The Silent Revolution in Healthcare and Human Potential: An India-U.S. Alliance

By Dr. Rick Levy with Dr. Vijay Mohan Kohli
Dr. Levy is featured in the Winter of Wellness

Rather than author a theoretical article, I thought it worthwhile to describe what it’s like on the ground in India, helping to develop a unified, holistic healthcare delivery system based on a new worldview. My own reflections as a son of the West are followed by those of a son of India – my friend and colleague Dr. Vijay Mohan Kohli, eminent senior consultant cardiac surgeon at The Metro Heart Institute in New Delhi and Consultant to The Thorax Centre, University  Hospital, Upsalla Sweden.
 
Since 2005, I have traveled several times a year to India to teach the Western science of mind-body medicine to India’s physicians and train them in the use of my methods. I have an East-West clinical practice with an established presence in Washington, DC as well as New Delhi. My work for 40 years with extreme de-stressors of the mind (protocols combining scientific meditation, clinical hypnosis and cognitive therapy) has focused on developing the mind’s capacity to heal the body and mind, heal other people, and express the soul qualities needed to heal society. India has viewed my work as both affirming and improving its traditional spiritual approach to healing, which I have refined via the rigors of scientific scrutiny.
 
A curious split exists currently in Indian medicine. Healthcare is rather conventional and westernized and not very open-minded. At the same time, almost every well-educated, cultured Indian has a basic philosophical understanding of Indian scripture, which teaches that there is an intelligent energy field that helps create and maintain the physical body, and that this field is principally governed by thought – a relatively new idea in the West, discovered by biophysicists. Enlightened Indian doctors are willing to focus on the interplay between consciousness (as an intelligent energy field) and the body, and hope this focus will leap them ahead with a new, unified, holistic approach to healthcare.
 
From the start, my work was welcomed in India with open arms. The Times of India made me a frequent columnist in their newspaper, with millions of daily readers. Mr. Sidhant Khosla, the CEO of Bennett Coleman & Company (owner of The Times), was quick to publish my second book “The Happiness Sutra: How to Lead a Heroic Life, Free of Stress.”
 
My methods are exceptionally effective in the treatment of cardio-vascular disease (CVD), and India’s rate of CVD is among the highest in the world. As a result, India’s cardiologists and cardiac surgeons have been particularly involved with my work. Dr. H.K. Chopra (‘India’s Heart Doctor’ and President of The Cardiological Society of India) and Dr. Navin C. Nanda (‘Father of the echocardiogram’) encountered my methods, and over the years have rallied around them as a means to improve health outcomes and reduce the need for invasive surgery for people with CVD.  They took me in like family. They lead “The World Congress of Clinical and Preventive Cardiology” annually, where I have been a speaker for the last five years, training hundreds of cardiologists and cardiac surgeons in the use of mind-body medicine to heal the most serious types of heart disease and improve surgical outcomes. With the help of The World Congress, I am readying a “How to Use Your Mind to Heal Your Heart” kit for widespread distribution to the general public.
 
Amity University is India’s top-ranked private non-profit university, and for the past 20 years, its Founder-President Dr. Ashok K. Chauhan has been a leading educational innovator in India. When Dr. Chauhan encountered my book “The Happiness Sutra” he stayed up all night to read it. After I lectured his students and we came to know each other, he endowed a Chair in my name and appointed me Chair Professor of Mind Body Medicine and Human Transformation. Through the auspices of Amity, I frequently lecture students and faculty throughout India, on how to use the power of the mind to transform self and society. Dr. Chauhan is quite the visionary and we too have become like family.
 
Through these and related experiences, I have observed a new partnership developing on the ground between East and West. The participants tend to have a thorough knowledge of conventional medicine, plus an appreciation of Einsteinian physics, neuroscience and biophysics, and they tend to be highly accomplished spiritualists with a good understanding of meditation and eastern philosophy.
 
Through this partnership, a different vision is emerging of what a human being is. A human being has a body and a mind, but is a soul with infinite potential. The vision includes how to develop people who, through education and the development of deeper abilities of the mind, will take the lead in healing themselves, their neighbors, their country, and their world. It is noteworthy that this advancing vision is not being accomplished by the spreading of lofty ideas but rather as a function of personal ties between highly capable and visionary people from East and West who form family-like relationships in which we live out this emerging vision. This is a new world view and a new way of healing based on a fuller understanding of the abilities which lie in each of us, supported by a transcendent understanding of family and a profound sense of community with each other.
 
Dr. Vijay Mohan Kohli is known both for his prowess as a cardiac surgeon and for his lectures and newspaper column explaining the depths of yoga. He is a close friend who trains with me and is familiar with my methods.  What follows are his reflections on the impact of my training and his vision of where this emerging East-West understanding is leading.
 
“Western Allopathic Medical Systems view the body as a Biomachine and diseases as the result of infections, trauma, ingestion of toxic substances and genetic factors,  and do not take into account emotions, consciousness, energy, life force of soul, or spirit. Few practitioners appreciate the dynamic role of the energy systems of mind body and spirit.
 
The Ancient systems differ from Allopathy in that they look at the human body in totality and try to heal the entire human being rather than “treat “just the ailment or the physical body, as Western Medicine does. They understood that the human body comprises five sheaths (these can be called the physical, physiological, psychological, intellectual and space bodies), which are forms of energy, and all of them need to remain in balance for the body to function properly.
 
This energy is derived from Pranashakti, also called Ki or Chi, which comes from Cosmic Energy. It enters the human body at the base of the medulla oblongata and travels down the body, and in the process divides into a number of energy centres called chakras or transformers. Chakras control different systems of the body and are also related to emotions.  This shakti terminates at the base of the spine and lies dormant there as the kundalini.
 
Any imbalance or block in energy flow will therefore lead to an imbalance in the functioning of one or more related chakras, leading to disease.  Chakras, therefore, form the basis for proper functioning of the human body. Yoga, Acupuncture, Chinese Medicine, and various forms of Energy Healing are based on this concept.
 
Dr Levy, having understood very well that the human body can remain healthy only if the mind, body and spirit are in balance, has devised methods by which one can detect energy blockages or imbalances at various levels in the mind and body of another person, and perceive the impact that negative emotion and thought have on a person’s health. Dr Levy has also perfected techniques to correct these imbalances, enabling one to heal serious diseases like Coronary Artery Disease, cancers, psychiatric diseases, or for that matter,  any disease since, as Dr. Levy says, almost 85% of diseases originate from the mind.
 
Hypnotic Meditation, a form of meditation devised by Dr. Levy, is remarkably effective in healing a host of diseases. By his methods it is now possible not only to detect a person’s medical problem remotely (from a different location) but to channelize healing energy to heal a patient at any distance. His Visualization has been perfected to such an extent that it is possible for him to guide medical practitioners anywhere in the world, even in the Operating Room.
 
Since I have personally practiced and used Dr. Levy’s methods with my patients, I have no hesitation in saying that Dr Levy has ever so beautifully married the Eastern concepts of healing into Western methods of mind-body medicine devised by him using a scientific method which can be replicated.
 
More and more health practitioners worldwide need to train and learn to integrate scientifically-validated mind-body medicine with allopathic methods if we are to help mankind. Such a bold approach is without a doubt the future of health care because both systems of medicine are absolutely essential to human wellness.  On the ground in India for some time, the focus has been on creating a large cadre of medical professionals trained in Western allopathic medicine and the Western scientific method.  What Dr. Levy brings is a system of mind-body medicine that is scientifically-valid. It has the potential to bridge the ancient and allopathic systems, which is not lost on the enlightened physician in India.”
 
The exchange between East and West works both ways and covers the whole gamut of medicine.  Recently, one of my patients in Washington, D.C. had a tricky question regarding exposure to electromagnetic fields and tachycardia. Her cardiologist did not know. I contacted Dr. Kohli, who consulted with his electrophysiologist, and I had an answer in an hour.
 
In this day of Skype, email, text messages and phone, communities of like-minded people can emerge from all over the world. This new India-U.S. alliance around healthcare and human potential demonstrates how humanity continues to evolve and create a different future. Something new is emerging here that bears watching by those who long for a better future than what is presently imagined.      

Dr. Rick Levy has been a pioneer in the field of mind-body medicine and quantum thought since 1976. A clinical psychologist in private practice serving an international clientele, author, speaker and consultant, Dr. Levy is owner/director of The Levy Centers for Mind-Body Medicine and Human Potential, USA, and Chair Professor of Mind-body Medicine and Human Potential at Amity University, Noida, India. His seminal book Miraculous Health: How to Heal Your Body by Unleashing the Hidden Power of Your Mind was published in 2008, followed by The Happiness Sutra: How to Lead a Heroic Life, Free of Stress, Free of Stress, now in its second printing. He hosted the U.S. public television series Miraculous Health. Dr. Levy’s methods are renowned for their ease of use, speed, and power. His “extreme de-stressors of the mind” – simple mental protocols combining scientific meditation, clinical hypnosis and cognitive therapy – allow people to access power and insight from their own minds and focus it to achieve any noble goal: healing themselves from physical or mental illness, healing others, attaining worldly success, realizing a vision for the social good, or achieving enlightened awareness. Dr. Levy holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Duquesne University, 1976. He is board certified in clinical psychology, psychotherapy, hypnosis, forensic medicine, and forensic examination and fluent in Spanish, French and English.  To learn more - click here.

Dr Vijay Mohan Kohli  is a Senior Consultant Cardiac Surgeon at the Metro Heart Institute, Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi.  He has over 36 years experience as a surgeon and has helped set up cardiac surgery departments in several hospitals.  Thus far, he has performed about 7000 cardiac operations independently and has been associated with twice that number.  He has published his scientific work quite extensively and has presented in various scientific forums in India and around the world.  He also speaks on topics related to health and spirituality and is involved with practising and teaching Yoga every morning. He writes a regular Blog called The Soul that explores “our soul, the atma, relationship with Parmatma, the Guru, Anhad Shabd.  A brief description of the great journey within.”  You can read Dr. Kohli’s blog by clicking here.