Dr Sarah Goldingay
Drama academic’s new BBC Radio 4 programme explores the holistic nature of healing
Drama academic, Dr Sarah Goldingay has a new programme that was broadcast on Sunday 15 May and featured as part of BBC Radio 4’s weekly radio programme, Something Understood.
In her episode, ‘Healing Moments’, Dr Goldingay explores the holistic nature of healing. Her current research interests are wellbeing, chronic pain, healing and the placebo response. She collaborates with researchers and practitioners in Humanities, Medicine, Neuropsychology and Theology. Her work begins from the premise that healing is not just about bodies. For Dr Goldingay, as she explains in the documentary, ‘Healing is about our emotions, our sense of self, the landscape and community we were born into. It is about our very soul’.
Dr Goldingay said, ‘Healing matters to us all. I'm collaborating with colleagues in several fields to better understand healing. We're focusing on the way that our life experiences shape how, and how quickly, we heal. We're investigating the phenomena of placebo - how apparently doing 'nothing', like giving an inert pill, can make 'something' happen. We think that something happens because healing is not just about the pill itself but also how we give the pill, the people we meet in that process, the spaces we spend time in, the stories we tell ourselves about our experiences. Our early findings are taking us beyond the biological to consider the whole person, and that's what the programme is all about.’
‘Healing Moments’ is an exciting follow-up to Dr Goldingay’s BBC Radio 4 programme that was broadcast last year in July 2015, The Problem of Pain – A Slow Motion Catastrophe, in which she explored ground-breaking research into relieving chronic pain. It's still available on BBC Radio iPlayer.
She said, ‘It was repeated earlier this year and selected for the Radio 4 in 4 series of podcasts. I’m delighted that I've been commissioned to create another episode for Pause for Thought in August that's going to centre on some of my earlier research around religion and performance. It's called Acts of Faith.’
‘Healing Moments’ also featured poetry from Professor Christopher Southgate from the Department of Theology and Religion, and readings from Navajo surgeon Lori Arviso Alvord.
The programme will be available to listen to on BBC iPlayer Radio until Monday 13 June.
Date: 31 May 2016