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Healing Hamptons

Maybe it’s all those negative ions blasting off the Atlantic. Or maybe it’s all the stressed out New Yorkers. There seem to be countless healers who have hung their shingles on the South Fork. We visited a few complementary practitioners plying various forms of healing.

Fancy Footwork
What can be better than having your feet rubbed with St. John’s Wort oil?  Okay, so there are occasional twinges of discomfort as a thumb or finger hits a “sensitive” spot. My feet are talking to Elizabeth Willoughby, a reflexologist with offices in Montauk, Sag Harbor, and Manhattan. They’re telling her where imbalances lie so that she can correct them with pressure. It’s a dance between ecstasy and … Ouch!

She locates several imbalances in my body: most notably my inner ear (I did have a scary bout of vertigo the day before) and my neck and shoulders. Well, I am a writer who spends many an hour hunched over a keyboard.

Believe it or not, she tells me, reflexology is actually a western application of Chinese acupuncture and Egyptian massage, which was developed by an American ear, nose, and throat doctor at the turn of the last century. Dr. William Fitzgerald used pressure on certain “zones” of the hands to normalize physiological functions all parts of the body and as a natural anesthetic. His work was further developed in the 1930s by another American, physical therapist Eunice Ingham, who worked with points in the feet.

Like most reflexologists, Willoughby works with the feet, hands, and ears to harness the “eastern principle of increasing energetic flow in the body.” Reflexology is also known to “increase blood circulation, enhance nerve function, lymphatic circulation and drainage, reduce toxins, and enliven organ function.”

Following in the footsteps of its originator, practitioners today still use it for pain management. Willoughby started a program in 2003 at New York’s Hospital of Joint Diseases for women with disabilities – many of whom found pain relief. Some also experienced increased function. Willoughby sees clients suffering from migraines, hormonal imbalances, digestive disorders, and muscular-skeletal tension. “It’s not a substitute for western medicine,” she stresses. “It’s a complementary medicine. We’re not saying alternative anymore.”

Willoughby started out as a modern dancer before becoming a window dresser at Macy’s. She’s been practicing reflexology for almost 30 years. She once worked on a client who jumped three inches off her table when her gall bladder point was touched. “It was like an electric shock.” Willoughby advised her to see a doctor. The next day the client had her gall bladder removed. Willoughby is currently working with a cancer patient in Montauk who is filming her struggle to overcome the disease through complementary treatments.

“Reflexology also is a great way to relieve stress and induce a deep state of relaxation,” she says. Amen to that. Do I have to get off the table? planetaryenergetics.com

The Whole Being
Suzanne Kirby and her husband Glenn Goodman are legends in Hamptons healing circles. I’d been hearing about them for years and finally found time to visit their practice, Sag Harbor Integrative Medicine Associates (SHIMA). While I’d somehow expected Kirby to be an earth mother replete with flowers in her hair, instead I found a chicly tailored fashion plate. So much for preconceived notions.
Both spouses practice integrative/functional medicine using various modalities including chiropractics, acupuncture, homeopathy, botanical medicine, and nutrition. Goodman also teaches his clients yoga and a newish exercise program, Foundation Training, “a group of movements and postures that lengthen and strengthen the posterior chain of muscles,” he says. “It’s the best way I’ve found to get people out of back pain.” His classes are held Wednesday evenings at Peaceful Planet Yoga in Sag Harbor. (Check with him first at [email protected].)

My appointment is with Kirby, who has been practicing in Sag Harbor since 1987. Kirby “looks at the whole being” before deciding on an individualized course of treatment. Her practice is filled with patients seeking help for such conditions as back pain, Lyme disease, digestive disorders (think: leaky gut), and allergies from dairy to seasonal. Blood and saliva tests, as well as kinesiology (muscle testing) are key elements in her diagnoses.

Her most frequent go-to modalities are homeopathy and nutrition, which she administers even for back problems. Most likely she will recommend removing wheat from the diet as most is sprayed with glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup. She also advocates adding fermented foods and wild herring and sardines, great sources of Omega-3 fatty acids. She might prescribe botanicals such as boswellia or turmeric for inflammation or corydalis for pain, herbs that help negate the need for surgery.

For my back and neck tension she reached into her ample bag of tricks for ultrasound (to relax muscles), laser (for muscle spasms), flexion (to traction the spine), craniosacral therapy, and needle-less acupuncture. A few days later I noticed that my neck felt better than it had in ages.
A substantial part of her practice is working with mood disorders. Once a blood test determines levels of dopamine and serotonin, she has an arsenal of homeopathic remedies for reducing anxiety and depression, which “work wonders.” Goodbye pharmaceutical anti-depressants! shimahealth.com

Good Vibrations
Adriana Barone spent the first part of her life as a graphic designer, a career that encompassed being an art director for such publications as High Times and National Lampoon. In the early ‘90s, as she found herself “in recovery,” she felt an “inner drive” to follow a path into the healing arts. The urge was so strong that it felt to her as if “someone had a hand on my back pushing me into this field.”

It was a field about which she knew nothing. That was about to change. Barone has spent more time than many medical doctors studying a bevy of modalities that have led her practice to where it is today. She spent three and a half years in Arizona studying with Robert Jaffe, MD, whose School of Energy Mastery taught her that energy contains intelligence. She went on in search of a “deeper spiritual training,” which she found with The Divine Unity, which taught her how to be connected to a higher power.

She started her energy healing practice in Sag Harbor in 1994, but still continued her studies. “When people came to my table I didn’t feel I was getting to know them,” she says. “I wanted more interaction.” Experiential Therapy, a method that incorporates psycho-drama among other elements, offered her a way to help her clients “break out of patterns.” It allowed her to “access a more conscious side of the person where the self has an understanding of patterns.” Cranio-sacral work, which she also studied, brings her work “into the body.”

But much of her work is done on another plane. Her four years spent studying with energy healing guru Barbara Brennan took her from mastering the fundamentals of “grounding” to reaching a “spiritual opening to divine energy.” She cherishes the time spent there with “800 other students, all pursuing a journey of self-discovery.”

For my session, Barone asks me a few pointed questions and within moments I’m crying, not something I do often. Seems we’ve started to chisel away at a block. I lay on her table whereupon she asks me to access my higher powers. I am visited by diaphanous beings that swirl about me, taking my hand, flying me off somewhere. It’s all very nice until such ethereal visions are replaced by the drivel of my monkey mind: What will I have for lunch? What will I write in this article?

I’m aware as the warmth of her hands hover over various parts of my body. It’s especially comforting when she cradles my head in her hands and asks me to feel the heaviness of my brain. She later explains to me what she was experiencing from her perspective as she accessed my “energy fields” and bypassed my “personality field.”

“It gets more vibrational, I could feel a lot of divine love, a lot of god presence.  Very loving energy came for you, very deep.”  She tells me that she balanced the mother/father sides of my body. I tell her about the trauma I experienced with my parents.  “We carry the energy of our parents,” she says. “It takes some time to shift.” She asks me what gift I would give my younger self. I’m not sure. “Think about it,” she says. And I will. adrianabarone.com

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