complementary therapies

Complementary Therapies

Helping Yourself to Good Health

Complementary therapies used to be thought of as too alternative to make sound, healthy sense. But attitudes are changing fast. In Britain, the past fifteen years have seen a steady increase in people seeking not merely alternatives to mainstream medicine, but soothing, drug-free, complementary support to whatever the doctor ordered. In 1993, osteopathy was the first complementary therapy to gain medical status. Other therapies, such as acupuncture, aromatherapy, remedial massage and homeopathy are recommended by orthodox doctors, especially where the patient has a persistent or chronic problem that drugs alone fail to relieve.

Complementary therapies and alternative medicines and therapies are a group of diverse medical and healthcare systems, practices and products that are not presently considered to be part of conventional medicine.  Complementary therapies or medicines are used together with conventional medicine, and alternative medicine is used instead of conventional medicine.


Maintaining Your Energies

The tenets of complementary therapies evolved from a time when wellbeing embraced both body and mind. Allopathic or orthodox medicine still tends to treat medical symptoms as separate from any emotional problems.

Although stress is still a buzzword, the concept of “energy imbalance” has yet to gain broad acceptance. Most ancient cultures hold that in addition to the tangible circulation of blood and lymph, there exists the circulation of a more subtle energy. Call it chi, prana or life force, it is this energy that generates vitality and connect the body and mind to the spirit. A “spiritual” person exudes vitality and seems happy, healthy and well-balanced. if there is an imbalance, or blockage, in this energy system due to physical or mental trauma, the whole body is thrown out of kilter.

To the Chinese, subtle energy, or chi, flows through meridians invisible channels, or arteries. Vedic (ancient Indian) texts identify chakras, or energy centres, relative to specific physical, emotional and spiritual areas, and crucial to the free—flow of prana. These energy systems form the basis of a broad range of complementary therapies, including acupuncture and acu-pressure, reflexology and, to some extent, aromatherapy, all of which work to keep the “`channels” free of blockages.


The Power of Touch

Another important aspect of complementary therapies is touch. Too easily associated with invasion or, at worst, aggression, touch is overlooked as fundamental human need. Studies last century demonstrated that children who are held thrive better and are more resistant to illness.

complementary therapies - power of touch

It has been proven that daily massage helps premature babies gain weight faster and leave hospital sooner. Basic massage can go beyond de-knotting tense muscles to give emotional reassurance. To a lonely or emotionally isolated person, re-established contact can be an affirmation of self-worth.

A controversial ‘hands-on’ healthy technique, known as the Therapeutic Touch (TT)  technique which is part of a complementary therapy program, also known as the Kreiger/Kunz Method, is based on the theory that illness is caused by blocks in the patient’s energy field. Through a series of stroking movements, TT rebalances energy, relaxes the patient and allows their own life force to do the healing.

The “feelgood factor” may also be chemical. There is growing evidence that skin is a well-stocked pharmacy housing potent natural opiates, such as endorphins, which are released to suppress pain. A research psychologies has proved that having your skin rubbed releases chemicals that can help immunize against illness and disease.


Emotional Rescue

As well as physically easing tension, touch is also a powerful catalyst to emotional release. Early in the 20th century, psychoanalyst Willhelm Reich put forward the idea that psychological trauma could be stored in bone and muscle. Reich believed that tissue has memory – traumatize it and each time that zone is touched, the memory of impact is released. If you don’t like being touched in a particular area, you could be subconsciously associating it with a traumatic incident from your past which your conscious mind has blocked.

Likewise, a classic hunched, defensive, tense—shouldered posture may be caused by chronic low self-esteem. Reichian massage evolved to release the underlying emotional cause through easing the muscular block and restoring the free flow of orgone energy Reich’s term for life force.

Gerda Boyesen, a Norwegian Manipulative Therapies psychologist and Reichian analyst who developed the technique as Biodynamics in the UK and elsewhere, also found that blocked energy builds up in the form of fluids trapped between muscles and nerves. Once the fluid is dispersed, spontaneous peristalsis in the intestine processes it. She likened this “gut reaction” to the Chinese concept that every  organ has two functions – physical and esoteric, or “meaningful”. Stress, then, is meaningfully digested by the intestines.

Reichian therapists listen to the intestines through steroscopes as they work. To them, stomach rumblings, churnings and gurglings are positive signs that stress is being released and digested. A stress-free system, they say, sounds like a smoothly babbling brook.

Virtually all complementary therapies uphold Reich’s theories on stress. There are countless anecdotes of spontaneous emotional releases such as sobbing, laughing or flashes of grief or anger as long-suppressed memories begin to surface. Many therapists also have counselling skills, or may recommend a course of “talking therapy” for specific emotional problems. It’s not unusual for phychotherapists to combine some form of touch with talk. And if you’re mortified because your stomach rumbles the moment you hit the couch – don’t be. It’s like music to a complementary therapists ears.