Dear Subscribers,

Oops, my computer crashed and I have to start over again. This will be light and might help new subscribers as well as perhaps a few others.

During a Uranus transit to my Moon in the early 80s, my father's accountant reminded him that I am a tax deduction so I received my first VCR and computer. It was, however, several years later that I came to view the computer as something more than freedom from white out. Andrew Weil had put my personal email on his popular web site. My inbox was flooded. I had never been on the web and didn't know one needs a browser to surf, but I hired someone to create a site. He made it look very complicated (and expensive) and then he went skiing and disappeared for six months. One day, I noticed that MS Publisher allows one to save files as web pages. I tried it and that year gave my friend Gail Barber a web site for Christmas. A few days later, I created AstroHeal.com and thus it began. I now have thousands of pages on the web and about 35 sites. The original response to the inquiries on bloodroot can still be found, a little expanded over the 50 words the web developer insisted was the maximum to prevent slow loading of the site.

http://www.cancersalves.com/introduction/introduction_contents.html

The site with the most traffic is KitchenDoctor.com. It emerged out of discussions with an Ayurvedic doctor who was staying at my house. We were talking about Alzheimer's disease and aging in the West versus India and the idea of self-help material based on what anyone who is motivated can accomplish in his or her own kitchen took root. I explain this a bit in the biographical part of Kitchen Doctor, but the basic ideas have, of course, evolved over the years. The original material was energetic, meaning that by recognizing early symptoms of imbalance, people could tweak their menus to correct the problems before they worsened. I totally believe that 100% symptomatic relief is possible through right dietary and herbal choices, but it does not mean that the underlying causes of disease are eliminated or that the disease is cured, merely that the symptoms are silent.

Kitchen Doctor, as promised, has just gone through an immense overhaul. It has a new header and color scheme and totally new navigation which makes it easier to get around and explore. A shop has been added and the printer friendly pages have been replaced by really easy to print pdfs. A tremendous amount of work went into this, but it was not done just for aesthetics or convenience. The site had grown and become hard to navigate and I want to commit to major additions in 2010. These include lots of podcasts and development of the Mid-Life Tune Up section.

http://www.kitchendoctor.com/midlife_tuneup/midlife_toc.php

The idea behind this program is disarmingly simple. Most of us perform more maintenance on our homes and cars than ourselves. A truly astonishing number of people are relying on their doctors to fix problems they themselves could have resolved if they hadn't let things slide. When the discussions were first taking place, I was concerned about a number of issues: toxicity, food additives, and hypofunctioning systems of the body. Toxicity is an environmental issue that affects all life on this Planet and we are remiss if we do not detoxify every now and then. I believe that the old cultural tradition of detoxifying once a year by simplifying the diet is excellent, but at least every five years, most people need really to clean out the liver and arteries and joints and intestines. This does not necessarily mean that the desired ends depend on austerities but that some strategy is embraced that will deliver the results; often a simple supplement will do the trick.

Most tonification needs to occur after the detoxification but some people are so stressed or run down that they have to tonify first. There are herbs for everything you can imagine so I want to concentrate the next few months on getting more material of this nature onto the web, mostly on Kitchen Doctor. Unfortunately, I cannot promise that everything will be free because in order to liberate time for writing, someone has to relieve me of remunerative tasks. However, in the spirit of the world wide web, I will try to keep the material affordable. As you know, I am technically a senior citizen so I am on that leg of my journey when I have to complete the projects I started. With Pisces rising, the nagging of my own soul can be really intrusive at times.

Now, I want to shift topics rather abruptly because I promised more Morrnah stories. Being the insatiably curious person that I am, it should not surprise anyone that I have met some fascinating people who made lasting impressions on me. However, what is sometimes less well appreciated is that the deepest impressions are often simple. Morrnah said that before anyone can be well, the obstacle to cure has to be removed. She gave examples of family dynamics and sometimes recommended the Hawaiian ritual of ho'oponopono. This long word translates as "problem solving" and the process involves all family members and sometimes friends as well as an elder to guide the less mature members snagged in the imbalance. Morrnah used to see what was in the ethers and when there were problems in this energy field, they would, of course, represent accidents waiting to happen. In the ritual itself, the key person, usually the patient, was encouraged to spit it out, from the gut level, and then others could respond, often in unexpected ways because what we have been sitting on may not be visible to others.

A practitioner contacted me last week with an issue that I felt could be addressed through ho'oponopono, but more importantly, what arose was that most of what we do in the name of healing fails to shift the cause. While Morrnah's style was devoid of judgment, I think it would be fair to say that she would have agreed with Einstein that problems cannot be solved from the level where they were created. Einstein may have been thinking of people trapped by their thoughts, but those of us who are more conversant with the unconscious know that a pattern will persist until it is defused (as in what fuels the pattern is no longer causing the pattern to remain in existence.) Self-criticism, blame, anger, regret, and so on and so forth continue to have a life of their own until they are disconnected and the charge dissipates. In some esoteric circles, these issues are referred to as the Dweller on the Threshold. I have tried to coin some sort of universal, culture-free language but I only got as far as "miasms of the moon" because I believe that what we perceive to be a certain way remains as we perceive it until the truth sets us free. Then, the misconceptions and mists vanish. There are many kinds of healing that entail the release of such fog because the fog is, shall we say, psychic baggage and not really a part of the legitimate landscape.

This said, there are many people who feel that they are victims and they do not want to feel responsible for their woes. I happen to agree with these people to the extent that the subconscious is responsive, not creative, so whatever we feel is a reaction to something whose cause was "out there" somewhere. For those who need confirmation, I do want to say that there are indeed conditions for which we as individuals seem unable to do much at all. I spend many restless nights worrying about depleted uranium that is recklessly spewed on innocents and then carried by the wind to more innocents. However, even if the crises in health are way beyond our personal patterns, we still have to extricate ourselves from the causes if we want to be well. Being an optimist, I am not only sure we can do this but that it is our Divine Destiny to be perfect so we will all enjoy this state sooner or later.

You can see that I am not decorating a conventional Christmas tree but rather filling my psyche with other kinds of ornaments that I hope to put online in the months to come. I am feeling a lot of momentum and really am looking forward to the coming times.

In the meantime, I want to take this opportunity to wish all of you safe and healthy holiday gatherings. I also want to thank you for your interest in my work, for your friendship and support, and for your willingness to be involved in situations requiring solutions.

Many blessings,

Ingrid

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2009

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