Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine

"This author successfully combines traditional scientific scholarship with an open-minded approach to complementary modes of healing such as shamanism, visualization, and energy work. She provides the experimental evidence that explains how images we hold in our minds really do effect changes on the physical level--it has to do with how the "imaging" part of the brain connects to brain structures which regulate hormones and the immune system. There is also a fascinating section on the wise-women healers of Europe and how they were persecuted for practicing medicine which went against established medical practice as well as against the Church. It seems the ancient healers were on to something that became suppressed, and which is now being rediscovered by scholars as well as healing practitioners.......The author is professor of psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Thus, she knows well how to use reductionist scientific methods as a tool while still seeing the possibilities lying beyond reductionism in the transpersonal plane."
~ Written on 1999-09-05