Concluding Session

At the last session of this course, there was a chance to reflect upon what we have learned over the last seven weeks. As shown in the picture to the left, we illustrated what we have learnt by making posters. I feel I have learnt a lot. Although different to the majority of our medical teaching, this course was not about memorising and regurgitating facts, but about learning through reflecting upon our experiences. I believe that this has allowed a much greater depth of learning, both about holistic healing and what that entails, but also my own attitudes and beliefs about a variety of aspects of life. I found exploring the concept of health very interesting, and I feel our discussions on this subject has changed how I will approach the subject in relation to my own health and also to that of others.

I also feel an important learning point in this SSC was about distributing my time sensibility, allowing time for myself; to relax, socialise and have fun. It is easy, to get bogged down in the vast amounts of work which we have to do for university, however, on reflection, I think a lot of this is self created. By creating unrealistic targets about work I can easily create more work for myself, making self motivation difficult. However, by remembering the other aspects of my life, and allocating time for these, it helps gain perspective.


I now feel I have a greater understanding of the meaning of holistic healing and its benefits to both myself and patients. I believe its approach creates a feeling of well being rather than a ‘scientific health’. Although many are medically healthy, they may grade themselves higher if they undertake some holistic therapies which may result in them feeling much positive in life.

Feeling of health: 9/10
What I will change: Whilst I would very much like to partake in holistic therapies unfortunately student finances make this difficult. I could consider using birthday money to treat myself in this respect but would have to learn how not to feel guilty about spending money in this way!

Alternative Therapy

This week, the group attended a therapy centre. Here, therapies such as massage, reiki and reflexology are performed, for descriptions of different types of massage see the massage company. I feel this is a session a lot of the group were looking forward to, in particular the massage. I was able to have a hydrotherm massage whilst visiting (illustrated on the left). This is a relatively new form of massage where you lay on a mattress filled with warm water allowing the therapist to slide their hands under the patient’s body to exert pressure on their muscles. This allows the massage to go deep into the muscles without discomfort. An advantage of Hydrotherm over other forms of massage is the warm water improves blood circulation and therefore is often used for muscle injuries. I found the massage to be very relaxing and also interesting as the sole purpose of such a massage is to relax. Although I therefore feel I benefited a lot from this massage, feeling less tense afterwards, I noticed their price list on the way out and it was very high. I was unable to try any of the other therapies due to them being in such high demand! However, I was able to observe reflexology being performed on a fellow student. Whilst doing the reflexology, the therapist was able to explain the theories behind it. I learnt reflexology is an ‘energy therapy’ which uses massage mostly on the feet but also the hands to benefit other parts of the body. He went through different areas on the hands and feet and explained to which part they relate to in the body. He then went on to tell us stories on how reflexology had benefited his patients in the past. However, as open-minded as I tried to be, I remained unconvinced, feeling the benefits were due to the pleasant experience of having your feet massaged rather than his ability to remove a blockage of an invisible ‘life force’. I realise however that this may just be my scepticism toward anything without a sound and proved scientific basis, but I am still not convinced! However, I don’t deny that having a massage is very relaxing, even if it’s just a one of treat.

Feeling of health: Before: 7/10 before: 9/10
What I learned: Massages can be relaxing and can make an individual feel more healthy
What I will change: save up for a massage

How Healthy am I?

During this session we explored what each of us do to stay healthy. This is a particularly important subject, statistics showing that doctors have one of the highest rates of suicide and drug and alcohol abuse (see BMJ student health matters and BMA doctors health matters, for a summary of a recently held conference on the subject) At first I found this difficult as I don’t knowingly do anything for the purpose of staying healthy. However, after further thought I realised I that I do in fact do things which help keep me healthy, just not through the traditional methods of playing sport and going for runs etc. After writing down ways of keeping healthy we split them into sections: physical, emotional, social and spiritual, my list was:

Physical: Get a good amount of sleep, walking to the hospital and back each day
Emotional: Talk to friends and family in times of stress
Social: Socialise with friends and keep in contact with friends from home
Spiritual: Nothing!
Environmental: Nothing!

This session allowed me to appreciate how much I do in fact do to stay healthy at the moment. However, it also allowed me to find areas where I can make improvements to give me a healthier lifestyle. The biggest area in which I can make improvement is my diet, generally living on easy to cook, ready made meals. Although I know this to be unhealthy, I manage to persuade myself that it costs too much money to eat properly and I haven’t got enough time to go food shopping. However, in reality by doing online shopping at a supermarket, it would turn out cheaper and it gets delivered to my door so I can’t reasonably state that argument. Therefore this weeks’ task is to order some relatively healthy food online to be delivered.

In terms of the other categories, I seem to be good at social and emotional, however somewhat lacking in spiritual and environmental. Not being religious, I assumed the spiritual category not to be relevant to me. However, having discussed this further with other members of the group, I realise there are other ways this can be achieved. Keeping in touch with nature, by walks on the beach for example, can help me to do that (and increases exercise levels!). In terms of environmental, my bedroom in my house, my main environment, is generally very messy and not particularly inspiring or relaxing. I therefore feel I can dramatically improve this area by finding some sort of system to organise my room making it nicer to come home to – maybe buy some plants as well!

Having said all this I recognise that it is unrealistic to try and achieve all these in a short space of time. I have therefore decided to stick with the main aim of ordering some proper food this week, and achieving any others to be a bonus. I will from then on, try to do at least one thing from the list every two weeks and see how I progress.

Feeling of health: 8/10
What I learned: That I do more to stay healthy than I think
What I will change: Try to achieve one thing from the list each week

Evaluation - one week on

I feel I have been quite successful this week in achieving my aims set out. I made a good start by ordering lots of healthy food off the internet and therefore being able to eat healthily. I felt the effects of this quite quickly, feeling better and healthier in myself for doing so. Whether it was the effects of eating more healthily or just the knowledge I was doing something positive about my health I,m not sure - either way I felt better so that’s got to be positive! Feeling motivated by this, I also went for a walk on the beach, which as well as benefiting me in terms of exercise, I felt the sound of the waves and the peacefulness of the beach in the early morning very relaxing and calming, indeed, I felt more awake despite getting up earlier than usual and felt it more beneficial than a lie in. I therefore feel that eating healthily and walking on the beach are things I should be able to, and want to, continue. I will therefore try and put these into my routine and then gradually try and include others from my list.

Yoga

Today, we attended a yoga session. This was my first exposure to yoga, and it turned out that it was a very different experience to what I was expecting. My preconceptions of yoga were of very fit and healthy people bending into random positions. However, I was surprised when the leader of the session said not to push your body if it hurt as this was not the point. I travelled to the yoga session in a car with several other members of the group. Thinking back now, I realise that on the way to the car we were all chatting, generally about medicine and all the things we have to do and how much work we had. However, on the way back, we were all sat back in our seats, much more relaxed and calm and I don’t think medicine and work was even mentioned! I therefore realise now how yoga has very different benefits to what I would have first thought. Instead of improving your health in purely a physical way, by stretching muscles, instead, I found it worked on the mind and thus making both mind and muscles more relaxed.


Feeling of health: 9/10
What I learned: Yoga is about relaxation, not pain
What I will change: Spend time for relaxing and listening to the stresses of my body

Who We Admire

One thing we discussed in today’s session is how we define ourselves. At this time if someone asked me to describe myself to them the first thing I would say, after what my name was, would be that I am a medical student because sometimes it seems like medicine dominates my life!. In fact, I am not only a medical student – but a person who studies medicine and also has other interests! So I don’t want to be just a medical student as I am lots of other things too and I need to try and remember this and ensure I allocate time for the non-medic time in my life - having fun is a great tonic!.

Another topic which we discussed was people who we admire and which attributes we admire them for. There was a wide range of people chosen by the group. Mine was my mum, shown in the picute on the right. When asked as to the reasons why we admire these people, a wide array of characteristics and qualities were described. These included things such as kind, caring, generous, hardworking and morale. When thinking why I chose my mum as a person I admire I decided the main reason was because she was nice!. She does things for other people, gives up her time and puts effort into helping others for no other reason than because she is nice. It is easy to think that when people do things for others its because they are benefiting themselves, however, maybe this is just a way of reacting to make people feel better about the fact that they haven’t done that particular nice thing and feel guilty. Therefore, I found it useful to go through this exercise as I think it shows us what characteristics we would like to have ourselves. I believe that just being aware of this and how we would like to improve can make it more likely to happen. It is also good to know that there are nice people in the world!

Feeling of health: 7/10
What I learned: I am not just a medical student
What I will change: Bear in mind my other roles in life in times of stress

Introductory Session

At our first session, we started by discussing what, as a group, we wanted to achieve from this course. We came up with a number of learning objectives:

Methods of dealing with stress
Application of holism in clinical practice
How to achieve positive thinking
Relaxation methods and Yoga
Dealing with difficult situations
Understanding of different approaches
Experience alternative therapies and massage

A large proportion of this session was used to think about and discuss the meaning of the word health. As a group, we decided that how healthy a person feels is reliant upon having no illness, feeling energetic and enthusiastic, feeling motivated towards the day ahead and a feeling of calm and relaxation. We then went on to discuss the determinants of health and how these vary between individuals and cultures. The list we came up with was:

Physical: sleep, food, rest, shelter, exercise
Mental: calm, relaxation, free of anxiety and anger
Spiritual: meaning and purpose, self-development
Social: wars, political, government, relationships,
Environmental: water, floods, famine, disease, global warming

We ended this session by individually scoring how healthy we feel on a scale of 1 to 10. I found myself high on the scale, deciding on 9. I think this is somewhat different to the score I would have given myself prior to this discussion, usually only taking into consideration healthy eating and getting enough exercise. However, after discussing what we believed the definition of health was more deeply, although not learning any new information or facts, my opinion of my own health dramatically increased. This made me later reflect on how this was of benefit. It seems that just by thinking about my interpretation of the word ‘health’ made me feel healthier without actually doing anything! I found this very interesting to explore as I had been made to feel better without making any changes to my lifestyle. I will therefore write my thoughts each week as we progress through this course.

Whilst discussing health further, we started to think about the NHS. I found it interesting to hear how some believe the NHS system at present to be more of a ‘National Illness Service’, focusing mainly on disease and illness rather than encouraging patients to try and maintain a good level of health. When we were asked at the beginning of the session ‘what is health?’ the first thing on most peoples list was the absence of disease, perhaps a reflection of the attitudes of those working in the NHS. Indeed, we are often told about how, in particular in GP practices, many patients come in due to a problem which is not strictly ‘medical’. For example a patient coming in with problems of headaches when actually she is worried about her husband having an affair. However, we are not particularly taught how to deal with this, and treating the medical condition of headaches, perhaps with painkillers, and not addressing the underlying cause is not always beneficial. Although this may help the headaches in the short term, the long term problem has not been addressed. It is also interesting to ponder on why patients feel it is necessary to present with complaints which are not actually what they want help with, perhaps a refection of how society has come to interpret the word health and the role of the NHS.

Feeling of health: 9/10

What I learned: The differences in attitude to the word health in holistic medicine
and conventional medicine

What I will change: Try to remember health is not just about illness and disease

About this Blog

For the next few weeks, I will be attending classes on the subject of Holistic Healing. Throughout this time I hope to record my experiences and thoughts of the sessions encountered. I hope this blog will enable me to look back on what I have learned over the weeks and hopefully how this new knowledge and insight has changed my own thoughts and behaviour over time. To this end, at the close of each entry I shall record: my key learning outcome and how I will try and change my behaviour as a result of this.