For all the women out there, with the beginning of summer, I want to encourage you to spend this summer bra-free, antiperspirant free and with minimal sunblock.  More than likely, that statement challenges a few strongly held beliefs, but I have good reasons for all these suggestions.

Speaking with a friend the other night, this phrase entered the conversation: "permission to heal."  At first, I considered it from the perspective of self permission, and for sure, found within so many of those I have worked with over the years, a sense of not giving our self permission to heal.  But then I considered it from the simple implications of the word permission and found myself recoiling from this word.

Surrounded by ways we are expected to ask for permission, I found myself feeling blocked at the idea of asking for permission once again.  After all, isn't this what we do at the doctors office? We enter full of trepidation and fear, we meekly tell what we are experiencing, we hope they are listening, we wait for them to make their assessment and then we accept their assignment of our self as whatever illness, diagnosis or designation they have come up with.  If we challenge these designations in most cases, we find ourselves alienated, and pushed away, thwarted for the she...

Every day I teach people about how to heal their bodies, a conversation which always begins with how to eat. However, as more and more people discover they are joining the myriad of individuals who find out daily they do not tolerate this or that, I am prompted to ponder how we have ended up in a constant adversarial relationship with what we eat. Over the next few weeks, I plan on delving into the major aspects of this relationship, highlighting:

• How we have come to a place where so many find so much hard to digest
• How a mindset of mindfulness can ease food reactions and harness better nourishment from what we eat
• How this relationship shapes our body image, and especially for women, a growing despair over the weight/health relationship and ways to approach a new understanding of what “normal” means.

It must first be understood that the food supply is not what it used to be. I have had so many conversations with people who grew up eating burgers, fries, and ice cream in the ’6...

In August of 2013, my husband and I were invited to lecture at the People’s Institute in Delton MI.
I lectured on non-weaponized medicine “Taking the killing out of our healing” and my husband on Hugelkulture.  The event was wonderful, exposing us to fantastic people with fantastic insights into healing and preservation of the earth, and for me to a book that opened many doors. 
The book: Jermey Narby’s “The Cosmic Serpent”.  Reading Narby’s narrative, I began to ponder many things, but a notation in the book, a question Narby left for himself to further investigate “does DNA have a sound” sent me researching.  Through my search, I came to a book titled “Conscious Healing” by Sol Luckman.  In this book, Luckman delves into the reality of DNA, its existence as a sound hologram containing of course all of the information needed for our physical form but also as a source of potential health and physical and consciousness evolution.  What struck me most profoundly were the lists and lists ...

The further I move in my journey as a physician; a facilitator I find the words of Dr. Luckman and Larry Dossey ring true to a greater and greater extent. In my study of Sol Luckman's work with Regenetics, he speaks of being inspired by Larry Dossey's term Era III medicine. The term reflects a shift, an expansion really, where we regard healing as a process of totality, one of holism, completeness, and one where we work from the understanding that all aspects of life are in fact totally connected.

Dossey writes:

“The recently developing Era III goes even further by proposing that consciousness is not confined to one's individual body. Nonlocal mind -- mind that is boundless and unlimited - is the hallmark of Era III. An individual's mind may affect not just his or her body, but the body of another person at a distance, even when that distant individual is unaware of the effort. You can think of Era II as illustrating the personal effects of consciousness and Era III as illustrating...

What if I told you, your genes could be healed? As the experiment of genetic modification through toxicity and direct food modification enters its official 10-20 year window, we are seeing an exponentially growing trend of identified genetic anomaly in the population. Popular labs like 23 and me have made it possible for anyone to uncover possible hindrances to total health by identification of specific markers for genetic alterations which can contribute to modified processing of individual nutrients and of impairment within detoxification pathways.

Hearing you have a genetic condition is scary stuff. Mostly due to the predominate understanding that our genes are static structures, unlikely to heal or be modified, a fact which is far from true. There are many genetic presentations which at this point do not appear to be modifiable: downs syndrome, Turners syndrome, and other birth-related conditions. However, those identified through 23 and me are not long-held genetic problems, and ...

It may be time to kick your multivitamin to the curb. Why?? Because most multivitamins are nothing but hard to digest unnaturally grouped nutrients inexpensive packages. There, I said it, words which have been aching to escape for a long time now. The other day, as I stopped at my local health food store to pick up foods... I was amused and dismayed to overhear a conversation between a male customer and one of the staff. It seems the gentleman in question was looking for a particular multi, which was out of stock and inquiring as to the possibility of getting another in for him by the end of the week. As it was December 30^th and orders could not be placed for delivery on the 1^st, the answer was no. He was genuinely dismayed, explaining he was going out of town, and didn't want to travel without his multi.

Not wanting to travel without one's vitamins? There are many herbs and remedies I take with me almost wherever I go... Thieves, some Chinese formulas, remedies for pain, some acute h...

Do you believe you can be healed?
Whatever causes you distress: issues with physical health, emotional issues, life challenges like money, stress, or your job; whatever it is, do you believe you can be healed? I do.
I believe within all life there exists true and profound healing for every situation, there exists a type of medicine for all things which cause us pain, there exists possibility at all times which can surpass the strength of even the most dire situation. Yet, most of us deep down don't really believe we can be healed.

Perhaps belief in healing is tempered by what medicine and society believes about our lives in general. In medicine, my observations continue to demonstrate a lack of appreciation for the seemingly infinite abilities of our human bodies to repair. Sadly, many doctors have adopted a mechanistic view of the body, seeing our systems as being fragile, prone to dysfunction, and lacking any kind of innate wisdom. In this model, the only possible routes to signific...

Fear is one of the most destructive forces on the planet.  Its impact overshadows significant attempts at peace and equanimity, driving our life force down, virtually eliminating our capacity for creative thought and keeps healing and transformation at arm's length.  One would think that in a "civilized" society cause for fear would be minimal as we don't have to run from a lion or bear, but fear is in fact posing what may be the most significant challenge our human life has ever faced.

Sources of fear within our modern world appear to be nearly limitless:

• Ebola
• Isis
• Political elections
• Border issues
• Financial security
• Climate change 

Unlike running from a bear or lion, which causes momentary fear followed by release and relaxation.  These "issues" are spoken of in such a way that the heightened state of arousal never ends.  This is extremely detrimental to our physical body as fear, anxiety, and terror set off a biological chain of events in which our bodies shut down "unn...

Are we ever done healing?
Is there a point where the process is considered complete?  
The short answer: not if we are doing it right! I have never thought of healing as a one-time event. Of course, there are big things, like particular pains, or identifiable conditions, which once eliminated can be considered healed, but true healing encompasses our entire being, therefore, to a great extent, healing is never over, healing in fact, is an ongoing journey, partnered with our life path, changing and morphing with the elements of our personal journey. The key is, to learn to live within the healing rather than apart from it.

I think one of the disservices of medicine is the compartmentalization of our heath into boxes, identifying disease, pain, and illness as problems with defined borders, and set parameters. Within this philosophy, we have come to think of our health as something separate from our life.  Consequently, if we feel moderately good, we soldier on, under the assumption when ...