jss (01/30/83)
we have two very different, yet somehow related, phenomena being discussed now. the question of faith-healing has come into the allergy question. faith healing can work, if you believe that it can work, and if you are lucky. the 'involuntary' processes of our bodies *can* be brought under conscious control, to a certain extent. in an attempt to get relief from tension headaches, i had bio-feedback training, in the course of which i learned to raise the temperature of my hands several degrees using visualization techniques. it was startling and convincing. i would expect that allergic persons could, iff they believed they could, control blood circulation or swelling or whatever goes wrong in the respiratory system. i would also expect that each person has to go to the kind of healer that s/he expects will be able to heal hir. that is, some to bio-feedback technicians (as i did), some to Christian layers-on-of-hands, some to meditation gurus, etc. the outward explanations are very different, but i believe the mechanisms are similar-to-identical. good luck to all. judith schrier !decvax!brunix!jss