Ommani is a Tibetan word meaning: our wisdom lies within us. In February 2001, the Ommani Center for Integrative Medicine opened under the
direction of founder and medical director Dr. Kalpana Rose Kumar.
The center, located in Pewaukee, provides healing-oriented medicine, taking into account a person’s mind, body and spirit, while emphasizing the therapeutic relationships of appropriate conventional and alternative therapies.
“I’m impressed by Dr. Kumar because she is an M.D. who opened a practice and works along side acupuncturists, homeopaths, massage therapists, nutritional consultants, life coaches, and ricci masters,” said Sherris Corby, practice manager at the Ommani Center, who nominated Kumar for a Health Care Heroes Award. “When do you see an M.D. who has enough self-confidence to say, ‘I believe in these more integrative approaches, and I’m willing to work side by side with them.’ That’s very impressive to me.”
“I’ve always had a passion for redefining health care,” said Kumar, who says she is finding a purpose in reclaiming and restoring the vocation of health care to replace a system she believes is not working. “I try to educate and empower people to see how their choices led to their illness so they can make different choices that actually lead to health.”
Kumar, a Stanford University-trained physician, has a background in traditional medicine, but believes the practice is severely limited.
“We overuse traditional medicine for chronic and stress-related illness, and it’s really not doing a good service to our patients,” she said. “We have to make conscious choices that create the environment to actually support health. We’re living from a very fear-based place and we look to the traditional model to fix it for us without taking responsibility.”
Kumar said her focus on health began in India when, at age 2, she was working to “heal” her dolls.
“I would see what kind of sickness they had and try to fix it,” she said with a laugh.
Kumar, who is board-certified in internal medicine and a graduate of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, developed a more organic style of treatment in her first day of medical school.
“I live from a place of heart and meaning, and I felt that aspect was missing in my training in medicine,” she said. “I’m impassioned to bring more meaning to the field. I believe everybody gets caught in the matrix of health care, and physicians lose sight of what it is we’re there to do.”
As medical director of the Ommani Center, the 46-year-old Kumar says her goal is to create a more integrated humanistic framework of medicine that is also more cost-effective.
“People are already changing,” she said. “It’s hard to change, but that’s where I can train physicians to ask the right questions and empower people.”
Kumar has helped thousands of patients reclaim their health, make healthy and wise integrative choices and minimize health care costs, while healing and empowering her patients.
“Consumers are already spending money on alternative medicine,” she said. “We really need to take a look at what they’re looking for. It needs to be done in a very educated manner, and we need to raise the credibility of alternative medicine and use it with a lot more sensibility. Our mission is to facilitate and restore health and healing, empowerment and vitality through high-quality care that optimizes physical, emotional and mental health and well-being. We are committed to providing services with authenticity, integrity, respect and expertise.”
