Dr. Oz & Health Empowerment

The Dr. Oz show officially started this week. Most of us know Dr. Oz from his appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show for the past several years, and, prior to that, his own Discovery Channel show, Second Opinion.

Dr. Oz, although a leading cardiac surgeon and Professor of Cardiac Surgery at Columbia University, is well aware of the inner ability to heal ourselves. In an Associated Press article (9/6/09), he is quoted as saying, "I found myself going to work and taking care of people who wanted to get better who believed that their only path to salvation was through my scalpel...I can heal with steel. I know how to do that. But it's very disenfranchising when you realize the true solutions are outside the operating room."

While medicine and medical procedures are a blessing and often offer miracles for repairing our weak or damaged bodies (often self-inflicted or self-induced through our own habits or denials), it is the inner healing and personal responsibility for our health that has been largely ignored in our culture in the recent past. We tend to do whatever we want to do, no matter how bad it is for us, then expect a pill or procedure to cure us without any real changes of our own. The combination of lifestyle changes along with benefits of medicine when needed is our way to a healthier society and the resolution of our healthcare issues. It is not enough to just throw money at more widely available health services, the root of the solution must also address our ability to heal ourselves in other ways than expensive and invasive medical procedures.

I find it humorous, in that way that spirit speaks to us, that Dr. Oz has the last name "Oz"... a name associated with the "Wizard of Oz," who conveyed to Dorothy that she had everything she needed within her all along, she did not need a wizard to fix her problem. I would say that Dr. Oz has found his true calling and purpose (which is quite evident in his enthusiasm), and that his name is just an affirmation of that!

What is even more promising about Dr. Oz, at least to me, is that he has advocated Reiki and energy work as an means of healing. He was one of the first doctors to allow Reiki during open heart surgeries that he performed. His wife, Lisa, is a Reiki Master. In her appearances during the "All About YOU Tour," she was quoted as saying, "My father's a doctor, my brother's a doctor, my husband's a doctor. I was actually a little contemptuous of Reiki at first. But life is energy. The difference between those body organs over there and you is energy. Everything is energy." Like many of us, Lisa Oz was skeptical about Reiki at first. It went against so many ideas that she had been brought up to believe...but then she tried it, and became a believer. Trying Reiki often does that to people. I know that was the case for me.

It is indeed powerful to have such a couple as Mehmet and Lisa Oz who can show the world the benefits of combining energy work with modern medicine to achieve not only our greater physical benefit, but our deeper spiritual experience...because these go hand in hand.

Click here to link to the "The Dr. Oz Show" website.