Can you imagine a tragedy equivalent to the number of deaths on 9-11 occurring in this country every three weeks? How would we, as a society, endure the loss of nearly 3000 lives every 21 days due to terrorist attacks? Would we dedicate trillion dollars to addressing this issue?

Now try to imagine that there was no end to these attacks, that they would simply go on and on and on forever. Okay, let’s add a level of complicity to these deaths that did not exist in the 9-11 attacks.  Let’s suppose that trusted members of our communities were literally coerced into participating as somewhat guiltless bystanders by large companies that benefited financially by their complicity.

How about another level of complication? Let’s say that friends and relatives who either through what they perceived to be compassion or through stupidity also contributed significantly to these deaths by participating either knowingly or unknowingly in this involvement.

Now we’re honing in on why this situation exists.  Physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants pressed by heavy marketing techniques employed by Pharmaceutical companies and relatives leaving their unused bottles of meds unchecked or knowingly giving these drugs to other relatives have contributed to a massive opioid problem in our country.

Approximately, 140 Americans are dying every day in their homes and on the streets due to this new type of drug terrorism, and this terrorism is opioid addiction.  Each year, we see the equivalent of nearly 20 times 9-11 in the number of Americans dying of drug overdoses.  This does not include the number of drug dealers, police, and bystanders killed by gang activities related to drug sales.

In many cases, the drug addiction emanates from what we have come to describe as chronic pain.  More than 100 million Americans categorize themselves as suffering from chronic pain, that’s approximately 1/3 of the population of the United States. In fact, the citizens of the United States represent 4.6% of the world’s population but consume more than 80% of the world’s available painkilling drugs and 99% of the world’s hydrocodone. That equates to about 110 tons of addictive opiates each year treating chronic pain at an overall cost of $2000 per U.S. citizen.

In the United States, pain is graded by an intensity of pain scale where one denotes very mild pain and ten refers to an unspeakable level of pain.  Back pain is the leading cause of disabling pain among Americans under 45 years of age. Interestingly, only one in seven people complain of chronic pain internationally, down significantly from the one in three in the United States.

What’s contributing to so much pain in the United States?  It could be inactivity, obesity, a lack of appropriate diet, exercise, and stress management as well as a lack of societal attachment, and absence of understanding as to what pain really is in our lives.

For many that prescription of opioid drugs can become an addictive dose, and because heroin and fentanyl are less expensive, the addiction then moves to unregulated street drugs.

The traditional path to treating chronic pain is with surgery, injections, opioids, occupational and physical therapy. It is a rigid adherence to these treatment methodologies that has often proven to be incomplete. World health has always taken a broader approach to pain management by utilizing additional treatments.  Per Circa Interactive, complimentary treatment options include acupuncture, natural products, deep breathing, yoga/Tai Chi/Qi Gong, chiropractic techniques, meditation, massage, special diets, homeopathy, progressive relaxation, and guided imagery.

With over two-thirds of our physicians admitting to inadequate knowledge of pain treatment and opioid dependency management, it is time to focus on both physician and patient education and also on complementary opportunities to address chronic pain. We are being terrorized by a lack of knowledge, greed of big business, and lack of open mindednesses.

If not now? When?

Otherwise, it’s 911 forever.

Years ago (during the 1970s to be more exact), as I stood in front of a classroom teaching music to high school students, I never thought that I would eventually become a healthcare executive nor—even more astonishingly—rely on what I learned in that classroom to revolutionize and reorganize hospitals.

But that is exactly what happened. And now, as I stand much closer to the end of my professional journey than its beginning, I wonder, genuinely wonder, why so many of my peers seem unable to see what I see when it comes to such issues as Transparency, Kindness and Compassion, and Patient, Student or Employee-centeredness. These are topics I’ve been writing about, involved in, and literally living for decades now.

My passion for this philosophy has not waned during that time, not even for a nanosecond. Its core is centered on humanizing experiences and on being transparent, engaged, supportive and nurturing. It is all about focusing on employees, staff, students or patients in ways not previously considered even before the United States government began to attach reimbursements to patient satisfaction scores in hospitals.

The good news is that hospital by hospital, school by school, and business by business some individuals—often against incredible opposition—are working toward a kinder, gentler world. Will they be successful? Can they change a structure that has long since been openly criticized as dysfunctional?

I believe that many of them will be successful. In fact, this effort is directed toward all of those who believe that they can and will find a better way to deliver care and, in the process, make life better for all involved.

For me, the journey began years ago.

I started my professional life dreaming of becoming a great trumpet player. Eventually, that dream morphed into a teaching job, which lasted ten years. During that time of trying to instill the same passion I had for music into a roomful of teenagers, one thought kept playing over and over again in my mind:  “How would you like to be treated?”

My teaching led to a discovery that seemed unique at the time, at least to me: junior high and middle school aged students had an unbelievable capacity to learn and to excel. This breakthrough in my thinking back then was affirmed recently in an article which appeared in a special edition of U.S. News and World Report, “Secrets of Your Brain,” by Nancy Shute entitled, “How to Deploy the Amazing Power of the Teen Brain.”

Until Ms. Shute’s article, I had no scientific evidence to back it up what I discovered as a young teacher. Before the use of MRIs beginning in the 1990s, it was impossible to know what nuanced changes were occurring in the brains of teenagers. Of course, the neurologists still don’t understand the myriad details of those changes, but they can make certain not-so-speculative statements about these changes. According to the article, what they found astonished them: The brain’s gray matter, which forms the bulk of the structure and processing capacity, grows gradually throughout childhood, peaks around age 12, and then furiously prunes underused neurons.

Because these changes begin in the back of the brain and move forward, sensory and motor skills mature first. These are followed by the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for judgment and impulse control. According to the scientists at the National Institutes of Health, the prefrontal cortex isn’t done developing until men are in their early 20s. The following quote from the article, however, should be the basis for all of the arts education in the United States: “Neurons, like muscles, operate on a ‘use it or lose it’ basis: a teenager who studies piano three hours a day will end up with different brain wiring than someone who spends that same time shooting hoops or playing video games. “

When we consider that during the teenage years, emotion and passion also heighten attention and tramp down fear, that brief time period presents the perfect opportunity to master new challenges. According to Frances Jensen, a neurologist at Children’s Hospital in Boston, “They (teens) can do things now that will set them up later in life with an enhanced skill set.”

Of course, the 1970s in semi-rural America did not harbor all of the challenges that we now face for our teenagers, but challenges did exist. What I had discovered in my work was that, by treating teenagers more closely as adults than subservient children while still maintaining control, by allowing them to work with you to select and enumerate their goals, and finally by encouraging them along the way, their passions and intensity would take the music and their performances to heights that would have seemed otherwise incomprehensible.

Music arranged for teenaged performing groups typically was watered down and lacked both emotion and challenge. I chose to make musical scores available to them that would have been considered too mature, too challenging and too far beyond their comprehension. The trade off, however, was that we were careful never to let them hear any of those “too hard” descriptors.

The results were stupefying. The kids worked endlessly and tirelessly to make sure these musical scores were mastered. (A critical factor in this, I believed, was that their parents were, in many cases, second generation immigrants. So they worked to ensure that the kids had: 1.) Plenty of sleep, 2.) A healthy diet, 3.) No drugs or alcohol and 4.) Unconditional love.

The U.S. News article concluded with something that was instinctive to me: “Nature had a reason to give adolescents strong bodies, impulsive natures, and curious flexible minds.” It was the stuff from which scholars, great artists and future leaders were made.

It still sometimes astonishes me to think that a music teacher with a passion for the trumpet would someday find himself running a hospital and founding two genetic research institutes. But mostly, when people began to gravitate to our facility, (e.g., physicians, scientists, patients), it always felt like there was a greater power at work, a larger orchestrator, conductor and/or choreographer behind the scenes.

And for the two decades as a hospital senior leader, I prepared myself for work each and every day by playing the same digital recording in my mind in a continuous loop. What if it was your mother, your wife, your daughter or son who was being treated today?  How would YOU personally want them to be cared for by us?

It has been a lifelong mission for me to create an environment for employees, students, patients and customers that first and foremost acknowledged them as fellow human beings and then demonstrated respect for their dignity.  In teaching it was the immediate abandonment of the parent-to-child interactions that so frequently represented the style of my peers; in healthcare, my goal was to ensure that we provided a caring, compassionate, and nurturing environment for employees, families, and their loved ones.

The creation of a truly healing, nurturing atmosphere that empowered the workers and the customers–where patients had an opportunity to take part in their care and to make decisions about the type of care they received—was always my goal.  In my view, the perfect environment was one where the staff was embraced as the primary resource of the organization and then was rewarded for their efforts. It was about creating a place where Care Partners provided support for their loved ones and where they could actually participate in their loved one’s care.

Most significantly, this environment could not be superficial, the kind found in so many institutions that proclaimed the value and importance of the individual but who eventually would be exposed as frauds merely seeking “good PR.” On the contrary, for this to work it had to be genuine, from top to bottom.

Well, in 2001, a Harvard physician by the name of Dr. Wayne London visited us and explained it was no accident that a musician was in charge, because my instincts had led me to build an ensemble of players who, in a sense, could provide unique and beautiful healing sounds through their science and their work. He also advised me to stay humble because he believed something much larger than me was trying to work through me.

That was both humbling and a little scary to hear. Whether or not I believed it at the time, all I knew was that during my time in health care administration, the efforts of our team resulted in our infection rate dropping to a level that was, on average, consistently around or below 1percent, or eight points less than the 9 percent national average.  Additionally, our lengths of stay, readmission rates, restraint rates, and death rates were all well below our peer hospitals.

So what does it all mean?

Ask yourself this question: If you are in hospital administration and have little or no competition, what would happen if a new competitor arose who allowed patients to access their medical records; if loved ones were invited to stay and become part of care giving teams; if there was 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week visiting hours; if employees were always treated with dignity and were respected, rewarded, and recognized for their work; if patients were always at the center of their own care?

What would that mean to your institution?

Perhaps a universal question focuses on whether or not our hospitals will go on treating “organs” or will they begin to treat people?  Will we focus on prevention rather than cleaning up train wrecks? Will we embrace kindness, openness, transparency, healing, and respect? Most critically, will we acknowledge that the value of a human being is not based upon the assessment of his or her estate but on an ability to give and receive unconditional love?  When this happens, your patients, your students, and your customers will come running to you.

Patient-, Employee- and Student-Centered Care should be the new world order and it represents a demystification process.  It represents an open spirit of communication that allows individuals to make the same types of informed choices that they have been entitled and encouraged to make in every other aspect of their lives.

Our vision, our mission, our goals, and our communications are all based on the spiritual connectivity of humankind with one another and with a universe that is larger than any mere mortal can grasp. It’s based on a spirituality that embraces the thought that race, religion, nationality and political beliefs are all moot points here. It’s based on the unconditional love and respect that have become our drivers.

It’s within all of our grasps.

We merely need to be willing to reach for it.

When we first introduced Integrative Medicine practices at the hospital where I was the CEO, we basically embraced a code similar to the Statue of Liberty. It was, “Give us the patients you’re no longer able to help because if we are doing no harm and nothing else is working, why not?”

There have been more than 19,000 educational and scientific papers written on the efficacy of acupuncture, but there are still those hardline or uninformed who believe it’s somehow a fad or totally ineffective.

Of course, Integrative Medicine doesn’t always work for every individual, but goodness knows that traditional medicine has its challenges as well. The point is never to replace one with the other but to complement one another when possible or effective.

The Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation has just opened the door to at least considering some forms of Integrative Medicine when dealing with the Opioid crisis. As one of my very closest friends recently wrote, “The failure of Pharma in pain management is monumental, and it is apparent to me that we are at the tipping point.”

He went on to say, “The Joint Commission has endorsed the use of independent licensed practitioners in the pain management journey, and Integrative Medicine brings a philosophy and clinical approach which is not well understood but is being received with greater acceptance. Clearly, economics and power have driven the country into this opioid crisis and have greatly delayed a transformation process that is not Pharma oriented.”

Back in the early 2000s, I had an opportunity to interact with the lead scientist from a major pharmaceutical company. He had visited our research center where we were endorsing both personalized and integrative medicine. As I drove him to the airport to board his company’s private jet, he turned to me and said, “You don’t understand the pharmaceutical industry.” My response was, “Clearly, I don’t” to which he responded, “The pharmaceutical industry is like the movie industry. We are only looking for the blockbusters. We want to give you a pill from the time you’re 5 until you’re 85 that never cures you.”

Well, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams with the opioid crisis. One of my emergency room physicians once told me that as little as one prescription of an opioid can cause addiction. Obviously, it depends on the pharmacogenomic profile of the patient, but some of us are addiction prone and our reactions to pain meds are dramatic.

One of the very sad examples of the savage capitalism involved in getting hundreds of thousands of patients addicted to these meds is that opioids also contribute to constipation. Consequently, pharma has come out with a new drug to sell the addicted that helps them with that drug caused problem as well.”Heal with a pill?”

I recently read a set of statistics that seemed not only overwhelming but also disconcerting and pathetic. The use of Vicodin has grown from 112 million doses in 2006 to 131 million in 2017. Per an ABC News report, the United States makes up only 4.6 percent of the world’s population but consumes 80 percent of its opioids and 99 percent of the world’s hydrocodone, and now that heroin is less expensive than Vicodin or other opioids, we have rampant drug addiction in our country.

More people are dying of overdoses in our country now than auto accidents, and, according to a quote from public health and law enforcement officials, painkillers are now responsible for more deaths than crack and black tar heroin in the 1970’s and 80’s combined.

So, the issue isn’t one of pain. We know that people have pain. The issue is how to treat that pain. The opioids were originally created to deal only with terminal patients.

When will the system recognize that mindfulness, acupuncture, visual imaging, controlled stretching, and other integrative modalities may be part of the answer? How about now?

We’ve all seen those articles where some geezer like me prints something about growing up in the 50s, 60s, and 70s and expresses his astonishment about the fact he is still with us. Well, this geezer is planning to take that to an entirely new level. I’m going to document some of the things that my body has withstood up to this point, and it is amazing.

Let’s first start with the medical field. Penicillin began being used widely after World War II, and my generation was the first to both enjoy its benefits and then to confirm its costs. As a little guy, my dad, and practically everyone else’s dad smoked like chimneys. Apparently, that somehow contributed to ear, as well as tonsil, infections. To say that I had plenty of penicillin shots would be like saying I ate plenty of Frosted Flakes. Counting the number of times that needle filled with white fluid entered my butt or my arm would be like trying to count the number of flakes in a lifetime worth of sugary cereal consumption.

At the same time, the pharmaceutical industry had convinced the farming industry to give its animals antibiotics because it made them get fatter faster. In fact, their salesmen used to take antibiotics and stand on the feed scales week after week to show their enormous weight gains. I’m not saying that my 36 plus inch waste came from childhood consumption of antibiotics, but what other reason could there be? Oh, and let’s not forget that the over use of antibiotics also contributes to the death and destruction of the good microbes in our guts which contributes to yeast belly. (I think beer does, too, but I’m no doctor.)

The Buster Brown store in Connellsville had a machine that I could put my foot into and with the flip of a switch see my foot bones. It was supposed to be for better fitting of my Ked canvas tennis shoes, but really?

Oh, and our local doc purchased a fluoroscope. You could bet that every time you developed a cough before you got your penicillin shot, you would stand behind that fluoroscope and doc would peek inside your chest. (Are you counting rads yet?)

Let’s not forget that, when I was a young teacher, the X-ray van would pull up behind the school each year and we would parade through that van to have a chest X-ray to make sure we didn’t have tuberculosis. Then, when I went for my regular physical from my internist, I got zapped again for 20 years.

Oh, and let’s talk about the 25,000 dental X-rays I’ve gotten over the centuries. Of course, they are low dose, but not low enough to keep the tech from running out of the room screaming before she pulls the trigger.

Then there were the pneumonia X-rays, the PET/CT scans, the regular CAT scans, the four heart caths with more fluoroscopy, and six dermatology radiation treatments by Dr. Jacob in Shadyside for a pimple on my lip in the 1960s. But let’s move on to my diet. Margarine was the food of choice. It was concluded by some ad agency to be so much better for you than butter. This stuff would sit out on the table for weeks at a time pulsating with hydrogenated fats, and we sucked it down like milkshakes.

Oh, and my aunt owned a candy store and paid me with candy for doing work around her shop. Yep, thousands of dollars of candy went into my mouth over my lifetime. And there was that raw milk that we drank straight from the cows, and don’t forget the thousands of eggs and dozens and dozens of triple cheese pizzas.

Throw in the no seat belt law, the no drunk driving laws, and the other “it’s OK” things, and I’m a MIRACLE! Case closed!

Father’s Day was never as big of a deal as Mother’s Day. It’s probably because dad’s role in the kid scenario is not as painful as mom’s role. I can honestly say though that being a dad can sometimes hurt like heck. It starts fast as each baby advances through their childhood ailments and other challenging experiences. As a young dad, I always wished their pain could have been transferred to me so they would have been spared, but that’s not the way it works.

When they were little, and I was alone with them at ages one and three, and both had fevers that were approaching the stratosphere, I fed them popsicles, bathed them in tepid water and prepared cold water enemas which, thank goodness, never had to be administered. That’s a memory I’ll never forget.

Then there was that time when my daughter caught her finger in the swing chain and broke the tip of it. The worst part of that experience, however, was when the nurse asked me how it was broken, and she asked me as if I had somehow tortured my baby girl deliberately.

Then there was the time I was in Lancaster and got the call that my son was hospitalized with pneumonia. I left immediately and arrived at 2 a.m.to sit with him throughout the night at his hospital bed. The resident had explained that the IV antibiotic could be painful, and as I sat beside his bed, I could hear a drip, drip, drip of the IV. Each drop made me wince. A few days later while sitting beside him at home, I heard that same sound and realized it was his SWATCH watch.

Of course, there was that day he was hit with a fastball and almost died from the dye from the CAT scan, and the time he accidentally shot the neighbor in the hand with his BB gun. Oh, wait, those were my pains. He didn’t feel anything.

There were those accident phone calls, too. My daughter’s college boyfriend’s car was T-boned on the passenger side and the hospital call went something like this, “Is this Mr. Jacobs? Your daughter’s been in an accident. Please come to the emergency room.” Or the time my son was hit by a truck and the neighbors were all in my driveway crying. Those were lifetime memories.

Much of today’s personal pain comes from their perceived individual or business challenges, from money challenges, health scares, and, of course, Lyme disease. It never stops until either we die or they do, and that’s the reality of being a dad. You can be there for them all the time, but not too much because being there too much can make them too dependent.

And now, all these years later, I get to do it all again with six my grandchildren. We’ve dealt with at least three or four broken arms, a broken leg, and a broken nose. We’ve had gymnastics accidents from the non-parallel bars and home accidents from falling off a yoga ball.

The hardest grandkid pain, though, has been from broken hearts caused by military deployments, from being bullied, broken promises from friends or loved ones, and misunderstood or unmanaged expectations from teachers and relatives that caused pure agony.

Before this scares any of you father’s to be, understand that I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. In fact, going through my life without my kids and grandkids would have been a journey not worth making because, when it comes down to it, there’s nothing better, nothing. Remember, roses have thorns, beaches have hurricanes, and bees have stingers. It’s all part of the deal, all part of this crazy thing we call life.

We’re all made of energy and matter and are both transient and eternal. Enjoy the journey.

When we discuss the concept of struggling for survival in America due to our health care coverage, it seems like this discussion should be considered absurd, but, unfortunately, it’s not. How many of us will be forced to stay in jobs that we hate or will be required to keep working long after retirement to maintain healthcare coverage? And how many of us will be left without insurance or will be unable to afford insurance in the future? These are all issues that must be taken into consideration as the Republican side of the U.S. Senate moves forward with their replacement of the Affordable Care Act.
We rank 38th internationally in infant mortality and 37th in overall health yet we spend more on healthcare per capita than any other industrialized nation in the world. If you are a child today in the United States, there is better than a 30% chance that you will develop and experience the devastating impact of Type II diabetes. In addition to the fact that we are overweight, under exercised and nutritionally bankrupt, we are seeing projections that our generation will potentially outlive our children.
In addition, we will soon be spending 3.8 trillion dollars on health care in the United States with less than 5% of these dollars being spent on preventative medicine. At the same time we continue to plunder our younger generations by spending over 50% of our healthcare dollars on end of life care that will neither improve our health status nor increase our longevity.

When will our priorities as a nation include health care consistency? As a country, we continue to struggle to establish a dependable national health policy. We have not embraced prevention and wellness, and we can’t agree if healthcare is an entitlement or another journey in capitalism. We also continue to see the irony of one side of isle that wants healthcare for all and the other side that is proposing significant cuts in health and human services.
Our current challenge, though, is we aren’t exactly sure what is happening in the Senate because their work has been cloistered. If it follows the recommendations of the House, it appears that millions of us could either be without insurance or unable to afford it. We also understand if healthcare is not addressed comprehensively, the Baby Boomers could indeed contribute to bankrupting our current system.
Earlier this year, the Pew Foundation report indicated that 60% of Americans say the government should be responsible for ensuring health care coverage for all, the highest percentage in more than a decade. This however is a very partisan presentation where Republicans supporting this coverage only accounted for 32% of the total and Democrats and Independents weighed in at 85%.
So, how do we work together to make our country a better place? Let’s live up to our own description of ourselves, and recapture world leadership in things that do matter. Is it possible to save more of our newborns, to help our children, and still find a way to treasure our elderly? Will we ensure that the life span of our children and grandchildren is not shorter than our own. Can we embrace a new philosophy of caring for our fellowman that will make a difference in the delivery of health care in our country?
Regardless of your party affiliation, we may only have one chance to influence our legislators in this critical decision and the time to do this is now. If you don’t believe that your voice matters, you haven’t been paying attention lately. Call, write, and reach out to Senators Toomey and Casey and make sure they know where you stand on this healthcare issue in America. It is possible to meet every one of the commitments that President Trump made in his campaign speeches regarding healthcare coverage. It’s just a matter of priorities. What are our priorities? More importantly, what are your priorities?

Critics say both statins and fluorides are supposed to have a negative impact on your IQ, Actually, neckties are supposed to restrict blood flow to the brain, too. (Maybe that’s what’s been going on in the United States lately?)

Regardless, I’m going to share some potentially impaired ideas with you that I’ve been thinking about for the last few months. I’m hoping that sharing this information might help you avoid a few of the pitfalls that I’ve encountered on my own life-journey.

From the book, New Eyes by Steve Treu: “A fundamental tenet of Buddhism is that suffering is inevitable during our lives.” When I’d have a bad day while working at the hospital, I’d just go up to the OB unit, look at all of those newborns and think, “You poor little babies, you have no idea what’s coming.”

Over the years, I’ve come to understand from my 20/20 hindsight, that a large percentage of my most mentally and emotionally painful experiences were preventable. They were, for the most part, self-inflicted wounds due to my personal conditioning, education, and perceptions. Most of the pain, however, could be directly attributed to my ego.

The ego is an amazing part of all of us. I’ve written about how our Amygdalae’s, those little almond sized parts of our brains, can drive us bonkers, but egos can be much worse.

The classic definition of ego is “a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance. And the synonyms for ego are our self-worth, self-respect, self-image, and self-confidence. It’s that part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for not only reality testing but also for our sense of personal identity.”

Some of us have over inflated and undeserved super egos, and some of us don’t have enough of an ego. It’s the Goldilocks ego that would be “just right,” but they’re hard to come by most days.

Look, we all need a strong ego just to survive, but your ego can also spin out of control so fast that it makes the speed of light stand still. What’s the cause of most of our ego problems? Well, childhood, junior high-ood, and adulthood are three factors. Then throw in parenthood, and just “the hood.”

Because parenting doesn’t require any training, most of us tend to do unto our children as our parents did unto us, and that can create more baggage than a Samsonite store. There are your overly critical parents, those demanding parents who just won’t stop picking on you. Then there are the over nurturing, helicopter parents who won’t let you out of their sight. Both provide us with lots of material to screw up our ego for life.

If we can be objective about our egos, we can avoid a majority of those self-imposed craters of pain caused by them. It all feeds into our self-inflicted unhappiness, and in the big picture, it’s kind of meaningless.

If we could just tangibly remove ourselves from the equation, step back and look at what’s really going on, much of what we become hysterical over is just senseless. The size of our house, the cost of our cars, the number of karats in the diamond, and the quality of our clothing will not deliver lasting happiness. Always ask the question, “In the big picture of life, does this really matter?”

Some of us tolerate toxic people and noxious situations way too long, and most of us take things much too personally. If we can just step away and quiet our amygdala we can see who the jerks are, what their game is, and why it’s better to just avoid them any way we can.

If that doesn’t work, take seven deep breaths which will automatically throw your body into the relaxation response. Then take a really hard look at whatever is driving you crazy and ask, “Did anyone die?”

Over the past 20 years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with the physicians listed above. I’ve worked with some of them for several years at a time. I’ve worked with Dr. Dean Ornish to help fund and advance his research projects in prostate cancer and heart disease, with Dr. Mimi Guarneri to establish Integrative Medicine Centers on the East and West Coast, and with Dr. Len Wisneski to support his efforts to move the agenda of the Integrative Health Policy Consortium’s 600,000 integrative practitioners to the next level. Finally, I’ve worked with Dr. Deepak Chopra toward helping design his future in ways that can impact millions of additional people. These relationships and engagements have been both an honor and a pleasure.

As a professional in integrative medicine management, my knowledge and expertise are in the areas of conceptualization and creation of integrative medicine programs and centers. My skills are most valuable in identifying and recruiting potential professionals, tying the programs together with national networks, working with my partners to avoid pitfalls in finance and scheduling, and designing these centers to succeed.  But what these physicians have worked on throughout their careers and what these centers are about is helping us find balance in our personal lives, the balance between our egos and our consciousness.

The major challenge that we have faced in this work is that many of our potential participants are so deeply engrossed in their traditional healthcare models that the possible impact of Integrative Medicine does not always register with them.  If they cannot visualize themselves utilizing these practices, they typically cannot identify with the millions of participants who do so on an international level.

The other challenge that we face in integrative medicine is that, because we are living in an avaricious society where most days we collectively seem to have lost our balance on many levels, our primary focus has become very heavily skewed toward only material and ego rewards. We seem to have collectively moved away from our journey toward wisdom, compassion, forgiveness, patience, humility, and respect. These are the consciousness traits that are reinforced through the practice of Integrative Medicine.

Some like to use the quote that we are all spirits having a human experience which reinforces that healing depends on the mind, body, and spirit connection.   Even though we all know that Ego-based successes do not guarantee peace in anyone’s life, we continue to run on that treadmill that promises to provide us with more ego-related rewards such as money, power, and control while starving our souls of the very real consciousness nourishment that will provide us with inner peace.

We all know that the only germane question in life is if our personal journey is bringing us that peace. That is what Integrative Medicine is intended to help promote, a path to peace.  We can only find that path if we embrace the Greek words, “Gnothi Seauton,” know thyself.  This Unity Consciousness can only be found inside ourselves.

No matter if it’s God, Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, or Native American consciousness, it’s a journey that we all must take for ourselves because we all know that our time here is both fleeting and temporary.  We are spiritual beings living in a human body. Integrative Medicine practices are all about finding that balance between ego and consciousness that will help us create inner peace from the outer chaos.

Many of us have heard the saying of the Buddha, “We become what we think.” We are all made of stardust, and we have vibrational connections that cannot be denied. Our universe is only one of millions and billions of stars and planets, and we also know that the path to finding happiness is deep within us.

Things and awards can’t buy us our inner love and peace!

BREATHE