What Next For Purehealth?

I have been having massive thinks about Purehealth and what I do next recently so I thought I would share those thoughts with you, not least as it helps me by writing it all down!

The Last Few Years…

As you know, I stopped taking patients 1-1 a few years ago now, mainly to concentrate on my own healing, to provide a virtual service for far many more people than can come and see you as a ‘bum on a seat’ as I call it, and to be able to write more.

All of that has, happily, worked out. The online business is thriving, I wrote the 300 page Gluten Plan, the Gluten Summit Overview, a ton of blog posts and a load more stuff for you. Most importantly for me, I feel a whole heap better in myself.

So, it’s time to move the business on a bit and see what we can do with it next. I could just sit and carry on as I am; I’ve actually managed to design a business that runs really nicely and pays my bills.

But, maybe as part of healing work, I feel the need to open up a bit more and expand, to be a bit braver and more inclusive. This has been me for the past few years:

And this is how I want to be a bit more now:

I’ve moved to Cornwall so I’ve got the sun and sea. I feel more expansive. Perhaps I’ll grow my hair and, er… OK, never look like that woman but you get the idea!

You do get a bit lonely working on your own, as much as I do love it. I feel the need for a more collaborative approach and to get back out into the world a bit more, sharing what I’ve learned. I don’t think working from home full-time behind a screen does your mental health much good, either! Maybe I should talk to others now and not just to myself…?

Anyway, here’s a summary of what’s coming up next then. Some of you have been with me for well over a decade, which I am so thankful for; let’s see where we go next!

The Purehealth Philosophy and Approach

When I started out, I invented what I called my ‘Sparkle Programme’ for people who had lost theirs! It was a multi-pronged 12 week health programme covering all manner of different therapies and approaches.

It took into account the need to overlay nutritional therapy with eg. energetic medicine, physical therapy, environmental detox, social connection, relaxation therapy, even colour therapy and Feng Shui! It worked, and people loved it. Some of you may even remember it, although it was 16 years ago, eek!

Then, over time, I had to learn much more about functional medicine, testing and treatment as the cases were becoming more and more complex. I recall the days when I used to be able to give everyone the Detox Box, a wheat and dairy free diet and a few nutrients and it would sort most people out. No more, at least not with the kind of patients I now deal with.

I have been feeling more and more recently that nutritional medicine – and complementary medicine in general – has gone too far down the road of ‘plug this gap, fix this symptom’ in a similar way to how the mainstream medicine model works. Functional medicine is all well and good: you identify where the function has gone awry in the body and then fix it, whether that be adrenals, liver, methylation or whatever.

That’s really important. But I don’t think it’s enough.

If there’s one lesson I learned from my own case, it is the importance of fixing the other parts of us too and sometimes it is a fact even, for some people at least, that we simply cannot heal the physical function issues without fixing the other bits first, if that makes sense?

So, for me and my hypersensitivity to food problems, it turned out that I had an ACE disorder (adverse childhood event) that had caused fear, transmuting into fear of eating and reacting mainly, and I had to have trauma therapy to release it and, indeed, that work is ongoing.

The childhood-learned fear and mechanisms I used to survive as a child had gradually translated into physical illness. I discovered this is actually far from unusual and many chronic illnesses that start in the 30s and 40s can be traced back to an ACE of some kind – who knew?! I certainly didn’t. I knew stress was involved, of course, as we all do, but this was entirely something else!

I was literally holding the trauma in my body tissues and neither adrenal treatment, leaky gut help, autoimmune therapy, a trulyglutenfree diet, nor even my ultra AIP Purity invention would help totally as it turned out that wasn’t (just) the cause. Of course, it helped the symptoms no end and I felt much better, but how long can we ignore an ever-decreasing food list and life? I had to sit up and listen when I lost even reverse osmosis water!

People think this means it is all in your head. It most definitely is not. It is true psychosomatic illness as it was originally thought of – the body having physical problems triggered by a brain pattern or trauma which causes physical, measureable changes in organs, tissues, glands, cells, brain waves etc. They can include subconscious learned-behaviours, conditioned responses and can be seen actually as cries for help, if we want to be truthful about it.

Obviously, it’s a lot more complicated than that, and I’ll be waxing lyrical on it much more in the coming months, but, for now, the point is that it woke me back up again to the importance of a comprehensive model of illness and therefore treatment.

Anyway, philosophy-wise, I am now going to pair the functional medicine, nutritional therapy, gluten related disorders and ACE work with the Sparkle programme elements and all the stuff I’ve learned on healing methods over the past two years and develop a truly comprehensive model of healing and preventing lifestyle illness.

Then, I’m going to deliver it in several ways hopefully – as an ebook, a face to face class, a series of webinars etc.

That’s the plan anyway; it will no doubt evolve as it wants to, which is what usually happens and it’ll take me quite some time to do all that! I quite like it as a healthcare model, though, don’t you? Makes sense.

So, that’s the angle for the next couple of years. Now, to some exciting day to day clinic changes…

New Offices in Cornwall

First: I’ve got myself some new offices in nearby Liskeard. I pick the keys up next week!

The main reason for getting them is to separate work from home just a little more and give myself a writing/thinking/creating space. Of course, it’ll have the added benefit that I can see people there via the new support calls (more below), teaching and possibly work with some other therapists.

So excited! I’ll let you have details soon but it’s three offices on the top floor here:

The nice thing is I can get in my car, play loud music on the way and work there when I want to, or I can work from my lovely home office in my jim-jams (although, best not when on video calls!) which brings me onto..

Support Calls

Having some offices will enable me to see some patients again. I am going to start this very gently via Support Calls (I made that up ;)). These are for when you want support, obviously; for when you need to chat things through with me or just talk to someone who ‘gets it’.

I get asked daily if I will take cases on. I simply haven’t got the time to take cases on, do notes, prescriptions etc etc and, frankly, my best skill is in seeing the big picture and directing you to consider certain approaches, see certain people etc. I’m a big picture-curator type person at heart and I’m going to play to my strengths. That’s what the Support Calls are for really.

You can have them face to face with me at the office, via video chat (eg. Skype, Google Hangouts, Messenger, GoToMeeting etc), Live Chat or by phone.

Read more about Support Calls here.  

Clearly, if this is to work, then, I’m going to need some help…

Practitioners Needed

My next job is to recruit some therapists who I can refer people to for various treatments. This way, I don’t get to shoulder the whole caseload; I’m not daft! To that end, I have invented a Purehealth Practitioner Programme.

This is simply a way of getting some therapists I already refer to and some new people on board with us, asking them to pitch in with the general day to day support eg. on the Facebook groups, help me with questions etc, and help patients when they can.

I miss the collaborative stuff of working within a team and this way I can have a bit more of that, but not have to be tied to being in the office. A kind of virtual referral team, if you will.

If you have dealt with anyone good and you think they should be part of our Purehealth family, you can direct them to this page here and encourage them to contact me: Purehealth Practitioner Scheme.

I’ve made it up as I’ve gone along as I’ve not found anything else like it (as per) and that too will no doubt evolve, but it gives us somewhere to start. I just need to get that set up slowly as I find the right people, so please do share if you know of someone who could help others effectively and they ‘fit’ with our gentle Purehealth approach!

Incidentally, I am also going to be helping to build a real live proper therapy directory for our friends at FoodsMatter.com so that will tie in nicely. We’ll have the ones I know and a huge database of therapies and therapists to resource from. How cool is that, thanks Michelle!

Aha, I hear you say: how are you going to get all that done, then?

Purehealth Support Bod

Well, my current business has run well despite the huge amount of healing work, research, illness and personal moving about I’ve been doing so there is some spare capacity there now I can ease off a little. I set out about 5 years ago to build a business that was pretty much automated and ran a lot without me so I could get on with the business of getting well and writing. It worked 🙂

However, again in the spirit of collaboration and ease of life, I am hoping to recruit an intern/nutritional therapy student/some kind of bod/a couple of virtual assistants to help me with the test service and general admin so I can concentrate on the patient care, research and writing. I favour a mentoring type of role as I really like teaching business skills to new therapists – and I can mould them into what we need for the GRD/ACE work too long-term, mwhahaha!

In all seriousness, I have no idea how I will recruit or who that might be yet so if you know of anyone or want to do something like that virtually or locally in Cornwall, do let me know. I have a feeling it might well split into several people doing different elements virtually for me, although it would be nice to have some face to face local support too. I already know of one of you who wants to but isn’t quite ready yet, another of you who is fantastically methodical and a proverbial terrier at getting info out of suppliers! And two almost-qualified nutritionists who may be able to pitch in.

Anyone else got some skills to share to help us?

So, a new era awaits us. Lots to work on and of course it is all subject to change, could go belly-up or take off like a rocket! Very exciting anyway and I can only do it because the healing plan is working. Watch this space for how to do the same thing for yourselves. The first job is to collate all the healing material and write the Healing Plan. Oh dear, what a shame: more writing 😉

Thanks for bearing with me, let’s get to it!

Meantime, if you’ve got any comments, thoughts or advice for me, do share.

Micki x