Journal of Sacred Work

(-From Catherine Self, Senior Consultant, Baptist Healing Trust, Nashville):           Today’s thoughts
emerge from my personal journey to understand and embody this thing we call
healing. I say I believe in the possibility and reality of healing and yet am
awed and honestly quite often surprised when I see evidence of its occurring. When
the patient leaves our care, uncured of the cancer that brought him to us yet
speaks of having been healed, so many questions rise within me. How does
healing happen? What makes healing happen? Where and when does healing begin?
   Some, like Dr.
Masaru Emoto, (www.hado.net) would suggest that we carry within ourselves
the power of healing (or harm!). This doctor of alternative medicine and
Japanese research scientist turns our attention to water as a messenger for
what is possible…

   You may have seen Dr. Emoto’s work in a popular 2004 film
titled What the Bleep do we Know?
Unforgettable pictures of forming ice crystals suggest an unseen power in sound
and even the written word.
   Dr. Emoto discovered that water freezes differently when
exposed to different types of music, spoken and written words and even
projected thought. He developed a technique using a powerful microscope in a
very cold room to photograph newly forming crystals from various water samples.

He found, for example, that distilled water freezes into a regular geometric
shape. When the same water was exposed to classical music, a different pattern
emerged as it was freezing, one with beautifully intricate and symmetrical
forms. Almost beyond understanding, when his sample of water was exposed to
spoken or written words, forms emerged that seemed to reflect the intended
message. The words love (see crystal at left) and hate (see image below), for example, “created” vastly different ice
crystals! Essentially, Dr. Emoto captured of water’s ‘expressions.’
    The core of Dr.
Emoto’s theory is that, since all phenomena is at heart resonating
energy, by
changing the vibration we change the substance. His proof seems to
imply that thoughts and feelings affect physical reality. While conventional
science in general still does not support this notion, according to Dr. Emoto,
quantum physics and in particular the ‘observer effect’ (of Heisenberg’s
uncertainty principle) clearly suggests we do alter our environment. He
furthermore suggests that words and thoughts are the vibrations of nature. “Beautiful
words create beautiful nature…ugly words create ugly nature. This is the root of
the universe,” says Dr. Emoto. “The messages from water are telling us to look
inside ourselves.”
    Other authors and medical researchers seem to support Dr.
Emoto’s ideas. Dr. Larry Dossey certainly believes in the power of thought and
word to effect healing. In his book, Healing
Words – The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine, Dr. Dossey tells
stories of individuals who are capable of generating extraordinarily negative
effects on living entities. He also tells many more stories of healing (and
curing) that defy scientific explanation. Love, says Dr. Dossey, is the fuel
behind the healing and is intimately related to health within us and between
us. Dr. Rafael Campo, assistant professor of internal medicine at Beth Israel-Deaconess
Medical Center,
writes about the power of words for healing in an article published in Evidence-based Complimentary and
Alternative Medicine Vol. 2(2) (2005). “Some doctors find poetry can treat
wounds that medicine can’t always reach,” says Dr. Campo (source: Carroll, R. Finding
the Words to Say It: The Healing Power of Poetry, UCLA
Department of Psychiatry, Los Angeles
CA 90024).
   Could it really be just that simple (and that wonderfully
complex)? Can healing come from the words we use, from the very thoughts that
give rise to our reaching out to hold, to touch, and to give care? Can the very
way we bring ourselves into a patient’s room impact that patient’s well-being
and health? I believe so.
    I leave with you today lines of poetry from two very
different poets. The first was written in the 1800s by Letitia E. Landon and
follows:

The Power of Words
 

‘Tis a strange
mystery, the power of words!
Life is in them, and death. A word can send
The crimson colour hurrying to the cheek.
Hurrying with many meanings; or can turn
The current cold and deadly to the heart.
Anger and fear are in them; grief and joy
Are on their sound; yet slight, impalpable…

  This last poem is adapted from one written in the 1300s by a
Sufi master, Hafiz titled A Hole in the
Flute.

I am
A hole in a flute
That Love’s breath
moves through
Listen to this music-