Our fulcrum is God: our lever, prayer; prayer which burns with love. With that we can lift the world! – St. Therese de Lisieux (The Little Flower)
I have a dream for a healing sanctuary. The inspiration began during 2 summers over 20 years ago volunteering at the home of Louise Brissette and her family of 36 adoption children, all with special needs. Louise felt the calling and the strong belief that all children deserve to have a mother and she saw that many of those born with special needs are not adopted or given up. It was in St Anselme, Quebec that I first learned the critical lesson that “only with the heart can one see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye” (Yes, they have a statue of The Little Prince in their dining room). It was my first osteopathic mentor, Viola Frymann, DO that after a year with her as her medical assistant, strongly encouraged me to spend the summer before my first year of medical school with the Brissette family. I returned for the summer after my first year of medical school. My time there was without a doubt the most important time of learning, in mind & spirit in my life. I am forever grateful & endeavor to pay it forward.
I invision a healing sanctuary for humans especially those with special needs, those without family in need of permanent homes and rescued animals.
Supporting an intentional community practicing sacred economics
A veganic farm with a vegetable prescription program providing nutrient dense whole plant foods
Residential plant-based nutrition & medically assisted water fasting
Traditional osteopathic and lifestyle focused family medicine
Medical student and resident training
Nutrition & cooking classes
Veganic farming & gardening classes
Fermentation & sprouting classes
1/2 to day long intensive seminars on disease reversal
Weekend wellness retreats & seminars
Therapy time with the animal rescues if they choose to participate. Nothing forced.
Somatic counseling services
And of course all it should covered by the Oregon Health Plan as you might think they would recognize that access to healthy food is the best way of truly keeping patients & communities well but I am not holding my breath seeing how more and more they are influenced by Big Pharma & Big Ag. I left my last government funded Benton County Health job due to this very issue. It is clear that this would be the best way to prevent and reverse disease rather than continuing to create permanent patients that require a lifetime of expensive pharmaceutical drugs and surgical interventions. The best way to treat cause rather than merely inefficiently and dangerously* just keep “mopping up the leaks” by treating symptoms with drugs.
*Complications of conventional pharmacologic and surgical medical treatment is the 3rd leading cause of death in the US. #1 is coronary artery disease, #2 cancer. We know that heart disease is 90 percent preventable if we followed a whole food plant-based diet, avoid tobacco & regularly exercised. JAMA: Is US Health Really the Best in the World? Starfield, MD, MPH
All humans and animals deserve to be happy and free. Eating animals is unnecessary for health for most humans and its dominant focus along with processed other fiberless foods is the main cause of disease in the US. It is also environmentally unsustainable and so I am sorry to say we must live and teach a different way, non-judgmentally but without apology. Eating whole foods, mostly plants can not only address and optimize our health as individuals but can also create address critical global food scarcity and help our planet to heal. We can not continue to define individual health in a bubble as being isolate and separate from the community and the planet. All of our choices effect our communities, the animals and our shared environment.
We can help save the planet by reducing our reliance on animal agriculture. The sanskrit translation for the word war is ‘the desire for more cattle’. If you trace back our history there was a time before animal herding agriculture began when we were gatherers before hunters and we embraced matriarchal systems of government, theology and culture. The planets environmental degradation began with the onset of animal herding agriculture and the consequent embracement of patriarchal, war dominant theology to justify & fit our blood and land lust. And medicine also shifted from the laws of nature and the application of its innate healing forces to the concept of domination, first over animals and other humans and then over disease with the use of poisons and eventual drugs to treat the illness over the use of plants and fasting. (Read the Chalice & The Blade by Riane Eisler and The World Peace Diet by Will Tuttle, PhD for more on that.)
Lets choose to eat whole over processed
Plants over animals
Organic over genetically modified, artificially colored and chemically laden
Water over chemical drinks
Minimize or avoid the consumption of meat & dairy products.
Move your body daily with cardiovascular exercise
Meditate, pray, sleep soundly, listen to one another.
Lets work for optimal health, food & housing justice
Lets work to end the unnecessary suffering of humans and all earthlings.
Lets work to reverse and prevent disease
May we live awakened, free lives so that we may have the opportunity to live out our true purpose and passions
May we create communities that enable a way of living that does not require working for corporations that continue to engage in violent, unethical and environmentally unsustainable practices.
May we create sustainable, gift economy communities that prioritize health, family, mental and emotional health over ego & third party corporate financial gains. Where all people have access to our best medicine, plants.
Invest in companies that do not profit in our destruction.
May all beings be happy & free,
Kyle Homertgen, DO
Some recommended reading:
by Micheal Greger, MD
by Doug Lisle, PhD
by Riane Eisler
