Posted By Bonnie on March 10, 2010
Transformational healing can only be done at a certain pace. It can’t go that quickly. Transformation takes time. Only so much can be taken in.
Everyone seems to want to be “fixed” now. Rather, in transformation, we are changed. We are not “fixed” in healing, rather we are changed. We transform. Transformation is not a quick single played out act. It is a process. A process takes time. We may become frustrated in our stuck places, however, we must also acknowledge that there is only so much new that we can take in. To change to quickly is like trying to eat too much too quickly. It can’t be done comfortably. If we do succeed, we have the potential to regurgitate that which we took in.
We should all honor the place where we are. We are all always transforming.
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Posted By Bonnie on March 8, 2010
I went to a workshop on shamanism this weekend. I was fortunate to have a lovely talk with a woman who does shamanism and is also a Western medical practitioner. We discussed the role of illness in our world. I talked about wanting to write about why sickness is wrong. Why do we think sickness is wrong? She was one of the few people I have talked to who really understood what that means. She can see the way people are treated when they are sick. She could see the way people suffer because others have these judgments or because they fear the judgments of others about their illness.
Coming up against the wall of how do we change that she started to say that even shamanism does that. From my perspective, which she liked as we discussed this, I was hearing the language of shamanism being about transformation.
In shamanism, you do not go to the doctor a sick person, to have something done to you to “fix” you. In shamanism, you do not get “fixed”. Rather, you get transformed. Transformation implies less judgment about the way you were before to what you become. It is merely change because it is time to change.
If I use the metaphor of changing sheets on the bed, in Western culture, there is an implication that I changed those sheets because the cat had a hair ball on them or they had a rip and now I need to change to the blue sheets. In shamanism, the change is that it is just time to change. I change the sheets from time to time because it feels good to have new sheets on the bed. There is an excitement about the new without a negative judgment about the bad.
I appreciate this language and this way of thinking about healing. I think it is a better way of thinking about healing. This puts us in an empowered state of thinking of healing. Rather than judging ourselves as bad for having a sickness, we are just being guided to a place of change. We will be all that we were however, now we will be even better.
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Posted By Bonnie on March 5, 2010
Sick people, chronically sick people are often told that they have some underlying reason for their illness. It’s as if it is their fault. It has become some what fashionable then to try to delve into our own subconscious and remove those blocks to allow us to heal.
I had a cat with a chronic problem. We had done some tests and in general when he stopped using the litter box he had crystals. I asked if we should do a UA before adding in the antibiotics. The vet said, “He’ll always have some crystals. It’s the nature of his body. Would we treat it any differently if we knew the cause?”
While I don’t like using antibiotics in general, it’s an interesting perspective. Would I treat any differently knowing the origins?
When we look into ourselves and peer into the dark corners our subconscious has worked so hard to keep us from seeing, will that really change anything? Do we really need to know? What will we use that information for? Will we treat ourselves any differently? The answer to those questions may be the key to getting our subconscious to allow us to peer a little more closely into those dark corners.
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Posted By Bonnie on March 3, 2010
Many patients who seek acupuncture treatments are chronically ill. They may be able to get up and work or not. Very often people seem to put them down, as if their illness was their fault. If only they ate better. If only they took this pill. If only they exercised more. If only.
I was reading comments on an article on the extension of employment benefits. A woman commented that she was one of those who had been out of work and was close to loosing her benefits. Another person below her commented that they disbelieved what she was. They said she must be lying because “that couldn’t happen.” In the face of that happening, they had to deny that it ever took place.
We go into denial only when are too afraid to face up to the facts. In the face of someone with a chronic illness, it can be hard to face up to the fact that it could happen because of environmental factors which we can’t control. It could happen because of the foods were fed as child. It could be because of something we don’t know about in our food supply. These are big issues that can create a feeling of powerlessness. Many people react to that, like the person did with the unemployed woman with denial.
It looks like blaming the victim (and to be certain it IS) but the root is denial. At the root of the denial is fear. Fear that this could happen to ME. Fear that it could happen at any time. Fear that we are powerless to control it.
Certainly we can’t control everything. However, the only way to learn what we can and cannot control is to know those people who are chronically ill. Know them and understand what makes them feel better. Stop denying their experience with the preconceived notions of what “should” be. Just be with it. Ironically the best way to loose the fear is to be with the person. Knowing them and understanding what they go through may make it easier if happens to us. Further the more we know, perhaps the more we begin to understand the complex web of things that happen to cause chronic conditions. Maybe there are things within that web we can control. We’ll never know if we keep denying that others have the experience.
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Posted By Bonnie on March 1, 2010
My experience as an acupuncturist and necessarily my bias is that the mind and body are interconnected. The psychological moods and learning abilities are reflected in the ways the body works. While I tend to think of this energetically, seeing energy as flowing all through the body and creating this interconnection, Mark over at Mark’s Daily Apple has an interesting post that comes from a completely different scientific standpoint.
The post is more about cognition than emotional issues (where I tend to find myself studying). However, it’s fascinating what many of these studies have turned up. Now, as I have no spatial relation concept and struggled through physics, I’m going to go swing my arms a bit. Yeah–that was in one of his cited studies!
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Posted By Bonnie on February 26, 2010
How many times have you gone into an office only to find people sneezing or coughing while they work? How many times have you seen coworkers looking pale and fatigued long before they should and the excuse isn’t just a wild night out? How many times have all been that coworker?
I have to wonder why we do this?
It’s easy to think of just powering through. There is always work to be done and work doesn’t wait for us to be well. It needs to be done now. It probably needed to be done yesterday. Employers often have no patience with those who are sick. In many lower level positions if customer service is involved, you may be required to find someone who can cover for you. It might seem easier just to come in and make it through. Someone who gets sick easily may worry that their job is in danger due to their ill health so they come in anyway.
Of course this exposes everyone else at the office to the illness. Then everyone else goes on about their business sick, thus passing it on. Bacteria and virus must love us. After all, it is only by finding a new host that most of them survive. Some do survive with us and help us live, but many are short term passengers in our body, making us feel miserable until they die off. The bacteria or virus considers itself successful when it moves on to a new host. If these creatures were to train us they couldn’t have done a better job. After all, we are all just doing our duty and our jobs and in turn are passing on our little passengers.
If those who are sick stayed home until they were well it would be better for everyone. The sick person rests and gets better more quickly. The coworkers and others who come in contact with them throughout the day would be exposed one less time to the illness. Everyone would stay healthier. Or so it seems. This is yet one more thing that we seem to have gotten backwards. Just work harder and will the illness off and it will go away. Needing rest is a sign of weakness. Worrying about catching an illness is a sign of weakness (but remember to use your anti bacterial soap).
Isn’t that an interesting dichotomy? It seems as if we purposely make things more difficult than they need to be, judging ourselves and others when they do the smart thing for everyone involved.
Change starts first with awareness. This is a sort of ingrained behavior in our society. Perhaps the only way to change it is to first sit with the awareness and ponder the contradictions that come about.
Category: About Disease, Genereal |
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Posted By Bonnie on February 24, 2010
I was talking to a friend. She has many things going on in her life, among those things are health issues. She has a blind spot. Her life is important to her but it impacts her health on a daily basis. The changes she would need to make are huge and heart wrenching, yet they would be the most direct route to healing. This is not to say that I see no other way for her to heal, but the quickest and most direct way would require sacrifices of a heroic sort.
Who would pay such a price? There are those who work towards their healing, giving up everything they love. What life is that? And how is that healing? They may have more physical stamina but are they happier? If they are not happier, is that healing?
To have perfect health, we could all pay a price. There are always prices to be paid for everything. We must always decide if we want the new car or the new house? If we choose to live in this neighborhood the schools are good but the cars are noisy. In that one, it is quiet but there are no children around for ours to play with. We hope for the perfect place, but this home has fewer closets and we make compromises.
We all find that there are prices we cannot pay for healing. When we look at others who have worked hard to be healthy but it continues to elude them, consider that the price they must pay may be greater than they can bear. Physical health does not mean the end of suffering. There are those with poor health who may suffer less than many who have good health.
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Posted By Bonnie on February 22, 2010
This morning I had a different yoga teacher than I usually have. I love my yoga teacher. Sometimes it’s nice to hear something from a new voice. My teacher said that we need to be mindful that it’s the little things that trip us up. The little things are the things we keep doing over and over again because they are so small that we don’t even realize we are doing them.
On the physical level, as we moved through our posses, she was speaking of the small muscles. Her style of teaching can be very difficult. I think it is the hardest work out I ever have doing virtually nothing. However, the mindfulness of the practice requires that all those little muscles that I never use, instead relying on my bigger muscles to power through, are forced to work. Naturally this is much much harder.
Considering the idea that we miss the little things due to lack of mindfulness and the fact that we probably do those little things again and again, consider the ways in which we trap ourselves due to behaviors that we may do again and again without thought. Therapy can help us find those behaviors. Meditation can help us find those behaviors. As we recognize them, we can either welcome them as something we can use consciously or we can decide that this is something we do not want to have in our life any more. As we become mindful and conscious of those small things that trip us up and hold us back, we can learn to flex the new muscles. It won’t happen over night. Those little muscles that are under utilized need time to strengthen to hold us up. However, as we keep noticing, eventually we find a new way of being in the world.
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Posted By Bonnie on February 17, 2010
What do we expect from health? I often think about that when questioning my patients. As part of my intake, I ask if they have gas or bloating and so often they say, “Just normal.” The question then, is what do people think is normal? Is any gas or bloating really normal or just “common” or typical? Further, no one ever complains to me about their cavities. However, Dr. Weston Price discusses that of the peoples he studied, those who were the healthiest had the fewest cavities.
Shortly before I started eating more tradition foods, I had some new symptoms crop up. Nothing “abnormal” but really not normal for me. I have been eating well for over six months but those symptoms continue. In the last month I have done some more serious digestive health changes, eating a GAPS diet, primarily. Still my symptoms have no lessened. It started to make me feel it was futile.
In my normal life however, I typically have other “normal” symptoms that I have had forever. It surprised me to note that today, for the first time in perhaps 15 years, they were gone. In fact, I do see changes. I have other symptoms that I never had but I don’t have others. Things are changing. The change doesn’t always feel good. The change doesn’t always come in the order I think it should, but slowly my body is changing. I think it is starting to return to health.
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Posted By Bonnie on February 15, 2010
I frequently have patients who send a tingle of intuition through me. I know there is something else they need that I don’t do and sometimes that requires referring them to someone else. It bothers me when I don’t have someone who uses the modality I keep thinking about. I have been seeing a patient for infertility issues and every time I look at this young woman I think of digestion. She is probably sick of my food recommendations and I do try and limit what I share but some part of her body appears to be calling to me to give her all the nutrition information I can.
The other night I was listening to a local naturopath and he is very into traditional foods like the Weston A Price Foundation and is one of the practitioners listen on the GAPS website, so he is very familiar with they types of dietary changes that I feel strongly about. His specialty, if he has one is digestive issues.
I waited around after his talk and asked him if saw patients for fertility issues. I loved his response. He sees fertility issues as he sees everything else. He works to bring the best health to the body he can and if in that way fertility resolves, it does. But he doesn’t “treat” fertility per se.
I loved the precision of language. The patient was not just an ailment. The patient was a person who needed to be well. As an acupuncturist I struggle with explaining what I do sometimes. I know I treat the whole person. Certainly I allow myself to get caught up in the symptoms that patients complain about, whether those symptoms are as complex as infertility or as direct as pain in the lower back. However, this man was reminding me that we see patients who need to have better health. If they are healthier can their symptoms be addressed? Absolutely.
My goal now is to work on conveying that message to all my patients and finding out how that changes what I do.
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