Happy Holidays to ALL!

Dear Healers, Friends, Caregivers and Readers,

I would like to thank you for your love and support, your ideas and encouragement throughout this year and wish you all the most loving and happy holidays!

Together we have begun to make true healing a reality and begun to alleviate so much suffering globally. Mere words cannot express my gratitude. You are amazing!

From the depths of my heart I am wishing each and every one of you the utmost- health, happiness, prosperity, joy, love, peace and wishes fulfilled.

I honour and appreciate every one of you!

My very best wishes to you, your families and friends, and all whose lives touch yours.

Namaste

Debra
Xiangjun 湘君

Thanksgiving- With deep and profound gratitude

It's Thanksgiving Day in the USA

Although I personally believe that everyday, every moment, every breath offers so many facets to be grateful for,and at the very least remind us of our own humility and humanity, they also present opportunities to express kindness, gratitude, benevolence.

It's hard to imagine that ten years ago, I would not have been able to type this post or share my thoughts through this medium, weakened by the wolf of lupus, MS and so many other conditions, struggling to maintain breathing, to walk more than a few steps and keep my kidneys from failing. Yet, things change! My favourite book, the YI JING so clearly illustrates this.

It has been a long, arduous journey, through mountains and ice storms, sometimes sliding down icy peaks and searching through darkness for the Northern Lights, but the rewards have been priceless. As I sit here tonight, I am especially thankful for the lessons of illness and healing, the many discoveries along the way, the people and places I would not have otherwise encountered and the MANY people who shared their journeys, their experiences, the knowledge and skills along the twists and turns thus far.

I am especially grateful for the way everything seems to fall into place when we need it, how everything we need is somewhere within and around us. Awakening to the existence and presence of these necessities is all that is required:)

Tonight, as I do everyday, I appreciate the life I have been granted since the day Chinese medicine entered my life. I appreciate Dr, Arvigo for sharing Mayan traditions, the way my life has always led me back to the Sioux healing methods and knowledge of elders, for Ms. Souly for sharing Lao traditional medicine, for the Buddhist traditions I've learned along the way, for Unani and Quranic healing and teachings, Tibetan Medicine and so many others.

I appreciate:

Dr. Ashis Brahma for his friendship, his laughter and his love, for chats and comparative medicine conversations, for always believing and being the incredibly special man he is.

Dr. Elizabeth Garcia-Gray for her friendship, encouragement and support, for so many conversations and the times she shared her memories of her grandmother preparing herbs for the family, revealing that they rarely needed to go to the hospital.

Dr. Matt Krystal, Dr. Brian Hoffert, Dr. Richard Guzman, Dr. Alex Bolyanatz, Professor Ellen Johnson and all my professors for the tools they gave me to continue along the pathway, to pursue the way

Professor Jane Jiajing Wu aka The Chinese Lady for her friendship, her lessons that keep on giving, for her encouragement and her love

Dr. Larisa Turin for initially saving my life and teaching me so many Chinese and Mongolian Traditions

Dr. Zhengang Guo and Dr. Guang Xie for teaching and supporting me along the way, for sustaining my life and showing me the way

Dr. Yan Zao Ming, Dr. Qiu Shao Lin, Dr. Shu, Dr. Yang Qing Zhi, Dr. Shen, Dr. Zhang, and Dr. Chu for sharing so much of your time, knowledge and skills, for being such wonderful examples of what Chinese medicine doctors are and should be

My Huaihua family for all that you are

Dr. Zhu Ming for allowing me to learn and research in Huaihua and for his vision

Dr. Wang Hong Cai for his invaluable guidance, friendship and a memorable class

My friends and family for the incredible gifts you are to me

and My children for their love, for the sacrifices they have made and continue to make as we continue this path for true healing of all,

My Tongxue for being the wonderful man you are

and the many, many patients that have also been my teachers.

Thank-you all so much! I wish you all love, health and happiness. And to anyone who reads this, I wish you the same. Mitakuye Oyasin.

True Healing

What is true healing?

This question has entered my mind countless times throughout the last few days. Healing occurs on so many levels! When someone suffers a chronic illness, he/she asks this question and seeks the answer(s). Life and its quality depend upon it.

When I consider the suffering in the world, the countless persons who suffer disabling, crippling and chronic diseases, and those afflicted by the infectious and pandemic ones, I realize the gravity of this question. At a much deeper level, I also see how true healing, one person, one condition at a time lends itself to the global healing we are in such desperate need of-- the spiritual, the physical, the mental. What so many fail to realize, however, is that healing on each of these levels heals relationships with ourselves, with each other and with nature. These are intrinsically connected. Embedded within each of them are the links to humanity and sustainability.

Because of this, perhaps, so many industries sidestep the necessary steps or deem true healing beyond the scientific scope of possibility. Yet, my being here, able to share these thoughts despite so many biological imperfections, years of untold suffering and triumphs over death, remind me that we need to listen to our bodies, to the world around us, look into life's mirror and really see what it reveals.

Answers lie within our reach. Albeit, some of them are cloaked in cultural beliefs and traditional practices and worldviews, but they are equally important. They, too, hold keys.

True healing, no matter what the diagnosis suggests, lies within reach. One person, one disease at a time, we can realize true balance and harmony and healing and heal worlds!

Namaste,
湘君

Building the TCM Clinic in Algeria-Honouring Nourredine

Communitas, a connection far greater than community is said to enter in any place in which the sacred exists. I have been fortunate enough to enconter it in all its glory. It is the deepening of relationship, magical interaction and bonding that extends no matter where we are. After all, Healing is a sacred rite.

I met Nourredine and Ammar in Huai Hua city, Hunan Province China at the Red Cross International TCM hospital. They had traveled from Algeria just to experience its methods. They had also tried some traditional African herbal medicine which seemed to help but that was available in another African state.

Nourredine had ALS, which had a rapid onset. In fact, he developed a rather severe form, literally seizing his being less than six days after a Hepatitis shot containing mercury and Thimerosal. (I saw many cases that paralleled this in foreign patients who travelled to China for treatment.)

I witnessed miraculous improvements in Nourredine while he was there. He regained the ability to walk and some use of his hands. His speech was not affected. Ammar spent three months in Huahua to care for his brother in the hospital, cook for him, etc. However, due to visa problems, etc., they had to return to Algeria for a month.

When they returned, Nourredine's condition was in decline. I wanted to cry when I saw him. It weighed so heavily on my heart! He could not walk or stand and his hands and arms had become quite rigid. As Ammar explained, just 15 days after their return, Nourredine was falling apart by the day. Obviously, travel was not easy and, more precisely, gruelling.

Additionally, as they revealed to me, medicine, ALL medicine in Algeria is difficult to come by outside of the capital city. There, as they explained, they also have Chinese medicine but these doctors are less experienced.

Within days, I noticed major improvements in Nourredine once more but I had to leave for Beijing. It was my distinct honour to be their sister, doctor, consultant, translator, and friend as we shared our lives, living space and even the same doctor at times in the same space for acupuncture:-)

Upon their return home, Nourredine once more lost strength and ultimately his battle with ALS. Yet, his spirit, his laughter, and vitality live on! I still remember our laughter intermixed with my rusty French and his more rusty English, midst his developing spoken Chinese.

After the death of our Algerian brother Nourredine, my *Algerian brother* Ammar has continued his efforts to try and open a Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic in Algeria.

We discussed this many times in China. I am incredibly honoured to be his sister. We are investigating the feasibility of this, of perhaps bringing together true healers from diverse backgrounds and traditions for the good of the people.

Ultimately, this will mean asking China for some doctors and even helping institute some program similar to the Barefoot Doctors. I am looking into the agreements China had with Tanzania and Kenya when they first sent these doctors in the late 1940s and early 1950s. One life is so important.

Those of you who know me, know that I would like nothing better than to go and build this from the ground up in honour of Nourredine, his love, vivacity, and courage. By doing so now, I will literally risk my life, at this time, unfortunately--allergic to ALL vaccines and western medicine. Yet, life has another means for me to help him do so. Since I cannot travel to Algeria currently much of this work will have to be done virtually, at first, and then through networks of people.

I so admire Ammar's heart and dedication!

I've got my work cut out for me here--international law, asking China for help and negotiations with the Algerian government:-)

Ammar has filed the paperwork with the local ministry and we await answers within the next nine months.

I have every confidence this will be so. After all, China sent medical teams both traditional and modern to Algeria in the year I was born!

Anyone that has ideas,information, or funding ideas, please feel free to chime in.
My love to all of you who venture into uncharted and charted territories for CHANGE!
Namaste,
湘君

The Path is Clear...Survival

Anyone who has encountered difficult times knows that these moments always yield lessons to be learned, choices to be made and sometimes hidden worlds and doorways…

My journey with the wolf of Lupus (SLE) I affectionately call “My s’ung manitu tanka,” has provided all of the above and then some.

From the most tumultuous times, midst the most tortuous moments, when I often awakened to find the wolf’s yellow eyes staring back at me through my own, there was no room for denial. As I struggled to get my kidneys out of bed each morning, pulled my lead-like legs along, feeling as if I had already run forty miles and peered into the mirror to encounter my jaundiced eyes, the face I had come to know slowly disappearing and witnessing skin turning to bone, I had to embrace the wolf I loved—the same wolf I thought had also betrayed me.


I knew this would be a journey!

The peaks have changed and the Northern lights still shine through to guide me, comfort me and remind me of the shamanistic journey taken years before—when the white wolf I so adored took me into her den, sheltered me, and ultimately left me in charge of her cubs.
What a journey this has been!

I have fallen many times, been tested by tortuous arctic winds and backslides down icy peaks, seen my lifeless carcass being dragged by the cubs I raised and delivered into the shaman’s hands. Yet, these experiences are nothing knew to a Shaman. It is through these spiritually guided journeys that we become the healers. In many societies, this is the dream, the calling, the awakening.

Even now, after more than 10 years of awakening, of enduring the battles from within and without, I am still becoming. Yet, along the paths, the encounters have proved the richest. So, too, I see how my passage through the “middle way” has healed many and leads to the bridging of worlds, not just spiritual and geographic but communally. In Zen-like fashion, I have become aware that my exploration has led me back to the crossroads of humanity, of modernity and antiquity, East and West, native and non-native.

Within the core of this lies true healing.

So, too, within the heart of this lies my own healing, I realize. As my Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Master recently told me, “Heal yourself. Fix yourself.”

I scarcely feel prepared, at times. Yet, this is how we truly learn. I have healed the Multiple Sclerosis over eight years time, leaving no traceable evidence of it within my body, with the help of these Masters and Chinese herbal medicine. I believe the release from the residual illness lies beyond the next few peaks, within the fires of transformation and inspiration and the wealth of experience.

However, true to my former Love’s words of warning many years ago, Man has entered in again. Modernity, power and greed have tainted the grounds here for me. I am hunted just as the wolf is hunted.

The path is clear……

To bridge these worlds, to heal East and West, man and nature, and fulfill sacred contracts, I must again journey far from here, perhaps never to return.

The ice melts away and the stone bridge beneath my feet has crumbled, as it had so many years before, plunging me into the icy cold waters below. Once more I seek the cave of enlightenment, the fire, and the sojourners--kindred shambhala warriors for the next phase. I have found them before and I will again. Somehow, I think the ancient Tang Dynasty Chinese physician Sun Simiao holds the key.

With gratitude for opportunities ahead, I honour those who share my journey, who open their hearts and spirits to share the collective knowledge and riches and pray my love and spirit touches someone beyond this circle. Namaste! 湘君

Re-dedication

I am a global citizen, inaugurated into a world of healing within the unforeseen ordering of life and my battle with lupus (Systemic Lupus Erythematosis). What was once a dark and desolate journey into seemingly unknown territory has taken me through mystic realms, tomes of medical information, led me to traditional medicine, spiritual guides, people and places I would never have otherwise encountered.

Never could I have envisioned that the tracks of the "wolf" would lead me through Native territory across culture, languages, ideologies, time and space, through the records and case studies of China. Never could I have foreseen the richness of techniques to be learned, the years and hours that Traditional medicine and Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) would add to my life or the consequent re-dedication of my life.

For the sake of others, I share my path, insights and studies.
If this saves even ONE person, then my life has been worthwhile.

I honour all those who encounter difficulties and challenges due to illness, and ask that you not only embrace them but also be open to the many lessons they offer. Within each of them lies a hidden treasure!

I honour all those who journey with me in spirit from all parts of the world, those I have encountered physically, and/or through other means midst research and along the various pathways that intermingled. I love you ALL. It is with deep and sincerest gratitude that we take the next step...

Namaste,
duxiangjun 杜湘君