Introduction
Over the past decade, an abundance of alternative and complementary prac-tices have become widely accessible to the public and are slowly becoming inte-grated into our current healthcare system. This book is a tool for healthcare professionals and patients to provide a holistic perspective when treating and working with patients in addition to those individuals who want to learn more about this aspect of healing.
Although “Do No Harm” is not specifically stated in the Hippocratic Oath, medical providers understand and yield to the ethical principles of first doing no harm. With an ever-increasing dependency of drug interventions and surgical pro-cedures, doctors are straying further away from facilitating overall patients’ health, wellness, and quality of life (QOL). Rather, patients are experiencing much less healing and more dependency and stagnation. The current procedures and regulations of healthcare are no longer keeping people accountable for their health, but addressing patients simply as chemical processes; therefore, treating patients with other chemical processes. This cycle has caused more illnesses, debt, and disease. When the definition of health is the absence of disease and/or injury, it compresses the value and experience of life into a limited continuum. This book will offer a larger scale of what health really is through individual flourishing not mechanically - but holistically. We will provide a new paradigm for healthcare professionals to use when consulting patients and assisting them through prevention and recovery. The objective is to move away from the sole utilization of the biomedical model and into addressing the whole person including lifestyle, environment, spirituality, and nutrition to instill a healthier, happier QOL. Understanding the Chakra system gives medical providers an effective model to counsel their patients on how to better internalize locus of control- making choices that are cost effective which will lead to healing and flourishing.
According the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) roughly 75% of healthcare spending goes to treating preventable diseases. Rather than operating healthcare as disease control, addressing patients as a whole to counsel them according to imbalances in their lifestyle and choices so that patients can empower themselves into sustainable healing and illness prevention. Educating oneself on mindfulness-based trainings and exploring the Chakra system provides a new pathway to healing and improved health.
We must take action and change our current system as, according to the In-stitute of Medicine, 30% of health care cost (roughly $750 billion annually) are wasted and do not improve health. Much of this waste comes from the focus on sub-specialization in medicine and skyrocketing healthcare costs not correlated to outcomes. An unproportionate, excessive amount of money is spent on the last months of life to increase quantity rather than QOL Furthermore, fears of lawsuits also drive medical providers to perform numerous unwarranted tests and additional spending.
The purpose of this book is to provide health care professionals and patients with a broader, intuitive lens in addressing a more participatory medical practice. Implementing new modalities that refine the patient/ doctor relationship so patients are seen, met, and understood by their medical team allowing for an improved clarity leading to sustainable healing.
Unfortunately, the medical culture is saturated with over-medicating pa-tients. In addition to potential side effects and interactions between medications, many of these pills do not correct the problem itself. Furthermore, many pathologies can be attributed to imbalances in chakras. With a direct correlation between the 7 main chakras and the neuroendocrine system, this model boasts many cost effective, holistic ways of improving healing.
This book is a collaboration between Dr. Kyle Hoedebecke and Yoga Therapist Melissa Aguirre to merge westernized medicine with holistic, natural modalities based off of experience and observation in patient healing and wellness. Within these pages compose both evidence-based research and case studies that point to self-sustainability in hopes to raise awareness and show the importance of accountability in healing and health care. This book does not take the place of the care of primary care providers or specialists - rather is intended to allow the reader to evaluate health from a new perspective and integrate non pharmacological treatments as a source of health and healing.
What Are the Chakras?
We are no animals. We are galaxies with skin. —Tara Sophia Mohr
Dating back to 1750–500 BCE, chakras derived from the Vedic culture known for the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. Many holistic practices are products of this culture, which includes theories of awakening, intuitional practice, as well as the belief that the individual is a realization of the self. The chakras are simply an organic formula for the individual to use to become pure or to rebalance in the body.
Chakras—meaning wheel or circle in Sanskrit—are psychospiritual vortices of energy within and surrounding the body. Though many exist, we will focus on the seven main chakras within the body. With that in mind, the idea is that humans manifest from an interplanetary system. For example, the saying “as within, so without” means that the elements of the planet are the same as those within the body itself. The element water is illustrated in the body as fluid, urine, and other unsolidified components: the element earth is illustrated in the body as bone structure, skin, and other physical configurations; fire is demonstrated through body temperature, digestion, and other metabolizing apparatuses; and air is exhibited through respiration, gas, and participates in digestion. Therefore, the Vedic culture believed the human being exists as a fractal of the universe. They used yoga practice and holistic interventions to clean and balance the elements, which would, therefore, clean and balance the system.
The chakras utilize movement, touch, voice, mind, and lifestyle choice to in-fluence anatomical, physiological, and psychological development. They delineate how depending on external influences and choice will yield catalysts to psychophysical expansion or malady in the body. Each chakra expounds glandular reactions with the brain producing tendencies in the human. The yogis identified fifty tendencies associated with different glands throughout the body.
The processes needed to balance the chakras are associated with practices such as meditation, chanting/singing, diet, lifestyle choice, ethics, yoga, and service. Each chakra has specific practices relating to both the neuroendocrine system and psychophysical relationship with the body to influence the specific region it corre-lates with. As there have been many evidence-based yoga practices that support, prevent, and rehabilitate ailments or injuries, the science behind yoga poses and their effects on the body is ample. Repeating yoga poses or movement patterns puts sustained pressure on key areas throughout the body. These positions also affect the flow of blood and lymphatic fluid throughout the circulatory system. As the body moves through functional patterns, this process helps optimize neuromuscular pathways that decrease discomfort in the body, making it easier for the person to function and live a flourishing life.
Overall, the chakras acknowledge that different people are at different places in their development. This knowledge allows the physician to identify what the patient is facing, thereby offering a better way to meet the patient where he or she is. For the individual, the chakras show up to delineate where the person should work on to enhance his or her own evolution and wellness.