Health sp17
by Bob Waite
Holistic health is something I’ve thought little about, so I was not ready for the immediate calming effect of a sunset mural making me smile as I walk through the door of the Peace Valley Holistic Center. I know right away that this was not a typical clinic, and the smiling faces I see were not the kind I would see in a doctor’s office on a late Friday afternoon.
In fact, the last thing either Dr. Christina Davis or her daughter Donnamarie Davis, Esq. would want would to be considered a clinic in the traditional sense. They help families who have children with special needs, often autism and they also help adults. But help needs to be emphasized. They do not this for fame or fortune but simply because they like using their skills to make a difference in other people’s lives. “It makes me happy,” says Donnamarie, who was once a high powered lawyer who worked for law firms and represented plaintiffs as a federal litigator.
Dr. Christina Davis came to her calling by a unique childhood. “I was raised with an opera singer and a concert pianist and I was not well. I had the cord wrapped around my throat and I had a damaged thyroid gland and never knew it. I kept keep getting sick and that was the beginning of my understanding that when I ate right in the summertime I was healthy, and when I listened to music I my healing progressed.” Everything coalesced as she studied music, food sources and vitamin therapy initiated by her father giving her vitamin C. Later Dr. Davis, who holds several doctorates, including one in natural medicine, studied anthropology and learned all she could about folk medicine and practices around the world, especially those that could enhance holistic healing and nutrition.
I am led into a room where I can speak into a microphone and be tested by the sound of my voice. Meanwhile Donnamarie explains her advocacy strategy for children with special needs. She explains, “The school system and the parent speak two different languages and I can translate. I found that when I bring them together and act as a non-confrontational intermediary between the parties, that they come together for the benefit of the child.”
Donnamarie explains that Peace Valley Holistic Center has a three prong strategy for helping special needs children and their families. The first is holistic therapy. This includes innovative light therapy, voice analysis, sound therapy, nutritional guidance and a needleless form of acupuncture called Qigong. The second prong of is complementary care for the families and friends of children with special needs. This includes therapeutic massage, stress management, relaxation methodology, sound therapy, and Qigong. She explains, “What we do here is recharge the batteries of the parents—giving them therapies and relaxation techniques, stress management, all kinds of things. If you don’t have charged batteries, you can’t help yourself or give back to your family.”
The third prong is having ongoing programs, seminars, and individual counseling sessions concerning the child’s legal rights for an appropriate education in their school district. Donnamarie’s unique background as a litigator, of course, suits her for this purpose, but as she explains, she now acts more in a mediating way than the typical adversarial relationship she held as a federal litigator. In fact, her approach to helping children with their needs has the support of the Bucks County Intermediate Unit, and she has been invited to speak to school superintendents about what she calls holistic advocacy and how they can use Peace Valley as a resource for special needs children in their district.
I marvel at the energy exuding from these two women as they explain all they do, but in keeping with their own philosophy, they decided to show me something rather than just speaking about it. Knowing about my fondness for poetry, Christine asks me to read some poetry as a voice and sound therapist records my reading for only about 20 seconds. My voice would then be analyzed by a computer program that uses the Merck Manual, which is a diagnostic manual standardly used by medical professionals.
After reading into the microphone, a printer prints out a sheet of paper with a circles on it and various lines representing spikes. Dr. Davis explains, “Think of pie and divide that sound wheel in half. The bottom is your left brain, all your food sources. The top is the right brain emotional. If you are looking at the rings, the outside rings that’s your absorption and how you are interacting with the outside world. The bottom portion is for absorption, and so are the pink areas which is vitamin B and the right across from it the lighter green.” She explains that I need more vitamin C and that I also need to increase vitamin D and B vitamins.
I ask Dr. Davis, “How did you come up with that?” She says, “Your voice is like a thumb print, there are no two that are alike. Your voice goes through the computer and the Merck Manual and we get a color wheel. In the wheel every spike and every gap correlates to something in the Merck manual, so that’s why it’s so individualized, it’s a diagnostic tool tailored to each individual and that’s why it’s so specific.”
This is also a way of finding tones that can relax subjects. Dr. Davis explains, “We calibrate it to what the child needs and if that child is autistic, depending on where they are on the spectrum, it’s going to take their brain longer to train that. We know the child is ready to come back is when they don’t want to hear it anymore. That means their brain has trained it, and that’s one of the ways they keep progressing.”
After having my voice analyzed, I go with Dr. Davis and Donnamarie to the color light therapy room. These light boxes were invented and patented by Dr. Christina Davis. The light therapy has a lot to do with which light attracts a person and integrating that information with information from color wheels.
Dr. Davis holds a patent on the light boxes she uses in light therapy. “I kept studying, trying to get a common denominator for color. I went through one hundred nine colors before I came out with these shades. I took these to the Temple campus and tested these on children. I now have a patent, which I got last May. It took 21 years and four years defending it.”
Explaining the lights, Dr. Davis says, “You are talking about lights LED/colors ... here is how I can explain about the lights. The lights work on the same frequency as the sound, it’s a Hertz frequency. But this goes into the motor receptors of the eyes and it effects the frontal lobe. It’s for behavior, that’s why the kids calm down. One of the stories that touch my heart is the family that used to have to eat in the dark on Thanksgiving and the child would hide under the steps. The first lesson the kid had here within less than twenty minutes he was calm and the parents couldn’t believe it. Now they can eat with the lights on. All the stories are all different but all the same. So, for all the parents that had no hope and went everywhere and tried everything. They come here and they have hope and it works.”
Both Dr. Davis and Donnamarie Davis are Optimistic about the lives they have already changed. On bulletin boards are photos of many success stories. They have photos from boyhood to adulthood of one of their clients. He began with some very difficult problems and the prognosis for his success was not considered good, but under the care of Dr. Davis and her staff, he flourished and now is a happy well-balanced young man with a future.
Donnamarie is busy with an outreach program from Peace Valley Holistic Center to youths at risk with special needs, especially AHAD who are in their teens and early twenties. “It was bugging me because a lot of kids with ADHD end up in the system and take drugs. They go down a bad path because their quick brain is not being harnessed or steered in a positive direction.”
Donnamarie has much support from the community and a facility in progress. People helping with this mentoring project include Starbucks, trade unions, American Culinary Association and others. It is coming together and people are pledging money for this project.
Peace Valley Holistic Center, because of community cooperation and a dedicated volunteer staff, have been able to accommodate families from all social economic backgrounds. When they first opened they only took unspecified donations, but this didn’t work for all the families.
Donnamarie explains, “When we opened, we are a 501-3C charily and they could pay what they can afford as a donation. We found out that parents didn’t like that. It took away their dignity. So now we use grants and have a schedule of how much ought to be donated. So now parents can go to our website under “Resources” and download “Child Services Grant.” After they fill it out and send it in, it goes to the board, there is motion made, the board discusses it, and the board votes on it. Sometimes the child receives a full grant and sometimes a partial grant, depending on their financial situation”
Peace Valley Holistic Center depends on donations and volunteers from the community to continue all their work with special needs families and children. They are located at 224 Old Limekiln Road, Chalfont, Pennsylvania 18914. For information about their services or donations, call 215-887-9901 or visit www.peacevalleyholisticcenter.org.
Bob Waite is the editor of Bucks County Magazine and MONTCO Homes, Gardens & Lifestyle magazine.
