Hugh Mann | organicMD.org

Health is metabolic efficiency. Sickness is metabolic inefficiency. Nobody is totally healthy or totally sick. Each of us is a unique combination of health and sickness. And each of us has a unique combination of abilities and disabilities, both emotional and physical.

As we grow up, we learn that we are loved for our abilities but hated for our disabilities. This happens at home, at play, at school, and at work. Sometimes, this even happens with our doctors, especially if our disabilities mystify them or remind them of their own disabilities.

So, we try to hide our disabilities from people and from ourselves. This charade undermines our relationships and our self-esteem. We learn to fear society and hate ourselves.

Self-hatred is the most debilitating sickness. It interferes with our ability to seek and accept help. And everybody needs help. How do we free ourselves from self-hatred?

First, we reclaim our disabilities, whether society accepts them or not. This means that we learn to accept ourselves. Then, we cope with our disabilities. This means that we learn to take care of ourselves.
(read more. . .)

healingarts | July 3, 2005 |

Marianne Williamson | The Gift of Change : Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life

Life as we knew it is passing away, and something new is emerging to take its place.

All of us are playing a part in a larger transformative process, as each of us is being forced to confront whatever it is we do, or even think, that keeps love at bay. For as we block love’s power to change our own lives, we block its power to change the world.

Humanity is moving forward now, though in some ways we are doing so kicking and screaming. Nature seems to be saying to all of us, “Okay, it’s time. No more playing around. Become the person you were meant to be.”

We would like to, but it’s hard. The problems of the world today seem larger than they have ever been before, making it easy to succumb to cynicism, fear, hopelessness, and despair. Until, that is, we remember who we are.

For who we really are is a power bigger than all our problems, both personal and collective. And when we have remembered who we are, our problems — which are literally nothing other than manifestations of our forgetfulness — will disappear.

Well that would be a miracle, you might say. And that is precisely the point.
(more…)

healingarts | June 27, 2005 |

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.
(more…)

healingarts | June 25, 2005 |

Louise Hay, from The Power Is Within You

Who are you? Why are you here? What are your beliefs about life? For thousands of years, finding the answers to these questions has meant going within. But what does that mean?

I believe there is a Power within each of us that can lovingly direct us to our perfect health, perfect relationships, perfect careers, and which can bring us prosperity of every kind. In order to have these things, we have to believe first that they are possible. Next, we must be willing to release the patterns in our lives that are creating conditions we say we do not want. We do this by going within and tapping the Inner Power that already knows what is best for us. If we are willing to turn our lives over to this greater Power within us, the Power that loves and sustains us, we can create more loving and prosperous lives.

I believe that our minds are always connected to the One Infinite Mind, and therefore, all knowledge and wisdom is available to us at any time. We are connected to this Infinite Mind, this Universal Power that created us, through that spark of light within, our Higher Self, or the Power within. The Universal Power loves all of Its creations. It is a Power for good and It directs everything in our lives. It doesn’t know how to hate or lie or punish. It is pure love, freedom, understanding, and compassion. It is important to turn our lives over to our Higher Self, because through It we receive our good.

We must understand that we have the choice to use this Power in any way. If we choose to live in the past and re-hash all of the negative situations and conditions that went on way back when, then we stay stuck where we are. If we make a conscious decision not to be victims of the past and go about creating new lives for ourselves, we are supported by this Power within, and new, happier experiences begin to unfold. I don’t believe in two powers. I think there is One Infinite Spirit. It’s all too easy to say, “It’s the devil,” or them. It really is only us, and either we use the power we have wisely or we misuse the power. Do we have the devil in our hearts? Do we condemn others for being different than we are? What are we choosing?
(more…)

healingarts | June 24, 2005 |

Erich Fromm | The Art of Loving

Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something one “falls into” if one is lucky? This little book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of people today believe in the latter.

Not that people think that love is not important. They are starved for it; they watch endless numbers of films about happy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundreds of trashy songs about love — yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything that needs to be learned about love.

This peculiar attitude is based on several premises which either singly or combined tend to uphold it. Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable. In pursuit of this aim they follow several paths. One, which is especially used by men, is to be successful, to be as powerful and rich as the social margin of one’s position permits. An-other, used especially by women, is to make oneself attractive, by cultivating one’s body, dress, etc. Other ways of making, oneself attractive, used both by men and women, are to develop pleasant manners, interesting conversation, to be helpful, modest, inoffensive. Many of the ways to make oneself lovable are the same as those used to make oneself successful, “to win friends and influence people.” As a matter of fact, what most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.
(more…)

healingarts | June 23, 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.
(more…)

healingarts | June 18, 2005 |

Dr. John Sarno | The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain

Pain, disability, misinformation, fear — that quartet has plagued the Western world for decades and the plague shows no sign of abating. Back, neck and limb pain are rampant, and statistics indicate that the epidemic is spreading. Disability in American industry from low back pain continues to increase year by year.

Industries that employ large numbers of people working at computers are experiencing great disability and health insurance problems because of a new pain disorder known as repetitive stress injury (RSI). Millions of Americans, mostly women, suffer from a painful malady of unknown cause called fibromyalgia. While gigantic medical industries have arisen to diagnose and treat these conditions, the plague continues.

This book is about that epidemic. It describes both a clinical experience that has identified the cause of the pain disorders and a method of treating them. Sadly, mainstream medicine rejects the diagnosis because it is based on the theory that the physical symptoms are initiated by emotional phenomena. Intelligent laymen in large numbers have embraced the concept, however, no doubt because they are not burdened by the bias imposed by a traditional medical education.

As if the pain epidemic were not of sufficient magnitude, a large group of physical disorders have been identified as equivalents of the pain syndrome, since they appear to stem from the same psychological process. These maladies have occurred commonly for years and, taken together with the widespread pain maladies, are universal in Western society. I refer to many of the headaches, gastrointestinal symptoms and allergies, as well as respiratory, dermatologic, genitourinary and gynecologic conditions that are the stuff of everyday life.
(more…)

healingarts | June 15, 2005 |

John Bradshaw, from Homecoming : Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child

Buckminster Fuller, one of the most creative men of our time, loved to quote Christopher Morley’s poem about childhood:

The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold
Of being only four years old.

Still young enough to be a part
Of Nature’s great impulsive heart,
Born comrade of bird, beast and tree
And unselfconscious as the bee-

And yet with lovely reason skilled
Each day new paradise to build
Elate explorer of each sense,
Without dismay, without pretense!

In your unstained transparent eyes
There is no conscience, no surprise:
Life’s queer conundrums you accept,
Your strange Divinity still kept. .

And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
May make you poet, too, in time–
But there were days, O tender elf,
When you were Poetry itself!

(more…)

healingarts | June 14, 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.
(more…)

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.
(more…)

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.
(more…)

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?
(more…)

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.
(more…)

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.
(more…)

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 |

Michael Sky, from Breathing: Expanding Your Power and Energy

Feelings derive from energy, and our capacity for feeling develops as a function of energy flow. Our breathing provides a primary source of energy, and our manner of breathing influences the flow of energies.

This interrelationship between breath, energy, and feelings proves fundamental to the way in which we experience ourselves and to our powers of creation. Learning to unleash the full creative force of our feelings through breathing turns the key to a healthy and fulfilling life. Unfortunately, we typically learn to do precisely the opposite.

Remember how you breathe when very sad but trying hard not to cry. You will constrict your breathing, making it very shallow and preventing movement in your upper chest especially. You will also attempt to hold your lips tightly together, cutting off the flow of air along with any expression of sadness, though others may be able to detect a quivering in your chin.

Now remember how you breathe when trying hard not to get angry at someone you love. Again, a tightly controlled and contracted breath; usually along with a knot of tension in the solar plexus, tight bands of contracted muscle along the shoulders and neck, a clenched jaw, and a stiffened brow. Tense yourself in this way when feeling good, and then try to breathe. You cannot even approximate a good, free flow of breath once you have become so contracted.

Now remember how you breathe when trying hard not to laugh at an inappropriate moment. Yet more tightened muscles and stifled breath. And remember sitting through a tension-packed horror film. Or anticipating bad news at the doctor’s office. Or sitting in a dentist’s chair. Or late, and stuck in rush hour traffic. Or watching the final moments of a nail-biting sporting event. Or attempting to suppress sexual excitement.
(more…)

healingarts | April 21, 2005 |

Pema Chodron, from The Places that Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. —Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

When I was about six years old I received the essential bodhichitta teaching from an old woman sitting in the sun. I was walking by her house one day feeling lonely, unloved, and mad, kicking anything I could find. Laughing, she said to me, “Little girl, don’t you go letting life harden your heart.”

Right there, I received this pith instruction: we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.
(more…)

healingarts | April 20, 2005 |

BBC News

A team from University College London said happiness leads to lower levels of stress-inducing chemicals.

They found that even when happier people experienced stress, they had low levels of a chemical which increases the risk of heart disease.

The research is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It showed that those who were happy less often had higher levels of a bloodstream chemical called plasma fibrinogen, which shows if there is inflammation present.

It is an indicator of how great a risk a person has of developing heart disease in the future.
(more…)

healingarts | April 19, 2005 |

Alice Miller, from The Truth Will Set You Free

When I was a child, the story of Creation was for me above all the story of the forbidden fruit. I could not understand why Adam and Eve should not be allowed to have knowledge. To me knowledge and awareness were wonderful things. So I failed to see the logic behind God’s decision to forbid Adam and Eve to recognize the essential difference between good and evil.

My childhood stubbornness on this point lost none of its vigor when I later encountered other interpretations of the story of Creation. At an emotional level I simply refused to see obedience as a virtue, curiosity as a sin, and ignorance of good and evil as an ideal state. To my way of thinking, the apple from the tree of knowledge promised an explanation of evil and hence represented redemption - good as opposed to evil.
(more…)

healingarts | April 18, 2005 |

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, from Healing Anger

When we are engaged in the practice of patience and tolerance, in reality what is happening is that we are engaged in combat with hatred and anger.

Since it is a situation of combat, one seeks victory, but one also has to be prepared for the possibility of losing the battle. So while one is engaged in combat, one should not lose sight of the fact that in the process one will encounter many problems and hardships.

One should have the ability to withstand these hardships and have the fortitude to bear these problems.
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healingarts | April 17, 2005 |