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Honoring Women's Wisdom
by Dr. Richard Clofine

     The experience of most women is that they do not like to go to the gynecologist. This is a near universal response. The reasons for this are not mysterious or hidden, in fact they seem quite clear. They do not look forward to their visits because their past experiences have associated those visits with embarrassment and discomfort.

     The visit involves the expectation of revealing deeply intimate things to another individual. It may be an individual the woman has never met, or that she does not personally resonate with. She is supposed to feel safe because the physician is part of an elite priesthood that allows them to hear confessions. Unfortunately, graduating medical school does not mean an individual knows how to honor another. These visits put all women in an extremely vulnerable situation where they expose some of their deepest parts intellectually, emotionally and physically. This creates violated vulnerability and discomfort.

     The profession of gynecology has a history dominated by patriarchy. Even when intent was to help, the application was mostly without wisdom, and thus wounding. This wounding is the experience of many women, and in most cases, is the experience of their mothers and grandmothers as well. While they are supposed to open up to their physician, there is no safe space held for them to do so. For many women it brings up memories of past abuse (physical, mental or emotional), and only serves to intensify the discomfort of the visit and exam.

     The business of medicine, especially over the last 10 years, has further degraded relationships between physicians and patients. The pressure on physicians is to see more and more patients in a shorter period of time, to compensate for changing reimbursements. Rather than having set referral patterns to other caring professionals, in most cases today it is about looking at a list of physicians, in a book, that is most likely outdated already. You might as well throw a dart at the phone book and see who you come up with.

     Often times the advice given runs counter to a woman's personal intuition of what serves her higher good. In general women do not feel heard when seeking medical care. Many women want to incorporate alternative and natural methods of healing into their lives. Usually they prefer these methods. Often times when seeing a conventional physician, they are consciously or unconsciously belittled by the physician for their interest in this way of living and being.

    If they have had a negative experience in previous years, then the anticipation of the next visit only serves to intensify their discomfort. They are thus in conflict over wanting to take advantage of good conventional health care, yet in pursuing that goal, they are faced with the memory of unpleasant experience. This creates inner conflict, without easy resolution.

     It is quite understandable that a woman would prefer to seek care from a female gynecologist. Who would better know what she is going through, in relationship to these issues, than another woman. Many women, despite their physician being female and knowing what period cramps feel like, still do not feel a safe honoring space held for their issues. This leads to them not being empowered by their visits. This issue of empowerment is not gender dependent. If a male physician understands these issues and is in touch with his inner feminine nature, a safe space for honoring women's issues can be held, unrelated to physical gender. We all have within us both divine feminine and masculine aspects to our being.

     So how can the practice of gynecology, from a holistic perspective, empower women?

     The holistic approach is interested in how a woman's life experience impacts their health. Together, the practitioner and patient come to appreciate that their past and present experiences impact their efforts to “create health” on a day to day basis. Together they view health, not just as the absence of disease, but rather as wholeness and balance in all aspects of their lives. A balance that is dynamic and always shifting and changing, rather than static and only requiring doing one thing over a lifetime. The needs of women shift and change as they move through the cycles of the month, and the cycles of their lives.

     Addressing “body, mind and spirit” issues is done with the understanding that this division is actually only a device we use to help us order our approach and treatments. Body, mind and spirit are actually one thing and always completely united. Those issues that impact one aspect always impact the others.

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