How To Find Your Ideal Practitioner
If you have a condition that needs healing, and you’ve chosen soul medicine, you have a wealth of potential modalities and practitioners from whom to choose. You have access, through Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine and Shamanism, to therapies that have over twenty times the years of experience that modern Western medicine possesses. You have recourse to treatments like EFT and subconscious programming, which can produce very rapid change. You have options like electrostimulation and Healing Touch, which can improve conditions that baffle allopathic medicine.
Once you’ve researched soul medicine modalities, you are ready to choose a practitioner, or team of practitioners, to assist you on your healing journey. Making the right choices here can make an enormous difference. There may be only one local practitioner of the method you want to explore, or there may be dozens. It will require some work on your part to narrow your search. What is the best way to approach it?
First, faith in your practitioner is essential. It’s even more important, given the nature of soul healing, than the modality you choose. Since we know that most disease results from blockages between soul and body, the method you use to reduce or remove the blockages is less important than the act of removing them. An acupuncturist can help create flow, as can an electromagnetic device. Since the quality of your own intention and belief is the most important single element in your healing, you must have a practitioner who you believe is able to help you effectively.
Second, having an active partnership with your practitioners is a must. You have responsibility for your own well-being, and you are seeking a partner who will assist you in your journey. Choose a practitioner in whom you trust, and with whom you feel comfortable. Communication should feel clear and easy. You should feel a mutual respect. It should be easy to be completely honest with this person. After all, you are forging a relationship between partners, a relationship on which your life may depend. A high-quality relationship creates and alliance to facilitate healing.
It’s important to meet your practitioners in person before making final choices. You should feel comfortable in their professional setting. Compare your expectations with theirs. Check in with your body: how do you feel when you are around this person. Are there areas of tightness or strain? What are they trying to tell you?
Check out the background and qualifications of the practitioners you are considering. You will usually find one or more of the following qualifications:
Licensed Professionals
This group includes medical doctors (MDs), osteopaths (DOs), acupuncturists (L.Ac.s), and Nurse Practitioners. The licensing procedure for these professionals is rigorous. After several years of schooling, they are required to pass a stringent exam, and complete a residency program under the supervision of highly experienced clinicians. However, the percentage of these professionals with an integrated, holistically oriented approach is small.
Numerous bodyworkers and energy healers fall into this category. Examples of certification are Certified Massage Therapists (CMTs) and Certified Hypnotherapists (CHTs). Certification standards differ widely from state to state and profession to profession. A certification can mean as little as having completed an eight-hour class, or as much as having 3,000 hours of supervised practice. You can usually find out what’s involved in obtaining certification in your state by doing a web search. This will acquaint you with the qualifications of the person from whom you are seeking treatment.
Healers
Healers may have studied a great deal, and worked under the supervision of teacher for many years. Or they may be self-described and self-ordained. They may have unique gifts that fit into no professional category. Most of the healers described in earlier chapters fit this description. They are bona fide spiritual healers whose gifts usually became apparent in childhood. Yet there are also charlatans and con artists in the business of taking advantage of sick people, so it’s worth checking out an uncertified practitioner especially closely.
There are also practitioners who are knowledgeable in several fields. It is not uncommon today to find medical doctors who are also certified Ayurvedic physicians, licensed acupuncturists, and licensed Nutritional Doctors (NDs)—all in one. Healers tend to have a lifelong interest in healing, and a curiosity about new approaches. Licensed professionals are also required to obtain continuing education credits, or CEs, each year. Many use this requirement to study an additional modality.
Master Zhi Gang Sha was already a highly respected physician and acupuncturist when he apprenticed himself to Master Guo. He writes: “I earned a medical degree in Western medicine at Xian Jiao Tong Medical University. However, my work as an institutional physician soon revealed that Western medicine was unable to help many patients. I realized that integrating it with traditional Chinese medicine would combine the best of both systems, so I obtained certification as a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. [Then] I became a disciple of Dr. Zhi Chen Guo. Under Master Guo’s rigorous training…my spiritual channels were opened, and I became a medical intuitive.”1
A healer may have studied a particular modality but not have the experience to treat you in depth; in such cases ethical practitioners recognize the limits of their expertise and will certainly refer you to a highly competent specialist. Throughout this book, and in the appendices, you will find the names of healers we recommend you investigate.
Referrals and Office Visits
Once you’ve checked out the qualifications of a potential healing partner, ask for referrals. Most healing professionals will supply you with the names of past patients who can vouch for their work. And your coworkers, family members, friends and social contacts are sources of possible information. Your primary care physician may have suggestions for soul medicine practitioners, and may surprise you with his or her knowledge of the field. Patients groups, support groups, and professional societies can supply you with information. Most colleges have lists of their practicing alumni online. Groups like the American Holistic Medical Association (www.AHMA.com) and the American Board of Scientific Medical Intuition (www.ABSMI.org) make their practitioner lists available online, and you will find many others in almost every specialty with the aid of a web search engine.
Practitioner web sites are also a good source of information. Their web sites will often tell you their credentials, professional affiliations, training, how many years they’ve been practicing, treatment philosophy, endorsements and testimonials, details of their particular techniques, and what you can expect during the course of a professional relationship.
Use a search engine and type in the practitioner’s name. This will give you a list of their publications, recent news stories about them, web sites on which they’re listed, and a host of details. Patient complaints will often show up here; there are sites that allow people to let off steam about bad experiences.
Payment information is usually not on a practitioner’s web site, and you will usually have to call their office to find that out. A few operate within HMO, PPO or other medical insurance plans; most do not. Many offer a sliding scale based on financial ability. Some offer a free or low-cost introductory visit or examination.
Use your intuition. Remember that your 11+ million bit-per-second subconscious scanning computer is already doing the evaluation! Draw on its wisdom. An initial consultation, armed with the right questions, will give you a sense of whether this is the right healing partner for you.
In the course of that initial consultation, be completely frank with your prospective partner. Describe all aspects of your life that might be relevant to your health concern. Make your expectations explicit. Ask the practitioner for a frank assessment of your future prospects with them. If anything the person says doesn’t sound right, let them know, and take note of how they handle the interaction. Are they able to accept feedback? Notice the person’s experience and intelligence level as well as the feel-good factors; there are highly empathetic practitioners who are not very effective, and geniuses are often short of manner, and intolerant of lesser talents.
Find out whether they will keep written records, and whether they will share them with other healing partners. Find out how long they estimate your treatment might take. Make notes, after the interview, of your observations, both positive and negative. If you don’t already keep a journal, a healing journey is a great opportunity to start one. Practitioner interviews will focus you on tuning into your body and intuitive wisdom, as well as your intellectual observations.
Get an accurate diagnosis. This might take visits to several different practitioners. But the time and expense required is virtually always worthwhile. An accurate diagnosis is an essential first step in treatment. For some conditions, especially those related to EMD, a conventional allopathic diagnosis might be difficult to obtain. But a visit to a good diagnostician can certainly rule out obvious organic causes of disease.
Supplementing a diagnosis by a licensed professional is the possibility of an assessment. An assessment is done by a healer; rather than aiming to identify a disease, it targets an area of energy blockage. The site of the blockage may be far from the site of symptoms, and precede any symptoms at all. Daniel Benor, M.D., a distinguished researcher who was the first to systematically catalog scientific studies that supported the role of spirituality in healing, drew this distinction in a paper entitled Intuitive Assessments: An Overview. He writes: “Reports abound of healers identifying problems present in healees. Many healers are able to intuit where to place their hands in order to give healing. Healees often comment on the fact that healers “find the right spot” without being told.… Some healers feel or see the biological energy fields around people and are guided by their sense of touch or by the colors of the energy field to places that need healing.… I have spoken with hundreds of healers and healees over two decades of healing explorations. I cannot count the numbers of stories I have heard of chronic pains, fevers, and diseases that eluded medical diagnosis and were clarified through intuitive assessments.”2
Once you start treatment, remember the partnership model. You and the practitioner or practitioners are a team, committed to your healing. Be proactive. Ask questions. Challenge suggestions that you don’t understand, or that feel wrong to you. Share disappointments as well as triumphs. Talk about your expectations openly. Get your practitioner’s e mail address so that you can communicate in this way too, and find out how often he or she checks and responds to e mails. But don’t impose, expecting your practitioner to substitute long free e mail conversations for office visits. They do not have the time.
Let all the members of your healing team know what’s happening. You might set up an online group to share information; several portals like Yahoo, Google and MSN have “group” services that take just a few minutes to set up. Having a group like “GeorgeGoringHealing@ yahoogroups.com”—and entering the e mail addresses of all those on your healing team, allows a comment sent by any practitioner to go to all. Again, take care about e mail contact. It’s like a hot line: used sparingly, it can be vital. If you overuse it, your healing professionals will tend to ignore your communications in this format.
Keep your primary care physician informed about other treatments. Patients often make the mistake of thinking that herbs must be safe because they’re natural. But some herbs have adverse reactions when used with certain drugs. And drugs can inhibit the effectiveness of some herbal formulations. Your ND, who may be prescribing herbs, needs to know what your MD, who may be prescribing drugs, is doing, and vice versa. An informed treatment team is an effective treatment team.
Sometimes even the smartest patient simply cannot understand some aspect of treatment. You might feel foolish asking, or asking again—and again.
Do it anyway. Healing professionals have their own mindsets and jargon. They may think they’re being perfectly clear, and the course of treatment might indeed be routine and simple to them. But it’s new to you, and it might take you a while to understand aspects of it. So nodding your head when you can’t follow the conversation is a bad idea. Ask till you’re sure you understand what’s going on—it’s an essential part of taking responsibility for your own well-being. You are your best physician. One of the most wonderful integrative, holistic physicians, Dr. Gladys McGarey, often speaks of the physician within. If you realize that your problems are primarily the result of unresolved emotional stress, you will find a complete self-therapy program is Ninety Days to Stress-Free Living, a guide to nurturing yourself.3
Use your journal to track the results of your treatment. Evaluate how you’re doing. Have the patience to give each treatment time to have its effect. Some produce very quick results. Some may result in you feeling worse before you feel better. Getting in touch with your body—and really being present to the dysfunction that you’ve been pushing to the back of your mind for the last five years—may result in you feeling worse. Holistic health aims to treat the whole person, rather than aiming a magic bullet at a particular pain. Your practitioner may treat a site a long way from the pain. Soul medicine looks for the root problem, rather than trying to make the symptom go away. Your practitioner can usually give you an average time it has historically taken other patients with your condition to get well—your healing time may be more or less. It may take patience, and learning patience is an essential part of a healing journey. The Old Testament tells the story of Naaman, head of the mighty Syrian army. He developed leprosy, and his body was covered with sores. His healing instruction was to, “Go and wash in Jordan [river] seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.” Naaman, an impatient overachiever, “was wroth, and…went away in a rage.” He had many better ideas of how his healing might be accomplished. Yet when he finally learned patience, and went along with the program, “his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child,”4 and he was healed. So give the process time, and keep an open mind.
A healing partnership involves both information and intuition. Illness is an opportunity to become exquisitely conscious, to straddle both worlds, to be fully in your body, as well as fully present with your spirit. It is a chance to find out about advanced treatments, as well as using common sense. Healing is a milestone on your spiritual journey. Embrace it as a powerful spiritual teacher!