Spiritual Health
By Dr Debasish Kundu
Here we’ll explore the connection between the spiritual Self and physical, mental and emotional health and well-being.
Spirituality in this instance does not necessarily mean religious. Although some articles will lean toward one certain religion or another, most will be geared toward spirituality in terms of living out your passion, expressing the divine energy inside you as a means of balancing your Self. If a part of you is being neglected or overworked, it can manifest in your physical body as disease, and this is the basic premise behind Spirituality and your health.
From common ailments, like, arthritis, hypertension, fatigue, menstrual disorders, to a number of chronic ailments, you might want to consider Traditional medicines or Spagyric therapy. According to traditional medicines or spagyric homeopathy, chronic symptoms are signs of imbalance in your physical, emotional, social or spiritual environment, and traditional or spagyric medicine may offer you options to pursue along with or instead of drugs or surgery, the usual recommendations of conventional medicine.
According to the philosophy of Spagyric Medicine there are six basic elements available in this world, and the whole world is made from combinations of these elements:
Magic
Magic lies in the root of all happenings of the world, magic and willforce has some interconnections.
Spirit
Spirit or Prana makes us aware of ourselves and others. Everything living has this essence.
Some people use the presence or absence of the spirit to define if something is alive or dead.
Fire
Fire is the first of the base elements. It represents the destruction and change.
Wind
Wind represents soothing, cooling and dissipation.
Water
Water represents soothing and absorption.
Earth
Earth represents permanence.
According to Spagyrists , to achieve the correct balance of essences, materials containing other balances must be mixed in precisely measured quantities, and using precise methods to release these essences into a more useful form.
Ayurveda, translated as “the science of life,” is the traditional medical system of India and is based on the theory that each person is a uniquely balanced combination of natural elements, Ayurveda emphasizes an individualized approach to health, disease and therapy, each person’s constitution is different, therefore no two individuals will have the same levels of good health, the same imbalances and disease symptoms, or the same treatment needs.
Ayurvedic therapy focuses on understanding an individual’s particular constitution and the specific imbalances that have produced symptoms of ailments. According to Ayurvedic philosophy, all life, including the human body, is composed of five elements: ether (space), air, fire, water, and earth. These five elements combine to create three humors, or doshas–wind, bile, and phlegm–which govern our bodily functions:
Vata (wind), is formed by ether and air and governs bodily functions associated with movement, such as respiration, circulation, and elimination. Pitta (bile), is formed by fire and water and governs our metabolism. Kapha (phlegm), is formed by water and earth and governs growth.
Each individual is a unique combination of these three humors, or doshas, which determine the individual’s constitution, strengths and weaknesses, susceptibility to illness, and dietary needs. If one or more dosha increases or decreases excessively, either by poor diet, social and environmental stresses, repressed emotions, unhygienic practices, seasonal changes, climate, or other factors, illness may result. In fact, one meaning of dosha in Ayurveda is “corrupting agent” or “cause of disease.”
Thus, a kapha person who eats phlegm-producing food may suffer an excess of that humor, throwing their constitution out of balance and producing illness symptoms, such as sore throat, congestion, or cough. Sound like the common cold? Those of us who have been taught that viruses cause colds might be relieved to know the Ayurvedic explanation: an imbalance in our doshas weaken our constitution and make us susceptible to “germs” and other debilitating influences. Keeping the doshas in balance will strengthen the body’s natural capacity to protect and heal itself.
The basic principle of most traditional medicines like Acupuncture, Spagyric Medicine and Naturopathy is quite similar to this.
Diet is the basis of health, but must be tailored to each individual’s dosha balance rather than based on general rules of nutrition. The traditional medicine practitioner, through pulse analysis, health history and observation, assesses one’s constitution and prescribes appropriate foods and food combinations that will avoid increasing or decreasing particular elements and disturbing the dosha balance. If there are already signs of imbalance, the practitioner may prescribe dietary changes, detoxification procedures, changes in daily habits, oil massage, and breathing exercises to bring the doshas back into balance. Homeopathy , Herbology, Osteopathy, Ayurveda, , Aromatherapy, etc. are also compatible with conventional treatment and often referred to as Integrative medicine that can help balance mind and body and contribute to the physical, emotional and spiritual harmony to achieve good health.
Besides maintaining health, preventing illness and curing disease, Ayurveda is probably unique among health systems in that it also has a program for rejuvenation, called panchakarma (pancha: five, karma: action). This program, which should be carried out only by an Ayurvedic practitioner, consists of five cleansing techniques to eliminate toxins from the lungs, large and small intestines, liver, gall bladder, sinuses and blood.
These techniques involve therapeutic vomiting, purgation, enema treatment, nasal massage and herbal remedies, and are prescribed according to the individual’s dosha constitution and specific imbalance.
A study by Lodha and Bagga, from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India, reviewed the Medline literature for clinical trials on Ayurvedic medicines. The authors found that Ayurvedic herbal preparations were successful or useful in treating bronchial asthma, ischaemic heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and acute viral hepatitis, and were effective in reducing levels of blood glucose and glycosylated haemoglobin in patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.
A report in the Alternative Medicine Review states that the plant alkaloid berberine, found in goldenseal, barberry and tumeric being long used in Ayurvedic medicine, has antimicrobial activity against bacteria, viruses, fungi, and chlamydia (Alt Med Rev 2000 April; 5(2):175-177). And an animal study of the herb ashwagandha, used as a health tonic in Ayurveda, showed that, in normal doses, it has cardio-protective and anticoagulant properties (J Ethnopharmacology 2000 April 1; 70(1):57-63). Ayurveda recognizes that optimal health is within each person’s potential. This is also one of the major themes among holistic, integrative and complementary medicine practitioners. Like them, Ayurvedic practitioners treat the whole person, not simply the disease symptoms. They attempt to improve health, not simply prevent or cure disease. They recognize the importance of detoxifying the body in order to restore harmony and attain longevity. And they emphasize each individual’s capacity for self-healing.
The Nature of Healing
Between these two extreme views of the nature of Health viz., due solely to either physical or spiritual influences, lie those therapies, often called “alternative therapies”, that see Health as an outcome of interactions between one or more invisible bodies, and the physical body. These invisible bodies are often characterised by names such as Mental Body, Etheric Body, Emotional Body, and Spiritual Body. They are often represented as an interactive set of “energy fields”(see the beautiful illustrations in the works by Brennan 1988). Here it is usually asserted that when the fields are “well balanced”, the physical expression of those fields will be a healthy Physical Body.
Sadness, especially over someone much loved, can be stored in that part of the etheric body that manages the heart. If not processed and released, the emotional stress leads to “heart pain”, which can be ameliorated by nicotine. But taking nicotine is palliative, not curative, and eventually produces its own side effects, one of which may well be a heart attack. If the heart pain is released, the need for nicotine can be reduced making withdrawal from smoking easier.
We need a lot of research to examine the clinical basis of what has led to the idea that “energy” is involved in Healing and in Health. We also need to examine in people the clinical symptoms which have led to concepts such as “energy blockages”, and to what happens from the point of view of clients and therapists when these “blockages” are “released”.
There do appear to be a host of therapies with the capacity to release “negative emotions” from the etheric body. Powerful therapies include bodyworking, rebirthing, reiki, shiatsu, acupuncture, deep connective-tissue massage, reflexology and all of these may be assisted by the right choice of aromatherapy products, homeopathy and naturopathy.
It is quite difficult to detach from being intentional in a healing session, especially if one is working with a patient in a life-threatening situation, or with a child in pain. One’s human inclination is to “see the person get better”. But for all the reasons given above, we do not know what constitutes the best outcome for anyone about anything, no matter how much we think we know what would be “best” for someone else. A case in point is encountered often by practitioners where an elderly patient living alone comes every few weeks to get treatment for an illness they do not have. Here, the person is lonely and knows no other way to get some social interaction that is not threatening. And so there is a long list of ongoing “problems” that are good enough to get that person one social encounter every so often.
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About the Author
Debasish Kundu is a Spagyric Homeopathic practitioner and Spiritual Healer based in Kolkata, India, his web: http://debasishkundu.yolasite.com, and e-mail: drdkundu@hotmail.com
