The importance of collaborative healing with functional and mainstream medicine

(pic thanks Sarah Pflug Burst)

Collaborative healing is the amalgamation of your team of health practitioners working together to create an empowered atmosphere for you to get healthy and stay healthy.

Your team would consist of one mainstream medical practitioner, specialists if necessary, and an assortment of other natural therapists to enhance your wellbeing. This could consist of a massage therapist, a physiotherapist, a chiropractor, a naturopath and nutritionist, a counsellor or a motivational coach and the list goes on for however many different modalities exist.

Collaborative healing is important because it cannot be expected that one practitioner deal with all issues that can arise in one’s lifetime. It is unfair to expect your doctor to advise you on which food sensitivities you should beware of, as that is not their forte. Just as it would be unfair to ask your masseur to operate on your thyroid if necessary. That is the reason a collaboration of many different natural health and mainstream medicine practitioners is essential. Further to this it is essential for them to empower you, so you know where to go and which practitioner can help you the most, when you need it.

Collaborative healing may be necessary when you are going through any kind of dis-ease. For example, if you get consistent headaches, popping pain killers may get you to the next meeting or help you drive the kids to sport, but you don’t have headaches due to a deficiency in pain killers. You have headaches because something is not balanced in your body.  It could be that your neck is sprained and you need massage, physio or a chiropractor. ,It could be that your neurones aren’t firing in balance affecting your nervous system and causing anxiety, which in turn caused the headache. Or your gut is out and there is an imbalanced cocktail there. It could be that you are simply dehydrated, or stayed up too late last night, or any other infinite number of reasons. Popping continuous pain killers is not a solution. It’s a band-aide.

The same could be said of any other illness. So, it makes sense to have a team of people working on different aspects of your health to teach you how to be empowered to look after it yourself, and visit them when you need extra input.

Another example of the importance of collaborative healing with functional and mainstream medicine could be someone who feels stuck in their career. They may need a life coach or a counsellor to undo old patterns and help them move forward. They may need an energy worker to help them lower their frustration, anxiety and anger regarding issues trapped in their energetic field, psychology and memory banks. So, a Reiki therapist or kinesiologist, theta healer etc would work on helping them restore energetic balance while a life coach would empower them with new ideas and motivation, to break new ground for a better lifestyle. Perhaps the person lacks confidence, so some counselling could assist with that or many other modalities. Either way the person benefits from the all-round health care.

The doctor features prominently in this recipe for health because the doctor has been scientifically trained in a different area of healthcare, just as pertinent as all the others. In past years the world has become even more divided in many things. In some ways medical science took the brunt for errors that were not caused by them. Nevertheless, when we need a heart transplant, or an oxygen machine, or a bone set to re heal, we all still need the doctor. The person that has gone through over 7 or 8 years of training to be the all-round specialist in so many things. That is the role of the GP. Then you have the specialist who does, heaven knows so many other years on top of that, to specialise in a modality of their own.

Without a medical system that goes hand in hand with mainstream and natural therapies the victim is the average guy on the street. You and me. Why? Because some things just can’t be fixed ‘naturally’. Sometimes it’s too late due to your years of lack of self-care, abuse with alcohol, cigarettes, illegal drugs, too much anxiety, trauma, depression etc. All those things that happen to make life difficult. The list is endless and it becomes harder and harder to undo entrenched patterns that have been there for years without the individual themselves working on it. That is why both types of healing are needed. For way too long they have been to separated and this needs urgently to change.

Stressfree Management® specialises in collaborative healing in your health plan. Blood tests are needed from your doctor, ultrasounds, x-rays etc while natural healing works to heal your gut, your anxiety, your depression, your lack of confidence etc.  The list goes on. So, you need your doctor and whatever other natural practitioner to work together, to put in place your health plan and empower you to act on it. Any plan without action will not succeed and any action without a plan cannot succeed. One enhances the other. So, we put together a plan for you, and all you need to do is learn how to follow it. If this happens, within a short period of time, you get healthier. Then the task is to stay healthy. Simple, just keep following the plan and tweak it if and when it needs tweaking.

This is how over the last 40 odd years we have assisted so many clients to get healthy and stay healthy. Very soon you will find that your collaborative healing team can support and empower you over your whole lifetime with just a few check ups here and there to make sure you are on the right track. Think about how that will help you get healthy and stay healthy. You can find us at www.stressfreehealthamangement.com