Psychotherapy is a practice that many different professional disciplines engage. Psychiatrists are also medical doctors and increasingly offer medication and do less and less actual therapy.

For me, the term psychotherapy is limiting. It implies that we work with mind and emotions, but excludes the body and pays scant attention to the spirit, soul, and broader environmental issues.

Energy healing is based on the supposition that illness results from disturbances in the body's energies and energy fields and can be addressed via interventions into those energies and energy fields.

I've found that techniques and practices of energy medicine offer healings that are often quicker, safer, and more effective than many better known healing practices.

Symptoms like anxiety, depression, aggression, alcohol or drug use, are responses to physical and emotional pain that has its roots in traumatic experiences from childhood and later in life.

A good therapist uses their whole being to engage fully with the whole being of the person coming for help.

My own work on depression demonstrated that men and women often have different symptoms, with males often becoming more irritable, angry, and aggressive when they are depressed, while women show the more inward symptoms such as sadness, helplessness, and hopelessness.

I've been a therapist for more than forty years and certainly there is a place for wise elders in the healing process. But most people, most of the time, can heal themselves and those they love, with the help of their family, friends, and community.

Looking at health through a gender lens is the first step to a more helpful and personalized approach to healing.

If you plan to read one book this year I encourage you to consider, Find Your Reason to Be Here.

If you want more love in your life, you could not find a better gift to give yourself, a friend, or a lover.

Anything that helps us know ourselves more deeply, love ourselves more fully, improve our social connections with family and friends, and engage us more completely with the earth, animals, and environment, is a good resource for healing.