Re-Vision Healing: What is Integrative Medicine?

Cure is something which is done to you. It is passive and is not within your control (surgery, radiation, chemotherapy are examples of cure) Healing is the blanket in which cure is cradled...

Healing is meaningful,teachable, active, practiced, open, loving, forgiving, connected and faithful.

4 brief Tenants of Integrative Medicine: Re-Visioning Healing

(4 Tenants of Integrative Medicine are based in part on "Towards a Post-Modern Integral Medicine" -- Elliott S. Dacher, M.D. published in: Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine)

1. Integrative Medicine is an approach to healing illness which contains hard science, traditional western medicine, cultural wisdom, alternative approaches, and mindful healing practices to vision and support an individual's Intentional healing path. Psycho-oncology or cancer therapy can be vital in birthing and supporting this path. 

2. Transformational: Integrative medicine re-conceptualizes illness as a time for growth and re-connection.

3. Consciousness: An expansion of consciousness is the foundational element of healing and integrative medicine.

"...The old forms have to be undermined. That is what illness does. An old way of thinking is shattered. A new way of thinking enters through ways of healing. We create a life through the forms we choose to pursue... healing is a practice; it becomes a way of life...meaning replaces random suffering, through which someone can be transformed... consciousness shifts." ~Deena Metzger

4. Holism: Conceptualizes the person not as a physical body but as a whole being, attending to mind, body and spirit in the activities and practices of healing.

"The key to the integral approach is not in the contents of the medical bag, but in the holder of the bag- the individual who has opened herself to the multi-dimensional nature of healing." ~ Marilyn Schlitz