I divide clients into two basic types: simple cases and complex ones. When I was treating mental illness, occasionally I had a client who had not been sick for too long. I could usually make this client well quite easily. But if the person had already become institutionalized, had been psychotic for many years, had received much prior treatment, then their case had been made much more difficult. This sort had a poor prognosis. A very similar situation exists with physical illnesses. Many people get sick only because they lack information about how to keep themselves healthy and about what made them sick. Once they find out the truth, they take my medicine without complaint and almost inevitably get better very rapidly. Some of these people can be quite ill when they first come to me but usually they have not been sick for very long. Their intention when coming into my office is very positive and have no counter intentions to getting better. There are no spiritual or psychological reasons that they deserve to be sick. If this person had not found me, they almost certainly would have found some other practitioner who would have made them well. This type of person honestly feels they are entitled to wellness. And they are.
However, some of the sick are not sick for lack of life-style information; they suffer from a mental/spiritual malady as well, one that inevitably preceded their illness by many years. In fact, their physical ailments are merely reflections of underlying problems. This patient's life is usually a snarl of upsets, problems, and guilty secrets. Their key relationships are usually vicious or unhealthy. Their level of interpersonal honesty may be poor. There are usually many things about their lives they do not confront and so, can not change. With this type of case, all the physical healing in the world will not make them permanently better because the mental and emotional stresses they live under serve as a constant source of enervation.
Cases like this usually do not have only one thing wrong with them. They almost always have been sick for a long time; most have been what I call "doctor hoppers," confused by contrary diagnoses and conflicting MD opinions. When I get a case like this I know from the first that healing is going to be a long process, and a dubious one at that. On the physical level, their body will only repair one aspect of their multiple illnesses at a time. Simultaneously, they must be urged to confront their life on a gentle gradient. There is usually a lot of backsliding and rollercoastering. The detoxification process, physical and psychological, can take several years and must happen on all the levels of their life. This kind of case sees only gradual improvement interspersed with periods of worsening that indicate there remains yet another level of mental unawareness that has to be unraveled.
Few medical doctors or holistic therapists really understand or can help this kind of case. To do so, the doctor has to be in touch with their own reactive mind and their own negative, evil impulses (which virtually all humans have). Few people, including therapists, are willing to be aware of their own dark side. But when we deny it in ourselves, we must pretend it doesn't exist in others, and become its victim instead of conquering it. Anyone who denies that they have or are influenced by their own darker aspects who seem to be totally sweet and light, is lying; proof of this is that they still are here on Earth.
All this generalizing about diagnostic methods and clinical approaches could go on for chapters and more chapters, and writing them would be fine if I were teaching a group of health clinicians that were reading this book to become better practitioners. But I'm sure most of my readers are far more interested in some complaint of their own or in the health problem of a loved one, and are intensely interested in one might go about handling various conditions and complaints, what types of organ weaknesses are typically associated with them, and what approaches I usually recommend to encourage healing. And, most importantly, what kind of success or lack of it have I had over the past twenty five years, encouraging the healing of various conditions with hygienic methods.
In the case studies that follow I will mostly report the simpler, easier-to-fix problems because that is what most people have; still, many of these involve life-threatening or quality-of-life-destroying illnesses. I will tell the success story of one very complicated, long-suffering case that involved multiple levels of psychological and spiritual handling as well as considerable physical healing.
Arthritis
Some years back my 70 years old mother came from the family homestead in the wilds of northern British Columbia to visit me at the Great Oaks School. She had gotten into pathetic physical condition. Fifteen years previously she had remarried. Tom, her new husband, had been a gold prospector and general mountain man, a wonderfully independent and cantankerous cuss, a great hunter and wood chopper and all around good-natured backwoods homestead handyman. Tom had tired of solitary log cabin life and to solve his problem had taken on the care and feeding of a needy widow, my mom. He began doing the cooking and menu planning. Tom, a little older than my mother, had no sense about eating but could still shoot game. Ever since their marriage she had been living on moose meat stews with potatoes and gravy, white flour bread with jam, black tea with canned milk, a ritual glass of brandy at bedtime, and almost no fresh fruit or vegetables.
In her youth, my mother had been a concert pianist; now she had such large arthritic knobs on all of her knuckles that her hands had become claws. Though there was still that very same fine upright in the cabin that I had learned to play as a child, she had long since given up the piano. Her knees also had large arthritic knobs; this proud woman with a straight back and long, flowing strides was bent over, limping along with a cane. She was also 30 pounds overweight and her blood pressure was a very dangerous 210 over 140, just asking for a stroke.
Instead of a welcoming feast, the usual greeting offered to a loved one who has not been seen for a few years, I immediately started her on a juice fast. I gave her freshly prepared carrot juice (one quart daily) mixed with wheat grass juice (three ounces daily) plus daily colonics. She had no previous experience with these techniques but she gamely accepted everything I threw her way because she knew I was doing it because I loved her and wanted to see her in better condition. She also received a daily full body massage with particular attention to the hand and knees, stimulating the circulation to the area and speeding the removal of wastes. Every night her hands and knees were wrapped in warm castor oil compresses held in place with old sheeting.