I just got back from my first visit China; it was an incredible couple of weeks. It’s been almost 60 years since the creation of the People’s Republic of China. What it is today, is a nation in the midst of breakneck economic growth. Everywhere you look you can see the boundless energy of commercialism; the streets of Beijing and Shanghai are ringing with Christmas carols. Like us, they recognize how good the spirit of this season is for business.
Today’s Communist government encourages individual ambition, considers requests from couples wanting to have more than one child, frowns upon religiosity but tolerates some expression. Bridal parties come to the beautiful Catholic Church downtown to be photographed in front of its ornate façade. They stand shivering in the freezing cold to capture the romance of this special moment because it’s what they’ve seen on TV and in movies. After the pictures are taken, however, nobody goes inside.
Everybody will talk to you, because they want to practice their English for the upcoming Olympic Games. The number of college students in China has doubled in the last decade, and lots of them study English. In Tiananmen Square (the largest public plaza in the world) I sat for a long time and could still feel the tanks during those bloody pro-democracy confrontations not so long ago. I asked a young English major if there was anything left of that movement, and she said they don’t talk much about politics; they trust their leaders are making decisions that are in their best interest. At first I bristled, until I recognized the truth: the citizens of most nations believe their leadership speaks for them and are willing to march along in patriotic rhythm.
The old Chinese culture is everywhere if you walk the old streets, bargain in the dirt markets, or eat at outdoor food stalls. The palaces and museums are exquisite, and the Forbidden City and Great Wall awe-inspiring, but the culture didn’t come with a soul that I could feel. I didn’t feel the spirit of China until the day before I left. On that day, my wife explored the Beijing Pearl Market, and I spent the day across the street at the Temple of Heaven. These sacred grounds are the largest, open green area in all Beijing. Built during the 15th century Ming dynasty, the temple is a three-tiered pagoda that is the largest wooden temple in the world. It is surrounded by other sanctuaries and palaces that were the spiritual center for the celebration of harvests, plantings, and the equinoxes. This is where the Emperor fasted and the High Priests made sacrifices. Outside the walls is a forest of more than 60,000 trees, 3500 of which are Cypress over 500 years old.
I desperately needed a bathroom, and it seemed easier to just go outside and find a tree. As I entered the woods, I became aware that there were small groups of people practicing some form of martial art. Under other trees I watched people, young and old, walking slowly around them. I sat down and watched their slow-motion pantomime, lifting their legs slowly and precisely, extending them deliberately before gently placing the foot back down. Each held one hand out toward the ground or tree, the other hand close to their chest. This is Qigong, an aspect of traditional Chinese medicine that involves the coordination of breathing and movement to tap into healing energies. When I looked around I noticed that every tree had its own circular path around it (clearly people had been walking here for a long time). In my fascination, I forgot I had to pee so I decided to begin the walk myself. At 6’6,’’ I dwarf the average Chinese, and even though I may have looked like a spastic Crane, nobody stared or seemed to care. As I got into the rhythm, I began to feel the roots of the tree under my feet . . . then I could feel the roots as if I was breathing through my feet. Focusing on the tree, I felt an energy flowing from my feet, to the hand on my heart, and out of my other hand into the tree.
My labored breath turned misty in the cold air, and as I tired I felt that the tree was now breathing its life into me. From the tree, into my hand, pumping my heart and into my feet . . . my steps became lighter.
Here under the Ming Cypress, I felt the soul of China; at the Temple of Heaven I connected to its sustaining spirit. Find a place that connects you to the healing harmony of the universe and let it lift your body and spirit. Happy New Year to all my relations. Mi Takuye Oyacin.
P.S. Last chance for the extraordinary Dancing Healers Intensive with Brad Keeney, Jan.13-15, 2008. Contact us "mailto:turtleislandprojectinfo@earthlink.net" turtleislandprojectinfo@earthlink.net for the bring-a-friend promo.
Among this year’s Caring Awards Youth Recipients was Jourdan Urbach, a 15-year-old musical prodigy. Jourdan was three years old when he showed a remarkable talent for the violin and has been performing publicly since he was seven. He began giving monthly bedside concerts on the pediatric wards of Beth Israel Hospital; seeing brain damaged children made Jourdan resolve to become a doctor.
He hasn’t waited until medical school to help neurologically impaired kids. Jourdan has created a musical charity foundation called Children Helping Children (CHC) that raises money for pediatric units and medical charities. Jourdan is now a high school student at Julliard in New York City, and he’s recruited other prodigies to give performances for children in New York hospitals. He soon realized that if he gave larger benefit performances he could raise more money. Jourdan has headlined at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Madison Square Garden; so far CHC has raised $13 million.
I didn’t know any of this when we met at a reception the night before the awards ceremony. I asked him about the work he had done to be honored this year and he said that he was a musician who organized concerts to help kids with neurological diseases. He asked me who I was and when he learned that I was a physician he told me that he worked as a summer intern at Harvard doing immunology research on Multiple Sclerosis. His dream is to become a neurosurgeon.
What do you say to a 15-year-old virtuoso violinist who is doing immunology research at Harvard while waiting to go medical school? I said he might not be making much music once his medical studies began, and Jourdan responded that although he loved his music, he could make a bigger difference through medicine.
After the award presentations the following evening, Jourdan was invited to play for the audience, and he was dazzling. He doesn’t think he is exceptional, he just sees himself as “someone who realized there’s more to life than videogames and TV.” Coming to this event always gives me the feeling I’ve crossed a Jourdan and seen the Promised Land.
Happy Holidays, Peace on Earth.
P.S. Remember The Dancing Healers, a unique workshop/intensive with Dr. Brad Keeney (a Bushman Shaman) and me is Jan.13-15, 2008, which is only 3 weeks away. More info on homepage (www.healingdoc.com).
You’ve heard me rail on about the price that we pay for the genius of our technology. Hand-held personal computers, cell phones, and instant messaging, that were intended to increase efficiency and save us time, are actually consuming more of it. People can’t tear themselves away from them — not at dinner, on vacation, or watching a ball game.
I’m pleased to announce that my babblings have now been joined by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Mark Andreessen, a founder of Netscape says we have become so seduced by techniques to maximize personal productivity that he calls it “productivity porn.” Jason Hoffman, a founder of Joyent (which designs web-based software for small businesses) has urged his employees to cut out instant messaging, swear off multitasking, restrict e-mail use and conduct business the old-fashioned way by telephone because it increases productivity.
Hoffman and Andreessen are among the disciples of a 30-year-old motivational author, Timothy Ferriss, who culled all of the time management and personal productivity theories of the last 30 years into a new book called The 4-Hour Workweek (Crown, 2007).
Ferriss’ theory is that we have too much information, “It’s not that Blackberry’s and IM are inherently bad……it’s the dose that makes the poison.” Ferriss encourages his readers to go on a “Low Information Diet.” Ferriss himself said he had to go on a crash diet of his own and that his “nasty addiction to RSS feeds is now a thing of the past.”
Ferriss’ method is to practice “selective ignorance”; for example, he gets his world news from waiters. Answering emails and arranging his social calendar are out-sourced to low-paid, highly skilled workers from abroad who reduce his email clutter and even find him dates online. If you ask him about work crises, he says, “It’s something somebody else worries about, ideally in Bangalore.”
I don’t know about a 4-hour workweek as my goal (I’d be happy to cut back to 30), but I am sure of this: the more you make yourself available, the more that gets thrown at you. Set limits on the information you receive; go on the “Low Information Diet.”
Remember that limit setting, is an ego-corrective experience for adults as well as children. Don’t get imprisoned by the instruments meant to liberate us. Find a way to say no to the seductions of excess, and you will live more peacefully.
I try to attend the National Caring Awards every year because I meet folks who restore my faith in humanity. Most of them are people none of us have ever heard of before like Rosie Espinoza from La Habra, California.
Rosie was born in a camp for migrant workers in La Habra over 50 years ago. She was brought up in a strict, extended family, did well in school, and became a medical instrument designer. Rosie married Alex, had a son, and then wanted to move back to La Habra and feel a part of a shared community. They bought a little house and moved back to La Habra, but it wasn't the childhood paradise Rosie remembered. Kids were still standing on street corners with baseball bats, except now they weren’t looking for a pickup game. But they had made an investment, and Rosie saw potential in the neighborhood.
First she dealt with the gang problem on her street and formed a neighborhood watch group. Gang members weren’t happy, and when they found police cars parked in front of their house, they left a message spray-painted on Alex’s truck, “Don’t finger us. Keep your mouth shut.” It was the first time Rosie also ever heard a bullet whiz by. She prayed for help in figuring out what to do next and wondered whether she had made a terrible mistake in coming back.
She canvassed neighborhood homes (including those of gang members) looking for some answers. What she learned was that many of her neighbors spoke little English, couldn’t help their kids with their homework, and they were dropping out of school at an alarming rate. That’s when she decided to help the neighborhood kids with their homework, and such was the beginning of Rosie's Garage ( HYPERLINK "http://www.rosiesgarage.org" www.rosiesgarage.org.).
She convinced Alex to let her convert the garage into a classroom and then scrounged around for desks, books, and materials. There was no money, no name, no formal incorporation or Board of Directors; there was just her and Alex, her sister, and some neighbors. The word spread in markets, beauty and barber shops, and bulletin boards. The first day she opened the garage door there were 16 kids waiting. From that humble beginning Rosie taught kids not only how to be successful, but how to respect themselves.
The gang activity on their street stopped because gang members saw their brothers and sisters going there and doing well in school. Nobody really knows how many kids Rosie’s garage has inspired, but it’s now moved from the garage to a location in a city government building a quarter-mile away.
I told Rosie her garage was a community-based mental health program and direction psychiatry ought to be moving, if it is ever going to deal with the escalating rates of kids with diagnosable mental illnesses for which we prescribe drugs. Instead of a model of health based on that kind of intervention, we need one that emphasizes prediction and prevention. Rosie opened a garage door for fragile soap-box cars, and what emerged were armored vehicles to engage the future.
P.S. If you’re interested in a transformational healing workshop/intensive join me and Dr. Brad Keeney (who has learned the Kalahari Bushman Shaking Medicine), on Jan.13-15, 2008 for The Dancing Healers. Check homepage ( HYPERLINK "http://www.healingdoc.com" www.healingdoc.com) for details.
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Ending the War Inside
Sunday, December 02, 2007
I recently wrote about an Army report (Schlagbyte 10/22/07) that revealed 20% of regular Army soldiers, and as many as 40% of reservists serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, suffer mental distress when they return home. Many of those who suffer do not seek help until they become functionally disabled.
Last week, I read about Brad Gaskins (NYT, 11/18/07), a 25-year-old Army Sergeant, who served two combat tours in Iraq. When the nightmares and anxiety became overwhelming, he went AWOL and hasn’t returned since August 2006.
Sergeant Gaskins was his high school’s starting quarterback; he enlisted in the Army when he was 17 because he wanted to improve his life, have a career, help his family, and serve his country. He was by all descriptions a good, tough, talented soldier, but the war etched away at his spirit. Sergeant Gaskins was reluctant to share his distress for fear his superiors would label him weak, or worse, crazy. But during his second deployment he came home for a two-week leave and did seek help for his problems. He was evaluated, given drugs for depression and insomnia, but was given no psychotherapy or follow-up care. He returned to his military base where the tanks, marching soldiers, and gunfire became unbearable, so he walked away back to his wife and newborn son.
He became reclusive, locked himself in a darkened room, and trembled when he saw images from Iraq on the evening news. He yelled at his two-year-old son for no apparent reason, and once put a knife to his wife's throat as if he didn’t know who she was; these are all clinical manifestations of PTSD.
A couple of months ago Sergeant Gaskins approached a veteran’s advocacy group, Citizen Soldier, and asked for advice. They encouraged him to get a psychological evaluation and to turn himself in saying he could not hide forever. Last week Sergeant Brad Gaskins turned himself in. He said, “I’m not a deserter, I’ve served my country and now I need help.…. I just want it all to go away and get my life back.”
Sergeant Gaskins has been hospitalized; he could be discharged from the Army for medical reasons and declared disabled. He could be court-martialed, which could land him in prison and prevent him from receiving veterans’ benefits. I’m hoping the Army will treat him and not punish him.
We have to stop waiting until our vets end up in psychiatric wards before we help them. We must come together as communities and ceremonially welcome home our soldiers, honoring them as returning warriors. We need proactively to reintegrate them by mobilizing our resources to reach out and help them cope, learn, do, or explore what they want to be doing from now on. We must get away from a mental illness model that focuses on disability and drugs, and move toward a community-based prevention model that focuses on ones strength’s to end the wars inside.
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Dr. Carl A. Hammerschlag, M.D., CPAE is a psychiatrist, author, and professional keynote speaker. He is an authority in the science of psychoneuroimmunology â mind, body, spirit medicine â and speaks about health and wellness, healing, leadership and authenticity . He has delivered motivational keynote speeches to corporate and business clients around the world.
