Long ago, before doctors, pharmacists and hospitals, religion and medicine were treated as one, and physical and spiritual ailments were treated alike.
Healing of these ailments was expected of all true prophets, and their gifts of healing were a sign that their calling was from God. Jesus was a healer, and he was an integral part of the movement towards a healing community for the first generation of Christians. Christ commissioned the Apostles, according to Luke 10:9 to "heal the sick." The human need for healing was not only deeply connected to major religions. Anthropological and medical literature has revealed that all people, tribes, and cultures in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas have for centuries cured the body and soul as a central expression of their religious beliefs and their attitudes towards the most powerful forces of the universe. Their healers were and still are in touch with hidden energies of God (or of the gods) and of the natural world in which they live. Healing and religion are still bound together, whether you study the ancient Egyptians or the modern-day inhabitants of the Kalahari Desert. To use the spirit to help heal the body's ills is an ancient idea -- one whose time has come again.
In the January 28, 1993 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, it was stated that 34 percent of Americans, or approximately 61 million people, used one or more types of unconventional therapy or form of some type of healing in 1990. These practices included acupuncture, meditation, biofeedback, self-help groups, prayer, and the laying-on of hands. The researchers found that the people they surveyed were more likely to pursue alternative therapies if they were better-educated. Nine out of ten who saw a healer did not have a physician's recommendation nor did they reveal their unconventional therapy to their own physicians. These situations seem to show that there may be unhappiness with Western medicine as is currently practiced, and also that people who are bright and ordinary may be unable to discuss their discontent with their family doctors. It seems that the medical establishment takes a very dismissive approach to anything other than conventional medicine. This is certainly not surprising since major medical journals "rarely discuss non-pharmacological approaches to treatment" because a major source of their income comes from the drug companies. Money is either scarce or not available at all for research into unconventional therapies for this very reason. But people who are very interested in alternative medicine and healing want to take responsibility for their own health and become channels of healing and are recognizing their "inner healer."
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