In the remote and rugged setting of Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Dr. John Day has established a unique holistic practice at the Haelan LifeStream Center in Crestone, Colorado. Recently, after suturing a friend’s laceration, Dr. Day talked about his medical journey, from early roots in a conventional surgical practice to his expansion into holistic healing.
What attracted you to medicine?
My mother and father were physicians in post WWII Alabama. I picked up a lot of intangible physician oriented cues from them. In church I allowed myself to be curious about the healing ministry of Jesus; knowing then that the medicine practiced by my parents did not match pure healing. I thought medicine was important, nonetheless. I let myself be guided into medicine after these early days. I did not put up much resistance, but developed just enough critical thinking to keep me on my correct path.
I accompanied my mother on hospital rounds and house calls. She once told me that it is God who does the healing. This was the only piece of direct teaching she ever shared with me. It is true of course. Our own innate divine healing intelligence is always operative within our lives.
How would you describe the initial phase of your medical career?
The early days were mostly about enduring the rigors of surgical training. I performed a lot of surgeries for victims of urban violence; a strong informant from my past, and a way to learn how to be a good surgeon quickly. After surgical residency, I began practice in Boulder, CO, in 1981. I chose Boulder because it has a wide panorama of holistic offerings. My early surgical experience was also influenced by Eastern spiritual and Christian mystical studies. I tried to bring the core ideology of different healing paths into my work. Otherwise, I operated 24/7, performing general, vascular, and trauma surgery.
What led you to develop The Haelan LifeStream Center?
I was becoming more steeped and nuanced in holistic medicine over the 20 year practice in Boulder. My partners never liked the holistic recommendations which I shared with patients. Choosing to dismiss the wider world of healing, they were conditioned to try to outsmart the natural healing process. One partner said, “John, we like the surgery you do, but we wish you wouldn't talk to people about this other stuff." I found myself being marginalized. I was ready to move on.
In 1999 I developed the early concepts of Haelan LifeStream out of my experience with breast cancer patients. As an apprentice of the breast cancer process, I began to have a deeper inquiry into cancer as a chaotic cell growth pattern which is initiated by unresolved chaos inside of the body-mind-emotion-spirit aspects of a person's life. All disease process is related to similar chaos, as well as the foundational issues of unresolved trauma upon which it is based.
How have you changed as a physician?
In my own life growth and healing I have adopted a lifestyle mentioned in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ teachings, paraphrased as, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will save it.” This statement is as clear as it gets on the subject of transformative dying. All good teachings enjoin this perspective.
For any healer type, the best way to serve is to embrace one's own healing and transformation. Then one can offer something more authentic than one's sense of self-image, titles, and accomplishments. What you own, owns you.
Please describe your work.
The Haelan LifeStream approach to disease, life growth, and happiness is a broad model which can deal well with any concerns a client has in the quaternary of body-mind-emotion-spirit. These principles could be taught at any level of educational learning, starting early on. The model is formally based on the emerging science of what the heart is doing besides pumping blood around. It is a heart consciousness model. The heart’s electromagnetic field is 100,000 times greater than the brain's energetic, and is informing all of our cells, as well as the multidimensional planes of existence which support our lives.
The Retreat Center was established in Crestone in 2009 as an eco-tourism and health Retreat. It is an ideal venue for eco-tourist seekers, as well as for anyone who wants to expand knowledge and practice in conventional medical and holistic health modalities. Eco features are shown in the website pictures. Local amenities include mountain hiking, skiing, hot springs, many spiritual centers to visit, as well as proximity to the Great Sand Dunes, and to Taos and Santa Fe.
Describe common concerns of patients who seek your help.
The model addresses nutrition, exercise, mental and emotional clarity, self-love, spiritual awareness, and vision work. People usually come to me with body related problems; such as disease conditions, polypharmacy concerns, desire for anti-aging, weight loss, more energy, or for bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. I am a very good patient advocate for anyone who needs help in understanding how to manage their journey through conventional medical and holistic modalities.
In the mind aspect I help clients understand how to balance key neurotransmitters, how to navigate the journey from brain mind to heart mind, and how to heal the interior beliefs and constraints which inhibit our alignment with creativity and spirit.
In the spirit aspect I help clients develop an awareness of their primary motivators and innate gifts. The client's primary motivators are identified through a heart based exercise which insures that the motivators so identified come from the heart and not the mandates of left brain terrorist constructs: the Judge, the Critic, the Skeptic, the Pusher, and the Victim.
The most important aspect of the quaternary is emotion clarity. I help clients understand 17 key emotional states and their hierarchical order from low energy to higher energy states. The lower emotions of apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, and pride are very important, but are usually tangled up in a shadow form of expression; a result of unresolved trauma imprinting. Trauma resolution is an important exploration. Everyone in this post modern industrialized consumerist society has been traumatized.
Describe a consultation.
People usually don’t know how much pain they are in. If a client can trust themselves with me, then we can develop an understanding and resolution of the parts of their past story which helped support the development of dis-ease into its solid form. Consultations average about 3 hours in length depending on client receptivity, level of interest, understanding, accountability, commitment, and financial considerations.
Describe your modalities.
The main modality is the development of a shared dialogue. This turns into a tutorial on everything from biochemical pathways and balance to evolution of a vision statement about what a client wants to manifest in their lives. We tend to live in a residual from our past memory. I help clients evolve a more healthy manifestation, which I call a future memory.
I also utilize a hands off of body type of healing in the client's electromagnetic field. This is a form of energy healing, and it replaces the old form of healing I used to do when my hands were inside of patients' bodies.
Another important technique is a biofeedback study of how a client's heart electromagnetics are operating: in fight-flight, in freeze, in both, or in coherent heart resonant frequency of 0.1 cps. In heart resonance we feel calm, can access higher emotional frequencies, have higher intuitive and cognitive awareness, and our hearts can entrain other hearts; both locally and at a distance via quantum field dynamics.
Do patients need to see you in person in order to work with you?
Initial in-person consultations are important and provide the client and myself with a good grounding in one another's energy field. The clients that come to be with me in person are rarely disappointed in the effort. Subsequently, I can work with them long distance for follow up. It is important for the client and me to meet each other first. Then the subsequent work is more meaningful and beneficial.
See more about Dr. John Day and The Haelan LifeStream Center and Retreat at http://www.haelanlifestream.com.
The Haelan LifeStream Center and Retreat
