Psychic Aids Police Locating Missing Body

The body of a man missing for over six months was located by the police acting on a lead provided by a psychic, according to a report in newspaper, The Houston Chronicle.

The man was 74 years old, with memory problems and suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He was visiting a museum and wandered off. Relatives searched for him for days, then weeks, with no success. Ultimately, they decided to contact Florida psychic Noreen Renier. She asked for maps of the area and used them to provide verbal instructions on where to look.Based upon these directions, friends of the family resumed the search and quickly found identification material in that location. The police were called in and then found the body nearby within two hours.

          When asked in an interview whether or not the police gave her credit for helping find the body, Reneir said that they claimed it was routine police work. On the other hand, earlier attempts to find the body had failed. The family credits Renier because it was only after they called her and acted on her information that the sequence of events leading to the recovery of the body unfolded.

          An irony of Renier’s work is that before she became a psychic herself, who now regularly works with the police, she was very much a sceptic. In fact, when she worked in a hotel, she refused to book a meeting room for a psychic training program because she thought it was baloney. A series of her own psychic experiences changed her mind.

          For more information about the work of Noreen Renier, see her website at www.atlantic.net/~nrenier

For Health and Longevity, Have Responsible Pleasures

All work and no play make for a boring day, and maybe a shorter life. We’ve heard the admonition, “balance in all things.” A doctor now advises that for better health, quality of life, and greater longevity, we should take time for pleasure. Not just for its relaxing qualities, or for the endorphins it may produce, but also because certain pleasurable activities enhance the sense of self and its purpose for and joy in living, believes Dr. Richard A. Lippin, M.D., founding president of the International Arts-Medicine Association and chair of the Mental Health Committee of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Writing in the magazine The Futurist, Dr. Lippin says that today medicine must recognize that to be healthy requires having a life worth living. We may need food to live, in other words, but we don’t live to eat. We live to find and contribute meaning to dimensions of life beyond ourselves. He writes, “Incorporating responsible pleasure into patients’ lives may be the single most underestimated source of health in our times.”

          What kinds of pleasurable activities does he recommend? The first is laughter, which has proven positive physical effects on the body as well as the power to change one’s attitude and perspective on life. The second is the arts. Minimally the “arts-medicine” would be art appreciation, such as listening to music. Third is sexuality. He quotes studies showing that men who have sex regularly live longer and women who have sex regularly have higher level of estrogen and less disruptive menopausal transitions. Fourth is having pleasure in one’s work. Satisfaction with work, rather than considering it a drudgery, appears as the strongest statistical factor in studies of health and longevity.

For further information, contact Dr. Richard A. Lippin, M.D., Medical Director, Lyondell Chemical Company, 3601 West Chester Pike, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, PA 19073 (610) 359-2955; email: ralippin@aol.com

Distant Healing Confirmed by Research

Even when the patients didn’t know that they were the object of prayers or healing efforts, they still got better. That result was but one of many nuances of an important study on the effect of prayer and other forms of distant healing conducted by Elizabeth Targ, M.D.. of the California Pacific Medical Center, who published her findings in The Western Journal of Medicine.

          The patients were people with AIDS, who had cooperating doctors that provided data on their progress. The study was done “triple blind,” in that neither the researchers, the doctors, nor the patients knew who was in the treatment group, and who were in the control group. Targ selected healers who were professional and experienced, but who used a variety of healing methods. According to the account of Targ’s research reported in Intuition magazine, the healers worked for free and did not know the results of their individual efforts, or who was most effective, as each patient in the healing group were rotated among ten different healers. The healers received instructions only “to direct an intention for health and well-being” to the patients for one hour a day, for six days. After a week’s rest, the healer received a packet concerning a different patient.

          The results were decisive in many respects. The treatment group showed significantly more improvement, and less complications than the control group. Psychological measures showed an improvment in mood. All patients were asked to guess whether or not they were in the treatment group. Accuracy was only at chance level, so the patients did not display any intuition as to whether or not they were receiving healing treatment. The results, therefore, could not be attributed to positive thinking, or the lack of it.

          Targ had no explanation for the mechanism of the healing. She noted that it is not necessary to understand how something works in order to demonstrate scientifically that it does work.

          For further information, contact Intuition magazine, 275 Brennan Street, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 538-8171; email: Intuitmag@aol.com; website: www.intuitionmagazine.com

Small Groups Yield Big Power

Almost four in every ten Americans belong to some small group that explores issues of personal meaning or social concern. This fact is the result of a poll reported by Charles Garfield and his co-authors in their book, Wisdom circles: A guide to self-discovery and community building in small groups (Hyperion). Their rationale is that “we yearn for a safe place in which to be authentic, trusting, caring and open to change.”

Reporting on their experiences in their own ongoing groups, and based upon studies of other small groups, they offer insights and suggestions on how to keep a group effective.

Open and close the meeting circle with some kind of ritual that the group chooses.

Have a clear manner of designating who is speaking at the moment, such as the use of a “talking stick.”

Speak from the heart, listen from the heart.

Allow silence in the group to be an OK event.

Use Hypnosis To Heal Nightmares

Both dreams and hypnosis are states of mind where we are in communication with the subconscious mind. It is natural, therefore, that we can deal with the upsetting communications of nightmares by using hypnosis. In her book, The pregnant man and other cases from a hypnotherapist’s couch (Random House: Times Books) Dr. Deirdre Barrett gives some examples of how hypnosis can be harnessed to heal these nighttime disturbances.

One method is to simply use the suggestive power of hypnosis to prevent nightmares from recurring. Pre-sleep suggestion, with protective imagery, can be quite effective.

A second method is to absorb the message of the nightmare so that it need not keep repeating it. While under hypnosis, experience the dream and respond to questions about its meaning, and what you can do to apply this understanding.

A third method is to change the ending of the nightmare while under hypnosis. Replaying the dream, yet resolving the presenting conflict into a better ending, will often end the recurrence of that dream.

Get to Know Your Universal Dreams

“We've all had them--those alarming dreams of being chased by something grisly, a loved one getting hurt or dying, driving a car without brakes, not knowing the answers to a test, falling fearfully through the air, appearing naked or half-dressed in public, or racing for the train that has just departed. These and other bad dreams that everyone experiences at some point in their lives are too familiar.”

So says Patricia Garfield, Ph.D., a founding member of the Association for the Study of Dreams and its current president. At her presidential address to that association, she describe a dream of an earthquake and a dream of a lost glove, and she asked her colleagues to identify the dreamer, either by the century in which the dreamer lived, or by country. Her audience, composed of professional experts, could not do so. Her point:

“What most of us don't realize is that these very same dreams are universal. They have existed from before the beginning of recorded literature, and will occur tonight in every country of our planet. They cross different cultures and classes. They endure over time.”

Dr. Garfield has developed a system for categorizing universal dreams. She has located what she believes are the twelve main universal keys, or themes. Each has a negative (most common) and a positive (less common) expression. One is being chased (negative) or being embraced (positive). Another is injury or death and healing or rebirth.

You can now correlate your dreams with these universal themes by going to the web site Dr. Garfield has establish specifically for this purpose. All twelve themes, and the opportunity for you to submit your own versions, are provided at www.patriciagarfield.com.

Healing Imagery Tapes Used in Hospitals

Patients involved in a research study at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, who were taught self-hypnosis/relaxation techniques before undergoing first-time elective coronary artery bypass surgery were significantly more relaxed following the operation, as compared to a control group, according to the scientific report published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Surgery.

As the value of imagery becomes more widely accepted in medical care, the cassettes and CDs that guide such imagery will be as common in hospitals as surgical gowns and scalpels. University Hospitals of Cleveland, for example, are incorporating a pre-surgery cassette developed by Belleruth Naparstek, author of Sixth sense: Unlocking the power of your intuition and creator of several healing imagery tapes, according to a report published in Health Journeys Network News.

As another example, if you were to call 317-369-7050 you could check out the telephone guided imagery menu that the Women’s Care Center at St.Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa has installed.

Yet one more example: A new healing imagery CD/cassette, Healing Trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has been incorporated into the Brecksville Veteran’s Administration Medical Center for use in their Transcend Vietnam program. Health Journeys has donated several copies of this progam to Littleton, Colorado for use by students, their parents, and school personnel.

For more information, or for a copy of the Health Journeys Network News, write Image Paths, Inc., 891 Moe Drive, Suite C, Akron, OH 44310 or call 1-800-800-8661. Fax (330) 633-3778. Visit their website at www.healthjourneys.com

Most Families Bless Their Meal

Some time back, the A.R.E. conducted a home-study research project with its membership to explore the effectiveness of various one-minute spirituality exercises. One of the most popular, it turned out, was taking time to say a blessing before a meal. Now it appears that many other Americans agree with this finding.

According to a poll conducted by USA Today and Gallup Poll, almost two out of three Americans with children (sixty three per cent) report that they say thanks out loud before meals. Twenty years ago, a similar poll showed that less than half the respondants (forty three per cent) said grace.

Idiots Can Interpret their Dreams

Carl Jung once said that he never could interpret a dream--immediately, that is, and a bit later than that for his own. But today, even an idiot can do it. Judging from what’s appearing bookstores, idiots are getting pretty interested in things of the New Age. Earlier we reported on The complete idiot’s guide to being psychic. Now that same company (Alpha Books) has come out with The complete idiot’s guide to interpreting your dreams. If idiiots are getting into dream interpretation, what’s next? To answer that question, look no further than another of their recent publications, The complete idiot’s guide to Tarot and fortune-telling.

Music and Imagery Can Enhance Immune System

Normal, healthy people can increase the strength of their immune system by using imagery or even by listening to music, and belief in this effect is not necessarily beneficial.

In a study conducted with Temple University students and published in Frontier Perspectives, researchers had students assigned to one of four groups: a control group, which sat quietly and relaxed for 17 minutes; a music group, which listened to Pachabel’s Canon; an imagery group, which listened to a recorded guided imagery session directing images of lymphocytes radiating out from bone marrow and traveling throughout the body; and a music and imagery group, which listened to a combination of the two. Saliva samples were taken before and after the session to measure changes in immune system response.

Relative to the control group, the music only and imagery only both improved immune response greater than the control group. Combining the two treatments gave no additional value.

There were some additional findings of interest, obtained by interviewing the students about circumstances in their lives and their reaction to the treatment. Those who felt they had more control over their interpersonal relationships, those who felt they had been stressed out during the past twenty-four hours, and those who reported the most happiness or satisfaction from the treatment were the students who were most successful at using the treatment to improve their immune response. Those were more confident of their ability to control their immune response were less able, in fact, to do so.

The researchers were surprised by this result and had no explanation for it.

For more information, contact Frontier Perspectives, Center for Frontier Sciences, Temple University, Ritter Hall 003-00, 1301 Cecil B. Moore Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19122; phone (215) 204-8487; fax (215) 204-5553; email: v2058a@vm.temple.edu; web page: www.temple.edu/cfs

Imagining Miracle Dream Can Resolve Problems

When people are stuck in seemingly unresolvable situations, they lose the sense of self-empowerment, that their own efforts can make any difference. Solution-oriented therapists often find it helps these people to imagine a self that is not plagued by this situation in order to get a foot in the door toward resolution. One such strategy is to ask what is known as “the miracle question”:

“Suppose that ... you go to bed and while you are sleeping, a miracle happens and the problem [that has been plaguing you] is suddenly solved, like magic. The problem is gone. Because you were sleeping, you don’t know that a miracle happened, but when you wake up tomorrow morning, you will be different. How will you know a miracle has happened? What will be the first small sign that tells you that the problem is resolved?”

This question can stimulate the person to imagine the beginnings of how to get past the problem. But this question may create a problem of its own, proposes Gilbert J. Greene, and his associates, at the College of Social Work, Ohio State University. Writing in Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, they note that the construct of a miracle, although well intended, may perpetuate the person’s belief that a solution can come only from outside sources, and not from their own ingenuity or effort. These workers suggest an alternative approach, exchanging “dream” for “miracle,” to imply that the miraculous solution could come from within:

“Suppose that tonight while you are sleeping you have a dream. In this dream you discover the answers and resourcees you need to solve the problem that you are concerned about right now. When you wake up tomorrow, you may or may not remember your dream, but you do notice you are different. As you go about starting your day, how will you know that you discovered the skills and resources necessary to solve your problem?What will be the first small bit of evidence that you did this?”

The authors report that some patients who contemplated this question unexpectedly had dreams that provided solutions to their problem. Clearly it’s something worth thinking about before you go to bed!

For further information, write to Gilbert J. Greene, Associate Professor, College of Social Work, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210.

Professional Association to focus on Remote Viewing Qualilty

A once-classified military discipline using parapsychology to gather intelligence during the Cold War has taken a long step into the public view with the formation of a professional association to propose standards and test performance in civilian uses.

The International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA) was organized March 18, 1999, by scientists and practitioners meeting in Alamogordo, New Mexico. According to a press release they made public, their aim is to provide an objective mechanism for evaluating the discipline called "remote viewing," encourage scientifically sound research, propose ethical standards and educate the public. The group met in conjunction with the first professional conference on remote viewing, held in Ruidoso, New Mexico.

Remote viewing is a technique based on innate human abilities whereby a person can describe people, places or events that are perceived mentally, but are separated from the "viewer" by distance, shielding or even time. The technique was developed in the early 1970s by SRI-International, a Menlo Park, California think-tank, under the auspices of the Central Intelligence Agency, and was used by the CIA and the military for two and a half decades to gather intelligence on threats to national security. Outside the government, the technique has also been successfully applied in such diverse fields as criminology and archaeology.

In 1995, the CIA deactivated and declassified the government's remote viewing program. Many diverse groups and individuals have expanded the use of remote viewing into the civilian world. It has been the focus of extensive media attention and the subject of several books. But until now, there has been no attempt to coordinate or standardize the rapidly growing discipline.

IRVA was formed by scientists, academicians and veterans of the military program in response to widespread confusion and conflicting claims. It will develop testing standards and materials for evaluating remote viewers, serve as a clearing house for accurate information about the phenomenon, and promote theoretical research and applications development in the remote viewing field.

For more information, contact David Hathcock, IRVA Coordinator, E-mail: dlyle@getnet.com

Religion Helps You Live Longer

Regular churchgoers live longer than people who seldom or never attend worship services. Life expectancy averages about 75 years for those who never attend church. However, according to a study conducted at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the life expectancy 83 years for those who go more than once a week.

The research, which is being published in the journal Demography, showed that people who never attended services had an 87 percent higher risk of dying during the follow-up period than those who attended more than once a week.

The research team factored in such elements as education and income, social ties (including marital status and having friends and relatives to count on), and health status and behavior, including such things as smoking and alcohol use, the university’s press release said. Educated and better off people, for example, who have lower mortality, were more likely to attend church, while churchgoers generally were less likely to engage in such high risk health behaviors as smoking and excessive drinking. Frequent churchgoers were also more likely to take part in social activities and enjoy a good supporting network of family and friends, which could help them avoid, or at least cope better with, times of stress or personal difficulty.

However, even after taking into account all these external factors and controlling the independent variables, the researchers found a "strong association" still persisted between infrequent or no religious attendance and higher mortality risk.

Researchers also found distinct and related patterns when looking at causes of death. For example, those who never attend services are about twice as likely to die from respiratory disease, diabetes or infectious diseases.

Rogers said this research established the importance of religious ]involvement as a fundamental cause of mortality. It also opened the door to further research perhaps examining religious attendance by denomination and looking at the less tangible spiritual issues.

For more information, consult this web page: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/05/990517064323.htm

Memories Can Be Altered by Reading Stories

Your memories of the past, not to mention those past life memories you cherish, could be influenced, if not created by, stories you’ve read in the past. This fragility and suggestibility of our memory system was demonstrated by a University of Washington researcher team who found that students’ memories were easily influenced. After interviewing students about whether or not as a child they had ever been lost in a mall or picked on as a bully, they invited those who said no to both items back for another experiment involving “reading comprehension.” Among the reading material was a brief story about a child being lost in a mall or being picked on by a bully, or  neither. When these students were interviewed later, and asked again whether or not as a child they had ever had these experiences, those students whose reading “tests” included a story about one of those events were significantly more likely to claim that they had had such an experience themselves.

The researchers suggest that we participate in stories we read, and such participation becomes part of our archive of experiences, easily confused with memories of actual events.

For more information, see http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/uwashington-sra060299.html