How can we promote better health in ourselves? What did Hammerschlag learn about himself? How can we integrate spiritual practices?Below is a summary of our thoughts about The Dancing Healers.
There were many universal truths that the author (C.H.) came to through experiences with N.A.’s. Below is a list of quotes from his second book, "Theft of Spirit." Dancing Healers gave us an interesting look at the relationship between the healer and the person being healed.
We discussed the tone of C.H. We all agreed that he had some privilege and condescending/patronizing attitude in his tone, perhaps related to drawing conclusions/summaries in an abridged way without showing the “journey” or process. We also considered that maybe men just write in a way that feels patronizing (how much privilege is carried in the maleness of “voice” in a novel, afterall, we’ve read about a dozen novels by mostly women).
One thing we talked about (and somewhat disagreed on) was the privilege folks (white people) have even when they are “doing the work” (I thought of Paul Farmer in Mts. Beyond Mts.) and how/when we give or don’t give “credit.”
We asked a few questions: Where did his kids and wife go anyway? Is it more appropriate for white people to be angry at white people? How much do you let slide? How much do you push? When we can’t/don’t/won’t see what people are doing or are trying to do to be activists sensitive to oppression and give them credit for their actions, then we end up being upset/angry all the time with no hope. If C.H. were sitting in the room, how would it be different? If he responded to questions/concerns about his tone in ways that showed compassion and understanding of his privilege then we’d have hope that he’s “working on it” but if he asserted his “rightness” then we would just think he was a jerk.
About Healing:
• Healing seems to come about when there is a greater power (individual or w/their group) than the power of the thing that is oppressing them.
• Community is important – Elizabeth Gilbert couldn’t have made it in three countries without the support of community (but she didn’t explicitly talk about it). Carl H. talks about the importance of community for N.A. healing (but not really about his own or white people’s needs for community). In his second book, he talks more about the importance of community for white people, too. Lori A. explicitly discusses the community of the patient, as well as her hospital and surgical Team.
• The legacy of racism/oppression is continued when the personal stories are passed on through the chain of generations. While there is a responsibility to hold onto the history/story because the alternative could be a loss of identity, the trauma legacy is real with psychological (cultural misunderstandings, depression, PTSD) and physical (T.B., alcoholism, dialysis) results of being an oppressed people with accompanying poverty, less access to healthcare, education, loss of history/identity/culture, etc.
• Understanding ourselves helps sustain us with other people
From Eat, Pray, Love:
• Maybe we really do need a guide to help reveal our inner selves and needs
• We really appreciated her step by step discovery and journey (she took us along)
• People do seem to need inner voice & calm
Some “Words of Wisdom” we gleaned from THEFT OF SPIRIT… follow.
“…PNI, a medical specialty that says the mind, body, and spirit are chemically connected and that what you know matters less than what you feel” (14)
“If you’re happy and have faith, belief, and purpose, you can cope better with whatever mental, physical, or emotional challenges you face than if you’re depressed, frightened, and mistrustful.” (14)
“It is through ritual that we separate our ordinary selves from our extraordinary possibilities and create the sacred time necessary to address important questions with the attention they deserve.” (27)
“Seeking an answer is the scientific paradigm; finding meaning is quite another” (29)
“How many ways are there to see? As many ways as we are willing to look.” (29)
“In a talking circle, everyone speaks from the heart, without interruption form the others. …The truth is always closer to the heart song; the heart knows things that the mind never even thought of because it has not yet become broken by doubt.” (30)
“In Native American tradition, there is no such designation as in-law. Relationships are not decreed by law, they are made by choice.” (37)
“The top is where you can see farther than you’ve ever seen before, not some preconceived place where you think you have to be. If you have to be some place other than where you are, you’ll never see the here and now.” (47)
“Gandhi once said, ‘If you’re going to be somewhere, be there.’ …If you spend a lot of time being someplace other than where you are, it means the moment is never good enough.” (52)
“The limitation of psychotherapy is that talking about issues is not enough. It is not enough to confront your truths in private. To rid yourself of old, dysfunctional earning you have to slay your dragons publicly. You cannot fulfill your dreams until you actually acknowledge them for others to see. Otherwise it’s only you head doing the talking without your body doing the talking.” (68)
“Healing is about paying attention to your damaged spirit, not only your broken body.” (69)
“How you come to it is at least as important as how it comes to you.” (88)
“…at every moment you can emerge from your blind self to see in the dark.” (109)
“I recognized that what people ask almost always says more about what they want to say than it does about what they want to know.” (110)
“It’s been nine months since the surgery …I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel …I saw no light until I decided that no one was going to deny me my last hope …The light at the end of the tunnel is not an illusion. The tunnel is.” (114)
“It’s not the events on your life’s journey that make the difference between your being a victim or a hero. It’s how you respond to them. The tunnel of fear is no more real than the light of hope.” (115)
“As long as he asked himself, ‘Why me?’ he was filled with a sense of hopelessness. …It was only when he said, ‘Help me get through this day,’ that he knew that he could survive the moment.” (116)
“So what’s new? Only how we choose to see. …It’s our feelings that will most influence our destiny; it’s what the heart believes, not what the mind thinks, that determines the course of our lives. Which is why it’s possible to commit ourselves wholeHEARTedly to something, even when our mind is only half-sure it’ll work.” (116)
“…when you have no strong sustaining connections to something other than yourself, that you get addicted. You can’t find outside what you don’t have inside.” (120)
“When it comes to sustaining joy, it turns out that the people who are most happy are the ones who are happiest most. We must find joy in the small triumphs, in those good days, in the moment-to-moment changes. We must find more ways to experience joy in those day-to-day, repetitive, ordinary tasks and trials that make up life.” (130)
“Being healthy is just letting life grow through your garbage. …If you discard your garbage, then a tree can grow through it.” (131)
No comments:
Post a Comment