Personal Geography

the earth, the water, the desert and the mountain within you.

Good morning!

The sun has finally appeared this morning after a few weeks on the lam but my mind still looks like this photograph which was taken a few days ago. There are blotches of light, moments of shimmering awareness, and there is still a lot of cloud cover. I don’t mind the cloud cover but it does mean I am bit slower on the draw, and later to my desk.

I missed you last week as I was on retreat with someone here in my home. Retreats here, despite the name and the visions of ease that might be currently associated with the word retreat, are not spa-like or pampering. Retreats here are more like what you might imagine as bootcamp or summer school, a lot of work in a short period of time. Retreats provide deep focus and investigation, an opportunity to mine your own essence and reckon with yourself in a kind of work that cannot happen in a life that is constantly in motion.

It is true that I provide as much nourishing food and beautiful space as I can during retreats to support the work and ease the process, but there is no offsetting the call to reckon with what shows up. It is also true that I use the tools of acupuncture, essential oils, stones, herbs, meditation, talking, singing, laughing, poetry, music, even dancing to illuminate the investigation, to reveal the way, and to companion the journey. But, it also remains true that no one else can walk for you through the fire, the desert, the river or the mountain that is your personal geography.

I say all of this because I am considering something that I often bump into when offering treatment to someone. Is the treatment therapeutic or diagnostic? Who needs to know? And what do they need to know? Do they need to know the “name” of something or do they need to know the mechanics of something? How will knowing change or bring about an outcome? There are so many questions when you receive a diagnosis. Or when you feel sick but have no diagnosis. There are so many questions and additionally, is it even important to answer them? This is what happens when you are reckoning with illness, something I am sure you already know.

Personal geography is the ground on which any illness happens. And it can be the ground on which any answers are integrated into the flow of sickness and health that characterizes all of our lives. Sickness is never about the illness so much as it is about the person, the place that a person is at the moment of encounter, the place the person wants to go with the engagement, the place the person sees for themselves in the world. These attributes of personal geography will determine the way any illness manifests at a particular time.

The idea that our personal geography is what determines how an individual is ill or how an individual is healthy is the heart of the medicine I practice. No matter what you call the medicine I practice , the heart of the matter to me remains to connect you with how you experience your world in whatever way I can. I have confidence that once you can see your own world from the seat of your own body rather than from the rules or preferences of culture, family, society, or workplace, you will have the strength and clarity to make choices that bring you health no matter what diagnosis you may have received or considered.

Your personal geography involves what I call your essence, your very DNA, the flesh, blood and bone that you inhabit in this lifetime. Working on the essence level can happen through accident or illness, being provoked by circumstance. But it can also happen through your intention, your conscious choice to dive deep below the surface, to surrender, to soften into the slow undulations of the “earth” within you.