William Stewart - Deep Medicine: Harnessing the Source of Your Healing Power

The manifestation of this version of Deep Medicine: Harnessing the Source of Your Healing Power rests on the shoulders of those who contributed to planting the seeds and nurturing the sprout of the first incarnation, and some important others who saw a potential for enhancing the original and making Deep Medicine available to a new and larger audience.

My thanks to Matthew Gilbert, director of communications at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and to editor Jess OBrien at New Harbinger Publications, who opened the conversation and trusted in the worth of this project.

I am indebted to Beth Witrogen, who brought her considerable editing skills and creative expression to subtracting what needed to be eliminated and adding to what needed more substance. Doug Winger helped simplify, clarify, and interpret the promise of Deep Medicine. Copy editor Jasmine Star brought her gentle touch to aligning and refining the final product. Milena Fiore, fine nurse and caregiver that she is, helped maintain the balance between my day job and the revision and renewal of Deep Medicine. Their caring interventions were well tolerated by the patient, who became stronger in the process. Thanks are also due to Doris Mitsch for the cover art, and for her many gifts and talents.

I am grateful to my colleagues, the staff, and our patients and supporters at the Institute for Health and Healing (IHH), and to Drs. Bruce Spivey and Martin Brotman, CEOs at the California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco, for their support during the genesis and evolution of IHH. Judith Tolson has been a gifted leader at the IHH since its inception. Without her capacity to manifest a transformative vision of healing and her enduring encouragement, both IHH and Deep Medicine might still be on a to-do list waiting to happen.

The patience, understanding, and support of my family during the many hours I spent writing this book provided the needed sustenance for the journey and many lasting lessons in my personal practice of deep medicine.

William B. Stewart, MD, is cofounder and medical director of the Institute for Health and Healing at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. He has been voted by his peers as one of the best doctors in America for many years through the Best Doctors, Inc., organization. Dr. Stewarts work has been informed by medical volunteer work in India and more than thirty years of surgical practice. His personal experiences have contributed to a profound perspective on the cycles of life and the principles and practices of mindful living. For more information about Deep Medicine, Dr. Stewart, or the Institute for Health and Healing, visit www.myhealthandhealing.org.

Foreword writer Angeles Arrien, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist, educator, and consultant to many organizations and businesses. She lectures and conducts workshops worldwide on cultural anthropology, psychology, and comparative religion. Arrien is president of the Foundation for Cross-Cultural Education and Research. Her books have been translated into nine languages, and she has received three honorary doctorate degrees in recognition of her work. Angeles Arrien lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Chapter 1

Healing has always been the common meeting ground between the physical and the spiritual. When we experience illness, even something as minor as a cold or the flu, we are brought face to face with our vulnerability, and if we look ahead, which we are prone to do at such moments, we can see death. As a result, illness has always been a breeding ground for spiritual concerns.

Larry Dossey, MD

The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.

B. K. S. Iyengar

One of my earliest childhood memories is pretending to be a doctor as a preschooler, with a toy stethoscope and a clinic of ailing stuffed animals. Not too many years later, this game became reality as I began my medical training.

In the 1960s, while I was in college and medical school, dramatic change was in the air in the world of medicine. Heart surgeons were performing magic at the bodys core. Organ transplantation was the new focus for pioneers and visionaries. Imaging equipment that would revolutionize diagnostic capabilities was on the drawing board. New drugs, based on rapidly expanding research efforts, were flooding the marketplace, and government-sponsored health insurance for the elderlyMedicarewas initiated, sparking the fear of socialized medicine in the hearts of established practitioners.

My medical practice began in general surgery training and evolved into highly specialized ophthalmic plastic and reconstructive surgery. I have since become medical director of an institute integrating holistic and conventional practices, with an increasing emphasis on education, leadership, and service. I have operated barefoot in India with handheld flashlights. Ive encountered acupuncturists in pain clinics, massage therapists in intensive care units, and chaplains on hospital rounds. I have seen unexplained recoveries from terminal illness, and Ive seen people die for no apparent reason. I have come to appreciate how tortuous the path and how complex the contributing factors are to each persons illness and well-being.

I have learned that there is no single, simple path to health. Everything we think, feel, do, and say either creates health or negates it. Furthermore, I have come to believe that every issue is a health issue.

The boundaries of medical practice continue to evolve. We are mapping the human genome and elucidating complex cellular and subcellular physiologic processes, even as practices such as traditional Chinese medicine, ayurveda (the indigenous medicine of India), homeopathy, naturopathy, yoga, and meditation are becoming more widely understood and applied. There are both individual and collective movements toward relationship, collaboration, integration, wholeness, and prevention in todays practice of medicine. This is occurring even as biotechnical, pharmacologic, and genetic breakthroughs are reported almost daily.

Yet estimates of the number of people whose symptoms represent psychosomatic, functional, or stress-mediated illness continue to be significant. With chronic illness in all age groups on the increase and the population aging, challenges to health care providers are clear and growing. It is understandable that people are seeking integrative or alternative solutions outside mainstream Western medicine and are turning to their own self-care, and it is likely that this will continue to occur in the future.

What can we learn from this paradox of suffering from more disease and illness even while enjoying more scientific and medical advances? One lesson we can learn is that we dont pay enough attention to the meaning and sources of true health. Perhaps we dont appreciate our health until it is compromised or we have lost it. Perhaps we dont appreciate all of the things that influence, both negatively and positively, our health and well-being. What we need to understand about health is its holistic nature, its dependence on aspects of character (for instance honesty, discipline, or patience), and the relationship of the healing journey to the choices we make and the way we live. John Astin, Ph.D., of the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, evaluated why patients use alternative medicine. He pointed out that in alternative therapies patients find an acknowledgment of the importance of treating illness within a larger context of spirituality and life meaning The use of alternative care is part of a broader value orientation and set of cultural beliefs, one that embraces a holistic, spiritual orientation to life (1998, p. 1552).