My Life Diary

Alternative to Alternative Medicines

A Page from my Life Diary11th October 2005

Alternative to Alternative Medicines
The Allopathic Medicines are treated as the Mainstay Medical System. It has its advantages and disadvantages. The main objection to allopathic medicines is that it is drug based, unnatural, toxic and harmful to the body in the long run. People who are fed up of the dis-advantages of Allopathic Medicines are in search of the Alternatives. Therefor we have the combined grand alliance of the opposition party called Alternative Medicines. This party included everything other than Allopathic Medicine. It includes Ayurvedic, Homeopathic, Reiki, Naturopathy, Yunani etc. The main advantages of the Alternative Medicines is that they do not harm the body while curing the disease. On the other hand they are slow to heal as compared with the Ruling Party of Allopathic Medicines. Alternative Medicines are also considered as New Age lifestyle.

I am writing this note to raise strong objection to the mentality of people using Alternative Medicines. Our mentality has been so focused on the mind that we treat our body like we treat our car. When we go the doctor, we actually take our body-car to the garage-clinic of the doctor-mechanic to repair our body. We feel that if we follow the advice of the doctor in terms of diet, rest and tablets we will get cured. If we are not happy with the Allopathic Medicine, we go to Ayurvedic Doctor with the same mentality of the body-car. We expect the Ayurvedic Vaidya (Doctor) giving us similar advice with Ayurvedic Science and we follow his advice in the hope that we will get cured without any side effects. We continue to treat our body like our vehicle. We stay in Mind in Ego-Centric Manner. Our centre of consciousness is in the taste buds in our mouth. Once we enjoy the taste of our food – may it be spicy, sweet, alcoholic etc – we enjoy the intake. The digestive system is taken as our slave. It is supposed to follow the law without any deviations. Digestive system does not have any ‘taste’ of its own and therefore we suppose that it does not communicate to us about its preferences. We get drunk and we say we enjoyed the Party. We means Who ? We means my taste buds, my ego, my mind, my passionate self. The body does not figure in this – though she has to clear out the mess we have made of ourselves.

When we do Nature Therapy, we take the diet as prescribed by the therapists. The mentality is the same as that of body-car and doctor-mechanic and clinic-garage. This is a great mockery of the whole healing system.

In reality, I make two branch of medicine as ‘I’ Medicine and ‘It’ Medicine. In the I medicine, I try to heal myself, with or without the additional help of medicines, by harmonizing my body with my mind and spirit and consciously ‘living’ in my body in a loving and joyful manner. In the branch of ‘It’ medicine, I treat my body as car to be maintained by regular service checkups and garage repairs – irrespective of the branch of medicine I use – whether it may be allopathic, naturopathy, Ayurvedic or any other. Most of us are in the second group of ‘It’ medicine. In such scenario, we can not call the naturopathy as the new age medicine, nor it is a holistic medicine. In fact it is not the medicine which is holistic, it is our approach to our body which is holistic. But to change our approach from ‘It’ medicine to ‘I’ medicine require conscious efforts on our part. This we find it difficult. ‘It’ medicine can be purchased by paying money. All we have to do is take the tablets. As simple as that.

The ‘I’ medicine can not be prescribed. We have to practice it ourselves. It is a part of our lifestyle. We can not ‘buy’ our cure. We have to cure ourselves. It is a matter of separate study as to within the group of ‘I’ medicine, whether I should use Allopathic or Ayurvedic medicine, or whether I should avoid the use of any medicine as far as possible. I do not want to dwell on that aspect in this note. Here I am focusing only on ‘ I vs It ‘aspect of healing. The people who do Yoga may claim that they fall in the I category of the medicine. I refuse to give them membership in the I Club. They are still in the It Club. Most people who do yoga are not able to live consciously in their body and harmonise the body and mind. When they do the Pranayam, they are mainly concerned about the in breathing, out breathing, duration of the breathing etc all the technical part. Yoga for them – and also for their teachers – is mainly of Asanas – body postures. What use is of body postures and breathing technique if the mind-body harmony is not established and the living consciously in the body in joyful manner is not done ? Body postures and breathing techniques offer very little help to achieve this objective.

We can follow ‘I’ medicine without any naturopathy, yoga and pranayam – though they will certainly help - by simply living consciously in our whole body. Living joyfully, stressfree in a playful manner. We need no religion or branch of medicine to heal ourselves, while all the medical science in all the branches can be used in a judicious manner to play a 10 % part in our healing system.

Allopathic medicines are out and out ‘body’ repair system. But the people following alternative medicines and the doctors of these medical branches are guilty of fraud because alternative medicines are supposed to be ‘I’ category medicines. We use I category medicine in It category system. In other words, we use petrol to run our bicycles ! If bicycle does not move with petrol neither bicycle nor petrol is to blame but the seller of the petrol and the owner of the bicycle is to take the blame. When we turn to the alternative medicine from the allopathic medicine, we are actually hiding the hole in our life pattern. If we fail in the business of selling stationery items, we turn to textile items. We fail there also because we fail to realize the importance of good business techniques and hard work – be it in stationery business or the textile business.

To my horror and dismay, I have come across internationally renowned practitioners of holistic medicine who treat people for a hefty fee. These people very well understand the importance of body-mind in the healing and healthy living. There is no objection to their charging hefty fees. Making money is good for health. What is of concern is that the people coming to them come with ‘It’ mentality and these doctors make very little, if any, effort in explaining and persuading them to follow the practice of body-mind consciousness. The next stage of specialization in holistic medicine is color therapy, sound therapy and cosmic rays. What use is of color therapy if the person getting the treatment is only interested to ‘repair’ his body ? Even Reiki system of giving healing energy violates the fundamental cosmic law of respecting the personal space of the person. If a person gets cured by receiving healing energy from other person, then does it not mean that he is only ‘repairing’ his body by healing energy instead of medicines ? His role is only to make payment to the healer. Rest all is done by the healer. Exactly the same with the repair of your car. You only pay to the garage man and rest all is done by him.

Now the main question is – how to live consciously in the body, how to harmonise the body-mind in a joyful manner. Well, this is a subject of another note and I will handle this topic some other time.

Life Wanderer

प्रस्तुतकर्ता Shrikant @ 11:22 am