The Source for Healing

12/04/2025

We've been sold a story that salvation lies in self-improvement, that if we could just heal our trauma, set better boundaries, manifest our desires, align our chakras, we would finally arrive at some state of completion. But the truth is simpler and more challenging: we become whole not by perfecting ourselves but by taking our imperfect, still-becoming selves and offering them in genuine relationship with others doing the same difficult work.

In an age of sides, of us vs. them, of tribalism wearing the mask of righteousness, where people gather not to connect but to confirm their shared judgments of those who are not like them. This is collective ego, the cult-of-the-self scaled up to group size, still fundamentally about defending position rather than opening to connection.

Real community happens in a different place entirely—not in the certainty of our positions but in the humility of the Great Mystery, in the recognition that none of us has all the answers, that control is an illusion, that something larger than our individual or collective understanding holds us all.

I invite you read my latest journal entry on trustworthiness and what it takes to hold this in community. We're truly in this together. Let's keep looking for how to lift one another up.

11/24/2025

Can I trust you? So many privileged people these days talk about "feeling safe" as if safety is an external condition, not an internal state. There is a disease of distrust in others, definitely a result of a consumer-motivated culture where one constantly wonders: what are you trying to sell me? We scan every interaction for the transaction hidden beneath it, the angle, the manipulation. We've become expert threat-assessors, building elaborate systems to protect ourselves from being fooled, used, or disappointed.
But rarely does someone ask the question of themselves: Am I trustworthy?
This reversal—from defensive evaluation to radical self-examination—is where the real work of trust begins. And it requires something our culture has almost entirely abandoned: radical self-responsibility. Read more: https://wix.to/AdDaWb2

10/11/2025

Dear friend, teacher, mentor Thomas Steininger
You made a huge impact in our lives, changing the way I we see the world, the space, the intelligence that lives in the field all around us. From the fire ceremonies at Lake Atitlan, it was there we met in 2014, to many years, retreats, dialogues, conversations, meditations from then until now - a deep bow to all you brought and made alive for so many of us. We are truly in this together Thomas. I feel your presence here, I feel your prayers and strength, your profound trust in life. Your curiosity, the questions that got right to the point, creating that immediate shift in consciousness. I love you now and am convinced you’ll continue to visit and inform us in your new form. A bow to to your indomitable partner wife Elizabeth Debold.

10/09/2025

We're living through a collective autoimmune crisis—attacking parts of our own social body as if they were foreign invaders. We find these patterns extending way beyond our political divisions, even into our relationship with ecological diversity. "Invasive species, foreign invaders, native purity....research increasingly reveals the limits of this black and white thinking.
Traditional medicine offers a roadmap: reduce inflammatory triggers, rebuild resilience, practice discernment over reactivity. From regulating our nervous systems with daily breathwork to having genuine conversations across difference, the medicine our times require isn't heroic gestures but sustained daily practices that teach us to recognize ourselves again—individually and collectively." Learn what you can do for an individual autoimmune process and our societal one. . https://www.thesourceforhealing.com/post/the-autoimmune-paradox-individual-and-collective-patterns-of-self-attack

10/09/2025

In Qi Gong practice, we cultivate wildness inside the body. We become the lion, sinking low and powerful. We become the crane, rising on one leg, wings spread in perfect balance. We become the mountain, rooted and strong, or the dragon, playful and quick. This is not metaphor. This is remembering—calling forth the animals that live in our cells, in our evolutionary memory, in our bones.

The wildness is not out there, separate from us. It is what we are made of.

But you forget. God, how you forget. You spend your days in rooms with controlled temperatures and artificial light. You drive on paved roads. You buy meat wrapped in plastic. You lose touch with fire as a living presence, with water as a spiritual being, with the earth as the body of your oldest ancestor.

The indigenous traditions I have been honored to learn from—Diné, Lakota, Nahuatl—speak of this forgetting as a kind of illness. When we stop recognizing our relatives in the more-than-human world, when we stop hearing their voices, we become orphaned. Alone in a way humans were never meant to be alone.

And perhaps this is what Thoreau meant by quiet desperation. Not that our lives are bad, but that we have lost the conversation. We have stopped tracking. We have forgotten that we are being tracked in return—that the Mystery is paying attention to us, leaving signs, waiting for us to notice.

Read more link in bio

10/01/2025

Losing the track: On quiet desperation and finding our way back to wonder. I’ve been trying for weeks to step into what I’ve wanted to share, to write, to say about my time in Kruger National Park, what pulled me there and what happened there and how it’s been since I’ve come home. Writing this has moved me to tears as I'm continuing to reorient myself, to find myself in the midst of all that is. This is the best way I could express myself to what’s moving on the inside for me. 🌍✨ Read more about it here: https://wix.to/MzWtBgD

09/25/2025

Sacred Movement, Open Hearts: Indigenous Peoples Day Qi Gong
Mon Oct 13th 9-10:15 AM EST
Join us on Monday, October 13th for a gentle introduction to the ancient practice of Qi Gong as we honor Indigenous Peoples Day with mindful movement and connection to the land. This open practice day welcomes both complete beginners and experienced practitioners to explore how these time-honored forms cultivate balance, vitality, and deep presence. We'll gather in our meadow and online to practice flowing movements that connect us to natural rhythms, learn basic breathing techniques that calm the nervous system, and experience the meditative quality of moving with intention. No prior experience necessary—just curiosity and a willingness to slow down and listen to your body's wisdom. This is a perfect opportunity for those who've been curious about Qi Gong but aren't ready to commit to a full series, or for anyone seeking a peaceful way to mark this day of reflection and reverence for indigenous wisdom traditions. Come as you are, move at your own pace, and discover why this ancient practice continues to offer healing in our modern world.

All are welcome to join this open one hour practice to explore the healing qualities of this ancient martial arts.

09/24/2025

The Life Story of my Qi Gong teacher Wang Qingyu: From Palace to Prison to Master: An Extraordinary Journey of Transformation ✨

Born into Chinese aristocracy in 1937, Wang Qingyu lost everything overnight when political tides shifted—wealth confiscated, family name branded "dirty," reduced to one set of underwear and constant hunger. Yet from this devastating fall, he discovered something far more valuable than gold.

Secretly practicing ancient Daoist healing arts while dodging persecution during China's Cultural Revolution, Wang transformed personal suffering into a gift for humanity. Today, he's recognized as one of China's greatest Qigong masters—healer to Olympic champions and high officials, yet a man who walks away from fame and fortune.

His story reveals the mysterious alchemy of the human spirit: how the deepest wounds can become sources of the greatest healing, and how true mastery comes not from rising above others, but from lifting others up.

"What is the significance of my individual pain? I'm just a speck of dust compared to nature's vastness. But if you reunite with that source, even the greatest suffering becomes bearable—and transformative."

Link in bio 👆 for the full incredible story of resilience, wisdom, and the teacher whose "stream of light" continues to heal the world. A story of inspiration and courage in dark times.

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https://wix.to/0cRA7qw

09/17/2025

If I were to offer a clinical assessment of our current collective condition, I’d say we’re experiencing acute symptoms of a chronic problem: the human tendency to organize around shared threats rather than shared aspirations. This creates a kind of cultural autoimmune response where we attack parts of our own social body as if they were foreign invaders.

The prognosis depends largely on whether we can learn to regulate our collective nervous system—to create enough safety and stability that we can engage with difference without triggering fight-or-flight responses that make complex thinking impossible.

This isn’t work that happens in isolation. It requires what Indigenous traditions call “good relations”—the patient, ongoing practice of maintaining connection across difference, of holding space for disagreement without dehumanization, of remembering that we share a common fate on a small planet with limited resources.

The evidence for our capacity to do this work exists not in grand political gestures but in the daily, largely invisible acts of recognition that happen between people who take the time to see each other clearly: the pulse point where connection occurs, the moment when someone feels truly heard, the recognition that we’re all trying to find our way home to something that feels like safety, meaning, and love.

Whether we can scale these individual moments of recognition into collective healing remains an open question. But the capacity itself—the stubborn, persistent human ability to see past surface differences to shared needs and longings—continues to show up in my clinic every day, offering what might be the only realistic hope we have: that we’re not as different as we think we are, and not as powerless as we feel.

We’re in this together.

09/17/2025

After 20 years in an integrative medical practice, I'm seeing an epidemic of nervous system dysregulation that mirrors our cultural fragmentation. But I'm also witnessing something that gives me measured hope: the persistent human capacity for recognition across difference. My latest reflection on what bodies teach us about our shared humanity, even in polarized times."
Read more: https://wix.to/OxvXIlb

September 16, 2025In my clinic this morning, I placed my fingers on Mrs. Chen's wrist, feeling for the subtle rhythms that diagnostic traditions have mapped for millennia. Her pulse revealed what her words had not: the chronic activation of her sympathetic nervous system, the kind of sustained hyper...

09/16/2025

As the leaves change and autumn settles in, are you feeling low grade heaviness or sadness? Discover how the Meridian Gutter (LU8) and Merchant Yang (LI1) points can help you manage your emotions this season. Learn more here: https://wix.to/ZYkeBbr

Are you troubled by certain repetitive thoughts or are you feeling a low grade heaviness or sadness hanging around. Perhaps it feels like something you can't seem to shake, like clouds in the sky or like a buildup of leaves and gunk in your gutters. Jīng Qú, (經渠) or Channel Ditch (Meridian Gut...