Conference Goals

From Vitalism

The Vitalism Conference has been conceived more as an experience and process, rather than working toward a prescriptive destination. To that end, we have some ideas about what the conference might produce, but in large part we are leaving that actual outcomes to be determined by you--the speakers--influenced to whatever degree they are by input from attendees and others.

So we have four ideas about this.

First, To begin to define The New Vitalism with all relevant potential stakeholders participating. This is, far and away, the most important goal. The speakers set represents a group of stakeholders with ties to some representation, connection, or alignment with vitalistic or naturalistic philosophy, either in theory or in practice. Large-scale efforts at developing this body of thought have lain, more or less, fallow for many years. Given the challenges health care systems around the world are facing and the appropriate hunger for solutions and innovation, one of our assumptions is that more efforts to explore the qualitative side of healing may have material benefit to the quantitative side of healing--systems, providers, and outcomes. It is up to this esteemed group to explore this topic and begin to, at a minimum, lay the groundwork for further exploration of this and related questions.

Second, to establish a platform for development of this type of material--mindful of issues of academic and intellectual integrity, political tensions, etc. Life University sees the need for a place where these conversations can--ought to--take place, and part of the impetus to host this event comes out of an awareness that these conversations are simply not taking place anywhere we know of.

Third, to create professional relationships and a collective experience characterized by pluralistic values. In an increasingly pressurized health care marketplace, an arguable position is that we all have potentially important, relevant, and even essential portions of answers to the vexing challenges of improving the health and wellness of individuals--while also increasing the effectiveness of the variety of delivery systems in place around the developed and developing world.

Bluntly put, some of the challenges we face fall into several basic areas of question: can we solve some of these problems better together than apart? Can we be collaborators instead of competitors? Can we develop a coherent and comprehensive agenda that is inclusive of diverse professional interests, yet stimulates intra-professional development and maturation of thought and expression?

And finally, to create a work product. Part of our commitment to 'process integrity' is to avoid too precise an advance determination of what all this effort should produce. We know we want to produce something (a common agenda; legislative/research/professional goals, plans for future discussions, white paper, etc.) but want the group to decide, in essence, what it wants to produce. We are inviting you to participate in a process, not necessarily to produce a predictable form of output. At the same time, we don't want to mis-play the opportunity we have before us by convening this remarkably deep group.   So we know what we want to do, in general terms. And we know that we care how we do it--but are deferring to the group (again) to define this.

So during the first day of the conference we will be presenting positions, opinions, and ideas. The second day we will have a group discussion about some of our collective and individual reactions to what has been shared: points of concurrence, points of departure, "ah ha!" moments of shared perspectives, and so on. Then Saturday afternoon as the attendees move on to either hear a report from Michael Denton about his personal journey through the concept of vitalism or leave for home, the speakers group will sit down and have a less-public conversation about What This All Means.

One of the explicit reasons we have invited Drs. Kaeufer from MIT's Presencing Institute and Coulter from UCLA/Rand/Samueli, is to obtain their expertise, experience and guidance in the quality and integrity of the process we go through both as speaker/participants and attendee/participants. We are expecting and eagerly anticipating their contributions to establishing the 'container' these conversations will occur in. How we listen to each other, what we do with what we hear, how we handle highly personal sets of preconceptions, biases, notions and pre-determined outcomes will be important to address in the flow of the event.

I do want to emphasize, even given all this, that the process needs to be elastic. If we see a good reason to change things, change is on the table.

SB

March 18

With the conference now one month away, I'd like to begin to lay out some of the questions that have occurred to us as we've thought through the issues around the reconsideration of vitalism.

The social context for the timing of this conversation is important, and the results potentially provocative. At the recent Institute of Medicine working summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public, there was widespread acknowledgment of the fact that not only has the American health care system been 'broken' for some time, but that the fundamental paradigm on which it's based is flawed or incomplete. A number of themes were discernible that were clearly vitalistic in nature or in their implications.

The prospect, then, is to consider as part of our deliberations (during and after the conference) the possible impact of a thoughtful contribution about a broadened paradigm that focuses on some of the observable phenomena that are explained or consistent with a vitalistic construct.

What follows is a list of some of the questions we'd like to frame up for discussion. Posting them here does not mean that they have to be dealt with, or even considered, by the group. It's a starting point for some of the questions we have on the chiropractic side of things.

There are a number of assumptions inherent in these questions--especially that we come up with something valuable to consider as a result of our time together! But I have faith that this will be true.

Questions:

• Can the current dominant paradigm be broadened, or should we seek to drive a fundamental paradigm change?
• If we seek a new paradigm, what is it?
• What is the taxonomy of this new, or broadened paradigm?
• What outcomes, products, or results matter in the context of a new paradigm?
• Can we (different professions) talk to each other about this?
• How do we talk to each other about this?
• What do we do with our conversations?

- In health care education - In health care policy - In health care services and delivery

• Can we drive system change?

- On the system's terms - On our terms - On terms collaboratively developed

• What is the basis for health and healing in any new paradigm?
• What 'relationship' do each of our professions have to that basis (cosmology)?
• What do we agree on?

- What do we do about our agreement?

• What do we disagree on?

-What do we do about our disagreement? - In other (?) areas....