Those of you who know my work,  know that I maintain an ongoing healing circle for the purpose of directing distant healing to those in need.   I work with my guides in spirit and together we have endeavored to help many people.  I am now opening this up to a wider circle.  I believe that there is strength in numbers and so I am inviting you, my readers to become part of the PRAYER TEAM and to link up with me in thought, in order to send healing prayers out to those whose names will be posted.  Also, please feel free to leave requests for healing through the comments box on this blog.  I promise to read all requests and to post them for the larger healing circle that I suspect will be forming.

When leaving a request for healing please leave the person’s first name and last initial, in what state they live, and what they seek healing for, as well as any outstanding symptoms.  This is what my teacher, guide and mentor, Harry Edwards, taught me to do.  Unless you are listing an animal or a baby, it is best to make sure that the person you are listing is comfortable with their name being listed.

For now, I am listing two people who I know are comfortable with being listed and I ask you, if you are willing to join the PRAYER TEAM, to please sign in and let me know who and where you are!   Thank you!!!!!

1.  Michael G—NYC—Healing for ALS

2.  Holly R—Middleboro MA—Healing for Cancer

I hope to hear from many of you!

Sheri

I’m always amazed at how simple answers are so often overlooked. My elbow had started to hurt about 3 months ago.  I don’t know exactly what brought the pain on. I didn’t recall hitting it or using it overmuch, but whatever the initial cause, it went on to smart for over 3 months. I did a lot of hands-on healing and massaging, even using the homeopathic cream Traumeel, which can be very effective.  Some definite improvement was brought about this way, but I had days where it still really bothered me.  I remembered that when I used to sit in on the Life Force Products conference call once a week, that I heard a lot of raving about a product called Flexio Plus and it’s amazing ability to take away bone and joint pain. Because at the time I didn’t have any of that kind of physical pain, I was not interested in the product. But now, with this stubborn elbow plaguing me, I decided to give it a try. Because I am a member of Life Force, ordering many of their products every month, I simply called up and added this product to my order.

They tell you at Life Force to evaluate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 as the worst pain and 1 as the least.   In the case of a 10, you would take 10 teaspoons of the Flexio Plus.  I evaluated my pain as a 4 and took 4 teaspoons of the Flexio Plus in my morning coffee.  Within 4 days the pain disappeared!  It’s now one week later and I am staying on that dose for a while…why argue with success?

I’d love to say that the entire turn around was due to my healing abilities both hands-on and remote, but I honestly suspect that the Flexio Plus played a major role in this healing and so I am passing this information on to you.  If you would like to know more about this product you can google Life Force International and you will read about many of the products that I use.  If you should decide to try anything, I’d appreciate it if you’d contact me at sheriperl@aol.com and allow me be your sales rep.

Be Well,

Sheri

Due to the death of my son Danny, I allowed myself one year to not deal with anything that I didn’t want to deal with.  Needless-to-say, one of the things I was happy to let slide by was my yearly mammogram.  It dawned on me a few weeks ago that it was closer to two years from the time of my last mammogram. I knew the responsible thing to do would be to make an appointment and so I went in last Tuesday.

The last few mammograms I can remember went smoothly and my baseline had been established years ago.  I felt reasonably sure that I would be heading home in no time, however, this was not the case.  Something didn’t look quite right to the doctor and a needle biopsy was suggested.  ”Then do it right now” I thought and they did.  They sent me home with lots of “good luck” wishes which unnerved me even more.  ”Do they think I have breast cancer?”, I wondered.

The next day I waited by the phone.  I was working from home but it was impossible to concentrate.  All manner of thoughts ran rampant through my head.  ”I won’t do treatment.  I’ll have surgery but none of that chemo for me. Unless, of course it’s a mild one that has a good recovery rate, but otherwise, I’m opting for alternatives and having the best days that I can.  They say that if detected early, breast cancer is curable.  Maybe it’s nothing.  I did have breast scares before. Uh oh…I did wait two years between mammos, I might have screwed up. Oh my God.” I thought, and then it would start all over again.

I think it’s funny now, that I used to play ostrich, thinking that I didn’t need mammograms because “I wouldn’t create cancer.”  God knows, I’d love that to believe that, but my experience has taught me to remain humble and not to make statements about things that I don’t know for certain.  And as I grow older, I realize more and more that nothing is certain except change.  And so I waited and I prayed to get out of the cancer ward, yet again.

The call finally came and hot damn! I’m out of the ward!  It’s not cancer!  It’s something called breast papilloma and nothing to be worried about.  Phew!  Big relief.  But the time I spent waiting for that call showed me how vulnerable I really feel.  Even with all the spiritual healing and the complementary medicine that is in my life, I was scared!  And I think there are a few important implications here.

I don’t care what Louise Hay or any other healer type person says, NO ONE KNOWS THE CAUSE OF CANCER!  No one knows how to prevent all ills and therefore do not DO NOT beat yourself up if you have cancer or any other disease.  On the contrary, have compassion for yourself and be kind.  On the other hand, don’t just sit there in the wait for your illnesses to wear you down.  Explore alternatives and educate yourself.  Try different healing modalities from acupuncture to changing your diet from acidic to alkaline.  There are things that you can do.  Find a good remote healer to take on your case as well.

If you are well now, this is the best time to begin building up your immune system through things like upping your nutrition, and adding herbs and vitamins to your daily routine.   After all I have been through, I do believe that prevention is so important.  Once you have the illness, it’s a whole different ball game.  Really, the most advantageous time to get a handle on your health is before you get sick.  Even then, there are no guarantees and that is why, as much as I hate and fear it, I still go for my mammograms.

I hope this opens up some discussion amongst my readers. I’d love to hear from you!!!

Be Well,

Sheri

In the early 1990′s I read “Healing Into Life and Death” by Stephen Levine and I was riveted.  Stephen was one of the first people who woke me up to seeing that healing didn’t always mean making the body well, although this would be the goal if possible.  But through Stephen’s work I came to understand that even when a complete and total healing of the body is not possible, one can still always heal the soul.  We like to believe, and indeed it would be the best possibility, that by healing the soul, the body would follow suit, but I have also come to see that we don’t always get what we want.

This was indeed a valuable lesson especially for me, because as a healer, it was easy to think that  I had failed if a patient did not recover; as if life and death were in my hands!  So Stephen helped me to take a big step back from this false sense of responsibility enabling me to take heart in just being there for people, whether they recovered physically or not.  Thank you Stephen!

But that’s not all that I learned from Stephen’s sane and gentle teachings.  He also taught a way of approaching pain that I had not considered before.  Stephen said to “soften around the pain”.  SOFTEN?

All I knew was that I had spent a lifetime armoring myself against pain of any kind, be it physical or emotional.  Not to mention my body’s automatic response to fear which was to tighten my gut as if it were a shield!  No wonder that by my 16th birthday it had become a battle ground!

So, when I first read about soft belly, again a Stephen Levine teaching, I couldn’t even imagine it.  I began focusing my attention on that part of my body, my abdomen and sure enough, it was being held in a tight grip, so to speak.  I tried to just let it go.  I found that it was next to impossible.  I decided that this was worth pursuing and so I began to add soft belly work to my daily meditation practice.  I would lie down flat on my back so that I could really access the feeling of my belly.  As I inhaled I thought the word soften,  as I exhaled, I did the same,

In, soften—out, soften.

I would feel my belly begin to relax a little and then I’d think a thought about something and wham! I’d instantly snap back into tight gut.  I could see it was a well ingrained habit to wear, what I began to call, my “spiritual girdle”.  It was almost how I held myself up.  I couldn’t imagine being able to really let that go, but I was determined to work on it because I believed that it would help me in many ways, but especially in the Crohn’s department.

So, for years now I have worked with softening my belly and not armoring myself against pain.  I understand that all things that must come, will come.  To resist that is throw pain on top of pain, for the resistance, in and of itself, causes great pain and undue stress to the body.

To learn my simple and useful breathing/meditation program go to www.sheriperl.com and read “Breathing Exercise”.  After you have familiarized yourself with it, add to it the word “soften” on the inhale and on the exhale, do the same, in order to fine tune the meditation to a soft belly meditation.

I have found that regular use of the soft belly meditation helps me enormously with keeping Crohn’s symptoms at bay.  There are many other benefits on the emotional end, but I will save that for another time.  Please add anything helpful ideas you may have on how to live with chronic illness and still feel good!  I believe that we can all learn from each other!

Be Well,

Love,

Sheri

Today in comments, a lovely woman by the name of Sarah, a post grad in both neuroscience and neurorehab asked me if I thought that western orthodox medicine and spiritual healing “could ever be tied into a unique practice for the good of everyone” and my answer is THEY SHOULD BE, for they both have the same goal, THE HEALING OF THE SICK!

I think that there are pockets here and there where this unique blending of modalities exists, but they are few and far between.  I understand that in most hospitals in Britain there are prayer registries for people who would like to receive prayer and I am told that in Japan when you enter a hospital you are given a choice as to whether you would prefer to use traditional western or alternative medicine.  This is way beyond what we have going on in this country.  I saw a statistic that ranked the United States #37 in health care and I can believe it.

Unfortunately, when you have a society that is ruled by money, decisions are not often made based on altruism but on pocketbooks.  The traditional medical model makes its money in numerous ways, none of which include anything as esoteric as prayers, or the directing of non physical energy.  One way it makes a lot of money is by selling countless medications.  Another way is by performing surgeries.  Cancer treatments, (unless they are alternative) usually involve either cutting (surgery), burning (radiation), or poisoning (chemotherapy). So what happens to that model if we find other ways to get well and stay well?  It certainly loses business.  So, this is one reason why we may always see resistance from the medical profession about integrating alternatives, prayer included.

And yet, on the optimistic side, I do think there are some medical doctors who recognize the value in complementary medicine.  Dr. Robert Steinfeld is one of them.  This man is truly a gem.  I met him when I went to The Schacter Center for Complementary Medicine in Suffern, NY.  Dr. Steinfeld was a general surgeon for 40 years.  He worked within the medical community performing surgery and working within that model.  For the last 20 years he has worked in alternative medicine and finding him was a tremendous boost to my confidence.

The way he works is to run some blood tests in order to see what’s going on inside and then he outlines a program designed to rebuild your health in any area of concern and to keep your health strong in all other areas.  It is so phenomenal to have a doctor who can blend both modalities, understanding everything that there is to know about the two diseases I still live with, Crohn’s Disease and Hepatitis C, and still know so much about natural alternatives.  This doesn’t include  spiritual healing or prayer, but it includes such alternatives as herbs, diet, vitamins/minerals, acupuncture, outpatient IV’s for Vitamin C and other helpful treatments, etc.  If anyone would like to know more about Dr. Steinfeld  or The Schacter Center, drop me a comment and I will include the information.

But, when you ask about all the different camps tying together into a unique practice, I wonder.  I think that our best chance of that happening, however, will be brought about by people like you and me who have experienced spiritual healing and know that there is something to it.  The fact is that there are more and more people beginning to explore spiritual healing and alternatives because, either like myself, they have been through a lot of medical treatment and they fear it, or they have been diagnosed with something like ALS, for which there is no treatment.

Now, please don’t get me wrong.  If I break my leg tomorrow, I’ll go get a cast put on it.  I’m the first person to recognize how miraculous major medicine can be and what wonderful healers many doctors are.  But the model is antiquated and needs to be revamped to include a whole spectrum of healing modalities.  Will it happen?  God only knows.

I think what we can do is to tie them together for ourselves.  That’s what I do.  I don’t have any doctor who uses everything I want included  in my repertoire and so I decided to-in a sense-write my own prescription.   My prescription is made up of a mixture of things.  I pick and choose from everything and it seems to be working.  I’d love to say that it is solely made up of natural things and sound all holistic and new agey, but my body has never allowed me to sit in any one camp too comfortably.  I need MAJOR MEDICAL MEDICINE in order to regulate a 4 inch colon.  Yup, the other 116 inches were removed in 1969 due to a bad case of Crohn’s Disease.  (For copies of “Healing From The Inside Out” contact me)  If it were not for this medical wonder drug which, to put it quite bluntly, is used to constipate that small colon of mine, I WOULD NEVER LEAVE THE BATHROOM!   So, my prescription contains elements from all of these groups:

1.  western medicine—pharmaceuticals

2.  herbs—capsules, tea

3.  supplements—liquid nutrition including vitamins and minerals,  liquid calcium, additional vitamins

4.  alkaline water—kangan water

5.  meditation and prayer

6.  characterized breathing—deep breathing with visualization (used for healing)

7.  diet, exercise  (I’m a little lethargic with the exercise these days…)

8.  fun, meaningful work

These are all components that I include in my prescription of what I need to keep me going.  Notice that I’ve included fun.  It’s important.

I can’t say whether these modalities will ever come together on their own, but it is up to us to bring them together for ourselves.  We need to keep educating ourselves and learning how to help ourselves.  When I was able to eliminate a medical drug called Flagil, because I was getting more relief with my Crohn’s pain from an herb called Cat’s Claw, I also eliminated the side effects that accompanied Flagil which were headaches and nausea.  Not a bad trade!

Ideally, we would love for the western medical system to embrace complementary medicine from prayer to acupuncture.  But it is doubtful that we will see this happen anytime soon.  But, fortunately this is a free country and there is nothing to stop us from learning and using all kinds of alternatives.  It’s worked wonders for me.  As a matter of fact I’ve got to call Nutrimedix right now—I’m almost out of Cat’s Claw!

If anyone would like additional information on any of the things you read about in my posts, do not hesitate to contact me through comments and ask away.  And thanks, Sarah, for your thought provoking question!

Be Well,

Love,

Sheri