What is Complementary Therapy?

The term complementary therapy covers a wide amount of therapies everything from acupuncture and chiropractic through to craniosacral therapy. Although all these therapies vary greatly in there approach they all have one fundamental thing in common, they are working to promote the bodies innate ability to heal it's self, without using drugs or surgery. 

So what does this mean?

Rather than just treating a persons symptoms a holistic aproach examines all areas of a persons life, lifestyle, diet, occupation and emotions (An example of this would be someone presenting with irritable bowel syndrome rather than just treating the pain that they are experiencing the holistic approach would seek to understand the persons whole lifestyle. To continue with the example of irritable bowel syndrome much work has been done on the idea that stress past or present may trigger and continue the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. To treat IBS a therapy such as Acupuncture may be useful to rebalance the bodies own systems encouraging the body to use it's own unique healing ability to heal it's self, acupuncture is useful for both body and mind.) It may also be necessary to look at what and how they are eating this would require an appointment with a nutritional therapist.

It is important to realise that any complementary therapist is not a doctor they are not their to diagnose, this can be a concept that people struggle with afterall if somthing hurts we want to take that pain away straight away we may not be that interested in were it is coming from and what caused us to feel it. The overall aim of complementary therapy is always to balance and unblock the bodies systems so they can heal themselves a complemetry therapist is there to facilitate this process.