Healers on healing

Healers on healing

• Elisabeth Kubler-Ross—In my view there are four essential qualities of a healer: trust, faith, love, and humility. The healer must act as a channel, the conduit of a healing entity or force, whether one calls this God, Christ, the Inner Teacher, or whatever. In order to become such a channel one must have absolute trust in its healing power as well as faith that he or she is capable of channeling it.

• And no one can heal—no matter what their technique—unless they use it with love and humility. No one can be a teacherwithout also being a student; no one can heal without being healed; when we give we receive; and when we teach, we learn.

• Larry Dossey—There is an invisible unifying factor that pervades healing from antiquity to the present day, overriding the obvious differences. This unifying factor can be singled out as mind or consciousness. There is much data suggesting that the mind is at large in the world, that it is not in a place at all, that minds are unbounded; in unbounded, then they are not separate.

• There is only one nonlocal mind at work in the healing process. The minds of all healers are one. Accordingly, healers never act alone. The contemporary Sufi master Pir Vilayat Khan has said, "The assumption of being an individual is our greatest limitation."

• Ram Dass—Just as in a garden, we do not "grow" flowers; rather, we create the conditions in which flowers can grow. The conditions for healing involve faith in the possibility that healing can occur. Suffering cannot be taken away, it can only be relinquished. Mahatma Gandhi said, "My life is my message." So, too, for us; what we do conveys what we are. Listening to hear, really hear, is a root component of this work, transcending what we "know" in order to listen quietly and freshly.

• Because "the truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing," we cultivate equanimity in order to hear. We are healed into truth. In the ultimate depth of being, we find ourselves no longer separate but, rather, part of the unity of the universe. Therefore, all acts of healing are ultimately our selves healing our Self.

• Michael Harner—Spiritual healers must somehow gain access to a hidden reality to transmit the power and wisdom of the universe to others who are in need. A spiritual link opens to the heart of the healer to such a degree that he or she "disappears" from the scene, to lose his or her ego, and to feel no need to take credit for the healing. This is a concept of compassionate intervention.

• Psychologists divide empathy into different parts—cognitive, affective, motor, and sensory—distinctions that, though a bit abstract, are useful. Cognitive empathy means thinking another person’s thoughts: I recognize that you have your own set of thoughts, and I try to understand what those thoughts are. Affective empathy involves feeling an emotion that another person feels: I am sad when I see that you’re sad; one baby starts to cry, others follow suit. Motor empathy relates to moving the way another moves: the infant sees an adult smile, and she smiles.

• Sensory empathy means feeling a physical sensation that another person feels: you’re in pain, and then I am; you’re nauseated, and I feel it too. This experience happens sometimes during pregnancy, when the male partner can experience a woman’s morning sickness, bloating, and even pain during contractions. Doctors call it pseudocyesis, or false pregnancy—the ultimate empathy.

• Ghaemi, Nassir (2011-08-04). A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness (Kindle Locations 1133-1139). The Penguin Press. Kindle Edition.

• BESIDES BEING BORN with plenty of oxytocin receptors, how can one attain a high degree of empathy? One answer, I believe, is to be depressed.


• In one study, severely depressed patients had much higher scores on empathy scales than a college student control group; the more depressed patients were, the higher their empathy scores.

– Ghaemi, Nassir (2011-08-04). A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness (Kindle Locations 1146-1147). The Penguin Press. Kindle Edition.

• Emotional empathy, produced by the severe depressive episode, may prepare the mind for a long-term habit of appreciating others’ points of view.


• Subsequent studies have found that patients’ ratings of their psychotherapists’ empathy predict improvement for depression, even with treatments (like cognitive-behavioral therapy) that do not emphasize empathy.

– Ghaemi, Nassir (2011-08-04). A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness (Kindle Locations 1163-1165). The Penguin Press. Kindle Edition.

Health & Medicine

Healers on healing