My Approach to Medicine: Vitalism

The medicine I practice reminds the human of their unique balance. There are two factions in science. The mechanists deal with the human body as a machine in which parts can be replaced, retooled, or re-lubricated. The vitalists deal with the human as a whole and concentrate on the vital energy underlying all form and function of the human body. I am a vitalist.

Thus far, science has difficulty proving the vitalist view. We know that there are bio-electric, bio-magnetic, along with nuclear strong, nuclear weak, and gravitational aspects represented in our system. Those we presently have a way of quantifying and qualifying. However, those energies are aspects of a whole vital energy that science has yet to be able to prove with the five physical senses.

Kototama/Inochi medicine and Te A Te Reiki, the Oriental philosophy based medicines I practice, work with the whole vital energy that courses through our system creating form and function. Once the body is returned or reminded of its own natural balance, form and function normalize. Certainly there are limits to our medicine just as there are limits to Allopathic medicine. It really is the miles and not the years that make a difference in how fast your body can regain homeostasis (balance/health). Once you have a knee replacement, for instance, the medicine I practice is not going to create a new natural knee. It will, however, aid the body in accepting the man made changes and speed healing from the surgery itself.

In my view, these two approaches are not competing philosophies. They compliment each other. I set out to study the natural approaches because the allopathic medical (mechanist) approach was not answering all of my questions as a massage therapist. I sensed another underlying aspect of healing that the study of anatomy and physiology couldn't explain. What created a muscle? How did the body have the wisdom to place a twist in the levator scapula? The blood encounters the lymphatic system exchanging nutrients for metabolic by-products. How did that connection arise? These questions and many others lead me to the study of the meridian system via my present practices. Did they give me the answers to the above questions? Not yet.

When people ask me how this medicine can help I simply say, "when your energetic system smoothly flows without impediments, you are healthy". The medicine I practice restores your unique natural flow while minimizing the impediments (stagnations). The vitalist in me pays attention to that underlying vital energy that creates form and moves energy while the mechanist in me pays attention to how the form and function present. By looking at both in the "now' and adjusting them with the tools at hand great changes can occur naturally.


Mary S. Wallis, L.Ac., NCCAOM Acupuncture Diplomate, L.M.T., C.N.M.T.
Energy Medicine Practitioner in the Japanese styles of Kototama/Inochi Medicine and Usui Reiki
President Improved Performance Inc.
895 rue St. Francois
Florissant, MO 63031
www.HealingStLouis.com
www.ImprovedHealing.com