There is an elephant in the holistic healthcare room. It causes embarrassment. It triggers intellectual sneers. The most experienced of practitioners and teachers may have trouble talking about it.
My own first skirmishes in this paradigm war took place decades ago with my
father, a medical doctor and Freudian psychiatrist. When arguing with me,
his intellectual outrage at the idea of a healing energy became sublimated into
a passive aggressive dismissal, suggesting (I am serious) that I might need
psychoanalytic therapy to help me overcome this infantile delusion. For many
years I felt diminished and infantilised by his patronising put down;
and I see that same anxiety in many of my complementary friends who want the
approval of their mainstream colleagues — as if their mainstream colleagues
represented parental love, safety and acceptance.
Decades on, however, I understand my father’s behaviour. His demeaning putdown was actually the defensiveness of a man looking down a barrel at a different perspective that, if admitted, would dismantle his paradigm, his sense of identity, his status and the way he lived. The concept of prana attacked his worldview. He hid from the threat behind a smokescreen of pomposity and regal certainty. Enough! I know that you know what I’m writing about here.
When opposing paradigms clash, the fury of the disagreements is not simply
fuelled by logic and methodology. It is not just ‘good science’ versus ‘bad
science’. The fury is fuelled by the emotional and psychological investments
made by the parties. For a while I was an academic social theorist and I was
particularly attracted to the Frankfurt school
of critical theory, which uses Marxism and psychoanalysis as a method for
deconstructing the internal drives that glue us to our worldviews. In sociology
there is a concept called Mannheim’s
Paradox, which asks whether it is possible ever to think oneself out of
one’s paradigm, because we are trapped by the very patterns of our thought
process, and they themselves belong to our prevailing paradigm. It is the snake
swallowing its own tail.
Before looking more closely at the political dynamics, let us ask an important question.
What do we really want? And is what we want radically different from the mainstream model? In answering these questions, I suggest that it is helpful to expand the argument away from the academic domain, outwards towards government policy and NHS management. Best practice in
If this is the case, then what makes a complementary practitioner’s holistic approach so different from a governmental holistic approach? It seems to be the elephant in the room again.
The fully holistic model includes the idea that some sort of ‘subtle information’ connects these different levels of wellbeing. All the medical and healing models of the East, particularly Ayurveda and Taoism, but also indigenous traditions the world over include this fundamental notion of connectedness. All of these approaches consider prana, qi, benevolent vitality and healing energy to be an essential component of their thinking and working practice. According to these systems of medicine, being connected with the universe through the benevolent forces of nature is a fundamental aspect of health.
To put it another way, the whole wellbeing project is hopelessly incomplete unless it includes prana, chi, vitality. Yet we know that mechanistic medicine and research are hostile to this notion of subtle information. Government policy, however, is on our side.
We are looking at a paradigm conflict. Let us be realistic. We know from painful experience that until mechanistic medicine has devised some rigorous gizmo that can measure and can manage prana, there will be no transformation of the mechanistic paradigm. So let us forget about winning the academic, scientific argument and focus on the politics and the overarching framework. We should argue holistically, not scientifically. There are lessons to be learnt here from political campaigning, one of which is the art of reframing the argument. In the ongoing
Let us therefore avoid the good science versus bad science bickering, and instead think about how to reframe the wellbeing debate so that it works to everyone’s benefit.
We need to notice that the current language and priorities of the NHS explicitly support, encourage and insist upon including the spiritual dimension. (If you just google ‘NHS Faith and Spirituality Action Plan’ you will immediately find dozens of reports from NHS trusts on how they are putting the plan into action). It is also, for example, explicit in The Revised Guidance on Spiritual Care and Chaplaincy in NHS Scotland 2008, which states that, 'NHS Scotland is committed to providing or facilitating spiritual and religious care with equal commitment to any within its care'. And best practice in psychiatric care increasingly allows space for the patient’s own beliefs and spiritual story. (For more on this, visit the Royal College of Psychiatrist’s Spirituality and Psychiatry Special Interest Group.)
Professor Dawkins’ god-free ideas have no influence within healthcare
provision. Politically this pluralism is partly due to the government’s need to
avoid inflaming religious and racial conflict, and to integrate the Muslim community
into
That health and wellbeing are positively affected by spirituality can even be
validated using theories borrowed from atheistic socio-biology and evolutionary
psychology. In fact it was the father of socio-biology E.O. Wilson, who put
forward the theory of biophilia. Pointing out that humans are hard-wired
for affiliation with the natural world, from a grain of sand through to
the night sky and mystery of the cosmos, and that this is good and
uplifting for us. This connectedness he believed to be the primal source of
the religious instinct, in that we feel good when we connect and are in rapport
with the natural world. (E.O. Wilson, Biophilia, Harvard University Press, 1990.)
His explanation for this deep sense of belonging to the natural world is that
all that we are made of the same stuff that came from the Big Bang. This is not
rigorous socio-biological theory, but it is a clear philosophical proposition
and surely looks like spirituality masquerading under other name.
This then is the reframe.
Stop having the scientific
argument. It is a waste of time and energy. Reframe it as a simple
statement: ‘spirituality is an essential part of wellbeing’. And
take note that this statement, as well as the notion of spirituality as a
natural sense of connectedness, has some serious scientific foundations. Then
notice too that we have already won the debate and paradigm war. Wellbeing is already part of the government’s
health policy package, and Concern for Spirituality is clearly named as a
marker of best practice in the NHS.
So we can take the high ground, stop the futile scientific debate and assert
that the fully holistic approach includes levels of analysis beyond the
mechanistic model, and that is already supported by NHS directives on best
practice.
***
This level of political activity, managing the framework within which the discourse
happens, also has to be grounded in real life one-to-one activity. Let me give
a relevant example from my own work. For the last decade I have been
facilitating workshops and trainings, which begin with a simple question.
‘What circumstances most easily connect you with the wonder and energy of life?’
The answers that come from the participants cover a wide spectrum. They
include, for example: nature, art, relationships, hobbies, dance, meditation
and pets.
I then ask a second question, which is rhetorical, but helps people to remember
the value of connecting.
‘Is it good for you to connect with the wonder and energy of life?’
Please note that these questions can be addressed to anyone. ‘ Professor
Dawkins, when you look through your telescope at the magnificence of the
cosmos or walk through nature, is that good for you? Of course, it is.
Why? What are the mechanics of your biophilic response?’ In this context,
a simple phrase — not intellectualised — such as ‘connecting with the
wonder and energy of nature and life’ is understandable and acceptable.
It has no immediate connotations of faith and religion; nor does it directly
imply the existence of prana. Yet this sense of connectedness and its benefits
to wellbeing resist explanation by coherent and rigorous scientific
methodology. The NHS is not bothered by this lack of theory and requires no explanation
for what is self-evident, simply and clearly asserting that the inclusion of spirituality
is best practice. And even the most hardened mechanistic cynics can sense that
it is indeed good for them too.
There is then a third question that I pose to my groups.
‘Do you know how to turn the volume up on your experience of the wonder and energy?
Do you know the skills for anchoring the consequent sense of wellbeing into your
ongoing health?’ This then leads us into a discussion about breath, relaxation,
mindfulness, an open heart and gratitude. What are we talking about here?
Is it spirituality? Is it scientific? What matters is that it provides a
foundation for wellbeing, and in one way or another complementary practitioners
have a feeling that this is exactly what they are doing: reconnecting their
clients/patients with the natural flow of life.
***
We have here the beginning of a political logic. Think globally. Act Locally. We
start with ourselves. Then clients/friends/patients. Then the polity. Locally, it starts with each of us looking
after ourselves properly. Part of this requires regular and ongoing connection
with the wonder and energy of life — in whatever way works best and most easily
for you. Most of us would if we knew how to, like to spend some time every day
soaking in that experience of connection. We know how good it is for us, and we
need to do it for our health’s sake.
Then with our friends, clients and students, we can practise our particular
healing art and enable them to come into more fluid connection with the
benevolent dynamics of the natural world. And this congruence of personal
and professional practice can give us greater integrity, maturity and
confidence. From that foundation we can
confidently ignore or transcend or marginalise the good science versus bad
science debate, because the real issue is whether are we enabling our patients/clients/friends
to make more full and wholesome connections with the wonder and energy of life,
which is the foundation, the fuel and the joy of well being.
We then, I suggest, need to expand this work into society in general. One
way of doing this is to give wider and deeper meaning to the word ‘holistic’,
fully acknowledging that holistic healthcare has to include all aspects of
mainstream healthcare. This can be supported too by writing HOLISTIC whenever you
have to fill in a form which has a religion box — especially in the UK
Census March 2011. This will help to integrate the emerging 21st century spirituality
— connection with wonder and energy of life — into a medical paradigm that
includes both the mechanistic and the subtle.
