I have had the great and good fortune of working with a homeopath since my children were babies. One of the greatest suggestions she ever made to me was to keep a health journal on the kids. In this journal I would note things like how often and when they got sick, what kind of sick and what helped. Over time, patterns began to emerge. Armed with these observations, I was able to predict how things would go, which treatments were most effective and eventually the approaches that would help strengthen the systems that habitually seemed out of balance.

After a time, I began keeping a journal on myself. This journaling has formed the basis of my own Personal Medicine. “Personal”, as in pertaining to a particular person, me. And “Medicine” as in the art and science of preserving and restoring my own health. It is made up of observations, wonderings, connections, approaches, and it is unique to me. I find this to be a meaningful and effective way to approach health in a time when conventional medicine seems top heavy with bureaucrats, overburdened with red tape and chains of command and ineffective in its ability to get to the root cause of illness and suffering.

What resides at the heart of this approach is personal responsibility. Being accountable to the parts of your health that are within your power to control. No matter where we are on the path, each one of us already knows where we have abdicated personal responsibility in matters of health. Where’s yours?