In my April Health Psychology and Social Justice post, I made mention of a research project I am launching. This study will seek to investigate the bio-psycho-social benefits of an existing Iyengar Yoga class as a palliative intervention for cancer patients. Although I do not have cancer (that I know of), I attend this class regularly and have been trying to learn these ancient healing practices experientially. This is because I believe that it is vitally important that, as a Western trained psychologist, I am careful when I utilize culturally different healing practices so as not to pull them too far from their roots.
What happens when we are disrespectful to the cultural roots of a healing practice? First, we deny the experience of people who believe healing to emanate from a culturally learned perspective. We also create risk that, from our own cultural perspective, we might downplay or misunderstand a potentially beneficial intervention for ourselves when we become ill.
As a thought exercise, I would ask that readers entertain the possibility that one of your “doctors” is a Yoga Instructor – someone who believes from their own rigorous training that the path to health is primarily through practices called Ayurveda and Yoga, among others. You have seen this path work well for friends or family or even yourself.
Then imagine your Yoga Instructor seeks to inject into your Yoga practice a healing method called Psychology, which comes from a completely different culture — one that applies a belief system known as the Scientific Method to the treatment of health. You have no personal experience with Psychology, the Scientific Method, or their benefits. Furthermore, when explained, the Scientific Method does not seem to fit with your understanding of Ayurveda and Yoga and the benefits they provide.
If you find yourself resisting the injection of Psychology into your Yoga, the thought experiment may just have worked in the way I imagine. This is because Psychology (and likely Yoga for that matter) are cultural perspectives that rest on assumptions of normality. In Psychology, there is an example is the empirical validation of statements as such:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy + Pharmacotherapy = the gold standard intervention for depression.
This assumption comes out of the sometimes curious, always statistically-manipulated Western system of disconfirming a hypothesis: that the above interventions do not have an effect significantly worse for a group of treated individuals than is the case for a group of untreated individuals. Here we call the results of these examinations Scientific, and adherence to this doctrine leads us to believe that there is such a thing as a universal gold standard for treating problems like depression.
Traditionally, Psychology adheres to a doctrine that closely resembles the Scientific Method in the way that it treats depression. Yoga, while it may also work to treat depression, does not.
So maybe you see the dilemma. I find that there is a sports metaphor available: examining Yoga as a bio-psycho-social palliative intervention for cancer would be like seeing Soccer for the first time and insisting that the players don helmets and shoulder pads, or else they are not playing Football.
Or, in this metaphor, perhaps Soccer is just plain Unscientific.
d pursue recreational activities (late night tv shows anyone) that sacrifice sleep. Most adults require 7-8 hours of sleep per night, although there are no hard and fast rules regarding how much sleep is necessary. The goal with sleep is to know yourself, and focus on getting an adequate amount of sleep that fits your individual needs on a nightly basis.
s easy to get lost in the details. There are 2 primary areas of dietary focus that seem to have the most impact: food choice and consumption quantity. Michael Pollan, an author and journalist advocating for health and nutrition said it best: Eat food that is food. Period. Pretty simple, right? Food choices are a fundamental aspect of health. We have a plethora of options of what to consume, and often we make some pretty poor decisions. One way to think about food choices is to consider what you are about to put in your mouth: if it was not hunted, fished, picked, grown, or harvested in the form sitting directly in front of you, chances are that it is not food, but rather a food-like product. Be wary of consuming too many food-like products instead of real food. The second area of focus is quantity of food. Too often we ignore listening to our bodily ques and eat way past the point of fullness. Listen to your body. When your body signals that you are full, stop.
active lifestyle. For those Colorado readers, we have a pretty intense take on what this means pursuing many types of extreme sport. For most of us, focusing on 30 minutes of mobility with increased heart rate several times per week has long lasting impacts on overall health (mental and physical) well-being, and sense of vitality. I once heard (can’t recall where) that if you can limit sitting, sleeping, working, taking care of household responsibilities, and watching TV to just 23.5 hours a day, you are probably heading in the right direction with exercise.