Tapping the Soul's Healing Potential
The integration of various spiritual practices and beliefs into alternative medicine has spurred a number of physicians to investigate these phenomena. Carlos Warter, M.D., Ph.D., a psychiatrist by training,with international education which includes Harvard, among others has migrated through many spiritual and healing traditions, including Sufism, Buddhism, Kabalah and Native American (North and South) practices, and has determined that healing, in any tradition, can be accomplished by reestablishing individual connection with the soul, the self or animus, that is the center of wellness. His attempt to increase awareness of this approach to medicine has added a unique and important dimension to the integration of spiritually based medicine into mainstream medical practice. To understand how Dr. Warter situates himself as part of the movement toward spiritually based alternative medical therapies, Currently Dr. Warter is in private practice in psychiatry in Kahala and Kailua, Oahu Hawaii, Clinical Faculty at UH JABSON School of Medicine Department of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, as well lecturing nationally and internationally on Integrative Psychotherapy. An author of 20 books translated in 9 languages he was interviewed by Psycho Anne H. Coulter, Ph.D., Alternative & Complementary Therapies" managing editor, ARC: There are a number of alternative practitioners who have emphasized the importance of spirituality in healing, including Larry Dossey, M.D., Deepak Chopra, M.D., and others. These physicians have published widely and are beginning to be heard within mainstream medicine. Your work has focused on many of the same issues as these practitioners but with a different twist. Could you describe what you perceive to be unique about the work you are doing?
CW: I am but one in a group of many that is making connections between prayer, spirituality, and the sacred with healing. Larry Dossey, for example, is an internist, who over the last several decades has observed the power of prayer. He has noticed and documented that people who believe and practice something of a religious or spiritual nature have experienced accelerated healing or recovery results that are more positive. In his books and his work, he has introduced the notion of nonlocal and local realities-healing that actually does happen, at a distance, from causes that may not be standard or even apparent in a traditional empirical model. Deepak Chopra looks at this phenomenon from the Indian perspective-through transcendental meditation. Using Ayurvedic philosophy, he emphasizes the need for a body/mind integration. Andrew Weil, M.D., on the other hand, has brought the rigor of allopathic research to herbs and substances that are natural in origin.
I see myself as introducing the next level in this shift toward spiritual dimensions to healing, that of body/mind/soul. I think that we have a more constricted- a more contracted-awareness of the reality of soul. A traditional model presents us as physical material entities who, with prayer, or through the experience of higher phenomena, achieve a third dimension, our soul. In my work, alternatively, I am suggesting that we do not have a soul; we are the soul. We are a non-local entity. We are really a consciousness that is taking form in this dimension, but our identity needs to shift from a head identification that is based on the object-referred culture to a subjectivity that goes beyond the mind and goes beyond the body and that is permeating and present throughout all phenomena. Selected Prayer Studies "Self-love is how we attain mastery in healing."
Integrating Soul Awareness into Your Clinical Practice
ARC: What are you doing to inform others of your techniques?
CW: I am working on several different levels to educate and inform clinicians of my work. On one level, I'm doing my own personal work with a corporation called Heartnet. The purpose of this organization is to bring the heart into healing-the heart into medicine. I'm also doing a few retreats, and a few seminars every year, here and outside the country. These seminars are designed to introduce clinicians to the possibilities of spirituality in the context of their own practices. A typical seminar will cover aspects of the following:
(1) practical techniques of spiritual healing and spirituality in
daily patient care;
(2) introduction to beliefs and practices of major religious groups;
(3) techniques for spiritual history taking;
(4) overview of the individual spiritual evolution from birth to death;
(5) alternative medicine and medical practices or beliefs your
patients will never tell you about;
(6) spiritual healing for the terminally ill patient; and
(7) recognizing spirituality in both clinician and patient.
I also attend different conferences of like-minded people to exchange
information about the field.
"Spirituality is not "something out there" separate from reality but is a cornerstone in the notions of reality that patients have."
ARC: But much of this is preaching to the converted or those who are willing to be converted soon. What are you doing to introduce your ideas to the skeptics, the non-believers?
CW: There, my focus is on two things-patient/doctor relationship and reawakening of vocation. These aspects I am introducing in lectures to different medical schools.When I was on the Clinical Faculty at University of Miami Department of Psychiatry my focus was to present Clinical Applications to Spirituality working with residents and medical students. I have spoken on spirituality in a spirituality and healing curriculum, a proposed curriculum, in Arizona, within the context of a hospital and a family practice program. In this program, residents, faculty, and interns will begin to learn that spirituality is not "something out there" separate from reality but is a cornerstone in the notions of reality that patients have.As a matter of fact since the eighties I have been internationally active in the field. In conjunction with the American and British Holistic Medical Association I co sponsored through the World Health Foundation for Developement and Peace the First International Conference of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 1989. The Dalai Lama , Sai Baba and Mother Theresa were the spiritual Patron while we were the Medical. It attracted multitudes in India from Europe , North and South America.
ARC: What is the contribution that integration of mind/body/soul, awareness of soul-your nascent technique of healing-ultimately makes to medicine?
CW: When patients reach the top level of my pyramid of healing, when they have surrendered to self-love, they reach a frequency of coherence that is body, mind, and spirit-life itself. They reach the raw source of all healing. They wake up each morning grateful for life and the restoration of consciousness, and everything else in the day-they wake up well.
Who Do You Think You Are?: The Healing Power of Your Sacred Self
I envision a study plan developed following a formal needs assessment which includes several very specific goals:
1. Establish and maintain a supportive (healing) environment at the
teaching institution that values and nourishes the spirituality of
patients, residents, staff, and faculty. Do this by discussing
spiritual issues openly and without judgment
2. Residents, staff, and faculty will learn about health-related
spiritual beliefs and practices of common faith groups.
3. Develop, evaluate, and teach practical methods for spiritual
assessment, treatment, and referral.
4. Identify research questions regarding clinical issues related to
spirituality and pursue investigations to resolve them.
Dr. Warter introduces the diverse spiritual approaches in our
culture to practicing physicians through the Medical Schools and to
resident physicians through the spirituality curriculum.
In Hawaii specifically respect to cultural and religious differences
is fundamental in the process of medicine , education and healing.
(1) why it is difficult to talk about spirituality; (2) what skills
are lacking to develop this dialogue; (3) how to expand individual
knowledge based on spiritual issues; and (4) how to develop their own
spirituality.