For Health and Healing:
By Sylvia O. de Guzman
Member, LightShare e-Group, Sanib-Sining, Sanib-Sigla, and Katipunang DakiLahi
[This is a short excerpt from “Principles and Techniques of Natural Health and Healing,” an article by Ms. Sylvia de Guzman solicited for Kamayan para sa Kalikasan Forum session of April 2005 on “Health Care without Pharmas.” The author, a major speaker at that session, is a human development specialist, writer, and educator who has studied and practiced natural health and healing techniques such as Tai’ chi and meditation over the past 11 years, and is affiliated with several organizations teaching and disseminating such techniques. The full article, to be published by the Lambat-Liwanag Paradigm-Specific Task Force on Holistic Health, explains much more, under such headings as: Physical, Mental, and Psychic Toxins; Negative Mental Programming Lowers the Immune System; Natural Capacity for Self-Healing; The Process of Healing; Harnessing Natural Healing Energies; The Vital Life Force; and Mental Reprogramming; Diseases with Karmic Roots. The Lambat LiwanagNetwork’s 2nd Empowering Paradigm is “Holistic Health and Healing.” Ms. De Guzman’s full article is an excellent contribution to the development and elucidation of this empowering paradigm, second of 15 being developed by the mainly-academe-based Lambat Liwanag Network for Empowering Paradigms.]
Based upon millennia-old traditions of health care and validated by the latest findings of modern science, including such newly emergent fields as psychoneuroimmunology, this new approach presents a radical departure from the conventional framework of mainstream medical and health practice, and alters the way medicine is approached.
Return to Nature
....Although natural health and healing provides a range of options for health care that may even be applied complementary to modern medicine, at its core is a return to nature – making full use of the human being’s natural capacity for self-healing, long neglected by medicine, as well as the vast resources and energies nature offers to attain and maintain health.
....As much as possible, natural healing avoids highly intrusive interventions that obtrude upon and drastically interfere with the natural workings and subtle energy flows of the human system, or that cause the natural functioning of the body’s systems to atrophy from long disuse and foster permanent dependence on synthetic preparations.
....A distinct advantage of natural health and healing techniques is that they often require greatly reduced expenditure since many of the healing energies provided by nature are free or come cheaply, such as those coming from sunlight, water, and fresh air.
HEALING THE PERSON,
NOT THE DISEASE
.
....While conventional medicine treats diseases in a generic way, prescribing the same healing treatment and regimen for all persons manifesting similar symptoms, natural health and healing strives to heal the patient as a unique and complex individual.
.... Gradually, the medical profession is relearning what once it knew so well – that we can not understand disease unless we understand the persons afflicted with the disease.
....This includes knowing and understanding the circumstances of their lives, and their psycho-emotional profiles and background, and on this basis, finding their unique paths towards health and healing. Medicine then ceases to be only a mechanistic specialty but is transformed into a special calling that requires compassion and depth of understanding of the whole person.
In this new paradigm of health care, patients are no longer viewed as unquestioning subjects for passive treatment by medical experts and authorities, but as active participants sharing responsibility for their own healing on the basis of informed choice.
Preventive Approach
to Health
Conventional medicine is curative; it attempts to cure the sickness as this manifests physically, when it is already there. On the other hand, natural health and healing is preventive; it tries to attain and maintain health and wellness even before any ailment manifests.
Conventional medicine is curative; it attempts to cure the sickness as this manifests physically, when it is already there. On the other hand, natural health and healing is preventive; it tries to attain and maintain health and wellness even before any ailment manifests.
....Its emphasis is on preventing sickness from occurring by bolstering the immune system and resorting to practices and states of mind conducive to health and vitality, such as nutritious food and cleansing diet, meditation techniques that foster inner harmony, music and art that massage the soul, adequate rest and sleep, sanitation, and exercise. Attention is turned away from disease and death, towards health and life.
Health as
Holistic Well-being
....All major religions and philosophical systems of humanity are one in teaching that human beings are multidimensional, consisting not only of physical, but also of emotional, mental, psychic, and spiritual dimensions.
....Many effects and symptoms, therefore, that manifest in the grossest physical or material dimension, have their origin and causes in some deeper dimension or higher, subtler sphere. The same is true with sickness and disease.
....Hence, health is now defined (in the global context, by such United Nations agencies as the World Health Organization) in a comprehensive and holistic way in terms of physical, physiological, mental, psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being. This coincides with current multi-dimensional approach to intelligence: multiple intelligences include not just the conventional components of Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.) of analytical/mathematical intelligence and verbal/linguistic intelligence, but also other intelligences such as body-kinesthetic, spatial/artistic, musical, interpersonal/social, intrapersonal/self-knowledge and self-mastery, naturalistic/environmental, and psychic/spiritual/cosmic.
Root Cause of Disease
While conventional medicine concerns itself mostly with the physical manifestations of disease which are but effects and symptoms, natural health and healing seeks to look into the deeper causes of disease as these are rooted in the human psyche.
.
....As early as the fourth century B.C., the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, said: “A change in the state of the soul produces a change in the state of the body.” This upholds what mystics have been saying throughout the ages: that most diseases of the physical body have their roots in the human consciousness: the mind and the inner soul.
=======
…humans are multi-dimensional, consisting not only ..of physical, but also of emotional, mental, psychic and spiritual dimensions......................................
Body-Mind-Spirit Connection
....Now, more than 2,000 years later, this principle is at the core of a radical new approach to the study of human disease, an approach that explores the body-mind-spirit connection and the power of mind over matter.
....For a long time, conventional medicine sought only physical explanations for human disease. Much has thus been achieved in studies on: bacteria and viruses that invade the body; biochemical malfunctions in the body systems; chemical toxins that poison the body; the effect of environmental factors such as pollution; the influence of genetics in such congenital diseases as hemophilia; the role of diet, food, and nutrients in human health; and many otheruseful findings. Though adding much to the fund of human knowledge, these studies explained human diseases only in physical terms.
While conventional Western medicine concerned itself mostly with tangible cells, tissues, and organs, other healing traditions such as Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine also delved into the subtle energy pathways, movements, and interconnections at work in the human system.
....Now, based on advanced studies, medical researchers and practitioners have started to acknowledge what mystics have long taught: that the root of most diseases that manifest in the outer physical body lie in the deeper dimensions of mind and inner soul. Considerable scientific evidence is increasingly establishing the psycho-emotional and psychical roots of disease. Medical research has found that more than 90 percent of diseases are psychosomatic, arising from inharmonious conditions in the mind, mostly due to stress. Stress-related maladies range from allergies to ulcers, hypertension, high blood pressure, and heart ailments.
Researchers are now studying the relationships among consciousness, psycho-social factors, attitudinal healing, and the immune function, the contribution of lifestyle and emotions to health, and the relation of stress and illness. Science now documents how feelings can create chemical changes in our body. Daniel Goleman, in his book, Emotional Intelligence, presents the latest psychological research findings on the processes by which emotions trigger reactions in the brain, resulting in the release of hormones and chemicals.
Health: A State of Harmony and Wholeness
....What state of inner consciousness causes disease in the outer physical body? Disharmony.
Renowned mystical healers since ancient times such as Aeschulapius, prince of Thessaly in Italy (whose symbolic staff was the caduceus, which has become the emblem of modern medicine), the powerful mystic philosopher-healer, Nagarjuna of India, and the eminent healer-alchemist, Paracelsus of Switzerland, have taught that if some disorder or disharmony prevails in the inner psychic dimension and state of consciousness, this is bound to have an outer manifestation in a sickness of the physical body. Health is a state of harmony and wholeness.
....This is now increasingly being verified by modern medical science. Correlations have been observed in the incidence of specific ailments with certain psycho-emotional states, among others: repressed anger with kidney or gall stones (accumulation of unreleased mental and emotional toxins); unexpressed or unre- quited love with heart ailments (a heavy, overstrained heart); excessive mental or emotional burdens or weight of responsibilities with shoulder and back aches (carrying a heavy load); and nervous tension with ulcers or hyperacidity (upset stomach).
Clearly, our psyche -- our emotional and mental state -- affects our health. We can change our biology by how we think and feel. A bout of depression can wreak havoc with the immune system while falling in love can boost it (resulting in an elevated immune response marked by increased salivary immunoglobin antigen or SigA).
....Despair and hopelessness increase the risk of heart attacks and cancer, thereby shortening life. In contrast, joy and fulfillment keep us healthy and extend life. This scientific validation of the body-mind-spirit connection confirms our capacity for mindful change at the cellular level.
Disharmony from Lack of Attunement with Nature
What, in turn, causes disharmony in the inner dimension?
....It is important to understand that, as human beings, we are part of a larger order of interconnected existence in the cosmos. This is expressed in the Chaos Theory propounded by physicists, biochemists, mathematicians, and other scientists which states that there are no isolated energy movements in the universe. We live amidst the intricate workings of a natural sea of energy marked by polarities which must be kept in harmony and balance. The human system itself constantly strives to attain homeostasis or balance. The body is governed by natural cycles which should not be disrupted for they exert a significant effect and influence on the body.
=======
As human beings, we are part of a larger order of existence in the cosmos. There are no unrelated energy movements in the universe…
.
....It would serve us well, therefore, to know these natural universal laws and conduct our lives in harmony with them and in attunement with the forces of nature. Such laws include: the Law of Compensation or Karma, which states that what we sow, we reap; the Law of Evolution, which states that all human beings individually and all humanity collectively are on a course of evolution; the Law of Sharing, which states that what we share would inevitably come back to us multifold; and the Law of Cycles, which states that all of life and nature is governed by cycles.
.
....Ultimately, disharmony in our system is caused by lack of attunement with nature, by violating the natural laws of the cosmos and thereby causing undulations in the cosmic web, by upsetting the harmony and balance in nature and thereby triggering a counterbalancing reaction which may be cataclysmic, and by disrupting the natural functioning of the body.
In health and healing, as in all life, self-knowledge and self-mastery are of crucial importance.
...In much the same way that we can control and shape our destiny by our actions today and at each moment, so also can we do much to control and improve our health and well-being.
.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BACK TO LSD-2 TABLE OF CONTENTS
To post FEEDBACK on this article, click HERE, join as member, and send your comment as a message.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment