A Mission Statement for the New Year
There are a lot of messages in the world right now about the differences, the problems, the errors and imbalances in other people. The solutions given are too frequently messages of rejection, to simply get rid of what you do not like, or fear, or do not understand, and then the world will be better. That message mirrors, in many ways, a modern medical system that works to accurately diagnose problems but then focuses primarily on suppressing symptoms. In that world view the definition of “health” becomes mainly the absence of symptoms. But that approach risks putting on blinders to the deeper source of illness. Suppression or rejection takes the place of transformation. It creates a kind of false perception, one that wants us to believe that if we just get rid of all the things that are “wrong” then everything will be good. Where is the healing impulse in that? Healing is about finding and participating in your own path of transformation. We believe it is worth working for deeper change and healing.
Pain, Sleep, Seizures: Windows to Healthy, and Imbalanced, Wakefulness
The beginning of August offered a powerful experience for me when a wide-ranging group of anthroposophic doctors, nurses and therapists gathered for a conference about “Transforming Chronic Pain–a Spiritual Task for Our Time.” The meeting included very inspiring presentations from several doctors in Europe, especially one with deep experience in palliative care and another with very poor and challenged patients in central London. After coming back to practice in Denver, I’ve been struck by the many different variations of pain and how it represents an imbalance, or a kind of distortion, of normal wakeful consciousness and of waking and sleeping processes. This has happened to me before: I go to a meeting and learn about special topic, then I come back and find a whole group of people who are struggling with just that kind of illness or injury and need this knowledge.
External Treatments using Kitchen Ingredients
Here are three simple ways to try to keep an illness process moving! And they only involve ingredients that you probably have in your kitchen cabinets or pantry. Sometimes our body just needs a little extra help so that a process doesn’t get stuck.
Chamomile steam for a badly congested nose and sinuses, or for an ear that won’t “pop” after air travel:
Boil several cups of water, and then pour them into a broad bowl. Add several teaspoons of chamomile tea (loose tea works a little better, or break open the tea bags if all you have is packaged tea). Stir in well and then with a towel or sheet make a little tent over your head and breathe in the chamomile steam. It can get hot and humid, so be sure to take breathes of cool air so that you don’t become light-headed and fall over! You can often even find chamomile teabags in a hotel, which is handy if your ear won’t pop after you have traveled far away from home.
The Integrated Care Package
There are currently places in the world where large hospitals, medical clinics and retreat centers are able to offer multi-disciplinary anthroposophic care (Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden), but the current medical model and insurance programs in the U.S. do not make this possible. This is a challenging moral quandary, as participation in insurance plans immediately creates oversight and rigid expectations around the kind of medical care that is being provided. Services must meet the “standard of care,” or practitioners face severe scrutiny, as well as potential punitive limits on medical practice and monetary fines. For these reasons we continue to make the decision that it is better to remain outside of the insurance system, recognizing that it is limiting access but it also allows us to provide a fully individualized, holistic approach to the healing process.
We would like to try to take one step towards healing that conflict.