Elliott S. Dacher, M.D. — Integral Health

Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing
Basic Health, 2006, ISBN: 1-59120-190-x
Available at Amazon
Also available: Companion CD of practices

Introduction
Selections
The Integral Map
The Center for Human Flourishing

Dear Reader,

I invite you to join me on a journey of self-transformation. We begin this journey with a simple yet profound acknowledgment —all of us want a life of authentic health, happiness, and wholeness. We want to go beyond our usual sense of health and life. We want to live with purpose, passion, intimacy, and joy. But you have to want that with your whole being. You have to want that more than the comfort of what you now know because authentic health will change you.

Conventional health is simple. Just follow what you’ve learned. A far-reaching health requires a transformation of mind and heart. We call this holistic and evolutionary transformation an integral shift. The result is integral health. This deep challenge can open new realms of health and healing. It requires that we be open, receptive, daring, and bold.

What is holding us back? Why have we settled for ordinary health when so much more is possible? The answer is so close that it is difficult for us to see. We’ve been trained to deal with suffering, distress, and disease by looking outside of ourselves by relying on remedies, therapies, techniques, health practitioners, self-help, and self improvement programs. We’ve been similarly trained to look outward for “happiness,” seeking pleasure from materialism, success, fame, romance, sexuality, alcohol, and drugs. But temporary relief and ephemeral pleasures that can comfort us for moments cannot transform ordinary health into enduring, exceptional health.

For this we need to redirect our efforts. We’ve been looking outward toward worldly experiences rather than inward toward our essence. That is our dilemma in the West. We have gained mastery over the physical and lost touch with the spiritual. To transform health and life we must shift our gaze inward, where we will find the everpresent source of exceptional health and healing.

Consider the journey of this well-intentioned internist from outer healing to inner healing to whole healing. I practiced internal medicine from 1975 to 1996. During this period, I participated in more than 45,000 office visits. From the very beginning, I came face-to-face with the enormous complexity of mental distress and physical disease that my medical education sanitized and reduced to a simple, yet incomplete biological diagnosis and requisite therapy.

Before long, it became apparent that I had been inadequately prepared to care for others’ lives — both their presenting symptoms and their larger possibilities. I saw this played out in my office each day. It was the patient with a stomach ulcer whose ulcerated life went unseen; the middle-aged man with heart disease whose heart, broken by years of meaningless toil, went uncared for; and the man or woman who did not fit into a neat diagnostic category yet was nevertheless suffering from disabling fatigue, pervasive anxiety, or unrelenting low-level depression.

They wanted what we all want—health, happiness, and wholeness. I would catch a glimpse of this longing in a facial expression, in the way the body was held, and in a silent reaching out. In my consulting room, this yearning of soul and spirit was translated into physical symptoms and then reduced by custom to a diagnostic label. The deeper source of these ailments went unseen, unheard, and overlooked. In time, I came to recognize that I did not understand or even have the tools with which to address this deeper yearning.

As a result of these experiences, I began a journey of discovery. I read as much as I could about stress, an obvious underlying issue in most of my patients. This interest extended to the study of developmental psychology, wellness, mind/body healing, and then finally consciousness and health. I slowly incorporated some of these understandings and practices into my work with patients and authored two books, Intentional Healing and Whole Healing. I spoke extensively throughout the country on these new approaches. I thought I finally understood the deeper and more profound aspects of health and healing, but I was wrong. There was still a distance to go, yet another education—one that reached further inside.

Ten years ago, I began what I consider to be my second medical education, this time in the East. The Eastern philosophies spoke to me about wisdom, compassion, the alleviation of needless suffering, and the promotion of sustained health, happiness, and wholeness. This second medical education focused on the inner rather than the outer, the mind rather than the body. Its goal was the permanent alleviation of unnecessary suffering and the promotion of human flourishing.

I made many trips abroad to study the philosophy of human flourishing. It was there that I saw firsthand the living reality of exceptional health and well-being. This flourishing of body, mind, and spirit was self-cultivated rather than reliant on outer remedies, permanent rather than transitory, hardy rather than fragile, and capable of surfing rather than succumbing to life’s adversities—including disease, aging, and death. This discovery and the gradual familiarity with its methods and practices were the focus of my second medical education.

I now know with certainty that humanity’s yearning for profound health and life can be realized in our lifetime. With access to the West’s mastery of outer science and the East’s mastery of inner science, we can evolve to the next level of health.

In the following pages, we will explore the vision and practices that enable us to take this important path toward integral health. Together we will begin this last leg of humankind’s long journey from survival to modern diagnostics to human flourishing.

How do we take this noble vision of exceptional health and translate it into a practical possibility? For this we need a map. The map that we use is based on Ken Wilber’s integral theory. It is a comprehensive and far-reaching approach to health and healing that simultaneously looks back to the great traditions and forward to an evolved future. It will take us along a path that is truly holistic, evolutionary, intentional, person-centered, and dynamic. We will learn how to undertake an integral assessment, design a program of integral practice, and progress toward integral health.

Finally, we will arrive at our goal—profound and enduring health, happiness, and wholeness. These achievements of integral health and life are of a different magnitude than what we ordinarily mean by these terms. Here we are speaking of:
Integral Health, self-generated and self-cultivated, that leads to a comprehensive, holistic, and far-reaching healing of body, mind, and spirit and that is immune to life’s adversities, including disease, aging, and death.
Authentic Happiness that arises from within and is expansive, robust, passionate, and unaffected by the circumstances of daily life.
Genuine Wholeness that experiences the interconnection of all life, a seamless existence and an uninterrupted oneness that is accompanied by ease, universal loving kindness, and a lightness of being.

These achievements will bring us toward the highest and best that is possible for each of us. By reaching toward human flourishing, we become co-creators in the next evolutionary leap of health and healing. We continuously create more and better health for ourselves and for our world. Nothing less will do if we are to fulfill our human destiny.

I am now entering the third phase of my medical education—the most subtle, refined, and important aspect of becoming a better person and a more skilled healer. As I increasingly experience glimpses of the profound and enduring health, happiness, and wholeness that is possible for each and everyone of us, I simultaneously experience a deeply felt sadness that emerges with the recognition of the needless suffering and premature illness that are so pervasive among human beings.

This heartfelt concern and care is slowly forging within my soul and spirit a compassion that I have long known is the only genuine motivation for becoming a healer. When one begins to know the gap between what is possible and the actuality of what is, inaction becomes untenable. Service becomes the only meaningful response. The arising of an authentic compassion and its call to service are the core of this third phase of my medical education.

It is my aspiration that the information and practices in this book, your personal reflections, and daily practice will help give rise to a profound and enduring health, happiness, and wholeness, and that these qualities of human flourishing will grow and ripen over time.