Product Description

This collection of essays on integral medicine, consciousness, and healing integrates mainstream medical knowledge with recent developments in the emerging areas of frontier sciences, and insights from alternative healing perspectives. It promotes a model of healing in which personal relationships, emotions, meaning and belief systems are viewed as fundamental points of connection between body, mind, spirit, society and nature.

Integral medicine embraces the recognition that human beings possess emotional, spiritual, and relational dimensions that are essential in the diagnosis and treatment of disease and the cultivation of wellness.

Readers learn from the leaders in the emerging field of integral medicine and consciousness research, from the most well known (Deepak Chopra), to the frontline policy makers (James Gordon-one of the heads of the White House Commission on Conventional and Complementary and Alternative Medicine). Readers also gain insights from health professionals who have experienced healing within themselves and witnessed remarkable healing in their patients. We hear from other medical professionals (through the essays and the interviews on the accompanying DVD) who approach medicine from an array of cultural perspectives, and can attest to this multicultural, interdisciplinary, and participatory healing system in action. Consciousness and Healing contains 47 essays in the book plus 9 bonus essays read aloud on the DVD. Essays are short and in language suited to an audience of both lay and professional readers, with extensive references on the DVD to original scientific studies for those interested in further exploration.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #622282 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 585 pages

Customer Reviews

an informative, descriptional review I came accross.....
While there are other books available that cover healing, CAM, and integral
medicine to some extent, Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to
Mind-Body Medicine will be the most comprehensive and authoritative
collection of work on the subject. The editors and contributors see this
book as a call to action for health professionals and patients alike. They
feel that physicians and patients carry the responsibility to help craft a
new, more fitting way of practicing medicine in light of the major crisis in
the practice and delivery of healthcare in the United States. The purpose of
this book is to ask those health professionals and patients to take the time
to consider the integral perspective, the view that the scientific quest is
incomplete without data from many domains of inquiry, and that human
transcendence can occur in the face of illness and disease.

Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine is a
collection of 47 essays on integral medicine, consciousness, and healing
that integrates mainstream medical knowledge with recent developments in the
emerging areas of frontier sciences and insights from alternative healing
perspectives. It promotes a model of healing in which personal
relationships, emotions, meaning, and belief systems are viewed as
fundamental points of connection between body, mind, spirit, society, and
nature. Integral medicine embraces the recognition that human beings possess
emotional, spiritual, and relational dimensions that are essential in the
diagnosis and treatment of disease and the cultivation of wellness.

The alternative healing perspectives in this book include: multicultural
healing systems, relational medicine, subtle energies and energy medicine,
contemplative mind, meditation, distant healing through intercessory prayer
and intentionality, and ecologically based healing systems. Readers learn
from the leaders in the emerging field of integral medicine and
consciousness research, from the most well known (Deepak Chopra), to the
frontline policy makers (James Gordon‹one of the heads of the White House
Commission on Conventional and Complementary and Alternative Medicine).
Readers also gain insights from physicians who have experienced healing
within themselves and witnessed remarkable healing in their clients. They
hear from other medical professionals (through the essays and the interviews
on the accompanying DVD) who approach medicine from an array of cultural
perspectives, as well as hear from patients who have experienced this
multicultural, interdisciplinary, and participatory healing system in
action.
The essays are organized into 5 major sections, with contributions in each
by pioneers in the emerging field of consciousness and healing
Section 1 Begins by introducing the implications of an integral
perspective for medicine. In order for the transformation to an integral
approach to medicine to take place, a full system shift is needed.
Section 2 Explores the nature of the healing system through the review of
recent developments in mind-body medicine. The subfields in this section are
not well-known within modern medicine, but the contributors present a valid
argument for their place in medicine.
Section 3 Embraces other dimensions of the healing system, including
religion and spirituality. The essays in this section reveal the
epidemiological data that better health is correlated with religious
participation.
Section 4 Focuses on the multiple ways of knowing that are involved in an
integral approach to healing. With the increasing popularity of alternative
medicine in the United States, biomedicine is being forced to view health
and healing within broader cultural contexts.
Section 5 Reviews the challenges facing Western medicine: economic
factors, an increasing burden of chronic illness, higher levels of physician
and patient dissatisfaction, and environmental and social ills.