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Improving health outcomes is the goal of every practitioner. Finding the solutions for challenging chronic conditions often requires precious time, extensive research, and sometimes even trial and error. Join Rob Lutz, the host and founder of Today’s Practitioner, as he interviews recognized experts and shares their knowledge and proven treatment protocols. Peer to peer guidance can be the most direct path to finding effective solutions for the conditions impacting your patients.
Rob Lutz 00:02
Hello and welcome to the OneMedicine Podcast with Today's Practitioner. In each episode, we share the expertise of a respected thought leader, some you will know and others you'll probably meet for the first time. We cover topics important to you, always with a focus on improving the health outcomes of the patients you treat, while expanding your understanding of the many healing modalities being used today.
Rob Lutz 00:24
Welcome to the OneMedicine Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Lutz. With me today is Wendie Coulter and I'll give you a brief bio on Wendie before we jump into the topic, but we're going to be talking about medical intuition. Wendie is definitely an expert, as you'll see here today during our conversation. Right now I'll share with you just a little bit about her background. Wendie Coulter is the founder and CEO of The Practical Path, presenting intuitive development programs for wellness professionals. An award-winning author and educator, Wendie is a Certified Medical Intuitive Practitioner, Master Certified Wellness Coach and the president of the National Organization for Medical Intuition, also known as NOMI. Her accredited certification program, Medical Intuitive Training, has been pivotal in helping integrative and holistic health care providers develop and optimize their inherent intuition. She is an invited presenter at prominent health and education organizations, including the Academy for Integrative Health and Medicine, the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, and others. Her trailblazing research on medical intuition is published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine. Wendie is the author of "Essentials of Medical Intuition: A Visionary Path to Wellness," the winner of a prestigious Nautilus Silver Award in Body, Mind, and Spirit Practices, and the International Book Awards and American Bookfest Book Awards in Health, focused on alternative medicine. Wendie, welcome and thank you so much for joining me today on the show. This is a great topic; you've shared lots of great information on our website; we've got a whole resource center dedicated to it. I think it's fascinating myself and really just can't wait to dig into this with you, and help our audience of medical professionals understand what it is and why they should consider this as something to bring into their practice as a toolkit to really help understand their patients and find those outcomes that they're really all striving for. So again, thank you so much for joining us. I have a question just to kind of get things started a little bit. This is not your normal medical direction that a lot of people take. What was it, was there an event that happened? What brought you towards this area that you're so passionate about?
Wendie Colter 02:46
Thank you, Rob, and thank you so much for having me; it's a pleasure to be here and to speak to you and your audience about this unique and somewhat ancient skill set. For me, I started working about 20 years ago or so as an energy healer and an intuitive energy healer, so to speak. I found that the information that I was receiving intuitively was really pretty profound and deep and detailed. As I worked more with the energy skill, I realized that some of my clients were coming back with the same issue over and over again and I wanted to know why. I thought, well, I'm already being able to--I had the skill where I was able to see into the body, actually see the anatomy and physiology and whatnot. I could also see into the life history. I know, this sounds kind of weird and "woo-woo," but it was very natural to me. I wondered if I could just do that first with my clients before I did any other kind of modality or intervention work with the healing stuff. I found that when I focused on just querying the body, asking it what was going on, where were the origins of this issue, what did it want, what did it not want--there was so much rich and important information for my client, that when I did the healing work on them, they were letting go of stuff that they'd been holding onto for years. They were noticing the difference, and they were telling their health care providers. Then I started getting phone calls from their doctors saying, I've got this other patient and can you look at them and blah, blah, blah. So that's interestingly not that unusual for medical intuitives. I didn't even call myself that back then. I didn't know what to call it. That's how I kind of got into it. There's no--there wasn't any school at the time that I could study at. So I figured this is really interesting stuff.
Rob Lutz 04:49
And when was that? How long ago was that?
Wendie Colter 04:51
It was almost 22 years ago now.
Rob Lutz 04:54
So were you a health coach, were you or a Reiki practitioner? What were you doing then?
Wendie Colter 05:01
I studied a lot of different kinds of energy modalities. I've been interested in intuition all my life, I was a very intuitive kid, blah, blah, blah. A lot of stories like that with the intuitive community. But what I noticed was that the more I worked with my intuition, the more--and energy healing is a really wonderful thing, because you're kind of moving energy through your body or through your hands or something, there's a million different practices. I did study Reiki, I studied other kinds as well. But I ended up moving away from energy healing and into this observation and assessment skill, because I saw that it didn't matter what the modality was, including conventional medicine. The treatments are the treatments, but the information to guide the treatments is what medical intuition offers. That's something different. So it really doesn't belong in a modality category at all. I consider it a foundational skill set for any.
Rob Lutz 06:04
So before we get into medical intuition, I would like to hear your definition of what is intuition? You How would you define that for the audience here?
Wendie Colter 06:16
Absolutely. Well, we all have it. We're all born with it. It's a natural human ability, a natural human trait. How I describe it is some children are born with a proclivity or a bent to math, or sports, or art. Some children are born with a bent or natural ability for intuitive skills. Even though we all have it, some kids just kind of show more of that. I was one of those kids. But here's the thing: anybody can learn to draw, anybody can learn to play sport, or the violin or something. The question is, do you want to develop it? I wanted to develop it; I kind of naturally wanted to. It was always fun and amusing and interesting for me. Then when I got into the energy work part of it, I saw the value of it, at least this version of it, for healthcare, and that really is what started my path. But we all have it. So if we think about intuition as something that we can develop, in other words, if you wanted to learn Italian you wouldn't you wouldn't expect yourself to know Italian, or even how to learn Italian, you'd go take a class, you'd go learn. That's really honestly, Rob, the reason I set up my school is because not only did I want to practice this, I wanted to teach practitioners how to use it, because I saw the value for them. That's how I teach and that's how I learned.
Rob Lutz 07:44
That's great. I think all of us have had an experience where you feel like: How did I know that? Or why was I thinking about that? But most of us probably just brush it off as something that was weird or unusual, and don't give it much more thought.
Wendie Colter 08:02
I will interject and say most of the time, children who are intuitive or hushed. We're told to stop talking and don't tell our impressions or our perception. Because it's not really well understood, there's a lot of superstition. Listen, when I speak at healthcare conferences, integrative healthcare conferences, if I use any of those, "clair- words": clairvoyance, clairsentience, you can clear a room of doctors with the word "clairvoyance" in about a nanosecond. And that's unfortunate, because it just means clear seeing, or clear hearing, or clear experience, clear feeling or whatever. It's very misunderstood and stigmatized, particularly in healthcare.
Rob Lutz 08:49
What it makes me think of, in a way, is I'm colorblind. Not everybody sees colors the same way, even two people that don't think they're colorblind probably don't perceive those frequencies exactly the same. So I'm thinking maybe intuition is something similar, where you're able to sense or feel, see things that maybe somebody else can't see. But maybe they can be trained to be able to recognize those things over time. Does that make sense?
Wendie Colter 09:20
Sure, I train doctors, nurses, psychologists, health coaches, massage the you name it, acupuncturist. I train anyone in the healthcare field that wants to learn how to do this. Some people come in with a sense of their own intuition, and some people come into this with absolutely "not an intuitive bone in their body," they say, and they all learn the same. It's a skill set. It takes time; it takes practice, right? And it takes the right kind of education, in my opinion. All of those things put together really can offer--well, I'll just tell you, my students, my graduates, it's a year long program, and at the end of that year, they are reading, they're seeing, they're scanning, they're doing this work at what I would consider a three- to five-year level of skill set. They're bringing it into their practices immediately. That's what I want to see. So, I can't vouch for anybody else's way of doing it, but I wanted to create a program that was--it really got everyone who takes it to a level that is professional. That's what we do.
Rob Lutz 10:35
So I mean, you're definitely a trailblazer in this area. Are there other groups out there that are trying to do similar stuff that you're connected with? Or is it really just NOMI that's really at the forefront of it all, at this point.
Wendie Colter 10:49
Medical intuition has been so stigmatized, that there's so little research on it. It's kind of been in the shadows. The National Organization for Medical Intuition was formed about three years ago now. We got together a bunch of medical intuitives who are like: Well, we all kind of do this similarly, we've all been working with doctors forever. Why are we still in the shadows? Why isn't this skill set known and brought forward. Why isn't there any research on this? As a matter of fact, I don't want to segue too hard here, but I did my research and 2019-2020, because I couldn't--there's so little on the books. And what there is out there in PubMed and where you can read about it, published research, it's all "inconclusive" or "promising," which is wonderful. We love "promising."
Rob Lutz 11:42
Right. "Promising" is great.
Wendie Colter 11:43
But there hasn't been a lot of additional study on it; it's really been in the background. So the national organization came together because some colleagues and friends and people who were also practicing professional medical intuitives, we were looking around going: What the heck, why isn't there an organization for us? Why isn't there an understanding of what the skill set is? I was writing my book at the time as well. We just decided that it was time to bring it out of the shadows, to talk about the professional practice of medical intuition, how it can benefit healthcare, how intuitives are already working in healthcare. So the very first thing we did--honestly, even before we incorporated--was a survey, we identified over a thousand medical intuitives in the United States that present themselves as professional medical intuitives, and we sent a survey to them saying: Okay, #1: How do you use your skills? We just wanted to get a lay of the land. We also said: Do you work with licensed healthcare professionals or do you get referrals from licensed healthcare professionals? And are YOU a licensed health care professional? Here's what we found. No one had ever bothered to ask this question before. Of the medical intuitives we surveyed, we found that 82% of them offer and work with licensed healthcare professionals for medical intuitive services for their patients, directly with them. 82%! I mean, hello, that was a crazy number. We also saw that 86% of those medical intuitives receive referrals. Now, that doesn't surprise me; it didn't surprise us. We all have received referrals, under the radar. We also found that 30% of them themselves are licensed healthcare professionals in something: Massage therapists or acupuncturists or something like that. That was another really nice surprising note. It's like, wow, this really is already integrated into health care. How come nobody's talking about it? So that's really why NOMI wanted to take the bull by the horns. So we've written a white paper on this survey that we did with a bunch more information. It's on the website: nomimedicalintuition.org. Just with the results of the survey and what we feel medical intuition can offer, honestly, our goals are to have a nice, strong database of vetted medical intuitives, professionals that healthcare providers can reach out to and integrate into their practices as well. We're seeing more and more of this. My graduates are--I don't have a job placement for them. However, I keep getting emails from all of them saying: Hey, I just got hired here, and I just got to this clinic, and that clinic. So clearly, something's shifting.
Rob Lutz 14:48
Well, what you said early on when you're speaking at some of these events, and there are licensed medical professionals in the audience, and they're going to be probably pretty skeptical, right?
Wendie Colter 14:58
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Rob Lutz 14:59
This isn't something they were taught even at Bastyr, probably, right?
Wendie Colter 15:04
Well, Bastyr, maybe. They teach about energy, put it that way.
Rob Lutz 15:10
So they're going to be more open to it, but they're going to want to see the research, right?
Wendie Colter 15:13
Absolutely.
Rob Lutz 15:13
So, you've done some research that's been published now. I'd like you to just talk a little bit about that study, what the findings were. If you could just spend a couple minutes talking about that, I think that'd be very interesting.
Wendie Colter 15:26
I could spend an hour talking about it. So because the research was so thin, it was just so inconclusive. I worked with some colleagues at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Paul Mills and others. What the goal was is to...it was basically a subjective exploratory survey study, because we're seeing what we could get out of it. So we had five of my graduates and 67 participants from the community, some of whom were patients at UCSD Medical, some from Scripps, where I did some teaching. We looked to see what the patient's perceptions were of what the medical intuitive saw. So we queried them with a Likert scale kind of a survey. It was anonymous and all the rest of that. We did it as blind as we could get it. The medical intuitives in my program always close their eyes, so we're not seeing anybody, we don't have visual cues. There's none of that. What we came out with was 94% accuracy in the medical intuitive's ability to locate and evaluate their primary health issue. Now, we don't do an intake; these are what we would call a "cold read," no prior knowledge at all. That's part of the blinding there. That was a lovely number. We honestly didn't expect to see it that high. We were thrilled with that. We also saw--remember, I mentioned a little bit that I could see into life history? I teach that as well, because we want to know root cause, right? So the participants rated the medical intuitives as 98% accurate in possible or probable life history event that may have led to their health issues. That was a beautiful number as well. Everyone always wants to know root cause, right?
Rob Lutz 17:29
Yeah, definitely, for sure.
Wendie Colter 17:31
What could also be root cause? Early life trauma--hello? A number of issues: accidents and things that later in life can flare. There's a myriad of issues that can come all through your life and medical intuition is designed to review it. So that's also very illuminating. One number that really spoke to the medical world is we asked the participants how consistent the medical intuitive was with a known diagnosis. Again, the medical intuitive has no knowledge of this. Medical intuitives do not diagnose, by the way. That's not within our scope of practice; we just observe. We'll state what our observations are. 94% consistency with known medical diagnoses. Now, that is kind of the brass ring, that the medical world wants to see, understandably, and we were just delighted with that result. There were more as well. I wrote about them in my book. "Essentials of Medical Intuition." Much of it was published in the "Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine 2020," so that's findable on PubMed.
Rob Lutz 18:42
What we'll do for the listeners, the show notes will be available on all the links that you've mentioned, and your website and ways to get in contact with you will all be there for them to find. I think that's interesting. It sounds like the type of research that could be compelling for a practitioner that might be a little bit skeptical of something like this. So, if you've got a case study of some sort that you could maybe share? How does it work? What does it look like for a medical intuitive to work with a patient and a practitioner, if you could maybe share one of those.
Wendie Colter 19:21
I've got a million of them. But I'll share the one that really speaks to both the physical and the emotional, mental, spiritual you could say, aspects of a health imbalance--everybody wants medical intuitives to say, do I have this? Do I not have this? Obviously, we can't do that. We can't diagnose. We can give you information to take to your doctors, to take to your practitioners. That's really how doctors and clinicians work with medical intuitives. They ask a lot of questions. The medical intuitive takes a look or whatever, however they perceive. So a case study here that's a good example of the full scope is a client early on in my practice, who had kind of a persistent case of tendonitis in her wrist. Tendonitis is not a massive major healthcare issue, but she had it for about a month and it wasn't going away. She'd been seeing her doctor and her acupuncturist and this and that, and nothing was working. She asked me to look at it. So what I saw--I use a visual skill, it's that crazy word "clairvoyance" again, meaning clear seeing, so I use visual mind's-eye-type visual intuition. In her wrist, what I did see was the tendons that look very, very sore and inflamed, and it was kind of going up her arm, and it was there, it was obvious. Underneath the tendons, I saw what looked like a healed bone fracture. Also around her wrist, I saw it looked like a cloud of emotion. Right? So all of this was kind of hanging out in her wrist. So this is when I start querying the body. I say, what is it I'm looking at here? What do you what to show me?
Rob Lutz 21:09
One question: I was going to ask this before. So these questions, are you internalizing these questions? Or are you actually speaking them out loud with the patient right there?
Wendie Colter 21:19
No, no, it's not for the patient. It's really internal. It's between my intuitive perception and their physiology, their bodies, their energy systems, whatever you want to call it, you could call it a quantum field if you want. But their energy is what I'm looking at. I'm not discussing anything with the client, they're just hearing information about what I'm seeing. Now I'm going to back up a little bit, and say that the premise of medical intuition is that the body holds information, physical, emotional, mental, even spiritual. The body hangs on to things even if we think we've processed it, or it's in the past. There's plenty of research about that from adverse childhood experiences. You know, all those all the research about that, well, physically, the body holds things, too. So that's the premise of this. So what I asked the body was: Show me what there is to see here. What it showed me--this client was in her 40s--it showed me an image of like a little movie of her life, in her 20s, where she was playing tennis with her boyfriend, and she swung her racquet and she tripped and fell and she broke that wrist. That was where that healed fracture came from. I'm looking at that going, that's interesting. Then the next thing I saw was her and her boyfriend in the hospital room, her getting a wrist taped up and her boyfriend breaking up with her in the hospital room. What that showed me was--what her body was showing me--was that not only did it hold the physical trauma of the break, but it also held the emotional trauma of the breakup. All that's in her wrist.
Wendie Colter 22:06
That's funny: a broken bone and a breakup.
Wendie Colter 23:04
It's really an interesting juxtaposition there. She stopped me and she corroborated. She said, Oh my God, I hadn't thought about that in years. Then she said, Oh my goodness, I'm going through--she just had gone through a major breakup a month prior, just before the tendonitis flared up--with her current partner. That connection was the body showing her that there's something in the present moment that connected her to the past. That's why it flared up right there. Now, this is interesting. There was more to see; her wrist showed me more. When I saw was her at about age five. I saw her in a dark closet, there were clothes kind of around her. Dark, not a light on. She was holding that same arm and wrist up in front of her face for protection. A cane was striking her right at that same wrist spot. It was wielded by what looked like a woman, probably her mother. She again corroborated that. She said, I know exactly what you're talking about. My mother was mentally ill. She used to beat me with her cane and lock me in a closet. Now this is early life trauma. So, it's emotional and physical at the same spot where she was having an issue now that wasn't resolving quickly.
Rob Lutz 24:23
That's amazing.
Wendie Colter 24:24
Isn't that interesting? Now, the next thing I do in a session, obviously, once I've seen the life history, I've seen the physiology of it, I'm going to ask the higher self: What else is going on that my client needs to know? How can this heal? So physically, it was all the obvious stuff she was already doing: ice and rest and immobility and all that. But it also showed me that her the rest of the physiology was reactive to this and I need to see all of it. For medical intuitives, our job is to see what else is happening in the body because otherwise you're just looking through this little tiny lens. So what I saw was there was some gut imbalance going on from the stress of the breakup and the stress of the pain. There was sleep impairment; she wasn't sleeping well. There were other things going on, some cortisol, whatever, all that jazz. There were some good recommendations from her body about that. But the underlying issues were emotional and there were some recommendations on that as well. Now, she called me two days later, and she said: It's gone, it's gone! Oh, my goodness! What happened was, she began processing the emotions of not only the breakup, but these other incidents in her life that were kind of hanging out in the energy field, and in her physiology, and she she felt like it was gone; it lifted off of her. So that kind of result is phenomenal.
Rob Lutz 25:48
That's amazing.
Wendie Colter 25:56
We can know about our past, and most of us who are intelligent, emotional beings, we think about our past, and we process the emotions of our past. But the body can hang on, the energy systems can hang onto things that are still unprocessed. I always find this fascinating. It puts these puzzle pieces together, that our minds and our logical brains might not, mostly do not. That's one of the major values of medical intuition, that it can put these things together in a way that people can actually release, and let go of things that have been hanging out for a long time.
Rob Lutz 26:34
So are most of the patients you work with, does it come back to some kind of an emotional trauma that happened previously? Is that the majority of them, would you say?
Wendie Colter 26:46
Yes and no; it depends on what the focus of the session is. When I work with clinicians, generally speaking, they don't ask me those questions. When I work with clients, always, always. They want to know; I want to know. I want to help them and looking for early--now, here's something interesting about trauma: that's a loaded word. For the psychological and the mental healthcare world, it really means major, major trauma--all the stuff that we hear about: physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse. For a medical intuitive, we might see what I call subtle or hidden trauma, meaning incidents from your life that may not seem like they're--you kind of blow them off, but they're still stuck in the energy and they're still active, and they're still causing imbalance in the energy field, which can cause imbalance in the physical body, or the emotional state or whatever. So we're going to look for it, whether it's small or large, whether someone feels like it's not important. If it shows up, there's something to know. That's one of the principles here that I work with.
Rob Lutz 27:58
So could you give me an example where maybe a practitioner asked his patient to come see you? What would that scenario look like? What would an example be?
Wendie Colter 28:11
You mean a referral from a clinician?
Rob Lutz 28:12
Yeah, it's a practitioner that's--are they kind of stuck with: I can't get this wrist to heal kind of thing? Or typically, when would they refer their patient to you?
Wendie Colter 28:24
Typically, at that moment, when it's a challenging case, a case that has not resolved, a patient who's had all the treatments and nothing's worked or they've even tried alternative type of treatments and nothing's worked. Typically, that's when they come to medical intuitives. I wish they didn't wait that long, to be totally honest, because one of the things that I can do or we can do is discern the best modes. What is the body really wanting? Is it this or that? This, that or the other? We can help a practitioner hone that; that's one of our jobs. For the patient as well. People can spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars chasing things. So those cases, I love those cases, because the body can show me. I have so many stories of this I can tell you, a case study of this, if you like.
Rob Lutz 29:17
Yeah, that'd be great. I'd love that.
Wendie Colter 29:18
Yeah, this actually really nailed down--this was very early in my practice; it was one of my first few clients. This really kind of nailed down medical intuition for me as a life saving skill potentially. This was a young woman--this was over 20 years ago--she had a lot of pain in her mid back and she had gone to every doctor in town and they couldn't find anything. So they called it psychosomatic and it had been going on for a while. It was right there in her mid back; it was a lot of pain every day, all day. So they gave her opioids for the pain because she was clearly in pain, even through they couldn't find the source of it, and antidepressants. So they said: it's got to be in your mind. When she came to me, within--oh, I don't know--10 minutes, 5 minutes, less, I saw that there was a little shard, a little crystallized shard in her. I think it was her left kidney. It had come out of the kidney and it was very tiny; it had embedded itself at the top of the ureter tube and it wasn't going down. It wasn't moving. It just wasn't. We all know what that is, but nobody could find it. I didn't find out later until why. But in any case, when I looked at her kidney, I'm talking to her kidney, I'm like: What does it need? Can she just drink gallons of water? Can she flush it out? The answer was: Go see a surgeon. It was like, block letters: TELL HER TO SEE A SURGEON. Okay, I think she's seen everybody, but go see a surgeon. So I drew her a picture of where it was. I said it's here, it's over here. Take this to somebody, go out there, it looks like there might be someone out there that will listen to you. Take that out there and see what you can find. Luckily she did. She didn't give up, thank God. She took it out there, she found a surgeon who was willing to take her case because none of the testing showed this. The reason none of the testing showed this, I didn't find out till later, is because at the time the technology wasn't seeing things at this tiny, tiny size. It can probably now, but no one saw it. So they assumed it wasn't there. So she found a surgeon, they did the procedure, she was out of pain, he diagnosed it correctly, she took the picture to him, and this person said: Hmm, there's something there. So that's a wonderful outcome. Unfortunately, and this is really where the corner turned for me, she had become so addicted to the opioids by then, Rob, that she overdosed. She died of an overdose in her 20s. This just floored me. It should never have happened. I mean, think about it, if her doctors could have consulted with a medical intuitive to say there's really something there and here's what I see it is--take a closer look, would she still be alive? I would hope so. I would think so. The treatment plan would have been completely different, I would have assumed. When I heard the story, it came back to me a couple years later--her parents called me actually and told me--I thought, okay, this means something here. I have to bring this as best I can into healthcare, because this should not happen. Every medical intuitive professional worth their profession has seen clients like this, who have gone through the mill, who've been seen as a piece or part of their body and not the whole picture of it and who haven't gotten the help they need. Look, the statistics out there in the medical world don't lie, they tell you this: Misdiagnosis, missed diagnoses, missed treatments, over-treatment, under-treatment. I'm not saying medical intuition can cure all of it or be a panacea for all of it. But it didn't--Lord, it certainly can help bring a cost effective and valuable, targeted skill set to the field. So you can see I'm rather passionate about it.
Rob Lutz 33:36
That's an amazing story. It really is. It just makes me think that this should be part of most practices, that there would be someone that could also take a look, because we think about a lot of modern medicine now. You get your three minutes with the doctor and four minutes with whoever the assistant is. There's really not asking questions, certainly not asking questions of the body. Maybe there's a bunch of tests, but it sounds like--yeah, I think it's fascinating, and the fact that there's now supporting research that validates what you already knew, is interesting to me.
Wendie Colter 34:17
I can talk about a little bit more research that's coming down the pike.
Rob Lutz 34:20
Yeah, please.
Wendie Colter 34:22
Again, research for medical intuition is way overdue. One of the things that this study has given us the opportunity, the one that was in "Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine," it started some balls rolling, which we're very excited about. I'm involved in a study that is really just underway. Where we are pairing medical intuitives, a clinician, and a patient together and studying that to see how that goes, and that we hope will open some doors into the integrative health care world to understand how this process, how this practice can benefit both them and their patients. Firsthand knowledge.
Rob Lutz 35:10
Fantastic.
Wendie Colter 35:10
Yeah, it's kind of exciting. No one's ever attempted this. So we'll see how it goes. But we're very positive about it.
Rob Lutz 35:19
That's great. One thing that you you mentioned before: What is medical intuition and what is it not? I think that might be an important thing for a conventional practitioner to really be clear on what you see it to be and make clear what you know that it's not, you don't want to position it that way. Can you talk to that a little bit?
Wendie Colter 35:41
Yeah, and my my position on this is no means the national organization's position on this, we see medical intuition as an assessment skill that is designed to support any kind of health care, any kind, and that support is what we are offering. So that's what it is. What it isn't is energy healing, or healing, or an intervention. So it's not an intervention, it's not a treatment, it's not a healing skill. You can use those with it, if that's your bent, or you can use those after it. But it's not meant to heal; it's meant to observe, assess, and give data, information. That information is what a treatment plan a forward motion, how the patient understands, where this began, what it can do, how to move forward--I call it kind of a path forward in a healing circumstance. So that's what it is. That's what it is not; it's not diagnosis, it's not prognosis, it's not prescription, unless the medical intuitive is legally licensed to do that. I'm not. I'm a health coach; I'm not a clinician, so I can't do any of that. But I can tell you what I see. The patient, or my clients, take that to their doctors, and their doctors can hear that, they can consult with me if they want, and they can develop their treatment plans out of it. You know, it's very new. It's burgeoning. Some clinicians are open to this, and some are not. When my clients come back, and they say, I told my doctor everything you showed me, and they were fascinated, and guess what? This happened, and that happened. I'm like: Okay, let's write this down, because we need to gather this evidence of the efficacy of it, and that your clinician was willing to listen.
Rob Lutz 37:38
And so are you collecting some of that, in a way, with your organization, or--because that, to me, feels like a way that you could be more convincing to a conventional practitioner.
Rob Lutz 37:49
Oh, without question.
Rob Lutz 37:49
Here's someone who is just like me, who had a patient I've seen. I was struggling in the same way. This was the information that came back, and sure enough, I was able to do X, Y, and Z and help that patient.
Wendie Colter 38:00
Yeah, and also even refer them to specialists or whatever else is needed. Yeah, we have years of that, and in my program, the students keep--we do a lot of practicum hours, and all of those hours are documented. In that documentation, we have a lot of really great anecdotal information. And also, over the years, the medical intuitives have been keeping that information. A lot of it's in my book, I wrote down a lot of it. What we would really, really love--and for this audience in particular--to go to the National Organization for Medical Intuition's website, and become a supporting member. Because what that gives us is the opportunity to connect with you, with our professional base, and we just started this, we've got about 40 medical intuitives, that we would consider are working at professional level right now through that organization--through my school, many, many more--but that are with us in the organization. We want at least that many practitioners, clinicians, so that we can pair you guys up. You can see how this works. You can see what kind of value you can get out of this. Certainly the graduates of my program that are all available on my website, you can do that with as well. We want more data, we just want more documentation.
Rob Lutz 39:25
That makes sense. That's what's really going to be compelling and convince more practitioners to integrate this into how they're evaluating or working with the more challenging patients because it sounds like it's really going to be the more challenging patient where they've kind of run into a brick wall. They just can't, can't figure this one out.
Wendie Colter 39:44
You're right. In the study that I mentioned earlier with the patient, the clinician and the medical intuitive, the patients are that kind of patient. They're not responding to treatment.
Rob Lutz 39:57
And the doctor just can't figure out what it is and how they think it's all in your head.
Wendie Colter 40:03
Well, luckily, they probably don't, which is why they want to take part in the study, at least I hope so. But the other thing is I would really--and we would really like to do longitudinal studies where we follow patients and doctors with recommendations. Long COVID is a perfect example. I would love to set something up like that, if anyone's interested, please reach out.
Rob Lutz 40:25
Well, I've got a couple of docs that I think might be open to something like this. I'll see if I can put you in touch with them, that focus on Long COVID. Let's see, we talked about a case study. We will, as I said, we'll include the links. But can you just talk a little bit about the programs and the classes that you offer, and what someone might expect, how that might work?
Wendie Colter 40:52
Absolutely. So the medical intuitive training is a two-level program. Level 1 is four months, one weekend intensive per month, then practicum hours in between. We do have conference calls in between as well. We also offer mentorship--mentoring one-on-one with my staff and my my faculty. So that goes on for four months; at the end of four months, what you'll learn is how to scan and evaluate the biofield. Now, the biofield, for those who don't know, is the energy system of the body, meaning in ancient terms, the chakra system and the auric field. Some people are familiar with this; some are not. But it's really fascinating to look at that stuff. In Level 2 is a five-month program, same organization, one weekend intensive a month for five months, practicum hours and conference calls and mentorship in between. There we are looking at the physiology of the body, all of the systems of the body in detail and in depth. And reading, scanning the body for these imbalances in these different areas physically. We also look at life history. So we want to see where the origins of these issues manifested. It's just a lot of that. So again, at the end of the program, it is a certification program. I think it might be the only certification offered in this skill set in the US. I could be wrong, but I set it up that way because it has meaning and it needs that and it has that depth of practice as well and observation demonstration. So it is a certification program. What else can I tell you about it? It is live online. All done in Zoom in real time. Real time live online, no self study. The self study is the practice, but educationally it's all done in the classroom in the Zoom classroom. We have people from all over the world. It's very exciting. Physicians and nurses and you name it, health coaches and whatnot, coming to us from all over and we're just thrilled. It's so much fun. Fascinating work.
Rob Lutz 43:05
Are you able to scan without being in person?
Wendie Colter 43:09
Yeah.
Rob Lutz 43:10
You can?
Wendie Colter 43:11
Yeah, it's a remote skill. I personally work with clients all over the world. So, I'm on the phone with them or on Zoom with them, but I don't see them. They don't see me. It's a blinded practice in that respect. It works at a distance. That's one of the really wonderful things about this kind of work. It's non-local, you could say, if you've looked into that, and that just means non-local consciousness means that you don't need to be in present moment with somebody.
Rob Lutz 43:44
I've heard about distance healing where you're not face-to-face with somebody. I'm sure it's on that same level of energy or whatever the term would be. That would have to be side-by-side with somebody.
Wendie Colter 43:56
That's what makes it, again, such a flexible skill. Yeah. Now, the other program that I offer, I wanted to mention is for anyone, for everyone. It's called medical intuition for healing and self-care. Many clinicians will recommend their patients to this because it's a way to learn how to use that visual skill set that I teach with yourself so that you can have a conversation with your kidney or your liver or your gut, whatever's going on, and really ask it some very poignant and pointed questions, and start to develop that connection. Everybody talks, Rob, about the mind/body connection. Well, what is that? Is that random? You don't know? So, you can actually learn how to get that intuitive connection with your own body. I've used it all the time. It's hugely valuable. I think more people--personally, I think more people should have that skill set. So I do teach that. That is a self-study program that will launch in the next couple or months. So if you're listening to this, we're still in 2024. Hopefully it'll have launched already in mid-year. But we're very excited about that. I've been teaching this workshop for many years, and people love it. So, there's that.
Rob Lutz 45:14
That's great. Well, I love to see people that have taken something they're passionate about, and, try to bring it to the world and share what you've learned. It really feels like you've got something here that will help a lot of people. It sounds like it already has. That's great to see.
Wendie Colter 45:32
Thank you.
Rob Lutz 45:34
Is there one final thought? What do you want the listeners to walk away with if there's one kind of pearl from what you've learned, and is there anything you feel like you'd like to share?
Wendie Colter 45:46
Absolutely. Your body, our bodies have their own consciousness. You know, every cell in your body is sentient, you could say. It has consciousness, it wants to heal, it wants to live in vibrancy. Our organs, our systems, and listening to or hearing what your body has to say to you can really make major shifts in your own perception. I encourage everyone to practice however they choose, even just being quiet and breathing, doing breath work, taking a moment just to look inside or just quiet the mental chatter, even with a meditation practice, or even just sitting outside under a tree or something like that is very, very healing for the body. Your body wants to speak to you. I encourage everyone to take the time to listen.
Rob Lutz 46:48
Yeah, I bet your body is always speaking to you.
Wendie Colter 46:51
Always.
Rob Lutz 46:51
We're just not always listening, or we don't know how to listen...
Wendie Colter 46:54
That's it.
Rob Lutz 46:54
...or realize that there's a message there, right?
Wendie Colter 46:57
Yeah, that's it.
Rob Lutz 46:59
Yeah. Really cool stuff. I'm so glad we had a chance to talk. I really enjoyed it.
Wendie Colter 47:05
Me too, Rob, thank you.
Rob Lutz 47:08
Thanks for listening to the OneMedicine Podcast. I hope you found today's episode interesting and came away with a few insights you can apply to your practice. If you're looking for the show notes, they can be found in the link below. If you want to go deeper on this topic or anything else, please visit todayspractitioner.com and consider registering for our weekly newsletter as well. Thanks again. I hope you'll join us next time.