Do You Have an Alternative Healing Practice?
What I Discovered About How To Protect Yourself
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not meant to be legal advice and is for educational purposes only. Please learn what is appropriate for your own geographical area. This information is particularly directed to meridian methods practitioners, but it could be useful for anyone who is a professional “people-helper.”
This is the short version of a legal issue that has been at the center of my professional life for the last year. I want to share some of this story with you, because I think that more and more EFT and other alternative practitioners may be feeling the shadow of the law, as represented by state regulatory agencies, falling across them. I believe that it is important to take this seriously. Change how you talk about your practice so that this does not happen to you. I wish I had known all this a year ago.
What happened? Dancing with DORA…
Many of us who are EFT practitioners took Gary Craig’s rousing cry of “Try it on everything!” to heart, and we did try it on everything. This has resulted in training programs, DVDs, websites and marketing materials with language that suggests to some state licensing boards that we are doing the work of doctors and therapists without adequate professional training.
As you probably know, I am an EFT practitioner, and I frame my work as helping people with a highly sensitive, spiritual temperament to discover and embody ways of expressing themselves that make their hearts sing.
In April of 2010 I was notified that an anonymous grievance for practicing psychotherapy without a license had been filed against me with Colorado’s Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA).
I responded to them that I was a Spiritual Life Path Coach (a profession unregulated by the state laws). However, the State handed me a Cease and Desist order, the harshest penalty available, and an extremely unusual punishment, especially as the first response. It is routine to follow up a grievance with several levels of warning and discussion. Issuing a C and D immediately is rare.
