What is it?

6 principles:

1. First do no harm (Primum non nocere) –
2. The Healing Power of Nature (Vix medicatrix naturae) – the body has innate wisdom and knows what it needs better than any doctor or test out there. The problem is quieting the mind long enough and being truly present with our bodies to learn and understand what they want/need.
3. Identify and treat the causes (Tolle causam) – instead of simply suppressing symptoms.
4. Doctor as Teacher* – (Docere)
5. Treat the Whole Person (Tolle totum) : mind – body – spirit – not just one organ. Everything is interconnected and the cells inside us are talking to each other more efficiently than we could ever know. My job is to remove obstacles and allow the body to restore balance.
6. Prevention (Praevenic)– to promote and keep you well & prevent future illness.

Docere is one of the 6 principles of naturopathic medicine. It is latin for doctor as teacher. It is the one that fascinates me the most and the one I resonated the most deeply with starting my journey to becoming a ND. Ironically, growing up my mom was a Medical Doctor and my dad was a University Professor. I didn’t know it until years later, but back then I was always following one of them around, observing and picking up on how they were in the world.

Both were immigrants, which looking back now I realize is responsible for a lot of the ambition and drive that I currently have (aka always wanting to keep myself busy and productive – which can be good but there is a shadow side to that which I’ll save for another blog post). Watching them reroot and start over, build and live their lives with little complaints and a whole lot of love undeniably left me with a lot of feelings at a young age. They also had a strong obsession with nature and walking, which I soon picked up on. Whenever I was outside, feeling the wind on my face, I felt free. This takes us to another principle, the Healing Power of Nature.

This left me with a strong desire to connect with the earth that follows me to this day. It also left me with a passion for learning and teaching people about the science of their bodies – to truly help people, understand their physical and mental/emotional worlds authentically with less judgment and less comparison. Oh how society has trained and conditioned us to think that we are not whole or complete, that we need something outside of ourselves to be whole and worthy … I’ll save this for another post 🙂

Anyways, working and observing at numerous doctors offices growing up I quickly knew that my passion was to help people get healthy, but I knew it wasn’t going to be in the traditional office sense. All I knew is that I wanted to create deep meaningful relationships and trusting bonds with my patients to help EMPOWER them to learn and grow on their own. To not just take one doctors opinion at face value, because why…. they are a doctor? What if they had a bad day? My goal is to get you so familiar and confident in your body that eventually you will be your own doctor, and help inspire others around you to take care of themselves and heal.