Rodger Douglas
Doctor of Medical Heilkunst
Contemplation
Exploring the Emotional Side of Skin Health
A chronic skin condition affects more than the surface of your skin. It can influence how you feel about yourself, how you interact with others, and even how you approach everyday life.
Yet we rarely take the time to explore this side of our health. We become absorbed in our physical symptoms while paying little attention to our underlying emotional state.
My approach draws on the work of four influential thinkers: psychologist Ted Grossbart, psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin, psychiatrist Carl Jung, and physician John Sarno. Although their methods differ, they share an interest in understanding how the subconscious mind affects physical health.
Ted Grossbart
The Emotional Life of the Skin
Why does our skin sometimes seem to reflect what is happening in our emotional lives? We blush when embarrassed, perspire when anxious, and may notice our skin becoming more troublesome during periods of stress.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Ted Grossbart, a pioneer in psychodermatology and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, devoted his professional life to exploring this fascinating relationship between the mind and the skin.
In his influential book Skin Deep: A Mind/Body Program for Healthy Skin, Grossbart examines how emotional stress, unconscious conflicts, and personal experiences may interact with chronic skin conditions. His approach uses practical techniques such as relaxation exercises and guided imagery.
Dr. Sarno
Journaling
To be honest, I bought the Divided Mind by John E. Sarno, MD because I liked the cover. Well, my intuition was right because it turned out to be one of the best books I ever read.
Doctor Sarno discovered something fascinating. In many instances his patients suffered from severe debilitating pain but there was no physical cause. No cut, no breaks, no herniated disks, nothing. Just pain. Of course he searched. He used X-rays, MRIs, blood tests, and more but he found nothing
He realized that the pain had to be created by the subconscious mind. So he developed a method to connect to the subconscious mind. His method is surprisingly easy, simply open your journal and write to your subconscious mind for just an hour a day.
Eugene Gendlin
Body Awareness
Eugene Gendlin was an Austrian-born American psychotherapist who developed Focusing - a therapeutic method that encourages people to tune into their bodies to gain deep insight into their emotionals.
There is a certain type of emotion that does not come from your mind but from your body. Gendlin called it a “felt sense." It's a bodily awareness of a situation or person or event. An internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given time-encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once rather than detail by detail. A felt sense doesn't come to you in words but as a single (though often puzzling and very complex) bodily feeling.
Gendlin developed a six-step practice that can help you understand your skin, your mind, and you situation as a singular whole. I often practice it with my clients during consultations. I'm sure you'll come to love it.
Although Carl Jung’s work isn’t part of the formal Heilkunst curriculum, his ideas fit naturally into the realm of therapeutic education. I have always loved his ideas and thus naturally included them in my practice.
Jung saw illness as messages from the unconscious. When certain parts of the self are denied or repressed, they don’t vanish, but instead surface in disguised forms either as emotional issues or as physical symptoms.
In my own work, I draw especially from two of Jung’s most useful methods: active imagination and dream work.
Guided Meditation
Meditation isn’t about escaping your thoughts or reaching some abstract ideal of stillness. It’s a practical, grounded tool that’s been validated by both ancient wisdom and modern science.
Studies show that meditation can shift brainwaves from the high-alert beta state into more restful alpha, theta, and delta states. From the myriad of meditation techniques out there I use guided meditation as it is easy to practice and tends to produce good results.
Sigmund Freud believed that when unconscious conflicts were made conscious psychological problems would disappear. One of his students, Wilhelm Reich, found that this was not always true. Some of the most thoroughly analyzed cases remained uncured.
When searching for a reason why, Reich discovered that the one factor that differentiated the cured from the uncured was the capacity for surrender. To let go! When we are able to let our energy flow we are happy and content, but when we dam it up our emotions become rigid, and our muscles become stiff. Reich referred to this as body armor.
I’m Dr. Rodger Douglas, DMH, a South African-born homeopath now based in Osaka, Japan. With a psychology degree from Nelson Mandela University and a diploma from the Hahnemann College of Heilkunst, I specialize in holistic skin care. I serve clients by phone or video across the US, Canada, the UK, and beyond.