Cultivating Prana

Robert E. Svoboda

Whoever you may be, and wherever you may live, you live your life well when you live it at the right rate. Plow your way through life and life will wear you out; poke your way along and your life will grind to a halt. Find a pace that suits you, though, and amble along it accordingly, and your world will spontaneously level a path for you.

Life requires of each of us a judicious stride, a step that causes every particle of our being to reverberate with rapport. Some of us find our stride without much effort; a few of us are even born ready to canter. But lots of us stumble along from day to day like we had two left feet, trying in vain to intellectualize our way through life when what all that life asks of us is that we let our prana do our walking forus.

Prana is the energy that drives life, the power that animates the body, enlivens the mind, spurs the soul. Prana is life’s inspiration, its foundation, its tenacity; it is the sure hand on the tiller, the wise voice of good counsel, the urge to health and harmony that craves to turn our bodies into havens where we can take shelter from the storms of the hectic modern world. Prana is at work at every instant in every cell of every living organism, seeking ever to deliver us from disease and confirm us in health, but only in those few people who are genetically fated to be healthy does prana automatically regulate its momentum. The rest of us must learn how to cultivate our prana.

Pranayama, the “control” or “regulation” of prana, is a central principle of many of the varieties of yoga that ancient India produced. Good prana management is essential for those who seek to follow the path of Ashtanga Yoga, the “eight-limbed” yoga of personal development that the ancient seer Patanjali systematized. Patanjali, who taught that “yoga is restraint of the fluctuations of the mind” (yogas chitta vritti nirodhah), sought to restrain those fluctuations by restraining the breath, which can when performed with care cultivate prana admirably. Unfortunately, ever since Patanjali many unwary students and teachers of yoga have equated pranayama with prolonged, forcible holding of the breath, which can actually ruin the body.

Wise pranayama begins with observation. When moving your body, how often do you ponder what causes your body to move? When exercising, do you exercise your muscles alone, or also the force that drives them? Do you limit yourself to the physical posture when you perform an asana, or do you perform it energetically as well? A good first step to effective prana stewardship is to alert yourself to your energy posture, your habits of holding and utilizing your energy.

Understand your natural affinity with prana and you gain insight into which method of prana cultivation will work most efficiently and effortlessly for you. Sound prana handling is methodical, and the rishis, India’s seers who spent their long lives poring over the many facets of the paradox that is life, proposed an variety of methods to encourage prana to adopt an suitable pace. They advised at the outset that we use the principles of Ayurveda, India’s life-science, to balance vata, pitta and kapha, the three energy strategies of embodied beings. These Three Doshas encourage ailments when they are permitted to struggle with one another, and work to support the organism when taught to cooperate. When the Three Doshas strive toward amity they serve to strengthen agni, or tejas, the fire of transformation that permits us to feed and nourish ourselves. Strong fire digests cleanly the prana that we consume through our breath and through our food, and strong agni and prana facilitate the development of ojas, the pure “juice” that makes living worthwhile by cementing together body, mind and spirit and fueling immunity from illness.

Strong tejas and ojas in a body provide prana a good seat (asana) there. Well-seated prana provides us the visceral resolve we need to perform our every action precisely, rightly, with great resolve and enthusiasm. Such a body moves not from obligation but from the joy of movement that is prana’s nature. Well-seated prana enhances immeasurably our ability to perform any yoga posture (asana). As prana becomes carefully settled through the practice of asana our bodies become fit for pranayama, which can promote control of the senses and the mind. Breath, prana and mind are mutually and inherently related; cultivate one well and the other two will fall into line. While many yogis do use breathing exercises to cultivate prana and mind, others use meditation to regulate the breath and prana. Some practice Svara Yoga, control of prana and mind by means of song, and some align breath, prana and mind by means of undiluted devotion to Divinity.

Devotion may be the supreme method for prana control, just as faith is the supreme remedy for disease. Strong faith can turn any placebo into an effective medicine as surely as doubt can render ineffectual the most powerful of remedies. While implicit devotion to Reality can compensate for misalignments in yoga practice, no quantum of technical proficiency in asana will suffice to restrain the mind’s fluctuations when that mind is plagued by doubt. Devote yourself to knowing and cultivating your prana, and your every capillary will soon swell with the exhilaration of genuine vitality. Learn to pace your prana, and your body and mind will automatically fall into step. Dedicate your yoga practice to facilitating and enhancing prana’s glide through your being, and gradually your own prana will start to direct your yoga practice. Treat prana with due respect, and you will find yourself squarely in the center of life’s flow.

Ayurveda: An Alternative or Complementary Medicine?

Robert E. Svoboda

The topic of my presentation this morning is Ayurveda: An Alternative or Complementary Medicine? I am not sure, however, that this is the right question to ask. I think we must first ask several other questions before we can answer this one.

Question One: Does modern medicine need alternatives and complements? The answer, I believe, is yes. Modern medicine responds admirably to crises which require quick, intensive, invasive intervention, and deals far less effectively with slowly progressing degenerative diseases The Journal of the American Medical Association recently reported that nearly half the people in the United States suffer from at least one chronic illness, and that together these illnesses account for three-fourths of all medical expenses in our country.[1] In this climate of change in the West which is now calling into question many of the assumptions which we once accepted unthinkingly an awareness is growing that our paradigm is shifting. A system’s paradigm is its pattern, the archetype which structures each of its products.

Crisis medicine promotes a crisis-based lifestyle. An imbalance that begins in one location can surface elsewhere, since all facets of the organism communicate with each other; physical imbalances can thus be generated from disturbances of the mind or the life-force, mental disorders can be due to physical derangements, and so on. Imbalanced individuals tend to perturb their surroundings, and a polluted habitat will pollute its inhabitants. Ayurvedists who survey today’s world find the human creature destroying its environment and itself everywhere they look, and are not surprised to discover the gargantuan imbalances thus created emerging as rampant disease.

The inability of crisis-based medicine to deal with these crises has led to the present situation in the West in which many alternative paradigms compete for the acceptance of scientists and public alike. Last week I spoke at a conference on organ transplantation organized by Howard University. While I was there I attended a lecture by Dr. James Gordon, Professor at the Georgetown University School of Medicine and first Chair of the Advisory council of the OAM at the NIH. During the course of his talk Dr. Gordon mentioned that 2 out of every 3 people who consult with M.D.s in this country are also doing something extra: herbs, supplements, chiropractic, whatever. 2 out of 3 is a decisive majority. Is it possible that our health care system is changing faster than our ability and willingness to perceive and describe it? Do all the people who are being served by the system still accept the fundamental premises that make up the system? It would appear that the ajority wants change.

Question Two: Is Ayurveda a worthy alternative? This answer is also, in my opinion, yes. This “superstition” has already contributed much to modern medicine, including the drug reserpine, which is extracted from a plant (Rauwolfia serpentina) that is still used today in India to safely control hypertension. More recently it has provided the cholesterol-controlling gugulipid (from Commiphora mukul), which apparently binds cholesterol in GI tract and has been reported to be as good as Lopid at lowering blood cholesterol levels.

Ayurveda has also given us plastic surgery. During the nineteenth century the Germans translated from the 2000-year-old treatise of the Ayurvedic author Sushruta the details of an operation for repair of damaged noses and ears. This operation, which appears in modern textbooks of surgery as the pedicle graft, led to the development of plastic surgery as an independent speciality. Today Sushruta is regarded by plastic surgeons around the world as the father of their craft.

Ideally, all Ayurvedic treatment is carefully tailored to the individual. Though it concentrates first on making simple changes of diet and behavior, for simple alterations are sometimes sufficient to produce big results, Ayurveda does not hesitate to use surgery, shock therapy, and other intensive treatments when mild interventions fail to produce results.

Ayurveda’s materia medica and therapeutic techniques have much more yet to contribute. I maintain, however, that Ayurveda’s most valuable contributions will be made to the new theory that medicine is trying to grow. These contributions will be derived from Ayurveda’s way of seeing the world, its darshana, a vision which will facilitate medicine’s ability to teach people not just how to avoid disease but how to proactively develop and maintain a healthy “state.” Modern medicine defines health as the absence of disease, Ayurveda focuses on health as a positive condition that is independent of disease, an active state of being that can be promoted by appropriate behavior. When you can upgrade your health you may find diseases disappearing without ever having been directly addressed. The same Ayurvedic principles that are used to correct yourself when you are out of balance can be used to preserve your balance once it is corrected.

Question Three: Can modern mechanical medicine adequately perceive, describe, understand and implement Ayurveda? I rather doubt this. Many similarities already do exist between the standpoints from which Ayurveda and modern medicine survey the world. Both believe in technological progress; on its part Ayurveda has absorbed therapeutic innovations from many sources within and without India over its history. Empiricism too is fundamental to both; the Ayurvedic author Sushruta declares, “A learned physician must never try to examine on grounds of pure logic the efficacy of a medicine, which is known by direct observation as having by nature a specific medical action.” Both agree that an allopathic approach to disease is ordinarily efficient, and both thus usually treat conditions with their opposites: fever is countered with temperature-lowering measures, obesity with reduction in caloric intake, and so on.

In spite of this Ayurveda does not yet have a sterling reputation among physicians of Western medicine; in fact, one recently called it in print “a superstition of ancient times.” But then this is because the majority of modern physicians do not know what to look for when they look at Ayurveda. Western materialist science presupposes that the way to eschew ambiguity in science is to distance ourselves from the things that we measure. This posture achieves precision by denying a place in Western experimental philosophy to any phenomena that are not externally measurable, and discourages Western medicine from accepting, or even grasping, that which cannot be explained phenomenologically.

The Ayurvedic system maintains that all phenomena however ambiguous are worthy of investigation if they influence embodied life. It encourages the free application of both rationality and intuition to scrutinize all states of being, internal and external. Over thousands of years the sages who moulded Ayurveda studied how embodied life is affected by what we do and how we do it in all of life’s arenas, including diet, exercise, vocation, avocation, and personal relationships. Though most of their experiments were performed internally these were no less rigorous and systematic than those that scientists perform in external laboratories. Nor were they less logical; Ayurveda is a different “language” from modern medicine, and its logic is a fuzzier sort of logic (in the non-pejorative, cybernetic sense of “fuzzy logic”).

Their inner explorations led these savants to conclude that consciousness is omnipresent in the universe, and in fact pre-existed the cosmos. This premise is fundamental to Ayurveda: that consciousness is omnipresent in the universe, and pre-existed the cosmos. Everything in the universe that is not pure unconditional consciousness is a form of matter, and the material universe and all that is within it evolved from and continues to evolve because of that consciousness. Consciousness expresses itself in and through everything that exists, its expression varying with the density of the matter that contains it. Everything with which an organism comes in contact interacts with its matter and its consciousness, however minimally; consequently, all living organisms are innately interdependent.

This is the gulf that truly parts Ayurveda from materialist science, which teaches that consciousness evolved from matter. No conclusions drawn by reasoning from one of these two competing and mutually exclusive postulates can be expected to prove or disprove the “validity” of the other postulate. The “consciousness” model, however, continues to gain ground as scientific evidence of consciousness’s ability to influence matter, at least in the form of observers affecting their observations, continues to accumulate.

Ayurveda’s approach is more alchemical. The alchemical paradigm holds that that reality is paradoxical. This means that a thing is closely related to its opposite, as we see today in love-hate relationships and the like. The approach of Chinese medicine is similar. India and China have always appreciated life’s innate ambiguities. Carl Jung wrote, “The Chinese have never failed to recognize the paradoxes and the polarity inherent in what is alive. The opposites always balanced one another-a sign of high culture. One-sidedness, though it lends momentum, is a mark of barbarism.”[2] While Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine try to mirror this ambiguity in their processes, materialist science abhors ambiguity.

Ambiguity has not always been anathema to science. John Maynard Keynes discovered in 1936 that Isaac Newton had been obsessed with alchemy and had mentioned it in early editions of his books. He eventually decided that he would have to repress this side of himself if he wanted to get ahead in the world of that time, and so purged all references to alchemy from later editions of his works.

Newton’s early form of “political correctness” reflects the sad truth that even modern medical science, research and practice alike, is structured in large measure through political means. Modern medicine itself succeeded in gaining a paramount position in our country with substantial help from political sources; consider for example the generally successful attempts at the end of the nineteenth century to outlaw homeopathy at a time when in many parts of the country homeopathy was more popular than allopathy. This is merely the most recent incarnation of a generalized ancient trend to support orthodoxy at the expense of innovation. Galileo’s fate and the witch-burnings were two other European examples, but no culture (including India’s) is spared this sort of thing entirely.

How we structure a thing determines to great extent its reality. “As Gregory Bateson has rightly remarked, Newton did not discover gravity; he invented it.” How we structure our reality determines what might be “alternative or complementary” to it, and the key to structuring what we believe to be real usually boils down to the amount of repetition and intensity that is brought to it. If you call something a duck long enough and loudly enough many people will eventually become convinced that it is a duck, whether or not it actually quacks. The more that the medical establishment calls chiropractic or homeopathy or Ayurveda “alternative or complementary” the more that is what they will become: secondary to, adjunct to, assistant to modern medicine.

All medical systems are models, approximations of reality. The modern fixed and unchangeable view of medical reality has meant that until very recently few scientists were prepared to accept that the mind and the body can and do influence one another in measurable ways. Many of the problems that we have today stem from the fact that our reality system officially denies that the mind participates in the creation, preservation and destruction of our physical reality. Denying the mind its influence does not prevent that influence; it only prevents us from perceiving it. Modern medicine assumes that the reality we can perceive with our senses is the only reality there is, and that we can observe portions of this reality as non-participating observers. But this act of mechanically constructing a separate, rationally ordered reality for ourselves is itself an active participatation in that reality from which we are trying to separate ourselves.

This totalitarian rationality, which by denying participation with our reality implicitly denies everything that is irrational about us, has created and is creating enormous difficulties for us humans and for our world. The most important of our irrational influences exist in the vast terrain of the unconscious mind, but modern science, by promoting the idea that rational knowledge is the whole of knowing, has cut itself off from the 90% of the iceberg of consciousness that is outside the control of the conscious mind. Now the mass of this iceberg is reacting against that neglect, counterattacking with epidemics of psychological and psychosomatic disease.

To be worthy of possessing alternatives or complements a system should accurately reflect and describe the reality that is embodied life to a substantial degree in a systematic and logical way. Modern medical science, which is currently in the throes of a revolution that will dramatically affect both its vision of the nature of medicine and the way that medicine is practised, may not qualify as such a system.

Question Four: How can we understand Ayurveda? The Ayurvedic model takes the approach advocated by Michael Polyani, who in his classic book Personal Knowledge showed that (even though most scientists like to claim otherwise) science is a craft. Whether it involves the growing of crystals or the reading of X-rays, a scientist becomes proficient at his science not by strictly following the dictates of some unambiguous rule book but by immersing himself in the slow trial-and-error process of discerning patterns and learning to follow those patterns. We have to do the same thing with our health; we must learn to improve it like we learn any other craft.

This process happens to be very natural to us humans. It is in fact innate to us, for this is how the brain learns as well. The brain is too parsimonious to assign one memory to one neuron. Instead, it organizes its neurons into neural networks. Any sensory stimulus that enters one of these networks activates each of the neurons to a different degree. The more highly activated neurons signal strongly and the weakly activated ones less strongly, the members of the network continuing to share information until a pattern develops. Many types of patterns arise and are held in the same net.

One of Ayurveda’s basic theses is that similar patterns appear at all levels of a living organism’s existence, both in its internal interplay and in the interplay between it and its environment. Each pattern affects us whether we are aware of it or not. Taste is one example of the many patterns in our daily lives than cannot be easily quantified. You can express your blood pressure in mm of Hg, but how do you measure taste? Most of us find it natural to believe that that well-cooked food tastes better than poorly-cooked food, even though there is no way to externally verify this internal perception. Ayurveda suggests that the self-evident good or bad taste of food has more than a trivial effect on the organism that consumes it. Ayurveda asserts that the internal reality of something as outwardly ephemeral as a taste pattern is in fact very real to the tasting organism. Evidence that supports this conjecture has also begun to accumulate in Western science (e.g.in studies on the ways in which the taste of fat or sugar in the mouth can influence physiology even before they are metabolized).

Taste is only one of the many patterns that characterize our bodies and minds. Another is prana, the force of life, which the Chinese call chi and the Japanese ki. We can describe prana as the energy that inspires life to persist within a particular living being. Students of yoga, Tai Chi and the martial arts who learn to identify and circulate this force within themselves discover that prana is as easily measured with their own internal instruments as it is difficult to measure with external gadgets. The pattern that these practitioners call prana is as real to them as the patterns that neural networks of taste produce when they sample a mango. Whatever their external reality, patterns are very real to the organism in which they occur.

Athletes around the world are now studying the life force as they learn that cultivating a healthy pranic pattern facilitates the type of body-mind cohesion that allows one to shine out on the playing field. Athletic training is basically a matter of breaking down old physical and mental patterns and building up new ones. Each living body hosts a wide variety of strongly-held metabolic patterns which influence its ability to build up new patterns. Ayurveda classifies each these many metabolic patterns into one of three classes. Each of these classes forms a metapattern, a pattern which actively reproduces itself whenever it is given the opportunity to do so. These three metapatterns are the Three Doshas, the body’s so-called “humors.” They are called doshas (”mistakes,” in Sanskrit) because when they are deranged they induce the organism to go off balance, in predictable ways. Students of Ayurveda work with the reality of life from the dosha perspective because of its practical utility in everyday practice. The dosha approach allows associations to be detected between seemingly unconnected causative pathways and manifested symptoms.

Ayurveda defines health as balance and ill health as imbalance, in all aspects of existence but particularly in the context of the Three Doshas. When they are balanced the Three Doshas ensure that the organism functions well. Disease-causing imbalance patterns may result whenever an organism fails to adapt properly to a change in its internal or external environment. The need to adapt is universal, but the ways in which people adapt differ from person to person. Though many of these adaptation patterns are learned behavior others are innate properties of the organism itself. Everyone has physical, psychological, pranic, and emotional strengths and weaknesses; taken together these form a set of “reaction prints” which are as characteristic of their owners as are fingerprints or footprints. The aggregate of these innate properties forms the individual’s “nature” or “personal constitution” (in Sanskrit, prakriti), a temperament which profoundly influences predisposition to health, general and specific sensitivity to illness, and responsiveness to various forms of therapy.

The Ayurvedic approach to healing concentrates first on making simple changes of diet and behavior, for simple alterations are sometimes sufficient to produce big results. Ayurveda escalates into surgery and other intensively invasive therapies only when mild interventions fail to produce results. Modern researchers continue to rediscover truths that Ayurvedic researchers learned many centuries ago.

For example, since 1935 modern science has known that when mice and rats are fed a very low calorie diet (30 - 50% of their normal intake) in the laboratory they live about 30% longer than do well-fed rodents, so long as they receive sufficient nutrition. Though the mechanism of this effect remains in doubt (it may be due to decreased production of free radicals) the effect itself is clear.

Americans not only eat too much food, too much of that food is fat. Dr. Dean Ornish has shown how a judicious program of exercise and dietary change can not only control but in some cases reverse the course of obstructive coronary artery disease.

Recall that the two most common diagnoses requiring transplantation in African-Americans are hypertension and diabetes. High blood pressure afflicts one-third of all Americans in their 50’s, half of those in their 60’s, and more than two-thirds of those over 70. But hypertension is not inevitable; it is a disease of civilization. Preindustrial people rarely get increases in blood pressure as they age, whether they live in China, Africa, Alaska, or the Amazon, mainly because they do not eat processed foods.

Dr. Paul Whelton of Tulane University’s School of Public Health has spent the past decade tracking 15,000 indigenous Yi people in southwest China. As long as they eat a traditional diet-rice, a little meat, and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables-almost none of them suffer from hypertension. But when they migrate to nearby towns their blood pressure starts to rise with age.[3]

Our ancestors subsisted mainly on fresh plant foods for about seven million years, and anyone who lives on such a diet ingests about ten times more potassium than sodium. “Civilized” people consume far more sodium; for instance, while a four-ounce tomato contains 9 mg. sodium four ounces of bottled tomato sauce has nearly 700 mg. Modern humans are the only mammals that consume more sodium than potassium, and we are the only ones that suffer from hypertension. Dietary changes can reduce blood pressure as markedly as drug treatment, and in as little as two months. In a study known as DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) researchers at several institutions put volunteers on one of three diets. Normotensives who ate a low-fat menu including ten daily servings of fresh fruits and vegetables plus two servings of calcium-rich dairy products reduced their systolic and diastolic readings by 5.5 mm and 3.0 mm respectively. Hypertensives had reductions of twice that magnitude. Potassium supplements can bring a similar but less dramatic effect, but consuming fresh, unrefined plants provides you the bonus of phytochemicals which combat cancers and boost immunity.[4]

Dietary change is potentiated by exercise, which in judicious amounts can help everyone, even the frail. Dr. Maria Fiatarone of Tufts University recently got ten chronically-ill nursing home residents to lift weights three times a week for two months. At the end of this period their average walking speed had nearly tripled, and their balance improved by half. Two went so far as to throw away their canes.[5]

A positive attitude is also a big plus in regaining and preserving health. Most people who live to be a hundred maintain through their lives a social network of support, keep their minds active, manage stress well, and never give up. It has been said that “patients suffer illnesses and physicians diagnose and treat diseases.” The two may have little in common. For example, in a seven-year study of 3,500 older people who were asked to evaluate their own health, those who rated their health as poor were three times as likely to die as were those who believed their health to be good. However, those who were clinically in poor health but who rated themselves as being healthy were less likely to die than those who believed themselves to be unwell.[6]

We are what we eat, what we do, and what we think. Observers can affect their observations; Larry Dossey, M.D. comments: “It appears that double-blind studies can sometimes be steered in directions that correspond to the thoughts and attitudes of the experimenters. This might shed light on why skeptical experimenters appear unable to replicate the findings of believers, and why “true believers” seem more able to produce positive results. The validity of decades of experimental findings in medical research would need to be reevaluated if it is proved that the mind can “shove the data around.”[7]

Ayurveda seeks to find positive ways for each of us to “shove our data around.”

By examining metapatterns in an organism it can help that organism’s owner decide what kind of food, exercise, meditation, and other healthful habits will be health-promotive to the greatest degree. When it is too late for prevention early detection becomes the key. In all cases, removal of the causative factors is the first step: the patient’s diet, lifestyle, and way of thinking all must change. Thereafter, one must carefully consider all the factors affecting the case, including the patient’s constitution and age, the season of the year, and most importantly the strength of the patient versus the strength of the disease. When therapeutic intervention is called for we generally focus on plant materials, at least initially. In choosing herbs for a patient we focus primarily on the pattern that the disease has generated rather than the specific symptom alone.

Question Five: “How necessary, desirable or useful is it that Ayurveda be described in and bound by terms provided by another model?” Our answer to this question might be, “Scientifically, not much. Politically, quite a bit.” Two essential steps on the path to good health are to establish a healthy relationship between yourself and your environment and to enhance and maintain that relationship with your every choice and action. Promoting Ayurveda’s health in North America in the current environment requires that it develop some sort of relationship with its environment, of which a major portion is modern medicine. The danger is that this will not be a mutually healthy relationship but will instead be one in which Ayurveda will be “commodified” and “mainstreamed” into the current disease-care system.

Conclusion: Ayurveda could be an alternative to modern medicine now except for the facts that the medical establishment in this country is not yet ready for it. Ayurveda is not yet ready either, for there is a dramatic scarcity of qualified Ayurvedic physicians. Now, therefore, it will have to act as a complementary medicine before it can become alternative.

It would be better it would be to first reestablish other modes of thinking and doing science, and create a new model of reality that is a culture of the alternative and complementary. This new model could do much worse than to model itself on the ancient model which continues to serve us so well: Ayurveda.

Footnotes:

1 JAMA Vol. 276, Issue No. 18, Nov 13, 1996, pp. 1473-79

2 David Rosen, M.D., The Tao of Jung: The Way of Integrity, (New York: Viking Arkana, 1996), p. 92

3 Newsweek June 30, 1997, p.62

4 Newsweek June 30, 1997, p.64

5 Newsweek June 30, 1997, p.61

6 Mossey and Shapiro, “Self-Rated Health: A Predictor of Mortality Among the Elderly,” American Journal of Public Health, 72 (1982):800-807 

La sanación y los sistemas de medicina

Pedro San José - Julio 2009

La vida humana es inestable. Si observamos la historia de la vida y el propio surgimiento de la vida humana, nos maravillamos de la complejidad del funcionamiento de nuestro organismo, nuestra fisiología y la homeostasis de nuestros órganos. Nos asombramos más aun si contemplamos cómo ha surgido la conciencia en nosotros, y como se integra nuestra bioquímica, nuestros humores, nuestras emociones y nuestro pensamiento en un todo único, con la consecución de una unidad individual, con capacidad finalista y de elección, de creación y transformación, y autonomía durante 70  o más años. Contemplo al hombre como un conjunto fisiológico en el que se integran miles de billones de billones de átomos organizados entre sí, con una estructura de colmena fisiológica, con maquinas maravillosas altamente especializadas: el corazón, el hígado, el riñón, el estomago, el cerebro, que organizan aparatos fisiológicos cooperativos, sometidos a un funcionamiento homeostático y a un funcionamiento sinérgico e interrelacionado, creando un universo orgánico propio (microcosmos), que surge de un designio marcado por miles de años de evolución de la especie, sintetizado en una compleja molécula de información, el ADN, que se transmite de padres a hijos y que lleva el poder de reproducir nuevos seres vivos pensantes. A pesar de ello, este complejo maravilloso es inestable. Está sometido a la tendencia al desorden de todos los fenómenos naturales, a la decadencia y a la muerte, que al final siempre vencerá a la vida.  Continuamente tiene que ser regulado, ajustado y rectificado, no solo en su fisiología, sino en sus emociones, en sus procesos mentales, en su interrelación con el medio. La vida en armonía es el resultado de un adecuado ajuste y adaptación continua del ser humano a su medio y a sus fines. La disarmonía, causante de enfermedades y eventualmente de la muerte fisiológica, es el resultado de los fallos, causados o permitidos por el ser humano, en el funcionamiento de nuestro organismo y nuestras vidas.

¿Cuál es el meollo de la vida humana?, ¿Qué es lo que provoca salud o enfermedad?, y ¿Cuál es el sistema para ayudar a solucionar los problemas humanos de forma que las personas logren vivir una vida plena, relativamente ausente de enfermedades? Se han organizado sistemas de medicina, considerados como sistemas de cuidado o cura de los problemas de salud, como respuesta a estas preguntas. Los sistemas de medicina son respuestas situadas dentro de una cultura, diferentes según la consideración que las diferentes sociedades realizan de la vida humana. Los modelos conceptuales propuestos para explicar el funcionamiento humano determinado por cada cultura, pueden ser unificados en tres diferentes arquetipos: el modelo mecanístico, el modelo organísmico y el modelo holístico.

El modelo mecanístico o biofísico contempla el ser humano como una maquina formada por aparatos y órganos, y percibe el sistema de medicina como una proyecto de ingeniería, dirigido a reparar y reemplazar los componentes averiados del mecanismo humano, hasta que el conjunto del sistema mecánico queda inservible. Este modelo interpreta el cuerpo humano como una suma de partes, y asume un modelo reduccionista, que simplifica las actuaciones médicas al nivel orgánico. Por supuesto es un modelo que no entiende de flujos energéticos, de psicología, ni de componentes mentales o espirituales de la salud y enfermedad. Su forma de intervención es invasiva, e instrumental. Su actuación preferente es la cirugía y el tratamiento siempre es mediado por la tecnología. El paciente es pasivo, y no puede intervenir en la mejora de sus problemas sanitarios, salvo en el mantenimiento de hábitos físicos saludables. Es necesario decir que el desarrollo de la cirugía, y de los cuidados intensivos, han permitido avances importantes en la medicina moderna, basándose en este modelo. La vida humana es percibida como la energía que hace funcionar la máquina humana, y que se mantiene mientras sus componentes están en buenas condiciones. Las enfermedades son el deterioro de los órganos,  producido por malfuncionamiento (vgr. aparición de placas de ateroma en los vasos sanguíneos como consecuencia de alimentación inadecuada o propensión genética, o la aparición de tumores que deterioran la vida orgánica, producidos por desviaciones del funcionamiento celular), por la invasión externa de infecciones o parásitos, por accidentes o por decadencia de los tejidos, consecuencia de amortización de los órganos, diseñados solo para un funcionamiento adecuado durante un número limitado de años. El trasplante universal de los órganos sería considerado el sistema definitivo de alargar la vida humana.

El reduccionismo de este modelo es la crítica fundamental al mismo. El ser humano no es una maquina orgánica, formada por componentes rígidos que pueden ser intercambiables. El modelo mecanístico no tiene en cuenta las enfermedades de sistema, y mucho menos considera el conjunto como una unidad en sí misma, más allá que una estructura mecánica compleja. El origen de la enfermedad, salvando las causas infecciosas o por traumatismo, permanece en la oscuridad, y solo son atribuidas a causas genéticas o intrínsecas. Para estas causas los médicos han inventado el término “idiopático”, que en realidad significa “no tengo idea del origen”. La vida humana es material. La fisiología de sistema solo se considera como los vasos comunicantes de los órganos, concebidos como sistemas biofísicos interconectados. No existe vida energética como un sistema unificado, y mucho menos la interdependencia entre el nivel psicológico o mental. Existe un claro dualismo entre la vida física y la vida mental o espiritual, siendo dos esferas de vida independiente. El sistema de medicina solo se ocupa de la vida orgánica y material. En su versión radical se llega a defender la inexistancia de vida espiritual.

El modelo organísmico o fisiológico pone el énfasis en la teoría de sistemas para concebir la vida humana como un sistema orgánico interconectado, en el que la base principal no son los órganos, sino las unidades fisiológicas definidas por su función: el sistema digestivo, el sistema excretor, el aparato circulatorio. Si bien los órganos son componentes de los sistemas fisiológicos, estos son algo más que una suma mecánica, ya que la función que ejercen precisa un nivel de organización superior. Su modelo de actuación médica es la medicina interna, que entiende principalmente de modelos homeostáticos (iguales condiciones de funcionamiento) y de sistemas finalistas definidos por su función, en el que el espacio de interés para el médico son las interacciones orgánicas (un edema pulmonar no se explica como un fallo del pulmón, sino como un problema de sistema en el que están involucrados al menos el pulmón, el corazón, el riñón y otros órganos. El modelo organísmico define la vida humana como un equilibrio fisiológico, cuya alteración creará consecuencias en los órganos y tendrá como consecuencia el desequilibrio en la función, que siempre es un fallo del sistema unificado. En este modelo el todo si es más que las partes. Sin embargo se mantiene una división completa entre el modelo fisiológico-material y los sistemas psicológicos, emocionales o mentales. Si bien se acepta el impacto del estrés, por ejemplo, en el sistema simpático, y por tanto en varios sistemas orgánicos, con efectos fisiológicos de sobrecarga, no se establece una correlación avanzada y de matiz entre los componentes emocionales o mentales y los sistemas fisiológicos. Por supuesto la vida espiritual se considera algo separado y con escasa relación con la vida orgánica. Al menos, no es en absoluto foco o materia de actuación del sistema de medicina.

Estos dos paradigmas, con diferentes variantes y asunciones, han dado lugar a los sistemas de medicina occidentales, que si bien han logrado avanzar importantemente en la comprensión del funcionamiento de los órganos y actuar con gran impacto en múltiples problemas sanitarios, tienen profundas limitaciones al actuar sobre un sistema integrado de salud, y han sido origen de importantes iatrogenias (enfermedades creadas por el médico), debido a su intervencionismo o actuación poco sutil al interferir en el funcionamiento de los sistemas orgánicos. Estos modelos están limitados para comprender las causas finales de porqué tenemos salud o porqué enfermamos, e integrar todos los componentes del origen de las enfermedades, por lo que limitan sus actuaciones a los tratamientos curativos de los problemas agudos y al sostenimiento orgánico de los problemas crónicos, ocupándose más del control de las secuelas de la enfermedad crónica, que de atender a su origen.

El modelo holístico de medicina se basa en la concepción del ser humano, y del conjunto lo existente, como un gran sistema holístico integrado. Holístico es un término que viene de “holon”, utilizado en primer lugar por Arthur Koestler, que significa nivel de organización de un sistema, que integra e incluye a los niveles inferiores, y al tiempo supone un nivel superior de organización, en el que aparecen nuevas propiedades y capacidades funcionales. Existe un proceso creativo ascendente, a través del cual los niveles inferiores son integrados en el superior y afectan al superior, y un proceso creativo descendente, en virtud del cual, los niveles superiores influyen decisivamente en los niveles inferiores. Holarquia, de acuerdo con Ken Wilber sería el sistema ordenado de acontecimientos en función de su capacidad holística. La vida humana sería una holarquia, en la que el nivel material orgánico sería el nivel inferior, seguido del nivel de sistema fisiológico, del nivel de sistema emocional–funcional, del nivel psicológico –mental, y del nivel superior o espiritual en el sentido individual, o del nivel de entorno natural, entorno social y entorno universal, en sentido colectivo. El conjunto es una unidad interdependiente con funcionamiento unificado, cuyas influencias se realizan a todos los niveles, por lo que no es posible concebir la actuación a un nivel sin afectar a los otros. Así, un mal funcionamiento orgánico provocará disturbios emocionales y mentales, y también afectará al comportamiento personal y social. Igualmente, el exceso emocional, por ejemplo ansiedad o miedo, debido a experiencias negativas de la persona, afectará definitivamente determinados órganos, definidos como órganos diana, dentro de un mapa de referencia de relaciones entre los sistemas energéticos y los sistemas orgánicos. Existen también las relaciones de interdependencia horizontales, de forma que una alteración en un sistema o en un nivel existencial, afectará a otros sistemas orgánicos o a otros niveles existenciales. Por ejemplo un exceso de miedo puede cursar con exceso de angustia, lo mismo que una hepatitis puede ir seguida de una úlcera de estomago.

Desde esta perspectiva, el que sufre la desarmonía, la enfermedad, es el individuo en su conjunto. No existen órganos enfermos, ni sistemas orgánicos alterados, sino el conjunto de la persona es la que está sufriendo el problema de salud, por lo que la personalización de los cuidados es fundamental. Cuando una persona enferma se complica el funcionamiento de los órganos y sistemas orgánicos, y también se alteran emociones, se disturban energías y el funcionamiento del conjunto de la persona queda dificultada. Por otro lado, el meollo del problema de salud está en el fondo vital de la persona, que se manifiesta de múltiples formas, por lo que podremos decir que si podemos actuar, o el interesado puede actuar, en la modificación de su centro vital, podrá intervenir radicalmente en su propio cuidado. Lo que llamamos fondo vital ha sido interpretado como la integración del eje espiritual-mental-emocional de la vida humana. Sabemos que existen interacciones básicas entre nuestro funcionamiento espiritual, mental,  emocional, inmunológico, hormonal y orgánico, a través del cual el conjunto de las funciones vitales se expresan, incluyendo el horizonte vital, el mundo de los valores, los hábitos, el entorno fisiológico y hormonal, y el funcionamiento de cada órgano controlado por neurotransmisores específicos.

En este contexto el paciente se convierte en agente y en director de sus decisiones vitales, y por tanto, el sistema de medicina es interpretado como un sistema de apoyo y ayuda para estimular la capacidad del interesado en movilizar sus propios poderes curativos.

En este modelo es posible hablar, por ejemplo, que un exceso de angustia crónica, provocada por decisiones erróneas tomadas en un momento de la vida, va a afectar al funcionamiento del aparato digestivo, con la aparición inicial de ulceras duodenales, por exceso de producción de acido, quizás provocado por la incidencia coincidente de H. Pilory en el jugo gástrico del individuo. También provocará un exceso de miedo, debido al negativismo de su pensamiento, lo que contribuirá a crear cálculos renales. Es posible también que si la angustia de base no es atendida, aparecerá con el tiempo un cáncer de páncreas, cuyo origen, siendo multicausal, está claramente mediado por la influencia fisiológica de esta emoción prevalente, y que le llevará a la muerte. Desde esta perspectiva ¿qué es lo que hay que tratar, el cáncer, la ulcera duodenal, el trastorno fisiológico del aparato digestivo, la angustia de base, la alteración energética provocada en el meridiano del estomago o del riñón según la acupuntura, o el cambio en el horizonte vital de la persona?

Es evidente que las formas de atención sanitaria son múltiples, y que sistemas con paradigmas diferentes pueden actuar cooperativamente, siempre que no dañen los sistemas orgánicos sino que los potencien. Una propuesta terapéutica formada por una cirugía reparadora, una dieta o hábitos adecuados y una actuación holística dentro de medicina natural sería muy adecuada. El sistema de medicina típico de un modelo holístico son las medicinas naturales, que siempre consideran al conjunto del individuo como un todo unificado e interdependiente. Los sistemas naturales de medicina integran las actuaciones en un sentido multidimensional, pretendiendo no solo la salud física, sino también emocional y espiritual. Tenderán a simbolizar la actuación sanitaria en torno a una conceptualización unificada del ser humano, a través de su interpretación como una unidad funcionante a través de energías vitales básicas (vgr. medicina Ayurvédica), canales energéticos combinados con los orgánicos (vgr. medicina clásica china), y correlaciones entre los sistemas emocionales, mentales y fisiológicos. Suponen una aportación cooperativa a la percepción del entorno fisiológico de la medicina occidental.

En este ámbito de reflexión es donde surge la opción de la Sanación. Entendemos sanación como una actuación decisiva de ayuda y apoyo al meollo de la mente-corazón humana, de forma que actué decisivamente sobre su estado de salud. Necesitamos distinguir la sanación de la curación o la atención sanitaria en sentido genérico, ya que la sanación implica la actuación sobre el conjunto de los sistemas holísticos de una forma global, no a través de una actuación particular sobre uno de los sistemas o un órgano, incluso aunque los efectos de la sanación puedan ser específicos. Sanación es pues, la movilización de las energías sanadoras o armonizadoras básicas que tenemos todos los individuos, bien de forma autónoma o por intervención externa, a través de un sanador. El sanador es la persona dotada de la capacidad para la movilización de los niveles superiores del ser humano en un sentido beneficioso para la vida del individuo, con independencia de la técnica que utilicen.  Los grandes sanadores son también a menudo, grandes figuras, líderes y prototipo de la vida humana, ya que abordan el sufrimiento humano como una experiencia vital global, tenga o no como resultado la aparición de una enfermedad física, y en consecuencia realizan propuestas desde el plano ético y existencial de la vida humana.

La sanación es la opción sanitaria más decisiva del futuro. Si somos capaces de actuar en el centro de nuestros problemas vitales, de conseguir el desarrollo de la plenitud humana, y de entender nuestros problemas de salud como problemas de nuestras condiciones vitales, estaremos alcanzando los niveles de conciencia necesarios para un verdadero sistema holístico de salud. Para ello será necesario vivir desde un diferente nivel de conciencia. Mientras tanto necesitaremos a los sanadores… y previsiblemente no los encontremos en nuestros hospitales o centros sanitarios, sino en medio de la sociedad, como personas llenas del espíritu necesario para que se conviertan en ángeles compañeros de nuestra vida. El encuentro con un sanador será siempre una experiencia transcendente.