Episode 18 : Injecting Soul Into Medicine
TL:DR - the soul, belief, faith, and religion play a role in illness, mental health, and healing. Medicine is anything that helps us come home to ourselves, whether through the mind, body, or spirit.
The body is the seat of the soul
Whether or not you’re religious, the fact is that something comes into physical form when we’re born, leaves when we die.
It has been said, this something is the soul.
I happen to agree with the belief that each of our souls enters into various lifetimes and iterations of human physicality with an agenda or intention to learn, grow, and develop… Invariably, we each will achieve that purpose at some time, in this life, or one or two or several down the line.
In order to achieve the aims of a lifetime, we have to be firing on all cylinders: mind, body, and spirit, according to our unique abilities and capacities.
Anything that prevents this, then, we should address, no?
Which raises an interesting question re: the purpose of medicine. Is modern medicine best used only as a tool for the physical? Are there implications for the nonphysical as well? Is there a reason (or reasons?) we get sick beyond the obvious fallibility of the human body?
For some, illness is nothing more than inconvenient at best, grief-causing life shatterer at worst. Flu right at the 11th hour of a critical deadline, an incurable infection stealing away precious breath.
For others, getting sick provides a moment of reflection and an opportunity to redirect. Diabetes, taken seriously when diagnosed, gives the opportunity to add in exercise, adjust diet and improve quality of life. Terminal cancer facilitates healing bad blood in a family or close community, making space for spiritual and relational reckoning. A benign heart scare snapping someone’s priorities back into focus.
Yet still for other folks, the issue of health and illness is tangled with philosophy, religion, and/or faith. Some iterations of Christian fundamentalism eschew any conventional modern medical care, in favor of prayer and God’s will. I wouldn’t be sick if God didn’t make me ill, so who am I to question and use worldly means to ‘correct’ what God has done? Other religious teachings welcome some medical measures, but may draw a line at specific ‘heroic measures’. Or, there may be a belief that illness is caused not by God, but by demons, making exorcism the appropriate treatment. Not a religion, but stoicism teaches that the obstacle is the way; how you as an individual respond to and move through illness is just as important as how that illness is treated. Kabbalah asserts that everything we experience is to the benefit of the soul, designed to reveal ever more light of the Creator in our own lives and in the world if we can proactively rise to the challenge.
Religious belief, faith, and philosophy matter in medicine.
“Medicine is anything that helps”
What then, are we calling medicine? If an exorcism or the work of a shaman can be as effective as an antipsychotic medication in alleviating hallucinations, who’s to say? Regulatory boards, of course. Insurance panels. Demonic possession doesn’t pop up in the ICD-10 diagnostic codes*, and it’s tough to get a procedure code for insurance reimbursement for exorcism.
Nevertheless, types of providers and practitioners that offer ‘healing’ seem to multiply unendingly. Energy workers, coaches, light workers, intuitives, herbalists… medical doctors, naturopathic doctors, osteopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists, therapists, counselors… There are great folks who do offer legit medicine and hucksters in each and every category; I’ve met intuitives and energy workers who are surprisingly plugged in to the unseen world… I’ve met licensed doctors who I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to.
But I digress…
In 2010, while I was studying herbal medicine, something I often heard “Medicine is anything that helps.”
Helps what?
Are junk food and booze medicine? They help for the moment, take the edge off of being present for life. Scrolling social media, watching an endless stream of videos… medicine? In the moment this helps us to play at enthusiasm and interaction. But no, I think not.
Emphatically, nothing we do doesn’t serve us in some way. From smoking to booze to raw juicing to lifting heavy to fast food binges to wise investing to blowing a paycheck on frivolous consumption… there’s nothing we do we don’t get something out of. That something may be distraction in the moment, or a better quality of life down the line. As an aside, the greater awareness and compassion we can bring to the ways our habits serve us, the better we can adjust our behaviors.
Anyhow, back then, my interpretation was that medicine is anything that helps alleviate suffering.
Now, I’d clarify and color with nuance…
Medicine is anything that helps:
folks come home to who they are
improve quality of life
someone make peace with who they are, and build courage to reach for who they can and want to be.
This is not an exhaustive list, but a good place to start.
Faith on both sides
It’s convenient to boot the soul out of how we conceptualize of medicine in the modern world. Doing a double blind clinical trial on matters of the spirit is… difficult? laughable?** Far easier to dose half of folks with a sugar pill and half of folks with a medication and see what happens.
And yet, the soul, belief, and faith creep in on both sides. Patients show up with a primary concern***, yes, but as complete and nuanced beings with beliefs and biases that color how they perceive and respond to the care they receive.
And so too do providers and the institutions where they work. Religion has funded hospital systems for centuries; still today, hospitals around the United States are run by various religious groups. The Catholic Sisters of Mercy are known for their work in healthcare, as are the Seventh Day Adventists. Religious non-profits of all varieties contribute in one way or another to medical care and/or education.
Makes sense. Religions often dictate and encourage compassion. Helping the poor, the sick, those who are unable to help themselves. It’s our duty as humans to do what we can to allay the suffering of the other. To provide charitable services (or donate towards those services) according to the resources we are ourselves afforded.
And so what?
Well…
I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. This article started out weeks ago, with a quote I heard from Michael Berg who teaches Kabbalah^ — ‘where you invest your thought, you invest your soul’, or something to that effect. Conventional medication for mental health, well employed, allows folks to have the space and energy to begin to invest their thought where it will provide the greatest returns. They can appropriately fuel meaningful action that will move them in the direction they’d like to go, come home to themselves and move closer to the agenda of the soul for this lifetime.
As I’ve written and re-written and re-written again, the more salient conclusion is that we are, as a culture, soul sick. We turn to modern medicine to ease this ailment most of us don’t know how, or are afraid, to name.
Loneliness and lack of connection affects the body, yes of course. It also affects the mind, and, starves the soul. But there’s not a drug to get folks out into the world and meaningfully engaged in close friendships and/or fulfilling romantic relationships.
Our food supply is not good for the body, causes physical and mental illness. In my experience, eating highly processed foods bereft of naturally occurring nutrients drives a wedge between the mind, body, and the soul. There’s a reason why there are dietary guidelines in various religions, why fasting is part of so many traditions. Food type, quality, and quantity matter when it comes to both our physical and spiritual health.
Ignoring this in medicine does a grave disservice.
As providers, we would do well to better consider the spiritual health of our patients. Never forcing or coercing, but, if there are ways that are appropriate, why not open the conversation?
As patients (people), it behooves us each to consider the interplay of each aspect of our being. To notice how we feel, mind and soul, when we better care for our bodies? Does meditation and prayer affect our digestion? Does attending Friday or Sunday services settle the heart? Is there a catch in the gut when we talk to our doctor about our anxiety and they jump to a medication out of the gate? What fears arise when it’s suggested that therapy to help resolve a close relationship is really worth considering? How do your emotions shift when your blood sugar is in balance?
A one size fits all answer doesn’t exist. And, in order to stay grounded and well in a wildly uncertain world, its important to include the soul in our calculations and assessments of what’s best for ourselves. In this way, we can deeply heal not only ourselves, but also support the health and positive growth of the wider world.
Not sure how to get started?
*As an aside, I looked this up, because, why not? Here’s what the AI summary had to say: “ICD-10 does not have a specific code for demonic possession. However, it does include codes for dissociative and conversion disorders which might be used to diagnose conditions that could be perceived as demonic possession. For example, F44.89 is used for other dissociative and conversion disorders and F44.9 is for dissociative and conversion disorder, unspecified.”
**Searching PubMed.gov for clinical trials related to prayer turns up 2,055 results as of this writing, Feb 21, 25. Many more than I expected. Some of the more interesting titles: ‘Therapeutic Effects of Islamic Intercessory Prayer on Warts’ (2017), ‘The efficacy of prayer: a triple bind study’ (1969), ‘God give me strength: exploring prayer as self-disclosure’ (2013), and ‘Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial.’ (2001). Not so laughable after all.
***Or what we doctors try to boil down to a ‘primary concern’ — I find its rarely so cut and dry.
^And runs the Kabbalah Center
