Farzeen Mahmud

Dear Readers,

I am writing this post amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, a time when our whole world is showing signs of dis-ease.  To move through this time of global disease, we must seek out global healing, and this calls upon us to find out all the ways our whole is broken and find its wholeness again.

One of my dear friends, Victoria Apperson, is a neurolinguistic plasticity practitioner.  Her field is one which recognizes the power of words in forming our realities, from a neurological basis which shows that how we conceptualize our reality is how our reality comes to be. 

For today, my mind comes to a language of peace, one where all beings spoken with and spoken to are honored.  There are several idioms in the English language and other languages which are derogatory to the human being, otherwise known as “bad words” or “curse words.” I advocate for our planet to cease the use of curse words, because any word which derogates our reality will indeed cause us to have a cursed reality.  We must be tender to the ways that our language harms and lifts one another up, seeking the latter outcome in all times.

The following is a description of how I healed from Lyme Borrelia, Bartonella and Babesia infections using neuroplasticity, an understanding of what I will call “organismic orbital theory,” PTSD healing, and herbal and dietary approaches.  The herbal, holistic and dietary approaches draw on the works of a renowned herbalism author Stephen Buhner, my herbalist, Kelly McCarthy, functional nutritional therapist, Kiran Nigam, and my friend, James Novakowski, as well as my own approaches.  

To understand one of the key components of this healing trajectory, namely organismic orbital theory, one needs to realize a geography of the body-mind-heart-spirit.  The main idea is that the human being, or any being with a soul, is comprised of “orbitals” or areas of energy localization that go from the center of the being outward into the atmosphere.  The center of the being is the physical locus, or the “body.”  Just outside this locus is the next concentric layer, namely the “mind” or the intellectual locus.  Proximal to this locus, at a greater radius, is the “heart” or the emotion locus.  Finally, the spiritual locus, or the “spirit” surrounds the body, mind, and heart in an all-encompassing embrace, where the being meets other beings at their spiritual locus as well.  To re-establish the boundaries between one’s own spirit-heart-mind-body orbitals and that of another creature’s, rose can be used as a salve on the belly.  Rose is an herb who teaches us the necessity of thorny boundaries to preserve the fragrant essence of a being, all of its layers in tact.

On top of this organismic orbital theory, about Lyme and coinfections, one needs to realize that the spirochete and other infecting agents are beings too, with their own orbital systems.  The methodology of healing described here lies on the precept that a main method of disease in Lyme and coinfections is that the spirit, mind, heart and body orbitals of each spirochete invade into the spirit, mind, heart and body orbitals of the human being, thus displacing them and leaving the human being in a dissociated state.  Thus, the healing of dissociation is key to the quantum healing of Lyme and tick-borne disease.  A key methodology for the healing of dissociation is the use of drops of ghost pipe tincture, a very potent medicinal plant.  Ghost pipe should be used one drop at a time, on the overt internal or external appearance of dissociation symptoms.  The healing of dissociation is in many ways the healing of PTSD, and the approach for this is multifold.  The sense of experiencing a traumatic trigger could be that you are responding to a current situation as though it is a previous situation which was unresolved for you.  This traumatic trigger is an opportunity to heal the trauma’s lingering in your body, by responding viscerally to the injury from the past in the present as though it is happening now, i.e. by yelling, hissing, laughing, crying, growling.  Letting the traumatic energy then move through the body, from head to toe, into the center of the Earth and then outward into the space beyond the final boundary of the Universe, the love which can carry and transform it all, restores integrity. One can feel that the body begins to re-associate after this process.  While feeling one's own body re-associate, one can imagine that pathogens inside their body are dissociating, which causes the pathogens to die.  Trauma healing should be done in private to allow for greatest benefit of the traumatic energy going directly to the Earth’s center and the Universe’s outmost layer, rather than getting dispersed to other people.

Next, a key concept which predicates the healing of Lyme and coinfections is that the healing of the brain, via neuroplastic retraining, is critical to the brain’s ability to heal its own body. In this case, this means redirecting internal mechanisms to direct the healing of the body from Lyme and coinfections’ impact on the body and its structures, i.e. joints, bones, connective tissues.  This principle predicates how each moment in the healing journey is undertaken, and is the connection between one’s intuition and the overall guidance of the Universe in what one ought to do to move forward in the ever-forward direction of healing.  To engage this mechanism, muscle testing can be used, to help tactilely maneuver the guidance of one’s intuition while in a brain-injured state, as Lyme renders one to be in.  

To summarize the dietary approach to healing from Lyme infection, it relies on the lessening of the burden of digestion on the body so as to reserve as much energy as possible for the curing of infection.  This means reducing all sugars and carbohydrates in a gut-healing GAPS (gut and psychology syndrome) diet, to help the body's ability to absorb nutrients, and lessen the load on the immune and digestive systems, detoxification pathways, and adrenal/stress system.  To supplement the adrenal healing offered by this approach, nettle oil can be applied to the feet to help support the adrenal glands in their effort to keep an immune response raised while the infection is latent in the body.  The dietary approach also includes rebuilding the brain and connective tissues by using foods such as Lion’s Mane and maitake and shiitake mushrooms, in bone broth.

Being that Lyme and tick borne disease are infectious diseases, antibiotics are necessary in the healing trajectory.  Many recommend a combination of doxycycline, IV ceftriaxone and antibiotic herbs such as Cat’s Claw, concentrated resveratrol, Japanese knotweed, andrographis and garlic.  In my healing, I used only of these resveratrol, Japanese knotweed, and garlic.  In concert, these three removed the Bartonella, Babesia and Borrelia from my organs and tissues.  I took the resveratrol from Source Naturals, as recommended by Stephen Buhner, at a dosage discerned via muscle testing at each intake.  I took the garlic in small slivers in a foot bath combined with detoxification herbs and materials, as discussed in the next section.  And I took the Japanese knotweed as a tincture, with drops dosed by muscle testing similar to the concentrated resveratrol.

Lyme and tick borne disease healing can be especially difficult because of the mediating step between antibiotics and restoring the body, namely the detoxification process.  This reaction is called the Herxheimer reaction, and it means that once the cell walls of bacteria are broken open via antibiotics, endotoxins inside of the bacteria are released into the bloodstream.  For many, the task of expelling these toxins can cause overwhelm and kick the body into a state called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, which is separate but related to the Herxheimer reaction.  Not everyone who experiences Herxheimer reactions will experience Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, but — as my doctor Marina Makous puts it — genetics can be the cause of such a syndrome, and environment — as a Lyme infection — can turn the syndrome “on.” Save Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, the herbs and salts which are helpful for eliminating a Herxheimer reaction are epsom salt, chamomile blossoms, lavender blossoms, nettle leaf, rose, oats, yarrow blossoms, calendula blossoms, turmeric and skullcap.  These can all be mixed into a detoxification foot bath, taken with garlic at every other antibiotic intake interval. Because detoxification places a demand on the body, it is useful to space out detoxification foot baths.  Many of these herbs are soothing herbs, which relax the body as it undergoes detoxification.  The feet are a major place of detoxification, and grounding in the earth can be helpful for this process as well.  Dry brushing is another possible technique, though it can trigger an immune response depending on how sensitive / overloaded the body may be.

To help heal the brain via herbal medicines, a tonic can be taken each day, namely Adrenal Brain Tonic, whose components are elderberry syrup, ashwaghanda, reishi, milky oats, gotu kola, elderflower rum, echinacea and rose.  All of these herbs are healing to the brain and adrenal system.

The earth is the brain. The sun is the heart. The moon is a thought.

Space connects us.

Dark matter and Light is the material which the Spirit moves.

Is it a pilgrimage around the sun Or just a pilgrim Dancing through the cosmos?

Sometimes bodies move, sometimes bodies stay still.  

Each patch of earth has a character of stillness and a character of movement, it is pulled in by the gravity at the core, but it can be lifted up and crumbled, piled into different places, shifted laterally along the plates that earth pieces may travel on.  

So it is with water -- in one place yet also moving across the surface, and into the sky and back.  

Our Body moves and stays still.  

Our Body settles and migrates and settles and migrates.  

We are all migrants and we are all already-here dwellers.  

We can bear witness to God's agape-welcome of migrants, because migrating humans are humans, when we bear witness to God's agape-welcome of the migrant spirit inside of our selves.  

Whether we are a migrant with experiences of blood and war in the moveable-and-still patch of Earth we were just inhabiting and have left for survival's sake,

or a migrant with a vision of a great beech tree and religious spaciousness in another,

or a migrant with a hope to notice the brokenness and wholeness that is everywhere.  

Whatever is the vision and the pull,

and they are as unique as each soul,

we can honor the migrant aspect of each our souls

whether it is actively moving us or actively inviting us to bear witness to the movements of others.  

This is my prayer,

for the humans who walk the edges of a moveable-yet-still Earth,

for the ones who travel in trains,

live in tents,

sleep on streets,

for the ones who nestle into cotton bedsheets in roofed-homes,

for the ones who leave places with too much bloodshed for immediate sanctity even if the places they are arriving are subscribed to different strands of the same world violence,

for the ones who witness and hear of these journeys through stories and news media,

Islamophobia is not just “fear of Muslims that non-Muslims have” it is also “fear that Muslims have.”  Islamophobia makes non-Muslims afraid of embodiments of Islam and it makes Muslims afraid of embodying Islam.  It makes Muslims afraid of non-Muslims, just as it makes non-Muslims afraid of Muslims.   Islamophobia is a disease of fear and we all share it, and we are all suffering from it, and we are all part of it’s healing, because all of our souls are connected.  

We don’t need to fight Islamophobia - to fight something is to believe that it is a power worth fighting.  Islamophobia is a disease - it has reasons for being here, it is in context of our inherent health, and with good tools and guidance from the healing coordination of the Universe, it can be healed, like any other disease.  We get to allow the healing of Islamophobia, in each of us, through each of us, for each of us.

Those of us who put forward Islamophobic ads, those of us who feel a wall between ourselves and non-Muslims or Muslims, those of us who are avoiding the toxic energy of our disease, those of us who know deeply in our bones that we are well, those of us who know deeply that we are long-lost siblings and aren’t actually even warring religions, but don’t have words or structures yet to live into it.

Fear is trauma which has settled into our bones.  What are our traumas having to do with Islam, or terrorism?  

I see beautiful movement to tell the stories of Muslim Americans - to say, “hey, we’re normal too, we’re beautiful people just like you.”  I’ve been feeling this energy keenly, ever since the hours me and my parents spent at the G Street Fabrics on Rockville Pike deliberating between swaths of fabric to turn into headscarves - back in 2002.  There was a great deal of attention paid to “not looking like a morose, serious, somber, oppressed, or threatening woman” - if I chose a grey scarf, I was quickly redirected to something with pink, orange, flowers, sparkles.  Sparkles aren’t threatening.

I think the beauty in this motion is vital.  But it is only part of the beginning of a long healing journey.  It is the first step, when you realize, oh, someone is safe to stand next to.  Especially in a broken world, it helps when we don’t re-traumatize each other.

But it won’t be sustainable for too long - it cannot replace the deep healing we all need to do.  Sooner or later, the need to have Muslims stand shorter than they are, or be hyper-vigilant about everything they do lest someone else get re-traumatized (or even, instigated into aggression that steps from un-resolved trauma), takes away from all of our human-ness.  The need to have Muslims constantly explaining Islam to everyone they meet is going to take a huge toll on an entire generation.  This does not mean that these aren’t real needs, in fact, the needs are more present than ever.  There is a real need for all of us to have a healthy, grounded understanding of many things: Islamic theology, history, ways to hold the verses of the Qur’an in a grounded spiritual context, but also, how hurt we all are that this fear and pathological violence has been terrorizing us for so long.

The most important thing that happened when our land experienced the traumatic violence that happened in New York City and at the Pentagon is that we were deeply traumatized.

Trauma is when the whole world ceases to make sense.  We are sustained by the understanding that we are safe in the world, that we can trust our neighbors, that we don’t deserve to be killed and violated and for our buildings to be flown into, and that we don’t deserve to be the recipient of violence that claims the name of God, or claims that we deserve it.  When the traumatic violence on 9/11/01 happened, all of our basic truths were violated by that violence.

We couldn’t wrap our minds around what happened.  We all found different ways to understand, to re-integrate, to move on, to find a way to wake up and bring our feet forward and keep going.  Some of that was through numbing our bodies to the intense grief we felt.  Some of that was deciding that certain things weren’t safe anymore, and avoiding them.

For some of us, it was no longer safe to feel free in our embodiment and celebration of Islam.  For some of us, it was no longer safe to feel free in our trust of our Muslim neighbors.  

When something unimaginable happens, it is important for the Being to find some way to understand what happened, so that the Being may continue to move.  Continue to wake up and keep going.

When what happened was so traumatic, to understand it takes many years of healing.  Most of us didn’t have the time or resources to engage in this healing.  We were either in elementary school or we had 9-5 jobs or we had to pay the bills.  We probably don’t know that much about how the deepest healing happens, as a culture, though the healing presence and practices are eminently available, thankfully, even if in secret sometimes.

If you don’t have the resources to do the deepest, most integrity-filled healing, you still have to find a way to understand.  To move on.  For many of us, that religion that the people who flew those planes claimed to be their reason for doing this traumatic violence on us was an unknown religion.  For many of us, it was our religion.

For those of us to whom Islam was unknown, it seems to have been useful to say “Perhaps this traumatic violence is explainable by the fact that an inherently violent religion exists and forms violent persons” so that we would have some way to understand.  Most of us who said this or who say this don’t actually feel that we know what Islam is.  Most people who say this are deeply unaware of Islam - people who feel like outsiders to Islam, people who aren’t in on what this faith means in a real way, the way that I know, a person to whom aspects of the tradition were conferred in my childhood.  When you grow with something from childhood into adulthood, you understand it, its history, its tradition, cultural baggage, social traumas, language, and in time, with God’s help, those forms are infused with your own spiritual and mystical growth.  They become alive.  And hopefully, they become alive in a life-giving way: a way which frees you from the worship of that religion or form, and confers the forms to be earthly vessels of that which is uncontainable and boundless.  

For those of us to whom Islam was known, to whom these forms became part of the garden which grew us into beautiful beings, it seems to have been useful to say “I will hide and apologize for being Muslim, because my sisters and brothers who do not know what Islam is are deeply terrified of my religion, because we have all faced this unimaginable trauma, and I do not want them to feel traumatized or violated by my being me.”  For those of us to whom Islam was known, we had the resilience in the face of the traumatic violence of 9/11 to understand that — despite the intense messaging of the attacking persons that the violence was inspired by Islam — the violence was not in fact encouraged by God.  In fact, we knew that these acts were deeply against what God showed us through the particular forms of Islam as they grew into our gardens.  We had this resilience because we had our own relationship to Islam — we didn’t need to buy into the terrorists’ message.  

until you are

given a way