Low Back Pain

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A person approached me before chi gung class seeking help with lower back pain persisting for the last couple of weeks. A couple of weeks before, while trying to move my bedridden mom, I strained my back. To my surprise, the injury cleared instantly during body process energy work I was doing as part of my health routine. He was wondering if the body process might help him.

The process that was run on me is one of a hundred different specific energies. Being unable to find someone familiar with my preferred body process system, I’ve hired a Reiki practitioner to run the energy I specify. I don’t even remember which one we ran that day. I just remember, realizing that the discomfort in my back disappeared mid session.

 

Body Process Session

Would a body process help him?  Certainly.  Would a body process be the best medicine to fix his back?  I don’t know.

What would I recommend for a person that is showing health deterioration that often occurs in older people?

PHYSICAL
Strengthen and engage the core. This means exercises like sit-ups. In the case of my injury above, I was forgetting to pull my abdominal muscles in when I bent over my mom’s bed to change a diaper or tried to move her. Simply remembering to do this has “saved” my back.

Keep the tissue warmed up – After years of “throwing out my back” at least once a year and being bedridden for a two to three days I learned that using a jade stone heating pad for 20 minutes daily prevents my back from getting too tweaked out. You could also keep the back warmed up with hot tubs, stretches, saunas, chi gung.

Sometimes lower back pain is caused by digestive upset. For instance, my mom complained of intense back pain when she had an intestinal infection.

Figure out what muscles are causing your discomfort and do specific exercises for them. My old annual back pain was caused by a muscle that was in the butt, underneath the gluteals. A tennis ball to the butt kept it more relaxed. Other muscles that have contributed to back pain are the psoas and quadratus lumborum. Search for exercises specific to them. I can personally recommend Somatics by Thomas Hana

ENERGETIC
Physical problems are always preceded by blocks in life force energy. Chi Gung, acupressure, and yogic practices that move energy along the meridians will remove the blockages and allow the body to heal itself. Other modalities that work on the energy level are sound healing, Reiki and energetic body processes.

The lower back is ruled by the water element and the kidneys in Chinese medicine. The kidneys are responsible for our deepest stores of energy. Depending on lifestyle, these stores can become depleted. One old friend had debilitating lower back pain in his twenties. Using pulse diagnosis a Chinese Doctor prescribed beef. His vegetarian diet was not providing him with enough yang energy. His back issues disappeared with the addition of meat and he is now in his 60’s still working as a carpenter.

If the lower back pain is a result of low kidney energy, beef is a good addition to the diet. In addition, I would recommend power mushrooms such as Reishi or Lion’s Mane and Eleutherococcus senticosus or American Ginseng. All these will bring up the kidney chi.

Energy testing for beliefs

MENTAL
Of course, everything begins with the mind. The energy and physical bodies simple follow the beliefs held by the mind. Unfortunately, the conscious mind is only 5-10% of our mental activity and the seeds for disease are imbedded in the subconscious mind. Luckily we have ways to change the subconscious erroneous beliefs.

In the case of the lower back, I would first look at beliefs in being unsupported or wanting more support. Remove those first using you preferred belief changing modality or prayer method. Then ask if there is any other misbelief holding the low back pain in place. Follow that line of questioning to uncover anything else. Once the beliefs are gone and energy healing should clear up the issue.

In my case, with my back strain moving my mom, I realized a little feeling of needing more support and was able to resolve that first, perhaps letting the energy session clear me for complete healing.

Spiritual Bypassing

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In 2009 I was living at a meditation center below Tucson, Arizona. Many times I drove from my old home in Northern California to where I was developing myself as a meditator. When I first made the trip, I used maps and my best guess on the quickest route to go, since GPS wasn’t a thing yet. However, while the major highway went through Phoenix, I quickly learned to take Route 85 as the “Phoenix bypass” since traffic through Phoenix, especially at rush hour, could literally be a real drag.

A bypass is a way to avoid or circumvent an obstacle or a problem. A road that goes around a busy city is called a bypass. It avoids the problem of getting stuck in slow moving traffic. Certain practices that circumvent mental and emotional obstacles could be considered a bypass as well. The highway could be called a physical bypass and the mental practices could be called a spiritual bypass. A bypass is always a good thing in my estimation.

I am beginning to focus my attention on doing more spiritual bypassing. The process of coming to know ultimate reality can be considered a clearing away of obscurations or weeds in the mindstream. However, I think there may be a bypass. Instead of focusing on pulling out each weed, perhaps, one can plant so many flowers that the weeds are choked out.

I have some rather large weed trees growing in my mind. I’ve tried to cut them back, sometimes almost to the ground and they just seem to sprout back in a new season. Other trees are so large and entangled with desirable trees that I can only seem to cut branches out. Its so thick that I don’t even recognize them as weed trees. Instead I think they are just a bad branch on a good tree. In the past, I’ve mostly focused on identifying and getting the weeds (false beliefs) out of my mind’s garden.

I know this is not the most efficient way to go. I’ve heard that a single moment of direct perception of ultimate reality will cut the root of every false weed tree. And the way to encounter that illuminating moment is to meditate and investigate how the self is created. That is what the Buddha did. However, so many weeds have taken over my mind I find it hard to have a stable meditation. I have been discouraged.

Now I am choosing to stop focusing on getting rid of the “bad”; to stop focusing on getting rid of the effects of ritual abuse trauma; to let the crazy arising and passing of emotions just be; to stop looking for the uncomfortable in me and the misbeliefs creating my world. Instead, I am embracing the “good”. I am expanding into all that is. I am focusing on simply whatever opens my heart and my mind.

To facilitate this, I’ve adopted the practice of Spiritual Mind Treatment. It is a form of affirmative prayer. The first step is recognition of ultimate truth and who I am in the big picture. Then there is a place for affirming the truth about the world – there is abundance: limitless energy, limitless love, limitless good; while denying falsehoods – there is nothing to fear, crave, or resist. Finally the prayer ends with rejoicing and a sense of surety.

The prayer can be long or short. It is followed with the practice of keeping the mind continuously directed to truth. This spiritual bypass focuses on truth and the multitude of possibilities as a way to elevate the mind, emotions, and spirit to starve out habitual limiting thoughts and false beliefs. Here is my Spiritual Mind Treatment for knowing greater peace and freedom:

I know there is one ultimate reality that encompasses everything. This truth of life flows through, within, around, and beyond everything. The world I experience is a deceptive reality that obscures the simple truth that I am that one life, that one power, that one reality. And since I am all that is (given duality is just an illusion) I know that it is impossible for me to lack anything. I am limitless peace, energy, love. It is impossible for me to really be separate from anyone and anything. It is impossible for me to be traumatized, just as it is impossible to traumatize the one life. Right here, right now, I choose to release all habitual tendencies to reify myself and the harm I experienced. I let go of the notion that I have to work to clear away obscurations. I simply affirm the truth that I am pure spirit and everything that is not true falls away. I rejoice in my new freedom and the great peace I feel. And so it is.

Canning Tip

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Any jar with a pop up lid can be used for home canning. Here you see the pears I just canned using a variety of jars – mostly Trader Joe’s Pasta sauce. These lids can be used over and over and are more reliable and easier to work with compared to traditional canning jars with the two part lids. Apple juice can be easily preserved in old glass juice bottles. Those usually always have a pop up on the lid.

My Method:

I put the clean dry jars in the oven at 275 F for 20-30 minutes and take them out one at a time and fill them with the boiling hot fruit. The utensils, funnel, etc I use have been boiled for 5-10 minutes in water.

I add the boiling hot fruit slices or applesauce, pear sauce, chutney to the jars with a canning funnel and then use a rag dipped in the boiling water to clean off the rim. Using sterilized tongs I take a lid out of the boiling water and screw it on.

The pop ups on the top will all be up while the jar is hot, but you will hear them popping down as the jars cool. When they are cool, you can press on the pop up button and it should be in the down position with no movement. If they didn’t seal and the pop up is up, it means the lid wasn’t screwed on tight enough. The contents are still good, just put it in the fridge and use it up.

If the pop up comes up during storage it means some bacteria is growing and producing gas. The gas pressure forces the button up. These you want to discard. I’ve never had that happen. Items high in fruit sugar tend to preserve easily.

Happy Harvest!