“The Holistic Health Centre will provide professional health care for the Community and for the people in the local area. A team of practitioners (doctors, acupuncturists, physiotherapists, homeopaths, psychotherapists, etc.) will work within the new Health Centre offering traditional and complementary medicine merged with spiritual awareness. ”

This quote is from a news/fundraising letter describing new projects of the Findhorn Foundation and Community. I hope to give some background information to this very powerful—and believe me quite scary—statement of creative intention.

When I made public my vision for the Health Centre it was new for me, and at the same time it was more than ten years old. Before I came to the Findhorn Foundation I had been working as a doctor practising orthodox medicine and my vision then was to work in a group practice with various practitioners to give holistic health care. I had initiated a project group that worked together for three years and finally made concrete plans for this group practice to be established in Hamburg. However, I wasn’t in the plans because I was already on my way to the Findhorn Foundation.

I arrived here in February 1988 and for one year I didn’t do any work at all using my medical background, but worked instead in the garden and in the kitchen. Taking the focus for Health and Wholeness at Cluny Hill College during my second year, I provided some basic health care, mainly complementary therapies and general TLC (tender love and care). Then, in December 1989, something happened which shook me up thoroughly and made me aware that by practising only complementary therapies, I had put a part of me to sleep.

A friend of mine was most severely injured in a car accident. I arrived on the scene three minutes after the accident and as soon as I saw my injured friend I stepped into the role I knew from my times in hospital and fought for her life using all the knowledge I had acquired in my training in emergency medicine and anaesthesiology. She died two hours later.

I could let her go and send her soul on its way with blessings, and with regrets, because I didn’t know how to sing the ‘Songs of Death’ to help a soul pass on.

In the days to come after this jolting event I was supported by the Community in a most wonderful way and in this atmosphere I could explore what it had meant for me. My body gave me symptoms to remind me that there was something to be learned and integrated from this experience. A friend gave me a massage and after many days of tension and distress, I finally relaxed.

I realised that when I had practised orthodox medicine my spiritual, non-invasive and allowing part had been dormant; and now, during my time at the Foundation, the active, hands-on, orthodox medicine part of me had been put aside, and that this form of medicine is very appropriate in some situations.

Suddenly these two parts of me came together and the power and tremendous potential in this synthesis was quite frightening for me. I had to allow myself to receive guidance about it, to accept from the source of inspiration beyond my intellect, and it was a challenge. I had been quite used to using my intuition in my daily life, but when it was such a ‘big thing’. . . .

Finally, in January 1990, during a wonderful retreat on the island of Erraid I sat down and wrote the following vision:

OneEarth-Autumn-1990-Holistic-Health-Centre signI see a Holistic Health Centre in the Park, an actual physical building in the area of the Community Centre, somehow connecting to the Apothecary —a half-round building complementing the Community Centre.

It will be an example of a ‘green house’ with all the ecological knowledge available at this point in time being applied. It will not be restricted by the arguments of money as I trust that when I keep my promise the rest will be taken care of. There will be three or more practitioners’ rooms (for consultations and treatments), a small laboratory, a waiting room, a sanctuary, a healing library, and a small kitchen. There will be a lot of windows and plants; space to breathe and be creative.

The holistic care provided will embrace traditional medicine, counselling, complementary medicine, physiotherapy, psychotherapy, spiritual healing, etc. Preventive health care will he one of the most important areas of the work.

The team of practitioners will be working together, sharing their experiences and different approaches, and the group wisdom will allow us to serve our clients even better. This group consciousness will be one of our main contributions as a model for the healing professions.

I see myself in the team as a doctor able to treat patients under the National Health Service, and therefore provide my service free of charge to the patients. The Centre will embrace initiatives in the Community such as healing groups, healing meditations, etc., and have a strong link with the educational aspect of the Foundation through guest programmes and workshops, and through members’ education.

The time schedule will be: a group forming and developing concrete plans for the Centre during 1990, and within 1991 the building finished and the Centre opened.

This vision is evolving and changing as plans for the general development of the Caravan Park begin to take shape. The vision has also become more vibrant and magnetic, attracting a great deal of interest.

I have been a staff member of the Foundation since June, focalising the Health and Wholeness Department which now serves Cluny and the Caravan Park. Within this new united structure of the department there will be a stable basis for expansion and integration of more and more practitioners and organisers inspired by the idea of the Health Centre.

The Holistic Health Centre, which many people have perceived for a long time on the ‘etheric’ level, is pushing vigorously towards its birth and I am happy with my role as midwife. I am deeply grateful to the Foundation for being such a wonderful seedbed for it, and to all the people who help in many ways to bring it ‘down to earth’.

By Cornelia Juliane Fellner

Editor’s note: This article was previously published in One Earth Magazine Issue 01 Autumn 1990.