A friend of mine says, “One of the main reasons people are sick is because they don’t want to be healthy.” If this is true then one of the main ways of healing illness would be by nourishing a powerful desire for health. Everybody wants health but in most their wanting is insufficient, feeble, lacking passion. If one desires health only enough that he is willing to complain to a doctor and settle for what the doctor can do for him that is all he’ll get. However if someone loves health, longs for health, thinks, reads, speaks and devotes himself to health, his longing will awaken and motivate his innate intelligence and he will learn how to fulfill his longing for health.
Naturopathic students are to be encouraged to become passionate about health, to unabashedly love it, long for it and pray for it. There is nothing more noble, more worthy of our love. Our understanding of what health is, evolves in step with our health improvements. Initially most of us think of health as a physical state free of physical symptoms. However as we heal we become aware that we suffer also mentally, emotionally and socially and our desire for health expands to include these. As our thoughts, words and deeds become increasingly in harmony with the dictates of wisdom and love, we actually become embodiments of these virtues; living expressions of health.
As a physician succeeds in healing herself at one level, her next level of healing naturally reveals itself in the same organic fashion as a fetus develops or a wound heals. She learns that healing does not end with freedom from symptoms but continues into ever more satisfying levels of health and happiness such as abundant energy, strength, endurance and flexibility, mental clarity, emotional joy, intimate relationships, becoming immune to infection by jealousy, resentment, anger etc.; an inspiring, meaningful livelihood; mastery of physical and mental appetites, an internal dialogue that is honest and loving, and a mystical relationship with and as your own self.
Vitalism is the cultivation of vitality.
The entire purpose of “Physician, Heal Thyself” is self-healing. Each participant will seek out for herself the self-healing practices most effective for her own healing. Participants will grapple intimately with their own challenges to healing. What skills does each individual actually need to cultivate in order to heal her digestion, sinusitis, PMS, neck pain, energy or moods? If she is not progressing, why? What blocks her from reducing sweets, exercising regularly? How actively engaged is she in healing her attitudes, beliefs and internal dialogue?