The Fundamentals of Naturopathy

The Naturopath’s ethical credo

As a practitioner, there are six principles I integrate into everything I do to reconnect you with your health:

1. See you for an integrated, whole human being, rather than an assembly of parts;

    

2. Uncover the root causes of your symptoms to treat the cause instead of the effect;

    

3. Trust in your body’s innate ability to heal itself when given the right support.

    

4. Leverage natural tools and minimally invasive techniques, while doing no harm throughout your treatment;

    

5. Teach you how to follow through on your treatment plan so you can sustain your improved health;

    

6. Show you how to prevent disease;

Your body is capable of mighty things. When you break a bone, catch a stomach bug, or simply mistreat your organism, your body can, and will, heal itself – if you give it the support it needs. Even more miraculously, we can further align and enhance your natural abilities.

Historic foundations

The six ethical tenets of naturopathy haven’t changed in roughly 2000 years, since its philosophical inception in ancient Greece as natural medicine [1].

Collectively, we’ve shed some outdated beliefs. Vitalism, [2] for example, was the paradigm until the 19th century and has since been rejected by scientists on experimental grounds [3], and philosophers on argumentative grounds [4].

John Scheel, coined the term “Naturopathy” in New York, 1895 to describe the healing discipline of Sebastian Kneipp [5]. The discipline includes techniques such as hydrotherapy, herbal medicine, and lifestyle optimization. The holistic discipline approaches your life as greater than the functions of your parts. A relatively healthy person has nothing medically wrong within their bodies, but that doesn’t mean they live at the peaks of human vitality.

Our era of specialization approaches health as a fix rather than a pursuit of physical and emotional well being – something needs to be wrong before you’ll get help. This mechanistic approach underpins the breadth of medical training, and often forgets that quality of life stems from more than a lack of problems.

A person is greater than the sum of their parts. A person is not a car – fixing or replacing a broken part, though crucial to well being, is not the only step towards a prosperous life.

Contemporary naturopaths find a middle ground between two equally implausible explanations: the life of an organism cannot be understood exclusively as a collection of parts, while life, in and of itself, is not some supernatural, immaterial, unobservable phenomenon. In other words, by addressing the physiological feedback of your body’s interaction with the world, I heal the sum that is greater than its parts – you. In doing so, you’ll not only feel better, physically speaking, you’ll feel better emotionally and spiritually.

Overcoming disease and honing your body and mind is a triumph that opens the possibility of becoming more optimistic in the face of uncertainty, more resilient in the face of adversity, and more targeted, focused, and motivated in the face of distraction.

Modern training and techniques

The most straight forward, though oversimplified example of Naturopathy in action is eating roasted garlic, sweet potato, and eggplant ratatouille (or casserole when organizing vegetable slices feels unnecessary) and chicken soup or bone broth to prevent winter flus. In this case, dinner is, for all intents and purposes, a naturopathic treatment.

In the past hundred years alone, humans have discovered penicillin and devised complex surgeries and transplants. We’ve also optimized protocols like intravenous therapy, chelation therapy, immune system support, and memory and cognition recovery. The practical tools a Naturopath can leverage have grown and evolved alongside the discoveries and innovations of modern internal medicine.

In this century, my Naturopathic training consists of a scientific university education, professional certification, and keeping up with the field’s continued evolution. You can learn more about my healing techniques here.

What Naturopathy does