Introduction To The Circle

The immediate success and universal interest in Book One of Forget the Cures, Find the Cause, prompted me to expand the scope of the first book by delving more deeply into some of the core issues of holistic/alternative health in Book Two. Though the first book, which contained The Seven Keys, was hailed by readers and critics as one that made holistic health more understandable, and connected the body, mind, and spirit of medicine in a way accessible to everyone, readers of all ages asked for more. Seniors pointed out specific issues with diseases and ailments that were not addressed with them in mind, and parents asked many questions about children’s health and pre-natal strategies to give newborns a healthy advantage.
Pet owners also wrote with questions about the alternative, holistic approach to animal care and cited many examples of typical western medicine short-cuts that affected their animal family members. From tainted or non-nutritive food, to profound errors in diagnosis and treatment, dogs, cats, horses, and other pets have suffered under the same philosophies of healthcare that their human owners deal with every day.
The future of healthcare in America also needs to be addressed, as the FDA, the EPA, The AMA and other agencies realize that alternative health is becoming more mainstream and patients are demanding substantive, alternative approaches to wellness that are affordable and recognized.
The Native American approach to health and wellness has been standard in our practice, emphasized in our holistic health podcasts and radio shows, and heralded in Book One as a truly inspirational, wise, and natural way to help us all connect with the earth, our beliefs, and our spirits to find the path to balance and wellness.
Though readers also asked for specific remedies and cures because of their training in looking for the quick fix for any ailment, we can’t and won’t follow that road just to sell books or make money. Finding the cause to any imbalance is the main key to health, and as Book One explained The Seven Keys, Book Two intends to draw the full Circle while incorporating these keys, and will empower the reader to connect and create the harmony and balance they seek from “miracle cures.”
I am not a healer. I have a range of training and experience that few have had the privilege of attaining. I learned Earth Medicine from Seneca grandmothers and studied with Bernard Jensen and Deepak Chopra before they became well known. I jumped at the chance to enter any course or school that furthered my understanding of alternative health and modalities, waited for schools on reflexology, massage, craniopathy, kinesiology, and explored any avenues that would enhance my ability to help people.
As a child, I was told to keep my knowledge sacred and to share only the gifts I was given or born with. An uncle taught me telekinetics and animal communication, and an Iroquois friend of the Mohawk tribe taught me my roots and connection to the Delaware Indians.
When I was very young, I thought I should be a doctor, and an aunt encouraged me by providing medical books suitable for my age. I knew the names of all the bones in my body before I was in second grade, and spent countless hours mesmerized by anatomy, chemistry, physics, electricity, and the power of community and love. My spirit was boundless, but my finances were limited. Medical school was not an option, and I would later realize that I was being guided away from traditional approaches to education and life, that my path would be a journey unlike most others, and that the gifts I was receiving could not be used in a traditional setting. I was a rebel at ten years old, but not yet a warrior, so I used the power of love in my relationship to earth, animals, friends, and community. I attached myself to the healing power of touch and communication coupled with my insatiable desire to aid all who needed me.
As I grew, I also became more attached to my country. I understood that America was a sacred place, a chosen part of our Creator’s plan, and again my Seneca grandmothers taught me my connection to Earth and all of its inhabitants. My path was not yet carved, but my higher self ordained my destination.
At eighteen, I joined the Marines. America was at war with North Viet Nam. Right or wrong, my country needed me. Friends were dying, or returning home crippled, confused, forever in pain. I believed I needed to experience the conflict, to write about it, to help the warriors heal. I understood energy and the absolute power of combining our energy with intention and love to change the negative course to a positive, healing one. I didn’t yet understand my purpose or role, but I joined with the faith that I was doing what my spirit was intended to do.
I passed the electronics test and was placed in a specialty few women had the opportunity to be in. As I taught male Marines the intricacy of repairing radios, I began to realize the importance of this detour in my life. I needed to know electricity and energy in a way that would allow me to help others understand their potential. I needed to know that resistance is a human reaction that lessens our power, and that capacitance enables us to charge forward. I needed to find my inner warrior so I could later complete the circuit of my knowledge without fear of recrimination or oppression. I needed to see the results of unimpeded energy, parallel electricity, to more fully understand our human connection to this power. I learned about our own circuitry, the spinal connection that “plugs” us in, the mind that controls the reaction of organs and tissue, and the conductivity of all energy within our souls.
Before the end of my first year of service, I was given another gift. A sudden onset of inflammation in my legs that quickly manifested into paralysis gave me the opportunity of choice. I could choose to believe the doctors who told me I had an incurable, unnamed disease that would forever affect my ability to walk, or choose to listen to the physician within and trust natural and Native American medicine to heal me. I chose wisely. Though doctors eventually diagnosed my illness as a “female disease” with a negative prognosis for recovery, my grandmothers used the holistic approach to determine the cause and offered the advice of specific herbs and lifestyle changes to eliminate the symptoms. It was not until many years later that I learned about the negative aspects of inoculations so readily given to service men and women, and so indoctrinated in the health care system for our children. My reaction to the many shots I was given was perplexing and ignored by traditional doctors in the Marines, and our children are still suffering and dying today because of mandatory vaccinations.
At the end of my tour of duty, I was honorably discharged from the Marines, and I returned to a society and culture deeply involved with mind-altering drugs, judgmental opinions, anger, and rhetoric from the anti-war movement that stated the intention of making love, not war. Love was not abundant. Indeed, the opposite was more true. People relied on drugs to alleviate their fears, mend their wounds, cure their inhibitions, and heal their histories. The pharmaceutical companies began rapid and steady growth as prescriptions and pills became the answer to every disillusion, every failed promise, and every hurt be it physical, mental, or emotional.
I returned to a culture where technological communication was being born and proclaimed as the chosen device of survival, and the world of computers was the cutting edge to power. Though my heart told me I should find a way to use my healing gifts, my soul told me it wasn’t time. Alternative health was still hidden to many and medical intuitives were not yet born in the minds of the masses. The gurus of true energy were obscured by data processing, the invention of the microchip, and the not- yet- conceived dream of a worldwide web. I went to work for IBM.
As a hardware computer engineer in a field still dominated by men, I had more lessons to learn about the hierarchy of power and how it ultimately affects our ability to take charge of our lives, our health, and our intended purpose. I was locked out of glassed computer rooms containing “sick” machines because women were not allowed to enter or supposed to have the knowledge to “heal” computer machinery. I was given impossible assignments to complete alone because the wives of engineers feared the possibilities of members of the opposite sex working after hours in locked computer rooms. When my intuition allowed me to interpret and then repair an erratic problem with a machine, my counter-parts feared the ability, called it unscientific and promptly asked to be assigned to any other project where they didn’t have to work with the only woman.
All of this moved me forward in my understanding of the medical world, and the history of medicine. My Seneca grandmothers had told me that medicine meant self-knowledge, and taught me to use my inherent intuition to absorb and feel obstructed paths of energy, allowing me to empower “sick” human machines to heal themselves. They also shared the stories of ancient medicine, and my research beyond their teachings taught me the rise of power afforded male physicians while natural, intuitive forms of medicine, female in nature, were disguised or obliterated.
I eventually left IBM and the computer business as a whole, mainly because the stress of the business was hazardous to my health, but also because I was continuing my research into pharmaceuticals versus herbal and vitamin supplements, studying the role of colon health in overall balanced health, and delving deeper into iridology as a diagnostic tool and preventive medicine modality. My Seneca grandmothers, seven in total, were aging. Their knowledge and wisdom had been shared with chosen people, and though I was an “adopted” protégé, it was my duty to honor their teachings by beginning to share my gifts with others. Thus, I entered the various modality schools available to me, massage, reflexology, kinesiology, naturopathy, homeopathy, energy medicine -and by being a student, was able to also be a teacher.
My back was broken twice by drunk drivers, so I began, with personal experience, to learn the methods and success of proper chiropractic care.
I suffered from Toxic Shock Syndrome, but survived, and learned more about the textbook methods of western medicine in dealing with a body in crisis versus finding the cause and eliminating the imbalance.
I pursued colon health by asking health food storeowners, in discreet whispers, who performed high colonics and where I could find them.
I researched vitamin and supplement companies to determine the true ingredients in their products and the consequences of combining different compounds. I never forgot the teaching that herbs were medicine and vitamins were food.
I parented children and learned first-hand the consequences of antibiotic therapy and western methods of dealing with disease.
I suffered with the sick and dying and felt the transition that comes with death.
The past thirty-plus years have been filled with encounters that have tapped every aspect of my education and experience. From babies with parasites, to senior citizens with water allergies, and dogs who needed probiotics, my education and intuition has helped me to help them.
America is undergoing a dramatic shift in healthcare. The cost of going to a regular MD or hospital is getting more and more expensive. Greed is not the only reason for these expenses. Medical malpractice lawsuits, medical insurance for risky procedures, pharmaceutical drug reactions, deaths with accompanying lawsuits, and expensive diagnostic equipment, are all escalating the cost of health care to the consumer.
Health insurance, once a perk offered by small and large businesses and corporations, is becoming a thing of the past. Large corporations such as General Motors complain that health insurance for employees cost them more per year than steel does for the cars they make. Consumers are being forced into providing their own, expensive health insurance, and have not yet gotten away from the mindset that health insurance should cover everything. Car insurance doesn’t pay for cigarette burns on the upholstery or spilled chocolate shakes on the floor mats, but consumers have been used to employers picking up the tab for health insurance and expecting that insurance to cover every hangnail or headache. Those changes and the increased costs have moved consumers to seek more preventive care and alternatives to traditional, expensive procedures.
Alternative medicine is often less expensive, equally or more effective, and produces less harmful side effects, as was evidenced by the flurry of pharmaceutical drugs the last few years that were finally removed or banned after being prescribed to hundreds of thousands of patients. People's trust in Western medicine is diminishing, and their relief in finding alternatives is rising. Major institutions are now doing large numbers of studies on alternative medicines, including herbal remedies, bodywork, meditation, dietary changes, and many others. Randomized, controlled studies are available on almost every type of alternative healing practice, and they typically show good results.
High-deductible policies and Health Savings Accounts allow people to have Western medicine waiting in the wings when they have serious health problems that require expensive drugs, tests, and surgery. But until then, they are able to use alternative medicine as the best service for prevention and smaller day-to-day health problems. Alternative medicine provides a “first line of defense,” while Western medicine provides the expensive, dangerous, but necessary backup. We will always need the surgeon. It is the physician that we seek.
The internet and World Wide Web have become the main resource for consumers searching for health answers, but there is a tremendous amount of misinformation about healthcare on the Internet. Much of it comes from well-meaning entrepreneurs duped into a multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme who try to pitch some health elixir or treatment.
A second source of health misinformation comes from the Western medical establishment seeking to discredit alternative medical therapies that could take significant revenues away from their invested therapies.
A third source of misinformation comes from the anecdotes of individuals who experienced relief from one therapy or another, but who do not (and cannot) actually represent a proven cure to a particular health problem. I have often asked clients why they are taking Vitamin E, or why they are using a specific herb, only to hear that a neighbor or friend told them “it worked.”
The reason people are turning to the Internet in such numbers is due to a lack of trust in existing medical institutions. Doctors are viewed with suspicion. Will my doctor let me die by not revealing an alternative therapy that could help me? Does my doctor even understand what alternative therapies are? Is my doctor truly holistic, or is he just saying that to keep me as a patient? Is my doctor getting kickbacks from the cute, young, female pharmaceutical rep who visits him twice a month? Big medicine has become big business, and the number one concern is no longer the patient, it's dollars and cents.
But hospitals and doctors are not the only things that Americans distrust.
People in government and in society seem to feel that some brand of socialized medicine will be the magic solution for America's healthcare problems. Socialized, universal healthcare will not work in America, and Americans know it. America needs to find a way to insure every single person in this country, but socialized medicine is not the cure for this illness. Forget the cures. Find the cause.
All of the problems mentioned here are symptoms. The cause of the crisis in health care lies in the disempowerment of the people and the failure of people to take responsibility for their health. Alternative and holistic health options have been feared and denied, but doctors will soon have no choice. Consumers are demanding prevention and alternatives, and western medicine is slowly integrating these therapies. Health insurance will eventually be a thing of the past as people stay well or discover alternatives to illnesses. Hospital costs will be forced lower as only surgical emergencies and back-up therapies will be incorporated. Pharmaceutical companies and their related agencies will no longer drive Congress to do their will as people realize pills are not the answer.
Book One gave you the simple seven keys to get on the path to balanced health. Book Two’s promise is to help you gain the insight and courage to connect your everyday experiences and those of your parents or children to a natural course of healing, a Circle of loving intention, explanation, and continuous verification to give you the tools, the mind, body, and spirit you need to live long and well in an ever changing world.