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one person's mind, directed with healing intentions, may affect another person's health; how mind-to-mind connections can facilitate "energy healing," as well as distant psychic and spiritual healing. Physician Larry Dossey asks:
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How do prayer, noncontact therapeutic touch, extended effects of meditation, effects of transpersonal or distant imagery, and diagnosis at a distance fit into modern medicine? Can they fit? I believe the answer is yes, if we are bold enough to extend our views of the mind. 1
Recently, Dossey's commitment to the study of mind-body healing has led him to become executive editor of the new journal, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. In his inspiring books Recovering the Soul, Meaning & Medicine, and Healing Words, Dossey describes three distinctively different types of healing methodologies that have been used throughout the course of medical science.2 Since they generally fall into historical sequence, he referred to these categories of healing as "Eras." Dossey's ideas provide a helpful framework for understanding the relationship of remote viewing to healing, so we describe the three types of methodologies here.
In medical Era I, all forms of therapy are physical, and the body is regarded as a mechanism that functions according to deterministic principles. Classical laws of matter and energy, as described by Newtonian physics, guide these approaches to healing, which focus solely on the effects of material forces on the physical body. The Era I approaches to healing encompass most of "modern" medical technology and include techniques such as drugs, surgery, and radiation. They also include CPR, acupuncture, nutrition, and herbs, but mind is not a factor of healing in this era.
Dossey extols the accomplishments of Era I medicine in the history of healing, just as modern physicists acknowledge the contribution of Newtonian physics to our understanding of the laws of the physical universe. "These achievements are so significant that most persons believe the future of medicine still lies solidly in Era I approaches," says Dossey, despite the fact that "all the major diseases of our day  heart disease, hypertension, cancer, and more  have now been shown to be influenced, at least to some

 
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