Welcome to Lessons from The Healing Field The Healing Field needed more than a dozen years of cultivation before it was ready to bloom. It took time, effort, and trust. Your journey to where you are right now is a testament to the risks you’ve taken, the relationships you’ve nurtured, the life you’ve cultivated. Time. Effort. Trust. You are to be commended for understanding that more good things are available to you when you unpack some baggage and peek behind your own curtain. To that end, congratulations for taking a deeper look inside The Healing Field. Here’s what we’re going to do. Chapter by chapter, we will explore what is going on with Lori and Dr. H. Their human frailties, and how they arrived at conclusions about their lives, can be instructive and illuminating for your life.
Awareness of what was “working on” Lori and Dr. H will probably shine a light on things that are working on you (or maybe even working you over). Sometimes these things are lumped together as
your story limiting beliefs fears, etc.
If these things (our reactions) don’t serve us for the better, it helps when we can identify them, truly see them for what they are (and even where they started), and then shift to something that honors us, supports self-care, and allows us to align body, mind and spirit. This companion guide is a continuation of the labor of love that is represented in The Healing Field. Consciously seeking people will be able to learn tools, principles and a new language of love and selfcare. The energy you spend in exploring this Guide will be energy well-spent. When we put the energy in, we re-invest the energy in ourselves and then it pays off dividends. Life is a long-term project that’s ongoing What happens in general life and in society is that we get allured by our short attention to get the shortcuts and have the easy way. But it doesn’t work. There’s a simplicity to these tools, and at the same time our brains are designed such that it’s not familiar to make these changes all at once. Even though our thinking mind says, “Yeah that’s simple,” our reacting mind and body says it’s unfamiliar – so those two words, simple and unfamiliar, fit very well together. When we practice this more and more, it’s much less unfamiliar. Like a foreign language, with practice, it’s less foreign. Eventually we can become more fluent in this language and have more grace and ease in our lives. It’s like my yoga practice. I’ve been practicing now for seven years on a regular basis. When I first started, if I had thought it would take seven years to master a certain pose, I might have been disenchanted. I might think it’s hard, and those words get in the way. When we think of life as a long term project that’s ongoing, that’s a good fit. Actually, I think that’s a great fit. I think it takes away the judgment that it’s too hard or takes too long. No, it’s ongoing now and we need to just practice getting better at it. When we look at life as a long-term project that’s ongoing and we listen to these words, we are here and we are sentenced to life. Sentenced to life – the common association is prison – somebody has a life sentence. Well, what if we consider the positive connotation: we’re sentenced here for life. In the positive connotation, in the now, we can continue working on making it the healthiest and most fulfilling life. It takes practice and intention and work, and that works! Those are the ingredients! That’s my definition of success, working it this way, a long-term project that’s ongoing.
Well, I hope you are happy to have a life sentence. I hope you are saying yes to life and that the sentence is worth carrying out. Sometimes it takes more work than other times, like in my yoga practice. Sometimes the pose takes more energy and more work and other times it’s effortless effort. It’s all in our intention, our attitude, and how we look at things.
How to Use This Guide In each chapter I have chosen passages that offer a lesson or opportunity for deeper reflection. Right after the passages I will point out the principles or ideas that may be unfamiliar, thought-provoking, maybe even startling. Answer the question and do the exercise. Breathe into the work you are doing. You will be reminded of things in your past and you might have moments of discomfort and even stress. Be gentle with yourself. This is an opportunity to enhance your self-care habits.
Prologue: Bullets for Jesus
Lori wished she could hold and comfort her dear sister, whose pain felt like her own. She longed to reach past James with her outstretched arms and say, “Let me embrace you, sweet Linda, and remind you I am by your side and love you dearly.” But she dared not risk such an effusive gesture. The fear of her father’s wrath and rejection kept her own anger buried deep in a vault of trepidation and sadness.
Chapter 1. Broken Spirit Example from Lori: Henry hadn’t witnessed this before. Most patients with compulsive behaviors, especially self-harming ones, performed their rituals in private. Lori appeared to be incapable of controlling hers. He wanted to snatch her wrists and handcuff them to her chair. “What if you put your hands under your thighs?” he suggested, his soft tone masking his unease. Lori lifted her eyes from her feet to Dr. Kaplan’s cushiony black leather chair. “I don’t know if I can, but I’ll try.” She spit the words out, like broken teeth, then struggled to tuck her hands neatly under her thighs. Resisting the urge to pick her ears had become an exhausting, futile, and demoralizing battle. He doesn’t have the slightest clue how hard this is.
Example from Henry:
Henry had been having muscle spasms for several weeks, coinciding with the increasing tension between his wife and him. Gabriella and he were spending more evenings in silence, both nursing their own wounds. Henry struggled to understand how things had changed so much in the two and a half years since they were married, and he tried not to get stuck in blaming her for all their marital problems. During their wonderful courtship and the first months of marriage, life had seemed so magnificent.
QUESTION: How does your body show you what is going on in your mind and spirit? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
Chapter 2. Back Fired Something was wrong in those meetings, Lori knew deep within, though no one else seemed to notice. She felt so insignificant. And so very alone. **** Confused, she hung her head low and fought back tears. She couldn’t have comprehended the sacred teaching that improper touching was considered an act of physical self-defilement and led to a downward spiral of deepening impurity and spiritual defeat. **** “Aha!” Her mom pointed to heaven. “The dream is teaching you that you must repent for withholding the truth. You don’t want to be left behind. Because the truth always sets you free, little one.” She smiled knowingly. “That way, you’ll be sure to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Tell Jesus you’re sorry for not being honest.” **** “Oh, that’s right!” A grimace crossed Evette’s face. “I’ve been meaning to order it. You should have it by the end of the month.” Lori waited and waited, but the chair never came, and it didn’t occur to her to remind Evette of her promise. Maybe I didn’t really need it after all, she concluded. Her back began to complain, though. The daily scrunching over because of her chair put pressure on two of her lumbar discs, which eventually bulged out like balloons, creating shooting pain down the front and sides of both legs. Despite muscle relaxants, pain-killers, and torturous physical therapy sessions, the pain became unbearable. Lori searched for ways to escape the numbness, the tingling, the muscle spasms—but she found no comfort. She couldn’t sit, stand, or lie down without feeling as if she were on a bed of nails. ****
In the weeks that followed, feelings of sadness, anger and betrayal accumulated in her body. She couldn’t find a handle to her emotions. Her back buckled under the weight of all the heartache. The pain flowed like lava inside her, burning everything in its path. **** “Your bones aren’t fusing,” the surgeon muttered from beneath a furrowed brow. “I’ve never seen this happen before.” Lori couldn’t breathe, and everything in the room seemed to be coming at her from far away. Her doctor’s voice sounded like it was traveling through an ocean as he attempted to explain that her pain and suffering were from a failed back surgery. All she heard was “failed.” This could only mean one thing, she thought. I failed. The doctor sent her on her way with a new supply of pain pills that did nothing and exercises she couldn’t possibly do. The pain only continued to get worse, and it filled every corner of her life—a life that quickly fell apart. **** I’m in so much pain! she screamed in her mind, but the pain didn’t matter as much as the need to continually pluck at her innocent lobes. Her pajama top was covered in red. Why can’t I stop? she cried out to no one. She’d long since lost her job and felt more and more worthless with each and every passing day. She was disgusted with her back, her life, and her near complete inability to function. What a stupid spine. I’m such a failure, her mind repeated like a broken record. **** It was almost four in the afternoon. The closet was dark and windowless. Lori hadn’t left all day. My bladder is so full. She adjusted her tense spine. But I can’t pee yet. Picking became more important than eating or caring for herself. I’ll have to let go with one hand, she rationalized. Her neurological circuits were stuck on compulsive drive. Somehow, if she kept picking and peeling, the pain would end. But it never did.
QUESTION: Do you have one particular negative emotion that kicks in on a regular basis? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
Chapter 3. Mystery and Misery Despite being in such a horrid mess and feeling like such a failure for seeing a psychiatrist, she felt a tiny bit less intimidated by Dr. Kaplan. Today I’m going to take a chance, she told herself nervously. Without fully realizing it, she was dislodging her massive wall of mistrust one small brick at a time. **** “There was no way you could have saved him.” Henry repeated the words slowly and intently. Then, without thinking, he added, “You couldn’t save him, just like you couldn’t have saved your sister.” Lori’s body convulsed in grief. “I should have saved them.” She let out another wail. And another. “This is too hard. I just want it to be over.” Her heart beat heavily. Her face was wet with grief.
In The Healing Field, we learn that Lori and her sister Linda were very, very close. Tragically, Linda fell into a deep, dark depression and she killed herself. Lori felt so devastated, understandably. And a part of her felt guilty as well, because two weeks before her sister died, Linda and Lori went to a Walmart-like store and unbeknownst to Lori at the time, Linda purchased bullets. When Lori found out that the shotgun Linda used did not have their father’s bullets, she figured out that it was bullets purchased at this store. That caused tremendous guilt in Lori. Now, we as outsiders of this emotionally laden and charged story can say, well, wait a minute, that’s not rational. You didn’t know, you couldn’t have prevented her. That’s a rationalization, not an intellectualization. However, because Lori felt so guilty and when we feel so guilty or whatever emotion it is ~ those emotions are energy in motion and they create an alternative, a different story. Lori felt responsible, guilty and therefore she said, “I should have saved Linda.” Also, her friend Tom died in a hospital of an overdose of medication. It was a mistake of prescribing excess quantities, and Lori felt somehow she should have alerted the doctor such that the doctor would have prevented this. She was powerless to do so. That’s a brief summary of the power of emotions in Lori’s situation. Now let’s look at when any of us use the word “should.” We’re going to use Lori as a teaching example, because this is profound and it’s huge. Now, we all should ourselves: I should do this, or I should do that, or I should have done X, Y and Z or I should not have done whatever. When we should ourselves, as Lori was shoulding herself, the word “should” is packaged with an arsenal or a punch of judgment, and also shame.
There’s judgment there, there’s self-judgment. Lori felt she should have saved Linda and she should have saved Tom. There’s judgment there, and there’s a host of emotions, including: shame, guilt, powerlessness, worthlessness. And other emotions that can get hidden: like anger and resentment, and betrayal. A huge, invisible depth of emotional TNT. So that’s how Lori had imprisoned herself. It’s a striking example of how we can sentence; that’s right, we can sentence ourselves with our sentences. And her sentence, “I should have saved Linda,” and “I should have saved Tom.” Those sentences sentence herself to infinite judgment and emotional stuckness. Wow. That’s her prison. So, we can sentence ourselves to a prison, and the other side of it is we can release ourselves from the prison. And then, of course see things in a prism and let the light in. Victims of disasters that survived, they commonly feel survivor’s guilt. For example, those that survived the tsunami and maybe a family member did not, “I should have died not my loved one.” That’s a reflexive response that goes deep in our brain’s survival mode. These are things that when we start to become aware of it sooner, and that awareness goes deeper, you shift and let go of that shoulding, and you let go of the guilt. So, guilt-free, shame-free and you’re out of the prison. You’re liberated when you let go of it. Reread the passages from The Healing Field in light of this new awareness. Then reflect on the question and exercise that follow. QUESTION: What have you taken on that doesn’t belong to you? Where have you used the words “I should have …” and how can you change that to “I could have …” ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE: The rules can box you in. Lori had snapped the lid shut on a coffin of judgment and sentenced herself to a life sentence of pain and shame. When we do this, we are often looking at an infinite prison of emotional stuckness.
Word choices can be our “get out of jail free” card. The following chart shows examples of word choices that set us up for grace and ease lined up next to the ones that tend to manipulate and cause aggravation. The words in the right column are great words to adopt for waging inner peace! It takes awareness and practice to hang out in a new language, so be gentle on yourself as you try this on. hard easy good bad should but Wouldn’t it be great? never and always
unfamiliar familiar healthy unhealthy could and It is. long-term project that is ongoing
Chapter 4. Got Doghouse? For three days, Linda went on a hunger strike, protesting silently with her refusal to eat a morsel of food. Then her hunger pangs broke her resolve and she ate the chicken, which by then had spoiled. Instantly, she became nauseated. That made Lori sick too, and she felt her stomach tighten with an unappeasable fear and a hidden mustard seed of anger. **** The thought that he might abandon her sent a shock wave of fear up her spine. You can’t do this to me! She trembled inside. No one knows how hard this is. “Lori, don’t you understand your control of food is the only source of power you have in your chaotic and disempowered life? And it’s killing you.” Lori stared blankly at him as if he was speaking gibberish. Of course she didn’t understand. She wanted to scream at him: You’re the one who doesn’t understand. “So let’s work harder together to help you find better ways of coping rather than restricting food. Is that a deal?”
**** Her Garden of Eden was forever tainted. . . . Now you’re really, really dirty. You are ruined, damaged, worthless. You are destined to go for certain to hell. These brutal thoughts ran continuously through her conscious mind as well as her dreams. No matter which way she turned, she couldn’t shake her rancid feelings of failure and worthlessness. She was tormented to the core of her being. Lori began to sneak out at night in an attempt to escape her ever-present shame.
Forgiveness is essential. Now, we have a choice here. If we choose not to forgive ourselves and others, then we put them or ourselves in a prison. It’s very familiar to be judgmental and critical. For example, we all say we are our own worst enemy. It’s a common sentence and we collectively nod our heads in agreement. Yes, we are our own worst enemy. The problem is, when we say that, think it, and believe it; then we make it so. Now let’s slow down the nodding. Say, well wait a minute, wait a minute... Do we have to be our own worst enemy? No. Can we work on being less and less of an enemy? Can we work on being more and more friend or advocate for ourselves?
Sure... It takes work, takes practice. Is it easy? No, it’s unfamiliar. So, the choice is there. When we are practicing being our own best friend or advocate, I like to term it or coin it; this is waging inner peace. Because, when we wage inner peace, why wage inner or outer war. Oh my goodness! Why do that when we can shift our focus and our energy in our intention if we’re all waging inner peace. Ah, wars, the war machine would just come to a dead end, and stop and halt. So, let’s wage inner peace. We can change with the ripple effect ourselves, and then our families, and then our neighborhoods, our communities, and the world. This is how it happens and it gives me no greater joy than when a client or patient, or somebody I’m working with comes in and after a session, they come back in and they’re using this language, and they’re feeling lighter in their body, and they’re feeling more energy. And then, what happens sometimes is they say they are sharing this with a family member. It’s like dropping a pebble in a pond, that ripple effect happens. We just have to keep dropping the pebbles in the right pond. Reread the passages from The Healing Field in light of this new awareness. Then reflect on the question and exercise that follow. QUESTION: Has there been a particular event in your life that set in motion feelings of failure and worthlessness? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
QUOTE
Chapter 5. Number and Number “I also think the work you’ve been doing with her has helped her become ready to see the painful truth.” His feet hit the rubber belt with a loud rhythmic drumbeat. Darla nodded. “I see it all the time. Physical activity makes people feel better—not just physically, but mentally and spiritually as well. It carries over in everything they do.” “Yes. And it takes a lot of courage to face the pain of emotional wounds,” Henry said, panting. “You help your clients become stronger in their bodies so their minds are more able to engage in the psychological work.” **** He feared not only being heckled but being found out. What if other doctors—or his patients—discovered he was breaking ranks and doing stand-up comedy? They certainly wouldn’t approve. Doctors were not supposed to be comedians. Sickness wasn’t funny. Dr. Rosen had suggested he use a nom de plume. “That’s French for pseudonym,” she explained. “Yes,” Henry agreed. “I’ll change my name when I go on stage. That way, it’s less likely I’ll be discovered.” He came up with a stage name: “Henry Newman.” He would become…a new man! **** That’s not the way to find yourself. You need to feed yourself, take care of yourself, and let me help you find the way to see that you have value in this world.”
Lori’s growing weakness reminded him of a stubborn bull in a bullfight— worn out and ready to drop before the last plunge of the matador’s sword. But ironically, Lori executed both roles—bull and bullfighter—with eerie skill and chilling mastery. As sacrificial bull, she received piercing psychological wounds throughout her body and mind, and as skillful matador, Lori got to deliver the penetrating emotional cuts to herself, mercilessly. “Lori, are you trying to get me to dump you?” He was determined to test her fierce and partly unconscious resistance to being helped. Agitated and supremely uncomfortable, she fidgeted in her chair as she considered his words. Though she was highly opposed to being hospitalized one more time, she still needed her relationship with him—ending it would be more terrifying than continuing. And though she craved his acceptance, she couldn’t internalize it; she felt too unworthy. She was still waiting for him to tell her what a failure she was. “No,” she exclaimed quickly. “No.” “Then why do you keep sabotaging your treatment?” Lori felt like a failure all over again. Her psychological fullness and heaviness drove her to eat less and less. She didn’t really understand why, but it made her feel a little less out of control. And it made her too weak to fully remember the horror she experienced the day her sister died.
Let’s go back to the idea that we have this condition, belief – conscious and subconscious – that we are our own worst enemy. I call that one of the three committee members – our inner critic or our inner judge. We all have an inner critic. When we start to observe, we will see how common and how prevalent it is. That we have judgment. And, in this case, we’re looking at self-judgment. Sometimes, that judgment is well concealed. We rationalize it, we deflect it, we laugh about it. Yet, when we really observe, slow down, stop, get quiet … only with that quietude, can we really start to see clearly how we can have such negative thoughts, comments, beliefs about ourselves. In this chapter, we see Lori was the victim, the bull. And, the victimizer, the bullfighter. That’s the inner critic run amuck, run wild, our own worst enemy. This is an example of when we create dis-ease, we create disease, as evidenced with Lori in the book. And, commonly amongst ourselves as well. Reread the passages from The Healing Field in light of this new awareness. Then reflect on the question and exercise that follow.
QUESTION: Facing pain and emotional wounds takes courage. Have you ever wished you could run away or change your name? Have you ever doubted that you have value in this world? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
Chapter 6. Out of the Box Lori was stuck in an energy-sucking black hole. **** With his eyes now meeting hers, he sought to penetrate her shield of listless inertia. Maybe by doing something totally preposterous, he could break her out of her depressed mind and give them both something to work with. The unexpected intrusion into her personal space threw Lori for a loop and she froze. What the devil is he doing? She had no frame of reference for his behavior. She held her breath. His intense eyes were three feet below her, looking at her in a way that was insistent—yet deeply caring. “What are you doing down there on the floor?” She still avoided his eyes, as if looking at them might cause her to go blind. Henry had taken a huge risk by venturing out of the safe, familiar grounds of standard professional practice into the wilderness of intuition, with nothing but his heart as his compass. “I am down here because it’s so damned difficult to reach you.” After a few moments he added, “I thought it was time to try something different.” **** Henry began to chuckle too, and then he joined her in noisy, unrestrained belly laughs. The room resonated gloriously with the sound of one laughter shared by two human beings. “Feel your lightness, Lori,” he encouraged her between guffaws, hoping somehow the seeds of humor would stick in her dark, nettled mind. ****
I never intended to write a book about a patient of mine, I would never do that. The doctor/patient relationship is sacred. It was only when my patient “Lori” literally confronted me and said “You have to write about this journey. You have to write about the miracles. This could help someone else.” That’s when I listened and she was right. The book and this guide came about with a purpose of helping consciously seeking people shift energy-draining reactions. We all have reactions that can be energy draining. We can all get stuck in certain patterns of reacting. It doesn’t matter what the content is, we know it when we slow down and go “Wow, that took a lot out of me” or, “I wish I had another way to respond.” It’s important to shift those energy-draining reactions, to realign body, mind and spirit.
When I’m doing yoga I know that if my posture is not in alignment I’m more likely to hurt myself or not get the most out of it. This is about realigning our reactions similarly that’s more in alignment with our body, our mind and our spirit in wholeness and integrity. Let’s look at a very simple equation. Reaction = Judgment + Emotional Tension When we’re in a reaction, when we have this hit, maybe somebody said something to us that we didn’t like or did something that we didn’t like and maybe our reaction is charged, so we have a judgment, we have a story, we have an opinion. We have emotional tension. Sometimes it anger, sometimes it’s frustration, sometimes it’s not so obvious. There can be hidden emotions like sadness, guilt, shame, worthlessness. Our emotional reaction or emotional charge is part of the whole umbrella of the reaction that I’m breaking down into these really two or three parts, are judgments, thoughts and emotional tension which resides in our body. We can have anger and not display it because we were trained or taught that anger is not okay. It takes energy to suppress or put down an emotion like anger, and there’s going to be a cost to that energy suppression, whether it’s conscious or subconscious. We can be emotionally constipated and it causes tension in our body. Here’s a thought. Society can say a person is successful because they have product to show or a bank account or a title. Yet if you’re that individual that is so called successful and your body is wound with tension and agitation or frustration, and you’re not sure how to release that, maybe you release it or not. We can release it in unhealthy ways, addictive behaviors whatever they may be. So the key here is when we start to become aware that we get stuck in these reactions and we’re not having healthy ways to release the tension, then I can help by showing people what I’ve learned through this journey in The Healing Field about the journey with my patient. We all get stuck in energy-draining reactions and when we start to find out what we can do differently, our energy balance sheet goes from the negative to the positive. Pattern Interrupt A pattern interrupt is doing something out of the box. It’s like a circuit breaker. Laughter is a wonderful circuit breaker and the moment that we laugh we’re not in the future, we’re not in the past we’re in the moment. Then there’s a connection. Here’s where the magic happens. There’s a connection for that relationship at that instant, it’s no longer doctor versus patient, me versus you, it’s an us, it’s a we, it’s a now moment, it’s a present it’s a gift. That’s what happens and that’s what the laughter and the humor did with Lori. It was certainly something I had not been doing previously so it gave me permission and invitation to be creative in order to connect deeper with someone like Lori who was in deep pain.
Deborah: I love what happens after that, where you say feel your lightness Lori, he encouraged her between [0:14:20] hoping somehow seeds of humor would stick in her dark, nettled mind. Lori closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath as her laughter subsided, her heart struggled to awaken from it unending gloominess and see a glimmering spark of hope. For a moment, her tiny universe expanded, there was space for her to breathe, ahhh…she inhaled new freedom. I think if I would hang that on my wall every now and then you know what, have a little giggle there you know and you’re universe will expand. Dr. H: Yes, and even those words ahh she inhaled, when we go ahh and aha our body shifts, our chemistry shifts, we take in a bigger inspiration and a more complete exhalation removing energy in our body and tension gets less tense and moves towards ease so the simple notion of laughter has the benefits of a little more complex in the physical realm, the mental realm and softening our hearts and letting down our guard. Deborah: I understand that and what I also know though is that in the case of Lori, she did not have a magical aha and stay that way, she slipped back into her gloominess but at least she had, and correct me if I’m wrong, the experience of a cleansing, deeper breath and that laughter and that spark of hope so that the next time it was coming at her, in something else you would do to break her malaise, maybe she would see it sooner or grasp it faster or hold it longer, is that possible? Dr. H: Exactly. It’s like taking a scarf and dipping it into dye, you do it once, take it out you get exposed to the elements it starts to fade. You do it again and the color deepens so each time there are experiences like this it opens up more of that tightly shut aperture, kind of greases it and opens it up so that connection can be found again, that’s the challenge and that’s the invitation for all of us. Deborah: So I’ve just had an image of tie dying something like a t-shirt, so I’m now looking at this mind, body, spirit beautiful tie dyed fabric and isn’t life really all about the fabric, all of the things that have happened to us and all of the things we think about and it’s kind of a interesting image. Dr. H: It is Deb, and sometimes that fabric can look and feel like it’s covered in mud so we can get fooled and seduced in the vision of its dark and its muddy and it’s trapping and I can’t get out so if we find ways or if we get help with this circuit breaker to see things differently and then to experience, even for a moment, that the mud falls off and we get rinsed of that mud and we get a glimpse of the beautiful tie dye fabric ahh, she inhaled or we inhaled a new sense of freedom when we do that so we should do it again and again. Deborah: Well you know, even as I listen to you take that aha or ahh, I actually felt myself breathe easier with you so I find it interesting that I’m not even, I’m not tense about anything, I love doing the show, I’m not nervous about it but I probably still carry some not anxiety, but tension and it’s not a
loaded type of tension but it’s wanting to do well you know, so I have my own judgment on how that looks, what that means and am I going to say something stupid, am I going to say something and he’s going to say what? So it’s just that I was nervous and now I showed you I wasn’t nervous isn’t that funny, oh I’m not nervous. Dr. H: What’s great Deb, is that your awareness and your ability to share that with us because that’s really being micro aware at the moment that your tension, you shifted into more ease and then there was the association of the thoughts that maybe associated with is so the neat thing is when I was breathing like that it invited you to do that and you dropped some tension, we all carry some tension around us very frequently and when we can shift into awareness and then shift that tension to more ease it just feels so much better. Here’s another little visual, if you think of a tuning fork when you have a tone, bang it on your knee and bring it up to your ear, now if you have another tuning fork that hasn’t been struck yet and you bring the first tuning fork to the second one it picks up that vibration. So, my vibration of more ease invited you, it’s like my being playful and humorous with Lori invited her to release her chronic tension that she was carrying so there’s a resonance there, a field of resonance energetically that we can detect and then we become better detectives and more self-aware and nonjudgmental of the thoughts, emotions and tensions that happen so quickly in our mind body field. Deborah: Now I’m wondering if your field, and I’m talking about the field of psychiatry, is in tune like a tuning fork, to this thing like the vibration I don’t know and I have no negative connotation around psychiatry at all but I’m just wondering if this is maybe outside the box. Dr. H: It’s certainly outside the box of traditional psychiatry and as with change in general over time, change happens at first slowly like a wave form, if you can imagine a pebble dropping into a pond this is wave form now there are other pockets in people in my profession though it’s relatively minor so let me use the music analogy, this resonance and this consciousness I have been teaching and learning and interacting with, with my clients and my patients, this when it spreads, this is a music I would like to spread more into the field of psychiatry and share this with my colleagues to say hey, have you tried this, do you know about this so hopefully that’s what’s going to be happening. Deborah: And I think that’s why this book is so important because frankly, Lori’s situation was so dire and it was clear that anything you were trying that was the norm for your field wasn’t working and it wasn’t going to work. Dr. H: And my colleagues did not have hopeful council or advice at the time on what to do, it was a collective feeling of hopelessness and helplessness. Deborah: Right ok so, I think I understand this concept of pattern interrupt on a lot of levels but I want to ask you a question and that is, could a person have a default reaction, in other words something happens and they always feel like it’s impending doom and maybe that’s how Lori was in her darkest days, you know everything seemed like a problem, everything was shame or horror right, you tell me.
Dr. H: Suspended fear, yeah. That default mode Deb is quite common, I see it all the time in depression and really depression is sadness that gets stuck and prolonged and it effects our circuits and then if effects how we see the world our lens, our reality lens gets clouded with this doom and gloom so it’s quite common, really very common so that was Lori’s default mode, that things could only be more bad or less bad that was it, there was no positive capacity for many years I was treating her. Deborah: Is that a habit, I’m not talking about Lori necessarily, but a consciously seeking person or anybody, is it a habit that makes us have that default reaction or is it something like awareness times ten, just what you said last time was so important, awareness, awareness, awareness times ten, is that going to help us or is this a habit we can change I other words can I plug in joy and forgiveness, can I put in the joy and forgiveness CD instead of blame and annoyance, can I just choose? Dr. H: Well you ask such rich questions, Deb so to the structure of your question, can we have this awareness or is it a habit so I will be gently and lovingly picky and say it’s not either or it’s yes and so let’s start with the awareness. The awareness, and I’ll get to that a little bit more, is pan amount to getting unstuck, awareness of many tools and I can’t go over them all right now so I’ll say that the awareness is critical to getting unstuck. Now the stuckness, you asked if it was a habit, yeah it does become a habit pattern, it’s auto pilot and it’s a cascade so if we’re feeling tense and anxious and our world seems to be falling apart that already compromises our capacity to see outside of that box. So we can be, like if were in a movie and it’s a horror film, any film, we can be inundated with the senses and the tension and it certainly can feel real and so we can get stuck in the perception that things aren’t getting better they’re only getting worse and then as I said a cascade, a self-fulfilling prophecy because it just amplifies so we really catapult down a spiral real quickly and get stuck there. Now, the unspiraling is the awareness that we can step out of what’s driving our perception because we can really get overly stuck and seeing things through a negative lens and that’s the distortion, that’s where the rubber meets the road, here is where we can work on what drives the perceptions and when we look at what drives our perceptions we can steer out of the ditches of misperception, so it’s quite tricky and challenging and inviting and very empowering and enriching when we start to get a handle on how to do that because then, we practice it more and more, it has a cascade up and positive out of the negative box. Deborah: So, I love that of course and I also am thinking that the wonderful cleansing breath we were talking about a minute ago, I’m wondering if in my case, when I’m feeling myself going for a default reaction and I used to have a real impending doom kind of, that’s why I mentioned that one, I’m kind of out of that mode right now, I’m in a better place now but I’ve had that where the default reaction was impending doom so I maybe still have it, it’s just not running me right now so I’ll guess I’ll save that one but I think if I were to take a breath it would be conscious, take a breath and then a little inventory of my feelings and the truth of what’s happening then maybe I really can avoid my default reaction and choose differently.
Dr. H: Yes, yes, yes, yes, did I say yes? Absolutely Deb, this is awareness and I say yes multiple times like awareness multiple times because when we have awareness, when you have that awareness and it comes simultaneously with impending doom you say to yourself, you give yourself self-talk, wait a minute Deb, take a breath and when you take the time to take a breath you slow the swirling vortex of doom and gloom a little bit and enough that you get expanded space in your mind and your body to process and engage other circuits to say wait a minute, maybe this is a distortion, an exaggeration , an old habit pattern so the breath, and I council people about the breath and the body because they go together we’re working with our body to take this kind of conscious breath, the breath is so undervalued and unrecognized and it’s such a powerful tool so yes, yes and another yes.
“What does the E stand for? You know—your middle initial?” She looked up at him for any signs that she’d blown it. Henry paused and shifted his eyes to the window to his right. He wondered why in the world, after all this time, she wanted to know his middle name, which was Eric. He glanced back at her and then the corners of his mouth turned slightly upward. “Eucalyptus,” he said mischievously. “What?” “Eucalyptus. Henry Eucalyptus Kaplan.” He tried to keep a straight face. Lori laughed long and hard, a release that began at the tip of her toes and propelled her body forward with glee. “You’re fun,” she said, fluttering light as a butterfly. Henry smiled. Today was going to be a good day.
Reread the passages from The Healing Field in light of this new awareness. Then reflect on the question and exercise that follow. QUESTION: What pattern interrupt can you envision creating for yourself when an energy-draining reaction is ruling the day? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________
EXERCISE:
Chapter 7. Definition of Insanity Henry shook his head wearily as he absorbed her words. His stomach tightened. He understood the intensity of his own frustration was minuscule compared to Lori’s desperation, but he nonetheless wanted to scream. Questions flooded his consciousness. Did his sense of frustration mean he was too attached to her getting well? According to conventional protocol, this kind of attachment could cloud one’s judgment. Seeing Lori sitting before him in a stupor of near lifelessness, he wondered if he could be part of the problem. Did he care too much? She was one of the most demanding and challenging patients he had ever had. He wondered why he was so deeply invested in seeing her get better. Was Darla wrong? Was it Lori’s fate to die like her sister Linda? What if she didn’t make it? Would that mean that he too was a failure? He didn’t believe that was the case. After all, as her physician, wasn’t he supposed to care? As he looked at Lori, he could not help but ponder. Since the brain could not always distinguish between emotional and physical pain, what about its ability to distinguish emotional or physical pain from spiritual distress, or matters concerning a person’s perceived absence or presence of God in their lives? Could an unhealthy relationship with the God of one’s upbringing cause or contribute to a disease? Was it possible that Lori’s self-induced starvation, on the deepest and most spiritually clear level imaginable, was a declaration that, “If this is how God is, I do not want to live in this world, and I am going on a hunger strike till I die or something changes.” Henry took a deep breath in an effort to release the compression he felt around his chest. He recalled a quote from one of Freud’s early collaborators, Carl Jung, who said, “The doctor is effective only when he himself is affected.” This was certainly affecting him. **** Henry turned and faced her. He put one hand on the hood of the car and began his inquiry. “What is it that’s underneath your stubborn wish to rot away in a stinking mound of skin and bones? This isn’t just about your fear of food. Something else is going on.” He paused and softened his tone. “Lori, why don’t we form a true partnership in healing?” She blinked her eyes in a futile attempt to process his words. He continued. “Let’s form a healing partnership in which there is trust and safety and honesty. What do you say? Let me treat you in the hospital, where you’ll be taken good care of.”
QUESTION: How would you rate your level of trust, safety and honesty with others? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
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Chapter 8. Holy Skirt Lori knew she must tell him the story of what happened despite the immense fear she had that he would be disgusted with her inexcusable behavior and fire her as a patient. My life depends on this. She didn’t know how she was going to find the strength to say what she was going to say. **** “With the grace of God,” he said, “let this fire burn off any and all residual shame from your sexual trauma in the park so many years ago.” He gently placed the candle back on its ivory holder. Lori, crying with relief, nodded as she mouthed once again, “Thank you.”
Lori had shared with me in a poignant, vulnerable moment. She had been raped in her past and it was extremely scary and difficult for her to share that because she was raised with such judgment about sexual matters and speaking about this was extremely shameful. She brought in the skirt that she had kept for almost a decade. She was trembling and gave it to me and asked me to something with it. I intuitively got a candle out and lit a match to the candle and burnt a portion of the skirt and as I burnt it, I said an affirmation, something like let this flame burn of the shame from your body now. It was very powerful to symbolically and in that space help her lose her tremendous self-judgment, kept there by tremendous feelings of shame and worthlessness. The moment went from such high tension to a drop into ease and safety and a feeling of profound healing that we both experienced. Deborah: It was beautiful and it was inspired and I’m sure that she appreciates it because I don’t know where it came from, like you said it came from intuition and it came from you caring enough about her to figure out what it needed to be at that moment and listening to your own soul to figure out what do I do, what do I do, what do I do. Do you ever have any mayday moments when you are in a session with your client and they bring you something whether it’s psychological or in this case physical item and you go wow, I don’t know what to do with you, I don’t know where to go. Dr. H: Yes, absolutely and in a sense that was a mayday moment, fortunately the intensity and duration were small enough because my heart, my intuition to use that phrase again I was out of the box, out of my cognitive mind because my thinking mind would have gone ok, what do I do with the skirt and that didn’t get in the way, I had an inner knowing and with a picture sense without it going to words first that takes longer and they’re different circuits that are laid out, since I was figuratively out of mind and more into my intuition, and then symbolically the flame melting away the shame that was the re-frame, not to do some rap here but the re-frame is to melt away the shame and lose the judgment so those are universal lessons for us all.
Deborah: I just can’t even imagine what was going through both of your minds, because that’s a once in a lifetime thing probably, for both of you and it was so critical at that moment. Dr. H: We had many healing experiences and that was part of the healing journey the lessons again, where we were out of our minds so to that familiar question, I don’t know what you were thinking, we weren’t thinking we were out of our minds and that was part of the magic, we weren’t in our minds we were in another space and that space of non-judgment, of caring and then sharing and that’s where the miracles happen, in that space there, that’s what I think. Deborah: So non judgment, caring and sharing is going to rule the day, it’s always going to rule the day and that sounded like judgment in a good way. If I ask permission and just do it and then tell you I did it. So you just mentioned the word affirmation I think and I had written it down a minute ago for some other thing we were talking about and now I actually want to talk about affirmations a little bit because I would think self-talk, affirmations, using affirmations might be another way to shift energy draining reactions and you actually wrote prescriptions for Lori which were meant to be consumed over and over again like tasty morsels were going to sustain her and give her sustenance so talk to me about that. Reread the passages from The Healing Field in light of this new awareness. Then reflect on the question and exercise that follow. QUESTION: Do you have a moment in your past that causes you pain, shame, suffering, frustration and could you figuratively put a match to it? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE: Deborah: I was just going to say that it’s like that mayday, mayday thing that we talked about in a previous episode where you can call, “Mayday! Mayday!” and something has to be available to you. [laughs] You know, to get you out of disaster. Right? Dr. H: Right, we can’t always wait for somebody to rescue us when we do the mayday. What we can do is be prepared by practicing this in advance, so that when we need this knowledge, when we need
these tools, when we have this awareness. Then, we can get out of our autopilot prison mode, and then shift into conscious pilot. Things look very different when we have more space. So, it’s really going from the tension and dis-ease into a space of grace and ease. And, it takes work, and the work pays off. Going from tension and dis-ease into that space of grace and ease.
Chapter 9. Comedy and Tragedy Henry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then, swiftly, as if propelled by an invisible force, he opened his eyes, scooted his chair away and pulled out one of his prescription pads he kept in his desk drawer. He got out his pen and tore off a blank prescription. He put her name at the top, dated it, and wrote a sentence three times in capital letters: FOOD IS NOT FAILURE FOOD IS NOT FAILURE FOOD IS NOT FAILURE
He handed the prescription to Lori. She stared quizzically at the words, then glanced at him. He was eyeing her as if she were an alien learning the ways of a new culture. She quickly averted her eyes and peered back at the piece of paper. Lori was unaccustomed to getting a prescription for anything other than pills. She folded it twice into a perfect square and tucked it carefully into the pocket of her sweater as if it were an undeserved message from a special angel. She fingered it nervously in her pocket, anxious for a chance to be alone so she could study it more carefully.
I wrote affirmations on a prescription pad that typically doctors use to write scrips for medications. I was writing affirmations for her so her mind wouldn’t be exposed again and again to some truths that her depressed and distorted mind could not see so on a practical level. For all of us, when we pay attention to our words, particularly when we are in those energy-draining reactions, if we slow it down like we’re playing a movie clip, put it on rewind and play and see what words and thoughts come into our head, we can see that we can sentence ourselves, we can sentence our self inadvertently due to more tension, due to more pain, When we’re not aware that we’re doing this, then we’re a prisoner and hostage to our reactions. It’s like a reflex hammer under your knee as the foot goes up. We have these reactions that are automatic. When we have an awareness that we’ve been talking about to see what those reactions are, to have some objectivities flowing down with our breath then we can start to change those thought forms, change the sentences that we sentence ourselves to a prison and instead, we can change our words or sentences to get out of that prison and as you know I usually say and into a prism where the light comes in and where we see things differently and where the healing occurs so yes with affirmations for example, if our automatic thought is I’m never good enough or I’m not going to do what I need to do to be ok, that sentence keeps us suspended in fear and contraction and we’re more likely to fail in that posture then if we are upright
and breathing with more ease and opening up more space, like you shared earlier with us in the podcast, when you had that mayday moment and used your awareness and your breath and you were opening up that prison of mayday and into the prism of more lightness and ease so this is where it’s at, right here. Reread the passages from The Healing Field in light of this new awareness. Then reflect on the question and exercise that follow. QUESTION: What prescription could you write for yourself right now that would ease a burden or make you smile? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
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Chapter 10. For Better or Worse With his heart racing, little Henry thought about Izzy’s lifeless body in the darkness under the dirt. But didn’t Mom say Izzy was going to heaven? Where could heaven be? What happened when we died? Henry could not imagine himself after death, just as he could not fathom his existence before birth. If he had become him only after he was born, then he was nothing before he was born. What if he would be nothing after he died? Nothing? Not a thing! He gasped for air. No more toys? No more cartoons? Never, forever and ever? His fragile young mind spun cartwheels. In tears, he jumped from his bed and ran to his parents’ bedroom. “Who’s going to bury me?” he sobbed, his lower lip quivering. “What is heaven?” he sputtered. “What happens after we die?” “Don’t worry, Henry, dear.” His mother pulled back the sheets and helped her son up to her side of the bed. “Your wife will bury you. We’ll all meet in heaven and be together with God.” “Where is God?” Henry tugged at her soft cottony nightgown. “God is everywhere,” she answered, combing his brown hair back with her hand. “Where?” he asked again, wriggling his feet in the bed. “He is invisible.” “What is heaven?” “It’s a place where we all meet.” Mother propped her head up on her elbow. “Is heaven invisible too?” Mom laughed. “You ask a lot of questions, my sweet boy.” Henry didn’t understand what was funny. “Don’t worry,” his mother said. She brushed his flushed round cheek with the back of her free hand. “Everything will be okay.”
Our early experiences with loss will inform us later in autopilot mode. Parents are often ill-prepared to deal with these topics that they haven’t necessarily thought about it or know what to say to their kids. They usually model what they learned when they were kids. Then all loss events that come later in life can have an anchor to the roots of how we navigate loss. We generally do it poorly as a culture and as a nation. We’re taught, replace the loss, time heals all wounds, “Ah, just get over it.” Messages like that, that don’t help one bit and actually make it worse. It’s common in our society or culture if somebody passes away. A comment that’s common, “Well, he or she is in a better place.” That gives people some level of comfort. Sometimes not enough because the person who loses that loved one… They tend to be in pain. And, our autopilot mode is to recoil from pain: push it down, hide from it. Don’t show up in society wearing our pain, because people usually are repelled by that. There are forces in autopilot mode individually and collectively that don’t do justice to how to deal with pain, loss. I say, we need to go through the pain: not around it, not above it, not behind it. Don’t push it down. We need to go through that pain in a way that’s the healthiest and the most healing. And, that is without judging our reaction, and allowing ourselves time to grieve. When we do that more, and we do it more better, then we’re more complete with the pain of a loss. That’s how I guide people to be more in conscious pilot with things like loss, and the pain of loss. Not to just cover it up and say, okay, let’s move on. It’s too quick. Let’s stick around a little while so we can get some healing from that wound, from that pain. Then, we increase the capacity for joy and for fullness. The Wise Inner Being Sometimes people recognize the wise inner being as the “higher Self” with the capital “S” versus our ego, personality self. Another word for that wise inner being or intuition or spirit, or even God. Another word that I use, and that most doctors don’t use, is the word “love.” When we are in a state of love… to me, that means we’re not in a state of judgment, of tension, of self-condemnation or condemnation of others. We lose our judgment, and we lose our fear. When we lose our judgment and we lose our fear… to me, that’s a state of grace, that’s a state of love. And, in that space… that’s where miracles happen. It would be great if we learned to love ourselves more. “Love yourself more.” Not everybody is ready to hear that, because we can cringe, especially if we’re in a state of dis-ease or disgust or fear, survival mode. The words, “love yourself more” can feel like an unwanted harpoon in our energy field. Now, on the other hand, if we have the awareness that we’re in that state of disruption, and judgment, and we’re not liking ourselves very much. Then, to get the feedback that, “Hey, maybe you can learn to dislike yourself less.” Oh, okay. That seems more doable than to love myself if I’m really not liking myself. So, to dislike ourselves less, and work on practicing that. The more we practice that, then hey, we might find
one or two qualities about ourselves that we can say, “Hey, you know I’m not that bad of a person. Maybe I’m okay, maybe I could start to like myself.” And that’s a powerful process of transformation. Reread the passages from The Healing Field in light of this new awareness. Then reflect on the question and exercise that follow. QUESTION: What questions keep you up at night? How do you find peace so you can sleep when things are confusing? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
Chapter 11. Mystical Moments Henry felt like hugging Mariette. Then he did. And when he left her humble home, he looked around, scanning the world around him in slow motion, as if he were seeing it for the very first time. He had an inner knowing, for the first conscious moment in his life: There was a God force, a Creator, something extraordinarily magnificent, something beyond the perceptions of our senses. He didn’t have to think, believe, feel, question, ponder, or wonder any more. He knew! Without realizing it, he had left his mind and entered his heart. He was truly out of his mind. What a joyful feeling!
be open to quite a new paradigm of what can happen if you really drop out of your mind and into your heart, and accept miracles. So, rather than my talking about that, I would love it if you would read for us again. I know you like it when I do that. I mean, when I ask you to do that. [laughs] I would like for you to read out of the chapter called, Mystical Moments. And, I think we talked about you reading on page 131, and kind of set the context for us. And then, let us talk about that after you finished reading. Dr. H: So, the passage that you asked me to read… I’ll put it into context because without the context, it’s very easy to judge. And I know in my past, I had judgments about people that went to others that you could call, psychic or intuitive. So, in my past I had judgments about that. I was trained in… First, engineering, very left-brained. And then, I shifted careers and went into medicine. Very scientific, evidence based. And, it doesn’t look at a person subjectivity. That’s not in the language of science. So, it took me a while to expand my conditioned belief system to not be so judgmental about my beliefs. And then, being more open. And so, in my pursuit of those questions that came up for seven year old Henry, of what’s God and where’s heaven? And, other questions of why are we here? And, what is the meaning of this? I was referred to a woman who had a very powerful story and experience. She was known in the community as an intuitive. And so, when I went to see her, we had an experience. And, I was aware of my judgment as they were crossing my mind. And, I just observe them and let them go. So, now I’m going to read the passage that you asked me to. And, this is my experience with Mariette, and here we go. [Dr. H reads from his book] [00:29:59 – 00:32:44] Deborah: Wow. My goodness. So, the first thing I would like to mention is that if you say he had no reference point anywhere in his mental software for what he was observing and experiencing. His body relaxed and he was filled with a strong sense of inner peace. So, my thinking is… It we’re open to miracles, and if we’re open to all possibilities, and we just kind of lean in and let it be… What can happen? Dr. H: Right. If it was an earlier time in my life, I might have not had this space to set my judgments aside. I might have judged that to be weird… Was it happening? It could have triggered fear and judgment. And, that’s not what happened. I felt a complete lack of fear. I felt totally at ease. I had never experienced my breathing to be so wonderful in its expansion of inspiration and its exhalation. That cycle of breath was so unhurried and so prolonged it was just breath-taking. And so, that experience, without that framework, really took me out of my mind. That was fulfilling.
Deborah: Well, I’d like to read the last part of that chapter because I think it speaks to what you were just saying. And, your writing is just beautiful here, and it says: He had an inner knowing for the first conscious moment in his life. There was a God force, a creator. Something extraordinarily magnificent. Something beyond the perceptions of our senses. He didn’t have to think, believe, feel, question, ponder or wonder anymore, he knew. Without realizing it, he had left his mind and entered his heart. He was truly out of his mind. What a joyful feeling. Dr. H: Yes. Deborah: That is so good. And, what a great invitation for others to figure out how to get that same – not that same experience but the – unbridled joy. And, I think it has to be the full package – that mind, body, spirit. Don’t you? It has to be the whole package. Dr. H: Yes. Deborah: Am I being too firm in that? I mean, it’s kind of a broad brush to stroke, you know. But, I think it’s right. Dr. H: Well, that’s integration. That’s wholeness. And, you know I’m an Integrative Psychiatrist. So, to me the word, integration is integrating the multiple parts of what makes up who we are. And, it’s much more in my experience than, we judge or we believe ourselves to be. Deborah: Exactly. Dr. H: And, I take great joy and pleasure Deb, as a psychiatrist when I can say to a patient, or a client, or just to people in general… When I say, “In order to heal, you have to be out of your mind.” So, psychiatrist usually, it’s about the mind and solving the puzzle of the mind. And, it’s really fun to say, “No, you have to be out of your mind and into your heart.” And, people usually get that, and they laugh. Deborah: [laughs] Well, let me tell you… Having experienced as many conversations as you and I have had, and it has been my pleasure every time, believe me. Dr. H: Thank you. Deborah: You’re welcome. I find that just like I have my mother and father in my mind, kind of as filter for some of what I’m thinking… In a good way. I have you, in my mind also. And, it’s really, really comforting. Because, when I realize that I have to step up and be with somebody… Like, I’m talking about with my friend that lost her dog today. I can hook into my parents, I can hook into you, I can hook into my heart. And, I kind of think it’s all one beautiful thing – that you already mentioned – that’s called love. Dr. H: Yes. Deborah: And, I would just like to wrap back around to that. And, it’s really important to understand and to notice it, and to own it. And, I love it. Dr. H: Yes. The Beatles sang it, “All you need is love.” Deborah: [laughs] Dr. H: It’s certainly a necessary ingredient in our wholeness, in our healing, in our well-being. Again, as I’ve said and I will continue to say what I’ve learned that: Path of love is to work on winding the other parts that go, “Noooo, this is wrong! This is bad! Yuck! Uhgh!” When we can stick around with that stuff going on, and quiet that part of our brain… Then, we increase the capacity for love, joy, and well-being. Reread the passages from The Healing Field in light of this new awareness. Then reflect on the question and exercise that follow.
QUESTION: What is your belief around spirituality, God force, Creator? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
Chapter 12. The Healing Battle Lori had fallen deeply into a self-imposed imprisonment of blame and judgment so well constructed that not even Houdini could have escaped. She was stuck, blind, divided, fragmented, separated, and suitably punished. **** They had become intertwined in a dysfunctional healing battle. Lori, in an attempt to release overwhelming tension, tried to get Dr. Kaplan to do the one thing he would not do: repudiate, condemn, and abandon her. **** Henry, on the other hand, had become trapped in the endless reruns of her bad-movie scenarios, watching her mind playing the same pointless episodes over and over again. How he wished he could direct a new script where he would be the welcome healer rather than the reproving judge—the role her subconscious mind had cast him in. He broke the silent stalemate. “What is it that you are trying to get from me?” Henry asked with compassion, watching her to see if she could receive it. “I don’t know,” she wailed. Lori sank back into the soft leather chair. The pressure inside her head mounted until she felt it was a balloon about to burst. She silently recounted each of the times she’d been admitted to the hospital, and she felt the unbearable sensations of anxiety and self-condemnation that wracked the inside of her body. If I go in again it’ll be the twelfth time. I’ll be the dirty dozen, she thought irrationally. Everyone will know how despicable I am. What else could they think? Her pain and suffering spread undeterred, like a tsunami radiating from an ancient, timeless quake. I want all this to stop, she screamed silently. I’m in so much pain. I just can’t stand it anymore! It would be better to die. I can’t let Dr. Kaplan send me to the hospital. But there he was, insisting on sending her back. He wouldn’t go away. For the life of her, she could not comprehend why he didn’t go away. Everyone else eventually goes away and leaves me alone. Why does he keep coming back?
QUESTION: What conversation do you run in your head that you think declares what others think of you? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
Quote
Chapter 13. Food Fight Henry pulled out a prescription from his pocket that he had composed earlier in the day. He placed this mystery note on the table where she was sitting, got up, and left. Lori hurried back to her room and stared at the new scrip, which she had carefully unfolded. She struggled to comprehend the puzzling message, which read: I’M LEARNING TO HATE MYSELF A LITTLE LESS… I’M LEARNING TO HATE MYSELF A LITTLE LESS… I’M LEARNING TO HATE MYSELF A LITTLE LESS… **** “What do you mean?” Lori said indignantly. Sometimes he just made no sense at all. Her knees twitched with agitation. “She never spends any time with me. I don’t want her to be my nurse anymore.” She glared at her foot, tapping urgently on the floor. “So you felt angry that she didn’t spend more time with you?” “No,” Lori snapped. Her chest tightened. She wanted to curl up inside herself. How ridiculous, she thought. Of course I wasn’t angry. “Okay,” Henry said. “Did you feel frustrated?” She paused. I guess it’s okay to feel frustrated. “Well, yes,” she said. “Did you feel resentment?” She stopped breathing, flooded with confusion. Her right hand moved up toward her ear but stopped halfway there as she considered an alternative. Then, hoping to win him over to her argument, she proclaimed, “I don’t want her to be my nurse anymore. Will you tell them not to give me her?” Henry could see real agony in her eyes. He took a deep breath and released his own frustration as he exhaled. He fished in his wallet for a blank prescription sheet, which he kept for emergencies. He pulled the pen from his shirt pocket and wrote: ANGER IS OKAY! ANGER IS OKAY! ANGER IS OKAY!
He held up the prescription for her to read. Lori felt like she’d been shot by a stun gun. What does that mean? She searched her mind for an explanation. Anger is not supposed to be okay. Henry waited. Then he said, “Lori, it’s okay to have anger. It really is. It’s an emotion that we all can have. If you don’t claim your anger, it will go underground and fool you with symptoms.” **** Her eyes still covered, she managed to squeak out a desperate plea. “I can’t talk about this to another human being. Not even you.” He thought for a moment, then spoke with a gentle ease. “Think of me as a soul, Lori, not another human being.” Ever so slightly, the vice grip on her throat began to loosen, and the pounding in her heart slowed just a bit. She spread her fingers, still pressed tightly against her face, and peeked through them. She looked at Dr. Kaplan to see if what he’d just said was for real. He said it again. “Think of me as a soul, Lori, not another human being.” She gazed up at him, hoping this miraculous escape hatch from her dungeon of silent despair was true. “Okay,” she hedged. “Can I really speak to you not as a person?” She held her breath at this possibility. “Yes,” he said calmly. She exhaled. She painfully described the time she went on vacation by herself to Hawaii, something she had never done before. She visited missionary friends there, but stayed in a hotel by herself. One night, Lori went to the hotel bar and met a man who treated her kindly. He bought her several drinks and they ended up in bed, much to her surprise and, later, tremendous remorse and shame. When she found out she was pregnant, she considered killing herself but decided against it. “Lori,” Henry said when she’d finished. “Thank you so much for trusting me with your story.”
QUESTION: What story about your past would you be able to tell a soul that you can’t see yourself telling another human being? Can you see the telling of this story as an opportunity to forgive yourself and feel peace about this incident? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________
EXERCISE:
Chapter 14. What if Love? “Dr. Kaplan,” she murmured tentatively, barely breathing, “I’m scared.” He waited three full breaths. “It’s okay,” he said, wanting to acknowledge that this expression of fear might actually be the beginning of a breakthrough for her. “You’ll be safe with me. I’ll make sure you are.” She heard his words, but was still reluctant. She scanned his energy to detect signs of danger, manipulation, or trickery. Exhausted, she released her grip and let herself be led away into the eye of her storm of fear. She was too exhausted to fight. **** She stared inward, trying to tune out the rumble of her mental motor, which carried her back in time, revisiting painful, long-ago family meals and her father’s ceaseless recriminations. She dared not share these experiences with any other human being. Lori forced herself to look at the people sitting at the tables. Everyone seemed to be okay—and they were eating. Lori knew she wasn’t okay, and she couldn’t eat. She was fat. How could she eat? Especially those unfamiliar foods Dr. Kaplan was putting on her tray. They weren’t safe foods. He must know that. Panic-stricken, she thought, What is he trying to do to me? She could only eat shredded wheat, and just trying to eat that was a huge struggle. But that’s all I deserve, Lori heard herself think. Her back hurt. She was in constant pain. She was useless. She was a miserable failure. She was fat. In fact, she was obese. **** Doesn’t he realize how excruciatingly difficult this is? Lori thought as she contemplated which seat to take. Should I sit in the chair next to him? Will he think I’m being too difficult if I sit in the one across from him? Food, and everything about eating it, represented shame and fear and guilt and worthlessness and emotional bulk—and more and more helpings of misery. ****
Though Henry was famished, he was also acutely conscious of Lori’s growing anxiety in this environment, fully aware of the risks he would be taking by bringing her face to face with the demons that tormented her around food. As he prepared to take his first bite, something clicked in for him from his experiences with stand-up comedy. Comedy had the power to defuse the thoughts and feelings that people feared, allowing them to look at these fears more closely. He picked up the edge of his napkin and unfurled it theatrically, unveiling his silverware as an overly zealous magician might do. **** “I…I could never mix food.” “Why not?” “I don’t…I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders. He knew she didn’t know, of course. He also knew that combining foods repulsed her, and the sense of contamination she experienced was absolutely real in her mind. Her mind converted the energy of her shame and sense of worthlessness into a physical sensation of density. If she were to get better he would have to break the toxic grip her distortions had over her being. ****
Suddenly Dr. Kaplan’s prayer, “God, please help Lori eat,” echoed in her ears. It was so different from all the prayers she knew. For one thing, his eyes had been open. And he didn’t shout, cry out, or rise up like the powerful man in the pulpit. Lori’s confusion ate away at her. She drew a deep breath and mustered the courage to ask a lifelong question, one whose mere asking could invoke shameful repudiation and accusations of disloyalty and faithlessness. Now she was faced with receiving the wrath of rejection or developing an unfamiliar sensation: trust. Trust had always traveled with another word: obey. Trust and obey. These words were knotted together in her biology and psychology. Could she trust and not feel like a subservient, lesser-than-other weakling? She crushed the blasphemous thought down with a judgmental sledgehammer. Don’t be silly, she chided herself. Yet she couldn’t help eking out a question to him. Inhaling bravado, she trembled as she asked, “Dr. Kaplan, what in heaven’s name is God?”
God = LOVE, total pure, unconditional, nonjudgmental, compassionate, loving, warmth, white light, nurturing, soothing, comforting, cleansing, purifying LOVE! Energetically healing, breathtaking, inspiring, blissful and joyful LOVE!” Lori read the words to herself. They were enticing and exciting, yet scary. She had never ever heard anyone describe God with such love and with the absence of fear. How could this make sense? The vise around her body loosened one ratchet. She hungrily read the words again and again. Could it be true? Could there be a God that was love? In her world, God was always watching. God was always waiting. God was watching and waiting to make sure your performance was good enough and that you followed the tribal rules. If your performance wasn’t good, then you had to ask God for forgiveness. Then you had to perform better. You had better perform better, because if you didn’t, things became really scary. Bad things happened to those who performed poorly. **** Her eyes tracked the writing on the napkin once more. She was confused. Is God a God of love—not a God of condemnation, punishment, and repentance? Wanting to touch her soul, Henry opened the windows of her eyes with his gentle stare. “Lori, you deserve to eat.” He waited a dozen heartbeats and repeated, “Lori, you deserve to eat.” Lori’s body went into deep freeze. Did he say, “You deserve to eat”? Just as those words were beginning to find space in her mind, he made another astounding statement: “What if, Lori—what if love?” Perplexed, she asked, “What do you mean?” “Lori, what if you choose love instead of fear?” Sitting motionless amid the cacophony of dishes and the ringing of cash registers, Lori tried to digest the words he had just spoken: “you deserve to eat.” And the brand new concept he introduced to her: “what if love?” These words taste good, she dared to think.
Cautiously, tearfully, and bravely, she uncovered her fork as if it were a harpoon waiting to spear its prey. She pierced a small piece of egg and lifted it warily. Her dehydrated mouth began to salivate. She put the egg on her tongue. “This is yummy!” she whispered, surprised. She was crying, but for the first time in a long time she felt calm. The turbulence inside her had quieted down. She felt—was it possible?—a ray of hope shimmer in her inner being. **** “What if I called you…would you mind if I called you…Dr. H? Would that be okay?” The tribe was super strict about keeping boundaries very formal when facing authority figures like doctors, lawyers, pastors, principals, preachers, and police officers. Might she be entering a forbidden trail? “Dr. H.” Henry repeated the name. His grandfather had called him “H” as a boy. “I like the sound of that,” he said. “Sure, Lori. You’re welcome to call me Dr. H.” Lori beamed. “Really? It’s okay?” “Yes.” “Thank you, Dr. H.” Lori sighed. “Thank you. That means so much to me.”
QUESTION: Can you trust yourself to go into the eye of the storm of fear and self-judgment in order to break through a long-held limiting belief? What physical sensations are you noticing as you ponder this question? Can you replace your feelings of fear and self-judgment with love and forgiveness? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
QUOTE
Chapter 17. Weapons of Mental Destruction She inched forward two or three feet, creeping like a paraplegic toward Dr. H’s outstretched arm and beckoning eyes. Stopping at his feet, she reached up, grasped the prescription, and brought it to her eyes. “What is this?” She sighed suspiciously, conserving her deathly low energy reserves. She brought her knees up to her chest, hugging her origamilike body with her arms and studying the small square-shaped piece of paper. She struggled to focus on the printed handwriting, straining to make sense out of the strange new words and sentences that appeared at the edge of her mental fog. Henry watched hopefully as Lori read to herself slowly, mentally fingering the letters as if they were Braille: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
ALL YOUR FEELINGS ARE IMPORTANT. THERE IS NO “BAD” OR “WRONG” EMOTION. YOU CAN HAVE ANGER AND NOT ASK FOR ANY FORGIVENESS. THERE IS NO UNSAFE FEELING. THERE IS NO UNSAFE FOOD. ALL FOOD IS GUILT-FREE AND SHAME-FREE!
Lori shuffled her feet. But I’m not supposed to have feelings, especially bad ones, she thought. She couldn’t even imagine what a good feeling was. People talked about being happy. But she wasn’t sure what that really meant. She remembered laughing at Dr. H now and then, with his ridiculous grapetossing show, but she couldn’t imagine what she’d been thinking to act so inappropriately. And anyway, it was better to not risk letting feelings—any feelings—get in the way of behaving properly. She knew the risks. Yesterday I was angry, she thought, and winced as she recalled her verbal attack on Dr. H. It felt awful, and it was bad. Very bad. She looked at the words on the paper again. How could anger be important? She held her knees close to her chest, in front of her heart, puzzled by the threatening prospect of redemption.
“I…I don’t understand,” she said, turning her head toward Dr. H’s feet as her tears began to well up again. “What don’t you understand, Lori?” He reached down and touched her forehead, perhaps to signal her to look up so that her world didn’t have to seem so low. “How can I have anger and not ask for forgiveness?” she asked, elevating her eyes. Her body was numb. All her life she had been trained to be meek, nice, polite, submissive, and conflict avoidant. Now it seemed that a lifetime of trapped emotions might spew like lava from every pore of her being. In her family, her home, her church, her community, you always had to repent for having bad emotions or thinking wrong thoughts or committing blasphemous behavior. Always. Trying to release a daunting layer of befuddlement, she lifted the wad of half-soaked tissues up to her nose and blew. “Lori,” Henry whispered softly. “You don’t have to ask for forgiveness. You don’t have to beat yourself up with anger, guilt, and shame.” She stared blankly at him, as if he were from outer space. “You don’t have to ask for forgiveness,” he repeated again, knowing she was still struggling to grasp this simple concept in her emaciated state of body and mind. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar. “Lori, you can actually experience emotions without conditions.” Emotions without conditions? What planet does he come from? How does that work? Emotions always had conditions and consequences in Lori’s solar system. How can he teach such rubbish? He’s not making any sense. As she struggled to comprehend what he was saying, her mind spun out in a tailspin of doubt. How can there be no unsafe food or no unsafe emotion? Lori flipped the question over and over again, turning the unsolvable riddle-filled prescription up and down, left and right, inside and out, with no clue how to solve the mystery it posed. There were all sorts of rules around food. Rules had to be obeyed, or there would be hell to pay. Didn’t he understand? Food was terrifying. How could food be safe? Her body rocked with confusion. The prescription fell to the floor. She folded her arms around her waist, grasping at nothingness. She was dying to know what the prescription meant. To her it was a jumble of nonsense.
QUESTION: What emotions with conditions have you in a trap? Can you see your way out? How about writing yourself a prescription right now? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
Chapter 18. The F***ing Rules Lori hesitated. She felt trapped in a box with two uncomfortable choices— she could either join in the craziness or refuse Dr. H. Joining him felt less threatening. She placed her hands on the bat next to his. Lori eyed him, the bat, and their hands. She took a deep breath and held it. Dr. H raised the bat, four hands in the air, and they swung, bellowing in unison: “I hate these f***ing rules!” The bat snapped against the rules lying on the vinyl mattress. They rejoiced as Lori tapped her feet gleefully. “Wow! That felt so good!” Henry silently celebrated the girlish expression of joy on her face. He wrapped her hands around the bat once again. Lori giggled and smiled wide-eyed as the vibration of the bat hitting the rules spread up through her arms. “Now, you do it—alone,” Henry urged, bolstered by her enthusiasm. Suddenly she lost her confidence. She sank down on the edge of her bed, shaking her head. “I can’t,” she squeaked, dropping her chin to her chest. “Go ahead,” he said. “You can do it, Lori. I know you can.” She shot a glance at him, at the bat, and at the spare bed. She rose up tentatively and reached for the bat, lifting it up like it might hurt someone, and gently hit the bed, muttering, “I hate these f***ing rules.” To offset her own selfcondemnation, she flashed her eyes at Dr. H for approval. “Good!” He clapped vigorously. “Good, Lori. Now, do it harder, and say it louder, for Pete’s sake.” She lifted the bat high up, pointing it to the ceiling, her arms steady. This time she brought it down with more force. It slammed into the paper and the mattress, sending an echo through the room. “I hate these f***ing rules!” she cried out. Her voice got stronger as she found her voice and her courage. “I hate these f***ing rules!” She swung again. The bat came crashing down on the bed, harder and harder, carrying her anger with it. It’s okay to be angry! What a discovery! “I hate these f***ing rules!” Henry watched like a proud father. He allowed himself to be cautiously optimistic. Maybe she was going to live through this after all.
QUESTION: What rules have you been adhering to that seem to strangle the life out of you? Can you see yourself taking a bat to those rules? Do you know that you don’t need anyone else’s approval or permission to dismiss your self-imposed and limiting rules? What joy will you release if those rules are banished from your life? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
Chapter 19. Yes to Life “I know it sounds funny,” Lori said, “but it feels like you’ve had enough of me.” Her face scrunched up with disgust at the idea that he was bolting. “Lori, I will be back. I promise.” He must think I’m a baby. After Dr. H departed, Lori felt a heightened sense of agitation. Her inner world was catapulting out of control. Everything inside her seemed to be moving so fast, yet she was going nowhere. Except down. She’d been barely eating before he left, and there was no way she could eat at all with him gone. The physical sensation of fear filled her body. Nothing matters. Nothing matters. Emaciated yet full, she began to fast. **** Dr. H’s colleagues stopped by to see her, but they couldn’t begin to understand what it was like to be her. Nothing made anything better. She was a porcupine nobody could touch—not even herself. **** Despite seeing a marriage counselor, they seemed to be chasing the same old issues around and around again. Gabi was still trying to get him to fit into the traditional vision of manhood she had etched in her mind. The problem was, her vision bore little resemblance to the man he really was. **** Lori rolled from her bed and fell to the floor gulping air and moaning. She couldn’t talk. Her limbs seemed to scatter every which way. She didn’t know, didn’t care and couldn’t have gathered herself together if she tried. Her body, mind, and spirit cried out in desperation and defeat. I’m in so much agony! Her pain unexpectedly triggered something in Henry. He stepped forward and lowered himself to the floor, an arm’s length from Lori’s head. Crossing his legs, he sat in front of her crumpled shell of a body. He saw with absolute clarity how her whole being was drowning in pain. He saw how desperately she needed to be heard, how deeply she yearned to be understood, to be cared for, to be loved. Like a bolt of lightning, her pain sparked a cloudburst of clarity. The heavens opened up. So did Henry’s heart, raining streams of compassion around the storm of Lori’s misery. All his judgment dissolved. Time stopped.
Henry peered intensely into the misty blue depths of her eyes. “You have a beautiful soul,” he uttered softly. **** Her eyes met his. Me? A beautiful soul? She teetered in a delicate balance between a descent into hell or a rise to grace. With all my failures, disgust, and shame, could it really be true, as he just said, I have…a soul, a…beautiful soul? She swallowed hard, considering this new yet dangerous idea. She tried to speak, drawing strength from the tenderness she saw in his eyes. Her voice was wobbly, but determined, hopeful. “I never imagined I could have a soul.” Like a fragile walkway across a wide gorge, a bridge of trust had formed that she only now dared to traverse. Perhaps she was willing at last to risk believing in herself, seeing how he unwaveringly kept still despite the ugly spill from the bottom of her pain barrel. A warm light of hope flickered inside her—a beautiful light, an energizing light. Maybe, just maybe, it’s true…I do have a beautiful soul. **** Prior to her miraculous breakthrough session with Dr. H, when he said what he did about her soul, she believed doing artwork was silly and was only for patients who were truly losers. But that day Lori showed up on time, spotted some blue, green, and red paper, and asked to use the stencils. She politely sat herself down next to a younger woman emerging from a deep depression, and created a multicolored piece of artwork on a single sheet of green paper. She arranged nine beautiful letters into three profoundly simple words: YES TO LIFE! Those three words were to become a driving force and a guiding compass on her evolving healing journey. ***** YES TO LIFE spoke to her of possibility, as if her past were a dried-up creek bed that now had the possibility of becoming a rippling stream, a tributary of hope. For the very first time, in such an agonizingly long time, she felt a reason to live. YES TO LIFE. The words resonated with something deep in her heart.
QUESTION: Can you imagine seeing your worthiness with such complete clarity that you would declare YES TO LIFE! no matter what? Can you imagine how light and full of love Lori felt? What mantra or declaration or manifesto sings for you? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
Chapter 20. The Healing Field One sunny afternoon, as she and Dr. H sat near the majestic eucalyptus tree, a hummingbird appeared, hovering in midair. Lori gasped in delight as she lifted her head high, entranced by nature’s delicacy. She threw Dr. H a furtive glance, reassured that he too was enjoying this amazing spectacle. As swiftly as it had appeared, the hummingbird darted away, fading in the cover of a distant tree. “Did you see that?” Lori pointed with wonder toward the foliage a dozen feet away. “I sure did.” He smiled enthusiastically, encouraging Lori’s expanding expressiveness. Emboldened, she turned back to him, straightened her short-sleeved yellow blouse, and blurted out, “Dr. H, will you fly me?” **** “Yes. Come on.” He lay down flat on the blanket, surrendering to the heavens above. His mind flashed on a verse by Jelaluddin Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi poet: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. The healing field. Come fly with me. No longer concerned if anyone caught him in this simple act of loving, compassionate care, Henry lay back, bent his knees and transformed himself into a human flying machine. Lori leaned over Dr. H’s welcoming size-eleven feet. She stretched out her arms like wings and filled her lungs with a breath of inspiration. Counting down silently she took a small leap and sprang into the air. Actually, it was a huge leap. She lifted off the unstable yet familiar ground of her rigidly controlling past into a present of uncertainty. She took a courageous leap of faith and trust. She took a quantum leap. And so did Henry. No longer just a doctor or a man bent on fixing broken minds, he had become a healing partner and a human spirit who recognized another human spirit beyond the fragile yet stubborn ego shell. He reflected back to her a belief and a potential in herself that she had never imagined existed…until now. And not so strangely, she had a similar impact on him. Like two mirrors placed facing one another, the possibility for growth and expansion became infinite.
**** “I’m flying!” she cried with delight. Her body radiated freedom and joy. Tears streamed down her cheeks and fell like raindrops to the ground. When the soul lies down on that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Her mouth opened softly. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.” Her spirit breathed new life as she sang out the words, “Yes to life!” Out in the healing field, the feeling that something was missing, a feeling that had been there for such a long, long time, wasn’t so strong any more. The eucalyptus tree seemed to laugh joyfully. The miracles were just beginning.
QUESTION: What message of hope and trust do you reflect back to others you are close to? When you connect heart to heart, what is that experience like for you? Can you see yourself with so much self-love that what you mirror for another expands his or her life, even creates miracles? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
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Chapter 21. Knight Mare Henry gasped for air. Was Susan right? Had he gone too far? Did he kiss Susan? No. He questioned himself further. Was he violating Lori’s boundaries or his oath as a doctor? No. She’d have been dead if he didn’t dive deep in her pain, if he didn’t care, if, as Jung said, he wasn’t “affected.” Was there a difference between violating boundaries and crossing them with carefully measured consideration? Surely there were times when the risks of crossing the boundaries were less dangerous than the risk of staying locked inside the box of professional protocol. Henry replayed the events of that day in his mind. Of one thing he was certain; he had not done what he’d done naïvely, nor to satisfy his own selfish whim, nor had he been playing out his own fantasies of his relationship with his patient. Rather, he had sensed a moment when the trust he had carefully nurtured in their relationship was so solidly established that neither of them would mistake the other’s intentions.
QUESTION: Can you think of a relationship that grew and grew till you knew the other person well enough to trust him or her without hesitation? What did it take to get to that place? Who did you have to be? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________
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Chapter 22. Back Healing “Look in the mirror, Lori.” “No,” she whispered. “I can’t.” “Yes, you can, Lori. Look at me in the mirror.” Very cautiously and very slowly, she shifted her eyes to his reflection, taking care to not look at herself. Then, with a sigh, she looked straight at Dr. H. His eyes were on hers. “Watch,” he said. She looked as he shifted his eyes and stared at his image. “I love you,” he said, gently. “I love you.” Her eyes widened. Maybe if he can do it, maybe one day I’ll be able to, too. But not now, no way. “Now it’s your turn,” he said. She felt a huge tug of resistance. I can’t. It’s not safe. Dr. H read her mind. It wasn’t hard to do. “Okay, let’s do it together.” Lori spoke to his reflection in the mirror. “Dr. H, I need help. Will you, would you hold my hand?” He smiled inside and took her hand in his. Ever so gradually, she shifted her gaze from looking at his image to looking at her own. Amazingly, she didn’t look so fat now. She wasn’t grossed out. Still, this was scary. How can I possibly say I love myself? He observed her trepidation as she continued to look at herself. She was barely breathing. “I love you,” he said. Then he repeated it. The third time, Lori joined him. “I love you,” they said in unison. She quickly looked back at Dr. H. This is exciting. I didn’t think I could do it. She wasn’t terrified—at least not while she was holding his hand. I did it! Well, with his help, anyway. It was strangely exciting. She even felt a tiny bit proud of herself. ****** After several moments, Henry spoke. “Dear God, dear Creator, dear Spirit, dear Universal Being of Love.” He drew in an expansive breath. “May the tension, the pain, and the stiffness be removed, released and cleared from Lori’s spine.” He took in another deep breath. “May the strength in Lori’s spine be restored and reenergized to allow her to have more freedom, mobility and range of motion.”
Yes, yes, yes. Lori whispered in her mind. Yes, yes, yes. Henry gently moved his thumbs and fingers slowly down each of her vertebrae, from her cervical spine to her thoracic spine. As he stopped by each one of her vertebra, he delivered another version of the prayer or affirmation that came to him spontaneously. Yes, yes, yes. Lori whispered in her mind, in her body, in her spirit. Yes, yes, yes. Henry continued to guide his hands down her lumbar spine to her sacrum. Lori didn’t know what he was doing. She only knew the word yes flowed through her each time he touched one of her vertebral bones. Henry didn’t really know what he was doing, either. He knew only that he was acting from his heart with an intention of healing. When he finished, Lori stood up with her arms outstretched. Neither of them said a word. There was nothing to say. The next day, she was overflowing with excitement. ****** “No more back pain. Can you believe it?” She began giggling. “After you left yesterday I stood up with my arms outstretched for about fifteen minutes. Like this.” She demonstrated. “It felt like my whole body was electrified—in a wonderful way. Like there was a current going through it. And then when it stopped, there was no pain. And I could bend like this.” She demonstrated again. And again. “It’s a miracle.” Henry wondered what happened. The doctor and scientist in him wanted to know. Was this a cathartic reaction, a letting go of accumulated distress or pent-up emotions? Was this some kind of spontaneous remission? Was it the power of belief, or wishful thinking? Who could know? ****** Fortunately or not, as far as they knew, no one was watching this unorthodox therapy through the glass window of the door of Room 173. Did it look silly? It didn’t matter. What did matter was that it was healing. Energy was being released, and that was good. Lori knew she would never eat another bite of shredded wheat again. She was finally ready to leave the hospital. So was Henry. And what a great day to go. Free at last. Free at last.
QUESTION: Do you have a prayer that could lead to miracles and healing in your life? Could it be as simple as praying to love yourself a little more each day? Could it be as simple as leaning to say yes to yourself more often? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ EXERCISE:
Chapter 23. Flying Tiger Epilogue: Out Beyond the Field Acknowledgments About the Author Meet Me in The Healing Field
15. Grapeshots 16. Obese with Shame