Path to the Soul: The Union of Eastern and Western Wisdom to Heal Your Body, Mind and Soul

Bedi, a Wisconsin-based psychiatrist and Jungian psychoanalyst, offers a Hindu spin on therapy, challenging readers to rethink childhood conflict and marital strife in terms of karma and dharma. Bedi's discussion of chakrasAthe seven energy centers said to exist in each personAillustrates the strengths and weaknesses of his approach. The first chakra, located in the perineum and ruled by the god Ganesha, governs people's sense of emotional security. For example, Paul, a client of Bedi's, has unstable romantic relationships. Bedi traces his problems to the first chakra, and suggests that Paul's recovery necessarily involves "correcting imbalances" among his chakras. That's an intriguing theory, but Bedi is so vague and his prose so confusing ("When he first came to me, Paul was stuck in the pignali nada of the root chakra, which manifested as untempered masculine enterprise") that readers may never quite understand just what the chakra has to do with their love lives, or what they should do about it. Meditate on the chakra? Draw a picture of the chakra? Pray about the chakra? When Bedi does give straightforward guidance, it is banal: when trying to overcome problems in relationships, for example, people should "identify" the qualities in others that they like and dislike. Bedi's claim that Hindu spiritual disciplines can augment traditional therapy is suggestive, but readers will have to go elsewhere to deduce the mechanics of integrating the two. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Soul Tells Us When We Are Sick and How we can Heal"
Milwaukee Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst: "The Soul Tells Us When We Are Sick and How we can Heal"

Traditional Physician Uses Non-Traditional Approach to Healing

Combining stethoscope and 'spirit' may seem a hard pill to swallow until you meet psychiatrist, Ashok Bedi, MD. The Milwaukee Psychiatrist says the soul is an indicator of illness and source of healing, and he's published a book that attends to this connection. Reflecting a growing trend across the country, Dr. Bedi's philosophy combines traditional medicine and psychoanalytic principles with Spiritual dimension of the healing of the mind, body and soul. Ashok Bedi, MD, a Milwaukee Psychiatrist and Jungian Psychoanalyst recently published Path to the Soul, which provides insight into the link between psychological and physical disease and a need for spiritual unity. Dr. Bedi draws from Hindu and Christian spiritual wisdom, biological medicine, psychiatric technique and over 25 years of clinical experience to create a highly effective and integrated treatment approach for problems associated with both medical and psychiatric illnesses. "I realized that part of my spiritual task was to take up a project that had long preoccupied me-- creatively integrating Eastern and Western healing modalities," Dr. Bedi explains. "The Prozac revolution and modern medicine can heal the body and mend the mind, but what will heal the soul; the well spring of our total health? Over decades of psychiatric practice, I found that allopathic medicine would heal the manifest symptom, but patients were still not happy or at peace. The fire had been put out, but the gas leak was not fixed. In desperation, I dug deep into my soul to find answers. Eventually, I resorted to my Eastern and Hindu roots and found that when I integrated my Hindu and Christian spiritual wisdom with my medical treatment, the therapy outcome was better and more sustained. Patients found meaning in their suffering and understood the mystery of their soul. I decided to write this book, which is my humble beginning in the mammoth task of integrating Eastern Spiritual wisdom with Western Medicine and Psychiatry in service of Healing and Wholeness." In Path to the Soul, Dr. Bedi explains that every person seeks a path to the soul, or a connection to the Higher Wisdom or God. The soul sends out emergency signals in the form of psychological or physical illnesses that alert us of the need to reestablish our soul connection. Additionally our hang-ups, our relationship problems, our family curses are not only harbingers of suffering but also a bridge to our soul. "Each symptom is a crucial whisper from the soul, that if understood, can lead toward increasing levels of psychological balance," says Dr. Bedi. The book presents fundamental concepts of Eastern spiritual thought, illustrates these thoughts through case vignettes from Dr. Bedi's practice and correlates them with Western psychiatric and psychoanalytic concepts. Path to the Soul demonstrates how one can correct psychological and physical imbalances through a variety of concepts and techniques involving Kundalini Yoga and identifying energy fields or chakras, which are easy-to-locate focal points where physical, emotional, developmental, and spiritual forces intersect. Additionally other ways to attend to the whispers of the soul, like recognizing and retiring one's complexes or hang-ups, one's clan karma or family curses, creating sacred space to honor the soul, decoding one's dreams, synchronistic events, accidents, medical and psychiatric symptoms as a way to re-ligate and reconnect us to the meaning and mystery of our inner life, our passion and our unique mission in life. It also examines the Hindu concepts of Maya, karma, and Dharma, and their intimate relationship to virtually every type of psychiatric disorder. Maya refers to our limited reality. Karma refers to actions and the consequences that follow. Dharma is the calling of our soul. It has four quadrants in its mandala. These include our calling to honor our inherent nature, our role in helping our family, our responsibility to our community and our need to honor higher power or God. In addition to utilizing case studies, Dr. Bedi also illustrates actual techniques to recognize the nudging of our soul, attending to the soul leads the readers to make a more viable connection between their outer and inner life and achieve better overall health. Concise "points to ponder" section at end of each chapter summarizes the concepts and has practical exercises to ground the material. Review of an extensive glossary at the end of the book simplifies the concepts and may be useful to review before the first reading of the book. The book is a welcome step in honoring the spiritual dimension of your life as you enter a new millenium.

Ashok Bedi, M.D., D.P.M., R.C.P.S. (U.K.), M.R.C.Psych., F.A.P.A., Is a Diplomat Jungian psychoanalyst and a board certified psychiatrist both in Britain and USA. A member of the Royal College of psychiatrists of Great Britain, a diplomat in Psychological Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of England, a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, he is a Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and on the faculty of the Analyst Training Program at the Carl G. Jung Institute of Chicago. He is Honorary Psychiatrist at the Milwaukee Psychiatric Hospital and the Aurora Health Care Network. He has been a psychiatric consultant to several agencies in Metro Milwaukee. Trained in India, Great Britain and the US, he is interested in the emerging frontiers of Spirituality and Healing and the synapses of the Mind, Body, Soul and Spirit ###