January 2006, Volume 6, No. 1

Editor's Musings

Research

While energy medicine is beginning to develop as a professional discipline, there are no nationally supported codes of ethics for energy medicine practitioners in the US. This lack of a set code of ethics makes it difficult for both energy medicine practitioners and clients to distinguish appropriate professionalism in the field. Within the energy medicine community, groups of Reiki practitioners are attempting to define codes of ethics that would be sufficient as ethical standards of behavior but many are lacking key elements. A data mining analysis was performed over the web (Yahoo, Google, Hotbot, and Jeeves) and written codes were found pertaining to appropriate ethical guidelines for Reiki practitioners. Similarities and differences among the different codes are discussed along with their potential impact.

Dealing with Life Challenges

When I was a child growing up in a family where things were often dreadfully wrong and no one knew how to make them right, my siblings and I had to carry some pretty adult-sized burdens at far too young an age. In little ways, large parts of our childhood were stolen in order to help my mother keep my father's impulsive decisions from capsizing our wobbly family boat in rough seas. He didn't mean to create such chaos, but he had the nature of one who grabbed for what he wanted when he wanted it, and the pieces were left for my mother and the children to pick up or put back together. One example of this phenomenon -- a relatively small blip on an already chaotic family radar screen -- is an era I have always spoken of, heavily punctuated with sighs, as "The Horses!"

To make amends for actions that wounded my mother deeply, my father decided to buy a farm and move his city family to the country. We were children used to roaming the streets of our very safe neighborhood every summer or weekend day in bands of friends. We wandered from one home to another from breakfast until day's end, inventing games or creative play. There were always adult eyes on us wherever we were. Often, we rode our bikes for miles...from the near end of the neighborhood to its far reaches. It was a rare day when there wasn't a friend eager to play. Without consulting any of us, we were suddenly living on a country road, miles from our friends and our familiar places to ride, play, and explore. The nearest neighbors were a long walk through a hayfield. Their children were older and younger than we were, so we were not a fast or easy match as friends. Days that had been full of laughter and play were abruptly long and lonely times. We grieved most of the summer and looked to the new school year with dread. Friends, familiar from kindergarten on, would no longer be at school to greet us on the first day. For the first time, we would ride a bus rather than walk to school with our best buddies, sharing the excited first-day chatter of young children.

Since my own humble beginning with No One Dies Alone (first as a volunteer companion in the early days to assisting in organizing systems - from what began as a grassroots movement - to becoming Program Coordinator), I have come to see this great program touch many lives in many ways. From those of us who serve our dying patients, to their families both near and far, to our culture here at Sacred Heart, I have seen the perception of the process of dying move from a quiet place of fear and denial to a sacred place so very important in the process of life. As Program Coordinator, I am in touch with all of our volunteers, as well as many of the nursing staff; there are definitely transformations taking place, too numerable to describe. One thing that strikes me so deeply is the shear amount of organizations, groups, facilities... around the world, who have contacted us about starting their own program... and many have done so with great success. Professionally, my hope is to continue to see movement away from fear towards a better understanding of the sacredness of this step in the human lifespan. Personally, I am honored to continue serving those during this phase of life and am humbled at its awesomeness.

When I was four years old I was home in bed with one of my frequent ear infections. I took a toy telephone I was playing with and unscrewed the dial and put all the pieces in my mouth as I had seen carpenters do with nails, which they then pulled out to use. The problem was that I aspirated the pieces and went into laryngospasm. I can still feel my chest muscles and diaphragm contracting forcefully, trying to get some air into my lungs, but nothing worked and I was unable to make any sounds to attract help. I had no sense of the time but suddenly realized I was not struggling anymore. I was now at the head of the bed watching myself dying.

I found it fascinating to be free of my body and a blessing. I never stopped to think about how I could still see while I was out of my body.

Variations on the Theme of Healing

Presence of Angels: A Healer's Life took five years to complete. Using my past writings and journal notes, I focused over fifty years of healing into one book with the help of my wife and editor. To my surprise, the book seems to carry a healing energy of its own. I have had reports from people who use it to heal their body by laying it on problem areas or find that its presence helps them sleep. (The latter I can understand, since some books can be boring and put one to sleep quite nicely.)

My own healing and intuitive gifts were inherited from my great-grandfather in Scotland. During my life, it has been my privilege to work on a very real and intimate level with angelic beings from the healing realms whom I call the 'Power'. It was through their teachings that I learned how miracles function as a natural part of the Creator's plan for us. The Creator holds the miracle cards close and unseen until they are put down on the table; then presto, life is renewed. With the Power doing the healing, I am just present in the room and that makes it very comfortable, nothing to do but to flow the energy.

In 1988 a light hit my forehead. That evening, around 9 p.m. I decided to go to bed early. As soon as I lay down I felt a sudden sleepiness come over me. It was like my eyes were being forced closed, even though I was fully conscious of what was going on. I heard an airplane approaching my apartment building. The motor sound of the airplane came closer and closer and then I saw through my closed eyes a light in my room, it came straight at me and hit my forehead. Shortly after that occurrence I witnessed on two separate occasions white light flowing from my stomach, performing miracles. I stated, 'witnessed' because at no time did I have anything to do with initiating these happenings, at least not consciously.

Without drawing attention to myself, I tried to grab onto the door of the green house as I felt myself slipping away; as if physically holding onto that door would prevent my spirit from going through it.

Looking back, the symbolism of that day is still incredible to me; the greenhouse as a metaphor for physical life itself and the door to the greenhouse a doorway to heaven.

It was a confusing experience for me, floating 15 to 20 feet above a lifeless, 15 year-old, 85 pound, anorexic body because I was still able to think, a process I had thought was limited to the physical brain. Although I had an inner knowingness of what was actually happening, I still couldn't totally comprehend whose body it was that I was looking down upon, whether or not it even was mine or what I could do about it. So I shifted my attention because I was starting to notice an illuminating brightness around me filled with continuous motion and movement.

Suddenly I got caught up in that movement and actually became a part of it while being at one with the light. Then a telepathic communication began with Spiritual beings of light. We began discussing the things that I hadn't done in my short lifetime that I had hoped I would. What an odd thing to discuss -- a lost future that was clearly now in the past!

Wholistic Approaches

This article is a short version of a booklet I wrote Hello, My Pain, Welcome. What Can I Do For You? -- Introduction into Emotional Body Healing. With this article I will guide you through the technique of Emotional Body Healing the way I practice it now. The suggestions to the client are in bold print, followed by my explanations.

I start a session by getting the client relaxed -- and myself, too. Here are the steps:

1. Lie down or sit down very comfortably. A session can be done anywhere. If someone comes for a treatment for the first time, I suggest finding a surrounding that will support relaxation and a feeling of safety and comfort. When I work with somebody who has already had a few sessions I can work in a cafe, in a park, or any other location in the world...

5. Tune into your body and your emotions. Next I ask my client to go with her attention to the inside, to feel and to sense inside her body. "Feel inside your body and feel if something is noticeable or perceptible, a body feeling or an emotional feeling, and then describe it to me." The question is phrased "What do you feel?" not, "How do you feel?" In my experience clients sometimes hide behind "good" as an answer to how they feel, whereas to "what do you feel?" there is hardly a hiding place.

Once the client tells me about her feeling, if it is an emotion like anger or grief I ask, "Where in the body does this feeling live?" and later on, "What does it look like?" I have found that this method helps my clients to start "seeing" inside, to really get in contact with their feelings. It is easier to connect to "the fear that's a rock in the middle of my stomach" than just "my fear." If I do not get an answer right away I wait patiently and then add: "Even the smallest, slightest feeling, perhaps just a tickle in your little toe, is a signal. Please describe to me what you feel."

Abstract

This paper provides a brief overview of how complementary medicines are regulated in Australia and of important new developments occurring in the regulatory environment.

Following wide-ranging reforms in governmental regulation in the area of complementary medicines in the late 1990s, which were premised on the emerging recognition of roles they can play in healthcare, progress toward greater acceptance and use of these medicines has continued at an increasing pace. Not only has this meant greater numbers of consumers and healthcare practitioners embracing complementary medicines but it has also posed significant challenges for the regulatory framework which operates for medicines in Australia. The regulatory framework for complementary medicines in Australia

In Australia, medicines are regulated federally by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which is a statutory body included within the Australian Government's health portfolio.

The TGA is responsible for administering the provisions of the Therapeutic Goods Act of 1989. The overall objective of the act is to ensure the quality, safety, efficacy and timely availability of therapeutic goods, including medicines, supplied in or exported from Australia. The TGA regulates many of the 'finished' medicine products presented for commercial sale and then prescribed by some healthcare therapists but has no responsibility for how such therapists are regulated or the interventions they use, these tending to be more matters of State jurisdictions.

Included among the types of medicines regulated by the TGA are complementary medicines which include herbal medicines, vitamin, mineral and nutritional supplements, traditional medicines such as Ayurvedic medicines and traditional Chinese medicines (TCM), homoeopathic medicines and aromatherapy oils.

Introduction

Subliminal Dynamics® is a method of Brain Management® that enables people to mentally photograph written material at great speed, without actually reading it. They achieve a very high percentage of recall that is permanent. Starting with this platform of performance, people can then extend their brain/mind capacities much further, into learning languages very rapidly, healing themselves and others, and much more.

Expanding the process

I developed an extensive testing and research program to understand what is happening within the brain. We kept pushing the limits till we were going so fast that it was physically impossible to turn the pages any faster. A teenager named Larry Maper peaked at 606,000 words per minute, and scored 90+% accuracy on tests by teachers. Larry is dyslexic, was consistently getting D-grades in school. When the next school year started, he got all of his textbooks for the semester, mentally photographed all of them, and two weeks later took all of his final exams, passing with straight As.

Testing from ages 4 to 93, it didn't make any difference whether there were IQs ranging from retarded to genius or learning disabilities. Anyone can use this. They are using a different part of the brain than is used for reading. We have people doing things that are not supposed to be possible. One of our students in Germany (who also lived in the Netherlands and Russia), Meindert Jan van Wyck, was a casualty of WWII. As a child he was a displaced person, lived on the streets, taught himself how to survive, and made his way across Europe. He's traveled around the world, never schooled or educated, taught himself to read and write (Dutch initially). After using this process for several years, he started corresponding with us. He had written and won awards for poetry in English. He then learned Russian. He is now recognized as one of the top healers and artists in Europe

Wholistic News Reviews

Massage increases natural killer cells in women with breast cancer

Early Migraine Headaches Helped More with Acetaminophen-Aspirin-Caffeine (AAC) Combination Than Sumatriptan

Misperceptions about nicotine can hamper smoking cessation

U.S. ahead of many other Western countries in medical errors

Psychotherapy clients' utilization of complementary and alternative therapies

Creative Arts for Healing

DB: I'm delighted to be able to interview you, Samuel. I truly admire what I've read and heard about your work in helping people open to inner awareness through movement and mime. I think it would be helpful to start with a thumbnail sketch of where you were born and raised and how you got to where you are now.

SA: An outline? That could fill books! I'll try. I was born in Morocco, in a simple religious Jewish family with traditional, old-ways. Part of my mother's and father's families are descended from Castile, from refugees to Morocco after the expulsion from Spain in 1492. We grew up in Morocco in a very humble way, in the Sephardi Jewish tradition.

DB: How did you come to the name Ben-Or?

SA: Aha, well that's my inner name that I didn't use for many years. I came to the name because or, in Hebrew is light, and speaks of the essence, according to Kabbalah. Kabbalah is the science and the art of exploring the inner light. The Kabbalah has much to say about light, and in Hebrew it is not just light, it's more than that. So Ben-Or means offspring of light, and I use the name to honor my tradition. I have had that name for many years but I couldn't use it until certain realizations were experienced and achieved. You earn a name like that, and you must be aware of the power of the inner meaning and living it with pure consciousness. We both have a name with Or. The Essenes spoke about the offsprings of darkness and offsprings of light, right?

DB: Where does that light come from? SA: That light is the light of the Neshama (Soul), the light of being, but it's not the light that we humans understand and think. It's not light of the sun. It's not light of electricity. It's a light beyond our ordinary perceptions. In my teachings, this is an approach, an exploration to understand yourself and the universe in a kinesthetic way first. We have ten principles that I developed in BodySpeak. In the first session the students learn how to literally make that which is invisible become visible right there in the classroom. In other words, to experience the process I call "The Journey from thought to action.." This is Kabbalah in action but without using the classic Kabbalistic terms. So, these ten principles of BodySpeak actually produce the sense of a light beyond the light that we know. And that's according to what I think the true artist understands. I'm speaking here of the genuine and authentic artist, not the commercial artists

The success of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize winning novel (1998) and the Academy Award winning movie (2002) The Hours has brought Virginia Woolf to the forefront again. Illness plagued her throughout her life. Humans posses a tendency toward repeated and protracted illness that helps define who we are. In On Being Ill, Virginia Woolf lays the groundwork for what we now call pathography, first person accounts of one's illness exemplified by Sontag's Illness as Metaphor (1977).

Background

In the opening scene of the novel and also the movie, it's late March 1941. Virginia Woolf has just finished writing a suicide note -- to her husband Leonard. (She also wrote a second note to her sister, Vanessa.) Virginia Woolf, aged fifty-nine, leaves her home around 11:30 in the morning wearing a heavy winter coat, taking her walking stick, and crosses the meadows to the nearby River Ouse. At the banks of the river, she places a large stone in one of the pockets of her coat. Then, nonchalantly, she walks into the river.

Her body was found by children three weeks later and cremated shortly thereafter. The verdict of the inquest was, "Suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed." A finding often recorded for suicide victims by British coroners. Thus, death ended a lifetime of illnesses.

Illness is a continuing thread of Virginia Woolf's life. Breakdowns and suicide attempts throughout her lifetime are evidence of bipolar disorder that led, in the forty years of her adult writing life, to frequent bouts of illnesses, in which mental and physical symptoms intertwined

Poetry and Art as Healing

Humor

Book Reviews