Extending the Art of Healing Through Anthroposophy

Burn-out! It’s everywhere. It affects parents, teachers, doctors, and students. Physicians feel it as their work becomes more and more consumed by medical records. Teachers feel it when they are asked to teach to the test. Parents feel it from the intense busyness that consumes daily life. Where does burn-out come from and how can we ease the sense of depletion it creates? Together Dr. Adam Blanning and Laura Scappaticci will explore burn-out and its antidotes, looking at time, technology, and ways to reclaim our wholeness. If you haven’t yet listened to our 10 mini-episodes in Season 2, this episode is a great introduction to that content. If you have listened, Season 3 will help you apply that knowledge (aka life hacks) to all aspects of your life.  We’ll do this with a philosophy that does not add more things to your life, but rather asks questions and ask you to notice points of rest, points of centering, and the times when you are able to fully encounter yourselves and others.Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Summary: Four Steps Towards WholenessIn this final episode of Season 2, you'll review the four “lenses” for medical care and how they relate to traditional and ancient insights. Practical suggestions for bringing them into the practice of medicine will be offered, and you'll hear more about why these practices bring needed flexibility and expanded capacities. They are an antidote to the trimming process that has led to burn-out for so many healers.Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 8: Being Part of Our Own Healing ProcessIn this episode, you will begin opening space to step into your own healing process. We will explore the links between fever, immunity, cancer and autism. Trusting your own powers for self-regulation will be key. This fourth level of understanding is related to both personal experiences and a "sense of coherence."Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 7: Threads of MeaningHow are experiences of illness influenced by age, priority and capacity? What opens when we listen carefully for aspects of meaning? You'll be asked to consider using this fourth level of insight as a key for not losing sight of the individual—on both the level of patient and provider.Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 6: Gesture and Connection"Gesture thinking" is a doorway to understanding body-mind connections. In this episode, you'll explore how recent increases in allergies and anxiety could be connected, and begin to understand boundary as an important element of both resilience and wholeness.Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 5: Building BridgesDuring this episode, you can begin looking for interconnections. Examples from the field of psychoneuroimmunology are presented. Research on how warmth bridges throughout many different parts of our physiology is presented and you're invited to view warmth as a tool for self-awareness.Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 4: Nurturing the Full Spectrum of Our PhysiologyIn this episode, you are invited into learning to see a more complete picture of our physiology, and how all living physiology needs alternating cycles of activity and regeneration. You'll be asked to start practicing spectrum thinking as a model of “too much” or “too little.” The next five episodes of Season 2 will be released on December 17. Stay tuned and thank you for listening! Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 3: The Physiology of Regeneration​​In this episode, Adam asks what it means when there are so many interventions that we forget to include time for rest? How are regeneration and recovery connected to time;? What is the link between rhythm and vitality?Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 2: Overcoming Assumptions—Including the Element of Time to Build ContextHow are some of our assumptions actually false anchors? In this episode we will sharing research about average body temperature, and how that has been steadily decreasing over the last 150 years and why thinking about time helps build context.Find more resources go to helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 1: New Viewpoints on Resiliency with Dr. Adam BlanningThis episode discusses the dominant role of deductive reasoning and date-driven therapies in medicine. We consider the ways they are complimented by three additional lenses: time and progression, "gesture thinking", and meaning. Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch. Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

 E1 Claiming Wholeness: Introduction ~ What is the Claiming Wholeness in Medicine course about?Welcome to Season 2: Claiming Wholeness in Health and Education.  The next 10 mini-episodes are part of a curriculum designed to help you find healing insights and claim a sense of wholeness in your life. These episodes are based on a course created for those who are either learning or practicing medicine. But whether you are a medical provider, healer, educator, or anyone experiencing burn-out, the examples are applicable and invite you to think differently about the processes of healing and your participation in them. Each episode explores how medical providers can move between diverse levels of assessment and diagnosis, both in terms of patient care and their own professional well-being. Part 1 starts with the questions: What helps you feel whole? What experiences or practices help you feel more connected to all the parts of you?Your host, Dr. Adam Blanning, is a family medicine practitioner, lecturer, teacher, and leader in the Medical Section, a research group out of the Goetheanum in Switzerland. During these 15 minute episodes, he will ask you questions to reawaken your curiosity, In fact, you’ll be asked to start to think differently, while being offered specific tools for building resilience and enlivening your personal or professional practice through an integrative medical view. Thank you for listening. If you are listening to this podcast, we would love your support! For the expanded course and more resources, go to helpthehealers.orgThis episode explores why burnout rates have risen so much in medical work. and describes the “trimming” process that frequently happens in training, leading to a narrowed experience of oneself. Adam explores the ways in which wholeness comes not through more tasks, but through expanded ways of thinking and understandingFind more resources about the full course at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch. Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Season One: Awakening our Understanding of Illness: 100-years of Fundamentals of Therapy This podcast is your invitation to engage with new perspectives on health and your own healing processes, while also learning about the fundamentals of anthroposophical medicine.   In episode five, the final episode for season one, we discuss chapter 14 of Fundamentals of Therapy by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman. Why did they devote an entire chapter to the concept of boundary? How do we find a healthy balance between having a hard boundary and being permeable? We discuss how silica and sulfur—two substances frequently used in anthroposophic medicine--help us on physical, physiologic and sensory levels.   This conversation is far-reaching. At one point, we talk about substance abuse and wonder how the ego, the I, is affected when we partake in something as simple as caffeine or as strong as an opioid. We discuss sense organs and how the whole body receives sensory information, not just the eyes or ears. All of our organs are working together. Not like an assembly line processing one thing after another, but in communication and cooperation.   To support this podcast (and future episodes) go to: https://medicalsection.goetheanum.ch/donate. Feel free to also email us your ideas and questions at extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com. We have some great ideas for season two, and we hope you will help us bring it to life. 

Season One: Awakening our Understanding of Illness: 100-years of Fundamentals of Therapy In this episode, we work through chapter seven of Fundamentals of Therapy, by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman. One of the primary concepts introduced in this chapter is how a challenging experience can bring new strength and capacity. This is a part of many holistic healing traditions, but rarely spoken about in conventional medicine. Anthroposophic medicine understands how healing is not just about removing symptoms, but about developing new capacities. You'll hear about iron and its unique role in the body and how it can be used to bring strength and courage. Also about mistletoe therapy, where, by introducing a very foreign plant extract into the human body, the immune system is spurred to greater activity. This helps recognize and clear out cancer cells, while also helping us personally look at what isn't serving us on an emotional, social or spiritual level. We also discuss the archetypes of a “blood” process and “nerve” process and how we experience these on a daily basis.   A central goal of anthroposophical medicine is to expand the number of therapeutic tools, especially beyond medicines that chemically make a change in our system, but which we will likely have to take for the rest of our life. Adam calls this a replacement paradigm. Anthroposophical medicine takes a more nuanced approach, aiming to reduce an illness process by increase our healing capacity.  To support this Podcast go to: https://medicalsection.goetheanum.ch/donate. Email us your ideas and questions at extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com.  

Season One: Awakening our Understanding of Illness: 100-years of Fundamentals of TherapyIn Episode 3, we discuss Chapter 5 of Fundamentals of Therapy: Plant, Animal, ManMedical education expects young doctors to memorize tremendous amounts of factual information, but offers much less guidance for making the information their own. Modern medicine similarly focuses mostly on quantitative measures—what are you blood tests?—but can forget to see the person behind the lab results. Neither way of working allows for much life. Anthroposophic medicines sees more, much more. It recognizes four levels of being. We can compare it to four possible steps for becoming a poet: first, you find a good poem in a book and see that it exists (step 1); you work further with it, it comes alive, and you start to remember it (step 2). Then a really good poem actually stirs and inspires your soul life (step 3); and in time, if you love enough poems, you start to write your own poetry (step 4). Our body makes the same steps with substance. Chapter five shows us this beautiful, fourfold physiology of body, soul and spirit.To support this podcast go to: https://medicalsection.goetheanum.ch/donate. Email us your ideas and questions at extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com. 

Season one: Awakening our Understanding of Illness: 100-years of Fundamentals of TherapyIn Episode 2, we discuss Chapter 3 of Fundamentals of Therapy: The Manifestations Of Life. This chapter asks us to expand our perspective on medicine and healing, particularly into the realm of vitality. We reflect on the static pictures that are often offered to us through medical tests and chemical analysis, in contrast to the dynamic functions within the body’s healing processes. Adam discusses the capacity to self-heal as a mystery unique to living organisms, and what this means to our understanding of health and illness. To support this podcast go to https://medicalsection.goetheanum.ch/donate. Email us your ideas and questions at extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com. 

Season one: Awakening our Understanding of Illness: 100-years of Fundamentals of TherapyThe book Fundamentals of Therapy by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman is our guide throughout the next five episodes as we discuss Chapters 1, 3, 5, 7 and 14. We hope you will read along with us! In this episode, Adam and Laura explore Chapter 1: True Knowledge of the Human Being as a Foundation for the Art of Medicine, discussing the challenges of standardized, protocol-based medicine in contrast to the gifts that arise through the relationship between the doctor, the patient, and the illness. We delve into the significance of the etheric life force for healing, as well as the anthroposophical concepts of imagination, inspiration, and intuition. To support this podcast go to https://medicalsection.goetheanum.ch/donate. Email us your ideas and questions at extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com.