One of Dr. Connie's Favorite Places to Muse is at the Pacific Naturopathic Retreat Center in Hawaii

2012: 

Weathering the Change

One could hardly write a newsletter for December of 2012 without at least speculating on what it all means to each of us, this ending of the Mayan calendar, this turning point in history.  And, moreover, what can we do about it?

The Mayan Calendar

In our previous practice in Brattleboro, Vermont, we had a client who specialized in predicting earth changes in the form of earthquakes. He had mapped out the entire United States, and determined the location where he would be statistically safest from that type of natural disaster. Unfortunately unforeseen were other natural disasters. Within in a short time of moving to his safe place, our client lost all of his possessions in a flood.

That you are where you are at this juncture in history is more than a minor miracle. Every thought you've ever had, every deed that you've done, every moment of every lifetime you've lived, has led you to this moment in time.

We cannot avoid the consequences of our every moment, nor can we outguess our fate. Acting from fear, though tempting and often compelling, will never take you where you want to go. What to do? Aspire to the highest good, tune in to your Higher Self, serve others, and act with the courage of your convictions. Whatever the challenge, know that you are always exactly where you are destined, by your very own actions, to be.

A crisis is nothing more than a dangerous opportunity. And every moment, however challenging, is a gift

Operative words for this period of time would be communication, connection, co-operation, creativity. Recommended practices would be meditation, prayer, yoga or other breath therapy, energization exercises or other exercises that train the flow of vital energy through your body.

Onwards to total transformation!

My Favorite Naturopathic Theory and Practice

Connie Hernandez, N.D.

I was drawn to naturopathy through teachings re the Vix Medicatrix Naturae. This is the  Healing Power of Nature, the life energy that animates all living beings, balances physical form and function, and is the ultimate source of healing. Early naturopaths were of the "Vitalistic" School. Their favored healing techniques were designed to free the flow of that energy, to strengthen it where needed, and to balance the flow through the body. 

Quoting below from the great naturopath Dr. Henry Lindlahr's early 20th century writings:

"The vitalistic conception of life regards vital force as the primary force of all forces, coming from the great central source of all life. This force, which permeates, heats and animates the entire created universe, is an expression of divine intelligence and will, the "logos" the "word" of the great Creative Intelligence. It is the divine energy which sets in motion the whirls in the ether, the electric corpuscles that make up the atoms and elements of matter."

"This intelligent energy can have but one source: the will and intelligence of the Creator - or as Swedenborg expresses it, of the great Central Sun of the Universe."

Vitalists relied heavily on the elements of nature to revitalize and cure: earth, air, water, fire and ether. In the mid 19th to mid 20th century, hydropathic spas throughout the United States and Europe became social and political gathering places for the healing of body, mind, and spirit. Dr. Marcel and I envisioned our first clinic as a revival of the Brattleboro Water Cure, thinking to model it after those earlier water therapy centers. Due to the exigencies of plumbing and privacy in commercial buildings, we have come closer to that ideal at the Pacific Naturopathic Healing Retreat Center on the Big Island of Hawaii, where all natural elements come to play in healing.

A few years into naturopathic practice, I came to know the teachings of  Paramahansa Yogananda and found that, though he is known as a spiritual master, he was also a great naturopath in the vitalistic tradition. Yogananda uses different words to describe the vital force... conscious cosmic energy, life current, vibratory life energy, prana.

Yogananda promoted a system he called Yogoda. Yogoda is a word derived from yoga, meaning harmony or equilibrium, and da, that which imparts. Yogoda is described as a system which imparts harmony and equilibrium to all the forces and faculties that operate for the perfection of the body, mind, and soul. Yogoda teaches active attunement to intelligent life energy such that we can call upon it and even direct it to the healing of ourselves and to the healing of others.

The foundation practice of the Yogoda system is the Energization Exercises. The poster you see on the door of our office at Pacific Naturopathic is a poster of the Energization Exercises. Yogananda assured his students that proper practice of these exercises would cure all manner of physical, mental, and emotional ills.

I can speak from personal experience as to the efficacy of these exercises.  In practicing them, I have tuned in to the Vix Medicatrix Naturae, revitalized myself, aligned my spine, transformed many a mood, become aware of energy blockages in my body and healed minor ills. Needless to say, I value most highly the role of the energization exercises in healing.

From a foundation of aligning with the fundamental source of all life and healing energy, modern naturopathy offers an ever changing array of other life affirming treatments. 21st century naturopathy incorporates everything from ancient and modern botanical knowledge to biochemical, genetic, and energetic testing and treatment. 

After seeking the cause of an imbalance, naturopaths combine synergistic treatments to address every aspect of being. I love the creativity and the ability to provide so many individual options.

* "How to Achieve Glowing Health and Vitality" is a compilation of Paramhansa Yogananda's teachings on healing, and can be be ordered from www.CrystalClarity.com  You may also browse through the copy in our waiting room.  

*Energization posters available for $10 from our office.

*Energization classes are taught at Ananda Church of Self Realization, in the Meditation 2 class.

Find out more about Dr. Connie's 

consulting services at:  

I have often been asked why I decided to become a naturopathic doctor.... 

Naturopathy:  

It Just "Felt Right"

 ***** 

Seriously, why would anyone choose to undergo a full medical school education, amass a fortune in student loans, and enter a field where naturopathic physicians receive less than half the recognition and a third of the income as conventional physicians?  The answer to the question is easy: it felt true to my inner being.

Inside all of us there is a place where the truth of who we are is distilled, rarified, and forwarded on to our conscious moments.  It is a place where when we do the right thing, when we make the right choice, when we act according to our highest vision, a resounding "YES" echoes throughout our cellular awareness.  So it was with my entry into Naturopathic Medicine - it was spiritually and genetically "natural."

Grandfather Hernandez

Grandmother Cabrera (my mother standing at left)

My Cuban maternal great grandmother was an herbalist that the family depended upon when medicine was needed for an illness.  She was also a bruja with extraordinary powers.  As a small boy, I had many warts on my fingers.  One day, she blindfolded me and rubbed some kind of oil on my warts.  The warts all disappeared within a few days.

My mother also kept several medicinal herbs in her kitchen cabinet, remedies that she had learned from my herbalist great grandmother.

When I first entered college and was asked what my major would be, without any previous thoughts I answered "pre-med."  Although as my undergraduate and gradate years ensued I wandered into the arts and eventually into a university professorship, the connection to medicine remained strong and my longing to explore medicine continued to grow, until I could no longer refuse the call.

In the summer of 1985 Dr. Connie and I were sitting on a beach in Bali in the midst of a life crisis and pondering our futures.   She also had heard the inner summons to explore natural medicine and we arrived at a decision together.  We would give up our cushy, perk-laden, high-paying university teaching positions and apply to naturopathic medical school.  Our dreams manifested, and we were accepted for the 1986 entering class at Bastyr University in Seattle.  The rest is history, as it is said.

Throughout my naturopathic doctor experience, I have focused on the areas that presented challenges for me and for my family.  Fresh out of medical school with a toddler son, my practice was about 50 percent holistic pediatrics, with the other 50 percent general medicine.

As the years passed, I expanded my focused interests into the fields of digestion and inflammatory bowel disease and men's health, specifically as regards men's hormonal balancing and prostate care, while still maintaining a medical eclecticism that allowed me to maintain general fluency in a number of fields.

As a newly graduated physician, my practice was geared to fixing what was wrong using the three pillars of naturopathy: a healthy mental/emotional state, regular exercise and a varied diet full of unadulterated foods.  And most people benefitted from this time-tested, classical approach. 

As time went by I realized that good health was something more profound - being healthy involved welcoming and adapting to continual inner transformation and regeneration because that was what was naturally happening anyway, and when we consciously choose to apply the brakes, to stop welcoming change, well, that's when our spirits, our "vital force," begin to shrivel and die, and the physical body soon follows.

Yes, I still rely heavily on basic naturopathic principles.  But more than ever I try to work with my patients on transforming their experience of life so that they flow through the constant changes with grace and understanding.  This is my own personal challenge as well.

Find out more about Dr. Marcel's work with men at:

Rapid Pain Relief 

With Elijah Free

Elijah Free, MH, CMI, CMT  

My healing career had its official beginning when I was trained to be a special paramedic in the Air Force during Viet Nam back in the late sixties. I had been selected from a group of GI's because of my aptitude in generally never losing my head under stressful situations and that I had the capacity to think independently and to naturally assume a leadership role.

As a result, I was placed in a special training program that consisted of greatly expanded clinic and fieldwork and intensive study. The military had a way of weeding out those that did not make the grade and the class thinned down pretty quickly. Much of my basic medical training was in the service and I have been eternally grateful over the decades for just how well they did train me.

I worked not just in clinics, but was made an evening and nighttime ward master at the age of eighteen. I also was trained in operating room procedures, emergency medicine at which I was at the top of my class, reading medical tests, X-rays and much more, including being a non-commissioned triage officer.

After the service, I worked on and off for years in the standard medical field. I really knew absolutely nothing about natural medicine. However, in the field as a paramedic, I was known for never losing a patient. I worked in a suburb of Boston as a medic before they had firemen paramedics. I also worked in the operating room as first scrub nurse and circulating nurse and ran a medical shift at a maximum-security prison as a physician's assistant in a special program back in the early seventies.

I can deliver babies, perform minor surgeries, suture and debried intensive wounds of numerous types, do tracheotomies, set bones and generally save lives at accident sites and manage disasters among other skills I trained in intensively.

I left the medical field around 1974 after a rescue in which a doctor pronounced a man dead on the site and told us all to go home. I resuscitated my patient and he lived with no visible effects from being pronounced dead as a doornail. The doctor submitted a bill and he was paid quite a handsome sum of money for saving the gentleman that he told us all was no more. That was the day I quit the medical profession and swore I had enough of all the incompetent work in the civilian field. The military medical scene is so much better than civilian life and the amount of tragic mistakes had gotten to me.

Several years went by and I had a rather severe back injury that left me in pretty bad pain all the time. I went to seek help but it was only made much worse. After a year of this, I began to pray to God, that if You ever let me out of this pain, I swear that I will learn to heal others.

An entire year went by in pain and praying. One day I got up and all of my bones went into place. Soon thereafter, I healed a friend's back in a few minutes that was scheduled for spinal fusion the next day. He did cancel his operation and he never had another problem.

That was how I found out I was a healer. Truthfully, I never had a clue. Decades later, I can look back and see just how beautiful this was all set up. And to this day, I have been eternally grateful for this wondrous career I have been blessed with.

Since this gift came from God, then I always regard God first in all that I do. I call it beginning rightly, knowing what is good and true about someone, rather than what is not good and not true.

My specialties are any kind of acute or chronic pain both mechanical and metabolic. As a master herbalist, I create and design all of my own products for my patients. I hold one patent and am in the midst of a second. In January of 2013, I am launching a national study for my fellow vets for a cure I developed for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome that has worked (literally) with everyone who has used it so far.

I would have to say that my approach is very eclectic because of my basic medical military training combined with my natural healing work and my spiritual path as a healer. In this way, I feel that my patients hopefully get the best of both worlds. 

*  *  *

To contact Elijah, please either call the clinic at 650-917-1121 or e-mail at [email protected].