EP. 56 “We can activate the healing course, we can support them, we can do everything that we can to make it real, but the healing has to happen within the person”

I’ve had a lot of interesting people on the Stay Grounded podcast during 2018, but this week’s episode broke a new record.

At 98, Dr Gladys McGarey is our oldest guest yet.

Dr. Gladys has devoted her entire life to changing the face of modern medicine – and she’s seen so much.

She grew up in India where both her parents worked as medical missionaries during the 1920s and she trained to become a doctor during World War II.

Instead of a focus on healing, she felt medicine was too focused on ‘getting rid’ of the things we don’t want such as pain, disease, and bacteria.

So, instead of being ‘at war’ with our bodies, Gladys became passionate about life and living.

This sparked a lifelong mission to explore holistic medicine, which led to Gladys co-founding the American Holistic Medical Association in 1977.

She was the first person to utilize Acupuncture in the United States – and trained others how to use it.

The Foundation for Living Medicine was created from her visionary life – with the mission to create a healthier world by fostering our own capacity to heal and to further extraordinary legacies, regardless of age or medical history.

She’s widely considered to be The Mother of Holistic Medicine – and I can see why.

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“We don’t have change, if we don’t expect it”​

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Dr Gladys is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met.

You can feel her warmth, love, and passion for life in her voice, which is why I know this episode is going to spark something inside of you.

Her “5 Ls” may encourage you to take a fresh approach to your own wellness journey.

Her incredible stories of healing may inspire some healing of your own.

And her belief that we all have a physician within may help you listen more intently to your own inner wisdom, that’s always ready to guide us.

So tune in.

You’ll learn plenty from this 98-year-old who has the passion, vitality, and vibrancy of someone half her age – and get inspired to create the same.

Enjoy!

This episode is perfect for you if:

• You are curious about a holistic approach to wellness
• You want to know more about alternative practices for healing
• You are in the mood for endless gems of wisdom a life of gratitude, contentment and happiness
•  You want to learn more about Living Medicine

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Fear is just an emotion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with fear. The idea of fearlessness is outrageous, there is zero chance you will ever be without fear.

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Time Stamped Show Notes

• [5:57] “When I was 2 years old, I knew I was a physician. I let my parents know that and the problem that I had was when I got into the actual workings of the field of medicine. There was something missing and it took time and working with the people that I was working with, my patients and so one, to figure out that what was missing was the whole spirit of medicine, the whole spirit of healing”Dr. McGarey talks about the beginning of her medical career. The focus was primarily on the body, practices were just starting to incorporate the mind and the spirit was left out completely.

  She was in medical school during WWII and the focus was killing, destruction and getting rid of an issue; that continued after medical school and continues today, with medicine centered around the getting rid of diseases, pain and killing off bacteria.

• [9:04]  5Ls – Foundation for Living Medicine (the energy of healing)
  • Life – nothing else possible without it
  • Love – spark that activates the whole process of life
  • Laughter – have to put some juice into it
  • Labor – have to work at it for a foundation to hold
  • Listening – have to listen to ourselves, the world around us, each other and out bodies

  The combination of these concepts lay the foundation for the building blocks that create the structure of living medicine: forgiveness, gratitude, etc.

• [18:02] “When we claim something and become it, it’s very, very hard to get rid of it”Dr. McGarey talks about the ways patients claim their illnesses instead of their healing. She uses a metaphor of a tree putting its root down in an area where there’s a large rock. The tree can either put a lot of effort into having its roots break through the rock, which can leave it unstable, or it can incorporate the rock into its structure. Doing so, stops the rock from becoming a blocker and, ultimately, makes for a stronger foundation. With illnesses, they can either be incorporated so that we’re able to continue our lives or we can become them, making for a challenging experience.

• [29:50] I asked Dr. McGarey about dealing with pain that you’re aware of. She talks about working with your dreams because they’re, ultimately, our unconscious communicating with us. Every dream that we have is about us; even when others are present, they are representing aspects of us. She suggests recording our dreams, writing them down and studying the symbols that are present. It helps each of us to really take inventory into what’s going on in our lives. She even uses her dreams to help guide her when she needs to make an important decision.

• [34:05] I asked Dr. McGarey what starts the path to seeking and how do we become aware. She says that it could be pain, illness and messages from the people in our lives. We discuss how painful growth can be. We often don’t want to face it, so we try to avoid it and, eventually, it shows up in a way that forces our growth because we can no longer ignore it. There’s healing in growth yet there’s still so much resistance around it because people fear pain and those dark parts of the “shadow self.”

Dr. Gladys McGarey