Cutting Edge Medicine:
An Interview on the Importance of Astrology in the Medical Field
with Frenesa Hall, MD

by Michelle Gregg, Counseling Astrologer

I see great value in having a patient see an astrologer to assist them in understanding the current energies that are affecting them, and to help them understand their core selves a little better. In that way, the patient and I can both be clear about any obstacles or ease that we might come across in their treatment.
~Dr. Frenesa Hall

In a recent interview with medical doctor, Frenesa Hall, on the importance of Astrology within the health paradigm, we talked candidly about how truly beneficial using astrology in conjunction with both traditional and alternative forms of health care can be.

Some insights that Dr. Hall shared with me are these:

1. Approaching a patient with an understanding of their worldview, via their astrological birth chart, is useful in terms of working with them optimally toward their healing. Astrological information is useful in understanding how a patient frames the world. Then, as their doctor, I have an idea of how to approach them in a healing context.

2. I see great value in having a patient see an astrologer to assist them in understanding the current energies that are affecting them, and to help them understand their core selves a little better. In that way, the patient and I can both be clear about any obstacles or ease that we might come across in their treatment.

3. I see astrology as being very beneficial to the health practitioner in treating a patient optimally. You can have 10 patients with the same thing, but the same approach is not going to work for every one of them. You already have to take into account each of their personalities, or you should, and that can be very challenging. However, if I had had an astrological fingerprint, some basic understanding of each patient’s modus operandi, I could approach them appropriately from the beginning of their treatment. Knowing their personality in advance would allow me to treat in such a way that would motivate them to do whatever it is that needs to be done to get them well.

4. We all have times when we just can’t seem to get ourselves together, we feel discombobulated, and can’t motivate. An example would be when someone tries to quite smoking and continuously fails. If they had some awareness through astrology of what energies are influencing them, then they’d know when the best time to try quit smoking would be. They’d want to start that endeavor when they know there’s not a lot of upheaval coming up; a time when the energies are positive, and when they can have some staying power on their side.

Dr. H said: I had a patient that every time I gave her a drug she’d have side effects. There was something wrong with that picture, and I didn’t see how it was possible that every drug she took gave her adverse effects. So I asked her if she read the information inserts that come with the drugs. She said absolutely, that she reads every word. So I told her I was going to give her a new one to try, and she was not allowed to read the information, and that I wasn’t going to tell her anything about it either. I told her to just try it and see what happens. And low and behold she had no problem with the drug! Her personality is that she is completely suggestive, and it took me several visits to figure that out.

Michelle said: Very interesting! So if I had been able to see this patient’s birthchart in advance of you seeing her, it’s likely that I would’ve found a Neptune/Mercury connection or something similar, showing that she has a very suggestive mind!

Dr. H: There we go! Had you seen her and we had consulted about her, I would’ve known that I would have to be very, very careful what I say to this person. When you’re working with someone with a particularly suggestive mind it’s very easy for them to misunderstand what you’ve said. You spend time back-tracking in order to clarify your meaning, which slows down their healing time.

Deeper into our conversation we also spoke candidly (and anonymously) about several of her patients. She asked me to look at the birthchart of one of them to see what I could see. She was looking for insight on how to help her best treat this challenging case. I had no prior knowledge of this patient at all:

Dr. H: You want to take a look at one of my patient’s birthchart? Just pull up this date and tell me what you see. I’d be very interested in knowing what you can tell me. Let’s call her Baby Jane. (This patient is a twenty-something female.)

M: Great! Fantastic idea! Let me get the info in the system. Okay. Here we go. Baby Jane has a super strong Mars/Neptune connection which gives her a tendency toward hypochondria. Health would be a terrific focus – something that she’d have a lot of concerns about.

DR. H: Whoo! ABSOLUTELY!

M: And while she would really like to break out of the box she has built for herself, she is probably finding that she can’t. Right now she’s having an explosion of her belief system; it’s coming under duress, or she’s denying that she’s experiencing any sort of explosion or enlightenment. But there’s something going on that she strongly feels the need to break out of. This is a person whose physical energy is not strong. Her physical energy is more confused…does that make sense?

Dr. H: Absolutely.

M: The way she communicates her needs is probably more round-about than direct. She has to go around the bend to get to the corner where she started.

Dr. H: Wow. You’re nailing this girl!

M: Another thing is that there’s a possibility that there’s been abuse in her background.

Dr. H: Oh my GOD! I can’t believe you said that! You have nailed it, you have nailed it! Okay!

M: Her goal, her path in this life, what she really needs to learn, is to step outside the trauma of that abuse, learn how to self-assert and stand on her own feet and say I can do whatever I want regardless of this abuse, and I can communicate that in a loving, generous, helpful way.

Dr. H: You have SO got her. Seriously.

M: The Uranus transit that’s connecting to her Jupiter needs to be nurtured by somebody now. Her whole world is opening wide in front of her, challenging her belief system and opening her to new ways of structuring her beliefs. Somebody needs to really underpin that for her, because it could get very out of control and could feel extremely overwhelming and scary to her.

Dr. H: (Laughs) Why don’t you just go ahead and read her like a book.

M: So if this transit that she’s having, which connects to a bazillion other things in her chart, is not done well, the danger is that she’ll fall back into the hypochondria and come up with all kinds of physical ailments that will keep her from getting what she’s supposed to be learning.

Dr. H: Well, that’s exactly where we are now. Exactly.

M: Does she have any support?

Dr. H: What she has is co-dependence with her mother. It’s so enmeshed. Her issues now have her confined to home and very dependent on the mother.

M: What does “confined to home” mean?

Dr. H: She has problems with her feet, has had surgery on her feet and she’s in a wheel chair. Personally I think she can walk, and I believe her psychiatric problems are because of the physical health issues that she’s having.

M: So this is really fascinating. With the strong Pisces influence in her birthchart being set off by this strong transit, the physical part of the body that comes into play now is the feet.

Dr. H: Really?

M: Uh huh. Transiting Uranus is also squaring Chiron, the Wounded Healer. When you aren’t getting the lessons of Chiron appropriately, he will sometimes place you in a position to become immobile. Chiron in mythology was wounded in the thigh by Hercules accidentally, which meant that he lost his ability to push forward through life. So it looks like what she’s experiencing is a literal physical manifestation of her woundedness. But if she can get out of it, learn the lessons at hand – and with this Uranus transit there is EVERY opportunity for her to do so – then she can come out of this and heal, rather than staying stuck in the chair. But it has to play out correctly. It’s a moment of “you either get past your fear or you don’t.” And if she can manage to get past that fear then the whole wide world opens up. That’s why I’m asking what kind of support she has? She’ll need it to help her play out the transit correctly. Here’s a little tidbit that might be helpful for all of you who are trying to help her. Transiting Saturn is about to come across her Natal Moon. It has already done that a couple of times, and this will be the last pass. What might happen is that she may withdraw emotionally from those around her, particularly mother and family. The danger to avoid is her falling into a deep depression. She’ll probably feel the need to withdraw from others for awhile, particularly her mother, which may be a natural thing, you know, pulling the wall down in order to keep the wide world from opening up too fast. It seems like it will be a delicate balance between prodding her into wellness, and allowing her to withdraw to a healthy degree at the same time.

Dr. H: I see.

M: So when Saturn crosses that Moon she may also feel that her mother is not supporting her.

Dr. H: Well she already waxes and wanes, feeling that her mom is too controlling, or feeling the need to have her at her beck and call.

M: That control thing with her mom could escalate now, and you may see her trying to control Baby Jane’s whole situation because “she knows best”. It looks to me like the mother thrives on keeping her daughter co-dependent.

Dr. H: Yes and her therapist is trying to get the mother to go to therapy, but she won’t.

M: I see. Well this is an opportunity to get her to step into some real emotional authority of her own life; or she could fall back into that place where she simply lets her mother run her life and she just disappears. That’s what this transit across her Moon is about. The time frame on that is around the end of July and the beginning of August. At that time she’ll either be withdrawing a lot with her mother controlling the situation to keep her sick, even though it won’t look like that from the inside; OR it’s the time when she’s going to stand up on her own two feet and say, “Look, I’m 20-something years old. I appreciate all that you’re doing for me mom, but I can be my own authority now.”

Dr. H: Right.

M: That’s the opportunity that’s there, so she needs to be prodded in that direction but it will be very difficult.

Dr. H: Right, because she’s going to vacillate.

M: Oh yes. She’s a vacillating kind of girl. I see her having tremendous problems with self-assertion, a VERY difficult time with that. But this could be her moment if she could be brought into knowledge of that on some level.

Dr. H: Wow. This is very cool stuff. Thank you SO much!

Our conversation ended with an agreement to do a bit of a clinical study. I’ll be looking at Dr. Hall’s new clients prior to her seeing them so that we can gauge how much more effective she can be with them in their healing process. I believe we’re really onto a cutting edge and innovative new approach to the field of medicine! Now if we can just figure out that pesky insurance piece! All in good time.

I’ll keep you posted! Very cool stuff indeed.