How to Choose a Healer

Mitzibel has chimed on in with a request of her own:

Here’s the thing. This past weekend I costumed a play that I got roped into acting in, as well. Basically, in the course of two days I spent about 20 hours strapped too tightly into an ill-designed “costume” corset (I mean like, “goth girl playing dressup” costume, not “I worked two weeks from a pattern from 1834 to make this right” costume) and in ballet slippers on a concrete floor. When I woke up on Sunday I could hardly move; turns out I screwed up the little vertebrae that connects your spine and your pelvis, the iliac-something.

So the doctor that I went to gave me good drugs, but also scheduled me for therapy—massage, deep heat, sonogram---and when I showed up, they gave me to the office chiropractor.

Now, I’m not a big fan of alternative medicine—the last chiropractor I went to had one arm and offered me a discount on hot oil full body massage lessons if I brought in one of my “co-ed pals” to practice my lessons on. This topic was brought up while I was lying topless on his table while he massaged me with Icy-Hot. Yeah. These days I stick to “legitimate” doctors.

But this one . . . well, he was awfully convincing. If the X-rays of my spine put up next to X-rays of normal people didn’t convince me, the difference in my range of mobility before and after he cracked my spine and neck certainly did.

But I’m still wary of quack-itude, especially since he’s prescribed a weeks-long regime of adjustments and massage.

So I think it would be spiffy if you could post a guide to choosing a good body-worker. I’ve had massage therapy in the past, and most of it was BS. I’ve also had quite a few friends who’ve been trained as massage therapists who left me feeling worse after their work than I did before.

Pretty Lady's recommendation is very simple: Ask. Your. Friends. Not the lousy bodyworkers; the ones who may have received good bodywork. She guarantees they're out there.

Also, put a query on local Internet message boards and forums; people who have had an excellent experience with a bodyworker are frequently eager to talk about it.

This is the short answer. Now Pretty Lady will elaborate.

You see, alternative healthcare practitioners fall into three rough categories; the Quacks, the Functional, and the Gifted. Functionals, with sufficient study and practice, can occasionally rise to almost-Gifted efficacy; and of course there are many, many people out there who are Gifted at Quackery. This is why it is paramount to rely on testimonials from persons whose character is known to you, plus a heavy dose of Gut Feeling.

Above all, you must listen to your own body, both when assessing the results of a session, and when choosing a course of treatment in the first place. Do not take your chiropractor's word for it that you need to come in three times a week for the indefinite future or risk permanent disability; Pretty Lady used to work for a chiropractor like that. His professional advice had a great deal more to do with the fact that he was scrambling to pay the rent on his Wall Street digs every month than with actual concern for his heavily-insured clients. Pretty Lady was doing all the work, anyway. Shortly thereafter she went into business for herself.

What Pretty Lady tells her clients is that they are the experts, both upon their own health and their own finances. She has no real objection to the self-indulgent person who wants three massages a week, except that it's boring to work on them, but it isn't usually necessary except when a person is recovering from a toxic infection so massive that it precludes doing yoga, and when this client is a purist who refuses to take painkillers.

Pretty Lady herself sees no reason at all to choose between 'alternative' methods of therapy and 'traditional' ones; these modalities, in her view, can and should be used in a complementary manner. One does not see a shaman for a broken leg, any more than one goes to a brain surgeon for depression. One simply proceeds in a scientific manner; try something, and assess the results. Repeat until dead or better.

When choosing a practitioner, one should additionally be skeptical of extraordinary claims. Chiropractors who assert the ability to Cure All Ills, including asthma and cancer, are delusional. For that matter, so are the M.D.s who talk like this. However, Pretty Lady's very own Mommy recently informed her that after two visits to her friend's chiropractor in Denton, the hip and back pain that has plagued her since the birth of her third child has abated to the extent that she is giving up painkillers. This, after twenty-five years of scoffing, "Chiropractic. Piffle." The yoga classes three times a week have helped a lot, too.

It is perfectly possible for one form of therapy to be of monumental assistance at a crucial moment, and later, not so much. In the course of healing her own chronic malleolar tendinitis, Pretty Lady visited an acupuncturist three times. The first time was useless, but since it was a free swap, she returned. The second time, the acupuncturist stuck a needle in her right wrist, and her left ankle felt better. This event triggered a cascade of psycho-emotional insight, which put a whole new complexion on the deeper significance of dragging one's left malleolar tendon upstairs; the third time was fine. After that, it was back to yoga class. Needles aren't much fun.

Really, just about any experience one has when visiting a healer, however out there, can be put to good use, provided one has the proper perspective. Pretty Lady has received invaluable insight regarding the mind-body connection, the nature of personal responsibility, and the nuances of codependency, by the simple expedient of visiting as many gypsy psychics, neurotic homeopaths, masochistic shamans and student massage therapists as she could find, even if this insight was merely 'never, never, never DO that again.' We attract the lessons we need until we've learned them. Life is marvelously efficient, that way.