Dear Ones, here is a story with no moral, at least not yet. I invite you to respond--your thoughts will increase my understanding.
A friend of mine told me (I truly do not remember which friend) that her therapist had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) at around the same time that she began therapy with him, a year or so ago. And then she said something that chilled me -- she said he had told her he didn't want to hear any stories of hope or reversal of the disease.
I found myself wanting to share Dr. Terry Wahl's story of recovery and reversal of all her symptoms, using a way of eating as well as quite a few lifestyle changes. I mean, strongly wanting to share. This is the kind of result from nutritional intervention that made me want to pursue my career as a dietitian as a young teen, and still fuels the fire of my professional purpose.
Dr Wahl's story can be found in her Ted Talk https://terrywahls.com/tedxiowacity-minding-your-mitochondria-with-dr-terry-wahls/ and in her book Wahls Protocol .
Her recovery is not only her unique personal story, but the result that many (in the hundreds or more, I believe) of her patients, research study participants and readers have also achieved.
Still, there is a part of me that seems to resonate, on some obscure level, with the resistance to having hope.
I have heard folks say things like "that diet is too hard" or "that might work for others but not for me". Of course, I have seen this resistance in other contexts than MS as well.
I have seen people jump in with extreme determination to follow a huge change and then fall off due to discouragement at setbacks and pitfalls. THIS is why I personally feel such as strong urge to "help", because in my work I have learned many techniques to ease the discomfort of change, to delve into and transform resistance, and in a very practical sense, overcome many of the obstacles that arise specifically when changing one's diet, such as techniques to overcome bowel issues, energy issues and palatability problems.
Does it boil down to wanting to spare oneself the pain of disappointment, in case we are the one person this treatment doesn't work for? Or possibly is it that the mind rebels against something it does not feel it has the bandwidth to take in?
We are all "terminal cases". We will all get sick and die, eventually. Unless we die of something that takes us quickly, we will all face the experience of feelig our Life Force drain away. There are indignities that go along with this process, and we feel a natural aversion to even thinking about them.
Is it that thinking of a "cure" requires us to face what we need the cure for?
I invite you to share your thoughts by commenting below.
Monday, January 15, 2018
Sunday, January 7, 2018
Tribute to Plum Village Meal Contemplations
Thich Nhat Hanh, affectionately known as "Thay" has long been a strong influence in my life. I learned his Contemplations Before Eating several versions ago (he likes to change things up to keep them from becoming dogmatic) and have used them whenever called upon to say grace before a meal.
Lately I have been moved to write my own tribute to his blessing. Here it is, I would love your comments!
This food is a gift of earth, sky and sea and the lives of beings. May we eat it with joy and attention so as to be worthy of it.
May the beings responsible for this food forever know our gratitude.
May we eat according to our hunger and fullness in order to be attuned to the cycles of Life.
May this food prevent illness and nourish us on the path of love and understanding.
Amen!
Lately I have been moved to write my own tribute to his blessing. Here it is, I would love your comments!
This food is a gift of earth, sky and sea and the lives of beings. May we eat it with joy and attention so as to be worthy of it.
May the beings responsible for this food forever know our gratitude.
May we eat according to our hunger and fullness in order to be attuned to the cycles of Life.
May this food prevent illness and nourish us on the path of love and understanding.
Amen!
Friday, January 5, 2018
What's in Your Consciousness?
In the post before last I began an exploration of how the Body invites us to wake up - or as we in http://www.trilliumawakening.org/ sometimes say, "wake down".
I want to share something I heard from Reverend Janet Schmidt Kingsley Darling. To paraphrase, she told of how in New Thought circles there was no shame in anyone "making their transition" (i.e. dying) but if someone is sick, the question tends to arise : What are they holding in their consciousness?
She was making reference to a fallacy that can come about as a misguided extension of the assertion "Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind". (see https://dianescholten.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/unity-principles-thoughts-held-in-mind-produce-after-their-kind/ )
In other words, Blame the Victim. So, as with all great truths, there is a Paradox: Yes, the body talks to us, sometimes quite loudly - through pain, illness, and injuries. Yes, by listening, by opening to what our body, that most personal of material manifestations, is "saying" we can often go on a healing journey that includes not only physical but emotional and spiritual healing. And, despite this, the body is finite. No matter how well cared for, eventually it will get sick and die. During our lifetimes we will experience varying degrees of health or illness, and in many ways we are powerless over this.
I invite you, my reader, to comment on this paradox.
May you enjoy this day, with all it brings.
I want to share something I heard from Reverend Janet Schmidt Kingsley Darling. To paraphrase, she told of how in New Thought circles there was no shame in anyone "making their transition" (i.e. dying) but if someone is sick, the question tends to arise : What are they holding in their consciousness?
She was making reference to a fallacy that can come about as a misguided extension of the assertion "Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind". (see https://dianescholten.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/unity-principles-thoughts-held-in-mind-produce-after-their-kind/ )
In other words, Blame the Victim. So, as with all great truths, there is a Paradox: Yes, the body talks to us, sometimes quite loudly - through pain, illness, and injuries. Yes, by listening, by opening to what our body, that most personal of material manifestations, is "saying" we can often go on a healing journey that includes not only physical but emotional and spiritual healing. And, despite this, the body is finite. No matter how well cared for, eventually it will get sick and die. During our lifetimes we will experience varying degrees of health or illness, and in many ways we are powerless over this.
I invite you, my reader, to comment on this paradox.
May you enjoy this day, with all it brings.
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Saying Grace
Prayer while contemplating the meal before me:
May I be attuned to the whole system that made this food possible, and may I transform the dysfunction in myself that contributes to the problems that threaten this system.
So Be It (Amen)
May I be attuned to the whole system that made this food possible, and may I transform the dysfunction in myself that contributes to the problems that threaten this system.
So Be It (Amen)
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
How the Body asks for Awakening
Embodied Consciousness Awakening - that is the promise of the Trillium Awakening path. I am so grateful to be about to transition to becoming an interning teacher in that work. Today, on my neighborhood walk with my dog, I reflected on the origin of my journey to emBODIED awakening, not because it was "up" for me but because walking by my neighbor's house started a train of thought.
Pondering the things my neighbor I'll call Carole has told me, I realized not only that she reminds me of my miserable self of 30 years ago, but that my path to awakening arose out of the same physical, body-based misery that she is clearly suffering from.
This was my thought process as I walked my dog past her house this morning: Oh Carole. So many complaints. Physically so much older than your years. In pain and looking for the magic bullet, only relaxed and happy when you are smoking pot. Bitter and resentful, you married quite young and are still with the man. He seems to the neighbors to be all sunshine and smiles but from your account is a negative old coot, in pain all the time and generally a hindrance to anything fun you want to do.
When I first moved here, Carole told me that neighbor Judy doesn't like me, and that the man down the street nobody ever sees had a wife who cheated on him and broke his heart.
Ah. Hmm. What happened to me that kept my story from being the same as hers? What was the very beginning? I remember being envious and bitter of my co-workers who got promoted, the ones who had the nerve to criticize my work. I took offense at everything and of course I could not speak up directly to the "offender"...but boy I could tell everyone else who would listen. I was miserable and from what I could tell everybody else was too.
Remembering.... Louise Hay, the Queen of affirmations! You Can Heal Your Life. ( https://www.healyourlife.com/authors/louise-l-hay ) I was in physical pain and used Louise Hay's affirmations to get relief. And then, to get relief from the emotional pain, I read further...so challenging! Louise was asking me to step up, to get brave. To change.
And around the same time, 12 step programs ... what a whole new way to look at Life! I suppose if I had had access to a substance that "worked" I might still be back there. The food kept me on the rollercoaster and showed up on my body as fat. As a health professional that was too mortifying. That and the general unmanageability of my life kept me in Program for long enough to begin learning a new way of life.
It's been a long story since then. My body has been my teacher even though I really did not consciously know it. As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says The Body Keeps the Score (see https://www.psychotherapy.net/article/body-keeps-score-van-der-kolk ). Trauma is stored in the body. The body tells us, using pain and illness of all kinds, that the trauma is there. We can listen and use the body's signals as a Doorway to Awakening.
Happy New Year Everyone. May we all LISTEN to what our bodies are saying. This morning's musing is just that -- there is much more to say. Thankfully our bodies don't stop talking no matter how much we wake up and wake down.
Pondering the things my neighbor I'll call Carole has told me, I realized not only that she reminds me of my miserable self of 30 years ago, but that my path to awakening arose out of the same physical, body-based misery that she is clearly suffering from.
This was my thought process as I walked my dog past her house this morning: Oh Carole. So many complaints. Physically so much older than your years. In pain and looking for the magic bullet, only relaxed and happy when you are smoking pot. Bitter and resentful, you married quite young and are still with the man. He seems to the neighbors to be all sunshine and smiles but from your account is a negative old coot, in pain all the time and generally a hindrance to anything fun you want to do.
When I first moved here, Carole told me that neighbor Judy doesn't like me, and that the man down the street nobody ever sees had a wife who cheated on him and broke his heart.
Ah. Hmm. What happened to me that kept my story from being the same as hers? What was the very beginning? I remember being envious and bitter of my co-workers who got promoted, the ones who had the nerve to criticize my work. I took offense at everything and of course I could not speak up directly to the "offender"...but boy I could tell everyone else who would listen. I was miserable and from what I could tell everybody else was too.
Remembering.... Louise Hay, the Queen of affirmations! You Can Heal Your Life. ( https://www.healyourlife.com/authors/louise-l-hay ) I was in physical pain and used Louise Hay's affirmations to get relief. And then, to get relief from the emotional pain, I read further...so challenging! Louise was asking me to step up, to get brave. To change.
And around the same time, 12 step programs ... what a whole new way to look at Life! I suppose if I had had access to a substance that "worked" I might still be back there. The food kept me on the rollercoaster and showed up on my body as fat. As a health professional that was too mortifying. That and the general unmanageability of my life kept me in Program for long enough to begin learning a new way of life.
It's been a long story since then. My body has been my teacher even though I really did not consciously know it. As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says The Body Keeps the Score (see https://www.psychotherapy.net/article/body-keeps-score-van-der-kolk ). Trauma is stored in the body. The body tells us, using pain and illness of all kinds, that the trauma is there. We can listen and use the body's signals as a Doorway to Awakening.
Happy New Year Everyone. May we all LISTEN to what our bodies are saying. This morning's musing is just that -- there is much more to say. Thankfully our bodies don't stop talking no matter how much we wake up and wake down.
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