Lyme & tick borne illnesses intro video of this complex dis-ease problem that is epidemic.

Although this is an interview of me from 5+ years ago much of the information is still relevant, some may be dated with new information always coming forward. 

This interview was extemporaneous and non-rehearsed, at least my end of it so please appreciate. 

My lovely daughter was patient enough to sit with me for the entirety of the 30 minute off the cuff interview.  Her presence, graciousness and love, then and now and years before when I was acutely sick with lyme and tick borne illnesses I always appreciate and have gratitude for and she was my light and reason I fought for to get well.

My hope is that my experience in having gone through this illness and in treating so many people with it; this video and other materials on this and our other related web-sites will help you or your loved ones regain health and vitality.

In health and wellness!  - Doc Tara Brooke (ND/NMD)

In commemoration of Leslie Wermers.  My luck that she was one of my lifetime dearest friends. She helped many as one of the world's most active Lyme Activists.  She lost her life to this disease at age 42 with the anniversary of that date soon upon us.  She is in a better place.  God bless you Leslie Wermers!  You are both missed and remembered!  Continued thanks to her sister Tracie Schissel and all the work she tirelessly does which she used to do alongside her sister.

upcoming STREAMING LIVE: (the video window link here will display the streaming Conference) ILADS Scientific Session on Lyme & Tick Borne Illnesses

Streaming live video by Ustream

ILADS Annual Scientific Session 21st Century Lyme Disease Treatment The Fairmont Royal York  |  Toronto, Canada  |  October 28-30, 2011 ILADS 2011 Conference Is Streaming Live Watch ILADS Lyme disease conference LIVE as leading professionals examine the cutting edge research and state-of-the-art clinical applications in the treatment and diagnosis of Lyme disease. Much of this year’s conference, which takes place Friday through Sunday, October 28th-30th, will stream live online. (You can sign up online at www.ilads.org to receive an e-mail reminder when the broadcast begins.) Some of ILADS' most popular speakers from last year will return this year. Marcus Conant, MD will be speaking on The cutaneous manifestations of acute and chronic Lyme disease and their implications for treatment. Joseph J. Burrascano, Jr., MD will speak on Borrelia Infections- diagnosis and treatment. Steven Bock, MD will enlighten us by speaking on the topic, Integrative Patient Care in Tick-Borne Diseases. See the entire live streaming schedule below. All times shown are eastern time. You can also download the entire conference program, by clicking here. Let your friends know. Click here and post to facebook, twitter and more. LIVE STREAMING VIDEO SCHEDULE Friday, October 28, 2011 10:30pm-11:15am Borrelia Infections- diagnosis and treatment — Joseph J. Burrascano, Jr., MD 11:15pm-12:00pm Management of Ixodes scapularis bites — Elizabeth Maloney, MD   12:00pm-1:30pm New Research on Lipid Replacement Therapy to improve mitochondrial and membrane function in complex infections — Garth Nicolson, PhD 1:30pm-2:15pm Coinfections And The Opportunistic Groupies — Christine Green, MD   2:15pm-3:00pm Lyme Disease & Babesiosis: Updates on Diagnosis and Treatment 2011 — Richard I. Horowitz, MD Saturday, October 29, 2011 8:30am-9:00am Cutaneous Mimics, Don’t Be Fooled — Marcus Conant, MD 9:00am-9:10am The Qualitative and Quantitative Implications of an Inadequate Diagnostic Test for Lyme Disease Patients — Sarah Buchman   9:30am-10:00am The Updated ILADS Clinical Guidelines — Daniel J. Cameron, MD 10:30am-11:15am Overview of Integrative Patient Care in Tick-Borne Diseases — Steven Bock, MD   11:15am-12:00pm Identifying environmental Illness and Mold exposure in patients with persistent Lyme Disease — Lisa L. Nagy, MD 1:30pm-2:15pm Food allergy, intolerance and candida — Morton Teich, MD For complete information about the ILADS Lyme disease free live streaming video, click here Join us and hear live updates on Lyme disease cutting edge research!

DIVINE CREATOR: in proof all around us, all the time.

Different religions may have different names for this single source of unimaginable creation and love.

What is interesting is that the main religions all do believe in one GOD/ALLAH/etc. 

Life around us - it's beauty and magnificence in display and in array and math is beyond wonder!!! 

This lovely video is a great reminder of that.

Thank you to the filmers, creators, artists and mathmeticians and all the people over time that it has taken to even become aware of these amazing facts in the face of likely glacial amounts of additional truly AWE-some information that we are yet unaware.

Spirituality & Faith

http://www.powerupyourbrain.com/

This is the website to the book "Power Up Your Brain", 'the neuroscience of enlightenment'; about neurology, shamanism and so much more.

It is co-written by an amazing Neurologist.  With whom I had the exceptional opportunity to spend a week preceptoring with at his practice in Naples Fl, during my medical residency.  Neurologist David Perlmutter MD and Alberto Villoldo PhD an Anthropologist and known Shaman.

Recently at a local conference through the Institute for Functional Medicine I had the chance to see Dr. Perlmutter speak again and was surprised and enthused to hear him reference these areas of medicine that are more or less unexplored, yet SO important, as he realizes.  This is also the content of this new book.

When I worked with him, his Office Manager, Anna Belle Fore' who is now retired but working as she wishes - WAS & IS a well known shaman.  Not to discount Dr. Perlmutter's amazing work; his wife once said to me; "if you think David is good - Anna Belle is the amazing one".  This after their family had been through a number of very difficult tribulations over the years in which after trying everything, it was earth & spiritual based shaman practice medicine that had helped them & resolved each situation.  So I am so very pleased to see that this highly respected and influental Neurologist is studying, promoting, writing and lecturing about this area of health & how it ties into the nervous system and so much more! 

Marty and I have just gotten back from another week of our 3 year shaman training as well through the Foundation for Shamanic Studies www.shamanism.org

This type of medicine is heritage to ALL humans.  The CORE PRACTICES were done by all humans.  Yes there are some indigenous groups who are incredibly lucky to still have access to their heritage.  However for all the groups that do not; anthropologists have gone back far enough in any ethnic group and have found that up to some point every group practiced CORE spiritual techniques.  The end of these practices were usually through another group trying to assert power and outlawing these practices.

These practices are all inclusive.  What I mean by that is that they do not exclude any religious beliefs.  However many religions DO exlude these practices and have wiped them out and continue to do so through missionaries and other practices to this day. 

I have seen this with my own eyes as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guinee Bissau West Africa.  The incredibly rich culture and heritage and practices which were inclusive of anything and everything that would help was pervasive everywhere. 

Yet there were missionaries there to tell the indigenous people that their rich culture was bad, evil, shameful etc.  I personally found this offending, as it steals peoples heritages and homogenizes the richness of people and who they are all over the world. 

If the missionaries approach had been in a way of introducing additional ideas and beliefs - the Guineans probably would have been open to these beliefs and honoring them at the same time as their own IF introduced that way. 

But to shame people for their heritage, OUR heritage that our world is SO CLOSE TO LOSING is appaling and a covert ongoing version of what the inquisition was all about. 

The parallel with the INQUISITION: People may not be killed outwardly for their practices and beliefs however they are still being shamed and stripped of their beliefs and practices through shame.  These beliefs and practices are an internal crucial piece of who they are at their core, through generations of identity, practice, solidarity and power!  So being stripped of them, IS killing a large part of who they are at the core.

That is the problem and the quest of FSS; the verbal heritage of core shamanism had become so close to dying out and the goal for this and other organizations and people like Dr. Perlmutter and Dr. Villoldo & others, is to give credibility to this work to keep it alive,  not only because it is the heritage of ALL PEOPLE, but because it can help heal in ways where all other medicine fails.  It has the potential to be incredibly powerful for people and at this crucial time - for our earth which is in peril.

I will reiterate that it does not exclude religions or governments or any beliefs.  In fact it is inclusive of all that is good.  However because it has the potential to be so powerful and helpful and can be made useful by a single individual - it certainly has had the attention of these groups through the millenia - with various intents that they have had which have ended up at this point in time with a brave and asserted effort to bring back this powerful way of life and healing as it has been almost obliterated.

I will add, traditionally in indigenous cultures - all the people know the oral history and ways of working with the medicine and are initiates.  However certain indiviuals excell and they are the ones who are considered the 'healers' or 'shamans'.  However they traditionally will never refer to themselves as such, it is only the people around them that will call them this. 

Shamans ONLY work on the behalf of someone WITH PERMISSION and only for POSITIVE OUTCOMES.  These practices can be used with negative intent as well; without permission and for negative outcomes.  In some cultures the people who work in this negative way would be called sorcerers.  However, these are only words and words have limitations in and of themselves.  Simply - in living spiritual societies, there are people who are known for practicing this work for that of good intent & with permission and they have a name for these people and there are others known for using it in the opposite way - to get ahead etc, and there is a name for them.  There is a lovely family movie called "The Secret of The Andes" which clearly shows the difference of this work based on intent.

The word shaman itself comes from Siberia and simply means to be in two worlds at once.  Meaning the physical world of ordinary reality & the non-physical world of non-ordinary reality.  If you go back to my first post I talked about this to some extent in terms of quantum physics which may give a more in depth background for understanding. In short, consider Einstein's equation of M and E (Mass and Energy) everything around us exists in both states an equal amount of time.  When a person has the ability, training, brain entrainment, methodology, & initiations into the ways to do so, one CAN enter non-ordinary reality - the place of energy - which is outside of space and time, and where there is vast amounts of information, knowledge and healing available.  When a person who is trained to do this one exists in both ordinary/physical reality and non-ordinary/energy at the same time.  This is a very brief and concise summary.  Suffice it to say, with the ability to do this, so much can be done.  In mass of people working toward the same goal in this state - who knows if there are any limitations to what can be done (hence I have not said the sky is the limit because this work goes SO far beyond).

To clarify; traditionally & currently a majority of shamanic practice and attaining a state of being in non-ordinary reality is done by repetitive percussive sound at a rate of 4-7 hz per minute.  Only 10-15% of this work has traditionally been done with the aid of psychodelic plants and fungi.  The training that Marty and I are doing accesses the states and realms of non-ordinary reality through repetitive percussion only.  This is not to discount the use of these plant medicines in context.  It is simply to educate that non-ordinary reality can be accessed either way, and that a majority of the people the world over throughout history have accessed this state via percussive sound of a very distinct rhythm.

Besides the group work that Dr. Perlmutter and Dr. Villoldo are doing, and the work that The Foundation For Shamanic Studies (originated by Michael & Sandra Harner PhD Anthropologists) of which Marty and I are doing our training, there are other groups that are also bringing forth this work in positive ways.  One of which I am becoming aware of but have not explored fully is a group that has compiled the ideas of tensegrity, quantum physics, Carlos Castaneda and Buckminster Fuller and their website is http://www.castaneda.com/

Keep in mind that any idea or system that works or has power - can be used in any way that a person or group chooses based on their intent.  This includes religions & governments as well as people.  Many of the systems and ideas that people inherintely consider to be benevolent and positive, when considered in a historical context in the sake of these beliefs - much blood has been shed & continues to be.  The inquisition that I mentioned above is one example and the ongoing missionizing of the world is a minor version of this as far as I am concerned.  At least in the ways that I have seen it carried out thus far.

I want to assert; I DO BELIEVE IN GOD.  I was raised Christian however I see merits in all the religious traditions as well as any positive spiritual tradition.  As such I have attended "The Center For Spiritual Living" in Seattle for years, which very much focuses on God, Jesus and other prophets, saints and the positive beliefs from all traditions. 

In addition I have found that in my training and oral receiving of the methodology & experiential initiations into shamanism, that ultimately in talking with others in the same circles and processes of knowledge and initiation; there is the common experience of a single creative force - whatever name it is given by any tradition. 

For me - I think of God coming from the Germanic meaning GOOD and ultimately LOVE - and love being the driving force of all creation. 

No words or language can summarize or describe this unifying creative force aptly.  To name it with words, limits it - however given that in ordinary reality all we have is language - we are limited to do that and GOD seems an apt although limited name. 

In Non-ordinary reality - there is no need for words, it is an experience, IS the energy that IS everything and IS pure love & peace - ALL interwined and connected.  In fact there is no disconnection, it is the I that is me, the I that is you, the I that is everything around us, through and in between.  Again to describe it - limits it, the experience is beyond words. 

Signing off, in health and blessings of a wonderful summer!  We are looking forward to a wonderful summer with our daughter and an exchange student from S. Korea arriving on Saturday whom we are welcoming into our family!!!!

Regaining Health Can Include Letting People Go:

There is SO much to write on this subject.

At a first appointment with new patients, I always explain that besides having identified the primary contributing infections that have knocked their health and lives down, it is important to recognize the major components that contribute to total negative load that suppresses their health.

It is never possible to recognize every single facet - our world is to toxic on many levels for that.

Recognizing the biggest ones are the most important, and working with them, modifying them; allows the body to heal. 

One of the major contributors that is crucial to be looked at, and if not looked at people tend to stay stuck even if all the other major total load contributors are gone or modified greatly - are the emotional pieces.

Stress - on any level in our bodies, is perceived in terms of psycho-neuro-immunology, as in the caveman days.  That is our body's send loads of stress hormones out for responding to the sabertooth tiger that is about to eat us.  In terms of our immune system and our nervous systems, we get put into a fight and flight mode (the sympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system) which also cuts off immune function because the need to survive the danger NOW outweighs the need to have a strong immune system, good resting, digesting etc. 

When people are chronically stressed, physically, mentally, emotionally or otherwise, their bodies are always trying to respond to that saber-tooth tiger the best they can.  This does not pose well for health.

People often modify their lives in many ways to improve what is around them.  Especially when I talk to them about what is in the above paragraphs. 

It is CRUCIAL they have the time and space to relax back into the parasympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system, so that they are not constantly flooded in stress hormones; so that their body will support itself naturally in terms of the immune system, the ability to sleep, and the ability to digest and regenerate.

Truly we all come from dysfunctional families.

Or if a person is lucky enough; then from a dysfunctional family that has taken their issues consciously on and started to work on the generational dysfunction as a part of the love and commitment to one another and the larger family group as a whole. 

If someone is not born into this type of family; if they are in a family that is adaptable enough to be willing to start to do this, again that is a huge blessing.

Additionally; we are either all co-dependent or recovering co-dependents.

I also realize this is simplified, but for the sake of this blog; it gets to the point that many people have many unresolved issues with their families of origin. Without insight most or all of the decisions one makes are directly out of survival mechanisms adopted unconsciously in the dysfunction of one's family of origin.  What is more, if they are not conscious of the generational dysfunction of their family of origin, then they likely are surrounded unconsciously by people who are playing out the same issues. 

This continues through lives and generations UNTIL a person starts to do their own work, self reflection, and becomes conscious of these issues and how they directly play out in their lives.

In working out of survival mechanisms, the choices and resulting relationships may be harmful however they are a 'familiar' entity.

A part, a huge part of a person's regaining their health, is also exploring the emotional total load they are carrying.  This includes looking at their relationships.  Often this includes at some point seeing a therapist or working with people who have training and the skills and accountability to help a person down this road. 

As someone becomes aware of what supports them and what does not, a shift changes. 

Once they can start living this in their lives, a major shift changes. 

These things can include making changes in your own behavior and setting limits with people for your own behalf and safety. 

Often, within a system of friends or especially of family that is still living from the model of dysfunction, there may be huge objections. 

The 'group' either will honor your needs, or they will not.  If they do not this is a pretty clear initial indicator that the person or group is not supportive in the way that you need and may in fact be toxic given the dysfunction patterns they are stuck in.

This is always shocking at first.  To think the people who you thought loved and supported you the most would turn their backs that easily. 

However the reality is that YOU are functioning from a new and healthier reality and by asking for healthy boundaries; it causes some major ripples. 

Either the person, spouse, or group you are asking this of is willing to look at your requests - if they are willing to work with you, they also will be secondarily going through change as a result. 

Or the fact that what you are asking could cause change scares them and the 'system' so much that they are not willing to support you unless you get back into the system with them.

If you find that they will not support you, all you can do is state your needs for YOU and your dependents.  Let them know that you love them and then let go. 

In time, they may come back to you or they may not. 

If they do not; you will meet and find people who are consciously working through things as you are.  

You will find support in those who are committed to exploring in life the ways and whys of how they function to get to a point to be able to choose what ways and whys to keep and which ones are left over defense mechanisms that perhaps were a saving grace getting you through childhood - however are no longer needed and in fact are a hindrance to a emotionally productive & otherwise fulfilling life.

One of the difficult issues here is if the person or group that has turned their backs on you and you need to let go; is family or a spouse.

Our culture and certainly most family's imbue children with a HUGE sense of loyalty & responsibility no matter what; towards their family. 

The amount of guilt this can bring up is another added emotional issue, however working through it to get to the other side of emotional health - is well worth while. 

Keep in mind that this guilt you are feeling is in response to both lifelong covert and overt messages; brain-washing really; that you will be there for a group of people "no matter what".  "Even if that means your health and ultimately your life". 

It really is as simple as that. 

If the love were mutually unconditional, they may not understand your rhyme or reason, but they would make an attempt to honor your boundaries and not turn their backs. 

When it comes to this illness; to be harnessed into a family, a spouse, or group of people who emotionally or otherwise hurt you with no willingness to explore the issues with you - IS handing over your health, and possibly ultimately your life. 

The reason; this PIECE of the total load is such a HUGE issue that no matter what we as physicians do with all the other pieces we can help you with, only YOU can free yourself from the emotional chains and wounds that bind you. 

These binds are so heavy that if they are not let go or shifted, something that only you can do for yourself, it is a choice that you make to stay in a system in which you choose a huge piece of negative total load to be there constantly.  This makes it almost impossible to hold your hand through to the other side of getting to total health, emotional freedom & self love - WITH the people surrounding you who support you and love you unconditionally regardless of their blood relation to you.

I will also add that I have heard to many times from so many providers that women (especially) with various chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and now add in tick borne illnesses/lyme disease and a whole host of other chronic illnesses - professional providers in their 'talks' will all to often say they see that the women who have been sexually violated are the ones who do not get well.  The person speaking is usually male.  I always cringe.  I can also tell you that this is NOT based in reality.  Reality is that sexual violation of women (and men) occurs so frequently that it could be correlated with ANYTHING. 

The reality is that all people have baggage and unresolved emotional issues and certainly the rate of sexual violations of women and men (do not forget) including rape, incest, molestation - is statistically incredibly high and is thought not to even adequately account for everyone. 

So one could say it is the cause of anything, or nothing.  Reality - it is part of the emotional negative total load of many many many people, all of which is critical to work through to a place of emotional peace with this and any other emotional load issues.

So cheers to introspection into emotional, physical, mental, spiritual, and any other level of stress or issues that you may have.  Resolving them all and finding health and peace on each level, is the key to reducing the total negative load so your body can attain it's natural state of health.  While some of this is done in conjunction with your Physician and other health care providers and therapists - some of it is ONLY done and initiated by you.  In fact the most important pieces are in your hands to take on, look at and resolve to a place of peace, and then the shifts in health that occur are truly miraculous.  What YOU can do, and how YOU can affect your own health, just in these areas alone - is often above and beyond that which any Physician or other provider could do for you.  You are incredibly powerful. 

Cheers to your ability to heal and your path to health!!