coping with Stress-The Truth About Psychoneuroimmunology (or PNI)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R9mD-iJZIg&feature=channel_page
Margaret Kemeny, Phd, Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF talks about her research on stress and how our ability to manage it affects or health and well being. What I like about this lecture is how clearly she explains the chemistry and physiology behind the what and the how of these effects.
***
What is the bottom line here? I guess the big question here is What is healing? We are aware of the body's ability to fight disease and infection and the influences of mind and spirit and environment to do so, but we also know that sometimes the body can be overtaken too powerfully and needs a little to a lot of help to pull through; and, of course, we know that sometimes no matter how much outside and inside help delivered, the body's fight for survival just can not be won. My mother is a Registered Nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit in Texas. She knows the battle of managed care for the sick and dying. In the case of 23 week old newborns, for example, what can you say about the health of the tiny patient and the state of his or her mind and spirit in regards to its suffering and potential healing? The work of the healthcare practitioner is to facilitate the intrisic healing mechanics of the body. But in cases such as these when the body was not able to mature to full-term in the womb and is then unable to viscerally function properly without the aide of machines and pharmaceuticals engineered to substitute the body's various deficiencies what can one do but manage the symptoms complicated by such a premature birth and work feverishly to simulate the mother's in utero landscape with warm lights in an incubator, IVs, synthetic surfactant (to increase pulmonary compliance or to keep the alveolus from collapsing under the force from the high surface tension of the water in the fluid that surrounds the alveolus), and a feeding tube? Who doesn't turn to prayer in one form or another to compliment these treatments? Or the gentle touches from the family and their encouraging words? This too is complimentary medicine. It is the rudimentary, most ancient of healing practices we could ever afford: love and compassion. Regardless of the healing modality, regardless of the science or era of a medicine, we can't always save the patient, but we can let them know that through all the pain and suffering they might endure they are not alone in this process and that all is being done to help them through. This is the best that any of us can ever hope for or hope to give. So yes, touching is good.
