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From its very beginning as a British colony, the United States has been afflicted with a disease. At its core, the disease is fear. As a response to that fear, greed emerged. The subconscious thought process that fuels greed is something like, “If I can amass enough [money, power, land, etc.], I won’t feel vulnerable, needy, or alone.” Controlled by this greed (fear), our founders acquired wealth by stealing other humans’ lives and putting them to work as slaves. Although overt slavery has ended in the U.S., the underlying disease is still here. If we’re willing to look at it, we all stand to benefit.
I often educate people on what holistic medicine means and how it differs from what could be called “reductive” medicine. The term holistic is derived from the Greek word holos, meaning whole. A holistic medical practitioner (regardless of what form of medicine they use) is one who endeavors to see and treat the whole person. They take into account the “big picture” of this being and the environment they live in. In contrast, someone practicing in a reductive way tends to see a person as a collection of separate parts and addresses themselves to correcting malfunctions of these parts without concern for the influence of, or impact on, the rest of the being.
Sometimes reductive medicine works just fine. You have a headache – who knows why? – so you take an aspirin without concern for balancing your whole being, and a few hours later it’s all better. Score one for reductive medicine.
Other times it fails. You have a headache, you try aspirin, and the headache’s still there. “What’s wrong with my head?” you think. Maybe you consider a stronger painkiller. Without broadening your view, you may never get to the root of it.
In the case of our history of oppression of Blacks, while we’ve taken many big steps in the right direction, our nation’s healing process hasn’t been adequately holistic. There were enough Americans who were sufficiently pained by the existence of slavery to bring about its abolition, but they never got to the root of it.
The prevailing attitude among White people was that despite the fact that Blacks were ripped from their homeland; that their families were torn apart; that they were deprived of rights, recognition, education, good nutrition and healthcare, and a sense of equality and potential – all would be better when the race that perpetrated this invited them to step up and enter society. It wasn’t and it still isn’t.
Greed didn’t fix that underlying fear, and the enslavement and dehumanization of Blacks created its own gaping wound. The recent visibility of police brutality against Blacks shows what can happen when we choose the path of reductive medicine. The problem originated in Whites, well before they saw the enslavement of Black people – and then the freeing of Black people – as their aspirin. But true, deep, holistic healing is often a hard, slow, uncomfortable process. That makes it a hard sell for a population that likes things easy, fast, and comfortable.
Throughout our years of slavery, the following years of segregation, and the most recent generation of supposed equality, it’s simply harder to live to one’s potential as a Black American than a White one. A popular graphic by Tony Ruth does a decent job of explaining the differences between equality, equity, and justice.
In the first panel, we see an apple tree that leans to one side. There’s a man under the low side (where most of the apples are) and another man under the high side (where there are few apples). Neither can reach the branches, but an apple falls into the hands of the man under the bountiful side. The caption is “Inequality: unequal access to opportunities.”
In the next panel, the two men are given equal sized ladders. This allows the man on the low side to reach plenty of apples, but the other man still can’t reach the tree. We may look on such a scenario as being equal for both men – one just happens to be on the better side of the tree – but in our country, the tree of opportunity nearly always leans toward the White person and away from the Black person.
If you’ve never had to worry about being denied a job or loan because of the color of your skin, you’ve benefited from White privilege. If you’ve felt generally safer in the presence of cops, you’ve benefited from White privilege. We could just as well say, “If you’ve ever wondered if you didn’t get the job or loan because of the color of your skin, you’ve been hurt by Black disadvantage.” But Whites have always known about the disadvantages of being Black and done little to rectify it. By framing the disparity as White privilege, it’s clearer for White people to see that the onus is upon them to do something to correct it.
The next panel of the graphic depicts equity – the man on the high side of the tree is given a taller ladder so he, too, can reach the apples. Whereas the previous panel assumes both men are fundamentally equal, with equal resources, they don’t have truly equal chances of succeeding. In an equitable scenario, we attempt to level the playing field by giving the disadvantaged person the resources they need to close the gap between the two. It can be helpful, but it’s an imperfect solution. A real world example is ignoring the systemic racism (the leaning of the tree) that causes the inequality in the first place and attempting to overcome it at the time of college admission or job application by giving extra points to the disadvantaged applicant.
The final panel of the graphic shows the tree being straightened by a set of boards and ropes and is captioned “Justice”. Here there’s no need for affirmative action because the two men finally have equal chances of success. Overall, I like the graphic. However, by depicting unequal opportunity as something as natural as a bent tree, one could say there’s an implication that we got here by chance. We didn’t.
As Scott Woods writes, “Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of Whites at other people’s expense, whether Whites know/like it or not. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a White person who likes Black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you.”
Another questionable implication of the graphic is that the tree can be bent to fix the problem. As we all know, an old tree can only bend so far before it snaps. Can we really keep the old structure and simply rectify it to correct centuries of damage? We must dive deep into the holistic path of healing to find out, but my hunch is that tree-bending is reductive.
So, what do we do? The old fear remains and as White people come to terms with the persistent consequences of treating humans as property, it takes new forms: the fear that healing this will be painful; the fear that fixing the system will mean a loss for those currently in a position of privilege; the fear that Blacks are cooler, stronger, faster, or more powerful than Whites and that their rise to equality will threaten White dominance; the fear that truly desegregating ourselves will amount to a dilution of Whiteness, etc. Thus we encounter many attempts to derail the conversation, like, “Don’t all lives matter?” and “If I’m so privileged because I’m White, how come I’m [poor, sick, disabled, struggling, etc.]?”
I don’t think I need to point this out, but acknowledging the advantages of being White doesn’t mean blaming White people for their whiteness. White privilege shouldn’t be conflated with White guilt. And whiteness alone doesn’t guarantee someone a good life. Life is, after all, what we make it.
I’m not an expert on racism, so I’m sharing this amazing list of resources (mostly for White people) – books, podcasts, videos, and articles by people who have made this their life’s work. Learn what they have to teach and amplify their voices.
What I do know is holistic healing and by applying these principles to our disease, I believe we truly shall overcome.
- Be humble. Resist the impulse to believe you already know, and listen to others’ experiences.
- Dedicate yourself to learning the truth. Go to multiple sources – not just the first one that confirms what you already believed.
- Broaden your perspective. Let your vision include as many factors as you can hold space for. This means also acknowledging what’s been kept hidden in the shadows, and the parts of yourself that you’ve denied.
- Forgive. Forgiveness is healing. I’m not saying your feelings are wrong. I’m not saying you aren’t entitled to feel angry, sad, victimized or anything else. I’m not putting a timeline on it. I’m only saying that at some point, a complete healing process – and true freedom – entails releasing our grievances.
- Keep your heart open. It’s natural – but not helpful – to close our hearts in the presence of pain. Open it, open it, and open it some more. Be willing to feel what’s arising. Feel without resistance. Notice what happens.
- See the connections. As Yogi Bhajan said, “Remember, the other person is you.” The great divisiveness and brutality of this chapter in human history is made possible through the illusion of separation. We are one. And as long as one person is oppressed, none of us can be completely free.
- Be willing to get uncomfortable. You simply can’t heal if you aren’t willing to be uncomfortable in the process. Trust that the discomfort will give way to greater freedom.
- Don’t settle for less than the ROOT. We’ve band-aided the hell out of this thing. Go deep. Ask for clarity and guidance and they’ll be given to you.
Please share about your experience. We all learn from this conversation.
Much love,
Peter
[post_title] => Holistic Medicine for Racism
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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
[post_title] => Losing Your Baggage
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[post_content] => “I just feel sad every night. It’s like I can hold it off until dark, and then it all comes pouring in,” I said in tears.
I was in Mexico with a group of close girlfriends and I should have felt elated: it was beautiful, I was with friends I love, and there was plenty of guacamole and margaritas.
But instead I felt like I was completing the final unraveling of a comfortable sweater that I had been wearing to keep me safe and was now coming off no matter how much I resisted. It had been almost a year of this profoundly challenging experience of feeling lost. Really lost.
“Go inside. What wants to come through? Something is shifting that you’re resisting, what if you allowed it to become?” whispered one of my sisters in the circle.
What if I allowed myself to become?
That’s when I started to live that question: what if I allowed myself to become . . . fully me?
Over the next year I went deep inside to find answers and to continue with curiosity, and in that exploration I discovered so much: my soul purpose, unshakable happiness, and a strong devotion to the Truth.
It wasn’t a magical pill, or even an “aha!” moment, it was a seed that was planted that grew and blossomed over time. It was my own curiosity and dedication that brought me on a journey for the evolution of my soul… and to this work to waking people up to their gifts and true calling.
It finally clicked.
“Oh! This is what I’m here for!”
Got it.
The gentle nudges and messages from a deeper source had been guiding me all along to show me my seat in the web of the Universe. And even though it wasn’t comfortable, still isn’t (where’s that damn sweater from before!?), it feels like fully living.
Magic everywhere.
Delight in my work.
Lightness.
Here. Learning. Growing. Ever evolving. Student of love.
So, what about you?
Are you feeling called to do or be something more? Is there some persistent inner voice begging for you to step into your full potential?
That’s the work we’ll do together: align you with your Highest Self.
What that looks like:
. . . where you want to go in your life is clear.
. . . your relationships develop and unfold with ease.
. . . anxiety, fear, and worry fall away as you create deep trust of your soul to lead the way.
. . . abundance flows in to support your life and purpose.
. . . your health and self-care find a significant place in your day-to-day, knowing that it’s an honor to live in this body.
Can you check all those boxes?
If so - high five!
If not - do you want to?
Now, I do this work for you and others every day in my
Soul Sessions– I help you wake up to your own calling, to hear your soul’s voice arise within you and direct your life, to give you clarity and fill you with purpose.
In
Soul Sessions I’ll help you discover who you really are, find clarity, and move beyond the noise that distracts from your most authentic self. If you’re feeling stuck, hindered, or afraid in life, business, or love – let’s work together and set you free of these limitations so you can really soar.
You have so much potential.
It’s time to tap into it.
You are ready.
[post_title] => What Would Make You Click?
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From its very beginning as a British colony, the United States has been afflicted with a disease. At its core, the disease is fear. As a response to that fear, greed emerged. The subconscious thought process that fuels greed is something like, “If I can amass enough [money, power, land, etc.], I won’t feel vulnerable, needy, or alone.” Controlled by this greed (fear), our founders acquired wealth by stealing other humans’ lives and putting them to work as slaves. Although overt slavery has ended in the U.S., the underlying disease is still here. If we’re willing to look at it, we all stand to benefit.
I often educate people on what holistic medicine means and how it differs from what could be called “reductive” medicine. The term holistic is derived from the Greek word holos, meaning whole. A holistic medical practitioner (regardless of what form of medicine they use) is one who endeavors to see and treat the whole person. They take into account the “big picture” of this being and the environment they live in. In contrast, someone practicing in a reductive way tends to see a person as a collection of separate parts and addresses themselves to correcting malfunctions of these parts without concern for the influence of, or impact on, the rest of the being.
Sometimes reductive medicine works just fine. You have a headache – who knows why? – so you take an aspirin without concern for balancing your whole being, and a few hours later it’s all better. Score one for reductive medicine.
Other times it fails. You have a headache, you try aspirin, and the headache’s still there. “What’s wrong with my head?” you think. Maybe you consider a stronger painkiller. Without broadening your view, you may never get to the root of it.
In the case of our history of oppression of Blacks, while we’ve taken many big steps in the right direction, our nation’s healing process hasn’t been adequately holistic. There were enough Americans who were sufficiently pained by the existence of slavery to bring about its abolition, but they never got to the root of it.
The prevailing attitude among White people was that despite the fact that Blacks were ripped from their homeland; that their families were torn apart; that they were deprived of rights, recognition, education, good nutrition and healthcare, and a sense of equality and potential – all would be better when the race that perpetrated this invited them to step up and enter society. It wasn’t and it still isn’t.
Greed didn’t fix that underlying fear, and the enslavement and dehumanization of Blacks created its own gaping wound. The recent visibility of police brutality against Blacks shows what can happen when we choose the path of reductive medicine. The problem originated in Whites, well before they saw the enslavement of Black people – and then the freeing of Black people – as their aspirin. But true, deep, holistic healing is often a hard, slow, uncomfortable process. That makes it a hard sell for a population that likes things easy, fast, and comfortable.
Throughout our years of slavery, the following years of segregation, and the most recent generation of supposed equality, it’s simply harder to live to one’s potential as a Black American than a White one. A popular graphic by Tony Ruth does a decent job of explaining the differences between equality, equity, and justice.
In the first panel, we see an apple tree that leans to one side. There’s a man under the low side (where most of the apples are) and another man under the high side (where there are few apples). Neither can reach the branches, but an apple falls into the hands of the man under the bountiful side. The caption is “Inequality: unequal access to opportunities.”
In the next panel, the two men are given equal sized ladders. This allows the man on the low side to reach plenty of apples, but the other man still can’t reach the tree. We may look on such a scenario as being equal for both men – one just happens to be on the better side of the tree – but in our country, the tree of opportunity nearly always leans toward the White person and away from the Black person.
If you’ve never had to worry about being denied a job or loan because of the color of your skin, you’ve benefited from White privilege. If you’ve felt generally safer in the presence of cops, you’ve benefited from White privilege. We could just as well say, “If you’ve ever wondered if you didn’t get the job or loan because of the color of your skin, you’ve been hurt by Black disadvantage.” But Whites have always known about the disadvantages of being Black and done little to rectify it. By framing the disparity as White privilege, it’s clearer for White people to see that the onus is upon them to do something to correct it.
The next panel of the graphic depicts equity – the man on the high side of the tree is given a taller ladder so he, too, can reach the apples. Whereas the previous panel assumes both men are fundamentally equal, with equal resources, they don’t have truly equal chances of succeeding. In an equitable scenario, we attempt to level the playing field by giving the disadvantaged person the resources they need to close the gap between the two. It can be helpful, but it’s an imperfect solution. A real world example is ignoring the systemic racism (the leaning of the tree) that causes the inequality in the first place and attempting to overcome it at the time of college admission or job application by giving extra points to the disadvantaged applicant.
The final panel of the graphic shows the tree being straightened by a set of boards and ropes and is captioned “Justice”. Here there’s no need for affirmative action because the two men finally have equal chances of success. Overall, I like the graphic. However, by depicting unequal opportunity as something as natural as a bent tree, one could say there’s an implication that we got here by chance. We didn’t.
As Scott Woods writes, “Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of Whites at other people’s expense, whether Whites know/like it or not. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a White person who likes Black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you.”
Another questionable implication of the graphic is that the tree can be bent to fix the problem. As we all know, an old tree can only bend so far before it snaps. Can we really keep the old structure and simply rectify it to correct centuries of damage? We must dive deep into the holistic path of healing to find out, but my hunch is that tree-bending is reductive.
So, what do we do? The old fear remains and as White people come to terms with the persistent consequences of treating humans as property, it takes new forms: the fear that healing this will be painful; the fear that fixing the system will mean a loss for those currently in a position of privilege; the fear that Blacks are cooler, stronger, faster, or more powerful than Whites and that their rise to equality will threaten White dominance; the fear that truly desegregating ourselves will amount to a dilution of Whiteness, etc. Thus we encounter many attempts to derail the conversation, like, “Don’t all lives matter?” and “If I’m so privileged because I’m White, how come I’m [poor, sick, disabled, struggling, etc.]?”
I don’t think I need to point this out, but acknowledging the advantages of being White doesn’t mean blaming White people for their whiteness. White privilege shouldn’t be conflated with White guilt. And whiteness alone doesn’t guarantee someone a good life. Life is, after all, what we make it.
I’m not an expert on racism, so I’m sharing this amazing list of resources (mostly for White people) – books, podcasts, videos, and articles by people who have made this their life’s work. Learn what they have to teach and amplify their voices.
What I do know is holistic healing and by applying these principles to our disease, I believe we truly shall overcome.
- Be humble. Resist the impulse to believe you already know, and listen to others’ experiences.
- Dedicate yourself to learning the truth. Go to multiple sources – not just the first one that confirms what you already believed.
- Broaden your perspective. Let your vision include as many factors as you can hold space for. This means also acknowledging what’s been kept hidden in the shadows, and the parts of yourself that you’ve denied.
- Forgive. Forgiveness is healing. I’m not saying your feelings are wrong. I’m not saying you aren’t entitled to feel angry, sad, victimized or anything else. I’m not putting a timeline on it. I’m only saying that at some point, a complete healing process – and true freedom – entails releasing our grievances.
- Keep your heart open. It’s natural – but not helpful – to close our hearts in the presence of pain. Open it, open it, and open it some more. Be willing to feel what’s arising. Feel without resistance. Notice what happens.
- See the connections. As Yogi Bhajan said, “Remember, the other person is you.” The great divisiveness and brutality of this chapter in human history is made possible through the illusion of separation. We are one. And as long as one person is oppressed, none of us can be completely free.
- Be willing to get uncomfortable. You simply can’t heal if you aren’t willing to be uncomfortable in the process. Trust that the discomfort will give way to greater freedom.
- Don’t settle for less than the ROOT. We’ve band-aided the hell out of this thing. Go deep. Ask for clarity and guidance and they’ll be given to you.
Please share about your experience. We all learn from this conversation.
Much love,
Peter
[post_title] => Holistic Medicine for Racism
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