LEAH BOYD-BARRETT
Born in Lawrence, Kansas, I lived in Europe from the age of 5 until 1998, when I finally returned "home". After living in Southern California for 10 years, my husband's career brought us to Bowling Green, Ohio, as a Journalism professor at BGSU. We are blessed with 4 wonderful children, and an adorable grand-daughter.
My first career had nothing to do with health. In the early 1990's, I was living in the UK, teaching foreign languages at a local high school, juggling a stressful job with a family of four children and a hyperactive dog. After experiencing some stress-related health issues, I found myself in a healing group, and went on to learn and practice Reiki. However, I could not entirely accept that energy healing really worked, and felt there had to be a catch somewhere! I looked into other forms of healing, but we lived too far from London for me to take my interest further.
We eventually moved to Leicester, a city about 100 miles north of London. A friend invited me to attend an introductory class in Touch For Health. I had never heard of Touch For Health, but it sounded interesting. That weekend turned my life around.
Learning about acupuncture meridians was my "eureka" moment. Suddenly, it all made complete sense. I witnessed how the body's blocked energy could be restored to its normal flow. I could even feel a buzzing in my hands when touching certain "neuro-lymphatic" points. It was fascinating to discover that the mysterious "energy" in my hands was just a natural electrical and magnetic force in nature organized into 14 major circuits around the body. I wanted to know and understand more. I took the plunge and signed up for the entire 2-year program offered by the Middle England School of Kinesiology (now the Classical Kinesiology Institute ). My true career had begun, and continues constantly to evolve.
Over the course of the next two years, we covered all four levels of Touch for Health, and went on to learn Advanced Kinesiology, Nutrition, Transpersonal Counseling, and Polarity Reflex Analysis. I established a small private practice and thoroughly enjoyed being able to help people with problems that could not seem to be resolved elsewhere (I am often the last stop when all else has failed!). Nutrition became my main focus because it seemed to be at the root of almost every health challenge. I also became committed to the effectiveness of hands-on healing, and became a Reiki Master Teacher.
Since being in the States, I have been able to enhance my Touch for Health and kinesiology skills by adopting the nutritional testing protocol of Nutrition Response Testing™ , a kinesiology-based system that addresses not only the unique nutritional needs of each individual, but also the numerous stressors that can prevent people from healing. These can include heavy metals, chemicals, food sensitivities, parasites, scars, bacterial, viral, fungal and parasitic infections. It has proved to be an exceptionally accurate and effective method of non-invasive nutritional evaluation. I sincerely believe it should be the first point of call for anyone desiring to improve their health.
Muscle Testing has led to other unexpected benefits as well. Over time, I have learned to "know" the outcome before even testing in many cases, and in some cases my understanding of a client's problem goes beyond the information I have been given. I believe from my experience that muscle testing is effectively linking with another light body and can lead to psychic development and perhaps heightened consciousness. I am eagerly exploring the possibilities!
Leah Boyd-Barrett, MA, CK, LMT
For Shamans, the world we perceive through our senses is just one description of a vast and mysterious
unseen, and not an absolute fact. Black Elk, the Oglala Sioux medicine man, remarked...... that beyond our perceptions is 'the world where there is
nothing but the spirits of all things. [It] is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world.'
Mazatec shaman, Maria Sabina, said the same thing: 'There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby and invisible, and there is where God lives, where the dead live, the spirits and the saints. A world where everything has already happened and everything is known. That world talks. It has a language of its own.' And the way that it talks is through nature. Through it is the antithesis of our social conditioning, this is the way to meet the spirit of the plants."
R. Heaven and H.G. Charing, Plant Spirit Shamanism