Sometimes we can understand mind/body or spiritual concepts easier, if we see them modeled by someone else. And sometimes, when we can observe this wisdom in animals, it becomes a very powerful transmission.
I am the guardian of horses, dogs and cats, and I learn continually from all of them. Even wild animals, or watching animals in videos can transmit greater wisdom, or states of peace. Here’s an email I recently received from someone recovering from Lyme disease:
“My partner has commented on how he finds me smiling as I watch and listen with the heart to your message in your u-tube conversations with your horses. Although I’ve come to enjoy your entire herd and family, your horse Montaro especially has truly blessed me with his assured strength and calm understanding. As he speaks to you and his herd, I feel he speaks to me too. This year, I met more wild animals during my daily walks than ever before. What a wonderful place and family you have made as you listen to your horses (and dogs) and learn from each other.”
In this blog post, I wrote about how our pets or animals can use their physical body to deliver emotional/mental/spiritual messages to us. So you will see how this concept I keep speaking about is not just applicable to our healing journey with our own bodies, but the universe can also use our pets bodies to deliver messages to us, and help us come into wholeness.
Although my horse Audelina had a hoof abscess and could hardly walk, I used a DMSO and wild oregano mixture to completely heal it in only 3 days because we simultaneously received and honored the MESSAGE her body was delivering.
Fortunately, although I’d never treated a hoof abscess before, I had a good understanding of the elements involved from one of my most popular posts on this blog (253,000 views, 413 comments): on natural remedies for perianal abscess and fistula. Aside from the location of the abscess, the same principles of trapped infection, difficulty treating the inaccessible locale, and helping infection to drain, all apply to hoof abscesses as well as perianal abscesses.
What is the message of perianal abscess?
If you have a stubborn fistula or abscess, or, one that keeps recurring – even though you’ve healed it – you’d do well to take an inventory of all possible contributing factors – physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Most people tend to only look at physical causes. I received this question from a reader:
“I was wondering if there is anything to prevent the fistula abscesses from coming in the first place. I read all about healing them. But am I missing getting to the root cause? Mine have returned & I’m really discouraged with everything I’m reading.”
I love that this person is asking the right question! As you can see in the video above, the message of your recurring abscess could be just about anything pertinent to your life, or the way you’re currently moving through life and making the decisions you make. So you’ve really got to cast your net wide, open to all possibilities and open to receive deeper wisdom.
But let’s start with the easy stuff…
Possible physical causes of perianal abscess and fistula
Drug use – I once had a chat with an MD who was convinced that many of the drugs prescribed for Crohn’s and colitis actually caused fistulas as a “side effect”.
Suppressed immune system – again, we can look at immune-suppressant drug use and all the other things that suppress immune function like WiFi radiation, GMO and pesticide-laden foods, heavy metal or other toxins, factory farmed meat, lack of exercise, poor sleep quality, poor air quality AND stress, to name a few!
Insufficient beneficial gut microbes – if your gut flora is not good, then your mucosal barrier is also not good, and your intestinal wall is more susceptible to injury and infection. Don’t forget that a number of drugs, like Prednisone and the birth control pill, make it very hard for good bacteria to thrive in your gut.
Pathogenic gut flora – hand-in-hand with the one above, if you have a lot of pathogenic (disease-causing) microbes in your gut, then you’re a short step away from infection. If you take drugs to suppress the infection (but not heal it), those microbes have to go somewhere and that’s when the body starts tunneling through tissue and bone to create a drainage hole for these infectious microbes.
So addressing/healing the physical contributors to your perianal abscess or fistual issue may involve weaning (don’t quit cold turkey or you may suffer severe consequences!) off prescription drugs. And switching to a clean food, happy-meat diet. If you can’t afford to eat pasture-raised or organic animal products, then consider becoming Pegan – where you eat mostly home-grown or organic veggies and meat is ‘condiment-sized’. You don’t need a big slab of meat; a few thin slices of pasture-raised healthy meat is going to benefit your body far more than a hunk of wretched factory-farmed meat.
For sure it’s going to involve getting rid of GI pathogens (preferably using natural anti-pathogen agents) and high doses of oral and colonic therapeutic-quality probiotics – like Natren brand. NOT a bunch of shelf-stable soil organisms that seem to be en vogue with doctors these days. And check the labels on your supplements and protein shakes to make sure soil organisms (bacillus) are not being added.
Then, of course, you are also going to need to get anti-pathogen (antibiotic, antifungal, antiviral) agents directly to the site of the infection. This is where my original fistula syringing protocol comes in. Or, as you saw in the video, you can apply them topically and combine with DMSO if needed, to drive them deeper into the tissue.
Possible emotional/spiritual causes of fistula and perianal abscess
If we look at the nature of what is occurring in the body, and where it is occurring, sometimes we can get clues or signposts that lead to where our real problem lies.
A fistula in spiritual terms seems to be about unhealthy things that are being hidden, or oppressed. Rather than bringing them out into the light, or going through the pain or struggle necessary to heal these aspects, or behaviours, or relationships, or beliefs… instead we are oppressing and pushing them down. Down into deep, dark tunnels, hidden away from the light. But, truth is irrepressible, sooner or later it will emerge; truth will out. So the questions to ask yourself are:
What am I refusing to deal with in my life?
What truth or knowing am I repressing?
What are the top 5 things I do to sabotage myself?
What am I too afraid to look at, or deal with?
What shame am I hiding away from the world?
The spiritual meaning of an abscess – especially one that’s recurring – could be a signpost to ask yourself questions to identify what is festering in your life right now:
What’s at the root of my discontent?
If I had NO limits, what would be my most outrageous dream?
How do I deny myself permission to really live, risk, or try things?
What is rotten, or festering, simmering away, in my life?
If I gave myself permission to acknowledge my hidden anger… what am I mad about?
If I could root out any unhealthy, destructive behaviour or belief, what would it be?
When I ask myself deep questions like these, I find it helpful to either meditate first, or even just relax in a hot candle-lit bath. Then I pull out my journal and write down my answers, thoughts, and ideas. There is an alchemy that happens when we write things down, instead of just answering in our head.
I would love to hear any insights or thoughts that come to you after exploring this method of going deeper into the roots of dis-ease. Remember, you don’t need to use your real name in the Comments below – you can share your gifts and still protect your privacy 🙂
Hi Jini,
This is interesting and provoked some thoughts in me that have been cooking for a while. It also gave me the incentive to act a little more boldly on them than I usually do.
I’ve done alot of work on attempting to heal a recurring perianal fistula. The only method of yours that I haven’t tried is colonic probiotics. I have tried rectal ozone therapy though. It healed up twice. Once after expressing my anger at my father after he died. The other was when I managed to get a CuddleParty event to happen in town (Unfortunately the facilitator couldn’t return and I haven’t been able to get this kind of event established locally). Neither of these events resulted in full healing of the fistula. It returned (rather painfully!) after a while. Here’s my answers to some of your questions:
What truth or knowing am I repressing? The knowledge that our basic social structure (The sexual couple) is unhealthy and that men are refusing to embrace the courage to change to a healthier “village” style of social structure.
What’s at the root of my discontent? Lack of supportive community.
If I had NO limits, what would be my most outrageous dream? To travel to attend the Plymouth meeting Men’s Therapeutic Cuddle Group (see:https://www.inquirer.com/health/men-cuddling-group-healing-trauma-mental-health-20190325.html). To move to a place (Calgary?) that has a very active Cuddle Party community (see:www.cuddleparty.com). To travel to places that are holding events related to recovering from perinatal trauma. To hire a male somatic healer to do daily sessions on me.
If I gave myself permission to acknowledge my hidden anger… what am I mad about? I’m mad about men’s cowardice when it comes to sharing healing touch practices with other men and taking full responsibility for our self nurturing needs. I’m mad about our community’s obsession with the sexual couple (a social structure in which participation for me is extremely challenging) and its failure to embrace practices that would be helpful to my healing process (like the Plymouth Meeting Men’s Therapeutic Cuddle Group (see above mentioned link) )
Thanks for inspiring this contemplation and for encouraging me to remain anonymous.
Mystery Man 🙂
Hi MM, thanks so much for your bravery! I love the elements you’re exploring here and also your courage to express your needs and desires. Have you looked into the Mankind Project? They are worldwide, but as it looks like you live in Canada, here ya go:
http://canada.mkp.org/
I know numerous men who’ve attended group workshops with MKP and they sound supportive, yet also encourage you to lean into your pain – and get to the pain underneath the anger that usually masks it.
I think more and more men are becoming aware of their need for this kind of support and exploration. Here’s a video made by a good friend of mine that I think you’ll enjoy:
https://youtu.be/IS4C-4L9_bQ
PS: A couple more answers to your questions:
What shame am I hiding away from the world? I don’t feel worthy of what makes life worth living (loving, playful, innocent consensual physical affection (i.e. intimacy)).
If I could root out any unhealthy, destructive behaviour or belief, what would it be? Covering up my pain with anger.
Well there you go – you have a good roadmap for where your work lies. And regarding your earlier comment about moving to Calgary, I once had a conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté (author of bestseller, When The Body Says No) and I was telling him how I wanted to move, but couldn’t (for various reasons). And he said something like, “I don’t think so. If someone held a gun to your head and said, Leave now. You’d be able to go, you’d get yourself out of your house and on the road.” And he’s right! It’s an image that has stayed with me: there’s a gun to your head, now what do you do?
If we have any faith/trust in the universe, Source, Truth, divine… we don’t need to know HOW. We just need to set a strong intention and stay focused on it, trusting that it will happen. Our job is to stay focused and define WHAT, the universe’s job is the HOW. xox
Hi Jini,
“Have you looked into the Mankind Project?” Yes I have. There is a local men’s group I attended for a while inspired by them. I bailed because as in all the local men’s groups I’ve attended their fear of non-sexual touch with other men was just frustrating to me. The Plymouth Meeting PA men’s group is inspired by the ManKind Project (https://www.inquirer.com/health/men-cuddling-group-healing-trauma-mental-health-20190325.html)
“I think more and more men are becoming aware of their need for this kind of support and exploration.”
Well if you run into any, please connect them to me. Maybe some day, I’ll meet enough local guys to experiment together along these lines and/or get healthy enough to be able to move to a place where they exist. It’s been very frustrating for me locally (very conservative Canadian city).
Thanks for your comments, the link to MKP Canada’s site and the video.
Sincerely,
MM
PS: “there’s a gun to your head, now what do you do?” Interesting that you should mention this. I’ve known there was the feeling and internal image of a gun to my head for most of my life. After realizing in 2004 that I’d been sexually abused by my mother in my childhood and told as much by a therapist, the gun (and the accompanying feeling) disappeared. Strong suicidal impulses have been a feature of my life many times. I consciously put a stop to that when my mother expressed strong resistance to that plan (I was recovering from a hospital stay due to Crohn’s in 2006 and she was helping me. I had no one else to talk to).
Thanks for calling me “Brave”. There’s a considerable amount of confusion in my family (and most of our culture) around what constitutes male bravery. My father’s profession as a Cold War military officer had him celebrated by our culture for his “bravery”. I find it cowardly to refuse, as he did, to confront the idea proposed by his colleagues that it takes the ability to destroy all life on earth 7 to 20 times over (these are the estimates I’ve heard about our nuclear weaponry at the height of the Cold War) in order to protect ourselves from the Russians. The one good thing that I saw coming out of that situation was to show us how crazy we humans are! He engaged in overkill. I’ve done the reverse. I tend to self destruct and Crohn’s Disease is the physical manifestation of this tendency. I think that my commitment to not commit suicide out of respect for my mother and to pursue healing practices instead is brave. Our culture, as you know, (and certain members of my family) would prefer me to suck it up, go on the drugs, go for the surgery and if they don’t work … deal with the consequences. I’d rather see what I can do by following the possibilities exposed by people like yourself. Unlike my father, I won’t get medals for it, but I appreciate your support. Thanks for all you’ve done to heal yourself of a diagnosis of Crohn’s Disease and supporting those of us who are making a similar attempt.
Here’s a story I haven’t written about yet: WAY back in the early days of my healing journey, I was 22 and came home from Tokyo for Christmas (surprise!) but my family had all booked to go away for Christmas. So I ended up in the house on my own.
The DAY AFTER they all left, I went into one of those free-fall off the cliff flares that happen with Crohn’s and got to the point where I was doubling the water level in the toilet with blood, hadn’t eaten and barely drunk water for 3 days due to crazy mouth ulcers all over my mouth and down my throat. Had slept only in brief snatches due to the continual pain. There were mini-craters in my thighs where my body was eating itself to survive – only someone with severe Crohn’s understands how it’s possible to lose 20 lbs of muscle in less than a week.
And I’d had it. I was SO tired of being ill and I was ready to surrender. I lay in my bed and said to God, “I’m ready. I’ve lived a good life, I have no regrets, I’m ready to go.”
And god said to me, “It’s not your time.”
“What do you mean, ‘it’s not your time’? I’ve had enough, I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m ready to die.”
God repeated, “It’s not your time.”
I felt myself getting angry, “Well then I’ll go get a knife and slash my wrists.”
God said, “It doesn’t matter, you still won’t die.”
Now I was sputtering, “Fine. I’ll get a gun and I’ll blow my head off!”
God said, “And I’ll send you right back down.”
Whaaaaa?? Well that stopped me in my tracks, especially since I was in the process of exiting the Christian church and didn’t even really know about reincarnation. I said, “What do you mean, ‘send me back down’?? There’s no ‘back down’… there’s heaven and there’s hell and I’m ready to go home.”
God repeated, “I’ll send you right back down.”
Terribly frustrated by this point, I yelled, “Well if I have to live, then GIVE ME A LIFE!!! Because I can’t live like this anymore!”
A complete and utter peace immediately descended upon me and I slept for 12 hours straight. When I woke up, I began to drink and eat simple foods, then I picked up the SC Diet (which I’d read but avoided) and continued my healing journey and exploration.
So what changed? I CHOSE LIFE.
There is a tremendous healing impetus that is unleashed when we actually CHOOSE to be here and choose to engage in life. Before this point, I was okay to be here, it was fine, but it didn’t really matter to me. I had never been afraid of death and often longed to ‘go home’ – even before I was diagnosed with Crohn’s.
When I screamed at the divine, THEN GIVE ME A LIFE – it was the first time that I requested to be here. And I spoke that intention out into the matrix.
It changed everything.
Wow! That’s quite a story! I’m impressed with your ability to communicate with what you call “God”. I’ve had my own spiritual experiences but I’m not so much a believer in God yet I do understand that “I” am not in charge of all that happens in this world and me. I think the word “Great Spirit” that native peoples use fits better with my understanding. “All that is not I” also works for me. I’ve had some brief conversations with this “All that is not I” but nothing as intensely personal as yours. I suppose when I decided to not commit suicide and pursue healing practices I chose life albeit nowhere near as intensely as you did. I was in alot of pain and reluctant to stay. My mother has been supportive of that decision to the degree she is able. I guess I’ve been slowly gaining the intensity that you seem to have had right from the start. I’m still working on fully embracing life as I confront my deepest fears. Thanks for sharing your story! You are SUCH a warrior in the service of life! It’s an honour to have connected with you 🙂
Right back atcha! And some people also resonate with “Truth” or “Source”. It’s all good.
Hi Jini,
I’ve been pondering your conversation with God that you mention here. I wonder if “God” was projected outside myself onto my mother in my early youth. I certainly have memories of seeing my parents as unquestionably right and good right up into my early twenties. She would have been a very powerful figure in my early life. I still crave and am immensely relieved by practices that mimic the nurturing an infant ideally receives early in life. They have a powerful healing effect on my body. Yet they are all ephemeral, difficult to access and ultimately frustrating. I’ve definitely been having many enlightening conversations with my mother since that suicide crisis in 2006. I wonder if looking for God within myself might be a better and more rewarding approach. Miten created a song recently that resonates with this (see: Mother Inside https://www.hooktube.com/watch?v=rnLp0F8bX88) Just a thought. Thanks for sharing your story with me.
What a beautiful song – thank you for sharing that, I’ve already passed it on to a friend 🙂
Here’s my HUGE realization about my own mother and her role karmically with me:
https://listentoyourhorse.com/meltdown-at-the-barn-dancing-with-victim-part-2/
xo
Thanks Jini,
That’s an interesting experience. I too have had many insights into how the traumas in my mother’s life ended up impacting me strongly and how other family members played a role in this dynamic. I also see the failure to our community to adequately support mother’s culture wide. Gabor Mate has some interesting insights into this pattern.
I realize that safety isn’t the best objective. Anything with form in this world will arise, maintain its apparent form for a while and die. If we’re attached to the form (another word for safety, we suffer when it dissipates). Resilience is better but unfortunately generally takes our identity for granted. The Oneness of which eastern non-dual mystics speak and Quantum Physics has discovered scientifically puts into question our sense of “I”. I think a deeper realization comes from experiencing our “True Nature”, it’s lack of form and inherent sense of safety and resilience. Even the Witness, which is easily accessible to anyone (I’m not at a place where I’m fully identified with Oneness, it’s still a concept to me) has this feeling of inherent safety to it. Rooted there developing resilience is just practice in maintaining the Witness while exploring the world of form. It’s the same process that ideally happens in early infancy with a safe mother to return to.
On the topic of mother trauma… a friend of mine suggested I read a book called “The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden” (see: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/445969.The_Fisher_King_and_the_Handless_Maiden). I read it yesterday. It was very interesting. I particularly identified with the Handless Maiden who lost her baby in a stream and felt powerless to do anything about it until she simply plunged in and rescued it without her hands. I’ve been searching for a long time for mother substitutes. I think it’s a way I avoid the pain of what I would have felt in utero and in the first four years of my life (major traumas in my mother’s life around this time frame). It’s like I’ve been wandering around looking for someone to mother the wounded infant in me. After reading this story (and having exhausted some recent attempts to heal this part of me with outside support) I realized that I have to do this myself. So I withdrew my hopes of supportive community and worked on exercises that my trauma therapist gave me to reparent my inner infant. It’s a close fit with Miten’s “Mother Inside” song. I’m learning how to mother my inner infant (body) carefully and to look less outside myself for that kind of support.
Thanks for sharing your story with me.
Thank you for the book reference – it looks like a good one. I’ll also pass it on to my friend who is very involved with his mother/feminine work right now. And yes, while outside help is good, and often transformative, it can’t replace the inner/solo work for sure. Oh I have one more book for you: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog – READING the book is designed to be a healing experience as the stories (case studies) themselves take you through some healing stages and neural pathway development. xo
Hi Jini,
Thanks for the reference to “The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog”. I’ve ordered it from our library. I’ve heard it mentioned and described in another of my readings. Perhaps it was Thomas Verny’s “The Secret Life of the Unborn Child” or perhaps it was Nadine Burke-Harris’ “The Deepest Well”. Thanks for urging me to read the original.
PPS: One last thought:
“If I could root out any unhealthy, destructive behaviour or belief, what would it be? Covering up my pain with anger.”
There’s more to this. Feeling the pain is just the beginning. Honouring its message and learning to protect myself from its source is the next bit. This goes counter to an entire childhood of ignoring my pain, repressing it into my unconscious. The source(s) must have felt impossible to change. My parents’ violence and unhealed trauma passed onto me was subtle. There was no physical violence or substance abuse in my family. That makes it challenging to see and even more challenging to confront. Crohn’s Disease in me is its most obvious manifestation. Oh well! Do or die, huh? Sigh! Thanks for welcoming my posts.
Hi Jini,
I’ve been pondering Louise Hay’s insight into the root cause of Fistulae (Louise Hay talks about “Fear. A blockage in the letting go process” for Fistulas in her book “You Can Heal Your Life”.) That insight has baffled me for a long time and affirmations didn’t seem to help until I looked into the conditions surrounding my time in utero and the emotional environment of the first four years of my life. One of your questions touches on this issue directly:
What am I too afraid to look at, or deal with? I’ve been unable to see how threatening well intentioned, culturally celebrated, outwardly acceptable, knowledgeable and experienced people can be (parents, family members and “experts”) and to protect myself from their failure to provide a safe environment for me and to support my needs. I’ve been afraid to take charge of my sense of safety and find ways to provide it for myself.
My “most outrageous dream” (see previous comment of mine dated November 22, 2019 above) is my attempt to do this for myself. Finding ways to take in the nourishing stuff from what is available locally, protect myself from the toxic stuff is what I’m exploring now. I’m also working to gain the resilience to identify with my “True Nature” that is inherently safe (no form), engaging in practices where I imagine myself in a situation where I’m fully safe and supported (while accessing the felt sense at the same time) and finding ways to recover my safety when it is lost as I explore the world of form. This is a challenging but rewarding meditative self healing pursuit.
Thanks for supporting this exploration of mine into the roots of my physical illness. I appreciate the opportunity very much. 🙂
Oh I SO hear you. In fact, I wish someone would do a study on the percentage of people with IBD who can say, “The world is a safe place.” Would there be any? I think this fundamental lack of feeling safe is at the root of many (most?) chronic dis-ease.
Here are two posts I’ve written on aspects I find FAR more valuable than trying to ‘feel safe’ – I too did Louise Hay affirmations for years!
https://blog.listentoyourgut.com/how-to-increase-feelings-of-safety-resilience/
https://blog.listentoyourgut.com/child-me-vs-adult-me-in-the-healing-journey/
Both these posts have EFT Tapping videos that go along with them. I hope they help you as much as they’ve helped me!
Lastly, I’m currently editing a workshop series on healing the roots of chronic dis-ease and Dancing with Victim is a big piece of it. Subscribe to the blog here and you’ll automatically be notified when that series is ready 🙂 HUGS xo
Thanks Jini, I’m looking forward to your “Dancing with the Victim” series. Your “Child Me vs. Adult Me in the Healing Journey” blog intrigues me too. I’m looking forward to reading it. I think I’m already signed up to your blog notifications. That’s how I found this blog. I was notified of it via email. EFT hasn’t worked well for me. I’ve tried many times. Given that the roots of trauma in my life are strongly connected to mother-child bonding disruptions and sexual abuse coming primarily through my mother later on, feelings of being disconnected from a key human source of survival support are strong in me. The local EFT practitioners I found were all women. I’ve noticed a tendency to freeze (or fall in love and longing for “cuddles”) in the presence of female practitioners. It doesn’t work very well. My most severe Crohn’s flares were all triggered by interactions with women. EFT tends to be a solo practice too which reinforces the feeling of abandonment that was so intensely threatening to me in the first days of my life. I’ve had better luck with a male somatic trauma therapist and the touch practices he suggests. CuddleParty is a great practice for me too. I’m hoping some day to be able to fully heal my connection with women. Thanks for the links to your blogs on safety.
I’ll be interested to hear if you’re able tap along with a woman in video form! Although, as my son informed me when he was 12, I’m “not a real woman”. He was comparing me to our neighbour who stayed home, cooked, cleaned and served her household in the way of an evangelical Christian modeling the “good wife”.
Intrigued, I asked him, “If I’m not a woman… what am I?”
He blustered, “You’re a… a…. a Memmon!!”
I laughed with delight – I’ll take it! My friends and I joke about getting memmon t-shirts. 🙂
Hi Jini,
I can tap along to a woman in video form no problem. I’ve tapped alone, with the help of female therapists, and with the support of David Feinstein’s book “Energy Psychology”. I just haven’t noticed things changing much. The most impressive changes I’ve had (with the exception of expressing rage at my father, the primary source of competition over my mother’s nurturing (touch being it’s primary form of expression)) were all connected to touch practices. I had a case of Erythema Nodosum resolve with one session from an amateur Healing Pathways practitioner (unfortunately this woman got ideas about me that I couldn’t fulfill so the one session was it). I had a major insight into how my inner kid was made happy by three nights exploring the non-sexual aspects of Marnia Robinson’s Ecstatic Exchanges (see: https://www.reuniting.info/node/1734 and https://www.reuniting.info/science/ecstatic_exchanges_and_neurochemistry). Unfortunately, she got kind of bent out of shape, accused me of being “codependent” and so 3 nights was it! My fistula healed and my blood lab test results became normal for the first time in many years while I was exploring Cuddle Party. My current male manual therapist (trained in somatic trauma therapy) uses touch practices to support me. I move through all kinds of stuff with his support. It seems to work well. I also have an animal therapist (a woman who uses dogs for support) who works with touch therapy as well. It’s immensely enjoyable and seems to help. The animals seem to provide a safety I can’t feel with a woman alone. I tend to shut down with most female therapists. Things just stagnate. On the other hand, I once had a female trauma therapist who urged me to express my anger. I immediately went into a flare that lasted 5 months! That’s when I realized I needed male therapists who use a somatic approach to therapy (a male Cognitive Behavioural therapist resulted in a massive amount of anger being triggered in me). Unfortunately, they are rare.
I’m not totally sure what’s up with EFT. I just haven’t had alot of luck with it. I suspect it’s too far removed from the preverbal (starting in utero) mother wounds with which I struggle to be helpful. Healing touch whether provided by myself or a safe human source without the burden of words seems to work better.
It sounds like you have a really good understanding of what your body needs/wants and when. I have 5 different bodywork therapists who are helping me straighten my former S-curve scoliosis (only 1″ off center in the thoracic now and the rest is totally straight – yay!). My body know exactly who it wants help from and when. I’ve had to stop doing yoga – although I’ve been doing it for 30 years and completed half my teacher training – because that’s not what my body wants/needs at this time. So my view is that it’s all good! As long as we follow our body’s wisdom, we will know what it needs and WHEN.
Hi Jini,
I’ve continued to explore your question: “What am I too afraid to look at, or deal with?”
There is quite a bit here. I think that fear is very common in men and highly taboo to acknowledge. Most men I know (and certainly myself) go to anger/competition before facing our fear and then exploring compassion and cooperation (with ourselves and other men). It reflects the challenges of my childhood connection with my father quite closely. Unfortunately we never got past the anger (in him), fear (in me) and competition (over wife’s/mother’s affection). Oh well! Late is better than never. 🙂
In addition to the already mentioned fear of honouring my personal insight into my life direction, and my fear of fully embracing my maleness, I’m seeing a fear of bodily sensations that interfere with my idea of how my body should behave. I frequently create healing protocols in my mind and get pretty disturbed when my body can’t adhere to them.
I’ve done some work internalizing the Nurturing Feminine aspect of myself and have been exploring Gabor Mate’s Compassionate Inquiry approach to therapy. It seems to be helpful to me as I attempt to change my attitude towards my bodily sensations, emotions and thoughts.
Just thought I’d keep you updated.
Thanks for suggesting these questions.
Cheers, MM
“I’m seeing a fear of bodily sensations that interfere with my idea of how my body should behave.”
This is connected to my fear of death (and hence of fully embracing life). There were some major death traumas in my childhood. My mother went through the death of a family member around the time I was born and lost her last sibling a few years later. Her (and her family’s) emotional turmoil around those deaths was intense and there was no effective support for healthy grieving or coming to terms with what most people would consider very unfortunate and painful tragedies. My father used rather large scale death threats as part of the political “game” he played with the Russians as a part of his work. I don’t think this was healthy either.
Meditative approaches to life seem to me to be the only effective way to transform the fear of death in my understanding. Non-dual mystics seem to experience it as a fiction. I’m not quite there yet. It’s a work in progress. Have you had any experiences related to this fear?
Cheers, MM
I’ve had a very real, active spiritual connection since childhood, so no, I’ve never feared death. I was only afraid of being tortured! That is WAY worse than death. No question.
Hi Jini,
You are fortunate to have had a “very real, active spiritual connection” since childhood. Mine didn’t start until my early twenties and I wouldn’t say anyone in my family has had a spiritual connection strong enough to face death, sex or power in healthy ways. The conservative community around me isn’t much different. My mother is showing signs of change, but this is recent. Life has often felt like torture to me but the door to suicide is closed for now for me so I struggle to live my values with less support than I would like. One thing for sure, it’s making me stronger!
“closed for now” – oh dear MM, that is not choosing life. Have you read Victor Frankl’s work? That is someone with NO support and pretty much everything stacked against him. Perhaps his work/perspective will give you a new way to look at life xox
Hi Jini,
Some more thoughts on this question: What am I too afraid to look at, or deal with?
I’m afraid to fully embrace and celebrate my maleness. I believe this is connected to repressing my aliveness. It’s also connected to fearing a deeply rooted pain in me. I see so much weirdness, manipulation, seriousness, shame, enslavement, violence and aggression around sexuality in our culture. I’m afraid I don’t have the strength to protect myself from it so that I can embrace the more friendly, respectful, loving, playful and innocent approach to intimacy that I crave. I’ve repressed feelings of sexual attraction very strongly in the past. The woman I eventually married (and divorced due to my emotional instability not long after) said she thought I wasn’t into women at all. I’m good at hiding my attractions to women but it’s hard on my health. This dynamic is changing slowly. It’s delicate (and demanding) work.
Regular access to a healthy group of physically affectionate men (as in Pennsylvania’s Men’s Therapeutic Cuddle Group see: https://www.inquirer.com/health/men-cuddling-group-healing-trauma-mental-health-20190325.html) and a mixed Cuddle Party group (non-sexual physical affection see: http://www.cuddleparty.com) could serve as a good foundation to a healthy “village” for me at this level in order to help me feel safe and get a break from the threat I generally feel. Once that “healing village” is established, a woman who shares my interest in a healing approach to physical intimacy might arise out of it for me (see: https://www.reuniting.info/science/ecstatic_exchanges_and_neurochemistry and https://www.reuniting.info/node/1734). She’d have to be willing to explore this method (or something equally as effective) with me. I can’t do the normal routine, I become far too unstable emotionally. In the absence of all this (a likely scenario in this culture), facing my frustration without indulging in it/ acting on it and my pain is the other way to transform my fear.
I fear exposing myself to women’s anger at men and the desperate competitiveness of men for female sexual partners. This has roots in my childhood. My mother’s idea of marriage is: “If my husband needs sex, I have to provide it”. That kind of institutionalized rape creates a pretty intense and dark emotional environment that was heavily repressed and hidden in my family. My parent’s gender roles reflected the classic “Hero/Damsel in Distress” routine that has been so strongly celebrated in our culture. Unfortunately for them, the big threats in my mother’s life had nothing to do with the kind of “thug” for which my father was thoroughly prepared as a military officer. He had no idea how to support a woman who was subjected to severe emotional crises and who had a tendency to get depressed. He resorted to urging us kids to not upset her (having nowhere else to go, it resulted in our childhood need for nurturing getting inadequately met and feelings like anger being repressed). My father had no capacity to embrace his weakness or vulnerability and had a distinct tendency to resort to anger instead of facing these parts of himself. I also think he had some early childhood Developmental Trauma that left him very needy for my mother’s physical affection and unable to provide physically nurturing affection for us. I experienced him as competing with me for the physical affection that was crucial to my survival as an infant and child. This was, obviously, a very unfair and damaging (to me) competition.
I find it difficult to express my woundedness in the presence of women because I get the sense they think I’m being a misogynist. Emphasizing that I see it as a failure of the “village” (and hence all of us) more than a failure of my mother seems to help, but it’s a challenging topic to negotiate. Men tend to be completely uninterested and unsupportive of my struggles. I tend not to place my focus on my father much because the gender roles my parents fully embraced and which were common in the communities where we lived didn’t assign an infant and child nurturing role to men. Things are fortunately changing that way these days. Effective sources of support for my healing process are rare. I guess I’m lucky to have the few I do. Thanks for being one of them. Dr. Gabor Mate wrote an interesting piece on the failure of the village to support healthy mothering and the narcissistic male violence toward women that resulted (see: see: https://drgabormate.com/jian-ghomeshi-problem-narcissistic-male-rage/). Unlike Jian, who had the unfortunate behavioural pattern of resorting to a socially condemned expression of violence, I self destruct which is more common amongst women and a far more socially acceptable form of violence. Dr. Mate doesn’t see a solution to this problem in his article. I’ve recently heard from a student of his that he now thinks Native People’s communities do a better job of supporting mothers and the needs of infants. I’ve experienced a healthy sexual “village” in the past.
It’s clear to me that my health struggles have connections to central aspects of our culture that are limiting and unhealthy. I wrestle with my fear of facing them and protecting myself from them. Thanks for giving me a chance to explore this topic through your questions and your blog. Sorry about the length of this post.
Sorry MM, it looks like I missed this comment in the hailstorm of our other comments back and forth. I don’t know if there’s more than .5% of the world’s population that was “properly mothered” to be honest. And I feel that many/most of the problems on our planet stem back to this lack of love and nurturing; which of course becomes a feedback loop. Because you can’t give what you don’t have.
I focus my efforts on breaking this loop and healing myself so that I can provide this safe, loving space for not just my own kids, but my parents, my siblings, my friends, etc. A shift in consciousness that opens the doorway to return to the vast abundant love of Source is the foundational healing that our species needs to embrace, in my opinion.
And thank god all paths lead to Rome! So we dialogue and we share and we hold space for each other to come into wholeness. I believe the other inhabitants of this planet are also holding space for us; the trees, plants, animals, mountains, ocean, etc. The method is not important, the intention to heal is what matters. Namaste.
Thanks Jini,
“A shift in consciousness that opens the doorway to return to the vast abundant love of Source is the foundational healing that our species needs to embrace.”
I couldn’t agree more. The “other is dangerous so let’s go to war on them” is getting old. We’re in a perfect storm these days. I feel it in my body strongly. For men, this is a difficult transition. We are generally heavily addicted to women (and our Warrior/Hero” identity) when it comes to accessing any form of Love and Nurturing. We tend to project it outside ourselves. It’s time we started embracing this neglected part of our wholeness for ourselves and others. I’m doing what I can within myself.
Thanks so much for your support and thoughts. Namaste! 🙂
Yes! It’s so interesting that in the workshops with the horses (that I’m working on now), that when we were exploring the Fierce Feminine (that sets the boundaries required for self-love, self-care, etc) the horses pulled men in to work with them. It was brilliant and perfect 🙂
I love that you are using your horses for this work. Horses are generally so senstive. I still have my six. Thankfully, my husband is caring for them while I have been to sick. I hate to think of separating the herd. They have their bonds & I hate to separate them. They would love to counsel humans!
Sue have you seen my blog and videos over at Listen To Your Horse? Here’s one that might give you some ideas to help defray expenses while you are out of action – and ideas to come up with something your herd would enjoy:
https://listentoyourhorse.com/two-horses-or-a-couple-of-dogs-rabbits-goats-make-money-on-airbnb/
And you are so fortunate to have such a supportive husband to do the work for you 🙂 My eldest son has been a tremendous help to me with the heavy workload here. xo
Hi there,
This was extremely accurate, wow. I have this cyst that keeps coming back in the same area. I have even had it removed by a dermatologist. Yet there it is again and again. The truth is that I’m an addict and am hiding it from everyone that loves and cares for me. I’m aware of this and yet have been rendered helpless to the issue. I’ve tried NA programs and have relapsed. My shame has caused me to bury this deep and keep it hidden. Therefore, hiding my self-sabotage deep within. I have no reason to sabotage my abundance. I have a great life. Yet, I somehow manage to rob myself of the many gifts the universe has blessed me with. Reading your take on cyst formation was really helpful in highlighting and bring awareness to the real cause of this re-emerging cyst.
Hi Steven! Thank you for sharing your experience and being open about your struggles. It takes courage to acknowledge and confront these challenges. Remember to be patient and kind to yourself as you navigate this journey towards healing and self-discovery.
We highly recommend trying this Jini’s healing course Lazer Tapping. It’s great for working through your emotional aspects: https://lazertapping.com/
All the best!
Yes, see how you resonate with Lazer Tapping – after you try one of the free sessions, you’ll know whether its the next place for you to explore. Also take a listen to this episode and some of the stories on here – might get you thinking about the roots of your situation and whether this is generational (ancestral). Sometimes our big blocks/saboteurs are not even ours!
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1fZdTRxU5k7YaJXBji44QW?si=Ww3RM6A2QI6C_FCf-sRzpQ