The Wisdom of the Body: Harmony Talks with Dr. Christine Page

Harmony: Would you speak about prevention—how can we shift from an illness-based health-care model to a wellness-based one?

Dr. Christine Page: I want to separate the term "wellness" from "preventive care." We have fairly good preventive programs here in the States, as there are in many countries, but preventive care is against illness. What we often find ourselves doing is focusing on the illness and not always on health. And so consciously, people take on sickness rather than doing anything because of wellness. If someone is going to have a colonoscopy, for example, we don't usually talk about what would it be like to have a healthy colon. And we tell people to eat the right things just in case they eat food high in cholesterol and get heart disease. What preventive care is looking for is disease states and making sure you don't have disease.

So my perception is we need to turn to a true wellness program, such as talking about what it would be like to have a healthy heart or a happy heart. What do we know that not just medically keeps the heart happy, but psychologically and spiritually brings us happiness? We know that a many people who have heart disease can tend to have a heart attack between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. on a Monday morning. What we know from that information is that when your heart is not in your work, or when you feel your heart dropping at the thought of another week ahead of you, this sends a blow to the heart. What makes people healthy is having excitement about their life, having people to talk to from the heart. We have a lot of thing we can share with people about having healthy organs.

To me, the focus of attention must be 70 percent on what it is to be healthy and the other 30 percent on what it will be the other way. And I think there is sometimes a fear—unfortunately, because of defensive medicine—that, as practitioners, if we don't tell them the symptoms, then we might miss something. And when we're coming from that place, we're constantly attracting into those people's lives that which we fear. A lot of the medicine has got to the point of doing preventive medicine so someone won't get blamed.

Harmony: So in some sense you see the term "preventive medicine" as still part of the conventional Western medical approach?

Page: I do. You know, I saw it played out in the old Soviet Union where they used to do a long stream of tests on everybody every year—totally inappropriately. And there, what I saw was people learned not to take care of their health that way because they literally were saying—I saw them in my own practice—"Well, I had a test a month ago, I can't have a disease." And you'd say to them, "But if you're feeling a lump in your breast, you've got to take note of that." So there is a concern that I have about preventive care that people can almost give away taking notice of their own body because of the tests. I would say true prevention is . . . what can I tell you about keeping your body healthy from a health perspective and not from a fear of illness.

Harmony: You have spoken about the body as a source of wisdom. Can you talk a little more about that?

Page: I would love to. Here again, I'm going to change the paradigm. What I believe is the body works for the soul and not for the personality. And I believe the body is a greater friend to you than you are to yourself. The body loves you so much it will even die for you! Not only do I say it from the perspective of my now thirty years of doing medicine, but from what I call "body dialogue." This is where I talk to the person's body. And I say to the person, to their body, as if I could speak to their body, "I know you want to help Susan." And the person says, from their mouth, "That's true." And I don't get much of a doubt. People think about it, but they don't say, "Oh, that's rubbish!" And I'm always amazed that the body affirms that it is our friend. And so what I say is the body is a true friend to you. If we ever took it to marriage guidance, it would already have divorced us!

In this kind of body dialogue, I literally ask the person to give me a small sentence about their illness. And then I ask them to relax, and I say, "I am going to talk to your body and I would ask that the body reply verbally, so that I need you to actually verbalize an answer." So I might say something like, "Who would like to speak to me?" And, for instance, the stomach may say, "I'll speak to you." And then I'd say, "Stomach, I hear there's been some problems. Could you tell us a little bit more about this—what you might understand?" Every part of the body I've ever talked to—and this is coming out of the person's mouth—the body has said something in line with the following: "I am really trying to digest what she's sends down, but if she won't stop and eat properly or if she's always trying to do six things at once, I can only go so far." When I then ask the stomach, in this instance, "Well, what drives her not to sit and enjoy her food?" It usually would be the brain! And when we go and speak to the brain, interestingly, the brain will say, "I am tired of pushing her along, but I have to keep doing that otherwise she gives way to something." The brain has often come in as a protector at a young age. Sometimes the brain says something like, "She doesn't seem to go forward unless I'm there." So we have to find a way of having another part of the body to start to take over. What I find is, in the body—even the mind or even the brain—all parts work to find a solution. I usually say to the body, "So, will you get better?" And the body says, "I'll only get better and the symptoms will dissipate when she stops doing what she's doing and until then I will continually give her a problem."

Harmony: It sounds like what you're saying is, in some circumstances, different parts are working against each other rather than working in concert.

Page: That also happens, and I have to say that the parts that work against each other are the brain against the rest of the body. We find that in parts of the body—take the left and right sides, for example—the right shoulder might say, "I seem to shoulder everything around here!" And the left shoulder may say in return, "Well, you know, I don't really want to do anything!" We then find a way of communicating between the two to say, "Could you take some of the load? That would really help." But also, I always reflect it back to the person. So I may say something like, "Well, where does she shoulder too much?" We always relate it back to the mind—the body doesn't get sick without a strong link to psychology. There is never a mistake. So someone holding back, may get a backache. Someone feeling that they just can't take anymore, either their hips, knees or shoulders go. It's never a mistake.

Harmony: What is the role of emotions in health? Are they the conduit between the body and spirit?

Page: That's a good way of putting it. I would say emotion is literally energy in motion. Every emotion is connected to an element and each will move in a different way.

For instance, the Fire emotion—anger—will make us have to change or make us have to transform. So that when we get angry, we either have to change our opinion or change our position. You can't stay in Fire! It will burn you one way or another. And when it doesn't get expressed—and as we all know, unfortunately a high percentage of cancer patients have anger that's never expressed—then you get chaos in the body. The cells are chaotic. Or you get problems with your gallbladder or liver disease. The anger is trying to get you to transform something.

Tears or sadness, as we would see them, are trying to dissolve something for you. Tears are very important in dissolving the past, dissolving what is no longer appropriate. And again, if we don't shed those tears, we see them, for example, in the lungs as water on the lungs or in the legs as excess fluid collection. So I see emotion as an interface and it's also the energy that makes for change. It changes, as you say, the spirit into physical and the physical into spirit.

Harmony: When a person is trying to integrate their emotions and understand what their body is saying to them, where do they get the courage to move more deeply into an issue? Most people have been trained either not to look at their emotions or not to look at certain parts of their body—or not to feel them. So where does that courage come from? Is it coming from the practitioner who literally shows them, "Oh, look, there's this way you can approach it." Is it an educational thing?

Page: It's a lot of different things. First of all, one of the questions I ask people is, "What was going on when you got sick?" I have to say, inevitably, especially with cancer patients, they will say, "I know why I have cancer." And I'm fascinated . . . people are, I think, desperate but they are so willing—they want to tell someone what they already know! I have many stories where people have said, "This was the way I got out of the situation, which I couldn't deal with any other way." There are so many stories that I hear—it really woke me up to something. And they know it, and they wait for someone to tell them! I do have people who say, "Ah, but it was falling down the stairs that caused the problem." And I respond, "No, what was going on before you fell down the stairs?" There is a tendency to link it to the problem rather than to look at what was going on when the problem arose.

I hear so many stories that are so beautifully metaphorical. A girl was telling me about breaking her hip—she was windsurfing. And she said, "I didn't head into the wind." And that was the whole story of her life at that time! She was scared of heading into the wind, and she turned and broke her hip. It was exactly what she was being asked to do spiritually—head right into it. One part of it is it's in the language. And yes, I would love practitioners to ask that question: What was going on when you got sick?

And, I think, one of the hardest adjustments to make is for someone not to see their body as the part of them that has let them down, not to separate from their body. There is a huge paradigm shift that has to take place. I really see the disconnect. We have such dissociation from our body, and part of that is Western culture, part of it is mythology that even goes back into, you could say, voodoo or witchdoctor time: When something outside hit you, you got possessed by something, and it's got nothing to do with you—you just need someone who will take away that possession. Now, we laugh at people with those ideas and yet we use exactly the same idea when we say something like "a virus hit me" or "cancer infected me, but it has nothing to do with me and I need someone else to get rid of it for me." So the idea of a demon or a possession, which is very rich in any indigenous people's thinking, or I should say, in the older, ancient energies, that's present in our culture as well.

I've had people with cancer tell me they've asked their doctor, "What can I do for myself?" And the doctor has said to them, "There's nothing you can do. These things just happen." That's such a disservice, because I don't care if you say to them, "What is it you feel you can do?" We know the quickest way of lowering the immune system is through helplessness. It's a totally unethical way of dealing with people to say there's nothing you can do.

Harmony: Where does that attitude come from—that finite stance? It's really like saying it's time to fall off the cliff.

Page: I think part of it is because the doctors feel helpless. Their training doesn't take them further. You know, years ago—I'm a homeopath as well—I did a lot of talking not only about homeopathy but other energy medicine. I was talking on an AIDS unit for children, and these doctors invited me to speak about homeopathy and so on, but didn't share my understanding about homeopathy. These young doctors said to me, "How can you, with all your scientific knowledge, believe such rubbish?" I turned to them and said, "How can you watch one child after another die in a family and say there's nothing we can do?" I went into medicine to help people, not to stand by and say because it's not in my toolbox there's nothing we can do.

Harmony: You say the body has a knowing. Is that knowing intuition?

Page: Absolutely. You know the intuition is like a knock on the door—sometimes with a sledgehammer! We all know it, yet we keep going. I've been training people in intuition—it's so important. Part of it is on the stubbornness level—not wanting to hear. And part of my task is helping people to listen at an earlier stage and realize, "You know, this just doesn't feel good." Also, part of the work is moving them with their thought beyond either a tribal belief—you want to fit in with everybody else—or the belief that you don't need to listen because it's mind over matter. Everybody hears their intuition but they don't always follow through. It comes through loud and clear and we don't want to hear it. People will have dreams and say to me, "I was in the passenger seat and we went over a cliff. What do you think it means?" Maybe get in the driver's seat! I see intuition as a connector to the soul.

Harmony: And so if illness is a message from the soul, is intuition is the way to tap into that?

Page: Absolutely. I say that 60 percent of illness is a wake-up call from the soul.

Harmony: Do you find that people can be trained to use their intuition—to move towards their soul if there is a disconnect?

Page: Yes. People have intuitive knowing. People will get messages from other areas of their life, but the beautiful thing about the body is that it really gets their attention! You know, they may be on their third marriage . . . but what hits them hard is when their body gets sick, because, of course, it stops them in their tracks. The messages are coming through thick and fast, but behind them are, very often, fears . . . the "what ifs"? The fact is, when the body takes over, you've lost the control. The control is saying, "I'm going to take you there." Essentially, I see illness as consciousness—it's a frequency of consciousness awaking integration.

Harmony: Is the function of the healer to facilitate that?

Page: Most definitely. And what I first start by saying to the client is the illness is not a weakness or failure—because we have to move out of the paradigm that it's a thing to be fixed. What we're really doing is supporting the client in their integration.

Harmony: And what's the role of the client?

Page: I think it's got to be a cooperation between the two. You know, one of our problems is that we now send people out of hospital even much quicker—before people have even started to consolidate or understand why they got sick. In the past, we used to have them in the hospital for weeks—they had a convalescence. Now we just send them back to the same scenario that caused their illness. And everybody in that person's life can't wait until the person comes back so they can just continue on as usual. I've seen several people with cancer who said, "Nobody ever asked me." They sent me back. . . . I remember one lady who basically had so much responsibility—the eldest of twelve, with twelve children, and she was also a schoolteacher. She was exhausted! And it was only when she got cancer—and this is typical—that she had a voice to say, "I need time out." She needed to have a voice. She needed someone to ask, "How can you make changes? What is it that you're not expressing?"

Harmony: Does each illness relate to a certain personality?

Page: Absolutely. Each of us has an area that is a better messenger for us than other areas.

Harmony: Is that a person's vulnerable area?

Page: It may be where you're going to learn in this life—through which chakra you are learning. Which area of your body are you really learning through in this life? And you can see it in your ancestors. Tell me your ancestors and I'll tell you what your family members are like.

Getting to the family again . . . for instance, someone gets throat cancer. And you've got scores of people saying, "Ah, but it's in your genes." And, you know, Bruce Lipton's work—nothing's in your genes, it's in your perceptions! The perception I see in breast cancer is somebody who is constantly feeding everything, nurturing and feeding everybody, from their breast. And they don't get anything back in return, and the resentment starts to build. They're such nice people, they don't say anything, and they think if they just give more, then they will get more. But they don't! And so when you look back in the family history, you find that everybody has been like that—every woman. And in fact the message was to the women, "Well, that's how you are to be a good wife!" That's why it runs in the family, not because it's in the genes, it's in the perception of reality.

Harmony: So the family really is important in terms of the health of the individual?

Page: Absolutely. That's why I say look at your family history of illness. Spiritually, I would also say you're here to heal the ancestral line. So what Native Americans say, and I would agree, is if you heal the last three generations, you heal the next seven to come.

You know, I try to find a "bullet" of sorts. People will say, "Well, I don't know if I really want to change." And out of the breeze I say, "Well, do you have children? Do you have grandchildren? Do you want them to do what you're doing?" Sometimes it seems to be the only way I can get people to do something, because they don't care about themselves. So I may say, "Do you want your daughter to live the sort of life you've lived? Your granddaughter? Because they will!" And to a man: "Do you want this for your family? Is this the role model you want to send to your son?"

Harmony: So what you're saying is a healer really needs to be creative—it's fundamentally a creative profession, isn't it?

Page: I believe so. If someone says to me, "I feel better when I do that," I say, "O.K., let's do that." There's nothing that isn't possible. And I tell them, "I will support you," because I want to be with them in their journey. And I will also say to them, where appropriate, "It's time you stop hiding behind your illness." Because I've also been around plenty of people who say, "I'd love to do it, but I have got my illness." Then I say, "O.K., can you make the change without needing to have the illness but me giving you support?" I'm speaking about situations where, for instance, a woman might say, "My husband only takes note of me as long as I have my backache." And I might say to her, "Could you ask him to take notice of you without your backache?" It's a dangerous game to play where your body is your means of communication.

Harmony: I guess a lot of times we're really afraid to ask for what we want because we don't think that we can get it.

Page: Yes. The attitude is I'll get it as long as I'm ill, and that's not an O.K. place to be.

Harmony: That's really the whole message of your work—helping people reach a level of honesty. It seems like it's going for a truth.

Page: Well, integrity is a word I use because we have too many good people! We need authentic people with true purity of heart—the true meaning of purity of heart—to be authentic from the heart.

Known as a mystical physician, Dr. Christine Page is an internationally respected pioneer in changing the face of health care from a system that concentrates primarily on the physical body to one that is soul directed. She has 30 years of experience within the caring professions as doctor, homeopath and seminar teacher. Her gift of taking complex ideas and making them easy to understand encourages individuals to find their center, listen to their intuition and follow the pulse of their soul. She is the author of five books, the latest being Spiritual Alchemy, and has another work on the way. She and her husband live north of San Francisco under the watchful eye of Mount Tam, the sleeping lady. For more information about the work of Dr. Page, visit www.christinepage.com.