Have you ever read a book that felt like you were having a conversation with a good friend? Jeff Kane's new book, The Healing Companion makes me feel comforted, entertained, encouraged and enlightened; just as if I'd spent time talking with a good friend.

The book could be considered as a guide toward offering sick loved ones our healing presence. This guidance is valid for anyone relating to someone who is sick and is just as helpful to doctors, nurses and counselors as it is to family members and anyone who has a loved one who is sick.

A quote from page three says "This book will guide you toward offering sick loved ones your healing presence. By learning to ask them exactly how they're suffering and help them express their feelings thoroughly, you'll encourage an atmosphere of honesty. You'll move toward a perspective in which whatever happens physically, the emotional turmoil surrounding it will settle. All involved will benefit from increasing serenity."

I found especially helpful Jeff's discussion of how sick people suffer. He talks about really listening to their suffering and hearing their fears, anxieties, confusion, depression and rages. He says "I learned that people get emotional when they're sick and that fear and anger and despair aren't abnormal; they're a natural feature of sickness. In fact, I'd worry about the mental health of sick people who weren't affected by their consequent feelings. Hearing many hundreds of stories, I gradually learned that people don't generally suffer from their disease as much as from their emotions, the reactions their disease ignites in them." (page seven)

The rest of the chapters in the book are just as juicy and relevant as the above examples. In "Speaking With TLC", Jeff encourages speaking (only after much listening) with truth, leanness and compassion. He gives examples and practical questions to ask ourselves to pass the "TLC" test.

My two favorite chapters are "Welcoming Mystery" and "Healing Yourself". The first deals with the existential questions that illness can stir and the second with "continual" self care. What profound encouragement both offer for living in this world.

I truly enjoyed reading this book (and have read several sections more than once). The wonderful stories of courage and healing inspired me to be a better listener, a better friend and even a better person. Thank you Jeff.

Anyone confronted with the serious sickness of a family member of friend will find this sensitive but unsentimental book invaluable. Jeff Kane not only shows how the emotional support and participation of one's friends and family help the sick person in his or her illness (that is, the social and spiritual disclocation and emotional and psychological suffering caused by the disease), but also gives very concrete, practical suggestions on listening, responding, respecting, and feeling and showing compassion. Dr. Kane's insights about the experience of suffering, the devastation it causes and the opportunities it offers both the sick person and the care-giver for self-knowledge and personal transfromation make this a book to be read and reread time and again.

For anyone who has stood beside a hospital bed wondering, "What can I do to help?" Dr. Jeff Kane's THE HEALING COMPANION is an invaluable new resource. Beginning with beautifully told stories of people redefining their lives after a diagnosis of cancer, Dr. Kane shares the essence of his decades of work exploring the nature and sources of human suffering. He then goes on to offer practical techniques, which anyone with a willing heart and open mind can learn, to alleviate suffering and aid healing. A remarkable book whose applications go far beyond the boundaries of medical uses, and can have a profound transformative impact on how we perceive the meaning of our lives.

This book came highly recommended to me because my husband has Multiple Sclerosis. I was instantly captured by the title alone. As I dove deeper, I realized these "remarkable recovery" case studies could be my husband. I gained a great deal of insight about beliefs I already had, yet was struggling to fit them into our lives to help my husband heal, to help him get better, and hopefully some day, fully recover.

This book gave it all to me. It is well written and full of humor, which I found very enlightening when you are dealing with disease and death. I strongly & highly recommend this book to anyone who knows or cares about someone with any severe illness or life threatening disease.

I just finished this absolutely wonderful book & am buying 2 more copies for friends. I suggest you read it and do the same.

Here is a book to come back to time and time again... as I have. In the midst of my own cancer journey, I have made it a point to read and re-read portions of this book. In the darkness and uncertainty that accompanies Cancer, this book gave me hope. A guiding light, on a sometimes starless night. My dog-eared copy of this book will forever maintain a cherished place on my bookshelf.

I read this book before ordering it for a friend who has cancer, because I wanted to make sure it was the kind of information she needed. I thought it was absolutely wonderful. I'm a hard-science kind of person, not skeptical at all about the mind-body connection but definitely needing proof, and I got it here. I can't imagine a person with cancer--especially one with a poor prognosis but who's determined to do her or his best to get well again--who wouldn't feel better after reading this book.

I read this book every day. It has enriched my spiritual life tremendously. Now I give it to friends and family. We all have places in our lives and selves that need to be healed-- this book speaks to many of those different dimensions.

I was knee deep in the muck, as they say. My mother had passed away much too early in life for me to make any sense of it, and directly thereafter i was going through a painful divorce. I was bitter. This book is for those of you that believe that God is in all things. That pain is a medium for growth, and as A. Powell Davies would say, " . . . There comes a gentleness, a returning quietness, a restoring stillness. This too is a door to life. Here also is a deepening of meaning - and it can lead to dedication, a going forward to the triumph of the soul, the conquering of the wilderness. And in the process will come a deepening inward knowledge that in the final reckoning, all is well."

If you, or someone you know, needs healing of some sort, this interfaith book of calendar meditations can help; but, even if not, the prayers for the healing of society, the healing of the world, are appropriate for anyone to pray. The selections range from ancient times to modern, some are deeply religious, some are more secular. I got multiple copies of this, two years ago, and I have given away my last copy; now I'm ordering one more, for me. The book is divided by the seasons of the year. It is compact enough to travel easily. Even if you already have a daily devotional book, this is worthwhile as a supplement.

This collection of essays examines how thoughts and emotions affect our bodies and the bodies of others at a distance. It is an insightful look at the relationship between science and "unscientific" topics like prayer, love, laughter, work, creativity, dreams and more, an examination of consciousness and spirituality in medicine. Everybody knows that something vital is missing in modern allopathic medicine - the role of the human mind. The author points out the deep level of ignorance within science about the origin, function and destiny of human consciousness. But at last we are moving toward a vision of consciousness that liberates the mind from its identification with the physical brain and body. Of course, the implications for medicine are vast. He refers to the ideas of Jung, Ken Wilber, Erwin Schrödinger, David Bohm and Rupert Sheldrake and makes a valid case for the fact that our power to heal and be healed extends beyond our physical bodes. The essays fall into the three categories Meaning, Mind and Nonlocality, and the book concludes with a bibliography, a section on sources and an index. This is a classic and I recommend it to all who are interested in holistic or spiritual healing and those want to take responsibility for their own health.

Larry Dossey discusses the mystery of life and how consciousness is related to all of the physical things in the world. He does a superb job in explaining the wonders of the soul. Although is work is always inspiring, this book is especially so. It tells us that everything including consciousness is connected in a convincing way. For another astonishing book with a slightly different take on the subject, I'd highly recommend "Rhythm, Relationships, & Transcendence" by Sato. It is also a tremendously insightful book!

This is a book that lifts you to a higher frequency of light on the first page and never lets you down. What wonderful blessings it brings to the world! As Larry Dossey succinctly states in his foreword, "There are rare moments in our life when the discovery of a particular book, teaching, or piece of wisdom, simly stuns us and leaves us breathlessly filled with awe, gratitude, and joy. We recognize immediately that we have come upon a great treasure.As we stand in its presence and yield to its brilliance, we can sense immediately that it has begun to change us. That has been my response to encountering the work of the remarkable Bulgarian spiritual teacher Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov."

Feuerstein has captured the spirit of Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov's life of loving compassion and his practical yet profound teaching. For example, Feuerstein says: "To realize the Spirit, we must vibrate at its unsurpassed rate. Spiritual life can be understood as the discipline of voluntarily stepping up our rate of vibration."

He follows this remark with Aivanhov's comment about being alive.

"You are only alive if you emanate love. It's so easy to practice! For instance, when no one is looking, lift your right hand high and project all your love to the whole universe, to the stars, to the angels and archangels, saying: 'I love you, I love you, I want to be in harmony with you!' And in this way you form the habit of always emanating something vibrant and intense, you become a living source, a source of love."

The Mystery of Light brings the ageless wisdom into the practical realities of our physical lives. I wholeheartedly recommend it to all those who are open to great spiritual teachings.

Mr. Feuerstein has brilliantly captured the essence of Master Omraam. His book introduces us to both the history of this great man and his teachings and is a must read for anyone interested in higher spirituality and Omraam's work.

Dr. Larry Dossey is perhaps the worlds leading authority on prayer and health. This examination of the power of prayer in the healing process is even more important than Dr. Herbert Benson's Relaxation Response, Remembered Wellness, and Faith Factor. The reason for this is because Dr. Dossey elucidates the true nature of the mind-body connection and points the way for prayer to induce optimal healing benefits, regardless of spiritual discipline. Five Stars Dr. Dossey!

As a bookseller for Pages For All Ages Bookstore, I chose this book as my book selection of the month. Dr. Dossey investigates the nature, essence and power of prayer for both good and evil, in a most convincing way. How one prays and their intentions are brilliantly probed with numerous examples. The theories propounded and advanced are completely consistent with reason and evidence. The impartial power of prayer to manifest as conspicuous result is beyond refute. But what one prays for and their intention determine the result. Dr. Dossy also delves into negative prayer, curses, hexes, angry thought, and the power of such prayers to exact harm, intentionally or unintentionally. This is a must read for anyone who prays or even for those who think they don't. Five Stars for the good Doctor.

This is a book that I will continue to refer to throughout my life. As I read through it the first time, I was able to apply its stories, lessons and explanations to myself and my approach to living. It helped me to sort through some of the negativity that was impacting my life and brought me to understand how I should approach a more spiritual and positive outlook. I have recommended this book to several close friends. I am grateful to Dr. Young for his easy-going style and the many personal stories that he included. I felt as if he were speaking directly to me.

Jean proposes reconstruction for nursing in the 21st century by recalling our Nightingale roots. She eloquently and courageously calls nursing to reclaim its caring-healing identity in the post-modern/transpersonal world. The book is a provacative yet authentic discourse that leaves one wondering: "How will nursing respond?"

This is a fine book and it's held up well since its initial publication in 1989. In fact I suspect it's probably Larry Dossey's best, although I haven't read _all_ of his books.

What Dossey sets out to do in this volume is very straightforward: he wants to show the reader that there is reason to believe reality consists at bottom of a single "nonlocal" Mind that deserves to be identified as God. (By "nonlocal" he means "unlimited by ordinary space and time.") That claim probably sounds a little strange to modern ears, but by the time Dossey is through, it will be a very closed-minded reader who still thinks there is nothing to be said for it.

For Dossey is pretty thorough. He takes a largely empirical approach and invokes experimental results from a broad range of specializations --- medicine, psychology, biology, physics. And while his exposition isn't always as complete as I might like (he gets a lot of mileage, for example, out of Bell's theorem, but he never actually explains what it _is_), he still provides a well-rounded overview of all the stuff scientists have said that supports the nonlocality of mind. The reader will get short overviews of (the relevant portions of) the thought of, e.g., Erwin Schrodinger, Kurt Godel, Henry Margenau, David Bohm, and Rupert Sheldrake.

By way of wrapping it all up, Dossey devotes his closing chapters to outlining just what all of this suggests about religion and theology. In some ways this is the real meat of his book and it's probably the strongest portion of his work. There will be few surprises in it for the reader who is already familiar with the philosophical/spiritual literature in this area, but Dossey is as good an introduction to it as any.

What sets Dossey's book apart is not so much its conclusions -- which are properly tentative and at any rate common to pretty much the entire range of mystical/idealistic tradition and "perennial philosophy" -- but its broad overview of the support these conclusions receive from (some) science and scientists. Lots of other books focus in on this or that area (quantum theory, say, or parapsychology); Dossey tries to cover the whole spectrum. As a result his presentation is a little thin in some areas, but after eleven years this is still one of the very few books one can consult to get introductory information on _all_ of them.

Good stuff. And if you've read any of Dossey's other books, this one will give you the theoretical/speculative underpinnings of his other work on e.g. the medical benefits of prayer.

Another great book by Dossey. This book is on my top tep list. Dossey does a great job of offering evidence for the non-locality of consciousness. Much like the Holographic Universe (above).

Dr. Dossey explores the research and theory behind the concept of non-local mind, with the intent to illustrate how our minds are non-local -- unconfined to brains and bodies and thus not entirely dependent on the physical organism. As Dossey explains, "If non-local mind is a reality, the world becomes a place of interaction and connection, not one of isolation and disjunction. And if humanity really believed that non-local mind were real, an entirely new foundation for ethical and moral behavior would enter, which would hold at least the possibility of a radical departure from the insane ways human beings and nation-states have chronically behaved toward each other." Dossey delves into ideas put forward by Schrodinger, Godel, Einstein, Margenau, and Bohm -- before moving into the spiritual implications of non-local mind. I highly recommend this book as an excellent starting point for understanding the concept of "one mind", and for considering the implications this has in our lives.

It's probably tempting to dismiss this book as "New Age" claptrap. That would be a mistake.

In fact Dossey is highly critical of the "New Age" movement. And despite some overblown cover blurbs, he doesn't claim to have "proven" anything about the power of prayer in healing; he's making suggestions and exploring possibilities, not laying down law.

Nor, for the most part, is his speculation wild or unfounded. His suggestions are founded on two things: empirical research that seems to show prayer is effective in promoting the biological growth of certain forms of life under controlled laboratory conditions, and the theological/philosophical view that reality is ultimately a single, universal, "nonlocal" Absolute Mind.

However controversial these foundations might be, he presents his suggestions with proper caution. And he is especially careful to avoid falling into the New Age blame-the-patient trap; he is well aware that prayer doesn't always achieve the results we might like and that this isn't because somebody has done something to "choose" or "deserve" ill health.

On the contrary, he has a healthy sense that prayer is really (though this language isn't quite his) for the purpose of adjusting us to the Divine Will rather than vice-versa. (Anthony de Mello tells a story somewhere about a man who said, "In your country it is regarded as a miracle when God does the will of a human being. In my country it is regarded as a miracle when a human being does the will of God.") On his view, the "power" of prayer is shown as much in our acceptance of our health limitations as in their elimination.

There are a couple of places where Dossey threatens to wander off the deep end (e.g. his suggestion that prayer can change the past), and there's a little bit of language (e.g. "Era I, Era II, and Era III") that recalls bad 1970s self-help books. But I really have only one bone to pick with Dossey: he tends at times to overstate the difference between his views and those of traditional, "classical" theism.

There is a tendency among those (of whom I am one, which is in part how I know this) who left their childhood religions in their early teens to assume, more or less unconsciously, that our understanding of such religion was complete at that time and none of its adherents understood any of the cool things we went on to discover for ourselves. It's hard to shake one's implicit belief that those hidebound "fundamentalists" couldn't _possibly_ have known any of this nifty "spirituality" stuff; "dogmatic" religion is, of course, the arch-enemy of "true" spirituality -- isn't it?

Dossey has a very mild tendency in this direction. In consequence I suspect he will occasionally leave more traditional religious believers with the sense that they are being misunderstood, patronized, or both.

But it doesn't happen very often, and it hardly happens at all in this book. On the whole, Dossey's approach tends to confirm rather than undermine the great theistic religions' view of prayer.

Dr. Dossey explains in HEALING WORDS how prayer-based healing works. It has been scientifically proven in hundreds of experiments to be a balanced part of health care that can significantly decrease health problems and significantly improve our quality and quantity of life. Dossey shares some of his own real-life stories of caring for patients... including an American Indian shaman, who requested Dr. Dossey's medical help for his aching neck! This book contains a wealth of information about prayer experiments written in Dossey's characteristically down-to-Earth style. I love the way Dossey raises questions about whether some prayer experiments are ethical, and why some scientists continue to resist the mounting body of evidence that so clearly shows how prayer has a powerful effect on healing.

Dossey again displays an inquisitive intellect. This work transcends a narrow, dogmatic "god," to approach a universal "non-local" mind which encompasses and connects all existence. Dossey is cognizant of the power of words and emotion... of the impact they can have on humanity. This is not "New Age;" it is a modern compilation and interpretation of ancient wisdom. Bravo!