Moore addresses cancer survivors about soul

Thomas Moore opens the the fifth annual Texas Breast Health Summit in Houston on Thursday 29 October. Jody Schoger blogs about the event and Moore’s message to the group of survivors, volunteers and caregivers at Jody’s Livestrong Challenge. According to Schoger, Moore "said that there is something about illness that gives a person's soul, or humanity, a chance to appear. "When we are sick," he said, "something of us is revealed. We can then view our illness as an opportunity, or a rite of passage."

Visual arts play a central role in medical arts

Sara Baker guest blogs about "Returning to the Roots of Western Medicine" on the site Creativity in Healthcare. Baker is a a novelist, short story writer, dramatist, and creator of the writing Woven Dialog Workshops, that help healing at Loran Smith Center for Cancer Support in Athens, Georgia.

Baker writes,

"In ancient Greece, the ill would go to healing temples, or temenos, which means a piece of land cut off or set apart and dedicated for sacred purposes. The temples dedicated to healing were call asclepieia, after the god of healing, Asclepius. The sick would come and bathe in healing waters and prepare themselves for a sacred dream, which they would then report to a priest, who would prescribe a cure. The earliest of these temples date from 420 BC, and both Hippocrates and Galen trained in asclepieia, and Hippocrates traced his ancestry to Asclepius."
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"By providing arts experiences in hospital settings, however, we are providing our own temenos. Here, in the safe space set apart from other concerns, patients are invited to have a healing, although waking, dream. They are able to find the symbolic language to express the crisis they are experiencing, and also, through the process of art, to seek new, imaginative ways to go forward. Thomas Moore, author of Dark Nights of the Soul, talks about the "unfolding self," the part of us that is always evolving and going through deep transformations. "The unfolding self hungers for symbols and language to understand and mark the transitions it is going through." (pg. 35) Through the process of creating art, the patient-artist both creates the distance necessary to reflect on his/her experience and honors the transformative process that is always part of the experience of illness."

She concludes,

"Medicine has always been a blending of art ― intuition, perception, creativity ― and science ― knowledge, skill, experience. While the current structure of our medical system so often mitigates against providing healing environments that address the whole person, my experience has been that all those involved in healthcare want such environments. By incorporating the arts as healing modalities, hospitals are returning to the roots of Western medicine."

Soulful thoughts about Brookline, Massachusetts

A country doctor, practising in the same small town for more than twenty years, blogs about a visit to Brookline and attending Thomas Moore’s summer course on Cape Cod,

"On our early morning dog walks we see residents and medical students hurrying to work with stethoscopes around their necks. There are joggers everywhere. We pass the Lown Cardiovascular Center, named after Dr. Bernard Lown, who pioneered cardioversion for atrial fibrillation. His book The Lost Art of Healing from a dozen years ago is a must-read for doctors, particularly now. My patient and mentor, Clarine, who told me from her sick bed to write, and who gave me Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul, also gave me a copy of The Lost Art of Healing.

Actually, Thomas Moore himself - a humble man - has said that even titles of books you haven’t read yet can be an inspiration. We attended his seminar on Cape Cod last summer, entitled "Care of the Soul". We missed a day of that course because of our dog’s illness. That was the summer our dog died, and what we learned from her passing paralleled what we learned from the course.

Moore continues exploration of soul in medicine

On Tuesday 6 May, Thomas Moore spoke at the William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich, Connecticut during the annual clergy-physician luncheon. On his blog, First Baptist Life, Cal Lord summarizes Moore’s talk. According to Lord, Thomas Moore acknowledged medical and technological advances of the twentieth century while suggesting developments in nurturing the soul of human relationships are as necessary in the twenty-first century. Lord concludes about Moore's presentation, "He definitely gave us all something to think about."

Cardiologist explores spirituality of the heart

When asked which five people, living or dead, he'd like to invite to dinner, cardiologist Kirk Laman chose Thomas Moore, Prophet Muhammad, Mohandas Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and his father who died three years ago.

Laman says,"My passion and life's purpose is to help people discover and heal their heart's troubles. I'd like to share the concept of living a mystical life now. This means shifting our focus from the outside to the inside to tap into our heart's deepest wisdom. Our hearts do know. They know what we need to be well on every level. If we can connect with this knowledge then we can begin the healing process."

In the Ann Arbor News today, "Emotions could be key to heart" describes Laman’s work to heal hearts through spiritual means as well as medical methods.

"Having grown up in the Methodist church with a typical Christian upbringing, he'd long been interested in things of the spirit. When he learned about the mystical Rumi tradition of Islam, which includes the healing of the heart, he converted.

Laman, an assistant professor of medicine at Michigan State University, does "heart-opening" exercises 45 minutes every morning, and throughout the day...

Asked which emotions are hardest on the heart, Laman said studies show depression is the most severe, followed by anxiety and stress..."

The article quotes Laman,"Getting people to change is difficult. We live in a world that's focused on the outer. In order to really change, you have to take your focus from the outer and move it to a more inner portion of your heart."

Lamen’s blog offers ways to do this.