There is a self-healing impulse which is part of every person's body, mind and spirit. In most cultures the traditional healing system is based on enhancing and supporting this inborn healing energy. For some reason knowledge of how to enhance our automatic healing impulse has been lost in the United States and the Western world until very recently. For several hundred years we have believed that the disease comes from outside and attacks the individual who is a helpless victim. Many disorders including heart disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer have been found to be largely preventable. We are now realizing that even though the disease may come from the outside, as in a virus, the internal healing mechanism of the immune system is the most important healer. The best and most profound medicine is already in us. We must learn and then apply methods to turn the medicine on and activate its ability to heal us.

Self-health responsibility, more than any other possible option, is the solution to our healing. Evidence for the truth of this fact is coming at us from everywhere. Research has shown that diet, exercise and stress management are powerful tools for maintaining health. However, in the Western world we have little tradition that is well tried in support of self-health actions. Diets change every day. Jogging was thought to be a perfect system but now has been found to be less beneficial than simple walking. Aerobics sold a great deal of equipment but was found to be detrimental to many people. Now low impact aerobics is the latest approach.

The Qigong of China and the Pranayama of India are systems of self-applied health enhancement which are easy to learn and simple to apply. Self-care is one of the most important features of the Asian traditional systems of medicine. These ancient philosophical and medical theories encourage, and, in fact, demand action and responsibility on the part of the person who is seeking to maintain or enhance health.

The self-application of health enhancement methods is particularly remarkable because of the broad array of real health benefits that are triggered. These practices modify and accelerate the body's own self-regulating physiological and bioenergetic mechanisms. They have a very practical application for healing diseases as well as supporting health maintenance, endurance and longevity. In addition, the very same practices, refined, deepened, and perfected, link to a whole realm of more metaphysical practices focused toward spiritual growth.

In the modern Western world the prevailing medical system is tragically lacking in strategies that a person or patient can implement themselves to support their own healing process. Aside from being patient and compliant to the physician's orders there has generally been little that the patient could do. The self-applied health enhancement methods (SAHEM), that spring from the Asian traditions, are tried and true techniques refined over thousands of years that are ready to be used now. A rapidly expanding health care revolution in the areas of patient responsibility and patient action is necessary immediately to meet the urgent need for solutions to the crisis in medical costs and the crisis in quality of care. These health enhancement practices lend themselves completely and readily to the critical need for patient applied self-care which complements any clinical strategy whether it be as conservative as acupuncture or as radical as surgery.