The Autobiography of Dr. Peter J. Glidden, BS, ND
“A second generation native of Nantucket Island, and the youngest of 6 children, I spent my childhood riding bikes, fishing, swimming, scuba diving, sailing and hunting in a quintessential Norman Rockwell-esque, small New England town. My mother’s devout catholic faith had a strong influence on me and subsequently I became involved with the Catholic Church from a young age all the way through High School. The spiritual side of life was always in the foreground of my mind and for a number of years as a teenager I seriously considered becoming a Catholic priest.
Investigations into the spiritual dimensions of life led me to become a Transcendental Meditation practitioner at the ripe old age of 10, the same year that I taught myself how to do yoga. Graduating third in my High School Class I matriculated to Williams College in the fall of 1976 ostensibly as a Religion major. Disenchanted with academic life I dropped out of Williams after only three semesters.
For the next 10 years I pursued a wandering life path of adventure and investigative spirituality which led me to Ananda Cooperative Community in Grass Valley CA, Sant Mat Spiritual Center in New Hampshire, and the Kripalu Center in Western MA. In my mid-twenties, my future started to call to me and the inner promptings of my life started to generate a pull towards securing a rewarding professional career.
Looking back, it is unclear to me why I chose the medical field as a profession. It was more of a felt sense than anything else – it just felt like the right thing to do, and it was time to do something. My experience with yoga and meditation had by default put me in touch with the alternative health culture in the US, and I had found myself over the years in the company of many different people who referred to themselves as “healers.” Interestingly, 100% of them lacked any substantial grounding in the scientific method, and when push came to shove, they would all fall back on conventional medical methods. There were only two wholistic medical practitioners that I had any respect or admiration for whatsoever – an osteopathic doctor and a chiropractor.
So in 1984 I went back to school, securing a BS in pre-med biology from the University of Massachusetts in 1987 with the intention of becoming an osteopath. In my senior year at U-Mass I became very sick and experienced two things that completely changed my life:
1 – The complete and utter incompetence of conventional medical doctors to help me to even understand what was wrong with me, let alone fix it;
2 – A remarkable and instantaneous cure from a licensed Naturopathic physician. The juxtaposition of these two events completely altered my professional path, and solidified in me an unshakable resolve to abandon conventional medicine and become a naturopath.
Five months after I experienced the miracle cure from the naturopathic physician, I was enrolled at Bastyr University of Naturopathic Medicine in Seattle WA – where I had the daily experience that I was in the right place at the right time doing exactly the right thing. I had hit my stride. In 1991 the goal of becoming a naturopath was realized and my passion for the profession was so strong that I was selected by my classmates to give a speech at the graduation ceremonies. I officially became licensed to practice naturopathic medicine in January of 1992 and have been in the front lines of private practice ever since, often working for years at a time in unlicensed states with the intention of drumming up public support for the naturopathic licensing efforts therein.
The combination of inner prompted spiritual investigation and outer grounded wholisticmedical training have given me a unique perspective on the workings of the human body-mind. My roots in New England Yankee pragmatic problem solving and the independent spirit which all Nantucketers enjoy by birthright have coalesced in me, ripened over time, and are in fact the true and authentic forces which drive me forward now in the last third of my life.
I am an unshakable stand for the optimal health and wealth of my brothers and sisters worldwide. I am an unruffled, proud and outspoken pioneer of wholistic naturopathic medicine, delivering the touch-stone message, so very necessary in this time of unparalleled human suffering, of health recovery through science based, clinically verified wholistic medicine to anyone with the ears to hear it. You can count on me for this. Every time.”
