What Modern Medicine Is Missing

Optimizing Holistic Intelligence Part 4

Spirituality is not separate from health. In fact, it’s an essential quadrant of the holistic ecosystem.

Our bodies, our thoughts and our emotions are all welcome in the exam room, but when you talk about spirituality, not even a psychiatrist knows what to do with you. The spiritual quadrant of health is ignored and undernourished in conventional western medicine and it’s really problematic- especially given the prevalence of anxiety disorders. The cure for anxiety is not to artificially raise serotonin levels. It’s to learn to trust an intelligence that the human mind cannot understand. It’s to make peace with the unknown and find a sense of safety in the great mystery. This requires that we engage with the spiritual quadrant of ourselves.

Western medicine thrives off data, certainty and predictability but the spiritual quadrant of health is the home of the unknown- the great mystery. Many of us have been taught that we have to choose between science and spirituality, evidence based data and faith, and when given this choice in the current paradigm, it’s common to choose the former. But in a holistic system, it’s not either, or. Both of these perspectives are important.

I don’t blame the conventional medical system for ignoring spirituality- I actually think there was a time when it made sense to do so. Evidence based medicine has saved lives and improved the quality of life of many- but that system has lost the plot and it’s not fully equipped to manage today’s flavor of suffering. We are materially overfed and spiritually malnourished. We are dependent on a healthcare system that has trained us to believe in the illusion of certainty, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it helps us feel safe.

Safety is a prerequisite for healing so even if it’s illusory or irrational, it’s essential, and we don’t want to give that up. When medicine ignores spirituality it may help us feel safe but it also limits our capacity to heal. The real flex is to use the existing system to create a sense of safety, while leveraging the spiritual quadrant of health to innovate and push the boundaries of what’s possible. This is what I do in my private practice.

In the spiritual quadrant, nothing is guaranteed. So much is unknown or unknowable, and the potential is unlimited. In the spiritual quadrant of health, intention and prayer are as important as your vital signs are to the physical quadrant. We need spirituality in healthcare- not simply because it’s an integral part of the anatomy of the self, but because it offers practical solutions to modern day suffering.

In this piece, I’ll get practical so you can start so you can use the spiritual quadrant of yourself to support your health goals.

If you are new to this series, note that this is the 4th piece in a 4 part series on The Holistic Intelligence Method. The series began with Unveiling Your Holistic Intelligence, where I provide an overview of the framework I use in my private practice.

The first step in the methodology is to get your Holistic Intelligence Quotient (HQ) score. It’s free and you can do that HERE.

Once you have your score, it’s time to take action to restore balance. If your HQ score revealed significant imbalance in the physical quadrant, start here. If the mental quadrant was the greatest source of imbalance for you, The Medicine of The Mind offers some actionable next steps. If you scored lowest in the emotional quadrant, Cultivating Emotional Fluency should be your next stop. And if the spiritual quadrant is the greatest source of imbalance for you, this piece will guide you toward a the level of wellbeing you deserve.