Give Back: Healer2Healer – Become a better healer

Healer2Healer is an international non-profit U.S. 501(c)3 organization based in New York City that brings volunteer complementary medicine practitioners such as Acupuncturists, Reiki Practitioners, and Massage Therapists to rural indigenous communities.

Their members are professionally licensed or certified  practitioners selected for their ability to work together as a small team of volunteers.  In the process they learn from each other and from the local healers.

 

Vision/Mission:   

Healer2Healer envisions a world where every community has access to healthcare and where healing practices of all modalities are taught and passed on from community to community; and generation to generation.  It provides a platform to exchange knowledge on multiple levels, striving to empower indigenous healers (mostly women) with alternative medicine training in basic acupuncture, Reiki, massage, which complements native healing practices. Healer2Healer provides organizational skills to improve the practices of these women in rural communities so that they can treat patients in neighboring communities too dangerous for our group to initiate pop-up clinics, thereby perpetuating ancestral indigenous knowledge.

How it started:   

It all started when a group of 16 acupuncturists, Reiki practitioners and students from NYC traveled to Lake Atitlan, Guatemala in August 2010 and held FREE clinics in 3 rural villages over 6 days. The types of treatments provided and protocols taught by Healer2Healer help to alleviate fertility issues, musculoskeletal pains, and symptoms of stress.  The local healers were eager to learn and adapt the modalities of healing that Healer2Healer provided. They continue treating patients and sharing their local medicinals in a beautiful healing exchange.

Projects/Initiatives:  

Donate |  Volunteer 

About the Founder:  

Frederic Bernal Lim – Founder and President

Frederic Bernal Lim, MSc-Edu, has been an educator in English language acquisition with over 18 years experience, including top universities in Guatemala and at Columbia University, New York. He is currently an instructional coach at a charter school in Harlem, New York. In 2016 he received two research grants from the Fulbright organization to Peru and Mexico. He currently mentors teachers at Hunter College, NYC Men Teach, and the Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching Program.

His avocation in alternative and complementary medicine emerged from assisting coastal and rural areas in eastern Guatemala recover from  Hurricane Mitch that devastated in 1998. He lived several years in Guatemala learning ancestral healing practices, indigenous customs, and Spanish. After graduating from acupuncture schools in New York and Amsterdam, Frederic founded the non-profit Healer2Healer in 2010 as a means for medical attention to reach under-served communities with free clinics and to empower indigenous healers with training in basic acupuncture protocols that complement a community’s local plant medicine.

His life’s passion is to combine education and health on a global scale with learning-based technology toward better-integrated health care using natural healing traditions from around the world, working especially with underserved groups in developing countries. This proactive and balanced exchange of medicinal knowledge both respects and greatly empowers practitioners and women’s groups to heal rural communities affected by poverty, genocidal war, and national neglect.

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