Hi…I wanted to introduce myself and give some background as to my own journey on becoming a practitioner.
I began my training when I was only 15 years old. I was in 9th grade when an announcement was made that anyone interested in a future in a medical profession should meet in the gym after school.
It was here that I learned about a young man in my home town who was paralyzed from the neck down as a rare side effect from Mononucleosis. An experimental physical therapy treatment had been developed at the Philadelphia School Of Medicine and volunteers were needed to help out.
I immediately signed up as did many in our community. The treatment needed to be done 3 times a session, 3 sessions a day, 7 days a week. There could be no change in this procedure so commitments were mandatory. If you signed up you showed up! I worked with Howie for 4 years, sometimes 3, 4 or more times a week. It took 5 of us, working each limb plus the head to execute the physical therapy procedure. It goes without saying that this was an amazing experience for someone so young.
About the same time I became a member of the National Ski Patrol. This involved numerous courses and certification from the American Red Cross in trauma and emergency care. Not only did I get quite a bit of experience on the mountain over the span of about 5 years but this training was called upon at car accidents as well as with emergencies I would encounter in my life.
At college I was a pre-med student. It was here everything changed as it did and does for so many. We go along as a young person thinking we have our lives mapped out and then lightening strikes. For me it was the Viet Nam war. I tried to ignore what was happening around me but eventually I could not. The more I became involved the less my mapped out future seemed like a certainty. It was here at college and relationships I had formed with some of my professors that a new direction was presented. One of my professors who knew I was conflicted about my future took me aside one day. He knew I wanted a career helping others. He suggested I quit college and see what other possibilities there were other than the medical route I had assumed was the only way. I did just that!
I began traveling. I started meeting people and having experiences that opened me up to a world I did not know existed. One of the turning points in my life happened in a little village in southern Mexico where a small group of men, myself included, began a healing center at the request of the local villagers. The trade was that they would train us in the ways of the Curanderos (healers) and we would be available to help them. They needed new fresh energy. Something we could give to them.
It was not too long at all before we were so well know that to our surprise stories about us were even being circulated in Mexico City. Los Curanderos Americanos! Unfortunately this ended up working against us as the President Of Mexico, Luis Echeverría signed our deportation papers himself. Some industrialists saw us as a threat to their coming in and taking over the area as the local people now were getting stronger, healthier, and energized. One day a VW bug with 5 federal agents with guns shooting out of the windows like a scene out of a western came to pick us up. There were now 9 of us, 5 of them and a VW bug to take us to Mexico City. I am going to leave you with this image and at some time I will tell you the “rest of the story” !
We ended up in the San Francisco Bay area arriving just in time for the first healers conference being held in Berkeley, Ca. It would be impossible to tell you how amazing it was to go from being picked up by federal agents, thrown into various prisons, deported with just the clothes on our back, no money and then find our way to a hall filled with healers all with amazing gifts and talents. This was the beginning of a renaissance! Health care would never be the same again! Nothing would be the same ever again!
As time went on I realized that the healing work we did in the small village in Mexico that worked so well was not going to work the same in our culture. Too much mind! This is the early 70’s and it was then I decided to return to a more physical healing approach. I have never departed from spiritual healing being the foundation of who I am, I only decided to have it be more in the background. I spend much of the session time silently repeating mantras (prayers) while I work. It is a perfect combination of the spiritual and physical!
I started studying acupuncture, enzyme therapy, oriental healing methods, as well as western herbs. I met and began training with Lauren Berry, a physical therapist from Redding, California. It was here that I was first introduced to lymphatic massage and its natural part of a healing program. I learned body manipulation as well as soft tissue (organ) massage. I met and did a class with Moshe Feldenkrais and so many others. I was making my own acupuncture needles, designed my own colonic device, spent 3 days sitting in San Francisco’s Chinatown at a herb shop patiently waiting to be served. (After that I would be welcomed and served right away.) Friends and I would get together to share what we were learning. It was an exciting time and a spark had been ignited and I was eager to be lit up and share that light.
For a long time I offered all I was learning as a gift with friends. I just loved doing it. It was when a friend approached me and said she wanted to start coming to me for sessions and paying me that a practice was born. This was the mid 70’s and the beginning of a journey that continues today.
The basis of my work is that what works for me gets included in my practice. I do everything first myself for my own healing. If I feel a change whether it is the work of another practitioner or a supplement or herb then it would be added as part of my own offerings to others. There were some healing tools that once I experienced them I knew I would never ask a client to go through it themselves. I would seek out an alternative.
My San Francisco practice grew quite quickly. I was booked months in advance and a waiting list. I had apprentices, was asked to San Francisco General Hospital as a consultant, and had special accounts set up with very prestigious supplement companies that were on the cutting edge of natural healing. But most importantly I helped countless people on their own health journey. It was quite an amazing time.
In the very late 70’s I began sensing something was not right. I could feel a very dark force/shadow was becoming attached to some of my clients. It had not yet been identified but soon would be. It was the Aids Virus! By the mid 80’s I needed to slow down working with people and reduced my practice to a small handful of clients. In the early 90’s I moved to Nevada City in the Sierra Foothills of California. I needed trees, land, the wild animals, and the natural magic of nature for my own personal healing.
Though I still worked with a small group of clients, it was some time before I felt ready to open up again to the general public. For one I needed to heal myself: Healer Heal Thyself! This part of the process never ends but at some point I felt ready to start again and open myself up to working with others. And thus emerged this work once again.
It is different work now than what I did in the 70’s and 80’s and yet the foundation is still the same. Always returning back to the simple roots of lymphatic massage as the core of my practice and what I feel is the basic core of a health program.
I have been very fortunate on this journey and I would like to take this moment to thank all of you who have been part of my healing journey as well as those who have honored me with being part of theirs. Many times you are one and the same. And that is the way it ideally is meant to be.
I would like to shine the Light on one very important person who has taught me more about healing and about myself, my friend Gardenia Gardener. Gardenia and I first began our collaboration in 1978 and it continues to today. Gardenia received the healing gifts I offered and jumped right in with no reservations. She was the dream person to work with! The type of person, that if a practitioner is lucky will have one in a lifetime. She quickly became a wonderful ally and partner. She found her own direction in healing, studying the Wise Women tradition of healing, herbalism, tarot, ritual, and a lot more. This she brought back and shared with me opening me up to new horizons and even more healing possibilities. Through her I discovered the Green World and all it’s healing, magic, and splendor. I learned more about the old ways and grew in ways I never would have without her influence. She not only shows me what is possible with the work I am offering but reflects back to me that which I need healing in myself. She is the voice in my own head that reminds me of what is True and to never settle for less. Because she never does or will! We all need a Gardenia in our lives and I am very blessed to have one in mine.
It was Gardenia who named me, The Lymph Guy.
This is the cliff note version of my own journey of being a practitioner. Perhaps some day the whole journey will be told for it certainly has been an epic adventure and is not over.
A whole new chapter is beginning right here.
Welcome and thank you for being part of it!
Together Our Hands Are Joined To Heal One Another
Alexander Gardener The Lymph Guy Lymphatic Massage Specialist
thelymphguy@gmail.com
*Sri Aurobindo or The Adventure Of Consciousness by SatPrem…om namo bhagavateh
