Author Archives: Bob Cummings

A Spiritual Answer to Drug Addiction

Have you noticed that there have been quite a few news stories in the local media lately about drug addiction? For example, a search for articles using the word “heroin” in The Oakland Press in the past 90 days yields 21 results, including an article in April entitled, Heroin use, deaths are on the rise

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Do You Think Of Achieving Health As A Battle?

“Make love, not war.” Remember that one? I was around when it was a popular saying. Do these sound familiar: Fighting the flu Battling cancer Struggling with pain? “Moving away from images of war or seeing our bodies as a battlefield can open up a new narrative for health.” This from Health Writer Anna Bowness-Park

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Are you willing to be free from allergies?

Here is a guest post by Debby Kowit, a colleague of mine in Pennsylvania. She explores spirituality and wellbeing in her Keystone Health Connections blog carried by The Times Herald in Pennsylvania (under the LIFE heading). Are you willing to be free from allergies? The experience of looking a tiger in the eye is one that

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Patient choice in healthcare

Health blogger Joel Magnes, writing in The Eden Prairie News in Minnesota, draws lessons from the documentary, “Escape Fire – the fight to rescue American healthcare” in discussing patient choice. He shares how he once made a choice that at the time was a very different one for him – a spiritual approach involving prayer. It helped, and

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Ridiculously small steps

Remember in the movie, “What About Bob?” how Bob’s Psychiatrist recommended “baby steps”? Writing in his regular health column on Chron.com (Houston Chronicle), Keith Wommack took a look recently at how “ridiculously small steps” can be utilized to achieve a healthier lifestyle. He writes: “Motivation and willpower fail us…”  “Frustration and discouragement set in.” “Spirituality

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Unplug to connect?

Sounds almost a little counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? But read on. As one who has been to Venice and also one who enjoys Rick Steves’ travel programs, the lead paragraph in a recent Vancouver Sun article by Health Writer Anna Bowness-Park drew a vivid word picture for me: “On a recent Rick Steves travel program, Steves

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Instead of losing your temper, lose your temper

That’s right. Or, as Health Writer Bob Clark in Florida puts it, in a recent Tampa Bay Times article, “Don’t manage anger — get rid of it”. Clark points out: “studies show that somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians result from stress-related disorders.” And doesn’t it make sense

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Needed indeed: New and alternative ways to relieve pain

Americans constitute only 4.6% of the world’s population, yet consume 80% of all opioids (painkillers).¹ This statistic, which appeared in the media again this week, again caught my attention. It brought to mind this observation from Escape Fire (which aired on CNN): “… the answers are not in a sack of pills.” Bill Scott in Washington State,

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Women’s History Month: One woman often overlooked

She “was no ordinary woman. Behind her Victorian-era velvet and lace dress was a 21st century power suit.” March is Women’s History Month. And so, appropriately, Ingrid Peschke, a regular health blogger on the Huffington Post, “highlights an often overlooked 19th century woman for her significant contributions to religion and health.” Peschke continues, “Her strength of character,

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An increasing desire to explore rather than ignore?

What connection, if any, is there between prayer, healing, Albert Einstein and William Randolph Hearst? What is the current trend in the level of research on prayer? Is there an increasing desire to “explore rather than to ignore” the relationship between prayer and healing? And is there a “potential measurable health benefit associated with prayer

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