Beyond the body: Future of Medicine

The field of medicine has long been interested in the human body: its physical structures, chemical processes, ailments, injuries, and ability to heal.

There is also another aspect of human nature that has been explored by medicine for many years: the aspect of consciousness.

What is consciousness? How do our perceptions of ourselves impact our experiences of sickness, pain, healing, and the ability to be healed?

Is there the possibility of gaining such knowledge about consciousness as would enable medicine to take the next step forward into a fuller understanding of human nature?

The meeting ground between the two subjects is so intriguing exactly because of this very reason: it is where measurements give way to experience.

The Mystery of Consciousness

Consciousness is one of the most familiar and mysterious components of human life. Our thoughts, feelings, intentions, sensations, memories, dreams, and perceptions are all experienced all the time, but what makes the experience itself so mysterious?

Consciousness is linked with brain functioning. Modern science has made a great leap forward in understanding how neural processes correlate with consciousness.

Nevertheless, the study of biological processes related to consciousness may not be equivalent to finding answers to the following question:

What is it like to be conscious?

We can observe our brain. We can measure its electrical activity. We can study the neural communications in the brain. We can look at what happens to the brain when we are sleeping, awake, meditating, under anesthesia, sick, and in other different states. However, the inner life of the human being is very personal. There is something unique about it. The same organism that can be studied from the outside by medicine has an inner world that can be experienced only from within.

Maybe this is the starting point of the dialogue between consciousness and medicine.

Awareness Before Intervention

Before we try to make any changes, we have to be aware of what it is that we are trying to change. Awareness means becoming conscious of our thoughts, emotions, sensations, habits, and reactions. An individual who constantly suffers from chronic stress will get to a point where constant stress will become his norm. An individual suffering from anxiety will interpret the world based on the perceptions formed by anxiety.

Chronic pain for an individual will affect him or her not only physically but also mentally, emotionally, relationally, in sleep, and identity-wise. Awareness does not necessarily remove these experiences from our lives. What awareness does do, however, is that it alters our relationship with these experiences. The difference is very important. To become aware of our thoughts does not mean we accept them. To become aware of our emotions does not mean we identify with them. To become aware of our pain does not mean we give our whole identity away to it. Awareness creates distance between us and the experience itself.

The Mind and the Body

The interconnection between the mind and the body has been a matter of natural intuition in humans for many centuries now.

We have been blessed with many techniques for exploring this connection due to advances made in modern medicine. Physiological processes and health could be affected by stress, sleep, behavior, emotions, social interactions, etc. On the other hand, illnesses and alterations in the functioning of the body could significantly affect one’s mood, cognition, perception, behavior, and so on.

It is hence a bidirectional relation. The body influences the mind. The mind influences the experiences of the body. Neither can be considered an equivalent of the other. Therefore, healing cannot always be considered an act of repair of a physical structure. One can achieve success by treating a disease from a biological perspective, but at the same time, one’s experience of the disease could be one of fear, anxiety, grief, loss of identity, and so on. Healing, hence, has different levels. There is the biological level. There is the psychological level. There is the social level. And for many, there is also the spiritual level.

Mindfulness: Learning to Be Present

Mindfulness has gained much importance in healthcare as it provides a concrete method of becoming more aware. In essence, mindfulness is nothing more than being fully aware of one’s current experience. This may seem like a simple concept. It is not an easy task. The human brain oscillates continuously between recollections from the past and expectations of the future. We recall things that have already happened and anticipate what lies ahead. Illness makes these oscillations even more pronounced.

We go back to the past: "Why me? Why has this happened to me?" We project into the future: "What will happen to me if I do not recover from this illness?" And somewhere in between all of this oscillation, the present disappears. But mindfulness provides another option: meeting the reality that one is currently experiencing.

Numerous studies have examined the effects of mindfulness-based therapy in treating stress, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. However, the results of the research are not an endorsement of viewing mindfulness as a panacea, but rather an indication of the significance of attention and perception in health.

Pain and the Experience of Suffering

Pain is physical. But suffering can often be far greater than just the physical experience of pain. Pain can lead to fear. Fear can lead to anticipation. Anticipation can lead to more tension. The mind can start creating a story about the pain: It will never stop. I will always be like this.

Life has been reduced to this ailment. The physical experience is real. But the narrative created around it can become a source of additional suffering. This does not imply that pain is a fabrication or that people can just think themselves into getting well. It suggests that being ill has both physical and mental components. Recognizing these aspects could help medicine heal the whole person.

The Possibility of Conscious Healing

The very term ‘healing’ needs consideration. Healing is not necessarily equal to curing. A disease can persist, yet the person feels restored to his or her wholeness in meaning. Physical damage done to one’s body may remain, yet the person starts having a new relationship to life. Chronic ailment stays, and fear, loneliness, and hopelessness are slowly replaced with acceptance and meaningfulness. This is not an attempt to undermine the significance of physical treatment.

Quite the contrary.

It just means that such treatment would become more effective if complemented with the human experience of the illness. A physician deals with a biological problem, while a human being deals with the experience of this problem. Both ways of dealing with the problem are different, yet need not be separated.

Meditation, Breath, and Movement

Techniques such as meditation, controlled breathing, yoga, and mindful movement have gained much popularity as they all work simultaneously on attention, awareness of the body, breathing, and behavior.

Meditation can help in the development of both attention and emotional awareness. Breathing exercises can be used to regulate arousal and focus attention on the body. Movement can help in bringing back awareness of the physical body. Yoga, especially, integrates movement, breathing, attention, and sometimes even a fourth element.

These techniques should never be treated as a substitute for proper medical intervention. Perhaps their true importance lies somewhere else. These techniques can teach us how to become involved in our experiences rather than being just observers of our body.

The Patient as a Participant

Maybe one of the most crucial steps in modern medicine is the understanding of the fact that the patient is not just an object receiving the treatment. The patient is an active participant.

A person comes to the medical context with a set of beliefs, fears, expectations, values, habits, relations, and experiences. This set can affect the process of perception and application of the treatment. Thus, patient education, decision-making, psychological support, and taking into account individual cases can become crucial aspects of healthcare.

It does not imply the idea that the whole responsibility for one's illness lies with the patient. Not all illnesses arise because of a person's thoughts, feelings, way of life, and choices. It is essential. Awareness should strengthen a person, but not make him responsible for his illness as its creation.

The aim of awareness is not blaming, but participation.

Technology and the Expanding Frontier

Perhaps in the future, medicine will find itself in a progressively more refined partnership with consciousness. Through neuroimaging, scientists can study brain function in unprecedented detail.

Neurofeedback seeks to determine if individuals can train themselves to affect certain functions of their brains using feedback. Virtual reality is being explored for uses including pain relief, psychological treatment, and rehabilitation. Artificial intelligence is increasingly being applied to medical data analysis to spot patterns that might escape human detection.

Such technologies could enable us to explore the link between brain, behavior, perception, and health even further. However, technology poses the following question:

Is it true that as our capacity for measuring the human being grows, so too must our knowledge of the human being?

Measuring has immense power. However, a measure and meaning are two different things.

A brain scan can show brain activity patterns. It does not have the power to reveal the meaning of a life for the individual living it. Both of these things will be required of medicine in the future.

Towards a More Complete Medicine

It may be that the medicine of the future is not just about more advanced machinery, more complex medications, or biological systems understood in greater depth. It may be that the medicine of the future is about our understanding of the patient behind the diagnosis. The human being is not just a box of organs. The human being is not just a mind detached from the body.

We are biological beings, psychological beings, relational beings—and spiritual beings, according to our worldviews. All of these aspects interrelate with each other. A more holistic medicine would thus include asking:

What disease does this person have?

But also:

What is this person experiencing?

What does this illness mean to them?

What supports their ability to recover, adapt, and participate in life?

How can medicine treat the condition without losing sight of the person?

These questions do not weaken science.

They give science a larger human context.

Unlocking Human Potential

The potential of human beings has often been defined in terms of intelligence, physical ability, productivity, creativity, or accomplishment. However, there could be another dimension to potential.

It could be the case that one of our greatest potentials lies in the potential of achieving self-awareness.

- To see without reacting right away.

- To feel without becoming lost in the feeling.

- To suffer without letting the suffering define you completely.

- To understand the body without forgetting the person living in it.

Apart from all this, it is also true that healing does not necessarily have to be about getting back to what you were. Sometimes, it is about realizing the possibilities of becoming who you can become.

Medicine can fix us up. Science can quantify it all. Technology can increase our abilities. However, it is consciousness that makes sense of it all.

The path of medicine is perhaps found in not choosing between the body, mind, science, spirituality, and technology, but in uncovering how these factors can relate to each other without compromising their own boundaries. Perhaps this is not about merely prolonging life; this is about enhancing what it means to be alive. And if medicine allows this through scientific precision, human kindness, and respect for the wonder of consciousness, then medicine should not be thought of as mere healing of the body but also as waking up to its possibilities.