Healing the Mind to Heal the Body

Reading this book, I found that Rinpoche advocates a sort of healing that is slightly different from the kind I read about in How Can I Help? While Dass suggests that one of the easiest things to do in helping a person is to just simply open up and listen in a general sense, Rinpoche offers a specific and practical way for a caregiver to aide a patient or distressed person. And though Dass offers many points that coincide with the ones Rinpoche makes, I feel that I still needed something specific or practical to go by. Keeping that in mind, I found what I was looking for in Medicine and Compassion. Not because I’m going into the medical field, but because I wanted something less ideal and more practical to go by. What interested me was how one can heal a person physically by healing their mind and offering them reassurance first.

Healing the mind

I decided to divide my analysis of the method into steps, which seems to be most fitting.

1. Before the meeting with the patient:

One of the easiest ways to approach healing a person seems to deal directly with keeping yourself relaxed and content to begin with. By “relaxing and removing ourselves from our own emotions, anger, and irritability,” we become “naturally” open. (Rinpoche, 5) After we accomplish this, the healing process with the patient begins.

2. The Meeting:

The next step upon meeting the patient is communicating with them. If the previous step has been completed, then we are that “nobody” that is needed to help and listen to a person. In a sense, this is a form of compassion, where we “bring a compassionate attitude into the exam room,” allowing the patient to “feel it” thus letting them communicate what they are really worried about. (Rinpoche, 13)

3. The Healing:

Rinpoche suggests that the type of healing that must be done before anything can be accomplished physically is that of mental healing, where the patient is relaxed and assured by the doctor. It is essentially up to the doctor at this point to instill the same feeling he has into his patient: “When someone who is afraid and worried encounters a capable doctor’s kind words and kind face, then confidence and trust can arise.” (Rinpoche, 71). By doing this, he has cleansed his patient’s mind, allowing them to experience a clearcast state that will only benefit their physical recovery.

“Whenever our mind is at ease and feeling appreciative, then whatever we see, hear, smell, or tough is okay. It feels perfect.” (27)

This kind of healing seems to place much of its effect on the caregiver. What I got out of this is that the caregiver must act like a mirror to the patient when they are being cared for. If we smile, they will smile. And if we are compassionate and confident in what we are doing, they will be infused with that same feeling too.