East Meets West

Open up to the possibilities of alternative healing.

By Julie Fustanio Kling

photography by Ashley Wilkerson

I AM WEIGHTLESS and tingling as I lie on a massage table in the chapel of St. John’s Medical Center (SJMC). I am not nearly as fragile as I felt right after surgery, and I’m much more open to the possibilities of energy healing. It is dark under my closed eyelids. Then, eyelids still closed, constellation-like lights flicker as I feel the therapist’s hands hover over the scar from my hysterectomy. Presurgery, had I known SJMC offered Healing Touch therapy, I would have asked for it during my hospital stay and also come back for it later when I felt depressed and immobile. But thankfully I live in Jackson Hole, where I am surrounded by healers who understand how light, sounds, touch, and smells can help with the stress, sleep deprivation, and depression that came with my surgery, and that can come from other things in life, too.

“Everything in the universe is made up of energy, including people,” says Kathie Chandler, who has multiple degrees in alternative therapies, including Reiki and light therapy. “When your body breaks down, the energy gets stuck, and it loses its ability to heal the body.”

Some of these methods may sound “New Agey,” but there is a growing body of evidence showing benefits to alternative therapies in general. Dr. Mitchell L. Gaynor, who died in September 2015 and was the founder and president of Gaynor Integrative Oncology in Manhattan, was an avid proponent of alternative therapies. A clinical assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, also in Manhattan, and director of medical oncology at the school’s Center for Integrative Medicine, Dr. Gaynor authored six books, many of them focused on the environment’s effect on an individual’s health. They include The Healing Power of Sound, Dr. Gaynor’s Cancer Prevention Program, and Nurture Nature, Nurture Health. In one book Gaynor writes about sound therapy: “Healing chants and music are chemically metabolized into endogenous opiates that are both internal painkillers as well as healing agents.”

NASA has used infrared light waves to grow plants and rebalance astronauts. Clinical trials of NASA-inspired light therapy on stem cell and cancer patients have shown marked results in pain reduction. Why shouldn’t we try it?

I AM A yogi and a believer in the mind-body connection, so I am open to the possibilities. But I am also a journalist, so I approach the therapies with a healthy dose of skepticism. As an editor of Teton Spirit Connection magazine, I know there are dozens of alternative, or complementary, healing modalities to choose from, and that’s just what’s available in this valley. They are part of a larger trend exemplified by people like Michael Cohen, a Harvard-educated Wall Street lawyer-turned-California wellness advocate who has made a thriving business out of writing books and representing wellness practitioners. He is also president of the Institute for Integrative and Energy Medicine, a nonprofit that explores health care policy and advocates for spiritual and emotional, as well as physical, healing. A growing number of wellness practition-ers use the transference of energy to heal with little to no physical contact. When I decide I’m up for trying this, I don’t know where to start. It turns out Lori Reetz, a certified practitioner of healing arts, including Dahn Hak, Jin Shin Jyutsu, Deeksha, Reiki, Access Consciousness, Munay-Ki, and ThetaHealing, finds me one lunch hour at a local Mexican restaurant.

“Come in and see me,” Reetz says in a soft voice and with a steady turquoise gaze. “I would love to do some work with you.” Three sessions later—she has a serene space on Scott Lane in West Jackson—she has barely touched me, but something is transformed. During each session she places a lavender pillow over my eyes, mists me with rosewater, caresses my toes, and places crystals that usually live beneath her massage table on my abdomen. Reetz’s hands do not touch me but instead linger in the space just over my body. Her goals are to remove negative thought patterns and help me believe in myself.

“The thing is, these teachings are deeply ancient,” says Reetz, who has been refining her practice in the valley for more than ten years and attests to the rise in the mainstream acceptance of a growing number of modalities. “Now healers are combining new science with ancient techniques and understanding them better.”

A few weeks later, my friend Daniela Botur, a sound-healing practitioner who owns the wellness boutique Intencións and also Lotus Vibes—a crystal singing bowl meditation and yoga retreat company—invites me to try out her BioMat. This is an FDA-approved, available-to-consumers bed of tubes filled with amethyst crystals designed to transfer infrared heat into the body with the goals of improving sleep patterns and reducing inflammation and stress. I am skeptical but eager to accelerate my healing process and like the scientific nature of this approach. In addition to transferring infrared heat up to seven inches into my body, the BioMat sends out negative ions, atoms with a greater number of electrons than protons, which are abundant in nature. Medicine Wheel Wellness in downtown Jackson also offers clients BioMat sessions.

Lying on the mat feels like a bath that’s too hot at first. Eventually, I ask to turn the heat down. Then it’s almost as relaxing as a sound bowl meditation session, during which I’m tucked under a blanket. After my first thirty-minute session on the BioMat, I notice the scar from my surgery is fading faster than it was pre-BioMat. As impressive as this is, it is the shift in my mind that most astounds me. After weeks of listlessness, I am again motivated to go on walks, get back to yoga, and take a more active role in my life. The BioMat is an unexpected healing modality for me.

Botur says her location in downtown Jackson allows her to attract some interesting clients. Intencións is on Broadway Avenue next to the Harley Davidson store. She has had travel-weary motorcycle men wander in, as well as groups of kids. The former were full of inquiries. The latter spent their own money for a session on a BioMat with sound-canceling headphones, listening to frequencies created by crystal sound bowls or binaural beats, which are tones created at certain frequencies and delivered through different ears to create an auditory illusion.

All of the work Botur does today, including aromatherapy and energy healing, began with sound therapy. She first learned about sound therapy while living in Mexico. Today, with the tap of her mallet and a swirl of her wrist, she plays crystal sound bowls for groups. Sound, breath, and other vibrational modalities can alter brain wave activity, heartbeat, and vibrational fields. The working frequency of brain waves, also known as the “beta” state, has a rate of twelve to thirty-eight cycles per second. “Alpha,” or relaxed, brain waves pulsate at eight to eleven cycles per second. And “theta” brain waves, associated with sleep or a deep meditative state, have a frequency of four to seven cycles per second.

CHANDLER, A REIKI master who is intuitive certified in TBM (Total Body Modification), reflexology, and massage, among other modalities, uses crystal light therapy to relieve pain and improve immune functions. According to doctors at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, light therapy—referred to as solar therapy by the Egyptians and UV therapy by later civilizations—is one of the oldest therapeutic methods used by humans. In 1903 Dr. Niels Ryberg Finsen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for his achievements with light therapy.

Chandler’s tool is the Theragem, a portable laser that beams light through semiprecious and precious gems, each prescribed to treat specific ailments and areas of the body. In total Chandler’s Theragem has thirty carats of precious stones in discs that slip in and out of the beam of light, radiating color, light, and megahertz into the body. On me she uses a combination of diamonds and carnelian, and points the laser at my spleen. It feels like whirlpools of warm water are traveling up to my heart as she rattles off the rising numbers until they stabilize and the R2-D2-sounding device beeps. From there Chandler goes to my head to access my endocrine system with sapphire. The device works quickly, and I feel a transformative lightness as I walk out the door of her Wilson office. The feeling lasts for a week.

“It goes after the issue, not the symptom,” she says. “The pharmaceutical world goes after the symptom. I don’t call myself a healer. I believe I am a facilitator to help you heal yourself.”

Chandler also practices Reiki, a touch therapy that was developed in 1922 by Japanese Buddhist Mikao Usui to transfer energy to reduce blockages and restore physical and emotional wellness. Reiki is similar to Healing Touch, the energy work offered to patients at SJMC. (Other hospitals around the country offer Healing Touch to patients recovering from surgery or illnesses or undergoing chemotherapy.) Both Healing Touch and Reiki involve trained practitioners working with the biomagnetic field that surrounds your body. The goals of both are to open up the natural flow of energy, which is sometimes stuck near meridian points or chakras.

SJMC, which has offered Healing Touch for two years, has five certified providers and is funded by anonymous donors. It is free to hospital patients. Since the program’s inception, providers have done upwards of 1,100 sessions. Prior to each Healing Touch session a provider asks the patient to rate their level of pain on a scale of one to ten. At the end of the session, which usually lasts an hour, patients are again asked to rate their pain. On average, post-Healing Touch, patients report a two- to three-point reduction in pain. “Healing Touch represents the compassionate side of medicine,” says Jackson Hole orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Gus Goetz. “It is a contradiction to highly complex, automated, and computerized patient care, but one almost everyone can understand and appreciate.”

“WE TRY REALLY hard to refer to it as complementary, not alternative,” says Catherine Beck, a nurse and the director of SJMC’s primary care unit. Beck adds that she wishes every patient could experience Healing Touch. After an hour of it being explained to me, I’m set up with a Healing Touch session.

I meet Kate Finnegan in the chapel and lie down under a white sheet on a massage table, itself covered in a white sheet. Next year the hospital breaks ground on a dedicated Healing Touch room. Like the Healing Touch program, this room’s design and construction are funded by an anonymous donor. Finnegan’s gentle manner is reminiscent of Reetz’s, but her hands smell of antibacterial soap rather than rosewater. She turns on some pleasing piano music. Strings and percussion eventually join in. “I work with the bioenergetic field, kind of like Reiki,” Finnegan says. “I feel movement like a wave with my hands over the body and then I move on.” She goes on to explain that the movement comes from my electromagnetic energy field.

I feel the heat emanating from her hands, which linger above my fully clothed body. It travels from my feet to my temples, creating a comforting sensation as I close my eyes. While I didn’t come in with any pain, I still leave feeling relaxed and rejuvenated, and in agreement with something Beck said earlier about touch therapy: “It is hard to quantify. But if you feel better, does it matter?”