“AYURVEDA & HELEN THOMAS” BY MIRIAM SILVER,
SANTA ROSA PRESS DEMOCRAT — APRIL 27, 2003,
SPECIAL SECTION: HEALTH TIME

Dr. Helen Thomas, is a fiery, opinionated and passionate alternative healthcare practitioner, in practice as a chiropractor and Ayurvedic physician for 21 years.

Patients often leave her Santa Rosa office crying with relief, extolling her virtues to anyone around. A patient smiles through her tears. "She is so amazing. What an amazing person."

Thomas, more matter of fact than immodest, says that is typical.
"Ayurveda is knowing your body, and most people do take to Ayurveda. Any physician becomes intimate with the human person. I can easily slip right in there where we can trust each other. People trust me. They feel profoundly different."

Thomas, 45, came to alternative health care as a teenager when traditional, Western medical care did not help her with a chronic problem. "I was sick when I was a kid. I had chronic seizures. When I was 17 a chiropractor adjusted me four times. I never had seizures again," says Thomas.

For years, she had seen different doctors for the seizures, stomach problems and sharp pains. They fed her Phenobarbital and other drugs. Nothing took until she went to a chiropractor who had helped her older sister recover from a car accident.

"He took X-rays of my spine, showed me how crooked I was, and after about six months I knew this is what I was going to do," she says.

She went to school at Palmer College of Chiropractic in Iowa and came back to her hometown area of Sacramento to practice, where she married and had two children.

Then there came a sign in 1985, in the form of a letter from Dr. Deepak Chopra, an endocrinologist practicing Ayurveda, addressed to chiropractors that practiced transcendental mediation. Chopra, since then known for his best-selling books and television appearances, was offering a two-week course in Boston on Ayurveda.

Thomas knew the limitations of chiropractic care and its mechanical techniques. She was also already an herbalist and had been practicing meditation since her daughter was born.

"What I didn't have was a system of understanding. Before I used herbs for the system. The core power of Ayurveda is to understand every disease has an origin and a path and the manifestation."

After the course, she sold her practice, and moved her husband, an attorney, and two young children to Iowa where she studied Ayurveda full time. The family returned to Santa Rosa in 1990. Thomas frequently invites Ayurvedic physicians from India with whom she consults collaboratively.

Thomas loves her work because she can address people through a combination of chiropractic care, Ayurveda, and allergy elimination. Hers is a hands-on approach that helps people with a diversity of symptoms and concerns.

"I don't talk anybody into getting better. Your body gets better."

In 1987 she published Ayurveda: The A-Z Guide to Healing Techniques From Ancient India.

Within the first five minutes of seeing a new patient, after reading their pulse and observing other physical things, Thomas can often tell what their complaints are.

"People will be amazed and overwhelmed. It is rare to be seen and be that intimate with a professional," she says.

A 17-year-old suicidal patient had been diagnosed as bipolar and been given all kinds of drugs. Thomas met her for the first time, talked and identified her Ayurvedic body type.

"She really moved me. I told her that she does have a special challenge, but that she can nourish herself, and she will evolve into the person she is meant to be with this disorder, not the disorder ruining her life," Thomas says. "Her mother cried. Moments like that make me come to work the next day."