Call us toll free: +1 4062079616
How To Be Spiritual In A Material World
Call us toll free: +1 4062079616
16 Nov 2021
Comments: 0

How To Start Connecting With Your Higher Self

All over the world, people are awakening to the fact that we are more than bones and flesh. We sense that there is more to life than what we see. The word “consciousness” is losing its unreachable meaning, and we look for ways to go inside ourselves and find inner peace.

How do I connect with my higher self, you may be asking? There are different ways, I will tell you about a few here.

Practicing yoga is very good for your physical body, but also for your soul. There are different types of yoga; all work, and their benefits are widely known and studied by science. If yoga is not for you, practicing Pilates is an excellent alternative. It has helped me with my body and my soul.

Meditation is one of the most powerful tools that exists to connect us with our higher self, with divinity or God, if you want to call it that. I will teach you a very simple way to start meditating:

  • Sit comfortably, preferably on a chair
  • Close your eyes and start counting your exhalations every time you breathe
  • Breathe normally, count to ten and start again
  • If you lose count, start over
  • Let thoughts pass and keep counting
  • Do this for at least 10 minutes a day.

You will see that each time, your attention and concentration improve, and a sense of peace and calm comes over you.

Praying is another way to connect with the divine. Repeating a prayer every day will have the same results as a meditation. It does not have to be a formal prayer; it can be a deep conversation with the divinity. This is also a way of praying.

Mantras are words or phrases that are repeated as litanies to support meditation or to connect with the higher realms. They are used in Hinduism and Buddhism. One of the best-known mantras used by many spiritual leaders, who attribute numerous spiritual benefits to reciting it, is “Om Mani Padme Hum”.

Do you like to sing? Music is a powerful way of connecting with your soul. Of course I mean calm, joyful and restorative music. I know people who go around humming a tune all day, and coincidentally they are always optimistic people.

Activate your inner powers by learning different activation methods, like pineal gland activation and heart activation and breathing techniques. One good and simple breathing technique to start with is to sit down and inhale through your nose in a deep and slow way and exhale slowly through your mouth, relax your shoulders and expand your chest. Do this for 3 to 5 minutes.

What is most important with all of these tools is to stop in your daily life and reflect on where and what we pay our attention to. The important things are within us. We are energy beings, and it is from this knowing that we create our world. Becoming aware of it will necessarily lead us to correct mistakes and create a better world for ourselves.

Take that step ahead. The time is always now.

 

About the Author:

 

Veronica Sanchez De Darivas is Chilean-Australian, now living in the UK and a proud mother of teenage twins. A spiritual awakening teacher, bestselling author, pineal gland (third eye) activator and Certified Instructor for the Cyclopea Method, Veronica is currently the only instructor in the world teaching the Cyclopea Method in English.

 

 

13 Nov 2021
Comments: 0

Steadfast

There is so much angst in the air these days that we may all be feeling more sensitive, exhausted or even more despondent than usual. So much so, that I feel a lot of folks are at the end of their tether, overwhelmed by the vast onslaught of confusing emotions and free-floating anxiety in the telluric atmosphere.

Steady, folks! Simply ignoring what is unfolding isn’t optional. However, grounding and staying centered in our core Being is a choice we do have, hour by hour, and day by day.

This past Wednesday there was an unusual astrological alignment. At the same time our planet has been undergoing a mid-level geomagnetic storm from more solar flares that erupted last weekend. On Wednesday Saturn and the Moon met up at 7 degrees of Aquarius, and Mars and Mercury joined up at 7 degrees of Scorpio. The Mars-Mercury gang was also opposed by Uranus retrograde at 12 Taurus.  This configuration is as rare astronomically as it is astrologically. The message in it is this: “…when push comes to shove”, or “enough is enough”, or “I am tired of this s**t”, or even “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

The manifestations of this seemed to erupt in synchronous fashion globally, but were more focused in the USA, UK and Europe. In the days leading up to this strange square in the sky between Mars in Scorpio (“I’m going to get to the bottom of things, and you can’t make me do what I don’t want to do!”) and Saturn in Aquarius (“You must submit to the mandates or lose your job.”) various unions representing the police, firemen, teachers and health care professionals in the United States started court actions against forced inoculations. Of course, to suddenly try to force anything on these folks, after they’ve been on the front lines for 16 months without the need for such an experimental medical intervention does not make much sense. Nor does it make any sense to risk losing these dedicated people by coercing them into having to choose between their ethics (and perhaps medical or scientific knowledge) and their livelihoods. The video below is about an RN in British Columbia, Canada who is going through this exact scenario.

Here in the U.K., on the very morning of said weird astrological event, the government announced that all NHS and care home employees would have to be vaccinated or be let go.  By yesterday morning 60,000 care home staff had been let go, and the care homes informed the National Health Service that they would be unable to accept any patient transfers from NHS facilities. That was standard practice during the early months of lockdown in 2020. Now it is the turn of the NHS frontline staff to choose where they stand. I have spoken privately with some nurses from our local NHS Trust hospital, and they feel it is simply wrong-footed to make the jabs mandatory.

Of course, there are other aspects to these developments, and I although I would like to address them here like bullet points in a lecture, I won’t do that. I’m not here to lecture anyone or tell them what I think they should do, or not do.

After a relatively quiet weekend and beginning to next week, we have a few more rings of fire to leap through.  Next Wednesday Mars in Scorpio comes into an exact opposition with Uranus in Taurus retrograde. This occurs at 12 degrees of each sign. The energy of any Mars-Uranus aspect is volatile, unpredictable and intense. I know because I live every day with Uranus square Mars in my natal blueprint. Saturn is also in an applying square to Uranus, which will be exact on December 24th, 2021, the last square between these behemoths in those signs for quite some time to come.

On Friday, November 19th, there will be a partial Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio-Taurus.

This lunar eclipse event may further galvanize and embolden those questioning the official narratives and mandates.  The confrontation between Mars and Uranus squaring Saturn will alert those in charge that their tactics are having less of an effect than desired. This may result in further and perhaps more draconian restrictions in December, especially after the Total Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius (self-righteousness). I am still taking the long view and holding zero expectations as we move from now to the first exact Pluto Return station to the USA Natal Chart Pluto in February 2022.  Now that will be a subject of deeper delving in January 2022!

The upshot of all of this from my perspective is that this is a time for steadfast resoluteness and preparedness. Lots of folks I know are “prepping”, something I’ve been meaning to do for a few months now since supply chains have been disrupted and fuel has gotten scarcer. However, the spiritual and soul-base perspectives are of primary importance in these challenging and confusing times.

Ever since Halloween and the November 4th New Moon I’ve detected an uptick in psychic interference and fatigue.  Some of that is due to the fluctuations in the planet’s magnetic fields, but hey, the veils are still very thin now.  People energy, including thoughts and emotions, seem to be bleeding through boundaries much easier than before. This is creating some personal friction that is straining working or friend relationships. Very touchy when it is someone close to you that you feel you need some space from. By extension I am also picking up on a lot of astral interference and other static. Clearing oneself daily is a useful activity, and only takes a few ticks to accomplish. Some symptoms to be alert for are undefined irritability, low-grade depression, self-talk, blaming, complaining, dissociative or addictive behaviours, a longing to be somewhere else, and general doubt or fear.

Although lower emotions like fear, guilt, shame and anger are generally to be eschewed, anger can be a creative energy when approached in the correct attitude. Anger is one of the most misunderstood and avoided emotions on the planet, or conversely, one that is over-indulged in far too often.

The one message anger can have for us is that our Soul Core is alerting us to some person, situation or thing that violates our sense of Self, or our core values. As such, anger is then your friend, and an ally in helping you in choosing and activating healthy boundaries. In a climate such as we have now, people’s right to say “NO!” is even being taken away. To someone experiencing physical, mental or sexual abuse, we would be appalled if someone were denied the inherent right to say “NO!, that is does not feel good and I will resist!” This is when anger can give us the courage to stand up for ourselves and by saying “no” we are saying “yes” to what feels right and good for us.

It will be increasingly essential to observe what is going down without it dragging you down with it. It is also becoming apparent that we may have to act in a firm and steadfast way to preserve the life we have chosen to live, and not acquiesce quite so easily to what others tell us to do. This Saturn in Aquarius cycle will be with us until March 2023, so we’ve still going to see this type of attrition carrying on for a while yet. By that time Pluto will be done with the transit to the USA chart and will be about ready to head into Aquarius itself. That should be of larger concern than what we currently are experiencing. Even so, it is vital that we look to staying as much in the now as possible.

There are many things to be currently thankful for, and to celebrate. If you have your health, good food, shelter and loving family and friends, then appreciate that…deeply. Hold fast to the vision you have for your life and choose the path that brings the most peace to you, not the most material gain or comforts. The pressures we are seeing have been designed by us, and for us, to awaken and galvanize us to take full responsibility for our happiness right now, and for the future.

This is also the Planet’s shaking and waking us out of the nightmare that is capitalism and consumerism.  I recall when I was channeling Archangel Ariel that she’d remind folks that moving into 5D would mean no more Wal-Mart’s or McDonalds. We cannot blend our current culture or beliefs with a higher order society. Our technology is owning us, and we are slowing realizing that that is now so. We also can feel how dehumanizing our institutions have become (humans are NOT a resource). The good news is that we are at choice, and in fact that is where our true power resides.

Choice.

Don’t leave home without it, and refuse to submit your power of choice to another.

 

About the Author

Isaac George is an internationally recognized intuitive mentor/coach, evolutionary astrologer, conscious channel, self-published author and musician. After a life-altering spontaneous kundalini awakening in 1994 he explored various healing modalities, including hypnotherapy and Reiki. In 1998 he began spontaneously channeling Archangel Ariel and other dimensional intelligences.

Originally from the United States, Isaac currently resides in the UK and offers Spiritual Mentoring sessions and programs and Evolutionary Astrology consultations.

28 Oct 2021
Comments: 0

Moldavite: Extraterrestrial Stone On Earth

Moldavite is a member of the tektite group, a glassy mixture of silicon dioxide, aluminum oxide and other metal oxides, with a hardness of 5.5 to 6. Its crystal system is amorphous. The color of most specimens is a deep forest green, though some pieces are pale green and others, especially those from Moravia, are greenish brown. A few rare gem grade pieces are almost an emerald green.

Moldavite’s formation coincides with the crash of a large meteorite in what is now the Bohemian plateau of the Czech Republic, approximately 14.8 million years ago. Most specimens are found strewn throughout that area. For many decades, farmers in southern Bohemia have turned up pieces of moldavite when plowing fields, and moldavite miners sift and dig through loose sand and gravel from depths of up to twenty meters. Some of the richest finds have occurred at the towns of Chlum and Slavce. A very delicate, lacy form of moldavite has been found near the village of Besednice, although this location is now exhausted. In recent years the moldavite fields have become depleted, and the stones are becoming increasingly rare.

Moldavite is the stone that initiated me into awareness of the spiritual properties of crystals and minerals, and it has been a catalyst for several of my most important spiritual experiences. It has, over the 33 years I have worked in this field, had similar effects on thousands of other people with whom I have spoken and corresponded. From my perspective, it has a special role to play in the awakening of humanity now underway.

Scientific theorists differ on hypotheses regarding moldavite’s origin. Some contend that moldavite is earthly rock melted by the heat of the meteorite crash, while others suggest that the material is of extraterrestrial origin, possibly a type of obsidian ejected by a lunar volcano.

A third theory holds that moldavite is a fusion product of meteoric material and earthly rock vaporized in the tremendous heat of the impact explosion, with the resultant gas being propelled high into the atmosphere. This gaseous material would have then cooled and condensed into a liquid glass that rained down on the crater and surrounding areas. Regardless of which, if any, of these ideas is correct, it is known that moldavite indeed fell from the sky, because of the aerodynamic shapes of certain pieces. Most scientists associate it with the meteoric collision that formed the Bohemian plateau and surrounding mountains.

The event that gave birth to moldavite was one of tremendous power. The force of the impact explosion has been estimated at six trillion megatons, far more than all the atom bombs on Earth. The heat, as mentioned above, was hot enough to vaporize rock, and the main body of the meteorite is believed to have passed completely through Earth’s crust, penetrating into the liquid iron at the planet’s core. This deep impact was described in a New York Times article as having disturbed the currents of rotating liquid iron enough to cause a reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles.

Throughout history, and even into pre-history, moldavite has been regarded as a spiritual talisman. The Neolithic peoples of Eastern Europe wore moldavite at least twenty-five thousand years ago, and the famed Venus of Willendorf — the earliest known goddess statue — was discovered in a digging site that contained a number of moldavite amulets. People of that period also used moldavite for arrowheads and cutting tools.

Feeling The Moldavite Flush

In modern times, moldavite has emerged as one of the stones most prized for metaphysical purposes. Its effects vary widely, from mild to almost overwhelming, from physical cleansings to spiritual breakthroughs — yet the common denominator seems to be the revitalization and acceleration of one’s path of evolution.

People who hold moldavite for the first time most often experience its energy as warmth or heat, usually felt first in one’s hand and then progressively throughout the body. In some cases, there is an opening of the heart chakra, characterized by strange (though not painful) sensations in the chest, an upwelling of emotion and a flushing of the face. This has happened often enough to have earned a name — the “moldavite flush.” Moldavite’s energies can also cause pulsations in the hand, tingling in the third eye and heart chakras, a feeling of light-headedness or dizziness, and occasionally the sense of being lifted out of one’s body. Most people feel that moldavite excites their energies and speeds their vibrations, especially for the first days or weeks, until they become acclimated to it.

Moldavite’s energies can activate any and all of the chakras. Its vibrations tend to focus in areas where one has blockages or wounds, first clearing these areas and then moving into resonance with one’s entire energetic system. Resonance with moldavite can take many forms — chakras can open; synchronicities can increase in frequency and significance; one’s dream life can become dramatically more vivid and meaningful; one can connect with spirit guides; physical, emotional or spiritual healings can happen; jobs and relationships can change; meditations can become deeper and more powerful — yet all these can be viewed as symptoms of a shift in one’s own energies. This shift is what moldavite can catalyze. With its high and intense vibrations, it can resonate with one’s energy pattern in a way that creates an intensification of spiritual vitality and an acceleration of progress on the path of one’s highest destiny.

Moldavite is a powerful aid for meditation and dreamwork. In both cases, taping a piece of moldavite to the forehead can have the effect of creating a much more vivid and visionary inner experience. Moldavite increases one’s sensitivity to guidance, and one’s ability to discern the messages sent from the higher realms.

Used As A Spiritual Talisman

Moldavite can be a powerful catalyst for self-healing, clearing blockages and opening the meridians, as well as energizing the interconnections among all aspects of the subtle body. It is a talisman of spiritual awakening, transformation and evolutionary growth.

In addition to use in meditation and dreamwork, moldavite can be worn as jewelry. This conveys the advantage of being able to keep its energies in one’s vibrational field throughout the day, for further strengthening of its effects. Doing this also draws an increased incidence of beneficial synchronicities into one’s daily life. Some people will have to accustom themselves gradually to wearing moldavite because of its energetic intensity, but most will make the adjustment in a few days.

Moldavite also offers an energy of spiritual protection. When one is in resonance with its high-frequency vibrations, negative energies and entities cannot connect with or hang onto one’s field. In alignment with its transformational properties, moldavite tends to disconnect one from unhealthy attachments and to magnetize the persons and situations most needed for evolutionary progress.

Moldavite tends to quickly attract whatever one’s spiritual metamorphosis requires. It also seems to cause whatever parts of our lives no longer serve our highest good to be discharged, whether we realize the need for that or not. This reminds us of Hermes, especially in regard to the speed of the changes that occur. Hermes was a being of great speed. He had wings on his feet, and was the messenger of the gods.

One phenomenon that displays a Trickster quality of moldavite is its apparent ability to disappear and reappear. I have experienced this many times. In a typical instance, I put my moldavite away on a dresser or in a box, only to find it gone the next day. Then, sooner or later, the moldavite will reappear, usually in a ridiculously unlikely spot. In one instance, I left my moldavite on top of my dresser in the bedroom, discovered the next day that it was gone, and found it again weeks later — in the container of one of our house plants in the living room! In the longest of these disappearances, my most treasured moldavite disappeared for fourteen years, only to be found eventually in the pocket of a pair of pants that I had never worn! For a long time, I doubted my memory, but this occurred over and over. And through the years, many people have told me their own very similar stories. There are numerous disappearing moldavite stories online.

What is the reason that moldavite performs these disappearing acts? I have thought at times that the intention behind moldavite’s disappearances may be to show us that the physical world is not necessarily as solid as we think it is. If that were proven to us, and if we accepted the evidence, the knowledge could be very liberating.

Moldavite Is A Stone Of The Heart And Dreams

When a person first holds a piece of moldavite, he or she often feels heat, especially around the heart. As this experience unfolds, the person frequently flushes red in the cheeks. This can be accompanied by tears, signifying an emotional release. I have witnessed people holding a moldavite and being surprised by the fact that their hearts began to beat in a different way. It is not a painful event; I compare the heart’s behavior to a dog wagging its tail when it is happy. I believe the heart responds to moldavite in this way, communicating its recognition and pleasure in the presence of this stone. And of course, moldavite is green — the color of the heart chakra.

In my first powerful moldavite experience, the sensation of energy began in my right hand where I was holding the stone. Then the current went straight up my arm and into my heart. At that point, my heart chakra opened, like a blooming flower of light. And in the next moment, the light surged both downwards and upwards from my heart, opening all of my chakras.

As an incubator of dreams, this is true of moldavite more than any other stone I have worked with. If you tape a small piece of moldavite to your forehead at the location of the third eye chakra before going to bed, I guarantee that you will dream! A lot! I have tried this many times and recommended it to others for over thirty years. Almost all of us find that the quantity and depth of our dream life increases immediately. And the dreams are often spiritually significant ones.

I believe that this happens because of moldavite’s affinity with the deep self, the part of us that creates our dreams. When moldavite lends its power to one’s deep self, a flurry of inner communication comes to us through a cornucopia of dreams. Another rather surprising symptom of moldavite’s effect on our dreaming is that most of us have to remove the moldavite during the night, because we are dreaming so much that we need to take a rest from it and sleep more deeply!

For virtually all of us, the path of spiritual evolution involves healing. In alchemical terms, we need to cook ourselves so that the impurities in our energies — the disharmonious patterns in our subtle bodies — are burned away. And moldavite just loves to do that!

Moldavite resonates with the pattern of our highest good — our full spiritual awakening and development. Thus, its influence moves us toward dispelling all patterns that are not in alignment with our wholeness, clearing the way for profound good health. However, the ride may sometimes be uncomfortable, just as it can be on the psychological level.

Something I experienced several times during my first years with moldavite was the onset of physical problems that turned out to be rooted in past lives. As people who work with past life therapy often observe, my physical ailments expressed similarities (at least symbolically) to traumatic past life events. Hypnotic regressions were helpful in completing my review of these patterns and letting them go, but I am convinced that the presence of moldavite is what brought them to the forefront.

Sometimes, especially when one is already in the throes of an apparent illness that stems from long-held unhealthy patterns in the subtle body, the introduction of moldavite can trigger a direct and rapid healing effect. It can seem as if the stone has cured a physical illness, but in my view, the presence of moldavite has simply dislodged the stuck pattern, allowing the subtle body to clear itself and bring the physical body back to health.

If one wishes to work with moldavite as a healing stone, it is often a good idea to bring another beneficial stone (or stones) into the mix. Heartenite, seraphinite, healerite and healers’ gold are good, overall healing stones that can stabilize one’s subtle body and work to soften the intensity of moldavite. In my own past, during a time when my healing was focused on the emotional body, I found that charoite and moldavite felt best to me. I urge you to work intuitively in these types of situations, and let the stone beings tell you which ones are most appropriate.

 

Excerpted from The Alchemy of Stones by Robert Simmons. © 2020 Destiny Books. Reprinted with permission from the publisher Inner Traditions

Robert Simmons has been working with crystals and stones for over 35 years. He is the cofounder of Heaven and Earth, a company offering gem and jewelry creations for self-healing and spiritual and emotional development. The author of several books, in­cluding The Book of Stones, The Alchemy of Stones and Stones of the New Consciousness, he lives in New Zealand.

 

 

 

 

09 Oct 2021
Comments: 0

Our Brains Tell Stories So We Can Live

We are all storytellers; we make sense out of the world by telling stories. And science is a great source of stories. Not so, you might argue. Science is an objective collection and interpretation of data. I completely agree. At the level of the study of purely physical phenomena, science is the only reliable method for establishing the facts of the world.

But when we use data of the physical world to explain phenomena that cannot be reduced to physical facts, or when we extend incomplete data to draw general conclusions, we are telling stories. Knowing the atomic weight of carbon and oxygen cannot tell us what life is. There are no naked facts that completely explain why animals sacrifice themselves for the good of their kin, why we fall in love, the meaning and purpose of existence, or why we kill each other.

Science is not at fault. On the contrary, science can save us from false stories. It is an irreplaceable means of understanding our world. But despite the verities of science, many of our most important questions compel us to tell stories that venture beyond the facts. For all of the sophisticated methodologies in science, we have not moved beyond the story as the primary way that we make sense of our lives.

To see where science and story meet, let’s take a look at how story is created in the brain. Let’s begin with an utterly simple example of a story, offered by E. M. Forster in his classic book on writing, Aspects of the Novel:“The king died and then the queen died.” It is nearly impossible to read this juxtaposition of events without wondering why the queen died. Even with a minimum of description, the construction of the sentence makes us guess at a pattern. Why would the author mention both events in the same sentence if he didn’t mean to imply a causal relationship?

Once a relationship has been suggested, we feel obliged to come up with an explanation. This makes us turn to what we know, to our storehouse of facts. It is general knowledge that a spouse can die of grief. Did the queen then die of heartbreak? This possibility draws on the science of human behavior, which competes with other, more traditional narratives. A high school student who has been studying Hamlet, for instance, might read the story as a microsynopsis of the play.

The pleasurable feeling that our explanation is the right one—ranging from a modest sense of familiarity to the powerful and sublime “a-ha!”—is meted out by the same reward system in the brain integral to drug, alcohol, and gambling addictions. The reward system extends from the limbic area of the brain, vital to the expression of emotion, to the prefrontal cortex, critical to executive thought. Though still imperfectly understood, it is generally thought that the reward system plays a central role in the promotion and reinforcement of learning. Key to the system, and found primarily within its brain cells, is dopamine, a neurotransmitter that carries and modulates signals among brain cells. Studies consistently show that feeling rewarded is accompanied by a rise in dopamine levels.

This reward system was first noted in the 1950s by two McGill University researchers, James Olds and Peter Milner. Stimulating electrodes were placed in presumed brain reward areas of rats. When allowed full unrestricted access to a lever that, when depressed, would cause the electrodes to fire, the rats quickly learned to repeatedly depress the lever, often to the exclusion of food and water. Realizing that our brains are capable of producing feelings so intense that we choose to ignore such basic drives as hunger and thirst was a first step toward understanding the enormous power of the brain’s reward circuitry.

Critical to understanding how stories spark the brain’s reward system is the theory known as pattern recognition—the brain’s way of piecing together a number of separate components of an image into a coherent picture. The first time you see a lion, for instance, you have to figure out what you’re seeing. At least 30 separate areas of the brain’s visual cortex pitch in, each processing an aspect of the overall image—from the detection of motion and edges, to the register of color and facial features. Collectively they form an overall image of a lion.

Each subsequent exposure to a lion enhances your neural circuitry; the connections among processing regions become more robust and efficient. (This theory, based on the research of Canadian psychologist Donald O. Hebb, a pioneer in studying how people learn, is often stated as “cells that fire together wire together.”) Soon, less input is necessary to recognize the lion. A fleeting glimpse of a partial picture is sufficient for recognition, which occurs via positive feedback from your reward system. Yes, you are assured by your brain, that is a lion.

An efficient pattern recognition of a lion makes perfect evolutionary sense. If you see a large feline shape moving in some nearby brush, it is unwise to wait until you see the yellows of the lion’s eyes before starting to run up the nearest tree. You need a brain that quickly detects entire shapes from fragments of the total picture and provides you with a powerful sense of the accuracy of this recognition.

One need only think of the recognition of a new pattern that is so profound that it triggers an involuntary “a-ha!” to understand the degree of pleasure that can be associated with learning. It’s no wonder that once a particular pattern-recognition-reward relationship is well grooved into our circuitry, it is hard to shake. In general—outside of addiction, that is—this “stickiness” of a correlation is a good thing. It is through repetition and the sense of familiarity and “rightness” of a correlation that we learn to navigate our way in the world.

Science is in the business of making up stories called hypotheses and testing them, then trying its best to make up better ones. Thought-experiments can be compared to storytelling exercises using well-known characters. What would Sherlock Holmes do if he found a body suspended in a tree with a note strapped to its ankle? What would a light ray being bounced between two mirrors look like to an observer sitting on a train? Once done with their story, scientists go to the lab to test it; writers call editors to see if they will buy it.

People and science are like bread and butter. We are hardwired to need stories; science has storytelling buried deep in its nature. But there is also a problem. We can get our dopamine reward, and walk away with a story in hand, before science has finished testing it. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the brain, hungry for its pattern-matching dopamine reward, overlooks contradictory or conflicting information whenever possible. A fundamental prerequisite for pattern recognition is the ability to quickly distinguish between similar but not identical inputs. Not being able to pigeonhole an event or idea makes it much more difficult for the brain to label and store it as a discrete memory. Neat and tidy promotes learning; loose ends lead to the “yes, but” of indecision and inability to draw a precise conclusion.

 

When we make and take incomplete stories from science, there are moral consequences.

 

Just as proper pattern recognition results in the reward of an increased release of dopamine, faulty pattern recognition is associated with decreased dopamine release. In monkeys, the failure to make a successful prediction (correlation between expected and actual outcome) characteristically diminishes dopamine release exactly at the time that the predicted event is anticipated but fails to occur. Just as accurate correlations are pleasurable, lack of correlation produces the neurotransmitter equivalent of thwarted expectation (or worse).

Once we see that stories are the narrative equivalent of correlation, it is easy to understand why our brains seek out stories (patterns) whenever and wherever possible. You may have read or heard about the famous experiment in which University of Illinois psychology professor Daniel Simons asked subjects to watch a video and count the number of times a ball is dribbled by a basketball team. When focused on counting, the majority of viewers failed to see a woman in a gorilla suit walk across the playing area. In effect, well-oiled patterns of observation encourage our brains to compose a story that we expect to hear.

Because we are compelled to make stories, we are often compelled to take incomplete stories and run with them. With a half-story from science in our minds, we earn a dopamine “reward” every time it helps us understand something in our world—even if that explanation is incomplete or wrong.

Following the Newtown massacre, some experts commented on the killer having Asperger’s syndrome, as though that might at least partially explain his behavior. Though Asperger’s syndrome feels like a specific diagnosis, it is, by definition, nothing more than a constellation of symptoms common to a group of people. In the 1940s, Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger noted that a number of patients had similar problems with social skills, eccentric or repetitive actions, unusual preoccupation rituals, and communication difficulties, including lack of eye contact and trouble understanding facial expressions and gestures. The 2013 decision by the American Psychiatric Association to remove the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome from its guidebook for clinicians, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM-V), for failing to conform to any specific neuropathology, underscores the all-too-common problem of accepting a clustering of symptoms as synonymous with a specific disease. Syndromes are stories in search of underlying causes.

Similarly, studies of psychopaths have shown a diminished volume of gray matter in specific regions of the prefrontal cortex. But these findings aren’t the sole explanation for violent acts. Because it is impossible to stimulate a specific brain region to produce complex and premeditated acts, we are left to conclude that while certain brain conditions can be correlated with a complex act, they are not necessarily causing it. Likewise, brain scans that reveal abnormalities in mass murderers may help us understand what might have contributed to their behavior. But the abnormalities are no more the sole explanation for violence than childhood neglect or poor nutrition. They are stories, albeit with a detailed neurophysiological component, but stories nonetheless.

When we make and take incomplete stories from science, there are often moral consequences. How much personal responsibility should we assign to an individual with a damaged or malfunctioning brain? What is the appropriate punishment and possibility of rehabilitation for such a person? Only when we openly acknowledge the degree to which science is presenting its observations in the form of story can we address this moral dimension. We must each work out our own guidelines for when we think scientific data has exceeded its bounds and has morphed into the agenda and bias of story. Of course this is always going to be a challenge in the absence of a full array of scientific data.

But we can begin by being aware of the various ways that storytelling can insinuate itself into the presentation and interpretation of data. Good science is a combination of meticulously obtained and analyzed data, a restriction of the conclusions to those interpretations that are explicitly reflected in the data, and an honest and humble recognition of the limits of what this data can say about the world.

 

Loose ends lead to the “yes, but” of indecision and inability to draw a precise conclusion.

 

As members of the public, we need to ensure that any science we accept as truth has passed through the peer-review process. We should also understand that even peer-reviewed data is not always accurate. In 2011, Nature reported that published retractions had increased by a factor of 10 over the last 10 years, while the number of papers published rose only 44 percent. Also in Nature, scientists C. Glenn Begley and Lee M. Ellis wrote that their colleagues at the biotechnology firm Amgen could reproduce only six of 53 landmark hematology and oncology studies from the scientific literature. Similarly, scientists from Bayer reported in 2011 that they could not consistently reproduce about two-thirds of oncology studies relevant to their work.

When reading science reports, we should also search for information on the limits of the data. Were assumptions made? What do the “error bars,” or graphic representations of variable data, say? We may not always understand the data limits, but we should be worried when some discussion of them is completely absent.

In the end, scientists have the tools, language, and experience to tell us informed, engaging, and powerful stories. In turn, we should judge their studies in the same light in which we judge other artistic forms. Like a literary critic, we should assess the preciseness of language, the tightness of structure, the clarity and originality of vision, the overall elegance and grace of the study, the restraint with which they present moral issues, how they place their studies in historical, cultural, and personal context, and their willingness to entertain alternative opinions and interpretations.

The methodology of science remains one of the great advances of humankind. Its stories, properly told, are epic poems in progress, and deserve to stand alongside the great stories of history.

 

About the Author:

Robert A. Burton, M.D., a neurologist and novelist, is the author of On Being Certain: Believing That You Are Right Even When You’re Not, and A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves.

 

Original article here.

18 Sep 2021
Comments: 0

Let the Healing Begin

“The body is everywhere assaulted by all of our new media, a state which has resulted in deep disorientation of intellect and destabilization of culture throughout the world. In the age of disembodied communication, the meaning and significance and experience of the body is utterly transformed and distorted.”

~ Eric McLuhan

“So much of the sickness is in our heads.”

~ Eric Clapton

Presence, Bliss, Tranquility. They are qualities of experience and states of being to be sure, but they do not arise only in the ethereal planes of awareness. They can exist while we are in embodiment as well. Carrying on from last week’s theme about our letting go, this coming weekend, and the early part of next week will afford us ample opportunities for accessing more of our divinity, while in our embodiment. This Monday-Tuesday, we get a breather, a blessing…a Full Moon in the expansion and dreamy sign of Pisces. Already we’re experiencing the forerunners. Strange or magical dreams and night-time dramas, restless sleep and bouts of feeling lethargic and tired, and a sense that one is walking in a fog bank. It will be helpful to reflect on these myriad states we’re entering before the exact moment of the Full Moon. That occurs at 00:54am British Summer Time. Subtract 5 hours for America’s East Coast, and 8 hours for the West. Hence why this lunation crosses over a day/night boundary.

This space will be super important to take advantage of, as the planetary and energetic aspects that unfold shortly. Next week there are some more intense energies afoot…mostly from Thursday onwards. We get a few little breaks in the action, until Mercury turns retrograde in Libra on September 27th. The real action will begin on October 1st, and reign through the whole month. But I get ahead of myself.

I inserted the quote from Marshall McLuhan’s son Eric as a reminder of why this Full Moon is so different than our abnormal digitized state of perception on the planet. This is an opportunity to connect or reconnect more deeply with our divine spark within. Whether you refer to it as your Higher Self or something else does not matter so much. You and that which is eternal are always together, always equals, and share a common awareness. No separation whatsoever! But in today’s world we may feel very hard-pressed to feel and know that Presence on a moment-to-moment basis. Now is a good time to re-establish the Foundation of your Being in the ways you feel drawn to do so.

The Eric Clapton quote is from the interview he did about his adverse injuries after having had the AZ jabs and having COVID anxiety prior to his accepting the jabs and after. Very honest and courageous man, and an amazing musician whom I’ve followed since 1966. I include it here to illustrate the (scientifically verified) fact of how we can be made to feel ill from just our thoughts and/or emotions, or from taking in toxic ideas from outside ourselves. This is about more than being a hypochondriac. One type of this condition is called psychogenic illness, and it can spread to millions of people in a matter of days or weeks…as we have seen.

With Sun in Virgo and Moon in Pisces, the themes of healing arise, especially emotional and psychic pains or wounds.  Allow your feelings to flow and don’t hold anything back or judge them, no matter how messy or chaotic they might be. It’s part of the healing from releasing we all need…a cleansing. Virgo is all about the body, and about the sacredness and beauty of the divine in human form. Revere your body as such, and it will respond to your healing thoughts. Too much of humanity has forgotten what their bodies are for.

Lastly, I suggest using this time for artistic pursuits, resting, walking in Nature, Qigong, Tai Chi or yoga, meditating, chanting, listening to music (or playing it yourself!). Tuning in to the deeper knowing that is you is the key. If you are looking for information or answers outside of yourself (Sun-Virgo), okay. But come back into yourself and let your heart and spirit discover what is right for you.

 

About the Author:

Isaac George is an internationally recognized intuitive mentor/coach, evolutionary astrologer, conscious channel, self-published author and musician. After a life-altering spontaneous kundalini awakening in 1994 he explored various healing modalities, including hypnotherapy and Reiki. In 1998 he began spontaneously channeling Archangel Ariel and other dimensional intelligences.

Originally from the United States, Isaac currently resides in the UK and offers Spiritual Mentoring sessions and programs and Evolutionary Astrology consultations.

12 Aug 2021
Comments: 0

Dragon And Tiger Medical Qigong

An Ancient Chinese Treasure for Health and Longevity

 

As more people seek natural, safe and effective ways to improve their health, strengthen their immune systems, reduce stress and anxiety, have more energy, emotional balance and greater mental focus, many have come to rely upon the ancient Chinese practice of qigong to accomplish these and many other health and wellness goals.

Dragon and Tiger Medical Qigong is one of the most popular styles of qigong practiced around the world today. The 1,500-year-old self-healing system teaches you to move qi (vital life energy) through well-defined energy lines within your body that are related to acupuncture meridian lines. Its seven-movement form is a low-impact practice very gentle on the joints, and able to be comfortably performed by anyone regardless of age or current level of health. At the same time, it’s very powerful and dramatically increases vitality, promoting healing on many levels.

Before exploring Dragon and Tiger specifically, let’s first take a look at qigong in general to learn what it really is and give you some background in this remarkable Chinese cultural treasure.

A General Overview Of Qigong

Depending upon sources cited, qigong originated in China between 3-5,000 years ago. Not a single static system, it has many variations, styles, and philosophical bases, each with their specific purposes and objectives. It can be done as a stationary standing practice or a moving form with many parts. Some styles can be done while sitting or lying down, by oneself or with a partner. It has continued to grow and evolve over the centuries, and is perhaps the most well-researched, comprehensive and highly developed system on the planet for building health and extending longevity. That it has continued to flourish through the millennia is a testament to its unique, profound effectiveness and versatility.

Even in the early stages of a beginner-level practice, qigong promotes greater self-awareness, awakening you to increasingly more subtle levels of your being. Many qigongs are rooted in spiritual traditions that transcend simply improving physical health and longevity, adding a nuanced richness and deeper dimensions to enhancing your life. At the highest levels of practice, it is a path to enlightenment and spiritual cultivation, and can prepare your mind for the deepest meditative practices.

Defining Qigong

In order to better understand what qigong is, let’s take a look at the word “qigong” itself, since that will tell us a lot about the actual practice. It is made up of the two syllables “qi” (pronounced “chee”) and “gong”. As each syllable in the Chinese language is itself a discrete word, we’ll first define each syllable separately to gain insight into its fullest meaning.

Often translated as “vital life energy”, or simply “energy”, qi is the sum of all the functional energies that animate and keep you alive, aware, and healthy. The electrical energy measured by an EEG (measuring brain activity) and EKG (measuring heart functional energy), the magnetic energy of an MRI that allows for the magnetic imaging of every cell in your body—all of your cells are polar— the neural energy running through your nervous system, the biochemical energy of enzymatic reactions, hormones and neurotransmitters, and the functional energy of every internal organ are all a part your qi. For a Western mind, this understanding can provide some useful touchstones, but it’s only a part of the totality of your qi, which includes many more subtle aspects than what are contained within the current Western medical paradigm.

In the context of qigong you may find that qi is sometimes translated as “breath” or “breathing”. This is not technically incorrect, since the Chinese character for qi as energy is identical to the character for qi as breath, and we’ll soon see that the Regulation of the Breath is an integral component of all qigongs. But that’s only a part of what qigong is about, and leads to the misinterpretation of qigong as “breathing exercises”. Sometime qi is translated as “subtle breath”, which distinguishes it from the common breath, and is more accurate as it’s the “subtle breath” that is the qi that circulates through our body’s numerous energy pathways.

“Gong” means practice, skill, or cultivation. As in the Western use of the word “practice” as it relates to practicing a musical instrument, practicing medicine, practicing law, or really any profession or avocation in which you may want to acquire some proficiency, it requires some effort invested over a period of time to gain that skill. That acquired skill is the desired result of the practice.

Because all qigongs involve regulating the body, “gong” is sometimes interpreted to mean “exercise”, so that “qigong” is often translated to mean “energy exercise”, but as with “breathing exercise”, it’s also a limited interpretation. In fact, the word “exercise” is sometimes used as a gentle admonition by a qigong master correcting a novice: “You’re not doing qigong, you’re just doing an exercise.” Once learned, an exercise is something that can be effectively performed by rote. In qigong, your full awareness needs to be engaged throughout the entirety of your practice.

Now we can see that the word qigong most accurately means effort invested over time in working with your vital life energy in order to sense, direct, and gather it for the purpose of enhancing your life in a variety of ways. You get to choose what those enhancements might be based upon the style of qigong you select to practice.

Five Philosophical Bases For All Qigong

The five broad categories of qigong are derived from one of the Five Philosophical Bases that most inform each practice. Those are Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, medical and martial. Each category is very rich and varied, but looked at simply, we can say that Daoist qigongs are most concerned with aligning oneself with the cycles and energies of the natural world and promoting longevity; Buddhist qigongs are most concerned with spiritual cultivation and enlightenment more than with physical health; Confucian qigongs are most concerned with intellectual achievement and societal ethics; medical qigongs are most concerned with preventing illness and treating disease; and martial qigongs are most concerned with developing physical and energetic power for martial applications. Each of the five categories may contain hundreds of different qigong practices ranging from the very simple and relatively common to the very complex and rare.

While there are qigongs that purely adhere to one of the Five Philosophical Bases, it’s common for there to be some overlap among styles. For example, the Daoist qigongs that promote longevity naturally inform some of the health-building aspects of medical qigongs (and vice versa), while the intellectual clarity produced by Confucian qigongs help the mind travel along some the more challenging aspects of spiritual cultivation in Buddhist qigongs.

The Three Regulations

No matter the philosophical basis or style, all complete qigongs include The Three Regulations: The Regulation of Body, Breath, and Mind. Beyond just improving your physical health, each of the Three Regulations influence your emotional, mental, and psychic states of being, more directly as you advance in your cultivation. At very high levels of practice, you can access, balance and clear your karma.

The specific ways in which body, breath and mind are regulated can vary considerably depending upon the goal and purpose of the particular qigong being practiced. The coordinated regulation of body, breath and mind further regulates the qi, first by intention, and ultimately by the mind’s direct contact with qi.

While each qigong has a particular focus, a specific purpose for which it’s intended, all initially produce a similar range of baseline benefits, including general well-being, more energy, reduced stress and increased mental clarity. No matter what style of qigong you may choose to practice, you can expect this common range of benefits. This is because through the Three Regulations, all help you to tune into the wisdom of your own body, releasing negative or restrictive energies, thoughts, and beliefs while bringing you back into balanced wholeness.

Now let’s examine the specifics of a most versatile, accessible and rewarding practice, Dragon and Tiger Medical Qigong.

Dragon And Tiger Medical Qigong History

The origins of Dragon and Tiger Medical Qigong are traced back 1,500 years. Its creation is attributed to the Bodhidharma, who taught it to monks of the Shaolin monastery in China to help strengthen and revitalize their bodies after extended periods of seated meditation. It included the stimulation of qi flow through qigong and acupuncture meridian lines, providing the foundation for an energy wisdom that blended Daoism, Buddhism, and Chinese medicine. That information was passed to each successive head abbot of the Shaolin monastery in an unbroken lineage through the centuries until the mid 20th century, when the last head abbot taught it to his niece, Zhang Jia Hua, a doctor of Chinese medicine.

Dr. Zhang was very experienced in the use of qigong for medical purposes, and made some additional refinements to the practice, transforming it into the even more powerful medical qigong it is today. Those refinements made Dragon and Tiger one of the most widespread and successful treatments for cancer and other serious degenerative diseases throughout China. During the 1960s and 1970s, she taught more than 20,000 instructors who spread Dragon and Tiger Qigong to over 20 million people. (As an aside, I learned Dragon and Tiger from Daoist Master Bruce Frantzis, who learned it directly from Zhang Jia Hua.)

The Meaning Of Dragon And Tiger

The Chinese often use animals to represent the characteristics associated with an abstraction they are describing, common in Chinese astrology and Five Element Theory, for example. In this qigong context, the dragon is associated with the lungs, which take in the air we breathe, while the tiger is associated with the liver, which powers so many of our physiological processes. The first movement of Dragon and Tiger particularly benefits the lungs and liver, giving this set its name. Here are some characteristics of each of these animals, and the associated benefits you may expect from Dragon and Tiger Qigong.

As the flying dragon is a creature of the air, the first associated correspondence is to the air itself. Dragon and Tiger strengthens your lungs and increase your ability to take in fuller, deeper breaths. We’ve seen that the Chinese character for breath is identical to the character for qi, so as you bring in more air with each breath, you are bringing in more qing qi, or atmospheric qi (literally, “clear qi”). The breathing practices contained within Dragon and Tiger increase your ability to extract more qing qi from the air, which builds your reserves of qi.

A second quality is that of the dragon’s movements, sinuous and lithe. Dragon and Tiger creates a physical openness that engenders a flexibility in your body you may not have enjoyed since you were very young.

A third quality has to do with the positive emotions associated with the lungs. When the lungs are functioning well, you will experience an upsurge in vitality and an exuberance for life, increasing your enthusiasm and joy. Conversely, when the lungs are not functioning well, you will often feel sad even when there’s no apparent reason for such sadness. A two-way street, prolonged periods of grief will likewise adversely affect the overall health of your lungs.

The tiger is the animal associated with the liver. The tiger is very powerful, agile and quick, able to transition from a relaxed stillness to the immediate physical activity of a rapid pounce or run in almost no discernable time.

The first association with the tiger’s power corresponds to the power of a well-functioning liver. The liver is involved in aspects of digestion, nutrient assimilation, detoxification, production of enzymes, the storage of glycogen, vitamins and minerals, and more. Its far-reaching influence on our metabolism and physiological processes is staggering. The health and strength of our body depends extensively on the liver’s ability to perform its functions optimally.

Another aspect of that power exists on the emotional level. It takes drive and perseverance, a kind of psychological power, to make changes in the world and in your life. A healthy liver provides that ability to accomplish, to get things done in a positive and productive way. This means you have the inner strength and focus to do what needs doing yourself, or you are able to inspire others to help when help is needed. By contrast, an imbalanced liver will make you easily angered, and that anger can be used to fuel anger-driven actions (which may even be directed against yourself) or to intimidate others into doing what you want. While still powerful, this is a pathological manifestation of impeded liver energy, an unhealthy way of getting things done.

According to Chinese medicine, the liver controls tendons and ligaments. When the liver is functioning well, your tendons and ligaments will be relaxed, allowing your body a greater freedom of movement, as embodied by the supple grace of the tiger. This helps reduce any restrictive physical pain you may have, and provides not only a greater freedom of physical movement, but greater internal freedom on every level. This involves the more subtle aspects of the manifestation of power, whether that’s applied for health, longevity, martial ability, social influence, intellectual accomplishment or spiritual cultivation.

The liver is also responsible for the smooth flow of qi throughout your entire body. This promotes the optimal functional energy of every organ, allowing each to do its job best and work in balanced harmony, fostering homeostasis. It reduces stress, helps maintain both physical and emotional equilibrium, and sharpens your reflexes, creating the same type of smooth continuous internal flow that allows the tiger to move from a relaxed aware stillness to an immediate pounce with no hesitation or awkwardness.

Physical And Energetic Characteristics Of Dragon And Tiger

Dragon and Tiger is primarily a medical qigong that balances the body’s energy systems in accordance with the principles of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. The inclusion of Daoist and Buddhist elements in Dragon and Tiger are used to support and enhance its medical applications. Increased sensitivity and awareness are the hallmarks of all qigongs, and with focused attention on your body, breath and mind, your awareness grows, helping to connect you to your healing qi more deeply. At advanced levels of practice, it can move into spiritual realms, fully integrating body, heart-mind (xin) and spirit (shen) for profound healing on every level of being.

On the surface, Dragon and Tiger have some similarities to the beautiful flowing movements of taiji (tai chi), and many of the principles of Dragon and Tiger can be transferred directly to taiji if you choose to learn that at some later time. It even provides many comparable benefits, improving balance, coordination, strength and longevity. With only seven movements it’s much easier to do, taking less time to learn and less space to practice. Each of its movements focuses on a particular meridian pathway or organ system, and each has specific targeted medical effects that will provide you numerous health benefits beyond those found in taiji. The synergy among the seven movements creates a system-wide energetic upgrade that benefits the health of your entire being.

Despite its simplicity, it’s a complete medical qigong system addressing almost every part of your health needs. Practiced regularly, you will activate and balance the core energy channels most commonly addressed in qigong, and the major acupuncture meridians, releasing blocked and stagnant energy both from your physical body and from the energy field around you, known as the qi body or the etheric field.

Some Expected Medical Benefits

As a therapeutic practice, Dragon & Tiger is designed to balance your body’s energies to prevent, eliminate, or reduce the suffering of disease. In China, it has been used to treat cancer and other serious degenerative conditions. Its seven movements are repeated a number of times, gently stretching, opening and releasing the body, making you more flexible and relaxed. It will reduce stress, improve blood circulation and increase synovial and lymphatic fluid movement, build energy, and enhance your felt sense of general well-being. By increasing awareness of how your body moves through space (proprioception), it‘s also excellent for improving balance, an important consideration for older people and athletes alike.

* The Regulation of the Body can be viewed simply as physical activity, yet when practiced with awareness, it promotes health on both physical and energetic levels, and lays the foundation for deeper energetic benefits that come later. In Dragon and Tiger, some of the physical regulations include weight shifts, which help improve balance in the same way that taiji is known to do; and bending, stretching, and gently twisting muscle tissue, which helps both to release physical tension, promoting relaxation, and opens pathways through which qi flows, reducing obstructions in order to increase the amount of qi available to circulate throughout your body. Removing qi obstruction and promoting qi flow is also the main mechanism through which it relieves aches, pains, and other physical discomforts.

When proper body alignments are learned and maintained, many of the movements release contracted muscles throughout the body, especially in such common trouble areas as the neck, shoulders, upper back, lower back and hips. Some movements massage and cleanse the axillary and inguinal lymph nodes, stimulating the flow of lymph fluids and benefiting the entire immune system. Some Dragon and Tiger movements stimulate communication between hemispheres of the brain, improving cognition in ways similar to the Western physical therapy technique of “cross crawl”, used to rehabilitate people with brain injuries and other cognitive dysfunctions.

* Regulation of the Breath most obviously improves lung health, breathing capacity, and resistance to airborne pathogens. It helps to create the optimal acid/alkaline balance throughout the body, crucial to overall good health. As important as these are, they are just a small part of the benefits derived from the Regulation of the Breath.

The Daoist natural breathing used in Dragon and Tiger gently pressurizes all of the internal organs, in effect massaging them to facilitate releasing the toxic accumulations of metabolic waste material in the same way massage therapy does for muscle tissue. It also frees any binding restrictions in the suspensory ligaments that attach each organ to the vertebral column. This allows for both greater organ mobility (its ability to be freely moved, the lack of which often causes pain) and organ motility, the natural movement patterns intrinsic to and generated by each organ. Together this increases the optimal functional energy of each organ, its ability to perform its intended functions, which is a large part of the organ’s qi.

In a purely Western medical context, there have been numerous studies that support this understanding. One study in New York State tracked 12,000 people for nearly three decades, and found that the stronger your lungs are, the less likely you are to die of any cause, when compared to other people in the same demographic. (Schunemann, H. J., Dorn, J., Grant, B. J. B., Winkelstein, W., & Trevisan, M. (2000); Pulmonary Function Is a Long-term Predictor of Mortality in the General Population. Chest, 118(3), 656–664.) The European Society of Cardiology reported that even a minor drop in lung capacity raises your heart disease risk by 200%. (The European Society of Cardiology, 1998.)

The University of Arizona researched possible holistic treatments for Covid-19.  They reported that among 20 subjects taught to practice qigong, there was a significant increase in lung capacity and that after just 10 days, their lungs had become 20% better at taking in oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide. It was noted to be a potentially lifesaving improvement.

* The Regulation of Mind improves cognition, mood, and perception. When layered in with aspects of Regulating the Body as discussed above, it further improves communication between hemispheres of the brain. This enhances creativity, analytic ability, and overall intelligence.

A well-know qigong principle states that “the qi directs the body, but the mind directs the qi”, or more simply put, where the mind goes, the qi follows. When integrated with the Regulation of the Body and Breath, the Regulation of the Mind most fully regulates the qi, providing the greatest benefits possible in regards to health, well-being, vitality and longevity. This is where the ability to directly feel and work with your qi becomes most apparent, and where Dragon and Tiger becomes most fun and exciting.

Somewhere between 6” and 18” outside your physical body is the perimeter of your qi body, also known as the etheric field. Dragon and Tiger teaches you to learn to feel that perimeter, and to move qi through it in specific ways. The qi of your qi body connects directly with the Dragon and Tiger energy lines within your physical body. Moving qi through your qi field moves qi through the corresponding energy pathways within your body, which creates all the health benefits and other positive changes that this medical qigong practice provides.

What’s Next?

Now that you have a detailed conceptual foundation for Dragon and Tiger Medical Qigong, the next thing you might want for further insight is an actual demonstration of the Dragon and Tiger form. Click on this link for an in-depth look with additional descriptive information about each movement, and graphic representations of all the associated energetics.

 

About the Author:

Steven Cardoza, M.Sc., L.Ac, holds a Master of Science degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine and is a nationally certified Chinese medical physician, a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist with over twenty-five years of experience. He is a certified instructor of Wu taiji and many styles of qigong, and has taught public and professional classes and workshops since 1986. He is the author of the books Chinese Holistic Medicine In Your Daily Life (2017), and Chinese Healing Exercises, A Personalized Practice for Health and Longevity (2013), both published by Llewellyn Publications; and the companion DVD, A Visual Guide To Chinese Healing Exercises. Email Steven at healingdragon@dslextreme.com or visit www.healingdragon.org

 

12 Jul 2021
Comments: 0

Remembering Beauty

Today as I was preparing to go for my almost daily bicycle ride, I stopped to glance over at one of our two rose bushes. They are planted in a small strip of ground between our living room window and the fence, and in previous years they have not been doing so well. Poor weather is usually the culprit here in the British Isles, but forgetting the rose food is also another factor. However, during the past 3-4 weeks, they have not only been producing a prodigious number of blooms, but they’ve grown over 6 feet in height!

As I gazed upon the unique orange blossoms, I thought that how easy it is to become inured to the beauty that is so close by somewhere. For a moment in time, all my personal thoughts faded into the background, and so did all the world’s tumultuous activity. Here it was just my consciousness taking in the beauty in front of me, and I became lost in a serenity that there are no words for.

Seems we take so much for granted these days, and most of us are so preoccupied that we just don’t really take in what is right at hand in our lives. It is one thing to look; it is quite another thing to actually see what it is we’re looking at. A mere thought about the to-do list, or a worry or three, and we are turning away from the miracle in front of us and exchanging it for another task, another obligation, and another round of problem solving. If you are an entrepreneur, most likely you live that experience 24/7, and barely come up for air. Marketing, tech hassles, virtual staff issues, grumpy clients…where does it end? When does the good life begin?

It can begin when we choose to slow down enough to take stock of ourselves, check and see if we’re occupying our body instead of hovering near it, and exercise our sovereignty diligently so we honor our own feelings and space to be as we are. Yes, I know…there are obligations aplenty. Working for a paycheck with a family to support during the upheavals of the past 17 months has been a grab bag of stress. Or perhaps you or someone you know has a health condition, or a psychological one. None of this we are experiencing is easy, and we can be so focused on survival mode that we overlook so much that there is to appreciate.

I have a very good book about spiritual seeking called “Doing Nothing” by Steven Harrison. Its focus is on the modern quest for enlightenment and peace, but many of his perspectives could easily be applied to more mundane matters. The other book which I have not read, but recently ordered, is entitled “How to be Idle” by Tom Hodgkinson. The Puritan work ethic, or the work ethic imposed by a jealous God in the Old Testament (“…by the sweat of thy brow shall you earn your bread…”) set the human race on a high-stress path of exertion with a future promise of reward and comfort. The entire dogma of the Abrahamic religions is centered on a perfect hereafter, if we are all good boys and girls, that is.

What is discouraged more today then ever before is that to be idle, or decide to withdraw from the Rat Race, is to be a reactionary. Someone who is anti-societal, and not to be trusted. In China it’s becoming a “thing” and they call it “lying flat”.

At this New Moon in Cancer take an inventory about your own life. Where do you over-commit? Where do you over-give? How do you cope with low-grade anxiety or moments of high stress? Are you happy and peaceful, or anxious and fearful? Are you in your body, and loving your body, or not?

Here’s something to ponder: when there’s a lot of cortisol pumping through our bodies we are incapable of rational decision making. The cost for this is multidimensional too, and as Dr. Gabor Maté states, trauma or living with trauma is the single biggest cause for disease…period!

Your physical and psychic boundaries are yours to employ and maintain. No one else will do it for you. We are empowered, we are capable, and it is not selfish to be concerned with one’s own harmony and wellbeing. Slow down, breathe and look around. What do you see? There’s beauty within and without to appreciate. Remember it often.

About the Author

Isaac George is an internationally recognized intuitive mentor/coach, evolutionary astrologer, conscious channel, self-published author and musician. After a life-altering spontaneous kundalini awakening in 1994 he explored various healing modalities, including hypnotherapy and Reiki. In 1998 he began spontaneously channeling Archangel Ariel and other dimensional intelligences.

Originally from the United States, Isaac currently resides in the UK and offers Spiritual Mentoring sessions and programs and Evolutionary Astrology consultations.

24 Jun 2021
Comments: 0

How To Help Dogs And Cats Manage Separation Anxiety When Their Humans Return To Work

When one of my co-workers found out about a tiny, orphaned kitten that needed a home a few months ago, he didn’t hesitate to adopt it. He says his new companion helped make the months of COVID-19 isolation at home much less stressful.

He is not alone. Animal shelters and breeders across the country have reported record numbers of dog and cat adoptions in recent months.

But after my co-worker returned to work, he says his adorable kitten started urinating on the kitchen counter while he was away.

Another friend is worried about how her dog will react when she returns to the office. Her big, goofy Labrador retriever follows her everywhere, even to the bathroom. When she leaves to run a quick errand, the dog sits by the back door and whines, awaiting her return.

What should these pet owners do?

The problem with sudden changes in routine

A change in routine, such as suddenly being alone for many hours every day, is a major cause of separation anxiety for both dogs and cats.

Separation anxiety is more than a little whimpering when you head out the door. It’s major, unwanted behavior that happens every time you leave or are away.

For dogs and cats, this can mean excessive pacing, barking or howling, whimpering or self-grooming as you get ready to leave. In some cases it can mean urinating or defecating around the house, often in places where scents linger, such as on bedding or rugs, or destroying household items in your absence. Extreme clinginess or neediness is another symptom.

Separation anxiety won’t go away on its own, and it can be difficult to get rid of entirely. But there are ways to manage it. As a clinical veterinarian and professor, I am often asked to help people find ways to ease their pets’ anxiety.

What not to do

First, it’s important to understand that it’s not about you – it’s about your pet. Your dog or cat is not trying to teach you a lesson or get revenge. Animals don’t act out of spite.

Instead, it’s a signal of extreme distress and frustration that should be approached like any other medical ailment. Your pet doesn’t want to experience separation anxiety any more than you want to experience its consequences.

For this reason, punishment is never the answer. For one thing, your pet won’t connect the punishment with something that happened hours – or even a few minutes – earlier. And punishment may only exacerbate your pet’s anxiety and stress.

Similarly, going to the opposite extreme by praising or giving affection when your pet is suffering anxiety also will make the problem worse.

The goal is to create a balanced relationship so your pet tolerates being alone. First, get your pet checked out by a veterinarian to rule out physical conditions, such as a urinary tract infection if your pet urinates in inappropriate places.

Next, make sure your pet gets plenty of exercise and mental stimulation. For dogs, this may mean a long run or brisk walk every day. Getting exercise shortly before you leave the house may put your dog in a more relaxed state while you’re gone. It’s harder to feel stressed when the endorphin levels are elevated. For cats, this could mean a change of environment by being outdoors in a safe, enclosed area such as a “catio.”

Treating separation anxiety with behavior change

Here, we’re talking about your behavior. The goal is to make your absence seem like no big deal. Making a fuss over your pet when you leave or arrive home only makes matters worse. If you treat it like it’s routine, your pet will learn to do the same.

Try to figure out when your pet starts to show signs of anxiety and turn that into a low-key activity. If it’s when you pick up your handbag, for example, practice picking it up and putting it back down several times over a few hours. Similarly, get dressed or put on your shoes earlier than usual but stay home instead of leaving right away. Try starting your car’s engine and then turning it off and walking back inside.

Next, practice short absences. When you’re at home, make it a point to spend some time in another room. In addition, leave the house long enough to run an errand or two, then gradually increase the time that you’re away so that being gone for a full day becomes part of the family routine.

Changing the environment 

Boredom makes separation anxiety worse. Providing an activity for your pet while you’re gone, such as a puzzle toy stuffed with treats, or simply hiding treats around the house will make your absence less stressful. Other options for dogs and cats include collars and plug-in devices that release calming pheromones.

To maintain your bond while you’re gone, place a piece of clothing that you have worn recently in a prominent place, such as on your bed or couch, to comfort your pet. Similarly, you can leave the TV or radio on — there are even special programs just for pets — or set up a camera so you can observe and interact with your pet remotely. Some of these come equipped with a laser pointer or treats you can dispense.

Using supplements or medication

In some severe cases, when the animal harms itself or causes property damage, medication or supplements might be necessary. These alter the brain’s neurotransmitters to create a sense of calm.

While some are readily available without a prescription, it’s a good idea to get advice from your veterinarian to determine which are safest and most effective for your pet’s situation. Medication can help reduce the anxiety, making it easier for the pet to learn new coping skills. A behavior modification plan accompanying the use of medication can help manage this problem.

Separation anxiety is difficult for both you and your pet. But a few simple changes can make a huge difference as life returns to some semblance of normal.

 

About the Author:

Lori M. Teller is a Clinical Associate Professor, Veterinary Telehealth, at Texas A&M University

 

14 Jun 2021
Comments: 0

Don’t Worry, Be Happy!

Happiness is the ultimate goal. All of us want to be happy; it’s our first search in this life. However, do we really know what being happy is?

Many of us think happiness is being content and satisfied with events present in our lives, like getting a new car, obtaining a new job or a promotion, falling in love, or traveling to a new place. But, the effects of these experiences pass and we keep looking for that elusive state.

Over the years and practicing my spiritual instruction, I have discovered that happiness is not a passing state or an illusion; it’s really a permanent state of fulfillment. Happiness for me is waking up every morning rested, it’s hearing the birds singing, it’s admiring the green beauty of my little garden, it’s enjoying a nice cup of coffee, it’s the simple things in life.

What I am trying to say is that my state of being is constantly a happy one and the best part of this is that everywhere I go I radiate my state of fulfillment to others around. I go to buy groceries, for example, and I get an extra apple for free, because I have been smiling and happily chatting to the cashier. Or somebody offers me their full bottle of mineral water in a restaurant before leaving. Or people just smile at me and talk to me.

It wasn’t like this before. I used to be a bit moody and bad tempered. However, by practicing meditation and spiritual exercises, little by little, my mood changed and my way of “being” changed, so much so that it caught my family’’ attention and they encouraged me to keep going, to keep practicing. I myself was amazed at my new way of enjoying my very own existence in this physical plane.

What about bad days, you may be wondering? Well, of course they appear from time to time, however they don’t last for long and if they do, I go deep into myself and quickly find my peace again.

Spirituality has given me the tools to achieve calmness, balance and inspiration to live my life like the happy energy being that I am. Happiness is a choice, and you can be happy, too.

Many times before I have said that our major proof is our own experience. Happiness is in my experience, not as a passing asset, but as a permanent one.

Go and make the necessary changes to allow happiness into your life.

 

About the Author:

 

Veronica Sanchez De Darivas is Chilean-Australian, now living in the UK and a proud mother of teenage twins. A spiritual awakening teacher, bestselling author, pineal gland (third eye) activator and Certified Instructor for the Cyclopea Method, Veronica is currently the only instructor in the world teaching the Cyclopea Method in English.

 

 

 

09 Jun 2021
Comments: 0

Spectro-Chrome: Healing With Colored Light

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to use colors as a way to make your life healthier? The truth is, you can. Dr. Alexander Wunsch, who is based in Germany, is a world-class expert in the use of light as a therapeutic healing agent, and is a human treasure trove of information on a topic that very few people understand.

In previous interviews, we’ve discussed the history of photobiology and how LED lighting can compromise your health. Here, our focus in on the therapeutic use of colored light, which Wunsch began experimenting with nearly 25 years ago:

“My first approach was colorpuncture from Peter Mandel. One evening, I met a friend of mine. I told him I would like to go deeper into the colorpuncture issue and learn more about that. He handed me a book by Darius Dinshah, ’Let There Be Light: Practical Manual for Spectro-Chrome Therapy’ …

I thought this is really a fascinating color system. It’s not only a color therapy method, it’s also a beautiful color system — [the way] Dinshah arranged these 12 basic colors, how they compose the Spectro-Chrome color wheel is a pleasure by itself, because it’s very symmetric and there’s a very logical plan behind it. I started to evaluate this method on my own.”

Why Chromotherapy Was Relegated To The Dustbin

As noted by Wunsch, who has studied the historical rise and fall of photobiology, in the 1920s, there was a strong push to weed out so-called “quackery” in medicine, although there was no evidence-based medicine to speak of as of yet.

All physically-based treatments were targeted for elimination, for the simple reason they were unwanted competition standing in the way of the burgeoning drug industry. In this crusade, the Spectro-Chrome method was one of the hundreds of targets of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“If you have a brave patient who takes the pills every day, he’s a good customer … If you have a client who’s treating himself with colored light, you might sell a lightbulb to him, but that’s it,” Wunsch says.

“There was a hype for blue light [in those] days. It was very popular. Light therapy, think of Kellogg, for example, was very popular. The medical experts in a way had problems with the spreading of these physically-based methods. It was more or less a logical step to [ban] the method …

Dinshah did one thing quite early in his chromotherapy career. He thought, ‘OK. If the doctors aren’t ready for the method, I will address all the knowledge I collected around the diligent use of colors to the laymen.’ His motto was, ‘Spectro-Chrome for every home.’ This was his aim. He wanted to spread the word about the effects of colors so that everyone would know how to treat himself or herself by using colored light.”

While there are well-documented health benefits associated with the red, near- mid- and far-infraredspectrum, the Spectro-Chrome method created by Dinshah focuses on the visible part of the light spectrum, on the rainbow and the extra-spectral colors.

Systemic And Local Use Of Colored Light 

You can implement colored light therapy either by shining light through a colored filter, or by wearing colored glasses, so that the light striking your retina is of a particular color frequency.

“You could say there is systemic use and local use of colored light. You would shine the light onto a body part, which can be the eye or the skin. There is a dermal application, and there is an ocular application. You can treat systemically, which means you are taking a light bath, covering the full body surface with the light, [or you can do] local treatments. 

The ocular treatment is somehow in between the local and the systemic. You’re treating only the eyes, which is locally defined, but the eyes are the window of the brain, the window of your vegetative system, so the treatment of the eyes is also a systemic treatment,” Wunsch explains.

“In the 1930s, when the Spectro-Chrome method had been banned already, there was some kind of modification, which is called Syntonics Optometry. Syntonics optometrists used the colored light exclusively for the eye. They addressed also systemic disorders using this ocular pathway. As a basic principle in phototherapy, it does not matter what kind of technology you’re using for the light source.

[What’s] important is that you cover the wavelength band and that you reach certain intensity levels. Intensity levels are already something that is very close to modern phototherapy. Spectro-Chrome [produces] effects based on information, not intensity. This means you can use large, huge colored projectors, but you can also use the small little light [that] might have comparable effects.”

What Can You Treat With Colored Light?

The premiere textbook for Spectro-Chrome is “Let There Be Light,”written by one of Dinshah’s sons, Darius Dinshah, current president of the Dinshah Health Society. This book lists more than 320 different disorders that have been successfully treated with this method

Wunsch goes so far as to say he would not exclude any disorder from the potential treatment with colored light, because you can, at bare minimum, benefit from symptomatic treatment. That said, one concrete example includes the treatment of skin burns:

“[Dinshah] understood green as the central color … the color which balances all the different body functions, mental functions and partly also emotional functions. The colors with longer wavelengths compared to the green, he called the infragreen colors. The shorter wavelengths, he called the ultragreen colors …

[W]hen you think of the classical signs of inflammation … you have the reddening, the erythema, you have heat, the inflammation. You have too much inflammatory or flame effect, so to say. The tissue gets red. The tissue gets hot. The tissue is painfully altered. You have hampered function …

Too much of red, too much of heat gives you already the idea of which color to use. You would use the ultragreen color to compensate for the long wavelengths, which become apparent by reddening, fever or heat. An acute inflammation would be treated with ultragreen colors and vice versa. 

The chronic inflammation or the chronic disorder should be treated by the infragreen colors. You’re always aiming to reach the green after a certain while, because this is the balance. This is the middle between the extremes.”

To Cool Heat (Red) Symptoms, Use Violet Or Indigo

This is not to say that there’s not a certain level of complexity involved. For example, you need to be cautious with ultraviolet (UV) rays and shorter wavelengths when you have a wound, as exposing wounds to sunlight can result in more severe scars. Wunsch explains:

“If you have inflammation … sometimes it comes along with an infection. Some germs, some bacteria, are aggravated or they benefit from shorter wavelengths. UV light can induce inflammatory reactions. We can tell this, for example, from the erythema caused by sunlight. This was one of Niels Ryberg Finsen’s findings that short wavelength light acts as an inflammatory.

If you have too much heat and you want to cool it down, it’s important to lower the activity of the metabolism. The metabolism is more or less represented by the activity of mitochondria. If you have an overactivity of mitochondria, then you would increase this over activity, probably, if you are using long wavelengths, because the long wavelengths definitely activate mitochondrial activity, metabolism and energy production, which we know from photobiomodulation.

So yes, you could treat a skin burn with a certain intensity of long wavelength light. This is not what Dinshah did [though]. For severe skin burn, which is induced by long wavelength, which is a thermal skin burn, he would use violet or indigo in the first phase.

The reason is, when we talk about the thermal skin burn, we have blistering. We have excretion or secretion of liquid. We want to reduce these secretory activities. Here, the violet or the ultragreen colors in general are much better than the infragreen colors.

There comes a moment in the process of wound healing where we definitely need the longer wavelengths as well, where we start and compensate for the excessive heat, for the excessive infragreen. We compensate for that using the ultragreen colors. 

Personally, I [had] the best experience using the indigo in the first step. If you treat a skin burn once or twice with indigo, you can even keep this injury from developing a blister … [I]f the blister does not fully form, it will hold and it will stay on the skin, even if it’s thermally modified. It will stay as your own natural wound dressing for the first few days. This gives the deeper layers the time to regenerate and restore.”

Practical Example: How To Treat A Burn With Colored Light 

If you were to get a sunburn, or accidentally burn yourself on the stove or hot instrument, how exactly would you treat it using colored light? Wunsch recommends using a simple incandescent lamp equipped with an indigo filter. Post-surgical wounds also benefit from indigo.

If you’re even the least bit handy, you can easily build your own Spectro-Chrome color projector. For a mere 50 cents, you can purchase step-by-step instructions to make a color projector with a 25- or 40-watt reflector lamp, some cardboard and glue from the Dinshah Health Society.

The book will also tell you exactly which filters you need to get to achieve the recommended Spectro-Chrome colors. Rosco and LEE are two companies making colored filters.

A drawback with these filters is that since they’re made for theater lighting, they also transmit white light. In other words, they’re not as saturated as the true, original Spectra-Chrome filters were. To achieve the required saturation, you’ll need to combine two or more filters according to the recommendations of the Dinshah Health Society (detailed in “Let There Be Light”).

As for the lamp, Wunsch builds his using a military angled flashlight, available from Amazon. They’re specifically made for adding filters for signaling purposes. Once you’ve made your projector, simply shine the light onto the affected area.

“The first one, two or three days, depending on the reddishness, on the heat in the tissue, you start with Indigo and [then] switch over to blue … In the classical and original Spectro-Chrome method, you would treat for 30 to 60 minutes …

[A] 10th of a millimeter under the skin surface [is] the capillary layer. All the colors of the rainbow reach the capillary layer. They reach the bloodstream. This is one of the direct actions. If you shine colored light onto the surface of the skin, it will automatically come in contact or it will automatically reach the bloodstream.

This is the reason why Dinshah recommended treatment duration of 30 to 60 minutes. He wanted to make sure that your whole blood comes in contact with the treatment color several times during the treatment session … Personally, from my own experience, after five minutes of treatment of thermal skin burn, the pain turns into a kind of tickling discomfort.

When you remove the indigo light, after 10 minutes or so, this tickling discomfort disappears almost immediately. But as soon as you treat it again or tonate — tonation [means] the use of colored light — if you go on treating it and the tickle and discomfort reoccurs, there is still [more healing to be done] …

In my experience, as long as the tickling and discomfort reappears under the influence of the indigo light, you should go on with the treatment. I had a third and fourth degree skin burn on my wrist. I treated this for more than two hours. I was able to prevent it from blistering. It healed up within two weeks or so. 

After two or three days, you can use the turquoise, the green and the Lemon. Depending on the progress of healing, you adjust the color which fits to the actual condition,” Wunsch explains.

How Color Affects Your Skin 

Contrary to the application of ice, which will only act superficially, the indigo colored light will act on different layers of your skin. Superficially, the indigo light will reduce the inflammatory reaction. In the deeper layers, there will be photobiomodulatory active radiation as well, because when you use an incandescent lamp combined with an indigo filter, you will have:

  1. A basic field consisting of near-infrared radiation
  2. A controlling field, which consists of the color indigo (approximately 430 nanometers or nm), which addresses the reduction of the metabolic activity on the surface

Incandescent light is an analog full-spectrum source, and when you place a filter over it, the majority of the wavelength will be indigo. However, almost all older glass filters and modern gel or plastic filters allow infrared, especially near-infrared radiation, to pass through. Were the filter to excessively absorb heat, it would break or melt.

“The filters from the old technology, you always have a transmission in the long wavelength part of the spectrum as well,” Wunsch says. “This, in a way, fits well to the principle of Fritz-Albert Popp, who said there is a supporting field in the long wavelength part and an information field in the visible and probably also in the UV part.

But for the Spectro-Chrome method, we use the information part in the visible section of the spectrum, and we use the supportive energy from the wavelengths we also know as being effective in the realm of the photobiomodulation.”

Treating Low Back Pain With Colored Light

Another common ailment is back pain. Wunsch, who is trained in the Alexander Technique, osteopathy, craniosacral therapy and acupuncture, notes that the area where it hurts is not necessarily the specific site of the problem. In acupuncture, specific meridian points will help alleviate back pain, but you could actually use a laser light on these points instead of a needle. You can also use temperature or vibration or other physical stimuli.

“Normally, the Spectro-Chrome method uses the whole body tonation. There is a set of questions you can ask, and then you will get an idea how to treat it. Is the back pain acute or is it chronic? If it’s acute, you would probably use the indigo, because indigo also relieves pain. An alternative would be violet or purple. These three colors are classical pain relievers.

If it’s a chronic event, you would not necessarily treat the area of pain, but you would start with whole body tonation using lemon … As a standard, if we are talking about a chronic condition, the basic color, which is always part of the treatment regimen, is lemon.”

Spectro-Chrome Glasses For Day And Nighttime Use

Another alternative is to use Spectro-Chrome glasses. Similar to a color bath, the glasses will provide systemic treatment, and they’re a lot easier to use than setting up a room for full-body tonation, as you need to make sure the room is pitch-dark aside from the colored light, the temperature needs to be optimal since you must be naked or near-naked, and you need a projector and all of the necessary filters.

“The glasses resemble a kind of ultimate life hack, because you can just choose the best color for the moment or the situation out of the box … When we just imagine the colored world that surrounded us as early humans in the step in the Savannah, in the rainforest, in the river scape, the coast landscape, the desert, the mountains, all these settings are linked to certain colors, which are predominantly active in this scene. 

The seasons, they add that color characteristics to the location and to the climate. Normally, our physical and mental body expects colors from our environment. When you are in a concrete desert and you look around, especially during the day when daylight is on, you would miss a lot of these colors. During the night, you will not have colors for longer periods of time …

I would not recommend for someone who is in a chronobiologically disordered situation to use the blue light or the blue glasses at nighttime … [T]here are colors that are recommended for the use during the daytime and other colors are recommended for the use during nighttime — those are the purple and magenta colors. Purple is the color that has the highest impact on sleep quality … 

[P]urple activates bromine … [B]romine was used in former times … for sleep disorders. Magenta stimulates lithium and alleviates depression. It’s the color addressing soul-associated disorders. Lithium salts are used for depression treatment in pharmacology as well. Instead of administering lithium, Dinshah would administer magenta. Magenta, purple, those are colors that should be used during the nighttime.”

A Remarkable Success Story 

A powerful testament to the effectiveness of color therapy comes from Wunsch’s own family, on his wife’s side. A male relative was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis at the age of 50. The university clinic gave him six months to live, telling him to go home and get his affairs in order. Using Dinshah’s method, he exceeded this grim forecast by a factor of 72.

“He traveled from Germany to Dinshah’s place [in Malaga] and learned all about the diligent use of the Spectro-Chrome method from Dinshah. He took a set of filters home and started to treat himself as you would treat a chronic condition, with lemon and red. Red is the color that addresses the liver. He was able to add another 36 years to his life.”

Personally, I believe chromotherapy is a safe and powerful alternative healing strategy that nearly anyone can add to their self-healing toolbox. For $100 or so you can obtain all the information and supplies you need. Just like liposomal C, which I believe should be in every emergency kit to treat acute infections, a light with an indigo or violet filter is another must to radically accelerate burn healing.

Again, you’ll want to get Dinshah’s book, “Let There Be Light,”from the Dinshah Health Society. (It’s also available on Amazon, but you’ll pay as much as five times the price.) Once you know which Spectro-Chrome colors you need, you can buy the required filters from Rosco or LEE and fashion a projector, either using Dinshah’s inexpensive projector plans or an angle head military flashlight. Alternatively, invest in a set of Spectro-Chrome glasses, available from Innovative Eyewear.

 

~ Dr. Joseph Mercola

Original article here