The trek to optimal health and joy is like a labyrinth, filled with a contorted network of paths.
Dr. Sonny Miles, physician and founder of Healing with Intention Integrative Medicine, navigated through this complicated maze herself prior to opening her integrative medicine practice.
After earning her medical degree, she worked as a doctor in the traditional healthcare system for years. While working with seriously ill patients, she realized she wanted more out of life and work than she was able to have working full time in that environment. However, starting her own practice brought up significant financial worries, anxiety, and even grief over the fact that this medical career wasn’t exactly what she envisioned.
But with a lot of coaching, deep inner work, and her support networks, Dr. Sonny learned to trust herself again and dreamed up her current practice. She established Healing with Intention Integrative Medicine as an LLC in August 2022. About a year later, she opened the doors to her brick-and-mortar business in downtown Loveland. In April, her podcast “Your Life Is the Medicine” will go live on various platforms.
With Dr. Sonny, it’s about working through an individual’s wounds and exploring what treatment modalities resonate with each person. These modalities could include breath work, movement, mindfulness, herbs, nutrition, sleep, and more.
“I’m a bridge between conventional and complementary medicine. I’m here to say here’s a different way to think about your health or here’s a different modality. While we work on your body, we also work on your life, to help facilitate healing and restore wellness,” she says. “My approach to healing is that healing is the journey, right? We don’t arrive at ‘healthy.’… So, working with me is really investing in that process.”
The healing journey with her may be a longer, more thorough process as she directs clients to discover what’s essential for their self-care.
“My approach is I’m the guide, but you’re really the only one who knows what feels good in your body,” Dr. Sonny says. “It is a co-creative process of a healing journey. So, the investment is time, it’s money, it is your energy to say I’m actually going to do something different, and I’m going to go on a healing journey.”
The physician takes an inner world and outer world approach to healing backed by a belief that our mental health is strongly connected to our physical health.
So, where does the path to healing start with Dr. Sonny?
It begins with an in-depth initial consultation with her where she dives into patients’ medical records, allows them to share their stories, and hears what needs healing.
Then clients will stop and reflect on where they are and what works for them and what doesn’t, which naturally leads them to think about what changes they could make.
“If we think about your life as the medicine, what’s the first thing we need to start shifting?” Dr. Sonny says. “My approach is that little changes over time create transformation…. And this idea that we can make these small shifts, so one percent or one degree of shift today and maybe one degree of shift next week or next month, and if we can stick with those because they are small…you can end up in a totally different place over time.”
Yet, if it’s challenging to make these shifts, then oftentimes people need help.
Now, Dr. Sonny doesn’t just merely advocate for investment in health and self-care for her patients, but also practices it herself.
She finds balance and well-being by creating a life that allows her to ride her horses, walk or hike outside, participate in women’s circles, prioritize sleep, and eat three meals a day, among other things. She invests in her own self care, such as treating herself to massages or seeing a chiropractor.
“I think the question for everyone is: how are we investing in ourselves? Health wise? Growth wise? Happiness or joy wise? What do we need to be better, to live better, to thrive?” Dr. Sonny asks rhetorically. “Think of how you are investing in your physical health, but also how are you investing in your overall joy in life?”
While people might not be able to meet their needs all of the time, the goal is to strive to meet them the majority of the time and realize how to get to that place. To reach that destination, it’s possible that Dr. Sonny might be a part of steering patients out of the labyrinth.
“My hope is to serve more people, to really help people connect to themselves and find sort of a home in their bodies,” she says. “We often have an adversarial relationship with our bodies, so really finding some ease with our bodies and creating lives that fulfill and sustain us.”
“I think the question for everyone is: how are we investing in ourselves? Health wise? Growth wise? Happiness or joy wise? What do we need to be better, to live better, to thrive?”