PD Revelation

My current focus is on the first of the two core exercises described by JWH, specifically on the continuity of connection. I recently compared notes with a friend who is also following the JWH approach to recovery, and is in fact well into the stage of recovery symptoms. He helped me identify a key adjustment or addition I can make. I suspect it may provide a real boost to my practice! I'll likely have more to say about that in an upcoming post.

Might we look at our recovery as a process of replacing fear with love? I think so! And so these words from Ram Dass speak to us.

[Updated – 9/10/21; 12/18/21 added three more videos; 2/21/22 added another video]

I've touched before on the value I've found in working some self-administered cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) into my time in the JWH protocol. I have used it mainly to help change thoughts that may be making me feel unsafe. I believe it's been a valuable adjunct to the protocol's two core exercises which, for their part, work by directly stimulating the parts of the brain that create a sense of safety. I've used mostly the CBT technique known as “cognitive restructuring”.

I've written before here about the benefits, within the JWH protocol, of promoting positive thinking. And, over time, I've become increasingly convinced of those benefits. In that spirit, I wanted to pass along this link to a simple, three-step technique for helping to build in more positive thinking.

Well, it didn't take too long to get back on track following my brief hospitalization. Having experienced streaks of pause turning off repeatedly from April through June, it seems it took about three weeks to process July's little speed bump sufficiently to enable the possibility of pause turning off again. And it did so last night. :)

Along the way I experimented with new and old ideas alike concerning what I needed to be doing to make the progress I was looking for. I'll post some of those details soon. For now I just wanted to post this, the first content I've ever posted here while being off pause. (Okay, it may not be quite the first. :–/ I don't recall whether or not I was actually off pause when I hit the “publish” button for this prior post.)

I've recently experienced what might seem a short-term obstacle to recovery. A bit longer term, though, I think it will actually hasten pause turning off in a lasting way.

What am I talking about? Well, something over a week ago I experienced a medical issue requiring prompt care. It landed me in the hospital for a couple of nights, was fully resolved with proper treatment, and now I'm back to my routine. (I'll skip the medical details here, as I don't want to distract from the tight focus I like to keep on the JWH protocol.) Needless to say, though, the experience has had an impact on my work in the protocol. Not surprisingly it caused a bit of a shake up in my sense of safety.

Recently I've come across some Janice Walton-Hadlock (JWH) protocol success stories that add to the list of people who have recovered or are close. By “close” I am referring to those who have have turned off pause (lastingly) and are enjoying the stage of recovery symptoms. I'll mention two of these stories here.

First there is an older case described in this 10-year-old Reddit comment. It's a response to a young woman describing how she had recently been diagnosed with PD. It seems the commenter's father had PD and was cured via the JWH protocol, as it was at that time. As far as I know, that would have been primarily Yin Tui Na. So from today's perspective I think we can assume he probably had only type II or type III PD. (JWH had not yet developed her ideas about self-induced pause which we now know to be involved in about 95% of idiopathic PD cases.) I'm guessing that the slight tremor he was left with was probably just some residual drug-induced parkinsonism, a result of the anti-PD drugs he had taken (see RFP, 2020, p. 58).

I've devoted some space here to ideas for keeping the dialogue going and for simply staying connected to your Friend. See, for example, here and here.

This time I just want to mention a simple technique I sometimes use to stay in touch with the felt presence of my Friend. I call it the “stop in your tracks” technique, though calling it a “technique” may be an exaggeration. It's really just a small, common sense, somewhat brute force response to the challenge of keeping the feelings of connection going. Here's what I do sometimes when I really want to stay with the felt presence:

In RFP (2020) Janice Walton-Hadlock (JWH) describes a young man she saw who had very early but clear symptoms of Parkinson's. With him she witnessed one of the fastest recoveries she's ever seen. On his first visit to her office, shortly after describing to him the technique of talking to an “invisible friend”:

He closed his eyes and I could see that he was silently engaged with someone. He began to smile gently. A shudder ran over his body. His Parkinson’s symptoms ceased, never to return. Right there in my office (p. 118).