Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Setting Your Healing Intention

The dictionary defines intention in general as “a course of action that one intends to follow,” “an aim or objective.” Ironically, in conventional medicine, the word intention means “the process by which a wound heals.” In a much broader sense, for healing from chronic disease, setting the intention to heal is the overarching first step in creating your program and putting the healing process into motion.

In setting this type of intention, you are asking the universe, cosmic consciousness, or God – however you are most comfortable addressing the “highest” level of infinite reality – to help you achieve the goal of healing.

Setting Your Intention to Heal is the Core Step

A recent survey of CAM use in the U.S. found that prayer for health was the most widely-used form of “CAM” in the previous year (43% prayed for their own health; 24% received prayers by others for their own health). You can consider this step to be praying or you can consider it setting your intention. This is a matter of labels with which you feel most comfortable. Whatever the label, setting your intention to heal is the core step of the overall plan.

It is up to the universe to figure out the details. You identify the goal, that is, healing. You may have some ideas about how you will start to go about operationalizing the steps along the way, and you will need to take those steps. When the intention is clear, the process will take over and lead you into whatever experiences, treatments, and people will ultimately be involved in your healing.

Make no assumptions that what or whoever is right for you now will remain right for you throughout the process. Remember, you are a dynamical being, ever-changing, expressing your free will in the context of a larger, a much larger environment.

No One Right Way to Set an Intention

There is no one right way to set an intention. It may be more common to do so in a quiet contemplative moment when you are fully present, without distractions of daily life. You may be alone or with someone you care about and who cares for you. For you, it may require a silent resolution, a statement out loud to yourself, a written diary entry, or a statement to a loved one.

What is important is to aim as globally as you can in setting the intention, i.e., that you are healing as a whole (not that just your body part is healing). As Larry Dossey, MD has said of prayer – Be Careful What You Pray For, You Just Might Get It. In this case, your goal is systemic healing, not just conventional medical local healing.

Play Big, Not Small

In other words, play big, not small. If you ask for small changes in body parts, you just might get those. If you ask for whole person healing as part of the Universe’s big picture, you just might get a transformation.

Setting an intention reflects clarity, simplicity, focus, largeness, love, determination, and positiveness. Bring together your feelings and your resolve in the moment of commitment to the intention.

Your intention is speaking to your deepest subconscious and unconscious mind and the larger non-local universal consciousness. Phrase the intention in a positive manner – that is, ”I am healing, I am whole at the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels of my being, for the highest and best good of all” (rather than saying, “I don’t have disease XYZ any more”). Aim for the most transcendent level with your intention.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Examining the Levels of Scale in Holistic Healing for People with Hypertension

Patient-Centered Care vs. Disease-Centered Care in High Blood Pressure

As we’ve discussed, in health care, our usual focus is the person level of organization. In conventional medicine, there is a perspective called “patient-centered care.” Patient-centered care, which concerns itself with the issues of who-has-the-disease, is distinguished from disease-centered care, which concerns itself with the issues of what-is-the-disease. In other words, the person is more important than his/her disease label. A person with high blood pressure or hypertension has a problem that manifests in the cardiovascular system. When the heart relaxes between beats, the pressure in the arteries does not fall back down into a normal healthy range.

Sometimes this elevated blood pressure comes from a stiffening of the the walls of the blood vessels. We also know that drinking too much caffeine, being under emotional stress, and many other factors can contribute to higher blood pressure.

Disease-centered thinking in conventional medicine revolves around the cellular and molecular level of scale. However, research has shown that many of us prefer to have a relationship with a provider who gives us patient-centered care in the sense that we are informed about our disease(s) and all of our treatment options and participate in decisions about how to proceed (rather than being told what to do).

Rather than focus just on the elevated blood pressure, which is risk factor for other health conditions such as heart disease and strokes, it is essential to look at the various levels of scale where the problem is showing up.

Organizational Levels of Scale
As said before, you are a system unto yourself, but you are made up of other systems at lower levels of organizational scale (e.g., circulatory system, immune system); and you are a part of still other systems at higher levels of organizational scale (e.g., families, communities, living creatures on earth).

* Higher Level of Organization: For a complex living system, each next higher level of organization has emergent properties, that is, behaviors that the higher level can generate, but that its component parts at a lower level cannot (a person has” behaviors” that a liver or heart by itself does not).

At the same time, there is a bidirectional feedback loop of information, from the global to the local level and back the other way. It is the feedback that allows the global (person level) and local (body parts level) to influence each other’s function, that is, to define your unique “you-ness.”

Levels of Scale from a Systems Perspective

Another way of understanding the holographic qualities of health and healing is to look at levels of scale from a systems perspective – true holism. Many systems, especially living systems, have a self-similarity or theme (also called “fractality”), at every level of scale. The self-similarity is a geometric concept, in which an object is irregular but similarly irregular at every degree of magnification, i.e., close up and far away.

In conventional anatomy, the self-similarity occurs in body parts such as different levels of organization of the bronchial tree. In complementary therapies, the self-similarity is not in physical structure so much as it is in patterns of function or dynamics (change). People can be in self-similar ruts of disease, just as they can be in ruts with relationships or jobs. The same idea is true for processes and functions – such as you, your body, and your health in your life.
Thus, under environmental stress (psychological or physical in nature), a person prone to asthma may experience an asthma attack. Their “rut” is responding with anxiety and asthma under certain environmental challenges. A different person might respond to the same environmental factors with irritability and a migraine attack.

You are literally “doing your own [unique] thing” in your world. And, in chronic illness, you are doing your own unhealthy thing over and over. The names and faces (specific content or details) may change from event to event, but the storyline repeats the same process through time.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Examining the Levels of Scale in Holistic Healing

Patient-Centered Care vs. Disease-Centered Care

In health care, our usual focus is the person level of organization. In conventional medicine, there is a perspective called “patient-centered care.” Patient-centered care, which concerns itself with the issues of who-has-the-disease, is distinguished from disease-centered care, which concerns itself with the issues of what-is-the-disease. In other words, the person is more important than his/her disease label.

Disease-centered thinking in conventional medicine revolves around the cellular and molecular level of scale. However, research has shown that many of us prefer to have a relationship with a provider who gives us patient-centered care in the sense that we are informed about our disease(s) and all of our treatment options and participate in decisions about how to proceed (rather than being told what to do).

Organizational Levels of Scale
You are a system unto yourself, but you are made up of other systems at lower levels of organizational scale (e.g., circulatory system, immune system); and you are a part of still other systems at higher levels of organizational scale (e.g., families, communities, living creatures on earth).

§ Higher Level of Organization: For a complex living system, each next higher level of organization has emergent properties, that is, behaviors that the higher level can generate, but that its component parts at a lower level cannot (a person has” behaviors” that a liver or heart by itself does not).

At the same time, there is a bidirectional feedback loop of information, from the global to the local level and back the other way. It is the feedback that allows the global (person level) and local (body parts level) to influence each other’s function, that is, to define your unique “you-ness.”

Levels of Scale from a Systems Perspective

Another way of understanding the holographic qualities of health and healing is to look at levels of scale from a systems perspective – true holism. Many systems, especially living systems, have a self-similarity or theme (also called “fractality”), at every level of scale. The self-similarity is a geometric concept, in which an object is irregular but similarly irregular at every degree of magnification, i.e., close up and far away.

In conventional anatomy, the self-similarity occurs in body parts such as different levels of organization of the bronchial tree. In complementary therapies, the self-similarity is not in physical structure so much as it is in patterns of function or dynamics (change). People can be in self-similar ruts of disease, just as they can be in ruts with relationships or jobs. The same idea is true for processes and functions – such as you, your body, and your health in your life.

Thus, under environmental stress (psychological or physical in nature), a person prone to asthma may experience an asthma attack. Their “rut” is responding with anxiety and asthma under certain environmental challenges. A different person might respond to the same environmental factors with irritability and a migraine attack.

You are literally “doing your own [unique] thing” in your world. And, in chronic illness, you are doing your own unhealthy thing over and over. The names and faces (specific content or details) may change from event to event, but the storyline repeats the same process through time.