Birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?

Rose Kennedy

I knew about Dr. Klinghardt for many months before being diagnosed in his clinic with Lyme Disease. I watched well over a dozen of his video lectures and read his protocols, notes, what others said of their experiences with him and I also read notes that others took of his lectures that were not recorded. I read everything I could find. Of course I am only one of many to follow this path after first hearing about Dr. Klinghardt and his methods and teachings for healing.

Like the many before me, learning about energy medicine was life-changing. For most, it often confirms what we intuitively know; we are powerful, we are interconnected, healing is nuanced. For some there is also a recognition or “deep knowing” of what it means, but for me it still felt like a distant and abstract concept for a long time. I grasped for months to get it.

When my Igenex lab test revealed “Lyme” I welcomed the diagnosis. At the same time, however, I also rejected it. That duality, the very polarity of it, helped me during treatment to show up for the work, while rejecting labels, “chronic”, “disease”, “no cure”. And while I was self-conscious about owning symptoms and talking about what my labs said about “me”, I didn’t understand at the time why.

I think there are many of you that can relate to this. Sometimes you need to talk about your symptoms but many times the experience can feel depleting. There is a scientific explanation for this; this goes back to the energetic nature of all things. On some level I intuited this. But I was mostly just stubborn. Regardless, it served me well.

Being ill or challenged in some other really big way creates space to be with soul work that can be life changing for some. It was for me. The more “awake” we are, the more aware we are of the many ways we continue to be triggered in the world, the more we also get to own our stuff and then deal with it. We also get to see how brave we actually are. There is power that comes from surviving moments in our lives where we feel powerless. Owning our brokenness and our power opens us up to this new way of looking at the world which allows us to love one another with more grace, authenticity, compassion and understanding.

That is what illness did for me.

So with a “Lyme Treatment Update” (you can substitute any life challenge) I like to start here.

The quality of our relationships with others might improve as a result of the soul work that comes with an illness or life challenge.

We may cultivate forgiveness for ourselves and others.

We may become a better steward of the earth and it’s habitants; plants, animals and people when we understand firsthand the fragility of life.

I know a lot of YOU have experienced powerful shifts in your life as a result of the challenges in your lives. This story is not about Lyme Disease, it is about sharing experiences so that we can help each other. What is your story? How has your life changed from as a result of the hard life challenges you have experienced?

Treatment Update

Where the Magic Happens – We love our doctor!

My daughter and I visited the Seattle area mid-March. Her second surgery for another wisdom tooth extraction was the following morning with Dr. Panahpour. We spent the remainder of that day at The Sophia Health Institute and returned three more days to check-in and refine our protocols.

Chaleigh is responding well to treatment. After her last visit three months ago, she returned to work full-time and found her passion; working with children. She also returned to school this semester to finish her degree. So much has happened in the last year. It is extraordinary to witness the transformation in her. Her commitment was huge and she has been unspeakably brave. She is also ridiculous and fun and loving and sweet and wonderful.

My healing is happening alongside hers, with bumps in the road, but progress. Today I am blessed to be able to run a business while also supporting my daughter and her treatment in addition to my own. We have both come a long way! Yay!

Other notes on treatment:

• Dr. Bruce Davis at the Center for Structural Medicine is working with me and Dr. Panahpour on a dental splint I am wearing to help reset my cranium. It is one of many unsexy things I have done on my path for healing but I am already a huge fan of this work that supports the brain and nervous system.
• My doctor started me on Designs for Health’s Neuro Calm – I have been sleeping much better since I started using it last week. Although I have used many of the ingredients at one time or another, this particular combination is outstanding My doctor says she is having amazing results with it with many of her patients.
• Never underestimate the power of earthing, movement, sunshine and observing nature. If the best you can do is sit on your porch and really observe the nature in your surroundings, then I hope you will do it. I have to relearn this often. This week our doctor insisted we go out and enjoy the sunshine with a short walk. We did so reluctantly and thanked her generously the next day.

That about sums it up! Although, for the sake of your future travel plans, Pharmaca in WA. is an amazing place to shop for gifts. Seriously. Beautiful journals and books, water bottles and stationary, cosmetic bags. (Okay, now you see how super cool I am!)

Chaleigh and her “twin”  Dr. Sarah at The Sophia Health Institute. Dr. Sarah will soon be helping Dr. Klinghardt.

On our way home back to Austin!

Before boarding, in the longest and slowest security line ever, Chaleigh attempts to cheer me up!

And the final gift of the trip… realizing we are both reading books that acknowledge spirit and healing; hers assigned from a Medical Anthropology class and mine picked up in aforementioned pharmacy. (Pictured: Instant Kava!)

I stopped on page 11 “accidentally” because I felt such a wonderful shift in consciousness from even those first few pages. I wasn’t sure how long I had lost track of time so looked at my phone. It was 1:11. The Magic in Serendipity. I don’t know much at all about numerology but I have learned recently there is something special the number 11 so I am happy when it shows up.

Where is there magic in your life? 

Sending you lots of sunshine and love!

Stacy Shuman

As Dostoyevsky’s Prince Myshhkin asked, “What if it is a disease? What does it matter that it is an abnormal tension, if the result, if the moment of sensation, remembered and analyzed in a state of health, turns out to be harmony and beauty brought to their highest point of perfection, and gives a feeling, undivined and undreamt of till then, of completeness, proportion, reconciliation, and ecstatic and prayerful fusion in the highest synthesis of life?”