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About Featured Articles

We are pleased to feature articles from authors who have led workshops or seminars sponsored or co-sponsored by Davi Nikent. We also feature authors we plan to host in the future.

The current article is an excerpt from the book Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing by physician, author, teacher, Elliott Dacher. It is a description of wholistic healing that was available to the people of Greece from 400 BC to approximayely 400 AD. Enjoy the journey...

Journey to the Center for Human Flourishing

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine taking the same trip that the ancient Greeks did on their way to the Asclepian healing temple. You know—perhaps through suffering, illness, or the calling of your soul—that you are ready to turn a corner in your life. Fortunately there is a place to go for individuals seeking integral health and life. You call such a center and are warmly received and encouraged to visit. On your way your thoughts about daily life and its routines drop away, and your focus slowly turns toward your [and your] own life. You feel a mixture of hope and excitement tempered with apprehension.

You arrive at the center, and you feel at home in the natural beauty as stillness and warmth welcome you. You meet the staff, find your room, get settled in, and sit back and read a bit about the center, its mission, and its activities. You then join other new guests to learn more about what lies ahead. At this initial meeting several practitioners serve as guides. They introduce themselves one at a time, speaking about their life, work, and interests. With whom do you feel a sense of connection or initial chemistry? Perhaps this is the first practitioner you will interview. Is he or she a match for your needs? Chemistry and intimacy are essential for this process to truly work.Imagine meeting with this healer/helper.

You arrive at the center, and you feel at home in the natural beauty as stillness and warmth welcome you. You meet the staff, find your room, get settled in, and sit back and read a bit about the center, its mission, and its activities. You then join other new guests to learn more about what lies ahead. At this initial meeting several practitioners serve as guides. They introduce themselves one at a time, speaking about their life, work, and interests. With whom do you feel a sense of connection or initial chemistry? Perhaps this is the first practitioner you will interview. Is he or she a match for your needs? Chemistry and intimacy are essential for this process to truly work.Imagine meeting with this healer/helper.

Imagine your story is fully heard from beginning to end, acknowledged, understood, and embraced. Experience the sense of stillness that enters your mind and heart. How does it feel to experience this inner stillness, peace, and ease? Your practitioner will point out that this is your inner healer, your place of refuge and reliance. Sitting in communion, imagine how you and your mentor will slowly arrive at the direction to take and the resources and activities to explore in your healing. Each day you engage in activities that nourish your body, mind, and spirit. Gradually, you begin to gain new understandings that blossom into important realizations. You can now sense how it is possible to change from the inside out. Your faith is transformed into confidence. You feel early movement toward integral health.

You can now trust there is a place and a way to find what you have been seeking. You now know that integral health and life is available to you regardless of your circumstances. Health, happiness, and wholeness can be self-cultivated, grown, and continuously expanded. Nothing and nobody can permanently separate you from these innate but previously illusive treasures. It is your natural state untainted and untouched by life’s adversities. You feel release and great relief.

There will come a time when you will be ready to return to worldly life. You will be renewed and encouraged by your experience at the center. You will have gained an understanding of the integral vision, acquired a program of integral practice, and discovered an inner path. This integral path can now become your new retreat and refuge, your source of reliance. You will return home connected to the new community met at the retreat and to the center that will always be a home away from home.

Things will be a bit different when you return home. You will have new priorities and perhaps have to make some readjustments. You will need solitude and time for study and reflection. You will soon notice that you will be less reactive to life’s challenges and have more patience and an increasingly clear sense of direction. You will certainly sense the awakening of a new-found health, happiness, and wholeness. This is the vision of healing bequeathed to us by the great sages. How does this feel to you? Would you like this to be more than an imaginary journey?

This chapter provides a brief overview of a new and very different type of healing center that will serve as a resource for individuals—adults and children—a teaching center for practitioners-in-training, and a research center for those who wish to more deeply study this expansive healing process. Everything we need to create such a center is waiting and ready. All that is needed is to implement the vision we have described here. Now is the time to bring it to life. To do so will be an act of healing not just for ourselves but our culture and the whole world.

Elliott S. Dacher, MD is a pioneer in the emerging medicine of the future. His knowledge and practical approaches to the field of health and healing have evolved from his extensive experience as a practicing internist participating in over 50,000 medical visits and his ongoing independent research and study.

Dr. Dacher’s current work begins with a fundamentally new viewpoint that questions all of our current ideas about disease, aging, death, pain, suffering and health. Drawing upon eastern and western sources he raises the possibility that a systematic, comprehensive and in-depth approach can address the root sources of both disease and health, leading to a radical shift in our well-being.