Integrative Medicine and Yoga
In regards to our Health Care System, Who do you think they care about more, us or the money? And I’m not talking about Doctors and Physicians individually. I’m talking about the Healthcare system as a business. Working as a senior sales executive for over 20 years primarily dealing with decision makers on the “C Level”, I quickly learned the quickest way to get to the bottom line is to learn what their financial incentives are. And in our current healthcare system the “financial incentives” are in the treatment NOT the cure. But the purpose of this blog is not to bash the healthcare system; with groundbreaking medical research and life-saving surgical procedures, modern medicine has been very successful in treating disease, Its inadequacy, however, lies on the other side of the spectrum – the maintenance of health and promotion of wellness.
There’s been a lot of recent attention in the urban community in regards to mental health and rightfully so. We see it with professional athletes as well as actors and musicians. All openly speaking about an issue that has too long been ignored due to its perception of weakness. For those of us that grew up in urban communities, we are faced with issues & circumstances that unfortunately too often has come to be seen as “normal”. Which begs the question, can any person truly be healthy if their environment is not? From this uncomfortable perspective, I truly don’t envy the job of Doctors & physicians, it appears that a physician, when treating a patient, is being asked to fix one small link in a long chain of events. I remember in one of my previous roles I was in a sales call with a healthcare practitioner and she shared with me the troubling sense that her efforts in healthcare is not much different from being a surgeon in the MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) unit during a war; in which the medic patches them up and sends them right back out to the battlefield to catch the next bullet. This impossible catch-22 job is felt by all parties involved. Human beings are multidimensional beings, not just an assemblage of body parts, we also contain emotional, mental, and spiritual dimensions, but how many of those dimensions do we expect a doctor to treat? And what about the above mentioned “spiritual dimension of health”. Which brings me to my 2nd question… Can you truly be healthy if you are spiritually malnourished?
Now I hesitate using the word spiritual, because the word itself seems to have been hijacked by religion. But spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves. It can also mean a person whose highest priority is to be loving to yourself and others. The body, mind and spirit are connected. The health of any one of those three affects the health of the others. Integrative Medicine speaks to the challenges facing western medicine. It focuses on being concerned with the WHOLE person rather than the disease. It is sometimes said that “conventional medicine treats the illness and alternative medicine treats the person”, the same is to be said for Integrative Medicine. Integrative Medicine is emerging as a cost- effective remedy to the epidemic of chronic diseases, stress and anxiety that continue to plague our community. Yoga is synonymous with Integral Medicine which is why so many healthcare practitioners are now including yoga as part of a comprehensive treatment plan. Also interestingly enough, some hospitals and HMOs (health maintenance organizations) are slowly beginning to cover such therapies. Some of these therapies included yoga, meditation, deep breathing exercises, massage therapy and other practices considered within the realm of Integrative therapies (acupuncture, exercise, aromatherapy etc).
Lastly, Integrative medicine is not just about the science of treating or preventing disease, but more importantly to a medicine that heals. That’s why it merges so well with yoga… it’s a dynamic, holistic, process that begins with widening and deepening relationships with self, culture, and nature. Health is not seen as the absence of disease, but as a process by which individuals maintain their ability to develop meaningful systems that allow them to function, heal, and grow in the face of changes in themselves, their relationships, and the world.
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Elvis
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