CHAPTER SEVEN

SPIRITUAL BOUNDARY WORK: HOW SPIRITUAL HEALERS AND MEDICAL CLAIRVOYANTS NEGOTIATE THE SACRED1

Ruth Barcan

Intuitive/spiritual medicine: Defi nitions and descriptions

It is impossible to separate out intuitive/spiritual medicine as a dis- crete branch of : fi rst, because it shares so many core precepts with other alternative therapies, including the energetic, or so-called ‘subtle’, model of the body; second, because both intu- ition and the sacred form an important part of many other alternative therapies; and third, because alternative therapies are characterised by a high degree of combination, hybridisation and customisation by both practitioners and clients. It is therefore neither desirable nor pos- sible to invoke an infl exible taxonomy whereby spiritual healing, for example, might be separated distinctly from psychic healing, or from medical intuition. Th e following descriptions are thus general point- ers only. Medical intuition is a subset of : the use of clairvoyance for the purposes of diagnosis and/or treatment or healing. While all clairvoyants are regularly called upon to give about ill- nesses, not all specialise in health. Th ose who do may call themselves medical intuitives, medical clairvoyants or medical psychics, or other perhaps more euphemistic titles like ‘intuitive counsellor’. Medical intuitives give a clairvoyant ‘reading’ of their clients’ health, whether

1 Th is chapter arises from a project on alternative therapies, which sees them as rich and complex body technologies that are at once medical and recreational, spiritual and consumerist, sensual and pedagogical. Here, I draw on interviews with a number of medical psychics, clairvoyants and spiritual healers. Th ese interviews were carried out as part of research towards a book on alternative therapies and the , provi- sionally entitled Th e Body in Alternative Th erapies: Cultural Practice and the Bound- aries of the Senses, to be published by Berg Publishers. Some participants’ names are pseudonyms. I would like to thank interviewees for their time and expertise. I would also like to thank the organisers of the Negotiating the Sacred conference for providing an open forum in which to test my . 130 ruth barcan in general terms or focussed on a particular issue. Th e client may be present in the room or the process may occur in absentia—for exam- ple, over the telephone or by email. Physical touch is not required. Medical intuitives detect medical problems; they carry out intuitive ‘diagnosis’, whether or not they use orthodox anatomical or medical labels. Some, though not all, also suggest treatment regimes (for exam- ples, by prescribing naturopathic remedies) and some also carry out healing techniques as part of the consultation (for example, by using visualisation), which is where the process may overlap with spiritual healing. Some practitioners see their central role as the passing on of medical information; others integrate information and healing. Spiritual healing (sometimes simply known as ‘healing’) is a blanket term for a range of techniques underpinned by a model of the body as an fi eld connected to ‘higher’, ‘spiritual’ energies. Practitioners work with the body’s own ‘life force’ and/or channel ‘universal energy’ (oft en known as God or spirit), sometimes assisted by spirit guides.2 Daniel Benor, a psychiatrist and spiritual healer, defi nes spiritual heal- ing as ‘the intentional infl uence of one or more people upon one or more living systems without utilising known physical means of inter- vention’.3 He breaks it down into two main approaches: techniques involving the physical ‘laying on’ of hands (or hands held slightly above the body), and a hands-off approach using ‘focused intent’, such as or . Both approaches are oft en combined with visualisations (such as imagining a cloud of healing light surround- ing the patient), and the two approaches (hands-on and-off) may be used simultaneously.4 Many spiritual healers work actively with enti- ties from a spiritual realm—spirit guides, deceased relatives and so on. As with medical intuition, some practitioners may also prescribe natu- ropathic, homeopathic or essence remedies, especially if they are also formally trained in these fi elds. In such cases, guidance about what to prescribe may arise spiritually or psychically and/or it may derive from their formal training. Some practitioners diff erentiate between psychic and spiritual heal- ing. For them, psychic healing involves ‘work[ing] with energy in a very deliberate and conscious manner, with of where and

2 Kathleen MacDonald, ‘Healing’, in Fiona Toy (ed.), Directions: Th e Directory of Holistic Health and Creative Living, Rozelle, NSW: Fiona Toy Trading, 1997, p. 56. 3 Daniel J. Benor, ‘Spiritual healing: a unifying infl uence in complementary thera- pies’, Complementary Th erapies in Medicine, vol. 3, 1995, p. 234. 4 Ibid.