Healing Reimagined: Reconnecting Traditional Healing with Modern Medicine

Karl Ching’s Healing Reimagined: Reconnecting Traditional Healing with Modern Medicine is a fresh look into the way healthcare can be greatly improved through a few simple implementations. I really appreciated how the book was organized into three parts: “Expanding Awareness”, “Cultivating Belief”, and “Establishing and Maintaining Balance” and then further broken down into chapters within these parts.

The first part, “Expanding Awareness” brings to light the importance of what we usually call “bedside manner”. Starting with initial patient-doctor contact, it is important for the healthcare provider to observe and listen to the patient. This doesn’t only mean the words they are using to communicate, but also body language and demeanor. Ching describes, with examples, the many things that the practitioner can interpret including eye contact and expressions with arms and legs. This book really breaks down understanding not only the physical ailments of a patient but the emotional ones as well. Something as simple as if the patient is in a positive or negative mindset can help to determine the outcome of a procedure.

Part Two delves into “Cultivating Belief”. This part is about establishing a connection with the patient and by using the skills in part one, creating a trusting relationship. I really enjoyed the part about the psyche and coping thresholds of people. For example, if someone comes into the office flustered, maybe he or she has a lot on their mind. It might be best to just introduce some of the basic information to the patient at that point because their brain may not be able to cope with much more.

Part Three is about “Establishing and Maintaining Balance”. This part talks about the root causes of problems, epigenetics, the patterns of people who fall into addiction, fantasies, and phobias. I found the chapter on Addictive Behavior to be particularly interesting. Addiction can be traced back many years and there have been so many modalities used to try and cure the detrimental behavior caused by addiction.

Overall, Healing Reimagined does an amazing job of covering so many topics on healthcare in under two hundred pages. The amount of valuable information in this book can not only be useful for health practitioners but for anyone who has to communicate with different people on a daily basis. Something as easy as listening to a person and digesting what they are saying before giving them your opinion can make a world of a difference in the way a relationship forms.