The Force of Will in Healing

Force Of WillEveryone is born with will as part of their senses and is located in the nerves at the back of the neck. From there it transmits the individual perceptions of the other inner senses to the conscious mind. These individual perceptions i.e.. pain or depression, are then formed into a complete perception of the inner reality in image and word form, which the person’s conscious mind can then assert as their inner truth.
The force of will lies neither in physical nor mental power, but in its irresistible strength, which develops when it aligns with inner truth.

Pain and suffering need to be understood as a warning sign by one’s natural protective system. It is often the only bodily messenger that can get our attention to tell us that something in our body/mind complex is out of balance. Without this message, the condition could lead to serious illness. Seeing pain as an enemy causes a person to fight the messenger rather than identifying the root cause of the disturbance, thus creating an inner warfare between the will and the body.

Retreating from fighting immediately eases the pain.

A person’s will may also be held in bondage by the belief that life is a pre-written script “written in the stars” or determined by karma carried over from past lives. Or passed on by heredity “written in the genes”. A sense of doom prevails and a sense that some dark fate is in the making from which there is no escape. Such views mistakenly picture the Cosmos as hostile, indifferent, or even “a set of mechanics”. The irony is that the person who holds such views projects them constantly into reality; thus one believes that they are true. One needs to realize that the parallel reality one creates through projection traps us in one fate after another.
The effect is an unaccountable depression that constantly undermines the will. The mood quickly synchronizes itself with bad weather conditions, negative news reports, prophecies of global fates, etc., all of which keep one locked in the negative vortex created by the underlying belief in predestination , and its complimentary belief that one cannot do anything about it.

The Biology Of Belief By Dr Bruce LiptonI encourage everyone to read The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton.

What effect can I have as a Practitioner of Integrative Shiatsu?

In order to arrive at a place where my client and I can communicate truthfully about what is going on in their life, I first like to connect, not only with the symptoms, but with the person.

I like to hear you out. See you as you see yourself. Be an integral part of your breakthrough and help to resolve your issue(s) with patience and understanding by creating a safe space for you and applying my 30 years of practice ,through the use primarily of my hands, to influence the natural healing processes of your body/mind towards Wholeness and Health.

The Connection to Source can never be broken, only disturbed.

Winter: The Fallow Season

Fallow SeasonWinter is a fallow season, both for the earth and her gardens as well as for our bodies. During this time, we feel sluggish and prone to influences of cold.  While we don’t hibernate like bears, we still feel the need for more sleep and warmer foods such as soups and stews.

The shorter days and longer nights tend to encourage us to cocoon in our homes.  We exercise and move less during these periods.

It is very important to continue with body treatments that encourage our blood and Qi to “get up and go” as we prepare for the spring season and becoming more active again.

The Concept of Blood in Chinese Medicine

Blood CellsWhile the concept of Qi often dominates our attention in Chinese Medicine, the Blood is at least equally important to us. We know that increasing good Blood circulation can increase the effect we want to achieve in local areas.

The Blood houses the Spirit in Chinese medicine and the Spirit provides the capacity for memory. On a spiritual level this includes the memory of who we really are and what we want to become. Memory can be important in the sense of maintaining change after a treatment.

Moving the Blood can help our treatments last longer because the client is able to register change on a deeper level and their physical form stores that memory for them. This is because we are increasing the circulation of Blood as it moves through the fascia and this has a strong effect on the musculature and nerves.

Excerpted from an article by Cindy Banker, AOBTA

Spring Fever

Red Bud BlossomsEnergy in the body also reflects the seasons. In the spring energy goes up and in.

Spring can be frustrating as “up” energy makes us want to do things and “in” energy confuses the outward expression of our experience. Anger and impatience are frequent in spring because energy is up and pushed inside. In springtime, shiatsu treatments are aimed at calming energy and bringing it out. Lack of energy is rarely a problem, usually the energy is just stuck.

Spring would be associated with morning energy and breakfast comes as we arise from our natural death-like slumber, just as spring follows winter. Morning has the yang-rising energy of springtime.

In the early morning, our digestive system is sensitive as that of an infant. Interestingly, whole grains have a protein to carbohydrate ratio and sweet flavor that virtually duplicates human mother’s milk. This suggests that a soft grain porridge would be a particularly suitable staple food around which to build a natural breakfast. A warm gruel as opposed to dry toast or cold cereal. Fruits and sugars generally have a yin, condensing, cold energy and are not appropriate foods for the first meal of the day according to Chinese herbalists. They can be temporarily stimulating, but can in fact dampen the Qi of the spleen/stomach/pancreas and create a tendency to experience those mid-morning low energy ‘Blues”, and cravings for more sweets and stimulants. For breakfast then, oats, barley, millet and rice are most suitable. No one would think of feeding an infant bacon, egg, sausage, steak or other such foods; these foods are appropriate at times when our digestive fire is stronger.

Kabir says:

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think…and think…while you are alive.
What you call “salvation” belongs to the time just before death.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
Do you think the ghosts will do it after?

What Kabir is saying is this:

When the Guest
Is being searched for,
It is the intensity of the longing for the Guest
That does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see
A slave of that intensity.

~ from the Kabir Book, versions by Robert Bly.

SPIRITUAL PRACTICE is the work of constantly being aware of life processes by carefully attending to the flow of movement of sensations and phenomena of the body life as they occur. This awareness is uncluttered by opinions or judgments about the experience themselves. It is an attentiveness that is direct, clear, simple, and without agenda. Attention for attention’s sake. Taking time to be with what is. Not wanting to make the moment anything more than what it is.

This is how I approach my Shiatsu Practice. Being in the moment with my clients and focusing on what their innate wisdom wants to address in that moment.

Consciousness-Based Energy Medicine for Optimal Health

Innate WisdomI would distinguish what I practice, which is a combination of Shiatsu and BodyTalk, as more subtle than physical manipulation and safer than pharmaceutical intervention.

Working with the subtle energy level is less invasive and has a broader range of influence all the way down to the physical. Yet I’ve gone a step further to include Consciousness, which is more subtle than the subtlest energy and all-inclusive, whether subtle, dense or otherwise.

Energy is innate to physical matter. Nowhere can we find physical matter devoid of energy. Similarly, intelligence is innate to energy. Nowhere can we find energy devoid of intelligence. This innate intelligence (or simply “Innate”) is everywhere in the universe, which would include this planet, Earth.

Energy is patterns of vibratory movement expressing levels of intelligence (coherence, beauty, knowledge), and innate is non-active pervasive pure intelligence (wisdom, power, bliss) essential to Consciousness. Innate cannot be isolated nor made more or less intelligent – it IS intelligence. I can be conscious of varying energetic expressions of health or dis-ease in the body/mind complex, but Innate is Consciousness itself and beyond measurement including any attempt at diagnosis whatsoever.

Working intuitively with the dynamics of Innate is to work as though Innate itself were doing the intuiting. This I refer to as “Being in the zone”.

There is not a person more intuitive than Innate itself and this is what allows each of us to unfold what is essentially our own Innate Consciousness.

Working with Innate, therefore, is to work beyond any personal level of intuition, even though it is through that intuition that Innate communes during a treatment.

The great wisdom of both Shiatsu which is based on the ancient premises of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Veda, and Bodytalk which is a modern day understanding of the Quantum Theories being expounded in the Sciences, is that since Innate is innately our own consciousness, Shiatsu and BodyTalk amount to being an exploration into the appreciation of our own Selfhood.

Now, not even doubt, hesitation, insecurities, pains, and problems can get us down because they are also expressions of Innate – and any message communicated by Innate Consciousness is worth getting excited about. Love yourself; go easy; be gentle with your Self and see everything, ‘good’ or ‘bad’, as an opportunity to expand. Laugh at yourself, go to the mirror and look at yourself, give yourself a wink and a smile. Feel yourself worthy of communion with the Supreme Wisdom innate to Consciousness that pervades and supports all of Life- your Life! This is the Life worth living. This is the source of All, including health and well-being. “Finding Health” begins and ends here with the applied consciousness of Shiatsu/Bodytalk.

You are so much more than the sum of your parts. The quantum shift that 2012 represents is not Apocalyptic or the End of Times. It is simply the end of the focus of Cartesian reductionism on the parts of us, and a return to the Holistic understanding inherent, not only in the mystical traditions of all major religions, but also in the findings and observations of Quantum Theory.

I would like to thank and acknowledge Tim Hall, Bodytalk Practitioner, for the inspiration and some of the content of this article.

 

Hara Shiatsu: Blending Ancient Wisdom with Modern Understanding of Form and Function

Hara Shiatsu DiagnosisHara Shiatsu includes palpating the abdomen to discover patterns of disharmony and imbalance and treatment of specific points to re-establish equilibrium and flow.

The Hara, as it is known as in Japan (or Dantien in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Martial Arts) is that region of our bodies, below the rib cage and above the pelvis, that we are all a little weird about. The belly button is in the centre; that connection, through the umbilicus, to our mothers. That tells us that this is where we receive our nourishment, which in turn makes our blood and sends vital ingredients to all the cells in our body, via the heart and circulatory system. The small intestine is a twenty foot long tube between our stomachs and our large intestine.

When I palpate the Hara I am looking for specific signs: hot/cold, hard/soft, full/empty, strong/weak to name but a few. There are what are known as Bo points which have an energic correspondence with other organs in the neighbourhood: Liver/Gall bladder, Stomach/Spleen/Pancreas, Heart, Lungs/Large Intestine and Kidneys/Bladder/ Sexual Organs – a colony if you will. We all know that the failure of just any one of those organs can lead to death or severe handicap.

Just below the navel is our centre of gravity, a space of focus for our breath as we do our Tai-Chi, Judo, Meditation and Reflection. The 2nd chakra is there too. A place of emanation of our ‘gut feelings’; our authority and our strategies instinctively felt at the deepest level. Our center of true discernment.

In acu/meridian yin/yang theory the small intestine pairs with the heart. The element is Fire. Joy, Passion, Warmth and Connection.

The Hara as a center of autonomic neural functioning, the Enteric Nervous System or Belly Brain:   www.honoringyourbelly.com/inspiration/articles/soul-power.html

Discover what science and research is now discovering:   www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gut-second-brain

Neuro hormones of the small intestine:  Serotonin and Secretin

Serotonin is a monoamine neurotransmitter that is primarily found in the GI tract.  About 80% of the human’s body total serotonin is located in the enterochromaffin cells in the gut, where it is used to regulate intestinal movements. Serotonin has various other functions too: the regulation of mood, appetite, sleep, muscle contraction, and some cognitive functions including memory and learning; and in blood platelets where it helps regulate homeostasis and blood clotting. Serotonin literally translates as blood tonic.

Secretin is a hormone that controls secretions into the duodenum, and also separately, water homeostasis throughout the body. It is found in the S cells of the duodenum in the crypts of Lieberkuhn. Its effect is to regulate the pH of the duodenal contents via control of gastric acid secretion and buffering with bicarbonate.

Autumn: A Time for Building Up Your Immune System

White Tiger ConstellationWe celebrate the return of Yin energy, where we begin turning inward after the warmth and outward expansion of Spring and Summer. Autumn is the time of gathering in the fruits of our labors, of bringing in the harvest.

To the Taoists of China, the Autumn Equinox opens the Western Door of Heaven, the door of the White Tiger constellation, one of the Four Doors, when the gates of Heaven are open to virtuous souls with great merit.

In Chinese Five Element Theory, the Autumn Equinox marks the beginning of the Metal Element cycle. Metal is also associated with dusk, the West, with the color white, with the White Tiger protector of the West, with dryness and cooling. It is the most important time of year for building up your immune system in preparation for the approaching cold winds of Winter.

A Time to Strengthen

It’s the best time of year for strengthening the Lungs, as we are more susceptible to colds and flus as the weather changes. Chinese herbs such as astragalus (Huang Qi) and platycodon are perfect to help strengthen the immune system and Lungs.

Now is also a good time to stock up on Yin Qiao, an especially good formula to take at the first sign of a cold. My favorite Chinese herbal formulation to fortify the immune system is Jade Windscreen Formula (Yu Ping Feng San).