karen

Math, oh no, not that!! Not my fondest subject. And really, herbal medicines, flower essences and homeopathy each have their own special uses. (I remember Michael Tierra advising me not to try too hard to find correspondences between Ayurveda and TCM :-) It is fun to talk about these things, but we don't want to stress our spleen chi with too much analysis Karen

Hi Lozen, Maybe we're just using the term "energetically" differently. If you do a chemical analysis of a flower essence, there will be at least a few molecules of the original substance (maybe a few more than a few). It's highly dilute compared with the usual herbal infusions, but not dilute to the point where there is absolutely nothing material there but the carrier substance. Even some homeopathics, below the 12X or 12C potency contain at least one molecule of the original substance -- the Schussler tissue salts, for example. But above the 12th potency, only energy and no substance. The flower essences do act on subtle levels, which is I think what you're saying. Material things can have subtle effects. Just that they're not as dilute as homeopathics, and they are also prepared in a very different way -- homeopathics are potentized by vigorous shaking ("succussing") after each successive dilution. The way you get a 12X potency is to take one part of the original substance to 9 parts carrier (let's say water), shake that very vigorously, then take one drop of that mixture and add it to 9 parts water, shake, and repeat the process 12 times. I often do it just by dumping the whole container out, because there will always be one drop left on the side of the glass. Not the most precise method, but it works in certain instances. 12C would mean that you use 1 part substance to 99 parts water, and dilute that 12 times. So you can imagine how dilute a 1M or 50M potency is (M meaning thousand) -Karen

Hi Yoda, The only thing the Bach flower essences have in common with homeopathy is that Dr. Bach was also a homeopath. (Well, now I'm editing that, because I was a bit hasty, but let's say they have less in common than it appears). Flower essences are more like herbal infusions, and contain some of the original material substance.. whereas homeopathics are purely energetic, and a chemical assay of homeopathics will show nothing of the original substance. The flower essences can be effective in cases where there is no deep pathology or trauma. The people these remedies were developed for (upper class women in England in the 1930's , had few pathologies, just some disturbed mental/emotional states that were easily treated with the flower essences. Loads more flower essences have been made from flowers found in different areas of the world, and the Bach flowers are only the original set. I find Rescue Remedy a little too subtle for me, although a lot of people like it. I sometimes need a bit of a gentle hit in the head Now.. this reminds me of something I think folks here might be interested in, that I find more powerful than flower essences and can be taken like nutritional supplements -- ORMES or ORMUS products. Has anyone experimented with them? Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements. Alchemical substances. I've used several ORMUS products and felt a quite subtle yet powerful kick from them. Nothing overwhelming, but definitely something going on there. Off the top of my head, websites would be Subtle Energies and Life Enthusiast Karen

Looks great. Has anyone tried Flextend and compared the two?

Yup. The world of nutritional research is really a massive mess. So yeah, not going along with bogus research, good call :-) Glad to hear you haven't been doing soy for years. Tofu really is strange stuff, isn't it. I'm an old hippie, and it was pretty much obligatory Karen

Neimad, Thanks for adding great information here. So interesting to find out the real history of soy, that traditionally it was not used as food, let alone burgers or sports drinks :-). Seems that fermented soy was used the way we use condiments, and the fermentation provides live enzymes to help digest cooked food. Lozen, if you want to look into what Edensoy is, I'd suggest you look on the Weston Price Foundation website in the section on soy, there's an article on how soy milk is made. I think you might change your mind about it. Digestibility can be a deceptive thing. Soy milk is so highly processed and broken down that it can seem more digestible because it doesn't upset your gut in any noticeable way. But obviously it's a poor food, and if eaten more than occasionally is bound to produce symptoms that you might not realize are connected with it. Even better quality organic soy is associated with the same multitude of health problems, especially thryoid disorders. The phytates inhibit the absorption of nutritive minerals, and the hormone-like phytochemicals are potent hormone disruptors. Yikes, I'd say. I was a strict vegetarian for 27 years, with a multitude of digestive issues, not being able to digest protein being a major one, until I changed my diet 5 years ago..eliminated the soy and whole grain staples and added meat, fish and eggs very gradually, in ways that turned out to be more digestible than I realized. Long story, but just to let you know that I have a (long ) lifetime of personal experience with this. Diet needs to be individualized, of course, but there are foods that people have thrived on traditionally for centuries, and those that are artifacts of the modern food industries. I think the first thing is to eliminate the "foods" that don't belong in anyone's diet and then individualize from there. Karen

I'd really like to look at Intu-Flow, although the whole program would probably be too much for me, but I'm sure I could adapt much of it, short of using clubbells. If/when anyone is finished with the first DVD and wouldn't mind lending it for a week or so, I'd really appreciate the loan. Reminds me, I have to get together a few things for the lending library. Karen

Aaah baths is right! I don't do it often only because the experience is somewhat limited in a tiny bathroom with no window. Having cool air to breathe, especially outdoors with the sound of surf, is a very nice way to do it, as I recall! Meantime, we're having freezing rain, and the water main broke so no water at all! Oh the irony of it. Time for some vivid visualization :-). This looks like a good brush for dry brush massage: http://www.hsu.com/dry_brush.htm -Karen

I got mine from a health food store.. haven't come across them for ordering online, but I should look around. The brush should be natural bristled and meant for this purpose, because the bristles are just the right stiffness (fairly soft), and you reserve that brush just for that purpose. Right before showering in the morning, you brush the whole body front and back (except the most sensitive areas) with just enough pressure to feel good but not too vigorously, with long strokes toward the heart. In other words, not scrubbing but long strokes covering each area just once. Takes all of about a minute, my kinda practice! How do you do pore breathing? -Karen

Michael, Thanks for reminding me about Gabrielle Roth. I took a workshop with her many moons ago, and she was fabulous. Now I see she has a series of DVDs called the Ecstatic Dance collection, including one called the Inner Wave which looks to be a little less physically active, more internal. Am thinking of checking this out. Karen

When I don't have time/energy to do a whole routine, I just do dry skin brushing before a quick shower, really invigorating, stimulates lymph and all that good stuff :-) Something about the dry brushing that has a different effect than scrubbing with wet stuff, but maybe the combination of dry brushing before the wet scrubbing would be interesting! Karen

This was a kicker.. I don't watch TV. I prefer not to be subjected to "programming" :-). But after watching a DVD on the TV, I switched to the FitTV channel and saw one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen. It was a series called Deadly Arts, showing a Canadian woman named Josie Normandeau who travelled around the world to study martial arts from various cultures. This particular episode showed her in India studying Kalaripayattu. Other episodes which I haven't seen yet include Capoeira of Brazil, Thai boxing (whatever the real name for that is), Karate, and a few others. The Kalaripayattu episode was stunning. At one point, there was a practice where a girl who looked to be a teenager was blindfolded. Other people were positioned around the room without moving, one was lying on the floor with what looked to be a large vegetable or gourd on his abdomen. The blindfolded girl approached him and cut cleanly into the vegetable without touching a hair on the guy. Then there was a lot of stuff that was very dance-like, aside from the ferocious stuff. I was so captivated by it that I looked to see if there is a video, and there is a DVD of the whole series but not in the U.S. and would come to $60 including shipping. So I thought I'd see about taping the episodes instead. There will be a repeat of the episode on Dec 17.. if anyone gets the FitTV channel (for me it's channel 20 on basic cable, where I get channels 1-20). If anyone is familiar with this form, I'd love to hear about it! Karen

Ya know, one thing that I especially liked about the Kalaripayattu segment was seeing how these young girls are trained.. who woulda thought?! k.

Looks like this particular series doesn't include that.. "only" Japanese, Brazilian, Thai and Indian :-) http://tinyurl.com/9a998

Update: The episode on Kalaripayattu is on Thursday 12/15 on FitTV at 9PM eastern, not 12/17. www.fittv.com for schedule.

Very interesting interview.. he did say 1935, although the interviewer said he was 65, so maybe the interview was done 5 years ago, although it was posted in '02. Not really important, and I agree, impressive and fun in any case. I saw something else interesting in the interview, that he had studied Kempo and said that "originated from India with the name Kalarypayat." Then he referred to "Kempo-Kalarypayat." I just heard the term "Kalaripayattu" for the first time the other day and posted about it here. Now at least I have some frame of reference to something I have a zillionth of an ounce of familiarity with Karen

Wow. Thanks for posting that, Yoda. When I first saw the photos, I thought, way cool, this guy is in my age range :-). Then I saw he was born in 1935?! Yikes! How inspiring! This looks to be in Brazil? Wanting a DVD of this. Karen

Oops, just one thing I forgot to mention about the goji berries.. even though raw, it's a good idea to soak them a bit, reduces the vatagenic quality of dried fruit (hard to correlate that with any TCM designation, but sometimes I think in TCM and sometimes I think in Ayurveda :-) Karen

It's a good question. Generally, with a healing crisis you feel a sense of gaining strength at a core level, even if it's only a very subtle distinction. Even though you have symptoms, you would have a sense of improvement being made at a deeper level. This of course takes practice to attune to, but we get plenty of chances :-). Also, after the healing crisis you generally would feel stronger than you were before. Sometimes a healing crisis can be intense, and you can feel disoriented and not know what's what for a period of time. If in time the symptoms become worse or move deeper into the body, then you might reassess the situation. Hering's (and Kent's) laws of cure say that cure moves from deeper levels of the body to the more superficial. In other words, a healing from a lung problem could show up as a skin condition, and that shouldn't be suppressed, because it's moving in the correct direction. If a skin condition was suppressed and then you get bronchitis, that would be a sign of things moving in the wrong direction. Also there's an additional law of cure that says that the direction should go from top downward, so that if you have, for example, head congestion that moves into your chest, that's the right direction of cure. Of course that indication alone isn't enough, but it's one thing to add to the assessment. Another issue here is that very often natural healing methods boost the vital force, and that's a good thing, but then the vital force decides it has enough energy to start tackling an issue that it couldn't tackle before. So deeper blockages are now revealed, and you can sort of hit a wall where the healing methods you were using before can't take you further. So there may be a deeper blockage coming up, which was always there but your practices may be allowing you to work more deeply now. These are just general guidelines, of course, and I can't say anything definitive about your situation, but I thought you might find these ideas useful. -Karen

YES! Just wanted to support that opinion. TCM could use "western" herbs and still be TCM ;-). Karen

Terrific post, Lozen.. it's precisely my point of view regarding the new wave of herbal supplements. I think the key is to remember that herbal supplements marketed to the general public in a one-size-fits-all way, are generally developed more by marketers than by real herbalists. I have been asked time and time again to critique multi-level marketing products, and almost 100% of the time those products fail the test when some simple critical thinking is applied to them. Now that herbs are being patented, similar products are flooding the market, and the message being presented is that these products are real alternatives to allopathic methods, when they're simply another flavor. There are a few criteria that people can apply to these products: first, traditional herbalism doesn't give single herbs or extracts over extended periods of time. "Simpling" is the one-herb approach for acute situations, not on any regular basis. An herbalist will use synergistic formulas, and single herbs only for very specific purposes, specific patterns of imbalance, specific people, you get my drift. Secondly, who developed the formula? Can you find any real herbalist behind it? And if it's a formula, what is the rationale for the foruma? Often herbal products contain irrational combinations of things, sort of the "let's throw everything against the wall and hopefully something will stick" approach. Rational formulas often contain herbs that have similar properties, but that's not the same thing as not knowing what you're doing and just throwing a bunch of things in the mix that have some exotic appeal to consumers. Also when I hear the usual hyped claims, to me they beg the question, why is this product so unique? You could probably take just about any herb, or vegetable for that matter, and write up a hyped ad for it, which would all be basically true -- look at the humble dandelion leaf that anyone can pull up in their garden. "Miracle cure for liver ailments!" Or even something a bit more subtle, analyzing all the amazing phytochemicals it contains and all the wonderful properties thereof. I think it would be fun to write some ad copy, or even something in the language of medical studies, for herbs that everyone has in their spice rack -- cinnamon, cumin, bay leaf, black pepper.. especially the ones you can get in bulk for less than $2/ounce, to compare side by side with the products that are being sold for $30 a bottle. To be fair, I think there are some products that are really worth buying at those prices. For one, Ayurvedic rasayanas, which are made according to traditional formulas and to the specs of master herbalists. Also other product lines developed by master herbalists.. for example, the Herbalist & Alchemist line by David Winston, and Herb Pharm from Ed Smith, Planetary formulas from Michael Tierra, and quite a few others. Then of course knowing how to use them correctly is a whole 'nother thing. Now that I've gone way off topic, I see that Mike asked me a question that I missed.. about goji berries.. I prefer eating them whole.. the juices are so concentrated that you get a quick insulin surge, and I prefer to avoid that. Also, there are so many active enzymes in the raw berries that help with digestion, although I do use Ayurvedic digestive herbs in general (Draksha is truly amazing). I generally find that raw veggies and some raw fruits have a bit too much cellulose to digest well, even though the enzymes are intact. That's why I'm not a big fan of veggie raw foods, but get my raw foods mostly via animal foods (that's also a whole 'nother topic :-), and some fresh veggie juices when I can. Less juice this time of year, though. Karen

Homemade chicken soup, warming tonic herbs, Ayurvedic oil massage with warming herbal oils, reduce cooling foods. Here in upstate NY the keyword is "warming." :-) Re. SAD lamps, there's some hype going around about that, emphasizing full spectrum bulbs that are not intense enough. Full spectrum is nice, but the more important spec is the intensity of the light. Should be 10,000 lux at a comfortable distance from the source. I got mine over 10 years ago and it's still working great, a relatively inexpensive one (~$200) from a Canadian company, Northern Lights.. it's not as spiffy looking as some, a more utilitarian desk lamp. Called the Satellite. http://www.lighttherapyproducts.com/products_lamps.html With the fluorescents it's important that they've eliminated the flicker that standard fluorescents have.. I know the Satellite meets the specs, and probably some of the others do too, but I'd check them out. Karen

I use goji berries from www.rawfood.com, essentially the same thing, I believe. The herbal/nutritional supplement industry is having a field day right now, appealing to the tendency to reduce herbs and foods down to chemical constituents and producing a lot of marketing hype. I think it helps to make the distinction between traditional herbalism and the herb industry that's been coopted by Big Pharma. It could be useful at times to take a fractionated substance like theanine out of the foods and herbs it occurs in naturally, but for general purposes I like to use the whole foods and herbs which are more balanced. Karen

Nice energy here, Sean, thanks and hi to all. Usually I can chat up a storm about all things related to healing, but of course now I'm at a loss for words .. I did want to post in the thread about herbs for injury, because I have a few ideas, so I'll zip over there.. Mainly my interest is in what works in a practical way, having been on a rather intense self-healing trip for a lot of years. See ya, Karen

Great stuff here... and thanks Sean for that insight which got me to thinking about my own use of EFT.. For me, EFT really kicked off when I focused on its use of the Law of Similars, since that functional polarity of opposites and similars that Dr. Hahnemann described is one that I tend to use as a framework for understanding things. The way EFT states the problem seems like the homeopathic remedy that provides a similar frequency and thereby extinguishes the original "disease entity" (false thought) via resonance. Seems to be a simple do-it-yourself form of Ericksonian "pacing", which then allows the person to "lead" themselves in their own best way. So interesting how different people integrate these things differently. I tend to use a stream-of-consciousness method with EFT, where I'll just start talking until the more resourceful insights bubble up. (Also I think I'll try that "leaning away" method on someone just for fun :-) -Karen