Holistic Medicine Principles
An Exploration of Life and Healing
The Heart Radiance holistic medicine approach always honors the wholeness of each person that is never lost. Health and resilience are experienced when our mind, body, and spirit finds harmony and balance. The same forces that govern all of creation are the very same that shape our lives, and this elemental framework applies to medicine as well.
We help you to heal and transform by guiding the powerful energies that dance in your acupuncture channels, with the medicine plants that heal our vessels, with the foods of this beautiful planet that nourish life, and by exploring how we meet each moment in our daily lives. It is through a remembering of our constant connection with the great mystery of life that healing unfolds.
Elements of Holistic Medicine
Absolutely all of life expresses meaning through patterns and systems, nature always communicates, but only those who listen with the heart may hear. Everyone has a unique constitution, we each have a personality, body, and gifts that we simply are as a being, it is our essence. The world is made of yin and yang, form and function, day and night. The cycle of life is foundational to holistic medicine, we are deeply influenced by the seasons and our environment, and this is explored through the five elements. Birth, life, death, transformation and learning, the journey is one great cycle and we are swayed by the same forces that govern all things.
We use keen observation to notice various patterns that are being expressed on top of someone’s most original state of being, we explore how this came to be, and what is needed to work with the energies of the body to help bring about a lasting change. This is what we call root and branch, what is the root of the issue and what is the surface level expression or symptom. Our bodies, emotions, spirits, and stories say everything and we notice the patterns which paint a holistic image of what is going on for somebody.
Questions are essential, but deep listening to the pulse informs the state of the qi in a person, and the tongue reflects the health of the internal organs. We use everything available, we feel the acupuncture channels for signs, we note the quality of the pain, color informs as does the tone of the tissues. We assess everything from the perspective of deficiency or excess, yin or yang, hot or cold, internal or external, and by considering absolutely all of the pieces we come to understand the patterns being expressed. Then we support the intelligence of your vital force with acupuncture, herbs, and much more to help restore harmony.
To be alive is an utterly bizarre, amazing, and beautiful experience, to open eyes for the first time and see what there is to see, to feel life, to breathe air deeply and walk upon the Earth. We do not know what this life holds and that's that’s okay because it’s about engaging and learning and being present with whatever comes. The events that happen to us are medicine if we choose to be with them, if we take every single thing that happens as meaningful, guiding, as the perfect lesson we each need in order to grow as a being.
It is from the heart that our inner light resides, receives, and extends out into the world. The warmth of the fire inside us is the spark of life, it’s our fundamental aliveness which continually combusts our essence which then generates energy. This primordial spark is the soul in each of us, it is our unique flame of the universal fire, and it is maintained through food, fluids, air, and experience. Living generates source qi which enlivens all parts of ourselves. By caring for and nourishing our lives and bodies we make a home for the pure fire of consciousness to reside in a body here on earth. We do this so that we may explore, engage, learn, celebrate, to feel challenge, fear, and uncertainty too. Life is an opportunity to experience and surrender to the mystery.
It is our work to keep our vessels clear so energy is able to flow smoothly, to draw life in fully, feel it, be with it, learn, change, transform, and then shed all which no longer serves, to then be able to have the clarity to respond without stagnations getting in the way. Our unique flames are given this precious opportunity to combust the essence of our bodies for a reason, we are all here to be in alignment with our journey, on our path, to grow as a spiritual being, and enjoy the ride too. It is our opportunity of human life to be the weaver of the tapestry of our lives, we get to choose to grow and evolve and explore, or not. Either way life’s lessons are always there until we learn them, patiently waiting.
We begin life whole and simply emanating our pure essence of who we most fundamentally are. Then life happens and we quickly become attached to our stories of how we believe things to be, we have challenging experiences in which we create strategies to protect ourselves. When an obstacle or confrontation is experienced, there is an asking for change and adaptation to the way that things are. This is being asked of us in each moment, a constant reorientation to the way that things truly are. When a boulder rolls into the river, the water must find a way around it, it must find a new path. So too we must constantly be with what is, we do not have control of much and it’s our constant opportunity to make peace with this. When there is restriction there is less space for resilience and flexibility, and it is the unwillingness to accept change that is the source of suffering.
The art of living is learning how to be fully in the river of life, navigating completely from our authentic unique essence. Life is the experience of knowing ourselves and our deepest shadows, to receive others, feel them, let them into the heart completely, let the world touch us, and to meet challenges as lessons for there is potent medicine in each and every experience. We can learn to put a paddle in and respond from a fully rooted place of love by being in relationship with all of oneself, both the joy and the suffering. We can choose to step into the unknown, see what is inhibiting, meet it, understand it, do this sacred work to then integrate the blockages. This is the work, the art of living and dying each day, to cultivate clear connection and emanate a celebration of life by fully living and sharing your unique light.
We do not learn the lessons of this life without getting our feet wet, it takes trust and curiosity, wonder, risk, seeing what is possible by letting go and learning to be guided by creation. When life has no expectations and we constantly are perceiving life as it is currently unfolding, we may remake our stories, we may shed that which no longer serves and instead we may venture forth in celebration of the gift of creation, orienting from gratitude for all that is. It is the dynamic range of experience which makes life full and diverse and rich. Illness and suffering is thus an invitation to come into alignment of what you’re here to learn.
We are the magnificent mystery of life experiencing itself through the infinite expressions, we become a living prayer to creator when we choose to be with all that is, and we remember what it truly is to be a human being on this sacred planet when we navigate the unfolding moment with presence, gratitude, surrender, and curiosity.
Heart Centered Perception
“Science has recently confirmed what many indigenous communities have known for thousands of years: our hearts are the first perceivers of our world. In many traditions, the heart is not only a portal, but also a gatekeeper to the unseen realms. When we open our hearts, we open the door to recognizing and interacting with sentience of all beings in the world.
The heart creates the largest electromagnetic field in the body (approximately 60 times greater than the brain), and extends several feet in each direction. The electromagnetic field of the heart isn’t a neatly symmetrical torus; “its shape is the expression of a constantly shifting, living process; it changes with each alteration as the heart takes in and processes information about its internal and external environments. The hearts electromagnetic field allows it to touch the dynamic electromagnetic fields created by other living organisms and to exchange energy. Like all nonlinear systems that display self-organized and emergent behaviors, the heart is supremely sensitive to external perturbations that may affect its dynamic equilibrium. The heart not only transmits field pulses of electromagnetic energy, it also receives them. Like a radio, it is able to decode the information embedded within the electromagnetic fields it senses. It is, in fact an organ of perception.”
~ Stephen Buhner