Brave topic to address. During my working years I paid and paid and paid for health support from the non-allopathic system - to try to deal with Fibromyalgia. Then I retired and had to live on a pension set way below the poverty line. It dawned on me that I could no longer afford ANY level of alternative care. I had not been to a doctor for 30 years but found myself forced back into the allopathic system as no other form of non-allopathic help is available to me.
I am lucky because I have many years of training in various alternative modalities, and I understand them well enough to self-medicate. I had succeeded in managing my FMS until covid and long covid damaged my body to the point where I did not understand it any more, and where existing management routines were no longer working. But there is the next rub. I can no longer afford the supplements anyway. I took out a loan to afford the FLCCC protcols after my run-in with supposed covid, and am now having to pay that back - which is why I am so angry at them for conning us into thinking we are dealing with the spike protein as the source of our ill-health and believing that their protocol had some merit. 8 months of their protocol achieved nothing but a financial debt for me to repay, and continued declining health. I cannot keep up any form of supplementation at this level. I have had to work out how to give myself a chance of living, without the support of supplements, let alone practitioners.
I am writing up for myself (but will publish it for others) a whole range of behavioural changes that will support my body in its attempt to heal itself. These might cost initially, but each cost is a one-off, such as getting a comfortable chair for my balcony so I can ensure sun exposure on days when I can't get out into the weather.
Following behavioural changes is dietary changes, including foods, herbs and spices used as both food and medicines. This is a case of substituting one dietary input for another. The healthier replacement is often more costly that the original, so the increased cost is ongoing, but is far more manageable than the cost of supplements.
After behavioral and dietary changes comes supplements for those who are able to afford them. After that comes practitioner support, so really you are only accessible to the fairly well heeled.
As an alternative practitioner, you have to factor into your prices the TOTAL cost to the customer. There is the expense of travelling to and from your clinic, there is your fee, and there is the cost of whatever you require them to do before their next visit. There is simply no way I can even imagine handling these costs.
I am currently preparing a whole batch of (free) Substack posts on what we can do, for free, to try to save our own lives. As taking responsibility for our own health is so alien to our culture, and as I have no authority for what I am saying, I cannot imagine a large readership. This means there is no potential for this to make me money, and frankly, I could not live with myself if I thought I had potentially lifesaving (if unproven) information and was charging for it.
For your own practice you might want to discriminate between the type of support you offer. I differentiate between information and personalised attention. Personally I think it is unforgivable to charge for information, except where there are publishing costs, when a one off charge is OK. But there are still very few naturopaths or any other form of natural practitioner publishing information we can use to help ourselves, for free, on the internet (such as the naturopathic version of the FLCCC protocols). That tells us all we need to know about non-allopathic health care practitioners. Not one of them is prepared to take the time and the effort to publish ANYTHING to help us. Their message! You pay or you die!
It may have been you or someone else who protested that natural healing does not work that way, that there is no "one size fits all", but frankly, it has to find a way of working that way. We are undergoing a genocide of the human race. At least the bottom 40%, financially, in western countries cannot afford your personalised care, so what else can you offer them? If you are a genuine healer, this question will disturb you, and I think it does. People are dying, slowly and painfully, and only government mandated allopathic medicine is available to them, and we know how well that works, don't we! If natural medicine does not provide even the most basic "first aid" for those suffering all the various forms of long covid, then it is useless to our current society. You have to provide "first aid", "one size helps all" type information or you have made yourselves irrelevant to the future of mankind.
Charging for personalised time and attention is OK with me, as long as the price is commensurate with average or mean incomes. In recent years, consultation fees have skyrocketed while fixed incomes have stagnated. Sure, charge what you can get, but don't expect us to continue to pay your prices when we cannot even afford decent food, and don't complain when we don't. But please, put yourself out there and provide "first aid" level information on the web for free. It would be the best form of self-promotion you could do anyway.
You can work with the concept of "buying time". I do this for people with cancer. I give them a juicing protocol that they can do immediately, and that will slow the progress of the cancer. Then it is up to them to find a practitioner who successfully treats cancer and can target their particular cancer in their particular physiology. This may take a while, and they may move between a few practitioners until they find one they are comfortable with (or can afford). My sister gained 13 years this way, and my cousin gained 10 years this way, both of them with 6 months prognoses.
Long covid sufferers need to buy time until we work out what is really causing the problem and how to treat it, but natural practitioners will not even give us help to "buy time", until something better comes along.
Yup. I’m retired now but was in the forefront of establishing alternative medicine in Dallas decades ago. A cO-founding member of the American Herbalists Guild and the American Botanical Council in TX. I had a small clinic in Dallas and struggled with the fee issue. I kept it affordable. Did not make a ton of money. In fact, without a partner I could not have survived on what I made. But it paid my overhead with a tad leftover for an occassional upgrade or splurge for myself or family. But I could not have saved for retirement. And overall, this is wrong. But not tending to people in need is wrong, as well so I made the best compromise I could, monetarily, and lived a full life I’m proud of. I have a dead partner’s pension and SS which people try to tell me is a handout. As well as a current partner’s pension. Both military. All of it earned by hard work. So I’m blessed and I like to think it’s because I chose the right path. Nowadays I work with anyone who is in need free of charge because I can. Except for the products of course. And teach a little. And research things and keep an eye n what is going on and help to educate people on all of that. Greed is a universal human trait that I doubt we will ever outgrow. Unless, of course, we all get programmed as trans humans into something else that isn’t human. Won’t be much better in my opinion. We just need to keep at it. Stay human. Try to walk the best path, spiritually and hope for the best.
I think you have hit the nail on the head there ...' respect and value low cost services'. I originally trained as a counsellor in the UK, for which there is a standard fee generally for one to one sessions, which was helpful for me.
Then I decided that I didn't really want to be part of a system dealing solely with the mind, that life was a lot more organic, and I put my focus on my healing skills, and moved away from calling myself a counsellor. This was where I began to find difficulty, not only with fees, but with the level of respect. So I quickly realised that not only would I need to change what I offered, but my whole 'business model'. I couldn't really go to the same networking events, and I certainly did not attract the same type of clients.
I think because some of the public stand great store by qualifications, instead of experience and gifts - that is a sweeping statement I know, but it bit very hard with me. So then I had to decide, well how much is this shift of consciousness worth to someone?
I played with charging large fees for about 8 months during covid in 2021 - so £200 for a session (first sessions are usually a whole morning with follow up). Then it just felt yuk, and I changed it to be first session around £100, follow on sessions half that price.
I think I used to charge like £20 when I started with reiki, back in the day - good grief, that was seriously too little.
Creating a sort of member idea has been helpful, and now seems to sit right. If I charge too low, it's assumed that I must be rubbish, so I do have to watch that.
But like you say, if you charge too much, you're not really living up to the work you said you would do, just making it harder for those who don't have money.
And some clients feel that they need to pay a lot in order to receive the healing they need - an interesting mindset, lol. Thank you, I could yap on all night about this topic :-)
On Greedy Holistic Healers
Brave topic to address. During my working years I paid and paid and paid for health support from the non-allopathic system - to try to deal with Fibromyalgia. Then I retired and had to live on a pension set way below the poverty line. It dawned on me that I could no longer afford ANY level of alternative care. I had not been to a doctor for 30 years but found myself forced back into the allopathic system as no other form of non-allopathic help is available to me.
I am lucky because I have many years of training in various alternative modalities, and I understand them well enough to self-medicate. I had succeeded in managing my FMS until covid and long covid damaged my body to the point where I did not understand it any more, and where existing management routines were no longer working. But there is the next rub. I can no longer afford the supplements anyway. I took out a loan to afford the FLCCC protcols after my run-in with supposed covid, and am now having to pay that back - which is why I am so angry at them for conning us into thinking we are dealing with the spike protein as the source of our ill-health and believing that their protocol had some merit. 8 months of their protocol achieved nothing but a financial debt for me to repay, and continued declining health. I cannot keep up any form of supplementation at this level. I have had to work out how to give myself a chance of living, without the support of supplements, let alone practitioners.
I am writing up for myself (but will publish it for others) a whole range of behavioural changes that will support my body in its attempt to heal itself. These might cost initially, but each cost is a one-off, such as getting a comfortable chair for my balcony so I can ensure sun exposure on days when I can't get out into the weather.
Following behavioural changes is dietary changes, including foods, herbs and spices used as both food and medicines. This is a case of substituting one dietary input for another. The healthier replacement is often more costly that the original, so the increased cost is ongoing, but is far more manageable than the cost of supplements.
After behavioral and dietary changes comes supplements for those who are able to afford them. After that comes practitioner support, so really you are only accessible to the fairly well heeled.
As an alternative practitioner, you have to factor into your prices the TOTAL cost to the customer. There is the expense of travelling to and from your clinic, there is your fee, and there is the cost of whatever you require them to do before their next visit. There is simply no way I can even imagine handling these costs.
I am currently preparing a whole batch of (free) Substack posts on what we can do, for free, to try to save our own lives. As taking responsibility for our own health is so alien to our culture, and as I have no authority for what I am saying, I cannot imagine a large readership. This means there is no potential for this to make me money, and frankly, I could not live with myself if I thought I had potentially lifesaving (if unproven) information and was charging for it.
For your own practice you might want to discriminate between the type of support you offer. I differentiate between information and personalised attention. Personally I think it is unforgivable to charge for information, except where there are publishing costs, when a one off charge is OK. But there are still very few naturopaths or any other form of natural practitioner publishing information we can use to help ourselves, for free, on the internet (such as the naturopathic version of the FLCCC protocols). That tells us all we need to know about non-allopathic health care practitioners. Not one of them is prepared to take the time and the effort to publish ANYTHING to help us. Their message! You pay or you die!
It may have been you or someone else who protested that natural healing does not work that way, that there is no "one size fits all", but frankly, it has to find a way of working that way. We are undergoing a genocide of the human race. At least the bottom 40%, financially, in western countries cannot afford your personalised care, so what else can you offer them? If you are a genuine healer, this question will disturb you, and I think it does. People are dying, slowly and painfully, and only government mandated allopathic medicine is available to them, and we know how well that works, don't we! If natural medicine does not provide even the most basic "first aid" for those suffering all the various forms of long covid, then it is useless to our current society. You have to provide "first aid", "one size helps all" type information or you have made yourselves irrelevant to the future of mankind.
Charging for personalised time and attention is OK with me, as long as the price is commensurate with average or mean incomes. In recent years, consultation fees have skyrocketed while fixed incomes have stagnated. Sure, charge what you can get, but don't expect us to continue to pay your prices when we cannot even afford decent food, and don't complain when we don't. But please, put yourself out there and provide "first aid" level information on the web for free. It would be the best form of self-promotion you could do anyway.
You can work with the concept of "buying time". I do this for people with cancer. I give them a juicing protocol that they can do immediately, and that will slow the progress of the cancer. Then it is up to them to find a practitioner who successfully treats cancer and can target their particular cancer in their particular physiology. This may take a while, and they may move between a few practitioners until they find one they are comfortable with (or can afford). My sister gained 13 years this way, and my cousin gained 10 years this way, both of them with 6 months prognoses.
Long covid sufferers need to buy time until we work out what is really causing the problem and how to treat it, but natural practitioners will not even give us help to "buy time", until something better comes along.
Yup. I’m retired now but was in the forefront of establishing alternative medicine in Dallas decades ago. A cO-founding member of the American Herbalists Guild and the American Botanical Council in TX. I had a small clinic in Dallas and struggled with the fee issue. I kept it affordable. Did not make a ton of money. In fact, without a partner I could not have survived on what I made. But it paid my overhead with a tad leftover for an occassional upgrade or splurge for myself or family. But I could not have saved for retirement. And overall, this is wrong. But not tending to people in need is wrong, as well so I made the best compromise I could, monetarily, and lived a full life I’m proud of. I have a dead partner’s pension and SS which people try to tell me is a handout. As well as a current partner’s pension. Both military. All of it earned by hard work. So I’m blessed and I like to think it’s because I chose the right path. Nowadays I work with anyone who is in need free of charge because I can. Except for the products of course. And teach a little. And research things and keep an eye n what is going on and help to educate people on all of that. Greed is a universal human trait that I doubt we will ever outgrow. Unless, of course, we all get programmed as trans humans into something else that isn’t human. Won’t be much better in my opinion. We just need to keep at it. Stay human. Try to walk the best path, spiritually and hope for the best.
I think you have hit the nail on the head there ...' respect and value low cost services'. I originally trained as a counsellor in the UK, for which there is a standard fee generally for one to one sessions, which was helpful for me.
Then I decided that I didn't really want to be part of a system dealing solely with the mind, that life was a lot more organic, and I put my focus on my healing skills, and moved away from calling myself a counsellor. This was where I began to find difficulty, not only with fees, but with the level of respect. So I quickly realised that not only would I need to change what I offered, but my whole 'business model'. I couldn't really go to the same networking events, and I certainly did not attract the same type of clients.
I think because some of the public stand great store by qualifications, instead of experience and gifts - that is a sweeping statement I know, but it bit very hard with me. So then I had to decide, well how much is this shift of consciousness worth to someone?
I played with charging large fees for about 8 months during covid in 2021 - so £200 for a session (first sessions are usually a whole morning with follow up). Then it just felt yuk, and I changed it to be first session around £100, follow on sessions half that price.
I think I used to charge like £20 when I started with reiki, back in the day - good grief, that was seriously too little.
Creating a sort of member idea has been helpful, and now seems to sit right. If I charge too low, it's assumed that I must be rubbish, so I do have to watch that.
But like you say, if you charge too much, you're not really living up to the work you said you would do, just making it harder for those who don't have money.
And some clients feel that they need to pay a lot in order to receive the healing they need - an interesting mindset, lol. Thank you, I could yap on all night about this topic :-)