Awakened at Needle Point: A Shamanic Journey into Body-Mind-Spirit Wellness

By John Jay Harper

“The search for new shamans has begun in earnest.”

~Margaret Wheatley, Ph.D., Harvard University, author of Leadership and the New Science

Introduction

It was late Friday afternoon February 26th, 2010; a cold, snowy mid-winter day in the Pacific
Northwest when an unresolved, incapacitating childhood conflict surfaced again. Indeed it was
the source of symptoms, mental and physical, that had controlled my entire life story until now.
These anxieties dogged me like a proverbial hound from hell and I began paying close attention
to them. I knew my sanity depended upon comprehending these symptoms as “signs and
symbols” of my unconscious psyche, but I did not understand why they manifested—yet!

The original catalyst for my crash and burn was the abandonment by my father in Seattle at age
5. He left my mother, Catherine, and my two brothers, Ron and Steve, homeless and penniless,
so he could hire on with a fishing fleet. His goal was to become the chief marine mechanic to
keep them trolling for the “deadliest catch” in waters up and down the coastlines of Alaska,
Canada, Washington, Oregon, and California. I never saw him again until I was 32-years old.

In fact, as I shared in the Second Edition of my book, Tranceformers:

Shamans of the 21st Century, my perceived reality since the 1950s was
nothing but the symbolic cutting down of my family tree reenacted
through me. And my heroic efforts to stop it from happening to those I
loved, again and again and again. Clinically speaking, I was suffering
from a borderline personality disorder known to psychotherapists as
“third degree emotional burns.” In short, I felt a swarm of toxic
emotions sting me that evening and reacted as a helpless child alone in
the dark—not an adult. I truly did not have a “life” yet, nor an
authentic sense of self that was symptom-free and able to engage the
world on its terms.

But the scenario that led initially to nothing more than headaches and sinus symptoms was
Claritin™ clear enough. My beloved 20-year old granddaughter, Kathryne, who had been living
with us for the past 3 years, was embarking on her first solo cross-country road trip from
Spokane, Washington to Jacksonville, North Carolina, and I was “deathly afraid” for her safety.
Katie was en route to Andrea, a girlfriend she had known in Spokane since 14, to share a
recently purchased home close to the Atlantic Ocean. Andrea was today a proud U.S. Marine
stationed at Camp Lejeune, awaiting the return of her husband, high school sweetheart Joshua,
likewise a combat soldier but fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan until summer 2010.

Specifically, in a panic-stricken spur of the moment decision that gripped my heart like a steel
vice, I decided to drive our gas-miser Honda Civic in front of Katie’s car for the initial one
thousand miles of this four thousand mile journey to the East Coast. I wanted to blaze the trail,
so to speak, make certain she, and co-driver Jody, got safely through the snowy mountain
passes in Idaho, Utah and then into the first city they planned to stop on Saturday afternoon:
Las Vegas, Nevada. I even paid for a deluxe room-in-advance at the Luxor Hotel for my wife,
Connie, and myself, before we departed Spokane. I was confident that this was a “mission
possible.”

However, my optimism overstretched my capacity to drive around-the-clock anymore, as I did

easily in my pre-retirement years, and we never made it. For I collapsed from exhaustion early
Saturday morning while driving on Interstate 84 through Boise, Idaho and was forced to exit the
freeway prematurely and pull into the Hampton Inn™ at approximately 3:30AM PST. Connie
called Katie’s cell phone and explained what had happened to me and wished her and Jody a
fun weekend in Las Vegas, but without us. We would rest a few hours, we said, and chart a new
course back home via western Idaho, eastern Oregon and central Washington, avoiding the
mountain passes crossed in the middle of the night.

This particular route East-to-West from Virginia to California was significant from an ancestral
migration standpoint. With hindsight, I recalled my grandfather was born in Salt Lake City in
1890 and my great-grandfather, Robert Harper, helped lay stones on The Mormon Temple.
Moreover, my father in fact who was born in Eureka, Humboldt County, California on April 6,
1928, died at Las Vegas Medical Center on February 25th, 1991. So my advice early on is pay
attention to the coincidences for they are sprinkled throughout my autobiography. These, of
course, are meaningful to me and my life story ultimately: but let me give you a hint upfront:
Your life is an open book too: Wake-up and follow the breadcrumbs—and bones—for there is
meaning to everything in existence and purpose under heaven if we can read the “signs of the
times” properly.

Clinical psychologist Wilson Van Dusen, Ph.D. (1923-2005), could

do just that and worked for decades with the mentally ill in
California state hospitals and the United States Coast Guard. He
concluded that “spirit possession” is at the root of many crises.
And upon retirement, he wrote about his life as a mystic, sharing a
lifetime insights in many inspiring books on heaven and hell. He
learned as I did, “The great spiritual adventurers found the whole
of creation and every part of it symbolic” as he shared in Seeing
Through Symbols: Insights into Spirit. I also have had and
investigated mystical, shamanic, and prophetic visions, as well as
spoken to millions of listeners on talk radio shows about my
conclusions to the near-death experience (NDE). Today these topics are common cocktail party
conversations among psychiatrists, psychologists, philosophers, and physicists; so I am in good
company, finally. I no longer feel like a fish out of water at least. My point is we are in the early
stages as a species learning to “walk between worlds,” bring the spiritual benefits of heaven,
and hell, to planet earth again through the eyes of the shamans. I see us integrating these skills
within a new science of soul in the 21st century. (See www.near-
death.com/experiences/experts13.html)

Shamans of the 21st Century

In the days, weeks, and months to follow spring 2010, my symptoms increased from sinus to
serious and I lost the ability to control my neck muscles and it collapsed. A pinched nerve in the
upper region of my spine at the base of my skull became so painful that it demanded medical
intervention. This bracing against pain 24/7 began a decline in my health with sleepless nights
and miserable days spiraling towards disaster. I no longer had a life really; rather I became a
walking, talking set of symptoms constantly seeking a savior with a “magic silver bullet.”

I brushed-up on Latin: Over-and-under the-counter medications available only by prescription

listed in the encyclopedic Physicians’ Desk Reference (PDR) crept into my daily vocabulary. My
medicine cabinet went from Alka-Seltzer™ to rows of neatly ordered alchemical brews from the
allopathic to Traditional Chinese Medicine herbal pharmacy. Somewhere a custom-made pain
pill that works without side-effects must exist I reasoned. If so, I never found one. You can go
into the twilight zone of numbness but you can’t remain productive once pain passes a critical
threshold of awareness within our electrified nervous system. Think root canal-level toothache
as in the Tom Hank’s movie Cast Away (2000) and you get this message loud and clear, right?

To my primary care doctors credit at Group Health Cooperative in Spokane, Tim J. Meyer, M.D.,
and Jan H. Mueller, M.D., I began a course of drugs that did address the PAG (periaqueductal
gray), the pain control center of the brain. So we started down the right track pharmacologically
even if I was to derail later. I read in Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel, the
encouraging words of biochemist Candace Pert, Ph.D.: “Pain researchers all agree that the area
called the periaqueductal gray, located around the aqueduct between the third and fourth
ventricles of the midbrain, is filled with opiate receptors, making it a control area for pain. It is
also loaded with receptors for virtually all the neuropeptides that have been studied.”

So began a turning point in my search for salvation from suffering, although understanding
neuropeptides was not easy since they acted more as quantum, non-local “fields of energy”
said the late Francis Schmidt of M.I.T. He called them mystical “information substances” or
“messenger molecules.” Dr. Pert proclaimed “This complexity has led to their being classified
under a variety of categories, including hormones, neurotransmitters, neuromodulators,
growth factors, gut peptides, interleukins, cytokines, chemokines, and growth-inhibiting
factors.”

Nonetheless, ideally, these “information substances” give us a sense of “bliss” or euphoria and
make life worth living in plain terms. But my brain quit making them, so I was prescribed the
opiate-derivative equivalent drugs such as hydrocodone and oxycodone as I underwent a
comprehensive diagnostic work-up to isolate the problem over a 3-month period from June to
August 2010. These tests included the cutting-edge in X-Ray for the spine, laboratory analysis of
blood and urine for general health index baselines, as well as cardiac enzyme function
examination at Sacred Heart and then, the final straw, MRI at Holy Family Hospital.

Now I had more diagnoses than my beloved late grandmother, Mary Evelyn Scott (1888-1977),
in Seattle would have said to me as a child, “Carter has liver pills!” Yet this is where we shine in
the West, our electron microscopes and spaceship-shaped nuclear magnetic resonance imaging
capsules save lives every single day because we can “see” into the living brain-body-blood-bone
matrix non-invasively. Though in terms of psychopharmacology we’ve only scratched the
surface of potential therapeutic potions for these non-toxic plant teacher medicines are known
only to shamans worldwide. If my musings are validated, amino acid therapy will combine with
indigenous hallucinogens to create a pharmacopeia second to none soon. I mean we all make
these spiritual visionary substances every second within our cells, tissues, intestines to brains!
My hunch is that heavenly and hellish realms are made of them as well and, thus, as real as the
rain in Seattle!

Along this same line of reasoning, I went to several complementary health care specialists in my
community to tap these psychophysical botanical plant farm roots that included acupuncture
with Rebekah Giangreco, L.Ac., Dipl.Ac., at New Moon Family Acupuncture; sports medicine
chiropractic with Ryan Johnson, D.C., at Pearson and Weary Pain Relief Clinics; and then
massage therapy with Marlene Sullivan, L.M.T. Later I also had a strong spiritual and shamanic
support team that appeared as if by magic. Robert Lindseth of the Life Church located at the
corner of 25th and South Grand Boulevard in Spokane came into my life miraculously after his
teenage daughter happened to come by our house one evening to ask my wife if there was
anyone that needed prayer? Oh did I ever! Pastor Bob invested countless hours ministering to
me this past summer as we prayed together for answers to my situation. I even asked him to
renew my covenant in baptism for I identified with this proclamation of Paul of Tarsus as never
before in my life: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in
me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me,
and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

Yes, it is true God so loves our world! (John 3:16)

In this same time period, Mona Klinger, a medical intuitive and

shaman in Bend, Oregon came into my life just as I thought I
could go on no longer. My suffering reached levels
unimaginable and I could not cope with life’s demands. Often
collapsing into a fetal position, I retreated to my back porch
deck to curl up on my side to relieve the unrelenting ache in
my neck and pain in the bones of my skull. The cold concrete
surface on its floor served as a whole body ice pack in those
early morning hours before the sun heated it anyway. Without
a doubt, however, there is One Great Spirit that listens to our
pleas for intervention, and speaks to others to go help us
recover, and Mona was that “earth angel” God sent to my rescue. Through a synchronistic chat
on Facebook™ Mona sensed my situation and that resulted in her flying, and later driving, to
Spokane to help me reorient my focus from fear to faith, illness to wellness once again. She
conducted not one but two 3-day treatments a month apart for me and Connie, and she made
all the difference in my world. From her first session employing shamanic wisdom, it was clear
that I was being spared to “walk the talk” of a Christ-centered, earth-honoring medicine man as
I had written a couple books on this topic—and seemingly it was time to “put up or shut up!”
(See www.sacredreconnections.com)

Anatomy of an Illness

And while all of these skilled and spirited practitioners of the healing arts and sciences helped
me cope to a certain extent, over the span of excruciatingly painful weeks that stretched into
agonizingly slow months I realized I was missing a critical key to opening the locked gates to my
wellbeing. In particular, I needed amino acid therapy administered intravenously (I.V.) and I
needed it today not tomorrow! I had to repair the cell damage of aging, diet, and toxic
emotions in order to restore the functioning of the communication circuitry, the message
carriers, of the central nervous system’s repair cycle: the “ligands” that are the “glue” to DNA-
RNA coded proteins. These ions cement amino acid molecule chains together to form the
building blocks of life. Anthropologist Jeremy Narby, Ph.D. had unpacked the meaning of his
own shamanic field work with the “plant teachers” in the Amazonian rainforests, ecstatically
reporting in The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge:

"When I started reading the literature of molecular biology, I was stunned by certain
descriptions. Admittedly, I was on the lookout for anything unusual, as my investigation
had led me to consider that DNA and its cellular machinery truly were an extremely
sophisticated technology of cosmic origin. But as I pored over thousands of pages of
biological texts, I discovered a world of science fiction that seemed to confirm my
hypothesis. Proteins and enzymes were described as 'miniature robots,' ribosomes were
'molecular computers,' cells were 'factories,' DNA itself was a 'text,' a 'program,' a
'language,' or 'data.' One only had to do a literal reading of contemporary biology to
reach shattering conclusions; yet most authors display a total lack of astonishment and
seem to consider that life is merely 'a normal physiochemical phenomenon."

Psychiatrist Rick Strassman, M.D. at the University of New Mexico had also released his clinical
experiments with the endogenous “spirit substance” known as N,N-dimethlytrptamine in DMT:
The Spirit Molecule. That is, DMT was made naturally by the brain-body-blood and was
concentrated in the pineal gland, what Rene Descartes himself called the “seat of the soul.” In
metaphysical terms, this is the third eye. Since 1996, Dr. Strassman has been exploring models
for the DMT effect, and has focused primarily on the Old Testament concept of prophecy. This
is a spiritual experience which takes into account the apparently external, free-standing nature
of the DMT “worlds,” in which one’s sense of self is highly preserved and interactive. This is in
contrast to previous models that borrow more heavily from Eastern religious systems, ones that
emphasize unitive, ego-dissolving experiences. In addition, the prophetic model deals directly
with ethical and moral concerns, adding a crucial element to our ability to understand and
integrate the content of the psychedelic experience. He is developing these ideas in his next
book, The Soul of Prophecy, due to appear in 2011. (See www.rickstrassman.com)

So one morning at my wits end with drugs of every

flavor that did not yield viable cures only intolerable
side-effects, I remembered an informative dialogue
I had on Facebook™ again, albeit a year earlier. It
was with Steve Sewell, founder of Mind & Body
Works in Durango, Colorado, and he had merely
succinctly replied to a comment I made that I was
using amino acids orally to improve my health.
Steve acknowledged my efforts but stated that in
many cases, they had to be administered via I.V. to
enter the bloodstream: bypass the digestive tract. Again, Dr. Pert, formerly a Research
Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Georgetown University Medical
Center in Washington, D.C., wrote in her aforementioned textbook on this topic: “Ligands are
generally much smaller molecules than the receptors they bind to, and they are divided into
three chemical types. The first type of ligand comprises the classical neurotransmitters, which
are small molecules with such unwieldy names as acetylcholine, norepinephrine, dopamine,
histamine, glycine, GABA, and serotonin.” (See www.candacepert.com)

After a telephone conversation where I shared my medical history, he speculated that, perhaps,
my brain could no longer create its endogenous, morphine-like pain killers, the endorphins, that
had become known as the “runner’s high.” I agreed that was a reasonable conclusion given my
“free-floating” symptoms of anxiety-panic, hypomania that seemed even to me to be a case of
hypochondria; that is, more psycho than somatic! In the final analysis, I needed high-tech soul
food: the “finger-licking-good” ligands that could possibly put Humpty-Dumpty together again.
If I wanted what they offered, Steve told me I could report to him at the clinic on Wednesday,
September 15th, 2010 for a physical examination by Paul Glanville, M.D., an anti-aging specialist
schooled in complementary and traditional medicine. I was impressed: they seemingly had
exactly what I was looking for no doubt about it.

From my own decades of study in the nutrition sciences and practice in Community Health
Administration and Wellness Promotion with the U.S. Navy Hospital Clinic, Keyport,
Washington, I knew that the future of healing disease would be through the integration of the
East and West, what Larry Dossey, M.D. in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and his wife, Barbara Dossey,
R.N., Ph.D., calls ERA-III Medicine. They do not mince words or split-hairs—and neither do I—
for this is the emerging health care paradigm of the future: We are literally “thought forms” co-
existing within the Mind of God, and we need to apply this eternal truth to our lives here and
hereafter. We co-exist with myriad life forms and we need to get over it and get on with it:

Taking nonlocal mind seriously can, as I describe in Reinventing Medicine, widen the
dimensions of consciousness. We can tap into sources of wisdom beyond ourselves and
beyond the present: Creative breakthroughs and prophetic knowing become ordinary in
 the context of nonlocal mind. Empathy and compassion flower as a result of our felt
linkage with one another. And the awareness of immortality, as I've described, takes the
pressure off living and dying. This will not happen automatically, however. We have to
do our share and set our biases and prejudices aside. These are urgent matters. As
Andre Malraux said, "The twenty-first century will be spiritual or it will not be at all."
(See www.dosseydossey.com)

Rocky Mountain High

For the record, it is an absolutely divine drive into Durango.

Colorado from all directions but we had come by way of the
northern Interstates: I-90E, I-15S, I-70E: Spokane-Billings-Salt
Lake City-Grand Junction, and then south onto Colorado
Highway 550. This is a breathtaking scenic route with big
timber, wildlife views at somewhat oxygen-starved elevations:
over two miles high at its jagged-rocky top peaks. But what a
beautiful clear-blue unpolluted sky!

Then as we descended into the City of Durango itself, we saw clean streets, a well-planned city
center and marketplace that highlighted its southwestern cowboy theme. The focal point was
the restored train station for the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. Of course, the
antique brick hotels with crystal-chandeliers and gun-fighting saloons of the 1800s helped set
the stage, literally. Actually, Connie remarked that we had come to a 5-star vacation getaway—
not a sterile-looking typical medical district as we had envisioned. There was even a gorgeous
fast-moving river running through the city park. This in fact was a sacred space nestled within
the Four Corners of the USA.

Upon arrival at the clinic the next morning, I already knew that I came to the right place to kick-
start my immune system. If I needed a booster shot of confidence, I was greeted with a warm
smile by Julie Frank, the office administrator, and Steve Adams, my co-counselor for the next
10-days. Then I reported for my physical exam at 10AM to Paul Glanville, M.D., and read these
inspirational words on his business card from Psalm 103 that made my day:

“
Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits who forgives all your sins and
heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and
compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed
like the eagle's.” You know what an eagle can do, right? It can grow brand new feathers
no matter its age!

Indeed I needed new feathers, and bones to support them, if I was ever to fly with my wings
upright again without a neck brace and a bucket load of medicines. In a nutshell, be careful
what you pray for but also extremely sensitive to what you write about, and who, for they may
very well return to validate, or not, your claims about them be they among the living or dead.
You’ll see what I mean when you read the First Edition of my book Tranceformers: Shamans of
the 21st Century. But, in brief, you will learn what I learned from an after-death communication
with a “deceased” optics physicist colleague and why analytical psychologist Carl Jung, M.D.,
stated “Modern behaviorist psychology reduces psychic happenings to a kind of activity of the
glands; thoughts are regarded as secretions of the brain, and thus we achieve a psychology
without the psyche.”

In other words, we have removed the psyche—soul—from our world as an independent reality
where the truth is we are entangled in messenger molecules just because “matter is minded.”
Spiritual encounters are synchronistic clues—profoundly meaningful coincidences—that speak
to a multi-dimensional, layered “hyperspace” cosmos filled-to-the-brim with wisdom beings.
There is simply no wiggle room anymore around this fact says National Public Radio award-
winning correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty, and acclaimed author of Fingerprints of God:
The Search for the Science of Spirituality. The lesson we are learning from amino acid therapy is
straightforward: the mind of the mystic, shaman, and prophet co-exists within a living field of
information that is lying dormant, untapped yet flowing-freely through us all now. That is, the
knowledge to heal ourselves is available for the asking the right questions and playing possum,
therefore, is not the answer to a user-friendly universe!

To the point: our life story must become lucid and integrated in the larger scheme of things:
The Big Picture. That is, the author of creation, God, writes the Book of Life and illustrates it
with our life experiences each and every moment throughout an infinite number of space-time
worlds. I wept tears of joy for I knew that my prayers had been answered: my deliverance from
pain was at hand and my walk into wellbeing had begun finally. Although I was optimistic, and
looking forward to the treatment sessions, I was about to take an unexpected swan dive, and it
was not the 6,500 foot elevation in Durango that made me swoon either.

I Died in Durango

“Are you okay, John?” my nurse, Jessica Dehen, R.N., asked. She
had skillfully inserted the first of ten-day intravenous (I.V.) feeding
tube needles into my arm, but suddenly my mind relaxed its
tenacious grip on the pain in my neck. I unwittingly started to slump
into what I imagined was the darkness of unconsciousness, so
replying softly, I said what I felt was true: “I’m dying.”

She calmly helped me into a black lounge chair and discretely

summoned Dr. Glanville to check my vital signs, if that was needed.
But it wasn’t, and of course I was not dying but being reborn in fact into a new way of living. Yet
I didn’t know that until a few days later after I shared what had happened to me with Jessica
and she corrected my distorted perceptions of this incident. She informed me that I did not
faint nor have any type of adverse reaction to the amino acid nutrients whatsoever, rather I
simply slipped into a deep state-of-sleep—and snored to high heaven!
As I reflected upon her words, that made perfect sense since I had not slept without a sleeping
pill in months. I knew I had stopped dreaming once I began taking Ambien™ and my educated
guess was that rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep is much more critical than we have imagined.
Perhaps, the brain-body cannot repair itself properly if we induce sleep with drugs of all types:
alcohol, prescription, and/or street? Maybe the organic messenger molecules created by nature
such as serotonin, dopamine and melatonin, for examples, are arrested with artificial analgesics
and tcannot exchange genetically coded information with the brain-heart-blood-bone immune
system network, I pondered?

Author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary
Shamanism, Daniel Pinchbeck, shared the conclusions of Dr. Carl Anderson of McLean Hospital,
Virginia: “… disparities between the left and right brain disrupt REM sleep, which as Anderson
notes is ‘essential for emotional regulation, learning, and memory consolidation.’” In particular,
I agree with Dr. Anderson, although I acknowledge that Pinchbeck, a wise urban shaman in his
own right, is not totally convinced yet with respect to this physician’s hypothesis:
“Interhemispheric struggles, primarily a result of child abuse, may be a fundamental
psychological root of drug addiction.” (See www.breakingopenthehead.com)

Accordingly, drug addiction is indeed getting worse

“If we could give every
individual the right
amount of nourishment
and exercise, not too
little and not too much,
we would have found
the safest way to
health.”
Hippocrates (c. 460-370
BC)
every single year in PTSD breeding grounds: military
combat zones, inner cities, and First Nations
reservations. This is the siren song warning that our
children and grandchildren are at high-risk for self-
destruction in untold numbers if we do not intervene
now, if not for any other reason that we are a
nutritionally-bankrupt nation! The obesity, for
instance, we see is symptomatic of stress stored in
belly fat and the high corn sugar-low exercise diets
and that will have only one long-term outcome for the
Western world: degenerative diseases such as
diabetes, hypertension, premature pain, suffering, and
death with correlated runaway health care medical
costs.

So I asked myself: Can amino acid therapy rewire our

genes towards not only optimal wellness and personal happiness but world peace too? Is it that
simple: Let food be our medicine in the way that the father of medicine, Hippocrates, meant it?
It’s a visionary idea for certain and will require considerable scrutiny if and when taken
seriously enough to have federal government funds assigned to it. In the meantime, I’d reflect
upon the meaning of the epigenetic medicine model findings of Dawson Church, Ph.D. relayed
recently in his book The Genie in Your Genes: “The healing power of consciousness and
intention appears to be independent of time as well as space. Prayer seems to work
retroactively as well as across great distances. Perhaps the whimsical injunction is true: ‘It’s
never too late to have a happy childhood!’” (See www.soulmedicineinstitute.org)
Can we pray our self and world well too? This much I know from my observation: our brain is a
terrible thing to see waste away on junk food, drugs, and booze! Slowly I stitched the pieces of
my addiction disorder that included a 12-pack of beer for forty years and pain puzzle together
with the help of the staff assigned to me for that purpose: co-counselors extraordinaire Steve
Sewell, Steve Adams, and shamanic practitioner Marie Redfeather. Though my life story is not
unique, it is totally relevant to you my friends regarding how to heal from childhood traumas,
symptoms, employing specific steps I took along the way that I methodically, painstakingly but
also joyously, outlined in the Second Edition of my book, Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st
Century.

Not surprisingly, every one of the lessons-learned on my own from decades of research, I saw
incorporated into the wellness model employed at Mind & Body Works. Go figure! By the way,
my two books are also directly related to what is happening to people and planet today in era-
2012: We are threatened with extinction. As cell biologist Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. has said: “It’s the
environment stupid!” Our toxic technology has turned our agricultural soils and drinking water
sources into septic tanks and our dysfunctional attitudes, behaviors, and lifestyles are eating
away at our immune system. Therefore, amino acid therapy is the key to survival in our efforts
to offset the impact of climate changes and what near-death researcher at the University of
Connecticut, Professor of Psychology Emeritus Ken Ring, Ph.D., knowingly called us to embrace
two decades ago: the “shamanizing of humanity!” (See www.brucelipton.com and
www.iands.org)

Thus I cannot emphasize enough the importance of shamanic tools and techniques for our day
and age for it is indeed the “myths” by which we live that determine our life story individually
and collectively as a civilization. What is it we want to experience, in other words? It could not
be said more clearly and forcefully than this prophet: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
(Proverbs 23:7)

The Key is Under Your Mother’s Pillow

Over the 10-day course of I.V. treatments with amino acid nutrients,
what I came to call “Love Potion Number 9,” I also had sessions with
other outstanding health care providers including Healing Touch™
with Linda Marie Ambrose, as well as in the downtown Durango
community. Namely massage therapy at Amaya Natural
Therapeutics, and acupuncture at Animas Oriental Medicine clinic.

Macushla F. Hobin, L.Ac., MSTOM is a graduate of the Pacific College

of Oriental Medicine, San Diego, California and her expertise in
clinical diagnosis and needle placement really opened the door—chakras and meridians—to my
healing. For the first time in six months, I finally heard an assessment of my situation that made
sense of the symptoms that was a true mystery to me. Yet I agreed with her immediately,
intellectually and intuitively, as to the underlying cause-effect relationships: Sleep Deprivation.
More so, I was told that my neck symptoms presented itself in a way that was well-known to
the classical oriental medicine model and therefore had specific treatment protocols that could
be followed.

Beyond a doubt, I benefited once these blocked pathways were opened to the flow of life force
energy—ch’i—again through my spinal column vertebras and into the skull’s sinus cavities. I felt
the instant relief from pain when she inserted needles into C7 vertebra that second session:
these circuits began to function as intended. That is, I was no longer grid-locked neurologically
between my head and heart in particular and the neurotransmitters could transmit messages
full-circle in these circuits of consciousness. My nerves quieted down and restored themselves
to peaceful co-existence with the natural rhythms of my lifestyle in the days and weeks ahead.

Marie Redfeather played a pivotal role in recovering and releasing early childhood trauma that I
had completely buried within my body. She is a First Nations, French-Canadian descent initiate
of Peruvian shamanism. Through her expertise, and sensitivity, to what was seeking to surface
during our counseling sessions and ceremonies together, we rediscovered a series of medical
crises that had crippled me throughout my life. Specifically, I broke my leg in the 3 rd grade and
had to be transported for treatment to Auburn General Hospital, Washington. This was in the
days when a parent could not visit or stay at will with a scared child, but to make matters even
more terrifying in my case the ward nurses used hypodermic needle injections to sedate me—
keep me quiet—throughout the night.

Moreover, during my days hooked-up to I.V. at Mind & Body Works, I flashbacked to several
incidents that involved doctors, nurses, syringes and I.V.s in Seattle. For examples, I had blocked
memories of Children’s Orthopedic and Virginia Mason Hospital clinic visits that had
traumatized me severely in my early teen years. Thus, we uncovered and brought to light how
these disturbing incidents ultimately steered my studies to psychology in my totally
subconscious efforts to continually work through these fears as an adult much as psychiatrist
Stan Grof, M.D. outlines happens in Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern
Consciousness Research. (See www.holotropic.com)

Needless to say, I was indeed “awakened at needle point” in Durango, Colorado!

However, it was the insights of the founder of Mind & Body Works that triggered a major
catharsis during his first counseling session with me. Steve Sewell patiently listened to my
medical history: recitations of childhood and alcohol abuse, military injuries and related
psychophysical symptoms, allopathic and integrative treatments, as he observed my body
gestures, too. He then gently, nonchalantly offered this “pearl of great price” for me to mediate
upon later that evening at the Iron Horse Inn motel as my homework assignment in fact: “The
Key is Under Your Mother’s Pillow.”

So I mused into the night, as my wife slept alongside me, about my life’s story and how I spoke
it into existence with every word uttered. Specifically, I came to see the wisdom in the words of
St. John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
(John 1:1). That is to say, I needed to wash my mouth out with soap for I spewed out toxic
temper tantrums, childish concepts and emotions in nearly every sentence. I colored my world
with words that had coagulated, nearly choked the life out of me with fear over many years by
failing to follow my bliss as a public-speaker because I was reenacting my mother’s sense of
“learned helplessness,” also known as clinical depression, at being abandoned by my father—
not me. In reality, I never knew my father given my age at the time of his departure but I did
incorporate—make physical—every negative emotion my mother felt and broadcasted into my
adolescent environment. My father had little, if anything, to do with my issues was the bottom-
line: It was “mommy dearest!”

Summary

In the Gospel of Thomas, Christ spoke these words of wisdom: “If you bring forth what is within
you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is inside you, what you
do not bring forth will destroy you.” Daniel Pinchbeck has the right molecular spin on many of
these matters: “The tryptamine molecule is the building block of many neurotransmitters. …
You may spend the rest of your life suppressing the memory, but it is still inside of you.” In a
burst of clarity, I saw that I did not get sick or healed in a vacuum these past months, rather my
life story was the well-orchestrated script that God had designed to bring me to my future work
with people suffering from addictions, pain, and stress disorders needing amino acid therapy.
To say I am objective anymore is a lie: I am subjective in that I know what works and I plan on
shouting it from the rooftops! If you are an adventurous, courageous soul willing to follow the
road less travelled to achieve optimal wellness, then I wholeheartedly suggest that you go to
this website right now: www.mindandbodyworks.org. Indeed, be bold and call the Mind & Body
Works clinic Toll Free at 1-888-788-7348!

Recommended Reading References

1. For those interested in the symbolic treatment of illness, I refer you to an eclectic new
book on this topic, Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy
by Alejandro Jodorowsky in Paris, France. As well as the insights of Jungian-oriented
psychotherapist Paul Levy in Portland, Oregon, himself a former mental hospital patient
and now “crazy life a fox.” (See www.awakeninthedream.com)
2. Braverman, E.R., M.D., and Pfeiffer, C.C., M.D., Ph.D. The Healing Nutrients Within:
Facts, Findings and New Research on Amino Acids. CT: Keats Publishing, Inc., 1987.
3. Harper, John Jay. Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century. CA: Reality Press, 2009.
(www.reality-entertainment.com)
4. Twiss, Richard. One Church Many Tribes. CA: Regal Press, 2000. (www.wiconi.org)

About the Author

John Jay Harper is a Community Health Coach specializing in the treatment of addiction, pain
and stress disorders and author of the bestseller Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century.
He holds post-graduate degrees in Business Administration, Human Resource Management,
Community Health Administration, Wellness Promotion as well as Clinical Hypnotherapy and
Psychology. He can be reached for radio/TV/print media-interviews at jjayharper@msn.com or
on Facebook anytime. John is now serving as a consultant to Mind & Body Works in order to
establish a public-speaking awareness campaign for amino acid therapy clinics nationwide. (See
www.johnjayharper.com)