Physician Intuitives
Julia Ireland, MIM, DO
“By realizing and acknowledging the emotional content of what is presented to you, you can make a choice about how you want to listen and respond. The Intuition Medicine grounding and centering practice helps you be more objective so that you can actually be more compassionate with people and clearer with your choices.”
Julia knew she wanted to be a doctor from a very early age, yet she did not like many facets of the medical profession. After being a body worker using the Rolfing method for many years, she eventually decided to go to an osteopathic school and is now in her third year of practice as a Doctor of Osteopathy.
And what about her intuitive training at the Academy? Why did she take it, and how has it affected her work? Julia’s answer is, “I have had problems all my life with being overly sensitive. This sensitivity, mostly to people, affected my health, my general feelings and my ability to comfortably operate in the world. So my goal was to learn how to regulate my natural empathic ability and to not be such an indiscriminate open intuitive receiver.
Within the context of my medical work, I was overly sensitive. The first time I was in a room with a patient, who was on a ventilator, with their spirit out of their body, I felt nauseous; I couldn’t function. I was so overly sensitive to how disturbed this person’s spirit was that it had an overwhelming and immobilizing effect on me. But by the time this happened, I had completed the Masters in Intuition Medicine (MIM) training and had the tools to pull myself out of the situation and get it together. Without the training I would not have known how to deal with those types of situations.
Every patient I encounter has needs and desires and pretty serious concerns about their health. The MIM training helps me to stay energetically separate. Furthermore, if I do not ‘take it ’, I am more objective and people feel safer telling me what is really going on. I have noticed that when I practice energetic separations with my patients, they do not become worried about burdening me with their health concerns, and are not afraid that I might get irritated with them. This frees them up so that they do not have to be mad or frustrated or anxious about my response.
I am also better able to deal with what is going on inside the person and how they are responding to the information I am giving them. I get deeper, quicker insight into the psychological issues. If it is done in a respectful manner, with the patient’s best interest at heart, it can be a very powerful method to be able to quickly read a person, work with their fear, and help them get grounded so that they can examine their issues and make better choices.”
Beth Marx, MIM, DC
“After a session with a patient, Beth heard a buzzing noise outside her ears, in her aura. From her Intuition Medicine practice she knew that this was an indicator that this patient was still trying to talk to her and that she needed to make an energetic closure with him in order to not feel his illness. Maintaining the personal integrity of your energy space keeps you healthy in body-mind-and spirit and is a vital complimentary medicine for sensitive people.”
Beth is in her twelfth year of chiropractic practice in Oakland. She works with a variety of healing modalities, including cranial-sacral work, radionics, and nutritional counseling. She is currently studying acupuncture, and will be adding that to her physician toolbox in the near future.
Beth entered the Masters in Intuition Medicine (MIM) training right after completing her chiropractic training. Beth answers the question of why she did that.
“I had been doing hands-on healing work with people for quite awhile and picking up things like pain through my hands, but did not know exactly what it meant. Once I started studying at the Academy, the training gave me a framework; it put everything into perspective for me in relationship to what I was actually experiencing and why and how I was contributing to this phenomenon.
With the MIM training, I learned how to set up in my intuitive space and get well-grounded. Now I know what I am picking up when I put my hands on somebody. In fact, I can just look at somebody and pick things up. I can pick up areas where they are blocked and need to be worked on and sense where the energy is not freely moving. I can feel their pain in my fingers, and now know what exactly it is that I am feeling. I ask intuitively ‘what is it that needs to be addressed today’ or ‘what body system is off’ so I know where to focus my attention. And I am doing all this intuitively — I am not verbally addressing my patient.
Although I mainly took the MIM training for the purpose of helping my work (my work has always been the grounding part of my life) I got a lot more out of it because it also helps in other parts of my life.
Like many people, I have always wanted to really ‘know myself.’ The MIM program helped me learn more about who I truly am. I also now have tools that I can use to understand and work with those parts of myself that I am not happy with or want to understand and resolve. The Academy training has helped me understand who I am in a deeper way and it's helped me ‘know myself’ in relationship to other people. For example, everyone has issues with their family and this intuitive training helped me to understand myself as a unique and whole member of my family.”
Jennifer Miles, MD, AIM undergraduate student
“It starts with yourself: I use my intuition, first to help myself, then the healing intention radiates outwards. My positive, healthy energy contributes to the well-being of all those around me. I trust my intuition as a guide. I use my intuitive awareness to be much more effective as a healer. Physician, heal thyself.”
Jennifer, who has been an MD for 7 years, specializes in primary care, with training in psychiatry and internal medicine. She works in an adult primary care clinic, working with low income Medi-Cal and uninsured immigrant patients. Holistic Medicine board exam in December 2000. This new certification represents the first official recognition that there is a place for alternative healing approaches within the American Medical Association system.
When asked what brought her to the Academy, she replied that she had been upset for some time by how western medicine works. In her ongoing struggle to come to terms with it, she started reading about alternative medicine. “It was shocking to me that we did not learn any of this in medical school! Here were proven ways of working with people that were not being recognized by allopathic medicine. It’s like being trained with blinders on!” Guided imagery training raised her interest in working with her intuition and led her to the Academy.
With her Intuition Medicine training, Jennifer recognizes that she has had emotional merging difficulties with patients. “Keeping myself separate from my patients and not taking too much on was always an issue for me. My empathy with patients is part of my medical intuition, sometimes I’d like to turn it off, but I don’t really want to. I’ve used what I’ve learned at the Academy — more than anything else — to help me keep my boundaries intact, stay grounded, help clear myself after I’ve been with patients, or ground a room if there’s a crisis going on.”
When asked if she was getting more or additional information about her patients, Jennifer replied, “I think I tune into them more. Maybe they’re saying they’re there for one thing — like a prescription refill — when that’s not really what they’re there for. I tune in and respond more quickly to their unspoken words instead of waiting for them to say, ‘oh by the way’ as I am walking out the door. I am now intuitively asking myself, ‘what is this patient really here for?’ And maybe they even think they are only here for the refill because they know that that is what western medicine physicians respond to.
I feel that people come to me not because they want a diagnosis and a pill — that may be part of what they want — but what they need is for someone to recognize that they are in pain or depressed and that it’s okay and it’s hard. It is about someone recognizing their experience and being able to give them information about their condition and what they can expect. But more than that, I sense that people need a physician to be present with them and be able to tolerate their pain.
Now it is more okay for me to be ‘present’ with patients because I know that with my Intuition Medicine training it’s not as dangerous; it’s not as likely to be overwhelming — which is how I often used to feel.”
By Jane ‘CJ’ Hurford, a computer coach and Intuition Medicine practitioner living and working in Marin County, CA.