Medicine and Healing
There's a time and a place for both.
But there's important differences between them.
Medicine and healing are very different things.
Medicine is an intervention that comes for the most part from outside of us. Whether it’s natural and hands-on, pharmaceutical or surgical, it requires the intervention of highly-trained experts. It can be costly. Good medicine saves lives. But the more we come to depend on medical interventions, especially for chronic conditions, the more we tend to hand over our fate to institutions, corporations and professionals.
Which is sometimes the smart thing to do. And sometimes not.
But the thing is ... even when letting the pros do their thing is a good idea ... the more we do on our end, generally the better the outcome, as long as we know what we're doing. That's why I've created this site and Natural Stresscare.
Healing starts within us. Our health challenges reflect our personal habits. The way we think, the way we nourish ourselves, the way we live our lives ... all these have enormous influences on our health.
Healing starts with the realization that if we want a good quality of life, we have to place ourselves firmly in the driver’s seat. We have to learn as much as we can about how our bodies work, the implications of our health habits, how we eat, how we relate to ourselves and each other, how various medical interventions really work and what they really do.
The difference between medicine and healing is that medicine requires us to submit to a program of care. Healing requires us to learn, change and grow.
There’s no shortage of health information on the web. I’ve designed this site to act as a filter. I’ve decided it’s time to share the things I’ve learned over decades of experience in healing work, first on myself, and then with my patients.
I don’t sell what I recommend. I remember why drugstores are generally not also doctor’s offices. I’m an acupuncturist and naturopath, and if you’re in the Los Angeles area you may be interested in my hands-on work. I spent three years working in a nationally prominent pain clinic (Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic) and a couple more as Integrative Medicine Director for a large chain of clinics. And there are times when my acupuncture, acupressure and massage work can make a big difference.
But if you’re facing a serious health challenge, my work, and everyone else’s, as helpful as they can be, can’t take the place of the things you do every day.
That’s why I’ve put up this site. It’s a compendium of the newsletters I send to my patients and students every few weeks. If you’d like to be added to that list, click here.
There's a time and a place for medicine, especially in emergency situations or when we've let health matters slide too long and things've gotten out of hand. But once the doctors stabilize us ... then it just might be time to heal.
What are you waiting for?