Healing and Disease - The Big Picture (Part 2)
A miracle, or just a truth we’ve forgotten?
Sometimes it’s easier to get a message across with a story. So let me tell you about pain, suffering, and what I learned from it.
Story #1 - My Nuts Crunched In a Vice
That’s what the rupturing of my appendix felt like - an invisible, gauntleted hand mercilessly crushing my gonads. Waves of pain rippling through my torso, bringing me to my knees in a sweaty delirium.
It was the summer of 2017. I was navigating a life-dismantling divorce, a move back from Europe to the US, a new job role, and the raising of two innocent, infantile daughters.
My life was a chaotic whirlwind, my identity in tatters. I didn’t know who I was anymore or who I could depend on. All I knew was I had to survive - to wake up each morning and provide for my children.
Yet through this struggle I needed to figure out what was going on inside of me.
How could I have done this?
What was wrong with me?
Am I getting what I deserved?
Who could possibly love and accept me?
Who am I?
This line of questioning invoked a deep sense of guilt - a heaviness in my shoulders and gut. Guilt festered into shame, then self-hatred - a piercing void that found a home in my lower right abdomen.
In my darkest moments, I would cry in anguish in the bath tub or lie on the ground punching my own body. Most sinister of my coping mechanisms was imagining an invisible knife in my hands, stabbing into my lower right torso, desperate for the pain to end.
After months of this torment, in a climactic moment, staring at the ocean, my body told me it had enough. I felt a sharp pain grow in my right abdomen. It didn’t stop. I knew I had to go to the hospital.
I barely made it to the Emergency Room. Gripping a handrail with all my might, I pulled myself close enough to the door to signal for a wheelchair.
I was delirious with pain. Though most of the memory of the event has faded, I remember blacking out, surrounded by worried looks and medical staff hurriedly trying to keep me alive.
I awoke a day later, my appendix removed, system cleared of infection. It took months to fully recover, and I thank the people who cared for me and helped me survive.
At the time It wasn’t clear to me or anyone in the medical system what had caused the appendicitis. I was told “it’s just something that happens”.
But that explanation wasn’t good enough for me.
In hindsight I can clearly see the amount of stress I had taken on during that time. The responsibility I signed up for, the guilt and shame I piled on myself, the brutality of my inward thoughts. There was a lesson for me.
What Did I Learn?
The mind and body are deeply interconnected.
I manifested what I was envisioning. Stabbing my own appendix was a figurative analogy that became a literal reality when it burst.
But it wasn’t just one act of imagination - it was an accumulation of experiences, thoughts, and emotions that created prolonged distress and dysregulation in my nervous system. This is what caused my appendix to burst.
The medical industrial complex does not have a clear set of measurements for this kind of narrative or experience.
The Placebo Effect is Our Innate Power -To Heal or Destroy
The placebo effect is one of the most interesting phenomena in medical science, commonly utilized as a control method in most studies and clinical trials. But it goes far beyond this. Consider a study in which patients with osteoarthritis underwent a placebo (ie fake) surgery and were just as likely to report pain relief as those who received the real procedure.
The implications of this study (and many more) are massive.
We often dismiss the placebo effect as a fluke, but Dr. Joe Dispenza puts together a compelling case in You Are The Placebo - what we think and feel has a direct effect on our body. This is a natural part of how our body heals itself. It’s also how the body can harm itself, known as the nocebo effect.
Dr. Dispenza’s work is completely in line with the research of Dr. Bruce Lipton, which I mentioned in Part 1 of this series. This is what I experienced with my appendicitis and in many more situations since then.
Story #2 - My Father Was Hospitalized
A couple weeks ago, My Dad recently experienced a kidney stone and a serious infection that spread into his bloodstream. This triggered sepsis, a life threatening condition, which required a massive dose of powerful antibiotics to restabilize him. I immediately drove to Las Vegas to be with him.
In the hospital, I observed the medical system in action. Fancy machinery filled the rooms and rolled through the hallways. Heroic staff did their best to provide care and help people through their suffering.
Yet this caretaking took place in a sterile, lifeless, claustrophobic environment. Entangled in a web of processes, procedures, tubes, and computers, I could sense a disconnect between patients and their healers.
Like cattle being shuffled around a feedlot; staff had to cram people into crowded rooms, check off checklists and insurance protocols, hand-off patients to other shifts, and delegate responsibility between a fragmented team of specialists. It was chaotic, and I couldn’t help but sympathize with the stress these conditions put on the staff and patients alike.
At times, it seemed no one fully understood the complete picture behind my father’s condition. We repeated his story over and over again each time we met a new health professional. Each one only understanding a piece of the puzzle.
There wasn’t any team huddle, or collaborative conversation around what to do. There were just electronic notes passed along between nurses, doctors, dieticians, and a half dozen other roles; and final decisions passed down from ‘on high’ on what to do next.
A Miraculous Healing?
I rotated time at Dad’s bedside with my sibling, making sure family was with him during his recovery. I spent hours meditating next to him, holding him, sending him love.
After 4 days in the ER, he was moved from that stuffy, hectic environment to the medical wing. He had a private space with peace and quiet, a beautiful view of the mountains, and a team of friendly, caring Filipina nurses. My partner and I brought plants, flowers, and fresh food.
The shift in environment was palpable. I could tell by the smile on my Dad’s face, the tension easing in his brow.
The antibiotics seemed to be doing their job, bringing the infection and inflammation down. He was able to sleep consecutive hours, eat nutritious food, and laugh with others.
One day later, something miraculous happened - A CT scan confirmed his kidney stone had simply disappeared. The urologist flatly made this declaration and simply moved on with the rest of his day. Without a thought as to why.
I was equally dumbstruck and curious. Why not inspect such a fascinating recovery? What were the factors and conditions that cultivated such healing? Was there a change in my father’s state of mind, his environment, his nutrition, his sleep, the people surrounding him? Was this worth documenting for some collective body of knowledge? Does anyone like science here?
Our industrial health complex has narrowed down our perspective to a limited set of diagnostics and chemicals we can measure with numbers and lab tests. There is little room for exploration and personalization at the ground level. We operate on broad statistics and studies that may convey averages and trends, but lack precision.
Was it really a miracle or just a truth we’ve forgotten?
What Did I Learn?
All suffering is shared. All suffering is universal.
Environment matters. A patient’s experience is influenced by their surroundings, what they take in. It impacts their mood and mindset. That shift creates momentum - towards healing or decline.
Our presence matters. Healing is a collaborative endeavor. We can feel each other at a conscious and subconscious level. Our bodies sense the emptiness of being alone, of feeling abandoned.
Our intentions, our love, our energy, our beliefs; they have a shared resonance. Feeling them gives us a reason to live. That alone can change everything inside you.
In Part 3 of this series, we’ll go beyond the mind body connection and explore a 3rd system of healing: energy.
Until then, may your gonads stay safe, happy, and uncrushed!
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What I’m Doing This Week
Gratitude
I’m grateful that reinforcements are en route.
Lesson Learned
Patience becomes less necessary the more you embrace the joy of the present moment.
Listening to
Creep by Radiohead
Watching
A powerful healing modality that is experiencing its second renaissance.
Reading
has an excellent piece on navigating growth and the latent powers we all have. I appreciate his approach which is similar to what I practice in my own psychonaut explorations: the scientific method.
Self-care
Meditation, HIIT, volleyball, ocean, muscle scraping, theta healing, chiro adjustments, naps, sunlight
I couldn't agree more about the mind and body being linked. My father had early signs of dementia for years, when his partner left him dramatically. It took less than six months from that point for him to not be able to talk at all. I thought about this a lot back then. Thanks for the article.
Thanks for sharing so vulnerably.. Fascinating how pain manifests in certain areas of the body. Since I started meditating more often and "expanding my consciousness", I have this pain and tensio in my solar plexus often (mostly in new social situations), which makes sense because I cannot always fully stand up for myself and had problems with confidence and assertiveness. Hope it gets better as I dig deeper into my fears and can let go of conditioned fearful patterns.