Christopher Ashton is a thought leader and truth seeker in all matters pertaining to improving health in individuals, organizations and populations. Educated in engineering physics, medicine and business finance, Christopher is able to connect the dots in multidisciplinary, complex scenarios in a manner few other persons can. Driven by the belief that answers always exist, he is currently making sense of previously incomprehensible human decisions from an organic, scientific basis. His personal goal, create something so creative and discover new truths worthy of consideration for a Nobel prize.
Dr. Christopher Ashton, Program designer/ Consultant
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
I’m considered a multidisciplinarian with education and practice in engineering physics, medicine and business finance. I’ve worked for myself for virtually my entire career; for most of the past 15 years, I’ve considered myself ‘unemployable’ especially now given my age. Nonetheless, I’ve had the privilege of working coast to coast to coast in Canada from the executive boardrooms to the front lines, positively impacting people’s health.
Yet, I am an ordinary person that loves the outdoors, hunting and fishing and exploring, hearing stories from my elders, laughing and loving. What is your business name and how do you help your clients?
My business name since 2006 is HarbourFront Health Group, started in Toronto in the neighbourhood of the same name. I help where others can’t through rigorously seeking the truth (as best I can), connecting the dots across disciplines and inspiring solutions that have been deemed ‘miraculous,’ ‘lifesaving’ and ‘brilliant. What are your current goals for your business?
I would like my current work to be a ‘disruptive technology’ in its current space. I’m sure it will be; I’m just first. What would you like to achieve for yourself and your business in the future?
I have no goals, just a life-long inner drive to do the right thing on the planet in this short journey. I’d be happy to be a full-time researcher but, in many senses, I already am. Who inspires you to be the best that you can be?
Muhammad Ali will remain as my internal role-model. Despite seemingly impossible challenges and challengers, his faith in himself prevailed. I’m also a boxing fan and was pretty good at the sport once upon a time. What is your work inspired by?
Mother Teresa inspires me to ‘do it anyways.’ I’m often internally confronted with a new truth that I know is going to go through some often savage criticism and will come at an energy and economic cost to me. I do it anyways. Tell us about your greatest career achievement so far.
I figured out what support groups told me was impossible to do: I know the organic basis of most of the complexity of addiction and the science of recovery (what to expect so one can handle episodic ‘craziness’). If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?
I’m truly torn by my current industry. I see little evidence of actual understanding of the issue at hand, yet the myths are so entrenched in society, very good revenues can be gained with proper marketing of things that don’t really work. More often than not, the overall effect of residential ‘treatment’ can be negative. Relapse after treatment physiologically makes the next attempt at getting clean and sober harder and with more longer term personality changes.
It's awful having this ‘knowing’ of what we’re truly dealing with, yet having to compete against more established, even branded centers with major marketing dollars. But I ‘do it anyways.’ Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
I don’t believe in ‘pivotal moments.’ To me that’s one of the societal fallacies designed to keep us ‘looking inside’ for discrete solutions that don’t exist. I specialize in science of the limbic system: emotions, thought, actions, memory. Except for true PTSD (which is another matter entirely), our reality today is the result of a developmental process that starts when sperm meets egg.
