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<div class="story-meta-left"> <div class="story-logo"> <a href="https://www.dailygood.org"> <img alt="DailyGood" src="https://www.karunanews.org/pics/90x90.jpg"> </a> </div> <div class="story-meta-info"> <div class="story-author">By <a href="/author?name=Awakin%20Call%20Editors">Awakin Call Editors</a></div> <div class="story-details"> <span class="story-date">Aug 28, 2023</span> <span class="story-read-time">21 min read</span> </div> </div> </div>  <div class="story-meta-right">  <div class="utility-buttons"> <div class="dropdown"> <button class="utility-btn translate-btn dropdown-toggle py-1" type="button" id="translationDropdown" data-bs-toggle="dropdown" aria-expanded="false"> <i class="fa fa-language me-2" aria-hidden="true"></i>Cherokee </button> <ul class="dropdown-menu dropdown-menu-end translation-dropdown" aria-labelledby="translationDropdown" style="max-height: 400px; overflow-y: auto;"> <li class="dropdown-header" style="font-size: 11px; color: #6c757d; text-transform: 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href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailygood.org%2Fstory%2F3028%2Flissa-rankin-sacred-medicine-and-the-mysteries-of-healing-awakin-call-editors%2F" target="_blank" class="share-icon" aria-label="Share on Facebook"> <i class="fab fa-facebook-f"></i> </a> <a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailygood.org%2Fstory%2F3028%2Flissa-rankin-sacred-medicine-and-the-mysteries-of-healing-awakin-call-editors%2F&text=%3Cp%3E%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Ciframe+allow%3D%22accelerometer%3B+autoplay%3B+clipboard-write%3B+encrypted-media%3B+gyroscope%3B+picture-in-picture%3B+web-share%22+allowfullscreen%3D%22%22+frameborder%3D%220%22+height%3D%22450%22+src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FQtGMGJVzQVc%3Fsi%3DKrQ4uq04-M26Qz5X%22+title%3D%22YouTube%20%3A%20founder%2C%26nbsp%3BDick+Schwartz%2C%26nbsp%3Bwe%26%2339%3Bre+teaching+internal+family+systems+as+medical+treatment.+I%26%2339%3Bve+taught+that+with+him&via=&hashtags=" target="_blank" class="share-icon" aria-label="Share on Twitter"> <i class="fab fa-twitter"></i> </a> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailygood.org%2Fstory%2F3028%2Flissa-rankin-sacred-medicine-and-the-mysteries-of-healing-awakin-call-editors%2F" target="_blank" class="share-icon" aria-label="Share on LinkedIn"> <i class="fab fa-linkedin-in"></i> </a> <a href="https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=%3Cp%3E%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Ciframe+allow%3D%22accelerometer%3B+autoplay%3B+clipboard-write%3B+encrypted-media%3B+gyroscope%3B+picture-in-picture%3B+web-share%22+allowfullscreen%3D%22%22+frameborder%3D%220%22+height%3D%22450%22+src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FQtGMGJVzQVc%3Fsi%3DKrQ4uq04-M26Qz5X%22+title%3D%22YouTube%20%3A%20founder%2C%26nbsp%3BDick+Schwartz%2C%26nbsp%3Bwe%26%2339%3Bre+teaching+internal+family+systems+as+medical+treatment.+I%26%2339%3Bve+taught+that+with+him%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailygood.org%2Fstory%2F3028%2Flissa-rankin-sacred-medicine-and-the-mysteries-of-healing-awakin-call-editors%2F" target="_blank" class="share-icon d-none d-sm-inline-flex" aria-label="Share on WhatsApp"> <i class="fab fa-whatsapp"></i> </a> </div> </div> </div>  <div class="story-content" id="dg_story"> <div class="dark-link perm_post"> founder, <u href="https://ifs-institute.com/about-us/richard-c-schwartz-phd">Dick Schwartz,</u> we're teaching internal family systems as medical treatment. I've taught that with him a few times before. We're teaching doctors and therapists how to actually work with the model. In the beginning, a lot of times, people need a facilitator, but it really lends itself to a lot of self-help work as well.</p> <p>The more people work with an IFS practitioner, the more they're able to do IFS on their own as part of an ongoing treatment so that the bolus comes from my daily practice. I am bolossing myself every morning in my daily IFS practice, which is based on sort of 'parts work' -- the idea that we're all made up of a multitude of parts and that we all have a self and that the self can become sort of the ideal healer sort of perfect mommy, perfect daddy, guru, doctor, therapist for the wounded parts in ourselves. The more we're able to lead those parts, the less those parts need to use our bodies to get our attention to somaticize various traumas in our system that can be healed by self with facilitation.</p> <p><b>Cynthia:</b> Beautiful. Yeah, one of the things that one of my teachers said was he said, that the sign that you have a teacher who's a good fit for you is when you're feeling self-empowered in their presence. You're feeling more and more self empowered. And I would say the same for a doctor or healer, you know, a partner or anyone that we're in relationship with.</p> <p><b>Cynthia: </b>I would love to segue into a question that you kind of explore too in your book and you help us come into. You're so — you're just very neutral and kind of agnostic as far as — in the camp of conventional medicine, Western medicine, we'll call it, where there are great gifted doctors and then there are people who will take advantage of you, you know?</p> <p><b>Lissa: </b>Yeah.</p> <p><b>Cynthia: </b>And the same thing, actually, in energy healing or alternative, what we, what we in the West will call “alternative medicine,” and that there are, we need to be careful…there are people who will take advantage of particularly people who are, very, very vulnerable and just open to whatever, because, right, they're in significant suffering. So I think self-empowerment is a really big sign. What are some other ways that, I don't know, we can keep our eyes keep our hearts open and our minds open to it, but we can also really keep our eyes open to what's in front of us?</p> <p><b>Lissa: </b>Yeah. You know, I went into this journey very naive and idealistic.  I think, like many people, I think I had a significant distortion in my thinking. And I thought, if you can lay your hands on someone and cure cancer, you must be Jesus. And this must make you an ethical sort of moral, maybe spiritually developed individual. And I now think that's absolutely not true. I believe there are people that can put their hands on someone and cure cancer, and I believe it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not they're a good person or whether they have ethics or are spiritually developed or any of those things.</p> <p><b>Lissa</b>: I think, you know, I think it's just a siddhi, it's a superpower, right? And just like there are people who have, a superpower with the guitar, or there are people with a superpower in the operating room, or there are people with superpowers of intelligence or superpowers of political power. And we know that rock stars and sports stars and movie stars and politicians, and, you know, surgeons are not necessarily nice people. They can still be gifted with a certain superpower and be guilty of all kinds of me-too violations and con artistry and corruption even though their superpower is real. And so, I would say the same thing is true in the energy healing world and the indigenous healing world and things like that. I do believe there are people that have these superpowers, but many of them are very underdeveloped. They've not worked on their trauma. They have a lot of shadow. They can be very corrupt. And, you know, as we said, there are sort of corrupt and untrustworthy individuals in the conventional medical world.</p> <p><b>Lissa: </b>I'd say it's even worse in the other world because at least doctors and therapists have boards that they're accountable to. And if you're corrupt enough, your patients and clients can report you to the board and you can lose your license. So, there is some oversight in the conventional medical and therapeutic world, and there's no oversight in these other realms. I was really shocked with the level of corruption, and I felt really helpless and powerless and wound up spending a lot of money on therapy because of my sort of bystander trauma.</p> <p><b>Lissa: </b>Most of these traumas didn't happen to me directly, but I mean, look at John of God, he's in jail for over 600 accusations of sexual assault and rape. And this is a man who I do believe was doing something that that was facilitating cure for some people. And a lot of people had significant spiritual transformations and other types of healings in his retreat center. And he was also a rapist.</p> <p><b>Lissa: </b>So, I think it's just really important to know that, to go in with eyes wide open. There's a whole section in <em>Sacred Medicine</em>, a very practical advice of what to look for and the red flags. I think many of these people with these spiritual superpowers, as they say, the cliche power corrupts, and it doesn't corrupt everybody. There are people with a lot of power who do their work and have good mentorship and have circles of accountability who try to hold them in shape.</p> <p><b>Lissa: </b>I have an entire community, including Rachel and the community that you and I have been part of, people I have asked to make sure that I don't become one of those people that abuses my power; and that if I get out of line or I start getting full of myself or I start abusing my power and I'm not practicing right use of power, please help. I don't want to harm people. I want to be somebody who can be trusted with the power and platform and privilege that I have. And that's uncomfortable. It means I get called out a lot, including by my own clients and patients who I empower to call me out and tell me when I'm doing something that hurts. But a lot of people sort of get drunk on their power and don't have oversight and don't have a board and don't have a mentor and don't have a teacher or a therapist or a circle of accountability. So, I think that's one of the things to find out is, if you're going to give your power away or make yourself vulnerable to somebody with these healing powers, who do they share power with or who holds them accountable?</p> <p><b>Lissa: </b>And the other thing I found really helpful is, I would ask people right away, tell me about your treatment failures. And let me talk to the people that had bad outcomes, because again, there's a humility that in conventional medicine, I don't know any doctor that would say, you know, “well, penicillin, cures, everything.” No, penicillin's really good for strep throat, and it doesn't do crap for COVID. We know that our medicines are not panaceas, and we know that they don't always work. And we know that there's side effects, and we know that there's treatment failures. And we know that before COVID, preventable, medical error was the number three cause of death in the United States. We know these things, so there's a certain humility in conventional medicine.</p> <p>But I found that when I challenged a lot of healers outside of conventional medicine, and I asked about their treatment failures and their side effects, they were very arrogant. They would turn it around. They would say, no, my medicine works for every condition for every patient, a hundred percent of the time. And if it doesn't, it's the patient's fault. They're not doing it right. Or they're resistant, they're blocking the medicine or they would do this sort of victim blaming that was a real red flag for me. And the really humble healers were like Bill Bankston, he cracks me up. There's a whole chapter about William Bankston, and he's like, I don't understand, like my medicine, my hocus pocus, seems to work great for late-stage pancreatic cancer and really difficult to treat cancers. And it doesn't do crap for warts or benign tumors. He's like, you can throw a sugar pill at a wart, and it goes away for other people, and I can't do a thing with it. I don't know. It seems to work for Alzheimer's, but it doesn't work for Parkinson's. That's interesting to me.</p> <p><b>Lissa: </b>So, looking for real humility and the willingness of a healer to say, yeah, I have no idea whether this is going to help you. It's helped some people and not other people, and it's sort of a mystery. Yeah, just be very, very skeptical, but not so skeptical that you're not open to things outside of the scientific materialism world.</p> <p>There is a world of mystery out there, and I'm not sure the mystery wants to be entirely demystified. And it seems to me, it's like be open, but not so open that your brains fall out, right? Don't give your power away to somebody with a lot of power who could really hurt you. And that's where I see people get in trouble, where they idealize somebody or idolize someone and put them on a pedestal. And then their critical thinking and discernment somehow go offline, and they wind up kind of under a seductive spell of somebody very narcissistic and even sociopathic. And there's a lot of narcissists and sociopaths in that world who do get drunk on their own power. And that's a trauma symptom.</p> <p>I tell a whole story in <em>Sacred Medicine</em>, based on an African myth of the evil sorceress with a thorn in her back. I think a lot of these people with power, they developed these powers because they were overpowered in childhood and many of them have terrible trauma histories. So, I have a real trauma informed compassion for why people wind up this way, but I still get really angry because it doesn't make it, you know, having compassion for why people become that way doesn't excuse the behavior or mean that they shouldn't be held accountable. Right now there are not good systems to hold these people to account. So it's treacherous, treacherous waters. So, one of the things I said is, look for somebody with an MD or a PhD or a Master's in therapy or something. There are lots of people like you, and like Rachel, who have medical degrees, who are also incredible healers. And at least then we know those people have oversight. They have a board that can hold us to account.</p> <p><b>Cynthia:</b> I think what you are really underscoring is just the importance of the collective, right, is always to remember. I mean, no matter what our gifts might be and what particular field is, we are one tiny drop in this entire ocean of consciousness, of being, and, past, present, and future. <u href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BJ_Miller">BJ Miller</u>, another great, just totally gifted, humble medical doctor and healer, who we had on this call last year.</p> <p><b>Lissa:</b> Also, from the Rachel community.</p> <p><b>Cynthia:</b> That's true, also from Rachel community, yes. But he uses the word “proportionality”, right. He is like, “yes, if we open, we have this immense potential to heal, to create, to be and to grow, and yet we are tiny. We are just small specs of dust, in this massive universe and to hold those at the same time.”</p> <p>The collective, it could be anything and I never even thought about the collective as something like a medical board, as an organizational structure in terms of accountability and just being a mirror to reflect to ourselves, like, “okay, am I in check? Am I okay?”</p> <p><b>Lissa</b>: I was just gonna say, I find one of the easiest ways to create that if you're not in a system where there's a medical board or a therapy board is to be really clear with our clients and patients that, I expect my clients and patients to hold me to account. Like, tell me if I am violating a boundary or if I have overstepped a line here. Tell me if I have a blind spot that's harming you because when I am teaching -- I am teaching sometimes on zoom to a thousand people -- I get a lot of people if you actually give people permission. I get a lot of people calling me to account on anti-racism issues or language that I might use that might sound ableist to disabled people or any number of ways where they think I can do better and it's hard. It's hard to take all that criticism, but I also know that it's loving. They are trying to help me be a better leader.</p> <p>So, if we can create relationships with the people that are facilitating our healing, where those who might be in a one-down sort of power-under position, know that the person who might be more of an authority figure knows that they're actually empowered to challenge the authority and that is safe. That, that person is going to appreciate that and be available and open to that and to develop more of a shared power partnership to break down those sorts of power over power under structures and, really share power. That's my goal, always in any healing relationship, to practice good leadership, but also to share power with the people that I am leading and, that's what I try to create in every community, including in Heal At Last, which is the nonprofit work that I am working on now.</p> <p><b>Cynthia:</b> Absolutely, thank you, and that's a beautiful place to end this hour of conversation with -- that ultimately we are servants, public servants. We are lifting up from the bottom, not kind of top-down super power.</p> <p>So Kristen is on, but before we segue over to live questions from the listeners and the viewers, I am wondering if we might play just maybe two minutes of the video for sacred healing. Just to take people more into a visual and direct experience of your ten-year journey in healing and exploring these questions. Also, I know some people are calling in, the music will transport you into a state that is kind of beyond images and, it is, Alyssa's beautiful voice, that is on the video so thank you.</p> <p>Lisa: And it's Karen playing the piano.</p> <p>Music plays</p> <p><em>Humble yourself in the eyes of the mother, You gotta bend down low and humble, yourself in the eyes of the mother. You gotta know what she knows, and we shall lift to each other up. Higher and Higher we shall lift each other up.</em></p> <p><em>Humble yourself in the eyes of the father, You gotta bend down low and humble yourself in the eyes of the father. You gotta know what he knows and we shall lift each other up. Higher and Higher we shall lift each other up.</em></p> <p><em>Humble yourself in the eyes of the children, You gotta bend down low and humble yourself in the eyes of the children. You gotta know what they know and we shall lift each other up. Higher and Higher we shall lift each other up.</em></p> <p><em>Humble yourself in the eyes of the elders, We gotta bend down low and humble yourself in the eyes of the elders. You gotta know what they know and we shall lift each other up. Higher and Higher we shall lift each other up.</em></p> <p>(Music ends)</p> <p><b>Kristin: </b>Wow. Thank you so much, Lisa. What a beautiful voice and powerful images.</p> <p><b>Lissa:</b> Oh, thank you.</p> <p><b>Kristin</b>: This has been such a fascinating conversation and thank you for taking us to some really profound places when this talk about healing and mystery. We have a number of questions that have come in, but I wanna remind our listeners that they are welcome to submit a question anytime.</p> <p>I would like to start actually with my own question. When I was looking into your work, I was fascinated by the placebo effect itself, but also your interest in it. And you have devoted a good number of years to researching the placebo effect. And the fact that the human body is capable of healing without anything, but essentially an imagination it's truly astonishing. And, I would love to hear more about what you have learned in recent years. Do you have any new insights on this topic?</p> <p><b>Lissa:</b> I do, actually I wrote an entire chapter. This book was three times longer than it was publishable, and I wrote a whole chapter that I cut about the placebo effect, my post-sacred medicine, and understanding of the placebo effect. They did a whole conference, a multidisciplinary conference at Harvard in the 1990s, trying to demystify the placebo effect. And they basically came away from it saying, “we have no idea.” Like they were not able to demystify the placebo effect. But I actually think that part of the reason for that is that the placebo effect may be what scientists are trying to lump together as all the subjective aspects of healing that we cannot control for in science.</p> <p>So for example, <u href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz-CDxKov20">Bill Bankston</u> has a theory about the placebo effect. He's published a paper about it, where he basically is saying that … well, so I will give a little background on Bill. He is doing hands-on-healing with mice that he has injected with a type of mammary cancer that in the science world is supposed to kill a hundred percent of mice within 28 days.</p> <p>So it is considered a medical miracle if a mouse lives 29 days based on this model. And he's curing cancer over 90% of the time with hands-on-healing in this mouse model. He's controlling for everything -- they have the same DNA strain, they're from the same backgrounds, the same cages. They're getting the same food and water.</p> <p>It's easier to study these things in mice than in humans where we can't control for a lot of those things. And he's teaching skeptical grad students how to do hands-on-healing. They think it's a gullibility testing study and they're curing cancer in the mice over 90% of the time.</p> <p>But the problem is they're also curing cancer in the control mice. So the ones that are not getting the medicine are also getting their cancer cured and what's that? And so he's been trying to explain. He had to take his control mice completely offsite. And if the study team even visits the mice, they get cured, but if nobody ever makes contact with those mice, they die right on schedule.</p> <p>So he tried to make sense of that. And part of his explanation is that maybe there's some sort of healing field that comes with being part of a study whether you're in the treatment group or not, however you want to define that field. There might be what he's calling resonant bonding between the people running the study and the people in the study.</p> <p>Maybe it's related to the clients or patients and their belief that they're getting some potential miracle treatment. Maybe it has to do with the caring and compassion and nurturing relationship of the practitioners that are delivering the medicines. Maybe there's some invisible thing in the bonding of the field, that there's sort of a connection between the practitioners and the study patients such that if anybody in that field has a positive outcome than maybe others are more likely to have a positive outcome.</p> <p>And he uses the example of -- like when we were talking about my experience going to Lourdes -- he's saying maybe this is like a mega placebo, right? Maybe this is a healing field where… he's saying maybe HIPAA is the worst thing we should be doing with patients. Maybe instead of isolating sick people and having them meet privately one-on-one with a practitioner, maybe we should be putting them all in a group, in a group field and delivering the medicine the way they do at Lourdes with thousands of people at the same time or the way the medicine was getting delivered at John of God with hundreds of people sitting in the current, meditating together and benefiting from this collective field.</p> <p>When I was working with many of the indigenous healers, I was so surprised because there was no privacy. You go to work with these healers. you show up at the beginning of the day at six o'clock in the morning to get in line. And there's already 30 people. And the healer is working with you in front of everybody and asking these very personal, private questions.</p> <p>And everybody's there, but you're also getting held by a collective community field with everybody in this humble place of surrender and suffering and vulnerability. Everybody's vulnerable together. So I now think that the placebo -- I used to think when I wrote <em>Mind Over Medicine</em> that it’s the combination of positive belief and the nurturing care of a practitioner. And now I believe it might be something far more mysterious that has to do with this collective community field -- the more people, the better holding this collective intention to heal in a really vulnerable way and coming together to create this love…call it love. But I certainly can't prove that.</p> <p><b>Kristin: </b>It's so fascinating. Thank you for sharing. That sort of leads to this next question, which is on the topic of the collective. A listener writes “This conversation is amazing. Thank you both for your work and insights. My work in the world has been with local communities, neighborhoods, small cities. This portion of the collective has its own nervous system and meridians. I'm looking for allies who are working on and learning about the habits of healthy communities that is exponential communities -- or does she mean experimental? -- I'm not sure -- in unleashing collective self-healing. Is that you or do you have any suggestions?</p> <p><b>Lissa:</b> Oh, I love this question.  It makes me want to refer people to a new book by somebody who's now a new friend. It's called <u href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706317/american-detox-by-kerri-kelly/"><em>American Detox</em></u> by Kerri Kelly. She is a white woman, a yoga sort who was living in that New Age, spiritual world and had a real wake-up call after 9-11 that made her take her yoga off the mat and get really involved in communities of healing at the level of real policy and activism. I would say Kerri Kelly is a great example of somebody who is trying to really move the needle to take our spirituality off the meditation pillow and off the mat and into these communities of healing.</p> <p>And I totally agree that there are these kinds of fractals -- like me and myself with all of my parts in my inner world is one sort of level. And then there is the community that is surrounding me. As I said, I live in the country in a very isolated community that during COVID became very bonded and we, too, have our own nervous system and our own meridians and acupuncture points.</p> <p>And then we're part of -- you go up to sort of greater systems and greater systems. So, yes, we're trying to do that with my nonprofit, with <u href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=heal+at+last.org&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8">Heal at Last</u>. Our vision -- because I have a real strong social justice part. And one of the things that was really obvious to me during 10 years of researching <em>Sacred</em> <em>Medicine</em> -- especially when I got injured -- and realized I literally have the most amazing healers on the planet on speed dial in my phone and what a privilege that is.</p> <p>Many of the people who are most in need of healing have no access and don't have the financial resources and can't be gallivanting around the world to do the kind of work that I did. I had a very good outcome from my injury and the surgeons told me I would not, that that was impossible.</p> <p>And I recognize that's not fair. I have every privilege that one can have other than being male. I am white, financially privileged, cisgender heterosexual, able-bodied, educated, all of those privileges. And it's just not fair that most of the things I wrote about in <em>Sacred Medicine </em>are not available to the people that need it the most.</p> <p>So we've created a nonprofit. We just got our first $100,000 grant to get started. And we're working with a team at Harvard to pilot our program at Harvard, to create a similar to the way 12-step programs have been democratized. You don't have to be rich person and go to the Betty Ford center to get addiction recovery.</p> <p>But you know, addiction is only one trauma symptom. So we're trying to create a similar way to create healthy communities within the communities in churches and community centers and people's living rooms where we can create circles of healing for anyone who identifies as being in recovery from illness, injury, or trauma, and is ready to do the deep dive of this kind of consciousness and healing work -- by donation only, led by cutting-edge trauma therapists and people with an opening to spiritual healing, to sort of democratize this and create peer support networks where we can support those community acupuncture points.</p> <p>I want to be part of a community like that. Imagine if we didn't have to go to workshops in order to do the sort of work that's in this book. We've been talking about it in an intellectual way, but it's a completely different thing. I just got back from teaching at <u href="https://www.esalen.org/">Esalen</u> where we actually did the work, where we're having experiential work. We're singing that song that was playing together in a group field and going out in nature and creating mandalas to make offerings to the indigenous elders, the indigenous ancestors of the Esalen land and the experience of doing these medicines.</p> <p>It's very, very different than the cognitive experience of talking about them. And I'm really interested in moving some of these medicines into communities of healing that don't cost anything, where you don't have to be a rich white person that pays to go to Esalen to be able to have these experiences. So I don't know if I answered that question. It's such a good question. I would love to hear from the community.</p> <p><b>Kristin:</b><em>  </em>I have a few questions that kind of speak more to the individual. Someone writes,<em> ‘I have a mental health challenge. I found that yoga and diet help. The psychiatrist and others think I need psych medicine, and not to go the holistic route a hundred percent, but to use both psych meds and the holistic route. What do you think?’</em></p> <p><b>Lissa:</b> Well, that's such an individual question. I can't tell an individual what's right for that individual. I can say that I personally believe that we have so many medicines in the global medicine bag, whether we're talking about the medicines in conventional medicine and psychiatry; whether we're talking about surgeries and interventions in the conventional medical world; whether we're talking about things in the wellness industry - nutrition, diet, meditation, acupuncture, these kinds of things; whether we're talking about the sacred medicine world; energy healing; and indigenous healing; trauma healing.</p> <p>I personally got the good outcome that I had on my healing journey by using all of them. But I cherry picked. I cherry picked what was right for me, using what I call your <b>Four Whole Health Intelligences.</b> You know, we have our <em>mental intelligence</em>: we can read the scientific data, we can apply critical thinking and be skeptical, and that's really helpful. But we also have - as Cynthia's an expert in - <em>intuitive intelligence. </em>We have <em>somatic intelligence.</em> We have <em>emotional intelligence. </em>And I think we can make the best decisions about our medical decisions - but really <em>any</em> life decisions - by kind of being an orchestra conductor of all of those intelligences within us. And I talk a lot about how to do that in the book. And it's a practice to be able to do that.</p> <p>So, for example, I had a chunk of my inner thigh about this big <em>[gesturing]</em> taken out of me by a pit bull that was right over my femoral artery. If it had got my femoral artery, I would've died cuz I was very far from a hospital.</p> <p>I opted not to go to the emergency room for a variety of reasons, but I worked with an emergency medicine physician who's a friend of mine, who's also an energy healer and craniosacral practitioner. And he helped me care for that wound, which included going to a plastic surgeon and getting a consult to see what do we do.</p> <p>And she said, "There's no way this will close on its own. You're going have to have multiple skin grafts. This is going to take up to a year. 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}</script> <h3 class="h5 pb-2 section-header mt-5"> <i class="bi bi-people text-success"></i> <span>2 PAST RESPONSES</span> <hr> </h3> <div id="cmtlist" class="mt-4"> <div class="comment-item" id="cmt_11068"> <div class="comment-container"> <div class="comment-avatar"> <img src="https://pod.servicespace.org/pics/mem/blank.jpg" alt="User avatar"> </div> <div class="comment-content-wrapper"> <div class="comment-meta"> <span class="comment-author">Kristin Pedemonti</span> <span class="comment-date">Aug 28, 2023</span> <a href="https://www.dailygood.org/story/3028/-p-p-iframe-allow-accelerometer-autoplay-clipboard-write-encrypted-media-gyroscope-picture-in-picture-web-share-allowfullscreen-frameborder-0-height-450-src-https-www-youtube-com-embed-qtgmgjvzqvc-si-krq4uq04-m26qz5x-title-youtube-awakin-call-editors/?t=showComment&cid=11068" class="ms-auto link-icon text-muted"><i class='fa fa-link'></i></a> </div> <div class="comment-content"> Thank you. Holding you in the light. And as both a survivor of multiple traumas and as a Narrative Therapy Practitioner, I stand with you in both/and journeys towards healing. May your work continue to flourish. I'd love to join on the project too<br /> Will email. With gratitude, Kristin </div> <div class="comment-actions"> <a href="https://www.dailygood.org/story/3028/-p-p-iframe-allow-accelerometer-autoplay-clipboard-write-encrypted-media-gyroscope-picture-in-picture-web-share-allowfullscreen-frameborder-0-height-450-src-https-www-youtube-com-embed-qtgmgjvzqvc-si-krq4uq04-m26qz5x-title-youtube-awakin-call-editors/?t=showComment&cid=11068#addcomment" class="reply-link" data-cmt-id="11068" data-cmt-author="Kristin Pedemonti"><i class="bi bi-reply"></i> Reply</a> <span class="btn-light post_btn small"></span> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="comment-item" id="cmt_11067"> <div class="comment-container"> <div class="comment-avatar"> <img src="https://pod.servicespace.org/pics/mem/blank.jpg" alt="User avatar"> </div> <div class="comment-content-wrapper"> <div class="comment-meta"> <span class="comment-author">Mia</span> <span class="comment-date">Aug 28, 2023</span> <a href="https://www.dailygood.org/story/3028/-p-p-iframe-allow-accelerometer-autoplay-clipboard-write-encrypted-media-gyroscope-picture-in-picture-web-share-allowfullscreen-frameborder-0-height-450-src-https-www-youtube-com-embed-qtgmgjvzqvc-si-krq4uq04-m26qz5x-title-youtube-awakin-call-editors/?t=showComment&cid=11067" class="ms-auto link-icon text-muted"><i class='fa fa-link'></i></a> </div> <div class="comment-content"> Thank you for your work and for "holding the vision." </div> <div class="comment-actions"> <a href="https://www.dailygood.org/story/3028/-p-p-iframe-allow-accelerometer-autoplay-clipboard-write-encrypted-media-gyroscope-picture-in-picture-web-share-allowfullscreen-frameborder-0-height-450-src-https-www-youtube-com-embed-qtgmgjvzqvc-si-krq4uq04-m26qz5x-title-youtube-awakin-call-editors/?t=showComment&cid=11067#addcomment" class="reply-link" data-cmt-id="11067" data-cmt-author="Mia"><i class="bi bi-reply"></i> Reply</a> <span class="btn-light post_btn small"></span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <script> $(document).ready(function() { // Toggle between short and full comments $('.see_full_cmt').on('click', function(e) { e.preventDefault(); var cid = $(this).attr('cid'); $('.short_cmt' + cid).hide(); $('.long_cmt' + cid).show(); }); $('.see_short_cmt').on('click', function(e) { e.preventDefault(); var cid = $(this).attr('cid'); $('.long_cmt' + cid).hide(); $('.short_cmt' + cid).show(); }); }); </script> </div>   </div> </div> </div> </div> </section> <script src="js/story.js?1aud"></script>  <footer class="footer"> <div class="container"> <div class="row"> <div class="col-md-5 mb-4 mb-md-0"> <h5 class="footer-title">About DailyGood</h5> <p class="footer-about-text"> For over 29 years, DailyGood has been a volunteer-led movement to share uplifting stories that connect hearts and inspire action — all without ads, agendas, or asks. 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