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
As a college student, I once attended a lecture by Dr. Andrew Weil. There, I learned that much of what I knew about 'herbal remedies' were merely over-marketed products that contained extracts of the plants I thought I was consuming. These processed medicines are missing many complementary ingredients they would otherwise posses in their natural form.
From Dr. Weil I learned that extracts are limited when taken separately from their whole form.
Although I haven't dealt with chronic pain personally, I know many people have been helped by biofeedback training, cognitive behavioral therapy and other types of alternative treatments.
Mark,
Dr Weil is right, and that's why Susun Weed recommends creating your own tinctures and infusions made from the entire plant or its leaves. I also recommend Quantum Herbal Products, hand-made tinctures extracted from whole plants of herbs organically grown in the United States which have never been sprayed or irradiated. For more, see http://www.quantumherbalproducts.com/frame_about.htm
Thanks,
Peter
It's a great article, Peter.
Recently, I was hearing some interesting things about the placebo effect. It was described to me as "giving your body the permission to heal itself." I've never heard it put this way.
They say when people are in their doctor's waiting room, they often feel their symptoms lift, or disappear altogether. It's as if the body says, "I can start the healing process now, because I'm safe and in good hands."
There are even people that take placebo pills knowing that they're placebos, because they know that placebos work! It's hard to wrap my head around that one,