The Alternative Healer

Cellular Memory--and its Relationship to Classical Homeopathy

I heard a true story recently that brings insight into life and healing.  It is about an eight year-old girl who had a heart transplant.  The story is related by members of her transplant team.  Malcolm Robinson has written about it, Case 6 in his studies of cellular memory. 

The donor heart for her transplant had become available with the sudden death of a woman.  The transplant went well.  The only hitch in her treatment came a few months later.  The girl began having vivid nightmares.  In these terrible dreams she was being attacked and stabbed to death by a man.  The dream would repeat, revealing a new detail.  The panic, and the being stabbed remained the same. 

This waking up at night in abject fear was traumatic for the girl.  Moreover, it was unusual--the girl had never had nightmares like this before.  They were entirely new and out of context.

Members of her team, which included psychiatric care, puzzled over this, and finally, as the girl continued to have these disturbing nightmares, one of them delved deeper into the matter.   What turned up is both astonishing and, in the end, the most “logical” explanation. 

The woman to whom the heart originally belonged was the victim of an attack and had died suddenly:  she was stabbed to death.  The dreams of the girl who had received the transplanted heart exactly reflected her violent demise.  Based on the details of these dreams, the attacker was caught and tried.  In some way, the cells of this woman’s heart carried the memory of her traumatic, violent end, and this cellular memory was transplanted with the heart.  

Cellular memory is some form of energy--an energy powerful enough to stir up intense fear and nightmares.  This energy is not yet measurable by any machine yet invented by biomedical technology--and without this “proof” many scientists would deny its existence.  Nevertheless, almost all of us have experiences that are difficult to explain in any other way.

Cellular memory has a close relationship to classical homeopathy.  The preparation of a homeopathic remedy involves extensive dilution and shaking of each dilution, leaving no trace of the original substance.  There is only the “memory” left in the triple distilled alcohol of the original substance.  This leads me to believe that homeopathy works on a similar energetic plane as cellular memory.  In the same way as the cellular memory from a transplanted organ can disturb a woman’s dreams, a small, infinitesimal dose of substance in a homeopathic remedy can energetically match and shift an ill patient to health.  

Classical homeopathy likely affords the deepest  energetic therapy we have. It is able to reach places and heal problems where everything else has failed.

How In-Tune are You?

My practice has a new member:   a machine to measure the acupuncture meridians.  I have thought about naming him--or her.  I welcome any suggestions.

This machine, developed by a chinese medicine doctor,  gives an accurate read of how “in-tune” or “out-of-tune” the energy of your body is.  More than that, it will tell about what internal organs are imbalanced.

This, of course, has to do with chinese medicine, and it may make you wonder what is an acupuncture meridian anyway?  We could say, “It’s a pathway of vital energy that runs along certain points of the body.”  That’s true, but it doesn’t begin to answer what a meridian actually is or why they are important.  

When explaining a meridian, It is easier to take an entirely different approach.  Say for example, someone close to you dies.  You grieve, and this affects the energy of the lungs.  The vital energy of the lung emerges from the lung and runs  along a pathway of  points on each arm, ending at the thumbnail:  the lung meridian of chinese medicine.  

Why, you ask, does grieving affect my lungs?  It’s somewhat of a mystery, but not entirely.  There actually is a deeper reason too complicated for this newsletter.  For the moment, it is easier to convince you that it is true.  

If you think back to a time when you lost someone or something you loved, you may remember feeling a heaviness on the chest, needing to take deep breaths.  When you cry uncontrollably, your lungs are very much involved.  You breath irregularly, and if you tune in closely, you will feel a need to suck in air:  you sob.  

If, in dealing with a unexpected loss, you are able to sense a heaviness in your chest, you have just tuned in to a change in the vital energy in your lungs.  That change will be reflected in the energy of the lung meridian.  

But say, for some reason, the energy of your lungs is chronically low.  Feeling that way day in and day out, not having anything to compare it to, how would you ever know?  That’s the problem, you don’t know.  And it’s important.  

Why?  Because energy imbalances in your body have everything to do with the symptoms you are having--or about to be having.  By measuring the meridians with the machine, we can use this information to evaluate your current health as well as to track your progress and fine tune treatment.  

This is fundamentally different than the laboratory measurements we MD’s typically perform.  The problem with these lab measurements is that they only show up after the underlying energy has been messed up, and likely messed up for a significant amount of time.  

A vital energy pathway in your body can be messed up in one of two ways: It can have stagnant or toxic energy, or it can have too little, deficient energy.  

Perhaps you have heard of a case of someone who had lung cancer who felt a “coldness” in the chest.  People who are sensitive to energy could actually feel this lack of vital energy by putting their hands on the lung area and sensing that it is devoid of vitality.  What is this saying?  It is saying that the vital energy in the lungs is profoundly deficient in this case of lung cancer.  With the capacity to precisely measure, this lung energy deficiency would have shown up before the cancer actually emerged,  Now we are talking good medicine.  Why do you want a test to discover your lung cancer AFTER it is growing uncontrollably in you?  That’s the best you get right now.

My practice has always been an uncompromising devotion to the best medicine on the planet.  Almost four years in the planning, now I am taking another--vital--step in that direction.  Thanks for sticking around on the journey.  You will be rewarded for it.   

On the One Year Anniversary of My Blog

I started this blog a year ago to outline the different levels of our being that different forms of medicines address. This anniversary week I plan to return to the this fundamental question. Last August I began by listing the levels of therapeutic intention that various healers can have. In other words, what is your healer trying to do. I saw this as an important question that all who seek health care, whether conventional or alternative, should understand. I outlined the levels as follows:

1) Intention at the level of diagnosis, i.e. fix the abnormal number or test

2) Intention at the level of feeling, i.e. fix the pain or discomfort.

3) Intention at the level of vital systems, i.e. fix the energetic imbalance.

4) Intention at the level of consciousness, i.e. shift the pattern of perception underlying the expression of physical and mental disease.

These I called the four basic levels of healing, seen from the point of view of any given healer’s therapeutic intention.

Around that same time, while reading in ancient Egyptian medicine, I had a realization. The medicine of ancient Egypt divided the human being into seven different dimensions:

1) the physical body (The Khat)

2) The vital or energetic body, also called “bio-plasmic body",   (The Ba, the soul of breath)

3) The emotional body  (The Khaba or astral body)

4) The intellectual body which consists of the lower and middle states of consciousness  (The Khaibit)

5) The spiritual Self, or Higher Mind (The Ka)

6) The Super-consciousness. The plane where Universal knowledge is available to those attuned to it.  (The Sekhen)

7) Pure spirit, or divine mind (The Ren).

What I noted in looking at these seven levels was the strong similarity they had with my levels of therapeutic intention. The only difference was the ancient Egyptians viewed the emotional dimension as deeper (i.e. further from the physical realm) than the energetic dimension. Levels two and three were switched around. I agreed with the ancient Egyptians. My levels of therapeutic intentions, in contrast, addressed the way healers in our society actually work. It might be worthwhile to put another level of intention between my 3rd and 4th levels. I have found healers with specific therapeutic intentions at the emotional body to be relatively uncommon. They do exist however. For example a shamanic journey has as its intention to retrieve lost or traumatized parts of our emotional selves--an intention specific to the Egyptian emotional body (3rd dimension).

I have since decided to use the word ”levels“ when I am referring to healers and their intention and ”dimensions“ when I speak of the actual layers (dimensions) of human energy. They are not exactly the same. As it turns out, you can numb the 3rd dimension by addressing the physical body (i.e. a 1st level intention), for example the use of prozac, tranquilizers, or pain killers. Therefore, 2nd level intentions are close in character to 1st level intentions in the physical dimension. i.e the 2nd level usually addresses the physical, although in a different way. The 1st level intention addresses an objective finding or diagnosis; the 2nd level intention addresses the unpleasant feelings the person is having, both working through the physical plane. People for millennia have learned to numb the emotional body (3rd dimension) through substance use (acts through the 1st dimension), whether it be alcohol and drugs or simply overeating. It’s the realm of self-medicating the emotional body through the material or physical dimension. Today’s medicine simply does this in more sophisticated ways.

Some people wonder whether the physical and emotional might not be two aspects of the same dimension, like their doctor tells them. But they are not. Energetically they are different. The emotional body appears to be a field of energy that exists in and around the cells of the body.

Because we as humans necessarily process experience through the physical body--e.g. the stress (emotional dimension) of the office today has landed in your tight, aching shoulders (physical dimension)--all experience from deeper dimensions will impact our physical dimension. It does this in ways that are predictable with knowledge with what is happening at deeper dimensions. For example, grief will energetically affect our lungs. In the same way, experience that impacts the physical realm (e.g. eating, sleeping, sex, accidents, exercise) will affect the deeper layers of who we are. These are more difficult to predict. For example, a person sensitive to fright (an issue that goes into the 4th level and dimension; note how 4th dimension is the same as the 4th level) has an accident on their bicycle and goes home and dreams of being chased for the rest of the night. Any aggravation at the physical dimension can aggravate specific, idiosyncratic 4th dimensional issues.

Welcome to a new year of my blog. I will continue to define these levels and dimensions in coming weeks.

On Animal-Human Relationships

Recently a California-base homeopath who treats animals, Beth Murray, wrote to me regarding what she has observed in her practice regarding the relationship between humans and animals. Her thoughts, which I think are important, I paste in below:

As a homeopath who sees animals at Creature Comfort Holistic Veterinary Center and at the Oakland Zoo, and treats people at Back to Life Wellness Center in Alameda, California, I often think about how remedy states, which are often described as being shared with or inherited from family members, are also shared by animals and their people. If we accept that a remedy state is a condition of the vital force that affects a person's spiritual, emotional and physical self, it's not a big step to imagine animals and their people sharing these states. We've all seen the old couple we "look" like each other, and we've also seen the dog and person who "look" like each other. In some cases this may be because a person consciously or subconsciously chooses a companion animal to echo her own appearance, in other cases, this resemblance comes after years of sharing the same space - the two begin to move like each other, cock their heads like each other, etc. So I do not find it strange that often pets and their people share the same illnesses.

For example, I have a weak bladder, and have to frequently use the bathroom. I think it is no coincidence that my both my cat and dog "leak" while sleeping and lying down. Quite frequently I discover that the animals I am seeing at the veterinary clinic share a weakness in a certain area of their body with their owners. I also find that the remedy that heals the pet is often the remedy that the owner needs, and vise versa. For example, I suggested the remedy Naja, made from the cobra snake, for a ten-year old cat with a heart murmur and early hyperthyroid. The cat continues to do well on the remedy. The owner went to see my favorite homeopath, who had no idea what I had given the cat, and this homeopath also prescribed Naja for this woman.

Unfortunately, I see the same phenomena in cases of cancer and other serious illness. The most common pattern I see is that an owner will bring in a terribly sick animal. The owner will be completely loving and terribly concerned about the animal - but I will have a sense that this animal has "absorbed" the illness from his person. In no way do I feel that this is the person’s fault. This is the nature of companionship, we share energy, and sometimes, illness.

In his book, The New Work of Dogs, Jon Katz discusses how the "work" of urban and suburban dogs is emotional rather than physical. He discusses how the "job" of being a companion and soothing their human's anxieties, may be taking a toll on dogs. Having a clear-cut job such as keeping a herd intact or bringing back a duck without tooth marks is a satisfying experience for a dog; the job is doable, and ends in the satisfaction of accomplishment. These jobs also involves a dog's best skills - her sense of smell and physical prowess, and while using these skills, the dog is simultaneously "discharging" stress through physical activity. Emotional work is not so clean cut. In a sense, "the job is never done," and discharge of stress is often not built into the job. I would expand Katz's discussion of work, to include other companion animals such as cats and rabbits. I do not see this phenomenon in herd and farm animals, who are more affected by and spend more time with each other than any human.

Recently Dr. Branch wrote ,“ "That which we cannot hold in our consciousness we express through the body.” I believe this, and would extend his statement further to say, "Sometimes, that which we cannot express, our animals and family members express for us."

He wrote something which luckily, is also true: "We are here on this earth to become conscious and to heal.” Despite the fact that animals do not use words or have intellects quite like ours, I do believe they have energetic and spirit paths, just as we do. And that each animal and person somehow “choose” each other in order to work on her own spirit’s challenges. Even if that means that the relationship is radically changed as an animal or person faces his own death, there is always healing in that process, and we share this healing as we accompany our animals through life, and stand at the doorway as they pass through death. Just as we share illness with our animals, finding the spirit-healing inherent in this process is a task we can also share with them.

Beth Murray, CCH, RSHom (NA)
www.wholehomeopathy.com
www.myanimalhomeopath.com
510.522.2469

Healing for all living beings

Network Spinal Analysis II

Prana, the Sanskrit word for “vital energy,” is also the word for “breath.” Network Spinal Analysis (NSA) works directly with prana. As an addendum to my last post, I would like to explain just how much.

NSA begins by correctly aligning the spine. Once this is accomplished and the patient progresses to the upper levels of NSA, we move beyond what we know as “chiropractic care.” Think of it this way: as an NSA doctor works on a patient, the muscular tension stressing the spine releases, and the spinal alignment corrects. At this point you might think, “Ok, we’re done.” If that were the case, you wouldn’t hear about NSA gatherings, where practitioners, families, and friends, gather to have fun and do NSA on each other. Nor would you encounter NSA couples who happen to blurt out how incredible their sex lives have become since advancing to the upper levels.

What is going on here? I think back to my posting on Alex Grey’s Chapel of Cosmic Mirrors. It strikes me that advanced level NSA has a similar view of the universe to Alex Grey. Witness his paintings of humans enveloped in vital energy, flowing out into the cosmos. These paintings force the question just what sort of universe do we live in anyway?

NSA’s Donald Epstein wants you to live in a different universe than the one you know. You can read his book on the 12 stages of healing, but we can cut to the chase and say his medicine has an ecstatic vision. How did we end up there from the “let’s-get-T3-and-T4-back into alignment” perspective? Think of the chiropractic office: your chiropractor quickly enters, turns you over into position, and crunch, vertebrae T3 and T4 slide back into place. A minute later he’s gone. A chiropractor can inspire a vision closer to the auto mechanic.

Nevertheless, backtrack to this idea that muscular tension around the spine produces misalignments. Imagine an NSA doctor inviting the breath into your body to break that tension free. In the first level of NSA, the tension around your spine frees up. At the second level, using much longer contacts held on those points of relaxation, the NSA doctor invites your breath in a step deeper, allowing your nervous system a deeper state of relaxation. It is when NSA patients move to this level of relaxation that they can spontaneously release emotions. For example, some people find that a certain part of their body shakes after an NSA contact, or they let out a cry or moan.

Considering this spontaneous release of emotion, a favorite yoga teacher of mine, Lisa Matkin (NYC), did a “heart opening” (4th Chakra) class one evening. She repeatedly brought us back to “heart opening“ poses, with the shoulders back and rib cage expanded into a back bend. Right after class, one woman started uncontrollably sobbing. It spoke volumes about how the body holds emotions. It is difficult to open and leave our hearts exposed.

Our body simply cannot help but register everything our mind experiences in the process of living. Every hurt, every rejection, every trauma, somewhere, somehow, our body processes. This holds both the promise and the problem of being human. NSA gives us a new perspective on this. It speaks of “re-connecting” parts of our body that lost communication with each other. My experience in yoga has taught me that the tightest spot in my body is often where I have the least sensation. Consciousness of this part of the body is largely absent. It is like a friend we lost track of when he stopped sending letters. An NSA practitioner, with his finely-tuned understanding of how we hold tension, coaxes our breath in and re-connects our consciousness with these lost parts of ourselves. NSA’s precise contacts nudge us to a degree of relaxation and body consciousness that would be difficult to reach on our own.

What is a medicine with an ecstatic vision? First let’s understand the opposite. Note how, when we become stressed, our breathing becomes shallower. Tension restricts our breathing. If we concentrate, we can learn to feel this restriction in our breathing, but what about all the other parts of our body we are unable to tune into? What’s happening there? What about the constriction around our heart we never feel that eventually comes to our consciousness through a heart attack? What about the constriction in our back that comes to our awareness in a perfect stab of pain one morning when we get out of bed?

To take in the stress of life without consciousness is to have our body shut down. We don’t notice it, but somewhere within blockages form. It may not be significant today, but tomorrow could bring the common scenario where someone sits before me and asks, “Why did this pain come to me NOW?” All blockages eventually come to our consciousness. The more out of touch we are with ourselves the more they tend to present as a mysterious, outrageous assault. Some visit the surgeon and tell him, “Cut out this pain,” that is, “cut out this part of myself I have lost contact with.”

A medicine with an ecstatic vision moves the opposite way. Instead of shutting down it brings in the breath and blows the energetic channels open. It brings consciousness into all those disowned parts of ourselves and re-discovers the emotions we have disowned. To breath tightly, to shut down, is to perceive pleasure in a narrow range. To blow open the energetic channels recruits those lost parts of ourselves as pleasure centers. Hats off to those NSA couples who have become pleasure seekers: think of the most relaxed sexual experience you have ever had and then imagine a relaxation three steps deeper, where you are conscious of every cell in your body. Full body-mind awareness is our destiny as humans. To avoid this process is to become blocked. It may be that all disease is nothing more than a wake-up call, whispering, or perhaps shouting: “You stopped opening to the divine ecstatic experience. It’s time to get moving again.”

Network Spinal Analysis: Inviting in the Breath

A branch of chiropractic care, network spinal analysis is one of the more difficult avenues of alternative medicine to understand. Beginning with various chiropractic principles and “networking” them, Dr. Donald Epstein created a discipline that simultaneously achieved the goals of traditional chiropractic care—and completely went beyond them.

My friends, Steve and Julie Wilke, both chiropractors, practice network spinal analysis in Madison, WI. Steve once described to me why he gave up traditional chiropractic for networking. He happened to be looking at the x-rays of a colleague who used networking spinal analysis. Stunned, he noted that the spines of his patients were practically perfect. That spiked his interest. Echoing this success is the case of a friend of mine who had a subluxation (misalignment) in her vertebrae that a number of traditional chiropractors were unable to realign. Dr. Wilke, using network spinal analysis, succeeded.

In the initial visits to a networking chiropractor, it is common to walk out mystified. Here’s what happens: you lie face down on the table. The practitioner checks the tension in your body by feeling the tension in your ankles and having you move your head from side to side. Using the “networked” chiropractic principles, he then determines a point along the spine where the muscles are most relaxed, and touches that point with a finger (“makes a contact”). I have always had a tendency to take a spontaneous deep breath after a networking doctor makes a contact along my spine. Asking about this, the answer was “That’s what’s supposed to happen.”

Making a contact in network spinal analysis invites in the breath. The significance of this is easier to understand if we consider yoga. Breathing is the primary focus in a yoga practice. As you work through the asanas, or yoga poses, the goal is to keep steady, deep, long breaths, making the exhale longer than the inhale. Developing flexibility in yoga involves the breath, which in some real manner energetically penetrates deep into our layers of tightness, breaking them open. Similar to how water can wear away rock, the breath can reach and open those bound up areas in us that have hardened over time. Stop breathing in yoga, and you lose the ability to energetically open.
A similar process occurs in network spinal analysis. All of us have experienced tightness in our necks and backs. It is actually this muscular tightness, sometimes pulling in opposite directions, that can cause the spine to shift out of alignment. Of course this is particularly likely when trauma stresses an already tight part of the neck or spine. Seeking out a point of maximum relaxation, the network practitioner makes a contact, inviting in the breath to break up the muscular tension that created the vertebral misalignment. As this occurs, the breath becomes smooth, deep, and an unrestricted wave undulates through the spine from the sacrum (lower back) into the neck. These waves of deep breathing allow the spinal vertebrae to “shake out” into precise alignment over time.

To those who have needed repeated chiropractic adjustments, only to slip back out of alignment yet again, the advantage to this should be clear. The reason you need repeated adjustments is because the muscular tension causing the misalignment remains. Network spinal analysis takes chiropractic care a level deeper by addressing the underlying tension that produces the misalignment.

I have to salute Dr. Epstein's genius. Somewhere he took a leap and made a connection that was not obvious, linking chiropractic care to the universal energetic currents. Perhaps there are new things under the sun after all.

Unable to Walk: An Acupuncture Case part II

Returning to Dr Ni’s case from a couple days ago, remember it was about a woman who was born in an “earth excessive year,” who became ill right after the giant earthquake in the ocean that caused the tsunami.  The Chinese system of medicine places the patient within a cosmic system.  We all know we exist within the universe.  No big stretch there…but then we read Dr. Ni’s case.  Whoa, that is indeed a stretch.  At least from the point of view of the western medicine we are familiar with it is. 

Some would argue the good doctor is off her rocker.  Maybe, but this is a cured case she is presenting,  I have watched her work.  I know some of her patients. I know her reputation. I have no doubt of its truth.  I also think that her reasoning makes sense and in fact led to the cure of this patient. 

Dr. Ni has an intimate understanding of the Chinese five element theory, and she takes this theory to an astonishing level of complexity.  The real problem for an acupuncturist, as I see it, is being able to work five element theory in a fluid and perceptive way.  Not easy, and cookbooks are not much help.  Take home message: when you seek care from acupuncturists, be aware of how they are thinking. What are they attuned to?  Are they treating you with a “recipe” or are they using five element theory to find the deep source of your imbalance?

Imagine, though, if we took this cosmic point of view seriously.  In addition to watching planetary phenomena, we would probably be calculating the effects of the latest solar flare, the position of the planets, and such.  In effect, we would become astrologers.  Interesting, because the system of Ayurveda, from ancient India, goes straight to astrology as a major source of its knowledge. Hmmm.  Maybe I’ll write on that some other time.

Unable to Walk: An Acupuncture Case

During my trip to Barcelona, I heard a talk by Dr. Yongli Ni, who practices acupuncture and Chinese medicine in the Washington, D.C. area.   I remember clearly the initial she case gave.  It was about a woman in the middle of her life, who had come to be debilitated, hardly able to walk.   After setting the stage, Dr Ni threw out this jawdropper:

“This woman was born in 1954.  Earth excessive year.”  She said this with one finger held up firmly for emphasis, then continued, "And what happened right before she became sick?”  She held up the finger up for emphasis again, preparing us for her coup de grace.  “Earthquake!   The tsunami!”

What Dr. Ni was saying was that this woman, from the Chinese point of view, had a strong earth component in her constitution.  In Chinese medicine, this has to do with acupuncture energy circuit centering around the stomach and spleen. Thus, she tells us that the disruptions in the earth direct produced by the earthquake directly affected the energy in her body, specifically the energy circuit (meridian) of her spleen and stomach.  The resulting imbalance produced a debilitating illness. 

So, how did Dr. Ni deal with this issue?   Did she bring out her acupuncture cookbook, look up “Can’t walk” and put in a bunch of needles for the “Can’t walk” syndrome?  No.  That’s exactly what she didn’t do.  But note, it’s exactly what many acupuncturists practicing today would have done. 

No, what Dr. Ni did is put in one needle--note…one acupuncture needle—right into a key point in the stomach-spleen energy meridian; wham, went right for the source of the imbalance, on which everything else on the surface hinged.   That one needle cured the woman’s debility.   

I love this case for a couple reasons.  Other than a few homeopathic colleagues, Dr. Ni is one of the few people I have known who has a therapeutic intention very close to my own.  If you want to understand what a good classical homeopath is trying to do, this is a good place to start.  To find that one deep place that will shift the entire system, put your finger on it, and nail it--this for me is good medicine.   This is what I do.  Whether it lots of different drugs or lots of different acupuncture needles, it is usually sloppy medicine. 

The other reason I love this case I plan on writing about tomorrow. 

Emotions and Body II

One of my friends, a talented bodyworker, tells the story of a farmer who came to him for massage.  This man was suffering from severe lower back pain.  Typical of farmers, this man was not a talker, yet over a period of a few weeks, as my friend worked to relieve the pain and tension, a story emerged.  This man co-owned his farm with his brother.  Before the onset of the back pain, he and his brother had gotten into terrible arguments.  The farmer was faced with the prospect of bowing to his brother to keep the peace, or taking legal action that would split the farm—and the family--possibly for good.   During this time he developed debilitating back pain.   

As my friend tells it, this case was a tough one.  Although he freed up the tension at the end of each session, there was no progress made overall.  Each week the farmer would come back, locked up as tightly as the first session.  Meanwhile, the issues on the farm became worse.  Instead of making a move to somehow resolve an untenable situation, the farmer did nothing.  He was stuck.

Finally, after a few weeks of this, my friend sat the man down after the session and gave him the straight truth.  He told them that he needed to deal with the issue on the farm, because the emotions surrounding the situation were, without exaggeration, “stuck in his back.”  He expressed his willingness to keep working on the farmer, but without some resolution of the emotions involved, he did not expect to make much progress.  Although the farmer was not able to verbally express much feeling, his back, on the other hand, was an expert in expressing it.   

To heal this man, it might be good to first have a conversation with his back.  Of course, my friend had a type of communication with this farmer’s ailing back every week.   This illustrates something I notice all the time in my practice:  that which we cannot process at the level of our mind and emotions, our body expresses for us.  Physical symptoms almost always express something deeper in us that needs to be healed.  The conventional doctor deals in a straightforward way with physical symptoms.  The alternative healer dives to deeper levels to get at the cause.   

There is a strong tendency for men like this farmer to develop diseases on the physical level.  These are the sorts of men that are “never sick a day” and then one day die of a heart attack.  Thinking back to my blog a couple days ago, Never sick a day…and then cancer, people like this remain without symptoms on the physical level for a while, and then their lack of care for the deeper parts of themselves expresses itself in a physical disease. 

Researchers have found a greater association between financial and work stress and lower back pain then they have between herniated discs and back pain.  This should make us ponder about what back pain really means.  We would think that a herniated disc would be a sure-fire predictor of back pain.  Yet, it's not the case.  Emotional stress, and financial stress in particular, predicts lower back pain more than a physical reality such as a herniated disc. 

Medical doctors, often uncomfortable with strong emotions, usually play along the farmer’s idea that he has a purely physical issue.  Imagine three such stuck farmers ending up in the doctor’s office after a couple of years of intense stress on the farm.   Farmer #1:  Ah, the cardiac enzymes are high; this gentleman has heart trouble.  Heart attack could be imminent.  Farmer #2 has a frozen shoulder; that’s simple enough, he may need an orthopedic doctor.  Farmer #3 with his intestinal problems has “irritable bowel syndrome.”   Or maybe an ulcer is visible on the camera.  But knowing now that ulcers are “caused by a certain bacteria,” we can “treat” this without any reference to the emotions we traditionally associate with ulcers.   

Don’t be fooled.  Once you have reached a point where you need a doctor to care for physical disease, you have let things go too far.  Learning how to care for the deeper parts of yourself is important.  Stress occurs in life.   How we are able to process it determines how healthy we remain.  Where emotions meld with body is where the good alternative healer works.  Thus they are good at preventing disease as well as restoring internal balance once it has occurred.    

Emotions and Body

When I was in residency at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Pennsylvania, I had the good fortune to know Len Roberts, a poet who lives in the area.  I have loved his poetry ever since, and I am particularly grateful for one poem, which clarifies the intimate relationship between body and emotions.  The poet, perhaps better than anyone, can tell us about the inner workings of acupuncture.

Acupuncture and Cleansing at Forty-Eight

No longer eating meat or dairy
      products or refined sugar,
I lie on the acupuncturist’s
      mat stuck with twenty
needles and know a little how
Saint Sebastian felt with those
      arrows
piercing him all over, his poster
tacked to the wall before my fourth-
      grade desk
as I bent over the addition and loss,
tried to find and name the five oceans,
      seven continents,
drops of blood with small windows of
      light strung
from each of his wounds, blood like
the blood on my mother’s pad the day
      she hung
it before my face and said I was making
      her bleed to death,
blood like my brother’s that day
he hung from the spiked barb
at the top of the fence,
a railroad track of stitches gleaming
for years on the soft inside of his arm,
blood like today when Dr. Ming extracts
      a needle and dabs
a speck of red away, one from my eyelid,
      one from my cheek,
the needles trying to open my channels
      of chi
so I can sleep at night without choking,
so I don’t have to fear waking my wife
      hawking the hardened mucus out,
so I don’t have to lie there thinking
of those I hate, of those who have died,
      the needles
tapped into the kidney point, where
      memories reside,
tapped into the liver point, where
      poisons collect,
into the feet and hands, the three
      chakra of the chest,
that split the body in half, my right
       healthy, my left in pain,
my old friend’s betrayal lumped in my
       neck,
my old love walking away thirty years
       ago
stuck in my lower back, father’s death
       mother’s
lovelessness lodged in so many parts
it may take years, Dr. Ming whispers,
       to wash them out,
telling me to breath deep, breath
       hard,
the body is nothing but a map of the
       heart.

Len Roberts (from The Trouble-Making Finch. 1998: University of Illinois Press)