Jin Shin Jyutsu: An ancient art with real benefits

Jin Shin Jyutsu treatmentOne of the hospitals in the US with a Jin Shin Jyutsu® program is found at the University of Kentucky. This article was written by Jennifer Bradley, who is a Jin Shin Jyutsu® practitioner at UK HealthCare.

At UK HealthCare, we strive to combine traditional medicine and treatment with other complementary therapies to help treat the whole person, with an emphasis on healing and wellness.

One way we do that is through Jin Shin Jyutsu, a practice that uses light touch to assist with pain, stress, nausea, and other uncomfortable physical and emotional side effects of treatment and illness.

Read the full article here.

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Jin Shin Jyutsu and Modern Medicine

surgeryFor those of you who are looking to learn more about Jin Shin Jyutsu and its application in modern/Western medicine, I highly recommend this article entitled Jin Shin Jyutsu and Modern Medicine on massagetherapy.com. It’s from 2000, but all the information and case stories are just as relevant today.

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Spotlight: Philomena Dooley, Jin Shin Jyutsu instructor

“Why do you look like you’re half dead?”

That question, uttered in passing, marked the moment that changed Philomena Dooley’s life. Up until then, she had been a registered nurse, but debilitating blood clotting issues had wreaked havoc on her health. She had experienced two pulmonary embolisms. Taking blood thinners and pain medications, wrapped from toe to groin in compression bandages, she still limped around in great pain. She was only 24 years old.

The condition forced Philomena to leave her hospital work and try real estate. At a convention in Florida, the cheeky comment from a fellow conventioneer got her attention. She would probably have never spoken to the man again, but a snowstorm in New Jersey stranded her at the conference. So, over lunch the man explained himself. He knew someone who could heal her, someone who had helped many people recover their health. That person was Mary Burmeister.

Until her death in 2008, Mary Burmeister was the American force behind the ancient Japanese art, Jin Shin Jyutsu®. Part energy modality, part life philosophy, Mary furthered the practice and interpreted it for modern day people. Her name and her work are still revered today.

Jin Shin Jyutsu (JSJ) originated in India 2500 years ago, and then migrated to China, and finally to Japan where it had almost completely died out by 1900. There were few written works that explained the ancient knowledge of the body, but Japanese philosopher, Jiro Murai, discovered The Kojiki. The name means Japanese Record of Ancient Things, and it held the answers Master Murai sought. By interpreting and applying these writings, Murai recovered from his chronic illness. He spent the rest of his life writing about and teaching Jin Shin Jyutsu. One successful student was Mary. And Mary chose to teach Philomena.

Finding Mary

It was 1978. Philomena was sick of being sick. Armed with Mary’s name and some vague information about energy work, Philomena decided she had nothing to lose by giving it a try. “I had the best treatments the medical world could do for me at the time, and I still looked half dead.” Her husband at the time and father of her children was a doctor. “He thought I had lost my marbles,” she says.

Feeling rotten can be a powerful motivator. Philomena booked a ten-day recovery trip to Scottsdale, Arizona where Mary was based. She received two treatments, twice a day from Mary and one of her students, Patricia Meador.

“By day five, I felt a dramatic change. I went from barely able to move to feeling like I had been awakened.”

Philomena recalls that on her return trip to New Jersey, her cousin didn’t recognize her at the airport. “I thought she was playing a game with me, but she really didn’t know me.” The same thing happened at her next doctor appointment. None of the symptoms she had been struggling with for so long persisted.

“My doctor said, ‘Whatever you’re doing, keep it up!’”

That was the beginning of Philomena’s career as a JSJ practitioner and teacher. “I didn’t decide to do this. I never decided. She decided.” Philomena laughs about this sudden change of path that was handed to her like a gift. While she did sit for trainings, she says the experience of becoming a JSJ practitioner was more like remembering.

“I would get phone calls from Mary asking me to go out to Long Island to a hospital. ’I don’t know what to do,’ I’d say. ‘Of course you do,’” Mary would respond. And, it turns out, she really did.

Her connection to the healing art and to its American leader was remarkable. Philomena says Mary would pull her aside and start talking to her about healing … in Japanese. She laughs, “I don’t speak Japanese, but I understood what she meant, even without the words. It was like we were …” Philomena winds her first two fingers together to show their intertwined connection.

Philomena’s 36 years in Jin Shin Jyutsu have been characterized by divine providence. So often, the people she needed to meet would just appear and ask for help. Most importantly, Philomena would say yes when those gifts appeared. Can you go help this person? Yes. Do you want to help me teach this workshop? Yes. Accepting these gifts has provided Philomena with a life’s work full of meaning and opportunity.

She recalls the experience of helping Mary teach a series of workshops in New York in 1986. “A doctor from France came up to me and said, ‘This is wonderful. I don’t understand a word of it. Could you come to Paris to teach me?’” Philomena worked out a week to come help. “And that was the beginning of my international practice.”

She went twice a year to teach medics and medical professionals for the next couple of decades. She has since taught workshops on JSJ in Lebanon, Dubai, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Ireland, England, Scotland, and all over the U.S. and Canada.

Now at age 80, Philomena appears to be closer to 60. Sitting in her Boulder, Colorado home-based treatment room, her hands repeatedly smooth the sheet of the treatment table in front of her. As she chases away the wrinkles, her fingers are powerful, her body confident. The pain of her youth is long gone, though the accent of her Ireland birth land still weaves through her crisp syllables. She says she has treated many, many people of all kinds – even Asian royalty.

“People come to me from all over the world,” she says. That experience has shown her that all people are exactly the same. “They all have the exact same blockages in the shoulders. People are just people,” she says.

But What Is JSJ or Jin Shin?

That question is one Philomena declines to answer in detail. Instead she invites the questioner to experience a treatment. “Would you like to lie down?” she offers.

She gifted me a treatment as a part of this interview process. The actual procedure involves holding various energy locks on the body. With her hands on my torso, feet, back, thighs, head or hands, she would seek harmony in the vibrations of my body’s energy system. It felt deeply relaxing, like warm liquid dripping slowly down my skin. The pain in my feet that I didn’t tell her about resolved during the session. Referring to a term coined by Mary, Philomena says the ‘jumper cables’ (her hands) encourage the body to right its own wrongs and unblock jams of energy that should flow freely, but often don’t.

“It’s a modern problem to have all the energy stuck in the back, shoulders, and neck,” she says. “We are so uptight. And what does that do? We’re living in this oval of energy. It flows down the front and up the back. Energy descends the front and ascends the back. It’s almost like living in an egg. Down the front and up the back.”

She explains that what we often call problems we should refer to as projects. “When we have a project that is above the waist, usually the cause is below the waist. As it is above, so it is below. As it is on the back, so it is on the front. And the same on the left and right. That’s the basic principal.”

In part because she can ‘speak doctor’ and partly because she shows instead of tells, Philomena has inspired doctors and hospital administrators to invite JSJ practitioners to volunteer in their facilities. Philomena started her first hospital JSJ project 30 years ago at Morristown Memorial Hospital, in Morristown New Jersey. Her volunteers have been offering treatments on every floor of the hospital, speeding patients to recovery much faster than the norm. Most recently she has helped begin a trial of JSJ for drug addicted newborns at the a hospital NICU in Lexington, Kentucky. She says that treatments reduce the detox and recovery time from 28 days to nine or ten. It will begin officially in January.

Trying to be retired now, Philomena plans to teach one more upper level JSJ course in Spain next September. But knowing how many little projects she is involved in, it’s hard to imagine that life will really slow down any time soon.

Philomena credits all of these opportunities directly to Mary. She says she is grateful and a little mystified at all that has happened. As we finish speaking, she leaves me with this quote from Mary,

“The truth is that within each one of us lies the power to cast all misery aside and to know complete peace and oneness. To be that beautiful creature of perfect harmony. To truly know (help) myself.” ~ Mary Burmeister.

Philomena couldn’t agree more.


Corey Radman is is an award-winning writer based in Fort Collins, Colorado. Her passion for story threads its way through her work, which has been published at 5280 MagazineStyle MagazineNorthern Colorado Medical & WellnessGet Born Magazine, and The Mom Egg. Her monthly spotlights at Whisperingtree.net feature interviews with experts in integrative healing who constantly challenge her ideas of ‘the best way to be.’

She can be contacted via her website at www.fortcollinswriter.com.

 

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The key to cancer prevention may well be maintaining an alkaline pH level

Cancer cell

“No disease, including cancer, can exist in an alkaline environment.”

German biochemist Dr. Otto Heinrich Warburg, 1931 Nobel prize winner for the discovery of cancer, and one of the twentieth century’s leading cell biologists, discovered that the root cause of cancer is too much acidity in the body, meaning that the pH, potential hydrogen, in the body is below the normal level of 7.365, which constitutes an “acidic” state. Warburg investigated the metabolism of tumors and the respiration of cells and discovered that cancer cells maintain and thrive in a lower pH, as low as 6.0, due to lactic acid production and elevated CO2.

Eating processed foods like refined sugars, refined grains, GMOs, and other unhealthy foods, can lead to a pH level that supports the development of these conditions, and leads to overall bad health. In fact, most conditions that are bothering humans today stem from a pH level that is too acidic. Incidence of parasites, bacteria and viruses are all attributed to an acidic pH level.

The online publication Curious Mind Magazine suggests the following natural remedy, and I want to try it. This is not the first time I’ve heard about the detrimental effect of a too much acidity in the body.

Anti-cancer Home-made Remedy

Ingredients needed:

  • 1/3 tablespoon of baking soda
  • 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (or apple-cider vinegar)

Preparation:
Mix the ingredients into 2.5 deciliters (8 ounces of cold water) and stir well. The baking soda will react with the lemon juice or ACV and begin to fizz. Drink the mixture at one go. The combination will naturally reduce your acidic pH level and prevent the conditions associated with an acidic pH level.

They claim the difference can be felt within a few days!

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Quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,  (born August 28, 1749, Frankfurt am Main [Germany]—died March 22, 1832, Weimar, Saxe-Weimar), German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, critic, and amateur artist, considered the greatest German literary figure of the modern era.   (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

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Stress: Portrait of a Killer

Most of my clients remark on just how relaxed they feel after a Jin Shin Jyutsu treatment. “I enter into this state of complete calm,” remarked one of them recently. Indeed, Jin Shin Jyutsu is uniquely suited to return the client to a state of pure being, melting away all tension and letting them release any traces of doing. This is really beneficial and helpful – we are “human beings” and not “human doings,” after all.

“Stress is not a state of mind… it’s measurable and dangerous, and humans can’t seem to find their off-switch.” These words of warning come from renowned author and award-winning neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky in the documentary Stress: Portrait of a Killer.1

Adds Dr. Carol Shively, Professor of Pathology/Comparative Medicine and Psychology at Wake Forest University, “This is not an abstract concept. It’s not something that maybe some day you should do something about. You need to attend to it today, because it’s affecting the way your body functions. Any stress today will affect your health tomorrow and for years to come.”

This fascinating film, which you can see in its entirety below, is jointly produced by National Geographic and Stanford University where Dr. Sapolsky is a professor and scholar. It shows just how dangerous prolonged stress can be, how it can shrink your brain, add fat to your belly, make you depressed, and even unravel your chromosomes. Once you have a better understanding of these facts, you may want to start seeking out ways to combat the stress in your life.

If you are ready to take steps to control the stress in your life and “find your off switch,” I recommend you give Jin Shin Jyutsu a try.

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Study Disproves CDC’s Primary Justification for Vaccination

dsc03308-c2-bluIt’s Winter, time to get your flu shot, right? Not so fast.

The debate over immunity/vaccinations and vaccine safety/injury goes on.  There is enough evidence out there to promote pushing for the right to make decisions about vaccinations for yourself and for your own children – without losing their right to see a doctor or getting an education.

I am not “anti-vaccine”; I am “pro informed consent” and “pro parental rights” to choose what medical procedures my children undergo and when.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Immunity to a disease is achieved through the presence of antibodies to that disease in a person’s system.”[i] This, in fact, is the main justification for using vaccines to “boost” immunity, and a primary focus of vaccine research and development.

And yet, newly published research has revealed that in some cases no antibodies are required for immunity against some viruses.

Published in the journal Immunity in March, 2011, and titled, “B cell maintenance of subcapsular sinus macrophages protects against a fatal viral infection independent of adaptive immunity,” researchers found that mice infected with vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) can suffer fatal invasion of their central nervous system even in the presence of high concentrations of “neutralizing” antibodies against VSV.[ii]

The researchers found that while B-cells were essential for surviving a systemic VSV infection through the modulation of innate immunity, specifically macrophage behavior, the antibodies they produce as part of the adaptive immune response were “neither needed nor sufficient for protection.”  These findings, according to the study authors, “…contradict the current view that B cell-derived neutralizing antibodies are absolutely required to survive a primary cytopathic viral infection, such as that caused by VSV.”

The discovery that antibodies are not required for protection against infection, while counterintuitive, is not novel. In fact, not only are antibodies not required for immunity, in some cases high levels are found in the presence of active, even lethal infections.  For example, high serum levels of antibodies against tetanus have been observed failing to confer protection against the disease.  A report from 1992 published in the journal Neurology found severe tetanus in immunized patients with high anti-tetanus titers, one of whom died as a result of the infection.[iii]

[i] CDC.gov, Basics and Common Questions: Immunity Types

[iii] Severe tetanus in immunized patients with high anti-tetanus titers. Neurology. 1992 Apr ;42(4):761-4. PMID: 1565228

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Lawsuit Launched as Testing Finds Cancer-Causing Chemical in Nearly 100 Hair Care and Personal Care Products

The CEH (Center for Environmental Health in CA) filed a lawsuit in California against four companies that sell products containing DEA, and the nonprofit has sent legal notices to more than 100 other companies that produce and/or sell cocamide DEA-tainted products that their products violate California state law.  Cocamide diethanolamine (cocamide DEA), a chemically-modified form of coconut oil used as a thickener or foaming agent in many products, was listed by California as a known carcinogen last year. Products tested with high levels of cocamide DEA include shampoos made by Colgate Palmolive, Colomer, Paul Mitchell, and many others. In addition, products marketed for children and a product falsely labeled as organic were found with the chemical.

In addition to many brand name shampoos and personal care products (see the full list), the CEH testing found cocamide DEA in store-brand products purchased at Walmart, Trader Joe’s, Pharmaca, and Kohl’s. A store brand children’s bubble bath from Kmart and a children’s shampoo/conditioner from Babies R Us were also found with cocamide DEA. Falsely labeled organic products from Organic by Africa’s Best also tested for high levels of the cancer-causing chemical; CEH previously won a legal settlement with this company requiring it to end its use of phony organic labels.

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Grandma’s Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes

Here is a fascinating article from Discover Magazine on behavioral epigenetics, a brand-new field in neuroscience. It is surprising many, including geneticists, who until recently didn’t believe that epigenetic changes could be passed down from parent to child, one generation after the next, but could only happen during fetal development. But it gets better. Two neuroscientists were recently pondering a hypothesis as improbable as it was profound over a few beers in a bar in Barcelona, Spain: If diet and chemicals can cause epigenetic changes, could certain experiences — child neglect, drug abuse or other severe stresses — also set off epigenetic changes to the DNA inside the neurons of a person’s brain? And just like that, behavioral epigenetics was born. This puts a whole new spin on the age-old “nature vs. nurture” debate!

According to the new insights of behavioral epigenetics, traumatic experiences in our past, or in our recent ancestors’ past, leave molecular scars adhering to our DNA. Jews whose great-grandparents were chased from their Russian shtetls; Chinese whose grandparents lived through the ravages of the Cultural Revolution; young immigrants from Africa whose parents survived massacres; adults of every ethnicity who grew up with alcoholic or abusive parents — all carry with them more than just memories.

This highlights the importance of dealing with emotional trauma and stress through bodywork such as Jin Shin Jyutsu and therapeutic massage, both of which are highly effective for this purpose.

Read the entire article here.

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Health Care System Falls Short on Stress Management

As we know by now, therapeutic bodywork like massage therapy and Jin Shin Jyutsu does an excellent job at lowering stress, anxiety, tension, and pain, while increasing energy levels, quality of sleep, and overall well-being. But according to a recent survey from the American Psychological Association (APA), we don’t do nearly enough to manage our stress: One-fifth of Americans report feeling extreme stress, and 35 percent of the adult population says its stress level has risen in the last year.

Findings from “Stress in America: Missing the Health Care Connection,” which was conducted online by Harris Interactive among 2,020 U.S. adults in August of 2012, suggest people are not receiving what they need from their health care providers to manage stress and address lifestyle and behavior changes to improve their health.

69 percent of New Yorkers this year say that managing stress is extremely or very important, but the number who say they are doing an excellent or very good job at it is only 32 percent.

We can do better than that. Schedule your appointment now, and start managing your stress!

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