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The
Alternative Vision of Holistic Health: Where Is It Going? (Originally
published in Earthstar
Magazine) -Are clients getting the therapeutic
learning strategies they need to be self-managing and improving? -Are
practitioners trying to see what may be in common among the rapidly
proliferating hundreds of methods, systems, techniques and modalities?
-Are
we in for a collapse of what might well be the somatic dot-coms? Just as with all forms of personal, political, economic, and health-wellness expectations, our expectations about how we hope to benefit from the many attractive and promising treatment modalities presently available, spreading and proliferating may be in for a reality check. Alternative, or ‘complementary medicine’, as we call the new modalities on the health, wellness and healing scene sounded promising, and still is attractive and growing. Change is in the air. The medical treatment-dependency model is clearly unsustainable, especially in the area of pain and disorder relating to muscles, joints, posture, and of course, back pain, to say nothing of its reliance on pain-killing, depression-anxiety reducing pharmacology drugs. But the situation is more complex, and not so simple. To use the comparison with the explosion of “diets” of all kinds, you would think that obesity was on the decline. Not so. The very proliferation of so many diets is actually a sign of the failure of diets to resolve the growing crisis of obesity (greater risks than smoking!) Similarly,
the emergence of what are now hundreds of new modalities is not a sign of
decreasing postural pain problems, nor successful resolution, but rather a
reaction to an increase of physical stressful use, and psychophysical
stress-induced disorders. No doubt
many have been helped beyond hope by some alternative modalities. But looking at
the multiplicity of available treatments, their relative successes and failures,
it is really hard to make the case that more treatment is better. From this
other perspective, the overall percentage of postural pain, and somato-emotional/psychophysical
pain syndromes seems to be on the increase. It could be just a blip on the
screen, or from the larger view, the historical profile, we may well be at one
of those junctions, one of those crisis moments-the ‘times they are a
changing’- in the further advance of body-mind healing and health. In spite of
our expectations of wanting a better success rate- looking for signs from any
reassuring source, from astrology to channeling, that we are on the right track-
the reality may soon prove otherwise. We may be closer to a change by necessity,
the hidden unfolding of the deeper dialectics of life [some say karma, dharma,
tao, or the spiritual ]. In short,
it is entirely possible that we are coming to the end of the original ‘new
age’ inspiration, the one that launched a thousand ships of the alternative
fleet. However, crisis from a Tao perspective is also opportunity. Today, the alternatives can be just as isolated in their own worlds. What has been lost, if it was ever in place at all- is the ability to cross modality lines and to see from different angles. American socio- cultural tendencies have long been on rugged individualism, on making it on our own. Bodywork practitioners, and their psychotherapy counterparts have been largely doing their own thing, going their own way. Add to this our growing mechanistic models of how we function. To see where this pattern of mindset and behavior has been leading: many clients see several practitioners, very few of whom communicate with each other, or even share a common ground of knowledge and science. The system of seeking different perspectives ends up by dividing up the person into sectors- “the six blind men and the elephant” metaphor. Each one treats a different part of the body-mind complex-not unlike car service or home maintenance. We have become unwittingly seduced by our success at treating the parts while losing sight of the whole. Some in the body-centered health, healing field have been trying to re-introduce the collaborative-integrative approach -both at our center as well as others- but only with minimal success. Our internalized time constraints, a stressful and demanding life-style schedule, the habit of working harder (not often smarter), lack of any support for such efforts from insurance companies, plus concerns and fears around being targets for legal suits makes collaboration difficult. Back in the late 70’s and 80’s there was a brief ‘integrative’ surge. Some will remember institutions such as INTERFACE. I myself worked in two medically-based alternative collaboratives during those years, inspired by the ‘new age’ hopeful mindset which soon devolved into remedies, more and more supplements, even magic, and, of course, the power of mind in healing, but without the scientific backup that validates. Networking is still an attractive concept, but more for business than for healing work. The (Iatrogenic) Paradox: More Modalities, Increasing DisordersIf each new modality on the scene proclaims it has the more advanced, the quicker, or better approach, a solution beyond its predecessor, should we not be then getting closer to the solving of the many new body and stress-related disorders of the day? How can it be that with all the new emerging sophisticated modalities on the scene that the statistics show an increase in disorders, especially postural pain syndromes? In the best view, the new modalities are helping people to maintain themselves. But the bio-physiological reality is that one is either getting better, or getting worse. (I once asked an experienced gardener about a plant that was not apparently growing. His response: the plant has to be growing. Otherwise, it would be dying). The worst-case scenario when one drops below the threshold is a slip- sliding away! Here is what I see happening (because it has happened many times before in human history), namely:
From an historical perspective the many modalities are likely to proliferate themselves out of existence, following the example of the dot- coms crash. The best scenario is that those practitioners who are awakening to this reality will move away from the force field of modality attachment and follow new pathways in body-mind art, science and reasoning-in essence following the pathways that reveal how healing and improvement actually take place. I offer the following as key factors in this process. · Just as with music, there needs to be a real basis to any kind of healing work. Whatever path of therapy or somatic education, we must address the foundation, the ‘body’with its central nervous system directing complex. The current dualist habit of training in either the mind or the body-not both as one system- still remains as the major impediment. · I suggest that any practitioner of the healing arts be familiar with these basics which in practice means simply trained enough to observe how the person is posturally supported, psycho-physically integrated, able to move, respond to stress, fulfill basic needs; whether the person somaticizes in the body as evidenced in the joints, muscles, posture, movement ease, breathing, relaxation, movement activity, coping skills, satisfaction skills, etc. The old dualistic model, established in the medical model itself, needs to change. The bodymind is one system. Every cell of the body has been demonstrated to be in communication with the rest, mediated through the central nervous system and all other systems. How do we move in the gravity field? How does the person organize, using what pathways, to keep everything going in order to get around, work, play, reproduce, create, imagine? How do we communicate? Talk in a similar language? How does a person get practical control of anxiety patterns. This is where healing and learning come together. The real power of healing may well begin with self-connected knowing, a somato-psychic learning process. In essence, how to empower ourselves using means beyond our dependency on words and ideas which sound fine but are not sufficient to effect real changes in behavior. What learning pathways are being activated in the now zone, the power of the present. Treatment dependency, whether psychological, physical, or chemical, is not a viable option, not economically sustainable- except where it is truly necessary- and needs to be transformed into self-empowering, practitioner assisted, wellness strategies, for the health of body, mind and spirit. Few people feel confident in their own ability to heal or help themselves. And yet, the basic foundation of being is built on being able to return to some very basic state of self acceptance and self-grounding, self-reliance and self-learning, the necessary preparation for higher potential, higher grade endeavors. What will this new alternative-integrative-intercommunicative model look like? That may be too premature to speculate upon. What it cannot continue to do is to operate out of the context of competitive divisiveness. If it opens up some new ways of responding to problems that can be dealt with by integrative approaches, that will be a good beginning. What
can such an integrative model accomplish? Just as we were designed to keep our teeth for life, barring the unavoidable, so we were not meant to chronically suffer back pain, shoulder pain, sciatic pain, arm pain, hand pain, jaw pain, arthritis, fibromyalgia-to say nothing of heart disease, and a host of other now very curable stress-related disorders (these account for a major percentage of diagnosed disorders). There is always a way through and out. But one has to know the path. That involves the right balance of therapy and new learning-a new integration. [Observations and findings from my own somatic field: there is, for example, no pain in a new neuro-pathway of movement that bypasses the old memory, as one major figure in somatic science, M. Feldenkrais observed. Major reduction of postural pain, for example, starts with getting sufficient movement daily. The next set of factors would be what kind of movement? Is there enough lengthening, strengthening, relaxation, motion flow, and enjoyment? The third is how much basic exercise including walking? ] The Ideal, (But do not wait for godot!) Were people to follow the most basic, time-tested, individual and species success-proven guidelines for well-being and health promotion, we would have accomplished far more than any medical treatment system can possibly accomplish. This approach has even been tried, in China with qigong exercise practices dating back 4000 years, and in India with Yoga. We would be launched into a revival and major improvement of the human condition. But that is an ideal- an intention not yet on the current horizon. What we can do now, to meet current reality, is to intentionally commit to looking into cross-modality receptivity and communication. This will not come from the medical community but from a nucleus of both curious and awakening clients and practitioners. The timing, like the market, cannot be predicted. The best time to start is now!
Josef
DellaGrotte, PhD, LMHC, LMT, CFP has been in practice since 1977, and is a co-director of the Body-Mind Integration Center in Watertown, MA. www.dellagrotte-somatic.com
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