Similarities Between Alternative Medicine and Mental Health Therapies
To my surprise, my husband gifted me with a trip to the Aji Spa (near the Sheraton Grand at Wild Horse Pass in south Chandler near Ahwatukee), where he paid for me to get my chakras balanced. Now, I won’t argue whether or not chakras are real, because it honestly doesn’t matter. What matters is, did it make me feel better? On some level, sure, it felt nice, and I did walk out feeing lighter. Here, I want to talk about some of the techniques I noticed her using that actually have some overlap with mechanisms used in a therapeutic setting.
Starting off, she provided a handful of cards, one for each chakra, and on them had certain qualities associated with the chakra. She instructed me to choose a card for each chakra, helping to focus my intentions for the session. I ended up choosing things like wanting to invite more abundance, creativity, authentic power, gratitude, self-expression, intuition, and a sense of knowing into my life. In therapy, we do this in a sense with goal setting. We spend a bit of time at the beginning of therapy going clarifying exactly what are you wanting to walk away with when therapy is over? How do you want to feel? What do you want to be different within your life? What do you want to change within yourself?
By going over one’s goals, we help you to not get distracted by the feelings and obstacles that block you from achieving them. By naming those qualities that you want to feel, you make them feel even more real, boosting your sense of motivation and drive. Even in just understanding what you do want, we can gain a better idea of what the problem exactly is, as it isn’t always easy to know. In making the barriers clearer, the way out becomes easier to see.
Next, she had me choose some crystals to arrange them on a wooden mandala in a way that felt meaningful to me, but still connected to each chakra, explaining that this was to help me see my own inner wisdom and what I needed in order to balance my chakras. It was curious to me that I picked these out without knowing their meanings, but she explained their meanings afterwards, allowing me to see the metaphysical properties and how they connected with those chakras.
Therapy does this in a more tangible way, using the brain a bit more, but we also help people seek out their own inner wisdom. In the stories that we tell about ourselves and our daily lives, it often reflects what it is that we are needing. Then when we realize what is hurting and what we actually need, it brings up the real underlying feelings that need to heal.
For example, take someone who simply wants to feel happier. A meaningful, but vague goal. Week after week, there’s a trend of them sharing how they are upset by someone not inviting them to a party, mentioning a family member forgetting to call them, complaining about the office social butterfly, and commenting about how they are too busy for friends. Seeing the theme, I would guess that they might be lonely, and that they need to feel connected with others in order to feel happy. By becoming aware of that theme, it stirs feelings up, and they step towards addressing the real problem.
After placing the crystals in the grid, she drew cards and placed them near each chakra, telling me that this is what the universe is saying needs to happen in order for that chakra to become healthier. She then went through each pairing and applied the goals with the tasks together to make it more tangible. I wasn’t so keen on this, because it felt like she was fishing for connections where there weren’t any, but I decided to keep an open mind.
Therapy is a bit more guided than that, not necessarily leaving it up to random card draws, but there is something to be said about putting an idea out there, picturing what it would look like, trying it out, and then assessing if that helped. If one looks online, you can find hundreds of different coping skills, and not all of them will work for every person every time a coping skill is needed. We are all unique in that way.
The same goes for reaching emotional goals. Some people need to make big choices, some need to implement a new habit, and some need to change their mindset in order to reach the emotional state they desire. However, you will never know what will work if you don’t try anything! We can outline some good options, set it up to give it a good chance of success, and we will still come across some approaches that won’t quite work. It is part of the process. With every failed experiment, you learn more about what works for you and what you really need. You start being able to hear your inner wisdom with more clarity as you try things and reflect upon how it felt.
The rest of the chakra balancing treatment was quite different than therapy is, so I won’t go into the details. However, she mentioned something that reminded me about how therapy works. Sometimes you won’t feel the change the day of the appointment. Sometimes you feel it later on as you live your life, and things said and feelings felt, start connecting in the days and weeks following the session.
I found this to be true for myself. The cards and the physical sensations I felt during the chakra balancing reminded me of some inner wisdom I gained earlier this year during a ketamine assisted psychotherapy session. It made me realize how the same wisdom I found within myself a few months ago still applied, and that I had let myself get bogged down with life and anxieties. Remembering that, I walked away from the chakra balancing treatment with a greater focus and a reminder of my goals and priorities.
So, whether you get support through a mental health therapist like me, or you enjoy some alternative treatments like a chakra balancing, many of the key components of healing are the same. Scientists are still discovering more about the brain every day, but the placebo effect is well known and documented, and it just shows how truly astounding the brain’s power is. Could being clear on your wants, understanding what blocks you, and speaking to yourself through a sense of symbolism and ceremony help harness that power within the brain? Perhaps. There is a lot of historical usage, anecdotal evidence, and scientific data to support these similarities amongst different forms of healing. So what if it is just tricking your brain? If it works, that’s great!
