Alternative Medicine & Health Insurance

This morning I received an emailed update from NCCAM (National Center on Complementary & Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institute of Health). The update included an announcement about a Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public that is being held in February by the Institute of Medicine. The meeting will discuss integrative medicine and its roll in patient-centered care and its role in patient's wellness and healing.

Many people are excited that NCCAM is there to do research on alternative and complementary medicine. Even more people want insurance companies to start covering massage, acupuncture, reflexology and other forms of CAM.

I have mixed feelings about it, mostly hesitant. Is that really a good thing?

As a healer, what I've noticed is that my clients who pay for their own alternative healthcare and take an active, responsible role in their healing, do better than the clients who refuse to get a treatment because their insurance company won't pay for it.

My other question is, "Do we really want the government and insurance companies involved in alternative and complementary medicine?" Sure, CAM providers would like to be acknowledged and be elevated out of the witchcraft, charlatan status but do we really want to jump through all the hoops that will be created by government and insurance company regulations?

The upside to all this is that government/insurance company involvement will set standards of education, training and care for CAM providers. The downside is that government/insurance company involvement will set standards of education, training and care for CAM providers.

One of the common characteristics of an effective healing session with a CAM provider is presence, connection and the flow of energy between the provider and the patient. How can you measure that? Who gets to decide the standards? How will healing energy be quantified?

Free & Easy Self-Care

Neck, back & shoulder pain is the most common complaint treated by massage therapists. The pain can be caused by some sort of trauma like whiplash from a car accident, but usually it's caused by the daily stress of working in an office environment in a sedentary position all day.

In an earlier post, I talked about my belief that chronic neck, back & shoulder pain would turn into fibromyalgia and that self-care could prevent a diagnosis of fibromyalgia.

One of the simplest and cheapest ways to begin self-care is to focus on your breath. Breathwork, breathing in deeply and exhaling completely with focus, is used in many meditation practices. You don't have to label it meditation. Just breathe.

It's free and easy.

Chevy Avalanche - Like a Rock

This is an ode to my husbands truck. It's a black 2002 Chevy Avalanche.

The truck (as it's called) used to be a shiny black, city truck. Real dirt had never been in the bed. The once pretty boy toy is now a working farm truck. Once I got it so muddy, the repairman had to wash the undercarriage just to work on it. Then they had to wash their garage.

Two years ago my husband missed an evil "S" turn on a country road and hit a utility pole. He didn't walked away without a scratch but the front end of the Avalanche was wrecked. He had to pull part of the bumper off just to get it to the body shop.

Last winter one of our girls got a Ford F150 stuck in the snow in our lane. My husband hooked a logging chain up between the two trucks and we dragged the Ford out of the snow.

This winter, everyone is snowed in again. Our daughter called because their power went out. My husband just drove twenty miles south to bring them to the farm.

Our Avalanche has been true to the old Chevy truck commercial where Bog Seger sang "Like a Rock".

I love our truck.

My Last Day At Fairfield Center for Health & Healing

Today was my last day at the Fairfield Center for Health & Healing (FCHH). I said 'goodbye' to some of the staff and some of my clients and assured them that I wasn't abandoning them. There are many good massage therapists at FCHH.

Although there were people who hugged me tearfully, when I walked out the door I felt such a sense of relief.

It felt like freedom.

When it's time to go; it's time to go.

Fibromyalgia - An Idea for Prevention

Fibromyalgia is a disease of unknown etiology. What does that mean? That means that "they" don't know what causes it. They do know symptoms can be triggered by stress.

My idea is that fibromyalgia is preventable.

Women are diagnosed more with fibromyalgia than men because women are the caretakers and the nurturers. Women are also more in touch with their emotions and spiritual self. I believe that people have cellular memory, especially women. Negative emotions in reaction to stress are remembered at a cellular level. This is especially true if the story of the stress is retold frequently.

Too often, clients come to me who have suffered with neck, back and shoulder pain for years. Usually, they're extremely stressed about someone or something in their lives. My idea is that if that pain in the neck, back and shoulders along with the stress that caused it, that it will eventually turn into fibromyalgia.

Preventive actions for fibromyalgia would include nutrition, exercise, bodywork and relaxation response training.

Please let me have your comments.