Offering holistic psychiatric and integrative wellness services for treatment of the whole person.

Personal Statement

The Integrative Medicine Model

When I began my practice over 30 years ago, the highest practice model I could find was within the exciting new field of Holistic Medicine — a term with which most folks are familiar. Taking that concept as a beginning, I decided to include the patient’s family, workplace, and spiritual values, all very pertinent to their healing process, to form a more thorough concept that I called the bio-psycho-sacred healing model. I used this term for many years in my articles and professional presentations.

But the field has grown even more over the interceding years, and new terms such as functional medicine and integrative medicine have crept into the literature and onto the internet, and now inform much of the patient discussion. For clarity, I offer the following definition from the American Board of Physician Specialties (ABPS) website:

“Integrative medicine, as defined by the American Board of Integrative Medicine® (ABOIM) and the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, is the practice of medicine that reaffirms the importance of the relationship between practitioner and patient, focuses on the whole person, is informed by evidence, and makes use of all appropriate therapeutic approaches, healthcare professionals, and disciplines to achieve optimal health and healing.”

To this definition I would like to add the Core Values of the AIHM — the Association of Integrative Health and Medicine , to which I fully subscribe:

1. The Healing Power of Love. Holistic health care practitioners strive to meet the patient with grace, kindness, acceptance, and spirit without condition, as love is life's most powerful healer.

2. Optimal Health is the primary goal of holistic medical practice. It is the conscious pursuit of the highest level of functioning and balance of the physical, environmental, mental, emotional, social and spiritual aspects of human experience, resulting in a dynamic state of being fully alive. This creates a condition of well-being regardless of the presence or absence of disease.

3. Whole Person. Holistic health care practitioners view people as the unity of body, mind, spirit and the systems in which they live.

4. Prevention and Treatment. Holistic health care practitioners promote health, prevent illness and help raise awareness of dis-ease in our lives rather than merely managing symptoms. A holistic approach relieves symptoms, modifies contributing factors, and enhances the patient’s life system to optimize future well-being.

5. Innate Healing Power. All people have innate powers of healing in their bodies, minds and spirits. Holistic health care practitioners evoke and help patients utilize these powers to affect the healing process.

6. Integration of Healing Systems. Holistic health care practitioners embrace a lifetime of learning about all safe and effective options in diagnosis and treatment. These options come from a variety of traditions, and are selected in order to best meet the unique needs of the patient. The realm of choices may include lifestyle modification and complementary approaches as well as conventional drugs and surgery.

7. Relationship-Centered Care. The ideal practitioner-patient relationship is a partnership which encourages patient autonomy, and values the needs and insights of both parties. The quality of this relationship is an essential contributor to the healing process.

8. Individuality. Holistic health care practitioners focus patient care on the unique needs and nature of the person who has an illness rather than the illness that has the person.

9. Teaching by Example. Holistic health care practitioners continually work toward the personal incorporation of the principles of holistic health, which then profoundly influence the quality of the healing relationship.

10. Learning Opportunities. All life experiences including birth, joy, suffering and the dying process are profound learning opportunities for both patients and health care practitioners.

This is a lot to consider when you first see it, but if you can picture this ideal as evolving over time, with the input of many wise and good-hearted healers, it starts to form a better picture of what I try to do every day in my practice.

Looking back to my teachers and mentors, I could not do it without them — and as has often been said, I am standing on the shoulders of giants.

Because — the view is so much better there! And the more I can see into the picture, the more I can help you.

Thank you for your faith and friendship,

— C. Shaffia Laue, MD, ABIHM, ABOIM

Education, Training & Professional Organizations

• Bachelor of Science (with distinction) from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, 1974

• Degree in Medicine from Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia, 1979

• Internship & Residency at the Menninger Clinic, Topeka, Kansas, 1979-83

• Fellowship in Child Psychiatry, Menninger Clinic, Topeka, Kansas, 1984

• Founding Diplomat of the American Board of Holistic Medicine, 2001 (now called American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine)

• American Board of Integrative Medicine (ABOIM) Diplomat, 2017

• Former professor at Holos University Graduate Seminary