Change of Blog--new blog now on zeeva.net!

An Art of Wellness POV
 Life and times and simplification. Please check the NEW zeeva.net--totally re-created by ME! the woman who used to be known as "that poor sick brain-damaged blind woman on oxygen!"
The NEW blog is on site directory as The blog and the NEW podcast as Zeeva Radio! Playing now: the Magic Bullet--from the intro to Zeeva: the Art of Wellness the True Story of How Z Got Well Again and You Can Too! Subscribe to both--I'll be blogging or podcasting almost DAILY from my own site now!

What’s in a Name? An Injured Brain is an Injured Brain

An Art of Wellness POV
 

We  call them TBI’s (traumatic brain injury.)  ABI’s (Acquired Brain Injury.)  Few people are calling what my brain was injured by what it should be called--CBI’s: Chemical Brain Injuries. A lot of people have those without even knowing it.

We should just call them BI’s. Brain Injuries. 

Whatever event injured a brain--the injured brain malfunctions. 

The brain is central control--and when central control’s in trouble--so's the rest of you.

Brain injuries cause physical short-circuits and disabilities. Mental ones. Emotional ones. They can cause cognitive problems, short-or long-term memory loss, the inability to "find things in your brain" you know you know, do “normal” things you used to be good at, inability to recognize faces--whatever the myriad differences of experience that people with Brain Injuries are having--they’re the same kind of hell.

It’s good we’re starting to talk about brain injuries. Brain injuries are the “signature injury” of our present wars. So many veterans are now suffering from them we HAVE to help, we HAVE to talk about them. 

300,000-plus young people disabled--"forever?" What'll that cost our country that's already broke? In medical and disability costs--but more--in our HUMAN RESOURCES?

We should be talking more talk about HEALING brain injuries instead of all these identifications, diagnoses, and dooming people to think “forever.”  

We should be focusing on healing and fixing people more than the study of the “how’s” and “why’s” of the things that are going wrong. 

When it comes to Brain Injuries--the wounds and scars are not visible.  The effects are terrifying and devastating and turn lives upside-down. But people can’t SEE brain injuries--the way they can see if you’re an amputee, in a wheelchair, a brace, a cast--or blind--like I was. Notice I say WAS. For more than 5 years. I’m not any more.

When it happened to me--in 1998--mainstream medicine believed “brain cells don’t regenerate, brain injuries don’t heal.”  I got that lecture from my father-the-professor-of-pathology when I was a teen-ager, as he sliced up real brains and prepared slides for an upcoming lecture. It didn’t make sense to me then--I asked: “If every other organ in the body has cells that can regenerate--why NOT the brain? Are you sure? Do you KNOW?” He replied “There is a lot about the body medical science does not yet know.” That was in the mid-1970’s. 

Two years after I was told “it’s permanent” and I’d “never get better,” SCIENCE did one of those 180’s medicine often does: “We USED to think...but NOW we KNOW.”  They discovered brain cells DO regenerate. Good thing I’d already been working on getting mine to do just that for two years by then. I could have accepted--like the MD’s advised me to--and given up. I could have been drugged and disabled and in a board and care.

I was on my own dealing with healing my injured brain. I was lucky. I had more education on medicine than most. I was dancer and artist and a creative out-of-the-box thinker who’d studied Human Potential, Human Development and Alternative Medicine for years.  I’d been involved in the fields of Psychology, the Arts, and Peak Performance--what a human being CAN do and CAN achieve--for decades when it happened to me. 

All the doctors said I’d never get better again and wanted to treat the many diagnoses and misdiagnoses for the many bad symptoms caused by my brain injuries with drugs.  

Just like they’re doing today. Drugs can control symptoms but they don’t FIX the cause.

And they have so many side-effects--including suicidal behaviors--but they sure make a profit for Pharma.

As a doctor’s daughter--I KNEW THAT. Most people think the “medications” are helping them. I understood the concept of treating the symptom and--as my father told me when I asked--"Isn't that just killing the messenger?"--"Well if treating the symptom doesn't work--then we have to treat more aggressively." I knew how to do research and find the cutting-edge Science that was more to my liking--non-invasive and geared to FIX the injuries and help my body and brain HEAL. I knew how to find the Alternative Medicine and the Natural Healing solutions to help my Body-Mind heal. My Spirit led the way. 

Coming back from brain injury isn’t easy. But it’s possible, it’s achievable and it can be done. I DID IT. 

We just have to change our thinking and our culture from the re-active and profitable diagnosis and treatment of “permanent-rest-of-your-life-but-manageable” chronic disease and disability to the pro-active. 

And bring back that old-fashioned “CAN-DO” attitude America USED to be famous for.

Spaghetti Gazetti: Brain injury graduates celebrate a “return to real life”

Spaghetti Gazetti: Brain injury graduates celebrate a “return to real life”: "symptoms after suffering an acquired brain injury include seeing a familiar face but not being able to remember a name, always feeling tired and struggling to accept the person you have become.

It results in people losing jobs and careers, their families, hobbies and interests. “Crucially, these are the things that tell us who we are,” added Dr Quinn.

“Any one of these challenges would be enough to face without a brain injury to contend with, let alone facing them all at the same time."

An Art of Wellness POV

Coming Back from Brain Injuries--Yes You CAN!

An Art of Wellness POV

Getting Well again from brain injuries is possible--I’m living proof. When the blind woman got her sight back and could all of a sudden see--a lot of people thought “Oh she’s ALL BETTER now.” Catching up to life after being blinded and worse from toxic chemical brain injuries takes some time. Imagine what it’d be like--to be blind for more than 5 years--years during which other people had to organize (in a lot of cases--disorganize) your life! 

One of the first things I had to do when I got my sight back was try on the clothing my sighted assistants had helped me buy. More than 5 years worth of clothing. I’d take an armload and try things on in front of the mirror. Some looked just fine. Others, I’d take a look at myself and say “OMG--they let me wear THIS?”

I went through about a dozen sighted assistants in 5.5 years blind. Some thought their job was just to hang out with me. I had friends to hang out with--I didn’t need to pay companions. I needed people who’d do the jobs they’d agreed to do for the money I could afford to pay them. Some thought it was a piece of cake, telling the blind woman that the job was taken care of. Eventually a friend who’d come to visit would tell me the job was NOT being done and I’d have to find a new assistant again. 

Getting my sight back was an intense experience. It took as much getting used to having sight again as it did to losing it. The sheer input to my brain was overwhelming. Sight is a tremendous amount of input--whether to lose or regain.  When I first lost my sight, I felt like Johnny 5--you know--that escaped robot in the movie Short-Circuit who moaned for “Innnnn-put”. I’d been such a high visual person all my life I felt literally starved of visual input when I lost it. 

Getting my sight back again was wonderful and intense--but life doesn’t stop. Less than a year later, my Mom--who’d been battling cancer’s 1-5 on the opposite coast of the country while I was battling crippling and blinding brain injuries--asked for help. And the next few years of my life became about the last few of hers.  It’s almost two years since she passed and I’m only now finding my way back to an organized life and re-developing a business that went on hold. But that’s radically changed. 

The RAND Corporation says we now have more than 300,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who are suffering “some level” of brain injuries. They already lived through the hell of war. Now they’re experiencing a second hell. A hell I know something about.

You can’t SEE brain injuries--but they’re a terrible thing. People thought the blindness was bad--it was. The blindness was obvious to others--dark glasses and a white cane. What was much worse was a brain going haywire and out-of-control. You can’t SEE that happening to someone and people were just not getting why I wasn’t getting it.   And why sometimes I did and sometimes I didn’t.  

Now I am Well. And I worry about all the very many young ’un’s we have today who are going through the terrible hell of brain injury and being offered little more than disbelief or a life-sentence of disability and drugs--like I was.  Those black-box warnings we tune out when we hear the commercials telling us to “ask your doctor about”  are coming true. Who’s ready to step up and do something about all these military suicides? 

Dr Mercola on Dr Oz Pushing the Vac's

An Art of Wellness POV

Why are TV doctors pushing the flu vac's? 
See--or hear--my POV in the previous blogpost.  

But don't just take MY word for it--here's a 
really UnCommon Sense POV from one of the 
most respected Health Pro's in the US today, 
Dr Mercola:

"Dr. Mehmet Oz, talk show host and Vice-Chair and Professor of Surgery at Columbia University is perhaps the most well-known doctors in the U.S.

In the first video, a Walgreens pharmacist gives Dr. Oz a flu shot -- which was also given to everyone in his studio audience. He states that he’s been getting the seasonal flu vaccine every year for about ten years.

But what you didn’t see in that clip was Dr. Oz stating that when it comes to the swine flu shot, neither his wife nor his four children will get the vaccine. This comes up during his interview on CNN, shown in the second video.

It’s amazing how many doctors have been hoodwinked into believing that the flu shot is a necessity.  It’s also interesting to note that when employment is not on the line the doctor acquiesces to a far healthier approach, and his wife and children will be spared the toxic burden and other potential health hazards inherent with the swine flu vaccine.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/10/13/Dr-Oz-Helps-Shill-the-Flu-Vaccine.aspx

Why the Media's Pushing Swine-flu Vac's So Hard

An Art of Wellness POV

"We're seeing a parade of MD's on all the "news" programs and the great big push for scaring US into making sure we get in line for those "won't have enough and may not be ready in time" swine flu vac's. Oh please--the amount of time getting the vac's ready and distributed is plenty of time to take yourSELF in hand, and with diet, lifestyle and natural means--BUILD UP YOUR OWN IMMUNE SYSTEM! But are any Dr's on TV or in mainstream media pushing that idea?" 


I posted this podcast and the text with it) in late August 09.  


Now that the vac's are "ready" a lot of people are mistrustful. SMART! If you wonder WHY the Media's pushing so hard--it's a good re-read or listen-to:


http://alternativehealthcarediscussion.blogspot.com/2009/08/media-brought-to-you-by-drug-dealers.html


Be smart--be WELL!

Death in the non-Native Sweat

An Art of Wellness POV

By now we've all heard about the deaths in the "sweat-lodge" in Sedona. Notice--I put "sweat-lodge" in quotes. That's because a sweat-lodge as practiced by traditional Native American people and the "sweat-lodges" that new-age leaders have been offering for years for money to people who seek another way to heal themselves are very different things. Therein is the problem.

Sweats have been practiced--as Body-Mind-Spirit traditions by cultures all around the world for thousands and thousands of years. In many parts of the world, as religions changed, and people lost  awareness that human beings are Body-Mind-Spirit beings, the traditions changed too. The benefits to the health of the body were clear, and though religions changed, many parts of the world kept going to sauna as a way to heal the Body--without the Mind or Spirit practices involved. Not until the latter half of the 20th Century did Science "prove" why heating up the body is beneficial: inducing sweating--the body's natural self-cleansing process--allows our bodies to expel accumulated toxins, but we now also understand the Science of metabolism, and how the increase of body temperature "turns on" the self-healing processes that healers understood (without our modern-day technology to prove it) long before the days of Hippocrates.

Some Native American peoples were also removed from their traditional ways for many years. Some found them again. And some handed down their traditions meticulously, quietly, down through the generations of their people. In the late 1970's, involved with many humanistic psychology and alternative health practitioners, I was invited by non-Native American people to come to their "sweat-lodges." I demurred. I'd already been a seeker and a traveller. I'd been fortunate to meet traditional healers around the world--and I felt that if I were to experience a tradition, I'd rather experience it with traditional people. A Native American elder I met pointed out how important it was to prepare spiritually, knowing the right ways, the right prayers, everything involved with the construction of the lodge, even before heating the stones and going into the lodge for the actual "sweat." She said something very powerful. She asked what it would be like if someone who was not of a Christian tradition that took communion put on the vestements of a priest, bought the chalice, the other tools, the wine, and without the correct preparation or spiritual training, sang the prayers, performed transubstantiation then offered communion. "People would be offended," she said. "Yet non-Native people do not feel there is anything wrong with performing our traditions."

Later, I worked with Native American people of different tribes, and was fortunate to be invited to traditional sweat-lodges in different parts of the country. Different tribes have different traditions. They "do sweats" in different ways. But a sweat-lodge is a very serious spiritual practice and undertaking. Native people have traditions of giving, and if you come for value, you give value of yourself in return. It is a matter of respect: respect for Self and respect to the People you have come to. But I have never been to a traditional sweat where they charged money for it.  And while I've been in sweats where we were crowded close together in small quarters, they were never so crowded that the lodge leader was not able to keep a very strong awareness of each individual in the lodge--many things can happen in a sweat. Whatever reasons the sweat is happening for, whatever reasons the seekers have in coming, the Body-Mind-Spirit welfare of each individual--and the group-- is a very serious responsibility of the lodge-leader.

In the first year after the acute toxic chemical exposure that injured my brain and body, and blinded me for years, I was being bounced around clinic doctors who had only drugs and a board and care to offer me. No real help, no real relief. My Indian friends brought me food, healing herbs, and took me twice a month to a lodge at a California reservation. I'd sweated there with them when I was well. When I became very sick, they cared for me and worked on me. I probably would have died that year without the healing I experienced there. I'd done a lot of work for their people over the years and they asked nothing of me in return. Later, when I got to one of the two medical toxicologists in the entire state of California at the time, he told me that I needed to go into a sauna as often as I could--to help my body remove the toxic overload. Without the healing of the sweat and the leaders who knew how to help my Body-Mind-Spirit, I do not know if I would have survived. I am grateful.

Choose and Infect: Stress? or a Wellness State of Mind

An Art of Wellness POV

State of mind matters. A Wellness State of Mind let ME beat brain injuries--when THEY said I wouldn’t! Life IS stressful. The economy, worries about our Health-Care system--we’re  all feeling it. And some of us are acting, well, less than Well. Daily--we're programmed by messages to "ask your doctor about" anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, and other  medications to calm us down, help us sleep. HELLO!

Those drugs dull some of the symptoms, do NOTHING for the cause, and are just downright dangerous! Maybe you remember--when we had a war on drugs, we knew that drugs tended to make people weak, sick and behave badly! Once the pharmaceutical industry and MD's colluded for profit; we lost our power to be Well: all kinds of diseases and disorders could now be managed with drugs. We became MORE stressed. America became much less Well!

  

Seems to me our culture of disease and disorder has made it OK for a lot of bad behaviors to flourish, for more people to have chronic disease, become addicted to prescription drugs, to feel powerless! “It’s a disease making me behave like this...”  Talk about STRESS!

Take back your power! Start to create change for yourself and others with a Wellness State of Mind! True, everyone’s stressed and Zeeva’s Art of Wellness does say “The only person whose Wellness you can really do anything about is your own.” But just like a negative state of mind can infect the people around you--you, too can infect others with YOUR Wellness State of Mind! If you work on your OWN Wellness State of Mind not only does that affect you--you impact others around you in a positive way. YOU'll feel better, more in control, and get more Well--and so will those around you.

A community Wellness State of Mind can heal US, improve our lives, and together, we can begin to change this culture of disease, disorder and bad behaviors!  Countless studies "prove" we affect one another's states of mind. Have angry people in your circle? You're likely to get angry easier than you "normally" would! Negative folks? You too get more negative. If you have happy people in your circle, you're more likely to be happy.

When asked why some people “get better” and some people don’t, my father-the-doctor-and-medical- professor would answer “Attitude.” Those who had the attitude that they would get well again would usually succeed. Those who believed the disease had them, would succumb. That was surely true for me! I got Well again because I believed I could and would! And I DID. Check your attitude! Be WELL! Be INFECTIOUS! All of us have an amazing power to change ourselves and the world around us--simply by our attitude, the things we do and the energy we put out--one by one-- into our worlds.

Yes, times are tough--but with the right attitude--you CAN make a difference for your SELF--and for the world around you.

I invite you to follow my blog--this week I begin to excerpt my book, Zeeva: the Art of Wellness the True Story of How Z Got Well Again and You Can Too! 

Learn how my attitude, my lifelong natural Wellness Lifestyle, alternative medicine, and cost-effective non-invasive cutting-edge Science let me beat a medical life-sentence of "permanent brain damage, permanent blindness, and permanent disability!"

Learn about what I’m working on today--to help our veterans whose brains have been injured in the wars! Learn how YOU can help too! And get into a Wellness State of Mind! Let’s start a Wellness Pandemic!

Coming Back--It Ain't Easy

An Art of Wellness POV

In August and September, I moved my studio and my company's offices from the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District studio I'd been for more than a decade up to Helicon--my high desert and green Creative Wellness Retreat just a short drive north of LA.  


It was a very emotional leaving for me: I'd been an Arts District gal since the early 90's. I lived a lot of life there.  It wasn't where the toxic installation that changed my life and took years away from me happened--I moved into the studio after becoming blind and disabled from the acute toxic chemical exposure that had the MD's saying I'd be "permanently blind, permanently brain-damaged, permanently disabled."  
It was where I began to heal, and the birthplace of my company Zeeva International Inc.  


I opened Bashtet Studio there back in 2002--when I started to get better and everyone wanted to know WHAT I was doing to get better.  "So many people are trying to get better and can't.  You HAVE to SHARE!" everyone said. I was blind. I was on oxygen.  I was working hard on my own rehabilitation to come back.  But still, they wanted me to "SHARE!"  It made sense to me. People needed to know how to be Well.


I saw it in my mind's eye. Sighted assistants helped me find what I saw and then set it up. I hired great teachers and we offered my urban community an escape to a beautiful peaceful retreat with classes in the kind of Body-Mind-Spirit techniques I was using to heal my SELF.  Bashtet was about Movement Arts, Dance, Yoga, Meditation, Aromatherapy, and we hosted the Community Healing Project--where alternative healers volunteered to give people in need holistic treatments for a very small donation.
It did my heart such good to hear that people who came in sickness and pain experienced some relief and left saying "OH--I feel better!"   


Moving during the California wildfires was challenging but so empowering!  Shorthanded, I did most of the move myself. An old friend came one night after work to help me load the "heavies" I couldn't hoist into my van myself. Another old friend committed to help with the one truckload of heavy large pieces, showed up on the day he told me to rent the truck and bailed, making the "I'm an ARTIST!" speech that I, who've travelled through artists' communities around the world, have only heard in LA--when someone doesn't want to do something they said they'd do.  Thank goodness there were day-workers at Home Depot. You know--those guys they say are taking jobs away from Americans. There were no Americans looking for work that day. They loaded me up in less than two hours and then I got a couple more to unload (in one hour) into my garage.


 Yet with each van-load I loaded and unloaded myself, each heavy piece I'd move into place, I'd think: "And I'm supposed to be permanently disabled!" 


It's amazing what we can accomplish when we have to. I'm 54 years old. In the last year, I've been my own contractor and rehabilitated a torn-up old house. That was supposed to be my ex's job--he chose the house as the one where his labor could make the most difference in increasing the value. The kitchen rehab I'd financed and he installed was to increase the value enough for the re-fi to pay for the next round of work. My mortgage broker said everything was in place, she was sending her appraiser, and as soon as she had a number "You'll have the cash in 3-4 weeks max."  


Then the economy crashed. My mortgage broker went incommunicado. The ex bailed with the house torn up ready for the next infusion of capital.  There was nothing to do but roll up my sleeves and do it mySELF.  I hired one guy to frame up a wall where one was needed, two others to hang the new doors--just before the coldest, snowiest winter my community had seen in 33 years hit, and an electrician to take care of the torn-out electric I couldn't fix myself.  Then I went from one end to the other of a 3800 square foot house, plastering, spackling, weather-sealing, fixing, and painting.


Thank goodness I'M an artist and I grew up knowing how to do these things. Amazing how old skills come back.  It's taken me almost a year--and it held me back from my own work and cleaned me out. But at last I have a place to work, to teach, to live like a human being. Now--to keep it.  


It's not the hardest thing that ever happened to me. I already lived through that--and I BEAT it. Today I'm WELL.  I can SEE. And life is changing again.  


Now--at last I'm ready to share the Art of Wellness with you--because no matter what age or shape you're in--by practicing the Wellness Lifestyle I lived all my life--you too can get better, feel better, and live better. And isn't that what it's all about? 

Creating an Abstract Art Painting by the Contemporary Artist Vera - www.veraarts.com

LOVE this!

Brain Injuries: the Signature Injury of our Post 9/11 Wars

Brain injuries are a hell like no other. In the “old days”--someone with a head injury would be described as “just not being right in the head” after that. They say that brain injuries are the the "signature wound of this war" and we have “little understanding of its long-term consequences.“
That was before we had so many chemical concoctions to alter our biochemistry and all the many possible diagnoses. Chemical treatment of symptoms became standard operating procedure of a profession we all still believe is committed to our health. Now we medicate people to control the symptoms rather than figuring out how to fix what went wrong. Medicating people for things that can be fixed with our own human abilities is a scary kind of Science. Thank goodness it’s not the only kind of Science.

I CAME BACK from brain injuries and BLINDNESS-- THEY said were "permanent!" THEY said I'd never get better again!

And if I had to go with the kind of treatment our veterans and soldiers are getting--I'd still be blind, sick, with a brain that wasn't working. We need to talk about FIXING brain injuries--not managing them!

Z to DC: My response to WhiteHouse request for videos on Health Care Reform

I got an e-mail request from our Vice-President last week--maybe you got one too! Though I've been madly busy with my own work getting the Art of Wellness to you and moving my studio from LA to Helicon during the wildfires!--I took the time to make this response.

We want and need Health Care Reform--but all they're talking about is Health Insurance Reform! So here's some UnCommonSense from Z on that!

If you agree--please share it--and this blog--with all your contacts--especially YOUR representatives in DC!

I invite you to follow my blog--just click "follow" and you'll get an e-mail update when I post something new! Recommend your friends, family, colleagues and other contacts follow too!
It'll help ME get promoted in the blogosphere and get the word out that you CAN get better--even from extreme illness and disability--like I did!

Blogging make it easier for me to be interactive and share the things YOU want to know! JUST CLICK on comment--and talk to me!

YOUR comments here let ME know what you want to hear more about!

Z's reaching out to Brain-Injured Vet's: I KNOW about being told you'll be disabled "forever" and that you CAN heal an injured brain! I'm living PROOF.

Please share this blog with any vet's, their families, and friends--at least once a week, I'll be posting something new about BrainWorks!

Stay POSITIVE in these challenging times and we'll all get through them!

SCIENCE now has proof that positivity affects everything--including your immune system.

Remember: nothing's impossible when you believe!
Otherwise--I'd still be BLIND!

Be happy, be healthy, be WELL

8 Supplements for Energy - Dr. Weil's Daily Tip

8 Supplements for Energy - Dr. Weil's Daily Tip

Shared via AddThis

How to Save an Injured Brain? Art and Science!

An Art of Wellness POV

When I was blind-all-and-systems-frying from the effects of industrial toxins on my body and brain--the first real relief and concrete reason to keep believing I could beat this--I could get better--came when I met Dr. Hershel Toomim.

Experimenter, researcher, scientific inventor and pioneer--my kind of guy all around. Interested with something experimental to offer. The success we began to have gave him one of his first HEG case studies. I was lucky to meet him. He got was I was going through. He was the first one who asked questions that made sense--that mattered--to figuring out what was going on. The first who had something to help.

There was no comprehensive program for me to follow. No roadmap but my own lifelong Wellness practice and a strong background in human development, peak performance, mainstream and alternative medicine. That’s how I knew how to find the cutting edge of the BioFeedback Center of Los Angeles, BioComp Research and Dr Hershel Toomim.

Our first goal was to stop the deterioration caused by neurotoxins. The healing didn’t start til I began to get enough oxygen. That took time. Time for me to get it, and once I did, time for my body to use it and start healing itself.

In our first HEG-training sessions, we worked on the areas that gave me some of the most troubling brain malfunctions--cognitive, physical, and behavioral.

Then everything began to improve and continued improving.

We worked and talked of many things: the other wholistic treatments, natural products and practices in my own Self-Designed rehabilitation plan.

He was my seasoned scientific guide into brain-injury and technology and I the determined trainee who challenged him to develop his art. We talked about HBOT (hyperbaric oxygen) and how it was being used in cases of toxic chemical brain injuries.

My own rehabilitation program combined with regular HEG sessions with Dr. Toomim let me return to living life: I was working--I gave up my Disability, I volunteered in my community, and I told stories at the Getty--but I was still blind, and I still needed supplemental oxygen. What I was doing was not enough. I chose a clinic south of the border to get the holistic, medically supervised detox treatment I needed combined with HBOT. The only treatment they didn’t have there I wished I could be doing concurrently was HEG via neurofeedback.

I left LA a blind woman and came back with sight. At last I could see the man who’d taken a confused, deteriorating neuro-toxically brain-injured blind woman and helped me fight my way back! He helped me make sense of things over the next many months as my brain continued to reorganize.

Today, Dr Hershel Toomim’s combining HEG and HBOT with great success in his Los Angeles facility. Thousands of individuals who have benefited from HEG neurofeedback therapy or who use Brain Exercise Works!™ at home, attain the benefits of cognitive acuity (improved I.Q.) as well as improvements in social integration (autism). The idea that anyone can learn to voluntarily control the blood flow in their brain is now as real as the ground we stand on. The Biofeedback Institute of Los Angeles is entering a new expansion phase to provide many more people the opportunity to experience Brain Exercise Works!™. Currently, there are over 2,000 instruments and 1,000 therapists worldwide providing HEG brain exercise at any given moment.

One Love | Playing For Change | Song Around the World

Poetry Feeds Body Mind and Spirit, Communifies and Heals

An Art of Wellness POV

“Take My Picture Gary Leonard!” http://www.takemypicture.com/TakeMyPicture.com/Home.html holds more visual treats than you can imagine. I love going there for inspiration. Gary’s a famous LA photojournalist--I’ve been his fan for years. Prolific with an incredible vision, he’s photographed people and our landscapes all his life--the famous, the infamous, and the unknown. You’ve seen his pictures in newspapers and magazines and books. Today, he has a gallery on S. Broadway with a revolving exhibit of his work. The best part--not only can you see his wonderful photographic work, you can buy it and take it home to provide you with continual inspiration.

Last week I felt the need for an infusion of Inspiration--I knew where to go. A houseful of weary Angelino’s (who’s NOT weary in this particular moment of economic turbulence?) got a real Body-Mind-Spirit-full of Inspiration at an event Gary hosted: Ad/Verse Reactions a Word performance by Ed Rosenthal and Jack Skelly.

With the backdrop of Gary’s iconic exhibition--The Billboard Show: Selling the So-Cal Lifestyle Photographic Landscapes of the 1950’s and 60’s-- the pure healing power of vocal poetry backed by the old-school bongos-and-bass by Gilbert and Charles, members of The French Semester made the Body groove and sway, transformed the crowd with the music, the spoken words engaging the Mind, and the satisfaction of the Spirit with the expression of what-we-all-feel-yet-can’t put into words.

We feel the joy, the laughter, the pain, the ridiculous, and the sublime and are delighted and healed by the words of the poets. And in the company of others who, too, are delighted and healed, we have a shared experience, and feel communified.

Art heals us: Body-Mind-and-Spirit. Art allows us to experience things we often don’t have the words to explain or express. Science has not yet figured out why. Yet wisdom handed down throughout the ages has us turning to the Arts--especially Music and Poetry when our Spirits need healing and the inspiration to keep on keeping on. Times like we’re going through today.

My thanks to the Host Gary Leonard and the Poets Ed Rosenthal and Jack Skelly for a wonderful evening of Healing Through ART, to Gilbert and Charles, and to John F. Gannon, Strike Out Studio, who filmed the event so I can share it with you--so that you too can experience the healing power of the Art of the Poets.

Just click here or on the title of this blogpost.

Look fast, you'll catch me at the door, while the intrepid Tom Gilmore introduces the night.

You'll need 39 minutes to see it--so take the time, enjoy, and be healed by the gifts of the Poets!

Invite some friends or co-workers to share it with you and experience how Art Heals and Communifies!

Once a Brain-Damaged Blind Chick...So Cut Me Some Slack

An Art of Wellness POV

Give me some time to work it all out. Isn’t that what we’re all asking for these days? It’s what we all need--especially in this insane economic mess we’re all in.

A lot of you have contacted me (phone msg or e-mail) saying you CAN’T POST REPLIES--and asking about Open ID.

Thanks for the alerts! I was starting to feel unloved. I’m working out the glitches and consulting my experts today!

I promise I’ll master Blogger in no time--and FIX whatever’s not letting you post.

And then we can talk.

For those of you who (like me) said “what’s open ID?” I posted a link so you can empower yourSELF. You probably already HAVE an Open ID and just don’t know it! Check the link! It's worth it--it basically eliminates the need to think of multiple usernames across oh--about 50,000 different websites. This SIMPLIFIES your online experience. Computers--always more to learn:)

When I was blind, it was serious survival need for me to learn talking computers. No one had the vested interest I did in researching what had happened to me, what they knew and how I could get better. I used to earn my allowance and brownie points doing research for my father-the-doctor. I knew how, where to search, and what to look for.

Talking computers were my correspondence, my library, my sanity, my lifeline to the world. But a whole new world opens when you get your sight back. Talking computers give you linear information--line by line. It’s all different-when you can SEE. When I saw what was on the monitor--for the first time in more than 5 years--it scared the bejeezus out of me.Think about how different what’s on the screen looked like to you by 2003 from what we had in ’98! The first year I often had to turn the monitor off and just use the talking programs I was used to--just to work.

THEN came learning how to use a computer visually again. Even though my brain, mental, cognitive, and others systems are back at excellent smart function--my visual systems were pretty trashed--and still tire. After all those years blind--I want to see everything. Sometimes I just have to close my eyes for a while--they’re so greedy for input--they overeat.

If YOU get confused with new programs and new sites and all the changes--imagine what it’s like for ME? Blogging's a great platform--but I’m just figuring it all out.

Which brings me to: a real-life example of Zeeva’s Art of Wellness Lifestyle.

I highly recommend you consider it for your own excellent SELF-Care. Real SELF-Empowerment.

Integral to the Art of Wellness: Want to master something? Go to the Masters.

When I got my Mac--I got the Apple One-to-One program. Best deal in town--$99 for the year and you can get a LOT of excellent training! You set up your appointment for

whatever you want to learn, come into the Apple Store a few minutes before your appointed time--and no waiting, you get your own Apple-trained and exclusive to Apple guru to teach you how to do pretty much everything you can do on a Mac! Ryan in Pasadena sold me the Mac I needed--with nuthin’ I didn’t--a few years ago and sold me on the One-to One Program. The first couple of years--I got some basics and was too involved with my late Mom’s needs to do much else. Used a virtual assistant to run my site, assist me with the Z’zine, and I wrote the book.

Last year, my VA got flaky. I walked into the Apple Store, showed ‘em my site, and said “How long will it take you to teach me to re-design, manage and maintain my own site?” THEY said “If you come in once a week--5-6 weeks.” 5 weeks later I published my own first site! Been redesigning on the fly since.

The last few months--I’ve been there every week--so I want to give Apple, Ryan, Matt, Mike, Jay, Darryl, Nathaniel, Warren, & Elaine some serious props. And brag just a bit:

Everything you see on my site--site design & implementation, the video’s, audio’s soon--has been created and done my ME--the woman people used to refer to as “the blind chick.” With the exception of the Zeeva logo and the portrait of me “as Zeeva” (from which I clipped that cool “Z’s Eyes” logo you see on top of each page) everything you see when you go to Zeeva.net or the ZeevaFamily site has been and is being done by a woman who is supposed to be “permanently blind, “permanently brain-damaged, and “permanently disabled.”

I shot the film, now I’m learning to edit, and this fall--you get to watch how an artist who lost a lot of abilities that defined me to a long battle back from brain-injury and blindness see what I can do now that I can see again.

(I chronicle that experience--and what I do as I continue my own Self-created, Self-guided, and Self-monitored ongoing rehab from the brain injuries the Medical establishment defined as “Toxic Encepalopathy-with-a -long-list-of-diagnoses “secondary” on the free ZeevaFamily membership site--sign up on Zeeva.net.

All the stuff you see--I’ve learned how to do for and by my SELF with the brilliant training and support from my Apple One-to-One team at the Pasadena CA store.

I’m such a big One-to-One fan--when store customers who stop to look over my shoulder as I’m working ask--I tell ALL of them “Get One-to-One and stop worrying about tying your friends and family down to those promises of showing you how to do something!” Usually--you can come before your One-to-One session or stay after to participate in the daily workshops in all-things-Mac they have going on too!

So hang in there, stick with me--and save your comments-to-post to a doc!

That’s MY story--I’m working on making it so you CAN post YOURS.

Pearls Before the Swine(-Flu)

An Art of Wellness POV

Food for Thought: Once upon a time the USA was the healthiest country in the world. Today we’re immune-deficient pill-poppers, terrified of the latest flu scam-demic.

We have a new flu virus going around every year. The nature of the flu virus beast is that it mutates--which is why chemical--uh--pharmaceutical companies get rich creating the new and improved vaccines for YOU each year. This year it’s a Swine-Bird flu mutant.

So far--this new flu has made it’s way around the world--and killed far less people around the world than prescription drugs kill in the US alone every year. Kathleen Sebelius--our Secretary of Health and Human Services tells us that our most vulnerable--our children--are going to be the first on the list to be vaccinated against this big bad Swine-Flu.

Her Australian counterpart--Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon is telling Aussie parents not to worry: the Swine Flu is no more dangerous than the “regular” flu. An Aussie immunization specialist estimates that though the average year in Australia sees 5 or 6 “regular” flu deaths among their kids--the H1N1 could take twice that number--from 10-12. Hmm... Are the Aussies that much healthier and more robust than Americans? Shouldn’t we be building our immune systems?

I’m listening to CNN this morning. Media’s really programming us to clamor for the new vaccine. Creating a consumer demand. Direct quotes from their newscaster:

"So we're not going to really have an immune population til December...”

“It's been in many countries around the world...”

“Swine flu's different--it kills young people and pregnant women...”

“You're worried about younger people--old people have some advantage here--at some time in their life--they were exposed and developed some immunity to it...”

“Young people’s immune systems have never seen this--so they're vulnerable..."

Why are our Media, our government, and the CDC running such a scare campaign about Swine-Flu?

What do YOU need to know?

There's no vaccine yet. There won't be ‘til mid-fall. They say you need to get TWO shots, two weeks apart, even then-- you won't have "full immunity" until about 2.5 weeks after the second shot. That’s why Ms. CNN said we won’t have "an immune population ‘til December."

This formerly blind chick sees the Media really earning those pharmaceutical advertising dollars for the networks.

NaturalNews.com’s Mike Adams points out: “To most people, vaccines sound medically harmless. “They’re good for you!” say the doctors and the drug companies, but they never really talk about what’s in those vaccines. There’s a good reason for that: if people knew what was really in those vaccines, they would never allow themselves to be injected with them...” http://www.NaturalNews.com/026779_swine_flu_patents_vaccines.html

Mike’s famous for his passion--and sharing information you just don’t see on other Health and Wellness sites. He can get pretty hot about stuff--and for good reason. Read his article to find out:

What do infected, killed-then-harvested African green Monkeys have to do with the upcoming new Swine-flu vaccine the chemical --uh--pharmaceutical companies are preparing for you?

Why does a top US military contractor share the ownership of key viral vaccine patents with the US government’s National Institutes of Health? http://www.NaturalNews.com/026779_swine_flu_patents_vaccines.html

Mike also wonders why the media’s not paying attention.

C’mon Mike--you grew up on the inside of Pharma like I did on the inside of Medicine. Follow the money.

HOW many commercials for drugs do we see daily?

In a related article (you can get it off the same link) called “10 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know About the Swine Fly Vac” Mike points out something very important:

“Let’s not beat around the bush on this issue: the Swine Flu vaccines now being prepared for mass injection into infants, children, teens, and adults have never been tested and won’t be tested before the injections begin...Notably, there is absolutely no safety data on the use of adjuvants in infants and expectant mothers--the two groups being most aggressively targeted by the Swine Flu vaccine pushers.” http://www.NaturalNews.com/026779_swine_flu_patents_vaccines.html

Dr. Mercola has a lot of great information and a new health networking site! He’s got a lot of good info on how you can start building your immune system up and be ready for flu season before the vaccine is!

He’s got a great article laying out the dangers of adjuvants in this particular new brand of kool-aid they’re trying to scare you into taking! http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/08/04/Squalene-The-Swine-Flu-Vaccines-Dirty-Little-Secret-Exposed.aspx

And what about this case in Poland: a medical trial done on as many as 350 homeless and poor people involved an “untried vaccine to the highly contagious virus.” People thought they were being paid to test a conventional flu vac. Investigators found it was actually a “bird-flu vac.” More than 20 people died. Wait--isn’t this the Swine-Bird-Flu mutant hybrid virus they’re scaring US with? Even though they haven’t proved the direct link between the deaths and the medical staff’s activities yet--the Polish Health Minister Ewa Kopacz said about the MD’s and nurses embroiled: they shouldn’t return to their profession--and that “in the interests of all doctors--the ones responsible for this should be punished.”

Makes me remember all the speeches I heard my father--the research and teaching physician--make about the “indiscriminate use of antibiotics and other drugs” American Medicine was taking from the 1960’s onwards. His concern--as a old-school pathologist--was that “we’re messing with our immune systems.”

After generations have grown up taking a pill for whatever ails you, here we are. A Chronically Diseased people on drugs, buying into all the commercials to ask you doctor about...

The CDC and all the big TV doctors are teaching us the basic hygiene habits we all learned from our grandmothers so we didn’t get sick--or if we did, we didn’t spread it. If only Medicine hadn’t developed the culture of treating symptoms with drugs instead of teaching people how to be HEALTHY. We might not have forgotten those basic habits. They’re on TV now talking about the new pandemic and how hard everyone’s working on the new vaccine--those patented expensive drugs they’re making.

If only they’d concentrate on telling us about how easy it is to build up your immune system naturally--and you should start NOW to be ready for FLU season. Oh, right--then people wouldn’t need the drugs.

That’s MY story--what’s YOURS?

Z

Artist, Dancer...Map-maker? What we're prepared for but never expect...

An Art of Wellness POV

In 1998--when they told me--the daughter of a research and teaching pathologist and a United Nations Secretariat staffer--what chemicals were in the mix I'd been exposed to--and what'd been found in my blood--I was terrified. I was already blind--that was bad enough. I knew how those neurotoxins and carcinogens would operate. I went to my alter lifted up my arms and said "You have given this to me. Now give me the strength to see it through. Give me the wisdom to learn what I'm supposed to learn and then do what I'm supposed to do."

I'd been an environmental activist, early organizer for the California Green Party, and canvassed on Prop 65--a law that controls the way that (a first 65 identified--many more now) common but very toxic industrial chemicals can be used. Ironically--asphalt--used VERY illegally--inside a building--was what did me in. It's on the list.

I understood Medicine and the human body and got into holistic as a child, human development and peak performance as a teen--and had lived Body-Mind-Spirit Balance for so many years. I knew what the law said.

As scared as I was then--the knowing came upon me--that if this terrible thing was to happen to anyone--the parents I was born to, the Masters of many fields that had guided me through childhood and since--all the different things I'd learned--had prepared me to get through this and come out the other side.

A lot of the many Alternative Health Pro's--MD's and Scientists too-- who helped me along the way commented on how even though what I was going through was terrible and confusing--I understood so much about my body-brain nervous systems and could tell them what I was experiencing and how that helped them. Not only with me--but to ask the right questions with other patients who were terrified and couldn't explain or understand what was happening to them beyond "somethings reallly wrong."

I'm an artist. I understood that even if it killed me--I had to document. I did. I learned talking computers to research and document and be able to communicate with wonderful online communities who couldn't tell from my e-mails how impaired I was and how long it took me to put my words and thoughts together. After years of catching up to a life disrupted by disability, I’d really just like to do my work. Make art.

Yet with so many people being told they must suffer with illness or disability "for the rest of your life" maybe the reason I has to go through the fires of blindness, brain injury, and disability--and all the many "systems" that people facing health issues go through--is so I can use the creative gifts from my Muses to provide others a road-map back to Wellness, and tell the story in whatever way I can--so that others who've been given the negative doom and gloom that encourages people to give up the inspiration, to tell what I experienced along the way, and provide some kind of direction for a safer path through their own journeys. No matter what state of health you're presently in--you CAN GET BETTER THAN YOU FEEL NOW. You don't have to be perfect to be Well. You just have to start.