Practitioner's Corner
Essays By and About Practitioners

The Integrative Medicine Alliance makes no endorsement of any business, organization, practitioner, therapy, or product described within this newsletter, nor is the information contained herein intended to be a substitute for medical advice. The following essays are solely the opinions of our members. We urge you to contact your physician and/or health team before trying any new therapy or healthcare product. 

HOW TO HELP YOUR CLIENTS WHEN YOU CAN’T HELP

By Karl Berger, ABT, LMT, Integrative Healthcare Consultant and Founder/Coordinator of the IMA.

Healthcare Practitioners know that as much as we want to help everyone who comes to us for care, we cannot help all of them in all ways.  Sometimes our clients present with an ailment whose cure lies outside our scope of practice or expertise, and we need to recommend them to a professional peer or to suggest a different form of healthcare altogether.  From this need, a new industry has emerged: that of the integrative healthcare consultant. The mission of the consultant is to assist patients and practitioners as they navigate through the complex array of healthcare choices that exist today.

Healthcare used to be much more straightforward.  Fifty years ago, if you got sick you’d typically go see a doctor, plain and simple.  If the doctor couldn’t help you he’d refer you perhaps to a specialist, or you might be informed “it’s old age” and “you’ll just have to put up with it”.

Thanks to the gradual mainstreaming of holistic therapies, we now have many more courses of action that we can consider before we “just put up with it”.  We now can define healthcare as simply “that which heals,” and are free to consider any therapy or healing approach that falls into that category, whether it comes from a doctor, a shaman, or your grandmother.  However, that also means that there are so many options, that it is often difficult to advise patients as to their best opportunities.

As we consider the meaning of “that which heals,” it becomes clearer that the number of choices is overwhelming.  I once wrote down every form of healing I had ever encountered through my years of work coordinating the IMA.  I stopped at about 300, and every month I hear of still more and more emerging modalities.   From high-tech methods such as radiology, to body-based therapies such as Rolfing, to mind-body approaches such as breathwork, to the world’s alternative health systems such as ayurveda, to spiritual healing traditions throughout the world, to the very simplest ways we can heal such as eating a healthier diet—in the space of 50 years we’ve gone from having too little healthcare choices to having more than we can ever imagine!  So, as responsible healthcare practitioners faced with a client we cannot fully help, where should we best point them?

As an integrative healthcare consultant, I have developed an expertise in helping people discover the paths to healing that are right for them.  My work often includes recommending high-quality caregivers to help them along their way. I have always loved bringing people together, so this occupation suits me well.

In my work, I use four guidelines that provide a compass for navigating among the hundreds of healing modalities and practitioners available to an individual seeking excellent and appropriate care. I share them here in hope that they may be helpful in your practice:

1. Clients are more motivated by healing approaches that support their values and beliefs.  The power of your clients’ belief and interest in the efficacy of a particular healing approach will help them follow through with your advice and can help them get the most out of their healing experience. In other words, think twice before recommending shamanic healing to a strict Catholic, or suggesting a novel therapy “unproven” by clinical trials to a skeptic. 

2. The choice of modality is sometimes not as important as the quality of the caregiver.  While our society now has an overflowing toolbox of therapies with which we can heal ourselves and others, it is more important how these tools are applied.  The practitioners I recommend to my clients are both knowledgeable and wise.  They are the ones who can be fully present in a healing relationship with those under their care.  I prefer practitioners who are the best of the best, with great healing powers. Often, whether they have MD, DC, RN, Lic.Ac., LMT, or Reiki Master after their names is of little consequence to their ability to heal.

3. Great healthcare practitioners know other great healthcare practitioners.  This guideline is not new to anyone who works in mainstream medicine, and I have found it applies to CAM as well.  If you want to find a great caregiver for your clients, ask a caregiver whose work you highly respect.  I have made it my business to know who are the best holistic and integrative healthcare practitioners in New England, and I have noticed that they are praised time and again by other practitioners.

4. There are many paths to healing, so suggest multiple options that address body, mind, and spirit, and let your clients choose the ones that suit them best.  In my consulting practice, I present clients with a diverse set of recommendations that collectively work on body, mind and spirit.  Some are simple, some are more complex; some cost money, others are free.  For example, for a client living in Cambridge, Massachusetts who wishes to get recharged and renewed for the spring, I might recommend a particular health club that suits his/her temperament, or taking a springtime walk in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.  I might also suggest a highly affordable series of decent student massage treatments at the Muscular Therapy Institute and a nutritional consultation with a naturopathic doctor. Other suggestions might include a discount weekend retreat at Kripalu, a de-cluttering of her home, or simply renewing a friendship.  All these approaches can heal. All have the power to renew him/her on various levels. However, one or more of these options might truly speak to that client, and these are the ones I would encourage him/her to pursue, and with vigor.

Most importantly, have faith in your client’s innate ability to heal, and in their ability to make the right choices when presented with a fitting set of healing paths.  Perhaps the very act of empowering your clients with choices that are right for them will be a deciding factor in their healing experience.

Karl Berger, ABT, LMT, is founder and coordinator of the IMA, and is an expert on integrative and holistic health and wellness.  As an integrative healthcare consultant, he helps people find high-quality integrative and holistic healthcare.  If you are seeking a high-quality caregiver or healing approach for yourself or your clients, you can email him at KarloBerger@yahoo.com or call him at 401-383-0661.  The author urges all receivers of care to consult their primary caregiver before trying any new healing approach.