Treating the physical, functional, emotional, and spiritual
Welcome to Anthroposophic Medicine
A call to action.
Anthroposophic Medicine offers a pathway for meeting the whole human being. It provides tools that allow us to understand more about the roots of both health and illness. The insights are novel and diverse and are about:
The interaction between body, soul, and spirit
The human being’s relationship to the natural world
New therapeutic possibilities for fostering health and healing
The experience of illness as part of a continuous path of individual development
It is a call to action. As the technology and cost of our medical care increases, the humanity of our medicine is called more and more into question. Anthroposophic Medicine provides a pathway for understanding the interweaving aspects of our humanity. It offers a methodology and medical language for describing these connections.
A Century of Healing
International and Integrative
Anthroposophic Medicine is an international, integrative medical movement celebrating a century of holistic care. It provides medicine and therapies which support patients on the levels of body, soul, and spirit.
Comprehensive and integrative, for all levels of care
Brings deeper insights to the care of the whole human being
Practiced by conventionally-trained physicians and nurses who have undergone additional specialized training
Applies a broad array of effective natural medicines
Incorporates art, music, movement and massage therapies as elements of collaborative, multidisciplinary health care
In Europe:
Integrated into acute-care hospitals, specialty treatment centers, and university teaching and research programs
In the United States:
Integrated into centers for chronic-illness care and elder care, as well as a large variety of medical practices
Trainings in Anthroposophic Medicine are offered for health professionals in thirty-two countries on five continents.
A New Language
The gift and also admittedly the challenge to learning Anthroposophic Medicine is the breadth of description and the unique vocabulary of this spiritually-extended science. You will be challenged to simultaneously take up:
New concepts
New medical terms
New ways of thinking
A Fourfold View of the Human Being
In today’s integrative and holistic medicine, phrases like treating the mind, body, and spirit are common. What they mean to you may not be what they mean to others.
That’s why it is important to be clear what these words mean to us as practitioners of Anthroposophic Medicine. This way you will know quickly whether you find relevance in our approach.
An Anthroposophic understanding of medicine expands beyond a physical examination to include a spiritual view of the human being. It incorporates what can reliably be observed as:
Physical and structural processes
Functional and recuperative processes
Emotional and sensory activities
Spiritual and creative elements
The interaction of these four aspects constitutes the different layers of the human experience.
Anthroposophic Medical Professions | WHO Benchmarks
ANTHROPOSOPHIC MEDICINE
Celebrating 100 years and the new WHO training benchmarks
Anthroposophic Medicine (AM) has recently celebrated its 100-year anniversary! Punctuating this centennial event is the publication of the international AM training benchmarks by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The AM benchmarks describe the minimum training requirements to practice any AM discipline, including medicine, nursing, midwifery, pharmacy, psychotherapy, dentistry, eurythmy therapy, artistic therapies, and body therapies. These training guidelines were written by dedicated AM clinicians and are a great validation of the work of Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman, MD and the world-wide medical movement they began 100 years ago. The WHO benchmarks for training in AM are part of a series of benchmarks published for traditional, complementary and integrative medicine (TCI), which includes ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, osteopathy, naturopathy, Nuad Thai, tui na, and Unani medicine. The aim of this series is to provide a useful reference for policy-makers, healthcare providers, educators and the general public as part of an international effort to integrate, as appropriate, traditional and complimentary medical services into national health systems. We hope this recognition will increase public awareness and access to AM and Anthroposophic medicinal products (AMPs) and further support developments in areas such as research, clinic facilities, nursing care, medicines and therapies. Click here to read the full announcement — PDF
Are you still with us? Because now it gets interesting, challenging, and transformative.
Fill out this form to download Anthroposophic Medicine: Introductory Handbook
60 Minutes to Enliven
Your Observation of the World
Although there are two important methods for engaging therapeutically with the world, modern medicine tends to use only one. Modern medicine breaks the world down to its most basic material parts. It relies on a science which fixes an illness process in time and space analytically, through pathology, chemical assay, and genetics. This method is valuable because it makes the mechanics of the process much easier to see, but this method alone can have a rigidifying effect on our thinking because our view gets ever smaller.
A different, but complementary approach is to look at the world more synthetically.
In our four-part introduction to Anthroposophic Medicine you will begin to:
See the living activities in the human being in new ways
Understand what we mean by finding patterns and relationships
Find out how we recognize the archetypal patterns that work within the blossoming activity of a healing plant
Discover the formative principles that guide and orchestrate our physiology as a whole
Appreciate the developmental rhythms that weave throughout a whole biography
Introduction to Anthroposophic Medicine
Sign up to get a link to a four-video Introduction to Anthroposophic Medicine webinar
Clinical Research
When asked if it is really possible to research a medicine of body, mind, and spirit, we have a definitive answer: Yes!
Anthroposophic medical research is done in many institutions worldwide and uses well established methodologies, following general guidelines, or developing methodologies.
From research studies on reducing antibiotic use, to providing successful approaches for many chronic diseases, to addressing the physiologic components of mental illness — we have a clinical research resource page for those interested in gaining trust in the efficacy of Anthroposophic Medicine.
The heart of the healer
“Is medicine a calling? For millennia the role of the physician or healer has been recognized as something special—a role afforded respect and bearing great responsibility. This has stood as a unique task within the community, not just because of the special training and mentoring required, but because work at the threshold of illness and health challenges us on multiple levels. We are asked to continually renew our sense of reverence for the special connection created when we accompany a patient through the illness process. We are challenged to discover the deeper meanings of illness; to find personal practices for self-renewal; and to re-kindle the will to heal. Long after the book learning of medicine is done, these practices nurture and sustain us. Through meditative practice, through affirming that transformation can come through illness, and by strengthening our sense for goodness in the other, Anthroposophic Medicine offers a path of development for the heart of the healer.”
— Adam Blanning and Alicia Landman-Reiner