An urgent plea: Healing with respect & love

I’ve been in quarantine for a week, having tested positive for Covid 19. It’s been a week of being with this virus inside me, experiencing the many symptoms that I’ve only read about and witnessed in others and experiencing my immune system wrestle with this monster of a virus. There have been days when I was too exhausted to even rest my eyes upon a screen for entertainment and nights when it felt like a comfortable position didn’t exist inside me and I was flopping all night long like a fish out of water. There have been textbook symptoms like cough, fever, loss of taste and then symptoms that I’ve never experienced in my life, like hypersensitive skin along my spine and a type of deafening electroshock feeling that made me want to crawl out of my skull. There were a few days where it felt like I turned a corner and the worst was behind me, only to feel a regression the following day. It’s been a roller coaster for sure, well, more precisely less like a roller coaster as there haven’t been moments of elation but more like one of those scramble rides that goes unpredictably fast and jerky makes you nauseous and you’re screaming for the operator to stop the ride and just when it seems like it might stop, it kicks up again.

Being a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), this period of having Covid is fascinating to me. It is allowing me to sink deeper than a conceptual framework of diagnosis and prognosis into the heart of TCM which has roots in Nature and Spirit wisdom. The themes of Nature and interconnection that I've spoken of for years are being profoundly revealed to me and want to be communicated for our collective survival and well-being.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is based on relationships. In TCM, our inseparable interconnectedness is a given. Everything affects everything else, both inside and outside of us and because of that, the aim of Medicine is to find harmony and balance inside an apparent system of interconnection. The primary teacher of that balance and harmony in TCM is Nature. This in contrast to modern medicine that assumes separate-ness with the man being center stage, a separate entity from Nature. The aim of modern medicine is one of  self-protection from perceived attacks and threats on the human body. In this system, the ruling authority over our protection is the MD. I have emphasized that traditional or modern is not based on the tools being used, but depends upon the approach to dis-ease—a lens of separate-ness or one of interconnectedness. In modern culture, we are born into a lens of separate-ness that we assume as reality. All of our institutions—educational, medical, legal, information are built upon this unquestioned foundation and reinforce this experience. Depending upon which lens one assumes, life experiences and approach are very different.

In a worldview of separate-ness, we identify “good” and “bad” and then we align ourselves with what we consider “good” and try to eliminate what is “bad”. We do this in Medicine when we identify, isolate and attack the offending disease. We also do this with people. We try to exterminate people in the same ways we try to exterminate bacteria and viruses. America’s racial history attests to this. But this type of thing doesn’t restrict itself along racial lines, we do it politically, socially and now as people are separating themselves into camps of vaccinated and unvaccinated people, we are doing it social-medically.

In this era of deadly viruses, racial injustice, environmental degradation, growing homelessness, increasing violence, economic instability and isolation, our sense of separate-ness and fear is as acute as ever. And many of us are digging our heels deeper in an attempt to protect ourselves. There’s hypervigilance in identifying the offending agent (be it a virus, a person or a situation) and protecting oneself against it. In essence what’s happening is that we are becoming more isolated, divisive and fearful in face of all this. And collectively, that equates to becoming weaker. 

But we can choose a different way. A lens of inseparable inter-connectedness leads to an experience of trust, strength, compassion and understanding. If we feel that our well-being is tied to the forces, people and events around us, then we seek for harmony and balance with these forces that we cannot separate from. We cannot truly eliminate anything, we must learn how to be with it as best as we can. Additionally, if we are intimately connected to the forces around us then we are abundantly resourced. We are not alone. We can receive the information and resources from all the forces and people and events around us. When we open up to this possibility, we have eyes to see and ears to hear. Our naturally connected apparatus, our body, will respond in intelligent ways. We will have an organic sense of response-ability. 

The most difficult and perhaps the most threatening thing to people in response to the worldview of inseparable interconnectedness is the notion that we are not only connected to the things that we prefer to be connected to—rainbows, good times, nice people, easy living—but that we are also connected to the not so fun things—viruses, mean people, death, lack of resources. It’s what the yin/yang symbol represents, an inseparable connection of opposing forces. So, does that mean we just become complacent and succumb to doom? Let all the bad things and people proliferate?

Radical Acceptance or Love or Respect is not complacent. It is the most powerful force in the Universe. It is Healing. It asks everything of us. In face of the scariest of our fears, it asks us to not run away but to confront, to trust, to allow, to understand and respect everything’s place in Nature and to learn. Not running away or attacking does not mean to be complacent and let a thing have its way with you. It means being in relationship with the totality of a thing (not just what you deem bad or good about it) so that an organic and intelligent response-ability arises. It asks us to be informed by our constellation of connections, not our disconnections. Actions stemming from that type of relationship strengthens.

 This past week, while being with this Virus inside me, a deep respect grew as I became humbled to the power of the virus. Not only in its strength and the ways it was wreaking havoc inside a body I generally consider healthy, but in the way it has shook up everything in this entire world. And as my deep respect grew for this virus, as did my deep respect for my immune system that was responding to the presence of the virus inside me. There was a conversation (sometimes an argument) between these two forces of Nature inside me and it brought up life and death of not only my separate body, but of all things and people and events that are inseparable to me. Including you. 

And so I emerge from this period of quarantine with a message. An urgent plea. We don’t have much time left in this life. Don’t let this be a time of further division and weakening. We are inseparably connected to one another, to Nature, to history, to all the things that make us who we are—the good and the bad. Let this not go down in history as one of those dark periods where people turned on one another. There are no boogey men out there to point fingers at. It’s not important to locate your fears in people and situations outside of you. Reach for your capacity to be with everything and your trust in a goodness that need not have an opposite. Resource yourself from what you are naturally connected to. Affirm what is good and strong inside you, the kind that can embrace grief and fear and anger and vulnerability and mistakes without attack. Respect one another, respect the Covid virus, respect the fear virus, respect your immune system, respect your life, respect your capacity for Love, respect death, respect your mistakes and respect your knowing, respect what little time we have left and live fully. It is urgent that we learn to respect all of life without exception, and to Honor what we have while we still have it.

In Healing and Community,

What is being born through you?

It’s been about 9 months now that our collective and individual lives have been shaken by the Covid virus. 9 months that we’ve had to reorganize work, school, play to care for ourselves and one another. 9 months of retreat. During those 9 months, we were also confronted with wildfires, political upheaval, the continual evidence of the terror of white supremacy on Black lives and an increase in domestic violence and murder. As I write this, the cases of coronavirus are higher than they’ve ever been and we are facing another intense period of Shelter in Place. 

9 months. How are you feeling? What has your gestation period been like? What might you be getting ready to birth?

I have given birth to three beautiful children. All of them at home, the last one “unassisted”, which medically means that there was no midwife or doctor present. It is interesting that whether a birth is considered assisted or not is based on whether a professional is in attendance. It was unassisted despite the assistance of my then husband, my two children, my friend who made himself available for the younger children, myself and all the invisible forces of ancestors and Nature that were necessarily present to usher Max into the world. My intention to birth my children in this fashion was my way of putting my trust in forces not recognized, with any degree of seriousness, in our modern culture. These forces include the unprofessional people that actually assisted me with their presence and help; the innate knowledge my body has to birth; my ancestors without whom neither I nor my child could be. It also includes things, like the soft twinkle lights that we had put up because Christmas was coming, and the safety of a familiar surrounding. Most importantly, my trust was in the intelligence of the sacred Source which is present in everything and from which everything emerges that I refer to at times as God, at times as Love, at times as Life. By the time I conceived Max, I was acutely uncomfortable with the disconnected and reductionist ways we live our modern life, often devoid of sacred connection. My deep yearning for a more connected and meaningful way of being led me to make choices like having my birth “unassisted.” 

It was not easy. There is a phase right before birth that is called the transitional phase. It is the most painful part of labor as it is the time right before the baby emerges. With all three of my children—and most acutely with my youngest,  Max—this is the phase that I quite literally and metaphorically lose my shit. For me, it is the phase where anything and everything that I thought I knew, had faith in or had control over goes out the window. It is the time where I scream to whoever is there: please call 911, what was I thinking, who’s stupid idea was this, where’s the epidural or morphine or someone just shoot me in the head. I can’t do this. I…can’t do this. It’s actually true. I, myself, can’t grow or birth a baby. The miracle of life and birth is a profound and collective unfolding of an uncountable number of converging elements and phenomena. It is silly to think that I, myself, am doing anything and sillier yet to think that a doctor or any assistant is responsible for the miracle that emerges. Transition lasts for some minutes but it feels like an eternity. Then, right at the moment that I surrender to death because I actually think I will die, the baby comes. My body relaxes, I am bliss and there is a miracle in my arms. 

Are we in the transition stage yet? It’s been a long run. I am tired. It feels close. Maybe we are still trying to hold on to some semblance of control. Perhaps even trying to exert more control over the situation, ourselves and others. Maybe we want to hand it over to the professionals—take some comfort in the vaccine that is coming. Maybe we are waiting for the solutions that will bring us back to the way things were before the virus. Do we really want to go back to all that? The controlled, reductionist life of the unfulfilled modern material world. Or are we ready to look deeper and let go of some fundamental ideas. Let go of our ideas of how we think we need things to be. Ideas of what we thought we needed to feel ok. Ideas of what we need to achieve, how we need to look and be, what we need to have to be loved and to be safe. Maybe if we can begin to let go of those ideas, we can begin to see what is already here. Maybe we can begin to feel our deep connection to one another, to Nature and all forces—seen and unseen. Then maybe we can hold everything sacred and preserve and revere what we already have. 

To birth a different life, a different world, we must go through a transitional phase of letting go. It will probably, but not necessarily, be hard and painful. Doubt will descend. And still I am ready. Because I am not alone. How can I have ever even thought that I was doing anything alone. That I was unassisted?! I am ready to birth this new world. I am ready to be birthed into this new world.

In Community,

Navajo Healing Project: Our Work Continues

“No matter what we do, no matter how we suffer,
we cannot disconnect from Connection.”

Nine of us were gathered for our first prep meeting to resume the Navajo Healing project and I recounted the above question that Justice Yazzie asked me when I first met him five years ago. The Navajo Project team this time had both seasoned and first time participants offering acupuncture, bodywork, herbs and education to the Dineh community* and I wanted to connect everyone to the history of the project. I spoke about my first encounter with Justice Yazzie, when he attended a talk I was giving on the worldview of Traditional Chinese Medicine. At that time, I had reached a point in my practice where it felt important for me to actively restore and reframe TCM back to how it was meant to be understood, practiced and lived --within a natural order of connection and harmony. Health is a restoration of our natural place in that greater order. I spoke about the central idea and assumption that our inherent connection with one another and the natural world is inseparable and that problems arise when we approach the world--as we do in the modern worldview--from an assumption of separateness and disconnection. Problems can manifest on a personal level as illness and disease and on a larger scale as war and environmental degradation.

Justice Yazzie’s question came at the end of the talk and it felt jarring, because despite the fact that I didn’t know who Justice Yazzie was at the time, his formidable presence made me feel that he was assessing me and testing what I had presented. I was already feeling vulnerable speaking publicly about a topic so important to me, and his question made me feel nervous, intimidated and I felt pressured to prove myself. I remember stumbling through something about contrast--that disconnection is necessary for us to understand the importance of connection. A sort of yin/yang answer. Judging from the dubious look on his face, it was an unsatisfactory answer.

What is the value of disconnection? What is the value of Covid, fires, racism, violence, injustice, climate change, poverty? Value. We know the value of a dollar. We measure it with what it can bring us in terms of security, pleasure and happiness--which is how we typically measure the value or worth of a thing. The value of a dollar, a home, a healthy body, a friend. But what does it mean when we ask what is the value of instability? What is the value of police brutality, wildfire, disease? The question forces us to put down the measuring stick of personal gain and security and puts us into a larger world where we must consider our connection to everything and everyone or to “all my relations” as was taught to me through Native prayer. If the value of a thing is not in service of personal gain, then what is it in service of? I believe it’s in service of our collective well-being, our Connection. Or simply, in service of Love.

Five years after being asked that question and reflecting on it with my team, I understand that Justice Yazzie didn’t actually want an answer. His question was an offering--a question that contained the answer. Inherent within the question is an assumption of value, an assumption of goodness within all things, or in Navajo understanding, “Hozho”. Hozho is Justice Yazzie’s favorite topic. If there’s one Navajo word that I’ve learned from Justice Yazzie, it’s Hozho. And it’s a good word to know. He speaks about Hozho tirelessly. When I first met him and asked what it meant, he simply answered “good” or “beauty” or “right”. It took me some time to understand that the meaning is not fixed in dualistic/ exclusive thinking, as in good vs. bad or right vs. wrong. The Navajo worldview, akin to TCM worldview, is one of interconnectedness and wholeness with Hozho as the underlying and all pervasive guiding force of Life. There is no opposite of Hozho.

As such, even within our disconnection--and the evidence of that disconnection today is as acute as it ever was--there is value. There is not anything, however it looks, that does not contain value and therefore we cannot actually disconnect from the fundamental value or goodness or Hozho that is supporting our existence. No matter what we do, no matter how we suffer, we cannot disconnect from Connection. We will always be guided to adjust our ways towards harmony.

Adjusting our ways towards harmony means in whatever action we take, we must carry the well-being of all our relations inside us and honor whatever shows up as a guiding and teaching force. When we do that, we connect to the source of healing. That connection restores our collective well-being and our wholeness. Hozho and restoring this connection is at the heart of what the Navajo Healing Project is about.

As I sat there with my team even amidst fires, disease and stresses of all kind, I could feel each person connect and commit to the mission of the Navajo Healing Project. And I knew that we have the support of Hozho and that our work would be good.

*BCA is returning to Window Rock, AZ Oct. 12 to set up a pop-up clinic offering free acupuncture, bodywork, herbs, nutrition and Covid PPE supplies for the Dine Community. Please support our efforts with a donation and spread the word! Thank you <3

In Community,