Change your perception
My perception of the world has been blown. This weekend I had the honor of being able to attend a day of lectures by Jeffrey Yuan on essential oils. And I’m pretty sure I walked away a new person. If someone could have reached into my soul and opened up the reality of the world in a room buzzing with florescent lights I would have told you that was crazy. But that was exactly what happened. It seemed that we were all touched deeply, Jeffrey had a message for all of all not just on how we practice, but on who we truly are.
I thought I was treating the root of disease in my patients. I thought I was reaching for the root of my own problems. But I learned that there is a level far deeper than the root. In the end it is our perception of the world that changes us and cures us, not the root, not even the emotions that lie there.
This was a lecture about oils but it also applies to herbs, and acupuncture and psychotherapy. It was a lecture about our core beliefs of the world. With your intention, you apply oils and change the animal’s perception of the world, with that you change the owner’s perception of the world. Through our animals we heal, through us they grow. Chronic disease occurs when our view of the world is rigid. To make it move again we need to change the way we look at it. Not just processing emotions, not just healing emotional wounds, we need to open our hearts and take another view, not be bound by our beliefs or what we have been told or what we have been taught. When we perceive the world as not getting better our consciousness is stuck, we are rigid and disease occurs.
Through plants we can begin this work. Pu Gong Ying or dandelion “makes our grandfather more outstanding” or brings out our ancestral qualities. Did you know that other plants grow better around dandelions because dandelion provides nutrients to the soil? Just like a kind and gentle grandfather. Roots help to strengthen us and ground us and help us see where we belong. Seeds help us start a new beginning. Flowers change the way we view life and especially high altitude flowers and plants help us endure and start a new direction. They know what it is like to live in a place of low oxygen and can help us move into a place of love when there has not been enough love in our lives. Barks, which support a tree, help us when we are rigid and diseased in our bones and our support; they help us break out of chronic disease patterns there. Our inability to let go of pain settles into our joints.
I am so excited to get back in my pharmacy. What herbs will call out to help? What will I discover in the formulas I make? What new points will call out to me when doing acupuncture? What will facing the world from a different direction bring?
