The other day, I had a new client come in for her follow up visit and we went over the exam findings and discussed a plan of action. Near the end of this visit, we talked about the healing or wellness model versus the medical or treatment model. This was and is extremely important because if our goals were not congruent and we were not on the same page we would be setting ourselves up for disappointment later. Besides, I don't want to give clients something they don't want or fail to provide them with what they thought they were going to get by working with me.
The last thing I said to my client was, “If you want to be made comfortable and not change anything then this might not be the best place for you.” Out of context, I'm quite aware that my words sound a little harsh, but in reality, they came only after significant discussion of the concept of healing and I spoke the truth.
Almost everyday, someone calls the Center to say s/he is interested in a holistic way of treating whatever symptom it is that s/he has. What s/he doesn't realize is that as soon as the focus is on treating the symptom rather than the person then it automatically falls outside the realm of holistic care. I know that there are people reading this article right now who would disagree with me, and I suppose it is a matter of semantics, but in my opinion, the words health, holistic and even wellness have been polluted by the medical model.
Anyone who's been in the Center's bathroom in the last several months could not miss the quote from Dr. Donald Epstein that is posted on the wall: “The purpose of a symptom is to inspire a change in behavior... the more intense the symptom, the more immediate and radical the internal transformation required.” The basic idea here is that our bodies express symptoms in an effort to communicate to us that some sort of change in our life is required. The question then becomes, why wouldn't you want to treat the symptom?
I'm not so naïve to suggest that symptoms never need to be treated. However, I would suggest that we look a little deeper to the message that a symptom may be trying to give us. Maybe we need more sleep or less stress in our lives. Maybe we need to eat better or experience more peace, joy or love in our lives. Maybe traumatic events in our lives have caused us to become disconnected from our bodies and it's time to become whole again. Maybe our soul has a purpose that we are not fulfilling and the symptoms we are expressing are its way of communicating that to us.
It comes down to this: if a system is failing and you just pump different modalities into it — be they drugs, surgery, chiropractic, herbs, reiki or nutrition — it's still going to fail. While some of the modalities on this list would be considered by many to be holistic , it would be more accurate to call them natural cures or alternative medicine. In other words, if you are applying the medical model to treat a symptom it doesn't matter what you are using since the intent is still the same.
Contrary to popular opinion, the medical model is not failing because medical practitioners use harmful synthetic drugs or invasive surgical procedures, although that doesn't help the situation. It is failing because ultimately the body can't be shut up forever. Inevitably, the symptom(s) will come back or another more extreme symptom will be expressed in order to initiate change. One thing's for sure, I'm not going to be the one who attempts to shut off that warning signal. As far as I'm concerned, there are already plenty of practitioners out there doing that.
So when I make that brutally honest comment, I am speaking from a firm commitment to listen to the body and not do what other practitioners do when they try to shut the body up. The simple truth is that true healing creates change. True healing helps us become more connected and aware of the changes that are needed in our lives and not numbed to their signals. I believe a prospective client has the right to know this and to understand that holistic or wellness care is not alternative medicine but rather an alternative to medicine.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Thursday, September 15, 2005
'I'm listening': Let the body be your guide
Recently, I attended an advanced training seminar with Dr. Donald Epstein. Dr. Epstein, the founder of Network Spinal Analysis and Somato Respiratory Integration, has become quite renowned in circles of healing and wellness over time. As you may know, the application of Network is applied with a very light force/contact held at an area where the body has rapport, which means an area where the nervous system is willing to accept input. The contact is always held until there is a loss of rapport or the body says “you're done.” One of the things I enjoy most about Dr. Epstein's teaching technique is his use of analogies to illustrate his ideas, and he used the analogy of female energy to describe how long a practitioner should hold the contact.
While there are, of course, exceptions to the rule, men and women approach things a little differently. For instance, when a woman is communicating in the relationship she may just want to talk to her partner without looking for any particular solution. Generally, men want to know what the problem is so that a rational, logical solution can be arrived at as quickly as possible. The woman (or person with female energy) may really just want to vent. She doesn't necessarily want a quick solution; she may simply want someone to listen to her. In fact, the only answer she may want to hear is, “I'm listening; tell me more.”
While holding the contact points during the seminar, we would silently be saying “tell me more, tell me more” and using the male/female energy model Dr. Epstein had proposed to help determine the duration of the contact. In addition, we did Somato-Respiratory Integration - exercises designed to enhance the connection to internal rhythms — as a group. As I connected to my body, I remained open and said “I'm listening. Tell me more,” over and over again.
It was not too long after returning home that I had the opportunity to put this principle to the test in my own life. Those of you who know me know that I have, at times, experienced some significant joint pain and swelling in my knees, feet and wrist. The normal progression starts with one joint and moves to another after a few days. I have become keenly aware of what it feels like just prior to its manifestation. I had an experience with this not to long ago which I thought was very interesting and worth sharing.
Usually when I feel this developing, my thought process is “Oh no, please don't do this. I can't miss another day in the office.” This time I decided to take a different approach and instead of dreading it, I welcomed it as a message from my body and not just a painful nuisance. I placed my hands over my stomach and the area that was hurting and breathed in my nose and out my mouth silently repeating, “I'm listening,” over and over. As the pain intensified, I moaned and I cried and even laughed because it hurt so much, until finally it got to the point where it hurt so badly that it didn't hurt anymore. It became, for me, a spiritual experience. Even though I was in extreme pain, my mind was at ease and I surrendered to the moment until I eventually passed out.
This experience illustrates the concept of stage one in the healing process, “suffering.” It's very common for people to do the stage one SRI exercise in order to escape their suffering. The interesting thing here is that it doesn't work. You actually have to get into it in order to get out of it. In other words, instead of trying to avoid the experience, we need to truly experience the stage to gain whatever wisdom it has for us. This is contrary to our cultural story which tells us to avoid suffering at any cost.
From my past experience, I fully expected that I would have to cancel all of my appointments in the morning. When I awoke, I tentatively placed my foot on the floor. I felt a little stiff and slowly pulled myself up and put weight on my foot. To my surprise I could actually stand. In fact, the pain in my foot had almost completely resolved. The reason this was so surprising was that each time I had experienced this in the past, and it has been numerous times, the experience consisted of two to five days of pain, swelling, and couch time.
In the wellness or healing paradigm, I advise clients that symptoms are the body's call for attention and change and to listen to what message their body is trying to give them. All night I said to my body, “I'm listening, what do you want?” I never did get an answer. What I realized from this experience was that maybe sometimes we simply need to listen to our bodies, not to find an answer but rather to just simply listen.
While there are, of course, exceptions to the rule, men and women approach things a little differently. For instance, when a woman is communicating in the relationship she may just want to talk to her partner without looking for any particular solution. Generally, men want to know what the problem is so that a rational, logical solution can be arrived at as quickly as possible. The woman (or person with female energy) may really just want to vent. She doesn't necessarily want a quick solution; she may simply want someone to listen to her. In fact, the only answer she may want to hear is, “I'm listening; tell me more.”
While holding the contact points during the seminar, we would silently be saying “tell me more, tell me more” and using the male/female energy model Dr. Epstein had proposed to help determine the duration of the contact. In addition, we did Somato-Respiratory Integration - exercises designed to enhance the connection to internal rhythms — as a group. As I connected to my body, I remained open and said “I'm listening. Tell me more,” over and over again.
It was not too long after returning home that I had the opportunity to put this principle to the test in my own life. Those of you who know me know that I have, at times, experienced some significant joint pain and swelling in my knees, feet and wrist. The normal progression starts with one joint and moves to another after a few days. I have become keenly aware of what it feels like just prior to its manifestation. I had an experience with this not to long ago which I thought was very interesting and worth sharing.
Usually when I feel this developing, my thought process is “Oh no, please don't do this. I can't miss another day in the office.” This time I decided to take a different approach and instead of dreading it, I welcomed it as a message from my body and not just a painful nuisance. I placed my hands over my stomach and the area that was hurting and breathed in my nose and out my mouth silently repeating, “I'm listening,” over and over. As the pain intensified, I moaned and I cried and even laughed because it hurt so much, until finally it got to the point where it hurt so badly that it didn't hurt anymore. It became, for me, a spiritual experience. Even though I was in extreme pain, my mind was at ease and I surrendered to the moment until I eventually passed out.
This experience illustrates the concept of stage one in the healing process, “suffering.” It's very common for people to do the stage one SRI exercise in order to escape their suffering. The interesting thing here is that it doesn't work. You actually have to get into it in order to get out of it. In other words, instead of trying to avoid the experience, we need to truly experience the stage to gain whatever wisdom it has for us. This is contrary to our cultural story which tells us to avoid suffering at any cost.
From my past experience, I fully expected that I would have to cancel all of my appointments in the morning. When I awoke, I tentatively placed my foot on the floor. I felt a little stiff and slowly pulled myself up and put weight on my foot. To my surprise I could actually stand. In fact, the pain in my foot had almost completely resolved. The reason this was so surprising was that each time I had experienced this in the past, and it has been numerous times, the experience consisted of two to five days of pain, swelling, and couch time.
In the wellness or healing paradigm, I advise clients that symptoms are the body's call for attention and change and to listen to what message their body is trying to give them. All night I said to my body, “I'm listening, what do you want?” I never did get an answer. What I realized from this experience was that maybe sometimes we simply need to listen to our bodies, not to find an answer but rather to just simply listen.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
I've known you all along: Our connection to each other
It's Monday morning after the Transformational Gate and, since I have a few hours before the Somato-Respiratory Integration seminar begins, I thought I might share some experiences from this weekend with you. Because I have described the basic idea of this transformational weekend in an article in July's newsletter, I won't go into the logistics too deeply in this writing.In the aforementioned article, I described the process of relinquishing the body's armor and the resulting flexibility in structure and consciousness which contributes to increased awareness, creativity, a feeling of connection, and a greater ability to experience love. After several Gates, one might think that this experience would be old news, but surprisingly, even to me, this is not the case at all. In fact, each time offers a greater level of depth to all of these experiences than the time before.
I heard that there were close to seven hundred participants in this weekend's program which is one of, if not the, largest number of people to be involved in a Transformational Gate. While two days did not offer enough time to personally meet and talk to everyone, there was, never the less, an unspoken connection among each and every attendee. It was what Donald Epstein refers to in his book, “The Twelve Stages of Healing,” as community.
When people are able to shed their armor, they are able to see past the surface to the heart and soul of one another. In this state, judgment gives way to a deepened vision of each individual's inner beauty. Community, in this sense, is the realization that we are all connected, as well as the feeling of pure love for people that we thought we didn't know. To put it another way, one transcends the illusion of separateness and realizes that we have known each other all along. I realize that this concept may sound far fetched to someone who has not experienced it. In addition, I don't believe our culture really has the words to describe the experience at all. If you have ever had the opportunity to realize this connection, you recognize it unmistakably.
At the end of the weekend, participants lined up in two rows facing one another. One at a time, with eyes closed, the person at the end of the row walked slowly down the aisle relying upon the guidance of fellow gaters to guide him or her as the entire group sang a nurturing song. As people walked though the group, they were showered with gentle touches and nurturing guidance. It's amazing to bask in the safety, trust, and pure love that are directed to you.
After this experience, as you walk around the room looking into the eyes of each and every person, you realize that although this may be the first time you met, you have known each other all along. There is a connection - soul to soul - and there are no words to truly describe this experience of community.
In light of ongoing world events and our collective responses, my thoughts keep returning to the idea that if we humans could achieve this “community” we might not only survive but thrive and evolve as a race. I believe it's the message that all the prophets and spiritual leaders in history have conveyed. When I hear the news of some less than desirable response to current events, particularly in New Orleans, it presents an even stronger case for our need to achieve community. While I know that this idea might seem obvious to most of the people reading this newsletter, it is my hope that it may initiate some of you to do a little more than you may normally do to promote community even if it is only to smile at the person you pass in the street. If you help or even just connect with a stranger, remember that they are not really a stranger... on the level of our souls, you have known them all along.
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