ACCORDING to the National Federation of Spiritual Healers, healing is officially listed as a therapy recognised by the National Health Service, and doctors are permitted by the General Medical Council to refer patients for spiritual healing if they wish to do so.

In Scotland, while some doctors have been so bold as to prescribe a bicycle to counteract heart disease and hypnotherapy to help patients stop smoking, spiritual healers have in the main remained outwith the sanctity of the NHS. Now, two medical centres in Glasgow have taken a healer on board, and Pamela Jauhar, practice manager of both centres, says: ''It is the way forward.

There is more to healing than medicine. This is a more

holistic approach.''

The concept is not new to the city, of course. East End GP Dr Craig Brown says in his book Optimum Healing that he has sometimes felt unable to do much for his patients and brought in a healer. He found that, as well as being more beneficial to his patients, he could also lower his prescribing bill. Ian De Coster is the healer who has been asked by the Madhok Medical Centres in Battlefield Road and Keir Street to use his gifts when conventional medicine is perhaps not the answer. De Coster, who also practises privately at the Natural Health Service in High Street, Glasgow, and at a clinic at Prestwick Airport, has helped people suffering from a broad spectrum of ailments since he was first told he had healing powers in the 1960s.

He was a painter and decorator to trade in those days, and reluctantly went to a psychic meeting at which the speaker asked him if he knew that he was a healer. De Coster actually looked behind him, thinking the speaker was addressing someone else. Instead, she insisted: ''No, I am talking to you. I think you should try it.''

It perhaps shouldn't have come as so much of a surprise. As a child, he had a number of psychic experiences at school and at home, but had given them little thought. Now, he visited the world-famous spiritual healer Harry Edwards and other healers, who all advised that the only way he could tell would be to try it. His first patient in the late 60s was child with asthma. In 1972, he joined the National Federation of Spiritual Healers as a body with an ethical code of conduct.

De Coster admits that at first he had no idea how to go about healing. Today he says: ''There is no such thing as a healer here on earth. We are only channels.''

Word of mouth about his successes meant his healing practice snowballed, eventually taking him all over the country to lecture and give demonstrations of healing as president of the Healing Guild. He believes in the presence of guardian angels, but taps into all international faiths. De Coster insists people go first to their doctor, and he has a rule not to make anyone any promises. Sometimes his healing cannot help, but his presence can ease the sufferer's path.

He says: ''It is surprising what can be achieved. I've had one or two patients who have had tumours who have gone in for operations and the tumours weren't to be found.''

Recently he has been treating people in the medical field, and the joint feeling was they should come together professionally. Other NHS avenues that he has tried to go down have been dead ends. This time, there were positive feelings on both sides and he is glad to be able to help them fulfil the Patients' Charter, which says a patient's wishes to see a healer should be met.

De Coster can't explain his gift, but an experiment at one of his consultations at an exhibition in London showed changes in brain patterns. He says: ''Whatever it is, something is happening.'' He wants to make that ''something'' available to more people, and says the way forward is a collaboration between NHS doctors and healers. ''There are 300 healers now in Scotland, and doctors who are saying: 'You can't do what I do, and I can't do what you do.' Working together is

the answer.''