Relaxation techniques are used by people who wish to relax, for a wide variety of reasons. Since the 1960's, research has indicated strong correlations between stress levels and physical and emotional health. Meditation was among the first relaxation techniques shown to have a measurable effect on stress reduction. In the 1970's, self-help books teaching relaxation techniques began to appear on bestsellers lists. In 1975, The Relaxation Response by Harvard Medical School professor Herbert Benson, MD and Miriam Z. Klipper was published. Their book has been credited with popularizing meditation in the United States.

Research released in the 1980's indicated stronger ties between stress and health and showed benefits from a wider range of relaxation techniques than had been previously known. This research received national media attention, including a New York Times article in 1986. Public awareness about the health benefits of relaxation techniques grew, and so did the numbers of people who practiced them. Conventional medical philosophy adopted the concept and its early Twenty-first Century practitioners recommend using relaxation techniques to improve patient outcomes in many situations. Relaxation techniques are also a mainstay of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Six out of ten of the most commonly used CAM therapies are relaxation techniques.

HOLISTIC RELAXATION TECHNIQUES AND METHODS:

1. Homeopathy:

Homeopathy is based on the 'Principle of Similars', first expressed by Hahnemann in the exhortation similia similibus curentur or 'let likes cure likes'. This is the exact opposite of 'contraries' upon which the Galenic medicine of his day was based, which Hahnemann initially practised and in which he had been trained.

The 'law of similars' is an ancient medical maxim, but its modern form is based on Hahnemann's conclusion that a constellation of symptoms induced by a given homeopathic remedy in a group of healthy individuals will cure a similar set of symptoms in the sick. Symptom patterns associated with various remedies are determined by 'provings', in which healthy volunteers are given remedies, often in molecular doses, and the resulting physical, mental and spiritual symptoms are compiled by observers into a 'Drug Picture'.

Speaking of the attitude his first proving inspired in him, Hahnemann states: "with this first trial broke upon me the dawn that has since brightened into the most brilliant day of the medical art; that it is only in virtue of their power to make the healthy human being ill that medicines can cure morbid states, and indeed, only such morbid states are composed of symptoms which the drug to be selected for them can itself produce in similarity on the healthy."

Homeopathic practitioners rely on two types of reference in prescribing. The Homeopathic Materia Medicae comprise alphabetical indexes of Drug Pictures organized by remedy and describe the symptom patterns associated with individual remedies. The Homeopathic repertory consists of an index of sickness symptoms, listing all remedies associated with specific symptoms. The first such Homeopathic repertory was George Jahr's Repertory, published in 1835.

At first, Hahnemann tested in homeopathic provings substances commonly used as medicines in his time, such as Antimony and Rhubarb, and also poisons like Arsenic, Mercury and Belladonna. Perhaps in this he was mindful of Paracelsus: "poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy." This subtle connection between poison and medicine, or 'what can kill can cure' was also observed by Shakespeare: "In the infant rind of this small flower, poison hath residence and medicine power:..."

Today, about 3000 remedies are used in homeopathy; about 300 are based on comprehensive Materia Medica information, about 1500 on relatively fragmentary knowledge and the rest are used experimentally in difficult cases based on the law of similars, either without knowledge of their homeopathic properties or through speculative knowledge independent of the law of similars. This modern approach also harks back to the ancient 'doctrine of signatures,' which Hahnemann definitely rejected as uncertain guesswork: "The ancients imagined that the yellow colour of the juice of...(Chelidonium, Yellow Poppy) was an indication (signature) of its utility in bilious diseases. The moderns from this extended its employment to hepatic diseases...the importance of human health does not admit of any such uncertain directions for the employment of medicines. It would be criminal frivolity to rest contented with such guesswork at the bedside of the sick. Only that which the drugs themselves unequivocally reveal of their peculiar powers in their effects on the healthy human body – that is to say, only their pure symptoms – can teach us loudly and clearly when they can be advantageously used with certainty; and this is when they are administered in morbid states very similar to those they are able to produce on the healthy body."

Examples of this impulse to expand the materia medica include: the use of an isopathic (disease associated) agent as a first prescription in a 'stuck' case, when the beginning of disease coincides with a specific event such as vaccination; the use of a chemically-related substance when a remedy that was well-indicated fails. A good example of this is found in the Bowel Nosodes which were introduced by the British homeopaths, Edward Bach (1886-1936), John Paterson (1890-1954) and Charles Edwin Wheeler (1868-1946) in the 1920s. Their use is based on the variable bowel bacterial flora thought to be associated with persons of different homeopathic constitutional types. Though receiving more attention today, the Bowel Nosodes are rarely used outside British homeopathy.

More recently, homeopathy has embraced the use of substances based on their elemental classification (the periodic table or biological taxonomy). This approach may well create neat systems for grouping remedies and classifying the ever-burgeoning Materia Medica, but its usefulness is questioned by some purists on the basis that inherently it involves speculation about remedy action without provings.

There are many methods for determining the most-similar remedy (the simillimum), and homeopaths sometimes disagree about the required remedy. This is partly due to the complexity of the 'totality of symptoms' concept; homeopaths do not use all symptoms, but decide which are the most characteristic; this subjective evaluation of case analysis rests crucially on knowledge and experience. Finally, the Drug Picture in the Materia Medica is always more comprehensive than the symptoms exhibited by any individual. These factors mean that a homeopathic prescription can remain presumptive until it is verified by testing the effect of the remedy on the patient.

Homeopathy is much more popular in Europe and India than in the USA. A study exploring the use of complementary medicine found the following percentages of various countries' population to be using homeopathy for some of their health needs (data from 1985-92):