Types of Complementary Cancer Therapies Spiritual Healing

Guide 3 Complementary Cancer Therapies

• Two out of three cancer patients embrace one or more complementary or alternative practices. The information that follows is an overview of the major options.
• Your goal should be to obtain more complete information on the subjects that are of interest to you. Then you can design an appropriate integrated-care program of your own.

Read And Learn More: Cancer Essential Things To Do A Road Map For All Cancer Patients Treatment Diagnosis

Question 1. When the subject is nontraditional cancer treatments, what should you expect from your oncologist?
Answer: Indifference.

• For the most part, twenty-first-century oncology has limited time for, or interest in, complementary and alternative therapies.
• The biomedical model is tightly focused on surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and hormonal therapy. Do not expect enthusiastic endorsements of approaches outside these core orthodox treatments.
• If you were to expect anything beyond indifference, expect criticism. The conventional cancer community’s “party line” on diet, nutritional supplements, and other more natural treatment approaches remains decidedly negative.
• Only the rare oncologist will bridge the world between mainstream and complementary medicine, support you in the process of taking charge of your situation, and work step-by-step with you toward the recovery of your health.

Know this: A patient’s interest in nontraditional cancer treatments is seen as a personal affront by most Western oncologists. It’s as if the patient is saying, “Your ideas are not enough.” Truth is, they are not.

• Do not expect to receive positive support for your complementary and alternative efforts from a conventionally trained and practicing oncologist.
• You can typically expect more advice and support on complementary and self-help techniques from an informed nursing staff. The control of treatment side effects is the most common nurse-provided information.
• Their coaching might be expected to include both pharmaceutical options as well as more natural approaches. Look for referrals to community-based organizations for visualization, massage, relaxation, breathing techniques, comfort, and support.
• Let’s briefly review the most common components of integrated cancer care:

Counseling

• Counseling within a holistic model is considered a central component of the healing process. Support through talking, through genuine give-and-take communication, is critical.
• It will help you become aware of your needs, define your questions, and determine how to go about receiving answers. In a real sense, this increased awareness is the heart of the entire holistic approach.
• Millions carry a bias against counseling, thinking it is simply about relief of emotional distress. But transpersonal counseling, assisting the individual in exploring his or her needs from a whole-person perspective, is much more.
• Cancer challenges everything—from our physical body to our thoughts, feelings, significant relationships, and spirituality, as well as the environment in which we live.
• While the initial focus of such counseling may be to help cope with the diagnosis and treatment of an individual’s cancer, the counseling quickly becomes more expansive and even a core-active experience.
• Discovery of the true self is both enlightening and supportive, encouraging the individual to access all resources—physical, emotional, and spiritual.
• Perhaps the key issue of a transpersonal counseling approach is spiritual. It can help us identify what our soul and spirit are yearning for.

Not surprisingly, a good number of cancer patients find ambiguity—on the surface, they are engaged in actively fighting illness but at a deeper level they are blocked by a seemingly unsolvable problem that leads to despair or even the need to let go and die.

Connecting with our deepest reality through transpersonal counseling often establishes great truth, peace and, ultimately, a healing of a higher order.

Group Support

• Cancer Recovery Foundation’s earliest work was focused exclusively on establishing psychospiritual support groups.
• The distinct advantage of this focus over a medical/clinical information approach is helping cancer patients discover the many abilities they possess and then implement them to overcome their present challenges.
• By focusing on what is possible, the aim is to give the individual a clear picture of the most effective way forward.
• Doing so within the context of mutual support among people in similar situations is extremely helpful.
• The aim of group support is not to expose an individual’s feelings. However, the process of group interaction can make it easier and safer for many people to express emotions, even safer than with family, friends, or a one-to-one counseling session.
• The group is also extremely effective in working together to identify common beliefs and patterns that may be obstructing progress toward self-acceptance and well-being.

Creative Therapies

• Art and music can bring freedom, giving people permission to express what they find difficult to put into words.
• These techniques require no previous training or even talent and ability. Often they are linked with group support.
• The central benefit is to release the more playful, joyful, and creative aspects of our individual natures. There is healing in the energy and fun we took for granted in our youth.

Art Therapy

• Art therapy reconnects people with their own creativity. Work done in art therapy can help people discover a sense of empowerment and control in the often disempowering and out-of-control cancer experience. Art therapy can also be cathartic, releasing insights into recovery.
• Creating with watercolors, acrylics, oils, charcoal, pens, markers, clay, paper, glue, or whatever they choose often suspends people at the moment, allowing them to become absorbed and involved.
• This is exceedingly beneficial in its own right because the mind can be at ease from its typical worries.
• All art therapy is deemed to have high artistic merit. The symbols are important. It’s joy and peace that the patient-artist is after.
• Positive expectations can be strengthened, emotional conflicts can be resolved, and a deepening awareness of one’s spiritual dimension can be revealed—all through art therapy.

Music Therapy

• Music has a long historical link with healing. The idea of music as a healing influence that could affect health and behavior is as least as old as the writings of Aristotle and Plato. Today a substantial body of research supports the efficacy of music therapy.
• There are some common misconceptions about music therapy. The patient has to have some particular musical ability to benefit from music therapy—he or she does not. That there is one particular style of music that is more therapeutic than all the rest—this is not the case.
• All styles of music can be useful in effecting change in a patient’s life. The individual’s preferences, circumstances, need for treatment, and the patient’s goals help to determine the types of music he or she may use.
• Be it actively playing music or simply listening to music, it has been demonstrated that music therapy can help people control anxiety, express feelings, lift spirits to a higher level, and even relieve pain. The positive shifts can result in a physiological boost.

Spiritual Healing

• Spiritual healing, and for our purposes this will include laying on of hands, is perhaps the very oldest of the healing arts. This practice is part of the beliefs and practices of many religions.
• Based on the belief that we are all children of God, the practice seeks to reconnect the individual to the source that heals.
• Increased connection with God certainly helps with coping. It can also dramatically improve one’s understanding and acceptance of life circumstances. For many individuals, this reconnection further provides a strong reason for living, even a mission for one’s life.
• Spiritual healing can be brought about by prayer being offered by a healer or healers, by personal prayer, or by self-healing exercises.
• Spiritual healing rests in the belief that an individual’s spirit, this universal life force that animates each of us, often becomes depleted.
• Through prayerful focused intention, the healer is able to tune in to that loving energy and bring it to whoever needs it, including themselves. The result is a restoration in the balance of body, mind, and spirit.
• For the past two decades, I have studied with some of the most respected and best-known healers. These various practitioners each have their own beliefs and practices. Results vary.
• However, there is this important insight: spiritual healing has its most powerful results when patients have their own strong personal beliefs and connect with a healer who shares those beliefs.
• Lasting spiritual healing takes place in the quiet of one’s spirit. For the most part, it will not be found in the arenas, on the stages, or under the television lights.
• There may be a celebration of healing in that environment, but the actual healing is found elsewhere.
• I have repeatedly observed one important dynamic of spiritual healing. The turning point is to be found where the individual seeking healing expresses a sincere desire for, and an invitation asking for, God to live in and through him or her.
• That invitation is very often followed by an inner turning toward a transcendent peace, a profound change toward a life characterized by a more loving and spiritual perspective. What follows is a lifting of the spirit, a joy, and a new healed life.

Energy Work Acupuncture

• Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese therapy that involves the insertion of very thin needles into specific points on the body. These points are located along invisible lines known as meridians, each of which is believed to be linked to a different organ system.
• By stimulating these points, acupuncturists aim to unblock the flow of vital energy, called qi, and pronounced “chee,” through the meridians and thus restore health to the body.
• Although acupuncture does not provide an effective cancer treatment itself, it does help relieve cancer pain, chemotherapy-related nausea and vomiting, radiation-induced dry mouth, and post-treatment fatigue. I personally employ monthly acupuncture as part of my own wellness program.
• If you are interested in understanding this modality and its potential application to your illness and treatment plan.

Hyperthermia

• The term hyperthermia simply indicates a body temperature that is higher than normal. High body temperatures are often caused by illnesses, such as fever. But hyperthermia in cancer refers to heat treatment, the use of heat to destroy cancer cells.
• Cells in the body exposed to higher-than-normal temperatures show marked inner-cellular changes.
• These changes may result in malignant cells becoming more likely to be affected by radiation therapy or chemotherapy. And very high temperatures can kill cancer cells outright.
• However high temperatures can injure or kill normal cells and tissues. This is why hyperthermia must be carefully controlled by someone with hyperthermia experience.
• If you are interested in understanding this modality and its potential application to your illness and treatment plan, contact the Valley Cancer Institute in the Los Angeles, California, area

Shiatsu

• Shiatsu is a form of acupressure that originated in Japan. It combines healing touch with a noninvasive acupuncture in order to help rebalance energy. It reduces stiffness, pain, fatigue, and stress, and it improves energy and sleep.

Therapeutic Touch/Reiki

• Therapeutic touch or Reiki decreases stress and anxiety, helps reduce fatigue, aids in recovery from physical/emotional trauma, and helps minimize side effects of conventional cancer treatments.

Yoga

• Gentle yoga is helpful for people dealing with illness, inviting them to listen and reconnect with their bodies.
• Through yoga, you will gain a greater understanding of how you can support your body in healing. Start with hatha yoga, which focuses on simple and achievable movements, focused breathing exercises, and relaxation techniques.
• I personally like the DVD series Yoga for Beginners, which is widely available where books are sold.
• If you are interested in understanding yoga and its potential application in your wellness quest.

Bodywork

Alexander Technique:

• Decreases muscle strain, nerve pain, chronic pain, fatigue, and postsurgical weakness.

Chiropractic

• Useful for musculoskeletal pain, particularly for the lower back. Decreases joint and muscle aches and releases tension. Improves range of motion. Increasing claims for improvements in general health and well-being.

Craniosacral

• Head and neck massage. Treats muscle tension, injury, structural misalignment, and nerve dysfunction. Decreases stress.

Manual Lymph Drainage

• Manual lymphatic drainage (MLD) is a safe, gentle massage technique that is used to treat many health conditions. It does not treat cancer itself but helps to improve symptoms of cancer treatments such as pain, neuropathy, lymphedema, scars, and postsurgical swelling.
• Lymphedema is a condition that occurs in approximately 30 percent of cancer patients. It is a swelling that occurs most often in the arms or legs.
• Lymphedema is a result of an impaired lymphatic system due to chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, or removal of lymph nodes. It can be managed or prevented with the timely application of combined decongestive therapy (COT).

This involves:

1. Skin Care
2. Exercise
3. Compression
4. Manual lymph drainage.

If you are interested in understanding this modality and its potential application to your illness and treatment plan.

Massage

• Massage is the systematic manipulation of soft tissues of the body to enhance health and healing and can be used to achieve an improved level of well-being. From a medical or therapeutic perspective, massage can help a person living with cancer by reducing pain, anxiety, and stress and providing a caring touch.
• Massaging the tumor itself is not recommended. However, people with cancer should not fear that massage is dangerous. In fact, massage can be a very important part of a complementary cancer care program.
• There is no evidence to suggest that touch or gentle massage causes metastasis. But there is ample evidence that it greatly benefits many cancer patients, both physically and emotionally. In fact, touch addresses not only physical needs, but emotional, social, and spiritual needs as well.
• Skilled touch can be beneficial at every stage of cancer treatment and recovery. Receiving comforting, attentive massage reminds us that the body can be a source of pleasure.
• It also can influence our ability to enjoy the present moment and feel our aliveness. A massage helps in reuniting the body with the heart, mind, and soul.
• Excellent research has shown that massage can positively affect many cancer symptoms or side effects from conventional treatment regimens. These include nausea, fatigue, insomnia, and pain. Massage supports relaxation, which in turn supports immune function. As a result, thousands of cancer patients report an increased sense of well-being and a reduction in anxiety and muscle tension.
• If you are interested in understanding more about massage and its potential application in your wellness quest.

Polarity Therapy

• Emotional and physical energy balancing. Improves circulation. Relieves pain and stiffness. Increases energy, flexibility, and clarity.

Rolfing

• Deep muscle bodywork. Decreases stress, chronic pain, and stiffness. Improves breathing, mobility, energy, and posture.