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Press Finding your way to a 'Healing Path' by David Zalbowski. AP. USA TODAY; April 12, 1994 Marc Barasch was editor of New Age Journal an ambitious writer covering the new field of mind-body medicine, he thought he knew all about healing. Then his knowledge was put to the test: In January of 1985, Barasch was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. To his doctors. the decision was clear: cut it out. But Barasch wasn't sure. He'd heard a lot about alternative treatments - and what was he to make of his mysterious dream? In one, his disease "was depicted as crab sticks," he says, a supermarket product that looks like crab but actually "is another type of fish entirely." Was the dream some sort of "inner guidance" trying to tell him the doctors were wrong? "I did not end up trusting my dreams," says Barasch. now 44, who after two agonizing months of indecision reluctantly opted for Surgery. "Like most people, I was frightened by pronouncements of death and doom" from physicians who felt chasing alternatives was pure folly. But neither could he renounce the dream voice. Two days out of the hospital, he began focusing on his inner journey: chronicling his thoughts, reading psychology and mythology, seeking out other patients. Seven years' work resulted in The Healing Path; A Soul Approach to Illness (Tarcher, $22.95), a reflective book about Barasch's own journey and those of others he interviewed, some of whom attributed remarkable recoveries to alternative treatments. "The journey is all about these choices," he says. "Conventional medicine doesn't address some of these inner needs," but both can be combined. Barasch has traded his single-minded ascent of the career ladder for new priorities like spending more time with his daughter. "I don't worry as much about what other people think." One thing he's learned: Everyone's healing path is different, and taking somebody else's is a dead end. "Healing means becoming your real self," he says. "It's a constant process we should all be engaged in, whether we're ill nor not." Barasch no longer regrets having had the surgery: "I did for some time; however, at a certain point I realized that physical intactness is not synonymous with being whole. And it may have saved my life--I will never know."