Article: A Different Touch

[Guest guest]

I hope one day that the medical community takes all we have learned from

EVERY form of healing throughout time and puts it to ALL good use, in

harmony with each other, not just picking and choosing one method with

tunnel vision

 

*Smile*

Chris (list mom)

 

http://www.alittleolfactory.com

 

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http://www.journalnow.com/wsj/MGB0NSUK16D.html

 

Fri, September 13, 2002

A Different Touch

Traditional healer from Lakota Indian tribe captures interest of local

audiences

 

By Michelle Johnson

JOURNAL REPORTER

 

Harry Charger, a Lakota elder and community leader from the Cheyenne

River Reservation in Eagle Butte, S.D., has been drawing a crowd

everywhere he goes in Winston-Salem.

 

Yesterday, he spoke as part of a panel discussion on alternative healing

and spirituality at Wake Forest University .

 

Charger, 77, is an expert on traditional healing and a leader of the

Fool Soldiers Warrior Society, a ceremonial drum group.

 

" We Lakota for centuries have been healing ourselves, " Charger said.

 

Healing is not merely a matter of fixing the body, it is also a

spiritual endeavor, Charger said.

 

He told several stories of healing, including the healing of a friend

who had been found to have terminal cancer. Doctors had told the man

that he had two weeks to two months to live.

 

" How can they set a deadline for you? " Charger said he asked the man.

" That is such an injustice to you.

 

" It's so simple. He brought a filled pipe to me and said he wanted to

live. He wanted to be healed. "

 

His friend is alive and well today, Charger said. His message and

methods may have once been dismissed by practitioners of Western

medicine. But over the past few years, traditional healing has gained

legitimacy in wider circles, as the medical community has realized that

Americans spend a lot of money on alternative therapies.

 

According to a study by David Eisenberg, the director of the Center for

Alternative Medicine in Boston, Americans spend more than $27 billion a

year on alternative, or complementary, medicine - a figure that

dramatically increased in the 1990s. At least one in four Americans has

tried some sort of alternative therapy, and many of them supplement

prescriptions with herbs or other therapies.

 

Doctors need to understand more about alternative therapies, because so

many of their patients are using them, often in conjunction with

prescription drugs or prescribed treatments, said Doreen Hughes, an

assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at Wake Forest

University School of Medicine. She also spoke at the panel discussion.

 

A factor driving the interest in alternative medicine may be the amount

of time that alternative healers spend with patients.

 

As medicine got more technological, she said, it lost much of its

personal touch and empathy. People who sought out alternative therapy

often were looking for that connection.

 

" It was, thank heaven, a wake-up call for the Western medical

community, " she said.

 

.. Michelle Johnson can be reached at 727-7305 or at

mjohnson