Healing and Dealing: Essays On Becoming Wholed

By Peter Cloud Panjoyah

When our lives are imbalanced at any level of our Self, i.e. physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, or relationally, we can experience stress, discomfort, unhappiness and illness. In his book Healing and Dealing: Essays on Becoming Wholed, Peter Cloud Panjoyah offers a roadmap toward an elusive balance point, outlinin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Cloud Panjoyah
• Release date: Jun 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781999063122

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Preface

In 2001, living 4000 miles from New England where I grew up, I found myself talking across several months in email with my mother and sister about my take on the healing process, particularly my emotional healing journey. After many long backings and forthings, in which I would share a little about my process and they would ask questions about how I got there and what I got out of it, leading to more explication, I received feedback particularly from my sister Alison that I did a really good job explaining something that was in many cases quite esoteric and nonverbal, and that I should consider writing a book about it.

Meanwhile, I was four years into a new relationship with Bee Wolf-Ray, a woman who I've come to consider one of the clearest channels of spiritual information that I've ever heard. Bee would often Be-Earth, a term she coined that she preferred to the notion or concept of channeling, holding forth on many aspects of healing from a deeper or greater aspect of her Self. We recorded many of these sessions, and I often transcribed them. Year after year since that time, she has brought forth many very helpful understandings and concepts that aided our own healing, information which comprised a significant portion of the raw material for this book, for which I am enormously grateful. We are still in partnership after twenty-three years and Bee is still BeEarthing helpful and impactful information to this day.

I absorbed and integrated much awareness along the way in receiving these BeEarthings from Bee that I felt could help others besides just the two of us in their own healing from trauma or simply life in western culture. In addition, I was heavily influenced by a series called Right Use of Will by Ceanne DeRohan, as well as, ultimately, what I grounded and integrated from my own source as a result of my personal growth process.

So in 2003 I decided to take the plunge and started penning monthly articles for my local newspaper which consisted of my take on aspects of the healing process. Bee was my editor and greatly assisted me each month in both illuminating and clarifying my points, helping prune my rough drafts down below the paper's word limit. I published some fifty articles across five years which were well received by my community. Somewhere during those five years I began expanding the articles' base material, fleshing out my topics and adding new ones, with the idea of taking up my sister's suggestion. You now hold the result in your hands (or have on your screen, as the case may be), after many delays, editing passes and self-publishing.

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Introduction

For nearly thirty years I have been actively engaged in healing my own patterns and past. This process has consumed me, and I have been dedicated to and enchanted with it and all of its workings, both on the inner and the outer. During this time I have also studied the workings of energy at all levels and how that energy flow affects healing, taking years of classes and practicum, soon maintaining a private energy healing practice. In 1996, when I felt an inner urging to have this practice be more grounded in the physical, I began private study with various individual bodyworkers, and took several massage courses, revamping my healership into a massage practice that focused more on the physical and emotional aspects of healing, as opposed to the mental/spiritual aspects that occupied my time as an energy healer in the early to mid-90’s.

Within these pages I offer some signposts outside conventional approaches to healing. I welcome disagreement, debate, and strong emotional response to what is said. My words are my opinions and my personal truth, not necessarily Truth, although opinions can sometimes be experienced as Truth if there is enough trust in their validity and practical applicability. What I offer has been time-tested in my own life, and in the lives of many of those in my healing community.

The recommendations and conclusions drawn in this book are off the beaten track and reflect a life currently being lived largely off the grid. They are not intended to reinforce what you already know, but perhaps what you have suspected or conjectured. For example, many people have not realized that expressing emotions in sound could possibly be healing or a good thing; after all, won’t we just create more of the same if we do that? Or could it be, like a pressure cooker being relieved of pent-up steam, that the dynamic, evolutionary creations we are become more functional and balanced if we hold less emotional charge?

This book is written in the hopes that it will help people think, feel and act upon changing and releasing old habits. It is divided into four parts across what I consider to be the four layers of the self: our bottom line, the physical body; our inner feminine, the emotional body; our halfway house the mental body, and our eternal, timeless light of consciousness, the spiritual body, all of which comprise the Self as a whole. I include a fifth section which follows the first four, The Relational Body: Love, Family, Friends and Others, for it is in this realm of life that the four bodies of our Self touch and interact with another’s four.

Though the text is divided neatly into these five discrete sections, there is an emphasis and focus throughout on the issues of the emotional body and how to effectively deal with emotional triggers. I focus on the emotional body because this part of self seems to be in direst need, collectively speaking, of more evolved understanding. It has become abundantly clear to me that a deep inquiry into one’s emotional backlog is not everybody’s journey. But it is the work of some, and the beauty of finding out if you or someone you love are among the some is that, ultimately, healing is do-it-yourself work and has a self-selecting quality to it. That is, you try it and it works and you feel good about the process having an encouraging effect, or you ditch it if it seems or feels wrong for you. Or, you do not even try it because it does not draw you. Hopefully discarding such an inquiry is not rooted in a belief that might read, I believe it works but it is just too hard and painful so I am going to give up and try a mental technique because it seems easier.

There are many suggestions for healing and dealing offered in this book. It may be tempting to believe a possible guilt message that if you don't apply all or most of the tips, healing and dealing is not for you, you have failed, or you are not a 'good' healer. Guilt, however, is not a truth teller. I encourage you to pick and choose what resonates for you to try on, and ditch the rest. Not every suggestion is meant for every person.

In addition, everyone has different pacing with their self-healing as unique individuals with unique right times, and cannot be compared lovingly to anyone else's healing path or arc of healing. Comparison energy is not in service to balancing and healing ourselves.

I have subtitled this book, Essays on Becoming Wholed, because a dear friend said to me that, more than healing wounds, the impetus we all have towards maximizing our potential and recovering from what we have endured in all of our painful history is to become whole people again, to have access to all of our power, all of that great potential becoming actualized or well on its way, so that life becomes an exciting adventure again, in every single nook and cranny of our existence.

Healing is a process, and the process molds us, happens to us, takes us over in the best way possible, becomes us. Adding the 'd' onto the word 'whole' somehow indicates to me a progression; motion. Motion generated via the increasing energy of rising vibration, which happens when we express emotions and receive resultant understandings. Some people think of emotion, or e-motion, as shorthand for energy in motion. All this considered, it feels right to coin the term wholed to more specifically reflect the ultimate outcome of the healing process.

I was not trying to reach every person with my columns, nor am I with this book. The kind of people I am hoping my words of encouragement might help are not those who have no apparent problems or ongoing issues in their lives. The kind of people I am trying to reach and perhaps help are the ones who are often having reversals in their fortunes, who cannot win, who have seething cauldrons of old emotions in them that they are not sure how to deal with, or who may be having physical problems and wanting to reach for new ways of responding to them.

I feel it is important for people who read my words to know which category they fall into, by and large, so they know if the content is applicable to them or not. If it doesn’t resonate, it simply means the material, or that part of the material, is not right for you. It may help to carry an awareness that different people on different paths need different help.

In describing examples or anecdotal illustrations of various healing scenarios, I often use the third person feminine convention of ‘her’, for several reasons. Firstly, it is too cumbersome to always use him or her, secondly, third person masculine has gotten most of the airtime over the millennia and it is time for a balancing, and thirdly, especially when it comes to describing scenarios involving the emotional body, the feminine principle is what I most closely associate with emotionality.

At some point in the healing process many of us reach a point where we would like to have some sort of group or peer support. There are people all around us doing vulnerable, deep healing work. There are people doing this work that one can meet through the web, through various workshop communities, and through friends of friends. Intending to find them and staying open for opportunities to be with them will undoubtedly lead anyone who wants help from individuals and/or groups, to begin to develop the roots of a support system.

The words healing and dealing are sprinkled throughout the book. This phrase indicates the work that we do to clear ourselves of backed-up emotional charge and old habits of thought (healing), which in turn manifests an outward flow of action toward people and situations in our lives (dealing) that reflect the dynamic balance we achieve, bit by bit, through consciously engaging in the process.

Healing and dealing is a reiterative process, like the fish that flops onto land only to slide back into the water twenty times before she grows legs and walks out for good. We make the same mistakes over and over again until we grow the legs of true depth of understanding and walk out of the sea of confusion and pattern. This is accomplished via the evolutionary process of the Wholing Selves We Are.

I wish you all good and strong healing and dealing. In so doing, may we reclaim ourselves in all our fullness and power, and bring balance back to life on Earth.

PCP

British Columbia

Spring 2020

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Part I

The Physical Body

Chapter 1: Tips For Long-Term Body Health

A Great Mixed Drink

I've been hearing about this great mixed drink. Unlike most mixed drinks, I hear the more you drink, the clearer you get. Heavy indulgence doesn't result in getting tanked or a crippling headache the next day. You don't have to wait in line at the liquor store to get some, and even minors can indulge freely. How do you make it? Two fingers hydrogen, one oxygen. Hey, barkeep, set my friends up over here...it's on me.

Make sure the glass stays full...as soon as you knock it back, top it off, as a visual cue for the next time you pass by your tankard, that there's more to be had. Guys, it's okay to chug-a-lug it like a triple shot. Drink and pee, drink and pee, all day long.

Feeling hungry a lot? Down a big glass, wait 15 minutes, and then see if you're really still hungry. We've grown so chronically thirsty for so long, we sometimes mistake our body's signal for more water as a call for food. For best results, drink a lot at room temperature on an empty stomach to give your body the highest high, and don’t mix it with anything else—juice is not the same thing. They don't call it a watering hole for nothing! Especially if you've just received bodywork, had a big cry, or have done a lot of physical activity. Flush those toxins!

Cooling Off Injuries

Then there's the frozen form of this elixir of life. Be cool. In fact, be cold. Get yourself one of those soft packs, wrap it in a hand towel, and put it on anything that hurts. Strap it on if it's going on a hard-to-balance place. Yeah, I know it feels better short-term if it's hot, but nothing brings that curative, long-term, deep secondary blood flow like ice. 10-15 minutes on...then take it off for another 10-15 minutes. Then on again, then off again. A total of three rounds, twice a day. Just chill those aches right out. Alternating cold with hot can be another successful experiment for your body, who speaks to you in a voice only you can hear. My body doesn’t have the same needs as your body, which doesn’t have the same needs as your friend's body, ad infinitum. This book isn’t meant to be a bunch of one-size-fits-all techniques, it’s more like a store – take what you need and leave the rest for someone else.

Breathe, Breathe In The Air

We live in a culture of shallow breathers. Shallow breathing starves the cells of our body and leads to all sorts of long-term nasties. You can go a few days without water, weeks without food, years without exercise but go a few minutes without oxygen and you will die. As far back as 1947 studies showed that normal cells can easily convert to cancer cells when chronically starved for oxygen. Lack of oxygen resulting from an overly rapid and shallow breath rate can contribute to heart disease, strokes, depression, sleep issues, fatigue, premature aging and nearly every malady known to humankind.

Corporate industry and the style of modern life, as well as its conveniences, have in many of us led to decreased outdoor activity and increased work indoors, coinciding with an increase in exposure to pollutants. Restrictive clothing such as tight waistbands, belts and bras compromises the ability to breathe fully and effortlessly and can contribute to digestive, elimination or lymphatic issues. These factors, combined with the subconscious fear of triggering the emotions stored in our body, help create shallow/rapid breathing patterns.

Cultivating an intent to face the emotions that can be stirred by continuous proper breathing allows one to begin the journey toward clearing the impediments to greater oxygen intake and resultant cellular health. When we intentionally breathe deeply, we stir the held fear, grief or anger in the rib cage and internal organs such as the lungs, heart, stomach, spleen and liver. This is a good thing if we have acceptance for the possible emotions that intentional deep breathing might surface.

Moving the lungs more fully with deeper breathing also assists in lymphatic fluid moving through the body. Only physical movement, including but not limited to deep breathing, can move lymphatic fluid through the glands and thereby eliminate wastes and toxins much more easily from the body. Besides physical movement, there is no other pump to keep your lymphatic fluid moving, as, for example, the heart is for the blood.

Oxygen

Oxygen is the key component in the production of ATP, the chemical basis of energy production in the body. Deeper, slower breathing increases production of ATP. Increased oxygenation also improves blood quality, aiding in the elimination of toxins. It especially improves overall brain function and pineal/pituitary gland rejuvenation. Skin becomes smoother and stress load on the heart is decreased (thanks in part to greater lung efficiency), resulting in lower blood pressure. Increased diaphragmatic range of motion massages the heart, liver, pancreas, stomach and small intestine, stimulating blood circulation in these organs.

Breaking Down A Deep Breath

The website http://holisticonline.com describes the complete breath in good detail. It starts with a lower breath inhalation that begins in the belly, and proceeds upward through a middle, intercostal breath (the lower ribcage expands to the side), completing the inhalation in an upper or high-ribcage chest expansion. Exhalation reverses this direction, and ends at the bottom of the exhale with a final component – what I call an inner hug, where the lower ribs give a gentle squeeze to the diaphragm. This squeeze not only eliminates the last bits of old air in the bottom of the lungs, but when the ribcage relaxes, the next breath begins automatically! This is where effortlessness can begin. Be in no rush to begin the next breath; pausing at the bottom of the breath for a few seconds brings its own benefits, particularly the resting of Body’s systems. Although oxygen uptake occurs on the exhale and thus slow out-breath is recommended overall, sometimes my body likes to just let go the air all at once, without pushing. Allow Body to do either, just because you feel to in the moment. The lack of pushing or rushing into the next breath avoids hyperventilation as well.

If executed properly, this breathing style is effortless. Strain and deep breathing do not go together and will likely result in significant forgetting or a subtle giving-up by Body if you are pushing yourself. Practice and perseverance will help turn re-learning into a new integrated Body function with a huge upside.

To remind myself to breathe I made a bunch of coloured art focused around forms of the printed word Breathe and taped them up around my place. We need to breathe fully and deeply, as much as possible and create a newer, healthier habit for increasing our body's vitality in place of the one we were raised on: subconscious, shallow breathing. It's a process. You will forget many times a day to breathe fully. It's alright.

Diet

I am making a conscious decision to only include limited suggestions for diet in this book. The reason for this is that there are such varied needs for individual bodies at different phases and times of life, even day to day, that no suggested regimen for all people or even subgroups of people could possibly be appropriate. That said, I have a few general tips that may work for you if you try them out at different seasons of your life for various lengths of time. As noted, cultivating the art of checking in with and listening to Body is really the only way to know what is the right food or regimen for you at the right time.

No matter what suggested food regimen you try out, avoid zealotry or proselytizing your tried and true way, or intimating your way is the right way for another, for the reasons stated in the above paragraph.

Don’t fight with your body’s cravings; hold your intention to let an eating habit lapse and then if you give in to a craving, see what feelings arise, when you feel you can. Once momentum is gained and right time for the change arrives, a habit falls away naturally. You won’t have to discipline it away.

One possibility to try is starting the day with a heavy intake of liquids such as herb tea with lemon, a green drink from powders or concentrates found in whole foods markets (heavily dilution is recommended to increase water intake, promoting toxin flush), freshly juiced fruits and veggies or a blended fruit’n’veggie smoothie. Conversely, other bodies require an influx of protein or carbs early in the day. Your body knows better than your mind, or my mind, what it wants.

However much you can moderate intake of wheat, dairy, sugar, alcohol, caffeine and refined/processed foods of all kinds can be helpful in keeping good balance and maintaining high chi levels.

Try working a raw meal or three into your diet every week. The benefits of a raw food diet are numerous and described in detail in many books and in many areas of interest on the internet, and again, are not appropriate for everyone at all times. Many people wax eloquently about the benefits of a 100% raw food diet on their health. Other humans with other body types, such as the vata body type in the Ayurvedic model, may find they need warm food, cooked or not.

A 100% raw diet may be particularly efficacious when dealing with life-threatening illnesses such as cancer or AIDS. Widespread research has indicated that bodies nourished on a diet of largely cooked meals are too acidic, and that an acidic pH within Body has been shown to be the root cause of nearly every illness or condition.

A raw foods diet has an alkalinizing effect on Body. It is recommended that a switch from a cooked-food diet to a raw food diet be accomplished gradually, slowly weaning Body away from cooked foods. If you ask, your body will let you know what it would like to try in terms of a regimen. Your body may require certain cooked foods in moderation, so checking in is crucial – every body’s needs are unique.

Zealotry, whether individual or group, is a pattern in many societies. It is not healing and dealing, nor is it free will, to pressure or coerce another to eat how I do at any given time. Zealotry and its accompanying pressure of others will, with enough healing, give way to an acceptance of others' ways as right for them at a given time, even if not for me.

Stretching

Remember that stretching is a wonderful injury preventive for any type of physical exertion. Stretch shortly after you've begun to exercise. For example, on a long walk, be sure to stop and stretch any time you start to feel pain in a muscle or an area of your body. Stretching after exercise is just as important too. I like to keep moving during my stretches...in super slow motion. Keep in mind that holding stretches for too long can put an unnatural strain on the body.

Many people are into yoga, a discipline from which I too have received great benefit at certain times. Overall, my Body’s preference is the do-it-yourself practice of Somatics, a low-impact Body meditation involving very slow movement that alternately