This past summer I had the unique experience of traveling to Irian Jaya, now called Papua or West Papua, a province of Indonesia, to visit with the Dani people. They are a people who some believe have only recently begun to emerge from the Stone Age. (This village was described by the author Peter Mathieson in "Under the Mountain Wall," 1961.) This experience was preceded by two weeks of trekking and observing/filming a cultural festival in Papua, New Guinea, on the eastern half of the island located about one hundred miles north of Australia.

Papua New Guinea mudmen in ceremonial dance. The traditional dance references the early tribal history of the Asaro people. According to legend, the mud covering protected warriors going into battle by frightening away adversaries. Photo: Michael Jon Spencer

After a strenuous three weeks, R & R was in order... four days in idyllic Bali. Not any more, owing to recent events in that Indonesian province. The bombing in Kuta has made me a bit queasy, for I was literally in NYC on 9/11, and passed through Bali on the opposite side of the world weeks before this most recent tragedy.

The feelings engendered by these successive experiences bring up the topic of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that has affected people of all ages in New York City in particular, and around the world. It has brought home the profound relationship between the mind and body, the mechanism through which live arts experiences work their wonders on the physical and spiritual dimensions of the human organism. This “connection” would now appear to be an "open and shut case" for what had been a diagnosis confined to the shock of warfare or natural disasters, now is one of the most widespread and recognized mental health disorders in which stress perceived by the mind becomes evidenced by a multitude of physical disorders.

The 9/11 mental anguish of thousands, if not millions of people throughout the world, many suffering in physically tormented ways, would appear to be sufficient proof that the human organism can no longer be viewed as having a dichotomy of physical attributes independent of mental/emotional states.

We are the most highly integrated circuit in the universe. The devastation and negativity wreaked on the human psyche can be reversed by the life affirming and enriching energies of art.