karen

The key is that treatment for chronic problems has to be individualized for each person, and is usually multidimensional, so there's not just one thing that's going to wipe it out. Sometimes one simple intervention like getting off diet soda or cutting out wheat or improving sleep habits makes a big difference, if the problem is minor and isn't deeply rooted. But often it takes more than that. The very first thing I'd ask is what was going on in the person's life when the symptom first appeared. And I'd find out whether they're taking any drugs that could have side effects like the symptoms they're having. Very important to rule that out. All too often the doctors don't take that into account, and slap on a new diagnosis when new symptoms come up. Back to fibromyalgia - there no such thing as an entity called fibromyalgia which is the same for everyone and treated the same, although of course most practitioners do try to treat it that way. Fibromyalgia is just a fancy way of describing the symptoms of muscle pain and fatigue. It's not a true diagnosis, but an allopathic label, so it doesn't disclose the cause of the problem, and only tells you what you already know (you have pain and fatigue). This means that every person who has those symptoms may have different underlying causes. So the approach depends on whether they want to get to the root causes, or whether they just want to suppress or palliate the symptoms. It depends on the person's inclinations and what he/she is prepared to do. Just to give you an idea of possible causes of that and other chronic conditions - emotional blockages; latent inherited diseases that are triggered into action by physical or emotional trauma (including vaccinations); past shocks and traumas; severe nutritional imbalances; toxins such as aspartame and mercury; Lyme disease; cellular dehydration; infectious agents like epstein-barr virus; deep fears and false beliefs. Often with complex, chronic conditions it's a combination of all of those. For example, we know that mercury dental fillings aren't good for anyone, but one person might become very destabilized from them, because they have a lot of other things going on and that was just the last straw. Whereas someone else might be able to handle it without becoming destabilized, until they get a vaccine or have an emotional trauma. Also there are many opportunistic microbes like mycoplasma, which are more the effect than the cause, but contribute to making the person feel sick. The tendency is to focus on those, but that's misguided, like if you lost something in a dark alley but you're looking for it under the street light just because it's easier to see there. Reducing some of the microbial load can sometimes help the person feel better in the meantime, but doesn't solve the problem. The ideal is to work at the causative level, while helping the person to manage symptoms, but the aim is not simply to get rid of symptoms. Even in alternative medicine, usually the focus is on symptoms, and if the symptom goes away, they consider it a success. Well, from the patient's point of view, of course it's good that they feel better, but if the symptom has simply been suppressed, the problem will emerge again later and probably more seriously next time. And it's not only drugs that suppress, but herbs and nutrients can be used suppressively too! But let's step back and look at some possible scenarios: 1. If the person is conventional medicine oriented, but willing to try a few other things on their own: Look at how the soul/spiritual life is being neglected, and what would nourish that. Look into improving their diet, and eliminate common culprits like aspartame, MSG, gluten. Look at diet typologies to determine what type of diet suits their particular metabolism Improve the amount and quality of water and salt they're using. Use some super-food type supplements - start with basic ones like cod liver oil, concentrated green foods and fruits, hemp seeds, minerals especially magnesium, B-vitamins and C, etc. Look at stress and emotional issues and consider learning EFT or Buteyko breathing or some form of meditation/relaxation technique. Look at lifestyle - exercise, sleep, relationships, etc. 2. If the person is willing to do various unconventional treatments, some of these may be useful in addition to the above basics: Get homeopathic treatment for the acute problem Get TCM treatment Use a Zapper ( www.orgonecrystals.com) to reduce the microbial load. Do oil pulling for a gentle liver cleanse, and some other detox methods depending on their particular constitution, no one-size-fits-all methods. Anything that regulates the autonomic nervous system like Buteyko, qigong, yoga, cranial osteopathy, Rosen work, etc. The most comprehensive approach I know of is treatment with a practitioner of medical Heilkunst, www.homeopathy.com/clinic. (Heilkunst is the complete system of medicine that includes homeopathy). Putting together a strategy can of course be overwhelming for anyone, especially figuring out how to individualize it, where to start, prioritizing and coordinate everything. I can help people do that. All natural healing methods are potentially useful - the trick is to know what you're really targeting beyond the symptom, and which is the right tool for that, for this particular person at this particular time. -Karen

What is your sense of "hooked, obsessed, evangelical..." - does that sound like a healthy state of mind? The truth has no hook, doesn't require anyone to follow or defend anything. But when people identify with beliefs, they're compelled to constantly defend them. There are many systems that claim to be liberating but are actually controlling. I know a spiritual advisor who advertises that he will replace your false beliefs with his true beliefs At another level, there's always a reason why people are attracted to these things. Often there's a need to go through certain experiences in order to learn something about attachment and freedom, that can only be learned from actual personal involvement. So if I had a good/bad moral judgment about it, it would be an opportunity for me to look at myself, rather than focus on what I think about the other person. In other words, what buttons does it push in me - my need to rescue them, my fear of losing someone close to me, etc., whatever issue it brings up. -Karen

Freeform, I forgot to mention Dennis Griffin as a trustworthy source for info and buying various stones. I'm sure he'd have an interesting opinion on meteorites. Orgone Crystals (the site's been down lately but should be up again soon). -Karen

Yup, two of the blocks that Reich described are in the facial area - the ocular block and the oral block. Reichian-based therapies like bioenergetics, Rosen method, etc., can work with this, especially if the armoring isn't too deep. SCENAR electrical stimulation is also great for dissolving armoring. But these methods can be limited, because they're working with an energy field but can't destroy the underlying force field behind deep emotional trauma. So it can be like letting off some steam from a kettle on the stove - helpful for sure, but if the heat is still on, more steam keeps being generated. Some armoring can have deep emotional underpinnings, and a soul/spiritual purpose so that working through that takes quite some work. -Karen

Unfortunately there's not a lot, but you could do a search on homeopathy imponderables or imponderabilia. And here's a materia medica entry for Luna (moonlight) The provings are pretty interesting - a lot of emotional sensitivity, wanting to be alone, dreamy state of mind, etc. -Karen

Hi freeform, I have a piece of moldavite, that I got from a trusted source, although I haven't been in contact with him for many years. My experience is that it feels cold in an uninviting way, just not resonant for me personally. If you want to experiment with the energy of it, why not try just writing the name of it on a piece of paper, as the name of something carries its energy. I'm more interested in experimenting with dynamized substances ("homeopathic"), which are abundant on earth, and cheap . The process of potentizing/dynamizing them brings out the spirit-like quality that wasn't active in the crude substance. There are quite a few "imponderable" substances prepared this way - moonlight, for one, which might be an interesting yin substance to experiment with! -Karen

These things are supersensible, spiritual or spirit-like phenomena, which can only be talked about by representing them as material things. But they're forces, powers and energies that the material description is simply pointing to but can't fully describe. This is where we have to develop our supersensible organs of perception to bring our own light to the understanding of the material, and that's why esoteric literature is designed to be frustrating to the intellect . "Air chariot" could be a reference to the air ether, which is the vehicle for the astral body. -Karen

Thanks for the feedback. You're right - cobbling different elements together doesn't work. The uncertainty principle says that there's no way to know reality precisely, but that's only because the intellect can't go there. It can't make the leap - the duck gets very near to the pond but can never actually get there . It requires a different function of mind, the deeper etheric mind which can embrace polarity and non-linear relationships. Let me see if I can clarify.. It's not really about taking two things and trying to bridge them. It's about developing a new model entirely which can embrace the sensible and the supersensible as a functional polarity, so that we're not whipsawing back and forth between the two. It's like the interrelationship between yin and yang. The intellect wants to separate and dissect them, and can't see the flow of interpenetration. It will look at each as separate entities and will get very frustrated in the hall of reflecting mirrors where everything is mirroring everything in a cascade of relationsihps. Particle - wave - particle - wave - where does one start and the other end? You can separate them and look at them that way, but then is what you see real? What I'm describing is all about energy and yet it's not an eastern model per se. Knowledge of the supersensible isn't the purview of the east - it's just that a western system that embraces the non-material realm has not been brought out except in certain disciplines that are a bit off the map. And it requires developing the etheric mind in order to understand it without simply imposing materialistic concepts onto it. There is a western system that's alive and well within the Dynamic system, a stream of thought running through the work of various functional thinkers like Hahnemann, Goethe, Coleridge, Steiner, and Reich. Goethe has come to be known as a poet, yet he did phenomenal scientific work. The dynamic thinkers have been largely misunderstood by intellectual interpretation. A paradigm shift changes the actual meaning of the ideas so that the material can't be understood from the same frame of reference. I hope that clarifies somewhat. It's hard to sort of start in the middle without going back to the history of science and the epistemological underpinnings - it's fascinating to tease things things out, but I didn't mean to go that far into the discussion.. just thought I'd put out a few thoughts in case there were some points of resonance . -Karen

I like what Sean said about knowing the qualitative difference between living foods and processed foods. I think the problem in thinking about all this is that we're fumbling with concepts of energy and chemistry and not having a system for integrating them. If anyone's interested, some thoughts Toward a Dynamic View of Nutrition -Karen

I especially like Don Croft's orgone zapper. How are you using the charcoal? How I'd approach this depends on whether the stains are superficial or not. It could be just a layer of stain from tannins, for example, and that's pretty easy to fix using a mild abrasive once in a while, like baking soda and calcium carbonate. But if the main cause of teeth darkening is dental fluorosis, which permeates the tooth, or migrating metals from amalgam fillings, then that method won't work. I'd say eliminate fluoride as much as possible, stop using toothpaste, fill mineral deficiencies, and look at how the teeth are reflecting what's going on elsewhere in the system, particularly in terms of sense of self. And why we expect teeth to be white and feel bad about ourselves if they're not. Many people say that oil pulling whitens the teeth - sometimes dramatically. I haven't found that yet, but apparently the teeth go through some transitition after you stop using the harsh detergents and abrasvies in toothpaste. So they may not whiten right away but as a longer process of restoring the integrity of the teeth and health in general. -Karen

Exactly. Just about everybody . I'd say it's a common error because not many people want to investigate true cause. We generally don't have true science but symptom or condition management - kiling the messenger, since understanding the true origin of disease is beyond the limits of the prevailing paradigm. Naturopathy for the most part isn't that much different. There is a system that does penetrate to the root level because it understands the true nature of disease and approaches the causes systematically, but it's sort of under the radar at this point, and you wont see studies about it. In the conventional understanding of disease, which the natural health field borrows, there are all the labels like arthritis, hepatitis, osteoporosis, autism, etc. Those only describe the symptoms which are the result of the disease process, not the cause. True diagnosis is supposed to be disclosive, not descriptive. And something can't be the cause of itself. If you have inflamed joints, your diagnosis becomes arthritis -which just means inflamed joints - regardless of the many different possible causes. The whole energetic realm is dismissed, so causation isn't looked for there. Yep, and that's a rather involved subject. Dr. Hamer and other earlier pleomorphism researchers (Bechamp, Enderlein, Rife, Naessens, Reich, etc.) showed that basically the microbes shape-shift, as they go through their life cycles. Dr. Hamer's recent work is really revolutionary in showing that microbes can be part of the healing process, and even viruses can help rebuild tissue. Very few viruses actually cause disease - most are the result, not the cause. They show up on the scene, for sure, and they can cause symptoms, but the symptoms themselves are not the cause of the disease. So targeting the microbe in that case is ineffectual, and depending on how you do it, can be suppressive, meaning that the disease is pushed deeper into the organism. Sometimes the microbe can be targeted judiciously to push it back to an earlier pleomorphic form. My summary of Dr. Hamer's work, the part about microbes is here: http://www.guideforselfhealing.com/2006/06...le-of-microbes/

yer welcome, cat Another interesting observation, FWIW.. I have a molar that's slightly loose. The opposing molar was pulled, and that's not good for the one that's supposed to bite down against it. So I started noticing pain on chewing, and the slightly loose condition. Ick. The invasive dental scenario flashed before my eyes, so I decided to get more serious about oil pulling - can't hurt, and could only help. Now I'm noticing that I don't have any pain in that tooth, and I just ate some pretty chewy veggies. The pattern seems to be that when I take a few days or a week off from oil pulling, the tooth starts acting up again, I get more tongue coating, and other not so nice things. -Karen

Yup, although conventional medicine is often conflating correlation and causation. Bacteria and viruses show up under conditions of stress, generated internally (pleomorphism), and not always as pathogenic agents. Sometimes they're part of the organism's natural healing process which needs to be facilitated, not shut down. Depends on the specifics of the case.

It's actually an Ayurvedic method, although in that tradition it's done for just a few minutes, and is called Gandusa. But this was researched by Dr. Karach who is not Ayurvedic, and he found the benefits comparable to what the Ayurvedic practitioners have found. It's meant to draw toxins locally from the teeth, sinuses, throat, and somewhat the ears, as well as deeper detoxification of the blood, almost like a mini liver flush but much gentler. The method won't disturb any dental restorations like fillings or crowns, except that over time as a filled tooth restores itself, it's possible that a filling could come out. The reason that refined oils are recommended is only so there are no impurities, but organic unrefined oils are really best. The 15-20minutes is the time that Dr. Karach found was usually required, but once the oil has become thin and white like milk, it won't have any further benefit, so you spit it out at that point. Depending on the person and circumstances, it will take more or less time to get to that point. I find it varies from day to day. -Karen

Motor oil is better for that method, cheaper than sesame oil Oil Pulling

Oh, that does sound yummy! Coriander, mmm. I meant the commercial kind that's made with distilled white vinegar and they pasteurize the life out of it, poor things

Any kind of fermented food that's raw and unpasteurized will have lots of beneficial enzymes and microorganisms. Nice and alive! Kefir, kombucha, kimchi (wonder why they all start with K?) and other kinds of pickled veggies.. you can make your own, but there are some good products available now that are actually raw, like Biolacto fermented veggies, and some traditional kimchi is unpasteurized. I'm still trying to find unpasteurized, naturally fermented pickled cucumbers, when I want one without waiting to make them.. 'cause I love good old fashioned pickles, but the vinegary kind are just wrong. Health food stores have bottled kombucha drinks now, which are unpasteurized. Check the labels, because some have added sugar to offset the natural sourness of the lactic acid. The sugar used in making it should be all converted, but then they sometimes add more. I've gotten the ones without added sugar and added a dash of honey or a dash of fruit juice. -Karen

Yoda, thanks for the offer, but I'm not sure that my progress can be pinpointed.. it's not like the teeth were sick and then at one point they were well . They're in a process of being cured/healed. As long as I'm confident that the treatment is moving things in a healing direction rather than the disease process escalating, I call it success. I still have further to go, because I only started pulling out all the stops with this protocol in the last year or so, and have had really bad teeth since childhood, many root canals in early years, etc. I grew up eating pretty good quality traditional foods, very little sugar or processed foods, and still my teeth were weak.. whereas my sister eating the same foods and doing the same kind of hygiene, had perfect, strong teeth and still does. There are reasons in the inherited miasms - I got the more challenging side of the inheritance, and then traumas triggered that latent predispositon into action. But anyway, what I can say about my situation now is that every time some pain or inflammation comes up, I can handle it myself. Granated, I've had a lot of training, and Heilkunst treatment. But the teeth that were supposed to not survive, are still standing. (My practitioner was told in his 20's that he'd have to have all his teeth pulled by the time he was 40. He's in his 50's and has strong teeth, didn't have to sacrifice even one). After many dental visits in which I was told I needed periodontal work and many root canals, I learned that nothing is set in stone. When I'd go back sometime later, the periodontal problem that was supposed to only get worse, is no longer there. And the decay at least doesn't seem to be getting any worse over the last few years, which is something they don't understand . But I'm used to the medical establishment being clueless about how I'm alive at all at this point . If you have an extra $20, why not start by investing it in a couple of bottles of cold pressed sesame oil and start the oil pulling routine. It's revolting at first, but you get used to it fast. -Karen

Re. statistics, there's the joke about the statistician who tells someone who has their head in an oven and their feet in an ice bucket that they're okay, because it averages out. I also know a statistician whose outgoing answering machine message says, "There's an 80% probability that your call is important to us." Yoda, I'm sure I've met your challenge and more - reversing abcesses, gum problems, decay, etc., some more slowly than others. Teeth regenerate slowly like bone. But I don't rely on dental x-rays to tell me what's going on, because they're notoriously unreliable - even dentists will admit that they don't really know for sure what they're looking at. And they'll assume that every little shadow represents a cavity that will only get worse if not drilled, filled, billed. I use an aggressive dental regeneration protocol, which besides various nutritional things includes "homeopathic" remedies that target the specific problems, plus oil pulling, brushing with soap, no toothpaste, no fluoride. In order to speed up regeneration, remedies that work on the generative aspect of the life force can work quicker and more efficiently than the usual self-help methods. Rife machine is usually not necessary when you can target the problem with specific energetic medicines. Teeth usually reflect problems going on elsewhere in the body/mind, and when the organism is trying to work out a particular mental/emotional/spiritual struggle, it can show up in the teeth. Inflammatory symptoms in the mouth can often be a sign of healing going on, but of course the dentist just wants to get rid of the symptom without understanding it in a bigger context. I think it's pretty strange that we don't think of going to a surgeon for every little bodily problem, yet that's what a dentist is. -Karen

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain

Good point. It's a false notion that only conventional medicine causes iatrogenic disease. But it's impossible to get reliable statistics on these things, because the real causes of illness are so misunderstood, and it's amazing how much goes unreported. It's very common for people taking pharma drugs to have "side effects" which their doctors aren't reporting as adverse effects but are treating as separate problems. But this can happen with any crude medicinal substances, even herbs. Many naturopaths are using relatively safer substances like nutrition and herbs, but throwing crude substances at symptoms is essentially allopathic. Allopathy means they don't really know the principle on which they're prescribing, but only from the point of view that the substance appears to make the symptom disappear. They don't understand the difference between a symptom or condition which is the result of a disease, and the true disease that caused it. The system is a mess. So there's a false duality that sees the allopaths on one side and the naturopaths on another, but they're more alike than many people realize. -Karen

I'd say that staying away from doctors, hospitals, tests, etc., is a good rule of thumb, but there is a time and place for allopathic medicine. When I was in septic shock and my vital organs were shutting down in a matter of minutes, the bacteria had to be wiped out pronto. Allopathic methods are often necessary in acute emergencies - that's where anti-pathic measures - using the law of opposites to counteract the symptoms (in addition to the law of similars to remove the cause), is the appropriate principle to use. It's like the symptom is the messenger, and normallly it doesn't make sense to focus on killing the messenger. But if the messenger itself has become dangerous, like if cancerous tissue is obstructing a vital organ, then you have to deal with the messenger as well as the entity that sent it. Otherwise, for chronic illness and for diagnostic purposes, allopathic methods and invasive testing are usually unnecessary. But also there are times when it's necessary to manage severe pain in the meantime, while the person is working on the root cause of it, and palliating pain when necessary is never wrong. Paul, I hope you're getting the medical care you need, whatever form is right for you. Or if you're looking for something new, there is a system of medicine that is largely unknown but very powerful, and I'm happy to talk about it privately with anyone who might be interested. -Karen

And the meaning of iatrogenesis goes even further, if we're talking about the way that a disease impingement is created in the etheric body (granted, not many people are ) Any medicinal substance in crude form is capable of causing iatrogenic disease, when the energetic essence of the substance impinges on the life energy of the person. It's like a sexual act, actually, as that superimposition generates new life - a disease entity is "born". It's of course a very different definition of disease, to look at its real etheric nature rather than as an abstract label given to arbitrary groupings of symptoms. So.. when drugs are used, iatrogenic disease is likely to be generated. Taking a drug once in a while probably wouldn't be enough for disease to take hold in the etheric, but if it does, it will manifest in some way even if symptoms aren't noticeable. Or sometimes the symptoms are there, but we associate them with something else. In the worst case scenario, the drug suppresses symptoms while pushing the disease into more vital organs. Then the person mysteriously "comes down" with a serious disease, without accounting for the real cause - iatrogenesis. So there is MUCH more damage done by iatrogenesis than is being reported. You go to the doc for a sinus infection, and you get drugs. Symptoms disappear, and you say YAY! Later on, you mysteriously "come down" with asthma. Well, they call it asthma, but that's just a description of the symptoms. The real cause could be iatrogenic disease. The drug may have caused it, and yet the docs aren't held accountable, and even take credit for "curing" the first disease, even though they actually may have caused the second. Well, they can just send us on our merry way off to a different specialist for the "new" disease. The good news is that if drugs are necessary in a particular situation, there are ways to treat the iatrogenic disease energetically to minimize the damage. -Karen

I think we're pretty safe to allow the conversations to evolve naturally . I'm not interested in debate, because I'm not trying to change anyone's mind about anything, just responding to what's of mutual interest. Otherwise it's no fun anymore. I'm all about fun Sean has a cool place here, so I pop in from time to time. Mostly I don't have much time between full-time school and consulting, and sometimes a quick note about MSG turns into a philosophical discussion and I have to be brief . Cheers, Karen

Hi Tao Parrot, I'd agree that scientific process is valuable, but who controls that process is the key. I don't think that institutionalizing science is necessary or that it produces the best results. But that's a whole 'nother discussion that could take a lot of time to construct - to define what we mean by science, for starters Cheers, Karen