Is there a place for the whole person in contemporary Medicine?

Can we move beyond reductionist science to embrace the soul and spirit as well as the physical body?

Many patients as well as physicians are in search of an integrative approach to medicine that embraces the whole person, in their mental and spiritual being as well as in bodily aspects. To this end, anthroposophic medicine was founded in 1920 by Dr. Rudolf Steiner and Dr. med. Ita Wegman.

Today this School of Medicine is alive in practices, therapeutic centres and anthroposophic hospitals throughout the world. It is taught in international training courses and is researched in university departments with associated professorial chairs.

Course Overview
The English Training In Anthroposophic Medicine is a part-time post-graduate training for physicians.

It explores new ways of understanding a patient’s condition that go beyond current purely physically based medicine, emphasising the patient’s spiritual, psychological and bodily capacities for resilience.

The training offers a deeper understanding of common medical conditions, offering participants experience-based learning processes that lead to an extended understanding of the human being, both in health and illness, and in their relationship to nature.

The treatments introduced include anthroposophic medicines and their pharmaceutical production. The course also provides a foundation for prescribing natural medicines and a range of non-medicinal therapies that have been shown in general practice to radically reduce the prescribing of antibiotics and other groups of conventional medicines, while improving patient satisfaction.

In addition, participants are also introduced to art therapy, eurythmy therapy, body therapies and nursing procedures through direct experience. These non medicial treatments can intensify therapeutic responses to illness. Biographical aspects and insights from psychotherapy and counselling are also considered in developing an understanding of disease processes.

Equally important is the ethical and spiritual development of the physician. Fundamental spiritual exercises and meditative practices that can aid such development, are introduced throughout the training.