In a recent P. B. S. program on Bill Moyer’s Mind and Healing there were two examples of how alternative approaches to medicine are beginning to gain credibility, even in mainline institutions. In a large New York hospital, for instance, Doctors regularly send patients with chronic pain to a center whose director teaches meditation and the need to bring pain into full bodied sensual awareness. People enrich their lives by learning to live around “the edge of their pain” while finding some measure of relief. In the second example, a psychiatrist is in the process of testing his unexpected finding that women with cancer participating in a support group live on average one and a half years longer than women who don’t participate in such a group. One of the important advantages of being in support groups is the encouragement to express feelings, fears and anxieties. In addition to living longer, life itself is enhanced.
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