Optimum Connections

June Sale

In honor of Father's Day, we are having a month-long sale on the F3 and F3+ varieties (the most potent and therapeutic formulas) of BioSuperfood/BioPreparation as follows:

• Buy three BSF-F3 and get one BP-F3+ free or get 10% off these formulas

        OR

• Buy four BP-F3+ and get one free

The discount or free product will not be shown in your shopping cart but will be given when your order is fulfilled and charged. Please mention our June Father's Day Sale in the special order instructions of the shopping cart or your phone or e-mail order.

Healthy water for less: Multi-Pure® Fast Track special offer

For a limited time get Multi-Pure's popular new Aqua Dome water filter for $100 off the retail price! This is a $180 value filter for only $79 + tax, shipping/handling and a $4 registration fee (to become a distributor). We took advantage of this offer recently and are passing on the word to everyone that wants to drink healthy water for less money. Multi-Pure is a leader in water filtration technology and with this promotion, we were able to afford the purchase of a filter, eliminating trips to the health food store to fill up our 5 gallon bottles with filtered water. See our article on Healthy water for you and your pets to find out why we recommend filtering your water.

For more information, see our Multi-Pure page, e-mail us or call 303-271-1649 or 866-305-2306 (toll-free).

Oil of the month

LavaDerm Cooling Mist

Testimonial
I had tried lavender essential oil for sunburn, and was disappointed when it did not seem to help. When I use LavaDerm, the pain is relieved and the redness is greatly reduced by the next day.
-MAL

To order
Click here to order on our Young Living World Essential Oils website. Go to Product Catalog and do a Product Search on "Lavaderm" (all one word). (Product #3249: $16.45/$14.47/$12.50).

Choosing a practitioner for your pet

by Margaret Auld-Louie

When choosing a health care practitioner for your pet, whether holistic or traditional, how do you know who to go to or whether they can help your pet? How do you know what to expect from the practitioner, particularly if you're not familiar with the techniques they use? There is no single practitioner that will be right for your pet in all circumstances and at all ages. A team of health care providers can bring different things to the mix, complementing each other's work. For instance, if your dog has an injury, in addition to having your primarily vet or a surgeon treat the injury, your dog may benefit from adjunct therapy such as massage, acupuncture, physical therapy or chiropractic. There are now more veterinary specialists for specific problems, such as ophthalmologists for eye problems. For a chronic degenerative disease, it may be helpful to consult with various holistic experts such as a holistic vet, a nutritional consultant or a medical intuitive. Obviously, it helps if you have a basic understanding of the different modalities offered by various practitioners, so you can determine the right fit for your pet. You can get referrals from friends and current practitioners to the practitioners that they recommend. If you are in the Denver metro area, see our website for holistic practitioners by clicking on the Information button, then Practitioners.

In addition to understanding what modalities a practitioner can offer you, it helps to understand their style of working so you know what to expect from them. The practitioner may not even be aware of their style of working but you can observe it if you know what to look for. By "style", we mean how the practitioner's innate personality influences their way of working with clients and their use of modalities. This is important because different results can come about from different styles. So different styles are appropriate for different circumstances.

What are these different styles we are talking about? We are referring to inborn differences in personality that can be measured by tests such as the Myers-Briggs personality test. This test comes from the psychology of personality developed by Carl Jung, a pioneering psychologist and contemporary of Freud. The terms "introvert" and "extrovert" that we commonly use today come from his psychology. In addition to those 2 basic personality types, Jung defined 4 basic "preferred functions" that are grouped in pairs. One pair is "thinking/feeling", meaning a person would tend naturally to either be more of a "thinking" person or more a "feeling" person. The other pair is "intuition/sensation" and again, a person would tend towards one or the other of these. Obviously, a balanced person can perform all 4 functions but they are naturally going to be better at one of the pair than the other, just as one person might be musically talented and another person is more mechanically inclined. You can think of these pairs as an axis or line, with people falling somewhere along the line but tending to be more one way than the other.

So, what does this have to do with health care practitioners? The "intuition/sensation" pair is going to strongly influence how they best work with clients, regardless of whether they are holistic or traditional. "Sensation" means they use their senses to objectively assess things. For example, someone who is very good at sensation is going to be able to watch your dog's gait and instantly know what is wrong with your dog, even if you can't see it. They are talented at observing things. And if they are skilled at their chosen techniques, they will know exactly what to do to correct the imbalanced movement they observe. An example of this would be a massage therapist, chiropractor or orthopedic surgeon who is talented at gait and structural analysis. After treatment by them, the structural problem will often be greatly improved.

At the other end of the axis, you will find practitioners that are naturally skilled at intuition. They may not even bother to watch your dog's gait because it isn't that helpful to them. They don't have the strong observational skills of the "sensation" types. But when they put their hands on your dog and start "tuning in", they can intuitively sense what is needed and work based on that, without necessarily having to logically understand what is going on with your dog. They can pick up information beyond what our limited five senses can discern. When they work on your dog, the gait problem may still be there after the session. But some other, seemingly unrelated problem that your dog has, may resolve. The intuitive practitioner is following the dog's innate guidance towards healing which may not result in immediate resolution of the symptoms that you want to eradicate. The body's own wisdom heals what is most important to heal, in the order that the inner intelligence deems is needed, not necessarily in the order that we think it should occur. This makes intuitive healing more difficult to see and understand.

Of course the best practitioners will work with a combination of sensation and intuition but they are still going to tend to be better at one or the other based on their own innate talents. The greatest practitioners are those who, whether or not they understand this psychology, understand their own strengths and weaknesses and have developed their strengths while learning to compensate for or be fully aware of their weaknesses. Most training of practitioners is based on the "sensation" mode of functioning so those who are naturally intuitive often have to find their way to working intuitively later, after completing their training. Our society teaches us to use and expect the "sensation" way of functioning. We think a practitioner should be able to tell us exactly what is wrong with our pet, using their 5 senses (plus laboratory work), and then correct it. And sometimes this is exactly how it works but not always. Maybe they can accurately diagnosis the problem but then are unable to correct it. Or perhaps they correct it but then another seemingly unrelated problem pops up because the dog's overall health is unbalanced. In that case, only the symptoms were treated and not the underlying cause.

 So, do you want a practitioner who is good at sensation or do you want one who is good at intuition? Each is going to think their way of working is superior, because it's what they understand. But there is no superior way of working. The best way for your pet depends on what is wrong with them and what results you are seeking. The sensation practitioners will be better for certain situations and the intuitives for other situations. As you can probably tell from the descriptions above, the intuitive way of working may take longer to produce improvement in symptoms. If the symptoms are severe or you need to understand what is causing them, then you may need a "sensation" type to alleviate them. However, for symptoms that have not responded to treatment by "sensation" practitioners, then you may need to consult an "intuitive" type for help.

We can give examples from our own pets of when they were helped by "sensation" practitioners and when they were helped by "intuitive" types. When we switched our cat Connie's diet from kibble to canned and then raw, we had a lot of trouble finding raw food she could tolerate. Most of them appeared to upset her digestion subtly, causing occasional vomiting and unease. We had switched her very slowly and used probiotics, as recommended, particularly when changing older animals to raw. But she still had digestive upsets, which were confirmed by an animal communicator. Our vet couldn't find anything wrong with her on examination or from her bloodwork. Though holistically-based, our vet could offer no diagnosis or solution to our cat's digestive issues. The homeopathic remedies she prescribed did not help the situation. We then consulted an intuitive vet, who worked remotely by phone with our cat (as animal communicators do). While she did look at Connie's bloodwork and symptoms, she based most of her treatment on the information she received when she intuitively tuned in to Connie to find out what was wrong and how to correct it. She prescribed a variety of supplements, herbs and homeopaths and Connie's digestive ills became a thing of the past. It also appears that Connie's thyroid issues were resolved by this treatment (though we have not yet confirmed this with bloodwork). We still don't know what was wrong with Connie's digestion but the problem went away, thanks to a practitioner with outstanding intuitive skills. Connie's severe arthritis still remains a problem, so not everything was solved by the intuitive approach. All approaches have their limits, depending on your pet's condition and age (Connie is 20 years old, equivalent to a human who is 100).

We had the opposite experience with our dog, Mikki. When we got her 3 years ago, she had a funny skipping gait while trotting (but not while walking or galloping). When she trotted on walks, strangers would ask me what was wrong with her. Usually a kneecap out of place will cause these symptoms in tiny dogs but our vet found nothing wrong with her knees. We went to an orthopedist and he found nothing wrong either and described her gait as "normal", though people persisted in asking me what was wrong with her. We then went to an intuitive practitioner who declared that Mikki had an injury and we must rest her and not let her jump until it healed. So we did that briefly but it just didn't make sense to me or feel quite right (intuitive information is not always correct or is sometimes interpreted incorrectly by the practitioner). I felt that Mikki did not have a current injury so resting would not accomplish anything. But we still didn't know what was wrong with her or if she needed treatment. I took Mikki to my vet again and she referred me to another specialist, someone much more experienced than the first orthopedist. He looked at Mikki walking (remember, the problem was only visible to me at a trot) and said, "oh, I think she has such and such wrong with her, let's confirm that with x-rays". He took x-rays and confirmed his observation, which was that the end of her femur (thigh bone) was uneven and causing the unusual gait. It was not severe enough to warrant correction by surgery and he said there was no reason to restrict her activities, unless the symptoms worsened. In this case, the practitioner who helped us was extremely skilled at observation (or "sensation") and this enabled a correct diagnosis of the issue and avoided unnecessary restrictions to Mikki.

The other axis of functional types, which we have not covered, is the "thinking/feeling" pair. You will probably find most veterinarians towards the "thinking" end because they would need a strong thinking function to be able to make it through veterinary school and understand all the technical scientific information. Someone with a strong feeling function would more likely pursue a less technical field such as animal communication or perhaps animal behavior and training (though you will also find strong thinking types in these fields). You might assume that someone who is strong in intuition would be strong in feeling rather than thinking, but this is not the case. They could be strong in either one. In my own case, as a canine massage provider, I am a strong thinking type, with a degree in biology, but am much stronger in intuition than sensation. I have never been good at observing things (so it is fortunate that my original career ambition to be a field biologist was not realized), but instead have a natural intuitive ability, that I did not discover until I studied energy healing techniques years ago. So I am learning now to use my natural intuitive talents during massage rather than strictly following the observational style I was taught in massage school.

If you survey massage therapists and body workers (specializing in either humans or animals), you will find some of them are very skilled at observing structure (sensation) and others are very intuitive. The sensation types know exactly what techniques to use to correct a problem whereas the intuitive types will often have techniques "come" to them intuitively and will usually combine massage with energy healing techniques. I still remember the first human massage therapist I went to over 20 years ago, who was so skilled at intuition that he didn't want me to tell him anything about what was going on with me (as that would interfere with his work). And he never did anything to evaluate my structure. Yet, what he did in each session was always extremely helpful and just what I needed. My husband, on the other hand, has suffered several auto accidents and has been greatly helped by body workers that are very skilled in evaluating structure ("sensation" types). You will also find this range of types in veterinarians, chiropractors and acupuncturists. That is why it is helpful to understand this difference, so you can pick the type of practitioner that you feel will best help your animal (or yourself!) and know what to expect from them. If one type doesn't help, then maybe it's time to seek someone of the other type. Our only caution would be not to hop around too quickly between practitioners so that you don't give each a chance to work. It may take repeated visits over time to get results with either type of practitioner. Also, don't use so many at once that their treatments are contradicting each other or overwhelming your animal ("too many cooks spoil the broth").

BioSuperfood helps problems holistically

Book of the month

Learning their language: Intuitive communication with animals and nature
by Marta Williams

ISBN: 1-57731-243-0

review by Margaret Auld-Louie

There are now a multitude of books on the market teaching how to communicate intuitively with animals so why are we recommending this one? The first sentence of Chapter 1 grabbed me when the author stated "I did not grow up consciously able to talk intuitively with animals." Many animal communicators tell tales of communicating with animals as a young child and then "shutting down" that ability when they got older. They also state that children naturally communicate with animals. However, rather than encouraging me, such statements discouraged me because I have no memory of ever communicating with animals, even as a very young child. So, it was encouraging to me to learn of someone that was able to become good at animal communication without having done it as a child.

In the above article, we mentioned that society teaches us to function based on what our 5 senses tell us, rather than based on intuition. For those wanting to learn how to use and develop their intuition, this book is an excellent start. It demystifies animal communication and grounds it in scientific reality, since the author is a former wildlife biologist with a Masters degree in biology. She even suggests when communicating with wild animals, that you verify the accuracy of the information you receive by looking it up in a field guide to see if it is true. She doesn't feel that animal communication is some mystical ability that only the gifted few can do but an innate ability that we all have and can develop. She states she is good at it simply from practicing and studying it so extensively (though we would argue that some people are naturally better at intuition than others, as described in the above article).

The book is filled not only with the author's journey to become an animal communicator and examples of successful animal communication sessions, but exercises for the student to do. And for those who don't have friends to practice with (and to check whether the information you receive is correct), she puts herself and her animals in the book with some questions that you can intuitively answer and then verify by looking at the "answer key" in the back. I thought that was a clever way to provide people with the type of practice that you can typically only get from attending a class.

Contact us

Click here to give your pet the fountain of youth today!

E-mail

General Information: Russell@OptimumChoices.com
Webmaster: Webmaster@OptimumChoices.com
Newsletter Editor, Margaret Auld-Louie: Editor@OptimumChoices.com

Telephone

303-271-1649
866-305-2306 (toll-free)
Normal office hours are 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM Mountain Time (U.S.). If you would like a return call outside those hours, please specify what days and times are best.

Location (call first for appointment)

416 Plateau Pky
Golden, CO 80403-1533
U.S.A.

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