Aside from our food system, there is no other area in our society more in need of reform than modern medicine. I’m not speaking of healthcare insurance reform, but the actual art and science of medicine. And at this point I realize I have just angered many, many people, perhaps some of whom think I have completely fallen off the deep end. But if this blog is about learning to live simply in a complicated world, modern medicine by its very definition, denies one the ability to live simply. And the sad realization is that it didn’t necessarily have to be that way.
The impetus to writing this post has come from my own healing experiences with and without modern medicine, as well as my observations for the past decade or so, and some academic research back in college and grad school.
If we think about it, modern (western, allopathic) medicine is basically the science of diagnosing and treating a particular ailment that affects a particular part of the body. And I do appreciate many of the "medical advances" modern medicine has "discovered" (although I think many are probably unnecessary) and I also realize that western medical professionals are compassionate human beings who primarily go into medicine to heal people. But modern medicine uses a reductionist model, isolating parts from the whole. Therefore, what it is miserably poor at doing is taking a holistic approach to the human form--the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of what it means to be human—and keeping that form well in all meanings of the word. Some may argue that modern medicine’s goal is not to treat all aspects, particularly the emotional and spiritual parts. But when an illness really encompasses all of these aspects, how "well" does a person actually become if only half of these aspects are treated?
What troubles me even more, is that with this reductionist model a treatment for one part of the body, sends another part out of whack. We see this on the popular television dramas, House and Grey's Anatomy, all the time, but it occurs every day in our own lives. All you have to do is just read the side effects on any over-the-counter or prescription drug. When treating only one specific organ system, or thinking that the trouble lies solely within one system, there is a potential to set off a cascade of events, creating more problems than were initially present. One of my favorite medical anthropology words is iatrogenic—which describes an adverse condition brought on (unintentionally) by some treatment. Using an environmental analogy, I often think that allopathic medicine is so focused on the tree, that it forgets the forest and the fragile relationship that exists between all organisms in that forest.
Enter alternative therapies. Chiropractic (interestingly, insurance companies now recognize this as a “valid” form of therapy), acupuncture, reiki, meditation, and other forms of healing. Being a rational and logical person I was very skeptical at first of all of the above. But the failure of allopathic medicine to do anything for a certain condition I have except make me feel like I was an anomaly and “not normal” led me to explore other options. My first goal was to increase the positive energy within my body. I had been feeling very negative and a friend with Parkinson’s had good experience with a reiki practitioner. He suggested one right in the Village, and I set up an appointment. My treatment ended up being both reiki and acupuncture, and eventually a series of Reconnective Healings. After about 4 months, I feel better.
I don’t pretend to understand what is really happening during reiki and acupuncture or how it occurs. What I do understand is that energy channels are being opened, areas where there is stagnation are being unblocked, and the body is becoming more balanced. I find it fascinating that the movement of energy (including thermal, auditory and visual energies) is palpable and real and (aside from acupuncture) it is done hands off. The healer and the client don’t even need to be in the same part of the country in order for Reconnective Healing to work. This has really boggled by mind, but the concept is simple. There are energy fields around us and we can learn how to manipulate those energy fields to bring our bodies back into harmony. If we are able to think of chronic disease or unwellness as any condition where the body is not in balance, where all the parts are not working harmoniously so to speak for one reason or another, then the simple solution would be to bring it back in balance. But it is impossible to try to bring one system back into balance without considering the whole body as well as external influences (I believe this is where Noetic science and the universal conscience is significant). I think I am beginning to understand that modern medicine is not necessary and perhaps not the best approach in order for re-harmonizing to occur. The film, The Living Matrix, does a beautiful job at explaining much of this in a rational way. It also justifies the power of intent, intuition and prayer.
So, why are these forms of therapy not more widespread? This was my major mental block and I asked my acupuncturist/reiki healer about it. Today, we don’t hear about it, largely because medicine is a business and big pharma is making a lot of money on our current medical paradigm. If we look at who is funding much of the medical research it is big pharma. Consequently, what gets media attention are treatments with modern medicine. So a large part of the public believes that allopathic medicine is the only obvious choice. Other alternative forms of therapy are looked upon with great skepticism. There is a societal pressure to treat illness with nothing but western medicine. But, why is that the case? I think a lot of our bias stems from the seventeenth century and the Age of Reason. Medicine suddenly fell into the category of science, based on Newtonian physics at its core (as opposed to Quantum physics, which of course, had not been “discovered” at that time). Subsequently, all illness occurring in the body had to be explained by using this model. Now, we are learning that everything occurring in the body cannot be explained by Newtonian physics, but there has not yet been a shift in paradigm. For some more in-depth reading on the subject refer to Robert L. Martensen’s “Alientation and the Production of Strangers: Western medical epistemology and the architectonics of the body. An historical perspective” published in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry (1995) and Byron J. Good’s Medicine, Rationality and Experience: An anthropological perspective (1994).
Honestly, if I were in the position where I had some life-threatening chronic or acute disease, I don’t know if I would be brave enough to challenge modern medicine and use solely alternative therapies. I too, am held prisoner to this powerful belief system. But I have lately become so disenchanted not only by the extreme reductionist philosophy, but also with the constant trial and error that goes on when trying to diagnose and treat a condition. Because alternative therapies work by a different model, it is not necessary to pinpoint the exact origin of the problem. Energy therapies will naturally find where the problem is and support the body to make the proper manipulations. With our environment changing faster than we have adapted (thanks to our own influence), we find our bodies out of whack more than ever before (certain cancers, obesity, heart disease, infertility, depression, autism). Allopathic medicine is struggling to find a biochemical, rational reason behind each illness (usually in the form of a gene) so that a proper drug can be found to alleviate, if not cure, the illness. If more people were open to alternative therapies, and treating the whole person, not just apparently a group of cells (because it really isn't just a group of cells that is the core of the problem), not only would a lot of money and time be saved, but a lot of angst, humiliation and dehumanization in the medicalized setting could be avoided.
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