The First Book on Spiritual Healing
                              Based on a Research Study at a Major
                              University Healthcare Center

                              By Michael Samuels, M.D. and Mary
                              Rockwood Lane, R.N., Ph.D.

                              Wiley, October, 2000

Spirit-Body Healing is based on a research study by Mary Rockwood Lane on how creativity heals.  The research was conducted at Shands Hospital from 1992 to 1999 at The University of Florida for her Ph.D.   Her study was sponsored and partially funded  by the College of Medicine. She  took detailed  interviews of people who had been through life crises or healed themselves of life threatening illness and analyzed their stories to elucidate the themes and essences of how creativity healed.

In the analysis of the interviews, she made a major discovery.  Although she started out asking how art heals, she found out that the spirit heals.  What people said over and over again was that they went to a place inside themselves where they actually experienced a shift of consciousness. This allowed them to see their whole life in a new way.  When the shift in point of view occurred, the life healing began.

Although the experiences were different for each person, the underlying themes were the same..  Each person went from a place of profound darkness, fear, or illness to a place where they experienced luminosity. After healing, they described feeling intensely alive and transformed.  Each person described a transcendent way of being; their spirit became awakened, visible, and illuminated. After the person goes inwards, glimpses darkness and light, feels healing energy, they feel or see their spirit and feel or see their spirit heal them.  The body feelings were concrete and were most often described as illumination or luminosity.  In the study, we called this experience illuminosity.  Each person had a different experience of transcendence, but the experience of transcendence was a recognizable phenomenon that was the main feature of their physical and psychological healing.

The study elucidated the process by which art heals and the process of how the spirit heals and became the basis for the book Spirit Body Healing.  This book will teach anyone interested in art and healing about the steps that make up the process of art and healing.

                              Spirit Body Healing is the first book on spiritual healing to emerge from a research study in a major university  healthcare center. By showing us how to deepen the spiritual dimension in our daily lives while doing easy  visualizations and meditations, Drs. Samuels and Lane teach us how to help heal physical,  emotional, and spiritual illness. With Spirit Body Healing, we go to a place of healing, beauty, and grace where we get in touch with our own spirits and the higher power that has meaning for us. Filled with inspiring, beautifully written stories, Spirit Body Healing reveals the eight steps of spiritual healing:

                                   1.   Go into Darkness
                                   2.   Go Elsewhere
                                   3.   Find Your Turning Point
                                   4.   Slip Through the Veil
                                   5.   Know the Truth
                                   6.   Embody Your Spirit
                                   7.   Feel the Healing Energy
                                   8. Experience Transcendence

          Spirit-Body Healing as a prescriptive book.  It tells how to use the Spirit-Body Healing method with
          illnesses including life threatening illness such as cancer, AIDS, and heart disease.  We have also
          used the techniques in Spirit-Body Healing with people with depression, with trauma, with problems
          in relationships,  and with life crises of personal growth.  The method helps people reconnect with
          the core of what people believe in their spirituality.  It helps them  become a more complete person
          and have the strength to carry on when things become difficult.

          Inspirational stories from real patient experiences and their teachings from the edge show each of us
          how to heal with the spirit.  Our patient’s advice gives us a way to live and a way to heal that is
          revolutionary and futuristic.  Spirit-Body Healing is the framework for spiritual healing for the new
          millenia.   From seven years of research, it is the best roadmap for you on how to heal with the
          spirit.

               Whatever your spiritual orientation, Spirit Body Healing offers practical,  prescriptive methods
          that show us and our loved ones how to create immediate changes in our lives