Authors: Jamuna Rangachari
Dancing with Life (6 page)
Karen suggested I look for a qualified acupuncturist in my area of residence and I was certainly inspired considering how active and independent Karen was despite multiple health issues.
To know more about my experiences with Acupuncture see
Chapter 5
page 83.
Metaphysics
Metaphysics refers to a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of existence, truth and knowledge. Although I had read about metaphysics earlier, I had not really understood the subject. But over the years in my job I came across many people who had recovered remarkably well just by focusing on metaphysics as a cure. I was a little skeptical at first and wondered if metaphysics was enough to cure a disease like MS, but I finally decided to give it a try. As always I reached out to my guru Promila Gurtu in Mumbai. After listening to me she told me that I needed to work on improving my relationships with people especially with my father as neurological problems like MS symbolize one’s relationship with figures of authority. I had no idea how much truth there was in this theory but it set me thinking about my childhood.
My mother had died suddenly after complaining of a headache when I was two years old. I later learned that she had been under a lot of stress due to money problems at home. My father had left his job and embarked on a series of business ventures, all of which failed. With no money to rent, my parents and I were forced to move into my maternal grandfather’s home.
My grandfather, already saddled with the burden of taking care of many children, now had to take care of the three of us as well. Many people said my mother’s unhappy life and untimely death was due to my father’s lack of business acumen, although no one really knew what really happened.
After my mother’s death, my father immigrated to Zambia. On a visit to India a few years later he had an arranged marriage, after which I went to live with him and his new wife Ramyamma in Africa. They had a son Ashwin whom I became very fond of. Later, my father lost his job in Zambia and returned to India where again he lost a lot of money in bad property deals. Society soon labelled my father a ‘failure’ and as I grew up he became the epitome of an irresponsible husband and father to me. By the time I was an adult the only reason I remained in touch with him was because I had developed a strong loving bond with my stepmother and half-brother. I soon began to avoid him. At social functions, I did not want to create a scene and would go sit with others, but never with my father. At home, I would speak only to Ramyamma and Ashwin. My father sensed my anger and was perhaps a little afraid of me. Even after I married and moved away I used to avoid him on the rare social occasions where we were forced to interact.
It was at this point in my life that I read Louise Hay’s book
You Can Heal your Life
. According to her, MS indicates mental hardness, hard-heartedness, iron will, inflexibility and fear. She suggests a new thought pattern that says, ‘By choosing loving, joyous thoughts, I create a joyous, loving world. I am safe and free.’
I used to always pride myself on being a determined person but is it not true that determination when carried to an extreme can become a negative force and turn into obstinate inflexibility? Was it not fear which had made me so angry with my father? Was it not the fear of becoming dependent on my family which had stopped me from visiting a doctor earlier?
Ultimately, I was forced to confront my personal demons and accept that certain incidents in my childhood had probably caused me to internalize a lot of stress and fear. I continued to meditate on the seven chakras in the body and tried to follow a new thought pattern of positivity. Apart from this, I knew that I needed to work on improving the emotional and spiritual quotient in my life. Any problem can be resolved only if we are first willing to accept that we have a problem. Our mind is a malleable tool that can be trained to help and enable us. I had to make my mind believe I could and would fight this illness and remain an independent and active person despite suffering from MS.
But first I had to set my emotional house in order. After much introspection, it became clear to me that forgiveness was not something that came easily to me. It was common for me to judge people and classify them into two boxes: good and bad, or white and black, as if life contained no ambiguity. I always remembered every incident in which I had felt wronged with clarity. Even though I would pretend I had forgotten the incident or person in question I never did. The paradox of life is that anybody who feels wronged becomes a perpetual victim, and the cycle of blaming others as well as ourselves continues forever, until we consciously decide to put a stop to it. I learnt that true forgiveness comes only by truly making an effort to understand the other person. Forgiveness is not about condoning wrong or hurtful behaviour. It is about looking at the larger picture and making an effort to understand the factors that caused this kind of behaviour in the first place.
For the sake of my own health I resolved to set right all my relationships whatever the outcome of my journey with MS may turn out to be. I felt I owed this to myself in order to lead a better life.
The first relationship I focused on was the one with my father. Yes, my father had lost a lot of money. Still, he was a good man with many friends and many talents. Would he have also not felt terrible when he lost so much money? Would he also not have suffered, perhaps much more than me as I was only an infant at the time, when my mother died?
I needed to step back and locate my father within a broader picture in order to understand him. I also knew that clear and heartfelt communication would work wonders. I started speaking to him regularly on the phone. My father loved books almost as much as I did and so all our initial conversations revolved around literature. He was also very concerned about my health and gave me some advice on the kind of food I should eat and exercises I could do to heal myself. I could sense the joy in his voice when we spoke on a regularly basis and he told me that he prayed earnestly for my recovery. My father passed away in 2013 and I have never regretted the fact that we repaired our relationship before his death. It was then that I understood that there are many versions of love.
I carried these lessons into many other relationships as well and made an effort to let go of any regrets and grudges. Not surprisingly, my equation with people whom I earlier thought of as selfish and egotistical changed overnight. It was not they who changed but rather I who had decided to not let my judgement of people cloud my view of humanity and deprive me of the chance of getting to know, and learn from, others.
On my MS journey I began to understand that every natural thing exists on several different levels at once. It is like a multilayered pudding that has a base, jelly and icing. Every layer is necessary for the pudding to be tasty and all of these layers when combined make it a thing of beauty. In this life, the gross level at which we can see and easily understand things ends at the tangible body. This level obeys the laws of classical physics such as gravity and friction. Medicines, whether they are herbal or pharmaceutical, also operate on this level.
Above this level and also operating on us is another intangible level. In humans this is the level of thought, feelings and imagination which has more power than the first layer. Today, has it not been proven and accepted by all doctors that all illnesses have a psychosomatic angle as well? Above these layers is another layer, which is even more powerful than either of the layers below. This is the layer of what is called karma, fate or destiny. It is essentially acceptance of the cards that are dealt to us by life. We can communicate with this layer only through prayer, positive belief and gratitude for the small mercies god or the universe has bestowed on us.
Had I not been blessed by divine grace to have understood and come across the gift of meditation even before I was diagnosed with MS? Had I not been blessed by divine grace to come across so many therapies which offered me hope of healing and even cure? There were many more blessings or graces that had been bestowed on me throughout my life, but which I had not noticed earlier. I decided it was time that I became more aware and grateful of all that had been given to me.
Notes and References
1
. Loren M. Fishman and Eric Small
, Yoga and Multiple Sclerosis: A Journey to Health and Healing,
Demos Medical Publishing, New York, 2007
2
. Ketan Shah,
Acupressure for Total Wellness: Plus a Wealth of Holistic Techniques,
Life Positive Publications, India, 2011
While there were several alternative therapies that worked for me or added to my sense of general well-being there were quite a few that I wasn’t quite convinced about. But I was determined to try any diet or therapy or medical technique that would aid my healing process instead of rejecting them outright. I gave each therapy about two months to prove its efficacy. You could call it a form of medical speed dating, I guess.
Expensive miracle gadgets
Sometime in 2008 a friend told me about a gadget which was quite expensive but promised all sorts of miracles including increasing your harmony and energy levels. My husband and I read about it and finally convinced, bought the gadget in 2008. I still have it somewhere in my house but frankly it didn’t made much of a difference. There was no improvement in my energy levels at all.
There was another product I purchased in 2009 which was supposed to make one’s spine function better. Now, this was quite an expensive product, but my husband and I decided it was worth the money as we heard many positive reports from people on its benefits. At that point in time, my music teacher and my sister-in-law told me they knew of several people who had benefited tremendously from this device as it is also based on the principles of acupressure. I thought I would give it a try. This too did not make much of a difference and things remained the same, more or less.
These failed experiments affected me in a big way although I pretended it was no big deal. Not succumbing to every fraud product and marketing scam is perhaps the biggest challenge for anyone who suffers from an illness. The market is full of miracle gadgets that promise instant and visible results. But they instead usually send one hurtling down on a roller coaster of hope and regret. As soon as I would buy a miracle gadget I would feel full of hope and certain that a cure was just around the corner. But it wasn’t soon before I realized that the gadget was useless and I had just wasted a huge amount of time and money for nothing. Desperation had driven me to reject critical thinking. Instead of reading up on a gadget and checking to see if the product and its claims were backed by any reputable scientist or medical journal, I went along with the herd. Instead of asking myself and others if these products really had any health benefits or were just fancy placebos I went ahead and placed a purchase order.
Ayurveda
Living in India it is impossible to escape Ayurveda. I had two opportunities to experience this ancient science of medicine.
An old friend of mine, Sujata Menon Kapila who had benefited greatly from Ayurveda in Kerala asked me to approach Swami Nirmalanandagiri Maharaj in Palghat (Kerala), her home town. His treatment consisted of mainly home-made concoctions such as tender coconut water, sixteen glasses of water boiled with dried herbs and dietary guidelines such as avoiding red chillies, tamarind and curd and baked items.
Sujata urged me to pay him a visit and said that I was more than welcome to stay with her mother in Kerala during the course of my treatment. I decided to plan a visit and my aunt Vijaya, who could speak Malayalam offered to accompany me and double up as an interpreter.
Swami Nirmalanandagiri Maharaj examined me and prescribed some medicines along issuing some dietary restrictions and guidelines. I followed his instructions diligently for a while but soon started having digestion issues after taking Ayurvedic medicines. I kept calling the Swami and asking him what to do. He would tell me to stop one medicine for a while and then ask me to make further changes in my diet.
After a while I began to find it really difficult to follow this kind of a lifestyle and gave it up once I left Kerala. I reasoned that perhaps I was combining too many types of therapies or that maybe it would work if I had been able to spend more time in Palghat under the direct supervision of the Swami. I resolved that after my children had grown up and found jobs for themselves I would once again try Ayurveda and this time stay in Kerala for the full treatment.
Ayurveda revisited me in 2009 when my husband was transferred back to Mumbai. A friend of my aunt said she had benefited a lot from an Ayurveda clinic in Kandivali. I went for a visit to this clinic and the doctor said there was every reason for my condition to improve provided I followed his instructions diligently. I was to eat nothing raw, not even fruits, and was to eat only cooked rice. He asked me to see him twice a day and asked his assistant to pay attention to me for an hour and a half each time. The assistant massaged me and poured curative oil on my head. Then she would leave me alone in a room for nearly an hour. After this, she would return and pour water all over my body. All I had to do was then change my clothes and go home. After dinner there was another session of a different kind. This became my daily routine: Ayurveda treatment in the morning, Ayurveda treatment in the late evening while life went on somewhere in between. My aunt would come to the centre in the night to take me home as I would be too tired to get back on my own. I was told I would feel better after a week and tried this therapy diligently for ten days. But soon the strain of following this routine became visible and began to cut into time that I spent with my family. Post dinner, my children would be asleep when I returned and I was always tired in the mornings.
‘Amma, stop whatever treatment you are taking. You are looking really tired and haggard,’ my daughter told me one day. It was as if she had read my mind as I felt I would collapse if I continued like this. That day I called the doctor and told him I could no longer continue with the treatment due to some personal reasons. Later even my aunt’s house help told me she was relieved I had stopped as she too thought I was getting worse, not better with this treatment.