Healing network - commentary on author Dean Ornish's book 'Love & Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy'

Men's Fitness, Oct, 1998 by Sam Dunn

In the summer of 1967, the Beatles sang All You Need is Love. Three decades later, Dean Ornish, the doctor who proved that people can prevent - even reverse - heart disease with a low-fat diet, regular exercise, meditation and social contact, says that not only were the Beatles right, but he's got the research to prove it.

In his new book, Love & Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy (HarperCollins, $25), Ornish draws from personal experiences and his vast knowledge as a researcher to argue that the emotional and spiritual transformations resulting from love and intimacy are root causes of what make us sick and what make us well. "Sometimes the brain needs to be satisfied before the heart can open," Ornish says of the wide range of studies involving hundreds of thousands of people he cites in the book. "When we understand what a powerful difference love and intimacy make in the quality and quantity of life, then we can have the courage to take these issues more seriously and discuss them more openly."

Ornish says there are many pathways to finding the love you need, but he suggests eight in particular: becoming aware of what you say and how you say it; finding a group that supports you; understanding confession, redemption and forgiveness; working to be more compassionate, altruistic and of service to others; using psychotherapy; touching; making commitments to others; and meditating. He recently discussed some of these paths with Men's Fitness.

Define intimacy. Is it enough just to have sex? What kind of intimacy heals?

Any kind of intimacy can heal. It's a basic human need that often goes unfulfilled in our culture. It matters not only in the quality of life, but in the quantity. It's a need as basic as eating and breathing and sleeping. When we don't know that, there are serious consequences that threaten not only our well-being, but also our survival. Studies show that people who feel isolated (which is the real epidemic in our culture) are three to five times more likely to die prematurely and get sick than those who don't.

How can meditation facilitate intimacy if it's something you do alone?

Intimacy is anything that takes you out of the experience of being separate and only separate. It can be a friend, a lover, a family member, a dog. In one study, people who had dogs had four times less sudden cardiac death that those who didn't. For many people, a dog is their only experience of unconditional love. You come home, the dog is always happy to see you. You don't get that from anyone else.

But intimacy can also be on a spiritual plane. On one level, we are separate; on another, we are part of something that connects us all, whatever religious or secular context you put that experience into. That is also healing. Even the word "healing" comes from the root "to make whole." Meditation or prayer can quiet down your mind and body enough to experience that larger something that connects us.

There are a lot of misconceptions about meditation, too. People think that exercise and fitness is macho and that meditation is for wimps. They think, Why should I do nothing when I have so many things to do? While it may look like you are doing nothing, meditation in fact is a very active process. Its main benefit is that you get better at focusing your awareness; any time you practice doing something, you get better at it. When you can concentrate better, you can perform better - in athletics, in business, whatever. Any time you can focus energy, you gain more power.

Second, if you can focus on something - whether it's sex, food, music, art or massage, anything involving your senses - your pleasure is greatly enhanced. When your mind finally quiets down and you rediscover inner sources of peace and well-being, you can often accomplish more without getting stressed. People have power over you only if they have something you think you want or need. To the degree that you are more inwardly defined, you need less. And the less you need, the more power you maintain.

Why does commitment make you live longer? I don't know what I'm going to be doing next week, let alone 10 years from now ...

I grew up in the '60s, and the popular idea then was, Why be monogamous? It's so boring. It wasn't until I got much older that I realized there is great freedom and joy in being in an intimate and committed relationship. You can't really be open and intimate if you think the other person won't be there the next day. I found that if you create a safe, sacred environment where two people can progressively open up to themselves and each other, the sex is so much more ecstatic and powerful. We wall ourselves off from other people to protect ourselves from becoming vulnerable to them. If you have nowhere to feel safe, to let down your emotional defenses, and no one that you trust enough to do that with, those walls always stay up. The same walls that are designed to protect actually threaten survival because they isolate you, and the isolation itself is threatening.