Deep Medicine: Harnessing the Source of Your Healing Power Hot

“In order to practice deep medicine you must inquire within and then act on what you learn.”

There are many good books about holistic healing available these days: Deep Medicine deserves to be placed on the top shelf of “must-reads.” I might describe it as a harnessing your healing power “primer.” Written by Dr. William Stewart, who spent more than thirty years practicing surgery and is now the medical director for the Institute of Health and Healing in San Francisco, Deep Medicine succinctly and elegantly combines philosophy with a practical program of self-inquiry to apply to every aspect of our life that contributes to health and well-being. Which is, as he says, everything: “All issues, in all domains of your life, are health issues.”

Stewart clarifies: “Health does not mean being completely free of illness or defying death indefinitely. It is about human values as well as lab values. It is more than the absence of symptoms; it means a wholeness and alignment in living our lives—a dynamic and constantly changing balance that that acknowledges the soundness of our physical state, the wholesomeness of our lifestyle, the values and virtues that define our behavior, our intimate and collective relationships, the meaning and purpose of our work in the world, and the cyclical and spiritual dimensions of our existence.”

Deep Medicine cultivates an inner landscape for personal well-being, blending science and the sacred in an integrative, multi-disciplinary, and relationship-centered perspective. Personal evolution toward wholeness and balance is a worthwhile endeavor itself, however, Stewart reminds us that our planet is just as much an integrated whole, and that our individual/collective health is intricately interwoven with planetary healing. Our ailments are reflected in our environment and vice versa. What we heal for ourselves, we heal for each other and for our precious life support system, the Earth.

Ultimately, this book reminds us of the power of choice: to create a new experience, to end an unwanted experience, or to maintain our current experience. And each choice is either health creating or health negating. Perceiving health from this holistic perspective motivates us to consciously engage with our thoughts and actions so that we can choose to make health, healing, and well-being a pervading experience and reality.