An Interview with Dr. Robert Zieve, M.D.
After a near death experience five years ago, Dr. Robert Zieve, M.D. became inspired to manifest his vision: Healthy Medicine: A New Mainstream in Health Care, an integrated and inclusive model combining the best of science and nature, wisdom and compassion. Dr. Zieve is particularly interested in Integrative Cancer Care and in the cultivation of what he calls “exceptional medicine” committed to excellence, deep moral integrity, selflessness and service.
What is Healthy Medicine? It is the recognition that our one-size-fits-all approach to medical practice is largely ineffective if our goal is healing. Healthy Medicine is a synthesis of complementary/alternative medicine with conventional modern allopathic medicine and energy medicine. Healthy Medicine is more than just methods or combinations. It is a way of looking at and embodying health and healing that restores trust and truth to medicine. It is a living matrix that mirrors the inherent truths in nature, in the human being, and in the divine. From Dr. Zieve:
As physicians, rather than being authorities who “fix” our patients, we accompany them on their journey as guides and protectors. This work with patients feels like a modern form of initiation, for both physicians and for our patients. Seeing seriously ill patients for whom their conventional physicians have “given up,” get much better and/or go into remission is a victory not just for the patient, but for the spiritual life in all of us.
The skill at being able to accompany a patient on his or her journey of healing requires such qualities as flexible thinking, an open and compassionate heart, and a sustained and persistent effort.
The seasoned practitioner is one who is adept at building into a cohesive whole, with integrity, the capacities of intellect and data gathering, integrated with an intuitive sense of what will work best with each patient. This sense is gleaned from a combination of experience, a devotion to truth, and a capacity to be both externally and internally quiet so as to listen and observe. The practitioner also comes to the understanding that to do this service to its fullest expression requires a concomitant equanimity in daily life, a rhythm of inner work and relationship with the divine, as well as a strengthening of life practices and supportive and nurturing relationships, an intimacy with all life.
Towards this end Dr. Zieve has co-founded the Healthy Medicine Academy. In Greece, the word academy included not just intellectual learning but also the development of skill and wisdom.
The Healthy Medicine Academy is bringing together researchers and practitioners who will teach us to be more flexible and discerning in our thinking, more capable of integrating and making sense of the mountains of data, and in developing a heartful, contemplative intelligence that helps the practitioner to perceive the essence of the individuality of each patient inclusive of the roots of the phenomenon of illness. Combined with science and clinical excellence, this is a medicine of true humanity. This is individualized humanized health care.
The Healthy Medicine Academy is initiating a series of seminars and online educational forums for both professionals and the lay public.
This is beginning with the Cancer Strategies Symposium: Improving Outcomes and Quality of Life March 25-27, 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona. Presenters include leading-edge innovators, researchers and clinicians. Some of the world class integrative cancer care experts include Dwight McKee, M.D., Moshe Frenkel, M.D., Donald Yance, M.H., Jeanne Wallace, Ph.D., Bharat Aggarwal, Ph.D., to name a few. There will also be a presentation by Holly and Patrick Quinn who authored the book “You Did What? Saying No to Conventional Cancer Treatment” a young couple who chose to decline chemotherapy and radiotherapy in favor of a natural medicine approach. They will tell their story of courage and their journey from cancer to health.
This is truly a whole person approach, an integrative alternative cancer care model that includes health and healing, and is not a war on cancer, but a journey of resolution and integration.
Dr. Zieve’s vision also includes Healthy Medicine Radio, a series of weekly in-depth downloadable interviews with some of the brightest and most heartfelt leading edge thinkers and Healthy Medicine Network an online meeting place for building communities of collaboration, a place for dialogue about innovative models of health and healing, resources for clinicians and patients.
Dr. Robert Zieve, M.D. is the Supervising Physician at EuroMed Foundation Integrative Cancer Clinic in Phoenix, AZ and is also in Private Practice in Prescott, AZ. He is the medical consultant, for Healthy Medicine Academy. He is the author of two books, “Healthy Medicine” and “Beyond the Medical Meltdown.”
More Information on Integrative and Alternative Cancer Care
Books by Robert Zieve, M.D.
