Adaptations in the Digital Age

Our goal is to be able to adapt to the following circumstances, and treat the conditions that result from our work.

• Inflammation of the body: For example, inflammation from the stress of working in a cramped environment, or on a phone or tablet with small repetitive movements. One of the most effective treatments can be found here: Bodywork
• Inflammation of the mind: dealing with fear, anger and even remorse, (anger turned inwards), can become toxic and literally burn us up. So we've used the tools at Self Examination and Options to address these manifestations of willfulness.
• Inflammation of each other: In order to remedy conflicts or grievances and make amends we can work on Self Advocacy with each other, or if we're not clear why circumstances keep escalating and become violent, we might try Problem Solving to identify the true source of the aggravation.

I realized that by opening up, I was able to find out where some of my conflicts came from. As a result of being honest, officers and health care personnel opened up about the cases they were familiar with to help direct my energy in a more constructive direction. For example: I may feel just about asking God to help me show tolerance, patience and pity to a spiritually sick person, but what gives me the right to make that claim? There are strict rules about who can diagnose or testify to traits of character in our society and it might do me more good to show respect for those precedents than to stubbornly adhere to my own beliefs. Doctors need to be licensed, Priests are formally trained and I'm probably better off redirecting the blame I feel to my own manifestation of the problems that I can identify in others.

Black Elk's Vision

When Black Elk was nine years old, he was suddenly taken ill and left prone and unresponsive for several days. During this time he had a great vision in which he was visited by the Thunder Beings (Wakinyan), and taken to the Grandfathers — spiritual representatives of the six sacred directions: west, east, north, south, above, and below.

Black Elk had learned many things in his vision to help heal his people. He had come from a line long of medicine men and healers in his family; his father was a medicine man as were his paternal uncles.

In his vision, Black Elk is taken to the center of the earth, and to the central mountain of the world.

As Black Elk related: "While I stood there I saw more than I can tell and understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.

And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy."

Black Elk's Prayer for All Life

"Hear me, four quarters of the world - a relative am I! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you.

Only with your power can I face the winds. Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather!

All over the earth the faces of living things are all alike. With tenderness have these come up out of the ground. Look upon these faces of children without number and with children in their arms, that they may face the wind and walk the good road to the day of quiet. This is my prayer; hear me now!"