Over the past several months since the passing of my business and life partner, Shay Arave, formerly the president of Pure Energy Rx, I have been on a long journey down the rabbit hole. This particular rabbit hole burrowed deep into my subconscious, tunnelling through and around the deepest roots of my particular "situation" with the body.

After months of intense caregiving to Shay, which exhausted me physically and emotionally, and to have it ultimately conclude with her passing over, I ended up feeling traumatized, twisted and drained. For several months afterward I found myself needing to sleep for 10-12 hours a night, and with little appetite. My body lost 20 pounds, and although I felt somehow released emotionally, the body was reverberating with something else.

Soon I started experiencing arthritis in my legs, feet, shoulders and hands, along with an extreme form of DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness), where even the slightest muscle burn resulted in days of soreness.

I did find out I had a severe magnesium deficiency, as well as a Vitamin B deficiency, which could explain some of my condition, but strongly supplementing with these and many other formulas had only minor effects.

I began to cut back a lot on my activities, hoping this pain sequence would pass, but it became worse, with severe bouts of sciatica and muscle cramps. Some days I literally could not walk, and such simple tasks as getting in and out of the car, or even sitting down on the toilet became excruciating. It was time to confront what it was that I must not be confronting.

At the advice of Dr. Carolyn Dean, I discovered German New Medicine, also referred to as Biogeneology. This modality posits that any traumatic experience creates a sort of shockwave in the brain that radiates into specific body parts depending on the type of trauma. Over a lifetime of traumas, certain "tracks" or patterns develop with links to similar traumatic events in the past. Find the earliest traumatic event (stored as a mental picture) and you've released the energy holding the physical symptom or condition in place. The body will then go into a healing phase and the condition or disease will resolve.

This is also the premise upon which The Healing Codes is based, as well as Tapping, and even Dianetics. However, Biogeneology additionally discovered that the brain trauma is actually visible on MRI scans, if you know what to look for.

So I began following the various and numerous clues my body was screaming at me, and it has been quite a ride to say the least. And although I'm still not 100%, I've regained my quality of life and gained huge understandings about who I am and how I have handled life so far.

Dr. Dean also recommended a type of physical therapy called Egoscue, named after its discoverer, Pete Egoscue. Egoscue's premise is that there is pain if there is misalignment, and as twisted as I literally was, Egoscue has been a revelation. By using changing "menus" of gentle movements and static positions allowing gravity to shift alignments, Egoscue retrains the body back to optimum alignment, and out of chronic pain. It's some work, but the benefits have been wonderful.

Ultimately, I was faced with a common denominator snaking through all my traumas and experiences: I had to admit there was a payoff for having painful conditions. The payoff has usually been, "Well, I can't do that because it hurts." This is a good one to use to justify why I'm not working hard, or getting things done, or developing myself into a "successful person". It hurts, so I'll wait until it heals or stops hurting, and then will get back to everything.

There are several things counter-productive about this way of thinking and acting. One: if I can avoid doing things I'm "supposed" to do, are those things actually what I want to do? And, two: what is it I'm actually wanting to do that being in pain prevents me from doing? Is it a form of procrastination? Fear of failure, or some sort of masochistic "comfort" zone?

These have been meaty questions for me, leading me to evaluate the importance of some things I know to be true, and those I know are not. For example, I know it is true that doing things that inspire me is a good policy that creates health. Doing things that "must" be done and yet are "hard" to do, are not inspiring, but have to be done anyway--like, in my case, doing accounting for the business, or doing the laundry, and are a necessary part of responsible survival in the modern world.

But this is a false dichotomy, and here's why: Living life itself is inspiring because at any moment you have a choice to BE inspired. There is meaning in everything, but only if you look for it, and there is inspiration in every moment, but you have to be IN that moment to find it. If you're way out into the future, or in some alternative reality, or cycling some mental conundrum, or stuck in the past, you're not in the moment.

By being in pain, there is a powerful excuse to avoid finding inspiration, because pain itself seems to be anathema to inspiration. But this is what I learned: Pain is there because you are NOT in the present moment. Pain is forcing you into the present moment because only in the moment is there resolution. All the stuck pictures of past traumas are there, all your true feelings are there, and that is where inspiration lives.

My Egoscue training is all about this point. Yes, there is some pain doing some of these exercises, and as you do the exercises pain begins to fade because you know there is healing taking place. And for me, that is the crux of the whole pain and disease thing. Once you have begun to live in the present with your pain, you begin to see it is there because healing is happening. Every moment is a healing moment, and every apparent "set back" is a new beginning to another healing throughout the body.

Pain can be a great excuse to avoid life, and can be a great excuse to never heal. It may be why many people die prematurely--they are not answering the call of the present moment where healing lives.

To your quantum health,