Nibley woman's family led her to practice natural healing

By Michelle Bundy

December 14, 2004 | NIBLEY -- Joan Elder is used to being "out of the norm." Enjoying her early 50s, she has 12 kids and two grandchildren and looks like she could be in her 30s. Ten years ago, suddenly a new widow, she designed and oversaw construction of her dream house. She can pogo stick up and down stairs, make a heavenly ice cream cheesecake, and has impeccable aim with a gun, according to her 25-year-old son, Russ.

She also practices natural healing.

How did she become interested in this nonconventional field of medicine?

"Traditional medicine wasn't always working for my family's health problems," she said.

As a 3-year-old, Russ suffered from leg aches, and was prescribed aspirin by his pediatrician. As the next two years went by, he developed swelling in his lips and feet. "Unbeknownst to us, this reaction was the result of an allergy to the aspirin," said Elder.

At 5, Russ suddenly fell into a seizure while shopping with his mother. They rushed him to the hospital where he remained in a seizure state for the next six hours, while his parents anxiously walked the halls, wondering if their little son would live. Although the team of doctors, a neurologist, and the family pediatrician "had no clue" what was wrong with young Russ, they approached his parents with the proposal to give him a shot in his spine to treat spinal meningitis. No way, Russ' parents said.

So instead the doctors gave Russ phenobarbital, a medication to subdue seizures. After two months of taking the medicine, Russ' parents were discussing the situation with friends who informed them that their grandson had just died from side effects of phenobarbital.

Elder and her husband became frightened and starting looking elsewhere for answers. They came upon a book called "The Fiengal Diet" which suggested that Russ was suffering from salicylate allergies, contracted from certain foods like pitted fruits, almonds, and red dyes found in foods. (To see a listing of salicylate content in foods, see http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/Food/ Salicylate.html. Feeling like this was a better answer than the ones they had been given by doctors, Elder and her family changed their eating habits.

"It was a huge effort. I did not want to give up chocolate and sugar. I wanted to keep my addictions," she said. They started eating more raw foods and juicing carrots and wheatgrass, giving a glass of juice to each child three times a day.

"All that stuff -- broccoli juice, wheatgrass -- it probably saved my life," Russ said, now 20 years past the allergies, and he has had few problems with them since.

"I found all my answers at the health food stores, all the specialists were clueless. I placed doctors on a pedestal with God. I don't do that now," Elder said.

Continuing her research, Elder discovered chlorophyll, which she calls "awesome, awesome stuff.

"It's like a blood transfusion," she said. Chlorophyll is the substance in plants that helps them convert light to energy. It is similar to our blood. So similar, in fact, that eating chlorophyll tablets or drinking chlorophyll is like getting a blood transfusion, said Elder. So the family started taking chlorophyll as well.

Since that time 20 years ago, Elder has discovered a myriad of natural healing techniques that she uses on her family and clients that request her services. She does foot zoning (using the foot as a "keypad" to activate response in different parts of the body), acupressure (using pressure points to clear blockages), and health kinesiology, which incorporates acupressure, psychological words, essential oils, homeopathics, and specially treated rocks that contain an electrical impulse.

"I'm an energy worker," Elder said. She quotes a Chinese philosophy that says, "Energy first, the body will follow." In other words, if the body's energy is balanced, then problems can be fixed naturally, according to Elder.

Although Elder is certified to practice these techniques through classes she has taken, she does not have a medical license, and is therefore prohibited from practicing medicine. This means she can't use certain terms such as "diagnose" and "cure," and she can't legally charge for the work she does, though she does accept donations for her time. Because the allopathic (conventional) medical field does not follow this holistic approach, Elder said she would be forbidden to use natural medicine if she were licensed.

"I cannot be licensed and serve the people the way I feel is best for them," she said. To be certified, however, she is required to undergo testing and practical application through the schools that offer the classes.

Her approach must be working, based on her growing clientele, which includes family members. Two of her daughters have started taking classes with her and are working on their certification also. Another daughter has been doing foot zoning for several years.

Melinda Beaman, Elder's oldest daughter, watched her mother use energy work to fix some emotional problems with the Beaman's dog, Penny. As a result, Beaman became interested in learning these techniques for herself.

"I was very much a non-believer until Penny (who was wetting on the floor when visitors came over) had visited the vet, who said 'there's nothing you can do, this is very common with dogs.' Then Mom said, 'Can I try something?'"

It couldn't hurt, Beaman thought. After working with Penny, Beaman said that Penny was "completely cured" of her wetting problem. Since then, Beaman has taken many of the same classes that Elder took and determined to use her new skills to work with other dogs that have behavioral problems. She believes animals have problems because of traumatic experiences in their lives.

"(Natural healing) helps mend emotions. The thing I love about energy work is you can help relieve the stress of a situation and learn to handle it differently," Beaman said.

Using essential oils is Beaman's favorite technique, not only because of their healing tendencies, but their practical uses as well. For example, Beaman said orange oil is the toughest cleaner around, and that it's not necessarily advertised.

The physical healing is important to Beaman, too. "There are things that the medical world doesn't know exist," she said. For instance, households are continually passing sicknesses back and forth between family members, and all the doctor can tell you is take vitamin C and wash your hands, Beaman said. Deliverance oil is a preventative for sickness, and since she has been using it, Beaman has been able to avoid the sickness that her husband has had in the past few weeks.

Emotional healing is most important to Beaman when practicing these techniques. "If you don't have emotional healing, what good is physical? The way we handle stressful situations makes changes in our physical life," she said.

Elder agrees. She said she has a 99 percent success rate working on people who are "willing to change." She, herself, had to be prepared for a new way of thinking about healing before she discovered these methods. "When the student is ready, the teacher will come," she said.

Elder has worked on physical, mental and emotional elements of health. Her approach is about "the whole body," she said. According to the American Holistic Medical Association website and Elder's energy work, holistic medicine does not concentrate on just the ailment, but on how it affects the whole being.

At one point, Elder worked on a young lady who was having difficulty learning to drive. Although she practiced often, she repeatedly failed her driving tests. Elder worked on the mental aspect of driving, and the girl not only passed her driving test but had another "side effect," as Elder calls it: she started doing much better in math, which had always been a real struggle for her.

Emotional healing took place when a woman had lost her spouse and was suffering from severe depression for years. After she applied some of these techniques, the woman was able to come out of the slump and return to her normal life.

Elder once worked on a man who had lost his left arm in an accident, so he depended solely on his right arm to do most activities. An avid racquetball player, he developed tendonitis in his right arm and sought Elder for help. After she worked on him for two sessions, he went back to his normal activities, including racquetball, without any further problems. Finally, in what may be a major breakthrough in the medical world, Elder recalls working on a woman who was "full of what I believe to be cancerous growths" (she cannot specifically diagnose a client with cancer). She had growths all over her body, and after changing her diet and doing some energy work, the woman is now free of the growths and feeling fine.

Elder said natural healing can cure all maladies. Why? "Because I've seen it happen."

Though the medical and natural healing world are now at odds against each other, Elder said it shouldn't have to be that way. They should work together, good doctors and energy workers. "If we worked together, there would be some amazing accomplishments," Elder said. Energy work should not replace doctors, but should be considered as a first alternative, she said.

"There are good doctors and good medicine, but there is a huge world of alternative medicine that is suppressed so people will stick with the mainstream. Go first to alternative medicine, if we can't help you, by all means, go to a doctor. My experience is that people that do this are not after money, but are trying to help others," she said.

If one decides to "stretch their belief box" and try alternative medicine, Elder suggests they follow their heart. "Go to someone you feel comfortable around, and your feeling about them, good or evil, will tell you to stay or go."

For more information or an appointment, contact Elder at 245-9662.

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