A Boy Named Sean, A Dog Named Homer

This little story (a true one) is composed by Homer’s Mom, who will be referred to in the third person mostly as “ HM.”

When HM first saw Homer (obviously, an unnamed yellow lab in a cage), she ‘fell in love.”  He had the most beautiful head and face she had ever seen.  She was missing her golden retriever who had died three months previous, and, though she had promised herself she could never replace the mighty Shiva, her retriever, there was something about this little doggie with the sad eyes and  beautiful nose….Something made her return to the breeder again and again….

When she found out from the breeder that this little pup had been whelped the same day Shiva had died, well, it was too great a coincidence, and she made the arrangements, and one day, carried the little ten week old pup into her backyard to meet her family.

Within six months it became clear to everyone that Homer, now called Homer Hanuman Ram Dog, was very sick.  He had already been hospitalized for severe digestive problems for over two weeks of his short life, but now, his back legs looked like they were…disappearing.  He was in severe pain.  He was listless.  He barely ate.

It was soon revealed that he was a “puppy mill” dog.  He was the result of a greedy breeder, keeping a bitch pregnant again and again, running the dogs down, having very sick pups, knowing that most people would just allow their puppies to die rather than spend money on getting them well.  Homer’s hips were non-existent.  He had literally no hip sockets.  Bone was rubbing on bone.  Three vets all agreed that the little nine-month old puppy, who had stolen HM’s heart, and the hearts of her family, would have to be put down.

HM was desolate.  One day HM was meditating on the floor, trying to accept the inevitable, when Homer’s big nose rested suddenly on her shoulder.  He made a “hhhhmmmmmm…” sound.  This sound was the sound HM had heard somewhere before, deep in meditation.  She was led to get up from meditation and go to instantly to her computer, where she was led to a site for an orthopedic vet who could perform a tricky operation for dogs such as Homer.

Very soon Homer was to receive an operation called a “Femoral Osteoechtomy”, which pretty much cut off the rest of his leg and hip bones, stuffed gluteal muscle into his hips and was used to make legs out of what had been shoddy bone, and HM and her family were told that he had a very slim chance of recovery.  This operation, seven hours in procedure, was only performed on very small dogs.  But the vet had taken a look at Homer and said that he had an “amazing spirit.”

Homer pranced out of a 7- hour surgery and yanked off his morphine patch, never to look back.  He needed virtually no rehabilitation.  He has been a marvelous, indomitable, spirited dog ever since.  He is alive and well, seven years later.  He was given a 50-50 chance of living to the age of 3.  At this writing he is 8 years old.

Now, you may wonder why this little story has so far been about a dog named Homer, but has not mentioned a boy named Sean.

That is because, it was not until Homer was well into his second year of recovery (or maybe it was his third year) that he met Sean.  It was this meeting that would provide Homer with his purpose in life.  To the boy named Sean, who was perhaps only 7 or 8 years old at the first real meeting, Homer was simply another friend, a litter- mate, so to speak.  But Homer had found his raison d-etre, his reason and purpose and meaning in life.  There was no turning back for Homer.

Sean was quite an exceptional boy.  He was “all boy.”  He loved to tustle and roughhouse and play and play hard!  This suited Homer very well.  Anything Sean did suited Homer very well.  Sean was just one of those boys.  Everyone loved him.  He was adorable, freckled, funny, had a wonderful family, and a very charmed life.  He was someone who was to develop intense focus on what he loved.  He had not quite developed this trait at his younger age, but this trait was to suit Homer very well.  Because, you see, bonding is about identifying with your loved one.  Homer was to bond so completely with Sean that he was to become his guardian angel, his protector.  It was why Homer lived through his trials and tribulations, it seemed.  And Sean was certainly an exceptional and special person.  He was well worth it.
The intense focus on Sean began for Homer when Sean, Homer, Sean’s Mom, and HM went to the Huntington Dog Beach when Sean was 8 and Homer was 3.  Homer had been to the beach only once or twice before, and he had been totally smashed down by waves, but he had shown enormous bravery and gone back into deep and salty waters again and again.  HM’s husband, Homer’s Daddy, and his entire family had marveled at Homer’s bravery.  What a trouper this little doggie was!

But nothing was to prepare us for what Homer was to do with Sean at the beach.  Imagine peanut butter!   Imagine crazy glue!  Imagine Velcro!   Homer and Sean, Sean and Homer.  And that was that.  Homer was never going to let go of the boy named Sean.   In the waves Sean splashed.  In the waves Homer splashed.  In the waves Sean crashed.  In the waves Homer crashed.  Sean built a sand castle.  Homer destroyed the sand castle.  Sean ate a sandwich.  Homer ate a sandwich.  Sean slept.  Homer slept.

Now, we are in present time, five years later.   HM, Sean’s Mom, Sean’s sister, and a few friends, return to the dog beach.  Sean is a young man now.  He has no time for any nonsense.  His voice has deepened, he has fur on his own face (Homer has noticed), and now, he has a dog of his own!  Harley, Homer’s nemesis!  Harley is a yellow lab, just like Homer.  Harley and Homer play and play and romp and romp.  It is Harley’s first dog beach visit.

And, oh, how they love it!  The two labs run down to the ocean and – splash bam crash – into the waves they go!!!  But wait!  Suddenly, Homer is swimming frantically toward three boys on surfboards, making a wheedling noise deep in his throat.  He thinks one of the boys is Sean!  He circles them and sees Sean is not there.  He turns in the deep water, a wave crashes him, he goes under,  re-surfaces and goes out farther and farther!  Where is Sean?  Where is Sean?  HM calls out to Sean.  He is way out.  Homer paddles frantically, way out in the ocean to Sean.  HM has to go out into the deep ocean waves to “rescue” the Labrador retriever! Homer has completely taken on the role, once again, five years later, of Sean’s protector.

Yesterday HM, Sean, Homer and Harley went for a walk.  Homer was unusually difficult on his leash, pulling and yanking HM’s arm.  Sean, who was walking Harley a few steps in front of HM and Homer, looked around and simply said “Here, give me the leash.  Homer needs to be with me.”

It was true.  Once Sean took Homer’s leash, Homer lowered his head respectfully as he walked slowly to the right of Sean, Harley on Sean’s left.  Both leashes were slack, as both dogs were grateful to walk with their beloved boy.

But the dog on the right, Homer, was absolutely perfect, his eyes on the road ahead, every now and then glancing to the left, his head swinging low but steady, his leash slack.  His job was assured, because he knew who he was and what he had to do.  He was happy and perfect. He was safe and content in his life’s purpose.   He was simply Homer Hanuman Ram Dog, and he was doing his job, walking with the boy he loved with all his heart.

 

-The End

The Nadis, the Gunas, and the Vivaxis: Interrelated Theories of Energy Arising

In the Tantric model of Kundalini arising, it is said that energy is activated in the root chakra (the muladhara) and rises through the Sushumna Nadi, or the Conception Vessel meridian.  On either side of this meridian lie two channels, one to the right, and one to the left.  The channel to the right is a cooling channel, the Pinagala Nadi.  It is yin in nature.  To the left of the Conception Vessel lies the Ida Nadi, the heating channel.  It is yang in nature.  These two nadis intertwine the Sushumna, forming the traditional Caduceus of modern medicine.

 

According to this theory, when energy is activated in this way, it is the ultimate marriage of Shiva (yang) and Shakti (yin).  Once all the 72,000 peripheral nadis are pierced by the union of the mighty Hindu god Shiva and his bride, fusion and merging occur in the crown chakra, the Sahasrara, and enlightenment is inevitable.

 

In another branch of Sanskrit philosophy, called Samkhya, three fundamental energies of prakriti (universal nature) are discussed.  These energies are called the gunas.  “Guna” is a Sanskrit word meaning “string”, but in a more abstract or metaphysical sense, it means an “operational principle or tendency.” The three gunas usually considered as principles of all creation, evolution and destruction are:  rajas, sattva, and tamas.   Rajas, translated loosely, means “fire.”  Sattva, “purity” and tamas, “inertia.”   In Ayurveda, as well as certain Vedic schools of thought, it is sometimes said that, before a soul decides to take birth, this soul decides the guna in which to incarnate.  For example, should a soul wish to come into life with a mission, that soul would choose, even pre-conception, a rajasic guna.  Should a person be confused as to the particular lifetime in which they are incarnating, they may enter with a tamasic guna.  And a few souls, usually those who are destined to become teachers and masters, come into realization with a sattvic guna.

 

Vivaxis is a term coined by Frances Nixon, a Canadian woman who discovered a unique energy flow that connects an individual’s energy field, or etheric body, with that of the earth’s magnetic field at the time of their birth.  She claimed that this field held one of the prime keys to understanding one’s individual life.  The link functioned, Nixon claimed, as a two-way connection between the individual and their place of birth. Nixon claimed that the direct magnetic connection to earth’s energies began when the individual’s mother’s labor began based on the actual way she was facing when her contractions began.  Furthermore, the connection remained even as the individual grew and moved and traveled as an adult.  Claiming that each individual had a unique frequency developed along earth’s axis, Nixon worked for over thirty years in helping restore the vivaxis connection, which she found might be distorted by chemicals, electromagnetic fields or even climactic changes like solar flares or lightning.  In theory, by reconnecting with these energies, one might once again find the harmony, health and grounding which were, quite literally, one’s birthright.

 

Donna Eden has coined a phrase and an energy protocol called “Vivaxin Syndrome.”  She has found that one may develop sensitivity – and indeed a problem – with certain directions, based on an incomplete magnetic “paving over,” so to speak, of the magnetic field in this direction of the vivaxis, or the birth field.  In other words, rather than the vivaxis remaining a direction of power for the person, Donna has found it to be for some people like a magnetic tape which needs de-magnetization –  it is too gunked up by the many electromagnetic “bombs” thrown at it by the vicissitudes of modern life.  She has developed a protocol for cleaning this symbolic tape and strengthening the auric field so that the original vivaxis remains strong.  Through the use of kinesiology and energy testing to ascertain the direction of dis-empowerment, Donna has been able to ascertain the weakened direction of the vivaxis, and using magnets twirled at the ends of the meridian while the individual then faces this direction, she has strengthened the integrity of the electromagnetic field/vivaxis.  The results for most have been remarkable.

 

In my own practice I have found that strengthening the vivaxis has been of particular benefit to those clients who claim they have ‘incarnated with the guna of “tamas.”  These are people who maintain a certain ambivalence to life; an inertia, or energetic uncertainty, and are the ones most likely to have this Vivaxin Syndrome.  In other words, those who have a sensitivity to a certain direction (East, West, South, North) so strong that it affects their health, are perhaps the very souls who have struggled to get here, and who may or may not have truly decided to stay.   Those with a tamasic guna coupled with a strong Vivaxin Syndrome, may have the most troubles in life with depression, autoimmune illness, and other problems of a weakened energy field.  I have found the similarities in these two theories of marked importance.

It is said that some indigenous tribes do not name their children for three months after birth. According to some theories, this is because some children ‘return’ before they have reached earth- age of three months.  In Bali, it is said that a child’s feet do not touch the ground for the first three months of life.  It has been of some note – and certainly not coincidental – that the clients I have asked to “just spontaneously, now, off the top of your head, tell me what energy you came in with – tamasic, rajasic, or sattvic” – (this is after correcting a weakened vivaxis and after relaxing the client and doing a considerable balancing and of course, explaining the theory of the gunas) – these clients almost always tell me, “well, tamasic, of course!”  They have spent a lifetime of inertia, uncertainty, ambivalence.  They seem to have little or no certainty about goals, relationships, and their health.  It is with these clients that I spend a good deal of time strengthening the yang energies.  But it is in the explanation of the theory of the gunas which has seemed to help my clients achieve the most congruency in their lives.

 

And it is then that the theories of the nadis come into play.  Clients who express the energy of tamas, of inertia, achieve great benefit when working with the Ida nadi, the yang channel.  The nadis, in general, prove to be of great benefit to these clients.  Indeed, for those with this particular construct, there is great hope in working with Kundalini and spiritual practice. I know of no better practice than meditation and chanting.  Since chanting is an essay in itself, I will speak briefly of meditations’ capacity to affect the nadi system and the sushumna nadi, in particular.

 

Meditation is a wonderful adjunct to a practice of Energy Medicine.  “Spiritual” practices help prepare the body and brain for higher states of consciousness, and they equally prepare the body and brain for the reception of depth charges during sessions of regression, chakra, and grid work.

 

To begin a meditation practice, that is, a sitting practice, alternate nostril breathing is particularly beneficial.  This activates not only the Ida and Pingala alongside the sushumna nadi, but it also helps crossover patterns along the corpus collosam, the great lobe of the brain.  Furthermore, anyone who has trouble with the 6^th Chakra will often see this trouble begin to melt with a daily practice of alternate nostril breathing.  There are a myriad of benefits to this particular pranayama (breathing exercise).  It would take yet another essay to begin to name them!

 

Sitting with the back erect, the chin level, the hands folded comfortably in the lap – or in chin mudra – the thumbs and forefingers touching – and after doing a series of alternate nostril breaths, meditation often seems ‘to happen by itself.’  Sometimes after a period of some restlessness, as the nervous system fights the newfound peace it is experiencing (a triple warmer phenomenon, surely!) one may begin focusing on the space between the eyebrows. As this area is focused on for awhile, one may experience a feeling of something being ‘pierced.’  This is not uncommon.  The 6^th chakra literally opens, and a flood of endorphins swells the being.  Meditation is well underway.

 

But do not quit before the miracle!  If this practice is performed daily, for 15-20 minutes, hopefully for the rest of one’s life, what had previously become a most unsatisfying humdrum existence, one in which one seemed doomed to inertia, restlessness, unhappy autoimmune illnesses of minor symptoms but of annoying frequency, may seem to remit rather suddenly, never to return.  The trick to meditation, or any spiritual practice for that matter, is not to quit.  We must avoid falling into a stupor.  It is essential to continue to practice, to raise our tolerance so that we do not become bliss ninnies each time we plummet deeper into depth charges availed us by a spiritual practice coupled with a daily energy routine.

 

As an Energy Medicine Practitioner, I feel strongly that one of my greatest responsibilities to my clients is to maintain the rigors of my daily meditation practice.  For me it has become imperative to recognize, sustain and deepen the charges in my body, mind and spirit in order to facilitate the same available states in my clients.  But “faith without works” is hollow indeed, so an explanation of the various theories of the nadis, the gunas and Kundalini have worked wonders with my clients, all of whom have brought me an understanding of my own self and my own spiritual , nature larger than I could ever have imagined.  Furthermore, this self-awareness, the theory of vivaxis,  the theory of the gunas, with the help of an understanding of the nadis, has also helped some of my clients re-frame early experiences of childhood victimization to ones of empowerment, as they see they may ultimately choose the energy system in which to be born.  Furthermore, it can be quite empowering to see that everything one does in one’s life may indeed be part of a purifying practice of Kundalini arising and the piercing of the 72,000 nadis.

 

These are amazing theories of energy arising, easy for most to understand, helpful for most to frame contextually within the boundaries of a session in Energy Medicine.  I have found that almost everyone I work with is yearning for things to be framed in a spiritual context.  Working with the theories discussed above has proven a rich ground for me in helping my clients move from what Carl Jung has called uneigentilich leiden (inauthentic suffering) into a perspective of compassion and mercy for the common bond we all share.

 

I am proud to be an Energy Medicine Practitioner, and even happier and prouder to be a daily meditator.  They are, at least in my mind, often one and the same.

What is Energy Medicine?

The dictionary defines energy as “the capacity for vigorous activity”; and gives a second definition as “abundant power.”

Medicine is defined as “the art or science of preserving health or …’due’ physical condition…”

We can thank Einstein and his colleagues, starting in 1905, the annus mirabilus, or miracle year of science, for publishing four papers which began to change our understanding of the nature of energy and for making the word a household one.  Along with Max Planck’s work on the quanta of heat, Einstein postulated one of the most shocking ideas of the 20^th century: that we live in a quantum universe, one built out of tiny, discrete chunks of energy and energy condensed into matter.

Of course our sophistication and Einstein’s further publishing on the special theory of relativity opened more and more doors to understanding space, time and energy.  In 1955, physicist John Wheeler conceptualized that what we had previously considered “empty” space was a dynamic quantum foam, which, if compressed into one cubic centimeter, was theoretically stronger than all mass fused together in the visible universe!

Furthermore, it appears nothing short of miraculous to realize that in a mere 100 years we have begun to speak of energy in colloquial terms.  Some now realize the possibility of moving this life force (energy) with their own hands, facilitating the possibility of living well and living to an old age – without the need for pills, potions, powders or sophisticated scientific understanding.

As some of us grow weary of the western allopathic approach to maintaining health and preventing illness, we can learn to call on the capacity of our body’s own vigorous powers of healing.  Dr. Richard Gerber, MD, one of the most respected and vociferous proponents of energy medicine in the world today, states unequivocally that working in our etheric field (the field which surrounds the human body – e.g., the ‘energy field’) may actually have a negative entropic effect on us.  That is, antithetical to entropy’s action of chaos and decay, energy approaches to health have the opposite effect.  A negative entropic effect causes subatomic particles to organize in a less chaotic way, theoretically making us younger and healthier.   We potentially cease to decay.  We have discovered the potential for a veritable Fountain of Youth!

There are four or five essential books for study in the field of Energy Medicine,  all listed below, but most importantly, the workshop – the veritable petri dish – is one’s own self.  A body, used for trial and error, repetition, proof and observation, is all that is needed.  Trial and error, repetition, proof and observation, all make Energy Medicine a very legitimate and fascinating science, a science worth footnoting and legitimizing through a bibliography, but a fact which is necessarily neglected for the sake of this brief essay, save for the recommendations for research and reading below.

Some of us break down our work with Energy Medicine into discrete categories by working with the meridians, the chakras, the aura, certain crossover patterns of energy, and other protocols.  I use my training from Donna Eden, coupled with work from the understanding of the energetic qualities of nutrition (macrobiotics), an understanding of yin and yang, a long time study of Chinese Medicine, an essential training in Applied Kinesiology and muscle testing (a very necessary tool for the diagnostic standard for certain energy medicine protocols), as well as a committed meditation practice.  I have found that grounding in spiritual work provides me with the ability to move out of the way and let something higher take over.

Energy Medicine is available, understandable, accessible, extremely powerful – and unquestionably needed in today’s world.  In the year 2011, some of us are unable to afford health insurance, so the most essential need to radically take our power back by taking care of our own health affirms David Feinstein’s eloquent statement:  “energy is the medicine, and energy is the patient.”  (“Principles of Energy Medicine,” Energy Medicine, 1999, Putnam and Sons.)

Energy Medicine is a healing protocol which uses natural, God-given power to bring one’s own potential healing into congruency and alignment.  And the best part:  it is available to anyone with a mind and a body.  “Working in the field” takes on a humorous and ironic meaning and it is not without a broad grin that I happily agree with Dr. Mehmet Oz’s assertion:  “energy medicine is the medicine of the future.”

 

 

**Recommended Reading List:

 

Energy Medicine – Donna Eden and David Feinstein, PhD.

Vibrational Medicine – Dr. Richard Gerber, MD

Between Heaven and Earth - Harriet Beinfield, L.Ac.,  and Efrem Korngold, L.Ac., O.M.D.

Touch for Health – John Thie, D.C.

Schadenfreude, Part III

December 15, 2010

 

 

I was ready to roll…I was ready to play the game, the mean, dark game of my protagonists, Chris, Norma, Judy and Cerrie.  I had just never wanted to stoop so low before.  I had never realized I had acted arrogantly by believing I was better than them and had more scruples.  It was truth time.

 

Melanie Klein was a psychoanalyst in Germany in the early 1900’s.  Melanie Klein taught a school of psychology called “Object Relations” – very basically, the way we relate to our first objects; our first caretakers.  I remember being intrigued in school about Klein’s comments about possession, how sick people could become malevolent puppeteers in the background and have malignant thoughts and take evil and mean-spirited actions.  Klein said these sick people would often do anything to destroy others.  The masochist would become the sadist.  Again and again and again.

 

Well, I am not a masochist or a sadist, but in order to survive in my small town, I had to do something.  I am a reasonably good psychologist, and I am an excellent lawyer.  Both require an understanding of science and an ability to employ scientific techniques, but both careers most often require an ability to employ acting skills.  I was getting ready to become the thespian of my life.

 

First object to relate to:  Judy O’Hare.  First emotion with which to work:  Guilt.  First principle with which to work:  Ten Commandments.  What to call out in the other:  Shame.

 

Got it.  Now go!

 

I often went to Saint Martin’s in the Field, a Catholic Church Judy attended on Sundays.  Father Dennis O’Dennehey was our Priest, and he and Judy were very tight.  It took very little effort to arrange myself between them at the Sunday afternoon tea, and to bring up the topic of atonement, and Father O’Dennehey’s opinion about sin, lying, and hell.  I got him to wax poetical about gossip and slander.   Judy’s face became tighter and whiter and her lips became so pinched I feared her mouth would disappear into her cheeks, but I persevered, and just as I thought, Judy was too mannered and courteous to excuse herself from the conversation.  She was probably too afraid of the discussion behind her back which we were likely to continue. She was very afraid of going to hell.  I counted on this.

 

It worked like a charm.  When I finally excused myself, I had Father O’Dennehey so intoxicated from the brandy in the flask I had in my purse which I had bountifully poured into his coffee cup, which in turn loosened his lips and forced him to become so dark and negative and terrifying, that I think Judy would have done anything to beg forgiveness for her terrible sins of gossip and slander against me that she played into my hands like melted butter.  She whined that she had to talk to me and needed “to do so as soon as possible”.    I felt terrible for about a minute.

 

But then I was on to Cerrie again.

 

Her codependent need to rescue pathetic dogs and cats made it easy to get into her good side (not that she had a good side), and she was easy to play.  More about her later.

 

Chris and Norma were the ones I had to figure out.  But once I went into the nastiness, they were easier than pie.  Because they were fat, so pie was where it was at.  Food, food and more food.  I was going to get to them through their pie holes, as the raunchier natives were wont to say. What better than a big Mexican picnic given in the town square in July during the 4^th of July festivities?  The irony would be lost on the dumb cows.  There was one Mexican person in Rigdon.  Chris.  Norma’s ethnicity was difficult to know.  She was flat of face, thick of neck, whiney of voice, dyed of hair, and big and thick of body.  She was simply hideous looking.  No one knew her last name.  She stuck to Chris, who was bigger than a house, like peanut butter.  So where Chris went, Norma followed.

 

And to maintain these enormous bodies, food was required.  And could I give it to them!  Burritos, tortillas, sour cream, the whole enchilada!!!  I was going to fatten up the fatted calves until these greasy mamas screamed for mercy!

 

One problem occurred, but one at which I excelled:  I had to delay gratification.  We were in the month of April, ‘mud time’ in New England, spring in the rest of the country.  I was forced to wait three months for the delight of hopefully seeing these enormous women get their comeuppance in the ways they deserved; run out of town on their big butts;  Rigdon finally and ultimately returned to its’ uppity-blue-blooded-Yankee ways.

 

Why these women projected their unfinished business on me remained to be seen, but I had long ago given up figuring out why.  I had been told to utilize, not analyze.

 

Cerrie Hartley, the hard-hearted bitch from hell, had told me a bit, but I had turned a deaf ear to most of her meanderings.  The gist of her rambling had been this:  I had been too successful, too ‘ethical’ too rigid in insisting that the group follow the traditions and rules of the long-standing Policies and Procedures; but mostly, I had been self-deprecating, and no one could stomach this.  This had long been one of my glaring character defects.  I constantly played down my abilities.  It was bad enough that I had success and glory, but no one could stand that I then pretended not to be who I was.  Nothing stinks like this kind of phoniness, broadcasted.  I would have hated me too.  It was the worst and smarmiest of people-pleasing narcissism.  I could not blame them for their rage.  But it was the extent of their acting-out which I found puzzling and very troubling.

 

I do not know what act of divine intervention or grace stopped me here in my tracks.  I do know I did not deserve it.  I had gone so far down the rabbit hole of vitriol and revenge and plans of retribution as to be unrecognizable, even to myself, but some thought, from a distant past, some lost shred of decency, or kindness, or character, reared its tired head and whispered to me, and I lost all desire and energy toward my agenda of attack.

 

I simply stopped.  I stopped, and I drooped.  My shoulders slumped, my head fell forward, and I felt a fatigue mingled with a relief and a – what? – Something I had not felt or recognized in some time – what was it? – humor ? laughter? A great rumbling of laughter came erupting from my belly and my lips as if from some molten underground.  Surely it did not come from me!

 

I was collapsing with laughter!  The irony of this all!  This plan!  This ridiculous plan of retribution and revenge, this silliness, this stupidity, when all that was needed was – nothing?

 

Had I ever listened to myself?  Why had I started the “spiritual group” in the first place?  To listen?  To speak?  Oh my God!!!

 

I was worse than they were!  I was being punished for my reverse-ego nastiness!  No one liked a phony!  At least these three mean-spirited cows were true to form!  They were the Saints here, certainly not I!  And with this realization of humility came a fatigue so delicious, so profound, so, well, –  surrendered –  that I was able to stop in my tracks.  This, I believe, this phrase, “to stop in one’s tracks”, is a hunting phrase.  I simply stopped in my tracks.  I stopped hunting.  And once I stopped, all anger, all vitriol, all nastiness, and my perception, my perception of these women, ceased to have any power over me whatsoever.

 

No one knew what happened, because no one knew that anything HAD happened.  And this is the power of the demented mind.  The delusional mind, shared only, it seems, by me, had been split.  My own mind, so lost in its own narcissism, pretending to be something I was not, had split itself in two, and I was forever in pretense, one part of me protecting the other, in some lost guilt and defensiveness I had surely worked through years’ before.  Everything my mind had set in motion simply stopped, and I was awed to see that nothing was going to happen, because nothing was occurring except in my delusion…..

 

To be continued….

Chrissy, Sushi, and Easter – and, of Course, God

Time cannot intrude into eternity.  The moments experienced as “time standing still” are moments outside of time, outside the realm of temporality, outside the realm of what we call human experience.

I saw her lips moving.  I saw her eyes blazing forth with light.  I refer often to her eyes as “snapping”.  They were snapping eyes, sharp and bright, snapping like a turtle, bright and intense and shiny, snapping shut and opening like a box of treasure.  I could see the aura and spectrum of light around her head, just like when she was a baby, snuffling and snarfling next to me in her papoose, the  swaddling clothes taught me by the nurse at Lenox Hill Hospital when they dressed my daughter for the taxi ride home.

I could not speak.  I deliberately allowed what some could call the ‘mind’ to close against the experience so that I was only Heart.  The center of my chest began to grow warm and to swell.  I experienced a warmth in my throat which grew steadily from my chest through my throat to my face and through the top of my head, all the while aware that I experienced No Mind, No Body, No Being.

She was speaking.  She was speaking rapidly, her mouth forming sounds and her eyes snapping.  How could she not see or experience the waves and swells of indigo and blue and green coming toward “her” from “me?”

I have had this kind of experience several times. Once I knew that if I allowed the experience to continue I could cause what I called “myself” to combust – to burst into flames.  The other time I had the experience James Wright speaks of in his poem “A Blessing”.  He says:  “Suddenly I realized, if I stepped out of my body, I would break into blossom.”  This time, I was carried away on a wave of inexorable love which lasted beyond what we call “time.”

So, I just sat.  I sat for one lifetime – or was it two? – Or twelve? – And listened.  I listened with all my being.  I listened with all my love.  I swelled with love until I burst open and the flame that was my heart consumed us both and I heard the words without hearing one word at all.  And I saw the eyes snapping open and shut, without moving at all.  I saw the aura around her head fill the entire room while she kept completely still, unaware of her own magnificence.

I knew – and have known – that the nature of God – of all of us, is Love.  Love extends. It extends and extends and extends and then extends some more.

I am very grateful to have been given this experience, unbidden, in a Sushi restaurant in Los Angeles, on Easter Sunday, with my 22 year old daughter.  I am filled with gratitude beyond reckoning.  We carry on in the dream because, I think, we do get these experiences, sometimes vast, sometimes tiny, and we are never sure when and if they will come.  All of it, all of the disappointments, the tiny troubles, the so called ‘problems’, are consumed and swallowed in this moment in eternity, when all is well, and when all is known.

In the wholeness of the experience described above, everyone was present whom I have ever loved – not as bodies, not as separate beings, but in my awareness as perfect oneness.  Nothing and no one was left out.  My parents, my friends, every relative, ‘enemy’, lover, every animal I had ever cared for and loved, were all there, for we were one.

I truly understand that love extends through eternity.  It is totally unlimited, and the joy of this recognition exceeds every expectation I have had in the past.  In the all-encompassing wonder of God there is never a need to think, only to be love, only to be what one really is.

After this timeless experience, I was once again sitting on the banquette in the restaurant, seemingly as a body, sated with food.  And each day that has passed since Easter has been more than a resurrection of Spirit, it has been recognition of this Love, this ease and serenity and heart swelling, this ability to forgive and melt all karmas in the dream.

It has been a Homecoming.

Schadenfreude

The problem started when women like Chris and Norma were allowed ‘in.’ No one had ever come to Rigdon like Chris and Norma in the first place; and certainly no one had come to this patrician New England town who looked like they did.

Built like huge pieces of timber, one a solid round and the other a solid square, they were homely women; nay, downright ugly, and they stood out like infected toes on an otherwise perfectly pedicured foot in this town of blonde, long-limbed, old money men and women.

Chris, nee Christina, was first generation Mexican, and mad as hell, it seemed, at all gringas everywhere.  She attempted to hide her origin by giving herself an English last name, but her predilection for obesity and greasy foods (which she ate with abandon in our meetings) sadly bore the telltale signs of her heritage.  She was madder than a hatter, and her pie shaped face was red in fury, her eyes bulging from their sockets as if to escape, and her lips were chronically pursed in a “tsk-tsk” way, giving them a sad resemblance to an anus.

Norma, her friend, looked like she had been hit in the face with a two- by -four, her features never having re-emerged.  She had no neck, her shoulders coming even to her chin, her enormous arms held to the sides, forced there by her size.  But the most unforgiving characteristic of Norma was her voice – a most unfortunate nasal whine which set one’s teeth on edge.

Norma felt it her duty to talk no matter what the topic and being forced to endure this terribly odious face along with the voice – well, it became too much for most of us, and we found we were avoiding the very group we had started in our meeting hall on Wednesday nights.

I felt particularly responsible for these problems, having started our women’s group.  I am a psychologist, and I offered to facilitate a group for like-minded people of the feminine persuasion to meet and speak about whatever they wished.  This was really just a way for women who could not qualify for the Junior League or the seriously ensconced chapter of the Rigdon DAR to feel as if they belonged in this small town.  I was proud of my efforts, which, until this point, had remained minimal.

But women like Chris and Norma did not move to Rigdon.  They did not come to these meetings.  And suddenly we were all confronted with our bigotry, our racism, and our serious contempt and dislike for these women, who did nothing to try and change our minds.

Bitsy Mullins spoke up first, and she spoke pointedly:  “How on earth did women like those two afford a house in Rigdon?”

It was a serious question, and one not to take lightly.  Each home in Rigdon, zoned within a tiny margin of historic collective, was a New England clapboard home, built before 1800, and maintained according to strict covenants and guidelines.  Most homes were not for sale.  Only a few were rentals, and these rentals were strictly supervised.

So it shocked us to learn that Chris had inherited a home from her former employer, as she had been a housekeeper to this woman, a woman we all knew well until she had become ill and disappeared into her illness, and Norma – God, we shuddered to think or say it – was her lesbian lover!

The home, at 3241 Cranberry Lane, had been willed to Chris, and rather than sell it, Chris had decided to live in it, and bring her hideous lover with her, to boot.  Our aquiline noses were to be rubbed in this fact again and again, and we had little recourse except to examine our hypocrisy, something the women of Rigdon knew little about.  It was not as if we were incapable of self-examination; we were incapable of understanding why anyone would put themselves in a situation such as Chris and Norma had done, thus forcing upon people like us the need to examine it.  Nothing made sense.  If these unseemly two were out to make a point there were far better ways to make it, such as voicing opinions at town hall meetings, refusing to vote in agreement regarding covenants and restrictions regarding property ownership, etc.

But to simply show up at a so-called “spiritual” group and sit there, week after week, pusses as sour as rotting ground- grapes, well….it just was weird and uncomfortable, and highly unusual.

Our husbands were no help.  The “good ‘ol boy” of the Yankee variety, these men spent weekends only in Rigdon, preferring their leather chairs at their clubs in the city, their Pratesi sheets turned down just so by the housekeepers in the pied a terres we all maintained in the East 70’s or 80’s in Manhattan, their aging bodies buffed and polished by the Russian and Swedish professionals at the approved health clubs on 53^rd Street.

So we women were alone with our dilemma.  Chris and Norma were firmly planted in our Wednesday group, their faces uglier and more sternly resolute with each passing week.  Try as I might to sweet- talk them; nay, try honestly to get to know them, they planted their unkind refusals and mannerisms like donkey-stalls, and I found myself hating myself even more for trying.  There was simply no getting around the fact:  we had to do something about these outsiders, and it was up to me, as the de facto leader, to decide Chris and Norma’s fate.

At about that time, Betsey Morrisey fell on the ice and broke her ankle.  Not only did she break her ankle, she broke it so badly she was unable to put any weight on it at all for six weeks, thus preventing her from attending or chairing her favorite annual event:  the New York Ballet held at the  Metropolitan Museum of Art.  It was her favorite charity, and she was known for it.  It was because of this terrible news I found out the key to unlocking a way in to rid our group of the Chris/Norma vermin:  these miserable two celebrated misfortune.  They epitomized schadenfreude.

Imagine, if you will, leprechauns and sprites dancing a jig with glee, kicking their heels together.  Now, put in place of the spry and agile leprechauns, two huge and homely dykes, clumsily dancing and clicking their army boots together, and you will have a semblance of what happened when Chris and Norma found out about Betsey Morrisey’s accident.  Try as they might, they could not contain their smug pleasure and downright joy at Betsey’s plight.

My understanding of schadenfreud encompasses the wonder of mental illness at its’ neurotic best:  the mind eclipsing the natural ability of the heart to find pleasure in the misfortune of others.  Chris especially, her globe-like face pursed and smug, actually made sideways comments about Betsey’s ‘clumsiness’ and seeming predilection to hurt herself.  It could have been comical, so unenlightened was she, so without psychological insight of any kind, but it came from a heart so black, so unkind, that even off-the-cuff comments made by this Mexican maid stung and stuck and made one do an auditory double-take.

We were lost.  We were mad.  We were unusually inarticulate.  We simply did not know what to do.

One by one, the women abandoned our group.  One by one, they made half-hearted and weak comments on my voice mail, carefully constructed to be left when they knew I was in session with a patient.  I became agitated and frustrated, walking around talking to myself and what I would say had I the opportunity to address the issue with them.  My calls went unreturned.  I was a ship, left to roil and sink in strange waters.  I was alone.

But I reconnoitered and did what I do best:  I decided to confront them.  Now, with someone who was mentally balanced, this might have been somewhat workable.  But my fatal mistake was in not taking into consideration that I was preparing to talk to people who were sick, who were dark and negative and hurtful.  Hurt people hurt people.  And they were preparing to strike back in a way unimaginable and in ways in which one could never prepare.

I decided to get to Norma first.  She was the more passive of the lesbian duo.  She was also the more unpleasant looking, but she scared me the least.  I ‘accidentally’ bumped into her coming out of the main store on Front Street one afternoon, having staked out her habits like a Private Eye.

I made small talk for a moment or two, then swallowed hard, and asked her to have a cup of tea with me.  She cocked her head, and at that moment the sun hit her head and ears at a particular slant.  I noticed with horror that her ears had black hair coming out of them in huge tufts, which belied the fact that she had blonde hair.  She looked like a werewolf, and in that same moment I noticed coarse black hair on her neck.  I may have shuddered, I may have made a slight grimace, but whatever happened, I so ruined the possibility of authenticity in that moment that even she, someone I considered dumber than a box of rocks, picked up on my distaste, and refused the invitation.

But I persevered.  I made small talk with her as she started to inch her way towards her car.  I had no idea in that moment what I was going to say.  But she seized the moment and did something no one has ever done, before or since:  She proclaimed, loudly, in that hideous whine:

“We despise you, Nellie.  You epitomize everything people like Chris and I hate.  We came here to make sure people like don’t continue to thrive.”

As God is my witness, these were the words spoken to me on that September day of 2009 in Rigdon, Connecticut.  I, the daughter of the governor of Maine, first family of many Yankee socialites, social register New England, registered family from the Mayflower, heard this hideous dyke proclaim words one dared not speak, much less think.  And for no apparent reason other than that of hatred, pure and icy and dripping and evil.  And I, with a PhD in psychology and a law degree, was struck speechless for the very first time in my life.

Part II

I left the sidewalk that day, and I never spoke a word of what was said to me.  As the weeks went on, and the months turned into a year, I figured Chris and Norma would live their lives, the group would remain disbanded, and no one would hear ‘boo’ from them again.  Besides, I was busy with my children, my husband,  and my campaign for Mayor of Rigdon.

It was this attempt at my first political run which drummed up the beasts again.  And they came at me in another way, a way dreadful and unimagined:  Judy O’Hare.

Judy was an elegant first-family patrician woman in her 70’s, and we had always been friends.  She epitomized finesse and old-fashioned values, a firm Catholic, a spinster, a whispered virgin, someone one wanted on one’s side.  She got things done.  She was vocal at town hall meetings.  She owned property.  She had taste.  She had a command of language.

So, when it was discovered that Judy had joined the Chris/Norma camp, I met the information with shock and disbelief.  Now what?  What on earth was going on?

The gossip and slander being perpetrated among people I considered my friends was what hurt the most, and what puzzled the most.  People who had long been my advocates and friends began to avoid me.  They said things to me which could not possibly have come from anyone other than an enemy, things which had enough truth to be from someone who knew me, but had enough falsehood to be known as gossip and slander.

Long had I known that people on a journey of success are susceptible to attack, but I had thought I would be the target of natural competition in the form of contenders in the mayoral race or silly jealousies from the past; Mark’s girlfriends who would say anything to get him back.  But these ugly and cruel women were relentless.  They were unstoppable.  And the strangest of all….

….they became successful.

The rot and erosion of gossip and lies have an unfortunate morphic resonance:  if said often and long enough, even the most appalling lies becomes the ‘truth.’  I was astonished to find that even people who formerly had loved me turned away, claiming they ‘did not know what to believe.’  The poison was pervasive.  The poison was successful.  Chris and Norma were the anti-Christs.  They had come to hurt me, and hurt me they were.

The Judy O’Hare betrayal was what made Chris and Norma believable.  There was something here, but what was it?  I was becoming too afraid to venture down Front Street.  I was keeping the famous, or infamous, ‘low profile.’

Then Cerrie came into the picture….

Cerrie was a contender.  Cerrie could beat Jesus at his own game, she liked to say.  Cerrie was so contrary, so contentious, so “Missouri Trailer-Trash” (her own words), she carved a swath of avoidance as she Hitler -marched down Main street spouting and spewing orders and criticism like a dyed in the wool old whore.

Cerrie Hartley was 63 years old and looked every minute of it.  Her face was lined and hard.  Her honey-blonde hair was thin and shoulder length, her hazel eyes her only pretty feature, although she kept then focused and hard, often narrowed as one tried unsuccessfully to avoid her glare.

As a politician in a small town, I well knew I needed Cerrie’s support.  I was loathe to coax it however, as she was an odious person, and I was very afraid of her volatility and her anger.  But I knew her soft spot.

She loved animals.

And I loved animals.

So, I invited Cerrie to walk her dog with me, and the story changed.

I expected to have to have to tell Cerrie about Chris and Norma, but Cerrie told me the story, from soup to nuts.  She told it in the unkindest way possible, telling me in no uncertain terms how I deserved the gossip and slander heaped upon me.  It was painful and difficult to hear, but I remembered my motive, and I simply listened, focusing on my Labradors ears, for some strange reason.  He walked ahead of me in a straight line, off-leash, as if understanding the need for a focal point.  I was in pain, psychic pain, and he knew it.  He was my focal point while I labored.  I knew – I surely and absolutely knew – if I took my eye off the ball for one moment by thinking about the absurdity of it all – these marginal and mean people getting their rocks off by putting me down and having me enable them by listening, I would lose my mind, kick their teeth in, and end up drooling on Thorazine somewhere, never sure of the why or wherefore this had happened.

So I disciplined myself.  I knew I had discipline.

I focused and I listened.  And I simply understood that I was the subject of pathetically childish jealousy, and that my group, my “friends”, had been led astray, and they had no backbone anyway, the typically “we don’t want to get our hands dirty type.”  Like the ethically troubled warrior Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, who was led by the Lord across the battlefield to kill his own family, who got clearly that he had to just ‘do it,’ that it was already done, and surrendered to the great understanding that he was not the doer, but the done. I was ready to roll.

I was being asked to take a high road not even understood by me.  I could do this.  I would play the game.  The way I had acted, with scruples and ethics, clearly was not working in this dark time, and I would and could come down to Chris’ and Norma’s level, and I could even outsmart Cerrie at her mean game.  I could outsmart Jesus if I had to.  I could definitely go for Judy O’Hare’s jugular:  her enormous Catholic guilt.

I got it.  I went for it.

It went something like this:

Part II:

To be continued….

From Southern Fried Spirituality

Wall-Eyed Miss Green 

Rennie and I went to our first “public” school in Orange Park, Florida for junior and senior years of high school.   Our two-room schoolhouse on Wadmalaw Island for grades 4 – 7 was public, yet it was the strictest, most pristine and most academic of all the varied learning experiences in my career.   One dared not screw up.  Miss Merle or Miss Mary’s wrath was not to be ignited, nor were the many tomes of literature, mathematics, mythology, Greek or Latin through which we were forced to plunder, ignored.   Johnny Whaley, Punky Seabrook, Chrystal Epps, Rennie and me comprised fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh grades.  My Mom cooked hot lunches, I set the tables, and at recess we adjourned under the oak tree with the tire swing and watched Johnny fart on his hand and smell it.

 

Anyway, more about Miss Merle and Miss Mary later.  This is about Miss Green, the dean of Students at Orange Park High School, where Rennie and I were fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be expelled our Senior year, for the unpleasant crime of cutting the testicles off our formaldehyde- preserved cat in biology lab and placing these jewels in the top drawer of our English teacher’s desk.  She subsequently screamed, had a heart attack, and ended up –  not dead –  where she deserved to be (so hideous was her language and grammar in this tacky, uncredentialed latrinae which tried to pass for a hall of academia); but she left the school, and good ole OP was sans an English teacher, and for that, we were expelled.

 

And the funniest part was not that Miss Green, whose right eye often faced the right wall with such tenacity that one could glimpse only a small whitish orb of what may have been left of a full brownish, blue or greenish pupil, but her left eye faced the left wall with the same grasping.  This left the unfortunate persons in her presence clamping down hard on their lips and anus when forced to be face to face with this gargoyle.  The laughter which invariably erupted at some point was going to be not only thunderous – it could also become gaseous.  Because when one twin tooted, the other twin’s toot wasn’t far behind.  And remember, we called them rootie toot toots in my family.  And rootie toot toots are not an average fart.  They are well – rootie toot toots.

 

When Miss Green sat Mothuh down in that way she had, we knew we were in for it.  Mothuh knew nothing about the wall-eyed bit, so Rennie and I waited primly, hands in our laps, legs crossed at the ankles, me to the right of our matriarch, Rennie somewhat behind the Green Lady. We waited for those eyeballs to begin traveling.

 

When Miss Green got going – parlance-wise, that is –  describing what we had done, forgetting that I had been the only student in the biology lab’s history to extract the brain  in one piece as we dissected these cats, Helen pursed her lips and started in on “Well, I told you not to put the twins together, especially as lab partners, blah blah blah,…” but suddenly, Miss Green’s left eye traveled in its socket a complete half-orbit.  We heard Helen gasp.  Then she swallowed.  Then she bit down hard on her bottom lip.  Rennie used this opportunity to titter.  This got Helen started somewhat.

 

I was always more serious, so I did not titter at this point.  I was to titter and guffaw a little later, because Rennie, once Miss Green’s right eye began its wandering also, started to mock-scoop God knows what from her vagina and into her mouth, eyeing our mother and trying, very successfully, to get her to laugh.

 

Mothuh, the great Helen, started to laugh.  She tried to stop, but the more she tried, the worse Rennie got.  Now Rennie started to mutter “panty puddin’” under her breath and scooped imaginary detritus with even broader strokes.  And this is when she let loose a rootie toot toot to rival the greatest rootie toot toot of all time.  She let loose a rip roaring fart unlike any I have heard now or since.  And we all lost it.  Miss Green had no eyeballs now.  Her eyes were rolled sideways into her head, and she was huffing and gasping and making astonished noises while we continued our ways.

 

What I do remember is that Mothuh asked, trying sincerely to stop laughing, that Miss Green NOT, whatever punishment she handed down to us bad, bad girls, NOT SEND US HOME.  ‘PLEASE, PLEASE, MISS GREEN, WHATEVER YOU DECIDE, DO NOT SEND THE GIRLS HOME.  HAVE THEM STAY AT SCHOOL AND DO DETENTION, OR SOMETHING.  PLEASE, DO NOT SEND THEM HOME.”

 

But, home we went, and we did not literally graduate from High School.  However, we both had already been accepted to colleges, both got graduate degrees, and both continued to mock -scoop panty puddin’ from our crotches and rip many rootie toot toots at inopportune, or opportune moments.

 

And Rennie and I both, I think, garnered extreme respect for our mother after that. 

Musings About Love: February 9, 2010

I am a fool for love.  I have been in love with God for a long, long time.  This is a most mixed and confusing blessing, it seems.

I don’t recommend this love.  It is coupled with a grief quite profound.  If truly examined, who in their right mind would want the Divine?   No one would want to go the distance, never knowing what the “distance” meant.  It would be insane to want to be the Beloved.   It could mean we would have to give up our right to whine.   It might also mean we might have to give up our cherished right to play the victim.  Another traitor to collective misery. 

I am told I burn through everyone’s “story” and defenses and for that, I am hated.  After all, who likes to be called out?  Who likes to be, as they indelicately say, “called on their shit?”  And I am certainly not one who does this on purpose, but I am one who detests dishonesty.  I also detest phoniness and people pleasing.  Who has the time for it? 

To find a clear ‘yes’ and a clear ‘no’ is the very definition of integrity.  How few have this integrity!  It is not conditional.  It is not negotiable.  It is not for sale.  And it makes our friends and family feel very safe since they know where they begin and where we end.  They know who we are and where they stand with us.  And if they have the capacity to be honest, they know they are loved.   And we are free to express the essence of Who We Are, which is Love.

It is never enough to put together a few days of facile forgiveness, where the heart sails high and the breath comes effortlessly like the breeze.  But couple the days with a string of open days, vulnerable moments and hours, when the very mystery of life leaves one speechless and dumbfounded in its wonder, unable to conjure in pictures or words the awe inspiring enlivenment of one breath breathed in this way….These moments transform and alchemize; they are the face of Love.

Recommended Reading List

 

Energy Medicine

Vibrational Medicine, Dr. Richard Gerber, MD.

Touch For Health, John Thie, D.C.

Energy Medicine, Donna Eden and David Feinstein, PhD.,

Energy Medicine for Women, Donna Eden and David Feinstein, PhD.

Chinese Medicine

Between Heaven and Earth,  Harriet Beinfield, L.Ac., & Efrem Korngold, L.Ac., O.M.D.

 The Web that Has No Weaver, Ted Kaptchuk, O.M.D. 

Five Elements Six Conditions, Gilles Marin 

PMS, Its Cause, Diagnosis and Treatment According to Traditional Chinese Medicine,  Bob Flaws 

Wood Becomes Water:  Chinese Medicine in Everyday Life, Gail Reichstein

 

Nutrition 

Food and Healing, Annemarie Colbin

The Macrobiotic Way, Michio Kushi

Your Body Never Lies, Michio Kushi

Spiritual

Play of Consciousness, Baba Muktananda

Course in Miracles, Foundation for Inner Peace

Loving What Is, Byron Katie

The Heart of Meditation, Swami Durgananda 

Disappearance of the Universe, Gary Renard

Power V Force, David Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D.,

Miscellaneous

Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Estes Pinkola 

Western Body, Eastern Mind, Anodea Judith

Sacred Psychology, Jean Houston

Embracing the Beloved, Stephen Levine

The Tao of Lau Tzu, Translated by Stephen Mitchell

When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron

Healing Diet for Doggies

Healing Diet for Doggies

 

Four cups short Grain Brown Rice

 

Two cups Whole Barley (not Pearl)

 

12 cups water

 

3 – 4 large organic Yams or Sweet Potatoes, diced

 

One large head Organic Kale (can use Collards – no spinach)

 

6-8 Tablespoons Tablespoon good quality Flax or Olive Oil (This is important for Lineoleic Acid and “good” fats – don’t omit it)

 

4 – 5  Lbs. Lean Meat or Fish

 

(You can cook meat in a separate pot if you want, but I cook everything together….)

 

Cook all  ingredients in large soup pot.  Bring to boil, lower heat to simmer for about 45 minutes to 1 /1/2 hours, until all water is absorbed.   Mix everything well.  You may need to add more water.  I sometimes “flavor” with garlic powder.

 

Can be put into individual portions and frozen.   Doggies love this!  Use marrow bones for teeth.  No treats at all, if a healing diet is employed…..IT IS ESSENTIAL NOT TO USE SUPPLEMENTS, TEAS, VITAMINS, ETC., IF CANCER, SKIN CONDITIONS ARE PRESENT.  WAIT FOR ABOUT THREE WEEKS UNTIL THE CONDITION IS CLEARED TO USE ANYTHING ELSE.

 

Brown rice is good for intestinal health; sort of “brushing everything through”.  Also good for dogs who tend to have allergies.

 

Barley is essential for dogs with an internal “damp” condition – or conditions with pancreatic or spleen difficulties.  This stabilizes them.  Also cleans out steroids (like prednisone) as well as other medications.

 

Kale is essential for liver vitality and health, and for the breakdown of the other foods.

 

Sweet potatoes, or yams, are a root vegetable for the spleen and pancreas.

 

Flax or olive oil contains lineoleic acid.  This is a“good” fat, as it is not a saturated fat.  It is essential for metabolism, coats, eyes, and for breaking down enzymes in other foods.

 

Dogs will poop a lot at first!  They have only 12 feet of intestines, compared to 32 feet for a human!

 

An average “feed” for a lab or Golden Retriever is a well packed 2 cups of this food,  twice per day.

 

Katharine Manning

818.248.7258

 

 

 

Healing Diet for Doggies

 

Four cups short Grain Brown Rice

 

Two cups Whole Barley (not Pearl)

 

12 cups water

 

3 – 4 large organic Yams or Sweet Potatoes, diced

 

One large head Organic Kale (can use Collards – no spinach)

 

6-8 Tablespoons Tablespoon good quality Flax or Olive Oil (This is important for Lineoleic Acid and “good” fats – don’t omit it)

 

4 – 5  Lbs. Lean Meat or Fish

 

(You can cook meat in a separate pot if you want, but I cook everything together….)

 

Cook all  ingredients in large soup pot.  Bring to boil, lower heat to simmer for about 45 minutes to 1 /1/2 hours, until all water is absorbed.   Mix everything well.  You may need to add more water.  I sometimes “flavor” with garlic powder.

 

Can be put into individual portions and frozen.   Doggies love this!  Use marrow bones for teeth.  No treats at all, if a healing diet is employed…..IT IS ESSENTIAL NOT TO USE SUPPLEMENTS, TEAS, VITAMINS, ETC., IF CANCER, SKIN CONDITIONS ARE PRESENT.  WAIT FOR ABOUT THREE WEEKS UNTIL THE CONDITION IS CLEARED TO USE ANYTHING ELSE.

 

Brown rice is good for intestinal health; sort of “brushing everything through”.  Also good for dogs who tend to have allergies.

 

Barley is essential for dogs with an internal “damp” condition – or conditions with pancreatic or spleen difficulties.  This stabilizes them.  Also cleans out steroids (like prednisone) as well as other medications.

 

Kale is essential for liver vitality and health, and for the breakdown of the other foods.

 

Sweet potatoes, or yams, are a root vegetable for the spleen and pancreas.

 

Flax or olive oil contains lineoleic acid.  This is a“good” fat, as it is not a saturated fat.  It is essential for metabolism, coats, eyes, and for breaking down enzymes in other foods.

 

Dogs will poop a lot at first!  They have only 12 feet of intestines, compared to 32 feet for a human!

 

An average “feed” for a lab or Golden Retriever is a well packed 2 cups of this food,  twice per day.