A teacher responded to my recent Schlagbyte (Change and Live, 5/9/05) in which I described patients with heart disease who had bypass or angioplasty surgery. After surgery these patients were told that if they didn’t change their lifestyles they would probably die from their heart disease. The surgery was good for maybe seven years, before they would re-clog. Still, knowing those lethal facts, 9 out of 10 of those patients did not start eating right and exercising more, and drinking, smoking and stressing less.

Simply knowing the facts doesn’t change people’s behaviors. The facts only remind people of the reality of their vulnerability. To change people’s behaviors, you have to inspire a belief that it’s possible to live a better reality. My respondent wanted to know how to do that.

How do I inspire people to see possibilities, rather than hopelessness? I develop a relationship with my patients — spend time together and share a piece of our souls. I have them imagine moving from where they are, to where they’d like to be. I encourage them to take a single step that moves them beyond their current limitations, and let them know I’ll walk with them on this healing journey.

Modern brain research corroborates the idea that if you can imagine moving beyond your limitations, you increase the likelihood of it happening. Using sophisticated brain imaging techniques, researchers examined the impact of “virtual reality” games on stroke victims. The May issue of the prestigious journal, Stroke, included this study. Ten volunteers, all relatively young stroke victims (average age 57), were randomly divided into two groups. Half the patients were trained for an hour a day, every day, to play virtual reality games. In each one, the patient’s body was superimposed into the videogame. In one game patients climbed up and down stairs; in another the patient went deep-sea diving with sharks, and in the last, the patients were snowboarding down a slope, jumping and avoiding obstacles. All of the videogames were designed to incorporate images that required range of motion, strength, and mobility.

Researchers found those patients who played the virtual reality games actually improved their ability to walk. Using brain imaging before and after the experiment, they also discovered a reorganization of brain function after the virtual reality therapy. The brain centers responsible for movement, actually expanded! The brain can be programmed to achieve imagined possibilities.

Healers, priests and shaman have always known that if you can imagine it, you can become it. Imagination can create a new reality — one that inspires us to move beyond the reality of our limitations, and moves us through the transformative struggle called life.

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I have often described my baseball activities with the grandsons, but I’ve never told you about my granddaughter’s athletic games (because I’ve never attended one of them). I’ve been to practices and scrimmages but never to a serious tournament. She is a serious volleyball enthusiast, who plays for her school and for a Club team which travels to statewide competitions. She invited me to her final tournament, and I didn’t want to miss it.
As soon as I get settled into the stands, I can feel that the competitive atmosphere is different. Before the game begins, these 12 and 13 year-olds, gather in a circle at mid-court; kneeling on the floor they bang their hands on the hardwood, and sing their team song. When somebody serves an ace, her team mates on the sidelines get together and spell A-C-E accompanied by hand-clapping syncopation.
It’s not just a song and dance routine though, these girls are fiercely competitive; they dive, dig, spike and it gets intense. It’s clear they are fully into it, but they compete in a spirit of cooperation and inclusivity. The girls pull for one another, and share their feelings more openly. It seems to me, that boys play games differently; for them, to compete means, becoming a winner. Boys play for who’s going to come out on top.

I wondered if it was just my perception so I called my friend, Mariah Burton Nelson (www. Mariah Burton Nelson.com), a former Stanford University basketball star, and WNBA professional. She is a powerful spokesperson for women, for building leadership and creating community. Mariah said she thought girls shared everything more openly. They give credit to each other, they’re willing to expose their strengths, weaknesses, disappointments, longings, and they build friendships that last. Mariah was still friends with girls she swam with when she was six, and those she played field hockey, basketball and lacrosse with in the seventh grade.

I’m sitting and watching my granddaughter play and thinking how I did not been to any of her competitions before. It becomes clear to me, that I love to watch those boys play because it takes me back to my old days, and because I identify with their sense of the competitive pursuit.

The girls inspired me, and I find myself wondering, if it’s possible that boys could learn to compete with the same love for the game and the people they play it with? If so, we might change the history of the world.

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Elaine and I both lost our mothers during this past year, so this was the first Mother’s Day in recent years that we came together as only three generations. We still laughed, played, ate time-honored family recipes, blessed our families, and remembered our moms, grandmas, Omas and GGMas.

The week before, we celebrated the Passover holiday, which was my mother’s favorite holiday. This year at the Seder table, we sang her favorite melodies, and I smiled as I watched my children recite the traditional blessing after the festive meal. This was my Mama’s greatest joy, being surrounded by family, watching her stories being transmitted from generation to generation.

I think a parent’s ultimate gift to watch your kids commit their competence to their children. I miss my mama, but mostly I feel blessed by her memory. I see her spirit reflected in the life of my grandkids, and it reminds me that everything we love will go away but will come back to love us in another way.

Bear witness to your life . . . tell your stories to a fourth-generation (I’m just praying I’ll still be able to remember them).

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The United States spends an astonishing $1.8 trillion a year on health care; this represents 15% of the gross domestic product (GDP). The vast majority of this expenditure is consumed by a relatively small percentage of the population for diseases that are, by and large, behavioral.

For example, 2 million people a year have coronary artery bypass surgery or angioplasty to treat their heart disease, at a cost of $30 million. These procedures, in and of themselves, rarely prevent heart attacks or prolong life, because the affected vessels get clogged up again and again. Doctors tell their patients that if they drink less, eat less, stress less, and get more exercise, they will live longer and not need repeated surgeries. However, research has shown that 90% of all people who have bypass or angioplasty don’t change their behaviors.

Why do we resist behavioral change so tenaciously? Why, even at the risk of death, do we hang on to such dysfunctional behavior? Because the facts speak only to our minds, and the head can always find more reasons to maintain the status quo than it can to make changes.

Behavioral change only comes about when you speak to people’s hearts. It’s feelings, not facts, that move us beyond our old limitations. Dr. Dean Ornish, the distinguished founder of the Preventative Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito California, has a world-renowned program for cardiac patients which includes psychological, emotional and spiritual dimensions. Dr. Ornish finds almost 80% of his patients stick with their lifestyle changes and safely avoid bypass or angioplasty surgery. He says it’s not fear of dying that motivates people to change, it’s getting a new vision of life.

To change behavior you have to speak to people’s souls and convince them they can feel better, not just live longer. Joy is a far more powerful motivator than fear — it’s not change or die, it’s change and live.

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A tall, well preserved, 80-year-old woman (I’ll call her Gloria), comes to see me professionally. A year ago, Gloria was told by her doctor that she had terminal cancer. Cancer cells were discovered in fluid they removed from her lungs after a bout of pneumonia. The doctor told her she had an “adenocarcinoma” but could not identify the primary source. Nevertheless, he told her she would likely be dead in three months.

Gloria was scared to death by the diagnosis and prognosis, so she sought out other opinions. She consulted with complementary medical specialists, nutritionists, body workers, energy healers, spiritual guides, and medical intuitives. Gloria also made an appointment at the Integrative Medicine Clinic at the University of Arizona. She sought me out because she worked in Indian country for many years and wanted to create a healing ceremony for herself. We have been meeting over the past six months, nullifying her doctor’s dire prediction for her, and she is thriving.

She is a remarkable, energizing, engaging, lover of life who is a retired university professor and a consummate world traveler (she has explored the jungles in Africa and climbed in the Himalayas). Divorced in midlife after 22 years of marriage, she has two children and several grandchildren, all of whom she is quite close to.

Gloria felt the only thing missing from her healing ceremony was having more love in her life. “What do you mean,” I asked her, and she said, “I need a love life, it’s part of my healing ceremony.” I, of course, got into it and asked her how long it had been since she’d been with a man, thinking it must be decades, and she said, “It’s been a little over six months.”

I loved it and laughed. “I need a younger man,” Gloria pined, “the older ones are either slow, sedentary or immobilized.” I look at her and do not see an old woman; she is fit, engaging, and intellectually alive. Gloria sees herself, as the equivalent of a 48-year-old. “I like dark complexioned men,” she said and smiled coyly.

I recommended she take up salsa dancing — lots of younger men, many of whom like fair-skinned women, especially those who can still move like a 48-year-old. But, Gloria said she never liked dancing because she is too tall and doesn’t like dancing with shorter men. “I can’t dance,” she finally confessed. I told her if she could make love, she could dance, same moves except you’re standing up. She said she was willing to try most things. We giggled together and I told her lots of women were with younger men: Demi Moore and Susan Sarandon, among others, and my wife and daughters all say it’s about time.

Gloria had dinner with her grandson recently. She told me, “We talk about everything, as long as he is interested and wants to know, I don’t screen much.” But last time he said, “Whatever you do grandma, please find a guy who is older than me.”

No matter what the age of your dancing partner, get out there and do a little salsa for whatever ails ya’.

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