Gail Coffey - Healing Journey |
 The Chief Executive Officer of Sharing Wellness Info is Gail Coffey. Gail began her foray into the area of wellness after her sudden onset of rheumatoid arthritis in 1977. Her Personal Healing Journey has taken her in many directions that didn't always look or feel like a healing journey. And yet, all those directions have, in fact, led her to better health and wellness and to a place where she wants to share with others everything she has and continues to learn about creating more and better health. The journey has led to no more allergy shots (since 1986) and no more rheumatoid arthritis pain, symptoms, or solganol shots (since late 1986).Gail's journey included lots of allopathic diagnosis and treatment, lots of surgeries and antibiotics, then to chiropractic and acupuncture for relief of continual pain from arthritis and spinal misalignments. Being an acupuncture client led Gail to study the philosophy of acupuncture for lay people in the SOPHIA program at the Traditional Acupuncture Institute. That led to a job setting up the first national acupuncture headquarters in Washington, DC for three different national acupuncture organizations in 1989—and learning about the individual and collective fears and issues of doctors and acupuncturists first hand. Then during a stint of working as a program manager for a government contractor, Gail completed a management course with Nancy Post based on the Chinese 5 Elements and named Systems Energetics. Along the way, Gail took many pscho-immune health training sessions with Jack Schwarz, a wellness author and lecturer. To improve her own health, Gail took an intensive training in biofeedback and also became a certified hypnotist. Gail read everything she could get her hands on about health, took tai chi courses, studied qi gong, tried different eating regimens, started a small meditation group for moral support in 1985 and then started another one when she moved 400 miles east in 1986. During 3 years of living in Hawaii, Gail studied Hawaiian healing that prescribes using the basics of balance: enough play, work, rest, and good exercise—as well as looking at what in one's life changed immediately before a health problem—and a commitment to changing one's own habits as necessary to improve one's health. It was at this point that Gail began to integrate for herself that the Chinese and the Hawaiian modalities were both saying balance was one key and personal responsibility was another key to health and well-being. And it was the point at which she began to make more and deeper changes in her life and lifestyle. The genesis of Sharing Wellness Info began to formulate during the time that Gail was working for the acupuncture headquarters and saw the benefits to practitioners of their own membership organization. She began to explore the meaning of "patient" as she sat impatiently waiting in doctor's offices for an hour or more after the scheduled appointment time. From a doctor of osteopathy, she learned that it was possible to offset the yeast infections that always followed antibiotic treatment by taking acidophilus as soon as she started the antibiotics. Eventually she learned that there are labs that will show doctors what herbs are as effective as antibiotics for treatment of many infections and began to use the herbs…and have fewer side effects, fewer infections. Gail began to network to find practitioners who would support her wellness efforts and engage with her as subject matter experts and peers on her healing journey. The more Gail learned, the more excited she got about sharing what she was learning with others. The more she could share with others, the better she felt. Eventually, the need to share with others on a broader scale than one to one brought Gail into collaboration about how to disseminate what she was learning and experiencing. And after a long gestation period, Sharing Wellness Info is the culmination of the seed that started to grow in 1989-1990. |
Lyndy Kimball-Pacheco - Healing Journey |
 Lyndy is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Sharing Wellness Info. Lyndy’s passion for education began in her formative years when she decided that she wanted to become a teacher. In college she majored in Physical Education and Health. During the summer following her sophomore year she was in a bad automobile accident and suffered a severe whiplash that changed the direction of her life. Because of the severity of the injury, it became apparent as she approached graduation that she could not in all good conscience sign a teaching contract to teach Sports in which she was no longer able to participate. At that time, Health Education was not a possible career because it was only something that was taught on rainy days when students couldn’t go outside to play. Now with a degree but no profession, Lyndy was persuaded to take a job at the local bank just to make some money until she decided what she was supposed to do! Fourteen plus years later she was still in the finance world as Assistant Vice President at the Riggs National Bank in Washington, DC. Despite great success in the finance arena, even becoming the youngest female Branch Manager in the United States in the mid 70’s, banking was not fulfilling her passion. As a result of the automobile accident, she had spent a substantial amount of time and money trying to regain her health and sense of well-being. It was in 1974 that Lyndy had her first introduction to Alternative Medicine. In an effort to be rid of violent migraine headaches that were a result of the accident, a family friend suggested she get an acupuncture treatment. The results were quite amazing. Acupuncture provided only a short-term reprieve because this type of treatment was thought to be rather radical, the cost of treatment quite high, and the need to travel a great distance to find a practitioner made continuous treatment untenable. In the late 70’s, once again through a family friend, she was led to a wonderful chiropractor, Dr. Richard DiCenso. As a result of Dr. DiCenso’s care, Lyndy was able to lead a more pain-free existence. Through Dr. DiCenso’s encouragement, Lyndy began what has become a life long commitment to Massage Therapy and its many blessings. At this time she also was exposed to Kripalu, a Yoga and Spiritual Center in Western MA. When in the late 80’s Lyndy decided to leave the financial arena, she returned to Academia and earned a Master's in Health Education. During her time in graduate school, she took a month long Holistic Health Educator training program at Kripaulu. During this program it became clear to Lyndy that this concept of wellness and wellbeing was the path to follow and that trying to bring this education and information to all the world would be her life’s passion. After receiving her degree in the early 90’s, Lyndy pursued another dream and went to the Baltimore School of Massage and completed the 500 hour program. At that time the Baltimore School took a very holistic approach to massage and incorporated many classes devoted to energy healing and the mind-body-spirit connection. This was a blessing at the time as it became apparent that a healing crisis was imminent. Lyndy began having extreme pain throughout her body, quality sleep was in short supply, mental fogginess was taking its toll, and a host of other symptoms were causing great anxiety. After spending thousands of dollars on medical testing and visits to some of the best medical specialists on the East Coast, no one could tell her what was wrong. Perhaps as one specialist put it, “the symptoms were psychologically induced” or in layman's terms: “it was all in her head.” In 1995, once again, a friend suggested to Lyndy that she read a small pamphlet, written by a doctor in Canada, about a syndrome called Fibromyalgia. Now her condition had a name and she no longer was under the burden of guilt that she was making it all up. Others, like herself, were afflicted with this unpredictable condition. Fortunately, there were a few cutting-edge practitioners trying to make sense of it all and bring some relief to the almost unbearable symptoms. All the practitioners and the varying modalities were alternative in nature. Mainstream medicine (allopathic) stated that Fibromyalgia had no cure; but, through a vast array of pharmaceutical drugs, doctors could try and control the symptoms. Lyndy knew in her heart that drugs were not for her and began seeking out other healing pathways. In the early years after the accident she was constantly being given drugs to deal with the pain. The side effects of these drugs were long-lasting and her intuition told her they might very well be a contributing factor to her present impaired condition. In the next few years, Lyndy looked at her condition from a more holistic view and made some very necessary life style changes – taking control of her own road to wellness. For a number of years the Fibromyalgia symptoms were kept to a minimum but were never 100% gone. In the fall of 2000, Lyndy was truly blessed to be introduced, once again by a friend, to Dr. Issac Mathai, a renowned Doctor of Integrated Medicine from Bangalore India. He recommended that she come to his Clinic in India for a three-week stay. Through an integrated approach to treating the root causes of Lyndy’s condition, and the subsequent support to follow a path to wellness, Lyndy has been free of the Fibromyalgia pain and other symptoms for more than 17 months. Because of Lyndy’s own healing journey back to wellness, she is passionate about helping others to obtain the information and encouragement they need to become the masters of their own wellness journeys. Her experiences made it clear to her that there was no comprehensive source for the individual health consumer to find the data they need to make well-informed decisions about their own state of health and wellness. It is her dream that she can make the journey easier for others and that she will save another human being from having to go through the trials and tribulations that she encountered in order to create a life of health and well-being. |
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