1 Upaya Chaplaincy Training Sixth Chaplaincy Cohort Final Paper – Diana Fried February 2015
The Gold Standard of Humanity: Global Activism and Spiritual Practice
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Tension Between Activism and Spirituality – A look back at my personal story
3. Start-Up Phase: AWB and New Orleans 4. The Three Tenets
5. How This Work Has Impacted Volunteers
6. Working with Conflict and Challenges – Staff, Volunteers, Board
7. Haiti: How to Hold It All
8. Military Stress Recovery Project (MSRP)
9. Nepal: Nomads With Needles (and photo essay)
10. Israel-Palestine: The War Lives Inside of You Just as You Live Inside of It
11. Chaplaincy: Empowerment of Others – Empowerment of Self 12. Conclusion
2 Introduction My great-grandfather on my mother’s side of the family was a socialist, living in the old country. However, his family had him pegged to become a rabbi. This conflict between social justice/activism and religious practice drove him to go to the United States, even though his wife, my great-grandmother, would not go with him. He was so adamant about being able to practice his politics freely in the U.S. and to have his family with him, that he went back to his village, took one of the children, and went back to the U.S. He then sent a ticket to his wife urging her to join him with the rest of the family, and she had no choice but to go if she was to be with all her children. I am using this theme of the interweaving of social activism and spiritual practice, that has roots going back in my ancestral history, as the underlying theme and inquiry of this paper.
Many of us have had a deep and abiding interest in both spiritual practices and social/political engagement with the world. Often it seems we must pick one or the other. At times, we may have found the world of spiritual practice cut off from the deepest global issues of concern to us. Or, perhaps, we have been involved in social justice work and have experienced burnout or something missing for the soul. This tension and the search for resolution between social justice/activism and deep inner spiritual and emotional practice has been a central story of my life. The Chaplaincy program at Upaya Zen Center has now become an important part of that integration. The driving force for me to join the program was the fact that I still had not found a way to truly balance these worlds in my work with Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB) and was seeking more help and a foundation of support. I found this foundation at the Upaya Zen Center, which turned out to be a perfect fit. I have found a huge change in my understanding of what it takes to balance my spiritual practice with my global activism. At the same time, I made a huge change during my chaplaincy, which was to leave my position as Executive Director. In this paper I would like to explore the areas of harmony and balance and those of challenge with my work with AWB over the past ten years, using the lens of the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemaker Order and the Five Buddha families as the foundational paradigm. The Three Tenets, as formulated by Roshi Bernie Glassman of the Zen Peacemaker Order, include: 1) Not Knowing – Being in a situation without opinion or judgment and with no fixed ideas. This allows for things to arise that you would not expect because the ideas and judgments are no longer obstacles to awareness. 2) Bearing Witness – Entering into a situation with an open mind and heart, and in a state of non-separation between the subject and object, which means not making a “we or I” and a “they” and just being present to what is happening, moment to moment. This opens the field to tremendous learning and clarity; 3) Loving Action – Allowing for the natural actions to arise out of not knowing and bearing witness, actions that were not planned or in an agenda that one has beforehand. This allows for tremendous creativity and actions that are far more durable and strong and with greater impact. I will use writings I have done over these past ten years from various disaster relief and international programs as the basis of the investigation. The purpose of this exploration is to use this as a way for me to deepen my integration of social justice/activism with spiritual practice; to explore how I’ve managed this in the past; to find the places of inspiration and transformation; and to find ways to move forward with this work in the future that are most advantageous for myself and for all beings. My hope is that this may be beneficial for others who have undertaken similar missions in their life.
The Tension Between Activism and Spirituality –
3 A look back at my personal story
I grew up in a family that was deeply imbued with progressive politics, with a strong focus on education and learning, a lot of left brain thinking, and a lot of emphasis on talking and debating ideas and being involved in world issues. From a young age, I was an activist, in a sense. I remember leading a protest with my best friend, Doreen Nicastro, in fifth grade. I had a guitar in hand and we sang songs of the 60’s as we led our homeroom out of the classroom in protest: I think it was about the Vietnam War. We were sent to the principal’s office. The principal, Mr. Purpel, was a sweet man and mostly acknowledged Doreen and my independence and leadership! Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was my hero and A Raisin in the Sun was my favorite book in fifth grade. I remember feeling proud of the political actions at this age; I thought I knew what was right and what was justice! By the time I was in college, I was studying Political Theory. I was also studying religion with a great teacher named Mr. Geohegan, who was very interested in Eastern religions. (In high school, I had already become interested in Eastern religions and philosophy and had done an independent study in this area. I also started learning how to meditate at Ananda Marga in Cambridge, Mass.) When I told my father that I wanted to major in religion, he just about went through the roof. He had been raised in an orthodox Jewish family, and was himself a self-described radical and an atheist. He had experienced the pain of orthodoxy as a child growing up. He felt religion was truly the “opiate of the people” and wanted none of it for me. I, however, continued to study religion though I decided to major in Political Science. There was something that spoke to me in the Eastern spiritual practices, and I wasn’t going to let it go. I also created an organization called “Struggle and Change,” which showed political films, worked on issues of apartheid and the like. But teachings with a spiritual basis that I discovered in the community, on Anthroposophy and other such things, continually captured my attention. After college, I went on to travel in Latin America and to learn a great deal about the world, about inequity in global distribution of income and resources, and the true impact of multi-national capitalism on countries of the global South. I also saw true deep poverty in a way that I had never seen it before. I was both captivated by the issues of inequity and had a strong passion to work on these issues, but also there was a way that some fear was touched upon in me. I think it was the deep culture shock of experiencing life in the slums and ghettos of the global South that would impact me forever. I then became community organizer for clerical workers in Maine, and eventually went on to study film and Latin American Studies with an emphasis on the political economy of the global South. My righteous bones were moved more deeply as I learned about multi-national capitalism and its impacts on the world. I also felt strongly about telling the stories of people who were oppressed by these systems. I managed to do a video thesis for my graduate work. I contacted the organization Cultural Survival in Boston to find out about connecting with indigenous groups in Mexico. I was put in touch with someone working with the Huichol Indians. After many months of being “tested” during visits to Mexico, I was allowed by the Huichol community to do a video about how the Huichol Indians were taking back their deforested land through small-scale economic development projects. This project opened my eyes not only to the ways in which the indigenous people were being exploited, but also to their deep connection to the land. I loved wandering the remote canyons where the Huichol lived and being part of their practices. After that I worked at Oxfam America doing global grassroots community development and creating a video program to tell the stories from our partners around the world, from the communities that had experienced the massacres of the death squads in Guatemala to the Eritreans who had won independence after a
4 protracted civil war, and much more. Although I loved the work at Oxfam, and my professional life grew and changed in extraordinary ways, it was during my time at Oxfam that a huge void started to open or appear in my soul/spirit and that changed everything. I didn’t really know what was happening to me, but I knew I needed something more and much deeper than I was receiving from the work at Oxfam. I started to do wilderness trips in the Southwest and felt my heart and soul expand. The trips had a spiritual focus. I also began doing intensive Vipassana meditation retreats. At the same time, I was sinking into a deep, deep depression from which I did not really emerge for many years. I felt saddened by what struck me as a disconnection I witnessed in so many people, including myself, though I didn’t understand the causes of my depression. I was disturbed by internal dynamics among the people who worked at Oxfam. The work, and mission, at Oxfam was so much about equality, community, love, empowerment, advocacy for those who couldn’t advocate for themselves, in a sense a holistic approach to life itself. Yet I experienced a lack of emotional intelligence among my colleagues about how to be with each other, about how to take care of ourselves, about how to bring that sense of soul, that seemed embedded in the work itself, into our very daily lives at Oxfam. This disconnect affected me deeply, over and over, every day. At the same time, I sank deeper into depression and was becoming unable to do my work. One day in Boston, I was looking out my window at home, craning my neck to see the moon, which I love to watch, and I thought, I have to move out of the city. So I took my partner, my two cats and our belongings, and we moved to Maine, where I could see the moon. I continued to work at Oxfam, but something inside me was brewing to which I needed to attend. Eventually I had to quit my job, left my partnership, and then spent many days and nights walking the beaches of southern Maine, trying to touch into that soul longing inside. I discovered Five Element Acupuncture, which was a practice of healing that appealed to me due to its deep connection and understanding of nature, its majesty and poetry and beauty, and its focus on the emotional and spirit level. When I started to study acupuncture, I knew inside I would have to find a way to resolve my commitment to social justice work and the longing for that in my bones, along with these deep inner practices. I did not know how that would be resolved. In 2005, after I’d been practicing acupuncture and sound healing for some years, I had that longing in my bones again. I dreamt of starting an organization that would offer free community acupuncture for global healing from trauma in areas that are coping with disaster, war, conflict, environmental devastation, and/or poverty. After Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, I was driven to take action. The immediate intent was to offer healing for trauma to the underserved communities in Louisiana with free community-style acupuncture done by volunteer acupuncturists from around the country. I named the organization Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB). I gathered my acupuncture network around the country and found a way to make it to New Orleans. I started to create networks and connections there, found a community-based medical organization to host us, and then went home and mobilized teams to go to New Orleans to offer free community-style acupuncture to communities suffering from the devastation. In some sense, from that time in fifth-grade when I wanted to be a civil rights leader, this felt like a carrying out of that theme. I was working in many primarily black communities, doing healing work for, and with, people who had suffered so much oppression. In acupuncture school, I had discovered community-style acupuncture, which is a form of acupuncture where people are treated together in groups, while sitting in chairs and without dis-
5 robing. I found that this style of acupuncture allowed me a synthesis of all the diverse strands of my life: social justice and concern for underserved and neglected communities; the possibility of doing healing work internationally; my love of nature; acupuncture practice; spiritual practice; and my training in qigong (Chinese meditative movements). The AWB program in New Orleans, and all programs since, have been based on the same model: AWB teams of volunteer acupuncturists utilize the NADA protocol - a pattern of five points in each ear - which enables us to provide deeply relaxing, powerfully healing treatments to large numbers of people simultaneously. The acupuncture we do after disasters has been proven to treat acute trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress. Our treatments are very simple and very effective –and the results are astounding. This protocol was refined and shared by the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA), starting twenty-five years ago in the United States. It is based on the Chinese medicine tradition of treating points on energetic “meridians” that correspond to major organ systems. Often people who have experienced traumatic events state that after NADA treatment that they remember what it feels like to be who they were before the crisis – to sleep and eat again like “normal.” As well, the treatments often reduce pain, increase range of movement, lower blood pressure, and improve overall well-being, amongst other benefits. Sometimes other acupuncture body points are used, depending on the situation. There are many explanations for how acupuncture works. What we know for sure is that it is has been used successfully for at least 3,000 years, around the world, to treat a wide variety of conditions. In the treatments AWB provides, endorphins are released, (the body’s natural “feel good” chemicals,) and the sympathetic nervous system’s fight or flight response is calmed. The deep peace that treatment recipients experience seems to help them connect to a quiet space inside themselves from which they can begin to heal pain, imbalance, and trauma.
Because it is so simple, and requires so little technology, acupuncture lends itself to being a type of “barefoot” medicine as it was used in China throughout the Cultural Revolution, which was of course a particularly difficult time in Chinese history. Acupuncturists Without Borders is now sharing this profound healing practice internationally.
“Acupuncture can help to revolutionize health care among communities in need around the world,” says Cynthia Neipris, Director of Outreach and Community Education at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in Manhattan, and also an AWB Advisory Board member. “It is perfect for rural, hard-to-reach communities, with little or no access to other forms of health care.” Neipris adds: “The western medical world is only now realizing what a great complement acupuncture is to what western medicine provides, because of its low cost, low-tech versatility and orientation toward prevention.”
Acupuncturists Without Borders is bringing training as well as treatment to underserved communities internationally. The trainings teach health care practitioners basic acupuncture techniques and other methods common to Asian healing practices, (such as the use of metal balls called “ear seeds” on acupuncture points, and qigong - pronounced ‘chee gong” - energy practices for deep body, mind, spirit healing.)
In Louisiana, over a year we treated about 8,000 people. Our volunteers treated in shelters, community clinics, rehabilitation homes, parks, community medical centers,
6 temples, churches, FEMA parking lots and elsewhere; we treated displaced and returning residents, relief workers, first responders, blacks, whites, Latinos, Vietnamese, fire fighters, police, National Guard and others. Eventually I formed a Board and got a 501c3, spent time fundraising, setting up systems, creating networks, doing outreach and promotion, hiring staff, and all the other myriad pieces involved in getting a non-profit organization going. The longer-term goal was to develop and implement international acupuncture-based programs that help facilitate peaceful community and personal healing in the face of large-scale traumatic events and their aftermath. Knowing that unresolved trauma can have repercussions for decades, my goal for the organization was to provide treatment to interrupt this cycle of pain and chaos and relieve suffering. By partnering with local organizations and treating with community-style acupuncture in group settings, we support the healing of the whole community. Start-Up Phase: AWB and New Orleans During this phase of start-up of the organization, I found the ability to balance my personal life the most difficult. There is so much pressure to raise enough funds just to get going, and so many systems that need to be created, combined with the need for promotion, program planning, Board management, etc. that I truly remain stymied as to how those undergoing a start-up of a non-profit can maintain balance. It is useful here, to gain a larger contextual understanding, to take a look at which Buddha family may be primarily involved in this personal and organizational dynamic. By way of background, the Five Buddha families come out of Tibetan Buddhism and provide a framework for understanding enlightened energies and their opposite, neurotic energies, and how those manifest in life. The Five Buddha families provide a wonderful model for looking at, and more deeply understanding, where there is harmony and balance within a system and where things have gone off balance. This model also helps us to understand energetically what might be needed in a system, where there are gaps, and how to further support developing a more balanced system. Roshi Bernie Glassman uses the Five Buddha families to explain the ingredients one finds in the “supreme meal”, where a person knows how to plan, cook, appreciate, serve, and offer the supreme meal of life - this is a Zen cook. Each of these characteristics that he mentions fall within one of the Buddha families, and together they offer perfect harmony and balance. It seems that this issue of personal self-care and balance mentioned above, or lack thereof, is addressed by understanding the Vajra family. The mirror-like quality of reflection, when in balance, is what is needed at this time. The ability to combine the intellectual brilliance of Vajra along with that blue calming clear-mindedness like the great and vast view of the ocean is urgently needed. From the very beginning I had a yearning for balance. This is from a piece I wrote in 2006:
Founding, and now leading, this organization has been an extraordinary spiritual experience. I am learning to follow a calling - a path seems laid out before me. It calls me to be a strong leader. And more, it calls me to listen deeply and attend to what is needed and wanted; I must allow this seed to grow in its most natural manner, and to provide excellent spiritual and organizational leadership, translating my personal beliefs and practices into action for the greater good. This is the greatest spiritual challenge of my life. I am called to do this work every day, and to seek the most compassionate and evolved ways to handle the many challenges that arise. My goal as Founder and Executive Director of this organization is to become an ever greater catalyst for compassionate change.
7 The initial phase in New Orleans was extremely challenging. At the same time, being on the front line, in the trenches so to speak, and with such raw emotion, is also tremendously inspiring. It is a time when bearing witness and not knowing are of paramount importance. I am including some detail here about the New Orleans effort as it was such a pivotal and landmark time for me and for AWB. Here are some excerpts from an article written by my dear friend and colleague, Graham Marks, who has been with AWB since the beginning and continues to volunteer. His words express so much of what I felt at the time:
October 16, 2005 - This is the hardest day. The Lower Ninth Ward is the community in New Orleans where the levee broke and was almost completely underwater. After the waters receded what was left was an ashen landscape of debris and shattered homes. It is devastated, silent, a ruin. Bodies are still being discovered in the wreckage. We set up a clinic at the Red Cross tent and offer treatments to the people gathering there. A woman sits down. She relaxes into the treatment and at the end, asks me, "Where in New Orleans are you from?" I tell her I am from western New York State. She is shocked and asks, "Why are you here in this place?" I say, "To try to help," and she starts crying. I start crying also. We are all silent in the car as we drive through the neighborhood streets that are passable. Later that evening I call my wife, and when I hear her voice, I start weeping. The grief and the loss of these people just wells up in my heart.
8
October 17 – We are staying in a tent encampment for emergency responders on the grounds of the water treatment plant in the Algiers neighborhood. It is a self-contained base with showers, laundry, and a food service that prepares three meals a day for about 800 people. The administrators of the encampment are grateful that we are there, and we are grateful for the shelter and acceptance. They give us a tent in which to set up a clinic. As I go through the food line, one of the cooks behind the counter who is serving us sees my "acupuncturist" ID badge and says, "My wrists are killing me from preparing so much food all day. Can you help me?" When she gets off her shift, I do a treatment. Next day on the food line she is beaming. "I slept so well and my wrists feel so much better!" I see her the next day and again she is beaming." I slept well again and the wrists are still good!"
October 18 - Our improvised clinic is a row of chairs and a table on the sidewalk. A man sits down. When I ask him what he needs he says, "I haven’t cried yet." We begin and the grief comes up. He weeps quietly throughout the treatment. Another man comes dancing down the middle of the street and stops at the clinic where the day before I had treated him. "This acupuncture makes me want to dance. It makes me happy. I couldn’t sleep before. I saw so many horrible things in the flood. Dead bodies ... Now I have joy again ... The needles help keep my mind straight. You really fixed me up." I awkwardly reply something like, "Well, you know it’s not me, I’m just an instrument," and he shoots back, "Well I don’t care, I’m coming back tomorrow and I want you to instrument me."
October 19 - A new team of volunteers has arrived. They hit the ground running, and the day they arrive we are all hard at work throughout the city. To be treating with a group of professionals from all over the country, from varied backgrounds and acupuncture traditions, is remarkable. Yesterday we had never met - today we are treating on the streets together. Although the NADA auricular points are our framework, additionally we all bring our own expertise into the treatment arena: TCM, Five-Element, detox work, Taoist balance method, etc. I am struck by the similarities rather than the differences. Rapport comes first, and I am moved by the compassion, tenderness and sensitivity of my colleagues. And people report feeling better, no matter what acupuncture style they were treated with!
9
November 18 -- The work that AWB is doing continues with rotating teams of volunteer practitioners. In the five weeks that AWB has been in the New Orleans area, over 1,500 people have been treated in the venues listed below:
The Cajun Dome, Lafayette, La. (evacuees, Red Cross workers, National Guard, local police, firefighters from all over the U.S.)
Common Ground Health Clinic - Algiers
Common Ground Distribution Center - Algiers
Common Ground Distribution Center in the Ninth Ward
Washington Square Park
Mary Queen of Vietnam Church (Vietnamese community)
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Baton Rouge (Vietnamese community)
Public park in Algiers point
St Bernard Parish (residents and FEMA officials) Lower
Ninth Ward, Red Cross tent
U.S. Health Services and staff of The School for Visually Handicapped, Baton Rouge
Emergency Operations Center, New Orleans
Covenant House (teens at risk)
Odyssey House (halfway house)
Tent City (emergency responders, water and sewer workers, food service workers)
National Guard in New Orleans
Monte de Olivos Church, Kenner (Honduran community)
Animal rescue of New Orleans
The Three Tenets
Graham points to some very important aspects of this work in his journal excerpts. I believe that in many ways we did exemplify carrying out the three tenets, to the best of our ability. This was our first experience of deeply witnessing to the horror of what happened in this region; the impact on people especially those with fewer resources; and the acute state of shock of a very large population. We also witnessed the impact of our work. We did not know what the impact would be. I believe we truly bore witness, in the manner in which Roshi Glassman expresses this way of being, in a state of non-duality; we were able to be fully present for those we were with, and for the suffering, with our hearts and minds fully open and without anticipation or agenda. We just let it all unfold.
Graham points to the effect of hearing stories and holding so much grief. This took a great deal of resilience on the part of the volunteers. I was learning on the spot – how to be a chaplain, how to hold all the suffering; and to be present for the clients and for the volunteers and at the same time run a detailed, professional 10 operation with little ground underneath us. Learning how to be present for myself tended to come last, to my detriment, ultimately.
Every day involved being in a state of not knowing and I believe our team entered each situation without an agenda, without fixed ideas and open to whatever was happening. The flow and sense of present-ness was incredible. Things were shifting sometimes from moment to moment, and we literally had to go with the current and figure out our role and best practices within so many moving parts. It was raw, unscripted, “in the trenches” work. Exhausting, exhilarating, and deeply moving.
Each day as we bore witness without “knowing”, we were able to move forward with loving actions that arose spontaneously. It was truly the Three Tenets in action.
This was an extraordinary time for me in the development of my understanding of this work and its impact on so many people whom we treated in the community; how it contributed to the overall empowerment and resilience of a devastated community; and how the community-based interactions of our teams were also a source of deep bonding and empowerment for each of us. Graham also points to this deep connection among the practitioners even though we barely knew each other. This was chaplaincy at work, in a raw and beautiful form. I like to call it the Gold Standard of Humanity, coined by Katie Fisher of Oahu.
What I know about this work is that the most important aspect is the formation of community on all levels. The community of practitioners and the incredible bonds that are formed quickly by doing such intense work together, the community of people who come to be treated, and the community of all of us together, showing up, being in healing circle and bearing witness without judgment to all that occurs. This is the harmony of all the Buddha families in action with its all-encompassing wisdom.
How This Work Has Impacted the Volunteers
I was amazed at how doing service work transformed the volunteers, myself included. It did this in numerous ways. I noticed how, as one volunteer said, “being in such a broken place brought up all the broken parts of myself.” So the work around one’s own trauma, and what was triggered by being in a place of so many traumatized people, became a core part of all of our work together, and something for me to hold as leader. Additionally, so many people went home and started doing all kinds of service work in their communities. The opening they had felt in their hearts and souls was contagious and not to be forgotten.
Sara Beckner, AWB Volunteer, wrote:
I just wanted to thank you again for all of your work making this happen. I had a couple of concerns before embarking on my trip down to New Orleans. One- that it wouldn't be well organized and we wouldn't have the access to people who needed treatment. Two- that this wasn't the right time for acupuncture intervention, when people are still concerned with food and shelter issues. I was wrong to have any concern on either count. It was clear that you had done so much work making connections and establishing different venues for treatment. And more importantly, people really wanted and appreciated the treatment that we had to offer. It blew my mind away to see acupuncture being used so effectively in this way.
This point that Sara makes about the concern as to our value is something that has come up so many times. People often feel that in the face of something so huge such as the devastation in Louisiana, or the earthquake in Haiti, what difference can it possibly make for us to come and treat people, even if we treat thousands of 11 people? Yet what I have seen, over and over, is that it makes a huge difference and we have heard thousands of stories telling us so. We have impacted hundreds of thousands of lives, which also means we have impacted whole communities. Who knows how this work may have reduced domestic abuse, substance abuse, violence, suicides, child welfare, let along how many people have been able to function better and have a greatly enhanced quality of life even as they go through a crisis. And how many people have “remembered” themselves as a result of treatments?
Volunteers in New Orleans Photo: Diana Fried
Korben Perry, AWB Volunteer, pointed to the impact of a “little good news”:
Early in my stay, a resident of the Algiers neighborhood told me that having your city devastated "is like your spouse having a stroke. You still love him, and he'll never be the same. You really don't know what will happen next. You're kind of waiting for the next part of the sky to fall." She said that "dealing with Katrina and its aftermath is like trying to get off crack. Your body is at battle every second, and cannot relax. Your desperate for a little hope, a little good news.
It's true that I've done some previous work with the style of acupuncture we're using in Louisiana. However, nothing could prepare me for how consistently profound these treatment experiences proved to be for those involved. It was incredible to watch people people's bodies relax for the first time in three months; see raging migraines and nagging backaches loosen their grip on tired, tired souls; have people return to thank us for their first peaceful sleep in weeks. As a set of patients settled into their chairs and into some deeper breathing 10 or 15 minutes after being needled, it was clear that some perspectives were shifting a little, allowing for moments of hopefulness and joy.
A woman from the neighborhood is walking by and sees several of her neighbors sitting in an oddly meditative manner. Mr. Ali, who has had three unsuccessful surgeries on his cervical spine in the last 15 years is looking at me with heavy eyelids and asking me how the acupuncture can so quickly make his neck looser. I am trying to answer as simply and quietly as possible, and I'm being helped by another man being treated, a 60 something year old cab driver. Mr. Clarke studied Mao and Chinese culture when actively a Black Panther in the 70s. He's 12
identifying a point I used on Mr. Ali's arm as lying along the Triple Burner channel. Lamar is a middle-aged painter and contractor who has been working 12 and 14 hour days since the flood. His forearm and fingers are numb and he cannot sleep. Francine is a 49 year old white woman who is working 10 hour days at the one welfare office of New Orleans' seven which survived. She is here for the third day in a row to get help quitting smoking, a decision made in the throes of the emphysema like coughing that has racked her since the mold set in. She knows of these men but has never spent any time talking to them.
She and Lamar are almost whispering to one another, both crying periodically, which gets the attention of a small orphan dog which has made its way to their feet. The clinic's only pharmacist, a woman from Detroit, has been sleeping in her chair with one leg elevated since the needles went in a half hour ago. She had asked for help with an acute migraine and a swollen ankle. The woman passing through catches eyes with another man who's getting a treatment, a man appears to know well. He's been orating irrepressibly since 5 or 10 minutes into the treatment. He's looking at her saying:
"Lord have mercy. Wow Like I'm in high school… This is alright… Aint this something Feel like a bird. Like a body ought to feel in this world… Aint this something. Somebody discovered something. Lord have mercy. Makes my back straight and takes my defenses right down. Like a bird I tell you."
And the passing woman shoots back "Well, go on and fly". Her only question is if the needles will hurt. "No, sweetheart." And, several people close their eyes and reassuringly shake their head. "Like a little bug bite", Francine says. She sits down with her neighbors.
It was hard for me to leave. It's the work I want to be doing. It needs to be happening everywhere. Two themes emerged for me in New Orleans. One was how completely the natural and unnatural disasters had torn back the layers of our social fantasy to make even more glaring the injustices of our everyday lives. Secondly, I was reminded when economic bureaucracy dissolves enough that peoples' natural collective initiative is less stifled, just how much creative cooperation flourishes, how quickly people choose courage and contact.
Korben went back to Philadelphia and started a community acupuncture practice serving all income groups, with a sliding scale and reasonable fees so that all members of the community could get treatment. In our contact since then it is clear that this experience changed his life, and, therefore, his ability to serve others in profound ways.
Many aspects of the Buddha families were represented during this time. Overall, there was such a sense of flow and integration that I would say the Buddha family was represented with an all-encompassing sense of space and no dullness was present. There was an energy present that carried all of us through. There was also a strong sense of the Karma family, with a kind of fearlessness and all-accomplishing practice. If anything was missing it was our sense of balance and our ability to do self-care, once again, in that we worked ourselves tirelessly such that we had an ongoing joke about how Graham would fall asleep during our evening meetings with his mouth hanging open.
We received thousands and thousands of positive inspiring testimonials from those treated. These continue to be inspiration for doing the work. Here is just one:
I am a volunteer with People’s Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) also and evacuee from Hurricane Katrina. I lost my mother due to the storm. My life has been upside down, inside out, sleeping 2-3 hours/day. The acupuncture treatment that I have just received has my body feeling as one. …I know that acupuncture is going to assist with my ongoing recovery. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. -R. Omar Casimire 13
New Orleans devastation from Hurricane Katrina Photo: Diana Fried
Jordan Van Voast, in a published article, writes about some key issues, including the act of giving and living the life of compassion:
Kwan Yin, the female Buddha of Compassion, often appears with 1,000 arms and hands, and in the palm of each hand, an eye. One thousand eyes scan the universe, ready to respond wherever suffering is found. When I reflect upon the work of Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB) in New Orleans over the past 12 months, I wonder if maybe she also appears with a needle in each hand, poised to treat a roomful of trauma victims, still struggling to find the ground under their upended lives in the deepening aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
In the year since AWB quickly assembled its first response team, volunteer acupuncturists from around the United States set aside their families and private practices, paid their own airfare and joyfully entered a disaster zone in order to bring a little light, love and healing to a place of desperation, dust and chaos. Nearly 8,000 individual treatments have been offered, and behind each of these, a story is told, sometimes in words, sometimes transcending words. Regardless of the language, the circle of healing, once set in motion, only keeps expanding, touching the hearts of everyone involved: volunteers, residents, responders, family members, the larger community and the world. I imagine that the desire to experience unity with the larger whole - the great circle of healing of every acupuncturist, and indeed probably is what brought them to the profession in the first place.
AWB, in offering the powerful healing inherent in Chinese medicine to the Gulf Coast recovery effort, has certainly performed a great service to the people of this region. Everyone loves recognition and support, especially infant nongovernmental organizations working diligently to stand and walk on their own two feet, enabling them to fulfill their noble vision long into the future. The ultimate benefit in serving others, though, is the very gift of giving. Everything circles back upon, and in resonance with, the mind of the actor.
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AWB offers individuals within the acupuncture profession, an incredible opportunity to participate in relief work, now and in the future; this is both heart-opening and holds vast implications for the future of our planet. Can you imagine living in a world based on compassion and healing, instead of war and strife? That reality is ours, right now for the creating. This precious gift has changed every acupuncturist who has gone to New Orleans. Some have even returned home and radically changed the structure of their practices, switching to a more community acupuncture-friendly model….
An hour later, as we pack to leave, a woman walks in and is obviously disappointed when she realizes we’re on our way out. She asks us where she can get help. She is visibly shaking with despair. We invite her to sit down. After placing five tiny needles in each ear, she starts to unload:
"’My work is my refuge, my routine. By staying busy, I avoid my pain, which I don’t know how to deal with alone. My family can’t help. They call me and want to talk about their problems. My father is dying. Another family member was recently killed in a car crash. Many of my friends have left. A few weeks ago, I went online and found information about suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. I feel so desperate and depressed.” Tears begin to stream down her cheeks. I reach out and she squeezes my hand tightly. Another volunteer puts an arm around her shoulder.
AWB Executive Assistant, Sarah Tewhey wrote: "Last winter the people I was talking with were desperate ... looking for anything that could help them. I’d ask about Internet access and hear about waterlogged computers, ask about transportation and hear about cars turned over on the next block. I’d hear about missing family members and months spent sleeping on uncomfortable couches, lost pets. People were heartbroken, traumatized and angry, but somehow they sounded as though they had the strength to get on with life. It sounded as if they were going to be OK and that all of the material losses were secondary to the fact that they had survived.
Based on more recent conversations with New Orleans residents, I think we are looking at a very dramatic second wave of trauma moving through the city. The people I’ve been on the phone with in the last few days are desperate. Many of these women are so busy taking care of their patients that they struggle to hold on to their own mental health. Several have confessed becoming addicted to drugs as a means of coping with the heartache and the enormous loss their entire community has experienced. There is a pervasive feeling of just barely hanging on. It hurts my heart to hear these things.
More recently, another volunteer wrote: "To see acupuncture work in the midst of such suffering was a great reminder of its power to help people heal." A patient from the Musician’s Clinic wrote: "Just knowing there are such beautiful souls who have us on their minds, and care enough to volunteer coming down here to love us, touches our hearts. So many of us feel that we’ve been forgotten by our countrymen, our government and everyone else. Y’all have been angels coming to spread your physical and emotional healing.
A woman at St. Jude’s Community Center, who was homeless, said that she was able to go to a "safe place" inside of herself for the first time, maybe since childhood. The peace that this simple treatment gave her was immeasurable and the sparkle in her eyes at the end, priceless. On the way to the airport, I asked our taxi driver if he was from here. "Born and raised," he said. "How have you been doing since the storm?" I asked. "Terrible," he replied. "I can’t stop thinking 15
about it, and I can’t get my spirits up." He went on talking for a bit. By the end I had given him contact information and schedules to our clinics around town. "Thank you," he said. "Everyone has forgotten about us in New Orleans. Thank you for coming down here." He was eager to try acupuncture and said he’d tell the taxi drivers. When I paid my fare, he brought me my bags and gave me a hug. "Hang in there," I said. "Oh I will, baby," he said in his classic New Orleans drawl, "I will!” (Acupuncture Today, November 2006, Vol. 7, Issue 11).
Jordan’s writing strikes at so many important aspects of this work: The point that we can live in the world of compassion, right here and now, and that is what this work reflects more than anything else. The power of the experience of unity, as the circle of healing represents, and how that is ultimately what we are each seeking in some form, and what this work brings in powerful and immediate ways. And the way that people’s lives are transformed by such service.
Treating National Guard New Orleans Treatment Ninth Ward devastation In New Orleans Photos: Diana Fried
Working with Conflict and Challenges – Staff, Volunteers, Board
One of the hardest aspects of this work for me, from the very beginning and to the present day, has been learning how, as a leader and as someone perceived as leader, to deal with conflicts; challenges to me by others; projections by others (both positive and negative, if one can make those attributions…because really they are neither positive or negative in the end); and general difficulties among staff and volunteers. Many of the challenges are not that hard, actually. The ones that are really hard are when it feels like an attack, and there is a kind of viciousness or undermining nature to it. This has happened on occasion, and has always been deeply wounding to me. I say that I need to develop thicker skin, and I don’t know if that is really what is needed. Each time something like this has happened – attack (or let’s say, what seems like an attack) by Board members, staff or others, I seem to sink into a deep state of despair. It brings up some very old story in me.
I remember attending a “percept” training where we were learning to work with our projections, with Alexandra Merrill in Maine, and somehow I was in the center of a circle of women who were making fun of me, like I was at a witch trial or a pogrom. I’m not sure why this was happening (it must have been part of some exercise) but it remains a sort of archetypal feeling of being on the hanging block. I imagine there is something in my Jewish heritage that gets triggered. This is what I feel like each time an “attack” has come down the pike when running AWB. I would say it is likely that this is a large part of the reason I burned out and needed a break. I really didn’t know how to handle these situations. What I started to do in more recent years is to bend over backwards times a thousand to bridge, and reach out, and try to befriend whomever had become a sort of self-described “enemy” or at least a clearly defined “non friend”. I did this for my own personal sense of comfort (easier for me to let go of ego attachment and to let them be “right” if that is what 16 it takes to create peace) and also for the benefit of AWB, because I found that keeping those folks closer was better than having them be further away.
I know that sometimes these “attacks” were coming from a place of less “emotional intelligence” on the part of the “attacker”, or from a sense of territoriality, jealousness or other such place. And I also have always wanted to be fully accountable for whatever my part may be in it. I am not the easiest person to work with, and have my own ego attachments and challenges as a manager. Trying to refine that sensibility, so that I am accountable, so that rifts can be bridged and healed, and so that damage is minimized is a huge challenge to me. But I have come to know this is the hardest part of running an organization. At times I have longed for mentors to help me through this, especially female mentors, because I think what happens to strong female leaders is unique in our society.
I think that bringing the Three Tenets into each of these situations, if I were able to do so, would be of great benefit. If I could hold my seat, as Pema Chodron says, and be able to take a pause to “bear witness” to what is happening, approach the situation with “not knowing”, and then find the “loving action” I’m sure it would help enormously. Figuring out a way to do this so as to minimize the intensity of the triggering would be key. And I think, over the years, I have gotten much better at it, and actually have been able to call on the essential nature of the Three Tenets to help find the best path.
I have also realized that there is a way, despite how strong I may look on the outside, that I carry a sense of weakness internally and that at some level I don’t really believe I am a leader or that I have impact on people. I think this has not served me very well, and that I struggle with how to really empower myself as a leader, to really believe in my own leadership capacity, with all its faults, and then to represent this to others. I hold myself back and I think I don’t realize the impact I actually have on people.
Team of volunteers in New Orleans
Haiti: How to Hold it All I went to Haiti on an AWB training trip in 2013. I had been there shortly after the earthquake as well, which was a mind-blowing experience. To witness that level of devastation in a country already so financially poor; to smell dead bodies that still had not been rescued from the rubble; and to be with people who had experienced such devastating loss; there are not really words. That trip was designed to set up a program whereby AWB volunteers could come and treat people. We were successful in doing this, despite so many people who said we were coming in too soon after the earthquake, or other such things. We sent eight teams to Haiti for six months following the earthquake, and treated thousands of people in the hospitals, camps, shelters, clinics, etc. Eventually the Haitians asked us to come and train them, and that training trip is what this 17 writing is about. In February of 2013, I went to Haiti to lead another training and to see how the trauma recovery work we initiated in 2010 was evolving. When I returned from Haiti in 2013, so many people asked whether Haiti had recovered since the earthquake of January, 2010. Once you’ve been to Haiti, you would never ask that question. It doesn’t make any sense. Haiti was desperately poor financially before the earthquake and the earthquake made things worse by an order of magnitude. But how can you tell? You know when you talk to the people and they speak to you of their loss, their grief that is still unresolved as life goes on and Haitians must draw upon every ounce of resource they have to survive. Yes, they are resilient – but even the most resilient people come to a point when their reserves begin to fail. This was an extraordinary experience of bearing witness to this resilience and how that played out.
Treating at Intensive Care Unit at hospital in Port-au-Prince – the hospital had been moved into tents due to destruction of buildings Photos: Diana Fried Hundreds of thousands live in what now appear to be permanent tent camps within Port-au-Prince. These camps seem to go on for miles, with shoddy tarps ripping in the wind, masses of people walking about, doing their work, carrying water, keeping the fires going to cook food. And the city itself is still in rough shape even with all the rebuilding that has taken place. Driving on the horrendously bumpy dirt roads one passes by mountains of trash and rivers full of garbage and pigs. The diesel fumes, dust, and heat combined are overwhelming. Early in the morning you can see throngs of people elbowing to fill their buckets with water from the public supply so they can begin their day. The streets are crowded and crushed with people from early morning until late at night. It seems like the people never sleep. 18
Tent Camps in Port-au-Prince Photos: Diana Fried People in Haiti work hard – very hard – in what often appears to be endless days and weeks. They are also strong, kind, rebellious, a bit fierce at times, and as our Haitian AWB Volunteer, Nathalie Guillaume says, very dramatic. But given conditions in which so many live, I cannot imagine a theatrical drama that could truly describe what life here is like. I have traveled a lot in my life, often within the global South, and have never been anywhere as hard or as harsh as Haiti. We responded to the Haiti earthquake by sending teams in 2010 to do free community acupuncture for thousands of Haitians. At the request of local health care providers, we then provided two trainings in this work for Haitian health care practitioners and community leaders, one in August of 2010 and one in May of 2011.
Working with trainees at AWB Healing Community Trauma training for Haitians Photo: Melanie Rubin 19
I have to say, even though I’ve been leading this work for many years now, and have seen how incredible the results are around the world, in the U.S., with veterans, after disasters, etc…I seem to remain a skeptic at all times with any new program we implement, until proven otherwise. I feel as though what happened in Haiti with our work is a bit magical. Louissaint Alcide is AWB’s Haiti Clinic Director. Without him, this project could never have happened the way it did. Louissaint does not have any previous training in acupuncture, nor in management or organizing an effort such as this. When AWB came to Haiti, Louissaint was working in a support capacity in one of the clinics where we provided treatment. He saw the importance of the work immediately and wanted to be involved. When AWB offered the first training in 2010, Louissaint was asked to participate, and he became trained in this methodology. He has dedicated his life and his work to getting acupuncture established in Haiti, which hasn’t been easy, financially and otherwise. He took us to his house on this trip – a small concrete room in a compound of similar dwelling units, mostly filled with a bed (for his wife, himself, and his five-year old son), clothes and items piled on the edges of the room, no refrigerator (they use a cooler and buy ice, as do many Haitians), no electricity, and a shared bathroom for many people who live in the small community. Since the beginning of our work with Louissaint, he managed to find exactly the right participants to come to our trainings: the professionals who would take this work forward and pioneer something so unique, so powerful, for the Haitian people. We have now trained psychologists from Partners in Health, nurses, doctors, and community health workers. Thanks to Louissaint’s careful support and cultivation of this network of healers, the work continues to grow in Haiti. During the February, 2013 training, you should have heard the room roar with excitement and release when our staff taught qigong (a Chinese movement system). They were the most dynamic qigong practitioners I've ever seen, and I’ve taught qigong around the world and across the U.S. It was hard to believe how they soaked up the peace when we taught meditation, as if they’d been wanting and needing this practice for years. When it came to them learning the NADA auricular acupuncture protocol, it seemed the approach and technique were completely natural for the trainees and within Haiti in general. Haiti’s people are open to things that are outside the box. Within 3 days, just about the entire trainee group was ready to go out and change the Haitian experience with their needles. I really mean that. I could never have imagined how smoothly and seamlessly this would go. Former trainees also came back to attend the training, soak up more knowledge, and tell stories of the impact of their acupuncture work over the last one to two and a half years since they attended their first AWB training. 20
Haiti AWB Trainees doing acupuncture clinic Photo: Carole DeVillers Many people ask where the aid has been used that was sent to Haiti. Many people also ask where the organizations have gone that said they would stick with Haiti until she healed. I cannot vouch for most of the aid, or explain what happened to the organizations that have left. But I can tell you that I have seen that aid makes a real difference when the funds are used to build local capacity and strengthen a skill base (or introduce a new skill that is directly applicable within the community). And this works best when the community requests the skills training, and you deliver it in a way that truly serves them. We offer our trainings for free. This makes it possible for the trainees to come. Many of them then take what they’ve learned to the streets, doing free clinics themselves. Some of them charge a nominal fee to those who can afford it, so a source for generating income is being created as well. After the training, we went to visit sites where AWB trainees are running acupuncture clinics. We visited a rural clinic about 3 hours from Port-au-Prince that is being run by Partners in Health’s Haitian sister organization, known as Zanmi Lasante. After jogging along bumpy roads, and around many swerving mountain curves, we finally came upon a small wooden church, on a hill. Outside a group of people were gathered under a mango tree. As we got closer, we could see that many had needles in their ears. This clinic in Thomonde is conducted once a month as a mobile clinic. In the little wooden church next to the mango tree, Partners in Health practitioners were holding sessions with patients. Inside the church, they do medical assessments and treatment for various kinds of mental illness, hyperactivity in children, and a range of physical conditions. After the sessions in the church, patients go outside, sit in the cool shade of the tree, and receive ear acupuncture. We heard stories of people with Parkinson’s who had stopped shaking and people with depression who had started being able to function again. Many of the practitioners attribute these changes to the acupuncture, and are amazed at the results. Father Eddy from Partners in Health, who was trained in a previous AWB training in Haiti, sent several of his clinicians to learn the NADA protocol during the training we did on this trip. We watched one of the recent trainees give a treatment, proudly, and with confidence and grace. 21
We also visited a clinic in Leogane, which was the epicenter of the earthquake. The clinic is run by Jean Marie Exavier and Elouse Thumas, who have known each other practically since they were born, and have been great friends all their lives. Both are dedicated to natural healing, and have studied herbal medicine and other healing systems. Their commitment to this work, and their friendship and mutual support, have allowed this clinic to flourish. We walked down a muddy little alleyway with a small creek running through it, with a tent to one side (Jean Marie’s home and herbal apothecary), and were greeted by about 75 people sitting along the wall, in chairs, wherever they could squeeze in. Mothers, children, husbands, grandmothers, babies – all waiting for treatment. They knew the drill; many have been coming for a long time to this clinic, because the treatment is helping to heal their wounds since the earthquake, helping to heal their families, and this devastated community. Jean Marie, when interviewed, told us of his immense gratitude for this methodology, and also his need for more support to do this work on an even larger scale, as he’d like to do.
The trainees are so jazzed about the potential for this work, how it has healed them, and what they can do for the people of Haiti. What I saw among the second or third-time trainees is that the training has changed the trainees – given them an empowered sense of themselves, helped further develop their identity as professionals, and given them hope for the possibility of change that, in some cases, they did not have before.
Though the mountainsides are bare in Haiti due to massive deforestation, and there are still so many signs of the earthquake’s devastation; though Haitian society has had to bear crushing oppression and destruction from many sources; though trauma and grief is still so prevalent; though the financial poverty (in contrast with the strength of Spirit) in Haiti is unimaginable; what I saw is that it is possible to begin to shift the trauma and support the deep resilience of the Haitian people. The trainees are doing this by offering skills that not only heal, but tap into a deep well of love, support, hope, and transformation, which the thousands and thousands of people treated will be able to draw on forever. For me the work in Haiti in some ways challenged and challenges me more than anywhere else. Perhaps this is the true test of chaplaincy. In Haiti, we experienced several personal robberies, and also a car accident in which we could have been killed. I struggled seeing animals tied up, and people fighting over a bit of water. When I came home, I did not ever want to go back to Haiti. I am a little embarrassed to say that. Maybe there is some racism in me around my current feelings about Haiti and difficulty in thinking of going back (AWB’s program has continued and others are running it). Perhaps this is the place most in need of bearing witness, of keeping that open heart in spite of the pain and anguish, and finding the place of loving action once again.
I feel that my relationship to Haiti right now resides within the Buddha family, but the neurotic state of that family. It feels like an all-encompassing state of ignorance that is the source of samsara. It pervades anything and everything.
Military Stress Recovery Project (MSRP)
I conceptualized and started the MSRP in 2006. At that time, it was clear that we were going to see thousands of military returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and suffering the tremendous consequences of the horrors of war, with post-traumatic stress, combat stress, and the like. These impacts of war would then reap 22 terrible repercussions on families and communities throughout the country. I wanted to do something to face the dragon straight on, and that seemed to me to be an opportunity to train acupuncturists to then open volunteer-run clinics in their communities treating military and their family members. This was a difficult choice for me, as this is not a population to which I would naturally be drawn. But I felt this was critical given the politics in our country.
I have to say it has been a very challenging program for me. Some people make assumptions about the political leanings of AWB thinking that the organization is very “patriotic” given our focus on veterans work. I am challenged by this type of assumption but must simply go forward with the work, both for the healing of individuals and communities and, knowing that, ultimately, if we can point to the impacts of war by treating those suffering in these ways, perhaps it will do some small part in forcing the recognition of the true costs of war. I would say that this program has tested my capacity for staying in a place of bearing witness and not knowing, and being willing to be open to what arises even as assumptions are made by others that are not in line with the underlying purpose of the program from my perspective.
Portland, Maine Veterans Clinic Photo Credit: Jim Daniels
The MSRP program, it turns out, has been truly amazing, with some clinics that have now been operating for nine years, and with about thirty clinics operating around the country. We hear veterans from all wars telling profound stories of the impact of the healing on them, and volunteers talk about the deep bonds that have been created at their clinics. At an event in Boston, a WWII veteran came up to me and said that he had been part of the battalion that had freed prisoners from Buchenwald. Until he had the acupuncture treatments, he had told no one of that story because it had been so deeply gruesome and painful for him to witness what had happened at Buchenwald. After treatments, he told his wife and started to tell others the story, and began to be able to heal from the horrors he had seen. This is priceless chaplaincy work. 23
Portland, Maine Veterans Clinic Photo Credit: Jim Daniels
Nepal: Nomads With Needles
We have been leading World Healing Exchange trips in Nepal since 2009. We were invited back after our first trip to teach Nepalis the basic field protocols that we were using. In 2010, we went to Nepal and led a training for about 70 health care practitioners. It was a powerful training with people from the acupuncture profession, homeopaths, psychologists, non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), substance abuse centers, the Nepal Red Cross and more.
Since that time, we have gone back to Nepal almost every year, led treks and clinics in rural areas, and done additional trainings in Kathmandu for forty-two more trainees (some of whom were trained previously and now received a Level 2 training). We have now secured grant funding so that we have been able to support ongoing clinics in Kathmandu at NGOs working with women and children who have been trafficked/abused/orphaned; at the Women’s Labor and Empowerment Society, which is helping the beleaguered women carpet factory workers; at Nagarik Awaz, an organization working for peace and trying to help heal the traumas of the long war in Nepal; and at other rural health clinics. We are deeply inspired by how this program has developed, and by the testimonials we receive. The Nepalis doing this work call it “a miracle”.
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Qigong practice at Kathmandu training Photo: Diana Fried
I wrote this piece of writing below after our first trip in 2009. I believe it captures aspects of the impact of doing this work in Nepal:
8,000 feet above the world, at a monastery tucked into the foothills of the Himalayas, resident monks and nuns emerge to greet us, a group of visiting acupuncturists from the United States. Prayer flags flutter in the breeze. And the stone façade of the Nepalese monastery stands as it has since the Middle Ages, holding the prayers and meditations of countless Buddhists over the centuries. During our visit, those steeped in the ancient Buddhist traditions will receive traditional treatment with Oriental medicine. The art and science of acupuncture comes from this part of the world. Our group of volunteers from Acupuncturists Without Borders are bringing it back to this community. Our guides on this journey, residents of Nepal, are Wild Earth Journeys’ leaders Carroll Dunham, anthropologist, and Thomas Kelly, photographer.
As we insert five little needles in each monk or nun’s ear (needles brought to these free treatments thanks to a generous donation from Lhasa OMS,) the hum of talking, chanting, movement, and maroon robes swaying, begins to quiet. A deep silence falls on the group as they settle into the moment. We finish our work and check to make sure each client is sitting safely and comfortably, ready to plunge into a deep state of healing. The treatment helps each person’s nervous system recover from any loss of emotional or physical equilibrium they may be experiencing, as they relax and feel safe and nourished on a profound level.
Every now and then the silence is interrupted by the deep quick tones of the music coming from inside the monastery. The monastery is deep in the midst of puja practice for an honored teacher who is near death. For us as westerners used to meditating in silence or with quiet music, this cacophony of sounds seems unusual.
At the end of the acupuncture treatment, our hosts applaud.
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Being from the United States, it’s hard for us to contemplate the discipline it takes to sit in spiritual practice for hours, days, weeks, and months, chanting and meditating like these hundreds of monks and nuns do every day. Their faces and the energy they exude is gentle, sweet, and kind. Imagine fifteen-year old boys in the U.S., hundreds of them, living this way!
Life for us as visiting Americans at the monastery challenges our normal habits. For example, bathrooms at the monastery guesthouse consist of several Turkish sieges (a porcelain piece on the ground with a hole in it, and two foot steps astride the hole). Some of them have a flush, which is more than I’ve seen in other countries with the same type of set-up. The guesthouse was built by a group of Tibetans from Switzerland, as a place for Tibetan refugees to stay after coming across the border into Nepal. It is still used for this purpose. When the refugees arrive, they have walked for weeks over the highest passes in the Himalayas bringing nothing with them but the clothes on their backs.
We are lucky to have this place to stay. Accommodations are simple…small rooms, each with two twin beds, a thin mattress, a sheet and a pillow. The building is pine construction with no insulation and no central heat. In fact, there is no such thing as central heat in these Himalayan villages. People live in warm clothes and stay by their fires. Some kitchens still have the fire in the kitchen with no chimney, so respiratory problems abound.
Dr. Rigzin is a traditional Tibetan medicine doctor, (called an amchi,) in residence at this monastery. His somber expression belies the enthusiasm with which he welcomes our group. After we spend a few days together, he is convinced he wants to learn our treatment methods. On our next trip to Nepal, we plan to train Nepalese healing practitioners how to use Oriental medicine techniques to treat members of their communities. Our focus will be on assisting these healers in addressing the residual trauma in their country left over from many years of internal struggle and conflict. In this way, we hope to support the current fragile peace in this nation. When unresolved trauma abounds, it can seriously interfere in individual and community progress toward peace.
Micah O’Neal, acupuncturist and trip participant told of her visit to the monastery:
After Lama Kelsang blessed us with his teachings about the Buddhist traditions and the true meaning of happiness (letting go of the materialistic mindset of most Americans,) AWB had the honor of treating over eighty young monks. What a powerful experience!
Because there were so many eager monks who wanted to be treated, AWB volunteers divided into three areas. In shifts, we gave our initial demonstration of what the healing session would be like. With the help of an interpreter from the monastery, we showed the young monks the needles, described how to clean their ears properly, and demonstrated how the needles would be inserted. We encouraged them to close their eyes and relax during the treatment.
Treatments lasted 30-45 minutes. The young monks were instantly pros - so brave and eager to try something new. In the room where I gave treatments, the youngest monk was four years old. With the help of an adult we taught the young monks how to breathe in and out as the five needles were inserted into each ear.
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As the sun shown through the monastery windows, the young monks glowed with peace and relaxation. I’ve never witnessed anything like it and feel honored to have been a part of AWB international work. After this experience none of us will ever view ourselves or this world in the same way. I now feel that the world is not as big, and human beings are not as different, as I once felt they were.”
In addition to the work at the Monastery in Nepal, our group visited people in their homes and gave treatments in their kitchens, while we were served Nepali Masala tea. When we sat on wooden benches, in little hut-like kitchens, dark and smoky with big brass and copper pots lining the walls, (a sign of wealth,) the camaraderie and warmth of spirit was priceless. What a gift it was for us to be able to bring healing into these people’s lives.
In the village of Phalpu, where the small plane lands to bring people to this region of Solo Khumbu, we visited the local health center. Because of funds brought to this project by a European funder, the health center is quite nice compared to what it might be without this outside investment. People struggling with a variety of illnesses sat outside on the grass, feeling the sun, and noticing the visitors. When we arrived we walked into a room where there was a young man who hadn’t been able to walk for a week. He was despairing, feeling that he might never walk again. The next day one of the acupuncturists from our group went to treat him, forsaking the climb up to see a view of Everest, as the rest of our group slogged uphill. By the end of his treatment, the young man was doing deep knee bends. Everyone was ecstatic. The acupuncture had brought him hope, and there is nothing more healing than hope. The next day, he was out on the grass and had taken 15 steps.
In Nepal, Acupuncturists Without Borders will provide training this year for Nepalese acupuncturists, Tibetan doctors, village health promoters, and nonprofits working with addiction recovery as well as to stop the trafficking of young girls and others. The practitioners who will be trained are very enthusiastic about learning how to do this type of treatment. A part of the training will include disaster relief skills, something AWB has been providing in the U.S. for several years. Nepal is a high risk area for earthquakes. The acupuncturists in Nepal are particularly eager to learn about the systems AWB has developed for treating survivors in an emergency.
On our trip, we felt the Nepalese people were very strong, physically, and in their spirits. When we trekked to the foothills of the Himalayas, each porter who accompanied us carried three large backpacks in homemade baskets on their back, with a band that went around their head. Each porter’s load weighed 180 pounds. To get to the “job site” where they met us, the porters walked for four days from their homes, plus a one day bus ride. We, on the other hand, got on an airplane in Kathmandu and flew for 45 minutes. Some might say we are privileged to be so rich, (the average Nepali income is 2$/day,) but I often wonder. I am envious of the warmth, gentleness, and person-to-person connections that we saw everywhere in Nepal.
And then, there are also circumstances that are difficult for us, as westerners, to understand. One day, walking through villages surrounded by rice fields and the miracle of terraced farming fields, we came upon a group of children playing on a huge swing made of bamboo. (I imagine that this is one of the few playful activities available to children, as we saw so many children working so hard. And to go to 27
school, many of them have to walk for 3 hours one way.) Suddenly one of the children fell off the swing. Everyone was scared. The mother quickly came up and hit the child, perhaps out of her own fear.
Throughout our trip, we saw many children being hit, and my heart tore open each time as I thought, “What can I do?” We also saw animals being hit and kicked, or wandering the streets with deep untended wounds. It is certainly a different culture, difficult for us to understand, from our perspective of luxury and privilege. Traveling in Nepal challenges one to stay open to other cultural ways, and yet maintain one’s own sense of morality, or simply keep one’s heart open when it feels like it is breaking.
Other things in the US might hurt someone else’s heart. When I came home I noticed on the airport train that no one looked at each other – there was no noise, no talk. This was in sharp, drastic comparison to the experience in Nepal, where it was as if everyone was a neighbor or a family member who would be helped if there was a need.
The dilemma of a traveler.
As I return home to all my material “stuff,” I wander over to the cabinet to get some tape. I notice the stack of three rolls of extra tape…enough to last a long time. I think back to Nepal. Acupuncturist John Ross had noticed that one of the sherpas was eyeing his roll of duct tape. John decided to give it to the Sherpa as a gift. When he handed it over, the sherpa’s eyes lit up…he graciously thanked John profusely, touching his whole body and bowing down and knocking his head as a gesture of thanks. The sherpa quickly went to hide it in his beat up old sack…twisting the top shut in a knot and making sure none of his Sherpa colleagues saw him put it there.
When we returned, one of our group members decided to sponsor a little boy who we got to know. Others came back deeply committed to continuing this work. We were sad at leaving one another from our traveling group; the bonds created on such a journey are life-altering. At the heart of what we are doing is a healing exchange that takes many forms. The monks exchanged their love with us, and we with them through our needles.
The amchis exchanged their professional expertise with us and this exchange was mutual. When we visited with the Tibetan doctors (Amchis), we weren’t sure how they would take to our medicine. But in these shared moments, we found they were so excited to work with us, to receive treatment, as well as to take our pulses and offer us their medicine. One of the participants walked away from their treatment with an Amchi saying, “How did he know I had an accident that hurt my back when I was young, just from taking my pulse?” We began to see the spark that can happen when visitors come not just to fill themselves with the riches of being in another culture, but also to bring gifts. In our case, these gifts took the form of healing treatments, offered for free and with no expectations.
When given the opportunity most people want to share and help each other: from the traveling acupuncturists to the Buddhist monks, to the overwhelmed mother who cares about the safety of her child, to Lhasa OMS, a U.S. company which donated the needles to AWB for the trip to Nepal. We are all one community.” 28
We do these journeys as a pilgrimage. On pilgrimage it is the journey, of course, and not the final destination, that is the key. Whatever we come upon, whatever we must face, this is the learning and the spiritual practice. Each trip to Nepal has had its share of extraordinary lessons. I believe that we do these with the intent of bearing witness and of not knowing, although I know there are many times when I need reminding of this and need to help remind others.
One of the challenges in Nepal has been trying to bridge between various health care communities. We found ourselves in the middle of a battle of sorts, between the Nepal Acupuncture Association and other health care practitioners who use needles, but sort of under the radar. Developing cultural competency and sensitivity to this situation took me several years. Under the guidance of Thomas Kelly, our partner on the ground in Kathmandu, we have resolved the situation, but it has meant that we are only working with the Nepal Acupuncture Association. I’m not sure the story is over on this one.
One of the hardest trips was when we were trying to get out to Phalpu and for five days we were stuck in Kathmandu, unable to get out due to weather. We had to keep our group occupied, including finding lodging at the last minute for each night we were delayed. Every day we had to go back to the airport and wait. And then, on the other end, when we were in Phalpu trying to get back to Kathmandu, with international flights booked, we were again delayed for many days. Our group was frustrated, on edge and ready to bolt. Some decided to walk out on an arduous journey. Some decided to take local transport – tractors, jeeps, buses – and they had an accident and almost died. I found the leadership on this journey very trying, and wish I could have maintained more calm in the face of it. But these are the kinds of obstacles we encounter, and it is certainly part of my practice to continue to strengthen my ability to hold the 3 tenets in this process. This is my chaplaincy work.
Following is a Nepal photo essay:
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Kathmandu – AWB Level 2 Trainees Photo credit: Linda Umla
Teaching children at Saathi Nepal - We treated this girl in about treatment at Saathi 2011 – she looks very much better Nepal thanks to Saathi Nepal!
Saathi Nepal - A Nepali NGO working to eliminate injustice and violence against women and children in Nepal and providing support to victims.
Photo credits: Diana Fried 30
Saathi Nepal treatment
Photo credit: Diana Fried 31
Laxmi, one of AWB’s Nepali trainees, doing treatment at Saathi Nepal
Photo credit: Diana Fried
Saathi Nepal ear seed treatment Photo credit: Diana Fried 32
Saathi Nepal treatment group Photo credit: Thomas L. Kelly
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Maiti Nepal treatments Photo Credit: Thomas L. Kelly Maiti Nepal - Crusading for the prevention of girl trafficking, rescue, rehabilitation, integration of survivors of trafficking. Anuradha Koirala, founder, won CNN Hero of the Year Award. 34
Umbrella Foundation - Ten years of civil war in Nepal has displaced tens of thousands of children. With countless children orphaned and even more trafficked and/or abandoned, Umbrella Foundation was established to rescue destitute children and give them access to education and the possability of re- integration back with their families and communities.
Photo credit: Diana Fried 35
Treatments administered in Mustang villages
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Clinics held in villages – over 600 people treated – people walked from afar to attend clinics
Photo Credits: Thomas L. Kelly
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Trekking
Local Woman Making Brew
Photo Credits: Thomas L. Kelly 38
Bodywork en route
Photo Credit: Linda Umla 39
Visiting a nomadic home en route where we did treatments for the mother
Photo credit: Diana Fried
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Clinic in Mustang, being led by Kunga Choesang, AWB Trainee. Kunga has just finished medical school and is returning to Mustang to take care of his people. He is passionate about the acupuncture and AWB has asked him to be the leader of the ongoing acupuncture work in Mustang. Photo Credit: Linda Umla 41
Mustang Clinic
AWB Training for 5 Mustang Health Promoters 42
Photo credit: Diana Fried High in the Himalaya, in Upper Mustang, village of Lo Monthang, AWB has just completed a short training course in the NADA protocol for five local healthcare practitioners. These are the folks that will carry the work forward in this remote region of Nepal, near the Tibetan border, where guerillas fighting the Chinese military used to camp. The area has a large population of Tibetans who fled the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Health care services are limited, though there is a school that is reviving traditional Tibetan medicine, led by Amchi (doctor/healer) Gyatso, a man with a beautiful, gentle strong presence and great spirit in his eyes. Three of the AWB trainees are graduates of the Tibetan Medicine school. The other two are local health care promoters for this region from the Jigme Foundation. They all attended clinics with AWB. Kunga and Pema travelled with AWB for most of our journey through this region, absorbing the interactions with our group of acupuncturists, hungry for the connections and the knowledge.
Visiting school for Traditional Tibetan Medicine – they are trying to bring back the ancient healing teachings and methodologies
Photo Credit: Thomas L. Kelly 43
Our group including Sherpa and horse crews Photo Credit: Thomas L. Kelly
Butter candles Photo Credit: Thomas L. Kelly
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Israel-Palestine: The War Lives Inside of You Just as You Live Inside of It In April of 2014, I traveled to Israel-Palestine for the first time in my life. This experience changed my life. I still am unraveling the many ways the trip impacted me. This trip happened during my chaplaincy program, and I believe the two interweaved themselves in profound ways. The trip was chaplaincy. I found myself bearing witness and being in a state of now knowing from moment to moment. Truthfully, I didn’t think I was going to like Israel very much. That was a bias I went in with. The outcome was very, very different, fortunately! It is always great to have our assumptions completely undermined! This writing below is an edited version from the trip, along with current comments related to chaplaincy work. I think this describes the many ways in which the trip was a part of my spiritual practice and social activism, and the actions that came out of the bearing witness and not knowing. Much of this story is about my own personal journey as well as the acupuncture work. I am Jewish, 55 years old, first time in Israel. I am here to train Arab and Jewish Israeli acupuncturists in Israel, and hopefully in Palestine in the future, to run an AWB project to do trauma healing training. Additionally we are trying to set up a future program to support Syrian refugees in Jordan. I am for the first time getting a sense of one part of Israel – the Jewish story. I hope to hear the Arab stories. I have not heard many of those yet (we will be going to the West Bank with “Women Against the Occupation and For Peace” so I am sure I will hear many stories then and we will also be working with Arab-Palestinians at our training). This is the fabric and background that for me will inform and deepen my understanding of the work we are doing here.
Map of West Bank...brown areas are Palestinian controlled, blue areas are Israeli controlled While I of course have had my own version of the story of Israel in my head for a long time, I am now getting the in-person body-mind-spirit experience. It is a profound experience to see and be part of so many Jews from all over the world all in one place. There is an aspect of meeting people that feels so familiar, so like family, and yet not. Many of these people came here, or their families came here, 45
under horrific conditions. Today we sat conversing with a couple and their friend. They live in Canada and are in their 60’s. Isaac’s parents were both concentration camp survivors. He said he grew up hearing their screams at night because they couldn’t sleep. Tamar is from Poland and was among the small Jewish population that lived there after the war (during the war her mother was in a labor camp in France and her father was in the Soviet Union and avoided the Nazi forces). During vehement Anti-Semitic times, in Poland in the late 60’s, they left for Canada, leaving everything they knew behind. They were treated like dirt while she was growing up. Their friend, whom we also met, was a bit of an ornery but soft man, whose parents were also concentration camp survivors. That is how he knows Isaac. He said the two mothers, the grandmother and sister slept on the same level of wooden planks in the camp. Isaac and Tamar told us a story of giving a ride to some German women one day who had missed the last bus. Tamar spoke to them in Yiddish while they spoke back in German. I asked if they knew she was speaking Yiddish. The friend chimed in with his acerbic tone: “Of course they knew. They learned it at Treblinka.” It is a sort of dark holocaust humor (at the expense of others, as is true of much humor). He went on to tell us of his hatred of Germans and how he doesn’t want their money (reparations money to Israel) or their pity. He just wants to hear more regret from them that he has never heard. Beyond that conversation they were very upset that I had never been to Israel (which I thought was cute…sort of like an uncle or something) and also that my next mistake was that I didn’t marry a Jew. They felt like old relatives of mine, not an experience I have very often in New Mexico. The apartment we are renting has a book of the owners’ holocaust story sitting on the counter. We visited Yad Vashem, the museum/memorial to the holocaust in Jerusalem. I couldn’t bear to go into the area where they have piles of hair and glasses because I already have visuals of this that haunt me throughout my life. We went to the children’s memorial, where they have faces of the 1.5 million children who died and candles with mirrors so you see a thousand points of light as they read the names, ages, and countries of the children. We saw the exhibit with the sweaters and dishes and journals and other items that survived through the camps. And we walked into the dark chamber with one candle lit and the names of the major camps written on the floor. And the line of trees in honor of the “gentiles” who helped save Jews during the war. 46
Teddy bear belonging to Holocaust survivor Stella Knobel, recovered by Yad Vashem researchers. Stella and her bear were reunited many years after the war. Photo: Diana Fried
Eternal flame at Yad Vashem among names of the major concentration camps where Jews were murdered during World War II Photo: Diana Fried We got lost the other day driving trying to leave Jerusalem and ended up going into the West Bank. All of a sudden there was this horrific imposing military looking wall. It was “the wall”. The wall that we started to see everywhere as we drove out of town following the line of the West Bank. Enclosing little Arab communities on one side or the other. I will and need to know more about this. I hear Israelis say “we were terribly opposed to the wall. We think it is awful. And yet, the violence is less.” They talk about what it was like during the intifada when they could not go on a bus, their children did not know downtown Jerusalem. This was told to me by a man whose parents spent a year walking here from Afghanistan where they were being persecuted as Jews.
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Barrier wall between West Bank, Palestine and Israel in Jerusalem Photo: Diana Fried The taxi driver whose parents left Yemen and Turkey due to persecution as Jews. On and on it goes. And then – I had no idea – how the Arab villages are so widespread everywhere throughout this land. These are the villages, the people, who were here before. Before the modern State of Israel. So the villages are old. Israelis frequent these villages to eat and visit the locales. They seem to especially like to go to the Arab villages. The whole of all these Arab and Jewish lives are so completely intertwined and they seem very much more similar than different to this fairly naïve eye of mine. How is it that I could possibly not know of the deep interweaving of life between Arabs and Jews in this country, and the proximity of the villages? And then there is the constant underlying sense of anxiety. You see it in people’s eyes and feel it in their voices. There is a sense that life is always on edge, everything has some urgency, and nervous systems seem to be set at a much higher level than what we might consider “normal” functioning. It seems to be a deep pervading theme throughout the culture. And at the same time a deep warmth, generosity, and openness, curiosity and a kind of caregiving sense that is widespread. And an openness to talk, to tell story, to know the other. And also it is incredible the mix of people that you see on the street from all over the world. Most of the people we have met are not highly religious, if at all, and are quite unhappy with the politics of the religious right. And yet I wonder about what feels like some fascination with the religious who one sees everywhere, especially in Jerusalem. Is it that the religious hold the external paradigm for “Jewish” in a way, even if people are vehemently opposed to their politics? I don’t know what it is. Or maybe it is just my fascination? Just like when I was a little girl and we used to watch for hours the Hasidim outside the window of my grandmother’s apartment in Brooklyn.
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Street diversity-religious Jews and members of the Israel Defense Forces Photo: Diana Fried I am here to hear the stories. All of the stories. This is the most important part of this journey. AWB’s work will find a place in this mix. The team of Israelis that we have met so far who are already deeply committed to the AWB model are fabulous. Warm hearts, open, clear. They are committed to whatever work is possible with Arabs. It meant so much to me to be part of a joint presentation with the Israeli team at the national Chinese Medicine conference. I have much more to learn from the team about their hopes, dreams for this work, and about who they are and what may be possible here. A story to be continued…
Members of AWB Israel and AWB USA: From top left- Adi Gerlitz, Dafna Farber, Carol Kessler, Carla Cassler, Laurie Kleinman, Keren Assouline, Diana Fried, Oren Rachmany AWB was asked to come to Israel to lead our Healing Community Trauma training. This was after Keren Assouline had come to the US and taken our training, and gone back to Israel to take the work to the Israel’s Trauma Center for Victims of War and Terror. The training we led with the AWB Israeli team was a phenomenal experience. People soaked it in like it was their own, and became deeply inspired and connected to the work immediately. One person said that she gets caught in her small life, and this training brought her back to her bigger self, expanding her sense of possibility in the world. And it wasn’t just some of the people who connected to the mission, as Keren the leader of the Israeli team said, it was ALL of the people. With AWB trainings, we tend to find our kindred spirits wherever we go, but this was over the top. These people are so committed to social change and justice. The AWB Israel team was extraordinary and working with them was, for me, a true gift and re-inspired me about AWB work. They really get it, what AWB is trying to do. And they put together a fantastic training (in collaboration with the US team). 49
AWB Israel trainer Keren Assouline leading a workshop on how to take trauma treatment out into the community Photo: Diana Fried They feel so inspired by this, like they have found family in another part of the world. They will take this far, I have no doubt. It will be fascinating to see what develops. Many, many ideas came out of the training for work they want to do – working with Sudanese and Eritrean refugees living south of Tel Aviv, working in mental health facilities, prisons, West Bank and Gaza (right now Israelis cannot go to Gaza and it is difficult for them to go to parts of the West Bank), survivors of torture and terror, etc.
Efi Ben David and AWB trainer Carla Cassler Photo: Diana Fried 50
Efi Ben David, a shiatsu practitioner, has been going with Physicians for Human Rights to do medical clinics on the West Bank. She is so excited to now have a clinical protocol that she feels will be more useful and also a community of people with whom to do this work. She told of an experience of treating a Palestinian police officer. They had a deep bond and connection and he wanted to exchange email addresses to stay in touch. He asked her if she had been in the Israeli army and she said she had been in the army, before she understood things better. He then said he could not exchange emails with her. Even though so many people have completely lost hope for change for the region, I am going to maintain hope that whatever AWB can do will be a positive contribution.
Healing Community Trauma in Israel participants What I saw is that the people we were working with are very committed to developing relationships – Arabs with Jews and Jews with Arabs. The AWB Israel team (which is all Jews at the moment) has spent a lot of time starting to cultivate these relationships. 51
Adi doing medical qi gong at demonstration treatment at the Akko acupuncture school for Arab- Palestinians
Adi Gerlitz told of going to the Arab acupuncture school in Akko (near Haifa) and meeting the head of the school and other faculty and students. He and Oren Rachmany did a NADA treatment for them, and his description was that 1/3 went very deep, 1/3 went to a lighter magical place, and 1/3 went to a different plane. He said they had a powerful treatment and connection and this was a very unusual experience. This AWB work has given them a platform to make connections, and they are doing it. They also understand that it has to be slow and they can’t be too urgent or pushy, though there is a sense of wanting it so much.
Aya Basheer and Oshrat Klarman Photo: Diana Fried The Arab-Palestinian Israelis who were at our training were like visitors in a way. They were really very, very brave and courageous to come, I was told (and that was evident). The worlds are so separate, so different and yet Jews and Muslims are cousins. I kept hearing about “Israeli food” and “Arabic food” and “Middle Eastern food” and it turns out, at least to me, they are all almost exactly the same food. When I talked about how I was feeling about the people and the connections they understood. They all 52
feel it too. One person said she has tried to leave (Israel) so many times because she doesn’t like the politics of the country, but she can’t for those reasons. She lives out in the desert with her girlfriend, in an Arab village, and she has been collecting the traditional medicine teachings of the Bedouin because she says it is dying and not being passed on (like traditional medicine in so many places). I found myself, and I saw it in the Israeli Jews and the Arabs, longing for connection, wanting it to work, doing everything we could even in this small setting to bridge the divide. And yet…in some mysterious way it was so difficult, even here. I guess this is where letting go of desire for outcome is critical.
I was deeply moved by the stories I heard, over and over, of how people’s families got to Israel and what they went through to get there. To hear about the worldwide persecution of Jews from everywhere in the world, let alone all the families of holocaust survivors and their stories – even though, of course, I know this history, was a bone-chilling experienced. Despite my strong opposition to the current occupation and to so much of the history of occupation, I was incredibly moved to feel in my bones in a different way than I ever had, how and why this mess happened. When you start to hear story after story after story of the hundreds of thousands of people who were fleeing persecution and did not have anywhere else that felt safe to go, or anywhere else to go at all…it changes the internal landscape, at least it did mine, in very surprising ways.
View from Masada in Israel across the Dead Sea to Jordan Photo: Diana Fried 53
I got in a taxi to take me to the tour group meeting spot for my tour to the West Bank. Turns out the taxi driver was Palestinian. I told him I was going to visit the West Bank. After he realized my general approach to the situation, he told me that living in Tel Aviv was “so, so” for him. He said many Jews get in his taxi and when they find out he is Palestinian they get very scared. He said it is really hard. I saw the fear in his face. He kept telling me what a “good, good” person I am and he wished more of his riders were like me. I could see that he wanted to hold onto this moment. It felt hard. I got out to meet my tour group and, to my surprise, tears formed in my eyes. The tour I took was led by Women Against the Occupation and for Human Rights - Machsomwatch (http://www.machsomwatch.org/en). I am going to highlight some of the things we saw and that I learned on this tour (most of this information comes from the tour leader and I am summarizing). I think their perspective on the situation is very important and unusual.
Women Against the Occupation tour at a West Bank checkpoint Photo: Diana Fried Our tour leader from Women Against the Occupation and For Human Rights told us that we won’t see what really happens at the borders. It is in the early morning hours when thousands of people cross that the troubles happen. The organization Machsomwatch has become like a go-between for the Palestinians and the soldiers. They watch at the borders; they felt they couldn’t not do something so they do what we can. If something bad happens they ask the soldiers to do something. Sometimes the soldiers listen, sometimes they don’t. The army sees them as reliable and trustworthy. They read Machsomwatch reports. They have meetings together. Machsomwatch feels for the soldiers as much as they feel for the Palestinians. They are all their children, families. They are forced into an impossible situation. They told us that they are not showing us a balanced situation. If you want you can join a settler tour to get the other side of the story. This 54
group is 300+ Jewish Israeli women with 10,000 opinions. They have a team that goes to military courts where Palestinians are tried. Law and justice for them is not the same as in Israel. 200,000 Palestinians are on the general security blacklist. They take Palestinian kids and moms to the beach for the first time in their lives. They have teams that go to do embroidery, knitting with Palestinian women and children. They have a team to go teach English to women and girls. The soldiers are not evil. The settlers are not evil. It is the occupation that is evil. There is no place in history where occupation didn’t cause violation of human rights and horrendous effect on occupier and occupied. Tour leader says: My parents came as refugees to Israel, as did so many. They came from Germany in 1936. My grandparents didn’t make it. I come from a Zionist family. I do what I do in memory of my parents and grandparents and for the sake of my children and grandchildren. So they can stay in the country I love. Some of the older people want peace. Unfortunately, the fact that the children now know soldiers at gunpoint is not very promising. They taught us their perspective on the wall – the separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank:
View from West Bank toward Israel - separation barrier and "seam" Photo: Diana Fried The wall is costly, it is a burden on Palestinians, and it is not secure. Even Moshe Arens says “tear down the wall.” Many Palestinians are demonstrating peacefully in opposition to the wall. You can get arrested for being in a demonstration. You have to pay and also serve three – six months or one year. Palestinians are under military rule. The wall is part of the separation. The wall is constructed in areas where there is direct aim from the West Bank to Israel. The wall is an outer separation. Sixty percent of the barrier has been constructed. Forty percent of the area is non barrier. The barrier is inside the green line. There is a ‘seam’ zone between the barrier and Israel. Palestinians need a permit for the seam zone. But the land belongs to Palestinians. Usually, it is farmland that the Palestinians need to get to in order to farm, and now they have to have a permit. Then there are the checkpoints to go in and out of the West Bank to and from Israel.
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Palestinian workers at a checkpoint Photo: Diana Fried A new development is that the soldier comes out at checkpoint and asks the farmer to take down all the merchandise and wants to check it. The farmer has been out since 6 a.m. He is exhausted. He doesn’t have the energy to do this. It is very difficult to sell merchandise in Israel so the farmer has to bring it back to the West Bank to sell. Some of his merchandise gets ruined from the handling. There are inner and outer checkpoints in the West Bank. The inner checkpoints separate Palestinians from each other. People get up at 3:30 a.m. to be at work in Israel at 7 a.m. They go through cages at the checkpoints. It is humiliating. Machsomwatch can’t see what happens in the cages. They only can ask the people who go through it what happened? From Nourah, a Palestinian-American woman on our tour: Arabs in Israel are the least educated Palestinians across the entire Palestinian community. Gaza has some of the highest number of PhD’s of anywhere in the 3rd world. If you are not criticizing everyone in this political situation, you are not reading the right book. People here are walking on eggshells and under that is glass and under that is barbed wire. We visited a beautiful, lush plant nursery run by a Palestinian, but when the wall was put up the nursery ended up on the Israeli side of the wall, rather than in the community with Palestinians – here is what the nursery owner said (he didn’t want photo taken nor name mentioned): Thank you for wanting to know the truth. We ended up beyond the green line, on the “wrong” side of fence. We are not against the security that Israelis deserve. We believe Israelis get to exist but Palestinians do too and security and the ability to go to and from should not be at our expenses. 2002/3 Israelis decided to do fence but it was constructed on our land and they 56
forced us to come here with permits - only we are limited in hours we can spend here and we need to go through bodily checking every day. All we want to do is to enter our places of business. Then we got to know Machsomwatch Tours. The organization that took it upon itself to help Palestinians. This changed for us how we saw Israelis. Israelis should be proud of this organization. They come rain or shine to help us. I host these tours and they are now part of our lives. They just want to help not to be famous.
Agricultural gate at the separation barrier Photo: Diana Fried This wall causes much harm. It changed our lives for the worse. We are limited in time. On the dot. We have nightmares about the gate. There are 2 ways to get here. One way is to go through the agricultural gate (open 6:30 – 8 a.m.; 1 – 2 pm; 5:45 – 6:30 pm). Army is in charge. Another checkpoint which is open 24 hours/day and people who control that are private security guards. Most people prefer the behavior of the soldiers and not that of the private guards. Some of the soldiers have become our friends. They understand how this fence harmed our lives. They are just under orders. Some of them don’t like us. In the book My Promised Land, Ari Shavit talks about the Israel of the 60’s and how vibrant, creative, exciting and sensual it was. To me, so far, things seem very serious here and also my image or thoughts about Israel have often to do with politics which doesn’t fit his description. But today, as I sit in Ceasarea on the shores of the Mediterranean, where King Herod ruled in Roman times, a place that was also invaded by Byzantines and Muslims and Crusaders and more, there is a great Latin fusion band playing music in the sunshine and breeze. We could be in New Mexico and it is Shabbat and I can feel how this place carries, along with all the politics and horror of invasions and trauma, a vibrancy and excitement that he talks about in the book. Such a land of contradictions and the same is true in my heart. 57
Ancient Roman aqueduct at Ceasarea Photo: Diana Fried Yesterday we were near Sderot at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai just north of the border with Gaza. We met with an acupuncturist named Oshrat Klarman. She used to live in Gaza but had to leave because it was too dangerous. She is an extremely vibrant, sweet and compelling person. She still suffers from a lot of trauma from that time and from current conditions. She has a clinic on the kibbutz and an incredible salt room made with Ukrainian salt (People with respiratory problems sit in the room for therapy—the negative enzymes from the salt help clear phlegm from the system).
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Safe room for acupuncture treatment at kibbutz Yad Mordechai clinic. Oshrat showed us the clinic room she uses when there is an alarm signaling possible danger from Gaza rockets being thrown toward these southern towns. Everyone has to go hide in safe rooms. Children know the drill. She has an acupuncture table permanently placed in a safe room so she doesn't have to whip out needles or have them run with needles in. Yikes. She says that they used to have siren alarms, but now it is a voice that warns of the danger. The alarm sound was too constantly traumatizing. I also think of the animals and what it must be like for them. The issues that social policy makers must contend with here! When we arrived at Yad Mordechai we were told that an alarm had sounded 20 minutes ago. We just missed it. We would have had to figure out how to get to a safe area if we even knew what to do at all. All I could think of were the children who grow up with this and what that must do to them, on both sides of the occupied territories. These acupuncturists who live in this region are very, very excited about a protocol they can use in groups to help heal trauma. Very, very excited. Today we met with some people trained in council process. I have a vision of integrating this into some of AWB's work – to help bring people’s stories into the community acupuncture work - and our work in Israel seemed a great start. They were two of the most beautiful inspiring people. Clear deep peaceful connected heart-centered. I am so happy about working with them here to integrate a council process into our training next week. Also, in spite of the politics of the State of Israel...we were discussing how amazing it is to be with Jews from all over the world and to hear the stories of how their families got there. Today our new council 59
friends told us that their families were from Egypt and left due to persecution and yesterday Oshrat talked about being of Libyan Jewish descent (there are not many Libyan Jews) whose parents also left due to persecution.
And what an extraordinary thing that this ancient beautiful language of Hebrew got revived on its way to extinction and all these Jews who come from everywhere all speak the same language. It makes me wish the same could happen for dying Native American languages. If only more Jews spoke Arabic, as many Arabs speak Hebrew.
I did not want to leave Israel though I miss my home. I almost never feel that way these days traveling. I am usually ready to go home. But the heart connection I felt, and the depth of life and love and a lot of laughter, and feeling so seen and understood, and seeing so many possibilities for the AWB work there, all made me want to stay. I feel like I am leaving a piece of my heart and maybe my soul behind. I see strong aspects of the Padma and Karma families in the land of Israel-Palestine. There is the passion or grasping of the Padma family and if this could only be transformed into the discriminating-awareness wisdom for the benefit of all. I also see the arrow-like pointedness of jealousy of the karma family. It is almost as if this were all one big family entrenched in a huge mythical family feud. This experience in Israel-Palestine brings full circle my ancestral family story, back in the ancestral land of Israel-Palestine, of the desire for social change/social justice and the pull toward the inner healing. If there were ever a land fraught with trauma, this is it. The Israel AWB team has expressed to us that in part through our being there, teaching about trauma, mirroring back to them, they can see more clearly, and maybe even for the first time, the significance of their own trauma and the need for healing that. If this were all that ever came out of the project, it would be enough! The work of this AWB Israel team is another example of the Gold Standard of Humanity in Action. Buddhist Chaplaincy: Empowerment of Others – Empowerment of Self
Sign hanging on fence in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina Photo: Diana Fried 60
There are so many ways in which this work has both exemplified the heart of Buddhist chaplaincy, and has also exemplified the challenges to doing front-line work in a way that holds to the core of Buddhist chaplaincy. I believe one of the most important aspects of the work of AWB, that has always been part of my vision, is that the focus is on rebuilding, empowerment and capacity-building. For me, this is core to Buddhist chaplaincy. Wherever we work, whatever we do, it needs to be empowering to ourselves and empowering to those with whom we work. Part of empowerment is the building of capacity at all levels. This is the path to “freedom” as discussed in Buddhist teachings. While sometimes AWB’s work has been about going into a situation, usually a disaster, and simply doing treatments (which is very valuable in itself in certain contexts), in our global work particularly we are interested in long-term relationships with communities, in hearing about their needs, and in serving through helping to build indigenous capacity by giving people tools. Our commitment is to stay as long as we can and not to abandon people, but to keep going back to the extent that funding and resources allow. We are using appropriate technology and are able to supply needles and other needed supplies to the regions where we work. I think this is a deep part of Buddhist chaplaincy - to give people the tools, to help them do the rebuilding, to continue to build capacity, and not to abandon. This is the meaning of empowerment. When translated to self, a Buddhist chaplain’s work should also be about empowering self, and helping to support an ever greater capacity to serve with compassion, and not to abandon self. I have to say that this has been the most challenging for me. I reached several points in the work where I found that I was at the very end of my rope. There was nothing left. This had built up for years, during which my complete and total focus was on this work. I gave up much of my personal life and even my health. I don’t know how else I could have done it, even though I know it was not the way of health and balance. It seemed to require this, as every time I tried to ease up, the money would not come in. So there was truly a choice, and I made the choice to keep doing it. Some of the tools of the chaplaincy work, particularly daily meditation practice, the Three Tenets, and also the tools taught by Fleet Maull and Cheri Maples for integrating self-care practices into the work and into organizations, are key to changing this dynamic. For instance, Fleet Maull teaches exercises that help to get at what it means to feel “fully resourced” as part of doing this chaplaincy work. He also teaches about kindness to self, as well as kindness to others, as part of the self-care that is critical in order to work in the charnel grounds. This could include not getting caught up in the drama triangle which causes a great deal of harm to self and others; understanding one’s own part in playing any or all of the roles of victim, rescuer and perpetrator, and being able to step out of these types of dramas, in order to be the healing force that one needs to be and to take care of one’s self. Cheri Maples talked about vicarious traumatic stress and its components: physiological, emotional and spiritual distress. She discussed how to be aware when this type of impact is setting into one’s life, and how to move out of it with creating more balance. Included in her many great ideas on self-care are: balancing being with doing; making connections and avoiding isolation; choosing work that is meaningful; consistent meditation practice; slowing down; proactive time management; conscious attention to your environment; practicing deeper and deeper levels of non-harming; and, not creating a culture at work that supports over working. Part of the work of what I call “keeping the beach clean” is also doing the hard work, that Maull and Maples both discussed, of dealing with triggers as they arise, working with conflict, and creating more 61 harmonious relationships within the teams and groups with whom one works. I feel that ongoing internal work of this nature is absolutely critical for me to be a Buddhist chaplain. Another important component of Buddhist chaplaincy is to do work without assumptions and expectations, and to be open to what arises. I have had to open my own heart and soul to the work of the Military Stress Recovery Project, a project I created, even when others make assumptions about my politics or the politics of AWB that are challenging for me. Because in my soul I know this program is deeply important, I live with the outside projections and just move forward doing the work we need to do. To me, this type of learning and acceptance is an important part of Buddhist chaplaincy. I think, as well, that being on the front lines of such deep trauma, especially in places like Haiti, did result in my experience of secondary trauma. I realized that I could not watch any type of disaster on TV without feeling deeply disturbed in my bones, and that I was having a deep visceral experience of pain and suffering that I could not hold onto my center. This did cause me eventually to leave the job of Executive Director, and to join the chaplaincy program. I am still in process with this, and not clear if I have the capacity to throw myself into the work and maintain balance. This then means that I cannot do the work with the kind of fervor that I did; better for my health, and less work will be produced. That is the trade-off, as far as I can tell, at this time. The work of Roshi Joan Halifax on compassion, moral distress and the G.R.A.C.E. model are extremely important to bring into this equation. The G.R.A.C.E. model is an intervention based on helping the practitioner open to the patient’s experience, stay centered in the face of suffering, and be able to actualize healthy compassion in the situation. The model allows for a necessary pause to be able to focus on one’s attention; to remember one’s intention; to do a brief self-assessment of somatic experience, emotional tone, and any cognitive biases; and then to tune into the patient or whomever is the “other” with empathy and an enhanced perspective; and finally to engage in a short internal prescriptive process assessing what will actually serve at the moment. All of this creates a sense of stability and integrity in the interaction. I have found that so much of the time in field work, especially in disaster situations, the “up regulation” is very high. People tend to move quickly, to make decisions quickly and to stay in a heightened state which keeps everyone’s nervous systems operating at overload. This model would be so tremendously useful for all volunteers to use in the field. I personally would like to employ this model to see the extent to which it would facilitate a more balanced approach, thus contributing to self-care and to delivering better care for all involved. This would be a great asset to the work and to creating a more wholesome Buddhist chaplaincy in the work. Conclusion
In spite of the challenges to my personal life and health and balance, my heart has been opened by this world- wide work. I feel connected to a global family in a way that I would never have imagined. The reception that we receive around the world almost breaks your heart, because people cannot believe we are showing up in the way we are, not as tourists to “take” from them, but in an equal exchange of healing, learning, being together. I remember being in Chichen Itza, home to the famous Mayan archaeological site that was a pre- Columbian city, visited by thousands of people every day. We were doing a clinic in the local community center. At our clinic, there were local villagers, moms, laborers, farmers, and even police workers! The mayor ended up coming late in the day, and he made a speech to us. He told us of his extraordinary gratefulness for what we were doing. He said that thousands of people come through their town every day and don’t even see the people who live there. This was different and they would never forget it!
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What an avenue for world peace! This is truly at the core of what I had always wanted: to find a way to contribute to world peace, not through demonstrations or the kind of advocacy work that I used to do, which felt like I was always in a battle with someone. I wanted to do it differently and to find a way that was healing for all, but that also contributed at some level to the making of peace. This feels like a way. I don’t know the long-term implications, but I do know that thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives have changed, including my own.
I feel that in this work there is a true merging of global activism and spiritual practice, for which I have longed all my life. I still have a long way to go in this endeavor, first and foremost, in my own practice and my ability to be the leader that perhaps I can be, which means empowering all around me in their own leadership and figuring out how to get through the deep suffering with more equanimity. Above all, learning how to take care of myself from moment to moment and, as the Dalai Lama said, to hold the suffering in the emptiness or to put it another way, to hold the suffering within the Buddha family of all-encompassing space, over and over again bearing witness, not knowing and then taking action that naturally arises out of bearing witness and the not knowing.