From Hospital To Healing Sanctuary:
The Journey Continues
by Staff Writer
THE NETHERLANDS - Picture your hospital experience in the year 2084. Your first floor room opens onto a lush courtyard garden. The TV & soap operas have been replaced with the gentle sounds of healing music. Fresh scents of various flowers, spices and herbs waive through the room in perscriptioned response to your ailment. A nearby lamp bathes you in soft colors, which seem to soothe your pain. Barely audible words of encouragement, joy and humor come from the tiny speaker near your pillow.
A fantasy? Not so say the participants at the Hospital As Temple conference which took place earlier this year in the Netherlands. Creating a healing environment was the theme of this second of a series of three conferences, organized by the Forum Health Care division of the Davidhuis Foundation in Rotterdam. These series of conferences endeavor to foster a new vision of medicine as it might be practiced in the Hospital of the future.
Doctors, nurses and health care professionals from throughout Europe attended the conference and heard an impressive list of visionary health professionals speak about the future of health care and healing. Pioneers such as Evarts & Fay Loomis spoke about the role of the health professional as guide and facilitator to the self-healing processes of the body and the opportunities for spiritual development and the growth toward wholeness which health challenges offer.
Dr Patch Adams, MD brought his own unique brand of humor to the conference. He spoke about his work as founder and director of the Gesundheit Institute, a holistic medical community in the US that has provided free medical care to thousands of patients since 1971.
Dying with dignity was the theme of the sessions led by Michael Murphy, MD a psychiatrist and medical director of St Peter's Hospice in Albany, NY. USA. He spoke of his hospice work with the terminally ill and their families, in arranged meetings which allow them a chance to share there inner most fears and feelings. As he explains, "Saying hello is a necessary prelude to saying goodbye."
Medical researcher and author Caryle Hirshberg shared stories about the many thousands of cases of spontaneous remissions from cancer she has documented during her 14 years of research, while the ethereal music of Therese Schroeder Sheker introduced her talk about the power of contemplative music as an adjunct to healing. Midwife Raven Lang shared her remarkable stories of birth experiences following a traditional Native American blessing ceremony.
The conference ended on a positive note with delegates resolved to start the revolution from within by making their own contributions to creating a healing environment within their hospitals. The conference was organized by Dr Bart van der Lugt, MD, Ph.D., and Mrs. Manec van der Lugt of the Forum Health Care at the Davidhuis Foundation in Rotterdam. Address: Forum Health Care, Stichting Davidhuis, Slotlaan 31, 3062 PL Rotterdam, Netherlands. Tel +31 1041 23 442.
Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation.
Meditation returns you to the source. And the source of all is sound. — Kabir
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