Parkinson's Disease: A case history
The following are transcripts of conversations between Kate Flax and Kathy, a patient with Parkinson's Disease.
Because Kathy had had Parkinson's for nine years, they decided they’d meet once a week
for therapy for the next nine months, a single month equating to a single year.
|
| Kate Flax' questions |
Kathy's responses |
| Can you talk about the time when you were first introduced to energy healing? |
I was introduced to this therapy when you (Kate) did a workplace demonstration about a year ago of how you work. When you first talked about it to the group, I was inwardly rolling my eyes, thinking, "Where are the sprouts?" Then I watched the way you moved as you worked on some people. Your body was up, down, then you twisted and turned. It was magnetic. It felt like there was lots going on, and I was drawn to what you were doing When it came my turn to be worked on I thought, "Okay, let’s try this." I wanted to be the last one so that I could be alone in the room when you worked on me; I didn’t want to be self-conscious about my Parkinson’s tremor. I felt that my tremor was pronounced as I got on the massage table and lay on my back. Then as you worked on me, I reached a point in the process where I was really, truly still.
I get emotional thinking about it; it was so great. Just to feel like that for thirty seconds or ten minutes - however long - I’ll take whatever I can get. |
| When we started this work, we had no expectations, just our curiosity and our hope
that your quality of life would somehow change. Could you summarize how you feel about our experiment? |
To feel "well" even for a short time is very therapeutic. To stop trembling when you work on me makes me remember how it feels to be well, to be normal. Hopefully that feeling will be stored as a sense memory so it can be evoked to counteract the constant sensory experience of the brain’s missed firings and missed connections. To have those connections working even for a short time feels wonderful and very healing. |
| Did you find that the experience changed at all over time? |
I can more quickly find my groove, that pattern that you talked about. My body can slide more easily into that space. Initially I had to struggle to find it. I can now feel the kinks unwinding in me like a twisted telephone cord untwisting. |
| Can you say a little more about the experience for you? |
My body is like a Geiger counter: it measures stress; under stress my tremors kick up. I tremor unself-consciously when I am with you; I just let it happen. It is an enlightening process. I see what comes up for me. The tremoring is often connected to something. Barriers sink. I feel like I am dealing with my genuine feelings in the moment. |
| Can you describe the process? |
This is not an intellectual process and it is not verbal. It goes on in broader consciousness. It is sub-verbal. Disarmed of words, the tools that have both protected and hurt me, is a therapeutic place to be. It’s allowed me to be less protective of myself but more supportive of myself. It lets me come closer to my genuine feelings in the moment. It’s like a tuning fork pitched to other vibrations. I feel unburdened, that whatever heaviness has been lifted from me. I am still but not still. Sometimes I feel the energy flowing inside of me; sometimes not. Sometimes I’m drawn to places, and I’ll put my hands somewhere on my body, like my stomach, and feel the energy myself and play with it.
Sometimes I am conscious of breathing, sometimes not. I am now more conscious of my breathing when I feel myself under stress. I can consciously breathe and reduce my stress.
Sometimes I see colors: cobalt blue, mustard yellow, apple green, aqua, orange. Sometimes I see brightness with my eyes closed in the dark room. At times I "check back in." I haven’t been asleep but I’ve been somewhere else. I feel as though there is air all around and under me and that nothing is supporting me. It’s not exactly like floating but more being enveloped in this nice supportive warmth. It is a very restful place, but an active place. There’s a nice balance. There is a feeling of positive energy in the active part. Then it’s peaceful. If something comes up, if there are disruptive rumblings, I pay attention. I just let it happen and I see where it goes.
Sometimes I think things. I actively think, "Here it is Kate, take it." I am conscious of the circuitry, that transmission, set up between us. That thing I’m letting go of is specific without being verbal. It’s a sense of a flow. In our highly verbal culture we use words to seal ourselves off from things. Words are a medium and a barrier. We can do verbal tricks to seem to be open but we’re really creating structures to fend off things, to disguise feelings, to protect ourselves, or present ourselves in a certain way. It is liberating not to have to deal with words. |
| Have you ever tried to induce this trance like state on your own? |
Not exactly. Every so often I find that I am lying down and putting my hands behind my head and I’m invoking what you do. I also feel that when you work on me I can manipulate that energy: move it up and down and play with it. |
| Anything else you’d like to say about this process? |
I’m not certain what’s happening but I feel that there are areas in the brain that are ignited and activated. I wonder what areas in the brain would light up in a PET scan during this process. I would be willing to bet that in Parkinson’s people, the affected area of the brain would show increased activity. And I would bet that very different areas would be activated in talk therapy.
This process is so unlike talk therapy. It is focused, intentional, present, in the moment. I feel you completely engaged and paying attention in the process. We communicate nonverbally. It must be amazing to feel what another person feels to be so empathic and to bring nothing to that feeling. You don’t label it, describe it, package it neatly. You put no language, no judgment, no expectations on it. That is incredibly validating. I think that this work taps into a kind of communication that we don’t often access, but it’s really there.
If you are sensitive to others, then your body as it experiences life is almost constantly under stress, paving the way for autoimmune disease and all kinds of things. Although no two people experience Parkinson’s the same way, I think all people with Parkinson’s disease could benefit from this practice. The process is full of serendipity and imagination. It’s so powerful, your invoking energy and light. |
| Kathy's Questions |
Kate Flax' Responses |
| What’s different about working on someone with Parkinson’s versus others
with other problems? |
What transpires in a session depends upon the person lying on the table. Two people with Parkinson’s disease wouldn’t necessarily experience the same work with me.
Consistently, every time I go to work on you, I am drawn to work on your head. Merely creating a fulcrum with my hands on the occipit of your head is enough for your head and all of its energy to talk for an entire hour, which is unusual in my practice. Recently, I read that creating a fulcrum at the head is how cranial sacral therapy would best be applied for a person experiencing Parkinson’s disease. So that validated my intuition. |
| How does it feel when you are working on me or on anyone else? |
I am feeling exactly what you are feeling in your body: that’s how I get my reading. Consciousness is part of the process. I feel heat in an area that needs your body’s consciousness brought to it. When your body has achieved that consciousness, it has brought healing to that part of your body as our bodies know how to self-heal.
Often a client’s complaint about a specific body part or area is not the reading I get when working on the person. I follow my intuition, not their words. As I take a reading of a client’s energy at their feet, if I am physically pulled to one side of the body or another then I go to that side. And I begin to feel the body’s energy as I slowly with a fingertip touch of my hand move my way up the body. |
| What is a block? |
All bodies are made up of chemicals and energy. There are all kinds of things that can stop that energy from flowing smoothly in us. There might be emotional, mental, physical, personality or spiritual reasons for the block. When frightened, for instance, we suck in at our diaphragm. Now if one does that often enough one will make an abnormal groove in the body, kind of like a tire on a muddy road makes a rut. The next time you drive down that same road it will be difficult to not follow that rut. This becomes a block.
Environmental toxins will block a liver. I will be drawn to put my hands on a person’s liver. The client will feel as though my hands are very hot when in fact it is the person’s liver gathering energy to that spot to grab the body’s attention, consciousness, and thus bring its own natural healing mechanism to the liver. I’m not fixing anything myself but I am merely the agent of change. Actually I am the agent of consciousness, which brings about the change |
| What do you mean by consciousness? |
We take our bodies for granted until they stop working for us. If you have a cold you feel full of mucus, otherwise not.
When I am around a body, I am drawn by my body and my intuition to those areas of blockage. My intention and attention stays there with my full thoughts on that area of your body.
I recently worked on someone with torn tendons at her feet. In fact, in her case, I found myself at her shoulder. I followed the energy and it torqued around. I followed it with my body and intention and performed what is called an "unwinding" on that area of her body. After a one- hour session she stood tall and straight and firmly on both feet, no longer limping.
She told me that she had first pulled her shoulder out, then pulled her tendons out. She probably had thrown off her body alignment, which made her more vulnerable to a leg/foot injury. My body knew that, my brain did not. I relive what the body has been through. As I act it out it actually releases the client’s body.
|
| How does your work play out over the short term and the long term?
| That varies from patient to patient. The work begins on the table. It can be up to 72 hours before something could be manifested. For example, I had a client surprisingly but gratefully commence her menstruation after 48 hours. I had another client come in with a migraine and walk out without one. A current client with a 30- year case history of cystitis is an ongoing client. I have seen cancer patients more than one time, which is typical.
A patient can often expect to feel fatigue after a session and I suggest rest and a lot of water drinking. I also recommend that a person undergo only one form of body work a day so that the body can absorb the experience.
|
| Are you able to rid a body of disease so it will not recur again? |
NO! No ethical practitioner of CST would ever claim to cure-disease. But we can facilitate healing. There’s a difference.
Every patient has an individual experience of varying lengths of time with varied outcomes. The body is a live thing. Nothing is fixed. It’s been a long process to get where you are and it will be a lengthy process to re-groove the body and expel its built-up toxins. I do feel optimistic and that emotional and physical toxins can be released through energy work whether it be in one session or multiple sessions, usually once a week. |
| What are emotional toxins? |
A jaw locked from BIG over stressful tension is an example. This can usually be released in one session. Here are some emotional toxin examples: bitterness affects the pancreas,and anger affects the liver and the gall bladder. You’ve heard someone say "She galls me." Overdoing daily activities affects the spleen. Not being able to stomach something or someone, as in, "I can’t stomach that," affects the stomach. |
| You hardly ever talk when you work. Why? |
I don’t generally talk in my therapy sessions as I value that trancelike, restful state a patient gets into. If I ask questions it immediately puts someone into their head and perhaps could even give them performance anxiety. |
| It is ever uncomfortable for you to feel others feelings? |
No, because I consciously tell myself the feelings are theirs, not mine, and that I am only the conduit. I stand between all of the energy that is out there in the world and the person’s energy. I merely allow the energy to pass through me in both directions, with healing white light going into the person and the toxins coming out of the person. I ask for that healing white light to pass through me and into someone. I put mental boundaries around myself to protect myself as that I allow my body to be a pathway in and out for that energy. |
| What is that healing light? |
Words can’t talk about that experience. I feel so inarticulate and I don’t really understand it. Everything is made up of energy and light is energy. I know that before and when I ask for healing for someone, brilliant white light pours through me. I am a being sensitive to energy. By my consciousness I can tap into that stream of flowing energy. |
| How did you develop as a healer? |
I studied for four years with an MD Shaman, one and one half years with a shiatsu/acupuncturist instructor, and one year with an esoteric healing instructor. Shiatsu and acupuncture are meridian based energy healing modalities,
while esoteric healing is chakra based. A chakra is one of the seven centers of spiritual energy in the human body according to yoga philosophy. Cranio sacral therapy, healing touch, and shamanism are other kinds of energy healing modalities. All of the modalities that I have studied are energy based. Since my formal and practicum instruction I find that the process of energy healing keeps getting richer for me all the time. There are no limits to energy healing. I will work with anyone with any physical or emotional blockage or trauma. I am fascinated to see what can happen.
I tell people we are on an adventure together. I have no idea what’s going to come up and what will happen. I feel so optimistic about the whole healing process.
|
