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How do we get everyone on the same page, equally committed to creating a better health care system?

Who can unite each aspect involved, representing all sides of the issues, so that everyone can have equal voice?

Who can articulate the vast diversity of health care in a way that creates a positive change?

A humanitarian effort is underway at the Helfgottblog, we like to call it: The Vivid Health care Plan. It’s based upon a similar response to organize the food industry in California called the Vivid Picture Project. As far as we’re concerned the momentum necessary for health care reform does not have to be abrupt, nor does it require an unseating of industry position, it merely requires an adjustment to each entity within the system so that everyone benefits, and health care can be provided in an effective, efficient, and altruistic manner.

With health care costs rising, and with political parties actively discussing health care reform, the Vivid Health care Plan is a necessary entity designed with the sole purpose to make health care work.

The Vivid Health care Plan has its own page, you can access it from our “pages” section on the left of our homepage. Our efforts are quickly expanding, eventually including resources, references, and surveys for the various aspects of the health care community, so that all facets are addressed. The basic idea is to use Portland as a starting point, organizing our efforts as a viable system in order to serve the needs of our community. To make Portland’s health care system functional in every aspect would serve as a valuable model for other communities searching for affordable and sustainable health care.

It’s as simple as hearing everyone out– from the grassroots of community to the wheat shaft of big business to the tall columns of Washington DC. Democracy is built for the people by the people. Let’s make the dream of functional health care a reality.

This is PART 1 in a 12 part series for the Year of Sagely Living project, entitled 12.12.12: A journey of self-discovery for a lopsided soul.
To learn more: click here.

“Brrrr-BING!…Brrrr-BING!….Buurr-rr-RR-rRr-BI-Eee-Br-eeEEEeeeg-!”

This is the sound that my Corona Typewriter makes. To say that’s it rusty from negligence and misuse would be an understatement… my forgotten 1910 Underwood could attest to such inappropriate unrest. This is also the sound that my mind makes when I attempt to force out any creative endeavors, especially upon command. It seems utterly useless when the mechanisms just refuse to work. It’s like poking a dead fish out-of-water and telling it to swim. To elaborate further, the physical challenges that prevent my communication, I present to you a key cast of players:

1. A sluggish tongue: a muscular structure that gets too ecstatic and emotional about my thoughts. This meaty member proceeds to flap endlessly and aimlessly, badgering and exposing my poor listeners to topics that may not have any other relevance except to myself.
2. My brain, which twiddles like a noisy cockatoo on some occasions and on others, wags happily like an excited hound. Neither of which, despite the joys within, can adequately convey a useful string of words. Estimations of grammatically structured ideas result, leaving misplaced verbs and made-up words in its wake, leading to describe itself as a distant relative to a soft pad of butter.
3. And lastly my fingers… the excitement that stems from their tips conveys enough emotive force that it moves my laptop’s cursory movement to wayward directions that seem even more than tangential to my oceanic thoughts.

In brief, these three factors, in combination to lack of time, poor memory, and a clean bar of soap have prevented me from relaying my experience of January’s rendition of 12.12.12. At first glance, my preface appears out of place, a wanton of self-pity, however I would like to reassure my audience (a membership of perhaps a small scattering of individuals) that I am human, as well. I simply knew that this project would prove too constructive and purposeful for my blitzing psyche to understand… but I digress, I accepted the challenge, and this is what I have to show for January 2008.

This was the selfwork delivered from Deepest Health:

January - Gall Bladder, Zi 子 (Rat): Scholarship/Study: This category will contain practices to develop us into true scholars in the Confucian/neo-Confucian tradition. Why this pairing? The seasonal energy is still in winter, a contemplative mood prevails, but the Yang is rising. Similar to this, we can see scholarly pursuits as ACTIVE passivity. One generally sits still, but one’s mind is hard at work.

Unfortunately, this initially proved troublesome because most of my time is spent working for the Helfgott Research Institute, a rather scholarly activity, and my body is still recovering from the completion of NCNM’s Chinese Medicine MSOM degree. My life felt pretty heavy-handed in the scholarship/study department, and to knowingly pursue additional avenues into this line of thought seemed counter intuitive. Sure, I love learning, exploring, detailing the invisible threads of mechanism on the mathematical, intellectual, and brain-bending scales…. But this felt out of balance with what I needed on an emotional, playful, and a delight-in-the-world realm, all of which I’m seeking to round out after a four year absentee hiatus directly due to my scholarly study at NCNM. These parts of my life are as equally important to me. Hence the inherent difficulty. So perhaps I bent the rules for the Year of Sagely Living game an eensy-bit, but I discovered that the universe has a rather perverse way of dealing with types like me….

Along my path of avoidance, in accord with my dogged determination to remain stubborn and to advert any and all self-constructive exercises, I subconsciously abstained from libraries, bookstores, and even reading the daily funnies … “The cartoons were becoming a bit stale,” I told myself. That and my co-worker and friend, Erin C, left for India with the organization BIRD to pursue underserved diabetic populations and blood pressure, (she was in charge of providing the Oregonian every day). My opportunity to read the funnies was actually not a conscious choice, but rather a secondary effect resulting from a lack of Erin C in my life.

Enter coincidence #1: Erin C decided to go to India because of a book she read: “eat pray love” by Elizabeth Gilbert and in part because she has an enormous heart.

Enter coincidence #2: This book had recently entered my life via a childhood friend, who throughout the years has provided me with numerous fabulous reads. This friend has watched me grow, and blossom in the worst and best of times. Despite the large nation that separates us, I am forever grateful for her and her continued persistence with our friendship. Deciding not to act on such childishness, however, I played off the concurrence of events, thinking that synergistically two items combined might equal the force of four, but beyond that number, nothing added up to enough greatness for me to pursue the book any further (starting to notice a pattern?).

To cut right to the chase, now clearly labeled as coincidences #4-6, appearing in respective order: my neighbor, my shoemaker, and some odd character on a Trimet bus recommended the book to me. Fine, I conceded, I shall read the book. And read I did, pushing imaginary timelines aside, creating a chaotic “book-reading” jaunt at least once a day, I provided an outlet for the Year of Sagely Living to shape me.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s processing was exactly what the doctored ordered. In short my life lessons learned in January were:

1. Devouring a book is a delight that I seldom allow myself, and this is mostly due to an over-active mind and a “so little time mentality” that I construct.
2. Devoting myself to simple daily practices like book thumbing, bath tubbing, and aimless walking keeps me balanced in this stage of the game.
3. Overall, I adored the book: “eat pray love” and would recommend it to anyone seeking a change in perspective from the tired routine of self-conformist thinking.

In retrospect, I did achieve the goals outlined in the Year of Sagely Living, as I learned to passively pursue the simple. Enabling myself with more “self time” and allowing my academic pursuits to cool off once and a while. Life and learning is all encompassing, and coincidently can be found in a book.

Read more about 12.12.12: A journey for a lopside soul here and only here.

This book by John Berger, “A Fortunate Man,” is blowing my mind. It’s an account of the life of a country doctor in the English countryside in the early 60’s.

When talking about the nature of illness -

“It is a question of failing to find any confirmation for oneself in the outside world.”

And then the doctor’s role -

“Clearly the task of the doctor - unless he merely accepts the illness on its face value and incidentally guarantees himself a ‘difficult’ patient - is to recognize the man. If the man can begin to feel recognized - and such recognition may well include aspects of his character which he has not yet recognized himself - the hopeless nature of his unhappiness will have been changed: he may have the chance of being happy.”

“It demands from the doctor true imaginative effort and precise self-knowledge.”

Thought you’d enjoy.

The Portland Monthly Magazine just released their Top Doc’s of 2008 issue, and within the glossy color prints and thoughtful descriptions, you get the overall picture of how functional we are becoming in the health care industry. We’re learning to play nice, listen to all aspects of the issue, not pick sides and defiantly take the stance that there is only one and final answer. Because if you haven’t figured it out by now, there is not just one universal way to make health happen, we’re all different needing unique and personalized forms of health care. The solution to our ailments and crippled health care system lies in its harmony, bridging different modalities with the common goal of effectively and efficiently providing health to the community. Portland’s Monthly mag managed to pave the way, providing a sustainable structure for health care in the Portland area, distributing roadmaps and contact information for those needing a little bit of direction along the way. A round of kudos is well deserved for Portland Monthly and, in a nutshell, its featured article Hippocrates, meet Lao-Tzu is more than satisfactory.

Author, Chris Lydgate, was successfully able to convey the current state of health care in the Portland area, but it really goes beyond just that. Yes, in the northwest we are privy to a unique cornucopia of medical practices empowering its patient base with choices and skills enabling optimum health, lower health care costs, and a better quality of life overall. More importantly, we are collaborating in ways that the rest of the nation has yet to discover, and cooperation is how we as a city are able to achieve this. Stumptown is about as progressive as it gets, home to organizations such as Recycle at Work and Focus the Nation, health care is simply another drop in the bucket. For us, critically thinking about the convoluted and complicated challenges affecting our current state of affairs simply makes sense. Why? Two real good reasons:

Numero Uno: Portlanders are basalmic by nature. During the rainy months of Portland we think-tankers take the opportunity to hunker down and reflect upon such unwieldy endeavors. We spend a lot of time indoors rubbing elbows and making collaborations with other fellows in our fields of practice.

Numero dui: Despite the fact that Portland has about 537,081 people, we somehow know one another and our “rule of separation” easily hovers around two. At some point or another you’ll bump into someone who is willing to put their thoughts and resources into the equation in order to make Portland more functional and practical for its people and the businesses therein.

The brass tacks of it: we like our city, we’re proud of our city, and we’d like to see it work for everyone.

So when it comes to medicine any debating based upon East versus West, natural versus conventional are yesterday’s news for this forward thinking town. Same goes for controversies that compartmentalize or pick apart medicine since there is rarely a solution offered in the argument. In the article entitled: Hippocrates, meet Lao-Tzu, author Chris Lydgate uses a holistic approach in his reporting style, reflecting a methodical and unbiased perspective on the infrastructure of Portland’s remarkable health care. He discusses the issues in a frank and straight-forward manner, citing the variety of outlets for medicine, and its a complementary approach to understanding the “diverse healing traditions” available and utilized by the inhabitants of our fair city. Lydgate doesn’t shy away from the grey area created between the complexity either, different modalities of healing mean a multitude of mechanistic actions and clearly defining how each is able to effectively cure is not necessarily an easy task. Nor is it necessarily important in the grand scheme of things; if a person gets better, he gets better right? Isn’t that what health care’s goal is aimed at? Diving deeply into the unknowns and what ifs that often times surround unconventional medicine, Lydgate attempts to smooth the edges of the infamous black box placebo for the weary consumer. Again not advocating for one or the other, merely putting all the cards on the table and asking his reader to simple pick one.

A great summation quote for this constructive article is the following: “What is striking about the rise of integrative medicine is the way in which it manages to construct a sort of therapeutic power-sharing, marrying the magic to the medicine.” Yep. As far as I’m concerned life has a bit of magic in it already, some call it faith, come call it placebo, some call it passion, creativity… whatever, really. Ultimately it’s whatever floats your boat or keeps you high and dry, happy in the turbulance of life. I guess we’re all too familiar with this thought pattern in Portland because we’re all in it together, huddled indoors, out of the rain; and on the one hand it behooves us to keep healthy, otherwise we’re just asking to spread sickness, and on the other hand, we’re keeping it real, thinking up solutions to the rest of life’s challenges.

The synergistic dialogue between “magic and medicine” does hold powerful promises, it’s a step in the right direction creating a solution to the pesky problem commonly labeled as “universal health care.” We must admit that the people over here at Helfgott could not help but ooh and ahh over the contents therein, personally recognizing a few of the doctors and facilities featured. Giddiness would adequately describe the mood, as would a contented sigh of relief: finally! I would personally recommend the read to anyone out there that can get their hands on the January 2008 issue in hardcopy format (it’s not available in a liquid form), so run to your grocer’s counter to flip through its thoughtful process and see for yourself the nitty-gritty details elegantly outlined inside.

12.12.12: A journey of self-discovery for a lopsided soul

Deepest Health’s writer Eric grey came up with a rather tantalizing suggestion: “practice what we preach,” in other words, can we aspiring health practitioners and healers walk the walk of our medicine? Chinese Medicine is all about refinement, getting closer and closer to our intimate selves, a spiraling if you will of self-discovery, getting clearer outlines of the nooks and crannies (both physical and emotional) of our dynamic being. Over the year of 2008, the idea is to watch, cultivate, and record observations about yourself in relation to the 12 Chinese officials and their inherent directional force. For a full description of the details, you can check it out here . You, too, can be part of the experiment; I triple-dog-dare-ya.

Eric’s idea does sound simple enough, but historically, my nature is whimsical, chaotic as a butterfly dipping into what suits my fancy given any present moment. In general, I have a problem with structure; confinement creates my chaos, feeling edges of definitions and boundaries, makes me become stubborn and unmanageable at times. Hence the fact that I call my cubical “my inspiratory” instead, and still feel the need to crawl around and be creative in cafes about Portland. I know these attributes of mine could prove problematic, friends, but on a realistic note, this may unearth a few hidden gems worth reviewing. Dogmatic and ritualistic routine I shy away from, and in some instances promote the opposite, finding for myself that the road less traveled has far more hidden treasures for my psyche and spiritual growth. This exercise shall, in the very least, prove interesting to both myself and any readers out there in cyber land. Life: we all go through it perhaps some overlap of my experiences will serve the betterment of humanity, or at least provide some insight into the process of being human.

To keep up with the continuity, you may periodically visit the page entitled, 12-12-12. Why 12-12-12? I was born on the 12th of December, and the way I shall reward myself for sticking though this self-discovery program for an entire 12 months will occur on December 12, 2008. And to keep those of you hungry for more, in addition to satisfying my innate nature for unpredictability, each months’ insights will occur haphazardly, occurring, but not limited to, at least once per month. Encouragement, feedback, or a simple thumbs-up is appreciated at any given time and in any pattern you deem necessary. Here’s to revelations within.