A Sensitive Soul

I’m cooking bacon and eggs for my lunch, and as the comforting aroma fills the kitchen, it seems more like a Sunday morning than a Wednesday afternoon. I’d normally grab a sandwich or have a salad at this time on a working day, so why the bacon and eggs? If I say I’ve just come back from a kinesiology session with Annie Day at Heaven Scent Bliss, you might still wonder at my sudden desire for this high protein midday snack. If I add that the kinesiology session has just tested me for 777 possible allergens, you might suspect that my choice of lunch has something to do with the outcome of that test – and you would be right.

I’ve never considered myself allergic to anything. In fact, if you were to ask me, I’d probably say I had a cast iron constitution and could eat anything. However, on and off over the last few months I’ve been getting eczema all round my eyes – not a very glamorous look at the best of times. As ever, I turned to the internet for help. Google confirmed that allergies can affect the proper functioning of the liver, and a plea for help on Facebook revealed I could be allergic to sugar, dairy or wheat. But without a lengthy food elimination process, how would I know which one of these, if any, was the source of my red, crinkly eyes? Looking for a quick answer, I asked Annie about having an allergy test and was delighted to find out that she conducts the test using kinesiology.

I love kinesiology. It was one of the first therapies I ever had with Annie, so I already knew it to be a completely non-invasive way of testing for imbalances in the body. What’s more, it can help to correct those imbalances – even allergies.
Kinesiology is based on muscle testing. As I lay on her treatment bed, Annie asked a series of questions about what substances my body is allergic to and used muscle contractions in my wrist to determine the answers. In front of Annie were rows and rows of small phials containing homeopathic forms of each potential allergen. The responses by my sub-conscious mind guided her to those which cause my body a problem.

At the end of some extensive questioning, a large number of phials littered her desk. We ran through the list of allergens. There were the usual suspects, such as monosodium glutamate and aspartame, but almost everything else surprised me. There was white potato, cocoa, yeast, sugar, soya, caffeine, wheat flour, candida complex, sodium and aluminium, alongside tap water (tap water? It’s the chlorine in it apparently) and a few pesticides and herbicides. The latter Annie looked up for me. They related to chemicals commonly found on fruits and vegetables. All my so-called healthy eating was possibly making me ill!

I needn’t have worried, however, as Annie went on to tell me that she could desensitise my body to the allergens with what she called a ‘set allergy detox’. She put all the phials into a small blue bag and added some drops of frankincense to help me ‘let go on every level, releasing fears from the past and promoting hope for the future’. She also shook in some willow drops, which help to ‘let go of emotions that might have become locked in with the allergies’. It might have been because I hadn’t had any breakfast, or it might have been the sudden knowledge that I was allergic to white potato, but something about the way she added the frankincense and willow reminded me of shaking salt and vinegar onto chips. Anyway, the bag was placed on my navel and three ‘cosmic batteries’ (more phials) were placed on my heart chakra. This had something to do with ‘holding all the acupuncture end points’, but I was far too relaxed by this stage to ask for further explanation. Ten minutes in the room alone with the strategically placed phials was enough to switch off my allergens at cellular level, which meant that if I didn’t eat them for 24 hours, my body would feel happier about me eating them in future. Annie did advise that this wouldn’t work for the herbicides, pesticides, MSG, aspartame and tap water, however – so it’s organic veg and filtered water for me from now on.

Next Annie turned her attention to the bag I’d brought with me. It was full of the assorted bottles and tubes that make up my personal care kit. Not much could go wrong here, I thought, knowing I had a couple of items in there that would pass the test. I’ve heard about sodium laureth sulphate and parabens as potential irritants, so I’ve been using a shampoo that doesn’t contain them. I’ve also recently swapped to a simple deodorant instead of a chemical-laden anti-perspirant. So, as Annie took hold of my wrist and resumed her questioning, I was feeling pretty smug and ready to proclaim myself already enlightened.

“Should Rachel be using this? No. This one? No,” Annie said, holding up each of the products in turn.
The questions went on and on. When was she going to get to my ‘safe’ items?
“Well that’s it then,” Annie said, placing the last item back on the desk. “Your body doesn’t seem to like any of these.”
“What?! But what about my shampoo? Surely that’s ok?”
Examination of the shampoo’s ingredients revealed no parabens (as I thought), but it did contain laureth sulphate! A combination of a last minute dash to Holland and Barrett and the need for new glasses meant I had misread the label, which actually said ‘no synthetic fragrance or colours’ and not ‘no sodium laureth sulphate’. The deodorant, it turned out, contains aluminium, which, if you remember, Annie had already identified as a no-no. I wasn’t as clever as I thought.
Luckily, as with most things to do with Annie, there was good news here too. Annie smeared a tiny sample of each of the products onto individual tissues and placed them in the same blue bag that had held the phials earlier. A bit more ‘salt and vinegar’ and then I spent another relaxing ten minutes switching off the allergens.
“You’re a sensitive soul”, Annie chuckled as I left Heaven Scent Bliss, my stressed out liver ready to fight another day.

All I had to do now was avoid the food allergens for the next 24 hours, so on the way back home, I called in at Asda to buy something non-allergenic for lunch. To my horror Asda didn’t have any organic salad – not one leaf! Contemplating what I already had at home, bacon and eggs seemed like the only option. Hang on a minute, isn’t bacon high in sodium? Whoops! Oh well, at least there’s one saving grace… I’m not allergic to wine!

Check out Allergy Testing using the powerful Health Kinesiology method by clicking here.