QUALITY OF LIFE

'Quality of Life’ research has shown a close correlation between happiness and health. Please explore this site to find out about our research, the underlying concepts of ’Quality of Life as Medicine’, the clinical research, it’s practical application in treating clients, treatment, training and other services available.

Opening letter by Søren Ventegodt, MD, EU-MSc-CAM

CAN YOU BE TRULY HAPPY?

Can you be truly happy? Of course you can. All it takes is a fair amount of insight into yourself. You need to understand your ego and your own divine nature in your human core. You need to use all you are wisely and in loving service of others. When you are happy... you can love and when you can love others... you can help them to heal their life. Consciousness is the key to personal freedom, a healthy body and mind, emotional intelligence, the gift of unconditional love and an unbound, happy one-to-one relationship. Understanding your life includes a deep look into the identification with body and mind, and this will free all aspects of you, from mind to sexuality. Profound self-insight allows you to understand your role in the world and to engage all your personal resources and talents of body, mind, spirit and heart in your daily living. Your life will spontasneously self-organize, as you become an integral part of the universe and tap into the many resources of the healthy, awakened human being.


WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM OUR HUMAN EXPERIENCE?

We as human beings are really meant to suffer. Only if we suffer can we wake up and learn. So we should not complain about suffering, but simply ask: How can this suffering be of value to me? What does it mean? How do I reach freedom and understanding? We suffer, because we do not understand ourselves. In this situation we make wrong choices and act from negative attitudes and fear. Little by little we destroy our own happiness and our health declines. Physical and mental diseases, sexual problems and social difficulties follow. It is surprisingly easy to improve quality of life and health. All it takes is deep and dedicated introspection. A self-inquiry that brings you down to the basics in life, to your innermost Self, your existential core. This process of existential healing is often called salutogenesis with a concept coined by the Israeli researcher Aaron Antonovsky (1923-1994). Salutogenesis means literally "creation of the solution" and is the exact opposite of pathogenesis, the process that makes you ill.

So getting to know yourself makes you healthy and happy. It is that easy.

Why is it so difficult to get to know one self? The answer is simple: Strong negative emotions surround the existential core, causing a strong resistance, a strong unconscious repulsion, from the core. Therefore you need somebody to help you go where you least of all want to go. To take your hand and guide you back to your core. Someone who can take you to that place, where you had lots of pains and failures at the beginning of your life...... that is the job of the holistic therapist.

FEELINGS AND HEALING Let us admit that it is about feelings and emotions. Some of these feelings are connected to the mind and spirit, but most of them seem to be related to the body – and its functions, energies and organs. Sexuality is one of the aspects of the body that gives rise to some of the strongest and problematic negative feelings, like guilt and shame. Feelings, we will do anything in the world to avoid to feel. We need help and support to feel that, to explore these old and painful areas in our existence. So this is why we have holistic therapy.


EFFICACY OF HOLISTIC THERAPY

How efficient is holistic therapy? Well, in coronary heart disorder, it seems that some patients elected for heart surgery are feeling well again after less than three month, if they used Dean Ornish holistic treatment (1,2,3). Even cancer seems sometimes to react positively to interventions that only addresses life style, emotional matters and spirituality (4,5). At some occations spontaneous remissions of cancer and other severe disorders have been observed in holistic therapy (4,5,6,7). We also know that chronic pain in inner organs and the locomotor system is responsive to holistic medicine (8,9). We also know that there are only rare side effects with alternative medicine (10).

So holistic medicine – mind body medicine that primarily works through consciousness (BodyTalk is one example of this of course) – seems to be effective and causes little harm.

The principle of supported self-exploration

The principle of supported self-exploration and self-inquiry are simple and easy to understand. It is a little more complicated to make it work in practice. But if you know where to look, if you understand in which direction you need to go to find the Self, it is not difficult. And it does not have to take long time. Often people can learn this in a few days. This is why we have developed a two-day course in scientific holistic medicine.


REFERENCES

1. Ornish D, Brown SE, Scherwitz LW, Billings JH, Armstrong WT, et al. Can lifestyle changes reverse coronary heart disease? The lifestyle heart trial. Lancet 1990;336(8708):129-33. 2. Ornish D, Scherwitz LW, Billings JH, Brown SE, Gould KL, et al. Intensive lifestyle changes for reversal of coronary heart disease. JAMA 1998;280(23):2001-7. 3. Ornish D. Avoiding revascularization with lifestyle changes: The Multicenter Lifestyle Demonstration Project. Am J Cardiol 1998;82(10B):72T-76T. 4. Frattaroli J, Weidner G, Dnistrian AM, Kemp C, Daubenmier JJ, Marlin RO, Crutchfield L, Yglecias L, Carroll PR, Ornish D. Clinical events in prostate cancer lifestyle trial: results from two years of follow-up. Urology 2008;72(6):1319-23. 5. Spiegel D, Bloom JR, Kraemer HC, Gottheil E. Effect of psychosocial treatment on survival of patients with metastatic breast cancer. Lancet 1989;2(8668):888-91. 6. Ventegodt S, Morad M, Hyam E, Merrick J. Clinical holistic medicine: Induction of spontaneous remission of cancer by recovery of the human character and the purpose of life (the life mission). ScientificWorldJournal 2004;4:362-77. 7. Ventegodt S, Solheim E, Saunte ME, Morad M, Kandel I, Merrick J. Clinic holistic medicine: Metastatic cancer. ScientificWorldJournal 2004;4:913-35. 8. Ventegodt S, Morad M, Merrick J. Clinical holistic medicine: Chronic pain in the locomotor system. ScientificWorldJournal 2005;5:165-72. 9. Ventegodt S, Merrick J Clinical holistic medicine: Chronic pain in internal organs. ScientificWorldJournal 2005;5:205-10. 10. Ventegodt S, Merrick J. A Review of side effects and adverse events of non-drug medicine (nonpharmaceutical complementary and alternative medicine): Psychotherapy, mind-body medicine and clinical holistic medicine. J Complement Integr Med 2009;6(1):16. May 27, 2011