COMMENT: Self-healing may provide calm, but won’t fix my broken rib

WRITING a column with a broken rib is not easy. Breathing with a broken rib isn’t much fun either. It’s one of the few injuries that causes discomfort through the act of living. Every breath hurts. It’s like a never-ending session of sadomasochism.

Seeking online medical advice doesn’t help either. One of the key symptoms of a broken rib is painful breathing. One of the key remedies of a broken rib is taking lots of deep breaths. It’s like being stabbed in the chest and then being treated by Edward Scissorhands.

Naturally, the idiotic injury was entirely self-inflicted. On our recent holiday, my daughter decided to show off her martial arts. I reminded her that I could block like Mr Miyagi. Her kick through my ribcage reminded me that I couldn’t.

So I ventured online in an attempt to self-medicate, but the advice was often contradictory. Stand up. Sit down. Don’t move. Keep on moving. Breathing hurts. Breathe more. It was like listening to a doctor with Tourette’s.

But the paracetamol barely helped and the stabbing sensation didn’t go away. So, in desperation, I ventured into the unfamiliar realm of self-healing practices and tumbled down a Lewis Carroll-like rabbit hole filled with sound healers, name chanters, tuning forks and Reiki sessions. All of these alternative medicines, therapies and vagina-scented candles popped up in my search engine (and you should see what else the Google algorithm throws up with a ‘vagina-scented candle’.)

At the risk of sounding like a wheezing old man with a broken rib, my knowledge of alternative medicine doesn’t really extend past acupuncture, which is really only considered ‘alternative’ in the way that Coldplay might be considered alternative. They’re not really. They’re mainstream products accepted at all bland dinner parties.

Does self-healing really cure all ailments?

But even acupuncture was a walk on the wild side for me. Literally. About 10 years ago, an over-eager physiotherapist at Raffles Place decided my sore back required the deliberate use of many needles and the accidental puncturing of my lung. (At the hospital later, the doctor said I had a curiously ‘long lung’, which I’ve since added to my Tinder profile.)

But conventional medicine is so 10 years ago. It’s all about self-healing now. A recent Yahoo Southeast Asia article highlighted Singapore actress Cynthia Koh’s energy healing process in considerable detail and I was particularly struck by the concept of sound healing. That’s the use of specific instruments, music and other sonic vibrations to heal the body.

I had a go with The Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK, but the pogoing did nothing for my ribs.

Of course, I’m being facetious. The process involves atmospheric sound frequencies to encourage deep rest and calm the nervous system, a tradition that goes back to the indigenous peoples in Australia and has been used by Tibetan monks for centuries.

A tuning fork is sometimes employed. Its gentle vibrations supposedly relax the spirit. I tried it with a regular fork at the dining table, but looked like a toddler refusing to eat my porridge.

There’s also ancestry vibration, which involves sounding out one’s name, over and over again, which can trigger a deep, visceral reaction. I’m on board with this one. When I wait off stage before a school talk and hear a thousand students chanting my name, there’s no laxative like it.

The only healing technique that was vaguely familiar was Reiki. A Singaporean friend swears by it. When he told me how much he pays for each session, I swore, too.

Basically, a Reiki practitioner places their hands just on – or near – a person and directs energy into that person. If only West Ham manager David Moyes was a Reiki practitioner.

Traditional vs new-age healing

Yes, I’m sure you’ve detected the flippant tone. It’s easy to have a little scepticism in an industry that has always had more than a hint of the placebo effect about it, and no shortage of snake oil salesmen determined to prove otherwise. The lunatic fringe ruins it for everyone.

Type in “wellness” or “self-healing practices” and you’ll eventually reach Novak Djokovic’s clever water or Gwyneth Paltrow’s vaginal candle. (Imagine putting those two together.)

Paltrow built Goop, a multi-million-dollar wellness empire, selling products like vaginal Jade eggs (no idea), dildos worth $15,000 (still no idea) and a sold-out candle that really was called This Smells Like My Vagina (OK, I give up.) She even recorded a wellness podcast whilst being hooked up to an IV drip, which was injecting nutrients into her body throughout the recording. Now that’s commitment.

The most radical thing I’ve ever done on our Yahoo Southeast Asia football podcast is praise Tottenham Hotspur.

Meanwhile, Djokovic, a self-proclaimed, vaccine-rejecting, wellness guru, told his followers that polluted water can be purified with a positive mindset. Never mind Wimbledon, the tennis icon should be standing outside our NEWater plants and sending positive thoughts into the filtration pipes. He could save us billions.

But cynicism be damned, wellness is big business now. In 2020, the Global Wellness Institute reported that the global wellness economy was valued at US$4.4 trillion, US$1.5 trillion in the Asia-Pacific region, and US$12 billion in Singapore. And the city-state has just finished its second wellness festival, which had more than 180 activities, including sound baths, beats therapies and stretch flows and proved tremendously popular.

Of course, the medical benefits are still contested. In 2011, The Guardian reported a study where American nurses recruited 200 cancer patients who were receiving chemotherapy and tested whether a session of Reiki healing would improve the patients’ wellbeing. It did, overwhelmingly so.

But medical experts still generally consider this a placebo effect and should not be used as an alternative to specific medical treatments.

Still, if they can be used together, if the awareness exists to recognise that self-healing therapies may calm the mind and ease the anxiety, even if they don’t cure the underlying illness, are they really so bad?

What I’m really saying is, I’ll continue to follow the doctor’s conventional instructions and take paracetamol for the rib injury. But if this stabbing pain doesn’t subside soon, you'll find me with a tuning fork in one hand and a vaginal candle in the other.

Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and a best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 26 books.

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