An Appreciation of Rudolph Ballentine – Holistic Leader in Health Care

My first encounter with Rudolph Ballentine was during my early 2000 naturopathic training at Clayton College of Natural Health. The book was Radical Healing, and it transformed my way of thinking about illness and healing. 600 pages of knowledge and experience opened my eyes to the promise of holistic thinking.

Rudolph Ballentine was trained at Duke University in Psychiatry; He later created and now directs the Center for Holistic Medicine in New York City. He is one of the great contemporary standard bearers for healing traditions as old as mankind. Ballentine tells us that suppressing of symptoms is folly, true healing is profoundly transforming, and deep healing is reorganizing deep inner patterns in mind and body.

Reading Ballentine I am reminded that the history of the natural healing arts is replete with men and women with vision and courage, that Ballentine’s Radical Healing is not new but centuries old. Wrapping our minds around that concept is difficult because in modern times the word “new” is just a way of framing what has always been.

There is something about the use of natural medicine that has a tendency to bring us back into harmony with the rest of nature. The idea of practice is to heal by bringing all of the pieces back into a cohesive package of spirit, mind and body

Ballentine is a true wonder in natural health practice, he has written a number of books, is a physician, psychiatrist, herbalist, Ayruvedic practitioner, homeopath, and teaches all of these techniques, Dr. Ballentine is a model for the health practitioner of the future.

Books: Radical Healing, Integrating the World’s Great Therapeutic Traditions to Create a New Transformative Medicine (2000) Science of Breath, a Practical Guide (2007) Yoga and Psychotherapy, the Evolution of Consciousness (with Swami Rama) (2007) Rudolph Ballentine is a great modern natural health guru. I appreciate his life and work.