Tag: Leslie Davenport

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Voices of Healing

I woke up this morning feeling a lot better than yesterday. I had spent much of the night doing mind stories and metta meditation. The metta meditation is a loving kindness meditation from the Buddhist tradition. I’ve adopted mine from several sources and it goes like this:

First you shower yourself with loving kindness by saying to yourself with feeling:

May I be at peace.
May my heart remain open.
May I know the beauty and the radiance of my own Buddha-nature.
May I be healed.
May I be happy, truly happy!
May I not cause anyone to suffer.

Then you shower the loving kindness blessings on someone you love, substituting “you” for “I” in the above rendition. You then shower loving kindness blessings on someone you are having a problem with and follow with showering loving kindness blessings on the whole world, imagining the earth floating in the vast emptiness of space. I practiced this meditation for several hours and woke up feeling fine! It was really important to shower the loving kindness blessings on myself first, so I could feel good enough about myself to shower the blessings on my spouse and other people I love in my life.

In the afternoon, I went to a meeting of Voices of Healing in Mill Valley. It turned out to be a support group much like the life threatened group at the Center for Attitudinal Healing. I was touched by people’s healing stories.

After the meeting, I received a massage from Pauline from Anna Halprin‘s group, and I’ve added her name to the resources list. Pauline is also living with cancer and continues to study with Gabrielle Roth. She was gentle and prayerful as she gave me an Eselan massage. The massage was excellent, and the mood was enhanced by the Tibetan music in the background.

From there I went to a session with Leslie Davenport. I needed to see her again this week because I felt in crisis with the thought of resuming my life as it was prior to the cancer. I felt and still feel that if I allow those conditions to be re-established, I’d be really susceptible to a recurrence of my disease, and this made me panic. There were other issues that came up, especially how much love if flowing into my life from many sources, but I was in the middle of a severe doubt attack.

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Eating Soup with a Fork

Today was probably the worst day that I’ve had since I received my diagnosis. I was full of emotion and frequently broke down crying. The morning was especially trying, as I was desperately trying to get in to see Leslie Davenport, having told my boss that I wouldn’t make it in today. The best she could offer was 6:00 tomorrow evening, so I jumped on it.

The doubt factor was the strongest. I doubted myself. I doubted my recovery. I was consumed by the idea that if things didn’t change in my life, I would have more trouble as a person who had had cancer than a person that has cancer and knows it. I was extremely afraid to be hurt and abandoned. Now that I am well, are my friends still going to care about me? Will I be able to continue to create my dream? Will my heart remain open? Or, is it already out to lunch? What about the divine love I was feeling last week? What about the love my daughter expressed for me last Friday? How can all of this be simultaneously true in my experience.

Well, here I am, eating soup with a fork! You’ll have to read It’s Easier Than You Think by Sylvia Boorstein to get the full impact of what I’m doing! The book is about the Buddhist way to happiness, and I spent the afternoon reading the whole thing, in between fits of tears and meditation. One of the main ideas that struck me from the book was that, “Traditional Buddhist texts teach that the ability to sustain attention in the truth of the moment is the antidote for doubt.” Many of her stories also moved me to tears. One of the bells of mindfulness that happened during my meditation was as call from a member of Anna Halprin’s group who offered to give me a massage tomorrow after talk at Voices of Healing.

I guess I’m doing a little better now that I’m eating my soup with a fork and writing in Yellow Stream!

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It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness

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The Tail of the Kite

Today was one of those days that started out being very stressful, as I was under pressure to solve a bug and chauffeur my kid around, and it also ended with a lot of stress as a result of negative thoughts that entered my mind after attending the Center for Attitudinal Healing.

After delivering my daughter to the shopping center with her friend, I went for another healing massage with Gail Teehan. She worked quite diligently on my shoulders and abdomen, and remarked that the effects of the chemo seemed much less. I also felt a strong healing coming into my body as she massaged my abdomen in a tender and loving way. This was the first time I had a massage at her house and we sat down for sushi afterwards. So I was feeling pretty good when I left her.

From there, I went to a session with Leslie Davenport. As I brought her up to date with all the wonderful experiences I’ve been having since our last session, I began to cry again, as the full extent of the emotional impact of the events hit me again. We talked at length about the opening of my heart chakra. During the guided imagery, she was trying to ground the energy so that my heart would stay open. While I was there, it seemed to work, but when I got home, I really experienced the fear of being hurt when I was so vulnerable. I spoke with her later on the phone and expressed my fears. To this, she once again emphasized the importance of grounding the energy rather than closing off.

All of these experiences led me to go the Center for Attitudinal Healing, even though my wife was taking the night off. At the Center, I shared the heart-warming events since last Thursday, and felt good about being open again. But then someone shared some experiences that made me start to think again, and I became lost in the fear. I began to doubt my love for myself, as I had most of my life. I felt like I was about to lose it and then the session was over and I could retreat into myself. I tried to explain what was going on to my wife, but wasn’t able to compete with the TV.

So what started out stressful due to performance and duty wound up stressful due to fear and doubt. All of these characteristics can be explained through knowledge of my point on the enneagram. Point six, as I’ve mentioned before is the position of the doubter, and fear is the passion. It looks like I’ve allowed my old personality to rear up again in the face of stress. And then I wonder, how can I alter my path of recovery so I don’t wind up in the same place I was when the cancer struck. If I do, there will be no real healing, as I must heal my aching heart.

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The Enneagram: Know Your Type! Awaken Your Potential

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“Let My Heart Fly Open, Let Me Come To You”

I was speaking with Joe, one of the facilitators of the Life Threatened group at the Center for Attitudinal Healing the day before yesterday to find out what went on in the group. There was one person who wasn’t given much of a chance of returning, and yet she did. I had been thinking about her the whole time I’ve been recovering from the treatment, and couldn’t wait to talk to Joe about the person. As we were speaking, Joe told me the story of his illness and work with the Center, which I can’t repeat here, except to say that he had had an experience of moving out of himself to the other.

Helen Palmer speaks about a similar experience. Our first line of work in the enneagram is to know ourselves. This we do through self-observation practice which corresponds quite closely with mindfulness meditation that I often write about. In fact, the self-observation practice that Helen teaches is to pay full attention to the breath in the belly, following the inhalation, the pause, the exhalation, and the return. This is the full cycle of the breath in the belly. As bodily sensations, feelings, thoughts, plans, memories, and fantasies enter into the mind, the are swiftly moved away, like a fallen leaf drifts slowly down by the effect of the wind. She teaches that when one becomes still in this way, one begins to get feelings that come before you know what you will feel, and that these feelings can be of the other. This process leads to the second line of work, which is to know the other as they know themselves.

When I spoke about similar matters with Leslie Davenport at our last session on May 29, I asked her what she thought was going on with me. She said, that in Sufi terms, she felt the I was changing “macoms,” which she described as “place.” I had heard about macoms at the First International Enneagram Conference three years ago, but I still don’t know much about them. She had said that one man’s macom is another man’s ecstasy. Apparently, as one moves from macom to macom, one becomes closer to the divine. My interpretation is that I am experiencing a great opening of  my heart, which probably began in the spring and was furthered by my experience at Anna Halprin’s studio on May 28.

The quote in the title is from a Sufi song that cries out for the presence of the divine. From this sparse information, I gathered that Leslie thought that I was moving into a new state. In this state, I personally feel a transformation from thinking mostly about myself to thinking about others. I’ve always thought a lot about my children and my spouse, but now I am thinking about other people a lot, especially the ones in my support groups.

So, today, when I had a massage, followed by a Feldenkrais session with Gail Teehan, I could only think of this song. Her loving hands seemed to strip the chemotherapy of its grip on my healthy cells and, as she massaged my feet, I felt the unwanted cells leaving my body through my shoulders. Her work on my lower back, shoulders and abdomen was the best massage I’ve ever had in those particular areas. I felt so cleansed by the whole massage that I began to cry when I sat up to change over to the Feldenkrais lesson. My heart was singing, “Let my heart fly open, let me come to you!” I had never cried before after a massage, and I had never felt so touched by the divine. I’ll never forget those feelings. It was like yearning for the divine and receiving grace. Throughout out my whole emotional experience, Gail was there with me with her loving presence and guided me to a safe space for us to continue with the Feldenkrais work.

The Feldenkrais lesson was shortened, due to the length of the massage, but it was excellent. She worked on my shoulders and my spine, and I really felt great! Then I gave Gail a shortened version of a Zero Balancing treatment, which I think she enjoyed. Nonetheless, it’s up to her to write about it!

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Another Step

Today was a little better than yesterday and the day before, but I didn’t feel well enough to go to the Center for Attitudinal Healing, as my wife did. I worked part of the day, and sent a manuscript of Healthy Cells Grow All By Themselves. I think this effort was a little too much for me, so I spent the rest of the day in bed, mostly following my breathing, but I did listen to the tape of my session with Leslie Davenport from May 29 again. I still don’t know who I am or where I am going! I know that I want to spread the word about self-healing and remembered wellness as far as possible. If that’s what I’m supposed to do, so be it!

I continue my mindfulness meditation as often as possible, coupled with frequent imagery sessions about healing my bladder. I’ve stated to re-read The Heart of Buddhist Meditation by Nyanaponika Thera to support my mindfulness practice. I highly recommend it!

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he Heart of Buddhist Meditation: Satipatthna: A Handbook of Mental Training Based on the Buddha's Way of Mindfulness

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Who Am I?

I had a session with Leslie Davenport today. I went in with an agenda, which I promptly forgot. However, after rambling on about all the good things that were happening in my life, I finally remembered that I wanted to do a guided imagery in which all of the dead cells and unwanted drugs were cleansed from my system. The session was filled with ecstatic moments, as I saw little water falls cleanse and bring energy to my eyes and flow down to my abdomen, and breathed into various places in my body. We then did a body scan, and when we got to my bladder, she used my saying of “healthy cells grow all by themselves!” This, of course, triggered other ecstatic moments, and I channeled the wonderful energy right into my bladder. Then we went deeper into the process of going inward, and she suddenly came up with the question, “Who are you, Jerome?” I had an immediate flash of blue light come in through my belly center and could only answer, “When Bhodidharma was asked that question by King Wu, he said, ‘I don’t know,’ and went off to meditate in a cave for nine years! So I don’t know!” We back into the guided imagery and a short while later she repeated the question. This time, my answer was the same, and I really got a kick out of it as if it were the real answer to the question. I felt like I had solved the koan quit well! The session ended soon after that, and I wanted to spend some more quality time with Leslie.

Later in the evening I went my Evolutionary Circle group. I spent a good deal of time explaining my physical condition, and everyone was thrilled. Then I began speaking about my spiritual state and invited them to follow the mindfulness path that I have been taking as an exercise. Everyone was enthusiastic about doing this, and the exercise lasted about twenty minutes.

I brought everyone into the breath in the belly by having them take several deep breaths, and then bringing their focus the to rising and falling of the breath in their bellies. I instructed them to repeat to themselves mentally, “healthy” with each inhalation, and to repeat “free” with each exhalation. At this point I let them get adjusted to what was going on internally with them before dealing with other objects of the mind. I then asked the to allow a physical sensation arise in their bodies and experience just what happens to their belly practice when the get lost in the effects of the body. After bringing them back to the belly breath, I instructed them on experiencing an emotion, so that they could experience what it was like to have some feelings while they were focusing on their breath in their bellies. I explained that energy follows attention and that if the emotion was strong enough, the breath observation practice would cease and they would get caught up in their feelings. I brought them back to the belly breath and guided them through the mental objects of thoughts, memories, plans, and images in the same way I had done the feelings, each time expressing the fact that the belly practice would dissipate if the energy in the though, memory, plan, or image was strong enough to move their energy. Then I had them return the breath in the belly for a few moments of silence, just so they could experience whatever came into their consciousness.

Finally, I brought them back into the room and had everyone share their individual experiences. The experiment was a tremendous success and provided a setting for the rest of the group to check in. I told many other stories of my spiritual experiences since our last meeting, and felt tremendous love and support from the whole group. They are so happy that I am doing so well!

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A Really Hot Day!

This morning, I slept until 9:00 A. M., which is very unusual for me. I needed the rest and felt all right about canceling my tennis date. Getting up so late almost made me late for Leslie Davenport‘s group. The hot weather kept the group quite small. When I shared about being free of cancer in my bladder, everyone was thrilled and inspired. This gave me the opportunity to express my feelings about integrative medicine, and I am beginning to think that I am preaching to the choir!

Leslie led us in a guided imagery experience that focused on qualities we would like to have in our beings. I focused on self-love, self-acceptance and joy. The experience was tremendously peaceful and I had many moments of joy. When Leslie asked us to focus on our little circle, I was reminded of the metta or loving kindness blessings that I use so often. While the other people drew pictures of their guided imagery experience, I wrote out the metta blessings for each of the cancer patients in the group. This is what I wrote:

May you be at peace!
May your heart remain open!
May you know the beauty and the radiance of your own true nature!
May you be healed!

In the traditional way of practicing metta, as I was taught, one starts with showering loving kindness blessings on oneself, because if your heart isn’t open, it’s awfully difficult to reach another. Next, you proceed to shower the loving kindness blessings on someone you love or someone you are close with. This is to bring them joy and heal their pain. After that, you shower the loving kindness blessings on someone you are having a little difficulty with, in order to learn forgiveness and open your heart to the person who hurt you or with whom you are not communicating very well. Finally, you imagine the earth, floating like a jewel in the vast emptiness of space, with it’s green forests and fertile lands, white mountain tops, blue ocean, and brown deserts. You beam down loving kindness vibrations to all beings, and repeat the loving kindness blessings to all occupants of the earth. You end with, “May All Beings Be Happy!” The last statement has been my traditional screen saver for many years!

My daughter just got elected to the council at school and we are going to celebrate her victory and my recovery tonight at the Buckeye!

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Free of Cancer!

My first appointment this morning was with Dr. Gullion.  He was rather pleased that the induction phase of the Shipley protocol worked so well.  He was also a little concerned about the 3 mm growth that was cut out of the surface of my bladder. He basically said that that was the nature of my bladder, and I would have to be watched. Nonetheless, we are still on the Shipley protocol and we begin chemotherapy and radiation next week. The basic protocol is the same, with chemo on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with 5FU and cis-platin, and radiation twice a day on Tuesday and Thursday. The whole process repeats itself after a week off. Then I am finished with the protocol. I plan to call Shipley today to discuss the situation with him.

My next appointment was with Leslie Davenport. My major concern in speaking with her was about the 3 mm tumor that was removed. I am still confused about how it could be there, with treatments I’ve had so far, but now it is removed and my bladder is free of cancer. We worked on the sadness I felt as a result of having some cancer removed, and I connected it with a desire for intimacy, especially with my wife. I apparently still need to work out some personal problems having to do with asserting myself, while maintaining a close and intimate relationship with my wife.

To celebrate my recovery, T. R. took me lunch at Insalata in San Anselmo. We had a very nice lunch, followed by a stroll by Gelato and a chat in the park. T. is very grateful for my recovery and very inspired by it.

All afternoon I felt extremely tired. I suppose it was from too much running around on Monday and Tuesday. Therefore, I’ve decided to try to take it easy today.

I went to the Center for Attitudinal healing last night and shared my happy news. Everyone was happy for me, and I continued to express my mission of presenting alternative methods as something to be done in conjunction with convention medical practice. I shared the T-Up information with one of the patients who seems to be reaching the point of no return. This patient has a choice for surgery for which the recovery period could be as long as the remaining of his life if he doesn’t have the surgery. The poor patient really has some tough decisions to make, and perhaps I can help him.

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A Much Better Day

I’m having a much better day today, thanks to a decent amount of sleep (perhaps!) I worked in the morning before my appointment with Leslie Davenport. In the session, we did a guided imagery experience of what was happening in my life at the present moment. The threat of the pathologist finding cancer in my bladder was still the primary focus of my attention. Leslie, in her wisdom, asked me if there was a way that I could turn out good even if the results were not what I wanted. Although I am still wrestling with this concept, I feel more confident in my ability to use my mindfulness to stay focused on all the good work I have done until now.

Next, I had to register for my surgery of Friday and make sure that everything was OK for Julie Motz. I didn’t even have to wait, so I guess everything will flow smoothly on Friday.

Following my registration, I waited around for a neck and shoulder massage with Anna Pera at the Radiation Oncology Unit. It really felt great and came at a perfect time. I really allowed myself to relax into it and thus I got a lot of benefit from it.

In late afternoon, I had a complete physical with Dr. Belknap. The blood work was very normal and the rest of my health is surprisingly good! Dr. Belknap said with the blood tests and physical exam combined, he gave me an 80 to 90 percent chance of being free of cancer in my bladder! This information helped me to relax slightly.

At night, my wife and I went to the Center for Attitudinal Healing. Some people have been coming to the group for years, against which my three week barely measures up. However, I found it quite beneficial to speak once again about the dilemma I have with the outcome of my surgery on Friday. I am trying to hold either outcome as a part of my healing process, but I really, really prefer to be free of cancer now! I spoke a lot about my daughters reaction to my illness and how they were such wonderful children. “We don’t need a support group!” is what they always say! Their love and support is really helpful, even though I’m not quite sure that they know the worst case scenario.

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Your Average American Day

This morning I went in for my blood work for Dr. Belknap. In addition, I had blood taken for a nutritional analysis of my blood recommended by Dr. Rossman.

Later, I went to Leslie Davenport‘s group at Marin General Hospital. Leslie did a guided imagery which evoked the four elements. She began with the earth element by having us imaging our feet grounded to the earth even through our socks, shoes, the floor of the room, and on down through the building. She continued with the water, air, and fire, building on the images we had already constructed. Upon completion of the guided imagery, we drew a picture to represent our experience. My drawing incorporated all of the elements focusing on the room in which we were meeting. The building in which the room was looked more like a safe than a building, and I remarked that we were trying to create a “safe” space with our group. Everyone laughed! The group was also quite excited about Julie Motz!

When I got home, I needed to rest, as I was expecting a visit from my ex-wife. She is visiting our son from Israel and wanted to visit me. She arrived one hour late in a broken down car and was more or less forced to spend the night! She even invited me to go to Yosemite with my son and her!

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Copyright © 2004-2018, Jerome Freedman, Ph. D.