The Religion of Medicine
When we disconnect from a sense of inner guidance and intuition, we are forced to rely on external constructs, authority, and experts. My mentor, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, said:What happens when religion masquerades as medicine and seeks to summarily eliminate all competing belief systems? What happens when we’re told that there’s one truth and that that truth is consensus-driven medicine? Perhaps the 110 bills introduced across this country to eliminate religious and personal belief exemptions to vaccination are a symptom of this insidious process.
Gonzalez also said: “Patients have to do the treatment they believe in. Fear is an infectious disease. You can catch fear but you can’t catch faith. That has to come from within.”
Healing the Nervous System
Nick wrote me in an email before he died about the role of healing the autonomic nervous system (ANS) as a part of a patient’s life path:“I was pleased, though not surprised, to learn yesterday that you have moved beyond atheism, the fanatical religion of our time.
“I approach atheism the way I approach adolescent acne, as a phase many go through that is meant to be outgrown, discarded, and forgotten. Unfortunately, too many ’smart' people stay stuck in adolescent levels of spiritual understanding, which limits them in their personal lives and precludes, in our particular profession, physicians from becoming truly healing.
“Interestingly enough, we find as the ANS branches become strong, healthy, and balanced, the brain hemispheres become stronger, healthier, and more balanced, and patients will start often looking into higher things spontaneously with no prompting. Sometimes it’s amazing to watch. It’s a question of the whole being far more powerful and insightful than the sum of its parts (ie, sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system).”
Snarky comments about atheism aside, he touched on something that I’ve observed in my own life and in the lives of many of my patients who go on to become nutritionists, counselors, and artists after our work is largely completed.
It’s the concept of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: the notion that needs must be met in a particular order and that the meeting of these needs frees one to examine higher-order intentions.
The typical hierarchy looks like this ...
Of course, in today’s health climate, many of us can get stuck pinballing between the lower three rungs on the ladder never quite making it to the higher agenda. I see this work, the work of teaching patients about lifestyle medicine, as having an unintended benefit of radically changing, evolving, and freeing one’s life path to expose the potential for purpose-driven behaviors.
Freeing the Soul
When the body comes into harmony, it’s more than just symptom relief, it’s an opportunity to come into yourself and ascend that ladder.Personally, I had to heal my body and resolve my autoimmune condition before I could open myself up to my greater mission. I understand now that cultivating an inner compass is trusting in a guide inside and connecting, without fear, to a trust in the unfolding of the universe—an unfolding we’re here only to witness, not to manipulate. In this way, challenges and distress are an invitation to look at what might be misaligned or out of balance.
Own your body. Free your mind. It’s so much more than a “cure.”
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