April 24, 2017

Meet Cari Schaefer M.A. TCM, L.Ac of Sustainable Health Center in Santa Monica

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cari Schaefer M.A. TCM, L.Ac.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Cari. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
At 17, I developed my first health challenge. I was told by my doctors that there was nothing I could do and I just had to live with it. Unfortunately, this advice led me down a road towards worsening health. In an effort to help myself, and a desire to help others, I went to school to study Chinese Medicine. While I was in school I suffered a health crisis. Living in constant pain, I was unable to walk 3 blocks without having to rest and felt like I had the flu everyday. Looking for answers to help myself has taken me on an incredible exploration. I began with the question what is making people and myself so sick these days? Why are health challenges like diabetes, cancer, and autoimmune diseases increasing at such alarming rates? I learned a lot about the body and my own health but found something was still missing. I realized that by looking into sickness I learned a lot about sickness, but what I really wanted to know was what created health. It is a compilation of what I have learned on this exploration into sickness and then creating health that has informed the development of the medicine I practice.

Has it been a smooth road?
One of my mentors once said if you ever meet a doctor who says they have the human body figured out, run the other way.

Each individual is unique and must be approached as such. There is no such thing as one solution for all. There can be basic steps, such as every client I work with has to clean up their diet, because as I said, health requires good nutrition. As well, each person is also unique with a unique set of life experiences behind them, so must be met as such.

Working in the healing arts requires constant growth, and growth can at times be painful. In order for me to help others, I have to constantly be expanding my ability to hold space for whatever a client brings, remain open to learning, and constantly be willing to think outside the box. It is a bit like being a detective. And it definitely keeps me on my toes.

So, let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Sustainable Health Center story. Tell us more about the business.
In order for a body to heal, it needs a solid foundation of good nutrition. I wrote the Amazon best-selling book The Food Solution to aid clients in making the transition from the standard diet eaten in the USA to a diet that supports health. The body needs to be free of built-up toxins. In the last 50 years, our environment has completely changed. The human body is being exposed to something it has never encountered before, massive amounts of synthetic chemicals and heavy metals. These substances can build-up in a body, especially a body lacking in nutrients, block healing and even make us sick.

Lightening the load of chemicals and heavy metals in the system goes a long way to helping a body heal.

As well, we need to be free to make the choices necessary to support health in our body. Many people I work with know what they “should do” but are unable to do it. When I looked more deeply into this, I learned that often people who are unwell have what I call Outdated Survival Programming affecting their ability to live in a health-promoting way.

Outdated Survival Programs are neurological imprints that affect how we respond to events in our lives. They are imprinted into our system in response to a stress filled situation. They inform our system how to respond when a similar situation happens in the future. It is a natural process. However, often they are active way beyond what is necessary and helpful. These imprints can negatively affect the choices we are making in our current life.

Something I see often is a person who desires to lose weight. Yet when we look deeper, they have an Outdated Survival Program that says that being thin is not safe. Perhaps as a child, when thin, they received attention that did not feel good or safe. So, as an adult, when they try to lose weight, they either fail or gain it right back because a part of their system feels unsafe when thin.

Lastly, and critically important to healing and creating health, is a person’s increased ability to care for and like themselves. If you are constantly sending unconscious messages to yourself that something is wrong with you, or you are bad in some way, your body will have a difficult, if not an impossible time, creating health.

I use the system I call the Sustainable Health System to support individuals and their families to address all the different factors necessary to healing. I support clients on a one-to-one basis, in group-programs, through public speaking, and of course through my book The Food Solution.

What sets my clinic apart is simple – we care, and we do not give up. Even when a client is unable to see for herself her ability to improve and heal, we know that she can. Nothing that a client is struggling with is wrong or bad. A client’s struggles are an essential part of her healing journey, and used to support her in reaching a greater ability for self-care and self-love, the bedrock upon which health is built.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Holistic health care is booming. With the cost of standard medical care continuing to skyrocket and, sadly, continuing to decline in quality, people are turning to other solutions. It is estimated that over 33 billion dollars is spent on alternative healthcare in the US, and those estimates were made in 2007. I can guarantee that you will only see an increase. Look, I sought out holistic healthcare because I received no answers from the standard medical system. I know I am not alone in this experience.

Pricing: