'Chakras' is not just the jargon of sandal-wearing, airy-fairy folk, according to a psychiatrist and author who believes illness is a soul thing. Niamh Hooper reports
There's nothing new in the concept that we are what we think. But Dr Brenda Davies takes this concept further. Every illness, she believes, has its roots in the soul. But it is only when our bodies develop disease that we tend to take notice.
According to the consultant psychiatrist, author and spiritual healer, by tracking the original wound and releasing the pain, healing of an individual's energy system can take place and with it comes a new sense of being.
"I believe every illness can be traced back to the soul level. If we don't deal with it then, it trickles down to the emotional level, then the mental and eventually it gets our attention when it gets to the physical level," she says.
"As a therapist I'm always looking for the root of the cause. I'm not suggesting years of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. But I see people who have been through traumas, who have behaviours they don't understand, who have addictions that they don't know how or why they got them. For me, it's about going back and letting the soul say what the real problem is and then letting go of the guilt of their behaviour, of the chronic illness or the frustration of 'why can I never get well?'"
And how does she propose we do that? "It's fairly simple," the consultant psychiatrist of 25 years says. "I work with the chakras."
Often dismissed as the jargon of lentil-eating, Jesus sandal-wearing, airy-fairy folk, the chakras (of which there are seven) are measurable energy centres of the body within the electromagnetic field.
Now 64, Dr Davies is a trained pharmacist, doctor and surgeon. As a little girl living in Co Durham, in England she "could see - as lots of children can - that people had these pretty lights around them". As a teenager she would keep notebooks on energy shifts she saw between people. She was 20 before she encountered the term "chakra".
A decade ago she won an international award in Moscow for her innovative combination of ancient complementary medicine and orthodox medical practice and is now involved in the Doctor-Healer Network in England and Germany - an organisation which helps both doctors and healers who wish to work with the other profession."There is much more of a partnership now and an interest to combine skills than in the past, " she said.
At a conference on healing in Australia recently, more than 200 doctors attended to learn about healing, she says.
An advocate of Dr Davies work and beliefs is Cork-based GP Teesha Fitzgerald. "Physical symptoms are the tip of the iceberg and dealing with just that part that is above the water is only going to have a short-term effect. Healing the whole person is very different to looking at one illness they have," she says.
"I believe the medicine of the future is to look at the bigger picture, to look beyond drugs and to find out what's wrong in an individual's energy system. Every illness has a context and that context is that person's life, childhood, work and relationships. A person's wellness or illness is a function of all these things," she adds.
Davies has written six books including The Rainbow Journey. She has hundreds of patients at her private practice in London and her own international schools of healing and spiritual development in England, Germany, America and Australia.
Dr Brenda Davies's seminar workshop, Spiritual Aspects of Disease, takes place on April 14th and 15th at the Stillorgan Park Hotel, Dublin. Visit www.jsaonline.ie or call 087 979 7988.