Who We Are

The Parkinson’s Treatment and Research Team of Santa Cruz is dedicated to providing treatments suggested by the Parkinson’s Recovery Project. We are a consortium of seven acupuncturists who have a solid background in Asian medicine and who have studied and trained with Janice Walton-Hadlock. Our treatment program is located in Santa Cruz, California, and is for people who would like to be treated for Parkinson’s Disease using the techniques expounded in the book Recovery from Parkinson’s Disease.

(This book is available for free on the website of the Parkinson’s Recovery Project, www.pdrecovery.org.)

We offer non-invasive treatment named Forceless Spontaneous Release (FSR) for idiopathic Parkinson’s Disease. The team reviews individual cases and makes recommendations for treatment strategies. All the members of the treatment program have been treating PD patients for two or more years with positive results.

Our Program

We accept patients and their practitioners for a period of up to one month. Patients can receive up to three treatments a day, up to six days a week. Visiting practitioners may attend treatment sessions and receive hands on training free of charge. Prior to visiting us patients should already be working with an FSR practitioner. FSR practitioners should have spent some time practicing the techniques on both healthy people and on the patient.

Practitioners and patients must have read The Parkinson’s Recovery Handbook by Janice Walton-Hadlock before being accepted into the program. This book can be downloaded for free at www.pdrecovery.org. (Patients who are still looking for a healthcare practitioner should read the warning posted on the “Information for Patients” page of the www.pdrecovery.org website by clicking on the word “warning” in the text of that page.)

Our Goals

Our goals are twofold:

1) to benefit the PD patients who come for treatment;
2) to help educate visiting healthcare practitioners.

Patients are also welcome to bring their family members to observe and ask questions. Long-term treatment, spanning the several years typically needed to recover from Parkinson’s, is not a part of our program. For this reason, we do not encourage patients to relocate to the Santa Cruz area for full time treatment. Recovering can take years, and patients need to be in an environment close to their homes, friends, and families, during the very difficult times of weakness and deep fatigue that can occur throughout the course of treatment.

The Value of Multiple Practitioners

The benefit of receiving FSR from several different practitioners has been remarked on by our patients. Patients observe that, although every one of us is doing the same thing, we still each have a slightly different feel, a unique way of “doing nothing.”

We first noticed this when Janice Walton-Hadlock asked some colleagues to work on those of her patients who were taking longer to respond. What she found was that patients felt a bond or an antipathy towards certain practitioners even though their FSR work was nearly identical. This like or dislike seemed to have an effect on the patient’s ability to feel safe. Sometimes it was a matter of gender or age of the practitioner, other times it was something inexpressible. From Janice’s earliest writing, she has encouraged FSR practitioners who have a patient that is not responding within a few months’ time to seek out other practitioners to give the FSR a try.

There is a benefit to students of FSR in observing multiple practitioners. Many times a health care practitioner comments that, despite reading the book, and even after seeing one or two people doing the FSR, it wasn’t until they saw the third or even fourth person sitting apparently motionless, holding a person’s foot or ankle for nearly an hour doing nothing that was visible to the eye, that they began to grasp the essence of the treatment. Sometimes they need to see several people “doing nothing” before they finally begin to understand at a visceral level just what it looks and feels like to provide non-intrusive, non-judgemental support.

We look forward to meeting you.

Treatment Program Details || Patient Eligibility || Fees || Biographies

Frequently Asked Questions

Before emailing us, please read the “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) page of this website. To enroll in the program, please contact us at our email address: pdteam@cruzio.com

The following attachments are available upon request by writing to this email address: pdteam@cruzio.com

• Motels
• Transportation Information (airports, airport transportation)
• Driving Directions to the practitioners’ office