On Learning To Heal: Book ReviewI
I was contacted by www.CoriolisCompany.com asking if I would like to read and review On Learning To Heal: What Medicine Doesn’t Tell you by Ed Cohen
They said “At thirteen, Ed Cohen was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease—a condition that nearly killed him in his early twenties. At his diagnosis, his doctors told him that the best he could hope for was periods of remission. Unfortunately, they never mentioned healing as a possibility.
In On Learning to Heal, Cohen draws on fifty years of living with Crohn’s to consider how Western medicine’s turn from an “art of healing” toward a “science of medicine” deeply affects both medical practitioners and their patients. He demonstrates that although medicine can now offer many seemingly miraculous therapies, it is not and has never been the only way to enhance healing. Exploring his own path to healing, he argues that learning to heal requires us to desire and value healing as a vital possibility.
Cohen has a Ph.D. in Modern Thought from Stanford, and for the last three decades, has been an award-winning professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University.”
My Review:
On Learning to Heal is Ed Cohens memoir mixed with philosophy. He talks of how we seek cures. We don’t recognize that we already have the innate ability for healing within ourselves. This exists inside our own bodies and minds. Yet we seek answers elsewhere.
The solution that he offers is that to begin healing we first must believe that it is possible.
This is not an anti scientific medicine book like I suspected it might be. This is a book about having open minds and exploring various pathways for our own healing. It is possible to use scientific medicine along with our own healing ability and alternative health practices.
I could relate to much of his description of Crohns flares. Though not the same I have Celiac Disease and an intestinal bowel disease called Microscopic Colitis.
He points out the need to focus on what is going right in our body instead of letting what is going wrong to take over.
I enjoyed the personal memoir narrative. I did struggle with the science, historical fact content only because at times it felt like when I was struggling to read textbooks for college. Thank you Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for the difficulty focusing.
Please do not reject the book based on those last few sentences, that was just my own struggle to absorb the wealth of information the book contained.
The book is both informative and thought provoking. I do highly recommend looking through it if you can get your hands on a copy. You can preview a bit of it at this Google books link
I am donating my copy to the healing center I am affiliated with so that others around me have the opportunity to read and think about the information contained within it.
Reading Mr. Cohens journey and seeing how far he has come is inspiring.
If you can’t find it in your local library I am sure you can always get a copy on Amazon.com.
Ed did speak of needing others to help keep us headed in the healing direction. I am thankful for those supports in my area. It is important to also think about the difference between ‘illness’ and ‘healing’. I had not really given the difference much thought until reading this book. Remember your disease isn’t your life but it does affect your life.
On Page 36 he reminds us “Healing is not a steady state” That really hit home for me as lately I’ve been riding the roller coaster of healing and the down days can make us discount the upward days. Reading this book gave me hope and inspiration that instead of giving up and letting my illness’s define me I can hop into the drivers seat and take back some control!
Here in the US, the medical industrial complex is all about money. They don’t want to cure anyone. If they cure us then they lose money. I’m open to all forms of natural treatment. I really need to write a post about the all natural treatment my daughter received in Mexico instead of going the route of chemo, radiation, and extreme surgery for her cancer. Thanks so much for linking up at the #UnlimitedLinkParty 112. Shared.
I look forward to reading the post about your daughters treatment. Thanks for visiting!
Visiting again to say thanks so much for linking up at the #UnlimitedLinkParty 115. Pinned.