Dr. Synthia Andrews: Shifting Energy Towards A Healing Path
Jennifer Niskanen
Coming from a medical family, Dr. Synthia Andrews of the Andrews Healing Arts Clinic, LLC (http://www.andrewshealingarts.com/) in Connecticut has been engaged in the idea of health care all her life. After a car accident and a back problem in the 1980s, she found herself in enormous pain. Her pain led her to become a amassage therapist and energy worker. Thirty years later, she studied Naturopathic medicine at the University of Bridgeport to address pain more comprehensively. She opened her own practice in 2009 specializing in mind-body medicine. She reports her work particularly relates to how emotions and energy impact health, healing, and vitality. According to Andrews, our bodies are vibratory instruments and these vibrations impact healing in very important ways.
“It was in pursuing my own healing from the pain I was in with my back that I began a career in massage therapy, and I discovered how to use my intuition around energy with that practice. I don’t really call it healing work because I honestly think that healing is something that everybody does internally for themselves, but I think as healthcare providers, we can hold a healing space for people to do the work that they need to do,” Dr. Synthia Andrews.
What is physically present in the symptoms is only a starting point for Andrews in her comprehensive practice. With tools like acupressure and acupuncture, she is able to tune into the energy – of her patients as treatments trigger the body’s repository of memories and feelings. As emotions organically rise throughout her treatments, They can then be processed in the session and worked on further by the patient at home through meditation and self-hypnosis.Andrews also useshomeopathic remedies to help change the energy environment of the patient.
“The beliefs that we hold, and the attitudes that we have, the emotions that we generate, impact the vibration of our body and that of course impacts our health. What I always try and do with someone is to look at not only what’s really going on with them physically, but what the emotional component might be that’s holding that physical vibration in place. Then, we can work on shifting the emotions or shifting energy. And then, it becomes much easier to heal the physical part of it,” Dr. Synthia Andrews.
Acupuncture and an acupressure technique called Jin Shin Do® BodyMind Acupressure® are used alone or in combination to balance the energy meridians, or channels, in the body. Chakra balancing and Craniosacral work are also used to create overall balance in different levels of the body andhelp release anything that is impeding transformation towards health and healing. Openness, she feels, is one of the most important aspects of healing
“We don’t know what possibility will set a person on a healing path. I actually believe that all people are on a healing path, so we don’t know what’s going to move that forward in a dramatic way. Openness is the most important thing . . . If you think there is only one area and that everything that’s happened to you has happened because of that one event, for example, in your life, then you may focus so much on that event, and look so much for transformation in that area, that you actually miss that underneath that event, behind and next to it, are a whole bunch of other things that might be in play even more. And, you kind of block the awareness of those things when you get single-focused, so I like people to let go of everything that they think they know, and be open to mystery,” Dr. Synthia Andrews.
One of her major focuses is treating people with Lyme disease because it is such a debilitating and invasive disease on the East Coast, where she is practicing. It requires an individualized approach, but, commonly addresses five factors, the first being building the immune system. Andrews explains that chronic Lyme seems to be an autoimmune disorder, so giving the proper information to the immune system is a key strategy, which usually involves providing transfer factors. The second step is directly fighting the spirochetes with antimicrobials and herbs. Careful research determines what herbs would be best to fight different parts of the disease. Next, she addresses the damage done by the spirochetes such as excess inflammation.. Then the symptom picture can be combined with the spiritual and/or energy components that impact health and the frequencies of the body. She often incorporates homeopathics as well as FDA approved machines to change the body’s energy environment.
“For me, the most important thing to healing in general is that everybody really understands how powerful they are as a healing force in their own lives. We tend to look around at the circumstances of our life, and we judge ourselves based on the circumstances that we are in. And, what I want everyone to really know is that we are more than the circumstances of our life. People are phenomenal, amazing, magnificent beings, in those circumstances to learn and triumph,” Dr. Synthia Andrews.
Because of her background in massage, Andrews also deals with many patients suffering from pain and chronic, degenerative conditions, such as arthritis, and injuries. She emphasizes the connection of injuries to the emotions that are experienced when things like accidents occur, like fear and anger. According Dr. John Upledger, any number of emotions travel into the body and lodge along with the vector force of the trauma to form energy cysts, which later become limiting factors in healing that need to be treated. Andrews uses body work such as Jin Shin Do® and other forms of energy balancing. She does not, however, rule out the use of conventional medicine.
“I actually believe very strongly that allopathic medicine and holistic medicine are married. They’re like the yin-yang, if you will, of medicine and each of them has a place and a purpose. You need to integrate them. The two things have to go together, so I never try to talk someone out of a treatment plan that they are doing with Western medicine or convince them that Western medicine is wrong. I try to show them how their body works and how their body can receive Western medicine better if their energy and their emotions and everything, their belief system, is in alignment with what they’re doing,” Dr. Synthia Andrews.
Exercise and diet are phenomenally important, but Andrews feels that nothing is more important than how present we are. She teaches that being grounded in the body by listening to its messages and emotions can help us respond to events and process life as it happens, rather than storing things up to become unconscious habits. She feels this is the single most important thing we can do to shift our energy and keep ourselves on a healing path.
Dr. Andrews writes books on energy and emotions, teaches workshops online and in person, and gives lectures at a variety of venues. The Path of Energy and The Path of Emotions, both published by New Page Books, provide the basis for her teaching. She currently has new book under development for release next summer. She works at a private practice in Connecticut and gives energy consults via Skype.