Non- western approach to healthcare in the contemporary world

Introduction

Non-western ways of treatment, also known as an alternative treatment, are gaining popularity. Half of the world’s population uses alternative medicine on a yearly basis. With the big public figures promoting such practice and different articles and news articles talking about this non-western healthcare approach, it has been gaining ground in the medical field and gaining attention from the public and many have started adopting this alternative treatment. There are thousands of alternative treatment or traditional treatments, whilst in this paper even if another certain alternative way of treatment will be discussed, the main non-western treatment that will be the main focus of this thesis will be ‘mindfulness meditation', which has been the major focus of all these above-mentioned promotions. Mindfulness meditation, a practice which is promoted in different aspects of life such as healthcare, gyms, and high schools to even for relieving stress in the workplace. A topic which seems to be taking over every section of our life in this contemporary world. How this topic has promised us numerous benefits and with a whole lot of benefits promised to us regularly, there is an underlying issue behind this favorable healthcare approach. Mindfulness practice should not be promoted as a necessity because it is a discipline in itself and not a cure for any underlying mental agitation.

Understanding the difference between Western medicine and non-western medicine:

Western medicine is a branch of medicine that deals with Most modern healthcare systems in the world that are built on the foundation of Trusted Source. It describes how medical professionals, such as doctors and nurses, use medical treatments including medications, radiation, and surgery to treat disorders. As a result, Western medicine may be referred to as mainstream or conventional medicine by some. Eastern medicine, on the other hand, refers to treatments and medicines that are not part of normal medical care. It is one of the world's oldest medical systems, having its origins in Asia. Eastern medicine is sometimes referred to as supplementary, alternative, or natural medicine by some people. Traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda procedures, which are holistic Trusted Source systems of medicine that have existed for considerably longer than contemporary Western medicine, are included in Eastern medicine. As explained by the article, "Western vs. Eastern medicine: What to know" by Sasha SanthaKumar, to give a brief and short difference is by defining the two different medicines. Western medicine refers to a system in which medical and healthcare professionals such as doctors, nurses, therapists, and pharmacists use evidence-based techniques such as medications, surgery, lifestyle changes, or treatment regimens to manage and treat disease. And in the contemporary world the main western medicine is all the pills and drugs that've been introduced and prescribed to us for almost every ailment. This is where non-western medicine steps in and why it has been gaining all the attention. Non-western medicine would be the traditional treatments without the pills and certain methods such as yoga, meditation, acupuncture and all the different sorts which fall under the umbrella of alternative medicine. Overall, western medicine focuses on pathology and curing disease while alternative medicine focuses on the health and healing of the person. For both treatments, the majority of concern comes from general misunderstanding and a lack of compromise from both sides. And regarding non-western or alternative medicine, there is a huge misunderstanding and a certain lack of information.?

How non-western medicine is marketed in the contemporary world:

The mindfulness market has turned into a billion-dollar industry. With this practice laced with traditional belief and practice that goes hand in hand with religious belief is now being marketed in the contemporary world and sold to people with the notion that it will make our life better and reduce our stress in this never-ending cycle of stress from the current world. To bring up a few instances of how this practice is being sold, how it is implemented in schools, prisons and healthcare areas and even such places like meditation gym is being continuously introduced and implemented for the well-being of society. Now, this old religious practice is famous and reachable to almost everyone but with all the great benefits there lies a problem with how this practice has turned into a billion-dollar industry and larger empires or associations are rather making a market about it, just making it another business for the capitalist society that we live in. In the article "The Mindfulness conspiracy", Ronald Purser states that it is sold as a force that can help us cope with the ravages of capitalism, but with its inward focus, mindful meditation may be the enemy of activism. Mindfulness meditation is being sold as a practice that should be adopted for one’s own well-being and to improve the entire social well-being. With the promise of improving our mental health and even physical health, thousands of products are being sold to us constantly such as books about being mindful, books about meditation, books about alternative medicine and so on. Even apps are available now so we can learn to meditate with just a finger touch away in our smartphones. Ronald Purser points out in his "The Mindfulness Conspiracy" that ''although it is based on Buddhism, it has been stripped of its ethics teachings as well as the liberating goal of eliminating attachment to a false sense of self while practicing compassion for all beings''. In the article ''Mindfulness: Towards A Critical Relational Perspective'' by Steven Stanley, he brings up spirituality, capitalism & mindfulness aspect and talks about the historical roots of the Psychologization of Mindfulness. Enlightenment, rationalism, romanticism, protestant Christianity, science, psychology, and postmodernism were all used by Westerners (mostly Americans and Europeans) to connect with Buddhism. There were three phases involved in this engagement: demythologization, detraditionalization, and psychologization. Through our own cultural frameworks and efforts, we can't help but engage with 'Buddhism.' There is no Asian word for 'Buddhism' or 'Buddhist;' the words were invented by Victorian imperialist colonists who wanted to understand and control 'Buddhism' for their own purposes. He talks about how it is being adapted and taken out of context of its initial faith. But the bigger issue in this billion-dollar industry is how it gives us the knowledge of such a helpful health tool called mindfulness meditation but it fails to acknowledge the core issue of why people in the first place need to practice this to help their mental health. People live with constant anxiety and stress in this modern world. In this 21st century where productivity and efficiency are being encouraged and demanded from the society, and when someone takes time for themselves, they are labelled with the term lazy and bombarded with reasons why they should be active constantly and be respected member of society they are asked to work, grind and be constantly productive, then with such day-to-day life people will develop anxiety or have severe stress and with this capitalist society it gives us the mindfulness meditation practice which will help our mental health and it will be sold to us as a solution to all our problems and after that, it’ll be an endless cycle of nonstop productivity and promises of our well-being.

The other side of mindfulness meditation:

With the several benefits of practicing mindfulness meditation, we have the other side of the coin that is not mentioned or exposed to us when the billion-dollar market promotes it to us. To first mention a few health benefits that mindfulness meditation gives us and not straight up ignore the benefits it really does give us are:

● It reduces chronic pain,

● Relieves stress,

● Anxiety management,

● Even helps in treating heart diseases

● Depression management

● Lowers blood pressure

● Helps in treating insomnia

● Improves memory

● Helps in treating gastrointestinal difficulties

● Increases self-awareness

In the article “Mind–Body Medicine and the Art of Self-Care: Teaching Mindfulness to Counselling Students Through Yoga, Meditation, and Qigong” a four-year qualitative study conducted by Marc B. Schure, John Christopher, and Suzanne Christopher highlight how stress may lead to worsening disorders and diseases and how stress impacts on job performances, effectiveness and satisfaction of one's performances. The paper brings up a case study based on MBSR (one of the most well-researched stress management programs is mindfulness-based stress reduction) based course where the 33 participants reported positive outcomes of practising mindfulness in the 15-week time span of research. The positive responses they submitted under the different practices were: physical changes, emotional changes, attitude or mental change, spiritual awareness, interpersonal changes, increased awareness of body, increased flexibility and energy, mental clarity and increased concentration, acceptance of emotions and personal issues, builds tolerance of physical and emotional pain, increases the sense of relaxation, learning to be comfortable with silence. Different positive outcomes were reported though it is also pointed out of the limitation of the study since it was a reliance on self-reported information. It helped us look into non-western medicine and gave focus on other mindfulness techniques such as yoga, meditation and qigong and expanded our ideas on how mindfulness practice affects our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of our lives. Even with all the positive aspects reported by the 33 participants, there is the problem that they may have been worried about the results and gave only positive results in their self-report so here drops the other side of the coin. The side effects of practicing mindfulness meditation and it does not only have health benefits but also has its negative effects. In a new study conducted examining some of these experiences, 6% of participants who practiced mindfulness reported negative side effects and 14% reported disruptive side effects that lasted for more than a month. The study was published in mid -May in ''Clinical Psychological Science''. All the negative side effects were pointed out in the article ''Too Much Mindfulness Can Worsen Your Mental Health'' by Sarah Simon. Some of the most common side effects reported were: increases anxiety, signs of dissociation, feeling emotionless, disrupted sleeping cycle, becomes more prone to panic attacks, memory lapses, problems with making decisions, social withdrawal, dissociation from the real world, detachment from others, fatigue, headaches, dizziness These are some of the side effects that have been reported and the other side of mindfulness which is never brought up when mindfulness meditation practice is encouraged. These issues are never highlighted in all those articles or books about mindfulness giving us the promises of a better health that it is not for some people and it can affect some of them to the level that it will disrupt their well-being regarding mental health and physical health. They will go into the practice with the idea that it will help them in improving their life but not knowing of these problems that come along with the mindfulness practice. So, these certain cons that come along with this 'greatly beneficial practice' should have an information on this negative effect.

The biggest issue with mindfulness in the contemporary world:

Mindfulness which was a self-discipline in the early days has been deprived of its original value and it's completely a turn from the origin of Buddhism ethics. It is now packaged in disguise as a self-help tool and sold to the public after stripping everything it stands for. As pointed out in the above lines of the harm's mindfulness meditation can cause another underlying problem with mindfulness is the neoliberalism aspect of. As James Reveley points out in his article ''Neoliberal meditations: How mindfulness training medicalizes education and responsibilizes young people'', neoliberalism, according to Connelly, is a type of capitalism based on free markets in which market logic is applied to institutions such as health and education. The billion-dollar empire of mindfulness sells us all the different ways to make one more mindful and wraps it up in a pretty way for the public to be more mindful. When they sell us this mindfulness it is constantly associated with the improvements it comes along with the practice but never discusses or tells the root cause of why people need to be mindful in the first place. They push mindfulness as the solution to all the problems and neglect the real problems of the world. James Reveley quotes Connely in his article that the neoliberalism economic structure necessitates the participation of "ordinary people who have internalized market rules". Personal autonomy, self-reliance, and responsibility for one's own well-being are ideological correlates of neoliberalism. James Reveley writes in his ''Neoliberal meditations: How mindfulness training medicalizes education and responsibilizes young people'', how for neoliberal theory to be widely accepted, it must be backed up by everyday activities. The core assumption of the article by James Reveley is that mindfulness meditation serves this purpose; it is a realistic strategy for passing down the neoliberal self-responsibilizing drive to young people. Mindfulness meditation is implemented in schools, prisons and healthcare gyms and fields making the people learn mindfulness with the notion that it’ll improve their social contribution. It makes them learn of their self-responsibility. Mindfulness is not truly revolutionary as it portrays itself as because it does not seek to overturn the dysfunctional system but it only serves to reinforce its destructive logic. The solutions and the benefits mindfulness give us only serves the neoliberalism ideologies. Mindfulness makes one learn to take responsibility and all the other benefits it provides in the above points all line up with the ideologies of neoliberalism where one should take responsibility for one's own issue and never point fingers at the real cause. In the article by Joanna Cook ''The politics of meditation and the limits of neoliberal critique'', the author points out that neoliberalism is a theoretical paradigm that serves to explain the relationship between systems of governance, selfgovernance, and capitalism market forces. The author asks how do we figure out where it stops? Is it possible that a concentration on neoliberal "entrepreneurialism" does not account for all kinds of governance and reflexive self-governance? Joanna Cook tells us that individually we can tackle the social issues and the only way to solve the social problems is to deal with it individually and we are responsible solely. We are told to work on ourselves, fix ourselves and learn to change our minds by being more mindful and learn to be non-judgmental and we should be accepting of certain circumstances. These are the ideologies which align so well with neoliberalism. We as individuals take on all the responsibility to make the world a better place by learning to be more mindful and not trying to change the issues that would make us happier is the package, they have sold to us. They feed us this new vision and new lifestyle, how to live a more meaningful and better life but in the end, it only serves the capitalist society and doesn’t benefit us as individuals and just ties us to the endless cycle of never-ending exhorting ourselves to make the society a better place. One cannot deny the argument that mindfulness meditation reduces the risk of suffering from mental illness, it is truly a good thing to be practiced. Mindfulness, which has gained popularity as a morally neutral means of paying attention to whatever is going on in consciousness with fine discernment and focus. It can be implemented in different parts of the society in such areas like school, prison and medical field. It is not only limited to that and to look at how mindfulness meditation can be greatly helpful is to look into how mindfulness meditation can be implemented in the soldier's life and how great of a help it can be. In the article, ''Mindfulness: Towards A Critical Relational Perspective'' by Steven Stanley, he brings up the point that mindfulness can now be taught to soldiers in the US military. In the face of rising suicide and self-harming attempts among troops, Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training aims to increase the operational efficiency of 'warriors' in battle. Meditation can be accepted by unusual groups such as inmates because of the link between Eastern awareness disciplines and martial arts. Even disciplines like vipassana, which emphasize mental toughness and endurance over kindness, may be adapted to fit with a hegemonic masculinity. Thus, it is a practical technique that can be used to teach people not only of self-responsibilities but to improve their well-being and help struggling individuals with mental health after several brutalities and it would even help in promoting positive social behaviors. No reasonable person would deny the many positive aspects of this mindfulness meditation trend that can help and save many lives but it serves as a double-edged sword in the neoliberalism context of making an individual take all the responsibility to make the world a better place. It makes us learn to cope with the toxic environment which is making us stressed in the first place and giving us all the health problems.

Conclusion

Mindfulness meditation with its double-edged sword makes youngsters or individual who needs help learning emotional self-management skills, which still helps them on an individual level as a consumer have to choose their consumption wisely with the unlimited choices being presented to us. Mindfulness-based practices are, in fact, blending with the neoliberal logic of "self-care''. So, if mindfulness is promoted as a discipline to help oneself without the disguise of serving the neoliberalist or capitalist society it could be the new vision change, we need or if the public learns of its dual nature and uses the learnings of such a helpful practice to revolt against the said ideologies. With the revolution and learning of the roots of its ethics and religious context we truly might gain benefit from it to help each of us as an individual in dealing with mental health and can even tackle physical health issues instead of just reaching for the thousands of pills for every sickness and just go for the traditional alternative way of treatment.

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