Category Archives: story

Using my superpowers for good

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You know that very famous quote from Marianne Williamson about how it’s not our darkness that we fear, it’s our light?

Well, here it is again:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

She is so brilliant.

For most of my life I’ve been afraid of my light. I’ve played small.

See, the thing is, I stayed in a job too long and picked up on the belief of others that good jobs are really hard to come by, that it was safer to stay where I was– until basically, something happened that brought me to a fork in the road, and I took the road less traveled. I quit a decent, stable, secure job seventeen months short of retiring and being able collect a pension.

My gut told me I needed to do something else.

A couple of months later, I decided to seek a contract job. I didn’t know how long it would take for my house to sell. I spent a day updating my resume, and the next day I responded to one ad, and before the day had ended, the recruiter who placed that ad called me about interviewing for the job.

So I interviewed and got the job. (And got a contract on my house right after that!)

Proof that if you have skills and a track record, you can find another job “even in this economy.” It just takes one yes.

That job ended at the beginning of June. I’ve been in massage school since the end of June, living on my savings. I was sort of looking for a part-time technical writer job. Part-time jobs in that field do exist, but they are few and far between.

Last week I decided to get serious: I updated my resume and made sure that each place it was posted had the same version with the same objective: part-time technical writing work.

The next morning I got a call from a recruiter about a part-time job at a very prestigious technology company.

Holy manifesting, Batman, I am powerful beyond measure. When I put a message out there, stuff happens.

I interviewed with a local team that was screening the job candidates. This team would be training me. The hiring manager was in San Jose and would do phone interviews with the top candidates submitted by the local team.

I made the cut.

Then I began to have doubts. I could not put my finger on why. It’s a good company and a good job, from all I know. But when I thought about actually doing the work, something inside me balked.

I bailed on the phone interview 10 minutes before it was to start. I’ve never done that before. I couldn’t give a coherent reason why, either. My body just gave me a very clear “no” signal. I didn’t want this job, and it seemed insane to go through with the interview knowing that.

The other parts of me besides this gut decision-maker weren’t entirely behind my action, either, and it took the rest of the day to integrate what I had done.

Part wondered if I was throwing my technical writing career away. Thirteen years. It’s been very good to me. I’ve found niches that I enjoy and am good at (that have to do with teaching people how to do things), but it just doesn’t feel satisfying to me any more.

Part said, “Maybe you need to work with a different kind of technology, such as medical technology.”

Part said, “It’s too hard to switch back into deep left-brain work while going to massage school three days a week.”

Part said, “Whew, even if you could have telecommuted from home after the initial training, you would still have had to drive 20-plus urban miles each way twice a week for the first few weeks to get trained. That is stressful. Good decision.”

Part said, “You are exactly on track, receiving training to do work that you love. You made loving your work your primary criteria. You cannot make exceptions and do work that you don’t love.”

Part said, “You are in-between, finding your way. Much is unknown, but you know it’s a path with heart. Trust it. Jobs may come that get you closer to where you want to be. It’s all an adventure anyway! Enjoy it and have fun.”

Part said, “Okay, now you know you can manifest. You have super powers. You must use them for good. Get centered and clear about your intentions. Allowing yourself to exist peacefully in the space of not knowing is the real challenge here. Your basic needs are met. You needn’t fear. You would be wise to meditate every day.”

And part said, “Your brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous self is unfolding! Enjoy the blossoming!”

Oh, yes, and the recruiter placed the other candidate she submitted who also made the cut. She said she appreciated my honesty, and it wasn’t a big deal. (I felt terrible about behaving like this, so those were welcome words.) The company got someone who really wanted the job, and I got…a new path.

Several hours later, all my parts had caught up with the decision-maker, and my own little private, personal drama became boring and a thing of the past. Next!

Is maze brightness in rats an equivalent of enlightenment in humans?

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I thought you might like to read an excerpt from the book I’m reading in a book group. The book is called Life in the Labyrinth, by E.J. Gold, who is in the Gurdjieffian Fourth Way lineage of teaching awareness expansion.

As a child of thirteen and fourteen, I found my bedroom overrun with lab rats, and more or less as an afterthought — I had no other use for them, not being particularly attracted to vivisection and the like — built a few mazes to study rat behavior.

One item stood out clearly in my observations of dozens of rats stumbling, bumping and sniffing their way toward their final reward as they learned to synthesize experiential data through a primitive form of deduction…or didn’t learn, and nearly starved to death.

I discovered, independently of texts on behavioral sciences, something which I later learned was by convention called maze brightness, which could be defined for the moment as “becoming able to find new paths through the maze toward the reward-point through sheer repetition”, from which we could, if we weren’t overly concerned about how far we could quantum leap, deduce that some rats eventually become aware of the general rules of maze construction, of course only on a purely subjective-instinctive nose-and-gut level.

I discovered through this a special learning process which could enable the rat to solve not only one known maze but virtually any maze it may thereafter happen to encounter by accident or design.

I also concluded, probably rightly, that such a rat would, eventually — having blundered its way through a sufficient number of mazes — in spite of itself, begin to dimly recognize the inescapable fact that it is in a maze and that moreover, it cannot — at least by present means — remove itself to parts unknown.

Once this first all-important recognition has been achieved, without which nothing further is possible in any direction except down, it can begin to perceive and analyze its surroundings as they actually are, and not as its unexamined fears and perceptual occlusions have caused it to imagine them to be.

Because the perceptual-emotional will have, for the moment, been resolved, it will no longer exhibit the compulsion to maintain a self-constructed veil of confusion and disorientation.

One would think the thrill of observing that single rat, which out of dozens, suddenly gave indications of having become aware of the maze would soon pall, but au contraire…the excitement of this simple yet magnificent discovery never failed to strike me as anything less than downright apotheotic*, and any behavioral scientist worth his or her weight in potassium nitrate who says anything different is spouting pure scoria*.

A rat achieves maze brightness, and its eyes seem somehow at once both older and younger; general posture and behavior toward the environment and toward itself show radical signs of alteration. It seems less frantic, more self-assured, and noticeably less self-destructive.

At the same time, one can see visible signs of excitement as a new sense of freedom descends overwhelmingly upon it, the same sense of freedom which humans who have discovered what they call “enlightenment” experience.

E.J. Gold is a good storyteller, and I’ve just ordered two more of his books, Practical Work on the Self and The Human Biological Machine As a Transformational Apparatus. The book group I joined has already read them, so I have some catching up to do.

*apotheosis means to exalt a person to the rank of God

*scoria means the scum left after melting metal

Being a Five, reading, writing, and what works

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Part of my journey as a Five on the Enneagram has had to do with my attitude about information.

As a child, I took to reading like a duck to water. I soon became an indiscriminate reader. Comic books, school books, the classics, storybooks and novels, poems, my parents’ books/magazines/newspapers (they were avid readers too), cereal boxes, food labels, trashy magazines, entire menus, every sign that I encountered, billboards, and so on.

My eyes and my mind were very attracted to the written word. (I wear contact lenses now, but my glasses were as thick as Coke bottles.)

I behaved as if I believed that if I read everything I possibly could, at some point I would understand everything. Life, the universe, my purpose, the answers.

This was an unconscious belief, as so many are.

The irony is that I missed out on some important aspects of living because I had my nose in a book!

On the plus side, I was a very good student in school and have gotten many jobs because I could read and write well. (Being an avid reader is the basis for being a good writer, in my opinion.)

I’ve become more discriminating with age, I’m happy to report. I don’t read everything any more. Whew. That wasn’t a very good strategy, was it?

In fact, these days if I start reading a book and if it is not compelling from the start, I put it aside. Maybe I’ll finish it later, maybe not.

Of course, much reading is simply required — road signs, food labels, homework, text messages, deposit slips.

I’ve become more conscious about why I read. Now it’s more of a choice about what information or inspiration will broaden or deepen my journey. 

The reading I most treasure these days is finding new and useful information, information that makes a difference in people’s quality of life. I guess you could call this kind of information insight or wisdom. 

That kind of reading and discerning gives direction to this blog.

I love discovering what works, and I love to share what I find. When I think of what “the truth” means to me, it’s useful information that works or that serves quality of life. Like how to prevent insomnia or a particularly useful way of phrasing an idea, for example.

I’ve also become more attracted to the questions. More on that to come.

Heck, maybe this is one of those things that you know about me already. If so, please rejoice that I’m becoming more conscious.

The Five Tibetans plus one

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My training to become a massage therapist includes training my own body. We practice and are graded on our own biomechanics when delivering massage. After just a few weeks (and considering there are students who are right out of high school and from very conventional backgrounds), the teachers are beginning to convey that massage therapists transmit their own health and well-being through their hands — the energetic connection.

Just this past week, my class’ primary practical massage teacher, Cindy Anderson, introduced us to the Five Tibetans.

I’ve encountered this series of exercises before, years ago. Cindy says we will be doing them regularly and that past students often thank her for teaching them — and tell of practicing them on mountaintops and other unusual places!

Curious Mind here googled “Five Tibetans” to learn more (especially to learn that they may not always be taught well on videos), and then headed over to Wikipedia to read about them.

Highlights: The Five Tibetan Rites are reputed to be at least 2,500 years old. The origins are unknown. They predate modern yoga (asana). Some of the exercises bear some similarity to certain asanas, so perhaps they influenced yogasana. Who knows?

They are done in order as a vinyasa (flowing sequence) and are said to stimulate the chakras. Many other claims have been made as well — they are a fountain of youth, reversing the aging process, and such. I think you can safely say they build strength, flexibility, and balance, and they will give you more energy.

You start by doing a small number of repetitions — 1, 3, or 7, depending on your comfort and ability level, but no more to start. You add repetitions slowly until you can do 21 of each. Add repetitions so slowly that you do not feel sore the next day. Never do more than 21. (Although apparently some yoga geeks do 108 of each! Make up a rule that works for you, is what I say.)

The Wikipedia description is good, including that you stand erect and take two deep breath cycles between each. Cindy has us exhale through rounded lips with eyes open wide.

There’s a whole blog about them: The Five Tibetans — Expert Advice, Support, and Information. It offers free downloads of the original English description of the exercises, posters of the exercises and warm-ups (should you need them), and a PDF showing 7 undulations to relieve office tension that will be helpful to readers with desk jobs who are concerned about their health.

The blog is connected to a website that offers DVDs showing you how to do the exercises and even Five Tibetans teacher training.

However, if you just want to see them, here’s a pretty good animated description.

If you do them for the first time from reading this blog, and if you don’t already have a regular yoga practice, please please please do each one very slowly and mindfully, tuning into what’s happening in your body, and never go beyond what’s comfortable for you. Be very gentle, especially with your neck and back.  Be mindful and err on the side of caution!

If you are not in shape, please download the warm-up exercises mentioned above and do them first.

Right now, I think of them as an alternative to a morning sun salutation — and that’s just where I’m coming from now. Both sun salutations and the Five Tibetans build strength and flexibility. They work the major muscles and joints of the body. They are fun to do, as well, at least for me. I’ll mix them in with my daily sun salutations, and perhaps later I’ll write a post about what I like about each practice.

The sixth Tibetan rite is a breathing practice. It is not usually taught in the US (our culture tends to frown on celibacy) but is recommended only for those living a monastic or committed celibate life. Wikipedia included a brief description and a link here. You do this exercise only to transfer the energy of the sexual urge up into the spiritual centers of the body.

A reader shares his TRE/shaking medicine experience

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In case you don’t read the comments on this blog but are interested in the trauma releasing exercises and shaking medicine, I’m posting a long comment from a reader as a regular post in order to reach more people.

Thank you so much, Richard, for sharing your experience.

Thank you, David Berceli, for bringing the world TRE.

Thank you, Bradford Keeney, for writing and sharing so much about shaking medicine.

I love the fluid body.

Hey Mary –

Been doing TRE for a few months now (think I commented here before possibly), and have taken a free workshop with one of the London trainers. I also notice I can allow it to come on at will, even standing up – the TRE trainer likened it to a hosepipe, and you can inhibit/disinhibit the flow, e.g. as if you were putting your foot on/off it. The explanation given was that humans generally walk around in constant inhibit-mode, and once you’ve done TRE a few times you gain the flexibility to allow it through. It took me about 4-6 weeks of daily practice to get to that point personally.

Btw, in terms of progress… it’s been plateaus with spurts of growth. Some things have changed drastically, others havent changed yet. The tension in my body has changed, and “getting stressed” now feels different in terms of the intensity and location of the tension that arises in my body.

I notice it never quite goes “how I want”… always how it wants. Some parts just shake for weeks, over and over, the same pattern, then suddenly shift in one session. Sometimes I think some things shifted and it comes back to that location for more, and sometimes new muscles start going at it that had previously been holding.

From what I understand TRE is a wildly individual process; very much a function of your personal trauma, your personal locations of chronic tension, and what emotions are entangled up with all of that. For me it’s very much about the abdomen, chest, and anxiety. For some people it’s depression, anger, etc.

What I do know for sure is a) it’s the only thing that gets me “unstressed” daily on a physiological level (and I’ve tried a lot), and b) I’ve gradually become much more the person I want to be; the person I feel I truly am; since starting with TRE.

Hope you and others are finding similar benefits!
Thanks
Richard

I notice that Richard started out with the TRE exercises and has transitioned to shaking medicine. My distinction is when you can stand up and shake at will, TRE has become shaking medicine.

I have a strong hunch that the vast majority of people need to learn TRE first, to learn how to allow shaking to happen. Once your body learns to trust the trembling and lets it move into various parts besides the legs (and of course that will take different time periods for different people), try it with your legs flat. Try it standing up. Try it sitting.

I agree that it’s like a pipeline you can turn on and off at will.

Eloquently said, Richard, that you’ve become much more the person you want to be, the person you truly are. This is truly energy medicine.

Movie review: The Cave of Forgotten Dreams

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On Saturday, I got to see The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which I posted about earlier (see Fantastic prehistoric cave art movie).

I enjoyed Werner Herzog’s narration in English with a soft German accent, completely understandable. He’s so earnest, it’s easy to make fun of him, but when you realize he’s the only filmmaker that’s been allowed to film the oldest known art, the precautions they had to take, his love for cave art since he was a child, and what an awe-inspiring experience this must have been, and you understand and forgive him. He’s a treasure of a filmmaker.

The art is pretty remarkable.

The “supporting cast” (the archeologists and other experts who shared their insights) was good and interesting. One man dressed in clothing made of reindeer hides is the type of colorful character that Herzog loves to include in his documentaries.

A young archeologist, Julien Monnet, stood out for helping Herzog give the film its title. This young scientist with a ponytail (formerly a circus juggler and unicyclist) spoke about his initial response to the cave. He said that when he first went into the cave to do scientific work, he was dreaming every night of lions — of real lions and of paintings of lions (they are depicted multiple times in the cave).

In his dreams, the lions weren’t attacking him, they were being peaceful, but their presence in his dreams was quite powerful.

Being exposed to the cave art was such an emotional shock, after five days, he had to stop going in. He needed time to absorb the experience. The cave art touched something deep.

Here’s a link to a clip of Herzog interviewing him from the film.

That was a profound response to this art, the kind of experience that can reorder your map of the world and who you think you are, and perhaps why Herzog chose to title the film The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. There is something dreamlike about seeing these fresh, lively images intact inside a cave and realizing they are over 30,000 years old.

Watching this film feels like rooting around in your forgotten ancestral memories. Something ancient becomes very, very fresh and new.

The film offers an opportunity for the collective unconscious to become a bit more mindful, for us to reflect on our evolution and deeply appreciate the lives of our forebears from the time before recorded history. 

We can now connect to these unknown people because they have become more known to us.

Thank you, Werner Herzog, and thank you, French authorities who decided to use extreme preservation methods yet allowed this film to be made.

In a postscript at the end, Herzog shows us a biosphere heated with water from a nuclear power plant 20 miles away from Chauvet Cave. The biosphere has been especially hospitable to alligators, and some of them are albinos. The camera lingers on images of albino alligators.

At first, it seemed like a rambling nonsequitur to include this in a film about prehistoric cave art, but I had a sense that Herzog was affected by the images of these albino alligators in a nuclear-heated biosphere in the same way the pony-tailed archeologist was affected by the images of lions in the cave.

The proximity of the ‘gators to the lions, the biosphere to the cave, a nuclear power plant to ancient drawings of animals, somehow stretch the boundary of what we think of as possible — and we humans played a role in the creation of both environments. The juxtaposition of the new and the old, the natural and the unnatural, the images and the collapse of time in this film and in our psyches is deeply powerful and disturbing, like the best art.

Do we humans like who we’ve become?

I liked it when Herzog’s cameras lingered on the art. The 3-D is subtle. There are no tricks that make you jump. Instead, the curves of the cave’s walls and features are made more visible. It adds life and depth to the imagery.

The perspective of seeing the beautiful wild countryside in southern France, with pockets of vineyards, massive geological formations, and deep rivers, was also integral to the beauty of this film.

The musical soundtrack seemed very well-suited for the film, although I might have wished for more silence at times. The soundtrack is due to be released on October 11, 2011.

On becoming gluten free

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I was inspired to write this post by the blogger Gluten-Free Girl. She invited people to share their symptoms. They were so all-over-the-place, including migraines, arthritis, random crying, fatigue, menstrual difficulties, infertility, canker sores, peripheral neuropathy, Hashimoto’s, and many more types of suffering, that I wanted to share my story and let anyone who’s just found out about candida and/or gluten-intolerance, or whose story is similar to these, know that there’s hope.

Life can be so great when you have your health. And the food industry and restaurants are increasingly becoming aware of the need to offer us alternatives.

If you have a gluten-free story, I urge you to share it at the link above. It makes a huge difference to have a lot of stories in one place. There are millions of us (18 million out of 307 million Americans, by latest estimate, have celiac or gluten intolerance), but most of us experienced feeling like we were the only one. We have lots of company!

And…in my opinion, this post and all the comments should be required reading for health care practitioners.

~~

When I was a child, sometimes on weekends, my father would make pancakes for breakfast.

Halfway through a stack of two pancakes buttered with margarine and smothered in fake maple syrup (because that’s how we ate back then), I’d start to feel not so good. Not really sick, but not well, either.

I guess the best description is that my usual vibrancy disappeared. I felt a little woozy, a little queasy, somewhat clumsy and sluggish. My belly didn’t hurt, but it didn’t feel good either.

It would last for a couple of hours, then  dissipate. I stopped liking pancakes.

Looking back, that was the most flour I ever ate at once. My family wasn’t big on bread. We didn’t eat much pasta or fried breaded food. But we did eat pancakes and sandwiches and cake and cookies and gravy, so I ate wheat if not every day, then several times a week.

In adulthood, I often had diarrhea, gas, and bloating, and less often, I had painful colon cramps that doubled me over, but I never reported it to a doctor. I thought I was just prone to stomach bugs.

In hindsight, I had no idea what good bowel health was. People just didn’t talk about it! That’s a good topic for another post… ; D

Generally, I felt dull and sluggish a lot of the time. Dissociated, not quite present, uncoordinated, depressed. (I also had PTSD, also unbeknownst to anyone. It’s hard to truly know what to attribute these symptoms to.)

I had skin problems — outbreaks of adolescent and adult acne. I had itchy, blotchy rashes at various times on my stomach and chest, my back, and my arms and legs. I would break out in a rash from sun and heat.

I took Seldane and later Claritin daily for allergies. I didn’t get the association between dairy and mucus, or between liver health and allergies, back then. I thought my allergies were all due to airborne irritants. I didn’t believe it was possible to care for my health so that I didn’t need pharmaceuticals.

I know differently now.

I often had low energy and was easily exhausted. I’d go out on Saturday mornings to run errands, and after two hours, I’d hit the wall energetically and have to go home and take a nap. I attributed it to the stress of being a working single mother.

Oh, yeah. I was told that I was a colicky baby, often screaming for hours. Hmm.

I did receive muscle testing and acupuncture treatment (NAET) for allergies in my mid-40s, when I first became interested in alternative medicine. I remember being told that my body reacted to grasses. I thought it was to grass pollen in the air. I never thought of grasses as foods. Of course, wheat and other true grains are grasses! As is sugarcane.

NAET helped. I no longer had an annual winter sinus infection, and I only needed to take Claritin 3-4 times a year.

I still had the occasional colon cramps and diarrhea, gas, and bloating. The colon cramps could be so painful, I’d become pale, break into a cold sweat, and feel weak and shaky.

It took me a long time to heal after a car accident in 1996. My body hurt. I had low back pain and was diagnosed with scoliosis (not sure when it started, and it’s now healed with chiropractic help). I had a couple of bouts with plantar fasciitis. My weight fluctuated by as much as 35 lbs., and I’m 5’1″.

The enamel on my teeth had gotten thin or worn away in spots, leaving me with sensitive teeth. I often had night sweats. I developed rosacea. I had canker sores. Sometimes the toes on my left foot went numb. I lost bone density.

I’m just today realizing that these health problems may have a connection with being gluten intolerant, after reading others’ stories. There are over 300 symptoms of celiac. No wonder it’s so often misdiagnosed. It’s enough to want to tell anyone with inexplicable symptoms to go gluten-free for a month and see if that helps.

~~

I grew up knowing very little about the relationship between food and health. I was never tested for food allergies. I had “hay fever”, and my digestive symptoms appeared when I was an adult.

One of my brothers had asthma and was tested, though. He had the traditional scratch test and was found to be allergic to a lot of things, both food and airborne. He reacted to cats, dogs, pollen, dust, eggs, dairy, nuts, and a lot of other foods, but not to wheat or grains. He took shots for years.

While going to Active Life Chiropractic in late 2006 for treatment, I was told that my health insurance covered food sensitivity testing (the Immuno 1 Bloodprint tests your blood for over 100 foods) and asked if I was interested. I agreed to be tested, thinking that I probably had some minor food sensitivities.

The results of my food sensitivity test came back a couple of weeks later. I was found to be sensitive to wheat, oats, two kinds of yeast, two kinds of beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and sugarcane. That was mind-boggling!

Because of the yeast and sugarcane, my doctor recommended that I be tested for candida. That test came back positive.

So I started my gluten-free journey with the candida diet, which meant no grains, dairy, any sweetener except stevia, yeast, fruit, juice, alcohol, potatoes, peanuts, legumes, mushrooms, chocolate, caffeine, condiments, vinegar, high-glycemic anything, cured or pickled or fermented anything.

(Hmm, isn’t it interesting that most of the foods I tested sensitive to were also banned on the candida diet?)

I cleaned out my fridge and pantry of everything with any forbidden ingredient in it. I didn’t want to be tempted or to make a mistake. It took over an hour to read the ingredients on every single label, and at the end, I had two paper grocery bags full of food to give away. Bye-bye, Michaelangelo’s frozen lasagna, Campbell’s tomato soup, soy sauce, mayonnaise, ketchup, barbecue sauce, coffee, honey, maple syrup!

My start date rolled around. It was by far the most drastic change in eating I’d ever experienced. It was so drastic, I decided to stick to it 100% so I would never have to do it again. Dang, it was rough, but I was determined to find out if I could feel better. 

I lost weight and went to bed hungry at times. Breakfast was the biggest problem because there were no traditional breakfast foods that I could have unless I wanted eggs every day. I often ate fish and salad (with Annie’s vinegar-free salad dressing — bless you, Annie) for breakfast.

Food was no longer inspiring — instead, it was plain and simple fuel. If I got hungry, I just waited until the next meal. Meat, fish, eggs, and non-starchy vegetables were my mainstays. Scrambled eggs were yummy with salsa verde on top. Little discoveries like that kept it interesting.

I took a supplement called Candex, which helps dissolve the cell walls of yeast. My poop smelled yeasty for the first few weeks.

After about a month, I discovered the book The Body Ecology Diet and began making young coconut kefir at home and  drinking Helios brand plain dairy kefir with FOS to get some probiotics into my gut. I slowly added grains like millet and quinoa and low-glycemic fruit like blueberries, Granny Smith apples, and kiwis.

(By the way, if you borrowed that book from me, I’d like to have it back.)

After two and a half months, I noticed that I felt really different. I felt physically good and my energy level had increased, and I noticed that I felt more present, like my brain was working better, like some kind of brain fog had lifted. I could focus better, read more difficult books, understand more complex thinking than before. My memory improved. I experienced myself differently. I felt smarter and more alive!

I stuck to the strict diet until my body told me I had cleared the excess candida, which was 3 months. The test had said I had mild candida. If it had been severe, I still would have stuck to it to find out if I could feel better. Anything to consistently feel better.

I transitioned from the candida diet to avoiding the foods I had tested sensitive to — the wheat, sugar, potatoes, and so on — and taking it easy on the other candida avoids.

~~

I was tested again a year later. Candida was balanced. I was sensitive to fewer foods (a couple of new ones too), but wheat and several other foods were still a no-no. My chiropractor had my blood tested this time for gluten. I wasn’t sensitive to it, only to wheat. So probably wheat inflames my small intestine.

Then my health insurance stopped covering the test, which was too expensive to continue on my own, so I haven’t been tested again.

Meanwhile, I read Eat Right for Your Type and noticed a strong similarity between the candida diet and the recommended diet for people with Blood Type O. Type Os should not eat wheat.

My theory is that people are born sensitive to certain foods and stay that way, and other food sensitivities come and go, based on stress and/or overexposure and sometimes maybe just shifts in body chemistry. Sometimes we crave the foods that make us feel bad, and sometimes we instinctively avoid them. That is some great learning there!!!

If you can’t afford to get tested but suspect you have food sensitivities, try the Blood Type Diet. I bet you’ll feel better — and it includes feel-good foods, not just avoids.

Also, I’d love to know how many celiacs, gluten-intolerant folks, and people with candida are Type Os and how many are another blood type. Please comment!

I was still in denial about wheat. I’d tell myself that every once in a while, I could have a burger or some birthday cake. I enjoyed those moments, but I eventually learned from experience that my body just cannot handle more than a quarter teaspoon of wheat without affecting my small intestine adversely, and that if I do “get glutened”, it takes 3 days for my body to get back to normal.

What I suspect happens is that the lining of my small intestine gets irritated by wheat, and it stays that way, interfering with absorbing other nutrients, until the wheat is completely out of my body.

That’s 3 days of malnutrition.

It’s just not worth it. I can now resist cake, cookies, burgers, and so on. I feel so much better consistently when I do. 

I’ve learned over the past five years that I can handle spelt and Ezekiel bread, but it also seems important that I don’t eat them often. In general, my body doesn’t do well with grains. Rice is my most tolerable grain. Quinoa is great. It’s a seed, not a grain.

~~

I have no idea if I have celiac disease, and it doesn’t really matter. Gluten-free means wheat-free, and I’m fine with describing myself as being gluten-sensitive or gluten-intolerant, as eating a gluten-free diet. My body doesn’t agree with wheat in particular, grains in general, potatoes, some legumes.

So basically, to cut to the chase, I spent over 50 years of my life consuming something that made me feel bad, interfered with absorption of other nutrients, and diminished my presence, intelligence, and vitality. I don’t like to dwell on thinking how much better my life could have been if only I or my parents had known. That feels tragic, and I can’t change the past. I want to feel great in the life that’s ahead of me.

I suspect my mother may have been gluten-intolerant. She often had gas, bloating, and bowel issues, low energy, took a lot of naps, had arthritis. She had anemia a lot as a child and young adult. She never knew.

I’m so grateful that I know and can act now. And if telling this story helps one person have better health, investigate, or stick to a gluten-free diet, it’s worth it.

Fantastic prehistoric cave art movie

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Do you ever think about the human species, where we came from and where we’re going? I do. I’m very excited about seeing a new movie, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, that will probably be the closest look any of us will ever get of the oldest art created by our species.

By all accounts the art is pretty wonderful.

The film is by Werner Herzog, who has made so many memorable films, like Fitzcarraldo, Encounters at the End of the World, Grizzly Man, and many more dramas and documentaries.

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams is about Chauvet Cave in France, which contains the oldest art known to be in existence. The film is also Herzog’s only (and probably last) film to be made in 3D.

Here’s some background information about prehistoric cave art, which I have long loved for its mystery and beauty. For perspective, science tells us that humans have been around for 190,000 years but only began writing around 5,000 years ago. All that time before writing is considered prehistoric. Not much is known about most of our species’ history.

The first major cave with paintings discovered by modern humans was Altamira. In 1879, the nine-year-old daughter of a nobleman who was also an amateur archeologist led her father into this northern Spanish cave to see the paintings on its walls. The cave had been sealed by a rockfall 13,000 years ago, and only when a fallen tree disturbed the rocks was human entry again possible.

The next year, he and other Spanish archeologists proclaimed the paintings to be Paleolithic in origin.

They were ridiculed. We may laugh about this now, but for years, the cave paintings were thought by many eminent scientists to be forgeries, because prehistoric humans were considered incapable of creating such art!

(Remember the stereotypical cave man, often a subject of cartoons? I think instead of being dull and stupid, they must have been exquisitely alive. No manmade toxins in the environment, acute senses because of the need to be alert for predators and food, the need to observe patterns and develop skill to survive, the importance of the group, living with a much smaller human population with much less competition…. Hmm. We may have peaked early.)

Anyway, in 1902, the leading proponent of the forgery idea famously admitted he had made a mistake in print (‘mea culpa”).

Horses, bison, goats, deer, wild boars, negative handprints made by blowing paint around the hand, and abstract shapes appear in Altamira.

Other Spanish caves with prehistoric art were soon discovered, but none matched Altamira. The Altamira paintings are estimated to be 17,000 years old.

The second major discovery of prehistoric cave paintings was at Lascaux in southern France. Four teenage boys discovered the cave in 1940 when a dog disappeared into it. They followed the dog, saw the art, and told their teacher, who told an expert.

The oldest Lascaux paintings as old as 20,000 years. There are over 2,000 figures of animals, humans, and abstractions: horses, stags, cattle, bison, felines, bird, bear, rhinoceros, aurochs (huge bulls) appear, as do some abstractions that may be maps of constellations.

After he visited Lascaux in 1948, Picasso is said to have said:

They’ve invented everything.

The cave of the new Herzog film is Chauvet Cave in southern France. It was discovered in 1994 by three archeologists who felt an updraft of cool air while exploring a cliff.

Chauvet has never been open to the public. Only a handful of researchers and scientists have been inside. Herzog is the only filmmaker granted access, and he was limited in how many people and what kind of equipment he could bring in. He winged it pretty well, I hope.

The oldest Chauvet paintings were painted 37,000 years ago. These paintings made when both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted in Europe, one species on its way in, the other on its way out.

The artists used perspective, shading, stencils, pointillism. They worked with the caves’ contours to produce 3D effects. They blew paint through hollow tubes to create a certain effect.  They used charcoal and colored clays from the earth to draw and paint with, made lamps of animal fat and plant wick to see what they were doing, created brushes, even built scaffolding.

They painted eight legs instead of four to produce the effect of a running animal and used repetition of the same image with the legs in different positions, making the world’s first “motion pictures.”

The art looks fresh and spontaneous, as if painted with a skilled, practiced hand. There is evidence in places of pigment being scraped away and painted over. These guys and gals (some of the hands depicted on the walls are female) were serious artists.

Here’s a description from Judith Thurman’s article on Chauvet in the New Yorker:

From here, one emerges into the deepest recess of Chauvet, the End Chamber, a spectacular vaulted space that contains more than a third of the cave’s etchings and paintings—a few in ochre, most in charcoal, and all meticulously composed. A great frieze covers the back left wall: a pride of lions with Pointillist whiskers seems to be hunting a herd of bison, which appear to have stampeded a troop of rhinos, one of which looks as if it had fallen into, or is climbing out of, a cavity in the rock. 

Now maybe you’re getting a sense of why this movie is so meaningful. It opens up so many questions: Was this art created for ritual purposes? Was it for good luck in hunting or to celebrate a successful hunt? Was it for fun, because they could? Why are humans and plants and landscapes not depicted? Were these paintings made by shamans, teenagers, men, women? How did they get so good?

How is it that perspective wasn’t rediscovered for thousands of years?

Imagine the later painters encountering the earlier paintings. Some paintings were painted over a period of thousands of years. Imagine collaborating with your distant ancestors.

Mammoths, lions, bison, and rhinoceroses all existed in southern France during this time!

Getting to see these images is a rare opportunity to see our species freshly and to have a little more information into the big mystery of life, at the same time as these images deepen the mystery about who we are and where we’re coming from.

The carbon dioxide in human breath damages cave paintings. Fungus and mold grow and spread. All these caves are now closed to the public, with research carefully monitored, but replicas have been made of Altamira and Lascaux, and one is planned for Chauvet. So we probably won’t get to see the real thing.

This is as close as it gets.

Werner Herzog’s website: http://www.wernerherzog.com/home.html

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams trailer: http://www.wernerherzog.com/index.php?id=64

Judith Thurman’s article on Chauvet Cave in the New Yorker:  http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/23/080623fa_fact_thurman

A reader’s experience with shaking medicine

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I’m feeling very blessed to have recently had two readers of this blog respond to it in depth, either by sending me a personal email with questions or by leaving a lengthy comment on a post and sharing their experience.

Readers, you are welcome to comment on anything you read that so moves you. You may also email me privately with questions. I love the personal connection.

My theory is, if you take the time to ask your questions or share your comments, there are at least 10 people behind you with questions and comments, and I’d like to share them publicly, disguising your name to preserve your privacy unless you explicitly give me permission to use it. This is one of the great strengths of blogging — the community aspect of it. I’m currently getting about 50 views per day and one or two new subscribers a week. This blog is reaching and speaking to people interested in at least some of the things I blog about — people who want to come back. I’m really tickled about it!

Jose Luis shares his experience with shaking medicine, and his experience is worth sharing in a post

Hi Mary Ann,
just a sharing… Shaking Medicine emerged in my life spontaneously during a series of Holotropic Breathwork workshops I attended years ago…and then 12 years ago, I found Brad Keeney’s work: everything fitted… Brad Keeney’s “The Energy Break” is a nice, friendly-user introduction (you can begin inmediately!). Amazing medicine! Finally I could attend two three-days-gatherings: As-toun-ding! It’s a deep mystery, but this I know: It’s heart medicine, for sure…and it keeps “cooking me”…

“Bushman knowing is inspired by feeling love rather than thinking ideas. The more they feed love – loving the loving in a recursively spun positive feedback loop – the more they amplify its presence and impact on their body. It causes them to tremble and shake, an indication to them that they are awake and in the only state worthy of trustworthy knowing. For them, thinking should serve authentically experienced love rather than the latter being an abstraction for intellectual word play. Bushmen seek to make their “ropes” (a metaphor for relationship) strong. They do so by shooting “arrows” of amplified love into one another. You might be tempted to say that they are “cupid scholars” who hunt for “n/om” (the soulful life force). They work to make themselves “soft” through absurd play and open hearted expression so that the arrows and ropes that enhance relational connectivity may pierce and join. Bushman stories emphasize changes that surprise and trip you into being off guard with any convenient category of understanding. In effect, Bushman knowing is all about letting yourself out of any and all typological grids of abstraction so that the Heraclitean movement of spirited love can dance you into ever shifting relations with life.
***
A group of elder women n/om kxaosi were asked what made them so strong in matters of n/om (Keeney 2010). They replied, “we are this way because of the tears we have wept for the ancestors who have passed on.”  The deepest longing human beings experience often comes from the loss of a loved one. Rather than trying to emotionally get over it, these Bushman elders keep the longing alive, feeding it until it breaks their hearts wide open in an awakened way, bringing them inside a more expansive and intimate relation with their ancestors. In this connection tears flow along a channel that keeps their relationships strong and permits a never-ending expression of love and soulful guidance.

Another intense form of longing is familiar to all lovers who fall deeply in love. In this infinite ocean of Eros we find there is more than simple love. There is loving love. When we become lovers of loving, the ropes are inseparable from us and carry our hearts into the highest realms.”

Nice interview with Brad here:
http://www.futureprimitive.org/2008/05/shaking-up-bradford-keeney-phd/

warm regards
Jose Luis

PS (Peter Levine speaks briefly about the connection between trauma and spirituality at the end of his latest book…in fact he is writing a book about the spiritual experience…)

Thank you, Jose Luis. I took the liberty of making bold some things that popped out at me.

I’m adding Brad Keeney’s The Energy Break to my next book order. I love what he has written about love in the Bushman culture. I’m still reading Shaking Medicine and recently got Shaking Out the Spirits.

I would so love to know about these gatherings! Please email me about these.

Love is embodied experience. It does mean opening to our own softness and letting down our defenses, which once protected us but often become habitual. I thank healer and bodyworker Fran Bell for showing me the difference.

The intent of Bushman storytelling seems very Zen-like.

What you shared about Bushman grief expanding the heart came just in time for me to share with a friend who recently lost her mother and is grieving deeply.

Peter Levine’s latest book, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, has been highly recommended to me by others as well, and it’s now on my list. His book Waking the Tiger changed my life. One of my friends just got certified in Somatic Experiencing.

Thank you for the link to the interview. Thank you again for sharing.

Prison yoga: stories and photos, and local prison work

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I read this Elephant Journal article, Yoga at San Quentin: Prisoner Interviews and Photos, liked it, discovered it had a Part 1 (Do Prisoners Deserve Yoga?) and a Part 2 (Know about yoga & meditation for at-risk and incarcerated youth? Serving where it matters most), and liked those articles as well.

At its best, prison is a place that transforms lives.

I’ve had an opportunity several times to go into the state prison at Lockhart and take part in the graduation ceremonies of Truth Be Told, which works with women behind and beyond bars. They have been the most moving, heart-opening, compassion-building experiences I’ve ever had. 

Please note on Truth Be Told’s website that a couple of upcoming opportunities to witness graduation ceremonies in both Lockhart and Gatesville are happening later this month. Respond quickly if you’re interested. I just got confirmation for attending the May 26 graduation in Gatesville’s Hilltop unit, my first time there.

I don’t know if there’s still space or if the deadline has passed. You have to be pre-approved by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

If you are interested in waking up to more of the world we live in, being moved, and finding a way to be of service (even if just witnessing), I recommend connecting with Truth Be Told and attending one of these ceremonies.

If you can’t go, at least get on their mailing list and make a contribution however you can.

Does anyone know if yoga is being taught in the Travis County State Jail, the GEO prison in Lockhart, the prison in Burnet, or in any of the Gatesville prisons? I’d love to know.