Alternatives to Healing Practices

Alternatives to Healing Practices

Name

Institution

Alternatives to Healing Practices

Alternative healing refers to all healing methods that are different from conventional Western Medicine practices. Majority of the accepted healing techniques that are effective in other nations are yet to be adopted in the Western nations. For instance, Acupuncture is commonly practiced in China, but it is not yet accepted fully as a Western Medicine. Medical services along with how people their sickness is changing rapidly. Majority of western doctors have realized that some patients heal faster and even more efficiently when they take alternative traditional medicine. Doctors have frequently objected to alternative healing. However, at the moment, Western doctors tolerate the use of alternative healing by their patients. A number of people are now learning the available various healing methods so that they can combine them for effective results.

My take on “authoritative knowledge” is that people should stop believing that authoritative knowledge is distributed hierarchically but realize that it is distributed horizontally. This would imply that equally parallel and legitimate systems of knowledge are present and individuals go through and use it in a parallel or sequential manner for a specific reason.  Justification of one way of knowing as authoritative dismisses and devalues the other means of knowing. Those people that take up alternative systems of knowledge are considered as ignorant, backward or immature trouble makers. The devaluation of non authoritative systems of knowledge will be a mechanism of through which hierarchical societal structures will be produced, sustained and displayed.

My take on “cultural authority” in relation to healing practices is that I am privileged, as a Chinese to talk about the body and culture. Personally, I come from a culture that detaches the body from.............