Marlise Annen is a busy woman. She runs a farm, offers Ortho-Bionomy® to humans and animals, hosts visitors, and produces dairy products. GstaadLife grabbed some time in Marlise’s busy schedule to learn about Ortho-Bionomy, working with animals, and stress relief for all.
 

You run a farm but also offer Ortho-Bionomy for people and animals. That sounds intriguing.
I’ve been running the farm for almost 20 years and started offering Ortho-Bionomy to people and animals in 2017. Ortho-Bionomy is a gentle, non-invasive form of bodywork that promotes balance and self-healing. It’s a very gentle sort of reflexology which draws on some basic elements of osteopathy and physiotherapy as well as intuition.

It took two years of training to become a practitioner, but for me it’s about more than the certificate. For me Ortho-Bionomy is a way of living. I decided to become an Ortho-Bionomy practitioner because it enables me to interact positively with nature and to also improve the life of my animals.

Arthur Pauls, the founder of Ortho-Bionomy, believed that our bodies contain all the knowledge they need for self-regulation and maintaining health. He chose the sand dollar symbol for Ortho-Bionomy because although it appears to be a symmetrical figure, its centre is not necessarily in its mathematical-geometric centre, just like the centre for humans is different for each individual. Everybody has their own centre so every client comes to you as they are and you take the person as they present themselves. You don’t judge them.

How does Ortho-Bionomy work?
The first thing to know about Ortho-Bionomy is that you are fully clothed during sessions. I advise people to wear comfortable stretch clothing because we do gentle movement. My clients lie on a massage table and I palpate their body to find the pain points or areas of tension. I use gentle movement and light compression to engage the nervous system, promote relaxation and release patterns of tension, with the goal of restoring balance, ease pain, and improve overall wellbeing.

As a practitioner of Ortho-Bionomy it’s important to not have any prejudices or judgments about what’s best for the client because it’s about restoring balance and encouraging the body’s natural ability to self-regulate. I always ask the client what makes them feel better and listen to what they tell me so I can help them find what feels comfortable and good.

I don’t manipulate the situation and decide I know what they need. Instead it’s important to go with the flow. Then when I find an area that hurts, I’ll listen to the body to help it feel relaxed. Because the body always seeks the healthy way, like a flower grows towards the sun. And it’s through this sense of relaxation that we help the body to find its own self-healing powers.

What are the benefits of Ortho- Bionomy?
Sometimes the body’s natural ability to remain balanced is impacted by stress, injury, accident, incorrect posture, emotional experiences or other events that overburden the body’s limits. In my opinion the reason why Ortho-Bionomy is so successful is you work on every layer, which means you can go deep. It helps people to break the cycle of pain without using resistance and creating more pain.

Something that helps me as an Ortho-Bionomy practitioner is to ask what your thoughts are like. Do you know how many thoughts you have each day? In the region of sixty or eighty thousand, most of them repeated. But do you think about what they are? How many times do you catch yourself thinking, oh, why did I do that? Why am I thinking that? How could I do that better? Our thoughts count because they create our experience. We often have negative thoughts about ourselves but would do better to focus on the good ones and to be more delighted with who we are. Think about it – if you go out and smile at everyone because you’re feeling good what do you see? People smiling back. Our thoughts really do matter, especially as they also impact how your body feels

But I find that humans often stay so much in our heads that we don’t consider what’s happening in our bodies. We are missing out because there is so much intelligence to learn from our physical bodies. This is where Ortho-Bionomy helps a lot. It makes us much more aware of our body. It encourages us to discover what our body does and doesn’t like. Why is this important? Because if we listen to our bodies, to the nervousness, restless, stress and tension, we learn whether something is good for us or not.

Ortho-Bionomy enables us to learn how to reset our body’s balance. Stress, as we know, is actually the base of many illnesses. But many people don’t even know how stressed they are so much of the time. They aren’t aware how this stress concentrates in the body as a type of trauma such that they feel it in their bones. Ortho-Bionomy helps them to release this.

Why does this matter? Because if you’re in a balance you don’t get ill. If someone is ready to get rid of their pain you can get really incredible results using Ortho-Bionomy.

What’s it like to perform Ortho-Bionomy on animals? Do you only work on farm animals?
I work with all animals. There’s a lot of intuition involved because obviously animals can’t speak!
Listening to the intelligence in our bodies applies as much to animals as humans. I have people question this because they don’t believe that animals feel anything. But I can tell you that they can be much more aware of their bodies than many humans. You can take a cow that weighs seven or eight hundred kilos and if you touch her somewhere on her foot then she’s going to react immediately.

I’ve been around animals since I was a child and understand them. I think animals are incredible and they definitely have their own ways of communicating with us, of letting us know what they want and how they’re feeling. I see this when I do Ortho-Bionomy on my animals. It’s so interesting how they come up to me and give me a nudge. It’s their way of saying: “please, I need something.” Often when I work on one cow, another will come over too, as if to tell me “I’d also like some of that.”

You also offer foot reflexology. Is that separate to Ortho-Bionomy or connected in some way?
Actually, it’s, separate, but you can integrate the two.

If people aren’t ready for Ortho-Bionomy, it can be powerful to start with their feet. I had an elderly client who didn’t want a full session of Ortho-Bionomy, but told me she felt like a princess after some foot reflexology. That touched me deeply. Foot reflexology can have a very positive, calming and relaxing effect, but I often find that people aren’t used to their feet being touched!

What’s it like to run a small farm in 2024?
You need passion and joy to lead a farmer’s life. Either you are a big or a small farm. And for me, the only way to run a farm is to keep it as small as possible. I only have 20 animals.

I don’t know how it works to run a big farm. I only have as many animals as I have hay for and I only have as many animals as I have space for. By keeping my farm small I don’t use the modern machinery that larger farms have. But I don’t have the expense of buying or maintaining that equipment either. So it’s a question of approach.

For me it is important to produce as much as possible by myself. Cows are such wonderful beings and they have so much to give to humans. Not only their milk, which is pure love, but also their strength, power, calmness and their beauty. And around us we have this extraordinary nature. I farm the way I was taught and I find my way to be self-sustaining.

What is a typical day like? Do you have such a thing?
That’s a really hard question to answer because there isn’t one typical day! What I can say is my days are full and there are always surprises! It’s hard, physical labour; twelve or fourteen-hour days are common. Do I wonder if I’ll be able to manage it all as there’s so much to do? Yes, but I’m lucky that I do get help from others, otherwise I couldn’t do it. I also have visitors to the farm who join in, but they’re amazed how hard it is to do physical labour for seven days in a row when they’re not used to it.

Aside from putting the animals first – milking them then mucking out – the work depends on the season. In springtime, for instance, a major job is fencing. I’m responsible for a lot of land (the farm in the village, the location mid-way up the Alps and the farm high in the mountains where the cheese gets made) so you’ll find me installing and maintaining kilometres and kilometres of fencing. On top of that there’s all the work involved in looking after the meadows and preparing all the products I market so there’s always a lot to do.

You offer products with the BIO SUISSE label?
Yes, but to me it’s more than a label. It’s like Ortho-Bionomy – it’s my way of living. It’s about my relationship with nature. It’s how I operate and how I care about nature. I don’t put any chemicals on my meadows (consequently Alp cheese is the best because it’s produced from the milk of cows fed exclusively on mountain grass) and I use homeopathic or natural treatment for my animals. Ortho-Bionomy also helps me to reduce the need for medicine so I only need to call the vet or use antibiotics in very special situations. And of course it is very important for me that cows have their horns – for their health and wellbeing.

What are your plans for the future?
I grew up on this farm so it’s in my bones. I actually didn’t want to take it o n initially because I didn’t think I’d be able to run it on my own. But as I was a single child my father turned to me. I remember he asked me in the September if I’d take over the following January as that was the last possible date to make the decision. I was uncertain but went into my body to seek guidance from myself and realised I would be very sad if I didn’t try to do the best for this little piece of paradise. So I did. And it’s worked well, but now I know it’s time to start looking for a new solution for running the farm so I can focus on Ortho-Bionomy full-time.

Farming and local produce are key elements of the Saanenland destination; how do you see the relationship between farming and tourism?
We obviously have a lot of farming and a lot of tourism in the region. I’m positive about the relationship between the two because I think it’s an important relationship that involves give and take. Tourism is very important because it brings people to our region and of course they also buy the products that we produce with our passion. But for me it’s more than that. I think it’s good for visitors to see what we do and they appreciate the level of work that goes on behind the scenes to produce the quality products that we sell. I also think it’s great they have this awareness so they can help us to protect the nature and support everything that we have here. Farming the way we do here in the Saanenland is very important for keeping the landscape clean and beautiful.

Finally, what is your own favourite spot in the region?
I always say that I have the greatest gift because there are so many beautiful places on my farm. But one other place I can think of is the Gryden, just above our mid-Alp farm area near Lauenen. It’s such a beautiful part of this region. And in the spring time it’s wonderful because there’s still snow up there and as it melts you see more and more flowers. It’s just perfect.

ANNA CHARLES