The Art Of Eastern Medicine
Voltaire: “The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”
Alec Baldwin’s arrogant surgeon in the movie “Malice”: “When someone goes into that chapel and they fall on their knees and they pray to God that their wife doesn’t miscarry or that their daughter doesn’t bleed to death or that their mother doesn’t suffer acute neural trauma from postoperative shock, who do you think they’re praying to? … You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God.”
Phase 1: Healing And Music
As a young musician, I learned how to listen for subtle shifts in tone, in cadence and in rhythm in the music I was studying. It soon became clear to me that music requires both intuition and rigorous discipline if one is to succeed. In this way I sought ways to coax the fullest potential from the guitar or saxophone before me. Looking back now, I see that performing and composing music proved to be a wonderful training ground for my second career, in Holistic Medicine.
These days, I work in a similar fashion, listening to you and assessing your needs so as to give you the best possible treatment modality. The goal is the same, whether I’m using acupuncture, hypnosis, herbs, supplements, Qi Gong exercise or nutrition: to stimulate your immune system so you’ll resonate at your fullest potential. I do this against the backdrop of your diet, your lifestyle, your presenting symptoms and your emotional challenges. In the classical ‘Eastern approach,’ the practitioner seeks not to ‘fix’—holistic medicine is more integrative than that—but to use the modalities at his disposal to coax out the patient’s own inner healing mechanism. It is this kind of healing work that I believe in, and to which I subscribe.
Just as it takes two to tango, it takes both healer and patient together to jumpstart the healing process. In holistic medicine, the passive patient rarely does as well as one who is actively involved in the healing process. Not only do the results often come more quickly, but there is an empowering aspect to this for the individual that is all too rarely seen in Western medicine.
Phase 2: Healer As Private Eye
It is in this process that we look for a small key—nothing too huge or transformative, mind you—that will unlock the powerful immune system within. It’s not about turning your life inside out, so much as tweaking a few things here and there. As jumping-off points we look at energy levels, diet, emotional process, lifestyle, and family history. We are also not afraid of blood workups and/or charts—in fact we encourage them—or anything else, Western or Eastern, that helps the patient arrive at the next level of positive, and extended, wellness.
Phase 3: Change is A Process
Most psychologists will say that we humans are not very open to change; that we are life-long creatures of habit. And there may some truth in that statement. This is why hypnotherapy is such a valuable tool. It helps us implement the changes that we ultimately need to make if we wish to remain free of medication and surgery. Our subconscious, where hypnosis plays out, knows what we need to do. When our conscious and subconscious minds start to integrate, small miracles happen. We might begin improving our nutrition, exercising, changing when, and how, we eat, and even getting regular treatments. The shifts can make the difference between a deteriorating life filled with toxic medications, or one where you are in control of your own wellness. The choice lies within us.
Thus we can approach the concept of change as a gradual process, a series of baby steps that we can take, one simple level at a time. In many ways, it’s like learning a musical instrument: We begin slowly and, with time, are able to play music we never thought we could. Our bodies aren’t that different. Each small step we take on our own behalf can lead to a healthier, happier and longer life. All it requires is taking that first baby step.
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