This project began when I was given a newspaper assignment to cover a story on an acupuncturist. My editors pushed me to verify all her credentials. This was in 1995, a time when people in Reading, a city in south central Pennsylvania, didn't often hear about alternative healing or such crazy ideas as moxibustion—the Chinese practice of burning moxa (mugwort herb) over an acupuncture point—or cupping—the Chinese practice of placing heated jars on the back to help restore the flow of qi (the body's energy). To further legitimize the article, I asked the acupuncturist to have a few patients available for me to interview.
I arrived at her office on a cold February day. It was icy, and I was certain no one would be there. Running a few minutes late, I flew into the front waiting area where I was struck by the number of faces meeting my astonished gaze. There were grandmothers and farmers and young people and businessmen, all there to tell me their tales of recovery. I could hardly keep pace. But all the stories had a common thread. The patients had a tremendous loyalty to Carolyn Jaffe, their acupuncturist, because they felt she listened to and loved them. She had helped free them of conditions that had plagued many of them for twenty-five or thirty years. They spoke of getting off all their medications, of getting off the breathing machine, of being able to work or play tennis or just be well. I have to admit I was overwhelmed by all the people who showed up, and finally I had to tell Carolyn, "No more people."
The story ran several weeks later in the Lifestyle section of the paper, and within twenty-four hours I personally had received nearly a hundred phone calls at the newsroom. "Do you think she can help my arthritis?" "Does that help headaches?" "I have cancer. Do you think she can help me?" Simultaneously, Carolyn's phone was ringing off the hook, and she was booked with appointments for nearly six months. Not to mention the Lifestyle editor, who got calls similar to the ones I received. It was obvious; people were searching for more. So I began researching the topic. Now, three years later, I bring you Integrative Medicine. It is a compilation of the information I have gathered from around the country, of my conversations with practitioners and patients, and a limited survey of what's happening with research, the National Institutes of Health, with insurance companies, and in anecdotal studies. This is only the beginning. I am only barely scratching the surface of the countless changes and improvements happening across the nation.
Although I write about the Eastern and Western approaches to treatment and how many people have found ways to blend the two, my greatest discovery was the unifying force between the medical traditions of the East and the West. It is a meeting in the middle, in love and compassion. I learned that our healing comes from within, and that we must find ways to simplify and love ourselves. Then the force of love will radiate out from our own center.
I think in many ways that when we are sick, we tend to get lost in all the technology and drugs. Our health care dilemma could be less complex if we could rid ourselves of the barriers to treatment. And while some of the blame for these barriers can be laid at the feet of the third-party payers (insurers, managed care, health maintenance organizations) and the regulators (like the Food and Drug Administration), some of the burden is our own. We are too stressed, we eat all the wrong foods, we isolate ourselves from others, and we have been persuaded to believe that there is something inherently wrong with natural physiological processes and life cycles. Menopause is as natural for women as puberty or childbirth, yet many women fear its onset. Death is seen as a failure of our doctors. But we all will die. We need to understand that there can be healing even in disease. Granted, Eastern and Western therapies cannot provide a cure for everything. And sometimes learning to live, even with disease, is part of healing. The choice is ours; to die while living or to live each day in grace, with ease, seeing the beauty and wonder in all that is ours. We need to reclaim memories of lying in the tall grass on a summer's afternoon and watching the clouds transform from dinosaurs to witches to angels. Let's recapture the burning pleasure of doing just about nothing, remembering the days when we would go to the pond's edge to catch frogs and etch our names in the red clay or make mudpies topped with flaming dandelions. At a time when our legs were still short enough to keep us close to the ground, we knew how to live. The answer lies somewhere between here and those dreamy summer's days. It's as individual as there are people on this earth.
We need to start following our heart. To make loving, living choices. It's not an us and them thing, it's an us thing. We need to live more simply: to enjoy the intensity of a shared smile; the beauty of autumn's changing hues or the ethereal image of winter's frozen flakes performing a gentle waltz in the incandescent rays of the city lights. Beauty is everywhere: inside and out. It's in the city, in the mountains, in the desert. We need to take the time and look for it in our hearts, in the face of a homeless person, in a dog's gentle kiss, in the wondrous giggle of a child.
Blessings of the universe,
Kathleen F Phalen
ONE
The Birth of
Integrative Medicine
"The utmost in the art of healing can be achieved when there is unity. When the minds of the people are closed and wisdom is locked out, they remain tied to disease. Yet their feelings and desires should be investigated and made known, their wishes and ideas should be followed, and then it becomes apparent that those who have attained spirit and energy are flourishing and prosperous, while those perish who lose their spirit and energy."
—From the Nei Ching Su Wen
CENTURIES OF HEALING WISDOM
We are certain the cure will be in the next pill, the next prayer, the next visit to the doctor. And in many ways we are not alone. The search for a cure has led even the crustiest of souls to the far reaches of the earth—to the healing waters of Lourdes, to an appointment with the surgeon's scalpel, to the shaman's medicine bag, to the acupuncturist's needles, to taking transfusions of another person's blood, to exposing ourselves to deadly gamma rays, or to taking addicting pain deadeners. Sometimes it seems we would do just about anything to find the golden cure.
Ancient cultures were no exception. People in the earliest civilizations suffered from chronic and life-threatening conditions—very similar to today's ills—and they, too, searched for remedies to stop the pain and extend life. Those ancient peoples knew much more about tending each other, the living and the dying. Their connection to the heavens and the earth wasn't complicated by 156 selections on satellite television or the horrors of the evening news, and, while they often faced the harsh realities of nature's elements with fewer protections, their essence was not lost in a lonely world where everything happens too fast. They listened to themselves, to their neighbors, and to the hearts of their ancestors.
In their less complicated lives, they were not spared the pain of living—the grieving, the loss, the sickness. And as primitive scratchings on dampened cave walls indicate, even in the earliest of times man suffered from headaches, chronic conditions, and sexually transmitted diseases. Archeological digs have revealed prehistoric art showing that holes were bored through human skulls to relieve pressure. Neolithic man endured the daily pain of osteoarthritis. There are the calcified remains of parasitic eggs known to cause the tropical disease schistosomiasis in Egyptian mummies.1 And petrified syphilitic skulls, dating back prior to Columbus's historic journey to the New World, have been uncovered in North America.2
Just like the diseases and the physical and mental ills that existed long before us, the natural impulse to stop the suffering, to find a better way, is nothing new, even though some try to lay claim to this innovative thinking. Today bulletin boards at trendy health food stores contain messages of healing—the new blue-green algae, the latest inner child healing workshop, or the spiritually centered ads about reconnecting with nature—tacked to their cork surfaces with multicolored pushpins. Or better yet, there are tear-off phone numbers so that the desperate can call for help twenty-four hours a day. Hip, pop-culture magazines are filled with the claims of new life from New Age healers. On the Internet you can get a reiki consultation, and herbs to kill your bad breath and the dog's at the same time. The secrets behind these dramatic breakthroughs and discoveries about stopping the pain and healing our bodies, our