Lyren Chiu - Founder & President, Canadian Research - Institute of Spirituality and Healing - crish.org
by Jennifer Croll
For Lyren Chiu, spirituality has been a lifelong pursuit. “I was born and raised in Taiwan, and Confucianism and Taoism were very widespread, as was Buddhism,” she explains. “And my mom was said to be a bodhisattva. In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is one who changes the world and helps with those who suffer.”
As leader of the Canadian Research Institute of Spirituality and Healing (CRISH), Lyren wants to change the world through spirituality. She created CRISH in 2006 to unite scientists, scholars, and students in order to research integrated health models and to shine a light on the widely unrecognized (at least in Western medicine) role of spirituality in healing. Lyren argues that many of the attempts to borrow from other healing modalities (such as Chinese medicine) ignore the complexity of such approaches.
“People think they can just add herbs and call that integrated medicine,” she laments. “You can better integrate areas of healthcare modalities if you honour their traditions instead of picking away at their essence.”
Lyren also has plans for a for-profit organization called the Beautiful Mind Health and Wellness Society. It will work alongside CRISH to extend its reach beyond academia. “This society will generate profit, create jobs, provide training, respect the planet, and improve the community,” she enthuses.
Lyren’s plans are ambitious, but she has a solid foundation to keep her steady. “If I want to do something, the first person I need to deal with is myself,” she says. “As long as I am at peace with my spirituality, everything will come very smoothly. That is what I have discovered.”
