Parkinsons recovery on untrodden path

My approach to Parkinson’s recovery has three parts.

1. Medical Qigong exercises that Howard Shifke’s Recipe for Parkinson’s Disease (PD) recovery
2. Dr. Janice Walton Hadlock’s (JWH) approach to PD recovery
3. Rajayoga meditation

First two parts are two different approaches for PD recovery. However, I consider, JWH’s approach can be integrated as a part of Shifke’s approach. This is my personal opinion which is the basis of  my explorations of PD cure. I will adopt JWH approach with Rajayoga meditation.

First I review below JWH’s approach to PD recovery since it can be practised alone. Later on, I will review Shifke’s approach.

According to JWH’s hypothesis, idiopathic  Parkinson’s Disease (PD) (not drug-or toxin induced Parkinisonism ) is  caused by the long term use of  a specific pattern in the electrical currents that flow in the connective tissue just under the skin. This particular electrical pattern is only supposed to run when a person is in near-death shock or coma. When this pattern of currents is turned off using therapies, PD ceases. 

JWH found four reasons that people get stuck in the specific electrical patterns that are associated with near death shock or coma(hence forth referred to as pause). Accordingly she classifies PD into 4 types.

Type-I: self induced pause
Type-II: being stuck in normal, biological dissociation from a foot or ankle injury
Type-III: self induced dissociation from an injury
Type-IV: being stuck in normal biological pause

Type-I PD: self induced pause
Self-induced pause is usually set in motion via a self command, often given in childhood, to “feel no pain,” “be spiritual: rise above pain,”  “I am not a part  of this painful world”  or some similar instruction commanding that one distance oneself from physical or emotional pain or trauma. The command was not a casual remark. It is often memorable for the  intensity and determination that was evoked. It was often performed while staring into a mirror.

Type-I PD is the most common among the people with PD. About 95% of people with PD has Type-I PD. About 90% of people with PD have both Type I and Type 2 PD. In this blog, we focus on Type-I PD. For the remaining types, please refer to the books: Recovery from Parkinson’s (2019) and Stuck on Pause (2017). These books discuss in detail the therapies for the four types of PD. The therapies might work for people with PD who have not taken anti Parkinson’s medications.

Recovery from Type-I PD usually takes longer. The time frame for the recovery varies from a few days to many years.

The length of time is related to the degree to which a person has developed a steady habit of a fear – or anxiety based internal monologue and/or cultivating a habit of imagining himself to be apart from the rest of humanity, or even alone in the universe. In general, the more a person has embraced wary and/or judgemental thinking, the longer it might take him o r her to recover.

The recovery method for Type-I PD has two exercises. These are thought / mental / meditational exercises for automatically stepping out of self induced pause. 

Exercise-1
The person should treat all thoughts and spoken words throughout the day as if they were part  of a silent two-way conversation with a friend: a deceased beloved friend or relative, a “higher power,” some saint or sage, or even a beloved, deceased pet. 

The friend  had to be someone you could laugh with, someone who loved you in an easy-going, honest manner. It could not be a stern  or spiritually ‘superior’ critic.

The thoughts need to become conversation. This chatty duologue would stimulate the striatum, the brain area that exhibits increased activation while thinking of a God with whom you could converse.

Exercise-2
This exercise begins when,  in response to the first exercise, the constant communicant began to seem real and trustworthy enough. This sense of a real relationship took some people years to attain.

Once attained, a person could do the second exercise: regularly ask the communicant to feel more physically present.

For example, a patient could ask the invisible friend to palpably hold him or her, or manifest as some sort of feeling or sensation either inside or on the periphery of the patient’s body. The expectation is to feel as  if the friend is giving physical comfort or gentle stimulation to some part of the body that wanted support, or maybe feel that the same loving energy that   is present in the friend could manifest inside the patient: a feeling inside.

This might stimulate the thalamus, the brain area that exhibits increased activation if your God is something subtly energetic that you can feel or resonate with.

Since Rajayoga meditation is a conversation with invisible God, I will adopt its techniques for Exercises 1 and 2, and share my experiences in this blog.

There are visualisation techniques to mechanically turn off self induced pause. Reader is advised to refer to the book, Stuck on Pause. I will take these for a review subsequently.