Loose Leaf Notes

The following first appeared in the spring issue of All About HER, a regional magazine newspaper insert.

“When you understand how food can be used to work for you, amazing things can happen,” says Lynise Anderson of the Healing Tree Wellness Center in Floyd. Anderson is a doctor of naturopathic medicine, a tradition that emphasizes a comprehensive holistic approach to wellness and the proactive prevention of disease. As a practitioner certified in nutritional counseling and Metabolic Typing, she has seen changes in the diets of her clients stabilize moods, reduce the need for medications, cause weight loss and stop disease. “Food can make you healthy or unhealthy. It does one or the other.”

Anderson was working as a mechanical engineer in Maryland and was enrolled in a master’s program for engineering management when her grandmother was diagnosed with advanced-stage ovarian cancer. Her family was devastated by her grandmother’s prognosis of three weeks to live and sought a second opinion, employing the help of a naturopath.

Impressed with what the naturopath knew and the results of the treatments, Anderson had a revelation. “I knew it was what I was supposed to be doing.” Although her grandmother eventually passed on, she lived longer than doctor’s expected with a better quality of life under the care of the naturopath, reports Anderson, who left the engineering masters program and enrolled in a naturopathy doctorate program because of her grandmother’s experience.

Of the various modalities taught in naturopathic medicine, Anderson chose to focus on nutrition because it is a basic foundation from which good health begins. “I found out I was good at it and that I had a knack for taking really complex information and making it simple for people to understand. When people have knowledge they also have power,” Anderson says.

She explained that the leap from engineering to a health practitioner was not that difficult to make because engineers build machines and bodies are like machines. “When you’re looking at a machine, whether it’s a car engine or something that propels a satellite, it’s a system of parts that has to work together to work as a whole. The body is a system too. All parts of a system are necessary.”

In Maryland Anderson developed a private practice. As a health educator, she ran children’s fitness camps, corporate wellness programs and seminars throughout the mid-Atlantic region under the Wellspring Organization, a non-profit formed to support health education outreach.

In 2008, Anderson and her husband Ivan, a certified Shiatsu therapist, moved to Floyd after vacationing in the area and falling in love with it. They opened The Healing Tree Wellness Center in 2009 with a focus on holistic pain relief and health recovery. In 2012 the center moved to its current location with more space and visibility. “Where the Impossible is Possible,” the sign out front reads.

Comprehensive services offered at the center are designed to bring balance to the body, mind and spirit of individuals and include addressing the structural body through shiatsu – a pressure point massage technique based in Chinese Traditional Medicine – and addressing the physiological body with nutritional assessment and counseling. A Whole Body Health Assessment at Healing Tree involves a full range of diagnostic screening, including vibrational hair analysis, iridology, applied kinesiology, saliva PH testing and Candida screening. Nutritional Metabolic Typing is a systematic assessment that ends “one size fits all” diets by determining which foods are right for each individual.

On the third Thursday of each month Healing Tree hosts a Lunch-N-Learn. For ten dollars participants receive lunch and class on health, all in time to return to work following the 50 minute “lunch hour.” Recent Lunch-N-Learn discussions led by Anderson have included Beating the Winter Blues, Oral Health & Your Overall Health and Diet, Lifestyle and Diabetes. Upcoming topics in the series include Managing men’s health, Women’s health, How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep, Safe in the Sun and Shattering Nutritional Myths.

Anderson also teaches fitness classes as part of the center’s Fit90 program. The current class has 12 students from age 9 to 80 who have committed to living a healthy lifestyle for 90 days. Fit90 participants take evening exercise classes and are provided with nutritional consultation and lifestyle management support. “We try to give people the tools it takes to live a healthy life and not just to lose weight,” Anderson says.

At a recent presentation titled Sugar Blues, held at the Floyd Elementary School, Anderson engaged students in a hands-on activity that demonstrated the hidden sugar in sweet drinks. Students were surprised to learn that 28 grams of sugar in a cup of juice equaled 7 teaspoons of granulated sugar, which they spooned into clear containers for a visual effect. “They got it and aren’t going to forget it,” she says.

Anderson sees herself primarily as an educator. She stresses the importance of meeting her clients where they are and treating each one as an individual. “My mission in life is to give people information and knowledge about their health so they can make informed decisions about their health and lifestyle.”

In April the Andersons held an Open House to celebrate the center’s new location. The event was also a Wellspring fundraiser, designed to offset the cost of Healing Tree services for those in need. Fundraising efforts included a silent auction and a catered lunch of Chinese food, so as not to disappoint Floyd residents who believed the rumor during the renovations that a Chinese restaurant was opening, Anderson joked. There will be musical entertainment, along with gift certificate giveaways and discounts for future services.

Future Healing Tree plans include the development of an apprenticeship program and a health video series. Anderson authors a monthly newsletter that includes articles on wellness, recipes and monthly specials. “I think the message we have is so vital. We want to reach more people,” she says. Colleen Redman

~ For more information visit the Healing Tree website healingtreehealth.com.