On the brink of the new year, I feel inspired to share some further points of view regarding the meaning of CD.

The chakra system provides a fascinating tool to clarify relations between body, mind, heart, and spirit. Since CD is so very obviously reflecting imbalance of the 5th chakra (or throat chakra), it is worthwhile to explore the symbolic meaning of this chakra and to see how it is linked to CD.
Generally speaking, the 5th chakra is the center of willpower and self-expression. The spiritual lessons we can learn in this domain are: taking responsibility for our actions, having faith, being truthful, and surrendering personal will for divine will.

We can disentangle willpower and self-expression by viewing these aspects from multiple angles, which are all correlated yet slightly different. Below I am giving you the various angles or sub-aspects that I was able to identify, including a brief description, as well as a few words on what disturbance of the sub-aspect generally entails. I subsequently make the situation of disturbance more specific for CD.

Willpower
The 5th chakra is the center of willpower, where mental and emotional intention are combined into will, giving direction for life.

• Disturbance
  One-sided fuelling of willpower, e.g., driven only by the ego and by thinking (mental), or only by fear (emotional).
• CD
  We are highly disciplined to control life circumstances after having suffered trauma, working around emotional blockages and hurt, living in a planned, strategic, and systematic way. But this apparent control is just an illusion. Our willpower is strongly ego-driven, very one-sided, thus deactivating the natural flow of life. The balance between mind, feelings, and bodily sensations is gone. The aspects of being out of control and of one-sidedness and imbalance are physically reflected in our neck condition.

Choice
The 5th chakra is also about making actual decisions and choices, which are the consequence of willpower. Choice is an act of (will)power, with tangible influence in life. Making conscious choices means taking responsibility for our actions.

• Disturbance
  Choices based on fear and lack of self-love, following others in choices, inability to decide, mindless and/or emotionless patterns, escape from conscious choice, addictions.
• CD
  We make our choices to avoid pain and anger, and to prevent losing control. At the same time we are feeling responsible for others more than ourselves (lack of self-love). Escaping in emotionless patterns and actions, the ego keeps us going on without room for relaxation, flexibility and improvisation. This is mirrored in mindless physical spasms and rigidity in our necks. We got stuck off-center, mentally, emotionally and physically.

Belief
Decisions are usually made with respect to our beliefs, truths, and knowledge. Therefore, we may say that belief is an act of will and in this way governed by the 5th chakra.

• Disturbance
  In case of fear-inspired decisions, there is no actual belief in the wanted outcome of the decisions, and this negative belief will create negative circumstances, i.e., will manifest the feared situations.
• CD
  Our fear to be out of control makes us believe we cannot live in flow, expressing ourselves freely. We believe we are less worth and unable to be who we truly are. We have a rather negative self-image, due to lack of true self-knowledge and self-love. Therefore we believe we have to strive for extreme perfectionism in everything we do.

Self-expression
The 5th chakra stands for communication of our authentic thoughts, truths, and emotions, to others as well as to ourselves. Creativity is part and parcel of communication, especially in oral, written, and musical forms.

• Disturbance
  Inauthenticity, dishonesty, lying, yelling, gossip, ignorance, denial.
• CD
  Agreeableness, not saying what we really want, reduced openness, suppression of emotions in general, difficulty to express negative feelings, in particular anger. Feeling disconnected from our core, not seeing and not showing ourselves as we are, demanding ourselves to be perfect instead of just who we are.

Receiving
Receiving is closely related – in fact almost equal – to expressing. We receive what we express from inside. The 5th chakra is therefore associated with abundance, as well as with lack of it.

• Disturbance
  Manifesting negativity in the outer world by the spoken word and other means of expression.
• CD
  We manifest rigidity in the outer, physical world due to our inner rigidity. Our perfectionism may help us to receive enough abundance in the material world, but that won’t fulfill us. We manifest situations that make us suffer and experience lack due to our lack of self-love.

Perception
Like receiving, perception of the outer world (as well as of the self) is the flip-side of expression of the self. Perception is the inward component of communication, like listening and clairaudience, and therefore also ruled by the 5th chakra.

• Disturbance
  Fear that others, i.e., the external world, have authority over our life. Fear of being out of control. Judgment and criticism.
• CD
  Focus on the outer world, wanting for things to happen outside us, taking care more of others than ourselves, fear of conflict, social phobia. Fear of losing control. Perfectionism, which drives us to judgments and criticism, constantly blaming others and ourselves. Open, unbiased and flexible perception of, and orientation on, our world has become impossible. We lost all flexibility in our center of perception, getting stuck, even physically.

Gateway
The 5th chakra constitutes the doorway between body and head, between heart and mind. It borders the domain of the upper chakras, which govern spiritual growth.

• Disturbance
  When the 5th chakra isn’t open, a disconnect between heart and head will obviously lead to stuckness, lack of flow. Emotions and mind are not aligned and out of sync.
• CD
  We are living in our heads, we lost the connection with the rest of our body. Our physical body literally shows us the disconnect in the neck, shows us the blockage in this channel between heart and head, between the physical and the mental – as well as the spiritual.

The antidote to the above described CD problems is easily defined.

• Resolve trauma and emotional blockage

• Face and transcend fear, anger and hurt

• Identify and transform negative beliefs in order to have faith

• Stop blaming others and take responsibility for your own choices and actions

• Allow mental processes to become supporting instead of leading

• Reconnect with your body, feel its sensations and its needs

• Identify the choices in your life that weren’t authentic (‘confession’)

• Identify your own truths and communicate them

• Know yourself and accept yourself the way you are

• Release judgment, embrace gratitude and compassion

• Understand that your outer world is a reflection of your inner world

• Realign with your core self, i.e. with your divine will, with natural flow

• Do and say what is authentic for you: be creative, follow your passions

It thus appears that the 5th chakra with CD is calling us to grow spiritually. Within this framework, I came across an interesting piece of information, which might provide another link to CD. In the neck, at the base of the skull, another lesser-known chakra has been recognized: the alter major chakra. It is said to energetically interconnect the higher, spiritually oriented chakras. (The 6th chakra accesses our inner world, and the 7th chakra provides a view of our outer world.) When the alter major chakra is opened, it shows us oneness, i.e., reveals that our inner and outer worlds are reflections of one another. It powers our instincts, our knowing without thinking. It provides a channel to the cosmos, to the collective consciousness. Opening this chakra allows us to make a dramatic shift in awareness.

In my search for transcendental consciousness, I have recently experienced authentic self-expression. Thanks to this experience it has become so clear to me that authenticity had been lacking in my life. Prior to getting CD, I used to make my decisions based on reason only, I used not to listen to my heart, I used to ignore my emotions and bodily sensations and I have therefore not been able to show myself as who I truly am, not even to myself. I knew that already on a mental level, but now I also felt it so clearly. During the transcendental experience, I sensed and saw an intense flow of energy, of my own spirit or life force, going through my body, freely, without any emotional blockages. And then I started speaking like an oracle. The words were coming from the core of my being. It felt so good to use my voice and to enjoy its vibration. It felt so great that the things I was saying were completely authentic. I didn’t need to use my mind at all, to say what I said. The words and sentences just gushed out in an automatic stream, straight from my soul, from who I really am, with exactly the right intention and intonation. My body, mind, heart, and soul were one. I was playing, composing, sketching and painting with words. I was at home with myself, I was connected with all that is, and I felt an intense love.

Now that I have experienced this, I know exactly what it feels like to be healed, to be whole again. Once I am able to be this authentic all the time, CD will be gone. The remainder of my emotional blockages, i.e., trauma, needs to be cleared for that. Having said that, I realize that resolving CD hasn’t been my main objective for quite some time now. I just want to be emotionally free and to be and to love who I truly am.

I wish you all an Authentic You!

Although I am doing well, this time I will write about something else than my personal progress. Hang in there and read this post till the end, as we are all deeply concerned with its subject.

Let’s broaden our view and look at what healing actually is. That is a core question that keeps popping up in discussions between the visitors of this blog and myself. And I keep noticing that many of us think that disease is something that happens to us, and thus needs to be primarily addressed by manipulating the body mechanically and/or chemically.

Although it can be helpful to physically intervene, especially with the more urgent and simple issues, I have come to understand that the primary mechanism of healing is something completely different.

Upward causation
We in the West mostly think that the universe around us simply exists the way it does, with or without us. We think that space, time and matter are fixed, independent, empirical entities. We think that each physical event can be reduced to distinct material triggers. Indeed, classical physics taught us that there are laws of nature which can describe and predict phenomena in our physical world pretty accurately. Some four centuries ago, this new power of reason took away much of the influence of religion, debunking part of the so-called miracles that the church supported, simply by explaining how they occurred.

When it concerns our own bodies, the same reasoning is still being applied today: elementary particles make up atoms, which in turn make up molecules, which in turn make up cells, which in turn make up living organisms, containing brains, which in turn generate something called consciousness. This means that consciousness is seen as something that is caused. Ultimately caused by the underlying physics and chemistry. Our brain is considered to be some kind of hardware, and the consciousness or mind perhaps to be some kind of software.

According to this materialist view, consciousness cannot cause anything external by itself. It has been caused. Somehow it resides in our computational center, the brain. Everything we experience in life is the mere consequence of mechanical and chemical courses in and around our physical bodies. This view is called upward causation. The entire medical world still thinks in terms of upward causation. So the only thing that they can come up with for healing, is manipulating the physical body, either mechanically, chemically, or by means of radiation. We are just machines that need to be fixed or controlled by physical intervention.

Paradigm shift
However, that view is incorrect. More and more people are starting to realize this, causing a paradigm shift. Quantum physics has already shown us a century ago that our physical reality is caused by the consciousness of the observer (wave-function collapse). Moreover, it has shown us that discontinuous changes (quantum leaps) are fundamental. And that intrinsic interconnectedness of physically separated particles is a fact (non-locality, entanglement). And finally, it has pointed out that determinism is not a foundation of this world (uncertainty principle, entanglement). But it’s not physics alone that has given rise to the paradigm shift. Mathematics has shown that our brains and consciousness cannot be compared to computers, because unlike consciousness, computers cannot process meaning. Parapsychology has, in a variety of ways, demonstrated the interconnectedness in our world and consciousness. Western mysticism and Eastern philosophical traditions have always propagated the primacy of consciousness. Philosophy has shown that classical physics tries to describe the ‘universe’, but leaves one crucial thing out of the equation: consciousness. And how can we construct a valid “theory of everything” without that? After all, if we were to select only one thing about which we are absolutely certain, it is that we are conscious! All else can be an illusion, like a dream (and I think it is), but we cannot deny the simple fact that we are experiencing beings, i.e., that we are conscious…

Yes, and even conventional medicine knows that something ‘strange’ is going on. What about the powerful placebo effect, which enables people to heal themselves only through belief? What about the fact that the particular blueprints for our bodies (how they need to be constructed in detail) are not to be found in our DNA, and apparently not in any ‘physical’ part of our cells? And how come that we can and do change our genetic material in the course of our lives? And what about the fact that spontaneous remissions in very ill people occur all the time? Large malignant tumors disappear overnight. And of course, there are numerous cases of remissions in people with CD, in which no obvious disturbances can be found from a physical perspective in the first place.

Hence, we are talking about downward causation here: we create our physical reality through our consciousness. Our beliefs, emotions and thoughts are part of that consciousness. We have already accepted that positive thinking can be powerful, but find that it is frequently insufficient. Why? Because our hidden, core beliefs about ourselves and our lives are often deficient, still feeding our emotions and thoughts from a subconscious level. If we can access our belief systems, and if we can see that they are invalid or just causing us unnecessary harm, we can let go of them. And with our beliefs, we can change our realities. This is called “the law of attraction”. We attract what we really believe, think and feel to be true for us. For many of us, this can be a tricky thing. For example, neurologists tell us that our condition cannot be healed. We often tend to believe this, thus attracting exactly that situation into our lives.

Spontaneous remission
Don’t worry though. There is a way out of this. Let’s consider spontaneous remissions. There is surprisingly little research into this subject. Probably because it is generally denied and concealed by conventional medicine – as practitioners are often afraid to be ridiculed. Yet, spontaneous remissions occur regularly. Most of the available information stems from cancer patients, although many other serious conditions are known to remit spontaneously.

Various systematic categories of spontaneous remission have been defined. But let me just give you a few examples, which I think offer fundamental insight.

1. Meditation and visualization
Consider the case of John M. He had a history of cancer operations and at some point he got terminally ill, getting ready to undergo surgery. In order to build strength prior to surgery, he went hiking, spending a month alone, eating healthy food, meditating very often, visualizing himself with a healthy body. And guess what: when he arrived in hospital afterwards, his cancer was completely gone.

2. Dance-induced trance
Physician Richard Moss has reported about a woman with terminal cancer, who joined one of his bodywork workshops. It took him a lot of convincing to make her participate in a dancing session to achieve a trance state. When she finally overcame her physical inertia and resistance, she danced with utter devotion. The next day her cancer was gone.

3. Psychedelic drugs
Physician Andrew Weil has cited a case of a pregnant woman, S. R., who at the same time had advanced Hodgkin’s disease. She did not want to undergo radiation and chemotherapy, because that would imply losing the baby. Her treating doctor was experimenting with LSD therapy and proposed her to do a guided trip. During the LSD trip, pondering on what she wanted for herself and for her baby, she suddenly realized that she simply had the choice to be healthy. After that she did recover, gave birth to a healthy baby, and changed her lifestyle for the better.

4. Near death experience (NDE)
Anita M. was terminally ill with cancer when at some point her doctors told her she had only 36 hours to live. In the process of dying, she obtained tremendous insights about her life, and about the structure of existence. She realized that our material world is simply an illusion, created by our consciousness. She saw that she was free to choose and she experienced all-encompassing, unconditional love. Although she was tempted to stay in those beatific dimensions, she realized that she had unfinished business in her life and decided to come back in a healthy body. And indeed, she recovered in no time, leaving no trace of the cancer that had completely infested and destroyed her body and organs before the NDE. Ever since her NDE, she enjoys life to the fullest.

5. Prayer healing
Various forms of directed (collective) prayer have been proven to generate strong healing effects in diseased people. One spectacular example is Zhineng Qigong (or Chi Lel Chi Gong), a healing system akin to prayer, practiced in Chinese so-called medicine-less hospitals, which can provoke spontaneous remissions in terminally ill people. Life-threatening tumors disappear within a few minutes while the practitioners uplift their consciousness to a transcendental state, visualize strong healing energy (Chi/Qi) and produce incantations that match their image of an already healed body. Love and belief also play a crucial role in Zhineng Qigong. And the patient needs to believe in the treatment, and to (sub)consciously connect with the practitioners at their vibrational level.

Such discontinuous, sudden change is not understood by classical science and medicine, which don’t take the power of downward causation into account and therefore reject the possibility of sudden change without direct physical intervention. Obviously, quantum physics on the other hand does allow for discontinuity.

Boundary conditions
Let’s try to learn from these cases by distilling some commonalities and eye-catchers.

1. Belief
Belief appears to be a very strong factor. Once we truly believe we can heal, we can make it happen. Or better: knowing it, visualizing and already feeling it is even stronger and comes on top of the belief. We have the power to heal ourselves. Illness isn’t just something that happens to us by accident or through upward causation. It is something we have created and can also replace by health.

2. Transcendental consciousness
In order to reach that level of belief or insight, knowingness, we clearly need to do something with our consciousness. Our ‘everyday’ state of consciousness usually doesn’t allow us to truly see and know how our reality is constructed. We need to arrive at a transcendental state of consciousness.

3. Interconnectedness
From transcendental consciousness, we can see that everything is interconnected – as supported by quantum physics. We can see ourselves the way we are, all aspects of our being and our place in the universe. Through this experience of interconnectedness, we (re-)discover ourselves and the parts of our being that have previously been dissociated and therefore diseased. When we see ourselves connected to ‘all that is’, our ego and specific illness become less important. Transcendence of the ego – which is an expression of separateness, just like illness is an expression of separateness – is key in becoming whole again.

4. Freedom of choice
In the transcendental state of consciousness, we also understand that we are free to choose what we want, that our physical world is just an illusion, in which we can manifest anything with our consciousness. Complete freedom of choice is in line with downward causation, because it implies that the consciousness (where the choice is made) is our creative force.

5. Discontinuity
In the above examples, the remissions were very quick. That is in line with the quantum effect of discontinuity, allowing (quasi) instantaneous change where classical physics doesn’t allow it. These people made a quantum leap into health. The desired situation is already there – as a possible quantum state. We merely need to select it with our consciousness in order to experience it.

6. Love
The transcendental experiences are usually accompanied by the feeling of being immersed in (self-)love.

7. Change of perspective on life
After their transcendental experience, these people made lasting changes in their lives, based on their newly acquired holistic and empowering perspective.

All this really makes sense to me. Illness can be regarded as a disconnect, segregation, consequence of negativity, stuckness, helplessness, contraction, as an expression of not-our-natural-self. The opposite of that is transcendence, self-discovery, (re-)integration, (re-)connection, flow, freedom, expansion, wholeness, in other words: healing. I would also go as far as to equate those facets to love.

Now, if we know that we can choose whatever we want, we will obviously always choose health, right? Well, we will do that only if we love ourselves unconditionally. Otherwise we may select a more negative outcome. It is transcendental consciousness that enables us to experience unconditional love. And once we start loving ourselves unconditionally, our perspective on life will also change in a lasting way. The transcendental experience starts off a new mode of life.

So how to reach this state of consciousness? Of course I am not suggesting that we should all take drugs or have a near-death experience. Deliberate application of the law of attraction, meditation, and prayer offer ‘safer’ alternatives, although these might require some more discipline. Even less deliberate methods can lead to an altered state of consciousness and to healing, as long as they incorporate some or all of the above outlined boundary conditions.

Cure cervical dystonia
Alright, a few last words on CD.

I have received confidential emails from a few visitors of this blog, who have taken psychedelic drugs prior to experiencing a remission of their CD that lasted a few years. I suspect that they must have had a transcendental experience, triggering the remission.

Also, there are multiple cases of CD sufferers who got Botox treatment and subsequently went into long-term remission. As if the relief they experienced from the Botox made them believe, feel and think that they could heal, thus provoking actual healing…

Through the visitors of this blog I know that most of us experience micro spontaneous remissions once in a while, which can last seconds up to hours. Those remissions usually coincide with a moment of flow, self-acceptance and self-love. I have lived through this in Korea one year ago (see my post Healing Happens!).

Often, CD remissions are temporary. I am sure the reason for that is because we relapse to our old patterns (rigid control, disconnect from our bodies, lack of self-love). But once we can fully accept ourselves, allow us to be ourselves, to follow our passions, and to love ourselves unconditionally, there is no need for rigid control anymore, no more disconnect in our system. Our energies will flow and CD will be gone.

Long-term remissions of CD can be spontaneous, i.e., happen overnight without medical intervention. This usually concerns people who got CD and a subsequent remission (within 2 years after onset) at a relatively young age. I think younger people are more flexible and therefore more likely to let go of patterns that they recognize to be unhealthy, thus triggering a spontaneous remission. I also suspect that this recognition will mostly occur subconsciously, so these people will often fail to incorporate lasting change into their lives and/or fail to resolve their traumas, leading to relapse some time after the spontaneous remission.

I am sure that if we achieve a deep level of transcendental consciousness, profoundly understanding that we have complete freedom of choice, the change can be spontaneous and lasting. The clearer we acknowledge and take ownership of the principles of downward causation, the quicker and more profound our change will be.

Nevertheless, CD remissions can also be slow; getting there with smaller steps is also possible. Doing daily exercise, selecting particular therapies that we believe in, doing our ‘emotional work’ (e.g., Somatic Experiencing to resolve trauma and re-establish contact with our bodies), re-aligning and re-balancing our bodies physically (spine, pelvis, TMJ, diet), etc., all contribute to our healing process. After all, in such a regime, we also incorporate the outlined principles of spontaneous remission by requesting ourselves to take it easy, to be more gentle with ourselves, to gradually reintegrate body and mind, to look for balance in our life, to improve our lifestyle, and to take our healing in our own hands.

And that last thing is really the most important to realize: whether we take one big quantum leap for spontaneous remission or take many small leaps, making it happen is always up to us!

Most of you must be wondering where I am at. Well, this is an update. After coming back from Korea I needed some time to lick my wounds and to understand what had happened. Initially, the treatment in Korea had brought me significant relief. But then fluctuations with new symptoms started popping up. And during the last week of my treatment, the symptoms even got much worse. After my return, this trend continued for a while. To my regret and frustration, I had to hold my head with my hands even when sitting in a chair, when typing on a keyboard, or when standing up. Walking was a disaster. Clearly, I was in a much worse state than I was before going to Korea. This wasn’t the desired result, not what I had planned. Continue reading →

I decided to go back home. My financial situation urgently needs to be taken care of and I need to see my family. My flight is this coming Friday. It’s a strange feeling. After having been here so long, it will also be hard to say goodbye to the people I have come to appreciate so much, who have looked after me with so much dedication. Continue reading →

Yesterday I saw a Parkinson´s patient who started to walk after a single treatment. The entire clinic applauded for the old man. Last week a young woman with rheumatoid arthritis entered the clinic. After one treatment she was crying tears of gratitude: with one treatment, her pain had almost gone, a sensation she hadn’t felt in 6 years. Continue reading →

Today I will write about my battle, about the challenges that I am facing now. Continue reading →

While I am riding the waves of healing crisis, I’ll tell you a bit more about the treatment I am getting in the clinic, so that you have a clearer picture of what it all entails. Continue reading →

It took me a while to write a new post, since I wasn’t feeling all that well. After my ‘walk of freedom’ last week, I started to get more symptoms: spasms, jerks, muscle tension, wobbly neck, a rotated and tilted head. I did not expect to recover within a few days, but it is not easy to accept aggravating symptoms – which I felt I had already overcome months ago… Continue reading →

This is not just some clinic. Everyone is walking around with YBA splints in their mouths. Everyone is doing neck and spine exercises, everyone receives acupuncture, cupping, and CST treatments. It’s like a flow we’re all in. The first few days it seems a bit odd, but you get used to this drill soon enough. Continue reading →

I arrived here the day before yesterday, but it feels like it was months ago. My flight was pretty good, although I was a little emotional due to saying goodbye to my dearest ones at the airport. That was tougher than I had imagined it to be. Continue reading →