Evolutions within my understanding of German New Medicine

Our group of people who connect every week on the practitioner call (I am not deemed a practitioner yet, but have finished Seminars 1-4 with Caroline Markolin), are beginning to take a look within ourselves and in the changes occurring energetically with this world. We realized that the basic points we see from German New Medicine are that the individual is the self-healer, there is no disease, only biological programs run by the brain in response to conflicts, and GNM is not a "medicine" per se, ie, a pill or a technique. GNM is solely about empowering the individual to see the power of the design of the body in self-healing. It teaches the individual the confirmed science behind this paradigm, and it provides a pathway by which we take responsibility for our lives.....deal with our emotional conflicts before they get too big or too lost within ignorance.

I was saying to someone the other day....GNM teaches me to not be afraid, to understand what is going on in my body, and my study/treatment of TCM (traditional chinese medicine) is just one factor I use to stay on top of my issues by continually bringing my emotional life back towards a balance so that I can deal with conflicts, emotions.

I am currently taking a Pathophysiology class....it is based on the reductionist view of pathology/disease, microbes causing disease, the body going haywire. Yet, even though the prof is very knowledgeable, from my knowledge of GNM, it is entirely possible in every instance of a disease he talks about to see through the conventional interpretation of the science. In most cases, conventional medical research has taken a narrow view of what the facts are, a slice in time, and missing the big picture.

How can I support this? I see it happening all the time with the cases we discuss in our GNM talk...watching people go through a program of a glandular breast cancer/nest wory, a morsel conflict/tonsilar cancer, a myocardium/overwhelm program, etc. Success is the degree to which a person comes to a place of no fear, understanding that conflict active and healing phases are a corrective processes, former motivating us to resolve, the latter giving us the clues to complete the healing process. Understanding that both of these phases are approached with reverence, acceptance and without fear. Learning to eat well (especially protein), sleep, rest, come into Awareness by whatever means (I personally like Zen and Advaita-type philosophies), love your life....and if you don't...do what you can to change it, without creating more conflict in one's life. It is simple, and it is also one of the hardest trips in the world....that short distance from ignorance to being awake. I am getting to the point that when something comes up for me, I know pretty much what the conflict is, what I need to do to resolve/downgrade, and how to take care of myself....and approach the phases with empowerment and gratitude.

Our world is going to see a big change soon in how it views medicine.....too many people are waking up to the facts that our present day conventional medicine is NOT working, and that the Mind-Body connection is not just some woo woo thing to which to pay lip service. Mind-Body connection techniques, though, based on the old medicine paradigm will not assist the person, because of its basic underlying fear motivation. Energetic medicine, of which German New Medicine belongs, is growing, people are seeing the positive outcomes and are being empowered to drop the old paradigm of fear.

Well, it certainly has been a while, yes?

OK, I am back....school definitely puts a crink into keeping up on this blog. It is my intention to spend more time with writing, especially since deciding to quit the outside work I was doing. Acupuncture, and GNM, my main focus now.

And, with that, it is time to go see a movie, relax before classes begin tomorrow.

Lots to tell you, stay tuned!!

Warmly,

Mariah

Human Design

This process, Human Design, is a combination of astrology, I Ching, Kabbalah, Chakra systems. It posits that our unconscious self, our "design" is embedded within the person 88 degrees of movement before birth (roughly 3 months). This is our innate way of being in the world..our "strategy and authority." We all know on a deeper level what that is, but many of us are largely unable to consistently access it, because there is the personality side to us....our conditioning (fits in there with Cheri Huber's work.....), which starts from the moment of our birth. Most astrology, I think...someone correct me if I am wrong....begins with our natal chart....the forces around us at birth. The originator is Ra Uru Hu.

My chart shows a couple of interesting things....I am a Triple Split Definition....I have 3 areas of defined chakras (head-ajna, throat-self center, and splenic-sacral), but NONE of the three are connected to each other.....so, for those folks who know me quite while, or those who scratch their heads over what I do....this is why I can be like 3 different people when it comes to making decisions. Often times, when I make decisions from the the top centers (head-ajna), those tend to not work out quite that well. The decisions I make from my gut (flashes of intuition and gut reactions....nonverbal uh huh, or unh unh) tend to be spot on, and draw me to better outcomes.

Winter Blues and Lessons in Upstate New York

So, I go through more grief once again. Just way down in the dumps, don't want to get out of the dark apartment or go anywhere kind of stuff for a good week. The adept acupuncture treatments by Darlene pull me through times when I think my own spirit is wanting to leave. My energy bottoms out. School starts up again. It is drab and dreary most of the time in Seneca Falls. My heart palpitations return.

A woman I had known from last trimester pops up in my life now and then. I find her to be very sweet, and I appreciate her idiosyncracies because I can feel she has a deep desire to live life as best as she can. I hadn't felt attraction beyond that appreciation. She and I talked one night, ever so briefly, very innocently, nothing intense, just fun. I walk away from the building happy, but more so from the totality of grace I had experienced that day...my acupuncture treatment focused on the sciatica/piriformis pain I had been having in the left leg....and realized afterwards that my leg felt "whole," there was more to its "beingness" perhaps a reconnection I hadn't felt in years (I originally injured my low back in Alaska, 1983....off and on problems with it). Classes were intriguing that day, Darlene was her usual nurturing and love-sharing self, and then it was topped off with a fun conversation.

Back home that night, I am sitting on my living room floor, it is the night before the New Moon (January 14th), and was aware that I wanted to write out my intentions for the month and meditate before going to bed. Before I do so, I am hit with this feeling of connection to life, feeling full and satisfied, I heard myself think "Hmm, love school. Love my warm apartment. Love how I have space to spread out and do what I want. Love that I am studying acupuncture. Love Seneca Falls' quietness. All that is missing is a significant relationship with a woman......sigh....oh well, in time. I can wait." I do my writing, and meditating, writing the intention that I will have a very good relationship with a special, compatible, loving, nurturing woman.

The New Moon was to occur at 2:15am or something like that......I woke up at 2am from a dream in which the woman with whom I talked earlier that day appeared to me, asking me to "be gentle with me." I am shaking and sweating, and get up, go to my journal and change the intention around to "I release my fears around being in an intimate relationship with another woman again." I am not ready to just jump in.

The end of January I wake up in a sweat, hearing my spirit say "if I want to move on, I need to let go of D." I break into sobs, it really is time to let go....this hanging on no longer serves me. I know it to my core that I have finally released my need to identify myself with D.

That morning, as I take a shower, both of my breasts are tender. I have a back treatment in acupuncture that afternoon, so I am prone for it.....wow...my breasts are really sore! The soreness abates over the week...I even needle myself for breast congestion....it helps! 5 days later, while taking a shower....I feel a lump in my right breast, and more of the fibrous feeling in my left. I know what it is....separation conflict in healing phase....I resolved the conflict of not being able to let go of D. for 2+ years! And, this is the healing response. I call Chris, and we have this great talk about the beauty of understanding the biological laws. No need to panic, and just ignore what is occurring.

I did go through an intense fatigue period about 3 weeks later...coupled with midterms and really overdoing the studying with my energy improving. I just let myself sleep as needed, I never skipped classes, but I didn't do much in the way of homework for about 1.5 weeks. Watched the Extended Version of "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. "Fellowship of the Ring" is SUCH a SPIRITUAl movie....blew my socks off!!!

Eventually, I did tell Darlene about the breast congestion and, sitting on the floor of her office, we talk quite a bit more in-depth about GNM. Planting seeds.

I am up to the present time.....mid-March...I can hear the March Madness basketball game on the computer in the cubicle next to me (I am at the school library).....Two months of dealing with my energy level fluctuating, my heart palpitating, stressful school and personal interactions. My energy is back to normal, the heart palpitations are gone, I have had alot of healing lately, I feel a strength building in me as I learn more about and accept myself. My friend Chris had been encouraging me to look deeper into Human Design, a system which explains the juxtaposition of your unconscious being versus the conditioning we call personality. It shows one how to understand your basic way of existing in the world, responding rather than reacting. I got a reading in January, and found a deeper explanation for why I am who I am, why I have done things in certain ways, and realized why loving myself is really natural.

Through these two months, I watch my monkey mind, my egoic conditioning fights me like CRAZY so as to not be let go of. I am focusing on my strategy and authority from Human Design, the daily tweets from Zen teacher Cheri Huber fit well with this, reading from her books when I can, meditating and doing qigong daily. Starting to exercise more as the weather and my energy improves. Wrassling with my conditioning of desire....holy cow, it is f***ing intense. Started counseling...wonderful to have the weekly time to just talk with John. Two weeks ago, he says to me "Hmm, I was wondering where to take this, but realize that I don't have to...you know what you need, and I am just here to witness." I feel it too....."it's all inside you...." as once told to me by Chi Ling, my spirit guide from the late 80's who propelled me into teaching Tai Chi in Portland. It's always been there. I just forgot to turn my attention to it.

The "it" is my old friend "ShenYi" or "God's Mind." The name I chose (or it chose me) for my tai chi school. Although, at the time, I didn't know it was "God's Mind." I just put Shen and Yi together, because the former means "spirit" and the latter is "consciousness"...I was looking for a name that would imply Body-Mind-Spirit. I had tshirts made up with the yinyang symbol developed by one of my students and on top of it was the chinese characters for Shen Yi School of Tai Chi." An older chinese acupuncturist in Portland took one look at my shirt at the start of my appointment one day in 1993 and asked me if I knew what the first two characters meant. "Sure! My school name!" "In my culture," he replied, "we read those together as 'God's mind.'" Goose bumps! I went back to my school studio in an altered state, feeling that something important was being presented to me.

The Laughing Brit

Naturally, I go in and out of grief. Chris told me the night Lorene died "she is a huge teacher for you, Mariah....." The acupuncturist I saw after Christmas caught me on a day where I was....high? from the love I was opening to. She suggested I was still grieving....I couldn't understand what she was telling me. Me? No, I am fine! Later that night, I lose the connection, or maybe it is just how the connection is supposed to be...I fall into a deep funk for a week.

Being as how it is Christmas break, I hang in with the ups and downs. And, start to come out of it by the first few days of January. Still sad, but happy, so gosh damn happy for having been given the time to share with Lorene.

I go onto Facebook, and realize I hadn't heard from another healing friend, Ann-Marie...the "Musings of a Mad Brit" author. So, I look up her site, only to read that she had passed away December 30th!!

Ann-Marie and I were fast and close friends the last 6 months I was in Wisconsin. I met her at the GNM seminar she had at her home. The first day of the seminar, we talked a few minutes, and then each said "I feel as if I have known you all my life!" We talked often, she near Milwaukee, me in Green Bay, and manage to get together as often as we could...made easier by my monthly drives to Chicago. Her husband was just the neatest guy, he was just as easy to be with. The three of us together felt like a couple of hobbits dancing around (Ann-Marie was british, and they lived in this cobblestone and big thick beamed ceiling home by the Milwaukee River) everytime we got together. Smiles, laughter, joy in spite of the fact that both Ann-Marie and I were "dealing with cancer."

Sometime in July, I believe it was, Ann-Marie developed bilateral breast tumors, which continue to grow and be very painful for her. She had a history of skin cancer occurrences a few years prior, in the upper Right chest area, if I remember correctly. She had surgeries, and chemo, I think originally, and then had decided to go to Mexico to be treated by the Hoxey Method. This time around, she went back to Hoxey, decided it didn't feel right, and so joined me in seeing Dr. Guo. We talked and talked GNM, but I could sense she wasn't embracing it for some reason.

In August, she decided to work with a healer in the Madison area. Her guru encouraged her to go the western medicine route, as well. These people found "brain tumors." The healer talked her into getting her teeth amalgams removed. She did coffee enemas, chemo, radiation. After she died, I learned from a mutual acquaintance that "the cancer just exploded all over her skin, body." Final separation conflict, everything being let go of.

It's hard, I was surprised she was going the way she was, and yet, I told her numerous times in September and October when she would express concern that I would be unhappy with her for her decisions that she didn't need my approval/disapproval and I wouldn't entertain any of that. I asked her to believe in herself and do what felt right to her. We stopped talking, though, sometime in the end of October.

Ann-Marie was an amazing woman...so filled with love and laughter, ingenious in so many ways. She drew people in to her life, and innoculated us all with her infectious love. She taught Phoenix Rising yoga, laughter yoga...she even had these really cute cards made up with her in funny yoga postures and funny words relating to them (example: she's in what I think is the Eagle Pose...arms and legs all twisted up...and a goofy grin on her face....inside the card read "sorry I haven't connected with you lately, I have been all wrapped up with myself!") She sold these to raise money for her Mexico Hoxey Clinic trips (I found them this morning as I was cleaning up my apartment and putting stuff away...more than anything, this is what finally prompted me to get back to blogging. I also realized I missed writing/working out stuff with the blog...too wrapped up in school....that will be another post.....).

When she passed on, a community of people from all over the world celebrated her life. She touched so many in her 50-some years of life. I am blessed to have had her touch mine.

People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.....

The last time I entered a posting was December 6th.....I had had the most glorious phone call with my dear friend Lorene and then jumped onto the blog to write. We talked again a few days later. We burst into this unabashed gushing over each other, just laughing and rejoicing over the connection with each other, so grateful for having each other in our lives. The evening of the 16th, a little after 5pm, I checked my emails....I had 2 emails timed between 1:10 and 1:18pm from Lorene's and her husband's blackberrys, asking me to call immediately. I tried Phil's number first, no answer, then her home phone. I call Chris to see if he had talked with Lorene, which he did not. I sit down in the library foyer, across from a poster entitled "Pray for those who have died...World Aids Peace Day" or something like that....a shiver went through me...I knew it was confirmation of what I felt in my gut. I dailed Lorene's number and reached one of her young daughters who, in shock, told me her mother had just passed away.....in reading the obituary weeks later, it noted Lorene's time of death as 5:21pm. I checked my phone records a few days later, my call was at 5:24pm.

Our friendship was the bright star in my life, showing me pure connection with someone in just the 4 months we physically shared on this earth. We never met face to face, we found common ground through our discussions of life, death, German New Medicine, family and personal issues. An unlikely pair...she a midwest republican, married with children, christian; me a buddhist/pagan/whatever, single lesbian. We understood the midwest upbringing and mindset, we shared a similar path of coming to grips with the reality of this dominant western medical paradigm and its fearing/panic modus operandi, we loved having the GNM connection and talking about how we had seen our lives change with understanding the biological laws.

Life takes its own course. People come into our lives at any given time and slip through and away as well. Some we really have a tremendously positive connection, others it is "negative," many connections are seemingly of no meaning. Yet, with everyone, at least in my experience, there is growth there because of the relationship, if I am open to it.

Lorene's death was very hard. That evening, after the news, I cried so intensely, from my core. And, I also had this feeling of immense love move into me, immense joy for our connection, and knew that she and I had allowed ourselves to see the truth of each other: that we are One. I had finals in two days, and heard something Lorene had told me in one of our conversations...."Mariah, I love watching you grow through this going back to school." I dedicated the rest of my study and test taking to Lorene, in gratitude for the spirit of support she gave me that fall.

Experiencing great improvement!!

It's has been a LONG time since my last post......indicative of the amount of studying we do in this program. This past week was intense, with two written assignments, a comprehensive quiz in Meridians and Points, a test in Theory, and my roommate continuing to act from a place of exhaustion and paranoia.

I made the decision two weeks ago that I would move out at the end of this trimester. No more trying to stick this out until April. It feels right to get into a better situation, I have learned my lessons with her......I find myself having compassion for her, for myself, and it is plain as the nose on my face that I have been viewing behaviors similar to those I acted on in my relationship with D. In their full force weirdness.....it has given me a sense of compassion towards what D. experienced living with me while I was very confused, tired, scared, and having grave liver issues.

I met with my advisor, Dr. Zhang, this week at the point where I was feeling unsure if I wanted to continue with the herbal portion of my degree (we have that option....acupuncture alone, or acupuncture and herbal medicine). She was very encouraging, explaining how the herbal portion is actually the majority of treatment in China, whereas in this country, acupuncture is emphasized. She also told me I had an aptitude for acupuncture/oriental medicine, and to hang in there. Nice to get that support. I went back to my herbal assignment, and found that sense of excitement, connection, again.

My intuition moved me to changing my treatment to the Seneca Falls Health Center last month to another one of my professors.....Darlene Easton....an amazing practitioner. Prior to going to her, I was struggling with the heart palpitations, easily drawn down energy. I had the sense that the student clinic/practitioner was not hitting things right with me. Darlene radically changed my herbal formula to that of working on my liver.....as the degree of phlegm accumulation/toxins in the liver were making it overwhelm the earth element, and my heart was then overworking as it wasn't being supported by the Liver. One day of the week, she and her students treat my back shu points.....acupuncture points which boost or tonify the energy of each organ....and place burning moxa on my Life Gate point (over the 2nd lumbar vertebra) to invigorate my essence or basic life force energy. The other day will be acupuncture on front body points, to address liver, heart, gallbladder, spleen issues. And more burning moxa over Stomach 36 Zu San Li or Leg 3 Li points on my lateral lower leg, to again invigorate my energy level. To build what is called Zheng qi......the Right Qi, the qi which forms the basic health and physiological functioning of my body. When this is lowered, Evil qi, Xie qi, can take over more easily......being more susceptible to external forces....wind, cold, damp, heat, dryness....and internal imbalances.

See, I am learning something here.....my body is my laboratory and teacher.....

This approach is all working very well -- I rarely have heart palpitations, and when I do they are very minor and it takes more "efforting" and tiredness to bring it up. My energy level bounces back so much more quickly and abundantly after a stressful week or situation (like, those with roommate.....). I am exercising 2x per week, much more active at school, tolerating entire days without energy crashes, and doing daily qigong, typically 30 minutes, somedays 1 to 2 hours depending on my schedule....which in itself, I experience, is also a big factor in why I am feeling better.

Sing the praises of Eastern Medicine......I would never have been able to heal like this without energy medicine, and the "no panic" mindset/understanding of the healing process from German New Medicine. In fact, I learned last week in Theory class what Dr. Guo meant when he said I would not have survived liver surgery. Liver yin, liver blood and essence from the kidneys are responsible for "anchoring" yang in the body.....keeping yin and yang in connection with each other so that each is capable of contributing their "expertise" to the body/mind/spirit. My liver was so "dried up" and lacking of yin and blood that if I had surgery, the liver would not have been able to heal properly, letting my yang lose connection with my body......which would have then created a cascade of health conditions, leading to death.

Sent chills through me......wow, my Spirit really is/was in tune with wanting to live, to stay on this planet, to heal completely. I cried and cried and cried in April 2007, a few nights after D and I went to Mayo Clinic, where the surgery option was presented to me.....I told her, in the middle of the night, crying, that I could not do the surgery, that my Spirit did not want the surgery. Chemo...hell, that would have just overwhelmed my body/energy, also...... So, I am still alive and kicking and growing and healing and loving, thanks to Spirit.

I know this is my mission, purpose in life.