“There is no one thing that’s going to heal us. The best advice I can give is to see where your belief system hangs and put your energy there.”
Psychologist Jeanne Achterberg
Many alternative healing techniques and therapies in their own way affect a person – depending upon how they are applied and interwoven into that person’s way of life.
Whereas traditional medicine concentrates on the physical problem, many alternative therapies focus more on the emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of an illness.
- Together they treat the whole person.
- Such techniques as lay healing, acupuncture, homeopathy, and osteopathy, and Qigong exercises have slipped into mainstream medical practice.
The use of imagery for medical problems
- Imagery can relieve chronic pain, alter blood flow, and stimulate other changes that we once believed couldn’t be controlled consciously.
The healing power of intimacy
- Love and intimacy are at a root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing.
Validating mind-body interactions
Focusing our minds on a word, phrase, or prayer
- Repeating words or sounds over and over so that other intrusive thoughts were disregarded
- Physiological changes occur, such as a decrease in metabolism, blood pressure, and heart rate.
- It can be a single word such a “love” or “peace,” or a phrase from a prayer, or any sound that relaxes the patient.
- The patient, not the doctor, decides what to use. A high percent of them chose a prayer.
- Therefore, it becomes about helping patients select prayer from a variety of faiths.
“Our overall health and well-being is akin to a three-legged stool. One leg is pharmaceuticals, another leg is surgery and medical procedures, and the third leg is self-care.”
– Herbert Benson
- People need to pay more attention to preventive measures and taking care of one’s spiritual health
- this appears to be as important as nutrition, exercise, and stress-management.
Re-source: Reshape
As we examine different life-affirming steps that people take to overcome an illness, common elements emerge that promote the journey toward wholeness
- Expansive hearts, inner peace, and sense of purpose and meaning, and often a sense of connection to a God or higher source.
- The word heal and whole stem from the same root
It’s the act of healing, not the act of destruction, that reshapes us.
- When people think of transformational experiences that alter lifestyles and views of truth, they tend to focus on the negative: wars, deaths, divorces –anything that crushes the human life or spirit.
An illness can transform an individual. Healing is ultimately a sacred act.
- “It’s about uncovering, recovering, and discovering the innate wholeness in ourselves and in the world.” – Rachel Naomi Ramen
One aspect of healing is self-evident: regardless of the healing method chosen, it is the process of healing that delivers the magical results.
- Embedded in the process is the opportunity to improve
- improve the body, improve oneself, improve life.
craving and resource from “A Call for Connection” by Gail Bernice Holland