This is the second in a series of articles focusing on the alternative healing practices offered throughout Oakland.
It isn’t uncommon to hear about people turning to non-western methods for a range of health care issues, from everyday colds to chronic ailments and injuries. And while the increasing popularity of alternative medicine can still surprise a few people, there are others, like Uwe Blesching, a Berkeley-based researcher and writer, who say they saw it coming. Mr. Blesching has spent the past several years studying a variety of traditional healing practices throughout the globe, and understands the appeal of such practices in the United States. “People, more and more, are reclaiming a sense of power in their process of healing,” says Mr. Blesching. “There is more of a living sense that they themselves are a crucial element in their own well-being and not just ‘good soldiers’ taking orders from the doctor.”
Mr. Blesching, a German native, has traveled throughout Africa, South America and Europe to understand how other cultures care for their sick and injured. As a paramedic in San Francisco for nearly 20 years, Mr. Blesching witnessed countless traumas and numerous patients with recurring complaints. And even as he attended to them, he couldn’t help believing that these individuals required deeper healing that was unavailable in his San Francisco Fire Department ambulance. “While orthodox medicine has an important place in healing and saves more patients than perhaps any other tradition of healing, we as a people are becoming more aware of its limitations and dangers as well,” he says.
Hypnotherapy
Roger Haas, a 42-year-old marketer, is one person who sought help beyond his primary care physician. Last year, frustrated with his many failed attempts to quit a lifetime of smoking, Mr. Haas decided to try something different. He contacted a hypnotherapist. He had given acupuncture a shot fifteen years ago, but it hadn’t worked. “I think I may have just had an inexperienced therapist,” he says.
But after three one-hour hypnotherapy sessions and some suggested alterations in his smoking habits, Mr. Haas managed to quit smoking. He’s been a nonsmoker for more than a year now. “Oddly enough, I can be around others who are smoking and it doesn't bother me or tempt me,” he says. “The power nicotine had over my life for the past 20-plus years is gone.”
And he gives the credit to Oakland hypnotherapist Patricia Sorbye, who in turn, credits the human mind. “I decided to become a hypnotherapist because I've always known how incredibly powerful the human mind is,” says the dark-haired Ms. Sorbye, who is of Scotch-Irish heritage. “When I suddenly realized that hypnosis was a method by which I could help people access (the mind’s) strength and capability purposefully - Woo! I was very excited.”
She isn’t surprised at her client’s positive response to such a short time of treatment. Hypnosis, to many, implies carnival stage acts and feats of illusion. However, hypnosis can also aid individuals in entering an altered state where they find relief from anxieties or addictions or unlock blocked memories that interfere with their waking lives. Hypnosis is literally a trance-like state, which resembles sleep. Ms. Sorbye, who works out of a nondescript building in the Lake Merritt area, puts it more like this: “If you see being awake as white, being asleep as black, hypnosis is that gray area in between.”
Ms. Sorbye began practicing hypnotherapy in Oakland in 2004, soon after getting certified at the Hypnotherapy Training Institute in Santa Rosa, one of the first schools in the area licensed to train hypnotherapists -- back in 1978.
She believes that more and more people are discovering hypnotherapy and other alternative medical practices sitting at home at their laptops. “With the unbelievable growth of the Internet, people have access to so much more information than ever before,” she says. “When you have access to such a wealth of information, it helps dispel the fear of the unknown.”
Hypnotherapy accesses the subconscious - that other 90% of the mind responsible for habitual behaviors such as smoking or overeating. Hypnosis allows someone to relax the conscious mind so it’s better able to be conscious of what’s coming in. A client stays “awake” during sessions. Still, many fear the mind-control scenarios associated with the fictional Svengali and his seemingly weak and willing subject Trilby. “It’s fiction, but it becomes urban legend or folklore that is larger than life,” observes Ms. Sorbye.
Despite such associations, she sees hypnotherapy moving into the mainstream, partially driven by increasing healthcare costs. “People have begun to see the benefits of maintaining good health from a more dimensional perspective, as if it's an investment,” she says.
Her typical client comes to her seeking help to end a habit, lose weight, clear emotional baggage or address anxiety, depression, or fears. Her office space is quiet and uncluttered. White walls with minimal art, a chair and couch greet clients. During a session, clients find a comfortable position – sitting, lying, or wrapped in a warm blanket. After some discussion, Ms. Sorbye orally leads the client into the quiet of the subconscious mind. With permission, the doors open. At the end, the client keeps what’s useful and lets the rest go.
Feldenkrais Method
If you’ve ever had a back injury, you’ve probably heard of the Feldenkrais method. A form of somatic education begun by Israeli physicist Moshe Feldenkrais in the 1970s, the process involves learning to direct one’s attention to various parts of the body. Students learn to focus on their movements, eventually leading to the creation of new habits. If successful, they can give up habitual neuromuscular patterns that may be causing or contributing to difficulties. Like hypnotherapy, Feldenkrais hopes to be more of an intuitive tool for healthy living.
Jan Hetherington has been teaching the Feldenkrais Method to people in the Bay Area for the past six years. “I think there is a growing awareness about my field of work amongst (physical therapists) and doctors - though I am still a little horrified to find doctors and surgeons who have not heard of it,” says Ms. Hetherington.
After earning a degree in Mathematics at Liverpool University, Ms. Hetherington ventured along several career paths -- computers, airlines, acting and banking -- until a car accident while jogging in Golden Gate Park lead her to a series of Feldenkrais classes at Oakland’s Kaiser hospital in 2000. “This work continues to inform me of what I can and cannot do,” she says. Today, a certified Feldenkrais practitioner, Ms. Hetherington teaches alongside her own teacher at Kaiser.
“Feldenkrais work is more of a learning tool, not a fixing tool,” says Ms. Hetherington. Regarded as an educational method, not as a medical treatment, some insurance carriers still may grant coverage under flexible spending accounts.
Many of the clients she sees at Kaiser, Oakland’s downtown YMCA, the Piedmont Adult School and in her home range in age from the late 20s to people in their 60s and 70s. “It tends to attract people who are older. But many who come in say - ‘I wish I’d known about this 20 years ago.’ ”
Even children complain of more specific sports injuries at earlier ages, she says. She blames this in part to increased competitiveness in sports paralleled with a generation that spends more time inside on the couch and at computers than outdoors. “Kids are not playing anymore. They’re spending too much time sitting. They’re not being vertical, in gravity, rolling around on the floor. Kids should still be generally physical. If they’re sitting, they should be sitting on the floor, not in a chair.”
Feldenkrais brings awareness to small movements and big ones. “The nervous system controls everything we do, even when we don’t think about it. When you change the way someone moves, you change the way they see themselves,” she says. “You are taking them out of their comfort zone.”
In her Maxwell Park home, this reporter received a brief lesson that involved crossing the non-typical leg (in my case, the left) over while sitting. The sensation, though uncomfortable for a moment, stayed with me throughout the day. In addition, I began observing how I might alter other simple habits that may be forcing me to favor one side of the body over the other.
Ms. Hetherington hopes that hospitals will start to offer alternative methods alongside traditional ones to support patients recovering from an illness or surgical procedures. She might not need to wait very long. According to Mr. Blesching, this reality could be just around the corner. “More than just looking for a more natural way, people are searching for more affordable, sustainable, locally available, safe, less invasive, effective and ultimately more self-empowering care,” he says.
Patricia Sørbye, CHT, Certified Hypnotherapist, Certified Master Hypnotist
Lake Merritt area, Oakland
510-834-6726
www.watervox.net
Sessions by private appointment; $100; 75 – 120 minutes
Jan Hetherington
Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner
Anat Baniel Method Practitioner
jan@moves-to-improve.com
510-534-4978
Private one-hour in-home sessions - $60-$80
Six-week classes at Kaiser - $55-$65
www.piedmontadultschool.org
http://www.feldenkrais.com/
http://anatbanielmethod.com/
Full disclosure: Ellen Mulholland edited Mr. Blesching’s new book, “Spicy Healing,” soon available through Amazon.com. |