Have You Been Healed ?

By Gagandeep Ghuman
Published: April 11, 2015

Jessica peered through eye-testing machine and expected to see nothing but there it was. She could clearly see and make out the contours of the little red barn on the other end.
“I was just shocked, I was just blown away,” Jessica says, recalling the magical moment when she realised her eyesight was back.
At 35, Jessica had been diagnosed with Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disorder that can result in swelling of the optic nerve and blindness.
Within a few months, she had lost eyesight in one eye and all she could see from the other eye was a hazy blur. She had spent close to $80,000 in treatment at the Mayo Clinic in the US and was scheduled for a surgery to ease the pressure on her nerves which would cost $100,000.
There were no guarantees it would get her vision back, and Jessica didn’t want to go ahead. But she finally acquiesced after pressure from family and physician. In the end, however, she never had the surgery. The treatment which she claims brought the light back, in fact, didn’t even come from a surgeon: it was a local homeopath that helped her regain the vision, she claims, and it cost her less than $300.
Terrified of her blindness and willing to try anything that might help her, she met Heather Royal at a friend’s suggestion two years ago. But she had least expected the miracle that would happen at the eye-testing machine.
 Alternative therapies, the last resort of the hopeless, are nothing short of miracles—when they work. Squamish is brimming with different kinds of alternative therapists who appear to be in demand if you notice the long queues. You might have to wait for at least a week to see a middle-level alternative therapist. People no longer make fun of their trade, even though you will still have to stretch your imagination to understand and accept what they say. Several kinds of alternative therapies are available—from the incredibly subjective shaman healing to acupuncture that looks like superscience.
Though the roots of alternative therapies go to the beginning of the new-age movement in the west that re-interpreted and experimented with eastern traditions, the recent spurt can be attributed to the decades-long environment movement which has successfully probed modern science and its claims to an unquestionable objectivity—and the universal good. The new disruptive science, such as quantum mechanics, has emboldened even those who understand very little even of old science to ask questions. As science, state and corporate nexus comes to acquire notoriety because of the environment lobby, people are becoming more accepting of things that remain unacknowledged by science. What better setting for such a trade than Squamish where thriving tourism, nature and sports attract people who are likely to be more open-minded than those in any other small town.

Alternative therapists have tough jobs. Since most clients come to them when everything else has failed, they are expected to perform nothing short of miracles.  The proof of the pudding must lie in its eating. That’s why even the practitioners get attracted to their trade mainly because they themselves witnessed the miracle once. Jessica’s homeopath Heather Royal knows the feeling of magic that led her to becoming a homeopath. She remembers taking her 18-month-old daughter Sienne to a homeopathic doctor 14 years ago for gastroenteritis and conjunctivitis. The homeopath took at least an hour asking questions and then gave a little packet of medicine.
In 20 minutes, Royal says, her daughter’s fever broke, her eyes cleared and she wanted to eat again.

“I was just stunned and completely flabbergasted by that treatment,” she said.
That day planted a seed in her mind and she took up a course in homeopathy. She has been seeing patients for the last seven years. She has treated hundreds of people suffering from migraine, anxiety, skin complaints, bronchitis and chronic lung conditions. Her homeopathic remedy, she claims, has even helped a woman get pregnant.
When Jessica came to her for treatment, Royal knew she had to look for the remedy with urgent hope. She looked through old herbology books and browsed through hundreds of medical documents on her computer for an eye remedy. She also decided to put her new learning to use: she has been learning a new homeopathy from India called the sensation method, which goes beyond pathology to look for the particular sensation a patient is feeling. That body sensation—hot, cold, tingling or stabbing—is then used to find a remedy that might mirror the same sensation. Royal was able to settle on a remedy that came from juglans regia, a deciduous tree.
Jessica was with her family in Tofino when she received the medicine. She was doubtful it would work because the previous two times, the homeopathic medicine hadn’t worked. She took the prescribed doses for four days and noticed her eyesight had improved. She says she had not been taking any other medicine and was simply stunned by what homeopathy did for her.  “I have my vision back and I can’t explain how overjoyed I’m by this,” she says.
For Royal, homeopathy is both a science and an art where intuition can play a big role. There are times when she will wear a dress or a piece of jewellery or eat something before meeting a new client which will also reflect in the client’s health issue. “For my training as a homeopath, I have to be a keen observer and cultivate the art of curiosity,” she said.
While Royal’s branch of knowledge has a considerable intuitive side to it, acupuncture seems as precise and mechanical as a science. 

“Is there anything else I can do for you,” the acupuncturist Terry Luykyn asked Gregory Fischer as he lay on the bed with needles stuck in his body. The owner of Newport Gelato was visiting the acupuncturist for allergies at the suggestion of a friend. But when she asked Fischer if she could help with something else, he was reminded of another nagging problem: the pain in his heels.
Fischer had it for a few weeks now. He had changed his shoes and walked on the side of his foot, but it just won’t go away. The doctor had referred him to a physiotherapist who suggested he wore special inserts under his soles. He spent $1000 on the inserts but they had made no difference. 
So when Luykyn asked Fischer if she could help him with anything other than allergies, he told her about the sharp pain in his heels. Fischer wanted to get back to his evening walks and was eager to try anything that might work.
“I said rightaway—go for it,” he recalls.
After 15 minutes of treatment that included sticking a few needles in his foot, she asked him to leave and come back for another treatment if the pain persisted.
Fishcer indeed went back to an acupuncturist—but not for the pain in the heel which did get cured. Scooping up ice cream again and again can be hurtful. On Canada Day, he had to fish out blobs of ice cream for over two hundred times in one day. That gave him a tennis elbow for which he went straight to his acupuncturist and was relieved of the pain.

Fischer says he would still go to a doctor if he has any medical problem, but he would try the alternative healing method first. It’s the advice he gives to friends and customers when they share their medical problem with them. His experience has opened up his mind to new medicine. “I’m just surprised at how quickly my pain vanished with some pins stuck in the right place,” he said. 
They said they would have to fuse her neck or she wouldn’t be able to move her hands. Marie Grindlay closes her hand, opens her fist and smiles: “It seems to be working out pretty well for me.”
A car accident in 2003 left Grindlay with a severe neck pain. Doctors wanted to fuse her neck and glue the vertebra together, but Grindlay refused. She knew where she was going for the treatment of her neck: her acupuncturist. She saw Luykyn for six months about two or three times a week. Now she is glad she didn’t allow the doctors to fuse her neck. “I feel the numbness sometimes, but I’m sure I would have felt that if they had fused my neck,” she said.
Even though Grindlay feels there is time and place for modern medicine, she has always tried to take the alternative route to healing. She has been doing yoga for more than a decade now and knows the need for an ideal mind-body connection to live a healthy life.
In 2007, Grindlay was diagnosed with colitis which put her in hospital for three weeks. It was a harrowing time when she lost 25 pounds as she was administered heavy doses of medicine to reduce inflammation of the bowels. Even then if she had a choice, she would have gone to the acupuncturist not the hospital. By the time she was taken to the hospital she was so weak, she doesn’t recall the journey to the hospital. “Even in the hospital, I was thinking when can I get out and see my acupuncturist,” she says. She was discharged from the hospital after three weeks with four bottles of tablets worth $300, but she was far from being healthy. She had lost 25 pounds, couldn’t eat and lacked physical as well as mental energy.

Grindlay owned a successful landscaping business, but even working inside her office was a huge undertaking now. She had built a career out of carving beautiful gardens but after her illness, she had started forgetting even the names of trees as common as maple. And then there were the meds, so powerful and addictive they left her body bloated and feeling emotionally wrecked. She was determined to get better and not “own” her colitis, she says. She started treatment with an acupuncturist and an herbalist, and kept finetuning her diet to what might best work for her palate.  After a few weeks, she stopped taking the pills, even though her doctor told her she wasn’t taking her health seriously. With a mix of yoga, healthy eating, mindful living and acupuncture, she says she has been able to handle her sickness well as none of her symptoms have returned.
“It’s not even a blip on my radar,” she says about her colitis. Acupuncture derives from the concept in traditional Chinese medicine that disease results from a disruption in the flow of chi—the body’s circulating life energy—and imbalances in the forces of yin and yang. Chi is said to flow along pathways in the human body known as meridians. According to Eastern thought, there are as many as 20 meridians and more than 2,000 acupuncture points found along them. Applying tiny needles—or, sometimes, pressure or heat—to those points is believed to deliver therapeutic effects for patients.
For the last 13 years, Squamish acupuncturist Andrea Lamont has helped several patients bring the body back to that perfect balance. From those suffering from back pain and menstrual cramps to those who are struggling with fertility issues, Lamont has seen a variety of patients. Last year, she treated a woman who had lost all hopes of getting pregnant. Lamont used both acupuncture and moxabustion, where herbs are burned on a meridian point. She claims the woman was able to conceive.

Lamont says the logic of chi, the circulating energy, is hard to explain in scientific terms. She says there is more research happening on acupuncture and how it works to heal in the body. “Acupuncture is distinct from allopathy in its customized treatment. It simply doesn’t work in a one-size-fit model,” she says.
Since alternative therapies are intuitive, subjective and not repeatable like many allopathic treatments, they can even have no pretension of having any internal integrity— an alternative therapy can be plain magic or rank superstition as many would like to call it. Healing and spirituality can no longer remain as distinct as they had come to be after the modern medical science. 
Juliette Woods, a web designer and mother of three who has also worked as a brain-wave technologist, is now a shamanist—a spiritual being with an ability to heal and work with energies. Woods became interested in shamanism while doing web design for a healing centre. On a whim, she asked a shamanist why she had survived a bite by three poisonous spiders, a Black Widow, Brown Recluse and  Hobo. The shamanist did a ‘soul journey’ for her and revealed a truth that resonated with her. After that, she completed three years of apprenticeship in the White Bone Tradition, which is said to be based on ancient Irish healing arts, Peruvian energy and core shamanic techniques.

A shamanist heals by bringing about a balance in unseen realms of body and mind and energy and spirit, says Woods. “It’s often about removing what doesn’t belong to us and putting back in what belongs,” she says, making it as clear as possible. Since the practice is based on belief, suspension of disbelief isn’t asking for too much. She enters an altered state through drumming and then interacts with the spirit world through a guiding spirit. The spirit brings backs messages that can help the person remove the unwanted from their life. “It gives them the energy back which helps them feel whole again,” she says .
All through 2013, Woods had set up a healing tent at the farmers’ market offering shamanic and energy-balancing sessions. On a warm day as the music filled the market with gaiety, a man, let’s call him John, approached her to find relief from a deep sadness. In this semi-private space, he lay on the massage table as she placed her medicine bundle over his heart to absorb any dense feelings he wanted to let go of and to share the supportive balancing, energetic and spiritual medicines that lie within it.
Wood’s shamanic journey began on a beach that is close to her heart, where she met her helping spirit in the form of a harbor seal who is responsible for facilitating ‘soul retrieval’ work. There she met a boy who represented the part of John that feels included, connected, and loved, but had left to escape the pain. She told him how wonderful it was to feel connected again. Later, she blew the essence of this retrieved soul into John, sealing in this healing work by rattling around his body. Later, she said John told her that some of his estranged family had contacted him a few weeks after the shamanic journey.

Woods is wary of pharma drugs but not dismissive of modern medical science.  She would never discourage anyone from seeking medical help. “Both of these can go together,” she says. Shamanic healing, she says, tries to touch the deeper roots of why someone may have anxiety or depression. The anti-depressant, she says by way of an example, might relieve the symptoms but “doesn’t reach the original wound that is still open”.
Erica Otto has devoted several years of her life to study kinesiology, the scientific study of human movement. She works with chronic pain, chronic disease, movement imbalances and posture correction, injuries she says are the result of long-standing postural and movement issues that have come to a breaking point. But Otto also knows a secret art of healing: the reiki, a technique through which a practitioner moves and channels energy into the patient by touch. She explains: “A reiki treatment involves application of life force energy—also known as prana or chi—to the subtle body and main energy centers, sometimes called chakras. This allows movement and healing on all planes: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Lack of flow or energy blockages manifest as mind-body tension, restriction in movement and disease. By releasing “stuck” movements, thoughts and feelings, reiki allows you to connect with your true self and thus enjoy a state of balance, happiness and integration.
Practising both reiki and kinesiology offers Otto an insight into these two different worlds. Reiki, she says, is a highly subjective and personal experience, unlike science which seeks objective, repeatable truths. Modern science, she says, can be too mechanistic and body-centric, influenced as it is by philosophers such as Rene Descartes, who argued for a mind-body dualism, removing the mind and soul from the body. But not having observable facts doesn’t mean that reiki isn’t effective, she says. As science evolves, it might develop technology to objectively measure what is a personal subjective energy healing experience, she argues.
Reiki allows you to connect with your true self and thus enjoy a state of balance, happiness and integration, Otto says. That has been the experience of Rose Anne who came to see Otto two years ago to improve her running, which had reached a plateau. After working in certain inflexible areas of her body, especially her hips, she took energy healing sessions with Otto to realign her emotions holistically with her body. Anne says those sessions gave her more flexibility than she attained by stretching the stuck areas.

Among the variety of alternative therapies, not all are pure magic or spirituality. Naturopathy blends several knowledges to treat a disorder and can even sound pretty convincing to practitioners of modern medicine. Dana-Marie Battaglia is thankful her boyfriend is a health nut or she would be living without her gall bladder. About four years ago, Dana-Marie started noticing pain in her tummy after she ate her lunch and there were times she would have to sit down for a few minutes. That pain was sharp and would be relieved a little if someone punched her in the back. Worried, she went to see her doctor. A few tests confirmed she had gallstones and was suggested surgery to remove her gallbladder. What scares her is that she might have actually gone down that route if her boyfriend had not suggested she see a naturopath. “I would have seen that specialist, believed that surgery was the only option and had my gallbladder taken,” she said.

When she went to see a North Vancouver naturopath, she found it comforting that he took a more holistic approach. He assessed her eyes, skin, even fingernails before prescribing nutrients and supplements. After a long interview and a few sessions, he gave her a chart of supplements and healthy food. On her next medical appointment she tried to show it to her specialist but he insisted that surgery was the best route to take. No matter what you do, the gallbladder had to come out, he told her.
Dana-Marie says she left the doctor’s office angry and determined to improve her healthy without going through an invasive surgery. She says she has followed the advice of her naturopath and focused on eating healthy and taking natural supplements. In the last two years, she has lost close to 20lbs and feels healthy and doesn’t get the sharp pains in her stomach. “The bottom line is whether or not my stones are still there or have shrunken down, as long as there is no pain, there is no reason to have my gallbladder removed,” she says.
Naturopaths try to educate and empower the patients by taking a more comprehensive approach to an ailment, says local naturopath Ashely Gordon. That means taking a look at a wide range of issues, from food intolerance to vitamin or mineral deficiency. After years of lobbying, BC granted naturopaths the right to prescribe medications in 2009.

Gordon was in her last year of B.Sc. and wanted to become a doctor when a visit to a naturopath kindled her interest in naturopathy. She says more people are getting interested in seeing a naturopath for holistic health. At her Garibaldi Health Clinic, she sees patients for a wide range of issues, from autoimmune disease to chronic illness and thyroid disorders.
Dr. Lloyd Oppel, the Chair of the Doctors of BC council for health promotion takes a different view of the alternative therapy. He knows alternative therapy is big business but says anything that has been proven safe and effective has been adopted by the medical system. He says people would always turn to something when the medical system can’t help anymore, whether that treatment has proven to be effective or not. “A lot of them haven’t been found to work and haven’t passed the test of scientific evidence,” he says, adding that if they were provable they wouldn’t be considered ‘alternative’.
Dr. Oppel has seen several cases where patients have had to sometimes pay a huge price, even their life, because they chose to ignore medical treatment. He says he had seen cancer patients who have ignored medical treatment because they opted for some other alternative treatment. “I remember one lady who had gone to get herbal treatment in Mexico but had to be rushed to emergency when she landed back in Vancouver,” he says.
More recently, he says the public is well-aware of unproven and unauthorized vaccinations being prescribed by some alternative health practitioners. A CBC investigation in 2014 found some homeopathic practitioners were telling parents nosodes were as effective as vaccines against diseases such as measles, polio and whooping cough. In 1992, Dr. Oppel says, several cases of kidney failure were reported in Belgium due to use of a herb called aristolochia. It has been used for several decades but research found it could cause cancer, he says. “You can’t know what harm a herb can cause. Tobacco was natural and green but we know what it can do.”
However, Dr. Lawrence Klein differs with Dr. Oppel. Dr. Klein is a physician at Elaho Medical, a multidisciplinary clinic in downtown Squamish which offers both conventional medical care and a curated selection of complementary medical therapies. He says he does sometimes advise patients to see specific alternative practitioners for certain conditions and his advice is based on which therapies have historically worked best. But he takes exception to the word ‘alternative’. The word is somewhat of a misnomer, he says. “There are only those therapies that work—and therapies that don’t.” Over time, he feels, some of today’s more alternative practices would likely be validated and ultimately absorbed into the body of allopathic medicine. Similarly, some of today’s alternative practices would be found to be ineffective, and ultimately repudiated, even by those who currently endorse them. “In the years to come, there will eventually be less alternative medicine and simply more effective medical practices,” he said.
At the level of education and research, Dr. Klein believes that there is a slowly increasing acceptance of at least some alternative or “complementary” therapies, but there is also some institutional and academic resistance. He says acceptance might come if scientists become willing to further investigate studies showing that a given treatment appears to be beneficial, even if the mechanism of that benefit is not fully understood according to the current medical paradigms.
 Dr. Klein specifies the treatment of ulcers with antibiotics as a relatively recent example of a beneficial medical discovery which was initially met with skepticism and academic dismissal but has subsequently been validated and accepted by the medical establishment. Allopathic physicians, he says, are improving in the holism of their approach. He is pleased to observe that current medical education appears ever-more appreciative that the duality of mind and body is a somewhat artificial construct and that newly-graduating physicians do appear to be increasingly respectful of the significance and importance of the mind-body connection.