Musings of a Restless Mind

This is chapter one of Sharon’s Playing to an Inside Straight talking about health and her health journey.

I like metaphor and I like memory triggers, therefore I am choosing cards that I think do both. So let’s start with the Queen of Hearts.

I thought that the Queen of Hearts was an appropriate card to choose to represent Mother Nature, or for those of you who are a little less prosaic, genetics. A card dealt to us early in the game and one that determines not only our eye color, but our propensity for certain illnesses. It determines our body type, shows our ethnic origins, and if all goes right, separates us into one of two gender camps; all of which will greatly affect not only how we play the game of life, but how others will interact with us, and further affect the game. It will give us our personality, our virtues and our vices, and our gifts, both as abilities and disabilities. The timbre of our voice, the way we walk, and how much pain we can endure, both physically and emotionally. It will give us things we most likely will never see up close: our heart, our liver, our stomach, our lungs, and our kidneys. It will affect the density of our bones, and thus one person will be better at long-distance running (higher density) and another will be a better swimmer (lower density). Some of us will do better in cool, moist climates. Others will thrive in hot, arid ones. Some of us will hear music in our head. Others will see how the stars unfolded. And all of us, will in one way or the other, be limited by this card and what we can do in this life.

But we don’t have all the time to do everything in this life, anyway. So why not do what we were best designed for? Because sometimes we get convinced to do otherwise, something we will talk more about in the next chapter. But for now, let’s just focus in on the Queen of Hearts and the limitations that she gives us.

When I used to teach chemistry, I told my students there were two things you needed to consider about choosing a career. The first was ability. If you couldn’t do math, then choosing to be a nuclear physicist was not a swift idea. But the second was equally important. You needed to love what you wanted to do. Because it is the love that will make you go the extra distance, and separate you from a lot of the other people out there. And no matter how good you are at something, sooner or later, the going gets rough. And it’s not ability that gets you through that. It’s love. Some people use the word perseverance. But perseverance in itself is just an ability, the ability to stick to completing a task. And sooner or later, even that gets tested. But if you love something (or someone) with every cell in your body, you find a way through the tough times. Or around them. Or under them. But you find a way. You find a way to stay in the game, until your luck turns. Or as they used to say as I was growing up, “Something worth having, is worth working for.”

And I’ve discovered something else in my life. That Nature is not perverse. We most love what we are most good at. I believe that there is some sort of plan. Whether or not it’s the intricacies of how chaos theory works or God’s hand or both, I believe that night follows day, and that we’re not only genetically designed to survive, but to each fit into a niche in our time and our place to make the organism that is mankind survive and thrive. And when we don’t follow our natural inclinations with regards to this, we hurt not only ourselves, but others as well. When we push young people into being doctors when they want to be journalists, we end up with a lot of poor healers. Nature is not perverse, we are.

When it comes right down to it, you’re really the only one who can see the card that you’ve been dealt on this one. There are tests that can give you feedback on your abilities, but no test has been designed yet to determine the nature of your heart’s longings. Only you know that. If you’re listening. If you’ve taken the time to ask and pay attention to the tiny whispering voice that answers. Because the intangibles, the things that scientists are very poor at measuring, matter as much as the matter part of us does.

Which brings me to my next point. We are matter-centrists. Most of us when we are growing up in school are taught that we are comprised of matter and energy, and yet, except for some comments on having to eat to get energy, the subject of our energy selves is soon dropped. Even our slang demonstrates this: “What does it matter? What’s the matter with you?”

But what’s the matter of hate? Or of love? I know that certain chemicals (matter) are released before or soon after we feel these emotions, but what makes us release them? I know when a person is dead, they don’t look the same. The matter is still there. But the energy isn’t. And neither is the soul. We are not just matter, and yet Western medicine until fairly recently has ignored the whole question of energy. But between nuclear physics which is fast approaching the conclusion that “There’s no there there” as they keep splitting matter into smaller and smaller units which seem to come down to particles of energy and to the intrusion of Oriental medicine which is being increasingly used by more and more people, Western medicine is being forced to rethink some of what it thought it knew to be true. But don’t hold your breath. I doubt very seriously if they will catch up to the Chinese understanding of energy in our lifetime.

I should know. I quite literally credit Taoism with saving my life. Acupuncture is the only form of medicine that I know of that is based on a religion. And it especially works well in those areas where Western medicine doesn’t know what to do.

At the end of this book, I list some books that I have found useful, so if you’re interested in reading more about acupuncture you’ll find some references there. I only intend here to give a thumbnail sketch of what I have learned and found useful in understanding the other half of our nature. I have spent the last eleven years in acupuncture, and that alone will make it crop up in my comments throughout the rest of this book.

Energy flows through our body along what the acupuncturists refer to as meridians or channels. Meridians are not nerves, neither are they a form of blood vessels. They are not matter at all. Pure energy flowing time and time again along a well-marked path like the flow of cars along some freeway. And a freeway is not a bad analogy. Freeways are separate from the land and cities that they flow by, yet they connect one city with another. One freeway often flows into another. Ideally, one neither wants the freeway entirely empty or entirely swamped. The worst is when the cars are not moving at all. If the cars represent energy, then in the Chinese world-view, we are talking about stagnant energy. Most people now-a-days have heard the word ‘chi’ or ‘qi’, depending on how someone chooses to spell it. I like ‘chi’ and therefore will use this spelling. So, you can get a traffic jam in your body. Stagnant chi. You can have deficient chi. An empty freeway. You can have excess chi along one meridian, or channel. Too many cars using one freeway, while others have almost no traffic. Except that, where freeways connect cities, meridians connect organ systems. A disharmony in one channel will not only eventually manifest as a physical illness in one part of the body, but eventually it will also affect the other channels it is connected to. Very much like a traffic jam on one major freeway impacting the freeways that are connected to it.

Taoists seek harmony. And by harmony is not meant a static stagnant status quo. There is a time for winter. And there is a time for summer. A time to sow, and a time to reap. Harmony is being in sync with the world around you, and the world within. There is a time to be active, yang. And a time to sleep, yin. And there needs to be a balance. Our human bodies are not designed to be awake all of the time, neither are they designed to be asleep all of the time. Illness is a sign of disharmony. And since each of us have a unique nature, then what is harmony for us will be uniquely defined. To get the most out of one’s poker hand, one must learn about one’s nature. And one must respect one’s limitations. If you have an allergy to a particular food, then you need to stay away from that food. Maybe there’s a pill you can take, or a treatment you can undergo that will minimize or maybe even eliminate the allergy. But whatever the particulars of your situation are, you have to work with your body, not against it. Well, you don’t have to. You don’t have to do anything in this life. But if you want to play your hand the best way possible, then you have to acknowledge the reality of the cards that you have been dealt. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Or in this case, you live in this body of yours, and if you trash the place, you have to continue to live there. Until the house burns down and then the game is over.

So you have to get to know yourself so you can live in harmony with your body. There are a lot of paradigms out there to help you with this. Pay attention to the ones that your curiosity draws you to. I have found that if you ask the question, the universe will help you find the answer. The body wants to feel good. Really good. Not the deceptive highs of alcohol or drugs. Or junk food. Or over exercise. Or whatever you put between you and your body so that you won’t listen to what it is trying to tell you about your life. And it will tell you more than just about the matter of your life.

Oriental medicine pairs emotions to the five major organs. Grief with the lungs. Fear with the kidneys. Anger with the liver. Pensiveness (worry) with the stomach. And joy with the heart. When our emotions are thrown into a disharmonious state for too long a period of time, they affect the corresponding organ system. And if you know nothing about acupuncture and this is all starting to sound a little weird, let me give you some Western phrases that might convince you of the tie-up. She died from a broken heart (lack of joy). He wet his pants (fear of death). My stomach is in knots over this (worry). I cried my heart out over this. Now this is an interesting one, the lungs and heart are closely connected, but when you cry you really feel it in your lungs. But excess grief obviously can lead to a lack of joy. So from personal experience, you probably already knew that different emotions affected your body in different ways. Now you’re conscious about it.

And that’s what’s important to know about the Queen of Hearts, you need to be conscious about what she is telling you about your life. Whatever it takes. Plato said that the unexamined life is not worth living. In our metaphor it would be more like, why did you bother pulling up a chair, if you’re not going to play? So pay attention to your emotions. They are there to protect you and to guide you. They will tell you who and what to stay away from and they will tell you who and what to embrace with your whole heart.

For if you’ve been paying attention, you know what puts a smile on your face. You also know what brings your world crashing down around you. Some of this is genetic. Some of this is learned. You can’t change your genetics. And it is not easy to unlearn some things that your environment has taught you, but you can at least learn some coping strategies. But the strategies that will work the best for you will be the ones that resonate with your innate self. The strategies have to fit you.

So does this mean you have to know everything about yourself before you pull up a chair to play? Of course not. You will probably spend your entire life learning new things about yourself. After all, there is a lot of information packed into those DNA strands of ours. But know this, one size does not fit all. And just as it hurts to put your foot in a shoe two sizes too small, it will hurt if you try to fit into paradigms that weren’t designed for your physical body.

Case in point. Several years ago I almost bled to death. Not a cool thing. But I found out my blood type. And that along with the book “Eat Right for Your Type” by Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo, I discovered that I had been going against my instinct for years. I don’t know if Dr. D’Adamo has everything perfect, but I do applaud the attitude that the diet that will work for you, may not actually work for me. In fact, we’ve all known this for years. High protein versus high carbohydrate. Vegetarian versus carnivore. Any given diet only successfully works for about half of the population. Well, about half of the population is type O. The other half is type A. And some left over for those of us who are either type B or AB. I’m type B and supposedly chicken is not good for me. Now, I prefer things like beef and lamb. In fact, my favorite meat is lamb. And according to his research, it is also the best meat for me. But I was a skeptic about the chicken (I was trained as a scientist) so I used another way to check it out.

At the time I was also seeing a chiropractor/kinesiologist. Now I imagine most people know what a chiropractor is. But a kinesiologist is one who does muscle testing in various ways to extract information from the body. I found it very useful to discover food sensitivities that I had. I use the word sensitivity instead of allergy because saying that you’re allergic to a food means that you trigger a particular type of histamine response in the body. But just because a food doesn’t trigger that particular response, doesn’t mean that it’s not bad for you. I used to eat chocolate and within five minutes my back would go out. At the time my chiropractor thought it was the chocolate (chocolate is given such a bad rap sometimes), but I wasn’t so sure. So I brought in pure cocoa, and I tested fine. And then she thought, well, it must be the cocoa butter. So I went and bought baking chocolate which only has cocoa and cocoa butter in it, and that tested fine. It surprised her to find that it wasn’t the chocolate. After a few more experiments it turned out to be the vanillin in the chocolate. Now vanillin is artificial vanilla. Chemically it is similar, but it is not identically the same molecule. I’m perfectly fine with vanilla. But I stay away from vanillin with a vengeance. That’s eliminated a lot of my favorite foods. But I really like my back not going out. And Ghirardelli and Guittard make chocolate without vanillin. Paul Newman has got a line of organic chocolate which is also good. Even Baker’s used to have chocolate without vanillin in it, but I haven’t checked that one for a while.

Anyway, back to the chicken. I was in the process of trying to get my blood pressure down after my surgery and I was going through a process to make sure that I wasn’t eating something that was contributing to the problem. Sometimes a kinesiologist will use a machine and run a mild current through acupuncture points on your body, to see if the food disrupts the current. We had discovered that I had developed a lactose intolerance. But when I brought in the cooked chicken and we tested it, it was the worst of any of the foods that we had tested on my body. Score a big one for Dr. D’Adamo. And years of feeling guilty about always choosing the beef enchilada over the chicken evaporated into thin air. Chicken was definitely not (contrary to current popular pervasive wisdom) better for me than beef.

But instinctively I had known that. In a latter chapter we’ll talk about instinct in greater detail, but for now I want you to remember this. Your body is talking to you all of the time, twenty-four hours a day. It talks to you when it tells you something doesn’t taste good. When your stomach gets upset, either you’ve eaten something you shouldn’t have, or too fast, or with the wrong people. It tells you when you are tired. It talks to you in your dreams, and in your hunches, and in your cravings. Now sometimes its messages get distorted like a polluted lake that starts producing malformed fish and birds. But if you can get your body into a place of harmony (wellness), it will send you messages to help you stay there. Western medicine is still doing a lot of guessing and has a one-size fits all mentality, so if you’re sick, go look at medical modalities that recognize that we’re not all the same: Oriental medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, chiropractic/kinesiology, naturopathy, homeopathy. Talk to your friends and neighbors and find someone who can help you find a competent practitioner and learn how to evaluate their skills like you learned how to evaluate a Western doctor.

It is scary to walk down a path that you are unfamiliar with. But no scarier than it must have been in the Old West to sit down and play poker with people with six-shooters strapped to their thighs. You know when your life is not working. It is not going to get better if you sit there and do nothing. But if you’re going to gamble, then it has got to be on you. And the universe loves a gambler, loves someone who doesn’t bury their wealth, but goes out and tries to increase it, to do something positive with it. And you are your wealth. There will never be someone exactly like you again. There are dark forces that would like to see you give up, lay down your hand and leave the table. But why should they get what they want? If you’re scared, get angry. You can’t be both at the same time.

I remember the first time that I went to see an acupuncturist. One of my students had recommended one, and I had as appointment for the next day. I don’t like doing new things, I like to know what is going to happen. I also know that the world doesn’t work that way. And since I love learning and solving problems, my love usually helps me overcome my fears. But I still feel them. And I certainly wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing for my body. But that afternoon before my first appointment, I laid down and took my daily nap. And I wasn’t dreaming much in those days, because FMS is a form of a sleep disorder. But I had the most amazing dream of this beautiful green light that started out as one line and eventually filled the entire vision of my dream. It was like the light you get from lasers, very narrow bandwidths, an unbelievable purity of color. When I awoke, I knew I was doing the right thing. Green is the color traditionally associated with healing, but I also just knew that my body was trying to tell me that it wanted to go down this path. I tell you this story because I have been surprised in how many ways my body has helped me along my healing path. I am getting better at paying attention to it. So you don’t have to know everything, but you have to develop a good ear for listening. Your instinct and intuition will make you feel really safe in some places and not safe at all in others. Pay attention. Your body is on your side.

S. T. Gaffney

As a scientist, Sharon immersed herself into acupuncture and oriental medicine in order to understand how something so seemingly strange to her scientist’s mentality had helped her. She blamed that for her time-travel thriller set in China–a book that one acupuncture student claimed led her to understand more about acupuncture than all her teachers and textbooks combined.