Traditional naturopathic philosophy holds that we all have an innate ability to heal on all levels if we are given the right conditions to do so. Looking at this broadly, traditional naturopathic philosophy sees every disease as the same disease (really?? stay with me here, I promise this is going somewhere good!). Every disease (or reduction in wellbeing) is essentially an overwhelm of the innate ability to heal, or the bodymind’s reaction to the many things that can push it off balance. At first, that’s not that big of a problem, but over time, the innate ability to heal, or vital force, diminishes in strength and cannot bring us back to balance. So, diminished vital force is one primary cause of disease or lack of wellness.

The two other primary causes are 1) the bodymind not having what it needs to run itself properly (in other words, not having the right good stuff coming into the body and mind), and 2) the bodymind not eliminating waste products and other chemicals or negative influences effectively (in other words, a build up of ‘toxins’ in the body and mind). Both of these get in the way of proper function of body and mind and further contribute to the lowering of the innate self-healing capacity.  

The list of things that can feed into these three primary causes is almost endless, including not just physical things we consume and eliminate, but also mental and emotional things, and it’s different for everyone! The general approach is to get the right good stuff coming in, and the bad stuff either avoided or eliminated. We are not taught in our culture that such a seemingly simple idea has vast influence over our physical and mental health, but it does! If you’d like to go deeper into this topic, grab my Free Health Freedom Starter Kit.

Starting from this place, I work with you to assess the aspects of you and your life that are feeding these causes and getting in the way of your self-healing. Finding the causes can include functional, pathology, or nutrient testing, examination of diet and lifestyle, looking for toxic exposures, and exploring mental or emotional patterns or tendencies. Treatments can include herbal medicine, five-element sound healing, flower essences, homeopathy, nutrients, diet changes, naturopathic hydrotherapy, counselling and/or lifestyle recommendations that are individualised to your body-mind.

I think it’s really important to revisit one more aspect of my philosophy here: the reasons you may be unwell are not only within you. We live in challenging times and in a challenging culture and economy that is literally designed to constantly push us out of balance and connection with Self, reinforcing false stories that we are not enough or not right just as we are and keeping us in 'survival mode'. It is important to have a mindset and self-regulation strategies that take this into account, because as much as we aim or intend to create a different kind of world, we must accept that the primary thing we can really change is how we interact with or respond to what is in the world around us, and that relies on our own internal physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing.

Connection with nature has immeasurable power to disconnect us from the aspects of our outer lives that can drain our vital force and cause us to lose ourselves, and to plug us into a vast source of vitality and self-connection, built on the same natural laws of self-healing and balance that we are. If I could only recommend one thing to my clients, it would be to spend as much time as possible in nature!