Dr. Sergio Bartoli – a co-worker of Assagioli presents how synthesis as a trend is beginning to influence medicine. Afterwards they have Q&A with students.
A Course of Lessons on Psychosynthesis. Lesson VIII- 1970. Translated by Gordon Symons. Original Italian Title: Il Concetto Di Sintesi Nella Storia Della Medicina. From the Assagioli Archive in Florence.
Dr. Assagioli –
In our program we said that we would carry out an experiment of “a spoken journal”. Now I believe that Dr. Bartoli can do it by briefly reporting on the activity of the Center of Rome, which is quite vast and fruitful.
Dr. Bartoli –
First of all, I can only express my personal pleasure to be back in Florence, which I consider almost my adopted city for the importance it had in my training as a man and doctor.
Let’s move on to the “spoken journal”.
I can report that in Rome the activity of the Psychosynthesis Center is in full and continuous development. In fact, in 1969/70 three distinct courses were held: one preparatory, one specialization and one practical application of Psychosynthesis. Each includes theoretical lessons and practical applications. Experience teaches us that the practical part is the one that most engages the individual, acting as a catalyst for intra-psychic processes. This is why we spend a lot of time in our courses on group psychosynthesis, obtaining truly remarkable results.
It is commonly held, in applied Psychosynthesis, that the group represents, with its structure, the family and social experience of the individual, and it is precisely through this collective technique that the individual is placed in front of a “psychological mirror” to first analyze and then understand their behavior towards others. Through the suggestions of the psychotherapist, who remains outside the emotional experience of the group, the individual himself will subsequently be helped to find their right place in the group and, therefore, to achieve an inter-individual psychosynthesis.
Another activity of our Center consists of the formation of some “working groups” which are dedicated to scientific research and the subsequent experimentation of various psychotherapeutic techniques, still little used in Italy, such as Psychodrama, Music Therapy, Chromotherapy and others. The results of these works are, therefore, brought to the attention of all the members and collectively discussed and tested. Before finishing this very short “spoken journal” I would like to inform you that a University Institute of Psychosynthesis with its center in Rome will also be working from next year, which will include qualified teachers of various disciplines. This Institute aims to create a harmonious synthesis between the various branches of teaching (always with a psychological orientation), indispensable for a complete and integral individual training. But in the spirit of Psychosynthesis, the time has come to address the theme of our meeting: “The concept of synthesis in the history of medicine”.
Synthesis in philosophy means the cognitive form which, starting from single observations, reaches a unitary conclusion. And to stick to this premise, and without going too far in the millennia where the documentation is inevitably scarce, we find that the first real synthesis in the field of medicine was made by the Pythagorean school before 500 BC.
It created the theory of the “enantiosi”, according to which all creation is governed by the harmony of opposites, and introduced the concept that the same harmony of creation exists in the state of health in the human organism, and that disease is no other than the disturbance of this harmony. Starting from this basis, the Pythagoreans also used a treatment system called “melo-therapy”, which corresponds to the current music therapy, and which was also used in the therapy of somatic diseases. However, it was with Hippocrates and the school of Kos that medicine took on the imprint it still retains today, and that the doctor, stripped of the priestly habit worn until then, became a man, while remaining a philosopher. In this regard it is worth remembering that Hippocrates said that the philosopher doctor is equal to a god.
After the Old Wise One, however, medicine entered its very long analytical phase which, starting with Aristotelian logic, still permeates current science. But the cosmic breath inevitably alternates its cycles. In fact, in the living human organism, the systole always follows the diastole, and the inspiration the exhalation, just as on a psychological level humanity alternates periods of introversion with phases of extroversion. And therefore, also in the field of the various scientific disciplines, the centuries of analytical investigation must inevitably follow the time of synthesis. It is as if one, scattered into a kaleidoscope of research, must recreate its synthesis to grasp its various meanings.
This is what is happening in all the sciences, from physics to politics, and therefore even medicine cannot escape this law. In fact, what is the historical moment of medicine today? A few observations will allow us to clarify it.
First of all, we observe how it deals with and cures man separately in his various biological, psychological and spiritual components. Orthodox medicine, in fact, is also involved in the biological and organic part of man, which is also supported by surgery.
The psychic part of the individual is instead entrusted to psychology in its various derivations (which therefore includes the whole vast branch of psychotherapy).
Finally, the spiritual part, considered unscientific and therefore outside the Olympus of science, is relegated to the care of the various religions, or to the various directions of esoteric or parapsychological research.
As a first consideration, it then becomes clear how current medicine has split human unity into three dimensions, from which three different directions of investigation and treatment inevitably descend.
Let’s start by examining organic medicine, which is concerned with man-as-body. It is a medicine that we could define as “allopathic” or opposites, because it is precisely from this concept already in use in Asia Minor in the first century BC. who took the basic theory, which is to cure the disease with remedies contrary to the symptoms manifested. In a certain period, it seemed to have to succumb to an opposite theory advocated by Thomas Sydenham, namely “homeopathic” medicine or the like, according to which diseases must be cured with minimal doses of the preparation capable of provoking them. But in the end the first was the winner, namely allopathic medicine, thanks above all to Pasteur who gave a scientific basis for the origin of the disease, by discovering microbes.
Since then, man has entered into a ruthless war against these microorganisms which he has tried to destroy with the most powerful chemical weapons, even at the cost of massive devastation in the human organism. And favored by the most modern means of investigation provided by the other sciences, current medicine tries to identify in man and in the surrounding nature any vital form believed to be responsible for diseases, that is pathogenic, and at the same time increasingly refines its dangerous weapons, the chemicals to combat these declared public enemies of human health.
But I believe that in order to objectively tackle the problem of medicine we must first clear our minds of what I would dare to call “orthodox conditioning”. Everything is scientific – we erroneously judge – that is orthodox, that is, it falls within the global system of scholastic education. Everything outside it is unscientific.
But are we really sure that the current medical trajectory is the right one?
It would be enough if we could pause for a moment and not be quite so sure anymore. Some trivial observations will confirm this. When have doctors, in the history of peoples, never been sure that their current treatments were more effective than those that preceded them, leaving the task of demythologizing these illusions to posterity? And in undertaking this endless struggle against microbes, have we not forgotten an elementary law of evolution, according to which the survival of the fittest is the rule in the evolutionary process? But can one therefore be weaker than a microbe? And then, might not the microbe only be the agent and not the cause of the disease, which only an anti-evolutionary and pernicious weakening of the human life force could thus justify?
Did not the great Hippocrates speak of ”vis medicatrix naturae”, referring to the vital force of man, capable of healing himself? And furthermore, did Pasteur not say at the point of death – confirming Claude Bernard’s theories – that the microbe is nothing and the ground is everything, meaning by ground the constitution of man, mind and body united? So, the same discoverer of bacteria returned to man as the first cause of the disease.
For centuries, man has been desperately trying to study and investigate in order to finally identify and understand the evils that afflict humanity, to determine its causes, foresee its evolution and decree its end through exact and infallible therapy. And if it is irrefutable that the current state of medical science is as a whole wonderful for its technical, analytical and profound observation of the devastation of the human organism in its struggle with the environment and with the principles believed to be the cause of ills (ie pathogenic ), it is equally true that synthetically this science is in error, because if the theories deduced from the observations were true and exact, man at this hour would no doubt have found the remedy for all ills (namely the exact therapy). But unfortunately, we know that this is not the case. Because a doctor, we said, is a philosopher and a physicist at the same time.
And if as a physicist he is the least imperfect possible because of the stupendous technical achievements of our time and for the scholastic learning of our century, as a philosopher, he remains with the cyclical idea of the philosophies of all eras.
On the other hand, we must note that our knowledge of the truth is a human presumption, even if we have become accustomed to this idea, as well as to many other conventionalisms. We believe that science is able to explain everything, and we pretend that it does so perhaps through absurd or false hypotheses, forgetting what Immanuel Kant said, namely, that only phenomena, and not the essence of things in themselves, can be grasped by our mind. We should therefore never draw conclusions with longer arms than the premises, because claiming to explain everything rationally is, as Thomas Brown said, “defining the power of God too narrowly, restricting it to our abilities”.
Experimental science proceeds in its investigation from the lowest levels of human sensitivity, and medical research deepens the scientific analysis, experiments with animals, observing the succession of forms, from embryonic-fetal to the dissolution of disease and death. And all of this is good. It then tackles the problem of sensitivity and intelligence, pleasure and physiological pain; and all this is a mistake. In the first case it is good because it studies in detail the character of evolutionary processes and detects the means, methods and laws. In the second case it is bad, because it deals with the supreme part of the human personality which is intelligence, with the same inferior, naturalistic methodology. That intelligence which is the unity of the universal organism and is the synthesis of an animal life and of all universal life.
On the other hand, the complex mystery of life in which a thought occurs, or a thinking unit or soul is stirred, cannot be investigated by experimental biology or chemistry, nor by any microscopic or radiological device. Therefore the problem of life in its deepest essence, of the small flame between billions and billions of organic lives in the universe, is today at the same stage as at the time of Timaeus of Locri, or of Empedocles, assuming that neither the one or the other didn’t know more about it. Medicine as a complete science is not knowledge of the anatomical structure of an organism or the chemical components of the human constitution, but the science of man’s vital manifestations in relation to pain, intelligence and the complete functions of the organs. And considered from this point of view, we realize how current medicine is still far from having resolved, even partially, its problem, which remains that of healing man from all his ills. But now let’s see what has happened in the psychic field.
Just as in the organic field, Pasteur built a scientific basis for allopathic medicine and gave a new direction to medical research with microbiology, so in the psychological field Freud created the preconditions for psychic investigation, hitherto ignored by the neuro-psychiatric organicistic current, to be accepted by official science, at least partially, opening at the same time a new path of research with the introduction of psycho-analysis.
And so, what Pasteur obtained with the discovery of the microbe, Freud obtained with the discovery of the unconscious. Since then, deep psychological research has branched out in various directions, and various schools have sprung up, each of which has studied and highlighted one or more aspects of the human psychic apparatus: from the will to power supported by the Adlerian school, to collective symbolism and Jungian typology, from the security research of the Horney school, to the separativeness of Otto Rank’s thinking. In some ways, it was fruitful and full of ferment, but unfortunately it was conducted more on the level of scholastic differentiation than unity and synthesis, and sometimes it shriveled into mentalistic dogmatism.
On the other hand, this new scientific opening has always been opposed, and in part still is, by so-called orthodox medicine, which, starting from the experimental method, claims to investigate the phenomena of deep psychology with traditional and naturalistic methodology. And it is precisely from this claim that the denunciation of “antiscientific” arises, with which the problem is then covered up. So much so, that even today it is questionable whether psychotherapy is a scientific method of treatment, that is, accepted by official medicine, or not. In Freud’s time it certainly wasn’t, today perhaps. But we still don’t know for sure.
And, briefly examining the historical moment of the spiritual dimension of man, we realize that even the “care of souls” is going through a difficult crisis. Humanity is in its cycle of extroversion, and taken up with frenetic technological development, it has focused on material achievements as the main objective of its existence. Life is conceived and lived as an end in itself, and man is dispersed in various and occasional interests that seem to have the sole purpose of diverting his attention from a more accurate and profound search for meaning. In fact, the phrase that “in life there are already too many worries to deal with without worrying about what it means” is also in common use! And this sentence, which would certainly have seemed paradoxical to any sage of antiquity, is today instead commonly accepted even in so-called scientific circles, where evidently the means have made us lose sight of the end.
Man’s only concern seems to be that he has less and less time at his disposal to think, as if keeping his mind constantly occupied on the so-called practical problems of life, guarantees him immunity from death, which is the thought that he would like most of all to keep away from himself.
And on the other hand, even for those who want to face the true meaning of life with the help of an external guide, the situation is not the most propitious. The various religions, originally different aspects of a single truth, in an attempt to remain available to new needs, especially of young people, destroy myths while lacking the evocative power to create new ones. And the various esoteric schools look at each other with suspicion, convinced of the singular authenticity of their products, and remain closed in what we might call their “spiritual privilege”, forgetting the true spirit of Christ who placed man at the service of humanity.
But if this is the current situation of the medicine of the body, of the psyche and of the spirit, that is, of the medicine of the whole man, it is right to point out how the analytical cycle in its various directions is transforming itself into a cycle of unidirectional synthesis. Man is trying to reconnect the various experiences with each other to obtain an interpretation in a new dimension that allows him to grasp new and deeper meanings. In organic medicine, the psychosomatic concept is increasingly being introduced, which is not as Weise and Englisch recall, a new specialty, but rather a new medical point of view. And with the acceptance of the psychosomatic synthesis, the relationship between psyche and soma is proving to be increasingly close, and the interdependence of the two factors in disease, increasingly clear.
But on the other hand, psychology is also attempting to climb to the roof of the individual, including what Maslow called “peak experiences” in his investigation. In this, however, helped by some of the most open-minded researchers of the spirit in the religious field, who precisely through psychological techniques aim at a greater knowledge of the human soul. In this way, a whole new synthetic concept of research is being developed such as ontoanalysis, the psychology of the personality, the anthropological study of man. At the same time, the same phenomenon is also occurring in all current sciences. In fact, we can see how ultramicroscopic research in the physical field is synthesizing in the concept of energy, and in the biological field in the concept of “finality” and “biological totality”, and how the separativeness of the various peoples and nations is being transformed into international integration at all levels. But also from another point of view, the various sciences are merging with each other, and their fields of action are becoming interchangeable: physics, chemistry, medicine, philosophy and sociology are in fact finding their harmonious synthesis in the thought of man, after centuries and centuries of mutual misunderstandings and often of hostility.
And it is in this historical moment that the pioneering intuition of Assagiolian bio-psychosynthesis finds the greatest confirmation of its scientific validity, when by science is meant the absolute value of research beyond any orthodox dogmatism and any scholastic mentalism. When science means the study of man in his manifestation and potential, in his form and essence, in his individuality and in his universality.
Psychosynthesis – which we can define as a structured psychological practice for man, understood as a three-dimensional unit – can be viewed in a threefold aspect. As a synthesis of the variety of human learning on a biological, psychological and spiritual level, which it synthesizes and uses as a system of integral therapy. Then as a synthesis within the individual of the three fields of vital manifestation, that is, of bio-psycho-spiritual energy, which it regulates and uses with alchemical processes of transmutation and sublimation. And finally, as a synthesis of man with the plurality of other human beings, which he uses to establish harmonious interindividual cooperation.
We can therefore consider Assagioli’s bio-psychosynthesis as the center of gravity of this wonderful synthesis undertaken by human science, which if completed will perhaps allow man to solve the great mystery of his existence and find the true meaning of his suffering. This is in fact the concept of Golden Medicine which is the science and practice of Pythagorean and divine medicine, that is, the medicine of the Great Synthesis.
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DEBATE
D. – I would like to know if it is possible to get to the essence of the individual through psychology.
Dr. Bartoli – It is possible through deep psychology to develop the potential of the individual.
D. – But I ask you more specifically if psychology can come to perceive “the essence of the individual”.
Dr. Bartoli – I answer you in the affirmative if you refer to what we could define a very high level psychosynthesis, that is, based mainly on those psychological techniques so well structured by Dr. Assagioli that favor the descent of elements from the higher unconscious to the level of consciousness or the elevation of the lower or conscious “I” to the higher “I” or Self.
Dr. Assagioli – In these studies it would be good to start using the terminology of “Height Psychology”. In general, depth psychology tends to examine the lower part of the unconscious, and undoubtedly, this must be done. But the lower unconscious corresponds only to the “cellars” of the human building, and the cellars must be cleaned so that they are not sources of infection; but there are not only the cellars, there are also the various floors and the terrace open to the sky. Metaphorically speaking, these three levels exist in the individual psyche. It is therefore necessary to scientifically study and use existing techniques to awaken and activate the latent potential of the upper part of the human psyche. And, therefore, we already speak above all in America of “height psychology”. I would say that scholastic psychology is two-dimensional and depth psychology, initiated by Freud, although it includes a third dimension downward, can be called two-and-a-half-dimensional psychology. But true three-dimensional psychology also requires the ascending component and the study of the higher levels of the psyche. More importantly, there are scientific methods, independent of any theory, any metaphysics and any theology, to develop these higher aspects.
D. – Are such methods to be found in Dr. Assagioli’s book Psychosynthesis – for the Harmony of Life?
Dr. Assagioli – No, but they are in my English book. And I hope it will be translated and published soon. When I wrote it, the climate was not favorable enough and the wind that blew was not coming from the stern. But now cultural meteorology is changing and perhaps the time has come for such a translation.
D. – Is it possible that the lower faculties of a human being, that is the personal resistance to recognize the Self “or” Higher I “, are parallel to the difficulties that exist in society?
Dr. Assagioli – Certainly the individual reflects the collective mentality, and in turn the collective mentality affects the individual. Few can be freed from the collective unconscious, from the mentality of the time. But there is a profound reason for this both in the individual and in society.
Fear of the new, in a certain sense, and then the fear of the commitment that each, even without having achieved those higher levels, senses that there will be. The “noblesse oblige” does not only concern heraldry, but translates into the fact that when higher values are discovered and accepted, there is an internal commitment, not an external code, but, I repeat, an internal commitment to achieve them and this it is very uncomfortable for the selfish personality. So, there is this ambivalence: on the one hand, dissatisfaction with current conditions and on the other, reluctance to commit. What Fromm calls “the escape from freedom”.
We need to understand each other about the concept of freedom. In general, freedom means freedom from any form, from any compulsion, from any code. In other words, it means freedom from. But this is only one side of freedom. Then there is freedom for: when one is free, what does he do with his freedom?
Let’s look at what a miserable and morbid use many make of it, even among young people. They have freed themselves from their parents and from doctrines, but then what do they do? They take drugs. So, what they need is freedom to, and then they will need new values, new commitments that can be even stricter than those of external codes. Because there are often loopholes and ways of getting around external codes, both at the legal and moral level. With higher values this is not possible, because they do not lend themselves to being deceived.
Dr. Bartoli – That of escaping inner commitment is a very current observation that the psychotherapist checks daily in his professional activity.
D. – Freud used the method of free associations to explore the unconscious. In Psychosynthesis, on the other hand, which method do you use?
Dr. Bartoli – I would like to clarify immediately that there is no conflict between Freudian psychoanalysis and psychosynthesis, but only the inclusion of psychoanalytic technique among the many techniques used by psychosynthesis.
Dr. Assagioli – To complete this answer, I would like to add that there is no opposition between Psychoanalysis and Psychosynthesis if we refer to Freudian Psychoanalysis understood as the technique of exploration of the unconscious and not to the set of psychoanalytic doctrines, that is to “Freudian theology “.
Dr. Bartoli – To return to the question, psychotherapy in general has also used other techniques for some time in the analysis or psychic investigation phase, each of which, in particular therapeutic conditions, offers advantages over the others.
D. – I would like to ask a second question, namely if the same techniques are used in the exploration of the higher unconscious.
Dr. Bartoli – There are more specific techniques for “upward” exploration, and others more suitable for “downward” exploration.
D. – Anyway, must we always take into account a certain evocation of symbols?
Dr. Bartoli – The value of symbols is certainly of great importance in psychotherapy. I can mention, for example, a technique based on the symbolism of the rose that stimulates the contents of the higher unconscious and which is widely used in psychosynthesis. In this regard, I would like to underline how “investigation” and “empowerment” techniques are used simultaneously in Psychosynthesis.
This is a new concept in psychotherapy, namely that of immediately starting to enhance the positive psychological qualities of the individual at the very moment when the etiological research into the neurotic roots of the unconscious begins.
Dr. Assagioli – This is the substantial difference, and it parallels what exists in medicine. One is the attitude of fighting disease, and the other is to encourage the healthy part that is in everyone, to activate natural energies and to cooperate with them to work on the sick part. And this is done in the most open and modern medicine. So even in psychotherapy we should not limit ourselves to fighting phobias, psycho-neurotic symptoms in general, but we must also stimulate all the healthy parts of the psyche. Then some symptoms clear up on their own, or at least lessen. Those which remain can be subsequently addressed, analyzed and often dissolved by an integral part of the psyche, already enhanced with the collaboration of the psychotherapist. It is therefore not the doctor who goes to the symptoms with the passive patient, but it is a question of developing the healthy part of the patient so that afterwards, in collaboration, one can work on the tenacious remains of the symptoms.
D. – In the famous clinical cases treated by Freud, and in the case of any neurosis, when one comes to the knowledge of unconscious causes and when these causes are brought to the level of consciousness there is resolution, that is, healing. But we know this is not always true. As far as Psychosynthesis is concerned, does therapy continue, therefore, always stimulating the latent energies?
Dr. Bartoli – By stimulating and activating the best components of the individual’s psychological qualities. It is an activation that requires “exercise”, that is, the use of suitable exercises. On the other hand, the analytical phase is not always considered indispensable in Psychosynthesis and, often times, we tend to minimize this investigation in favour of active techniques, i.e. “empowerment”.
Dr. Assagioli – In general, the problem is this: the same technique should never be used for everyone. Psychosynthesis insists a lot on the fact that “each case is unique”, as fingerprints show, and all the more so in the structure of the whole personality. Each case is unique, each case is a unique set of different elements, and therefore a different method is required for each case, that is, a different combination of the various techniques according to the needs of that case and the stages of treatment. This is the essential point. No partial method is valid for all cases, and Psychosynthesis is precisely the synthesis of all psychotherapies. In Psychosynthesis, all the valid techniques of the various schools are accepted, impartially.
D. – I would like to ask two questions. The first is: what do you think of official neurology?
Dr. Bartoli – I won’t hide from you that the question is rather a embarrassing one and the answer is far from simple. I can limit myself to finding that official neuropsychiatry suffers from the current of thought that permeates all of today’s life and, therefore, its focus is strictly organistic. This has a limiting effect on more serene and objective scientific research, today mainly limited to the demonstration of organic alteration and, therefore, oriented unidirectionally. And since we know that as an objective in psychiatry there are merely some debatable electroencephalographic changes, present only in very limited cases, the whole structure of this branch of medicine is limited to a series of diagnostic labels with which to catalog the ever-growing array of so-called mental patients.
Dr. Assagioli – On the other hand, there have also been recent studies on the modification of the electroencephalographic tracing in states of meditation. In India and Japan, they found that there are real changes in this condition. So, the electroencephalography response itself depends a lot on the state of consciousness, and not on the brain state. Before meditation and after meditation the person’s brain is the same, and it is instead the functionality that changes due to the effect of psychological and psychosomatic factors.
Dr. Bartoli – So logic leads us to shift the focal point of scientific research from the concept of organic injury to the concept of organic functionality. And to understand an organ that is malfunctioning, one must first know its normal functioning; physiology, in fact, has always preceded pathology as a teaching subject. Always, except in psychiatry, where the physiology of the psyche, that is, psychology, is mistakenly ignored and is replaced by physiology, even if partial and incomplete, of the nervous system and its main organ, the brain. But who can in good faith say that the psyche is the same as the brain, when any dictionary defines it as very closely allied to the soul?
In conclusion, there is an urgent need to start an in-depth study of intrapsychic dynamisms at a scientific level to arrive at a more valid psychiatry.
D. – The second question is: what do you think of drugs?
Dr. Bartoli – I think that the use of drugs should be reserved for very limited uses and, in any case, always under the control of the psychotherapist. I am convinced, in fact, that there are equally valid means of psychological action to obtain that so-called “expansion of consciousness” ascribed to some drugs, methods that are much more manageable and free of unpleasant side effects.
D. – Psychosynthesis also uses oriental techniques such as those, for example, which concern breathing.
Dr. Bartoli – Psychosynthesis takes the techniques it deems valid from any latitude. On the other hand, even if some of its techniques are from Eastern extraction, they have been restructured with a western methodology, therefore acceptable for our culture and our mentality.
Dr. Assagioli – These techniques are isolated from their ideology, from their philosophical or religious framework. This is the point: the techniques are valid in themselves, regardless of how they were formulated and the theory to which they were connected. This is essential. They can be removed from their historical conditioning and from the mentality of the times and can be accepted as techniques suitable for defined purposes; impartially, whatever their origin. Psychosynthesis accepts every valid technique whether it comes from the East or from the West and puts it to the test. Does it work or not? If it works, let’s determine in which cases and in what way. This is a scientific, impartial attitude.
To come to breathing, which you mentioned earlier, I believe it is very important, first of all from a biological point of view. Generally speaking, people cannot even breathe biologically. They breathe in too superficial a way, often rushed, and then the emotions have a great impact, as is known, on breathing. So, it is a question of learning to breathe with a psychological attitude, precisely in consideration of that continuous psychophysical connection. It is certain, however, that some breathing exercises done in the East are not applicable in the West, because living conditions are different.
In the East there is calm and time available to do exercises; here, however, this is a luxury that we cannot afford, and therefore the exercises must also be adapted to the time and place. In fact, I believe that the East has minded towards a too one-sided development, giving too much importance to the “breathing” and “positions” factors alone, while these are only a few of the elements for achieving a better state of health.
