Annie chats with Melissa Abrahams about life, the universe and everything, including their shared experience of transitioning from lawyers to bodyworkers. Melissa Abrahams is a medicine weaver and an intuitive healer, a Women's Mysteries teacher, and a ceremonial space-holder. With a great capacity for deep listening and bearing witness, Melissa walks between the worlds, weaving her unique witchy wisdom in the service of liberation and freedom. Melissa is a fully qualified acupuncturist, with degrees in Psychology, Law and Chinese Medicine. Melissa has been training and working in the fields of healing and transformation for more than 20 years, and runs a private healing practice in Windsor, Victoria. Melissa facilitates many sorts of ritual spaces including women’s circles, rites of passage circles, seasonal cycle ceremonies and sacred drum journeys.
The podcast referenced is the TCM segment by Derek Beres in Episode 38 of the Conspirituality Podcast, "Natural Hopes, Natural Fallacies".
The study Annie mentioned about placebo knee surgery was probably this one (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12110735/), which was actually about arthroscopy of the knee for osteoarthritis, not a knee reconstruction, but she did not exaggerate the results!
The study Melissa mentioned regarding adverse events from surgery in Australia was probably this one (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12201185/) which stated that the adverse event rate for surgical admissions was 21.9%, of which 13% had permanent disability and 4% resulted in death.
A quick search on adverse events for acupuncture (https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/88/12/10-076737/en/) shows that they are mostly very mild and transient and the incidence of serious adverse events (death, organ trauma or hospital admission) was about 0.024%.
You can find Melissa Abrahams on instagram @sunmoonhealing on facebook at Sun Moon Healing and on her website: www.sunmoonhealing.com.
Find Annie McCasland-Pexton on Instagram @consciouslycreatingchange and @thebabyinthebathwater.
Annie's book: Invisible Work: an Ex-Lawyer's Guide to Self-Care is available from Amazon and Lulu Press or via her website: www.melbournecraniosacral.com/links