Becoming a Better Healer by Kristie

Dear Students,

This story can help you all become more responsible healers.

A consulting client of mine was doing a large amount of consulting with the clerk at a local health food store. While there are some clerks who are properly trained I still feel that actual consulting in this situation is not appropriate. These clerks are probably the most informed as to the products they are selling but answering any questions outside of this range, without having a full profile on the person in front of them (do they ever ask if you are pregnant, nursing or taking other medications?) can be dangerous.

This is also something we need to consider as healers or as people training to be healers. Are we being responsible in our advice-giving? This is one reason I don't give free consulting. I don't feel that answering a question without knowing someone's full health history is responsible. So I will help guide people in the right direction so they can do some more research or I will give them some "general advice" in a Letter to the Editor response, but in no case can I see that it would be responsible to hand out personal advice without knowing your client more extensively.

Here was my advice to her:

Dear AH,

...However, I just became a bit concerned when I received more than one e-mail about your consultations with the health food store clerk/owner/?.

I am concerned about people who are running health-food stores or natural healing stores offering themselves as consultants. This, to me, is like a pharmacist telling you what medicine to take when you go to the pharmacy. What if the doctor prescribed your daughter a cream for her skin or a certain antibiotic and then the pharmacist said "Oh, no, you should take this one"? It is irresponsible for three reasons:

1. It is a conflict of interest. How can you REALLY trust someone and how can they really trust themselves to give you the best opinion when they are also selling the product?

2. It is irresponsible. You can only advise someone on dosages and formulas once you know their entire story. Unless the pharmacist or store owner is going to sit with you for a half hour and ask questions or read a 4 page questionnaire then they should be more cautious.

3. They usually do not have the proper training. And if they did they would know better than to be handing out advice "on the fly" without a consultation. I cringe. I want to cry every time I go to purchase things at my local health food store and I see the clerk advising someone on an herb to take by opening up a few books they have on the counter and saying "the book says..." It is horrifying! I have actually had clients in my office who were ill from taking herbs that were advised to them in this way.

Books are for reference by a person who already has training in a field. Or they can give you guidelines on where to look or consider healing. They can also be used for things like colds, headaches, etc...However, you need to have a lot of background training to be able to use a book to diagnose and suggest cures for chronic diseases. And the books are often misleading. I have about 60 books that I use on a regular basis to cross reference various things. This is because one book may suggest 4 drops of carrot oil (as is in your case) and another may suggest 40 drops. One book may say never to take a certain herb but in another book it may tell you that it is safe. None of the books say the same things exactly.

This is where training comes in. The person who is trained takes what is in the book (or in their head) and can cross reference it with the hundreds of cases they have seen and dealt with. They can consult with others in their field that they know and in the end they can come up with an educated answer for their client based on a wide knowledge of the client's needs AND a wide range of reference and knowledge of the materials they are using.