Tag Archives: faith

Dr. David Rosmarin Says Spirituality and Faith Key to The Future of Mental Health

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Keys5132013Everyone wants a piece of the future when it comes to health care. If only we could all peer ahead and find the golden key to better outcomes, cost-cutting, and patient-focused care.

There are a lot of people ardently focused on those very outcomes. Yet, a significant part of the solution has “been around for ions,” Dr. David H. Rosmarin told me in a recent phone conversation. Health professionals have simply been ignoring it.

What is this “golden key”? The power of a patient’s spirituality and belief in God. Continue reading →

Life Lessons From the Golf Green

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Kim ShippeyCredit Sarah Brokenshaw

Guest-blogger Kim Shippey has worked as a broadcast journalist in many countries. He is now a full-time writer and editor with the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly print and online publication.

At this time of year, American baseball players are coming back to the plate; in Europe, cricketers and tennis pros are loosening their shoulders; and top golfers from many countries are assembling for the first Major of the season, the US Masters, to be played from April 11 to 14 among the azaleas and songbirds that abound on the fairways of the National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia.

Golf, of course, teaches many life-lessons, and has spawned hundreds of jokes, includingPuttingforsuccess the one about the little white ball that has a whim to hit a tree or take a swim.
As a reporter on several sports, who always worked weekends, I was never free enough to learn to play golf–a game I suspect I would have loved.

But I was privileged to work on many sports programs with the man who for 20 years was BBC Television’s senior golf commentator, Henry Longhurst. He wrote 12 books on golf in a prose style that his colleagues insisted was “as effortless as falling out of bed.” Also, his “on air” quips were legendary. “They say ‘practice makes perfect,’” he once observed. “Of course, it doesn’t. For the vast majority of golfers it merely consolidates imperfection.”

Longhurst loved the Masters, as does a good friend of mine who knows the Augusta course quite well. My friend played on the European and US golf circuits, and tells me that Continue reading →

Women’s History Month: Mary Baker Eddy as a Pioneer in Health Care

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March is Women’s History month. This year’s theme, according to the National Women’s History Project site: Women’s Education – Women’s Empowerment, recognizes the pioneering leadership of women and their impact on the diverse areas of education. The following blog honors an extraordinary 19th century woman who made significant contributions to spiritual and religious education as a teacher, writer, and leader.

Mary Baker Eddy circa 1882-1883 around the time she moved from Lynn, Massachusetts to Boston.

Mary Baker Eddy circa 1882-1883 around the time she moved from Lynn, Massachusetts to Boston.

Mary Baker Eddy was no ordinary woman. Behind her Victorian-era velvet and lace dress was a 21st century power suit.  At a time when women could not vote, rarely preached from a pulpit or took part in medical professions, Eddy’s work in the healthcare arena broke through the glass ceiling that had yet to become a metaphor. Her ideas as an author, pastor, teacher, and healer charted the path for current thought on consciousness and health today. And in more ways than one, they still lead the way.

After a series of disappointments, including the passing of her first husband and the eventual desertion of her second, Eddy was mid-life and suffering from her own chronic ill-health. This prompted her to investigate alternative healthcare methods, rather than resorting to the harsh treatments and side-effects of conventional 19th-century medicine. She tried diets, hydropathy, homeopathy and what are now known as placebo treatments–and she found some relief. But her most important conclusion from all of her investigations was that what a patient believes is directly related to the healing results they see.

Read the full blog on the National Women’s History site: http://www.nwhp.org/blog/?p=1419

For more information visit the Mary Baker Eddy Library website.

What Does it Take to Be a Wise Health Consumer?

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More people are asking themselves this question in part because of the newly mandated healthcare law, or Affordable Care Act, and in part because health care in the United States isn’t exactly delivering on the goods.

Overtreated“We have a disease care system, not a health care system,” says Shannon Brownlee, senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and author of Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer. “And the disease care system . . . if it really was honest with itself, it doesn’t want you to die and it doesn’t want you to get well. It just wants you to keep coming back for your care of your chronic disease.”

The title of a report published a few weeks ago by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine speaks volumes: “U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health.”

The report states, “The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries.” Continue reading →

A Holy Night

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Today’s guest blog is written by Boston, MA resident, and longtime journalist, Kim Shippey. Kim enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, reading, and playing sports. He is currently a full-time writer and editor with the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly print and online publication.

Ingenious advances in medical research have taught us more in ten years than in ten decades about mental health, especially in areas such as acute depression, loss of memory, and post-traumatic and obsessive–compulsive disorders.

Through exhaustive surveys, extensively and conscientiously covered in the news media, we’ve learned much about warning signs, and heightened our ability to take speedier ameliorating human footsteps. Continue reading →

Oprah Interviews Dr. Eben Alexander

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Today’s News&Culture update: For those of you who have been following the buzz on Dr. Eben Alexander’s New York Times best-seller, “Proof of Heaven” you won’t want to miss this hour-long interview with Oprah Winfrey on her Super-Soul Sunday series.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Alexander’s ideas and book have been featured on this blog several times in recent weeks. He came back from a coma and life-threatening disease with a new understanding of life, health, consciousness and faith.

Perhaps you’ll be as interested as I was in his answer to Oprah’s question, “Did you see the face of God?” He explains his understanding that God isn’t a person–a he or a she–but an Continue reading →

Put a “Be” before Healthy

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So often the emphasis is on the “doing” not the “being” when it comes to caring for one’s health. People do all sorts of things, from taking daily medications to undergoing treatments and procedures to find out if they are healthy or not. Yet despite all these efforts, health can still be illusive.

All this emphasis on the doing is adding up to a high-cost health care system in the U.S. According to a recent New York Times article, “When it comes to medical care, many patients and doctors believe more is better. But an epidemic of overtreatment — too many scans, too many blood tests, too many procedures — is costing the nation’s health care system at least $210 billion a year, according to the Institute of Medicine, and taking a human toll in pain, emotional suffering, severe complications and even death.”

I know a woman who juggles a busy family life and active career, while staying physically fit and involved in her community. She recently went through several routine cancer screenings that resulted in a very stressful few weeks. She had a hard time sleeping and Continue reading →

Life Lessons from Near Death Experiences

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The following guest blog is written by my friend Steve Graham. Much of his career as an editor has been centered on spiritual reporting. He writes from his home in Natick, MA.

For a long time, I’ve been interested in so-called near death experiences (NDEs). I’ve read Dr. Raymond Moody’s well-known book “Life After Life,” which reports the results of over 100 case studies on people who were revived after having been pronounced clinically dead.

The amazing consistency in what those people have told about their experiences–including a recognition of disembodiment, of

traveling through some sort of interim passage, of perceiving increasingly bright light, of emerging into a realm of unspeakable beauty, of meeting loved family and friends who had already died–has seemed to me quite remarkable.

The way in which these NDEs corroborate the existence of an omnipotent and eternal Supreme Being has only served to increase my faith that the teachings of the Bible and so many other sacred texts, and specifically my own Christian Science faith, are not contradicted but validated, not at odds but speaking in unison. Continue reading →

Grow with your grandchild

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Today’s guest blog is written by Kim Shippey, who has 11 grandchildren. He is a full-time writer and editor with the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly print and online publication. His post continues this week’s theme of a spiritual view of aging and vitality.

I’ll never forget a Saturday morning in the supermarket with our then three-year-old granddaughter Brittany sitting snugly in the basket of our shopping cart singing at the top of her voice, “Sun, Sun, Mister Golden Sun, please shine down on me!”

As we sped around a corner we encountered a seasoned shopper with a twinkle in his eye who grinned broadly as we narrowly missed crashing into his cart. “Excuse me,” he said pointing to Brittany, “could you tell me in which aisle I’d find one of those?”

I always say that the best thing about grandparenting is that when you’ve exhausted yourself having fun with the kids, you can hand them back to their parents, reclaim your laptop or iPad, and head for your armchair. Continue reading →

9/11 and Mental Resilience

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Most of us remember exactly where we were standing and what we were doing on the morning of September 11, 2001.

I had just put my 3-month-old down for his morning nap when a friend called and told me to turn on the television. My five-year-old was by my side when those horrible images flashed across the screen.

The next day in his kindergarten class he drew pictures of the planes and the buildings. He, like many other children across our nation, drew pictures that told an unspeakable story. A story of blue sky and smoke.

Until that day his life was all about the blue sky moments. I wondered how watching those events would affect my son, not to mention the many children and adults whose lives were directly impacted by the events of 9/11.

So as I always do when something isn’t right in my life, I prayed. Continue reading →