Alternative Health Pain ideas.
Pain comes in many shapes and sizes of course. It’s cause can be obvious or a good less less obvious in some cases. It is one of the most common causes for consulting a health practitioner.
Just about all types of alternative health systems have various strategies to combat or remove pain.
Of course where possible it is better to eliminate pain permanently rather than just damp it down temporarily. However that might not always be possible depending on what is causing the pain.
Pain is a natural signal that something is wrong, whether it be physically or emotionally caused. There are still gaps in the theory of pain. Following are some possible methods to address pain.
Unresolved bruising
Sometimes long term pain is caused because extensive bruising after an accident has not come to the surface of the body entirely. Once cleared the patient is free of the pain. This is the real problem even for some people in wheelchairs long after an accident. Scrape and cupping therapy can be utilised to bring the bruising to the surface and some herbs and other techniques can do it too.
Sujok is another system that can often help with pain, especially with acute pain, usually by working on the various correspondence systems on the feet, hands and ears (although other body areas can also be utilised just as in the original Fitzgerald Zone therapy).
Magnets, moxa, seeds, and other Sujok techniques including mustard plasters and the like can all help pain at times, as can hot and cold treatments, and colour therapy.
In Sujok colour is usually applied with a felt tip pen, nail varnish or coloured plastic onto mini meridians or chakras on hands and feet, whereas Spectrochrome colour therapy is applied with a light onto larger body areas so it is a very different colour therapy system.
Spectrochrome may well be one of the ultimate health modalities.
Generally working on the microsystems of the ears, hands and feet for example is easier than body acupuncture/ acupressure, but not always preferable in results.
Bio-holographic Theory
Several authors contributed to bioholographic theory, which he called Embryo Containing the Information of the Whole Organism (ECIWO). Of course the holographic idea was not really new.
Holographic photography also shows similar characteristics as the body microsystems.
The holographic theory has developed very rapidly, with lots of research in many fields.
The human body consists of many holographic units, each having two characteristics. One of the characteristics relates to the individual unit’s development and the other relates to the whole body’s development. Each unit is not only a part of the body’s structure, but it also plays a role in the body’s development.
Pain Points mirror the disease
In Sujok, and in the less sophisticated simple Reflexology, finding the pain points in an area of the Correspondence zones and stimulating them sends a message to the brain that there is a problem still to deal with and a healing pulse from the brain starts to try and fix the problem.
When you think about it, Homeopathy (and also for example the Bowen Technique) may work in a similar way, simply sending a signal that something needs fixing.
Of course the body senses all this anyway through it’s comprehensive communication system, but we can often make it a stronger signal and help the process to be more successful.
Perhaps the fact that someone else is involved prompts the brain to react in a more effective manner than in the past for that problem, possibly sending a social signal too and humans are social animals for better or worse.
If you want to know more about the psychological arena in heath I recommend looking into Gestalt Therapy and the work of Dr. Wilhelm Reich.
You can use hands, feet, ears, scalp, face or other areas of the body as seems best for each case. The more you know about diagnosis and strategy for treatment the better. Such knowledge tends to appear in a patchy way in books but if you persevere you can pick up quite a lot about which systems to use for which problem and the sequence of techniques for best effect.
Education in Alternative Health
There are good and bad points to being self taught, as Woody Allen pointed out regarding being a self taught film maker, but overall I think too great a reliance on official courses is no good, as most are disappointing, often more about bureaucracy nowadays than real information. Everything tends to be padded out so you have to do a four year course to get information you could have learnt in a year.
Education in the West has now become nothing more than another business controlled by the favoured few, so cost is now a major factor to consider. At the very least you can learn a lot about health from sources other than courses.
Online courses such as with the American website Universal Class and other similar sites can sometimes be useful. For example Universal Class has courses on many alternative health subjects, simple courses but sometimes helpful. One year Platinum membership covers all 600 odd courses offered in all subjects by Universal Class and through Yipit website membership is only US$89.
In any case you need to keep researching even after doing an official course. So many important things are deleted from official courses, which of course being run by the government are terribly keen on promoting the status quo in everything, and dumbing everything down.
The Yajuan Wang book on Micro-Acupuncture and many other books can help you with a vast coverage of all aspects of using microsystems.
Choosing the Most Effective Point.
When the human body is diseased, not only are there reaction points on different superficial areas of the body, but the patient may also have various reactions on different microacupuncture system points. Some of the micro-acupuncture
points may be more reactive and more representative of the disease.
For example, in hand acupuncture, when an internal organ has a disease the reaction point is more likely to be located on the palm side of the hand.
However, for some diseases, such as a musculoskeletal system disease, the reaction will be more pronounced on the dorsal side of the hand.
Face and ear acupuncture have greater reactions for patients with internal environment imbalances, and good results are often achieved with autonomic nerve disorders.
Musculoskeletal diseases have better results when treated with hand and foot acupuncture.
Scalp acupuncture usually has better results for central nervous system disorders, stroke and the like.
In general, when you see that the point has pathological changes or reactions (such as changes in color, flakiness of skin, and painful reactions), this usually indicates that the point should be chosen for this treatment. When choosing points, it is not only important to choose the best system, but also to find the most sensitive points for the treatment. This will result in a better clinical outcome.
So, how does the practitioner determine the most sensitive or effective points in clinical practice? The most direct and effective method is to first focus on which system will have better results for each case. Second, the clinician visually observes the affected areas and/ or uses tools or an electronic device to locate sensitive points.
It pays to write down in a separate file each tip you find about these subjects of diagnosis and treatment strategy as it is crucial to results very often.
Sujok is a goldmine of such usually unavailable secrets and detailed maps of previously unknown connections and multiple correspondence systems.
Sujok Nail therapy
A very, very useful little book is Sujok Nail Therapy by Park Jae-Woo. It contains much information on the fingers and nails of hands and feet, and lots of ideas on treatment strategies. It also has a good explanation of Homo, Hetero and Neutro.
The nails and the areas around them can treat the whole body, being the most hetero (active) part of the body, and with links to the whole system. Seed therapy, magnets, massage, colour, moxa and all the other ways of treatment can easily be used on the fingers and toes.
For example the right hand little finger nail has a special affinity with the pancreas, and the left hand little finger nail with the gallbladder and so on. The book shows the link up of body parts to all the fingers, toes and nails, so you know which ones are best to use for each organ and/or disease and the general types of disease, homo, hetero or neutro.
You can also choose nails to treat based on characteristics like heat or cold, colour, deformity, pain or numbness. Also you can choose according to the standard correspondence system of which limb is represented on which finger for example.
A similar map showing the link up of fingers and toes for all endocrine glands is also given. The little book is a goldmine of information infact, all in a neat little package.
The thumbs on the hands are best for Hetero (acute) disorders, and the big toes best for Homo (chronic) disorders.
Using massage on the correspondence systems of the nails is also effective, with many techniques available. Using a diagnostic stick or similar implement you can use clockwise movements for acute (Hetero) diseases and anti-clockwise for chronic (Homo) diseases.
Therefore the targeted treatment you can give with say nail therapy enables you to treat many types of pain from multiple causes. This nail therapy can thus be an option whenever trying to address pain (or any other problem) from most sources.
Sujok Seed Therapy
One other method I will mention is Sujok seed therapy, a very simple but effective way of treatment. Seeds are taped with plaster to relevant areas on or around the nails, in similar ways to magnets, and indeed they can be used on other parts of the Correspondence Systems as well of course, not only on nails.
In other words things can be done with many simple methods, not just acupuncture needles, and very effective seeds, magnets, moxa, massage, colour and other methods can be too.
Seeds contain lots of energy to build a new plant, and all the information to build a new plant. It helps if the type of seeds used are aligned more with the disease, for example kidney beans help kidney diseases well, but to some extent any kind of seeds can be used.
Try not to use seeds treated with chemicals and pesticides as from hardware stores, fresh seed is much safer and better. Apple, pumpkin, water melon and buckwheat seeds are good examples of seeds you can find easily and use. There are of course many other seed options.
Sometimes small twigs can be used, and often the old doctrine of signatures comes into it. For example carnation and some other stems are segmented a bit like a skeleton of bones and can be used for spinal and other bone problems. They all of course grow according to the same laws.
There are many other examples of these similarities, such as heart shaped seeds being good for using on heart problems and so on. Kidney beans can be used on kidney problems and so on.
Various types of strategy have been developed for seed treatment in Sujok, such as arranging the seeds so that their energy flow suits the disease, to treat constipation or hernia for example.
Treatments with different numbers of steps have been developed, such two, three and five point therapy. This depends partly on the nature and severity of the disease and it’s history. Simple practical information that enable you to help yourself and others.
When effective the seed often breaks up as if the energy has been transferred, which presumably is what actually happens.
Sujok books
Sujok has many books by Dr Park, all of them have strong points. Especially I recommend Nail Therapy, Seed Therapy and Being Your Own Sujok Doctor, as all three are very practical and not too big!. Other Sujok books though are also good, including Sujok Onnuri Therapy Books 1 and 2 which cover the Correspondence systems in more detail, and Sujok in Emergencies for example. Twist Therapy is also potentially very valuable too.
Eclectic Approach gives you more options
As you can see from this article and my websites, my approach is rather eclectic, whereas many practitioners are wedded to only one approach, rather like fanatically following an ideology in some cases.
If you only know acupuncture, herbs or Osteopathy (or whatever) then you use it in all cases but infact it is not indicated in all cases, this is just one example. Of course many people only learnt one thing anyway.
It does not matter what you use, if the Brazilian toe massage (just to take an unusual example) fixed it and nothing else worked, then the main thing is you finally got a result, even if sometimes we are not quite sure why one thing worked and another did not work.
In general if possible work on the feet for upper body problems, and hands and ears for lower body problems, but it is not a hard and fast rule by any means. The points on the feet are also more sensitive than those on the hands but harder to reach especially for self therapy!
All these diagnostic pointers from various disciplines have to be applied flexibly, including the famous Hering’s Law of Cure in Homeopathy (which was never set in concrete even by Constantine Hering himself it now transpires).
Chronic pain though may not be fixed or not completely fixed if it is due to trauma like a broken bone, a vertebra out of place, ongoing disease or whatever. After all pain is a signal that something is wrong. So fixing the cause if possible is needed to permanently stop pain.
Cancer.
The characteristic pulling pains of cancer need the cancer process to be reversed if we are to entirely fix the pain. Cancer is due to tissue and plasma shrinkage, cancer is infact a shrinking disease due to long term inhibition of pleasure due to unconscious emotional blocks. The exception of course is if there is poison or radiation damage causing the cancer.
Cancer cells are simply cells going anaerobic due to lack of oxygen because Chi (Orgone Energy, Prana) has ceased to be circulated properly because of character blocks (bio-energetic blocks).
The Orgone blanket could help in many cases, it concentrates life energy (Orgone, Chi, Prana, ether) and recharges the organism, so some cancer pain may be greatly relieved.
Be sure to follow the instructions that come with the Orgone blanket (internet sites can tell you all about Orgone blankets and similar tools), do not overdo it, and do not use it within about three metres of electrical sources like T.V’s or computers. Best to use a room away from such disturbances. Using the Orgone blanket would be greatly facilitated if you have read The Cancer Biopathy by Dr Wilhelm Reich.
The best ever book on Cancer is Wilhelm Reich’s “The Cancer Biopathy”. Dr Wilhelm Reich explains what others misunderstand or can only guess at. It will blow your mind, like all of Reich’s books.
Another very useful little book is by Dr. Robert T Cooper who treated cancer very successfully with Homeopathic Arborivital plant remedies, his book is called Cancer it’s Homeopathic treatment.
His son Dr Le Hunte Cooper also wrote and lectured on the subject and a book on this is also in print, consisting of the proceedings of various conferences on cancer in the 1920’s. Frankly it is less useful than his father’s book I think but still worth reading.
The work of Dr Royal Raymond Rife was also suppressed by the medical cartel, but is well worth looking into on the internet and if possible later in books. He also was a cancer genius, as well as other things, but his work was soon repressed.
German New Medicine, the work of the brilliant Dr Geerd Hamer has a lot of profound information on cancer and is well worth reading about.
Psychosomatic approaches
Gestalt Therapy techniques such as following the pain around in the mind and seeing how it changes can be used for emotionally caused pains such as in neurasthenia for example. Similar techniques can sometimes be useful, acting like a bio-feedback loop, for examining and trying to gain control even over physically caused pains.
These techniques are explained in the Gestalt Therapy Book by Perls,Hefferline and Goodman at some length, and there are other resources on the web for further techniques for similar efforts.
The Reich book “Man in the Trap” by Dr Elsworth Baker has good sections on the emotional underpinnings of most diseases including heart disease, arthritis and diabetes. If you read the book you get a much deeper understanding of disease as well as a deeper understanding of human history and the human dilemma. The book may be available to read online for free. Unfortunately most health therapists have never even heard of Dr.Wilhelm Reich.
Dreams can also be utilised in health problems, as disease and it’s causes often appear in a disguised form in dreams. Various techniques for working with dreams are available when we discuss Gestalt Therapy. See my pages on Gestalt Therapy.
The point is that Gestalt type techniques can creatively help you to find answers, even to pain, in ways that would never even occur to most health practitioners (or most psychologists!).
The emotional is not well understood in Oriental medicine, and they are resistant to looking at it at all, trying to pretend that everything is physical. The Character Structure meaning of the emotional blocks is the key that they do not want to know about.
Of course Oriental societies were terribly stuck in a highly conservative and class ridden feudalistic rut, and still are very largely, and even in the West Dr Sigmund Freud and even more so Dr Wilhelm Reich were bitterly resisted by vested interests like religion and class society. Indeed a resolution of all this awaits a more enlightened and less materialistic society.
A Gestalt session of psychotherapy can often dramatically relieve physical symptoms, especially neurotic ones. However neurotic pain accounts for a very significant percentage of people seeking treatment.
The books by Debbie Shapiro on the emotional meanings behind many diseases (psychosomatic meanings) can be useful to put things in perspective and give some hints as to the real problem.
As she points out the emotional cause of disease is usually the first thing to be thrown out of the window.
Acupressure
Acupuncture / Acupressure also has many points and strategies for pain, as evidenced by it’s use for anaesthesia purposes in some operations. Acupoints for pain are many and often relate to particular pain areas and types.
Books on acupuncture/acupressure with details on the meridians and acupoints can easily be obtained. The books for instance by Roger Dalet and also those of Michael Blate are very useful, and there are many other good acupressure authors.
Actually Acupressure can help with less obvious things, such as inability to study (or teach) and stagefright for example. Such points can be massaged simply and help with such problems, imagine immediately being more confident in interviews or other stressful situations, or being able to study or teach a bit better than before. As with Mudras, apart from a book there is no cost.
For alternative health books, first stop have a look in the Public Library at the alternative health section, then try the Book Depository website etc. Amazon and Abe Books can also be worth a look.
There is a good site called www.booko.com.au which will list the ten cheapest places online worldwide to buy the book you want.
The Mario Wexu book “The Ear-Gateway to balancing the Body” is very good on ear acupuncture, and cheaper too, and has a good section on pain control, a subject which most books and articles tend to gloss over without much attempt at explanation.
Infact I would recommend all therapists to buy the Mario Wexu ear book as it is written in a modern and open minded way and tends to throw light on several often murky areas of diagnosis, theory, history and treatment. It is useful for other systems too not just ear acupuncture. It is one of the most helpful books on Alternative Health that I have ever seen.
Herbs.
Herbs are often used for pain control, many of them having properties that can help reduce pain for many cases. A lot of herbs have anti inflammatory properties for instance, and many have an affinity with particular organs in the body.
Amongst the better known herbs often mentioned in pain contexts are Feverfew, Ginger, Turmeric, White Willow bark, Capsaicin from Cayenne Pepper, Birch leaf, Devil’ Claw, Arnica, Cherries (yes Cherries), Peppermint, Boswellia, Wintergreen, Oregano and many others.
Most of these herbs work because of anti-inflammatory properties, so they are treating the symptoms but not necessarily the cause of the pain. If used correctly for the type of pain and in the correct dosage they are safer and more effective than Pharmaceutical drugs but what you need if possible is a cure not just endless relief of symptoms.
Herbs can be dangerous too so research them thoroughly before using, and never overdose beyond the recommended dosage. Be extra careful what you take if you are pregnant, infact it may be better to take nothing in pregnancy unless it is an emergency and under expert supervision.
Bach Remedies.
Bach remedies are often thought of in connection with pain relief, at least indirectly. They are flower remedies from trees and other plants which are prepared by the direct sunlight method or in some cases by boiling. Dr Edward Bach got this age old method via Dr Robert T Cooper.
The Bach Rescue Remedy relieves fear, shock and foreboding and so helps to bear pain. Impatiens Bach remedy is also often mentioned as relieving pain ( possibly because it makes you less impatient ).
In any case all the Bach remedies, by changing the mental state (indeed they are prescribed on the emotional state of that individual) can have an effect on pain tolerance and in emotionally caused cases on pain production too. Actually I would not underestimate the Bach remedies at times when thinking of Alternative Health, sometimes simpler is very effective. For example the Oak remedy (Quercus Robur) often helps in alcoholism and the like.
The Bach remedies can be seen as a slightly unorthodox part of Homeopathy, indeed Dr Edward Bach and his mentor Dr Robert T Cooper (whose work on cancer is very important and interesting) were well known Homeopaths as well as prominent medically trained doctors.
Homeopathy of course has a First Aid and also Emergencies component, so any books or articles on that are well worth reading.
Therapeutic Exercises.
Some therapeutic exercises can help with pain too as in Yoga, Tibetan and Taoist systems. The Taoist internal exercises book by Dr Stephen Chang is quite effective in many cases. What helps each individual of course sometimes needs some trial and error experimentation.
Another helpful resource is Tibetan exercises as in the books by Tarthang Tulku, they may also be applicable to many syndromes of disease.
There are many different therapeutic exercise systems of course, from yoga to callisthenics and many others. Pilates, Rolfing, Feldenkrais, Tai-Chi and Tibetan systems are all well known and others also exist.
Mudras
Mudras (various hand finger positions) may also relieve pain if chosen carefully for many causes of pain. They are simple enough, free and immediately available. They work by balancing the three Doshas, or the five elements if you prefer the Chinese way of looking at it, and are of great assistance in health matters.
Just experiment with them, the books by Gertrud Hirschi on Mudras are very helpful I have found, and there are other good authors. There are many Mudra sites on the internet.
In a heart emergency the Apaan Vayu mudra or lifesaver mudra will be worth doing, it has often limited or stopped heart attacks. Of course you still need urgent medical help even if doing the mudra.
Lists of which mudras are helpful for which diseases also exist on the internet for example, and like everything there are sometimes contraindications too, for instance some mudras should only be used until the problem is relieved, for example the Wind Mudra.
Some should be used with caution if you have high blood pressure, such as Linga Mudra, and so on. Obviously mudras are connected in some way with the same sorts of theories associated with acupuncture, reflexology, colour therapy, chakras and similar approaches.
Another interesting area is Jin Shin Jitsu, a Japanese system which also utilises finger therapy similar to Mudras in many ways. Their way of looking at it is rather different, but many people have found benefit from Jin Shin Jitsu. It is claimed to be a rediscovery of an ancient system, but whether it is or not it clearly has some knowledge behind it.
Acupressure
Acupressure books can be very useful, as can the allied Japanese Shiatsu, the books by Roger Dalet and those of Michael Blate for example are practical and very useful. The Blate books are not so good on diagrams, Dalet is better from that point of view. Acupressure of course is just acupuncture without the needles.
Bowen Therapy (based on the work of Tom Bowen in Geelong) can often relieve pain effectively also. It is an unusual type of soft massage, originally based on Shiatsu probably more than anything else, but developed by Tom Bowen into a somewhat different system.
Spectrochrome Colour Therapy
Spectrochrome Colour Therapy can help pain in many cases too by fixing the imbalance or directly trying to address the pain.
In a simple colour prescription Indigo, Violet or Purple tonations of the affected area or systemic (larger body areas) tonations with these colours including the affected area should help with pain. Of course if it recurs the cause has to be investigated more thoroughly to try and remove it.
Blue light will take out burn pains (and of course lower the shock), keep tonating until pain goes. Of course nowadays a bad burn will be in the hospital, but whenever not, or if waiting for medical help, the blue will be better than other treatments. Spectrochrome saved many lives with it, if nothing else is available shine a light through a blue bottle or blue plastic over the burn with a lamp or even a flashlight, a lot better than nothing.
Contact me on mobile 044 966 1062 in Sydney Australia if you need Colour Therapy or more information.
The book “Let There be Light” by Darius Dinshah is well worth getting from the non-profit Dinshah Health Society. It contains colour therapy prescriptions for most diseases and lots of explanation of colour therapy, everybody needs the book!
Specific named holographic areas on microsystems.
Various maps of ear, hands, feet and other reflecting holographic areas show areas for pain. These are well worth having a go at with various techniques to see if they make a difference to the pain you are dealing with. Massage, acupressure, probes, magnets, colour, hot and cold and other techniques can be tried on these pain and other holographic areas depicted on the maps.
Paul Nogier ear maps, Chinese ear maps and many other holographic maps of areas such as ear, feet and hands show such areas for treating pain (and for treating other syndromes such as cancer, diabetes and arthritis).
There are also holographic reflecting areas on many maps for cancer too, for example three different cancer points on the soles of the feet for different body areas and their tumours. These three are acupoints, but other larger zones exist in many holographic systems and can be part of a treatment regimen. Similar areas exist for most well known diseases such as diabetes for example.
These points for such conditions as pain and cancer are on various parts of the body, and you just need to keep researching, as usually these things are not mentioned in a very coherent way in most books or courses.
Various Chinese and other charts for Reflexology and Acupuncture etc show specific areas affected by pain, cancer, diabetes and other disease syndromes, and the more you look the more such information you can find. Of course you can use them as well as other approaches to treatment for the disease according to what you have managed to learn. Acupoints, mudras, sujok, colour can all be used as well as herbs and exercises for example.
Working on such mainly holographic reaction areas as pain or cancer areas for example can be creatively experimented with to see what works and what doesn’t work. Of course you can just use massage techniques, but there are lots of other options.
You might try colour, magnets, moxa, hot and cold, and other methods to sedate or tonify through these specific areas, or indeed any other method you think might help.
Tieing in the pain, cancer, diabetes and similar holographic reflecting areas with one of the many Sujok treatment strategies would also make sense, examples of such strategies for example are found easily in Nail Therapy and in the Seed Therapy books.
Creativity comes into it, which is very heartening, rather than just following a program mechanistically (to build your creativity Gestalt Therapy will be of great assistance. The Brain Mudra (Gyan Mudra) also builds intellect and creativity, as well as lowering stress and blood pressure.
Visualisation techniques or even talking to the reaction area through Gestalt techniques may be worth a try, always keeping an eye on whether the patient feels better or worse from the activity. Of course you need to read some of the Gestalt Therapy book (and do one of my courses or workshops preferably) to see what ways you might be able to use and how to use them.
Sujok Twist Therapy
Another branch of Sujok is Twist Therapy, which uses simple twist movements throughout the body to address health problems.
This is based on a theory of three dimensional structure called TriOrigin and has different types of twist exercise for each body area depending on diagnosis of these three types of problem (homo,hetero and neutro).
Getting my head around Twist Therapy since I finally decided to fork out the money for the book a few months ago has not been so easy yet, but even so some of the twist methods are simple enough to apply.
Actually from what I have seen I think Sujok Twist Therapy can be extremely important for pain treatment and health generally, and knowledge of it needs to grow around the world.
Once again the idea of therapeutic twist exercises is not really new, after all Yoga, Tai-Chi and many other modalities use such an approach, but Dr Park Jae Woo implemented and understood it I think more profoundly than most people, just as he did with the many holographic correspondence systems.
Of course if you want more than temporary relief of pain then the cause, physical or ultimately emotional, has to be fixed. So persevering until it is finally resolved (if it can be permantly resolved) is very necessary.
Wide reading in many different modalities of alternative health can gradually equip you better to deal with pain and with all other health problems. Don’t give up, the answers are definitely out there.
It always amazes me how many people just swallow painkillers for years on end and do not put in much effort to solve the pain problem at the source. Some of them do not even know what is causing their pain, or what pills they are taking, they just take the tablets.