Tagged with health …

Jan 24 2012
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Blog Posts, Cooking, Cultural Issues, parenting, Reality, Uncategorized

Why We Eat What We Eat

As a cooking teacher, who regularly meets people through my cooking classes, here on the sunshine coast, I get to see what a cross-section of society likes to eat and feels comfortable with on their plate. It is interesting to observe shared traits amongst the groups of people, who pass through my cooking school, and it gets me thinking about the whys and why nots. I wonder why most of us tend to eat from a similarly small selection of meals, despite the fact that we now have available in our supermarkets a far greater choice of ingredients than ever before. I think about what food represents, in terms of its psychological ramifications within our lives, and whether these settings can be adjusted.

It seems to me that many of us retain attitudes towards foods, which were garnered in the family home when we were children; and that the apple generally falls close to the tree. If mum and dad liked certain foods and cooked these foods more often, then for many people these influences remain strong throughout their adult lives. A bit like the children, who upon leaving the nest, build their own homes in the same street, suburb or town as mum and dad, keeping extended family close. Food like shelter is a primal need and is intimately tied up with our notion of emotional security.

As we expand the concept of family outwards and it becomes our cultural heritage, food choices again are inextricably linked to our regional and national identities. Here in Australia we can celebrate the rich diversity of our many multicultural strands and this happens most often through experiencing the foods and culinary dishes of these transplanted cultures, like Italian, Thai and Chinese foods – made available by the restaurants and takeaways, which have been created by the sons and daughters of foreign shores.

We are enriched by experience when we allow ourselves to move beyond the close confines of who and what we think we are. Just as our human species is strengthened biologically when we mate and breed outside of those whom we call our own. The cross fertilisation of genes, ideas and even recipes can make us all healthier, smarter and our lives definitely tastier. Our predominantly Anglo-Saxon backgrounds, have unfortunately, cursed many of us somewhat with limited culinary antecedents and if we do not break out of these restrictive walls, then we are condemned to eat poorly and to miss out on the more sublime flavours that life has to offer.

What and how we cook is often a bit like how we make love, we learn from experience a few things and then tend to groove these moves; somewhat unchangingly. Primal activities are a bit like that, not something that we muck about with too much, and what and how we eat falls into this category. We eat to refuel, to derive energy and sustenance from food, but eating is also a profoundly sensual activity. The nerve endings and taste buds inside our mouths feel every morsel as it slides about, and we experience our food in full technicolour, sensorama – if we are lucky enough to be in touch with our full five senses of taste, smell, sound, sight and feel.

So eating is a very personal activity, it is close to who we are, and yet we often eat in public, unlike other intimate activities like sex and going to the toilet. This sharing of the eating experience in communal structures, like cafes, restaurants and workplaces is a ritualised cultural activity. We bring our own mores, likes and dislikes, to this public performance of consumption. I am always reminded of the recounted experience of migrant children in the Australian school yard at lunchtime, as the contents of their lunch boxes were reviled by the Anglo kids because of their peculiar differences. As children we often fear what is not customary and uniform, and unfortunately many of us remain in this childish state, particularly around our foods and what we consider acceptable.

When people form intimate relationships, like marriage and close friendships, they are often confronted with the need to move beyond their culinary comfort zone in a bid to cement the stability of their relationship. The desire to share tastes and flavours is sometimes paramount to couples and their ongoing sense of emotional security. I regularly hear about the compromises being made by one partner or the other, and the effect that the changes to their diets has upon them, both positively and negatively. In fact this can be a major motivating impetus in getting people to come along to my cooking classes. A bit like going into relationship counselling I suppose, with both parties hoping that the inspirational influence of a neutral teacher may magically impart some shift in the culinary status quo of their relationship; and it sometimes does.

Seafood is a commonly held culinary ‘no go zone’, among many of the people who attend my classes. I hear again and again the refrain, “Oh I didn’t know that seafood could taste this way!” Whether they had an unfortunate early experience with a bad cook or perhaps have actually never tried the said example of fish or shellfish, due to the fact that mum or dad likewise had avoided the experience and did not cook these critters at home, the fear based result was the same. We often work out who we are by declaring the things we know that we dislike, “Oh I don’t eat fish, or oysters, or mussels.” I may have made this decision when I was 6 years old but I unquestioningly stand by it today. The walls around this individual are close and in yours and their face, perhaps it makes them feel safe. Eventually however there comes a time when the individual feels somewhat cramped by their stated dislikes, and this is when they often find themselves in one of my cooking classes, either alone or with their partner.

I speculate that the adolescent or young adult who has consciously rebelled against the tastes and predilections of his or her parents, usually has developed a wider and more far-reaching culinary diet – they still may not be able to cook but they may consume more different foods. This individual has broken away from the invisible ties that bind the obedient child to the emotional strings surrounding mummy and daddy. We are all on variable time lines regarding this necessary rebellion, some do it early and some very late, but eventually we all need to break the moorings and swim free; and perhaps then taste the sea.

Sacred Chef Cooking School on the sunshine coast.

©Sacred Chef

House Therapy – Discovering Who You Really Are at Home.

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Jul 08 2011
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Healing, Health, Published Articles, Therapy

Tapping the Pain Away

Heading: Thought Field Therapy.


Subheading: Tapping the healer within.

Do our thoughts have an energy field? Are we beginning to see the emergence of a new type of medicine based on the treatment and understanding of subtle energy fields? Thought Field Therapy (TFT) is one of these new therapeutic tools that may seem like magic from the outside, but is firmly based on the premise of our thoughts having an energy field.

It is interesting to stop and consider our own thinking processes. Especially those thoughts we run through our conscious mind again and again. Usually when we are very concerned about something and we begin to obsess about it. Is there an energy field around these obsessive thoughts? How are these thoughts affecting our physiology?

Is our autonomic nervous system reacting to how these thoughts are making us feel?

Perhaps even before we have registered that we are having an emotional reaction to these thoughts.

In the instance of trauma or severe anxiety, it is understood that these negative thoughts are encoded or embedded in our subconscious mind and can subsequently produce a range of physical reactions without first registering in the conscious mind. These so called diseases of the mind, psycho-symptomatic phobias, post traumatic stress and the like, have been and still are difficult conditions for our doctors and psychologists to successfully treat. As there has been no pharmacological answer to the debilitating experience of severe anxiety, except drugging the person into a state of apathy, the onus has fallen upon the “talk therapy” of our psychologists.

One of these psychologists was Dr Roger Callaghan, the founder of Thought Field Therapy (TFT) and the author of Tapping the Healer Within, the definitive TFT self-help book. Dr Callaghan who trained and practised as a clinical psychologist in the USA, and was associate professor of psychology at the University of East Michigan, was professionally frustrated at his own, and his colleagues, lack of success in treating these types of illnesses with cognitive based “talk therapies”. “Whether we were treating them for depression, phobias, or a shattered relationship, too many clients seem entrapped in years of expensive psychotherapy, talking endlessly about their life circumstances. They’d painfully relive their trauma. They’d often blame something or someone in their past for their current troubles. But at the end of the day- or the year- they had nothing to show for it,” he states in his book.

This led him to explore therapeutic approaches outside the mainstream. This quest would eventually open his mind, almost accidentally, to the consideration of Chinese medicine and its theory of energy meridians running through the human body. Whilst seeing a long term patient, who had a severe water phobia, Dr Callaghan chanced upon the idea, almost out of desperation, of using the acupressure points on the body to treat the symptoms of the phobia. The patient had said, “I feel it in the pit of my stomach. Every time I look at or think of water I feel it right here in my stomach.” Although not formally trained in acupuncture, Dr Callaghan knew that that position directly under the eye was the location of the concluding point of the stomach meridian. Instructing the client to tap with two fingers on that particular spot and to think about her fear of water he was amazed when she reported back a few minutes later that the sick feeling in her stomach was gone. Further more the client was positive that she was no longer afraid of water.

Although skeptical at the time, Dr Callaghan continued refining this technique through research and trial and error. He was hopeful that the stunning result that he had achieved with this one patient would be reproduced with all his patients, he was to be disappointed. However, as this was the most powerful healing experience he had had in thirty years of practising he persevered with his research into what would become TFT. He discovered that with certain clients a whole series of meridian points would need to be tapped and not just anyhow but in specific sequences. The value of this was that many more clients with a variety of psychological ailments beyond just phobias were helped and a system of tapping “algorithms” was developed.

These “algorithms” or specialised sequences of tapping on various pressure points on the body are used in conjunction with the initial focus on the thought that contains the fear, anger or negative emotion. It is paramount to the effectiveness of TFT that the person experiencing the therapy holds that thought in their consciousness. Thus the thought field is activated and the therapy can do its work. Apart from the tapping there is also a series of exercises involving the opening and closing of the eyes and the pointing of them in various directions.

These eye movements are common to a variety of therapeutic techniques and Dr Callaghan explains that the eyes are an extension of the brain. “I believe that each eye movement may access a different area of the brain. Some research shows, for example that when the eyes are open, the back of the brain receives relatively greater stimulation; when they are closed, the front of the brain is more stimulated.” In addition he states, “the humming and counting processes are designed to activate the right and left brain, respectively. Theoretically, the right side of the brain is being receptive to treatment by the humming and tapping, and the left side of the brain by the counting and tapping.”

If you are like me when you first begin these exercises you may feel a little like an uncoordinated child on your first day at ballet classes, trying to rub your tummy and pat your head at the same time. With a little clear instruction and practice you soon get the hang of it though, and even when I fell on the floor laughing I noticed how much better I was feeling already.

Dr Callaghan’s study of several other fields has also contributed to the evolution of TFT. His look into physics has given him a language and a scientific structure to explain the effectiveness of TFT. Starting with Einstein’s basic postulation that everything is energy (E = mc2) then thought is an energy. This energy has a field like a magnetic or gravitational field; you cannot see them but they exist. Dr Callaghan in his book employs a dictionary definition for a field as thus: “a complex of forces that serve as causative agents in human behaviour.” He goes on to say, ” The thought field is the most fundamental concept in TFT. This intangible structure or scaffolding can contain large amounts of information, but in treating psychological distress, we’ll concentrate on the negative emotions you are experiencing. When you are terrified of snakes, devastated by a marital breakup, or depressed over the loss of a job, the cause of this disturbance is contained in the thought field.” Dr Callaghan then uses the term “perturbation” to describe this disturbance in the thought field – this is a unique entity according to him that contains “active information” (a quantum physics concept) of a highly specified sort that can be isolated within the thought field. He states, “the psychological upset is due not to a trauma or the loss of a love, for example. These experiences give rise to the perturbation, but it is the perturbation itself that is responsible for generating, guiding, and controlling all of the fundamental changes within the body.”

One of the most interesting pieces of scientific evidence produced in Dr Callaghan’s book to support the health benefits of TFT is its effect on Heart Rate Variability or HRV. HRV, which is the quantified variation in the intervals between heartbeats, has been used in cardiological research (for the last 30 years) as an indicator into the functioning of the autonomic nervous system. A low variation in heart beats per minute is seen as a depressed HRV and can be a warning about the health of the patient’s heart. Whereas the higher variability in pulse rates per minute is a sign of better overall health. Dr Callaghan has been assessing the physiological health of his patient’s bodies through HRV, before and after TFT sessions. He states, “although you probably aren’t conscious of it, your heart functions with subtle variations between beats. In fact HRV appears to be the most accurate tool we have for monitoring the autonomic nervous system or ANS, which is the internal system that controls heartbeat, breathing, body temperature, blood pressure, blood chemistry, tissue repair, metabolism, immune function, and other processes considered involuntary and beyond conscious control. Clearly, the more optimally your ANS is functioning, the healthier you are likely to be.”

The dramatic results that TFT has achieved with patients, some of whom were seriously ill with heart conditions, in raising their HRV has shown Dr Callaghan that the psychological healing is also producing measurable physiological changes.  He states, “I often use HRV to evaluate TFT whether I’m trying to heal a patient’s anger, grief, anxiety, or phobia, or relieve his or her physical problems such as migraine pain or allergies. HRV is an adjunct to TFT that objectively demonstrates and quantifies the effectiveness of this breakthrough therapeutic technique.”

Dr Callaghan goes on to quote further HRV/TFT testing that has been done by Dr Fuller Royal, medical director of the Nevada Clinic. “Heart Rate Variability is the only test known that will not respond to the placebo effect,” he said. “You can’t fool the autonomic nervous system.” He added, “TFT has been for me a nice piece of the puzzle that has been missing on how to enter, and correct rapidly, defects in the autonomic nervous system.”

The broadening research into HRV as a clear indicator of our state of health, and in many studies as the strongest predictor of mortality is widely covered in Dr Callaghan’s book. He also puts forward research that states, “making changes – particularly rapid changes – in HRV readings is virtually impossible. Two studies (one of humans, the other an animal study) found that exercise was the only common way to get those HRV scores to budge in a positive way, but even then it would take eight weeks or more of intense physical activity to produce improvements.” This puts TFT’s remarkable effect on HRV into context.

Personally, I find that TFT seems to be a whole body therapy that listens not just to our chattering mind but is a further revelation in the understanding of the holistic paradigm. It is another step forward in removing our focus away from just what lies between our ears. We hear the words, that we are an interconnected system within an even larger interconnected system, but perhaps now we are beginning to see the proof of that through our healing experiences.

I did have some preconceived doubts and negativity in regard to how quickly TFT works in many of the cases reported. I suppose I share a common attitude about therapy and spirituality that we need to suffer to truly understand, before we are relieved of our burdens. For those who have carried these debilitating conditions, it is often like a miracle when they are set free from them. We as human beings are, I think, examples of the most incredible life forms, and the growing awareness of energy medicine is very exciting. TFT is part of that continuing enlightenment.

Now with more than twenty years’ research into TFT, Dr Callaghan, and a substantial number of therapists all over the world are achieving unparalleled success in the treatment of phobias, anxieties and psychological disorders. The work has evolved and been refined even further with the next generation “Voice Technology.” In Australia, Eugene Piccinotti has established a TFT centre here, and offers workshops all over the country. Eugene trained with Dr Callaghan in the USA, and personally overcame huge obstacles through TFT. Like many before him, he tried numerous variations of “talk therapy” without success. Eugene has now facilitated hundreds of people into energy shifting TFT releases, and continues to be inspired by the work.

©Sudha Hamilton

Appeared in WellBeing Magazine.

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Sacred Chef cooking school on the sunshine coast

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Nov 06 2009
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Blog Posts

Quick and Easy!

Quick and Easy – Transformation Guaranteed!

We have all seen these words splashed across advertisements, books, and websites; and heard them coming out of the mouths of sales people everywhere. There are doctors, naturopaths, therapists, and other ‘so called’ health professionals, extracting dollars through the promotion of pills, courses and products – all claiming to do the hard work for you. Well it’s not true! There are no quick fixes in health, weight loss, and just about anywhere else in life. Ask yourself honestly, have you ever really taken a pill and instantly achieved whatever it claimed to do for you? Of course not, occasionally they have been an accessory and encouragement on the road to your goals – a bit like gym clothes really.

If you want a few guidelines in life that really stack up, this is point one – there are no quick fixes. Now immediately you have one structure in your life to guide you away from delusional situations, involving those who claim to be able to facilitate change in your life, instantly and without some sacrifice. This is not a case of mere exploitation with you and me as the victims; no we are actively involved in the whole fraud, because we want a quick fix too- as we do not want to do the necessary hard work to achieve change. We want to have our cake and eat it too – and we want to be thin and attractive at the same time, as we want to stuff our faces with cake. This is the modern dilemma of humankind in the consumerist age.

Quick and easy meals! Just 4 ingredients! Dinner in 5 minutes! Cookbooks around the globe are emblazoned with these headlines. What is the mass appeal of this message saying about us? Well maybe that we don’t enjoy cooking and that we would rather be doing something else. There are a number of issues here of course – mothers who are traditionally coerced into cooking meals for an often unappreciative family audience; singles who would rather work or play elsewhere and do not enjoy cooking for one; and those who do not know their tastebuds from their haemorrhoids, to name a few. However health is derived from a good nutritional diet and if we continue to take the easy option, popping a few multi-vitamin pills to prop up our neglected nutritional selves, we are heading for a state of disease. Quick and easy cancer in just a few years!

Become a Reiki master in 3 days! Learn to heal your emotional self in one weekend! Re-birthing in a single session! Wow when I flick through the pages of the monthly, throwaway, holistic journals I can see how easy it all really is. World hunger, victims of the devastation of war and suffering watch out – there is a Reiki master waving his hands right now. Refugees from the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, where our Australian soldiers are fighting now, are however not benefitting from these ads for instant transformation – in fact they cannot even get into our country.

Horny goat weed; fat blaster; tiger penis; snake oil – products packaged and sold in pharmacies, multi-level marketing pyramids, and TCM shops around the globe – all promising transformation in exchange for money. The health industry! We have doctors and pharmaceutical companies (who now own all the vitamin producers) on one side, ready to chop you up and medicate you with anti-depressants, and on the other side we have a mish-mash, containing a few good hearted healers interspersed with the providores of the all natural, quick fix, in various forms. The former bunch do not respect you at all and see you as meat, muscle and bone and the latter are predominantly ineffectual and unrealistic in their claims for you and for themselves – because in many cases their training has been as inadequate as the one they are now selling to you.

All however is not lost. Put down the newspaper, magazine, and mouse. Close your eyes and ask yourself – really ask yourself, where do I go next? What is the next step for me? How can I heal myself? Keep asking the questions – this is no quick and easy solution. Meditate upon them and follow your fears into the unknown.  It may take a lifetime but the journey is worth taking, and really you don’t have a choice anyway. It’s your life after all!

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Jan 14 2009
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parenting, Reviews

Book and CD Reviews

Book  and CD Reviews

Heart to Heart Parenting

By Robin Grille

ISBN: 9780733322983

Heart to Heart Parenting is a book on nurturing your child’s emotional intelligence from conception to school age. For anyone who enjoyed the expansion and wisdom of Parenting for a Peaceful World – this is the developmental sequel. Practical in application, but still with the historical context and psychological understanding that is characteristic of Robin Grille’s creations.

Raising your children can be the most fulfilling thing you ever do. But your children can also challenge you like no one else ever will. To make it through the sleepless nights and toddler tantrums, it is fundamental that you develop an understanding of what makes your child tick.

An empowering book for parents, Heart to Heart parenting is more than just a ‘how to’ book about raising happy and resilient children – it aims to help you create a deep and lasting relationship that is unique to you and your child. Using techniques that are based on connection rather than shaming, manipulation or punishment, Robin Grille introduces you to insightful and practical ways to benefit your child’s emotional wellbeing and development. Available from ABC Shops / Centres, selected bookstores and online at www.abcshop.com.au RRP $35.00

The River Runs Free – Exploring and Defending Tasmania’s Wilderness

By Geoff Law

ISBN: 9780670072453

Geoff Law first rafted the dangerously beautiful Franklin River on a whim. He was inexperienced and in a leaky raft, the weather was treacherous, and his travelling companion was someone he didn’t know and who hated the place. But that eventful trip drew him into the historic battle to save the Franklin from being dammed. It was a struggle that brought down a federal government, and one whose ecological reverberations, twenty-five years on, are more commanding than ever.

In The River Runs Free Geoff Law gives a lively and witty account of that flagship campaign, weaving it around stories of his wilderness travels. Drawn since childhood to wild places, he is an experienced solo bushwalker, one who can never resist a challenge. He writes powerfully about the connection between humans and landscape, the source of inspiration for his life’s work. Travel with him and you never know what’s coming next – but you’ll arrive exhilarated. RRP $32.95

The Conscious Cook

By Giselle Wilkinson

ISBN: 9781921221385

Giselle Wilkinson has been a social and environmental activist for over thirty years. Influenced by

early experiences of communal living and travel Education, Giselle realised earlier then most that choosing to live consciously is a powerful force for positive change. What better way to live consciously than in the kitchen? Her book takes us on a journey into the breadth of food-associated issues, helps us join the dots connecting the issues and demonstrates the complexity of sustainability and the simplicity of many of the actions involved in achieving it. Containing 50 delicious recipes covering an eclectic mix of ethnicities, ingredients and dishes, The Conscious Cook is completely different from other cookbooks. It looks at food, not only from the point of health and taste, but also through the lens of the global sustainability movement working to reduce our impact on our very stressed planet. The Conscious Cook raises awareness of the interconnections that link human health and wellbeing with that of the health of the planet. RRP $34.95 Order online at http://consciouscook.org/buy

Starsong

By Lia Scallon

The Sacred Language and melodies of Sirius channelled here through Lia are a beautiful healing gift for all. The sounds of ‘Starsong’ travel deep within to touch and heal the wounded child.

These sacred harmonics gently stir the soul, unlocking its secrets, reawakening it to recalling its true purpose. ‘The Sounds of Sirius’ are a gift to humanity at this time of great change. They come to assist us with the major shift in consciousness and to reconnect us with our true essence. Comforting, calming and deeply relaxing, ‘Starsong’ is a gentle and joyous celebration of life.

‘Starsong’ & ‘Song Of The Earth’ are companion CD’s, brought through from Spirit together. Although each individual ‘Sounds of Sirius’ recording works on many levels of the being, these two particular CDs, used together, have proven to be profound “Inner Child” therapy. Available at ABC Shops or from Lia www.soundsofsirius.com RRP $29.95

©Sudha Hamilton

Eco Living Magazine

Eco Living Emag

Midas Word

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Dec 21 2008
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Health, Published Articles

Emotional Healing – Af-X Release Therapy.

Heading: Emotional Healing.

Subheading: Af-x Release Therapy.

What first attracted me to Af-x Release Therapy©, was the notion of respect for our own mind’s ability to heal ourselves, inherent within its philosophy. Here, it seemed, was a process that put the onus on self-responsibility, instead of the almighty therapist. Having tried numerous therapies, I now have a greater respect for anything that puts me in touch with my own wisdom, rather than something that makes me dependent on someone or something else. It intrigued me, too, when I was told there would be only three sessions and I would not be required to speak much in any of them. This was definitely like no counselling I’d had before.

A Zen-like flavour pervaded my encounter with Af-x’s founding practitioner, Ian White, with few words on my part and from him a confidence in my ability to “right my own mental and emotional cart.” The silence growing within me was a welcome change from the usual chatter as I listened to him outlining the coming sessions. Why was I here? I suppose you could call it mild depression. I was also interested in experiencing this therapy. Closing my eyes and sitting back in my chair, I opened my mind to the words being spoken to me.

Af-x Release Therapy© is based on the work of the School of Affectology, developed by Australian psychotherapist, Ian White. Its roots are in studies are in studies of early childhood and the discovery that we develop a subtle emotional sense well before we begin to think conceptually. In the period of birth to 18 months, we’re developing our feeling selves long before we learn words and how to think in a narrative way. We learn what feeling responses work for us and this is the basis of the development of our emotions. This information is stored by the limbic brain, there to be called on when we require an emotional response. The process is referred to as neuro-encoding. Many of the scientific studies of this early learning period are covered in books by Goleman, Damasio, LeDoux and others.

“Of course, our affect -meaning emotional reactions, are immediate and don’t allow us to think about them because they are happening at a subconscious level – the reactions defy our rational selves,” says Ian. “Through this we build a habit of feeling,  that eventually grows into our own unconscious sense of self.” Af-x Release Therapy© predicates that these first learning’s have a powerful influence on how we react emotionally throughout our life, often without realising why. As these feelings are experienced pre-verbally, it is, Ian’s view, ineffective for the client to attempt to “talk it out.” “What is important is to allow the client to focus on, and safely reach, that inner feeling space, and it’s only through silence and a quietening of the mind’s chatter that this is possible,” says Ian. “Once there, the subconscious mind’s own sophisticated self-correcting gear is available to a simple ‘reminder like’ suggestion.”

“So isn’t this just hypnotherapy?” I put to Ian. “I prefer to use the term ‘assisted self attention’, or ‘focus  on feelings’, as it’s not necessary for the client to be in any particular state for the process to work, and the term ‘self attention’ also describes the meditative state, which I think is a closer fit for this work,” responds Ian. “Also, what is integral to understand here is that, unlike hypnotherapists and all other counsellors and psychotherapists, we are not responding to a particular complaint voiced by the client, because of course the client has not said anything. The Af-x practitioner is appealing to the client’s own innate ability as a perfect being to make the necessary adjustments to their emotional self.”

As I hear these words and ruminate on being a ‘perfect being,’ memories of my own spiritual journey filter into consciousness. I remember being told stories by my spiritual ‘master’ about how insanity was dealt with in the East, in the time of Lao Tzu; how the suffere would be locked in a cell in complete darkness with no contact with any other person, meals being slipped under the door. It sounded barbaric but, apparently, it was often a quick cure as the inflamed mental state was not pandered to and an encounter with the”original face or self” was hard to avoid. The strict adherence of the client to the no-speaking approach in Af-x therapy and the self-attention consciousness of the meditative state ring a few bells for me, so I am not surprised to learn that Ian White trained as a Zen Bukkyo monk in his earlier years.

“Yes, I sat in Zasen in black hakama robes, being whacked on the back with an oak walking stick by the senior monk and scrubbing a sterile, perfectly clean floor over and over again, and all that other exciting stuff, but I never really took to it because it didn’t deal with my impatience about helping bring peace to my fellow person,” says White.

It is perhaps that focus that has led Ian to a life devoted to assisting in the healing of thousands through the development and refinement of Af-x Release Therapy©. Through the School of Affectology, Ian White has trained Af-x practitioners in Australia, the US and Europe. He and those who are using the therapy in their work have had particular success in dealing with those apparently suffering from the many forms of depression, as well as a host of other mental-emotional problems. Ian says, “One of the most important aspects of the Af-x approach is that we do not consider that ongoing psychotherapy is productive in changes for the better. In fact, ongoing therapy actually gets in the way of people making the mental and emotional change choices that bring about success.”

“How do you monitor whether three sessions are enough or are effective at all?” I ask.

“Over the past 10 years, every Af-x client has been asked to participate in a feedback system,” Ian ventures. “Questionnaires are sent out guaranteeing that the client’s responses will remain confidential and anonymous. We just get the pure data and so we know in the majority of cases that it is working.”

Many ex-clients have come forward to volunteer their personal stories about their experiences with Af-x. It’s through this process that I am able to read through testimonials from clients who have visited an Af-x practitioner. Although these people range widely in age and circumstance, there’s a common theme, which runs through their experiences. In nearly all cases, they were previously informed by health professionals that they were suffering from depression, panic attacks or stress and required medication. One testimonial in particular caught my attention – “Lisa’s Story.” I think it was because, being a teenager, Lisa (not her real name) conveyed her situation with that rawness and emotional honesty often seen in her age group.

Lisa’s Story (age 17)

“For many years I suffered from what is known as clinical depression, a diagnosis I received from psychiatrists and doctors. From the early days of my problem, I was prescribed various antidepressants. I also suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. During this time, I thought about suicide on many occasions. Life seemed to be of no use, no purpose, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of it living in the big black hole I seemed to exist in. I felt lost and alone. No one knew how to help me. Of course, many people tried to help, but for a long while I suffered alone, thinking I was beyond help; just willing myself to die. On more than one occasion, I attempted to take my life, never thinking I could find any solutions to getting any better than just coping from day to day, taking drugs and lashing out at everyone and everything around me.

“My friends and family were desperate for my recovery. Endless visits to the school counsellor seemed to make no difference. I spent many months ‘in therapy’ with a psychiatrist. Same outcome. Those many years of taking antidepressants and even alternative natural medication resulted in no answer. In fact, things were getting steadily worse. Quite apart from my depressive sickness, there was a steadily increasing pressure on me to get better. Pressure that people who had no idea of the loneliness of me applied. I know they had the best intentions, but they didn’t know they were adding incredibly to my burden.

“Then my parents heard about Ian White and his work, which he called Af-x therapy. My parents had no idea how it worked and, quite incorrectly, translated it to me as being ‘hypnotherapy.’ This, of course, didn’t help my expectations and I was opposed to the idea of seeing him from the start. In fact, I was very sceptical about the idea, I thought it would be another case of crazy person with crazy antics claiming to have all the answers. For this reason, I refused the treatment.

“After months of my family pleading with me to ‘give it a go’, I reluctantly agreed. In all honesty, that was merely to stop the pleading and give me an excuse to say to them, ‘See, this didn’t work, either!’ I walked into his rooms, making it very obvious that I didn’t want to be there and I was only there to ‘shut everybody up’.  Of course, I was determined to derail anything he was going to try with me. As a result of my many visits to other counsellors and therapists, I was certain I knew how to handle him to my own ends.

“But I was very surprised at his approach. Now, in hindsight, I would say I was pleasantly surprised. Ian was lovely and considerate of the fact that I had been pressured to undergo treatment. He talked about that pressure right from the outset and gave the impression that he knew all about how I felt about ‘everybody trying to tell me what’s best for me’.  He made me feel very comfortable and relaxed and told me I was ‘the boss’. In other words, he did not do or say anything I was uncomfortable with and I was given no reason to oppose the idea of going ahead with helping myself out of the dilemma.

“He explained the procedures of Af-x very clearly, removing any idea that there was ‘a mystery’ about what he had to offer. Ian explained he didn’t want me to talk unless I wanted to ask a general question about the treatment. He explained why it was important for me not to try to put my problems into words. That was a great relief, because I had been trying unsuccessfully to put my problems into words for years. I had always left counsellors’ offices wondering whether I had really explained things in a truthful way.

“After my third session I thanked Ian for his time and walked away wondering when and if I would notice any change. In some ways, even though I had enjoyed my time in the therapy, I still couldn’t see how it could help to ‘say nothing’ and ‘take notice of my self’. I did what Ian suggested and tried not to analyse what we had done in therapy. As a matter of fact, I tended to forget I had gone to see him.

“About a month later, I stated to feel very strong, physically and emotionally, and I decided to stop taking medication for my depression. I had depended on that medication for such a long time, that there was a part of me that seemed to be saying, ‘Well, I’ll stop taking it and that’ll prove that I can do without it.’ But that didn’t happen. I started to notice that my energy levels were gradually rising and my desire for sleep was declining. I also started to notice I had a calmer and less aggressive approach to negative situations. My friends, my family and my teachers all noticed and commented on this change. I no longer felt a need to resolve my problems with violence, verbal or otherwise, and for the first time in my life I felt happy. Although I did not understand how the therapy worked, I remember on many occasions, the things he said and explained came back to me in those moments when I once would have become depressed or lost my temper.

“Today, eight months after my therapy, I am still not taking medication, I’m attending the gym three times a week and I seem to not react to things as I used to- angrily. I receive compliments all the time on how much I have improved in all areas of my life. At times, these comments are about changes that I think are obvious, but sometimes I’m surprised that people have noticed some of the more gentle changes to who I am. I feel like I have eventually found myself, and found the person inside that I once used to be, and found the person I can be.”

No analysing?

The idea that we can undergo change without analysing it, talking it through and even intellectually understanding that change is baffling for many people. In many of the volunteered stories I read the most common response was: “I don’t know how this thing worked but it did.” Ian White talks about ‘re-education’, that the work of Af-x Release Therapy© is all about re-educating our early emotional selves. This is subtle stuff and it doesn’t employ any high tech gadgetry….well, except, that is, for the most sophisticated gadget of all, the human mind. Perhaps as we evolve further we will learn to value the finer workings of the human brain. At present, our models of our own consciousness are computers, which in truth are terribly inadequate.

For many people, the whole purpose of their visit to a counsellor is to pour out their problems, so this ban on words can be a major deterrent. Ian explains it’s absolutely vital to the success of the therapy: “As soon as you listen to their story you are complicit in their world paradigm – the half truths, the snippets of pseudo self-help theories they’ve picked up and applied to their own situation; and you are caught in their web with them. The Af-x practitioner comes clean to the table and bypasses all this completely, working directly with the subconscious emotional mind.” White likens this process to the Zen therapeutic approach of “holding the mirror firmly.”

After speaking with Ian for many hours about his past training and personal experiences, I begin to get a picture of how this therapy has come into being. The development of Affectology has been a constant evolution of a work that began with a desire to understand the qualities of consciousness. Having at its core a profound respect for the ‘perfection’ of humankind, it’s a therapy for a conscious age. Also, at that core seems to be a deep concern for the way society believes many of the damaging myths about our mental and emotional wellbeing.

How was it for me? I experienced an upsurge of self-belief immediately after the sessions, which I had over a three week period. My self esteem, which had been low, due to a failed relationship that had ended some 16 months before, felt markedly stronger at the conclusion of the sessions. While I was suffering only a low level of depression, the results were gentle and subtle, yet definite. As for curing ‘the human condition’, Ian White maintains strongly that our human condition is already perfect but needs some guidance for reflective emotional and mental healing. That’s the nature of Af-x Release Therapy©.

There are now a number of practitioners who have been trained by the School of Affectology in Australia, the US and Sweden. Ian White is currently in Greece, training practitioners in Athens.

©Sudha Hamilton

Appeared in WellBeing Magazine.

The Sacred Chef cooking school on the sunshine coast for nutritious and delicious food for better health and happiness!

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Dec 21 2008
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Health, Published Articles

Thought Field Therapy – Tapping the healer within.

Heading: Thought Field Therapy.

Subheading: Tapping the healer within.

Do our thoughts have an energy field? Are we beginning to see the emergence of a new type of medicine based on the treatment and understanding of subtle energy fields? Thought Field Therapy (TFT) is one of these new therapeutic tools that may seem like magic from the outside, but is firmly based on the premise of our thoughts having an energy field.

It is interesting to stop and consider our own thinking processes. Especially those thoughts we run through our conscious mind again and again. Usually when we are very concerned about something and we begin to obsess about it. Is there an energy field around these obsessive thoughts? How are these thoughts affecting our physiology?

Is our autonomic nervous system reacting to how these thoughts are making us feel?

Perhaps even before we have registered that we are having an emotional reaction to these thoughts.

In the instance of trauma or severe anxiety, it is understood that these negative thoughts are encoded or embedded in our subconscious mind and can subsequently produce a range of physical reactions without first registering in the conscious mind. These so called diseases of the mind, psycho-symptomatic phobias, post traumatic stress and the like, have been and still are difficult conditions for our doctors and psychologists to successfully treat. As there has been no pharmacological answer to the debilitating experience of severe anxiety, except drugging the person into a state of apathy, the onus has fallen upon the “talk therapy” of our psychologists.

One of these psychologists was Dr Roger Callaghan, the founder of Thought Field Therapy (TFT) and the author of Tapping the Healer Within, the definitive TFT self-help book. Dr Callaghan who trained and practised as a clinical psychologist in the USA, and was associate professor of psychology at the University of East Michigan, was professionally frustrated at his own, and his colleagues, lack of success in treating these types of illnesses with cognitive based “talk therapies”. “Whether we were treating them for depression, phobias, or a shattered relationship, too many clients seem entrapped in years of expensive psychotherapy, talking endlessly about their life circumstances. They’d painfully relive their trauma. They’d often blame something or someone in their past for their current troubles. But at the end of the day- or the year- they had nothing to show for it,” he states in his book.

This led him to explore therapeutic approaches outside the mainstream. This quest would eventually open his mind, almost accidentally, to the consideration of Chinese medicine and its theory of energy meridians running through the human body. Whilst seeing a long term patient, who had a severe water phobia, Dr Callaghan chanced upon the idea, almost out of desperation, of using the acupressure points on the body to treat the symptoms of the phobia. The patient had said, “I feel it in the pit of my stomach. Every time I look at or think of water I feel it right here in my stomach.” Although not formally trained in acupuncture, Dr Callaghan knew that that position directly under the eye was the location of the concluding point of the stomach meridian. Instructing the client to tap with two fingers on that particular spot and to think about her fear of water he was amazed when she reported back a few minutes later that the sick feeling in her stomach was gone. Further more the client was positive that she was no longer afraid of water.

Although skeptical at the time, Dr Callaghan continued refining this technique through research and trial and error. He was hopeful that the stunning result that he had achieved with this one patient would be reproduced with all his patients, he was to be disappointed. However, as this was the most powerful healing experience he had had in thirty years of practising he persevered with his research into what would become TFT. He discovered that with certain clients a whole series of meridian points would need to be tapped and not just anyhow but in specific sequences. The value of this was that many more clients with a variety of psychological ailments beyond just phobias were helped and a system of tapping “algorithms” was developed.

These “algorithms” or specialised sequences of tapping on various pressure points on the body are used in conjunction with the initial focus on the thought that contains the fear, anger or negative emotion. It is paramount to the effectiveness of TFT that the person experiencing the therapy holds that thought in their consciousness. Thus the thought field is activated and the therapy can do its work. Apart from the tapping there is also a series of exercises involving the opening and closing of the eyes and the pointing of them in various directions.

These eye movements are common to a variety of therapeutic techniques and Dr Callaghan explains that the eyes are an extension of the brain. “I believe that each eye movement may access a different area of the brain. Some research shows, for example that when the eyes are open, the back of the brain receives relatively greater stimulation; when they are closed, the front of the brain is more stimulated.” In addition he states, “the humming and counting processes are designed to activate the right and left brain, respectively. Theoretically, the right side of the brain is being receptive to treatment by the humming and tapping, and the left side of the brain by the counting and tapping.”

If you are like me when you first begin these exercises you may feel a little like an uncoordinated child on your first day at ballet classes, trying to rub your tummy and pat your head at the same time. With a little clear instruction and practice you soon get the hang of it though, and even when I fell on the floor laughing I noticed how much better I was feeling already.

Dr Callaghan’s study of several other fields has also contributed to the evolution of TFT. His look into physics has given him a language and a scientific structure to explain the effectiveness of TFT. Starting with Einstein’s basic postulation that everything is energy (E = mc2) then thought is an energy. This energy has a field like a magnetic or gravitational field; you cannot see them but they exist. Dr Callaghan in his book employs a dictionary definition for a field as thus: “a complex of forces that serve as causative agents in human behaviour.” He goes on to say, ” The thought field is the most fundamental concept in TFT. This intangible structure or scaffolding can contain large amounts of information, but in treating psychological distress, we’ll concentrate on the negative emotions you are experiencing. When you are terrified of snakes, devastated by a marital breakup, or depressed over the loss of a job, the cause of this disturbance is contained in the thought field.” Dr Callaghan then uses the term “perturbation” to describe this disturbance in the thought field – this is a unique entity according to him that contains “active information” (a quantum physics concept) of a highly specified sort that can be isolated within the thought field. He states, “the psychological upset is due not to a trauma or the loss of a love, for example. These experiences give rise to the perturbation, but it is the perturbation itself that is responsible for generating, guiding, and controlling all of the fundamental changes within the body.”

One of the most interesting pieces of scientific evidence produced in Dr Callaghan’s book to support the health benefits of TFT is its effect on Heart Rate Variability or HRV. HRV, which is the quantified variation in the intervals between heartbeats, has been used in cardiological research (for the last 30 years) as an indicator into the functioning of the autonomic nervous system. A low variation in heart beats per minute is seen as a depressed HRV and can be a warning about the health of the patient’s heart. Whereas the higher variability in pulse rates per minute is a sign of better overall health. Dr Callaghan has been assessing the physiological health of his patient’s bodies through HRV, before and after TFT sessions. He states, “although you probably aren’t conscious of it, your heart functions with subtle variations between beats. In fact HRV appears to be the most accurate tool we have for monitoring the autonomic nervous system or ANS, which is the internal system that controls heartbeat, breathing, body temperature, blood pressure, blood chemistry, tissue repair, metabolism, immune function, and other processes considered involuntary and beyond conscious control. Clearly, the more optimally your ANS is functioning, the healthier you are likely to be.”

The dramatic results that TFT has achieved with patients, some of whom were seriously ill with heart conditions, in raising their HRV has shown Dr Callaghan that the psychological healing is also producing measurable physiological changes.  He states, “I often use HRV to evaluate TFT whether I’m trying to heal a patient’s anger, grief, anxiety, or phobia, or relieve his or her physical problems such as migraine pain or allergies. HRV is an adjunct to TFT that objectively demonstrates and quantifies the effectiveness of this breakthrough therapeutic technique.”

Dr Callaghan goes on to quote further HRV/TFT testing that has been done by Dr Fuller Royal, medical director of the Nevada Clinic. “Heart Rate Variability is the only test known that will not respond to the placebo effect,” he said. “You can’t fool the autonomic nervous system.” He added, “TFT has been for me a nice piece of the puzzle that has been missing on how to enter, and correct rapidly, defects in the autonomic nervous system.”

The broadening research into HRV as a clear indicator of our state of health, and in many studies as the strongest predictor of mortality is widely covered in Dr Callaghan’s book. He also puts forward research that states, “making changes – particularly rapid changes – in HRV readings is virtually impossible. Two studies (one of humans, the other an animal study) found that exercise was the only common way to get those HRV scores to budge in a positive way, but even then it would take eight weeks or more of intense physical activity to produce improvements.” This puts TFT’s remarkable effect on HRV into context.

Personally, I find that TFT seems to be a whole body therapy that listens not just to our chattering mind but is a further revelation in the understanding of the holistic paradigm. It is another step forward in removing our focus away from just what lies between our ears. We hear the words, that we are an interconnected system within an even larger interconnected system, but perhaps now we are beginning to see the proof of that through our healing experiences.

I did have some preconceived doubts and negativity in regard to how quickly TFT works in many of the cases reported. I suppose I share a common attitude about therapy and spirituality that we need to suffer to truly understand, before we are relieved of our burdens. For those who have carried these debilitating conditions, it is often like a miracle when they are set free from them. We as human beings are, I think, examples of the most incredible life forms, and the growing awareness of energy medicine is very exciting. TFT is part of that continuing enlightenment.

Now with more than twenty years’ research into TFT, Dr Callaghan, and a substantial number of therapists all over the world are achieving unparalleled success in the treatment of phobias, anxieties and psychological disorders. The work has evolved and been refined even further with the next generation “Voice Technology.” In Australia, Eugene Piccinotti has established a TFT centre here, and offers workshops all over the country. Eugene trained with Dr Callaghan in the USA, and personally overcame huge obstacles through TFT. Like many before him, he tried numerous variations of “talk therapy” without success. Eugene has now facilitated hundreds of people into energy shifting TFT releases, and continues to be inspired by the work.

©Sudha Hamilton

Appeared in WellBeing Magazine.

Eco Living Magazine

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Dec 15 2008
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Blog Posts

What is the Wellness Industry?

Heading: What is the Wellness Industry?

Subheading: A look at the health system.

Welcome to the latest installment of Midas Words, where words are designed to change your world, whether it be for the wiser or the wealthier. Midas Words has been created to stimulate thought and to aid you in your journey into greater wellbeing, in business and in life. There has been of late, a great deal of talk about the new – “wellness industry” – and I think it might be useful to establish what some of its defining aspects are.

Looking back historically, humanity has always been interested in its own mortality, how to preserve it, improve it and prolong it. At the same time, these primary urges have also often provoked an economic response, as those with the knowledge and/or skills to heal, have sought to be renumerated for their services. A fare exchange being the bedrock upon which we have based our capitalist system, and which allows those so inclined to practise their specialised craft.

For the last hundred years, or so, the state sponsored health industry in our country has been the exclusive domain of those trained via the allopathic school of medicine (defined as the use of opposites in treating disease* and is commonly referred to as ‘modern medicine”). A consequence of this proliferation of a “one school” specialised approach, has been the disempowerment of the individual in his or her responsibility for their own health. Our failure, to include a greater emphasis on health and wellbeing, when educating our young has further removed the individual’s ability to manage his or her own health.

However, despite some magnificent breakthroughs in the treatment of diseases such as childhood leukaemia, heart disease and many more, there has been a growing general disaffection with modern medicine and its inability to treat chronic illnesses. Perhaps also in part due to its failure to respectfully deal with the mind, as distinct from the body, and science’s continuing inability to understand human consciousness; but also in it’s arrogant dismissal of alternative healing approaches. Modern medicine is after all a big business, and like many big businesses, it prefers a monopoly to competition for those health dollars. Funded by large pharmaceutical corporations it treads a precarious path in its bid to fulfil its Hippocratic oath,** and not be swayed by the often unseen lure of filthy lucre.

It is the general overview of the modern medical/pharmaceutical behemoth, that there will be a pharmacological cure/treatment for every disease/medical condition, if you can find or fabricate the right drug/ingredient. Whether this premise is indeed correct, or not, cannot hide the fact that for many people the current crop of available pharmaceutical drugs is not the panacea that they are searching for right now. Many in the community (a recent Victorian survey confirmed up to two thirds surveyed had consulted an alternative non-allopathic practitioner) have turned away from the local GP, prescribing pain killers and antibiotics, in search of an alternative, that is possibly more inclusive and often gives them more time, care and understanding. In response to this market led shift away from complete dominance of the health industry there has been some small cross fertilisation by doctors learning acupuncture, naturopathy, homeopathy and the like – and the renaming of alternative health as complementary health (proving in business that if you cannot eradicate your competition then the next best thing is to incorporate them into your own business).

This just about puts us where we are, at the beginning of the 21C, and in the midst of a trend or movement toward wellness or preventative medicine, where a growing proportion of the population are self-medicating with vitamins, minerals, supplements and organic food. This is generally, I believe, in the hope that they will avoid many of the diseases, that their parents and grandparents have fallen foul of, and indeed beyond that- to live longer and better lives. Enter the wellness industry with its rapidly growing nutriceutical manufacturers, associated bodies representing natural practitioners, natural health media and a host of astute businesses, recognising a hugely expanding market, that have jumped on the band wagon.

As in many sections within the business community, you can find a mixture of motivating reasons why these people are involved in this particular industry: personal commitments based on health issues that have affected themselves or a close family member; vocational destiny; avarice, pure chance and a combination of the above. However, as more and more existing companies seek to align themselves with this push toward health, the number of people, who will find themselves working in a health related field, will continue to grow exponentially; and these people will need to be educated beyond their current level of knowledge.

The recognition and accreditation, recently achieved by many of the natural health educational institutions, is tantamount to this fact. The establishment of the Complementary Healthcare Council, under the direction of the Therapeutic Goods Administration, and the ever growing legislative requirements of this body- is further testament to the size and recognition of the natural health industry. Recent problems, best illustrated by the Pan Vitamin Crisis, saw the largest recall of vitamins ever seen in this country. Hundreds of lines of vitamin supplements were recalled, in defiance of the fact, that Pan, was also a manufacturer of pharmaceuticals, and that the Travacalm product, which caused the serious complaints, which led to the TGA action, was actually a pharmaceutical item. This disturbing incident has created a certain unease within the general public and I am sure has had long lasting negative implications for the industry.

However it seems regulation is necessary, and for the industry to continue to grow, certain requirements will need to be met. History shows, that pioneers, who establish new industries will often resent government interference at first, but that it is part and parcel of the natural evolution from small to big business. Of course many of the vitamin manufacturers are primarily pharmaceutical companies, who have developed the vitamins as a side line or who recognising the market growth have bought in. It does raise certain questions about their positions on the Complementary Healthcare Council and could be seen to be somewhat compromised. Who are they representing, and what hat are they wearing, when decisions affecting both the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry and the traditionally less regulated natural health supplement industry are being made. It is in my view, always a shame, when the expense of regulation moves an industry out of the financial reach of many of those who wish to take part in it, but the upside of this is the removal of many of the so called “snake oil” salesmen who inhabit it (the future possibility that snake oil is found to actually contain the ingredients of some wonder drug would render this metaphor obsolete). Welcome to the wellness industry.

* whereas homeopathy uses minute doses of substances that create similar effects to the existing symptoms of the condition.

**

HippocratesHippocrates, the father of medicine

Hippocratic Oath — Classical Version

I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfil according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:

To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art – if they desire to learn it – without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else.

I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.

Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.

What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.

If I fulfil this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.

Translation from the Greek by Ludwig Edelstein. From The Hippocratic Oath: Text, Translation, and Interpretation, by Ludwig Edelstein. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1943.

©Sudha Hamilton

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Dec 10 2008
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Blog Posts, Health, Reviews, Uncategorized

Foodmatters DVD Review

Heading: Foodmatters DVD Reviewed.

Subheading: You are what you eat.

I was really impressed with the content of Foodmatters – You are what you eat - strong voices speaking with confidence about nutrition in the face of the institutionalised apathetic attitude of the scientific/medical community.

This subject has been close to my own heart for many years, and it is great to see that these film makers have produced a high quality documentary with something to say, which really matters. Food does matter, and the betrayal of humanity’s needs by capitalism in this regard is a crime – millions of people with cancer and heart disease, dead and dying, while our supermarket shelves are groaning with processed foods full of fat, salt and sugar.

If it is always about the money, if money is the bottom line, then we are all just slaves on a production line heading to the cemetary. Of course it isn’t really about money, it is about living with heart and soul. Stop buying crap – fast food, pre-prepared food and start cooking fresh food.

Start growing your own organic veggies, and if you stop ‘working for the man’ – stop lining the pockets of the rich, you will have the time available to do so. It feels a hell of a lot better than telling the lies we all have to tell to make a living.

Foodmatters the DVD – has some very intelligent people, sharing some poorly understood information, about the importance of eating good food. Andrew Saul is particularly impressive in the way he communicates what he knows, and the state of play in the world. It is bloody unbelievable that doctors publicly question the validity of vitamins, and that hospitals feed you white bread and packaged custard. In the US, hundreds of thousands of people die every year from wrongly prescribed, and misadministered pharmaceutical drugs, and the numbers may be lower in Australia but it is still much higher than those killed on our roads.

A point of interest here – it is quite difficult to get this information in Australia, as, suprise suprise, all the focus in studies is on illicit drugs; it seems hospital mortality rates are a closely guarded secret.

Andrew Saul makes the point, that there have been ten suspected deaths in the US involving vitamins over the last twenty three years - only suspected, never proven - while he conservatively figures that over two million people have been conclusively shown to have died from wrongly prescribed medication. Our health system here, as in the US, is in the hands of vested interest groups, pharmaceutical corporations and the associations of doctors who dole out their product to you and me.

Government health policies are controlled by the medical lobby groups and in the US, the re-election of MP’s are funded by pharmaceutical money. In Australia, the AMA is always on the front foot, threatening state and federal governments with action by their doctor members, if their wishes are not met. Hospitals are run by doctors and bureaucrats, who used to be doctors, all trained in the same system, and every road leads back to the drug companies.

The scientific medical journals, which publish discriminately, ‘ so called’ medical breakthroughs, and research studies, are funded by the pharmaceutical companies through their advertising spend. The studies themselves are directly funded by the drug companies. The regulatory bodies are funded by the pharmaceutical corporations. The doctors, until recently in Australia, were encouraged to sell more pharma product by being  presented with lavish gifts – holidays, all expenses paid conferences, golfing trinkets and luxury goods, by the companies that made them. It is now illegal in Australia for the pharma giants to do so.

The PR employed by pharma and the medical associations is immense. When you hear about a medical breakthrough or new ‘wonder drug’ on the nightly news, this information has been fed to the TV stations and newspapers by PR agencies in the employ of the drug companies. There has usually been very little journalistic scrutiny engaged by the media in these instances. Why? Because the money involved is big and the pharmaceutical corporate influence is so heavily embedded in our western cultures that we hardly are even aware of it anymore.

The widely held assumptions run something like this -

Doctors are like Gods because they heal the sick.

Drugs are the modern saviours of our wonderful health system.

Things were bad before we had all these drugs to fight off disease.

Now there is some truth in these statements but that does not mean that we cannot debate aspects of modern medicine’s approach to healing. It does not mean that we have to accept the way things are currently run. Why does the AMA want to control things so much? And why do they actively disparage any other approach to healing?

Money!

You cannot easily make so much money from encouraging and indeed selling fresh healthy food. You cannot copyright fresh produce to the same extent as an artificially produced pharmaceutical drug – but they are trying with Genetically Modified canola and the like. In Australia, many of the vitamin producers are now owned by pharmaceutical companies, as there are a lot of vitamins being sold, despite the best efforts of the medical fraternity in rubbishing their efficacy.

The Pan Vitamin Crisis may still be fresh in the minds of many Australians – funny that it is referred to by that name, as Pan was a producer of pharmaceautical products and the poisoning, which occurred with Travacalm, was a pharmaceutical not a vitamin supplement. This did not however stop the TGA from stripping from our shelves, Australia wide, every Vitamin supplement ever made by Pan. Damaging the natural health supplement industry on every level and putting many smaller concerns out of business permanently.

Once again this echoes Andrew Saul’s  playfully expressed conundrum – why, if every one is dying from pharmaceutical poisoning and nobody is dying from vitamin overdoses, are the medical fraternity so worried about natural health supplements? Why are they pointing the finger at the wrong suspect and hiding their own gross mortality rates?

Foodmatters is beautifully put together and maintains an inspirational but determined tone throughout its eighty minute duration. It isnt a rant (unlike my blog at times), it is full of intelligent experts like Prof Ian Brighthope, Charlotte Gerson, Phillip Day, Dr Dan Rogers, David Wolfe and Jerome Burne. It points out startling inconsistencies in the way our health system operates, and the way our food chain has been exploited and polluted by capitalism, in search of bigger profits. It illustrates why we are getting sick with chronic illnesses, which modern medicine cannot heal; because it cannot cut them out or prescribe an effective pill.

Nutritionists, turned film makers, James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch, have created a timely masterpiece, which buzzes with alive energy and contains a poignant message for humanity.  I loved the way they employed archived footage and audio from the fifties and sixties, complete with smug voice over and patronising tone, conveying our ‘ all knowing’ western science of the time, now proven to be a toxic disaster.

If you want to watch something, which is hard hitting, vibrant and intelligent, watch this.


©Sudha Hamilton

Sacred Chef cooking school on the sunshine coast for nutritious and delicious food, fun learning and good living

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Dec 06 2008
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parenting, Published Articles

Raising Children Consciously

Heading: RAISING CHILDREN CONSCIOUSLY

Subheading : Parenting for a peaceful world.

By Sudha Hamilton & Suzy Barry

Is parenting a thankless task of unfathomable consequences or an opportunity to bring a keener light of consciousness to our universe?

Parenting is a state that resides deep within the lands of instinct and tradition. The most common determinant of your parenting instincts is your own parents and how they parented you. Depending on the circumstances you may either repeat that act of parenting or do the opposite in reaction to the unwelcome reminder of your own parent-induced trauma.

This repetition in parenting behaviour patterns is condemning us to keep on making the same mistakes again and again. If you do not take responsibility for raising your children in the most enlightened manner possible then how can you ever expect them to take responsibility for themselves, their health, their state of mind and their ability to love. It is a challenge to stand apart from the ever repeating cycle and honestly ask yourself, “what do I want for my child in every moment?”

It is those moments that make up the whole. So what does it all mean? How can we apply the same level of consciousness to raising our children as we do to our own issues? Here are some practical solutions for ‘aware parenting’.

The “Fourth Trimester”

The first few months of new parenthood can be considered the “fourth trimester” of your baby’s life. For parents they are the most intense, but need not be the most difficult! Humans are born at the earliest maturation of all mammals. Consider other mammals that are born almost as fragile and dependent as humans. A baby orang-utan is carried almost constantly on its mother’s body until it is capable of dealing with life on its own. This is a useful way to look at the early months: it helps to separate the advice based on this premise and the advice characteristic of a fast-paced, ‘get things done’ society.

Controlled Crying

Controlled Crying is an example of a common practice considered to be harmful and unnatural by many. Keeping your baby close is what’s best for baby and your relationship with them. You might say, “There are no predators in the nursery, my baby is safe,” but the hollow sound of a baby’s unanswered anguished cries indicates a type of predator, a human emotional predator, which can engender a sense of abandonment and is extremely distressing for the infant. The Australian Association for Infant Mental Health has expressed concern and does not encourage this practice of Control Crying and other variations on the theme, which essentially disregard the only method of communication available to your child. Babies and young children have shorter sleep cycles providing more opportunity for awakening but also more REM sleep and hence, essential brain development. This means that if those inconvenient awakenings that infants are prone to in the first two years or so, are by-products of the short sleep cycles, which are vital for their brain development. Controlled Crying and other sleep training methods designed to keep children asleep for longer periods, must train them out of these shorter cycles, hence rob them of their quota of REM.

Physical touch

English psychiatrist John Bowlby, developed in the nineteen sixties, what has come to be known as attachment theory. This theory holds that babies thrive best on having a secure touch orientated attachment to their parents, being constantly held rather than being placed in a pram or cot. More recently science has detected positive benefits to the babies immune system when they are predominantly held in states of physical closeness to the mother or primary carer.

When you think about it, it is not so surprising, having been inside the womb for nine months, the transition from mother’s body to spending large parts of the day in a pram or cot, away from the reassuring heart beat of the mother does seem harsh. Jean Liedloff in her nineteen seventy five seminal book, The Continuum Concept, named this vital stage in early childhood care the “in-arms phase.” Spending several years in the jungles of South America with a tribe of Indians, she observed a different and decidedly more nurturing way to raise children.

Skin to skin contact is a vital physical reassurance to the newborn child and like our monkey forebears this contact provides a successful two million year old continuum. Strapping the baby to the mother by means of a sling or other similar device allows the child to be part of the mother’s energy field and has been a part of numerous cultures throughout the world; in Africa; Asia and beyond. Through observation the baby is also learning about the mother’s universe, her day-to-day activities. Beware though of the front packs where the legs hang straight down, they are not good for spinal development. [STUDIES?]

Rochelle L. Casses, D.C, taken from http://continuum-concept.org/reading/spinalStress.html

“A baby’s spine is placed in a compromising position in many of today’s popular carriers. If the carrier positions the infant upright, with the legs hanging down and the bodyweight supported at the base of the baby’s spine (i.e. at the crotch), it puts undue stress on the spine which can adversely affect the development of the spinal curves and, in some cases, cause spondylolisthesis (forward slipping of a vertebra on the one below it).

Spondylolisthesis is documented in approximately 5% of white males, but is prevalent in native Eskimos (as high as 60% of the population is affected). There has been much discussion on the high percentage of affected Eskimos as to whether it is a genetic predisposition or related to environmental factors (i.e., papoose carriers). Knowing how dynamic and vital the biomechanics of the spine are, I believe that environmental factors are the cause. If the trend continues in the U.S. to carry infants in carriers (or place them in walkers, jumpers, etc.) that place their spines in a weight bearing position before the spine is developmentally ready to do so, I believe we will see an increase in the incidence of spondylolisthesis”

Breastfeeding

The World Health Organisation recommends breastfeeding for the first two years and beyond. The WHO encourages food as a diet of food and bm after 6 months, exclusive bfeeding up to 2 years and beyond.

“Promoting appropriate feeding for infants and young children

10. Breastfeeding is an unequalled way of providing ideal food for the

healthy growth and development of infants; it is also an integral

part of the reproductive process with important implications for

the health of mothers. As a global public health recommendation,

infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of

life to achieve optimal growth, development and health.1 Thereafter,

to meet their evolving nutritional requirements, infants should

receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods while

breastfeeding continues for up to two years of age or beyond. Exclusive

breastfeeding from birth is possible except for a few medical

conditions, and unrestricted exclusive breastfeeding results in

ample milk production.”

http://www.waba.org.my/docs/gs_iycf.pdf

The WHO’s recommendation to exclusively breastfeeding to six months should not be mistaken as an instruction to wean at six months. There are wonderful benefits to full term breastfeeding. Six months is such a premature time to wean when the human history is taken into account as is the world’s current population. If you can do it, the best foundation for ensuring your child’s needs are being met is to breastfeed on demand for the first year and as long as is mutually desirable. Some time in the second year, the child’s understanding of others’ needs may grow to allow you to gently begin to assert your own needs, your own instincts and your child’s reaction are the best guides here. Breast milk changes with the growing infant and is undoubtedly the best source of nutrition for a young child.

Toddler Years and Beyond

The toddler years are the beginning of individuation and undoubtedly the most challenging for many parents and children. The toddler is becoming aware that they are separate people and their own desires are emerging and taking control of their body, mind, voice and spirit. The age of the tantrum is upon you! How many of us have looked at or partaken in a sort of release therapy? Toddlers should be release therapy practitioners. They are open valves of emotion, they live in the moment and embody the oneness that so many of us are striving for.

Raising toddlers consciously means not crushing this exuberance, whilst guiding your tremendous toddler in the ways of the world, via your own personal boundaries. To parent authentically is to allow your toddler to express themselves within the boundaries you are comfortable with. There is no benefit to the toddler allowing them to climb on your head, while you patiently wait for their exuberance to change to respect, you need to indicate that you have personal boundaries. They are now ready for them. In teaching them that you need your boundaries respected, they will learn to give this respect and expect the same from others; here we have the foundation of respect for self.

Gentle Discipline

Gentle discipline means respecting your toddler as another human being. It does not mean allowing them to walk all over you as this is rarely what the toddler wants or needs. Gentle discipline involves negotiation from a place of empathy with a view to a long-term goal, as opposed to short-term convenience of an obedient toddler with eyes downcast in shame. Shaming and physical punishment/ solitary confinement (time-out) have become the cornerstone of popular discipline. This is what Robin Grille, psychologist and psychotherapist, in his book Parenting for a Peaceful World terms operating in “Socializing Mode”. The socializing mode is characterized by the preoccupation with social norms and producing children who will function well in society, be employable, polite and well mannered. In order to train children it is necessary to curb their natural desires in some way. Every time we employ these conventional methods, we are attempting to “break” our children. An obedient animal has its sprit broken, and every time this happens to a child, a little of them must surely die.

Redirection

If you see your child becoming aggressive, don’t wait for them to hit someone, and then punish them. Intervene, ask if they are feeling angry and tell them it is not acceptable to hit people, but that it is just fine to feel angry and invite them to belt a cushion to alleviate their frustration. This can be great fun!

Negotiation

Invite and employ negotiation. Think about the wonderful skills you are passing on by respecting their desires enough to negotiate. Blind obedience loses its appeal somewhat after about age 10, then we value initiative. Probably one of the few simple formulas: If your child doesn’t want their nappy changed, but it is stinky and you need to go out. You can say: “We have to change your nappy, but would you like to bring this toy with you, or this one?” Or “We have to change your nappy now, but would you like to do it on the change table or on the couch?” This alleviates the monotony a toddler must feel of not being in charge by giving them a choice within your own boundaries. You need to go out now – that is your boundary – so within that, what can you offer?

Allow Expression

Frustration abounds in the toddler years, they are becoming independent in so many ways, but their natural exuberance means that they are often met with opposition from parents and from their own capacity. Allow and encourage tantrums, they are the toddler’s therapy; they are valid expressions and should be honoured. If your child wants chocolate in the middle of shopping and you don’t want her to have it – fair enough! But…she will be upset and though it wouldn’t distress you that much, it is the end of the world for her, so there is no point telling her it’s not! Let her sit on the ground and have a ‘tanty’, really what’s the big deal, be brave and weather the disapproving glances of the old ladies who ‘never would have had that in their day’ or who would ‘have given them short shrift’. Remember, it is children brought up under that paradigm who pack the waiting rooms of therapists, and whose depression levels have hit record levels. Honour your child and focus on your child and you will be amazed at the transformation after she has grieved the chocolate experience that never was.

Look behind the behaviour

It is important that you delve beneath the behaviour presented by your child and always ask, “Why?” A holistic way is to look at the whole child, not just the behaviour you would like to stamp out. What is happening for your child that is making them react in this way? Can you help them? As we all know; it is always better to deal with the cause than the symptom.

Unconditional Parenting

Alfie Kohn has published works including “Unconditional Parenting” on the problems with a system of punishments and rewards. We are not dealing with a rat, which is what behaviourism was based upon. (The faith in a punishment/reward system is based on studies conducted with rats and morsels of food; not humans).

Withholding love and approval sends a message to our children that they are only lovable if they do what we want, what a concerning idea to take to the world! The idea is to ‘work with’ your children to achieve the best consensus for all involved, instead of ‘doing to’ them – in order have your own laws obeyed. For example, a punishment is something you do to your children; instead consider working out a solution that is acceptable to all parties.

Mutual Respect and Authenticity

These are perhaps the most important elements that underpin all aspects of Gentle Discipline. When your child does something that makes you angry tell them so just as you would your partner. Communicate with your child with respect, but with feeling and authenticity. Your children want to know you. Your needs are also important, a self-sacrificing parent is not being authentic and our children can feel it. If you have had enough of reading “Maisy” after the 50th time that day; stop. Offer another suggestion, or just say, I need a break and offer an alternative activity that doesn’t involve you…or Maisy. Your child should respect your threshold, as you should respect theirs.

The bigger picture

Are we parenting today in a manner today that is all about making things easier for parents or are we parenting for healthier conscious children? Is placing six month old babies in full time childcare in the best interests of that child? Are we relinquishing our parental responsibilities over to paid professionals for purely economic reasons? Economics is after all, about the value of “things”. What is the value of a well-loved child throughout his or her lifetime?

There is a millennium of violent, exploitive and sadistic cultural behaviour towards children entrenched in our collective unconscious, and only a handful of sporadic decades that have been characterised by the desire to nurture and value children. Robin Grille prefaces his book by saying, “The key to world peace and sustainability lies in the way we collectively relate to our children.”

This might not be the first occasion in human history on which this idea has been expressed. Today however, groundbreaking research has brought new confirmation to this ancient idea. Our understanding of early childhood development has grown so rapidly in recent years, that we can now say the following with unprecedented confidence: “the human brain and heart that are met primarily with empathy in the critical early years cannot and will not grow to choose a violent or selfish life.” This is Robin Grille. Parenting for A Peaceful World.

There is a link between how we parent our own children and the levels of violence and degradation in our communities. Each moment with our children provides the opportunity to foster respect for self and others, to nurture them with the same enlightened quality of love that you desire in your own life and to above all allow their individual spirit to flourish. When you as a parent are temporarily subsumed by your negative emotions (rage, despair, and the like) find ways to vent these elsewhere away from your children, remembering that in reality they are often just very small children, not the “Toddzillas” they sometimes feel like. As with all moments that seem to be overwhelming remember, “this too will pass.”

There is no future in a return to a spurious golden age of discipline and authoritarian control, as often promulgated by media commentators. This was clearly a time characterised by violence and force. There is no turning back the pages of time and there is no quick fix, raising children consciously is time consuming, challenging and the true consequences of an act of love.

References

Parenting for a Peaceful World

By Robin Grille

Longueville Media 2005

www.our-emotional-health.com

The Continuum Concept

By Jean Liedloff

Penguin Books 2004 reissue

Unconditional Parenting

By Alfie Kohn

Aria Books

The Natural Child – Parenting from the Heart

By Jan Hunt

New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island BC 2001

The Aware Baby : A New Approach to Parenting

By AJ Solter

Shining Star Press, Goleta California 1998

The First Relationship – Infant & Mother

By Daniel N Stern

Harvard University Press 2002.

©Sudha Hamilton

Appeared in WellBeing Magazine

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Dec 01 2008
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Published Articles

Skin

Heading: Skin

Subheading: More than skin deep.

Our skin is our single largest living organ and it literally defines who we are. Without our skin, we would be a skeleton in a puddle of blood and that would take some getting used to, I imagine. Skin is often derided for being at the surface of things and thus incorrectly labelled superficial – so skin deep – but what this elastic covering achieves for our anatomical structure is more than just a tidy appearance. Skin breathes and like a baboon’s bottom its colour and appearance indicates our state of health – it is a barometer for all to see, of our moods, our level of hydration, our age and whether we are succumbing to disease.

We look outward in our search for beauty in our lives, we are conditioned to look out and not within, to seek beauty and meaning in romantic love, Art and nature. Beauty that inspires us to love or perhaps to begin the journey to find our heart, and meaning – to find meaning in that same quest for love or is there meaning in beauty itself? Much of our seeming obsession with appearing beautiful is, I think, the desire to be loved for who we are. As Louise Hay writes, “Our skin represents our individuality. Skin problems usually mean we feel our individuality is being threatened somehow. We feel that others have power over us.” I always think of adolescence and the eruption of skin problems at this time as a great example of this.

Our skin makes us uniquely who we are and no other. To touch another’s skin is an intimate act and usually the preserve of mothers and lovers. Skin to skin. The feel of your beloved’s skin is very important – it must feel right to touch for things to proceed from there. How one feels inside one’s own skin is another way of conveying the emotional response to one’s own existence. It is funny that we describe someone as ‘skinny’ when they in fact have less skin than someone who is not so svelte, but perhaps we are referring to them having less fat beneath their skin. Still we call someone a fatty when they have more fat but linguistically ignore the need for the extra skin to stretch over that fat. Skinny latte for me please.

Skin is portrayed in myth as often about magical powers, like the dragon’s scaly skin being impenetrable or the healing powers of the snake shedding its skin as renewed life. Skins were our first clothing in ancient times, to keep us warm and perhaps also to take on some of the properties of the slain animal – bear skins, sheep skins, fox, wolf, mink, cat, dog, buffalo, rabbit, kangaroo………..Shaman still today, wear skins of their totemic animal when performing rituals. When the beautiful white swans descend down to water, they remove their feathered skins to become frolicking naked ladies and if you can steal their skin they will follow you home and be yours forever – according to the myth that is.

©Sudha Hamilton

Appeared in Eco Living Magazine.

http://emag.ecolivingmagazine.com.au/

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Nov 30 2008
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Health, Published Articles

The Time of the Kidney

Heading: Time of the Kidney.

Subheading: Noni and the TCM Kidney Qi

In our western health culture the kidneys are perhaps one of the most invisible and possibly neglected bodily organs. These two vaguely bean shaped organs are located near our spine at the small of the back, just below the liver and spleen. Responsible, in the main, for the removal of urea, mineral salts, toxins and other waste products from the blood, they are seemingly behind us and out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps their association with excreting waste has led to a lack of polite conversation about them over the years. The kidney is not, at this juncture in time, the somewhat sexy organ that the liver has been of late, with its infamous association with drugs, alcohol and partying. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) however prescribes far greater influence for the kidneys upon our physical health and indeed our lives.

Western medicine focuses very much on the diseases that affect the kidney and the field is called nephrology, from the Greek “nephros” for kidney. Renal failure and dialysis are possibly terms and conditions that you have heard of and refer to in the first instance – “renal” Latin for kidney and their failure through disease to remove wastes from the blood; dialysis involves filtering the blood outside of the body assisted by a machine and is used as a means of keeping those with renal failure alive before and if a donor for a kidney transplant can be found. Kidney diseases can be congenital, meaning from birth, or acquired and although most of us are born with two kidneys we can function with one working kidney.

The fully functioning kidney is made up of more than a million nephrons, which are the units that actually filter the blood. Consisting of a renal corpuscle and a renal tubule, which are an intertwined blood vessel and urine collecting tube, a chemical exchange takes place between them as waste materials and water leave the blood and enter the urinary system. Your kidneys are also measuring out the minerals and chemicals like sodium, potassium and phosphorus and releasing them back into the blood as needed. They are the prime regulating organs for these vital substances, where too much or too little can be harmful and indeed fatal. In addition to this the kidneys are directly involved in the release of three important hormones: erythropoietin (EPO) which stimulates bone marrow to produce red blood cells; renin which regulates blood pressure; and calcitriol the active form of vitamin D that maintains calcium for bones and for chemical balance within the body.

The greater proportions of kidney diseases damage the nephrons and cause them to lose their filtering capacity. Diabetes is the most common cause of kidney failure and high blood pressure is a major factor in diabetics developing kidney problems. Indeed high blood pressure in non-diabetics also ranks as a leading cause of kidney disease, as it damages the small blood vessels in the kidneys. That damage reduces the filtering capacity of the kidneys. If wastes are not being removed and proteins are not being returned back into the blood then you are moving toward renal failure and a variety of health issues before death ensues without medical intervention.

So that is a very basic understanding of kidney function within the western medical framework. The TCM outlook is a far more comprehensive and holistic view and involves more than just the organ itself. A brief definition of TCM being that it is a system of health care that encompasses acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, anmo tuina (remedial massage), qi gong (exercise and breathing), and diet and lifestyle.

TCM assigns the kidney the foundation position among the other organs, as the home of the ‘ancestral chi’ and the root of the yin and yang for the entire body. The kidney stores the vital life essence, and this is produced by the Qi, as it digests food and drink in the stomach and small intestine. According to Chinese Medicine we have a post-haven Qi and a pre-haven Qi, with the former being derived from the food we eat and the air we breathe, and the latter from our parents, perhaps similar to our understanding of our hereditary genes. The kidney in TCM is much more than just renal function, it encompasses the influence of the adrenal glands as well. Kidney energy is divided into kidney yin and kidney yang. Kidney yin refers to the nutritive function of the kidney, body fluids and essential Qi. Kidney yang governs the physiological processes like warming and transforming fluids like hormones. Yin is like the earth or substance that is the body and yang is the life energy that courses through it.

I think that this is a particularly salient example of the difference between the two medical frameworks, with the western medical view only seeing the body & its functioning, but unlike TCM never seeing the life force that runs through the body because it can never measure it or define it under its current scientific rules of evidence. According to the western model early stage kidney disease is very hard to spot with few obvious symptoms and this is perhaps why most information about nephrology focuses on worst case scenarios, leading to dialysis and kidney transplant. The Chinese model allows for earlier detection and indeed kidney tonics form the greater part of TCM herbal remedies. A deficiency of kidney yin means that the body is being run down and not able to maintain its health with too much yang energy showing itself through a flushed complexion, overheating, hypertension, inflammation and the like. Whereas coldness, pale complexion, tiredness, low libido and oedema are indications of a lack of kidney yang.

Ageing in general is seen to be due to declining kidney energy in TCM and will manifest itself as low kidney yang in most cases. The slowing of our metabolism as we age contributes to many of the symptoms like coldness, fatigue, emotional withdrawal, mild depression, frequent urination, loose bowels, memory loss, weak back and legs. Kidney tonics to stimulate yang energy by increasing our metabolic rates and tightening up organ function can delay the onset of many of these conditions. Kidney yang in essence can be seen in the energy lifting secretions of the adrenal medulla, some androgenic hormones secreted by the adrenal cortex, thyroid hormone and growth hormone from the anterior pituitary gland. It is also affected by the release of EPO by cells in the kidneys and to a lesser extent the liver, which stimulates the bone marrow to make erythrocytes. Further symptoms of a kidney yang deficiency are: sensitivity to cold, lack of libido, impotence, sterility, clear urine, dribbling urine, nocturnal emissions, premature ejaculation, oedema of the lower limbs, weak pulse, whitish moist tongue fur.

Morinda officinalis or Noni has a long history of use within TCM and is commonly used as a kidney yang tonic. The roots have been traditionally been employed and Morinda is known as “Bajitian.” Traditionally recognised for its adaptogenic, aphrodisiac, urogenital astringent, analgesic, hypotensive, digestive stimulant and diuretic properties. It provides a tonifying action on the reproductive (sexual), urinary, muscoskeletal and central nervous system functions.

The Morinda plant is a genus of around eighty species and they mainly come from tropical regions. There are seven species found in Australia. Plants can grow from three metre shrubs up to twelve metre trees. It has oval shaped leaves and white flowers that occur in the summer and autumn. These are followed by the fruit, which are edible and have a pungent aroma. The juice of the fruit is considered to have a wide range of medicinal qualities. In recent times, since 1997, Noni juice has become popular in western nations as a health supplement. Studies into the healing benefits of Morinda are now being undertaken by herbal research centres, like Lismore’s Southern Cross University.

The Morinda plant is made up of polysaccharides, which include glucoronic acid, galactose, arabinose and rhamnose, coumarin, medium chain fatty acids, flavone glycosides, sterols ( betta-sistosterol), terpenoids, essential oils, amino acids, vitamin C and potassium. Plus Morindone (yellow dye), alizarin (red dye), rubiadin and a large range of anthraquinones in the roots, bark and leaves. The terpenoids help the body detoxify through their anti-bacterial qualities. The many anti-oxidants within the noni plant like the glycosides provide a defence against free radicals. Scopoletin or coumarin has anti-inflammatory properties. Limonene and anthraquinones have anti-septic value within the body.

Morinda citrifolia (a close relative of Morinda officalis), has been used for centuries by Polynesian healers to treat the respiratory, digestive and immune systems. Likewise it has a strong healing history in India, SE Asia and in our own Northern Australia. Published information on its use by indigenous Australian’s indicate that various groups regarded Morinda citrifolia as “an excellent food and a strong medicine.”

In studies conducted recently at the Southern Cross University, the antioxidant activity of noni juice was assessed to be in a similar range to green tea (with an oxygen radical absorbance capacity ORAC result in the 747 to 1517 level). Professor Wang from the Department of Pathology, UIC College of Medicine, Rockford, Illinois 61107, USA reported on studies conducted on Tahitian noni juice which showed the superoxide anion radicals scavenging activity of Tahitian noni juice to be 2.8 times that of vitamin C, 1.4 times that of Pycnogenol and 1.1 times that of grape seed powder. Also the initial results of cholesterol synthesis inhibition of noni juice are particularly promising. Results reveal that noni juice shows a positive dose response and inhibits cholesterol synthesis. Associate Professor Dr David Leach (Southern Cross University) say’s “The in vitro findings are encouraging, and it is work we would like to repeat”.“In noni’s anti-inflammatory activity scopoletin, quercetin, and ursolic acid were identified as major anti-inflammatory constituents. Since ursolic acid was known to have anti-inflammatory activity, we characterized the mode of action of scopoletin and quercetin.” H. YU, S. Li, M.-T. Huang, and C.-T. Ho. Dept. of Food Science, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey . An antidepressant like effect was also observed in a study conducted by Zhang ZQ, Yuan L, Yang M, Luo ZP, Zhao YM. Division of Psychopharmacology, Beijing Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology. The study observed the antidepressant-like action of the medicinal plant Morinda officinalis in a behavioral swimming test conducted on rats.

There are numerous positive anecdotal reports of noni’s effectiveness in improving vitality, libido, skin condition, hair condition and many of the symptoms related to low kidney yang levels. It is particularly useful for people who have a highly sensitive intestinal tract and who suffer easily from constipation and pain. People who exhibit sluggish metabolism associated with a hypo-thyroid condition also seem to benefit from using noni.

Licorice root (Glycyrrhiza sp.) is another kidney yang tonic ingredient, noted for having cortisone-like action. Glycyrrhizin, a derivative of glycyrrhetinic acid, is chemically very similar to certain adrenalcortical hormones. It is not uncommon for plants to contain hormone-like substances similar to those found in humans. Licorice too has anti-inflammatory properties and these were discovered quite by accident in 1946. When a Dutch physician, F. E. Revers, saw a small-town pharmacist prepare a licorice based remedy for the treatment of gastric ulcers and upon trying it on several of his own patients he found that it worked just fine. In at least half the patients he tested this paste on, the ulcers were nearly gone within a month. Licorice like cortisone, though not as strong, can relieve symptoms of peptic ulcers by inhibiting the inflammatory reactions. Also like cortisone, the regular and excessive use of licorice will produce the oedemic, moon face appearance of Cushing’s syndrome, a condition which can be described as `deficient kidney yang.’ As with corticoid
therapy, licorice in regular and high dosage can cause, elevated potassium levels, resulting in oedema and hypertension. It is, therefore, not recommended for those past the age of sixty five who have a tendency towards renal hypertension.

Rehmannia root, or sheng di huang and/or shu di huang in Chinese, is another very effective ingredient in many kidney tonics. A member of the foxglove family, the root can be used in its raw state as a detoxifying herb that cools the blood in the treatment of wasting fevers. As shu di huang it is cured by soaking and drying the compressed root many times in rice wine, thus warming its influence as a kidney tonic. Like many TCM herbs it can be used in different preparations as both a yin and yang tonic. Rehnammia is said to be the “kidney’s own leading herb.” Promoting kidney function, cooling the blood and bring moisture to dryness. With kidney yin deficiency said to be very common in our modern societies because of the hectic lifestyles. Rehmannia root, taken under the supervision of a trained TCM practitioner, can be of great help in relieving many of the symptoms – like dryness in the scalp, skin, night sweats, frequent urination and dark rings under the eyes.

Siberian Ginseng is a warming TCM kidney yang tonic. The major chemical components of Siberian ginseng are eleuthrosides A-G (phenylpropanoid, sterol,
lignans, isofraxin, carotenoids and coumarins). There is evidence of cortisol like anti-inflammatory activity.

References:
“The pharmacologically active ingredient of noni.” by Heinicke, R. 1985 Pacific Botanical Garden Bulletin.15:10-14
“Anti-cancer Activity of Noni Fruit Juice against Tumours in Mice” by Furusawa E., CTAHR Conf. Jan 2003 P-1/03
“Noni Handbook” by Jackson J, ND & Dr Wermuth PhD. Qld.
Hirazumi A, Furusawa E. Chou SC, Hokama Y. Anticancer activity of Morinda citrifolia (noni) on intraperitoneally implanted Lewis lung carcinoma in syngeneic mice. Proc West Pharmacol Soc 1994; 37: 145-6.
Hirazumi A, Furusawa E. et al., Immuno-modulation contributes to the anticancer activity of Morinda citrifolia (noni) fruit juice. Proc West Pharmacol Soc 1996; 39:7-Hirazumi A, Furusawa E. An immunomodulatory polysaccharide-rich substance from the fruit juice of Morinda citrifolia (noni) with antitumour activity. Phytotherapy Res 1999 Aug:13 (5):380-7                     Liu, G., et al. Two novel glycosides from fruits of Morinda citrifolia (noni) inhibit AP-1 transactivation and cell transformation in the mouse epidermal JB6 cell line. Cancer Res 2001; 61:5749-56.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Fong ST. et al. Extracts of Morinda citrifolia (noni) exhibit selective anti-tumour activity against breast and colon carcinoma cell lines. Poster presented at: Building Bridges with Traditional Knowledge Summit meeting: May 30. 2001; Honolulu , Hawaii                                                                                                                                           Bushnell OA et al., The antibacterial properties of some plants found in Hawaii . Pacific Science 1950; 4: 167-83

Banbury L, & Brushett D. Investigation of Noni Juice Centre for Phytochemistry & Pharmacology 2004                                                                                                                        (11) Wang MY et al. Morinda citrifolia (Noni): A literature review and recent advances in Noni research. Acta Pharmacol Sin 2002 Dec; 23 (12):127-41

Appeared in WellBeing Magazine

www.wellbeing.com.au

©Sudha Hamilton

Eco Living Magazine

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