Healing Is Not a Protocol
Despite what your favorite wellness guru says...
I’ve been thinking a lot about how complicated healing has become in the wellness world today. How it’s been co-opted, protocoled, and sold to the masses through extreme claims and contradictions.
Yes, healing is nuanced. It’s rarely straightforward. It’s not linear. It doesn’t follow a neat timeline. But it’s also not always as aggressive, burdensome, or expensive as it’s often made out to be.
Somewhere along the way, healing turned into protocols. Stacks. Plans. Timelines. Thousands of dollars spent on supplements and programs that promise optimization or transformation. And I think we lost something important in the process.
Because at its core, especially in integrative medicine, healing is often about returning to yourself. Returning to equilibrium. Returning to homeostasis.
One of the foundational principles of integrative medicine, and the lens through which I practice, is guiding the body back toward balance. The body is wise. The body is intelligent. The body knows how to heal itself when the right conditions are in place.
Healing is multidimensional. It’s layered. It’s not one pill, one diet, or one supplement. A sound approach to healing considers the whole person. Your story. Your trauma. The meaning you’ve assigned to your illness. Your upbringing. Your environment. Your food. Your microbiome. Your stress levels. Your work. Your sleep. Your relationships.
When you list it all out like that, it can sound overwhelming. But I actually think it’s more accurate to call healing layered rather than complicated.
I often think of it like peeling an onion. Each layer brings you closer to the center. Closer to balance. Closer to healing.
This idea shows up across the pillars of wellness. Physical health, emotional health, environment, spirituality, financial stability, community. None of these exist in isolation, even if we often try to address them that way.
What frustrates me about many modern wellness conversations, especially on social media, is the lack of nuance. Extremes are easier to sell. Simple villains and miracle solutions are more profitable than sitting with complexity and actually listening to a human being.
Health is not one size fits all. Blanket statements about diet, lifestyle, or supplements can be misleading or even harmful when they ignore individual biology, nervous system state, environment, and lived experience.
Yes, there are general guidelines that tend to support most people. Eating whole foods. Moving your body gently or regularly. Prioritizing sleep. Drinking water. Those things matter.
But healing lives in the nuance.
There’s a difference between complexity and nuance. Complexity is when healing is made inaccessible through rigid protocols and endless additions. Nuance is when we slow down and look at what’s actually in the way for someone.
And sometimes, healing is less about adding more and more interventions and more about removing the barriers to healing.
Because oftentimes, the body already knows what to do.
