So-called alternate health

[Guest guest]

Dear Jagannath, I am attaching details of my current project. (I'm not sure if this group accepts attachments?) I wonder if you will be so kind as to comment on it. As you will see, it is gender-specific, because it is sponsored by the Research Centre for Women's Studies SNDT University. I would like to interview women who have experienced healing after working with Muslim or Christian faith groups.I am also keen to understand the insights of women who have been care-givers for men and chidren experiencing such healing. I am already examing the Charismatic Healing Centre here which is a branch of the world wide Christian movement. I am sorry to add to your work load! But if you suggest some suitable cases I would be so grateful. Thanks and regards. Prabha Krishnan.

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A HOTLINE TO THE DIVINE

PARADOXICAL HEALING IN GLOBALISED INDIA

PROJECT-IN-BRIEF

Access to relevant, dependable and affordable health care, never very easy for Indians, has become somewhat more problematic in the political reality of globalisation. While drugs, vaccinations, antibiotics and high-end surgical procedures are heavily promoted, and consume a very significant proportion of the national health care budget, adequate food, quality air and drinking water, sanitation, resource security and stress management, which together form the bedrock of health- care are given short shrift. Under these circumstances it may be of value to examine some examples of “paradoxical healing” to see to what extent these can fill the gap between demand for health care and the supply by mainstream health practitioners. This study aims to · Show that in many cases “paradoxical healing” is a viable addition to the arsenal of health care methods

· Highlight the need to develop tools to better understand the process, and hopefully develop methods to regulate the field

· Query policies that devalue drugless health care and the native genius that advances it

· Emphasize the administration’s lack of accountability in failing to provide, after 6 decades of self-rule, the basic building blocks for health to large masses of people.

Responsibility for the design, conduct and publication of the study will rest with the applicant.

She will draw upon the expertise and services of the two institutions described within, viz., the Research Centre for Women’s Studies and Sparrow: Sound and Picture Archives for Women.

PUBLICATION

The publication will be in the form of a book, accompanied by a compact disk containing the narratives of women who have engaged with “paradoxical healing”. The disk will where appropriate contain the discourses and shrine/group music used in healing. The original material will form a contribution to the oral history collection of the institutions listed.

RATIONALE

Little needs to be said of India’s dismal record in the domains of public and individual health. India is promoted as a health care destination in the affluent countries of East and West, but malnutrition is endemic as are iron-deficiency anaemia, jaundice, malaria and worm infestations. Displacement due to development and terrorism (sometimes the boundaries between these causal factors blur) condemn large masses of people to insufficient food and sanitation, with resulting escalation in disease.

In India, western bio-medicine is promoted as the norm, while all other systems are grouped together as Indian systems – this includes Ayurveda, homeopathy, Unani, Siddha, etc. Therapies like Reiki, osteopathy, chiropractic, aromatherapy, spiritual healing all feature as “alternative systems”. While Indian systems have regulatory provisions, the so-called alternate systems have none. While a number of such practitioners have training and experience, and can provide drugless health care, the field is wide open to quacks and charlatans, who give this type of treatment a bad name.

In the following paragraphs, the terms paradoxical healing, alternate systems, energy medicine and holistic health are used interchangeably. The difficulty in regulating these forms of therapy is that the gold standard of placebo controlled, double blind tests cannot be applied. This is because all such forms of what are called “energy medicine” systems have to do with the vital energy of the human subject, which is thought to flow from the spirit, which therefore is not quantifiable. The underlying principle of energy medicine is that imbalances in the spirit cause the individual to ail, at which time s/he becomes vulnerable to the effects of influences external to the body, such as microbes, pesticides, electro-magnetic fields, etc. Treatment then consists of reaching out to the person’s spirit through meditation, chanting, Reiki, etc. There is, in this understanding of dis-ease and ease, no place for antibiotics, vaccinations, surgery and the one-size-fits-all approach of mainstream medicine.

The current debate about the efficacy of Homeopathy has fore-grounded the concept of the “placebo”, that is healing which takes place because the patient is deluded into believing that the treatment has physiological value. Yet, all authentic healing takes place only when the mind accepts the treatment as valid. In India, surgical procedures were termed Asura Vaidhyam, since they were invasive and coarse, treatment with medicines was Manusha Vaidyam appropriate for ordinary men, and treatment through the mind was Daiva Vaidhyam, the highest form appropriate for more evolved humans. The role of the mind in sickness and health is crucial according to practitioners of energy medicine. It is precisely the absence of expensive drugs, infrastructure, procedures and personnel that is the strength of the “paradoxical” stream, and as such it would be tempting to argue that the procedures/therapies under this rubric should form a significant part of public health services. However the ground reality is that regulation apart, the field is crowded with fakes and quacks, all set to make a fast buck from the gullible citing precisely those difficulties with evaluation to cover up their failures. In effect we have systems of healing which are inexpensive, workable, decentralized, user-friendly, appropriate for the public domain and which are at the same time, unregulated, not often replicable and open to mis-use.

THE PROPOSED STUDY

In this proposed study I intend to examine critically narratives of healing from women who are/have been members of organized groups such as Brahma Kumaris, Art of Living, Meher Baba Ashram, Ahmednagar District. These groups have been selected because the researcher has personal experience of these groups. Paradoxical healing is however not limited to them, and India especially is home to a wide spectrum of such energy medicine efforts. In order to widen the scope of the study, comparable groups will be identified from Christian and Muslim faiths.

The Brahma Kumaris, or Daughters of Brahma are headquartered in Mt. Abu in Rajasthan. The group advances the practice of Raj-yoga Meditation, in which the practitioner seeks to perceive herself as a transcendent point of light radiating energy. Together with daily and weekly congregational work, and attention to diet and some moral observances, individuals are encouraged to feel as members of a spiritual family. The group runs several public facilities, including hospitals in Mt. Abu and in Mumbai, and in these, Raj-yoga meditation is used as an adjunct to mainstream medical care.

The Art of Living is a comparatively recent group, and it makes direct and distinctive health claims for its technique, Sudarshan Kriya or the Science of Breath. This technique has been evaluated by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. Group and social responsibility and dietary observances are encouraged.

The oldest of these three groups are the adherents of the teachings of Meher Baba, whose ashram is in Mehrabad, in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra.

This is a more loosely constituted group, known as Baba-lovers. The emphasis here is on love, and connecting with Meher Baba, and volunteering time for the group’s educational and medical services. At the ashram itself, no meat and alcohol is served, and the use of tobacco and drugs is prohibited.

All three groups have centres world- wide.

METHODOLOGY.

As discussed earlier, paradoxical healing does not lend itself to evaluation by methods of evidence-based therapy as used in Western bio-medicine, but for the purposes of this study, I will consider those examples where a disease condition has been diagnosed by mainstream methods and later shown to have been addressed wholly or partially by the use of non-drug methods as practiced by these groups.

Data will be gathered through personal interviews with women who have experienced elevation of health levels through following the practices of their affiliated groups. As noted earlier, attempt will be made to select those cases where according to mainstream medicine a disease condition existed, and was addressed through the use of one of the paradoxical healing methods. Regression of the disease condition or relief from symptoms need also be endorsed through mainstream medical opinion.

It will be necessary to visit women in the headquarters of the various groups, which have now become places of pilgrimage.

In addition, the study will document those instances of healing that are more anecdotal in nature, and which may appear in books and magazine articles.

Interviews with the doctors involved will enrich our understanding of the healing process.

TIME FRAME.

It is expected that the study will be completed in one year from inception.

1. Appointment of staff and initiating the research process 1 month

2. Library search for relevant data and background material 1 month

3. Identification of sample, design and testing of in-depth interview schedules 1 month

4. Interviews with identified women and medical personnel if

any 4 months

5. Analysis of data 2 months

6. Preparing the report and disk 3 months THE INSTITUTIONS

Established in 1974, the Research Centre for Women’s Studies, RCWS is the oldest and the largest institution of its kind in India. Over the years, it has (alongside with its teaching and extension activities) undertaken research on a wide range of issues affecting women in collaboration with many national and international organizations, such as the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR), the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh programme of the Government of India, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), Bangkok, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, UNESCO and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), Washington DC. The subjects covered by RCWS studies range from micro-credit for women entrepreneurs, budget allocations for women’s services, women in scientific careers, domestic violence, sexual harassment of women in work places, etc. Most of these studies have had serious policy implications. The contributions made by the RCWS to the growth of Women’s Studies in the country has received national and international acclaim. SPARROW Sound and Picture Archives for Women is a Trust devoted to the use of oral history and pictorial material for research on women in order to expand the scope of research by including unexplored areas of experience and expression. SPARROW is not just a documentation or consultation centre, but believes in being an active agent in bringing women together for discussion and work and being an agent of conscientisation. SPARROW has in its holdings, some valuable photographs, oral history narratives, posters and video films.

THE CONSULTANT

PRABHA KRISHNAN is a social activist, interested in issues concerning women, media and health. To this end, she has written extensively and participated in research projects, protests, seminars, workshops, etc. Her research activities and publications include:

An analysis of the projection of women in Indian television, published by Sage International under the title: Affirmation and Denial: Construction of Femininity on Indian Television.

“In the Idiom of Loss: Ideology of Motherhood in TV Serials,” published in the Economic and Political Weekly, 1992.

This formed part of the research project, the Ideology of Motherhood in India, undertaken by the Research Centre for Women’s Studies, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai.

For the National Commission on Self Employed Women, 1998 – an analysis of the depiction of self-employed women on TV programmes, published in the Shramshakti report.

For the panel on “Women and Law “ International Conference on Women, Nairobi, 1985 – a paper on Women, Law and Empowerment.

For the National Institute of Adult Education – an analysis of literacy primers, as part of a study of five Indian states.

In Search of Annapurna : Meeting the Evolutionary, Ecological and Ethical Needs of the Community. This edited work contains papers submitted to the Indian Association of Women’s Studies Conference on Women’s Perspectives on Public Policy held in Hyderabad in January 2000. The papers form a feminist critique of the gap between food and nutrition.

Her latest publication is Health Care Earth Care: Interrogating Health and Health Policy in India, published by Earthcare Books, Mumbai in 2000. This work calls attention to the lack of spirituality in health care – not the spirituality that is “ done” in an ashram or retreat, but that which forms the foundation, the underwriting, the sticks and stones and mortar of any human endeavour. Such a lack leads to alienation with grave consequences for the earth and all those who inhabit her.

She is currently with a Mumbai-based health action group called AATMIC – Health by Choice, which provides personal counseling, workshops, field trips and food preparation demonstrations.

Contact Prabha at D 63, Symphony C H S Ltd., Chandivali Farm Road, Andheri East, Mumbai 400 072.

Mail : prabha_k, krishnan_prabha.>

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Andrew Weil. Spontaneous Healing. 1995, New York, Fawcett Columbine.

Caroline Myss. Anatomy of the Spirit: the Seven Stages of Power and Healing. 1996, New York, Three Rivers Press.

Larry Dossey. Meaning and Medicine; a Doctor’s Tales of Breakthrough and Healing. 1991, New York, Bantam Books.

Larry Dossey. Recovering the Soul: a Scientific and Spiritual Search. 1989, New York, Bantam Books.

Lawrence A. Babb. Indigenous feminism in a Modern Hindu Sect. Signs. 1984, 9(2) : 400-416.

M. L. Kothari and Lopa Mehta. Living, Dying. 1992, Mapusa, Goa. The Other India Press. (Indian reprint)

Prabha Krishnan. Health Care, Earth Care: Interrogating Health and Health Policy in India. 2000, Calcutta, Earthcare Books.

Ted Kaptchuk and Michael Croucher. The Healing Arts: a Journey through the Faces of Medicine. 1986, London, BBC.