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8 Random Things About Me

Friday, July 27th, 2007 by Maryam Webster

A little late on the ball, but in response to biz-buddy Krishna’s tag in her post: 8 random things about me

Krishna tagged me to write about 8 random things about myself so here goes. I’ve decided in typical me-style to be truly random…

Like Krishna, I’ll start with my name. "Maryam" is the name I took by requirement during my three-and-a-bit years as a practicing Muslim, circa 1981. It felt so much more "me" than my given name, I made it legal and permanent. "Webster" is an ancient name in my mother’s family line I re-monikered with after divorce. It didn’t occur to me until I used my freshly-minted driver’s license as ID, that the combination together sounded similar to the name of a prominent dictionary. People have been reminding me of that (usually with laughter) ever since…

When I first put up my website in 1996, I got a nastygram from the Merriam Webster dictionary people as I too am a prolific writer and produced tons of material that contained words in their book. Imagine the cheek, they said. They desisted after a spell of chatting with me. An almost magical sense of charm and persuasion goes a long way back among the women in my family.

I am a veteran of nearly thirty years in shamanic practice of both metis and Nordic medicine ways, and apprenticed fifteen years to a Missouri sweet medicine man, Corliss "d" deLarm, who stands unequalled but by the Dalai Lama in spiritual presence, in my personal experience. I’ve taught the Nordic system of runes as healing, divinatory and spiritual advancement tools for about twenty-five years. My, how Dagaz flies…

Speaking of the Dalai Lama, I have received two initiations from His Holiness Tenzing Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. The White Tara longevity empowerment and the Medicine Buddha initiation and blessing for my work in healing. It’s not as cool as you think though - I was one of about five thousand that day to receive these blessings. And he was going along so fast in Tibetan you had a hard time keeping up with the visualizations of a white Buddha above a towering stack of golden Buddhas all holding lotus flowers and so on and so on.
It worked though. About a month later I gashed the living daylights out of my thigh vacuuming (a dangerous profession), managed to clean the 2" deep wound out, instill betadine, close the wound with steri-strips and get a pressure bandage on it all while reciting the Medicine Buddha mantra and the husband was fainting dead away just at the sight of the thing. Chanted the whole way to the hospital and had an amazing personal experience with both Medicine Buddha and His Holiness, plus didn’t feel a thing when stitched. (12 stitches, 4" scar just above the knee) Cue doctor amazement and personal happiness…

I have a broken back. Almost everyone’s heard this story but if you haven’t here’s the teacup version: Whilst living in Cambridge, England on a rainy night, drunk driver sails over the top of a roundabout and slams into my Mini van (Mini as in Cooper) causing iron box with heavy pipe wrenches to slam into my back. *crunch* L4 cracked vertically, spinous process on L5 fragmented, spinal cord trauma. Had to move back to U.S. for surgery as in England, would have been on a two year wait just for a diagnostic MRI. Progressive paralysis. Spent a total of three years paralyzed from the waist down, intense surgery, six more years recovering mobility. Can walk, run, dance and hike now. Today, it’s only a problem if I don’t keep up vigorous exercising.

My favorite form of exercise is hiking in the redwoods, but don’t get to do that every day. Yoga, I do every day and couldn’t live without it. At right is me circa 2006 outside my old studio - Willow Glen Yoga in San Jose, CA with cone-head hair after the last downward facing dog of the day. Great yoga and good people - click my picture to go there. Been practicing yoga since 1974, when I learned in an afternoon class in junior high school. We learned straight-up hatha and our teacher busted our chops. Then and again, we were young and our chops could stretch a lot further in those days… My spiritual mentor d. deLarm extended this practice through the next twenty years in sharing the blessings of Integral Yoga. Balance Yoga (balancecenter.com) got me mobile again following my paralysis. Lately my passion is Yin Yoga (paulgrilley.com) as I’ve still got a lot of shortened tendons and stiff muscles. Yoga keeps ‘em limber and the mind, serene.

If you like cats and you’re a computer nerd, you might "has" seen the picture at left. (No, it’s not my kitties, it came from here) While I love friend’s children, I am blissfully child-free, though am mother to two mitties. (cats - mitten + kitty = mittie….don’t ask) They are dark charcoal fluffball, the Princess Anoushka and her lean grey huntress companion with the perfect white bikini, Tashi-Claire. The Bear wanted to name them Xena and Gabrielle but was overruled by the cats themselves who told us their names and insisted we use them.
The mitties exist in a partially contentious, partially collegial relationship and strictly enforce territorial limits of the garden. Tosh-cat is an avid bird watcher and is generally interested in the wildlife that pervades the area around the pool. Anoushka is a garage kitty and hangs out on the persian carpet under the Bear’s office chair, even on the hottest and muggiest of days. We figure her to be an adherent of Virginia Woolfe. Myself and the Bear are seen as jailers and parental units. I love them unmercifully of which they are tolerant and accepting and both feed and comb them. But when the Bear is home, I am relegated to chopped liver status. They are the only cats I know who actually *dislike* chopped liver…

I am an accomplished frontierswoman. Though you wouldn’t think it to look at me, I can make my own paper and ink, spin, weave, dye woven goods with native plants, make soap in a cast iron cauldron, split logs, make brooms and other tools of wood and local plants, harvest and manage forest foods such as hickory nuts, boil the hickory branches to get three kinds of food: salt, sugar and milk (yep, you can), muddle and sweeten ground roasted acorns for frontier flour, construct a log cabin (well, in theory, I only did it once and that was with a lot of help - those logs are heavy!), grow, harvest and make herbal medicines (plus know how to use them), midwife human and animal babies into the world, make shoes from leather, plants or refuse such as old tires (great for treads), set, manage and harvest a trotline for fish, snares for rabbit and quail, plus skin and dress the meat if called upon to do so (not my favorite thing) and tan the skins. I can build a fire with a bow drill and pine duff or other local tinder, though it takes a long time. I can construct a shelter out of almost any material available, and find food in a forest even in winter. What’s more, I have a hardy spirit and am a survivor, born of a long line of women who persisted, shared their knowledge and endured to win in life.
I’ve not been called on to do any of these frontier tasks in a long time, but the memory still persists. My mother was a great one for recapturing the pioneer spirit and my great grandmother on my father’s side up in the Smoky Mountains of Carolina (they really do look like they’re smoking - see?) thought a girl child should know how to weave and dye and make soap, ink, paper and so on.

The picture above right is in front of the National Frontier Trails Center in Independance, MO, close to my hometown, and she was always pointed out as a model to follow. Though I must say I adore my computer, electric fans, swimming pool and other modern conveniences, if and when the lights finally go out, I’ll know what to do. Can’t buy that kind of peace of mind, plus it’s a joy to know you can survive by your own efforts.

So now it’s my turn to tag eight people so I’ll now ask some of my great "virtual crushes" I’ve connected to through life, business, blogging and sharing personal energy, to share 8 random things about themselves. Over to you folks: Suzanne Falter Barnes, Jen Louden, Andrea Lee, Ellen Britt, Betsy Muller, Gloria Arenson, Sarah Zeldman, Jasmine White and Vikki Hoobyar…

Posted in Day In The Life, Wonderful People, Religion, Travel, Games, Women, Spiritual Teachings, Business, History, Women's Health, Role Models, Maryam | No Comments »

What Your Grandmother Told You…Still Holds True

Monday, June 25th, 2007 by Maryam Webster

Purple Coneflower, aka, Echinacea. Isn't she pretty? Last year the National Institute of Health published a study that said echinacea, or purple coneflower (at right - isn’t she pretty?), does nothing to help or cure the common cold. (Hundreds of years of pioneer and native American experience to the contrary). Now, the British Journal Lancet has published a counter study that says granny was right. From USA Today Health:

A new study published today in the British journal The Lancet: Infectious Diseases finds that the popular herbal supplement echinacea cuts the chance of catching a cold by 58% and can reduce the duration of colds by about a day and a half.

This directly contradicts a major study funded by the National Institutes of Health and published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine which found that echinacea doesn’t work.

The Lancet study looked at the results of 14 previous clinical trials that investigated echinacea’s effects on the common cold. Those trials involved a total of over 1,600 patients.

The analysis was done by Craig Coleman, a professor of pharmacy at the University of Connecticut, and colleagues. Meta-analyses combine the findings of large numbers of studies to tease out trends that might not be visible individually.

Coleman and his colleagues looked at all the randomized, placebo-controlled, peer-reviewed studies available and by combining their data, found that echinacea reduced the incidence of contracting the common cold and its duration.

And they wonder why the herb grannies sometimes cast a jaundiced eye at ‘that newfangled doctorin". While science has its place, you’ve got to wonder sometimes why hundreds of years of anecdotal evidence is often pooh-poohed. Perhaps because big pharma can’t lay patent to what is essentially a weed? Full article here

Posted in Day In The Life, Current Affairs, Food and Drink, Women, Alt Health, Environment, Healing, Health, Wellness, Women's Health | 2 Comments »

Opening to Open Source

Saturday, April 21st, 2007 by Maryam Webster

As I’ve been writing Everyday Bliss this past month, creating new practices, tightening up old ones and spinning off ideas on possibilities far beyond the methods I’m writing about, I’ve been blessed with insights. One of those is surrounding the whole idea of healing:

(a) being a human right

and

(b) the necessity of having at least one superior healing technique be Open Source technology

Here’s a bit of background on why I’m thinking about Open Source at this time:

In the late 1990’s an attempt was made to trademark and restrict the Reiki healing method only to those who trained under the individual applying for the trademark. Cumbersome contracts would have heavily restricted practice, teaching and writing about Reiki. This structure was ostensibly to provide standardization, but was also openly acknowledged as a generator of massive revenue for exclusive benefit of the individual forwarding the trademark application.

The greater Reiki community did not train with this individual or her highly exclusive organization, and were outraged. Many of this individual’s own students even refused to sign such a restrictive covenant.

Around the world, Reiki teachers and practitioners rose up against this attempt, wrote thousands of letters to the U.S. Trademark Office, quashed the application, and there was no more talk of trademarking or restriction of use after that.

Sadly, quite early on in this process, tremendous fear and grief gripped the Reiki community. People stopped teaching and writing about Reiki in fear that they would be prosecuted for trademark infringement. Many stopped their practice entirely and never resumed it - even though Reiki had given them great comfort and healing.

A culture of fear and anger was created that caused many to abandon what was otherwise an essentially fine healing method. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first nor will it probably be last time such a thing would happen in different communities and with different healing methods.

This situation is regrettably not unique. It has much in common with efforts all over the world to restrict and curtail people’s efforts to heal themselves and others using methods that may not be establishment-approved, and to made a fair and decent living at it, if this is their wish.

In additional to individuals, governments and their restrictions on complementary medicine present difficulties to those wishing to heal themselves and others quickly, inexpensively and for want of other resources.

I am all for someone making a profit on their hard won ideas, intellectual property, personal gnosis or scientific study. And I support my colleagues in protecting their business interests. This is ever more important to those of us whose stock in trade are ideas, inquiry, synthesis, catalysis and holding training and healing space in a special way unique to each of us.

Those who are currently trademarking and licensing their healing methods are doing a form of public service in creating journeyman and professional classes in energy healing. This can be of great help to the public when dealing with methods that can often only amorphously be described and experienced in the beginning phases.

But while professional level training may be useful in some sectors, it will only serve a small fraction of the public who need such methods. Most people balk at learning any method whose practice is made difficult or becomes politicized in any way. Even though these methods might otherwise help people, those that are curtailed in any way have some key drawbacks:

a) they are restricted in practice or scope
b) they may cost a lot to learn, practice and/or teach
c) they may restrict a practitioner sharing healing with those in deepest need

I am concerned, as current energy healing methods gain more structure, financial constraints and complexity, they can lose the grass roots of what really works, and be taken out of the hands of those who stand the most to benefit. My personal concern is for women and children worldwide who have no health insurance and no other primary provider in the family. This is where we truly need such a freely available Open Source healing method.

What I would like to see is an energy healing technique that is made completely Open Source, under community development, and available to people to do what they like - to heal themselves and their families, to become better people, have the lives they’ve dreamed of and even to teach and make income from. A method that is easy to practice and whose centerpiece is essential, unadorned functionality.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

If you’re not a computer geek, you may not be familiar with the term Open Source.

For defining and pursuing Open Source, we have the free computer software community to thank. From opensource.org comes the following definition, pertinent to software, but easily transferrable to any product:

"Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in…"

The parameters for open distribution, modification and no reliance on any one predescessing method or architecture would also be applicable to an open source healing method.

Interesting idea, isn’t it? Volunteers, anyone??

Read more about one method of Open Source technology here: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

Posted in Women, Bliss, Abundance, Women's Health, Research, Self-Help, Writing The Book, Bliss Compass, Reiki | No Comments »