Enjoy More from Less:
Post-conference interview with best-selling author Elson Haas, M.D.
In the welcoming ceremonies for CCNH’s 2004 natural health conference, Elson Haas, M.D. looked and sounded bigger than life. With sincere fervor he gave the crowd of 250-plus what he considers life’s huge truths. Among these were:
He applauded his audience of “natural detectives” who arrive at the profession of holistic health because of a yearning to be with others on their health journeys and to help others decide to actively change their lives. He later said that being a “docere” and lecturing from an amphitheatre is his favorite thing. That’s because in Latin, this word, from which we derived our word for “doctor,” actually meant “to teach.”
Over the next three days, conference attendees and staff members heard several times that one experience or another was this teacher’s “favorite thing.” In fact, his endearing tendency to love every moment, remaining energetically present and indelibly pleasant were among the reasons that CCNH was eager to invite Dr. Haas back to our spring, 2005 annual conference—which, again, coincides with Earth Day. We wanted the docere to come back and teach us more about his integrative “bridge-building” approach to healing ourselves and healing the earth.
During next year’s April 21–24 natural health conference that also helps commemorate CCNH’s 25th anniversary, Haas will again be in good company. Next year’s keynote presenters include American Herbalists Guild founder Michael Tierra and bodywork guru Stewart Mitchell.
But wait. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves let’s be here, now, and settle in for a leisurely chat with Elson Haas, M.D., who began the interview by playing a Native American flute and talking about his unique practice of sonic-puncture, the practice of integrating sound therapy with the application of acupuncture.
HT: Your words “enjoy more from less” seem to transcend the human response to those annoying imperfections and challenges of day-to-day life. It almost sounds like metaphysical advice.
EH: I think that being a philosopher-physician is the best way to reach people, offering lifestyle guidance from a place of love and compassion rather than just the prescriptive “patch, patch, patch” voice of authority.
Metaphysics is certainly a right-brain approach to health and well-being. Back in the ‘70s when I started practicing medicine, I immediately found the left-brain scientific/ analytical constraint to be quite limiting. It just didn’t feel right, and I felt like the professors who were calling medicine a “healing art” had sold us all a bunch of goods because they called it one way but sure didn’t teach it that way.
HT: Those smothering words you just said, the words “constraint” and “limiting” don’t seem to come up much in your own lectures. What we’ve been hearing, instead, are calming words such as “flow...open...breathing....”
EH: Part of healing is tapping into our perfect intelligence through guided imagery. When I talk with my Inner Guides, I begin to appreciate my body as a beautiful part of the great Divinity—and I don’t mean candy! (Laughs)
When I see the gift that life is, it’s clear to me that the human body is indeed a temple. Everybody knows better than to dump trash in or around a temple, but junk food is the toxic sludge that we mindlessly dump inside, habitually, which leads to toxic thoughts—until we can lift ourselves back up and achieve a shift in consciousness.
To help change the system each individual must first set a good example, so that the automatic quick fix doesn’t seem like such a glorified solution—which it isn’t. What we can do, as practitioners of healing, is connect with our brothers’ and sisters’ Higher Selves, to their sense of higher purpose.
HT: How exactly did a busy physician become such a prolific author? That, in itself, seems like quite a transformation.
EH: I began to feel a general malaise, a vague dread that I wasn’t doing something right. As I gradually got more in touch with my creative voice, I got the unstoppable urge to write. At that point I had to argue with myself a little bit—“But I’m a doctor, not a writer”— but I also listened to a trusted friend who said she had always seen me as an artist.
Since I’ve always believed that healing is more art than science, I had to at least try. And writing, of course, facilitated my own self-healing. As I wrote chapters and then a book about fasting for detoxification, my body started to rebalance. I lost weight and gained mental clarity, energy, even a happier attitude. The process fed itself, making me almost evangelical about it!
But we all know that as a whole, natural health practitioners are devoted to inspiring, motivating and promoting greater self-responsibility, so that individuals can actively, intelligently seek their own perfect balance. It’s what motivates healers to give free lectures at health food stores, whether we end up speaking to five people or 50. It’s why we painstakingly prepare educational handouts for people we don’t even know.
And yet, all our talk about the psycho-spiritual issues that affect our ability to take better care of ourselves and better care of others might sound great on paper, but real life is another matter altogether. What about when you find yourself stuck in a distant airport in the middle of the night, with vending machines offering nothing but coffee, cola, crackers, candy...?
HT: Don’t forget chips. For me you help bring it to life when you talk about a “SNACC tax” as the high health cost of empty snacks rather than nutritious fuel.
EH: Ah yes, let’s talk about how to become less fixated on SNACCs: Sugar, Nicotine, Alcohol, Caffeine and Chemicals. I don’t think the answer is to say, “No more, never.” That’s not very practical, since most all of America’s Baby Boomers were heavily exposed to the S.A.D., standard American diet. It’s more practical to moderate one’s intake of “sin” foods...so that ice cream, wine or a burger is an occasional treat, not totally off-limits but also not part of one’s day-to-day nutritional choices.
HT: I’ve heard you talk about a “SNACC tax” of a broader scope but in similar context to our government’s “sin tax” on tobacco and alcohol.
EH: I would impose a SNACC tax on the big companies who do more than just purposefully malnourish us. They purposefully poison us because they also have no regard for the permanent damage that their pollution causes. I think their companies should be taxed to death, taxed in advance for the havoc they intentionally wreak.
And what to do with the tax proceeds? Organic farming subsidies, fair pay for the teachers who educate our children, pollution control. I wish that America would focus on huge-scale filtration systems to help eliminate toxins from the air and water. I’m not saying we won’t ever need bombs and fighter planes—we all wish we didn’t—but I think that our poisoned environments here and abroad certainly, without question, fuel toxic thinking and toxic emotions, which leads to fear, which leads to hatred.
If we can stop or even just consciously, purposefully help slow down the deadly pollution and vocally refuse to be poisoned, then our plants and planets and everyone in between will feel their innate survival instinct kick in, strong. What we do to the earth, we do to ourselves and to our children and to our children’s children.
Can we heal the earth? I don’t know, but how on earth could we not even try?
HT: In your early rural practice during the 1970s you personified the pioneer spirit, bartering farm goods for healthcare services...
EH: One patient traded me this ring (extends hand) with blue lapis and green malachite stones that look like a globe. She called me “a doctor of the earth.”
HT: In this techno-world of ours, how can we reclaim the simple sweetness of trading treasures with each other— our own time and talents— rather than betting on the world’s finite energy supply? How can we nurture each person’s unique, individual contribution over the stagnating drain of “Group-Think”?
EH: The outward answer is the same as the inner answer. When I get confused or fearful about any type of situation, now I can instinctively “go inside” and ponder: Why have I encountered this problem, at this time in my life? What is my inner guidance trying to say?
When we can consciously strive to give others that exact same deep consideration, then we are meeting people on a human-to-human level, eyeto-eye and heart-to-heart, not fear-to-fear and hate-to-hate. Outer harmony begins within, and one of the highest forms of medicine is transformation.
HT: Sounds true to me. Thanks for your time, and CCNH looks forward to having you back with us next spring.
EH: Same here. Be well.
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Detoxification: The Latest Rage and the Oldest Sage
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EDITORIAL NOTE:
Mary Grace McCord
