History and Group genesis

HI-Med was started the 2000/2001 school year. HI-Med’s group activities over the past two years include a focus on inviting physician-healers who practice integrative medicine speak about their practices in the holistic field and how that integrates with the western biomedical training and techniques they employ as well. In 2002 and 2004, Deepak Chopra spoke to our group and also offered our group members free admission to one of his symposia touching on the role of consciousness in healing with leading researchers from around the world speaking. John Kim, MD, spoke to us about his integrated use of Reiki and Acupuncture in his clinical practice. John is a tai-chi teacher as well and is a senior member of HI-Med who has played an advisor role within the group. Dan Vicario, MD, spoke to us about his practice of oncology and the incorporation of an empowering mind-body approach he uses with his cancer patients to good effect. Mimi Guarneri, MD, the founder of the Scripps’ Hospital Center for Integrative Medicine spoke to us of her development as a physician from a cardiologist focused on surgical intervention to one focused holistic approaches. Her center utilizes therapies such as yoga, meditation, education, and life-style modification for patients with heart problems, and in our group visit to the center we saw a group of patients whose lives had been transformed in fundamental ways out of their involvement with the center’s activities. Maria Yraceburu has spoken to the group about her perspectives on health and healing as a Navajo Shaman. The group has organized a visit to see Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh speak on “cultivating peace within ourselves and our communities.”

Our group is still in the growing stages and our future plans include securing sources of good funding, starting a yearly retreat in the countryside led by physicians with holistic orientations to medicine and healing, and continued regular group meetings incorporating meditation, yoga, and other tools for inner development. We also have a list-serve that serves as a forum where we can share our experiences around issues of holistic healing and support regarding the difficulties faced in the traditional western medical environment in the development of a holistic approach.

Broadening the group members’ development as teachers and facilitators of wellness on physical, mental, and emotional levels is one of the most fundamental goals of HI-Med. HI-Med will organize group workshops to provide direct contact with caregivers and patients experienced in integrative modalities. An important goal of these meetings will be to teach practical skills to medical students seeking to integrate the practice of medicine as presented in formal coursework with parallel approaches from other traditions. The personal contact of members with patients, caregivers, and each other will further broaden and strengthen our perspectives on healing, and how to build a career that integrates a holistic focus within modern medical healthcare.

In recognition of the bond between a holistic approach to helping others and a holistic approach to one’s own life, HI-Med seeks to cultivate the personal growth of our members and to broaden the interpersonal connections within the group. To this end, meetings with a medical focus are supplemented by ongoing classes aimed at integrated personal and group development. These meetings will embody the principle that we must learn to heal ourselves in order to play the role of healer in other’s lives. Techniques of use in holistic health care are practiced in these sessions, including meditation, yoga, tai-chi, and energy healing techniques such as chi-gong and reiki. A major goal of HI-Med is to have a yearly retreat coordinated with the help of physicians with holistic practices. This retreat will serve to provide a group bonding experience around the central theme of the development of the skills necessary to grow in one’s abilities as a healer.

HI-Med seeks to make the experience of medical school an experience that will allow interested UCSD students to do inner work in the area of developing our abilities as healers. This can be facilitated by experiential work in transformative practices as well as learning about the many approaches to healing and the importance of a holistic and balanced approach to maintaining health. HI-Med also serves the purpose of helping to educate the interested medical student in the other world-views currently utilized by healers of other traditions who so many of our future patients will be seeing concurrently.