I graduated from medical school in 1995, but it wasn’t until 2009, two years after I had quit my job as an OB/GYN and left the hospital to study mind-body medicine, psychoneuroimmunology, the placebo effect, shamanism, energy healing, and cutting edge trauma...
Physician burnout is all the buzz in hospitals these days. With rates of physician suicide, addiction, depression, divorce, and early death rising uncontrollably, and with physician drop out rates peaking, hospital administrations know that something has to...
We all know medicine is in crisis, and so are those of us who serve the sick and injured. Astronomical numbers of health care providers, especially physicians, suffer from abusive medical training, neglect of self care, unmet physical and emotional needs,...
We’ve all seen this famous image. Is it two white faces looking at each other? Or is it a black vase? See how you have to shift your lens to see one or the other? It’s almost impossible to see both at the same time, isn’t it? But if you pull back far enough, you...
The Whole Health Medicine Institute, founded in 2013, has mystical roots. After a nudge from Jay Fiset, who suggested to me at an Association of Transformational Leadership meeting that I might create a training program for doctors to invite them into a...
My friend and esteemed colleague Jason Wachob, who founded Mind Body Green, where I am a regular blogger, just released his new book WELLTH: How I Learned to Build a Life, Not a Resume. I contributed to his book on the topic of gratitude, and I want to share with...
I have two friends who are trying to do beautiful things in the world. One is an ardent environmentalist who really passionately yearns to save the biosphere and protect the planet. The other is a social worker serving abused, abandoned, neglected, traumatized...
What does it take to become more tender, open-hearted, and compassionate human beings in a world that trains us to judge, criticize, compare, blame, and shame? How does this evolutionary initiation happen, when one makes the journey from the head to the heart and...
Dear God, Help me remember everything that comes through me comes from You, that none of it belongs to me, that it's not mine to control. Let me remember that I am of You and in You and connecting to the You in All That Is, but I am not in charge of how You flow...
We are all, every single one of us, heroes. Life is hard, and to live it fully and express your soul authentically requires the courage of a warrior and the softness, gentleness, and yielding flexibility of a goddess. In my spiritual self-help book dressed up as a...
As a doctor who runs a business that relies on the internet, I realize it’s a strong statement to suggest that the internet may be literally killing us, but I’ll give you my reasons for saying something so provocative. When you look at the scientific data, I think...
About five years ago, things that seemed like miracles—things my mind couldn’t explain—started happening around me. Patients were having “spontaneous” remissions. Synchronicities were unfolding around me as if I had been swept up in some current of magic. Spiritual...
Finding and fulfilling your calling can be confusing, disheartening, anxiety-provoking, disappointing, and frustrating, but it can also lead to the greatest feelings of deep fulfillment you’ve ever experienced. When you know—you just know—that you’re here to be an...
The following is an excerpt from my new memoir The Anatomy of a Calling. The Anatomy of a Calling is about finding and fulfilling your calling, using Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey as a map for what happens in between the moment when you hear The Call to...
More now than ever before, we are entering a time when people are realizing that it’s not ultimately fulfilling to just find a stable job, hunker down and serve a company that doesn’t feed your soul, build up your retirement account, and delay gratification until...
For many years now, a lot of people have been talking about “The Shift,” this mysterious transformation of human consciousness that is supposedly underway. Ever since the end of the Mayan calendar in December of 2102, New Age types tend to twitter away about the...