The New Zealand Herald newspaper has been running a great series of articles about the crisis in our mental health services: GREAT MINDS – The search for happiness

Despite numerous national inquiries into the failures of the mental health system and a huge increase in mental health funding, nothing seems to change. The stories from patients, shared in the GREAT MINDS series, portray a broken system.

The government is implementing a major reform of the NZ health system but, as before, the reform only addresses the funding and structure of the health system and is not actually reforming the care provided. This costly reform will damage the health system, yet again, without any improvement in patient care.

What to do?

I believe that we could begin to transform the effectiveness of mental health care within a year, without spending a dollar more on treatment.

I explain how in this letter to Alex Spence, the editor of the GREAT MINDS series. He has acknowledged my letter but, so far, there is no sign of my views being shared. I have decided to share my letter openly. Here is the text of my letter:

“Dear Alex

Thank you to the NZ Herald for the series of articles about the crisis in our mental health service and the lack of improvement, despite the Government investing huge sums of money. Hearing the different perspective from ‘the front line’ is valuable.

I work full time as a trauma therapist in my own clinic in Raglan. I have a unique perspective on the problems we face. I am a retired medical specialist, an author and speaker, and a former advisor to the NZ Government and the WHO on issues of patient safety, quality of care, and people-centred healthcare. I have campaigned in fifteen countries to bring more compassion and humanity to healthcare. I also have direct knowledge of the mental health services through the experiences of several close family members.

I feel frustrated that genuine innovations and breakthrough new treatments are being ignored or suppressed by the medical system and by those who fund mental health services. I’d like to share one innovative treatment with you and how the medical system of knowledge and power suppresses any genuine breakthrough. My purpose in writing to you is not to promote a particular therapy (although I would love more people to know about Havening). Rather, I want you to understand the structural problems that prevent real change occurring in mental health services.

In my clinic, I am seeing life-changing results in my clients every day using a therapy called Havening Techniques. This method has been developed over twenty years by a medical doctor and researcher in the USA, Dr Ronald Ruden. The method is based on a detailed scientific theory of the exact mechanisms by which traumatic events get hard-wired in the brain. Trauma is the underlying cause of almost all mental health problems and addictions. The science and physiology is well described but is not taught in the medical curriculum. As a medical specialist, I was completely unaware of this science until four years ago.

In Havening techniques, we do not aim to treat pathology, rather we stimulate an innate healing response that can completely erase the neural encoding of a traumatic event in a matter of minutes. Dr Ruden’s scientific paper fully describes the neural pathways and molecular mechanisms underlying both traumatic encoding and deletion of the memory. The healing reaction is stimulated with very precise forms of soothing touch, which are mediated by newly discovered nerves in the skin. The sense of profound safety created by the touch allows the client to erase the traumatic memory. I am a trainer in this technique and it requires about four or five hours of teaching to fully explain the science – it’s that detailed.

Severe traumas, such as sexual violence, abuse, abandonment, betrayal, injury or illness can be erased in a matter of minutes. Severe phobias can vanish. Having been an anaesthetic specialist for 30 years, I am a skilled observer of human physiology. The changes I witness in clients are astonishing.

For instance, I did a research series of thirty mothers with PTSD as a result of severe childbirth trauma (which is extremely common). These mothers are at serious risk of postnatal depression, failed bonding with their new babies, chronic anxiety, re-traumatization with subsequent births, and long-term mental health problems. 80% of these mothers were essentially cured of their PTSD with a single session of therapy and others were relieved after the second session. My research report is here.

I have given up a lucrative career as a medical specialist to do this work full time because it is the most rewarding and astonishing work I have ever done as a doctor.

This therapy is backed up by a detailed scientific theory (Ron Ruden Science Paper) and two randomised controlled trials (references below). These controversial papers are not getting published in mainstream medical journals and my medical colleagues immediately dismiss this therapy as being ‘woo woo’, ‘alternative’ or ‘not evidence-based’.

The traditional process to get a new medical treatment established is to conduct major scientific trials. Here are the barriers we face:

• Lack of research funding for truly innovative treatments (no track record)
• Strong opposition from Hospital Ethics Committees – “it’s unethical to try an unproven treatment in a vulnerable population”
• Extreme difficulty getting a researcher to invest years of work in an ‘unproven’ therapy
• When a study is completed, extreme difficulty in getting the finding published because of the criticism by Peer Reviewers who are deeply invested in their own expert knowledge.

The published scientific trials took years to complete and to get published, framed in rather academic and obscure terms which tend to conceal the true impact of the research. To sway medical opinion, we generally need four or five large randomised controlled trials published in mainstream medical journals. A realistic timeframe to achieve that is TEN years from now.

But when new medical science is proved, beyond doubt, the average time it takes for the new treatment to be systematically adopted in medical practice is SEVENTEEN years. We can’t afford to wait a quarter of a century to change mental health care.

A rapid solution

At the moment, all health agencies that commission services (District Health Boards, Ministry of Health, Accident Compensation, etc.) insist that the therapy must be ‘evidence based’ within the traditional medical model. Often the ‘medical evidence’ bears little relationship to real-life outcomes for patients.

An alternative is to put in place a system of measuring real-life client or patient outcomes, and have that determine what services get funded. This is called ‘patient-oriented evidence’, which is generally resisted by the medical profession because it shows how ineffective many medical treatments are. Our lack of genuine progress is an issue of power and control.

An example is the data I collected in my research trial of mothers with PTSD caused by severe childbirth trauma. I used a scientifically-validated, patient-reported scale (Impact of Events – Revised), which measures the level of PTSD symptoms that cause so much fear, pain and distress to mothers. I also collected real-life stories from mothers about the amazing impact the therapy had on their lives (and their partners’ lives). The research shows about a 75% reduction in symptoms, with immediate effect.

In my view, the only person who is qualified to report on the effectiveness of mental health treatment is the patient or client. This is the only VALID EVIDENCE.

[Patients need to report:] Did this treatment cure my anxiety, fear or panic disorder? Has my phobia completely vanished? Am I now resilient and capable, rather than vulnerable and helpless? Is the profound depression and worthlessness caused by my sexual abuse now completely banished, such that I feel worthy, secure and happy? Has my chronic pain been abolished? (yes, lots of chronic pain is caused by encoded trauma and can be cured). Has my chronic physical illness resolved? (caused by inescapable stress). Can I anticipate my next childbirth, or next hospital treatment with calm and confidence? In the course of [mental health] treatment was I treated with loving kindness, deep compassion, respect and validation?

Ask these questions of many existing mental health treatments and the answer is sadly “No”.

Commissioning mental health services on the basis of client-defined outcomes is highly ethical, common sense, would be broadly popular and politically safe. Only the medical [and research] profession stands in the way. Their protests will be in vain.

The Government should mandate the use of patient-defined and patient-reported outcomes for all mental health services (and set up a national system to collect and analyse them.) Then we should fund and trial a broad range of mainstream, complementary and alternative therapies. Continued funding would be contingent on achieving real outcomes for clients and patients. Within a year, we could transform the approach to mental health.

Evidence from overseas shows that brief community-based interventions in trauma can prevent many cases of chronic mental illness, reduce the burden of acute mental health admissions, allow wards and hospitals to be closed, and invest ever more funding into services that really work.

If you want to see a 12 minute video demonstration of the power of Havening Techniques, see how I treat a 70 year old woman who had been haunted for twenty years by an armed hold-up in South Africa. She had frequent nightmares and fear responses in her daily life. You can see the transformation in the client. These effects are permanent.

You will sense my intense frustration and also my passion. I really hope that this essential issue can be brought to public and political attention.

If not, then perhaps we can raise charitable funds to do the patient measurements ourselves and generate the evidence needed to transform the system.

Kind regards, Robin”

References

Sumich, A., Heym, N., Sarkar, M., Burgess, T., French, J., Hatch, L., & Hunter, K. (2022, March 21). The Power of Touch: The Effects of Havening Touch on Subjective Distress, Mood, Brain Function, and Psychological Health. Psychology & Neuroscience.

Hodgson, K. L., Clayton, D. A., Carmi, M. A., Carmi, L. H., Ruden, R. A., Fraser, W. D., & Cameron, D. (2021). A psychophysiological examination of the mutability of type D personality in a therapeutic trial. Journal of Psychophysiology, 35(2), 116-128.

You know the feeling: The holiday is over and you are back at work. All the jobs you have been putting off now crowd into your mind. It feels like there is a huge mountain of work and your neck and shoulders start to tense up. You fortify yourself with strong coffee as the headache starts to build.

If you are self-employed like me, it can feel as if the work never ends. You can’t just complete the assignment your boss gave you and then relax for the rest of the day. I love sessions with my clients but behind the scenes there is an endless stream of work to build the business, update the website, handle all the administration, develop new products, organise the training sessions, schedule events, answer all the emails – and so on. Even if you work for a boss, the demands on your time and attention probably seem never ending.

I remember the days when finishing work at 5pm was time to ‘clock-off’ and relax. I hardly gave a thought to work outside of office hours. Now we are all endlessly connected and we bring our work home with us on the laptop and phone.

The To-Do List

So I started my day by writing my To-Do List. This helps me a lot because half the stress is trying to remember all the things I have to do. Having it written down allows me to feel like I am organised and I won’t forget important tasks. Also, I realise that a lot of things on my list can be done really quickly. The best thing about the To-Do List is crossing things off! It gives me a lot of satisfaction and I can see the burden of tasks shrinking quickly.

Today is my first day back in the office. I was working last week but I was running an intensive five-day retreat and then a full-on weekend training course. So I focused on those activities and put aside all the other jobs I had to do. This morning I started by writing my To-Do List and then I paused. I decided to give priority to an item that wasn’t even on my list.

When I looked at my To-Do List, I noticed what was happening inside my body: I was tensing up. Then I asked myself a really important question, ‘Of all the jobs on your list, which give you satisfaction or enjoyment?’

The answer surprised me: ‘All of them!’

I’m good at my work and I take pride in doing it to a high standard; I love learning new things; I enjoy writing and graphic design work; I like investing in new tools to make my website and business flow better; I love my one-on-one meetings; I open my email inbox with excitement each morning; I love reaching out and building new relationships and new opportunities; I get satisfaction with organising my schedule….. and so on.

So why does my To-Do List feel like a burden?

The answer came with crystal clarity: The ONLY reason my list of tasks weighs me down is the mental frame I have put them in. The To-Do List automatically feels like a pile of stuff ‘that I have to do’, an obligation, an onus, a weight of responsibility, a worry, something that will tax my energy. Yet all of the jobs on my list are things I choose to do, they give me satisfaction and enjoyment! A happy day is doing many of these things!

So at the beginning of today I ignored all the items on my To-Do List and decided to reflect deeper on this habitual way of thinking, and then to share my thoughts in this blog.

To-Enjoy List

Today is the last day I will ever write a To-Do List. Henceforth, I will only write a To-Enjoy List!

With every item on my new list, I have paused for a moment to reflect on the pleasure and satisfaction that task will give me. Even if the task is mundane – following up an unpaid invoice, for instance – I can reflect with gratitude on the income that my work generates. I can decide to be kind and generous, rather than annoyed and judgmental, to a late-paying client. I can add a note of appreciation to my business emails. I can feel excited about future opportunities that my work of correspondence might generate.

Finally, I paused to reflect about what is NOT written on my list. Does my list only include my urgent jobs and have I given time for the more important aspects of investing in personal and professional development? Have I prioritised my health and wellbeing? I am investing in the things that will make my business more successful?

My choice now is to go for a walk, let my tense muscles relax, and to reflect deeply on my new way of framing the many tasks I enjoy in a working day.

The choice is yours

Nobody else decides how you frame your thoughts, what habits you stick to, the attitude you bring to each moment of your working day. What will you choose? Is it time to tear up your To-Do List and instead make it a list of the things you enjoy?

It’s a painful double-whammy: a life of emotional misery topped up with chronic illness. Some personality types are just destined to suffer. However, a dramatic breakthrough in trauma research may offer the key to unlock this painful destiny.

Type D Personality describes those who have habitually negative feelings accompanied by social inhibition. This personality type has long been associated with much higher risks of chronic physical and mental illness, compared with the average population.

Painful emotions and lack of social connection cause chronic stress, which is accompanied by increased circulating stress hormones, such as cortisol, and raised blood pressure. Chronic stress increases your risk of heart disease and stroke, impairs your immune system, and can precipitate mental illness.

People with Type D personality are also more likely to live an unhealthy lifestyle, avoid health-sustaining activities and neglect their adherence to medication.

This personality type is usually the result of adverse experiences and emotional trauma early in life, affecting up to 30% of the population.
However, a breakthrough study showed that a single session of Havening Techniques – a novel psycho-sensory therapy – nearly abolished the signs of Type D personality and significantly reduced cortisol and blood pressure. A randomly matched control group of subjects showed no change in their scores.

Kirsty Hodgson and Debbie Clayton from the Metropolitan University of Cardiff teamed up with therapists across England to identify one hundred twenty-five clients with Type D personality and test the outcomes of Havening. Their study is published in the Journal of Psychophysiology.

Remarkably, the early response measured at 24 hours became even more pronounced one-month after treatment. Prior to the treatment, 59 out of 68 participants were classified as Type D personality. At one month, only 9 participants met the score for this diagnosis.

The implications of this study are profound. It overturns the dogma that personality types are stable over a lifetime and cannot be modified. The blood pressure response at one month after treatment was about as big as doctors would expect from starting drug treatment for hypertension.

The persistent reduction in blood pressure and cortisol levels shows that chronic stress is diminished and long-term health risks are reduced – from just one hour of simple and gentle treatment.

What are Havening Techniques?
Havening, which means ‘to bring someone to a place of safety’, is a novel form of guided self-healing built on a detailed understanding of the molecular biology of trauma.

Dr Ronald Ruden, a physician and PhD researcher in the USA, has doggedly pursued the question of what happens in the brain during traumatic experiences and how that ‘hard-wired’ stress response might be reversed.

Pulling together many strands of research, he showed that traumatic memories are encoded in a part of the brain called the Amygdala, when new receptors are inserted in nerve junctions, linking together the sensory, emotional, physical and stress components of the trauma.

In a leap of intuition, he guessed that trauma might be reversed if the nerve circuits holding the trauma were first activated and then feelings of deep safety and connection were created in the interaction between client and practitioner.

In practice, the client is asked to briefly recall the trauma and notice the feelings of distress, then soothing touch is applied to the upper arms, palms and the face. These parts of the body have specialised nerves that register soothing touch and within half a minute the client’s brain is flooded with low-frequency brain waves, called Delta Waves.

The Delta waves cause a slow oscillation of calcium ion concentration inside the nerve cells encoding the trauma, which activates enzymes that rapidly remove receptors from the nerve junction. This deletes the encoding of the trauma so that the emotional and stress responses are abolished.

Practitioners report that a severely traumatic memory can be completely erased in about twenty minutes, an astonishing experience for the client.

While there are many anecdotal reports of the remarkable potential of Havening Techniques, this is the first rigorous scientific study to confirm the impact on both clinic outcomes and measures of chronic stress.

To learn more, see Havening.org

Author Robin Youngson is an award-winning doctor, trauma therapist, and life coach who helps people heal their past and attain their greatest potential. A Certified Havening Techniques Practitioner and Trainer, and author of ‘Time to Heal’, he shares the astonishing new science of self-healing at neuroscienceofhealing.com

“I don’t feel as sick as I did last time.”

I was so taken aback by my client’s words that for a moment I was speechless.

“Sick?! It never occurred to me that you were sick!” I responded with surprise.

When I first met this client in my trauma clinic, some time ago, she was recently discharged from a mental hospital with a diagnosis of severe depression. She had responded rapidly to the Havening Techniques® we used to delete the emotional trauma underlying her depression. She found joy and meaning in her life again and started a new job.

Now she presented in acute distress, struggling with an event that had left her feeling devastated, depressed and self-blaming.

In my practice, I regard anxiety or depression as a symptom, not a diagnosis. Indeed, I never give a client a mental health diagnosis other than having emotional trauma. Emotional trauma is ‘hard-wired’ (encoded) in the brain to cause the painful emotional reactions and stress responses, which lead to the life problems experienced by my clients.

On this occasion, my client was devastated by the sudden break-up of an intense love affair. In the middle of a conversation about their future plans, her partner had suddenly stated, “I can’t do this any more!” and had abruptly broken off the relationship.

My client was heart-broken, depressed and full of self-blame. The break-up must be her fault, she had concluded, because she believed she was worthless and not good enough. The painful rejection had pushed her into a big dark hole and she felt trapped and hopeless, an understandable reaction to a major life loss.

In endeavouring to give her some encouragement, I reminded her of the profoundly depressed state she presented to me when we first met, and how quickly she had responded to Havening. That’s when she said, “I’m not as sick as I was last time.“

When I asked her to elaborate on her thoughts, she confessed to me that she believed that she was ‘brain damaged‘ as a result of repeated cycles of mania and depression. Her said her brain wasn’t functioning properly, she had trouble remembering things, and as a result her life seemed doomed.

I hastened to reassure her that her temporary mental incapacity was the result of severe stress, a reaction that I see often. Science tells us that acute stress causes parts of the brain cortex to go ‘off-line’ as we fall back into primitive survival mode. I also knew that my client was, in fact, a highly qualified professional, easily able to do complex work.

When I asked about the basis of her belief that she was ‘sick‘ and ‘brain damaged‘ she then told me about the most devastating event in her life: a psychiatric consultation twenty years ago. The doctor told her that she had ‘manic-depression’ (now usually know as bipolar disorder).

My client was absolutely devastated by this diagnosis. She had previously met several people with manic-depression and they all had chaotic and out-of-control lives. This was the future she now saw for herself.

To add to her devastation, she was advised that her condition would make her incapable of looking after children and being a mother. As a young woman, she had dreamed of having a family and now her hopes and desires were dashed on the rocks of a medical diagnosis.

I listened to this story with horror. My client’s life had been blighted by a medical diagnosis, which was laid on her like a curse. Yet I knew her as a highly functioning and deeply caring individual with advanced professional qualifications and many gifts to offer the world.

Ironically, of many the traumas that had affected her life and made her prone to depression and anxiety, one of the worst traumas was her experience of the psychiatrist. My client’s belief in her ‘sickness‘ and ‘brain damage‘ all stemmed from this diagnosis.

Fortunately, with Havening we were able to quickly erase the traumatic memory of her psychiatric consultation. When that process was complete, she was able to think back to that event with no distress, almost as if it had happened to someone else.

The change in my client was striking. We ended the session with an affirmation, “I am ready to offer my gifts to the world,” which she stated with conviction and positive energy. After twenty years, the curse of a diagnosis was lifted.

When she returned for the next session, she was still struggling with negative thoughts and feelings but a whole new door had opened up to reveal the earlier life causes of both her depression and ‘mania’. Until we lifted the curse of the diagnosis, we had never been able to identify the fundamental causes of her mental health problems.

Now she gained an important new insight: how the recent break-up with her partner was actually re-triggering the trauma of early life events and her dysfunctional relationship with her father.

As we talked more, it became apparent that her ‘mania’ represented a rebellious part of her breaking free of a controlling relationship. Her depression was understandable in terms of never feeling she was good enough and her chronic habit of self-blame.

I’ve seen these kinds of patterns before. Another client, diagnosed with manic-depression, responded really well to Havening when we separately addressed the trauma that drove both his mania and his depression. We examined carefully what was happening in his thoughts and emotions at the beginning of each cycle and used those clues to identify and then delete the relevant trauma.

His extreme energy and obsessive commitment to a new project – that became mania – were driven by a personal mantra: “I’ll show you!” In response to his severe childhood violence and trauma he had created an incredibly powerful motivation to prove his worth, which was encapsulated in these words.

As we healed the trauma and built his self-worth, the excessive need to prove himself softened. He became more self-aware, he could throttle back his energy and stop himself becoming manic.

In the same way, we worked on the root causes of his depression and negative thinking. Now when he feels discouraged or down, the feeling lasts only a few hours or days and he can pull himself out of the trap of negative thoughts and feelings.

Both these clients are complex. In addition to serious childhood trauma, their adult lives have been blighted by chronic mental health issues. The gentle unpicking and healing of the trauma is a prolonged process but, week by week, I get to celebrate the emergence of new resilience and wellbeing in my clients. The ultimate goal is cure and I have deep faith that my clients can leave their troubled past behind.

Doubting the worth of psychiatric diagnosis

I am not the only one to question the validity of psychiatric diagnoses. A recent study, published in Psychiatry Research, has concluded that ‘psychiatric diagnoses are scientifically worthless as tools to identify discrete mental health disorders.’

The authors report:

• Psychiatric diagnoses all use different decision-making rules
• There is a huge amount of overlap in symptoms between diagnoses
• Almost all diagnoses mask the role of trauma and adverse events
• Diagnoses tell us little about the individual patient and what treatment they need

The authors conclude that diagnostic labelling represents ‘a disingenuous categorical system‘.

Little will change in mental health care until we abandon the current diagnostic criteria. However, in many countries including the USA, clinicians can’t claim a fee for their patient care unless they attach a diagnostic code from the widely used Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).

Yet these labels can do immense harm to patients and so often lead to harmful treatments and life-long stigma. Using drugs to treat anxiety or depression is at best treating symptoms, not causes. It’s time we adopted a trauma-informed approach to mental health, which is infinitely more promising.

All human beings have amazing self-healing power and our brains are designed to rapidly heal trauma. Shouldn’t this be the basis of our approach to mental illness?

If you are curious to learn more about the amazing science of self-healing and the power of Havening Techniques, read my new book ‘TIME TO HEAL‘. It’s available on Amazon and for instant download from my website.

The author of this article, Dr Robin Youngson, is a Certified Havening Practitioner and Trainer. Havening Techniques were developed by Dr Ronald Ruden. For more information see Havening.org

Chapter One:

‘Choosing a better life’

When life is just an ongoing struggle, you can feel trapped with no space to make choices. Being stuck in chronic negative emotions such as anxiety, depression, hurt, or anger means that you are in the grip of emotional brain programming from the past that takes away your power.

Worse still, when you are anxious and stressed, your sensory systems switch into a survival mode where the sole focus of your nervous system is potential risk. Your brain no longer perceives opportunities and doesn’t notice the good things in life.

The chronic stress takes a toll on your physical health. You feel exhausted, you don’t sleep well, your body aches. Your digestion plays up, you get sick more often, and you become prone to addictions which add to the toll on your health.

I can show you how to get out of this trap. Your negative emotions are largely the result of your past emotional trauma. This book shares an amazing new scientific discovery: that you have a mechanism in the brain that can rapidly delete traumatic events from your memory, thus freeing you from the past.

Some of my clients are so haunted by one traumatic event – such as a violent attack or rape – that they never feel safe. Yet fifteen minutes of guided self-healing can literally erase the trauma from their brain so they are freed from their past. It’s as if the terrible event never happened. The fear is gone.

I have seen clients cured of severe anxiety disorders and PTSD. Depression can be banished when the underlying trauma is identified and healed. Broken relationships are healed when the inbuilt fears of abandonment or betrayal are erased.

Sometimes chronic pain and physical illness is the direct consequence of emotional trauma. Heal the trauma and the pain and illness vanish.

When your trauma is healed, you no longer experience the emotional reactions and stress responses that trap you in life struggles. The many situations and people that used to trigger your anxiety, anger or hurt no longer have any power over you. You can step forward calmly and confidently.

Suddenly you have power to make choices again. Imagine how liberating that would be!

Life possibilities open up. You see things more clearly. You perceive many opportunities that were hidden before. You gain the power to make plans and decisions. You realize how much of the world you saw was created by your own attitudes and beliefs. Now the world looks very different.

Do you really want your power back? Are you ready to be responsible for your life? This is the first choice that you have to make. It’s a major life decision. If you are ready, I’m here for you.

This book is for those who say, ‘I choose a better me!’

Why I love this work so much

Many of my clients really struggle in life, and not through lack of trying to get their lives back on track. I see clients like you who invest in their health, who eat good food, exercise regularly, go to yoga classes, they have good friends – but somehow their struggles go on. Many have sought counseling or therapy, often without much relief.

Imagine what a pleasure it is to give people hope again: to show how this new science explains your life difficulties, to let you know it’s not your fault, to describe how your brain can rapidly heal trauma, and then to demonstrate your self-healing capacity.

Most of my clients are astonished by the end of their first session in my clinic. A memory that haunted them is simply erased. An overwhelming burden of negative emotions is lifted. Their phobia is cured.

Of course, many clients have layers of trauma, starting early in life. So we can begin a patient and gentle process to heal that trauma, layer by layer, over a number of sessions. My clients see the changes happening in their lives; they notice their anxiety reducing, their hurt easing, their anger abating.

For clients in life crisis, I offer one-on-one healing retreats. In one week, you can completely change the trajectory of your life. What would that be worth? Don’t you owe it to yourself?

As I explore in the next chapter, ‘It’s not your fault’, so many of your life difficulties are the result of emotional programming in your brain. You are literally hard-wired to react in certain ways. The hard-wiring doesn’t just affect your emotions, it also controls many of your body reactions, motivations and behaviours.

Science can now tell us exactly how this programming works in the brain – and why – and how we can heal ourselves to erase these unhelpful ‘programs’ that drive our life. This is the understanding that underpins my healing practice.

I see my clients leaving their past behind and floating free to shine as the very best version of themselves. They are liberated and energized to offer their gifts, and to find renewed meaning and purpose in life.

The ripple effects are enormous. They literally transform the relationships around them. They bring out the best in others, create loving relationships, and inspire others to change.

So this decision is not just for you. It’s also making a commitment to create a more beautiful world around you. This may be the greatest gift you ever give your loved ones.

Are you ready to fulfill your life purpose? Do you want to be free? It’s time to heal.

If you want to read more, you can purchase and download the full book here

Did you know about the E-spot?

E is for Empathy. The science behind the significance and function of this spot is fascinating.

When we reach out to comfort a friend, our instinct is to touch the upper arm near the shoulder and maybe give a little downwards stroke. This touch conveys empathy and support.

Recent research shows that this form of touch is hard-wired into our nervous system to affect the emotional systems in our brain – it’s referred to as ‘affective touch’.

Our skin contains specialised receptors and nerves that transmit different kinds of sensation – light touch, pressure, itch, hot and cold sensations, and pain signals. The new research shows that we all have specialised receptors and nerves in the skin that respond only to a soothing stroke or massage, which signal pleasure and comfort. These nerves respond most to a stroke that moves about 3 to 5cm per second and is temperature neutral – neither hot or cold. So when we are stroked by a hand in a soothing way – not too hard or fast – we get the maximum positive signal into the emotional circuits of our brain.

This biological function is seen in all mammals, it’s part of the essential bonding and attachment necessary for healthy brain development. So both humans and animals comfort their young with stroking and licking.

None of this seems surprising but the story gets much more intriguing when we consider recent developments in a novel form of psycho-sensory therapy called Havening Techniques®. This is a powerful new therapy for emotional trauma, anxiety, PTSD and phobias, based on a detailed neuroscientific understanding of how trauma gets encoded in the brain, and how it can be rapidly and permanently erased. Havening Touch involves soothing stroking to the upper arm – on the E-spot – and this causes a brain reaction that can cure trauma.

When we have a traumatic experience, new nerve connections are made in a part of the brain called the Amygdala. It’s like we create a multimedia web page of the traumatic event – all the sights, sounds, smells, emotions and body reactions get encoded in a form that can be rapidly triggered again. So, for example, one of my clients was involved in a serious car crash. Ten years later, she is still fearful when driving and she startles with sudden noises. The traumatic memory of the car crash is being triggered by sensory information – such as the experience of being in a moving car.

The developer of Havening Touch, Dr Ronald Ruden, has spent many years elucidating the molecular mechanisms of traumatic encoding, and how it can be cured. His breakthrough discovery was that trauma can be cured when the brain generates high levels of Delta Waves, a low frequency brain wave typically only seen during deep sleep. If a traumatic memory is activated and then Delta Waves are generated, the nerve connections that encode the trauma are deleted.

We now know the precise molecular mechanism for these changes, including the removal of receptors from the nerve membrane. In clinical practice we see the miraculous effects of this reaction when a traumatic memory and a phobia can sometimes be completely cured in five to ten minutes.

One of the most effective ways to generate high levels of Delta Waves is to stroke the upper arm – the E-spot – in a soothing way. The direction of the stroke matters for therapeutic effect, it’s always a downward stroke. Stroking of the head and face is also effective in creating Delta Waves.

I investigated this phenomenon by purchasing a neuro-feedback monitor called FocusBand. This device measures brainwaves from electrodes on your forehead and displays the signals on an app on your iPhone. As a doctor, I was completely astonished to see a dramatic increase in the amplitude of Delta Waves within twenty seconds of beginning the Havening touch to my face and upper arms.

Delta Waves turn out to be a pretty interesting phenomenon when you consider their significance in developmental and healing functions. Deep sleep – also known as ‘slow wave sleep’ – is the only time, as adults, that we normally have high levels of Delta Waves. Deep sleep has functions of replenishment, restoration and healing.

Babies and small children have a predominance of Delta Waves in their brains and, as our brains develop, we shift to higher frequencies. The early years of life are when we form our core beliefs and also our attachment style. Thus a loving upbringing gives us a secure attachment style and we have ease and confidence in our relationships. But if we don’t receive enough touch, comfort and love in our early years, we can develop an avoidant attachment style and have great difficulty in relationships.

Curiously, the Delta Waves we have during deep sleep also seem to play a part in process and consolidating the memories and meanings of our everyday life. If deep sleep is disrupted, our learning is impaired.

So here we have a fascinating series of connections to the E-spot: empathy, bonding, emotional support, relief of anxiety and trauma, and the generation of our core beliefs that we are worthy and loved. Maybe the E-spot is more important than the G-spot in human survival?

Next time you reach out to comfort a friend, just think about the power of your touch.

The author, Dr Robin Youngson, is a Certified Havening Techniques® Practitioner.

The neuroscience of healing

My client told a harrowing story. Many years ago he was critically injured in a road accident. Lying all alone, he was trapped under the wreckage with multiple spinal, limb and head injuries. He believed he was going to die. Fourteen years later he is still trapped in the past, with daily flashbacks, paralysing stress and blinding headaches.

The entire therapy session took only thirty-five minutes, including the time taken to meet my client and hear his story. At the end of the session, the traumatic memory of the accident was erased, and he was unable to register any distress when asked to recall that day. All he could remember was the rescue.

While his relief from trauma is remarkable, the revelation for me was learning the neuroscience of the Havening Touch ® therapy that I used. Although some of the details are speculative, it’s established that this form of psycho-sensory therapy works via specialised nerve receptors that transduce soothing touch on the skin of the upper arms, face and hands. These signals stimulate high levels of low-frequency brain waves (Delta waves), which can reverse the process of traumatic encoding in the amygdala. The neural connections that encode the trauma are permanently and swiftly erased [1]. When the client is asked to recall the event, the memory now seems distant and devoid of emotional content.

The power of this process is startling for both client and therapist and it leads to a giddy sense of relief and sometimes laughter. Many clients with life-long phobias have been cured in a single session of therapy. Those with a complex history of trauma require an iterative process of uncovering and treating different traumas and building emotional resilience. In this process, chronic physical health problems are often resolved and healed.

It’s not my intention to promote Havening Touch above any other form of therapy and it’s the general principle I want to explore. Learning about the mechanisms of action produced a seismic shift in my worldview about the nature of medicine and how patients recover from illness, regardless of the medicine or therapy used.

In the thirty-eight years I have studied medicine, I have from time to time been astounded by incidences of inexplicable patient healing. I saw a patient severely disabled with a painful frozen shoulder, who had barely moved his arm for four months. After ten minutes of therapy from a renowned Qigong healer, the patient recovered a full range of completely pain-free arm movement. My astonishment was matched by that of the patient, who was himself a doctor. I have also met a number of patient who have survived for years, or even decades, after doctors had diagnosed terminal cancer, for which there was no treatment and no hope.

In our Hearts in Healthcare work with health professionals in many countries, exploring the meaning of compassionate caring, I have heard hundreds of deeply moving and inspiring stories of healing. These experiences gave me a deep, intuitive understanding of healing and how a brief encounter can completely change the trajectory of an illness.

As a doctor and scientist, I simply didn’t know what to do with these inexplicable happenings, some of which verged on miracles. I couldn’t integrate them into my system of medical knowledge. However, learning the neuroscience of one mechanism of rapid healing gave me a scientific understanding of how many other forms of medical treatment might work. The revelation for me was that humans possess a rapid, powerful and inbuilt mechanism for healing both psychological trauma and the resultant disease (dis-ease), chronic pain or physical illness.

Suddenly, the miracles of healing I had witnessed before were no longer miracles. I realised that healing is ordinary. Every person has this capability. But Western medical science has been blind to this possibility. The problem is our basic science, which has reduced our patients to mindless machines. Machines don’t heal themselves but humans do. This formulation of medical science has led healthcare into a deep crisis.

The burden of lifestyle disease means our health is getting worse, not better

Despite our remarkable advances in medical technology we are not getting healthier, as individuals or as a society. According to the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013, less than 1 in 20 people worldwide had no health problems, with a third of the world (2.3 billion people) experiencing more than five ailments [2]. The number of people with several illnesses increased both with age and in absolute terms between 1990 and 2013.

In my hospital clinic, I assess patients who are coming for anaesthesia and surgery. Only a small minority of patients do not already have multiple medical diagnoses and a list of prescription medications.

The focus on disease rather than healing, plus the explosion of expensive new technology, has caused an exponential increase in healthcare costs. Our hospitals are in crisis, trying to respond to ever-increasing numbers of sick patients. Health professionals are overworked, stressed and burning out in alarming numbers.

With this new perspective on the failings of modern medicine and the untapped potential for healing, I now find it extraordinary and perverse that almost all of medical research, medical training and even my own medical practice has been based on a mindless version of science. What exactly do I mean by that?

While most doctors care very much about their patients, their medical practice is actually based on science that specifically excludes the consciousness of their patients, that treats patients as mindless machines. As a consequence, doctors can’t care for the whole conscious person nor do they learn how to help patients heal. They can only respond to a diagnosis with a standardised therapy. For example, hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, asthma, infections, heartburn, depression, and menstrual problems are usually treated with a drug without exploring how and why these disorders arise in the context of the patient’s life.

This limited version of medical science is ill-suited to the management of chronic disease. We now know for a fact that patients’ beliefs about illness [3], the meaning they attach to treatment [4], and how much they trust their doctor [5], profoundly affect treatment outcomes. We also know that a major cause of unhealthy lifestyles, addictions, depression, chronic illness and even cancer, is early life experience and emotional trauma [6]. However, a mindless science ignores these factors and leads doctors to treat symptoms rather than causes, and to miss the opportunity for healing.

Patients’ beliefs radically affect their likelihood of getting sick and how well they recover from illness and injury. This effect is so powerful that it seriously complicates medical research. Researchers don’t know if patients get better because of the medicine being tested, or because the patient believes in the treatment and the doctor.

How do medical researchers solve this problem? They came up with an ingenious solution: double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trials. In this form of medical research, dummy pills are compared with identical pills containing the medicine being tested. It’s called double-blind because neither the doctor nor the patient knows what treatment is being given. This research method removes any influence of the patient’s mind and measures only the physicochemical effect of the therapy.

This mindless science has become the only acceptable way for a medical treatment to be ‘scientifically proven’. Based on this evidence, experts formulate clinical guidelines that tell doctors how they should treat different conditions.

This mindless version of science is the basis of almost all medical training, it determines what does and what doesn’t get published in the medical journals, and informs the treatment guidelines developed by expert panels. Doctors are so indoctrinated in this form of science, they sincerely believe that alternative treatments ‘have no evidence’ and ‘they don’t work’. I held similar views for most of my career. But what if complementary and alternative forms of treatment work precisely because they influence the mind of the patient and elicit a natural healing response?

I’m not being critical of my fellow doctors. Like me, they were trained in hospitals where mindless medicine works extremely well. In an emergency, when the patient is seriously ill or injured, during anaesthesia and surgery, in intensive care, doctors can largely ignore the effects of belief and rush to give life-saving treatment. Modern medicine saves countless lives. Because all doctors train in hospitals – even those destined to become family doctors – this experience creates the foundation of doctors’ lifelong beliefs.

But even in acute hospital settings, research shows that the conscious experience of the patient greatly influences outcomes. As an anesthesiologist, if I am empathetic, kind and supportive to the patient before she goes to the operating room, she will have much less pain and anxiety, will need only half the dose of painkillers, the surgical wound will heal faster, and the patient’s stay in hospital will be shorter [7] [8].

Acute medicine doesn’t work in primary care

The mistake made by doctors is to assume that this mindless medicine is also effective in the treatment and prevention of mental illness, lifestyle disorders, chronic disease, and cancer. However, these conditions are the ones most powerfully affected by the consciousness and beliefs of the patient.

We know for a fact that thoughts and feelings affect gene expression [9] [10] [11] [12]. The patient’s habitual thinking style, attitudes and beliefs powerfully influence the course of disease – for better or worse.

These effects are potentially as powerful as many of the drugs that doctors prescribe. It’s extensively documented that some patients have cured themselves of terminal cancer. Coronary artery disease can be reversed without drugs or surgery [13]. A positive mental attitude is just as effective at preventing influenza in healthy adults as the ‘flu vaccination [14] [15]. Research also shows that a doctor’s kindness, caring and compassion have a major impact on patient outcomes [5].

In the management of chronic disease, treating patients as if they are mindless machines is a catastrophe. We are treating symptoms rather than fundamental causes. Almost every patient ends up on multiple medications, sometimes causing more problems than they help. This love affair with prescription medications is costly. Almost 1.3 million people attended U.S. emergency rooms due to adverse drug effects in 2014 and an estimated $200 billion a year is spent on unnecessary or harmful drug treatment. In elderly patients, more than 20% of emergency hospital admissions are caused by adverse drug effects [16].

The century-old history of medical training

Why are doctors so completely immersed in this mindless version of science? The fact is, major corporations took control of medical research and medical training more than a century ago and pharmaceutical corporations continue that domination of medical science. After all, it’s not in the pharmaceutical industy’s interest for people to know that 80% of chronic disease and 40% of cancer can be prevented or cured without resorting to expensive drug treatment (according to the WHO).

The 1910 Flexner report into medical education in the USA and Canada was sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation [17]. Objective biomedicine became the gold-standard for medical education. The many medical schools that taught natural medicine and homeopathy were closed down. Carnegie and Rockefeller, the two richest industrialists of their age, gave huge research grants to support medical schools that supported the new curriculum. Patented medicines became the mainstay of medical treatment. Pharmaceutical companies have a powerful and corrupting interest in medical training, medical journals, medical text books, key opinion leaders, and ultimately government health policy [18] [19] [20] [ 21] [ 22] [23].

In mindless medicine, it makes sense to focus on efficiency, productivity and throughput. Our clinics and hospitals have been industrialised – designed to maximise procedures, prescriptions and profits. When the typical family doctor works in a system that only offers ten-minute appointments, mindless medicine is reinforced. The end result is not a healthcare system, it’s a highly expensive, medicated-sickness system.

The general public knows that many complementary and alternative therapies do in fact work. The reason they work is that practitioners treat the whole person. The therapies are infused with meaning and they elicit the patient’s natural healing response. But tested by the standards of mindless medicine, they are dismissed as useless treatments with no scientific validity.

The medical system is not supportive of alternative viewpoints and there are powerful interests vested in maintaining the biomedical model. As a doctor treating physical illness, if I talk about ‘healing’ my patients or if I practice any form of therapy based on conscious science – as opposed to mindless science – I risk being called a quack and being persecuted for ‘unprofessional’ practice. Medical journals routinely reject papers that do not conform to mindless biomedicine.

Technology is not the only solution to the healthcare crisis

Rapid advances in the technology for sequencing the human genome have excited the imagination of biomedical scientists. The much-hyped ‘Personalised Medicine’ revolution is defined by the National Cancer Institute as, ‘A form of medicine that uses information about a person’s genes, proteins, and environment to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease.” But to me it seems ironic that Personalised Medicine treats everything except the actual person, reducing the characterisation of patients to a series of numbers on lab tests.

Instead of rushing to sequence every patients’ genome – a throwback to genetic determinism – we should be studying how life experiences and beliefs change gene expression. For instance, the most famous of cancer genes – BRCA1 and BRCA2 – which today carry an 80% lifetime chance of breast or ovarian cancer, are highly variable in expression. In the 1920’s the exact same genetic mutation carried only a 20% lifetime risk of cancer [24]. Why? We don’t know the answer because there’s no profit in studying how people stay well but there’s a potential fortune in selling genetic screening tests to everyone.

Another excitement in medical science is the discovery that stimulation of the vagus nerve can have a major influence on inflammatory processes and gut-brain chemistry, helping conditions as diverse as rheumatoid arthritis, epilepsy and depression [25]. Technology companies have rushed to invest in the development of implantable vagus nerve stimulators but the cost of the implant and surgery is up to $30,000 [26]. However, the vagus nerve is one of the major pathways in natural healing responses and similar results can be achieved by teaching the patient yoga or mindfulness meditation [27].

Thus, we have a choice: investing in expensive new technology or funding research in the science of healing. I believe the next great revolution in healthcare will not be amazing new technology but a revolution in medical science. It will be a science of caring for people, not just treating disease. It will be the science of health, wellbeing, resilience and healing.

This science will ask why some people can smoke cigarettes all their life and not get ill. It will study why some patients can cure themselves of cancer or chronic disease. It will research why many people don’t get arthritis, or depression or hypertension. And it will deeply inform the development of a healing relationship between a doctor and a patient. It will acknowledge that the natural human capacity is to remain disease-free and vigorous into advanced age with minimal medical treatment, if only we lead healthy lives.

The American Heart Association just reported a study showing that the average life span of men and women can be increased twelve and fourteen years, respectively, with the adoption of five simple habits: not smoking, eating a healthier diet, exercising regularly, keeping a healthy bodyweight, and moderate alcohol consumption [28].

Who maintains healthy lifestyle habits? People who are happy and contented. Who does not? The unhappy, the depressed, the anxious and the stressed. Healthy bodies begin with healthy minds. But social isolation, loneliness, and mental health issues dramatically increase mortality rates and shorten the lifespan [29].

In short, we need a new science of healing to complement our science of sickness and disease. A science of healing that is rigorous, carefully researched, evidence-based, peer-reviewed and which starts with the assumption that each person is a conscious being, not a mindless machine.

The pioneers in healing science are offering us a tantalising glimpse of future possibilities: That a brief family intervention for children at age eleven can reduce inflammatory markers and halve the average alcohol consumption at age nineteen [30]. That emotional trauma, hard-wired into the nervous system, can rapidly and permanently be erased by eliciting innate healing mechanisms [31]. That programs in mind-body medicine can improve clinical outcomes and change the expression of more than a thousand genes concerned with cell reproduction, immune function and stress response [10]. That subjects enrolling in volunteer programs have a 40% less chance of developing hypertension [32] and can reverse age-related declines in cognitive and memory function [33].

We need new institutions

To succeed in this venture of developing a whole new science of healing we need independent new institutions, which are funded to develop this science for the benefit of humanity, not in the pursuit of profit. These institutions need to embody health and wellbeing in every aspect of their physical design and organisational culture.

These institutions will not patent their discoveries, they will freely share all advances in science and technology. They will collaborate, not compete. And these institutions will develop schools of healing science to train new generations of health professionals.

It’s a mistake to conceive of health as an individual phenomenon. This individualistic science is a characteristic of Western thinking, which is not conceived in many other cultures. For instance, among the Maori people of New Zealand, emotional wellbeing and health is a concept that arises within the family grouping (‘whanau’), not individuals. This viewpoint is supported by the science of social network analysis, which shows that health conditions such as obesity and depression are highly contagious, they occur in clusters governed by social relationships [34] [35] [36].

The largest, longitudinal study of health determinants and outcomes – the famous Harvard Study – has been running for nearly eighty years. The Harvard researchers report that the single most powerful determinant of a long and happy life is not the genes we inherit, nor the level of our cholesterol, but the quality of our social relationships. It is impossible to separate individual health and wellbeing from the health of our communities.

However, we live in a time when the greatest worldwide health burden is depression, arising in a society where individualism, materialism, greed, inequality and violence are poisoning our communities. It’s an urgent matter to research how we heal unhappy and divided communities and develop a science of collective flourishing.

The final Western delusion is that man is separate from nature, that we can endlessly exploit and damage our natural environment, in the pursuit of economic growth, without profoundly compromising our human health. Study of ecology has much to teach us about human health and wellbeing, as evidenced by the explosion of knowledge about the human microbiome. Just as humans have mechanisms for healing, so do natural ecosystems. An integrated science may lead us to many new important insights.

Furthermore, we cannot hope to address issues such as climate change without this shift in consciousness. The same mindset that creates a reductionist, mindless form of medicine also allows us to believe that we are separate from nature.

An integrated science recognises that human healing depends on the healing of our ecosystems and our communities. The wisdom-holders in this deep science of the interconnections between human health, ecological health, and the health of communities are the indigenous peoples of the world. Indeed, one native healthcare system in Alaska – Southcentral Foundation Nuka System of Care – is deemed to be the leading example of healthcare redesign in the USA, and perhaps the world.

Who gave this opinion? Dr Don Berwick, Former Administrator for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and President Emeritus of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). At Southcentral, the holistic approach to community healthcare reduced ER visits by 40% and hospital admissions by 37% between the years 2000 and 2017, achieving at the same time exemplary results in patient outcomes, patient satisfaction, and employee satisfaction.

Our new Institutes of Healing Science will flourish when they build deep collaboration between the pioneers in human healing, ecological healing and community healing, and the holders of traditional wisdom. To this we must add an economics that supports health, rather than endless consumption and environmental destruction. A wonderful, holistic framework is captured in the idea of Doughnut Economics put forward by Oxford economist, Kate Raworth.

A revolution

It’s time for the revolution. Everybody knows that the current system of healthcare is unsustainable, and in great peril. We need to act urgently to save our hospitals for the important care of the acutely ill and injured. They are already in crisis, overwhelmed with the burden of treating the chronically sick.

The only answer is to urgently invest in a new science of healing, to complement the advances in biomedicine. We need to expand the model of medical training, and to turn our healthcare system into a health system rather than a sickness system.

How do we start? I can think of no better way than an international gathering of the leading scientists and traditional wisdom holders in an interdisciplinary exploration of the science of healing. Out of this gathering will arise the shared commitment to create the new Institutes of Healing Science, embodying a new set of values and ways of working together.

Now I need your help. I’m reaching out across my international networks to identify all the most important pioneers in healing science – in human healing, ecological healing and restoration, and community healing. Please share with me your knowledge and ideas. Name the pioneers. You can post comments below or you can reach me at robin@heartsinhealthcare.com.

Let’s make this happen.

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References

[1] Ruden, R., A., Harnessing Synaptic Plasticity to Treat the Consequences of Emotional Traumatization by Amygdala Depotentiation Techniques: An Electrochemical Model. 2016. https://havening.org//media/articles/04c490_462ebbeae12a42d697af1401e1362f161.pdf

[2] Global Burden of Disease Study, C., Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 301 acute and chronic diseases and injuries in 188 countries, 1990-2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. Lancet, 2015. 386(9995): p. 743-800.

[3] Seligman, M.E.P., Positive Health. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 2008. 57: p. 3-18.

[4] Moerman, D.E. and W.B. Jonas, Deconstructing the Placebo Effect and Finding the Meaning Response. Annals of Internal Medicine, 2002. 136(6): p. 471-476.

[5] Kelley, J.M., et al., The influence of the patient-clinician relationship on healthcare outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. PLoS One, 2014. 9(4): p. e94207.

[6] Gilbert, L.K., et al., Childhood adversity and adult chronic disease: an update from ten states and the District of Columbia, 2010. Am J Prev Med, 2015. 48(3): p. 345-9.

[7] Egbert, L.D., et al., Reduction of Postoperative Pain by Encouragement and Instruction of Patients. A Study of Doctor-Patient Rapport. The New England Journal of Medicine, 1964. 270: p. 825-7.

[8] Pereira, L., M. Figueiredo-Braga, and I.P. Carvalho, Preoperative anxiety in ambulatory surgery: The impact of an empathic patient-centered approach on psychological and clinical outcomes. Patient Educ Couns, 2016. 99(5): p. 733-8.

[9] Bhasin, M.K., et al., Specific Transcriptome Changes Associated with Blood Pressure Reduction in Hypertensive Patients After Relaxation Response Training. J Altern Complement Med, 2018.

[10] Kuo, B., et al., Genomic and clinical effects associated with a relaxation response mind-body intervention in patients with irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. PLoS One, 2015. 10(4): p. e0123861.

[11] Fredrickson, B.L., et al., A functional genomic perspective on human well-being. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 2013. 110(33): p. 13684-9.

[12] Perroud, N., et al., Response to psychotherapy in borderline personality disorder and methylation status of the BDNF gene. Transl Psychiatry, 2013. 3: p. e207.

[13] Gould, K.L., et al., Improved stenosis geometry by quantitative coronary arteriography after vigorous risk factor modification. The American journal of cardiology, 1992. 69(9): p. 845-53.

[14] Cohen, S., et al., Positive emotional style predicts resistance to illness after experimental exposure to rhinovirus or influenza a virus. Psychosomatic medicine, 2006. 68(6): p. 809-15.

[15] Jackson, L.A., et al., Safety, efficacy, and immunogenicity of an inactivated influenza vaccine in healthy adults: a randomized, placebo-controlled trial over two influenza seasons. BMC Infect Dis, 2010. 10: p. 71.

[16] Laatikainen, O., et al., Hospitalizations Due to Adverse Drug Events in the Elderly-A Retrospective Register Study. Front Pharmacol, 2016. 7: p. 358.

[17] Stahnisch, F.W. and M. Verhoef, The flexner report of 1910 and its impact on complementary and alternative medicine and psychiatry in north america in the 20th century. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med, 2012. 2012: p. 647896.

[18] Glauser, W., Pharma influence widespread at medical schools: study. CMAJ, 2013. 185(13): p. 1121-2.

[19] Piper, B.J., et al., Undisclosed conflicts of interest among biomedical textbook authors. AJOB Empir Bioeth, 2018: p. 1-10.

[20] Liu, J.J., et al., Payments by US pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to US medical journal editors: retrospective observational study. BMJ, 2017. 359: p. j4619.

[21] Smith, R., P.C. Gotzsche, and T. Groves, Should journals stop publishing research funded by the drug industry? BMJ, 2014. 348: p. g171.

[22] deShazo, R., et al., Backstories on the U.S. Opioid Epidemic Good Intentions Gone Bad, an Industry Gone Rogue and Watch Dogs Gone to Sleep. Am J Med, 2018.

[23] Sismondo, S., Key opinion leaders and the corruption of medical knowledge: what the Sunshine Act will and won’t cast light on. J Law Med Ethics, 2013. 41(3): p. 635-43.

[24] Tryggvadottir, L., et al., Population-based study of changing breast cancer risk in Icelandic BRCA2 mutation carriers, 1920-2000. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2006. 98(2): p. 116-22.

[25] Bonaz, B., V. Sinniger, and S. Pellissier, Vagus nerve stimulation: a new promising therapeutic tool in inflammatory bowel disease. J Intern Med, 2017. 282(1): p. 46-63.

[26] Ben-Menachem, E., et al., Surgically implanted and non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation: a review of efficacy, safety and tolerability. Eur J Neurol, 2015. 22(9): p. 1260-8.

[27] Breit, S., et al., Vagus Nerve as Modulator of the Brain-Gut Axis in Psychiatric and Inflammatory Disorders. Front Psychiatry, 2018. 9: p. 44.

[28] Li, Y., et al., Impact of Healthy Lifestyle Factors on Life Expectancies in the US Population. Circulation, 2018.

[29] Erlangsen, A., et al., Cause-specific life-years lost in people with mental disorders: a nationwide, register-based cohort study. Lancet Psychiatry, 2017. 4(12): p. 937-945.

[30] Miller, G.E., et al., A family-oriented psychosocial intervention reduces inflammation in low-SES African American youth. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 2014. 111(31): p. 11287-92.

[31] Sebastian, B. and J. Nelms, The Effectiveness of Emotional Freedom Techniques in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Meta-Analysis. Explore (NY), 2017. 13(1): p. 16-25.

[32] Sneed, R.S. and S. Cohen, A prospective study of volunteerism and hypertension risk in older adults. Psychol Aging, 2013. 28(2): p. 578-86.

[33] Carlson, M.C., et al., Impact of the Baltimore Experience Corps Trial on cortical and hippocampal volumes. Alzheimers Dement, 2015. 11(11): p. 1340-8.

[34] Rosenquist, J.N., J.H. Fowler, and N.A. Christakis, Social network determinants of depression. Mol Psychiatry, 2011. 16(3): p. 273-81.

[35] Christakis, N.A. and J.H. Fowler, The collective dynamics of smoking in a large social network. N Engl J Med, 2008. 358(21): p. 2249-58.

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“You shouldn’t use the term ‘healer’ – it has negative connotations.” The peer review of my article about the role of compassion in healthcare was blunt. Although my article was commissioned by the editors of a prestigious medical journal, following peer review it was rejected. I took it personally.

I chose a career in medicine because I cared. I wanted to offer my care, compassion and healing to those who were suffering. This most profound part of my identity and purpose has been denied and vilified in a medical culture that values detachment and objectivity more than human connection.

What comes to mind when we talk of healers? For most of my career, I imagined a mysterious alternative practitioner offering miracle cures, without scientific foundation. In short, a quack. Such was my indoctrination in biomedicine and a narrow definition of medical science that eliminates any effect of healing relationships.

How was the notion of healing so debased, so quickly dismissed as ‘non-scientific’?

I now see compassion and healing as two sides of the same coin. Compassion is defined as ‘the ability to understand suffering, and a motivation to address it‘. Healing is defined as ‘transcending suffering‘. So when we step into the role of compassionate caring, we become healers but we’re not allowed to use the word.

Healing is not equated with cure. Indeed the most profound healing may occur in the face of incurable disease, in the patient finding acceptance, peace and resolution. But science is now on the side of healing, with growing evidence that the quality of relationship between health professional and patient has a profound impact on clinical outcomes.

Patients mostly recover from illness, trauma and surgery because of their innate healing powers. When we care for the whole person, instead of fighting the disease, we support that natural healing process.

Its not only the profession of medicine that quashes our idea of being a healer. Jill Maben, a nurse academic in London, researched the fate of new nurse graduates working in the NHS. They graduated with high ideals of compassionate, whole person care but within two years their ideals were ‘compromised and crushed’.

This disconnection between professional ideals and the prevalent culture of medicine is a significant cause of burnout. In our travels around the world, we have seen health professional weep at the tragedy of their caring identity denied, and also weep for joy in remembering rare instances of extraordinary healing connection. What’s the cost of this disconnection? Horrifying rates of burnout among health professionals, who suffer emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and a complete loss of job satisfaction.

What’s at stake? The difference between a healing approach and a disease-centred approach is stark.

Consider the 80% of patients who present to their family doctor with anxiety, depression, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, reflux, addictions, and chronic pain. When we dutifully practice ‘evidence-based medicine’ we write a drug prescription for almost every patient. We are treating the symptoms, not the cause. The work is joyless and the demand is relentless.

As a healer, we treat the person, not the disease. We tackle the dis-ease that sits behind so many chronic health issues and poor lifestyle choices. How many people have a well-developed sense of self-worth in our modern society? Very few. Instead, we are collectively burdened with emotional trauma, adverse events in childhood, and societal values at odds with our fundamental human nature. These are the things that healers can help their clients to address: then so many chronic health problems melt away and people are empowered to make healthy choices.

This work is incredibly gratifying, fulfilling and joyful. Instead of relentless demand, overwhelm and stress, we find abundance. Our patients are not a burden of demand, they are the source of healing.

The distance between the everyday experience of most health workers and the joyous possibility of what could be is a tragedy, most especially for idealistic young health professionals who become disillusioned and cynical.

I did not realise how much the pain of denial hurt me until I found a healing practice outside of my hospital medical role. Healing work is joyous. While I bring a deep healing intention and compassionate presence to my clients, I perceive that the healing is something that arises in the client, not something I do to the client. I let go of attachment to outcomes, while witnessing miraculous changes in the lives of the people I serve. A day of healing work leaves me filled with love, awe and joy – not stressed and exhausted.

Yes, I find opportunities for healing in my hospital practice and I know that my presence sometimes make a huge difference to patients. I also know that when I bring a healing intention to my clinical tasks, I make better judgments and apply my technical knowledge and skills more effectively.

But much of my clinical work is soulless and I worry that it may be doing more harm than good. Around 80% of the conditions we treat in hospital are preventable. What if we brought healing to the lives of patients instead of expensive and sometimes harmful medical treatment?

So I think it’s time we reclaimed our deepest identity. I want to be a doctor AND and healer. I want the word healer to represent the best in us, not to be dismissed as quackery.

As a nurse, a therapist, a midwife, a dentist, a social worker – are you ready to reclaim your deepest identity and purpose? Will you stand with me? How much longer will we tolerate a healthcare system that steals our deepest identity, our purpose and our joy?

Times are changing. When I began campaigning fifteen years ago for humane and compassionate healthcare, the word ‘compassion’ was absent in the entire medical literature. It took courage to stand on the stage and defy medical norms and to talk about compassion and caring. Now its OK to talk about being a compassionate doctor.

Even my own profession of anesthesiology and intensive care – the pinnacle of technical medicine – is now openly talking about the importance of compassion, not only for patients but for our trainees.

Now is the time for us to be courageous in claiming our identity as healers. If we stand together, we can no longer be denied.