Columbia University looks to promote faith healing by the the Spirituality and Mind-Body Masters Degree Program - Aug 9, 2012

Despite the release of the 2012 Columbia University think tank report from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) which says faith healing is not the answer, Columbia University has made a faith healing specialized Masters Degree program based on just that called the Spirituality and Mind-Body Institute. Most likely fueled by the easy money to be made when joining the Recovery Industry Cartel role of teaching Bill Wilson worship, chanting, rituals and ceremonies many people are choosing the easy way to make the enormous profits.

Merging Spirituality and Clinical Psychology at Columbia

By SHARON OTTERMAN
Published: August 9, 2012

The psychology graduate student ran a wooden stick across the edge of a Tibetan Buddhist singing bowl on Tuesday and asked the five homeless young men sitting in front of him to listen to the undulating sound, and to raise their hands when they could no longer hear it. One by one hands went up, until well after the sound had seemed to dissipate.

Then the student asked the men to take long breaths and to visualize themselves not in their current circumstances — living in transitional housing near the Lincoln Tunnel — but as their “best selves.” With eyes closed, the young men pictured those best selves loving their present selves. Then they visualized sending that love across the room, first to one of the other men, then to all of them.

After 15 minutes, they opened their eyes. They were still in a fluorescent-lighted conference room at Covenant House with a few plants, a coffee machine and a microwave. But their faces were relaxed. Over the course of 16 weeks of group therapy and meditation, a bond had formed among them, the young men said, one that they said filled them with a sense of possibility.

“It’s just like a balled fist,” said Roger Elliott, a Covenant House resident and an aspiring actor who asked that his stage name be used to protect his privacy. “If your fist is balled, there’s nothing going in and nothing going out. And what this has done for me is open my balled fist.”

The therapy sessions were part of a new effort by Columbia University’s clinical psychology program to experiment with integrating psychotherapy and spirituality in ways seldom seen at a major research university.

Mainstream psychology programs traditionally exist in the realm of academic language and empirical fact, keeping the supernatural at arm’s length. But in January, Columbia began a spirituality concentration in its clinical psychology master’s program, and last month, the university created a broader program, the Spirituality and Mind-Body Institute, to conduct research and host colloquia.

Read the rest: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/education/columbia-program-merges-the...

What will the Recovery Industry Cartel think of next?