The Potential Healing Power of Community

Over the last decades there was a growing interest in religious materiality, miraculous images, votive practices, and how the faithful engaged with devotional art, as well as a renewed impetus to discuss the long-recognized association between sculpture and touch, after the predominance of the visuality approach. Additionally, the neglected phenomenon of clothing statues has also been increasingly explored. Based on the reading of Santuario Mariano (1707–1723), written by Friar Agostinho de Santa Maria (1642–1728), this paper will closely examine those topics. Besides producing a monumental catalogue of Marian shrines and pilgrimage sites, this source offers a unique insight into the religious experience and the reciprocal relationship between image and devotee in Early Modern Portugal, and is a particularly rich source when describing the believers’ pursuit of physical contact with sculptures. This yearning for proximity is partly explained by the belief in the healing power of Marian sculptures, which in turn seemed to be conveniently transferred to a myriad of objects. When contact with the images themselves was not possible, devotees sought out their clothes, crowns, rosary beads, metric relics, and so forth. Items of clothing such as mantles and veils were particularly used and so it seems obvious they were not mere adornments or donations, but also mediums and extensions of the sculptures’ presence and power. By focusing on the thaumaturgic role of the statues’ clothes and jewels, I will argue how the practice of dressing sculptures was due to much more than stylistic desires or processional needs and draw attention to the many ways believers engaged with religious art in Early Modern Portugal.

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‘To more than I can be’: A phenomenological meta-ethnography of singing groups for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Health An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine ◽

10.1177/1363459320978520 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 136345932097852

Author(s):

Heather Yoeli ◽

Jane Macnaughton

Keyword(s):

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease ◽

Qualitative Research ◽

Quantitative Methods ◽

Chronic Obstructive ◽

Obstructive Pulmonary Disease ◽

Quantitative Evidence ◽

Discrepancy Analysis ◽

Healing Power ◽

Artistic Heritage ◽

Arts In Health

Anecdotal experience and qualitative accounts suggest that singing groups, classes or choirs specifically for people with COPD (henceforth referred to as COPD-SGs) are effective in improving health. However, this is not reflected in the quantitative evidence. This meta-ethnography deployed phenomenological methods to explore this discrepancy. Analysis identified the phenomena of being together, being uplifted and being involved as central benefits of COPD-SGs. When viewed through the phenomenological lens of body-social as distinct from body-subject and body-object, findings demonstrated that the qualitative effectiveness of COPD-SGs is greatest on a collective basis. Qualitative research into the effectiveness of COPD-SGs offers more favourable results because phenomenological approaches can identify collective benefits that quantitative methods cannot. COPD-SGs should seek to maximise these collective benefits by rediscovering their cultural and artistic heritage within the national and global Arts in Health (AiH) movement, which has long emphasised the radical creative and healing power of group activity.

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The Healing Power of Poison

Proceedings of the 25th ACM International on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management - CIKM '16 ◽

10.1145/2983323.2983910 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Mostafa Dehghani ◽

Samira Abnar ◽

Jaap Kamps

Keyword(s):

Healing Power

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Engaging Social Justice Methods to Create Palliative Care Programs That Reflect the Cultural Values of African American Patients with Serious Illness and Their Families: A Path Towards Health Equity

The Journal of Law Medicine & Ethics ◽

10.1017/jme.2021.32 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 49 (2) ◽

pp. 222-230

Author(s):

Ronit Elk ◽

Shena Gazaway

Keyword(s):

Palliative Care ◽

Social Justice ◽

African American ◽

Middle Class ◽

Cultural Values ◽

End Of Life Care ◽

Life Care ◽

Serious Illness ◽

White Middle Class ◽

Healing Power

AbstractCultural values influence how people understand illness and dying, and impact their responses to diagnosis and treatment, yet end-of-life care is rooted in white, middle class values. Faith, hope, and belief in God’s healing power are central to most African Americans, yet life-preserving care is considered “aggressive” by the healthcare system, and families are pressured to cease it.

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