German New Medicine
Season 03 - Episode 07
We dropped into this conversation after a busy month with minimal contact. Joan had just finished keynoting a conference on generative conflict, and Jamie was fresh off a weekend-long dance workshop that reminded her how easily the left-brain can crowd out the rest of your life. Our individually embodied backdrops matter here, because today’s episode is all about imagining a new way of relating to the body. It’s a field note from Jamie’s five-year-long paradigm shift, proposing: what if the sensations we call “symptoms” are actually signs of healing?
This is our first dive into German New Medicine (GNM)—not as “the one true way” (neither of us believe in those anymore, anyway), but as a framework that has proven profoundly clarifying for Jamie’s professional practice and personal life. But, honestly, more than anything else, this conversation is an invitation to re-center curiosity as a vital clinical skill and valid spiritual posture.
As these ideas have moved from concept into lived practice for Jamie, (unsurprisingly) they’ve begun shaping the work she’s doing offline, too. This February, Jamie will be co-hosting a week-long retreat in Hawai‘i with her dear friend Lyndsay—a BSN, RN, functional-medicine-trained practitioner and soon-to-be Nurse Practitioner with more than two decades of experience inside the medical system. Their work together sits squarely inside the themes of this episode: root-cause healing, biologically aligned living, and partnership with the brilliant spiritual technology that is the human body. If you feel resonance or curiosity after listening to this week’s episode, be sure to keep your eyes on your inbox later this week for more information about how to join Jamie in Hawai’i!
The short version:
Bodies are on our side. GNM’s fifth “biological law,” the quintessence, says there’s no malignancy in nature—life always moves to carry life forward.
“Disease” = a generative process, not a moral verdict. Much of what we label as illness may actually be the body completing a survival adaptation after a conflict shock.
This isn’t all-or-nothing. Surgery sometimes saves lives. Acute care can be a miracle. And also: curiosity regarding an underlying emotional–relational–spiritual component of physical conditions could keep a lot of people safer, saner, and far less medicated.
Curiosity over certainty. Neither of us is interested in shame-and-blame binaries (“you made yourself sick”) or supremacy hierarchies (“this paradigm cancels that one”). We’re interested in a bigger table. That no one owns.
How we got here (and why it matters)
The first part of this conversation sits upstream of GNM itself: the last century of American medicine sidelined whole lineages of healing in the name of standardization and prestige. Some people believe that shift has ultimately been for humanity’s benefit; Jamie doesn’t believe the fruit bears out. If our outcomes (burned-out clinicians, rising chronic disease, lonely patients) tell us anything, it’s that the menu on offer in the industrialized system has gotten too small. Season Three is all about imagination, and we both believe modern medicine needs much more of it, urgently. GNM offers one pathway out into a much wider and fertile field of possibility
Five ideas, human-sized
We didn’t do a whiteboard lecture; we did the living-room version. Here’s the gist:
Conflict → adaptation. A sudden internal shock (loss, separation, threat, “I can’t digest this”) can kick off a survival program across psyche–brain–organ.
Two phases. There’s a “conflict-active” phase (often without symptoms) and a healing phase, where the body cleans house—and you usually feel it.
Embryology matters. Different tissues (by germ layer) adapt in patterned and discernible ways.
Microbes as helpers? This is the spiciest one. GNM frames microbes as cleanup and optimization crews during repair, not problematic invaders. Joan sits with that curiously, and states that either way, the stance toward the body can remain the same: thank you for tending to me.
The quintessence. “No evil in nature” doesn’t mean “no harm.” It means we assume intelligibility first. We ask better questions. We intervene with reverence.
The headline isn’t that everyone must agree on virology; it’s that how we regard our symptoms—and how the clinicians we work with regard them—changes our nervous system, our choices, and even our outcomes.
Where this touches real life
Jamie shares a household story: after a relational repair between kids, the next day brought sudden, intense vomiting—24 hours of the body finishing what the psyche resolved. The following day? Back to normal, full of energy.
Joan offers the clinician’s lens: so many visits are not best served by “find something to excise or medicate.” Adding “unresolved/just-resolved conflict” to the differential can dignify what many patients know but haven’t had language for. It can also prevent iatrogenic harm from treating a body that’s actually already healing.
Both of us refuse the shame trap. Any framework that proposes “if you were stronger/more spiritual/less toxified you wouldn’t be sick” is anti-human. Our measure is always the fruit: Does this increase compassion and agency? Does it widen the menu?
If you want one takeaway…
Try on this reframe the next time your body is expressing symptoms:
“What if this is my body’s brilliant completion of something I’ve lived through?
What if these symptoms are evidence that I am already healing?”
And then let that question change how you choose support—whether that’s rest and soup, antibiotics, a dance class, a second opinion, a hard boundary, or all of the above. It’s not what you pick as much as how your system feels about it. Aaaad as a quick disclaimer: this episode is for entertainment purposes only, and does not constitute medical advice. Please feel empowered to use your own discernment! We trust you with you!
🎧 Listen to this week’s episode: German New Medicine
Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Youtube | Amazon | Hear the full conversation: Jamie’s dance-lit epiphany, Joan’s clinician reflections, and how we’d like to see curiosity braided into modern care.
And in the comments: tell us one place your body is asking for curiosity right now!
Stay Connected
Send us a note any time at exanatomy@gmail.com!
Dr. Joan Chan
→ Website: joanchanmd.com
→ Instagram: @joanchanmd
→ Podcast: The Other Human in the Room—now part of the Hippocratic Collective
Jamie Lee Finch
→ Website: jamieleefinch.com
→ Instagram: @jamieleefinch
→ Offerings: Your Body Is a Person (foundational course), Log Off + Tune In (recorded workshop with zine), Personal Practice (unique 1:1 work with Jamie including a movement practice personally tailored to you)
As usual, listening to the two of you converse about what many would call a "controversial" topic with care and curiosity made it easy to take in and process new information. I learned a lot! I've always felt more kindly to the viruses that visit me than others might, because I know they are just trying to live too! 😊 I'm also contemplating how English speakers attach negative meaning to the word "germ," even as it is related to the word "germinate" which has a positive reputation.