Sometimes getting fooled again is good for you, as in healing good. Shamans have been healing people for tens of thousands of years, using their considerable powers of persuasion and that most efficacious of treatments: placebo.
While shamanic healing methods are varied, there is a great deal of ritual similarity across time and space: trance, sucking, [...]
Tags:Bali·Balian·Balinese healers·cultural tourism·Daniel McGuire·Ketut Liyer·Mangku Pogog·New Age·placebo·ritual healing·shamanic healing·suggestion·traditional healers
As is the case with charismatic or evangelical forms of Christianity, some strands of Islam have a robust sense of supernatural agency that populates the world with all manner of malevolent spirits who are ostensibly responsible for real world afflictions. In a recent article, psychiatrist Amir Afkhami reports on an Islamic “faith healer” in Iraq [...]
Tags:Amir Afkhami·charismatic·Christianity·demons·evangelical·faith healing·folk beliefs·folk religion·Freud·hysteria·Iraq·Islam·jinns·Koran·Mullah Eskandar·Quran·shamanic healing·spirits
Yet another study has been published which demonstrates that the placebo effect is real and powerful. But the difference in this study is it did not involve deception — the patients were told they were being given a placebo and still had improved health effects!
In “Placebo Effects and Shamanic Healing,” I explored the connection between [...]
Tags:illusions·outcomes·Paleolithic·placebo·placebo effect·Placebos without Deception·Rick James·shamanic healing·Ted Kaptchuk
Over at HuffPo Religion, Dr. Rustum Roy — a geochemist — accuses the media of criminal conduct in its reporting of the non-existent war between science and religion. In the course of doing so, Roy tilts at several windmills and claims special authority for “hard” or “classical” science.
Roy begins by touting his credentials as a [...]
Tags:Christopher Hitchens·classical science·cosmology·Daniel Dennett·Darwin·experimental science·facts lab science·geochemistry·hard science·Harvey Whitehouse·Ian Stevenson·Jeanne Achterberg·Jesse Bering·Justin Barrett·Larry Dossey·Nietzsche·Pascal Boyer·placebo·positivism·Richard Dawkins·Rustum Roy·Sam Harris·Scott Atran·shamanic healing·Stephen Hawkins·Stephen Weinberg
There are some scholars — such as James McLenon and Stephen Sanderson, who contend that shamanic techniques of healing played in an important role in the evolution of religion. I tend to agree and discussed the issue in “Judge Not and Be Persuaded (or Healed):
“Essential to McClenon’s argument is that the people being treated by [...]
Tags:Antonio Damasio·Christian Science·emotions·healing·health·hypnosis·Jaak Panksepp·James McLenon·placebo effect·placebos·shamanic healing·shamans·Stephen Sanderson·suggestion·Tor Wager
Over at Inkling Magazine, Meera Lee Sethi reports on a brilliant study which shows that when believers are told that the person to whom they are listening has divine powers, the regions of their brain responsible for high level executive functioning — in other words, the areas involved in critical thinking and judgment — show [...]
Tags:faith healing·hypnosis·James McClenon·James Walker·Lakota·placebo·priming·shamanic healing·suggestibility·suspension of disbelief·wicasa wakan
