EP03: Plant, Animal, Man

Season One: Awakening our Understanding of Illness: 100-years of Fundamentals of Therapy

In Episode 3, we discuss Chapter 5 of Fundamentals of Therapy: Plant, Animal, Man

Medical education expects young doctors to memorize tremendous amounts of factual information, but offers much less guidance for making the information their own. Modern medicine similarly focuses mostly on quantitative measures—what are you blood tests?—but can forget to see the person behind the lab results. Neither way of working allows for much life. Anthroposophic medicines sees more, much more. It recognizes four levels of being.

We can compare it to four possible steps for becoming a poet: first, you find a good poem in a book and see that it exists (step 1); you work further with it, it comes alive, and you start to remember it (step 2). Then a really good poem actually stirs and inspires your soul life (step 3); and in time, if you love enough poems, you start to write your own poetry (step 4).

Our body makes the same steps with substance. Chapter five shows us this beautiful, fourfold physiology of body, soul and spirit.

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