Spiritual Healing of Mind and Body:  The Brain Gone Right
By W. Dean Belnap M.D.

I never expected to find myself in a testimony meeting of psychiatrists in the Ivy League Halls of Harvard.  And yet, there I was surrounded by my colleagues from all over the country, sharing experiences and feelings about faith and healing.  We had been invited to the University to attend a seminar in December 2001 as part of the inception of the, “The Mind and Body Medical Institute.”  This new department, formed by faculty members from the Departments of Psychiatry and Internal Medicine, has as its declared purpose — to teach patients and physicians how to use “religion, faith, prayer and spirituality to aid in the healing of the mind and body.”

Although the mind/body connection, as it applies to faith and healing, had been previously explored in the media, such a contemporary movement was unprecedented among academic, medical circles.  After all, my profession had drifted towards a secular approach all during the twentieth century.  To witness the medical shift back to a more religious and sectarian paradigm infused me with excitement and hope.  Harvard, and the fifty-two other universities adopting similar programs into their curriculum, had given academic legitimacy to concepts I had embraced since my youth.  

All my life I have been blessed to witness the power of the Lord in healing both the mind and the body.  That faith was borne of a rich spiritual tradition given by my parents.  Greater faith was honed and personalized through medical school and a lifetime of practicing medicine.  That same faith has crystallized as I have had the privilege of pursuing humanitarian and church service opportunities.

I experienced one my earliest imprintings of faith during the Great Depression.  Our family, while encountering extremity, was filled with anxiety about how we would survive.  But as I watched my father pray, I knew his faith would bear fruit and our anxiety would be dispelled. This assurance came as I reflected on stories of faith and healing my parents had shared with me.  One such story involved my uncle, Francis Belnap, who through prayer and priesthood, had called his son back to life several hours after the boy had died of Rheumatic fever.  This occurrence as well as other sacred family experiences laid a foundation of faith that was augmented during medical school.  At this time, I read a composite of spiritual experiences of healing in Man the Unknown by Alexis Carroll, a Nobel Prize-winning surgeon from France.  He testified of observing a cancer shrivel to a scar following the prayerful appeals of an afflicted woman.  Later, my wife, Elen, and I experienced a similar miraculous event while serving a mission in Indonesia.  A sister who had contracted a breast cancer, which had grown to the size of an orange, was given a blessing.  A few weeks later, the cancer was gone, leaving a scarred indentation of equal size to the original cancer.

While these experiences seemed natural and right to me, they have, in general, seemed foreign and anecdotal to the medical profession.  Not anymore. What explanation could there be for such a shift?

One of the determinants revealed at the seminar is the gradual slip away from Freudian Analytical Psychiatry.  Indeed, the head of the Department of Psychiatry made direct reference to this drift as he described the move from classical Freudian analysis to a development of the integrated Behavioral Sciences.  He declared that Freud espoused the thinking of the German philosophers who had proclaimed, “God is dead!.”  With some degree of humor and a slight smile he said, “Now Freud is dead!”  The implication was clear.  We were now entering a new era of faith-based medicine, emphasized, addressed, and acknowledged on a collegiate research level.

New and sophisticated research techniques and tools are additional reasons for the impetus to study and research faith and healing within the context of medicine and the mind/body connection.  One of these research tools involves neuro-imagery of the brain.  This neuro-imagery is capable of observing and mapping the brain while the whole nervous system is carrying out its functions.  These are not just fixed pictures of brain anatomy, but living, moving images.  With the help of this tool, neuro-scientists have been able to empirically see that the right side of the frontal brain is activated through prayer and meditation. 

This part of the brain, so uniquely human, is the processing point of experiences and value judgments of right and wrong.  Neuro-scientists can observe the chemistry of brain and body reciprocally interacting.  They understand what happens to the patient, but the how and the why remain a scientific mystery. This evidence with its commensurate scientific dilemma has precipitated the postulation of many neuro-scientists that the brain and the “soul” work together as the mind of man and that spiritual forces must and do exist.  That such concepts are even acknowledged is spectacular!  One last notable finding to come out of the university research indicates that when the physician, practitioner, and patient share a common personal belief and faith, the results are even more striking.

I have personally witnessed the validity of such evidence as I have become involved during the past three years in humanitarian services.  This service, in part, has included callings to work with the missionaries in a mental health capacity. Other service has been involvement with non-profit agencies which aid those with mental health problems.  These organizations are directed to members of the Church.  In a setting where personnel, physicians, and patients all share the same belief system, the rewards and results are enormous.  For us, the “why” and the “how” are no mystery.  Addictions to pornography, gambling or substance abuse can be surmounted.  Mental illnesses such as depression and Bi-polarity can be managed and even eliminated. The work is hard.  It is humbling.  But at the same time, it has brought me more joy than any other medical service with which I have been engaged.   Both patients and care-givers have all found that there is a continued need of another essential member of the team — the Holy Spirit, for ultimately, it is the Lord who heals.

Malachi poetically prophesied that all would be made right when the Lord returns again, “with healing in his wings.”    Yet, even now, in this life, our physical and mental travails can find healing in this same faith and hope.  As we serve each other in this capacity, we are His servants.  This is my testimony.