An Interview with KeleMarie Lyons
Director of Business Development
for CORE / El Centro in Wisconsin, USA June 13, 2017
KML: What do you see as the root of the root of disease in your practice? Disconnection from higher self? Personality? Constitution? Lifestyle? Other?
MD: The concept of a “root of a root” is new to me. When was this introduced? If there is indeed such a thing, I would venture to say that there is a common root to all diseases regardless of how it presents, and that would be the separation of Heart-Mind from the body and, at a deeper level, the separation from Spirit which is, in some interpretation, the so called ‘original sin’ of Christianity. This separation from Spirit is a decision made by the individual at a very deep unconscious level and has engendered much guilt and confusion.
KML: What TCM patterns do they reflect? (by and large)
MD: I actually do not use TCM patterns anymore. In my view, these patterns limit to a great extent the possibility of a healing effort reaching deep enough to catch this ‘root of the root’ as you say.
Thanks to the teaching from Michael Greenwood, I have learned to unequivocally trust that the symptoms are definitely not the illness. In fact, the more I am able to guide one to breathe with the symptoms which may arise during a session, the deeper one is able to be present in the moment, therefore reaching as close to the root of one’s dis-ease as is possible on that day.
This approach very much matches the reason for which I moved away from engineering and eventually pursued a career in the healing arts. Natural medicine has stated for a long time that the body can 1. heal itself and 2. that the symptoms are not the disease. The symptoms are what one feels when the body attempts to correct a pattern of disharmony. The only difference between a chronic muscle ache and cancer is that the latter is a very clear call for one to inquire into oneself, for one to pay attention and investigate what the source of the disharmony may be. Without that level of investigative curiosity, it is unlikely that any intervention, however clever and modern, will bring any kind of lasting effect.
KML: Can you give an example of a treatment method?
MD: The word treatment may not apply in the case of transformational acupuncture, the term I prefer to use for DIA. Incidently, and possibly ironically, all the points I tend to select come from TCM theory. I am trained in TCM and had to pass my exams in order to practice in BC, just like everyone else. The difference is that I am now clear that I am not there to treat anyone, or fix anything. That premise, in my view, is crucial to the effectiveness of the session.
The current healing model, even in those eloquent and intelligent approaches such as Chinese medicine, is for a ‘patient’ to seek treatment from some healing expert. In that model, the patient will be deeply grateful when the treatment works, and potentially deeply disillusioned when it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter what form it takes, such approach is always a form of ‘magic pill medicine’. And it is also why I chose to move away from traditional TCM thinking and essentially avoid making any diagnostic conclusions when one shows up with a dis-ease. Essentially, I may be able to claim that I am an expert in acupuncture but I’ll never truly be able, nor willing, to claim that I can be an expert about anyone else’s body, let alone their experience of life and dis-ease.
So, a session is always an invitation to explore what the body has to offer at the moment of the session. One usually shows up with a series of complaints which may or not be relevant at all to what is really going on at a deep level. It does however give a flavour as to what is going on in one’s life, what one is struggling with.
The first session nearly always involves the Four Gates (bilateral LV3 and LI 4) and quite often also CV12. As the session evolves, there might also be other points selected, quite often from those A Shi points identified through palpation of the legs and Front-Mu points.
Feel and breathe. Breathe and feel.
The patient is asked to breathe quite actively into the sensations and thereafter follow the sensations which the body makes available on that day by breathing with or into them. The sensations which show up are not always what one would expect to show up. In fact, it most often opens in a very different direction which often has very little to do with any TCM diagnosis.
One often ends up going through a cornucopia of physical and/or emotional sensations which can be quite surprising in intensity and/or diversity, and nearly always culminate to a place of deep calm while there is a concurrent sensation of unimpeded energy flow which is often felt as a tingling which may involve only some of the extremities or the entire body.
KML: Do your patients see you as the doc who can 'cure' them? Or do they participate in their healing? If they participate, how do they get motivated to do the work?
MD: This was covered above already. Just to be certain, I do emphasize with them that I do not intend whatsoever to treat or fix anything. My role during the session is solely to 1. open up Qi flow and take them to the edge of what Michael Greenwood calls the Void, and 2. keep them company and keep them safe in the external world as they choose to go deep into the recesses of their sub-conscious being. I would view my role as a catalyst or facilitator rather than one who can cure. “Healing is always spiritual” (Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona) is one of the best statement out there. There are several possible interpretation of this statement, and I have never met this doctor in person, but my sense is that he at least refers to the fact that true, deep, meaningful, and lasting healing is most often achieved when the divinity of our existence is allowed to work at its best. This is likely what is referred to as our innate self-healing ability.
KML: What is your experience with DIA? Can you describe a treatment?
MD: Also covered above. A description of a session is always tricky to do. It is difficult to convey into words what results into an experience which is often outside of common place understanding of self and life in general.
Maybe I can try to explain more with words when we talk.
KML: What other modalities do you incorporate into your treatment plans?
MD: Most frequently, there is some component of Esoteric acupuncture (pioneered by Mikio Sankey) and/or medical Qi Gong (in the tradition passed on by Jerry Alan Johnson), for those who are clearly engaged in a spiritual practice, nearly always the understandings conveyed by the work of Chuck Spezzano (Psychology of vision), Course in Miracles, and Ki Aikido (which always teaches the importance of Heart-Mind and Body coordination, as taught my Koichi Tohei sensei), and rarely now, Emotional Freedom Technique (aka EFT or energy psychology).
KML: What do you see as the barriers to true healing?
MD: The main barrier to true healing is one’s belief that healing is not possible. This can at times be compounded by a poor prognosis or a final pronouncement given by the medical experts. The latter is known as ‘hexing’ in Qi Gong and is not very much different energetically than a curse. Also, the word healing is in itself confusing to most because of the underlying belief that it involves corrections only at the physical level, and most often a correction brought on by some healer in one format or another. This is what I call pill mentality, and there are various forms of pills that one might take – a chemical pill, a herbal pill, a homeopathic pill, an acupuncture pill, a massage pill, etc., you get the point I’m sure.
Healing has to involve at least 3 things and, in the case of cancer, it involves at least 9 aspects, the least of which is a reason to live. First, there must be a good rapport with one’s therapist and that means quite importantly that the patient is not treated as a medical ignorant but rather as the ‘expert’ about his or her own body. I may sound quite intelligent when I give a TCM diagnosis but it is arrogant of myself to suggest that I will ever be an expert about anyone else’s experience of illness. The assumption of expertise is at best limited to the skills and theory I have learned at school. The patient’s experience of any disease, however similar to a textbook description it may be, is bound to be completely subjective. In fact, the acceptance of that fact can help in one’s healing journey if only because there is no one road to any sickness and no one road out. And I’ll accept that this may be a generalization.
Secondly, there must be some improvement at some level of one’s sense of well being. Ideally, this can be a resolution of the symptoms themselves, or a change in one’s relationship to these symptoms. At the Pain Clinic where I met Michael Greenwood, twice I heard someone say something like “I know the pain is there, but it doesn’t hurt anymore”. I consider this point to be very important - the patient must have some conscious awareness of the change that happen during a session. I have heard too often reports from colleagues whom have told their patients “I have removed this entity or that blockage from her/his body” while the patient has no awareness that anything has happened. Of course, it is possible that this is enough to affect permanent change but in my observation, a statement of efficiency without a concrete, subjective experience it is not sufficient for a person to take personal responsibility in keeping that change going.
Thirdly, the patient must be ready to look at habits that stand in the way of healing. Without taking responsibility in some shape or form, there is a significant probability that the illness will return or morph into something else. The longer habits have been around, the more difficult they are to break. Sometimes, one has to be ready to change one’s life completely, and not just at the physical level in what one eats and does, but also at the mental, emotional, and spiritual levels as well.
KML: How do you evaluate the success of your practice or your ability to guide someone in the healing process?
MD: I know I have helped a person achieve a change in their struggle when he/she leaves with a sense of deep transformation. This is probably going to be difficult to put into words because it is a highly personal experience that involves, I assume, one’s own perception of self and of the external world.
Nearly always, one leaves with a sense of awe at the depth of transformation which has occurred. It’s like, in my personal experience of this process, one sees the ‘same’ world but one has a sense that something has change. What is likely difficult to take in at the moment is that the change has actually happened in the deep Self. The world appears to be the same from the information gathered by eyes yet one’s perception of the visible world has been altered.
When a patient comes off the table, there is often also a concomitant dizziness accompanied by a sense of intense energy flow and deep relaxation. I then know for sure that something has changed deeply in that person. I’ll often encourage one to consider that this is exactly what deep change may feel like in the moment. And when one says something like ‘I’m sure I’ll feel normal soon again’, I also caution them to consider that the ‘normal’ they are referring too is in the past now (and I motion behind me with my hand), and encourage them to let the new and sometimes confusing or disorienting sensations settle on their own accord into the new expanded self (motioning forward with my hand now), and that this is exactly how change should feel. After all, if change is really what one is seeking, there should also be an expectation that one should feel different on the other side of this change.
And that is why I call the acupuncture I do ‘Transformational Acupuncture”.
for CORE / El Centro in Wisconsin, USA June 13, 2017
KML: What do you see as the root of the root of disease in your practice? Disconnection from higher self? Personality? Constitution? Lifestyle? Other?
MD: The concept of a “root of a root” is new to me. When was this introduced? If there is indeed such a thing, I would venture to say that there is a common root to all diseases regardless of how it presents, and that would be the separation of Heart-Mind from the body and, at a deeper level, the separation from Spirit which is, in some interpretation, the so called ‘original sin’ of Christianity. This separation from Spirit is a decision made by the individual at a very deep unconscious level and has engendered much guilt and confusion.
KML: What TCM patterns do they reflect? (by and large)
MD: I actually do not use TCM patterns anymore. In my view, these patterns limit to a great extent the possibility of a healing effort reaching deep enough to catch this ‘root of the root’ as you say.
Thanks to the teaching from Michael Greenwood, I have learned to unequivocally trust that the symptoms are definitely not the illness. In fact, the more I am able to guide one to breathe with the symptoms which may arise during a session, the deeper one is able to be present in the moment, therefore reaching as close to the root of one’s dis-ease as is possible on that day.
This approach very much matches the reason for which I moved away from engineering and eventually pursued a career in the healing arts. Natural medicine has stated for a long time that the body can 1. heal itself and 2. that the symptoms are not the disease. The symptoms are what one feels when the body attempts to correct a pattern of disharmony. The only difference between a chronic muscle ache and cancer is that the latter is a very clear call for one to inquire into oneself, for one to pay attention and investigate what the source of the disharmony may be. Without that level of investigative curiosity, it is unlikely that any intervention, however clever and modern, will bring any kind of lasting effect.
KML: Can you give an example of a treatment method?
MD: The word treatment may not apply in the case of transformational acupuncture, the term I prefer to use for DIA. Incidently, and possibly ironically, all the points I tend to select come from TCM theory. I am trained in TCM and had to pass my exams in order to practice in BC, just like everyone else. The difference is that I am now clear that I am not there to treat anyone, or fix anything. That premise, in my view, is crucial to the effectiveness of the session.
The current healing model, even in those eloquent and intelligent approaches such as Chinese medicine, is for a ‘patient’ to seek treatment from some healing expert. In that model, the patient will be deeply grateful when the treatment works, and potentially deeply disillusioned when it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter what form it takes, such approach is always a form of ‘magic pill medicine’. And it is also why I chose to move away from traditional TCM thinking and essentially avoid making any diagnostic conclusions when one shows up with a dis-ease. Essentially, I may be able to claim that I am an expert in acupuncture but I’ll never truly be able, nor willing, to claim that I can be an expert about anyone else’s body, let alone their experience of life and dis-ease.
So, a session is always an invitation to explore what the body has to offer at the moment of the session. One usually shows up with a series of complaints which may or not be relevant at all to what is really going on at a deep level. It does however give a flavour as to what is going on in one’s life, what one is struggling with.
The first session nearly always involves the Four Gates (bilateral LV3 and LI 4) and quite often also CV12. As the session evolves, there might also be other points selected, quite often from those A Shi points identified through palpation of the legs and Front-Mu points.
Feel and breathe. Breathe and feel.
The patient is asked to breathe quite actively into the sensations and thereafter follow the sensations which the body makes available on that day by breathing with or into them. The sensations which show up are not always what one would expect to show up. In fact, it most often opens in a very different direction which often has very little to do with any TCM diagnosis.
One often ends up going through a cornucopia of physical and/or emotional sensations which can be quite surprising in intensity and/or diversity, and nearly always culminate to a place of deep calm while there is a concurrent sensation of unimpeded energy flow which is often felt as a tingling which may involve only some of the extremities or the entire body.
KML: Do your patients see you as the doc who can 'cure' them? Or do they participate in their healing? If they participate, how do they get motivated to do the work?
MD: This was covered above already. Just to be certain, I do emphasize with them that I do not intend whatsoever to treat or fix anything. My role during the session is solely to 1. open up Qi flow and take them to the edge of what Michael Greenwood calls the Void, and 2. keep them company and keep them safe in the external world as they choose to go deep into the recesses of their sub-conscious being. I would view my role as a catalyst or facilitator rather than one who can cure. “Healing is always spiritual” (Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona) is one of the best statement out there. There are several possible interpretation of this statement, and I have never met this doctor in person, but my sense is that he at least refers to the fact that true, deep, meaningful, and lasting healing is most often achieved when the divinity of our existence is allowed to work at its best. This is likely what is referred to as our innate self-healing ability.
KML: What is your experience with DIA? Can you describe a treatment?
MD: Also covered above. A description of a session is always tricky to do. It is difficult to convey into words what results into an experience which is often outside of common place understanding of self and life in general.
Maybe I can try to explain more with words when we talk.
KML: What other modalities do you incorporate into your treatment plans?
MD: Most frequently, there is some component of Esoteric acupuncture (pioneered by Mikio Sankey) and/or medical Qi Gong (in the tradition passed on by Jerry Alan Johnson), for those who are clearly engaged in a spiritual practice, nearly always the understandings conveyed by the work of Chuck Spezzano (Psychology of vision), Course in Miracles, and Ki Aikido (which always teaches the importance of Heart-Mind and Body coordination, as taught my Koichi Tohei sensei), and rarely now, Emotional Freedom Technique (aka EFT or energy psychology).
KML: What do you see as the barriers to true healing?
MD: The main barrier to true healing is one’s belief that healing is not possible. This can at times be compounded by a poor prognosis or a final pronouncement given by the medical experts. The latter is known as ‘hexing’ in Qi Gong and is not very much different energetically than a curse. Also, the word healing is in itself confusing to most because of the underlying belief that it involves corrections only at the physical level, and most often a correction brought on by some healer in one format or another. This is what I call pill mentality, and there are various forms of pills that one might take – a chemical pill, a herbal pill, a homeopathic pill, an acupuncture pill, a massage pill, etc., you get the point I’m sure.
Healing has to involve at least 3 things and, in the case of cancer, it involves at least 9 aspects, the least of which is a reason to live. First, there must be a good rapport with one’s therapist and that means quite importantly that the patient is not treated as a medical ignorant but rather as the ‘expert’ about his or her own body. I may sound quite intelligent when I give a TCM diagnosis but it is arrogant of myself to suggest that I will ever be an expert about anyone else’s experience of illness. The assumption of expertise is at best limited to the skills and theory I have learned at school. The patient’s experience of any disease, however similar to a textbook description it may be, is bound to be completely subjective. In fact, the acceptance of that fact can help in one’s healing journey if only because there is no one road to any sickness and no one road out. And I’ll accept that this may be a generalization.
Secondly, there must be some improvement at some level of one’s sense of well being. Ideally, this can be a resolution of the symptoms themselves, or a change in one’s relationship to these symptoms. At the Pain Clinic where I met Michael Greenwood, twice I heard someone say something like “I know the pain is there, but it doesn’t hurt anymore”. I consider this point to be very important - the patient must have some conscious awareness of the change that happen during a session. I have heard too often reports from colleagues whom have told their patients “I have removed this entity or that blockage from her/his body” while the patient has no awareness that anything has happened. Of course, it is possible that this is enough to affect permanent change but in my observation, a statement of efficiency without a concrete, subjective experience it is not sufficient for a person to take personal responsibility in keeping that change going.
Thirdly, the patient must be ready to look at habits that stand in the way of healing. Without taking responsibility in some shape or form, there is a significant probability that the illness will return or morph into something else. The longer habits have been around, the more difficult they are to break. Sometimes, one has to be ready to change one’s life completely, and not just at the physical level in what one eats and does, but also at the mental, emotional, and spiritual levels as well.
KML: How do you evaluate the success of your practice or your ability to guide someone in the healing process?
MD: I know I have helped a person achieve a change in their struggle when he/she leaves with a sense of deep transformation. This is probably going to be difficult to put into words because it is a highly personal experience that involves, I assume, one’s own perception of self and of the external world.
Nearly always, one leaves with a sense of awe at the depth of transformation which has occurred. It’s like, in my personal experience of this process, one sees the ‘same’ world but one has a sense that something has change. What is likely difficult to take in at the moment is that the change has actually happened in the deep Self. The world appears to be the same from the information gathered by eyes yet one’s perception of the visible world has been altered.
When a patient comes off the table, there is often also a concomitant dizziness accompanied by a sense of intense energy flow and deep relaxation. I then know for sure that something has changed deeply in that person. I’ll often encourage one to consider that this is exactly what deep change may feel like in the moment. And when one says something like ‘I’m sure I’ll feel normal soon again’, I also caution them to consider that the ‘normal’ they are referring too is in the past now (and I motion behind me with my hand), and encourage them to let the new and sometimes confusing or disorienting sensations settle on their own accord into the new expanded self (motioning forward with my hand now), and that this is exactly how change should feel. After all, if change is really what one is seeking, there should also be an expectation that one should feel different on the other side of this change.
And that is why I call the acupuncture I do ‘Transformational Acupuncture”.