Explore every episode of the podcast Extending the Art of Healing Through Anthroposophy

In this episode, we ask what happens when medical protocol replaces human connection in medicine and in education. Medical and educational protocols are meant to meet as many people as possible in an average kind of way, but the response can be vastly different. We need to hold a space for listening to our students and our patients, our children and our community members, in order to discover the solutions that align with their values and needs.

Adam discusses a measurement called sense of coherence, which decreases our risk of death by any cause by 15 to 20%. We explore the ways that coherence is eroded or strengthened in teenagers through screens, social media, and societal and family expectations. On a larger level, we ask how we can have a sense of coherence when we see and hear about global suffering and challenges. "What can I do about this today?" is a hard question to answer when the world around us or our inner world feels chaotic.

We move into talking about the body and how the body is not like a car. We can replace parts, but the car doesn't have the capacity to heal itself like the human body does, and we can't mechanize emotional systems or our sense of life.

Near the end of the podcast, Adam discusses a study that indicates that fevers, particularly in children on the autism spectrum, can help bring the individuality forward in a stronger way. 

Throughout the past two seasons, we've been asking you to reclaim two minutes a day to restore your wholeness. What have you done in those two minutes? How are you reclaiming them? We'd love to know. Email us at extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com and share your stories with us.

Find more resources@helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at MedicalSection.goetheanum.ch and follow us on Instagram Medical_Section.

Thank you for listening and for sharing this podcast! 

This episode focuses on the connection between allergy and anxiety, and the ways in which our inner world relates to these two reactive processes. Adam equates the stimulus in our environment with our digestive system. We can chew and swallow a ton of food, even junk food, but processing it is a whole other matter entirely. It’s the same with the 
stimulus in our environment. With that in mind, we explore the role of anti(s), antihistamines and anti-anxiety medications and how 
they can help and hinder our healing.
If you work with teens and children, this episode is definitely for you, as we dive into the pressure placed on parents and kids today. When society tells us that the finished product is the starting place, emptiness is sometimes the outcome. If trying, failing, and 
growing are where meaning is created, where learning happens, how do we offer our children these types of capacity building 
opportunities?
We hope this episode invites you to explore your inner world and the growing trends of allergy and anxiety from a holistic perspective. Email us at mailto:extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram @medical_section. Find more resources at helpthehealers.org (http://helpthehealers.org/) and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch (https://medicalsection.goetheanum.ch/).

The rhythms of the body and the rhythms of the planet have great wisdom, but rhythm is not about maximal efficiency, something that our current productivity culture insists upon. Rather, it is connected to vitality and life. 

Our own capacity to heal is incredible, yet in our current western medical culture, we put more emphasis on outside interventions. This is true in educational systems, where we may not allow the natural unfolding of learning, but rather put standards and benchmarks above natural curiosity and interest. In other words, we have a regenerative body, but it needs time and rhythm to regenerate, to grow, to adapt, to learn. 

Dr. Adam Blanning introduces us to "interoception," our ability to sense our own well-being, what Steiner called Life Sense. We look at the importance of the 24 hour rhythm, a cycle of light and dark, and its connection to our “I”, the most individual part of us. 

We need forces of vitality to live and to heal. These forces are part of life and we can access them through the slow but wise physiology standing behind all of this, and behind anthroposophical medicine. 

All of these thoughts, all of these fresh perspectives on healing, are why Adam and Laura are so excited to share our podcast with you! Please follow and share. Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Burn-out! It’s everywhere. It affects parents, teachers, doctors, and students. Physicians feel it as their work becomes more and more consumed by medical records. Teachers feel it when they are asked to teach to the test. Parents feel it from the intense busyness that consumes daily life. Where does burn-out come from and how can we ease the sense of depletion it creates? Together Dr. Adam Blanning and Laura Scappaticci will explore burn-out and its antidotes, looking at time, technology, and ways to reclaim our wholeness. 

If you haven’t yet listened to our 10 mini-episodes in Season 2, this episode is a great introduction to that content. If you have listened, Season 3 will help you apply that knowledge (aka life hacks) to all aspects of your life.  We’ll do this with a philosophy that does not add more things to your life, but rather asks questions and ask you to notice points of rest, points of centering, and the times when you are able to fully encounter yourselves and others.

Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.

Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Summary: Four Steps Towards Wholeness

In this final episode of Season 2, you'll review the four “lenses” for medical care and how they relate to traditional and ancient insights. Practical suggestions for bringing them into the practice of medicine will be offered, and you'll hear more about why these practices bring needed flexibility and expanded capacities. They are an antidote to the trimming process that has led to burn-out for so many healers.

Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.
Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 8: Being Part of Our Own Healing Process

In this episode, you will begin opening space to step into your own healing process. We will explore the links between fever, immunity, cancer and autism. Trusting your own powers for self-regulation will be key. This fourth level of understanding is related to both personal experiences and a "sense of coherence."

Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.
Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 7: Threads of Meaning

How are experiences of illness influenced by age, priority and capacity? What opens when we listen carefully for aspects of meaning? You'll be asked to consider using this fourth level of insight as a key for not losing sight of the individual—on both the level of patient and provider.

Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.
Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 6: Gesture and Connection
"Gesture thinking" is a doorway to understanding body-mind connections. In this episode, you'll explore how recent increases in allergies and anxiety could be connected, and begin to understand boundary as an important element of both resilience and wholeness.

Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.
Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 5: Building Bridges
During this episode, you can begin looking for interconnections. Examples from the field of psychoneuroimmunology are presented. Research on how warmth bridges throughout many different parts of our physiology is presented and you're invited to view warmth as a tool for self-awareness.

Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.
Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 4: Nurturing the Full Spectrum of Our Physiology
In this episode, you are invited into learning to see a more complete picture of our physiology, and how all living physiology needs alternating cycles of activity and regeneration. You'll be asked to start practicing spectrum thinking as a model of “too much” or “too little.” 

The next five episodes of Season 2 will be released on December 17. Stay tuned and thank you for listening! 

Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.
Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 3: The Physiology of Regeneration
​​In this episode, Adam asks what it means when there are so many interventions that we forget to include time for rest? How are regeneration and recovery connected to time;? What is the link between rhythm and vitality?

Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.
Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 2: Overcoming Assumptions—Including the Element of Time to Build Context

How are some of our assumptions actually false anchors? In this episode we will sharing research about average body temperature, and how that has been steadily decreasing over the last 150 years and why thinking about time helps build context.

Find more resources go to helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch.
Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Claiming Wholeness Part 1: New Viewpoints on Resiliency with Dr. Adam Blanning

This episode discusses the dominant role of deductive reasoning and date-driven therapies in medicine. We consider the ways they are complimented by three additional lenses: time and progression, "gesture thinking", and meaning.

Find more resources at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch. Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

 E1 Claiming Wholeness: Introduction ~ What is the Claiming Wholeness in Medicine course about?

Welcome to Season 2: Claiming Wholeness in Health and Education.  

The next 10 mini-episodes are part of a curriculum designed to help you find healing insights and claim a sense of wholeness in your life. These episodes are based on a course created for those who are either learning or practicing medicine. But whether you are a medical provider, healer, educator, or anyone experiencing burn-out, the examples are applicable and invite you to think differently about the processes of healing and your participation in them. Each episode explores how medical providers can move between diverse levels of assessment and diagnosis, both in terms of patient care and their own professional well-being. Part 1 starts with the questions: What helps you feel whole? What experiences or practices help you feel more connected to all the parts of you?

Your host, Dr. Adam Blanning, is a family medicine practitioner, lecturer, teacher, and leader in the Medical Section, a research group out of the Goetheanum in Switzerland. During these 15 minute episodes, he will ask you questions to reawaken your curiosity, In fact, you’ll be asked to start to think differently, while being offered specific tools for building resilience and enlivening your personal or professional practice through an integrative medical view. Thank you for listening. If you are listening to this podcast, we would love your support! For the expanded course and more resources, go to helpthehealers.org

This episode explores why burnout rates have risen so much in medical work. and describes the “trimming” process that frequently happens in training, leading to a narrowed experience of oneself. Adam explores the ways in which wholeness comes not through more tasks, but through expanded ways of thinking and understanding

Find more resources about the full course at helpthehealers.org and support this work by making a donation at medicalsection.goetheanum.ch. Email extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com with your questions and ideas. Follow us on Instagram @medical_section.

Season One: Awakening our Understanding of Illness: 100-years of Fundamentals of Therapy
This podcast is your invitation to engage with new perspectives on health and your own healing processes, while also learning about the fundamentals of anthroposophical medicine.  

In episode five, the final episode for season one, we discuss chapter 14 of Fundamentals of Therapy by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman. Why did they devote an entire chapter to the concept of boundary? How do we find a healthy balance between having a hard boundary and being permeable? We discuss how silica and sulfur—two substances frequently used in anthroposophic medicine--help us on physical, physiologic and sensory levels.  

This conversation is far-reaching. At one point, we talk about substance abuse and wonder how the ego, the I, is affected when we partake in something as simple as caffeine or as strong as an opioid. We discuss sense organs and how the whole body receives sensory information, not just the eyes or ears. All of our organs are working together. Not like an assembly line processing one thing after another, but in communication and cooperation.  

To support this podcast (and future episodes) go to: https://medicalsection.goetheanum.ch/donate. Feel free to also email us your ideas and questions at extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com. We have some great ideas for season two, and we hope you will help us bring it to life. 

Season One: Awakening our Understanding of Illness: 100-years of Fundamentals of Therapy 

In this episode, we work through chapter seven of Fundamentals of Therapy, by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman. One of the primary concepts introduced in this chapter is how a challenging experience can bring new strength and capacity. This is a part of many holistic healing traditions, but rarely spoken about in conventional medicine. Anthroposophic medicine understands how healing is not just about removing symptoms, but about developing new capacities. You'll hear about iron and its unique role in the body and how it can be used to bring strength and courage. Also about mistletoe therapy, where, by introducing a very foreign plant extract into the human body, the immune system is spurred to greater activity. This helps recognize and clear out cancer cells, while also helping us personally look at what isn't serving us on an emotional, social or spiritual level. We also discuss the archetypes of a “blood” process and “nerve” process and how we experience these on a daily basis.  

A central goal of anthroposophical medicine is to expand the number of therapeutic tools, especially beyond medicines that chemically make a change in our system, but which we will likely have to take for the rest of our life. Adam calls this a replacement paradigm. Anthroposophical medicine takes a more nuanced approach, aiming to reduce an illness process by increase our healing capacity. 

To support this Podcast go to: https://medicalsection.goetheanum.ch/donate. Email us your ideas and questions at extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com. 

Season One: Awakening our Understanding of Illness: 100-years of Fundamentals of Therapy

In Episode 3, we discuss Chapter 5 of Fundamentals of Therapy: Plant, Animal, Man

Medical education expects young doctors to memorize tremendous amounts of factual information, but offers much less guidance for making the information their own. Modern medicine similarly focuses mostly on quantitative measures—what are you blood tests?—but can forget to see the person behind the lab results. Neither way of working allows for much life. Anthroposophic medicines sees more, much more. It recognizes four levels of being. 

We can compare it to four possible steps for becoming a poet: first, you find a good poem in a book and see that it exists (step 1); you work further with it, it comes alive, and you start to remember it (step 2). Then a really good poem actually stirs and inspires your soul life (step 3); and in time, if you love enough poems, you start to write your own poetry (step 4). 

Our body makes the same steps with substance. Chapter five shows us this beautiful, fourfold physiology of body, soul and spirit.

To support this podcast go to: https://medicalsection.goetheanum.ch/donate. Email us your ideas and questions at extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com. 

Season one: Awakening our Understanding of Illness: 100-years of Fundamentals of Therapy
In Episode 2, we discuss Chapter 3 of Fundamentals of Therapy: The Manifestations Of Life. This chapter asks us to expand our perspective on medicine and healing, particularly into the realm of vitality. We reflect on the static pictures that are often offered to us through medical tests and chemical analysis, in contrast to the dynamic functions within the body’s healing processes. Adam discusses the capacity to self-heal as a mystery unique to living organisms, and what this means to our understanding of health and illness. To support this podcast go to https://medicalsection.goetheanum.ch/donate. Email us your ideas and questions at extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com. 

Season one: Awakening our Understanding of Illness: 100-years of Fundamentals of Therapy
The book Fundamentals of Therapy by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman is our guide throughout the next five episodes as we discuss Chapters 1, 3, 5, 7 and 14. We hope you will read along with us! In this episode, Adam and Laura explore Chapter 1: True Knowledge of the Human Being as a Foundation for the Art of Medicine, discussing the challenges of standardized, protocol-based medicine in contrast to the gifts that arise through the relationship between the doctor, the patient, and the illness. We delve into the significance of the etheric life force for healing, as well as the anthroposophical concepts of imagination, inspiration, and intuition. To support this podcast go to https://medicalsection.goetheanum.ch/donate. Email us your ideas and questions at extendingtheartofhealing@gmail.com.