We need a new medical model, and we need it fast. Although the medical establishment will not always tell you this, but we have the power to heal ourselves. Everything we need for this process we already have, if we but knew it.

Ironically the medical establishment has helped to conceal this fact from us. In their efforts to provide a simple pill or a ‘scientifically proven’ cure for our ills, they have removed the necessity for us to take responsibility for our own health as well as the need to understand the fundamental principles of healing and the knowledge for how it is actually done.

The drive of the scientific community to take medical care out of the hands of untrained, and sometimes unscrupulous, members of the clergy in centuries past (you know, the sort of people who executed ‘witches’ as well as anyone who suggested the earth revolved around the sun) was laudable.

But now, as drug companies conceal and distort the results of drug studies, as the lines between the drug regulatory bodies and the drug companies themselves become blurred, even invisible, and as a high degree of arrogance and narrow-mindedness pervades a large proportion of the medical community (only they know about health!), it is time to revisit how healing is supposed to occur and our role in obtaining and maintaining continuing and abundant health.

Christiane Northrup, M.D., an ob-gyn with decades of medical experience, leading her to become a world-renowned women’s health expert, writes in her groundbreaking book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing that her experience over the years caused her to challenge everything she was taught in medical school. She learned to pay attention to the thoughts, beliefs, and behavioral patterns of her patients which, she says, are the missing link to optimal health on all levels.

Northrup offers a different and radical approach to healthcare:

It is possible to thrive in [our] body instead of simply waiting for disease to happen. It boils down to this: Regardless of our individual circumstances, our pasts, or our ages, each of us has inner guidance available that we can tune in to in order to create vibrant health - now. We are born with this inner guidance…

Almost two decades ago Dr Deepak Chopra, in his book Ageless Body Timeless Mind: A Quantum Alternative to Growing Old, **posed the question: why**is it we accept the body’s ability to heal the skin and broken bones yet most of us reject the possibility of our bodies healing cancer? He argues that our body is indeed capable of healing serious diseases like cancer and argues that the rarity of such healing is not because of the body’s inability to heal, but rather is due to our ignorance and lack of belief, and that such healing requires a level of spiritual genius.

As we all know, genius at any level is rare. Rare, but possible.

Eileen McBride
Eileen McBride is the author of Love Equals Power 2, a spiritual seeker and teacher. This article was published on March 2, 2011.