Why do a consultation in attentive medicine?

Ornamental flowering crabapple tree, covered with thousands of delicate pink petals, symbolizing spring renewal and the fleeting beauty of nature.

We are not machines like cars to be repaired when broken. More deeply, at its core, living is about relationships-our hunger, thirst, bodily rhythms, and even the need to express what feels truly ‘me.’ Every change in us is a message from those relationships. We are not separate beings to be fixed from the outside. We are nature, and we are connection.

To truly pay attention to these changes is to practice a kind of care that, unlike conditional affection based on performance or function, offers presence without asking anything in return-a form of unconditional love that begins with ourselves.

---

1. We are nature, not machines

Today, many human beings-and the medicine they create-see themselves as machines. We judge a body as we judge a car: if it works, all is well. If it slows down or malfunctions, it must be repaired to perform again.

“Worth” is then measured by functionality: the capacity to physically attract people, to intellectually surprise others, or to athletically mesmerize.

If worth depends on satisfying expectations-ours or others’-then affection becomes conditional.
But unconditional love doesn’t ask anything of anyone to love. This purely functional vision of self is therefore deeply questionable if one truly wants to challenge the cultural habit of conditional affection-towards self and others.

The ground of nature doesn’t seem to be productivity. Eating, drinking, breathing, sweating, urinating, defecating, menstruating-these are not mechanical inputs or outputs. They are relationships between bodies of matter, air, water, and soil. They happen without our conscious command, yet they sustain essential relationships compatible with life. Hunger, thirst, the urge to open bowel and pass urine-and that inner energy of what is “really true to me”-seem to be, among others, what teach us how to live.
Take an apple tree. In our utilitarian view, it “serves” to give us apples. But an apple tree is, above all, an apple tree. It is not here for us.

If one day it produces fewer apples or none at all, we might ask: Is it seasonal? Has its vitality shifted? Has its relationship with soil, water, air, or sun changed?

If we truly care for the tree, we don’t graft an engine to force more fruit. We listen. We investigate. We tend to its relationships. Because its health is not just its own-it is inseparable from the world it belongs to.

We are like this apple tree. We are not products designed by human culture, nor mechanical assemblies. Most of life escapes our conscious will: our heart beats without our decision, our breathing continues in sleep, digestion and reproduction happen through a choreography beyond thought. These are not isolated functions-they are relationships with air, water, food, other bodies, and the planet itself.

---

2. What conventional medicine shows-and its price

A functional way of looking at self and others prompts human beings-and conventional medicine-to medicalize aging.

It is essential to distinguish between the natural functional decline that comes with aging-inviting new relationships with self and others-and the decline in vitality seen in disease. Illness is a signal that something in our relationships-with environment, others, or ourselves-has lost harmony.

Confusing aging and illness nurtures the illusion that every slowing or transformation not pleasurable to humans is a defect to be fixed. This is how aging becomes medicalized: treated as pathology, rather than a natural transition calling for adaptation, listening, and respect for the body’s truth today.

When life is immediately endangered, conventional medicine’s quick, technical intervention is understandable and often lifesaving. But for recurrent or chronic conditions, is a lifetime of chemical modification truly our only response?

And even for acute illnesses, which often call for rest and care, don’t we also want to understand why they arose-in this way, in this body, at this time? We often focus on contagion and exposure to other people’s illnesses; yet, if this were the whole story, those most exposed-like clinicians-would be constantly sick. What, then, makes an immune system able to coexist with microorganisms and larger organisms in harmony? And what weakens it, in that very place, at that very moment?

Nature doesn’t change “by mistake.” It can set aside one function to restore another balance. That balance might not align with cultural ideals of performance or appearance-but it belongs to the deeper intelligence of life.

The reason we became sick was never because we lacked the medicine or surgery that later “treats” us. That’s why such treatments are necessarily symptomatic: their absence was never the root cause of the disease. This also explains why medications often have various side effects-because they act on healthy processes within the body.

We are nature-we cannot declare that nature has made a mistake we will correct.

---

3. Learning from nature-attentive medicine as correct relationship

The body that changes-through hunger, thirst, fatigue, illness, or time-is not issuing a technical problem to solve. It is expressing a relational demand: a call for attention to our life, which is itself a relationship with ourselves and the world.

Without the sweetness of fruit, the weight of rain, the lightness of air in our lungs-and without letting go of sweat, breath, urine, or excrement back to the air and earth-what would we be? These are not mere functions. They are relationships that shape our existence. When altered, the body is asking for attention, not just repair.

Attentive medicine begins here.

We are not just functional.
We are not machines.
We are living beings-inseparable from the relationships that sustain us.

If the body changes without our will, it is precisely the moment to listen to the nature we are, instead of imposing cultural ideals upon it. It is not about replacing conventional medicine, but walking alongside it. This path is more demanding because it requires curiosity, humility, and sometimes slowing down rather than rushing to fix. It invites us to recognize the vast part of ourselves and nature that lies beyond conscious control, and to surrender to it with curiosity and affection, eager to learn.

It is also a path of deeper respect-one that refuses to reduce human beings to vehicles of production, and instead recognizes us as organisms in constant relationship, an intelligence of nature far beyond conscious will. This approach embraces a form of care rooted in unconditional love rather than conditional affection based on performance or utility. Here, care offers presence without condition-an echo of the unconditional love we need and deserve, starting with ourselves and radiating through all our relationships.