Beyond Functional Medicine in search of a truly integrated model of healing
If you have been tuned into the landscape of health and wellness care, then likely you are aware of the tremendous growth of an approach called Functional Medicine in the past several years.
Functional medicine is an approach that is rooted in what it calls systems biology. While the practice of functional medicine evades a succinct description, one concise way that is often used to describe functional medicine is that it is ‘Root Cause Medicine’.
The analogy of a tree is often employed. Traditional western medicine manages symptoms and diagnoses diseases, often in a very advanced stage. The symptoms and diseases are the leaves of the tree. In contrast, functional medicine seeks to find and address the imbalances that contribute to disease (the trunk of the tree) before it becomes manifest and track even imbalances back to the earliest “root” stages (lifestyle factors) and address them. Sounds good.
To accomplish this aim, functional medicine often employs a variety of “functional” testing that can look at digestive function, detailed hormonal and blood or urine chemistry panels, and genomic testing, to name a few. The treatment tools of functional medicine often involve individualized lifestyle counseling and detailed dietary and nutritional supplement protocols.
I can personally attest (as a functional medicine physician) that the functional medicine approach has helped relieve entrenched symptoms and improved the day-to-day functioning of many people I have worked with. It has also helped me personally with some health challenges.
This said the functional medicine model is still wildly incomplete. Some passing acknowledgment is given to the need to address non-physical aspects of health and healing - the psychological, emotional, and spiritual. As it is elaborated and practiced, though, functional medicine is still primarily medicine of the physical body. It is still based mainly on the same underlying (materialist) paradigm that assumes that disease happens and is cured as a matter of inputs or subtractions - what one is doing or not doing and exposed to or not exposed to in the environment.
More and more people are, on some level, grasping this model's incompleteness and seeking a deepening understanding and experience of healing and a reconciling of these things we all know intuitively. Things such as -
Healing is not the absence of disease.
Healing occurs on levels that are other than physical.
Disease and Illness are not synonyms. While we use them interchangeably, they are not the same thing. Have you ever known someone with a disease (perhaps even cancer) who did not feel ill? Their spirit and life force were bright. Conversely, have you known someone who, despite exhaustive evaluation within the Western(and potentially even alternative) medical system, clearly was ill, but nothing could be found on the physical level? How do we explain this? Does our current model of health and healing help us here?
Disease happens on the physical level (at least in part).
Illness relates to a disturbance in vitality, a level other than physical. More about this in a moment.
People are searching for the medicine and the model of healing that embraces and truly integrates all the levels on which dis-ease and imbalance can happen.
Not everything that makes us ill is a disease or even a biochemical or nutritional imbalance that might be assessed by functional medicine.
To be clear, I am not saying that physical medicine, even functional medicine, has no role in this expanded understanding of healing. They do have a place. But in and of themselves, they are incomplete systems or frameworks for healing.
People know this. This inherent knowledge is the driving force behind the tremendous growth in alternative approaches.
We are in a time of unprecedented change and instability, and how we conceive of and receive healthcare needs to change. Even the language needs to change the word healthcare is so thin. What people are seeking are approaches to support their healing.
This brings me to what I wanted to discuss, or at least start discussing here - a model for how we might start to think about a more integrated framework for healing. The framework is called the Five Bodies of Consciousness.
I cannot take credit for conceiving this model. I first encountered the idea in the work of Dr. Amit Goswami, the quantum physicist, who expounded the idea in his book The Quantum Doctor and revisited it in his recent book, co-written with Dr. Valentino Onisor, Quantum Integrative Medicine.
This model, the Five Bodies of Consciousness, provides a helpful way to make sense of the levels on which we can heal. As a physician who aspires to support healing in those with whom I work, it has helped me think about how I might broaden and expand my perspective.
I will provide a brief exposition below, and as I continue to explore these concepts in my practice, I will share where these ideas take me in future writings.
The Five Bodies - where healing may occur
The Physical Body
So, as we have discussed, modern Western medicine addresses the physical body - with more recent approaches, such as functional medicine, also primarily addressing the physical body albeit in a more biologically upstream fashion. Imbalances in the physical body manifest as disease or potentially within the functional medicine diagnosis framework as chemical imbalances and genetic predispositions. This is a necessary level, and in cases of acute or life-threatening injury or infection, this physical body, the disease-based approach is critical, but as you will see, incomplete. There are other levels to consider as well.
The Vital Energy Body
A level beyond the physical is the Energetic Body. This is the level of what Goswami refers to as the blueprint. This level holds the plan and potential for our physical form. At this level, imbalances present as a feeling of illness - a disturbance in vitality. Approaches such as acupuncture, Ayurveda, and Naturopathy engage the being at this level (although they may not exclusively work here). In addition, problems such as delayed or inappropriate healing e.g., soft tissue strains, excessive scar tissue, and poor wound closure, to name a few, might be well addressed at least in part by this level.
The Mental Body
The next level is the level of thought. The levels of belief about what is possible or not possible. These thoughts may be conscious or other than conscious. Therapies that support uncovering and shifting beliefs that may limit an individual’s ability to see themselves as whole or healthy present at this level. Examples of therapies on this level include various psychotherapeutic approaches, EMDR, EFT, NLP, etc. For chronic long-standing conditions, especially if there is a family history, this sort of mental and belief work may be essential to supporting healing.
Beyond the mental - the level of the supramental
This is the level of our fundamental being that we may glimpse when practicing mindfulness meditation or in a state of flow. Here we get into what can feel like more rarefied territory from a Western medicine perspective. It is easy to see why as for much of its history, western medicine has wholly abdicated the role of spirituality in healing. Not so with most other traditions of healing where the spiritual and physical were recognized as inextricably linked. It is also helpful to remember that spirituality is not synonymous with religion - instead, this level speaks to purpose and aspects of our health other than physical. Illness on this level manifests as an absence of alignment or fit.
The Bliss Body
or fifth level is closely related to but a further expansion of our being to the profound connection that we may experience in meditation or in nature, a sense of awe and connection to something profound and so much greater than ourselves. Imbalance at this level or the level of being is felt as a profound sense of disconnection, not just from others in the community but from purpose and meaning—a level of illness in the soul.
So, what would it look like to have a healing system capable of supporting people on all these levels?
So many people are seeking this. The profound sense of its absence and the limitations of our culture’s prevailing theory of illness and disease is driving the breakdown of our medical system.
Where do we go from here? There is more to say, but I will end here for now. I will continue to explore these ideas and post more. I also welcome your thoughts and feedback.
Yours in healing and solidarity,
Nicole Winbush, M.D.
Dr. Winbush founded Sankofa Healing Arts & Functional Medicine, an interdisciplinary healing practice based in North Carolina. Through this practice and aligned partnerships, Dr. Winbush seeks to support others in their goals for their health and well-being and doing so in ways that are easeful, ecological, and enduring. You can follow her at @sankofahealing on Instagram.
