Inner Practice of Medicine
by Wendy Lau, MD
As a physician, you likely went into medicine aspiring to live a meaningful life in service to others. However, the current Western medical paradigm often implies that your aspirations to serve are stifled by a system that is designed to put profits before people.
Although the current system is not set up to support the mental and physical well-being of physicians, this book addresses how we can work within the system and realize our full potential of job satisfaction by leaning into our inner resources and human connection in the workplace. With practical exercises that you can take into the workplace on a daily basis, you can learn to reconnect with your sense of wholeness. This will enable you to show up fully present with compassion for yourself and others at the forefront, despite the limitations of the system that you operate in.
Who should read Inner Practice of Medicine
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Dr. Wendy Lau has written an essential primer for working and thriving in the physiologically taxing, emotionally challenging, and—too often—morally conflicted realm of modern medicine. She deftly combines clinical experience, spiritual wisdom, and psychological acumen to teach mindfulness practices that attune us physicians with ourselves as much as with our patients, thereby re-aligning us with our core intention of serving humanity.
Gabor Maté, MD
Author, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture -
This book is a revolutionary, insightful, and practical text that has the potential to transform the way medical trainees show up as fully integrated, compassionate, consummate clinicians. It is clearly written from the perspective of someone who has done the brave, hard work of facing the shadow side of medicine and now practices from the fruits of inner unity already achieved. […]
Andrew Ikhyun Kim, MD, MPhil
Hospitalist Physician, Optum; Global Health Policy Advisor, UCSF and USAID; Former White House Fellow -
Dr. Lau skillfully describes toxic aspects in medical training and more broadly, in the culture of medicine. She offers a powerful antidote in tools designed to increase our awareness, refocus our minds and empower our actions in the practice of medicine, cultivating compassion and presence within ourselves and for our patients. This book is a gift to trainees and practicing physicians.
Esme Finlay, MD
Professor, Internal Medicine, University of New Mexico
About the author
Dr. Wendy Lau is a board-certified Emergency Medicine physician, ordained Zen priest, chaplain, meditation guide and competitive martial artist.
She wrote Inner Practice of Medicine after years of teaching her physician colleagues what she feels is missing from medical education — tools to get in touch with our inner processes while working in the challenging medical systems of our time.
It is her hope that this book can be a tool to foster deeper conversations about our shared humanity as physicians in order for us to thrive as humans first, then the healers we have chosen to be.
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Inner Practice of Medicine is a timely and indispensable resource for anyone facing the challenges of practicing medicine in today’s complex environment. Healthcare professionals face astounding rates of burnout working in what, at times, can feel like a hopeless and broken system.
This is not another manual instructing medical professionals how to be more resilient, which can sometimes be interpreted as “try harder,” but rather a true roadmap to inner transformation and a way back to our humanity. […]
Barbara Burggraaff, MD
Board-certified ENT and Sleep Medicine Specialist
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Dr. Lau and her insightful book, Inner Practice of Medicine, has brought a powerful lens to the issues associated with the complexity and challenges of practicing medicine in the modern era. She offers a powerful view inside ourselves to help physicians find self-compassion, maintain perspective, deal with grief, and boost longevity in medicine. It is raw, powerful and insightful.
Christopher Doty, MD MAAEM FAAEM FACEP
Tenured Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Kentucky; Past President, Council of Residency Directors in Emergency Medicine; Physician Wellness Advocate and Speaker
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[…] This book resonates deeply with me as my colleagues and I tackle choices of resiliency versus acquiescence, grit versus quit, and whether to protect ourselves from unspoken grief by further compartmentalizing versus awakening our awareness. I was reminded of the question of seeing the way things are and the ways things ought to be and finding peace in the space between.
Inner Practice of Medicine unveils the essential strategies necessary for physicians to not only survive but thrive amidst the complexities of their profession. […]
Travis Tollefson, MD MPH
Professor and Director, Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, University of California Davis, Sacramento, CA
James Willis, MD
Residency Program Director, Department of Emergency Medicine, Kings County Hospital - SUNY Downstate
“Dr. Lau has written a brave, raw and powerful account of what’s ailing physicians and medicine today. It helps identify the problem and gives tools to achieve longevity in the practice of medicine. It can be utilized for a physician at any stage of their career and used as a tool to teach residents about resiliency and wellness.”
Scott D. Weingart, MD
Emergency Intensivist and Host of the EMCrit Podcast
“Zen Buddhism provides a unique and vital path to thrive in medicine, especially in the resuscitative specialties. There is no better guide for this path than Dr. Wendy Lau, emergency physician and Zen priest. Today, the practitioners of medicine are rife with dukkha—a sense of dissatisfaction and the desire for things to be other than they are—which begets burnout. Dr. Lau's book provides a spiritual salve for this dissatisfaction to allow us to again find joy and to flourish within our careers.”