Cue the theme song to the Twilight Zone: Research shows your plants won't grow as well when you're depressed as when you're happy. Praying for someone else will improve your own health, too. The growth of E. coli bacteria is inhibited when a group of people merely think about stopping the growth. And qi gong practitioners in San Francisco can kill cancer cells in other peoples' bodies--by willing the cells to die. These ideas surely sound ludicrous, but these and other similarly mindboggling studies have been commissioned and replicated by researchers at Harvard, Duke, McGill, and other esteemed universities.

Larry Dossey is known as the father of mind-body medicine and perhaps best known for his advocacy of the role of prayer in healing in 1995's bestselling Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine. He admits that working on such seemingly impossible projects a few years ago would have ruined a researcher's career with "ATF," or "the anti-tenure factor." But things are changing. He wrote Reinventing Medicine to present proof that "the mind can literally change the external world" and how this "nonlocal mind" will change health care in the future. His argument for the existence of this nonlocal mind is as convincing as it is eloquently conveyed. Doubters, he says, merely need to examine their own dreams for proof this is true. When was the last time you had a conversation or found yourself in a situation you dreamed about the night before? Studies from as early as the 1960s "strongly suggest that dreams are an avenue of nonlocal communication between separate, distant persons."

Dossey's support of the nonlocal mind is sure to draw pooh-poohs from cynics, including M.D.s, but, he warns, health-care workers are bound to experience this force firsthand: "Doctors can experience their patients' symptoms nonlocally, and this can be unpleasant." He cites the example of psychiatrist Mona Lisa Shulz, a medical intuitive, who "began to grow increasingly uncomfortable, feeling hot and flushed," while speaking over the phone with a feverish patient. Dossey says this telesomatic event, extreme empathy, or whatever you want to call it, is dangerous, but that "empathic balance" is something that will be taught in medical schools in the future to ensure accurate diagnoses of ill patients. Dossey was one of the first vanguards of mind-body medicine, which is basically accepted as fact today; he's again presenting the future of medicine, as otherworldly as it seems. --Erica Jorgensen


From Publishers Weekly
Always in the vanguard, physician Dossey (Prayer Is Good Medicine, etc.) makes a fascinating case for the next revolution in medicine beyond the current era of mind-body healing. Rather than signaling an entirely new direction, he defines a larger, more humane vision based on incorporating advances in integrative medicine. His brief, persuasive work is bound to attract attention from the general public and medical professionals alike, especially in light of his pioneering work on the connection between prayer and healing. Rendering his argument in simple language and illustrating it with many individual stories as well as scientific studies, Dossey contends that we are entering an era of the "non-local mind"Athat consciousness can accomplish healing outside the confines of one's brain and body, influencing distant events, people and circumstances. He does not discount the efficacy of medical intervention so much as he anticipates an enlightened model of partnership between patient and healer. While some readers may resist the idea of prayer influencing such events as cell development, many will accept the more familiar examples involving animal behavior (e.g., pets traveling thousands of miles to reunite with their owners). Addressing such major conduits of nonlocal healing as dreams, prayer and being in "the zone," Dossey offers moving examples of human healing that seem inexplicable by other means. He is at his most eloquent in his concluding chapter on "Eternity Medicine," or the compassionate treatment of the dying. Agent, James Levine. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
In his Recovering the Soul, physician Dossey first introduced the idea that there have been, so far, three eras of Western medicine: physical healing, mind-body healing, and a new era he focuses on here, continuing his investigation/description/ validation of alternative healing. He challenges physicians and others to look beyond the now-accepted mind-body component of healing (pioneered during what he calls Era II) and to embrace what he terms nonlocal medicineAa worldview incorporating consciousness as a healing agent, where events are unaffected by space or time. Dossey summarizes research supporting nonlocality and then examines it in the context of ordinary, day-to-day medical practice. Although some of the material included here is repeated from previous works, much of the research he cites is recent. An interesting and unusual approach to health studies; recommended for public libraries and health science centers.AAndy Wickens, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib. of the Health Sciences Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Dossey is the foremost physician advocate of prayer, thanks to the best-selling Healing Prayer (1993). Now he expands upon his concept of nonlocal mind, which denotes the character of consciousness that seems necessary to account for why prayer aids healing, why one can have premonitions, why one can experience sympathetic pain and distress when a loved one is injured, and a host of other occurrences that defy present scientific logic. He contends that mind is spread throughout space and time and even between species, including between plants and animals. To support the contention, he cites study after study, well prepared by reputable researchers, to establish that "impossible" and "miraculous" phenomena can be verified, if not explained. The evidence indicates at least that, though greatly separated by distance and without previous acquaintance with or knowledge of one another, a person can physically and mentally influence another person. Dossey further asserts that medicine is poised for a third stage in its modern development. Recapping that development, he says that scientific medicine was the defining characteristic of Era I medicine, which lasted until the 1950s. Then, after a half-century of psychotherapy and its formulations, especially the idea of psychosomatic illness, medicine accepted the mind-body connection, initiating Era II. Era III will begin when the idea that mind is not confined in the body is accepted. Dossey stresses that Era III will not overthrow the discoveries of Eras I and II, which helps make his new medicine easier to swallow, as does his clarity and tact as a writer. With Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra, he is one of the most approachable healing gurus--and he doesn't vend a self-help program. Ray Olson



"Cogent and compelling..."



"With Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra, [Dossey] is one of the most approachable healing gurus..."



"Hail, Larry Dossey, physician and seer!"

FROM THE PUBLISHER