Student and Therapist Newsletter Archive
   - The Meaning of Symptoms

+ Chronic Fatigue - looking for the meaning of symptoms. - Nov 06

+ How do you treat babies? - September 06

+ Question about Down syndrome. - April 06

Hi John,
I have a question for your newsletter: Chronic Fatigue. Do you have any pointers for what to check or work on with patients with this syndrome?
Best regards,
Eva Kuhl Bornefelt
Central Coast

>>>MY COMMENTS:

That's a great question as always Eva and thanks for asking it.

Talking about chronic fatigue gives me an opportunity to go into the sort of process I go through when I look at any set of symptoms.

I ask myself what is this condition trying to communicate to the person. What is it saying?

Why this condition and not another? Why chronic fatigue and not fibromyalgia or arthritis or irritable bowel?

Of all the conditions this person could have, why do they have this one?

Each set of symptoms add up to a very specific communication.

So don't worry about the physical manifestations?

Not at all. It's very important to deal with them but dealing with them alone won't necessarily solve the problem. Looking at the condition in
this way points you towards the deepest reason for the condition.

You may not know what the deepest reason is but at least you will be looking in the right direction.

Then getting a sense of what the deepest cause of the condition is will inform you how to deal with the physical manifestations.

So let's put it into practice. What is chronic fatigue communicating?

It's a syndrome so it contains lots of different symptoms and few people exhibit all the symptoms all the time.

The main symptom is in the name - fatigue. The person has no energy to do anything. Sometimes they will need to sleep a lot, other people are
tried but can't sleep.

Generally they will have to stop working, stop their hobbies, significantly reduce their social life.

So what does this all add up to?
In short the person's life grinds to a halt.

What is this aspect of the condition communicating?

Stop.

Stop what?

Stop everything.

Why do we communicate, 'stop' to someone?

Generally it's because there is something about what the person is doing that we don't like and we want them to stop doing it.

No kidding Sherlock. Is this what chronic fatigue is communicating?

Generally speaking I've found that it's a main part of the communication.

For example, if a person has a condition that is annoying but doesn't give them too much discomfort, the communication is generally about getting their own attention. 'This is bothering us and we need our attention about it.' But it has a, 'When you can get to it.' sort of vibe.

Whereas Chronic fatigue has a, 'Stop everything and deal with this NOW!' sort of vibe.

So look for what is so important to the person, that when it is in disharmony, they will put their whole lives on hold until it is resolved.

Another thing to consider when treating someone with chronic fatigue is their capacity to stay sick.

Let me explain. The amount of energy required to create chronic fatigue is huge. The people I have treated for chronic fatigue have usually worn
out about 5 or 6 therapists by the time they get to me.

If you are very attached to quick results then maybe you shouldn't take them on because these people have huge endurance. It's a little
paradoxical. Someone with chronic fatigue having huge endurance. But don't be fooled by the lack of energy issues. I have found they have lots of energy for keeping their lives on hold. This is all unsonscious of course. Consciously, the person is desperate to get better.

I have found it most helpful to see my role as facilitating them to discover what the disharmony that is causing them to press the 'Pause' button on their life is. And no I don't necessarily mean having long, probing, regressive, conversations with them about it.

The other useful thing when actually working with their systems is to sit very comfortably in the timeless aspect of our work.
By that I mean, the depth at which we work.
All going well when you work with someone you will be in a very meditative state and in that state, time pauses. We descend into the moment and in
that, it's eternal.

This is a very handy space to be in with a condition that has therapists for breakfast. As you sit with the person and your system entrains with theirs. Your system conveys a quality of timelessness. The subtle communication from your system is, 'I can stay here forever.'

You can't fake this. It has to be real for you. If it's not you need to meditate more until it is.

I have found that when someone with chronic fatigue comes to see me and our systems entrain and their system gets this, 'I can wait forever.'
Quality from mine it gives up on the endurance test and starts to avail of the support to deal with the underlying disharmony.

Follow up from Eva                                May 07

I just thought I'd give you some feedback about the chronic fatigue client I posed a question about in an earlier newsletter.

I treated the person before the newsletter reached me, so didn't have the added help from your insights. I had been treating this woman for other things for a while, when the time came to deal with the chronic fatigue directly. In the space of only 3 weeks the whole issue seems to have been resolved.

It started off with really good communication with the hypothalamus, pituitary and membranes where they were able to correct themselves and stay good.

Next week several past life traumas and associated local restrictions needed to be released after which chakras 1 and 2 were able to start releasing their restrictions. The biggest problem was in the 2nd chakra where lots of damage had been done when the client as a newborn was given drugs to counteract kidney failure.

Those drugs caused damage to the nervous system, which lasted for quite a few years. The result was a very big block in the energy flow in the area.

I'm sure there were other contributing causes for the chronic fatigue starting up 7 years ago, but it wasn't necessary to go into them. After one and a half sessions over 3 days with work only with the 2nd chakra there was a definite endpoint, where her whole body came to peace and I got a very strong communication that that was the end of it.

She didn't jump up and down like a two-year-old right away, but has continued to get stronger and more energetic every week since. She hasn't had any relapses since those treatments in November.

Top

***QUESTION***

Dear Mr Dalton,
Thank you for you very informative newsletters. I have encouraged some of my patients to read your book with favourable results.

In general, I am very happy with the direction of my practice but it has come to my attention that I work mostly with adults.

I find treating babies very difficult mainly because they are more nebulous than adults.

How do you overcome this? What do you do practically? Do you have a systematic check up that you use for babies?

Keep up the good work.
Kind regards.
FL
Brisbane.

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Okay, here's how I work with babies. The main focus is the same as it is with adults. Right from the first contact I'm trying to get a sense of what this person's story is and how their sickness fits into that story.

This begins with the first contact I have with the baby which will usually be through an adult as most babies can't use the phone or write an email.
Here are a couple of different beginnings to give you and idea of what I mean.

Beginning 1.
Mum rings up and while we're chatting I can hear what sounds like 5 other children in the background all trying to strangle each other. My conversation with Mum is punctuated by Mum roaring at the other children to keep quiet. Mum is calling to see if cranio sacral might be able to help her 3 month old child, who is having difficulty sleeping.

Beginning 2.
Mum calls to make an appointment to have her newborn checked. She heard about me from a friend. Mum sounds calm and relaxed.

Beginning 3.
Granny calls to make an appointment for her granddaughter who has bad reflux. It's obvious from the conversation with Granny that Mum won't be coming to the appointment.

Three different beginnings. Each one tells a different story.

When I am working with someone, adult or baby, I have what I think of as a mental white board for them.

I note everything to do with the person on this mental white board. Then I try to piece all the information together and come up with a theory as to why they are sick.

It's a whiteboard because I'm continually revising my theory, as new information is revealed.

It's also a whiteboard so I don't get too attached to my theory of why the person is sick. I have often had to do a lot of work with students who developed the habit of writing their theories in stone.

A certain amount of information will be communicated in the initial contact. Taking the case history is a process of adding more information to the white board. With babies and children I will ask additional information. All of which help me to get a better idea of what the baby's story is.

I will ask about conception.
If Mum or Dad were working in nuclear reactor or a power plant or some other very toxic environment when baby was conceived can have a bearing on baby's embryonic development.

I will ask about the pregnancy.
Were there any accidents?
Was it an easy pregnancy?
How was mum's diet?
Was she smoking, drinking or doing drugs?

I will ask about the birth.
Home or hospital?
Active or passive?
What kind of drugs?
Did mum have good support?
How long was the labour?
Were there any difficulties?
What was baby's presentation?
Caesarean?
Forceps?
Ventous?
How quickly was the umbilical cord cut?
What was the immediate aftercare like?
How long was baby separated from mum?

All this info helps me get a sense of what this person's entry into their life was like.

I will ask about what sort of home environment the baby came into and what kind of emotional state the baby was in.

I will ask about feeding, bottle or mum?
Did baby latch on okay?
Do they have any problems sucking?
Are they fed on demand or to a regime?
What is their sleeping pattern?

As I am getting all this information I'm trying to get a sense of the family, collectively and individually and what it says about the baby's story.
Why these kinds of parents and not others?
Why this sister?
How are the family making me feel and why?

From the moment I am in physical proximity to the baby I will have a focused receptivity to them. I will be particularly aware of what they are communicating with their eyes. There is generally a moment when we can connect and I am careful not to miss it.

It all goes on the whiteboard. Before I lay a hand on the baby I will have a ton of information and usually I will have a theory about why the baby is sick. All this information will inform me about the best way to approach the baby.

As a general rule I prefer mum and baby to remain together. I have a sofa in my treatment room that patients sit on. It is a very natural progression for me to join mum and baby on the sofa and to begin to approach baby from there.

The exception to this would be if mum/dad are so freaked out or caught up in their own issues that I feel I need to get a bit of space between them and baby to better hear what baby is communicating without the static.

All things being equal I will take up a contact on the lower half of the baby's body as it is usually less defended. From that contact I will check the following.

The Symmetry of the body generally and in particular the cranium.
The viscera particularly the pyloric sphincter, the ileocecal valve, the flexures in the colon and the sigmoid colon.
All the diaphragms.
The lungs.
The dural tube.
The occipital condyles.
The overall state of the cranial membranes with particular attention to the falx cerebelli.
The sphenoid and then the floor of the cranium.

Depending on what I find will influence what happens next.

Sometimes we will need to move to the treatment table.

Sometimes I will need to withdraw my contact and expalin to the parents about trauma and how it releases and prepare them from what may happen in the next few minutes of the treatment, 'Baby may cry in a way you have not heard before and you may find it upsetting . . . '

You asked about a systematic approach, I'm encouraging you to systematically evaluate and re-evaluate the fundamental question that brought the baby to you in the first place.

Why is this baby sick? What is stopping them from getting better?

***QUESTION***
Hi John,
Found your web site very useful and your URL easy to remember.  I use it as my virtual business card. I have been treating a man in his late fifties with sciatica. I have had some success but feel I could achieve more. 

Can you recommend any techniques that you have found particularly useful for sciatica?
Thanks
J.P.
Brisbane.

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Glad you like the site.
   I'm going to answer your question in two parts. Let me start by saying no one technique is 'the' technique for ANYTHING. Techniques are ways we get a handle on the bigger picture. And the biggest picture is what you need to be available for. 
   I am putting it like that because describing it as 'looking' for the biggest picture is way too active, eager, inefficient and INTURSIVE.
   You need to ask yourself, what is really going on here?
Why has this person got these particular symptoms? 
Why are the symptoms in this configuration? 
What's the root cause of this situation?

Symptoms generally manifest physically, meaning they show up in the person's body.  But that doesn't mean the CAUSE of those symptoms is exclusively physical.

Often EMOTIONAL issues will express themselves as physical symptoms.
   It doesn't just stop there, often the root cause of what is going on has a physical component, caused by an emotional component but the root cause is not emotional it is something DEEPER.

That may sound spooky or kooky to you depending on your slant but I have seen it time and again, where the root cause was deeper than physical and emotional issues.

How can that be?

Let's go through it one layer at a time.
   Physical problems.
   These problems are characterised by very physical causes and descriptions,  'The tentorium cerebelli is pulled inferiorly here, causing pressure there . . .etc'.
   Regardless of the source of a pattern of a restriction, it will show up physically.  Becoming accurate in identifying the extent and complexity of physical restrictions takes a lot of practice and is a prerequisite for working with the deeper causes.

Emotional issues/causes.
   Restrictions in the emotional aspect of the person can have causes like, a person may need to leave a partner or job or it may be an old
emotional abuse. 
   Emotional restrictions are more difficult to identify accurately because it's very easy to start theorising about the person's problems instead of simply receiving the information from the person's body in the same way you do with physical patterns.

Core problems
   These relate to how the person sees themselves in their lives, their relationship with themselves, with God, with their idea of God. 
A feeling that they're off track.
   And no, you don't need to know what their track is.
   Core problems can feel like fundamental disharmonies within the person.  They are the hardest to perceive because they are so deep in the person. 
   Your ability to see and work with these core issues comes with lots of practice and humility. 
Their revelation occurs in the dynamic between you and the person and what you have to offer each other.

Are you with me?

It generally works its way through the layers something like this.
   A disharmony in a person's core will affect them emotionally and in turn affect them physically. 
   For example someone might think they are fundamentally bad.  This could manifest emotionally as anxiety and paranoia, which could manifest
physically as headaches and chronic fatigue.
   The skill comes in being able to assess where the root cause of the problem is. 
   Before you go charging off into the great mystery, let me add this. It can be as easy to go the other way and start looking for deep emotional and core issues as the root cause of a purely physical
problem.
   'I just twisted my knee Mate!'

Now the second part of my answer is purely physical.
   There are lots of different ways of creating sciatica.
   It's a pain, which means there have to be nerves involved. The pain generally is in the lower back and travels down one leg or the other, sometimes both.
   Have a look at, [in books and with your hands] the lumbar plexus, the sacral plexus.  How are the nerves on both sides of the spinal column as they leave the vertebral foramina?

Scan the nerves up as far as the thoraco-lumbar junction.  Remember tight membranes can pull vertebrae together and pinch nerves.
   Consider how long the person has been getting the pain?  Getting a sense of when and how the pattern of restriction was formed.
   So, look particularly at the dural tube. 
How are the membranes running?
Most particularly how is the cerebro spinal fluid moving?
Find ways to help it come into a harmonious flow.
   It's all about flow.

Top

***QUESTION***
John, thanks for these emails, I enjoy them and find them useful. I have a question: Is there anything that can be done for a newborn with Mosaic Down Syndrome, where some chromosomes are affected and some are not, given that it is apparently a chromosomal disorder?

As I understand it, Mosaic, means that it is a less severe case. Is there an "esoteric purpose" i.e how does this affliction serve the individual or the mother?
Sandra Newland
Brisbane.
PS. Please thank Jenny for her story - it was a great description of the treatment process and very moving.

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Yes, Down Syndrome is a genetic disorder and as such it would be a big ask of the body to change from and I'm not even sure if it would be an appropriate question to ask.

The mosaic part of it means that about half of the baby's cells are 'Down' cells. That could mean that the baby is having second thoughts about the whole down thing and you could definitely assist if it chose not to.

'What?'

I'll explain . .

Let's say you're a kid and you like to run and jump. All day long you run and jump around this big field. Running and jumping, jumping and running. Man, you just love to run and jump.

'Lovely. Great. What has this to do with Down's?'

Then let's say one evening you're looking at the telly and you see the 400m hurdles race at the Olympics. You're mesmerised as you watch the race. This is running-and-jumping heaven.

As you look at it you hear a voice in the back of your head saying, 'I wonder? I wonder if I could do that? I wonder if I could do that in the same way they're doing it? I wonder if I could be as good as that?'

So you find your local athletics club and join it and you begin to practice. In time you become good enough to qualify for the state team and eventually you become good enough to make it to the Olympics.

If we look at it from a different perspective we could say that you have voluntarily taken on a series of limitations to help you answer a question about yourself. The question being, 'I wonder how good I could be at that?'

The voluntary adoption of constraints for the purpose of finding something out about yourself.

With me so far?

'Not really.'

Now hold on to that idea while I ask you some questions. As you're thinking about the answers, I'd like you to discount any answer that comes to you that someone else has told you or anything you've read.

'I don't understand.'

Okay let's say I asked you if you knew for definite that America existed.

'Yes it does.'

Hang on, I haven't asked you yet. Let's say you've never been to America.

'But I have.'

Okay tell me somewhere you haven't been.

'Jamaica..'

Okay, let's say I asked you if you knew for definite that Jamaica existed. Before you answer I'm asking you to discount anything you've read about Jamaica or anything anyone who'd been there had told you about Jamaica..

Get it?

'I think so.'

Leave out any answers you've been told or read.

'Right.'

Okay here are the questions.

'About Jamaica?'

No the questions I was going to ask you initially. The Jamaica thing was just and example.

'Oh I see.'

Okay are you ready for the questions.

'Yes.'

Why were you born a man or a woman?
Why were you born the race you were born?
Why were you born in the country you were born in?
Why were you born to the parents you were born to?'

I think if you're honest, you have to admit that you don't 'know' the answers to these questions.
The funny thing is, we all have a sense that there ARE answers to these questions and the answers are NOT random.

I discovered, through working with people with life threatening conditions, that in the same way that the kid went to the Olympics to find out something about themselves, our lives are about finding something out about ourselves. What we are trying to find out is an extremely personal question for each of us.

The four constraints I asked you about in my questions, your sex, your race, your nationality and your parents are part of the constraints we voluntarily adopt to help us explore the question we have about ourselves. These four are just the tip of the iceberg of constraints we have voluntarily adopted to help us.

How often have you wondered at the apparent synchronicity of events in your life.
Why that thing happened as against the other thing happening?
Why this person and not that one?
Why was that done and not something else?
The different things that happen to us are tailor made to help us with our question.
The different constraints we adopt are individual to each of us.

All except one.

The one constraint we all share is we don't know what it is we're trying to find out. We don't know what our question is.

As to why that is I can only guess that it's similar to reason we get upset if someone tells us the end of a movie. Particularly if it's a movie we really wanted to see. Even if they tell us that the movie has a happy ending. It still feels like it's ruined.

Let me take a moment here to highlight that point. Even if the ending of the movie is a happy one we still feel like we've been gypped in some way. It sort of follows then that we are more interested in the watching of the movie than we are in the happy ending.

I'm going on about it because it's an analogy for life. I think one of the possible reasons we don't know what our question is is because we're more interested in the living of our life and the exploration of that question, than we are in knowing the question.

In my experience, there is a deeper part of ourselves that does know what our question is. It has known from the beginning. It looks out into our lives with what could be described as dispassion, though I don't think that's what's really going on.

It has a VERY broad view of our lives. It knows that in 200 years we'll be dead and no one will know us. We might be remembered as a two dimensional historic figure but no on will know us in the way we are known by the people in our lives who know and love us now.

I don't mean to bum you out but that's true. We know this too of course but we often live as if we don't. We live as if we have all the time in the world.

That deeper part of us is a bit like a compassionate Clint Eastwood. Eerily quiet. It never actually speaks directly to us but yet it never lets us forget about our question. It doesn't care about the silly sort of things we care about, like life and death and food and security. It will break up our marriage. It will have all our money taken from us. It will make us sick if it needs to get our attention.

That's why I say it can appear ruthless but the reality is it knows that our lives are very transitory and the whole point is to explore this question we have about ourselves. So it forces us to keep facing it, even when we don't want to.

Whether you are working with an adult or a child makes no difference. This question is something we all work with from the beginning to the end of our lives.

In most cases you won't have a strong sense of what the person's question is and that's okay.

Remember this is a very private part of a person and information is given on a need-to-know basis. If you get any insights about it, it will be because you were given or allowed them by that deeper part of the person.

So you remain open to information about what the person's question might be while being VERY humble and respectful of anything you receive about it.

As you look at the situation with the Mother and the child with the Mosaic Down syndrome, look at it from the perspective of a concord of questions. Try and get a sense of how the questions for the different relate to each other and how they all fit together.

For the child itself, be open to feeling if it is in harmony with it's question. Hold the perspective that being Down syndrome is a constraint that this child has chosen to help them with the exploration of their question.

As I said at the beginning, the fact that it's Mosaic Down's could mean the child is not sure if they want to go fully into it. It could also mean that they have chosen this specific form of Down's for a specific reason and are in harmony with themselves about it.

I know the people I've treated with Down syndrome have had a happy harmonious quality. I always felt happier myself just being around them.

On a practical level you need to be very careful around the back of their neck as the muscles and tendons in people with Down's are weak there.

If you feel the child is not in harmony with it's question, then further open your contact to what it might need to help it come more into harmony.

For the parents, you need to view the child's condition as one of THIER symptoms. Try and get a sense of what the child's condition means in the parents lives and how it might relate to the parents question.

Become your own Wellness Detective