Restorative Medicine
What is Restorative Medicine, and how can this approach help us navigate the relentless rise in chronic disease?
Some may wonder why ‘Restorative Medicine?
What might be its role in navigating the relentless rise in chronic disease?
Acknowledgement of the inherent intelligence and self-healing capacity of all living systems is not new. For millennia, Healers and Wisdom Traditions have recognised illness as a disturbance in the natural order.
Now decoupled from this life-affirming perspective, today’s industrialised paradigm of specialised medicine, is frequently focused on waging war against disease. This approach can easily lose sight of cause and consequence, thus limiting our ability to make true, informed sense of what is.
At the School for Restorative Medicine our attention is (re)turned to the innate intelligence of the body. By listening into its language, feeling the harmony and disharmony, patterns of distortion and dysfunction can begin to be discerned. This then may help guide us in ways that support the body’s return to balance.
Order and Harmony
Cross-section of the Cerebellum
The word restore acknowledges the existence of an original order that has been disturbed. We see this order in life’s ceaseless unfolding. To be in harmony and at ease within this flow, may well be the truest reward of living. By contrast, we find that disharmony – when the flow is blocked, misused or depleted – manifests in dis-ease.
The language of symptoms is the body communicating this disturbance in the natural order. As we learn to listen, we grow in our ability to decipher and intuit what may be out of balance, how and why. In a clinical setting this awareness brings depth to our diagnostic skills. In the broader societal context, this helps to refine our innate capacity for pattern recognition and discernment.
Pattern and Detail
Skin cells in cross-section
Matter and Energy
Cross-section of Haversian canals (bone)
Our exploration is rooted in the realm of biology – of matter and energy. We delve deeply into the physiology, metabolism and biochemistry of the body – in sickness and health. This gives us a firm grounding in the strong currents of historical and ideological persuasion. It enables us to better see, and contemplate, the contribution of more subtle and nuanced influences on our being, both psychological and generational.