Who Are You?

There are sick people and well people and some in between.   That's a fairly obvious categorization.
However, to be sick or well is not a real-time descriptor but rather state of being, a mindset.  I am not saying that illness is all in one's head; I am not saying that an individual chooses to have leukemia, AIDS, or cystic fibrosis.  I am stating that there are vastly different ways to approach and heal disease. 
Have you ever known someone diagnosed with a serious or terminal illness who becomes a model for living?  Someone who looks at disease as a life challenge and emerges as a happier, more whole being because of it?  Is that "diseased" person sick or well?  By my definition, he or she is a shining example of a well person.   She might not have begun her journey through illness as a well person, but learned that extracting positive meaning from disease is a path to survival. 
Conversely, maybe you always pass your yearly physical, have normal blood work, and take your vitamins, but are continually waiting for the next sinus infection, dreading a tickle in the throat, or constantly nursing an exercise-related injury (isn't that elliptical supposed to keep you healthy?).  If you're worried about getting sick or give up and chug Nyquil when your nose runs, chances are you are more in the "sick person" category.  Not because you like being sick, but because you haven't realized your body's healing potential - that it wants to be well and can do almost anything to get there.  If you let it.
Some of us can be the terminally-diagnosed patient who learns, grows, and heals beautifully through her own doing, and some of us need a little help just getting out of bed each morning.  That is why I have started this blog and a Total Body Analysis practice, to help your body allow itself to heal through providing the energetic frequencies it needs.  Together, we can learn to be in tune with our bodies and allow ourselves to enter a state of wellbeing.  Sometimes this involves just a remedy, in other cases we need to do more emotional energy therapy in order to release the negative frequencies which bind us to illness.  But the potential is there for each and every one of us.  Who do you want to be?

Love-Hate-Love

I have a love-hate relationship with life.  I know that I am an incredibly lucky human being.  I have a healthy family, a stable home, and a secure day job.; I could ask for little more.  Still, far too often I forget how to appreciate all this.  I forget when I think I am running late, when I overlook putting wet clothes in the dryer before work, and pretty much any time when I am tired.  I get up early to use my fit and able body to run and then feel sorry for myself at four o'clock because I am waiting for my second wind to prepare dinner.  I plan 62 things to accomplish in a weekend and then curse the meager 24 hours in a day to get them done.  I am always trying to be productve, but am crappy at setting limits.  I have great intentions and sometimes nearly kill myself on the follow through.  So how can I narrow my scope and focus on a tangible, short-term goal - preferably one that will benefit both me and my family?  Enter the least likely of avenues for getting oneself together:  Christmas time.
Christmas is generally a period of shop, shop, shop, bake, bake, bake, drink, eat, drink, wrap, wrap wrap for me.  But I have a four- and a five-year-old who are experiencing all the innocent magic and effortlessly suspended disbelief that I once knew and will never be able to conjure up again in my own lifetime.   I decided to watch my life this holiday season like it were a movie.  I want to see it through a viewer's eyes; to critique my own character and file all the sweet and ridiculous plots that my kids lay out into permanent memory.    Not an easy task for someone like me who struggles with patience and forebearance.  But I think that for the next 24 days I can do it.  It will be like a three and a half-week training plan, but instead of improving my running, I will imrove my presence.
And just maybe I will be able to take that new habit with me into the new year.  A love-love life relationship?  That is someting worth focusing on.

Call if You're in Trouble

You're driving down the highway alone and skid off the road into a ditch.  You make a quick assessment of the situation and find that you have all of your parts, and your car seems to as well.  Heck, the engine is still on.  Great.  Step on the gas, and...nothing.  You're stuck.  Next steps:  Turn on the heater and end it all in a cloud of carbon monoxide?  Too dramatic.  Call a friend to get you, and leave the car to report it stolen later?  Too risky.  Call a tow truck?  Duh and bingo!  You have roadside assistance, you are safe for the time being, and you'll be out and back on track within an hour.  A simple, economical, straightforward solution to getting stuck.
What about when you're stuck in a health issue?  If your chemotherapy or antidepressants or yoga just aren't doing the trick anymore?  How can you get out of that physical or emotional ditch?  End it all in your manner of choice?  Please, no!  Get referrals for a dozen specialists and spend time and co-pays trying to find the "real" problem?  Who has time for that?
You are reading a blog about a safe, effective, and inexpensive holistic solution to being stuck in a health rut.
Total Body Analysis and the energy therapy that I practice as a complement will gently and safely help your shiny new Mercedes (that's you: your body, mind, and spirit) creep up and out of that muddy ditch in the middle of nowhere.  And you don't need a membership or insurance - just a phone call and an open mind.  If talk therapy is your bag, we can talk as long as you like. If privacy is something you hold dear, just think about your issues and your body will signal what it needs.  It's like the mechanic hooking your car up to a computer at the shop (except we don't use wires and your energy field is way smarter than a computer).
Check out Well Vibrations TBA and energy therapy or research holistic medicine on your own.  I guarantee it'll pick you up.

Decisions, Decisions

My husband is a great guy:  Dedicated father, gifted teacher, hardworking house cleaner, and talented runner.  Sounds ideal, but who cares if he's a runner, right?  Running may not seem like a typical highlight on a husband's resume, but it is a huge part of who Mike is, and running his tenth marathon last weekend (and the week preceding it) illustrates perfectly the topic of this post:  Total Body Analysis works wonders, but we have to do right by ourselves, too.
Put yourself in Mike's (running) shoes.  You have trained well, your wife/TBA Practitioner has helped keep you in top form with remedies, good food, and love, and you are just itching to hear that starting gun blast and then take off for another Boston Marathon-qualifying race time.
Except.
Your second grade students have hacked and sneezed on you all week, your own children are involved in a hundred activities, you had to stay up for those football AND those baseball games, your wife stresses you out with her own regaling of school day challenges, and you really, really like the new drink you've discovered, the maple old fashioned, but unfortunaley bourbon is not exactly a tonic for the immune system.  So, you develop a little cough, spend nine or ten hours in bed the Wednesday through Saturday before your marathon, load up on sprouted wheat pretzels, and hope for the best, really believing Sunday will be your day to shine for 26.2 miles.
The believing part is key; we have to believe we can succeed at something in order to bring it to fruition, but as we shall see here, belief and good holistic medicine can get you to the starting line, but to finish strong, you need to give yourself some TLC.  
But aren't my primary and general remedies detoxing, antidoting, and supporting my system???  They sure are, but any toxic energy that is layered on after we make your remedy will be a factor in how you feel.  So Mike's ever-present work stress got him down, and then staying up late and the occasional weeknight old fashioned knocked him out.  His remedies helped keep him from officially getting sick, but he was not in tip-top health for peak performance in a marathon (he finished in 3:27 - still pretty danged good).
It all boils down to making decisions.  We decide we want to be healthy, but wellness doesn't stop there.  It's an ongoing, active state where we're constantly pitching, catching, swerving, and righting ourselves as the days roll on and life's challenges and rewards unfold.  It is vital to have a supportive circle of friends and family to talk with about being and staying well and to continually think about the consequences of our daily habits.  Then we can make solid decisions about how to tackle what's in front of us with the big picture in mind.  You're reading this, so you have "meta-wellness," or thinking about being well.  Decide to take the next step:  Make a TBA appointment, down a kale smoothie, or just go to bed early, and rock on knowing you're ready for a strong tomorrow.

Be Aware or Beware?

Feel your boobies! really got my attention - it was the catch phrase for a Breast Cancer Awareness poster I saw last week.  The direct and playful command is one of a multitude of messages about the deadly disease that we see in October (Breast Cancer Awareness Month).  We've all been touched by it in some way - my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1975 and fought it for 20 years until she succumbed at the young age of 68.  She battled unfalteringly, working, traveling, leading a "normal" life through a mastectomy, new found tumors, and skin grafts.  She was and is an example of never letting a disease rule your life.  I am thankful to have had such a person close to me, but I would trade that in a hot second for a grandma who didn't spend her final weeks wasting away in a bed at the hospital where she'd worked for many years. 
No one should have to experience what cancer patients or their families go through.  Do we have an alternative? We are aware that cancer is pervasive in our population, but how aware can we really be of its cause, presence, and progress? 

Not only do I not want cancer (breast or any other) to invade the life of anyone else close to me (four family members are enough, thanks), but I also don't want to know that there is even the slightest inkling of the dreaded C lurking in the dark space between our cells.  This is one of the enormous advantages of Total Body Analysis:  We can eliminate the cause of a cancer, even before the cancer itself begins to grow.  TBA remedies work to eliminate the most volatile toxins in your system as your body signals that it's time.  By continually making Primary and General remedies for my family members as their bodies are ready, I know that I am not only detoxifying the most serious issues at that time, but I am also preventing future ailments that stem from these toxins.   My TBA clients are assured of the same safe, effective self-healing.  Those who regularly take their remedies experience profound health benefits, and over time, continue to peel back the body's toxic layers to reveal a state of wellness they did not know was possible - sound sleep, relief from food allergies, escape from repeated bacterial infection, improved digestion, the advantages are as numerous as we are unique.
So, beware of simply being "aware" of disease, and beat it before it starts with TBA.

What's Your Compass?

Wellness is a complex concept.  We know when we have or don't have it, but its definition is more difficult to identify.  Total Body Analysis (TBA) is an integral part of the journey to wellness:  We pinpoint areas of weakness and support or detoxify them with a remedy.  TBA allows toxic layers to be revealed and antidoted, and all we have to do is "take one half-dropperful of the remedy three times a day."  But can a vial of energetic liquid be the answer?  Is it enough to supply ourselves with a spectrum of frequencies and let them do the work?  It can be, depending on how we address the question of why.  Why do we want to be well?  If we don't examine our motives for change and healing, we can't identify a goal.  How will we know we've achieved wellness if we can't visualize its appearance or how we will have changed as a whole human being?
My picture of wellness is continuously transforming, and I am always striving to get to the next level of healing by discovering the why and then following the how.  TBA is the tool that allows me to traverse the path to wellness, but my mind and my heart are the guides.

Only If You're Bleeding

Call me an insensitive mother of small children, but I hate band-aids.  Their physical annoyance of getting wet, coming unstuck, and leaving dirty black glue marks, bleeds, if you will, into their utilitarian menace as a placater for all things boo-boo to children.  I feel like when I need a band-aid, it really can't hold up to the daily grind, and ninety-nine percent of the time that a kid gets to apply one, it's just to make her stop whining.
Metaphorical band-aids can quite literally squeeze my soul until a gaping, ironic wound erupts, oozing my sanity and clouding my judgement with worry over the next spirit-crushing quick fix that might adhere itself to my life.
On a daily basis for me, the most harmful band-aids come in the form of non-solutions to social justice issues in public education.  I teach English as a Second Language full time in an elementary school and I see the ill-effects of data folders, pre- and post-tests, state assessments, and New! Research-Based! language arts programs on our children.  School districts spend millions of dollars on these band-aids while neglecting the goal of a solid education:  A happy, whole child.
What does this have to do with alternative healing, you might ask.  The educational band-aid metaphor is akin to the conditioning we've undergone as a society to buy this, pop this, drive this, or wear this to make us feel - whole?  Not really.  Temporarily satiated?  Maybe.  The cyclical emptiness and emotional longing that ensue from conditioned consumerism leave us with a deep need to heal.  On our healing paths we sometimes try band-aids in an earnest effort for wholeness.  Years ago, my general practitioner, who was conditioned to prescribe antidepressants, wrote me a script for Zoloft to help my symptoms of depression.  I was conditioned to believe that a pill would heal me.  If that were the case I would not be writing this post. But that band-aid, like many, was a learning experience.  We cannot change our past actions, but we can learn to change our attitudes and shift our focus away from consuming to feel better and toward autonomous healing.  We are only human, and sometimes band-aids are necessary to get us through the day or to deal with an unexpected problem.  Those patches (like the beer I had last night - hey, it helped calm my brain to start this post), as long as we recognize their role, are a way to keep us from straying from our healing paths
(sometimes, they plain keep us from going crazy).
Perhaps one day as well, school districts will recognize the difference between a quick fix and plotting a lifelong course, and they'll shift away from programming our children and toward allowing the learners to lead in their educational dance.
For now, readers, may we know when we are truly bleeding, and when to just give our four year old a box of cartoon bandages because he's wailing in a restaurant from bumping his head on our elbow (then maybe we can finish our wine).