Sustainable Healthcare is an Irreversible Upgrade: Get Yours NOW

By

Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.

Copyright 8/11

The healthcare revolution is not an external, political event. It is a personal
awakening, inspired by the children who will be our future. While the
political landscape is fraught with adults behaving selfishly and degrading
downgrades, the message of sustainable healthcare is a constant, irreversible
upgrade. The ceiling is continually raised, until the sky is the limit, when you
use empowerment based, sustainable healthcare resources such as those the
TARA Approach provides.

This is not simply a play on words. When you change your consciousness you
change your DNA, and this reverberates through generations. When we dialogue
with cellular memory and reframe our perspective what seemed like health
deficits, including genetic tendencies, fade from sight. We see this most directly
when parents change their perspective on their children, when we redefine
healthcare symptoms, when we do not accept the predictions of negative, limited
outcomes, when we listen to symptoms as communication from our bodies, and
when we emphasize health over disease in all regards.

Insecurity is running amok as our economic forecast shows a never ending
series of storms. Confidence in leadership is virtually impossible. Watching
political debate is like watching troubled children in a sandbox. The political
concept of healthcare is not focused on people's needs. It is utterly disconnected
from the day to day experiences of humanity. The only alternative to this 
dismal external landscape is internal resourcefulness. We can step into the 
center of the healthcare movement, asserting ownership of our greatest
wealth: our own health and the health of our children and our treasured elders.

We enter the healthcare debate and claim a clear direction of sustainability
and empowerment when we listen to our own bodies and listen to what our
children and our elders are telling us. This is listening at the level of
sensation rather than analysis; listening with our wisdom ears rather than
the fear that categorizes everything into pathology. Dare to be intelligent
in this way. Dare to truly hear what your child is saying when he or she
describes an experience at school or with a friend or when an elder talks
about what is happening inside them. In this message I am speaking to young
adults, adults, parents, and those of us who stand at the center of the
generations and can therefore see both backwards and forward.

STOP, LOOK and LISTEN RIGHT NOW: CLEAR GUIDANCE IS ALWAYS AVAILABLE 

I am asking this community to stop, look and listen right now ~ to read the
handwriting on the wall and attune to the intelligence that unites us in a
common faith in human potential. In the TARA Approach we have an assortment
of listening methodologies. We listen with our connective tissue by attuning
to energy pulse; we listen with our eyes by understanding what skin color,
gesture, voice and expression communicate about human need; we listen with
our wisdom hearts when we hear what others are saying or what we are saying
to ourselves; we listen with our adult parenting minds to what guidance is
being called for to sustain an empowered life direction. These structures
give us clear guidance about how to help ourselves and those around us.
Learning and using these listening tools is the key to empowerment and
sustainability.

Never before has it been more important for us to embody our capacity to be
a source of healthcare in our own lives, homes and communities. The TARA
Approach was created for these times! It is a compassionate design, a
merciful outpouring to families, to those in need who are discounted by the
powers that be.and this is proving now to be most of us. The greatest uphill
battle I face in my teaching around the world is to inspire people to
believe in their own innate, God given ability to change the course of
disease, to intervene as instruments of health, to engage in the progress of
development so mightily that they steer it in the direction they have chosen
rather than the direction that has been chosen for them. In essence this
means changing DNA. Epigenetic contributors to development are showing, in
research trial after research trial, to be minimally equivalent to genetic
traits and frequently more influential than genetics in determining health
outcomes.

In case after case where I have consulted I have seen negative, even fatal
predictions reverse through the use of TARA Approach interventions,
sometimes at the last moment. The components of the TARA Approach (applied
touch on key bioelectrical sites on the body, attuned dialogue aimed at
redirecting neuronal consolidation, integration and assimilation of new
directions) are available to anyone willing to learn them. In truth, when
you engage in the TARA Approach you don't learn a system. You learn about
YOURSELF! Exchange the downgrade for an upgrade NOW.  

Blending Eastern Healing Wisdom with Western Neuropsychology

 By

Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.

Unlike most other neuroscientists I have immersed myself not only in Western
neuropsychology and contemporary brain research but also in the older
Eastern wisdoms that surprisingly have treasures in this area to contribute.
As culture proliferates with technology that inundates our brains, it is
both the younger and older generations whose nervous systems are most easily
overwhelmed. We see this in the increasing reports of autism, sensory
integration dysfunction, Alzheimer's disease, heart attacks and strokes. Out
of compassion and awareness the TARA Approach is awakened to this need and
searches for how to help.  While we in the West think of ourselves as
opening the window to the study of the brain, in fact ancient sages and
masters of healing in the traditional worlds have resources to offer so I
look to that vast compendium of wealth to see how it matches our current
dilemmas.

Here is a treasure I just extracted: The Kidney Meridian nourishes the Sea
of Marrow (the brain), but if the Spleen Meridian is regenerated it will
fill the Kidney Meridian while you sleep. When I read this I thought, "Oh
now I understand why Mary Iino Burmeister (my masterful Jin Shin teacher)
told me to treat my Spleen daily!" Fortunately I have followed her
recommendation and treated my Spleen Meridian virtually every day since she
said that to me almost thirty years ago.

TARA Approach students know how to tonify the Spleen Meridian and anyone who
reads my books can also learn this simple treatment. There are multiple
approaches to Spleen treatment and they can be used at every stage of life.
They can be utilized during the Third Trimester in utero to strengthen the
demanding brain development that occurs during this period in the baby's
life. They are great for little ones to cultivate their intelligence. If your child has 
sensory struggles or is not meeting his or her milestones, use the Spleen treatment for 
that extra boost and you will see a resurgence of capacity. For youth facing the 
demanding challenges of growing up in this chaotic world, the Spleen is a better resource 
than Red Bull! As we age, the Spleen treatment keeps us current. It assures that our   
brains will never linger in the past while the present evolves. 

Treatment of the Spleen is easy. You can find a variety of treatments in my
book We Are All in Shock: How Overwhelming Experience Shatters You and What
You Can Do About It, or in the self-care manual Jin Shin TARA Self Care, or
in the Sacred Sites Oracle. All of these are available from our website
(www.Tara-Approach.org) or by calling 1-800-493-6117. 

Here are two short-cuts for quick Spleen Meridian treatment:

Simply hold the thumb: Just wrap your other fingers around it and you will
soon take a sigh of relief as this energy system fills up. If you see a child who
is sucking their thumb you know they are asking for this nourishment!

For Yogis: While sitting cross legged in lotus or half lotus, hold the inside of your 
ankle (just below the ankle bone) and the base of your tailbone (the coccyx).
Close your eyes and reboot with prana!

There are multiple other ways to regenerate your Spleen Meridian in the TARA
Approach including more extensive treatment when depletion takes on labels
like Chronic Fatigue or other forms of exhaustion. The important thing to
know is that you can refuel not only your overall energy but also your brain
through this repeated application. Change the pattern of using everything up
until it is gone and refuel your brain daily with the TARA Approach.

 
FEATURING TARA APPROACH STUDENT DORA HAGERMAN 

Dora Hagerman

 Dora Hagerman is the woman who single-handedly brought the TARA Approach
to Mexico almost fifteen years ago. Our first program in Mexico was on the beach
in a village called San Francisco, near Puerta Vallarta. After that Dora organized
courses in Cuernevaca and Fortin de las Flores, introducing American students
to the scope and beauty of her beloved country. Now Dora is organizing our 
upcoming program in Mexico City where she lives. Dora has blended her studies
studies of dance and theater, film making and choreography with the TARA 
Approach. She has also added parenting to her resume. Dora is the mother of 
the incredible Julieta who, like her mother, is also a lover of the theater arts 
and Jin Shin TARA! 

After several years of movement studies, including creating performance
pieces in Mexico, Dora (who never lost her practice of Jin Shin TARA and the
TARA Approach) is resuming her focus on the healing arts. Of course she is
being entirely innovative in this resurgence, blending her use of Feldenkrais
Awareness through Movement with the TARA Approach in a cutting edge
program at the studio of her Feldenkrais teacher/practitioner, Rebecca Sitt.

Dora's creativity and authenticity is a blessing to us. Watch this rising star. I
believe she will shine her TARA Approach embodiment for the enlightenment
of many around the world.

Freedom Is the Right to Know Your Own History

 By

Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.

The TARA Approach is not only a treatment design. It is a vision for humanity. This vision sees everyone with the ability to easily access the true story of their conception, prenatal life and birth. This essential biographical data shapes health, relationship, career and spirituality. It belongs to us. No matter what the details are, having access to your history empowers you. This power is freedom. It liberates you from addictive behaviors, chronic health dilemmas, and repeated self-sabotage.

Pre and perinatal educational programs can be included at appropriate intervals in the educational process for all children. Embryogenesis, the development of our beings in the womb, is a thrilling study that focuses on the courage and brilliance of babies to forge their purpose driven destiny and birth. All midwives, doulas, nurses, physicians, lactation consultants, family birthing staff, or anyone serving pregnancy, childbirth and parenting should be informed about pre and perinatal psychology and embryogenesis. This is the TARA Approach vision.
The TARA Approach is committed to restoring the vital role of the individual and the family in building a healthy, compassionate and evolved society through this awareness of prenatal life and birth. The keys to a healthy society are held by our children. The keys to our children's healthy development are attunement, attachment and bonding. These critical developmental experiences begin in utero. Simple acts of loving and honest communication produce attunement, attachment and bonding and are cost free interventions available to every family. When you add the gentle applied touch components that the TARA Approach offers, then developmental enhancement and nourishment is available at your fingertips.

The common sense practice of seeing development from the child's perspective is the best kept family health secret in the world! Parents can provide constant streams of developmental support through their words and their educated touch, strengthening health and brain development with truth, contact and consciousness. The neurochemistry of love is fueled in just this way no matter what the external circumstances. When adults understand their own developmental obstacles and repattern them they can truly be adults and free our society from the universal repetition of big children raising little children.

Parents, grandparents and siblings can learn about the crucial prenatal stages and adapt their dialogue with little ones to support formative periods. Embryogenesis is not a highly technical subject exclusive to those who attend medical school. In fact, it may not be emphasized in medical preparatory training. Many family birthing unit nurses have reported to me that they know nothing of embryogenesis! The incredible story of how we develop is enlivening learning that can easily be translated into language that anyone can understand. Extracting the individualized information about each person's developmental history is like reading or writing an intriguing mystery novel, pointing us always to the surprising conclusion about a victorious being who has chosen and fought against the odds to be here now. It is an action thriller, each and every time! No one's history is boring. No one is unimportant.

Our children are our future. Parents who want to conceive can prepare themselves best by accessing their own prenatal and birth histories. If you or your child is struggling, the details of prenatal life and birth can remove the obfuscations of your challenges, either in health or emotions, and provide clear and surprising solutions to regain radiant equanimity.

In this month of July when we celebrate American freedom, claim yours! It is available to you. When you know your origins you have the power to fulfill your destiny.

Be part of the TARA Approach vision for humanity. Claim the birth-right of your odyssey, your passion for life. Pass that vitality on to your children. See each child as a victor and acquire the tools that will help anyone who has forgotten their intention to reclaim it in their body, mind and spirit.

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Seventh Inning Sit by Karen Lowry and Now I See the Moon by Elaine Hall

I love these books because they portray, with real life detail, how parents can advocate for their children. Autism and sensory integration struggles have been pathologized when they can be seen as profound outcries for specific support and adaptation. Our children are always trying to tell us about their experiences but they will do this most frequently in somatic ways that we, as adults, must understand. This challenges our creativity, as it should. Our children are helping us grow our intelligence so that we can help them grow theirs! The moms who wrote these books met this challenge. They had to develop confidence in their perceptions and their attunement to their children so that they could face the educational and medical resistance to their wisdom. One of the premises of my forthcoming books on sensory integration is that parents are frequently the cutting edge therapists for special needs children. These books prove my premise. Let's applaud these moms and their children! They have so much to teach us.

UNBURDENING and DIFFERENTIATING

Reflections on My Studies with Mary Iino Burmeister*

By

Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.

Copyright 2/11

“The skin is no more separated from the brain than the surface of a lake is separate from its depths; the two are different locations in a continuous medium. The brain is a single functional unit, from cortex to fingertips to toes. To touch the surface is to stir the depths.”      

~ Dean Juhan

Mary Iino Burmeister

The Unburdening Process is a way to not accumulate behaviors, movements, thoughts and feelings that no longer serve you. My teacher Mary Iino Burmeister spoke frequently of the damages of “accumulations.” She warned us to let go of anything that burdened us. She emphasized the importance of “unburdening” without using that particular word, but she said it is required for true health. She said that all Jin Shin practice is “unburdening” or relieving accumulation. I add the consciousness and frequently the articulation of what is being unburdened.

What does it mean to “unburden” yourself? From the standpoint of structure, it means to take the load or stress off of the muscles, joints, bones, tendons, or ligaments that carry the burdens of unconscious and repetitive movement. The same is true of thoughts and feelings. They burden our neurological structures in precisely the same way, Repetitive destructive movement patterns like jutting the chin out or collapsing in the spine burden our overall physical structure. Unconscious, non-beneficial mental-emotional habits similarly create brain inflammation and rigidity. Then we wonder where our resiliency has gone and attribute that to aging or something outside of ourselves. Just as we want to re-educate our bodies to move and function in supportive and aligned ways so do we want re-educate our brains to not repeat misaligned patterns of thought, feeling and behavior.

Unburdening requires a personal parting of your Red Sea of engulfing habituated patterns and walking through on the pathway of clarity to the other side. This is what I see happening over and over in TARA Approach training programs and individual sessions. It is exhilarating to watch someone realize that talking about their partner is not the way to transform their own life! It is a joyous ah-ha when someone recognizes that they are asking questions that they already know the answers to! By naming the patterns that keep us disempowered we immediately step into empowerment, and our physical structures automatically realign with our mental ones!

These are the basic steps in the Unburdening Process:

1.    Identify and Name the Burdens: This is the crucial step of awareness. For those who have studied Jin Shin TARA the pulses are remarkable allies in helping you identify the burdens, especially when you use the language of the Elements. Any sequencing process will lead you to the naming of the burdens;

2.    Take Responsibility for Unburdening/Find New Options: Reflecting on the burdens leads to a stunning recognition of all the options available to replace outmoded behavior. You can try on new ways of speaking, different styles of walking and lifting, explore new exercise systems, journal or paint, reorganize the way you sit at your computer, replace destructive relational behaviors with ones that really work for you;

3.    Establish New Vital, Conscious and Consistent Behaviors: When you start to use your new options you cannot just let them sink into the same realm of unconsciousness as your old habits. You have to remain in an active relationship with your new behaviors, and with everything that you say and do. This is a lifetime commitment!

Walking this path demands will and attention. It is a mindfulness practice; a living meditation.  You need sturdy, time tested tools to excavate entrenched and many rooted weeds of the mind from the dry, infertile soil of repetition. This is not a process for the lazy or feint of heart.

To unburden yourself you have to get into the grungy corners of your mind where the detritus of intergenerational lies and false beliefs gather dust. Mary Iino Burmeister called this the “DD’s and GG”S” or “Dirt, Dust and Greasy Grime.”  Most people postpone this housecleaning (Mary used this metaphor often) or never undertake it and therefore they do not evolve. When you commit to the continuity of this clean-up you are guaranteed vitality. You will have a palpable experience of increased spaciousness in your mind and body, just as if you had cleaned your house of hoarded junk.

This is a weight loss plan. Unburdening means that we take off the weights we have been wearing that do not tone our muscles. Mary said that “weight is stress.” We are wearing the weight of the past within our flesh, carrying it and dressing it as if it were a precious treasure. The truth is that these old habitual thought patterns are useless knick-knacks that clutter the truth that is behind them. The person who asks questions that they already know the answer to is trying to wear the clothes of a child. When they put on the new outfit of resilient, creative maturity they suddenly see that they look absolutely fabulous as an adult!

The TARA Approach combines the tools of energy medicine (Jin Shin TARA) and stimulating dialogue (whether self-talk, journaling or dialogue with another) to unburden mind, body and spirit. Those who study and practice the TARA Approach often have immediate access to the energy and applied touch practices. The bigger stumbling block, surprisingly, is frequently dialogue.

Differentiation Is A Tool for Unburdening

One of the most effective tools in the unburdening process is the concept and application of differentiation. If you grasp the beauty of differentiation you immediately discover dialogue clues to get you to that destination. Differentiation IS unburdening. What is differentiation? It is the thorough recognition that you can only change yourself and that others are separate and unique. They are not you. They are themselves. It may sound simple but lack of differentiation has burdened almost everyone. Once you embody your differentiation the burdens fall from your shoulders like the statues of dead dictators.

Differentiation is a mature adaptation of individuation. It applies to all relationships. When you realize that you are differentiated from others, even with your loving connection to them, you liberate yourself from any responsibility for their choices or behaviors. You continue to witness and participate in their lives compassionately. You stand on your own even when you stand with others. Seeing and feeling, in the core of your being, that you are distinctly yourself and differentiated from others does not exclude you from the experience of oneness. On the contrary, it accentuates it. You recognize that conscious oneness is really only possible when there is differentiation.

In Jin Shin TARA there are actual treatments to heighten the innate energy systems that convey differentiation. When you charge this bio-electric circuitry you experience the exhilaration of independence, self-sufficiency and sustainability. This is when you become undaunted in your evolution. It is amazing how unburdening and differentiation infuse you with a capacity for tireless, well-boundaried service and love of others. Unburdening and differentiation literally lift a weighty load from your human structure. You are simultaneously lighter and more rooted. This is the joy of conscious relationship with others, with the world, with your partner, your family, and your children. It is the path of love and the path of liberation.

Mirroring and Parenting

Unburdening and differentiation are adult experiences. Parents must unburden themselves and differentiate from their children to truly serve them. This is true universally but it is especially true when parenting a special needs child. My next blog will talk about MIRRORING from an unburdened and differentiated perspective. Mirroring is an art we can cultivate to serve our children and it is particularly effective to support children with sensory needs, like autism, to help them find relational possibilities from within their own nervous systems. While it may appear that mirroring is the polar opposite of differentiation in fact it is only effective when the adult doing the mirroring unburdens and differentiates themselves.

“May each one of you discover the teacher within.” ~ Mary Iino Burmeister’s last words.

Featured TARA Practitioner

AnaElizabeth Pagola

elipagolatri@yahoo.com.mx

AnaElizabeth Pagola

AnaElizabeth Pagola, PT, holds the banner of the TARA Approach in Mexico. She tirelessly does everything in her power, with faith and devotion, to convey the TARA Approach to her patients and to the many communities where she lives and serves. Elizabeth has attended, sponsored, co-taught or organized TARA Approach programs in Chiapas, Morelia, Mexico City and San Luis Potosi. She is now living in Puebla, Mexico where her children are completing their education and she is already a representative of the TARA Approach there.

AnaElizabeth Pagola skillfully integrates the TARA Approach into her physical therapy practice. For the past year she has been involved in a private mentorship with Dr. Stephanie Mines, founder of the TARA Approach, to gain her Self Care Teacher Certification. She is already certified at the Foundations and Advanced levels of the TARA Approach. We applaud her exquisite and compassionate embodiment of the TARA Approach in all regards and look forward to when she can teach all the levels of the TARA Approach in Mexico.

Mil gracias, Elizabeth, for your contribution to sustainable, empowering healthcare in Mexico.

If you have comments or questions about this blog please feel free to send them to me at tara-approach@prodigy.net. It is my joy to provide these free downloads to enhance your quality of life and uplift you on your path of love. If you would like to learn how to unburden and differentiate, as well as how to provide mirroring as a parenting tool, go to www.TARA-Approach.org to learn about our programs, books, handbooks, CD’s and DVD’s.

*This blog is a product of the current iteration of the transcription process I have been engaged in beginning in November 2010 to decode my notes from over twenty years of study with Mary Iino Burmeister. Many of Mary’s statements were cryptic phrases that, strangely, she was never asked to explain. Since Mary’s accident in 1990 that sacrificed her memory and then since her death on January 27, 2008, I have come to see my voluminous notes as one of my life’s greatest treasures. I not only transcribe the notes. I also correlate the information with my studies of the nervous system, thereby finding the healing brilliance in Mary’s words.

Fetal Origins

By

Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.

 

When Annie Murphy Paul was pregnant with her second child she used her scientific curiosity and her writer’s drive to investigate the answers to the questions that frequently plague pregnant women such as how does my emotional life impact my baby; what about endocrine disruptors; how much fish should I eat; how much weight can I gain; how do the dynamics in my family communicate to my baby; what is post-partum depression really about? This magazine journalist who has written for the New York Times Magazine and who appears in The Best American Science Writing didn’t just read books to find answers. She went right to the researchers themselves. She also explored her own experience in her pregnancy with alert intelligence and unwavering depth. The result of her inquiries, both external and internal, is her book ORIGINS: How the Nine Months before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives (Free Press, 2010).

Those of us who have been investigating the world of fetal origins for decades don’t think of this as a new topic but most of the rest of the world does and Annie Murphy Paul speaks eloquently and intimately to that larger audience. She boldly predicts that “one day the medical care of children and adults will be tailored to the conditions they experienced before birth.” Annie Murphy Paul awakens the awareness of the stunning concept of the prenatal origins of health in the minds of the general public. Though what she is saying is what I have been saying for years, I celebrate the moment her book came into the world. She is heard by people I cannot reach. I want everyone to read this book! Please read it and recommend it to others.

FREE DOWNLOAD: THE PEACEFUL REVOLUTION ~ GRASSROOTS SUSTAINABLE HEALTHCARE

Click here to read my article on GRASSROOTS SUSTAINABLE HEALTHCARE. The article tells you how you can actively participate in sustainability in your professional life or in your own home.

HOLLY JONES, PT ~ TARA APPROACH CERTIFIED FOUNDATIONS PRACTITIONER IN OKLAHOMA

Holly Jones, PT is a 1990 graduate of the University of Kentucky's physical therapy program. She specializes in integrated manual therapy and is in her tenth year of private practice in Oklahoma.  She has blended the TARA Approach with manual therapy for the past six years. She feels this integration allows her to uncover key musculoskeletal and emotional areas simultaneously, promoting maximal healing potential.  In addition, Holly has an expertise in the evaluation and treatment of pelvic floor disorders and is an APTA Section of Women's Health member.  As a certified animal massage therapist, she also integrates manual therapy and the TARA Approach in the treatment of small animals.

Jones Physical Therapy 
3317 E. Memorial
Suite 104
Edmond, Oklahoma 73013

 Phone:  405-475-7080

Fax:  405-475-5033

“Holly Jones is a perfect manifestation of what I believe is possible when you combine the skills of sequenced manual therapy and the TARA Approach. Because physical therapists cultivate acute awareness in their hands and because they are palpating connective tissue with great frequency on a daily basis, they are in a perfect position to decode cellular memory. Holly has chosen to maximize this opportunity. She sees her patients with her eyes, her heart and her hands “ ~ Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.