Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

~Leonard Cohen, ‘Anthem’

Nothing that is complete breathes.

~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

These two quotations keep popping back into my mind lately, as they imply some very important concepts around health, disease, and the goals of treatment.

At a micro level, these quotes can be interpreted in terms of the cancer miasm, which I wrote about recently. Interestingly, the above quote about breathing has a profound meaning in terms of cancer, which completely inverts the healthy function of the cell to be anerobic instead of aerobic. In my recent blog on the cancer miasm, I mentioned the psychological characteristic of perfectionism, which can be likened to a false form of trying to being “complete”, and therefore not breathing.

A meditation on the macro questions of health, illness, disease, and the purpose of treatment can also follow from these quotations. The concept of resonance, which I’m always making reference to in these blogs, functions in both positive and negative ways. The “crack” through which disease enters us is this very resonance — no disease can be contracted which we do not have a resonance for. This points to one of the absurdities of the Pasteurian germ theory, which posits that a mere proximity to a germ is sufficient for contracting the disease. The best immunity, in this sense, is to ensure that we do not have resonance with the state of mind of the disease which is going around.

Without having this “crack”, or capacity to take things in through resonance, we would not breathe or be living at all. Furthermore, this continual taking in through resonance prompts change, transformation, and growth. When our “crack” is covered over by chronic disease and armoring, our capacity to have these growth experiences through resonance is limited. I think you’ve met people like that, who have such a thick wall around them, that their capacity to take in anything new is virtually non-existent. This is also why, when a new patient tells me that they “never get sick”, a red flag goes up in my mind, wondering if they are sufficiently armored that nothing appears to move on the surface, while a much more serious chronic illness is brewing at the depths.

The book The Healing Power of Illness does a brilliant job at expanding on this concept, and illustrating how the goal of healing is to raise our resonance quotient, so that we can experience and discharge all of our negative resonance at the least consequential level possible. “Bumping” into someone as we walk down the sidewalk is a much more safe form of discharging a particular resonance, than “crashing” into them in our car at 100 km/h. The purpose of Heilkunst treatment is to raise the level of our negative resonance discharge as much as possible, in order that we “get” the meaning of our lessons as gently as possible.

This theme pervades virtually all chronic medical issues, where the natural instincts have been suppressed and converted into disease forms at both the biological and psychological levels. There are a number of scenes in the movie which beautifully portray the main character’s inner conflict, and un-natural two-sidedness to his character, where he was a sweet and compliant son on one side, and the ruthless and amoral businessman on the other.

In terms of Heilkunst medicine, we can point out the remedy Anacardium, which directly addresses this form of split in the human being, where it is as if the forces of good and evil are battling it out within. There are some very extreme presentations of this state of mind, which can be witnessed at the local mental institution, but in its milder forms, we witness that just about every patient has to confront this false split within themselves sooner or later in their treatment.

For those who are interested in a much deeper historical exploration of the origin of this form of armoring, Dr. Wilhelm Reich outlined it in tremendous scientific detail, and is an area of study which is very rewarding to those who wish to engage with it. He does a tremendous job in linking the historical process of socio-economic changes in our family structures with both the biological and psychological processes of armoring which emerged as a result of an increasing shift into a patriarchal structure. The obvious link with the element of prostitution in the film becomes very clear from this perspective.

For the purposes of this blog post, and getting back to the artistic content of Risky Business, the film’s story and ending left an impression of a true reconciliation between the two sides of his conflict — rather than the false path of choosing one side or the either (being either the “good” boy, or the eternal rebel), the audience witnesses Joel breaking through his false outer form, and learning how to use the “dark side” to fuel his true creative power, rather than to struggle to hold it at bay.

There is a tremendously beautifully shot love-making scene towards the end of the movie, which takes place on a public train, and which ends with an outside shot of the train reaching the end of the line, accompanied by the sound of the train discharging as its lights go out for the night. This is a brilliant artistic expression of the complete function of the orgasm, which the main character has just experienced, and is the doorway through which his character reconciliation becomes possible.

There is a key prop throughout the film, which is a glass “egg” art object, prized by the Mother, and displayed on the family’s mantlepiece. There are probably multiple artistic interpretations of its fate towards the end of the film (where a tiny crack is discovered at its centre), but I would like to offer that it represents the crack in Joel’s armoring, which now allows him to flow more fully through his life, allowing both the elements of light and dark to pass through him freely. I’m reminded of the line in the song There is a Crack in Everything (by Leonard Cohen, as recently coverd by “The Once”), which says “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.”

Peering beyond all the overtly sexual and amoral content of this film, which some may find difficult to consume, a very effective artistic message lies at the root, in terms of the path we all need to find within ourselves toward a similar reconciliation. Just as in the fact that many of the most powerful homeopathic remedies are derived from poisonous substances, it is also similarly true for powerful art often being derived from “toxic” or difficult subject matter. “Poisons make the best medicines”, and likewise, an ability to look past the surface of the film into its essence can provide a strong mirror and transformation of our own energy structure, as an adjunct to our Heilkunst treatment.

I’ve had the greatest pleasure to serve couples who suspected that they may be infertile to beholding their wee bundle of joy in their arms.  Some of them were just curious about the fact that they were actively having sex with their partner for over a year without having yielded the intended results asking me to help out in this regard, while others had undergone rounds of IVF, (“in vitro fertilization” literally means “fertilization in glass.”)  The latter patient, admittedly, took more time to resolve, as first we had to clear the barrage of toxic drugs used in this process before the body was pristine enough to once again engage in the natural process of creating new life.  The root cause of this issue is not as mechanical as you might think.  In fact we’re just starting to recognize the side effects of having a chemically induced, cryogenically manufactured or even marginalized love affair with a superficial donor.

If you’ve been trying to create a babe with your partner, you may have become frustrated having reduced the intimate and beautiful act of love-making to some kind of clinical setting.  Taking your temperature, assuming a position, rushing to cavort at the right times of the month to just stare at your bloodied underwear month after month can leave both of you feeling disappointed, empty, impotent and sadly mechanistic about bringing a babe into the world as some kind of functional gymnastics.  Everyone of us has heard the story, several times, about a couple that has “given up” on their capacity to procreate and gone ahead with an adoption to find out they’ve successfully conceived within months of the adoption.  There is a key state of mind to be cognizant of in this story.

As a Physician of Heilkunst Medicine with over 15 years of research under my belt, I can tell you that the art and science of making babies has a lot less to do with chemicals and mechanistic thinking than you might ever think.  In fact, using your intellect to tweak a chemical here or there, or play with hormones is the realm of God, and I strongly suggest that if you try to get too close to the the almighty sun, you will no doubt burn your Achilles feathers.  The approach we use in order to realize consistent results is by using the principles laid down for us by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann.  He stated that the Physician has only one true calling and that is to make the sick healthy and whole and that the only righteous way to treat a person is to remove the block, shock or trauma that is impinging on that individual’s life force.  Not only will the person know greater health physically, but they will also realize their full emotional and spiritual fulfillment.

Following Hahnemann’s blueprint for cure, means that we’re doing a detoxification and chelation therapy starting your first visit to us through that Drainage and Organ Support dropper we give to you.  Also, that recommendation to drink 2-3 litres of pH balanced water and those Himalayan Salts and Greens we recommend help to address acidosis in the system.  The impregnated zygote will make a left at Albuquerque to avoid implanting into the uterus of a toxic or acid environment.  Also, states of anger (stress), fear and Genetic Miasms like Cancer, Gonorrhoea (Sycosis/Medorrinum) and Syphilis will make it doubly difficult to encourage new life to want to stick around on board for the nine month duration.  Would you want to be hosted by such an organism plagued by such issues?  Me neither.

When we have addressed your specific regimenal and medical issues without causing you an ounce of harm or further re-toxification, we then turn to the art of love.  Are you in a wholly resonant relationship with your beloved?  Have you created a beautiful ritual for you and your partner to ask for the baby?  In Waldorf pedagogy inspired by Rudolf Steiner, we attended multiple ceremonies when our children’s teacher read a beautiful story about how our son or daughter came to be spiritually called for walking over the rainbow bridge between the super-sensible and sense realms.  I know this may mess with your mechanical mind, however, Bronislaw Malinowski proved in his book, The Sexual Life Of Savages, that children encouraged to have fully orgastic sex in their teens by their parents and community never suffered any unwanted pregnancies.  When the Chief of the tribe was interviewed by Malinowski, it is realized that babes are only produced in a committed union between a man and woman and that they’ve consciously asked the Gods for a babe to be delivered to them, only then will conception be achieved through the love embrace.

Also, are you doing it right?  Are you properly threaded through to genital primacy as per Dr. Wilhelm Reich?  What I know about our modern culture is that most folks are living out of their heads, intellectually postured in the past or anxiously projected into the future.  In order to truly make love, communing with another being through orgastic potency, we need to have cleared the decks of the emotional content still mucking up the decks above the pelvic block right up to the ocular block.  Also, does the earth move when you have sex with your beloved are do you need some thawing of your genitals and pelvic region?  Reich recognized in his book, The Function Of The Orgasm, that only a small number of men, and no women, were achieving a full erectile-ly/vaginally charged, all over body grand mal seizure version of orgastic potency.  A genital sneeze, may not be enough oomph to power those swimmers into their intended destination and you need a fully threaded man and woman, connected to their emotions and spiritual nature to spawn a child of true consequence.

If you could look through our organizing lens into our offices and see the conception, in uteri and birth traumas still registering on our patient’s richter scales, you might think twice about how you want the cellular memory of your offspring to recall their birth experience right from the moment of conception or before.  If I wholly understand Steiner’s Anthroposophy, or study of man, the wee soul that is searching the earth for its new hosts to incarnate into, starts that process well before the sperm ever meets egg.  The further we get from a spiritually connected union, fully threaded through the function of the orgasm and consciousness, the bigger price down the line is that we all have to pay through toxic medical interventions like IVF, damaging Ultrasounds, Amniocentesis, karmic sufferings and socio-economic challenges.

If you’ve considered the above and are committed to taking responsibility for what the “Gods” may gift you with, then come and see us about your fertility issues and we’ll begin by peeling your proverbial onion.  Through the process of Heilkunst excavation, we tout a 90% success rate with fertility issues.  We know that the 5,000 regulating chemicals and hormones in your body will be following their finely orchestrated blueprint once the timeline of traumas and Genetic roots for constant chronic disease are removed on the sound basis of law.  It’s a no brainer.  Make sure you send us a picture of your newborn to adorn our clinic walls!

The purpose of every Heilkunst session is ultimately determined by the patient, and what their current troubles and/or health goals are. Giving the patient an opportunity to tell their own story in their own words and their own style is the most important guiding principle in the case taking. Addressing their most immediate concern is always the first order of business.

To the degree that we are working on deeper chronic issues, or long-term goals, I’ll draw from any number of the following categories of inquiry:

• Specific reccomendations for their immediate concerns: Which homeopathic remedy or remedies will help them with current symptoms, (which we call ‘pathic’ prescribing)? Which lifestyle or nutrition modification would be most useful? What have they already tried, and what were the results?
• The basics of regimen : I like to ask the patient what his or her “nutritional habits” are. This phrase tends to prompt a much more accurate picture of their lifestyle than the idealized word “diet” tends to evoke, and usually prompts the patient to tell me what they think they should be eating, rather than what they actually are. There are any number of issues which need to be addressed in a patient’s regimen, starting with the basics of hydration and nutrition as a foundation.
• The basic life functions : How are the patient’s basic life functions? Is sleep deep and refreshing? What about the appetite, digestion, and assimilation?
• Assessing the time line of shocks and traumas : Particularly when the issue is of a chronic issue, I’m looking at the patient’s time line history, to determine which blockages might need to be addressed sooner than later. Although we normally follow a treatment logic of a reverse chronology for the time line, sometimes I will jump the queue to a particularly strong event, or one which has an obvious bearing on the present issues.
• What are the larger themes in the patient’s life? (ie not missing the forest for the trees) : Going beyond the specific details of the patient’s time line, a broader theme or themes of their whole life begins to emerge, such as “the eternal victim”, or “looking for love in all the wrong places”. Prescribing a specific homeopathic remedy in a dropper bottle (ie for long-term gradual use) will be included in their treatment for this aspect, coupled with appropriate counselling.
• What is the patient’s constitution? : I’ve written about some of the homeopathic constitutions, or ‘genotypes’ elsewhere (see “Living With a Sulphur”, for example), which are the six fundamental personality types and their corresponding homeopathic remedies. Using this remedy over the long-term helps the patient to feel more balanced and grounded within themselves. There are also six additional types called ‘phenotypes’, which are not fundamental constitutions, but the typical patterns that a personality will get frozen into under various long-term stress or trauma.
• What is the patient’s character type? : I’ve written elsewhere about some of the character types, as originally derived from Wilhelm Reich’s work. Like the phenotypes, these are also not natural states, but distortions of the fundamental flow of life energy which gets frozen in a variety of conflicts to a natural flow and expression, and which manifest by certain characteristic behavioural or character patterns, such as being eternally pleasing (the “passive femine” type) or eternally combative (the “phallic” type), for example.
• The health history in the family tree : What diseases have run in the family? What have been the causes of death in previous generations? The picture here reveals a focus and depth of predisposition in the patient which may not be obvious in their current health picture, and allows the opportunity for a truly preventive form of medicine.
• Emotional life : What is the patient’s current emotional landscape? What is the satisfaction they have in their life, overall? How are their relationships? Nurtruting? Conflicted? Ultimately this picture will reveal what the underlying relationship that the patient is with themselves.

As I mentioned above, the uniqueness of each patient will guide the direction of their treatment, and not all of these elements need to be investigated with every patient. The human being is multi-dimensional, and the well-trained Heilkunst physician will be fluent in all of these areas (and more!).

My accumulated experience in the clinic has illustrated for me the differences between men and women, and how they engage in the treatment process. The first and most obvious fact is that my practice has always been populated by a much higher proportion of women than men. This is true not only in my practice, but in fact across virtually all health care modalities. Men, stereotypically, come in for treatment (when they come in for treatment, that is), as the ‘caboose’ dragged in by his spouse, and after the children.

Comparing the general health goals of men versus women also reveals a great difference in how they each think about health — men tend to be much more linear in their thinking, and thus bring to treatment very specific symptoms, desiring simply to eliminate them — the classic “problem / solution” mode of thinking. This is also, by the way, the reason that more men will choose conventional medicine over Heilkunst, which delivers such a quick symptom removal philosophy of healthcare.  Women tend more to appreciate the process of Heilkunst treatment, and are more internally aligned with goals of taking care of their long-term health, as well as being conscious of their personal growth and development. While men appreciate the linear approach of treating the time line, women appreciate the idea of finding relationships between their inner world and what occurs in their outer ambient.

In addition to the symptom (problem/solution) focus of men, they also are more focussed on the external aspects of health, rather than their interior process of thoughts and feelings. Not only is it a realm which men don’t readily discuss, it is often a realm which apparently doesn’t even exist. In obvious contrast, the inner life of women is often spontaneously shared with me in consult, and which naturally becomes a more central focus of their treatment. On this point, when treating couples, this is one of the differences for which a bridge is sought out.

Treating a couple together can often be quite productive in many ways. The positive learnings that they gain from each other in their relationship generally are accelerated and enhanced within the treatment context. While one of the goals of health within Heilkunst is to find a balance between a capacity for healthy thinking, and for healthy feeling, a couple working on their health together will often help the other where natural strengths are overlaid onto the other’s natural weakness.

To conclude with this point, I’ll say that one of the general goals of health for either sex is to bring out and fully develop our polar nature. Every man has a feminine side, and every woman a masculine side. The abstract goal of “balance” becomes more concrete when it is framed in such qualitative terms.

Qualitative observations, on the other hand, are much more central to Heilkunst diagnosis. It goes without saying that a higher level health of the practitioner is a requirement for accurate and objective diagnosis in this realm, and one of the reasons that treatment is a requirement for the practitioner. It is interesting that this is a requirement within a system that focuses on health as its foundation, rather than the “sick care” focus of conventional medicine, where the doctor is presumed to need treatment only when they get sick themselves.

An example of a medical observation which is qualitative comes from the field of Orgonomy, as developed by Dr. Wilhelm Reich. Part of my assessment of a patient involves observing the degree of ‘armoring’ that they have. Armoring exists both at the biological and psychological levels, and can be observed through a number of the following qualitative elements.

How does the patient’s body move — is it free-flowing, or rigid in any way? Likewise, how flexible is their mental function — do they have a difficult time if new ideas are introduced? Also, various signs of anxiety indicate a degree of armoring — visible limitations to the breathing (shallow breath, uncoordinated speech patterns, etc.) illustrate an armoring pattern in the patient.

I am also observing how a patient responds to the remedies over time — a desirable healthy response to the remedies will involve a full discharge at some level (nasal discharge, emotional discharge, etc.), but in a very armored patient, the remedy will only work for a brief period of time, but then the patient will “snap back” and contract into the customary state of illness held in place by their armoring.

There is also a topography, or depth to the armoring — the patient and their treatment may progress in a fairly free-flowing way for at the beginning, but then we hit on a deeper level of armoring where a very different side of the patient suddenly comes out, seemingly “out of the blue”. This is usually because much illness and armoring has been suppressed, and is not easily observable on the surface. Experienced and careful observation, however, can pick up the most subtle clues at the surface about this deeper level of armoring, and the practitioner can prepare themselves to anticipate a big collision when this deeper level is reached in treatment.

Watching for the movement in the patient from greater to lesser degrees of armoring goes hand-in-hand with another qualitative observation of the changing state of mind of the patient. We all have personal experience of someone we’re close to being “off”, or acting out of character — these are examples of a shift in state of mind, and in a medical context prove to be some of the most important observations for understanding which direction the treatment is progressing.

In a healthy, and trained practitioner, these qualitative obervations are actually objective, and much more reliable than any quantitative observation at getting at the real meaning of the case.

There are some more specific aspects of the character armoring which I’ve written about previously, which you can read here , here and here.

But Lot’s wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
Genesis 19:26

A few years ago, a very beautiful woman had first came in to see me for various complaints, including a sore neck, joints, migraines, chronic constipation and pain during intimacy.  A month later, she came back to see me for her routine follow-up and cited that I was a miracle worker as every one of her symptoms were completely gone.  She accredited it to the homeopathic remedies.  I smiled, knowing  that the quick results were more attributed to the increase in her daily water consumption.  She had replaced her 18 weekly coffees with about 2.5 litres of water!  It is amazing to me that most folks are actually chronically dehydrated and that technically, they don’t really qualify for medical remediation until we’ve assessed what percentage of their medical issues have to do with faulty regimen, especially dehydration.

It is still amazing to me how many folks still believe that other beverages like juice, milk, coffee and tea qualify as hydration.  Countless women have pleaded with me trying to justify herbal teas as a form of hydration.  Sadly, I’ve served countless children who hate the taste of pure water because it has always been sweetened and watered down with juice.  When a patient is unknowingly suffering dehydration I will explain that if a beverage contains too many TDS (total dissolved solids), then the body will read it and understand it as “food”, rather than water – no exceptions!

The body is constituted of around 70-80% of a jelly-like material that resembles the primordial ocean.  This mesenchymal layer, or the part of the embryonic mesoderm, consisting of loosely packed, unspecialized cells set in a gelatinous ground substance, from which connective tissue, bone, cartilage, and the circulatory and lymphatic systems develop.  We are mostly just congealed sea water, with a titch of minerals thrown in for colour, and we’d do well to bathe our innards to precisely the same degree that we bathe our outer chassis.

If you think about it, planetary systems have an orbit that they adhere to based on gravitational pull.  Our bodies, too, rely on dynamic, mass-free forces possessing a fluid-crystal structure which is sub-divided into different levels of density, frankly, to hold us together.  Physics states that the density of this fluid body is proportional to the density of any physical substance occupying the area of space that it is concerned with.  For example the watery domain will increase around large bodies such as stars and planets, acting as a refracting medium, affecting the speed of the propagation of light.  This medium is relied upon for conveying electromagnetic forces while adhering to the theory of relativity.  Rudolf Steiner stated, “As above, so below.”

You may be asking yourself, what the heck does this have to do with the 2-3 litres of water I’m supposed to chug down per day?  Well, I’m getting there.  Try to bear with me for a quantum second or two!  Quantum field theory states that all fundamental fields, such as the electromagnetic field, must be anchored at each and every point in space (including our bodies).  A field in physics may be envisioned as if you could see space filled with interconnected vibrating balls and springs (Reich’s orgone energy).  The strength of the field affects the displacement of a ball from its rest position.  If you like, read that last statement, again, and just let it congeal as an etheric impression on your watery body for a moment.  The theory requires for “vibrations” in, or more accurately changes in the strength of, such a field to propagate as per the appropriate wave equation for the particular field in question.  The second quantization of your quantum field requires that each of the ball-spring combinations be allotted a quantized (a measurable pole of strength) depending on its capacity to act as a harmonic oscillator, pulsation with excitation form the field corresponding to its elementary particles in space.  Crazy stuff huh?  That’s what I thought too!

Our bodies can only be attuned to energetic excitations from the universe, then, to the degree that it is able to shift, amble, contract, displace  and expand its harmonic oscillator … its watery body!  Even the vacuum theory cites a vastly complex watery structure and all calculations of the quantum field theory must be adjusted to the degree that certain bodies in the field are able to oscillate at stronger frequencies than others.  When you “distill” this all down, you will clearly see why my patient was able to resolve her ills simply by drinking more water.  She created motility where stasis was formerly beginning the stiffening, sclerotic processes just by propagating her “wave equation”.  Can you imagine how much fun I am to invite to your cocktail party?

Disease is a function of being cut off from “the big field” of communication, otherwise known as the domain of well … God.  The intellect, unhooked from its watery etheric impressions, has mostly mired us in matter, or salt!  The Genotype Silicea (the most intellectual of all of the Homeopathic Constitutions) will often display a strong preponderance towards the phenotypical state of grief or feelings of perpetual disappointments in love and romance otherwise known as Natrum Muriaticum.  These folks generally live in the past, just as Lot’s wife did feeling alienated and cut off from themselves and the Initiates of the higher domains as per Rudolf Steiner.  It is no accident, that the homeopathic remedy for grief, or living out of the past is Natrum Muriaticum, the Latin term for salt.  Protracted grief, over time, may start out producing emotional armoring, hardening of the attitudes, stiffness in the joints, constipation (holding on to old … um … shit) tumors, fibroids, cancerous growths and if the sclerotic effects are left untreated the final stage is rigamortis.  If you slice open a tumor, you will find it largely comprises a big ball of acidic sodium chloride in addition to other toxins.  This, really, is a hardened representation of the patient’s hardened and rigidified past.  The disease of Cancer was Lot’s wife’s lot in life!  Now, try saying that 10 times fast!

The astounding properties of 2 hydrogen molecules and 1 oxygen molecule forms the only substance in nature to be labile and flexible enough to be able to respond to varying temperatures.  Miraculously water will harden to ice, flow like a river, or vaporize like your breath on a Wintery day in January north of the 49th parallel.  Folks with the Cancer state of mind, generally feel chilled regularly with extremities like ice, while folks who are more healthy and orgastically potent create a renewable source of flowing warmth and heat.  You will notice it in their bright eyes, smooth, soft skin, and their open smiling face.  While pure pH balanced water is not a good conductor of electricity, the TV show “Myth Busters”  threw radios, hair dryers and electric heaters into bathtubs to confirm, or myth-bust, whether these things will really kill you or not. The electric heater released so much energy that it turned the dummy to charcoal and exploded the bathtub into a hundred pieces! It was hilarious.  Of course, it would be tragic if it were a person; but when it’s a dummy, it’s ROTFL funny, as my kids would say.  It is of interest to note that only contaminated city water will produce these results, picking up every current introduced to it!

If your mesenchymal layer is mostly salty, acidic and littered with contaminates, leaching potassium and creating a super-saturated domain, just imagine how you may be limiting your capacity to be quantized and vibrating to receiving quantifiable messages from The Field.  If most folks are actually dehydrated and potentially rigidifying from their own toxicity, what does this mean for their capacity to pick up resonant “vibrations?”  Wilhelm Reich, a Psychotherapist was originally Freud’s most favored student, until he recognized that the body’s capacity for orgonotic vibrations introduced through a device called an orgone accumulator was destroying cancer cells and producing more orgastically potent individuals.  A simple harmonic oscillator, quantization, produces excitations of the field corresponding to the elementary function of the orgasm.  What a concept.  Now you know the deeper reason why my patient began to enjoy pleasurable sex with her husband again.  I recall her exclamation that during that first month, after introducing proper water regimen, that her libido returned with full thrusters and that she hadn’t had that much delicious sex in years!  Giddy up!

In the teachings of Theosophy, Devas (powerful Devine powers) are regarded as living either in the atmospheres of the planets of the solar system (Planetary Angels) or inside the Sun (Solar Angels) (presumably other planetary systems and stars have their own angels) and they help to guide the operation of the processes of nature such as the process of evolution and the growth of plants (etherically, watery imbued organisms); their appearance is reputedly like colored flames about the size of a human being. It is believed by Theosophists that Devas can be observed when the third eye is activated. Some (but not most) Devas originally incarnated as human beings.  It is believed by Theosophists that nature spirits, elementals (gnomes, ondines, sylphs, and salamanders), and fairies can be also be observed when the third eye is activated.  While this capacity is mostly a function of an older consciousness, it is maintained by Theosophists that these less evolutionarily developed beings have never been previously incarnated as human beings; they are regarded as on a separate line of spiritual evolution called the “Deva evolution”; eventually, as their souls advance as they reincarnate, it is believed they will incarnate as Devas.  All this to say, that these beings possess etheric bodies (but no physical bodies) that are composed of etheric matter, a type of matter finer and more pure that is composed of smaller watery particles than ordinary physical plane matter.  So it all goes to say that if we are suffering an internal desert, we may be bereft from experiencing the salvation of a healthy mind, body and spirit.  Our oasis in the physical enables communion with our etheric body where we render impressions on this watery domain, suck up the impressions into consciousness and render them anew through inspiration, imagination, and illumination.  This process is only the function of human consciousness and if we are too dry and dehydrated, we remain mostly mired in matter imprisoned in our own salt.  Sadly we’re doomed to looking back with Lot’s wife.  Did the poor girl even have a name?

In Dr. F. Batmanghelidj’s profoundly accurate book, “Your Body’s Many Cries For Water,” he states, “When the human body developed from species that were given life in water, the same dependence on the life-giving properties of water was inherited. The role of water in the body of living species – mankind included – has not changed since the first creation of life from salt water and its subsequent adaption to fresh water.”  The human body has a major problem with its normal water regulation, caused by a gradual loss of thirst sensation. If you do become thirsty, it is too late, you’ve already become dehydrated.  Humans seem to lose their thirst sensation and the critical perception of needing water. Not recognising their need for water, they gradually become increasingly and chronically dehydrated with the progress of age. Batmanghelidj went on to advise Physicians that recognizing thirst signals of the body will undoubtedly produce complicated problems in the present way of treatment of these conditions. It is all too easy to assume these signals are complications of a serious disease process and begin to treat signal-producing dehydration with complicated procedures. Although water by itself will alleviate the condition, medications or invasive diagnostic procedures may be forced on the person. It is the responsibility of both patients and their doctors to be aware of the damage that chronic dehydration can cause in the human body. Dr. Batmanghelidj was very clear when he said, “These chronic pains include dyspeptic pain, rheumatoid arthritis pain, anginal pain (heart pain on walking, or even at rest), migraine and hangover headaches, colitis pain and its associated constipation.  The “view shift” dictates that all these pains should be treated with a regular adjustment to daily water intake. No less than two and a half quarts (two and one half litres) in 24 hours should be taken for a few days prior to the routine and regular use of analgesics or other pain-relieving medications.”

In closing, maybe think about the principles of quantum physics illustrated above and how they relate to cosmic wisdom that holds the planets in the cosmos (above) in conjunction with your body (below) in good physical and  spiritual equilibrium.   When we drink water, depending on the volume of water that enters the stomach, a hormone/neurotransmitter called “motilin” is secreted. The more water we drink, the more motilin is produced by the intestinal tract and can be measured in blood circulation (immune function or ontic, sense of the self). The effect of motilin on the intestinal tract, as its name implies, is to produce rhythmic contractions (Reich’s orgonotic pulsations) of the intestines – peristalsis – from its upper parts to its lower end. Part of this action would involve the timely opening and closing of the valves (labile flexibility also indicative of a labile state of mind) that are in the way of flow (watery formation) of the intestinal content (and the function of the orgasm). Thus, when there is enough water in the body for all the digestive processes that depend on the availability of water, the pancreas (the organ that metabolizes the sweetness in life) will produce its watery bicarbonate solution to prepare the upper part of the intestinal tract to receive the acidic content of the stomach. Under such ideal circumstances, the pyloric valve is also allowed to open (open on emotional level, think of acid reflux or indigestion) for the evacuation of the content of the stomach. Motilin has a major “transmission” role in co-ordinating this action. Motilin is a satiety hormone secreted when water extends the stomach wall.  Ah, relaxation.  All is well that ends well!  When operating in concert, we are able to transmit, receive and radiate information, beyond the veil, anchored to the measurable quantum divide.

Sources:

Dr. F. Batmanghelidj: “Your body’s many cries for water” – 154 pages.
Published by: The Therapist Ltd.
ISBN: 1 899398 35 X
Price: 9.95 pounds sterling.

Following on in our series on Character Types, (Last month’s focus was on the Hysterical Type), we will take a brief look at another type this month : the Passive Feminine.  These 2 examples of character types differ from each other in many ways, and are structured on very different energy dynamics.  You may want to review the previous articles in this series to re-acquaint yourself with the general understanding of how character types work (automatic and unconscious habitual perceptions, behaviours, and reactions), and how we approach them in treatment.

The Passive Feminine is a sub-type of the general area of blockages linked to the anal stage of development.  The most predominant characteristics of the passive feminine are:

• Excessively polite and compliant
• Passive
• Orderly
• Cautious
• Feelings of inferiority

However, these surface characteristics are a very strong cover-up for some deeper emotions of anger and hostility.  When this outer shell is penetrated (either in therapy, or in other informal life situations), a deeply rooted outburst can emerge, which may include qualities of spitefulness, or contempt.  With the passive feminine, however, these underlying emotions are usually very successfully buried, and it takes a tremendous amount of therapeutic force to penetrate to this hidden depth.  These patients usually suffer from a degree of exhaustion, as their energy is used up to a large degree in the maintenance of this repression of emotion.  It is instructive to read some of Dr. Reich’s published cases, and how intensive and lengthy the treatment would be in order to get to the breakthrough, and then beyond.

The general therapeutic goal in breaking through this strong character defense, is to find ways of provoking the patient enough that their hatred and rage becomes mobilized, and can begin to be discharged within the therapeutic context.  Within the context of Medical Heilkünst, we are very fortunate to have both homeopathic and homotonic remedies at our disposal, which are able to get at, and begin to transform this energetic core, without needing to engage for weeks and months at a time in psychological battles with the patient’s  defenses.  The fact that Dr. Reich meticulously documented these battles in his case studies gives us a very precise map of this territory, and we are now able to traverse it at speeds that would never have been possible for him as he pioneered these methods.

What I see unfolding with patients on the basis of their treatment, is consistent with the map the Reich laid out, but which happens on a completely sped up time frame.  One very valuable remedy in passive feminine cases is the Homotonic remedy Staphysagria.  I recently treated a patient with this, and before their following visit, they experienced a period of extreme exhaustion – this was their healing reaction from the remedy, which means that a particular disease layer has been destroyed, and is a sign that the body is pushing the debris out to the surface, which is experienced as a temporary worsening of their condition.  After this healing reaction cleared for the patient, they came back to their next session in a state of energy and joie de vivre which I had never seen in them.  This is always the type of evidence I’m looking for to verify that a given remedy has hit its target, and the patient has been able to move to an increased level of health.

According to Wilhelm Reich, there is a basic contradiction between human longing for freedom and our biophysical incapacity to accept it.[1] In other words, our ability to be entirely self-regulating individuals – - invulnerable to false authority – - is a function of our physiology. Reich observed that our character structure, which determines our capacity for resonant relationships, fulfilling work, and inspiring studies, is rooted in our (oftentimes chronically rigid) musculature.

This clinical insight informed his advice to psychotherapists that “in explaining the reasons for the failure of a particular case, the analyst must avoid statements such as that the patient ‘did not want to get well,’ or he or she was not accessible; for this is precisely what we want to know: why didn’t the patient get well, why wasn’t he or she accessible?”[2]

In view of the most challenging cases, Reich would more readily accept the limitations of his therapeutic technique than conclude that the stubborn individual sitting across from him simply did not want to get better. His clinical success with so-called masochistic patients supported his claim that even those who inflicted pain on themselves were motivated by the pursuit of pleasure: their muscular structure simply could not tolerate the expansiveness that pleasure generates. As such, their self-mutilation was actually a source of relief for them: they were too armored to take up the reins of a healthier, happier, life. But they certainly wanted (i.e. cosmically longed for) freedom. The question for Reich was: (how) could this freedom be attained?

A testament to its seeming indelibility, Reich recognized that armoring is a function of civilization: its specific purpose is to hold back and assist individuals to conform and thus reduce anxiety. Rather than yell and threaten to kill his father, for example, Reich observed that an enraged child would rather tighten his throat, which, over time, would develop into a stutter.

By Reich’s account, we are a hobbled, diseased, flock of subservient patrons. And, since armored parents raise armored children, armoring is a self-perpetuating pandemic. Seemingly necessary to preserve the status quo, it enables us to conform to societal expectations. But, in order to do so, we often have to deny what we really want. We literally have to tighten our bodies to prevent the energy mounting in our loins from running amok.

So where does that leave those of us who want to emote freely and have the capacity to surrender to life’s many pleasures? Reich identified the futility of any mass overhaul of societal norms and, towards the end of his career, found most hope in prophylaxis by informed child rearing: “We cannot tell our children what kind of world they will or should build. But we can equip them with the kind of character structure and biological vigor which will enable them to make their own decisions, to find their own ways, to build their own future and that of their children, in a rational manner.” [3] But, along the way, he also developed therapeutic techniques to help his patients soften the chronic armoring that had a clamp down on their character structures. And, while I can appreciate Reich’s eventual emphasis on prevention, right now, it is the de-armoring aspect of his work that I find most relevant. I certainly care about future children, but my immediate interests are in learning techniques to soften my own musculature, break through my own armoring, and transmute my own character structure. This is why I am impressed with the de-armoring arsenal at Arcanum. This is also why I have recently become so interested in the Bowen Technique as a modality to complement my future Heilkunst practice.

I was initially captivated by this hands-on technique when it was used on me after I dislocated my shoulder. It was a serious injury (I had left it dislocated overnight to tend to in the morning) and the prognosis was quite bad. Dissatisfied with the options laid out for me, I flew across the country to my trusted Bowen practitioner who restored full mobility to my arm in a single session! While the long list of acute and chronic ailments (http://www.boweninstitute.ca/bowen/conditions.html) that Bowen can address continues to amaze me, as my studies of this technique progress, I am increasingly interested in its de-armoring properties. Over the course of my training, I continue to notice a profound shift in the character structures of my classmates and myself. We are all softening at the touch of each other’s “Bowen Hands.”

Bowen’s efficacy is often attributed to its ability to re-balance the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), where the body’s self-healing mechanisms are governed. The ANS controls over 80% of bodily functions and is very susceptible to external stressors. In our fast-paced society, most people we encounter are living in a constant state of high stress and sympathetic dominance. Bowen catalyzes the transition from sympathetic dominance to parasympathetic dominance, which is necessary for healing to take place. Expressed differently: it is also the state our body needs to be in to release chronic armoring.

When Reich questioned what produces chronic muscular contraction, his investigation led to the realm of the vegetative nervous system and the basic antithesis of vegetative functioning. He found that “excitation of the sympathetic nervous system causes contraction, which is felt as anxiety. Parasympathetic excitation causes expansion, which is felt as pleasure. It is chronic sympatheticatonia, therefore, which causes and maintains the armor, which in turn maintains the neurosis.”

After a Bowen session, when I feel my body shift into parasympathetic dominance, I know that it is in the requisite state to disarm itself. The gentle rolls over my muscles and connective tissue inform my nervous system of the state of tension in the musculotendinous tissue, which then responds to finally break the vicious cycle. I experience profound relaxation and my entire body is restored to a state of grace, no longer chronically compromised by social pressures. It is more labile and flexible and free to arm and disarm itself as appropriate. It is – - or should I say, I am – - no longer in a constant state of emergency.

True: I will never forget the immediate rehabilitation the Bowen technique granted me after my accident. But it is the overall softening and openness to pleasure that I am most grateful for and most interested in carrying forward.

To participate in Carol-Ann’s Bowen clinical, contact her at: cagalego@gmail.com

[2] Wilhelm Reich, Character Analysis, trans. Vincent Carfagno (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972), 9.

[3] Wilhelm Reich, Children of the Future, ed. Mary Higgins and Chester Raphael, trans. Derek Jordan et al. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), 7.

Following on from my last post on the various typologies we draw on in Medical Heilkunst, this post is a brief description of one particular character type, called the ‘hysterical type’, or ‘hysterical character type’.  The Character Types were most clearly developed in a therapeutic context by Dr. Wilhelm Reich, and provide one of the cornerstones we draw on to map the shortest route from illness to health for each patient.  A person’s character structure is a type of ‘force field’ which shapes the flow and function of their life energy, and is visible in terms of certain characteristic behaviours and typical situational reactions, as well as some of the physical symptomology suffered.

This ‘force field’ originates in a mix of shocks, traumas, and other blockages to the life energy during early childhood development, and remains in adult years even when the precipitating situations are no longer a real factor in the person’s life.  By their nature, the defensive patters of the character structure operate in an automatic, unconscious manner (the autonomic ‘reflex’ system in the body), and the first challenge in treatment is to raise the patient’s self-awareness of these patterns sufficiently, which involves going through the most defensive aspects of their ego structure.  There are a variety of ways such a structure is retained in the organism, including chronic contraction of the musculature and insufficient breathing habits (biological armoring) along with rigidified beliefs and perceptions about the world (psychological armoring).  All that to say, that there can be a tremendous amount of built-in resistance encountered in attempting to uproot and overturn these patterns, and at times might feel like a “life and death” battle between the patient and practitioner.

The basic structure of the hysterical type has attained a relative degree of health in terms of the stages of natural development of the child, and has been mostly rooted in ‘genitality’ (the natural conclusion of all the healthy fevers of childhood being transformed and rooted in the emerging sexual energy of puberty); however, rather than a fully healthy expression of the ‘genital character’ type, the hysterical type is also built on a permanent form of anxiety, around which the basic behaviours and reactions are built.

The hysterical type simultaneously has a drive towards healthy sexual expression, and yet a deep anxiety and avoidance of the same.  This makes for a characteristically flirtatious attitude, which then turns to withdrawal, or even blatant attacking of others in order to calm the resulting anxiety.  This seemingly contradictory conduct is best understood by seeing that the hysterical type uses flirtatiousness as a way to assess a person or situation for danger, which makes sense in the context of the character structure, but not from the point of view of healthy behaviour.  Unlike other character structures, there is a fair bit of healthy, ‘lively’ energy of the hysterical type, however it tends more towards a restless or fidgety nature.

The main goal in treatment of the hysterical type is to raise the patient’s self-awareness about the nature and origin of their current way of being, while also finding a way to “corner” them, in the sense of confronting their core defense without allowing them any way to ‘escape’ or ‘run’ from this moment of realization (which would be their normal tendency).  Much of this therapeutic structure can be set up by a correct sequence of homeopathic and homotonic remedies, along with other supportive modalities, which sets up for a much easier moment of resolution between the patient and practitioner.