By Rob Verkerk PhD, founder, executive and scientific director
I’ll be the first to say, we haven’t yet agreed on the best elevator pitch for the biggest project we’ve ever worked on. I’m referring to our blueprint for health system sustainability.
The trouble is, none of us at ANH-Intl are PR specialists. But so far, whenever we've had advice from PR specialists, we've been given wording that seems to short change us on the whole, big picture of what the blueprint is all about. so far, what we’ve seen from publicists have missed the mark — they’ve only told a small part of the much bigger, transformational story. With this back story, if there is anyone out there with a background in PR who also gets our work, is passionate about our mission, we'd love to hear from you.
My most recent pitch would require an elevator journey of around 1 minute and a quarter. So it’s either a fast elevator with a few stops, or an oldie, possibly wood-lined, with both a hinged door and a scissor gate.
Here it is:
“Imagine yourself in your community, with all parts of your body and mind perfectly balanced with your internal and external environment. You – at the centre of an ecological system – in perfect equilibrium. That’s the ultimate goal of our blueprint for health system sustainability. By combining know-how from natural ecology, sustainability and the latest biomedical science, we’ve developed an approach that’s all about creating health, not just managing disease that may have taken years to develop. It’s radical, yes. But we now need radical change if we’re to make sure current health systems don’t collapse under the burden of ever increasing pressures from preventable chronic diseases like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, anxiety, depression and many types of cancer.
What’s really different about our blueprint is that it focuses on health creation – also known as salutogenesis – not treating or managing disease. Health creation isn’t something that can happen in hospitals and clinics. It happens in the community, in your home, at your workplace, in schools, in all the places we spend most of our time.
The model we describe in our blueprint isn’t about replacing existing systems of healthcare delivery, whether that’s a GP practice, a specialist consultant, a psychotherapist, acupuncturist or a personal trainer. It’s a system that lies over the top of these disease management and health systems. It’s about taking the pressure off existing structures of acute care so they can be less burdened and get on with doing what they do best.
Frankly, we’ve got a bunch of others too – they’re all works in progress.
But every now and then you speak to someone who helps draw things out of you.
That person for me was Ben Brown ND – a remarkable naturopathic doctor and practitioner, an exceptional lecturer, communicator and speaker on matters relating to natural health and functional medicine, and a friend.
Ben Brown ND
Rob Verkerk PhD
Last week Ben interviewed me on his Positive Health Podcast and following is a link to our discussion. If you want to have a deeper understanding of what our sustainable health project is all about, why it might matter to you, as a citizen, a practitioner, or a company involved with natural health, try and find yourself a spare 47 minutes to listen to this podcast.
You can download it to your device for listening at a convenient time. But unless your elevator breaks down, it's unlikely you’ll be listening to this podcast in an elevator!
Comments
your voice counts
05 December 2019 at 12:52 pm
The replacement of Heath as the balancing within wholeness under the changing, challenging and transforming conditions of Life - does NOT need another layer over it so as to ease the burden, salve the pain and help to sustain the unsustainable. Although of course the attempt to maintain an out of balance state MUST seek any and every means to persist.
I often refer to the now known Bankster trick as metaphor - in which toxic debts (unowned and unresolved consequence) are repackaged into complex instruments whereby to generate seemingly new 'market opportunities' while actually operating as a dump on the unwary and as a cover story for the sustainability of a corrupt system - as IF for the benefit of the whole.
"Future is sustainability from the heart of one’s being. This may be said of a person, a family, a business, or a nation. From a soul’s perspective, future is the promise of perfection which you remember and seek to re-attain. In that pursuit, infinite potential will supply your needs, yearnings, lessons, and alignments until at last you realize that true completion has always been within yourself, and is reattained through liberation of external desire as well as attachment to everything outside yourself." ~ Glenda Green, Love Without End.
At some point is the dawning realisation that completion or wholeness of being is known and shared by giving and receiving as distinct from a lack-driven sense of 'getting' (and being got from) that reinforces as a treasured and protected identity.
So back to the original point - any moment of the extension of wholeness of being is the extension and expression of health. This may seem irrelevant to the schemata and mapping out of disease and its treatments or strategies. But when the 'miasm' of a condition of sickness falls away - the moment of a deep and true appreciation shines through the heart's gratitude for being.
Awakening a self-responsibility for consciousness is contextual to all else - and not a replacement so much as a re-aligning and reintegrating that has relational as well as personal expression of well being, helpfulness, meaning, cultural renewal.
I don't write to 'disagree' but to join with a resonant recognition that undoes or heals dissonance. All fresh insight runs the risk of being put into old wine bottle paradigm so as to become marketised, weaponised and subverted to just another 'getting' device - which then devalue and dilute the forms and terms of its expression.
Balancing within wholeness is a bit like surfing a wave in that the forces at play have to be felt rather than mapped out and applied. Giving power to structure can seem safer than a direct energetic relation under confusion, and is protective to the degree it enables us to regain a consciousness of choice. But tyrannous and blind over the abnegation of choice for an illusion of safety that cannot be 'structured' or ruled in. Safety is an 'inside job'.
Regaining trust is a step by step process of listening in or feeling our way - using all our faculties but with the context of a recollected presence that draws on a deeper self-honesty than we may in the past have owned or allowed.
In a world of disinformation on top of confusions on top of asserted and protected identities - we need to become responsible and awake and ongoingly so - for resonance, recognition and where we extend an active willingness of trust. Because what we can do now with BOTH FEET - that is as a willing wholeness - is actively growing wholeness - while trying to fit into or live up to ideas and ideals can set us up to fail - perhaps because forcing what seems to be the 'right thing' can decontextualise it of freedom to be You.
Discipline is aligning persistently and consistently in who you truly are and desire. The 'truly' can be lost if we turn a blind eye. Setting the foundation is the basis from which all else comes naturally. Revealing a true foundation is the natural movement of healing in the heart.
A conflicted heart generates a split mind under narrative control that dumps unowned and unresolved conflict on the body. The complex of entanglements that we meet as our world can seem overwhelming - but living this day well is perhaps a matter of attending the choices we are active in rather than the fragmentation of a mind seeking to manage or control life.
Your voice counts
We welcome your comments and are very interested in your point of view, but we ask that you keep them relevant to the article, that they be civil and without commercial links. All comments are moderated prior to being published. We reserve the right to edit or not publish comments that we consider abusive or offensive.
There is extra content here from a third party provider. You will be unable to see this content unless you agree to allow Content Cookies. Cookie Preferences