How to Use Multiple Modalities to Heal the Whole Body with Diane Fownes on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger

disease, which is very sad. I mean, I’ve been doing this for how long now? And I don’t see really any huge leaps and bounds in progress for us. I think as alternative medicine has started to catch up, it’s created more chaos. It hasn’t created clarity.

 

Manon Bolliger 05:06

Yeah, yeah.

 

Diane Fownes 05:07

So, I think on the part of the patient, they’re more confused than ever. I think on the part of the practitioner, it’s more challenging for us. There almost used to be, you’re an alternative, or homeopathic or that’s your lane. And here we are over here and here’s our lane and we’re completely separate. As we’ve learned to integrate the two together over these past, I’d say past 10 years, you’re really starting to see it start to kind of mesh one with the other. It’s become a lot more grey, you know, it’s not black and white anymore. And it’s, I think it’s very challenging both for myself having a nursing license. Now that I’m in California, I work under my California nursing license. But while I was practicing in New Brunswick, it always shocked me when I would have another health care professional or a nurse or a physician, come to see me for Bowen therapy. And they’d be like, shocked that I wasn’t working under my nursing license. I was working under a naturopathic license. And I was willing to take that risk to let go of years of nursing and my stability and financial security that they had become so accustomed to. That fear of if I walk away from my profession to do something that I’m passionate about that I know works, that I know that I love. It makes a difference in people’s lives. That doesn’t take precedence. Yeah. So, it’s no wonder our patients, I think, sometimes get very confused. I’m still seeing it on a daily basis here. Right now, I’m doing IV therapy for a patient of mine doing concierge service that has been through the wringer with our health care system. And he’s shocked. He’s like, why now am I only finding about this stuff. I’ve been suffering for years. Why did I not know about some of these other things? Why was I not guided by my practitioner, my primary care physician, that these other alternate means for health and well-being were at my fingertips.

 

Manon Bolliger 07:13

Yeah.

 

Diane Fownes 07:14

And the advocated it and had wanted to push me in that direction as well, for its comprehensive care.

 

Manon Bolliger 07:19

But I think you know, as you’re speaking, what I’m feeling that is happening more, is less of a division between, you know, allopathic, and let’s call it natural, more of a consciousness that isn’t all there yet. But about the patient being self-guided and responsible and intuitive. What they need to find the right, practitioner.

 

Diane Fownes 07:58

And that is what I’m saying to people. We have so much technology at our fingertips now, so much information that we can go and find on our own if we’re proactive and self-directed to do so. That information sometimes is food for their soul. It’s amazing how it opens doors for them to start to realize that maybe there’s something else that I can do or try. And it’s not all how I have been, you know, socialized in regular medicine to think that this is the only way it’s not always the only way I think we’re a team approach.

 

Manon Bolliger 08:32

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m anyone in in practice that has knowledge like yourself, or like myself, that is alternative, or complementary, or whatever we want to call it, knows this, but what I think is changing is the patient is now losing faith, I believe in the allopathic system. I think there’s been in the last couple of years, there’s been an awakening to the deep, deep betrayal, you know, of the expert. The expert knows all of this. And then how could the experts say it was it’s safe and effective? When well, what’s the experts supposed to do just listen to the government or just listen to paid people in power? Or, you know what? It becomes really tricky, right? Like, it’s like, what do you mean? Like I’ve interviewed some and it’s like, what do you mean, you didn’t do your research? You know, we’re not actually trained to understand this scientific data. And then it’s like, well, wait a minute here, but the data wasn’t even available. It was hidden. So how can you actually say something without the informed consent without telling your patient hey, by the way, we actually haven’t seen the ingredients list, and we don’t get the results, and we’re told it safe and effective. And oh my gosh, now it’s even, in some places obligatory and mandated. You know, and it’s like, and they’re still doing it. Like, you have to tell your clients and your patients, this is, this is the state of the art right now. Yeah. Instead of holding on to I’m an authority because I get to do this stuff. I mean, this is so scary.

 

Diane Fownes 10:43

I know. I think it’s what fascinates me is even where we are right now, how far we’ve come what we’re still learning, what we still have much to learn. When we think that we’re masters at knowing pretty much what’s going on inside our body and how stress affects us and how it affects our healing and what creates disease and what creates inflammation. There’s still a lot we don’t know. And that’s what I think the average person still doesn’t quite understand that we’re still learning, we’re still trying to figure out like, how our body systems work. You know, I was reading an article the other day from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, actually, they’re doing a study right now, obviously, it’s a study on mice to see the idea that stress is either innate or learned behavior, basically. And they’re doing it on pregnant mice to see when they are really stressed during pregnancy, the hormones that are secreted, and how it affects the fetus. That those babies when they’re first born, are highly stressed, much harder to calm. The mother is most notably usually withdraw from those babies when they’re high stress moms post-delivery. And this is just recently. So, it’s like we still don’t know some of these things to be able to help our clients the best way we can, when we’re talking about how to teach them, how to give them tools on how to heal their body, from within to give them that control over themselves. It’s a we’re still, as much as we know, like I say, it’s almost frustrating sometimes. I still have patients come into my clinic, on the aesthetic side of things, and I see patients, it happens every single week that I have a patient come in. Just by chance. Sometimes it’s for cosmetic purposes, they’ll be like, I just don’t like these gels anymore. I don’t like how I’m getting really jolly through here. And it’s I’m losing the femininity of my face. And they’ll come in to have Botox in their masseter muscles. And the first thing I’ll say is, do you have ringing in the ears? Fullness in your ears? Do you have do you clench or grind your teeth? You got heartburn? You had neck or shoulder pain? Oh my god, I have all those things. Has a dentist told you your teeth are wearing down? Yes. Let’s get to the root of the problem here. You know, it just amazes me that you know like our first responders, which are those dental hygienists or dentists that see patients long before I’m ever going to see them still don’t have that very well versed, comprehensive idea of health and wellness in the body and what, for example, just picking the jaw, which is my that’s my bone of contention.

 

Manon Bolliger 13:42

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, I mean, a governs does so much stuff. Right. And I mean, I know you’ve had experience also, with dentist directly. You can sort of see the back and forth after you fix the TMJ, then all the disorders, not just of the mouth, but of the entire body are changed right. You would think that a dentist, you know, would have there are theories out there. It’s not that there aren’t any. But, you know, many of them don’t even discuss the importance of what type of alignment is it the teeth first, you know, which is like the facade, right? It’s, you know, sure it looks good.

 

Diane Fownes 13:53

Yep. Yeah. Oh, I remember being at a dental conference in Toronto once. And I was probably it was by an Australian dental practice who had come to do this big conference. And I was in a room of probably 50 other dentists. And they had he had on the screen. He had this picture that just showed teeth and he was asking for like malocclusions and what do you think this is what kind of class overbite blah blah blah, And everyone put their hands up on the room and they’re like, Oh, this is what it is I’m going to diagnose by looking at the photo. And then he scans back, and it shows neck and shoulder from here up. And the person is sitting kind of like this, you can tell they’re one side of their face is a little different. Not one person picked it up in the room. I remember going to Joe, that person has gotten major TMD

 

Commercial Break 15:20

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Diane Fownes 16:00

You can tell just look at them, they scan out they do a full body picture. Amazingly enough, they have bone practitioners in their practice there. In their dental practice in Australia. And it made me realize how amazing that is that they’re combining for the for the care of that patient the best outcomes for them proper diagnosis and having someone on hand to be able to help that part. While they’re doing their part as far as a dentist to give that patient like I say those best positive outcomes in the end. And I remember Joe saying to me, he goes, he goes, Diane knows what it is. And the guy goes down at the microphone down the aisle is like, oh my gosh, can we put on the spot now? And I said I think the patient has severe TMD. Yeah. And once they scanned out looked at the whole body and he goes, I want to know why nobody else in this room caught this. Because they’re trained to look at teeth.

 

Manon Bolliger 16:57

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

 

Diane Fownes 16:59

That’s at no fault of theirs. Right.

 

Manon Bolliger 17:02

That’s the training.

 

Diane Fownes 17:04

That’s the training. That’s the in the box

 

Manon Bolliger 17:08

It’s also the, the conceit, you know, of not just those dentists but of all professionals, including alternative professionals, who think this is it, you know, inability to go, what if? What if there’s more? What if? What if the body has…is so incredible, actually, that there may just be something that I don’t understand. You know, it’s like, what’s the word in English? Modesty. Like, there’s no modesty left in this professional world?

 

Diane Fownes 17:53

Oh, I’ve had some bodywork people come in to see me for at my aesthetic clinic and question, why would you ever do Botox on someone? Doesn’t that kind of go against the grain with it being a pharmaceutical to with what you do with health and wellness and bodywork and I’m going no, this is what is the best outcome for the patient. And if I can get them out of pain immediately within two weeks, then we can work on the rest. And they can come back and do Bowen therapy and do TMJ work. We can talk about doing myofascial release, at the same time, I might be able to get them set up in it with maybe a mouthguard from their dentist or set them up in something that they can do at home. It’s not just one thing.

 

Manon Bolliger 18:40

Yeah.

 

Diane Fownes 18:41

I’m lucky enough that I get to have that body of knowledge number one. But it didn’t come by chance. Right?

 

Manon Bolliger 18:51

Exactly. And that’s the thing, too, right. If they had seen somebody else, it might have stayed there. And then we got problems too. Right? It’s like…

 

Diane Fownes 19:03

Well, that’s right.

 

Manon Bolliger 19:04

Nothing alone necessarily, is the solution. Right? And it’s like, you know, we all have a journey and there’s always one door that is or us to start the healing journey.

 

Diane Fownes 19:16

Yeah, I think as practitioners, we’re all just the puzzle pieces. Right? All together.

 

Manon Bolliger 19:21

Exactly. It’s funny. You know, Diane, I did not ask you the one question that I asked everyone in every single interview. So, I’m gonna ask it as we as we sort of wrap up.

 

Diane Fownes 19:35

Absolutely.

 

Manon Bolliger 19:37

What is it that got you into, I’ll call it the healing arts? You can start with nursing, but then what happened, if you could?

 

Diane Fownes 19:47

I think I was always I was always drawn to people when I was younger. And then, for me, knowledge has always been power. It’s always been so much power to have more knowledge. So, I was always like a monger to learn more. So, I did maternal child health for a long time. It was very happy to sit and do my night shifts and in the labor and delivery department, and then move to California. And then I realized, this was 20 years ago now. I started having experiencing hip pain while I was working in a plastic surgeon’s office, and I’d done all the proverbial things I was supposed to do. You know, I’d gone to the doctor, they’d started me on this and on that, and then by the time it got to the point where they were like, okay, four or five, six months in, I had this quite severe hip pain. It was limping at the time. I was quite sure I was going to need a hip replacement. I mean, didn’t make any sense to me. And I have a degree in kinesiology. So, I’m all about functional medicine, wondering what have I done that has created so much dysfunction in my pelvis that is creating this pain. Still thinking pelvis, it was always my hip where the pain was. And one of my clients told me that she’d had a massive car accident and had seen a Bowen practitioner in Rocklin. And said, you should just go. Go there first before they start putting injecting steroids in your hip. And I remember sitting on the table and sitting up at the end of that treatment, half laughing, half serious. What the hell did you just do to me number one, because I feel relief. How did this how did this just happen with so little movement? And you leaving, I remember him leaving the room, and me thinking, where the heck is he going? Like, why? Why is he leaving me? And he goes, look, at next time you come, I will take 15 minutes of my day to give allow extra time to explain to you what exactly it is that I’m doing. Well, I didn’t wait. I went home. And I just researched and researched it. And to me, that was the turning point. Understanding the neuro response in the body and what happens. I had a lower back that was out it wasn’t even my hip. Yeah, I had total referred pain wasn’t even my hip at all. Yeah, and I never saw him passed a second treatment. I was enrolled in a Bowen course, within six months. I thought this is crazy. Any therapy that can deliver this kind of a result with the, like I said, with the knowledge I already possess about the body. And still knowing there was that piece that I didn’t understand didn’t know that I needed to know more and learn more. And it’s where I started to understand energy and the level of intention.

 

Manon Bolliger 19:47

Yeah.

 

Diane Fownes 21:27

When you’re doing your work, doesn’t matter what kind of work it is. For me putting my hands on someone’s body. And as you know, that can differentiate you from other Bowen practitioners or other people who don’t do body work. It comes from a place that is within you.

 

Manon Bolliger 23:00

Yeah.

 

Diane Fownes 23:01

That’s what makes the change.

 

Manon Bolliger 23:03

Yeah, I do think so. I mean, and, and there’s a resonance, you know, between…yeah, I mean, I was just discussing with another practitioner, how, you know, who’s also a Bowen therapist, actually,

 

Diane Fownes 23:18

Oh, wow.

 

Manon Bolliger 23:19

Yes, in in Holland, but comes from Scotland. But it’s like, as we learn more, there is more that comes through us and through our hands. Right. And our ability to sense things goes beyond the hands, right? Like, we’re a whole person, you know, we have a relationship with another person. Right? So, so much comes into our field of understanding.

 

Diane Fownes 23:53

And like, again, another yet another area where we still have not been able to have concrete, like determining information when it comes to vibrational energy. And that can tell a layperson, this is what’s happening. It’s not that clear cut.

 

Manon Bolliger 24:15

No

 

Diane Fownes 24:17

We may never get to that place. I don’t know. But I just know that now we still don’t have that…that particular science to back up what’s happening in the body, but I’m very happy, though, to know that there’s more and more and more clients and more and more people that are out there that are willing to actually hear listen, learn and try.

 

Manon Bolliger 24:38

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, especially because there’s been such a mockery of science.

 

Diane Fownes 24:45

Yeah

 

Manon Bolliger 24:46

That scientists are really upset because they’ve been used, you know, like, really in abused. I mean, not those who have been paid off, but they are the ones…

 

Diane Fownes 24:59

Yep

 

Manon Bolliger 25:00

That still are trying to, you know, come to an understanding of, of the of the human body. But I think it’s interesting. I was just came across a quote from Einstein against Einstein,

 

Diane Fownes 25:14

Einstein. Yep.

 

Manon Bolliger 25:16

You know how it is, I don’t remember the quote, how the other end of it is almost like, the spirituality it’s almost this unknowing, which is part of the entire equation. Right. And, and so I think that’s that idea of also modesty, you know, we can go down one track, and then you realize that the track is a circle.

 

Diane Fownes 25:41

Right? Yeah.

 

Manon Bolliger 25:43

And you go to put it all together you know, if you’re so lucky. Yeah, yeah. So, we have a couple more minutes, I just anything that you really want to share or a…somebody you have been able to help that you haven’t been able to tell other people without names. But something that that really touched you and moved you,

 

Diane Fownes 26:06

Gosh, you know what, I am so lucky that I get to do this on a weekly basis. To combine two very different parallel forms of medicine and have them integrate, because I’m able to do that with a level of autonomy that I have here and doing the work that I do, which is really wonderful. I think for me, the biggest impact that I make, or the biggest impact that I have on people’s lives is doing TMJ recognition and work. That is a huge thing. It changes people’s lives drastically when they’re living in chronic pain when they’re living with a lot of chronic inflammatory processes in their body. If that can be just the one thing that we can actually address. It’s amazing how it can create a trickledown effect. And I get to do this on a weekly basis with patients who stumble into my clinic and don’t even know they’ve got it.

 

Manon Bolliger 27:08

Yeah.

 

Diane Fownes 27:09

So that to me, I think is the most rewarding thing for the work that I do is recognizing that, like I have the patients and they will come in for just cosmetic Botox, and they’ll just by chance happen to say, oh, this is going to really help my headaches. I’m like, wait a second. A first time client, you’ve been getting Botox for headaches, and where have you have they never been putting it where it belongs here instead of here, because this is just tension. This is fixing the problem. Yeah. And yeah, so I think that’s the biggest, most rewarding thing that I do. I’m so lucky that I get to do that every single week. Yeah.

 

Manon Bolliger 27:50

Yeah, that’s super.

 

Diane Fownes 27:52

It’s a huge takeaway. Every day I come home.

 

Manon Bolliger 27:57

Thank you so much.

 

Diane Fownes 27:58

Thank you!

 

Manon Bolliger 27:59

For your experience and knowledge and yeah, we should talk.

 

Diane Fownes 28:04

I know, I know right, and I’m not done yet.

 

Manon Bolliger 28:08

I know, you do. Do you miss that teaching at all?

 

Diane Fownes 28:14

I do.

 

Manon Bolliger 28:15

Oh, really?

 

Diane Fownes 28:16

I really do.

 

Manon Bolliger 28:17

We should talk because we’re at a turning point where I believe Bowen therapy in the hands of people with the right experience that could teach it and inspire people, you know, for the possibility of the body what it can do, where I think people are craving this. So, we should talk.

 

Diane Fownes 28:44

Yes, yes, we will! I have a daughter heading off to New York and I will be an empty nester next year.

 

Manon Bolliger 28:51

Okay.

 

Diane Fownes 28:53

I will have nothing but time.

 

Manon Bolliger 28:56

All right. Well, take care.

 

Diane Fownes 28:58

So nice to see you.

 

Manon Bolliger 29:00

All right. Bye.

 

ENDING: 41:33

Thank you for joining us at the Healers Café with Manon Bolliger. Continue your healing journey by visiting TheHealersCafe.com and her website and discover how to listen to your body and reboot optimal health or DrManonBolliger.com/tips.