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 odors, our relationships, as well as the universe around us, can be ours with just a credit card number.
What we often don't realize in our search for healing is that many of the concepts and theories that are being touted these days have been around since a time when it was OK to believe in myth, a time when legend was passed from generation to generation. Finding a way to wellness dates back to an era when legend could become reality. Today we have come to a threshold in which we understand what our ancestors perhaps took for granted—that healing is everyone's business and responsibility, and that it is something that involves our understanding and active participation.
The healing traditions of our neighbors in the East, which go back centuries of generations, are steeped in parables and evidence a connection between health, spirituality, and the cosmos. In China, Han dynasty tombs preserved fragments of exemplary medical information, which, according to legend and generations of believers, were first penned by the mythical Yellow Emperor, who is said to have reigned from 2696 B.C. to 2598 B.C. Beginning with conversations between the emperor and his physician, the Nei Ching Su Wen, or The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, establishes the concept that supports the need for a positive doctor-patient relationship. With information on drugs, surgery, medical theory, spirituality, life force, the balance of yin and yang, the five elements (wood, fire, metal, air, and water), and the four seasons of healing, this comprehensive record remains a main source of guidance for many Eastern cultures and health practitioners today.3
Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets, dating from somewhere around 2500 B.C., tell tales of illness and list the details of medicinal plants and animal parts prescribed for treating the ills of the time. Historians are unable to determine whether the Sumerians actually discovered these healing arts or whether the concepts were borrowed from other cultures. Many of these medicinal remedies were divided into organic and inorganic categories, with plant remedies such as figs, dates, anise, jasmine, juniper, coriander, caraway, and willow.4 Passing this legacy of knowledge and healing on to the Babylonians, the Sumerians set in motion a generational chain of curative information that formed the rudimentary foundations of Western medicine. The embryonic Sumerian teachings traveled history's course, crossing lands and time. Eventually uncovered by Egypt's Pharaohs, these healing arts evolved to yet another level. And as writings preserved in papyrus tell us, elaborate theories explaining the cause of physical ills took on dramatic proportions. The Egyptians believed that sickness originated in the supernatural realm, and that healing took place on the physical and spiritual planes.
As the discoveries of healers became paradigms for their culture, the integral rhythm of contrasting internal and external forces was seen as reigning over the body. Chinese healers set forth the delicate balance of yin and yang: yin, the feminine force of darkness, night, moon, moistness, quiet, and earth; yang, the masculine force of light, sun, day, dryness, fire, heat, heaven, noise, and function. Yin, representing the internal, descends; yang, the external, ascends. It was believed, and is still believed today, that each of the body's organs has an element of yin and yang, and that health is achieved by keeping the two in balance.
Similar to Chinese healers, Greek physicians looked at the nature of disease as sets of opposites: hot and cold, moist and dry. They also described and diagnosed illness based on the four humors—blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile. The thread that binds these ancient beliefs is the theory that a vital life force, when kept in balance, can ward off disease. And whether it is called qi (Chinese, pronounced cbee), lung (Tibetan, pronounced loong), or prana, meaning breath, maintaining or restoring balance was the physician's secret for preventing disease.5
Ancient healers developed an intimate bond with their patients; they believed, above all, that nothing must be done to injure the patient. Whether taking a history, feeling the pulse, or gauging the heat of the body, each practiced the gentle art of his or her respective beliefs. Medical advice, even in more primitive times, paralleled much of what the adventurous preach today—diet, exercise, prevention. The Chinese, much like the Tibetans, talked openly about combining tranquil, moderate exercise with seasonal diets, stressing the
