Alternative healing: meditation, crystals, aromatherapy

[Maria]

Tigg is talking about a post I made on her thread over on B77. I'll repost it here, in case anyone is interested- since it seems the conversation has moved here.

problem is the headaches have increased, shields work on lots of levels, I let mine down and this morning the pain brought me literally to my knees, until I put my shield in place again.

I've got a story about shields. Two years ago, my husband contracted Lyme disease, a disease carried by ticks. It causes joint inflammation and muscle pains, and he hurt a LOT. After he was diagnosed, they put him on a course of antibiotics for a month. After the month was over, he was still in terrible pain, so they upped the dosage and said to continue the treatment for another month. Instead of getting better, he got worse. After the second month was over, they started him on a third month- with the warning that if this time didn't work, it would be very strong intravenous antibiotics the next month- and he'd have to carry around an IV stand with him for a couple of weeks.

About this time, I finally convinced him to take energy healing seriously, and to try doing it to himself. The first step is to lower your shields, and this was terribly difficult for him, as they'd been the only thing helping him function as the pain got worse and worse. I was with him when he was working on lowering the shields and as they finally went down, I'd never seen him in such pain before. It really, really hurt him. Tears were streaming down his face- and he's a big, strong man who (almost) never, never cries.

Anyway, he got the shields down that first time and allowed himself to feel all that pain his body had been sending him, and went through the visualizations involved in exchanging universal energy... and felt better. After that, he was able to drop the shields more readily and did self healing at least once a day for a while. He soon quit hurting and stopped the third round of antibiotics before it was done and was symptom free for a year and a half. (Lyme disease can come and go at random for the rest of your life. Some people are never symptom free) The next time the symptoms flared up, instead of *blocking* it, he did the self-healing routine (after I reminded him!) and cut short the relapse. He only had a couple of days of pain.

I think that when you block pain with shields you are blocking some of the information flow to and from the brain that your body/mind NEEDS to communicate in order to heal itself. I think also that healing energy is partially blocked by pain shields, which is why you have to lower them before energy healing can work.

Pain is like a small child. If you ignore the complaint, the cries get louder and louder until you can't ignore it anymore. Sometimes all you have to do is listen to the pain and it is lessened. If you are very good at ignoring pain, then the levels can be overwhelming when you are finally forced to pay attention to the problem. Sometimes, agreeing to feel the pain and accept it as yours is the best thing you can do to speed healing. Blocking the pain without fixing the underlying problem is a surefire recipe for making the damage worse. Yes, I am speaking from experience....

Some of the energy healing methods I've read about say to use a "circle" when healing- but that didn't work for me at first, because I envisioned Star Trek like force fields, that nothing could get through- so *nothing* got through. If you use that sort of protective field, you need to make it semi-permiable in order to let good energy through. I suspect that that sort of thing is only necessary in urban environments, to keep bad vibes from close neighbors out. The only time I ever felt the need for such a technique was when my son was in the hospital for 9 days. In a rural environment like my own, I never use such protection. It simply isn't needed.

All I was trying to say, Tiggerty One, is that while shields can protect you and help you get through difficulties, they can also impede healing. You have to let down the defenses and pull in the good, clean energy and then focus your will on what you want to happen. Focusing the will without letting the shields down doesn't help much, and letting the shields down without a plan does little more. You have to WANT something to happen when you let those shields down.

Some healing techniques I've read about advocate just trusting the universal energy to know what needs doing and take care of things when you let the shields down, but that seems a bit .... well... wishy washy to me. I want specifics! Like now while I'm on a diet and I do the self-healing thing, once my shields are down and I'm drawing in *good* energy- I envision my metabolism speeding up and my blood sugar stabilizing and any other house keeping details I can think of- like my skin shrinking to fit. I could just *wish* to "lose weight", but I like to think it works better this way.

Now when you don't know the cause of what's going on, that's not possible. My husband is having a relapse of Lyme pain yesterday and today, and when we work on it, we don't know the cause of what's going on. There are no microbes at work in him any more, and anti-inflammatory drugs don't help the joint pain, so the best we can do is just wish for healing. And smoothing out the energy flows in him. He works on opening up, and I try to feel where the energy is knotted up and try to get it flowing smoothly again. I usually can't even feel the chakra's energy flow (I'm really not very good at this healing stuff! Just obsessed with it. ) but last night I did! There were definite tingles as I passed my hands where the chakras are said to be. They felt weird.

When I tried to smooth out the energy flows, the feeling kind of reminded of me of .... like.... well, did you ever have a child's toy where there was a picture with a plastic cover over it and metal filings were inside the plastic cover and you used a magnetic wand to drag the filings around and put mustaches on the face and such? It felt like I was doing that, sorta. That I was dragging my hands through his stalled energy and the bits were reluctantly following the pull of my hands as I swept them on out of his body.

His eyes were closed, but he said he could feel what I was doing, even though I wasn't physically touching him, just holding my hands a couple of inches over his body.

Anyway, I'm definitely in the early learning phase still. I thought I'd never really feel the chakras, like the books say, and yet yesterday I really did. It was kinda funny, his throat chakra had almost no energy associated with it at all... and he really doesn't talk much, either. I wonder if that's why?

I don't know how much of what I read about energy healing is real or not, but I try to give things a chance. They say long distance healing is just as effective as face to face, but the one time I've tried it on someone with their knowledge, they reported no change. I've tried sending distance 'healing energy' to people who are really in trouble, without their knowledge but who knows how effective that is? It's not like I can ask for an evaluation afterwards. And from what I've read, you can't really do something like that to anyone and have it be effective unless they know about it and let you proceed. That's what shields are really about, I think. Protecting you from unauthorized influence from others.

[Maria]

Update on my husband's Lyme relapse. I was talking to my boss about it (he has a PhD in infectious diseases) and mentioned that there can't be any microbes at work anymore, and he stared at me in astonishment and proceeded to explain about the many different diseases where the bacteria or viruses go dormant and into hiding IN THE BODY and reoccur later, and that it's very probable that his relapse is due to the Lyme disease organisms becoming active again.

The joint pain my husband is feeling is a direct effect of the toxicity of the bacterial activity. The fact that he got over his last relapse in a couple of days indicates that his immune system kicked in and wiped out the active bacteria. There is no reason to assume that this won't happen again this time. I recommended that my husband concentrate on boosting his immune system when he does meditative healing. That oughta do it!

I also told him he's like Frodo, and his "wound" may never fully heal- and that he may just have to live with being ill and in pain for a few days at the same time every year.

[TIGG]

I also told him he's like Frodo, and his "wound" may never fully heal- and that he may just have to live with being ill and in pain for a few days at the same time every year.

I guess as long as he knows what it is and how to sort it it is managable, but it must be tedious for him to have these reoccurances

a side note: I am trying color therapy, in that I am wearing more color and have ditched the 'black'. My spirits are certainly rising, and the other day I wore "TIGGER legs'
I have a pair of orange and black striped tights and when I feel particularly silly or like I need to bounce I put on my TIGGer legs

I also just purchased new bed linen, a cheery GOLD and White for my bedroom, ( warm and cheery) and taupe for the spare bedroom, ( should be cooling and restful).

Still drinking the Hawthorn, Gingko, Aldeke, Dandelion and some other stuff.

Eye sight tests next Tuesday. I have lost the blurred patches in front of my eyes, and my visions seems more consistent across the field, but that's just my impression. Although I am wearing my glasses more and more., even for closer work than what I did before. its all just too confusing.

Have resolved to do some chakra work with crystals this weekend, and burn some nice incense.

for maria's husband

and a quick bouncing hug for Maria

[grumpydwarfmom]

Hey, hiya Maria.

It's great that you've found that you can control your husband's symptoms with the energy. I've been working with this stuff for awhile, and I believe it might even eventually kill the bugs hiding out in the deep tissues, perhaps with 1-hour sessions every other day for several months to a year. But ya know what? Sometimes its better and simpler just to avail ourselves of other resources--like a six-week course of oral doxycycline--and to run the energy to supplement/offset the effects of medication.

Chronic Lyme sufferers endure joint damage, memory loss, and a plethora of life-sapping problems. Wouldn't life be simpler if your husband just didn't have to deal with any of that? Lyme disease is curable, not just treatable, and I hope you and your husband don't resign yourselves to living with the disease.

You may find, like some Lyme patients I know, that the biggest problem is finding a doctor who will take your complaints seriously and educate themselves on effective treatment protocol, or who will at least provide what an educated patient asks. Be patient and persistent.

Love,
gdmom

[Maria]

Hi GDM!

The specialist we went to was the regional "expert" on Lyme at the teaching hospital here, so I think we were being taken seriously and had a good doc.

My husband went through several courses of antibiotics for 3 or 4 months and it wasn't helping him at all until he started the energy healing stuff. He recovered from this latest relapse in about 3 days, so I think it was really just a matter of his immune system kicking in and taking care of business after the bugs reactivated for whatever reason. Or maybe he was re-exposed?

I don't think he's just controlling symptoms- otherwise he would have to keep re-doing the meditative energy healing frequently. As he's really not interested in this stuff- it takes a significant pain level for him to pay attention and do what he needs to do. I don't know why his immune system needs this jumpstart to get moving against the Lyme- but apparently it does. Maybe there's some *stealth* aspect to the Lyme bacterium that makes it appear benign to the immune system until nudged into action by meditation? Who knows?

So you are into this sort of stuff too? What do you do? Is there a specific system you follow? What sort of techniques work for you? I'd love to hear how you work with energy, as I find I need to change visualizations frequently for increased effectiveness.

[grumpydwarfmom]

I don't think he's just controlling symptoms-

No, I don't think so either--poor word choice on my part. I think he's raising the resonant frequency of his energy system enough to actually kill the bugs, but keep reading:

My husband went through several courses of antibiotics for 3 or 4 months

Not to belabor the point, but several courses for 3 or 4 months might not have the same effect as a continuous 6-week or 3-month course of an ntibiotic known to cross the blood/brain barrier. Most do not, although the Lyme spirochete does--which is why it's so hard to kill. It simply hunkers down in the brain and waits for the antibiotics to clear, then reemerges. A short course of drugs kills the bugs in the bloodstream and superficial tissues, but does not reach those entrenched more deeply, so the reatment is only temporarily effective. And that is my totally UNqualified opinion based entirely on out-of-date research and folksy anecdotes , so I'll stop questioning your physician's recommendations, and just speculate that perhaps something similar occurs when your husband meditates. He is able to clear most of the nasties, but it will take persistence and time to completely eradicate them. (Or a sustained, saturating course of doxycycline. )

As for the energy work, yes! I'm into this stuff too, and here's a belated thank you for starting this thread. I've long wanted a place to come and compare notes with other like-minded weirdos! :P:)

What do you do? Is there a specific system you follow? What sort of techniques work for you?

Oy, too many questions to answer all at once! That would be one long, boring post. For now, I'll just say I was trained in a modality called Regenesis, and though I've explored other processes, that's my foundation and favorite application. But ya know, it's all good. Reiki, acupuncture, laying-on-of-hands, visualizations, meditation--it all works. I've learned stuff from you, too, whether you aware of teaching or not. Thanks!

[Maria]

*googles "Regenesis"*

OK, that sounds cool! I must find a book about it!

One of these days, I'll work up the gumption to actually attend a real class about this sort of stuff, but such opportunities are few and far between in the Midwest. Meanwhile, I make do with books.

Errrrrrrr... I'm not finding anything that sounds applicable- unless, maybe, this one?

[grumpydwarfmom]

Wow, copyright 1917! That looks very weird. I'll armwrestle you for the one remaining copy!

But, it has nothing to do with "our" Regenesis. Alas, I don't know of any books on the subject out there, although if you go through a workshop you get a nice "manual" that basically leads you through the process and application step-by-step. "Put your left-hand tripod (a tripod is formed with the thumb and first two fingers) on Landmark A; put your right-hand tripod on Landmark B. Breathe until the energy is balanced."

It's a very cookbook, follow-the-recipe-and-you-can't-go-wrong approach. At the same time, it's a flexible process, very amenable to intuitive guidance. The hard parts are first, overcoming our acquired obstacles that make us think "this can't possibly work," and secondly, tuning in to the feel of energy flow (and there are visualizations that help us tune in). You've already done the hard parts, I think. So even though you may not find a book on it, I think you could figure this out and run with it in a trice--that is, if you wanna try it. I don't recall you asking for an online tutorial! And not that you need one--you're finding your own way quite well, it seems to me. This might be one more trick to put in your bag, that's all.

[Maria]

There's plenty of used ones, no need to armwrestle! It does sound kind of interesting, doesn't it? Even though it's off topic.

Is there an online tutorial for Regenesis? That didn't occur to me.... That might be interesting to do if I get motivated again. Right now, I'm kind of in a blah state, with regards to self healing. I've had a spot of poison ivy on my leg for weeks, and I just can't get motivated to push it to get better. I fall asleep every time I even get started trying to do anything about it. The same with a small wart on my little finger. As long as the poison ivy doesn't itch, and the wart can be trimmed flat and doesn't show, it just doesn't seem necessary to push things to get better faster than they normally would. My automatic systems oughta be able to heal some things without help!

[Lhaewin]

I haven´t read the entire thread, but will do that when I have more time.

I am using homeopathy and acupuncture in my professional life and it does work - mostly and sometimes better than the usual treatments. Especially the Traditional Chinese Medicine is very effective - and the concept of the flowing Qi (life energy) can be found in some other therapies such as Reiki and Yoga.

Instead of taking cortisone pills (life-long) against hayfever and asthma (as an example), you can almost completely heal it with the Chinese Medicine - comprising herbal tea, a change in the nutrition and maybe acupuncture.

Homeopathy did work especially for my daughter´s migraine (she started at the age of 11) and both children´s chronic ear infections, after surgery and antibiotics had entirely failed.

[TIGG]

Lhaewin

You mentioned in 'your professional life'.

are you a health professional?

I hear acupunture doesn't hurt even though it is needles...but needles.. scary things they be.

I find Feng Shui to be another fascinating subject that I dabble in.

Order and tidiness certainly affect our emotional health and the chinese approach to the placement and alignment of objects is so 'natural'.

[Maria]

Our chiropractor used acupuncture on my husband to fix his carpel tunnel syndrome. He claimed it didn't hurt. She also attached small electrodes to needles at each end of the zone she was inserting them on. The flow of current was important for some reason. He said that didn't hurt, either, but it was REALLY weird when his body had enough of the treatment, and these needles would spontaneously come out of the backs of his arms, without him moving any muscles that we could see. They just..... came out! It was very strange. He healed fast with that treatment, though, after months of nothing helping that an MD was recommending.

[grumpydwarfmom]

Is there an online tutorial for Regenesis?

Well, if there ain't , there oughta be! Maybe I'll see what I can come up with. It'll be awhile though--my schedule is filling up again.

Lhaewin, just out of curiosity, have you encountered any problems in recent years with your homeopathic remedies ceasing to work? For the past 5 years or so, I've been having to buy fresh remedies whenever I need one. It seems they "go bad" quite quickly, and a couple of other people I've talked to have mentioned the same. There's been some speculation about whether the increase in cell phone waves over the past years has been zapping them.

Or maybe it's just that the house I moved into 5 years ago was formerly owned by a witch who did some "bad high energy stuff," as the psychic who did a reading over my remedies said.

[Lhaewin]

TIGG, I am a midwife.
Acupuncture can hurt for a moment, but not for the whole session - there are some points which are very sensitive.

Feng Shui is just one part of the Traditional Chinese Medical System. It bases on the same theoretical background as acupuncture.

Maria, it depends on the energetic status of the person, if the needles are being connected to electrodes or if they are being heated or just used in the "normal" way everyone would associate with acupuncture. That´s interesting that the needles came out by themselves in the end. Quite a few pregnant women suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome and acupuncture often does the trick.

grumpydwarfmom (is it possible to abbreviate your name?): I know that mobile phone or microwaves can spoil the homeopathic remedies and then you might have to get new ones. Well, you can never be sure because it´s also possible that we chose the wrong remedy when it didn´t work.

[Lidless]

grumpydwarfmom (is it possible to abbreviate your name?)

She'll probably answer to grumpydwarfmo if you try.

[Lhaewin]

grumpydwarfmom (is it possible to abbreviate your name?)

She'll probably answer to grumpydwarfmo if you try.

Thank you so much, Lidless! This was very helpful!

[Inanna]

Being in India, so-called alternative healing processes come very natural to me. Ginger, yoghurt, turmeric, garlic, asofaetida... these are oft-used curing techniques.

I was doing Yoga for a couple of years and it really helped my migraine. Like a dumb-wit I have stopped and now have to restart ( stupid me). My parents and sis follow "Pranayam" (breathing techniques) religiously and have benefitted massively from it. My aunt is a Reiki expert (I intend to learn from her once I move to the US) and all of us swear by Homeopathy!!

Homeo has solved a few of my major problems - starting with migraine, recursive (and very painful) ameobiasis and low BP, and right now I am taking it for a gynae problem (after trying allopathic for 6 months )

Other than that, I talk myself out of headaches a lot, especially if I can catch them early.... especially if you wake up really early morning with the beginnings of one... I can talk-cum-sleep it off in an hour. Sometimes not.

[Maria]

Or maybe it's just that the house I moved into 5 years ago was formerly owned by a witch who did some "bad high energy stuff," as the psychic who did a reading over my remedies said.

Well, if that's the case... that's pretty easy to "clean up" from what I've read.

[grumpydwarfmom]

Okay, I'm back. Sorry for the long pause!

grumpydwarfmom (is it possible to abbreviate your name?): I know that mobile phone or microwaves can spoil the homeopathic remedies and then you might have to get new ones. Well, you can never be sure because it´s also possible that we chose the wrong remedy when it didn´t work.

First of all, you can abbreviate my handle anyway you please. People use "GDM" or "grumpy." I sometimes sign posts "gdmom," because it looks like "good mom," which assuages my feelings of parental inadequacy, and which is probably more than you cared to learn about someone at such an early stage of dialogue, and which is certainly more than I usually care to divulge. :D Until Lidless's suggestion (LOL), I'd never been called a "mo," as I am not a Mormon but a Papist. Given the context however, I'm sure he didn't intend a religious slur. :)

As for the remedies, yes--it took a while to figure out that I wasn't simply sucking at prescribing. But after a few cases where the indications were very clear (e.g. Arnica, Belladonna, and some other simple cases), I took some remedies around and had them muscle-tested, for whatever that's worth. Everyone was unanimous--the remedies were inactive. Granted it's not a conclusive test, but it undermines the confidence I once had in my "pharmacy." But I'm glad you haven't heard of more failing remdies--it's better being an isolated case than a symptom of a widespread problem.

Maria: Well, do tell! I never really considered the psychic's advice as anything other than entertainment, and I don't even remember what she said to do.

[Maria]

It was something I read in a book called "Psychic Self Defense", I think. Their formula was to invoke a particular archangel to the north, the south, the east and the west for protection and then evision a dome of energy enclosing your house and then visualizing a white light sweeping slowly from one end of the house to the other, dissipating any negative energy in it's path, until you get to the other end of the house and are done.

I wasn't familiar enough with angels of any sort for that to work for me- so I envisioned comic book characters. "Storm" from X-men guarded to the west end of the house, since the prevailing wind here is from the west.

I got tired of that pretty quick, though, and just visualize myself facing north and bringing up a wall of energy there, and repeat for the other directions and do the dome. I do envision the white light going from one end of the house to the other, kicking out any unpleasantness that might be there.

Sometimes, instead of the white light, I envision that thing the computer does when it defragments... you know, when you can actually watch the 'puter rewriting the code and packing it in more efficiently? Sometimes I think of what I'm doing like that: that the energy is picking up every little particle in the house, looking it over and rewriting it to where everything is *good* again.

You know, it just occurred to me that I haven't done that this year yet--- and my kitties have fleas for the first time in a couple of years..... Do you think biting insects would actually be affected by this technique? Hmmmmmm.... Must try this, tonight, and see if their flea problem dies down. We've been using the flea comb on them, but the number of fleas is noticibly higher than recent previous years.

Anyway, that's all there is to it, if there was anything *bad* there to begin with... which is, of course, unprovable. Except for the fleas!