Alternative medicine has always fascinated me.

I don’t mean generic prescription drugs, which offer a cheaper alternative to the high costs of medication.

I mean alternatives to the western medicine that has been crammed down our throats in a creamy, sherry flavored syrup since we were young enough to enjoy Flintstone vitamins.

I am talking about massage therapy, aroma therapy, reiki and herbology. These are types of healing that are not prescribed by doctors and big drug companies.

Yesterday at a meeting, a friend of mine was demonstrating body work.

I volunteered to be her assistant, and was I sure glad I did. I had been in kind of a funky mood, feeling generally agitated and grumpy.

Yet after she started aligning my shakras and working on my aura, my frame of mind completely reversed.

I went from being anxious to totally serene in a matter

of minutes.

I also rediscovered a field of medicine that had fascinated me in high school.

Here is a brief case study. When I was fourteen, my grandmother contracted e-coli.

She was in intensive care for quite a while, and it’s quite miraculous she recovered.

Grandma suffered a lot of kidney damage and she had to be on dialysis for a while. In fact, her doctor told her that no one in her situation had ever come off of dialysis.

Things weren’t looking too great; however, it just so happenes my cousin and his wife were studying alternative healing methods, reiki (a method of channeling positive energy) in particular.

While Grandma was in the hospital, they performed the Japanese healing method on her.

Low and behold, within a week or two, Grandma became the first patient to come off of dialysis.

I do not advocate reiki or herbology as an alternative to chemotherapy, for instance. However, I do think that it can be a nice way to augment such treatments.

These procedures give the patient a feeling that is more directly involved in her treatment, which can give someone a stronger will to survive.

Conducting body work and other types of alternative treatment is also incredibly relaxing, and a great stress relief-two important factors to include in any healing treatment.

Alternative healing is a fascinating world few people in the west know much about.

If you are into yoga, which happens to be quite a hot trend at the moment, why not take it to the next level?

Look into any of the many interesting methods of healing; even if you doubt their medicinal purposes, they are still a great way to relax and unwind.

Send comments to Erin Wethern at [email protected].