The Two PercentSadistic sociopath
Streets and alleys bleed
across my adopted country
The Black man can't breathe
Centuries of slavery
make the blood run
bouncing over jagged rocks
I feel its legacy
in every Black pulse
people now assumed free
The rough run of fluid in veins
traumatized for generations
My Appalachian heart
distilled in the North country,
running from the violence
nurtured on Assassin's Hill
A successful white immigrant
brought down by comorbidities
of profound injury
My pulse is choppy too,
the imprint of torture and murder
resonating in the flow
One American son moving
corporate mountains
to heal the heritage of
Satanists and Nazis
The other hand in hand
with his love,
where I could not be,
wearing a gas mask,
shot by rubber bullets,
no lost eyes
Left his gun at home
and walked peacefully through
the hemorrhaging streets
because he is a patriot
without a leader
these long years
I live without sleep
I am the granddaughter
of this man
riveted
by the face of suffering
increasing and decreasing
pressure
alternately
on MY neck,
watching life
fade in and out
until the policeman,
his brotherhood's two percent,
was ready to
end the game
and see us ALLdieCrying to his mother waiting
on the other side
Adieu to children here
A torturer's focused face
A limp body
Family terrified into
complacency
- Celia Quinn
In any medical system pain is considered a warning sign that there is a problem in the body. Pain can be sufficiently extreme and chronic to result in suicidal thoughts. I am thinking of female patients who have endometriosis their whole lives that rivals the pain of natural labour. Chronic psoriasis from childhood into adulthood can itch enough to cause agony. Pain can be significant. Western medicine sees a person as a collection of individual parts rather than the seamlessly functioning whole envisioned by Eastern philosophers. Today there is a specialist for every part of the body, including our mental health. Eastern medicine regards the mind and body as the same. The ancient medical texts identify physical symptoms rather than mental because it is not Confucian to intimate someone is ‘crazy’. According to this ancient tradition, someone who has physical symptoms has mental ones as well, whether they manifest them or not.
Psoriasis (www.dermnet.com)
It is an individual’s free choice to face the psychological issues related to their pain or set them aside. Stagnation and pain increase as we repress our feelings. Pain is telling us to change something about ourselves and its emotions provide clues. Sometimes it is very difficult to acknowledge the sweeping adjustments that need to be made in one’s life. Unexpressed emotion sits like a compost pile in our interior, growing hotter and hotter the way organic material ferments. As old age approaches, the heat and inflammation can reach a crescendo. A healthy day-to-day life involves constant processing of outer stimulation and the exploration of our inner being’s reaction to it.
Suppressing pain (thebrainbank.scienceblog.com)
Some people somatize their symptoms, feeling them as physical pain. Some experience emotional upheaval rather than body aches and some allow a combination of the two. Generally sufferers of severe pain have a history of extensive trauma in their lives, whether it is physical or mental. If you choose to work with a therapist, find one who understands that the more you experience the emotion behind pain, the more it decreases. Pain is the result of anything unresolved. It could develop from eating large amounts of ice cream because it tends to obstruct areas from its dampness. It can begin with the chronic use of OTC medications for colds and flus because you choose not to take time off for trivial illness. In the Eastern tradition, these minor maladies provide an opportunity for cleansing. Drugs that suppress symptoms also prevent the toxins from expression and discharge. An acupuncturist familiar with the Shāng Hán Lùn School (Injury Caused By Cold) will know how to help you express rather than suppress illness. The course of a cold will shorten and you will recover more easily while understanding its importance to your general health.
Zhāng Zhòng-Jĭng, author of Shāng Hán Lùn or Treatise on Damage By Cold (bamboogroveacademy.com)
Shāng Hán Lùn or Treatise on Damage By Cold (www.china.org.cn)
Many of us have obstructions created by trauma, which bruises the blood and can create stagnation that is deep and persistent. Swollen purple veins under the tongue reveal this situation. I am reminded of a massage therapist who complained that she could not help a client who had been trampled in a bar. I suggested she scrape the area with a clean coin and some oil. Acupuncturists call it Guā Shā because it brings old blood and heat to the surface in the form of red spots resembling hickies (they resolve in a few days). What emerged from this woman’s back was the perfect print of a man’s shoe. This is an excellent illustration of how our bodies tend to retain trauma unless it is treated. Needless to say the massage client felt much better.
(www.rvdv-advocaten.nl)
By the time pain has reached the low back or shoulders, we are reaching the limit of places to store suppressed material, emotional or pathogenic. We see the body like a house with cupboards, an attic and a basement. These are the places where we store experiences we feel we have no time to process. This is the idea of making something latent or putting it into dormancy. The repositories get full in older people because they have experienced more. Ask anyone who has emptied an ancestral home, even if it has housed only one generation: there is a lot of unwanted stuff!
Pain and the comfort of the fetal position (runioredmane.deviantart.com)
“A great woman is one who carries the child in her heart.” Mèng Zĭ
Mencius AKA Mèng Zĭ
Being immersed in Daoism, I was inspired by the photos below. The evolution of spiritual cultivation in Daoism moves from childhood through adulthood and returns to childhood with old age. This is not an endorsement of dementia. The elder purposely develops the innocence of childhood. It is clear from their answers that children think deeply about the importance of relationships. They are nonjudgemental about the world. They know instinctively that, “the name that becomes a name is not the Immortal Name” (Lao-Tzu’s Taoteching translated by Red Pine). Under ideal circumstances they let go of trauma easily because they are not yet socialized to hold onto it. Children cry instinctively when they are hurt to wash away the pain. The sun comes out when they finally smile, ready to play again. My children attended a school where an injured child was not instantly picked up and admonished that everything was OK. Instead the youngster lay where they fell, surrounded by playmates and teachers, until she had finished processing the experience fully. Otherwise, with time, trauma accumulates in the body like the sediment in an old barrel and reduces circulation, which causes pain. For the same reason, children adapt easily to new circumstances. Youngsters have the ease of Wú Wéi. This is the idea of accomplishing everything without doing anything. The wise elder knows that this is the best way to live life: immersed in the spontaneity of the moment.
celiadermontblog 