Our Mission

  • To facilitate radiant health, vitality, and balance of body, mind, and spirit in everyone who works with us
  • To use the most effective, progressive, enlightened, and biologically compatible methods we can find
  • To empower all those who work with us to live their lives in ways that enhance energy, wellness, and personal growth

Our Basic Principles

  • Vibrant health and happiness are the normal states you deserve and should expect.
  • Health problems occur only after obstacles develop that disturb normal function.
  • Wellness returns automatically when we remove the obstacles to normal function.
  • We do everything within our power to help you remove those obstacles, so you can heal.
  • More healing may be possible than you believe.

How We Will Help You

  • We will listen carefully to what is going on with you.
  • We will conduct a thorough evaluation.
  • We will help you understand what is going on and what you need to get better.
  • We will design a personalized care program based on your wants and needs.
  • We will continue working with you as long as you feel it serves you.
  • We will do our best to exceed your expectations.

The Four Worlds of Healing

What You See Is What You Get

In our work we recognize four primary perspectives about life, function, and health, which we call the four worlds of healing. They are all important, and interrelated. Each world involves a different set of problems that require their own solutions, addressed in the proper sequence. Our experience is that standard medicine mostly pays attention to your chemistry and how to change it with drugs. However, for us, this does not come close to telling the whole story. We believe that while many aspects of health can be understood by this viewpoint, other perspectives are equally important. We have found that looking at ourselves in the context of the other worlds as well has given us a richer array of healing tools.

The Four Worlds Are:

The World of Molecules and Cells

Western medical science sees the human body essentially as a machine, an assemblage of molecules and cells, further combined to form tissues, organs, and ultimately, us. From this perspective, most health problems would be expected to develop from chemical imbalances such as deficiencies of vital substances, poisoning by various kinds of toxic pollutants, or bad ratios of ingredients in the chemical mixture. And we freely acknowledge that these things occur and contribute to many diseases.

Medical doctors prescribe drugs to change our biochemistry and deal with such chemically-based health problems. We prefer to avoid drugs when possible and use the nutritional and detoxifying methods of Functional Medicine and Clinical Nutrition to balance body chemistry and heal problems on this level.

The World of the Regulatory Systems

When we look closely we can see that we are more than just chemicals. Everything that happens in our bodies, including the movement and balance of chemicals, is controlled by our regulatory systems: the nervous system, which is made up of the brain and nerves that run like wires from the brain to all parts of our bodies, and an electromagnetic field generated by our molecular structure that we call the bioenergetic matrix. If you think of the nervous system like a network of telephone cables, the bioenergetic matrix is more like the wireless internet.

When our bodies incur traumatic injuries, the force of the impact is absorbed into our molecular structure. This creates lasting changes in the function of our regulatory systems, which can create patterns of tension, pain, altered physiology, and health problems. To deal with this we practice the amazing manual therapy technique, Matrix Repatterning, which is the only thing we know of that is able to undo and remove the effects of traumatic injury. Matrix Repatterning often creates instantaneous and lasting changes in pain, stiffness, and function. Once we have removed the impact of injury with Matrix Repatterning, we can employ Energy Medicine techniques like acupuncture, microcurrent, and laser neuromodulation to stimulate the bioenergetic matrix and balance the regulatory systems.

The World of the Mind and Emotions

We are not only chemicals and regulatory systems. Our mind and emotions can influence both the function of our regulatory systems and the balance of our body chemistry. In some ways, our thoughts can create our reality. For instance, research shows that if we believe we are receiving a powerful drug, we can take it and recover from an illness, even if the drug is, in truth, completely inert. This is called the placebo effect. Likewise, chronic stress or negative thinking can create a state of ongoing emotional agitation that leads to, for example, persistent indigestion and gastrointestinal disease.

Difficult situations engender stressful physiological states in us, which bring about neurological and chemical changes. These states can sometimes persist for many years after the initiating event, keeping us upset and even making us sick. The more stressed we are, the more vulnerable we are to new stressful situations, and ultimately the stress physiology becomes habitual, keeping us sick. We can even form destructive beliefs based on the traumas and our responses, which distort our view of reality and keep us unhappy as well as unhealthy.

By far the best technique we know of for such problems is called NET (Neuro Emotional Technique.) NET lets us access, explore, and heal the unconscious beliefs and negative patterns that keep us from being able to break out of our reactive stress cycles and heal.

We support the NET with Transformational Psychotherapy, guided intuition, grounding meditation, and lifestyle coaching, to help you make the changes you are seeking.

The World of Transpersonal Systems

Sometimes, when working with people we can see things going on that don’t seem to make sense. Someone will get sick at the same age her mother was when she died, possibly with the same illness. Someone else will fail in business just like his father did. And others might, despite their concerted efforts to do better, recreate their parents’ awful marital dynamics. Strange as it sounds, these people are often responding to unconscious pressure from the transpersonal dimension. They are not always engaging in mere copycat behavior. The rules of the transpersonal world seem to require a sort of energetic balance that we must honor and facilitate even when such balance can, ironically, only come about from self-sabotaging behavior.

Responding to transpersonal influences, it can seem like things move through us rather than originate within us. We call these forces fate, destiny, or karma. We believe that disturbances on this level come most often from problems in family dynamics, such as breakdowns in the relationships between parents and children, or between siblings. It seems like patterns of family dysfunction can even pass down through generations, like a weird family heirloom. Those with transpersonal disturbances seem to feel emotions that are not directly related to their external circumstances, or even their own life experience. But they feel them deeply, and they cause them distress. Fortunately NET can help us discover, explore, and heal these pervasive patterns.

The Key To Success

We get the best results for our patients and clients when we can identify which world or worlds have the most significant issues, and work on your highest priority areas first.

In the Middle of Difficulty Lies Opportunity

While these words sound like wisdom from an ancient and inscrutable oriental sage, like Sun Tzu, in The Art of War, they were actually written by the twentieth-century western sage Albert Einstein. They represent an especially helpful concept for those dealing with health issues, and they describe a cornerstone of our approach at Confluence Wellness Center.

Wooden pathway through beautiful Mount Cook National ParkIt is easy to get caught up in self-pity when dealing with a difficult health problem. We can feel overwhelmed and victimized by our illnesses, and it can feel as if we are in a struggle with something attacking us from outside, for no apparent reason. We often wonder “why is this happening to me?” and can feel like failures at life for being sick, especially if we are chronically or seriously ill.

Sondra Ray, one of our teachers, used to say that everything that is up in our lives, is up for healing and release, including illness. We believe that is an extremely powerful and valuable approach to life. When we are sick we are getting a communication that we need to change things we are doing, or develop new understandings. Illness is not only a hardship, it’s an opportunity for improvement. The pain we feel from putting a hand down on a hot stove is actually vital and necessary for our well-being, as it reminds us to be more prudent and stop doing what is hurting us. In the same way, all illness can be understood as a form of communication from our inner selves.

When we see each symptom and illness in this way, as an opportunity for healing, release, and growth, we become empowered. Dr. Bernie Siegal, the noted progressive cancer specialist, described it this way: he said that the goal of his work with his patients was to get them to change from “why me?” to “try me!”

If we understand that illness is the result of choices we have made, we can make new choices to create a new, improved, and healthier outcome for ourselves. This shows us we are actually in control.

Many times patients have come to us after an injury or crisis, and in the course of taking their health histories we have discovered that they have been living with longstanding problems that they didn’t know were addressable, problems they thought they just had to live with. The symptoms that induced them to seek care actually turned out to be vehicles that delivered them for healing on a deep level. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Find out how we can help!

Contact Us Today!