The Burden of Proof in Holistic Medicine | ChineseMedicineTools.com: Chinese Medicine & Acupuncture Social Community ~ Video ~ Podcasts

Christian Nix

September 29, 2009

The Burden of Proof in Holistic Medicine

When I speak to MD's about what I do, the questions I field seem to fit within certain categories. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that their queries seem motivated by an easily recognizable curiosity. The training of the western physician compels him/her to organize the reality of health and illness along certain distinguishing and definable lines. Once I was asked by middle-aged gynecologist "what is holism?" Wow, that really woke me. Yet upon reflection - this question and others I routinely hear asked are as predictable as they are legitimate.

The training of the Western physician is not only long and arduous but is characterized by certain parameters.

"A critical experience for most medical students (is) where they see physiological responses to various chemicals introduced into a living animal . . . (which) serves as the architecture for developing medical knowledge . . . (this) quickly becomes the only reasonable way to think . . . physiology elaborates this world in the language of mechanism and function." (Good and Good, 1993)

To realize the metaphors - or cognitive system - employed by conventional, reductionist medicine is to take a big step toward understanding that which it does and does not acknowledge as real.

"If and when we think reductionistically about the mind-body, it is because it is 'good for us to think' in this way. To do otherwise, using a radically different metaphysics would imply the 'unmaking' of our own assumptive reality. To admit the 'as-ifness' of our ethnoepistemology is to court the Cartesian anxiety - the fear that in the absence of a sure objective foundation for knowledge we would fall into the void, into the chaos of absolute relativism and subjectivity." (Scheper-Hughes and Locke, 1987)

The perceived fallacy of objectivity in science is not so much a fallacy as a paradox. Quantitative data is objective only insofar as it remains within the realm of the physical. No one can argue with the results of a blood-cell count, the presence or absence of a physical tissue (neoplastic malignancy). But objectivity breaks down when subjective interpretation and meaning must prevail. The trouble with quantitative data is that it can be utterly devoid of meaning. Quantitative data is objective only in-so-far as it can be verified. Reductionist-style, conventional medicine prefers quantitative data precisely because reductionism favors physical, material aspects of reality. But the paradox enters when one considers the need to interpret that 'objective' and quantitative data.

Interpretation involves assigning meaning and meaning inevitably requires subjectivity. The objectification of nature was a critical step and no one can deny the tremendous advances that have been realized.

"Darwin's alienation of the outside from the inside was an absolutely essential step in the development of modern biology. Without it, we would still be wallowing in the mire of an obscurantist holism that merged the organic and the inorganic into an un-analyzable whole. But the conditions that are necessary for progress at one stage in history become bars to further progress at another. (Lewontin: 2000)

It is plain -- from a given point of view -- that the greatest challenge to the reductionist cognitive system in medicine has been its success. (Becker, p.20)

The issue most deserving of attention and the question I am most frequently asked by MD's involves the issue of proof. In holism proof dresses in a cloak of subjectivity that also has an objective basis underneath. Like reductionism, understanding holism bears the burden of paradox as well. This article takes a look at the complex subject of 'what constitutes scientific proof?'

To properly address the question above we must first ponder an even more fundamental one. What is science? Robert Becker reminds readers in his revealing classic The Body Electric, that 'scientific' medicine long-ago abandoned the central principle of science - 'revision in light of new data.' (Becker, p. 20) Sonya Pritzker has this to say about the current trend in medical science:

"Crisis . . . 'a crucial or decisive point or situation: a turning point . . . an unstable condition . . . involving an impending abrupt or decisive change . . . which aptly describes the transition taking place in science today. In physics, biology, chemistry . . . experts concur on the fact that the traditionally western dependence upon reductionism, linear thinking . . . has reached its limits." (Pritzker, 2002)

Candace Pert likewise comments on the frustration of working within the reductionist model.

"Measurement! It is the very foundation of the modern scientific method, the means by which the material world is admitted into existence. Unless we can measure something, science won't concede it exists, which is why science refuses to deal with such "non-things" as the emotions, the mind, the soul or the spirit." (Pert, p. 21)

The backlash against reductionist medicine and the crisis referred to by Pritzker is a tricky knot to untie. Too much has been made of reductionist methodology as being a synonym for science (with a capital S). Yet assuredly one can recognize a logical, rational basis for holism -- if one admits one's "ethnoepistemology." The lessons bequeathed by reductionist science - namely its rigid adherence to controlled studies -- are a gift that must not be swept away by those holistic neophytes who seek to fill the void of subjectivity - excluded as it is from reductionist methodology - by an over-adherence to subjective interpretation. Such low-level application of holism inevitably involves spirits and disembodied entities being channeled to assist in diagnosis and treatment. This need not be overt. Rather, many holistic practitioners only reveal their reliance on intuition or spirit-guides when pressed for an explanation of their treatment strategy.

Chronic disease is - more often than not - added to and encouraged by the patient; to wit, inept lifestyle design, societal pressures, diet, exercise (lack thereof). Chronic disease inevitably entails some (correct) subjective interpretation and awareness by the patient over how to alter their life path in such a way as to intercede in the illness process by opposing it - i.e. by practicing wellness. In holism, the seminal influence of subjective reality is impossible to ignore. Here's the trick: subjective reality can also be verified. When a patient says they can't stop thinking / worrying, this subjective report will not exist in isolation from other signs or symptoms. Holistic science recognizes that signs and symptoms do not exist in singular isolation, but as patterns of imbalance in which one sign or symptom will help to corroborate a given constellation or picture of the disharmony. The issue is not that subjective aspects should cause one to,

"fall into the void, into the chaos of absolute relativism and subjectivity." (Scheper-Hughes and Locke, 1987)

A patient who can't stop thinking may simultaneously exhibit; swollen tongue with teeth marks on the edges, red tongue tip with possible source or painful points, a subjective feeling of pressure in the chest, red eyes, tremors or spastic movements, poor digestion and loose stools, or dry-bound stools. Thousands of years of empirical observation verifies that certain predictable patterns of signs and symptoms will underlie and accompany the chief complaint of excessive thinking. Holistic science is logical and peer-reviewable. The danger of holism-as-spiritual-medicine is that it negates and disavows rational logic. One need not - and ultimately cannot - provide verifiable proof of their god's presence and contribution to diagnosis and treatment. However, holism-as-logical-science can be peer-reviewed.

Holistic science does not require communion with deities, gods or spirits. Anyone familiar with the fantastically brilliant prescriptive methodology of holistic Chinese medicine knows that,

"The most effective way of doing Chinese medicine is based on pattern . . . discrimination. That's (the) safest . . . (you're) least likely to have a side effect. When you prescribe something according to the pattern, you're actually prescribing it for that individual patient's personal needs. That's why Chinese medicine is safe. That's why it's holistic. That's why it has no side-effects. . . The whole benefit of Chinese medicine is that we have this fantastically, brilliant prescriptive methodology. . . . The important thing about Chinese medicine is the prescriptive methodology. . . It's not the medicine, it's the theory . . . what's important about Chinese medicine . . . is how we prescribe things." (Bob Flaws: from a lecture on Chinese Internal Medicine, Blue Poppy Distance Learning)

Contrast such a statement with this comment on the epistemology of western medicine vis a vis Chinese medicine, made by a western MD,

" . . .medical science is not a science at all: It is to a large extent based on sciences - but it has yet to become a science . . . Western medicine, like Chinese medicine, developed empirically. Unlike Chinese medicine, however, it developed without being guided by a fundamentally stable theoretical framework." (Yan, p. 15)

The belief that holism requires greater spirituality in order to be performed correctly is one of the greatest obstacles to any attempt at integration in medicine. Unfortunately, holistic practitioners themselves seem the most eager to perpetuate this myth as they perch on some illusory -ground and from their supposedly more spiritual point of view, stare down contemptuously upon reductionism and its mechanical motif, unable as it is to "to deal with such "non-things" as the emotions, the mind, the soul or the spirit." (Pert, p. 21)

This lack of 'revision in light of new data' is seen nowhere so clearly as it is in the exclusion of quantum reality from conventional physics. What's the connection between quantum and subjectivity? The patient with chronic disease is getting signals, messages, (some as subtle as a 2 x 4 to the head), about how their lifestyle and belief system, diet and physical regimen are driving their illness. In other words, the key to recovery for many chronic diseases is the correct and timely analysis of the patient's subjective reality of illness. (The author freely admits that not all disease can be eradicated simply by a realization of mind-body connection and that illness is frequently a complicated and mysterious affair. Nonetheless, my comments are aimed at the over-whelming majority or patients who hinder their own recovery by ignoring the essential signals that are inevitably present in the life and body of one who is chronically ill). One of the most significant principles of quantum reality - and by far the most actionable - is the essential point that any observation, life-experience or occurrence is being influenced by the observer as well as the influencing. In other words, life through the quantum lens posits a simple ineluctable truth: you are experiencing what you are experiencing because it is significant to you. Your whole life journey is one long, subjective tunnel. Quantum blows the doors and windows off the house of scientific objectivity precisely because whatever the individual is noticing about their illness is essential to the understanding of and recovery from that illness. What is the practical application of integration? It has nothing whatever to do with an academic understanding of quantum theory. James Gordon M.D. of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine places self-care at the center of any shift in treatment strategy. The demands of modern diseases and the state of human health in this epoch suggest that the patient with an empowered ability to 'read' the signs and symptoms, who is able to determine for themselves what action to take in alleviating their own suffering stands a much better chance of achieving and maintaining a good quality of life in the face of chronic disease.

The Burden of Proof: Conventional Medicine and Proof

"Physics is messy . . . and it's not that this mess is a mess created by the dirt that's on the microscope glass. It's that this mess is inherent in the systems themselves. You can't capture any of them and confine them in a neat box of logic." (Waldrop, 1992)

The preference for empirical, quantifiable data that yet exists within conventional medical science is a hindrance to this more complete approach to healthcare and healing.

The time has arrived to reconsider the limits of linear- reductionism as it maintains a doctrine of separation and specialization which hinders a more complete approach to healthcare in general and to integrative medicine in particular. "The narrow population-based RCT (randomized controlled trial) approach that has been widely acclaimed in evidence-based medicine fails to include qualitative measures, thereby missing important data regarding the meaning and impact of the therapy on patients." (Johnston and Mills, 2004)

The tendency in conventional medicine is to acknowledge quantitative evidence as the primary proof of validation. Matter being less ambiguous to measure than say, thought or feeling, there is a strong preference for that which can be quantified. Qualitative evidence is left the task of proving its worth. I might tell my reader that the U.S. soccer team lost 2-1 to Ghana, however, this quantitative data would do little to convey the quality of play, the run of the match and the performance of the players of both teams. This 'just give me the bottom line" approach that is the signature preference of conventional medicine is of less use in medical situations where the quality of the patient's life experience is the main goal of treatment.

The main casualty of conventional medicine is an inherent loss of meaning. The subjective experience of the patient's illness is passed over in favor of an interpretation that focuses, not on what is inherently useful or empowering about the reality of illness and how it may require and even motivate useful growth, change and evolution within that patient; but rather on the disease, the evil that has disrupted the paradise of wellness. This loss of subjective meaning may be the essential piece that is recovered by an epistemology that attempts to view things, not in isolation, but in relationship and interconnected wholeness.

Research and Holism

"Nothing happens in this world of causality that does not originate in some cause. So the idea of an "acausal (holistic) connection" seems to be ruled out right from the start - there is simply no room for it in a universe of (linear) causality." (Peat, 1987)

In the December 2004 issue of The Journal of Alternative and Complimentary Medicine, Bradley Johnston and Edward Mills make a compelling argument for a shift in research methodologies away from studies using large population 'n'toward an 'n-of-1' approach in which the subjective experience of the individual is of primary importance to treatment efficacy. What is n-of-1 except the inclusion of subjectivity? N-of-1 not only permits for, but actually requires the inclusion of the patient's subjective experience of illness and the meaning that it imbues. The authors do not suggest that n-of-1 utterly supplant all methodologies of research. Rather they advocate the elevation of an n-of-1 approach in the study of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), on holism, on the inclusive aspect of reality, not on the exclusive principle of reductionism.

What type of patients and medical situations might most benefit from such a shift in research methods? "n-of-1 trials are . . . applicable to chronic, recurrent conditions that require long-term, non-curative treatment." (Johnson and Mills, 2004) Why does n-of-1 hold special appeal for such situations? Because "narrow population (i.e. large n) . . . fails to include qualitativemeasures, thereby missing important data regarding meaning . . . n-of-1 . . . may be able to identify more effectively the ways in which patients find meaning through CAM therapies." (ibid) In the same way that holism imbues reality with an interconnected and qualitative bias, so too n-of-1 emphasizes the qualitative and subjective aspect of the patient's lived experience of illness. Inherent in such a view is that symptoms maintain meaning for the patient. Meaning, qualitative insight and the subjective experience are all supported by an n-of-1 approach and these seem also to be the primary tenets of diagnosing and treating disease for which no cure yet exists.

In order to conduct research on such a supposition, quantitative research based on assumptions of linear cause and effect, reductionism and the doctrine of separation must necessarily give way to and/or include a qualitative approach in which the patient's inner reality and felt-experience of illness or healing is paramount to the promotion of empowerment. Furthermore, holism - by its very nature - lends not only to a qualitative method detailing one's lived experience, but to an n-of-1 approach in which the uniqueness of each individual and their experience is held to be of importance equal to any quantitative set of data. Can n-of-1 studies reveal how choice is influencing the health or illness of an individual? Contained within this question lies some of the tenets and suppositions about what a useful shift in healthcare must consider. Ultimately, a mixed approach which employs both qualitative and quantitative methods may provide the most accurate way to collect data and to decipher its meaning.

Fundamentals and Requisites

In a 1998 study into why people seek medical care that is alternative to conventional Western science, there was a trend among respondents that indicated a desire to discover a medical approach that allowed for the inclusion of spirit. In other words, the massive numbers of Americans who seek alternative modalities, do so because they feel these other modalities inherently include and acknowledge some aspect of the divine and they believe they are better served by treatment that sees a human being as more than a mechanistic sum of various disparate parts. (Astin, 1998) This search for a link to spirit within medicine and healing is consistent with a cultural trend (awakening?) in which spirit may be conceived of as an impartial and functional entity that may be accessed for guidance and inspiration rather than an authority that must be punitively obeyed and feared. (Myss, 2001) The concept of spirit as a functional part of the human psyche opens the way for what is really at the heart of any grass-roots attempt to shift healthcare - i.e. self-empowerment and self-care. (Gordon, 2006)

The Issue of Research Methodologies

The fundamental discourse about the efficacy of a given research methodology has to do with the issue of how a given methodology affects outcome. In other words, the way in which one inquires is of singular importance in determining what one eventually discovers. How one poses the question and the parameters one establishes as one's methodology affects what one perceives as the answer to that inquiry. Because self-care necessarily implies the inclusion of a patient's inner, subjective reality - a large portion of which may not be accessible to quantitative approaches - the challenge for researchers is to discover ways in which one may expose, include and validate the importance of the patient's subjective experience. Furthermore, the core significance of how a given research method affects outcomes is that certain approaches hinder patient empowerment and other approaches inherently expose the patient's own role in the creation of their reality of health or illness.

Strengths and Weaknesses

"Medicine has been hampered by the incessant forces favoring specialization." (Ewald, 2002) Not surprisingly then, Western medicine as a whole "can be described as hostile to connotative discourse." (Garro and Mattingly, 2000). It is narrative inquiry and interview that most lends to collaboration in expounding the subjective aspects of reality. "In narrative studies it makes little sense to band together in exclusionary disciplinary tribes. There is too much to be gained from cross-fertilizations that draw widely upon the social sciences, as well as literature, history and philosophy." (ibid) This stands in sharp contrast to the segmented and decidedly compartmentalized approach that conventional science has followed for the past several centuries in which all other sciences are presumed inferior to physics.

The notion of inclusion - the inclusion of the patient's actual lived experience in understanding what is happening to them therapeutically - is echoed at a meta-level by the work of Linda TuhiwaiSmith. Her book Decolonizing Methodologies describes the fundamental pitfalls of conducting research on peoples of different cultures without casting an eye to the biases of the observer and concludes that research and analysis done 'at a distance' can never accurately portray the lived experience of the people it seeks to illuminate. Furthermore, the types of biases that are maintained when conducting research as an outsider only serve to highlight the self-referential blind-spot of the observer.

"Most research methodologies assume that the researcher is an outsider able to observe without being implicated in the scene. This is related to positivism and notions of objectivity and neutrality. Feminist research and other more critical approaches have made the insider methodology much more acceptable in qualitative research . . . the critical issue with insider research is the constant need for reflexivity." (Smith, 1999)

The parallel here is that the legacy of separation lends to predictable results whether one applies such an epistemology to methods of anthropologic study or whether one seeks to empower one's patients. The obvious conclusion is that one must include the subject(s) being studied. ". . . Community concerns were always reframed around standard research problems. How can research ever address our needs as indigenous peoples if our questions are never taken seriously? It was as if the community's questions were never heard, simply passed over, silenced." (ibid) Similarly, it is essential that individual patients have their subjective reality included as a part of their process of healing. Without this inclusion of their subjective view-point, any therapy or technique will only ever be partially successful. The input about how a people (person) will take part in their own redemption from illness to health is an essential and conspicuously absent piece to the methodology that sees phenomena and patients as essentially discrete and disconnected entities.

The legacy of separation and the holistic approach which seeks to provide balance through recognizing various interconnected relationships can amalgamate to form new methods of inquiry. The essential issue of how methodologies of research affect outcomes points toward a fundamentally different assumption about patients and toward different criteria for researchers to address. Is it not essential - in a model in which self-empowerment is primary - that the patient be permitted to discern for themselves not just the pattern of events that lead to illness, but also the meaning of their experience as it relates to wellness/recovery? How can a patient learn to recognize the ways and the moments in which their mind is creating their matter?

Judith A. Sedgeman of the West Virginia University initiative for Innate Health says 'yes' to the former question above. In a paper on Innate Health and Healing Realization (IH/HR), Sedgeman makes an interesting observation that gives interdisciplinary evidence of the shift in research methodologies which attempt to include the lived experience of the individual. In her research on stress and its effects on a given individual, the question is shifted as to the where stress arises.

"The persistent assumption that stress is a consequence of factors outside of the control of the individual, however, has kept research attention on the relationship between stressors and the individuals who are subject to them. As a result, studies focus on how best to protect people from stressors or equip them to respond to stressors as successfully as possible. A question for further study is how people access their internal resiliency. What allows some people to draw on their internal strengths when they most need them, while others are easily overwhelmed? What explains the power of the psychological immune system, and why is it not consistently engaged or functioning?" (Sedgeman, 2005)

The author highlights the disconnection between the source-origin of stress and the person suffering its effects. This is symptomatic of the self-referential blind-spot, analysis-at-a-distance and the reductionist archetypal methodology. The compelling twist that Innate Health researchers are introducing is that . . . the individual is empowered and not passive. So long as stress is seen as an outer force, no individual can hope to manage it. But this belief that stress arises from outside is a methodology based on the same beliefs that gave rise to the eminence of western science and that now limits that science. In other words, the essential difference to this empowering approach lies in the way the research question is posed and the method by which inquiry is conducted. By shifting assumptions about the origins of stress and no longer agreeing to assume that stress originates from without the individual who experiences its effects, the patient's subjective reality and, more importantly, their personal role in the creation of that stress is acknowledged and included in the methodology. If one were to put on the interdisciplinary goggles necessary in this line of study, one can discern that this is roughly analogous to the findings of Linda T. Smith who reminds us that it is not possible to approach another group of people as an outsider and ever hope to wholly understand their lived experience (so long as one were to remain an outsider). Furthermore, the suppositions of IH/HR are consistent with the tenets of CAM modalities in which the shift is toward an empowered individual. If the way in which one frames inquiry of their experience is central to how they will recognize and narrate that experience, to how that experience will color and shape their reality of health or illness, then any patient who seeks healing from chronic disease is better served by a method of inquiry that permits them to frame their search for pattern and understanding in a way that empowers them from the start and assumes that the source of their illness is not outside of their choosing but rather within it. (1)

Michael Taussig writes about this same issue concerning a lack of alternative ontologies in American medicine, saying that they are "denied by an ideology or epistemology which regards its creations as really lying 'out-there' - solid, substantial things-in-themselves . . . this illusion is ubiquitous in our culture." (Taussig, 2003) Thus it is not only that reductionism is itself a uniquely discernable ontology, it is also the case that a feature of reductionism is to deny comparable status to any alternative ontological world-view save one which reflects reductionism.

Whereas conventional medical diagnosis and treatment requires a disempowered, passive and compliant patient, similarly, conventional research methodologies maintain a focus on pathology, disease, and problems. In contrast to this, just as CAM modalities have an inherent focus on self-help as a central tenet of treatment of and recovery from illness, so too narrative interview has a primary preference for focusing on the actual lived experience of the individual and their illness/recovery with all the concomitant meaning and insights that accompany such a focus.

"N-of-1 trials have been used for diagnostic purposes and can help develop better diagnostic tests. Chinese and naturopathic medical practitioners often treat "syndrome" or "subclinical" conditions according to their particular evaluation and diagnostic procedures." (Johnston and Mills, 2004)

Analysis at a distance and large n randomized control trials (RCT) is to linear-reductionism what n-of-1 RCT is to qualitative pattern discrimination with its assumption of synchronous causality (Table 1; Guyatt, et al, 2002). Synchronicity is - by nature - an n-of-1 phenomenon. "the essence of a synchronicity is that the particular pattern has a meaning or value for the individual who experiences it . . . synchronicities act as mirrors to the inner processes of mind and take the form of outer manifestations of interior transformations." (Peat, 1987) In addition, the ability to cognize health and illness at a 'subclinical' level is what lends to prevention. In a world where cause and effect do not have to be linear, one may notice the disharmony between mind and body that eventually gives rise to serious illness, long before a gross anomaly like a neoplastic growth becomes detectable (i.e. quantifiable).

Conclusion

The inclusion of a patient's lived experience mimics the very notion of quantum reality - the exclusion of which so defines and limits the conventional, mechanistic approach to healthcare. With the inclusion of a synchronistic principle of causality, the patient's role in determining their own health and illness becomes impossible to ignore. Similarly, it is within quantum reality that the notion of the isolated observer collapses utterly and is no longer supportable. The physicist Wolfgang Pauli was one of the first to report such a possibility and did so in correspondence to his countryman Carl Jung. "Pauli believed that synchronicity made it possible to begin a dialogue between physics and psychology in such a way that the subjective would be introduced into physics and the objective into psychology . . . in which subjective and objective aspects would reveal different features of the same underlying phenomena." (Peat, 1987)

Not only do qualitative methods require a shift in assumptions about causality in nature, but an emphasis on meaning also requires that assumptions about healing must be expanded to include more than merely a notion of physical cure. A research methodology that includes a synchronous principle of causality will orient a patient-subject toward the discovery of meaning within their quest for healing and recovery - whether or not that quest ends in cure.

It is subjective meaning that is missing from a heavily quantitative approach. It is synchronicity that imbues experience with meaning. It is CAM modalities and qualitative methodologies - of which n-of-1 is the epitome - that imbue healing and research with meaning. It is meaning that empowers patients to manage their chronic illness. It is meaning that is the common thread.

Works Cited

· Astin, John A. Why Patients Use Alternative Medicine: results of a national study. JAMA. 1998: 279; 1348-1353

· Becker, Robert and Gary Selden. The Body-Electric.

· Garro, Linda C. and Mattingly, Cheryl. Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing. University of California Press, Berkeley, California; 2000

· Good, Byron J. and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good. Learning Medicine: the constructing of medical knowledge at Harvard Medical school. From Knowledge, Power and Practice; the anthropology of medicine and everyday life. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993.

· Gordon, James. From a lecture: Center for Mind-Body Medicine, Professional Training Program. Berkeley, California; January 2006

· Guyatt G, Haynes B, Jaeschke R, Cook D, Greenhalgh T, Mead M, Green L, Naylor CD, Wilson M, McAlister F, Richardson WS. Introduction: The Philosophy of evidence-based medicine, Guyatt G, Rennie D, eds. Users' Guides to the Medical Literature: A Manual for Evudence-based Clinical Practice. Chicago: American Medical Association Press, 2002:3-11

· Johnston, Bradley C and Mills, Edward. N-of-1 Randomized Controlled Trials: An opportunity for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Evaluation. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, volume 10, number 6, 2004, pp. 979-984

· Lewontin, Richard. The Triple Helix: gene organism and environment. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2000

· Myss, Carolyn. From and audio recording; Advanced Energy Anatomy, Sounds True recordings, 2001

· Peat, F. David. Synchronicity: the bridge between mind and matter. Bantam Book, New York, 1987

· Pert, Candace. Molecules of Emotion - why you feel the way you do. Touchstone Press, New York, NY. 1999

· Pritzker, Sonya. From the Simple to the Complex: what is complexity theory and how does it relate to Chinese medicine? Clinical Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. Elsevier Science Ltd. Vol. 3. 2002. p. 99-104

· Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Margaret Locke. The Mindful Body. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Volume 1, number 1. March, 1987

· Sedgeman, Judith A. Health Realization/Innate Health: can a quiet mind and a positive feeling state be accessible over the lifespan without stress relief techniques? Medical Science Monitor, 2005; 11 (12): HY 47-52

· Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies. University of Otago Press, Dunedin, New Zealand, 1999

· Taussig, Michael. The Nervous System. "Reification and the Consciousness of the Patient." Routledge. New York, London. 2003.

· Waldrop, M. Complexity: the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. New York. Simon and Schuster. 1992

· Yan, Johnson F.: DNA and the I Ching: the Tao of Life. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California 1991.

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