Not like any medical conference that I’ve been to before.

The Medicine Festival was an antidote to every medical conference that I have ever been to. It was held in the beautiful woodland of the Wasing Estate, Berkshire. Over 10,000 people gathered to camp, dance, sing, meditate, to celebrate the summer and have a great ( sober) time. Firstly it was hot, an outrageous 36 degrees, and dusty. I pitched up for my shift as a traffic cop, this has been my fantasy job for some time now, and did my 3 shifts that meant I got a free ticket to this festival that I knew almost nothing about. It honestly was a joy from start to finish, all 5 days, despite the heat, the dust and the water supply being a bit patchy.

So if it’s not the kind of conference I am used to going to as a doctor, what was it ? The phrase that kept coming up was ‘ You are the medicine you seek ‘, and there seemed to 10,000 ways to health being demonstrated at the festival. Every person that I shared a chat, or shower queue or dance session with had their own take on what they were enjoying, or looking for, or finding. A sense of connection to the other humans, the music and also the nature around us was everywhere I looked. The site was decorated with exquisite attention to detail, with handmade mandalas on the ground and flowers moss and and mushrooms tumbling out of tubs everywhere. Fatoumata Diawara from Mali played an incredible high energy gendre-crossing set on Friday night - using her stage and power to share her hopes for the world, and inviting friends up on stage to dance with her. In one workshop I learnt about sensuous touch and how consent can be asked and given in the most subtle and delicate ways, in another I found out about different goddess archetypes and how their qualities could help me move through difficulties that I face in life. I found a late night Irish folk band in the woods, and some new friends.

I ate fabulous food, drank not a drop of alcohol, danced, sang and laughed till my belly hurt. It really was a far cry from the damp tuna sandwiches and disappointment swallowed down with beer at the end of the day that I associate with a more conventional medical meetings. At “Medicine’ there was talk about what matters most : love, rage, grief, nature, water and economic systems. Interestingly there were keepers of indigenous and healing wisdom woven through all the areas and the opening and closing ceremonies of this festival, so this was full of many medical traditions, just ones that I had perhaps lost site of as an NHS doctor.