A Medical Student Speaks

Reprinted from APTA Energy Winter 2005 Newsletter

By Jacob Conklin

It is an exciting time in medicine, and I’m excited to be a part of it. My name is Jacob Conklin, and I’m a fourth year medical student at Ohio State University.  In a few short months, I will gain a couple of letters after my name, leave Ohio State and train to become a primary care physician. It’s the ultimate job, a job that honestly does place some fear in my heart. But it’s a job that, thankfully for my generation and me, I will not have to undertake alone. I say this because now more than ever, western medicine is learning the incredible resources available in complementary medicine—practitioners who have skills beyond the scope of allopathic medicine who can work with us as a holistic medicine team dedicated to the well-being of our patients.

In December of 2005, I did one of my required rotations in Complementary Alternative Therapies at the Columbus Polarity Center for Integrative Health and Wellness where I had the incredible opportunity to expand my horizons beyond the borders of the hospital setting and witness, experience, and participate in the many practices collectively termed Complementary and Alternative Medicine. I spent time with practitioners of many alternative types of medicine like Craniosacral practitioners, massage therapists, a Rolfer, and acupuncturist, a naturopathic physician and chiropractors. I was able to observe patient sessions, experience sessions myself, and spend a month studying in-depth the incredible and rapidly growing body of evidence that supports these modalities in health management. I also attended polarity training classes and participated in learning techniques of polarity therapy and the Science of Energy Medicine.

I began the month with the goal of learning more about these modalities, knowing that patients today are demanding a greater knowledge of these complementary practices from their physicians. I wanted to know the indications, contraindications, benefits and risks of these therapies so I might better inform my patients as to the best therapies available to them. This was a perfectly noble mission, but little did I know that my month in complementary medicine and polarity therapy would lead me to much, much more.

In addition to a fundamental knowledge of complementary therapies and energy work, I was ignited with both a passion for holistic medicine and an imperative to find practitioners like those here in Columbus and Columbus Polarity to make health care for my patients as good as it can be. After a month of speaking with patients and seeing the benefits they have experienced with these therapies, I am even more excited about my future as a primary care physician, armed with an arsenal of options for the well-being of my patients. I am made bold by allies in health in my community—allies who have different perspectives on the well-being of our patients, but the exact same goals in mind. The place where all these perspectives come together is the place were optimal health care occurs.

I am not alone in these sentiments. Never before has there been a time where people from all backgrounds and modalities of medicine were more open to collectively contributing to health and well being of patients. This is the time—this is our chance to make medicine what we believe it should be as patients, practitioners, and policy makers. Through electives like the one I have taken, more and more young doctors like myself can get excited about the synergy we can create with complementary medicine. There is incredible good we can do open hearts, eyes, and minds come together in the name of making lives better for our patients.

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