January 12, 2025 • 35 mins
Transform your perspective on healing with Dr. Edward, who takes us on a remarkable journey from a cattle property in North Queensland to becoming a trailblazer in holistic veterinary medicine. Discover how his personal battles with chronic fatigue syndrome and Lyme disease inspired the creation of the Whole Energy Body Balance method—an innovative approach to therapeutic touch and energy healing. Dr. Edward reveals how unlocking healing gifts within ourselves can help both animals and humans break free from pain and societal constraints to reach their fullest potential. Hear about his early veterinary experiences and the unique techniques he developed for releasing pain in animals, all rooted in his fervent passion for therapeutic touch.
Dr. Edward shares his personal evolution, driven by an insatiable curiosity about life and the interconnectedness of all beings. His candid reflections on shifting from conservatism to progressivism offer a window into the mindset that fuels his mission to heal and nurture growth. Learn about his transformative encounters with practices like qigong and shamanism, and how they bolstered his commitment to physical fitness and wellness. Through stories of past relationships that catalyzed his journey toward self-awareness, Dr. Edward offers insights into exploring life's possibilities and fostering a profound connection with nature. Join us as we explore how his experiences and insights can lead to a healthier, more harmonious world.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello and welcome to the Whole Energy Body Balance
podcast.
I am Dr Edward, the healing vet, and I am devoted to creating
health, happiness, vitality andharmony in my life and
supporting that in the lives ofthe animals that I care for as a
veterinarian and in the humansthat I work with as a healer,
(00:24):
and also in our global communityof students who are learning
how to use therapeutic touch,intuitive perception and energy
healing to make their world abetter place, to make their
animal's world a better placeand to make the whole world a
better place, because I firmlybelieve that the more that we
(00:44):
become aware of who we are andthe more that we empower
ourselves to awaken our healinggifts, and I believe that every
human has powerful healing giftsthat are waiting to be unlocked
inside their consciousness,inside their being.
So today this is a kind of areboot of the podcast, which is
(01:09):
we're moving into the renamingit the whole energy body balance
podcast.
The whole energy body balancemethod is a modality that I've
created as a result of my ownhealing journey.
I had chronic fatigue syndromeand Lyme for 20 years, so I've
had a long experience of chronicillness and pain and stiffness
(01:32):
and fatigue and a whole lot ofother things.
But it's also been a responseto wanting to find the most
natural ways to help animals bewell, healthy, vital and live
long and happy lives, andbecause I've done a lot of
healing work myself as a humanbeing, working with humans as a
(01:56):
healer is also a large part ofmy journey.
And helping humans unlock,unlock, get away from um
whatever is constricting theirfreedom to be who they are and
that can be trauma, it can befamily patterns, it can be
societal patterns, it can bekarmic patterns, it can be all
sorts of things that get in theway of humans being able to
(02:22):
express their full potential,their, their beauty, their love
and bring their energy ofcreation into the world.
So this is my passion, isreally about consciousness.
(02:43):
It's about waking up more andmore to be more able to see and
sense and feel and perceive thephysical and non-physical
realities of the world that welive in.
And the more that I do that,the more I find I can help
animals and the more I find Ican help people and the more I
teach people how to do that, themore I see them grow and
transform and them and theiranimals get happier, healthier,
(03:06):
more vital and more able to livea full, beautiful life.
So that's me.
I'm, in addition to being aholistic veterinarian and if you
ever want a holistic veterinaryconsultation you can hit me up
and I work with people with Zoom, all over the world.
That's part of how I express mypassion.
Like I said, I'm a body worker.
I'm fascinated with therapeutictouch.
(03:28):
I'm fascinated with the powertherapeutic touch has to unlock
and release pain, tension,anxiety and trauma out of not
only the physical systems andstructures of the bodies of the
animals and humans that I workwith, but also throughout the
(03:50):
energetic systems, thepsycho-spiritual systems and in
combination with that.
I grew up in North Queenslandon a cattle property which was
both beautiful and brutal inequal measures and lots of
different ways.
It was a very beautiful way togrow up, but there was a lot of
violence towards animals thatwas just accepted as the way
things were done, which shapedme in a really profound way, and
(04:13):
a lot of what I do has been ahealing response to move away
from that kind of power overusing force and fear and pain to
make animals do what humanswant them to do.
I'm very, very interested inexploring relationship building,
deepening and creating healthy,balanced relationships with my
(04:39):
animals, with my beloveds, withmy clients and their animals and
with all the living beings andliving energies of this amazing,
amazing earth, this, what Iconsider to be the biggest
living being of them all that welive on, that gives us
everything that we have.
Basically everything that wehave comes from from mother
(04:59):
earth.
So just a little bit of my lifestory.
Like I said, I grew up on acattle property.
Um, quite early on I decidedthat I wanted to be a vet, went
off to university, graduatedfrom the university of
queensland in 1995, then wentout into practice, had a
terrible first job in this mixedpractice, practice with large
(05:21):
animals and small animals.
Then, about 18 months after Igraduated, I was doing a
temporary job and met Dr TomAhern, who is a very innovative
fellow who'd worked out methodsof releasing pain and tension
and restriction in horses' necksand spines.
(05:43):
He would take horses that had afolium lameness that they could
not find a reason for withnerve blocks and x-rays and and
lameness examinations and hewould release the neck, get the
neck moving and the lamenesswould go away.
So I immediately thought wellabout dogs and cats.
(06:03):
They have necks and backs too.
They didn't get taught anythingabout dogs and cats.
They have necks and backs too.
I didn't get taught anythingabout neck and back pain at
university when I was startingto be a veterinarian.
So I started feeling into thedogs and cats' necks and backs
with more curiosity and veryquickly, once I started
realising that I should belooking for things, I found a
whole lot of pain and tensionand dysfunction that before I
(06:23):
knew about it and before I wentlooking for it, couldn't find it
.
Now, in those days, some 30years ago, there were no
modalities that I could go offand learn how to do therapeutic
touch, physical therapy withdogs and cats.
So I just started playingaround with touch, with pressure
, with movement, seeing if Icould unlock the pain and
tension in dogs and cats' necksand backs, and pretty quickly I
(06:45):
found that I could do the painand tension in dogs and cats'
necks and backs and prettyquickly I found that I could do
that and we saw lovely changesin the animals that I worked
with.
I've been doing that ever since.
In between there's been a wholelot of other things that have
gone on that have fed into myskills and expertise on that
level.
A few years later I went andworked in the UK United Kingdom
(07:06):
and then I became very, veryunwell with chronic fatigue
syndrome, had to come back toAustralia, couldn't work at all
for a few years.
I had a lot of pain and tension.
So I started exploring havingbody work, massage therapists,
physical touch therapists workwith me and I found that it
helped me a lot.
But I also found that energyhealing, which was something
(07:27):
that was so far out of my worldas a child in very conservative
community of far northqueensland country community,
that at first it was like thisis a bit weird, but it makes me
feel better.
So, uh, I really wanted tocontinue to explore that and I
went off and learned how to doit.
(07:49):
Interesting thing happened I'dbe practicing these energy
healing practices and every timeI practiced my little dog
within a few minutes would comeand run up the steps and sit on
my feet.
Wow, this is curious.
It must be a coincidence, wasmy first thought.
But after about 10 or 15 or 20times of really consistently her
(08:09):
running up and sitting on myfeet, and she wouldn't
necessarily run up and sit on myfeet when I was writing or
doing other things at that samedesk, sitting in the same
position but doing differentthings that had the same kind of
sounds associated with them.
So I realised that littleTicker, my lovely little snappy
dog, could feel what I was doingwhen I was practising energy
healing and she liked it and shewanted to be near it.
(08:31):
So I then went on a quiteextensive journey of learning
energy healing, found thatanimals responded well,
integrated into my practice,spent about three years in
Townsville in an intuitivecircle, gathering together every
week and practising andlearning like an intuitive
apprenticeship, so to speak.
Then fast forward on about fiveyears from there and I started
(08:58):
my own vet practice.
That's where I really got intothe more holistic side of things
, because I had freedom to dowhat I want.
You would maybe not besurprised to hear that most of
the vet practices I worked infrowned upon this alternative,
complementary, weirdo, woo-wookind of stuff that Dr Edward was
into, so I didn't really havethe freedom to explore that.
(09:18):
Then over the next kind of 15years or so in practice I
developed the whole energy bodybalance method through working
with tens of thousands ofanimals hands-on.
I've got a little cheat sheethere, because whole energy body
balance is the theme of thispodcast and it goes far beyond
(09:40):
the modality.
So I want to go through each ofthe words in turn and dig into a
little bit of what the meaningof them is.
So whole is a thing that iscomplete in itself.
And if we look at the deepermeaning, the etymology, the
meaning that this word hasevolved, safe, healthy and sound
(10:03):
.
So for me, wholeness issomething that we both have as a
condition of being a livingbeing, but it's also something
that we need to actively seek,create and maintain, because all
of us living beings areimpacted by all sorts of
(10:23):
influences, traumas, thecircumstances and situations and
pressures of social patternsand all that kind of thing that
we grow up with.
So we have this kind ofincipient wholeness or potential
wholeness, but I believe thatit takes a significant amount of
intention and work and will toreally grow into the wholeness
(10:47):
that we can express.
So whole, being whole,supporting wholeness, seeking
wholeness is one of the thingsthat I'm very, very passionate
about.
Then we come to energy, which isthe power and ability to be
active and vital, the ability todo work.
The older meaning is force ofexpression, which I think is
(11:09):
interesting.
So energy is the force thatanimates life.
You know, we take in energy inthe form of oxygen when we
breathe in.
We take in energy in the formof calories when we eat food,
and so same for our animals.
You know plants a little bitdifferent.
They take in energy from thesun and they take in energy from
(11:32):
carbon dioxide in the airrather than oxygen.
But this there is energy thatis moving.
I think another thing aboutenergy that is true for me is
that energy needs to be movingto be healthy.
Anywhere that energy stagnates,you tend to get problems in the
(11:54):
physical body and in the energysystems and in the emotional
systems of the beings that we'retalking about.
So energy you need to haveenough energy to do the work
within the being and theconsciousness and the
physicality to keep the beinghealthy and whole and vital and
able to function and move aroundand learn and grow and evolve.
(12:15):
But you also need to havehealthy movement of energy
throughout all of the systems ofthe animal, of the organism,
because I see us as an animaltoo.
I think we're just a little bitkind of more able to make
things than some other animals,but I really think humans are an
animal organism at the core.
(12:36):
Then we have body, which is theliving form of a being, the
organism, the whole of theorganism, and the older meaning
I think is quite interesting istrunk of man or beast.
Now, I don't quite know whatthat means, but I think it's
kind of cool.
So the body, this body isphysical, that we live in, but
there is a very strong energeticcomponent to the body.
(12:57):
This body is physical, that welive in, but there is a very
strong energetic component tothe body.
You could almost think of us ashaving a physical body and an
energetic body.
And there are complex, dynamicfields of energy and information
that surround the physicalbeing of all living creatures,
including humans, that to atleast some extent can be
measured by scientificinstruments that we have.
(13:18):
There's a whole lot of moresubtle energies that science
hasn't managed to get thecapacity to measure just yet,
but the intuitive perceptualcapacity of the human certainly
can gather information aboutthem.
So for instance, if you want tolook at it from a scientific
perspective, we have anelectromagnetic field that
extends well beyond the boundsof our physical body.
(13:39):
That's driven mainly by theelectrical activity of the heart
, but it's also driven by all ofthe electrical activity of the
nervous system and, to someextent, the electrical impulses
created in the fascial systems.
With every movement there isalso electric impulses created
through the connective tissueand fascia in the body.
(14:00):
And balance, steadiness,stability, equilibrium and what
I like to call dynamic harmonyand the older meaning of balance
is physical equipoise Isn'tequipoise a beautiful word
General harmony between parts,or to bring or keep in
(14:21):
equilibrium.
So the intention of the WholeEnergy Body Balance podcast is
to support all of these themesthat are inherent in the name
through sharing information withsome solo episodes.
(14:42):
You know, sometimes I'll havesomething that I just want to
talk about with me so that I canexplore in depth where I'm at
and how I'm thinking or what'sgoing on with life and my
practices, and I intend to havea whole lot of special guests
where we're going to explore andthe theme of this podcast is
(15:04):
exploring, you know that's whatI really want to get into is
exploring lots of differentthreads and flavors of different
practices, of different ideas,with the common kind of
underpinning foundation that allof these things that we're
going to be exploring in thispodcast are designed to empower
(15:26):
you, the listener, to make apositive impact and a positive
difference in the lives of youranimals and in the life of your
beautiful self, which I think iskind of fun, and I really enjoy
exploring ideas and I reallyenjoy having interesting
conversations.
It's not going to be tooheavily scripted, this podcast.
(15:49):
It's going to be a little bitmore freeform, with room to jive
and dance and improvise and,you know, explore the path less
travelled, in a way, inconversation with people who
(16:11):
have a deep-lived experience ofone kind or another, a
deep-lived experience of onekind or another which they've
had, experiences where they'reworking to bring greater harmony
, greater balance, greaterwholeness, to increase the
capacity of beings to haveenergy and that sort of thing.
(16:34):
Now, in this podcast, we'regoing to have a question that we
ask the speakers and I thought,even though I've introduced
myself a bit, I thought that Imight go through my response to
this question, which is who areyou, why do you do what you do
and how did you arrive at thispoint in your life?
(16:56):
So who am I?
I'm Edward.
I am this strange consciousnessthat's inhabiting this earth
suit, this vessel that myconsciousness is living in and
moving in and growing in andevolving in, in and moving in
(17:24):
and growing in and evolving in.
I am fascinated with growth,I'm fascinated with evolution,
I'm fascinated with humanpotential and the potential to
become more.
I think that our humanpotential is so far beyond what
most people can imagine thatit's almost terrifying, to be
honest.
So I am a human in this body,having this experience of life
(17:49):
on this planet.
I have a deep love for life.
I have a deep love for the lifethat inhabits this planet.
I have a deep love for theintelligence of life.
You know life, living beings,each different kind of living
being, whether it be a plant oran insect, or an animal or a
(18:13):
whole planet.
I believe that everything inthe universe is a living energy,
a consciousness, anintelligence.
And who am I in the middle ofthis?
I am a tiny little speck ofcuriosity and I am insatiably
curious about everything.
(18:35):
Really.
I'm curious about humans.
I'm curious about how toconnect more deeply.
I'm curious about how to lovemore profoundly.
I'm curious about how to be inright relationship with all
living energies and all livingbeings.
Now, why do I do what I do?
I do what I do because, youknow, I don't even know if I
(19:02):
know why I do what I do, but Iknow that my why is that I want
to make a difference, that Iwant to make a difference for
myself, to make myself strongerand clearer and more powerful,
so that I can be of greaterservice.
I think that's probably theanswer is, why do I do what I do
?
I want be of service to myself,to my beloveds, to my family,
(19:27):
to my community, to my um, mystudents who come and work with
me, my clients and their animals, and I really want to make a
difference in the world.
I want to help, help everyonethat I touch at least see the
potential for growth and healing, even if they can't necessarily
(19:50):
take that step, to have somekind of awareness that there's
possibility for healing, forgreater presence, for greater
vitality, for greater awareness.
And one of my sayings that Isay a lot is that awareness is
the key to freedom.
So I suppose one of the thingsI do this this why is for one to
(20:12):
gain greater awareness ofmyself, but so to share greater
awareness with, with everyonethat I can, or everyone that's
interested.
At least I'm not going I'm nothere to force anything on
anybody but that is certainly mypassion.
And how did I arrive at thispoint in my life?
Oh well, that's a long story.
(20:37):
I think having a long,challenging, debilitating,
chronic illness has shaped meand how I think and move and act
in the world very profoundly.
It certainly moved me fromsomeone who was very
conservative politically tosomeone who's very progressive
politically.
If you get to a point where youcan't work, suddenly
(20:59):
progressive policies make awhole lot more sense than very
conservative policies because itbecomes very personal.
I also arrived at this point inmy life through being
determined and never reallygiving up, no matter how hard it
was, no matter how painful itwas.
I've got this Capricorniandetermination that I will
(21:25):
prevail one way or another andthat I will continue to to keep
applying my will.
You know, um, five or six yearsago I was very weak, I was very
unwell, I had awful pain,fatigue.
I was functioning at maybe 5060 percent at best and I went
(21:48):
off and and worked with someonewho did qigong and shamanism and
stuff like that.
Now it turns out that he was anarcissistic, abusive, culty
motherfucker excuse my french Ihave.
I do swear you will get the oddnaughty word on this podcast.
Now I didn't know that at thistime and even though it was
traumatic and injurious to me toparticipate and and interact
(22:11):
with this fellow.
Overall, um, I learned somereally good lessons from it.
But I couldn't even stand in aqigong stance for more than
about three minutes without mylegs being in extreme pain and
feeling like I was going tocollapse.
I could not do a single chin-up.
I could do maybe three or fourpush-ups, and that was a
struggle.
And one of the good things thatcame out of that interaction
(22:35):
with this guy was that heinspired me to start actually
exercising and I've beenexercising five mornings a week
ever since quite vigorously, andnow I can do 30, 40 push-ups
and 10 or 12 chin-ups and awhole lot of other things, and I
can stand in a chicken stancefor probably hours without my
(22:57):
legs complaining.
So I think that's a big part ofhow I arrived back into
wellness was deciding that I wasgoing to actually do the things
I needed to do to get strongand well again and then followed
through with it.
I also have had two marriageswith narcissistically abusive
women.
Bless them and the trauma andeverything that shaped them.
(23:20):
I do have compassion for themas well, but that at the end of
my second marriage left me in ain a very broken state, which,
um, also was very, very helpfulbecause it it triggered me into
actively seeking help andsupport for the first time in my
life and that's when I startedto really really get well, um,
(23:44):
these days I've got the mostbeautiful beloved you can
imagine who's kind and caringand wonderful.
But I had to experience myfamily patterns in an intensely
uncomfortable way to get to thepoint where I could see them and
and motivate myself to actuallychange enough to free myself
from them, enough to free myselffrom them.
(24:10):
So that is who I am, why I dowhat I do and how I arrived at
this point in my life is, Ithink, again, curiosity,
curiosity and a devotion tocaring and beauty and wanting to
make a difference in the world.
Now, in these conversationswe're just going to explore and
exploring.
You know, I think, exploringpossibility and exploring, um,
(24:37):
where there's lack of freedom inyour life, and exploring out in
nature and going for walks.
But being having this kind ofmindset that exploration has
value for me has been a bigshaper of how I live life and
how I've grown and how I'vecreated the modality and created
(24:59):
my business and gone on torecord an album as Tree Brother,
because I'm also a musician andartist.
I love growing food, I lovecooking.
You know I do a lot of thingsand I love doing a lot of things
.
I'm someone who's reallypassionate about many different
things and love to do manydifferent things.
But exploration being anexplorer an internal explorer
(25:22):
too, you know I think there's atremendous value in exploring
ourselves, in getting to knowourselves.
Somatic awareness is a very,very large part of my ongoing
practices.
A simple act of self-witnessing, by continually bringing all
awareness into and throughoutthe body and simply being
(25:44):
present with everything that isbeing experienced, without
judgment, without stories,without trying to fix or change
anything, is probably the corespiritual and life practice that
I engage in, and I engage inthat as many times a day as I
can remember to do it, which isquite a number most days and not
(26:05):
so many other days, you know.
But this is a really curiouskind of self-exploration because
I've found that the more I knowme, the more intimately I
explore the sensations, theactivities of consciousness, the
unfoldings of awareness withinmy consciousness, within this
(26:30):
body, within this life.
The better I know myself, themore I can meet others and the
more I can know others in a veryintimate sense within my
consciousness.
It's a really curious thing, um, the more you know yourself,
the more you know everything.
No, I'm not going to say thatthat's necessarily easy or
(26:52):
comfortable, because it's notnecessarily easy or comfortable.
In fact, it can be verychallenging and very
uncomfortable, and there is a aneed to face and embrace and
assimilate and integrate all theshadows of myself, which is an
ongoing practice as well,because there's no end to that,
though it's not something that Iwant to give too much focus to
(27:13):
in my life, because I want tohave a whole lot of joy and fun
and shadow work.
You you can get a little bitstuck and mired in the mud of
that.
So whole energy, body balance isthe name and the theme of this
podcast.
It's a beautiful thing toconsider.
(27:36):
How can you support morewholeness in yourself, in your
life, in your animals, in yourbeloveds, in your family, in
your community, in the greaterworld?
How can you create and maintainenergy, higher levels and
(27:58):
higher vibrations of energy, sothat you have more energy
available for you to do the workof life, of life, of evolution,
of love, of spiritual practices?
How can you tend to thisbeautiful body that you live in,
this living form?
(28:20):
How can you nurture, nourish,strengthen, potentiate and and
make sure that your body is inthe peak state of capacity to
live life and to express yourcuriosity and your, your, your
beautiful exploration ofyourself and of the outside
(28:42):
world and of all that this lifeand this planet has to offer?
And how can you support,balance, ongoing, dynamic
harmony within yourself, withinyour animals, animals, within
your family, within yourcommunity and within the world
(29:02):
in in an empowering way?
And you know, another thing thatI'm really passionate about is
empowering people.
Rather than you know, I've gotabsolutely no interest in being
a guru or being put on apedestal or um kind of setting
things up so that people need meto be able to do the thing that
(29:25):
I'm teaching.
I want people to be able tofind their own way to express
their own selves in the mostbeautiful way that makes sense
to them, and I will doeverything I can to support that
.
That's how I roll, and you knowthere are challenges within
that.
There are challenges withinlife.
This planet at this time andhumanity at this time are
(29:49):
heartbreakingly challenging inso many ways, and that is
another thing that I find that Ihave difficulty with some days
Now.
Yesterday, I had a moment whereI thought, god damn these humans
.
They're just killing the planetand they won't stop.
And it could be so simple.
It's not for everybody, butthere's all these greedy people
(30:12):
who are obsessed with power,trying to take everything.
And you know, god damn it.
Why can't we just wake up andbecome emotionally and
spiritually mature as a speciesso that we do what is good for
everyone, rather than playingpower games and subjugation
games and power over anddominance and wars and raping
(30:35):
the planet?
I had a moment and then Ithought well, you know what?
It's a beautiful day, the sunis shining, the grass is green,
I can give my horse a scratch,give my dogs a pat, so I'm going
to have the best day that I canhere now.
I'm going to make as muchdifference as I can within
myself and within my world, andthat is another kind of thing
(30:58):
that I hope that this podcastwill help you be inspired to
uplift yourself in the face ofthe grief of loss of habitat, of
the grief of humanity'sviolence, of the grief of these
these times.
Um, now I I have done some,some learning and some practices
(31:21):
with, with shamans from thequechua, people from peru, the
very elder indigenous people andthey have no doom and gloom.
They are absolutely confidentthat humans are a good species
(31:43):
and that the planet loves humansand that if we work together to
wake up and to come into rightrelationship with all of the
living energies of the earth andthe other beings and ourselves,
that we will transcend whatseems to be impossible and we
will heal this planet and wewill evolve into something
(32:03):
spectacularly wonderful.
So I choose to participate inthat intention, in that kind of
mindset, because it helps melive this day in a meaningful
way and for me, living life in ameaningful way and for me,
living life in a meaningful wayis is really the most important
(32:23):
thing that I can do for myself,for my beloved, for my animals,
for my family, for my communityand for this planet.
So whole energy, body balance.
Another key thing is thatrelationship being in right
relationship with myself, withmy animals, with my beloveds,
(32:43):
with my family, with mycommunity and with all the
living energies of this amazingplanet that we live on is an
ongoing journey of discovery anda big priority in my life and
and um, we may talk about thatwith people, as we have guests
on the podcast.
So that's it for me today.
I just wanted to come in and doa little bit of an introductory
(33:05):
episode.
Let you get to know me a littlebit.
I'm dr edward, known as thehealing vet, also known as tree
brother in a musical sense.
Um, or ed, and here I am andhere are we.
So I would ask you to give yourpets, if you got them, a pat
from me.
Um, be as lovely to yourself asyou are to your animals and
(33:29):
just keep on doing what you canto make this day the most
beautiful day that you canpossibly enjoy.
Goodbye for now.
We'll see you in the nextepisode.
Hello and welcome to the Whole Energy Body Balance
podcast.
I am Dr Edward, the healing vet, and I am devoted to creating
health, happiness, vitality andharmony in my life and
supporting that in the lives ofthe animals that I care for as a
veterinarian and in the humansthat I work with as a healer,
(00:24):
and also in our global communityof students who are learning
how to use therapeutic touch,intuitive perception and energy
healing to make their world abetter place, to make their
animal's world a better placeand to make the whole world a
better place, because I firmlybelieve that the more that we
(00:44):
become aware of who we are andthe more that we empower
ourselves to awaken our healinggifts, and I believe that every
human has powerful healing giftsthat are waiting to be unlocked
inside their consciousness,inside their being.
So today this is a kind of areboot of the podcast, which is
(01:09):
we're moving into the renamingit the whole energy body balance
podcast.
The whole energy body balancemethod is a modality that I've
created as a result of my ownhealing journey.
I had chronic fatigue syndromeand Lyme for 20 years, so I've
had a long experience of chronicillness and pain and stiffness
(01:32):
and fatigue and a whole lot ofother things.
But it's also been a responseto wanting to find the most
natural ways to help animals bewell, healthy, vital and live
long and happy lives, andbecause I've done a lot of
healing work myself as a humanbeing, working with humans as a
(01:56):
healer is also a large part ofmy journey.
And helping humans unlock,unlock, get away from um
whatever is constricting theirfreedom to be who they are and
that can be trauma, it can befamily patterns, it can be
societal patterns, it can bekarmic patterns, it can be all
sorts of things that get in theway of humans being able to
(02:22):
express their full potential,their, their beauty, their love
and bring their energy ofcreation into the world.
So this is my passion, isreally about consciousness.
(02:43):
It's about waking up more andmore to be more able to see and
sense and feel and perceive thephysical and non-physical
realities of the world that welive in.
And the more that I do that,the more I find I can help
animals and the more I find Ican help people and the more I
teach people how to do that, themore I see them grow and
transform and them and theiranimals get happier, healthier,
(03:06):
more vital and more able to livea full, beautiful life.
So that's me.
I'm, in addition to being aholistic veterinarian and if you
ever want a holistic veterinaryconsultation you can hit me up
and I work with people with Zoom, all over the world.
That's part of how I express mypassion.
Like I said, I'm a body worker.
I'm fascinated with therapeutictouch.
(03:28):
I'm fascinated with the powertherapeutic touch has to unlock
and release pain, tension,anxiety and trauma out of not
only the physical systems andstructures of the bodies of the
animals and humans that I workwith, but also throughout the
(03:50):
energetic systems, thepsycho-spiritual systems and in
combination with that.
I grew up in North Queenslandon a cattle property which was
both beautiful and brutal inequal measures and lots of
different ways.
It was a very beautiful way togrow up, but there was a lot of
violence towards animals thatwas just accepted as the way
things were done, which shapedme in a really profound way, and
(04:13):
a lot of what I do has been ahealing response to move away
from that kind of power overusing force and fear and pain to
make animals do what humanswant them to do.
I'm very, very interested inexploring relationship building,
deepening and creating healthy,balanced relationships with my
(04:39):
animals, with my beloveds, withmy clients and their animals and
with all the living beings andliving energies of this amazing,
amazing earth, this, what Iconsider to be the biggest
living being of them all that welive on, that gives us
everything that we have.
Basically everything that wehave comes from from mother
(04:59):
earth.
So just a little bit of my lifestory.
Like I said, I grew up on acattle property.
Um, quite early on I decidedthat I wanted to be a vet, went
off to university, graduatedfrom the university of
queensland in 1995, then wentout into practice, had a
terrible first job in this mixedpractice, practice with large
(05:21):
animals and small animals.
Then, about 18 months after Igraduated, I was doing a
temporary job and met Dr TomAhern, who is a very innovative
fellow who'd worked out methodsof releasing pain and tension
and restriction in horses' necksand spines.
(05:43):
He would take horses that had afolium lameness that they could
not find a reason for withnerve blocks and x-rays and and
lameness examinations and hewould release the neck, get the
neck moving and the lamenesswould go away.
So I immediately thought wellabout dogs and cats.
(06:03):
They have necks and backs too.
They didn't get taught anythingabout dogs and cats.
They have necks and backs too.
I didn't get taught anythingabout neck and back pain at
university when I was startingto be a veterinarian.
So I started feeling into thedogs and cats' necks and backs
with more curiosity and veryquickly, once I started
realising that I should belooking for things, I found a
whole lot of pain and tensionand dysfunction that before I
(06:23):
knew about it and before I wentlooking for it, couldn't find it
.
Now, in those days, some 30years ago, there were no
modalities that I could go offand learn how to do therapeutic
touch, physical therapy withdogs and cats.
So I just started playingaround with touch, with pressure
, with movement, seeing if Icould unlock the pain and
tension in dogs and cats' necksand backs, and pretty quickly I
(06:45):
found that I could do the painand tension in dogs and cats'
necks and backs and prettyquickly I found that I could do
that and we saw lovely changesin the animals that I worked
with.
I've been doing that ever since.
In between there's been a wholelot of other things that have
gone on that have fed into myskills and expertise on that
level.
A few years later I went andworked in the UK United Kingdom
(07:06):
and then I became very, veryunwell with chronic fatigue
syndrome, had to come back toAustralia, couldn't work at all
for a few years.
I had a lot of pain and tension.
So I started exploring havingbody work, massage therapists,
physical touch therapists workwith me and I found that it
helped me a lot.
But I also found that energyhealing, which was something
(07:27):
that was so far out of my worldas a child in very conservative
community of far northqueensland country community,
that at first it was like thisis a bit weird, but it makes me
feel better.
So, uh, I really wanted tocontinue to explore that and I
went off and learned how to doit.
(07:49):
Interesting thing happened I'dbe practicing these energy
healing practices and every timeI practiced my little dog
within a few minutes would comeand run up the steps and sit on
my feet.
Wow, this is curious.
It must be a coincidence, wasmy first thought.
But after about 10 or 15 or 20times of really consistently her
(08:09):
running up and sitting on myfeet, and she wouldn't
necessarily run up and sit on myfeet when I was writing or
doing other things at that samedesk, sitting in the same
position but doing differentthings that had the same kind of
sounds associated with them.
So I realised that littleTicker, my lovely little snappy
dog, could feel what I was doingwhen I was practising energy
healing and she liked it and shewanted to be near it.
(08:31):
So I then went on a quiteextensive journey of learning
energy healing, found thatanimals responded well,
integrated into my practice,spent about three years in
Townsville in an intuitivecircle, gathering together every
week and practising andlearning like an intuitive
apprenticeship, so to speak.
Then fast forward on about fiveyears from there and I started
(08:58):
my own vet practice.
That's where I really got intothe more holistic side of things
, because I had freedom to dowhat I want.
You would maybe not besurprised to hear that most of
the vet practices I worked infrowned upon this alternative,
complementary, weirdo, woo-wookind of stuff that Dr Edward was
into, so I didn't really havethe freedom to explore that.
(09:18):
Then over the next kind of 15years or so in practice I
developed the whole energy bodybalance method through working
with tens of thousands ofanimals hands-on.
I've got a little cheat sheethere, because whole energy body
balance is the theme of thispodcast and it goes far beyond
(09:40):
the modality.
So I want to go through each ofthe words in turn and dig into a
little bit of what the meaningof them is.
So whole is a thing that iscomplete in itself.
And if we look at the deepermeaning, the etymology, the
meaning that this word hasevolved, safe, healthy and sound
(10:03):
.
So for me, wholeness issomething that we both have as a
condition of being a livingbeing, but it's also something
that we need to actively seek,create and maintain, because all
of us living beings areimpacted by all sorts of
(10:23):
influences, traumas, thecircumstances and situations and
pressures of social patternsand all that kind of thing that
we grow up with.
So we have this kind ofincipient wholeness or potential
wholeness, but I believe thatit takes a significant amount of
intention and work and will toreally grow into the wholeness
(10:47):
that we can express.
So whole, being whole,supporting wholeness, seeking
wholeness is one of the thingsthat I'm very, very passionate
about.
Then we come to energy, which isthe power and ability to be
active and vital, the ability todo work.
The older meaning is force ofexpression, which I think is
(11:09):
interesting.
So energy is the force thatanimates life.
You know, we take in energy inthe form of oxygen when we
breathe in.
We take in energy in the formof calories when we eat food,
and so same for our animals.
You know plants a little bitdifferent.
They take in energy from thesun and they take in energy from
(11:32):
carbon dioxide in the airrather than oxygen.
But this there is energy thatis moving.
I think another thing aboutenergy that is true for me is
that energy needs to be movingto be healthy.
Anywhere that energy stagnates,you tend to get problems in the
(11:54):
physical body and in the energysystems and in the emotional
systems of the beings that we'retalking about.
So energy you need to haveenough energy to do the work
within the being and theconsciousness and the
physicality to keep the beinghealthy and whole and vital and
able to function and move aroundand learn and grow and evolve.
(12:15):
But you also need to havehealthy movement of energy
throughout all of the systems ofthe animal, of the organism,
because I see us as an animaltoo.
I think we're just a little bitkind of more able to make
things than some other animals,but I really think humans are an
animal organism at the core.
(12:36):
Then we have body, which is theliving form of a being, the
organism, the whole of theorganism, and the older meaning
I think is quite interesting istrunk of man or beast.
Now, I don't quite know whatthat means, but I think it's
kind of cool.
So the body, this body isphysical, that we live in, but
there is a very strong energeticcomponent to the body.
(12:57):
This body is physical, that welive in, but there is a very
strong energetic component tothe body.
You could almost think of us ashaving a physical body and an
energetic body.
And there are complex, dynamicfields of energy and information
that surround the physicalbeing of all living creatures,
including humans, that to atleast some extent can be
measured by scientificinstruments that we have.
(13:18):
There's a whole lot of moresubtle energies that science
hasn't managed to get thecapacity to measure just yet,
but the intuitive perceptualcapacity of the human certainly
can gather information aboutthem.
So for instance, if you want tolook at it from a scientific
perspective, we have anelectromagnetic field that
extends well beyond the boundsof our physical body.
(13:39):
That's driven mainly by theelectrical activity of the heart
, but it's also driven by all ofthe electrical activity of the
nervous system and, to someextent, the electrical impulses
created in the fascial systems.
With every movement there isalso electric impulses created
through the connective tissueand fascia in the body.
(14:00):
And balance, steadiness,stability, equilibrium and what
I like to call dynamic harmonyand the older meaning of balance
is physical equipoise Isn'tequipoise a beautiful word
General harmony between parts,or to bring or keep in
(14:21):
equilibrium.
So the intention of the WholeEnergy Body Balance podcast is
to support all of these themesthat are inherent in the name
through sharing information withsome solo episodes.
(14:42):
You know, sometimes I'll havesomething that I just want to
talk about with me so that I canexplore in depth where I'm at
and how I'm thinking or what'sgoing on with life and my
practices, and I intend to havea whole lot of special guests
where we're going to explore andthe theme of this podcast is
(15:04):
exploring, you know that's whatI really want to get into is
exploring lots of differentthreads and flavors of different
practices, of different ideas,with the common kind of
underpinning foundation that allof these things that we're
going to be exploring in thispodcast are designed to empower
(15:26):
you, the listener, to make apositive impact and a positive
difference in the lives of youranimals and in the life of your
beautiful self, which I think iskind of fun, and I really enjoy
exploring ideas and I reallyenjoy having interesting
conversations.
It's not going to be tooheavily scripted, this podcast.
(15:49):
It's going to be a little bitmore freeform, with room to jive
and dance and improvise and,you know, explore the path less
travelled, in a way, inconversation with people who
(16:11):
have a deep-lived experience ofone kind or another, a
deep-lived experience of onekind or another which they've
had, experiences where they'reworking to bring greater harmony
, greater balance, greaterwholeness, to increase the
capacity of beings to haveenergy and that sort of thing.
(16:34):
Now, in this podcast, we'regoing to have a question that we
ask the speakers and I thought,even though I've introduced
myself a bit, I thought that Imight go through my response to
this question, which is who areyou, why do you do what you do
and how did you arrive at thispoint in your life?
(16:56):
So who am I?
I'm Edward.
I am this strange consciousnessthat's inhabiting this earth
suit, this vessel that myconsciousness is living in and
moving in and growing in andevolving in, in and moving in
(17:24):
and growing in and evolving in.
I am fascinated with growth,I'm fascinated with evolution,
I'm fascinated with humanpotential and the potential to
become more.
I think that our humanpotential is so far beyond what
most people can imagine thatit's almost terrifying, to be
honest.
So I am a human in this body,having this experience of life
(17:49):
on this planet.
I have a deep love for life.
I have a deep love for the lifethat inhabits this planet.
I have a deep love for theintelligence of life.
You know life, living beings,each different kind of living
being, whether it be a plant oran insect, or an animal or a
(18:13):
whole planet.
I believe that everything inthe universe is a living energy,
a consciousness, anintelligence.
And who am I in the middle ofthis?
I am a tiny little speck ofcuriosity and I am insatiably
curious about everything.
(18:35):
Really.
I'm curious about humans.
I'm curious about how toconnect more deeply.
I'm curious about how to lovemore profoundly.
I'm curious about how to be inright relationship with all
living energies and all livingbeings.
Now, why do I do what I do?
I do what I do because, youknow, I don't even know if I
(19:02):
know why I do what I do, but Iknow that my why is that I want
to make a difference, that Iwant to make a difference for
myself, to make myself strongerand clearer and more powerful,
so that I can be of greaterservice.
I think that's probably theanswer is, why do I do what I do
?
I want be of service to myself,to my beloveds, to my family,
(19:27):
to my community, to my um, mystudents who come and work with
me, my clients and their animals, and I really want to make a
difference in the world.
I want to help, help everyonethat I touch at least see the
potential for growth and healing, even if they can't necessarily
(19:50):
take that step, to have somekind of awareness that there's
possibility for healing, forgreater presence, for greater
vitality, for greater awareness.
And one of my sayings that Isay a lot is that awareness is
the key to freedom.
So I suppose one of the thingsI do this this why is for one to
(20:12):
gain greater awareness ofmyself, but so to share greater
awareness with, with everyonethat I can, or everyone that's
interested.
At least I'm not going I'm nothere to force anything on
anybody but that is certainly mypassion.
And how did I arrive at thispoint in my life?
Oh well, that's a long story.
(20:37):
I think having a long,challenging, debilitating,
chronic illness has shaped meand how I think and move and act
in the world very profoundly.
It certainly moved me fromsomeone who was very
conservative politically tosomeone who's very progressive
politically.
If you get to a point where youcan't work, suddenly
(20:59):
progressive policies make awhole lot more sense than very
conservative policies because itbecomes very personal.
I also arrived at this point inmy life through being
determined and never reallygiving up, no matter how hard it
was, no matter how painful itwas.
I've got this Capricorniandetermination that I will
(21:25):
prevail one way or another andthat I will continue to to keep
applying my will.
You know, um, five or six yearsago I was very weak, I was very
unwell, I had awful pain,fatigue.
I was functioning at maybe 5060 percent at best and I went
(21:48):
off and and worked with someonewho did qigong and shamanism and
stuff like that.
Now it turns out that he was anarcissistic, abusive, culty
motherfucker excuse my french Ihave.
I do swear you will get the oddnaughty word on this podcast.
Now I didn't know that at thistime and even though it was
traumatic and injurious to me toparticipate and and interact
(22:11):
with this fellow.
Overall, um, I learned somereally good lessons from it.
But I couldn't even stand in aqigong stance for more than
about three minutes without mylegs being in extreme pain and
feeling like I was going tocollapse.
I could not do a single chin-up.
I could do maybe three or fourpush-ups, and that was a
struggle.
And one of the good things thatcame out of that interaction
(22:35):
with this guy was that heinspired me to start actually
exercising and I've beenexercising five mornings a week
ever since quite vigorously, andnow I can do 30, 40 push-ups
and 10 or 12 chin-ups and awhole lot of other things, and I
can stand in a chicken stancefor probably hours without my
(22:57):
legs complaining.
So I think that's a big part ofhow I arrived back into
wellness was deciding that I wasgoing to actually do the things
I needed to do to get strongand well again and then followed
through with it.
I also have had two marriageswith narcissistically abusive
women.
Bless them and the trauma andeverything that shaped them.
(23:20):
I do have compassion for themas well, but that at the end of
my second marriage left me in ain a very broken state, which,
um, also was very, very helpfulbecause it it triggered me into
actively seeking help andsupport for the first time in my
life and that's when I startedto really really get well, um,
(23:44):
these days I've got the mostbeautiful beloved you can
imagine who's kind and caringand wonderful.
But I had to experience myfamily patterns in an intensely
uncomfortable way to get to thepoint where I could see them and
and motivate myself to actuallychange enough to free myself
from them, enough to free myselffrom them.
(24:10):
So that is who I am, why I dowhat I do and how I arrived at
this point in my life is, Ithink, again, curiosity,
curiosity and a devotion tocaring and beauty and wanting to
make a difference in the world.
Now, in these conversationswe're just going to explore and
exploring.
You know, I think, exploringpossibility and exploring, um,
(24:37):
where there's lack of freedom inyour life, and exploring out in
nature and going for walks.
But being having this kind ofmindset that exploration has
value for me has been a bigshaper of how I live life and
how I've grown and how I'vecreated the modality and created
(24:59):
my business and gone on torecord an album as Tree Brother,
because I'm also a musician andartist.
I love growing food, I lovecooking.
You know I do a lot of thingsand I love doing a lot of things
.
I'm someone who's reallypassionate about many different
things and love to do manydifferent things.
But exploration being anexplorer an internal explorer
(25:22):
too, you know I think there's atremendous value in exploring
ourselves, in getting to knowourselves.
Somatic awareness is a very,very large part of my ongoing
practices.
A simple act of self-witnessing, by continually bringing all
awareness into and throughoutthe body and simply being
(25:44):
present with everything that isbeing experienced, without
judgment, without stories,without trying to fix or change
anything, is probably the corespiritual and life practice that
I engage in, and I engage inthat as many times a day as I
can remember to do it, which isquite a number most days and not
(26:05):
so many other days, you know.
But this is a really curiouskind of self-exploration because
I've found that the more I knowme, the more intimately I
explore the sensations, theactivities of consciousness, the
unfoldings of awareness withinmy consciousness, within this
(26:30):
body, within this life.
The better I know myself, themore I can meet others and the
more I can know others in a veryintimate sense within my
consciousness.
It's a really curious thing, um, the more you know yourself,
the more you know everything.
No, I'm not going to say thatthat's necessarily easy or
(26:52):
comfortable, because it's notnecessarily easy or comfortable.
In fact, it can be verychallenging and very
uncomfortable, and there is a aneed to face and embrace and
assimilate and integrate all theshadows of myself, which is an
ongoing practice as well,because there's no end to that,
though it's not something that Iwant to give too much focus to
(27:13):
in my life, because I want tohave a whole lot of joy and fun
and shadow work.
You you can get a little bitstuck and mired in the mud of
that.
So whole energy, body balance isthe name and the theme of this
podcast.
It's a beautiful thing toconsider.
(27:36):
How can you support morewholeness in yourself, in your
life, in your animals, in yourbeloveds, in your family, in
your community, in the greaterworld?
How can you create and maintainenergy, higher levels and
(27:58):
higher vibrations of energy, sothat you have more energy
available for you to do the workof life, of life, of evolution,
of love, of spiritual practices?
How can you tend to thisbeautiful body that you live in,
this living form?
(28:20):
How can you nurture, nourish,strengthen, potentiate and and
make sure that your body is inthe peak state of capacity to
live life and to express yourcuriosity and your, your, your
beautiful exploration ofyourself and of the outside
(28:42):
world and of all that this lifeand this planet has to offer?
And how can you support,balance, ongoing, dynamic
harmony within yourself, withinyour animals, animals, within
your family, within yourcommunity and within the world
(29:02):
in in an empowering way?
And you know, another thing thatI'm really passionate about is
empowering people.
Rather than you know, I've gotabsolutely no interest in being
a guru or being put on apedestal or um kind of setting
things up so that people need meto be able to do the thing that
(29:25):
I'm teaching.
I want people to be able tofind their own way to express
their own selves in the mostbeautiful way that makes sense
to them, and I will doeverything I can to support that
.
That's how I roll, and you knowthere are challenges within
that.
There are challenges withinlife.
This planet at this time andhumanity at this time are
(29:49):
heartbreakingly challenging inso many ways, and that is
another thing that I find that Ihave difficulty with some days
Now.
Yesterday, I had a moment whereI thought, god damn these humans
.
They're just killing the planetand they won't stop.
And it could be so simple.
It's not for everybody, butthere's all these greedy people
(30:12):
who are obsessed with power,trying to take everything.
And you know, god damn it.
Why can't we just wake up andbecome emotionally and
spiritually mature as a speciesso that we do what is good for
everyone, rather than playingpower games and subjugation
games and power over anddominance and wars and raping
(30:35):
the planet?
I had a moment and then Ithought well, you know what?
It's a beautiful day, the sunis shining, the grass is green,
I can give my horse a scratch,give my dogs a pat, so I'm going
to have the best day that I canhere now.
I'm going to make as muchdifference as I can within
myself and within my world, andthat is another kind of thing
(30:58):
that I hope that this podcastwill help you be inspired to
uplift yourself in the face ofthe grief of loss of habitat, of
the grief of humanity'sviolence, of the grief of these
these times.
Um, now I I have done some,some learning and some practices
(31:21):
with, with shamans from thequechua, people from peru, the
very elder indigenous people andthey have no doom and gloom.
They are absolutely confidentthat humans are a good species
(31:43):
and that the planet loves humansand that if we work together to
wake up and to come into rightrelationship with all of the
living energies of the earth andthe other beings and ourselves,
that we will transcend whatseems to be impossible and we
will heal this planet and wewill evolve into something
(32:03):
spectacularly wonderful.
So I choose to participate inthat intention, in that kind of
mindset, because it helps melive this day in a meaningful
way and for me, living life in ameaningful way and for me,
living life in a meaningful wayis is really the most important
(32:23):
thing that I can do for myself,for my beloved, for my animals,
for my family, for my communityand for this planet.
So whole energy, body balance.
Another key thing is thatrelationship being in right
relationship with myself, withmy animals, with my beloveds,
(32:43):
with my family, with mycommunity and with all the
living energies of this amazingplanet that we live on is an
ongoing journey of discovery anda big priority in my life and
and um, we may talk about thatwith people, as we have guests
on the podcast.
So that's it for me today.
I just wanted to come in and doa little bit of an introductory
(33:05):
episode.
Let you get to know me a littlebit.
I'm dr edward, known as thehealing vet, also known as tree
brother in a musical sense.
Um, or ed, and here I am andhere are we.
So I would ask you to give yourpets, if you got them, a pat
from me.
Um, be as lovely to yourself asyou are to your animals and
(33:29):
just keep on doing what you canto make this day the most
beautiful day that you canpossibly enjoy.
Goodbye for now.
We'll see you in the nextepisode.
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