Truly integrated mind-body-spirit-energetic medicine is increasingly attractive to patients, doctors, nurses, CAM providers, psychotherapists, healers, and spiritual leaders. Yet academic education still splits healing methods into separate departments in the university.

BODY: Doctors and other conventional health care providers learn to treat the body in the Medical School or the Nursing School, yet, through no fault of their own, they are often vastly under-educated in mental, emotional, spiritual, and energetic healing methods.

MIND/EMOTIONS/TRAUMA: Psychologists, family therapists, and social workers learn to treat the emotions and the mind in the Psychology or Sociology department, yet they often fail to realize that treating trauma, clearing emotions energetically, and helping people develop spiritually also impacts physical healing and can cure cancer or improve heart disease.

SPIRIT: Spirituality and religion are taught in the Theology or Religion department or the Divinity School, and faith healing may be part of some religions. Yet spiritual healing methods may also employ “spiritual bypassing” techniques that perpetuate “conflict avoidance in holy drag” and lead to the emotional repression that can predispose people to illness. If we only focus on transcending the body and bypassing our traumas, we cannot optimally develop spiritually or heal physically.

BASIC SCIENCE: Bio-field sciences and quantum mechanics may be studied and taught in the Biology or Physics department, yet these areas of study are often divorced from psycho-spiritual aspects of healing and unrelated to the impact of the bio-field and quantum theory on conventional medical science. Integration of these sciences with medical science lies at the cutting edge of medicine.

TRADITIONAL HEALING: Shamanism and indigenous medicine might be taught in the Anthropology department, yet ancient healing methods such as Energy Healing, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tibetan Medicine, & Qigong Medicine may be homeless and disenfranchised in the university, leaving such healing methods on the fringes of the mainstream.

WHAT IS WHOLE HEALTH?

WHOLE HEALTH requires bringing all of the tools in the medicine boxes of all departments and cultures together, with respect, reverence, and regard for the sacred medicines of all physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and energetic healing modalities. WHOLE HEALTH asks us to end the fragmentation that divides healing into different academic silos, where “never the twain shall meet” and invites unification of all of the aspects of what makes us whole as human beings, not just mind, body, spirit, and energy, but also our relationships, our work, our creativity, our sexuality, our living environments, our financial lives, and all aspects of what makes us authentically expressed, integrated humans.

THE WHOLE HEALTH MEDICINE INSTITUTE IS COMMITTED TO OFFERING EDUCATION & PERSONAL HEALING TO ANYONE INTERESTED IN SERVING SICK, TRAUMATIZED, & SUFFERING INDIVIDUALS WHO CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE IS FAILING TO ADEQUATELY TREAT. WHILE THE WHOLE HEALTH MEDICINE INSTITUTE WAS SPECIFICALLY CREATED FOR PHYSICIANS, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, LAY PEOPLE ARE INVITED TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS UNIQUE WHOLE HEALTH CURRICULUM.

Many who are trained to treat one aspect of health, such as the body (doctors, nutrition coaches, fitness instructors, bodyworkers, herbalists, naturopaths, chiropractors), the mind (psychologists, psychiatrists, life coaches), or the spirit (priests, rabbis, gurus, spiritual teachers, chaplains) get insufficient education in other aspects of Whole Health. Body-oriented practitioners tend to focus on traditional healthy behaviors, such as conventional medical approaches, diet, exercise, physical adjustments, or herbs and supplements, while neglecting psycho-spiritual and energetic root causes and treatments. 

The Whole Health Medicine Institute seeks to fill in the gaps, specializing in educating body-oriented practitioners who have insufficiently educated in mental, emotional, spiritual, and trauma healing modalities that may help cure otherwise “incurable,” “untreatable,” or “terminal” conditions.

Who Qualifies For The Whole Health Medicine Institute?

Anyone Who Wants To Heal Yourself & Help Others Heal

In the past, we have limited the Whole Health Medicine Institute to licensed health care providers and therapists. But desperate times require flexibility—and in many ways, these are desperate times with countless people in need of healing and not enough healers properly qualified to serve them. Because of our changing times, we are now opening this training to lay people interested in either personal healing or a career in healing. Traditionally, this program was for doctors only, so we LOVE having doctors but are no longer limiting it to doctors. This program best serves people with prior education and experience as health care providers, CAM providers, therapists, and coaches, but it is now open to anyone who feels genuinely called to facilitate this kind of healing work.

Is Dr. Lissa Rankin’s Whole Health Medicine Institute Right For You?

Take this little pop quiz to find out:

• You suspect that, with the right guidance, illness can be a vehicle for personal and spiritual awakening.
• You know, deep in your soul, that you were put here on this earth to help people remember that each human is imbued with a spark of divinity that makes us all precious and unique.
• You find yourself drawn to spirituality, animals, alternative forms of healing, art, music, craft-making, or other creative pursuits.
• You had a wake-up call with a health issue of your own—or that of a loved one—that changed everything for you, and now you want to use what you’ve learned from that experience to help clients.
• You or a loved one is struggling with illness, injury, or trauma, so you’re personally motivated to learn cutting edge healing modalities.
• You long to find a community of like-minded visionary health care providers and healers who will remind you that you are never alone.
• You were called to the field of health care and healing, but you feel pressured to conform to a model that feels way too constricting for someone with as expansive a vision as you have.
• You feel called—the way a priest is called to the priesthood—to help others heal, transform, connect, love, create, succeed, and thrive, but you feel thwarted from expressing your true gifts inside the current health care system.
• You sense that unhealed trauma lies behind many chronic illnesses that Western medicine fails to cure and that healing trauma and spiritual solutions may lead to cure for those conventional medicine feels helpless to treat.
• You wonder whether you might have been a shaman if you had been born into an indigenous village.
• You know you’re a healer at heart and you’re meant to be part of the evolution of consciousness but you’re not clear about how to best serve.
• You would love to find a way to enjoy more meaning, fulfillment, and a sense of mission and purpose in your work.
• You sense that something is out of alignment with how medicine is being practiced and instead of feeling victimized by the system, you feel empowered to be part of the solution.
• You’re excited to use your gifts as a healer to spend up to an hour with your clients while getting well paid for your time. Maybe you’d even love to write books or help others via public speaking, workshops, or online classes. But you have no clue where to start.
• You’re ready to expand how you practice medicine and you’re looking for the right mentors to help you take a leap of faith.
• You have a tendency to over give at the expense of your own health, happiness, sanity, and relationships, believing that to have true value in the world, you have to give until you’re depleted—and you’re ready to break this pattern.
• You feel a hard to explain pain in your heart when practicing managed care medicine because all those restrictions interfere with the sacredness of the doctor-patient relationship.
• You’re ready to stop complaining about health care and start being proactive about opening doors to a lucrative, fulfilling, revolutionary way to use your gifts instead.
• You feel in your gut that patients and clients would achieve better outcomes if they were more personally invested in their healing journey and accepted more responsibility for why they’re sick and how they might get better.
• You yearn to serve your community by taking leadership as a pioneer of the new medicine while seeing patients in a way that left you feeling smack dab in the middle of your purpose?
• You would relish a way to be well paid while spending more quality time with your patients.
• You find yourself reading this invitation while feeling a strong, inexplicable pull to sign up for this program, but you have no idea why. (Seriously, MANY of our applicants report feeling this way!)

If you resonate with at least a few of these, you may be one of us—the team of visionary healers who will help transform health care from the inside out, starting with healing ourselves and restoring our co-creative power, so we can bring our grounded imagination, vitality, passion, creativity, and wholeness to those who are struggling with illness, injury, or trauma.

As natural healers and givers, we are so programmed to self-sacrifice that we hardly notice how much we’re suffering. Then something collapses—your health, your marriage, your job, your financial security, your family, your sanity, your will to live. Suddenly, you wake up. And then—with clear seeing—you can’t un-see what you’ve finally seen. You know something must change. Sometimes, it’s a matter of life and death. But always, it’s a bubbling up in your chest that says, “I know there’s something more . . . ” It comes as a longing born in the truth of your deep heart to experience more meaning, more passion, more vitality—and to reclaim your calling as a true healer, one who tends not just to bodies, but to souls.

 This deep knowing beckons you into “the space between stories,” when one story has ended and the next has not yet begun. You’re not sure what to do, how to be. You’re not sure if you’re supposed to leave medicine—or leave your marriage—or move across the world with only your backpack.

“The challenge in our culture is to allow yourself to be in that space, to trust that the next story will emerge when the time in between has ended, and that you will recognize it . . . So please, if you are in the sacred space between stories, allow yourself to be there. It is frightening to lose the old structures of security, but you will find that even as you might lose things that were unthinkable to lose, you will be OK. There is a kind of grace that protects us in the space between stories.”

Maybe you’re in that space between stories now. Maybe you feel inspired to be part of the solution, but you’re not quite sure how.

Maybe you’ve already left your job inside the medical system, but you have no idea what’s next. Maybe you’re still slogging along in a managed care environment, fantasizing about how you can offer your gifts to a world in need of your love, but you have no idea how to get unstuck. Maybe you’re a stay home mom with an empty nest and you know that now is finally the time to give the gifts you were born to give.

Maybe you dream of offering patients a different kind of medicine—one that incorporates not just what Western medicine has to offer, but also the kind of mind, body, heart, and soul medicine indigenous healers, shamans, and energy healers have been practicing for millennia. But how does someone in modern culture even begin to learn what initiated healers spend decades learning from their lineage traditions?

Maybe you’ve thought about hanging up a shingle and starting an integrative medicine practice or getting certified in functional medicine, so you can offer a cash-based service that gives you a way out of the system. But perhaps something inside of you is feeling “off” about selling expensive supplements and ordering pricey specialty laboratory tests, much of which is untested and not evidence-based. Maybe you sense, deep down, that patients won’t really get better until you address the psycho-spiritual roots of illness and delve into the unhealed traumas that keep people sick.

Maybe you’ve fantasized about using your medical expertise to teach online programs, lead workshops, deliver keynotes, write books, or offer health coaching virtually. Maybe you’ve considered getting further training in CAM modalities like energy medicine, acupuncture, or naturopathic medicine.

Maybe you’re a life coach or health coach or yoga instructor, and you just know that adding this education and experience to your already rich knowledge and practice could facilitate miracles for your clients.

Maybe you’ve been certified in every energy healing modality on the planet, but you sense that you’re still missing a piece and you intuit that you’ll find it here.

Or perhaps you’ve dreamed of ditching it all and pursuing a creative career as a writer, an artist, a musician, or a vegan chef.

THIS IS THE PLACE TO SAFELY GO DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE AND DISCOVER WHAT’S NEXT

MEDICINE IS IN CRISIS, AND WE LONG TO HEAL

We all know medicine is in crisis, and so are those of us who serve the sick and injured. Many patients are also in crisis, and conventional medicine and psychotherapy have failed to cure them. Suffering abounds, yet we seem twisted in a Gorgian knot of medical fundamentalism that is causing pain for everyone involved. At the Whole Health Medicine Institute, we are committed to healing—not just ourselves, not just our patients and clients, but the system itself and those who serve in it. Astronomical numbers of health care providers, especially physicians, suffer from abusive medical training, neglect of self-care, unmet physical and emotional needs, compassion fatigue, burnout, chronic illness, addiction, depression, anxiety, broken relationships, loneliness, and PTSD from the traumas we experience and treat without proper emotional and spiritual integration. Trying to practice stellar medicine inside a corrupt system leads to “moral injury,” which was first described as an injury to war veterans. Moral injury is described by researchers as “perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.” Harvard physicians Simon Talbot and Wendy Dean explain that “failing to consistently meet patients’ needs has a profound impact on physician wellbeing—this is the crux of consequent moral injury.”

It’s time to heal this moral injury in health care providers so we can heal our broken system. You don’t have to accept the status quo as normal. But we can’t expect someone else to fix it for us. We can’t blame the system because we ARE the system. Which means we are not helpless. We have the power to change it. WE ARE THE ONES WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR.

Lissa Rankin, MD & the rest of the Whole Health Medicine Institute Faculty have developed a unique, specialized training program just for you and the tribe you haven’t met yet.

This program was developed in response to the desperate plea among others like us to find support in healing themselves while learning alternative ways to offer their healing gifts to a world in need of their love, intuition, intelligence, and integrity.

This is your invitation to THRIVE again. To SERVE with your whole heart again. To BE the healer you know you truly are.

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whole Health Medicine Institute Testimonials

Praise for Lissa Rankin, MD, and Mind Over Medicine

Whole Health Medicine Institute Founder Dr. Lissa Rankin’s Story

On top of all that, by the time I was 33, I was twice-divorced, I was taking seven pharmaceuticals that weren’t working for a host of chronic health conditions that plagued me, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had really laughed or felt vital. I fantasized about how “normal” people lived and dreamed of one day being happy—maybe after I retired at 65.

Then my Perfect Storm hit. I gave birth to my daughter by C-section, my dog died, my brother wound up in the ICU in full blown liver failure as a side effect from the Zithromax he was taking for a sinus infection, and my beloved father (also a physician) died from metastatic melanoma. Six months later, when I was just starting to breathe again, my then husband, who was the stay home daddy for our newborn, cut two fingers off his hand with a table saw and couldn’t care for our daughter.

All hell broke loose. I wound up asking myself, “If I knew I had only three months left to live—the way my father did—would I be doing what I’m doing now?” My answer was a resounding “Hell no!” And this realization changed everything.

When I asked myself the first thing I would change, I was horrified to realize the first thing I would do if I found out I was dying was to quit my job. But I couldn’t do that! I had a newborn, an unemployed husband, two mortgages, and a boatload of debt. But when I searched my soul, I kept coming up with the same answer. I couldn’t keep selling out my happiness, health, relationships, and integrity in exchange for the security my job provided. So, I took a huge leap of faith and quit.

Leaving my conventional medical practice was a huge risk. My then husband wasn’t bringing in a paycheck, we had a newborn, and I had no idea what I’d do to pay the bills. We had to sell the two houses, liquidate my retirement account, and move to the country in order to afford to pay the $120,000 medical malpractice tail I had to cough up in order to buy my freedom. But what choice did I have? I just wasn’t willing to keep slogging away for the next 30 years until one day, I could finally start living.

So, I leaped. I spent two years painting, writing, living off credit cards, and racking up $200,000 worth of debt during what I came to call my “waiting and becoming” years. It wasn’t easy. I was anxious most of the time, and the people who loved me thought I had officially lost my marbles. I had to protect myself with a mostly artificial bubble of supposed “fearlessness.” But deep down, I was plagued with self-doubt, and the fearful voices inside my busy mind chattered away incessantly.

Yet, somehow, deep down, I knew I could never go back. The roots of my future had started digging into the soil, and I could only move forward, in spite of all evidence that the path I was blazing was more of a cautionary tale than an inspiration.

I almost bailed and ran back to the hospital, tail between my legs, dozens of times during this “waiting and becoming” time. I was falling deeper and deeper into debt, and the recruiters were calling incessantly, tempting me to betray my intuition and offering me the big bucks if only I was willing to return to the conventional medical system.

But everything in my heart screamed, “No! There’s something else you’re supposed to do if only you can trust the unknown.” I had to tap into something deep and quiet within, something essentially true, a voice I ultimately came to call my “Inner Pilot Light.”

My Inner Pilot Light led me to start a cash-based practice in Marin County near San Francisco, where most of my patients were “health nuts” doing everything right—but they were some of the sickest people I’d ever met. I was baffled. I mean, these folks received the very best Western medicine has to offer at universities like Stanford and UCSF, they drank their daily green juice, ate a vegan diet, worked out with personal trainers, slept eight hours a night, took dozens of supplements, and saw their naturopath, their acupuncturist, and took yoga classes. But their symptoms were only getting worse.

Compare this to when I worked in a clinic where many of my patients were from the inner city of Chicago. I understood why they were sick. They ate poorly, rarely exercised, smoked, drank, didn’t listen to the doctor, and got sick. That made sense to me. But the patients in Marin didn’t. From everything I had learned in medical school, these people should have been in perfect health. But many of my patients had chronic pain, they suffered from recurrent infections, they felt chronically fatigued, they experienced headaches, skin disorders, food and upper respiratory allergies, gastrointestinal distress and autoimmune dysfunction. Why were these people so sick when they were doing everything “right?”

So, I tried to help my patients by running batteries of tests—some of them common, some of them specialized. I tried offering them natural supplements and dietary modifications instead of drugs. And, yes, sometimes my patients would get better from those interventions. But mostly, I’d find nothing earth-shattering, the supplements wouldn’t help much, and I’d wind up shrugging my shoulders. It was clear that there was still a big, missing piece of the health care puzzle, but I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

So, the first thing I decided to do was change my patient intake form. I started asking some of the questions we now teach in the Whole Health Medicine Institute, questions that pierced right to the heart of how patients were not living in alignment with their souls or how unhealed trauma was leaving its mark. Most of my patients wound up in tears, and then they’d open up to me and share with me the most intimate revelations and the most touching heartbreaks. They seemed to know deep in their own hearts what their bodies needed in order to heal, and yet they were scared to do what they knew they must. I was shocked at how intuitive my patients were when I asked the right questions, and how quickly they started having “spontaneous” remissions when those who were brave enough started following their own prescriptions and radically transforming the way they were living their lives. I knew I had stumbled across something that would radically change how we practice medicine. I had full-body goosebumps, over and over, but I had no idea what to do with these insights.

As a physician, I knew it wasn’t enough to treat only the biochemical elements of a healthy lifestyle. Sure, diet, exercise, a good night’s sleep, and taking your vitamins are key to a healthy life. But if you’re in an abusive marriage, you hate your job, you feel spiritually disconnected, you feel creatively thwarted, you can’t stand where you live, and you haven’t found a feeling of belonging within a supportive community, no drug, surgery, supplement, or diet plan is going to cure you for long.

I came to believe that the body is a mirror of how we live our lives. By digging deep into the medical literature for proof of what I was coming to believe, I found evidence that our bodies sometimes have the power to enable radical remissions from seemingly “incurable” diseases when we change our beliefs and how we think about our health while doing whatever it takes to bring our bodies into harmony with what is true in our relationships, our professional lives, our creative lives, our sex lives, our environment, our financial lives, and more. This realization felt profoundly transformational to me—and I wanted the world to know it.

What ensued was a burning desire to create a revolution in health care, to change how we think about health and healing, and to start a grassroots campaign to shift the paradigm of modern medicine. I started spreading the ideas that were pouring into me like a waterfall—first on my blog, then in my books Mind Over Medicine and The Fear Cure, as well as on two widely-viewed National Public Television specials about my work. I gave four TEDx talks that have had over four million views, and I’ve shared this message on stages and in retreat centers across the globe. I’ve lectured to doctors, nurses, insurance adjusters, pastors, psychologists, energy healers, and spiritual teachers who are all incorporating this work into how they practice.

But here’s the kicker. As I was spreading these ideas, I started getting hundreds of emails from patients across the globe asking where they can find doctors and other health care providers who embrace similar ideas about health. But I didn’t know where to refer these often desperate, sometimes even terminally ill patients. I know many wonderful functional medicine and integrative medicine doctors, but even still, these ways of practicing, while so much more holistic than managed care practice models, are still largely biochemically based allopathic models. Even functional and integrative medicine philosophies, such as those taught in Dr. Andrew Weil’s Integrative Medicine fellowship, often focus primarily on supplements, herbal treatments, natural medicine, and alternative medicine treatments such as acupuncture or homeopathy. I support any treatment modality a patient believes will help, so I’m a big fan of all these modalities. But I think even the most alternative treatments are insufficient if the health care provider isn’t addressing unhealed trauma, areas where a patient’s life is out of alignment with the soul’s true nature, and other mind-body-spirit factors.

I finally came to realize I needed to develop a training program to teach what I’ve learned so I could certify physicians and other qualified health care providers to practice Whole Health Medicine. We know it will take a village to heal health care and change how we all view health. We need your help in order to lead the troops in the mission to transform our system. You are the spiritual warriors who will bring the heart of medicine back to the center of our profession, and we are so grateful you are among us.

Whole Health Medicine Institute Faculty

Warning: This Could Change Your Life

We do not want to scare away anybody who is ready for the Whole Health Medicine Institute, but we do want to prepare you that this could fundamentally change your life. Transformation can be messy and beautiful, chaotic and evolutionary. To experience the full benefits of this program, you may need to carve out some time in order to properly digest and integrate what you will learn and experience. Most experience this transformation very gently, comfortably, and even ecstatically. But some are uncomfortable, so we want you to know the “side effects” of transformation that some prior students have experienced.

Some students of this program have:

• Quit secure jobs because they felt unable to continue to participate in what they felt was a corrupt system driven by the financial bottom line about love and integrity.
• Left toxic relationships or set rigid boundaries to ensure emotional safety after realizing how a relationship was retraumatizing.
• Entered into intensive therapy to heal hardcore past traumas.
• Experienced financial insecurity.
• Cured chronic illnesses only to realize that cure can be destabilizing if you’re anchored into a “normal” of being sick.
• Felt destabilized by traumatic memories that surfaced as part of their healing process.
• Felt physically uncomfortable as they became more embodied in their spirituality and physicality.
• Quit numbing behaviors like addictions only to discover that real life without numbing can be painful.
• Experienced disorienting and ecstatic mystical experiences that threatened their world view.
• Opened up their channels to receive guidance from their Inner Pilot Lights in a way that surprised them.
• Developed their intuition when they didn’t really believe in intuition and felt frightened by their sixth sense.
• Experienced a feeling of dissolving as their heavily anchored identity becomes “bug soup” in the process of transforming from the caterpillar to the butterfly.
• Experienced “kundalini awakening” which led to hypersensitivity to sensory input.

 The good news about this is that, as a result of this kind of change, WHMI students have also:

• Cured from “incurable” illnesses.
• Gotten pregnant when they were infertile.
• Experienced profound spiritual awakening, opening up of non-dual awareness and deep connection with the Divine.
• Created careers that bring them joy and fulfillment beyond their wildest imaginings.
• Developed a new relationship with the “muse” and discovered untapped creative talents.
• Healed relationships they previously believed were irreparable, including falling back in love when they were on the brink of divorce.
• Cleared traumas that years of conventional psychotherapy had failed to clear.
• Experienced unexpected financial abundance in ways that did not require depleting themselves.
• Discovered their authentic sexual selves and experienced a sexual awakening.
• Became pillars of their community as the touchstone for cutting edge healing.
• Made lifelong friends.
• Relocated to a place they’ve always longed to live.
• Followed a long, lost dream that put them at risk of both success or failure.

 We encourage students to go slowly, trust your intuition, and take in this material at your own pace and get any one-on-one professional support you might need. Everything in need of healing may come to the surface. To our knowledge, this transformational process has never led to  “spiritual emergency,” suicide, overdose, or other adverse outcomes, but we know this is always a risk and have resources at our disposal to refer WHMI students to transpersonal psychologists and other expert trauma therapists, should this be needed. If you have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder, or if you have been suicidally depressed, WHMI Level II may be contraindicated. If in doubt, choose WHMI Level I, which grants you education without delving as deeply into your psyche and consciousness. If you’re not sure and you think you might be at risk, please consult your mental health expert and share with them this disclaimer to ensure your safety.

Whole Health Medicine Institute Tuition and Payment Options

WHMI Level I

The investment for this life-altering program is just $1,999

Payment: $1,999 is due immediately upon acceptance. ($2,499 after February 15)

Note: Refunds are not available. Please purchase wisely. If you have questions or want to inquire to determine if WHMI is for you or not, please reach out before purchasing at pearl@lissarankin.com.

WHMI Level II

The investment for this life-altering program is just $7,999

Payment Plan 1: $7,999 is due immediately upon acceptance.

Payment Plan 2 (Installment Plan): $3,067 non-refundable deposit immediately upon acceptance, then two additional monthly payments of $3,066. Total tuition = $9,200.

Optional Badge of Certification: This separate fee of $149 is paid at the time of purchase if you so choose to complete the Badge requirements.

All applications must be received by March 17 for consideration into the Whole Health Medicine Institute Class of 2020. If you are accepted into the program, payment is due by March 23 to guarantee your spot. After March 23, you will be placed on the waiting list for the Class of 2021. 

The Whole Health Medicine Institute Class of 2020 officially begins March 31!

“BUT WOW! THAT’S A LOT OF MONEY AND I’VE ALREADY INVESTED SO MUCH!”

Yes. We know you may have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars becoming a health care provider already. We also remember how scary it was to invest in a dream you can’t guarantee will come to fruition. Most of your teachers at the Whole Health Medicine Institute took huge personal, professional, and financial risks to get where we are professionally. Most of us also invested hundreds of thousands of dollars building our visionary businesses.

We also know that sometimes The Universe tests us to see whether we’re really, truly, 100% IN. If your Inner Pilot Light just knows this is the next step for you, taking a leap of faith like this can be your way of telling The Universe you’ll do whatever it takes to realize your vision, even if it feels like a huge stretch.

Keep in mind that because of the nature of what you will learn in this program, you can expect a return on your investment that has the possibility not only to lead to revenue generation for your business but also to teach you tools to continue generating revenue beyond when this program ends so that your visionary health care business becomes a sustainable source of revenue generation.

The Whole Health Medicine Institute program is a 7-month commitment. If for any reason you choose not to continue—or you stop participating—you will continue to be liable for the fees of this program.

This kind of program is a powerful transformational process and at times, you may feel “up against a wall,” as if your visionary dreams are not happening or something isn’t working. This is often a perfect sign that you are releasing obstacles and overcoming limiting beliefs. Our request is that any and all concerns with regard to these kinds of feelings be addressed with your teachers so we can do our best to meet your needs. When brought to light, we can use these feelings as an opportunity to deal with any blocks that are coming to light so we can go deeper. Working together, we will make sure your needs are met.

THIS IS YOUR CHANCE!

At the Whole Health Medicine Institute, we are passionate about YOU, the well-being of YOUR CLIENTS, your RADICAL, VITAL, VISIONARY LIFE, and YOUR professional success—no matter what!

 What does the wisdom of your intuition tell you? Is this Whole Health Medicine Institute right for you, your body, your mind, your heart, your soul, your spirit, and your business? Is this year the year you get a full-body YES?

 With love and faith in your journey,

 Lissa Rankin, MD

Frequently Asked Questions

QUESTION: I’m a licensed health care provider looking to expand my education and potentially start a practice outside the insurance-based system. I can’t decide whether to sign up to get certified with the Institute of Functional Medicine (IFM), learn a CAM modality like acupuncture, or join WHMI. Can you explain how they’re different and why I would do one over another?

Answer: Our physician students wrestle with this question—for good reason. Many doctors who are looking for alternative careers find it beneficial to get additional education that positions them as “integrative” or “functional” medicine doctors, or they choose to develop another CAM skill that allows them to work outside the insurance system. This can be a wise business decision since the general population values integrative, functional, and CAM approaches to treating illness and, at least in the United States, patients have come to expect that this will require them to pay out of pocket, since few of these kinds of practitioners accept insurance. Because what we teach in WHMI is so cutting edge, patients may not even know to seek it out as a valid option when conventional medicine has failed to elicit cure. This leads a lot of doctors who consider themselves integrative or functional medicine to be attracted to this program, since it educates students in radical remission-inducing touchstones that functional or integrative medicine programs may not cover. Anecdotally, our graduates have found that adding this glaring missing piece to a Whole Health treatment changes everything for patients and can lead to drastic improvement in symptoms or unexpected cure.

Certification with IFM or certification with a CAM modality are very different than what is offered in WHMI. While we touch on nutrition, hormone replacement therapy, and functional medicine, WHMI does not teach you what supplement to use for what chronic illness, how to get up to date on the latest laboratory tests to assess and optimize the microbiome, or detailed use of bio-identical hormones. What you learn in WHMI will not make you a master acupuncturist, trauma therapist, energy healer, shaman, or guru. If you’re wanting to become a master, you may need to get additional training with one of our guest faculty or seek out additional certification. This training very specifically focuses on root cause work and is very holistic rather than allopathic, although it includes in the Whole Health approach allopathic treatments that patients add to their intuitively-guided Prescription as part of the Six Steps To Healing Yourself.

In WHMI, you will learn how to facilitate patients through illness as a psychological and spiritual healing and transformation, identifying and treating why the body’s self-healing mechanisms broke down, to begin with. While patients may also benefit from adding to their Prescription conventional medicine or functional/integrative medicine approaches, those approaches don’t tend to examine issues like how childhood trauma affects adult-onset disease—and how to clear it in a way that may lead to resolution of symptoms and radical remission. Most allopathic methods treat the symptoms, if not with drugs and surgery, then with herbs, supplements, and IV’s.

Your education in WHMI is guaranteed to expand awareness and practice of the tools in your holistic medicine bag in a way that can help you treat the patients who conventional medicine—and even functional or integrative medicine—have failed to treat. Nobody in WHMI is suggesting that conventional medicine or functional/integrative medicine doesn’t have its place. Many of our graduates have also sought certification with the gold standard of functional medicine certification via the Institute of Functional Medicine, which is a $12,000-15,000 process. We know time and money may require you to choose one or the other, but please know that we fully support those who want to combine these educational opportunities! When it comes right down to it, as always, we encourage you to tune in and trust your intuition.

What distinguishes WHMI from these other programs the most is the Heal The Healer aspect of this work. You will not just be learning cognitive knowledge. In order to expertly facilitate Whole Health in others, you will need to become wholly healthy yourself. Therefore, you will be undergoing your own transformation as part of your education. The degree of your transformation will depend on which level of commitment you choose—Level I or Level II.

If you are allergic to the painful emotions of your patients (or the emotions their emotions elicit in you), then you’re probably better off seeking training in integrative or functional medicine over WHMI. If, however, you welcome the intimacy of helping your patients feel, express, and clear the painful, suppressed emotions that may lead to illness, and if you’re open to seeing illness as an opportunity for emotional healing and spiritual awakening, WHMI may be a good fit.

QUESTION: I’m not sure whether WHMI Level I or WHMI Level II is best for me. Can you help me make my choice?

Answer: WHMI Level II is the whole shebang. It’s what the Whole Health Medicine Institute has always been in its seven years of existence, and from what our graduates have told us, it’s a truly transformational experience. WHMI Level II is far more than an education. It’s like graduate school, trauma healing therapy, transformational inner work, and a spiritual community of dedicated practitioners committed to transformation—all wrapped up in one. WHMI Level I is the cognitive and intellectual content, but without the deeply personal, relational, and transformational work that can only happen by coming together in person in intimate community.

Obviously, some people will choose WHMI Level I over Level II for financial reasons. It’s much less of a financial commitment. Some will choose Level I because they can’t take enough time off work to travel to California twice in one year or because they live overseas and it’s just not feasible to come to the US. Some will choose Level I because they’re very excited about learning the cutting edge tools we teach and applying them with clients, but they’re not yet ready for the potentially catalytic, life-altering, sometimes triggering transformational aspects of Level II. If you read the “Warning: This Could Change Your Life” section and you don’t feel ready for that yet, Level I would be a better choice.

QUESTION: How much of a time commitment will this be? Will this interfere with my full-time job, the attention I give my children and my partner, or my self-care?

Answer: We know that many of the people who sign up for WHMI are doctors, full-time employed health care providers, busy professionals, or juggling family responsibilities. That’s why this program is designed so you should be able to show up at your work full time, attend to your families, and still find bandwidth for the core basics of WHMI. However, many of our WHMI students are working part-time, or they’ve left medicine because of burnout, depression, illness, or broken relationships, and they’re desperate for as much content as we can possibly throw their way! We’ve tried to create WHMI so it’s streamlined enough to meet the needs of busy professionals, while also offering a lot of optional content to satisfy the intellectual and spiritual hunger for additional content that people with more time might desire. Some students use this as a container for extensive continuing education, almost like they’re in graduate school, while others just take in what they can on weekends and commutes.

Heal The Healer Track

For those who are on a healing journey of their own and are motivated to enroll in WHMI because of a personal need rather than a professional need, it’s possible to limit the number of hours needed by skipping one of the three pillars of WHMI—the business development pillar. This doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be free to pursue additional learning in business development in the future, but if your primary focus is personal healing, this may not be a priority right now—and that’s totally okay. You can still get the gist of the work—and practice being a patient with your practice partner—and enjoy all the physical and metaphysical benefits of the program—without distracting yourself with concerns about customizing your medical practice or getting certified to facilitate the 6 steps.

Estimated # of hours invested: 65 hours (2.5 hours per week)

The Certification Track

This track is for people who intend to use the tools learned in WHMI to become a certified Whole Health Medicine Institute practitioner, someone who helps patients/clients work with the Whole Health Cairn and facilitates the 6 Steps To Healing Yourself, either in an individual one-on-one setting or in groups. This track is a potentially career-boosting track that gives you tools to differentiate yourself from a practitioner who accepts managed care insurance, someone who has done additional training to offer skills that can help support people for whom conventional medicine has failed to meet their needs. You may intend to use these certification skills inside or outside the conventional health care system. We will let you know exactly what is mandatory to qualify for certification, so you can choose which events/calls to prioritize if time is restricted.

Estimated # of hours invested: 105 hours (3.75 hours per week)

Fast Track To Paycheck Track

Some of you have left your paying job, you don’t have other means of support, and you’re desperate to pay the bills. Paying the tuition for WHMI may have been a stretch already, so now the pressure is on to find a fast track to the “return on your investment.” You’ll likely want to get certified, plus you’ll want to dive right into the content that will help you figure out what’s next in your business life. This may or may not include pursuing certification, but it’s definitely going to behoove you to take advantage of all that WHMI offers regarding running a “fee for service” practice, building a platform so you can attract paying clients, get a book deal, fill workshops, or get paid for public speaking.

Estimated # of hours invested: 145 hours (5.25 hours per week)

QUESTION: I’m sure I want to participate, and I really want to do WHMI Level II this year because the timing is perfect, but I have a conflict with one of the retreats. Can I still enroll?

Answer: The juiciest part of WHMI is the live events, so if you miss one of the retreats, you’ll miss a lot. We highly recommend that you consider applying next year instead of this year if you know you’ll miss a retreat. If however, you are dead set on being with us this year because you’re getting the WHOLE BODY YES from your intuition, and you either can’t make one of the retreats or there’s uncertainty around whether you’ll be available, write to Pearl@LissaRankin.com and explain your situation. We make decisions about retreat attendance on a case by case basis and try to be as flexible as possible. (For example, last year we had a woman whose baby was due around the second retreat, so she participated until it was Baby Mama time—with our blessing. Another year, one student had to miss a retreat because a parent got sick. Life happens. We understand.)

QUESTION: Can I make up a retreat if I miss one?

Answer: No. We’re sorry, but that doesn’t work. Each year, we select a class to journey together and it’s disruptive to bring someone who isn’t participating in the whole journey into the intimacy of retreat time.

QUESTION: Why did you decide to accept lay people this year? If I’m a doctor or licensed health care professional, will this dilute my WHMI experience?

Answer: We have been asking ourselves this question since WHMI’s inception. Our first year, we offered WHMI only for doctors with MD’s and DO’s, and everyone with letters after their name got triggered. So the next year, we opened it up to anyone with letters after their names—chiropractors, naturopaths, Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners, midwives, physician assistants, nurses and nurse practitioners, psychotherapists, etc. Opening the program to other kinds of professionals definitely changed it, but we feel it changed it for the better, breaking down the hierarchy that usually places doctors at the top of the power pedestal and other health care professionals beneath them. Over the years, we’ve fielded countless requests from professionals in other industries—like law, education, the churches and temples, corporate life—ask if they can participate so they can become ambassadors of Whole Health inside their institutions. We’ve also had many coaches and lay people with passion and experience in health care beg to be allowed to bring Whole Health to their private practices and communities.

Our hesitation to open WHMI to lay people has been two-fold. 1) We don’t want to water down the experience for the people we originally set out to help—doctors. 2) We care about quality control, and we’re fully committed to protecting the patients our graduates touch with this penetrating and transformational healing work. With so much corruption and loose boundaries that Lissa has witnessed in the field of Sacred Medicine, we want to ensure that our graduates have both mastery in their field and airtight ethics. This is why we have taken great care this year to add the mandatory Ethics & Trauma Safety course to our curriculum for those who are not board-certified, and it’s why certification is only available for WHMI Level II and III—because we want to ensure that we can maintain quality control as we expand to allow lay people to join us.

We acknowledge that this is an experiment, and this might be the only year we make WHMI available to lay people. If our experiment dilutes the program or in any way harms the integrity of the frequencies we hold, we will reset the boundary next year. So if you’re a lay person and you’re on the fence, consider participating this year, since we may not do it again.

We will be soliciting feedback from all graduates next year to assess how this big change affects the experience of our students, so please trust that we will do everything we can to bring a Whole Health perspective to the widest audience while doing our best to ensure that our growth doesn’t diminish the experience of our students.

QUESTION: What inspires people to sign up for this program?

Answer: People enroll in WHMI for different reasons.

• Some are driven by their integrity. They know there’s more to healing and they want to stay on the cutting edge of how best to help patients and clients heal in a Whole Health-informed way.
• Some are starving for like-minded community of practice, purpose, and belonging. After feeling on the fringe or marginalized by their beliefs about health and healing, many students find that the community of others who are passionate about Whole Health is the best part.
• Some attend because they are personally sick, on disability, and seeking healing from a chronic illness or a health crisis and they want to use the tools in this program personally.
• Some attend because they’ve left a conventional medical job and they’re broke, scared, and desperate for a career change that will allow them to pay the bills while still using their gifts and serving their calling.
• Some attend because they are passionate about healing health care and they hope to do so from inside the system.
• We imagine that because this is the first year WHMI is open to lay people, some might be passionate about Whole Health and seeking new career opportunities as a Whole Health coach. Others who are not health care providers might see that a Whole Health education would bolster their career in other ways.
• Some have no idea why they’re signing up, other than their intuition said “This is the medicine I need now!” (Seriously, we hear this all the time.)