Charley Cropley, N.D
Abstract
A reflective exploration of professional conflict within naturopathic medicine and a vitalist framework for restoring integrity, dialogue, and collective healing.
This commentary examines the impact of the COVID era on the naturopathic profession, framing internal division as a call to return to foundational principles of truth, compassion, and self-responsibility. Drawing on vitalist philosophy, it proposes a practical, relationship-centered approach to healing both individual practitioners and the profession as a whole.
“There is a medicine older than language, older than argument, older than every institution that has ever claimed authority over your body or your mind. It cannot be patented. It cannot be suppressed. It is available to you right now, this instant, for free. … and it is not what you think it is. It is what you are made of. And it made you.”
Sayer Ji, founder GreenMedInfo.com
A Naturopathic Detox from the COVID Era: Healing the Profession Through Truth and Compassion
Dear colleagues,
How disturbing has it been to you to be a Naturopathic Physician in the era of COVID? Specifically, what is the type of suffering and the severity that you have experienced in your personal and professional relationships with your Naturopathic colleagues?
I want to examine our unique professional experience of our unique sickness that I am calling ‘Naturopathic COVID,’ the sickness which has infected our professional body – physically, mentally, emotionally and morally.
As a profession, we are behaving like a family in whom the father or mother is an alcoholic and the family is unable to speak truthfully about it for fear of the turmoil it will create.
I would like to examine Naturopathic COVID from the perspective of our Naturopathic philosophy and principles in order to better understand the root causes of our collective suffering and formulate a therapeutic regimen for healing this sickness.
What do our Naturopathic ancestors tell us with certainty to be the root causes of sickness? Henry Lindlahr, N.D., defined the root causes of sickness to be ignorance, indifference and lack of self-control.
The Medicine that heals ignorance is Truth.
The Medicine that heals indifference is compassion.
Acting truthfully and compassionately is Self-control.
Our philosophy clearly defines the nature of our professional sickness and its treatment.
Naturopathic COVID, like all sickness is a call for attention.
Truthful, compassionate action is the universal remedy.
What follows is the therapeutic regimen based upon our principles.
“Physician, Heal Thyself.”
Let each of us examine our personal ways of eating, moving, thinking and relating and ask ourselves “How can I care for my own health by living with greater compassion and wisdom? How can I stop harming myself and others?”
This question asks us to face the formidable and practical personal challenges we each face such as overeating, lack of exercise and the myriad self-injurious behaviors that we ignore and rationalize. Very humbling.
- Keeping in mind that our main emphasis is healing our professional relationships, let us listen compassionately and speak truthfully first with our own selves about the pain and suffering we are experiencing in our relationships with other NDs and with our Naturopathic institutions.
- Let us initiate a conversation with a colleague with the intent of listening compassionately and speaking truthfully regarding our experiences of Naturopathic COVID.
- If any of this seems confusing or daunting, ask for help. Our asking is an absolute honor to ourselves and the colleague we ask.
- A practice that has helped me greatly has been striving to acknowledge and fully experience my own indifference and ignorance in my personal views and actions. And, the counterpart, which is to seek out, acknowledge and fully appreciate the genuine compassion and wisdom in the views and actions of those I feel at odds with. Again, very humbling.
If you have any doubt that wise, compassionate action will heal our personal and collective relational suffering then simply rethink from first principles the root causes of all sickness and how the principle of Vis applies to Naturopathic COVID; then pray deeply for the courage to heed your own diagnosis and prescription.
Surely, we can all find agreement that this path of practical personal action will, with certainty, bring immediate and unparalleled benefit to us individually and collectively. Wise, compassionate thoughts, words and actions will always and unfailingly heal, protect and strengthen us in relation to all sickness, COVID, cancer, obesity, mental anguish. The entire art of healing human suffering comes down to the simple advice of the great physician, Buddha Shakyamuni,
“Love yourself, and… watch.”
As a profession, there is far more that we agree upon than what separates us; there is far more goodness in us than we realize – perhaps more than in any other healing profession.
As a profession we are in something like a marital crisis. Someone needs to tell us that we are all good people, facing enormous challenges, and that we need to sit down and talk with each other, probably with a counselor.
Vis, The Healing Power of Nature, is our inheritance as Naturopathic Physicians bequeathed to us by Nature through our ancestors. In these times of darkness, when our country and world are afflicted unto death with disease; our people innocently ignorant of how to heal, we NDs, by no merit of our own, somehow find ourselves heirs to The Healing Power of Nature. Everything we do as Naturopathic Physicians is in service to and radical reliance upon a loving, wise power infinitely greater than ourselves. Vis is the primary distinguishing characteristic between Naturopathic Medicine and allopathic medicine.
We are living in dangerous times. Our profession is in grave crisis. What will we trust? What concrete actions are we going to take? I have offered a diagnosis of the root causes of our sickness and a practical therapeutic regimen of consciously choosing to embody compassion and wisdom in our thoughts, words and actions; and, my encouragement in this article is that we give special attention to healing our ways of relating with our colleagues, through compassionate listening and truthful speaking.
May we and all beings together be free of suffering, may we all enjoy health and happiness.
These words of Stephen Jenkinson seem fitting for closing.
“If we wait to be really compelled by something… something big, well… we’re going to wait an awful long time … and I don’t know if the state of our world can tolerate our holding out until we feel utterly compelled… I think it’s more like this,that we have to proceed now as if we’re utterly needed…
That takes almost something bordering on bravado… though I don’t think it is… That’s what we’ve got to bring to the challenges at hand, not waiting to be convinced that we’re needed but proceeding as if we are.
Your insignificance has been horribly overstated.”
If you would like to talk to me about this, you can call or text me. 303-442-6161
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Charley Cropley, ND is a naturopathic physician, educator, and author with over four decades of experience in natural medicine. A 1979 graduate of the National College of Naturopathic Medicine (NCNM, now NUNM), Dr. Cropley has dedicated his career to teaching and practicing the foundational principles of vitalist naturopathic care.
His clinical and educational work emphasizes lifestyle medicine, therapeutic nutrition, fasting, and the practical application of the vis medicatrix naturae—the healing power of nature. Dr. Cropley is widely recognized for his contributions to naturopathic education, having taught extensively at naturopathic institutions and mentored generations of physicians in applying traditional principles to modern clinical practice.
In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Cropley is the author of several books on diet, fasting, and natural healing, and continues to advocate for simple, foundational approaches to restoring health through alignment with nature.
