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Posts from the Interesting Topics Category
Drs. Bruce and Molly in the News - Weight Loss, Healing Power and Healthy Lifestyle - 3 Questions for Dr. Molly
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on July 7th, 2008
Check out the article in The Inner Peace Diet blog, highlighting us, Drs. Bruce and Molly Roberts. The author asked me, Dr. Molly, three questions:
1. What advice do you offer patients who are beginning their journey to weight loss?
2. What is the best way to tap into your body’s innate healing power?
3. What are the most important factors in maintaining a healthy lifestyle and spiritual health?
It was fun to write out my thoughts on these important health topics, and I hope you enjoy them.
The Earth Changes are Here!
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on June 13th, 2008
I often receive emails from friends talking about their lives, their thoughts on the state of the world, whatever comes to mind for them. I received a particularly fascinating email recently from a friend named Charla Hermann. She is one of the most interesting people I know, having lived the life of an executive at CNN, a consultant to Fortune 500 businesses, and a shamanic spiritual leader known throughout the country. That’s a lot of living in one lifetime!
She shares some of this history, while discussing her visions for the future. Check it out - it’s a fascinating memoir of a life well lived.
Charla’s visions of the past, present and future in Earth Change Option.
Cyclones, Earthquakes and Our Own Healing
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on May 13th, 2008
In the last few days, I have gotten an onslaught of emails from the spiritually related groups that I belong to, all talking about the devastating cyclone and earthquake tragedies on the other side of the world. Some were emails sent before the tragedies, warning that some big events were about to happen and that more is on the way. They were amazingly accurate in their predictions.
Other emails were sent afterward, discussing some of the spiritual shifts they see going on right now to try to rebalance a world that has been tilting out of balance for such a long time. I have been struck by the similarities of their message, as all of them emphasize a loving call to action.
We have spent such a long time distancing ourselves from our planet and each other. Wars, pollution, arms build-ups, using up our natural resources, misunderstanding each other to the point of violence and revenge, holding back our love from those “not like us” - they all indicate a lack of connection to ourselves, to our collective community, and to our world.
It is an energetic relationship to our Mother Earth and her inhabitants that seems to need healing, and there is no time like the present to shift the balance toward loving and honoring ourselves and our world.
It is easy and probably fair to blame those who came before us and those in power. However, I don’t think blame is what will fix the situation now. It wastes another precious resource, our limited time, attention and energy. I would therefore like to advocate for something different, a higher frequency of problem-solving.
Almost 10 years ago now, I had an injury to my neck that paralyzed my arms for a while and caused an incredible amount of pain for a long time afterwards. At the height of my pain, I did a meditation/journaling technique where I dialogued with my problem to see if I could find any insights from my heart that I couldn’t find from my head. When I read over my dialogue, I received an insight that was life-changing for me.
On the page, my pain (my inner voice) had written, “You don’t love me.” I wrote back, “How can I love you, you hurt so much.” The pain responded, “When you are hurting, don’t you want someone to love you?”
This was a profound revelation to me. Before then, I would try to escape from my body when it was hurting or would condemn it for not working the way I wanted it to. After that meditation, I became significantly more gentle with myself. When the pain was most acute, I would ask, “Aw, honey, what do you need?” and would then follow through on my body’s requests. The real healing of my body, mind and soul started on that day.
We are all struggling, we are all hurting, and we are all in pain to some degree. Our planet is clearly in pain.
It’s time. It’s time for us to ask of each other and of our planet, “Aw honey, what do you need?” and then really (really) listen to the answer with a loving ear and a willingness to honor the requests made of us. The moment we collectively decide to do so, that is when the real healing will begin.
Are We to Blame for Our Illnesses?
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on April 27th, 2008
I love reading the New York Times‘ Health blog by Tara Parker-Pope. If you haven’t had a chance to read it, check it out. She does a wonderful job of turning interesting medical news into a discussion, and I have added posts to several of her topics.
The latest one had to do with how exercise decreases the recurrence rate of cancer. She got quite a backlash of comments from people saying that the article blamed the victim. She then commented on the backlash, and I add my two cents to that discussion. I will put the link at the bottom of this post if you want to read the whole discussion.
Here is my response as #17 in the comments:
As a holistic physician, I find this to be a great discussion, as it brings up so many issues outside of the one related to how exercise helps cancer. This miscommunication of intentions often suggests a lack of trust both toward the physician and toward the patient.
By the time someone reacts to a simple, seemingly innocent statement of “exercise helps prevent cancer,” that person has been inundated with well-meaning and some not-so-well-meaning people telling them how they had caused their own pain. When you are hurting, that kind of blame doesn’t do an ounce of good for anyone involved,and it can feel like being kicked when you’re down even if the person who made the comment didn’t intend it to have that strong of an impact. I would contend that it even slows down healing.
I am sensitive to this issue for several reasons. When I was younger, a family member got very ill. Instead of treating the family with kindness for the difficulties we were now living with, my parents in particular were blamed for the problem. I felt firsthand the abusiveness of the medical system when it doesn’t treat those who are hurting with kindness, gentleness, and sensitivity.
When I broke my neck several years ago and my arms became paralyzed for a while, I had someone tell me that if I would just get a good attitude about it, I wouldn’t feel the pain. Well, I’ve been a pretty joyful person my entire life, and yet this was an appropriate time to grieve, so that comment felt like a punishment and a judgement from someone who had no idea who I was as a person.
During this injury, I stopped going to my doctor when he said that I should have been over the pain by now, because I could see in his eyes that he had lost his ability to deal with the discomfort of not being able to “fix me.” I understood his discomfort and didn’t blame him for it, but I knew that he could no longer help me to heal.
I did get better, and I think it’s important to say that the people who helped me the most during that difficult time simply held me and gave me the space to cry it out. The grief didn’t last long, and I did find my way back to health.
I think that some of this tendency to judge the patient comes from a feeling that if we blame the victim, we can somehow keep that illness far away from us personally. The nurse in #9 above who said that she has willed herself not to get cancer is likely very afraid of this illness and is trying to establish some control over that fear. I have great compassion both for that nurse and for the person she inflicted that comment on.
The way I talk about this is that every illness has components of mind, body, emotions and spirit to it.
Cancer is a perfect example of how multiple factors can make you more or less susceptible to an illness. Everyone has their areas of vulnerability - for some it is a tendency toward cancer, for others, it may be toward depression, for some it might be more back pain, for others it may show up as a rift in their relationship with their spouse, and the list could go on and on. Imbalances will find the easiest form of expression depending on our bodies and our psyches, and we all have our weak points.
I want to emphasize that EVERYONE has their weak areas, related to our bodies, minds and emotions, our genetic tendencies, our family history, the toxins we’ve been exposed to, our unique abilities to clear those toxins, our sleep habits, our diet and exercise, and yes, even our soul’s path. We all generally do the best we can with the knowledge and energies we have available to us at the time.
If exercise has been shown to decrease the risk and recurrence rate of cancer, then certainly, it ought to be a part of the discussion for how to be as healthy as possible. It’s all in how the subject is discussed, what the relationship has been between the patient and the physician, and a general assumption of good intentions on both their parts that turns that comment into one that empowers the person and sets them on a course of healthy living.
Thanks again for bringing up such a great topic, Tara. Your blog is excellent.
Dr. Molly Roberts
Co-Director, LightHearted Medicine
www.LightHeartedMedicine.com
Board of Trustees, American Holistic Medical Association
www.HolisticMedicine.org
— Posted by Molly Roberts, MD, MS
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/the-well-podcast-cancer-and-exercise/
