Hello Everyone!
Thank you for reading my weekly newsletter. I hope you are having a wonderful week. Lately, I have been pondering on what has been the best way to reduce stress. What has kept me strong, hopeful, and calm even when tomatoes were being thrown at me? What has helped me to stay on course when I wanted to walk away? No, it's not ice cream. 🙄
Keep reading and I will share what I believe to be the most important source of stress resilience and how I teach my patients to tap into that source when healing.
May your life be filled with light and warmth!
Enjoy! 😄
After setting a legal precedent, Jacques Simon, my attorney who helped me win against the Maryland Board (2009) said, "You stayed calm through the whole thing. A lot of doctors lose it when facing the Board." Since Jacques specialized in defending holistic clinicians from their State Boards, he would know.
Life has its stressors. The adventure of being fully alive comes from experiencing the ups and downs of life. Like riding a roller coaster, the thrill of the ride comes from knowing that one is safe while experiencing the adrenaline of sheer terror.
What has allowed me to feel safe while riding the roller coaster of life has been my confidence in a spiritual Source that is attentive, loving, and powerful.
My relationship with a spiritual Source helps me to prioritize values and principles above things. Values and principles, in turn, help me to stay on track more easily, and they don't suddenly disappear beneath me.
In 2007, when I read that first letter from the Maryland Board, fear flowed through me like a cold river as the blood drained from my head down to my queasy stomach. I thought, "Wow! This feels exactly like the novels described!"
I had to find an attorney ASAP. I discovered that to defend my practice, the legal costs would be over $10,000.00 per month and that every holistic practitioner before me had lost their license to the Maryland Board. Ouch.
I said, "God, I can't afford this. So, if you want me to do this, you'll have to pay for it."
Money didn't fall from the sky, but my income grew to meet my needs, and one month when I had to pay for two expert witnesses and two attorneys (their time, flights, and hotel bills) my practice miraculously increased enough to cover all my expenses, just for that month.
Early on, I had a vivid dream that symbolically showed me a course of events, and when I awoke, I felt that the dream had revealed that I would defeat the Board and how it would happen. As events unfolded, the dream turned out to be accurate and prophetic.
Also, during a holistic medical conference, a woman whom I met the day before, came over to deliver a "message from an angel." In her dream the night before, an angel wanted her to tell me that divine forces were working on my behalf and that I didn't need to worry.
You may assume that miracles occur rarely, don't happen to you, or they're just for Parting-the-Red-Sea-Stuff. But I think miracles happen all the time, with everyone everywhere, and even with everyday stuff. And of course, miracles can happen to you!
I also think it can happen more frequently, and perhaps more powerfully, if we practice connecting to a source of perfect Life Energy and direct its power through our intentions.
A book called, "The Tao of Psychology, Synchronicity and the Self" by Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, talks about a power that creates synchronicity and order in life. It is the presence of the Tao/Divine in daily living.
To connect to Infinite Life Energy, the Tao, the Divine, or whatever one chooses to call it, I ask my patients to practice doing Energy Breaths, 20 breaths twice daily (total time around 5 minutes).
I show them that after they do Energy Breaths, they are more physically resilient when I push down on their arm, demonstrating that this simple guided visualization can greatly strengthen their physical resilience to stress instantly. It is a reproducible experiment.
Daily life offers us opportunities to interact with the Infinite and to facilitate its manifestation in the physical world--a fun game of hide-and-seek.
As you go about your day, may you tap into the power of your connection with Perfect Life Energy, the Tao, the Source, and take comfort in a loving, empowering universe.