Good Fortune

     

 

My husband Frank makes beautiful glass, both art and architectural works.  Not too long ago, he made this door with black glass undulating beneath the Chinese characters for happiness, blessings, and good fortune.  I came across this photo of it recently and it reminded me of all of the good fortunes that I have received, not only in my life, but also in Chinese restaurants over the years as I have enjoyed their delicious fare.

Being as spring is upon us and as it brings its promise of renewal and the good fortune and bounty of summer ahead, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share with you some of the good fortunes that I have collected and saved from the many fortune cookies that have blessed my dining table and my life.  I share them with you now, like affirmations to brighten your day as they have continued to brighten mine.  

Let yourself think of these like a waterfall of blessings showering over, around and through you.  And, as a little experiment, let yourself believe each one.  

You are always welcome in any gathering.
You have an ability to sense and know higher truth.
You should be able to make money and hold on to it.
You enjoy giving gifts of yourself to others.  You will be rewarded.
You are going to have a very comfortable old age.
Consider gain and loss, but never be greedy and everything will be all right.
Things are not always what they seem.
You have a captivating style all your own.
Elegant surroundings will soon be yours.
You will inherit a large sum of money.
Your energy is at its peak.  Channel it into fun activities.
You will be showered with good luck.
You will spend many years in material wealth.
Your love life will be happy and harmonious.
Your air of confidence naturally draws others to you.
The star of happiness is shining on you.

May we all be renewed with the love and joy for life that spring so often brings.

Josephine Laing
© 2024

Cast Adrift

 

Cast Adrift.  That's how we feel sometimes.  It's as if we don't know where we are going, or even why.  But often the soup just has to cook.  Time spent not knowing, just simmering has proven, in the past, for me, to be extremely beneficial.

The clouds of not knowing can settle down around us with a damp chill, closing in about our bodies and minds, leaving us feeling directionless, purposeless.  Sometimes, it's illness, sometimes it's financial devastation.  It can be social or environmental injustice, or simply a lack of connection with others and their support.  But if we hang in there, give it a little time, and our consideration, let the flavors, ideas and feelings meld together, our way forward gradually comes clear. 

I like to use affirmations and gratitude practices during those darker days to help me keep hope and trust alive.  All of the spiritual practices that we have learned can give us some direction.  Prayer, mantras, along with inspirational stories, poetry, music and art, these are the tools I turn to, to help me find the light ahead.

I remember years ago, while I was healing from a major injury, wondering day-after-day, why this devastating thing had happened to me.  What was to become of my life after so many changes had occurred, flipping everything I trusted and knew on its head?  I had gotten a degree in horticulture, had been running my own landscape business, had employees, had just bought a home and was planning to remodel and then everything stopped. I had to let the business go.  My financial situation shifted drastically.  I became sincerely dependent with no guarantee that I'd ever recover.

In that dim light of life, with the heat turned way down low, I simmered and grabbed what ingredients I could and tossed them into the stew pot of my days.  Meditation, dream-work, time spent musing quietly, alone with my thoughts, taking what small steps I could to help restore my peace of mind and my physicality.  It can be a slow process marinating in transformation.  The egg in the nest takes time to change and open.  The seed doesn't sprout overnight.  Dismal news can come.  We just have to let it go and keep focusing on the next one or two possible steps that we can see for the way ahead.

Peace Pilgrim used to say, "Stay in the present moment.  Do what needs to be done.  Do all of the good you can each day.  And the future will unfold."  This is a lovely prescription for finding one's way.  It has helped me greatly over the years.  It's the little steps that matter.  One at a time.  There is no rush.  It's a long life, and from my perspective, there are plenty of them.  So, we don't need to hurry.  We can take our time and go slow.

So, there I was, all those years ago, stuck in bed, doing next to nothing except visiting my chiropractor once a week, and slowly, incrementally, finding my balance again.  And that's when my empathy, my clairvoyance, my ability to see and know what was going on in the health and well being of others, started to emerge.  It certainly wasn't anything I had expected to have happen.  I had guided the ship of my life in a totally different direction.  But there it was, arising quietly and consistently from within me.  It took a process of many years to refine and smooth off the rough edges of my psychic skills.  But, as sure as the lady bug transforms from the larvae, a new me emerged.  When we trust ourselves and let our lives flow, riding the hills and valleys as gracefully as we can, our path eventually comes clear.

I remember hearing the story of a young man in Great Britain who had gotten off on 'a wrong foot,' and began his early adulthood stealing things.  He wound up in jail, got out, took on a small job that at first he didn't know how to do, but learned.  Then he found himself helping others, newly out of prison, in finding work and learning how to do those small jobs as well.  In time he had founded a nationwide service providing support for others who had walked a similar path and his purpose in life was revealed.  

We never know where these roads will take us, but if we hang in there, and do what we can to stay present and work daily to hold our heads above water, and help others whenever we can, the way before us will unfold.  We find that we were never really cast adrift, we just needed an unexpected course correction, to set us on the good and right road that was always before us.  From there we can look back, at the end of our lives, and see that the way was really always clear.  We just needed to simmer a little, let all of the ingredients meld and blend and create the true sustenance of our beings.

So, hang in there.  Trust yourself and the Universe.  Stay in the moment.  Stay the course and expect the best.  A deeper part of you already knows the way.  We just need to let it all gradually and gratefully unfold before us.

I will leave you with a little haiku-like poem that I wrote years ago.  It came to me after I awoke from a dream where I saw three of my footsteps in front of me, in a forest, in the deep snow.  Just three footprints.  On a clear bright sunny winter's day.

My feet are always falling - steadfastly - on my path before me.

© Josephine Laing 2024

 

Taking the Time to Heal

I recently pinched a nerve in my neck.  Nowadays they call it by a more technical term, Cervical Stenosis.  But this very human problem has been around for ages, probably since we evolutionarily started standing upright.  And quite a few people wind up in trouble with this sort of condition, especially in the later decades of life.  

For my own part, I had gotten a little too frisky flexing my neck one day and within two weeks, it went from bad to worse and then into agony.  I had to stop all of my work, lost all strength in my arm and then my fingers began to go all tingly and numb.  The pain was intense and traveled from my hand up to my shoulder.  

I did all of my usual home remedies: anti-inflammatory supplements and diet style, hot baths, homeopathics, natural herbal analgesics, massage, hot and cold therapies and I also visited a few alternative practitioners.  But no matter what I did, it just kept getting worse and nothing seemed to really help.  

The only thing that brought me any relief at all was sitting very still, with my arm propped up in just the right way and then after a time, the pain started to abate and it would begin to get a little more comfortable.  So that's what I did.  I simply sat and read some nice uplifting books.

The medical profession had quite a few options for me.  They had drugs, and I tried a few, but they just made me feel pretty awful on top of being in pain.  A friend of mine had gotten a cortisone shot in her neck, some years before, with her pinched nerve.  She said it took about four months after that to fully resolve itself.  I considered that, but the down side was that it would most likely seriously mess with my blood sugars.  Another option was to do what they did to my brother and carve away some bone and put a mini railroad track in my neck, in order to separate and support my vertebra.  I figured that all of those were things that I could certainly consider down the line if I needed them.  But I thought I'd first try time.

It did take a couple of months for things to start to settle down.  But then they did.  And I remembered that that was what my mom used to say about healing from significant injuries, back on the farm, when she was a girl.  Doctors were few back then and medical care was rudimentary.  Mostly the farmers, themselves, were the vets, and the housewives were the healers.  When someone got really banged up, they put them in bed and kept them there.

 In our modern culture we try to speed the healing, and make the repairs as quick as possible, so we can get back in the game.  But, I'm thinking, after this recent episode, that there is some real wisdom in simply taking the time to heal.  

Now, it is true that all of that lounging around let me get drastically out of shape, even very muscularly weak.  And, putting a stop to my work hit our pocket book quite a little bit as well.  But our spending dropped too.  There wasn't much need to go out and get anything, other than groceries.  And with so much free time, I wound up having lots of laughs and plenty of chats with my friends and with my sweet husband, Frank.  So, other than the pain in my arm, I was quite happy and relatively healthy.  

After about eight weeks, the pain had subsided enough that I could start doing a few things around the house, but I could tell I was really out of shape and my balance wasn't great, either.  I figured I needed to have some basic physical therapy.  Fortunately my new niece, my nephew's betrothed, is a physical therapist and I was so relieved to be able to work with her.  

We met in either of our homes, instead of going to a P.T. clinic, where the therapists always seem to be rushed these days, and often have to yell over the booming exercise music.  That sort of an environment didn't seem as healing to me and I really appreciated the quiet and personal attention of one-on-one.  It has been another eight weeks now, of daily exercises, starting very gently at first and checking in once a week for a few more exercises and some nice deep tissue massage and I'm so very glad to say that I'm starting to feel good as new once more.

Sometimes all it takes is a little time and the willingness to let the world go on by for awhile until we heal and are ready once more to get back in the swing of things.  And blessedly, in this case, for me, that was true.  But, whether it is a pinched nerve, a different injury or an illness, listening to your own inclinations and guidance from within and then taking the time to do what needs to be done to heal is always a good idea.

My wish is for us all to have the good grace to be able to take the time to go slow, do less and accomplish more.  Blessings to you as we enter these longer nights and the darker half of the year. 

 

 

As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and in my videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.

"Do nothing. Time is too precious to waste."

 

This somewhat famous lesson from the Buddha, "Do nothing.  Time is too precious to waste." has indeed perplexed me from time to time, because there are so many important and worthwhile things to do.  And there is also so much that really and truly needs to be done.  But then, blessedly, I find myself just sitting quietly somewhere, maybe gazing up at the clear blue sky, or indulging in a little day dream, and then I get it.  The being part of me, the human being, rather than the human doing, settles my mind once more, and I fall into a deeper reality, a freer and wiser place within myself.  

There is such an emphasis on productivity in our Western culture, what with the rush and pushing of time.  And yet so often our most profound understandings and our sudden unexpected inner knowings for our best course of action pop into our heads, not while we are trying to figure it all out, but instead these insights occur most often while we are doing nothing.  It is as if we humans really do need to step aside once in a while, to let it all come clear and slide into place.

Ram Dass, in his seminal work, Be Here Now, demonstrated the bursts of creativity that can come when we allow ourselves to simply focus on the moment.  Watching the cat stalking stealthily in the garden, or a bee visiting a series of flowers, gazing into a campfire, or taking in the silence and stillness of the night, letting the mind simply focus on what is present, for just a few minutes, now and then, is natural and a very important part of who we humans are.

In our rush of technology, and too often wrongly in the name of efficiency, somehow the current trend has resulted in us letting these precious moments of doing nothing slip farther and fewer away.  Instead we play word games or distract ourselves with videos, leaving the television or the radio to play in the background.  Or we listen to talks or the news.  All good ventures unto themselves and completely justifiable.  But not so good for the seemingly ever increasing abstinence from open windows of freely attentive time.  Time where nothing is happening.  Time where we are not trying to meditate or take a nap.  Time where we just take a little break and let ourselves be.

Our brains get so used to us filling every moment with varying pursuits, sounds and distractions, that it actually starts to feel uncomfortable to do without.  Open space for our mind's to gaze at something, or to wander around in, become no longer familiar, and it can start to feel really weird to do so, unless we consciously begin to cultivate empty time, intentionally, once again.  

Allowing this free flow of mind is important, because it is in this open state of simple clarity that epiphanies arise.  Inspirations live here.  The non-focused gentle resting of our attention opens the door to our connection with everything.  This is how we spontaneously see the bigger picture and move past our fears or self-imposed limitations and progress into the free flow of fresh ideas and more prescient understandings and deeper connections.

So, though I too can get frequently lost in the 'brownie points' of checking things off of my 'to do' list, and rushing on ahead to getting things done, the Buddha's words do reach through this furor from time to time and remind me of the clarity that I can find by just taking a moment to look around and do nothing.  So, join me.  Let's just relax and let the moment in.

Swedish Death Cleaning and Plein Air

 

I recently heard a talk on Swedish death cleaning by a woman who wrote a book on this idea.  Apparently it is an old tradition in Sweden where, as the decades of one's life march along, we prepare progressively more and more for our eventual passing.  This primarily involves lightening our load and cleaning up our act.  It also makes everything a lot easier for those we leave behind.  This sounds like a good and sensible thing to me.

For all of us baby boomers and for all who come after, as we enter our fifth and sixth decades or are even pushing our ninth, it only makes sense to let go of some of the things we enjoyed in our twenties, thirties and forties.  I no longer wish to drive a convertible and I don't keep a horse anymore.  The convertible I drove in high school was an old beat-up jalopy that got me into my twenties and my former wild mustang lived with me, on the skinny, for nearly four decades.  We sure did have some fun.  But, when she put her old tired bones to rest, letting go of that time and lifestyle was appropriate for me too.

The seasons of our lives do change and paring down can be a blessing.  Several of my friends have really embraced this and have significantly downsized: giving away two thirds of their wardrobe, emptying filing cabinets and bookshelves, re-distributing or tossing old photographs and art works, and leading lighter lives.  One friend of mine re-homed her two little dogs.  She loved them enough to realize that they needed more care and she needed more time to rest and heal.  It's all good and we can let go.

This brings me to plein air.  Because, as we come to realize that statistically we may only have five, ten, fifteen, or, if we are lucky, twenty years, of quality living still to go, (which of course can happen to any of us, at any age,) it only makes sense to spend this precious gift of life doing as much of what we love to do as we can. 

I have one older friend who is devoting her life to caring for wild birds.  She is increasing our local bird species populations and supporting others on their migration routes.  When walking past her home, the birdsong is more than noticeable, it's incredible and loud, a veritable symphonic cacophony.  Given how precipitously our bird species numbers have fallen in the last five or six decades, this use of her time and energy is remarkable.  She also loves to paint.  And so do I.  But I love colored pencils, for their simplicity, even more.

Together, she and I enjoy sharing plein air sessions.  En plein air is french for "in the open air," and refers to painting out of doors instead of in an art studio.  During our day to day travels about town, we each keep our eyes open for beautiful views.  And then, as often as we can, carving out a little time, we set a date, deciding on morning or afternoon light and we go!  And then we sit.  We bring our jars of water and pads of paper, pencils, brushes, blankets and colors.  And then, for hours at a time, with little sandwiches packed and a few pieces of fruit, we chatter away about this and that, matching the colors, as busy as those birds, doing what we'd really love to do.  May you be so blessed as to be able to do so, too.

 

 

 

 

Take Me To A Novel

 

Sometimes we just need to push pause and find a way to take a break from all of the 'ins and outs,' and 'ups and downs' of life.  And thus, in steps the novel.  We all love a good story.  And reading a novel is my way of slipping into the La-La land of "Don't worry.  Be happy."

It is not something that I recommend all of the time, because there really are very serious things that require our attention, both personally and globally.  We need to care for ourselves and our loved ones.  And we need to care for our world, literally.  On the very serious side, and for an extremely illuminating reality check, I recommend listening to a recent Q&A with Noam Chomsky about the Future of our World.  He speaks of the systematic dismantling of arms control measures that has taken place over the last few decades, leaving just one in place, making a nuclear holocaust a very real potential, and the lack of awareness about this, and about the reality of climate change, both looming very large before us all.  He also proposes what we can do about it.  

We do need to lend our energy to movements for positive change.  This is part of our responsibility as global citizens.  Like our self care, it is part of our soul growth.  And, I certainly do put time and effort into this aspect of my life.  But I also need a little down time from time to time.  TV doesn't often interest me much, I prefer stories.  So, I thought I'd share with you a small handful of some of my favorite novels.

Recently I've been reading some rollicking good fun, in the form of historical fiction.  I've been focused on changes that women have made which have helped to generate cultural advancement.  My recent favorite is Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.  I fell in love with her protagonist, Elizabeth Zott.  Set in the 1950's, this book is full of humor and hope and shows how things were and why they got better.  

I also really loved, The Giver of Stars, by Jojo Moyes.  This novel is based on the true story of the depression era Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky.  These women rode out into very rural areas and brought books that people could borrow for free, increasing literacy and connection for isolated families.  Jojo Moyes wrote another book that I truly enjoyed with some great girl-inspired capers, bringing wrong doers to right, called Someone Else's Shoes.

Being a woman myself, of course I do love to read about strong female characters.  Another author who focuses on historical fiction to elaborate on our past and how women have helped to change things for the better is Barbara Kingslover.  She has some of the most insightful and far reaching stories in her quiver of novels.  Perhaps my favorite of hers is Prodigal Summer.

One of the classics of modern literature, and an absolute must read is Beryl Markham's West With the Night.  This book, about the true stories of her life is filled with love and the bravery of a woman living and working in a man's world.  If you read nothing else on this list, this would be the one.

All of these books have helped me to see and appreciate the (albeit slow,) changes and much needed progressive strides that we have made toward love, respect and allowance.  They have brought me joy and have helped me to hold a positive view in the face of all that life here on earth has to offer.

There are three others, by male authors, that are really fun and wonderful.  My grandmother gave me my copy of My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell.  Frank and I have both read this one many times and we laugh and giggle our way through it every time.  Durrell's prose and descriptions of nature on the pre-war island of Corfu are beautiful.  And the antics of his family are sure to bring a smile into your heart.

The Dalai Lama's Cat by David Michie, is one the most heartwarming and enjoyable books I've found.  This wise little cat lets us peek into the inner sanctum of life at Dharamsala, bringing insights on how to find delight and peace of mind in our own lives.

And lastly, Niall Williams, with This Is Happiness, for it's sheer beauty, left me transfixed by the inner workings of the heart, a young boy's first tender loves, and how the culture of old world Ireland reaching into today, has shaped his perspective and brought him to the eloquence of a life enlightened.  This is a book to be savored and it brings happiness, indeed.

May you all have some fun with this list, 'push pause' when you need to and take a little break.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Went From a "Positive" Test to a "Negative" Test, In Just Two Days, Naturally

 

I've been as careful about COVID as can be for three years now: washing hands, masking, not hugging my friends.  But then the old wall that holds the creek behind my house fell early one morning.  This happened, blessedly, between storms, so our soil profile did not wash away.  The city had built the wall and they stepped up to fix it, since it fell behind two other houses as well, and its absence threatened to undermine the nearby boulevard.  This resulted in crews of workmen coming and going with engineers and firemen and building inspectors all gathering in and parading through my backyard.  Some of them I needed to catch up with and let them know some particular or another before they disappeared.

I think that is when it happened, because two or three times I found myself out there, speaking with a small group, having dashed out without my mask.  Just four weeks before this, a friend had come round for a birthday visit on the patio.  He had come down with COVID the next day and we had been exposed.  Fortunately, I had recently remembered how effective overheating baths can be at stopping nasty viruses, (I had read that this had happened with the AIDS epidemic.)  So, I took an overheating bath and dodged a bullet that time.  (You can read more about that experience in my March 2023 blog titled "Exposed and the Overheating Bath.") 

My husband, Frank, has a good friend who comes round most mornings with his little French Bulldog who loves to play with our dog, on the front lawn.  The two men stand at a good distance from each other and talk about the repairs and various projects they are working on while the dogs dance around together, racing back and forth.  Two weeks ago, our friend showed up with a cold.  Not COVID, just a cold.  And Frank caught it.  Our friend later said he "thought that they weren't that close."  Very funny.  But air borne microbes can be like that, and as we all now know, quite contagious.

For some reason, I knew that I wouldn't catch Frank's cold.  It's amazing how you just know.  Though we took a few slight precautions I really wasn't worried about it.  Then, four days later I woke in the night, quite surprised and a little pissed, to find that I had a sore throat.  I reached for my ever handy arsenal of cold remedies: Dr. Schulze's Super-C Plus, Healthy Trinity by Natren and Equinacea Supreme by Gaia Herbs.  That backed the sore throat down quite successfully, but by morning, my sinuses, normally always free, were slightly congested and I groused at Frank about it.  By afternoon, I was feeling slightly headachy, and somewhat fatigued, with the start of a drippy nose.  I took my temperature and found it was at 99.5 degrees.  

I accused Frank of having had the dry scratchy throat proceeding his cold and said that he had just not remembered having one.  He was denying that anything was off at the onset of his cold, as he always does.  Having a full work week ahead I really didn't want to come down with what felt like a mild viral infection.  And I wasn't supposed to anyway, so I jumped into an overheating bath, which is always very effective at fighting viruses.

Frank said he had read up on the difference between a cold and a flu earlier that day, in Linda Page's book, Healthy Healing, (the same edition I referred to in my last blog with the instructions on how to properly do an overheating bath.)  I asked him to read the difference between the two again, to me, while I was in the tub.  While he was reading, he kept noting the onset of a "cold" for himself, and I kept noting the onset of a "flu" for myself.  That was when it dawned on me that maybe we had two different bugs.  And that maybe I hadn't caught this from Frank after all.

Anyway, that night, after my therapeutic hot bath, I slept in a pool of sweat and had to change the sheets and start washing everything in the morning.  I took a shower to clean the gunk off of my skin and then it occurred to me, "wait a minute, wait a minute,": sore throat, slight fever, headache, sinus congestion, fatigue.  It finally ran a bell.  And so there, on the morning of day two, I took a COVID test, and to my surprise found the faint pink line, indicating that I had the presence of the proteins in my mucus that reveal the presence of the COVID virus.  Blessedly, Frank did not.  And that hot bath, from the day before, had done me a world of good.  Apart from a slightly drippy nose, and a tendency toward chills and sweats, I felt pretty good.

That afternoon, I decided to do another overheating bath.  I took my temperature before hand and to my surprise found I was already at a hefty 102 degrees.  The day before, with my previous overheating bath, rising up from 99.5 degrees to 103 degrees had been a bit of a struggle and I definitely needed my assistant, Frank, to hand me the thermometers and hold my cup of hot tea, with a drinking straw, for me.  

Killing and then moving all of those viruses out is a lot of work for the body.  It can leave one feeling very weak.  And holding a manufactured fever of 103 degrees for fifteen minutes can be quite daunting.  So, a therapy like this is not for everyone.  Our ninety year old friend, Einar, mentioned that he had to do overheating treatments as a child for serious illnesses.  But, as he said, the only problem was that sometimes they'd "loose one" due to the rigors of the therapy.  So, this method is not something to be taken lightly.  And a capable assistant is essential.  

For me, with my second bath, going from 102 degrees up to 103 degrees was easy, I barely noticed it.  I even spiked briefly up to 104 degrees a couple of times.  It is generally not advisable for adults to go over 102 degrees for more than two full days at a time, but briefly spiking fevers of a slightly higher range are generally considered acceptable by many natural method healers who are familiar with overheating therapies. 

Fevers in the body are important.  They happen for a reason.  They burn out pathogens and then throw them off through sweating.  They also deactivate virus replication.  Lots of liquids need to be taken to stay hydrated, and the skin needs to be kept clean to avoid having toxins being partially reabsorbed by the body.  Sometimes a persistent high fever can be a sign of a more serious problem, but typically a fever, with a cold or flu, will help someone get better faster.

I do my overheating bath differently from the more measured and safer method that Linda Page, N.D., Ph.D. describes in her ninth edition of Healthy Healing.  She suggests not eating for several hours beforehand, emptying the bladder and colon before beginning, having a nice big tub and using two thermometers constantly, one for the bath water and one for the body temperature, both in use, for the entire duration of the treatment.  

For her version of the bath, the patient should be completely submerged, with only the eyes, nose and mouth above water.  She suggests starting the bath water at skin temperature, then raising the temperature of the water to 100 degrees fifteen minutes later, and then up to 103 degrees fifteen minutes after that, holding it at 103 degrees for a final fifteen minutes.  Since the person is completely covered, no body heat can escape and the body temperature will rise to match the water temperature.  The bath takes about an hour and constant supervision is required. 

She also suggests an alternative way to use overheating therapy which is a sauna.  The heat of a sauna will also inhibit the replication of pathogens, speed up metabolism and stimulate all of the glands and vital organs into increased activity.  This supports the immune system and accelerates healing functions.  Detoxification then occurs through the sweating process.  The sauna can then be finished with a cool shower and a rubdown to eliminate the toxins that have been removed from the body via the skin.

She notes that though induced fevers can be natural and effective healing modalities, advice and supervision from expert practitioners is advised.  She also notes that general vitality and heart health check-ups are also advisable and that it is necessary to determine in advance that the patient has the ability to perspire, which sometimes is absent in folks who are seriously ill.

The overheating bath that Linda Page gives is a great and quite safe technique.  But I go about mine a little more simply.  I know my body pretty well and feel comfortable doing my overheating bath this way.  And I am certainly not suggesting this method for anyone else.  But basically what I do, for me, is this, I get the tub really hot and I jump in and I stay there.   

More specifically, before I begin, I plug the overflow valve of the tub with duct tape so I can fill it right up to the top, nice and deep.  I set at least four clean towels on the floor, a quart of liquid to drink while in the tub, my two thermometers, a box of tissues and an empty quart sized plastic cup, all in close reach.  Then I put at least one cup of various mineral salts (see my previous blog for details,) in the tub and fill it right up.  

I generally empty the hot water heater into the tub with the water at or slightly higher than 115 degrees.  I plop myself in there and start to cook with one thermometer in my mouth, shaking it down periodically and retaking readings to keep track of my body temperature.  I also use a quick reacting candy thermometer to keep track of the water temperature.  If the bath gets too cold, below 112 degrees, Frank carefully pours in more hot.  Periodically using an oximeter, (the little finger gizmo that most doctors have for reading blood oxygen levels,) I keep track of my pulse.  Mine usually stays around 90 but may rise up to 105 when I'm really cooking with my body temperature at or above 103 degrees.  

Once the fifteen minutes at or a little above 103 degrees has been accomplished, I start adding in a little cold water to cool the bath gradually.  I usually soak for a good long time at these lower bath water temperatures anywhere from 105 degrees, (the average hot tub temp,) to 110 degrees.  After drinking all of my liquids and having a good long soak and sweat, to finish off the bath, I cool it a little more and linger a little longer.  Then I drain the tub and using the quart sized plastic cup, I rinse the mineral salts off my skin.  Then I carefully climb out of the tub, using all four, arms and legs.

Once I do get out, I'll often lay on and cover up with the towels on the floor to recover for a while before getting up and walking into the bedroom, where I have the heater on and piles of blankets on the bed.  I also tuck a few beach towels in between the sheets to absorb some of the sweat and I have more, at the ready, in case I want to change them in the night.  Then, using my skin as the amazing eliminative organ that it is, I sweat all of those dead viruses and other toxins out of me all night long.

I did this overheating therapy three days in a row.  The first bath, the one before I realized it was COVID, starting with a low grade fever was the challenging one.  The second one, when my natural healing body fever had kicked in and let me start the process already at 102 degrees, was a snap.  Easy.  For the third, my fever had dropped down to 99 degrees again, and it was easy too.  This morning, the third day, when most COVID cases start to really ramp up, and just two days after I tested positive for COVID, I have now tested negative and guess what?  I feel fine.  Absolutely fine.  No fever.  No brain fog.  No loss of taste or smell.  No decline in memory or cognitive faculties.  No cough.  No shortness of breath.  Isn't that amazing!

I'm still going to self isolate, with Frank, and take care of my self.  My house is full of the virus and I wouldn't want to relapse.  So, I'll stay inside, keep warm, take the recommended COVID supplements: Vitamin C, Vitamin D3, Zinc, Usena barbato extract, Bee Propolis, Goldenseal root, and Echinacea root extract.  And I'll test again in a few more days and over the next two weeks.  But I'm so happy to say, I went from a positive COVID test, with all of the initial symptomatology, to a negative test result in just two days.  And I credit that to an age old natural healing remedy, the overheating bath.  

Wishing all, good health and a very happy spring.

Update:  It has been nearly two weeks now and I still feel absolutely fine.  I did a third COVID test and remained negative.  For the first week, I was very gentle with myself and didn't push myself physically.  Now, nearing the end of the second week, I'm back to my full vigor and enjoying life immensely.  Though there can  occasionally be a false positive COVID test result, it is very rare.  And, I feel that my positive test was accurate and that I did contract the virus.  I experienced the typical initial symptomatology: the headache, the sore throat, the fatigue, the minor fever and chills.  And now, all of those symptoms are long gone.  And, I feel so very blessed.

As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.