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The State of Holistic Health in 2025: Vision, Empowerment & the Somatic Shift
Manage episode 491222255 series 3051575
Keywords
holistic health, vision, empowerment, children’s vision, integrative medicine, natural healing, systemic health, eye care, wellness, future of health
Summary
In this podcast, Dr. Sam Berne discusses the evolving landscape of holistic health as we approach 2025. He addresses the growing demand for natural healing methods, the integration of vision into holistic practices, and the importance of empowering patients in their health decisions. Dr. Berne emphasizes the need for a comprehensive approach to health that includes vision, especially in children, and expresses hope for the future of holistic health amidst current challenges.
Takeaways
People are tired of band-aid solutions. There is a Renaissance in whole body therapy. Vision reflects systemic and metabolic health. Children’s vision development is crucial for learning. Patients want equal partnership in health decisions. Holistic methods can support eye health. The current medical model is symptom-focused. Empowerment is key in holistic medical care. Community involvement is essential for change. Integrating ancient principles with modern practices is vital.
Chapters
00:00 The State of Holistic Health in 2025
02:48 Integrating Vision into Holistic Health
06:09 The Role of Vision in Child Development
09:06 Empowerment in Holistic Medical Care
12:01 Rethinking Eye Care Practices
14:52 Hope for the Future of Holistic Health
Sam Berne (00:00)
to welcome you to my latest podcast. Today is a very interesting show. What I’ve done is I’ve pulled my functional vision integrative method practitioners. So these are doctors who wanted to ask me some questions and the theme is about what is the state of the Union of holistic health globally in 2025?
So I’m going to take their questions one at a time and I hope you enjoy the show. Thanks for tuning in. The first question is from a naturopath who practices in Denmark and he’s asking what is the state of holistic medicine and vision not only in the US but globally and the way I see it in 2025. We’re in a really big power shift right now.
People are tired of band-aid solutions. You know, a day doesn’t go by when I get an email from somebody that says, you know, I’m really tired of symptom management care. People want to know what is the root cause of their condition and what can they do to heal their condition naturally?
I would say the biggest aspect is people want to take responsibility for their health. know in the US we do call it health insurance, but I think we should call it disease insurance because all it’s good for is things like if we have to go to the emergency room, if we, you know, get into a car accident, if there’s some big traumatic event in our body, medical care works really well.
But in terms of being proactive, it just isn’t there. And in fact, so many people will share with me how invalidated they feel when they even bring up things like nutrition, supplements, herbs, essential oils. It’s getting really tough out there for people to find a like-minded holistic doctor if they are themselves holistically minded.
Question 2 is from a craniosacral therapist who lives in California and she’s asking how do I fit into this holistic model of health not only in the US but globally? Well, I think there’s a Renaissance and people looking for whole body therapy. I mean, if you look at just the holistic health industry, one of the things that I’ve observed
Is that when practitioners now want to teach internationally, they really can’t do it unless they either get a work permit or they have the country that is hosting them do some legal things to be able to invite them so that the government’s now are on to holistic health and people who want to teach it internationally. And if you want to do that,
You have to jump through a lot of hoops. remember 25, 30 years ago when I used to teach internationally. We didn’t have any of these restrictions or requirements. So people are hungry for holistic medicine, holistic health. And in terms of the eyes, I mean, it’s off the charts. People are wanting holistic methods to support their eyesight and vision.
All right, question three is from an Ayurvedic practitioner. He’s also a Chinese medicine doctor. He’s from New York and he’s asking how do I integrate the eyes and vision into my message to mainstream medical health? Well, I’ve been at this for a long time and what I’m here to say is that vision is more than in the eye, know, in so many of my
video blogs and written blogs. I’ve talked about how vision is more than in the eye and our eyes really reflect our systemic and metabolic health. we look for example, at iridology, iridology has been around for hundreds of years. The iris is the colored part of the eye and it maps the body doctors have mapped it for over 200 years. And so when we look at the iris, we can actually see
What’s the health of our thyroid our pancreas our heart health we can look at genetic tendencies and we can also look at in our current health. What are some nurture points that we need to do whether we tend more towards inflammation or you know, we need to stay off of gluten dairy and sugar. So your ideology is one way that the eyes reflect our systemic and metabolic health another.
model that I’ve studied is Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Many of the glands and organs the meridians run throughout the entire body to our eyes and I’ve talked a lot about the relationship between our liver and gallbladder and our eye health. You know, as an example, people who suffer things like chronic eyelid inflammation or dry eye syndrome.
They’re probably not absorbing their healthy fat soluble nutrients like vitamin A lutein and zeaxanthin. are fat soluble and although they might be eating a lot of really good rainbow vegetables and taking their omega-3s. They’re not absorbing their fat soluble vitamins. And when they do a liver cleanse or liver gallbladder cleanse, what happens is is there
their fat-soluble vitamins now are getting absorbed into the eyes. And so the chronic eyelid inflammation problems or dry eye, these are just two examples. They start to recede and we regain our eye health. Number three, I think I’d like to talk a little bit about children’s vision and we know that, you know, the the eyes originate from the brain that the
The eyes have a neuroplasticity capability and the way I evaluate kids in it is in a developmental model meaning that not only am I looking at their chronological age in the way they use their eyes and vision, but I’m looking at their performance age and we look at things like brain and body processing. You know, I bring in things called the primitive survival reflexes.
which are infant reflexes that need to be integrated or it becomes difficult for the child to really develop their sensory motor processing skills and the physical vision therapy the functional vision therapy that that I’m training practitioners on and I’ve done on thousands and thousands of kids really impacts their ability to read to learn to problem solve to make decisions because we’re not just talking about reading the eye chart.
That’s not even vision. That’s our eyesight. But vision is how the eyes and the brain and the body process information and that’s a learned and developed skill and based on our gestation birth and bonding experiences that has a strong influence on our sensory motor development and which includes visual processing auditory processing motor processing. So we got to get past doing an exam on a child just by having them.
read the distance acuity chart. I mean, that is just not cutting it. We have to do tests in the area of visual focusing, visual coordination, some of the visual perceptual skills. And then can we even do some tests in the area of our vestibular processing? And of course back to those early motor patterns like our primitive reflexes until we start bringing those into the standard eye exam room. We’re going to be missing
all the problems that kids have in terms of their vision learning and development. Okay. This next question is from a German naturopath who’s taking my course and she’s asking what are lay people wanting in terms of their holistic medical care? Well, number one, I think people want empowerment. They want equal partnership in the decision-making.
of their health needs. They want a doctor who’s open-minded around herbal medicines, aromatherapy, functional nutrition, energy healing and until they find somebody like that, it becomes a very invalidating experience for them. I have a vision coach right now that’s in our program and she’s wanting to help kids. She wants to help seniors.
And she wants to help the middle-aged people around their glasses and contact lens prescriptions. so through the physical therapy exercises that I teach, she is very inspired to be able to meet people where they are. And instead of having to deal with drugs needles and surgery, there could be some nutritional recommendations that she makes.
and really cleaning up a person’s inner environment so that nutrient wise, they’re absorbing more the physical exercises change their brain neuroplasticity offering things like light therapy and morning sunlight just by itself helps balance our circadian rhythms red light therapy, which supports better mitochondria function. This is all the things that are really really important around
offering things except, you know, in the mainstream, it’s still surgery and pharmaceuticals. This next question is from an osteopath who practices in Vancouver, British Columbia, and she’s asking me if I had 60 seconds to talk to a medical Dean, what could I say to them? Well, you can’t talk about brain health, trauma recovery, stress and nutrition without including vision into the picture.
In fact, we know that vision is more than in the eyeball. can use the eyes as an entryway into the body to help create more balance. This next question is from a physical therapist who’s studying with me and she lives in Santa Fe and she is asking why is vision overlooked in Optometry and Ophthalmology schools? Well, the reason is is because the model of eye care and eyesight.
is based on a number and we get a lot of numbers when we do eye exams. Well, we’re so much more than a number, know, one of the sayings that I like to use is that instead of looking at the numbers, let’s look at the person behind the numbers and until I care starts to look at the person behind the number and start recognizing
that things like our digestion, our nutrition, our stress, our trauma, all of those things influence how we see. mean, if you just look at the eye exam, it’s a very stressful experience. And once you get your lens prescription, you’re getting it under duress. It’s not going to be right. It’s going to be way too strong for you. It’s going to be imbalanced and you’re told to just live with it. Get used to it.
And so what that does to your nervous system is you have to operate around a sympathetic nervous system model, which creates more cortisol, your mitochondria function, and the retina goes down. You have more oxidative stress. You get more inflammation. It’s no wonder that people are developing macular degeneration, cataracts, and glaucoma at such high rates because the way the eye doctors are treating the patients is very much in symptom management and
It’s very much like a conveyor belt and there’s no questions about asking, you know about the person’s lifestyle. It’s all about what is the number? Let’s give you the number get used to the number next person. Okay, the last question is from a Chinese medicine doctor who’s studying with me. She lives in Hawaii and she’s asking what gives me hope. Well, I think what is really giving me hope is that our current models aren’t working.
And they’re breaking down and we can recognize that in our evolution that we will always go in a dissolution state and then we resolve the dissolution and this is actually creates more versatility and flexibility in our health and wellness and yes technology is taken over, you know with the
artificial intelligence and other things. But one of things that I teach as I integrate artificial intelligence into our daily living is something called somatic intelligence our interoception. What are we feeling? What’s our intuition saying? What’s our creativity about? So we need to have both. It’s kind of like the the left brain is AI and the right brain is Si and
As we’re in this chaotic phase right now, things will shift and will become more resolved in the next phase of the wave that’s kind of looking at it in that in that perspective. So I don’t look at the the small details as everything but in the big picture we go through phases and we go through cycles and we’re now in a cycle.
where we’re reorganizing to a whole new level and it’s going to take a mass of people who are questioning who are inquiring who are creative who are looking for new answers and as we grow the mass the community will take over. So I am actually very hopeful even though we’re kind of in the midst of it and certainly in healthcare.
You can always find holistic health practitioners to help you. You know, I’m doing my part where I’m really focusing on helping practitioners use the philosophies that I have developed and they can take it into any practice whether it’s massage, rolfing, craniosacral, functional medicine, acupuncture, you name it.
⁓ These particular principles that I’m talking about are age-old. It’s not something that I made up but in studying a lot of different disciplines. This is how I’ve integrated it. So if you’ve got more questions, feel free to send them along to me. Hello at dr. Sam burn.com. Check out my website. We’ve got some seminars coming up in July August September October.
I’m also going to be doing a six-week online program starting in November. This will be on zoom so you don’t have to travel and yeah, stay tuned for more good stuff. All right, everybody. That’s our show. It’s a wrap. Take good care.
Set up a free discovery call with Dr. Berne to learn more about his practitioenr’s training: [email protected]
Practitioner’s Program Link: https://www.drsamberne.com/practition…
For even more from Dr. Sam, check out his new exclusive membership where you get access to my content and resources, new information, articles, videos, webinars: https://drsambernesmembership.com/ Then the show notes, then the transcript then Website: https://www.drsamberne.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SamBerneOD/?…
Instagram: / samberneod
Twitter: / drsamberne
LinkedIn: / drsamberne
Dr. Sam Berne has been in private practice in New Mexico for over 35 years and where he works with patients to improve their vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Pennsylvania State University, Doctor of Optometry from Pennsylvania College, and did his postdoctoral work at the Gesell Institute in collaboration with Yale University. He has been awarded The Special Awards for Service from the Behavioral Optometrists in Mexico for his innovative and holistic work with children.
His protocols take a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to health and wellness. He understands and treats the body as one integrated system rather than a collection of independent organs in order to identify and address the root causes of disease. His whole health protocols improve vision and wellness by healing the mind-body-spirit through nutritional protocols, vision therapy, and self-care techniques. This views each person as genetically and biochemically unique and enables the individual to make lifelong improvements to their well-being.
341 episodes
Manage episode 491222255 series 3051575
Keywords
holistic health, vision, empowerment, children’s vision, integrative medicine, natural healing, systemic health, eye care, wellness, future of health
Summary
In this podcast, Dr. Sam Berne discusses the evolving landscape of holistic health as we approach 2025. He addresses the growing demand for natural healing methods, the integration of vision into holistic practices, and the importance of empowering patients in their health decisions. Dr. Berne emphasizes the need for a comprehensive approach to health that includes vision, especially in children, and expresses hope for the future of holistic health amidst current challenges.
Takeaways
People are tired of band-aid solutions. There is a Renaissance in whole body therapy. Vision reflects systemic and metabolic health. Children’s vision development is crucial for learning. Patients want equal partnership in health decisions. Holistic methods can support eye health. The current medical model is symptom-focused. Empowerment is key in holistic medical care. Community involvement is essential for change. Integrating ancient principles with modern practices is vital.
Chapters
00:00 The State of Holistic Health in 2025
02:48 Integrating Vision into Holistic Health
06:09 The Role of Vision in Child Development
09:06 Empowerment in Holistic Medical Care
12:01 Rethinking Eye Care Practices
14:52 Hope for the Future of Holistic Health
Sam Berne (00:00)
to welcome you to my latest podcast. Today is a very interesting show. What I’ve done is I’ve pulled my functional vision integrative method practitioners. So these are doctors who wanted to ask me some questions and the theme is about what is the state of the Union of holistic health globally in 2025?
So I’m going to take their questions one at a time and I hope you enjoy the show. Thanks for tuning in. The first question is from a naturopath who practices in Denmark and he’s asking what is the state of holistic medicine and vision not only in the US but globally and the way I see it in 2025. We’re in a really big power shift right now.
People are tired of band-aid solutions. You know, a day doesn’t go by when I get an email from somebody that says, you know, I’m really tired of symptom management care. People want to know what is the root cause of their condition and what can they do to heal their condition naturally?
I would say the biggest aspect is people want to take responsibility for their health. know in the US we do call it health insurance, but I think we should call it disease insurance because all it’s good for is things like if we have to go to the emergency room, if we, you know, get into a car accident, if there’s some big traumatic event in our body, medical care works really well.
But in terms of being proactive, it just isn’t there. And in fact, so many people will share with me how invalidated they feel when they even bring up things like nutrition, supplements, herbs, essential oils. It’s getting really tough out there for people to find a like-minded holistic doctor if they are themselves holistically minded.
Question 2 is from a craniosacral therapist who lives in California and she’s asking how do I fit into this holistic model of health not only in the US but globally? Well, I think there’s a Renaissance and people looking for whole body therapy. I mean, if you look at just the holistic health industry, one of the things that I’ve observed
Is that when practitioners now want to teach internationally, they really can’t do it unless they either get a work permit or they have the country that is hosting them do some legal things to be able to invite them so that the government’s now are on to holistic health and people who want to teach it internationally. And if you want to do that,
You have to jump through a lot of hoops. remember 25, 30 years ago when I used to teach internationally. We didn’t have any of these restrictions or requirements. So people are hungry for holistic medicine, holistic health. And in terms of the eyes, I mean, it’s off the charts. People are wanting holistic methods to support their eyesight and vision.
All right, question three is from an Ayurvedic practitioner. He’s also a Chinese medicine doctor. He’s from New York and he’s asking how do I integrate the eyes and vision into my message to mainstream medical health? Well, I’ve been at this for a long time and what I’m here to say is that vision is more than in the eye, know, in so many of my
video blogs and written blogs. I’ve talked about how vision is more than in the eye and our eyes really reflect our systemic and metabolic health. we look for example, at iridology, iridology has been around for hundreds of years. The iris is the colored part of the eye and it maps the body doctors have mapped it for over 200 years. And so when we look at the iris, we can actually see
What’s the health of our thyroid our pancreas our heart health we can look at genetic tendencies and we can also look at in our current health. What are some nurture points that we need to do whether we tend more towards inflammation or you know, we need to stay off of gluten dairy and sugar. So your ideology is one way that the eyes reflect our systemic and metabolic health another.
model that I’ve studied is Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Many of the glands and organs the meridians run throughout the entire body to our eyes and I’ve talked a lot about the relationship between our liver and gallbladder and our eye health. You know, as an example, people who suffer things like chronic eyelid inflammation or dry eye syndrome.
They’re probably not absorbing their healthy fat soluble nutrients like vitamin A lutein and zeaxanthin. are fat soluble and although they might be eating a lot of really good rainbow vegetables and taking their omega-3s. They’re not absorbing their fat soluble vitamins. And when they do a liver cleanse or liver gallbladder cleanse, what happens is is there
their fat-soluble vitamins now are getting absorbed into the eyes. And so the chronic eyelid inflammation problems or dry eye, these are just two examples. They start to recede and we regain our eye health. Number three, I think I’d like to talk a little bit about children’s vision and we know that, you know, the the eyes originate from the brain that the
The eyes have a neuroplasticity capability and the way I evaluate kids in it is in a developmental model meaning that not only am I looking at their chronological age in the way they use their eyes and vision, but I’m looking at their performance age and we look at things like brain and body processing. You know, I bring in things called the primitive survival reflexes.
which are infant reflexes that need to be integrated or it becomes difficult for the child to really develop their sensory motor processing skills and the physical vision therapy the functional vision therapy that that I’m training practitioners on and I’ve done on thousands and thousands of kids really impacts their ability to read to learn to problem solve to make decisions because we’re not just talking about reading the eye chart.
That’s not even vision. That’s our eyesight. But vision is how the eyes and the brain and the body process information and that’s a learned and developed skill and based on our gestation birth and bonding experiences that has a strong influence on our sensory motor development and which includes visual processing auditory processing motor processing. So we got to get past doing an exam on a child just by having them.
read the distance acuity chart. I mean, that is just not cutting it. We have to do tests in the area of visual focusing, visual coordination, some of the visual perceptual skills. And then can we even do some tests in the area of our vestibular processing? And of course back to those early motor patterns like our primitive reflexes until we start bringing those into the standard eye exam room. We’re going to be missing
all the problems that kids have in terms of their vision learning and development. Okay. This next question is from a German naturopath who’s taking my course and she’s asking what are lay people wanting in terms of their holistic medical care? Well, number one, I think people want empowerment. They want equal partnership in the decision-making.
of their health needs. They want a doctor who’s open-minded around herbal medicines, aromatherapy, functional nutrition, energy healing and until they find somebody like that, it becomes a very invalidating experience for them. I have a vision coach right now that’s in our program and she’s wanting to help kids. She wants to help seniors.
And she wants to help the middle-aged people around their glasses and contact lens prescriptions. so through the physical therapy exercises that I teach, she is very inspired to be able to meet people where they are. And instead of having to deal with drugs needles and surgery, there could be some nutritional recommendations that she makes.
and really cleaning up a person’s inner environment so that nutrient wise, they’re absorbing more the physical exercises change their brain neuroplasticity offering things like light therapy and morning sunlight just by itself helps balance our circadian rhythms red light therapy, which supports better mitochondria function. This is all the things that are really really important around
offering things except, you know, in the mainstream, it’s still surgery and pharmaceuticals. This next question is from an osteopath who practices in Vancouver, British Columbia, and she’s asking me if I had 60 seconds to talk to a medical Dean, what could I say to them? Well, you can’t talk about brain health, trauma recovery, stress and nutrition without including vision into the picture.
In fact, we know that vision is more than in the eyeball. can use the eyes as an entryway into the body to help create more balance. This next question is from a physical therapist who’s studying with me and she lives in Santa Fe and she is asking why is vision overlooked in Optometry and Ophthalmology schools? Well, the reason is is because the model of eye care and eyesight.
is based on a number and we get a lot of numbers when we do eye exams. Well, we’re so much more than a number, know, one of the sayings that I like to use is that instead of looking at the numbers, let’s look at the person behind the numbers and until I care starts to look at the person behind the number and start recognizing
that things like our digestion, our nutrition, our stress, our trauma, all of those things influence how we see. mean, if you just look at the eye exam, it’s a very stressful experience. And once you get your lens prescription, you’re getting it under duress. It’s not going to be right. It’s going to be way too strong for you. It’s going to be imbalanced and you’re told to just live with it. Get used to it.
And so what that does to your nervous system is you have to operate around a sympathetic nervous system model, which creates more cortisol, your mitochondria function, and the retina goes down. You have more oxidative stress. You get more inflammation. It’s no wonder that people are developing macular degeneration, cataracts, and glaucoma at such high rates because the way the eye doctors are treating the patients is very much in symptom management and
It’s very much like a conveyor belt and there’s no questions about asking, you know about the person’s lifestyle. It’s all about what is the number? Let’s give you the number get used to the number next person. Okay, the last question is from a Chinese medicine doctor who’s studying with me. She lives in Hawaii and she’s asking what gives me hope. Well, I think what is really giving me hope is that our current models aren’t working.
And they’re breaking down and we can recognize that in our evolution that we will always go in a dissolution state and then we resolve the dissolution and this is actually creates more versatility and flexibility in our health and wellness and yes technology is taken over, you know with the
artificial intelligence and other things. But one of things that I teach as I integrate artificial intelligence into our daily living is something called somatic intelligence our interoception. What are we feeling? What’s our intuition saying? What’s our creativity about? So we need to have both. It’s kind of like the the left brain is AI and the right brain is Si and
As we’re in this chaotic phase right now, things will shift and will become more resolved in the next phase of the wave that’s kind of looking at it in that in that perspective. So I don’t look at the the small details as everything but in the big picture we go through phases and we go through cycles and we’re now in a cycle.
where we’re reorganizing to a whole new level and it’s going to take a mass of people who are questioning who are inquiring who are creative who are looking for new answers and as we grow the mass the community will take over. So I am actually very hopeful even though we’re kind of in the midst of it and certainly in healthcare.
You can always find holistic health practitioners to help you. You know, I’m doing my part where I’m really focusing on helping practitioners use the philosophies that I have developed and they can take it into any practice whether it’s massage, rolfing, craniosacral, functional medicine, acupuncture, you name it.
⁓ These particular principles that I’m talking about are age-old. It’s not something that I made up but in studying a lot of different disciplines. This is how I’ve integrated it. So if you’ve got more questions, feel free to send them along to me. Hello at dr. Sam burn.com. Check out my website. We’ve got some seminars coming up in July August September October.
I’m also going to be doing a six-week online program starting in November. This will be on zoom so you don’t have to travel and yeah, stay tuned for more good stuff. All right, everybody. That’s our show. It’s a wrap. Take good care.
Set up a free discovery call with Dr. Berne to learn more about his practitioenr’s training: [email protected]
Practitioner’s Program Link: https://www.drsamberne.com/practition…
For even more from Dr. Sam, check out his new exclusive membership where you get access to my content and resources, new information, articles, videos, webinars: https://drsambernesmembership.com/ Then the show notes, then the transcript then Website: https://www.drsamberne.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SamBerneOD/?…
Instagram: / samberneod
Twitter: / drsamberne
LinkedIn: / drsamberne
Dr. Sam Berne has been in private practice in New Mexico for over 35 years and where he works with patients to improve their vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Pennsylvania State University, Doctor of Optometry from Pennsylvania College, and did his postdoctoral work at the Gesell Institute in collaboration with Yale University. He has been awarded The Special Awards for Service from the Behavioral Optometrists in Mexico for his innovative and holistic work with children.
His protocols take a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to health and wellness. He understands and treats the body as one integrated system rather than a collection of independent organs in order to identify and address the root causes of disease. His whole health protocols improve vision and wellness by healing the mind-body-spirit through nutritional protocols, vision therapy, and self-care techniques. This views each person as genetically and biochemically unique and enables the individual to make lifelong improvements to their well-being.
341 episodes
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