Hold harmless

I can imagine few behaviors worse for health and well being than holding a grudge.

I'm not talking about anger, a "piercing" experience as Pema Chodron describes it, that can reveal the truth (whatever that is). Anger is a quick moving, fiery experience. If allowed to run its course, it can be cleansing and beneficial - as long as you don't take it out on someone else. If you cling to the anger, though, says Pema, it will burn you. Truer words were never written! Wow.

A grudge is quite different from anger. It doesn't move. It is like a solid brick of sludge, heavy, obstructive, toxic. A grudge is an old hurt or betrayal that has become more than a sum of its parts. It is far more than resentment. A grudge is resentment solidified over time. It is resentment that has been preserved, cherished, even worshipped. It is so unhealthy!

Healers of every kind are quick to say that grudges are bad for us, but it's not as simple to let them go as some make it sound. For one thing, our culture reveres grudges, or maybe what I should say is we revere the idea of revenge. Many movies, books, and myths are based on some kind of heroic version of revenge.





"I shall have my vengeance."

I believe the message in this movie is that there is honor in holding a grudge if you are powerful and determined enough to exact revenge. I think he dies at the end of the movie - a good thing, probably, because once revenged, what would inspire him to get up in the morning?

Most of us are not Russell Crowe in a film that glorifies revenge. Thank god! Most of us do not get the chance to slash and bash and shoot the bad guy. So for most of us, hanging on to resentment of any kind - even if we think we are justified - cultivates the sludgy, sticky, heavy and unhealthy state of holding a grudge.

Grudges often afflict not only individuals, but family souls as well. Think of Romeo and Juliet, the Hatfields and the McCoys.

It's a big problem for which there is no dedicated, proven solution. For individual grudges, one can go to therapy, receive acupuncture, pray, open one's heart. It helps. Certain spiritual paths help cultivate the ability to release grudges, such as Buddhism and the sects of Christianity that lean heavily into the actual teachings of Jesus.

Sometimes we practice forgiveness for years on end, in all earnestness, but are still unable to release the grudge. Please don't ask me to explain why. It's no one's fault. The mechanics of full release are mysterious and probably out of our hands. But we have to try! Because grudges are heavy, unpleasant, and very bad for health and well being.

Coming up on summer solstice, I take time to think about my various resentments and grudges. The solstice itself is a sacrifice according to the old stories. It's a great time to let go of old stuff, including grudges, including fabulous fantasies of revenge. The old stories say that Brother Sun will take all the stuff we no longer need into the dark as the solar year wanes. In the dark, the stories say, the energy will be composted and can be used to enliven the world. It hasn't always worked for me, but I give it a try every solstice. Over time, the practice helps. All the practices help.

Are you a holder of grudges? If you're human, you surely are. Summer solstice is about to arrive in the northern hemisphere. Gather your grudges and put them on the solstice bonfire, yes? I say yes.

L'chaim.

Respect the body's limits

You should see my client's faces when I give them the Respect your body's limits talk. Sometimes they look confused, quizzical. Sometimes they frown. They look annoyed. I've seen incredulity on their faces, impatience, frustration.

At this moment in history, at least where I live, the body is expected to function perfectly, 24/7. Neither sickness, injury nor fatigue, neither snow nor sleet nor dark of night, nothing - and I do mean nothing - is supposed to keep people from fulfilling every one of their noble plans. We are supposed to work hard, maintain relationships, eat whatever the hell we feel like, exercise hard, complete every to-do list every day, no matter what. It is so unreasonable.

Once upon a time it was OK to rest while recuperating from life's inevitable upsets, ailments and setbacks, but not now. We're supposed to do it all without a hitch, also without decent sleep or a life enhancing quota of fun. When our bodies finally say enough is enough, we come down with a cold or another minor illness, or twist an ankle, or just feel tired, the culturally appropriate response is to be angry with our bodies - as if we are somehow separate from the tender, complicated, remarkable animals that we are. It's mean.

How about a little compassion for your body? I say that to people. I say, If this was happening to your cat or dog, would you yell at the animal? Of course not. You would care for it, make a nice soft bed for it, make sure the animal had everything it needed to get well.

I tell you it is so easy to dish it out. It is much harder to listen to my own advice. The weather in DC is spectacular this weekend and yet I can not be out there because this is the worst of the allergy season, according to my body. If I insisted on being out there, I could go into anaphylaxis, as I did a few years ago. That would be cruel and stupid, too.

Yes I take medicine both modern and ancient (Chinese) for my allergies. It takes the edge off but does not solve the problem. Really all I have to do is wait, be patient and kind to myself. All I need to do is take care of myself. The pollen season is about to end after which I can spend all day outside if I choose to. In the meantime, I'm trying hard to be as kind to myself as I tell my clients to be to themselves. It's not as easy as it sounds when I'm waving my finger at my clients.

Oh well. Closing the windows now, settling on the sofa with my book. Be kind, Reya, please be kind! OK. OK. Shalom.

Good Grief

We are tender, soulful beings, we humans. In my culture we don't want to think of ourselves that way. We like to think of ourselves as ruthless, aggressive, ambitious and unstoppable. That's part of human nature, too, of course. The problem (I see it as a problem) is that it's taboo to attend to the soulful, tender part of ourselves in 21st century east coast culture. Being tender and soulful is seen as a weakness. By some people, not everyone. Listen: it's not healthy to ignore the needs of the tender heart in order to appear powerful and relentless.

Because we can love, we must grieve. We have to grieve small things and large losses, missed opportunities, failures of every kind. It's inevitable. Grieving is not some kind of weak indulgence and it isn't unique to homo sapiens. Elephants grieve, dogs grieve. I'm certain many animals grieve. 

Is there any way to manage grieving? Because it is not pleasant and can be embarrassing in our culture of bad-assedness. In India you can hire professional grievers to do the work for you. What a concept! I wonder if one of the purposes of all the rituals around funerals and grieving is to remind us to go through the process whether we want to or not. These rites are of course mostly about remembering and honoring the ancestors, something humans have always done. My guess is that funeral rites are the oldest rituals. Grief is a part of us, it is not optional.

There have been times when I've swallowed grief, either because I wasn't in the mood for it, or engaged in something else (like working) or so far into denial I couldn't sense it. Swallowing grief is a sickening sensation that makes the throat tight, the head and stomach ache. When I swallow grief, I swear my intestines ache. Grief that doesn't move coagulates in the body, I feel it all the time in the stiff necks and backs of clients. It can coagulate in the organs as well as the muscles, which is never a good thing. It can be toxic when it doesn't move.

I love the idea of wearing a black arm band for a period of time after a loss. I've seen pictures of FDR wearing one after his mother died. When people saw the black arm band they knew that the person sporting it was in an altered state: grief. Part of the difficulty of grieving in our society is that we have to tell the story over and over. With the armband, people could simply say, "I'm sorry for your loss," and skip asking about the details.

When my dog died, I decided to wear an armband. I was a wreck for several weeks after he died, crying uncontrollably. It was horrible; I thought the armband would help. But Michael Jackson died the same week as my dog. It came to me that people would think I was grieving Michael. I couldn't do it.

Make time for grieving, please, for your health and well being. Let it flow, even though it's messy and unpleasant. The elephants understand this and go with it. The elephants are very wise.

L'chaim.

The Path of Wisdom

One thing I say to clients in the midst of a life or health drama is, Let it change you. I say it all the time. It's a counterpoint to the idea that an illness or injury of body, mind or spirit should not change anything. The idea, spoken and unspoken, is that we should see illness, injuries and endings as setbacks to be gotten over as soon as possible. Once we are well or healed or have grieved a loss or ending, we're supposed to get right back on the merry-go-round of our goals and plans, undeterred, but also unchanged. I wonder what that is about.

Determination is a beautiful human quality. Commitment, too. During a serious health or life crisis, we would have a much harder time surviving if we couldn't access determination, will, and a commitment to carry on.

When the crisis has passed, that's when people turn their intentions toward getting back to life exactly as it existed before the illness, loss or injury. It's then that I will inevitably say, Let it change you.

Of course there are those who dive head first into transformations. As soon as they're able, they begin straightaway making rash decisions, before they have healed, before they've integrated what happened. In a certain way, the folks who all of a sudden quit their jobs, leave their partners, move to new cities or whatever, are also not allowing whatever happened to change them. They opt to make external changes that are often quite destructive rather than evolving from the inside out. I should know - I've tried this approach numerous times.

The people who can sit with what has happened to them, who can make changes in their lives that come from the inside out, become wiser, kinder and more compassionate. Sometimes they have to let go of a relationship or their profession. When those life changes come from wisdom, they are, in every case, sound, helpful, healing.

Life is a sacred drama, as full of loss, illness and sadness as it is with beauty and joy. Every experience can teach us something new about being human. I believe we would be hard pressed to ever learn anything if life didn't trip us up now and again. How we get back on our feet after a crash and burn is a sublime learning experience, or - it can be. There are people who are pretty good at avoiding the potholes - I guess. I've never met anyone who was able to avoid all injuries, illnesses and loss. But maybe there are some of them out there. Are there?

People who say they don't want drama in their lives confuse me. I think what they're saying is that they would prefer not to suffer. Well, who wouldn't?

May you be safe and sound. When the sacred drama of life in this form throws you a curve ball, may you prevail. May you take in what happens to you at the deepest level. Let it change you.

L'chaim!

Who knows best?

I'm in the middle of a modern medical battle with my eye doctor. Actually battle is way too strong a word. He is a very nice person who wants to do right by me, he sincerely does. He has been in practice for a long time in an office downtown where he sees patients who are chronically sleep deprived, stressed out, poorly fed. His patients sit for many hours a day in front of their computers, squinting at numbers and letters under fluorescent lights, enclosed in hermetically sealed cubicles, or in communal work spaces where they must fight distractions in order to stay focused. These people drive around a lot, they sit in front of their TVs at night. The way they use their eyes is radically different than the way I use mine.

When you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail - hence he is trying to change my prescription as he would for someone who suffers from eye strain. Even though I've spoken and written at length (and quite eloquently, may I say) about the differences between me and the people he usually sees, even though I have been vociferous about explaining that the glasses I have now are EXCELLENT, that I see perfectly through them at a distance, while reading, and when I'm on my computer, even so, he can't help but think my prescription can be improved. He even agreed with me that my prescription does not need improvement, except - well - he wants to improve it.

The glasses I wear now are scratched up (because my old eye doctor didn't automatically include scratch resistant coating for the lenses) and the frames are crusty. I've said to this new doctor, verbally and in writing, many more times than once, that I don't need a new prescription, what I need are new lenses and new frames. But he can't hear that. He can not take it in.

The first round with the new prescription was a disaster. I couldn't read, and through the new lenses, when I looked at a photo across the room, my eyes crossed. He admitted he had overcorrected and that the measurements for the progressives were off. He asked me to come back into the office to have measurements retaken. He promised to redo the lenses with something more akin to the old prescription, but he still wants to make changes.

My confidence in the new glasses is not sky high since I had to show his assistant that the machine she was using when taking measurements was upside down. But I'm open to what happens next. I can still see perfectly with my old glasses, except for the scratches. If it takes awhile and several attempts before the new glasses work, I'm ok with that. I'm curious to see what happens next.

It's hard to stand up to modern medicine. It's a challenge to be assertive, even for me, and I'm kind of an expert in that endeavor. Modern medicine depends on tests and numbers and charts. Even though according to the measurements, the new prescription was scientifically better, I couldn't see through the new lenses. My eyes and my vision are not something that can be totally accounted for by medical charts and standards. I could be insulted that this doc is unwilling to believe me, except I know it happens all the time. It's not personal.

One problem is that within the realm of modern medicine, we are encouraged not to pay attention to sensations of any kind. We are told to accept what the doctors say and to follow their lead, because they know best. I have clients who feel like hell, but since all their test numbers are correct, the doctors tell them they are healthy. It is bizarre.

In many cases, doing exactly as the doc says, no matter how you feel, is the best course of action. I'm talking about people who swallow fistfuls of sensation killers such as ibuprofen, and try with all their might to ignore the needs of their miracle bodies - basic needs like sleep and good food, fresh air and relaxation, for instance. For people like that, modern medicine is important.

But for people like me who pay attention to every symptom and shift in the realm of the body/mind, modern medicine can be - at best - perplexing and at worst, utterly frustrating.

Who knows best what is going on in your body/mind? Have you ever thought about it? Well?

Take the long view

Sun dogs and clouds above the chateau.

How often do you stop whatever you're doing, look up, and gaze at the sky? It's easy enough to ignore the sky, especially if you live in a city and have the busy life that's exalted in our culture. Instead of the sky, it's more practical to focus on screens small and large, books, magazines, recipes, shopping lists, the dishes, the laundry, the notes you've written in preparation for a meeting at work. We also look at each other, our nears and dears, co-workers, kids, pets, friends and neighbors.

I have nothing against focusing on the dishes, by the way. Humans are working animals. Unless we're productive, we are dissatisfied, we easily become bored. But all work and no play, no matter how great or important the work seems, dulls the ability to feel pleasure, blunts the capacity for enjoyment. It's unhealthy and out of balance.

And yet, many people continue to flog themselves with work and busywork, focusing their minds on the minute details, focusing their eyes on letters and numbers. Is it any wonder that as a society, stress is crippling us? Good lord. We have to relearn how to relax. We need inspiration. We need to take the long view. One easy way is to stop whatever we're doing every now and then, and just look at the sky for awhile. Clear, overcast, day and night, the sky is ever changing and in almost every situation, beautiful. I'm not talking about a quick glance upwards. Spend at least five minutes gazing. Breathe.

Looking at the sky extends visual focal length which relaxes the eyes and the brain. Here's a link to a Scientific American article about why the brain needs down time.  The best ideas come to the relaxed brain.

Father Sky helps us see the big picture metaphorically and literally. People have always seen patterns in the stars and shapes in the clouds. Those patterns and shapes inspire, shift perspectives, help us think clearly. In Tibetan medicine, a treatment for depression includes gazing at the unobstructed blue sky. That would cheer up anyone, don't you think? It cheers me up, for sure.

There have always been people who focused on the minute details, of course, like scribes for instance, scholars, watchmakers, painters and the like. After work, though, like most humans throughout history, even scribes stopped to look at the heavens and marvel at what they saw.

It still works, if you can remember to do it. Looking at the sky helps everything. I highly recommend it.

Shalom.

Soul imbalances

Soul loss is an issue of extreme soul imbalance that healers have attempted to treat for 100,000 years. Soul retrieval is the oldest profession, I'm sure it is. It seems to be part of the human condition, the comings and goings of the soul.

Even in modern medicine, soul retrieval is practiced. We don't call it that anymore. We call it psychotherapy and psychiatry. There was a period of time when soul retrieval was not a part of modern medicine. At that time, people suffering from soul imbalances were locked up. It was very cruel, but no one knew what else to do. God bless you Grandfathers Sigmund and Carl!

Of course people are still locked up and hospitalized all the time. The practice of psychiatry is absolutely necessary for some people. I am not against the miracle drugs that make it possible for these people to function and live their lives without so much suffering. I'm grateful relief is possible for people when they need that level of care.

The practice of psychiatry does not restore or balance the soul, it is a compensatory endeavor that helps people feel less haunted. I am all for it!

Psychotherapy is something I availed myself of often and for many years earlier in life. I wouldn't hesitate to go back to the couch if needed. Psychotherapy is a gradual and meticulous type of soul retrieval, a mindful type of soul retrieval. The process saved my life, more than once. I wish it was truly affordable and seen as proactive healthcare.

One of the reasons I love Chinese medicine is because it's a complete system. No matter what my symptoms may be, the acupuncture and herbs address soul imbalances as well as the physical imbalances. Chinese medicine is elegant, it surely is.

As a shaman, I am very interested in soul imbalances. I am a healer shaman, a kind of diplomat whose job it is to mediate between the seen and unseen, as best I can, to bring harmony to the body and soul of the person I am working with. There are shamans who go to the underworld to battle demons, or go head to head with sickness spirits. I honor these warrior shamans but it isn't what I do. I come in peace.

Hence I can't treat soul loss of a serious nature. I leave that to the warrior shamans, the psychiatrists, psychotherapists and acupuncturists. But I work with common, chronic types of minor soul imbalance all the time in individuals and families.

What is it with soul, that it's so ready to abandon us? I've been asking myself this question for many years. Naturally I have no answers. Many people have asked this question going back in time who knows how long. No one knows, but still, we wonder. I have a few theories, of course.

If you're feeling a little (or a lot) "off" but can't connect it to anything physical or external (like a situation at work, for instance), I suggest some soul balancing work. Acupuncture and therapy are excellent paths, but there are many ways to balance the soul. We always have, and still do need soul balancing. It's part of the condition of ensoulment.

May we be soulful, not haunted.
May we be peaceful and spacious.
May we be healthy.
May we love and be loved.

Amen.