When reviewing the Reiki Backgrounder for the NIH/NCCAM website, I suggested to my NCCAM colleagues that Reiki is more accurately grouped with meditation as a spiritual practice, rather than placed in the energy medicine category.

The point may seem moot, another round of academic hair-splitting, but what a difference this shift could make in today's health care. Let's take a look.

In energy medicine, the therapist does the housecleaning, whereas through spiritual practice, we alter our state from within.

Today's medicine is reactive by definition (otherwise it's called Preventive Medicine). Practice, however, is proactive. We reach for medicine when we feel ill; we practice as part of our regular hygiene, cognizant of the damaging effects of accumulated stress, and of our need to settle into home base at least once a day. We practice because our common sense tells us it is necessary, even when our hearts don't register the longing to phone home.

Conventional medicine groups spiritual practice under lifestyle modification. You make a deliberate choice, a commitment to self-care that becomes part of your daily routine, like tooth-brushing (and for some, more like flossing).

Before 2008, everything I did had something to do with mental health. I'm a neuroscientist, and I was all about understanding how we create our perception of reality, and understanding what's going on in the brains of people who experience hallucination and delusion.

But then I gave a TEDTalk about my own experience with stroke. Within weeks of delivering that talk in 2008, my life changed and the repercussions still resonate loudly in my world. My book, My Stroke of Insight, has been translated into 30 languages. Time and Oprah's Soul Series came calling. I've traveled to Europe, Asia, South America, Canada; I've criss-crossed the states. And in February 2012, I took a trip to Antarctica with Vice President Al Gore, 20 scientists, and 125 global leaders who care deeply about climate.

While I was traveling the globe, I still thought my core issue was mental health. But, perhaps spurred by that trip to Antarctica, I've come to understand that the two issues of mental health and global health are closely linked -- if not one and the same. Similar processes we use to improve our mental health can help us make better, more responsible decisions as a society -- by focusing on the compassion and integrity of our right brain, rather than the judgment, punishment and deception of our left brain.