Brei Olivier
Lying on my back in an all-white room perfumed by essential oils and dotted with healing crystals, it was easy to laugh at myself. I felt out of place with my jeans and sneakers in such a beautiful, light-filled space.
I was waiting for my reiki session to begin.
A practice that originated in Japan in the early 20th century, reiki healing is based on the belief that human energy is directly connected to psychological well-being. When the natural flow of interior energy is blocked, people can experience physical and emotional struggles. By hovering their hands over certain areas of the body and channeling that energy, practitioners of reiki—which roughly translates to “universal life energy”—aim to shift it around, creating a flow that might relieve both physical symptoms and emotional pain.
A year prior, I’d have laughed off any mention of “woo woo,” a term I’ve used to describe alternative healing or anything that seems more rooted in magic than logic. Forever the skeptic, I promptly wrote off anything that couldn’t be proven using the scientific method.
At least that was the case until early 2018.
Officially into my mid-twenties, I felt the gravitas of reaching an age in which I was expected to mostly have it “together.” I was hell-bent on projecting that image and thought that, for the most part, I’d been successful.
As a freelance copywriter, I spent my days cross-legged on the couch, churning out endless social media captions for companies offering dolphin tours on boats and for local golf courses. I abused prescription amphetamines, and on the rare occasions I did eat, my diet consisted mainly of fast food or take out. My only real exercise consisted in taking my dog on hurried walks in the early mornings and late afternoons.
I got the sense that she and I were in it together, searching for the root causes and solutions to my confusing health problems.
The toll this lifestyle was taking on my health presented itself in the form of thick clumps of hair in the shower drain. I didn’t notice the perfectly round patches of hair missing from my scalp until one day, while styling my hair for a night out, a friend pointed it out. Once I had calmed myself down, I promptly booked an appointment to see a dermatologist.
I had ignored every sign of my deteriorating health over the years: the weight gain, the missing periods, the foggy headedness, but it was vanity that finally brought me to seek help.
At the dermatologist’s office, it took only a moment for the doctor to briefly glance at my scalp and diagnose me with alopecia areata, an autoimmune condition in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy hair follicles. Researchers don’t know the definitive cause of the condition, but the doctor told me that a traumatic event or high stress levels might have triggered it. No cure currently exists, but doctors do prescribe a few different approaches to treatment. Mine? Several rounds of painful steroid shots to the scalp that may or may not cause the hair to grow back.
While she did prescribe me medications to treat my symptoms, I was left to my own devices to figure out how to calm my immune system and de-stress my life.
In the months following, I found myself desperate to get to the root of my health issues. I had heard positive things about reiki healing, but hadn’t really considered it as an option until I met Amberleigh Carter, the founder and owner of Kinection Holistic Health, through my work.
Brei Olivier
Amberleigh Carter's work at Kinection Holistic Health is based on a foundational belief that life experiences affect the body in ways that often go unseen.
Long before she became a holistic healer, Carter knew she wanted to work in healing, and started on the path to becoming a medical physician. In school, she breezed through her pre-med classes and enjoyed learning the science behind modern medical thought.
“I was so immersed in it, I started not to be able to see past it.” Carter said. “I had a very narrow mind and viewpoint of science, medicine, and how to heal the body.”
Passionate and meticulous in her pursuit of personal health, she began to make lifestyle changes to reflect the information she was learning in school, particularly when it came to nutrition and exercise. However, Carter found that her body actually had a negative response to these adjustments; she felt worse than ever before.
In search of answers she wasn’t finding in her medical curriculum, she ultimately decided to shift her focus away from modern medicine, graduating from Elon University with a Bachelor of Science degree in exercise science with a double minor in neuroscience and psychology.
After graduation, Carter took a job as an Exercise Interventionist and research psychometrist studying Alzheimer’s and dementia at the Institute for Dementia Research and Prevention, where she was quickly promoted to Director of the Brain Wellness Program. Her experience working with a particular pharmaceutical company there proved to be a turning point. She was troubled by the cozy relationships between medical providers and some of the sales reps, who seemed to prioritize profits over matching patients with the most suitable medications.
“What I realized is that research doesn’t lie,” she said. “People do.
While she doesn't believe all research studies or institutes blur the lines this way, the experience made her question the things she had been taught to see as dogma at the denial of all other possibilities.
“It made me realize there might be more validity to the unseen,” she said.
That experience ultimately drove her interest in the study of metaphysics—which she describes as the study of energy that exists beyond the five main senses of perception. She wanted to find a way to understand the body and mind in ways she felt modern medicine was lacking, eventually earning a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate of Metaphysics degree from the correspondence-based University of Metaphysical Sciences.
Brei Olivier
What she discovered, she said, was: that “Every experience you have in life affects your body.”
Relationship problems or childhood trauma might manifest in the body in a number of ways, she explained. And in her experience, these issues are not often the central focus of traditional western medicine.
I booked a session with Carter, and spoke with her about my past the way I might speak to a therapist. I opened up about my rocky relationship with my mom, the pressures I felt at work, and my history with anxiety and depression. As she hovered her hands over my body, I felt a tingling, buzzing sensation in my skin. She channeled energy she said would help clear the blockages I had and alleviate some physical and emotional symptoms I was experiencing.
Unlike my experience at the dermatologist’s office, I felt heard and seen. I got the sense that she and I were in it together, searching for the root causes and solutions to my confusing health problems.
Carter doesn’t completely scoff at modern medicine. When it comes to surgery, stitching up wounds, or treating a sinus infection, she said she would personally opt to see a physician. But for lifestyle changes like managing stress or adjusting one’s diet, she emphasizes that sometimes, the prescriptions of modern medicine simply don’t focus on the whole picture.
“People are way more in tune with themselves than they give themselves credit for. They have all the answers within them.” —Amberleigh Carter
Kathleen Currie, a New Orleans-based holistic health practitioner, echoes Carter’s sentiments. When something acute happens to the body, she said, or when a diagnosis requires particular treatment, modern medical care is the way to go.
“It just frustrates me that it’s not holistic at all,” she said of her own experience with western medicine. “You have to see a specialist for everything.”
Currie first experienced the medical world’s lack of holistic understanding while attempting to manage her chronic pain after breaking her back while bouldering during her first year of college.
After the accident, she spent the following summer exploring different forms of healing beyond the pain medications her doctors had prescribed, including yoga, reiki, and craniosacral therapy. She later decided to major in Holistic Health and Wellness from Prescott College, during which she worked as a reiki master and personal trainer. After graduating with her degree, she also completed a massage program at The Providence Institute in Tucson, Arizona. She is also certified in the David Elliott method of breathwork—a series of breathing exercises meant to therapeutically influence a person’s mental and physical state.
Brei Olivier
At her practice at Wellspring Wellness, Kathleen Currie specializes in breathwork and craniosacral therapy.
Today, Currie operates a private practice in healing arts at Wellspring Wellness, where she specializes in breathwork and craniosacral therapy—a practice of light touches designed to promote healing by moving fluid through the craniosacral system—the network of membranes and fluid that surround and protect the brain and spinal cord.
“Breathwork is the thing that blows the lid off,” she explained. The practice is meant to release pent-up emotions and stressors. “Craniosacral is almost the opposite. It calms everything down.”
She said her clients are mostly women from several different backgrounds, but most of them want to work on their past traumas, or are seeking emotional or physical pain relief. They want to feel better.
Following a painful breakup, Ashley Monaghan, the marketing manager for Krewe in New Orleans, booked a healing session with Currie. She was seeking relief, and she found it where I did, lying on a massage table.
Monaghan said Currie instructed her through breath exercises that released tension and made her feel weightless. She screamed, cried, and had visions.
“It was remarkable,” she said. “I felt held and safe the entire time. Completely cleansed.”
Monaghan said her experience with craniosacral therapy shifted her perspective. She said she had major revelations about mindsets she’d developed in childhood, and that the experience allowed her to see herself: past, present, and future.
“Sometimes we really need someone else to cultivate the right space to pull it out of us and guide us through grief,” she said.
Monaghan’s experience mirrors my own. Though I’ve been skeptical of “woo woo” in the past, the more I venture into this realm, the more I realize, in some ways, it all works if you believe it will. But the answers we seek aren’t always with the practitioners. I’m increasingly convinced they’re within us, and we can access them with the right guidance.
Carter agrees. “People are way more in tune with themselves than they give themselves credit for,” she said. “They have all the answers within them.”
Currie has similar thoughts. “In these sessions, you as a client are developing the tools to heal your own problems,” she said.
Maybe then, in this world of alternative healing, it’s less about believing in magic, and more about believing in yourself.
wellspringwellnessneworleans.com
Follow Sydney Blanchard’s and Ashley Monaghan's alternative healing journey by subscribing to the How To Deal podcast, found wherever you get your podcasts.
