A pioneer in functional and integrative medicine, Dr. Frank Lipman is the founder and director of Eleven Eleven Wellness Center and a New York Times best-selling author. In his four decades of clinical experience, Dr. Lipman has helped thousands of patients heal and change their lives with his unique blend of ‘good medicine,’ which combines the best of modern medicine with the best of alternative and complementary medicines, and integrates essential elements from Chinese and functional medicine as well as nutrition, acupuncture, meditation, yoga and more.
In his newest book, How To Be Well: The Six Keys to a Happy and Healthy Life, Dr. Lipman gives readers the ultimate cut-to-the-chase, at-your-own pace, total wellness toolkit with which to build a lifetime of vitality, resilience and good health.
Recently, Dr. Blum sat down with Dr. Lipman to talk about the new book. Here’s what he had to say:
You talk about a Good Medicine Mandala in the book, Explain?
For the book, I created my “new map for a new era of medicine” around a unique organizing structure: The Good Medicine Mandala. A mandala is a symbol used in many wisdom traditions of the world. Almost always a circle, it represents wholeness, potential, and the infinite. It represents the unknowable and the eternal and suggests a cosmos or even a universe; it depicts continuity—one ending is another beginning—and captures the wheel-like turning of time, seasons, and of course, our own human life.
As such, it is used as a tool for establishing sacred practice, especially in Eastern traditions. They deploy it in practices of meditation as a focal point of contemplation to help you gain awareness of the totality of your Self—from the rudest physical aspect of your human body to the immeasurable and expansive nature of your spirit. At its most fundamental level, the mandala is a symbol that restores order.
The Good Medicine Mandala is a circular system in which you, not a doctor or any other authority figure, stands at the center. It is an antidote to old-school linear thinking (which often, just boxes you in). Six rings surround you, representing the six spheres of life that, as an integrative physician trained in modalities of East and West, I know to be the pillars of long-lasting health. When you restore and/or optimize all these spheres, you lead the pack in terms of your standard of health and enjoyment of life.
Each of the six rings contains the blueprints for an abundance of small actions you can take, beginning right now, to improve and strengthen your resilience and functioning. In an echo of a traditional mandala, the Six Rings of Good Medicine ripple outward from the most material aspect of health—the food we eat—to the most subtle one—our sense of connection to the world at large. The Six Rings are:
How to Eat Well – mastering the very building blocks of life: food
How to Sleep Well – re-prioritizing and restoring one of your most fundamental needs
How to Move Well – supporting the body to move in all the ways that nature intended
How to Protect Well – mitigating and preventing the invisible assaults of everyday toxins
How to Unwind Well – consciously switching off to allow for complete mental and physiological reprieve
How to Connect Well – awakening and enhancing a sense of belonging and meaning
Within each ring, you will find the instructions for the essential habits, routines, and tactics that boost resilience and improve functioning. These are universal by design. The way you use them however, is personalized. You can navigate through these rings in several ways, depending on your personality and your individual preference for changes—deep and focused, or gradual and gentle.
What do you want readers to take-away from How To Be Well?
My goal is to show people the extraordinary power of ordinary actions, both small and large, done on a daily basis. Even just one new habit can have a surprisingly wide reach when it comes to the interconnected system that is our human body. Once established, each new habit creates a ripple effect, making the next new habit easier to embrace and ingrain. I want readers to have the tools they need to develop the habits that will, over time, ensure life-long vitality – looking good, feeling good, dodging dysfunction – and enjoying life!
To pre-order your copy and receive some free gifts, visit HowToBeWell.com/preorder and begin your How to Be Well journey!