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Natural healing practitioners hold expo
Friday, Nov. 20, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by DARWIN WEIGEL
Valerie Watson, the massage therapist for At The Bay Healing Arts Center in North Beach, demonstrates a neck message with Joy Baker who practices reiki and reflexology at the center.
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Natural healers demonstrated their crafts and discussed their services at the Twin Beaches Health & Wellness Expo last week, held just over the county line at the Holland Point Civic Center.
Practitioners explained their modalities during presentations and invited people to participate in yoga, exercises, acupressure and body balancing techniques.
Laurie Morin, who sells nutritional supplements and natural skin care products from a company called USANA Health Sciences, said she called everyone listed in Calvert and Anne Arundel counties with services in holistic or natural therapies and who sells natural products to organize the expo. Denise D'Amour of North Beach, who also sells the products through her business Prosperity Lane, said the nutritional products were "found by the man who learned how to get human cells alive."
"If this is successful, I'm hoping I can start a group," Morin said of the expo.
More than a dozen practitioners gave demonstrations and networked with the people who leisurely strolled around the booths collecting information during the afternoon.
Yoga is glandular based, said Satyam, an instructor with Renaissance Yoga in Tracys Landing. As he guided participants through poses during his demonstration, he said, "It's getting the whole mind and body involved."
At the Bay Healing Arts Center of North Beach sold jewelry and photographs and displayed brochures with its services of massage, acupuncture, reflexology, reiki and chakra balancing. A new class offered at the center, Holistic Stress Management, focuses on relieving stress through meditation, art and music therapy and laughter, said Valerie Watson, a massage therapist, who took a five-day instructor's class in Colorado under Brian Luke Seaward, a nationally and internationally renowned expert in the field of stress management.
"We go over what stress is and how it affects your body, mind and spirit," she said. Watson said some of the therapies offered will release stress-causing emotions.
Whether it's "financial, relationships, career, spiritual — some people struggle," Watson said, adding some have stress because of "the insecurity of what's going to happen."
Reflexology massages pressure points in the ears, feet and hands that correspond with other areas and organs of the body, while with reiki, the hands are held over a person's body "feeling the exchange of energy," said Joy Baker, a licensed reflexology and reiki practitioner with At the Bay Healing.
"It helps our bodies work more efficiently," she said.
Chesapeake Beach resident and speech pathologist for the Prince George's public schools for 30 years, Cheryl Caster said she teaches energy balancing techniques called the "Body Talk System — Cortices" technique through her business Heaven to Earth Healing Arts in Prince Frederick.
"My claim to fame is having a Calvert County student increase their MSA [Maryland School Assessment exam] 178 points in two years," she said. When adding energy balancing techniques to speech therapy, "it helps them move along faster," she said.
Caster said she works with autistic children helping them communicate through speech pathology and energy techniques which use breathing sequences with light tapping around the head to balance lobes of the brain. Several people followed along as Caster demonstrated the head tapping on a volunteer.
"The [body] parts and organs must be talking with each other to be aligned," Caster said.
It's also all about balance with Rachel Strass's acupuncture and zero-balancing business, Spirit Point Healing, out of Edgewater.
"It focuses on balancing the mind and body through touch," she said. It's a fully clothed gentle massage and adjustment of the limbs, Strass said of zero balancing, adding, it also releases energy that people hold from bad experiences.
"Release that energy and people feel better. It's very relaxing," Strass said.
Feeling better is also about healthy eating habits, and the Essence of Life Wellness Center, a center for chiropractic and natural care in Edgewater, displayed several sodas and energy drinks showing the large amounts of sugar in each drink in a Zip-Loc bag.
Despite the variety of holistic modalities, all the practitioners at the expo shared the philosophy of the mind-body connection to healthy living.
