 The Perfect Marriage of Meditation and Alternative medicine
The term "alternative medicine" makes this branch of the medical world seem radical and exotic. But the real interpretation is much more mainstream that you might imagine. Alternative medicine simply employs a holistic approach to medicine that includes the emotional, spiritual and social forces that shape who we are as people in the therapy for wellness. As such, meditation fits perfectly with the alternative medicine approach to dealing with illness and even illness and how to prescribe a path to recovery.
The methods used by alternative medicine come from the thesis that the individual is not a divided being with the physical nature divided from the mental, spiritual and emotional person. Instead, therapy includes all three of these factors to prescribe a healthy lifestyle or to develop an approach to recovery from disease or injury. While at one time using meditation as part of a medical regimen of therapy may have been considered experimental, alternative medicine has made great strides to demonstrate and document the scientific evidence of the effectiveness of meditation in how doctors approach prescribing wellness for their patients.
Meditation has found a nice fit in alternative medicine treatments for chronic pain, anxiety, depression, panic disorders, sleep problems, heart disease and even problems with incontinence. It comes as no surprise that the breathing management techniques that one learns as part of the practice of meditation are standard part of the way the pain of childbirth is managed.
But those same alternative medicine methods such as meditation have been used successfully in other difficult recovery processes such as cancer treatment and the preparation and recovery from surgery. Doctors who incorporate alternative medicine's findings in their treatments have had success with patients dealing with high pressure and even asthma and tinnitus.
It isn't that mysterious why alternative medicine would embrace meditation as part of a holistic wellness or treatment program. The regular practice of meditation calls for the subject to learn to focus the mind on the key health indicators of the body especially the breathing and the heart rate. Meditation is a focused and intentional system for apprehending stress related physical reactions and reducing the impact of that stress on the body. And since stress is a leading cause of numerous ailments as well as a detriment to the immune system, meditation empowers the individual to fight negative health factors in a very natural way.
While traditional medicine puts the focus on drug treatments and invasive surgery as a primary way to combat illness and injury, alternative medicine turns to those methods last. By using natural methods of enabling the body's natural recuperative abilities, alternative medicine can take advantage of the powerful effects of meditation to bring down the blood pressure and to contribute in numerous ways to the recovery of the patient.
Practitioners of alternative medicine and the use of meditation in medical recovery commonly find that the use of relaxation methods in meditation routines realize improved digestion and deeper sleep patterns almost immediately. The control of the breathing enriches the blood with greater oxygen reserves which helps to cleans the intestines and energize and relax the mind at the same time.
What is particularly encouraging to patients who use meditation as part of a holistic alternative medicine treatment for disease or injury recovery is that meditation costs nothing. There are no negative side effects in using meditation and there is no potential for overdose. The "uncontrolled" nature of meditation as an effective medical treatment may be one reason it has not been fully embraced by the whole of the medical community to date.
Meditation is an ancient art that grew up in the context of religious ceremony or cultural training particularly in eastern cultures. The use of meditation as part of alternative medicine in no way diminishes the use of the discipline for religious, spiritual, cultural or reflective purposes. All of these goals can be achieved along with realizing the significant health benefits of meditation that alternative medicine advocates. And since the ability of meditation to deliver such consistent benefit in medical treatments is becoming more recognized, it won't be long before meditation is a standard part of medical treatment in the realms of both conventional and alternative medicine.
|
|
|
