We live in a society of drugs. The Mayo Clinic reports that 70% of the US population takes at least one prescription medication. Over the counter drugs? We make about 3 billion trips to the store each year to buy them.

In my practice, we only use only non-pharmacological treatment, so I got curious one day and started asking our patients, “Do you know how drugs work?” No one had a single answer.

So, since there’s a 70% chance that you are taking drugs, it might be useful for you to know a bit about how they work.

A drug gets in between the intelligence that operates your body for you and your physical body and forces certain things to occur:

BODY INTELLIGENCE –> DRUG –> BODY FUNCTIONS

This can work well, or it can be a disaster. Drugs are a lot like auto-correct on your phone:

The auto-correct is IN BETWEEN you (the intelligence) and the final text. You lose control of what you intended to say. But unlike auto-correct, your body doesn’t have the luxury of being able to catch the error and fix it. It must live with the mistake.

The main problem with drugs is that they take the control away from the intelligence that is responsible for the operation and maintenance of your body. Drugs grab the wheel away from your body, and you may or may not stay on the road. In my non-pharmacological practice, I let the body be the doctor and follow its instructions.

When I was 15, I got a summer job as a “worker” at a camp in the Missouri Ozarks. It sounded fun, until I found out that the “workers” were tasked with installing a 100-yard long water pipe out to a new bathhouse. We were given shovels, picks and it was recommended that we drink plenty of water. A good idea as the temperature was in the high 90’s under a broiling sun. Halfway through my second day, the boss hailed us and asked, “Anyone know how to fix a tractor?” Everyone looked at each other, wishing oh-so-much that tractor mechanic was on their resume to get them out of the sun. I considered myself to be mechanically minded (though cocky would be closer to the truth) and raised my hand.

It was an old, red farm tractor and it wouldn’t start. I proceeded to remove the starter motor from the engine and disassemble it (in a nice and shady workshop, by the way). I don’t recall the exact problem, but it must have been simple as I was able to repair the starter and fix the tractor. This got me a whole string of fix-it jobs and kept me off the ditch-digging project for the remainder of the week.

Let me take you back to that moment when I first put a wrench on the bolts holding the starter motor to the tractor: I was one worried kid. Honestly, I’d never even been close to a farm tractor. I wasn’t experienced as a car mechanic; I’d barely worked on bicycles. I knew that once I started taking parts off that tractor that I wasn’t certain what would happen, and I just hoped for the best.

This experience of “hope for the best” is familiar to medical doctors. Let’s explore why this is true.

Despite all the hype, bluster and news stories of scientific marvels, no one remotely understands how a human body works. I think we are fooled by the tremendous advances of knowledge we’ve had into imagining we know much more than we do, because in reality we haven’t scratched the surface.

A body, like any other organism, is a physical structure controlled by a living intelligence. Right there, we’re in deep trouble. What’s an intelligence? Where did it come from? How does it work? How does it decide what to do in the operation and repair of the organism? Almost all the current answers to these questions are in the area of philosophy, not science. If you look back at the history of any science, there was a time before it became a science when it was a philosophy (astronomy, for example). This tells you we are in the stone age of understanding regarding intelligence.

So, with no understanding of intelligence but with the technology of drugs, we’re able to take control away from the body and force actions and changes to occur, but we don’t really know what we’re doing. Thus, the same drug that creates a near miracle in one patient can kill the next one.

We are missing an entire area of the technology we need to make drugs safe and effective: The ability to work WITH the intelligence running the body rather than bypassing it. Therefore, doctors “hope for the best” and put you on one drug after another, rolling the dice with every prescription. I’ve avoided the dice-rolling with a non-pharmacological practice for the past 25 years.

There is a good comparison between my tractor repair and your doctor’s prescriptions: we both were hoping for the best.

I think good advice would be:

1. Only take drugs as a last resort and get off them as quickly as possible.
2. Take responsibility for your own health and thoroughly research any drug before you start it.
3. (Should be #1) Work to have a healthy body that doesn’t need drugs to start with.

Here’s hoping for the best!

Find out more

Here is a webpage with a short summary of what I do.

Here is a free booklet with the story of how I developed my techniques and how those techniques work (very practical information).

Here is a link to a book I wrote about women’s hormones in every stage of their lives (on Amazon)

Here is a link to a book I wrote about my treatment technique (on Amazon)

Here is a link to a book my office manager wrote on staying healthy long-term (on Amazon)

Here is a link to a free online health survey that you can submit for a phone consultation on your health

Here is a link to request a new patient appointment

If you have a health problem with no solution other than to manage the symptoms, I can recommend that you stop accepting this and start researching a real solution. In many, many cases there will be a way back to health for you.

I wish you the best of luck, and any help or advice I can offer.

A lot of times we can feel lost. I know I do sometimes. It isn’t that we don’t know what to do because for most of us that is all too clear. It is just that we may not have ever stopped to really examine why we do the things we do.

I know we do the things we do because we are supposed to and we have to pay the bills or people are waiting on us to finish the project, but really why do we do the things we do every day? Do you have a purpose in your actions, or do you feel lost, pushed off from the shore and floating or moving too quickly in the current we call life?

I know I can feel lost sometimes. It isn’t that I don’t know what to do, because for most of us that is all too clear. It is just that we may not have ever stopped to really examine why we do the things we do.

There’s the “have tos” such as paying bills and going to work. There’s the “supposed tos” that our family and friends expect from us, and those things we do just because we’re used to doing them. There’s the “must do’s” where we succumb to impulses and compulsions, like eating sugar, junk foods or making a snide remark.

And then, finally, there’s our own actions and decisions and creativity and the things that uniquely make us ourselves.

When I find I’m adrift or pushed away from being and doing those things I want and spending my life doing the “have-tos, supposed-tos and must dos,” I see it is a sign that I need to take a pause and reflect. I have learned that a pause can mean everything and can allow me the space to examine, to really see. You can take a pause.

When I am in the pause, I step back a good way— maybe a mile, maybe more— till my life looks like someone else’s life. Sometimes if I can move far enough out from it, my life will look like characters in a movie. It helps me see. I push the pause button and I can see the players, the plot, the action and where it is headed.

Doing this helps me remember that life is a game. A game that I have made my part in, and a game that I can change if it’s not what I want. It puts things in perspective for me and that is usually what I need to decide where the pieces go next. My pause makes my moves more conscious and more aware. Hopefully less reactive.

I like to view my life as a game, very similar to an amusement ride, that you can get off anytime, you can keep riding, or you can change the ride or rides altogether. I have the power.

If you don’t know what your game is, it’s easier to choose a goal or a purpose (a game!) from a distance rather than in the heat of living it. If you are afraid to even choose a game, that is where you need to start, because you must have a game in order to be out on the field. You can start any game and then change it; the key is to start. You do have the power to be exactly where you want to be and the power to decide to change where you want to be. If you want to change it, change it. You can even have the game of having no game, as long as you have decided that’s what you want.

You can find that your game has become someone else’s. Life is hard sometimes and goes fast and before you know it you have a game that has many players. It can seem like it’s someone else’s life; someone else’s game. But it is still your game; you’ve just stopped making the decisions and moving the pieces and become a player only. You just need to take that pause and sort it out for a minute. You are the master of the game.  Some of the moves are easy and can be done quickly and without too much fuss. Others may need multiple steps and some alternative planning and may take some time. The important part is that you make the plan and that you create your own game.

Time will pass anyway; that’s part of the game. You will be several steps ahead if you start now to create your own game and keep it up. If you are not the person you planned to be or are not where you planned to be now, fix it if you want to. If you are happy that is good. If you want to make some changes, make some changes. Where do you see yourself in five years, in ten years? Have you lost your way or are you on track? Do you need or want a new purpose; one that makes you get out of bed in the morning with energy and joy?

The world is big. You can see this from your vantage point a mile or two above your own story. There are so many people playing so many games and going so many places! When you are down in it, you can seem so small and sometimes your role may feel irrelevant. It isn’t of course, but it sure is hard to see the forest for the trees.

That is why it’s good to take that pause and distance yourself a little or a lot. Things can look very different from this new perspective. You’ll be able to see the stuck places, and where to push and in which direction that loosens up the area. You can see how to change; because after all when you change the whole story changes.

Write your story and make the ending you want. Do you want to travel or start a new business or be an artist? Do you want to lose weight or make a new friend or get married? Do you want to buy an island in Alaska or move to the mountains? Do you want to start a llama farm or write a book? What do you want? Whatever it is, if you can see it and you really want it, make a plan. Just start with that.

I can hear you all falling right back down to earth, smooshed into the impossibilities, the lack of money or education in an area or all the reasons why it can’t happen.

You know, it isn’t the reasons why it’s so impossible that are keeping you from your island or your farm or your book tour. It’s because you are listening to them and believe them! There are so many reasons why something cannot be done, but all it takes to overcome this is the one real intention to do it that you created up there during your pause. At the end of the day, that is all that matters. Back out again from your life, pause, put the purpose back up there and start to plan how it can be done. Don’t listen to the voices in your head or those around you that tell you it can’t be done, unless you wrote them into the plot and you just wanted to give yourself some more hurdles to overcome.

Find those that support you and put wind in your sails. Move those other pieces off the board. You know the ones— the negative people, the ones who invalidate your goals and you. The vampire people who don’t want you to play, let alone win. You don’t have to have them in your game. Gently move them aside. Find the ones who love you for you, who help you be a better you. Find those you trust and who trust you, who are here to do good in the world and leave it a better place for having been on the playing field.

We have a finite time here and we cannot know how much we have left. It can be gone in an instant, our game, this life. Live it hard and live it well. Change it when you want and make it yours. It always was. If you forgot, remember; maybe for the first time. Love yourself.

And the next time you pause a couple miles out, you will look down and discover you are being exactly what you want to be.

Love for the journey.

Compassion is generally seen as necessary for any successful society, and many religions espouse compassion as a vital ingredient in human interaction.

But what is it compassion really? And how do we have compassion for others and then ultimately, for ourselves? I wrote a blog post last week about grace, about forgiving yourself and others. I think that grace is a part of compassion. Caring, and giving quarter where perhaps none is deserved, is where compassion is needed the most. Maybe it’s most needed because it isn’t deserved. Having compassion is necessary in so many parts of our lives.

Compassion isn’t needed when all is good, the folks are doing what they are supposed to and we’re all happy. Compassion isn’t called for, necessarily for the “good” in our lives and in the lighter parts, but it is called for mostly in the dark parts. The parts where we are hurt the most and where we cannot see the light. This is where I find it the hardest to find compassion.

I believe it would be a mistake to think of having compassion as weak. It doesn’t take strength to strike someone down when they are at their weakest or when they have made the biggest mess of a situation. It takes strength to not retaliate or condemn. It doesn’t take much strength to hate, it does take a lot of strength sometimes to love.

I had a person once, that I was considering hiring, who had gone behind my back to someone close to me to question my integrity and say some pretty nasty things about me. The person was also seeing me professionally to help her with her health. The friend she had spoken to called and told me what happened. The next time I saw this person I knew about her negative words and the venom she had spat in my direction; but she was unaware that I knew. I had the choice to treat her kindly and maintain a compassionate attitude, or I could confront her and address it angrily. I chose the former and didn’t bring it up or change the way I treated her.

I had always treated this person with respect. For her to behave this way towards me meant that she was truly defensive and frightened of life and of ME! So, I chose to love her. I did not pretend. Had she addressed me about her criticisms I would have kindly told her what I thought but she did not. I treated her kindly and professionally and asked how I could continue to support her in her health goals. She answered and we had a nice visit. Someone close to the situation and who knew what was happening, saw our exchange and wondered about it out loud to me later after the woman left.

She said, “How did you treat her so calmly and so professionally, so kindly? She is so negative and clearly does not mean you well! How can you look at her and not be angry?” I answered that she was my patient foremost and when that is the case I always come from a place of love. Yes, I was hurt that she had acted the way she did, but I just decided to treat her as I always had honoring that place of grace in her that I always saw and I chose to ignore the negativity she was creating. It was a conscious decision. It didn’t hurt me and shortly after, this person decided to seek help for her health in a different direction. This is a small example of compassion. One that was fairly easy at the time and did not hurt me too much to implement.

I can tell of a time I did not show compassion. It was extremely hard for me to even see that compassion was needed in the situation, so stuck was I on my own rightness. It seemed to me at the time that it would hurt me tremendously to have compassion in this situation. I regret greatly that I didn’t see more clearly and behave differently.  Regret in life sometimes can be a tough thing; especially if you cannot go back and do it differently. A very close friend had something tragic happen in her life that made her choose a different direction than I would have chosen for her. We argued about it and I tried to convince her to make a different choice. I was younger then and I did not understand how big a part compassion plays in our day to day interactions with others. I chose to be judgmental and headstrong and hold her decision against her and stand “strong” in my own personal belief that she made the wrong ethical and moral choice and that I was right, and she was wrong.

How condescending and stupid that sounds to me now in the rear-view mirror of 20 something years. I can hear myself asking “Well, how did that work out for you?” Not well. I lost the opportunity to win for both of us. I lost something that day that I never got back. We stayed friends but it was never the same. I always held the judgmental “holier than thou” space in the relationship and she died before I had a chance to get older and wiser. It breaks my heart to think of that; and how I can’t go back. What if I had had a softer heart for her and what she was experiencing. What if I tried harder and had put myself in her shoes? Really put myself in her shoes and walked in them for a time.

Most of us are not evil. The press, the politicians “the dividers” separate us into race and sex and religion and political party. We are, the polls say more polarized than ever on so many topics. But we are all just human beings. We are all people. I know that the answers to the questions we fight over and struggle with in our world today are not easy ones. Some of us feel very strongly about a lot of things— and I think we should. Developing compassion is an ongoing journey and so very needed right now in our world.

Have you ever tried to fully, completely understand a position so opposite from yours that it makes you feel crazy to even listen to it? It sounds so dumb or so ignorant or so something? Think of a view so opposite from yours that you could never in a million years think of understanding it let alone taking it on as your own. Yes, that’s the one! If I had really decided to take my friend’s perspective back then, and really understand her and why she made the decision she made, even if I totally disagreed, I could still have had compassion for her. And maybe, just maybe, we could have found some agreement.

Compassion is an attitude and a gift. It isn’t a condescending view that we are better somehow than the person in front of us. Doing that very thing, taking on and listening closely to another viewpoint completely opposed to my own, has enabled me to change my mind about many subjects I thought I could never change. It is a gift we can consciously choose to give each other.

I have changed some of my strong and long-held beliefs by listening and questioning with friends who were kind and had compassion for me and for my “crazy to them” ideas. It works both ways, you see. They were willing to listen to my strongly-held viewpoints and I was willing to listen to theirs; without judgement. And you know what? Sometimes both of us changed a little in each other’s direction. Sometimes after a time of introspection one of us came to understand the other’s reason for believing or acting as they did. Interesting. I think in these times with my friends, we had compassion for each other even when the other became passionate or even upset about a topic.

Do unto others as we would have them do unto us comes to mind. I know this isn’t easy or even natural. We have to overcome some very basic programming to just make this so, but I encourage you to try it. Examine your red lines. The line that you would never cross to show someone compassion and try it anyway. The fact you are even thinking about it is progress. We can’t all do it all the time and all at once, but we can start. Radical compassion. It doesn’t mean someone doesn’t take or shouldn’t take responsibility for a wrong. It doesn’t even mean it wasn’t wrong. It means your compassion opens a passage way in the universe for a possible redemption for them and for you; especially for you, if the wrong was done to you.

Radical compassion. Crazy sounding, right? Two very opposite words.

Opening the door to being compassionate allows the light to shine in and more possible solutions to surface. It opens a space in the universe where none existed previously. You can bring light to those situations around you that seem impossible. Try it. Let it happen.

I send you love and best wishes for finding and living with more compassion in your life every day. I wish you strength for the journey.

 

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”  Aesop

I’ve been thinking about grace lately: How little grace we offer to ourselves and to others. Maybe it stems from perfectionist attitudes about life and love or maybe we feel we just don’t deserve it.

Do you ever remember a time you just cut yourself a break and thought joyously that you didn’t have to feel guilty about that thing whatever it was?

 

Sometimes I think our guilt voices come from things we’ve been told or learned from watching others model such behaviors. Other times it seems they were just made up in the moment to torture ourselves or “teach ourselves a lesson.” We can be kinder sometimes to a stranger than we are to ourselves.

Did you miss your workout last week or not take your daily supplements? Did you splurge on an extra glass of wine or eat a huge piece of cake? Most importantly— are you still feeling bad about it? What about relationships? Is there that one person you love that you just can’t seem to communicate to without it ending in a fight or a disagreement? Do you get angry or raise your voice at someone you love and then regret it? As a parent do you feel like you don’t do enough for the kids and you work too much or haven’t given them the life you planned? Is your life not what you envisioned so long ago when visions were all we had, and reality was a long way off? Do you wake up some mornings profoundly disappointed with yourself and what you’ve accomplished at this stage in your life? Do you feel you should be in a different place, or making more money or making more of a difference?

It seems all the social media pages are blaring out perfect lives with amazing vacations and sexy significant others in perfect homes with amazing children graduating

from Ivy League schools with multiple majors. You may be struggling to decide what you next career path will be or if you should take the risk and leave your current job for another one that may or may not be better. You might wonder how everyone’s got the money to go on all those trips and probably something must be very wrong with you!

When you see that ground-up house renovation or the 25-year wedding anniversary with the “Barbie perfect” family it can make you question your worth or make you wonder why all isn’t wine and roses in your neck of the woods. Wonder what they do for a living? Wow, how does she stay that skinny? I never look like that in a swimsuit! I wish my kid would just go to school— any school!  Then the voices start about yourself.

All my friends are in graduate school and here I am at home still. I must be a loser! They have such a lovely relationship; my husband and I just fight all the time. What is wrong with this picture? I don’t even have a boyfriend! I should leave my job. If I made more money, I could save more money and afford trips like the Jones’ do! I never traveled the world and now it’s too late. They don’t seem to work all that hard and have tons of money! What’s wrong with me?

The problem is no one sees the pain on the other side of those perfect pictures. The husband who spends all his time playing video games and won’t work enough to support his family but will stand still in his Sunday best for a beautiful family photo. The daughter who was forced into a major by her parents who told her she couldn’t make a living in art so she better study something in a “good school” so she could support herself. That first day of college photo is lovely but no one feels the pain of broken dreams or sees the tears. You don’t see the debt that renovation put that family in; the $120,000 renovation is now a second mortgage. That beautiful island trip that cost $20,000 plus for that family of 4 is now on someone’s credit card and another stress to worry about. No one sees the spouse that cheated on the other one three times, but they will both stand at the family reunion and play the game of “all is fine” over here.

You don’t know what lies behind the pictures. People don’t often reach out or share what lies behind the façade. We all come from different backgrounds and different cultures. To share or not to share? Did your family share or did they hide what was really going on and play the game of make it all look normal and ignore the pain and sometimes the abuse and shame that families are good at hiding?

And here is where the grace comes in: We all have pain. We smile over it and keep on going. We screw up and keep on moving. Why don’t we stop more often and realize we are all human and what that means is that for the most part, most of us mean well. We want to do good, to help those around us to be good parents and good spouses and good employees and good bosses. Life is crazy. When you see someone else it is impossible to tell what story they have to share, where they have come from and what they have to offer. Chances are they may be in a worse situation than you are and may need some grace.

Give it to them. Hold your tongue when you want to scream. Let them in when they need to get over when you are driving. Overlook the lateness if you can. That person in front of you probably woke up with the intention of doing his job and really didn’t mean to make you mad. That waiter didn’t mean to take so long to bring you that drink. All those FB posts are probably not 100% what they appear, and you don’t have to spend as much, be as thin or go as many places as all your friends do to still be a good enough person and valuable to society.

Your kids probably will still love you even though they didn’t go to the expensive school or the expensive camp this summer. Your husband may irritate the living daylights out of you, but he’d never cheat. And probably if you saved your pennies you could go somewhere nice and enjoy yourself and not go into debt. And more than likely if you haven’t found a graduate program that you are really passionate about, the one you will love will be there next year.

Give yourself a little grace. Forgive yourself at least one of your faults and frailties. You don’t have to be strong every single time. It’s OK to cry and it’s OK if you don’t really know what to do next. Probably if you aren’t where you think you should be at this time in your life, you made decisions along the way that got you here. Think of what you want to do next and make a road map to your next destination. Be brave. Think big. At the end of the day it is your life and you get to do what you want with it. Post your beautiful self on that social media and share a little truth with the world. Give yourself grace today and every day. It will spread and you will be kinder and make a kinder world for yourself and all of us. It is OK to be human and to err. What’s not OK is to guilt yourself for trying to achieve unrealistic expectations and even worse someone else’s expectations. As Mark Twain said, “Comparison is the death of joy.” Don’t compare yourself with anyone.

And create some joy!