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 fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan until summer 2010.

Specifically, in a Titanic-like panic-stricken spur of the moment decision that gripped my heart
as within the jaws of a steel vice, I decided to drive our gas-miser Honda Civic in front of Katie’s
car for the initial one thousand of her four thousand mile journey to the East Coast of the USA. 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 that evening confident this
was a “mission possible.”

However, my cock-eyed military veteran optimism overstretched my capacity to drive around-

the-clock anymore, as I did easily in my pre-retirement years. We never made it. For I collapsed
from physical exhaustion early Saturday morning while driving on Interstate 84 through Boise,
Idaho, forced to exit the freeway pulling into the Hampton Inn™ at approximately 3:30AM PST.
Connie called Katie’s cell phone and explained what had happened 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.

With hindsight 20/20, I saw I was literally travelling on “sacred ground,” revisiting a segment of
the migration route East-to-West from Virginia to California that was significant to my ancestry.
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 meaningful coincidences for
they are sprinkled throughout this autobiography. These, of course, are relevant 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 trail of breadcrumbs—blood and bones—of your genealogy for there is meaning
to everything in existence once can read the “signs of the times” symbolically mapped by The
World Tree in the Garden of Eden.

French scholar of religions, Mircea Eliade, classified the “axis mundi” or trunk within The World
Tree as the gateway to the gods, and devils, writing in his classical book Shamanism: Archaic
Techniques of Ecstasy: “The underworld, the center of the earth, and the ‘gate’ of the sky are
situated on the same axis, and in past times it was by this axis that passage from one cosmic
region to another was effected.”

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

do just that, soul travel, and worked for many decades with the
mentally ill in California state hospitals and as a training officer
with the United States Coast Guard. He concluded that “spirit
possession” can be the root cause of illness. And upon retirement,
he wrote about his life as a mystic, sharing a lifetime of insights in
many inspiring books on heaven, hell, and “hyperspace” nature of
existence: infinite worlds within worlds without beginning or end.
Dr. Dusen became a proponent of Swedish scientist, inventor, and
Christian mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg (1668-1772), and
learned, as I had, that “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.

Wikipedia records this much on Swedenborg: “In 1741 at the age of fifty-three he entered into
a spiritual phase in which he eventually began to experience dreams and visions beginning on
Easter weekend April 6, 1744. This culminated in a spiritual awakening, where he claimed he
was appointed by the Lord to write a heavenly doctrine to reform Christianity. He claimed that
the Lord had opened his eyes, so that from then on he could freely visit heaven and hell, and
talk with angels, demons, and other spirits. For the remaining 28 years of his life, he wrote and
published 18 theological works, of which the best known was Heaven and Hell (1758), and
several unpublished theological works.”

To this point, I also have had such visions since childhood and investigated mystical, prophetic,
near-death experience (NDE) and prophetic visions of the End-Times for that reason, as well as
written and spoken to millions of listeners on talk radio shows regarding my conclusions about
them since 1993. Today these themes are common cocktail party conversations among
psychiatrists, psychologists, philosophers, and physicists; so at least I am in good company,
finally. I no longer feel crazy nor like a fish out of water. My vision is we are in the early stages
as a species learning to climb the world tree, “walk between worlds,” bring the spiritual truth of
heaven and hell to planet earth again through the eyes of the shamans. I see us integrating the
wisdom within the human body into a new world order “science of soul” in the 21 st century.
(See www.near-death.com/experiences/experts13.html)

Shamans of the 21st Century

In the days, weeks, and months of 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 of suffering 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.”

So I brushed-up on my pig Latin because my constant bedfellow

companions spoke only in the multisyllabic language of the Physicians’ Desk Reference (PDR)
dictionary. My medicine cabinet’s stock and trade went from boxes of Alka-Seltzer™ to neatly
ordered rows of pill bottles from the allopathic pharmacy. 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. Thus we started down the right track pharmacologically even if I was to derail later. I
reviewed the medical literature in articles, books constantly for clues to my situation and 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.”

There was the key word I must investigate further I mused: neuropeptides. So began a major
turning point in my search for salvation from suffering, although understanding neuropeptides
was not that easy since they acted more as quantum phantom in the brain, non-local “fields of
energy” declared the late Francis Schmidt of M.I.T. He called them “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” in balanced proportions give our human
brain-blood-bones a sense of wellbeing, “bliss” or euphoria that make life worth living in plain
terms. But my body quit making them, and my physicians prescribed the opiate-derivative
equivalent drugs to them 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 chemical health index baselines, as well as cardiac enzyme function
examination at Sacred Heart and then, the final straw that pushed me into an urgent search
mode for alternative treatments, my MRI at Holy Family Hospital.

For now I had more diagnoses, prognoses, and fear factors than my beloved late grandmother,
Mary Evelyn Scott (1888-1977), would say “Carter had liver pills!” Yet these high-tech toys are
our pride and joy in the Western world, 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, but intervene surgically with razor-edge,
laser-light precision if warranted. Indeed, my wife’s cousin in Kansas City has her husband, Bob
Stevens, alive today because a neurosurgeon was able to pinpoint a brain aneurysm earlier this
year and repair it successfully. They call Bob a miracle-man for he beat the odds but he is still
seeking relief from one nagging problem: pain that prevents sleep!

Though pharmacologically, we’ve only scratched the surface of

potential therapeutic potions of these non-toxic plants for pain
known to shamans worldwide humbly as nature’s “teachers.”
However, if my musings on this topic are validated, amino acid
therapy will combine with indigenous so-called hallucinogens to
create a pharmacopeia to treat addictions, pain and stress disorders
second to none soon. I mean every single one of us make these
morphine-like opiates, the spiritual visionary substances of
ayahuasca, the “vine of the soul,” every second within our brain,
blood, and lungs, for instance. These entheogenic—“creates God
within us”—plant researchers such as Alex Grey, Martin W. Ball, Ph.D. (Native American,
Mysticism, Shamanism, and Religious Studies), late Terence McKenna, and newcomers like
journalist and explorer Graham Hancock report the same inner space mindscape co-exists as he
maps in the encyclopedic book on this subject, Supernatural: Meetings of the Ancient Teachers
of Mankind. (See www.alexgrey.com, www.martinball.net, www.deoxy.org/mckenna.htm and
www.grahamhancock.com

Psychiatrist Rick Strassman, M.D. has also released his clinical experiments on 60 volunteer
subjects at the University of New Mexico with approximately 400 doses of the spirit-seeing
substance N,N-dimethlytrptamine in DMT: The Spirit Molecule. One hypothesis is that DMT is
endogenous, made in the pineal gland, what French philosopher, physicist, and mathematician
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) 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)

The Sacred Geography of the Human Body

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

vibration healer, Reiki master, and shaman in Bend, Oregon
came into my life just when I thought I could go on no longer.
My suffering reached cosmic-levels heretofore unimaginable
and I could not cope with the pain or 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 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 resulting in her flying, and later driving, to Spokane to
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 our
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 it was time to “put up or shut up!” (See
www.sacredreconnections.com)
Along this same line of treatment, I went to several complementary health care specialists in
my community to tap my biological 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 massage therapy with
Marlene Sullivan, L.M.T.

Thank God, I also had a strong spiritual support team that appeared as if by magic, usually a
bad choice of words with the Christian evangelic. Hopefully, I will be instrumental in helping
them step-up to the plate: the challenges and opportunities for ministry in this matter now.
Trust me they are right-on-target when it comes to Hades—“the hidden place”—and the “evil
spirits!” For the “doubting Thomas,” I only ask you to review one “non-religious” textbook, The
Body of Myth: Mythology, Shamanic Trance, and The Sacred Geography of the Body by
mathematician, and physicist Professor J. Nigro Sansonese,
● ● ● and the objective documentary DVD film titled “Gates of
Hell” produced by The History Channel. That is, I am not
He knew that Glory
focused on fear at all but facts that will convince you
and Hell too, beyond a reasonable doubt that what we’ve called “hell” is
right here on earth. Specifically, we’re experiencing a literal
Are in your soul, with warfare going on within the cells of our human body-mind-
all their myths; spirit! (See www.history.com)

He knew, like the “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to
Greek, that the days Of offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to
God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” (Romans 12:1)
Time are Eternity’s Pastor Robert Lindseth of the Life Church located at the
Mirrors. corner of 25th and South Grand Boulevard in Spokane came
into my life miraculously after his teenage daughter
~Jorge Luis Borges happened to come by our house one evening to ask my wife
if there was anyone that needed prayer? Oh did I ever! 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)

And while all of these skilled practitioners of the healing arts, sciences and religions 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 of hell to my wellbeing: Life force energy.
In particular, I needed to increase my ch’i with amino acid therapy
administered intravenously (I.V.) to repair the cell damage of aging,
diet, and toxic emotions in order to restore the functioning of my
communication circuitry, the message molecule carriers of the central nervous system. I had to
glue Humpty-Dumpty back together again, increase the “ligands” that are “binding” elements
of DNA-RNA coded protein synthesis cycles of consciousness. These electronic ions cement
amino acid molecules into chains, the building blocks of life. Anthropologist Jeremy Narby,
Ph.D., Stanford University, unpacked the secret in DNA from 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."

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)

Soon thereafter, 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, with Steve Sewell, founder of Mind & Body Works in Durango, Colorado. He had
merely succinctly replied to a comment I made that I was using amino acids orally to improve
my health but he knowingly stated that in many cases, they had to be administered via I.V. to
enter the bloodstream: bypass the deleterious impact of digestive tract juices and processes.

In a subsequent telephone conversation, I shared my medical history and Steve offered that,
perhaps, my brain-body could no longer create its endogenous, morphine-like pain killers, the
endorphins, to give me that “runner’s high” I associated with wellness? 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 to the last drop” ligands! If I wanted what
they offered, I could report to Steve at the clinic on Wednesday, September 15 th, 2010 for a
physical examination by Paul Glanville, M.D., an anti-aging specialist schooled in
complementary and traditional medicine. Of course, I was impressed by that time and took his
advice to heart, and head: they seemingly had exactly what I was looking for no doubt about it.

From my own decades of study in the shamanic sciences and practice in Community Health
Administration and Wellness Promotion with the U.S. Navy Hospital Clinic, Keyport,
Washington, I knew that healing disease happened 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., call 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 Body 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: There is a lot
of work to do if we are to bring hell up from and heaven down to earth. Our mission is to merge
three world—upper, lower, and middle—realms into one new world order right here and now!

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: Animas. 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 spiritually “physical” universe! 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 “real” messenger molecule worlds. With this
insight, 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. 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 obviously 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 paralyzed, and cannot exchange
DNA-RNA protein synthesis maintenance information between brain hemispheres, 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 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 we see is symptomatic of stress stored in belly fat and the high corn sugar-low
exercise diets will have only one long-term outcome for the Western world: degenerative
diseases such as arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, premature pain, suffering, and death with its
correlated runaway health care medical costs for taxpayers.
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, pain, and stress disorder 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. Again, Daniel Pinchbeck speaks wisely
“If we could give every beyond his tears: “With his visions, his ability to
individual the right transform energies, and his mastery of healing, Christ
amount of nourishment could be seen as a prototypical shaman.”
and exercise, not too
little and not too much, Not surprisingly, every one of the lessons-learned on
we would have found my own from decades of research, I saw incorporated
the safest way to
into the wellness model employed at Mind & Body
health.”
Works. Therefore, amino acid therapy is the key to
Hippocrates (c. 460-370 survival in our efforts to offset the impact of climate
changes and what near-death researcher at the
BC)
University of Connecticut, Professor of Psychology
Emeritus Ken Ring, Ph.D., knowingly called us to
embrace two decades ago: the “shamanizing of
humanity!” 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 systems worldwide. (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 so how
could I blame him for being a bad parent or role model? But I did incorporate—make physical—
every negative emotion my mother felt and expressed by her body postures and inadvertently
“poisoned” my environment. My father had little to do with my life issues was the bottom-line:
It was “mommy dearest” after all.

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.
No doubt about it today, my history is not my destiny. Yet to say I’m 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 here and hereafter, then I wholeheartedly suggest that you go to this website right
now without delay: www.mindandbodyworks.org. Indeed, be bold and call the Mind & Body
Works clinic Toll Free at 1-888-788-7348 and, perhaps, you too will become awakened at
needle point!

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)