How We Heal Is Changing

Here’s how to work with the change to best support your healing

When I started practicing medicine in San Francisco in 2011, my office was flooded with generally healthy people working for very well known tech companies. My patients were so stressed and anxious they could hardly breathe, let alone digest their food well and live vital, fulfilling lives. Stress and anxiety quickly became the number one diagnosis in my office and my approach was always to suggest lifestyle changes, breath work, mindfulness, meditation and stress management practices before considering supplements or prescription medications. In those days patients would walked out of my office, ridicule my suggestions and demand Xanax prescriptions.

I almost quit medicine, but a couple of years later, something started changing. It was as if a wave of curiosity and new awareness swept across the Bay Area, and eventually I had a waiting list of patients seeking alternatives to medications.

Over the last 14 years I have seen tremendous change in the healthcare system- but it’s not because the system itself has changed much (although I wish it would), and it’s not because technological advances have impacted healthcare delivery and practice, and it’s not because a global pandemic revealed cracks in the system and forced rapid change. Healthcare is changing because we are changing- people are changing, consciousness is changing, and therefore the way we heal is changing.

I could speak about why these changes are occurring from a lot of different perspectives but this piece is a continuation of “The Astrological Phenomenon that will Transform Healthcare” so I’m going to write from the perspective of the third eye chakra, the part of me that sees patterns and symbolism in all things, the part of me that looks to the celestial macrocosm to gain perspective on what’s happening around me.

When we look up at the night sky, we’re reminded of the cycles that connect us to the whole. Just as our circadian rhythms and menstrual cycles are integral to individual health, the cycles of the cosmos impact our collective health, and our orientation to medicine and healing. When we zoom out, there are cycles upon cycles upon cycles affecting us in different ways and we can look to all of them to gain insight on our healing.