A Memorable Death

by Dr. Tim Ong

Marvin is 55 years old and he has a brain tumour. He is getting physically weaker by the day and is now having difficulty in breathing. However, he is still mentally very alert. Although Marvin knows that death is imminent, he does not seem to fear death, at least not outwardly. As he is not talking very much about his impending death, I take it as a sign that he or those around him have not fully accepted the reality of his situation. I personally feel if this hurdle is overcome, it would make a tremendous change for all.
Good or bad deaths
For the past 17 years, I have witnessed countless deaths. To simplify my observation, some deaths can be termed as “good” or easy while a small number are considered “bad” or difficult.
William was 44 years old when he was diagnosed to have kidney cancer. As his cancer ravaged his bones and liver, he became physically weaker. Refusing to believe that his death was near, he fought it all the way. Each day, he harboured hope for a cure and he was constantly searching for it. He was angry with his doctors because they could not offer him a cure and so he directed his hope towards alternative treatments. Despite trying various types of alternative treatments, he succumbed to his disease.
William had a difficult time as he was dying. From the numerous house visits, I could see that he was afraid to face death and to accept his own mortality. He was fearful of the unknown after death. What was there waiting for him? Would he exist after death?

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From Cells To Self In The Biology Of Belief

What is the connection between a cell membrane and the human brain? A lot, according to cell biologist, Dr. Bruce Lipton, whose book The Biology of Belief, details reasons why we can be the creators of our own destiny. A renowned cell biologist and former professor at the University Of Wisconsin Medical School, Bruce Lipton shows precisely how the molecular processes behind the brain’s functioning work. In fact, he is the leading authority on the new science of Epigenetics—the science that sees life to be controlled by factors other than genes. From cells to self, Bruce Lipton compels us to re-think our understanding of empowerment—how much power do we have over our own bodies and over the course of events in our lives? Simply put, he suggests that we are not victims of our genetic blueprint; in fact we have the power to program our own destiny.

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Moving Towards An Ageless Body

Copyright © 2006 Mary Desaulniers

Picture this—a woman in a red bodysuit, back arched on a narrow perch. A bar holds the base of her neck, a seat holds the small of her back as her body, well-toned, flexible with full musculature, secures itself onto the perch. Her left leg, straight and taut, is held high off the ground by powerful back and thigh muscles. Her hair, thick and dark, swoops towards the floor, revealing a strong, firm neck. Nothing in the pose, skin or face belies her age. She is 69.

Meet Emilie Conrad, the woman with the Ageless Body. Founder of the Continuum Movement, Emilie has been tapping into the body’s wisdom since her early years. Even as a child, she had a strong intuition that life was imbued with a unifying spirit. A fortuitous visit to Haiti confirmed her intuition; enchanted by the undulating movements of the Haitian prayer rituals, she sensed its power to connect the human body to a primal fluid rhythm. She saw the earth speaking through the feet of the prayer ritual dancers.

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Stressed? Have A Talk With Your Body!

Copyright © 2006 Mary Desaulniers

Ilana Rubenfeld Ph.D knows first hand what having a conversation with your body means. A gifted violinist at the Julliard School of Music, Rubenfeld was well on her way to become the first woman conductor in the music scene when a debilitating back spasm cut short her music career. It was at that point that Rubenfeld turned to the resources of her body and transformed trauma into triumph by embarking on a personal mission to look for answers in the body’s wisdom. The result is The Listening Hand: The Rubenfeld Synergy Method of Talk and Touch which made her a world-recognized pioneer in integrating psychotherapy, body work and intuition. “You can learn to develop ‘listening hands’ in order to ‘hear’ changes in the body,” she says. Talking with your body is the first step towards healing and integration.

Why? Emotions reside and are held inside the body. Any change or event produces a ripple effect throughout the entire physical, emotional, mental and spiritual system of a person. This ripple effect changes one’s equilibrium which means that a traumatic event has the power to “freeze” a person physically in the form of chronic neck, back or joint pain and emotionally in the form of depression, despair and anger. Unfreezing or thawing the body at emotional and physical levels means retrieving the memories that have been locked in the cells and re-integrating them through touch and talk with new and present perspectives. In this way, we access the dynamics of healing. What these dynamics mean is that all positions are malleable, provided we allow for their transformation. Talking to your body can literally dissolve painful memories that have been locked in different parts of our bodies.

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Obesity And Heart Disease

We only have to look at a Titian painting to recognize that at one point in the history of Western culture, fat was considered beautiful. Before the 20th Century, corpulence was touted as a sign of wealth and luxury, largely because most people were barely surviving on a meager existence.

Ironically, now in our era of affluence and plenty, we have to contend with the health and economic problems of obesity. We have a population in North America that is more than 55% overweight. More than 20% of those overweight are considered obese, a situation which proves to be an economic burden on our Health Care system because of the coronary risk factors associated with obesity. In 2004, total national health expenditure in the USA was $1.9 Trillion or $6,280 per person.

Why is obesity a risk factor for heart disease?

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Teen Marketing And Body Image

Copyright © 2006 Mary Desaulniers

You see them everywhere—magazines featuring emaciated teen models with brash, defiant looks that say “We express ourselves,” their arms and ankles glistening with fashion accessories. The definition of “cool chick” in another magazine is a glossy-lipped, half-woman, half-child peeking ambivalently behind a set of heavily mascared eyes. ”I am confection,” she seems to say, her body eloquently displaying a padded push up bra. Such teen marketing tactics have been successful in making their point. Girls, as young as ten, have made the word “diet” part of their vocabulary and the La Senza part of their identity.

Body image and weight control have occupied mainstream culture since the beginning of the 20th Century when film and media images created prototypes of ideal male and female bodies—men with swashbuckling muscles and women with slender waists and boyish hips. The effect of teen marketing and media images on our teenage population cannot be overstated. It is not surprising then that teenagers of both genders have distorted body images that often lead to unhealthy behaviors.

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Writing Help And Morning Pages

Copyright © 2006 Mary Desaulniers

Reading Julia Cameron’s The Sound of Paper is like revisiting an old friend. For more than fifteen years, her morning pages ( three uncensored pages written every morning fresh out of bed) have been my daily writing help, the friend that coaxed me out of fear and inertia about putting words on paper and like the Nike slogan, urged me to “Just Do It!”

Why is it so difficult to write? Writing is an activity removed from direct experience. Writers have often mourned the loss of words to describe an event and this is probably because rendering what happened in words involves a completely different set of neural motor skills. Freud in Civilization and Its Discontent sees writing as technology; both he claims act as “prosthetics” to the body, functioning as an appendage or addition. Even the word “prosthetics” is ambivalent, carrying both the negative connotation of loss or compensation and the positive sense of extension. After all, writing is a later development of the human brain and signals not only the beginning of recorded history but also the evolution of the highly specialized and compartmentalized intelligence in the prefrontal cortex.

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Memory Loss And The Elusive Self

Mary Desaulniers 

I have no fear of death, but I am deathly frightened of losing my mind and memory. The idea of being trapped in a stranger’s body, lost, adrift in thought and time is more than I can bear. Friends have laughed at my fear; they have countered with glib remarks: ”At least you wouldn’t know you are in that condition. You would be so far gone in memory loss that you wouldn’t know your body is deteriorating. If you have no understanding of the nightmare, how can you be suffering?”

True enough. However, I am uneasy about such glib assumptions. The question nags at me still: is there any way the unconscious or subconscious body can know of its misplaced self ? Can someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s have an unconscious or subconscious awareness that his memory, his identity or sense of self has been lost in the shuffle?

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The Truth About Senior Moments

Mary Desaulniers 

We all have our moments when the word stays paralyzed in our throat. We can see the face, hear the voice, but we struggle to name who it is we have in our mind. Most of us have dismissed such moments as senior moments. After all, we reason, they are part of aging. However, a new study that emerged from Chicago recently suggests otherwise. Senior moments might not be as innocuous as previously thought. The study suggests that in a disturbing number of cases, embarrassing senior moments such as forgetting a word, name or recent conversation are really hallmarks and signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

After performing autopsies on the brains of 134 older people who had appeared to be normal except for some moments of forgetfulness, Chicago scientists have found that one third of the participants had brains riddled with plagues, waxy protein clumps and scarred tissues that were all signs of Alzheimer’s disease.Their senior moments were pathological. Despite the fact that their brains showed marked deterioration similar to those who succumbed to Alzheimer’s, these participants had been able to lead functional normal lives; that is, they were able to take care of personal, household, social and daily living needs. Their ability to do so has prompted the inevitable question: why is that that some people are totally incapacitated and indisposed by brain deterioration while others (who had similar levels of deterioration in the brain) are able to function normally?

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Acidophilus–The Body’s Balancing Act

If you experience moodiness, depression, indigestion, an unsettled stomach on an almost daily basis, you could be suffering from an imbalance in stomach bacterial organisms.Lactobacillus acidophilus, or acidophilus for short, is one of the most useful organisms in your body. Acidophilus is a probiotic, one of the organisms living in the stomach and the intestines which are vital to the correct absorption and assimilation of nutrients, as well as for the defense of your digestive system against harmful bacteria. These “intestinal flora”, as they are known, keep Candida, a virulent strain of yeast which lives in the body, as well as other harmful organisms, in balance so that they do not begin to overgrow and cause harm.

Lactobacillus acidophilus can be thrown out of balance by many factors. These include the use of steroidal hormones, the consumption of excessively processed food, a depressed immune system, and even some over the counter so-called remedies. But the most common factor is the use and overuse of antibiotics. Broad spectrum antibiotics – that is, antibiotics which kill not just one targeted organism, but any bacteria which they come into contact with – devastate the digestive system, killing off not just acidophilus, but many other necessary bacteria which line the stomach and intestinal walls.
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