Meditation And Other Non-medical Types Of Therapy

If you are going through a period of crisis, there are various techniques that can improve your quality of life, whether you are sick or healthy. These techniques can be the perfect complement to medical treatment if you are ill or just want a new spirit of life. They all fall into the category of non-medical types of therapy and include meditation, reiki, music therapy and more.

So let’s take a little journey and define these types of therapy and their impact on our physical and mental well-being. In addition, we need to define what well-being means and how it differs from the concept of health.

What are non-medical types of therapy?

Diseases are traditionally circumvented through a medical point of view. That is, crises, distress, and disease are solved with pills. Fortunately, this mindset has evolved and it is now believed that medical treatment is necessary in many cases, but it is not sufficient or optimal to improve the patient’s quality of life. On the contrary, things like meditation are being used more and more as a supplement to medical treatment.

“He is the best doctor who knows the worthlessness of most drugs.”

-Benjamin Franklin-

It is important to ask how other non-medical techniques can affect the patient’s quality of life or perception of their own well – being, as well as their physical health through the effect they have on the immune system. And on top of that, we should also ask about their possible implementation in specific health centers and involvement in current therapeutic programs.

“Health is not everything, but without it, everything else is nothing.”
-ONE. Shopenhauer-

Although research on these techniques is relatively new, in 1977 Engel had already suggested the need for a biopsychosocial medical model. In it, he suggested that biological, psychological and social aspects are all involved in overall health.

What is wellness?

We can conceptualize well-being as a set of attitudes and behaviors that improve one’s quality of life and contribute to achieving optimal state of health (Donatelle, Snow & Wilcox, 1999). In other words , it is an active process aimed at improving one’s life in all aspects.

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not just the absence of disease or weakness.”
World Health Organization, 1948-

Here, non-medical types of therapy come into play, as they allow the individual to be the main actor in their own health. This can be achieved through healthy habits due to the proper adjustment and integration of physical, mental, social, spiritual and emotional factors at any level of health or illness. Therefore , you can experience well-being, whether you are sick or healthy.

“There is no medicine that can cure everything that happiness can not cure.”
-Gabriel García Márquez-

These results are very important both for clinicians and for ordinary people because they lead us to new avenues that allow the use of psychological treatment as a form of disease prevention.

“It is more important to know what kind of person has an illness than to know what kind of illness a person has.”
-Hippocrates-

How does stress affect us?

A person’s personality and emotional experiences affect their health and are an important link in illness and mental stress. Psychological stress affects the immune system and the diseases mediated by it.

“The good doctor treats the disease; the amazing doctor treats the patient who has the disease. “

-William Osler-

Stressful situations, such as traumatic experiences and divorce, can create negative emotions, such as depression, fear, and hopelessness. These situations activate the central nervous system (CNS) and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and produce changes in the immune system, which is a blow to the body’s defenses.

There are many strategies that can be used to deal with stress, and there are various studies of alternative types of therapy that minimize the impact of stress and increase people’s sense of well-being. These include music therapy, meditation, reiki, yoga, visualization, physical activity, psychotherapy, etc.

Connect with your inner self through meditation

Do you meditate? Do you doubt the efficiency? Want to know what research has been done on it? Before answering these questions, I must mention that there are many other techniques that I will not include here. For now, we will focus on reiki, music therapy, meditation, acupuncture and laughter therapy.

“Laughter is the only medicine without side effects.”
-Shannon L. Alder-

Today , Eastern activities, such as meditation and yoga, have become much more popular. A study was conducted on 86 patients with chronic diseases, where all participants followed an intervention program based on yoga, group discussions and information on stress management. The studies showed a decrease in cortisol levels, an increase in beta-endorphins and a decrease in interleukins and tumor necrosis factor after 10 days of intervention.

After interpreting the results of various studies, we can conclude the following:

• Non-medical types of therapy show an increase in immunoglobulins, which affects the patient’s well-being, whether it is the main intervention or contribution to medical treatment.
• It has also been shown that non-medical types of therapy lower stress levels due to a decrease in cortisol levels.
• However, there are limitations to this new area of ​​research, and it is important to note individual differences in patients and different forms of disease in order to apply these techniques correctly. Therefore, there is still not much material to refer to when doing a new study.
• For this reason, the results of studies of non-medical techniques can be confused with a placebo effect, which is generated by the therapist’s positive expectations for healing the patient.

Finally, we give you a link to a project in the UK that makes playlists for patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s as a new type of memory loss: