A true story about fifty years of searching, one clear answer, and a calling that was there all along.
What if the knowledge you have been gathering your whole life was always meant to be shared?
Dr. Rowen Pfeifer, DC
Board Certified Natural Health Coach
For the person who already knows that diet and lifestyle hold the real answers.
I spent decades studying nutrition, reading everything I could find, and watching people get sicker while doing what their doctors told them to do. And I knew there had to be a different path.
It started when I was a kid, and I had no idea anything was wrong.
I grew up chronically constipated my entire childhood. I was a poor student. I could barely focus. I graduated high school with a 1.98 GPA, dropped out of college after one semester, and spent years working in factories and playing in a band across the Midwest. I genuinely believed I was not a very bright person, and my grades confirmed that story.
What I did not know, and what nobody around me understood, was that my body was full of toxicity. My diet was terrible. My system was backed up. And every symptom I was living with, the foggy thinking, the low energy, the inability to perform, was my body signaling something deeper.
That is the part most people miss. The signals are there. The body is always communicating. And when nobody teaches you to read those signals, you spend years believing the problem is you.
I carried that belief for a long time. And honestly, it was isolating. Because even when I started searching, even when I began reading the Eastern philosophies and the Bhagavad Gita and the self-help books that called to me, I still did not have the language for what I was sensing. I just knew the answers I had been handed were incomplete.
Then, at age twenty-five, one line changed everything.
I was reading the Bible on my own, outside of any religion, just the text itself. And I came across the verse that says the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. And for some reason that I still cannot fully explain, those words landed on my heart in a way nothing had before.
I went from a person who disliked reading to someone who devoured every book I could find. T.C. Fry. The American Natural Hygiene Society. Robert Mendelsohn. Distilled water fasting. Raw nutrition. Natural hygiene principles. One author led me to the next, and the next led me to the next, and I felt like I was being guided through a curriculum I did not design.
The knowledge was there. My body was still waiting for me to live it.
I went on to chiropractic school, built a practice, and poured myself into the work. I loved it. I still love it. And through all of that, I was studying nutrition on the side, reading ninety-nine percent about diet and lifestyle and one percent about chiropractic. That is where my heart was. That is where it has always been.
The stress of building a career and raising a family was real. And even with everything I had studied, I was not yet living it the way my body needed me to.
It came on slowly, then all at once.
The chronic constipation I had lived with my whole life began to escalate. Blood in the stool. Then blood and mucus. Then explosive diarrhea. It progressed over a period of years, and I kept pushing through until my body made that impossible.
A holistic medical doctor misdiagnosed me with a yeast infection and sent me home with nystatin. I got worse. My wife saw how badly I was declining and got me to the emergency room, where I spent a week with IVs in my arm replacing the electrolytes and fluids I had lost. They did a colonoscopy and diagnosed me with ulcerative colitis “bleeding ulcers of the colon”. Medically speaking, it was supposed to be incurable.
I went the medical route for about a year. Prednisone put the fire out temporarily. Every time they tapered the dose, the symptoms came roaring back. The medication could suppress the symptoms. It could not reach what was causing them.
And I knew, somewhere underneath the fear and the exhaustion, that the twelve years of study I had done were pointing me toward a different answer.
“Do what you already know to do.”
I spent that year in a lot of prayer. Personal prayer, intercessory prayer, altar calls. One day I was singing in a very large choir, and during the altar call I did not feel led to go forward. I just received a clear word, one of the only times in my life I have ever heard something that distinct.
“Do what you already know to do.”
I knew exactly what it meant. Every book I had read. Every principle I had studied. Every truth about how the body heals. It was all there, waiting for me to live it.
I stopped all the medication. I did a six-day distilled water fast. Then I moved into organic carrot-based vegetable juices and one hundred percent raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.
My wife, who was a medical assistant, told me I could not do that. She said everybody knows that when you have a colon problem, you cannot eat roughage. And I said to her: that may be true, but all I know is it is the raw fruits and vegetables that have the nutrients my body needs to heal and get well.
Within two to three months, the ulcerative colitis was resolved. There were a couple of dips along the way. Some peaks and valleys. And then it was over.
That was over thirty-six years ago. I have not seen a medical doctor for anything health-related since.
The body carries its own healing intelligenc. It waits for the internal and external toxicity to be cleansed, and then it does what it was designed to do.
The years that followed taught me something I carry with me every day.
I started teaching every patient who would listen. I built a lending library in my chiropractic office, a big bookshelf where patients could purchase or borrow books, take one home, bring it back, and get another. Some made mild changes and got good results. The ones who changed everything got the results that still move me to talk about them today.
The healthier the body is, the better results you get on any kind of good therapy. I watched it happen over and over. When a patient showed up toxic, overweight, and running on medication, chiropractic could only do so much. When a patient showed up nourished, detoxified, and taking real responsibility for their health, everything worked better. The adjustments held longer. The healing came faster. The whole person came alive.
That principle became the center of my practice. And it taught me a truth that extends far beyond chiropractic: when the internal and external environment is clean, the self-healing mechanism reactivates. The body does the rest.
But there is one part of this story I need to share, because it is the most honest thing I can tell you.
I could not get my wife to come along on this path.
She understood it. She could explain it to you. She saw the results in me and in our patients. And for whatever reason, she would not or could not do it for herself. I pushed too hard in the beginning. I learned to back off. When she would mention a symptom, I would gently offer what I knew. She just never came around.
I lost her almost two years ago to Alzheimer’s and dementia. The truth I carry from that is simple, and it is the hardest truth in this work: you cannot force anyone to change. You can love them. You can be the living example. You can share what you know when the moment opens. And sometimes it is not enough. That is part of this path too.
If you have ever watched someone you love struggle with their health and felt the weight of knowing what could help them, you understand what I am saying.
That is also why I believe so deeply in education. In giving people the understanding, the framework, and the confidence to take responsibility for their own healing. The people who make the change are the ones who truly understand why the change matters.
Finding Dr. Group was like hearing my own voice confirmed by someone with the research and the framework to take it further.
I had been doing this for over fifty years by the time I came across Dr. Edward Group. I had seen his videos, watched him in docu-series, and kept noticing that he was saying everything I had studied and lived for decades. The same principles. The same understanding. The same respect for the body’s own intelligence.
What Dr. Group gave me was a framework I had always sensed.
The root cause of disease comes down to two things: internal toxicity and external toxicity. The toxic gut, the toxic liver, the parasites, the chemicals and heavy metals. These are the four instigators, the places where that toxicity accumulates. Once you understand that, everything else falls into place. The symptoms make sense. The protocols have a sequence. And the body’s self-healing mechanism, which was always there, has a clear path to reactivate.
I had lived this truth in my own body for thirty-six years. Dr. Group gave it a name, a structure, and a community to carry it forward.
Getting certified at seventy-six was one of the best decisions I have ever made.
I went through the Natural Health Coach Certification knowing most of the material already. Fifty years of study will do that. I completed it in about eight weeks. And I want to be honest: I do not expect most people to move that fast. If I had not had that background, I would have spent six to eight months going through the courses, because there is a tremendous amount of depth in them.
What surprised me were the things I did not know yet. New ideas, new perspectives, deeper understanding of areas I had only touched on the surface. That is the mark of a strong program. Even someone with five decades of study walks away with something new.
And then there is the part I did not expect at all: the community.
When I was healing from ulcerative colitis thirty-six years ago, the journey was lonely. There was no one to talk to. No Telegram channels. No social media. No group of coaches who understood what I was going through. I had cassette tapes. I had books. And I had a wife who did not fully understand what I was doing. That was it.
The Global Healing Institute changed that completely. Getting my certificate, joining the Telegram channels, interacting with other coaches who are living this work and building their practices, it has pumped me up to a level I have not felt before. The support is real. The friendships are real. And the brainstorming and training the Institute provides to help coaches build their work is constant and genuine.
If I had had this community thirty-six years ago, my entire journey would have been different. It exists now. And that matters more than I can say.
Maybe everything you have studied has been preparing you for something larger than your own health.
I know what it feels like to carry this knowledge alone. To be the person in the room who sees what nobody else sees. To love someone who will not change, and to keep believing in the work anyway. To spend decades studying, searching, reading, and never quite knowing what to do with everything you have gathered.
That is where I lived for most of my life. And if that sounds familiar to you, I want you to know: you are not behind. You are exactly where your preparation has brought you.
Maybe the years of reading were not random. Maybe the late nights researching, the books that found their way into your hands, the quiet knowing that diet and lifestyle hold the real answers to health, maybe all of that was shaping something in you. A readiness. A depth. A calling you can feel even if you have not named it yet.
The people who need this work are everywhere. I see them every day in my practice. Eighty-five to ninety percent of the patients who walk through my door are significantly over their ideal weight. They are in pain. They are exhausted. And they have been trained to believe that medication is the answer, that the problem lives outside their control.
Someone needs to teach them the truth. Someone who has lived it. Someone who has walked through their own healing and come out the other side with the understanding, the compassion, and the framework to guide others.
That person may be you.
If you are going to guide people toward their health, the path you take matters.
My goal now is to transition ninety percent of my working time into health coaching, teaching, and educating people through every channel I can reach. I want to travel, work from wherever I am, and do one-on-one coaching through Zoom with people who are ready to take real responsibility for their health.
I am seventy-six years old. I have practiced chiropractic for almost forty years. And the truth I have arrived at is the same truth that landed on my heart at twenty-five: the body is sacred, it carries its own healing intelligence, and when you clear the toxicity and give it what it needs, it does what it was designed to do.
Dr. Group's Board Certified Natural Health Coach Certification is the framework, the credential, and the community that turns the knowledge you have been carrying into a practice you can build with confidence.
Here is what that means for you.
The next time someone describes their exhaustion, their brain fog, their chronic pain, you will know what their body has been carrying. You will know the questions to ask and the framework to guide them through.
The years of study stop being scattered pieces and become a structured, credentialed practice grounded in root cause. Everything you have learned finally has a home.
You get to guide people with confidence and warmth, helping them see the deeper truth underneath their symptoms. You become the person who helps them understand what their body is asking for.
The most powerful healing agent known to man is already inside you. That is the body’s own self-healing mechanism. Dr. Group’s certification teaches you how to help others reactivate that mechanism and take real ownership of their health. We do not fish for you. We teach you how to fish.
The choice is clear. You can keep gathering knowledge on your own, trusting that the pieces will organize themselves someday. Or you can step onto a path built to make you trained, certified, supported, and ready to guide others with real clarity and earned authority.
If this is the work you already feel drawn to, this is where you stop being the person who knows, and become the person who is equipped.
The certification is $5,997. Your grant takes $2,000 off, which brings it to $3,997 today. You can begin from $167 a month over 24 months at 0% APR, no interest (US only). Living outside the US? We set up an international payment option for you here.
If you need more clarity on whether now is the right time for you, our enrollment advisors are available and can hold your grant until you have your questions answered and your confidence in saying yes feels best.