Reconciling the Direct and Indirect Healthcare Factions
It is common to hear “Direct” and “Indirect” healthcare providers snipe at each other. This article encourages a truce between the two camps.
Chart emphasizes Direct and Indirect Healthcare models. Click image to download as PDF document
The Direct camp — mainstream medicine and science — often ridicules1 the many versions of Indirect camp — a very diverse sets of holistic practitioners and alternative providers. The Indirect advocates frequently launch counter-attacks. The fact that the Indirect camp is experiencing excellent marketplace growth adds spice to the debate. However, even within the alternative world, some practitioners disparage others for not being indirect enough.2
Dr. Randolph Stone, DO, DC, ND (founder of Polarity Therapy) was acutely aware of the political tension in health care, and shows the way with a chart on the subject:
“In such a confusion, conscientious minds of thinkers and researchers will naturally look for an answer that could do justice to all and shed light on a dark road of misunderstanding and persecution of one group by another,” Dr. Randolph Stone wrote.
This chart3 is one of Stone’s greatest teachings. It succinctly describes how both the Direct and Indirect camps are valid and useful complements to each other. With the adjoining text, it also describes his Three Principles concept, both functionally and anatomically. Stone did not make up the Three Principles idea, it is the basis of Oriental Medicine (Yang-Yin-Neutral), Ayurveda (Rajas-Tamas-Satva), as well as modern physical science (Positive-Negative-Neutral, as in proton-electron-neutron or magnetic attraction-repulsion-balance). But Stone brought it to the foreground for a modern western audience, far ahead of his time, in 1948.
Close study of this chart leads to many profound ideas, including the meaning of allopathic and homeopathic and the location of a triune polarized field that organizes the body. It fits nicely with the findings of modern embryology as well, giving important detail to the implications of Ecto-, Endo, Meso- tissue origins.4
But for our purposes here, the message is about Direct and Indirect action. They are really two sides of one coin. Shown above is a summary of the two approaches.
In this summary the attributes of the two approaches are summarized. Direct action is represented by an urban landscape because it is so well developed. Indirect action has barely been explored by the mass culture, although there are many signs of recent progress. The disparity is interpreted as a measure of how imbalanced our culture became in its recent history.
The pictures in the middle of the chart are intended to track this progression of events. At the top is the ancient Tao symbol, a Crop Circle that appeared in England on 7/7/2007. Under this guiding concept, all fronts have backs, all lefts have rights, and all tops have bottoms. Next down is Stone’s diagram, reflecting his adoption of Taoist wisdom and applying it to the body directly. Third down is the Caduceus, ancient Egyptian and Greek symbol of medicine. Stone recognized a complete energy anatomy in the emblem: the staff is the spine, the globe at the top is the brain, the two snakes are Yang and Yin, and the wings are consciousness. At the bottom is a drawing of the American Medical Association logo from 1954: the Caduceus has been changed by removing one snake and the central staff has become a tree branch instead of the staff of Hermes. The effect is to forget the Yin (Indirect) and pull in the misogynistic attitudes of the era as embodied in the Garden of Eden story. The result is a very Yang approach to health care, authoritarian and profit-driven. Common sense dictates that the two should be in approximate equilibrium, not overloaded on just one side.
In the lists of attributes, close study will reveal the polarities involved, each worthy of thoughtful consideration and discussion. Each item on each list has an important place in the grand scheme of health care. If a person has arterial bleeding or appendicitis, apply direct pressure or surgery. But if these kinds of measures are being applied, also use items from the right side of the chart, to maximize the patient’s internal healing resources. Both can be very effective, and the health care of the future will be much stronger as a result.
The two can be blended seamlessly in a Polarity Therapy or Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy session, with excellent results. For example the session could begin with firmly contacting the feet, to create a first wave of relaxation. Then a cranial base disengagement may be appropriate, and it may happen more efficiently. Next a “Five-Pointed Star” might carry the disengagement benefits into the body, and finally a particular problematic location can be addressed with “Becker’s Three-Stage Process.” The sum, alternative Direct and Indirect, can be very effective!
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Footnotes:
A great article discussing the situation is “The Sense of Being Glared At” by Anthony Freeman, describing the attitude of the prestigious British magazine Nature toward biologist Rupert Sheldrake. The “Quackbusters” and “Skeptics” lead the charge with aggressive monitoring of media including internet and attacks whenever possible. These extremists are given influential platforms by institutional media such as Scientific American, which hosts Michael Shermer and his often-scornful “Skeptic” monthly column.
For an example, see Stillness by Charles Ridley (North Atlantic, 2006), which takes a gratuitous swing at Franklyn Sills, author of Foundations in Craniosacral Biodynamics (North Atlantic, 2011). For another example, read “The One Hundred Years Osteopathic War” by Alain Abehsara, recounting the divisive arguing between “structurals” and “cranials” within the profession of Osteopathy.
Randolph Stone, Polarity Therapy Volume I. (CRCS Publishing, 1984, Book 3, p. 1).
Randolph Stone, Polarity Therapy Volume I. (CRCS Publishing, 1984, p. III-31).
Jaap van der Wal, www.embryo.nl