Lessons from the Road

It takes a lot of energy, time, and money to leave Hawaii. For me to travel anywhere (and leave beautiful Kauai), it’s got to be a better place than Hawaii, or for a good reason! My wife Jane and I had a very good reason to make the trek this past August. We traveled to San Diego, California to guide, teach, and learn at the 31^st annual American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association conference, and the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society meeting.

The Retreat

Before the week of day-long conferences began, the Council of Elders (of which I am part of) organized a three-and-a-half day retreat in the High Desert Mountains near the town of Julian. The purpose and title of the retreat was: “Healer, Heal Thyself!”

It may come as no surprise to you that veterinarians lead stressful lives. Animals hold a very special place in peoples’ hearts, and caring for them necessitates the additional challenge of learning to communicate with animals that cannot speak English. They can’t tell us where they hurt, or give reasons why, or tell us how long the pain has continued. Veterinarians are responsible for helping bridge that gap, and we are the last line of defense for saving someone’s best friend. As a result of all of this pressure, we veterinarians have the highest suicide rate of any profession!

The annual and semiannual retreats help veterinarians take time for their own spiritual and emotional healing, and enable us to become better healers for all of our clients and patients back home.

Thirty-three veterinarians attended and shared the wonderful space at Stevens Ranch retreat center. Veterinarians from Canada, Japan, Hungary, and the US were in attendance. We saw lots of wildlife there: deer, bobcats, squirrels, wild turkeys, a peregrine falcon, vultures, hawks, nuthatches, thrushes, ravens, crows, and woodpeckers. It was the most woodpeckers I have ever seen so close up!

The days spent at the retreat were peaceful and sweet. Under the trees in an open space with desert aromas of sage, chaparral, and pine, we met and shared our stories.

The Mind & the Heart, and Ho’oponopono

My wife and psychologist Jane Winter, MFCC, M.A., produced a one day workshop on “The Mind & The Heart,” and introduced everyone to the Hawaiian process of forgiveness and reconciliation called Ho’oponopono.

In her workshop she describes the Mind as an instrument or tool. We need it to drive a car, formulate sentences, figure out mathematics, study a foreign language, interpret lab results and x-rays, and plan a surgery, etc. But, when the Mind is used for finding one’s own identity, for explaining spirituality, or when used in our loving relationships…our Mind can get us into trouble.

The Mind and our negative thought patterns can become the single most stressful input in our lives causing depression, fear, and chronic anxiety. Do you feel stressed often in your daily life? Have you stopped to consider how much of your stressors are legitimate concerns, and how many are just your own fears and anxieties repeating themselves? What can you let go of today?

As veterinarians, we are trained to rely on our minds more, and give less weight and credence to our instincts and the power of Love. We as a profession have become the “animal mechanics,” and not the healers we really want to be. How about yourself? You may not be in the veterinary industry, or in the field of medicine, but do you feel like your profession pushes you to rely less on your instincts and more on theories and arbitrary rules?

Jane’s advice was that living from the Heart will lead one to the Truth of one’s purpose in life and will create deeper and more meaningful relationships in life.

The Ho’oponopono process was included in the workshop to help the attendees to heal their personal relationships, and to forgive themselves. As a side note, what haven’t you forgiven yourself for? Missing a deadline? Not finishing all of the tasks on your to-do list? Take a deep breath, and release. Now take another deep breath, and exhale.

Forgiving ourselves is one of the biggest challenges people face, because we might be having guilt issues from some perceived failure in our professional or personal lives. Ho’oponopono encourages one to forgive and reconcile – to free yourself from the judgements of your Mind. Using a process modified from the Hawaiian Ho’oponopono, Jane led a series of meditations that helped the veterinarians free themselves from guilt, blame, and revenge. If you’d like to learn more about the Ho’oponopono process, please contact us via email, and we’ll put you in touch with Jane Winter, or another qualified healer to help guide you through the process.

The Conference

After the spiritual retreat, it was time to move on and return to the city and the heart of the San Diego, where I led an herb walk for the Veterinary Botanical Medical Association.

We had a great group of about 65 very interesting people from all over the world. Vets traveled from Germany, Australia, the East Coast of the US, Canada, and even the Rocky Mountains. It was a good representation of the interest that seems to be worldwide: The Power of Plants.

My goal was to guide and lead these veterinarians on a journey that would be more engaging than just rote memorization of plants and their healing qualities. I didn’t want my guests to quickly forget what they had learned. So, I encouraged everyone to touch and interact with the plants. We opened up our minds and our senses of perception (according to ecopsychologist Michael J. Cohen and his course “Connecting with Nature,” we have a total of 53 senses). I asked everyone to find a plant that they were especially attracted to, and then ask themselves, “What does the plant tell you about itself?” We used our senses of sight, smell, taste, and texture to identify clues about each plant and figure out what each might be useful for.

For many people, the concept of interaction with plants seems a bit hokey. We’d much rather interact with machines on a minute by minute basis (ever try having a conversation with a teenager that isn’t via text message?!). It takes opening up our Heart, and our senses, and shutting down or quieting our mind to accomplish this sense of “oneness” with our natural environment. You don’t always need Google to find the answers! If you pay attention to the environment, Nature gives lots of clues about how things work, and what they should be used for. It’s fascinating, really!

Altogether, there were about 350 holistic veterinarians in attendance. Eighty-five percent were women, ten percent were old men like me (ha ha), and the remaining five percent were recent graduates. I was very glad to see new veterinarians with such a strong interest in holistic therapies! And unlike most veterinary conferences, this wasn’t strictly business – we greeted each other with warm hugs and kisses. There were lots of “warm and fuzzy” feelings amongst the participants and the speakers.

Medicinal Mushrooms

In addition to the herb walk, I also gave a lecture on Asian Medicinal Mushrooms and their use and application for a variety of ailments.

Medicinal mushrooms can really make a difference in an animal’s life by improving health and longevity. Ganoderma lucidum, Maitake, Shiitake, and Cordyceps varieties can help treat serious heart and kidney diseases, (like those commonly seen in geriatric animals) and will help prolong life by tonifying the blood, energy, and vital circulation so that repair of these organs is possible. Over the years, mushrooms have had a negative stigma and reputation (i.e. poisonous or magic), but what is often forgotten is that medicinal mushrooms have been used for thousands of years by healers and medicine men and women. There are many documented cases of the positive health effects of consumption of these mushrooms.

One of my popular pet supplement formulas, Genesis/Resources brand CAS Options, includes medicinal mushrooms and antioxidants that support detoxification, improve energy, and help the immune system modulate against toxins that might cause DNA damage and subsequent tissue necrosis and tumor formation. I’ve used this formula with great success in many of my geriatric patients.

I also lectured on the concept of food therapy and TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) principles. You may be familiar with this concept – I wrote about it in my book: Fresh Food and Ancient Wisdom.

Here are some of the questions I posed to the vets. Give it some thought, and try to come up with your own answers.

How does the Western world relate to food?
Where do veterinarians get their information about nutrition?
Where do most people get their information about nutrition?
How the general public relate to food and cooking?

Got your answers? Great! What did you come up? I encourage you to leave your comments below.

What I try to emphasize during my lectures about food and nutrition is that we often overlook several things in our relationship to food. (Perhaps you remember some of this from my other blog article: Things We Forget About Our Food). Here’s what I think most of us forget, or take for granted:

The living conditions for most of the feed animals in our food system. Acknowledgement for the suffering of the animals (CAFO= confined animal feeding operations = factory farming) that were raised and sacrificed for our survival and the survival of our pets.
The people who work for low wages, under harsh conditions harvesting our food in the field, or working in slaughter houses and rendering plants
The love in a lovingly prepared meal, and the lack thereof in commercially-made diets or fast food.
Acknowledgement in the environmental cost of food harvesting, processing, and delivery. Fossil fuels are used every time we buy a steak or a piece of fish.
That food consumption and preparation is a crucial element of life. Your food is your fuel, and caring about what you put into your body or what you feed your pets is a big part of health and wellness. I encourage you to cook and prepare meals in your own home.
Your Intention (Yi) is important not only when performing acupuncture, but also when you cook. The “Yi follows the Qi.”
Making food and preparing meals should always include Intention and Love. Here is one of my favorite quotes with regard to how one should regard food ingredients that will be turned into a meal: “He handles them with Loving Kindness, with Intimacy, with Joy and with profound Respect” – Abbot John Daido Loori
Food can be healing! You may not always need to rely on man-made medications for healing. You can use TCM principles: formulating diets for the specific needs of an individual, balancing the energetic and physiologic properties of food, creating food that supports healing and synergy. Eat with purpose!
The Japanese principle of Washoku (Food in Harmony) – specifically, the 5 Roads To Enlightenment Principle

The Five Roads to Enlightenment (Gokan no mon)

The Five Roads are part of Washoku – the five important principles of making and preparing traditional Japanese food, and food in harmony. Meeting all of the principles of washoku ensures that the meal is healthful and balanced, and has aesthetic harmony. “Wa” means peace, harmony, and softness, and “Shoku” represents cooking.

The “5 roads” to me is the “essence” of food and eating:

Gratitude and acknowledgement of the people who prepared the meal
Use the energy Qi of the food…to do good works in the community
Eat food with an open heart
Acknowledge feeding the “soul” as well as the body
Engage in your own spiritual path

The other components of washoku are:

5 tastes (gomi) – Salty, sour, bitter, sweet, spicy
5 ways of cooking (goho) – simmer, steam, fry, boil, raw
5 colors (goshiki) – red, yellow, green, black, white
5 senses used in cooking (gokan) – balancing the senses of sight, smell, taste, texture, and hearing

In theory, a good meal includes each of these components.

Old & New Connections

The meetings gave me the chance to reconnect with many old friends. I even had the chance to meet with an old vet friend from my Santa Cruz, California days living in the mountains: Dr. Lynda Wells. Dr. Wells operates a house call practice in California, and specializes in acupuncture and herbal medicine. She shared with me that she had just bought a 25-acre ranch to begin farming, and she’s going to focus on medicinal herbs, vegetables, and raise sheep for wool. Pretty cool stuff!

You can find more info on Dr. Wells here.

I was also delighted to meet the incredible Dr. Beth Hirschfield of Florida. She works with cats…but not the usual kind! She treats big cats and exotic animals at sanctuaries and shelters. She explained some of the challenges of working with such large predators. She first must tranquilize them, then rely on anesthesia for surgical work, blood draws for lab tests, or to perform acupuncture treatments.

She recently performed a “C section” on a Bengal tiger, a hysterectomy on a black panther, and did dentistry on an old cougar with bad teeth. At the end of the meeting she was going to check a patient (a peregrine falcon) after jumping off a cliff to paraglide with the bird in flight.Wow!

Unfortunately, Dr. Hirschfield does not have a website, but if you’re ever in need of a wildlife vet, do look her up here!

All in all, it was a time of great learning, teaching, and meeting new and old veterinary friends.

Beautiful airline photo via rharrison