Pick your Holistic Practioner

Healing is an art form, not a science.   Just like any art forms you have good artists and you have bad ones.  Some acquire their skill through education and some are naturals.  Unfortunately the field is not controlled and there is no way to identify good practitioners verses bad ones.  Thus you may try Reiki from a weekend warrior, have no relief just to say ‘Reiki didn’t work for me.’, while  in reality the practitioner may not have been skilled.  It is difficult to choose the right person and I would be the first to admit I am very particular, but here are some suggestions and warnings when choosing a holistic practitioner.

1)      Always follow your heart.  Holistic healer’s main tools are compassion and love.  If you don’t feel these from the person you are probably not compatible.

2)      Be careful of snake oil sales.  In the old days peddlers went town to town selling their latest snake oil making promises to take the ailments away.  We still have these salespeople today.  These will sell you a ‘cure all’ formula if you just keep up the regimen.  Many will even help you get it cheaper by allowing you to sell it yourself.  These folks are not healers, they are product sales people and often they do more harm than good.

1. Avoid drinks or snacks that give you the cure for anything- even if there is lots of scientific evidence behind it.
2. Avoid people selling (pushing) product more than for client accommodation.
3. Avoid anything that you need to follow the rest of your life; it isn’t healing, it is coping.
4. Avoid taking nutritional advice from anyone who doesn’t have a certification in nutrition, including your girlfriend’s mother, the latest TV commercial, the friend at the gym and someone who has the same condition as you who found something worked for them.

3)      Healers use a spiritual base belief system, be it Christianity like I use, or some other spirituality.  Make sure it is something you believe in or you may be messing with a religion/spirits you do not want.  I’ve seen some folks think they are dealing with angles and they are being fooled and having huge problems as a result.  Some questions to ask are

1. What spirits do you work with?
2. Do you follow a religion? If yes how does that come into play with your healing style?
3. Do you believe in (reincarnation, past lives, ghosts, demons, angels)
4. Do you use prayer/meditation in your healing?

In the end use your good old spidy senses and if it doesn’t feel right, run away.

4)      Procedure verses intuition.   All some need is a weekend and about $300 for a certification which allows them to be called Holistic Practitioner. They learn a procedure in a weekend and start practicing. Healers use to be selected and accepted by their teacher.  Teachers know their name, heart and their abilities.  They mentor their students and guide them to their greatest potential.  They teach their students ultimately to move from procedure to intuition.

This is the difference between learning to paint by number and someone who has found their own art form.   Asking the practitioner how they learned their skill can help you choose.  By the way this is the difference between a $60/hour and a $200/hour practitioner.  Some clients will go only to students because they get their session free or very low cost.  Remember you get what you pay for.  If you feel worse after a session then you may need professional to fix a student’s mistakes.

5)      Massage therapists and beauty salons.  Many massage therapists dabble in holistic work, some are good, but some are just massage therapists who don’t have a clue what they are doing.  I recently had my first pedicure and was surprise to find they massaged and hot stoned my feet.  Which was very lovely to have someone play with my feet, but I had more healing from my grandmother.  Basically feeling good and healing are not the same thing. if you aren’t seeing improvement find someone else.

6)      Not a doctor.  If your practitioner tells you to stop a medicine your doctor has you taking or that you no longer need to see a doctor, they are wrong.  Holistic practitioner’s supplement doctor’s work and the doctor’s work takes precedence.  They may tell you to have your doctor check something or monitor certain medication levels if the healing has potential to impact the amount needed, but they should never tell you amounts of medications.

7)      Guarantee healing – If you practitioner guarantees a healing in so many sessions, they are wrong.  That is like a doctor telling you your cancer will be gone after chemo.  No one can guarantee anything especially in the spirit world.  Unfortunately these folks usually are looking to sell you an expensive prepaid package.

8)      Electronic solutions- some electronic tools work, many do not.  I had a girlfriend who bought into a program where she would have her computer send out energies for an individual on a revolving frequency so basically the theory was the computer would send you the energies you were missing several times a day.  You can not automate compassion and love.   If this worked, I’d hate to be a partaker on some computer glitch that wasn’t able to get it just right.  She tried to have me sign up for free, I went running away and so should you.  I worked in the computer field, even doing artificial intelligence.  Computers will never have a human’s intuition and spirit.

9)      Over zealous healers.  Many healers will throw their healing at you because they feel it is the right thing to do.”  They are violating your spiritual space and messing in a place they shouldn’t be.  This is a form of a control junky…don’t let someone force you to take a healing and see a real healer afterwards if you feel sick or out of sorts when receiving a healing without permission.  Unfortunately this happens in many churches too as people praying over you do it with a motivation that is not for your highest good.

10) Network of healers.  Healers have their specialty and those who know their limits will refer you to other healers who can address your issue better than they can.  They may give it a shot with their tool set, but they know others with different skills and will not hesitate to admit that they have reached their limit.

Bottom line is the holistic industry is not controlled and there will be charlatans in a business where there is enough mystery around.  Follow your own intuition when dealing with people.  Just like artists, find a healer who you like their work.