Light for Health

Wednesday, 28 April 2010

This blog has been seriously neglected! Call it hibernation, call it just going with the flow, and the flow did not involve the blog. So now with Spring bursting out I am re-energised and more focused, and wanting to communicate.

Now I am in the midst of organising another CLRT seminar for London and Scotland in June. The difference is that this time I have great feedback from those of you who now regularly use Cranial Laser Reflex Technique. So its not just how others in the US and the rest of the world use it, its how WE respond. It shouldn't matter but it does, when it comes to the differences between how we express ourselves.

So here is the experience of Surrey osteopath, Catrin Mear (Bsc Ost Hons), for those of you considering learning this new technique. When it comes to lasers, Dr Wise will be selling at the seminar relatively inexpensive single diode laser pens.

'I use CLRT during almost every treatment. From an osteopathic perspective, it can help me in preparing the tissues before doing an adjustment and it also useful for very acutely inflamed areas, where even gentle soft tissue work would be unbearable initially.

I find it really good for most areas of the spine. It seems to be effective for some muscle groups more than others but used correctly you can usually reduce muscular pain by about 50%. Using CLRT on the sacroiliac reflex points round the ears is amazing because it can instantly address a pelvic torsion and relieve a lot of pain around the sacroiliac joints. In the same way, it can be great for reducing pain and tension in the shoulder area particularly in the difficult to reach areas of the rotator cuff.

Interestingly it can be useful to test the diagnosis I have made from my osteopathic examination, in terms of whether the tender points on the head correlate with where I think the lesion is. I have obviously not done any evidence base research but it seems to correlate about 95% of the time. When it doesn’t it often encourages me to recheck and re-evaluate my hypothesis and search around for something else.

I see CRLT as another useful tool in my technique repertoire, which is very quick to use and easy to integrate with osteopathic practice. It often amazes the patients as well as me. I have only come across two patients who were not comfortable with it and as with any treatment technique who did not want it. One had had a bad experience with the medical profession, and another was worried that it would interfere with her hearing aid. Apart from that it is painless and there seem to be no side effects therefore most patients have been happy to experience it as part of their treatment.

Another of the major benefits of CLRT from the point of view of the practitioner’s body, is the saving of the hands as doing lots of soft tissue work can be hard on the hands. I also self treat with CLRT to keep things at bay until I get treatment from an osteopathic colleague.

It does feel a bit strange at first and I felt a bit detached because as an osteopath I am not very used to using a technological implement, however my palpatory skill as an osteopath is to my advantage as it allow me to quickly assess the tender reflex points and the required change in the area being treated. Also within minutes you have your hands free to be able to get back to your more typical osteopathic approach to treatment!'

Sunday, 3 January 2010

Processing Emotions: The Mayan Way, and with Light

2010 - New Year's Eve was spent in a hotel room in Guatemala City, hoping to catch a standby ride on a plane to Miami early the next morning - thanks to my brother's job as a captain with American Airlines. Smelling the acrid smell of thousands of fireworks, but unable to see out of the fortress hotel, I reflected on the new awareness that travel brings to our daily lives, and how we are all connected in our guardianship of our planet. Leaving behind the busyness of the past few months with Light for Health, I went to Guatemala with my son, to revisit his time there as a volunteer in the indigenous Highland area of Quetzaltenango, or Xela, as it is popularly known.

Staying with the founder of INEPAS, the organisation he worked for, we spent Christmas Day leaving the city for the surrounding rural area, visiting a 19 year old girl whose last five years of education had been sponsored by Dario, a visiting Italian, who was also staying with us. Bumping along the dirt road, we passed many fields, houses and shacks in the wide open valley encircled by mountains. Every patch that could be cultivated was. Ingrid lived with her mother in one small room in a compound with other family members, and a room that housed the communal loom. She greeted Dario with a specially woven cloth with his name and the date, to thank him for his generous sponsorship enabling her to progress to become a bi-lingual (English) secretary. Then we were informed that the whole extended family, waiting outside all standing in an openbacked van, were taking us for a picnic to celebrate our visit. Christmas Day was their only day off.

Climbing higher to a wood overlooking the valley, we decamped near a large cross and an open patch of ground. Out of about fifteen people, including young children, the family only comprised two men. The rest, we were informed, were probably in the USA having gone there to find work.
A barbeque was set up and meat, probably lamb, was put over the charcoal, but not before we all joined hands in a circle and sang Happy Birthday to a very old looking woman in the group. It was her 69th birthday. She was less than nine years older than me, but half the height, and looking about ninety. After the singing, and the thanks to Dario, she went into the middle of the circle, knelt down and covered her head with a scarf. She started to wail and moan, talking Mayan. Her sister comforted her at one point, and then after about ten minutes she got up and rejoined the circle. Her misery, it was explained to us, stemmed from the fact that two family members had stolen from her, had been caught, forced to return the goods, and she had decided not to prosecute. This immediate and supported way of releasing emotion, found in many other traditional societies as well as in this Mayan one, was uninhibited and profoundly moving. For us Westerners, used to holding in, and covering up, it was a valuable lesson in how cell memory takes hold, affecting our health and wellbeing, unless we find effective ways to express and let go. The photo at the top of the blog was taken with me after her emotional release: she looks better for it!

Which brings me to light. At the end of Dr Wise's seminar in England, he pulled out of the hat one more gem. He had discovered by studying publicly available MRI scans, that men and women process emotions in different parts of the brain. Emotional release can be helped in women by shining a low level laser light half way between the outside tip of the right eyebrow, and the inside top edge of the ear. For men the same effect can be promoted by placing the light on the middle of the right eyebrow. A couple of weeks later half way through a Thai Yoga massage I got out my laser and used it on my emotional release point. My massage therapist felt an immediate shift in my energy, and a release in my problem area, my tight right hip! At the end of the session she used it on herself, and felt her feet root into the floor, grounding her after our session.

So, whilst some of us would find it hard to process emotions in the Mayan way, in a group of supportive family hearing and holding us at the time of the event needing to be expressed, there are other ways that access directly where we process emotion in the brain. Of course its better to combine light with therapies such as Emotional Freedom Technique and EMDR. It was exciting in a guest house on the shores of Lake Atitlan to meet a psychotherapist from Austin, Texas, who practiced EMDR, and who had not heard of Dr Wise's discoveries with light. He looked forward to further discoveries of brain processing, and no doubt to their combination with light!

Wednesday, 7 October 2009

Course in Glastonbury with Dr Nick Wise

We are putting on a seminar with Dr Wise on CLRT in Glastonbury on Sunday 1st November, at the George's Rooms in the High Street. The day after Halloween ...in Glastonbury! Once more I do a search for local practitioners, wary of relying on emails, and a little nervous of their ability to take any notice of them, when who the hell am I!

Imagine my delight this morning to get an early morning call from a chiropractor in Yeovil, eager to book in. I suspect emailing her Practice Manager was the key, and targeting her specialisms in Craniopathy, advanced neurology and Paediatrics. Reading the article in Osteopathy Today sealed the deal because of the case-study of a patient who was helped by CLRT after a stroke. She has three clients with problems after a stroke. I hate doing a hard sell. I'm getting better at curbing my over-enthusiasm, which for an unresponsive victim is a huge turn off. I absolutely love connecting people with information which they instinctively reach out for.

Thank goodness I followed my intuition and went out to Honolulu to see Dr Wise 'perform'. I know how good he is first-hand, and that must be what I am communicating when reaching out to others to connect up with him as well. Sixty bookings for the Gatwick seminar is phenomenal for a first visit to the UK. Its just telling us that the time is right for light as a healing modality. I am so privileged to be on this journey of discovery ...... and delivery.

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

LLLT Course 2nd October 2009

On Friday October 2nd 16 people came together at the Optimum Health Clinic in North London for a course on Low Level Laser Therapy, with Dr Pamela Murphy and Wendy Boast as teachers. Some were there as Q1000 practitioners, others were there to find out more about light, having booked on to Dr Wise's course later in the month, and others were there with different lasers, eager to learn. Inevitably, a day was not nearly long enough to deliver all the information AND get plenty of time to practice on each other. But as a taste of what is possible, the day was a success. Obviously, its hard to judge how much of the basics to go into, with mixed backgrounds and starting points, but when both lecturers demonstrated their protocols it was great to learn new techniques, and to expand on how we use the laser. Dr Murphy was showing us how to reinflame an old injury with crossfiber massage, before going in with the light to reduce scar tissue, both directly on the injury and via various acupuncture and energy points. Wendy Boast was emphasising the importance of dealing with the lymph before an LLLT treatment, and the vital need to activate the spinal nerves too.

At one point Wendy talked about racheting up the power in some cases by increasing the hertz, or frequencies, to deliver a stronger message to the brain. Her laser system has the ability to do this. So the issue of needing to understand how lasers differ needs to be addressed.

Opinions differ when it comes to frequencies, and its hard to find research that backs up the need for frequencies as opposed to continuous beam. One leading British laser has no frequencies at all. The Q1000 has seven different wavelengths of light and colour, with one mode cycling through 29 frequencies in three minutes, covering many beneficial frequencies. However, the higher powered probes are continuous beam and get great results with joints, nerve regeneration, bone healing and pain. Some experts are of the opinion that frequencies, when used, should move from low to high. Its interesting that all the beneficial brainwave frequencies are low. Its possible that the homoeopathic principle of less is more applies here in certain situations. Interestingly, when it comes to assessing opinions about frequencies from the experts, most are unsure about using anything over 100 hertz. If you talk to laser engineers they will tell you that it is very difficult to be accurate with frequencies the higher you go, especially above 5,000 hertz.

What seems to matter more is power. Its joules of energy that are more important, and that comes from the power you are using. So, an 808 nM infrared probe that is high powered, say 300mW, is going to get through joints and bony tissue, with low circulation, and deliver healing energy, where other lower powered instruments will not.

Wendy Boast gets great results with her system, taught by Dr Gordon Farmer. And so do Q1000 practitioners. What seems to matter with all these systems is whether there is adequate back-up, once you have purchased, to learn how to use the lasers to their maximum capacity. Is there someone who knows about lasers available on the end of a phone, for your system? Can you email and get a quick response? Is there a manual covering numerous conditions and protocols that can get you started? What kind of battery is used, to ensure power outputs that are comparable in doseage even though the battery is running down?

When it comes to it, we get attached to our lasers as extensions of our own ability to heal with our hands. I know that with certain people I can put the Q1000 on their problem area, say a recent injury, and fairly soon start to feel an energetic shift in them, through the laser. My body gets pins and needles running down my legs, I go hot, and I feel my breathing become more shallow. When I get this kind of feedback, through an interface between myself and another person, I naturally bond with that brand!

When choosing a laser you need to navigate the minefield out there, do your homework, and go with your gut feeling about what works for you. Experiment, play, and expand how you use this fantastic tool.

I was intrigued at the seminar to watch how light can be used by kinesiologists, placing light on a certain area of the body and then muscle testing. Steve Lazell worked on me and found an issue in my diaphragm. Three weeks earlier I had fallen hard on the side of my left breast playing tennis. No external bruising because of using the light, but castor oil packs were needed for the internal bruising. Steve seemed to get to some sort of energetic memory that involved the diaphragm. Do I feel a difference? Not sure, but its sure as hell fascinating stuff, and yes, I do believe in 'cell memory', and using the light to challenge my body did throw up the problem, and maybe threw it out as well!