I have been in practice for almost 17 years, and life for over 46, and the longer I live and work the more strongly I believe in the importance of whole health healing, particularly digging deeper to the true causes of poor health. So much so that this past summer I enrolled in the Whole Health Medicine Institute, a program for healers that was created by Lissa Rankin, MD over 6 years ago. This program is based on the 6 steps to healing, as outlined in her first book, Mind Over Medicine: The Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself and on the concept of the Whole Health Cairn, a visual model to describe the key components of health, where each stone represents a component and that the stones are placed in a particular essential order onto the cairn, with the most foundational aspects forming the base of the cairn.
I invite you to take a look at the stones of the cairn and do a gentle and curious inventory of how firmly placed each stone of the cairn is in your life, and how you feel about the order of importance placed on each stone. Many people are often surprised to see the foundational stones including things like: creativity, spirituality and sexuality, with the physical health stone resting on the top. This isn’t to say the physical health stone, nor the mental health stone, also precariously near to the top of the cairn, are not of vital importance, they are! But what this model describes is that in order to have health in these areas, one must have the underlying stones in place.
How many of you have struggled with focussing mainly on your physical health? Pushing yourself to exercise more, eat cleaner, take more supplements, etc.? or concerned yourself of your mental health and taken supplements or pharmaceuticals to support you through anxiety, depression or insomnia?
And how many of you find these may have benefit but their benefits don’t last? Or are hard to sustain? Or maybe don’t work at all?
If this feels familiar, ask yourself if you have a relationship with the other stones of the cairn? Do you have a relationship with your “inner pilot light”? This is Dr. Rankin’s term for intuition/ inner wisdom/ our wise inner being/ the voice of our soul? Or does hearing this question send you reeling into confusion? Which can often be the case as we are not taught how to discern the voices of the programs that run in our heads from the wiser stiller voice deep within. Are you doing work in your life that brings joy and meaning to you? How healthy are your relationships? Do you engage in creative play? What is your spiritual orientation? All of these have a significant impact on our physical and mental health as they dictate how settled we feel within our bodies and our environments. This causes a corresponding shift in the flow of energy out of the fight or flight nervous system and into the rest-digest-heal-libido nervous system. And from this latter nervous system activation, healing can actually take place. From here the food choices we make, the supplements we take, how and when we move our physical bodies all have a greater impact. We make choices that are aligned with our inner wisdom, making them that much more nourishing for us.
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I invite you to take a look at the stones of the cairn and do a gentle and curious inventory of how firmly placed each stone of the cairn is in your life, and how you feel about the order of importance placed on each stone. Many people are often surprised to see the foundational stones including things like: creativity, spirituality and sexuality, with the physical health stone resting on the top. This isn’t to say the physical health stone, nor the mental health stone, also precariously near to the top of the cairn, are not of vital importance, they are! But what this model describes is that in order to have health in these areas, one must have the underlying stones in place.
How many of you have struggled with focussing mainly on your physical health? Pushing yourself to exercise more, eat cleaner, take more supplements, etc.? or concerned yourself of your mental health and taken supplements or pharmaceuticals to support you through anxiety, depression or insomnia?
And how many of you find these may have benefit but their benefits don’t last? Or are hard to sustain? Or maybe don’t work at all?
If this feels familiar, ask yourself if you have a relationship with the other stones of the cairn? Do you have a relationship with your “inner pilot light”? This is Dr. Rankin’s term for intuition/ inner wisdom/ our wise inner being/ the voice of our soul? Or does hearing this question send you reeling into confusion? Which can often be the case as we are not taught how to discern the voices of the programs that run in our heads from the wiser stiller voice deep within. Are you doing work in your life that brings joy and meaning to you? How healthy are your relationships? Do you engage in creative play? What is your spiritual orientation? All of these have a significant impact on our physical and mental health as they dictate how settled we feel within our bodies and our environments. This causes a corresponding shift in the flow of energy out of the fight or flight nervous system and into the rest-digest-heal-libido nervous system. And from this latter nervous system activation, healing can actually take place. From here the food choices we make, the supplements we take, how and when we move our physical bodies all have a greater impact. We make choices that are aligned with our inner wisdom, making them that much more nourishing for us.
READ MORE
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