Teamwork is Dreamwork. You can’t do it all by yourself. Delegation is something I am now learning to develop as a strength. It takes time!
Today, more than ever, wellness is at the forefront of societal discussions. From mental health to physical well-being, women are making significant strides in bringing about change, introducing innovative solutions, and setting new standards. Despite facing unique challenges, they break barriers, inspire communities, and are reshaping the very definition of health and wellness. In this series called women in wellness we are talking to women doctors, nurses, nutritionists, therapists, fitness trainers, researchers, health experts, coaches, and other wellness professionals to share their stories and insights. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Veronica McBurnie.
Veronica is a mother, family physician, speaker and Clinical Director/Founder of Scotland’s first truly integrative general practice @westbournemedicalstudios, (clinical and alternative medicine). Veronica is also Founder of @singinghealth and Founding Member of Inner Health Coalition — bringing a special modality of singing as a therapeutic bridge for healing to her practice.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
Thank you so much for inviting me to be part of your great series on health and wellness.
I am passionate about my work supporting people as they embark on their own individual journey to optimal health and wellness, looking holistically at the healing of the whole person and not just a sum of the parts. I have always been interested in the Mind Body connection and what makes people tick; why two people with the same diagnosis and prognosis can have a very different outcome and what factors might influence this.
I grew up in Scotland, the daughter of a dentist and a teacher both of whom had come from very humble beginnings and had to work very hard to carve out their professional careers. The importance of a strong work ethic was instilled in me from an early age and after I left school, I went straight away to study medicine at The University of Glasgow in my home city. I had originally considered a career in music (and in fact only in later years did I realise how strongly the two are linked), but this was no competition for the draw of medical school. I knew early on that I wanted to become a family physician and have managed to integrate my singing and music into clinical practice in so many ways that I couldn’t be happier.
A career in medicine affords many privileges including the ability to travel around the globe. Work has taken me to Bermuda, Spain,The Netherlands, Nepal and Australia, encountering all walks of life and so many different health models from the Masai people to Melbourne businessmen to tug boat fishermen on remote Scottish Islands…Despite my wanderlust, I also felt a strong affiliation to my roots and so after a while would always return to Scotland no matter how far afield I went. Most of my earlier years were spent working in the poorer areas of society and also working in prisons both in Scotland and in Bermuda. I was so grateful to somehow pay back for some of the wonderful opportunities Iife afforded me. I always knew there was more I wanted to do and more I wanted to give and began to create a vision of my “clinic of the future” where each patient journey was as unique and individual as the last, marrying both allopathic and holistic medical models under one roof.
Like everyone I have had my share of life adversities. In the middle of my career I found myself on my own with my two young sons, having clambered through various serious health challenges and a degree of financial difficulty through no fault of my own. I became more and more aware of the role stress plays in disease and how we are each ultimately responsible for our own health and wellbeing. I was working crazy hours both in my NHS government clinic and as an emergency doctor in Scotland’s remote island communities. In all of these clinics there was never enough time to spend with patients or to truly be able to hear all of what they had to say.
At the same time I was studying with so many wonderful teachers learning so many techniques for self care and care of others and I knew that one day I wanted to fully incorporate this into my clinical practice. I was creating a picture in my head of my dream clinic that one day I would open in my home city, leading the way for change. I knew it would happen, I just wasn’t sure how.
After the sudden passing of my beautiful mother I knew that I had to build this my own clinic and start following my dreams with due care and attention.Westbourne Medical Studios was built in her honour and I am proud to say we are in our fourth year and growing every day. I like to think of the studios as a beacon of light, leading the way for healthcare in the future, a place where those who enter feel nurtured from the moment they climb the steps and enter the foyer. We have several doctors working with us and many holistic therapists too. We run community events, weekly yoga and meditation classes for our patients and our neighbours. In addition to the “normal” medical services we also offer various holistic and cutting edge techniques to walk with the patient on their journey forward to optimal health and feeling as good as can be.Things are evolving every day.The journey never really ends.The more you know, the more you realize there is yet to know! I feel this is just the beginning and am so excited to see things unfold.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
Throughout my career I have had so many incredible experiences both at home and abroad. I have worked in many different countries and environments around the world that I could fill your whole magazine with so many tales of wonder — tales form everyday people like you and me. Peoples’ lives are so varied and interesting and every one of my patients has a story to tell. I guess the most significant story of all for me was my own health story!
Shortly after graduating from Medical school and in the middle of my houseman intensive year I had a bad riding accident resulting in an unstable spinal injury landing me in hospital for some considerable time.This was an invaluable turning point for me and an experience which shaped the future of my career. I had to lie still in a bed for months and was unable to move, totally dependent on nursing care and the kindness of visitors. I learned so much about what it was to surrender and trust, about the mind body connection and of use the power of the mind to create change in the body and also to be patient as well as to be a patient!
This invaluable insight stood me in great stead for the rest of my career and allowed me to truly share empathy with patients who are vulnerable and weak, struggling with little or no independence and what it was like to be on the receiving end of medical care, both compassionate and otherwise.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about a mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Mistakes…some say there are no accidents and there is no such thing as a mistake! I think the biggest mistake I have ever made was the pressure I imposed on myself that it was up to me to “fix everyone.” Day one of medical school consisting of 200+ bright eyed and bushy-tailed medical students who were out to “save the world” learned some hard lessons over the years. Having dedicated my life so far to a fascinating and amazing career, I really don’t think I have any major regrets except perhaps to have reminded myself more often that nothing is absolute we must strive to do everything we can to the best of our ability with love and compassion in our hearts. The role of a physician is to support the patient and help them nurture their physical, mental emotional and spiritual wellbeing; to walk with them on the path to optimal health using every tool that seems appropriate whether that takes the form of blood tests, X-rays, nutritional advice, breathwork, medication or meditation.
The other answer to this question could be more about the clinic and the mistakes in the early years so I suppose the title for that could be that Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day. Things take time. Making change requires a huge amount of effort and faith and self belief. Stepping out and creating something totally new and different was an interesting exercise in patience and self motivation. The voices in my head telling me I was crazy and all that everything had to be perfect from day one offered interesting internal dialogue I think I learned not to spend too much time on the perfectly perfect plan…take the first step and the next one will light up and appear giving direction on where to walk rather than sitting in the darkness of deliberation.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
I do believe that the current health care model has to change. There is a wealth of scientific evidence stating that Stress is the main cause of almost all disease. This takes us down the road of genetics vs epigenetics and how we switch our genes on and off. Most of us are living in “fight or flight” mode and our autonomic nervous system is way out of balance. We need to look at the whole person as a unique individual and create a bespoke health program to support them on their healing journey. I would love to see the clinic model at Westbourne roll out across the UK, Europe, the USA and beyond.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
This is an interesting question. It’s not so much a lifestyle “tweak,” it’s more about a commitment to change and accept responsibility for our health journey as best we can. The message it that we can rebuild and regenerate wherever possible. For example, we do not have a single red blood cell in our body that was circulating 6 months ago and so we are rebuilding and regenerating all the time. Nothing is set in stone; our bodies have an innate ability to heal if we support them in the right way.
1 . NUTRITION: We are what we eat! We are also what we absorb which is why the gut flora is so important. Every single item of food we put into our mouths is a building block for the next red blood cell we make, the next brain cell we make and so on. I would say nutrition is key to take us where we need to be on the plane of well-being.
2 . BREATHING: A favourite subject. I spent months and hears learning to breathe with an amazing guru called Anne Shearer who is sadly no longer with us. Her lovely colleague Heather works at our clinic and leads man of our clients though correct breathing practice. Do you know that we eliminate as much as 70 percent of all body toxins through breathing? Most of us stopped breathing correctly when the stresses of life took over and so the little oxygen factory in the centre of every cell nucleus (call the mitochondrion) is not optimising the oxygenation of very cell in our body. Breathing also activates the vagus nerve and “rest and relax/ rest and repair” part of our nervous system. Breathing correctly is essential for health and well-being across the board. One of my clients rom LA had come for a review after treatment for a chest infection. He said he was feeling much better but, when I examined him his oxygen saturation was only 89 and he was alarmed and anxious thereafter. We spent only ten minutes running through a breathing practice which left him both relaxed and elated. His oxygen levels visibly climbed in that short space of time to 99 percent. He was amazed! Breathing is essential for life, correct breathing is essential for good health, and its free! You can do it anywhere — at the traffic lights, in the grocery store ….
3 . SLEEP: Another essential tool for longevity and wellbeing. When we sleep, the fluid around our brain rinses the toxins away and allows cell repair and regeneration. It’s a bit like a brain carwash! It’s not so much about counting the hours of sleep and more about the quality of our sleep as this detoxification process only happens during the deeper phase of sleep. If we do not sleep well, then our brain is exhausted and that is when wiring goes awry and the brain and body so not connect as well as they could.
4 . MEDITATION: Another favourite subject of mine! There is so much scientific evidence now to prove the link between meditation and health. Can our thoughts make us well? The answer appears to be yes! Our thoughts are in the form of frequencies and our brainwave frequencies have different values depending on how awake or alert the mind is and where we are placing our attention. If we can let go and let our attention drift into nothing, then the brain can relax and reach a lower frequency state allowing the body to enter deep relaxation and rewire neural pathways to optimise health and wellness. Dr Joe Dispenza has done much great work in this field and has gathered a huge amount of clinical evidence showing that meditation can rewire and recharge the brain, encouraging new healthy signals to the body to repair itself on a cellular level. I learned to meditate over a decade ago and regard meditation as one of the most valuable health tools in my box.
5. JOY: Doing whatever brings us natural, pure, unadulterated internal joy is something that should never be compromised. It’s amazing how few patients take time each day to find some joy. In fact, many look most startled when I ask them the question at their first medical appointment, “what brings you joy?” I find joy in some of the every day things — being with family, walking my dogs in the woods and of course SINGING! I run singing workshops up and down the country promoting singing for wellbeing within communities. When we sing we are expressing ourselves in our truest form. A recent study found that when people sing together, their hearts start to beat in synchrony. When we have what is called “heart coherence,” we are in the perfect state to create, to repair and regenerate and to fall in love with life!
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Ooh, that’s a hard question! There is so much I would like to see people doing for themselves and when we honour ourselves in some way we also honour others. I think most of all I would love to change the face of healthcare and start a movement to upgrade traditional allopathic medical clinics to ones that include a bespoke and individualised all round holistic approach to health allowing the patients to thrive and be the very best version of themselves embracing the full, whole and complete picture of wellness. I would love to see the model I have created here in Scotland rolled out across the UK, Europe, USA and beyond.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
1. You can do it! Believe it and become it! I created my clinic from the ground up at a time when no one else around me. Certainly none of my peers would have contemplated this. It required much motivation to keep going. I don’t think I could have done it without the encouragement from those close to me who believed enough that I could do it and so allowing me to become it!
2. Teamwork is Dreamwork. You can’t do it all by yourself. Delegation is something I am now learning to develop as a strength. It takes time!
3 Less is more. It doesn’t have to happen all at once. Recognizing the high achiever disease of pressurized unrealistic “it is all essential and has to be done yesterday” approach is not necessarily the best one.
4. Know your strengths. Know when to ask for help. Asking for help is a strength in itself!
5. Everything always turns out in our best interest even if at the time its not always obvious.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Mental Health is without doubt the topic closest to my heart. There are 101 reasons why mental health is on a deep decline. Our mental health has a huge impact on our physical health. You cannot separate the mind from the body and so despite huge advances in modern technology and medical research, both mental and physical health is declining across the globe. Stress is the major cause of disease. When the autonomic nervous system is out of balance and we are all about fight or flight rather than rest and relax, then the body releases a stress hormone called cortisol which causes inflammation. When in fight or flight mode the body has no way or repairing damaged cells, we have little or no creativity and our mental and physical health takes a downward turn.
The feeling of belonging to a community, sharing of emotions, the need to create, and to connect to one an other as humans is essential for our survival. Our lights need to shine to light the way for ourselves and others, to support one another and to nurture our health both mental and therefore physical and spiritual/emotional, will improve the health of every nation.
What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?
I would love your readers to reach out online. They will find me at my clinic www.westbournemedicalstudios.com. We are also on Facebook / Instagram and you can also come and join in some of our singing exploits on www.singinghealth.com. I look forward very much to connecting with everyone.
Thank you so very much for inviting me to be part of your fabulous magazine series on Health and wellbeing !
Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.
About the Interviewer: Wanda Malhotra is a wellness entrepreneur, lifestyle journalist, and the CEO of Crunchy Mama Box, a mission-driven platform promoting conscious living. CMB empowers individuals with educational resources and vetted products to help them make informed choices. Passionate about social causes like environmental preservation and animal welfare, Wanda writes about clean beauty, wellness, nutrition, social impact and sustainability, simplifying wellness with curated resources. Join Wanda and the Crunchy Mama Box community in embracing a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle at CrunchyMamaBox.com.
