The True Threat to Inner Peace: Animated Short

Click on The Fly for two animated minutes of profound advice on finding peace and mindfulness, via Bounce.

Want more mindfulness a la moving image?  Check out What You Can Really Get Out Of Meditation

Feet: Meet Your New Best Friend

At a Pilates session this morning, my toes and I were introduced to the Foot Wakers. Wow. I may have to invest in a kit.

Can your dog help you meditate?

 

Leslie Garrett and James Jacobson think so.

Read more about mindfulness, pets and dog meditation here.

Massage + Therapy = Medicine

Well that hit the spot!  It’s gotta to be a good sign when the Wall Street Journal reports on the medical benefits of getting a massage. Check out Andrea Petersen‘s Don’t Call It Pampering: Massage Wants to Be Medicine.

Related alternahealthgrrrl story: Why a Post-Workout Massage Feels So Good

Holistic Healing: What would Bill W. say? LSD may treat alcoholism

Dropping acid may help you drop drinking, according to a large review published this week.

Reading this study, I was reminded of a talk, “The Impact of Spiritual Experience on Health” that I attended at the Integrative Healthcare Symposium. In the workshop, and the session intro, Richard Schaub, Ph.D, described the role of spiritual experiences in improving people’s health and lifestyle choices. “One famous example is the cosmic consciousness experience of Bill Wilson.  A desperate alcoholic who was hospitalized yet again for detoxification, he became immersed in the hospital in a blissful “white light” and emerged free – for the rest of his life – from his addiction.  He went on to co-found the now-worldwide 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and built spirituality into the Steps because of his experience.”

Schaub went on to tell us about Wilson’s experimentation with LSD later in life, saying that he was attempting to revisit the spiritual experience he had in the hospital. Reportedly, Wilson supported the clinical use of LSD as a treatment for alcoholism.  In Scott Hensley’s coverage, he cites a researcher who suggests, essentially, that a “trip” can be a profound experience that dramatically changes the direction of a person’s life.

Hallucinogenic drugs aren’t a magic cure for alcohol dependency, but I find this line of research fascinating.  Can a consciousness expansion help some people who are struggling with addiction? And, as Schaub asked the workshop attendees: What actually happens to someone in such a moment of personal transcendence?  Why does it cause such a ripple effect of change in the person’s health and life choices?  Can such experiences be induced by safe, effective methods?

I, for one, am going to pick up some of Schaub’s books to further explore this topic.

A New Call To Take Back Our Health–Together

Mark Hyman, MD gave a preview of his new book, The Blood Sugar Solution, due out in the end of February, at the Integrative Healthcare Symposium this month.  In addition to a bunch of daily detox tips (sweat, drink water, eat garlic) he told us about the new movement he’s launching alongside the book. Take Back Our Health.org is a social movement, a conversation about how to get healthier together.

It’s not just about occupying healthcare, it’s about taking back health in our schools, in our places of worship, and in our communities.  Like Surgeon General Regina Benjamin in her recent praise of the Seventh-Day Adventist commitment to healthy living, Mark Hyman stressed the important role that social support (aka love) plays in individual health.  Especially in group worship, he says, because a rabbi, priest, minister, pastor, or imam can encourage care of the body as well as the soul. He sited the Saddleback Church project, where he worked with Daniel Amen and Memhet Oz to help create The Daniel Plan, a get-healthier small group guide.  The tagline is “Glorifying God in the Way We Eat, Move and Think!”

It’s the new “group health plan” or group fitness class, and I love the team approach. Belief in a higher power can be motivational–I think (and hope) it’ll be successful.  Especially thanks to the part of Mark Hyman’s site that lets members post pictures of people “caught in the act” doing something healthy.

Holistic Health: What you can really get out of meditation

Elaine Retholtz, my MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) course instructor, shared this clever video short from Headspace.  In mere seconds it explains the practice of meditation and what you can really get out of meditating and being mindful.

It is, I presume, a free sample or promotion for their products–various apps and mindfulness training programs (some of which are free) led by Andy Puddicombe, author of Get Some Headspace. I can’t say for sure how useful the products are, but judging from this clip, Headspace seems kind of amazing.

Hooray for Holistic Healthcare!

More proof that holistic is the way to go when it comes to feeling good and maintaining good health: Integrative medicine is effective for treating everyday problems, according to a national survey by the Bravewell Collaborative.

Some 75 percent of integrative health centers said they had successfully treated chronic pain.  And more than half reported positive results for treating gastrointestinal conditions, depression and anxiety, cancer and chronic stress. Food and nutrition, supplements, yoga, meditation, traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, massage and pharmaceuticals were among the most cited approaches.

What’s more, the multidimensional team approach is cost-effective, personalized and empowering for patients. To learn more about the results, check out  Integrative Medicine in America: How Integrative Medicine Is Being Practiced in Clinical Centers Across the United States.

All You Need Is Psychosocial Support

“What we call psychosocial support in medicine,” explained Dean Ornish, MD, a few minutes into his talk at the Integrative Healthcare Symposium this morning, “is really just another way of saying love.” Speaking about his program’s focus on four key aspects of patient lifestyle, he highlighted food, stress response, exercise, and lastly, love and support.

On the surface, the importance of love in healing sounds cheesy and trite, but like the Beatles song, once you hear it, feel it and experience it, you can’t resist it.

Ornish is certainly onto something. Over the years, he has made real strides bringing integrative medicine to the mainstream.  Recently, Medicare agreed to provide coverage for his comprehensive lifestyle change prescription to reverse heart disease.  Not only will this make integrative medicine accessible to more people, it will help medical practices that approach health holistically fund their important work.

No doubt about it, Dean Ornish is spreading the love.  And to that end, I’ll share some of the things he told us today about the crucial roles of altruism, compassion and forgiveness in health and healing. (Find more on on OrnishSpectrum.com)

–Fear is not a motivator for healthy change, feeling better is.

–Our need for love, connection and community is as powerful as our need for food, air and water.  (He cited the successes of Facebook and Starbucks as examples of businesses that met an unmet need.  Connecting with others, via the internet or congregational coffee lounges, satisfies us.)

–As with more exercise and better nutrition, your brain gets more blood flow and oxygen with more love.

This Valentines day, try spreading around some of that psychosocial stuff.  We need it!

Related story: Dr Vegan Goes to Washington

Jeffrey Bland Opens Integrative Health Conference With Talk On Inflamm-Aging

The Integrative Healthcare Symposium kicked off with a keynote speech from Jeffrey Bland, Phd, the “father of functional medicine.”  He addressed practioners from around the world who came to New York to learn more about integrative healthcare.

You can watch an interview with Dr Bland about last year’s symposium here.

This year, he tackled the Clinical Implications of Epigenetics, and gave an overview of how environment and lifestyle influence the expression of our genes—and the role they place in the development (or prevention of) of disease.

When describing nutrition’s role in health and how food talks to genes, Bland defined “inflamm-aging”:  How eating white foods like sugar and fat leads to inflammation and accelerates aging.

About functional medicine: This approach to medicine addresses the underlying causes of disease, using a systems-oriented approach and engaging both patient and practitioner in a therapeutic partnership…By shifting the traditional disease-centered focus of medical practice to a more patient-centered approach, functional medicine addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms. Functional medicine practitioners spend time with their patients READ MORE