I’m often asked what I and my colleagues actually do at the NHS Centre for Integrative Care.
Here’s a 20 minute video where I explain what Integrative Medicine is. This is based on a talk I’m giving to GPs next week so the intended audience is health care professionals but I thought anybody might find it interesting or thought provoking…..I hope it is!
In essence I think Integrative Medicine is a holistic approach to health making, and my understanding of health and illness is framed by the lens of complexity science, or, specifically, through the lens of the Complex Adaptive System.
You’ve probably come across the idea of embodied cognition and embodied metaphors (briefly, we now know there are neural networks around the hollow organs of the body, especially the heart and the intestines, revealing that we don’t do all our cognitive work inside our skulls! and that metaphors like “heart broken”, “heart to heart”, “gut feeling” and so on, demonstrate how we experience the whole world through our whole being – body and mind)
This particular study is a self-reported one – it does not show physiological body changes, rather a representation of what people say they experience subjectively. Look at the beautiful summary image they produced –
How well does this show the shutdown experience of depression, the fist clenching of anger, the whole body experience of happiness, the links between anxiety and fear, or between shame and disgust, or between envy and contempt?
Another thing that strikes me about this is the degree to which the shutting down in depression is focused in the limbs – which makes me wonder about the links we are discovering about the healing power of exercise.
Hmmm…..haven’t come across this acronym before but its an exciting one!
It stands for Music Evoked Autobiographical Memories.
This interesting study used “No. 1 songs” to stimulate autobiographical memories in patients with brain injuries. They compared this method to the standard psychological “AMI” – Autobiographical Memory Interview. It’s a very small study of 5 patients and a very specific type of problem so the conclusion that music was more efficient than verbal prompts at eliciting autobiographical memory needs further study.
However, this whole idea has pricked my imagination. How often does a particular song or piece of music take you right back to a particular place, time or person in your life? How often do we share music with old friends or family to recreate our shared autobiographical memories?
One element of the study which is especially interesting is that most of the MEAMs were associated with positive emotions. When you think of our brain’s bias to negativity (Rick Hansen says our brains have velcro for negativity and teflon for positivity), and the common claim that we need a ratio of 3 – 5:1 positive to negative thoughts a day to experience flourishing, then surely music must be a GREAT tool for embedding positive, accessible experiences into our memories.
I know, there are lots of other reasons why music plays an important part in our lives, but, hey, MEAMs just sound such fun!
José Mujica, Uruguay’s president acts very differently in power from most of the world’s leading politicians. He lives in a one bedroomed farmhouse instead of the Presidential palace, and gives away 90% of his monthly salary.
He is described as the world’s poorest President but he rejects that description preferring Seneca’s teaching about poverty – “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” He most refreshingly rails against hyperconsumption and waste pointing out that
We can almost recycle everything now. If we lived within our means – by being prudent – the 7 billion people in the world could have everything they needed. Global politics should be moving in that direction but we think as people and countries, not as a species.
This is such an important point which is almost never made by our politicians. Global population is doubling every few years and shows no sign of stopping. Just how is that sustainable? Can we keep growing the population by that much, and all keep pushing for “growth” (by which we mean great consumption and accumulation) and not hit a wall at some point? Isn’t the Earth finite?
But I especially like his last point there – that we think “as people and countries, not as a species”. We need to start living as if we are species, not isolated groups trying to beat each other, dominate each other, exploit each other.
Watch this for THE most coherent and convincing exposition of this case –
He also makes the excellent point about our enslavement to the market –
I’m just sick of the way things are. We’re in an age in which we can’t live without accepting the logic of the market,” he said. “Contemporary politics is all about short-term pragmatism. We have abandoned religion and philosophy … What we have left is the automatisation of doing what the market tells us.
Halévy says all this too in his publications. He challenges us to ask what’s the purpose of our current socio-economic system and who does it serve? Go on, ask yourself, read around a bit, and see what answers you come up with.
Both Halévy and Mujica focus on the need for quality instead of quantity. Halévy uses the term “frugality” and Mujica says “prudent” but neither are setting out the case for a worse life. Quite the opposite, they say we should concentrate on getting more quality from less consumption, and in so doing, create a sustainable way of life on this little planet.
For a long time there have been two broad views of the universe. Determinism and meaningless chance.
Most religious traditions have the idea of a Creator, of some super-natural spirit or force which is in control. There is comfort in this view, in that it helps to make sense of Life, and brings a feeling of there being some control over events (even if that control is in the hands of God, rather than of human beings).
With the rise of materialism and decline in religious beliefs, many feel that the universe is a heartless, meaningless place where we are all the repeated victims of chance. Of course, some who see the universe this way gain great comfort and security from humanistic principles ie that we are the masters of our own destiny.
In the second half of the 20th century a third view has arisen. Complexity science has allowed us to understand that chaos is absolutely not the same as randomness. Once you understand the principles of complex systems (networks and webs of interconnected parts which are all acting on each other), then you find that whilst the behaviour of chaos can be hard to discern, it allows us to see that everything holds together. Indeed, if you consider the “universe story” of energy, to the first atoms, the creation of stars and planets, to the first elements, the emergence of Life, and evolution of consciousness in human beings, you can see this other view appear – one which does not require an external “super-natural” controller, but isn’t random and meaningless either. There is a direction of travel in the universe story towards ever and ever greater complexity. As complex systems move to “far from their equilibrium” points into the chaos zone they can develop completely unpredictable levels of greater organisation and complexity (see the concept or “dissipative structures“)
I do think we are in the early days of this new paradigm, but, for me, it makes a lot more sense than the materialistic, nihilistic scientism which has dominated the last century and more, and doesn’t require me to believe in any super-natural beings. I’m very happy to know such a new paradigm is emerging because so much seems to be falling apart – the economic/financial system, social structures, the health of the planet and the health of human beings who consume ever more drugs to try and control ever more chronic disorders. We need new ways, different, more creative ways of understanding and organising our shared Life.
If you’ve read anything about this emerging paradigm, do let me know – I’m keen to read whatever I can get a hold of!
Many have believed in an animated, inhabited, sacred world surrounding them, the natural world that constitutes reality. These beliefs restore our sense of belonging, of being-with, which is threatened by our dividing, conquering brain;
Oh, this connects with so many other things I’ve read these last few months. That last phrase taking me back to ‘The Master and His Emissary‘ – “our dividing, conquering brain” – what a brilliant description of what our left hemisphere does! But it’s this sense of Life everywhere which really captures my imagination. Marc Halévy in ‘Ni hasard, ni nécessité’ writes about the concept of hylozoism….a term I had never encountered before. Look it up. I thought Halévy had invented it as a neologism – but he hadn’t. It’s a very, very old idea which, suddenly becomes very, very new and relevant now. It’s the idea that everything has life in it. He juxtaposes hylozoism to materialism and says
It reveals to us that all matter is alive, that all matter is an expression of life, that all matter is living. (my translation)
Without looking it up right now, I seem to recall Howard Bloom argues something similar in ‘The God Problem‘ too, where he makes the case that even neutrons demonstrate free will.
It seems that Life is everywhere, and that the Cosmos is where we belong, what we are part of, not apart from. Does it make you feel differently about our planet once you realise it isn’t a resource but a manifestation of a living universe
Dr Peter Gøtzsche is the founder of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, a highly respected medical researcher who examines clinical trials. The Cochrane centres are widely accepted as the most reliable sources of unbiased information about the research evidence for medical interventions. He has written a thoroughly disturbing book comparing drug companies to organised crime. His messages are clear, rational and evidence based. Here’s a quote from his new book, Deadly Medicine and Organised Crime.
‘The main reason we take so many drugs is that drug companies don’t sell drugs, they sell lies about drugs. This is what makes drugs so different from anything else in life… Virtually everything we know about drugs is what the companies have chosen to tell us and our doctors… the reason patients trust their medicine is that they extrapolate the trust they have in their doctors into the medicines they prescribe. The patients don’t realise that, although their doctors may know a lot about diseases and human physiology and psychology, they know very, very little about drugs that hasn’t been carefully concocted and dressed up by the drug industry… If you don’t think the system is out of control, then please email me and explain why drugs are the third leading cause of death… If such a hugely lethal epidemic had been caused by a new bacterium or a virus, or even one hundredth of it, we would have done everything we could to get it under control.’
Marc Halévy describes three “incredible” leaps in the history of the universe –
The leap from light to matter
The leap from matter to Life
The leap from Life to thought
Reminds me of Thomas Berry and his “moments of grace” – from the forming of our solar system –
Such a moment occurred when the star out of which our solar system was born collapsed in enormous heat, scattering itself as fragments in the vast realms of space. In the center of this star the elements had been forming through a vast period of time until in the final heat of this explosion the hundred-some elements were present. Only then could the sun, our star, give shape to itself by gathering these fragments together with gravitational power and then leaving some nine spherical shapes sailing in elliptical paths around itself as planetary forms. At this moment Earth too could take shape; life could be evoked; intelligence in its human form became possible. This supernova event of a first or second generation star could be considered a cosmological moment of grace, a moment that determined the future possibilities of the solar system, Earth, and of every form of life that would ever appear on the Earth.
to the human moments –
when humans first were able to control fire; when spoken language was invented; when the first gardens were cultivated; when weaving and the shaping and firing of pottery were practiced; when writing and the alphabet were invented.
and right up to this present time –
So now, in this transition period into the 21st century, we are experiencing a moment of grace, but a moment that is different in its significance from any previous moment. For the first time the planet is being disturbed by humans in its geological structure and its biological functioning in a manner like the great cosmic forces that alter the geological and biological structures of the planet or like the glaciations. We are also altering the great classical civilizations as well as the indigenous tribal cultures that have dominated the spiritual and intellectual development of vast numbers of persons throughout these past 5,000 years. These civilizations and cultures have governed our sense of the sacred and established our basic norms of reality and value and designed the life disciplines of the peoples of Earth. We will never be able to function without these traditions. But these older traditions alone cannot fulfill the needs of the moment. Something new is happening. A new vision and a new energy are coming into being.
Does it feel like that to you? Does it feel like the old order is crumbling, and that we are about to take a new, “incredible” leap?
A tree we might say is not so much a thing as a rhythm of exchange, or perhaps a centre of organisational forces. Transpiration induces the upward flow of water and dissolved materials, facilitating an inflow from the soil. If we were aware of this rather than the appearance of a tree-form, we might regard the tree as a centre of a force-field to which water is drawn….The object to which we attach significance is the configuration of the forces necessary to being a tree….rigid attention to boundaries can obscure the act of being itself.
Neil Evernden, in ‘The Natural Alien’
I don’t know how this particular tree came to grow this way, but when I saw it I was struck by how the form revealed the process….not only did it reveal the flowing, developing nature of the tree, but it presented a permanent memory of an event. One day something happened in this tree’s life and it took a turn to the left, a sharp turn. It looks like it was a pretty dramatic event, maybe even one of those events which could bring its life to an end, but it didn’t…..it survived, and coped, and flowed in a new direction.
That’s a quote from David Suzuki’s book, “The Sacred Balance”. It comes just after this paragraph –
Although we know who we are, where we come from, what we are for, we give that knowledge no weight; our culture tends to deny or conceal that insight, and so we are left alienated and afraid, believing the truth to be ‘objective’ instead of embodied (my italics). A world that is raw material, resources, dead matter to be made into things, has nothing sacred in it. So we cut down the sacred grove, lay it waste and declare that it does not matter, because it is only matter. Just so the slavers of an earlier century declared their merchandise to be incapable of ‘proper human feeling’. Just so generations of experimental animals have been sacrificed in the name of research. Pesticides poisoning the lakes and rivers, fish disappearing from the oceans, rain forests going up in smoke – this is the world we have spoken so powerfully into existence, and we will continue to live in it unless we change our tune, tell a different story.
What a powerful piece of writing!
Aren’t there so many important points in that one paragraph? How we fail to recognise the embodied nature of reality, and instead create the delusion of ‘objects’ and ‘objectivity’. And how from that one delusion we create a whole story of separateness and objectification which colours our relationships to others, to Nature, and, ultimately, to ourselves.
We DO know very well what matters most to us – and that is the people we love, and the place where we live.
Shall we just act from that knowledge? Test our choices against that truth?
How would life look then? What story would we be telling……a love story?
I welcome constructive criticism and suggestions. I will not, however, tolerate abuse, rudeness or negativity, whether it is directed at me or other people. It has no place here. ANYONE making nasty comments will be banned.
Heroes Not Zombies 