Complementary and alternative medicines are something that I have become more interested as my degree passes. Between the holistic approaches to almost everything in life, or the alternative ways of healing. Now incorporating that with conventional western medicines, a person can heal properly and more efficient. There is always something different that we can do as a person in order to obtain healing for our bodies. In which our bodies can defend itself against almost everything, as long as you take good enough care of it. However, there are means of healing that we have been blessed with through technological advancements now days that can fix almost every symptom. But that isn’t what complementary and alternative medicines focus on, they focus more on the person, instead of the symptom which can accumulate more healing throughout the body. I am a firm believer that if we take care of our bodies, our bodies will take care of us. Through alternative means of healing, we can obtain a greater sense of self, and develop more of an immune response, without all the side effects of man-made medication.
The practitioner that I ended up interviewing and researching more into, was Laura Johnson at Casper Reflexology and Spa. Due to limited contacts here in Casper-Wyoming, I was only able to find a couple alternative and integrative practices here in town which come to find out, are the busiest ones in town. She recently moved her practice into her home due to complications within her office during COVID. Of course, we all had to overcome and adapt in order to make it through this pandemic. She is a very friendly lady who is 74 years old and has been doing these practices for almost 40 years. She focuses on the whole body, and looks at the word Holistic, as whole-istic. Her view on it is that the word hol reminds her of a hole in the ground, and that isn’t what she is trying to obtain when healing people. She looks at it as a whole, where she sees the entire body and adjust her healing practices to that. It is a great way to look at it, though most people might have other opinions. I had gathered a copious amount of information pertaining to the practices that she completes.
Reiki is one of her practices that dates back to the 1800’s when a woman of the name Mrs. Takata brought the practice over to Hawaii from Japan. She began to practice there, with a method called the USUI Method. This is the same practice that Laura practices today through all the certifications and licensure that she has received over time. She also does other practices like Reflexology and Myo-Fascia release (MFR) while also doing other means of holistic practices like feather-tapping and essential oils. Each one of these practices focuses on the person’s well-being, and fixing the individual as a whole, instead of just the symptom.
Reflexology is a hands/feet modality that uses different pressure points to relieve separate problems and was created in the 1920’s by a person named Unis Engam according to Laura (Johnson, 2020). While Myo-Fascia Release was created by an athlete by the name John F. Barns years ago that hurt his back while he was lifting weights. This deep tissue massage type is used with rollers and other hard surfaces to penetrate deep into the muscle tissue. It helps to release tightness in muscles and relieve stress areas. It was thought that the harder you pressed, the better it would work. However, they have found that doing less pressure over a span of a few different appointments, it tends to work better.
Feather-tapping is an old Native American practice that is done to release the dark energies within the body and engulf you in light energies. It is done by listening to a guided meditation and listening to Native American drum and flute music while wearing a heavy buffalo hide blanket. She then will place them in a coat of feathers to wipe away all the dark energies. This is done to realign your chakras and relieve pain, stress, anxiety, depression, and inflammation. Now with essential oils, it is exactly how it sounds. She will determine what the patient’s problems are and adjust the type of essential oils in the air or applied directly to the body. Of course, some people may opt out of this one, for the fear of allergic reactions. Also, most essential oils are bad for animals, so it should be done away from them.
The social impact of her practices is slim in our area. Since Wyoming isn’t that much of a progressive state, most people don’t understand anything about complementary and alternative medicines and are usually stuck in the old school ways of things. This is a result in not very many clients that are mid-aged individuals. However, the knowledge is beginning to get out there more and more every day, so people are starting to find an interest in these practices. The younger age groups have been taught more about these practices in health classes in school. So, their interests are there, and more elderly patients are beginning to appear. As we get further into the processes of these practices, more and more people tend to find interests, and are willing to try it out.
The economic impact that these practices have, is that Wyoming isn’t a license state. Meaning that people don’t need licenses to practice some of these modalities. Of course, they are voting on this to be a license state so that people that are licensed can continue to practice. With people having the ability to just open their own clinics, has been hindering people that are actual practitioners to lose clients. This could have an economical impact on people that have taken the time to get their licenses and certifications in order to practice safely. On the other hand, though, with more clinics, more people could be paying back into our economy. Also, most CAM practices aren’t covered by insurance unless it is considered massage therapy. There is a “flexible” expenditure within insurance policies here in Wyoming that allow massage therapy to be done on patients that are needing it. However, reiki, and other alternative practices don’t get classified under that criteria. So, without insurance paying for it, most people might find it hard to justify spending money on these kinds of things.
According to a study done on reflexology, patients were found to have a significant reduction in depression and anxiety, while also improving their quality of sleep at night (Wang, et al., 2020). This study was done with 26 randomized control groups with a total of 2,366 individuals that met criteria (Wang, et al., 2020). They found that the longer they performed the reflexology on the feet, the more the patients sleep quality improved. Being able to increase patients sleep quality can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression by itself. However, improving all these mental incapacities can improve one’s life tremendously.
According to Lewis on a peer reviewed study, our body’s natural healing response is improved with complementary and alternative means through more holistic approaches, while conventional practices can diminish our healing response (Lewis, 2002). With a more improved natural healing response, we can kick most illnesses and diseases more easily, while also not contracting new ones. For example, with the current pandemic, they were using ventilators at the beginning of the pandemic. They soon found out that since their patients were breathing synthetically, their bodies natural healing processes weren’t kicking in, resulting in more deaths at the beginning. Once they figured out that the right vitamin supplementation, enough sleep, and hydration they were able to heal quicker. Though our interview had been postponed a few times, I was finally able to get it done. I asked all the required questions, while also asking a few of my own. It was over the phone to minimize exposure of COVID, and to make it more accessible for her. The following is a part of the interview from our Unit 7 Assignment:
Question 7-How long have you been doing each profession?
In her 74 years of life, she started as a flight attendant for 40 years, and since then, she has been gathering knowledge and certificates to practice in the Unites States. She has gathered almost 42 years’ worth of knowledge and certificates to be able to know what she is doing and continues to find new things to learn. She has been doing Reiki for almost 12 years, with all the others surpassed that.
Question 8-What gave you the desire to start these practices?
She started having an interest in these practices through her own personal experiences of these practices. She has found that conventional western medicine was killing more people than healing, since they only focus on the symptom, not the person. She is super sensitive to most anti-biotics, and other medications that prevent her from being able to take them. She found that energy healing practices have had more of an impact on her, and now on her patients.
Question 9-Any Other Comments?
She is always promoting other holistic healing practitioners within our region. She tells her patients that just because they come to her, that there may be another practitioner that may work for that persons needs more. She is fully committed to the individuals healing, even if it means she loses a client.
She also believes that people’s immunity should be their priority above all else. Along with taking care of themselves, while also taking at least an hour to decompress each week.
She is also an astrologist, where she believes that since the moon affects the tides here on earth, that the moon must affect us as well, since we are 70% water.
Her outlook on certain aspects of our lives and our world aligned with some of my beliefs, which made our interaction more pleasant. I too believe that the moon has more of an affect on us as human beings, since it can control the height of the tides in our massive oceans. Of course, the moon is massive within itself, yet it is so far away, and it still affects our oceans tides. So why wouldn’t it have an impact on us at all? I also believe that everybody needs to take time out of their week to decompress and take time for themselves. Whether it is going for a hike, doing something that they love, or even sitting in silence for an hour. Either way, taking those moments to get your mind off of everything going on in your life, could help reduce stress and anxieties. Most of us are so focused on what we are doing on a daily basis, that we never take time for ourselves, or we are always putting everyone and everything else above our own needs. Reaching a level of self-love can increase your mood, and your social interactions as well. If we don’t love ourselves, how could we love anyone else, or anything else around us?
Self-reflecting on the interaction with Laura was sort of humbling, for the reasons of her vast amount of knowledge that she had obtained over the years. I have been going to school for almost four years now, and I know that even though I have learned a lot, there will always be something more to learn. Especially with the ability of relaying the information as fast and as well as she had during our interview. It showed me that in order to be good at what you do, you need to continue to refresh your knowledge and continue to research new topics within these practices. I have always loved seeing someone do something that they are really good at. Though I hadn’t watched her do it physically in person, I know that she is going to know exactly what to do if I were to come in for an appointment. Which might be a possibility in the future for the reason of interest in these practices. I would like to experience what it is like to sit in as a patient before I begin dabbling in it some more. I am a hands-on learner, so if I could even sit in as a shadow and observe what she does, I think she would allow that to happen.
Our relationship grew over the past several weeks, from the first day I had spoken to her, to the point of saying good-bye on the phone after the interview. She had even offered to allow me to get some sort of practice done for a discounted price. I think furthering our relationship would help introduce me into these practices more, so that I could advance my knowledge with more hands-on knowledge. She had integrated her practices on her own self just recently, since she had slipped on ice, and broke her arm. She got the conventional surgery to realign her arm and did the pain management that the doctor had prescribed her to do. However, after being released from the hospital, she had begun to do some of her own practices on herself, limited to what she could do of course. She went to a fellow practitioner and had them complete some of the practices that she couldn’t do herself. With her having complications to man-made medicines, she tried to stray away from them as much as possible. She had found that the essential oils, and reflexology that was conducted on her, alleviated her pain within her arm.
All in all, this whole past 10 weeks has been inspiring and has drawn me to this lifestyle even more. I knew I wanted to use these practices in my life in order to help as many people as I can, and now it is even more of a desire. I look forward to seeing what this degree has in hold for me in the future, and it has all started with learning of these practices. This course has invited me to look out in my own community in order to find a practitioner and has shown me that the possibility of doing something along these lines in Wyoming is actually there. I had continued to believe that doing some sort of alternative practice in small town Wyoming was nearly impossible. However, I have found a clientele base, and a potential colleague to work with and further my education. Through my personal trainers’ certificate, this knowledge of complementary and alternative/ integrative medicines, nutritional counseling, and my desire to help people, I may be able to make a difference within my community, and potentially even statewide.
-Cyral I Callender III
References:
Johnson, Laura. (2021). Casper Reflexology and Spa. Retrieved from: https://casper-reflexology.abmp.com/home
Lewis, P. (2002). Integrative Holistic Health, Healing, and Transformation: A Guide for Practitioners, Consultants, and Administrators. Charles C Thomas. Retrieved from: https://eds-b-ebscohost-com.libauth.purdueglobal.edu/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=4557106a-7543-4f29-9b57-4363080bbcc1%40pdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=446310&db=nlebk
Wang, W.-L., Hung, H.-Y., Chen, Y.-R., Chen, K.-H., Yang, S.-N., Chu, C.-M., & Chan, Y.-Y. (2020). Effect of Foot Reflexology Intervention on Depression, Anxiety, and Sleep Quality in Adults: A Meta-Analysis and Metaregression of Randomized Controlled Trials. Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine (ECAM), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/2654353
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