"Making it" as an alternative health practitioner

It is an unfortunate reality that the majority of alternative health practitioners struggle to make a decent living from their business.

This raises the question: "Why are people who are dedicated and passionate about what they do failing to translate this into a successful business?" Having spoken to countless alternative health practitioners, I have identified why the majority of them are struggling:

• They often do not realise that their healing work can also be a successful business that makes them money.
  
• A deeper version of this belief is: They believe that it is not ethical or spiritual to make a lot of money doing this type of work.

Many alternative health practitioners start in their business more as a hobby or part-time. They get into this business because it is something they love to do and passionately believe in. Building a successful practice isn't always a top priority at first, but as they love the work, they want to do it full time. Making that transition does require investing time in some business building activities. You can do it! I know many successful alternative health practitioners and society requires many more.

Once you have accepted that you can have a thriving alternative health practice, let us address the belief that it is not ethical or spiritual to make a lot of money doing this type of work. Do you believe that in order to be spiritual or ethical, you should not charge for your work? It's easy to mix your "caring, heart energy" with your skilled time. But they are not the same: skilled time is scarce, and highly valued. It is a business service just like a carpenter, a programmer, a nurse. Heart energy and love are infinite and can't be quantified into a dollar amount or a session time limit. I've developed the distinction that "I bill for my time, the caring is free. "

Spirituality has no relationship to money. You can be very spiritual and be rich. You can also be very spiritual and be poor. You are able to make a bigger difference in the world and pursue your spiritual path more in-depth if you don't have to worry about how to pay the bills from week to week. A person's spirituality manifests by what they do with the money they earn, not by the amount of it.

On this Christmas Day, I send out hope to my many colleagues to understand and overcome these blocks so that you too can create a thriving alternative health business and make a good living while helping more people and doing what you love.

Erica Bliss Winston, LMBT
www.massage-therapy-cary.com

Starting up a blog as the year rolls into next - kind of cool :-)

More joy and peace in our lives... a good thought as the holidays draw closer. One of the key ways to get that joy and peace in our lives is to tame our gremlins! You know, the little voices/urges in our heads that are always questioning us: "are you doing the right thing here?", "are you sure?", "have you been a good enough person?" -- or often telling us we are not.

We ARE NOT our gremlins. After all, if we are listening to it, who is listening? So where are our gremlins and how do we tame them? By paying attention to our tension - tension in our bodies, tension in our thoughts (those thoughts where you sense the voice gets an electric charge, louder, more intense). Our tensions are our gremlins.

If we pay attention and unwind from that tension (through biofeedback or conscious stretching or good bodywork) we'll often remember the whole series of choices/decisions - many out of conscious awareness even -- that we've made over the years to get in our current tense spot. The choice to keep our lips buttoned over something we didn't dare say years ago that now travels up into a nasty migraine whenever we are especially "tactful."

We can learn we have to deal with the worry and stress in our situation - and take steps to resolve it. But we don't have to let our bodies get so involved in the process that we uncage a gremlin :-)

The result - more joy and peace in our lives, which I sure wish to all!

Erica Bliss Winston, LMBT
Licenses Massage and Bodywork Therapist
www.massage-therapy-cary.com