Welcome back!
We are priviledged to have Peter Hanfileti, MD as our guest blogger today. Dr. Hanfileti is a pediatrician and holistic physician with a practice in Vancouver, Washington, and is the creator of the website Principles for Parents and the Principles for Parents Blog. His main focus is on educating parents about the benefits of energy medicine, based on his own experience treating kids and families in his local community. Enjoy!
Energy Medicine and Kids
It might be unusual to hear a medical doctor, let alone a board certified pediatrician, talk about energy medicine. But that’s pretty much all I talk about in my clinical practice.
Over the last several years I have come to realize that we must take into account your child’s energy system and energy dynamics in any type of health evaluation. That’s because energy has such a significant impact on your youngster’s daily function. When I practiced primary care pediatrics several years ago, I had the notion that all that was required of me as a physician was treating illnesses and monitoring such things as:
- Physical issues
- Growth and development
- School performance
- Social skills
- Family stability
I now know that while those things are important and necessary, it’s what is NOT included in that list and job description that is utterly lacking and woefully incomplete. Of course, back in those earlier years in my practice I simply didn’t know any better. I now have what I would consider a more holistic and all encompassing view of what it means to take a comprehensive history and how to structure a treatment approach geared toward your individual child.
I have a deep respect and admiration for my physician colleagues who continue to struggle amidst the constraints and challenges of our current healthcare system. I see my role and experience as one of being an adjunct, or an addition to the conventional medical system, not a substitute or a competing influence in any way.
Having said that, I must admit that for me, the energy medicine paradigm filled a huge void in my operating knowledge base and as a physician, I find it indispensable to my practice and ability to help the kids and families I see in my own clinic.
What do I mean by energy medicine?
One definition that I like is:
Energy Medicine describes the reality of how our body and systems work, both internally and externally. In addition, energy medicine (whose treatment modalities and systems are numerous) provides a way to address imbalances in our body and systems, both internally and externally.
To put this more bluntly, I believe that your child is NOT a robot. They are much more than the physical working parts we see in action. To restrict our evaluation to only the physical attributes or measurable statistical variables is not logical, given our current understanding of how the bodymind complex works, and how little we actually know about the brain and nervous system.
In addition, many of the “facts” I learned in medical school a couple of decades ago are now obsolete or just plain wrong. With this background information, I cannot in good conscience, ignore what is obvious to me and many others:
The energy medicine system is real, useful, ubiquitous and valuable as an educational tool and as a treatment strategy.
Join us tomorrow for Part Two of Energy Medicine and Kids!
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