I have to first preface this by saying one of the gravest mistakes people regularly make in spiritual communities is foregoing traditional evidence based western medicine for alternative healing instead of using adjunct with traditional forms of treatment. I regularly refer my clients back to their physician or a mental health professional if the issue they are looking to remedy with magic has any sort of medical etiology and only move forward in the process once they can confirm they are doing the work with licensed healthcare professionals. With that being said... this is an area I am highly interested in as I experiment a lot on the interplay between occultism, magic, hypnotism, and physiology.
When dealing with the link between magic and "miracle healing" what we are really exploring is in woo-ier pseudo-psychological terms "mind-body psychology". We lean a lot into understanding the body's processes, if there is work the unconscious/subconscious mind can do, and where do spirits or magic intercede on the mind-body axis. There are pretty miraculous (on the surface) things that can happen when we utilize magic with healing but under the hood what is usually happening is changes in neural pathways and the communication between different sets of neural networks. For example, there is a lot of clinical evidence for the effectiveness of hypnosis on nearly permanently curing the symptoms associated with IBS, CVS, and CHS - all syndromes of the gut-brain axis. The gut has a high density neural network that can be thought of as a separate "brain" from the central nervous system. This "gut-brain" is responsible for why things like anxiety or depression can trigger stomach pains, diarrhea, constipation, etc etc. In the treatment of these symptoms using a psychological model you're usually using guided imagery in a state of trance. This creates new neural pathways that desensitize the neurons in the stomach so they have higher stress tolerance and moves the anxiety to register cognitively instead of processed through the gut-brain axis. This has been a well known and effective technique and treatment for syndromes of gastroentology but largely not used because of its association with "woo-age" practices and the severe lack of trained professionals on these techniques.
The same things can be utilized when dealing with stuff like blood. The heart and cardiovascular system has the same density of neurons creating another "little brain" in charge of the cardiovascular system. I have been able to utilize this for basic first aid purposes. Sending blood away from irritated/inflamed areas of the body, bug bites, slowing bleeding. Its very doable and very easy especially when working on somebody who has a magical practice already (they are trained in subconscious communication).
Where this stops short is usually on a cellular level. For example I can send the blood away from an inflamed or bleeding area using nothing but magic words and my hands but the histamines being released by the cells in the area I don't have control over. So while I can't send the histamines away I can desensitize the person to registering the histamines as an irritant. The histamines are still there but they aren't registering the response to them as itchy or irritating.
One of my passions though is experimenting with the endocrine system, hormones, and magic. This has been a lot more difficult than the more direct methods you can use with things like the gastroenterological system or cardiovascular system, I am not sure why but I havent been able to find as much clinical research as with the others. But this system is controlled by the hypothalamus and so my focus a lot of times has been there. The few successes I've had with the modifications of hormones is regressing the client to a state of being that they have already experienced to trick the body into producing the hormonal cocktail associated with that. For example, you can regress a woman to the memory of pregnancy or puberty in order to induce the production of estrogen, phytoestrogen, growth hormone, and an "anti-aging" hormone known as DHEAS-1. You can regress a person to a an intense workout where they hit a personal record to induce the production of lactic acid, growth hormones, and stimulate a muscular response. The interplay between bodily processes and the hypothalamus are usually successful through accessing a memory in which the hypothalamus was communicating with the bodily functions.
So here we've explored a ton of the ideas behind utilizing the subconscious/manifesting physiological change. Which absolutely can be done. To what extent? Thats why I'm experimenting with this territory. Because nobody really knows - but new clinical research is emerging every day that is further confirming that you can absolutely chaos magick/hypnotize/manifest your way into physiological change.
So where does traditional magic step into this? Now if you are utilizing these subconscious techniques to change your physiology you can absolutely do this in ritual and allow spirits to aid in the process. Just as cursing somebody sends a spirit that messes with their unconscious drive to fuck everything up you can utilize a spirit to aid in the acceleration of your metabolism for weight loss, to further embed the work you are doing. I think the limit here is stuff that is truly reality breaking. I do not think you can conjure yourself into growing body hair so you become a DeviantArt OC, or having a 1 foot penis (believe me i've tried but if you figure it out DM me) however you can use the aid of spirits in conjunction with the subconscious programming to really trigger healing, physiological change, and changes to neural pathways. Its something my wife and I experiment with heavily to great success (and a lot of failures too).
So with all this insight there is a ton of potential for magic to aid you in healing your body, however you have to ask yourself if it is truly in the realm of possibility. Is the body, through natural processes, capable of rearranging itself so that your colon stops pressing on your intestines? Or is the better route to use magic to alleviate the sensation of constipation which is totally doable. Do you desensitize yourself to your fear of surgery and conjure for its success while magically managing the symptoms until you get the surgery? I do not know friend you're going to have to figure this out yourself. But I hope my insight provides you some kind of inspiration and hope to figure out the best course of action magically.
