As lifespans increase, medical practices which diagnosis disease and repair injuries may have shortcomings. One of these is residual or reoccurring pain which can trouble both the patient and their family. An event of this type triggered Debra Schildhouse to seek ways to ease the pain of her daughter.
Her path to this knowledge and practice is the core of this story of Bio-Touch. As she explains her path, she also provides the story of the person currently leading and teaching this pain relief method, Paul Bucky. Her presentation of the story shows two different variations of the hero’s path reaching a common goal. Debra has a gift of sharing the stories almost seamlessly across decades of personal history leading to the Bio-Touch organization currently in Tucson.
Debra is not teaching the method or providing its basis which might be desired by those hoping to use it. While she does provide ways to obtain that information, she concentrates on the origin and creation of the Bio-Touch method.
It was Debra’s desire to be able to relieve pain and perhaps cure injury which led her to this method. Her journey has moments of heart breaking sadness and pain interspersed with an almost self-deprecatingly humorous way of describing her training and early work in Bio-Touch.
Her teacher of the method is Paul Bucky. We meet him through a series of interviews that Debra conducts for this book. It is tempting to describe him as one of the last vagabonds of the hippie era, although the described times in Colorado and Hawaii belie that definition. The Colorado era becomes an almost modern pioneering effort creating a community. The Hawaii period seems almost a missionary role. It was interesting to see that he did not claim to invent the method, but rather helped teach what he had learned.
Although those interested in this as a method of pain relief may be the main audience of the book, the dual stories of Schildhouse and Bucky provide an enjoyable experience for a reader of informal and storytelling based biography.