The Body and Inner Work
I’m on my way back from the Health Information Exchange (HIX) 2024 conference, a great functional medicine focused gathering in San Diego. I heard story after story of so many courageous people who left their traditional jobs, or side hustled, and retrained themselves in functional medicine ... nurses, nurse practitioners, and even business people. They all have one thing in common. They are driven by their passion to heal chronically ill people or to help prevent illness. Almost every single one of their passions was ignited by their own journey. At some point in their lives, their health was severely compromised, and they hit a dead end in traditional healthcare. They had to take matters into their own hands, and eventually were healed through the functional medicine and integrated approach. Their response: "I have to do something to help others and make their journey easier." Remarkable compassion!
But the work of these practitioners does not stop at healthcare. Though I keynoted at the conference (my talk was “Doing Well by Doing Good, and Staying Well While Doing It”), I myself took so much out of the experience this weekend. My favorite quote that was shared by another speaker: “Illness is an initiation into the deeper self.” What a beautiful summary of why functional medicine, mental health, and the deeper inner work are all integrated as an individual pursues truly healing on all dimensions. From healing a chronic disease, to processing childhood trauma, to a discovery of one’s true nature as the One Consciousness, the inner healing journey is intertwined and continuous. Often the body is the starting point as it forces us to stop and listen. It becomes a pointer to other healing work that is needed in our system.
Precisely this convergence of these modalities is central to our thesis at Manifestations Capital. And like the amazing practitioners who inspired me this weekend at HIX, my motivation for launching the fund is rooted in accelerating other people’s healing journey. Driven by my own journey, from healing my gut, to addressing my early life traumas, to the spiritual practices that have been central in my life, my response also was to then help others. As I lead DHA Labs today, I could not be more proud of enabling and supporting these practitioners and being the lab testing extension of their practices. We work hard to provide distinguished service, a seamless experience for their patients to help with testing compliance, and reliable results. We also help them extend their service to include mental health related biomarkers.
I know the hopelessness that can set in as one struggles with chronic illness; the dead-end experience that one faces in traditional healthcare; the suspicious questions that they receive from providers. If you or someone you care about has experienced this, keep going. Hopefully you can partner with a holistic provider to aid in the journey. And perhaps the suffering can be eased just a little by a knowingness that you are in the midst of an initiation into a deeper transformation.
FUND ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Join our mission of supporting distinguished entrepreneurs build businesses that help to propagate healing in the world. Contact me to learn more about investing in Manifestations Capital.