What is Integral Medicine?
Integral Medicine. There’s a 5 minute way to describe it, and a 5 hour way, and not a lot in between!
Integral Medicine is a way Colleen uses to deal with your whole self: your integrated, entire person, from thoughts and feelings to physiology and neurology, from your history to your potential.
Colleen has studied a number of forms of Integral Medicine, and uses them in whole or in part to access your system and see what you (and only you) need to move, shift, clear, uncover, reclaim, or get rid of.
Working like this is something you can do after the acupuncture needles are in, as it’s gentle, effective, non-invasive, and 100% tailored to each individual person.
Signs You Could Benefit From Integral Medicine
The easy answer is that anyone can benefit from Integral Medicine, just like anyone can benefit from acupuncture and TCM. It’s a customized healing modality that listens to and pays attention to who YOU are and helps your system correct the things (physical, mental, spiritual, or other) that are holding you back or weighing you down.
A lot of people turn to Integral Medicine when they’ve got that ‘weird’ thing, that ‘stuck’ thing, that thing that doesn’t seem to want to respond the way it should when you’ve been doing all the right things.
And of course, if you’re someone who is excited to have new ways to continue to evolve into the best possible version of you, then you’ll probably love Integral Medicine. 🙂
Why Choose Crimson Door Healing?
Ok, so – 3 friends tell me to see this woman to help with the chronic fatigue that had been plaguing me for 12 years, making me feel as if my whole life was being pulled down with lead weights. My first session, when I started to explain how I felt, and something on Colleen’s face told me she got it, I just started to cry, and I kept crying for almost the whole session. She kept working, and passing me kleenex, and somehow making me feel like I was going to be ok. How did I not feel embarrassed after that? But I didn’t. I hugged her when I left, and I don’t really hug people, but I had this feeling like the worst of me got hauled out for viewing, and it was still ok. She gave me these herbs to take – sorry, tinctures, – and I put ten drops into a glass twice a day and drank it, out of sheer faith I guess, because I hate stuff like that. Then something weird happened. Visit 3 she was asking me questions about how I felt, and I kept saying “the same”, then realized that I wasn’t. I was tired, but not all the time. I was tired, but I was exercising. I was tired, but I didn’t need to nap 8 hours a day and sleep another 10 at night. Stuff I hadn’t thought to care about changed, too, only I hadn’t thought to mention it – the athlete’s foot (stupid name, I was a ball of mush, not an athlete at that point!) was gone – the headaches that were always there in the background were gone – I was less irritable, more optimistic. Oh yeah, and I wasn’t doubling over with cramps after eating. I don’t really understand what she does, but I apologize for calling my friends crazy. I have a life again, and it just keeps getting better.
~Sam M, Ontario
Colleen is passionate about all the work she does, and Integral Medicine is one of those things, like Traditional Chinese Medicine, that make her recognize how genius people are. NOTHING we do is by accident – we just might not realize that our body has chosen to do something on purpose that we don’t love, like develop a phobia, allow headaches to happen, change how your gut digests (or doesn’t).
Colleen’s focus is on paying attention, keeping you feeling and being safe, helping you move things as quickly as you comfortably can, and throwing in some humour whenever possible. The people who work best with Colleen are willing to dig in to whatever needs digging, be open-minded and open-hearted, and excited to find their best selves (even if they feel it’s been a while.)
At its heart, this form of healing uses a combination of traditional and cutting-edge scientific theories and techniques to access your innate capacity to heal, even when it’s been shut down by anxiety or stress.
This kind of healing work takes years to become proficient in, and is based on some of the most complicated and incredible aspects of what people are like.
Symptom Management
Integral medicine isn’t really about symptom management. It’s about allowing your system’s innate capacity to function more quickly, smoothly, and easily.
Symptoms are identified (headaches, stress, anxiety, ongoing cold and flu issues, pain, menstrual issues, etc etc etc) and then Integral Medicine (like TCM) looks at the underlying causes to that. Integral Medicine doesn’t treat headaches (or any other symptoms) because the headache (or other symptom) isn’t the issue: it’s the thing your body is doing to let you know that something is out of whack and isn’t quite working smoothly. When that underlying thing gets working well again, the symptoms simply don’t need to be there.
You can check out some FAQs about Integral Medicine here.
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