Introducing Naturopathic Doctor and Healer Extraordinaire, Dr. Linda Burnham

Posted: May 14th, 2010 | No Comments »

It is our pleasure to welcome to the VIB family, of wellness practitioners, Dr. Linda Burnham. Linda is a naturopathic doctor and healer extraordinaire.

Linda’s story begins with her journey of recovery, from an accident. Her life was immediately compromised at the young age of 24, the only thing doctors could offer her was a big bottle of codeine, and said she would need it for the rest of her life. Linda knew there had to be a better way. The holistic movement was in its infancy and held the cure – connection to Spirit, proper nutrition, and finding your soul’s purpose.

Inspired by her spiritual awakening, she began to travel the world in search of meaning. She met healers and teachers that nurtured her and helped her cultivate her own healing gifts. Dr. Burnham was part of a group of holistic practitioners that began The Center of Light, a spiritual healing and retreat center, in the Berkshires of Massachusettes. Linda has created two exquisite hands on healing techniques: Burnham Systems WiseBody TherapeuticsSM and Burnham Systems Facial RejuvenationSM. She has taught and certified practitioners in both modalities nationally and internationally for over 30 years. She adapted the professional techniques for personal use in her beautiful book The Natural Face-Lift: A Facial Touch Program for Rejuvenating Your Body and Spirit. She lectures and teaches extensively in the health, beauty, and spa worlds internationally.

Name: Linda Burnham, N.D.

Career: Energetic Healer, Naturopathic Physician, Holistic Practitioner, Author, and Public Speaker

Age: 60 and loving it!

Family situation (kids? dating? long-term relationship?):
Many deep and enduring friendships and a couple of great ex’s. I’ve had a big hand in raising 12 children from two different families (lots of kids to love have come my way). I have two phenomenal nieces. Right now, I have the delight to be ‘honorary’ aunt to two extraordinary new beings.

How do you make sure you feel good everyday?
Plenty of water. Clear, clean, radiant water that helps to nurture and sustain every part of my life – drinking, cooking, bathing – a precious commodity anywhere you live, but essential in the high desert. Also I try to add a little value to each of the important areas in my life every day. It is a challenge because life happens – certain things must be done in a timely manner: work has deadlines, computers freeze and fail, phone calls and emails stack up, friends I love stop by unexpectedly, the dishwasher overflows…. and that can crowd out the gentler, less noisy needs/desires that I have in the less insistent areas of my life… so I try to attune to just the right flow for the moment…not logically, but from my inner self, I make that connection with the Divine. I am often amazed and delighted at how things flow through the day for me when I can do that. It is a real yoga to make space for Spirit first, and then proceed to do my day. When I can, my life feels richly round and full with a sense of actually living my very own life.

What inspires you to do the work that you do?
I believe that we are more than this physical experience but I want this one life to count profoundly. As I support others to face challenges on any level – physical, emotional or spiritual – I feel the power of healing source more intensely in my own life as well as theirs. Wholeness and vitality inspire me. I seek it out. I keep my inner senses attuned for IT – that sparkling life-force presence that I know it is possible to find in any person, situation or thing. Does that apple have it? How much? Can I help it get more, be more? What about the kidney that is in pain? That liver? That ankle? What about that difficult situation at work? Or in the bedroom? Where is the vitality of life in any moment? I find IT and encourage IT to come out to play through everything that is present. I just love the possibilities of healing into wholeness. Fundamentally, it is all I want.

How did you muster up the courage/confidence/stamina to create the life you have?
I have never thought of it like that – that I mustered up something to create the life I have. I just faced the moments as they came and invariably, in a given moment, a helping hand…from some other dimension or this one…came. It brought the help I needed to source my own inner strength, focus, tenderness – whatever was needed. I am infinitely grateful for the many sustaining, inspiring presences that have threaded themselves through my life. It has not been a solo accomplishment or journey. My life and I are the creative project of many generous hearts.

As I continued thinking about this question, I realized that throughout my life I have had this quiet, inner dream space – barely conscious but very real. I have dreamed magical daydreams that wove my “here and now” practical skills with my “oh what if” yearnings and created inner visions of myself that expanded beyond what I knew myself to be. They inspired a quality of magnetic attraction – and a space to hold more inwardly. So I became more, more was offered and I showed up in new ways. It is a dollop of magic added to the recipe – the leavening agent. It makes me smile to feel it as I write. So my life happened and it has been amazing.

What’s your approach to nutrition?
I’m a passionate foodie – organic, discriminating, intrigued, captivated by everything concerning food, always seeking vitality that feeds my vitality. Here is my soapbox about food: In a world ‘hell-bent’ on the quick and easy, we’ve lost touch with the nutritional vitality of food, with its living essence. It is that essence that feeds our bodies’ vitality and feeds its innate intelligence to heal itself. It is that essential living spark of unadulterated, minimally processed food that actually builds the strength of our bodies’ life force. This is what makes the healing miracles of renewal and regeneration on a physical level possible. Every day we have to make choices, for ourselves and our loved ones – hard choices – seeking to preserve that spark in our food. From soil to water to air, to growing to harvest to delivery, to preparation to gratitude to ingesting, we need to chose life and chose processes that nurture, preserve and enhance that living spark. There are decisions about life itself that are at stake when we buy, make, and eat our food.

Each of us is unique. No single theory, diet, approach is THE way. Throughout our lives we can find what works for us at the moment – what brings in that vitality, clarity, ‘juice’ and strength that we need – and be willing to do what we need to do concerning what we put into our bodies, hearts and minds. And our ‘life diet’ will change and refine and take on different emphasis over time.

Several basic questions inform that ‘life diet’ concept: Does what you ingest give you more energy or take energy from you? Is the earth nurtured as she nourishes you? Is there wholeness in your relationship with the whole of the world of nutrition? Can we answer these queries with a resounding ‘yes, to the best of our ability’? I try to. And I support others to also answer ‘yes’ in ways that uniquely serve their individual lifestyle needs.

This focus on a diet for more life – this ‘LifeDiet’- is not just about the physical food we eat. There are choices to be made about the nutritious-ness of our prayers and thoughts, our actions and friendships, the books and movies we eat with our eyes, the feelings we have about our selves, our purposes, our gods. Nutrition and our relationship to it runs deep into the quality of our soul that we are creating. It is not a superficial contemplation but an abiding self-creative process we are involved in.

How do you stay inspired when difficult challenges arise?
The greatest aid in facing challenges is knowing we are enough and knowing we aren’t alone. Whether I seek the inner assistance of Spirit or I reach out for help, I trust that in the end the healing resolution is assured even if I don’t know the how the journey will unfold.

What do you do to stay in balance?
After 30 some years of traveling and teaching, I had a major leg injury – five surgeries over 3 ½ years. Shattering a leg has had its benefits – I learned I can work from home! Spending more time in Santa Fe has allowed me the time to grow a vegetable garden, take cooking lessons and deepen new friendships, start dating again (at 59 no less). Staying home has also given me more opportunity to support Amma, the Hugging Saint, a spiritual leader and humanitarian whose work spans the globe. I have balanced the pleasure of my professional work with the simple pleasure of my personal work – gardening is work!! Now, as I begin to travel again, I make sure I balance my time away from Santa Fe by staying with friends and re-connecting with loved ones wherever I go.

What’s your ultimate indulgence – just for you?
Deep, dark organic chocolate (not a lot but it must be sublime) surrounded by down pillows, a comforter, and a great book! Just finished Diana Gabaldon’s latest and ate some Booja-Booja from London – it is an all organic, dairy free hazelnut chocolate truffle that friends hand deliver to me every year. Sublime is definitely the word here. Yummmm. Next time you are in the UK, find some. You will thank me!

What advice do you have for women/men aiming to have it all?
Remember that you can only take what you have inside on the next journey. Make sure what you have outside satisfies you in some uniquely personal way. Your life is for you, own yourself.

Thank you for speaking to VIB and inspiring so many!

TO HAVE A SESSION WITH LINDA:
Sessions available in NYC from Tues. May 18 – 21 from 9:30-3:30pm. In person visits are $150.00/Telephone $135.00.

Contact information in NYC: Call Linda at 505-690-9460 (cell) to make an appointment or Email burnhamsystems@earthlink.net or check out her website at www.BurnhamSystems.com.
Location in New York: 448 West 46th Street, Apt. 3RW (between 9th and 10th Avenue)