Spiritism: Bridging Spirituality and Health

Reported September 15, 2008

If you found out you had a life-threatening disease, what would you do? Would you depend totally on western medicine for treatment, or would you be open to trying different approaches to healing that evolved from shamanic traditions and involved spiritual therapies?

Emma Bragdon, Ph.D., director of the organization, Spiritual Alliances, has produced and directed the thought-provoking, beautifully filmed and well-crafted DVD, “Spiritism: Bridging Spirituality and Health” which offers insight into the world of Brazilian Spiritism, a spiritual approach to healing mind and body. Through interviews with western medical doctors and Brazilian mediums and healers as she visits various Spiritist Centers and Hospitals in Brazil and the United States, Dr. Bragdon helps the viewer understand what Spiritism is, and how profoundly it can affect one’s well-being. Dr. Bragdon believes Spirtism Centers have found a way to bring the best from shamanic cultures into contemporary life for healing mind and body using what the shamanic people have known for thousands of years.

After opening the DVD with some less-than heartening statistics about western medicine, such as nearly $40 billion having been spent on cancer since the 1971 launch of the “War on Cancer” and now, almost 40 years later, there are still no signs of cancer ending (per Dr. Devra Davis, epidemiologist and author of The Secret History of the War on Cancer); and The Journal of American Medical Association pronouncement that “Deaths induced by a physician’s activity, manner or therapy constituted the third leading cause of death in the USA (following heart disease and cancer),” we are then taken to the verdant jungles of Brazil, where members of the Fulni-O Tribe are picking medicinal herbs for their healing practices, and we’re introduced to the shamanistic idea of talking with spirits and having a deeper communion with nature in order to facilitate healing.

Daniel Benor, M.D., a psychiatrist and author of several books on spiritual healing, who admits to once having been a skeptic about such things, suggests there are a number of cultures around the world where this kind of awareness is just accepted as a way of life. He suggests we have been blinded to other possibilities like talking with spirits, which westerners call “folklore,” through our own cultural peculiarities. Dr. Benor saw a healer at work in 1980 who made a change on someone in half an hour that was medically impossible. He said not only did he see a lesion healed, his skepticism was healed as well, and that he has been exploring spiritual healing ever since.

We learn from Elsie Dubugras, researcher, magazine editor, and Spiritist (and 100 years old when filmed!) that a Spiritist believes in life after death and that the physical body has its equal in spirit land. That when you die, you pass over into spirit land and meet your loved ones. After learning whatever lessons you need, you’re then reincarnated – born again into the physical world. She states that Spiritism is not a religion, but a way of thought, a way of thinking.

Spiritism is popular in Brazil, with about 20 million people who use the Spiritist Centers’ resources. Dr. Bragdon takes the viewer to The Federation of Spiritism in Sao Paulo, the largest Spiritist Center which has about 7,000 visitors a day, who are not required to pay for their services. We see Spiritist mediums administer “passes” to get their directed thoughts of healing to work for the patients through hand movements which they say must be filled with love to permeate the energy they donate. “Our love is what is helpful in all phases of the illness,” says Vladimir Lisso, Esq., director of the Spiritist Federation of Sao Paulo. “The medium connects himself through prayer with the higher planes of life – with God, with Jesus,” says Marlene Nobre, MD, President of the International Medical Spiritist Association. Dr. Nobre goes on to say that a Spiritist medium/healer wants to help the ill person with all his heart, and magnetic energy emanates from the healer and is directed to the person receiving the pass. That higher spirits channel this magnetic energy into the spiritual body of the patient. She adds that water may also become imbued with this energy, which diffuses itself throughout the body of the patient and contributes to healing.

Though it would have been far more validating to see statistics and research from other sources outside the Spiritists, the video offers some statistics about Spiritist healing, according to the Federation of Brazilian Spiritists of Sao Paulo:

· 70-percent success rate in helping people heal from cancer (Study conducted at Grupo Noel, Sao Paulo)
· 90-percent success rate with drug and alcohol addiction
· 90-percent success rate with treating profound depression

Dr. Bragdon says these statistics need to be repeated and more rigorous studies done, but still thinks there’s a very strong indication that effective healing is happening at the Spiritist Centers. The viewer sees interviews with people who have received mental and physical benefits from Spiritist healers and hears some interesting stories from those who became Spiritist mediums.
 

In addition to seeing some Spiritist centers in Brazil, Dr. Bragdon brings the viewer back to the U.S. (where there are currently 70 Spiritist Centers) and interviews Jussara Korngold, Director of the Spiritist Group of New York who talks about how in addition to the positive spirits that are helpful, there are also negative spirits who might be motivated by revenge or want to hurt someone. Sometimes these negative spirits might want to live through someone else, such as an addict wanting to live through the addiction of someone who’s in physical form. The film then covers what are called “dis-obsession” sessions, where the Spiritist medium tunes into the patient and picks up what negatively motivated spirits are obsessing the patient, and then through counseling, the Spiritist helps the negative spirit release, and then liberates the patient from its ill effects. As Dr. Bragdon points out, “It’s hard to say exactly what’s happening, as how can we measure such things?” And she adds, “But it’s palpably real to me.”

The viewer is told, “Spiritual obsession is a complicating factor for 60% of schizophrenic patients, 80% of bi-polar patients. Disobsession has proven effective in treating all manner of physical and mental illnesses.” Dr. Bragdon says her thinking has been transformed on these topics and that there’s a strong possibility this could be of help to more people in psychiatry. Whether it’s talked about in terms of spirit possession or not, is another question!

This 35-minute film doesn’t prove healing occurs with Spiritism, but it certainly gives enough fascinating and anecdotal material to whet one’s appetite for more information on this compelling topic. “Spiritism: Bridging Spirituality and Health” is definitely worth viewing by anyone interested in the mysteries of Spiritist healing, or those looking for another approach to health that is far different from current western medical paradigms. Dr. Bragdon does a fine job bringing the potential of the Spiritist ways into contemporary life with this provocative film.

Source : www.emmabragdon.com