I recently spent a day in a workshop
given by Susun S. Weed, called "My Herbal Medicine Chest," which elucidated the
healing powers residing in more than a dozen common plants, from burdock to yarrow. Weed, an ethnobotanist and internationally recognized expert in
herbal medicine, has devoted her life to the study of plants of all sorts, and
her workshop was a revelation. She added immeasurably to my
knowledge not only of herbal remedies, but also how to spot and utilize these
plants, most of which grow right around us. Plantain, for instance,
is a common weed that grows all across North America in front lawns and
meadows, and even pops up through the cracks in your driveway. (See photo: Common
Plantain, plantago major, is distinct
from the banana-like fruit that grows in the tropics.) It has remarkable
healing properties when chewed and made into a poultice. A few days after the
workshop, I happened to slash the heel of my hand while doing home repairs, and
decided to forgo the hydrogen peroxide and sterile gauze pads and give plantain
a try. Chewing a small leaf and spreading it across the bleeding, inch-long
gash, I covered the moist poultice with a whole leaf and wrapped it all with a
strip of adhesive tape. The pain dissipated almost immediately, the bleeding
stopped, and I forgot about it as I continued working.
A few hours later, I
removed the poultice to discover that the skin had already begun to close over
the wound. The next day I could still see a line in my hand where it had been
slashed, but there was no sensitivity, redness, or swelling--all the usual signs
that the immune system's inflammatory response has been called into action. The
plantain's natural healing properties had not only relieved the pain, but had
also healed the wound so thoroughly and naturally that my immune system felt no
need to spring into action. That may sound unremarkable, except that I've often
experienced noticeable anti-inflammatory symptoms in response to much smaller
cuts, which have remained tender and puffy for several days after being treated
with disinfectants.
I was astonished at how
effective the plantain was, especially since I thought I already knew quite a
bit about herbal remedies. I've spent the better part of the last 20 years
writing and co-authoring books and teaching workshops about the spiritual life
and the world's religions. Recently, though, I have devoted most of my time to
books about health and healing in one form or another. In these co-authored
books I have researched and contributed information about the value of
anti-inflammatory diets and herbal supplements in preventing or slowing
arthritis; strategies to avoid or relieve musculoskeletal pain in general; and
the emergence of consciousness-based healthcare. (What's that, you ask? As opposed
to mind-body medicine--mind-based therapies including meditation, visualization,
and biofeedback that help patients heal themselves--in consciousness-based
healthcare, the mind of the practitioner effects healing in the patient through
focused intention.)
To my mind, there's no
inconsistency between spirituality and relieving pain. Any stratagem that
alleviates suffering without creating dangerous risks, as with narcotic
painkillers or invasive surgery, is essentially spiritual, because relieving
pain--our own or other people's--is an inherently sacred act. That should be
self-evident, but it doesn't get much traction in our Manichaean culture. The
Manichaean heresy that found its way into early Christianity held that spirit
is good but the body is inherently evil. If something is evil, the reasoning
goes, it deserves to suffer. Based on the core Christian belief that Jesus died to
redeem humanity from sin, suffering can be seen as a positive good. And
for nearly two millennia, that belief had a certain rationale. Until the
introduction of ether and chloroform in the 19th century, followed
by the development of painkilling opioids, pain was considered a fact of life
that was best dealt with by assigning a spiritual purpose to suffering. Karl
Marx might have been speaking almost literally in 1844, when he wrote,
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless
world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of
the people" (The Critique of the Hegelian
Philosophy of Right).
Given
what we know about the placebo effect, it's not hard to understand that accepting
pain as a form of spiritual cleansing could in fact be anodyne. And the
moivation for overcoming pain need not be related to any particular religious
belief system. In 1959, the Harvard
anesthesiologist Henry K. Beecher wrote about observing at Anzio and other
World War II battlefields that seriously wounded soldiers reported much lower
levels of pain, even when they had suffered severe tissue damage in combat,
than his civilian patients in the recovery room of Massachusetts General
Hospital. Some of these soldiers, Beecher reported, had "entirely denied pain,"
despite the obvious evidence of their injuries. He reasoned that the men may
have been distracted by other, more powerful concerns, such as staying alive or
protecting their comrades.
That could also explain
why the Judeo-Christian world has always had contempt for drugs, a disdain not
shared by many of the spiritual traditions of the East. But once painkillers
were readily available, one needn't rely only on religion or heroics to cope with
intractable physical pain. Perhaps as a natural offshoot, contemporary
spiritual teachers have taken a much more practical--and compassionate--approach
to pain. My own experience of the connection between spiritual life and
physical healing dates back more than a decade to my collaboration on a series
of books with Caroline Myss and Ron Roth. Myss, who worked for many years as a
medical intuitive, has always been on the side of healing from pain, while
exposing the self-imposed blocks that prevent that healing. The late Ron Roth,
a former Catholic priest with whom I wrote five books on prayer and healing,
left the priesthood because of a conflict with his bishop. Ron had been
conducting hands-on healing services in his community, but the bishop thought
this was inappropriate for a Catholic priest. What madness! Apparently it was
all right to read about healings in the Gospels, but not to follow the example
of Jesus and heal people on one's own.
Then,
in 2003, I co-created a deck of Healing Cards with Caroline, for which I drew
on teachings from the world's spiritual traditions that relate to health and
healing. (One of my favorites is: "God didn't create any illness without also
creating the remedy, except death," which comes from the oral tradition of the
Prophet Muhammad.) In the course of doing research, I discovered that all
spiritual traditions offer practical wisdom related to health, diet, nutrition,
and mental well-being. You might expect this in the Eastern practices of
Ayurveda, Taoism, and Tibetan Buddhism, but it's also essential to the
Judeo-Christian tradition of the West. Not only was Jesus of Nazareth a healer,
after all, but he also came from a tradition of Jewish healers that produced
renowned miracle-workers such as Rabbi Hanina Ben Dosa, who lived around the
same time as Jesus. Somewhere along the way, Christians lost the connection
between Christ's compassion and his ability to heal physical and psychological
pain, and they chose simply to bear it as a misguided path to transcendence.
In part because of my
own experience with chronic back and joint pain, I was especially grateful to
work on two books with one of the country's leading sports medicine doctors,
Vijay Vad, who is based at New
York's esteemed Hospital for Special Surgery. The books offer a variety of remedies for arthritis and
musculoskeletal (or MSK) pain apart from prescription painkillers, nonsteroidal
anti-inflammatory drugs, and invasive medical procedures.
Growing up in India, Dr.
Vad was exposed to the traditional medicine known as Ayurveda, and he watched
as Ayurvedic physicians and remedies helped both of his grandfathers heal from
serious ailments. As a result, although he was trained in conventional
medicine, he has an appreciation for the integrative approach, combining
mainstream with complementary or alternative treatments. I had my own experience of the conventional medical system
while working on Dr. Vad's new book, Stop
Pain: Inflammation Relief for an Active Life (Hay House). Suffering from
severe pain in my lower back and sciatic nerve, I went to a neurologist who
recommended surgery on my spinal discs. After talking it over with my wife,
Louanne, who is a gifted nurse, and with Dr. Vad, I decided to seek a second
opinion.
The neurologist I saw
next, based on a careful physical exam, recommended Physical Therapy, and
prescribed Celebrex, a Cox-2 inhibitor, for the pain. "Where is surgery on your
list of treatments?" I asked.
"At this point, it
isn't on the list," he said. "If your
condition gets worse in five or ten years, then maybe."
The PT helped reduce
the pain somewhat, and the Celebrex did the rest. But after Vijay reminded me
of the dangers of heart disease associated with Cox-2 inhibitors (two others,
Vioxx and Bextra, were withdrawn from the market at FDA insistence), I stopped
taking it. Dr. Vad recommended some herbal remedies (described in our book),
and among the options I found ginger and bromelain to be most effective. Bromelain is an enzyme derived from pineapple that
has been shown in scientific studies to have marked anti-inflammatory
properties. It has even been approved by the German Commission E--a
regulatory agency established by the government to evaluate the usefulness of
over 300 herbs--to treat swelling and inflammation following surgery,
particularly sinus surgery. And ginger has been used in India to treat joint
pain and nausea for thousands of years.
Ron Roth used to say
that suffering was not an end in itself. And even if we look at it as a means
to an end, he believed, we're still better off if we don't suffer needlessly.
Far from being therapeutic in some transcendental sense, physical pain
distracts us from the enjoyment of life that is part of our spiritual mission.
Pain can also inhibit us from doing our work, which would seem to make it run
counter to the almighty American work ethic. That might be a good thing, of
course. Mystics from John Donne to Ram Dass have written eloquently about how illness
or disabling infirmity can be powerful teachers. But I'm talking more about the
everyday chronic pain that allows us to function while draining our energy and
making it less likely that we'll accomplish what we set out to do.
Which isn't to say that I didn't learn a great deal from my brush with MSK pain. To begin with, I now appreciate the value of getting a second opinion--especially when the guy telling you that you absolutely, positively must have surgery happens to make his living by cutting people open. I discovered firsthand that herbal remedies work as well as some prescription drugs--without the dangerous side effects--and that even mainstream medical institutions, including the Mayo Clinic and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, have begun to devote well-documented pages of their Web sites to herbal and nutritional supplements. Most of all, I learned that the real value of integrative medicine lies in taking the best from both worlds. If you're having a heart attack, you do want an experienced medical team to intervene as invasively as necessary. But the evidence is increasingly showing that following an anti-inflammatory diet, using herbal remedies, and doing moderate exercise can prevent or forestall most heart disease to begin with. So you really need both approaches to be available, and the best doctors are beginning to understand that.
We may still have a lot
to learn about the connection between the natural world, human compassion, and
the spirituality of pain relief. But healers like Susun Weed and Vijay Vad are
helping us get there.
NY
Times interview w/Vijay Vad, M.D. and
video link
More about Stop Pain: Inflammation Relief for an Active Life
More about the Healing Cards deck and
iPhone app
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