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Richard James (Reviews Editor) richard@integrativehealthcare.co.uk
Handbook of New Age
Daren Kemp and James R. Lewis (eds)
Brill, 2007
ISBN:
978 9 00415 355 4
£76.02
This Handbook of New Age presents itself as a substantial academic survey of the New Age religious and cultural phenomenon. 500 pages long and with 22 essays by specialists in the field, its substance is emphasised by the fact that the least expensive version available on Amazon costs £76.02 and the most dear £134.51.
You may already perhaps detect a note of cynicism – and you are accurate. If flaky is the most used term of abuse thrown at new-agers, then methodologically flaky is the overall impression presented by this tome. The structure of this handbook is promising with sections, for example, entitled New Age and Social Scientific Research and Global Aspects of New Age, but both as a body of work and as individual essays, the approach is impressionistic – anthropology, sociology and social history all done in a light way with little rigorous theory.
As both a new-ager and a social theorist, I find it disappointing.
That said, however, each essay of course has something interesting to contribute. The bits and pieces of knowledge help build towards an understanding of the bigger picture. But that is also precisely my complaint. We are now well into the second decade of New Age academic study and we need more than sketches. We need attempts to understand its meaning. New Age is not a temporary and peripheral religious movement. It has integrated fully into contemporary culture, appears in all metropolitan centres including African capitals, takes up substantial media space in both tabloids and broadsheets, touches senior political leaders, and has become a normal lifestyle choice of contemporary culture. It deserves serious theory and rigorous, adventurous analytical enquiry.
This enquiry could, for example, look like a structural analysis of contemporary alienation and the search for meaning. Another approach would be to clarify core New Age propositions and critique their internal rigor. (One of my complaints about all these sociologists of religions is that none of them yet, to my knowledge, has actually bothered to read thoroughly the texts of core authors like Rudolph Steiner or Alice Bailey.) And yet another line of enquiry, for example, would be to examine how New Age is a melting pot for traditional faiths in a global village.
The good news, however, is that the book takes the New Age seriously. Now why is that important for practitioners of holistic healthcare? Because at the heart of New Age is the love that holistic practitioners dare not name. This love, still awkwardly hidden in the closet, emerging shyly only then to withdraw stung by the scorn of the medical establishment, is vitality/prana/chi – subtle information. Can there be a holistic medical paradigm without prana?
Academics who study New Age generally agree that one of its core features is the rebirth of western esotericism, the metaphysical study of occult realms and energies. In fact the Handbook begins with a substantial essay on these esoteric roots. But this esoteric approach – the notion of a multi-dimensional universe made of energy that affects and can be affected by an observer – does not just belong to western esotericism. The concept of energies (albeit woolly), and the ability of human beings to influence and be influenced by them, runs through the many traditions and schools that make up the New Age smorgasbord. It is a key and explicit tenet. It is to be found in new science, in tribal and animist beliefs, in mystical faiths, in magic and so on. It is also, of course, found in the medical traditions of Taoism and Ayurveda, homeopathy, cranial sacral work, bio-energetics and in all forms of spiritual qua energetic healing.
Thus the New Age phenomenon provides a serious problem for complementary practitioners seeking mainstream acceptability. Historically the two arose together over the last 50 years, sharing people and texts (there is an essay by Maria Tighe and Jenny Butler in the Handbook that partly describes this history). Culturally, however, New Age has not been interested in mainstream intellectual acceptance; worse, many aspects of it have been dumbed down into commercially appropriated lifestyle choices. (Q: What's the difference between a pagan and a new age crystal? A: Two zeros on the price.)
It is not surprising therefore that ‘serious' holistic practitioners often distance themselves as far as possible from New Age. Their sense of identity and their mission to create an integrative healthcare system are threatened by the apparent flakiness and brashness of their vulgar companion.Yet, as I say, look closely and the roots of New Age and integrative health are entwined. When, in the future, the social histories of our time are written it will, I believe, be seen that the very best of New Age was a solid companion to holistic healthcare. In fact, my own forecast is that the term New Age will disappear to be replaced by a phrase such as ‘a holistic approach to spirituality and healthcare'. In this approach any denial of energy/prana/qi will be seen as a temporary and eccentric ignorance – because true health, as we all know, arises through the harmony of body, emotions and mind with our social environment and with the wave fields of benevolent qi that permeate nature and universe. Ah – the love that some of us dare not name.
In the meantime, if you have the money for an expensive doorstop or need to be better educated about contemporary religious approaches, then I recommend this book. Its internal rigor may be dubious, but its impressions are useful and its external form is expensively reassuring.
William Bloom, freelance mystic, author and educator
Shen: psycho-emotional aspects of Chinese medicine
Elisa Rossi
Elsevier, 2007
ISBN:
978 0 44310 181 6
£34.99
In her initial sentence of the introduction Dr Rossi quotes from the first Chinese text dedicated to acupuncture: ‘All acupuncture methods must find their root in shen'. This I felt set the tone for treating psycho-emotional illnesses and the underlying emotions in many somatic conditions.
Much study and effort on behalf of the author has gone into the modern translation of the ancient text. The book was rather an intense read. I found its format somewhat dour, off-putting and uninspiring; not doing justice to the effort the author had put in.
The text is well referenced. Of particular note is the distinct meaning of shen and the psychic aspects of the soul; heart stores shen, lungs po, liver hun, the spleen yi and the kidneys zhi. The spirit qi (energy) of the organ can be demonstrated clinically even after surgical removal by measuring the meridian flow electrically via electro meridian graphing, as I have used in my clinic for the past 15 years.
While reading the chapter on the five souls I was reminded of the case of Claire Sylvia who underwent a heart-lung transplant operation. Post surgery she took on the characteristics of the donor. I wonder, do donor organs retain their original shen and live on indefinitely?
The author illustrates how emotional aspects of our lives can disrupt the psychic aspects of our individual organs and adversely affect sleep patterns. Chapter 7 illustrates classical and contemporary ways of treating insomnia energetically via acupuncture. Irregular sleep can result from somatic health problems, while psycho-emotional illnesses can create sleep deprivation. Restoring natural sleep patterns to our patients is a distinctly holistic approach for restoring their health.
Mental health and ‘classic syndromes' are covered in chapters 8 and 9. They indicate how modern Chinese texts make reference to western psychology disorders. This chapter indicates how one can utilise acupuncture clinically from a western point of view for treating patients as individuals. This approach will allow the practitioner to influence the patient's internal environment holistically.
Alan T Plenty, acupuncturist/chiropractor
The heart speaks: a cardiologist reveals the secret language of healing
Dr Mimi Guarneri
Fusion Press, 2006
ISBN:
1 904132 96 0
£8.99
Dr Mimi Guarneri is a cardiologist, founder and current medical director of the Scripps Centre for Integrative Medicine in San Deigo, California.
Guarneri describes herself as a successful, traditionally trained heart physician and this book serves to illustrate her journey from the dominance of bio-medical practice to one of a ‘heart-centred' and integrative healthcare practitioner.
The books opens with Guarneri illustrating her early memories of growing up in a tight-knit loving Italian family in New York; enriched further by the ‘old world' Italian culture and community spirit that surrounded her, much of which she credits with giving her insight into the healing effects of a community coming together to help and support each other. In her early childhood she was painfully introduced to heart disease with the premature death of her mother from a heart attack. The emotional impact of the loss is tenderly recalled in describing how, at night, she would put her hand over her own heart to calm herself, fearing that without this her heart would surely stop too. A decade later her father also died from a heart attack; both losses were to forge her interest in medicine and in particular cardiology.
She describes her original orientation to a highly focused bio-medical career which left her little margin for more than she had been trained to do. However over time and despite the practical successes of modern technical cardiology, she began to realise that the heart was far more than a functional pump, and she recognised that for many of her patients treatment could not reach the deeper wounds that life had brought to their lives and to their hearts. Poignantly she refers to the condition of stress cardiomyopathy, or ‘broken heart syndrome', caused by intense emotional reactions to severe stress, eg the shock of a death, in people with no history of heart disease.
Guarneri, influenced by the work of Dr Dean Ornish, went on to develop a patient-centred and holistic rehabilitation programme of care which includes peer group support. At the same time her search for greater understanding led her to reflect on the links between psychosocial factors, and the presence of unresolved emotional and spiritual issues that are capable of contributing to the development of heart disease.
I got the impression that her confidence in writing about what matters to her most increased as the chapters grew into the final 10. It soon becomes apparent that she is a compassionate and deeply committed practitioner seeking to learn from her patients and their lives. She cites Dr Rita Charon's work on the role of stories and narratives in medicine highlighting how medical practice is better served when based on being absorbed, and moved by the stories of illness and to this end the book is a blend of case histories, her own story and the use of research to substantiate the significance of psychosocial factors in cardiac health and illness.
There is a slight tendency towards ‘TV-soap-drama' in the telling of each story, but even this does not obscure the richness in her portrayal of each patient's story. Guarneri has selected cases that reflect the emotional issues arising before and within the experience of heart disease, citing examples such as: those people who are living with unexpressed or unresolved grief; those who have become ‘hard-wired' into persistent anger and angst next to those whose heart conditions are worsened in the presence of low self-worth. There is, however, also mention of the significance of spiritual experiences in the process of healing among some of her cases, in particular patients who were helped and healed through a mystical or spiritual experience (seeing angels) at the time of illness, during treatment and prior to death.
In addition she also shares her own process in speaking about her own vulnerabilities and moments of growing awareness along the way, that ultimately influenced her practice of medicine. In particular I felt that her awareness around her own grief was made possible through the patients. Another example is her appreciation of the sacred in life and spirituality when facing serious illness and to this end she remarks that one patient helped her to view cardiac procedures not just as everyday occurrences but as sacred ones.
On the whole I found the book to be a well crafted balance between case histories, parallelled to careful selection of relevant research and current thinking about mind, body, spirit and emotional and spiritual health. I enjoyed the way she balances the description of what is important in terms of evidence and research to underpin her personal and professional experiences with the crafting of real life stories.
The final chapter throws in a last minute case where the author indicates that she practises healing touch, offering an example of how in giving healing touch to a patient they avoided surgery for a damaged finger. This chapter ends abruptly and I felt there was an opportunity missed in reflecting more widely on the journey she has taken to this point.
The book is suitable for students in healthcare and for the public seeking the ‘inside story' of how doctors can grow when listening to their patients.
Ruth Sewell, Lecturer in Integrated Cancer Care, Psychotherapist and Autogenic Training Therapist
