Thursday, November 10, 2005

Healing options

A 3-day health expo offers choices for physical, mental and spiritual health -

POLLY HIGGINS

Tucson Citizen

Bruce Silvey summarizes the public health convention he's organized for this weekend with one word: choices.

The publisher of free wellness magazine Arizona Choices says he hopes to educate the public about their options, "so they see what they can do to improve their entire physical and mental health."

The Arizona Choices Expo, a gathering of conventional, alternative and indigenous healers, begins tomorrow at the Tucson Convention Center, 260 S. Church Ave. An American Indian blessing and welcoming ceremony at 8:30 a.m. outside TCC will signify the official start.

Tucsonans make up two-thirds of the practitioners conducting the 100-plus free lectures, 70-some $10 lectures and setting up exhibition booths, Silvey says. The rest from around the world.

Among the special events is a performance by Grammy-winner local R. Carlos Nakai and his quartet at 8 p.m. Saturday.

Silvey, who calls Tucson home, says it's a good place for the expo because he sees Arizona as being "on the forefront of combining conventional and alternative medicine."

The country as a whole is slowly opening up.

In a 2004 survey, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine found that 36 percent of U.S. residents 18 and older employ some form of complementary and alternative medicine in their healing. That number rises to 62 percent with vitamin therapy and when prayer used for health reasons is included.

CAM encompasses such practices as deep-breathing exercises (24 percent of Americans), natural products such as herbs (19 percent), meditation (8 percent), yoga (5 percent) and massage (5 percent).

Trinka Colsman, 65, is among those open to CAM, especially since she started going to the At-Ease Wellness Center on East Broadway. Much of what owners (and husband and wife) Nicholas Tivoli and Joan Norton practice is an alternative form of chiropractic care called Network SpinalAnalysis.

A year ago, Colsman says, she was in hospice, hooked up to an oxygen tank 24 hours a day, due to lung and heart disease. She is now out of hospice, needs oxygen just at night and has cut her medications in half.

"I don't know what they do," says Colsman, who stretches out on a padded table at the center four times a week and receives a 20- to 25-minute treatment. "Whatever it is, I feel great."

Norton says that she has found Tucson generally open to a wide range of healing options.

MORE INFO • Arizona Choices – the publication can be found at dozens of spots around town, including Bookman’s, the UA Visitor Center and Epic Café; and at www.arizonachoices.com online. • National Center for Comple-mentary and Alternative Medicine – http://nccam.nih.gov/

"The expo is a wonderful opportunity for Tucson," says Norton, who will have a booth at TCC. "With healing, there should be choices."

Molly Manning Roberts agrees. She's a medical doctor who believes conventional medicine isn't enough, because it doesn't address mind, body and spirit.

Concerned about the "flake factor," Manning Roberts initially was reluctant to include spirituality in her practice, but decided to go with the approach she most believed in.

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