Sporting a charming British accent belying his cut-to-the-chase attitude, intuitive healer Ondre Seltzer modestly calls himself "a truthful sort." And scores of clients and amazed medical professional have experienced Ondre's reality. For example, a four-year-old girl had a blocked tear duct very recently. "They were just about to do an operation on it," says Ondre. "I did some work and the tear duct completely cleared up, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it is blowing the doctors away." All in a day's work for Ondre, who has been featured on numerous radio shows and has attracted the media attention of NBC, CBS and Fox Networks.

On his website, www.ondre.com, Ondre candidly reveals his difficulties growing up with his intuitive sensitivities. By age 8, he was regularly demonstrating healing abilities and frequently experiencing all manner of intuitive phenomena. "My parents never really did make the connection. They are basically still non-believers. They were so terrified at what they saw." Born into a working-class industrial area of England, Ondre had to resist becoming a social outcast. His parents assumed he was hallucinating and doctors concluded he needed medication. Boxing became a physical outlet for Ondre and his boxing instructor was a significant inspiration for young Ondre to stand up for himself and his perceptions.

A fateful meeting with an open-minded local veterinarian, opened Ondre to the vast field of scientific research. As a result of this alliance, Ondre was able to document and quantify his perceptions and abilities. The result: psychosymmetrolysis--Ondre's coined word for his formal work. "We were looking for a word to describe what I do, and the reason we chose psychosymmetrolysis is that it is perfect matching--psychological and spiritual matching." By using his intuitive ablities, Ondre uses a specific method to exactly match his clients to specific herbal remedies and other protocols. He primarily uses hair samples, but also works with blood samples when he is helping medical doctors.

Ondre's commercial service enterprise, Advanced Botanical Research, utilizes essential oils in formulating specific remedies for his individual clients as well as companies. "We do a number of formulations. More and more companies approach me, and want us to come up with something for herpes or migraines, or backache and so forth. They'll send some samples of people's hair or blood samples, and we'll come up with something. If it works, we get paid--if it doesn't, we don't get paid. So far, we've been paid, and it's been good." Ondre has collaborated with Subtle Energy Solutions to develop our Follow Your Heart Sea Salt and Oil Exfoliating Scrub, is a luscious blend of essential oils and the finest lubricating and hormonal balancing oils. (The Follow Your Heart scent has been customed-blended by Ondre for us exclusively and is a perfect gift item for that perfect somebody on your Holiday list).

I asked Ondre if his intuitive abilities were activated by meditation or some specific protocols, or if they were always "on." "It's 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Basically, even when I'm sleeping, I can be suddently woken up early in the morning with something. What happens when I'm around plants and medications can sometimes be overwhelming. To give you an example, the other day I was in Wild Oats (natural foods store), and just walking down the aisle there it was very difficult being around herbs and the plants, because it's almost like they are shouting at you. The best way to describe it is that it's like walking around with a set of headphones on listening to a CD. It's like having music going on. Everything has a frequency. It can be a gift or a curse depending on which way you look at it."

Besides his "always on" intuitive deluge, Ondre's second plague is that in nearly every case he is called in as the agent of last resort. "Most of the people who come to see me can go nowhere else." This makes his job that much more difficult, and at times, distressing. In the case of his mother--who was terrified by her son's childhood abilities--she is now open to what he has to offer. "It's strange, you know, some people are so adverse to anything that is not with the medicine--I think it's probably fear-based."

I asked Ondre if he has seen any overall changes in health trends since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. "The first thing that I noticed is a huge demand for preventative medicine. A lot of people are taking forward steps in preventing illness. On the other hand, I've seen a dramatic increase in diabetes, alchoholism, smoking-related disease. People are eating, drinking and smoking a lot more than ever before. It's stress-related. In New York City alone my clientele out there are seeing a lot of fungus diseases. There are some unusual eye and ear infections, skin/dermal infections and there's not a lot to be done [for them]."

He is also seeing a lot more fear-related conditions such as forms of agoraphobia, depression and more aggression. "Everybody is building a wall around themselves. I've also seen a lot of young men and women very depressed. There's an energetic change--a change in the energetic value. The plants and the trees are not putting out the same frequencies they were 18 months ago. There is a definite drop in the values of the plants. I'm noticing it in the oils in the plants coming from Europe or abroad. It's almost like the plants are giving themselves up or something."

Ondre subscribes to a gentle but persistent strategy when it comes to treating the illnesses that come to him. "I don't see disease as the enemy. I see disease as something that's trying to make a living for itself and to survive. So what I take a look at when I'm dealing with disease [is to] treat it with respect, and don't try to blast it straight away. Try to understand why it's there and then allow it to disperse. Everybody has cancer, it just depends on whether it actually starts to go or not."

Ondre's international renown comes partly from his "always on" intuitive impressions and his enthusiasm to impart what he sees to everyone around him, but his main claim to fame comes down to results. He has become indispensible as a diagnostic tool for many forward-thinking doctors and hospitals. Ondre sees why: "If you think of the complimentary medicine industry as worth close to 20 billion dollars a year, and allopathic medicine--modern medicine--as worth about 10-15 at the most, there's a real need for hospitals to link up to us. More and more modern hospitals are setting up preventative medicine wards. So we've seen a real change and a kind of fostering in bringing people like myself into hospitals. But it's a financial thing, not necessarily in the interests of the patient."

I asked Ondre what he thought of California's new health freedom legislation, and he was less than enthusiastic. "They preach health freedom, but the insurance companies preach nothing but make money. If the insurance companies were really interested in saving money, they'd be checking the bills more, wouldn't they? Many times, the bills are a hundred percent inflated. Insurance companies on the whole own the hospitals. The hospitals and insurance companies' shares are owned by the drug companies. It doesn't seem to be in their interests to make people get well, but more to maintain them. I don't think they mean to maintain them in sickness, but to just maintain them. You'd think that insurance companies would sensibly be practicing preventative medicine--pay for people to go to the spa--but it's not doing that. That leads me to think that we need to make some breaks between drug companies, hospitals and insurance companies."

Suddenly, during my interview with Ondre, there was a brief pause in his cadence. "Are you having problems with your back, Boyd?" he asked. "As a matter of fact, yes," I replied, wincing in remembrance of the past two weeks I'd spent hobbling around with low-back pain. And Ondre was immediately on a roll, telling me exactly what was wrong, what to do about it, and even told me--in the most charming way--what I ought to be doing with my life and my talents. I was taken aback at his generosity and what he told me rang deeply true. His willingness to help and guide me was inspirational, if not a bit disarming. But for anyone, it is all a part of an encounter with Ondre.

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