People want put things in terms of Eastern versus Western or the dreaded ‘New Age’ medicine. It’s really just about being in tune with your body and the fact that what you’re feeling is tied to both the physical and the emotional.”

Elizabeth McGonagle

ROBERTSDALE — Elizabeth McGonagle has always had somewhat of a sixth sense when it comes to reading people’s emotions.

Through her work as an occupational therapist, McGonagle said, she often saw ties between physical pain and emotional burdens.

“We all know people who suffer from physical conditions that are exacerbated by stress,” she said. “That has become almost a normal comment from doctors. But, what is the doctor really saying? They are saying that our emotional and mental and spiritual issues affect us physically. I think this was common knowledge at one time, but somehow, as a culture, we have lost that knowledge.”

In fact, there isn’t a lot of education in our Western medicine system to teach practitioners how to adequately recognize and address those correlations between the physical and the emotional, she said

“Right now, we have doctors addressing physical problems and psychologists addressing emotional problems and very few people in between addressing the fact that they are interconnected,” said McGonagle.

But don’t call it “holistic” medicine.

“Holistic is a terrible, cheesy word,” McGonagle said. “People want to put things in terms of Eastern versus Western or the dreaded ‘New Age’ medicine. In reality, it’s really just about healing and that means being in tune with your body and the fact that what you’re physically experiencing is tied to both the physical and the emotional.”

Just like stress being able to worsen a physical condition, a healthy attitude can improve one.

“I’m not talking about some Pollyannaish notion of saying ‘everything is fine’ no matter how you are feeling,” she said. “I’m talking about taking a healthy and honest approach towards what else in your life might need healing – on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level.”

An Eastern Shore native and graduate of Fairhope High School, McGonagle earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Alabama and a master’s degree in occupational therapy from San Jose State University in California. But she said they never taught her these things in school.

So, five years ago, after working for nearly 15 years in the healthcare business, McGonagle and childhood friend, Greg Banks, decided to start their own business. She became a life coach, a certified Reiki practitioner, and a Certified Personal Trainer. One year ago, they opened the Genesis Coaching and Fitness Center on Highway 59 (Chicago Street), which shares space with The Hub Design & Printshop, next to Campbell Hardware in Robertsdale.

McGonagle said that once she left the constraints of the healthcare system, it allowed her to expand the services she could offer to people to help them find their own way to better health. Reiki was definitely a part of that. According to reiki.org, Reiki is a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing.

It really wasn’t until she began to incorporate this technique into her practice that she began to understand which parts of the physical body were tied to which emotional, mental and spiritual issues.

“I was working with a woman in her 30s that was suffering from chronic migraines,” McGonagle said. “While working with her, I recognized a symptom that tied her migraines to an inability on her part to express anger. When I asked her if this was an issue for her, she confirmed that, like many well-reared Southern women, expressing anger was not something she was comfortable with and reported that she usually just bottled it up instead.”

McGonagle encouraged the woman to pray and meditate on healthier ways that she could give voice to her feelings.

“Within 30 minutes, her migraine was gone,” McGonagle said. “That was a recovery time about two days shorter than usual for her. Since then, she still gets migraines on occasion, but now it is a trigger for her to look at what area of her life she might need to pay attention to. In other words, she is looking at the migraine as a red flag – a way for her body to communicate with her about what needs her attention.”

McGonagle said she would never suggest throwing out Western medicine. But she does hope that a day is coming when doctors and nurses and rehab therapists will receive additional and advanced training in some of these other effective modalities. In the meantime, we can help ourselves.

“It’s really about being in tune with messages that your body is trying to send you,” she said. “Oftentimes our body knows what we need and, in many cases, can heal itself. If we can just open up and listen to what our body is telling us, the cure might be right there beneath the surface.”