10th Dot

Question for Dr. Pierce: How do you deal with walking in the “two worlds” of conventional medicine and yoga?

There is no doubt that yoga and conventional medicine have two very different worldviews, and these differences can create some serious conflicts. For example whereas yoga views Spirit as primary and matter secondary, biomedicine assumes the opposite (if Spirit even exists at all.) Sometimes I find myself at a patient’s bedside asking, “which do I serve, the Spirit or the body?”

Luckily I have been given several tools for navigating the apparent conflict and contradictions between yoga and biomedicine. In yoga, we might investigate such conflicts in light of “hatha” which is loosely translatable to “sun-moon:” a particularly deep prototype of polarity that names a major type of yoga. In medicine, these issues are addressed in the context of integrative medicine, which seeks to find the appropriate use of both conventional and complementary/alternative approaches. Both hatha yoga and integrative medicine are particularly useful to transcend apparent conflicts and contradictions that arise in my life.

To be more specific, I navigate the conflicts and contradictions that arise from being involved deeply in yoga and medicine by recognizing that each of these systems addresses a particular range of on the vast continuum that is consciousness. Whereas yoga is exquisitely designed for inquiry into interiors (subjective experience, etc) biomedicine is exquisitely designed for inquiry into exteriors (sensory objects, etc.) Whereas yoga is aimed at unity (yoga means union in Sanskrit), medicine assumes the attitude of anatomy (from Greek meaning “to cut apart.”) Rather than being in conflict, yoga and medicine – by their very differences- are complementary.