I have a dream that we will bring the care back to health care. I have a dream that we will bring consciousness to medicine. I have a dream that we will practice love, married with all the miraculous technologies that make Western medicine so life-saving, especially in acute care situations.
Marry Western Medicine with Sacred Medicine
Imagine a health care system where the advances of modern medicine that save lives with emergency surgery during trauma, stent placement during heart attacks and strokes, and miracle treatments that save the lives of premature babies marries the wisdom, expertise, and techniques of shamans, Eastern medicine doctors, faith healers, and energy healers. Imagine functional medicine and nutritional interventions in a rock-and-roll mash up with scientifically proven mind-body medicine practices like the ones I teach in my book Mind Over Medicine. Imagine science and technology and psychology and spirituality all wrapped up together in a DNA spiral of infinite possibility that predisposes the body to seemingly miraculous cures from supposedly “incurable” illnesses.
The Ethics of Purity
Imagine if both conventional and alternative medicine providers are required to abide by a strict code of medical and spiritual ethics that ensures a level of heart-based purity, so you know who you can trust, not just inside the hospital systems, but in the realms of shamans, energy healers, faith healers, acupuncturists, therapists, homeopaths, and life and health coaches. Imagine if intuition and discernment reigns so that love-based practitioners have all the power, and vulnerable patients are protected from megalomaniacs, charlatans, and black magicians, both inside and outside the conventional health care system.
The Healing Round Table
Imagine a healing round table of such practitioners, all hand chosen by the patient’s intuition, collaborating in service to the health of the patient, with everyone who is present at the table given equal rank. Imagine if the patient’s intuition reigns supreme and nobody is every strong-arming the patient into doing something that doesn’t feel right or judging him or her if she chooses to decline recommended treatment. Imagine practicing LOVE, the way doctors of old did, only now, the best of modern medicine can be added in to the bedside manner and loving mentality of the house call doctor who cared about the patient and the whole family in times of great turmoil and fear. Imagine if everyone involved in the care of the patient is practicing compassion, knowing that a journey through illness can be a transformational crucible for deep soul growth, if everyone is holding the intention for healing and everyone involved is putting the patient’s physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being first.
The Best of Both Worlds
Imagine if you could trust those at your healing round table to help you “write your own Prescription,” which might include drugs and surgery, but also a healing diet, an exercise regimen, supplements, a workshop on finding your calling, marriage counseling to help heal a toxic relationship, and help finding your soul tribe, so you can be surrounded by those who are committed to holding you in love as you heal.
Imagine if you were a patient who could just relax in the arms of love of a team of conscious health care providers who have your back- not just as technicians of science, but as a devotional practice of sacred service. Imagine if all of this is covered by your insurance—or even better, imagine if health care is a right and not a privilege, and we are all covered by universal health care, free of political agenda.
Heal the Healer
Imagine if health care providers aren’t giving until they’re depleted, sacrificing the integrity of their soul to collude with a system that threatens to violate the trust of patients over and over again. Imagine if these conscious health care providers infiltrate the system from the inside, so that love invades medicine, not because some politician mandates it or some HMO prescribes it to their doctors or because some pharmaceutical industry is advertising all over television, but because the health care provider is really a stealth shaman in a culture that doesn’t recognize the shamans among us.
Imagine if you got sick and knew that you could simply relax into these arms of love because a team of caregivers have GOT you, and you will get the best of modern medicine, especially in the midst of acute trauma, but you will also be treated for any soul sickness that might predispose you to the kinds of chronic illnesses modern medicine doesn’t know how to treat. Imagine if this relaxation in your nervous system could activate your body’s natural self-healing mechanisms, thereby making your body ripe for miracles modern medicine can only begin to explain through the study of mysteries like the placebo effect and “spontaneous” remissions. Imagine if you could live to be 100 with a marvelous quality of life, and then you could choose to die at home, surrounded by loved ones who witness your death as a deeply nourishing spiritual transition. Imagine is death was nothing to fear and we could surrender into it gracefully when our time on earth is over.
It Takes YOU
I have a dream that hundreds of health care providers who have graduated from the Whole Health Medicine Institute (WHMI) are helping me realize. Because it takes a village. No single person can revolutionize a system. Every single one of us—conscious healers and empowered patients alike—must say YES to our calling and do what we can to heal the system from the inside out—one healer/patient relationship at a time.
Former WHMI graduates are giving TEDx talks, writing books, starting revolutionary practices that confront the status quo, and facilitating radical remissions from seemingly “incurable” health conditions. WHMI grads are infiltrating veteran’s hospitals, speaking out politically, influencing medical education, and participating in activism that shines a light on medical errors as the #3 cause of death. WHMI grads are starting entrepreneurial businesses and reforming the system from the inside out. They are interfacing with the pharmaceutical industry, the managed care systems, politics, and academia.
But we also need empowered patients who are willing to rewrite the story of medicine with us! That’s where all of us come in. We can only heal health care as a grass roots effort. Every one of us is needed. Bless you for your contribution to bringing the CARE back to health care.
With love and infinite gratitude,
Lissa Rankin, MD
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