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

In Episode 3, we discuss Chapter 5 of Fundamentals of Therapy.

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. 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.

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, 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.