Article March 1, 1993 Issue

IN THE NEWS

"Healing and the Mind"

Comments on the topic of a recent PBS television series

Throughout the United States hundreds of study groups have been formed to discuss the questions and issues raised by the recent television series hosted by reporter Bill Moyers called "Healing and the Mind." They are using a study guide prepared to accompany the programs, which ran late in February.

Any step that uncovers the mental nature of sickness and disease or how mental factors affect them is progressive. But as long as mind is equated with brain, progress will be limited.

Some in the field of mind/body medicine have contended, for example, that certain relaxed states achieved through meditation and other relaxation techniques can activate endorphins in the brain and so alleviate pain. In some as yet unexplained way, calmness, humor, or other "healthy" states of mind are supposed to assist the body's own healing processes. But any effort that attempts to explain prayer as a physically mental process producing chemical effects is really an outcome of what must be labeled the atheism of matter.

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Worldwide meetings being scheduled to consider Science and Health
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