Exploring the Power of Holistic Healing with Reverend Dr. Beth Cooper

Are you ready to journey through a healing sanctuary? In this first of three interviews by Reverend Tom Ziegert, Reverend Dr. Beth Cooper, a Christian elder and holistic health practitioner, takes us along her personal path of physical and mental healing. With an array of techniques from massage to tuina, acupressure to somatic experience, she has woven a remarkable tapestry of healing at the Bhakti Fest. At one point, our host, Tom grappled with depression, and through the guidance of his chiropractor, discovered the transformative powers of amino acid therapy and dietary changes. Tom's candid sharing of personal experiences in juxtaposition with Beth's healing modalities is truly inspiring.

The episode takes an intriguing turn as we delve into the fascinating history of massage, linking it back to French missionaries and the ancient Chinese art of tuina. The discussion emphasizes the necessity of touch and connection in healing and the importance of equipping ourselves with a diverse set of healing tools. We also reflect on the critical role healers play in our society, especially in managing trauma, chronic pain, anxiety, and stress. Whether you're on a healing journey yourself or seeking to understand more about holistic health practices, this episode with Dr. Beth Cooper offers revealing insights into the power of holistic healing.

Transcript

Tom: 0:11

Greetings listeners. This is Reverend Tom Ziegert. Welcome to my podcast, Theology 21st Century, offering the religious outsider alternatives and practical understandings of God's relationship with us. Your experiences and thoughts are more than welcome. Your posts are important to me. You can leave likes and comments both on my blog site, searching-for-god. com, my blog's Facebook site under the same name, or at wwwtheology21ce. com. If you do, I'll respond to you. This episode begins this podcast's fifth season with a three-part interview about healing modalities as experienced by my guest. We hope this podcast serves as an inspiration for you. Let's begin With me today, for this first of a series of three podcasts is Reverend Dr Beth Cooper. Reverend Dr Cooper is an ordained elder in a Christian church. She is an animal advocate and health specialist that includes body work for both people and animals. Beth is also a licensed massage therapist and a holistic health practitioner. Beth grew up on a farm and has taught religion and ethics at San Diego State University. Welcome, Beth.

Beth: 1:30

Hi Tom, it's really good to be here.

Tom: 1:32

Good to see you again, Beth. You've just finished up three days of healing work in the Healing Sanctuary at Bhakti t Fest. Tell us a little bit about that.

Beth: 1:42

Well, with it in Joshua Joshua tree, it was mighty warm, but I'm really thrilled for the experience of being able to be one of the healers there. I worked on a lot of people in the three days that were there, and many were suffering with chronic disorders related to their body, and through different healing modalities such as massage, tui N, acupressure and somatic experience, I was able to help people and they felt better getting up off the table and then, I'd say, at least 85% of the time, they actually felt like, you know, whatever stray muscle or something out of place. They had profound relief.

Tom: 2:34

How did you find your way into physical healing as compared to the spiritual healing of a lot of your training in your church ministry?

Beth: 2:44

I in my previous work I was working over 80 hours a week and it was killing me and I didn't even know it. And when it was all said and done, and the amount of stress and also the way people treat people, it just it was a lot. And it really helped me to say you know what's important? And if we're not healthy with our mind, our bodies, our spirit, then how can we participate in God's creation when God is saying it's good and there was nothing good about working so hard and taking the amount of stress? And so, as I began to look at that, I had already had done some previous work in the area, but I just dug into the holistic health side. I was raised in a family that had medical training. I knew about Western medicine, but I wanted to find other tools that could also help people and once I started, it just was amazing, totally amazing.

Tom: 3:59

Did you ever have people work on you physically to heal you in that kind of way, the way that you do?

Beth: 4:06

When I started in the holistic health school, I had incredible teachers. I saw people come into clinic who were bent over, that had terrible back pain and after a massage, whatever the modality, they were able to literally stand up and walk out. When you're able to move inflammation and then you're able to maintain a certain life of maintenance and healthy eating, good living, it's amazing how your body can rejuvenate.

Beth: 4:47

Stress is a killer and our bodies are not designed to be in total stress 24 hours a day. And that's pretty much what we're doing. You know, if you think about it, we were designed to do 98% to be in parasympathetic, meaning taking care of yourself, relaxing, being in community, being engaged with others, because we're designed to be connected. And then 2% of that was to deal with the sympathetic, meaning, you run away from the dinosaurs that are about ready to each up. Now I meet with people who are craving help and their life is just the flip of that. They're living in total stress and, as a person who's been there and done that, I can tell them that it will hurt your body and it's not a question of will it or won't it. It's a question of when it will happen, because our bodies are not made to maintain that type of exertion.

Tom: 5:58

A lot of years ago I had a herniated disc in my C3-C4 level and I started going to a chiropractor who was also a practitioner of Kundalini yoga and was also a practitioner of holistic healing, and so, after years of just keeping maintenance and doing different things with him, I had a problem with depression and I went to my medical doctor and they thought Prozac was a good response. And then, but I didn't, and so I thought, well, I'll just ask my chiropractor about this, and so he recommended a different kind of therapy. He recommended amino acid therapy, and contraindicated with amino acid therapy was sugar, which he considered killer.

Tom: 6:59

I could die at any moment if I had a spoonful of sugar. It didn't make the medicine go down, so I wound up stopping. You know, there's sugar in everything bread, cereal that or corn syrup. So yeah, so everything was going to kill me, unless I just ate vegetables, and that wasn't in my lifestyle. But I did stop bingeing on donuts and cake and cookies and toast and, lo and behold, the depression went away.

Tom: 7:33

But I don't attribute that to any amino acids. I attributed it to just getting off sugar our lives together continued. A t one point in time I was feeling depressed because a great friend of mine had died an s I was getting an adjustment. nd then he did some pressure points. He asked me to think about what I was sad about, and then he would make other adjustments and pressure point changes and adjustments to my spine and it just melted away. Then he talked to me about how our bodies retain memory, how a lot of our emotions are retained, becaus e we have physical reactions to our emotions. Ou shoulders go up, we get tight and they become, in some kind of weird way, a muscle memory.

Beth: 8:38

That's right.

Tom: 8:39

On so over time w undefined h h h undefined we earthquake earthquake, which we had lots of in LA. I he' d an adjustment. He manipulated my leg or my arm and had me them as as he put pressure them and and then he would make an adjustment based on that and the tension le would an leave me. S later on I came and ordained elder and one of the things we were called on sometimes to do was pastoral counseling. I was like, what to do with that? They have classes and it's like, yeah, you know, you know I actually failed psychology 101. First time I took it and so I was like I'm not really equipped for being an analyst.

Tom: 9:23

I could talk to people about, you know, their spiritual concerns and if they, if those concerns became emotional about either the abuse they suffered in church or or other things that were in their life where they felt damaged or hurt, I would advise them that if we were going to continue, I would like them to see my chiropractor and then when they went, they would say why they were there and let him do the part that would release the tension and the stress and the memory that their body held of the emotions. We're actually plaguing them sufficiently that they wouldn't even come to see me. All right.

Tom: 10:08

And it became part of my pastoral counseling. Just, my technique was that I would work with the verbal stuff and then they could get a clear picture of it, then send them to somebody who could actually do the secondary part, and that's how I actually became an advocate of holistic healing.

Beth: 10:28

Yeah, absolutely.

Tom: 10:29

When I was in pain, rather than take with the periator disc, rather than take a lot of drugs, I went to an acupuncturist and by using that that helped alleviate some of the pain. And then the verbal had not existed. They were also part of the picture, but that was part of the way that I found my way to healing and years later, while I still have needs of chiropractic attention the C3, c4 herniated disc the damage that was done to it disappeared, which is considered impossible.

Tom: 11:08

But, it no longer shows up on an x-ray that there was ever any damage. I don't consider it a mystery, I just consider it healing.

Beth: 11:15

Absolutely.

Tom: 11:16

And it was just having people and me paying attention to what needed healed and taking some risks, which weren't really physical risks but were risks of just a new idea, Doing something differently than I'd done before.

Beth: 11:31

You know, when you think about it, massage is the oldest medicine. Coming from a Christian background, when we think about all the different parts of scripture that say she anointed his feet or this person was anointed, when you go back and really look at that, they just didn't slap some oil on them. There was a ritual in this, there was a way to show compassion and it was through anointing and it's kind of a new idea but it's been around a long time.

Tom: 12:08

It breaks up the image of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.

Beth: 12:16

Yes.

Tom: 12:17

Which was a massaging of the feet, when the cleaning action is a movement of your hands in contact with the feet and in its own way, I would suspect there was a caring nature to it and, even though it may have been a very primitive example of it, it seems like it was a massaging technique that was healing, and it wasn't just washing the feet, it was healing the wounds and healing the damage that was done to people, and why he liked to do it rather than do it to him is that he would have known what the damage was to those who followed it.

Beth: 12:58

I sometimes think in the Christian community we forget how much the people of the day walked and traveled. When I had an opportunity to walk the Camino de Santiago, you saw Roman walls and Roman sculptures and these people got around. So for me, we focus a lot on the cleansing part because in our culture today that's what we understand. But if you're walking and you've got blisters or sores or you're weary and tired, there are pressure points on the feet that can help you get a second wind. There is nothing like a good foot massage.

Beth: 13:50

I have worked on people of service. I've had several nurses that have called and said, could you just work on my feet for 60 minutes? And I'll say, yeah, sure, and they are like a new person when they get up. So for me, when I think about that stuff and even the story of the nativity scene when the three wise people brought gifts if we understood the focus of what frankincense and myrrh does for the body, we would totally have a different understanding. Okay, yeah, we're talking wealth, but we're also talking wealth of health. The frankincense oil is just amazing for the body and the healing aspect of it.

Tom: 14:44

When you do a massage, how do you know you're done? Well beside the time ding ding, it's 60 minutes.

Beth: 14:54

Yeah, that was a little hard because when you're at a place that has thousands of people there's a time limit. But usually when I work with people there's a little bit more expansion if needed. But with that said, if you're really connected in that healing understanding of what you're doing, with the healing touch, it's almost a mutual agreement. I don't know how else to explain it, but it happens and it happens with every session, 98.9% of the time. Every once in a while you get someone that's like oh, it just feels so good, oh, I have relief. Could you help me with my ache over here?

Beth: 15:45

Or can you. And then you're like okay, let's have another session. And I think too and I don't want to blame it on COVID, because I think it was there long before I think it made it even worse. But the isolation we're not built to be isolated. We are a people designed to be in connection and part of that is healing touch, and a lot of people suffered through that isolation, and I'm not here to argue if it was necessary or not. What I'm saying is we need to find ways that we can help the body cope and find resources to help with stress and tools that can give people different modalities to be their own healer.

Tom: 16:52

Since everyone may not understand what you mean by modalities, do you want to explain what the various modalities are?

Beth: 16:59

Sure. So if we had a tool belt and we only had a hammer, it would be really hard to build the house with a hammer, and so what I remind people is that Western medicine is great, but it's not the only tool, and for my life I would like to have as many tools in my tool belt that can help me heal in ways that I need healing, and so I encourage people to look at all the different modalities that are out there, which are different ways of doing healing. If you look at different cultures, massage just isn't one way. There are many different ways to massage a person, and I don't think people realize that.

Tom: 17:46

Okay, so the modalities are just different. Things like like Reiki or chiropractic or massage or you know, since I have one or two tattoos there have been. It was suggested to me by a tattoo artist that a lot of that there are. Those who come for tattoos, who just want to be touched.

Beth: 18:12

Yeah, interesting and it is it is.

Tom: 18:15

it is the way that they have accepted to be touched and that and that it becomes addictive in that way because of the just the relief of being touched, even though it's certainly not necessarily always comfortable. It's a way that. It's the way that some people recognize a healing touch.

Beth: 18:39

I haven't heard of that before, but I will say that, like, acupuncture would be a modality, chiropractic work would be a modality, and then, with massage, you've got Tuina, which is a Chinese form of massage, you've got Swedish massage, and actually people it's. It's amazing because when you start doing the research on massage, it is a French word, but what people don't realize is that French missionaries had gone to Asia and they were watching healing happen and they kept saying what is it that you do? But due to the lack of translation and language, the connection was not made for them and so they called it massage.

Tom: 19:42

Interesting.

Beth: 19:43

Yeah, and that's where the French word came from. So it's time to claim the religious part of healing, because, in a world that is so full of trauma and hurt and chronic pain and anxiety and stress, as adults we have choices to make, and it isn't always about popularity or money or who's in or who's out. The world needs healers.

Tom: 20:14

Amen to that.

Beth: 20:15

Yes.

Tom: 20:16

Thanks for being with us today.

Beth: 20:18

Yes, thank you, tom.

Tom: 20:19

Take care. Thank you for listening today. I hope you send me your thoughts and experiences, likes or dislikes, regarding today's podcast. You can do that on my blog site, wwwsearching-for-godcom or at wwwtheology21cecom. I'm grateful for the what's and who's involved in the making of my podcast road microphones, audacity audio editor, buzz sprout, wordpress, squadcastfm, premium beat and my gifted editor, Frank Barnes. May God continue to bless and keep you, Stay safe.