Focusing in Naturopathic Medicine

One of the fundamental philosophies of naturopathic medicine

Your body knows how to heal itself

Our task is to clear the path, to move what is stuck or blocking us from moving forward, so that we can restore balance.

The Search

  • Most of us want to get to the root of our health concerns, looking for the underlying causes of symptoms.
  • In the quest for healing, we might focus on nutrition, repleting nutrient deficiencies and removing inflammatory foods, as well as prioritizing exercise and ‘managing’ stress.
  • We might work on gut repair, enhancing digestion and rebuilding the microbiome.
  • We may need to support detoxification and antioxidant pathways, or focus on rebalancing hormones and neurotransmitters.
  • We might need to address harmful microbes, or support recovery from environmental triggers like allergens, mold or other toxic exposures.
  • There’s a lot of places to look and many ways to go about it.

The Cycle

  • Many times this approach is really successful, and yet sometimes, it can be overwhelming and arduous.
  • Getting healthy can become a full time job.
  • We might find ourselves working harder and harder in an effort to feel better, eventually with diminishing returns.
  • We might find ourselves locked into a state of hyper-vigilance,  with an increasingly narrow comfort zone.  Or we might find ourselves ready to give up, because it all just seems so hard.
  • This is when our approach to restoring health might actually be in the way  — and keeping us stuck.

A New Approach

  • When we’re stuck, it often helps to step back from the status quo and our usual ways of approaching problems, so that we can explore a new path.
  • We might notice that when we are trying to fix, manage and control our bodies, it can create more tension and distress.
  • Rather than focusing what feels wrong and how to fix it, we might find that inviting ‘what would feel right’ opens up more possibilities and perhaps a forward movement.
  • Cultivating a spacious and responsive interaction with our bodies, we can experience healing as a dynamic process that carries us into deeper alignment with our vitality.