browse content
and 
Learn more about Dr. Northrup's work on
An unconventional foundation
I grew up in a family of doctors. My father was a holistic dentist, my aunt and uncle were conventional medical doctors. Thanksgiving was like an AMA meeting. I loved these people, but not everything they said was the Gospel truth. My own parents once checked my baby brother out of the hospital against medical advice because they knew he would die if they kept him there. So I recognized early on the limitations of conventional medicine.
There was a role reversal between my parents. My mother's life revolved around outdoor activities and skiing. She would go out hunting while my father was more interested at looking at flowers, organic farming, and nutrition. She taught us the importance of self-reliance and physical fitness. So, that was the soup: organic vegetables, physical fitness, following your passion, and finding the limitations of conventional medicine. That's the background with which I went to medical school.
A new view of women's health and medicine
The first time I saw a baby born, in medical school, I burst into tears. That was it for me. As an OB/GYN, and later part of the Holistic Medical Association, I realized there were all kinds of things going on in women's lives that nobody was addressing. Nobody was addressing the relationships women were in, the fact that 40% have experienced some physical or emotional abuse in relationships, and that this had a profound effect on their physical health. No one was talking about it.
So I began to put together a new way of thinking about the physical body based on the fullness of women's stories and how by changing their characteristic thoughts and beliefs and victimization patterns, they really could have vibrant health. That was the missing piece of the puzzle: women's underlying mental and emotional patterns.
Choosing the route of pleasure
I've dedicated my life to everything that can go right with the female body and how to magnify that, how to sustain it, how to support it in a culture that, by and large, supports everything but. Being depressed, victimized, poor, and angry is a slam dunk. Just turn on the TV; you've got a global support network for that. So many of us live from emergency to emergency, exhausting ourselves for the things that are worth dying for, the internalized masculine.
We need to consciously choose the route of pleasure, the route of health. It takes enormous discipline to practise this. What I tell people is that if it feels pleasurable, if it will be fun, then that's how I know that it will uplift me and that I can help the endeavor. I'm interested in the organic garden model of life: you replenish the soil and the plants are healthy. This new way of thinking is what will enable women to turn around what's going on in their bodies and their lives, and prevent problems in the future.
We are the people we've been waiting for
If you think about the Baby Boomers, my crowd (I'm 59, on the leading edge), we took back the night and did the civil rights thing and the sexual revolution--all of it. Boomer women are the ones who infiltrated medical schools and law schools and corporations. We are the ones who are going to do it, but we're not doing to do it the old way. We are the people we've been waiting for.
Here is our biggest challenge. The second half of our lives has to be sourced from spirit, from our souls. What does that look like? There are no roadmaps for how you source your life from your soul, but women can support one another as each of us discovers what lights her up.
I grew up in a family of doctors. My father was a holistic dentist, my aunt and uncle were conventional medical doctors. Thanksgiving was like an AMA meeting. I loved these people, but not everything they said was the Gospel truth. My own parents once checked my baby brother out of the hospital against medical advice because they knew he would die if they kept him there. So I recognized early on the limitations of conventional medicine.
There was a role reversal between my parents. My mother's life revolved around outdoor activities and skiing. She would go out hunting while my father was more interested at looking at flowers, organic farming, and nutrition. She taught us the importance of self-reliance and physical fitness. So, that was the soup: organic vegetables, physical fitness, following your passion, and finding the limitations of conventional medicine. That's the background with which I went to medical school.
A new view of women's health and medicineThe first time I saw a baby born, in medical school, I burst into tears. That was it for me. As an OB/GYN, and later part of the Holistic Medical Association, I realized there were all kinds of things going on in women's lives that nobody was addressing. Nobody was addressing the relationships women were in, the fact that 40% have experienced some physical or emotional abuse in relationships, and that this had a profound effect on their physical health. No one was talking about it.
So I began to put together a new way of thinking about the physical body based on the fullness of women's stories and how by changing their characteristic thoughts and beliefs and victimization patterns, they really could have vibrant health. That was the missing piece of the puzzle: women's underlying mental and emotional patterns.
Choosing the route of pleasure
I've dedicated my life to everything that can go right with the female body and how to magnify that, how to sustain it, how to support it in a culture that, by and large, supports everything but. Being depressed, victimized, poor, and angry is a slam dunk. Just turn on the TV; you've got a global support network for that. So many of us live from emergency to emergency, exhausting ourselves for the things that are worth dying for, the internalized masculine.
We need to consciously choose the route of pleasure, the route of health. It takes enormous discipline to practise this. What I tell people is that if it feels pleasurable, if it will be fun, then that's how I know that it will uplift me and that I can help the endeavor. I'm interested in the organic garden model of life: you replenish the soil and the plants are healthy. This new way of thinking is what will enable women to turn around what's going on in their bodies and their lives, and prevent problems in the future.
We are the people we've been waiting for
If you think about the Baby Boomers, my crowd (I'm 59, on the leading edge), we took back the night and did the civil rights thing and the sexual revolution--all of it. Boomer women are the ones who infiltrated medical schools and law schools and corporations. We are the ones who are going to do it, but we're not doing to do it the old way. We are the people we've been waiting for.
Here is our biggest challenge. The second half of our lives has to be sourced from spirit, from our souls. What does that look like? There are no roadmaps for how you source your life from your soul, but women can support one another as each of us discovers what lights her up.
responses (1)
