Divine Feminine – “Healing & Nurturing”

        The Divine Feminine when brought into Healing Practices does not seek to diagnose through creating a differential that isolates, calculates symptoms as an equation and then treats and medicates as an isolated problem.  The Feminine quality seeks to restore balance by finding common denominators in looking at the person’s lifestyle, relationships, beliefs, attitudes, and what type of things they are dealing with, etc.  It connects intuitively by seeing areas of a person life as interactive and influencing each other. The typical Allopathic, masculine model treats the effect or symptom, without necessarily identifying the cause and therefore engages in managing symptoms, usually through drugs or surgery and never actually creates an experience through which healing takes place.  The Masculine looks to find the problem as the effect and solve, fix or eliminate it.  The feminine looks to find the cause that’s initiating it bring it back into balance knowing that will change the effect.  

        The Feminine, holistic approach, seeks to find the cause and introduce lifestyle changes that will restore the system to a balanced and harmonious state through natural means that can be maintained on their own.  Holistic pharmacy is the garden, herbs, affection, beauty that’s sensuously stimulating, sound as music, cultivating loving relationships, massage, aromatherapy, etc.  It heals by teaching, introducing change, practicing new ways of being and doing, and by cultivating new habits that produce desired effects.  It heals through nurturing, comforting and by expressing compassion.

       The Feminine, holistic approach has birthed holistic medicine as well as what is currently called Energy Medicine.  Energy Medicine is complementary to the Eastern Medicine of Yoga and Auryaveda, as well Shamanic Medicine and works through a base knowledge of the body’s energy system in terms of a hierarchy of interrelationship as the invisible spiritual aspects of the soul being the determining factor of the body.  The body is the creation,manifestation or effect of the Astral body as the Soul.  We can recognize unknown aspects by their relationship to known aspects, much like Algebra.  This requires very well developed intuitive abilities, not in psychic terms, but in the ability to practice the Law of Analogy and Correspondence that allows Intuitive Knowledge of Energy systems as the Universal Principles that determine how systems behave or operate.  It bridges Art with Science as a holistic practice.  This requires not only a great deal of education as scientific knowledge, but also the skill at performing it.  Art (feminine) is taking the science (masculine) and using it to create by interpretation which is the application of Knowledge to specific circumstances to see a variation as a personal reality.

       The Masculine takes a fixed process and applies it across the board.  The same process is used to diagnose and treat everyone.  The Feminine, takes Principles and applies them to the individual and their exact circumstances to produce constant variety in which the treatment is uniquely designed to meet the individuals needs.  Every treatment is different, based on practical application of the Universal to the individual. 

       So to bring the Feminine back into power in terms of orientation and learning how to work out of a holistic model, we must change the very foundation out of which all of our processes flow.  One of the first things we need to recognize, is that while the Masculine model tends to work through elimination, by eliminating the Feminine aspect, the Feminine, being whole in nature and stemming out of the Masculine, keeps the Masculine intact as a crucial part of the holistic process.  It does not operate by eliminating the masculine and going into an extreme expression of the Feminine, but rather through inclusion as an operation based on relationship as interactive and balanced.  And always keep in mind, that when we talk about “Masculine and Feminine”, we are not talking about gender, we are talking about qualities that we all have within us as potential resources that can be brought into expression and developed into proficiency.

       The foundation has to be correct in order to produce a congruent process of unity and harmony.  We cannot apply the Feminine through the model of the Masculine.  We have to evolve our basic mind-set in order to see bigger realities where new possibilities naturally become apparent.  If we continue to operate out of old, popular models, we’ll keep producing the same type of effects.  The new age is not about the same thing the old age was built on.  It’s not about separating, fragmenting, analyzing and changing the nature of your work in order to “market it”.  It’s about looking at things from their natural state as an ecology, synthesized and interdependent, and understanding how they exist in relationship to each other, and how to articulate and communicate that in a way that can be understood and received without compromising the integrity of your work by “dumbing it down” into marketable terms.  We are being called to become more sophisticated in our ability to see more complex ideas as actually being simpler because they are unified, and are so much apart of our inherent nature that we can do them spontaneously without much thought.  

 Linda Gadbois, DES, CCHt.

Divine Feminine – “Holistic Mind-set”

       When we talk about bringing the Feminine aspect back into power, as a main quality of ourselves for changing our mind-set, we have to realize that it requires more than just talk, and we can’t do it by taking the same approach that we always have which is born out of a masculine model.  The Feminine is holistic, feeling oriented and intuitive.  This calls on us to create a whole new way of looking at things, and developing new models and processes for how we do things.  We have to embody those qualities to form new perceptions that direct our actions allowing us to teach by demonstrating.  We have to “Be” the feminine aspect as a primary orientation that the masculine serves by bringing it into action. 

Example:  The Masculine is what creates a narrow focus, singular mind that breaks everything apart and analyzes it in small pieces, then if not bridged back with the feminine, will leave things in their fragmented state and proceed to create a whole out of a single aspect.  From this we get the mentality of specializing, forming a niche’, summing up what we do in one sentence so that it can be marketed to others who live out of a limited mind-set also.  The mind always assumes it’s dealing with itself when it moves out into society.  The masculine, current model popularized, is still being used to specialize in the “feminine power”, because it fails to see that once again it’s attempting to approach the idea of the feminine from the perspective of the masculine.  What we need to do, is create and move back into a “holistic model” that does not take pride in dealing with life from a fragmented state of expertise, but rather dealing with the whole person from an intuitive perspective.  It’s not about becoming a “this or that” specialist and only dealing with that, but approaching all of life from an interconnected basis as our foundation for perceiving, and developing processes ideally suited for the whole person and not just one area of their life.  Any area of our life, whether it be personal, relationships, health, professional, spiritual, financial, etc., effects and directly influences all other areas of our life.  We have to train our mind to move back into a unified state and build a foundation from that perspective.  You can’t build a holistic mind-set out of a process designed to separate, embellish and create a whole out of a part.  When we take this approach, we are making an error right from the get go.  Everything else that comes out of that model is a continuation of that same error.

        Niche’s, as single specialties don’t require much knowledge and therefore work off of a basis of limitation.  You can’t help somebody in one area of their life without recognizing that it will produce a series of corresponding consequences in all areas of their life.  To demonstrate the feminine aspect, we have to change our entire mind-set and start developing holistic models that allow us to “see” life, each other and nature as interconnected and interdependent. We must move back into being holistic practitioners.

 Linda Gadbois, DES, CCHt.

Miraculous Healing – “The Power of Love”

       My first experience of performing what would be deemed a miracle, came as a desperate response to a moment of incredible devastation that pushed me past all limitation, not by endlessly engaging in the limitations themselves in an attempt to process them and overcome them, but by transcending them by losing all awareness of the perception in which the limitations existed.  Like shifting into another space, nested within the same situation, in which fear didn’t exist and wasn’t even a consideration.  This experience was an amazing lesson not only in helping me to see my own capabilities and learn to build confidence by believing in myself, but  also revealing to me the shocking reality of how people tend to show up in times when it matters the most. 

       What happens in those moments when we find ourselves in situations that the eye could not foresee often astounds us.  I was abandoned by the people who should have been there, and helped by other that I barely knew.  A true testament of giving up perceived control by simply recognizing and allowing my inner guidance as intuition that provided divine intervention, not through another but as an act of my own will surrender to a higher intelligence.  I engaged in activity that I performed from a place of sheer knowing in absolute trust that almost felt peculiar to me as I was doing it.  As if I was inhabited by a companion form of consciousness. One that didn’t make a big deal out of stuff, but just silently stepped in and went about its business from a removed state that seemed intimately connected.

       This is just one part of amazing experiences that spanned 15 months, but open my eyes to the real potential of the human spirit when acting from a place of love, devotion, and surrender.  It also served to teach me the true nature of people in moments of great necessity that went painfully unanswered.

      My son was born 4lbs. 10oz., fully matured but with what I would discover through relentless pursuit, as having Hirschsprung's disease.  He was hospitalized on Thanksgiving Day and underwent emergency surgery that set into motion an amazing process of self-discovery as a demonstration of human fortitude.  After six surgeries, two colostomies, and surgically implanted mainlines due to vascular breakdown of all available IV sites, he peeked out at 5 lbs. 7 oz. at a little over two months old,  then began a process of deteriorating.  After losing weight and dropping back down to 4lbs. 8oz.  at a little over three months old, he became lethargic hard to wake up, began dehydrating due to his major organs systematically starting to shut down.  They diagnosed him with failure to thrive and removed all life-support and estimating approximately 48 hours before he would die.  They gave me an option of leaving him in the hospital and allowing it to happen there or to take them home in when it happened to call them and they would take care of the arrangements.

       I cannot even convey the level of grief I was experiencing that had began building a few weeks prior to his diagnosis.  I felt detached from reality and had trouble comprehending what was going on and struggled to perform normal tasks.  The next morning as I gathered him and all his things and walked out to the car, where I had to drive us home.  My husband announced to me a month into it, that he couldn’t handle it and refused to come down to the hospital.  I was left on my own to figure out how to deal with it.  As I got to the car my legs were trembling and started buckling.  I had to sit on the asphalt and try to compose myself.  My heart was pounding out of my chest, and I couldn't catch my breath, the ground was moving and I felt disoriented as those everything was closing in on me.  After a brief time of trying to create a relaxed state so that I could drive the car I finally got to my feet, and secured my son in his car seat next to me in the front seat and began driving.

      I stopped at a red light and it was as if something snapped inside of me and the whole world collapsed around me.  I lost all awareness of everything outside of the car and I suddenly became overwhelmed with grief and started screaming as I was crying saying, “I refuse to accept this! I refuse. I will not allow my baby to die!  He wants to live.  He's going to live.  I will not accept this”.  I repeated this hysterically while hitting on the steering wheel and the dashboard.  Then after mumbling for a bit non-sensibly, I looked down at my son in the sunlight coming through the window made his face and peer like an angel, softly undistinguished and innocently sweet.  I leaned down pressing my face against his and rocking back and forth while mumbling and sobbing, and suddenly I became extremely aware of his heartbeat.  As I listened to it beating it seemed to get louder and louder.  Strong and pronounced.  Then a kind of silence fell around me, and I felt a calm come over me and my thoughts became collected and my heart relaxed into sync with his, and I suddenly knew what I needed to do.  It was a kind of knowing that felt like a trance.  Something I couldn't articulate with words but simply knew it as a feeling inside.  It was a presence in me that removed all fear and possessed me with the kind of certainty that was removed from doubt.

       I then sat up and began driving home calmly.  When I got home I gathered my son went into the house and place to quilt over the rocking chair.  I closed all the curtains, lit a couple of candles, got a glass of water, removed my shirt and bra took all the clothes off my son except his diaper and colostomy bag, and sat down.  I laid him across my bare breasts so he could hear my heart beat, smell my skin, and be warmed by my body.  I then started stroking his body with loving affection, kissing his head and the side of his face, and softly sang a lullaby as a kind of humming.  Then as I began rocking I ran pictures through my mind of him at six months old, smiling and laughing, then at a year old learning to walk having his first birthday while eating his cake with his fingers, then at two years, playing in the park with the other kids on the polka-dotted pony.  I saw him at his second Christmas where he was fascinated with the lights and was more intrigued with the bows and the wrapping paper than he was with the presents.  I imagined him at two and three years old, healthy, and strong as I became filled with overwhelming love for him as I continued caressing him,  kissing him and rocking him with sweet lullabies. 

       At first he was lethargic and unresponsive his body was cool and limp.  After a few hours he started moving his hands and feet as if getting comfortable.  After about six hours he sneezed and rubbed his nose.  Then he started moving as if waking up from a nap.  After about eight hours, he opened his eyes and gaze straight into mine, then smiled and started acting irritable.  As he began squirming slightly trying to breast-feed I thought . . . he's actually hungry!  When I put them down to get his bottle he cried until I picked him back up.  He then drank 4 ounces of a special formula, and later ate some mashed bananas.  By the next day he was fully active, eating, cooing, in playing in his crib. 

       The hospital called me two days later because they couldn't figure out why they hadn't heard from me.  When I told his doctor that he had made what seemed like a full recovery and was eating, drinking, and playing, he was in disbelief and wanted me to bring him in for a checkup.  Upon examining him he said, “this doesn't make any sense, this shouldn't be possible”.  He was then struck by the fact that he recovered without any side effects from what appeared as deterioration of his major organs.  He then began questioning me on what I had done, how I had done it, and what on earth possessed me to do it, and when I told him, he just got a blank look on his face stared for a moment, and said “I guess a mother's love is the ultimate healing force after all”, and shook his head.

     This would instill confidence for what would come four months later on the second go around to remove part of his intestines, which after healing, they would close his colostomy, which they had originally planned it for 14 to 16 months old as he needed to be around 17 pounds to perform the operation.  By the time he was seven months old he weighed 16 1/2 pounds.  In four months he had gained 12 pounds.  The doctor was just struck with amazement.  He laughed and said, “I don’t know what you’re feeding him, but it’s certainly working!”

       After a series of surgeries the second time, they remove part of his intestines, let that heal for a couple weeks and then closed his colostomy, after which time he began falling into the same pattern.  They then came to me saying that he wasn't responding to treatment and they needed to put him back on life support and implant IV lines into his chest.  But this time I elected to take him out of the hospital without permission and bring him home to heal instead in the same way I had done before.  Again, it worked beautifully and within hours he was awake, alert and eating.  He had his first bowel movement at 8 1/2 months old.

       Through this experience I learned what it means to love someone so much I was willing to die for him.  My life crumbled before my eyes, and I lost everything I owned.  In that moment I became very clear on what really matters and what doesn’t.  I learned that we can access super-human strength when we actually need to.  And I touched on the strength of my moral fiber that served to catapult me into greater and greater levels intuition, self-knowledge and confidence that comes from believing in myself and forming absolute faith based on that. I acquired the confidence to stand up against all odds, and walk fully awake into the flame without flinching or shrinking back with intimidation.  

      So with that experience, when I came into contact with the healing practice of Reiki and Energy Medicine several years later, I immediately saw the connection and chose to study it as a primary healing modality that actually had a name.

 Linda Gadbois, DES, CCHt.

The Miracle of Love – “A Mother's Intuition”

      My son was born full term at 4 pounds 10 ounces, in the early morning of November 8 after a two hour drive lying in the back seat of the car, starring up at the night sky. I can still hear that doctor’s voice say “we've got a preemie” as he laid his warm wet body on my abdomen and I thought to myself “he's not a preemie, why are they saying that?”  But as I looked down at the small trembling body, reddish and water-logged, his eyes were wide open with a panicked look in them. I reached down, took his small hand in mine, caressed his tiny fingers and he turned to look at me. When our eyes met, we fell into a kind of trance that seemed to sooth both of us. He stopped crying, became motionless and just gazed at me.  I was amazed as to how small he was. I remember thinking he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, it was love at first sight.

      Then I remember the commotion as they cleared his air-passages, wrapped him in a blanket and rushed him off for tests and further examination. As I laid there starring up at the ceiling, my mind faded and subsided from sheer exhaustion, and slowly slipped into the silence. I woke in the recovery room a few hours later, and reflecting back on what I had just experienced, it all seemed like a dream. I felt my body, aching and throbbing, which now seemed empty and void somehow. I remember thinking “that wasn’t so bad”, even though a short time earlier I had been in excruciating pain while wondering if I would survive it, I now laid momentarily longing to do it again. It was one of the most painful, beautiful and profound experiences I had ever had. I had to just lay there in the silence and take it all in. Attempt to comprehend it within all the emotions I was feeling.

    After a while the doctor came in to inform me that despite his low birth weight, he was actually well-developed and appeared quite healthy. He said “we don’t normally allow babies under 5lbs. to go home, but he seems perfectly healthy, so we are going to make an exception.” I felt relieved and excited to go home with my new little boy.

     As we got home and settled in, I was still recovering from birthing, and was totally consumed with the experience of being a “Mom”. I began noticing that he was having trouble breastfeeding. Though he loved being at my breast, as he drank my milk he seemed irritated and anxious somehow, he would pull off, cry and clench my nipples with his little hands, then, relax and go back to sucking. I then noticed that he didn’t seem to be having bowel movements, and when he finally did, they were more like squeezing toothpaste out of the tube. Concerned, I took him in to see the doctor three days after he was home. This began a nightmare that would last for over a year that would challenge me in ways I never contemplated before.

      At first I was told that he was allergic to my breast milk, and he was put on formula. Then it became about him being constipated, so we put Karol syrup in the formula, then it was the wrong formula and we began experimenting with different ones. Within the 15 days following his birth I sought medical help and advice 18 times. I gave up on the Pediatrician after 6 visits, and proceeded to take him in to the emergency room of the local hospital. After about the 4^th ER visit, they began talking to me about Post natal depression, paranoia, and delusions. They started recommending “psychiatric” help and anti-depressants, and would shake their head, and even made “new mother” jokes and sarcastic remarks when they saw me coming. Even my husband withdrew his support and began trying to talk me into seeing a psychiatrist.

      The whole time this was happening I was going through a kind of mental anguish and torment. I had a deep pervading feeling that something was seriously wrong. I felt extremely aware of it, and it slowly developed into a kind of inner anxiety that led to feelings of panic. My mind would sense that something was wrong, and I would notice what I thought were clear symptoms. I knew in my heart my baby was struggling for his life and yet no one seemed to hear my repeated cries for help.

      On Thanksgiving morning, after spending the night in the ER because I could see his abdomen was not only swollen and extended, but starting to turn a bluish color, only to be ridiculed and sent back home, I finally got him to drink 4 oz. of formula at around 6am. He seemed peaceful and was finally resting. After holding and rocking him for a couple of hours, feeling relieved, I began preparing for Thanksgiving dinner, when 4 hours after eating, he threw-up. I thought to myself, there is no way that formula should still be in his stomach to throw-up. At this point I was overwhelmed with a feeling of internal panicked. I could feel a rushing sensation deep inside that had immediacy to it; it was overwhelming me with the need to do something quick. My heart began racing and I felt frantic. I knew that everyone thought I was crazy, and I searched my heart trying to figure out what I needed to do. I finally decided I was going to take him to a different city, and to a different hospital to see if they could help us.

       I randomly opened up the phone book, selected a hospital that stood out, and called the ER, explaining my concerns. They told me to bring him in, and they would take a look at him. When I announced to my husband what I was going to do, he shook his head, sighed with frustration and tried to talk me out of it. When I decided to go alone, he reluctantly agreed to drive me down there, even though he was sure of what he was going to hear. At this point he was convinced that I was having problems.

      When we arrived and admitted him, they quickly examined him and handled it as if it were an emergency. They rushed him away, and the “wait” began. They emerged periodically to ask all kinds of questions about my pregnancy, our family history, any traumas or infant deaths, etc. By 2pm, they had diagnosed him with Hirshsprungs Disease and I was being informed and advised as I was signing an endless amount of paperwork necessary for “emergency surgery”. They told me if I would have been 2 hours later, he would have died from perforated intestines, which were on the verge of “popping” when we arrived.

       I was beside myself, as everything began rushing through my mind and I was overwhelmed with emotion, I felt as if I was caught in a whirl-wind. I had trouble coordinating myself to think clearly about everything that was happening. By 4:30pm, he was undergoing a major surgery in a hurried attempt to save his life. All I could think to myself was, “thank God I didn’t listen to any of them, thank God I followed what I knew in my heart to be true and real, and I believed in myself even though I was being told I was crazy”.  I felt overwhelmed with intense feelings of gratitude, as I silently waited in the strange and sterile surroundings of the waiting room, anticipating the outcome. He had been given a 4% chance of surviving. Four percent! All I could think of was the papers I signed that told what type of death he would most likely experience, praying in my heart for a miracle.

     After 6 hours, I felt a noticeable calmness and relaxation come over me, and something told me, it was going to be okay. Ten minutes later the surgeon walked into the room with a surprised smile on his face and embraced me. He looked me in the eyes and with excitement in his voice said . . . “he made it. He’s a little trooper, made it with flying colors.” Hearing those words, I felt as if the room was swirling and I felt my knees buckle, next thing I knew, I was on the ground crying while laughing uncontrollably.

      What would follow in the next year, and 12 surgeries later would be the most profound transforming period of my life, followed even by the murder of my husband which would come seven years later. Within the next year I would undergo experiences that were deemed miraculous on two separate occasions, and led me to my first experience with what I later encountered as “Reiki”, the healing power of loving touch. In the moments that followed, my whole life would crumble before my eyes, truth would reveal itself in extremely profound terms and I would learn the true meaning or courage. Not the kind that comes from facing fear, but the kind that gives us the fortitude to carry on the face of complete devastation and loss of all hope. The kind of courage that miracles are made out of.

       An interesting thing, the hospital that I randomly chose to take him to just so happen to have the chief surgeon who only five years earlier had discovered the cure/treatment for Hirshsprung’s disease. He was the leading authority in the country for his condition. I had unknowingly selected and placed my son into the best possible hands I could have, all without even realizing what I was doing. Clearly a case of pure intuition, the unknowing that silently guides our actions, only to be realized in the aftermath and seen for their profound implications. This experience brought a whole new meaning to “Thanksgiving”. To this very day, is my favorite holiday. J

 1^st of a 3 part series: “The Miracle of Love”

Linda Gadbois, Ph.D.  

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