Probably you have believed that healing is taught in medical and nursing schools and that health care professionals understand illness and how to heal people who are ill or injured.
As it happens, nurses and doctors do not really know how the body heals. They know something about the conditions that are helpful or necessary for the body to heal, but they cannot make the body heal. The body must heal itself.
The word healing comes from the Greek "hael," which means to make whole on all levels -- physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual. Healing incorporates not only the numbers from data about the body, like blood counts or temperature, but also how we are feeling and what we are thinking. Health and healing relate to body, mind and spirit, because these are not separate, distinct pieces of who we are; we are whole. Healing must be wholistic. Healing can happen even when the body is not cured.
Western medicine has had its success in focusing on the cure of physical ailments. Sometimes medicine and surgery cannot cure the body. Sometimes the cures are tougher than the illness or injury. Sometimes medicine's focus on the physical neglects the emotions and spirit. Sometimes there is more to healing than medicine can offer.
Many people, in fact 40 percent of adults in the U.S., are using medicines and treatments that are not currently part of Western medicine. These kinds of treatments are part of what is considered alternative or complementary medicine. For many people, these treatments seem to be more helpful than Western medicine, or they help the medicine work better. Western medicine has been skeptical about treatments that did not fit what was taught in our medical schools. However, there are so many people who have found help that our medical establishments can no longer ignore these therapies.
In 1992, the Federal Government, through the National Institutes of Health, established the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). The purpose is to fund research documenting the effectiveness of these therapies, so that people will know what really works and what does not. They have a very helpful website: http://altmed.od.nih.gov/.
Since they began doing research in 1992, many studies have shown that some of the alternative or complementary therapies are indeed effective. Many health care institutions and Western medicine practitioners are acknowledging that people can benefit from these therapies. Integrated Medicine centers are being developed so that people can benefit from different types of treatment.
A patient might see a medical doctor who has run out of options for treating arthritis and sends the patient to see the acupuncturist. A chiropractor may determine that the limits to adjustment of the spine requires that the patient see an orthopedic doctor, or that after an adjustment, seeing the massage therapist will help the muscles hold the adjustment better. Massage therapy may benefit a patient who has swelling after breast cancer surgery. Here is Integrated Medicine.
The idea is to create a healing space, a place where people can find assistance in an atmosphere that is free of stress, where there is nurturing and caring. It is a place where questions are answered respectfully, where the needs of the person for understanding of the illness are met through explanation and education, where the emotions that accompany illness are acknowledged and where the meaning of illness and spiritual direction can be addressed.
