Who is a good candidate for "bioenergetic rehabilitation"?

Over the past 14 years I have treated many people with many kinds of injuries. I've treated injured shoulders, backs, knees, ankles, hands, fingers -- you name it. A lot of those treatments were what I call "guerilla" treatments: in my training or my teaching or just walking on the street I would meet someone in pain, and I would offer to treat them. In some cases I've seen stunning results and in a small minority of cases no results, and I've often wondered what makes the difference. I believe that most physiotherapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists and osteopaths have also encountered the same phenomenon: many clients who respond well and a few who, for whatever reason, don't.

In my experience injured athletes and people in a great deal of pain are the ones who respond most quickly and most readily. For both, there is huge incentive to get better. Athletes want to get back to their sport. People in a lot of pain want the pain to stop. They don't care how it happens, so long as it happens. They don't go into a lot of thinking and rumination about what energy healing is and how and why it works. They are just willing to try it. There is openness to the experience, a feeling of allowing, and sometimes even curiosity. In this way they become participants in their own healing, and we can both watch it unfold.

Several of my teachers have told me that I should not call myself a healer. The person I am treating heals him or herself. They are the healers. I am the facilitator. The people who understand this are the ones who heal most quickly. We are doing this together.

Another successful knee intervention

Emily came to me with soreness and swelling in her knee after having moved into a home with many stairs. Her knees had been quite painful for a few months and she was worried about a swelling just south of the kneecap which her doctor thought might be water. After a 1-hour treatment she said she was walking easier, with a lot less pain. The next day she reported that she felt well enough to go dancing and that the pain had returned afterwards, but at a lesser intensity. We did a second treatment. After this, I didn't see her for a few weeks. When I met her again, she said she was completely pain-free and the swelling had gone down considerably. We then did a third treatment to address the swelling, with the results TBA.

Perhaps I should add here that the usual pattern of healing with "bioenergetic rehabilitation" is that while there is immediate improvement after the first session, the pain can return at lesser intensity a few days later (the time varies). A second treatment usually produces a longer period of improvement. After each treatment there is usually improvement, until the condition resolves or a plateau is reached. Even at the plateau there is less pain and greater mobility than before. Usually in three to four treatments people reach a place where they are comfortable enough to stop. If you are one of the few for whom bioenergy is not an answer, you will know after the first session.

However, I have also seen clients who came in with significant, long-standing pain, and left with very little pain or no pain, and who told me that the pain relief lasted. I still like to do four sessions, but in the case of people who benefit immediately, the sessions can be spaced out over a few months, as their condition requires.

Aging Baby Boomers Cause Steep Rise in Number of Knee Replacements

Just ran across an article on Yahoo, entitled "As Baby Boomers Age, Knee Replacement Surgery Numbers Soar". According to the article, a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association revealed an increase of 161.5% in the number of knee replacements in the US from 1991 through 2010.

The author of the article expressed concern about the systemic cost of all these surgeries, pegging it at $3.2 billion over the study period of 20 years. I would express concern -- and raise questions -- about the need for them.

I have known a number of people who had knee replacements. One man developed an antibiotic resistant infection in his knee after the surgery, and suffered greatly from it. Another man also developed an infection and was treated with an antibiotic that destroyed his kidney and sense of balance. Still others told me that the rehabilitation afterwards was long and excruciatingly painful. Here are a few excerpts from comments to the UK National Health Services information page on "Knee Replacement Risks":

I have exchanged one form of discomfort for another and in the main, my untreated knee is less bothersome than the one that was replaced.

12 months later I am in considerable pain the knee works ok with good movement in excess of 90 degrees, the quad muscles are strong, but I have lots of pain on the inside of the knee, not sure if this is scar tissue but if it is will it get better? can I do anything to improve it? ... what can I do to get my life back? I am 57 years young.

I had a TKR on 26th April 2011 and was discharged from hospital 7 days later. 3 days after this I was readmitted with suspected wound infection and kept in for another 5 days... I was sent home, in more pain than on the first discharge. 10 days later and in excruciating pain I was readmitted for a third time for manipulation under anaesthetic. I was discharged 48 hours later with the pain level increasing by the day ... It is now 8 weeks since my operation, I am in considerable pain, and am still hobbling around with a stick. This is the very worst thing to happen to me and I wish I had never agreed to the operation - I am in far worse pain now than ever before ... How much longer will I have to suffer like this?

Patients are advised of the risks -- as in this PDF, which lists thrombosis (blood clots), infection, knee stiffness, nerve damage, ligament and tendon tears, bone fracture, and "implant related complications" as talking points that patients need to discuss with their doctors prior to surgery. Another talking point is the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine which found that people over 60 were thirty times more likely to have a heart attack within 2 weeks of the surgery than people of the same age and gender who did not undergo a knee replacement.

To be sure, the surgery is said to have a 90% success rate, which may be of little comfort to the 10% for whom it doesn't work. On the whole it is invasive, drastic, and has an unpleasant recovery period lasting many months. For those whose medical and physiotherapy bills are not covered, it can also be quite expensive. But the people who decide to have the surgery do so because they are suffering, and because they believe that this is the only way their suffering can be lessened.

Not so. Bioenergy therapies are another way. Not invasive. Not painful. And potentially quite effective. I know of people scheduled for knee surgery who did not need to have the surgery after they received bioenergy treatments. I've seen a heavy set man kneel on the floor and jump up from that kneeling position shouting "look what I can do!" after a Domancic bioenergy clinic lasting four days. I've seen pain reduced and mobility increased significantly as a long-term proposition. At the very least, even in cases where the deterioration cannot be stopped, the day that the knee replacement is needed can be pushed farther into the future. And in Canada especially, where wait times for surgery are long, it makes sense to look at alternative means of pain control instead of suffering in silence.

I am not claiming that bioenergy therapies are the best or only option for everyone under all conditions. But I am saying that they are well worth looking at before taking the drastic, risky, and painful final step of having one's knee joint replaced altogether, and living with the consequences.

Too much medical care?

An article came to me via Twitter, entitled "Too Much Medical Care?", in which the author used her daughter's experience with the medical system after spraining her ankle at dance camp to illustrate why medicine in America has become so hugely expensive.

The child's doctor, after looking at the sprained ankle, initially suggested a "wait and see" approach. A month later the ankle still hurt. The full armament of the medical establishment was then deployed on it: multiple MRIs, x-rays, as well as extensive bloodwork, most of it inconclusive or "ambiguous", requiring more MRIs and bloodwork. On one occasion the child almost fainted after seven vials of blood were drawn from her. She was referred at various points to a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, a pediatric rheumatologist, and an eye specialist, all of whom ordered their own tests. The mother writes:

Five months after twisting an ankle, my otherwise healthy daughter limped out of the radiology office carrying X-rays of her hands. “Mom,’’ she said, “my ankle still hurts.”

That's five months of pain, five months of not being able to dance, five months of unnecessary medical rigmarole, and huge, huge, huge costs to the system. Contrast please the "bioenergetic rehabilitation" option: four appointments in the space of a week or ten days, at the cost of maybe $300, and she would have been fine. She might not have even needed the four appointments: for a sprained ankle, one might have been enough. She would have been back at dance camp a lot sooner, and the system would have been saved from spending tens of thousand of dollars on unnecessary medical tests on a healthy young girl.

Bioenergetic Rehabilitation

"Bioenergetic rehabilitation" is the application of bioenergy healing practices to injuries to allow the sufferer to return to normal activity faster. It works in conjunction with physiotherapy, but it also works instead, or after physiotherapy has failed or reached its limits.

Here is an example.

About two months ago I began treating a woman I'll call "Ann" for purposes of anonymity. Ann is in her early sixties, tall, athletic, and more youthful than her age. Last year she took a nasty fall and broke her hand and wrist, as well as injuring her hip and shoulder.

Her experience with the helping professions was less than stellar. Her break was not set properly and her cast was put on too tight, and when she complained no one listened. By the time the cast came off, she could not bend her fingers or use her hand. She could not rotate her lower arm to turn her palm upwards. And due to the shoulder injury, she could not raise her arm. She could not work because she could not type, and she was compromised in her daily life because she could not grasp or holds things with her right hand.

By the time she came to me, she had had it with physio. She had "given up on her doctor, and her doctor had given up on her". She was more or less resigned to having to live the rest of life with these physical limitations.

Over the next few weeks I gave her a series of relatively short treatments. With each treatment, we saw improvement. She can now raise her arm. She can turn her hand palm upwards. Her ability to grasp and hold things has improved, as she told me, "1000 per cent". And most importantly, she can type again, so she is now able to work. To all intents and purposes, she now hardly notices any handicap in her daily life. That's what bioenergetic rehabilitation is all about.

The beauty of these treatments is that there is no manipulation or pain. Improvement happens naturally, organically, the body healing itself from within.

Sports injuries & Quantum Touch

This is a video posted on Youtube by Quantum Touch founder Richard Gordon. In this video, after quoting Dr. Oz as saying that the use of energy in healing is the next frontier in medicine, Richard goes out to the Santa Monica Promenade to treat people in pain, with interesting results. He also mentions that QT makes athletes stronger between resting sets, gives them more endurance, and helps them recover more quickly from injury.



I use Quantum Touch as one of the many modalities in my toolkit, but what Richard Gordon says of QT is also true of other energy therapies.

Another Happy Customer

"Judith healed me so well, I have almost forgotten what my problems were! I suffered from quite severe neck/back pain and fatigue for twenty years, also intermittent acute anxiety. All this has improved dramatically since seeing Judith and I have ceased needing my chiropractor and my acupuncturist."

Mary Painter, Toronto

Is yoga good for you?

A New York Times article by William J. Broad, entitled "How yoga can wreck your body" says that it's not. Broad interviewed Glenn Black, a yoga teacher with vast experience who studied at the legendary Iyengar institute in India. Black says most people who now do Yoga should not be doing it. It's an issue of demographics. Whereas yoga hails from a culture where squatting and sitting cross-legged are the daily norm, most Western students of the art spend most of their days sitting upright in office chairs or in cars. I would add that many of them of them take up yoga at an age where flexibility does not come easily. Also, Black points out that with the growing interest in yoga there has been a proliferation of studios in many of which teachers lack adequate training. The trend, he says, is towards pushing people. My karate teacher, a very fit woman with many years of experience both in martial arts and yoga, suffered a back injury when her Yoga teacher literally twisted her into a particular position. I also treated a practitioner of Ashtanga yoga once who suffered a muscle injury on the hundred and fiftieth repetition of a particular move. He conceded that he was a bit "macho" about yoga -- but said that this was encouraged at the studio where he practiced. I also recall an Ashtanga teacher coming to the karate school where I trained to teach a yoga class, and her shtick seemed to be to prove to us that Ashtanga practitioners were tougher than we were. Is it just me, or is competitiveness not in the spirit of yoga? My conclusion would be that yoga is not to be practiced as a sport or as a mere fitness activity. It's more akin to meditation. Mindfulness is key if you want to avoid being injured. And if you are injured, and you live in or near Toronto, contact me.

Don't try this at home