Everyday Bliss

This story begins with a sleepy if fascinating conversation with my late night study-buddy, Jan. We’re both night owls working on decoding certain levels of human experience that we wish to be able to change, enhance or amplify. Among my peers, he’s one of only a handful who really gets the more arcane things I’m into. And like few others, he always tells me something I never knew before which sparks intense debate, discussion, learning and more research.

Being a wizardly sort, Jan lives in Berkeley. If you’re a magically gifted world-changer in the San Francisco Bay area, and need help changing yourself, he’s definitely your man. I give him my highest recommendation and you a referral to his website here for more information.

A Little Night Music…

Henrietta Lacks, mother of the immortal HeLa cells

This particular evening, Jan was speaking of immortality and mentioned the cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks, branded “HeLa” cells by scientists. I’d never heard of Henrietta nor her world famous cell cultures and finding out about them makes me want to spread the word rather like HeLa cells have spread…worldwide.

Henrietta Lacks was a homemaker living in Baltimore in 1951 when she was diagnosed with, and died of, virulent cervical cancer. During diagnosis, cells were taken from her tumor without her knowledge or consent and grown in some of medical science’s first cancer cell research.

Researchers found that HeLa cells had extraordinary properties. Unlike cells from other donors, they grew on everything. They grew out of control. They consumed the growth medium in their test tubes and Petri dishes and grew outside of them to infect lab equipment, entire labs and finally, the world. HeLa cells can survive freezing, dehydration, starvation, radiation and deep space. They are known to be virtually indestructible.

(There could quite literally be some of Henrietta Lacks in that glass you’re drinking from, right now. Mind that small speck
on the rim there. Yes…that one.)

Because these were the first cells to be cultured for study, labs across the world wanted samples, which were grown and shipped to Russia, Paris, Chile, Amsterdam, London, Reykjavik and many other labs. And from there due to their extraordinary growth properties, they spread outward like a virus, worldwide.

HeLa cells were used to first culture then find the cure for polio and other diseases. They have learned to masquerade as cells from different parts of the body, and even as different diseases. In one notable incident, documented by author Harold Schmeck, American medical researchers had the unenviable task of notifying

“…Soviet scientists that the cells in which their viruses were growing were not even derived from Russian cancer patients. The cells actually originated from Henrietta Lacks…”

This interesting yet devastating property of HeLa meant that worldwide, contamination needed to be assumed, studies needed to be trashed, intense cleanroom protocols needed to be established and millions of dollars of research had to be done all over again. A commission was formed to contain the spread of HeLa, and today, genetic sequencing ensures the purity of research from HeLa contamination.

Now that you know some of the background, we’ll be picking up this thread in later posts. As Jan and I debated, immortality is in the eye of the beholder – be it the individual or the collective. But for now…

Enter the Goddess…

Crazy? No. While this may all sound like science fiction, it is most assuredly science fact. Though the woman herself perished, her cells have achieved true immortality. HeLa just can’t be stopped, so in a way, Henrietta Lacks has become the first known modern Immortal.

And in an interesting twist which brings in threads of my history in Northern European shamanism, Hela is also the name of the Nordic goddess of the Dead. She is many things but poignantly, presides over the realm of those who died disenfranchised, of disease or old age – not honorably as the ancients would have had it, in battle.

The Norse feared a death at Hela’s hands. In Odin’s realm of Valholl (Valhalla), a warrior would fight the good fight all day, eat, drink and carouse with comrades all night. What more could one want in the afterlife? Helheim was comparatively boring, and decrepitude was a dishonorable estate for one who previously went a-viking. The famous poet-warrior and Paget’s disease sufferer, Egill Skallagrimsson wrote bitterly in his old age, of relegation to shivering by the hearth, subject to the whims of mere women (in this case, his cook):

‘Old haltered horse I waver,
Bald-head I weakly fall:
Hollow my failing leg-bones,
The fount of hearing dry.
Blind near the blaze I wander,
Beg of the fire-maid pardon,
Crave for a seat. Such sorrow
From sightless eyes I bear…’

Though he feared Hela and what he would have seen as death without honor, Egill welcomed her embrace when family and peers began to die. In Sona Torrek, after the death and interment at Digra-ness (the Skallagrim burial mound) of his son Bodvar, Egill writes:

‘Hard am I beset;
Whom Hela, the sister
Of Odin’s fell captive,
On Digra-ness waits.
Yet shall I gladly
With right good welcome
Dauntless in bearing
Her death-blow bide.’

(citation: W. C. Green, 1893, Kings College, Cambridge)

Hela is typically depicted, as in this image by the artist Thorskegga Thorn, as half white, living, and half black, dead. Nordic shamans befriend Hela and go through the death experience yet live to gain great knowledge for the Well of Wyrd (meaning Fate, and All-That-Is) lies in her underground realm. The parallels to the contemporary HeLa phenomenon are uncanny, and perhaps no coincidence.

Goddess, thy name is Henrietta Lacks.

Which brings me to the main theme of this afternoon’s symposium:

In what ways will you achieve True Immortality?

I’m not talking cellular immortality (which includes having children) but other ways. What will you leave behind you that will go on after your macrobody ceases to exist?

• As the great philosophers, what immortal thoughts, questions and other cognitions will you leave behind?
• As the developers of cures, what patterns or processes that help others will you bequeath the world?
• What other things will survive you – perhaps forever?

Here is a place to let the world know, and get the word out about the value you will leave beyond your physical death. You can do that in the comment form below and we can continue this most interesting and provocative discussion…

Very highly topical as a small but dedicated team of colleagues joyfully collaborate on the creation of a new energy transformation method, is the Seed Magazine article on Reality Tests. A team of physicists in Vienna has devised experiments that may answer one of the enduring riddles of science: Do we create the world just by looking at it?

To wit:

Some physicists still find quantum mechanics unpalatable, if not unbelievable, because of what it implies about the world beyond our senses. The theory’s mathematics is simple enough to be taught to undergraduates, but the physical implications of that mathematics give rise to deep philosophical questions that remain unresolved. Quantum mechanics fundamentally concerns the way in which we observers connect to the universe we observe. The theory implies that when we measure particles and atoms, at least one of two long-held physical principles is untenable: Distant events do not affect one other, and properties we wish to observe exist before our measurements. One of these, locality or realism, must be fundamentally incorrect.

Thick, but if you’re into science or interested in quantum realities, worth a read:
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/06/the_reality_tests_1.php

Thanks to Krishna who tipped me off about putting this at my blog. You can read her sage suggestions here on how to use this research to market your self growth business!

Haven’t we been telling them this all these years? Well just recently, the docs and scientists finally wised up in this article from CNN:

You know you’ll get killer cramps or that nasty headache any minute now, but nothing you take seems to help once the pain hits.

You’re not alone: Many women have a tough time finding the right kind of relief for their pain –and for good reason: Until recently, experts hadn’t actually studied women’s pain specifically, and most research wasn’t conducted with a woman’s hormones and physique in mind. All that’s changing, though.

Docs now know that to banish our aches, they must develop treatments formulated for women’s bodies. What’s more, researchers are also looking for — and finding — ways to head pain off at the pass, so those of us with chronic troubles such as migraine, fibromyalgia, or backache don’t have to be hobbled by pain on a daily basis. Here, the new research will help you live an (almost) pain-free life.

Maryam’s take: If you’d have asked us, we could have told you – right ladies? So you can use epidural blocks and the like suggested in this article, or you could simply do what I did when faced with pain so gaspingly disabling from a broken back I could literally not get out of bed: Energy therapies.

Whether you turn on Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Tapas Acupressure Technique (TAT) or the point-free ZPoint Process (a little ZPoint humor there – wink), they all work well for pain and symptom relief once you understand how  to work them, and without the side effects of Oxy-Contin or other commonly prescribed "killer" pain  relievers.

The article goes on:  What should have been a relatively simple injury became an odyssey that had Weiner visiting specialists all over San Francisco. She finally found a podiatrist who "took a detective-like approach to the problem," Weiner says, by exploring and treating each joint and tendon in a methodical search for the pain’s source. Thanks to this care, which includes regular pain-preventing cortisone shots, the 55-year-old mother of one has been able to resume her hobby of salsa dancing.

Very important in your care to find someone who (1) Believes in you  and (2) Is willing to take the time to be a detective and find out what’s really wrong, instead of shopping you every pain pill in creation without doing the sleuthing first. And, to be a sleuth in your own body, for what bugs you, what is good for you and what you notice that’s different.

In the middle of pain and physical drama? Notice what’s happening from a deep place inside the felt-sense of your body. Take notes and start a journal of your symptoms, precipitating foods, events and people. Be a body detective…

To be continued…

If you’ve had a traumatic day, sleeping it off might not be the best idea. 

New research out of the Medical University of Lübeck
in Germany suggests that sleep following learning could bolster
long-term retention of emotional memories. Therefore, a nap after
trauma could increase the likelihood that a patient will develop
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the psychological fallout of a
horrific experience. Symptoms of PTSD include nightmares, flashbacks,
emotional detachment, clinical depression and anxiety. The research is
published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

Read the rest of this article here.

And if you’ve had a traumatic day, cross crawl twenty times to get your brains unscrambled, then do your TAT, EFT, ZPoint or other stress-reliever process until your emotional load is zero, THEN sleep.

I’m replying to a comment Elizabeth made on the previous post about Women, Math and scientific ability. (BTW, you’re welcome to comment on ANY of my posts folks!)           ***                       ***                          ***                       *** Hi Elizabeth, thanks for posting your story of the lesbian transsexual. Libido and math ability enhanced on male hormones, interesting! (but probably not suprising) I heard a geneticist on the radio a few months ago say that while all babies start out female in the womb, a wave of testosterone is released that masculinizes boy fetuses and also wipes out up to 70% of the communications center, among other areas in the brain. He likened the effects of testosterone to acid saying it could well be used as a weed killer, of all things.

I also think of the sex and the brain research I read in grad school in the early 80s. One thing that stuck with me that I read – in primitive tribal times, by virtue of biology, women looked after the children and needed to be aware of spatial relationships only as they concerned the space between toddling children and dangers such as a cave mouth or open fire for instance. Their use for such a spatial/relational skill was minimal however, and children were comparatively slow moving targets.  They had a greater need to know what was going on socially to keep interactions peaceful to maintain the status quo for the stability of the whole tribe. The conclusions at the time were that this was how women developed intuitive, creative answers to problems.

In contrast, the men who went out hunting and gathering needed immense pattern recognition skills to tell friend from foe, when dangerous animals or geographical situations were present or imminent and the like. They had little need for social skills except to communicate around the needs of the hunt. This they theorized, was how men evolved logical, spatially oriented coping skills. (and yes, I realize this is a greatly, greatly over-simplified overview)

It seems like a reasonable theory to me, and as a woman or man, I’d not feel demeaned by it. Even in the lifespan of one person, they will develop new skills in relation to their occupation, geographical locale and the like. It’s a reasonable surmise. So to conclude, I see nothing wrong with acknowledging thousands of years of evolution that play towards men having a better shot at being math geniuses, women at being therapists for instance… but then there are always exceptions to that seeming rule.

And of them are women like Sophie Germain, a natural exception, who contributed significantly to solving Fermat’s last theorum by playing a man to do so. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/germain.html) And take your pick of famous male therapists.

There is also a lot to be said for nature versus nurture. Until very recently, girls were not given all the educational opportunities boys were. Boys were taught a certain curriculum and girls, another, if they were taught at all. That curriculum certainly did not include the sciences. Until very recently in historic time. Many of the female savants that have come through the ages usually had a parent or other authority figure actively tutoring them or otherwise allowing free access to knowledge in the "male" domain.

It will be interesting for future writers several hundred years from now to look back upon this period and note all of the women AND men who excelled in professions heretofore barred to their sex, which have sprung from the 20th century on forward.

What might we all do, when unbound from the conventions of society -  and even more, from the limits of our own belief systems?

The possibilities are literally, endless.

Here’s the audio for today’s Energy Coaching Borrowing Benefits class with Grant Connolly, who taught us ZPoint for Personal Relationships. It was a great call and you gotta hear it! Unfortunately, it seems not to have recorded properly, so I’m releasing a small (but relevant!) portion of the call Grant did with our Certified Energy Coach Program students. The whole ZPoint Process is outlined here for Procrastination. Try it, and Borrow Benefits yourself!

If you’re interested in getting a free month of amazing audio capabilities like being able to post files like the above in literally two minutes, click on the word "AudioAcrobat" in the player above. It’s what I use and it’s saved me so much time and sanity I can’t tell you. Excellent for coaches and therapists!

And for the low-down on today’s topic go to Grant’s site: www.zpointprocess.com for info on ZPoint, the fabulous ZPoint manual, free audio and articles and just maybe the quickest kid on the block, energy therapy-wise. Enjoy!

And somebody out there please post a comment on what you think of these audios. Like them? Do you use them to Borrow Benefits with? Hate ‘em? Still don’t know what to think? Let me hear it. I want to know.

Now go out there and somehow manage to have an excessively cheery day! Here’s a tip: Zpoint can help you to make that a surety.

I’ve been re-reading Wayne Dyer’s mid-90′s masterpiece Your Sacred Self: Making The Decision To Be Free these last few months. It’s a book I enjoy savoring over and over again, chapter by slow chapter, and sometimes paragraph by re-considered paragraph. Much of it pertains to the principles of quantum physics and energy therapy. Dyer says: 

This is basic energy magic, and the science behind the oft-thought-trite idea that we are the creators of our own reality. When I first started hearing this phrase back in the early 80′s in the human potential movement, like many others I thought "oh please! give me some hard facts!". But the sages and gurus and teachers who have been telling us this since forever, had quantum physics beat by centuries. Our "hard fact" sciences have only just caught up. The basics are as Dyer points out:

1. While our bodies appear to be solid, we are in fact, masses of energetic particles stuck together in one place. And even at that, we are not solid, this energy ebbs and flows.

2. The mass we think of as our physical body coheses together by virtue of the fact that our consciousness (another energetic mass) has decided upon this physical form as a focal point of existence.

3. The "reality" that is manifested around us is subject to change, based on the simple concept of A.I.R. Giving Attention to that which we wish to change, making a definitively stated Intention to effect change, plus copious Repetition of our attention and repetitive reaffirmation of that intention/s.

4. Change what you place your attention on, change the intentions you approach life with and reinforce this repetitively, and change will happen in your life.

A simple experiment will prove this point to you. Recall the first time a new pet or person from a place you’ve never been, came into your life. You may have gotten for instance, a Siamese cat, and decided they were the best breed in the world. Then all of a sudden, you find that you’re seeing and hearing about Siamese cats everywhere. Not dogs, ferrets or hamsters, but cats. Not Burmese, Persian or Maine Coon cats either – but Siamese.

Ditto the person from a place you’ve never been to that you take an active interest in. Once you start hanging out with your new buddy from Des Moines, suddenly everything’s coming up Iowa all over the place. Newspaper mentions of Iowa – Des Moines even, seem to be on the increase. You hear about Iowa on the radio and tv when you could swear you never did before. It’s because your Attention is there, your inquisitive mind wants to find out more, setting your Intention to subconsciously go looking for mentions of the new interest. You do this Repetitively, many times a day and not suprisingly, the object of your focus appears to become more frequent in your life. You’ve just done a simple act of Manifestation in the physical. And this formula works time and again, equally well for changes in your self, your environment and the world around you.

See? Magic!

Dyer goes on to quote Gary Zukav in The Dancing Wu Li Masters:

and comments himself:

Keeping your attention on desired change is the hardest part of making the magic work. Here’s some help:

* Mnemonic aids such as daily affirmations, chanting and a regular practice of meditation help to embed your new intentions to yourself firmly in future memory…and thus into your everyday waking reality.

* Regular practice of EFT, TAT or other energy therapy method will help you remove all the negative beliefs that you "can’t" or "shouldn’t" create a different reality for yourself. Once those are gone, daily practice focused using your Intentions as treatment affirmations will help you embed your new reality even more solidly into your everyday experience. 

So what are you waiting for? Kwitcherbitchin and get busy! This is the formula to change misery to happiness and get what you’ve always wanted. Shift, turn and change into what you’ve always wanted to be.

This is both easy and extremely difficult, as life provides more than we want of diversions. But it can be done. It’s how I crafted my broken spine into a supple willow, to its former "clinking, clanking, collection of collagenous junk" to quote the Wizard of Oz. I walk now becuase of this magic, and the determination never fight for my limitations, but instead celebrate and encourage infinite possibilities. As Richard Bach said in his book Illusions: "If you fight for your limitations, you will achieve them." Focus instead on infinite possibilities – and choose one of those to be your specific focus for today.

You can literally do anything you set your mind to! It’s easy, it just requires A.I.R. – Attention, Intention and Repetition. Plus liberal dollops of love, wonder, patience and perseverance…

What focus will you choose?

Well cripes. I just found out that one of my so-called organic deodorants contains alum, which (you think I’d have picked up on the word derivation) is an aluminum salt. So out it goes. Which one is it? Uncharacteristically, the "Kiss My Face: Liquid Rock" copped to it right on the label. I also highly suspect the "Natural Crystal" rock spray and similar solid "crystal rock" deodorants as they’re of a piece with the KMF claims. They say "natural mineral salts" on the label and never come out with exactly *what*, but heck, aluminum is a naturally occuring mineral, (ditto bauxite, from which it comes) so anything that lists either alum or bauxite is suspect. A tiny taste-test (I washed out my mouth with rosewater!) revealed it all – there was a definite, alum-like acridity about the Natural Crystal Rock spray.

Well shoot. Back to the drawing board.

And back to my old favorite, baking soda. Which incidentally is sodium carbonate from salt (sodium chloride) and limestone (calcium carbonate) mixed together in a reaction known as the Solvay Process. To my knowledge, neither of these compounds have negative health implications unless you ingest too much of them (salt). So I’ve removed the Kiss My Face and Natural Crystal Rock spray from the lineup, and am making my own concoction.

Auntie M’s Pit-Stop Deodorant Powder

When I was in college, first going vegan and utterly broke, I couldn’t afford the fancy organic deodorants so I made this baking soda/cornstarch mix. As I remember, it worked pretty well until I ran out of money to buy more oils. In a glass bowl mix half baking soda and half cornstarch – any amounts, just half-n-half. If you’re allergic to corn, you might want to eliminate the cornstarch. But if you put it in, you’ll eliminate the need for baby powder to take down the tackiness of your wet/stick mix deodorants. Baking soda is not enough by itself to accomplish this.

Add tea tree oil (just a drop – it’s STRONG!), lavender, sage and lemon oils – a total of no more than 6 drops per cup of dry mix. I also liked a scant drop of neroli as a scent-sweetener, though you can use rose or ylang-ylang or just amp up the amount of lavender or citrus. This is reading like a cake recipe! But it’s better than aluminum

Mash all this around in a glass bowl with a fork until well mixed – some folks put this mix in the blender, but cleanup can be difficult as the oils scent sticks to plastics. Store in a glass jar, out of the sunlight (which can degrade essential oils) and apply with a powder puff over other, wetter organic deodorants. Keeps well and for about 6-8 months. If you use Tea Tree and Sage, it’s going to help you free from fungi as well, so feel free to go ahead and powder those barking dogs of yours. Great for sprinkling in the shoes as well.

Enjoy!

From Nature.com:  The season in which a woman is born influences the age at which she will go through the menopause, suggests a survey of northern Italians.

The survey, which looked at nearly 3,000 post-menopausal women at three clinics, revealed that those born in March showed the earliest menopause, at an average age of 48.9 years. At the other end of the scale, those born in October remained fertile until an average age of 50.3, with many lasting beyond 55. Said Angelo Cagnacci, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the university: "The age of menopause is influenced by the season in which the female is born. It shows prenatal life is important for future adult life. Things that happen before delivery, during pregnancy, may determine many things in adult life, including when reproduction ends."  Read more here

But wait, there’s hope for them there hormones!

If you like me have an early spring birth month (I was born in April) this could mean that you will begin to experience the more negative side of menopause earlier too: hot flashes, serious cramping and hormonal surges leading to what my Dad used to call "the crazies". Every woman knows about them and every man on earth has been indoctrinated by his fellows to fear them. And all women have to go through this painful, debilitating process, sacrificing a few of her most productive middle years to temporary insanity, pain and disability. Or do they?

Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, the painful, compromised half-life of "the Pause" is very, very old news indeed. Here’s why:

Women all over the globe are using Quantum Flow Bioenergetics (QFB’s) the "energy therapies" to mitigate nearly all symptoms of menopause including those "monster cramps", memory glitches, "crazies" and hot-flashes of hormonal surges. Some women choose to use QFB’s instead of hormone replacement (HRT) and some use them in conjunction with medical methods. Since QFB’s cannot cause any harm or interfere with drugs, they are the perfect complement to HRT, herbs or other complementary therapies. Either as the main symptom-mitigator of menopause, or in concert with other methods, Quantum Flow Bioenergetics are proving time and again to be uniquely successful in women of all different cultures and backgrounds. Whether you favor EFT or the other tapping methods, the gentle point-holding of TAT or subconscious cue-wording  of BSFF, Z-Point or other self-hypnotic methods, QFB therapies are totally "client guided and applied", resulting in on-the-spot success in application.

Going crazy from hot flashes, memory glitches…hormone surges? Quantum Flow Bioenergetics can help by either greatly reducing or eliminating distressing symptoms in many cases. Get in touch for classes, one-time tutorial or ongoing private coaching using these amazingly swift and powerful methods. Tell me you saw this article on "Sage Wisdom" and I’ll even take 30% off your first session!