The Healing Mind is meant to be a guide to self-healing, recovery, and spiritual exploration. It is a book that tries to show how a union with the "Divine Spirit" may be gained through meditation, self-examination, and prayer. While it does discuss a wide variety of topics and philosophies, attempting to combine the essences of each into a spiritual path, it was found wanting in several ways.

The book covers a moderate range of topics including the author's view on the purpose of life, meditation, self-examination, prayer, energy practices, healing, dreams, visions, and the life cycle. The book is written for someone who is at a starting point in their search for knowledge of spirituality, and tends to assume that the reader has a rather immediate need of such knowledge. It is not difficult reading; about one-third of the book consists of anecdotes.

Right from the beginning, the book shows the author's spiritual viewpoint, which is a combination of Eastern and Western spirituality. In covering meditation, the author discusses the effect of the Chinese concept of qi on the health of the individual as well as explaining how it interacts with the chakra system. She discusses how disruptions in the chakras may affect our psychological and physiological health. Several meditation exercises are also given to acquaint the reader with these energies. In discussing prayer, the author posits a very Western view of God in respect to the relationship of the individual to God.

The concept of self-examination is a major focus of the book and is presented as something which "is necessary to fulfill life's purpose, which is to evolve the soul and consciousness" (p. 36). Curiously, the author, an occupational therapist, suggests choosing a psychiatrist to accomplish this important task, believing that "you may find a mentor or friend who can serve in this capacity, but often the relationship can be convoluted by other issues that may hamper your self-examination" (p. 39). Furthermore, the author states, "At its loftiest, psychotherapy offers the modern version of the communal wise person who lives what he teaches and teaches others the same" (p. 40). This is a rather surprising position to take, especially because it contradicts most of the esoteric philosophies she is trying to explain to the reader.

A full one-third of the book is devoted to anecdotes of the author's experience as a healer, citing case after case of where a patient recovered fully with the help of her energy work. Unfortunately, the author makes no mention of whether or not there might be any kind of a placebo effect occurring in these cases and mentions no corroborating research to support her claims.

In fact, the bibliography contains only two references, which is reflected in the depth of the author's discussions. The author combines the Chinese concept of qi with the Indian concept of chakras quite often, evidently not fully understanding the philosophic origins and differences between the two concepts. The meditation information is good on a technical level, but it is apparent that the author has not done sufficient research on the subject of Eastern methodologies, even the relatively simple Buddhist techniques.

But there are some good aspects to this book. The section on alternative medicine is quite good in giving definitions of various kinds of treatments and suggestions about when alternative medicine techniques may be more effective than their allopathic counterparts. The author does a reasonable job at presenting certain philosophical concepts, such as the chakra system and methods to attain stillness of mind, but the amount of useful information is overwhelmed by the author's style of painting subtle philosophies with an excessively broad brush.

In conclusion, anyone who has been to the New Age section of a bookstore has seen shelf after shelf of books that aim to be of the self-help variety, or, at least try to make people feel good about themselves. The book is competent in this regard, but does not include much in the way of information that cannot be found in dozens of other books of the same genre.

Craig Clayton
Shaolin Gung Fu Institute
P.O. Box 95745
Seattle, WA 98145

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