Fear is one of the most destructive forces on the planet.  Its impact overshadows significant attempts at peace and equanimity, driving our life force down, virtually eliminating our capacity for creative thought and keeps healing and transformation at arm's length.  One would think that in a "civilized" society cause for fear would be minimal as we don't have to run from a lion or bear, but fear is in fact posing what may be the most significant challenge our human life has ever faced.

Sources of fear within our modern world appear to be nearly limitless:

• Ebola
• Isis
• Political elections
• Border issues
• Financial security
• Climate change 

Unlike running from a bear or lion, which causes momentary fear followed by release and relaxation.  These "issues" are spoken of in such a way that the heightened state of arousal never ends.  This is extremely detrimental to our physical body as fear, anxiety, and terror set off a biological chain of events in which our...

Are we ever done healing?
Is there a point where the process is considered complete?  
The short answer: not if we are doing it right! I have never thought of healing as a one-time event. Of course, there are big things, like particular pains, or identifiable conditions, which once eliminated can be considered healed, but true healing encompasses our entire being, therefore, to a great extent, healing is never over, healing in fact, is an ongoing journey, partnered with our life path, changing and morphing with the elements of our personal journey. The key is, to learn to live within the healing rather than apart from it.

I think one of the disservices of medicine is the compartmentalization of our heath into boxes, identifying disease, pain, and illness as problems with defined borders, and set parameters. Within this philosophy, we have come to think of our health as something separate from our life.  Consequently, if we feel moderately good, we soldier on, under the...

Healing is a verb, yet if we really examine how medicine and society treats the process of healing, it is regarded more as a noun.  Static, defined, categorized, and linear.  Set apart from our lives, healing is relegated to an activity directed and coaxed by physicians.  If not regarded as a noun, it is given status as a state of doing; as something with defined tasks, labels, and problems to be solved.  Both manners of perception leave us in a state where in fact healing can be difficult to manifest.

As a noun, the process has no flow, creativity, or nuance.  It is dominated by facts, figures, tests, and results, and limited by these same processes.  In this way, little room is given for untapped possibilities and new emergence.

As a verb of doing, it ends up like so many things in western culture, an activity of defined parameter, invoking high-stress emotions, difficult to meet expectations, with checklists, benchmarks, and normal’s.

...

Do you speak to your body in ways that will enhance your health?  I doubt many have spent much time considering this question, but everyone should!  Our words have a profound impact, not just on others but on our own organs and cells too.  Many traditions speak spiritually of using your words wisely, as they cannot ever be taken back, but often we extend our understanding of these teachings to apply only in the spiritual realm, never realizing that the same can be said for how we speak to ourselves.  A very good friend of mine, Angelique Sanchez reminded me of this recently when she spoke of the ways she hears people speak about their bodies.

 As a massage therapist, she works on bare tissue, and consequently, sometimes she gets a revealing insight as to how people feel about their bodies, and often it is not kind. Many get lost in their dislike of how they look, unintentionally saying things like “I just don’t like my thighs” or “...

Have you ever thought about why things happen?  Why sometimes do events not occur when you had them scheduled?  Why do some things just keep happening over and over even though you don’t enjoy them, or even welcome them?  Is it bad luck? Fate? Or is it due to something else?  Have you ever considered the possibility that the cause might in fact be you?

Some may take that to mean they are their own worst enemy. For certain, in the world of spiritual psychology, this idea has sparked billions in books sold.  In truth, you create your reality.  However, most of the time, you have no idea what you are doing.

I see this time and time again, an anxious patient, spending all of their subconscious energy on the “What if’s” and “What next’s”.  Using their voice to say “it is all going to work out” or “I am trying to cope” but the background noise so obviously is panic, anxiety, worry, fear,...

We live in a largely weaponized world. We fight wars on drugs, and poverty, fight to end diabetes, fight to end cancer, and go to boot camp to lose weight. We approach every situation with the intent of subduing, defeating, killing, or destroying whatever we perceive to be our opponent. Even when that opponent is ourselves.  Making it virtually impossible to cultivate a sense of inner peace, of life creation because our mindset is continually focused on being at war.

There are subtle ways this presents; in our cultural obsession with body image, weight loss, and external beauty, being bombarded by a nearly unending assortment of messages indicating a sense of never good enough. Or by the way our media images keep us focused and honed to the things we fear most.

Emerging out of this philosophy of constant struggle, are common messages playing behind the scenes for far too many of us:

I am not good enough for that

I am too fat, too ugly, too undesirable to be beautiful

I am not...

Before you take the ice bucket challenge, give some consideration to the cause! As weeks of ice bucket challenges have come and gone, I continue to be concerned with the total lack of information available as to the cause of ALS, and the rather distracting way constant videos do little to highlight the real concerns. 

ALS is a debilitating disease, ultimately affecting motor control to such an extent that breathing and swallowing become impossible. For anyone suffering with this condition, it is well known the progression is agony. Research into ALS has provided little in the way of cure or even delay and even less as to its cause.

Perhaps so little is known about ALS because the potential causes are things which modern medicine would never consider. From my perspective, the top tier possible causes depending on the case are:

1. Chronic Lyme disease and/or its numerous co-infections
2. Chronic toxicity from both agricultural chemicals and industrial chemicals
3. Chronic toxicity from...

There is nothing medically wrong with you. How many times, I have been told by patients, this is the final opinion of their doctors. They come to me, feeling crazy, let down, and thwarted. Nothing??? How can there be nothing wrong with me, when I feel so awful???!!!

But maybe, just maybe this is the truth. There is nothing “medically” wrong with most people, even those who are extremely ill. No abnormal labs, scopes, imaging, nothing to say there is a disease-causing their discomfort. In truth, there is nothing medically wrong.

That is not to say they are not ill and suffering, but their illness doesn't have a proper name, it may have elements of issues like food intolerance, nutrient deficiencies, chronic infections, toxicity, dental work created illnesses, ancestral illness, organ weakness, shock, trauma, and energetic disruptions, lifestyle stress and imbalance, “capitalism” syndrome and many others, just not a medical illness.

The thing is, it might be...

How do we find hope within chaos? In the past few months, it feels like the world has gone crazy. Between world conflicts, threatening pandemics, and untimely deaths, it can be a challenge to see the possibility of hope. Yet, hope and possibility is what we must find, especially those who are at this moment outside the lines of fire, in places where our health is safe, and our own personal freedom is currently not challenged.

Standing in the middle of a warzone, I could not imagine being able to think thoughts of peace. Sadly, with ongoing media bombardment, I imagine it is hard for many in places which are safe to also think thoughts of peace, but we must.

In 1974, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his students conducted a study to prove what he had predicted in 1960: that only 1% of the population practicing Transcendental Meditation could cause a shift in the larger population.

“The finding was that when 1% of a community practiced the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program,...

It takes time to heal, sometimes days, other times weeks, and in some cases years.  We don’t as a general rule, allow for this time.  Maybe it is because our lives are so fast-paced, or because we feel we can’t or maybe because we have been trained to expect immediate everything.  No matter why, the truth is, we have adopted a philosophy of healing which just doesn’t allow for time.

I can attest to the need for time.  About a month ago, I fell, tore my meniscus, maybe other ligaments too. Initially, I walked on it, was back at work the next morning, out with the family, driving the car…essentially acting like it was a little thing that would resolve its self quickly.  After a few days, and lots of swelling, I understood I had done more than twist it a little.

It took me about four weeks to relax into the awareness of just how much time it will take to heal my knee.  In that time, I went through lots of varying emotions from...