My Best Option Was To Change What I Put in My Body / Patricia, Artist

I have had some unknown illness, or some unknown unhealth, most of my life. When I was younger, it was looked at as hypochondria and as a teenager, it was looked at as deeper issues. And it just went on, and I went from doctor, to doctor, to doctor, until at 19, my body did a major collapse. And even then, after going through all kinds of medical things, there was still no resolution to it. And one of the interesting things is during a number of years I was working as a student aide at the National Institute of Health. And so I had some of those resources available, but still, nobody was able to get at what was going on with me. And weirdly, okay, I’m 68 now and it was just say within the last 3 years that I learned what I have. And it’s called angio edema and it’s the genetic form of it.

And so back then when I was younger, because we didn’t have genetic information, no one, unless they had some references for angio edema, it was something that wasn’t in any medical … Most people, even now, I do not know any medical personnel in my community, that is accessible to me, who has information. The thing is, is because I’ve had, say through my life, I had these unknown things, and after when my body decided to change itself, even though it wasn’t something very popular in my community, I completely changed my diet. And I went from being a mainstream American hot dog whatever you want to eater, white bread, to not having any of that. Completely having a change in eating organic. And I’m talking about from the late sixties.

I found this because I was just wandering around and looking for any information I could find. I was working at a place called Woodward & Lothrop in DC. And there was this health food store across the street. And I used to go in there and I’d get all their brochures and I’d look at it and I’d say, oh this is… It was just like a foreign language because it was not anything I was familiar with. And then I discovered a place in Georgetown called the Yes Bookstore. And books. I just began reading and reading. And I decided that my best option was to change what I put into my body. And it took me a while to make the commitment to do that. But once I made that commitment, I still to this day, I eat organic.

More recently, it’s like, say on that, I have been local food Bloomington for the early two thousands. I used to be called green dove, or I used to have a website, Green Dove. And local food was a part of it because having access to healthy food has turned out to be the saving thing for my life, because I am not able to take pain medication. I’m not able to use medicines like other people. Medicines when they go into my body, they chemically behave differently. And so you might be given something that’s going to help you. And it may be something that’s going to compromise my life. So I don’t. I’m very, very… It’s like I take a one kind of a medicine right now, but it’s a very common thing. And I’m very careful and always monitoring my body. And at the same time, I’m just, think doing most people, trying to stay alive and do the best that you can and be the kindest person that you could be.

I realized that food was the only thing that I could really control. It’s like, since I knew that I was… say as a child, that I was given so many antibiotics that they didn’t seem to function with me anymore. Because the reality is the antibiotics could not help with the problem that I was having because it was edema, but it wasn’t being understood what these things were. So my going with food, it meant that I was on an island by myself in many ways, because most people… Let’s say in the beginning, my family thought that there was something incorrect with me going for this organic food and being even a vegetarian or just even considering ideas like that. Yet, I will say that within 25 years, my entire family went organic.

When they chose meats, they chose meats that were without chemicals, without hormones, without all kinds. And the choices. And it’s because even though they chose to take more medical intervention, they learned that the food was key to their health and the wellbeing. And the world at large began opening up to more organics. Even though I had to say that when I first started my local food Bloomington, the many of the major food players on the planet were putting every financial that they could towards bringing down the organics because they didn’t want them. And then you saw them shift when they realized that people really did want to eat good food and they didn’t want to eat things that might be causing them damage down the road. And so they started shifting. They still have not completely shifted because, and I wish most people knew about this, and I wish I could remember the exact number, but I think there are less than 20 corporations right now who own the major seed companies on our planet.

And among those are the Monsanto, Bayer and other groups like that. I guess since the seventies, I’ve been saying to people, if you like food and you want to be able to choose the food you eat, then you need to advocate for free seed. Seed accessibility for seeds that are in the public domain. And to that end, just because I became… I have it on a website. I found out this year something called stone seed preservation. It may go a year. It may go five. It may keep going. I’m hoping that it’s me putting up seeds on the web and saying, these are seeds that me and a group of other people who, most of them I don’t even know then, are choosing to grow this year. Next year, hopefully other people choose to grow some.

But it used to be, every family had some seed to now. Many of the kids don’t even know that their food comes from seed. And so anyway, I’ve been interested in food security all my life. Because I see food security and the quality of that food as essential to health and wellbeing for not just my body, but for your body, for the entire planet. And definitely for anybody who comes with future. But if people don’t pay attention and if people do not embrace open pollinated seeds and the other seed organizations that are coming up in preservation things, they will be at the mercy of people like the people who have not care if they had food or not. The media that cares was announcing that we are due… Unfortunately, we’ve got more than 17,000 species of trees that are ready to go out. And what that means to our planet. And the thing is that everything that is at risk, we could choose different options. But we really have been, it’s like, I am shaking because I have been taught to be afraid to say these things. I’ve been taught that, well, you can’t stand up against big corporations, but at the same time, it’s like, if you look at history, it has been people saying, we don’t really want that.

We want the best for ourselves. And I’m hoping that we here in this country and this planet that we realize that for all the money we put into our space flight, which I love outer space. I’m the sci-fi nerd. We won’t ever get there if we don’t figure out how to take care of our home base. We just really won’t. The Reiki, and the other practices that I do, they’re all about energy and they can be used with touch or without touch. It’s like most of my work now, because of just how I’ve been kind of, I’ll say grounded, the last three years or four years with my health. And so any work that I do, it is at a distance. And it’s the idea that energy is not separated by time and space. Energy just simply is. And we’ve had enough, I’ll call them physicists, prove that motion in one place can impact motion in a completely other place.

And this energy is a group. Chi, life force basically love energy. It is positive. Some people call it God force. I call it many different things and it really doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters to me is that it is a positive energy. And it is something that, say, if I were to share Reiki with you, I would get your permission. But say, for instance, you’d been in an accident and you couldn’t talk to me. And I wanted to send some energy your way anyway, I would send that energy, asking that your intelligent self accept what it will. And if it does not want to accept any of this energy that I’m offering, then let it go to somebody else who is praying for some energy help. And that way nothing is ever lost. And it just keeps going on and on and on.

But you’d have to be real specific. Have a specific question about Reiki, because it started again as looking for things to heal myself. And energy practices, polarity just they’re all… Anything that causes you to allow your body time to have respite, allow your mind to allow you to be at peace in any way is healing, is nurturing. And that is what Reiki is. Whether you’re doing it to yourself or you’re doing it to another person, it’s valuable and it’s his name? Oh, I’m having name things today. But there’s this doctor… Doci. There’s a doctor who he spent many years as a traditional medical practitioner. And later has written a number of books about prayer and how he is seeing prayer help people. And yet he has come to understand that the less specific you are, the better. That if you know a person has gone in and you are having a heart problem, pray for their wellbeing because you don’t know what may be connected to that heart problem. And if you’re only praying for the healing of that heart, then you may miss other valuable things. So just simply let healing happen. And healing doesn’t always mean that the person is going to stay present in this world, but it may mean that they have an easier time when they leave.