WALK WITH A SURGEON SANGOMA

YOGA
Stress Busting vs. Something More

Just before my trip to the San Bushmen in 1987 (next blog) I had begun an asana yoga practice which enabled me to gain some equanimity around the challenges of my surgical practice. Although this was mainly about stress busting, the active meditation also began to give me inclinings of a different kind of awareness.

I was reminded of this Zen story.

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in serving the tea poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

Like this cup, Nan-in said, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?

I decided it was time to empty my "medicine" cup which had filled my intellect for the past many years - and begin from scratch. 

Chung Tau teaches the same thing, I had been a prisoner on my medical doctrine ... a wounded healer become warrior (and worrier.)

After a 16 day yoga intensive at the White Lotus Foundation and encountering many younger folks whose cups were filled with spiritual principles I did not know, I realized I was sadly lacking.  After the intensive Ganga White said to me; "Now you are an M.D. - master of your destiny!"

It did not hurt my M.D persona to know that yoga also appeared to lower cardiovascular risk factors, the heart rate and blood pressure, reduce stress, boost immunity and even increase life span by lengthening one's telomeres. 

 I also appreciated, however, that while opening the mind to New Age thinking was really useful it was till good to retain a certain amount of skepticism that I had learned in medical school. This was also to serve me well during my later shamanic excursions.

"Information is not to be equated with knowledge, knowledge not to be equated with understanding, understanding not to be equated with wisdom and wisdom is not to be equated with virtue."

The Ancestors 

I began to read avidly around yoga scriptures, energy anatomy and chakras. It was time for a different kind of anatomy. With time I confirmed that without a dedicated spiritual practice and energy balance, the way would be much more difficult.

I indulged in a vigorous asana and a "flow"Vinjasa practice but was well aware that there were eight limbs to the yoga path and I was circulating around and very far away from mastering just these few - asanas (postures,) paranayama (breath meditation) and meditation. I was aware that Kundalini was the gateway to samadhi (unity consciousness or the oneness experience) where the Knower-the Known-and the Process of Knowing all fused into single ecstatic phenomenon. I had not yet had anything like this nor did I expect to, since it seemed the province of truly advanced yogis. Also I had not yet met anyone on the path that had - teachers included - though a lot of talk centered around the concept of Kundalini yoga. The best I could describe was a tingling or vibrating feeling traveling up the spine which many other practitioners had experienced as well. 

I thought that maybe if I went back to watering hole of my South African birth place I might find those who had mastered this mystical energy.

I knew there were powerful sangomas who could access the world of spirit and that the San Bushmen could travel out of body during their spirit dance and trance state. I started to hear they had their own names for this feminine, Shakti energy that seemed similar  to Kundalini - Umbilini for the sangomas and Num for the San.  I came to appreciate that this energy was trans- cultural and it did not have to be as advanced and profound as samadhi.

Rock art depiction of Num traveling up the body of a San healer and eventually leading to Kia - an out of body trance state that allows the Bushmen and women to navigate the spiritual realms to bring back "non local" information and healing to the clan. The vibrational effect is implicit in the art.

Below is a description given to Richard Katz, a Harvard anthropologist, one of the team that spent several years with the Kung San Bushmen in the 60's.

Thanks to yoga my intentions shifted away from previous habituated patterns. My journey to the San was beginning to take form.

I was excited by the prospect that with drumming, dancing and chanting they achieved advanced states of consciousness without the help of entheogens - mind altering plants used in sacred ceremony by indigenous shamans in North and South America.

The Yogis say there are72000 energy channels or nadis in the body that converge on the three main channels centered in the spine. The Sun or hot or red channel expands and has to do with cognition and intellect which was where I had been focused the last many years. The Moon channel, however, contacts, is cool, blue in color and has more to do with intuition and receptivity to the unknown. Both these spiral around the chakra and the central channel in the spine. 

The Kundalini, Shakti, feminine power resides at the lowest root chakra near the coccyx. This profound energy moves upwards when sun and moon are finely balanced thus slowly creating what the Ancestors would call one's Becoming. We are never there - it's not an end point, possibly implied by the words Self Realization or Enlightenment. There is always more ahead.

My intention was to focus more on my Moon than my Sun channel but to remember the latter to keep myself from too much magical thinking.

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 THIS IS THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF BLOGS 
 - WALK WITH A SURGEON-SANGOMA

The purpose of these blogs will be to delineate some of the principles that can help anyone want to make a significant life change. They did mine and they apply to us all in different ways. In order to understand this journey its necessary to understand the difference between the 
"wounded" physician 
and the true 
"wounded healer archetype."

The true shamanic wounded healer archetype usually suffers a "calling sickness" which may vary from seizures to migraine headaches to unexplained aches and pains anywhere in the body. These often result from spirit guides intruding on their auras - the energy of which causes "dis"- ease. Medical evaluation will find nothing "wrong"in spite of sophisticated testing. In South Africa the calling sickness is always recognized by a competent sangoma (simplistically speaking - Zulu for the equivalent of a shaman.) The remedy is initiation after which the mysterious illness disappears once the spirit guide energies are channeled in the right direction.

Alternatively a severe illness can turn the victim inwards because of compassion arising from their own predicament, resulting in them wanting to help and heal others. This is not the true shamanic wounded healer but rather someone who feels their destiny is to take what they have learnt from the illness to heal others. Here there is usually no explicit assistance from the spirit world.

Medical doctors, however, are "wounded" in a different way - by the ordeals of the training and then the profession itself such as; managed care, medical insurance companies, big business, the bottom line, malpractice fears, possibly a large mortgage and significant debt incurred by the training. Electronic medical records now increase work time and aggravate the stress for no extra renumeration and patient loads increase as the numbers of doctors decrease. Add to this burn out, a high divorce and suicide rate and sometimes substance abuse and you have the full picture. Patients understandably are becoming impatient with their physicians.

Small wonder that now medicine has become more of a job than a calling. Income revenues are strained but a compromise may be a benevolent call schedule enabling the physician to leave his cares behind to a colleague who may not have the same "feel" or concern for the patient.

All these factors may get in the way of compassion and caring and the doctor fits in better now with the warrior archetype, fighting  battles rather than the healer archetype which originally drove most individuals to want to do medicine. Certainly now there is little in the way of financial reward to match the stresses and strains. Most physicians feel they are being manipulated by forces beyond their control and that they are not treated with dignity. 

Medical school, internship and residency for specialty training can fulfill all the conditions of a rigorous rite of passage on a hero/ine's journey but the incorporation  or integration phase of the true healer is now difficult, creating a lot of unhappiness. The bottom line has eroded the dignity and power of the profession. Physician incentives for doing medicine are declining rapidly. Many regard it as just a job and no longer a calling. Medicine should not be just a job. Todays physicians are are thrown into a cesspool of compromising choices and many are wondering why they embarked on the career. Many older doctors also say that if they could they would retire.

This is different to the archetypal wounded healer. The doctor is wounded by the training and the profession and tends to lose compassion in the face of all this adversity. 

In the case of the true wounded healer archetype it is the wound that drives the individual to to be compassionate and heal with his or her new found insights and the desire to learn healing skills.

It was my wounded-ness that created a calling to do something different but still keep my day job to support the family. The journey began in 1987. I hope the principles I came to understand - sometimes in retrospect - will be helpful to others.

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JOY - SUMMARY

This is probably the last of the blogs on Joy and I thought I would summarize where we have been. When I began this journey I was struck by the profoundness of some of the Ancestral teachings on Joy but never quite realized how important they were. As per Rev Nachman;

 "Joy is not incidental to your spiritual practice it is vital!

 Joy or happiness we have seen, does not stand alone but is a summation of many spiritual principles all coming together at the top of the energy-vibration-coherence hierarchy of the Tree of Life or the Yoga system of chakras. These maps tell us where we are and where we need to go to find more well being.

At the end of the day happiness is about Virtue which is right at the top.

and therefore we need to

The Ancestors 

We have looked at the Root chakra of flight or fight, freeze or feign death (Kingdom on the T.O.L. and the earth where we live.) This center includes Seligman's helplessness and pessimism which can be reversed with learned optimism. Ancient wisdom teaches that in every crisis there is opportunity and to take our suffering and make something useful out of it. Its not what happens to us thats important but what we do with it - pain is inevitable, suffering optional! If we look at all the factors that affect happiness 40% are trainable and can be altered by changing one's mind set. Only 10%  are related to circumstances.

The Ego energy center (or the triad on the T.O.L. of Ego-Attachment-Non Attachment) is the place of self-cherishing (Buddhism) and self-esteem with a strong emphasis on the small s of the little ego self. However, it's important to have a strong ego before subordinating it to the Higher Self.

The hardest chakra of all to open is the love chakra (balanced by Mercy and Judgment on the T.O.L.) Opening the heart is key to s/Self concept, forgiveness of s/Self and of others. Self concept is an upper chakra energy, unlike self esteem.

The Hero/ine's journey is something we keep doing in the upper energy centers. We are always refining the way "up" with more subtle higher, vibrational refinements. However, it's important to validate the three stages in order to actualize the Incorporation phase. Service - the key factor in the Hero's journey can be creatively expressed to the extent we invoke the Fifth chakra. This is also Karma yoga.

(The Warriors journey is usually a lower, ego-bound  polarity but is important for finding our core strengths and congruence with self and eventually then with Self.)

The Fifth chakra of creative expression (and less so the Sixth chakra of intuitive wisdom in the Third Eye) are where Gratitude resides with all the benefits of how we mindfully give and take (these centers on the T.O.L. are embraced by the triangle of Understanding, Wisdom and the God head.)

Gratitude can be a form of Devotional or Bakti Yoga especially if it involves devotion to the Creator. 

The P.E.R.M.A. of Seligman includes a lot of what ancient wisdom has been teaching for eons and straddles both higher and lower energy centers as does Carol Ryff's positive psychology and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. However, their emphasis is more psychological than spiritual. It is interesting to note that neuroscience is now proving that this is also a journey to better physical health.

INVULNERABILITY!

Invulnerability can signify an overemphasized ego (even narcissism) and a closed heart Chakra, as in Paul Simons song;
"I am a rock I am an island...
And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries..."
There seems to be a striving for invulnerability in the West generated by our culture. There are some, buried in social media, who have an imaginary invulnerability because they do not have to relate to others. Below we have a figure of the flip, excessive, negative, "Contraction" side of the energy hierarchy where we should not want to dwell. We have to balance both sides of these systems; sun and moon, expansion, contraction and find the middle way of peace, harmony and happiness.

Going up the contractive forces on the energy maps...
We find that if overemphasized...
We basically tend to favor fear based feelings over love. 

Many feel helpless and pessimistic from grief, sorrow and poverty. 
This is epitomized by the Resignation Syndrome now given to describe immigrant children placed on the remote island of Nauru of Australia who have lost hope and are no longer eating or speaking. 
When the first Dutch colonizers landed in what is now Cape Town and imprisoned the local San people for killing Dutch live stock (the San were hunter gathers and lived by the law that all animals  were fare game to anyone) - the results were catastrophic. Jailors would soon find them dead in their cells in spite of the fact that food and water were provided. The San lived so much in the present moment that they could not conceive of a time when they might be free. With no hope they checked out spiritually but also physically.
Politicians should be more effectively addressing the poverty factor which leads to Helplessness. They give lip service to it but ultimately the powerful who are in control prevail. European countries are much more successful on the happiness scale, especially Scandinavia.

Regarding ego...
The "Hollywood"  industry does wonderful things to educate and entertain but also engenders a desire for the perfect persona by all means possible from clothing to car, to house and even to a surgically induced perfection.

And the heart chakra...
We are taught to blame and be skeptical which lead to cynicism and the byproducts of shame, guilt, lack of self-worth and failure to forgive ourselves and others. We may learn not to ask forgiveness from our politicians and heads of state and to never apologize.

Wisdom and the 3rd Eye...

Our education system dictates that if you cannot prove something  with a study it does not exist, and so we buy into dogma, doubt and denial. We try to have control and make the uncertain, certain and the imperfect, perfect, when the Ancestors teach;

"You cannot control results only your actions, you cannot predict outcomes only your choices."

So look now how far we have come in the figure below!

Joy and Happiness are at the top and
lack of Joy also has karmic consequences.

ITS A MOVIE FOR A MESS. 

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JOY #7 MISCELLANEOUS TIPS

Barry Schwartz in his work on joy defines two "Selves"; the Experiencing Self and the Remembering Self.
 He clarifies that it is the Experiencing Self that experiences the 
in the moment sensory joy experience.
Happiness he says is more of an evaluation of the past, present and future and how one's "story" makes us feel. We all have a "reset point" for joy which is part of the Remembering Self and our psychological immune system. This is a a kind of synthetic happiness which depends on how we integrate, rationalize and actualize our experiences. He also emphasizes that one bad aspect of an experience can spoil everything and that what is Remembered is key! Hence it is important not to end on an adverse event but to redeem it as quickly as possible with a better experience so that this is what is remembered.
He adds that wealth will not necessarily make one happy but poverty causes unhappiness. The first few years of life are critical in creating a positive environment for a child and that reading stories, being taught to read and having a regular bedtime can go a long way toward creating a happy child growing up under bad circumstances.

The Ancestors stress the Three L's of Joy; 
Love - Love
Laughter

Norman cousins cured himself of a debilitating immune disease with laughter and by watching funny movies. He wrote a book on it called Anatomy of an Illness. The movie Patch Adams about Hunter Campbell M.D. describes the true story of a physician who opened a free six bedroom home for the purpose of creating humor infused care. Laughter releases endorphins, enhances the immune system, decreases sympathetic tone, and has physiological affects similar to moderate exercise.

The Heart Math Institute reminds us that stress and negative emotions create an Incoherent heart rhythm as well as an increased Heart Rate Variability (H.R.V.) which have a negative affect on our brain function causing negative emotions and decreased cognitive function. They also stress that there are more signals emanating  from the heart to the brain - (not just electromagnetic but biochemical and others as well) - than vice versa. On the other hand when the heart rate variability is constant the rhythm becomes Coherent with positive emotional and cognitive affects. Among other Heart Math techniques, breath meditation is an easy way to achieve a Coherent rhythm. Heart Coherence gives us harmony, serenity and equanimity and even splashes onto others, having more than just an individual affect.

The Ancestors tell us to counteract the dark around us we must 

"find joy in hidden places." 

These suggestions can help. 

"Connection" 

Touching, pats, hugs and massage increase oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin which make us happy. Talking or visiting a loved one does the same.

Nature

Sound

and

The Ancestors

Other Tips

The Ancestors

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