It’s been called many things: alternative, holistic, complementary, comprehensive, and yes, even quackery, but natural medicine is simply natural. Even the term “natural medicine” is too limiting, because it’s so much more than just medicine. It’s a philosophy that involves many variables.

Natural medicine views health as a puzzle. When even one piece is missing, the puzzle is incomplete. Regardless of what you may have heard about natural medicine, there are no magic bullets. We all know that it takes more than one piece to complete a puzzle. We also know that our health can be one of the most complicated puzzles of all. So it only makes sense that there are many pieces needed. The completed puzzle is, of course, optimum health.

One of the most important concepts about natural medicine and holistic health care is that you are in control. With help, you can determine which piece of the puzzle is missing and what you need to do to fill in the gap. It all begins and ends with you. After all, it’s your body. And the power to heal lies within you. Natural medicine is an umbrella representing many services, products, and treatments. Everything from dietary changes to detoxification procedures can be called holistic or fall into the category of natural medicine. Here are some tidbits of information about just some of the opportunities available under the umbrella of natural medicine.

• Chiropractic Medicine. In 1980 there were one million patients utilizing chiropractic medicine. Today there are somewhere around 20 million.
• Nutritional Supplements (i.e. vitamins, herbal extracts, etc.). In 1994 alone, Americans spent well over $700 million on herbal medicines obtained from health food stores. Today estimates are at nearly $6.5 billion.
• Acupuncture. Several thousand US physicians use acupuncture in their practice, up from only 500 twenty years ago.
• Homeopathy. Practiced widely in Europe for centuries, this respected form of medicine has been recognized in the US for over 200 years.
• Hydrotherapy. The use of various warm and cool water treatments for a wide range of digestive, circulatory, and respiratory conditions, various forms of hydrotherapy have been around since the 19th century, and were originally marketed as “water cure”.
• Research. As with any approach to your own health, research is an important component. With the internet, today active research by individuals is much easier, with much more information widely available. Armed with additional information, you are much better equipped and informed to work with your own health provider.

As you can see, there are familiar and not so familiar holistic health care services available through natural medicine practitioners. Don’t let all of these options intimidate you. Don’t expect to learn them all at once. Take your time and find a practitioner that you feel safe and comfortable with and that you trust to help you. Most practitioners adhere to five time tested medical principles. These principles serve as the foundation upon which the alternative health care provider practices, whether he is a naturopath, chiropractor, acupuncturist, nutritionist, or medical doctor.

Principle 1: The healing power of nature. The body has considerable power to heal itself. It is the role of the healer to facilitate and enhance this process with the aid of natural, nontoxic therapies. Above all else, do no harm.

Principle 2: View the whole person. An individual must be viewed as a whole person composed of complex interactions of physical, mental/emotional, spiritual, social, and other elements.

Principle 3: Identify and treat the cause. It is important to seek the underlying cause of disease rather than simply suppress the symptoms. Symptoms are viewed as expressions of the body’s attempt to heal while the cause can spring from the physical, mental/emotional and spiritual levels.

Principle 4: The healer as teacher. A practitioner must also become a teacher, educating, empowering, and motivating the patient to assume more personal responsibility for their health by adopting a healthy attitude, lifestyle, and diet.

Principle 5: Prevention is the best cure. Prevention of disease is best accomplished through dietary and lifestyle habits that support health and prevent disease. Undoubtedly, these natural principles of healing will persist over time. By acting as a vital link in the evolution of medicine, these underlying principles of good medicine provide a bridge between the medicine of the past and the medicine of the future. Perhaps the famous words of Thomas Edison will turn out to be truly prophetic: “The doctor of the world will give no medicine, but will interest his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.”

All the modalities associated with natural medicine have one thing in common, their philosophy. Natural medicine practitioners and their clients believe that the power to heal lies within the body itself. If you provide your body with the proper tools, it can and will heal itself. The natural medicine concept believes that drugs and surgery should only be used when the body is in crisis and cannot defend itself properly. With natural medicine, there is a strong emphasis on proactive health care and disease prevention. Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick.”

Natural medicine has a long history of use. Today, it is clear that what was once “old” has now become new again. It’s been called a paradigm shift in health care because of our new view of an old mode. But whatever you call it, there is no question that there is renewed interest in the treatment practices of yesterday – the very same healing practices that people hundreds of years ago used. Traditional treatments from centuries ago are finding widespread success in treating today’s health issues, and contributing to better health through prevention.

When I first started studying natural medicine in 1982 my head was swimming. I began researching nutritional supplements and found the terminology and jargon confusing and overwhelming at times. Fortunately, after I realized that I didn’t have to learn everything all at once, I went to Chicago to a state license school to become a colon therapist, a practice I have continued over the years. I opened my first office in April 1984 and began chipping away at the entire subject of natural medicine, and whittling it down into easily digestible pieces.

Your needs and interests create your learning path. You may not be inspired to make natural medicine your career or find it to be your passion to help others with their health. But whether you are researching methods of natural medicine to incorporate into your personal wellness plans or looking into various allopathic approaches, your time and dedication is well spent. The more you are informed about your options and various methods, the more proactive you can be in protecting one of the most important things in your life – your own health.

Learning blockages come in many shapes and forms. Movement has been shown to stimulate the brain and help on the path to recovery. Brain Gym was created by Dr. Paul Dennison who received his Doctorate in Education at the University of Southern California for his research on beginning reading achievement and its relationship to brain development.

For nineteen years Dr. Dennison directed the Valley Remedial Group, a learning center helping both children and adults turn their difficulties into successes. His discoveries are based upon an understanding of the interdependence of physical development, language acquisition, and academic achievements. By using simple physical movements, patients are able to change the way they learn and develop.

What is Brain Gym?

Brain Gym:

• Creates “stress free” learning for both instructor and learner.
• Can be done in less than five minutes; no special equipment or space is needed.
• Adapts well to any curriculum.
• Activates balance in all areas of the brain for learning ease; specifically, both hemispheres and the frontal lobe.
• Is a quick, specific, self-directed way to activate the highest performance potential and increase self-esteem.
• Offers results that are immediate, long-term, and demonstrable.
• Is neurologically sound in its approach.
• Is accepted by the National Learning Foundation as one of the top innovative technologies for education.
• Is highly effective for specific learning difficulties.
• Facilitates the individual taking responsibility for learning, working, and playing from an integrated, whole system point of view, in an atmosphere that honors each person’s unique and powerful abilities and potential.

When people are heavily stressed in situations that don’t honor their unique learning and working style and developmental readiness, they exhibit the behaviors/reactions ascribed as SOSOH, or in other words stress out survival oriented humans, a term coined by neurophysiologist and educator Carla Hannaford in her book, “Smart Moves: Why Learning is Not All in Your Head”. The brain becomes a fascinating circus, feeding in all available information from past experience to lay the basis for infinite future possibilities.

This inner dialogue is then thought to develop through use and myelination of the frontal lobes. Myelination is a critical process of development wherein myelin accumulates around nerve cells, which enables information to be transmitted faster and allows more complex brain processes. One study shows that 2-5% of all youngsters are hyperactive usually beginning before the child reaches school age. Myelination is believed to begin in the neo-cortex around age four, which is when behavior can be regulated by self-verbal commands. SOSOH people may not have developed myelination areas thus controlling their own behavior.

What behaviors are typically exhibited in SOSOH people? Dr. Hannaford notes that the following behavior patterns tend to exist in her paper The Brain Gym (R) Option for Hyperactivity, ADD, EH, Special Ed., LD, and FAS:

1. Hyperactivity
2. Attention Problems
3. Disruptive
4. Learning Difficulties
5. Inability to control self behavior in accordance with social norms
6. Marked discrepancy between seemingly high verbal skills and inability to communicate effectively

So how does stress play into this picture? During stress, levels of adrenaline increase sending blood to the muscles to prepare for “flight or fight”. The eyes become peripheral and fixed, unable to track across a page of writing – less important for survival than knowing what is going on around you, and increased neural function occurs in the survival areas of the brain away from the neo-cortex, so we tend to react rather than think.

The survival center of the brain can be described as:

1. The brain stem, sensory/motor or reptilian brain for self-preservation and survival. This hard-wired, genetically encoded, unemotional center deals with the outer material world and develops from conception to little over one year old with proper motor/sensory stimulation. It deals directly with getting food, mating, shelter and territoriality.
2. The emotional/cognitive limbic or early mammalian brain deals with all possible relationships and species survival. It is dependent on the reptilian brain for expression which expresses itself as the terrible two’s when a child doesn’t feel emotion – they are the emotion. It gives rise to short and long term memory and allows for emotional relationship survival (bonding and care of the young) in relationship with the body, it controls the immune system.

With regard to the limbic brain and stress, studies show that hyperactivity is exhibited for boys and men eight times more than girls and women. When people are heavily stressed out in dysfunctional environments that don’t honor their unique learning style and developmental readiness, it makes sense they would exhibit the behaviors/reactions ascribed to SOSOH.

This has been the case with children and adults and it is believed that these reactions are not out of conscious understanding, but rather out of survival and the need to have their basic human needs met. With survival being their primary goal, the higher centers of thought and regulation may just not develop, though the potential is there. Realizing that survival is the priority of each of these people, it is incongruous to ask them to do high-level deductive reasoning and rationally control their behavior without first making them comfortable in the learning situation, relaxing the survival drive and bringing attention to the neo-cortex.

I have watched major changes occur when Brain Gym is used with individuals. Brain Gym is a series of specific brain integrative movements designed to bring attention to and fully activate the neo-cortex of the brain (away from the survival centers). It is designed to stimulate myelination across the corpus callosum between the two hemispheres, and activate visual, auditory, and kinesthetic function for ease of learning and change.

Brain Gym, by stimulating motor activity in the frontal lobes, and bringing attention away from the survival centers may actually help to activate, develop and promote myelination of these areas of the brain allowing for controlled attention, self-regulating behavior and ultimately formal reasoning. In keeping with the need to first relax the survival priorities, I have found acceptance and unconditional honoring of each individual to be inherent in the Brain Gym process itself. As we’ve learned more about how the brain function actually works, we begin more and more to take advantage of the learning and growth that can be gained as a result.