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| The Future is Ours, Let’s Do Something About It! |
 Interviewed by Mildred Lynn |
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In early 2006, I interviewed Louise White, a well-known advocate for holistic health and co-founder of the community-based “Run for Awareness” in Sydney, NS. Louise encourages people, especially baby-boomers*, to choose a health care strategy--alternative, traditional or combination--that is compatible with their health beliefs. She also favors the creation of a new health care system that uses HST contributions to support personal choice, ultimately empowering the user and reducing the strain on our health care system. Thank you Louise! |
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 What is your vision? |
I’ve always affirmed that health is a concept, with healing being the desire to be well. In my vision, we are moving away from hospitals toward healing centers that offer integrated, alternative health approaches; healing places where people can be housed for a period of recuperation, similar to the hospice model. The turning point will be when our personal HST contributions are used to support “choice-based” health care that is in-sync with our personal mind-body-spirit beliefs.
As a baby boomer, I’ve paid taxes on cars, homes, and all commodities, so it makes sense that I’d have a say in how tax dollars are dispensed to cover my future heath care needs. Now that I’m nearing retirement age, I realize that I’ve not used the existing mainstream health care system for almost twenty years! I’d really like a system in place that I’m comfortable with. As an alternative health advocate, the present one doesn’t always meet my needs or the needs of thousands of others who are of the same belief system regarding being well and staying well.
The future is ours, let’s do something about it. The time has come for baby boomers (and others) to ask the questions that will ensure that our personal health care options are built on strategies that are holistic, empowering, fiscally responsible and choice-driven. As the saying goes, if I keep doing what I am doing, I’ll keep getting what I am getting! |
| Who inspired you? |
| The late Hanna Kroeger (www.peacefulmeadowretreat.com) of Boulder, Colorado, had a profound effect on my life. In her teaching of the “Seven Physical & Seven Spiritual Causes of Ill Health”, she broke down all aspects of disease or dis-ease. Her life long philosophy, and the title of her first book, was “God helps those who help themselves”; her credo was “help one another”.
Hanna’s inspiration came from her upbringing, where she learned that natural healing came from within the body. According to her teachings, the body becomes ill due to experiences that leave trauma and congestion in the energy pathways, organs, glands, muscles or wherever the physical body feels pain and discomfort. Neglect on top of this, causes long-term illness. She taught that all dis-ease began in our emotional framework and manifested inwardly to our physical body. In fact, she believed that dis-ease from the past could be triggered today in response to a new stress, totally unrelated to the past condition, yet similar from an emotional interpretation. Most importantly, Hanna believed that reversing all of these conditions would create a flow of energy that would resolve the issue and cleanse the body, eliminating most of these repressed emotions and physical setbacks.
Today, with twenty-two books to her credit, Hanna Kroeger is recognized worldwide as an outstanding pioneer in herbs and natural healing, along with Dr. Edward Bach, Edgar Cayce, Dr. John Christopher, Linus Pauling and Ann Wigmore. |
| Are people asking for alternative solutions? |
| Yes, primarily people of all ages that have exhausted avenues of mainstream medicine and are now seeking help of a more holistic nature. Next baby-boomers are eager to educate themselves on alternative health strategies to promote quality of life. There is also an excellent opportunity to educate people in their 20’s and 30’s on the benefits of alternative healing when they are well, rather than waiting until they are tired, ill and discouraged. In most cases I’ve seen, the common themes are empowerment, free choice and mind-body-spirit integration.
In accepting a new approach to health, people empower themselves to make decisions that they normally hand over to someone else. A good knowledge base allows us to ask the right questions and to find remedies that will suit most circumstances that come up on a daily basis. Wisdom brings that knowledge into an arena of having the tools always at our fingertips. Then we are able to help in a way that we never thought possible!
My vision is grassroots. It is for families to be equipped with a knowledge of “how to” tap into the body’s innate healing system, ask good health questions, and to have a voice in how their personal HST contribution is used to support their personal health care needs. |
| What are you doing on a community level? |
| For 16 years I’ve owned Nana’s, a health food station in Sydney, N.S. My focus has always been on education. I want people to know why they do what they do. Why would I buy whole-wheat flour instead of white flour? People need to know the “what” and “why” of their actions. Our health depends on knowing the importance of good quality choices. On a community level, I’m a co-founder, along with Maribeth MacIntyre, of the annual “Run for Awareness”. Our mission is to teach people how to help themselves and others through dietary and life style changes. During the week, we offer cooking classes, yoga, gentle exercise, a film festival and a run. All of this is in the name of education. At last year’s event, we served more than 300 meals to eager people who wanted to learn (and put into action) a healthier diet and lifestyle. We also created a cookbook so people could go home and implement changes right away. This is a perfect example of community involvement where people benefit so much from a small amount of knowledge. As one elderly man at a lecture commented, “Don’t knock it. Try it. You’ll like it!” |
| Recommended resources? |
I’d highly recommend Hanna Kroeger, Wayne Dwyer, Deepak Chopra, John Robbins, Raymon Grace, Franciso Coll and Louise Hay—plus, attend lectures, network, tap into local alternative practitioners and most of all, listen to your intuition.
Contact Louise White at louisewhite15@aol.com or in Sydney, NS at (902) 567.1217.
© Copyright Mildred Lynn McDonald 2006. All Rights Reserved.
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