A new study at Arizona State University led by Jessica Tartaro seeks to understand the impact of spirituality on healing by studying men and women who have completed any type of cancer treatment within the past year. Tartaro is also interested in learning about other spiritual sources of strength beyond traditional ones.

Many people believe that factors other than traditional treatments can affect healing including exercise, stress reduction and nutrition. However, an individual's spirituality and it's connection with healing is less well-understood.

According to Tartaro in an interview with the The Arizona Republic, research shows people of faith tend to have an "edge in healing and half of all patients feel illness strengthens their faith."

Try Not To Remember for the movie Home of the Brave, the process of songwriting and how cancer changes your priorities, were the main topics of discussion during a recent interview with Sheryl Crow. When asked what inspired her to write the song Try Not To Remember for Home of the Brave, Crow explained that it came in part from her own experience with breast cancer.

"I think the pivotal experience -- when you realize your life is never gonna be the same, and you are going to have to integrate back into your life I saw the movie and I think the thing that really struck me is that everybody gets dealt these pivotal moments in their lives, whether it is a war or breast cancer or losing your home in Katrina, or whatever. It is how you integrate. It determines what you do with the rest of your life."

Crow calls this year her year of transformation. Because of her breast cancer diagnosis, she feels she met herself in a way she had not done before, and as a result, she spent time redefining who she was and how she would live her life. She has learned to say no, rather than being a people pleaser. "I changed the way I look at my life, my body, my health, my family, my friends, and the way I treat myself." Crow learned to make herself a priority in her own life.

Visit Sheryl Crow On Overcoming Cancer, and The Soundtrack for Home of the Brave by Christina Radish to read much more about what Crow shared during the interview published in Media Blvd. Magazine.

From the moment of Sheryl Crow's breast cancer diagnosis, we have been sharing the introspection and insight of a creative and spiritual woman whose vulnerably honest perspectives as a cancer survivor continue to inspire. Here are some of the previous posts we have published:

• Sheryl Crow has breast cancer surgery
• Sheryl Crow: talks about how cancer changed her
• Sheryl Crow: ABC Good Morning America exclusive interview
• Sheryl Crow: We are fragile but we also are divine
• Sheryl Crow adopts Eskimo diet to fight breast cancer
• Sheryl Crow in the blue tattoo sisterhood
• Sheryl Crow: women need to be demanding of doctors
• Sheryl Crow: breast cancer survivor's spiritual reminder
• Sheryl Crow: "I wasn't known for my breasts until I got breast cancer."

For fitness, the practice of yoga promotes balance, flexibility and strength. America loves yoga, according to a survey conducted by the Yoga Journal. The top four reasons given for the interest in yoga were: flexibility, stress reduction, strength, fitness and conditioning. As yoga grows in popularity, it is also becoming Americanized, and there are a number of hybrid yoga practices springing up like: Acu-yoga, Yogilates, Disco Yoga, Hip-Hop Yoga, Punk Rock Yoga, Aqua Yoga, Doga (with your dog), Yoganetics, Soul FlowYoga, Freestyle Vinyasa Flow, Sonic Yoga, Yogic Arts (yoga combined with martial arts) and Nude Yoga -- which is a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on who you are asking.

Of the survey participants who were asked , these were the top four good/bad statements made to the increasing popularity of yoga in this country:

• "Americans need to recognize that practicing yoga doesn't conflict with mainstream religious values."
• "The commercialization of yoga is a good thing. It attracts many more people to the practice who otherwise wouldn't know about it."
• "Innovation is good for yoga. The many different styles that are evolving make the practice accessible to everyone."
• "Yoga in America is becoming too commercialized."
  

Is yoga the current fitness fad? Maybe. Will it fade in popularity? I suspect it will for those who flitter from one new trend to the next new trend. But, for example, there have been years of research into the potential benefit of yoga in improving the quality of life for cancer patients and survivors, and the National Cancer Institute has recently awarded M. D. Anderson a $2.4 million dollar grant to study the benefits of Tibetan yoga for cancer patients and survivors.

According to M. D. Anderson researchers, cancer and its treatment are associated with considerable distress, impaired quality of life, poor mental health and reduced physical function. For thousands of years, Tibetans have been practicing a form of yoga that might help reduce treatment-related side effects that accumulate over time for cancer patients. As research continues, yoga may become an accepted alternative and complementary therapy incorporated into mainstream medical practice for the treatment of disease and improving health.

Realistically, I am not certain that some of the trendy hybrid forms of yoga will endure over time, but the yoga that has been around for thousands of years is here to stay.

Cancer go away.

The news is not good today. When someone is diagnosed with cancer, and there seem to be so many of us now, it does not diminish the initial response when you find out someone else has cancer. The news is still a shock to the spirit, a moment where the breath catches and pauses out of rythmn, and the heart drops into another pool of sadness. As a cancer survivor, you know what is to come for the newly diagnosed, not just the physical, but the mental, the emotional and the spiritual effects for the cancer patient and those who love them.

Cancer. I hate this disease.

You have just learned you have cancer, and I am surviving cancer. With all my heart, I want you to survive cancer too. I walk back through my mind, retracing my footsteps from the day of my cancer diagnosis to this, remembering all the things I did that might have tipped the scales in favor of my living and not dying. I cannot say I know the one thing that it might have been, or the combination of things I might have done, so I want to remember it all. I want to share all of it with you. I want you to be able to tip the scales in favor of life and not death too.

Here is how I approached my diagnosis of cancer, these are the perspectives I held and the steps I took during my cancer treatments and healing. Maybe there is something in all of it that matters, that made a difference, that if you know too, will help you in your healing too.

How do you measure the ethereal? In an earlier post, I quoted Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia and author of a forthcoming book, Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, who I believe summed it up best when he stated, "The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion."

It doesn't seem to keep those intent on attempting to measuring the immeasurable and attempting to prove in physical world scientific terms that spirituality can play a powerful role in health and healing. Of course it can. Spirituality is a path to profound healing for those who are spiritual in nature. But it does not exclude healing from those who do not follow a spiritual path. The truest power rests in the power of belief itself on an internal landscape of the mind and body.

The John Templeton Foundation announced it is funding a new study at Michigan State University exploring the role spirituality plays in the recovery from breast cancer. I think that it will not matter the results of the study -- if it is positive it will reaffirm what the spiritual believe to be true and challenged by those who do not put much weight in the spiritual dimension of being. If it does not reveal a significant link between spirituality and healing, then the reverse dismissive rejection of the findings will be made.

Do I believe in the power of spirituality to heal? Yes. Do I believe it gives me an advantage to healing over those who do not share my beliefs? No. There are many paths leading to the same destination. The wisdom would be in acknowledging all paths as real and powerful. If we did that, we wouldn't need a study sure to bring nothing but more controversial debate with little possibility in the blending of hearts and minds between spirituality and science. 

It is good to express a matter in two ways simultaneously so as to give it both a right foot and a left. Truth can stand on one leg, to be sure; but with two it can walk. -- Nietzsche

Integrated medicine combines mainstream western medical practices with complementary and alternative therapies -- two ways simultaneously -- giving medical treatments both a right foot and a left, in providing optimal outcomes. Seek a second opinion, and a third opinion, and a fourth opinion, if necessary, until you are comfortable that the chosen course of treatment feels right for you -- and is one you can believe in completely.

In the New York Times, the headline reads, Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer, and of course, as with so many study results regarding the measurement of the immeasurable, all it reveals is more ambiguity. According to the researchers, this study was going to be the study that ended the contentious debate between those who believe you can measure, in scientific terms, the power of prayer to heal, and those skeptics who believe you simply cannot measure spirituality by the laws of the physical world. The results of this study suggest prayer has no power to heal. But, I can quote an equal number of respected studies that show prayer does have the power to heal. In addition, I can illuminate a central flaw in the study, just from reading the press on it. The flaw begins in defining healing and the true power of prayer.

The participants in the study who were asked to pray, were told they could pray in any way that suited them, but they were to include in the prayer, for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications. Basically, prayer is not an exercise where Santa shows up and leaves all the presents you asked for under the tree. This predisposes the belief there is some central magical figure granting requests. Or, equally as misdirected, that we are all little Harry Potters, with the power to alter the course of an event by chanting a certain phrase. There are all kinds of healing. There is physical healing. There is emotional healing. There is healing of the mind. There is spiritual healing. Which means, at the start of this study, the researchers were on a course doomed to failure, if the results were based on specific wish granting of a single wish.

I think Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia and author of a forthcoming book, Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, sums it up best when he states, "The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion." Research into the power of prayer will be a waste of time and money until there is a paradigm shift in physical world thinking to the spiritual world. Both are real, and both are intertwined, but both are separate, with a power all their own.

I came across a story aired on WWAY Newschannel 3 about Monika Tippins, a woman battling a second round of breast cancer who found comfort and peace at a Buddhist Temple in North Carolina. Tippins is not a Buddhist, but she has, with her daughter, been visiting the temple, and feels that the practice of meditation, and adopting some of the philosophical beliefs and perspectives Buddhism is based on, has helped them survive difficult times.

There is research to validate that spiritual practices provide health benefit for cancer survivors. University of California researchers report finding that faith, the use of prayer or meditation, and religion, provide protective health benefits for cancer survivors. Studies are consistently adding to a growing collection of emerging literature on the beneficial impact of faith and spirituality on health.

Buddhism is a world religion and philosophy based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama. Originating in India, Buddhism gradually spread throughout Asia to Central Asia, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Southeast Asia, as well as the East Asian countries of China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. There are a number of versions or sects of Buddhism generally teaching paths to Nirvana, enlightenment or bliss; the Four Noble Truths, recognizing existence and source of suffering; and the Eight Fold Path, correct understanding, behavior and meditation.

Heroines: Transformation in the Face of Breast Cancer, a book of photography and poetry chronicling the spiritual odyssey and transformation of women, from 33 to 73, who have faced breast cancer, and who have had the courage to define and create their own sense of reality. The photographs are breathtakingly beautiful, the poetry moving. Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul, introduces acclaimed photographer and photojournalist Jila Nikpay's artistic project as a book with an essay written for women recently diagnosed with cancer.

From the author Nikpay in the book Heroines: Transformation in the Face of Breast Cancer: "The soul, obscured by ego and encased in the body, expresses itself in the most unlikely ways and in the most unexpected places. In my search for this elusive human quality, I have crossed the land of health into the land of illness to meet with those who have experienced breast cancer. My subjects have realized beyond this hinterland of suffering, lies a body of water in which the spirit caresses their soul and heals their wounds. Caught between the profane and divine realities, my subjects have faced their own mortality, mourned the loss of their breast and moved into the land of grace."

You can order this book from the Heroines: Transformation in the Face of Breast Cancer website. Pages of the book are featured on the website as well. As a breast cancer survivor, I highly recommend this inspirational and spiritually soothing work of art in book form, as a gift to yourself as a breast cancer survivor or as a gift for a woman in your life who is facing life with breast cancer.

Exceptional Cancer Patients, ECaP, celebrates the potential of balance, inner peace and wholeness for people facing the challenges of cancer and other chronic illnesses, by creating a sanctuary of resources and retreats based upon the science of mind-body-spirit medicine. ECaP was founded by Dr. Bernie Siegel.

Dr. Siegel, who prefers to be called Bernie, one of the world's foremost physicians, best-selling authors, and motivational speakers, is a compassionate, caring and loving advocate for individuals who want to take an active role in their own healing process. With Dr. Barry Bittman, ECaP is dedicated to promoting a comprehensive integrative philosophy in the context of whole person, evidence-based care. ECaP's philosophy holds that life is to be celebrated, everyone's healing journey is unique, health and healing are a process, we are all teachers and students, we are here to learn and share our experiences, and love heals.