August / September 2006

NAVIGATING A HEALING PATH
—Vera Franco Dahm

A healing path is always a choice. Living in the United States under our Constitution gives everyone the right to determine what services he/she will select for assistance with any illness. The problem attempting to be addressed by AHP [in Chip Baggett’s essay, The Right to Choose a Healing Path, in the June/July 2006 AHP Perspective, Inside AHP, p. 5] is not the right to choose a path of healing, but rather being given the opportunity to choose personal treatment choices and have them paid for within a healthcare system of insurance.

Whenever we step into a system seeking to make use of its benefits, we relinquish a certain amount of power. On the other hand, the “right to choose” freely often means letting go of the safety and protection of an organized system. A child cannot continue to both live at home and choose whatever strikes her fancy. By its nature, an established system of thinking limits choice.

If the “right to choose a healing path” means working within the current healthcare business system to expand the options of choices available to clients, then the phrase could be misleading and place the power of choice within an established system and not with the individual. It also does not address the responsibility of the individual in her own health and in selecting practitioners who will become members of a healing team, supportive of all resources that the client deems necessary and useful in the healing process.

I take exception to the idea that we are ever “…forced to comply with established ideology and practices of conventional treatments. The choice rests with the individual. Sometimes maintaining individual power means making difficult choices that have consequences, and, yet, that individual power always exists as an option and may in the long run be for the higher good of the community. I have been ill for more than ten years. When a chair broke in my office causing a head injury, I had to close my private practice and I went on disability. My experience has shown me that it is possible to receive help from the current system of care.

PHYSICIAN COOPERATION My physician has been most helpful. He is willing to give me prescriptions for cranial–sacral therapy and massage therapy sessions. While not covered by Medicare, the prescriptions do facilitate my getting some tax reduction. During the two years and six months when I had no health coverage because of the Social Security/Medicare setup, this same physician would fax me bloodwork prescriptions without my having to pay for an office visit.

This same physician gave me B-12 shots when I indicated that they helped. He reads material I give him on supplements and how I might benefit. He was and is willing to prescribe medicines without preservatives when I ask.

In the course of my illness, I have encountered over and over physicians who do not listen and who insist on conventional methods of treatments. I make new choices [of physician]. I have also sought help from alternative practitioners who would not listen, could not see the whole picture of my healing process, and insisted on treating me from their model exclusively. They had little regard for my knowledge of what I needed from them and what I knew would help me. I have struggled just as much with “alternative” practitioners, qualified in their disciplines, but lacking in the ability to be present to me as a client within a larger context.

In seeking to allow an alternative or complementary treatment to be included in an insurance plan, a practitioner will come under the scrutiny of people who have no knowledge of their modality. Documentation will be required that demands qualifications as well as clarifications, and, eventually, there will be limits to the scope of practice, as there is in traditional medicine. The whole process of verification also can make patients’ personal records available to untrained and ignorant eyes when those files are requested for review.

Envisioning a new paradigm for healthcare is an important and complex task. It requires a change of the underlying principles that currently guide our healthcare system, not just an inclusion of alternative and complementary modalities. In addition, the individual is the one being transformed by the illness and ultimately is the one responsible for her life and health. Doctors, medicines, and a variety of treatments can support the renewal of health. They are necessary in times of crises and in the ongoing return to functional health. However, an essential principle missing from our current understanding of healing is the responsibility of the individual.

Go to www.wellness-institute.org

The ability to respond in navigating any illness demands that
(1) the individual make self-care and the process of healing her number one priority. No other activity can take precedence.
(2) she must come to see that healing is not curing. Sometimes a cure occurs, but not always. Curing might remove the symptoms of the illness, and, yet, it generally leaves the underlying cause and the patterns of thought and emotions that anchor the illness unexplored.
(3) healing requires an intention of self-discovery and a desire to uncover underlying causes.
(4) as the individual continues to face challenges and setbacks, it becomes important for her to know that all the interactions along the path of healing are “the healing.” Each encounter reveals the multiple dimensions of the patterns.
(5) appreciation of the learning and the gifts inherent in the journey provides the motivation for ongoing self-discovery.
(6) healing is a continuous process of standing in uncertainty with faith and trust and often the lack of either.
(7) it requires surrendering to what is.
(8) the person navigating the healing path must come to appreciate that bringing forth all that is within the unconscious body is vital.
(9) in every choice the “right use” of the higher will is involved.
(10) the healing path is a process not determined by treatments or by time. The individual soma–psyche is the organizing principle. It is an organic, dynamic, and ever-changing energy system functioning within other living systems.

PLANNING YOUR OWN TREATMENT Listening deeply to the inner movements of the soma–psyche often requires the individual to shift midstream. Standing as head of her healing team, she must respond as such. If she is too ill to do so, then she must choose wisely the caregivers who will temporarily advocate for her. When choosing doctors and practitioners, consider the following: Traditional Doctors
• who are willing to be open to other modalities,
• who are willing to consider the advice or suggestions of other practitioners from whom the client is seeking help, and
• who are willing to read material selected by the client on her own behalf. Alternative and Complementary Practitioners:
• who use supplements, herbs, or essences with the intention and understanding that the purpose is to support the soma–psyche in its movements,
• who are listening for the underlying healing process,
• who trust the client to know her needs even if she has trouble articulating the “knowings,”
• who will respond to the client’s requests for specific assistance if it is within her realm of skills and knowledge, and
• who are qualified to be doing the work of healing: one who has apprenticed and walked the healing path herself/himself.

Go to www.altjn.com

These concepts and ideas support a much bigger issue of change. Our culture views the one who is seeking healing as “needing to be fixed.” Our AHP community could offer a much-needed understanding of the meaning and purpose of any mental, physical, or spiritual breakdown. “Imagining” a healthcare system that brings support and care to all its members requires a change in the current outdated mindset about illness and a more inclusive philosophical base. A variety of treatment models is only a small part of the bigger picture of defining a healing path. The Right to Choose a Healing Path project could include a deeper understanding of illness while maintaining individual power. Envisioning a system that celebrates illness as redemptive and evolutionary would not negate preventive or restorative health considerations.

The darkness surrounding any illness contains a sacred process filled with possibilities. The theory of dissipating structures for which Ilya Priogogine won a Nobel Prize in 1977 demonstrates that when a selforganizing structure breaks down, the possibility for reorganizing at a higher level exists. The burden of individual responsibility could be made lighter with the realization that the experience has personal value and serves the community.

I worked with a practitioner of the Course in Miracles who was fond of the phrase, “Atta girl, Vera.” No matter what presented in my healing process, he saw me as being sufficiently strong to clear the patterns of thought, suppressed emotions, and experiences that had created the presenting complaint. I was celebrated regularly. His support calmed my inner critic and still allowed me to do the exploration necessary to release the energies long held in my body–mind.

All of us are called to be fully whole, holy, enlightened. Illness is one of the paths. Honoring the path of healing could open the door to a new matrix of self-care with respect for all treatment modalities.

VERA FRANCO DAHM VERA FRANCO DAHM, Ph.D., has been a member of the AHP community for more than 25 years. She was a regular presenter at AHP Midwest and National Conferences in the 1980s and 1990s. Vera was unable to work for six years due to illness. Her Ph.D. is in BodyMind Psychology, and she is licensed by the State of Ohio as a professional clinical counselor and by the Medical Board of Ohio as a massage therapist. She maintains a private practice in BODYMIND counseling and Fourth Strand Bodywork as well as doing trainings and consultations. Vbodymind@aol.com (937) 254-2779

2nd Cover Story:

Voice Dialogue in 2006: 19 Practitioners . . . Dassie Hoffman