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The Healing Path: A Soul Approach to Illness
Drawing on the work of Jung and Joseph Campbell, as well as the wisdom of dreams and mythology, this book presents an archetypal map of a perilous transition--not just for the ill, but for all those who travel over difficult terrain in search of wholeness.
- GenresSpiritualityHealth
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 4, 2015
The unifying theme of this book is that healing calls for making meaning out of illness. Stories have arcs that organize experience into meaning, as they grow from the initial alarm into conflict and struggle in pursuit of a goal, and finally come to a resolution. Marc Ian Barasch uses classic films as myths of the healing path, a framework within which he tells his own story and the stories of others who have confronted serious illness. The essence of healing isn’t always surviving. Some of his journeyers, as he calls his fellow travelers on the path, died. Others had virtually impossible recoveries through spiritual and holistic approaches to self-healing, defying both medical predictions and medical advice. Still others, like the author, had conventional treatment while integrating psychological and spiritual changes.
Barasch did substantial research. His own encounter with cancer and his bizarre dreams that diagnosed it long before his doctors did and predicted aspects of his treatment provoked his curiosity about how others heal. (He wrote another book, Healing Dreams, which I highly recommend.) I’ve read just about every book or study that he cites in The Healing Path, which made this section of the book a little too familiar to me, but then, I’m a professor who has taught a course on alternative medicine. The book is few years old, so its medical information isn’t the latest, but the essence of the message holds up. His adventures as a seeker of alternative options, and the profound self-explorations of the journeyers he interviewed, make for a compelling story.
His language is extraordinary. I bought this book as a used paperback, idly curious after having liked Healing Dreams: Exploring the Dreams That Can Transform Your Life, and I’ve actually highlighted and starred sections, something I don’t normally do to my books. There are so many shining jewels I had to make sure I could find them again.
The final sections of the book blew me away. I’ve studied energy healing, psychology, and a lot of yoga and meditation. I teach the latter two. I write fiction that involves a healer. I know this stuff, but he knows more, because he has lived through things I haven’t. He taught me, even though all the facts were familiar. His wisdom isn’t platitudinous. It’s hard won.
In James Scott Bell’s writing guide Super Structure, he discusses how great movies and fiction all have a turning point in the middle where the protagonist confronts a painful or frightening truth about himself or his life. Bell calls it the Mirror Moment—looking in the mirror literally or figuratively—and says the essence of it is change or die. This might not mean bodily death; it could be spiritual or emotional or professional. (Synchronicity: He uses one of the same movies Barasch does, he Wizard of Oz, to illustrate his ideas.) This next observation is a minor spoiler, if nonfiction can have spoilers. Barasch says his realization at the key stage of his journey through cancer was change or die. He had to change his whole life, not just get the disease treated. He was facing all the forms of death, not just the one threatening his body.
Change or die. That’s the hardest lesson—we fear change. It can seem like a death of sorts. When sick people change, it can upset those around them. This aspect of healing and illness is examined frankly in this book. The larger story around each journeyer shows over and over that healing is not a return to sameness. Disruptions ripple in all directions.
Anyone who is or has been seriously ill, knows someone who is, or simply loves good writing, could appreciate this book. And strangely enough, there’s a lot in it for fiction writers to learn from, as Barasch uses fiction to illuminate aspects of the plunge into illness, the confrontation with mortality, and the helpers and obstacles encountered on the way out—the healing path.
Barasch did substantial research. His own encounter with cancer and his bizarre dreams that diagnosed it long before his doctors did and predicted aspects of his treatment provoked his curiosity about how others heal. (He wrote another book, Healing Dreams, which I highly recommend.) I’ve read just about every book or study that he cites in The Healing Path, which made this section of the book a little too familiar to me, but then, I’m a professor who has taught a course on alternative medicine. The book is few years old, so its medical information isn’t the latest, but the essence of the message holds up. His adventures as a seeker of alternative options, and the profound self-explorations of the journeyers he interviewed, make for a compelling story.
His language is extraordinary. I bought this book as a used paperback, idly curious after having liked Healing Dreams: Exploring the Dreams That Can Transform Your Life, and I’ve actually highlighted and starred sections, something I don’t normally do to my books. There are so many shining jewels I had to make sure I could find them again.
The final sections of the book blew me away. I’ve studied energy healing, psychology, and a lot of yoga and meditation. I teach the latter two. I write fiction that involves a healer. I know this stuff, but he knows more, because he has lived through things I haven’t. He taught me, even though all the facts were familiar. His wisdom isn’t platitudinous. It’s hard won.
In James Scott Bell’s writing guide Super Structure, he discusses how great movies and fiction all have a turning point in the middle where the protagonist confronts a painful or frightening truth about himself or his life. Bell calls it the Mirror Moment—looking in the mirror literally or figuratively—and says the essence of it is change or die. This might not mean bodily death; it could be spiritual or emotional or professional. (Synchronicity: He uses one of the same movies Barasch does, he Wizard of Oz, to illustrate his ideas.) This next observation is a minor spoiler, if nonfiction can have spoilers. Barasch says his realization at the key stage of his journey through cancer was change or die. He had to change his whole life, not just get the disease treated. He was facing all the forms of death, not just the one threatening his body.
Change or die. That’s the hardest lesson—we fear change. It can seem like a death of sorts. When sick people change, it can upset those around them. This aspect of healing and illness is examined frankly in this book. The larger story around each journeyer shows over and over that healing is not a return to sameness. Disruptions ripple in all directions.
Anyone who is or has been seriously ill, knows someone who is, or simply loves good writing, could appreciate this book. And strangely enough, there’s a lot in it for fiction writers to learn from, as Barasch uses fiction to illuminate aspects of the plunge into illness, the confrontation with mortality, and the helpers and obstacles encountered on the way out—the healing path.
April 5, 2015
I previously reviewed ”Healing Dreams” by Marc Ian Barasch, which book I thought was brilliant.
The present book is quite excellent, though perhaps I was even more enamoured of “Healing Dreams”.
Barasch suffered from cancer of the thyroid, which he himself was the first to diagnose, as recounted in the above-mentioned book. He had to make the difficult decision as to which form of treatment to pursue.
He consults Tibetan and Chinese physicians, noted psychologists, including Lawrence LeShan, and takes part in an Indian sweat lodge ceremony.
He finally concedes to accepting surgery, though is in doubt as to whether this is the correct decision.
Barasch discusses disease and transformation and the spiritual implications of disease. What are you supposed to learn? He states: “ --- the interplay of illness, healing and consciousness has been observed throughout the history of medicine ….”.
He deals with making meaning out of illness and asks “What heals?” Former patients informed him that getting in touch with so-called negative feelings was “a first gateway to greater aliveness”. “Healing means to become your real self,” He is told that the quest for wellness is “intimately entwined with the search for personal authenticity.”
He quotes the psychologist Jeanne Achtenberg as saying that “kindness, graciousness, a giving constitution, a cheerful outlook – don´t work in the struggle against disease”. Cardiologist Dr. James Lynch states that disease often results when patients “cannot feel in their own bodies” and “become deaf to the longings of their own hearts”.
Some patients inform him that when they surrender, let go, their symptoms begin to mysteriously diminish (this is the message of the illustrious David R. Hawkins – my comment).
He notes that we may experience spiritual growth without being physically healed (this is what I personally have experienced).
The author treats the subject in great depth – he leaves no stone unturned.
He talks of the powers of nature, mentioning that ailing wild chimpanzees will seek out the Vernonia amygdalina bush to cure themselves of intestinal parasites.
The body is capable of fighting serious disease when restored to its natural balance.
Barasch cites a patient diagnosed with terminal melanoma who uses the Gerson diet of detoxification. She begins re-experiencing every physical injury she´d ever had, the numbing of her arms from an accidental pesticide exposure, the worst emotional hurts she´d received from her parents, etc. etc. She´d had terrible curvature of her spine as a child and osteoporosis as an adult. She´d broken her ribcage and her posture had got progressively stooped. But suddenly her spine seemed to straighten out, pop-pop-pop. The compound fractures in her back went pow-pow-pow for about two hours, and then she could stand again! Then the five months of chemotherapy came pouring out in three days. Sooty stuff came out of her pores, and she got burns on her face from the chemicals. When she came home from the clinic three weeks later, her neighbours didn´t recognize her. When she´d left she was stooped over, ugly, awful. She looked dead. Now she was hopping around like a twenty-year-old-girl. She even started menstruating again. However, when she went off the diet for five months, everything started reversing. She had to return to drinking large quantities of carrot juice, eating organic foods, etc. etc.
To sum up, this is an amazing, rich book, wonderfully expressed, tackling deeply the subject of healing in the deepest sense. As the sub-title states, it is a “soul approach to illness”.
I highly recommend that you read this enlightening, unique work!
The present book is quite excellent, though perhaps I was even more enamoured of “Healing Dreams”.
Barasch suffered from cancer of the thyroid, which he himself was the first to diagnose, as recounted in the above-mentioned book. He had to make the difficult decision as to which form of treatment to pursue.
He consults Tibetan and Chinese physicians, noted psychologists, including Lawrence LeShan, and takes part in an Indian sweat lodge ceremony.
He finally concedes to accepting surgery, though is in doubt as to whether this is the correct decision.
Barasch discusses disease and transformation and the spiritual implications of disease. What are you supposed to learn? He states: “ --- the interplay of illness, healing and consciousness has been observed throughout the history of medicine ….”.
He deals with making meaning out of illness and asks “What heals?” Former patients informed him that getting in touch with so-called negative feelings was “a first gateway to greater aliveness”. “Healing means to become your real self,” He is told that the quest for wellness is “intimately entwined with the search for personal authenticity.”
He quotes the psychologist Jeanne Achtenberg as saying that “kindness, graciousness, a giving constitution, a cheerful outlook – don´t work in the struggle against disease”. Cardiologist Dr. James Lynch states that disease often results when patients “cannot feel in their own bodies” and “become deaf to the longings of their own hearts”.
Some patients inform him that when they surrender, let go, their symptoms begin to mysteriously diminish (this is the message of the illustrious David R. Hawkins – my comment).
He notes that we may experience spiritual growth without being physically healed (this is what I personally have experienced).
The author treats the subject in great depth – he leaves no stone unturned.
He talks of the powers of nature, mentioning that ailing wild chimpanzees will seek out the Vernonia amygdalina bush to cure themselves of intestinal parasites.
The body is capable of fighting serious disease when restored to its natural balance.
Barasch cites a patient diagnosed with terminal melanoma who uses the Gerson diet of detoxification. She begins re-experiencing every physical injury she´d ever had, the numbing of her arms from an accidental pesticide exposure, the worst emotional hurts she´d received from her parents, etc. etc. She´d had terrible curvature of her spine as a child and osteoporosis as an adult. She´d broken her ribcage and her posture had got progressively stooped. But suddenly her spine seemed to straighten out, pop-pop-pop. The compound fractures in her back went pow-pow-pow for about two hours, and then she could stand again! Then the five months of chemotherapy came pouring out in three days. Sooty stuff came out of her pores, and she got burns on her face from the chemicals. When she came home from the clinic three weeks later, her neighbours didn´t recognize her. When she´d left she was stooped over, ugly, awful. She looked dead. Now she was hopping around like a twenty-year-old-girl. She even started menstruating again. However, when she went off the diet for five months, everything started reversing. She had to return to drinking large quantities of carrot juice, eating organic foods, etc. etc.
To sum up, this is an amazing, rich book, wonderfully expressed, tackling deeply the subject of healing in the deepest sense. As the sub-title states, it is a “soul approach to illness”.
I highly recommend that you read this enlightening, unique work!
July 11, 2021
Tough material at times, but overall an empowering and therapeutic read. I enjoyed the look into other culture's beliefs and healing practices, as well as the comparisons he drew between healing and "the hero's journey". Although the book is centered around acceptance and recovery from cancer, it has lessons and comfort for those dealing with a chronic illness of any kind.
March 24, 2011
Being one who appreciates books that promote the holistic connections concerning health, this book was a disappointment for me. Perhaps this opinion reflects the fact that I have a strong background in this area. The author just didn't present anything truly new that I had not read previously.
Still, I'd recommend the book for someone just beginning to explore the mind-body-spiritual connections that lead to health and illness.
Still, I'd recommend the book for someone just beginning to explore the mind-body-spiritual connections that lead to health and illness.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews