I was diagnosed in 2010.
I'm committed to staying drug free (with the exception of LDN/Low Dose Naltrexone) especially after taking a quarter of a tab of sinemet 25/100 twice this past week. Horrible experience...severe altered state, strong nausea, then fell asleep hard like with a strong sleeping pill. One I am quite familiar with Janice Hadlock's books (have read both books twice), Bianca and Zhineng medical qi gong, Howard Shifke, John Coleman, David Zidd, and Robert Rogers.
I really want to connect now more than ever with others who are committed to clearing the symptoms of Parkinson's without drugs or surgery because it is getting harder to embrace Parkinson's in this wawy due to severity of symptoms.
Here's a little background on me…
Until 2006, I practiced for 30 years as a spiritually oriented psychotherapist with a 25 year professional background in natural medicine consulting that included many years of study in energetic healing, psychoneuroimmunology, and the managing of an oriental medicine clinic for 3 years. I started to receive guidance in spiritual practices at age 17. I am now 60. In 1992, I started and facilitated for the next 14 years, a residential inner work community called The Sanctuary for Inner Peace which was dedicated to world peace through ending the war within. This community was partly modeled on Gandhi's phrase: "Become the world you want to see". Also in 1992, I received one of the only two honorary PhDs ever offered by one of the oldest colleges of natural healing in the U.S. and shortly thereafter, I was ordained as a nondenominational minister.
Since 1971, I’d always known I would eventually expatriate from the states, and in 2006, I was invited to come and do service in a community on Margarita Island, Venezuela. Venezuela has some of the worst security problems of any country in South America. Due to having a background in trauma counseling, much of my work here has involved spending time with people who have been robbed and/or assaulted and/or have lost a friend or family member to a violent crime.
I was delighted to finally have a chance to really live and serve in South America, (not just visit it,) however, in 2010, I started experiencing rather severe neurological challenges (Parkinson’s). This caused me to realize that the opportunities Life was offering me through the kind of work I had been doing here were more than I could effectively embrace right now. So, while my focus is primarily on personal healing at this time, I continue to participate whenever I can in what is known in South America as the Bolivarian Revolution: a remarkable movement that has transformed the quality of life of over 15 million Venezuelans who had previously only known the multi-generational hell of abject poverty.
I suspect that a 40 year dedication to natural medicine, spiritual practice, and psycho-spiritual study, are partly what led me to connect up through the internet with a tiny community of brave souls who have committed to fully recovering from neurological challenges without using drugs or surgery. Inspired by their courage to clear what the medical community solely regards as degenerative incurable illness, I have made the commitment to do whatever it takes to recover from the symptoms of Parkinson's drug free.
It seems that the journey of recovering from neurological challenges can be a wild and fierce gift of grace. Fully embracing the experience of these symptoms, can bring a raw, visceral, physicality to the process of awakening to who we really are which is actually a profound gift IF we also desire that our awakening includes the integration of body, mind, and spirit which I do. Since 2010, this process has shown me that to truly evolve beyond the need for the particular symptoms I am dealing with, requires no less than an absolute reconsideration… in fact a total "reinvention" and "re-imagining”...of all that we have previously known ourselves to be.
I have exclusively used Apple computers since 1989. I feel utterly certain that if it were not for the genius of Steve Jobs, pen and paper would still be the primary tools of my creative expression because I have never been able to endure the Windows operating system for more than a few minutes! Besides relentlessly exploring Life through my beloved portal to infinity (my iMac), my core interests are meditation, natural medicine, yoga, qi gong, conscious diet, uncovering the connections between personal healing/awakening and the transformation of global issues, all forms of music, independent film, and the process of hopefully becoming a better and better writer.
Michael