Intergrative Wholistic Healing

Our mission is to provide authentic Integrative Wholistic Healing, through area hospitals, to the communities under their care.

Integrative Wholistic Healing is a free-standing, public organization based in Moline, Illinois.

This organization works with area hospitals to set up centers and retreats in Integrative Wholistic Healing, as well as working with administration of hospitals and educational institutions to offer a variety of authentic complementary healing methods for the community under their care. As the word Integrative implies, we work with physicians and hospitals, combining Wholistic methods of healing as an optional addition to the care provided.

Wholistic refers to Mind, Body and Spirit.

Integrative Wholistic Healing is sponsored by The Institute for Cultural and Healing Traditions, Ltd. a 501(c)3 organization. The Institute also encourages Independent Scholars and, for this purpose, provides a public forum every Thursday evening during fall and spring. Often the forum is attended by patients at both the chronic stage of their ailment as well as at recovering stages. Preventive care is an important emphasis of our work.

Our Work
1. INTEGRATIVE WHOLISTIC HEALING RETREATS:
Designed by The Institute, the IWH retreats are divided in three segments:
a. The “backbone” of meditation and yoga – or parallels.
b. The afternoon sessions by acceptable complementary modalities.
c. Evening retreat presentations that are open to the public:

Evening sessions are presented by physicians on aspects of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) modalities and their usage.


2. DIRECT WORK WITH AREA INSTITUTIONS.
a. The Institute and its officials work with area hospitals, healing institutions and training institutions to introduce CAM modalities into the community under their care.
b. Additionally, The Institute provides a Network of Integrative Wholistic Healing professions and CAM practitioners for the local area.


3. OUR TRACK RECORD:
Healing modalities introduced:
• After our first retreat yoga was introduced in the local hospitals.
• After our second retreat, hospital privileges for Medical Acupuncture as a method of healing was included at Genesis Health Care System.
• After our third retreat, prayer was included in the operating room during cardiac-surgery at Genesis Health Care System.
• With the assistance of the local hospitals, Chi-Quong and Yoga are offered to community members.
• Workshops in the art of interior arrangement to enhance health, happiness and well-being were introduced to the community.
Healing concerns and issues addressed:
• Frank Claudy, MD and Rev. Merlin Cannon Whittmer discussed the use of metaphor in the expression of pain among patients.
• The uses and the dangers of Herbs was discussed by Nicole Nisly, MD, member of our Core Group as well Director of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Clinic at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.
• David B. Larson, MD., Director of the National Institute for Healthcare Research, Washington DC gave a series of presentations on the power of prayer to both the community as well as the hospital administrations of both the area hospitals. This series lead to the inclusion of prayer in the operating room.
• Wellness in the East: Dr. David B. Sands, MD. Director. Maharishi College of Medicine, Fairfield, Iowa discusses the concept of wellness in the east and the use of Ayurveda.
• Kirk Witherspoon, Ph.D. clinical psychologist
• Christine Deignan, MD discussed the use of acupuncture in modern medicine.
• H. Ahn, MD discussed the use of acupuncture in modern medicine.
• Paul Pomreh, MD. Dept of Preventative Medicine and Dean, College of Public Health, University of Iowa, discussed the concept of wellness in the west.
• Uses of Complementary and Wholistic Medicine have been discussed by Evan Kligman, MD, Chair of the Dept. of Family Medicine, University of Iowa .
• The new paradigms of health care were discussed by Myron Fields, MD, from the Fields Surgical Clinic, Rock Island, Illinois.
• Establishing centers in Integrative Wholistic Healing in collaboration with area Hospitals.
Past Work:
• After our first retreat yoga was introduced in both hospitals.
• After our second retreat, hospital privileges for Acupuncture as a method of healing was included at one of the area hospitals.
• After our third retreat, prayer was included in the operating room during cardiac-surgery.
• Chi-Quong and Yoga are offered to community members.
• “Feng Shui” the knowledge of interior arrangement to
enhance health, happiness and well-being, was introduced to the community and workshops provided.
• A Dream Workshop was given by invited guests and
shared by participants.
• The uses and the dangers of Herbs was discussed by
Nicole Nisly, MD, member of our Core Group as well
Director of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Clinic at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.
• David B. Larson, MD., Director of the National Institute for Healthcare Research, Washington DC gave a series of presentations on the power of prayer to both the community as well as the hospital administrations of both the area hospitals. This series lead to the inclusion of prayer in the operating room.

Future work: Establishing centers in Integrative Wholistic Healing in collaboration with area Hospitals and educational institutions.

Network

The Institute network includes healers and care givers providing traditional and complementary healing to their communities. The network is structured to reflect the authenticity of the traditional care provided.

The Institute reviews credentials among other aspects of its networking members.

Sponsors

The Institute for Cultural and Healing Traditions, LTD. Genesis Medical Center

The University of Iowa Dept. of Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Questions

A University of Iowa study showed that most people considered "complimentary" medicine to mean "free" medicine, as in complimentary coffee, or breakfast.

We need to highlight the frequent confusion of the two words.

COMPLIMENT refers to a kind word: Something good said about someone.

COMPLEMENT refers to the addition of: Something that completes or makes perfect.

At Integrative Wholistic Healing, we avoid the use of the term "complementary" medicine because of the judgmental flavor of the term. Differing traditional practices differ in countries and cultures. For example, what is traditional in China is not what is traditional in the United States.

History

INTEGRATIVE WHOLISTIC HEALING-three words complete in themselves.

INTEGRATIVE medical healing refers to those allopathic medical practitioners that have been trained in western medicine and are open to the authentic healing practices from other philosophies outside the realm of western allopathic medicine.

WHOLISTIC refers to mind, body and spirit. The healing for the body refers to the actual physical taken in through the influences of medicine, and/or surgery and other direct influences on the body. The Mind refers to the powers of ones own mind in healing one's physical ailment, often known as self healing, while the Spirit refers to the influences of forces from another realm-namely the dimension of prayer, environmental forces, and vibrations that are larger than the individual. This has been referred as to Era 1, Era 2, and Era 3 respectively. In the 1970's the word for Wholistic healing was spelled with a "W" and the "W" signified the Spirit. In later years, the "W" was dropped due to the controversy regarding the inclusion of Spirit. The word "Holistic" was coined and used to refer to the Mind and Body.

HEALING encompasses the entire range of healing by ingestions, applications, surgical as well as self-healing including the change of life-styles. All three of the healing methods referred to above are included.

Historic Article

The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy was created March 8, 2000, by executive order. The 2-year commission will ultimately report to the president on legislative and administrative recommendations for ensuring that US public policy maximized the benefits of complementary and alternative medicine.

This is the first article that the chair of the commission, Dr. Gordon, has written regarding the work of this key advisory body.

We believe that this is a historic article and needs to be acknowledged as such and well circulated.

James S Gordon chairs the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy and directs the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, DD. He is the author, most recently, of ‘Comprehensive Cancer Care: Integrating Alternative , Complementary and Conventional Therapies (Perseus Press, 2000).

THE WHITE HOUSE COMMISSION AND THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE.

James S. Gordon, MD

Ninety years ago, at a time when medical education and the standards of physician practice were wildly variable, Abraham Flexner, a Carnegie Foundation consultant, issued a report titled Medical Education in the United States and Canada. Aided by the American Medical Association, Flexner graded North American medical schools according to the scientific standards of Johns Hopkins, which in turn was basing its rigorous curriculum on the German model. Flexner’s report, with its emphasis on full-time faculty in the basic and clinical sciences and extensive laboratory and hospital facilities, set the standard for medical practice and licensing, as well as medical education, for the 20th. century.

In July of this year, the newly appointed White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy began to undertake a study that may conceivably exercise as profound an effect on 21st.-century medicine as Flexner’s report has had on 20th.-century medicine.

The medicine that Flexner’s report catalyzed, and the subsequent infusion of capital from John D. Rockerfeller, helped to produce the extraordinary gains in scientific research, high-technology treatment of illness, and rigorous scientific education that have been the hallmark and pride of American medicine. But the medicine of Flexner’s heirs, though enormously powerful and precise, had inevitably been incomplete.

In using a stringent set of criteria to judge medical education, Flexner, and those who followed his recommendations, eliminated some of the diversity that marked early 20th. century medicine. Schools of homeopathy – and those emphasizing herbal and natural healing-disappeared, as did a number of those serving women and minorities. The scientific medicine of the ensuing 90 years has made many advances, but in the process has ignored or dismissed many other healing traditions and many practices as having only historical, anthropological, or sociological interest.

Over the last 30 years, increasing numbers of Americans have begun to experience the limitations of the medical care they receive and begun to look to these other traditions and practices to help them with their healthcare problems. In a very real sense, this search ahs been stimulated by the success of the Flexnerian enterprise. It is, in fact, those who have had all the benefits of modern scientific medicine who have led the search.

These people are not turning their back on conventional medicine, but they are painfully aware of its limitations and side effects and therefore are exploring approaches that would complement this medicine – or be alternatives to it. They include men, women, and children with life-threatening illnesses like cancer and HIV, and many more with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, neurological disorders, chronic depression and a host of other conditions.

They are looking for therapies that are both more helpful and less toxic. As managed care becomes pervasive, many of these people are searching for something else as well. They want more time with the professionals who will provide care to them, a sustained healing partnership rather than a brief consultation, and an opportunity to participate in their own care as well as follow doctors’ orders.

A survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1998 showed that 42% of all Americans were using therapies other that those their doctors prescribed, many along with and some without conventional care: chiropractic and massage for back pain; supplements and herbs for headaches, depression, diabetes and weight loss; and a combination of dietary therapies, exercise, meditation and group support as an option to cardiac surgery. In 1997 Americans made 649 million visits to alternative care practitioners, 243 million more than they made to their primary healthcare– MC–providers.

In fact, the actual number of Americans using these approaches is probably significantly higher that revealed in the survey. People who didn’t speak English and didn’t have phones were not included. Many of them are recent immigrants for whom what we call “alternative” or “complementary” is, in fact, primary care.

In recent years the movement to integrate complementary and alternative care and to create a more holistic and patient-centered approach has gained significant numbers of adherents among teachers of medicine and present and future healthcare professionals. Approximately three quarters of all US medical schools have at least an elective offering in alternative medicine. Many thousands of practicing physicians are each year seeking advanced training in mind-body medicine, nutrition, herbal therapies, and Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. And thousands of college graduates, many with excellent academic credentials, are now entering non-MD training programs in complementary and alternative approaches-among them chiropractic, acupuncture, naturopathy, herbalism and massage therapy.

Congressional legislation, supported by an extraordinary bipartisan coalition, reflects the breadth and power of this movement. In 1991, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) created the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. In the years since then, the office’s original budget of $2 million – a “homeopathic level of support”, according to the office’s first director-has risen to $ 100 million. The office has been upgraded to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and rigorous research on therapies that were ignored and disparaged 10 or even 5 years ago is proceeding apace at many of our leading academic medical institutions.

At the beginning of the 20th. century, Abraham Flexner worked with the American Medical Association to survey the medical landscape and to bring high scientific standards to the training of physicians as well as to the services they offered their patients. At the beginning of the 21st. century, congress and the president are asking a commission of conventional physicians and researchers, complementary and alternative medicine pioneers, citizen advocates, and business people-men and women of many colors and ethnic backgrounds-to design a blueprint for a new medicine that is both scientific and inclusive.

The job of the commission-our job-is to establish guidelines for scientifically exploring approaches that have come from other cultures, and practices that have flourished outside of conventional care; to gather information about and describe models that can successfully integrate the most effective of these practices into conventional care; to make this information-about what works safely and what doesn’t – easily available to all Americans; and to recommend legislative initiatives that will make the best of these therapies, and training in them, an integral part of medical and other professional education.

In July we began this work. At the first commission meeting in Washington, DC, we created a blueprint for six 2-day commission meetings over the next 9 months-2 each on research and access to services, one on professional education, and one on public information.

We decided to hold a number of town hall meetings as well, to give Americans around the country (those who offer and those who receive healthcare) an opportunity to tell us what kind of healthcare and research and information they want. At our first town hall meeting in San Francisco, 61 people testified-concerned parents and hopeful advocates, clinicians, and researchers from a dozen different healing traditions.

Flexner’s report established standards in medical education and practice and helped to give birth to generations of distinguished scientific physicians. The White House Commission’s mandate is to help those scientifically trained physicians to turn their attention to other promising avenues for helping and healing, to formulate ways to bring together ancient wisdom and modern science and conventional practitioners whose primary training is in complementary and alternative approaches, and to educate the American public as well as professional caregivers.

Flexner gave physicians an authority in which patients could trust. Even as it deepens that authority, the commission’s work will help extend our options for good care, enlarge the range of practitioners available to all Americans, and encourage patients and their caregivers to establish the kind of sustained healing partnerships we all want.

Events

January 2007

INTEGRATIVE WHOLISTIC HEALING RETREAT:

Ayurveda (Ayur means long life. Veda means wisdom)
Ayurveda is The Wisdom of Long Life.

Saturday, Jan.13th from 2:00pm to 4:00pm:
• Eating according to the seasons and body type.
• Effective control of Obesity, Depression,
and Insomnia in Ayurveda.

Sunday, Jan. 14th 2007 2:00pm to 4:00pm:
• How Ayurveda can assist in management of Allergies,
Inflammation and Dietary disorders.

Private Consultations with Arun Sahi Ph.D, M.Sc are available:
$50.00 per consultation.

Please call 309-762-9202 to schedule a consultation.
Payments go directly to Dr. Sahi.

About the Presenter:
Arun Sahi Ph.D, M.Sc is visiting us from Chicago, Illinois, where he has a practice in Ayurveda since 1997.
Prior to Chicago , Dr. Sahi had practiced Ayurveda in New York for 3 years and in India for 10 years.
He is a third generation Ayurvedic doctor.

Event is held at The Moline Club 2nd Floor.
513 16th Street, Moline
Refreshments will be available.

The event is sponsored by The Institute for Cultural and Healing Traditions, Ltd.
and is free and open to the public.

April 2007 - SPECIAL
Dr. Prachi Garodia
December, 2006 visit was cancelled due to winter blizzard.
Event will re-schedule April 28th and 29th, 2007. Details to follow.

Past Events:

2006 June, December

2005 - May 14th.2005
10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.,
Image Guidance Intensive for Professional Healers
Location: Larson Center - Illini Hospital
Hosted by: Integrative Wellness Center

2002 - The Integrative Wellness Center
2526 41st Street
Moline, IL 61265

2000 April 19th
"A Walk in the Garden: Herbs your patient may be taking"
Presentation by John W. Golden, MD
Medical Director, The Integrative Wellness Center of the Quad Cities

1999 Integrative Wholistic Healing Retreat
3rd. Annual Retreat.

1998 Integrative Wholistic Healing Retreat
2nd. Annual Retreat.

1997 Integrative Wholistic Healing Retreat
1st. Annual Retreat.