SynTalk

SynTalk thinks about health & healing, while constantly wondering whether health has a fixed meaning. Is health an anxiety? The concepts are derived off / from Hippocrates, Charaka, Patanjali, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Foucault, William Osler, BKS Iyengar, Dean Ornish, & Atul Gawande, among others. When & why did the health of the population become a concern for the state, and why was this a significant historical turn? How, when & why did health enter national budgets, and create an industrial force? What is the difference between healing (subjective?) and cure (objective?)? Is healing largely phenomenological, & subjectively realized? Is ‘cure sometimes, relief often, and comfort always’ a possible underlying ethical principle? How the ‘breath’ (prana), as the universal entity within us, unifies the body and the mind when both have a history (situated in time), and are ‘ours’? Is the body a river of energy, & is it possible to understand this energy more specifically & at the molecular level? Does the medical system address the ‘whole self’ and not just the body, & what is the journey from yama to samadhi? Does every part of our body have an expression? How can we make effective therapy safer? Is the doctor a facilitator for nature to cure the person, & is Placebo Effect the most significant healer? How then is the physician the king (& not the consumer), unlike in other transactions? The distinction between the legal & the ethical responsibilities of the doctor? Is it a part of the modern condition to be perennially anxious, & the scope is then extended to treat the ‘risk’? Are the alternatives such as ayurveda & yoga also being recycled under the framework of ‘healthism’? Is it important for the alternatives to have their own systemicity, and not be read solely in terms of the dominant system? Is the crisis of medicine external to a ‘good central core’? Why is cure more important than healing for the modern medical system, and is the underlying logic solely commercial? Is the iatrogenicity (in some ways) a part of the design of the healthcare system, and does this design have to change? Is internal intervention as (if not more) important than the external intervention? The links between witches, apothecaries, acupuncture, Nitric Oxide, endorphins, 21600 breaths, 2 pegs of whisky, statins, ether, and laughter. In the journey of healing, is comfort the starting point or the ending point? Does healthcare need to integrate the notion of ‘space’ into its metaphysic? Is health a personal challenge or (largely) a technical issue? Does the system currently have our complete faith, and does the equivalent of the ‘God is dead’ need to happen? Is it possible to be a non believer of the current dominant industrial medical system? The SynTalkrs are: Dr. R.D. Lele (nuclear medicine, Lilavati Hospital, Mumbai), Prof. Susie Tharu (cultural studies, philosophy, EFLU, Hyderabad), & Zubin Zarthoshtimanesh (yoga, Iyengar Yogabhyasa, Mumbai).