What to Expect

I included the word “Integrative” in my business name for a reason: I am trained in both conventional and holistic approaches to healing, and I enjoy utilizing both approaches - sometimes even during the same treatment.

The conventional approach means that your therapist will focus primarily on your symptoms and attempt to help you feel better by treating and suppressing only those symptoms. This approach often produces very rapid results that may be temporary because the underlying cause of the symptoms are often neither acknowledged nor addressed, and also because the client is not required to take an active role in helping himself, such as increasing his awareness, making changes to his attitudes or habits, practicing follow-up self-care at home, or actively participating in the treatment itself. Examples of conventional treatment include relaxing or “deep tissue” massage, drug therapies, surgery, and conventional chiropractic care.

The holistic approach is somewhat more difficult to define because it includes many elements. Generally, it will focus on the causes of your ailments with much less concern for the symptoms those ailments produce. The results may be slower, but are much more likely to be permanent. The holistic approach requires a great deal of participation on the part of the client. In fact, the client becomes his own therapist and the practitioner becomes the coach and assistant. The client is required to assume complete responsibility for his condition, circumstances, and healing process - we are all ultimately responsible for everything that happens to us, without exception. The client understands that all ailments ultimately begin in the mind or consciousness, and the only way for true healing to occur is to make changes in thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and habits. The practitioner uses his deep understanding to help the client identify and address imbalances in all levels of being: physical, mental/emotional, energetic/spiritual, etc. The client becomes self-empowered after learning how his thoughts affect his state of being, and is then able to make more conscious choices, moving forward. Examples of holistic treatment include multi-dimensional data collection and treatment such as detailed body/mind connections, posture analysis, biofeedback scan, and hands-on therapies that tap into the body’s own intelligence, triggering self-healing, the development self-awareness by becoming more present with the self - during treatment and elsewhere, and by practicing home-care exercises between appointments.

Before I can effectively help you with your therapeutic needs and expectations, I need to get to know you and to determine your openness to each of the different approaches. This starts with the information you provide in your intake forms, and continues when we begin to meet face-to-face at each appointment. If your only interest is conventional massage, then that is what you will receive. If your interest is in self-awareness, self-empowerment, and true healing, then we will go deeper. We will take your therapy only as deep as you are ready and willing to take it. You are limited only by your mind - your beliefs and your attitudes.

Please note that I only accept clients for ongoing care who are at least attempting to live life consciously, meaning that they are aware that their attitudes and actions affect their reality, including their health and their relationships with other people. This does not mean that you can’t “vent” your frustrations on me as part of your treatment - a verbal release is just as therapeutic as a physical one. It means simply that I do not work with “victims” who firmly believe that life is something that happens TO them, and who insist on blaming people and circumstances outside of themselves, and who cannot be convinced otherwise. While I refrain from judgement against these people, I cannot reach them, and therefore cannot help them. This type of negative energy affects my energetic space and my effectiveness as a therapist and coach. I empower myself by surrounding myself only with positively-polarized people who accept full responsibility for themselves.

Recommended Reading for self-empowerment and enlightenment:

• Keyes, Ken Jr. Handbook to Higher Consciousness. Love Line Books, 1975.
• Walsch, Neale Donald. The Complete Conversations With God (books 1-3). Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc. and G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2005.
• Ram Daas. Be Here Now. Harmony Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, 1971

We Are One

Most, if not all, of the struggles we experience in life are a direct result of forgetting who we are. This includes problems with our health including addictions and pain, security, relationships, success in life, etc. Many of us who live on this planet are suffering from the illusion of separation - we believe that we are separate from each other, and from the one that many call “God”.