When I was fourteen years old, in the middle of my freshman year of high school, I suffered three successive concussions within seven months. I was subsequently diagnosed with Post Concussion Syndrome — more commonly referred to as PCS.
Initially, I was placed in the pediatric unit at Kaiser Permanente San Rafael Medical Center. Within a week, my symptoms grew in severity and I was referred to the head of pediatric sports injuries at the same hospital. After being in her care for a couple of weeks, I was referred to another specialist, the primary neurologist at the same hospital.
I was tossed around a lot more after that — between hospitals, specialists, medications and treatment plans. But one variable never really shifted: my brain. Despite all of the healthcare options my family had tried, the severity of my headaches continued to escalate.
Eventually, I was recommended to an acupuncturist who exposed me to the entire underbelly of the medical world — alternative, non-allopathic treatments.
After finding long-sought relief with cranial sacral, acupuncture and herbal remedies, I grew frustrated with my prior ignorance regarding other options beyond conventional medical treatments. Subsequently, I became interested in learning more about different approaches to wellness, healing and medicine.
Four months, five interviews and over three thousand words later, I share the stories and perspectives of four women who have taken alternative approaches to medicine here in Marin County.
Kate Lumsden
Kate Lumsden is a certified Ayurvedic Medicine practitioner and Mount Madonna College of Ayurveda graduate. Ayurveda is a traditional healing practice native to India, though it is also common in Nepal. It focuses on maintaining a balance between the body, mind, spirit and five elements of nature (fire, earth, ether, water and air) through purifying diets, herbal remedies, massage therapy, yoga and meditation. In addition to her studies in Ayurveda, Lumsden has a master's degree in the Science of Chinese Medicine, which emphasizes similar components with a primary focus on acupuncture.
Lumsden is also a licensed acupuncturist throughout the state of California and is formally trained in hatha yoga, a slow-paced style of yoga that incorporates breathing, posture and channeling energy. She works primarily with Marin youth and pregnant women and mothers. She currently operates in Larkspur at Village Acupuncture & Ayurveda.
Her primary method of treatment is acupuncture, though she varies it depending on the patient, considering factors such as a patient’s lifestyle, nutrition or mental health when offering treatment options.
Acupuncture is a method based in Chinese medicine that utilizes thin needles to target parts of the body. Acupuncture can be used to treat acute or chronic pain through its stimulation of nerves, muscles and connective tissue.
“Acupuncture is a holistic practice; we like to look at the body as a whole. So if someone comes in and they have sore muscles [or] they want some help with an [injury], we're going to look at the body constitutionally,” Lumsden said.
Specifically, Lumsden notes the benefits of acupuncture regarding mental and emotional well-being.
“Acupuncture is a tool [for] if you are struggling with anxiety or just feeling like you've got a lot on your plate in life. I feel that acupuncture is a way for you to calm your nervous system. And when you calm your nervous system and ground you, it’s helpful in life… I think that's one of my favorite gifts of medicine,” Lumsden said.
Shailah Menda
Shailah Menda works in Biodynamic Energy Therapy but was formerly a homeopath and has experience with Reiki, a Japanese art of energy healing. Menda became interested in biodynamic energy after she was seriously injured in a series of car accidents and had a complicated recovery. After seeing several different classical Western doctors and failing to find relief, she experimented with different alternative therapies and began to believe in what she calls “the natural world.”
Menda describes her work, which focuses on centering and moving energy in the body, by comparing the art of healing, which some energy specialists call the midline or blueprint, to the operation of a vehicle.
“[Biodynamic energy work] is almost like putting [a] car in neutral. You put the car in drive or reverse when you learn to drive. And there's also a neutral setting where you leave it be – that's kind of [how] biodynamic energy works: to be left in neutral, but the car is running. The healing and the curing of symptoms, or the bettering of symptoms, happens in that neutral space,” Menda said.
Specifically, she explains how her work manipulates the body’s energy.
“[Biodynamic energy therapy] takes energy from the lifeforce energy from the world and the planet and the universe, and you kind of put that into the client patient's body and begin pulling it, guiding it and pushing it through,” Menda said.
But despite the unsatisfying experience she had in her twenties with Western medicine after the car accidents, Menda strongly emphasizes the use of both Eastern and Western approaches to medicine. Where she draws the distinction, however, is with rest. She believes that alternative approaches emphasize attaining a deep state of rest, which is paramount to recovery.
“I respect the space of allopathic medication that's needed in accidents, immediate trauma [and] all of that intense, acute stuff. But for actual healing, we need [deep] rest. Both have importance; it's not an East versus West. Sometimes, both are helpful, [and] sometimes even in conjunction,” Menda said.
Dr Beverly Yates
Dr Beverly Yates is a naturopathic doctor and an internationally recognized diabetes expert. She developed the Yates Protocol, which focuses on a patient’s A1C (glycated hemoglobin), fasting and controlling blood sugar through a lifestyle-based approach. She has over 27 years of experience following her graduation from MIT’s School of Engineering and her career in Silicon Valley.
Like Menda, her unconventional path was spurred by frustration with Western medicine's restricted scope. After dealing with health complications from mold exposure, she found relief in naturopathy, which introduced her to that form of alternative medicine.
However, Yates's unique approach to medicine makes Yates even more distinct. She approaches it not from a classical medical perspective but from that of an engineer. She views the body as a complex configuration that must be understood to be treated.
“From the point of view of engineering, you look into [the body with] a system's point of view. You can start to see what's working well and what's not, and then look at the root causes of what's not working well and address that,” Yates said.
Yates works predominantly with individuals dealing with Type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes, sleep apnea problems and congestive heart failure. She led the first-ever accredited residency program in California based on naturopathic and integrative medicine. She vouches for natural therapies, focusing on nutrition and lifestyle aspects of medicine. She also emphasizes consistency with exercise, strength training and meal timing. Overall, her approach is curated around each patient and their needs.
Yates described her experience after moving to Oregon and her introduction to naturopathic medicine.
“My health was affected by all the rain, dampness and mold. To make a long story short, what got my health back was working with a naturopathic physician in Oregon; it was completely transformative for me. After several visits, I was dramatically better,” Yates said.
She noted that she also sought out a Western physicians but found that the naturopathic doctor's approach was more effective.
“I found a medical doctor and got an allergy shot for the mold, but the real issue was more addressing the root causes rather than the symptoms. And as I learned more about naturopathic medicine, I realized, ‘Wow, this just makes sense to me.’ So, I left my engineering career and returned to school. I went to naturopathic medical school and got licensed and board certified,” Yates said.
One of the most notable aspects of Yates’s practice is her belief in a no-judgment approach, especially with her patients with Type 2 diabetes. She believes it’s futile to blame people for recurring injuries or complicated health issues.
“The judgment, shaming and blaming for [people] Type 2 diabetes isn't helpful. Similarly, we can be judgmental because people are injured or have multiple recurrent injuries, often under the assumption that they're doing something wrong [because] we never look at what kind of advice they got. Did anyone really help them?” Yates said.
Another difficulty she notes is the general lack of focus on rest, recovery and nutrition in Western medicine. The root of this, she concedes, is in American cultural values.
“I think in terms of American culture, we distract ourselves, and we don't prioritize recovery from stress. We don't prioritize recovering from trauma, and we don't prioritize sleep,” Yates said.
Yates also emphasizes the importance of nutrition, pointing out how nutritional focus is often lacking in most Western healthcare.
“With all due respect to my allopathic Western medicine colleagues, they completely skip over things like nutrition, where we have hundreds of hours of training and real expertise that can be applied to medicine. The typical medical doctor has anywhere from zero to more than 12 hours of nutrition [education] over the thousands of hours of their training,” Yates said.
But beyond the debate over the value of different approaches to healthcare, more than anything, Yates advocates never giving up on one’s healthcare journey, especially if one is struggling with a devastating illness or injury.
“It's so important to get to know yourself well and what works for your body, and to keep searching for answers. If you find that one door is not open and it's not working out, open some other doors. There's bound to be a way that you can get help" - Yates
Tiffany Hunter
Tiffany Hunter is an energy healing specialist with a background in psychology and trauma. She has been researching energy healing for over 35 years and opened her clinic Healing for People in 2002. She also has a PhD in research psychology from University College in London and is the author of Reiki Helps You Feel Better: A Guide for Young People and Curious Adults.
Hunter spoke about her origins and what got her on the path of energy healing.
“I've always been interested in how energy works in the body and out in the world, but I didn't have any intention of doing it professionally. For many years, I studied it before I did my traditional background in psychology. What I began to understand is that what I was looking for was a combination of [psychology and energy]-- using psychology principles, but getting into the body dynamics to make changes,” Hunter said.
She explains her work about trauma, describing trauma as being maintained in the body through negative ‘charges.’
“If something's happened to you, and then you think about it later, and you kind of flinch when you think about it, [it’s] because [you are] reactivating that charge. That charge is held in the body. And that micro-trauma is held in the body,” Hunter said.
She notes that the body copes with larger traumas differently. With issues of greater magnitude, the negative ‘charge’ can linger and lead to within someone’s body of consciousness. And that remnant of a negative charge is where Hunter comes into play.
“Sometimes that trauma doesn't fade [on its own]. If you've had a bad accident, a messy childhood or a messy divorce, that charge can stay in there. I start releasing the charge from bodies and helping people do that, and they [begin to] get better,” Hunter said.
She also notes that trauma is a word that, in this context, encapsulates negative experiences that our bodies and minds grab onto.
“You can have experiences that are still affecting you. Sometimes there are big headline-grabbing experiences, and sometimes they're just mundane,” Hunter said.
She explains that this is because our brains can’t distinguish between different types of trauma.
“[Our bodies have] a really good evolutionary reason for [process trauma] that way. It's just in our modern world, and the same way that our nervous system can't distinguish between being eaten by a bear or being late for school. Both of them, neurologically, are in this panic state" - Hunter
Her work addresses all kinds of trauma — those on the micro and macro scale. She aims to treat the trauma response at its core and alleviate the charge that it has in the body, whether big or small.
For her approach to function, Hunter argues that it’s necessary to view humans as composed of different integral components connected by energy.
“The energy fields that make up our system overlap with our minds and our bodies. So if one-third of your system is out of whack and unbalanced, it will affect other parts of you equally. Even though all the symptoms will show up in the physical body or the mind, they don't all originate there. Sometimes imbalances or symptoms originate in the energy part of us, but they show up elsewhere, so you can keep trying to fix them, ” Hunter said.
This conceptual understanding is pivotal when considering the different roles of allopathic and naturopathic approaches.
“[My work] comes into play where allopathic medicine doesn't have great solutions. [Doctors are] just medicating for things like anxiety, sleep and migraines and things like that, but those things tend to be the problem that tends to originate in the energy anatomy,” Hunter said.
My Reflection
While interviewing these women, I’ve learned a lot about the technicalities of medicine, traditional therapies and varying perspectives on what ‘wellness’ even means. But, amidst all of the vocabulary I’ve since defined, practices I’ve sought to understand and perspectives I’ve tried earnestly to represent, I have learned, overwhelmingly, that there is no one singular approach to medicine.
The variety of practices, therapies and methods employed by different people and cultures allow for a blend of options for people struggling with their psychological or physiological health. Whether one approach is superior to others is entirely individual to the person. Granted, it has been inspiring to me, as someone who still struggles with her health, to know that there are an abundance of options out there. If one thing isn’t working, you owe it to yourself to try to find something else; never give up.