Wholistic health fair redefines conventional healing

M.J. Myers knows skeptics will look at Saturday's Mother Earth Wholistic Fair and cast it somewhere between witchcraft and ridiculous. But Myers hopes those with open minds will show up to find out more about things like aura photographs, energy workers and psychic readings.

"It may not speak to everybody, and that's OK," said Myers, who organized the event and runs a small wholistic learning center in Perryville, Mo. "But if you're the least bit curious, come on down."

The wholistic health fair is the first of its kind in the area, Myers said, taking place from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the VFW hall in Cape Girardeau at 1049 N. Kingshighway. Thirty-three vendors will be set up at the fair with a diverse mix of exhibits like light body activation, energetic transformation, herbs, massage and Tarot card readings.

Myers put it together because she knows there is so much to offer from nontraditional sources that can help people be spiritually and physically healthier. There will also be booths on hand that offer healthier foods and homemade items like soap, candles, jewelry, crystals and therapeutic-grade oils.

Fair entrance is free, but organizers are accepting donations of canned food for the Regional Family Crisis Center.

Vera Marie Kostelnik is a vendor driving from northwest Indiana to perform card readings. Kostelnik doesn't like the word fortune-telling, but she admits that's what it is.

"Sure it is," she said. "All of it is foreseeing the future."

Kostelnik uses various cards, such as Tarot, mahjong or Wack Pack. Wack Pack cards, for example, is an illustrative deck of 64 creative-thinking strategies that "whack you out" of habitual thought patterns and enable the reader to help look at his or her life and actions in a fresh way.

People who are having cards read add their own energy to the reading by shuffling the cards, she said, and then pick out cards randomly that then apply to their lives. The cards help solve problems, she said.

"Forewarned is fore-armed," she said.

She also realizes some see the whole thing as silly.

"A lot of people do, and a lot of people have another opinion," she said. "If they want to ridicule or make fun of it, that's fine with me. My point of view is different."

Paula Bridges, who lives near Marble Hill, Mo., is a certified healing-touch practitioner. Another way she describes herself is an "energy worker." Unlike "body workers," like a masseuse who manipulates muscles in the body, people like Bridges work to rejuvenate someone's energy.

"I work to help balance the natural flow of energy around the body and the aura," she said.

Using a massage table, she can determine how positive or negative someone's energy is using temperature of air near the body, vibration changes or variations in energy density.

Sometimes, she uses light touch therapy and other times she works "off the body," she said, using hand movements in an attempt to balance one's energy field.

She sees such treatments as equally valuable to medical treatments.

"We should not be separate at all with traditional medicine," she said. "It's not a case of and/or. If they see me, that doesn't mean they shouldn't see a doctor. We compliment traditional medicine."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137