Welcome back to Healthier with Elizabeth! Today I want to speak about what you can expect from this series—the topics I'll cover, the modalities I'll draw from, and my approach to sharing information with you.
Drawing on My Experience
The type of topics I'm going to cover will very much draw on my experience as a naturopath in community and in private practice over the last almost 15 years now. I'll also be drawing on the different pieces of education and different modalities that I work with—some of which I've studied along the way but don't necessarily practise anymore, whilst others have just formed part of my journey.
For example, I have a master's in public health, but I don't work in research and public health so much anymore. It's useful though if I'm looking at research studies and trying to understand the data—I can draw on what I learnt there. I also have a background working in research, so I've had a peek behind the curtain of how research institutes work, how research and scientific methods are used to discover things. But what else goes into that? It's not a case of people just sitting around researching what they want. There's politics behind that. There's funding. There are lots of different pieces. So at some point I can speak to that experience as well.
Generally, I'll be covering pieces of information that are interesting to you and that you can apply to your everyday life. Most of the episodes—this is what I'm envisaging right now anyway, right at the beginning of creating this—are going to have a purpose that involves tips or tricks. There'll probably be a story or something leading into it and then I'll get into the tips and tricks and bits and pieces that I've found have worked for me. Sometimes they're quite personal.
I've actually gone ahead and started recording some of the regular episodes and there'll be things that are triggered in my life—interactions I've had with my kid or something like that—and then I'll speak to how I'm handling that, the things that I'm doing. But then I'll also talk to experiences with clients, more or less case studies, but obviously nothing identifying. This is all about trying to get ideas and bits and pieces out that are of use to you, the listener, the watcher if you're on YouTube, or the reader if you're on the blog.
How I'll Cover Topics
There will be times where I'll skim topics because I want to bring a whole lot of things in but then hone in on a particular piece. For example, Chinese medicine—you can create an entire career spanning decades and still not have mastered it. So, I'm not going to be disseminating a course that means you'll become an expert, but what I might want to do is hone in on a certain theory, tie it in with natural medicine, and then get to "well, how does that work for you?"
I'll try to break it down and curate it to make it really easy and smooth, but I might leave a whole lot out and just make it clear that what I'm taking is a tiny piece of the pie for that particular episode—because this is the bit that I want you to know. I hope that makes sense. It'll become a lot clearer as we go along.
But I also might go deep, might take some deep dives into concepts. There's so much I've found as someone who has come from a naturopathy background and then taken on a traditional Chinese medicine diploma and added that to my wheelhouse. Having that extra layer, I've just found it so useful and practical to understand certain health conditions or certain concepts that sometimes naturopathy hasn't been able to touch, and vice versa. There are elements of naturopathy that I find cover health concepts in a way that enhances the Chinese medicine approach.
So yeah, that's the kind of way that I'll be working. And I've only just mentioned naturopathy and Chinese medicine. You know, my great love is Crystal Essences actually, and vibrational medicine. So, that's going to be layered on top as well. Anyway, lots of different things to talk about.
Modalities I'll Cover
What I might do is list some of the areas or modalities that I'll speak from, because some of you will be interested in some modalities whilst others won't be of interest to you. So, this is sort of a scratch list of what kind of knowledge you can expect.
As I said, naturopathy, Chinese medicine, crystal essences, vibrational medicine—that includes things like flower essences, which are a big part of how I work.
Herbs
I'll also be talking to western herbs. I speak to Chinese herbs as well, but particularly the patented formulas. So, that's where I tend to work—as opposed to single herbs, there are a few that I work with. But yeah, I work more with single western herbs. As part of my life journey when I was living in Montreal and studying Chinese medicine, the school that I was at—Setsuko, brilliant school by the way if you're in the West Island NDG area in Montreal and you're interested in studying natural medicine or Chinese medicine—that's the school to go to.
Anyway, they also had a herbalist come through and take us on herb walks, which was just brilliant. Like, it was actually weeds that we were looking at, most of them, but medicinal weeds—dandelion, motherwort, St. John's wort. We had burdock. We had all these sorts of different weeds that you would just see growing in parks or in forests, but you know, take them, turn them into tinctures, turn them into teas. Obviously don't take them if you're not supposed to be picking in that area, but anyway, my experience with herbs was very much expanded in those years when I was studying there because I went from just knowing conceptually the herb in the bottle.
In fact, my teacher, when I told her why I was there—I wanted to understand the herb and meet the herb—she said, "Oh, we call you a bottle herbalist." And I was like, "Yeah, I am." I can tell you this is an adaptogen. This does this. This does that. But would I be able to tell you where that herb is and what it looks like and how it grows? No. So that's what I wanted to learn, and I did. It was really great. Montreal is such a lush environment for wildcrafted herbs. In North America, it's a really gorgeous place to be. I just had so much fun understanding herbs and I'll talk to you about some of the herb walks I used to do in our neighbourhood and the experiences with my kids. So that's where, for example, I might go deep into a particular modality—western herbs as an example.
Supplements and Naturopathic Principles
I'll cover the naturopathic lifestyle principles. I do work with some supplements, pills and potions like that, but I am moving away from that. I just find I'm not necessarily interested in these very overprocessed, extracted supplement formulas that have a lot of pieces in them. I'd much prefer to go with a tincture of an entire herb or whatever that's going to settle within the body and not ask the body to do a lot of absorbing and processing and transforming. So, to give you an idea, I don't really go with these fandangled clinical formulations that have come from a lab.
Some of them are great, I'm sure, and there are naturopaths out there, health professionals out there, who work that way and get great results. But for me, I come from a different approach. We'll get more into that later.
Nutrition
Now, nutrition is an interesting one because I went through university. I did a degree at Curtin University, a nutrition degree—basically three years. Then there was an option to go on and do a year of dietetics to become a dietician. I'm just telling you that because I've got the basics of a dietician's background. I went on and did health promotion and public health instead of dietetics. But just to give you that concept, I've got the very science-based nutrition course and then I have nutrition through naturopathy and Chinese medicine.
So, I'm going to bring all of those pieces in and speak from those different points of view when it comes to food and your body and how you can practically hone in on these different ideas and just try them out if you want. Talk to your health professional, see if they're going to work for you, but otherwise try them out.
Evidence-Based and Vintage Approaches
Where I want to emphasise, I guess, is that I'm going to be looking at evidence-based approaches, but I'm also going to be looking at vintage approaches, old knowledge. There's a lot of value in those. And funnily enough, you sometimes find that science has just discovered this amazing new thing and you'll go back to a hippie nutrition and herb and naturopathy book from the 70s and they've already spoken about it there.
So, not everything—it's sometimes nice to have it backed up and proven through the scientific lens, but I don't necessarily find that if you're completely evidence-based, it's of use to health and healing. That's a whole other kettle of fish. But anyway, just letting you know that we'll be looking from multiple perspectives.
Homeopathy
I also like to use homeopathy quite regularly. I'm particularly attracted to a kind of homeopathy that's called isopathy or tautopathy, where if you've had a reaction to something in particular—let's say it's a medication or a stressor—then we take that particular element and it's potentised in a homeopathic formulation, and then we're calming your body's reaction down using that substance. I'll speak a lot more to that, but I've had some great results with that form of homeopathy. I do use a bit of the traditional Hahnemann's approach, but I seem to work more with that other side of it. I'll explain more about that later.
Traditional Chinese Medicine and Bodywork
And yeah, traditional Chinese medicine. As part of my course and as part of the way people see me, if you see me in person you'll get the health consultation and then you'll get some bodywork, acupressure usually. So that is like acupuncture but no needles—we're pressing the same meridian points, we're moving the chi, we're addressing imbalances, and yeah, it's really, really effective.
When I work with people online and I'm not able to give them any bodywork as part of our work, I encourage them to go and get bodywork—acupuncture or something that's going to move the chi and the energy as well. Bowen, Reiki, shiatsu. I want people to be getting that bodywork as we make changes to their diet and lifestyle to get them back on track with their health. That's how important it is to me—I see it work so beautifully and fast as well when you're already doing the bodywork to encourage the changes that you're making to assimilate.
Tissue Salts
Yeah, I also have—tissue salts. So, Schuessler tissue salts, cell salts—that's a big part of the way that I work. Those are micro minerals. They're at a molecular level. They work best when you take them under the tongue so they absorb straight into the bloodstream via the mouth. So they're not going into the digestive system and trying to compete with other nutrients there. No, you get them straight in and they're so tiny that they go in beautifully.
I'll talk to how I use those with clients. There are practitioners out there where that's all they do, and they do facial diagnosis as well where they can look at you and go, "Ah, you're deficient in this mineral, and this is also reflecting in your health and your wellness and your disease states. So let's give you that mineral for three months and see how you go." I'll speak to those. They're really, really cool and again they work really nicely with my philosophies around working at a more minute level, at the vibrational level, at the energy level, at the molecular level, to influence the health and wellness of the body.
Crystal Essences
And oh yeah, finally my great love, Crystal Essences. So these help with the emotional and psychological terrain. They connect you to your spirit. I'm a big believer that we can fix you up physically. I can balance you. I can throw that herb in. I can get you sleeping. I can get your nervous system under control. We can work with your diet and lifestyle. But if there's an emotional block or a fixed way of being, a subconscious programming, something that you picked up in childhood and it's still influencing the way that you approach the world, the way that you react to different people or different situations, and that's related to your journey of going out of health or going out of balance—we can help you out physically, but unless we transform that side of it, you'll probably just end up where you were.
So this is where working on the emotional terrain, the spiritual and psychological terrain, is really, really helpful. There are lots of therapies out there that can do this, but for me, I like to throw in the Crystal Essences. The Vintage Health Crystal Essences is a tool that I've created. I'll speak more to that, but essentially I work from the place of you intuitively or instinctually know what you need. And so we're using that side of your knowledge to decide which Crystal Essences or which blends are right for you. I'll walk you through the process. You don't have to get this one right, but I work differently to other therapists who might work with these vibrational medicines like flower essences or crystal essences, where often we're schooled in learning the essence and then we hear the client's needs and then we decide which essence is going to fit the picture—and that can work beautifully.
But that approach can work really well. I like the way that I do it where my interpretation, my experiences, are not clouding the choosing of the crystal essence process. I'll speak more to that, but yeah, it's a very intuitive-based process working with the Vintage Health Crystal Essences.
My Personal Context
And then other than that, I tie all of this up within a context of sharing about my life, my personal experiences. You know, I'm a mum. I'm married. I've been married to my beloved for about 15 years. We've lived in a couple of different locations around the world. We actually met in Asia. Then we went and did just over a decade in Canada and then about four years ago we moved here to Western Australia. So there's much to explore and to speak of, and speak of with a purpose.
So that's what I want you to come away with—anytime if I start a story and you're like "where is she going with this?"—I promise you there'll be a purpose. Everything that I talk to will be covered in my storytelling way and it's often a spare-moment approach. Having the neuro-sparkly side means that I need to keep myself interested. I also will have the most ideas and cohesive ideas and putting it all together for you in the moment if I can just stop.
Which is also why you'll find some of this information might only be audio. I'll be recording just before I'm going into a yoga class because I've just thought of something or done something or had an experience. So, I'll be sitting in my car and recording the audio. I'll still disseminate that information on YouTube, but you'll find that you'll be staring at a thumbnail of Healthier with Elizabeth, the advertising thumbnail. It won't necessarily be me on video, but for these first few intro episodes, I really was committed to videoing them so you can see me and get to know me and see if I'm someone that you want to follow and hear more from.
So, I think that's it. Any questions, let me know. You can email me at elizabeth@vintagehealth.com.au. There's a contact form through my website which is vintagehealth.com.au. I'm on YouTube, I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok, and I'm on a podcast platform. So, there are different ways that you can certainly reach out. If you've got any questions, if there are any particular topics that you'd like me to cover, I'd love to hear. And yeah, subscribe wherever you are to the series Healthier with Elizabeth. Okay, bye for now.