Mother's Milk and H2O2

 

People I trust encouraged me to meet with a medical intuitive named Richard. I met him hoping that he could give me some insights into my physical condition. For example, I would like to know, are there any other problems in my system that contribute to my Parkinson’s?

When I first heard his story he described an ability to “see” a person’s health conditions, for example, glowing red blood vessels in a woman with high blood pressure. As well as being a medical intuitive, Richard found as he started to work with people, that he was connecting to the spirits of dead family and loved ones. They speak to him and can advise and help the living person. It has become his primary work. His business cards reads: Spirit Medium/Medical Intuitive.

We met, just the two of us, and I tape recorded the session. I told him I was interested in a health reading, but I did not tell him anything about my health history.

 Gradually, with great concentration, his eyes moving back and forth, but not looking directly at me, he described my condition. He accurately stated that I was a teacher and that I had been interrupted in my career for health reasons. He described a disconnection or lack of communication between my nerve connections throughout my body and in my brain. 

After describing what sounded to me to be the symptoms and sources of PD he said that he also saw an environment or “atmosphere” in my body that was ripe for the formation of tumors or cysts or stones. There was sludge, bad bacteria, and accumulated waste building up inside me. He eventually pinpointed its location as being primarily in my liver and gallbladder.

He ended by telling me what my body was missing and giving me instructions for adding supplements to my diet. My reserves were depleted, he said. I was particularly in need of B vitamins and iodine. Along with adding those to my diet, he recommended acidophilus, colostrum and food grade hydrogen peroxide. These were to nourish and oxygenate my cells. I had never heard of H2O2 as an internal remedy. I read about it online and was amazed by its value for many conditions. Colostrum also, is new to me as a supplement that anyone can take. It's derived from the first milking after a cow gives birth. I thought Colostrum was available only from human mothers for their newborn babies.

I am getting ready to begin a daily morning routine taking these cleansing, and nourishing dietary aids.  It may not be delicious, and it may be tedious, but it may be helpful. I hope it will be helpful, in a big way. I asked Richard about the foods and supplements I eat. Is eating them the main thing I need to do in order to improve my health including my nervous system? He said, “It always is.”

I did not ask for his service as a spirit medium. However, a spirit, he said, did speak to him, and that spirit was my grandfather - my father’s father.

I’ll write about that in my next post.

                

           

The Parkinson Personality

      

 I have always been someone who questions myself why I do things, say things, feel things, and why things happen as they do in my life. I also spend a lot of time wondering why people react to me in the ways they do, especially when it is feels uncomfortable or negative.

            This may be, as Janice Walton-Hadlock suggests, because the “fight or flight” response is permanently turned on, or as the Chinese and energy healers might say, triple warmer is working overtime inside of me. Janice says that it is always this way for the PDer. In other words, perhaps I am in an anxious state when I am asking these questions. She suggests it is part of a Parkinson personality, a personality type that is pervasive in our population.

            My brain does buzz with a steady stream of thoughts; sometimes worries, but my interest in the personal are not all a bad thing. Recently, I dug up Riso and Hudson’s books on personality types because I remembered reading and enjoying one of their books 25 years ago. Now, as then, I want to understand myself better.

            The book to start with is Discovering Your Personality Type, which contains a questionnaire with 144 questions. It tells you how to assess yourself to learn which is your personality type and what is your “wing.”  Each of the nine types has two possible wings, so it is possible to fine-tune the result to one of 27 types.

            I remember finding Riso and Hudson’s descriptions of types in healthy, average and unhealthy modes to be illuminating for myself and in understanding my family. I also liked the potential for growth, which they call integration, or decline, which they call disintegration. The personality types are arranged on the ancient enneagram symbol and by following its pattern of movement one can learn something of your possible goal in life.              

            The second book I have is Personality Types, which contains in depth analyses of the types.

            After taking the questionnaire it was revealed that I am a number 5 with a 4 wing. Now if that corresponds with a Parkinson’s Personality I wouldn’t be surprised. But a HEALTHY 5 with a 4 wing or a 5 who is moving towards an 8… that would be different. 

           How does one get healthy? That’s what this blog is about. Learning about all aspects of your own personality is certainly helpful in becoming healthy.

            I'm wondering. Am I getting there?

           

Heart/Art Work

Why have I not been blogging? Because I, like most Americans, have been busy. But, I hope this is a substantial busyness, one with a purpose and a long-term goal. It is, that with the right activity, I will complete a transformation, even a miracle: remission of Parkinson’s Disease.

So, this summer I have been playing with visual art techniques such as clay, french dyes on silk, stone carving, multi-media drawings in a sketchbook. Then there are my domestic arts projects including gardening, furniture restoration, decorating, and culinary. All of these I consider “following my heart.” I have grown more and more heedful of this advice I was given by the PD Recovery staff in Santa Cruz.

            On the other hand there is work that I do more specifically geared towards helping my body or whatever it is (spirit? psyche?) that needs healing. This takes a little time only in my day compared to the other activities, but I do this, almost, every morning: 

Donna Eden energy exercises, specific ones that my energy worker gave me to do for homework, such as tracing all different sizes of figure eights in the air with my hands and spooning my feet with a metal spoon.

            Work out on my “Gazelle,” hopefully twice a day.

            Abs exercises for my potbelly.

            Tai Chi Chih, usually outside in bare feet.

            Some weeks I may go to as many as three yoga classes, or go for a walk or bike ride.

            It’s not much, but that is all the time I am willing to give to exercise at the moment. I am feeling well and able enough to be active. I am thankful for that. And the activity I choose is often something I love to do: creative work.

pot by Mochizuki Shu

Shiatsu & Tai Chi Chih

 

Although I am now taking drugs for PD I have not given up on other treatments. I have continued with therapy based on traditional Eastern medicine that works on the theories of energy or chi and the channels through which it moves in the body. Perhaps because of these therapies I think I am beginning to physically sense the presence of this energy in my body, something I previously could not.

My PD friend Janet, who I found through PatientsLikeMe, * recommended a Shiatsu student who needed to practice on a willing subject. I now get weekly Shiatsu from Matt who comes to my house, sets up a pad on the floor and spends a good hour or more pressing on acupressure points, stretching my limbs and joints, and kneading muscle knots in an effort to treat my chronic and more temporary complaints, and to increase energy flow. It’s not always comfortable, but I am usually stoic and don’t say a word of complaint. At other times I fall asleep, so it’s sometimes nice.

The other energy related therapy is something like exercise, though my teacher says it is not. I have returned to take a series of beginner classes in Tai Chi Chih. ** It has been a year since I took Siobhan’s class, and I haven’t tried it since the all day workshop I took last summer, but it is coming more easily and quickly to me now. Often, while I am practicing, I notice a new feeling in various parts of my body that seems to me to be energy moving. It feels as though I am a little dizzy, or that something is filling or expanding inside me. I feel that there is indeed energy present when I am scooping up energy or moving it with my hands as I do the movements of Tai Chi Chih.

After three years, I am going again to see Diana. She uses the energy healing techniques of Donna Eden in her work.  Over months of visits to her office, she introduced me to many ideas that were unusual and hard for me to accept at the time: the Tibetan rings, the holes in my aura, stuff stuck in my aura. Bizarre! It was to me bizarre, but I had some faith mixed with my skepticism. None of it helped me after months of weekly treatments and many dollars, or not that I could tell anyway. Now, I am going back. I want her to assess me again to see what she sees in my energy system. And I want to talk.

None of the alternative therapy work I did before the drugs (Qi Gong, Feldenkrais, Reiki, Tai Na or FSR "Forceless Spontaneous Release," meditation, etc. see past blogs) seemed to be of help in halting or reversing the symptoms of PD and the symptoms continued to worsen. Why do I hold out hope for any of it in helping me now? I don’t know. I have a feeling I guess, that there is something to it all, reinforced lately with the new sensations in my body. It may be a process of growth in me that tells me that now I might be ready to change on a very fundamental level. It’s a very slow process for me, but yes, I still have hope. I believe that healing is possible for PD, but it is up to me to change something inside in order to heal myself.

             

*Online site that helps people communicate and share treatments with others

who have the same health issue and their caregivers.

**A simplified form of Tai Chi created by Justin Stone consisting of 19 movements and one pose.

Art as Therapy for PD

Making art has re-entered my life. Working in the clay studio, now that the weather is warmer, has been exciting. I have made the largest piece I’ve ever attempted – a sculpture of a flower that is about 24 inches tall. Not huge, but it has to be in two parts to fit in my kiln.

            
Robert Rodger’s Parkinson’s Recovery radio blog had an interview with Nancy Tingey, an artist who studied art therapy when her husband developed PD. The painting group for PDers that she formed in Australia has been copycatted all over  the country. In the interview she speaks about the benefits of art making, specifically painting in easing the symptoms and improving the well-being of PD sufferers. A very good interview, it reinforced the sense that the clay studio is therapy for me for multiple reasons, primarily for the joy of focusing on the creation of a personal expressive object whether a painting or sculpture. I recommend this interview to all readers:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/parkinsons-recovery/2012/04/25/painting-with-parkinsons

There is also a two-part video on Youtube about her work called "Making a Mark; art as therapy for people with Parkinson's" :

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Making+a+Mark%3B+art+as+therapy+for+people+with+Parkinson%27s.

Wouldn't it be great if there were such groups in our country?

A New Rx

Since my last post about three months ago I have had a change in medication. Much sooner than I expected, though I had expected it one day, the Mirapex lost its efficacy. I was back to stumbling and struggling to walk even though the drug dosage had been raised gradually to its highest limit. I made an appointment with Dr. V who again as expected, prescribed a new drug to be taken: Sinemet.

            I had heard of Sinemet from my PD dance classmates. I also knew that it was a levadopa drug and the most commonly taken drug by Parkinson patients. After some discussion about other drugs I had read about during which he was fairly patient (I am a cooperative patient at last) and about drug studies he had read, I began to add a half of a 3 mg. Sinemet pill three times a day in addition to the 4.5 mg. of Mirapex I was already taking. He told me that the combination of the two was beneficial because they each performed different actions in the brain.           

            Within a couple of days the Sinemet kicked in. I could walk again. I called Dr. V two weeks later and was told to continue the course.

            I must say the drugs have been a big influence on my daily life. As I look at my last post in November of 2011 I notice that since then I have been veering from the contemplative to a more active mode. Is it only a physical response to improved mobility or is it affecting my psyche, my spirit? These are drugs that act in the brain after all where, I’m guessing, at least some of “spirit” exists.

            Anyway, I hope spirit exists inside me somewhere and is everywhere in all the activities in which I’m engaged. Anyone should not have to go to church or meeting or meditation position to be spiritual. Ideally it should be a part of our daily life - in gardening, cooking, cleaning or talking to a friend. Is this an impossible goal?

            Gurdjieff wrote, “Remember yourself always and everywhere.”

            I can only wonder, am I anywhere near doing that? I am living life with a spirit of joy almost everyday. That may be something like it.

Spiritual Matters

I don’t know if I am a spiritual person, that is someone who has developed their spirituality or is innately spiritual, but I have been spending more and more time involved in study of spiritual matters.

            Recently, it was prodded by the Santa Cruz group, the PD Recovery therapists. When I visited them in 2010 the spiritual aspect of healing was pervasive in their approach, particularly from JJ who has a wide-ranging knowledge of religions and spirituality. Two of the fundamental instructions they gave me were to meditate and pray daily, and I have tried to do so, with varying regularity.

            But earlier in my life, beginning in the mid 80’s, I was part of a study group that discussed the writings of George Gurdjieff, whose teaching is called the Fourth Way. The Fourth Way is a system of self-development. I also met privately with the group’s teacher who did bio-energetic work based on the psychotherapist/researcher Wilhelm Reich’s ideas. I still highly respect all of these teachings, but I don’t know that they took me very far in my own development. Perhaps I was just dabbling, or something kept me from truly absorbing and healing from the teaching and therapy. Reich would say it was “armoring.” 

            Adding to my list of spiritual explorations, I have for the past two weeks gone to Sunday meetings of the Buddhist Meditation Group in my town. I know and recognize one person only - Linda is in my clay class and told me about the group. Who they all are and where they come from I have yet to learn, but I met with them in the living room of an ordinary house for meditation and chanting. Last time we also watched a video with Anam Thubten Rinpoche, the guru I assume, for this group. Whether I will persue this long term or drop it as I have so many other practices remains to be seen. 

            Exploration continues.