Please Note: A medical intuitive does not replace a medical doctor.
While I don’t seek out alternative medicines, I’m not opposed to exploring something “out there” on the fringes of the wellness frontier. Along with healthy eating and consulting the occasional self-help manual, I’m usually good. But the pandemic’s stresses had me jangled, so when I had an opportunity to visit something called a medical intuitive, I jumped at the chance.
A medical intuitive, sometimes called an intuitive healer (as practitioner Kathryn Schiff does) or medical and spiritual intuitive (as Katie Beecher does), is a person who uses their self-described psychic abilities to shed light on how beliefs and emotions might be related to illnesses of the mind and body. They are careful to stipulate they don’t replace medical care but augment its treatment for overall health and wellness for those who seek their services.
For the past year, I’d been suffering from sinus headaches as well as sneezing fits and a runny nose. Also, occasionally, sore throats. I tried everything, from switching up my pillows to changing bed linens and washing my pillowcases more frequently to adding a new HEPA filter in my home air conditioning system and installing air purifiers. Washing my pets, keeping the pets off the furniture…but still, lots of sinus pain, and not just during the change of seasons, but year-round.
I was popping 24-hour antihistamines twice a day and started supplementing with a nasal spray when I thought, hey, I wonder if there is an underlying issue here that’s got to do with my overall mind-body balance (OK, skeptics, I know you may be thinking what is she talking about? but, this is how we reason in Los Angeles). I set up a time to Zoom with Rachel Reimer, a medical intuitive based in Iowa (so doubters, it’s not just us West Coast loons believing in this stuff). I listened to her backstory on a podcast and thought, sure, why not?
The day prior to our half-hour session, as requested I emailed Rachel a selfie that I snapped outside my front door. She told me the reason she asks for this is because when she is doing a phone session, a photo of the other person gives her something to focus on while she is talking. (But since we were Zooming with one another, there was no need for her to overly analyze my static image.) She asked if I wanted to offer up any particular ailments right away, and when I said no, she started the ball rolling by asking if any of the women in my family had breast ailments. I said no, and then she inquired about how nurturing my family history had been—for example, would my mom or grandmother pull me to their bosoms? “Not really,” I told her. Was I similarly non-physically affectionate with my son? She wondered, and if/how this affected my feelings about my family.
Reimer attentively watched my face as I spoke, then would glance up to the left or the right of the screen. I later found out that she was reading a set of visual symbols that indicate the next question to ask. For example, when she asked me about the generations of women in my family, she had seen a staircase, which in her interior visual language means there’s a physical or psychological issue that spans back through the generations. As Reimer asked me questions, I was surprised at how easily it was to answer her fully, honestly and without embarrassment—when after ten minutes we were discussing deep family ruptures that are quite personal and painful, it felt completely natural and not at all weird. Throughout, she told me the imagery she “saw” in her mind’s eye—someone has a book deal, someone from my childhood kept a shameful secret—and she’d ask questions not about that image, but about the relationship I had with the person connected to that image.
And finally, the sinuses. I told her I was having sharp pains in my face, and she smiled and said that sinus pain was usually an indicator of “irritation with someone close to us, especially the opposite sex.” And viola—I thought of my father’s recent illness (with my judgement of his part in it), my teen son’s hormonal mood swings and a host of other small slights by men in my life. And for a moment, just a moment, I felt my sinus pressure abate, just by the naming of the physical and psychological connection.
Also, as kind and soothing as Reimer’s manner was, I was desperate after 45 minutes to get off the call. I really wanted to take a walk around the block because: So. Many. Feelings.
After a nice walk with my dogs outside and a de-briefing with my bestie about the session, I felt much lighter and calmer. I realized later that, perhaps especially because of pandemic isolation, I had grown so focused on caretaking others, or at least formed an identity around my relationship to my son, my late husband, my parents. And talking to Reimer, I shifted my perspective to what was going on with my body and, by extension in Reimer’s world view, my emotional inner life. Ironically, by talking in great detail about the pains and challenges I was experiencing right now (reader, I left out some digestion stuff that no one wants to hear about because ewwww, but suffice it to say, she helped with that too), I left my call with a peacefulness and ability to consider my life trajectory as a woman with her own desires, goals and needs, separate from the caretaker focus I’d had.
And, final note—I’ve forgotten to take my antihistamines most days, or not needed them, since my sinuses seem to be more open and my headaches are almost entirely gone.
So, skeptics, I don’t have any proof that my session with Reimer did this, but along with a calmness and new perspective I came away with after my call, I’m happy to seek her out and recommend her to my friends.
