ASK THE EXPERT
GLADYS McGAREY
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 50
P: What’s on top of your bucket list?
P: What do you see as the biggest challenges advocates of
M: I’ve established a Foundation for Living Medicine and we’re
holistic medicine face in the effort to create a paradigm
in the process of creating a Center for Living Medicine, which
shift in how we view health and disease?
will include a birthing center. That’s very important for me to
M: I think the biggest challenge that we have is having people
do before I die. n
understand that they are the ones that do the healing within
themselves. It is not somebody outside themselves. It’s not
RUTH
medicines that heal us, it’s not somebody outside of ourSTRICKER
'S
selves, it’s our own life force. We have to have
WISE
something to live for. If you don’t have something to
VOICES
S
PEAKER
live for, you can’t put any effort into living for it. You
O
CT. 18
don’t even realize that you are living. Even pain—pain is
not our enemy. I’m not opposed to getting rid of the pain if
you can, but if that’s the primary focus, and not finding out
what that pain’s really about and what you’re really living with,
then there’s something wrong with our attitude. Our attitude
needs to come back to the person, come back to the healing
that’s going on within each patient, and the therapeutic modalities that we use need to be the ones that enhance that, not the
ones that try to get rid of the process.
P: How can the spa industry help bridge the gap between
conventional and holistic medicine?
M: Exactly what the spa industry is doing. You’re giving people
an opportunity to do something for themselves. Reclaiming
health – not reclaiming youth. There’s a difference.
ccording to
Gladys McGarey,
the Foundation
for Living Medicine
consists of five “L’s”—
living up to each of
them paves the way to
a healthy, holistic and
life-centric approach to
wellness and healing.
A
52 PULSE
n
August 2015
LIFE: “You have to be alive. Life itself is the great healer—
if you’re not alive, nothing else counts.”
LOVE: “If love doesn’t enter into the healing process, it
doesn’t really heal. You can cure a disease and not really heal
a person. And you can heal a person and not cure a disease.”
LAUGHTER: “You got to put some juice in it. If there isn’t
something to laugh about or something to enjoy in life, it
becomes very dry.”
LABOR: “You have to work at it.”
LISTENING: “We have to listen to the world around us, we
have to listen to what other people are saying, but we also
have to listen to what I’m calling ‘the physician within us.’
Within our own being is the ability to heal.”