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I bet that if I said, “Let’s start the process of dealing with your psychological baggage,” most people would tense up a bit and expect that they’re in for a “heavy” experience. It’s funny, because if we’re carrying around this baggage all the time, it already represents a certain “weight” that we’ve gotten used to, and the “dealing with it” part should amount to feeling lighter and freer.
While writing our book, The Well Life, we felt it simply wasn’t possible to guide people to the wellest of lives without encouraging them to resolve and/or release the stuff from the past that may be undermining their best efforts to be healthy and successful today. But we anticipated that some readers might react to this agenda about as well as if we offered to give them an amateur root canal.
I don’t have enough space in an article to explain our whole methodology – not to mention the approaches we use before and after to prepare for and stabilize this work. But I’d like to share an except on how we introduce this process, which I hope will help you feel ready to liberate yourself:
“Now, before you think, “Oh boy, this is going to be heavy,” we want to tell you that this doesn’t have to be a heavy experience. In fact, it’s an opportunity to feel lighter. It’s just that, between the heaviness and the lightness, there’s often something that one of our former teachers calls a “veil of discomfort.” The discomfort is only a veil because it’s really quite insubstantial. As soon as we become willing to experience it, we readily pass through it. And on the other side is lightness and opportunity!
Let’s talk about how these loose ends from your past can undermine you. One thing that may happen when you prepare to go for something big (whether it be a new relationship, a career change, or a cross-country move) is that your mind quickly runs through all your baggage—unresolved issues, past traumas, mistakes, losses—and tells you this is a bad idea.
Rather than hating your mind for this, it’s important to remember that you programmed this mind. You started out as a baby with a clean mental slate, and little by little you trained your mind to look out for things that might threaten your survival or happiness. That’s how your mind is built to work. It just happens that most minds are overly eager to do this job (especially if it means that your mind gets to monopolize your attention).
The more intense the bad experiences of your past, the deeper the groove they cut in your mental record. The mind looks for anything in your present that even remotely resembles these past experiences so that it can steer you clear from repeating them. It produces warning thoughts and initiates intense emotions to grab your attention.
So what can you do? Thank your mind for its efforts to protect you, but inform it that it’s working from outdated beliefs and overly generalized data. There’s no purpose in blaming yourself for how your mind functions. You’ve done your best with the resources that were available to you in each moment. But if you want the freedom to show up to each moment without being restrained by your past, it’s imperative to recognize that your baggage impedes this. Limiting beliefs and the echoes of past emotions are an intrusion on your space and the peace that lies within.
The key to identifying past incidents that get priority cleanup status is that when you bring them to mind and then check in with your body, you don’t feel altogether light and clean. Instead, you might feel heavy, tight, agitated, or constricted. Or a negative emotion might come up, such as guilt, fear, shame, anger, regret, sadness, or grief.
It’s possible that something you did that was objectively bad, like stealing the Statue of Liberty and burying it in your backyard, doesn’t actually provoke an especially strong physical or emotional response when you focus on it. In such cases, it’s important to remember that the objective “sin rating” of an event is less significant than how much of a hook it has in you. On the other hand, you might have accidentally thrown away your child’s first finger-painting and experience a tremendous feeling of guilt when you think about it—this would be something worth addressing.
Think of this process like cleaning your living space. When your house is filthy, there are piles of documents, dishes, laundry, and areas needing repair. It can feel so daunting you don’t know where to begin. You don’t even want to begin. But once you start, and then you have one room that’s clutter-free, it feels more manageable. Eventually, the whole house is pretty well in order, and then it’s fairly easy to stay on top of it. In the same way, as you clean up your life, you’ll find it both easier and more appealing to continue to clean, and to nip any new messes in the bud so they don’t impede your future.”
If this sounds good to you, I encourage you to let go of something right now. If you feel into your body, are you totally at ease? If not, is the unease associated with something that’s unresolved? Something you want to be different? Something you’re holding onto? Why not let it go – even if just for this moment? First try feeling it without any resistance, welcoming the feeling completely. Then take a breath into the feeling and as you exhale, let it go.
If you’re intrigued by where we’re headed, check out our book.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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Around the age of 20, I got a book called The Science of Homeopathy by a Greek homeopath named George Vithoulkas. It was so eye-opening that it inspired my path into medicine. One of the most interesting parts was his description of our different “layers,” how they’re related, and what this means in the progression and recovery from disease. I’d like to offer a brief synopsis of it.
Vithoulkas explains that we can think of humans as having a certain hierarchy in the way we’re constructed. First is a hierarchy of layers (which overlap to some extent): (1) the mental / spiritual layer, (2) the emotional layer, and (3) the physical layer. We’ve been hearing about the mind-body connection and the triad of body-mind-spirit for decades, so at first glance this may not seem new, but keep reading for Vithoulkas’s unique take on it.
The central and most vital of these is the mental / spiritual layer, which, he says, is the true essence of a person. It’s through this aspect that consciousness enters the being, we register what’s happening in and around us, we understand that we are alive, and we are able to choose and communicate and evolve. There are three qualities present when this level is healthy: (1) clarity (2) rationality, coherence, and logical sequence (3) creative service for the good of others and oneself. Vithoulkas says this third quality is of greatest importance.
Second and slightly more superficial is the emotional plane, which is our vehicle for the experience and expression of emotions as well as the receptor of emotion from our environment. Feelings can be broadly classified as positive – drawing us toward a state of happiness and creating a sense of unification with the world – and negative – drawing us toward a state of unhappiness and producing a sense of isolation and separation from the world. Positive emotions nourish us and serve our community; negative emotions (when chronic) diminish our health and are degrading to our community.
Third and most exterior is the physical level – the body. Mainstream medicine has focused almost exclusively on this level, which has been of great benefit in the treatment of physical illness, but hasn't made as much progress on understanding how the spiritual, mental, and emotional aspects work and integrate with the physical.
Next, Vithoulkas roughly defines a second hierarchy within each layer. Looking at the systems and functions in each layer, we can rank problems or impairments by how much they would affect the overall wellness of the organism.
On the physical level, we could put issues of the brain and heart at the top of the list. We have only one brain, and if it’s damaged the consequences to our ability to get joy and meaning out of life are often dire. We also have only one heart, and when it stops working, that’s the end. (Cardiovascular disease tops the list of causes of death in the U.S.)
Further down the list are the digestive and respiratory systems, which can usually sustain considerable injury without compromising the whole organism. Lower still are the urinary and reproductive systems, the muscular and skeletal systems, and the skin. Of course, there’s some flexibility to this list.
On the emotional level, expressions of emotional dysfunction are ranked by their overall impact on the person. This is a harder list to make, since it’s less about the form the disorder takes and more about how much a given individual is affected. Major depressive disorder would be at or near the top of the list. Severe anxiety could potentially squelch one person’s ability to function while another individual might be able to manage it while continuing to work and socialize. Intense grief is high on the list. Lower down are moderate to mild anger, worry, irritability, boredom, and dissatisfaction.
On the spiritual / mental plane, topping the list are impairments of consciousness, complete mental confusion, and delusion. In these cases an individual’s “personhood” is absent. Further down the list are impaired communication, milder confusion, poor memory, lack of spiritual connection, and difficulty focusing.
The point of all this is Vithoulkas’s assertion that a thorough health assessment should examine and rank expressions of imbalance on all these levels. Keep in mind that the above examples are only guidelines. For example, there may be a case in which a minor brain issue is less significant than a severe digestive disorder.
In viewing the whole person this way, we can determine whether someone is moving toward or away from wellness, and whether a given therapeutic intervention is beneficial or not. If we look only at one level at a time, we might be misled. For instance, if a doctor gives someone an opioid painkiller for back pain, the patient reports a decline in pain, and the doctor concludes that the patient has improved – without taking into account that they’ve become apathetic (a more significant impairment of wellness) – the doctor has clearly missed the point of good medicine.
In homeopathic theory, in the presence of a challenge an organism will do its best to express signs and symptoms of distress at a level that is the least detrimental to its overall wellbeing. Seen through this lens, a skin rash may indicate that the organism is doing a good job of pushing the insult to a very peripheral level – the outermost layer (physical) and the least critical system. If this rash were an expression of, say, a dairy allergy, and we administered a topical steroid like hydrocortisone (a strong anti-inflammatory), Vithoulkas would say we would be suppressing the healthiest possible expression of that allergy and forcing it to be manifested at a deeper level. If the rash cleared but the patient then felt irritable (emotional level) or distracted (mental level), Vithoulkas would see this as a progression in the wrong direction.
To give another example, if someone was recovering from severe anxiety through a deep examination of their fears and responses (a non-suppressive approach) and, as their anxiety abated, they developed gas and loose bowels, this could be seen as a positive trajectory. Even though the digestive upset is a new symptom, it represents a movement outward and from a more critical issue to a less critical issue.
What do you think about this model? Have you ever been working with a health challenge that led to the development of new symptoms which ultimately gave way to a total recovery? Have you noticed an interplay between physical, emotional, and mental expressions of imbalance? Share with us in the comments section below.
I hope my overview of this model has given you new insights into your wellness and how your many aspects are all interrelated. Also, if you’re interested in homeopathy, I wrote two other articles on the subject a few months ago which you can find here in the Articles section.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => You Are An Onion: Getting to Know Your Layers
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Oftentimes when flying, travelers may find themselves with a few minutes to spare prior to their flight, just enough time to get a bite to eat and a quick chair massage to address those shoulder knots. However, there are those *fun* times when travel plans get a full upheaval with an unexpectedly long flight delay or layover time. This happened even more than usual over the past few months, when much of the country was experiencing quite the winter storm.
Passengers are always pleasantly surprised by our oasis-like feel, and simply ‘spotting the tree’ can bring a huge sigh of relief, particularly when that 25 minute layover has suddenly become a 2 and a half hour layover.
But imagine the surprise of turning that time, usually spent standing around, catching up on your reading, or browsing knickknacks, into a spa day?
At our Portland International Airport location, in addition to our Sangha Room chair massage treatments, we have two private treatment rooms, where we offer a range of styles of therapeutic full body massage. We also offer a menu of ancient Ayurvedic spa treatments, such as Garshana, a traditional exfoliating massage done with raw silk gloves, using long strokes on the body to increase circulation to help increase the elimination of dead skin cells. The skin is the main eliminative organ of the body, and we could all use help eliminating stress and impurities, especially when travelling! Our Glowing Grace package, consisting of the Garshana service paired with a full body massage, is a great way to melt the time away, as well as your stress level, so you arrive at your destination feeling open and ready to receive whatever gifts the world has for you. So next time you find yourself with some time to kill before your flight, go online and book your treatment, or come visit us, across from C11. Surely, after your visit, you will wonder why you haven’t been working us into your travel plans every time you fly.
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[post_content] => I bet that if I said, “Let’s start the process of dealing with your psychological baggage,” most people would tense up a bit and expect that they’re in for a “heavy” experience. It’s funny, because if we’re carrying around this baggage all the time, it already represents a certain “weight” that we’ve gotten used to, and the “dealing with it” part should amount to feeling lighter and freer.
While writing our book, The Well Life, we felt it simply wasn’t possible to guide people to the wellest of lives without encouraging them to resolve and/or release the stuff from the past that may be undermining their best efforts to be healthy and successful today. But we anticipated that some readers might react to this agenda about as well as if we offered to give them an amateur root canal.
I don’t have enough space in an article to explain our whole methodology – not to mention the approaches we use before and after to prepare for and stabilize this work. But I’d like to share an except on how we introduce this process, which I hope will help you feel ready to liberate yourself:
“Now, before you think, “Oh boy, this is going to be heavy,” we want to tell you that this doesn’t have to be a heavy experience. In fact, it’s an opportunity to feel lighter. It’s just that, between the heaviness and the lightness, there’s often something that one of our former teachers calls a “veil of discomfort.” The discomfort is only a veil because it’s really quite insubstantial. As soon as we become willing to experience it, we readily pass through it. And on the other side is lightness and opportunity!
Let’s talk about how these loose ends from your past can undermine you. One thing that may happen when you prepare to go for something big (whether it be a new relationship, a career change, or a cross-country move) is that your mind quickly runs through all your baggage—unresolved issues, past traumas, mistakes, losses—and tells you this is a bad idea.
Rather than hating your mind for this, it’s important to remember that you programmed this mind. You started out as a baby with a clean mental slate, and little by little you trained your mind to look out for things that might threaten your survival or happiness. That’s how your mind is built to work. It just happens that most minds are overly eager to do this job (especially if it means that your mind gets to monopolize your attention).
The more intense the bad experiences of your past, the deeper the groove they cut in your mental record. The mind looks for anything in your present that even remotely resembles these past experiences so that it can steer you clear from repeating them. It produces warning thoughts and initiates intense emotions to grab your attention.
So what can you do? Thank your mind for its efforts to protect you, but inform it that it’s working from outdated beliefs and overly generalized data. There’s no purpose in blaming yourself for how your mind functions. You’ve done your best with the resources that were available to you in each moment. But if you want the freedom to show up to each moment without being restrained by your past, it’s imperative to recognize that your baggage impedes this. Limiting beliefs and the echoes of past emotions are an intrusion on your space and the peace that lies within.
The key to identifying past incidents that get priority cleanup status is that when you bring them to mind and then check in with your body, you don’t feel altogether light and clean. Instead, you might feel heavy, tight, agitated, or constricted. Or a negative emotion might come up, such as guilt, fear, shame, anger, regret, sadness, or grief.
It’s possible that something you did that was objectively bad, like stealing the Statue of Liberty and burying it in your backyard, doesn’t actually provoke an especially strong physical or emotional response when you focus on it. In such cases, it’s important to remember that the objective “sin rating” of an event is less significant than how much of a hook it has in you. On the other hand, you might have accidentally thrown away your child’s first finger-painting and experience a tremendous feeling of guilt when you think about it—this would be something worth addressing.
Think of this process like cleaning your living space. When your house is filthy, there are piles of documents, dishes, laundry, and areas needing repair. It can feel so daunting you don’t know where to begin. You don’t even want to begin. But once you start, and then you have one room that’s clutter-free, it feels more manageable. Eventually, the whole house is pretty well in order, and then it’s fairly easy to stay on top of it. In the same way, as you clean up your life, you’ll find it both easier and more appealing to continue to clean, and to nip any new messes in the bud so they don’t impede your future.”
If this sounds good to you, I encourage you to let go of something right now. If you feel into your body, are you totally at ease? If not, is the unease associated with something that’s unresolved? Something you want to be different? Something you’re holding onto? Why not let it go – even if just for this moment? First try feeling it without any resistance, welcoming the feeling completely. Then take a breath into the feeling and as you exhale, let it go.
If you’re intrigued by where we’re headed, check out our book.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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