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Ultra Low Dose Enzyme Activated
Immunotherapy (LDA)
Post Traumatic Environmental Stress Disorder
Peace of
Mind: Holistic Approaches to Anxiety and ADD
(on "New Life
Journal" Website)
Bipolar Disorder Can Be Treated With Medication
and Naturally
ALLERGY REDUCTION:
Improving Mood and Energy
Hidden Factors Behind Your
Persistent Illness
Adult
ADD:
To Medicate or Go Natural
Cancer
–
Finding Your Best Advisor
Overweight - The Risk and the Remedy
Loss
of Sexual Interest
Approaches in Helping Bipolar Sufferers
Help
for Panic and Anxiety Sufferer
Seasonal
Affective Disorder: The Winter Blues
Depression
Relief Speeds Health Recovery
Amino Acids
& Other Considerations in Depression Evaluation
Integrative
Medicine & Psychiatry
Blood
Pressure -
A Wake up Call
Addictions
- Breaking the Cycle
Spirituality:
The Core of
Healing in Integrative Psychiatry
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Spirituality: The Core of
Healing in Integrative Psychiatry
Ronald
R. Parks, MD
“Why do you
stay in prison when the door is wide open?”
From Rumi the 13th
Century Sufi mystic poet
Depression,
anxiety, bipolar disorder and addictions are all too common in
our society. Health care dollars spent for these
conditions in the U.S. plus the cost of lost work is enormous.
If depression, for example, exists along side other illnesses,
these diseases and their recovery are much more severe and
difficult. In illnesses as diabetes, chronic pain
problems, substance abuse, arthritis, hypertension and heart
disease – effective identification and treatment of depression
may bring marked benefit in medical improvement, enhanced
quality of life, improved relationships, reduction in the
degree of disability and improvement in treatment outcomes.
Integrative psychiatry offers a comprehensive and holistic
approach to these problems. It looks at a broad array of
possible underlying factors to remedy, and seeks to address
some central needs and issues. The most profound and
important of factors is often the most hidden. The
Buddha, centuries ago recognized this. He came to the
realization that the cause of all suffering is attachments and
gaining freedom from attachments is the path to freedom from
pain and suffering.
In sickness and ill health,
a common experience is the feeling of attachment or entrapment
– caught in a situation or place where there is a sense of no
escape. Someone with chronic pain, depression, cancer or any
life threatening illness may experience suffering sometimes or
most of the time in the course of the illness. The person
feels locked into an idea of what the illness is and what will
happen with the illness. An individual may worry about death
and dying or about losing the ability to do things as usual:
to care, work or support one’s self or others. An important
aspect of integrative psychiatry is providing guidance,
education and the techniques to facilitate the release from
the grips of unhealthy attachments, to help alleviated pain,
suffering, and to enhance healing and wellbeing.
Most schools of spiritual
philosophy and western psychology have examined the different
levels of body, mind, soul and spirit in terms of awareness,
perception and identity. The self-ego is our developed
sphere of self-centered awareness and patterns of reactivity
and response. Tight identity with the self-ego has a
functional role for us. It aids us in adapting,
interrelating and functioning in the everyday world.
This developed self-ego has locked in perceptions and ideas of
what different encountered experiences mean in terms of
rewards, nourishment or threat. Depending on early life
experiences, type of learning and parenting, the self-ego is
imprinted with learned patterns, reactive thoughts, images and
responses that may be adaptive or maladaptive.
With illness or severe loss,
the self-concept of ones world – as one has come to believe it
– begins to break down or shatter, causing great fear or
suffering. The degree of suffering depends on the level of
attachment to one’s developed worldview or biased perceptions,
i.e., the tighter the attachment, the greater the suffering
and inflexibility. With greater inflexibility comes greater
pain and a lessened ability to adapt, change, heal or
transform. It is a healing crisis where opportunity exists to
move along the natural developmental lines in spiritual
growth. If you examine the healing process and spiritual
growth, the key ingredient is the ability to experience or
recognize something larger than ones own clusters of reactivities; repetitive patterns of response to experienced
situations. One’s ability to gain freedom from mental or
physical suffering requires an opening to the possibilities of
change and an allowance for movement through self serving
repetitive thought, actions and behaviors.
Being stuck in fix behaviors
or patterns may be part of the actual cause or perpetuation of
the illness. The ability to be flexible and to make a change
is needed for healing. If caught in an inflexible self-ego,
rigid level of awareness and spiritual void, one truly is in
the dance of death and suffering, awaiting a release to
freedom, new expression and experience.
Most schools of spiritual
development teach the importance of following some form of
regular practices to gradually move one from bodily awareness
to mental awareness to the freeing experience of the soul and
spirit and beyond. Each tradition has its own instruction of
how to care and nurture the body, mind, soul and spirit; to
achieve greater happiness, freedom and release from the
bondage of being entrapped in a shallow, unenlightened world
of an inflexible self-ego. With development and practice
even, the dualism of self-ego and the spirit melt away into
one unity. The progression to enlightenment often follows a
course of gradual awakening of the awareness and deep
witnessing that is always there in spirit and acceptance of
change and impermanence. Occasionally these shifts can be
sudden or a mere glimpse in the course of practices, or after
some catastrophic event or severe suffering. Integrative
psychiatry supports and nurtures the development of a
stronger, but yet flexible sense of self and self-esteem. The
goal is to promote better functioning and adaptability to
everyday life and stresses. At the same time, work is done to
enhance the individual growth and development beyond self and
the experience of everything as me or mine, to the deeper and
more expansive realm of soul and spirit, where the natural
state of peace, happiness, well-being and release from
suffering exists.
Some practices to consider
for approaching healing in an integrative fashion and to
joyfully progress along the different lines of personal,
compassionate, and balanced development of a healthy body,
mind, soul and spirit are the following: psychotherapy; yoga;
chi gong; meditation; other spiritual practices or practices
from your own religious tradition; elimination of substance
abuse; reducing exposure to harmful environmental toxins and
allergens; correction of metabolic or hormone deficiencies;
macrobiotics or a more natural organic chemical free diet;
massage; acupuncture; health enhancement with vitamins,
minerals, botanicals, essential fatty acids and natural
hormones; active and meditative exercises; community service
work; volunteer work; compassionate assistance to others in
need; charity; communing with nature; caring for a pet; deep
relaxation; adequate rest and play; detoxification work;
hydrotherapies; naturopathy; and care of our environment
(personal and outside). Study with credible, well trained and
trust worthy spiritual teachers and mentors. Read and study,
individually or in groups, the writings and teaching from the
great spiritual traditions and philosophies.
Ronald R. Parks, MD, MPH
practices Integrative Medicine and Psychiatry in Asheville,
North Carolina and directs Macrohealthmedicine.com. He is
specialty trained in Psychiatry, Internal, Family & Preventive
Medicine, with a background in nutrition, and other natural
healing arts. He acts as a bridge between the best of
conventional Western medicine and the innovative approaches of
Integrative Medicine and Psychiatry.
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