As an integrative health coach I engage with clients in opening a path to their optimal health. The work involves creating a heart-felt personal vision for that state of wellness, identifying obstacles, and designing doable strategies for overcoming them. Often we discover the obstacles are habitual behaviors which stand like the ancient troll who blocks the bridge to progress, demanding a toll of obeisance to the old or short-term. Self-care can be the hardest realm of habits to change.
Dr. Mark Hyman is a physician and educator who writes extensively on functional medicine, an emerging systems biology approach to holistic health care. In a recent Huffington Post blog piece on new thinking about cancer treatment and prevention (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/cancer-new-science-on-how_b_779936.html), he describes a picture of cancer as the result of the breakdown of normal physiological processes, and he argues for a treatment approach focused on supporting those processes and removing impediments to healthy function. In short, he advocates the functional medicine focus on applying treatment to the CAUSE rather than the SYMPTOMS of disease. He likens cancer to a pernicious weed in the garden and points to a principle of sustainable agriculture with a parallel to sustainable health: treat the soil, not the plant.
In my coaching work I find that the garden metaphor is powerful and useful with almost everyone. We can see cancer and other diseases as unwanted weeds overtaking the garden and having a destructive influence on the well-being and fruitfulness of the garden’s desired plants. As seasoned gardeners know, the routing out of weeds is just one aspect of garden care. More broadly, a healthy and productive garden requires ongoing care for the soil and for the overall garden milieu (which effort in fact helps keep the weeds in check).
As Dr. Hyman points out, scientific literature abounds with evidence that diet, exercise, stress and environmental toxins all influence the initiation, growth and progression of cancer (and all disease). What is the common thread among those factors? Lifestyle, over which, on paper, we have control.
An important part of the health coaching process is bringing awareness to the habits that run us in order to be more ‘on purpose’, as a client of mine says. With awareness comes options for conscious choice of behaviors and practices that support robust health and diminish the weeds of illness. Awareness is the huge first step and the one that is necessary for finding the thread to empowered self-care. In health coaching, as we bring awareness to the fact that the client is both garden AND gardener, we gently and curiously inquire: how are you tending the garden of you?
So well put. I love the phrase, “the garden of you.”
Helping any individual to develop the awareness that they are in control (on paper) is the best thing we can do as health providers. The next best thing (which is not easy) is to help them develop the skill set to create the action steps required to express that state of health. It appears both you, Kathleen, and Dr. Sharp are right on track with doing such. I applaud all the time and energy you invest to helping folks minimize the use of synthetic drugs and maximize their health potentail through the participation of active lifestyle choices. Great blog Kathleen, keep it up.
Dr. Sean