About Dr. Woodard
Question: Dr. Woodard, how did you get into doing what you do?
Answer: I think that I must have been born into it. Before I was 10 years old I often lay awake in bed for hours at night spinning elaborate fantasies about helping seriously ill people recover their health. I had a lot of personal experience with illness and doctors because of frequent sore throats, bronchitis, and abdominal pain. Even at that tender age, I had some awareness that if I was going to help other people get well I had to overcome my own health challenges. I even had some awareness that to do that I would have to change the way I lived. It turned out that I was right, although I didn't know it until years later. All my chronic illnesses were caused or aggravated by milk allergy and cleared up when I quit drinking a quart of milk a day.
With my own health much improved, I felt it was time for me to try to help others. When I was in middle school I would often take a first aid kit onto the playground during recess and attend to the scrapes and cuts that happened there. I eventually realized that it was going to take more than Band Aids and Merthiolate to help people with their serious health challenges and that I had to look further for how to do that.
However, there was a slight delay in pursuing this. About that time, I started through puberty and for about a decade hormonal issues such as girls and sexuality trumped helping people improve their health. The time wasn't wasted, though. I learned important things in high school and college: In high school I learned that I was definitely uninteresting to any girls who were interesting to me. It was not a happy time. The most important thing I learned in college was that there were plenty of attractive young women who were interested in me. I've never understood what there was about going to college that changed my social fortunes so radically, but I never worried about it either. I just enjoyed the new situation and resumed searching for ways to fulfill my life purpose - this time with awareness that relationships, as well as biochemistry, had a lot to do with health. That led me to study psychology where I learned more about rats than I ever wanted to know but precious little about human relationships and how to do them better. I was also aware that biochemistry and physiology were vital parts of good health, so I went to medical school. I learned a lot about treating physical illness but still nothing about creating healthy relationships. It seemed to me that achieving good health required both the physical and the emotional components (relationships), so after medical school I took a psychiatric residency and then went into the private practice of psychiatry.
It took just a few years for me to learn that psychiatry was a weak hero for helping people find the better way to live life and do relationships that I was looking for. I added back into my practice what I had learned in medical school but was disappointed to find that it didn't add much. I then began, one after another, to learn and use new things: exercise physiology, diet, nutritional supplements, orthomolecular medicine, meditation, environmental medicine, Ayur-Veda, and energy medicine. Each of these fields had something to offer; none of them was sufficient by itself. As I moved from one field to the next I brought forward the best I had found there, incorporating it into my practice and into my life.
Eventually I had a complete system that enabled me and my patients to overcome challenges and create a life that is more fulfilling and joyful than I could have imagined. Then, to top it off, I found a way to make it simple, easy, and time efficient enough that people can incorporate it into their daily lives; no need to go to a monastery or become a hermit.
Q: What interests you, even fascinates you, about your field?
A: I feel the most fascinating thing about it is that most people have a capacity, a potential, for self healing, creativity, vitality and joyful living that is beyond what they can even imagine. Another fascinating thing is that I can often, to one degree or another, guide people to discover and use this inborn marvelous capacity. A third fascinating feature is that there is amazing creativity unleashed when my patient and I cooperate intelligently together to devise the program and the strategies that enable my patient to realize his or her innate self healing and power. There is no ONE way to do this, no cookbook or cookie cutter method. The approach for each individual has to be as unique as the individual, so it absolutely requires the intelligent cooperation of the physician and the patient, working together in an attitude of mutual respect, great openness, and a spirit of adventure in exploring the unknown.
Q: What are some of the contributions you have made to your profession?
A: Probably my greatest contribution is a book that my wife and I published called, Healthspan: Claim your Birthright to Holistic Health and Happiness. The book sums up what we had learned in the first 45 years of medical practice and a number of years when Genevieve and I worked as co- therapists in family therapy. A more recent contribution is that I am mentoring younger physicians who want to learn more of the integrative approach to medical practice.
Q: What are some of your proudest achievements as a professional?
A: My proudest achievement is the development of a holistic - that is body, mind, spirit - approach to healing, vitality and quality of life, an approach that is simple and practical enough that one can apply it in the details of his/her busy, time urgent life. Those who do this gain the power to create their own miracles. Another part of this achievement is being able to encounter each individual patient in such a way that I can catch enough of that person's uniqueness so that together we can craft a healing program that makes sense to my patient and that he/she can actually use.
Q: What are some big things that you have accomplished for clients?
A: A number of my patients have said that I saved their lives. I didn't, really, but I did guide them and encouraged them to do what they had to do in order to release the innate healing power that they used to save their own lives. That is a gratifying thing for a physician to do, but I think an even bigger accomplishment is gaining the ability to guide people into doing what they have to do in order to achieve not only vibrant physical health but also great relationships, creativity, productivity, and inner fulfillment and peace. Many patients come to me with their lives in disarray on several different levels: career, personal, and physical and emotional. Some of them are miserable enough to be desperate. I can usually guide such people to a substantial improvement in their overall quality of life, although they have to do the actual work to achieve it; and the outcome is often summed up in the words of a patient who was completing our work together: "Life is good!" Another thing that I have accomplished for my patients is to give them hope that they CAN recover from conditions that conventional medical science considers incurable: Things like type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, sometimes rheumatoid arthritis, chronic colitis, Crohn's Disease, depression, age related cognitive decline, and autoimmune diseases such as lupus erythematosus, and chronic muscle and bone pain.
Q: What is your working philosophy and approach to working with clients?
A: My working philosophy is, as I said, that people have an inborn capacity for self healing, creativity and joyful living that very few people even imagine that they have, let alone put it into action. My job is to guide them into first believing that they have this capacity at least enough so that they will try some of the interventions that we together develop for them. Another part of my working philosophy is that a person's short comings can be transmuted in such a way that the short coming becomes one's greatest strength. For example my greatest short coming is probably a refusal to get involved with the conflictual, nitty-gritty issues of life because I don't like to have my inner tranquility disturbed; and yet, if I am to fulfill my purpose as a guide for people who want to improve their quality of health and life, it is essential that I do exactly what I have an aversion to doing. I have found that, as I step over my fear and actually engage in life rather than observing it from a safe distance, my ability to serve my patients and fulfill my purpose increases in such a way that I am actually hopeful that I can transmute my major shortcoming into my greatest strength.
My approach to working with patients is preferably for us to work together as a coach and a quarterback work together - that is, the coach has a knowledge about what plays are likely to gain the big yards. The quarterback has knowledge about what is actually going on, on the playing field that the coach will never know by observing from the side lines. When the coach and the quarterback communicate well and cooperate intelligently together, the probability of winning the game increases exponentially. Although this is my preferred way of working, I can take charge when necessary and sometimes in certain urgent and emergency situations, it is necessary for me to do that and I am comfortable doing so.
Q: What is your educational back ground, advanced degrees and training?
A: I have an M.D. degree from The Medical College of Georgia. I am board certified in psychiatry. I have studied and incorporated into my holistic medical practice, exercise physiology, nutrition (both diet and nutritional supplements). I am trained in environmental medicine, Ayur-Veda (the traditional health care system of India and the most holistic approach to health that I have ever seen). I am studying energy medicine and logo therapy (how to use fulfilling one's purpose in life to promote health.) I have been able to incorporate valuable elements of each of these fields into my current practice of holistic medicine.
Q: Do you have some extracurricular activities?
A: I am passionate about and actively engaged in making the holistic approach that I have developed during the last 50 years available to as many people as quickly as possible. I have a sense of urgency about this because it seems likely that humanity is rapidly moving into one of the most challenging times in history where so much of what we have been accustomed to will change so rapidly from relative abundance to scarcity that it will require a great deal of personal power, resourcefulness, and adaptability in order to seize the great opportunities that are inherent in such a time of change and at the same time avoid equally great dangers. My present vehicle for doing this is this web site which I am developing with the intent to make the most useful information available to the greatest number of people at the least possible cost and as quickly as I can.
Another major interest of mine is learning how to grow a complete diet for one person on 1000 square feet of land, using only hand tools and no outside inputs of petroleum derived pesticides and herbicides or natural gas derived fertilizers.
In the meantime I enjoy and cherish my family and friends, find occasions to laugh and appreciate every day, and to be extremely grateful for the challenges in my life and the ability to overcome so many of them.