” All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
Over the past year or so I have attended several ‘mainstream’ health events, and what I have experienced, when speaking to medical doctors or healthcare providers who are not generally interested in ‘alternative’ therapies, is their first question tends to be “So what research have you got to back up that up?’
I was asked the same question last year when speaking with a wellness provider at New Zealand’s inaugural HPM event (Health and Productivity Management’ in the workplace) . And when I approached a spa with the idea of offering the healing meditations of the Universal Tao – tried, tested and proven Chinese health exercises which have been passed down for over 6,000 years – the manager immediately said she’d have to run that past the doctor.
Talking with a doctor at a health seminar a few weeks ago I finally saw how there is still an automatic assumption that Doctors know more than (as she termed us) ‘alternative therapists’. And all of a sudden I became acutely aware of how ‘alternative therapists’ are somehow seen as ‘lesser than’ doctors in terms of their understanding of illness. Wow. And when I asked myself why is this? I really saw it’s just a matter of conditioning.
Why is it that everyone thinks ‘doctor knows best?’. Because we have been conditioned to think so! We have been unwittingly brain-washed to think that doctor is king. What is interesting is, if I have got my facts right, doctors have only risen to such high status in the last 150 years or so. Prior to that ‘natural therapists’ were the ‘mass consciousness’ health model.
Whilst advances in healthcare are truly amazing, for example in the fields of surgery, as far as chronic (long-term) illness is concerned, doctors are, in general, still swimming in the dark. And why is that? Because as yet they have not been addressing a human being as a holistic entity of mind, emotions and body. They have not understood the role of the mind and emotions in the creation of dis-ease.
So how is it we have given our power away so much?
Television advertising and the pharmaceutical industry have a lot to answer for. People are perpetually being bombarded with advertisements telling them that this, that or the other medicine will ‘get to the cause of their symptoms’. And somehow or other we have been completely conditioned in the West to think that if you are ill, the first stop is the doctor. It’s just conditioning! So, I invite you to break free of this narrow-minded thinking.
So, who really knows best about your body, your health, your illness? Is it the doctor or the natural therapist?
Well, neither, actually. YOU, you are the person who knows the most about you. No-one else can possibly know more about you than you. Although often we do need the helping hand of someone else to help us discover this information, and that is the role of a truly good therapist… or doctor.
So, it’s time to take our power back, and start taking more responsibility (the ability to respond) for our health. It’s time to stop looking outwards for answers. Trust your body, your wisdom, you know what’s best for you!
Kim Knight – The Art of Health
The Art and Science of Wellbeing
Ph + 64 9 833 6553 Mb 021 410 633
Websites: www.artofhealth.co.nz www.mickeltherapy.co.nz www.taohealth.co.nz
2011 Finalist NEXT Magazine Woman of the Year Awards: Catagory Health and Science
Learning to master your health and wellbeing 