Tag Archives: Circle Medicine

Circle Medicine Series on CLOSLER

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Thanks CLOSLER for publishing a series of 5 short articles on Circle Medicine!

Out of One, Many – David Kopacz, 2018

I have been working on this concept of Circle Medicine since I had the realization that a number of different holistic models I was working with all included circles: the Hero’s Journey, the Medicine Wheel, the Circle of Re-humanizing Medicine, the Circle of Health, and Circle Medicine: the circle of circles.

In our forthcoming book, Becoming Medicine: Pathways of Initiation into A Living Spirituality, we have a table comparing Circle Medicine with Linear Medicine. Linear medicine is the predominant, biomedical approach in contemporary medical practice, however it misses crucial aspects of human being that are only found in holistic, circular models of medicine.

Linear Medicine Circular Medicine
Pathological Process Natural Process
Treatment          Transformation
Elimination of symptoms Acceptance of symptoms
Restoring old state    Achieving new state
Disease-based Health-based
Biomedical Model Holistic Model
Evidence-Based Medicine Human-Based Medicine
Hierarchical        Collaborative
Can Foster Dependency     Empowering

Here are links to each of the short articles:

CIRCLE MEDICINE: A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO HEALTH FOR CLINICIANS AND PATIENTS

THE HEALING CIRCLE AS A HOLISTIC FRAMEWORK

THE CIRCLE OF RE-HUMANIZING MEDICINE

THE CIRCLE OF WHOLE HEALTH

CIRCLE MEDICINE

Rainbow Medicine Wheel, David Kopacz, 2017

CIRCLE MEDICINE: A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO HEALTH FOR CLINICIANS AND PATIENTS

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New Zealand Landscape, 2, David Kopacz, 2011, featured in the article

“It can be helpful to see the circle path of the hero’s journey as the healer’s journey, the path that we take through our lifelong medical education. For the true healer, this is not a journey we make just once, but periodically we embark on exploring new depths of the suffering of the world, reaching deep into ourselves to find new resources for healing to bring into our work and world.“

Thanks to the team at CLOSLER from Johns Hopkins for publishing the first of a series of my posts on Circle Medicine! Here is a link to the full article.

“Burnout as part of the healer’s journey: I have been thinking of burnout in this way. Maybe burnout is a necessary step for us to grow as healers. There are intrinsic elements in our work that change us, working with illness and death. When we get “infected” by our work, we incubate until we can find a cure and healing path. There are also extrinsic elements of burnout, such as institutional pathologies and frameworks. In modern times, healing has been regulated and institutionalized, and institutional economic and organizational demands are sometimes at odds with the demands of healing. We must continually work to reconcile the essence of our work as healers with the daily reality of the institution.”

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Australasian Doctors Health Conference, Sydney, Australia, Sept. 15-16, 2017

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I recently returned from a trip to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. I started in Sydney, Australia at the Australasian Doctors’ Health Conference. The conference was held at Luna Park in North Sydney with a great view of the city and the opera house.

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View of Luna Park (lit up below bridge) from the North Sydney Harbourview Hotel

I did two presentations at the conference. The first was a workshop co-facilitated with my mate, Hilton Koppe, called The Hero’s Journey of the Healer, where we looked at burnout as a necessary stage of the healer’s journey and also at the important role that mentors can play on the journey. We also made a distinction between instructors (who train you to do the technical job) and mentors (who help you find yourself in the work and sustain your humanity).

Title slide Healer Hero

circle

I have recently come across the concept of transformational learning as defined by Jack Mezirow it includes several steps that parallel the process of initiation and the hero’s journey: a disorienting dilemma, realization that disorientation is part of the growth process, and then a reintegration with a new, transformed identity.

Transformational Learning Model

The second presentation was Circle Medicine: What’s Good for the Client is Good for the Clinician. This presentation reviewed a few of the circular models of healing I have been using lately: the Hero’s Journey, Whole Health, and the Medicine Wheel. I believe that we need to include both linear medicine and circle medicine in order to best serve our clients.

Circle Medicine Title

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I had a great time at the conference, caught up with some old friends and made some new friends. I also spent a few hours speaking with Gerald Arbuckle, author of the book Fundamentalism that I recently reviewed. Gerry and I have had an ongoing correspondence since I used his models of medicine concept in my book Re-humanizing Medicine, and also he wrote an endorsement for Walking the Medicine Wheel. It was great to finally meet in person and have a really good chat!

More blog posts to follow from this trip!

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