It's Eric Bakker.
Thanks for coming back.
Lots of people send me comments.
You can imagine.
Ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.
You need a new hair cut.
You need a brain transplant or you need whatever.
I get all this kind of stuff.
I love it.
But every now and then I get comments like this one.
I want to become a naturopath.
Where do I start?
How do I get into your profession?
It's important work that you do.
I'd love to do this kind of work.
Well, let me tell you something.
When you get into naturopathy, you don't get into it for money.
So it's not a job you do because you want to make dollars.
Dollars only come well down the track when you've got experience and you really get a
grip on this kind of treatment.
It's like any medical kind of profession.
Now many people say, don't call yourself a medical professional person because you're
just a pseudo scientific cult member.
Maybe that's what I should be calling myself, a pseudo scientific cult person.
It's quite interesting, isn't it?
There's no easy road to becoming a naturopath really, just like there is getting into any
other sort of area of medicine really.
It takes time.
It takes study.
It takes concentration.
But furthermore in naturopathy, it also takes a high degree of insight into human behavior.
Psychology is a very important part of naturopathy.
I think if you want to get into this area, how you would start is you would find a good
college.
Now there are good colleges in the states, United States.
There are few in Australia.
So in different countries, there are colleges.
Online education I don't really think is the way to go.
I think it needs to be classroom setting.
It needs to be face to face with teachers, but particularly you need a mentorship, and
this is what's sadly lacking with most colleges.
There's no finishing off of the naturopath.
He or she will learn some information and then maybe spend a few semesters or terms
in a student clinic and then that's it.
They're on their own.
They have to then become people who market themselves.
They have to understand about bookkeeping and about basic business.
They have to understand about diagnosing, treating.
It's a lot.
It's very overwhelming all this sort of stuff to try and learn in a short period of time.
Again, I've never been a person who does anything for the short term.
I always think about the distance.
I planted, for example, two avocado trees six, seven years ago because I knew that what
you sow, you will reap.
Now of course we've got hundreds of avocados all hanging off the trees, and people are
rushing around me trying to buy trees and put them in the ground.
If you want to do something, do it yesterday.
Don't do it today, don't do it tomorrow.
Do it yesterday.
You'll get old like me and then you'll think, "Oh, I haven't got much time left."
So if you want to do something, don't muck around and get into it.
Find the best possible college you can study.
If you're serious about naturopathy, you will move to that area so you can study at a prestigious
college.
It makes more sense.
You've got a higher chance of proper mentorship or finishing off.
You got passionate people who teach you, people who get paid good money to teach.
I got put into a naturopathy college years ago.
I think I got paid less than the minimum wage, and I had a principal in the college who wanted
me to pass everybody.
We had people in the back of the classroom rolling cigarettes.
They couldn't even write naturopath, so of course I'd fail anyone like that.
These aren't people with a passion.
Some colleges it's basically just a funding grab because they grabbed funding from the
government and stuff bums on seats to make some type of money.
Those people don't end up becoming clinicians.
They're just time wasters.
When I qualified, there were nearly 60 people in my class.
About 20 years after I graduated, I found there were less than five of us still in practice.
The dropout rate for a qualified naturopath is extremely high for colleges because it's
not easy to make a living becoming a naturopath.
It takes time.
It takes commitment and dedication.
Generally most naturopaths I know in my sort of position on their way up to getting experience
before they could command a little bit higher fee, they would had to work stacking shelves
in the supermarket or pumping gas or cleaning windows or jobs like that.
I did all sorts of crazy jobs in the first several years just so I could support my family.
I didn't really start making any income out of naturopathy probably for the first five
to 10 years until I got more serious with the clinic.
It wasn't until probably 30 years that I actually could start commanding a couple of hundred
dollars for an hour, which I think is fair enough when some people charge thousands of
dollars for half a day and they give crap information out.
It's not what you charge is the important thing.
It's your commitment and deedcation to the client and your ability to want to solve problems.
That's the key.
If you've got that commitment and you're wanting to help people, money's not the object.
People will pay you anything to get better, but it's not up to you to take advantage of
that situation.
That's the wrong kind of professional approach.
It's the approach I certainly don't like with practitioners.
Income will always come.
People will always seek the person who can help them the most and the fees are commanded
and normally paid are commensurate with the level of experience, so don't expect a lot
of money for the first 10, 20 years.
Unless you're a money grabber like some people are, but people soon see through that kind
of junk too.
Get into this field because you like natural health and you like helping people, you've
got a passion for it, and people will see through that very quick.
They'll pick up on that and they will be more committed to your recommendations.
That's the best advice I can give.
But also spend a lot of time reading the right kind of books, particularly books that were
written maybe 50 or a hundred years ago.
There was some very good naturopathic books written.
Google it.
You'll soon find the titles.
These books were created in an era long before computer technology, in an era when people
actually spent time observing people and writing down notes.
They didn't have machine based learning.
They didn't have machine based diagnosis.
Everything was manual.
These were the golden years of naturopathy in my opinion, 5,200 years back, where the
treatments were incredible.
People got great results.
Antibiotics weren't quite around at that point.
The older books are the best.
A lot of that information is not online still.
It's still not available through Google.
But if you make inquiries and do research, you'll definitely find some books.
Depending on your culture and your country, you may have a specific interest in ethnicity
for example.
I mean it could be Uranian natural medicine or you could be looking at Moroccan or Sudan.
Every country has its own know plants and ability to heal people depending on where
you live.
The other recommendation I have is to pick a niche.
I picked the candida niche and the gut niche.
You may be interested in cardiovascular or female health or something.
When you become more niche driven, you become more of an expert in that niche because you
try and learn a lot of information regarding that niche.
Again, people will see that and if you make a better mouse trap than the lady next door,
the guy crossing the road is probably going to buy your mouse trap.
That's what happens.
It takes time.
It takes dedication.
Unfortunately you don't make a lot of money in that time, but the rewards will come to
you.
Remember, rewards don't have to be monetary.
Some of the best rewards I've ever had were things that people told me after the treatment.
It didn't involve how much money I made out of that person.
So it's up to you.
But I think it's a noble profession and I think you've got a fantastic future if you
do decide to go down this path.
Please pick a really reputable place to study.
Pick the best teachers, and then try and associate yourself with different mentors, like I have
over the years, with people that you look up to that have written many books.
Then you can learn a lot of these people.
Dr. Ross Walker, my friend, the cardiologist in Australia has written several books.
Dr. James Wilson wrote the book on adrenal fatigue.
Dr. Joseph Collin's expert in female endocrine health.
These are all friends and people I associate with, people I've learned information from.
Dr. David Quig, PhD from Doctor's Data, expert in heavy metals and in the gut.
If you're a naturopath, align yourself with the right kind of people.
Take them out for lunch, learn.
Also you'll become quite a good friend.
You'll have another friend and you'll be surprised how much you learn from these kinds of people.
I hope that inspires you to take up the torch because my clinic's finished now after many,
many years.
I'm done.
This is my final day of practice, which I find very distressing and quite sad in one
way because I've really enjoyed the clinic, but it's time now for other people to do this
kind of work and for me to get back into guitar playing and gardening and doing nothing, bicycling,
maybe meditating.
I hope this video inspires somebody.
Thank you so much for your attention.
I always appreciate it.