Therapist of the Month – Herbalist Diann Fletcher Jones

We’re delighted to announce that Diann Fletcher Jones, whom we’ve worked with previously in her roles as eating disorder Councellor and Raw Food Chef, has just completed her 4 year course in the Masterherbalist Tradition with the Irish School of Herbal Medicine in Portlaoise and is now practicing in Wexford.

Diann’s background in psychiatric nursing and the knowledge of the workings of conventional medicine that that entails has given her a unique knowledge basis from which to approach the treatment of illness. However her training (involving 600 supervised clinical hours spent in the herbal medicine clinic in Portlaoise) has led her to an approach which is anything but ‘conventional’ in the sense that allopathic medicine can be conventional. Rather her approach is holistic in the best sense of the word.

The system in which she has trained is firmly based on the work of Dr. Christopher and Dr. Schultz of the School of Natural Healing in Utah in the United States. The cornerstone of this approach is to firstly work on bowel cleansing and whole body detox no matter what ailment is being addressed. Unless the body is able to eliminate accumulated toxins and keep on doing so any other approach is futile and might, at best, bring temporary relief. A course of treatment with Diann will include looking at factors like diet and lifestyle, stress levels and current medication status. Herbs will only be brought into play once these other influencing factors have been assessed and necessary adjustments are underway. According to Diann her approach is about “facilitating people to make the changes in their lives which can stimulate the body’s self healing processes”. To this end there are no short cuts.

As an example she quoted the case of the person suffering from habitual acid indigestion. Marshmallow root can be very effective in this situation but, unless the factors which have caused the problem such as eating on the run, too much coffee and too much acid forming food are dealt with first, marshmallow root will be at best a sticking plaster and not a long term solution. However I also feel Diann knows enough about people to steer clear of the dogmatic approach that sometimes just doesn’t work. If a person can’t, or for whatever reason doesn’t want to, go the whole way with lifestyle change, I feel she has enough experience to see that and allow a person to do “what they are ready to do now” in the knowledge that it’s better to take a few steps on a journey than not start it at all. This, after all, is part of an approach that is non judgemental and compassionate and perhaps can only fully flower after the years in the caring profession which Diann already has behind her. So rest assured, if you are looking for a herbalist you’ll find in Diann a deep knowledge of holistic as well as allopathic medicine combined with an approach which is realistic, compassionate and person-centred.