| To answer that properly, we have to pay attention to the fact that over 150 years ago, there were no effective medications. There was quinine for malaria and there was the juice of limes for scurvy, but other than that we had nothing. Then, starting with the definition of bacteria with Koch and Pasteur, and going on to the incredible discovery of penicillin, these successes were so awesome, breathtaking, that we looked away from the older methods. Penicillin could cure pneumonia, with a majority of our population passing away from that. Drugs like streptomycin coming along, that could treat tuberculosis. Even when I was in medical school, in the late 1950s, half the hospital beds in the United States were occupied by tuberculosis patients. And to correct blindness through cataract surgery. These were fantastic. And we came to believe that that’s all that we needed, overlooking the fact that even when all of these wonderful therapies were incorporated, some 60 to 90 percent of visits to doctors still involved stress-related factors. So to have a truly balanced medicine, we need not only the surgery, not only the pharmaceutical approaches, but we also need self-care.
Is it held to a higher standard? Yes, probably because of these awesome successes of the others. But they’re not complete.
How widely has your work, the relaxation response, spread in terms of application by doctors, in hospitals, in educational settings and elsewhere?
When we started our work in the late 1960s, about seven percent of the population were using such mind-body approaches. Now, when you include prayer for self-healing, over 50 percent of people are regularly using a technique that evokes the relaxation response. But they are multitudinous. It’s not just meditation; it’s prayer, yoga, tai chi. It’s been a whole series of mind-body effects that have that common result of the relaxation response. So it’s widespread.
What’s bothersome is that many consider it alternative medicine, or complementary medicine or integrative medicine. In truth, it’s simply part of our traditional medicine because it’s now scientifically proven and shouldn’t be held to a different standard. It has the scientific proof.
Harvard Medical School has developed programs on spirituality in medicine. Why did Harvard conclude that this subject was worth teaching? Are there areas where science and spirituality intersect?
These were courses that our team originated, Spirituality and Healing. The reason that came about was that we noted that people who were evoking the relaxation response claimed to be more spiritual. What did they mean? Dr. Jared Kass, in work supported by Laurence Rockefeller, found that there were two features that people experienced when they felt spiritual. One was the perceived presence of a power, a force, an energy. God, if you will. Two, that that condition was within them. Then we found that people who experienced spirituality (as Kass and others defined it) had fewer medical symptoms. That was the genesis of this course, to try to bring these two seemingly separate worlds together.
But we were always cognizant of the point that there are religious and spiritual aspects that some people feel should never be studied scientifically. We were simply looking for the overlap. Not to undermine the importance of spirituality or in any way put it down, but rather to recognize its health benefits. Some people feel that such health benefits are not in the spiritual realm because spirituality, and communication with something beyond us, should be separate and not related to health. We felt that the overlap should be studied and expressed.
Aside from achieving a relaxed state in which stress is managed or minimized, you also have written about what you call a “breakout” state. What is this and how does it relate to the relaxation response?
When striving for a certain end, often people hit a wall. An example would be writer’s block, where achieving their goal is not met. There seems to be a formula to overcome that, which has four steps. One, a person has to work at something, to try very hard. You know, to be a good basketball player you have to practice over and over again. To be a good musician you have to practice on your instrument. To experience certain types of feelings, you have to almost work at them. So that’s the first step. |
