Harvard Medical School | Science Blog

In a study designed to isolate the root causes of violent behavior, Harvard Medical School researchers found that young teens who witnessed gun violence were more than twice as likely as non-witnesses to commit violent crime themselves in the following years. The study [appeared]  in the May 27 [2005] issue of Science.

“Based on this study’s results, showing the importance of personal contact with violence, the best model for violence may be that of a socially infectious disease,” says Felton Earls, MD, HMS professor of social medicine and principal investigator of the study and of the the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods.

“Preventing one violent crime may prevent a downstream cascade of ‘infections’. And the lessons learned in Chicago should be broadly applicable. Generalizing this to any large city should be valid,” Earls said.

The study, a five-year project that included interviews of over 1,500 children and teenagers from 78 Chicago neighborhoods, used statistical advances and extremely detailed information about the study subjects to go beyond the correlations and associations typically used by social scientists to determine violent behavior. “We have a broad range of factors, and a long course of study, so we can tease out the causal mechanisms,” said first author Jeffrey Bingenheimer, currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan who will be joining the Harvard School of Public Health in September as Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar.

Previous work has shown that a large network of factors pushes or pulls young people away from or into violent crime. Researchers suspected that exposure to violence in the community played a role, but many argued that a common factor, perhaps in family structure or personality, might be the common cause of both exposure to violence and later acts of violence. Demonstrating cause and effect with a controlled experiment, deliberately exposing some children to mayhem, would be ethically impossible. But by grouping together and comparing teens with similar likelihood of exposure, some of whom were and some of whom were not actually witnesses to violence, the researchers were able to isolate the independent contribution made by seeing gun violence. And it turned out to be large, swamping other single factors like poverty, drug use, or being raised by a single parent.

The researchers studied the subject teens at three points in their adolescence. Initially they and their caregivers were intensively interviewed and data was collected about their families, personalities, neighborhoods, school performance, and many other factors; this allowed the researchers to group the teens by their propensity to witness gun violence. Two years later, the subjects were interviewed to see which of them had actually seen someone being shot, or shot at. Finally, almost three years further on, they were interviewed again to determine who had participated in gang violence or other violent actions.

After finding that witnessing violence more than doubled the risk that teens would violently offend, the team looked at their statistics to check whether an unknown factor could be hiding from them. They found that something significant would have to be at work to change the findings substantially, and it would have to be uncorrelated with the factors they did examine. “And honestly, it’s very difficult to think what we might have left out,” Earls said, pointing to the 153 variables that were embraced in the study.

There is no shortage of medical ways to view urban violence, but the challenge for social medicine researchers is to choose the best one-–is violence a product of families, akin to a hereditary disorder? Or is violence like an environmental contaminant, lurking in some communities and leaving others unscathed? Based this study’s results, showing the importance of personal contact with violence, Earls feels the best model may be an socially contagious disease.

healingarts | April 7, 2011 |

Stephen and Ondrea Levine, from Embracing the Beloved : Relationship as a Path of Awakening

This book is not meant to be read in only a linear manner. It often offers an experiential process. It is as much poetry as prose. Absorbed phrase by phrase, image by image, it allows healing to enter the heart, the mind, the body.

We share the process from which we are learning daily for the benefit of all who wish to use relationship as a path of self-discovery. This work is not to be taken lightly. This is a book about co-commitment, not co-dependency. These techniques are not applicable to anything that resembles the old-style dominant/submissive relationships which have for so long perpetuated our all-too-human suffering.

When true hearts truly join there is a mystical union. An inter-connecting of whole human beings which, is the foundation for great insight and growth. It is a collaboration in healing.

Although we often speak in terms of merging, or becoming one, or dissolving into oneness–this is not a giving up of one person to another. It is not, as the great German poet Rilke fears of such commitments, “a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both of their fullest freedom and development . . .”

Indeed, if two people attempt only to become one, they certainly may get lost. But if the oneness just beyond such concepts is their ultimate concern–if each heart is committed to the universal heart, our birthright, our original nature–neither stops. And the ongoing aerial act is spectacular.

Indeed, when Rilke says that the most that can be expected is that “two solitudes protect and border and greet each other,” he is speaking of the best of the ordinary way. They do not burn for the Beloved. They do not love the truth even more than each other. They refuse to give it all away. To be blessed surveying new frontiers.

The distance from your pain, your grief, your unattended wounds, is the distance from your partner. And the distance from your partner is your distance from the living truth, your own great nature. Whatever maintains that distance, that, separation from ourselves and our beloveds, must be investigated with mercy and awareness. This distance is not overcome by one “giving up their space” to another, but by both partners entering together the unknown between them. The mind creates the abyss but the heart crosses it.

A conscious relationship teaches us to treat ourselves and others as our only child. And to do it mindfully. It does not break the heart. A conscious relationship is as healing and life-affirming as an unconscious, old-style relationship is at times harmful and life-denying. The harmful effect of an unconscious relationship is that it keeps us so small, dependent on external circumstances for our happiness. More needs than gifts are brought to such an entanglement. But a conscious relationship, offers the possibility of relating across the gulf of I and other all the way into the heart of our beloved. A conscious relationship shows us to remain conscious while in relationship. It’s a whole new ball game.

A few years ago Ondrea and I were scheduled to give a talk about healing on what turned out to be Valentine’s Day. Coming from the stillness of our mountain retreat to the commotion of the “big city,” we were deeply touched by the care and kindness exhibited as the meeting hall filled. So many couples aiding each other. Those alone helped to their seats by the loved ones of the recently departed. The weary, nearly translucent faces of patients, friends and colleagues. So many others drawn with illness or gray with grief. So many returned for healing with their families. Their lovers. Men and women of every description–teen-agers and octogenarians, janitors and physicians, car salesmen and poets: black, brown, yellow, and white; gay and straight; sick and well–the loved, the loving, committed to a mutual process. So much buzz and affection. Five hundred gathered for an evening in this beautiful old stone church in an investigation of healing.

These open faces, and the exceptional, nearly initiatory, day we had just had, overwhelmed us with waves of loving kindness.

And we thought what a perfect day to speak about human kindness and maybe even share that term we love so in private but rarely used in groups: the Beloved. A word that incorporates the heart of the sacred into a profound appreciation of our deepest nature. A word that is a “bonding responder” for the way our relationship has become our spiritual practice. And how our practice, our work on ourselves, has become the central core in our connectedness.

And we asked ourselves whether we needed to talk about healing or could just effuse about the Beloved a few times before we realized there was no question. There was no difference. As healing progresses deeper, a more tangible sense of being ensues. From that sense of being there constellates the quality of “being present.” Being present we come into “the presence”: the space in which the process floats: the Moved.

We find the term “the Beloved” quite functional for many reasons including the obvious parallel between the hearts affinity for such an idea and the draw of the personal toward the universal. And, of course, because it is our practice to meet our beloved as the Beloved.

It is a term used in many spiritual traditions and is particularly well served in the Sufi tradition, whose mystical, devotional aspect seeks the “hidden mysteries,” yearning for the direct experience of the one they call “the Beloved.” In perhaps the greatest of all devotional poetry, in the spectacular longings of Rumi, Kabir, Miribai, and Rabia, the Beloved is all that is sought. The Beloved is the context into which the wounded and dismayed may enter, as the ever-injured and uninjurable vastness embraces. their pain and transmutes it to mercy. But to all who seek their own true self, whether Sufi or Buddhist, Christian or Jew, Jain, Native American, or agnostic, the Beloved is the ever-experienceable vastness of our true heart, our original nature. And for all, it is the possibility of freedom, the divine capacity to transform our pool of tears into the Ocean of Compassion.

The Beloved is neither a person nor a place. It is an experience of deeper and deeper levels of being, and eventually of beingness itself–the boundarylessness of your own great nature expressed in its rapture and absolute vastness by the word “love.” It is not for the concept, but for the experience, that we use the term “the Beloved.” The experience of this enormity we falteringly label “divine” is unconditioned love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and compassion. We use this concept, not to name the unnameable vastness of being–our greatest joy–but to acknowledge and claim as our birthright the wonders and healings within.

As we began to speak on that Valentine’s evening, the words “the Beloved” exited our lips with a sigh–a gentle bow to those gathered in the room and to that within each of us, which is only love and boundless being.

healingarts | June 25, 2005 |

Kurt Chandler | Salon

Growing up, I was terrified of my father’s hair-trigger temper. So it was with surprise, and shame, that I found myself exploding at my teenage son.

It’s a fine Friday morning. My wife fries bacon in the kitchen as I lead our kindergartner daughter through her bathroom routine. In the living room, our son, a high school freshman, slouches on the sofa, reading the paper.

I hand my daughter, Emma, her toothbrush and spy a damp, green bath towel heaped on the floor, no doubt the property of her brother, Ben. It’s frivolous, an errant towel, and should be no more than a nuisance on this glorious Wisconsin day. But it’s the same green towel that was heaped on the floor yesterday, and the day before. Today it sets me off.

I snatch up the towel and stalk into the living room with the evidence.

“Ben. What is this?”

He glances up absently from the sports page.

“Ah, let me see. A towel?”

A smartass reply from a smartass 14-year-old. And normally I’d let it slide or come back with my own smartass reply. But he levels his remark at me with a look of such disdain — a glower that I see more and more as he grows older — that I lose it.

“Goddamn it, Ben.” My circle of vision collapses. I can see no light, no detail. Only the smug scowl on Ben’s face.

And it becomes my target.

I lunge for him. I tear the newspaper from his hands and hook him around the head with my arm, knocking him off balance and pushing his smug little face into the sofa.

He goes down without resistance, taken aback by the swiftness and force of my rage. And then he panics.

“Don’t touch me! Get your hands off of me!” he spits into the cushion.

And in seconds, it’s over. I release my grip and push away.

Ben springs to his feet and out of my reach. His ears are beet red. His T-shirt is hiked up his back. His glasses lie on the rug under a table. He looks at me for a long second, his face wracked with shock and utter, desperate hurt.

“I’m out of here,” he mutters, his eyes damp and downcast, and he stomps out the front door, not bothering to retrieve his glasses.

I hover in the middle of the room, dizzy now, the adrenaline drained. And in the corner of my eye, in the hallway mirror, I see my reflection. Jaw tight, brow furrowed, eyes ablaze. The face is familiar. It’s my father’s face, the same face that raged at me so many times, so many years ago.

Damn.

My father.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

My father only made it to age 58. He died of lung cancer when Ben was 6, before his grandson really knew what made him tick. It has been up to me to explain to Ben the many sides of my father — including the hair-trigger anger that eventually would be handed down.

My father’s rules were rigid, his punishment swift. For the worst offenses, his discipline could turn corporal — a “lickin’,” as it was grimly referred to, exacted with a large, muscular hand, the hand of a carpenter.

Yet it wasn’t the punishment that was most feared. No, it was my father’s temper that planted dread into the hearts of my siblings and me. Sometimes the most seemingly harmless deed — a bicycle left out in the rain — would push him to the edge. He would explode in a roar, shouting us into obedience. When I reached adolescence, a gulf grew between us, widened by my rebellion and his temper. Time and again we would clash, battling over things both momentous and trivial — the war in Vietnam, the length of my hair. My father would pace the kitchen floor, delivering a stern admonishment as I stood silently, leaning against the counter. Suddenly his rage would erupt, pinning me against the counter like a blast from a fire hose. I would take it, wordlessly, my arms crossed at my chest, despising him for his bluntness and shamed by his reproach. Then I would strike back, hollering into his face until, in a fit of frustration, I would bang out the kitchen screen door.

After the dust settled, my father would try to smooth things over with a touch of humor, using his playful teasing like a verbal mussing up of my hair. But there were no words of reconciliation, no discussion of the fury that had been unleashed. The dysfunction was locked away, never sorted out.

It wouldn’t be fair to say my father had a mean streak. He was a bighearted man, willing to give his time to friends and family without complaint. He spent many hours with me, one on one, heaving a baseball high into the evening sky when he was dead tired from work. And when we moved to the parceled pasturelands of Milwaukee’s western suburbs, he built a wooden footbridge over a creek that separated our backyard from our neighbors’, a magnanimous gesture.

But sometimes the man boiled inside. And when the pressure became too great, he boiled over.

I have a photograph of my father as a young man. He is scowling at the camera, wearing a look of complete contempt that could stop traffic. I don’t know what was behind that particular scowl, and I can only guess what fueled his rage later in life — the strain of his job, of raising four children, of missed opportunities. He kept it to himself, lived with it, as so many men of his generation were prone to do. He buried himself in his work, his most loyal friend. I’ve seen that expression a thousand times — on the face of my father, my brothers, and on my own face. Sometimes I see that same scowl on the face of my son — and I feel accountable.

It has become my duty as my son’s father — and my father’s son — to cut the scorn and anger out of the family tree, as if it were a diseased limb or rotted stump.

But anger is hard to carve away. The roots go deep.

Ben has seen his own anger rise up from within. Weeks earlier, he roared at his sister when he found her rummaging through his desk drawer. “Stay out of my room!” he bellowed. “You can’t just come in here any time you feel like it.”

Ben’s thunder frightened Emma and sent her running for her mother. He later apologized, all was forgiven, and we wrote it off as an adolescent mood swing. But I sensed it was more than that. It was anger inherited.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

My scuffle with Ben over the bath towel casts a pall over our home. The next day, a Saturday, he repels my attempts to break the ice. But on Sunday, he reluctantly agrees to come along on a family day trip to an apple orchard.

Candy apples and a petting zoo draw Emma into the barn at the edge of the orchard, and my wife, Cathy, follows.

“Let’s go pick some apples,” I say to Ben, seeing my chance, and we wade through the field grass, the tall blades sweeping against our jeans.

We start with Harrelsons, pulling the lowest fruit from a squat, gnarled tree. The tree resists for a moment, its branch bending, then gives up the fruit, the branch flying back.

“Smells like rain,” I say, studying the sky. But Ben says nothing.

“You’re still mad at me, aren’t you,” I say.

“Maybe. Maybe I am.” And he moves to another tree. “I just don’t like being pushed around.”

I hesitate, but I know this is the time for amends.

“That was wrong of me, Ben. And I’m sorry. It frightened me. Reminded me of my father.”

Ben’s eyes narrow and he waits for more.

“I need to work on my temper,” I say. “The pressure builds and I just lash out at whoever’s closest. There’s no excuse. You’ve seen it happen, you’ve felt it yourself. Let’s just try to let it go.”

My son and I have talked about male rage and how hard it is sometimes to predict or avoid. But it has become easier for me — for us — to control it. With words instead of stubborn silence, it can be brought into the open, laid bare and the roots sheared, so nothing grows between us.

We move on to another apple tree, two paper bags nearly filled with fruit. Ben pulls down a Macintosh, bites into it. Then he sends the core flying. I turn, but not in time. The apple finds its target, my stomach.

“Oooff.” I double over. Ben laughs at his precision and picks up another apple.

“Wait!” I call out, backing away and laughing myself. “Truce! Truce!” And he drops the apple.

A drizzle is falling. Raindrops spill down my face and I wipe my eyes with my sleeve. In the distance, Cathy is calling.

“Come on. It’s starting to rain, we’ve got to go. What are you guys doing?”

We grab the apples and make a beeline to the barn.

healingarts | June 18, 2005 |

Marc Ian Barasch | dragonflymedia

Compassion as a Wave of Change

I’ve spent the past few years researching a book on the compassionate heart. I began what I called my “field notes” feeling both hopeful and hollowed-out. In a time of war, the ice caps melting like Sno-Cones, and meanness an item on the national agenda, I had set forth, as the poet Derek Wolcott once urged, “to fall in love with the world in spite of history.”

My journey took me to a man who had forgiven his daughter’s murderer; and to one who had given his kidney to a total stranger. I chatted (via pictograms) with oddly empathic bonobo apes. I hung out with Balkan kids who called themselves “the Post-Pessimists” — survivors of war who’d made peacemaking the whole point of their lives. I met Tibetan monks and neuroscientists studying the inner workings of the soul, and spent time with those who did the heart’s heavy lifting, succoring the sick, feeding the hungry, comforting the abandoned.

Spiritual teachers have always claimed that compassion is not a case of being born a saint, but of cultivating — like diligent, sweat-stained gardeners — the secret kernel of benevolence that is our birthright.

This is not to say compassion doesn’t take some grit. It can draw us to places where the candle gutters in the soul’s darker, draftier labyrinths. The word itself derives from the Latin cum patior, “to suffer with” (think Mother Theresa: “Ache, ache, ache: one by one by one”). It might sound like a bummer but it’s what we’re made for — for that fellow-feeling that renders kindness not only possible, but ineluctable; for the joy of knowing each other deeply, as we really are. Our limbic system, the emotional brain we share with all mammals, is a powerful antenna, attuned to each others’ wavelengths. When we say, “My heart went out to him,” we’re saying we can’t help but resonate, even when we try not to notice.

A Tale of Deliverance

I’ve known my friend Kate for decades. Now 50, her rangy six-foot frame is still topped by a mane of auburn. When I first met her, Kate was an activist with a wild streak and a big heart. She’d fronted her own bar band, become a registered nurse and a midwife, gone to work for Sting, and co-founded a natural shampoo company. She eventually drifted into public relations, becoming a consultant-for-hire — a semi-retired bodhisattva in a glittery, jittery life funded by what she called, in a Seussical singsong, Boring assignments/For corporate clients.

It wasn’t even Christmas yet, but she was already sick of the season, with its synthetic cheer, slushy streets, and eggnog gossip sprinkled with leftover election gripes. Then the Great Tsunami tore a chunk out of Southeast Asia.

At first horrified, then numbed by the images of suffering that coursed at light speed around the globe, Kate was struck by a message that popped up on her friend Steve’s computer screen: “Why aren’t you on a plane to Thailand with a pocketful of cash, helping some small village recover?”

Steve, a successful businessman, also had been pierced by the images on CNN, but couldn’t bring himself to ship off a wad of his cash to some bureaucratic charity. An investment analyst and a wizard of arbitrage in a world where swarms of darting numbers demand risky split-second decisions, Steve was flummoxed. But, finally, he concluded: “The only way to see if I could make a difference was to be there on the ground.”

A few days later, they were on a plane, with Kate and Steve still asking: “Who are we to do this? How can we possibly help? Will we be in the way?” Twenty-four hours later, they alighted in Bangkok.

They wanted to get to Phuket, the tourist island whose beachfront was the tsunami’s Ground Zero. But when they arrived, they were told that the relief efforts were finished; the only work left was identifying the dead.

Kate sat down with Steve, the metaphysical agnostic, and composed a plea to the universe: “Lead us to a place where we can relieve suffering and bring hope.” She dropped off to sleep muttering it like a mantra. The next day, a man at the American Embassy appeared and directed them to a hotel 90 miles north. Arriving by rattletrap Jeep at a hilltop resort packed with relief workers, soldiers and missionaries, they entered a surreal world — inside, a luxurious tropical swimming lagoon; outside, a devastated flatland littered with miles of rubble and hundreds of white caskets where entire coastal communities once stood.

Two missionaries they met in the lobby invited them to help haul supplies to a devastated fishing village. The next day, at an encampment of plastic tarps housing 76 displaced families, they learned the group had lost more than 40 family members. Though the circumstances of these survivors couldn’t have been more dire, Kate was struck by “how incredibly warm, friendly and welcoming they were.”

The village leaders explained that they needed help rebuilding their fishing fleet. By the next day, Steve had pledged the money and Kate applied her organizational chutzpah to start a foundation to build a new flotilla of traditional long-tail boats. Within hours, Steve and Kate were in a nearby town, buying saws, drills and lumber. Later, at the site of a newly donated boatyard, they handed over the tools and equipment to the fishermen, bowing ceremoniously in the Thai manner to seal the deal. Fortuitously, the improbable debut of the Waves of Hope Boat Building Project was captured by a TV news crew. The next day the whole global village heard the story.

“Boat-building turns out to be more ‘win-win’ than I could imagine,” Kate says. “It gives people food, employment, self-reliance, dignity, hope.” Back in the States a few weeks later, she got a call from the new shipyard. In the background she could hear the “amazing, sweet music” of crews hammering in the nails on their second craft. The project may be replicated in other villages in Thailand and Sri Lanka.

The whole experience left Kate thinking about chance and design, accident and fate. She’s convinced, no matter if it sounds like mystical gobbledygook, that “setting a clear intention to serve the highest good — and empowering that through our minds and hearts — made it so.” She’s considering giving up her consulting jobs to follow “this thread of service.” She finally feels plugged back into something she’d forsaken a dozen years before, when she’d “traded away inspiration and passion to pursue houses and things.”

The High Road to ‘Elevation’

Kate’s journey was less one of self-discovery than other-discovery, our real terra incognita. Father Thomas Keating, a Benedictine monk, once observed: “The American way is to first feel good about yourself, then feel good about others. But spiritual traditions say it’s really the other way around — that you develop a sense of goodness by giving of yourself.”

It’s sometimes hard to figure out what good we can do for a world that often looks like it’s coming apart at the seams. But that cynicism is a slur, a cheap shot, on our own true nature. Our smaller selves may not know how to proceed; our larger, wider selves do. Every time we see an act of nobility, our hearts swell with the sheer certainty of it.

That very feeling has caught the interest of mind-body researchers like John Haidt of the University of Virginia, who has been investigating what he calls “elevation” — that state of soaring inspiration (sometimes accompanied by a poignant, choked-up sensation) we feel when we see a particularly selfless deed. In this near-automatic, evolved response, he thinks he might have found a key to positive social change.

“Elevation seems particularly capable of fostering love, admiration, and a desire for closer affiliation,” Haidt told me. He has written: “If elevation increases the likelihood that a witness to good deeds will soon become a doer of good deeds, [it] sets up the possibility for an ‘upward spiral’… raising the level of compassion, love, and harmony in an entire society.”

Now, more than ever, we need such a fine-mesh web of kindness to bind us together. On an interconnected globe, the good of each is tied to the good of all. Every border is porous; anyone’s business is everyone’s business; a problem “over there” becomes, in an eye blink, a problem over here. What’s in any one person’s heart right now can be as big as the whole world. A few people with desktop computers can collaborate between continents on the blueprints for a new concert hall or the specs for a suitcase nuke. Or, a few people like Kate and Steve can revive entire communities of boat builders, halfway around the planet.

The Empire of Compassion

I know a young woman, Nadja, who during the siege of Sarajevo was wounded by Serb shrapnel. After the war, watching a scared-looking Serb soldier weep during his televised trial, she couldn’t help weeping with him. When her brother angrily scolded that the man could be the same one who’d lobbed the mortar round that wounded her, she replied: “I can’t keep a separate heart, one for my friends and one for my enemies.” Yet Nadja’s no pushover. She went on to become an effective global campaigner against child slavery and the abuse of women.

She echoed a Burmese activist I know named Ka Hsaw Wa, c0-founder of Earthrights International, who confided that he feels ko gin ser (roughly translated: “My heart is trying to be your heart”) for the government soldiers once tortured him. He chose to oppose them with the nonviolent weapon of international law. His group won a settlement from Unocal, a California oil giant accused of complicity in brutalizing local villagers to build a pipeline. “We have to stand against what’s wrong,” says Ka Hsaw Wa, “But I know we have to change the human heart.”

I like to think of Kate, Steve, Nadja and Ka Hsaw Wa as loyal subjects of some rising Empire of Everybody, an emergent world order with compassion as its central organizing principle. Why not believe that a culture based on “social healing” is germinating within the husk of the old — an evolutionary leap made up of small changes of heart that will burst forth, like the Czechs’ Velvet Revolution and the Ukranians’ Orange one and gently take over the world?

I’ve been inspired lately by Gandhi’s famous 1930 Salt March. When the British government in India imposed a salt monopoly, making that necessity nearly unaffordable, there was widespread despair and a call to arms. But the Mahatma had a better idea. He led a mass procession down to the seashore, picked up some of the ocean’s bountiful white condensate, and held aloft a handful for all to see. The roar of the crowd that day shook the foundations of the British Imperium. People suddenly knew they had the resources to reclaim their lives and remake their society. They could withdraw consensus from an irrational system, unhobble their creativity and, in Gandhi’s words, “be the change you want to see.”

A lot of us are trying to do that today — to live holistically, to be smart, green consumers, to support the causes we believe in. But if we really want to heal our world, we need more than topical remedies. If war is an infection in the human system, the antidote lies in strengthening what it most directly attacks: our capacity for compassion. Knowing how to properly “value” Nature may not be enough; we may need to love it as well (either that, or start looking for a new evolutionary niche). And love, as everyone knows, is less about grand gestures than daily increments.

If we each all simply took less, gave more, tithed our time and energy, invested our love and our imagination — can we even imagine: “What then?” Loving-kindness sounds gentle, but it’s deeply unruly: it won’t stay in its seat, refuses to follow instructions, doesn’t know when enough is enough.

I’ve concluded — like any unjaundiced observer throughout the sweep of history — that compassion, empathy, altruism and forgiveness are the most powerful forces in the known universe. As St. Paul said, love is all that endures when everything else crumbles. In our beautiful, imperiled world, it is the only way to imagine an infinite future.

healingarts | May 21, 2005 |

Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks, from Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Committment

For most of us, relationships are a struggle. We each have a strong inner urge toward conscious loving: toward love relationships that are free of mistrust, disharmony, and unspoken words. We want our relationships to be springboards to higher consciousness and enhanced creative expression. Yet within us also lives an urge toward unconscious loving: we are encumbered by the burdens of our past programming. In this book we will present the results of our exploration of relationship issues over the past twenty years. From our work with over one thousand couples we have discovered the key flaws that produce distortion in relationships, and we have developed a precise, step-by-step program for turning your loving into conscious loving. We have also identified the crucial choice points in the evolution of a relationship that enhance or ruin the opportunities for intimacy.

Unconscious loving turns relationships into entanglements which bring out and actually require the destructive habits of each participant. Unconscious loving saps energy and creativity. By knowing the crucial choice points and practicing the skills of conscious loving we describe, a state emerges that we call Co-Commitment. It is a state of well-being which enhances the energy and creativity of each per-son. In our journey together through this book you will learn the intentions that allow co-commitment to unfold, how to spot and overcome the unconscious patterns that emerge in any close relationship, how to identify feelings and key body sensations, how to tell the microscopic truth, and how to make and keep commitments.

The ideas in this book apply not only to couples, but to any close relationship. They work even if you have an uncooperative partner. They work even if you have no current partner. Many of our clients worked out their major issues while single, then went on to form successful, co-committed relationships. A great deal of powerful change can occur when one person in a relationship breaks free. Don’t fall into the trap of waiting to change until your partner is ready. Waiting for others to change is a sign of unconscious loving. Go ahead and make a total commitment to your individual development. However, if your partner is willing to commit to the program, the changes can be rapid indeed.

When we first began to “wake up” we found ourselves mired in many patterns of unconscious loving. Both of us came from dysfunctional families, and in adulthood we had re-created many of their patterns in our own relationships. Unless you are very blessed, you are also trapped in some aspect of dysfunctional relationships. We developed the ideas in this book during our journey to co-commitment. Eventually, an exciting new state unfolded, which we call co-creativity. A co-creative relationship is passionate, productive, and harmonious. We turned the energy that would have been wasted through conflict into creative projects such as writing books, giving seminars and lectures, volunteering for activities, and building a happy family. We found that we had access to much more creativity as a partnership than each of us ever had on our own. Now we have applied the techniques to a substantial number of people in therapy and workshops. We have determined to our satisfaction that, with some intense work on themselves, people can move from co-dependence to co-commitment and co-creativity. Now we want to make the material avail-able to a wider audience.

The Questions that Began Our Search

Our approach to relationship therapy grew out of questions we began asking ourselves many years ago. These are questions that you have no doubt asked yourself, such as: Why are close relationships, which are supposed to be about love, often so painful? What are we doing that causes the pain? What are we overlooking? How can we have more love and less pain? The answers came, not always in the way we expected or in a kindly manner. Sometimes we were so stubborn and resistant to learning that life had to take a sledgehammer approach to teaching us. Ultimately, we got the relationship we wanted, but it was many times better than we ever could have imagined.

Most of us are born into families that are full of conflict or the avoidance of conflict. Both of us came from families in which conflict was always avoided, so we had to learn to acknowledge conflict before we learned to transform it. It is important, however, not to stop there. In close relationships, conflict is not necessary or desirable, although it is what most of us know. In this book you will learn how to resolve conflict effectively and you will find a path that will take you beyond conflict, if you are willing.

Love is a powerful force. If we do not know how to handle its power, we slip very quickly into its powerfully painful distortions, such as conflict and co-dependence. But know this: It is resistance to love that causes the problems. There is nothing wrong with love. Love is a force that focuses its light on the deepest shadowy parts of ourselves. It brings to the surface the parts of ourselves that we most desperately try to keep hidden. When these parts of our-selves emerge, we often retreat, blaming love and those who have loved us. In this book you will learn how to do something radically different, something that will allow you to live in a state of continuous love and positive energy. You will begin where you are, possibly stuck in a troubled relationship or feeling the pain of not having a close relationship, and you will move at your own pace to a place of freedom and real growth.

Part I of this book explains all the essential ideas, with examples drawn from our personal experience and that of our clients. (All the examples in this book are drawn from real life. Names and identifying details have been changed to ensure the privacy of the people involved.) The thirty-four activities in part 2 contain the experiential techniques that will make the ideas a reality for you. We want to acknowledge you for beginning this journey with us. Our relationship has been the catalyst for unparalleled growth and creativity in our lives. We hope that you will use your relationships to fulfill undreamed-of potential in yourself. It will help if you commit yourself completely to this process now, at the beginning. The most creative and evolved people we know are those who use every situation as an opportunity to learn about themselves. Openness to learning is a hallmark of evolution. It makes learning and acknowledging even the most soul-shaking facts about yourself easier and more fun. With a strong commitment to inquiring into yourself, the universe does not have to use catastrophes to wake you up.

Unconscious Loving and Co-Dependence

Co-dependence, a term that first appeared in the field of alcoholism treatment, is a particular form of unconscious loving. It originally referred to a pattern that healers noticed time and again when working with addicted persons. Frequently the addicted person was in a relationship that supported the addiction and interfered with the treatment. Often the co-dependent did not drink, but due to deeply flawed interaction patterns, he or she made it possible for the addicted person not to change.

healingarts | May 10, 2005 |

Jerry Jampolsky, from Forgiveness: The Greatest Healer of All

Consider for a moment that happiness is our natural state of being. At the Center for Attitudinal Healing, where forgiveness is so much a part of everything that we do, we say that the essence of our being is love!

We learn to look at life from the perspective that we are spiritual beings who are just temporarily in these bodies of ours. When we look upon our lives that way, we also begin to see that love and happiness are inseparable. And what forgiveness teaches us is that it is possible to choose love over fear and peace over conflict regardless of the circumstances affecting our lives.

Before we talk about forgiveness, let’s briefly explore the roots of unhappiness. By looking at where unhappiness starts, we can move toward a very different way of looking at the world. A good place to begin this exploration is with that part of us which believes that our happiness lies in external things.

Living in this modern society, as we do, it becomes all too easy to believe that money and the accumulation of material things will make us happy. The trouble is that the more we accumulate, the more we want. No matter how much we get, it almost never seems like enough. Once we begin making choices from this perspective, we fall into the habit of believing that we will eventually find something outside ourselves that will bring us lasting happiness. The fact that this search frequently ends up with our feeling frustrated, angry, unhappy, and even hopeless is our clue that this belief isn’t working.

Why is it so difficult for us to see that our search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is only hiding the fact that we are both the rainbow and the gold?

There are so many temptations in the world on which to blame our unhappiness or our lack of money and material things. We look around us and see people with more than we have who seem to be happier than we are. We turn to other people and seek to fill the hole in our souls with our relationships. It may seem like a big jump we are making from seeing more material things as the answer to seeing other people as the answer. But the same part of us which tells us that the answers are to be found in externals also tells us that we should be able to make other people responsible for our happiness. Surely, if we could only find the right person, our lives would be fulfilled!

Pretty soon we are on a psychological treadmill, going round and round in an endless circle, disappointed and unhappy because neither money and material things nor our relationships are making us happy. We have moments, but they seem too fleeting. We may begin to feel trapped by life. But what, we may ask, is the alternative?

What is this part of ourselves that keeps us seeking outside ourselves? Can we even name it? It is the part of us which believes that our true identity is limited to our bodies and personality self. It is the part of us which sneers at any suggestion that our true essence is that we are spiritual beings living for a time in these bodies.

I like to use the term ego to describe the part of us that is so concerned with externals. The ego tries to justify its presence in our lives by saying that it is only looking after our better interests, that our bodies need it to stick around or we are going to accidentally step out in front of a speeding truck or forget to feed ourselves or protect ourselves from all the dangers that are in the world. Our egos would have us believe that anyone who doesn’t think that money can buy happiness doesn’t know where to shop.

Again and again, our egos send us the message that we live in an unfair world where we will be victims if we aren�t constantly on the alert. Our egos are quite happy when we become convinced of our victimhood, because then we hand our power over to them. The last thing our egos would want us to believe is that we have a choice-that we can choose not to be victims, that we can, in fact, choose love rather than fear, that we can choose to forgive rather than hold on to our embitterments, grudges, and judgments.

It is easy to see how the ego interprets happiness, love, and peace of mind as its enemies, for when we are enjoying these states of being, we are experiencing our spiritual essence. We are seeing a world that is very different from the one our egos furnish us. Forgiveness is easy when we look at the world through the eyes of love, since it is then clear that the answers we have been seeking all of our lives can be found here and not in the ego’s beliefs in the externals of life.

At its worst, we hear the ego in our minds saying that it is impossible to experience happiness for long, so we had better be able to turn to the physical reality for our true and lasting happiness. Eventually, things will fall apart. Something is sure to go wrong. Someone or something will intrude on our happiness. So we’d better be on the lookout for the person who is to blame. The ego’s advice is to become a faultfinder, to make certain we are always right and the other person is always wrong.

Ultimately, our happiness or unhappiness actually is measured by the degree to which we accept the advice of our egos. Think about what happens whenever we judge other people, hold grievances in our mind, or cling to blame and guilt. What we feel at such times blocks us from experiencing love, peace, and happiness. Our feelings of unhappiness are magnified and we become faultfinders, probing our world for circumstances or people who might be to blame for our unhappiness.

Forgiveness is a transformational process. In a heartbeat, we can let go of the externally based paradigm that says we must look outside ourselves for true happiness. With a simple change of mind, we can release ourselves from the ego’s conviction that to be safe we must believe in our victimhood and act defensively. With a shift of perspective, we can stop seeking other people or things outside ourselves to blame for our unhappiness. We can embrace our true spiritual essence and instantly find that this has always been our source of love and peace and happiness. It is never more than a heartbeat away, and it is free for the asking.

Forgiveness can be learned at any age and by anyone, regardless of their present belief system, the past they have experienced, or the way they have treated others around them.

A Model for Forgiveness

Several years ago, my wife, Diane, and I met a remarkable woman by the name of Andrea de Nottbeck. We became acquainted with her through a most unusual phone call from a person in Switzerland, who told us that a woman who lived there had a painting she wanted to give us. The woman was ninety-three years old at the time and was very healthy. While she had given most of her wealth to philanthropic organizations, she still had one material possession to give away before she died. It was a thirteenth century painting of Jesus Christ.

Feeling perplexed about who should get the painting when she died, Andrea had gone out to the mountains to meditate on it. After a few moments, she had gotten the message “Love Is Letting Go of Fear.” The painting, she decided, should go to Jerry Jampolsky, the author of the book by this title, which is about the ways that we prevent ourselves from loving. And so she had her friend call me in the States.

We learned that following her husband’s death, several years before, Andrea had become a bitter, crotchety old woman. She was difficult to get along with, frequently provocative, and extremely argumentative. At the age of eighty-five, a friend gave her a copy of Love Is Letting Go of Fear.

This book became Andrea’s daily reading. Soon she began forgiving all the people in her life who she felt had hurt her. She forgave herself for behavior she knew had caused pain or had been unloving. Miraculously, her life changed. No longer crotchety and angry at the world, she became more carefree and joyful than she’d ever been in her life. To celebrate her transformation, she changed her name to Happy.

Without my ever knowing it until I met Happy, she had been responsible for getting Love Is Letting Go of Fear translated and published in French many years before.

When I heard the story of Happy’s transformation, Diane and I decided to visit her, combining our trip with one I already had scheduled for the Middle East. Upon our arrival, we met this most extraordinary woman. She showed us a French magazine with her picture on the cover-of her flying in a hang glider high over the French countryside! She was eighty-eight at the time. And as if that weren’t enough, she had gone stunt flying in a biplane at the age of ninety-one.

We spent three wonderful days with Happy at her home in Geneva, Switzerland. I have to say that she lived up to her new name in every way imaginable. She was one of the happiest, most peaceful, and most loving people I have ever met.

When we asked Happy what she had done to bring about all these positive changes in her life, she replied, “Oh, I just gave up all my judgments.”

We left Happy’s home just after the first of the year, having celebrated the New Year with her. Diane took the painting she had given us back to California while I went on to my meeting with some friends in the Middle East. Three weeks later, we received a phone call that Happy had died peacefully in her sleep as she had predicted.

To this day I think about Happy’s story of how her life was transformed through forgiveness. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to meet this delightful woman. She will forever remain a most powerful model of forgiveness for both Diane and me, and a reminder to us all that we are never too old to change.

Miracles Inspired by Forgiveness

Finally, there is a story in Yitta Halbertstam and Judith Leventhal’s book, Small Miracles: Extraordinary Coincidences from Everyday Life, which clearly illustrates the process of forgiveness. I paraphrase it here:

There was a young man named Joey, who at the age of nineteen left home and turned his back on his Jewish religion. His father was extremely upset with his son and threatened him with total rejection if he did not change his mind.

Joey did not change his mind, however, and all communication between father and son ceased. The son wandered throughout the world to find himself. He fell in love with a wonderful woman, and for a while he felt that his life had meaning and purpose.

A few years went by, and one day in a coffee-house in India, Joey ran into an old friend from his hometown. His friend and he passed the time of day, and then the friend said, “I was so sorry to learn about your father’s death last month.”

Joey was stunned. It was the first he’d heard about his father’s passing. He returned home and began to reexamine his Jewish roots. His girlfriend and he split up because she was Jewish, too, but did not want anything to do with her Jewish tradition.

After a short stay at home, Joey traveled to Jerusalem and found himself at the Wailing Wall. He decided to write a note to his deceased father, expressing his love and asking for his forgiveness.

After Joey wrote the note, he rolled it up and tried to fit it into one of the holes in the wall. In the process, another note fell out of the same hole and landed at his feet. Joey reached down and picked it up. Curious, he unrolled the note. The handwriting looked familiar. He read on. Amazingly, the note was from his father, asking God to forgive him for rejecting his son and expressing deep, unconditional love for Joey.

Joey was thunderstruck. How could this possibly happen? It was more than a coincidence � it was a miracle. As difficult as it was for him to believe what had occurred, there was the note, written in his father’s own hand, irrefutable proof that this was not just a dream.

Joey began studying the Jewish faith in earnest. A couple years later, back in the States, a rabbi who was a friend of his invited him to dinner. That night at the rabbi’s house, Joey came face-to-face with his old girlfriend who had left him years before. She, too, had returned to her Jewish roots.

And, yes, Joey and his girlfriend were married soon afterwards.

Time and again we hear stories in which the process of forgiveness wipes clean the slate of a painful past. It is not always easy to accept the fact that a shift in perception can apparently produce such miracles, removing the blocks to our awareness of love. But Joey’s story indicates that not even death can stand in the way of this process. It is as if the reality of the incident that once caused us such grief vanishes and is replaced by the love that was always there � and will always continue to be there forever and ever.

healingarts | May 9, 2005 |

Katherine Ellison | The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter

Anyone shopping for a Mother’s Day card today might reasonably linger in the Sympathy section. We can’t seem to stop mourning the state of modern motherhood. “Madness” is our new metaphor. “Desperate Housewives” are our new cultural icons. And a mother’s brain, as commonly envisioned, is impaired by a supposed full-scale assault on sanity and smarts.

So strong is this last stereotype that when a satirical Web site posted a “study” saying that parents lose an average of 20 I.Q. points on the birth of their first child, MSNBC broadcast it as if it were true. The danger of this perception is clearest for working mothers, who besides bearing children spend more time with them, or doing things for them, than fathers, according to a recent Department of Labor survey.

In addition, the more visibly “encumbered” we are, the more bias we attract: When volunteer groups were shown images of a woman doing various types of work, but in some cases wearing a pillow to make her look pregnant, most judged the “pregnant” woman less competent. Even in liberal San Francisco, a hearing last month to consider a pregnant woman’s bid to be named acting director of the Department of Building Inspection featured four speakers commenting on her condition, with one asking if the city truly meant to hire a “pregnancy brain.”

But what if just the opposite is true? What if parenting really isn’t a zero-sum, children-take-all game? What if raising children is actually mentally enriching for mothers – and fathers?

This is, in fact, what some leading brain scientists, like Michael Merzenich at the University of California, San Francisco, now believe. Becoming a parent, they say, can power up the mind with uniquely motivated learning. Having a baby is “a revolution for the brain,” Dr. Merzenich says.

The human brain, we now know, creates cells throughout life, cells more likely to survive if they’re used. Emotional, challenging and novel experiences provide particularly helpful use of these new neurons, and what adjectives better describe raising a child? Children constantly drag their parents into challenging, novel situations, be it talking a 4-year-old out of a backseat meltdown on the Interstate or figuring out a third-grade homework assignment to make a model of a black hole in space.

Often, we’d rather be doing almost anything else. Aging makes us cling ever more fiercely to our mental ruts. But for most of us, our unique bond with our children yanks us out of them.

And there are other ways that being a dedicated parent strengthens our minds. Research shows that learning and memory skills can be improved by bearing and nurturing offspring. A team of neuroscientists in Virginia found that mother lab rats, just like working mothers, demonstrably excel at time-management and efficiency, racing around mazes to find rewards and get back to the pups in record time. Other research is showing how hormones elevated in parenting can help buffer mothers from anxiety and stress – a timely gift from a sometimes compassionate Mother Nature. Oxytocin, produced by mammals in labor and breast-feeding, has been linked to the ability to learn in lab animals.

Rethinking the mental state of motherhood is reasonable after recent years of evolution of our notion of just what it means to be smart. With our economy newly weighted with people-to-people jobs, and with many professions, including the sciences, becoming more multidisciplinary and collaborative, the people skills we’ve come to think of as “emotional intelligence” are increasingly prized by many wise employers. An ability to tailor your message to your audience, for instance – a skill that engaged parents practice constantly – can mean the difference between failure and success, at home and at work, as Harvard’s president, Lawrence Summers, may now realize.

To be sure, sleep deprivation, overwork and too much “Teletubbies” can sap any parent’s synapses. And to be sure, our society needs to do much more – starting with more affordable, high-quality child care and paid parental leaves – to catch up with other industrialized nations and support mothers and fathers in using their newly acquired smarts to best advantage. That’s why some of the recent “mommy lit” complaints are justified, and probably needed to rouse society to action – if only because nobody will be able to stand our whining for much longer.

Still, it’s worth considering that the torrent of negativity about motherhood comes as part of an era in which intimacy of all sorts is on the decline in this country. Geographically close extended families have long been passé. The marriage rate has declined. And a record percentage of women of child-bearing age today are childless, many by choice.

It’s common these days to hear people say they don’t have time to maintain friendships. Real relationships take a lot of time and work – it’s much more convenient to keep in touch by e-mail. But children insist on face time. They fail to thrive unless we anticipate their needs, work our empathy muscles, adjust our schedules and endure their relentless testing. In the process, if we’re lucky, we may realize that just this kind of grueling work – with our children, or even with others who could simply use some help – is precisely what makes us grow, acquire wisdom and become more fully human. Perhaps then we can start to re-imagine a mother’s brain as less a handicap than a keen asset in the lifelong task of getting smart.

Katherine Ellison is the author of “The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter.”

healingarts | May 8, 2005 |

Dharma Singh Khalsa, from The Pain Cure: The Proven Medical Program that Helps End Your Chronic Pain

Pain is a more terrible Lord of mankind than even death itself. —Albert Schweitzer

Torture Victims

If you are in chronic pain, you probably feel alone and frightened. You may feel helpless. You might even feel as if life’s no longer worth living. I understand. I understand completely. You have the worst medical problem a person can have.

Chronic pain is the most devastating physical malady that exists. It’s even more overwhelming than having a terminal illness, according to patients of mine who have suffered from both conditions.

Being in pain, hour after hour, day after day, rips away your strength, your hope, your personality, and even your love.

Chronic pain is a demonic force that can destroy everything it touches.

But people are strong. I’m constantly amazed by their courage. When life knocks them down, they struggle back up. They do it again and again, all their lives.

If you’re a pain patient who is reading this page right now, you must certainly be strong, because you’re still trying to find a way out of your suffering. Despite everything, you still have hope. I salute your bravery. In my eyes, you’re a hero.

But you can only stand so much, right? You’re human: that’s your blessing, but it’s also your vulnerability. You probably suffered stoically for months or even years, but after a while your endurance gave out and the pain took over. Finally, you probably began to feel alone and helpless.

By now, you may even feel like a victim of torture. Researchers have found that torture victims and chronic pain patients endure a very similar experience—a horrific experience that can kill the will of even the strongest person.

Right now, you may be hoping that I’ll say, “The good news is, I can help you.”

It’s true. I can help you. Your pain can probably be cured.

But I have even better news than that: You can help yourself. If you read this book carefully, and put its advice into your life, you’ll no longer need me. Your own body has a healing force that will enable you to rise above your pain, and feel whole and happy once again.

When I tell this to my patients, some are thrilled—but others are disappointed. They want me to tell them that I’m the hot new medical pioneer with the miraculous new potion for their pain. That attitude is understandable, because modern medicine has packaged itself as a purveyor of technological miracles. Many of today’s doctors enjoy being seen as latter-day sorcerers who can fix every ill with a magical pill.

That may be good marketing, but it’s not good medicine—because it’s just not true.

There is “magic” in medicine. But this magic—this almost supernatural force—won’t come to you in a bottle. It will come to you when you do the honest hard work of tapping into your own inner resources.

When you do this, you will conquer your pain.

The human body performs the greatest miracles of modern medicine all by itself. As physicians, we will never be able to replicate the body’s natural healing force. The body’s own power lies far beyond the pale mimicry of human engineering.

Your body can heal the pain it now feels. When you cut your finger, you fully expect your body to heal the injury, don’t you? You should not expect less of your body in its fight against pain. Your body’s inner healing power is unimaginably strong.

Working with my patients—today’s true medical pioneers—I have developed a comprehensive, proven program for chronic pain that gives them access to their own inner healing power. I believe that helping patients reach this power is the greatest thing a doctor can do.

About fifteen years ago, when I first began to develop this approach, it was considered very avant-garde. My pain program at the University of Arizona’s teaching hospital in Phoenix was the first holistic pain management program in the southwestern United States.

Since then, though, many of the most prominent pain clinics in America have adopted the therapies I employ and have enjoyed superb results.

However, even though my approach has been accepted by many mainstream pain clinics, most of the individual physicians in America are still uninformed about this approach to pain, and therefore they often fail to cure pain. One reason they fail is that they do not address the role that the brain plays in pain. That’s a big mistake. The brain helps start chronic pain—and the brain can help stop it.

If you read my first book, Brain Longevity: The Breakthrough Medical Program that Improves Your Mind and Memory, you know that I consider the brain one of the most amazing entities in the universe. In that book I showed that if the human brain is properly nurtured and medically supported, it can overcome terrible chronic conditions—even Alzheimer’s disease.

In this book I will show you how your brain can help you cure your chronic pain.

Your brain, in fact, has virtually no limits, other than those you impose with your own human frailty.

I can show you ways to overcome that frailty. I can show you a path that will lead to your mastery over pain.

But it’s up to you to walk that path. It won’t be easy. But good things never are.

On this path, you’ll have to give up many of the special indulgences that your pain may have granted you: a sedentary lifestyle, a sense of privilege, drugs that temporarily make you feel good, and the pity of others.

But all of your sacrifices will be repaid many times over. You will regain your sense of personal power, and your ability to control your own life. You’ll once again have the energy to do the things you love, and to do things for the people you love. You’ll even get reacquainted with a very special person: your own true self.

I have seen this happen many, many times. In fact, when patients work hard, it happens most of the time. I have helped cure many hundreds of “hopeless” cases of chronic pain.

I have been able to achieve “impossible” victories against pain for one central reason: my pain program has evolved far beyond the old-fashioned, traditional approach to pain. Unlike many doctors who treat pain, I don’t rely on just pills, injections, and surgery. That limited approach, which I and many other doctors now consider outdated, often gives temporary relief but rarely stimulates the permanent healing of chronic pain.

My program is different. It battles chronic pain on every level: the biochemical level, the structural level, the psychological level, and the spiritual level. This thorough approach is absolutely essential—because if you have chronic pain it has probably invaded every part of your life.

To get your life back, to get your true self back, and to overcome the pain that has violated your body, mind, and spirit, you will need to engage in a comprehensive, coordinated program.

My program can be your path to recovery. It will oppose every possible aspect of your pain, and help you reach new heights of mental, physical, and spiritual well-being.

My program, as you will soon see, is unique. It still has components that are not yet commonly used by even the best pain clinics. For example, my program employs many advanced brain-enhancing modalities—some of which were described in Brain Longevity—that will give you the extra brain power you’ll need to defeat your pain.

In addition, my program draws upon not only the very latest discoveries from modern technological medicine but also employs ancient healing methods that have withstood the test of time.

This combination of modern medicine and ancient healing is still not widely used in America, but it’s incredibly potent. It will enable you to marshal your own healing power, and cure your pain.

If you’re suffering now, it might be hard for you to imagine feeling whole and happy again. But that feeling—though deeply buried—already exists within you. It’s waiting for you.

You can return to a life of feeling great. Others have. Others will.

Now it’s your turn.

Let’s begin!

Pain Is Not Suffering

Pain and suffering are different things.

Pain is a physical sensation. Suffering is one possible reaction to that sensation. But suffering is not the only possible reaction to pain.

It’s possible to experience pain without suffering from it.

When you learn to experience pain without suffering, you will be set free. You will be able to love your life again, even though your life may still contain some pain, as all lives do.

When you reach this point, your chronic, disabling pain, for all practical purposes, will be cured.

In addition, when you achieve the ability to experience some pain without suffering from it, you will gain much more than just freedom from constant hurt. You will attain a power of mind and spirit that is rare in this world. Generally, this power is achieved only by enlightened yogic masters and by other people who are very spiritually evolved. Why just them? Because, as a rule, only they are motivated enough to do the hard work that creates this power.

But you have your pain for motivation, and pain is the most powerful motivator of all. Your pain may now be a curse, but when you learn to harness it as a motivator, you will transform your curse into a blessing.

I remember once telling an elderly arthritis patient that his pain need not cause suffering, and he blew up at me. “That’s easy for you to say,” he snapped, waving a gnarled finger in my face, “but if your hand hurt like this hand hurts, I don’t think you’d say that. You don’t know how this feels!”
He was right about one thing: I didn’t know how he felt. If you’re free of pain, you can never really imagine the dark cruelty of chronic pain. That’s one of the reasons chronic pain is so shattering. It separates people. It obliterates understanding and creates isolation. One result of this psychological isolation is that the divorce rate among people with chronic pain is almost 80 percent.

“I don’t know how you feel,” I told the elderly man, “but I do want to help you, and I think I can. So let’s start right now. I’d like you to imagine a hypothetical situation. Let’s say you’re a kid again, and you’re attending a very strict, old-fashioned school. Imagine that you have a mean teacher who constantly singles you out for punishment. One day he asks you a question, and you give the wrong answer. So he stands you in front of the class, makes you hold out your hand, and slaps your palm with a ruler. Smack! It really stings! On this day he dishes out the punishment again and again, and you’re powerless to stop it. Pretty soon you’re so depressed and angry that when lunchtime comes, you don’t even feel like eating your lunch or playing with your buddies. All you can think about is how much your hand is throbbing, and the more you think about it, the more it hurts. You’re really suffering.

“Finally, you’re saved by the bell—school’s out. You go to your Little League baseball game, but you don’t even feel like playing. You do play, though, because you’re a tough little kid who won’t give up.

“You’re the catcher. You’re a good catcher, the only one who can handle your team’s best fastball pitcher. The first time he zings one in, though, your poor hand feels like it’s going to explode. But the batter is way behind the pitch and he strikes out. Everybody cheers. So you keep calling for fastballs, and you start to dominate the hitters. Three up, three down! Boom, boom, boom! You could call for some curves or change-ups—to give your hand a break—but your pitcher’s fastball is really hopping, so you stick with the hard stuff. Pretty soon you own the batters, and you feel great. Every time the ball slaps into your mitt, you feel like a hero. You’re not thinking about your hand anymore, or your teacher, or anything except how good it feels to be in the game. You love the cheers from the crowd, and the smell of the grass, and the friendship of your teammates. Nothing else exists.

“Finally, last out. Game’s over. Your coach comes over and pats you on the back. He says, ‘Great game! How’s your catching hand?’ You tell him it’s fine, but when you pull off your mitt, your hand looks like a pink balloon. Your coach says, ‘Better put some ice on that.’ You tell him you will, but then you start playing a pickup game with your buddies. Your hand is hot and sore. But you want to keep playing. You have pain, but you’re not suffering.”

The elderly arthritis patient nodded. He got my point, and looked encouraged. He was a strong man, and that was good, because he was in for the fight of his life.

“My pain program,” I told him, “can help you feel good enough to get back in the game, so to speak. Then your own spirit is going to take over. And when that happens, I don’t think anything is going to stop you.”

“What will happen if I don’t get back into the swing of things?” he asked.

“If you don’t, you’ll continue to suffer. It might get worse.”

I was understating. In fact, if he didn’t get back into a proactive, take-charge lifestyle, he would probably fall victim to the worst nightmare that pain patients face: chronic pain syndrome.

healingarts | May 2, 2005 |

Cristin Snyder | ofspirit.com

All beings require equality. There must be a balance between the spiritual, emotional, and physical being. When the balance is off, we are off. We feel the repercussions through physical pain, discomfort, anxiety, anger, and depression. When we go to the doctor to seek pills for physical ailments, typically we are focusing treatment on the symptoms and not the underlying problem.

Again, I am not discouraging anyone from going to the doctor, however most doctors would agree that a well-balanced person tends to be a healthier person. Nothing that improves the outlook and helps reduce stress can hurt you. There are various natural methods that can be used by anyone in even the busiest lifestyles, to help restore a sense of balance. I will be touching on the basics of light meditation, visualization, affirmations, and journaling.

Meditation:

There are many misconceptions about meditation. Many feel it takes a lot of time or that it is a serious religious practice. It definitely does not have to be and is one of the most powerful tools anyone can integrate into their lifestyles.

It takes a little effort, but the rewards are immeasurable. The truth is even a moment or two a couple of times a day will allow the mind a chance to regroup. This is particularly helpful for those who suffer from anxiety or problems with short-term memory.

Meditation is the practice of stilling the mind, and controlling where ones thoughts flow. Through doing this you can gain a better perspective on situations in your life, as well as become clearer and more focused throughout your daily activities. There are dozens of other benefits to this practice as well, which I cover more in some of my classes.

For beginning meditations I recommend sitting in a comfortable position in a location as free from outside noise as possible. Close the eyes and simply focus on clearing your mind of all conscious thought. If this is difficult you can repeat a word that makes you feel comfortable and at ease. My word is “repose”. If you catch your mind starting to wander gently pull it back to your word or to the stillness. When you first start try doing this for only a minute or two, and then as you do it more you can increase the time. This helps to avoid frustration and will help you stick with it.

If you are patient and persistent, you will find that the benefits are well worth the effort. Your mind will thank you for the break.

Visualizations:

Next I would like to move on to Visualizations. All of us know how to daydream. The truth is when you daydream you are doing a visualization of sorts. You are removing the conscious mind from all the hustle and bustle of its thoughts and placing it somewhere else. In visualization exercises the purpose is to control where you put your thoughts. It can be used to aid in pain relief, depression, (I am seasonally depressed and use visualization therapy a lot to help me get through winter) and in anxiety reduction.

Bring into vision in your minds eye a place that relaxes you, a place that is all your own. It can be an actual place you have been to, or a place you create. This will be your sanctuary. Picture the place in your mind. Now go deeper into the picture. What do you see? Look for the details of your special place. What is the temperature like? If you are outside, how is the weather? What do you hear? What do you smell? Reach out and touch the ground or the floor, what does it feel like? Touch; hear, smell everything here.

Spend a minute or two exploring your senses and familiarizing yourself with this special place. Really develop this place to the tiniest details. If it helps you, write a description of it. It is very important to bring it to life in your mind in a way you can always go back to it and see it in its fullest details and unique beauty. This place is the center of your soul, a sanctuary for you where you can relax and be free from everyday worries.

Affirmations:

Next I would like to cover affirmations. Affirmations are brief, positive statements developed to help us to reprogram certain parts of our subconscious. We have all heard that inner critic kick in with “ You’re not pretty enough, you’re not smart enough” etc. This can be a very powerful voice and the more negative thoughts we have the more we feed it.

Many people are not aware of just how much negativity they consume, self-inflicted or otherwise. I recommend keeping a pen and paper close to you for one hour. During this hour be conscious of your thoughts, as well as external influences. For every negative statement you take in, make a mark on your paper. Once this exercise is finished multiply the number of marks on your page by at least 16, which will give you a small idea of the amount of negativity you are continually bombarded with.

One of the most powerful tools to use against this ingrained negativity is to reprogram our thought patterns. Our subconscious minds don’t care what they are programmed with, negative or positive. When you hear something enough you start to believe it and those negative thoughts can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Our goal here is to fight fire with fire so to speak, and come back at the negatives with positives, almost like reprogramming a computer.

An affirmation should have the following qualities:

Must be brief
Must be concise
Must not have the word no in it or any negative connotations
Must be easy to remember
Must be repeated

An example of a good affirmation would be I have all I need and I am thankful, or I love myself unconditionally.

As a general rule I say to keep the same affirmation going for at least a week. Learn to say it with conviction. Pay attention to what you are saying every time you repeat it. When you have a few minutes to yourself go look in the mirror and say it to yourself and mean it! Yes, you will tell yourself you look silly, that’s OK, do it anyway. The more you do the less silly you will feel and the more empowered you become. When we face ourselves we find our true strength!

Journaling:

I cannot say enough how much writing helps. There are many different ways to do this, and the best method is to find your own method – one that is comfortable to you, as this is a very intense, very personal experience. When you first start just write/type whatever comes into your head, no matter how silly it might seem. This is the key to unlock the floodgates. Gradually as you get into it and time progresses you will open many doors of self-discovery, and through this begin to regain your balance.

To develop a habit of writing set up a 5 – 15 minute period in your day where you sit and write. You can make this a part of your nighttime ritual, or do it first thing in the morning when all is quiet.

With a little self-discipline and practice you can make yourself a happier more balanced person through just a few simple practices.

I know from personal experience that taking time for the Self is so vital to personal empowerment and wellness. It is easy to get so involved in our “roles” that we forget to remember our true Spirit. Take some time for yourself and get to know your own best friend, he/she has been right there with you all along.

___________________

Cristin Snyder is a Spiritual Guidance and Personal Empowerment coach who offers a wide variety of Spiritual and Personal Growth Resources through her website Mystical Treasures. Visit Cristin today at www.mysticaltreasures.net.

healingarts | April 24, 2005 |

Dean Sluyter, from Zen Commandments

One morning I found myself running through the Newark, New Jersey, train station, trying to make a connection to New York, dodging frantically through the crowd as complex scenarios of missed appointments flashed through my mind. I reached the steep stairway to the platform and ran up, two steps at a time. Blocking my path at the top was a heavy swinging door with a large grimy window set into it; on the other side an old man in faded work clothes was washing the glass with a spray bottle and rag.

Out of the middle of the grime he had just wiped a clean circle about a foot across, through which, our noses inches apart, we now faced each other. Suddenly all the worry and hurry in which I had been caught up seemed to be illuminated in the morning light breaking through the circle, and then to drop away. It was as if the window were my clouded mind and the old man with his rag had made a clear space for me to see, once again, that everything was light, everything was fine, and it always would be.

Am I making too much of a simple encounter? (Did Dante?) I don’t know…maybe…yes and no. All I know is that the old man smiled broadly, and in that moment I could have sworn he knew exactly what he had done. Then he opened the door for me and stepped aside as the train pulled into the station.

healingarts | April 23, 2005 |