How Bowen Therapy and Homeopathy Can Heal with Amber McPhail on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger

accelerate after that. I researched online, the best medical training I could find in the world, knowing that I didn’t just want to suppress symptoms and actually wanted to get to the deeper cause of disease. And then, yeah, I ended up at naturopathic doctor school in Vancouver, which doesn’t exist in New Zealand. They are like primary care providers and man, we learned everything, acupuncture, herbs, homeopathy, chiropractic, counseling, on and on and on. But I was one year away from finishing, and I wasn’t able to finish because I wouldn’t receive their mandated vaccine at the time.

Manon Bolliger  03:41

We’re calling it a bio weapon. Because, yeah, so I’m really careful about words in that way.

Amber McPhail  03:49

It’s not actually a vaccine is it? Not like that’s not what it’s not, it’s not and I had to change the definition right to make it fit. So when I first I was in New Zealand, setting online for a little bit waiting to get over there waiting, waiting, wasn’t able to travel. And as soon as we heard that the some of the Canadian airlines, not Canadian, Australian airlines were requiring the bioweapon to travel, I thought, Nah, screw that I’m not going then that’s not even an option. So I knew from my gut feeling at the start that that would never be part of, you know, the journey. I managed to slip over to Canada without getting it and then it held me up at the end anyway, and, of course, sank a lot of money and energy, and I moved across the world for this studying and unfortunately, I couldn’t finish but at the end of the day it all worked out for the best.

Manon Bolliger  04:41

I mean, that’s a…it’s a huge commitment. And also, financially, I mean, what is it now like 100k a year?

Amber McPhail  04:50

Yeah, it’s a huge…it’s like it’s a huge amount of money, for sure. And it’s all for that fancy certificate, you know? That’s what it comes to Yeah, yes.

Manon Bolliger  05:02

You don’t get the the support when you realize that they’re not independent. So that’s where it also gets really tricky, right? Like, you know, we’re supposed to be learning things that are good for the body that help, you know, the people heal, that work with the immune system, you know, that don’t suppress and here we are, you know, mandated to do something and our own governing bodies, and schools, just enforce it.

Amber McPhail  05:37

Yeah

Manon Bolliger  05:39

I was appalled to find this out, I just could not. I actually had this feeling that wow, where this is our chance to really get out and tell people you know, take zinc take, you know, all these natural things, and let’s get our systems up to date, you know, be fit blah, blah, blah, instead, slap slap, slap, and, you know, suppress, and blah, anyway, yes. Sorry, it’s your story, but it’s like, um, I yeah, I live it through everybody else that has gone through this.

Amber McPhail  06:13

It’s strange, because of the things we talked about, you know, individualized medicine and this and that. And then they were using very unscientific like ret tests for the unvaccinated students like segregating us from the rest, and it just made no logical sense. And that was a really tough part as well. So, ya know, it’s, it was very disturbing and very confusing, and very surprising. And, yeah, so it turned out that the medical school I went to was pretty conventional. We learned biomedicine, pathology, physiology, anatomy from quite a conventional point of view. And we use natural products, again, like green allopathy. Natural products can suppress symptoms as well, right, we weren’t really stimulating the vital force to overcome disease and imbalance. So I got to learn that outside of Bouche, which was very lucky for me, and yeah, it was. Yeah, it’ll worked out.

Manon Bolliger  07:12

Yeah. So, what then…yeah. Tell us a little bit more you’re, you know…

Amber McPhail  07:19

Yeah, totally. Okay, go. And so I mentioned that these kind of like the education, there was a little bit conventional. And I went to Canada to get the best medical training I could, and I did end up receiving that, and that wasn’t from Bouche. It turns out two big modalities really seemed to push the needle the most, and that was homeopathy, and Bowen Therapy. So I guess I learned about these modalities through school through medical school, but not at medical school. So luckily, I was redirected into a wonderful Classical Homeopathy Education outside of Bouche and also with Bowen therapy with you, and that just changed everything. And the best part is, neither of them are that invasive or intrusive. And because what I see now is really interesting, as people say, I hate to admit it, but Bowen therapy really worked for me, because people seem to want more and more and more and make it painful and then it will work, the therapy will work if that’s the case, and that just isn’t how it has to be. There’s a lot of unlearning to do, you know,

Manon Bolliger  08:33

A lot of misconceptions to get over.

Amber McPhail  08:37

Absolutely, yeah. And while I was in Canada, I received some other amazing therapies. One was actually in an animal medicine called Combo. It’s from a frog. And it helped me kind of cleanse myself of all these like accumulated environmental toxicities from growing up on a conventional dairy farm in New Zealand, heavy metals, emotional suppression, all that kind of stuff. And then I became more and more intuitive, more and more in tune. But I’m actually learning to manage a little bit now because I kind of am a bit too open and a bit too sensitive to other people’s stuff. So that’s the next part of my…this is the current part of my journey that I’m working on. Yes. It’s been great. Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  09:17

So it’s not the end when you…when there’s something that you know, blocks the way forward. I mean, there might be a big loss financially, but in your case, I mean, you’re a positive person anyways, uh, despite the depression diagnosis. You found a way through, just continue the education and can you explain a little bit that path? You know, because often we think it’s supposed to be a certain way, or we go to a certain place to get things, how does it really work and what’s your experience?

Amber McPhail  09:56

Yeah, definitely. And even in the midst of the depression diagnosed, just the cool thing about the homeopathy is, it cured me. I never have struggled with that, again, that’s not my story part of my story anymore. And that is what is possible. That is actually what the kind of healing that we achieve, you know, it’s not just like, oh, dampen every feeling and emotions, you don’t feel depressed, you don’t feel happy or excited. It’s like, No, this is completely gone. But you say, I guess I was under the misconception that you know, you need like a certificate, a title, I’m going to be a doctor, then I will be respected, I will be useful. But when I was waiting to get into my final year, hopefully hoping that the mandate would drop. I was tutoring like eight, nine students, a lot of them also unvaccinated it was really great to help people in that way. So I became really proficient and all those kinds of conventional medical sciences and things like that. And I was waiting, I was waiting. And then I was like, Wait a second, you can see that I’m going to become a jack of all trades and master of none, let’s actually go deeper into a couple of the really powerful kind of modalities. So I was like, once I released the ego of not being a doctor anymore, I was like, right, let’s get some good serious training, some expert training from people who are very specialized in their fields. And I just started kind of putting feelers out, things came to me and I, yeah, I just fell into some incredible things. And it just yeah, the path just kind of unfolded, as I let go of like, expectations, assumptions from other people, for myself. And yeah, don’t know what else to tell you. It just, it just worked out so beautifully. And things just aligned. And then once I trained with you, I decided like, right time to go home time to live really again on the land serve my community. And then since I’ve been home, all I’ve have heard about is this various little issues, ailments people have. And I’m like, Okay, this is a working out as well. And now people are coming in is word of mouth. And people just get better. And it can be quite hard for them to come to terms with the fact that they can let go of the issue. Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  12:20

Yeah. That actually is one of the hardest things. Yes, people say they want to heal. But and I’m not saying they don’t I mean many I really do. But there’s also, partially, we’ve been programmed with the idea that we can’t really heal. So there’s the other part of us that’s holding on to things, kind of saying, Well, I guess that’s always gonna be a part of me. Right?

Amber McPhail  12:48

I hear a lot. It’s like, oh, so how is your sciatica? Okay, they’re like, Oh, I haven’t had it. But I also haven’t done this or this, which usually causes it and I’m like, okay, like, not having it is significant as well. You don’t have to, like, make little excuses why it’s gone away. So I see that that is a funny, a funny thing. And there’s that unlearning piece to it, right? People don’t usually completely heal from things and you know, in our, like, kind of modern society. So there’s, yeah, you’ve got to let go of that attachment to suffering and to being a victim a lot of times as well, which is, not easy. Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  13:22

So like, in your case, I mean, like you said, you’re like, oh, of the, the, the ego attachment to our label, right? But you actually do have the, you know, a big part of the education?

Amber McPhail  13:36

Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  13:37

That, you know, was needed. But do you when you look at just everything you’ve learned, including the deep dives and homeopathy and, and BowenFirst therapy, what do you think it takes to either to really help people? What is it about? Is it like, obviously, the answer is not the degree, clearly. But what does it take and maybe to help free people a little bit from their preconceptions?

Amber McPhail  14:08

That it’s a very good, big question Manon. Thank you for asking. Well, I guess because I’m still learning this. I’m still very early in my journey, but I guess, I don’t like to have an opinion on what is going on for them. I like to let them tell me, and with words and observations and symptoms and little quirks what is going on for them? And I kind of like to just sit back, because a lot of the kind of counseling and psychology stuff is like, Oh, I think this is why this is the case. And I’m like, I’m not really interested in that I have learned that people have their own individual susceptibilities that make them respond predictably to stresses and they respond to stresses through symptoms and if I can sit back and let them tell me these little predictable ways that they respond, then I can easily kind of see the bigger picture, see deeper to the level of the vital force, how they respond, and then I can kind of how do I say it, and then I can kind of just help them heal themselves. I’m not doing anything, I’m just sitting back and facilitating what that is. And a lot of the difficulty I’m learning is how to sit in others suffering. Because if I were to take that suffering away from them, they’re losing out on lessons on lots of things like that how to heal themselves. And I’ve learned that healing is not necessarily smooth and easy.

Commercial Break  15:46

What would your life be like if you were pain free? If you were one of the millions who suffer from chronic pain, the thought of just one day without it may seem impossible. This is often because conventional medicine tends to fall short in the treatment of pay, opting to prescribe pills or recommend surgery rather than getting to the root cause of the problem. But if you are suffering with emotional or physical pain, there is hope. Join the founder and CEO of Bowen College, Manon, Bolliger, live online for Your Body Mind Reboot. Learn how to listen to your symptoms and get to the root cause of your pain. Plus be trained in basic Bowen therapy moves, so that you can reboot your body for optimal health. You don’t have to live in pain, you can heal, stop the pain pill cycle by visiting www.yourbodymindreboot.com To learn more, and to register.

Amber McPhail  16:56

Example is the detox reaction or the healing crisis that happens as well. And I’ve seen that a few times, which is a very interesting phenomenon. Yeah. So I don’t know if that made much sense. I hope so.

Manon Bolliger  17:09

And other opinions, I mean, I do think the listening piece is huge, because often, that’s what starts the trust relationship, and the acknowledgement of what’s going on. And then, you know, the responsibility that actually, you know, one can make a difference in one’s own life by making certain decisions and choices. So, it kind of starts everything. But when you, you know, when you abdicate that responsibility with a typical, you know, visit to your medical qualified practitioner who has much less time for you. And that’s a systemic problem. It’s not necessarily individual, but you know, we’re in a system, then the problem is the patient can never really speak, they never feel heard, they get diagnosed, usually one body part or one thing at a time as if things are not interconnected. And then it’s kind of like, well, the only responsibility you have is take this, you know, and take what, okay, you know, and so you miss the ball entirely of what the process is about.

Amber McPhail  18:29

It’s so true. And the biggest thing I’ve been learning recently is putting external things into the body is not often that useful, unnecessary, especially when detoxification is a big part of the process. It’s like no, don’t put more active things in that need to be processed, and detoxified just kind of get the body into…the body, the mind all of that into a space where they’re like, Ah, now we’re in healing mode. Now we’re putting energy into these processes to heal, to detox to flesh, whatever it is, and it doesn’t have to come from the outside. And humans love to take things and put them in and this helps for this system, this helps with the system. But if we’re just coming in and interrupting a pathway, you’re adding in more ingredients for this pathway you’re just gonna kind of throw things off, because it’d be just so unfathomably complex, we can’t really come and knife around in there and have much of a good effect. You know, we’ve kind of got to leave it up to the whole, the whole person, the whole system. Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  19:34

Sure. So we have a bit more time together, but I’d love to hear you know, because I know you’re new in practice. And I know that you’ve had some great results so why don’t you maybe share just no names obviously for all the same reasons as usual, but what surprised you of possibility and healing like yeah, tell us.

Amber McPhail  20:01

I’ve got a couple of goodies for sure. So one that was really awesome was an older man I treated for the first time. He came in, he had really swollen hands like super red puffy, like the whole hand was. And I could not, not tell him to get antibiotics. I was like, Oh, that looks bad. Like I can’t say not to do anything conventional in terms of that. And after the first treatment, which didn’t even address his hand, by the way, it was just the whole nervous system, the whole body. His hand 100% came right, no redness, no swelling. And I was just…what!?

Manon Bolliger  20:37

Doing the basic Reboot of Bowen.

Amber McPhail  20:40

Basic Reboot of Bowen. That’s all I did it just come…and, you know, older people as well they are assume or your old you can’t heal as well. Overnight. It was amazing. So that was one.

Manon Bolliger  20:54

Did he when he said you can’t and you know, what we don’t prescribe. We can’t unprescribe. That’s, you know, a general rule. Because we’re not the one on top. But had he started? Had he taken anything?

Amber McPhail  21:06

Oh, he, we I saw him beforehand. And he said, Oh, what do you think? Should I go to the doctor? And I said, Oh, well, they will they will prescribe antibiotics. And I can’t say don’t do that because it looks infected. But he hadn’t got there yet. And he didn’t have to go in the end. And that was…

Manon Bolliger  21:23

Yes, that’s the best way.

Amber McPhail  21:24

Yeah, isn’t it so great. So first aid and everything but a more kind of chronic situation. I’ve got a couple was a girl she came to me I guess she was almost 30 and she had this terrible sciatica but it wasn’t a normal siatica it was like, numbness like motor could not move her foot sometimes. Anyway, I saw her for about like eight weeks, which is longer than usual, that I need to kind of continue with Bowen. And we had huge improvements in the end, never quite fully better. But weirdly enough, her scoliosis completely was corrected by the end of it. And I didn’t even realize she had scoliosis, which. But her physio said oh my gosh, you’re you’ve got no curvature to your spine anymore, like in the scoliosis sense and something so complex is scoliosis just cannot really be fixed with bracing or surgical rods. It’s just too complex, the body has to be the one to correct that. And that…that blew my mind. That was the gist. I’ve heard that Boeing can help with scoliosis, but I accidentally we accidentally fixed it. And it was the coolest thing. Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  22:35

So accidentally, because she didn’t bother telling you?

Amber McPhail  22:38

She didn’t tell me because her chief concern was so severe. That’s all she wanted to focus on.

Manon Bolliger  22:44

And then if you’re treatment protocol anyways, you would just do where the problem is first, right? It just comes to show how, you know the body is gonna do what it has to do. Maybe the acute in that sense was though, it seemed to semi chronic for at least reoccurring. But you know, the body’s going to do the holistic thing anyways, or whatever they say. And that’s also why it may have taken eight treatments.

Amber McPhail  23:18

Yeah, definitely. And it was the oh, sorry.

Manon Bolliger  23:22

That makes total sense. Yeah.

Amber McPhail  23:24

There’s often like a lot of deep emotional, traumatic beliefs, things that are like stored. And I saw that come up big time with a woman who was just under 30. And she had terrible sciatica could not have everything was standing could barely drive, a standing desk, you know, to counter it. And we were addressing it, I think it was a third session. And during one of the moves that I did with Bowen, a traumatic event from childhood that came up right in front of her face, and she tried, she told me, she tried to suppress it, but she couldn’t, this person’s face was in front of her face, and she was freaked out. Anyway, she knew what had like where this came from in childhood and then afterwards, she cried and cried and cried and cried. And after that, no sciatica completely gone. So that was a woah, like again, that can be a little bit difficult can be a little bit uncomfortable to really honor and experience what is stored for it to then be released and then the body doesn’t have to adapt to that anymore.

Manon Bolliger  24:32

Yeah, but and, you know, it really makes the point you know, that when I made you know, all the changes in the curriculum, for Bowen college, you know, the importance of preparing also the practitioner to be able to, like, allow for the healing space, you know. To allow for it to even create it in because healing is so much more profound if you as a practitioner have gone through your own journey, you know. Yeah, it’s not surprising you’re getting these great results.

Amber McPhail  25:11

It’s just the coolest thing for sure. And even things from like rashes, like, after a treatment I gave a woman and then it lifted like a layer of suppression and her rash flared up really bad right after the treatment on her arms. So then I was like, Okay, coming out, just do a quick like, I cleared the shoulder, the elbow, and the rash went away, like within seconds. And I’m just wow its to good to be true. This is so crazy. Gets me every time. Yeah. Every time. Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  25:47

How do you see homeopathy? How are you seeing how you’re going to work with that? You know, how to integrate that or?

Amber McPhail  25:58

It’s a good question. So homeopathy is an absolute art form in itself. And I am very humbled by it all the time. And I’m treading carefully with it because it also has such a bad rap. And I am almost a little bit protective of it, because it helped me so much in my journey. But I guess I’ve been, I had been using Bowen and homeopathy together. If it feels like significant enough, and I’m not quite sure how to explain that. Sometimes I’ll find, I’ll say, Oh, I know that this is your remedy. But I’m not going to give it to you. Because I don’t think you necessarily suffering enough in these ways. And Bowen itself can handle the job. But if it is like a really, for example, a client had really terrible sight, but also very terrible vertigo. And in that instance, the remedy I found, I gave, and then popped them on the table for Bowen. And then the next day vertigo gone completely didn’t come back again. But sciatica is still working through a few sessions with Bowen. So yeah, I’m learning a lot with these two, I’m playing around. And if there’s a big mental health component, like terrible anxiety, or whatever, as well, often I’ll give the remedy too but yeah, I don’t know, I’ve had advice from you. In the past with it. I’ve had advice from other people. And at the end of the day, if you use both, and it’s appropriate, you can absolutely change someone’s experience completely. And it’s just the coolest thing. And it takes months for homeopathy to fully work as well. So I’m also learning less is more, less is more, I have to sit back and just wait a lot. So yeah, so there’s…but Bowen, you can do it every week. And it’s just the coolest thing.

Manon Bolliger  27:46

Well, I found it the most, the most beautiful mix, you know, is, you know, I was grateful to have Bowen, because I could see more people and get results and keep my belief in myself that, you know, I can actually make a difference, because people respond to that so quickly. Whereas homeopathy, you know, it’s like, 17 hours to find a remedy. It’s the wrong remedy. It’s like, it has no impact. You know, so it’s very discouraging. And they took me years, you know, maybe eight to 10 years, to really feel like I’m starting to understand homeopathy. You know, I would say to master it might be 15-20 years, you know, like. It’s a really in depth, but beautiful therapy, you know, and then the dance between the two, you know, it’s, yeah, I like to know, what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. And what I’m following, you know, so I kind of separate them. But there are times where they make sense together. And, you know, and I think this is all our learning curve, right. There is no absolute way. For you know, it’s it’s very individualized, you know, so it’ll be interesting to talk in 10 years and find out how you’re doing.

Amber McPhail  29:23

Definitely, because even as you’re talking I realize there are some instances like with homeopathy, if someone has gone through a big head injury or spine injury, often they can shift into a remedy that is yeah a state because of that and quite often then, either I will do Bowen for a while, clear up blockages, you know, get muscles and things facia working really well. Give them the remedy and things just flow so beautifully because you’ve cleared all the stored stuff from the body and then you push the vital force to fully overcome, you know the issues. So that seems to be like a really awesome way of using it. And yeah, and one client, she’s very sensitive. I found her remedy. But then, in my learning, I repeated it too many times. And she had like a worsening, I gave her Bowen, cleared up all this suppress stored stuff. Then when the time was right and gave her the remedy again, and she said overnight, she felt like she became the person she always wanted to be. There was not this sense of doom anymore. She just felt completely amazing. So the way that they interact with each other is there’s so much to learn. It’s just the coolest thing. It’s so exciting. Yeah. Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  30:42

You know Bowen can help detox and clear things. It’s great.

Amber McPhail  30:49

It can definitely detox and clear things. I’ve seen that like crazy. Yeah, it’s the coolest.

Manon Bolliger  30:55

Well Amber our time is up. So any last statement you want to make of either encouragement to people who need help, or to people wanting to learn? All of that’s possible.

Amber McPhail  31:11

Yeah, I guess. One of the biggest, coolest things I’ve found through this therapy that I’ve been learning is that people are meant to feel everything. I know it sucks to suffer and to feel pain and to feel this and that. But at the end of the day, that’s what we meant to do. As humans, we’re meant to experience things fully, so that we do not store it in our physiology for it to then fester and brew and come out worse later on. And it’s hard because modern Western society doesn’t like to do things just to normalize it, instead of being

Manon Bolliger  31:48

Alright, well I’, going to leave it with those words. And thanks so much for your time.

Amber McPhail  31:52

Thank you. This is lovely.

Ending

Thank you for joining us at the Healers Cafe. If you haven’t already done so, please like, comment and subscribe with notifications on as I post a new podcast every Wednesday with tons of useful information and tips for natural healing that you won’t want to miss, go to DrManonBolliger.com/tips for more tips