Into the Clearing

Sometimes you have to clear space in your life for creativity to happen. I've wandered away from serious attempts to write for quite a while. In the past year, I focused more on reading than writing. Plus, I began to experiment with photo collage. I also needed time just to be myself during a year where my job changed suddenly, significantly adding to my responsibility without any warning. Anxiety seems to build in me whenever I have to cope with sudden change.

It took me a while to feel comfortable again.

And I do need to feel a sense of comfort in order to be a writer. Writing is not necessarily very easy for me. I find research much easier than writing.

I have this mental image of being in the middle of a dense thicket, where the path is obscure and there are so many brambles that you need to avoid. Slowly as the trail winds past the last bushes, the way becomes open again. There is a clearing ahead and you are surrounded by a grove of trees stretching upwards, taking your heart and mind with them as they reach skywards.

The picture at the beginning of this entry is a modified photo taken last autumn in Pennsylvania, where I stayed for a weekend among friends. It represents the vision of the clearing that I see before me now.

I feel more at peace now for waiting until I had the energy and calmness to think clearly. No doubt I will continue to wander because it is in my nature. But I now have a sense of purpose and a few solid plans. It has been a long way down the path to reach this grove of trees, but at least I am out of the thicket for the moment.

Perhaps my tendency to have these struggles through the thicket is why I love the quote by J. R. R. Tolkien from The Lord of the Rings so much:

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.

I know that change is always going to happen. It is practically impossible to plan for all contingencies. But human beings have the gift of insight and the ability to change their sense of perspective about an idea, a problem, a value. Flexibility of perception is an important aspect of my life that fuels my creativity.

Lifeforce

I am that supreme and fiery force that sends forth all the sparks of life. Death hath no part in me, yet do I allot it, wherefore I am girt about with wisdom as with wings. I am that living and fiery essence of the divine substance that flows in the beauty of the fields. I shine in the water, I burn in the sun and the moon and the stars. Mine is that mysterious force of the invisible wind. I sustain the breath of all living. I breathe in the verdure and in the flowers, and when the waters flows like living things, it is I. I found those columns which support the whole earth . . . I am the force which lies hid in the winds, from me they take their source, and as a man may move because he breathes, so does a fire burn but by my blast. All these live because I am in them and am of their life. I am wisdom. Mine is the blast of the thundered word by which all things were made. I permeate all things that may not die. I am life.

-Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century

My reflections this week are elemental. Not only am I engaged in some private research on the elements, but I am also beginning a course acupuncture treatments for chronic sinusitis, an illness which has plagued my whole life. I found it thrilling, therefore, to find in twelfth-century visionary artist Hildegard von Bingen's writings the epigraph above on the nature of lifeforce.

Our bodies are living organisms with communities of organs working in collaboration and with a network of neurons deciding on courses of action. Our nerves are like the invisible wires that cause mechanical devices like computers to switch on or switch off in a pattern of ones and zeros. If this metaphor holds, then it also stands to reason that sometimes a body's wiring or mechanisms may not function correctly, or might encounter a problem creating an infinite feedback loop. Clearly my immune system has been running poorly and is currently experiencing a breakdown.

Western medical science can perform great miracles. I don't doubt that it is a valid path of restoring health. I do find, however, that after some 34 years of attempting standard Western medical practices: drugs, injections, inhalers, etc., I need a breath of fresh air and a different point-of-view to help solve my systemic problem. It's not just the headaches I often feel, ranging from mild to migraine. It's not just the sore throat, coughing, wheezing and general feeling of listlessness that comes with each infection. It's the constant rash of dry, crackling skin; the insane amount of water I need to drink to prevent dry-mouth; and the pressure on my brain. Sometimes it's also the millisecond of fright that arrives in the morning, wondering if I'll be able to take that first breath of the day through my nose or mouth -- or at all.

That's where the Chinese concept of Qi comes in. Qi, life energy, is a concept that I have known about since I wandered about studying Eastern philosophies during college.

A definition of Qi from Wikipedia.com

Qi, also commonly spelled ch'i (in Wade-Giles romanization) or ki (in romanized Japanese), is a fundamental concept of traditional Chinese culture. Qi is believed to be part of every living thing that exists, as a kind of “life force” or “spiritual energy.” It is frequently translated as “energy flow,” or literally as “air” or “breath.” (For example, tiānqì, literally “sky breath”, is the ordinary Chinese word for "weather). In Mandarin Chinese it is pronounced something like "chee" in English, but the tongue position is different

I now realize that Qi is the same word I've heard people pronounce like /chee/. Some even use a westernized spelling of it: Chi, as in Tai Chi Chuan, a martial art I practiced for a while during graduate school. Personally, I think of Qi as lifeforce, the energy that binds our bodies together and helps them to breathe and move. It's also the energy that makes us aware of ourselves and of our surroundings. It is that which creates our sentience.

Lifeforce is not unknown to the West as Hildegard's poetic writing proves. Many religions hinge around a concept of a life-force or an energy surrounding all things. It is a concept familiar to anyone who knows about the Shinto beliefs in Japan or to the cosmology of Native American peoples. And even if you aren't particularly spiritual you've probably heard of The Force. ("Use The Force, Luke.")

There must be something within my body's energy or lifeforce that is not working as it should. Why should I labor under a near constant state of illness, no matter how slight? It's been so long since I've sought any medical treatment for my sinusitis, and since I last received care for it, the world has changed. Insurance companies now accept the probability that cases like mine can be treated with acupuncture. And that is where I arrive at the Qi concept. I know someone who found great relief from sinus trouble through acupuncture. Other friends of mine have had even more serious illnesses like Crohn's disease treated successful by Chinese medicine and acupuncture.

At last I have found the right combination of willingness to try something new in the hopes of relief from my non-debilitating, yet irritating condition and of ability to afford said treatment. I found my courage and went to my first acupuncture appointment last Thursday.

The first thing I realized was that it was more like going to a massage therapist appointment than like a doctor's office visit. I didn't have to undress and wear a tiny sheet. I didn't feel cold. The room was not lit by harsh fluorescent lighting, but rather dimmed, warm light. There was gentle music playing in the background. My acupuncturist was calm and professional as any medical practitioner might be, but with that hint of empathy you don't often receive from a medical doctor. She feels my case is treatable, but she will need to see me frequently at first to get my wiring to recalibrate itself. The needles, don't hurt, by the way. You hardly feel them at all. In comparison to the years of desensitization injections and antibiotic injections I received as a child, they are a walk in the park. I know well that I will have to wait and see if acupuncture can offer me some relief, but I long for my body to be in harmony with itself.

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If you are curious to know more about the relationship of the Chinese concept of Qi to medical health you might want to read an online article on acupuncture and qi or the following paragraph from Wikipedia's article:

Qi in traditional Chinese medicine
Theories of traditional Chinese medicine assert that the body has natural patterns of qi that circulate in channels called meridians in English. Symptoms of various illnesses are often believed to be the product of disrupted, blocked, or unbalanced qi movement (interrupted flow) through the body's meridians, as well as deficiencies or imbalances of qi (homeostatic imbalance) in the various Zang Fu organs. Traditional Chinese medicine often seeks to relieve these imbalances by adjusting the circulation of qi (metabolic energy flow) in the body using a variety of therapeutic techniques. Some of these techniques include herbal medicines, special diets, physical training regimens (Qigong, Tai Chi Chuan, and martial arts training), moxibustion, massage to clear blockages, and acupuncture, which uses small diameter metal needles inserted into the skin and underlying tissues to reroute or balance qi.

On Being Mindful of Health

I am prompted to write on this subject because a friend and coworker has been struggling with a severe medical problem that has played havoc with her life for now nearly six weeks. She has had two surgeries in less than a month and has been trying to find time to work and time to be the single parent for her young daughter despite these trials. All I can do is to try and ease her burden at work just a little and to do personal favors for her, such as my offer to cook her dinner some evening--an offer I hope she accepts.

Every January, suddenly the normally, retiring, quiet "self improvement" section of bookstores suddenly leaps out from behind shy shelves and confronts the customer in central aisles and towers that says, "Admit it. You know you came here to buy me." The lure of "New Year's resolutions" is too much for many to resist and all of the morning news shows tell you to to loose those extra holiday-gained pounds, get into shape before you get into your Spring Break beachwear, and how to communicate more effectively with your partner.

I laugh about this phenomenon each year. "Self improvement" has become a way of life for me since I was forced to reckon with the state of my health five years ago at the age of 31. I spent nearly ten months in 2001, dealing with a serious medical problem that forced me to look squarely in the mirror, and face the fact that I had ignored my health for far too long. I had to have invasive abdominal surgery to remove seven rapidly growing tumors, ranging from the size of a pea to one 10 cm in diameter (the size of a grapefruit!). The major concern was that no doctor knew for certainty if the tumors were benign or cancerous until I had the surgery.

Medical researchers are uncertain, based upon current research, whether or not a certain diet, a certain amount of stress, or a lack of exercise are actually direct causes of the condition I have. Many doctors are still convinced that my particular illness is genetic and that I can do little or nothing about it. My mother also had surgery in her forties for similar enlarged tumors. After living with this knowledge for five years, I have come to believe that this "condition" I have may indeed be genetic, but that if I can live a more healthful life, I can slow down or even prevent the tumors from returning.

Two goals I placed upon myself during my long recovery, were losing weight and increasing my strength. As a child I was willowy, but as a teenager I was overweight and not inclined to be involved very much in sports. I did nothing about my weight problems or health for twenty years. I experimented with being vegetarian for several years and initially lost weight, but gained it all back due to the increased amount of starches and sugars I ate or drank. By the time I was thirty, I was back to weighing what I did when I was sixteen, and feeling rather unhappy about my body.

The diagnosed growth of tumors was my wake-up call. Suddenly every day, every meal, made me feel obsessed about my health problems. For the first several months after the discovery of the tumors, I threw caution to the wind because I had an almost fatalistic view that I should "be merry, for tomorrow I may die." Then I received the medical opinion that I must have surgery. I just shut down mentally and became extremely depressed about my health. I ended up calling the minister of my church for help.

He was working from home on the day I called. He invited me to share his lunch and told me something that I will never forget. He told me that in times of great stress and turmoil, he found comfort in the most simple things. He had typed the word "breathe" on a piece of paper and taped it to the dashboard of his car so that whenever he was stuck in traffic and boiling over psychologically about some problem, he would see that word and immediately focus on his breath and, by focusing on his breath, calm down. He also advised me to be mindful of eating, enjoying my food, slowing down to take my meal without rushing. As a person working part-time to support grad school studies, I was always rushing! Finally he also told me to drink more water. Sounds like something a doctor or your mother would say, but I've since read that when you are under stress, drinking clean, pure water instead of soda or juice is the best way to remove the acids in your body that stress produces.

At the time of my meeting with the minister, I was in such a state of panic that I didn't quite get the message. But as I began to be more mindful of what I put into my body, I really did began to calm down or at least tune the stress down a notch or two. No, it didn't cure me or solve my psychological problems, but it did something even better than that. It taught me that we humans living in our world of modern conveniences, cut off from the need to gather and hunt for our own food in Nature; sealed in our hermetic environments with HVAC systems; and living in an age of wonder drugs and long life-expectancies often forget the basics.

Health is really a very fragile state. The assumption of our culture is that if you are unhealthy, you aren't doing your job. You haven't seen the right doctors, haven't jogged enough miles, haven't eaten the right foods or gone on the right diet. It's your fault. Or, it's pure tragedy: "Oh,that poor child," you might hear someone say. "It's just so sad that she got cancer." I say that we are the caretakers of our own health. And if we care for others in our lives, we first need to care for our own state of health.

I am now over 25 pounds lighter than I was before my surgery in 2001, thanks to regular exercise and the South Beach Diet, a nutritional plan that seems to fit my body type and leaves me feeling satisfied after meals. I am also more muscular and stronger than I have ever been in my life because I am now more athletic and I train with weights. I have also recently begun to take yoga, a practice I had first learned at the age of five or six, but had long since given up until just last year. I drink vaster amounts of water and remember to consciously breathe, often remembering that conversation with my minister when I do.

I am a human being. I need air to breathe, water to drink and food to give me energy. When I can be mindful of that, no matter what aches and pains I feel, no matter the state of my chronic sinusitus, I know that I am being mindful of being alive.

Attunement to the Universe

My word for this week seems to be "attunement." I might venture a definition for that word as "the state of coming into balance." Balance is a quality I have craved in my life for many years. While it is impossible for anyone to be in balance all of the time, I have been able to practice maintaining my balance by consciously slowing down when I know I'm stressed out by breathing deeply and centering myself. I have also increased my attention to keeping my physical self in tune because I neglected and disliked my body for most of my teenage and early adult years.

Tuesday night I went to a meeting of my women's group to learn about Reiki, pronounced "ree'-key" in American English. Reiki is a Japanese word that translates as something like "universal life force." As my friend K. described it, the "ki" part of the word designates something similar to the Chinese concept of "chi," as in the body movements called Tai Chi Chuan. Reiki is a healing practice for many in the West and some people take it further and consider it as a spiritual practice.

When I came to the gathering, K. took me aside and asked if I had ever had a Reiki Attunement. I didn't even know what an Attunement was. Basically, it's a manner of laying-on-hands to convey healing energy. K. had me sit on a chair outside on the balcony under the brilliant light of the full moon. She asked me to hold my hands together in front of my heart, as if I might bow to someone. She raised my hands upward, then back to my heart, then my hands outward and open like a book, and once again to my heart. She walked behind me and touched my back briefly and then held her hands behind my head, not touching me.

I know many people who find the idea of spiritual energy to be a "crazy hippy concept" or something akin to belief in angels or UFOs. I admit I was skeptical about energy work until about ten years ago, but I what I have learned about it since then has changed my mind. Modern scientists rediscovered what has been known by healers since ancient times: the human body has electrical current flowing through it. Our nervous system is electrical and runs on chemical impulses. The brain is the central computer that sends waves of energy to the appropriate places. If you have a pain, sometimes it feels like pulses are running through the afflicted area--those are your nerves at work. I experienced that kind of pain once when I was diagnosed with sciatica, a type of shooting pain in my legs brought about by a problem with my lower back nerves. Fortunately, medication followed by a program of regular workouts have solved that problem for me. I also know I have experienced the body's electrical power in other more positive ways. When you touch someone with whom you are in love, isn't just possible you actually sense "sparks" as your nervous system responds to another's?

My experiences with energy work are amateur and experimental, but I believe that massage, accupressure, accupuncture, tai chi, yoga and other bodywork healing practices can help smooth and improve the body's electrical system. So as K. lead the meeting she explained more about Reiki and how it works. I can understand the aspects of energy she described. Picture if you will, later that same evening, when she had the whole group of 15 or so fully-clothed women of ages ranging from teenager to grandmother, sitting in a big circle on the floor, with each woman touching the back of the other. The idea was that we would pass our energy to the next person and through the physical connection of touch spread the healing throughout our circle and out into the universe. In other words, once each of the participants felt attuned to the universe, she could pass that healing energy onward to herself and to others. It seems to me like opening a channel to the universe. In fact, K. used the phrase "it's like tuning in to a frequency on the radio dial" to explain what Reiki Attunement does.

Scientists know that atoms bounce around and are attracted together to form chemical bonds and repelled from each other to break the bonds down. I think of it as a dance, where the individuals move and sway to the beat of cosmic time. Movement is energy. The dance of the atoms creates the maple tree, the air you breath, that cat perched on the windowsill and the metals and plastics comprising your car. And You! As Astronomer Carl Sagan used to say, "We are, all of us, made of star-stuff."

Back on earth, it is a stressful week at my place of work. My positive experience at the meeting of women who I like and care about has left me feeling more relaxed and confident. The odd thing is that I have been having stiffness in my lower back when I wake up in the morning lately, but on the morning after that meeting my back was not stiff at all. Perhaps the healing power of energy work is all in my mind, but I am not so certain.