The Wise Roots Approach
Bridging the gap between physical and mental health
As a naturopathic doctor, I have spent my career helping people with their physical health. But the more patients I worked with, and the more I learned in my own personal journey, the more I understood that our physical and mental health go hand in hand. One cannot be healthy without the other.
And if our physical and mental health are interwoven, rather than addressing them in the traditional silos of “doctor” and “therapist, we must treat them in tandem. This is the collaborative work we will do together at Wise Roots Medicine.
Removing barriers to your body’s ability to heal
Using nature as medicine is one of the things I love most about naturopathic and functional medicine. But at Wise Roots, I not only use nature as medicine to treat symptoms; I also use a detective mindset to investigate – and then treat – the root cause of those symptoms. It is a very significant distinction.
The other thing I love about naturopathic medicine is how it works to harness the body’s amazing self-healing wisdom. The miraculous healing of a cut on your hand, without any medical intervention, is one example of the body’s incredible power to heal.
Chronic symptoms are the body’s way of letting you know that something is interfering with its inherent ability to heal. Once we identify the roadblocks to healing and address the root cause, the body is able to heal itself and the symptoms will disappear.
These beliefs are the foundation of the Wise Roots approach
Mental and physical health are connected. To be wholly healthy, we must treat them in tandem, not separately. Everything is connected.
Mental health conditions may be invisible, but they are real. And healing is possible.
We need to search out and treat root causes, not just address symptoms.
The body has amazing self-healing wisdom. When we find and address dysfunction, the body can heal itself.
We are each made up of many different “parts” that influence us to think, feel, and act the way we do. While we may not always like how they make us think, feel, or act, there are no “bad” parts.
The symptoms are your body’s smoke alarm
Imagine this: You’re sitting in your house and you smell smoke. Then you see smoke. And then you hear your smoke alarm start to blare. You call the fire department and they quickly arrive on the scene. They open the windows to air out the smoke, and remove the batteries from the smoke alarm. Then they leave.
Meanwhile, there is still a flaming pan on your stove. Yes, the firefighters addressed the smoke, but they didn’t take care of the problem – the fire on the stove. While this hypothetical situation sounds ridiculous, it is a very accurate description of how modern healthcare focuses on symptom management – not root causes.
Your symptoms – physical or mental – are smoke alarms letting you know that something is not right in your body. And it’s our job to find out where the fire is, what’s causing it and put it out.