The Medicine of Experience: Why Living It Matters More Than Knowing It

07-18-2025

By Dr. Howard Friedman MD | Veteran | U.S. Army Medical Corps | Internal Medicine | HHOM

Experience is the medicine no textbook can teach—where memory, resilience, and awareness become the truest source of healing

Not in the chart, but in the soul,

The silent wounds still make us whole.

A pain once borne becomes a light—

Not just endured, but turned to sight.

The body breaks, the spirit sees—

And healing lives in memories.

—Dr. Howard Friedman, MD

In a world obsessed with credentials, protocols, and data points, we often overlook the most powerful teacher of all—experience.

Whether it’s a veteran’s scars, a physician’s decades at the bedside, or a survivor’s quiet resilience, experience isn’t just a chapter in your life—it’s knowledge in motion. It connects us to awareness in a way no textbook ever could. Healing—physical, emotional, or spiritual—begins not in theory, but in the lived moment.

Is Consciousness the Final Frontier of Medicine?

We treat bodies. We manage symptoms. But what if the true seat of suffering—and healing—is consciousness itself?

What happens when we ask not just what hurts, but who is hurting? The body may be the vehicle, but who is the driver? You might call it the observer, the soul, the witness, or simply awareness. No lab test measures it, yet it’s the silent companion behind every pain and every moment of clarity. Understanding consciousness may be the next evolution of medicine—not as mysticism, but as necessary perspective.

Experience Is the Bridge: Mind to Body, Past to Present

Memories don’t just sit in the brain like files in a cabinet. They’re entangled with emotion, encoded in flesh, and often resurfaced through the body before the mind can catch up.

Trauma, joy, purpose—these aren’t abstractions. They leave footprints in our nervous systems, our posture, our breath. The body doesn’t just keep the score. It tells the story. To heal, we must not erase these experiences but integrate them. Growth doesn’t come from avoidance—it comes from deepening awareness.

The Seen and the Seer: Who’s Behind the Experience?

If you go deep—past the thoughts, the feelings, the roles—you’ll find the witness.

This witnessing self is not broken by trauma or diminished by age. It has watched every season of your life unfold. Some call it awareness, others call it soul. Whatever the name, it’s the most constant thing you have. You are not your worst moment. You are the one who lived through it. That quiet witness is your core—and it cannot be harmed.

Experience Isn’t What Happens—It’s What You Do with It

We don’t get to choose every event in our lives. Veterans know this deeply. Life hands us loss, injustice, pain, and challenge.

But the alchemy—the transformation—that’s ours to own.

This is the heart of every blog I’ve written, whether about inflammation, nutrition, stress, or disability. I don’t hand down commands—I offer understanding. What you do with that information is where the real healing begins. It’s not about avoiding pain but metabolizing it. Letting it move through you without turning you to stone.

Howard’s House of Medicine – HHOM LLC

At HHOM LLC, we serve veterans because we are veterans. I’ve walked the hospital halls and VA corridors. I’ve seen the disconnect between policy and people. That’s why I built this practice—not to systematize healing, but to restore the human in the medical.

We listen. We analyze. We advocate. Our Nexus Letters are precise, honest, and backed by lived experience. But we also offer something more—a growing library of blogs to support the healing journey, with topics ranging from VA disability claims to the deeper intersections of health, purpose, and awareness.

Thank you for reading. May your experience, whatever it holds, become your medicine.

—Dr. Howard Friedman MD

Board-Certified | Internal Medicine | Veteran | U.S. Army Medical Corps

Founder of Howard’s House of Medicine (HHOM LLC)

https://www.hhomllc.com

Frequency Asked Questions:

Q: Why is experience a more powerful teacher than knowledge alone?

A: Because knowledge can be memorized, but experience is lived. A textbook may tell you what inflammation looks like, but a veteran who has endured it understands its weight. Experience fuses information with meaning, shaping how we heal, decide, and grow.

Q: How does consciousness connect to healing?

A: Consciousness is the seat of awareness—the “who” behind the “what.” Healing is not just fixing symptoms; it’s understanding the sufferer. By engaging awareness, we treat the whole person, not just the condition, allowing suffering to transform rather than dominate.

Q: What does it mean to use experience as medicine?

A: It means metabolizing what life hands you—pain, loss, challenge—into something that strengthens instead of hardens. Experience becomes medicine when we integrate it, rather than avoid it, letting scars guide wisdom and resilience.