Andrew Weil's "On Integrative Medicine and the Nature of Reality"
excerpt from Voices of Integrative Medicine: Conversations and Encounters ed. Bonnie Horrigan
When Dr. Andrew Weil was investigating Native American Shamanism in the 1970’s, he found their word for medicine had a much larger meaning than our word for medicine:
When they talked about medicine men, medicine women, medicine place, medicine people, it was a much bigger concept that embraced magic and religion, as well as what we mean by medicine. I call it Medicine with a capital “M,” and I think that our culture desperately needs it. (252)
Dr. Weil's opinion is that our medicine and culture have disowned magic, which is regarded as antiscientific and antirational. Magic, for Weil, is about “the relationship between internal and external reality and how [anyone] can change or modify external reality with internal operations [...] Being able to instill or awaken in patients a sense that they can get better is an example of "practical magic": change on the level of consciousness that can translate into physiological reality (252)
Great post and so true.
ReplyDeleteGood thing I didn't rely on my doctors for that sense!
They just seemed befuddled. (except Cole!)
:)