Crystal Child: How Chinese Medicine Saved My Daughter from Food Allergies and Asthma
Lisa B. Lewis is a mother, advocate, circus and variety performer and business owner who wears many hats and plays many roles, each of which she pursues with unlimited enthusiasm and love. She has a BA from Brandeis University, a BFA from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, and an MA from NYU in Clown/Circus History; she has also completed the Teaching Artist Training Institute and works with Marquis Studios teaching circus skills to students on the autism spectrum, with other special needs and General education. Lisa spent fifteen years working with the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit, an organization that sends trained performers into pediatric hospital rooms. She Now works with The Big Apple Circus as Program Director of Circus of the Senses, a show adapted specifically for Deaf, Blind, Visually and Hearing impaired students as welll as those on the Spectrum. She runs six different educational assembly programs that use visual circus arts and magic to make science come alive and clear for students in grades Pre-K to 8.        In advocating for her own child, she became the school liaison for all students with food allergies at PS 261 in Brooklyn, where she created a food allergy management program for the entire school and coaches many parents of newly diagnosed children on proper care and maintenance, not only in the school, but in their homes as well. She is the allergy advisor on two different Yahoo groups for children with special needs.     Lisa is jokingly referred to as a “pit bull” for her determination to find help and advocate for her daughter. She believes her daughter—who, at the age of ten, is a great gymnast, walks on stilts, sings, dances, and plays guitar and piano—is living proof of the positive effects of Chinese herbal immunotherapy for asthma and food allergies. Her message is about life, love, and living to your fullest potential.