Meditating for Health

Excerpts from the Edmonton Journal, Saturday, 6 January 1993

(No by-line)

Western medicine is one of science’s great achievements……We marvel at some of the machines and we gobble an array of pills and medicines. We also still get sick…..And we pay an ever-increasing amount for health care. Financially, our miraculous medical system is practically killing us.

A small experiment at the Calgary General Hospital should be watched with interest. There, a group of staff members have set up what they call the “East Meets West Interest Group” to explore non-western forms of health care and treatment that are much less interventionistic than western medicine, absolutely non-technological, and, it is worth saying, much less expensive. Also, the eastern forms of health care they are studying are not sickness-based, but rather based on notions of wellness. These staff members, and perhaps their patients in days to come, will spend more time healing themselves–or ensuring that they don’t get sick.

The worlds of East and West can be complementary, to the benefit of both……And so the Calgary hospital staffers are investigating tai chi, yoga, biofeedback, massage based on a Chinese model of body meridians, meditation and so on……”Eastern medicine is promoting the natural healing within us, whereas western medicine is more an intervention,” says Wendy Panton, a nursing unit manager…….The eastern approaches would place more responsibility for wellness on individuals, resulting in less formal health care. It is preventive medicine.