In this second installment of our interview with the course director of the
Physicians’ Association for Anthroposophical Medicine’s (PAAM) training course for medical doctors and professional therapists, Alicia Landman-Reiner, M.D., talks about what led her to pursue an “alternative” form of medicine and a spiritual path bringing a sacred dimension into contemporary science.  

LILIPOH: It goes without saying, that if you’re offering a training in an “alternative” approach to medicine, that you’re unsatisfied with conventional medical training. Can you say a bit about your discontent?

Dr. Landman-Reiner: Institutionalized science is drying up, conceptually.  It reminds me of trees that grow in very difficult conditions, and get very tough and stunted.  There they are; they’re not going away, but they’re terribly cramped. Once upon a time, in the past, healers could look at a healing plant and know what it could be used for.  And a shaman could undergo a “nighttime” experience that would reveal, as a kind of auditory experience, what was the patient’s soul-problem.  We can’t do these things in the old way. We can, of course, study the plants named in these ancient traditions – or the plants selected by native healers in societies that still can experience in these ways.  But the drug companies, which are very interested in developing products based on these plant traditions, can only grind them up and see what their chemicals do.  In science today we don’t understand nature in anything like its own terms – or as we used to say, “her own terms.”  

LILIPOH: We can’t go back, though, to shamanistic seeing, can we?

ALR: The ideal is not to go back. So let’s be hugely grateful for antibiotics and insulin replacement and ventilators.  The ideal is to take what we have gained with natural science, the phenomenal clarity of thought and analytic capacity, and let’s move on into the future. Let’s further ourselves by incorporating life, soul, and spirit into our scientific considerations. It’s time for that.

LILIPOH: When did you become aware that this kind of change is needed?

ALR: When I was younger, it wasn’t immediately clear to me. I veered from science, as such, to medicine, because at least I could help people. That’s a noble purpose and very rewarding.  As a Harvard undergraduate, even though I loved to study and learn, some spark was missing for me. I had one very specific experience in that regard. I was looking up at the old and beautiful trees in the campus quadrangle and felt very clearly that the trees were something, or contained something, which I was simply not being taught in science. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I felt, “I’m kind of depressed, but I think I need a philosopher, not a psychiatrist!”  

LILIPOH: Can you look back now and say what was missing?

ALR: Yes. I wasn’t able to find spirit at Harvard University.  I studied with so many smart, accomplished people.  And maybe some others did find spirit infusing their studies there, but I certainly had the experience that everything I was being taught was missing something crucial, which one could actually contact by looking up at the leafy green canopies of the trees.  
The goal is not only to contact that greater reality that expresses itself in nature in a dim, feeling way, but to explore how to bring together the clarity and discipline of science with the full dimensionality of nature.  People are starting to do this.  Not just commenting on what is lacking in science today, but developing scientific thinking in a new dimension.  People are doing it – doctors here in the United States and Canada, and in Europe, Egypt, the Philippines and India. Those who are working with the anthroposophic approach are doing it, for example Craig Holdrege and Steve Talbott and colleagues at the Nature Institute; the folks at Schumacher College in England, Will Brinton and his work with water and micro-organisms in Maine, and authors from a variety of traditions, scientific, spiritual or both, such as Rupert Sheldrake, Brian Goodwin, David Abram, the Dalai Lama and Seyyed Nasr.

LILIPOH: Could you characterize the common thread?

ALR: Yes. They are bringing a sacred dimension into contemporary science, while building on its considerable strengths.  It’s a beginning.

LILIPOH: Who inspired you to move in this direction?

ALR: Barbara McClintock (1902-1992) was a biologist who studied the DNA and genetics of corn. What made her unique was that her starting point was looking at the plants.  She said she knew every single plant. Colleagues thought she was more than a little nutty. Well, she discovered something about corn genetics that defied a cherished dogma of molecular genetics. Following the organism led her to the new knowledge that DNA is open to influence from the cell, and does not, itself, determine everything, as was originally thought. Her methodology was more to let the corn reveal itself, and less about subjecting it to experimentation.  And the method gave results. The idea that we can do more than 19th century science has done, that we can develop past the limits of dualism, it’s not just philosophizing. Pushing those boundaries a little won Barbara McClintock the Nobel Prize. We won’t all do that, but we can be a little part of this new development in knowledge. To me that is thrilling.

LILIPOH: Is a spiritual practice necessary for a physician in order to be a “good doctor?” If so, what’s yours?

ALR: What is vital spiritual nourishment for each person is different.  Some people sit every day and meditate, others go to church and others try to “live deliberately.”  We must each find our own path. I couldn’t say what is right for everyone. But I do think every good doctor needs to be in touch with what is whole in the universe, to find a way to feel connected to all things and all people, whether through religion, spirituality, or native feeling. That enables a doctor to know, in his or her bones, that whatever the patient is going through, there is some unity, some greater organization to it all. Through this conviction, we help our patients to hope, help them to cope, as George Harrison said.

LILIPOH: What about the physician’s relationship to suffering?

ALR: Every good doctor needs to be in touch with suffering. Usually this means having been present for our own suffering. Usually this means the pain of self-knowledge. Otherwise we can’t be helpful to our patients in their suffering.
Self-knowledge is a path; there are many ways to travel it. For me, the anthroposophic path is what draws me. Rudolf Steiner gave six exercises to strengthen our soul-forces. Michael Lipson wrote a beautiful little book about them (The Stairway of Surprise: Six Steps to a Creative Life, 2002, SteinerBooks).  I worked at these for years. They are simple, but not easy. At this time, I do a meditation three times a day that involves being thankful for what sustains us.  And I try every evening to look backwards over the day, to look at myself from the perspective of a kind, but objective stranger.  
There are other inner exercises out of the anthroposophic path, which we share during the doctor’s training. For example, our conventional medical training teaches us how to be critical. But spiritual teachers tell us that reverence for whatever is higher than ourselves is the crucial starting-point for soul and spirit development. This is a spiritual practice in itself that requires no special equipment. We don’t have to sit in any particular position.

LILIPOH: Is the training aimed at a picture of medicine for the future, let’s say 10 years ahead?

ALR: Actually, anthroposophic medicine has been well ahead of its time all along.  For decades, we have been decades ahead!  Not just the mainstream, but even the forefront of interest in integrative medicine is just catching up with ideas that have been the foundation for anthroposophic activity for a long time.  So I think we are teaching well into the future.
In the past 15 years, we’ve seen integrative medicine – or as many call it, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), come into public view. When I applied to medical schools in the 1970s it was invisible. In the 1980s, still pretty invisible.  Now we have a Center for CAM at the National Institutes of Health, several peer-reviewed journals, involvement by many medical schools, and more and more research.  In 10 years this will have progressed to where every doctor must be familiar with CAM.  More and more they will be integrating these practices into what they do.  

LILIPOH: How can we spread the word about the training?  And who should take it?

ALR: We could benefit from more outreach.  Many people who are interested in integrative medicine have not yet heard of anthroposophic medicine. Hurdle number one is just to be able to pronounce it. I feel we need more basic lectures and courses so medical people, including pre-meds, can have a first encounter with these ideas and then decide whether they are useful to them. We need to interact more with the many talented people who are creating the integrative medicine arena today. Steven Johnson, D.O. gave a talk on anthroposophic medicine at the national meeting of the American Holistic Medicine Association, and I hope to do the same in 2006. Other doctors offering similar types of presentation are most helpful.

When I ask doctors how they heard about the course, many say, “Through LILIPOH!”  Thank you, LILIPOH!

LILIPOH: You’re most welcome.