The Rituals of Healing

Do you notice the rituals of healing in the same way as you notice the rituals of religion? It is interesting to think that rituals play a large role in the healthcare system, and perhaps in our ultimate healing. What do you consider the rituals of healthcare? Perhaps the white coat and stethoscope? The physical exam?  Receiving of a prescription for a medicine?  I have been reflecting on what we consider rituals related to the healing process as I have read and watched some interesting remarks on this subject from two leading sources on this topic.

Dr. Ted Kaptchuk, the director of Harvard's Program in Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounters, was recently interviewed in the New Yorker magazine about his quest to understand the placebo effect and how it influences quantifiable measures of health.  Could our belief about whether a treatment is effective or our level of trust in routine rituals of healthcare, such as placing a stethoscope on the chest, physiologically change our ability to heal? 

Dr. Abraham Verghese, author and physician, ponders whether we, as a society, are in danger of losing the art of medicine as we have increased access to technology to support the science of medicine. In his recent TED talk,  Dr. Verghese argues that while it is important to have modern tools of medicine, which are enabled by science and technology, the art of medicine is essential as well.  For it is the art of medicine that allows for the human connection between patient and healer to emerge and the rituals of healing to be sustained.

What are your thoughts?

The Arts of Compassion: Perspectives on Arts and Health

A reminder about an interesting upcoming symposium in the Boston area, on Saturday, October 2, which promises to be a very special gathering of experts, leaders and visionaries in the field of arts and health care. The event is open to the general public and will be followed by a concert by the Longwood Symphony -- an orchestra composed of health care practitioners. Here is a press release about The Arts of Compassion: Perspectives on Arts and Health:

"A year ago, a remarkable group of engaged, curious and committed individuals who share an interest in the role of the arts in health care began to meet to share ideas and inspiration. Each month, the group, including Longwood Symphony Orchestra, gathered to hear a presentation about the remarkable work being done by one of its member organizations.

BACH: Boston Arts Consortium for Health now invites you to join us, to learn more about the remarkable breadth and depth of the field of arts and health care here in the greater Boston community.

Join us as we learn about Whittier Street Health Center's Expressive Arts Therapy program; Artists for Alzheimer's work with people living with Alzheimer's, Longwood Symphony's LSO on Call program, The Healing Empowerment Center, and much more.

During the midday break, participants are invited to learn about integrative medicine from practitioners at the Mobile Clinic from the Integrative Medicine Alliance.

The Arts of Compassion will be held from 9:00am-5:00pm at the David Friend Recital Hall at Berklee College of Music, 921 Boylston Street, Boston. The conference is open to the public, and the registration fee of $35 includes materials and lunch. Online registration for the symposium is available through the Longwood Symphony Orchestra's website

Participants are invited to attend the Longwood Symphony Orchestra's opening season concert at a discounted rate of only $25. The concert is will be held at NEC's Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street at 8:00 pm. Go to www.longwoodsymphony.org and enter discount code SYMP"

Arts of Compassion

Mark your calendars! Arts of Compassion: Perspectives on Arts and Health is an upcoming symposium scheduled for Saturday, October 2, 2010 at the Berklee School of Music. The Longwood Symphony will also be performing after the symposium. The symposium is being sponsored by BACH (Boston Arts Consortium for Health). This promises to be a wonderful day of inspiring speakers and moving music!

Musical House Calls

The Longwood Symphony, an orchestra made up of physicians, medical researchers and health care providers, broke with their tradition of playing a large concert and instead took their music to their audience -- their patients. Dr. Lisa Wong, pediatrician and president of the Longwood Symphony Orchestra stated,“To launch this year, instead of having a concert in Jordan Hall, where we usually play for 800 to 1,000 audience members, we thought we’d bring it to the patients". This year the healer musicians were broken into several groups that spread out over Boston, visiting health centers, hospitals and elder care centers in an initiative called LSO on Call: Health and Harmony in the City. They reached a similar number of audience members yesterday, playing for a total of about 800 in nearly two dozen small concerts.

To read more about this great group of healing musicians, click here for the Boston Globe article.

Healing Music in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Sometimes healing comes through low-tech interventions in high-tech medical environments. That thought resonated with me when I came across an article in the McAllen Chronicle, describing the work of Dr. Anatoliy Ilizarov, the medical director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Mission Regional Medical Center in Mission, Texas. As you can imagine, stress is rampant in a NICU, for staff, families and the tiny, fragile patients. Dr. Ilizarov, a trained classical pianist, began streaming music into the NICU to help reduce stress, and discovered that the premature infants began to gain weight faster, and began to feed earlier. Staff and families felt more relaxed as well. Dr. Ilizarov theorizes that the beat of the music, between 60-80 beats per minute, mimics the mother's heartbeat while the infant is in the womb. I was struck by the simple beauty of this intervention, a doctor who is a pianist using his gifts of art and science to heal gently. Good work, Dr. Ilizarov!