PD Revelation

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).

[Updated – 6/19/21, 7/7/22]

I said I would provide an update about what it feels like for me these days when pause turns off. I'll provide that here as well as a few other thoughts on turning off pause. And I just want to reiterate that the experience of turning off pause varies from person to person. So don't assume your experience will necessarily be a lot like mine. JWH does provide some descriptions of what you can reliably expect to feel. Here is a good one (RFP, 2020, p. 363):

However, regardless of where one is in terms of muscle and nerve healing, every time that pause is turned off, the inhibition of dopamine release for motor function is instantly turned off. Turned off instantly. A person immediately feels subtly different. The chronic sense of impending doom, the need for wariness, and the other aspects of the Parkinson’s personality – a medically recognized syndrome – ease up. Dopamine for motor function flows freely, instantly, when it is supposed to… until such time, if any, that pause mode is mentally initiated again in response to an unexpected fear or from the long-installed habit of wariness.

Optimism is good for your health. And optimism, and positive thinking more generally, seems to give a boost to the Janice Walton-Hadlock (JWH) protocol. You could say positive thinking is grease for the wheels of the protocol. In my experience, progress is better and the daily practice of the protocol is more effective in the presence of a positive attitude.

Unfortunately negative thinking seems to go hand-in-hand with Parkinson's. It is in fact so common in PD that JWH describes it as a feature of the “Parkinson's personality” (RFP, 2020, pp. 202-203). She writes, “Over time, the use of the Parkinson’s personality creates habits of negative thinking that make it harder to turn off pause.”

[Updated – 4/26/21]

This post updates and elaborates on a prior post in which I outlined some techniques I've used in an effort to deepen my response to the two core exercises of the Janice Walton-Hadlock (JWH) protocol.

Phrasings

These are examples of some of the kinds of things I've said during a session in dialogue with my “invisible friend.” My primary aim with all of these phrases, requests, etc. is to nurture feelings of safety and surrender. So these phrasings contain content about those and other related feelings.

That Robert Earl Keen song captures something of how this new phase feels!

I'm pleased to say my sense that I was back on track seems to have been accurate. And my feeling that I might have turned off pause again was accurate too. I can now say confidently that I have turned off pause four times in the last week!

My focus recently has been on nurturing my relationship with my invisible friend, with some emphasis on safety and surrender. As I mentioned in a recent post, my main invisible friend lately has been Divine Mother. A few days ago it occurred to me that I might still be complicating things too much, getting a bit too fancy in trying to say certain things that I thought would have just the right effects. That led me to the notion that perhaps the simplest way to nurture the relationship and a feeling of safety was just to abide in the loving, protective arms of Divine Mother.

This is essentially a variation on exercise #2. What was different this time was that instead of merely repeating a request such as “Let me feel you hold me,” I tried to have a more continuous experience of being held in her arms. That is, the aim was to rest there in her arms for as much of the time as possible. (This is possible even during activities like walking.) Talking was secondary. Much of the time was spent not really talking about much of anything, or just moving casually from one topic to another, whatever came to mind. I think you could say this was also an intensified version of the “companionable silence.”