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I have a long history of not living up to my potential. I had some talent in music, art, and academics, but I spent years noodling around and not making anything of it. I started a lot of things I didn’t finish. This trend started to shift a bit when I was in grad school, mostly because I wanted to practice Chinese Medicine more than I had ever wanted any other achievement. Yet, even though I had the sense that I was still underutilizing my potential, my greatest career aspiration was to be an effective doctor with a very long beard. Then, I met a girl named Briana who wanted to open a spa, and although it sounded impressive, it also seemed like way too much responsibility for my taste . . . especially given my history.
As the years went by, and I watched this woman build the spa into a sizable wellness company, I was impressed by her drive, but I was even more impressed by how she was able to turn ideas into realities, and to do so without losing her balance. I began to see that I could help a lot more people if I utilized avenues beyond my clinical practice, so I gradually took a more active role in the company. But, unlike Briana, for me it felt complicated and crazy-making to have so much going on.
At some point – three spas and one baby later – I dug my heels in. I said something like, “I don’t want anything new or different in our lives for like a decade!” She said, “Show me your schedule and let me watch you work.”
Then Briana truly discovered just how cluttered my mind is and how bad I was at planning, but it was ultimately good for both of us. She had the challenge of figuring out how to teach a right-brained musician-philosopher-type how to efficiently set and achieve goals while remaining organized and balanced with many responsibilities. And I was the beneficiary.
We saw that lot of people weren’t pursuing their big dreams because they already felt maxed out by the everyday stuff (and, unlike me, they didn’t have a partner to push them). Meanwhile, I noticed that many of my patients’ had a similar challenge with implementing consistent self-care practices and making time for the things that made them happy, and I realized that this needed to be integrated into any sustainable framework for achievement. Together, we started to develop a system to help people prioritize the self-care and soul-nourishing parts of life, navigate their life tasks with ease, unleash their potential, and achieve their dreams.
The result was our
Rituals for Living Dreambook. We launched it with a successful Kickstarter campaign. It has sold phenomenally well, and we’ve heard so many amazing stories of transformed lives.
When we asked for readers’ feedback, many of them expressed that they wanted more instruction and accountability. So, we created an online course called
Dreaming and Planning: Create a Meaningful Life. Our aim is to walk people through nine weeks of integrating these concepts into their lives, including choosing a goal and making it a reality.
We aren’t able to do private coaching with everyone who’s interested in this material, and we’d have to charge more than many people could afford, so our aim was to make this course the closest thing to one-on-one guidance at a much more affordable price.
Join us, and bring your amazing gifts into the world!
Be Well,
Dr Peter Borten
PS - Act now to enjoy the best possible price on Dreaming+Planning: Create a Meaningful Life. After tonight, the price will increase permanently.
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What an amazing time to be alive, isn’t it?
I was meditating last week and a little story popped into my mind. I was a soul not yet born into this body. I was looking down at the world with some kind of guide and the guide said, “Are you sure you want to be a human right now? During your lifetime there’s going to be a pandemic and it will be scary and sometimes tragic. The world will be forever changed. Plus, there won’t be much toilet paper.”
I can’t say for certain that this is how it works, but if it does then we all made this choice. I like to believe that I made the choice to jump in because I knew I would have the faculties and resources to manage whatever might happen, and to thrive and make a positive difference in others’ lives. I have a feeling that a part of you (maybe all of you) feels the same way – even if your mind tells you otherwise.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to lose sight of this core truth. Fear is contagious and it has a frequency which (especially when resisted) can be intensely jarring. After all, that’s its job. It’s the emotional mechanism of our survival instinct. It’s trying to convince you that the only thing that matters right now is security. But humans evolved the ability to experience these animalistic impulses without letting them control us. One way is to open our eyes and notice all that’s good in the world – all of the evidence that our mind’s irrational concerns are untrue. Here’s some good news that’s come about through this tumultuous period.
- There is greater appreciation for the working class. More than ever before, many are recognizing that these beautiful people – the grocery store clerks, the UPS drivers, the garbage collectors, the utility company technicians – are keeping our world running. Let’s show them our gratitude.
- There is a pause in the habit of filling ourselves up with stuff. Sure, we’re stocking up on beans and rice, but for lots of people who have a habit of shopping to self-soothe, this period has initiated a rare break. It’s a time when we’re prompted to make do with what we have. Perhaps to repair, instead of replacing, what can be fixed.
- The environment is healing. How else could we have gotten the whole world to drive less? In such a short period of time we’ve seen the canals of Venice become clear enough to see fish and dolphins swimming in them, and the cloud of pollution over China has mostly disappeared. These may be short lived miracles, but it’s important for the world to witness that the environment is resilient. When this pandemic runs its course, environmental issues will still be here, and hopefully this vivid display of the impact of human activities will inspire us to develop permanent solutions.
- Everyone is working together. The world has never been so united in a common cause. We’re seeing unprecedented stories of cooperation. In England, there was a call for National Health Service volunteers and over 400,000 people signed up in the first 24 hours.
- We’re reminded of the value of our elders. Who could forget that line from Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi (1970): “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” The threat of losing our senior citizens had helped the world recognize just how important they are. The young are helping the old. Stores are offering special hours for seniors only. This period has also highlighted how isolated many of our elders are, and it’s prompting a collective desire to honor them, to care for them better, and include them more.
- We’re recognizing the importance of community. The bigger and faster the world gets, the easier it is to feel disconnected. But social distancing has been a (sometimes painful) reminder of how much we need and value each other, and all sorts of novel ways of connecting have emerged from this crisis. We’ve seen virtual sing-alongs, virtual dinner parties, video chat board games, meetings in parks (maintaining six feet of distance) to make eye contact, tell jokes, and (non-contact) dance. People have been doing the “reach out and touch someone” thing with folks they haven’t been in contact with for years. We need each other.
- Unprecedented generosity. We’ve seen offerings of free products, free counseling, groceries, donations of medical supplies, sharing of toilet paper, help with yard work, and so many other ways in which people are stepping up to contribute.
- Teachers are getting the recognition they deserve. For all of the parents who are suddenly forced to home school their kids, there’s a mass awakening happening as to how hard it is to be a teacher and how much we depend on them, not just to educate our kids but to keep them safe, to hold space for them to develop and grow, and to create a healthy classroom culture for them to discover who they are and hone their gifts.
- We’re reminded of how many heroes there are. People everywhere are putting their health (perhaps their lives) on the line to serve others. Doctors, nurses, medical staff, caregivers of all kinds, receptionists, and everyone who continues to show up at jobs in essential businesses – these dedicated humans are putting the good of the community first and we should all be grateful for them.
We would love it if you’d share some good news in the comments below. What silver linings have you discovered? What’s beautiful in the world that’s being revealed in this crazy time?
Be well,
Peter and Briana and Everyone at The Dragontree
[post_title] => {Good News} 9 things to celebrate right now
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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
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I have a long history of not living up to my potential. I had some talent in music, art, and academics, but I spent years noodling around and not making anything of it. I started a lot of things I didn’t finish. This trend started to shift a bit when I was in grad school, mostly because I wanted to practice Chinese Medicine more than I had ever wanted any other achievement. Yet, even though I had the sense that I was still underutilizing my potential, my greatest career aspiration was to be an effective doctor with a very long beard. Then, I met a girl named Briana who wanted to open a spa, and although it sounded impressive, it also seemed like way too much responsibility for my taste . . . especially given my history.
As the years went by, and I watched this woman build the spa into a sizable wellness company, I was impressed by her drive, but I was even more impressed by how she was able to turn ideas into realities, and to do so without losing her balance. I began to see that I could help a lot more people if I utilized avenues beyond my clinical practice, so I gradually took a more active role in the company. But, unlike Briana, for me it felt complicated and crazy-making to have so much going on.
At some point – three spas and one baby later – I dug my heels in. I said something like, “I don’t want anything new or different in our lives for like a decade!” She said, “Show me your schedule and let me watch you work.”
Then Briana truly discovered just how cluttered my mind is and how bad I was at planning, but it was ultimately good for both of us. She had the challenge of figuring out how to teach a right-brained musician-philosopher-type how to efficiently set and achieve goals while remaining organized and balanced with many responsibilities. And I was the beneficiary.
We saw that lot of people weren’t pursuing their big dreams because they already felt maxed out by the everyday stuff (and, unlike me, they didn’t have a partner to push them). Meanwhile, I noticed that many of my patients’ had a similar challenge with implementing consistent self-care practices and making time for the things that made them happy, and I realized that this needed to be integrated into any sustainable framework for achievement. Together, we started to develop a system to help people prioritize the self-care and soul-nourishing parts of life, navigate their life tasks with ease, unleash their potential, and achieve their dreams.
The result was our
Rituals for Living Dreambook. We launched it with a successful Kickstarter campaign. It has sold phenomenally well, and we’ve heard so many amazing stories of transformed lives.
When we asked for readers’ feedback, many of them expressed that they wanted more instruction and accountability. So, we created an online course called
Dreaming and Planning: Create a Meaningful Life. Our aim is to walk people through nine weeks of integrating these concepts into their lives, including choosing a goal and making it a reality.
We aren’t able to do private coaching with everyone who’s interested in this material, and we’d have to charge more than many people could afford, so our aim was to make this course the closest thing to one-on-one guidance at a much more affordable price.
Join us, and bring your amazing gifts into the world!
Be Well,
Dr Peter Borten
PS - Act now to enjoy the best possible price on Dreaming+Planning: Create a Meaningful Life. After tonight, the price will increase permanently.
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For me, this is one of the most valuable pieces of writing to ever appear on the internet. Thank you for sharing.