I gave a lecture on Accunect at the central hospital in Torino, Italy, at the Ospedale Molinette in early December, which I was very excited about – I even wrote about beforehand in a previous blog post. It was very successful in many ways: it was attended by approximately 300 people, and there was a lot of enthusiasm. So why has it taken me this long to write about it?

The whole experience was very exciting and very auspicious. I mean, I got invited to Italy to speak to 300 people at a big hospital about how Accunect can work with western medicine to facilitate true integrative medicine – how cool is that? That’s what society needs to be doing in the future, combining the power of western medicine in controlling symptoms with holistic approaches to improve health. And Accunect was designed to be usable by even the busiest professionals – that’s why I call it the Future of Medicine, Today. But the experience was also a little sobering in terms of seeing more clearly the challenges that face hospitals in incorporating techniques that are completely outside the box from their perspective.  To be honest, I’ve needed the natural period of reflection that visits us at the New Year to come to terms with the experience.

Seeing People, not just Symptoms

On the one hand, there is genuine interest and a sincere understanding of the need to expand the horizons of mainstream medical thought. As one of the doctors on the panel pointed out to me, quite passionately, people don’t come to the hospital with just one, neatly defined illness, they come with multiple problems. And this is where medicine fails. This is why they know they need to look for holistic ways of treating real people with complex problems. Medicine isn’t very good at juggling multiple conditions. It is a reductionist way of looking at problems: let’s break it down to the smallest detail and then treat symptoms at that level. Hey, some symptoms can kill you, so we should all be grateful that so many smart people have dedicated themselves to saving lives by figuring out how to control symptoms.

But if all you do is control symptoms you’re missing the point. When people have lots of symptoms from different conditions the symptom management model. The more medications someone is on, the more the possibility of side-effects. Most medication doesn’t make you better, it just controls symptoms and may create stress on the body that keeps it from healing on a deeper level. You can get into a vicious circle of dependency on medication that keeps you from healing so that you need the medication permanently rather than to just get over a temporary problem. Plus, by the time you have a lot of symptoms, it becomes really hard to figure out what the real problem is. And you end up prescribing more medication to control the side effects of the first medications.

So it was great to find that kind of clarity about both the challenges that face medicine and the need to incorporate other strategies. And about 300 people showed up – doctors, students, therapist, and interested members from the general public. So what was my problem?

Politics are Everywhere

Here’s part of the delay in writing about this. Although the reception to my lecture was very favorable overall, there was one exception. Part of me wanted to ignore this part of the experience and just report that it was all awesome, but my New Year’s resolution is to be as authentic and real as I can in every aspect of my life, including business.

After I finished the lecture and did a few demonstration Accunect sessions, I opened up the floor for questions. The first question was not really a question it was a long negative comment. Well, to be perfectly honest, it was a rant. The former director of the hospital objected strenuously to the presentation of something that was so novel and outside the normal parameters of western medicine and not backed up by statistical studies. I might have been more flustered except for the fact that his comments were so over the top that it was almost ludicrous – the longer it went on, the more I just wanted to laugh and say “Really?” As I later learned, the hospital director is appointed by the ruling political party rather than being a position that it is filled according to experience and merit. So the whole thing was a political drama between a disgruntled loser and the current administration. Let me hasten to add, that I say loser in a literal sense, not as a character judgment – the fellow in question literally lost his job in the last political election.

On a positive note, the panel that had invited me to speak effectively put the nay-sayer in his place. But it was still kind of sad and embarrassing that politics marred the sincere efforts of true visionaries to broaden the horizons and to pave the way for integrative medicine. And even though political structures vary by country, politics affects medical policy everywhere, and that is what I have been reflecting about.

On another positive note, I have had more medical doctors train in Accunect in the short time (3 years) that I have been teaching it than I ever had study BodyTalk in the 10 years that I taught that system. And I am happy to say that every single medical doctor who has trained in Accunect is using it in their practice, which is a nice change from the previous ten years. So I know that Accunect does and will play a role in the future of medicine.

But it’s good to learn from experiences, and I have been reflecting on my experience at the lecture. I thought it was a really good experience, and a generally well-received lecture, but what could I have done better? What would I change in hindsight? Is there anything I could have done that might have side-stepped the political drama?

In hindsight, I think I spent a bit too much time on explaining the science behind Accunect. Accunect is the most scientifically valid approach to healthcare in existence, but that doesn’t mean it’s the way to explain it. As I processed it afterwards with Carlo Torazzi and Riccardo Torazzi, who have organized all the Accunect classes in Italy and provided the connection for the hospital lecture, I realized that maybe I was too attached to proving that I was a good scientist. And I am a scientist by training and education, I graduated with top honors, and I was raised in a family of scientists.  Carlo wondered (gently, bless his kind-hearted soul) if I may have been trying to make my parents proud of me by giving an overly intellectual lecture about the scientific basis of Accunect. Guilty as charged. I should know by now that features don’t convince people, benefits do, and focusing too much on the science invites people into their left-brain, analytical part of their mind where we look for problems, instead of into their hearts where we look for truth.

I had a chance to process it further this last weekend in Montana – one of the students in the class is a former hospital administrator, and I discussed the experience with him. One of his comments was essentially to be careful not to get caught up in competing directly according to medical standards – essentially don’t get trapped into playing their game. Because medicine isn’t really ruled by scientific principles, it is an industry ruled by economic forces. And the big players have the money to fund statistical studies that make it all seem scientific. We can’t win against big money at their own game – we need to sidestep their game completely and be seen through different eyes.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics

Disraeli said that, and I agree.  And this brings me to why I emphasized the part about not being backed up by studies above. As soon as the primary focus becomes too focused on the science, it invites comparison to medicine, which is perceived as scientific because it is “supported” by research and statistics. And I don’t want to go there. Why don’t I like statistical studies? Any number of reasons, including:

• You can’t do them for energy medicine.
  • You can’t do a double-blind study for obvious reasons
  • We don’t apply the same “treatment” for everyone with the same condition – everyone gets a unique, completely personalized balancing for their individual needs, even if they have similar symptoms.
• Don’t like the company.
  • Most medical studies poorly constructed with inadequate controls
  • Most of them reflect an inappropriate bias – data which doesn’t fit the desired result is often excluded
  • I’m not the kind of scientist who can throw out results I don’t like to fit a curve.
  • Funding of medical studies isn’t impartial.

It’s really hard to construct a study with valid methodology, which is why so few qualify as good science. Read more about the challenges in the British Medical Journal. Some estimate that as little of 1% of medical studies report accurate findings – read more here.

Studies will never prove anything, or change anyone’s mind. What changes people’s mind is trying it and having it work for themselves or for their patients. I’ve worked really hard at making Accunect simple, fast, and powerful. Because it is easy to learn and fast to do, doctors and other humans have time to try it and see changes, and that’s how it will grow and play a larger role.  One of the points I made at the lecture is that because Accunect is safe and super fast, it is appropriate to allow it to be included as an adjunct, so that clinicians get practical experience with it. I should made that point stronger by not focusing on so many other points.

Over-emphasizing the scientific principles behind Accunect makes it sound too medical and invites people to look at it the wrong way. I felt that BodyTalk grew too slowly because it was too left-brain in both practice and explanation, causing it to be too hard to learn, and to be too easily misperceived. That’s a mistake I have been trying to avoid, and I thought I had learned that lesson. In truth, I got carried away with the idea of presenting a scientific lecture at a big hospital. Sometimes you need to learn a lesson again to learn it better.

What Now? Or Keeping It Simple

The experience of giving the lecture was cool, in spite of my ruminations here on what could have been better. It was a great opportunity, it was a big event, there was a lot of enthusiasm and I’m really glad I went. I think it is really exciting that there is enough interest in the medical world to sponsor a lecture about cutting edge energy medicine at a major hospital. And through my reflection process (okay, let’s be honest and call it perfectionism) I’ve found a new commitment to first principles and keeping it simple.

What we can say about Accunect that can allow it to be used in hospitals and other medical environments is that it helps to reduce stress. Any more specific health benefit claims beg for research or studies to back them up with studies before including them. Fortunately, this is enough to say. This is really all there is to it:

• The body is able to heal itself
• The body is run by the nervous system
• The nervous system is run by the mind
• Stress distorts the mind and nervous system, creating physical imbalance
• Negative beliefs and perceptions create negative emotional states and stress
• No healing happens without changing our mind
• Hence all true healing is spiritual healing.
• Accunect promotes healing by relieving stress
• Accunect relieves stress by balancing the bodymind at an energetic and emotional-spiritual level

The Philosopher Physician

In the old days, great physicians in both the East and West were also philosophers because they recognized the need to treat the whole person, not just their body or just their symptoms. Somewhere along the way, the power of antibiotics, anesthetics and other drugs brought on by advances in chemistry seduced us away from this basic truth.

Controlling symptoms can be useful, but it is not healing. I come away from the experience with a clearer commitment to being a philosopher physician for the 21^st Century. To promoting the idea that to truly heal, we need to address the whole person on all levels, including the emotional and spiritual aspects. To being a spiritual healer because that’s how true healing happens.

One of my students this past weekend reminded me of a lecture I gave in Santa Monica years ago that shifted her whole perspective on health because I started it by saying that I was in the miracle business. And she thought, “that’s a business I can get excited by.”

The idea that the mind can heal the body is the most scientifically verified fact in medicine.  AND it’s a miracle.

So as we begin 2015, let me introduce the new and simpler me:

I’m a spiritual healer.

I help people heal their mind and body on all levels.

I help people with their limiting beliefs about themselves and how those thoughts are held in their body’s energy field.

I help people heal their life and their body at the same time because they are connected.

I teach other people to do spiritual healing, because it’s easy to learn, and a lot of people need spiritual healing – way more than I can reach by myself.

I’m in the miracle business.

I practice Accunect.

I’m so excited – I have been invited to speak at Ospedale Molinette, the central hospital in Torino, Italy to present how Accunect can be used as integrative medicine alongside mainstream healthcare. The lecture will be on December 4th and will be presented to a large audience of doctors, therapists, and students.

This is super exciting for me and a huge validation of what we were aiming for in the design of the Accunect curriculum.  We kept Accunect simple and easy precisely so that doctors and other busy professionals could actually include the techniques in a normal office visit. A nice bonus of this approach is that is easy to learn, and of course anyone can learn it in a weekend. The bottom line is, if a technique takes too long to learn and master, or if it takes too long to perform, then it is effectively unusable by practitioners who are busy and hence have limited time with each patient. Our company Future Medicine Today, because we want this work to part of medicine at all levels in the future and to truly be part of the future of medicine, Accunect has to be usable by even the busiest of professionals.

I’m very grateful to Carlo Torazzi and Riccardo Torazzi for bringing Accunect to Italy. They have both trained as Accunect SelfCare Instructors and and have both taught SelfCare as well as organizing Accunect Connect and Zoom – in Italian! This particular invitation has come through the efforts of Dr. Elisabetta Soro, who has taken both Accunect Connect and Accunect Zoom, as well as Accunect SelfCare. She has found that she is able to integrate Accunect into her practice with great results. I’m going to be presenting the principles and scientific basis of Accunect, as well as practical ways that busy healthcare professionals can include Accunect balancing as part of their routine patient care.

I will also be talking about the utility of referring to Accunect Practitioners for more in-depth balancing. This is where the Accunect Practitioner Certification program will play an important role. By defining standards of professional practice, we can create an environment where Accunect is accepted with the medical profession as an integral part of holistic care. I’ll be moving the certification program from soft launch to active signup shortly – look for a launch announcement soon.

Grazie!

Thanks for all the feedback on this post – see notes at the bottom of post.

I’m passionate about getting what I do and teach accepted by a wider public including the medical community. So I’m pretty strong about saying intuition is great, but not perfect – so let’s be careful what we use it for. Recently I encountered some noticeable resistance and anger to my lecture on muscle checking for supplements and I realized that my short version is easily misunderstood. Thank goodness for people who have the courage to come up to me and say they disagree, because now I’m thinking there might be other students who have misunderstood what I really mean on this subject – hence a blog post because this is a really important topic.

For Accunect to be the future of medicine it needs to integrated into all levels of healthcare. One of the things that means is encouraging people to be responsible about muscle-checking. I’ll admit, one of my pet peeves is people using muscle checking to prescribe herbs and supplements for themselves and others without proper training. But I realize that some people think I am against all supplements. Not true!

I have four years of training in Chinese herbs and I take a few vitamins, minerals, and herbal preparations as a part of my health maintenance.  I don’t take a lot of supplements, but I do like to take some. Properly used they can be a great tool for improving health.

So how did I get so misunderstood? I merged too many topics at once.  The whole discussion of or not supplements  are useful or harmful in a given situation is a topic all by itself. I mixed it up with the ethics of how they are prescribed, and the ethics of intuition and muscle-checking. Let me try to address the subject by answering some basic questions:

Can supplements be super, incredibly useful and healthy?

You bet. We all know someone, maybe ourselves who have been really helped by herbs, vitamins, minerals, or other supplements. Sometimes it can seem like a miracle.

Can supplements be harmful and counterproductive?

Absolutely.  Take too much colloidal silver for too long and your skin will turn blue for the rest of your life. Your brain and liver will also turn blue for the rest of your life. I’ve also seen people taking literally handfuls of supplements in terrible health – they started to get better once they scaled back on the number of pills they were taking.

Media and marketing leads us towards the idea that there’s a pill for everything. We get bombarded by ads for drugs and supplements constantly. It’s a huge industry and a lot of “health food stores” devote most of their floor space to supplements. But our digestive system is designed to process food, not pills, and at some point you just overstress the digestion by adding more pills. Just because a little might be good doesn’t mean that more is better. Interestingly, in some countries the people working the counter in a shop that sells supplements are trained naturopaths, a far different standard than what we have in the US.

 So how do you know when they are helpful or harmful?

You could go to school and get a degree as a Naturopathic Doctor.  Or you could study to become a certified nutritionist. That would be respecting that tinkering with the chemical balance of the body should not be taken lightly. I know other practitioners who don’t have license level training in supplements, but have taken professional training courses in using supplements or supplement ranges – that’s a commitment. To think that all we need to do is muscle check to see if something is good or not is not an acceptable alternative. Look, I do realize that some people use muscle checking for selecting vitamins and herbs for themselves and do it fairly well – they are pretty conservative. But I see way too many people self-prescribing supplements that end up taking way too many pills and stressing their digestion as a result. I also understand that when people don’t feel well, they are desperate for something to make them feel better – and this makes them get “yes” answers to too many supplements.  But that doesn’t mean I approve of or encourage self-diagnosis using muscle checking. And if I am to work towards more acceptance of Accunect, and more acceptance of intuition in health care, I’ve got to stand for proper standards.

Muscle checking is not a test. It’s a way of checking intuition. Intuition is cool. Intuition is useful. Often intuition is amazing. But it is not perfect. We will never gain acceptance widely as long we imply that our intuition is perfect. But intuition is useful, so this is not a black and white thing. At the risk of making the discussion more complicated, here’s some thoughts on specific questions:

Have I ever used muscle checking when prescribing herbs?

Partially. I have used it to get an intuitive answer about which of several formulas might be better for someone. But this is intuition adding to and refining my professional training. I’ve never given a formula solely on muscle-checking – I’ve made sure that I can justify the prescription based on symptoms, pulse diagnosis, etc. And after the patient has left, I’ve studied the formulas in more depth to understand if and why the “intuitive choice” was actually the best.  Often, the “intuitive” formula really was best. Sometimes, the intuitive choice wasn’t actually right, but it gave me an insight that helped lead me to selecting a different formula altogether that was a better fit. It’s just not as simple as right or wrong.

Have I ever used muscle checking to self-prescribe anything?

Another partial yes. I sometimes use muscle checking to decide to take a supplement or herb on a particular day. But the vitamins and other supplements that are in my cupboard have all been recommended by my naturopathic doctor or by my medical doctor. That’s different than going to the health food store and testing lots of different supplements that I have heard about or read about.

The bottom line:

Intuition can only be used carefully if at all in prescribing anything. Intuition has to be supported by professional training and knowledge. Intuition may provide insight, but the decision to actually prescribe anything should be supported by professional training and knowledge.  If you aren’t someone who is trained to prescribe supplements, you shouldn’t start doing so just because you know how to muscle-check to access intuition. If you are trained to give out supplements, make sure you are using muscle-checking to generate insight, not to replace your professional assessment skills and judgement.

 Comments?

Did this discussion help you? Was it too long? Let us know your thoughts at office@futuremedicinetoday.com

Update 14 October 2014

Thanks for all of your emails in reply to this post. We don’t have comments turned on, because of all the spam posts that come in if comments are on.

A lot of you really liked the clarity of the explanation and how it gave you a professional way to say no to requests to “check” supplements. A LOT of people reported that they felt like they had been given wrong supplements through muscle checking and thought this was a balanced discussion.

Only one person said that they thought muscle-checking was valid, but qualified that support with the idea that the more “clear” you are, the better your answers. That’s kind of true. Some people get reasonably neutral answers much of the time. But since it is always intuition, there’s always a chance that you are wrong. The real question is: how do you know when you are being “clear” enough. Even if your answer is “right” there may be other guidelines that you could only know with training. For instance, are there any contraindicated foods, herbs, supplements or medications in combination? If you don’t know, you can’t advise properly.

Intuition is great, but not reliable:

Here something to think about: how com you never see a headline like “Psychic wins lottery!”?

– Jay Leno

We didn’t go away, we just moved. Across the country.

Our residence and the Future Medicine Today office have moved to Connecticut.

If you’ve been trying to reach the office, please don’t give up. The office has been mostly non-existent for nearly a month, and not very responsive leading up to that. But we are now moved and will be catching up on correspondence over the coming weeks. Hopefully we can get caught up soon, but if you have an urgent request or question, call us at +1 303-442-5222 (the phone actually rings again now) or email us at office@futuremedicinetoday.com.

We’ve had a very difficult year personally, and that has already impacted on office operations. So it’s been an awkward time to move, and our apologies to everyone wondering what happened to Future Medicine Today.

But we really felt for own well-being and for us to continue our work in bringing Accunect to the world we needed to be in a good place for us. Boulder is a great town and on paper a likely place to launch a cutting edge energy medicine system. But we had so many challenges in so many different areas of life and work there we had to accept that it is not a great town for us. After a lot of research and discussion and a bit of intuition we settled on New England and specifically Connecticut.

There’s a never a good time to make a big move, but we really felt like we had to move now. As hard as it has been on continuity, it would be worse later. We are modernizing the website and our systems to support other instructors in the near future, and it will only get harder to move later when we have more people to serve.

It’s been harder than we thought trying to sell our house in Boulder, find a place to live and a place to run the office from in Connecticut. And then actually move home and office across country before school started. But we are here now. Here is Ridgefield, Connecticut – full address at end of post below.

A few words of advice to our community :

Students: If you need information about upcoming courses, or have questions, watch the website for new postings and keep trying to call or email.

E-course students: Check your email for updates today and over the coming weeks.

Coordinators: If you think we are supposed to be finalizing an upcoming course, we probably are and need to talk. I’ve scheduled some of you in for meetings, but reach out and be proactive: email us again.

SelfCare Instructors and Instructor Trainees: We are working on a new website portal for you and there will be some policy updates coming soon.

Patients: A lot of people haven’t been rescheduled because of uncertainty of timing of move. We will contact you soon to reschedule, or email us for a time. New office hours for appointments are Tue, Wed, Thur from 9am to 4pm Eastern time (minus lunch time)

Finally, a big thank you to Christi Stone, who helped us for much of our time in Boulder. Due to our move, she is no longer working in the office and she will be very hard to replace. Until we can find the right person locally here in Connecticut, I (Ka’imi) will be answering the office email account.

Our new mailing address is
Future Medicine Today
54 Danbury Rd #347
Ridgefield, CT 06877

New Office hours: M-F, 9am-4pm Eastern time zone

The rest is still the same:
Phone: 303-442-5222
Fax: 303-993-3065
Primary email: office@futuremedicinetoday.com

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”  -Marilyn Monroe

What if there was a war overseas and you signed up to serve your country and then you got there you were told you could never go home from the war? That would be cruel, inhuman, unjust and unfair. For many veterans, that is exactly what happens. Their body comes home, but their nervous system stays at war. It’s like never really coming home. It’s hard to re-adapt to normal life, to come out of fight or flight mode, to feel safe, secure and able to focus on relationships, getting a job, and building a life when your nervous system believes you are still at war. For some the journey back home is only terrifically hard. Unfortunately, for too many it seems impossible and they give up on life when everything they try fails.

The need to help veterans make this transition is huge, and I’m very honored to have been invited to present Accunect Connect for the veterans community. Accunect is a very powerful tool for releasing deep emotional trauma and balancing the bodymind on all levels to come back to stability and health and the potential to help veterans with Accunect is exciting.  The course is being organized by Pathways for Veterans, a national organization that helps veterans to heal and to reconstruct their lives. They have a powerful vision of hope for veterans by helping them find their path to health and wholeness through creative programs in many areas.

I’ve worked with some veterans in the past and I know this work can help. Accunect was developed to address the root causes of disease – which in traditional Chinese Medicine is mostly emotional trauma. Over my many years in practice I’ve really seen that underneath the most difficult physical and psychological problems is deeply held trauma. Often this is in the form of abuse or other severe emotional trauma from childhood. Since children don’t have the tools and maturity to deal with these traumas, they just become imprinted on the nervous system. The patterns of stress underlying disease aren’t conscious choices, they are reactions coming from deep within the nervous system.  For veterans, the stress and trauma comes in adulthood, but it is so intense and so unrelenting that it makes a deep and lasting impact on their psyche and their nervous system.

These kinds of stress are difficult to address using talk therapy for that reason. To get powerful shifts in these patterned responses you need to balance the whole bodymind to change the automatic responses – no one decides to jump at a sudden noise, it’s a nervous system reaction. You have to balance the nervous system, as well as the acupuncture meridian system in order to break the cycle.

It’s not just me that gets results with mental and emotional issues – the system works for everyone. Here’s a testimonial from Accunect student Gary Niki about his results using Accunect shortly after taking the class to help a client battling depression:

“Recently, during a bout of depression, I met with Gary Niki, who performed a procedure called Accunect Connect on me, a process in which one identifies “what is ready to shift” and then, through simple movements, helps that shift occur. Gary then showed me how to perform the procedure on myself. The results were amazing. Within about a minute of performing the movements, I felt something ripple free from my heart center. I continued to perform the movements and, as I did so, laughter repeatedly bubbled up. What an amazing shift from the feelings of despair and irritability I had been experiencing before beginning this process–and so fast. In just minutes I felt much lighter and happier. I can’t thank Gary enough to introducing me to this incredibly simple yet profoundly effective technology.”
–Marlis McCollum

Here’s the details about the class:

Where it will be:

Pathways for Veterans
5932 Beech Ave
Orangevale, CA 95662

Who is it for:

• Veterans
• Family members of veterans
• People who work with veterans
• People who want to help and serve veterans

How to register:

Pay at Pathways for Veterans Events Page
Email Ramona Rivers to confirm registration

The class is coming up soon, so sign up and be part of it. Or if you know someone who might be interested, please forward this email to let them know about this great opportunity.