About
Marilee Tolen:
Marilee Tolen RN, founder of Home Spa Lady,
and host of the Green Tea With Marilee Show, has a background as a Registered Nurse with clinical
experience in Intensive Care Nursing, an ancestral
background in natural healing, and extensive training and
expertise as a Professional Nurse Healer. A third generation
healer, Marilee was raised by parents who taught her to hug
trees when she was a child - so to appreciate the healing
power of nature, and ultimately the healing power of love.
Marilee is an Alternative Health Care "Industry Expert"
and now teaches people how they can access these
therapies for themselves. She interviews nationally
and internationally recognized Alternative Health Care
Experts on her monthly teleseminar show
"Green Tea with Marilee".
Much of what Marilee teaches focuses on what is available to
them
right in their home or techniques that can be done in their
home.
Marilee's interesting and vast
background. . . .
Dance was Marilee’s passion as a child and she studied the
Luigi style of modern dance all through high school,
traveling with the USO for 5 years. Drawn to eastern
thought, Marilee began practicing Transcendental Meditation
in her junior year of high school and noticed the dramatic
healing of her teenage acne within one week. Her belief of
the mind-body connection was anchored at this point –
realizing the body’s ability to create beauty and healing
from the inside out – given the right conditions.
Despite Marilee’s love for dance, yoga became her choice of
movement as she entered the nursing profession in 1974.
Although Critical Care was her area of expertise, in 1978
Marilee began studying the budding specialty of Holistic
Nursing - because it was in alignment with her personal
philosophy and upbringing.
Professionalism and Expertise
Marilee went on to become one of the country’s first 25
nurses to receive board certification in Holistic Nursing in
1995 through the American Holistic Nurses Association (AHNA).
She also served as a board member of the AHNA, serving two
terms as Northeast Regional Director. Her area of expertise
as a Holistic Nurse is in Energetic Healing, Vibrational
Medicine, and Intuitive Diagnosis. She has completed the
internationally acclaimed four year program in Brennan
Healing Science (Barbara Brennan, physicist and healer –
author of Hands of Light and Light Emerging) as well as
receiving certifications as a Healing Touch Practitioner and
Instructor and serving on the board for Healing Touch
International. Marilee also completed Intuition Training
with Caroline Myss, PhD and Norman Shealy, MD. Other
modalities she has studied include aromatherapy, foot
reflexology, massage, applied kinesiology, homeopathy,
flower essences, hypnotherapy, iridology, and colon
hydrotherapy. Her nutritional studies outside of the
conventional system include macrobiotics, the body ecology
approach, and an astute awareness of the role of Candidiasis
in many people’s health today. As with everything, she looks
at food energetically and vibrationally. Marilee’s studies
in healing are scientifically based, recognizing the
marriage of science (quantum physics) and spirituality –
resulting in profound changes in the physical body – healing
dis-ease, slowing down the aging process, and creating
beauty internally and externally.
Already Nationally Known
Marilee has an extensive list of professional presentations
that she has offered nationally and in British Columbia -
both in conventional and alternative medical circles over
the past 15 years. She often joins with physicians and other
leaders in the alternative medicine movement to teach both
health care practitioners and lay people interested in how
to work with nature to let the body heal and rejuvenate.
Years of Experience in Anti-Aging, Cleansing and
Detoxification, Longevity Medicine
Marilee began her private practice as a
nurse-healer in 1993 and in 1996 she opened an Integrative
Wellness Center in New Jersey staffed with physicians and
nurses. Anti-aging and Longevity therapies were offered that
included IV Chelation, Hydrogen Peroxide, and vitamin drips.
Colon Hydrotherapy, aromatherapy steams, and other cleansing
and detoxification therapies were offered. Marilee also
brought in her influence of the Edgar Cayce remedies that
she studied and used for years.
The Key to Success in Beauty and Health – Therapeutic
Essential Oils
Since 1997 Marilee has passionately embraced the use of
therapeutic essential oils in her personal and professional
practices and all areas in her life. In her opinion there is
a huge difference between ‘aromatherapy’ and the ‘use of
therapeutic essential oils’. As a matter of fact she shies
away from saying she ‘practices aromatherapy’ (although she
is receiving her certification in aromatherapy) – she sticks
with ‘the use of therapeutic essential oils’ – because of
the way she uses and teaches about essential oils. She says
it is not about the smell – it is about the life force, the
‘chi’ - in the plant that helps the body to heal, naturally
repair, and retard aging. Most essential oils in the
marketplace and aromatherapy products have chemicals and are
adulterated in some way that can be destructive to health.
Marilee is impassioned with teaching about the differences
in grades of essential oils
Consults to Health Care Systems
Marilee has also played the role of
consultant to conventional health care systems and
physician’s practices to help them incorporate alternative
therapies into their current operations. The truth she likes
to unveils about this is that the reasons these systems and
doctors want to offer alternative/integrative therapies is
because the amount of money that people are paying out of
pocket for these therapies is astounding! And they want to
be part of it. It has been her observation that their desire
to truly learn the holistic health model of care and serve
patients and the public within that framework is ‘very low’!
Alternative medicine is ‘market driven’ and they don’t want
to miss out.
EMPOWERMENT -The Most Important Part of Healing –
for
great beauty, joy, health, and success
Marilee moved on from her Wellness Center to
work independently. Her private clients ranged from dealing
with divorce and relationship crises, life stressors,
spiritual crisis, to debilitating disease such as cancer,
diabetes, heart disease, and end stage illnesses. Her
practices, and the practices she teaches – can address any
life issue – any age – any problems – because the premise of
healing in the Holistic Model is always the same. Her
philosophy behind these practices is the key to overall
healing and a joyful life – and it is about empowering
people to be a participant in their approach to High Level
Wellness.
Her Personal Mission
While a nurse in the hospital, although she saw many people
do well with surgeries and treatments from emergency
situations, Marilee also saw people get more sick from
medications that were often improperly or over prescribed,
along with a tremendous lack of managed care (especially
with the elderly and the under educated), and a serious loss
of dignity and de-humanization in the process. She saw that
this led people to become completely disempowered and
develop serious states of hopelessness – needing only to
rely on the doctors’ and the systems’ every word. She
believes that developing these states of dependency in
people has been part of the health care crisis today. In
order to make changes in this system, but ultimately for
people in their everyday lives, it is incredibly important
for people to know and learn that they can do many things to
heal themselves at home with natural and safe things that
are already at their access.
Her Personal Experience
Marilee spent the years of 1999 through 2003 devoted to the
care of her aging and ill parents, seeing to it that they
did not lose their personal power in the dehumanizing system
of the health care industry. She navigated ways to maximize
what the system had to offer – which most often was not much
in terms of healing. “The factory approach of which our
health care system is runs is nauseating” “It was like
navigating through a dark muddy maze, and having lived and
worked in that maze before – one would think there would be
some recognition of the territory, but the waters were
muddier than ever – I can’t imagine what it is like for
people who have no clue” Patient care advocacy is one of the
most needed things today – but we don’t have to get to that
point of need if we know how to embrace the holistic model
of health care in our lives everyday. Marilee was able to
create beautiful, healing, supportive, and loving conditions
at home for the last months of her parents’ lives – both of
whom died at home within 18 months of one another. They were
able to access great care at home conventionally through
Home Health Care that Marilee and the doctors arranged, and
then through Hospice when the end was near. Marilee
continued her holistic practices and treatments on her
parents for their conditions (Dad – emphysema, Mom – kidney
cancer) that were natural, comforting, and led to a very
peaceful passing for both of them.
Beauty and Anti-Aging are the only Side Effects
Marilee is passionate about teaching people how to do things
at home, in their everyday life, to prevent problems and
illnesses. Many times these things are historical spa
treatments – because of the basis of how it all works in the
natural health model. And for those interested in beauty and
anti-aging – those are the only side effects!
Following Trends –
Holistic Health Practices Accessed
Most in the Spa Industry
Marilee naturally has had her finger on the
pulse of what is happening in her industry – and early on
saw evidence that it will not be the hospital’s Wellness
Centers or the stand alone ‘Integrative Wellness Centers’
where people will be flocking for natural healing remedies.
They are already headed, in droves, to the Spas. It makes
great sense. No bureaucratic red tape, no hassle about “will
insurance cover this?”, ‘out-of-pocket’ payments are already
well accepted. But – there can be limitations there as well
– many prices are prohibitive, and the variations on the
skills of the therapist or technician vary widely because
there are little to no standards set in this industry. And
not everyone has the time or resources to access spas. Where
does that leave us? Believe it or not – right where you are!
Stay at home and learn that you have so many resources right
at your fingertips! Learn from Home Spa Lady what they are and
how to use them in your everyday life!
A Statement from Marilee – Host of the Green Tea with Marilee Show and founder of Home Spa Lady
“I am fully committed to share with the world ways in which
we can take care of ourselves at home – on a daily basis,
even in the busy–ness of life as it is today – based on the
Holistic Health model and philosophies of natural law. This
perspective and practices are not unlike Florence
Nightingale’s suggestions that taught us to “Put the patient
in the best place for nature to act upon them”, or
Hippocrates’ wisdom – “Let food be thy medicine”.
Historically, spas have been used for healing the body of
pain and disease with baths, waters, anointing of certain
oils, laying on of hands, and massage. We are in a time now
where we can provide these things for ourselves on a daily
basis – to stay healthy, prevent disease, and even treat
diseases naturally or by augmenting medical care with
natural therapies we can do at home. This is not to say not
to utilize conventional medical treatment for disease, nor
is it to say don’t go to a day or destination spa. I think
both are highly important. But it is to say that you have at
your fingertips - right in your own home - ways in which you
can assist your body and your life to heal, fight the aging
process, elevate emotions, learn to love yourself, better
your relationships, stay empowered in life, and function at
a higher level than maybe you even thought possible.”
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