Holistic Health: The Search for Balance

by Daniel Redwood, D.C.

I am a natural health practitioner, but I am not ideologically opposed to all of western medicine. When I was ten, it saved my life. One winter's night, I became severely ill with what turned out to be a combination of pneumonia and pleurisy. I remember the panicky feeling as I became less and less able to draw a breath. And I recall, as clearly as if it were yesterday, how my family physician made a midnight housecall to administer the shot of penicillin that pulled me back from the brink of death.

Unfortunately, our society is still blinded by the belief that if a little is good, more will be better. Antibiotics are now doled out so routinely that I've seen children who have gone through dozens of courses of antibiotics by the time they reach high school. Many prescription medications are so overused that they are losing their effectiveness, as germs adapt and grow resistant. Furthermore, these medicines have side effects which are by no means insignificant. It is particularly disturbing to me to see powerful medications utilized routinely for conditions that could be effectively dealt with through proper diet and other natural methods.

If, over the next generation or two, we are going to create a new holistic paradigm of health care that is accepted broadly enough to become the recognized standard of care, it will have to draw upon the strengths of both mainstream and alternative practices.

What are these strengths? Clearly mainstream western medicine is the best in the world in crisis care. But the real goal is to avoid the crisis in the first place, and here western medicine has far fewer answers. Natural healing arts practitioners, drawing upon both new and time-honored practices of nutrition, bodywork and emotional healing, have a great deal to offer. They teach us how to avoid disease, and empower us to care for ourselves so that we become less dependent on outside assistance.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of the natural healing arts is that they teach us to look beyond the presenting symptoms, perceiving and supporting the innate life force present in each of us, no matter how ill or out of balance we seem on the surface. In this way, natural methods, be they hands-on, nutritional or emotional, frequently result in improvement of symptoms for which the patient was not even seeking treatment.

I was taught in chiropractic school that healing occurs " from above down, and from inside out." To me, this means that both doctor and patient draw energy and sustenance from a higher source, and that when proper balance is restored at a deep inner level, the outer manifestations of illness fall away at their own pace.

I have seen patients who came seeking treatment for back pain, and then found to their surprise that spinal balance brought a new level of energy and centeredness, along with improvements in various other areas. It's not that all problems have a chiropractic cause--it's that when the body is brought into balance with natural methods, it displays a wonderful capacity for self-healing.

I believe that this search for balance will serve us well as a pivotal guiding principle, as we create our future together. In fact, if I were asked to define health in one word, balance is the one I'd choose. The Chinese symbol of yin and yang, where the two halves of the universe are joined in a circle, offers a beautiful graphic representation of the concept of balance. Yin is never present without yang, and interestingly, if either is taken to its extreme, it turns into its opposite.

Traditional cultures the world over use balance as their fundamental organizing principle, and we have much to learn from them. There are times in life when extreme measures are needed, but these are never sustainable over the long haul. Wisdom comes in knowing when to use radical measures, and most importantly, knowing when to stop.

Thus, in treating a disease, strong medicine (whether a medical prescription, a megavitamin, scream therapy, or a variety of deep and powerful bodywork) may be precisely what is needed at the beginning, or after a period of preparation. But the method that serves us well at the height of the crisis is rarely the exact same one we will need at a later stage of recovery. If true, deep healing is to be achieved, a shift must be made before long which allows more gentle, long-term, health-sustaining methods to take center stage. The art of healing lies in recognizing the point when the change is called for.

I believe that we as a society are at such a change-point with regard to our health care system as a whole. Many of the most serious problems we face (cancer, heart disease, and disorders of the immune system) may not be solvable within the western medical paradigm. They require dietary and lifestyle changes which, if fully implemented, would drastically change the face of our society. We would be eating different foods, living at a much more relaxed pace, and treating each other with a whole lot more patience and compassion.

The good news is, the change has begun. Ideas that were dismissed as quackery for decades are now entering the mainstream, hailed as exciting new discoveries. The signs are there for all to see, from the medical establishment's recognition of nutrition's crucial role in cancer and heart disease, to studies published in prestigious medical journals validating spinal manipulation as the most effective approach for many forms of back pain.

It is often frustrating that the pace of the change is so slow. Yet it may be that when we look back from a generation hence, we will see that the closing decade of the twentieth century was the time when the great holistic paradigm shift first showed convincing signs of its eventual success.

©1990 by Daniel Redwood, DC