Last week was the second anniversary of the serious wounding of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and the killing of 6 others including nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green. Christina’s mother was in New York promoting a national plan to prevent gun violence. Afterwards, she went to Newtown, Connecticut to support the families of the 20 children who were killed by another crazed young gunmen. Last week also featured the pretrial hearings of another sick young man who gunned down 70 people in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater last year. This surge of murders has us again scrambling for solutions; gun control, more intense background checks, and curbing media violence, but that’s not enough.

I’m reminded of the story about people picnicking by a riverside who suddenly see a drowning child in the water. The picnickers mobilize to form a human chain to reach and rescue the child. No sooner do they return to their fun than they see another child in distress. Again they link up to save the child, but when they emerge from the water one of the rescuers walks away. The others call out to him “where are you going, we may need you again?” To which he replied, “I’m going upstream to see how they are getting in”.

I think we need to be looking upstream, and addressing what’s happening to young people in our culture that sets the stage for such psychopathic acts of violence? Jared Diamond, the distinguished scientist and Pulitzer Prize winning author tells us in his new book “The World Until Yesterday” that when it comes to raising kids we can learn something from our ancestors who lived in traditional,‘ small-scale cultures’, where kids didn’t grow up to be psychopaths.

Kids raised in traditional cultures grew up in community, with extended families, all of who shared responsibility for childcare, training and the development of social skills. These people talked to each other, and didn’t spend much time by themselves in passive entertainment; their children felt secure, and became young people who were capable of facing their fears, insecurities, and challenges without becoming crazed killers.

These are lessons worth considering; let’s spend more time talking to each other rather than communicating only online. Let’s restore the evening meal to a family ritual; make it the rule to turn off phones, headsets, and computers at the dinner table. Share what’s happening and important in your life. We can find, create, and nurture a community of support; build a network of people who mirror your values, expectations, and who will be there for you in your joys and in your struggles.

Surely we need to enact some gun control, and also intensify the background checks, but let’s also go upstream and make some changes in our child rearing practices.

Like you, the senseless murder of 20 children and six educators has left me feeling depressed, helpless and enraged. I can’t get my head around the unending horror of these indiscriminate shootings by sick young people. It’s unfathomable to me why we have been unable to come together and legislate against easy access to military-grade semi-automatic weapons.

In these days following the Sandy Hook massacre I have listened to the predictable clamor and finger-pointing about who and what is to blame…from gun control to parents, divorce rates, an inadequate mental health system, and media violence…but there has been little movement toward real change.

In the midst of my despair I read about Robby Parker, the father of one of the victims who reached out to the shooter’s family. He said “I can’t imagine how hard this experience must be for you, and I want you to know that our families love and support goes out to you as well”. This act of humanity actually lifted the veil of my sadness. In spite of Robby Parker’s heartbreaking loss, he did not become consumed by anger or vengeance and found a way to embrace everyone who was suffering, and doing so moved me toward healing.

We need not wait for more legislation, mental health professionals, treatment programs, teachers in self-contained classrooms, or after school prevention programs because none of it will happen quickly. Right now parents of problem children are suffering in silence because there are so few resources available to them. We can reach out to them just like Robby Parker did and find a way to heal in community. Schools, churches, hospitals, clinics can provide a safe space to invite parents with problem kids to talk to each other, and learn strategies about dealing with what they are facing. Mental health professionals would actually volunteer to help facilitate the process.

Thanks Robby Parker for reminding me that the way from Newtown’s horror to healing in the New Year is to reach out lovingly when someone is in pain and let them know you care. So this is my New Year’s resolution, I will volunteer to facilitate a group for parents with problem kids and find a place to make it happen.

I reach out to you Relatives to send my blessings for a healthy, fulfilling, and inspiring New Year

Mi Takuye Oyacin.

Philip Roth, one of America’s most celebrated novelists has retired from writing. Every morning he sees the Post-it note he stuck on his computer that says, “the struggle with writing is over”. It gives him strength he says, but it hasn’t been easy. After doing it every day for over 50 years. Roth says, it’s taken a tremendous burden off his back, “I’m free, I don’t have to slave over it anymore… I don’t have to endure the frustration (New York Times November 18, 2012). He still pens lengthy notes for his biographer, but says it’s a relief not to have to dreg his own life as the springboard for his fiction.

I marvel at his ability to let go while he’s still near the top of his game. The work of getting old is coming to peace with the truth of what you can’t or don’t want to do anymore; letting go of what no longer serves you. I want to get older like Roth, to slow down, change my m.o. and feel relief. I’m not quite there yet, I still get pangs of uncertainty that from slowing down, it’s only a brief slide to a complete stop.

Getting old is nature’s way of taming the ego. We either accept the truth of who and what we are now, or lament our losses. We can feel good, come to peace with our limitations, while still making contributions. If we can do that, then we have reached the blissful state called Radical Self-Acceptance. (For more on this subject read the chapter on Radical Self-Acceptance in my new book Kindling Spirit: Healing From Within.

What’s Roth doing now? He’s rereading books he hasn’t looked at in 50 years… Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Faulkner and Hemingway. Every morning, with his coffee he studies a chapter in iPhone for Dummies, pulls out his iPhone and plays with it. Portnoy’s not complaining, he’s simply found another instrument he can pull out and play.

Have a great Holiday season…Order Kindling Spirit: Healing From Within and I’ll sign it for you.

Peace and Holiday blessings to all of you Relatives, and remember to welcome your imperfections and shortcomings, they are as much of a blessing as your talents.

I say this For all my Relations, Mi Takuye Oyasin.

The theory about what causes depression is it’s a disease caused by a dysfunction in the brain’s neurotransmitters. Antidepressant drugs restore the dysregulated chemistry and gets the system back into balance. However, in 1 out of 3 depressed patients those medications don’t work. The modern practice of psychopharmacology demands that other drugs be added, like anti-seizure medications and atypical antipsychotic agents which work by entirely different mechanisms.

A new treatment has been announced, called “the biggest breakthrough in depression research in half a century” (Science, Oct. 5, 2012). Scientists have prescribed Ketamine for chronically depressed patients. This is usually prescribed as a pre-anesthetic, but has hallucinogenic qualities. Among club goers it’s called “Special K” and it’s long been a favorite for those looking for dream-like highs.

It’s not clear how Ketamine works but it’s also different from existing formulations. Researchers think it regenerates synapses (the connections between brain cells) that become damaged by stress and chronic despair.

Synthetic mind altering chemicals like Ketamine, LSD, MDMA (Ecstasy), in addition to natural organic psychoactive substances (in cacti, vines, weeds, mushrooms, flowers, and animal skins) have been used since antiquity in the treatment of mental problems, addictions, PTSD, and a host of visionary seekers.
I once used it for a dying patient crippled by end-of-life anxiety for whom it provided profound relief ( HYPERLINK “http://www.healing-doc.org/blogs/2012/04/seeing-in-the-dying-light-a-ketamine-case-study/” http://www.healing-doc.org/blogs/2012/04/seeing-in-the-dying-light-a-ketamine-case-study/). The New York Times Magazine (April 22, 2012) featured an article in which Psilocybin  (the psychoactive agent in magic mushrooms) was given to 12 seriously depressed cancer patients and every one of them reported significant relief of symptoms.

The brain is hardwired for mystical experience; we are biologically programmed to have visionary experience. Hallucinogenic drugs activate that portion of the brain that fuzzes the boundaries between the real world and the imaginary one. It serves an important function, which healers have always known. You can get into that altered state by chanting, drumming, dancing, rituals and ceremonies; they all open channels into that part of the brain that allows one to see the world from an entirely different perspective.

My concern is that Big Pharma will surely want to pursue this route and will market it as the next panacea for whatever ails you. Don’t get sucked into another pill that promises to remove the lampshades of fear, doubt, sadness, and anxiety, there are many more organic ways to lift the spirit.

Just days before Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast I spoke in New Haven Connecticut; this is where I lived during my psychiatric residency at Yale from 1967- 1970.

I addressed a Nursing Leadership Forum looking at the future of healthcare, I followed a technology expert from Johns Hopkins who suggested that better nursing care and job satisfaction would come through the mastery of new technologies. When I spoke, I encouraged them not to exchange the holding of hands and touching of hearts for the ease of handheld computers and video cameras that allowed distant observation. The source of their greatest joy and satisfaction was what brought them into nursing, reaching out to patients to promote healing. A nurse’s connection with a patient has always represented the soul of medicine,

I spoke on a Friday afternoon, the Jewish Sabbath (shabbos), and told them a story about how I held my mother’s hand and sang to her on her deathbed. My mother was an observant woman, and one of the highlights of her week was lighting the Shabbos candles, Every Friday night when lighting the candles, she covered her eyes because she didn’t want to be blinded by the light that signaled the coming of the Messiah. Even when he didn’t come, she would always then put her hands on my head to bless me, and I felt her unconditional love. After I left home, I made it a habit to call her on Friday nights; for her if the Messiah didn’t arrive, my call might be the next best thing.

It was a cloudy Saturday as I strolled nostalgically through the streets of New Haven. I went back to Yale, and then to the apartments where we lived. Two of my daughters started school there, and where my third was born here. Our apartment was next to a park, and every Sunday we walked through it to get the New York Times at the drugstore. They’d get a sweet treat, and on the way home we’d sit under a ramada and look out over Long Island Sound while I recited the same poem.

That Saturday I walked through the park to the drugstore that no longer existed, but the ramada was still there. I sat and looked over the water, felt my girls at my side, and recited the poem. Tears trickled down my cheeks, a beam of sunlight pierced the clouds, and in that flash of light I felt my mothers hands bless me. The Messiah comes on shabbos and the message is always, love

This is the season of Thanksgiving Relatives, Thank you is the simplest, most heartfelt prayer I know. Say thank you for the love that’s been given to you, and spread it around.

When a Harvard neurosurgeon says “heaven is real” it makes the cover of Newsweek (October 15, 2012). Dr. Eben Alexander is a physician, neuroscientist, and a faithful (if not practicing) Christian (in belief if not practice), Dr. Alexander was in a deep coma for a week from a fulminating bacterial meningitis. He was completely unresponsive, but in spite of the fact that his higher cortical functions were nonexistent, his unconscious mind was alive and well.

Dr Alexander describes in poetic detail the wonder of scintillating beings (maybe birds or angels) who were singing in joyful chorus and transmitting messages to him. They told him that he had nothing to fear; there was nothing he was supposed to do, and that he was unconditionally loved. His near death experience opened him to the realization that there was a consciousness after death, and that heaven was real.

Dr. Alexander is not the first one who has described such phenomena in near-death experiences, and they all talk about such a light, peace and beauty. Shaman, priests, philosophers, and mystics over the ages, have told us that there is a consciousness beyond the body. But if you are a Harvard neuroscientist and you get a personal glimpse of the Great Spirit/Celestial Angels/God, and talk about it, it gets wide circulation. .Dr. Alexander wants to spend the rest of his life investigating his certainty that we are much more than our physical brains.

The first time Dr. Alexander went back to church after the coma he saw in the stained-glass windows for luminous beauty of the landscape each scene in the world above. He heard the organ music flow through him and in a painting of Jesus breaking bread, it evoked the message that was the heart of his journey…”we are loved and accepted unconditionally by a God to even more grand and unfathomably glorious than the one I’d learned as a child in Sunday school”.

The way I see it, this has nothing to do with God; Atheists can also see and hear the prophetic because our brains are hard wired for mystical experience, it doesn’t matter how you get into that altered state of consciousness (chanting, drumming, drugs, dancing, meditation) those are all the mechanisms through which the spirit speaks to us.

Jesus, Einstein, and aboriginal shaman, all speak the same language; there is something out there that explains the harmony of the universe. It doesn’t matter what you call it, and you don’t have to experience near death to see it. If you exercise your mind to look beyond your ordinary reality you can catch a glimpse of that peace, harmony and universal love. When that happens we all become instruments through which the divine speaks.

Last week I spoke to the Idaho Hospital Association at the Sun Valley Resort in Ketchum, Idaho. I told an audience of hospital exec’s that it didn’t make any difference who won next month’s Presidential election because nothing could stop the cultural shift from the current healthcare model based on intervention to a new model of delivery based on prediction and prevention.

I spoke about the importance of healing in community; healing is about becoming whole, being restored to health, and community is a place where people gather to share their hopes and dreams. A community welcomes/ encourages/honors each individual’s unique contributions and where all support common goals. A community transmits to its constituents a sense of shared values, an ethic about how to walk a good road in this life.

After my keynote I spent a couple extra days in Ketchum, which is my picture postcard of a healing community. I go to Ketchum to restore my spirit,. The beauty of its pristine forests and streams fills my cup with joy, and in the second week of October it’s resplendent in autumnal colors.

Ketchum admittedly has some unique gifts, a solid tax base, abundant natural resources, and a citizenry that transmits the ethic of this place. Young and old are encouraged to participate in what the community offers; walk, bike, fish, hunt, swim, skate, ski, and snow shoe; go to the post office and talk to your neighbors (there is no home mail delivery); go to the library, which has a great reading room with all the morning papers. This is rural America where people connect with each other and the land, celebrate their lives and honor their dead.

This was the home of Ernest Hemingway lived, worked, played, and ultimately killed himself. This Nobel Prize winning literary giant was also a world-class sportsman, loved women and alcohol. When his alcoholism robbed him of the wellspring of his creativity he became profoundly depressed. Not even electroshock therapy could move him beyond his inner demons, so he shot himself.

Hemingway is buried in the un-gated, non-denominational, cemetery next to the main road. His grave is strewn with coins (nobody takes them), a weathered copy of The Old Man and The Sea, and five empty beer bottles. In this community town people stand together celebrating their joys and lie side by side through their suffering.

In Ketchum they heal’em… myself included.

I met a young woman at Oregon Country Fair this summer dressed as a clown in my Truth Fairy costume. I appear in pink tights and tutu, and offer a three-minute consult to anybody who wants to ask an important personal question. I get a chance to channel my intuitive soul and sometimes inspire insightful moments (see Schlagbyte archives).

People have no idea who I am, or what I do, but they come because I look ridiculous and there is no risk; it’s free and they don’t have to pay attention to what I say.

This is a letter that was forwarded to me by my assistant last week:

Hello,

My name is M. and I met Dr. Hammerschlag at the 2012 Oregon Country Fair.  My friends had approached him, asking to take a picture (not because we knew who he was, but because he was wearing a pink tutu). He requested to take a picture with me because of my intense reaction to the wig/clown nose he was wearing (I am truly afraid of clowns).  Fortunately for me, I took the picture.

Of course, this all leads up to the reason I am writing this email.  Dr. Hammerschlag asked that if I had any future thoughts concerning this incident that I contact him, and kind of give a follow up (yes, my reaction was that intense).  I have been thinking about this event on an off since it happened, and I just wanted to pass along that I am grateful for his insistence that I take the picture.  As a person, I am astonished to realize that I could overcome this fear, even if just for a moment.  As a senior psychology student, I am even more excited about the interaction because I have had the amazing opportunity to have a first hand experience of the way in which fears/phobias can hold us back and the ways in which they can be overcome.  Don’t get me wrong, I still am afraid of clowns.  However, I wish to say thank you because during this, there was a moment when we were talking about being outside comfort zones, and trying new things that we didn’t think could be possible.  I have learned that I am a person who can do what I believe to be impossible (and with grad school around the corner, it is a priceless gift to be given the confidence to continue all of my efforts, because, after all, what is grad school compared to facing a fear?).

I just wanted to share this thought.
Thank you,
Meghan

I love your story M. and it was wonderful playing hide and seek with you and your willingness to immortalize our connection with the picture. Thanks for getting back to me, it’s a reminder us that every act of insight/creativity is just the result of a prepared mind and a serendipitous moment. If you are in the right place at the right time insight/change can happen like a bolt of lightening.

Psychologists, mystics, and healers have always known this, and now modern brain scientists can show us the areas of the brain that light up when you have such epiphanies. The key is providing the brain with new information, which allows it to create new brain pathways; that’s why we are not ruled by old habits. There are lots of ways to open the mind…listening to great music, a good meal, watching the sunset, hearing drums beating, and sometimes a chance encounter with a clown.

PS: If you’re interested in more on this subject you’ll enjoy reading:
Timothy Wilson, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change, and Jonah Lehrer, Imagine: How Creativity Works).

And there is still space in the Oct.19-21 healing workshop that Mona Polacca and I are doing. Check it out at http://www.healing-doc.org/the-science-and-spirit-of-healing.php

The new iPhone 5 has arrived! You need to pre-order and then wait in line to be the first in your country to get one. The tech savvy consumer is feeding this frenzy seduced by its newest features “the thinnest, lightest, fastest” instrument of all time.
The iPhone 4 could do most of what the new version does (speak, text, e-mail, Internet access), but this incarnation has better photo and video qualities. So, in addition to being able to tell your friends where and what you’re eating, and how many times you’ve gone to the bathroom, you can now also treat your friends to TV quality videos of these precious moments.

I haven’t pre-ordered my iPhone five (and I don’t have the iPhone 4); as a matter of fact, I have never owned a cell phone and may be the last man standing. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the magic of the computer (I could not function easily without mine). But the price I’d pay for a cell phone is too high…it’s simply too intrusive.

I don’t know anyone over 12 who doesn’t have a cell phone, and they carry it with them at all times. The phones are placed on dinner tables like a guest who might arrive later, and will demand immediate attention. It doesn’t matter if you are eating, talking, taking care of business, or making love, it will take you away from wherever you are. People say they can choose not to respond, but the buzz, ring, click, or vibration always gets attention, and even if you don’t respond it’s an intrusion that’s taken you someplace other than where you were.

In this culture we have become accustomed to instantaneous access to everything from facts to goods and services. If you are not available at a moments notice you could miss something important, more important than whatever you’re doing in the moment.

Gandhi’s advice for living a life of joy was that if you were going to be somewhere then be there; we live in a culture that is the antithesis of that perspective. It’s hard for us to really be where we are because there are so many other places we might also want to be.

I don’t want to be that available, so I’ve drawn the line. It’s not that I wouldn’t use the iPhone 5, because I would; the wonder of it (I could give up lugging my computer in a backpack), the ease of it (I can’t find public telephones anymore), the the seduction of it, and then ultimately the dependency.

I’m passing on the iPhones, because the price is too high. I need to get away, I don’t want to be that available. So to those who love me, and fear for my safety when I meander, love me enough to leave this last man standing being where he is.

A couple of weeks ago, over a hundred clowns from all over the world gathered for our annual clown trip to Iquitos, Peru; among them were 20 health professionals. For the first time we provided mental health clinics in the streets, based on the Patch Adams M.D./Gesundheit! healthcare model, that features open access and loving care delivered by open-hearted providers, as the foundation for doing healing work.

These street clinics were the result of my work with Amazon Promise (AP), an extraordinary non-profit that provides primary healthcare to indigenous people of the Amazon. I was the first psychiatrist who was willing to see patients in an open room, shared with doctors, dentists, medical students, and a lab tech without privacy or any psychiatric drugs.

Rosa, the AP clinic coordinator, served as my translator. She has a remarkable way of translating my words into her own heartfelt story that clearly touched people (Schlagbyte Aug.18, 2010).  In 20 minutes, patients could be impacted by the experience. We loved working together and believed that with more mental health professionals we could treat more people in the streets.

This year, Rosa set up four, half-day clinics in different communities. We printed flyers saying, if anyone was having problems at home, with spouses, children or parents, if they were abused, couldn’t sleep; there were professionals who could help them.

I met with the clinicians (psychologists, social workers, counselors, nurses, medical doctors. a chiropractor, and two body workers), before the first scheduled event, and shared my experiences over the last 3 years. I said they would be hearing stories that would make their hearts bleed (of abuse, abandonment, sexual trauma, and grinding poverty). It would make them wonder how anything in their training prepared them for this… But they would also see people who were remarkably resilient, and perhaps the most important thing they could do was to come with an open heart and simply listen to their story. For many patients, 20 minutes with someone who is truly listening to them, is more attention than many have ever gotten.  If. in addition, they could help them identify their strengths, share some advice, inspire hope, it would all have an impact on their patients and themselves.

We would not dress in our usual clown flamboyance, but we would all wear our clown noses. After the visits we would give vitamins to everybody, and I brought along some amulets of the Virgin of Guadalupe that had been blessed by Huichol and Navajo shaman. I told the therapists that if they saw patients whom they thought might benefit from such a gift, as a reminder of their time together, to give it with a little blessing when they hung it on their neck.

We set up in a schoolyard, soccer field, loading dock, and the AP clinic. On our arrival we passed out the flyers, and also announced our presence over loudspeakers. Clinicians worked in pairs, sitting with patients in tight intimate circles surrounded by clowns playing with children; veterinarians sterilizing dogs and cats, and laboratory technicians taking blood samples from kids, and the community strolling by. Amidst the noise of this 3-Ring circus, the therapists saw 200 people. In those four days they listened to each other’s stories and everyone felt good about what happened.

Skeptics may wonder if anything really meaningful can be accomplished in 20 minutes, I say unequivocally, yes! The overwhelming social and economic problems will not go away, but 20 minutes connecting to someone with a listening ear, a loving heart, and a clown nose, can kindle the human spirit and renew hope. Whatever our suffering, it is those precious moments that we are reminded of our humanity.

(see pictures)

PS:  If you are doing healing work are interested in learning how to maximize your skills; I’m doing a workshop with Mona Polacca in Phoenix, October 19–21, 2012 here in Phoenix Arizona. Check it out at www.healing-doc.org