Autie

My Passion

2012-01-03T05:38:00.000-06:00

As my wife lies in bed waiting to fall asleep she often listens to a CD, usually by Dr. Wayne Dyer or Deepak Chopra. This early morning she was listening to Dr. Dyer. In one clip he mentioned that a passion cannot fail when you tell the Universe that that passion is really want you want in life. I had to agree wholeheartedly, and I agree that my passions followed suit. My thoughts took me back to the summer of 1993 when I was working as a Respiratory Therapist at the Porter Memorial Hospital in Valparaiso, Indiana. Since leaving the role as a heroic Emergency Medical Technician in my home town of Reading, Pennsylvania just ten months prior, I can’t say that I really had a passion. But one developed over time during my days in Indiana. When I saw that I had the potential, the level of care for people, the smarts and the guts, I knew what I wanted to be – a doctor. The question, though, was what kind of doctor. Yes, desiring to go to medical school was at the forefront. But situations and circumstances proved that this would be practically an impossibility to attain due to floundering past academia and the political games of acceptance into the program. But it was a passion, and that passion eventually did come to be. Six and a half years later, I graduated from Life University in Marietta, Georgia as a Doctor of Chiropractic.

Now that I achieved the goal I was very passionate about, there was no other goal in sight. I was a doctor, and now I had to put a shingle out and take care of people. It’s been almost twelve years now, and I must say that I’ve been, for the most part, unsuccessful in this end. Yes, we can point the finger at my autism. But we can point the finger even more emphatically at the fact that I had no particular passions. Since 2011 had been my most dismal year yet in business, I am vowing not to repeat the same lackluster pattern ever again. I had been thinking for several days now that I need a new direction. While I am actively pursuing getting skills evaluation done through a nonprofit organization called Autism Works, something else profound ran through my mind this morning. I have been developing a passion all along that only in the past four months have I seriously started to focus on more.

My thoughts took me back to one very important letter I wrote in late June of 1994. I was living in Georgia and was studying prerequisite courses leading to acceptance into the chiropractic program. I was quite an enthusiastic visionary as I handwrote a letter to Father Stephen Halabura, the Catholic priest who saw me growing up since the age of nine. In the letter I expressed how excited I was to be entering chiropractic school. But I also said something in the letter that was quite intriguing. I said something without even knowing why I said it. I predicted that it would be because of studying to be a chiropractor that I would be led to a greater purpose, my real passion. Although being a chiropractor would be a tremendous part of the picture in the end, something even greater would be presented to me that would eventually appear to be true calling. That “something” is what I discovered four years later when I met a lady named Betty McKeon. Under Betty, I learned the Usui System of Reiki As Taught By Takata. (There are many forms of Reiki which are Westernized offshoots of the original method taught by Hawayo Takata.) I had not heard of Reiki before. After studying both the 1^st and 2^nd Degree levels of this great healing art, I was fascinated by its vast number of applications. I felt that I was a more aware, intuitive chiropractor because of it. I even managed to attract a few Reiki clients over the years. But up to this point in time, Reiki was an “extra tool” that I made use of. It was not a primary passion.

Now all these years later, as I am going through a personal re-evaluation process, I’ve really been wondering to myself what it is in life I really feel good about. What will be that thing I do that brings about countless successes as I strive to do what I love so all else follows? Because of Betty, I not only learned Reiki, but my eyes were also opened to a great path of spiritual development. I studied the principles and practices of yoga, and I dove deeply into the piercing words of Swami Muktananda. I also came to love and appreciate the teachings of Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Caroline Myss. I came to know a higher realm of healing and of existence, a realm which they just don’t teach about in any medical or chiropractic school. While I was ecstatic about having much knowledge and ability to help people with their physical needs for healing, I came to realize that there was so much more. Because of Reiki training and what I learned from these other masters, I now have the tools I need to help people not only physically but also emotionally and Spiritually.

Physically, I can adjust the spine to restore proper nerve function, and I can order diagnostic lab work to measure and evaluate one’s health. But the emotional and the Spiritual realms are not to be discounted. They often are, though, because most people, including most doctors, don’t see the connection, the holistic integration, the existential whole. Emotional healing doesn’t pertain just to helping a person feel good. It has to do with helping people discover how feelings, experiences, and beliefs influence their decisions and how they can cause them to become stuck. Emotional “stuckness” eventually leads to physical manifestations in the form of illness. Spiritual healing doesn’t just pertain to helping one find a connection with God or a purpose in life. It has to do with balancing the chi energy that enlivens a person and helping to resolve conflicts with metaphysical aberrations (hauntings, possessions, paranormal conflicts, etc). Reiki is a massively powerful healing art that helps on ALL of these levels. I am just now beginning to refamiliarize myself with something that I’ve been in possession of for the past eleven years. Because of my awe and respect for this ability, it has now become my passion. THIS is what I was meant to do. THIS is why I am here in this world. THIS is what I have to offer as a healing practitioner.

Random Thoughts To Occupy My Time

2011-11-22T17:23:00.000-06:00

Usually my best writing is done when I start out with a blank mind and a blank page. In those moments, I just write whatever comes to my mind first. Everyone tells me I should be a writer. Well, this might be the only way it happens, really. Otherwise, I have to wait those very long intervals in between inspirations. But when I DO write, I end up saying something that hits home to someone, somewhere.

My latest attempt at being successful professionally will commence in about two weeks from now. It is a recycled idea from many years ago that has a more developed approach to it now. I will be advertising my hotel call services to all 45 hotels within a five-mile radius of my home/office. Both chiropractic and Reiki services will be offered. As my chiropractor, Dr. Joe Donahoe of Roseville, MN, said to me just today, “You never know where it might lead.” In order for doors to open, I have to knock first.

This past Sunday night I was listening to Joel Osteen’s TV sermon. Now I am not a “religious” person, but I find great spiritual encouragement in his rather non-sectarian messages. He said, “Be careful what you put after the ‘I am’ because that’s what will come looking for you.” It is a great message of hope and encouragement. All too often we focus on what we DON’T have in our lives while at the same time we are not thankful for what we DO have. I think one of the roles of karma is to help us to focus on what is here and now before we can enjoy and fruits of our labors later on. God only exists in the present. Memories of the past and thoughts about the future are merely pictures created in our own mind. Let’s take a look at the here and the now. Live in the moment. It’s the only way we can resolve our hangups about the past AND relieve any worries about the future in the same stroke.

I was reminiscing with a fellow firefighter on Facebook the other day about those seemingly glorious six months in 1981 when I was a firefighter, and how “office politics” caused me to be booted off the fire truck once and for all. I answered to that, “It was all good because it led to something better.” It was a real example of doors to opportunity opening simply because I knocked. To read the full story of what I am referring to, you can read my earlier post entitled “The Last Call.” While my message is about not living in the past, it is important to know that that which happened in the past is what shaped us into the person we are today. If what you are today is something you don’t like, then NOW is the time for you to change that. Today will be tomorrow’s yesterday. If the person you are today is a person of character and integrity, then you have your life events to thank for that. I am currently working on a book that I am co-writing with my wife Bianca about my life story and how, despite having autism, I got to where I am today.

Speaking of being successful despite having autism, I always say to people that NOT being diagnosed with autism when I was younger was the reason why I accomplished so much in life. Although I did everything the hard way, there was no one to tell me I COULDN’T do something. I never had a label, a naysayer, to hold me back. Whenever I give one of my autism lectures to an audience, I remind the parents and caregivers in the audience to never limit a child with autism. Yes, they will be learning challenged and socially challenged. But that does not in any way mean that they cannot reach their goals. They are JUST as capable as anyone else. They just have to figure out their own way around. Time is of the essence!

That’s all I can think of writing for now. My brain stopped thinking.

Myths & Facts About Reiki

2011-10-03T02:26:00.002-05:00

Last week a new Reiki client called me out of the blue to schedule a session. The result of that session left me with the notion that I really need to focus more on what is working in my professional life rather than on what is not. I guess you could call this writing a continuation of my previous post entitled "The 'Other' Calling," in which I describe how being autistic leads to a natural flair for being a minister. The one thing that my menus of health care services and ministerial services have in common is Reiki healing. Thus, it is the Reiki that will be my primary focus for promotion and advertisement from now on.

While many people reading this article may wonder what Reiki is, I will explain it in a nutshell for now. Hawayo Takata explained that Reiki means Universal Life Energy, and we are all composed of this energy. It is that force behind the flow of everything – healing of wounds, the circulating of blood, the flowing of water, the blowing of wind, etc. This energy can be used for healing. During a Reiki session, hands are placed in various areas on or over the body, front and back. There is no manipulation. The Universal Life Energy simply flows on its own accord to the areas where healing is needed. We all have this ability to some degree. With Reiki attunement and training, this ability is magnified immensely to where the results can actually be quantified and measured.

My deep appreciation and excitement for Reiki healing goes far beyond what can be experienced in the purely physical sense. Because of that connection that exists with the Universe, I feel obligated to be true to the original methods, teachings, and practices of what Reiki really is. Unfortunately, there are too many people out there, including Reiki practitioners themselves, that DON'T know what it is, just like that new Reiki client who came to see me last week who said that he was a trained practitioner himself. The "knowing" isn't based on ideas about techniques and teachings -- it is based on the experience of what Reiki can do for you. Those who abide by the founding principles and teachings are not only more knowledgeable, they are also more respectful of the energy and of the Reiki Masters (teachers) who originally developed this great healing art. The true Reiki healer does not let his/her ego get in the way. A high degree of respect automatically takes ego out of the equation. Lastly, and most importantly to the client or patient, the one receiving the Reiki healing will experience something far greater than anything they've ever felt before. The Reiki session ends up being an unforgettable, life-changing experience!

To continue, I need to make it clear that I am not a Reiki Master at this point in time. I hope to be someday. There are three different “levels” of Reiki practice. The 1^st Degree practitioner performs hands-on healing for physical illness and injury, and the 2^nd Degree practitioner is able to use Reiki for psychological and spiritual healing as well as being able to perform in-absentia healing and other metaphysical/paranormal applications. As far as being a healer goes, one is complete in their abilities at the 2^nd Degree level. The Master is one who is trained to attune and teach other practitioners. In the traditional method of Reiki, there are no other levels. The 2^nd Degree practitioner is given three symbols, or “keys”, to work with in their healing practice. The Master is given a fourth symbol which empowers them to empower others. In the traditional method of Reiki, there are no other symbols, and these symbols are NEVER revealed, never shared, and never discussed. To do otherwise, such as posting the symbols on a website or displaying them blatantly during a session, is an abomination to the tradition. Reverence for the energy is paramount.

I’ve been writing “the traditional method” quite a bit in this article. That is so that I can set it apart from the non-traditional, and often less effective, methods that have been, rather egoistically, developed since Reiki came to the United States. In that light, one who practices and respects the traditional method will be intimately knowledgeable of Reiki’s history. I am not going to tell the entire history here. That is for a true Master to teach. Reiki is NOT an ancient healing art that was “invented” more than 2,000 years ago. It was discovered, and gifted to, a monk named Mikao Usui in Japan in April of 1921. Because of the great work of developing and perfecting it, done by Chujiro Hayashi and Hawayo Takata, the original Usui System Of Natural Healing According To Hawayo Takata was born. It was not originally called “Reiki”. “Leiki”, later called “Reiki”, is the word that Usui used to refer to the actual energy. When Takata brought the teachings to the West in 1970, much to the dismay of the traditionalists in Japan, she trained 22 Reiki Masters in this traditional system of healing. Unfortunately, not all 22 of them kept true to the original teachings. They instilled their own egoistic ideas, creating their own methods, and mixed Reiki with other healing arts. THIS is what exists in grossly large amounts in this day and age. I once talked to a Reiki “Master” here in Minnesota who said to me that she “heard of” Hawayo Takata. I was appalled at the lack of knowledge and respect, which translates into less effective ability as well. I consider myself blessed to have been taught by the student of one of those original 22 Masters of the West who kept the teachings pure, unwavering from their origins. Because of the utmost degree of respect that I have for Reiki, I follow in their footsteps with great honor.

Perhaps the greatest myth that exists today about Reiki is that you can learn all levels in one weekend for only about a hundred dollars. This is far from the truth. It cost me $650 and more than three months of apprenticeship under my Master, Rev. Betty McKeon, to learn the intimacies of how Reiki works. You get what you pay for, and you receive what you are capable of handling. True Masters will have spent at least $10,000 and several years of apprenticeship under their Masters before becoming Masters themselves. True traditionalists will also know what their Reiki lineage is. Mine is posted on my website.

Shortly after I was trained in the 2^nd Degree, I had performed a successful spiritual cleansing of someone’s home which was haunted. When I was talking to a fellow member of a healing circle about the experience, she asked me how on earth I did it. Another person who was listening in on the conversation advised me that the person I was talking to was a Reiki “Master”. I figured that if she really WAS a Reiki Master she would have no need to ask. That just showed me that my Master was right about most people out there not practicing, and not even knowing about, the traditional method of Reiki, even though they staunchly think that they do. As for the new client that I performed a session on last week, his ego quickly disappeared when he experienced something profound during his session – a session that his own Reiki “Master” was never able to give him. He learned the depth and intensity of my respect for traditional Reiki. As I found out later from the person who had taken over the practice of my Reiki Master’s Master (Rev. Fran Brown) after her passing in 2009, my client’s “Master” was one of Takata’s 22 Masters that did NOT keep the teachings pure and destroyed what she was given with her own ego-driven ideas.

Another myth is that since all energy is the same one should not charge for their healing services. One of my Spiritual Teachers, Swami Muktananda, once said that it is not a bad thing if one’s healing practice is their livelihood as long as they are honest in their work. Yes, there are those like me who do this as a profession. In addition, those who are WILLING to pay for the service are the ones who know the true VALUE of what they are receiving. Therefore, they will certainly gain more from it. For people who have never experienced real Reiki before, and to give people a sample of my style, I will certainly offer a five-minute session at no charge. It is interesting to observe that people quite often experience something profound just during the sample! It is even more amazing what they walk away with after a full session. With me, a full session lasts an average of 75 minutes. On numerous occasions during the 13 years I’ve been practicing Reiki, I’ve had people say to me that even though they’ve had Reiki done to them before, they never felt the magnitude of powerful energy that they felt with me. That usually leads to a discussion about the difference between the nontraditional “Westernized” methods and the pure, unadulterated, traditional method, “the way it was taught and practiced in Japan,” that I use. There definitely IS a difference!

Two other myths about Reiki that make it out to be some kind of New Age hokey pokey game are the ideas that the practitioner is “clearing” the client’s chakras and that Spirit Guides are communicating with them and guiding them. The energy actually flows on its own accord, and its effects cannot be directed or predicted. Intuitive information does arise, unattributable to any kind of angelic or garish entities. On that note, I will share a personal view. It’s not just that the traditional teachings are more pure and potent. My Reiki Master told me that I was so connected to the energy that I was a natural. People who are autistic do seem to have a natural ability to be connected to the universe, the inspiration, that surrounds them. This is what I attribute my “natural” ability to. There is something transcendental about placing my hands on someone and experiencing the flow of energy. During the course of the 75-minute (average) session, intuition itself “speaks”, and I share the information with my client. Oftentimes it ends up being an Edgar Cayce-like experience. They learn something about themselves that helps them along in their quest for healing and positive life change. They walk away with something tangible they can use.

For more information about my Reiki healing services, please see my website at http://www.DrPatSuglia.com/reiki .

The "Other" Calling

2011-08-06T12:35:00.000-05:00

Although it’s been a couple months since I last wrote a blog post, I’ve been quite busy writing my book about being autistic. I’ve also been busier with planning and officiating wedding ceremonies, as it is that time of year. I don’t usually focus so much on my ministerial work in my writings, but in this blog post I will. In just two hours from now I’ll be officiating a wedding ceremony in this tourist town of Rice Lake, WI. When I woke up this morning, things started clicking in my mind. Becoming an Ordained Minister is something that occurred by happenstance way back in October of 2001. I didn’t really do anything with it until 2004, which is when I officiated my first wedding. Even my attempts at starting my own church fell flat simply because I wasn’t really motivated. But now something is different. Times have changed, and feelings have changed.

For the most part, I felt rather uneasy officiating weddings and performing other ministerial tasks. It wasn’t because I was afraid of being in front of crowds. I am not. Perhaps being autistic had something to do with it. And then this morning, as I lied in bed half-awake, this realization suddenly came to me:

The five points of being an autistic wedding minister:

1. You are a man of the cloth. Your social foibles are forgiven.
2. You are not building relationships, and these people will never see you again.
3. You will feel out of place because you are not part of this family. Don't worry about it.
4. You will be looked up to anyway because of your important role.
5. Regarless of the first 4 points, you are automatically considered trustworthy and may even become somebody's confidant along the way.

During yesterday’s rehearsal for today’s wedding, these points were very palpable. That which made me feel so uncomfortable in the past was suddenly a moot point.

These same points DO NOT apply to being a chiropractor. Since almost all people see chiropractors as either not "real" doctors or an "optional" piece of the puzzle, I am automatically under more scrutiny and am being judged more, a fact that I cannot afford being autistic. It’s not that I want to leave this profession. Those that know what I do say that I am a great healer (their words, not mine), thus I want to continue helping those who trust me enough to experience what I have to offer. It is just that since this part of my life has not panned out the way I wanted it to, perhaps, after eleven years of trying, it’s time to shift my focus.

When I was a very young kid, John, the kid I grew up with that lived next door to me, and I used to pretend that we were Catholic priests. We both went to Parochial schools and were very active in our churches as altar boys. We both became very close friends with our parish pastors. Now John lives in a seminary. While his goal is to become a priest, he of course balks at my having become a minister "for hire". In the end, though, it seems that we followed through, in our own ways, with that which had inspired us in our younger years.

For me, I see it as something different, yet at the same time not. I am still a healer. I’m just not performing in the "doctor" role at the moment. As an Ordained (Interfaith) Minister, I can still use energy medicine (Reiki) to hold healing sessions. I can counsel on a spiritual level. My service to the Heart (the hub in which God dwells) through bringing people together in wedding ceremonies, memorializing people at funerals , welcoming people into this world through baptism, or in other ways, is how I am serving humanity. This is a duty, and this is a most honorable CALLING.

Such food for thought.

Caveat Emptor

2011-05-28T01:44:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was killing some time at the Rosedale Center before it was time to go to the Autism Society of Minnesota’s Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder support group. I was browsing through books the health and wellness section at Borders when I came across a few books on autism. One particular book caught my eye. Its message said that autism is not a behavioral disorder but a disease that can be effectively treated. Next I saw that the book was written by someone who is a strong advocate for the “Defeat Autism Now!” diet program. That was quite a pshaw moment for me. If autism was THAT easy to take care of, then nobody would have it. Besides, I bet a lot of the people who I and my social worker/counselor know that tried the DAN! program to no avail would like to have a word or two with some DAN! practitioners and advocates. The truth is that not everybody that has autism has a gluten or a casein allergy. I don’t. Also, autism is NOT a disease. It is not even a behavioral “disorder”. It is a different-than-the-norm way that the brain is wired which affects the way people think, feel, interpret, learn, socialize, problem solve, and communicate. In the worst cases, it also affects one’s ability to be functional to any viable degree.

Unfortunately, there are people and “health practitioners” out there who are using autism as their marketing tool, as their way to market a product or service to a vulnerable niche. This may sound like an extremely harsh criticism on my part. After all, some people really ARE helped by the DAN! program and by other medical and alternative medical treatment programs out there. That is absolutely wonderful, and I love hearing testimonials about things that work. But, what irks me to no end is when people with clout take what helped them or their family member, get up on a lucrative soapbox, and market their story and product as THE solution for ALL people with autism. It just doesn’t work that way! This is why I am not an advocate of any organization that promotes one thing or, like the DAN! program does, promotes the latest thing to come along. So, since gluten/casein diets obviously don’t help EVERYone with autism, along came the mitochondrial defect theory -- a new soapbox to captivate an audience. Mitochondrial diseases do exist. But the people who have them have musculoskeletal disorders, not autism. People with autism can have mitochondrial diseases, and when this issue is addressed they do improve. But, like everything else, it is not a be-all-and-end-all answer.

These sometimes melodramatic pitches about “what helped my child will help everybody” or “what I have (or do) is THE cure” are why I am a practitioner of responsible functional medicine evaluation. Do I tell people I can help them? Sure! Do I promise people I can cure them? Absolutely not. Can I test you for food allergies? Yes. I can also test for mitochondrial disease, for heavy metal toxicity, for genetic defects, for impaired neurological development, for amino acid deficiency, for hormonal imbalances, and a whole lot more. I don’t just randomly throw you onto an arbitrary treatment and expect things to get better. My approach is very different. Unlike some “health practitioners” who do the DAN! program, chelation therapy, and maybe even hyperbaric oxygen treatments or some other theoretical workage all at once and with no apparent basis for some of them, my approach is extremely individualized, evidence-based, and conservative. And it comes without promises of a cure.

With that being said, I should point out some important news from the “other side”, from the perspective of the person that HAS autism. Many of US do not like being treated as a person with a disease, somebody who needs to be corrected or cured, nor do we like being looked down upon because we don’t “fit in”. We just want to be accepted AS WE ARE. My goal is not to “fix” your kid, your spouse, or you who don’t seem to “get it”. My goal is to help those who are least functional, are greatly challenged, or who really want to see what they can do for themselves and their overall health concerns, and to do so sincerely and with compassion. After all, I have autism too, and I DO know what your concerns are.

And Along Came Rocco

2011-01-10T15:35:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time, my wife Bianca would have never considered getting a dog. I would have considered getting one to be a companion to our future children. Those ideas all changed a couple years ago when Bianca's parents bought a dog. Their German Shepherd named Jumbo changed our hearts and minds. So, for the past couple years, Bianca and I had in the back of our minds the thought of one day owning a dog. This past June, I happened to be browsing the internet for puppies. I figured that we should get a Labrador Retriever because I heard that they were family-friendly. I happened to see on the American Kennel Club website that a breeder had puppies for sale. I was sitting at the computer looking at the listing, and I called to Bianca who was in the next room, "Do you want to get a dog?" The rest is history.

I decided to name our new puppy Rocco because it seemed like such an appropriate name for a male lab. It has a certain kind of oomph to it. Little did Bianca and I realize how Rocco would strengthen the bond between us and bring more stability to our frames of mind. While Rocco is a paramount source of stress relief for Bianca, he is also the avenue by which I can get out of my own head and show how capable I am of taking care of family responsibilities. Bianca says she never saw me happier than when I am spending time with Rocco. To tell you the truth, I never felt happier! In return, Rocco senses that as well.

It is no great surprise that animals have such a therapeutic effect on people. There are horse riding camps for disabled children. There are people who have their dogs and cats trained to be therapy companions and visit people in hospitals and nursing homes. There is even a type of psychotherapy called AAT, or animal-assisted therapy. Because of my own personal experiences, and seeing for myself the effect animals have on fellow audies, I cannot stress enough how vital having a pet is for ANYone.

I recently saw that there will soon be a study done that examines the unique connection between dogs and children with special needs. Being autistic, I am not quite sure why all the neurotypical people seem to think this “connection” is so unusual. It just IS. Bianca seems perplexed at how Rocco responds to me and at how I always seem to know what he is feeling and trying to say. While any observant person can figure out their pet’s nuances, Rocco and I seem to be able to communicate on a subtle, nonverbal level. It works pretty much the same way as the nonverbal communication, the emergence of intuitive insights, that occurs when I am caring for my patients. Feelings arise. Vibrations are sensed. No interpretations are required. This is why the appropriate responses, verbally and in actions, can be made. I don’t know how else to explain it.

This connection is not unique to me and Rocco. This is how it is for fellow audies too. Why? Because people with autism, and their pets, do not have the same judgments and subjectiveness as a neurotypical person would. Outcomes are based on synergy, not on egoism. Neurotypicals tend to react and respond to things from within their own biases. Autistic people, who tend to not get the social clues most the time, react and respond to things based on past experiences of what is and isn’t appropriate. But between the world of people with Autism Spectrum Disorders and the animal kingdom, there exists a rationale that cannot be defined or explained. Like I said previously, it just IS.

We never trained Rocco to ring a bell or bark by the door when he has to go to the bathroom. I can just see the look in his eyes. When I ask him if he has to go potty, either the deliberate blinking of the eyes or a bob of the head means “yes”. It never fails. When I am giving Rocco strict discipline, all I have to do is calmly tell him what isn’t correct without yelling “no”. It is much more effective. While these interactions may certainly exist between neurotypicals and their pets, there is something extra going on here, something on a deeper level. I should add here that Labrador Retrievers, by nature, are very smart. Because of Rocco's good nature, we plan on having him trained as a therapy dog. I can only guess that this same level of understanding would exist if Rocco was another breed or was another animal all together. My guess is that there would be. A fellow audie who owns several dogs says that this is the way it is for her and all her canine companions.

If you’ve ever read Dr. Temple Grandin’s works regarding how she can interpret animal behaviors, then you have seen a glimpse of what I am trying to describe. She can get into the animal’s head. Therefore, she can determine what the needs and the concerns of the animal are. In this way, she can come up with the best solutions. It’s what makes her a genius at what she does as an animal scientist and designer of ranches and slaughterhouses. I can never claim to be a “dog whisperer” or a master of beasts. I am just somebody, like my fellow audies, who pays attention to the subtleties in the air through which esoteric communication exists. For me, there is nothing to decipher, nothing to figure out; it just IS.

Neurological Complications With Autism

2010-11-28T22:49:00.000-06:00

Although many people consider autism to be a neurological abnormality, many of us audies do not agree. We say that it is what it is, and we just are the way we are. Still, we could have neurological problems along WITH being autistic. Yes, people on the lower-functioning end of the spectrum will probably always be debilitated. They may never be verbal or never be able to live independently. Yes, there are audies that have Fragile X Syndrome, mental retardation, or even seizure disorders. In this article, I will not be focusing on this group. Instead, I will mention things that people with autism experience that are less obvious at first glance. Recently, I have met fellow audies and parents of autistic children who shared with me the neurological problems they deal with. I identified with their concerns very well because I too have neurological problems which, in and of themselves, I would never have associated with autism at all.

When I was a young child, my physical developmental delays were quite noticeable. Over the years, though, I’ve learned to compensate for them, somewhat. At the age of five months, I had suffered from salmonella food poisoning. The 108° fever and the three weeks I spent in intensive care nearly took my life. Even the doctors told my parents I would not live. Although everyone considered it a miracle that I did live, I point the finger at this illness as the main cause of my neurological problems, and perhaps the autism as well. During the rest of my childhood, I learned that I would need to wear glasses the rest of my life because my eyesight was very poor. Uncorrected, my right eye sees 20/200 and my left eye 20/400. Although I have a 20% hearing loss in my left ear, I suffer from chronic tinnitus in my right ear. This baffled the audiologist I visited recently because she said that tinnitus should happen on the side with hearing loss, not the normal side! My arm and hand strength and leg coordination were noticeably weaker on the left side. Also, I had a chronically weak voice and poor fricative pronunciation. On top of everything, I have always had some sort of sleep disturbance especially from my junior year of high school on to the present day.

I was definitely a funny-looking and certainly odd acting creature when I was a kid. I wore Coke-bottle glasses until I was in 11th grade, which is when my parents finally found a doctor who was willing to prescribe contact lenses for me. I didn’t learn to sit up or walk during the normal times a toddler should be able to do these things. I also wore a brace between my shoes to correct my foot flare. I was the last one in my kindergarten class to learn how to tie his shoes. Because of my coordination problem, I had a habit of tripping and falling whenever I ran or played. Some of those falls resulted in me either breaking my glasses or needing a trip to the emergency room to get stitches. In order to strengthen my left side and improve my coordination, my parents started me in piano lessons when I was four years old. The years of piano training that followed definitely made a difference. They helped mostly because my teacher was quite a demanding, old-school classical pianist. I had seen a speech therapist when I was in third grade, and again when in my senior year of high school, to improve the quality of my voice. As for my hearing and my sleep disturbances, they are today the way they have always been. My brain has become accustomed to ignoring the chronic high-pitched ringing in my right ear, and my circadian rhythm is permanently set for me to be a lifelong night owl.

Because of my developmental delays and stunted growth, my parents would take me to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia every year for evaluations by an endocrinologist. When I was twelve years old, my annual visit yielded the discovery of a heart defect. I had a leaking aortic valve. Now the yearly visits switched gears from monitoring my stunted (but within normal range) growth to checking on the adequacy of the pumping of my heart. At the age of eighteen, the leak in my heart valve finally became so severe that I needed open heart surgery to correct it. As for my lack of coordination, I’ve learned to compensate over the years. Even though all those years of piano lessons as a child made significant improvements, you will still occasionally find me walking into people, furniture, and doorways. Because it’s not so debilitating these days, I just laugh when it happens.

Other health woes have challenged me throughout the years as well. From April 10, 1995 until October 15, 2009, I suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I remember the exact dates because you never forget the day you wake up with a life-changing illness, and the only thing that successfully brought it to an end, once and for all, was the occurrence of a tragic event. On October 15, 2009, I woke up suffering from a stroke. My entire right side was paralyzed from head to toe. The stroke was caused by a brain hemorrhage. Even though I spent four days in intensive care, I surprised everyone, including the neurologist who treated me, by being back to my old self again, with full-strength and energy, just six weeks later. Not only was I back to my pre-stroke self, I was back to my pre-Chronic Fatigue Syndrome self! In addition, all of the voice weakness that I still had for all these years was also gone! I did battle with bouts of insomnia, which is common for many stroke survivors to have for several months after a stroke. The insomnia was treatable with melatonin, and it eventually disappeared all together on the one-year anniversary of the stroke.

Because I recently found out about other people with autism who have similar neurological problems, I am wondering if there is a direct connection between such neurological conditions and autism. The neuropsychologist who confirmed my autism diagnosis with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale in July of 2008 agreed that my illness as an infant must have damaged my nerve system. One particular child I learned about recently has developmental problems almost identical to mine, yet never had such an illness. In that light, I feel that it would be appropriate to place such developmental problems on a parallel spectrum. On the lower end you have such things as Fragile X Syndrome, while on the higher end you have conditions milder than what I have. This would probably make a great subject for a survey or study.

Compromising, & Other Things That Work

2010-11-14T22:07:00.002-06:00

This article was written just for my fellow audies to read. As the sign on the treehouse reads, “No neurotypicals allowed.” However, you are invited to sit and watch from a distance, as you might learn something about the world we audies live in.

Compromising is a fact of life that anybody, audie or neurotypical, must deal with eventually in order to have a happy relationship. Whether it is a relationship between you and your parents, you and a coworker or boss, or you and a spouse, sometimes you just have to do what they ask in order for the team to accomplish its goals. Yes, we do like when things go the way we want them to, regardless of what other people think or feel. It’s not that we are selfish or obstinate, like the neurotypical world thinks we are. It is because of how very strictly we arrange the rules of our routines, the rules we live by. If you’ve read my post entitled “How I Pretend To Be (Somewhat) Normal,” you would see clearly how I sometimes just have to manipulate the rules in my head. When I give my autism seminars, I am always approached by a parent or caretaker about what to do about that loved one of theirs that doesn’t want to budge from their “bad” behaviors or ways of doing things. I guess it comes with age, but eventually you come to the realization that it is better to make the members of your team or family happy so that they can feel and know that you can contribute to this world. You just have to tweak the rules a bit.

So how does this happen? You know how you make rules in your head for every little thing? Your bathroom routine must proceed in a certain way. The way you start up your workplace for the day. The way you drive your car. The way you arrange your piles of papers. Everything follows a set of rules that only you can understand. Well, the key is this: In between each rule you have to insert a space. For example, as a rule I always shave right before I take my shower. Usually, I go right from shaving to taking my shower. Over the years, I’ve learned to insert a “space” between these two tasks, a space where interruptions and a change of plans is ALLOWED to happen. This lets me break away from the bathroom routine momentarily to do some yard work or feed my dog before going back to shower and continuing on with the routine as usual. This works so much better when your wife is adamant that the grass needs to be cut TODAY. Interruptions and change are inevitable. Compromising and doing this differently really are possible. Then you will receive lots of pats on the back for having been able to be more “flexible”. But you know, and so do I, that it was possible only because you were able to rearrange the rules!

I know that many of you have to take certain medications such as Prozac or Adderall. Anxiety and feeling that your mind is all over the place really take a lot out of you. Without these medications, it is hard to function, especially when you are expected to do so around a group of people. I know it’s not something you are proud of, but it’s also not something to be ashamed of either. Look at Temple Grandin. She has to take Prozac before she feels capable of being able to get in front of an audience to give one of her great speeches. But what if there was another way of doing things so that you don’t HAVE to take prescription medicines? In reality, there is. Even though you take only half the normal dose of those medicines because of how sensitive you are to changes, you may be just as responsive to the positive changes that the alternatives have to offer. I know this to be true firsthand. Although I’ve never taken prescription psychoactive medicines, I have taken herbal supplements instead. Did you know that 750 mg of St. John’s Wort is just as effective as 80 mg of Prozac, and has far less side effects? That’s what a study showed that was published in the November 1996 issue of the Journal of Natural Medicine. There are similar herbal alternatives to other types of medications as well, and it is up to you to try them.

But there is something that helped me far more than any herbal supplement. Well, actually a combination of things. First, you really need to go to a chiropractor and to visit him or her on a regular basis. If I go more than two weeks without seeing my chiropractor, my ability to communicate coherently, my concentration, and my hypersensitivities become worse. It is by having my nerve system free from interference, interference that happens when bones shift out of alignment and affect how nerves work, that everything in my body, including my brain’s ability to think, work better. In addition to this, I listen to my instincts, my own intuition. Many of my own successes in life are due to this. For many of us, this is not easy because we tend to doubt ourselves and become anxious very easily. What helped me to “tune in” more is practicing a formal type of meditation. By practicing meditation seriously, I can look past all the waves in the mind that make us feel “less than” and see what’s going on behind the scenes, so to speak. It’s a more insightful, “spiritual” if you will, way of looking at the big picture. These are ways in which I have helped myself to navigate the oftentimes confusing and exhausting neurotypical world. Even when reason and advice from neurotypicals seem to work against me, listening to my intuition ALWAYS produced the better outcomes.

Above all else, remember that everybody really DOES want the best for you. People aren’t out to “get” you. It may seem that way, more often than not. I know because I lived with this feeling for so many years. I had to see past this belief, and to see past my own feelings of inadequacy, before life really started handing me some great moments. There may be a troublemaker or two you encounter along the way. But on the whole, NOBODY is out to get you! There really is greatness within you and around you, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Sometimes you just have to sit there with pen and paper and start writing things down before you recognize them. Sometimes you just need to have a counselor or a mentor who points these things out for you. I myself see a very caring social worker who helps me to see things in a better light. It’s all a matter of perception, and we audies tend to feel like we are the bad guys in a good world; we are the cause of others’ misery. Everyone is indeed responsible for his or her own behavior, from the neurotypical who is a less-than-understanding crab to the person with an Autism Spectrum Disorder that points the finger at the fact that he is autistic when he makes a social blunder. If you want more insight into any of the topics I briefly discussed in this article, let’s get together and chat. All of these things that work that I mentioned here can certainly be topics in themselves for future articles and conversations. I’m an audie just like you, and I’m here to help!

Adverse Behaviors In Autism

2010-11-06T03:48:00.000-05:00

Every time I teach my autism seminar, I have at least one parent approach me with questions regarding adverse behaviors in their child, wondering how to deal with them while frustration mounts. The answer is always the same: “Be understanding, and be very patient.” By “adverse” behaviors, I am not saying that the autistic child or adult is being purposefully bad. “Adverse” simply means that the behavior is not congruent with the neurotypical (normal) ways of doing things. Stimming, outbursts, lack of eye contact, “headbanging” routines, defiance, anxiety, hypersensitivity, and panic attacks are all examples of adverse behavior. I like to explain that adverse behaviors happen only when the autistic person is expected to act like a neurotypical. In other words, they’re just part of the daily life of a person with an Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Most autistic people will have only one or two adverse behaviors. I believe my two are hypersensitivity and “headbanging”. These behaviors are only made worse when people such as my dad, when I was a child, and now my wife try to correct them. It’s just not going to happen! Headbanging is not to be confused with stimming, and I will explain the difference later. Stimming is the repetitive flapping of hands, hitting oneself, rocking, making annoying sounds, and so on. Stimming was a very common behavior in me when I was a child. I would bang my head against the headboard of my crib and constantly want to go full-speed in a rocking chair or rocking horse. I would also sing, horribly, at the top of my lungs while rocking. Stimming was how I found comfort in the world since everything and everyone around me seemed so intimidating. During my late teens and early 20s, there was defiance. I had no motivation to follow any path, to make any friends, to get anywhere in life. This is what I call my period of “shutdown”. I knew I was different. I felt that nobody cared because nobody understood. So I just wanted out. Thank goodness for one or two adult friends, I never did self-destruct. But it was definitely a sad and lonely time.

One thing that seemed so unusual to many people was the fact that I felt right at home when in front of a crowd. Maybe it was because I had been playing the piano in recitals ever since I was four years old? Whatever the reason, I displayed practically no anxiety at all. I loved assignments in college where I had to prepare a presentation to give in front of the class. I felt right at home playing the role of “teacher”. On the contrary, though, I do experience some level of nervousness when giving instructions on performing a particular skill, such as CPR. I feel most comfortable when I am disseminating knowledge. Because anxiety is very common in people on the spectrum, it is usually dealt with by taking psychoactive medicines such as Prozac and Zoloft. Even though people on the spectrum need only half the typical dosage, I must, as a doctor of natural healing, blow the horn of advocacy for safer ways of dealing with anxiety such as herbal alternatives (such as St. John’s Wort), meditation, yoga, energy medicine, and chiropractic care (particularly upper cervical specific).

Hypersensitivity is also extremely common among people on the spectrum. Hypersensitivity doesn’t just mean being more affected by the things people say and do, oftentimes taking too many things personally or the wrong way. It also has to do with sensory input and how it is processed, such as the lighting and sounds in a room, the feel of certain textures, fragrances, etc. If there are too many hypersensitivities at one time, sensory overload occurs. For me, this would cause me to go into “shutdown” mode. When I was a trainee on the ambulance squad, I was definitely hypersensitive to all the activities going on around me during an emergency situation. Therefore, I would always shut down and freeze up as if I didn’t know what to do. I certainly did know what to do. I just couldn’t multitask until I forced myself to learn how. That’s what overload can do to an autistic person, usually causing them to either have a panic attack or an outburst. My hypersensitivities are much more pronounced and devastating when I am unrested or unbathed for a whole day. Lack of sleep can make me fidgety toward things that normally wouldn’t bother me, such as listening to music or the TV, or even having my wife hover around me. Also, I could never ever leave the house for the day unless I’ve had a shower first. Otherwise, I feel as though I have swamp scum covering me from head to toe, and even letting my wife touch my hair freaks me out. Normally, though, I handle sensory overload by turning things off, such as the radio, TV, lights, or by ignoring the (unintentional) aggressor. Unfortunately, though, when I was working in the busy hospital setting during my days as a Respiratory Therapist, this meant that I would shut off my pager without even realizing it if I was concentrating too much on another task, such as taking a patient’s vital signs.

As for the “headbanging” routines, I define these as any task that is repeated over and over again without any purpose or without any results. While stimming equals repetitive actions, “headbanging” means actual tasks. Since making social and business-related contact with people is perhaps my weakest area in life, I figured that I would certainly get somewhere as an entrepreneur if I write a great brochure and send it out by direct mail to prospective clients. In the eight-plus years I’ve been making brochures, mailing lists, spending hundreds of dollars on postage, rearranging my website, and making poor attempts at cold calling, I never received a single client through these efforts. This unproductive dead-end of doing the same thing over and over again with absolutely no results was THE final straw that caused Bianca and I to start drifting apart. It was my sincere wish to pursue marriage counseling that finally brought me to the discovery that I was autistic, thereby forming a strong loving bond between Bianca and me.

So, in the end, how are parents and caretakers supposed to deal with adverse behaviors? How does Bianca deal with mine? She just does. There is no “right” or “wrong” to correct. Adverse behaviors are just part of being autistic. Such mannerisms add color to the world, as they are part of the autistic person’s nature. It would certainly benefit the autistic person to receive counseling from a psychologist or a social worker. I myself see a social worker simply to have somebody to talk to who can help me see things from a neurotypical perspective in a nonjudgmental way while accepting myself, autism and all, as I am. As I stated earlier, adverse behaviors happen only when an autistic person is expected to act like a neurotypical. It is necessary for the parent and caretaker to take away this notion of changing the person with autism. The autistic person needs to be accepted as they are. They may never be exactly the person you want them to be. But they will certainly be comfortable being themselves.

Living By The Rules

2010-11-02T01:26:00.001-05:00

There are different ways in which the autistic mind thinks and processes information. These different types are discussed in detail in the video "It Takes All Kinds of Minds" by Dr. Temple Grandin. No matter which kind of mind you are talking about, there is one thing that is common to all of them: all actions, reactions, and interactions are based on rules. Rules are made over time as things are categorized and differentiated. For example, Temple had to learn that not every piece of furniture that had four legs was a dining table. There are coffee tables, end tables, chair with four legs, flower stands, etc. As for me, living by the rules had to do more with how to do my job and interact with people rather than categorizing objects and animals. This led to a rather debilitating amount of cluelessness. This cluelessness could eventually be overcome only by observing results on the job and the reactions and feedback I would get from people. When the outcomes were negative, I'd think of how little my presence and my input was worth. When they were positive, I'd feel motivated to keep going.

A good example of how I learned something by forming rules was the job I had when I worked as a data trip record clerk for Penske Truck Leasing. One of my tasks was to enter paper reports that the drivers of the leased vehicles would fill out into the mainframe computer. On a daily basis, I would type between 150 and 300 reports, logging departure cities, destinations, mileages, fuel purchases, etc. To look at the piles and piles of reports left me feeling exhausted and disoriented before I even began. For the first few months I worked there, I was the slowest in a department of sixteen people. It wasn't because I didn't know how to type. I certainly could, and I knew computers well. I just moved very slowly, as I usually do before I develop a knack. Then one day I discovered something. As I was typing along, I could modify the way I typed to form certain musical patterns. I could form arpeggios when typing in the mileage column. I could bang out a quick tap-tap to enter in a state abbreviation. I would create similar genres for each column on the page. After forming these rules by which each bit of information could be easily and playfully typed, I went from being the slowest person in the department to the fastest! But it came with a price. The better I got at typing, the louder I hit the keys. Hearing the same mosaic banging over and over again all day long caused everyone around me to have headaches.

They say that one thing an autistic person cannot do is function in any job that requires a lot of distraction and multitasking. This is one reason why I am glad that I did not find out I was on the autism spectrum until I was in my late 40s, well after having become a successful ambulance attendant, fire police officer, and respiratory therapist. I would have surely been told that I could never accomplish any of these things because of how demanding they are had I been diagnosed early on. As a result, I pursued these interests and eventually learned how to excel at them, even moreso than many people of the people I worked with. I did it by forming procedural rules within my own head. It is one thing to practice and master being able to put a sling on somebody's broken arm in a classroom. It is a completely different situation when you are performing the same action when you also have three other victims of an accident to tend to, monitor their vital signs, take their health history, write a report, and then eventually regurgitate all this information to the emergency room staff. I could do all this only after months and months of making mistakes, eventually figuring out a set of rules that would "categorize" each action until they became second-nature. If a distraction would come along, as it always did, I would form a picture in my head of whatever task I was being pulled away from, thereby putting this task on "hold", so that I knew what I had to return to. For example, when assessing a patient with a collapsed lung, and then suddenly being asked to set up an IV elsewhere, I would envision myself with half a lung on one side in order to remind myself what task I had to go back to when I was finished.

Being prudent in social situations, though, took a lot more doing. There was no forming of rules. There was only figuring out what was acceptable and not acceptable by seeing the outcome, sometimes making enemies or losing “friends” along the way. In the book “Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships” by Dr. Temple Grandin and Sean Barron, rule #6 states “Not everyone who is nice to me is my friend.” Because I never had the ability to simply “fit in,” I had no idea what guys talk about or what is appropriate conversation and with whom. I found out the hard ways that it is not okay to assume that a woman is romantically interested in you simply because she talks nicely to you, even if she is married. I found out that it is not okay to repeat gossip in front of the gossip subject’s friends. I also found out that it is not okay to be mean-spirited when directing traffic as a fire police officer because the person you may be yelling at is an off-duty sheriff. It is also not okay to tell a young black female that you talk to all the time, and think that you know well, that she looks “yummy” in a photo shoot. That situation resulted in my losing the best part-time job I ever had. Because rules are people based, as rule #1 of the “Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships” states, and because you really never truly know somebody unless you have already broken an unwritten rule, living by the rules continues to be a major challenge. In that light, it is always safer for me to simply be silent and to be a loner. I have to know somebody very very well nowadays for me to even have a conversation about varying topics with them. I am far from being shy, although I have always been reserved.

The number one reason why forming any rules even happened is the fact that I had a mentor or somebody who gave me a chance. Without my boss Linda who always liked my demeanor at Penske Truck Leasing, I had job security. Because of Larry who was my ambulance driver and mentor with the former Governor Mifflin Area Ambulance Association in Shillington, PA, I learned how to be a darn good Emergency Medical Technician – one who eventually became a trainer of new EMTs for our squad. It is so very important for people on the autism spectrum to be in the company of people who believe in them. Once they have that, they can accomplish anything they set their minds to. Nobody should ever tell a person with some form of autism that they cannot accomplish their goals or fulfill their dreams. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I had accomplished feats and did tasks that people with autism are being told all the time that they cannot handle. I did it all by forming rules. What would have helped me even further was if I had somebody who taught me what the proper rules of social interactions are. Life would have been SO much easier for me! As for now, now that I know I am on the autism spectrum, I don’t worry so much about it. I know that there is a reason (but not an excuse) for the awkwardness.

How I Pretend To Be (Somewhat) Normal

2010-10-15T01:43:00.002-05:00

I am a visual thinker. If I need to remember important information, I think of a picture with details drawn in. I am also somebody who, like perhaps all people on the autism spectrum, learns by making rules. These two brain functions are what carried me through much of life when it came to learning new tasks and becoming more flexible in my thinking. If I was expected to change the way I do something and then eventually did, people would say, "See, you CAN be flexible!" In reality, it's not that I was being "flexible" at all. Instead, I was forming a set of sub-rules to a main rule. In the book Unwritten Rules Of Social Relationships, rule #1 states, "Rules are not absolute. They are situation-based and people-based." By making a rule "situation-based," I can appear to be flexible and can therefore pretend to be somewhat normal in society. Thinking in pictures and forming sub-rules are also how I learned very complex tasks, tasks which would seem impossible to tackle for a person with an autism spectrum disorder.

In the book Developing Talents, Dr. Temple Grandin states that one of the most improbable jobs for visual thinkers is to work as a nurse in a busy hospital setting. There is too much sensory input coming at you from all angles, and the multitasking that is required would be unmanageable. Between 1984 and 1986, I was a student at the now-defunct St. Joseph Hospital School of Nursing. I never made it through the program because I was unable to handle being in such an environment. My mind could only focus on one task at a time, and it was very slow at doing that. Even though I was at the top of my class academically, the program administrators said that I needed to drop the program. Back then, I did not know that I was on the autism spectrum, and testing I had done at the local rehab hospital did not pinpoint anything specific. This was before the days of there being any form of protection or accommodation for people with disabilities. Six years later, though, I did become a respiratory therapist. The training itself was slower-paced and specific. Therefore, I was able to get through it. But once I was working in the busy hospital setting, I saw how very very challenging it really was. I didn't spent a great deal of time in that setting before going off to graduate school to become a chiropractor.

Where I DID spend a great deal of time was being an ambulance attendant. Ten good years of being with the same squad, working with the same mentor, was the ideal situation for me. It was where I became quite proficient at being able to handle extremely stressful situations which required multitasking to be able to get anything accomplished. Most people spend about three months being a trainee if they are just starting out on the ambulance squad. I spent at least three years as a trainee. Under normal circumstances, a person like me would have been let go of in a matter of weeks. But this was a volunteer organization, and my mentor Larry was somebody who worked with my mom and knew her very well. Besides, volunteers were always hard to come by. Little did I know that how I learned things was very different from the norm. Learning how to put a splint on a broken leg in a classroom didn't take much brains. But learning how to put a splint on a broken leg while your patient is lying in the middle of a busy highway covered in broken glass in the middle of a thunder storm while there were four other injured people to worry about is a whole different ball game. It took being subject to such situations over and over and over again to be able to form sub-rules for various situations before I was finally able to do such things on my own. A day eventually came when I could just pull out that file in my head and know what to do for what type of situation. Nothing was spontaneous. It all had to be learned, step by step.

Learning how to multitask was a whole experience in itself. How was it that I was eventually able to take a blood pressure while at the same time listening to the paramedic's assessment? This is where thinking in pictures was my best friend. Normally, such a bombardment of input would be handled by shutting everything out and focusing on just the task I was doing at the time. This is how I flunked myself out of nursing school and is also what I did in the hospital as a respiratory therapist. I knew that if I really wanted to be part of the ambulance service, being a great contributor to my community and saving lives, I better get learning! I eventually figured out that I could build my short-term memory by holding an image of what was being said in my mind long enough so that I could retrieve it when I was done with the task at hand, making that the next order of business. If there were more than one orders of business coming up, then each one would be a picture in my head, one right next to the other just like in a comic strip.

While making sub-rules and thinking in pictures were, and still are, my best friends in the work setting, starting up again in a whole new profession would not be possible. On the ambulance crew, I had three comfortable years to be able to go through all the processes and self-discoveries. This is certainly not something any employer has the time for. It is also why I am not currently looking for another career path. To reenter the world of pre-hospital emergency care is also not in the cards. Now that I know what chiropractic can do, and what medicine cannot do, I would be too tempted to educate people to these facts. I truly AM a chiropractor at heart, even if I’m not serving an abundance of patients at this time.

If there was a way to think in pictures and to form rules and sub-rules regarding successful marketing, I’d really have my hands full. This is an area that I still haven’t quite figured out yet, even after ten-and-a-half years of being in practice. Dr. Temple Grandin got to where she is today because she had a nice portfolio put together of all her successes. She did not get where she is because she had good people skills. She does not, and neither do I. While at first glance, people would never guess that I have autism, they would certainly come to know this over a period of time. My next step is to work on a portfolio that shows my accomplishments. Dr. Grandin, like me, developed her skills by having a mentor who believed in her and gave her a chance. The “real world” is not so giving or forgiving. I guess I will forever be in a state of struggle, whether being an entrepreneur or if working for somebody else.

There are other factors that affect my abilities, such as having a cognitive disorder and a circadian rhythm imbalance. The cognitive disorder affects my ability to process information and to remember things offhand. Learning new skills not only requires that I learn things my own way by forming rules. Constant repetition is also necessary. Usually when a person tells me something, such as a memorandum piece of information or their name, I will not remember it, even if I am attentive. I must hear the information a second time, or even a third. As for the circadian rhythm imbalance, ever since my senior year of high school I have had notable sleep disturbances. These disturbances have prevented me from being able to hold a daytime job. The record, though, goes to Penske Truck Leasing, who I worked for as a data entry and report editing clerk for 26 months, thanks to Benadryl and L-tryptophan. There is a reason why my chiropractic office hours begin at 2:00 in the afternoon and go well into the night. That’s what I am capable of. I mention this in my marketing efforts to let people know that it would suit them better to visit a doctor who they can see when their work day is done than to have to miss work during the day. I always find a way to make lemonade out of my batch of lemons.

Over the years, I have certainly been quite the spectacle. Kids on the playground at school would make fun of me. Adults in the workplace would make fun of me too. They knew that I was different, that I didn’t fit it. They knew that I did things in odd ways. Although I may have appeared as a recluse, I still got the job done, somehow. But for those jobs where I lasted only three weeks or less, it was apparent that I wasn’t able to cognize the skills that were required of me in a reasonable amount of time. Perhaps the most notable of these jobs was my short stint at Pearle Vision Center in January of 1988. Lots of lenses were destroyed as I tried to learn how to use the lens grinder. I would have finally “gotten it” if I had been given just a few more days. Whether we are talking about kids in school or adults in the work place, people do not like being around somebody who doesn’t “fit in”. It makes them uncomfortable to have to mesh with somebody like that. It makes them feel burdened as if they cannot be themselves. It brings out the worst in them. This is why schools and employers NEED to have mentors available for people on the autism spectrum. Mentors are truly angels in disguise. They are the ones who can let the individual on the autism spectrum know that they DO belong and that they are an important contributors in this world. The mentor is the one that the autistic person will remember and thank profusely when it comes time to give credit for their marvelous accomplishments. Despite the fact that the audie thinks and reasons very differently, the same goals can be reached, and perhaps with even greater insight. All they need is a chance.

The Early Years

2010-10-10T16:51:00.002-05:00

Kids just go about being themselves. I was no exception. I was not “different” in my eyes. I was just doing the things that interested me very much. Suddenly I found myself being the talk of the adult world around me. Who is this genius who knows how to pronounce the difference parts of the brain, and also knows what they do? Why does he make up his own addition and subtraction problems just to keep himself amused? What kind of strangeness must be in this guy’s head to dress up as Sherlock Holmes in 90-degree weather? While adults were kept entertained, kids my own age were not. They were very mean and spiteful, calling me a nerd or a retard. Not all of them were like that, though. If you wanted to be my friend, the best way to do that was to play word games with me. Otherwise, I was not social with my peers.

Although in third grade I started to cognize that I was very different, it wasn’t until I was eleven years old and in fifth grade that it really hit me. As we entered adolescence, differences between me and the other kids became very obvious. I wasn’t into all the gossip and rough play. Conversations did not revolve around sports, sex, or building friendships. It was as if my eyes suddenly opened one day. That’s when the inferiority complexes started rolling in – feelings that would plague me well into my adult years.

Just before being diagnosed with PDD-NOS in 2008, I read the book “Unwritten Rules Of Social Relationships” by Dr. Temple Grandin and Sean Barron. While reading Sean’s story, I couldn’t believe how much his early years were almost identical to what I experienced. It was as if I were looking into a mirror. That’s when it really started clicking in my own mind that I may have been autistic all these years. I also thought that it would be nice if I WAS diagnosed with autism because then, for the first time in my life, I could finally put my finger on the reason why I was so different.

To add to all my social ineptness, I was constantly suffering from some sort of health problem. The fact that I was small for my age didn’t help matters. Constantly having ear infections and some reason to visit the medical doctor kept me isolated from other kids much of the time. I spent a lot of time in the care of my grandparents or my Aunt Doris and being examined by some doctor for some reason. At the age of 12, during a routine visit to an endocrinologist, I discovered that I had a leaking heart valve. I myself made the discovery before the doctor mentioned it. I even pointed it out to my parents before the endocrinologist called for the cardiologist. It wasn’t until I was 19 years old that the leak in my aortic valve became bad enough to require open heart surgery to fix. While my own health challenges were an influence in my decision to pursue a career in health care, other interests developed during my childhood that are still present today. While spending time at my Aunt Doris’s place, I would walk up the street to the public library where I would spend the day reading books on anatomy & physiology, astronomy, and paranormal phenomena. While it is obvious from my choice of profession that anatomy & physiology is my forte, these other areas are still topics of great intrigue.

On the first day of fourth grade, in September of 1971, I met a new lifelong friend who would be an integral part of my life in many ways. It was the new priest who just took over as pastor of the parish, Father Steve. I remember that the reason why I was excited to meet him was because he had such a calming and accepting energy about him. As Father Steve recalls, his first great memory of me happened on the day we met, when I recited The Lord’s Prayer in Greek. This was just another feat by which I captivated an adult audience. At this period of time, I was teaching myself how to speak Greek because I had neighbors who were from Greece. From that day on, Father Steve would be the main person I would share everything about myself with. He would be there during all those years I was going through my inferiority complexes. He was there with me in the hospital ICU when I first woke up after my open heart surgery. He would also be the person I’d visit on a regular basis when I needed somebody to talk to during my adult years. I last saw Father Steve one Monday morning in February of 2001, when he made a surprise visit to my apartment in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Because of his unconditional acceptance of others, I spent a great deal of time talking to him about anything and everything, even well after I stopped practicing Catholicism.

You might wonder what my parents must have thought as I was going through such difficulties. Among the myriad of doctors and health professionals they ever took me to, there was a child psychologist thrown in the mix. Back in those days, though, the only form of autism that existed was classical autism, where communication and logical action are lacking. Even when I saw a psychologist at the age of twenty-two for an evaluation for possible learning disabilities, autism never came into the picture. While my parents were extremely supportive and responsive to my physical needs, they were completely unaware of my emotional and social concerns. To them, I was an amazingly brilliant, precocious wonder. If I wasn’t following the rules of social conduct, I just needed more discipline to knock some “sense” into me. Needless to say, my relationship with my parents in my teen and young adult years were not always so pleasant. They were doing what they though was best, and they gave me what they thought I needed. But it wasn’t what I needed, and all that that discipline to knock more sense into me really did was frustrate me more and more. While I feel that I am very close to my parents to this day, I still do not mention all the things that are on my mind because of their limited understanding of how my mind really works. My mind works like an autistic mind, not as one that needs more sense knocked into it.

My stimming behaviors have not always been so disruptive. Most autistic people make strange repetitive motions or have undeniable behavioral mannerisms. This is not the case with me. As a child, I was completely addicted to anything that physically moved me, such as rocking chairs, a rocking horse, swings, etc. Throughout my teen years and well into my adult years, I would listen to music, sitting in a room with all the lights out, wearing out rocking chairs. I mostly listened, and still listen to, Elton John. I would daydream about being a hero with the fire department or being in the military. I would also daydream about being part of Elton John’s band, traveling with the band around the U.S. between concerts on motorcycles that could fly. This world of music, darkness, daydreaming, and rocking was so comforting.

An even more peculiar stimming behavior that I still indulge in is making lists. As a child, I made a list of every kind of car I could think of while drawing a picture of the front of the car next to the name. In high school, a circulating joke between three or four friends turned into my creating the fictitious, and now legendary, “Sugi’s Army”. My “recruitment” efforts netted over three hundred people, and I would always carry with me the list I typed up of all the army’s members and their ranks. Before the days of computer word programs, I became quite a good Scrabble player by reading through the Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary, making list after list of strange words. While working for Penske Truck Leasing in the late 80s, I made a list of every city and town in every state and cross-referenced the names to every state that has a city or town by that name. I compiled this list be ticking off town names, one by one, in both the Rand McNally Road Atlas and the AAA Road Atlas. But perhaps my most notorious list was the creation of “Pat’s Picture Book” – the entire National Scrabble Association’s Official Tournament Word List typed, word by word, into a WordPerfect document, and many of the obscure words then being linked to websites that describe those words. Over the course of the past eight years that I’ve lived in Minnesota, I’ve created several lists – lists of all school districts, colleges, hotels, funeral homes, attorneys, trucking companies, etc. in the state and beyond, all being establishments which I advertised my services to. Making lists is what keeps my mind occupied when nothing particularly inspirational is in it. Yet, it is the inspiration to reach a particular goal that propels me to take on such an exhaustive project.

So, as I stated, I was just being me, a kid doing his own thing, following his own interests. Then, when adolescence and the teen years came, along came the eye-opening reality that I was very different than my peers. I really REALLY didn’t fit in. Although there were a couple other kids I did do things with, there was no way I could possibly go out independently into the world to make new friends. It’s not that I was shy or afraid. I was not. I was just clueless as to how to go about initiating conversation. Even when I did finally get the gumption to start talking to other kids, my ignorance of the social rules was quite evident. I didn’t even talk like a “guy”. I talked like that nice kid who was treading lightly as he ventured out of an eggshell. Knowing I was so different was indeed painful. Thanks to the adults I could talk to, though, I never reached such a low as to consider self-destruction. There was always that inner spiritual awareness, yet to a small degree during the teen years, that kept me engaged in the world. But at the same time, the strong need to “fit in” eventually gave rise to some very inappropriate ties.

During my senior year of high school, I would go to parties and do things that I would have never considered doing before. My beer chugging habits became the talk of the school. Taking a few “hits” from a marijuana cigarette seemed cool. Although I never became part of the “in” crowd, I was being more socially daring and was therefore talked to more. Once while I was at a training exercise with the Fire & Rescue Explorers Post, we visited a local fire company. I decided that it would make me look more mature if I spent some time hanging out with a loudmouthed fireman and some of his friends. When I became a fireman, I tried to act like what I thought a “guy” should act like. Having a few too many beers at the local bar with some "friends" became a pastime. In the later 80s, the scene moved from bars to a biker bar with adult entertainment where a few firemen I knew frequented. These scenes were NOT regular events at all. They were occasional activities that I felt would improve my manliness. But in the end, all they did was obviate my awkwardness. These “fitting in” digressions lessened significantly when I left Pennsylvania in 1992 and stopped all together when my fortunate spiritual journey began.

Those who have known me since 1998 know the inner adventures I so diligently wrote about during the years since. Meeting an Indian guru in the summer of ‘98 changed the course of history forever. I briefly touched upon my spiritual experiences and revelations in past blog posts. You can get a good picture of where this path has taken me in such writings as “The Healing Power Of Qi: Lessons From Avatar”. There will be more to come like this in the near future.

What If Your Doctor Had Autism?

2010-10-07T02:03:00.002-05:00

What if your doctor had autism? Would that be so hard to believe? I guess if your view of autism is seeing helpless children and adults who can’t speak and can’t care for themselves in any way, then it probably would be. The truth is that such a view of autism describes a limited number of people who have been diagnosed with classical autism, not the entire autism spectrum. The rest of the people with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are very much able take care of themselves and to be great contributors to society in many professional ways. Yes, I am a doctor, and yes, I have autism. So what is it that you should know and expect from a doctor who has autism? First and foremost is to know that the care you receive in such a doctor’s office is done with such empathy for your concerns and with such diligence at giving you the best care possible that you can be grateful for such an individual who can give you such outstanding attention. Secondly, you need to know that people with ASDs will almost always appear socially uneasy. That’s because they just are, and there is no “why” to explain this. It is something that you will need to look past in order to appreciate the gift that such a person brings into your life.

While many people with ASDs become great scientists, engineers, and computer programmers, those who choose professions where direct, and often personal, contact with people is required, such as being a doctor, do so for a very humanitarian reason. They are not doing what they do just because it was a good choice of profession; they are true healers. They knew from a time early on, perhaps due to having had their own health concerns, that they could make a difference for other people. As for me personally, I had many many health challenges throughout my life. Therefore, I can understand how serious your concerns are to you. I can ESPECIALLY understand the concerns of your loved one who you may be bringing to my office because they have an autism spectrum disorder. Also, it is necessary that you understand that a person with autism will express themselves differently. The social mannerisms of an autistic person may oftentimes be peculiar. This is not always evident to somebody who is not familiar with autistic people. Therefore, in jest, while listening to me speak, you can think of Dr. Gregory House on the TV show House in order to feel more at ease.

Personally, I feel that I can be more at ease when talking about health concerns. The reason is because I have been through so many of my own, and I turned out to be okay. Some of these concerns include having had open heart surgery, and I am also a stroke survivor. When I am talking to you about a condition or situation that worries you, and I know that it is something that I can help you with, then I will convey uplifting, hopeful vibes to you. My goal is to help you feel more comfortable with the care you are receiving, to instill hope, and to help you see that being positive-minded is the best healing power of all. By having appreciation for my good nature that I relay is key to seeing beyond serious “doctor-ness” which is usually expected and realizing that I am a real, down-to-earth person, one that really cares.

So, what is actually going through my autistic mind as I am caring for you? Do not be surprised if it sometimes seems that I am “zoning out”. This is actually how I go through the problem solving routine. I am searching through the “hard drive” in my brain, much like Dr. Temple Grandin, a world-renowned autistic scientist, does when she is trying to solve a problem. I have to think in pictures, to visualize what is going on in the body or in the mind, as the case may be, in order to derive the correct treatment, procedure, or piece of advice to give. This is not to be mistaken for cluelessness. It is just how many autistic minds work. Keep in mind that the answers and advice I come up with may be very different from what another doctor may have told you. One doctor’s response may be based on academia or past experience alone. Mine is ALSO based on the conceptualization of processes and outcomes. It is MORE insightful.

It may surprise you to learn that people with autism may be great contributors to society. It’s just that they are challenged because they do not interact, nor does their mind function, in the ways which are considered “norms” by society. They have to think and do things in alternative ways. Unfortunately, this oftentimes affects how one communicates as well. But once the autistic person finds the way in which he or she can communicate, whether it be through writing, drawing, speaking, or some other way, it is amazing what they can accomplish! Having an ASD does not doom most people who have them. It does give them obstacles they must maneuver around in order to be functional. They are, nonetheless, FUNCTIONAL. The stereotypes of autism being a taboo subject, a curse, or a life sentence need to be thrown out. The autistic child who disrupts the normal schedule of a classroom is not to be disciplined but is instead to be encouraged to think and do what he can in the ways that he can. Many thoughts and feelings about people with autism are actually shadows of Dark Age paradigms. This is NOT a medical condition that can be cured, and people with autism need not be institutionalized, shunned by society, or, worst of all, be made a pin cushion of by the medical establishment. One thing I often contemplate is whether or not there will ever be a cure for “neurotypical-ism”. Now THAT would be nice!

The Coincidental Omen: Ominous Or Auspicous?

2010-10-02T00:32:00.000-05:00

The date was Saturday, October 2, 1982. It was 11:30 PM in Ganeshpuri, India. The man who would become my spiritual teacher and guru in due time, Swami Muktananda, took his last breaths before leaving this world. In the meantime, some 7,800 miles away in Reading, Pennsylvania, it was noon. I was standing in the back yard of the house I grew up in. I was talking to my next door neighbor, a man named Anthony. Suddenly, we heard a very loud buzzing noise directly above our heads. We looked up to see a very strange sight.

“Do you see what I see?” Anthony said.

I shook my head, laughed, and answered,

“Yeah. That’s a plane flying backwards!”

Well, that was a conversation piece for years to come. We never could figure out what kind of plane could do that. We never saw the plane again.

Fast-forward exactly 28 years to the day, minus about eighteen hours, to Friday, October 1, 2010. I was standing behind the Coyote Moon Grille on the grounds of the Territory Golf Course in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. I was dressed in my ministerial attire, mentally preparing myself for the wedding ceremony I was about to officiate. Suddenly I heard that strange buzzing noise again. I looked up to see that plane flying backwards again! It was the only time I had seen it since the first time. It took no time before I realized the coincidence of the date. Instead of laughing at the irony, a bittersweet feeling came over me. Anthony had since passed away just a few years ago. Muktananda was leaving this world the first time I saw this plane, and now my head and heart are full of his teachings and his presence. I was only twenty years old then, and I am forty-eight years old now. So much of life has been lived in those years. All of these thoughts flooded my mind. As the plane flew over my head, going east toward the Saint Cloud Regional Airport, a tear came to my eye in wonderance of what this could possibly symbolize. I feel that a new era in life is about to begin.

Add to all this strangeness the absolutely bizarre dream I had just before 7:00 this morning. The alarm went off for my wife Bianca to get ready to start her day as a school teacher. Now I’ve had all sorts of very strange dreams over the years of my life. But I never had a dream like this. I was inside a building, and I didn’t know where I was. I was in a room that was deep blue in color. On a big screen TV, there was a very weird program playing. What started off as an adult entertainment film very quickly deteriorated into a horror show. I thought this was definitely not something I wanted to be watching, either way. While purposefully avoiding eye contact with the TV, I walked over to the large windows to see if I could get a clue as to where I was. I found that I was on the ground floor, looking out into a parking lot where a few cars were parked. I then turned to leave the blue room. Instead of pushing open the door, I walked THROUGH the door out into the hallway. I saw in a large meeting room down the hallway that a couple people were gathering. Instead of approaching them to ask where I was, I figured I’d venture through the building myself, using my newfound superhuman power of being able to walk through walls. Besides, maybe I didn’t even BELONG in that building? Next, I walked through a wall and found myself in a dark dressing room with curtained cubicles and hospital gowns. Was I in a clinic of some sort? Then I thought I’d get really adventurous, and I walked through the wall behind the dressing room. That’s when I ended up in a cold place where I couldn’t see a thing. The dream then came to a sudden end as the alarm clock rang. The alarm probably woke me from my dream at just the right time.

This dream left me shaken and wondering. Just the night before, I had performed two Reiki sessions in a row. I equated being able to “walk through walls” with being able to penetrate through, very clearly, the walls within the subconscious mind. The Reiki sessions had more to do with helping people find clarity in their life choices rather that helping them to heal from some kind of ailment. Was I not using the healing gift I was given for what it was intended? Was I going into places where I didn’t belong because I was actually reckless? And what about the horrid show that was playing on TV? Somehow I intuited that it had something to do with the naivete of years gone by, particularly during the period of time when I first lived far from home when I moved to Valparaiso, Indiana n 1993. Was the building I was in my own clinic? Were the people in the meeting room coming to hear me speak? Was I trying to escape from them? Many thoughts and contemplations ran through my mind until I was finally able to fall back to sleep.

One thing that I considered odd is that this all happened on the first day of what I consider the most reflective, bittersweet time of the year – the months of October and November. Last year at this time, I felt such a deep sadness and, I ended up having a stroke. The rest of the months of October and November would be marked by profound sleep disturbances. While I feel happier and much healthier this year, I feel that this time the Universe is bringing about a profound change. Today’s events seemed quite evident of that! But is it a good thing or a bad thing? Muktananda once wrote a book entitled “Where Are You Going?” Perhaps Muktananda wanted to remind me that I need to be contemplating this question right now by sending that airplane flying backwards over my head.

The Doctor Is In: An Audie Journey

2010-09-29T01:57:00.001-05:00

Last night I attended the Richfield city council meeting. Ten of us were present to promote a new city ordinance whereby tobacco usage in city parks would be banned. In attendance were four of us from the city’s Advisory Board of Health and two medical doctors who were administrators of HealthPartners. When they passed around a sheet so that we could sign in, the two doctors from HealthPartners signed their names as “Doctor -----“, with the word “doctor” spelled out. Without batting an eye, I did the same. I just never saw that done before, which is what surprised me. In the end, the new ordinance passed, and it will go into effect on January 1, 2011. Tonight’s event put the icing on a day-long contemplation about how and, more importantly, WHY I became a doctor. Also, how and why I became a CHIROPRACTOR. I will share this contemplation with you, which is the most truthful description of the journey there is.

Doctors and health professionals of all kinds have always surrounded me throughout my childhood years. I was either constantly ill with ear infections and other illnesses or being evaluated for my neurological sluggishness, stunted growth, and heart problems. Another interesting point is that I witnessed a lot of tragedies in my lifetime where the emergency responses stuck in my head – Hurricane Agnes, numerous severe fires during the 60s and 70s, numerous severe accidents at the intersection just 200 feet from the house I grew up in. All of this exposure was fascinating. While I could probably make a strong case that all of this influenced my choice to make a career in health care, the truth is that none of this was the primary motivator.

Back in these childhood years, I knew that I was different. I knew that I was a social recluse. I knew that I had very different interests and very different ways of looking at things. I was so different that I didn’t dare try to be social with people my own age. It’s not that I was afraid to. It was just that I didn’t know how to. I derived my greatest joy from receiving compliments from parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, and neighbors who were all astonished by this hyperlexic, awkward runt. Reading Gray’s Anatomy, textbooks on astronomy, and researching paranormal phenomena in the adult section of the Reading Public Library was my favorite pastime when I was only nine years old. I had no social life per se. Therefore, I also felt as though I didn’t belong anywhere. I felt that I had nothing to offer, and all of my interests really wouldn’t take me anywhere in life.

During this time in my life I did have a couple friends that I hung around with. One was the boy next door. The other was a kid named Michael. Michael’s dad and uncle were members of the local fire department. Michael would always talk about really neat emergencies that his dad and uncle were at. When Michael and I were seventeen years old, Michael joined the local fire and rescue explorers post, where people our age could receive basic training in firefighting and rescue techniques. While all of this sounded fascinating, the fascination itself was not the motivator that finally led me in this path. It all boiled down to one thing: if I was ever to be looked at as somebody who could make a difference to other people, I needed to be able to help them during their greatest time of need. Otherwise, I would just be this socially isolated, strange kid without a purpose. THAT was the motivator. And the more I learned over the years, the more potential I discovered within myself.

My social awkwardness did prevent me from becoming “liked”. Whether I was a member of the fire department, working for an ambulance service, or working in a hospital somewhere, I was always that hyperlexic, awkward runt. It’s just that now I had a tendency to bring out the worst in others since I was easy to pick on. But I kept going in what I did because I enjoyed it so much. Also, what I was doing in the health care field did make a difference to me. I really was helping people during their greatest times of need. I finally had a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

My early years of health care were spent in emergency care. I enjoyed the thrills of being a firefighter (until my heart condition prevented me from being able to be a firefighter any longer), an ambulance attendant, and a nurse aid. Eventually I became a Respiratory Therapist. At no point during these early years did I consider going to medical school. I was enjoying the adrenalin rushes more than anything else. Being there in life-and-death situations was where I belonged. This is where I could make that difference in people’s lives. As a result, though, I didn’t focus so much on academics. Even though I was college educated, GPAs and class rankings had no importance to me. A year after graduating from the first-ever Respiratory Care class at Reading Area Community College, I finally saw the potential in me to become – a DOCTOR.

Now working at the Porter Memorial Hospital in Valparaiso, Indiana, I saw a brighter future ahead, a clear vision of moving up the ladder even further. But because of my floundering past academia, I knew that it would be near impossible to get into medical school. This was further quashed by a conversation I had with the dean of the medical school at Indiana University in Gary, Indiana. As he slammed a rubber ball onto his desk, he said to me, “It aggravates the hell out of me to see these nurses and therapists who think that they can do a doctor’s job better than the doctor, and this becomes the reason why they want to go to medical school.” My only thought was, “What a jerk!” I knew that there were many other options to become a physician within the world of health care. So I did some research into various schools and programs, and I did some meditating.

One place I loved visiting after I got done working at the hospital at 11:00 at night was the Indiana Dunes State Park. It was so soothing and inspirational to walk in the sand, looking out over Lake Michigan in the still of the night. While standing there on the beach one night in August of 1993, the water just touching my feet, I meditated on what the right path to follow would be. I imaged myself as a doctor of various professions – dentist, podiatrist, osteopath, etc. The one that felt absolutely right for me was being a chiropractor. The rest was history. After looking into all the chiropractic schools in the U.S., the school I chose was undoubtedly the best one for me: Life University in Marietta, GA. Whereby many schools placed too much emphasis on medical didactics, I figured that if I was going to study chiropractic, I wanted to learn chiropractIC. Life University teaches more hands-on techniques and more anatomy and physiology courses than any other chiropractic school. But being part of the largest chiropractic school in the world at the time would prove to be a social challenge in itself.

I found the academics to be very interesting. My GPA soared to above 3.5 effortlessly. Just six months into the program, on April 11, 1995, I began a 15-1/2 year battle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The GPA fell and attendance suffered. But I plugged away and made it through. Along the way, the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome would not be my only health challenge. But what was even more of a factor in how I did was the fact that I was still a socially awkward recluse. Now, spending more time with peers, I appeared to be even more awkward and naïve. While it takes most people four years to complete this graduate school program, it took me five and a half years. While part of that was due to my health problems, most of it was due to my social incapacities. Student interns must scrounge for their own patients to care for during their internship. Making meaningful contact with people would prove to be my greatest weakness, as it always had been throughout my life. I made it through, nonetheless.

I’ve been in practice now for 10-1/2 years. Looking back at all I have done throughout the years, I can truly say that I accomplished my #1 goal: I became somebody who could help people during their greatest times of need, health-wise. And yes, this does give me a great feeling, to be able to rise above the perpetual social awkwardness. We know now that I have an Autism Spectrum Disorder, which explains everything regarding my lifelong social struggles. I feel better knowing this. But because the social awkwardness is still there, the attempts at building a practice over the years produced mere drops in the bucket. Now I turn my primary goal toward accomplishing another great feat: finding a way to be successful at what I do or at anything whereby I can financially sustain my household and my family. All along I thought that everything would just fall into place just by being what I am professionally. It has not. The doctor is in, but nobody notices.

How To Choose The WRONG Chiropractor

2010-09-25T02:30:00.001-05:00

This past week my wife Bianca had a terrible episode with her lower back. She had been sore for a couple days, and then she went to her massage therapist. After her session, she was in such severe pain that she couldn’t get dressed, go out the door, or get into her car without assistance. She called me to ask what she should do. I told her to take her time and come home. Since she had the massage therapist to help her there, I would take it the rest of the way once she arrived home. After taking forever to get out of the car, I took her right into the breezeway of our house, which is where my chiropractic office is set up. Although I knew quite well what the problem was, the possibility of her needing to have x-rays or even an MRI done were coming to the forefront of my mind. I worked on her in my office, doing what I could by hand alone, wondering if it would be enough. Just a few minutes later, she was significantly better. Over the course of the next four days, both chiropractic care and a full Reiki session brought her back to almost 100% health. No x-rays, no MRIs, no electric stimulation, no ultrasound machines, no mechanical traction, and no gimmicks were used. My intuition, knowledge, and my hands were all that were needed.

Then, I thought back in time to a couple similar situations that happened back in 2001 when I was still practicing in Pennsylvania. Patients with similar problems came to me where other chiropractors and even medical providers have failed them, only to be completely healed. How did these things happen? It’s not magic. Not even close. It’s just that I do what I do using the basics and using my heart. I really care about the people that walk into my office. My primary focus is on getting them BETTER. When they are better is the time that I turn my attention toward talking to them about maintenance care, chiropractic philosophy, and bringing their family in for care. Also, I do it all without any gimmicks, just as I took care of my wife this time around.

A question that arises now and then is how do you tell the difference between a “good” chiropractor and a “bad” one. Speaking generally, this formula applies to doctors and health care providers of ANY kind. Not just chiropractors. First I should point out that the American Medical Association has succeeded to a great extent at brainwashing the people of the U.S. into thinking that chiropractors are uneducated quacks. They did so by forming a committee in 1963 called the Committee Against Chiropractic. It was later renamed to the Committee Against Quackery to include professionals of other non-medical healing arts as well. It took a group of seven chiropractors in the state of Illinois a federal lawsuit against the AMA, which the Chicago Seven so valiantly won in 1989, for the organized slander to come to an end. But the damage was done, and organized medicine continues its nonsense in underground and backhanded ways. How did the AMA lose this antitrust lawsuit? It was pretty much a no-brainer when study after study was presented in court showing how amazingly beneficial and effective chiropractic care is for a variety of reasons. The evidence spoke for itself.

Speaking of chiropractors in particular, the REAL one will talk to you like a person. That’s first and foremost. They will greet you by name, ask you what your concerns are, and will then proceed with care. From there, the answers are all very different because not all chiropractors have the same philosophies about what they do. It is helpful to steer clear of the ones who say, “We’ll adjust you three times, and if that doesn’t work we’ll try muscle stim, ultrasound, reverse traction, or (insert your nonsense here) instead.” This chiropractor has no faith in what he does. Likewise, the one who starts by telling you that this nerve controls that organ and that correcting the subluxations in your spine is going to help you function better and has you all confused with big anatomy and physiology terms and hardly breathes between words just like this sentence is going is likewise somebody to be avoided. This person is an idealist and really doesn’t care about the pain you are in.

Physiotherapy equipment such as electrical modalities, cold lasers, and roller tables do not belong in a chiropractor’s office. Most of the people I’ve ever seen in my office say that those things either never did a thing for them or actually made them worse. These things are awesome ways for the chiropractor to pad the bill that he’s going to send off to your insurance company. Another question I often get is if x-rays are really necessary. The answer, in general, is “no”. However, there are certain chiropractic techniques that are entirely dependent on x-rays for specific analysis of your skeletal structure. And, if you were just involved in a vehicle accident and hit your head against the windshield right before walking into my office, you better believe that the first thing I’m going to do before doing any kind of adjusting or manipulating (there is a difference!) is have you get x-rays! The chiropractor who does x-rays on everyone that walks through his door is afraid he might make a mistake. He has no intuition, and he has been told that people are sue-happy. Then there’s the chiropractor who wants you to sign up for a year’s worth of care up front, or he pressures you to buy his line of products. This to me is unethical.

In the end, you are a consumer looking to purchase a service. It would be wise to shop around until you have found the person that you feel most comfortable being with. Go with your instincts! When I was still practicing in Pennsylvania in 2001, I had worked as an associate doctor to a well-liked chiropractic speaker. It became evident, though, that this person missed the mark when it came to actually caring for patients when I was the one receiving complaints about her! After that point in time, I realized that I had a unique gift – a piece of myself that I could offer, with sincerity, to people in need. I could especially understand people because there have been so many times in my life when I was the patient, lying in a hospital bed, not knowing if I was going to live or die. I feel that people who can actually EXPERIENCE such an event, let alone more than once, make more intuitive healers. All in all, I certainly know enough that I can be confident to speak up and write this article!

A New Money Paradigm

2010-07-21T02:29:00.001-05:00

It has been said that money is the root of all evil. Some new age healers believe that one shouldn't charge for their healing services, probably because they see money as an obstacle. Over the years, I've come across people who avoid conversations about money because it brings up a lot of bad feelings. Obviously it does bring up bad feelings between married couples because it's the number one reason why divorce exists. Even homeless, and hopeless, people see money as an obstacle, something unobtainable. Oftentimes people will say, "If only I made more money, I'd be happier." But, when you've been in a state of lack for a very long time, how you think of money does tend to change. It has to.

Some people may say that I was homeless for a period of time. To me, being "homeless" means that your bed was the most comfortable patch of weeds you could find under a bridge somewhere, or maybe even an obscure park bench. Although I was never in this situation, I was in a state of pretty extreme hardship during a ten-month period between 2001 and 2002. For two years before then, it was the generosity of my family that pulled me through the rough times. But from October 1, 2001 until June 30th, 2002, I lived off of whatever money I could put into my pocket from having my office located at a truck stop in Bartonsville, PA. I wasn't making enough money to support both a place to live AND the office. So I lived in the office, sleeping on an air mattress every night, and hoping that I had at least one customer the next day so that I could buy lunch.

Now we know, all these years later, that being an audie was the main reason why I had so many difficulties, and still do to a large degree. As I was driving toward my Scrabble club get-together yesterday afternoon, an interesting thought about money hit me from out of the blue. Lately I had been so busy with making lists of places to contact about my autism seminar, trying to come up with article ideas, looking for work, and taking care of the house while my wife is away on vacation. Then today, the director of a local college's continuing education department asked me if I could help her put together and promote an autism awareness program. I thought that what she wanted to do was a fantastic idea. But it would just be another big project added to my list. Therefore, it hit me, out of the blue, to charge for my services. The thought didn't arise out of greed nor of a sense of need -- it was borne out of the necessity to PRIORITIZE. Thus, a new paradigm was created.

Since being self-supportive, monetarily speaking, has always been an area of desolation in my life thusfar, perhaps seeing the whole money thing in a different way will make the difference. Instead of seeing money as something elusive yet necessary, or drowning in a state of extreme lack thereof, I will see it as a way to prioritize the tasks and services that I provide to others. The more effort something will take, the more its cost for me to do it. It is more than just giving to receive as in making a purchase. It is adding VALUE to what is given, and it puts things into a hierarchy on a priority scale.

Now I am not talking about receiving a paycheck for a job. I am talking about prioritizing the things I do as a self-promoting freelancer and entrepreneur. I am also not talking about egoistically embellishing my self-worth. Lord knows that money is NOT something that is needed to live. If you can't afford a place to live, there are always homeless shelters and food banks to carry you through. I say that because I was THIS close to being there. Being in such a situation does tend to destroy a person's ego and make them more appreciative of what they DO have (if they don't lose all hope in the process). It's about knowing that you have a lot to do and a lot to offer in this world, and about knowing that the only way any of it will lead anywhere is if you prioritize. The measure by which priorities are set is MONEY.

Just a thought.

Audie Communication

2010-06-13T02:46:00.001-05:00

It may be strange to see me writing another blog post so soon after the last one. I typically average three to four weeks between posts. I guess you can say that I made a self-discovery in the past day. If somebody asks me a question that deserves an answer, then I can come up with something to write about. Otherwise, my communication is pretty sparse. I recently started a fan page on Facebook, which as of the writing of this blog post has 109 fans. Thanks to Facebook Adwords, I am getting the word out about me and what I do as a Holistic Physician, minister, and educator. But the Adwords advertising campaign will not last very long because money is not a commodity for me right now. And, like for most audies, it never had been. Thanks to that most intriguing and baffling art form called “communication”, I, like many audies, have a terrible time making ends meet in this world.

There was once an essay written by Emily Perl Kingsley entitled “Welcome To Holland”. This writing has been adopted by many autism activist parents to describe their struggles with raising an autistic child. I recently told my wife that the neurotypical world really seems like Holland to the autistic person (the audie). She wondered how that translated. I explained that it is JUST as hard for an audie to figure out what the neurotypical (“normal”) world wants as it is for the neurotypical person to figure out how to relate to the audie. This is largely because of miscommunication and misinterpretation. Audies are very capable of communicating, but they do so in their own way. Communication is not always verbal, and when it is it is often misunderstood or done inappropriately (according to the rules of the neurotypical world, that is). What an audie is communicating, however, may make perfect sense to another audie. Figure that one out! Such is the nature of living in Holland.

Just as there are all types of audies ranging from the brilliant scientists to the totally incapacitated, there are also all levels of communication. Dr. Temple Grandin is an excellent example of an outstanding communicator, even though she has classical autism. As for me, my best form of communication is writing. This is true for most nonverbal audies, and also for those who are socially awkward with their verbalism. For nonverbal children, perhaps the best way to get them to communicate is to use picture cards. One of the followers of my Facebook fan page invented her own picture card system that helps her to communicate, quite effectively, with her autistic daughter. I have seen other such systems being used as well to help in communicating with the nonverbal audie.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that with the audie, communication has to develop and occur at its own pace and in its own way. It may never be the way the neurotypical wants it to be. Also, for the audie to learn his/her own way around Holland, I strongly urge him/her, and the neurotypical caretaker, to read the book “Unwritten Rules Of Social Relationships” by Dr. Temple Grandin and Sean Barron. Just by reading this book, the caretaker will FINALLY get a very good glimpse at what is going on in the audie’s mind. Also, the audie will learn what is expected of him/her by the neurotypical world in order to fit in, to some degree anyway.

One reason why audies, especially as children, may have tantrums or may become short-tempered is because they are TRYING their darnedest to communicate, in the way that they can, and are still often misunderstood. This is all the more reason for discovering proper communication abilities and channels early on in life. This trying and being misunderstood is still incredibly frustrating for me when I know that I didn’t exactly say what I wanted to say, and people thought I was actually meaning something completely different. Jobs have been lost because of this, and my current practice goes unbuilt for this same reason. Just because I have what some people call an “impressive” resume doesn’t mean I’ve been successful with making a living at it. I have not. Goodness knows what bridge I’d be living under if it wasn’t for the unhuman amount of patience that my wife has.

One thing that I strongly encourage, for communication building, is for the audie and their caregiver to become involved in their local chapter of the Autism Society of America. With attending their support groups and classes, each person can learn some very helpful techniques to help build and discover an effective line of communication. Not only that, but you will find that you are not alone in your plight, and you will have others that you can count on. I feel that the lack of proper communication between audie and caregiver/the neurotypical world is the most frustrating part of having an Autism Spectrum Disorder. If we all knew what the other meant and was expecting, the rest of it would be easy. How to communicate effectively is something that can only be found out by trial and error.

The Prediction

2010-06-09T02:11:00.001-05:00

It was the summer of 1994. I had just moved into my new apartment in Smyrna, Georgia. I was about to begin my final quarter of undergraduate prerequisite studies. In just another three months I was to begin chiropractic school. I sat down to write a letter to an old friend of mine, a Catholic priest that I had known since I was nine years old. Father Stephen Halabura was a part of my growing years, and he and I spent a lot of time together. He was always my go-to person when I was feeling out of place around my peers during junior high school and high school. In the letter, I told him how excited I was about studying to become a chiropractor. Much to my own surprise, I had written to him, “Becoming a chiropractor is merely the next step toward my real calling in life.” I had no idea what the next step was. In that moment, I knew that there would be something beyond. I have been a chiropractor now for over ten years. I feel that by the end of 2010 I will finally discover what the real calling is.

Almost nine months after writing that letter, my struggle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome began. Three years after that, my most amazing Spiritual journey began. In April of 1998 I joined a meditation group hosted by one of my teachers. In July I learned Reiki, and in August I was introduced to my Guruji, Swami Chidvilasananda, more lovingly known as Gurumayi. On October 3, at about 8:00 PM, I received the gift of Shaktipat, the awakening of the Kundalini energy. That firmly grounded me in the knowledge and the experience of the entire universe, manifest and unmanifest, being God. This event, along with all the healing arts I have learned, are key to what my real calling will be. The pain and suffering I endured, and continue to endure of sorts, from my own health challenges are also key to whatever my real calling is. Something amazing lurks in the not-too-distant future.

This past weekend, my wife Bianca and I spent a weekend in Chicago at the Celebrate Your Life conference which is hosted by Mishka Productions. It was a life-enhancing event. It was good to be around so many people who held the Spiritual path in high esteem. Not since visiting the Siddha Yoga ashram in South Fallsburg, New York (which I last did in 2002) did I feel so fulfilled. Although there were many famous speakers there, the three that I got the most from were Caroline Myss, Neale Donald Walsh, and Deepak Chopra. What these three people had to say pretty much summed up what I have been experiencing on the spiritual path for the past twelve years. Caroline Myss said, “Imagine that…” and she went on to describe EXACTLY what I had experienced the moment I received Shaktipat in 1998. Neale Donald Walsh explained in a very practical way not only how we can have our own conversation with God but also the fact that everything that is IS God. And Deepak Chopra really reeled me in with a scientific look at how everything that appears to “exist” is actually a waveform, God’s Consciousness, or, as Swami Muktananda would say, a “Play Of Consciousness”. None of these things were new to me. It was all profound because everything I had contemplated, meditated on, and read about in the words of Muktananda during the past twelve years was re-divulged in a most awe-inspiring way.

So, what is the “next step”? What is my real calling? Many people over the years have said that my greatest strength is my gift of writing. My Reiki Master just reminded me of that again today. In a recent blog post, I wrote that I can only write well, if at all, when inspired, and that this doesn’t happen more than about once a month. I am feeling, though, that this past weekend put a charge into my motivation to write more. That’s a good thing. Professionally, things are being rearranged. Today is the day I will be closing my office in St. Louis Park, MN. It doesn’t mean that I will no longer practice as a chiropractor. Instead, I will see people in my own home and will focus even more on holistic practice. I am also working more on bringing my ministerial work to the forefront. I think that if I contemplate things long and hard enough, I could find a way to be an avid writer. Making a living at it would certainly be a challenge, just as everything else I ever tried had been. One nice note to make is that I’m being invited more to speak about living with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. I received three invites just in the past week! Only one of them will be a paid gig though, and it’s not even for sure that it will take place. Perhaps I can challenge myself a bit more and advertise again for The Wellness Interfaith Church and for doing health talks in my “new” home office setting? Yes, I have so much to say and so much to offer in the realm of healing. I don’t want to give myself false hope, as I’ve done so often, but I do feel that some positive changes are about to take place. The real calling, whatever it is, is near.

The Rocket Without An Engine

2010-05-15T03:38:00.000-05:00

A couple months ago I met with the General Manager of Oak Ridge Convention Center in Chaska, Minnesota. I wrote a several-page proposal about how Dolce, Oak Ridge's parent company, could improve upon its facilities and services, catering to the health and wellness goals of both employees and clients, as part of its new branding vision. I guess I should tell you that I know all about it because I work there (here, the place where I am as I am writing this) part time as a night security guard. Mr. Carl Blanz, our General Manager, responded by saying to me, "You built a fantastic rocket ship. But now you just have to figure out how to get it off the ground." Well, being an audie I knew one thing intimately well: that this has always been, and continues to be, the story of my life! It's like a perfectly written book that never gets read because nobody ever heard of it. Well, it's not "like"; it IS. And so the headbanging routine continues.

My attention has now turned to a different project, another rocket without an engine. Back in December I designed a class for community education entitled "Living With An Autism Spectrum Disorder." I taught the class four times so far, once in Ellsworth, Wisconsin and three times in Hastings, Minnesota. The last class I taught was made up mostly of caregivers of adults with autism from a group home in Apple Valley, Minnesota. One of them said to me, "You should offer this as a continuing education class." That's all I needed to hear to set me on a new venture. I developed the class into a three-hour seminar, complete with PowerPoints and videos. Now I am self-promoting this seminar to every school and facility I can think of that might have anything even remotely to do with dealing with people with Autism Spectrum Disorders. But self-promoting is basically tiring and unproductive. Once again, I have created an amazing rocket ship with no way to get it off the ground.

My wife Bianca is so amazing -- to have seen me create so many rocket ships in the eight years that we've been married so far only to have them end up as scrap metal. She certainly knows better by now not to get hopes up and not to pay much attention to the hours I spend at the drawing board coming up with new ideas. But she's been riding this wave for only eight years. I've been riding it for forty-seven. I've never given up though, and I never intend to. I know that what I need is a collaborator -- not one who tells me what I should do differently, but one who knows how to attach engines to rocket ships and make them work. Finding such a person to work with is actually part of the headbanging routine. It just doesn't happen.

My headbanging routine began when I was a toddler. I LITERALLY used to bang my head into the headboard of my crib. With the crib sitting on a hardwood floor, it would wander around the room as I rocked back and forth, banging my head over and over again. I don't know if this particular behavior could be considered "stimming." I don't know what kind of stress I could have been under as a toddler! My parents would strap a pillow to the headboard so I didn't hurt myself. Nonetheless, I kept banging away. If my memory serves me well, I actually became upset when they put the pillow there because banging my head was so much more enjoyable when I had something very hard to hit against. Maybe this routine was a sign of things to come -- living a life full of creativeness that severely lacks implementation.

And so the art of building rockets without engines continues. Forty-seven years and counting.

A Three-Tiered Approach to Health

2010-04-17T05:49:00.001-05:00

When I was a kid growing up, I was captivated by watching emergency scenes. All the firemen, ambulance personnel, and policemen rushing about, putting out fires and saving lives. When I was eighteen, I joined the local volunteer fire department. It was quite a thrill! Only six months later, the fire chief told me to hang it up because he discovered that I had a pretty bad heart condition. I had no idea who told him. I certainly didn’t! I just wanted to be a part of the action. Shortly after leaving the fire state for the last time, my cardiologist told me I needed to have open heart surgery to replace my failing aortic valve. Although the operation put an end to my short-lived passion for being a fireman, I was allowed to work with the ambulance crew instead. That is what opened the door for my lifelong career in health care and to where I am today.

Starting out as a Respiratory Therapist, I enjoyed caring for people in the hospital setting, particularly in lifesaving situations. At the same time, my eyes and my interests were being opened to natural healing practices. Even though I went on to study to be a chiropractor, all this time I was focused on one dimension of healing: the physical. During the latter half of my days as a chiropractic student, I learned about the other dimension of healing, the nonphysical, which involves both the mind and the Spirit.

Thus, today in my practice I address both the physical and the nonphysical realms of existence using a three-tiered approach. Using chiropractic, medical, and “alternative” methods of evaluating one’s health situation, I embrace a truly integrative system to help my patients achieve their optimum potential.

First, I ask, “Is there nerve tone imbalance?” The nerve system controls every organ and action of the body. When bones become misaligned, stress can be placed on nerves causing them to become too taut or too lax. This imbalance results in abnormal function of one or more of the body systems. How exactly this happens was studied in depth by D.D. Palmer, the founder of the chiropractic profession, during a ten year period from 1885 - 1895. D.D.’s findings were later confirmed in a study done by Henry Windsor, M.D. in 1921. Chiropractic care corrects nerve tone imbalance, thereby restoring proper function to body systems.

If a person’s condition is fairly complicated and affects multiple organ systems, I ask, “Is this a problem that is due to some type of toxic exposure or intrinsic dysfunction?” If this is suspect, then I proceed to the physical examination/functional medicine testing tier of care. If abnormalities with a particular system are identified, I refer my patients to the appropriate medical specialist for further evaluation and treatment while still retaining them as a client.

The third tier of care is what transcends the physical, and I promote this avenue sparingly. Not everyone is open to energy medicine practices. I’ve even had people say to me, “I am a devout Christian, and what you are doing is the devil’s work.” Therefore I now discern more closely who I propose this avenue of healing to. If it is rather obvious to me that this person is under a great deal of mental/emotional stress, or if I feel that their cause of anguish has an etheric source, then I will let them know that there are nonphysical issues that need to be dealt with. If I get a good sense that they are openminded, I explain the concept of chi. I explain that life force energy fills this universe. It is that power that keeps your heart beating, your lungs breathing, your blood circulating, your mind thinking. Because of physical and nonphysical forms of stress, life force energy may not flow in the manner that it should, resulting in physical, psychological, or even spiritual distress. The method of energy medicine that I use is The Usui System Of Natural Healing According To Hawayo Takata, which is the oldest and most potent form of Reiki there is.

When a person comes into my office, I am well prepared to evaluate and treat that person on any level. I usually do not announce right away that I am a chiropractor. Instead, I say that I am a Holistic Physician. Not everyone that comes to my office is there for chiropractic care. By taking an integrative approach, I can address the needs of my patients on multiple levels without having to refer them somewhere else. And, if I feel that they are openminded enough, I tell them to be prepared for anything (hinting to the third tier of care). But I don’t view each tier as taking care of a separate physical, mental, or spiritual entity. Each of these realms of existence is woven into one inseparable manifestation of the person as a whole. Each realm affects the other in some way. If I am giving somebody a chiropractic adjustment, I am allowing for a fuller expression of chi energy to take place. If I am taking somebody’s vital signs, I am measuring the flow of life force energy. If I am performing a Reiki session on someone, I am helping the body, mind, and spirit to balance each other in a state of harmony.

It is important to keep in mind that one who comes to us for help is not just a physical person who feels things, thinks, and performs actions. This person is a manifestation of the Universal Intelligence. It is what that person, because of a thing called ego, puts into their thoughts and into their body that creates illness. Our job is not to see if we can rid this person of a disease. Our job, as integrative, HOLISTIC practitioners, is to bring this great manifestation before us to a higher understanding of themself. By helping him or her to be self-sufficient, proactive and preventive, we empower them to take charge of their own destiny. In retrospect, we are truly facilitators of healing. As Thomas Edison once said, “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.” He said that in the past, so the NOW must be the “future” he was referring to.

The Brilliance Of Autism

2010-04-14T02:30:00.002-05:00

What goes through your mind when you hear the word "autism"? For most people who are not autistic in any way, they probably think of somebody who will be "less than" in the worldly, pragmatic sense. But when an autistic person shows that they are creative or are able to contribute to society, the non-autistic person probably oohs and aahs that a "less than" creature was somehow able to show signs of a functioning intellect. Well, maybe I'm being somewhat sarcastic. But to those of us who ARE autistic, I say that it's time the non-autistic population, or the "neurotypicals" as we call them, realize one thing -- that it is usually we, the audies, who end up saving their butts with our brilliance.

We're usually the ones who are able to point out the obvious when others cannot see it. Where would this world be if not for the amazing contributions to it by Einstein, Mozart, Beethoven, Jane Austen, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Thomas Jefferson, Carl Jung, and Van Gogh, just to name a few? Or, in our lifetime, Bob Dylan and Bill Gates! I wonder if Bill Gates, as an unknown way back when, applied for a job and announced that he was autistic if he would have ever been hired anywhere. Probably not. But thanks to an organization called Think Beyond The Label, that may all change someday.

The word "autism" was first coined in 1912. The literal meaning of the word translates to read, "a state of being absorbed by one's self." What this really means, as I see it, is that autism is a state of being so awe-inspired by your own view of the world and not really knowing how to communicate it. Eventually we learn how to, though, much to the askew glances of the neurotypical world. Sometimes when we speak we say the "wrong", or socially inappropriate, things. But always when we speak, we say the truth. We can't help but to be oddly creative by the neurotypical's judgement, but we're just being ourselves by the audie's reality.

I am quite a fan of Temple Grandin. Not because she is an autistic person who can speak brilliantly, which is perhaps why neurotypicals enjoy her (as if they never expected someone with autism to be a great contributor to society). I like her because she tells it like it is. Well, telling it like it is is what makes us appear so off-color, really. We say what we want, we dress the way we want, we do what we want. We make our own rules. And we don't really care what society thinks because we KNOW we are brilliant. We are "absorbed by our own self". It's time that the neurotypical world realizes this and doesn't scold us for being ourselves. If you look past the label and see what we can do for the strange world around us, you'll shut up and listen, and you'll give us a CHANCE.

I got to where I am in life because of mentors, or "guardian angels" as I call them in my "Living With An Autism Spectrum Disorder" class that I teach. If not for a guy named Larry, I wouldn't have lasted more than three days on the ambulance crew that I volunteered with for ten years. Thanks to Larry taking me under his wing, I eventually became somebody who could take charge of the scene of a major emergency, and I became somebody who could train others. Every audie NEEDS a mentor. It's not that we are "disabled". We are not. Because of the way our brains process information, we need to learn, on our own accord, a different way of doing things. We need to repeat things over and over and over again until we get it right. And when we get it, we are not only good at it. We are brilliant! We exceed what the neurotypicals who are all doing the same thing can do. Why? Because our intuition allows us to see the elephant in the room when others can't. We find better ways. We become very efficient -- SELF-sufficient. We are "absorbed in our own self"; we are AUTISTIC.

It is understandable, though, why a neurotypical employer wouldn't want to bother hiring somebody with autism. Who wants to be around somebody who doesn't "fit in"? Who wants to feel like they are having to drag somebody when they need somebody who can magically jump right into the shark-infested waters? But really, who wants to hire somebody who's not afraid to tell them that they can do their job more efficiently than they can? It's a new science -- trying to figure out how to coexist with these creatures from another planet. Well, we are not from another planet. We have always been here, and our "problem", as you see it, is not going to go away. Deal with it.

So why does this condition exist in the first place? In all those years ago, we can truly say that some brilliant people were wired that way, as some are in this day and age. For some, especially in modern times, their condition may have been unfortunately induced by some toxic or allergic exposure or even a physical trauma. In any case, autism is what it is, and autistics are what they are -- people who can contribute to this world in amazing ways. If you are a person with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, or you have a child or loved one that is, get together with others that are by joining support groups. Don't navigate this world alone. There is definitely strength in numbers. Also, find a mentor. Every audie NEEDS one. For employers, stop thinking that audies are disabled. They are completely able!

Because I am a physician and somebody with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, I recently felt the need to expand my horizons in my quest to get the message out there. I am willing to travel anywhere in the 48 contiguous United States to teach my "Living With An Autism Spectrum Disorder" seminar or to speak to your company or special interest group. To see an actual syllabus of the three-hour course, which includes my bio, please click HERE (this file is in PDF format). I am always available to answer any of your questions through my Facebook page. I hope this entry has given you a better picture of what goes through the mind of an autistic person. If you hop on board, you'll find that exploring the mind of somebody with an Autism Spectrum Disorder is a fantastic journey!

Random Thoughts

2010-04-03T02:33:00.000-05:00

As you can see, it has been a month and a half since my last blog post. I think I once revealed that the reason why I couldn't be a writer by profession is because I write only when I am deeply inspired to do so. But I challenged myself lately. I was recently appointed to the Executive Advisory Board of the American Association of Integrative Medicine. One of the requirements of being on the board is to write an article for the quarterly newsletter. That pretty much forces me to sit down and write, and what I write cannot be something I wrote and published beforehand. In fact, I've been awaiting the Spring issue of the newsletter so that I can use the article I wrote as my next blog post. The article is about my "three-tiered approach" to healing that is the method of operation I take in my private practice. Whenever it appears, I will post it here. But if you want a sneak peak, you can always check out my practice's website, which I updated since writing the article a month ago.

One thing I have been doing since I last wrote is making my own educational videos. They have been playing on community TV stations throughout the southwestern metro areas of Minneapolis. You can view them also on my practice's website. The manager of St. Louis Park community TV taught me how to film and edit my own productions. He was there looking over my shoulder for the first episode. The second episode was done entirely on my own, without any help. I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. I am thoroughly enjoying these news skills I am experimenting with! Now with my own miniDV camcorder and nonlinear editing programs, I think I'm getting pretty good at this. The first program is on carpal tunnel syndrome. The second is on birth trauma. I am not sure what the next episode will be about. Since April is autism awareness month, I am thinking I will make it about autism.

Since we're on the topic of autism, I am not sure if I ever mentioned the class that I put together entitled "Living With An Autism Spectrum Disorder". I've taught it in Ellsworth, Wisconsin and Hastings, Minnesota already. Other community education programs actually balked at the topic because it was too "controversial". Anyway, I feel that as both a health care provider and somebody with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, I could be educative for people who are caretakers of or known a person who is autistic. Using the book, "Unwritten Rules Of Social Relationships" co-authored by Dr. Temple Grandin and Sean Barron, both of whom are also on the autism spectrum, I share my own experiences, and I help people to get inside the head of the autistic person so that they can relate to and understand them better. It would be great if I could travel to anywhere in the U.S. teaching this class because it is so very beneficial for people to have this information. The only part of the class I have had trouble from other people with is when I mention that vaccinations is one of the theoretical causes of autism. Although I do use the word "theoretical," I still get some pretty lame-brained heckling. But still, this is vital information that everyone that deals with the issue of Autism Spectrum Disorders needs to hear -- right from an audie!

This past week I met with the two directors of The Uteam4U, Inc., a consortium of experts that people can call upon to consult in various health and wellness areas. I was referred to them by the general manager of the place where I work part time after he heard that my goal, as a Holistic Physician, was to expand my expertise beyond the walls of my office. But when I saw that the directors were educational experts with autistics and people with cognitive disorders, the bulk of the conversation was about me and how I could possibly get ahead despite having these problems. Although this meeting ended on a very positive vibe, it has yet to bear any fruit. I don't count my chickens before they hatch. In fact, I don't count them at all anymore. In fact, in a conversation I had just tonight with a Minnesota native at the place where I work part time, I was told, "People in Minnesota say one thing and do another." Although I have lived in many different places and found this to be a universal truth, it is PARTICULARLY true in Minnesota.

On the subject of this blog, I once said that I would write more about health and wellness topics. It seems that almost all of my LinkedIn and Facebook contacts who are professionals like me, blogging is a staple, a weekly, if not daily, event. They always seem to have something to say and know every fact in every book. I can't say that I am so gifted. But I guess my new skill of producing my own TV shows will be the way I do my educating. Now I'll stop writing because if I continue I'll just be rambling.

The Healing Power Of Qi: Lessons From Avatar

2010-02-16T01:43:00.001-06:00

Sorry that it's been more than two months since I've written. I usually do not write unless I am inspired to do so by that inner intuition. Since creating a new "ask the doctor" page on Facebook, I feel the need to call upon this intuition a little more often from now on. My purpose is to use this blog as a teaching tool. On that same note, I am in the process of creating the first, of hopefully many to come, video that will be aired on local community TV about various health conditions. The first one is all about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and I hope it is ready to be aired within the next three weeks.

Now as many of you know, I have been answering questions on health topics in various online forums for about two years now. Just last night, somebody asked the question on LinkedIn, "Does intuition really exist?" In my answer, I mentioned the book "Awakening Intuition" by Mona Lisa Schultz, M.D., in which Dr. Schultz specifically mentions how she trained herself to listen to her own intuition and gives exercises for how we can do the same. So the question should really be, "What is intuition?" Simply stated, intuition is qi talking to us. Qi is another spelling of "chi", and I prefer this spelling simply because it is a hugely valuable word to know for a competitive Scrabble player like myself. And here's the neat thing about qi: it is both omnipotent and omnipresent.

Qi is referred to as Kundalini in Vedic traditions. It is referred to as Holy Spirit in Christian traditions. In the movie Star Wars it was referred to as "the force". It was also very well explained in the movie "Avatar". In the movie Avatar, the Na'vi refer to this all-pervasive power as their deity Eywa. There is no better explanation to give for what qi is than what the character Neytiri gave to her human mate Jake. This energy, this force, fills the entire universe. It is the essence by which all things are created and become alive. It keeps our hearts beating, our blood flowing, our lungs breathing, rivers flowing, heavenly bodies moving, flowers growing, and on and on. This power is limitless and can never die. When a living creature "dies", the energy merely leaves the form it occupied and returns to the Absolute, to G-d, to The Divine. Not that The Divine is separate. This energy IS The Divine and has created all that is physical and nonphysical. And in many traditions around the world, this divine qi is worshipped in many ways. The fact that the Na'vi were so acutely interconnected with this qi energy naturally made them a more peaceful, appreciative, loving race.

Because of this energy, we are never really alone. Because of this energy, we are never limited. Because of this energy, we are never without an inner compass. But because of something called "ego," which I talked about in my last blog post, we can THINK that we are alone, small, powerless, and lost. So how then do we become more aware of qi? How then does it talk to us? First of all, it is always there, and it is always saying something. The key is to make a sincere practice of meditating to quiet the mind. To "meditate" simply means to focus. To focus on quieting the mind, sitting upright in a quiet room, whether you follow a formal type of meditational practice or not, is key in becoming aware of qi and what it is saying. In this case, the goal of meditation is to, like I said, quiet the mind. The mind, with all its worries and thoughts about all things worldly, IS the seat of the ego, that which likes to impose illusory limitations on things. By taking this completely out of the picture, the power of qi can be recognized. For one who is good at meditating, the recognition and connecting with qi comes quite naturally. By continuous practice, actual DIALOG with qi can happen.

When one can actually dialog with qi, then intuition is at its strongest. In the movie Avatar, the Na'vi just had to "plug in" by using the fibers that grew from their ponytails to be able to communicate, nonverbally, with all living things, because of qi, including with their divine deity Eywa. We as humans aren't so lucky. We have to eliminate the loud chatter of the ego first.

I had mentioned that there are formal types of meditational practices. Some prefer Qi Gong. Some prefer Buddhist meditation. I personally practice a path called Siddha Yoga. After 12 years, I must say that I have had some pretty strong "encounters" with qi. As a healer, I have learned to listen to my intuition, to the qi talking, when I have a patient in my office. Maybe it isn't so surprising when people say to me that I can find things and zero in on problems that others have completely missed and have not been able to help. It's not so much that I am "better" at what I do but that I am constantly listening to my intuition. Then, when I place my hands on somebody to help them, the qi moves to create healing. This is naturally how it works. There is no "trying"; it just does. When used for good intents, qi can be a great healer. When listened to through intuition, it is an unfaltering master.

In conclusion, we can probably argue that there are so many different religions and warring factions all calling upon God (perhaps THEIR god and not the enemy's god), to inspire them as they carry on with their self-righteous indignations and judgements. Who is right? Which side will God lead to victory? Again from the movie Avatar, as Neytiri explained to Jake as Jake prayed to Eywa for just such a guidance, "Eywa does not take sides. She is only interested in the preservation of the balance of life." After all, how can qi, which is present in ALL people, peoples, and creatures, know differences? Differences can only be perceived by the illusory ego.

Audie Ego

2009-12-11T20:47:00.001-06:00

In his book "The Power Of Intention," Dr. Wayne Dyer mentions six characteristics of the ego. When a person can break themselves free of these six illusions that characterize the ego, they are a truly enlightened spiritual being. But such a task is not easy. Even the spiritual masters had to endure many years of spiritual practice through yoga and meditation to reach this level. This blog posting is not a discussion of these six characteristics. Instead, I am going to focus on just one: "You are what you do."

For an autistic person on a spiritual journey, "you are what you do" would probably be the absolute most difficult part of the ego to destroy. The reason for this is because an autistic person grew up in their own world where they could not figure out how to communicate and be part of the neurotypical world. Therefore, that gift that they bring to this world, whether it be a great talent, interest, hobby they excel at, or profession they encompass, becomes THE way that they can bridge the gap between the two worlds. They identify themselves so completely with what they do that they use that as a definition of themselves and their self worth. It is only natural to do so because they lack social interaction skills and normal learning skills to be able to see themselves as anything or anyone else in the world.

How many times do you hear somebody with Asperger's Syndrome talk about their favorite pastime or TV show or an interest in electronics -- incessantly. It really can be annoying, yes? But to them, this is the only way they know how to bridge the gap between their autistic ways of thinking and the "typical" world around them. They identify so intimately with what they do, and this identification may never be broken. As for me personally, ever since I was a kid I was interested in how the body works and in metaphysical topics. So truly did I stick to these interests that I became a holistic physician who practices healing arts that span the spectrum from mainstream medicine (with functional medicine testing) to etheric healing (which encompasses dealing with paranormal phenomena). But these interests do not stay within the walls of my healing center in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. I spend a great deal of time answering health related questions in two different online forums. Many times over the years, in social situations I would end up being a turnoff to people because I'd talk about my profession and my place in it. I indeed WAS what I DID.

I felt that I was what I did, like most audies, because I had to place myself somewhere in this world somehow. My way of breaking out of the autistic world was to tell the neurotypical world how I can be of service to them, and loudly so because I always "knew" that I was one of the best darn healers in this world because of my great insight and because I had the best darn teachers teaching me the best darn ways of doing things. I was BEST FRIENDS with this part of my ego -- knowing that I WAS what I DID. Unfortunately, announcing this to the world only alienated me further, when done so in socially inappropriate settings. Like other audies, I was just as boastful about my accomplishments because I had nothing and no one else to identify with; there was no measure for me to identify my place among the "normals".

In her book "Unwritten Rules Of Social Relationships," Dr. Temple Grandin explains that the autistic person needs to develop an interest in something and excel in that interest because that is what will carry them through life. Developing other tools to relate, such as social and interpersonal skills, would be a constant struggle. Thus, it should be no surprise that an autistic person will use that one skill they embrace and are highly proficient at to navigate through their life in this foreign land of the typical world. One must understand this, and perhaps become a bit more tolerant, of an autistic person the next time they hear him talk about molecular physics for the 39,543rd time.

So how does an autistic person on the spiritual path break free from the illusory egotistic belief that they are what they do? For me to really be able to answer that fully would be like a cow trying to explain, and make excuses for, why she is a cow. I myself didn't start to see lights going off in my own mind until I started attending a support group for adults with autism at the Autism Society of Minnesota. Being among other audies, and finally being in a crowd I felt at home with, allowed me to see myself in an objective way. Also, early on in my days of practicing Siddha Yoga, I had profound visions during deep meditations in which I was not only being separated from the world around me by a profound force, but my etheric body was being separated from my physical body. It was a very important lesson to EXPERIENCE the fact that we are, in our pure essence, the Power of God in manifest form. So, there is no reason to be attached to an ego, which makes us have all these illusions of what we are NOT.

Over the past eleven years that I have been practicing Siddha Yoga, I wrote about my meditation experiences and lessons learned from them, which I am willing to share openly. I encourage every audie in this world to adhere to some sort of discipline that will focus on the Spiritual aspect of being. It will surely give you greater insight and strength to carry on in your difficult journey in this world. On that note, though, not all "meditational" paths are the same, so choose wisely. You will know which path is right for you because you will feel your audie ego melting away from the beginning.

Why DO Children Need Chiropractic Care?

2009-11-23T18:01:00.001-06:00

In keeping up with my vow to include more educational posts in my blog, here is another installment. It is actually an article I wrote a couple years ago. This article has been published on the website of the American Pregnancy Association and on other sites as well:

BEGINNING OF ARTICLE

Let me start with the facts. These “facts” are not just hypothetical ideas. They are actual statistics and actual studies that show that chiropractic care for children is not only safe, it is vital. Take these figures into account:

- A study done by Abraham Towbin, M.D., an expert in pathology, shows that “Spinal cord and brain stem injuries occur often during the process of birth but frequently escape diagnosis." (Towbin, A., "Latent Spinal Cord and brain Stem Injury in Newborn Infants", Develp Med. Child. Neurol, 11:54-68,1969) This often leads to something known as Blocked Atlantal Nerve Syndrome, a primary cause of upper respiratory infections including ear infections and chronic tonsillitis. (Gutman, G., "Blocked Atlantal Nerve Syndrome In infants and Small Children", Manuelle Medizin, 1987)

- A study in which Blocked Atlantal Nerve Syndrome was corrected with chiropractic care showed that 40 out of 43 children studied who were suffering from ear infections improved with chiropractic care alone within two weeks of being adjusted. (Froehle, R.M., J Manipulative Physiol Ther, 1996 Mar-Apr;19(3):169-77)

- A study by J.E. Upledger showed a definite and significant relationship between restrictions in movement of the upper neck area of the spine and children with learning disabilities. (Upledger, J.E., J Am Osteopath Assoc, 1978 Jun;77(10):760-76)

What we have going on here is a high prevalence of something known as “birth trauma” that is causing children to suffer as they grow. When bones misalign they press on nerves. When this happens, the whole body suffers as a result. These misalignments are known as “subluxations.” So the question is what type of healthcare practitioner is trained and qualified to diagnose and correct such a condition? Only a Doctor of Chiropractic can do this, particularly one who has specialized training in the care of pediatric patients.

Birth trauma causes DIRECT impingement on the tiny nerves of a child. However, there are two other major reasons why subluxations may occur indirectly: mental stress and toxic stress. While mental stress may not be so prevalent in childhood years, toxic stress is, particularly because many vaccinations contain compounds such as thimerosal and formaldehyde as preservatives. A child’s immune system isn’t even fully developed until after the age of two years. Thus, vaccinating a child before the immune system is even capable of handling such an antigen can impair the immune system’s response at a later time. This is why many children still may develop a disease even though they have been vaccinated against it.

I am often asked by mothers-to-be what is the safest way to give birth in order to minimize the occurrence of birth trauma. They are pleased to learn that the upright or squatting positions are not only easier on the baby, but they are much more comfortable on mom as well. The baby has the benefit of having a gravity-assisted birth that minimizes the amount of force being placed on the baby’s head and neck. Mom doesn’t feel as much pain because the baby is not pressing down on the sacral plexus of nerves as it usually is in the typical “lithotomy” position (mom lying flat on her back with legs up in stirrups). These safer, less painful positions minimize the chance that both mom and her baby will suffer from a subluxation.

Children who receive regular chiropractic care do indeed live healthier lives. While I was a chiropractic intern at Life University in Marietta, GA, I met many people my own age who have never been sick in their life. They said that the key to their abounding level of wellness was that they have never received a vaccination and they’ve been receiving chiropractic care since the day they were born. I have seen for myself how much happier and vibrant children who receive chiropractic care are. It is so heartwarming to see children who no longer have to take medications such as Ritalin, asthma medications, or antibiotics because they started receiving chiropractic care instead.

Seeing a child who was once sickly be able to laugh and play with other kids in an optimal state of wellness gives me the greatest joy. Chiropractic works!

END OF ARTICLE

When I was still practicing on the East Coast, whether it was in Georgia or Pennsylvania, it was an almost daily thing for me to be taking care of pediatric patients for the very reasons cited in this article. Here in Minnesota, however, it is largely unheard of for a child to be adjusted. People here seem backwards in their way of thinking about chiropractic. I blame it mostly on the strong influence that the medical community has here. This is the home of the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota Medical School. It is the birthplace of managed care and the "land of 10,000 hospitals". Even the chiropractic college here in Bloomington, MN doesn't have the right philosophy of what chiropractic really is. I have heard on several occasions in the seven years I've lived here from other chiropractors that they wish they could have gone to the chiropractic college I went to because then they could have actually learned CHIROPRACTIC. When I first moved here, it took me about a year before I found an actual chiropractOR. Even though he was a graduate of the chiropractic school here, he says he then went to the Gonstead Institute in Wisconsin to learn how to actually care for people.

It is time for chiropractic to arrive in Minnesota. That's why I am here.

Just A Very Short Note

2009-11-21T02:23:00.000-06:00

This note is for all those people who are afraid that I and my wife would ever consider leaving Minnesota: Even if I WOULD find a substantial opportunity to be professionally successful elsewhere in the U.S., it would have to be so substantial that I could afford to commute during break times back HERE to my home in Minnesota. I'm only considering one such opportunity at this moment in time, a clinic faculty doctor position at my chiropractic alma mater in Marietta, GA. We love living here, ESPECIALLY because of events that occurred within the past couple months that showed us how very special the people that we know here are and how great it really is to be a Minnesotan. I guess we can call ourselves "Minnesotans" now since we've been living here for more than seven years now!

A New Angle On "Success"

2009-11-01T01:19:00.005-05:00

In my last entry I mentioned a doctor by the name of Tom Necela. He contacted me, and we are now LinkedIn comrades. It is interesting how the internet definitely does bring people together in the strangest ways! After all, the internet is how I met my wife Bianca.

Bianca and I had a conversation just two days ago that was inspired by a friend of ours, Todd Chowan. It was about how one should measure how successful they are in life. This was based on a series of events that happened just two weeks ago on October 14th - 15th. I had been feeling particularly disappointed and discouraged by the fact that my practice is so incredibly small that it only gives me pocket change. Bianca and I bought a house last summer. We have plans to upgrade the house and to start a family. Although she makes a very good salary as a school teacher, I have contributed very little monetarily to our picture of success.

But, taking money OUT of the picture, it is apparent that I am perhaps one of the most successful people I know! I have succeeded at one of my childhood goals of becoming a doctor with great knowledge of how the body works and can help people improve their health and well-being in holistic ways. The 18 years of being involved in health care BEFORE becoming a doctor were but a primer, a preparatory challenge, that lead me to become a great healer. Having my own health challenges ever since infancy has built my own ability to empathize with people and know what it feels like to be sick, hospitalized, incapacitated,and left wondering if they are going to live to see tomorrow. I now have a wonderful wife and a wonderful hone. That is certainly a success! In my favorite hobby of playing Scrabble, I am ranked among some of the best players in the country. I am sure that I can come up with other ways in which my life was successful to this point.

But this is not the way I was thinking on October 14th. I was feeling quite dismayed, even as Bianca and I enjoyed a wonderful dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant. As on any usual day, Bianca went to bed before I did. I continued my nightowl routines. I suddenly felt very tired at about 2 AM October 15th, which was still a bit early for me to go to bed. I also had a headache. I thought nothing of it because I occasionally do get headaches on days when I abstained from caffeine.

When I woke up at 7:30 in the morning to go to the bathroom, I noticed I couldn't get out of bed. I could barely move my right leg, and I had no strength to balance on it. At the same time, Bianca had asked me to set the alarm for her. As I picked up my right arm, I noticed I couldn't move my hand and coordinate my fingers in any sensible way. I made it to the bathroom and back by holding onto the wall. Bianca was very worried and wanted to call the ambulance. I was stubborn and I said "no" with a slurred and muffled voice, but then said okay. The ambulance came and rushed me to the hospital were a CAT scan revealed that I was having a stroke.

Since I take coumadin anticoagulant for a prosthetic heart valve, they gave me the drugs Vitamin K and Factor 9 to stop the bleeding in my brain. I then spent the next four days in ICU. Then, after spending just one day on the regular hospital floor I was transferred to a rehab hospital where I spent three days. So I was in the hospital for a whole week. During that time, I regained full use of my leg and I can now walk normally. I still do not have full use of my right hand. I can type adequately and eat, but I cannot write very well at all. I also lost some of my voice. I will now be going through outpatient rehab therapy for my right hand and my voice.

Because of this experience, I can truly say that I am connected to a very caring community of friends and people from the school district where Bianca teaches. Thanks to connecting with them through the Caring Bridge website, we now have meal support and ride support to my appointments. It is also uplifting to know that my parents will be visiting from the East Coast next week. It is always good to have family around during a crisis situation. My parents had ALWAYS been there for all of my life health crises. Now that they are in their 70s, this visit is so much more special. Heck, I am the one who is supposed to be looking after THEM!

I can't say for sure if the stroke was brought on by the negative, sulking frame of mind I had the day prior. But I CAN INDEED say that a negative frame of mind DOES lead to illness and continued illness. During all the years I have been in healthcare as a care giver, I can truly say that the sickest people I've ever seen, on a whole, are the ones who do not have a positive frame of mind. The feel as though their whole life has been a failure, and they also lack a support system to give them happiness and encouragement.

Having a feeling, and a genuine notion, of belonging and success in life are PARAMOUNT to good health. Even the psycholgist Abraham Maslow, the founder of humanistic psychology, pointed this out in 1943. In 1895, Dr. Daniel D. Palmer, the founder of the chiropractic profession, pointed out that 80% of all illness in life is due to one's mental state of being. This was a big personal lesson for me! And from now on I will count my blessings and my successes instead of measuring myself based on a monetary income. I am quite abundant in the amount of help I can give others. But if they do not want what I have to offer,that doesn't mean I am not successful!

The Integrative Approach To Health Care

2009-09-18T00:44:00.003-05:00

Today I will be mailing off my portfolio and application for board certification to the American Association of Integrative Medicine. While looking at the requirements for board certification, I realized that I am actually qualified to gain the next higher level -- Diplomate status. Having such a designation always looks good on a resume. It will be especially helpful while I am marketing my newest venture, that of being a mobile practitioner of integrative health services. The question that many people may have now is why I chose the subspecialty of integrative health care. Being a chiropractor, don't you just work in an office all day adjusting peoples' spines? Actually, as with any specialty, whether it be being a medical doctor, nurse, or attorney, a chiropractor can have different fields of specialty.

For people who have known me my whole life, it should be no great surprise that I am an integrative practitioner. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "integrate" as "to form, coordinate, or blend into a functioning or unified whole." In this case, I am bringing together multiple disciplines to help a person with his or her health concerns. As a youngster growing up, my parents always took me to medical specialists to find out about my health problems, from a life-threatening food poisoning to chronic ear infections to stunted growth and development and finally being diagnosed with a heart condition that eventually needed open heart surgery to correct. It seemed to go on and on and on. I'm not sure if this is why I've always been fascinated with the science of studying the human body, but it certainly kept me interested. I used to spend hours diving into medical text books before I was eight years old, showing off a rather profound hyperlexia for my age. Even when I decided to pursue health care as a career, I saw that there were so many fields to choose from that I just didn't know which avenue to take.

As fate would have it, I happened upon deciding to make a career in health care after becoming a volunteer ambulance attendant. During those ten years, learning how to save lives and enjoying many great adventures, I spent one year in nursing school. Even though I was always at the top of the class in book work, I performed miserably in the clinical setting. In fact it wasn't until just last year that I finally was able to put my finger on the disability that always stunted my capacity to learn hands-on skills. Eventually I became a Respiratory Therapist, and then from there a chiropractor. Throughout the years of my life and my education, I have always been fascinated with various lab tests and what they mean, diagnosing illnesses, finding out how the human body actually works, and helping those who were suffering from various health woes. Even now as a chiropractor, I see how making use of these same diagnostic tools can help me to help people better their lives. Now as a chiropractor, I feel that I have more tools to work with than the average chiropractor AND the average medical practitioner. I am INTEGRATIVE in my approach.

As an integrative physician, I have knowledge from "both sides of the fence," so to speak: medicine and "alternative" medicine. As I explain myself in interviews, because I have knowledge of both, I know the abilities and limitations of both, and I know when and where I can cross the lines between the two when caring for a patient. In my office, I perform physical exams. I do D.O.T. physicals, pre-employment physicals, athletic physicals, routine physicals, neurological evaluations, and functional medicine lab tests. I will order X-rays, CAT scans, MRIs, and even medical lab tests when I feel that they are necessary. Because I have knowledge from both sides of the fence, I know when a headache might be due to an upper neck misalignment and when it might be due to an undiagnosed brain tumor. I know when a bad case of enuresis might be due to a lumbar nerve compression or a urinary tract infection. To see things from the integrated view means that I can pool diagnostic and treatment options from medicine, alternative medicine, and of course chiropractic to help a person heal.

Looking back at the illnesses I suffered in my life, I can see what could have been helped by chiropractic when medicine failed, and I can also see when medicine was necessary to help what chiropractic would not have been able to help. Just to stick to one regimen is limiting. The person in need needs to open their mind to the various options and NOT feel hopeless just because the medical approach gave no results. It is just as limiting to rely only on natural methods, including chiropractic, for a particular problem when it is obvious that only medicine, or a life-saving operation, could help. Even the healthcare providers themselves, NEED to open their minds, and open their hearts, if they are TRULY to consider themselves HEALERS.

It's time for both sides to stop throwing stones. To the medical doctors: chiropractors are NOT "quacks," and your Committee Against Chiropractic (later renamed to Committee Against Quackery), which was formed by the American Medical Association in 1963, was your biggest mistake. Your concerted effort to destroy anything you couldn't own for yourselves was despicable, and it set back the healing possibilities of this nation hundreds of years. Likewise, to the chiropractors, I say this: YOUR blind following of super-straight philosophers leads you astray. I was horrified by the blasphemy I heard directed at me by teachers and fellow students at the best chiropractic college in the world because I needed to have medicine for certain conditions that I suffered from. Do not dare tell people that they do not need a certain medication until you have already helped them with your super-straight ideals. Even D.D. Palmer, the founder of our great profession, said in his book "The Chiropractor's Adjustor," "The good Doctor of Chiropractic will know what he can help and when he needs to refer to his medical counterpart."

Now let's integrate and get to work.

Spinal Hygiene

2009-09-11T22:21:00.002-05:00

When I mention the words "spinal" and "hygiene" together, I usually get a good chuckle. Hygiene commonly refers to the act of cleanliness, such as brushing your teeth properly or washing your hands often. In reality, the true meaning of the word "hygiene", according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is "Conditions or practices conducive to health." Therefore, these two words fit together perfectly. Here's a question to ponder: If the brain controls everything in the body, how do the signals get from the brain to the body and back again? It's not a trick answer. The answer is: the spinal cord. All of the nerves that run through the spine, and the 24 cranial nerves, control EEEVEERRYYYTHING in the body. Therefore, it's vital to maintaining optimal health and function to be very aware of proper spinal hygiene.

The first an absolutest rule to proper spinal hygiene is: get a chiropractor. When bones misalign, they can and do put pressure on nerves. When nerves have pressure placed on them, things start to go bad, and it doesn't always cause pain. Chiropractic care takes the pressure off the nerves. You can never reach your true potential in life without chiropractic care! Secondly, the rest is up to you. Do what you can when you're not in your chiropractor's office to keep yourself healthy. This includes setting up your work areas to reduce physical stress. This is referred to as "ergonomics." This also includes de-stressing yourself mentally and emotionally on a regular basis. Dr. Daniel David Palmer, the founder of the chiropractic profession, said that 80% of all illness is due to "autosuggestion", or how we think. Spiritual health is also very important. I'm not talking about the need to go to church or practice a certain belief. Being "spiritual" simply means doing what is right and keeping in mind that there is a bigger picture and a Divine Order to the universe.

In my stress reduction workshops, I teach people a series of physical stretches that specifically focus on spine tuning as part of a complete spinal hygiene package. These exercises were developed in 1999 by Dr. Ron Kirk, dean of the chiropractic program at Life University in Marietta, GA. These exercises are so simple that anyone of any age can do them, even if they have some sort of back problem. You can see the instructional program on how to do these exercises here: http://www.life.edu/node/868. In followup sessions, people have told me that when they do these exercises, they find that they have better endurance throughout the day, whether they are working at a desk job or whether they are an athlete in training. I encourage everyone to look through this spinal hygiene and spine tuning program. It just might make the difference in how healthy you feel and in how well you function!

If you don't already have a chiropractor, and you don't know who in your area to choose, you can always contact me. I will check around to see who in your area I feel will be able to serve you best based on your particular needs. Not every chiropractor is the same, meaning that some have different subspecialties. For example, not every chiropractor is trained in pediatric care or in the care of extremity problems. You can contact me through my NEW website at www.mihsUSA.com.

A New Format

2009-09-10T03:14:00.003-05:00

Since I've hardly used this blog, and when I did it was either a for a rant or a good story to tell, I figure I will use it as an educational tool. I am completely revamping my business, my websites, my resume, and now my blog. I still have yet to figure out how to incorporate the Blogspot site into other sites, like you can with WordPress. I'm becoming more in tune with these things, thanks to some help I am getting these days from fellow business professionals. One reason why I haven't been very successful in business is because I always tried to go it alone. Those days are over. Networking with likeminded people is crucial in this day and age. I once complained that it's because people do not like my autistic mannerisms. BUT, that is something people don't even find out about until they've walked through my door. Getting people to do THAT much is the trick!

So, in the days to come this blog will be used to give little health and wellness tips. Nothing fancy, nothing controversial. My newest venture is to get out of the office more and onto the road. The Sufletesc Center has become Mobile Integrated Health Solutions. Mobile does not mean that I am going back to doing house calls. Doing that is how I ended up with chronic pain in my shoulder, which has since healed up nicely. It does mean that I will make business-to-business "house calls" to places like trucking companies, private offices, community events, etc. "Integrated" means that I not only offer chiropractic care, but I also do D.O.T. physicals, employee health screening, employment & athletic physicals, and functional medicine services, just like I always have. This is the new deal. For the time being, I will be serving all of Minnesota from Duluth to Fergus Falls to Worthington onward to the southeast.

For more information about what I've been up to lately, you can see my NEW website at http://www.mihsUSA.com . Or, you can follow me as I take the show on the road on my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Saint-Louis-Park-MN/Mobile-Integrated-Health-Solutions/126862493842?ref=ts . There's more to come!

The Next Chapter

2009-08-09T20:31:00.003-05:00

It's been more than a month since I last wrote. My writing habit comes and goes. For a while I have a ton of stuff running through my head. Then I go into that "empty box" where my head just doesn't feel like thinking of anything. Since I last wrote, I hopped back on the "what am I really supposed to be doing with myself" wagon. Thanks to that autistic tendency to want to try to fit in with different groups of people to see where you can fit in, I ended up losing my job as a security guard at the theater here in Minneapolis. People complained because I said things, rather I wrote things on their Facebook page, that made them feel uncomfortable. My explanation was that being autistic makes it hard for people to draw the boundary lines between what should be said when and to whom. This much is really true. But the fact that they fired me for it and merely relocated another guard to another position led me to file a charge of discrimination with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. I'm not even going to follow up on it, really. Whatever happens happens, and in the meantime I have moved on.

While being a "healer" always ends up being the answer to what I was really meant to do in life, building a clientele continues to be my weakest point. I can help a three-month old overcome colic when everything else failed, I can help a family member overcome vertigo when a medical doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong, I can uncover deeply-rooted emotional hangups that keep a person sick thanks to medical intuition, but I can't build a practice. Go figure. Just last night I figured that I really shouldn't be surprised. After all, not knowing how to correspond appropriately and with the right people has ALWAYS been my downfall. It still continues to be my downfall. But just like Dr. Temple Grandin, if not for the people who knew of her gift and stuck up for her, she probably would have succumbed to the same lack of social propriety.

On that note, I recently decided to make lemonade out of lemons. I designed a class specifically on living with autism spectrum disorders -- a class about ASDs taught by an audie. What a concept! I advertised it to several local community education programs, 117 of them to be exact. So far, I have about six of them that I scheduled this class with for their upcoming Fall community ed programs. I am also taking this opportunity to seek out the advice of a psychologist who may be able to give me some practical advice. The one who has experience working with audies was all booked up (surprise surprise). So the one I will have an appointment with this coming Wednesday specializes in anxiety disorders and depression. I can't say I have any issues there, but at least it was something that stood out as different from the rest of the people on my insurance provider list. The difference is that I know where to start -- I am a person with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder. I didn't know that just 13 months ago.

I guess there really is no "next chapter". I am just revisiting the previous one, but now knowing what my shortcoming is. And it's something I'll have to deal with and make known to potential employers. I have gone back to trying to promote myself through making phone calls and proposals for providing chiropractic and examination services. I even list in my most current brochure that I myself live with an ASD. I pretty much had to do that in hopes of cutting down on the amount of strange looks I get if and when people visit my office and see somebody they judge as not being "doctor-like". I have to make do with what is and forget about what isn't. Another thing I am looking into is what possibility there might be that I can get some kind of disability compensation. Sure I can work. But functioning is a different story. Functioning as a "neurotypical" may always be an impossibility. It would be nice if there was somebody who could walk in front of me whenever I am going to make a presentation or reach out to a new contact and say, "Here is a physician who can help you, as long as you overlook the fact that he may act differently because he is autistic."

Audies DO live in a world of their own. It is up to the neurotypical to learn how to coexist with them and communicate with them in a meaningful, functional, non-judgmental, progressive way.

A New Venue

2009-07-01T03:32:00.003-05:00

A light bulb went on in my head just a couple days ago. I started putting together some of the pieces of the puzzle of my life in a more meaningful way. First, I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and I do not have the ability to get out there and promote myself and be present during the daytime hours. Second, thanks to the early days of this CFS problem when I was pretty much houseridden, I became hooked to the internet. I still spend quite a bit of time online, just not in chatrooms anymore. Yes, I have my doctorate degree, which I've felt is going to waste for quite some time because I have not been successful in business. So, how can I get myself out there AND make money at the same time. All this time I've been focusing on creating my websites, tweaking them, making up brochures and ads, all to promote myself. In the past year or less, I started answering questions in different health forums, and I found that I really enjoy that very much. So, finally, it dawned on me what I should do.

The question came to me, "How can I answer people's health related questions online AND get paid for it?" I'm actually quite surprised that I hadn't thought of it sooner. The answer is -- by creating a virtual office. That is what I am in the process of doing now. I found a website where people can call in or write to experts in different categories. If they approve of my credentials and profiles, then away we go. If they do not, then I'll create my own forum on the website that I already have, and I'll advertise it all over the place. All you have to do is click a button and you have me in a chatroom, live and at your service. I already know what I will be charging, and I already have about a year of experience doing this online. Now let's see what happens. It WILL be up and running soon. It's just a matter of how many people I can attract. I figure I can't be invisible forever. Yes, I am here to serve, as a physician, as a healer, as a shoulder to lean on for people who are in need. This IS my calling.

Recently my wife and I saw the movie "The Proposal". Although a very funny movie indeed, there was one somber moment where a question of mine was answered out of the blue. Because of my floundering business success, I had been asking myself lately what it is I was REALLY meant to do. I figured that I wasn't being very successful because I wasn't doing the right thing. Then Betty White answered my question in the movie with this line: "Whatever you do, that's what you'll be." Now it's no mystery to me. I'll keep being what I always was -- a healing practitioner. Let's see how this new venue works out.

On Being Aligned With The Divine

2009-06-28T04:51:00.002-05:00

I am in the process of listening to the new audio presentation of Dr. Wayne Dyer's "Excuses Begone". It is a powerful presentation, and many of the things he says I have never heard before. That's what makes it special. The main message is that we should throw out every excuse we ever used for our not being able to accomplish something and instead think from an "awareness" perspective. The "awareness" part means that all that exists is a manifestation of God. Thus, acting from the awareness that we ARE The Divine made manifest means that excuses should never enter the picture. Excuses are the product of the ego, not of God. Also, the more we think about what we SHOULD be doing, where we SHOULD be, how much money we SHOULD be making, etc., we are thinking from the perspective of the ego. God simply is, and God simply does -- as us, through us.

Yes, I have accomplished quite a bit in my life. I've suffered many health challenges. I've had many life experiences, both as a hospital patient and as a health care provider. I've earned a graduate degree. I have a lovely wife and home. I like where I live. The positives in my life are many. However, taking to heart what Dr. Dyer points out, and what many great sages throughout the millenia have said, I find it odd that God would be content with being sedentary. If God is acting through me, as me, then he must really enjoy having all these ways in which he can love people and help them without actually having anybody coming into the office to receive. Interesting concept. Rather humorous, at that.

So, anyway, I had some ideas of what I wanted to write. But I think I just used them all. It's 5:00 in the morning now, and I really need to get to bed. I have to go back to my $11 an hour job as a security guard in a theater this afternoon.

Enter The "Holistic Physician"

2009-06-09T02:41:00.005-05:00

Last week while I was working at my security job at the Guthrie Theater, I got talking to a couple of the ushers. Most of the people I work with already know that I am a chiropractor. But what they don't know is that I am very holistic in how I care for my patients. "I address all of my patients' health concerns," I said at one point in the conversation. At that moment, one of the ushers I was talking to perked up and started asking me all these questions about her high blood pressure problems. She wanted to know what natural ways there are to take care of it. I then thought to myself that THIS is why I became a doctor -- to help people with their health concerns in a holistic way. I didn't become a "back pain specialist," and I really hate being mistaken for one. Even though my business card says that I am a "holistic chiropractor," the word "chiropractor" insinuates, in most people's mind, that I take care of only back pain and headaches. I've been in health care for over 26 years now in many different capacities. I certainly never intended to limit myself by becoming a chiropractor!

What people DO understand is the word "physician". D.D. Palmer, the founder of the chiropractic profession, always frowned on chiropractors who would call themselves "chiropractic physicians". Many medical doctors with an ego would also frown upon a chiropractor considering himself to be any kind of physician. I've always been neutral to using this term because, as the Latin origin of the word "physician" implies, a physician is a practitioner of a "natural science". (Source: the Online Etymology Dictionary) So the question would then be, could I simply call myself a "holistic physician"? To answer that, I turned to the good ol' internet, that magical land where all knowledge can be bestowed. Alas, I came up with an article who answered that question with a profound "yes". Here is the link to the article: http://www.radicalmedicine.com/holistic_physician_defined.html .

According to the article, there are six different healing professionals that can use the title "holistic physician": medical doctors, osteopaths, chiropractors, naturopaths, dentists, and acupuncturists. Therefore, I feel at ease to change my business cards to read "Dr. Patrick V. Suglia, Holistic Physician". Then, to be in accordance with Minnesota state law, I would list chiropractic care among the services that I offer. I do offer a slew of others, such as health status testing (which the American Holistic Medical Association calls functional medicine), routine and specialized physicals, Reiki healing (which the AHMA refers to as energy medicine), and others. I won't go into detail about them here because you can always see everything I do on my website at http://sufletesc.twicmn.org .

People haven't quite made the full paradigm shift yet to fully comprehend and appreciate the words of Thomas Edison: "The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest her or his patients in the care of the human frame, in a proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease." The human frame IS the specialty of the chiropractor, and the other mentioned items are the concern of any holistic physician. The paradigm shift started only 18 years ago when in 1991, for the first time, more visits were made to practitioners of "alternative" medicine, with chiropractors leading the figures, than to general practice medical doctors. Yes, the paradigm is still shifting. More and more people are learning about the wonderful HOLISTIC benefits of chiropractic care, while the current being created by the medical establishment, who is trying to hold on to their dying ego, continues to try to push us further from the public's interest. Until the paradigm shift is complete, which I hope I live to see, I will, for now, call myself a Holistic Physician.

Writing Cramps

2009-06-05T02:35:00.002-05:00

As you may notice already, I hardly write in this blog. But when I do, it's pretty much to the point. People tell me I'm a great writer and that I should consider it for a career. That would be great, if I was a writer. To tell you the truth, I really have to have something pounding in my brain, begging to come out, in order for me to write well. Otherwise, if I just sat down to write because I had to, it wouldn't sound good at all. Such is life! So, that's about all I have to say right now. I'm still waiting for the next great spark.

Chiropractic: Realism vs. Idealism

2009-05-09T18:55:00.006-05:00

Yesterday there was a post on the Minnesota Chiropractic Association's newsgroup announcing that the association was looking for doctors to volunteer their services at a local walk-a-thon. At the walk-a-thon, doctors would be working with medical professionals to help care for the participants, and the purpose of the walk-a-thon is to help raise money for breast cancer research. Another chiropractor wrote in, chastising the association for wanting to promote a "medical" paradigm of chiropractic which would cause the general public to not recognize chiropractic for its true holistic value. I couldn't resist writing back to this guy. Here was my reply:

"I hear you. After being in practice for 9 years, 7 of those years in Minnesota, I've come to realize a few things. First of all, people do not understand chiropractic the way we PRINCIPLED chiropractors do, but to "get to them" we have to approach them from an angle that they do understand -- the medical paradigm. I've also come to learn that when you approach people from the (chiropractically) realistic viewpoint, they see this as an idealistic philosophy that they most likely would not buy into anyway. The second issue is the fact that we are here in Minnesota means that people will AUTOMATICALLY be misconstruing chiropractic for a branch of medicine, which you and I both know it is not. We also know that there isn't enough chiropractic philosophy being taught in our own state's chiropractic college, which means that many chiropractors in this state also have this misconception, unfortunately. On that note, I regret to say that I had a MUCH better practice when I still lived on the East Coast. People here just don't have the same mentality."

Yes, it depends on which chiropractic college one goes to whether or not they are going to be subject to the medical, or "realistic", paradigm of chiropractic or the chiropractIC, principled, or "idealistic" paradigm. (Insert here a side note for chiropractors that whichever one you are exposed to, the schools lack the ability to teach you how to market yourself and become successful. That you have to figure out on your own.) Are you a doctor who does physical rehab in your pain relief and personal injury clinic? Or are you a chiropractOR who tells their patients that EVERYONE needs chiropractic care in order to function at their very best potential in life? This is the difference between realism and idealism. The general public identifies MORE with the realism because to them the idealism is just that -- an idea. And why is that?

Here in the United States, people constantly have the medical paradigm of "health and wellness" in general jammed down their throat. You have to take this pill for that, you have to get this vaccine for this flu, you have to take medicine to prevent this disease, and anything "alternative" has no merit unless the American Medical Association (aka "God") says so. Plus, God, in this case the AMA and the pharmaceutical industry, has the greatest means of getting their words of advice, or dare I say "scare tactics", out there: the media in all forms. Thus, the pain relief chiropractor has it made, especially when he partners with a medical doctor or physical therapist. Enter chiropractIC where we proclaim the truth that the body is a self-healing, self-regulating organism that needs to external influences and only to be free of the interferences that caused the dis-ease to begin with. That cause is the subluxation (misaligned bone) that impinges on and interferes with the proper function of the master regulator of the body: the nerve system. Such a lesson in reality is just too hard for people to grasp after they've been told that their bodies are incapable of such greatness and will constantly be dependent on medicine to survive in this world.

It is probably evident to you by now that I side more with the "idealistic" view of chiropractic. Yet, here's another point I absolutely need to make. The realistic and the idealistic paradigms need to merge. Just after I graduated from chiropractic school in March of 2000, a doctor who graduated from National College of Chiropractic in Chicago said to me, "You need to throw out all the garbage you learned about subluxations and get real." Likewise, chiropractors from my own alma mater, Life University in Atlanta, say, "You need to throw out all the garbage you learned about medicine and get real." Okay, here's what's real. Because of medicine, I am still alive after almost dying at the age of 5 months from salmonella. Also, because of medicine my heart still beats after having open heart surgery to correct an aortic valve defect at the age of 19 years. Because of a chiropractOR who corrected my subluxations in the summer of 1986, I overcame a ten-year bout with chronic sinusitis. Because of a chiropractOR who corrects my subluxations, I am able to function quite well despite having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Because I am a chiropractOR who corrects subluxations, a pediatric patient I once took care of no longer suffers from chronic ear infections. BOTH medicine and chiropractic have their place, and they need to stop throwing stones at each other. Here's the tricky part, though -- the general public needs to know this, and they need to be able to think for themselves without all the brainwashing.

This is possible if we get rid of false gods, our own egos, and simply join hands to serve the people we are supposed to be serving. This is NOT impossible because it happens in many countries around the world -- outside the U.S., that is. The "realistic" and the "idealistic" chiropractors get together to go to countries such as Guatemala, Peru, India, and many other undeserved areas to do one thing -- get people well and help them stay well. One relieves their pain while the other helps their bodies function optimally. Choose your paradigm. It still does the job. And in these countries, people flock in droves, filling up entire sports arenas, waiting their turn to be adjusted by a chiropractor. There is no AMA to tell them this is quackery. Their own governments support and promote this because they know how this helps the people of their country!

Let's put the stones and rocks away and get to work. We BOTH have places in this world, and we BOTH are here to make a difference!

An Eerie Fairwell To Edgerton

2009-04-10T00:55:00.002-05:00

From the very beginning, I could see signs that the whole Edgerton venture was going to be just another headbanging disappointment. Little could I have guessed then that the final straw would be an altercation with a ghost which would close the door to Edgerton all together. Joni, the massage therapist I was sharing the place with, owned the building that I had my practice in. From the moment I set foot in the house, I knew something wasn't exactly right. But I figured it was just an old house, and it had that "old house" feel to it. Besides, most of the town seemed like that. After all, sharing a place with another healing practitioner who would refer clients to me was ideal.

The population of the town is right around 1,000. It was a town full of farmers, kids, and locals who just opened new businesses. Sounded like an opportune place to be. Then I learned that the people there were of Dutch descent. I knew from growing up around the Pennsylvania Dutch that such people shy away from anything that is "new" and are very skeptical of anything that might make them have to think progressively. Soon I came to realize that these people were no different. My ads that I placed in the local newspaper, and even an interview in the same paper, generated only three new patients -- people that were already clients of Joni. For a town that size, I wasn't getting the reception that I thought I would.

Even as far as Joni herself goes, she is a great person and fun to be around, by Edgerton standards. But her own reservations about getting the care she needs, chiropractically speaking, and the fact that she couldn't even pronounce Reiki correctly, brought me to the realization that I was probably in the wrong place after all. I didn't really see much of a "spiritual" component to her practice. It was more about her interest in selling Arbonne products. Even the massage therapist who was sharing the place with her was a very uncultivated redneck. All in all, Joni was nice enough to allow me to sleep overnight at the house so I don't have to pay to stay in a hotel. Besides, the closest hotel was 21 miles away in Luverne. (There were two bed-and-breakfasts in Edgerton, but that's not my thing.)

Even though Joni offered her place to me, I didn't take her up on it right away. I had listed my hours as being Wednesdays and Thursdays from 3 PM to 10 PM. Out of the three weeks I spent taking care of patients there, the first week I had driven down and back all in one day because I had only one patient scheduled on Wednesday. But that was way too much driving, and I realized how quickly I got tired out. A 3-1/2 hour drive one way where all you see is farm fields the whole way was just too much to handle. But the next week were different. During the second week I had a new patient scheduled for Wednesday and the client from the week before scheduled for Thursday. So I stayed at the house located at 321 East Mill Street overnight.

It was a quaint, small house with a kitchen, full bath, and laundry room on the first floor and three bedrooms on the second floor. This is where Joni had lived until she got married several years ago. She retained ownership of the house, and now uses it just for the massage studio and to house family guests when they come to town. Now if the "old" vibe to the downstairs of the house wasn't scary enough, the feeling I got when I went upstairs to the bedrooms was downright frightening. Still, I set up my Aerobed air mattress and settled in. After all, it sure beat paying to stay in a hotel. But later that night, I wouldn't be so happy about my decision to stay there.

Being the nightowl that I am, I decided to go for a joyride late at night. The town of Edgerton was so still that you could hear a pin drop a mile away. So I decided to drive down to Sioux Falls, South Dakota just to see how long it took to get there. After all, I had my laptop with me and I was hungry, and I was looking for a place to take it easy for a while. Just over an hour later I arrived at a Denny's Restaurant, the only one in Sioux Falls. They had internet connection there, and both my need for food and for being online were fulfilled. When I arrived back at the house in Edgerton it was almost 3 AM.

I laid down on my air mattress, felt the eeriness of the air around me, and hoped to fall asleep soon. Instead, for the next three hours I would be constantly woken up by an unseen force. This force was no stranger to me. I knew EXACTLY what it was -- an evil entity that was there to attack me. I knew because I had this exact same thing happen to me only once before in my life, the night after I performed an exorcism in the apartment I lived in in Smyrna, Georgia ten years ago. Invoking the same healing energy I used to dispel that unwelcome spirit, I shrouded the house and myself with protective light in hopes that the disembodied attacker would go away. The attacks did lessen, and at dawn they stopped all together. I was then able to sleep soundly the rest of the morning and into the afternoon.

I didn't think much of what happened during the night. Haunted houses are aplenty, and I've even gotten rid of a few unpleasant entities in my day. But I do so only if the owner of the property asks me to do that. I don't just go around "playing with energy" like a voyeur. But how was I to tell Joni that there is something evil in her place, the house she once called home? I didn't. Right after I took care of my patient for the day, I packed up and went home to Richfield.

Now came this past Wednesday. I received the bill for the ads, saw that the interview appeared nicely in the newspaper, and I was confident that word was getting around that there was a new chiropractor in town. I only had one patient scheduled on Wednesday. My plan was to stay overnight again and spend the day on Thursday going around the city and to neighboring areas introducing myself and posting signs. Joni asked me how it was staying overnight the week before. I said that they energy wasn't very good, but it was probably due to the fact that I was sleeping in an unfamiliar place. I thought to myself I would give it another try though because, again, it still beat paying to stay in a hotel, and I thought maybe this time things won't be so disruptive.

I had gotten only 4-1/2 hours of sleep the night before. So after I took care of my patient I was in no condition to go for a joyride again. I stopped by Tally Ho, the local coffee shop, to get myself something to eat, and I return to Joni's house to spend the rest of the night reading and typing on the computer. I finally felt tired enough to go to bed at 1:30 AM. But instead of getting a good night's sleep, the SAME EXACT thing happened as the week before, and it was now WORSE! This ghost was more aggressive as it not only "stole" my sleep from me but was also poking me with something that was sharp or burning. I didn't even bother to call upon the protective energies. I figured if I could just put up with it until daybreak I'd be fine. But the more I laid there, the more I told this intruder to go away, the more adamant it became. It really wanted me out of there!

I can sense the negative energy around me. It feels like a still, heavy, dark cloud. Whereas some mediums and psychics can actually see spirits, auras, and energies, I feel them and intuit them. By having my sleep "stolen", I mean that I would be sound asleep one minute and then would find myself lying wide awake the next without apparent reason, and this would be repetitive every time I started to fall back to sleep again. But the poking and prodding was something new. Now I knew I was dealing with something I never dealt with before. Still and all, it wasn't in my place to play the rescuer of the house here. Just before daybreak, I finally gave in and said, "You win. I'm outta here." And at 5:30 in the morning, I packed up my belongings, my patient records, and my chiropractic table, and I left for good, never to return.

This event wouldn't end without something positive coming from it, though. As I drove down Murray County Route 1 on my way back home, the scenery all around me was one on the best I had ever seen in my life. Daylight was just starting to creep above the horizon in the East, and the dark silhouettes of the hundreds of windmills flapping in the night sky filled my vision. The planet Mercury sat on the horizon to announce the beginning of a new day. I turned around to see the night sky behind me. Clouds just started to obscure a bright full moon. Despite all that happened, this one vision of the morning sky in Edgerton is what I will walk away with and will cherish the rest of my days. It was as if the Universe were saying that from here on, things will be better.

The Last Call

2009-04-06T03:16:00.007-05:00

I was going to write about my trip to Vancouver tonight. But instead, I am writing about something far more sentimental to me.

My interest in healthcare as a career started "by accident," I guess you could say. Here's the story. The year was 1979. I was just a bumbling, nerdy high school kid who had a friend named Michael that I used to hang out with. My activities consisted of taking piano lessons and playing Scrabble. Other than that, I was pretty average. Then Michael started telling me about his dad being a fireman, and about the local Fire & Rescue Explorers Post that trained kids our age how to be firemen and rescue personnel. I figured that sounded like a great way to add some excitement to my life. After all, I was looking for some action, a way to really dive into something that would get my adrenalin rushing. I was looking for a way to "fit in" and be a part of society, and being a fireman would be a great big huge way to do it. So I joined the explorers post that Michael belonged to. Over the course of the next two years, I really enjoyed taking training classes in first aid, CPR, firefighting techniques, and even going to some real-life emergency calls to observe. I really felt that I was onto something great.

Then came my senior year in high school. I turned 18 years old. Now I was old enough to actually join the fire company and become a volunteer fireman. So I did. Reading, Pennsylvania has the oldest existing part-paid-part-volunteer fire department in the U.S. Even though you become a member of one station within the city, you can go to any station and hop on the fire truck if an emergency call came in. Naturally, I joined the station that served my neighborhood, the Oakbrook Fire Company. That was in March of 1981. I now had a place to call my "second home," and many of us enjoyed hanging out there during the evenings. Even though the "Oakies" was my primary base, I didn't hesitate to go anywhere in the city to help fight a fire if it was big enough. Six months after joining the Oakbrook Fire Company, I transferred to another company simply because I wanted a place where I could sleep at night and be right in the middle of the action even during the night. That station was the Keystone Fire Company, and it was located in downtown Reading. Many fellow Oakies warned me not to transfer my membership. But I didn't listen, especially because they never gave me a good reason. Within a matter of days, I found out why.

One night I was at a fire call with the "Keystones," it was a house fire, and I maintained my position outside the burning building, unraveling the hoses when they'd get crossed and maintaining crowd control. During the cleanup process after the fire, the head chief at the time, Swifty Schaffer, called me over to talk to him. I wondered why he would want to talk to me personally. He said that he knew about my heart condition, and he told me not to go to any more fire calls until a doctor gave approval for me to do so. That took the wind right out of my sails. Until then, I was flying on Cloud Nine. Then I began to wonder who squealed. Who could have blabbed that I had a heart condition, a failing aortic valve, to be exact. Interesting. What was even more interesting was that just two months later, my cardiologist discovered that my heart condition had worsened to the point where something needed to be done. On November 4, 1981, I had life-saving open heart surgery at the Deborah Heart & Lung Center in Browns Mills, New Jersey. If that wasn't life-changing enough, all I could think about in the days that followed was when I would be able to get back on the fire truck and be a fireman again.

I ended up spending three weeks in the hospital due to post-operative complications. Despite the internal bleeding and infections, my main question to my cardiologist was about returning to the fire department. He said that I would never return again because I will be taking an anticoagulant medication the rest of my life which would make me more prone to internal bleeding if I was ever injured bad enough. Needless to say, I was not at all happy. Three months later, during a followup visit, I asked a doctor who was examining me if he could write a letter giving me permission to be an active firefighter again, even though I was aware of the risks. He did, and I could feel myself rising up to Cloud Nine again. As soon as I got back home, I brought the letter to Chief Schaffer. But Chief Schaffer wasn't so agreeable.

A friend of mine named Matt, who was a fireman with the city's rescue unit, said to me, "Maybe you'll be allowed to work on the ambulance instead." So I started approaching things from that direction. Why not? At least I can still be of help in some way. I can still help out in emergency situations. I would be saving lives. I would be very happy if I could do that! When I approached Chief Schaffer again, he said that I would have to talk to the city's examining physician. So the next day I did. Lo and behold I was jumping for complete joy when Dr. Hassel approved and I was granted a city license to work on the city's ambulance squad. WOW! I took that license right down to the Keystones, which is where one of the city's ambulances was housed. A few minutes later I was riding on my very first ambulance call ever.

Upon returning to the station, I received a phone call from the deputy chief, William Rehr. He told me that that was not acceptable because in order to be able to ride with the ambulance, I had to be able to perform ALL the functions of a firefighter. That's when I knew I've been railroaded. That's when I knew that the REAL situation was that nobody wanted me around -- period. That was in March of 1982. I walked out of a Reading Fire Department station for the last time as an actual member.

I think to this day that if the guys at the Oakbrook Fire Department would have explained their reasons for not wanting me to transfer to another station I certainly wouldn't have done it. I was told that they were protecting my status as a firefighter because they are an independent annex of the city. Well, it was a little too late for explanations now! Now I could only sulk and be very bitter. I still continued to hang out with my friends at the "Oakies," even though I couldn't go to the emergency calls with them. I was glad to be able to help out in the cleanup work after they got back to the firehouse.

Then one day I met my friend Matt again. He said to me that if the doctors did indeed allow me to work on the ambulance, then there was a sure chance that I could work for the neighboring volunteer ambulance service -- the Governor Mifflin Area Ambulance Service. That was in July of 1982. The president of the ambulance service was a guy named Larry. Larry and my mom worked for the same company, so they knew each other well. My mom explained the situation to Larry, and Larry showed me around the ambulance station. After becoming a member there in August of 1982, I went on to spend the next ten years as an ambulance attendant. I had FINALLY found a place where I felt welcome and where I could really make a difference!

But that's not the end of the story. On weekends I continued to hang out with my firefighter friends at the Oakies and the neighboring volunteer fire department in Kenhorst, PA. That's where I learned about Fire Police. Fire Police are called Reserve Police Officers in most municipalities in the U.S. In states where fire departments are mostly volunteer, they are called Fire Police instead. When I realized that my heart condition did not prevent me from becoming a Fire Police officer, I just had to sign up. That was in September of 1986. Over the next six years, I went on to serve as a Fire Police officer in five different municipalities. One of them was in Cumru Township as a member of the Cedar Top Fire Department.

Now I had TWO fantastic ways to be of service to the community -- as an Emergency Medical Technician on an ambulance, and as a volunteer Fire Police officer. Fire Police, just like Reserve Police officers, function as police officers during times of emergencies or special events. Duties include setting up road detours during emergencies, crowd control, commencing evacuations, and more. It was quite an honor to be given such a responsibility! At the time, my squad Fire Police captain with the Cedar Top Fire Department was Ron Gehman. Cedar Top was a small community, and the Fire Police squad consisted of only four men. A few months after joining Cedar Top, Ron passed away. The fire chief, Richard Trostle, appointed me to be the new squad captain since the other men didn't want the responsibility. I gladly accepted. That was in February of 1992.

One day, on August 30, 1992 to be exact, the Cedar Top Fire Department was called to stand by at a routine training that the Cumru Township Police Department was conducting. They were training that day with highly explosive materials. The firefighters' job was to go through the surrounding woodlands around the training site to hose down any fires that would start after the incendiary devices were deployed. Later in the day, some of the firefighters were getting tired, as it was a very hot day. The police had just set off a very large bomb that shook the whole area. Burning embers were flying everywhere, and we knew that there would be a lot of ground we had to cover. That's when Chief Trostle called me over to talk to him. I wondered what on earth he would have different for me to do. He handed me an Indian Tank, which is a vest full of water that is used for fighting brush fires, and told me to get geared up and go fighting fires. In that instant, I was once again a fireman. This moment in history was captured in this picture that you see. But what the camera could never capture was how high and how far my heart jumped for joy. And that was the last call.

The Surprising Update

2009-03-23T03:12:00.003-05:00

I was browsing through the zip code locator that I used to find all those 40 cities that I had on my list of "underserved" populations when I was deciding which one to choose to open a satellite office. I was quite surprised to see that Edgerton made it on the list quite by accident! The marker that shows where the zip codes are located was actually pointing in the wrong spot. With this in mind, I decided to redo the entire list. Now the list of underserved populations in Minnesota, chiropractically speaking, is down to 24 cities. The closest of these cities to where I live is Willow River, a mere 112 miles in comparison to Edgerton at 197 miles. But, accidents do happen. Sometimes it's the accidents that lead to something great big huge. My plans won't change because of this. It's an interesting find, nonetheless!

Nine Years In The Making

2009-03-16T01:59:00.006-05:00

In just nine days from now I'll be celebrating my 9th Anniversary of being a chiropractor. In numerology, nine represents the end of an era and the beginning of another. In this case, let's hope so! Although I've never been successful at building a successful chiropractic practice, I did a lot of tweaking along the way which led me to the way I practice today. What I do today would indeed be something people would flock to, if I only knew how to market myself. People always told me to just do what you do and if people like it they'll tell others. That worked to a degree when I was still in Atlanta, Georgia, when I was in Maysville, Kentucky, and also when I was at the truck stop in Bartonsville, Pennsylvania. It did not work at all here in Minneapolis, Minnesota -- not in the seven years I've been here! But no matter where I was, I still have yet to make a 5-figure income with chiropractic alone.

When you look at my website, you will see all the things that I do at The Sufletesc Center. Each page of the website was written by me and me alone. Each service I offer and each technique that I use were part of the nine-year evolution. Now that I am taking this concept of the practice the way it is today to the small town of Edgerton, there's no telling what might happen. Most people don't realize that chiropractic care is pretty much a MUST for children if they are to have a healthy childhood. Most people don't realize that there is a chiropractic technique specifically for extremity injuries. Most people don't realize that chiropractors can perform Department Of Transportation CDL driver fitness exams and employment exams. Most people also don't realize that chiropractors can order lab tests including hormonal profiling, metal toxicity testing, and food allergy testing. I do all of these things at The Sufletesc Center, and it will be interesting to see what the people of Edgerton make of it.

Later today the local newspaper, the Edgerton Enterprise, will be interviewing me for an article they will place in their paper on Wednesday. What a PERFECT opportunity to tell my story! I am hoping that this opens some eyes. Like I said, what I do evolved over the past nine years. What also evolved over the past nine years was my confidence in what I do, what I offer, and how I can present myself. The reason for that is because I did so many things that DIDN'T work, both advertising-wise and business-wise, and so I can assuredly explain who I am and WHY I do the things I do.

There has been an ad in the Edgerton Enterprise running for the past four days. I am figuring that nobody called yet because they don't know that they CAN call. The ad says that the office opens for business on Wednesday. I certainly won't be driving all the way down there if nobody calls for an appointment. So, I will keep my hopes a bit elevated for another week and see what happens. If nothing happens in another week and a half, then I can start saying that this was yet ANOTHER attempt at success that went nowhere. But I'm not going to say "I have a feeling" because I've had "feelings" in the past. (Besides, Bianca knows better to roll her eyes when I say that.) Instead, I will say that I'm keeping my chin up -- for another week.

All Ready To Go

2009-03-13T01:59:00.004-05:00

This is the ad that will start appearing in next Wednesday's Edgerton Enterprise. There had been an ad that started this past Wednesday, but I was very dissatisfied with it. That weekly area newspaper needs an editor very badly! So I decided to design my own ad. Here it is. I already submitted it to Joni as well so that she can distribute it all over town.

I'm not quite sure what the actual population of Edgerton is. It's anywhere between 800 and 1,200 people, but the exact number remains a mystery to me. I feel that the two days a week I spend there will be fruitful, though. They have a local coffee shop where I plan on eating lunch. They also have an inn just on the outskirts of the town whose owners Joni knows personally. There is also a pizza joint, a volunteer ambulance service, and a volunteer fire department where I am sure I'll make lots of contacts. But, this is all stuff I am thinking of in my head. None of it will become a reality if nobody actually CALLS me to become a patient. That's the problem I have here. I certainly would hope things would be different in a town where the closest chiropractor is 18 miles away. Time will tell, I guess.

Back here in my home city of Richfield, I am excited about the chance to serve on the local Advisory Board of Health. The first meeting I will actually attend will be this Monday night. I figure it's about time I become a community activist, now that I actually am a homeowner and settled in a community. Richfield is a great place to live, and I never considered living here before. Now that I know that there are neighborhoods in Richfield as nice as the one I live in, I am glad to be here. If you're just passing through on Nicollet Avenue or 66th Street, you pretty much miss all the good parts. I feel that Richfield is the nicest suburb of Minneapolis where you can get a lot of house for the price. Also, from the people I have met thusfar who sit on the City Council, I feel as thought I am surrounded by some pretty caring and involved people. Two thumbs up for "The Urban Hometown"!

The Curse Of Modern Technology

2009-03-09T22:46:00.004-05:00

Remember the TV commercial for some cell phone company that was showing how human reactions to what is said, or is not said, depends very much on what message is received, or not received? That's pretty much what has been happening during the past four days between me and Joni, the person I am to share office space with in Edgerton. I had already pulled the plug in my mind, and I made contact with Joni's competition to examine the possibilities there. Then suddenly this morning I received a phone call from Joni saying that she had placed the ad in the local paper about me joining her office, and the reporter wanted to interview me for an article. WHAT??? Here is the same person I hadn't heard from in 12 days, who never returned my phone calls. And now she's acting as though everything is just peachy? Hmmmmm! When I called her back and wondered what was up, she asked me if I had received the phone messages she had left on my cell phone both Thursday AND Friday. I received neither, thus she was very surprised by my reaction when I called her back today.

After we figured out a way to get around this glitch so that neither of us thinks the other has dropped the ball and lost interest, we proceeded to make plans for opening day. The ad for me in the Edgerton area newspaper will start running THIS Wednesday, and my first day actually working there, provided somebody calls and sets an appointment, will be next Wednesday the 18th. Wow, what a turn-around! And once again I am looking forward to a regular breakfast stop at Emma Krumbee's. Once again I look forward to seeing those windmills dot the countryside as I drive into town. The sun has risen on Edgerton! Whew!

Oh, and regarding my conversation with Dr. Graber, my new "competition," I found out all about his game plan. I guess this curse of technology was meant to be JUST so I can find out what this guy is up to -- and figure out a way to outmaneuver him. I don't see him as competition, though. In reality, there aren't ENOUGH chiropractors in the world. There just aren't enough people going to chiropractors, and there aren't enough people who are educated to the fact that chiropractic is all about optimal wellness and not just relieving back pain. Perhaps in the future it would be great for Dr. Graber and I to cohort. However, from learning a bit more about him I will say that the way we treat our patients vastly differ. He uses physiotherapy machines to zap and prod his patients. I use my hands to correct their subluxations and help them HEAL.

Another Thought On Edgerton

2009-03-08T01:36:00.002-06:00

So Joni, who appeared to be quite interested, suddenly changed her mind without telling me. After saying how excited she was and that she would do all this advertising and even make up new business cards for me, she is no longer answering my e-mails or returning my phone calls. But let's look at the other side of it all -- she certainly was not all smily and friendly. She was very businesslike, and she kept referring to her "competition" who suddenly moved into town, that being a salon up the street, who she seemed determined to undermine. So, in the end, it all seemed like one big territorial war for her. Add to that the fact that she said, for whatever reason I have no idea, that the massage therapist that shared her little place with her was not happy there and wanted to be on her own. Oh well. I guess nothing was lost after all.

Now let's look at another situation. There IS a chiropractor in town, and he only works eight hours a week, two mornings a week. His main office is in Fulda, which is about 30 miles away, and Edgerton is his satellite office. His office is located inside that very salon that Joni was afraid would pull all her massage business from her because they have a massage therapist there too. So, what do you think my next step is if I want to keep this Rural Minnesota Chiropractic Initiative alive? Well, I'm no dummy. It dawned on me tonight that I should give this chiropractor a call and see if he wouldn't mind having me share the space with him in the afternoon hours. If he's okay with it, I am sure he will refer me to talk to the owner of the salon. I am all for that. This MAY be my chance to still open shop in Edgerton. If not, then it's on to the next town.

One thing Joni said when I was at her place was, "Don't go running off to those guys," referring to her salon competition. My answer was, "Nooooo. To me it's all about loyalty." I am a loyal person. When I find someone who is willing to give me a thumbs up or a cause that is worth fighting for, I'm ALL for it, and I'll come out with all barrels loaded. Apparently Joni's barrels were empty. And now it's time for me to take my loyalty elsewhere. That's the way it goes in life, and ESPECIALLY in business! Loyalty doesn't really exist these days when it comes to making a buck. It might have in the "old days". But the "new" days are "me first" days, and loyalty is a very antiquated, and practically dead, concept. Let's see where my new idea leads.

The Rural Minnesota Chiropractic Initiative

2009-03-01T03:00:00.005-06:00

The title of this post is what I call my effort to bring my services to underserved areas of Minnesota. The remainder of this post is actually a re-post of my progress that I wrote this past Thursday in my Facebook notes. I will also attempt to post the same cute picture that I posted there as well:

My chiropractor, Dr. Joe Donahoe in Roseville, MN, told me that if I wanted to be very successful in my practice that I should look for a town out in the middle of nowhere. So, being the audie that I am, I decided to do that in a very methodical way. Using the criteria that a zip code had to have no chiropractors listed in it, according to the Minnesota Board of Chiropractic's list, AND no chiropractors listed in all the adjacent zip codes, I cam up with a list of 40 towns. While the closest of those towns is 118 miles from where I live here in Richfield, MN, I chose to seek out the more populated towns instead. Redby came out on top, but I didn't find any info on the place anywhere. So, next on the list was Edgerton. But according to the latest census, Edgerton is actually bigger than Redby. Not only that, I did find business listings and a whole bunch of stuff on the city of Edgerton.

I found one massage therapist listed in Edgerton, so it was obvious where I would start in my search to open a new door. Her name is Joni, and I've been in contact with her by e-mail for about a month before actually making the trip to Edgerton to visit her yesterday. The trip was exactly 196 miles from where I live to her office. Edgerton is right on the "edge" of the Minnesota state line, just before you cross over into South Dakota, and is located in Pipestone County. The drive was long and boring. Once I got outside of Bloomington, I saw nothing but wheat fields as far as the eye could see for the ENTIRE trip! I did stop at Minnesota's famous Emma Krumbee's restaurant in Belle Plaine to have breakfast on the way there. What I saw RIGHT before I got into Edgerton was indeed a sight to see -- HUNDREDS of windmills dotted the landscape for as far as you could see! WOW!

Joni and I came up with a business plan. For now, my office hours in Edgerton will be from 3-10 PM on Wednesdays and Thursdays. But if nobody signs up on a particular day, I won't drive all the way there for nothing. Joni will do all the advertising and setting appointments for me. That sounds like a pretty neat arrangement, and I pay her a percentage instead of a flat rent. Pretty cool! Also, the next closest chiropractors to town is 17 miles away in Pipestone or 21 miles away in Luverne. Let's keep our fingers crossed that this pans out.

So the plan is that I will travel down there on a Tuesday night if I have patients scheduled for Wednesday, and I will drive back to the Cities on Thursday night, assuming I have patients scheduled on Thursday as well. It is a 3-1/2 hour drive. Yesterday I drove down and back all in the same day, and that way definitely too much! Then I would work at the Guthrie, like I have been, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. The job at the Guthrie, and with Mill City Security, will stay unless things get SO busy in Edgerton that I end up increasing my hours there.

Sure it would be a bit of a strain with Bianca and I not seeing each other for a couple days. But she did suggest a while ago that I look for work elsewhere since nothing is panning out here in the Cities. So, that's what I am doing here. Although Austin, Texas WOULD be a nice change! (haha) Besides, I have come to accept the fact that I am a MINNESOTAN now, and I better get darn used to this winter crappy weather. I've become accustomed to living in the constant below-freezing weather. But it is when the temperature drops below 10 above zero that things start to get unbearable, and I start screaming that I need to get out of this place. Oh well. C'est la vie!

The Meaning Of "Spirituality"

2009-02-02T02:11:00.005-06:00

When I tell people that I diverted from my Roman Catholic background and was ordained as a "ULC" minister, I get all kinds of reactions. Most people are confused as to what that actually means. The term "ULC" has become standard for ANY type of minister who has obtained their credentials through making an online donation to a church that gives them a piece of paper or one who has completed correspondence coursework to obtain their ordination. In proper, "ULC" stands for the Universal Life Church, who originally started this trend back in the 1950s. Now there are many different variations of the ULC concept, and everyone that follows it is lumped into the "ULC" category. But what is this "ULC" religion anyway? While many ULC-type churches may pass themselves off as Christian, their basic creed is spiritual in nature. For example, the Universal Life Church itself adopted the creed "Do only that which is right." When I start discussing spirituality as a way of believing, people get even more confused. So, that is my topic for this discussion.

When I taught my Intro to Spirituality classes, one of the first things I said to open the class was, "No matter what religion you are, you can still be a spiritual person." Spirituality, in and of itself, is NOT a religion. Far too many people confuse it with some type of new age practice or a system of non-religious living. It is neither of those, yet if somebody follows either of those, they too can be spiritual. Spirituality simply means being connected to the Divine Source. Dr. Wayne Dyer does an excellent job at describing this connection in his book "The Power Of Intention," and I will not try to repeat his words here. Religion, on the other hand, is a disciplined approach to practicing one's spirituality.

How many Catholics, Muslims, Jews, atheists, New Agers, and Buddhists do you know that are very happy? How many people from these same religions do you know that are miserable? Wouldn't you say that the number is about the same? Why is that? They certainly have different religions, so we can't say that it is the religion, can we? Indeed not. Some people are connected to the Divine Source, eg Spiritual, while others feel disconnected and lost and are therefore not Spiritual. It's just that simple. No other explanations are needed.

People sometimes ask me how can they tell if they are connected or not. The first question I ask them is if they see the glass as being half empty or half full. If a person can stop, even in the middle of a moment of sadness, and see beauty in the sunset, then they are connected. If a person can grasp the fact that the entire universe is interconnected by the power of the Divine Source, they are Spiritual. They do not need to be taught anything else.

People are disconnected if:

- they think that their religion is better than anyone else's
- they love their family but they hate their neighbor
- they feel wounded and hopeless
- they think that ALL Muslims are terrorists and ALL Christians are superior (or insert your religions here)
- they think the word "om" is the name of a Hindu god that needs to be despised
- they think such things as energy healing and meditation are "the devil's work"
- they think that The Holy Bible, the Koran, (or enter your religion's scriptural text here) is absolute law
- they base their self-worth on how much money they make

And I am sure I can think of hundreds of other examples. On the other hand, people are connected to the Divine Source if:

- they see only equality in all people that they meet
- they see the Light of God before they actually see the person in front of them
- they feel love in their heart that NEVER wanes, no matter what
- they teach their children to play fairly with the children in their school who may be of a different race, nationality, or religion, and to treat them respectfully
- they take time out to pray or meditate regularly
- they are hopeful and joyful
- they spread their love and joy to others through their words and actions
- they shy away from gossip, greed, and discrimination
- they can look at the evils in the world, feel sad, and know that it is not their place to feel hateful because of it

Again I can think of many other examples.

I know that I left a lot of room for people to inquire, "Well, what about if (insert your dilemma here)." That's just the point -- get rid of the dilemmas in your mind and just BE. You will be connected, and you will be Spiritual.

Rural Chiropractic

2009-01-26T02:42:00.004-06:00

I just completed a huge project that took me several weeks to complete. It was inspired by my chiropractor, who recently shared with me the plight of a chiropractor he knows very well. This chiropractor moved from a small town in western Minnesota, where he had a hugely successful practice, to the big city. Now that he is in Roseville, just north of downtown Minneapolis, he is struggling like never before to even have somebody give him any credibility. That sounds all too familiar. My chiropractor suggested that maybe the thing for me to do would be to open up shop in a small rural town. That set the wheels in motion for me to make a study of the entire state to find possible places to go.

Now I had been in a small town in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. There were 25,000 people in the city, and 25 chiropractors who were all struggling for the most part. I certainly didn't want a repeat of that situation. Therefore, I set very specific rules for what a prospective town had to have. (Remember, as an audie I thrive on making rules!) I investigated the possibilities by zip code. Not only could there not be a single chiropractor in the zip code. There could not be a single chiropractor in any of the zip codes that border that zip code. I found a great online zip code map, and I looked in chiropractic directories to double-check. In the end, I had a list of 40 zip codes throughout the state that met the criteria. The closest one, though, is 89.4 miles away from my own zip code. So if I do end up in a rural place, I certainly won't be commuting every day!

Then, after looking at populations, I chose what appears to be the most populated of these 40 towns. I say "appears" because different sources give different populations. The most populated, thusfar, appears to be Edgerton, Minnesota. The actual town is 197 miles from my home in Richfield. Just before I began writing this post, I gathered a list, although quite small, of potential businesses I may want to partner up with, eg massage therapists. I WILL be contacting them very soon.

On that note, tomorrow I will be taking care of my first new patient since October. I am excited about that, and so is my new patient. Tomorrow also will begin my hopeful venture into becoming a community activist. In 46 years, I have never felt as though any one place I've ever been was "home". Now that my wife and I are settled somewhere, now that we own a home and are set in our careers (at least she is), I figure it's time to start getting involved in the community. I will be dropping by the Richfield City Hall to hand them my application to be part of either its Advisory Board of Health or one of its other seven commissions. My first choice is to be on its Civil Service Commission, since this field is where I spent twelve good years of my life when I still lived in Pennsylvania.

I have been setting stages lately. Stay tuned for the opening act!

Audie Or Not?

2009-01-22T03:44:00.002-06:00

I see that the neuropsychologist who did my in-depth evaluation said that I DO NOT display behavior typical of someone who has an Autistic Spectrum Disorder. BUT, I found THIS: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/autism/complete-publication.shtml . This is an article right from the National Institute of Health which states that Autistic Spectrum Disorders are indeed part of Pervasive Developmental Disorders (which is what I have). So, even though I don't have "autism" per se, I am darn near close to it. It is not unusual that I identified so very closely with Sean Barron and a lot with Dr. Temple Grandin as I read their stories. I think like them, and I act like them. There is very little difference. I just wanted to make that note before I go to bed. I just spent all night doing one of my audie things -- studying all the zip codes in the state of Minnesota, but for a particular reason which I'll talk about next time. Good night.

The Year Of The Hero

2009-01-17T03:05:00.005-06:00

It's 2009. The economy is very bad all over the world. Jobs are being lost. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Nonprofits are feeling the burn too as donations are dwindling. Sounds pretty bad, huh? I'm feeling the pinch too since my hours are being cut back at my security job, since the theater I work at is losing some of its funding. But, alas, there is some hope on the horizon. This will be the "year of the hero." One thing to look for are news bits about people who do good things. Such reports will give us all encouragement and hope that there really are good people in this world and some good things going on. Take for example the pilot whose expertise and skill saved the lives of 155 people as he safely landed an airplane in the Hudson River. There will be many more stories of heroes to come in 2009. I can feel it.

Let's look at another American hero. Now I never really discuss my political views. I won't even say if I voted for Barack Obama or not. But I will say this -- he is a hero to many. Who knows how he will be as President of the United States of America. That remains to be seen. But the fact is that he has already lifted many heads. No longer is a person's race a limitation. No longer is a person's economic status a lifelong cross. Barriers have been broken. What is even more fantastic to see is that the festivities surrounding Barack Obama's inauguration fall on the same weekend as the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. What a wonderful way to bring a message full circle! I consider it a very big deal that Barack pays so much homage to Abraham Lincoln, the very president who started the whole freedom movement for minorities. (But you have to admit, though, that Abraham Lincoln WAS a Republican.) I get goosebumps to think that a man who just 143 years ago would have been hung from a tree for disobeying a white man is now the leader of the nation. We have certainly evolved, spiritually, as a people! We must keep in mind, though, that there are those who would rather keep the mindset that existed 143 years ago, and thus we still have problems.

Dr. Wayne Dyer says in his book "The Power Of Intention" that there are just enough spiritually sound people in the world to counteract the negativity being put out by the hateful. So, instead of just seeing the damage being done by people who want to cheat, people who want to attack America, liars who serve in high positions, and even more liars who want to push an agenda, we can turn our attention to the fact that there are also people in the world who are doing much good. I believe that this is why you will hear about such people in news reports in the months to come. We need hope, and we need these people to turn to. The best of these people will not follow a particular ideology, religious belief, political agenda, or fit a particular social norm. They will appeal to ALL people, and the message will be universal. You will know them when you meet them or hear about them because they will touch your heart, and you will feel goosebumps when they speak. And how will you know that they aren't just wolves dressed as lambs? That's where gut instincts come into play. Use them wisely, and LISTEN to them. You do have that ability to be discerning. And you DO have the ability to be somebody's hero.

I Smelled The Myths All Along!

2009-01-11T19:36:00.004-06:00

One of the chiropractic magazines I receive is The Chiropractic Journal, a publication of the World Chiropractic Alliance. Usually I flip through professional magazines and throw them in the trash within about five minutes time because they are always the same ol' same ol'. But an article on page 25 of this month's issue caught my eye in a big way. Dr. Dennis Nikitow points out several myths that chiropractors have about building and running their practice. Oddly enough, I was ALWAYS wary about doctors who believed these myths right from the day I graduated from chiropractic school almost nine years ago. In fact, I never believed such myths, and I knew that doctors who did believe them were barking up the wrong tree. They never got MY resume, except for one that I was desperate enough to work for back in 2001, a job that lasted only four months. Anyway, here is a synopsis of the article and my commentary:

Now I went to a school that always taught that the more people you serve the better things are. That is true IF you can keep it affordable for people AND give them quality care. So the first myth is that "high volume means higher income." Or, you can always have a Personal Injury practice were you make about $10,000 a year per patient. Good luck trying to build such a practice in the presence of greedy insurance firms! Anyway, the doctor I worked for for only four months was a high-volume monger. One day she took care of a patient who was very familiar with my style of spinal adjusting. That patient later complained to me that the doctor, who was my boss, was terrible because she was only interested in doing a push here and a push there and then was off to see the next patient. I took my time, always, with each and every patient. I practiced that way when I was a student intern, and I still practice that way today.

This leads to the second myth that chiropractors believe -- that if they hire an associate doctor on commission, that doctor will build the practice for them. I've never seen this work, and a doctor who hires a doctor to be his lackey is severely lacking in integrity. Unfortunately, more than 90% of the "help wanted" ads I see on chiropractic job boards are just that -- doctors looking for other doctors to do the work for them. Hmmm. I wonder what their people skills are like. OR, maybe they are all audies like me?

Another myth that is mentioned in the article is that using physiotherapy will boost the income of the doctor. While physiotherapy is more geared to a Personal Injury type practice and not a wellness-based practice, insurance companies do tend to cut off the amount of care a person receives sooner when many therapies are performed. In reality, electrical and ultrasonic physiotherapy has never been, and never will be, my thing. Many of the patients I care for who have had physiotherapy done to them by other doctors tell me that they feel much better when I just give them what they need -- a chiropractic ADJUSTMENT. That is what chiropractic is all about, anyway. Besides, where is all the money going that is made from physiotherapy? Why it's going to pay the physical therapist, the higher bills, the equipment upkeep and all that needless overhead. It doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.

Still another myth is that different types of instrumentation could be used to monitor a patient's progress instead of x-rays. First of all, I only x-ray a patient if they absolutely need to be x-rayed, for example if they were just in an accident or if I sense something is unusual in their exam findings. People may say, "Well I feel no different," and you may argue that they are better because some pretty, colorful graph shows a change. Does the patient really feel better? Does the patient really FUNCTION better? Do they notice the changes, even slightly? These are the results I am interested in.

In the end, I am in practice for myself because I tend to speak my mind about these things and not buy into the myths. I also will not work for another doctor who exemplifies the myths. So until I find enough people who know that I am different, I guess I'll keep struggling in my difference.

"Chiropractic Medicine" -- What On Earth???

2009-01-10T02:15:00.005-06:00

Now I have been in the healthcare industry for over 26 years now, and I have never heard of a branch of medicine called "chiropractic". Yet, there are some chiropractors, some chiropractic schools, and even at least one state board of chiropractic, that insists that such a branch exists. Thus, they invented a degree called "Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine". No wonder why so many medical doctors are still NOT warmed up to chiropractic as a whole. I certainly wouldn't want to go to a medical doctor who calls himself a Doctor of Medical Chiropractic! To me, calling yourself a Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine sounds just as far fetched, and even silly, as calling yourself a Doctor of Basketweaving Medicine.

I guess it's an ego thing. For those chiropractic doctors who feel that they need to be accepted by the medical profession, because they have this illusion that they are not accepted, they need to include the rather antonymous word "medicine" to their title. I don't hear dentists calling themselves "Doctors of Dental Medicine". They are DENTISTS. And, for goodness sake, chiropractors are CHIROPRACTORS. I practice chiropractIC. I don't practice any sort of medicine in any way, shape, or form. This rather obscene play on words is one of the reasons why, even when asked, I never wanted to practice in the state of Florida. I could never fathom calling myself a "Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine" when I, in fact, do not practice medicine!

But I am not the first to have such a rant on this topic. The first, as far as I know, was Dr. Patrick Gentempo, a chiropractOR. He is the president and one of the founders of the Chiropractic Leadership Alliance. I am right on par with him when he says that calling chiropractic "chiropractic medicine" is ridiculous. Medicine is the practice of administering substances and therapies, including surgery, for the treatment of disease and injury. Chiropractic is the practice of correcting, by hand alone, bone misalignments (subluxations) that impinge upon the nerve system, which is the master regulator of all body organs and functions. Man, medicine and chiropractic certainly sound like two very different things to me!

So, it's rather interesting, and not in a positive way, to hear some chiropractic doctors themselves refer to themselves as "Doctors of Chiropractic Medicine." Now I can understand this happening in the general public. After all, medicine is the dominant healthcare paradigm here in the U.S., and therefore people may make that mistake. I forgive them, and then I correct them. But for an actual DOCTOR to make this mistake? Hmmm. I am certainly NOT going to forgive them!

To 501(c)(3) Or Not To 501(c)(3)

2009-01-05T01:19:00.002-06:00

I don't know if this is an audie thing or if I'm just not looking in the right place. I have contacted TONS of grant-giving foundations and community organizations in the past few weeks. But absolutely none of them will even consider you unless you have 501(c)(3) status. When I tell them that we are a church and churches are exempt from having to be 501(c)(3) organizations (in fact, most churches are NOT 501(c)(3) organizations), then they don't know what to say and leave you hanging in limbo without a definitive answer. Has anyone else experienced this? It's quite frustrating, to say the least. Thusly, the whole idea of getting the church off the ground remains just that -- an idea.

So, what are some pieces of advice that have been given to me over the past couple months. One is to simply become a 501(c)(3) organization and the doors will open up. If I had $500 sitting around somewhere and six months to sit around and do nothing, this would be quite do-able. Another is to hire a fiscal agent. Every grant guideline I ever read says that they don't give money to organizations that have a fiscal agent. Another piece of advice was to get a grant writer who will do everything on commission. It is frowned upon, and may even be illegal, for nonprofit organizations to do this. So, can you understand why when you throw these obstacles at somebody who is already used to banging their head against a wall they end up doing it even more?

In the end, my primary source of support may be from the congregation that I eventually put together. To do that, I will have to come up with some creative ways of advertising the church and its ministries. I have had absolute zero luck with advertising the church on Craigslist. Even the two or three people that did answer me on Craigslist ended up being less than desirable people. I will try other methods from now on instead of Craigslist. Currently I am putting together a mailing list of all of the homeless shelters and food banks in an 8-county area of the greater metro Twin Cities. I will let them know about the free wellness center, at least. I know that in some cases, though, I am basically trying to reinvent the wheel because some of these places are already affiliated with a free wellness center or a nurse practitioner who takes care of their guests.

Now I could rewrite this entire entry in such a way that I look at the glass as half full. I am not doing that because I am revealing, through blatant honesty, the FIRST impressions that go through my mind, before I start coming up with positive ways to look at things. In the end, my head will have hurt anyway because it's been bouncing off the wall AGAIN. I know that when you are reading what I write, you are saying to yourself, "Wow, he has such great ideas," and then you go back to doing whatever you are working on without flinching. That's what I mean when I said in a previous post that people only see Mickey Mouse. You probably just did it yourself. It is the person who BELIEVES in the ministries I am proposing and WANTS to see them work out that will act and BECOME INVOLVED. The rest will just say, "How nice," and will continue on their way.

Life as an audie is tough, isn't it. I wonder how I would feel about these obstacles if I were neurotypical. Hmm.

Ripping Pages

2009-01-03T13:00:00.006-06:00

I hope you have either enjoyed or hated, very much, my first few posts in this blog. I guess you could entitle what you have seen so far "My Struggle." (I will not translate that title into German, thank you.) While much of what this blog will be about in time to come is different, I wanted to share with you a bit of my history, including my state of mind. Afore October 3, 1998, I was not a very likeable person. It was easy to see my struggle. It was written on my face. What is written in words here is pretty much what came out of my mouth, moreso directed at myself in anger. But what happened on October 3, 1998 changed my life forever. A person who I mentioned in this blog before, in a brutally honest way, gave me a "second chance," so to speak. While I was boiling with inner rage over the fact that I just felt so uncomfortable in this world, Muktananda came along and burned all that away in a split second. The event was known as shaktipat. Shaktipat is the spiritual equivalent of a person who was blind since birth suddenly being able to see. I will not elaborate on the shaktipat experience here because I have written volumes, and continue to write about my experiences with this Spiritual Awakening, in an actual book I am writing.

Shaktipat does not change the human-ness of a person. It DOES change their awareness of who they are and why they are here. That alone makes a person much better at what they do and what they have to share with the world. For example, at that point in time, I was a chiropractic intern, taking care of patients in the clinic setting. Before shaktipat, I was poking around at people's spines, trying to find which bone I had to push on. After shaktipat, I just went right to the subluxation that needed correcting without even a second guess. Even the doctors who were supervising me were amazed at my insight. Things were suddenly THAT different! But like I said, I'm not going to go on and on about it here since such writings exist elsewhere. I will say that it has truly made a difference. That is why I KNOW, and it's not just a "feeling," that I have a lot to offer the world as far as being a healing practitioner goes.

Now, enter Minnesota -- the state that is the LEAST friendly toward practitioners of "alternative medicine". (Although, I must say that what I do has no semblance to "medicine" at all.) Suddenly everything has become a struggle. And, after 6-1/2 years of being here, it still is. Thus, I rely on my inner awakening, the awareness of the shaktipat gift, to keep that smile on my face and to keep going forward with what I am doing. Some people would say that since I met this Guru who gave me such a gift I should have the world on a string. Well, that's not the way a true Guru works, and it's certainly not the was shaktipat works either. Like I said, it doesn't change the fact that you are human and have struggles. If it did, it would be like God herself taking away her greatest gift to humankind -- free will.

Anyway, why did I entitle this entry "Ripping Pages"? It's because THAT is what the shaktipat experience did for me. It ripped away all the pages of self-hate and illusionary smallness that WOULD have existed to this day. It changed my life forever. This is why, as a healing practitioner, I also deal with that realm of existence -- the spirit realm itself. No, I don't call on "spirit guides" and angels when I have you on my table. That's pretty far-fetched, and I would avoid any "healer" who does that. I would also avoid self-proclaimed "healers" who do not have any formal training BECAUSE they turn healing into some blind three-ring-circus. I DO, because of my extensive training with THE unadulterated form of Reiki, with my eight years of chiropractic education, with my 26 years of healthcare experience, and with my extensive experiences with Saivite and Vedanta philosophies, have a lot to offer this world. Now it's time to fill up my clinic despite all odds.

The Topic Of Paranormal Interests

2009-01-02T01:41:00.005-06:00

About a year ago at this time, I created a website devoted completely to the performing of distance healing involving the resolving of conflicts involving paranormal phenomena. Nowadays, a much shorter version of that page exists, and I don't throw away money to advertise it anymore. You can view the new page at http://www.universalpeace.vze.com/. It would be my greatest joy to make a career of being involved in dealing with the paranormal. However, what I want to do does not exist on any viable level. There are parapsychologists and "ghost hunters" who scientifically investigate paranormal phenomena, and then there are groups of people who are simply interested in discussing the topic. What I do is VERY much different, and does not involve either of these extremes. Instead of studying the paranormal, and instead of being an aloof fan of it, I help people to resolve any conflicts they may have with it.

So how does that work? If people have a ghost in their house, I don't say, "Ooh, aah, how neat!" Nor do I offer to come into your home with spectrometers and special cameras to study what's happening. I actually ELIMINATE the ghosts all together, using energy healing. I HATE, and I do mean "hate", when TV shows glorify hauntings, which are in reality spirits who are trapped in a realm they cannot escape. I also hate the investigators who bilk thousands of dollars from people in order to rationally explain something that cannot be rationally explained. Enter one Rev. Dr. Patrick V. Suglia who, for only $150, will rid the phenomenon all together that is causing you grief. Now, wouldn't that be a fair price to pay to find peace with the universe? Why monkey around with it!

So, how many ghosts have I chased? Well let's see. I started doing this in 1998. Since that time I chased, quite successfully I must say, at least three ghosts. I also performed one successful exorcism. (The exorcism was NOT a very pretty situation, and, although I would certainly do them if called to, I do not look forward to having to do one again.) Also, I have been very successful at making contact with loved ones who have crossed over, not for myself but for clients who were in much need of closure. These are not things I do "for fun". They are serious matters, and they should be treated as such. And, one thing I DO NOT advertise myself as is a "psychic". That I am not. I am a HEALER, one that uses energy modalities to create universal peace.

This blog entry may be considered a self-advertisement. So be it. But I needed to clear the record. When people see on the church website that I perform "paranormal and metaphysical services", they need to know what this means. This blog post explains that in more detail. It also shakes a finger at those who go too far to the left and to the right on the topic. To the right I say stop wasting time, money, and energy by making a "scientific study" of this stuff. To the left, I say stop thinking that it's so neat that you lose your head in the clouds over it. It is neither. It is a serious matter. And people need healing because of it. That's where I come in. If you want to know more, check out my website which I mentioned earlier in this post.

Happy New Year! Really?

2009-01-01T03:21:00.003-06:00

It is just so fascinating to think of how one decision made by a Catholic Pope in the year 1582 changed the course of time itself. Now we combine the supposed year that Jesus the Christian Lord with astronomical phenomena, namely how many times this rock we live on revolves around its sun, to determine all sorts of thing. Based on the decision made by Pope Gregory the 13th, it is now decreed that a person isn't old enough to drink alcohol until the Earth flew around the sun 21 times. Perhaps such a logic would sound really ridiculous to a space alien who would come here to study life on this planet? But what is time, anyway? It is a measure by which events are sequenced. That's really about all it is. And the measure is based on what people over the ages felt what scientific occurrences it should be based on.

Now what if we measured time based on how many times the moon revolves around the Earth? That's how the Roman calendar worked, which was used about 2,762 years ago. (Is that 2,762 Gregorian calendar years?) What then? Well, now we reach the age of 21 years five whole Gregorian years earlier. So, in a sense, a person would then be old enough to start drinking alcohol at the age of 16, which was actually 21 then. But as time went on over the centuries, it was somehow determined that other universal movements should determine how mature a person is. This seems to be the most logical reason why we feel a seven year old child is being, well, childish when he or she may have a brilliant idea, while a forty year old with a PhD would be taken quite a bit more seriously, even if his idea isn't quite so plausible.

This is why I measure a person's value not by the Earth's movement but by the fact that they are a PERSON. What novel concept. Children can offer amazing, and sometimes downright extraordinarily creative, insights into how the world can be a better place. It is written in the Christian gospels that Jesus once said, "Unless we become like children, we cannot enter the Kingdom Of Heaven." My interpretation of this is thus: unless we rid ourselves of our false notions, our blindness, our ego, our "adult" logic, and become simplistic, we will never experience true joy and our connectivity to The Divine.

Now it's almost 4 in the morning and I'm tired of thinking. It's time for me to go to bed. After all, I have to rest up in order to enjoy the first day of the next trip around the sun.

Frankness

2008-12-29T23:13:00.003-06:00

One of the reasons I created this blog was to be up front with people. Even if a person is considered a leader or a pious person, there is one thing that the general public usually forgets -- the fact that they are human. To err is human, and it is also human to have the same concerns, complaints, aches, pains, grumbles, gripes, emotional swings, foibles, ticks, habits, and bathroom habits as a "normal" human being. Therefore, to look at someone's profile, such as mine, and think that this person has everything in order is to be mistaken.

Let's look at some great leaders throughout history and see what I mean. Jesus, the Christian Lord, is esteemed to be THE incarnation of God himself, yet totally human. So, if he was totally human, did he get angry? You betcha. It even says so in the gospels. Did he feel pain? That's certainly well documented. Was he married, and did he have children? The latest writings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls seem to indicate that. So, this must also mean that he suffered from the flu now and then, got upset stomachs when he ate too much, and may have even suffered from allergies. Well, he WAS human, right?

How about another example. The late great Swami Muktananda of Ganeshpuri, India. Truly an enlightened being he was, a Siddha. He could translocate, performed great healings, and awakened people's Kundalini energy. This same person also had to have a pacemaker put in him to keep him alive. This same person also had a terrible temper and would chastise people in public. This same person was also accused of being sexually indecent on some occasions. Well, he WAS human, right?

Soooo, next time you look at a public profile and think they are above all things human, think again. They are JUST as likely to be as human as YOU. Therefore, as you read my blog posts, don't start feeling nauseated by what I have to say. After all, not only am I human too. I am also autistic.

Against All Odds

2008-12-29T01:05:00.003-06:00

Just think -- an autistic person who suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is happily married, lives in a home he and is wife just bought, he runs his own wellness center, he is the pastor of a church, and he works on a security team at a famous theater. Doesn't that sound just downright ODD? Well, it certainly is indeed. None of these situations have panned out well. My wife is one tough and brave woman to stick things out. During the ten months of marital counseling we undertook together was when I was diagnosed with PDD-NOS. That gave me a second chance. It was also during those ten months that I got my job as a security guard. That also gave me a second chance. The wellness center has a whopping two clients, and the church has a whopping two congregants. Therefore, don't be fooled by the initial statement. The autism and the CFS HAVE indeed put me on the wrong side of the odds.

When I tell people that things are at ground zero, they give me all kinds of advice on how to advertise myself, talk to people, where I should go, who I should talk to, etc. What they don't realize is that I've been there and done that. I feel like Micky Mouse who wants to be considered for a promotion to archbishop of the diocese. The character just doesn't fit the picture, even though he may be fully qualified to be in the picture. If there was a way that people could stop seeing me as Micky Mouse and start seeing me as a figure worthy of the archbishop role (in this example), then we might have some luck here.

So, until I, like Dr. Temple Grandin, find that "guardian angel" who does the promoting for me, I am in "struggle" mode. The psychologist who diagnosed me with PDD-NOS, after having administered the WAIS-R test, said to me, "You must feel tired of banging your head against the wall all the time." I simply answered, "That's the story of my life." Autistics know what they want to accomplish. They just don't know how to get there. Even when they try, they don't succeed unless they have a guardian angel to open the right doors. Now I've had one or two over the years, which is why I am where I am today. One was a guy named Larry. After months of being on "trainee" status with the ambulance service, and being considered for termination, Larry took me under his wing. Months later, I was able to stand on my own two feet during emergency situations and was even able to instruct other trainees. That's the kind of guardian angel I need once again.

It would also pay to know where to find decent funding. I just saw a report today that the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits put out. It gave a dismal outlook for nonprofit organizations who will be seeking funding in the year to come. The current recession is really going to hurt a lot of people. But I'll just keep moving forward. That's the only direction I know how to go in anyway.

The Other Part Of The Story

2008-12-28T09:48:00.003-06:00

Now it is almost 10 AM here, and most people should be up and around for the day. I will not be. In addition to being autistic, I also have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This means that my USUAL wake-up time is, well, whenever I feel rested. Typically it is after about 9 hours of sleep. Any less than that, and I have to calculate how I'm going to feel because, chances are, I will usually feel horrible. It's not that I can't get up. It's that I will be dragging all day, moving very slowly, and I'll look all droopy-eyed and out of it all day. Drinking a coffee will only take the edge off, but it never wakes me up. A medical doctor who once treated me said that I was lucky because I only get the tiredness from CFS and not all the illnesses and pains that go with it. There are people out there who think that CFS can be cured by "x", and the x is a blank that can be filled in by anyone who did experience relief from that "x". But after 13-1/2 years, I know what works. While nothing "cures" it, I function so much better when the weather patterns are stable, when I get adjusted by my chiropractor at least once every two weeks, and when I meditate on a regular basis. That's it. I don't take any medications or herbal remedies otherwise. Been there, done that.

Now I always knew that I had sleep problems, ever since high school. I was always a late sleeper. However, I was always able to get up when I had to and function. However, on one particular day, my life changed forever. That day was April 11, 1995. I was living with a girlfriend at the time. I was in my first year of chiropractic school, and the third quarter was only a week old. It was a Monday morning. My girlfriend was at work, and I slept in a bit longer, as I usually did. 10 AM was a good time to get up and get ready for the afternoon classes. But after making my way to the bathroom to get ready, I noticed that I didn't look like myself in the mirror. I was all glassy-eyed. My head felt heavy. I could barely pick up my tooth brush. I knew something was wrong. At that moment, a story of a lifetime began. While medical and alternative medicine remedies came and went, I remained the same to this day.

Part of the problem is that I can wake up and not get back to sleep. The thing is that if I decide to stay up, I will certainly drag all day. And if I go back to bed, which is my plan when I am done typing this, I will sleep until the late afternoon. If I end up with a TOTAL of about 9 hours of sleep or more, I will be "perfectly" functional and awake, relatively that is. This is why I can never predict how I will feel when I am taking care of my own patients in my office, or even if I will make it to the office on a particular day. This is also why I tend to shy away from officiating morning or early-afternoon weddings as an ordained minister. That is why I like my job as a security guard so much. The work hours are from 6 PM until 2 AM, and I do have a lot of walking around to do while I am there.

So what was life like before the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? Well let's see -- I worked on an ambulance for ten years. I was a community service officer (back East they were called Fire Police) for six years. I was a nurse aid throughout the 80s. I worked 50+ hours a week when I was a Respiratory Therapist from 1992-93. I traveled to all sorts of Scrabble tournaments. (Did I mention I play Scrabble competitively?) I was CONSTANTLY on the go, and I could wake up from a sound sleep when the fire alarm would sound to go to an emergency call. I also loved hiking and just being outdoors. That was life BEFORE April 11, 1995.

I'll go back to bed now.

What Is An Audie?

2008-12-28T03:50:00.000-06:00

If you are somebody that has autism, then you know that this is the word that is used to describe YOU. I just found out that I have something called PDD-NOS, which falls somewhere on the autism spectrum. How this finding came to be is a story in itself. And the fact that I have it is no great surprise. I always knew I was "different." I just didn't know why I had the problems that I had. Before even being diagnosed, I started reading the book "Unwritten Rules Of Social Relationships" by Dr. Temple Grandin and Sean Barron. What I was reading was MY OWN life story, particularly in Sean's case. That's when I knew that what I considered normal was actual NOT normal to the neurotypical person, that is somebody who does NOT have autism and fits the "norm." It is no wonder why those of us on the autism spectrum feel as though we are on the wrong planet, and the neurotypicals feel the same way about us.

Soooooo, how does somebody with autism become a doctor and a minister? Well, for most audies the book work is the easy part. It's with the practical work that they do miserably. And so it is with me too. Here I sit at my job as a security guard at a theater when I am a chiropractor and an ordained minister who is the pastor of a church. My chiropractic office and the church sit empty. They sit empty because I simply have no success with being able to advertise these things and to retain clients. Imagine how people come into the office expecting one thing and then end up being cared for by a doctor who they accuse of not being a "real" doctor, and then leave without paying. Yes, audies are indeed looked at very weirdly by the neurotypicals. We have it rough. But we have to make ends meet somehow.

Dr. Temple Grandin had it rough too. She is world renowned and is a college professor. But she wouldn't be where she is if she didn't have people who stood up for her and gave her chances in life, people who saw her true worth. Many employers wanted to fire her just for being "weird." Now that's something I can identify with very very well!

Anyway, my shift is ending, and it's time for me to head home to my wife and my home. Yes, I am married, and how my marriage survived is part of the audie journey. There is much more to come in this blog, and I look forward to communicating with those of you who read this.