There’s a quiet reckoning happening in the world of natural health.
It’s not about more herbs, more protocols, or even more clients.
It’s about who we’re becoming as practitioners and as a profession.
Let’s be honest, while our hearts beat with purpose and our medicine is rooted in wisdom, we’re not always seen as professional. Not in the way we deserve to be.
And that’s not just about perception.
It’s about practice.
In his briliant book Turning Pro, Steven Pressfield writes:
“The amateur plays for fun. The professional plays for keeps.”
For too long, many of us have been playing small not because we aren’t brilliant, but because the systems that support professionalism, leadership and communication have largely been absent in our field.
In corporate environments, “professional development” is non-negotiable.
Teams are sent to leadership retreats, given communication training, taught conflict resolution and systemic thinking.
But in our profession?
The majority of practitioners graduate and are handed piece of paper, a bottle of herbs, and a vague sense of “good luck out there.”
We’re expected to run businesses, manage clients, regulate emotions, do marketing, build teams, liaise with other professionals and do it without the support structures that professionals in other industries take for granted.
This has to change.
What Does ‘Turning Pro’ Look Like for Us?
It’s not about wearing suits or fitting into a medical box.
It’s about maturity. Clarity. Confidence. Capacity.
Turning pro in our field means:
- Setting and upholding ethical, collaborative standards.
- Doing the inner work: self-awareness, boundary setting, emotional intelligence.
- Communicating with grace and clarity—even when we disagree.
- Lifting each other up, rather than competing or isolating.
- Speaking with the medical profession in an integrative and respectful manner—advocating for our role in the future of health, without defensiveness or apology.
It means being someone others can trust.
It means holding the weight of the role, and the lightness of possibility.
This is exactly why I created the Naturopathic Futures Academy and the Futures Accelerator for practitioners ready to lead.
Not just to teach skills.
But to foster professionalism in the truest sense of the word.
We integrate energetic presence with strategic communication.
We teach legacy leadership alongside business models.
We explore conflict navigation, inter-professional collaboration and holding space for impact.
We grow practitioners into mentors, educators, advocates and system-shapers.
Because the next generation needs us to be more than healers.
They need us to be leaders.
The Bottom Line?
If we want to see our profession respected, valued, and included in the future of integrative healthcare…
Then we must become the professionals who can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any industry, and speak from a place of grounded authority and clarity.
Not ego.
Not blame.
Not fear.
But service. Leadership. Vision.
It’s time to turn pro. Together.
💛 Applications for the Futures Accelerator open soon. Be part of the founding cohort.
