Natural News

(Originally published in The Herald Express, Devon - April 14th 2007)

If all goes according to plan, I’ll be at the Natural Products Show in London tomorrow, where I’m destined to see the largest trade show of its kind in the UK. I’m told around 6,000 specialist buyers will be bringing along a staggering £2.7 billion worth of naturally-oriented budget, looking to splash out on the latest innovations in wellbeing.

Now, with the show its eleventh year, I reckon it’s safe to say that natural products have come a long way. Organic, wholesome and ethical are no longer the exclusive domain of the knit-your-own muesli, sandal-toting tofu mafia.

In the press, on the TV and in every supermarket, healthy living is everywhere and it’s sexy too with no end of celebrity endorsements. Sales are up, the marketing men have moved in and natural products are here to stay.

But behind the health-based hype and commercial appeal of feel good foods and the fast-growing array of non-edible life-enhancing gadgets, is it all good news?

I’m all for the higher profile that environmentally-friendly, ethically sound and rudely healthy natural products are getting, but there are causes for concern away from the organic lime light exemplified by the relatively unknown, yet thoroughly vital Goji berry.

A marketer’s dream in terms of product pedigree, Goji berries are found in the pristine “Heavenly Mountains” of China and have been famous and revered as an anti-aging elixir for thousands of years.

These “immortality berries”, according to whatreallyworks.co.uk have “a unique group of polysaccharides found nowhere else that are a super source of essential cell nutrients”. Apparently they help facilitate the release of Human Growth Hormone, which its thought increases concentration, offers more restful sleep, faster healing, weight loss and even increased sex drive.

Also in the Goji nutritional blueprint are germanium, selenium, carotenoids, and more beta carotene than carrots; pound-for-pound, they pack a nutrional punch and taste something like a cross between a cranberry and a cherry.

Trouble is, it seems they’ve ruffled a few food industry feathers and are likely to be banned by – what is in my opinion – a very dodgy piece of EU legislation, the ‘Novel Foods’ directive.

Don’t you just hate the fact that Goji berries and products containing them may have to be withdrawn from sales if an EU-wide investigation confirms that they are a ‘novel food’? Because under the “Novel Foods Regulation” a food or ingredient is defined as novel if there is no significant history of consumption within the EU before May 1997.

I’m keeping an eye on the investigation launched by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) which says it received enquiries from food companies about the status of goji berries. Though I suspect it will leave other controversial ‘food’stuffs like sugar-laden fizzy drinks, artificial sweeteners and transfats well alone.

The FSA has put the burden of proof on retailers, health food companies and other stakeholders, asking them to demonstrate a “significant history of consumption” and I await their findings with a mixture of bated breath and incredulity. Without the evidence, Goji berries will be considered novel and cannot be sold legally until they have been formally authorised. What’s next I wonder?

What might make sense logically, i.e. protecting the public from rogue foods, does not actually add up in a world where, as the old cliché says: “you can get enough paracetamol in a supermarket to kill yourself, but you’d be struggling to finish yourself off in a health food store”.

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Dawn Ireland, a 43 year-old vegan with “no kids, 3 cats and two allotments to organise”, grows her own herbs, fruit and vegetables, organically of course, and has made her own natural toiletries and cosmetics, avoiding chemicals, artificial ingredients and vegan, for many years. Now she’s sharing her secrets…

“I spent nearly 20 years working in offices and being bored and stifled but not knowing what else I could do,” says Dawn. “One day my sister said I should look into training in complementary therapies. I first did a basic herbalism diploma by distance learning, then a herbal horticulture and botany diploma.”

“I perfected a few handmade toiletries, had them safety tested by a lab and began selling them in my local health food shop under the trade name of Green Wych,” adds Dawn.

“I realised there were lots of people who wanted to make their own products too, so I began a series of short practical workshops teaching others how to do it. They became quite popular and I expanded them to include soap-making, toiletries, household cleaning products and basic herbal remedies.”

Soon after, Dawn discovered iridology and decided she wanted to learn more about this fascinating subject and time-honoured diagnostic tool. She searched on the internet and found a course run by Devon-based holistic therapy school Kevala.

“It was perfect as it allowed time to study at home, along with practical tutorials to fit in with existing commitments,” Dawn explained. “I had a very good teacher with a huge knowledge and admin staff always willing to help.”

Eventually, Kevala asked Dawn if she would be interested in writing a short course on Natural Product Making, similar to her workshops, but more in-depth. She did this, and after taking a basic teacher training qualification, now teaches at the college.

“The past few years of study have given me the confidence to enrol for Herbal Medicine degree,” says Dawn, who works in her local health food shop, where she is able to promote her courses. “This is something I would never have believed possible a few years ago. My advice to others considering changing careers, or wanting to start something new, is - go for it, be positive, you become what you meditate upon!”

You can find out more about Dawn’s Natural Product Making course at: http://www.kevala.co.uk

The idea of going for a scan can create anxiety. Whether for the purposes of routine screening or to double-check a medical suspicion, scans also tend to be rooted in the physical body. So the idea of a metaphysical or holistic scan – to look for energetic blockages – caught my interest.

It’s Kimberley Jones, a Torquay born and bred Art Historian turned healer and artist, who offers this insightful and unusual service under the banner of Quantum Coaching and Healing, and for anyone remotely interested in the connection between the emotions, the mind and health – she’s a must-see.

Sure I was intrigued to learn that Kimberley “reads” bodily energy with her hands and can feel colours - red, blue and green - which reveal different types of energetic information all over the body. But I was relieved to be greeted by a very normal looking and sounding person when I went for my initial consultation.

“I have sensed ‘energy’ since I was a child - although I wouldn’t have called it that,” Kim told me when I quizzed her about her background. “I just knew what people were thinking and feeling.”

“Growing up I found my sensitivity made it hard to be in the world so I started numbing myself with alcohol and cigarettes at a very young age. I convinced myself I could get a respectable job and perhaps be a ‘businesswoman’, whatever that meant,” Kim revealed.

“Nothing satisfied me and I moved jobs regularly. I buried my abilities deeper and deeper until I forgot about them. I got more and more stressed,” added Kim whose mother it turns out was also highly psychic.

Following her mother’s death in 1997, Kim started experiencing violent psychic events and her abilities were blasted wide open again, far stronger than before.

“I went into a ’spiritual emergency’, a crisis that often leads to a breakdown of some kind,” Kim told me. “I also became physically unwell. Diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 2000, I became unable to function in any normal way and had to stop work.”

“The one thing that had a strong effect on me during these years was healing. Whether spiritual healing or Reiki, each session led to a huge improvement in my condition and my reawakened extra-sensory abilities.”

“Eventually I was strong enough to start my own research and training, using myself as my own guinea pig,” she explained. “I began by studying Reiki and am now a Reiki Master.”

Soon after Kim trained in “energy mastery” and the “energetics and spirituality of business”, followed by a voluntary apprenticeship to a leading European re-birthing therapist, which enabled her to learn more about how pain, both emotional and physical, is just energy held in the body’s energetic fields.

“This is when I started to see and sense how energy behaves in and around the body according to what we are thinking. It was a huge breakthrough for me,” she said.

Kim has now developed all of her learning into a system called Quantum Coaching and Healing where she uses her abilities as an “energy intuitive” to scan people’s energy fields and offer guidance and healing according to what she finds.

“I have found this cuts through to a truth that is validated by my clients time and again,” she told me. “People are regularly referred to me by their psychotherapist or body work therapist. Your energy fields never lie. They always speak the truth about the deep issues underlying anything you want help with.”

Kim reckons our masks, inherited beliefs and attitudes are like our ‘words’, and she calls the real us revealed by our energy, our ‘music’, claiming that if our words and music don’t go together we get imbalance and eventually dis-ease of some kind.

“I see my job as something resembling a choir master, bringing your words and music together so you can sing your own unique song in the world with health, confidence and joy,” says Kim who also offers support to those highly sensitive to the energy of others at work or at home.

Her Quantum Coaching and Healing sessions involve clients lying down fully clothed and relaxing on a treatment bed. Kim then passes her hands over and around your body sensing energy fields as though she has “eyes in her hands”.

Kimberley’s approach – after an initial and thorough pre-treatment discussion - is a really interesting blend of off-the-beaten-track energy work and hi-tech methodology. Lying on her treatment table, I was at first aware of her ’scanning’, but soon drifted off into a much-needed snooze, comfortable in the safety of her already-healing space.

Before I fell into too much of a slumber however, I saw how Kimberley transcribed the sensations felt and ’seen’ through her hands into coloured shading on an outline of a human body – representing me and my energy on this particular day - on her laptop screen, for later interpretation.

It must have been around 30-40 minutes, when I felt Kimberley’s healing touch on my arm inviting me to rejoin the conscious world. A little fuzzy still, I returned to the consulting area to be greeted by a pretty map of my metaphysical energy and to hear Kimberley’s insights, findings and ideas about what it all meant.

Depending on what is needed, Kim uses healing, visualisations, breathing, relaxation techniques and energy meditations, drawing on her toolkit of training and experience combined with intuitive and psychic sensing.

She’s good and she’s accurate. Coming from a very loving and supportive place – and not in any way ungrounded or annoyingly new age – Kim really gave me something to think about and a number of useful tips to help me through what she saw as my energetic blocks. I’ve always thought the body never lies, and Kim’s energetic extension of this theory takes things a convincing step further.

Kimberley Jones’ Quantum Coaching & Healing is available in Totnes and Netwon Abbot. Call 01803 868282 for more information or a consultation. Or visit: www.quantum-coaching.co.uk

Like a chain, our health (and the sense of wellbeing that’s built upon it), is only as good as its weakest link.

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The word “healing” really seems to push people’s buttons. Just recently, I heard a Radio 4 guest - on one of those hot-air opinion-based programmes - slam anything to do with healing (i.e. “run a mile”) based on the merest mention of the word. Fair play I suppose, it does conjure up images of eccentric characters standing over or behind those in need, with their hands hovering mysteriously in the air, eyes closed and an atmosphere of mystical expectation.

In fact, when I once questioned a person who asked “would you like some healing?”, asking her: “what is it?”, she replied “well, it’s healing,” in a way that suggested everyone knows what healing is and what’s more it can only be for the good. So I do understand widely-held discomfort, but feel I must challenge the widely-held ignorance that tends to go with it.

In the last few weeks, BBC2 did the concept of healing no favours either, with its series “Trust me I’m a healer”. A predicatble stitch-up that’s thrown together a random bunch of “healers” and given them the usual media treatment - opinionated skepticism and understated ridicule - and an all-out effort for a cheap laugh about something most people don’t understand. Of course, making fun of what you don’t understand is something “foreign” people used to endure in pre-multicultural days, but let’s not open that can of worms here.

Sadly in this recent BBC2 hatchet job, the inference, as with most mainstream programme-making is that all healing is suspect, which to any intelligent person is like saying all eating is somehow bad or all medicine is wrong. Healing is an activity which, like eating and medicine, can go a number of ways in the hands of any number of people.

Here’s some help for those who haven’t dismissed it out of hand based on sloppy media portrayal and a few eccentric or rogue practitioners they’ve experienced third-hand on the telly, down the pub or at a mind, body and spirit fair…

There’s “Spiritual Healing”, which the National Federation of Spiritual Healers (NFSH) says is: “a generic term used to describe various forms of holistic healing across the world.” They claim there are “more than 15,000 healers operating in the UK, of which 5,000 belong to NFSH but many others work independently and in their own way.”

Add to these thousands those who do not use the prefix “spiritual”, which might include many complementary therapists not uncomfortable with the term healing (which after all, must surely mean “to make whole”) and you get a potentially huge heal-th boosting army, who get written off by the prejudice that surrounds that simple, yet deeply powerful, h-word.

As the NFSH say, “healers come from many different backgrounds and belief systems. The source of healing energy is open to interpretation and varies depending on the individual.” So for heavens sake, do see for yourself and quiz anyone who calls themselves a “healer” until they satisfy any qualms you have. Because that’s where I would advise caution; anyone who does call themselves a “healer” as opposed to someone who facilitates “healing” should be carefully examined.

Use the 3 ‘i’s that I often recommend - intelligence, instinct and intuition - but please don’t get hung up on a word or your old ideas and pre-conceptions. You colud be missing out if you do. If I’m not mistaken, the NHS has spiritual healing in its vast and diverse armoury these days.

“People who receive healing often experience profound benefits. Healing should always be considered a complementary therapy, not an alternative to conventional treatment.” the NFSH reminds us. “Spiritual Healing can help on many levels as it treats the whole person, mind, body and spirit. Remarkable changes can occur but a physical cure is not always a certainty. (NFSH) healers should not offer false hope.”

Of course they shouldn’t. But that’s not a reason to not give healing a chance. You might be surprised.