I have been in the health care field since entering pre-medicine in 1967. For over 30 years I have had different roles in our country's health care system. I have seen development of technologies and changes in health care standards that would have amazed me when I started my journey to become a doctor. Most of my years in the health care field included contact with typical "standard western medicine" areas: classes as M.D. med student, leave of absence, personal search for healing that led me into alternative medicine, work in medical records (typing the reports of MDs of several specialties, part-time over 20 years), licensed as counselor, massage practitioner, naturopathic physician. I have studied with specialists in Native American shamanism, Ayurveda, Chinese Taoist Acupuncture, spiritual healing, homeopathy, herbalism, electro-acupuncture biofeedback (EAV), NES Infoceutical technology, CoRe (Coincidence Recognition), German "Psycho-Kinesiologie", Biological Dentistry, Orthomolecular Medicine, Osteopathic energy perception and more.

I myself have experienced Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, chronic yeast effects, dental problems, initial signs related to MS, and several other considerations. This is in addition to having the normal musculoskeletal challenges of an active athletic life. The way to help people with a variety of complaints is to have a variety of options from which to choose.

My insights into the need for an interactive, multi-faceted groundwork for health care (and for Life itself) drive my work to help preserve the assets of many ways of looking at life's needs, including health care. My web site gives examples of ways humanity is now poised at a point where tremendous health benefits can be realized if people are able to share their resources and build our future in mutual support. Without freedom of choice in health care we seem doomed to less vibrant existence, more chronic puzzling illnesses, enslavement to simple "answers" to complex problems. 

Historically, naturopaths were "Eclectic", using a variety of approaches. District of Columbia registration for "naturopaths" now allows a variety of backgrounds. I have met several non-four-year naturopaths and am impressed with their grasp of the eclectic spirit of natural medicine and their ability to bridge several approaches to health support including what has been called "energy medicine". The 4-year schools have become limited in their appreciation of the full range of techniques traditional naturopaths used to employ. Their graduates seem to me to represent the "high-end specialty" part of the spectrum of naturopaths and many of them will not do the "mundane" areas of bodywork, intensive counseling and planning relating to diet/lifestyle advice, or other approaches that take time a specialist does not want to devote. It is my hope, therefore, that we can find a balance between the four-year graduates and others whose schooling was in other institutions. Ultimately, I would like to see all institutions training "naturopaths" come to agreement and achieve a standard of education that includes scientifically validated approaches as well as effective assessment/treatment techniques for which the science to explain them has not yet been completely elucidated. And the result of that would be a unified presentation to the western medicine schools and to the nation of the necessity for obeying natural laws in order to have a truly successful practice of "medicine", "doctoring", "healing".

Dr. Bastyr and Energy Medicine: I want to encourage young N.D. graduates (and students also) of four-year schools such as Bastyr University to consider the "energy medicine" approaches, acumeridian therapies, and study and research them if possible. This will educate you in the "higher levels" of the 5-level Map (Model) to Health and Healing. Dr. John Bastyr himself was a stock-holder in "BodyScan, Inc." BodyScan was a company that was founded in the 1980's and told investors that it was making a chair in which the patient would sit and have light rays beamed in front of them, with receivers on the other side that would capture the light beam and see how it was changed in character by the vibrations of the person's energy field that surrounds each of us. I took a tour of the facility and heard their investment presentation. The company eventually went bankrupt. However, for me knowing that Dr. Bastyr had invested in the possibility of scientific validation of the energies he could sense is a powerful motivator. My latest hope is that Autonomic Nervous System monitoring using Heart Rate Variability technology may be the way to objectively document the changes currently assessed using Applied Kinesiology and Autonomic Response Testing.  I think that the HRV Live! technology may be the breakthrough in proof that he and others sought [see the Store page for more info; update 3/2006 -- the device was removed from the market, but may be returned, that depends on the developers; I own one myself; see clinical research that I did myself - here].

Update 3/2008: I earlier wrote that the NES technology may be an important technology for assessing body information processing (my opinion of this see: NES/Integrative Homeopathy Synthesis). There is another technology that seems more versatile and that is the CoRe (Coincidence Recognition) system (information: www.Energy-Medicine.info). Choosing which to use is a complex matter. They are definitely both based on the higher levels of the 5-level Map to healing [here] and deal with what is termed the "Healative" aspect of the human being's "Dynamis" [more].

Special Note on Dr. Bastyr and Dr. Abrams: Dr. Bastyr kept an Abrams "Black Box" device in his office. I am convinced that this was a statement to us all that even though something can become the object of ridicule and derision, it may be a clue to a truth that in later years would be accepted. My understanding is that the initial observation Dr. Albert Abrams made was that if a patient were standing facing to the geographical West, then the result of percussion of the abdomen would be different than when they stood facing other directions. To me, this makes sense and was hammered home to me last year when looking at television coverage of hurricanes -- they always rotate in a specific direction that ends up with an aspect of their orientation pointing towards the West. This could only be seen from high in space using a satellite for imaging the cloud patterns, something that Dr. Abrams, Dr. Bastyr and other early doctors and "students of Nature" did not have at their disposal. (See Goldfish Bowl Medicine essay below.)

Dr. Abrams went on to develop techniques based on what he understood about human bioenergies. He began the studies of what has been termed "Radiesthesia" or "Radionics." However, those whose world view (and pocket book) was threatened attacked him. (See links below to sites about Dr. Abrams' discoveries.) Many other discoveries or systems of assessment and treatment draw upon the same as-yet unacknowledged aspect of the natural world, such as: the Toftness device (I trained in using this at an extracurricular workshop while I was a student at Bastyr; this "device" is simply a piece of plastic that is rubbed by the practitioner with one hand and the other hand is placed near the body of the patient and when the hand is above a place on the body that is giving off a radiation of disturbance then the practitioner's hand feels a "squeak" instead of sliding on the plastic, this is a phenomenon of electrostatic charge, a simple concept but it was seen as dangerous knowledge and attacked by the AMA and the FDA), Applied Kinesiology (I trained in this in an extracurricular workshop while a student at Bastyr), Chinese pulse testing (I trained in this in the acupuncture department at Bastyr), Nogier auricular medicine with the VAS (Vascular Autonomic Signal, which I learned in a workshop while at Bastyr), and much more than I can cite in this essay at this time. [Note: This "electrostatic" concept could even be the basis for what homeopaths have called Chronic Miasms and Chthonic Disease.

I plan to write an essay about this, titled "Goldfish Bowl Medicine": This will describe the situation that just as fish do not perceive that they live in water, so our modern western medicine system does not acknowledge that humans move within an intricate system of energy fields that are invisible and affect us in subtle ways. It now is time for us to "wake up" and realize how important it is to be able to look "beyond the goldfish bowl" and see the influences that push us in ways we cannot understand if we only remain as ignorant fish in a goldfish bowl. This is why I say that E = mc² is a crucial equation to consider (see below).

Story: If I happen to know that there is a huge section of the street outside that is capable of falling into the ground-- much like a trapdoor that could open and swallow up people and cars, etc. -- I have a human obligation to tell you... This is the same as my insights in health care...

The section on "Why haven't I heard of this before?" contains conjectures about reasons for the slow progress in expanding the model or paradigm used to explain health, illness, treatment and reclamation of health.