Hacking Healing, Boule and Dr Roger Banister.

What did we say before kids and nefarious evil states started to break into other people’s software!?

I guess, “Figuring out a way to get through…” how ungainly!
Thanks for the term “Hacking” it suits really well!

My business is Healing – and how do we get there more quickly, efficiently and with repeatable reliable results?

My favourite pass-time is the French game of Petanque or Boule (depending on what region of France you hail from..) If you don’t know the game exactly, the formula repeats itself through all societies…. You have a target, and throw things at it! In this case it’s a little ball, and you try to get big heavy balls to land near it! The balls or Boule are the size of a small orange, they fit in your palm, and weight variously around 700gms or about 1.5lbs.

There’s a much vaunted technique, where you arc your ball out of your hand, it hits the opponents ball, the opponents ball shoots off the piste (playing area) and yours remains in its place. All intermediary players desire this awesome skill, all exceptional players can hit 8/10 or more of these shots. Sadly, I’m in the first category! I’m trying very hard to move to the upper category via a lot of missing, heartbreak and lost games!

Clearly, we all know the old adage, “Practice makes Perfect” – but why’s this actually the case?

There’s a great deal of sports research that shows that mental rehearsal improves one’s skills, just by thinking about the task one can improve oneself by up to 35%  over the baseline one research programme demonstrated.
(The people who ACTUALLY physically practiced improved over 50%)

Getting your mind in the game is clearly important, but so is repeating the task over and over.

There’s more to it than this however.

Halfway through a pretty average game last Sunday, I was faced with a simple set of choices, we were scoring one point, our opponents had used all their balls, I should roll my boule compliantly towards the target ball, and hopefully score another one or two.
At least that was the mundane option (and my usual choice!) out of nowhere I “shot” both of their boule off the piste, one after the other scoring us four points, not the one or two!
I usually hit about 30 – 50% of my targets on a good day. Before trying this, I usually confer with my team-mate to see what he thinks. Then I confer with myself, give it a good think over, and generally see the sense, and don’t do it! If I do, it usually takes me two tries before I knock one of the opponent’s boule out.
This time, like a gunslinger, I unleashed two perfect shots, in quick succession, hitting my targets, and leaving a stunned silence!

There was finally NO logical thought employed, my body just knew what was required, and did it without consultation. I was totally in the “Zone” that we hear top athletes and runners talk about.

It seems that the more logical thought strays into a process such as this, the more it’s likely to screw things up.

We understand in sport, that we can’t be in the flow every moment of a game, that’s where the practice takes over. You hone a set of skills and reproduce close to your best each time.
Once in a while, there’s suddenly a breaking point, where with total focus, you can win the point, match or tournament. This, when you spot it and drop into autopilot is accessing the Zone.

Let’s look at healing then, what factors are required to really enact a deep and meaningful healing in somebody who is for instance a Cancer patient?

In a previous essay, I talked about the role of Positive Mindset in the healing process.
The more I think about it, the more I’m able to identify the mindset within my client base.

I have instinctively known with some clients that they won’t “make it” to recovery. There’s a question of ethics here, this is something that I’d never reveal, what if my instinct is wrong? People can change their minds too, in fact that’s the whole point of the process that clients follow with me. It’s a mental conversion process. It does however take energy and strength of mind, some people arrive so depleted and so defeated that “putting on a brave face” just isn’t going to cut it.
Some people arrive with such a pre-formed mindset, that I’m faced with the question “Are some people so set in their ways that healing and change is just NOT possible?”

I know enough about Plastination of the Brain, and understand the maxim “Brain cells that fire together, wire together” to know that the more habituated a person becomes, the more that habituation is hardwired into their brains. In the healing process, this then becomes a deadly race against time, can the brain shift, or will the internal destruction process finally win?
I genuinely believe it’s not too late for anybody, but that’s NOT my decision to make, my client has to make the mental move themselves, I’m never more than a sign-post.

Firstly, we must achieve this positive mindset. We need Belief, and Faith in what we are doing.
As you know for me this means Qigong. HHaving spent some 30 years at this stage studying the subject, I think it’s the most elegant of solutions, but I would wouldn’t I!? There are many other paths to the top of the mountain.

The Brain is exceptionally good at telling stories. We always require to make sense of everything that happens to us. The process of thought, likes to compartmentalise experience, everything logically placed in its own cubby hole, filed carefully for further reference.
The storytelling can really help us though. In the Qigong tradition that I work in, we constantly retell positive healing stories. The point about this process can be illustrated by Dr Sir Roger Banister.

On the 6 May 1954 at the Iffley Road running track in Oxford, Roger ran the first sub 4 minute mile.
Many people had suggested that this was not humanly possible, and that if attempted, it would surely lead to heart failure and death. The previous century the time for the mile had only improved very gradually, in the previous 10 years only a second or two had been knocked off the time.
What we often don’t hear about Dr Banister’s amazing feat is that his record was broken about a month after he achieved it, and then it was broken again and again, until a few years later a Student broke the record.

What we see, when we look at the world of Extreme Sports is the same pattern. In skateboarding for many years, the Holy Grail was a spin that took one through 720 degrees of rotation, in the middle of a jump off a ramp. Only one skater could do it, Tony Hawks.
After he pulled it off, he was followed by about six others who managed the trick.
He then moved to 900 degrees, and achieved that.
This is a skateboarder who’s a fully grown adult, who’s been practicing every day for three quarters of his life. Shortly after achieving the “900” a newcomer to the scene threw at 1020 rotation.
The newcomer was 12 years old, and about to become one of the most feted 12 year’s olds on the planet! (Well certainly in the extreme sports arena anyway!)

The point of these stories is that we find it much easier to achieve these great hights, when somebody else has done it first. (Especially since the ubiquity of Video cameras, now you can watch these record breaking exploits the moment they happen.)

Monkey see, Monkey do!

So now we start to visualise the crucible in which the alchemical process of Healing can take place.

Firstly, we require a positive mind set, then the stories of other people healing themselves from the most extreme of conditions start to change our minds about what we are capable of ourselves.
We have a tool box of ideas that can help us on a physical level create the grounds for healing.
For me I suggest Qigong, alkalising one’s body (I always suggest Super Greens), getting a blood test to look for deficiencies in vitamins and minerals, maybe a Cleanse of some sort and then a simplifying and cleaning up of the diet. You have to give your cells the best possible chance to go back to what they are supposed to do.

I suggest Mental Hygiene too. Cleaning out the negative thoughts is a powerful process.
I tend to suggest things like Hypnotherapy or EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) which I have used with success in the past.
Sadly, I don’t think going to a traditional style Psychiatrist is a useful process, repeatedly reliving a trauma and talking about said trauma over and over only energetically reaffirms the problem and gives it power.
Whatever the choice of modality, being brave enough to look for the triggers that have created deep chronic illness is a powerful way to move through it.

The third major strand of help, is being together in a healing community.
.This always puts me in mind of Dr Pang’s much vaunted Medicineless hospital that ran in the 90’s in China, and which I hope to emulate here in the UK shortly. (Finance willing!)
Getting support that another person, who has been down the path that you are now treading is an amazingly powerful aid
A little story from the Medicine-less hospital illustrates this.
One gentleman reported to the reception with his X-rays, and said “I’ve been told I have 5 weeks left to live…”
He was met by one of the Teachers who said “Forget about that, that’s what they told me Five years ago!” – There was the jump-start to his healing process right there! What an adjustment to his mindset!
I saw in Xi’an how the people on their healing journey supported each other, every day they are jollying each other along, providing the backbone for each other, when one’s own spirit sags a little.

There’s so much evidence to suggest that a group is so much more powerful than an individual, and that when we practice together, that our brainwaves “entrain” – that’s to say, they start to match each other. So, when one person moves to the healing “Zone” then it’s much easier for others to do so. (I talk about my plan for a healing centre on my website www.24days.org if you’d like more information on the process)

The last strand is just a small refocusing of all the amazing research that has taken place in the West, into Consciousness. So often excellent self-help authors such as Joe Dispenza and Greig Braydon tell us about focusing on a better future, where we are already healed. By focusing on a better future, we have something to evolve towards.

I feel this misses a critical point.

Every moment thinking about the past is a present moment that’s wasted. Turning over the past has never been that useful.

However, deferring things to a better future has a similar effect. What’s required is to realise that we are healing ourselves NOW. Don’t think about a month hence, or six months hence, heal yourself RIGHT NOW! (And tomorrow and next week, and next month!)

In Zhineng Qigong we often use a Chinese phrase Hao La! (It basically translates as “Everything is already good!”)  – See yourself as already fixed, every day!

This then closes our circle. The Extreme Athletes OR average Boule Players alike seek this zone where greatness emerges without the frontal lobe of the brain jumping in and making noise!

Meditators also seek this Zone, where the chatter switches off, and peace reigns.

But most importantly, when we do our Qigong for self-healing, this is the space we seek.
The body knows what to do.
The body knows how to repair us, as it does whilst we sleep.
Take away the bad stories we tell ourselves, sink into the Zone – this is where the Miracles can emerge from. Sure, it takes a while to get through the “Struggle” phase, before we reach that ocean of healing calm, but just know that it’s your birth-right as a human to access this Zone, and that anyone can achieve it. This is where ANY illness can be healed!