Season One: Awakening our Understanding of Illness: 100-years of Fundamentals of Therapy 

In this episode, we work through chapter seven of Fundamentals of Therapy, by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman. One of the primary concepts introduced in this chapter is how a challenging experience can bring new strength and capacity. This is a part of many holistic healing traditions, but rarely spoken about in conventional medicine. Anthroposophic medicine understands how healing is not just about removing symptoms, but about developing new capacities. You'll hear about iron and its unique role in the body and how it can be used to bring strength and courage. Also about mistletoe therapy, where, by introducing a very foreign plant extract into the human body, the immune system is spurred to greater activity. This helps recognize and clear out cancer cells, while also helping us personally look at what isn't serving us on an emotional, social or spiritual level. We also discuss the archetypes of a “blood” process and “nerve” process and how we experience these on a daily basis.  

A central goal of anthroposophical medicine is to expand the number of therapeutic tools, especially beyond medicines that chemically make a change in our system, but which we will likely have to take for the rest of our life. Adam calls this a replacement paradigm. Anthroposophical medicine takes a more nuanced approach, aiming to reduce an illness process by increase our healing capacity. 

To support this Podcast go to: https://medicalsection.goetheanum.ch/donate. Email us your ideas and questions at extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com.