Hello everyone,

Just an update on my back, and a sincere thank you to all of you who so
gratiously offered thoughts and suggestions (Claude, Ray, Ben, Aaron, Micaela,
Gerry, and others).  The suggestions that ring true to me include:

swimming, walking, and other gentle movement exercises, massage, chiropractic,
and other qualified body work, a high % raw diet (I'm signed on to 2 raw
groups: one which eats animal foods and one which doesn't; one says no raw
animal products because it leaches calcim from the bones, the other says
plenty of raw meat), high mineral foods like sea veggies, raw greens, etc.,
plenty of pure water for the kidneys, etc.

I like Ray's suggestion perhaps the best:  "Love your body".  This has been
quite a challenge for me: paying attention and truly heeding the needs of my
body.  I've tended not to trust it, and to trust the intellect and the advice
of "experts" more than my body.  Thanks Ray!

For those of you who are interested, or those who believe in this sort of
thing, I'll also relate what I was told this week, regarding my back, in a
psychic reading.  This reading was done by an incredible woman, Mary Ellen
Flora, who founded the psychic institutes / churches in the Pacific Northwest
where I currently do my emotional / healing work, and who also wrote several
good books.  Her reply to my back question:

Movement is crucial.  She said she could hear my body screaming for movement
(I knew this but sometimes get frozen with fear and other problems relating to
my eating disorder - reaching for food rather than exercise, or frozen by the
past pains I am bringing up in my emotional work).  She said the main problem
(challenge) is my mom's energy in my space:  she saw my mom's energy in my
first five chakras - some in the form of an energetic chord in the back of the
first chakra.  She said this controlling chord has always been there, but the
spiritual / emotional work I am doing of late (meditation, visualization,
etc.) has resulted in my resisting her energy in my space, thus the pain.
This, too, makes complete sense to me.  Much of the fear I've experienced
these past few years is my mom's fear (she is scared of me lighting up /
seeing her buried pains along with my own).  The key is to "let go" of her
energy, beliefs, emotions, without judging her tendency to control me, rather
than judge her and "resist" her.  It's a subtle but crucial difference (what
we resist persists).

Anyway, this may sound strange to some of you, or make complete sense to some,
but it certainly validates what I've felt, as well as heard in other psychic
readings (this is what I am studying to do, as part of my healing work);
knowing ourselves and seeing ourselves clearly is key, no?

Thanks again for your support!

Roy