This is an interview Omanisa did with Lisa in May 2015, as part of a series of practitioner interviews. Lisa Riemann is a spiritual chiropractor and healer in Campbelltown, NSW.
I’ve been out of touch with you for a while! Can you give me an update on what’s happening with your business practice?
I work from home. I brought the practice home when I was about 6 months pregnant. I had a very, very strong calling to work from home. I did so up until about 37 weeks but after having four months off, people started asking “When can we come and see you?!” It hadn’t been my intention to get back into practice after giving birth, but it just kind of happened of it’s own accord.
I always let people know what I think they should do in terms of when they should rebook, but most people just call me when they are ready. I take a really flexible approach to rebooking. They can come back as much or as little as they want and they know they can ring up that week and get an appointment at fairly short notice.
I haven’t been doing any advertising, so all of the work I’m doing now it based on word of mouth, which is the way I was practicing when I was in Darwin. I really love that model and I knew I could do it again.
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Tell me why you love word of mouth.
Because I don’t have to do too much explaining about what I do. People who come to me are getting information about who I am and what I do from someone they trust. This way, I don’t have to sell myself, which is good because I don’t enjoy being a salesperson.
The way I work is a lot different to a traditional chiropractic practice. I’ve moved right away from doing quick consultations which are the standard norm in our industry. Instead, I do half hour consults. This leaves room open for more conversation and allows for less rushing, which really suits my nature. I’m a slow person, so this gives me time to think things through and it allows for a far more organic, intuitive process. Allowing the client time to talk and share is healing in and of itself. I simply function as the facilitator, providing space for them to express and self-reflect.
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What do you love about working from home?
I don’t have to travel! I enjoy being able to flow back and forth from being a mum to being a chiropractor and I don’t have to wear a uniform. It’s great having my clients come to me. If people want a more clinical experience, there’s plenty of places they can go. My approach is more family friendly.
For people don’t don’t know much about what you do, can you tell them a little about your background and qualifications?
I can’t say being a chiropractor is something I chose to do; it chose me! It all happened kind of accidentally but when I sat in on the first chiropractic lecture I thought “This is it! This is what I’m meant to do for the rest of my life!” It’s such an integral, natural part of who I am that I couldn’t imagine my life without it. I have a Bachelor of Chiropractic Science and a Master of Chiropractic which I completed here in Sydney at Macquarie University and so I know all the traditional chiropractic techniques and definitely use these in my practice, but I’m also a Reiki practitioner, and I studied with you!
One of my dilemmas when I moved from Darwin to Sydney, was trying to work out where Chiropractic fit within the broader context of my metaphysical journey. Essentially, we are spiritual beings but we are spiritual beings in a physical body. So I work on the physical body and help it inhabit this physical realm with more comfort and grace. We all need physical therapy.
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Yes, I think sometimes spiritual people become a little fixated on the spiritual, on energy, and they forget to look after the basic mechanics of the vehicle that they are in. But it’s not just a vehicle is it? It’s still us. It’s our means of personal expression in this world.
That’s right! We know that we aren’t our body. It’s just a vessel. But it’s OUR vessel! Our body holds so much. It’s so protective of us. The length it goes to, to keep us working on a day-to-day basis is phenomenal! People say “Oh, I didn’t realise how much I used that part of me until it got sore!”
Generally people will come to me with a problem. And once we work through that, I let them know my door is always open, and if they feel anything out of balance, to come and see me sooner rather than later so that they don’t regress.
I explain to them “You are with your body every day. You know what’s going on. I can help you. But you are in charge of your body and what you do with it.” I do have some clients who come regularly but this is their choice, not something enforced by me as the practitioner.
This is always something I used to struggle with: taking too much responsibility for other people’s healing. In the last few years I have gotten to the point where I know what I do works, there’s no question about it, it’s just whether people want the healing or not.
I think you have a little bit more surrender and faith, because you have worked on the spiritual side of what you do as a practitioner.
Yes. And in that light too, I see myself as simply being a facilitator. It’s not me doing the healing. The body is a self-healing and self-regulating organism. I really am just the connection between the client’s body and their conscious awareness. I help people’s body’s talk to them a little bit more, so they can understand what’s going on in their body.
I allow myself to be intuitively guided as I work and clients are often surprised by what I find. “I didn’t know I was sore there!”, they will say. I love teaching them about how their body works, and how complex the body is. People often don’t realise that pain in one area doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s where the problem is. Everything is connected and problems in one area can be due to compensation occurring or due to imbalances in another area. Every treatment is a treatment of the entire body as a whole.
I think some people want their body to feel perfect 100% of the time and that they should never feel anything. These expectations are unrealistic. People under-estimate what they come into contact with on a daily basis, how much work their body does and how much stress they put themselves under. Even negative thoughts or getting too caught up in your own head can have an impact. We are so used to a faster pace of life and things happening instantly that we forget that we are nature in essence, and nature is slow. Trees don’t grow overnight. Nature has a slow rhythm and so does our body.
I’m an empath, so I often feel for the client. Unless people are quite switched on, they often don’t feel the blockages in their body and aura. As I’m working, I might physically get a jolt, or I feel vibrational shift. I might feel a blockage release from the client out through me but if spirit wants to bring something through I feel a vibration come through me into the client. When I feel a client’s body responding, releasing and working properly again, it makes me feel good! My core value is freedom, so when I feel this freedom in others it makes my heart sing.
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Do you have a vision for the future of your business?
Most of my clients don’t know how spiritual I am. They aren’t aware yet of that side of me, but I’m feeling as though I really need to be getting this part of me out there a little more.
In the future, when my children are at school, I would like to work more with mothers. Perhaps talking with mothers groups, and helping them trust themselves when it comes to their babies. I think that trusting yourself as well as your body is really important, and if mums can trust their babies, these babies will grow up trusting themselves.
My intuition became stronger when my son was born. I had to trust myself as a mother, over and over again, having the courage to do things my way in spite of all the opposing messages in the world around me about how to raise my child. And I absolutely loved the birth process; it gave me such a strong sense of being able to trust my body to guide me. I would love to help other women tap into this kind of space!
Lisa can be contacted on 0412 582 162 or at lisa.riemann@y7mail.com
