The Creative Physician

By Wendy Chappell, Executive Director

It is no accident that our conference has landed in Grand Rapids during the ARTPrize festival. I enjoy infusing all our meetings with the arts. It makes my job fun, but it also emphasizes the connection between healing and creativity. A new book called “Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind,” by Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman provides some insight into the necessity of creativity for integrative physicians.

In a Huffington post article about the book, Gregoire writes; “Neuroscience paints a complicated picture of creativity. As scientists now understand it, creativity is far more complex than the right-left brain distinction would have us think... In fact, creativity is thought to involve a number of cognitive processes, neural pathways and emotions, and we still don’t have the full picture of how the imaginative mind works.” She goes on to lists18 things highly creative people do differently. I’d like to highlight a few that brought you to mind.

They observe everything. When it comes to patient care, a holistic physician sees the whole person without pre-conceived expectations of a diagnosis that matches an insurance code. This careful observation is the way we can succeed where mainstream doctors often fail.

They turn life’s obstacles around. There are tremendous challenges to integrative medicine both by institutions that want to maintain the status quo, and by entities that make millions off of our current “sick care” system. It takes a creative outlook to turn those challenge into inspiration and opportunity, and to keep up the energy for the fight.

They seek out new experiences. Dr. Kaufman, a cognitive psychologist, and the scientific director of the Imagination Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, has shown in his research that “openness to experience is more highly correlated to creative output than I.Q., divergent thinking or any other personality trait,” writes Christie Aschwanded in her review of the book in the NY Times. “Openness to experience is consistently the strongest predictor of creative achievement,” says Kaufman. “This consists of lots of different facets, but they’re all related to each other: Intellectual curiosity…openness to your emotions…. The thing that brings them all together is a drive for cognitive and behavioral exploration of the world, your inner world and your outer world.”

They “fail up.” Not everything we do is going to work. To be pioneers in our field, we must have a willingness to try something new, even if success is not guaranteed, and the ability to not take our failures personally. Openly admitting mistakes or questions about what works and doesn’t work allows us to advance collectively in a more efficient manner. This is why our next meeting “What Works” in Cincinnati April 18-22 relies heavily on case studies, panels and pearls. We must be comfortable with failure to learn from each other’s mistakes.

They take risks. “There is a deep and meaningful connection between risk taking and creativity and it’s one that’s often overlooked,” Steven Kotler wrote in Forbes Magazine. “Creativity is the act of making something from nothing. It requires making public those bets first placed by imagination. This is not a job for the timid. Time wasted, reputation tarnished, money not well spent — these are all by-products of creativity gone awry.”

They make time for mindfulness and solitude. ICIM is a time for togetherness and community, but it is also a chance to step away from the rigors of your regular schedule and take some time for yourself. Skip a lecture or two, or get up early for a sunrise walk over the lovely pedestrian bridges on either side of our hotel. We acknowledge our members’ need for renewal through our retreats, a time of relaxation, rest, and play, in the company of friends.  Our next retreat Jan 31-Feb 4, at the beautiful Elohee center will offer ample time for hiking, napping, or even fly fishing in a local stream! Elohee’s mission is to be a home, rooted in nature, for deepening human awareness, facilitating the healing of mind and body, and transforming individuals and society. According to Carolyn Gregoire, creative types understand the value of a clear and focused mind — because their work depends on it.

Although a creative path may seem chaotic at times, I believe that an open mind and heart, along with insatiable curiosity is what makes integrative physicians visionary healers. Wired to Create offers another reminder to me to be patient with the chaotic details of organizing a conference. After all, as the book says: “Imaginative people have messier minds.”