Healing Connection, The
Details and Description
Description
"It is inspiring to see a physician who is unafraid to stand up for his religious beliefs and who understands how those beliefs can resonate with good science." —Larry Dossey, MD, author of Reinventing Medicine and Healing Words
The name Harold G. Koenig is well known in the fast-growing field of spirituality and health. Founder and director of the widely respected Duke University Center for Theology, Spirituality, and Health, Dr. Koenig is recognized worldwide for his groundbreaking work in medical science and religious faith. In this book—now available in paperback—he shares his remarkable personal story and shows how personal trials became the catalyst for his pioneering research.
In part one, he describes his turbulent youth: growing up on a California vineyard, college days of experimentation during the 1970s, adventures as a student researcher in Africa with Jane Goodall, an emotional breakdown, expulsion from medical school for disruptive behavior, battling mental illness as a street person in San Francisco. He refers to his ongoing battle with a chronic and debilitating physical disease in terms of the insights it gives him for his work, and he recounts the striking realization of God's call, the people and events that helped him refine a vision into a mission, and the subsequent professional opposition that resided alongside his success.
Part two draws on the real-life examples of former patients and summarizes Koenig's most important findings concerning the impact of Christian faith on mental and physical health, encapsulated by the statement: religious faith and practice are connected to mental and physical health.
In part three he challenges individuals and the American church to consider the implications of the research and to develop constructive ways of implementing the healing connection that can be found in faith.
Table of Contents
Introduction / ix
1. The Journey Begins / 1
Part 1: One Man’s Story
2. Early Days / 13
3. From Books to Buffaloes / 25
4. Butterfly Hunter / 35
5. From Med School to Madness / 45
6. Empty House, Empty Life / 57
7. Healed and Called / 67
Part 2: The Research Findings
8. Publish His Glorious Acts / 87
9. Hoping, Coping, and Growing: The Duke Studies / 95
10. Getting, Giving, and Living: The Duke Studies Continued / 109
11. The Evidence Piles Up / 123
Part 3: The Link for Us
12. Red Flags—When Faith Does Not Heal / 143
13. What Does the Research Mean? / 161
14. How Should We Respond? / 189
15. The Call to Care / 191
Endorsements and Reviews
Reviews
National Medical Association
In summary, The Healing Connection is short, easy to read, and useful to clinicians sharing Dr. Koenig’s faith and approach to patient care. Principles found here are not easily exported to other faiths and other patient-care settings.
Christian Marketplace
In The Healing Connection: The Story of a Physician’s Search for the Link between Faith and Health, Dr. Koenig shares his own, often surprising personal story including his personal crisis that resulted in an emotional breakdown, disruptive behavior that led to his expulsion from medical school, and to battling with mental illness as a street person in San Francisco. He had no idea that he would become a medical scientist, study factors that help people cope with chronic illness and stresses associated with aging and depression, and explore the effects that religious faith and practice have on mental and physical health. He had no idea he would fight against slowly progressive and disabling arthritis that would dramatically affect his own physical challenges and cause him to face the same challenges that many of his patients encounter.
Journal of the National Medical Association
In summary, The Healing Connection is short, easy to read, and useful to clinicians sharing Dr. Koenig’s faith and approach to patient care. Principles found here are not easily exported to other faiths and other patient-care settings.
Science & Theology News
The book allows us to identify with Koenig’s vulnerability and humanity. He summarizes some of his extensive research in an enjoyable-to-read style. The book could be used as an introduction to the mind-body connection, but it is most obviously a guide for Christians to improve their health through faith when both health and faith are tried most.
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith—Vol. 57, No. 1
Koenig is the Director of the Duke University Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health, and Editor of Science and Theology News. He has authored dozens of books and journal articles about the relationship between faith and health. Templeton Press, the publisher of this book, promotes knowledge about invisible and intangible reality including such spiritual aspects as love, creativity, worship, and purpose.
Koenig’s interest in faith and health has been influenced by his life’s personal experiences, and his study of research outcomes. He learned that in times of physical and emotional turmoil, people turn to religion for help. Many of them find it helps lessen depression, anxiety, and physical symptoms.
Koenig is careful to point out that benefits flowing from religious belief do not prove God’s existence. Furthermore, religious faith does not guarantee good health and long life. But Koenig does conclude that both individuals and churches might consider how physical and mental wellbeing can be improved by religious faith and action.
Scientific and Medical Network, The—Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
The book is written from an explicitly Christian perspective but those who share a spiritual outlook will respond to Koenig’s findings and prognoses.
Living Church—Milwaukee, WI
The author hopes that his personal story and his research will be a wake-up call to health professionals to concern themselves with the spiritual component of their patients. This should be especially good reading for health professionals with its emphasis on the often-neglected power of spiritual healing.
The Midwest Book Review
The author hopes that his personal story and his research will be a wake-up call to health professionals to concern themselves with the spiritual component of their patients. This should be especially good reading for health professionals with its emphasis on the often-neglected power of spiritual healing.
www.Spirit-works.net
While Dr. Koenig’s book is unequivocally slanted toward Christian thought and ideology, the research stands alone undaunted. I felt the book well worth reading and look forward to sharing it with my son in medical school. The power of 'belief' and knowing the body's ability to heal itself, can take us far in today’s healthcare market. I highly recommend it to you also.&mdashRev. Dr. Sandra Gaskin
Journal of Community Nursing
Anyone familiar with Koenig’s work will want to read this book revealing how Koenig’s personal trials (his turbulent youth, expulsion from medical school, former battle with mental illness, ongoing struggle with a chronic, debilitating physical disease) became the catalyst for his pioneering research that has elucidated the connection between faith and health. The book is a personal testimony of how God changed one life, an instructional book about religion and health and a challenge to develop constructive ways of implementing the Healing Connection that can be found in faith.