{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.033261802575107295, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0037553648068669528, 'mean_word_length': 4.939490445859873, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Living in relation to mystery: addressing mind, body, and spirit.

ADVANCES Summer 2003, VOL. 19, NO. 2 I want to thank Dr Rossman for so thoughtfully articulating a dilemma faced by many clinicians who work with and support patients, as well as their families, who are struggling with cancer. This dilemma arises when mind/body is divorced from spirit. Addressing spirit enables clinicians to resist the proclivity of conventional medicine to standardize care, even mind/body interventions. It is in spirit that congruence is experienced. The duality implicit in the mind/body paradigm is resolved in a mind/body/spirit approach to care. “Mind/body” speaks of two sides of a coin; “spirit” speaks of the coin itself. Considered in this context of mind/body/spirit, the question “Does the fighting metaphor mobilize emotion and physiology in a way that is specifically useful in overcoming cancer?” is incomplete. Its focus is on the disease rather than on the person experiencing the disease. Including spirit expands the question to “what is useful to this person now?” The broader context of mind/body/spirit focuses on the individuality of the healing journey, reminding clinicians that we can at best empower the client to create/find his or her unique path to healing. Without rooting ourselves in spirit, the pressures of conventional medicine will have us spoon-feeding mind/body pills, limiting ourselves to the flat dimensionality where healing equals cure. Similarly, the second set of questions seeks to understand cancer as an entity separate from the person it inhabits. However, each cancer patient has a unique disorder that will unfold idiosyncratically, inwardly if not physiologically. As Dr Rossman writes, supporting people to heal requires one “to be accepting, non-judgmental, Living in Relation to Mystery: Addressing Mind, Body, and Spirit