Constructions Of Health, Healing And Well Being In The New Age: A Qualitative Study Exploring The Understanding Held By Spiritual Healers

Despite a recent renaissance of holistic therapies, spiritual accounts of health and healing are still largely marginalised in western healthcare contexts, where the dominant discourse of health and illness is the biomedical model. The Cartesian mind-body dualism that is assumed by the medical model contrasts sharply with the holistic approach that characterises much of the spiritual healing literature. Indeed it might be argued that the medical model and spiritual healing approaches are constructed in an entirely different vocabulary. While the medical model is predicated upon clearly defined units such as cells, tissues, organs, systems, and measurable factors such as deficiencies, excesses and infective agents; spiritual healing approaches resist the construction of boundaries and insist on an interactive model which is not readily amenable to testing and measurement. Furthermore there is considerable variation in the range of beliefs and practices that can be considered ‘spiritual healing’. Despite this diversity, it is possible to identify a number of common ideas that lie at the core of the spiritual healing literature. These recurring themes are worthy of brief consideration before exploring the accounts offered by the healers in the current study.