I suffered from psoriasis from the age of 12. For nearly 12 years I tried all the medicines doctors gave me (including having my mother putting very sticky creams on my head in the evening, sleeping with a towel around my head and washing my hair before going to school). It was tough. It didn’t help, but in fact the problem got worse and spread from my head to all the other parts of my body, and the medicines they gave me had very unpleasant side-effects. I felt desperate, especially because at that age we are very sensitive about our appearance, and I spent very hot summers in long sleeves and turtle neck jumpers.
At the age of 24 I went to see another doctor, who was the director of the dermatological clinic of a large town where I was studying. He told me that it was a degenerative disease and could only get worse. He said that he had no cure and that the only thing he knew that could halt the degenerative process was a near-starvation diet for the rest of my life: if in 20 years time I had the same amount of psoriasis without it having got any worse, then I could consider his “therapy” successful. I remember that when I left his office I wished to jump under the first bus in the street.
But I didn’t and I refused to believe him and his colleagues. I started seeing a Chinese doctor who did acupuncture: it started to improve, but very slowly. In the meantime I had completed my master degree and having started to work, I decided that I could support myself and moved away from what I thought was the psychological cause behind my disease. I actually moved more than 400 km away (just to be on the safe side!) and changed my life entirely. I believe that this step was essential for my healing. However, removing the cause is often not enough if the imbalance has soaked so far into us as to affect us physically.
By that time my Chinese doctor was too far away for me to visit, however a colleague of mine had a doctor friend who was studying acupuncture. I already knew the acupuncture points and she taught me all I needed to know about how to insert the needles correctly. I improved quite quickly, however every time I did a course, as a side effect I felt very lethargic, which was a problem to me because I was leading a very active life.
Once the psoriasis regressed to a few patches I started feeling “safe” and didn’t bother to complete the acupuncture treatment.
In the early 90s a friend of mine introduced me to Reiki and I had my first attunement. As soon as I had it, I noticed a reduction of the patches. My friend also encouraged me to look into crystal therapy and I bought some crystals to try. Not knowing how to use them (and being very sceptical about them) I mistakenly applied the wrong crystal to a patch of psoriasis and to my great surprise the patch immediately became worse: this reaction meant to me that crystal therapy worked! I started studying this discipline and – at the same time – I attended a course of Channelling. We met twice a month and every time I attended a session, 24 hours later I always noticed a small improvement.
In 1984 I had become vegetarian and I wished to become vegan, but I knew this would have probably meant eating a lot of soya, and doctors told me that soya was the worst possible food for my condition and therefore to be avoided at all costs.
When I moved to England I still had some tiny patches of psoriasis: although they didn’t bother me, I felt that their presence was a reminder that there was still work to do, that I was not healed. In London I gathered much more information about the ill-treatment of farm animals and I decided that I would become vegan, regardless of what might happen to my skin. For the first few months after I became vegan I was very worried that I would experience a sudden explosion of psoriasis, but it didn’t happen. What happened instead was that, after a few months of being vegan, my body adapted to it and even the last, tiny patches disappeared. This happened ten years ago and the psoriasis has never come back. I am nearly 58 now and I am totally free from what doctors told me was a chronic and degenerative disease.
I now run my own private practice of hypnotherapy and other alternative therapies and I help people to free themselves from problems that affect their spirit, mind and body in a very natural way.
© Renata Bartoli 2009

Author's Bio: 

I have a solid academic background with more than 20 scholarly publications to my credit. I have nearly 40 years’ experience in helping teenagers and adults to improve their lives and solve their problems (gained teaching in Colleges and in Adult Education in several different countries).
I began practicing hypnotherapy in Italy in 1994, and since I moved to the UK I have gained several formal British and American qualifications in Hypnotherapy and Counselling.
I am now the director of my own successful private practice in North Harrow, At The Apple Tree Hypnotherapy, which I run together with my husband Gary. Together we offer our clients a dedicated, comprehensive choice of services for their physical, emotional and mental well-being using a combined approach of Hypnotherapy, Conventional and Holistic NLP and Conventional and Holistic Counselling and Life Coaching that makes our methods particularly effective and flexible for their most varied needs.
We specialise in Stop-Smoking, Weight-Management and Regression Therapy as well as Grief and Bereavement Counselling. We have also created a very powerful new technique called Interactive Inner World Therapy, exclusively practised At The Apple Tree, which combines various techniques in a new blend of therapy that yields excellent results for many and varied conditions both physical and emotional (see our website for a complete list of the therapies and techniques available). We actively update our expertise on an ongoing basis and we are fully insured and bound by a strict code of conduct. Confidentiality is assured at all times.
As a practice we endeavour to provide support and guidance (via email and telephone) after a client has left our premises for as long as it benefits them. Our objective is always to provide a high quality bespoke service to those who put their trust in us, which is why we work only with a limited number of clients at any one time.
All our scripts are personalised, and our clients can be assured that they are created specifically for them and perfectly tailored to their problem and the causes that created it. We are all unique individuals with unique needs and unique solutions, and we know that having the same problem doesn’t mean that we can solve it in the same way. At The Apple Tree we shall help our clients' Subconscious to unleash their full potential.
All therapies are offered in ENGLISH and ITALIAN. Telephone sessions are available worldwide via Skype or conventional telephone connection.

I run LOW-COST WORKSHOPS on SELF-HYPNOSIS and PAST-LIFE REGRESSION (see our websites: www.the-apple-tree.co.uk and www.footprintsfromthepast.co.uk ).