13/08/2026
“We have no moral right to take someone’s suffering away.”
Ram Dass
This image was taken at a monastic pharmacy in Florence.
There is something about this image that brings me back to why I wanted to study complementary in the first place.
As a young woman, I really planned to study medicine after completing my biomedical science degree. I read a book about studying medicine in the USA, the enormous costs, the debt, and the cost to students’ health. In fact, the health of medical students declined by 70 per cent, and it didn’t get much better after they left medical school. The stress started and never stopped. Perhaps the nervous system had learned how to suffer on, or simply how to navigate its way through a system that demands too much from our doctors and health workers.
What I didn’t know then was that there were other traditions of medicine, much older, in which healing was never completely separated from the inner life of the healer.
Ayurvedic medicine is one example of this. In the Vedic tradition, medicine, herbs, contemplation, prayer, service, discipline and care of the whole person could exist together. The pharmacy was not simply a place where medicines were prepared. Many doctors lived in the nooks and their herbs were gathered from the forests in which they lived. Healing was part of a larger understanding of life and alignment with nature.
When I found complementary health through Yoga, Ayurveda and Psychosomatic medicine, something began to make sense to me. I knew this was going to teach me how to look after myself on every level, unlike the Western medical system which may have stolen my health. From that true place of embodied medicine, it also included a contemplative spiritual understanding of health: faith, trust and spirituality.
From this place of true self care and inner work, I knew I could offer this to others.
We often treat people in medicine who aren’t willing to heal, and without their genuine desire to take responsibility for their healing journey, the patient may struggle to heal. This is often different in my line of work. My clientele and students tend to have a deep intrinsic care for themselves and their own path.
This is helpful, because in Ayurveda we learn about Karma, and we must be very careful not to take someone’s Karma away without their genuine intent, for their suffering can be their grace. As Ram Dass says, we have no moral right to take someone’s suffering away. These teachings encourage us to be the witness, consciousness, “Saksha Bhavi”, not the doer, nor the healer, but the .
Perhaps this is one of the great differences between simply treating illness and understanding medicine as a path of healing.
In , we treat the underlying causes. We build up the system so it can cope with any intervention we give it. WE NEVER just treat the symptom.
I feel we have reached a time in medicine where we are waking up to something new.
It’s happening in , , and general practice.
The needs to do the inner work. The patient does too.
Perhaps we are remembering something that traditional medicine and the monks and rishis understood long ago: healing is not only about what we give to the body, but about how we live, how we relate to pain and suffering, how we understand ourselves, and the intention with which we care for another.
It’s a union of sorts.
A true Yoga.
Embodied Medicine Training - , , Ayurveda, Therapy https://biyome.com.au/course-pages/350emt/
