Healing Grief To Heal Crohns and Colitis

There is something shifting in my heart

A calling only I can hear

When I hit the bottom of  tears of years

Flood over, washing ‘habit-cope’

 Cracked wide open I AM

To feel it ALL

 I was unable

Until this moment stopped in time

To feel the move on in 

And through...

Oh dance of grief,

Welling an acid-burn in my bowels so tender

Of choices not so kind

A daily reminder i am not worthy

Of a pure deep dive of alkaline self-nurture

Yet something beckons and I hear

Not from my tower...

From my knees and face-grazed earth

Cracked wide open am I

To let the God’s light of rest

Seep on in...

Crohns and Colitis

Tami’s Story: 

Crohn’s & Colitis

Did You Know: According to the Crohns & Colitis Foundation of America, about 1.4 million Americans have Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis. Of those, about 700,000 have Crohn’s. In the years between 1992 and 2004, there was a 74 percent increase in doctor’s office visits due to Crohn’s disease. In 2004, Crohn’s disease was the cause of 57,000 hospitalizations.

Over 10,200 new cases of IBD are being diagnosed in Canada each year, making Canada among the higher rates of IBD in the world.

The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America estimates that about 70 percent of Crohn’s patients eventually need surgery to repair damage or remove an obstruction. Sometimes, a portion of the bowel must be removed. About 30 percent of surgical patients will have a flare-up within three years, and 60 percent will have one within 10 years.

In 2006 I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis after what I thought was a (2 month) flu affecting my digestive system. The next 5 years seen me in and out of hospital, for severe dehydration, bouts of medication that did not heal with a final diagnosis of Crohn’s (because of the multi layers of mucosal lining that were damaged)

I found myself seeking out seeking out holistic options, ending up at Hippocrates Institute at West Palm Beach, Florida for their 21 day transformational program. When I arrived in Florida I was too weak to even walk the beach. Three weeks consisted of a raw-low-glycemic high-chlorophyll vegan diet along with various therapies and an educational program. At the end of the three weeks I was able to run the beach for 30 min. The bleeding in my intestines that had been present off and on for a year, subsided in 2 days.

I continued to study live food, juicing and plant based healing with much success over the next 10 years and am incredibly passionate to share with people how this lifestyle is the answer to most diseases.

Tami has been doing ongoing individual counseling for individuals wanting to look at holistic treatments for healing Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

Silencing the Inner Critic for Gut Healing

We have 60,000-80,000 thoughts a day and 90% are the same. Which thoughts do we want to continue repeating and which do we want to begin deleting? Can we change our actions and our way of thinking as we remodel a thriving world?

In silence and body inquiry, coming home to body awareness is as quick as three belly breaths. In getting out of future fears and into our bodies, we realize an unfocused and inflamed mind is seldom our friend. This unkind mind will often focus on what is wrong over what is right and, believe me, no matter how ill we are, there are sparks of unbroken essence waiting without judgement to assist us toward better health!

In deeply exploring our emotional attachment to addictive comfort food and thought, we may compassionately unravel our emotional dependencies in using food as a drug to take the edge off of life. When the pseudo-security of old patterning is no longer working for us, we are at a crossroads. From here, we may begin to learn to trust our hearts, get out of our heads, and into the self-inquiring found when simply bringing stillness to our meditation butt … “no buts” …

Shakespeare was known to have said, “First, know thyself.” In the silence we reunite. In self-inquiry we find many answers. When we move beyond the initial discomfort of deeply listening to our primal belly, we begin to hear. I experienced this deeply when I was too ill to eat and stay busy—the emptiness and unfelt childhood emotions I kept at bay with food and busy work started to surface. Oh my, oh my, the bitter sweet surrender in silence and letting go—raw and uncensored.

Unwinding ancestral broken hearts, may allow us access to recreate, re-parent and honour an upgraded version through the visitor called dis-ease. Science tells us change is often uncomfortable until new habits are grooved into the mindbody. When it becomes a new healthy habit, taking it one moment and one day at a time, may help ease the integration until we one day awaken to know, “nothing tastes as good as feeling good feels.”

Love: The Silent Healer An awakened alkaline mind-body allows love accessibility.

Love is not a concept. It is a living matrix that is deeper and older than our primordial need for food. For when infants are fed, yet not touched, they continually die of touch deprivation. Love is who we are and maybe what keeps the stars, our spines, and our souls in alignment. Perhaps, just perhaps, when we see a forward-hunched older person, we may be seeing someone, for whatever reasons, who missed out on the love train and has spent their life lunging so far forward, when the present moment was not the loving, living matrix he needed to be here and now.

When we are privileged to be witness to a beautiful fresh love or a multi-decade loving kind one—love that is a conscious sacred union, this helps shift us back into conscious alignment. We are both participant and witness in love’s sacred unions, a gift from beyond. how to do this or have found communities that support such a life. We are taking the thousand-mile journey and practising presence while keeping our hearts wide open. For love is everywhere!

Feeling the love in beloved community soothes our senses and allows us to experience the love. It is impossible to heal without feeling loved and connected.

We can only heal when our heart is in it when we bring energy to motion—emotion! What we are doing needs to matter in our heart of hearts or it will fizzle out quickly!

One morning, I watched while I lay under massive evergreens in this sacred mountain home. In the silence, I was able to remember the beauty and effortless ease in both growth and grounding. In a world of sexual exploitation and pseudo-beauty attempts for love, it is essential we live in the power and essence of the following Navajo prayer:

Walk in the Beauty Way

In beauty all day long may I walk

Through the returning seasons, may I walk

On the trails marked with pollen, may I walk

With dew about my feet,

With beauty behind me,

With beauty below,

With beauty around me, may I walk

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk

In old age wandering, on trails of beauty, living again, may I walk

May my words always be beautiful

The Reconnection of Remembering: We are One

We are part of this unified field. We are expressive, diverse, and whole. The modern, medical model has created many specialists and separatist theories that have sometimes created a divided view of how we see ourselves from whole/holy.

We DO want to know if the food we are feeding our children and grandchildren is safe and healing! Let us reclaim our mother bear instincts!

Our healing begins as we connect compassionately to our planet’s biome, as the whole interconnected and pulsating network it is. We may begin to ask ourselves:

• What is my interconnection to Earth? To view the cosmos as a biome, I ask myself, “Is the world I am building, what I want for our grandchildren to inherit?”

• Where did the nutrition in our food go? Where are the nutrients in our soil, the spring in our step, the easy smile on our faces?

Interwoven into this is the understanding that living, uncontaminated, microbial-rich soils are innovators of great souls in motion. We may begin to piece it together that: glyphosate and chemicals in genetically modified organisms (GMO), food, and conventional-sprayed food inflame the entire body and open the tight, single-cell, protective mucosa colon-lining junctions; radiation exposure creates chaos; turning off Wi-fi when not in use and deep breathing helps one feel calmer; and eating and drinking specific substances will affect mood and energy. We may begin to feel we have personal healing power within the practice of “healthy living” and whole-person reclamation. Whenever the mind-body is disconnected and unwell, we are at a crossroad; to numb out symptoms or “to bring fierce compassionate inquiry and attention upon it,” as my favourite “doctor of fierce inquiry,” Dr. Gabor Mate, teaches. Throughout this book, we move towards a happy gut. However, since so much of the root of disease begins in the EarthGut manifesting in the mind-body, people searching for answers for their mind-body out of harmony may find this information of value on their journey as well. People who’ve connected gut health as the root cause, as the first investigative protocol of whole-body healing, find gut health relevant for the treatment of every disease.

When I began to understand how to connect the dots that all the dedicated scientists, seekers, physicians, biologists and farmers set before me, healing began on a whole new playing field and I truly understood: When fear sits in the fire of our bellies and bathes in gut inflammation, it makes it incredibly challenging to navigate our way into rest and nutrition. When it is allowed to burn up the rubbish, we will stop burning—deep and kind compassionate inquiry will begin and we are on our way back home.

My Story: Making the Connection

We are not our story. We are much greater than our story. Yet our story may light our path into a wellspring of awakening. In 2006 I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory digestive conditions. The next three years saw me in and out of the hospital, severe dehydration, with bouts of medication only relieving symptoms for a short while yet did not heal. The final diagnosis was Crohn’s (because of the multi-layers of musculature lining that were damaged) including fistulation. An intensely inflamed bowel takes us out fast!

The GI doctor on call that day told me I might need to be on antibiotics off and on for the rest of my life to keep the fistulas from getting infected. I knew the systemic gut damage that antibiotics did to me as a child. I had constant ear infections which I later discovered was a severe dairy allergy. I was so ill at the time, but I remember thinking, no way! I found myself seeking out holistic options, ending up at Hippocrates Health Institute at West Palm Beach, FL for their 21-day transformational program consisting of a live food, high-chlorophyll, organic vegan diet, juices, wheatgrass, along with various mind-body detoxification therapies and an educational program. On my way to Hippocrates, I was so weak I could not walk along the beach. Miraculous healing after 21 days allowed me to run the beach for thirty minutes, bask in my body’s renewal, and feel hope!

If you are reading this in your search for answers for healing, you will know intimately what I mean … when you begin feeling really healthy again, when hope is restored!

The bleeding in my intestines that had been present off and on for a year subsided in just two days on juicing and bowel rest. This is our body’s amazing self-healing gifts! Why did this have such amazing results? It was because every single person I encountered knew; not believed but knew. I could heal and held space for my entrance into wellness. I walked through that veil into what Joe Dispenza calls my genius.

I continued to study live food, juicing and plant-based healing, and the power of rewiring my brain into infinite healing possibilities, with much success over the next 10 years. Yet this was not without challenge and many a “getting-back-on-track” days, self-inquiry and unwinding many moons of ancestral heavy food habit, is certainly a journey!

I divinely landed at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Centre with Dr. Gabriel Cousens and the Essenes. It is here where I finished a Masters, in Plant Based Spiritual Nutrition. Later I was blessed with a deeper self-inquiry at the Sattva School of Yoga with Rameen Peyrow and loving the yogis and their hot healing room at Modo Sherwood Park.

Yet always a student, humbly breathing my way through this thing called wellness, I come before you here to share some learning I have deemed helpful along the way. For “I have walked a thousand miles in your moccasins” and it is from this place of heart-centred understanding I share my simple story. It is not an A to B story; it is more a spiral one with exit and entrance points of good and not-so-good choices, sadness, and joy in the ebb and flow of this miraculous thing called life. Caroline Myss once said these words of wisdom: “We must make the decision to share our wisdom from our suffering and choose wisdom over woe!”

It was through pain, my heart surrendered and through sweet surrender, one morning on my bathroom floor I felt such a deep presence of light, I knew I would be well and share this remembrance journey of pain transmutation into the sacred. Since beginning this book my eldest and only son died, grandchildren were born, and I experienced many other comings and goings of life and death, grief and gratitude. Yet I was still breathing, one breath at a time. Sometimes a deep breath would get stuck in my chest, cleansing tears, and the circle of life continued with beautiful grandchildren Emerlee, Phoenix and Hadley.

Juicing, fasting, yoga, breath, friendship, grounding-living-peace food shared with friends, kept me in the HERE and Now, and the world kept turning. Illness and loss can be such an opportunity to let go of the old and let the light shine in through the cracks of our broken hearts!!

Give Gratitude Light not Heat:

A Blessing

“I get by with a little help from my friends” —both microbial and human/animal ones, then sometimes a gentle reminder on the next breeze comes, and “we are not just dust in the wind but rather recycled light, stardust, and transmuting energy.”

Meditation helps us ground our love into a world so in need of this.

Maybe we just are simply recycled stars as pondered in a prose poem my friend John shared:
The stars were formed
roughly at first
In giving of their light
Once finished
Can fragment
We are not perfect
And some souls leave early
Yet, we can still give light through love
Restoring ourselves in thankfulness
For simple things…

 Let us marvel in thankfulness. Matter and light are interchangeable. My wise friend biologist John Phillips once said, “Marvel my child at how photosynthesis creates life from light.”

Photosynthesis is the process in which plants, some bacteria and some protistans use the energy from sunlight to produce glucose from carbon dioxide and water, converted into pyruvate, release adenosine triphosphate (ATP) via cellular respiration. Hence, oxygen is formed. Light is infinite and spacious attractor energy, a lighthouse if you will.

Light respects sovereignty, a state in which we recognize we have autonomy over ourselves, and the power and responsibility to rule all aspects of our lives; creating flow and a safe harbour. Rameen Peyrow tells us, our job here is to keep our mindbody temple pure so our soul may shine through brightly! What exactly is giving light, not heat? It is a world of non-codependency, right action and non-conflict. For its opposites attract heat-heat as inflammatory thoughts and a belly on fire.

This light, when ignited, burns up the rubbish. It is the kind of fire in the belly that ignites the TanTien and shines so bright that it allows others to find their way, beginning the thousand-mile journey home towards remembrance.

 In the beautiful literary art of Lars Muhl in The Gate of Light, he describes an ancient healing method used by the Essenes, or The Sons of Light, 2500 years ago, as the living prayer of our hearts and an open hand offering of heart-light to another. Yes, that bright lighthouse scans across the seas, letting its presence be known. Illumination may be the key to our survival, putting out the driving force of all inflammation, keeping our face to the sun, until darkness no longer can do anything other than reveal shadow.

Food For Thought: Surrendering to the present moment, one coming-home breath at a time, is the balm; breath and heartbeat, our only compass!

A Blessing

Early Beginnings

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see, yet the research reveals almost 50% of our children will have a chronic disease of mind-body by 18 years of age. What is this earth our children are inheriting? Can we turn it around? Will we?

In the beginning, children were known to receive their first inoculation of bacteria through the vaginal canal upon entering this world, skin to skin, mouth to breast and lips from healthy parents who still interacted in a healthy environment.

This is where we see the beginning of a world out of harmony. Caesarean section surgery and bottle feeding may be necessary for parents unable to do a natural birth and feeding, yet it is sometimes unnecessarily used too often for convenience and not always emergency—at the expense of a healthy diverse microbiome. I believe we, as a culture, are returning back to feeding our babies naturally when possible; and when not exploring breastmilk sharing, use natural formula as close to nature as possible. Other factors affecting early beginning are:
• Non-food stuff filling our schools, homes, chemical non-food
• Lack of contact with outdoors, and living nutrient-rich food and families preparing whole food together.
• Our convenience and fast-paced and overstimulated world Breastfeeding is also a major contributor to the formation of a healthy microbiome. Healthy breast milk supports the maximum neurological growth. A breastfeeding baby begins life immediately with lipase and amylase nutrition. Pregnant breastfeeding mothers need adequate amounts of DHA, and the conversion of ALA to DHA is more optimal with proper levels of B3, B6, magnesium, zinc, and vitamins A, C, and E. Oligosaccharides, which are plentiful in breast milk, promote the growth of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus, which assist in strengthening development and immunity.70

 Most postnatal depression comes with a severe Omega 3 deficiency, as it takes so much essential fatty acid to build a beautiful new life!! This was the case for myself when my mother was diagnosed with an aneurysm when I was only ten days old. During this time, I was given watered-down canned evaporated milk. As the story goes, I cried 24/7. My new normality throughout my early childhood was fluctuations of a distended, crampy abdomen—fluctuating between bouts of constipation and diarrhoea. This was exasperated by the continual antibiotic prescriptions that I used for constant ear infections, which I later learned were due to my extreme allergies to sugar, processed food and dairy. There has always been a direct link to dairy allergies, loss of microbiota diversity and ear infections. This is the seeds for IBD and dis-ease, later in life for many. Sheryl McCumsey, from Pesticide Free Alberta, and Zen Honeycutt, in Moms Across America, along with thousands of more trailblazing, advocating mother bears, teach the power of eating only organic and biodynamic food to heal allergies, learning disabilities, and more severe conditions, and are having great success. The instinct to protect our children is strong, deep, and old. I believe most mothers who have been given the correct information regarding the poison in our food supply, would protect their children from the tainted foods found in the supermarkets today.

Food for Thought: Let us regain our health to regain our connection, wisdom, and sacred sovereign choices!

Oh You Vagus—The Nerve! The Powerful Vagus Nerve

Vagus from the Latin root “vaga” meaning to wander, is the longest of the twelve cranial nerves, known as the 10th cranial nerve, rooted deep in our abdomen and extending all the way up to our brainstem, wandering over to our lungs and heart, seeking all organ-ic connection. It works on the ANS, meaning our nervous systems are directly affected by the bacteria in our guts. The stimulation that is created from our gut microbes controls chemical messengers along this wandering nerve pathway. It extends into our brain with its own enteric nervous system, generating many of the same neurotransmitters—serotonin and acetylcholine interactions, and reacting to every organ system. This bidirectional communication system, which includes both our ENS and ANS, is richly nourished with vascular beds, Peyer’s patches, and T lymphocytes.

There is a 9:1 ratio of afferent nerves, compared to efferent nerve bundles, that supply our intestines. Our guts are controlling our brains. What we feed it matters, be it love food, fear or other anxiety-laden food! This vagal nerve supply equates to 30,000 to 80,000 nerve bundles carrying information to our brain, compared to a small fraction of nerves that return information to our gut. It is our intestines that are directing our brain in what to do, not the other way around. This second brain, through the vagus stimuli, has the ability to control hormones, regulate muscle movement and act as the warehouse to the largest part of our immune system. Research tells us that we tone-stimulate this nerve through and through by:

1. Yoga

2. Singing, chanting, toning

3. Coldwater and cold face washing

4. Deep relaxation

5. Stretching

6. Deep, baby belly breathing

7. Nutrition

8. Massage

9. Gratitude, as it reduces stress instantly

 In an abstract titled “Vagal, On Pathways for Microbiome-Brain-Gut Access Communication,” it was found:

There’s strong evidence from studies that gut microorganisms can activate the vagus nerve, and that such activation plays a critical role in mediating effects on the brain and behaviour. The vagus appears to differentiate between non-pathogenic and potentially pathogenic bacteria, even in the absence of overt inflammation. The microbiome-brain-gut axis communication, via the vagus nerve, has the ability to:

• Turn on anti-inflammatory responses

• Release mediators, such as acetylcholine, that interact with immune cells

• Play an immune-modulating role initiating from the vagus nerve, which has been shown to also modulate mood and brain function. it appears research is moving toward looking at nutritional stimuli and the gut-brain implications to heal both depression and mood disorders.

Well, all that wander, are not lost!