At Healthy Healing, the role of the doctor is that of both a physician and health coach. The doctor doesn’t just write out prescriptions. She actually listens, explains tests and procedures in detail and works with you. A good physician needs to be an authority, but things go wrong when she starts lording it over you. There is trouble when a doctor does not listen to you but rather only talks down to you.
In any event, if you want to be vibrantly alive from now into your old age, you’d be well advised to follow the 4-step process. Therefore, in your own life:
- Recognize how you presently feel and your overall state of health; in other words: know yourself. Relaxed, natural and confident self-awareness is the greatest asset anyone can have. Self-awareness also includes the awareness of others. You need to have it. If you don't have a sense of your body and the state it is in, but rely on others (like 'experts') to tell you - you are lost and helpless. Likewise you will stay lost and helpless, if you have no clues as to how you feel and what these feelings do to you. It is very difficult to stay healthy and happy without awareness. It is actually impossible. That's why awareness and recognition come first. After you have recognized a problem, for example if you feel low on energy all the time, or if you are constipated too often:
- Enquire as to what harmful aspects are troubling you and what healing aspects are lacking; in other words; know the negative and positive aspects, your 'enemies' and your 'allies'. Even for a genuine physician the consultation starts with these two questions, when a patient comes for a first consultation. Except in clear emergencies when swift action is required, dealing with merely symptoms is not helpful. Health problems arise because harmful factors impact the body's capacity for self-healing and self-repair negatively. We need to find what they are. What are the weaknesses, or the lifestyle habits that invite trouble? Likewise some positive aspects are missing. We need to first identify them. This is the diagnostic phase. Then, we need to act on our findings.
- Unload what needs to be removed in order to permit your body to heal – and you to feel rejuvenated. In other words: let go what your body cannot take and what through symptoms he indicates that you should avoid. Shed the toxins. Do not go against your body's wishes. Action always has to follow inquiry. If we do not act on what we know we have wasted precious energy and time. Once we have defined what is harmful we need to unload it. This is the first step which will invite natural balance to re-establish itself.
- Nurture well-being by sustaining a lifestyle conducive to long life and good health; in other words: find and cultivate through taking action the meaning that you want your life to have. This naturally includes honoring your body's needs. If you have to change your food habits, do it. But do it in a way that also pleases your palate. Eating healthy does not equal eating tasteless mush. If you have to move more, exercise more, find the joy in the endorphins that are released in the process.
If healing is what we are aiming for, we cannot leave any one of these for steps out. They are a process. For the process to be successful, they all need to be a part of it.
The four steps of healthy healing have been followed and honored by physicians and healers since healing has been practiced among humans; at least 10,000 years, if not more. By comparison, the approach that is merely symptom oriented and thus, focuses on suppressing symptoms has been in existence at the most since the 1930s, if that. Medicating symptoms has been totally predominant, actually for less than 50 years. Into the 1960s even most conventional physicians practiced medicine from an integrative perspective.
The four steps of healthy healing have been followed and honored by physicians and healers since healing has been practiced among humans; at least 10,000 years, if not more. By comparison, the approach that is merely symptom oriented and thus, focuses on suppressing symptoms has been in existence at the most since the 1930s, if that. Medicating symptoms has been totally predominant, actually for less than 50 years. Into the 1960s even most conventional physicians practiced medicine from an integrative perspective.
Likewise, Healthy Healing is good for the mind as it engages you and draws you in as a whole person, with all your faculties – in order to help you live joyfully and meet your days and tasks with enthusiasm.