The evidence is clear--the human mind and body compose one organism. The distinction between "mental" and "physical" illness is completely artificial. It is used by bigots and fearmongers to enhance their self-created images of moral superiority.
It has clearly been shown that people can "get better" or "be healed" or even "be cured" through mechanisms that we don't completely understand.
The infamous (and pejoratively named) "placebo"effect demonstrates that the patient's condition can change based on his or her "expectations", or response to the clinical encounter. Everyone in the healing arts knows that the process of care itself, independent of medicines or radiation or surgery, is powerful--for good or ill.
There is more we do not know about how the brain/mind/body really work in an integrated organism than there is that we do know. Can the mind heal the body? Of course, as the body can heal the mind. This does NOT require, in my view, magic waves from Mars or vibrations from Venus or "whoo-whoo" or interventions by the dead. It is real and has been documented repeatedly.
The meaning of "spirit" is simply "breath". Breathing brings oxygen, the essence of life. I believe that what is called "spiritual healing" is simply healing that is mediated by neurons and oxygen in a way we have yet to quantify or completely understand. It is NOT magic (which historically has been anything nor understood by the observer) nor emanations from inorganic objects.
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