Could kinesiology explain the phenomenon of faith healing?
Can kinesiology—specifically the therapeutic practices of body talk, acupressure, emotional stress release, etc.—explain what’s occurring in many instances of faith healing?
In the Pentecostal tradition that I grew up in (and escaped from), faith healing often happens in a highly charged environment, with lots of prayer (meditation), and emotional catharsis.
Now that I’m doing somatic therapy and various kinds of bodywork, these kinesiology techniques for releasing stored trauma are strikingly similar: addressing (befriending) the pain, listening to it, often in a meditative state, and finding that emotional catharsis and release.
What I’ve experienced in the process feels—for lack of a better word—miraculous. I’ve had real, physiological pain in my body vanish. Had the Christian faith still been my framework, that’s what I would attribute any healing to.
- see also: modern science often repackages medieval categories, or for a more positive spin, we rediscover and rename old ideas all the time