“One of the main reasons we are not able to operate effectively is because we do not have full access to our life force,” explains healer Claudette Bouchard, whose work is to assist people in what she terms “life force recovery.”

Bouchard describes health as “an alignment and flow of energy.” She sees health problems as occurring when the life energy cannot flow.

“Illness, confusion and accidents result when this energetic flow becomes blocked or misdirected. These are signs from the soul that we need to re-evaluate and realign with our deeper self,” says Bouchard.

“As we go through various life experiences, we accumulate stresses -- not only physical stress, but also mental and emotional stress. Eventually this begins to show on the physical level, where it manifests as density and restriction within the system of body tissue.” It is at this point, she believes, that ailments begin to occur.

“Decoding an illness means finding out where it comes from,” she says. “The choices we make in our lives are either to our benefit or to our detriment.

“When people start to recognize that they have the ability to change their own lives through the choices they make, the discovery is phenomenal. We create our lives, we can choose our attitudes. Why not choose an attitude of joy, no matter what? The center for decision-making is moving from the brain to the heart. The old way of being in the brain is not working,” she says.

Bouchard trained in New York at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, and at the School of Energy Mastery in Sedona, Arizona. Her travels have included Africa and China, where she studied with a kung fu master. She has lived in Tokyo and spent time in Paris. Now a resident of Vancouver, she was recently invited to be a speaker at the School of Theology, British Columbia, for the Women and Spirituality Dialogue 2000.

Bouchard sees a part of her work as bringing a fresh perspective, another dimension, into people’s lives, which in turn brings change. In her sessions with clients, she uses a wide variety of techniques to “reacquaint people with themselves.” These include acupressure, breathwork, and the balancing of body energy -- the physical, mental and emotional levels -- to bring about healing.