lovelight holistic health clinic
About me - my journey to real health

From my earliest memories, I was not totally healthy. I remember frequent visits to numerous doctors, who would poke and prod, examine and then prescribe. I would take pills and potions and would come to some sort of equilibrium with sickness – not feeling totally well but not sick enough to be sick. So I had chronic sore throats, despite having my tonsils and adenoids out (as was the custom back then), earache, all the childhood complaints (measles, mumps, whooping cough, rubella, chicken pox), with tracheitis thrown in for good measure. This was despite the fresh vegetables my father grew in the garden for us to eat, which, we thought, should have made us healthy. So I grew up with the concept of the hero model of medicine – the doctor was the person ‘out there’ who would ‘fix’ you when you were broken.

This lasted until about 1981, when I developed severe pain in all joints of both arms. I was a teacher at the time, in charge of outdoor education, very active and renovating our house in my spare time. Yet I found I could not pick up my two-year-old daughter nor could I hold a book open and write on the blackboard! Naturally I went to our GP, who diagnosed osteoarthritis. I asked him to fix it, after all, that was his job wasn’t it? He laughed, said it couldn’t be fixed, and prescribed aspirin tablets for me to take, six tablets three times a day. After a few days I was in dream world, my feet barely touching the ground; no pain, but no life and loudly ringing ears.

I had heard a little about alternative therapies, most of it very disparaging, but one thing that made sense to my scientific mind was that, to a large extent, you are what you eat. I had also heard that caffeine could be bad for you, and coffee contained caffeine, and that red meat and alcohol could be antagonistic to arthritis. So I gave up coffee and stopped the aspirin. A few days later the pain had gone. I waited a week, had a cup of coffee, and the pain returned for a day. Six months later try again, same result. Same result five years later. So I don’t drink coffee, and have since given up caffeinated tea as well.

So I began to realise that perhaps doctors are not infallible.

We had a couple of incidents where our daughter was incorrectly diagnosed and treated by a doctor and a hospital. Perhaps medicine was more hit and miss that it had seemed when I was a child. So my confidence in ‘conventional’ medicine was further eroded.

In September 1989, while an outdoor instructor for an outdoor education centre, I was hit on the back by a large rock which fell about 12m from the top of a cliff. The impact was on the muscle between the shoulder blade and the spine. A few centimetres in any direction, or had I been sitting upright and been hit on the head, and the injury would have been far more serious or even fatal. It still put me out of outdoor instruction for about four years. The GP said there was nothing he could do, go to a physiotherapist. The physio also could do nothing – he told me to swim. Fortunately at that time we lived near Taupo which had the AC Baths with a 25m heated pool for swimming lengths. I went from one, very painful length the first day until I was swimming 2km three times a week. I almost came to enjoy it, and certainly it helped my injury.

At that time, another instructor had slipped a disc in his back (while doing up his boots – so it doesn’t take a huge effort to injure yourself). He suggested that I read “Creative Health” by Dr Andrew Bell. This was the start of my journey into mind-body healing. It made very good sense – our bodies are not machines with a computer controlling them – I quickly came to realise that the mind and the body are inextricably linked and to treat the body, you must also treat the mind. So I read anything I could get my hands on and could afford to buy (why do libraries not stock these types of books?) – Bernie Seagal “Love, Medicine and Miracles”, Richard Bach’s books and many others.

After leaving outdoor education due to my injury, I taught in a ‘real’ school where, in addition to science, I taught horticulture and used their greenhouse extensively. At Easter 1991 I totally collapsed. I have very vague recollections of this time but my wife has told me about some parts of it. I suffered excruciating headaches, my eyes felt they were loose in their sockets and hurt whenever I moved them, I was photophobic, and my behaviour was totally irrational. I remember feeling that nothing was real. I have been told that I was examined by our GP for an hour. He was very concerned – I slept through the whole examination. He checked my reflexes – none. They woke me up so I could put my shoes on – that took about 10 minutes! So I went to Hamilton for a CAT scan – drove myself there – and afterwards I had a feeling that I was in a totally different world from everyone else and that nothing could hurt me. So really there was no reason to wait for pedestrian traffic lights and irrelevant things like that. Fortunately I did, and also drove home, arriving safely - somehow.

Each second day I would go to the school greenhouse and check on the plants growing there. My symptoms didn’t change. I was referred to a psychiatrist, was given lots of tests – nothing. There was absolutely no explanation for my illness.

After a while (I have no recollection of how long) I decided I should resign from my job so that students could have a full time teacher rather than relief teachers, and went to the school to check the greenhouse one last time and hand in my resignation. I entered the greenhouse and immediately smelt spray. I have no further recollection of anything that afternoon. When I spoke to some of the staff later, apparently I had handed in my resignation and had chatted with some people, but they said I seemed a little ‘spaced out’. I ‘came to’ about 8pm that evening at home.

I subsequently found that the greenhouse had been sprayed that day with Malathion. The GP took blood for a cholinesterase test, but that showed no abnormality, so it couldn’t be Malathion poisoning. (More recent research indicates that many people who are poisoned by Malathion do not have abnormal levels of cholinesterase.) I also learned that my predecessor had used Malathion extensively the previous year and, being an organic compound, it had been adsorbed onto the plastic of the greenhouse and given off in small doses, which I picked up each time I entered. Interestingly, a student in the horticulture class was repeating that level because she had been sick for most of the previous year – her symptoms had been very similar to mine, but she was now away sick once again. After my visits to the greenhouse ceased, I recovered and worked as a self-employed gardener and maintenance person for the remainder of the year.

I had relapses of Malathion poisoning on several occasions during 1991-2 and again in 2005 when we camped at Mapua Camping Ground near Nelson, which is right next to what has been described as the most toxic chemical site in New Zealand, where a chemical plant manufactured agricultural poisons for about 50 years. Frustratingly, throughout all these episodes, nobody was interested – ACC’s attitude was that it was a figment of my imagination. I also now wonder whether the pesticides my father used on the vegetables he grew in the garden had anything to do with my apparent sensitivity to Malathion. I know he used DDT (before it was banned) and Malathion, but have no idea what other toxins we consumed at that time. Perhaps that explained my chronic illnesses as a child.

I obtained a teaching position at a tertiary institute teaching an environmental course in Whitianga the first year, then in Tauranga. Here I renewed my pursuit of health. Studying homoeopathy for two terms of evening classes allowed us to cut our annual family medical bills from around $2000 to around $200, but homoeopathy did not answer all the many questions I had. Aromatherapy was useful, and my wife still uses it daily, but again did not have the answers I sought. Nutrition is extremely important, but was missing whatever it was that I was seeking. In 1991, when working as a gardener, I had developed chronic lower back pain, so for this I tried osteopathy and acupuncture. These worked for a few days only, but then the pain returned. On the advice of my acupuncturist, I refused root canal fillings, having those teeth and an abscessed tooth removed, and while the back pain left for a few days, it returned. I enjoyed growing and using herbs, so I studied the first year of a herbal medicine course which, while very interesting and useful, again did not provide me with answers to the largely unformulated questions I had.

After I left my tertiary teaching position in 1994, I started my own business as an outdoor instructor. On one camp to Waitomo in 2003 I met a parent helper who was also interested in alternative therapies. She mentioned a book called “The Journey” by Brandon Bays, which describes how Brandon developed her own method to heal a large cancerous tumour. I bought it, read it and immediately felt that this was what I was seeking. I enrolled on a Journey Intensive course in Auckland a few weeks later and had the feeling that I had come home. I knew at that stage that this was exactly what I had been seeking all my life and that I would become a practitioner in this healing modality. This I have now done. The past three years have been the most worthwhile and life changing I have ever experienced. I know that I have grown hugely in all aspects of my life – physical, spiritual, mental and emotional. My wife barely recognises me and loves the new me; I have lost the impatience and anger that I previously had. I have even totally cured my chronic back pain - after 14 years trying many different modalities, a two hour Journey process, in which I needed to go back five lifetimes to find the cause, and it was gone.

In 2007 I received an email regarding ThetaHealing™ courses. I had never heard of ThetaHealing™ but it sounded interesting, so after investigating on the internet I enrolled. What amazing courses they were! The transformation and growth in my life and in my healing abilities was phenomenol. At the end of one of the courses I thanked the teacher for sending me the original email. She denied all knowledge of having sent it, saying that the first she had heard of me was when I contacted her! So the Universe was certainly taking a big hand in guiding me.

Looking back on my life, which is often the best way to see it clearly, I find it interesting how I have been guided when I needed that guidance and have been provided with challenges, like the rock hitting my back, the Malathion poisoning and the chronic back pain, as means of directing me to learn so that I could heal them. It is interesting that these challenges only stay around until the lessons they are here to provide have been learnt, then they are free to leave, and they do.

I have now started my own healing practice – Lovelight Holistic Health – in which I use Journey and ThetaHealing™ processes to enable people to heal themselves emotionally, this healing then flowing through to allow physical and mental healing to take place. It is amazing how a short session which includes a Journey and ThetaHealing™ techniques, can be life-changing for the person involved, totally changing their outlook, responses and the way they view the world, other people and themselves. It is also amazing when their physical ailments just seem to vanish, either at the end of the session or soon after. This really is remarkable healing and I never cease to be grateful that I am able to facilitate this healing that comes through me, not from me.

Examples of healing include children who had great learning difficulties and are now achieving near the top of their class and interacting in their home environment in a caring and responsible manner; a bereaved partner able to let go of his wife emotionally and heal from the physical ill-health that holding on to her had caused, including losing 40kg of retained fluid the week following the process; people with phobias, self-destructive habits and repetitive negative behaviours and inappropriate vows healing these to allow themselves to make positive, conscious decisions regarding their future life; and people with major physical dis-eases who heal totally within a short time, after being effectively written off as 'incurable' by conventional medicine. I facilitated a Journey process for a person to heal her fear of public exposure, in which she went back through five previous lifetimes, and then I watched in amazement as, an hour later, she became the life and soul of an impromptu party and sing-along, and then spoke in front of 200 people the next morning. I believe it is impossible to overstate the benefits derived from these healing processes.

Meanwhile my own journey is continuing, with books such as "Light Emerging" by Barbara Ann Brennan and "Anatomy of the Spirit" and "Life on the Other Side" by Caroline Myss leading me more into the spiritual learning that was missing in my earlier explorations of healing. I have also delved into the freaky aspects of quantum physics in the realm where that touches on spirituality, reading such books as Bruce Lipton's "Biology of Belief", Lynne McTaggart's "The Field" and "The Intention Experiment" and Gregg Braden's "The Isaiah Effect", "The Divine Matrix" and "Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer", plus many more. I have found that my healing abilities have expanded and that I find the perfect teachers to guide me on my next steps in my healing development at exactly the time when I am ready for these steps. I also find that I am guided by spirit when I am healing, all I have to do is to ask, listen and carry out what I am told to do - it always works. Life in this vast boundless freedom is truly wonderful.

I am waiting with excited anticipation to see where my journey through this lifetime will take me next.
Find me on the Journey Practitioner Directory
PO Box 296, Tauranga, New Zealand * Tel (07) 544 3087 * Mob (0274) 809 816 *
© 2006 - Lovelight Holistic Health