MONDAY, JULY 14, 2014
IDS INDIANA DAILY STUDENT | IDSNEWS.COM
SAM STAR | IDS
Holistic healer Susan Clearwater cuts part of a flower at her garden close to Lake Lemon. She calls her plants little miracles.
The complete treatment Local healer realizes it’s not just treatment, but lifestyle that gets results. BY SARAH ZINN sjzinn@indiana.edu
Four gongs on each side of the large, 14-inch crystal bowl signaled the beginning of its song. What Susan Clearwater called “the singing bowl” rang out, its vibration moving in a circle from Clearwater to her intern Vida Chavez-Garcia, as they sat with their eyes closed and legs crossed, the bowl between them. Clearwater moved a stick in a circular motion around the outside of the bowl. A large window took up the wall opposite them, showering half of their bodies in sunlight. The garden glowed outside. “Ohm,” they said in unison, occasionally harmonizing. This is how Clearwater and Chavez-Garcia start most of their mornings before they work on the gardens. Past Lake Lemon and down a windy road, a gravel path leads to Clearwater’s five acres of land that she calls a sanctuary for plants and people. At Green Turtle Botanical Sanctuary in Nashville, Ind., she teaches classes on the healing nature of certain herbs, which she grows in the garden. “The use of sound is one of the most ancient forms of healing,” Clearwater said. After sound meditation, Clearwater slipped her shoes back on, sandal strap tan-lines crossing her bare feet. ** Susan’s other intern, Brendan Patterson, ripped a plant out of the ground and examined its large, bulbous roots, which he would later
clean and cut to a fine pulp. In her classes, Clearwater teaches how to make tinctures — little vials of water, alcohol and various crushed roots used for medicinal purposes. Clearwater picked a small leaf off the plant and lifted it to the sky. Sunlight shined through the leaf, exposing its veins and turning it a lighter shade of green. “See those black dots?” she said, pointing at the tiny dark circles on the leaf, only visible in the sunlight. “That’s how you identify St. John’s wort.” St. John’s wort remedies kidney problems, alleviates nervous disorders and if made into a salve, helps mend wounds. Like most healing herbs, its uses date back to ancient times. The ancient Greeks said it warded off evil, and medieval folklore said it had magical powers, but it gained its name from a Christian tale. When St. John’s wort has matured, a yellow flower blooms, which appears not long after the apostle St. John’s birthday each year. “That’s how you know if a plant is safe,” Clearwater said. “Look at the tradition of use.” Clearwater also recommends this tincture to patients experiencing depression and anxiety. Many of her patients seek treatments for these conditions in lieu of taking anti-psychotic medicines such as Prozac. People forget that pills are inspired by nature, Clearwater said. “You put peppermint in your tea, and you’re consuming hundreds of chemicals,” she said. “Modern medicine is just isolating one chemical
SAM STAR | IDS
Holistic healer Susan Clearwater and her intern, Vida Chavez-Garcia, sit in front of the crystal singing bowl and meditate.
and synthetically reproducing it.” The difference is, she said, Mother Nature knows how to weave all the chemicals together with the least amount of side effects. She calls Mother Nature the master chemist. Using the backside of a hatchet, Clearwater hammered a spoke into the ground by her patch of echinacea plants. She was building a fence to protect the plants from the deer. Whack, whack, whack. Her long, silver hair whipped from the effort. There’s more to healing than just swallowing a pill, she said. ** Rain danced on the roof of Clearwater’s office at the Center for Wholism on North Walnut Street in Bloomington. The gray sky made the
mint green color of the walls pop. Even the waiting room was adorned with colorful, whimsical artwork. Forms on the table had questions such as, “Are you a warm or cold person?” Clearwater sees and treats patients at the Center for Wholism. The holistic approach tackles health problems by looking at the problem as a whole, exploring its causes and looking at a variety of remedies. Plants bloomed next to diagrams of the human body. Pill bottles lined her cabinet, filled with different vitamins and minerals. She said it is essential to examine both the patient’s psyche and lifeSEE HEALER, PAGE 7
IU Coach Tom Crean and hiss coaching staff have made perim-eter shooting a point of emphasiss this season, bringing in shooterss in recruiting and now Zeisloft ass a graduate student transfer, who o will be available to play this fall ll because he graduated from Illinoiss State. “The addition of Nick allows uss to spread and space the floor even n more and play with more pace,”” Crean said at the time Zeisloft ft joined IU. Zeisloft will join freshmen n James Blackmon Jr., Rob Johnson n and Max Hoetzel, who are each h known for reliable jumpers. But there is another reason Cre-an brought in Zeisloft, somethingg his team this past year struggled d with visibly on the court: veteran n leadership. “I’m ready to be a leader and bee a guy that brings experience and d shows maturity out there on thee
court,” Zeisloft said. What Zeisloft’s role on the team will be is unknown. He averaged just 6.9 points per game in his past season for Illinois State, which is a member of the Missouri Valley Conference. But whether he sees significant playing time or he’s brought in as a situational shooter, Zeisloft knows why he was brought to Bloomington. “I’m ready to put in plenty of threes for the Hoosiers,” Zeisloft said.
TESY
Nick Zeisloft said he doesn’t remember how old he was when he first walked into Assembly Hall, but he remembers the feeling that came over him. The newest addition to the IU men’s basketball team, Zeisloft is billed as a pure shooter for a team desperately in need of perimeter shooting. Of the three returning players who played significant time on the perimeter, only junior guard Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell is an above average three-point shooter, hitting 40 percent of his shots behind the arc in the past season. Sophomores Stanford Robinson and Troy Williams struggled with their jump shots, combining to make just nine threes all season. The pair shot 19 and 21 percent from behind the arc, respectively.
Zeisloft, a 6-foot-4 graduate student transfer from Illinois State, is a renowned sharpshooter. He shot 36 percent from behind the arc and 90 percent from the free-throw line during the 2013-14 season. For Zeisloft, he’ll get to play for the team he grew up rooting for in his hometown of La Grange, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. “I was in sixth grade maybe,” Zeisloft said of the first time he walked into Assembly Hall. “I was there for an Iowa game. The game was a great experience. It’s one of the best venues in all of sports.” As a kid, Zeisloft thought he was going to be playing baseball at the collegiate level, not basketball. It wasn’t until his sophomore year of high school he realized basketball would be the best avenue for him to play college athletics. “I was pretty young when I realized I could shoot pretty well,” Zeisloft said.
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BY EVAN HOOPFER ehoopfer@indiana.edu
PHO TO
3-point shooter to join Hoosiers this fall