Complementary and alternative medicines
While contemporary conventional medicine has distanced itself from the less reductionistic and more vitalistic approach of traditional medicine, some areas of complementary medicine continue to espouse vitalistic concepts and worldview. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) classifies CAM therapies into five categories or domains:
- alternative medical systems, or complete systems of therapy and practice;
- mind-body interventions, or techniques designed to facilitate the mind’s effect on bodily functions and symptoms;
- biologically based systems, including herbalism;
- manipulative and body-based methods, such as chiropractic and massage therapy; and
- energy therapy.
The therapies that continue to be most intimately associated with vitalism are bioenergetic medicines, in the category of energy therapies. This field may be further divided into bioelectromagnetic medicines (BEM) and biofield therapies (BT). Compared with bioenergetic medicines, biofield therapies have a stronger identity with vitalism. Examples of biofield therapies include therapeutic touch, Reiki, external qi, chakra healing and SHEN therapy. Biofield therapies are medical treatments in which the “subtle energy” field of a patient is manipulated by a biofield practitioner. The subtle energy is held to exist beyond the electromagnetic (EM) energy that is produced by the heart and brain. Beverly Rubik describes the biofield as a “complex, dynamic, extremely weak EM field within and around the human body…”
Acupuncture and chiropractic emphasize a holistic approach to the cause and treatment of disease. However, it should be noted that today many chiropractors no longer adhere to the concept of vitalism to explain their mechanisms of healing, and are more mechanistic in their approach. More traditional or “straight” practitioners, however, adhere to a concept of “innate” intelligence. For example, in a paper named “The Meanings of Innate”, Joseph C. Keating, Jr. says that “Innate Intelligence” in chiropractic can be used to represent four concepts: a synonym for homeostasis, a label for a doctor’s ignorance, a vitalistic explanation of health and disease, and a metaphysical premise for treatment.
The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, promoted an immaterial, vitalistic view of disease: “…they are solely spirit-like (dynamic) derangements of the spirit-like power (the vital principle) that animates the human body.” As practised by some homeopaths today, homeopathy simply rests on the premise of treating sick persons with extremely diluted agents that – in undiluted doses – are deemed to produce similar symptoms in a healthy individual. Nevertheless, it remains equally true that the view of disease as a dynamic disturbance of the immaterial and dynamic vital force is taught in many homeopathic colleges and constitutes a fundamental principle for many contemporary practicing homeopaths.
healing can be defined as: a restoration of health to a part of the body that was previously diseased or injured. This is what most our patrons and communicants will consult us for, no doubt.
We know, the body itself has a remarkable built-in system of healing whereby it can replace portions destroyed by injury or disease, prevent the invasion of organisms that take part in the various infections to which it is susceptible, and reject the growth of foreign tissues, as in tumor and cancer. The discipline of medicine especially the studies of physiology and pathology, is now in a position to shed much light on the many processes of healing whereby the body attains a normal state of function after a severe injury or disease.
However, the one characteristic that soon eludes the casual observer is the remarkable order of the processes. There is a regulated outpouring of the cells and fluid necessary for healing both from the blood and the nearby healthy tissues, and when the end of healing has been attained the flow of fluid and the migration of cells ceases forthwith. Order and rhythm are features of the healthy bodily function. Once order is disrupted and disorder predominates the disease becomes more serious; the most sinister is the unrestrained abnormal growth of cells that characterizes a tumor. Tumors are either benign or malignant; and if benign and left to their own destruction, sometimes turn malignant and habour death. This follows its own rules of growth, whatever they may be, and if it is malignant it will tend to destroy the whole organism in its relentless spread.
Medical science can describe these processes in terms of chemistry and physiology with ever increasing precision, but is still largely ignorant about the fundamental factors that initiate the chemical response and control it. There seems to be a more subtle healing power that lies beyond the manifest phenomena of disease and healing that has yet been discovered by the biological or physical sciences. It appears to be related in some ways to the emotional and mental life of the person, and this in turn is dependent on the purpose the person sees in his or her life and the purpose to which it is devoted. In any healing process there are factors involved that are strictly localized to the part of the body that are diseased. But there are also factors of a more generalized, or systemic, nature that seem to control the over-all response of the whole body to the assault of injury or disease. These include such tangible influences as diet, environment and occupation, but there is also increasing evidence that mental attitudes of life are also of vital importance. The mind, itself intimately related to the brain, controls the body’s response to many noxious stimuli that might otherwise destroy it.
The human personality functions on at least four levels – the physical body, the emotions that influence its actions, the rational mind that investigates and controls the environment on which life depends, and a deeper center of moral decision which is traditionally called the soul. More acceptable contemporary names for this central focus of personality are the true self or spiritual self, which is to be contrasted with the ego self by which the personality expresses and asserts itself moment by moment in the environment. The ego-consciousness fluctuates with emotions whereas the consciousness of the true self is stable; it defines the formed attitude of the person to the great themes of life: vocation, purpose, faith, dedication, renunciation and death.
Our emotional life is especially close association with its impact on the body. We all know the effects of anxiety or grief on the heart’s action and the digestion. The emotions in turn are related to the state of the rational mind that determines coherent action in response to immediate needs or more distant needs. But all are finally under the direction of the soul, which discerns ultimate purpose in the apparently meaningless flux of today’s life, a purpose that may indeed transcend the rational barriers of life and death.
Individual healing must always occur in a social context, inasmuch as the healing of society is a prerequisite for the total healing of the individual. On the other hand, it is the healed individual who alone is able to use his strength fully to assist the healing of society. Nor does society exist as an isolated unit; it depends on the world around it, deriving its nourishment and sustenance from nature. Therefore concern for environmental conservation and the welfare of all life are integral to a fully comprehensive view of healing.
Every experience in life bears its own lesson, and we will not pass by the barrier it erects until we have learned how to transcend it. Every aspect of the personality has to participate in this process of growth and strengthening; no one part can be by-passed
