In January of this year (2005), I had a very severe flare-up
of rheumatoid arthritis after the death of my mother, with whom I was close.
That event was only the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” as I had been
getting increasingly arthritic from holding a difficult imbalanced life dynamic
for years (I'm 56).
I did not go to conventional physicians for
treatment, mainly because I feel they treat symptoms and not the overall human
system of body, mind and soul. I also do not have health insurance. Instead, I
went to see a chiropractor [1] in my town, who works more with the body
energetically in addition to keeping the spine aligned through adjustments. Over
this entire year, she has steadily brought me back to strength and health –
which was supported by my ongoing yoga [2] practice, which I have done daily for 27
years. At first, I could only do a little yoga in a chair, mostly spinal flexes,
shoulder shrugs, neck twists – left, right & up, down. That’s all I could
do, but at least it kept my core torso flexible and moving.
My
chiropractor used gentle flexing movements (which she called “fluffing”) to keep
my joints mobile and to keep the blood flow moving to the cartridges around
joints. This approach has brought me back to a state of full integrated healing
and strength. Taking a pill to further suppress the immune system to relieve
rheumatoid arthritis is not what I would ever recommend or do for myself.
I appreciate any medical establishment moving towards integrated,
holistic healing, as the old modality of simply treating the symptom will
increasingly not work in the future. We are witnessing the rapid disintegration
of the present system of health care in America, one where Big Pharma,
physicians and insurance companies are in bed together to the detriment of true
healing of the individual- body, mind and soul.
