Foreword
Wellness is a meeting point of many different facets of our life: the scientific, the interpersonal, the way we eat, the way we sleep, the way we deal with our emotions. Healing involves interpersonal relationships between individuals and those whom they invite to be in healing relationships with them.
It is clear that we are moving from a world in which we look to experts in health care to make decisions for us to a world in which we have recovered our ability, as individuals, families, and communities, to heal ourselves and to make the advice and skills of the "experts" supplemental to our reliance on the innate human ability to heal. We are in a period of redefining the idea of health and recovering the awareness that a life well lived is characterized by the ability to cope with suffering and to live life in the presence of death. We are also coming to recognize that the expectation of living life without pain and suffering is unrealistic, and that human cultures cannot afford to go on believing otherwise.
Kathleen Phalen starts from the perspective of a journalist reporting on emerging phenomena in our culture. She gives us a book different from others in its scope and presentation.
Here you will find the stories of many individuals—stories that most readers will recognize. You will also find lists of illnesses and suggested remedies, as well as new ways of thinking. Uniquely, Kathleen points out the possibilities confronting each individual as he or she copes with various symptoms, and she brings to her presentation the awareness that symptoms may be teachers and guides that each of us and our practitioners must interpret in a different way. And she also offers a solid presentation of the available research and the relationships that exist between mainstream researchers at the National Institutes of Health, physicians, and practitioners of alternative medicine, as well as an understanding of the enormous drive of the American public to recover something that has been lost but that was well known to our ancestors.
There are answers. And when you find an answer, you will also find another question. This book is a wonderful blend of factual material, possible options, creative thinking, and personal stories. Mostly I appreciate the personal passion that I witnessed in Kathleen as she went through the process of writing this book, her excitement and passion about the stories of the many individuals with whom she spoke, her sense that something new was happening and awakening, and her craving to find a way to share a complex mix of old and new ideas.
—Robert Duggan, MAc, MA, DiplAc (NCCA), president and cofounder, Traditional Acupuncture Institute, Columbia, Maryland
In 1994 he was appointed chairman of the Maryland State Board of Acupuncture and now serves on many national health care advisory panels including programs for the NIH.
Introduction
Somewhere between the diaphanous folds of living, loving, grieving, and dying lies the hidden truth of healing. But much like the early morning's mist gently rising above the dewy ground, its simplicity eludes us. We reach out, but often in our desperation we try too hard, and the answer scatters among the tubes, needles, drugs, and heroic measures. Begging for life and healing at any cost becomes our mantra. But there are those who in recent years have asked, why? And while the answers are as individual as those exploring new healing avenues, common threads emerge: the need to examine our own beliefs about healing; the desire to connect physically and spiritually with healers; the quest to simplify; and the willingness to try alternative paths. This book illustrates how ancient Eastern remedies are being integrated with Western treatments and offers an overview of the transition that is gradually occurring in our nation's health care treatment options. It offers insight into not only patients' feelings and experiences but also practitioners'. And perhaps most of all, it shows that many people have the desire to meet somewhere in the middle.
This journey has been one of excitement, agony, discovery, and wonder. Having worked for many years as a health reporter and writer, I was very familiar with conventional Western medicine and its practitioners. I have seen the good and the bad over time. And because of this I was often disillusioned with a system that I believed was seriously failing those seeking help and guidance. This book has changed my mind. It is a book about hope. It is