by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | May 8, 2015 | Balance, Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, Clinic, doctor as teacher, Emotions, Finding yourself, Personal, Reflections
It seems like the only thing I can focus on right now is negative space.
Like the obsession with the space between a model’s waif-like thighs, affectionately termed the “thigh gap”, I have seemingly been attributing way too much time and attention to the lack of things in my life. Life is up in the air right now—a freeze-frame of dust particles that someone has stirred up, and we all wait breathlessly to see where they will settle on the ground.
That’s it: I feel unsettled.
And this unsettled feeling has the tendency to sharpen the focus on the things I don’t have in life. The search doesn’t need to go far. I lack stability in my career, a romantic relationship, my own apartment—the typical signs that life is moving forward. I don’t know what two months will bring, let alone the next few years and, as someone who spent all but two years of their waking adult life in academia, not having a future laid out before them in the form of assignments, tests and other externally imposed milestones leaves me feeling uncontained. There is no one conducting evaluations on my life but myself.
And what an astute evaluator I’ve become:
How am I doing? The best way for the masochist to answer this question is to look at how other people are doing. There are plentiful points of comparison if I want to feel fully inferior. Everyone seems to have more patients than I do, nicer apartments and fulfilling relationships. They seem to be moving somewhere. I just feel stuck, not at a crossroads, but at the edge of a cliff. Am I just supposed to jump? Did everyone else jump? Or did they end up hitching a ride on some lucky parachute that happened to pass by a few minutes before me? Why are they lucky? What are my eyes closed to? When will it be my turn? Or am I simply cursed? The mind stirs up more dust. Sense of personal injustices prevail.
This unsettled feeling can’t last.
So I strive. The answer must lie in working harder. After all, it’s what we’re told to do. Push on. Move forward. Just do it, as Nike says, sweat beading on foreheads. There’s always sweat beading on the foreheads of the mentally unsettled.
I hand out business cards, but no one calls me. I try calling them. I look for other jobs that are poor fits. I take more shifts at the day-job I’m holding on to for secure cash. I go to business networking meetings that I don’t connect with and try to convince myself that I should just force myself to make it work. I search desperately for an apartment, and despair when I don’t get the one I finally love. I hold on to past relationships well past their due dates and complain and obsess and analyze what went wrong to my friends, whose patience can’t possibly last much longer. I notice myself compromising my values and dreams in order to get away from the edge of the cliff.
Still I get nowhere.
So I turned to the only thing I know how to when the mind is desperate and despairing and the spirit is looking to the future for salvation—I turn to the present. The dust in up in the air, so to speak. Everything is unsettled. And yet, how am I? I’m more or less alright. I’m warm. I’m fed. I’m rested. My plight is ridiculous when compared to tiny Vietnamese hands sewing buttons on Banana Republic blouses. Who taught me this sense of entitlement?
I have a place to live and some money coming in (the longer it takes me to find an apartment, consequently, the more I end up saving). I have friends who are genuinely concerned about me and a generous, loving and supportive family. I have hobbies and social events to attend. The blessings in my life are numerous.
Why am I so intent on speeding down the highway of life? What will happen when I arrive at my destination? When I have a beautiful apartment, patients booked months in advance, when I’m in a wonderful, loving and passionate relationship with someone who inspires me, what will I do then? Once the dust is settled, won’t I eventually, decide to stir it up again? If I can’t be content in the present, when will I ever find that elusive contentment that always seems to slip out of our grasp?
Most of all, I ask myself, what is behind my longings? Are the reason I long for these things pure? Or, like a perfume or Coca-Cola ad, do I really want what’s behind what they’re selling me: the beauty, enchantment, lightness, freedom and magic that life often promises us but we seldom encounter in the places we’re told to look.
I wonder if, with eyes closed and mind settled, I’ll be able to breathe clear air again. Perhaps then I’ll find a path down from this cliff, a creative alternative to the already available options: jumping, backing down or sitting and waiting for a magical parachute to come and save me.
Between all the wants, needs, dreams and aspirations, between the striving is space. In that space I might find a little room to breathe. But who can really breathe with dust in their lungs?
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Mar 2, 2015 | Clinic, Community, Creativity, Finding yourself, Gratitude, Health, Patients, Private Practice
I wrote this post a few months ago while beginning my private practice. When I first wrote this post, the next week an incredibly good-fit-of-a-patient walked in my door! A month later, another booked in! I have been blessed from the start with a roster of wonderful people who have found their way into my practice. I’m posting this blog post to celebrate that and keep morale high.
No, I don’t have her yet (edit: there are a few potentials, though!). Instead, I began practice with a few individuals who reflected back my insecurities, made payment awkward (likely more about me than about them) or who threaten to complain about me to the regulatory board (long story) and keep forgetting to follow their treatment plans.
Naturopathic doctors have the second largest scope of practice in Ontario besides medical doctors. We are primary care providers. We are highly trained. If I wanted to get filthy rich I’d have done something else, anything else. I am 29 and I wear sweaters from the Salvation Army and live with my parents—I just want to help people.
I digress. My perfect patient does not yet exist, but in a marketing workshop I took in November, they told us to imagine our ideal patient—where does he or she live, work, drink his or her coffee? I decided to create a blog out of it, killing a few birds (free range turkeys) with a single (humane) stone. That being said, if you read to the bottom of this post and find out that you are, in fact, the perfect patient, or know one that is, then please message me and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
The Perfect Patient
The perfect patient has extended health benefits. However, she understands that health is worth paying for and is willing to go beyond her benefits in order to feel better.
She has faith in naturopathic medicine and in my doctoring skills. She understands the work and education it took to get to where I am. She respects that and recognizes that my opinion is far more informed than that of a health show host, blog poster or supplement store employee.
The perfect patient knows me. She’s heard of me, or read my professional blog, or been to a talk. She jives with my spirit as a doctor and therefore is already sold on me and naturopathic medicine before she comes into the office.
She is compliant. She understands what education and training is behind the treatment recommendations that are prescribed to her. She follows them, determined to make positive changes to her health. And, because she does this, she gets better. She takes an active role in her own health and doesn’t hesitate to help me understand what treatments are feasible and appropriate for her.
She tells all her friends and family about me and how I’ve helped her. She refers them all to me. Like 10-20 people are direct referrals from her.
These referrals begin to refer as well. It’s a great practice because they all connect with my philosophy and follow my recommendations and are willing to pay for my services and don’t cancel their appointments without giving 24 hours’ notice.
They are all respectful of my time. They don’t overstay their visits or bombard me with emails, unless they are genuinely confused about something or they have a legitimate concern and they understand that, if it requires more than 15 minutes of my time then we need to book a follow-up in person or a phone consultation and they know that requires payment. After all, I am a professional.
They all follow my blog and recommend it to friends. One of their friends is a big-deal editor and signs me on for a book deal. I sell a lot of books and this generates even more patients who are in line with my beliefs and the medicine I practice.
Everything flows, naturally and easily. I learn a lot. These patients are introspective and interested in growing. They know that health is the foundation of a good life. They want to make the most out of life, to challenge themselves in interesting ways and embrace love and creativity and spirituality. We have great conversations that allow us to benefit and look at life a little differently. My clinic becomes a place of healing and spiritual growth.
“I feel better just by spending time in the waiting room.” Say the new patients these days.
I start a Alternative Healing Collective with my current clinic owner, an MD/Homeopath. We employ different healthcare providers and pay them salaries. The patients pay a yearly rate and then are charged a smaller fee for a visit. Practitioners and patients form boards and vote on changes and practices of the clinic. It becomes a place of progressive private healthcare.
Students come from around the world to learn from our methods and copy our model of providing accessible, effective healthcare.
We dedicate our time to helping those who can’t pay for the services but are in line with our principles and would benefit from our care. We travel to countries and set up clinics there. We give talks, workshops and classes. We do community acupuncture.
Our clinic becomes a community centre for healing, where patients can drop by, have a tea, listen to a talk or take a class, see a practitioner, meditate, take out books on health or just sit and converse with like-minded individuals. We are closely connected with the arts, especially the visual arts and have non-toxic art studios for health-conscious people who believe in expression and beauty.
Our clinic becomes a model throughout Canada, then throughout the world. We revolutionize the healing professions.
When I retire I become a mentor, an elder. I still see patients and teach classes and write books. Sometimes I write fiction. Sometimes I paint. I feel like a part of the community. I feel I have given back, traveled and grown and lived and loved.
Then I die peacefully, surrounded by family, friends and community and love.
And it all started with the Perfect Patient.
Here’s hoping.
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jul 16, 2012 | Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, Clinic, Creativity, Docere, Education, Exams, Motivation, Naturopathic Principles, NPLEX, Philosophy, Professional Development, Student, Teaching English as a Foreign Language
As a summer English as a Second Langauge (ESL) teacher I often attend teacher training workshops. In a recent training session I attended, a grammar workshop, it was impressed upon us the importance of creating a learning environment in which we allow students to experience the language rule for themselves, rather than simply standing at the blackboard, teaching it to them.
(more…)
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Feb 27, 2012 | Art, Asian Medicine, Balance, Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, Clinic, Naturopathic Philosophy, Research, Robert Schad Naturopathic Clinic, Stress, Student
Another naturopathic exam session has come and gone. The end of our last midterm week tucked an uncomfortable 49 exams (in less than two years) under our already stuffed belts. Despite the over-stuffing of knowledge (taxing our Spleens, according to TCM, which is the equivalent of overeating at a buffet), I can’t help but feel empty at the end of these week-long ordeals.
(more…)
It seems like the only thing I can focus on right now is negative space.