I line up my hand with a series of electrodes.
Each one aligns with a reflex zone and measures the vibrations of energy emitting from different parts of my body – one point measures my temporal lobe, another my kidney, another my spine. There are 46 points in all.
Sandra Kelly, founder of the Canadian Healing Institute and a holistic health practitioner operating out of the new Healing Centre in St. Albert, gives her screen a puzzled look before turning to me.
"Did it work?" I ask eagerly.
"You're dehydrated I believe. Either that or you're really sick," she says.
Without much water in my system – I live off coffee – the machine wasn't able to pick up any of my body's electric currents.
Two Tri-Salt pills and a handful of electrolyte gel (to improve conductivity) later and I'm relieved to see that my organs have not all shut down on me.
I watch as splotches of green, purple and turquoise start to spread across Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man like watercolours soaking through a piece of parchment.
This is my aura. The colours represent my personality, my thoughts, my emotions and my physical condition at this moment in time.
I'm told I'm pretty balanced except for one or two areas. According to my chakra reading, I'm a yellow-orange person: curious and analytical, with a sense of child-like wonder.
The one thing I'm noticeably lacking is confidence. I'm showing a low root chakra. Optimum range is between 40 to 65 percent. My chart reads 31.
Root chakra is the base of the chakra system. It has to do with a person's sense of security and stability. Those who show imbalance can experience anxiety, fear and nightmares.
I'm told that it's normal, especially at my age, to score lower in this area.
"When we're a child we come into this world with a big head and no legs. We spend our whole life trying to find our footing. Our root chakra is really what grounds us," said Kelly.
"You're still developing, you're still trying to find your path. That number will be a reflection of that."
What they don't know is that my roots are all in Ontario and moving to a new province less than a month after graduating has certainly come with some emotional challenges.
To boost my confidence, LeeAnna Binder, owner of the Healing Centre and a holistic nutritionist, recommends the following: wear red, eat grounding foods (root vegetables and red meat); walk in the grass in your bare feet (probably my favourite feeling in the world, who needs socks is what I always say); visualization (pretend my feet are becoming one with the ground below them); and essential oils.
Binder douses me with a mixture of ylang ylang, vetiver and cinnamon and slips a red bracelet around my wrist, to see if it raises my root chakra.
I place my oiled-up hand back on the Biopulsar and instantly my Vitruvian counterpart's feet display a crimson hue. It worked.
Today we are only assessing my mind and my soul. The fun part, Binder says.
The Biopulsar can also tell you a lot about your physical state and even detect irregularities in a person's organs. Binder and Kelly use it to create a base health assessment, develop a personalized treatment plan and monitor a person's progress.
"You can use this as a time course to travel through while you're getting therapy, whether it's a back pain or you have trouble sleeping, or you have emotional issues," said Kelly.
The Healing Centre, which opened its doors at the end of October, houses 15 different practitioners and a variety of alternative and complimentary treatments, such as specialty yoga (tailored to relieve sciatica, stress or neck pain), hypnotherapy, reflexology and cupping, which are all centred on the belief that optimal health can only be achieved by treating the whole person – mind, body and soul.
They are not alone. St. Albert counts 47 other centres that offer alternative and complimentary healthcare services, with a new float centre called Lily Pods adding to that number two weeks ago.
Despite the fact that many modalities – acupuncture, Reiki, meditation – have been around for thousands of years, the western world has only recently begun to embrace the concept of holistic medicine.
When Dr. David Richmond and his wife started practising naturopathic medicine in St. Albert 14 years ago they were two out of 31 practitioners in Alberta. Today the province counts more than 200 naturopathic doctors.
Even so, St. Albert Naturopathic Clinic finds itself serving much of northern Alberta. The growing awareness of holistic health has kept his office in high demand.
Every practitioner and specialist I spoke to, including Richmond, said this comes not only from a desire to live a healthier lifestyle, but from a feeling of dissatisfaction with the conventional medical system.
"People are tired of being sick. It's not health care; it's sick care," said Binder, who strongly believes that the Biopulsar could have saved her mother's life.
Suffering from lower back pain she was put on painkillers. The doctors couldn't figure out what the cause of the pain was and simply treated the symptoms – a philosophy holistic health tries strongly to counter.
When they figured out that she had kidney cancer it was too late.
Tim Caulfield, a University of Alberta professor in law and public health, the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy and skeptic of alternative medicine, agrees that there is a need for change, but he also believes that the popularity of holistic health is creating a false dichotomy.
"People are looking for something that they're not getting from conventional practitioners, whether that's time, the feeling that healthcare practitioners are listening to them and responding to their personal needs," said Caufield.
He's OK with that. But to say that family doctors don't care about a person's mental and spiritual well-being is frustrating since many do.
What's in a name?
Alternative medicine was popular in western civilization during the early part of the 20th century, but with the introduction of antibiotics and other medical advances in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, it fell out of fashion.
Then the '90s came. Along with the Spice Girls and Tamagotchis this decade brought what Caulfield calls a "post-modern" or "all knowledge is relative" movement that reawakened the idea of complementary or alternative medicine.
Caulfield embraces the open-mindedness and would be the first to herald an alternative form of medicine if it proved effective.
The problem is there is very little research to support this, which leads him to believe that much of it is "bunk."
"I think the placebo effect looms large in the area of complementary and alternative medicine," he said.
That isn't to say that the placebo effect – the improvement of a patient's condition caused by the simple expectation that a treatment will be effective – isn't powerful, or beneficial. But it also isn't truthful.
"By acknowledging that you're saying we're creating this big theatre of care in order to induce the placebo effect. To put it in even harsher terms: you're lying to patients."
He believes there should only be room for one health-care system: one that encompasses all evidence-based treatments, whether that's radiation, massage therapy or acupuncture.
An orange a day, does not keep the cancer away
Kristi Schmyr, president and director of Prana Holistic in downtown Edmonton, gets why there is so much skepticism surrounding the practice of alternative and complementary medicines. She believes that some practitioners have overstepped their bounds, especially in the area of oncology.
"I think it's a somewhat warranted mistrust," she said.
Schmyr herself was a skeptic – until she became a third-generation reflexologist.
As a little girl she dreamed of becoming a doctor. A real doctor. None of that voodoo her grandmother and mother practised.
"I thought they were witch doctors," she said.
But as she grew up Schmyr began to appreciate that although there might not be a plausible explanation for why her mother's touch to the soles of her feet could clear the congestion from a cold or calm an asthma attack, in the end it worked.
"After a while I stopped making fun of them," she said.
Contrary to what Caulfield wishes to see – one umbrella system – Schmyr simply wants to see a more cooperative relationship between both healthcare worlds.
That starts with ditching the title of alternative.
In a recent blog post, Schmyr tried to clearly delineate the roles of complementary and conventional care.
"Alternative medicine implies an "us" against "them" mentality. It implies that you should choose one or the other – either get acupuncture, or see a doctor. Do massage, or get surgery. Take herbs, or take medication," she wrote.
"Complementary medicine implies that this world of holistic health has room for both."
Although she doesn't believe that vitamin C alone can cure cancer, she has helped patients manage the side effects of chemotherapy, such as nausea.
She can help reduce the pain of a broken bone. But she can't set the fracture.
As I leave the Healing Centre, Binder offers me some essentials oils to 'Rev up my Root.'
I happily accept.
Whether the effects are perceived or real, if a dab of cinnamon behind my ears or a red scarf around my neck can help boost my mood, why wouldn't I give it a try?
