Speaking to current and future students at a recent Endeavour College open day, it was evident that illness is often the catalyst for seeking a career in health. This sentiment may ring truer again for those seeking a natural health career. Often due to inspiration from a fellow practitioner that helped them when the western medical community couldn’t or perhaps fuelled by a quest to find alternative options for their current health challenges. Whatever it is that plants the seed, its not hard to see the appeal of embarking on a career in natural medicine.

However, an interesting phenomenon occurs somewhere between the transition from student to health practitioner. This oddity is also held up by industry outsiders and the crux of it is the assumption that practitioners are perfect. As a humble health practitioner myself with a past medical history of both breast cancer and hashimotos thyroiditis, I can tell you this is simply incorrect. I can also tell you that the absence of health doesn’t make you a worse practitioner and that, in fact, the opposite can sometimes be true. For it is often in times of struggle that strength, knowledge, and innovation is born.

Therefore, don’t discount the merit of visiting a practitioner with health challenges. Not only does this not discredit to their ability to guide, support or hold space for you and your health conditions- their health challenges may have gifted them a deeper level of empathy for those that they treat and provide them with a beautiful foundation for understanding and connecting with their patients on a deeper level.

For those health practitioners feeling that their health challenges render them a failure, please know this is purely fiction. We often don’t see the light that we carry, and we often don’t see the positive weight of our actions and the ripple effect that occurs.

So, wherever you are on your health journey and whether you sit in the practitioner, patient or student camp, don’t fall for the assumption that your health practitioner is perfect and don’t discount them for their humanness– it may just be the driving force that makes all the difference to your experience.

Lastly, always remember that health is a journey and not a destination. We will naturally ebb and flow throughout this life and it is our applied actions and continued commitment to support our health and increase our understanding of our body that makes the long-term difference.