Out of the Box Coaching and
Breakthroughs with the Enneagram, Mary R. Bast, Ph.D. 
Copyright © 1999. All rights reserved. Revised: December 31, 2011  

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Holistic Approaches
to Chronic and Life-Threatening Illness

A Brief Time in History – Born in 1942, Stephen Hawking was told in the mid-sixties he had three months to live. He is now a world-renowned astrophysicist, best known for his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes.

When I Wish, I Blow Bubbles. – In wishing well we let go of needing to be in control, of expecting a specific outcome. We focus on serenity, delight, purpose, meaning, and compassion in an easy flow with the cosmos. This quality is conveyed by the quote: "When I wish, I blow bubbles..."

What We Know in Our Bones – Early in Close to the Bone: Life-Threatening Illness and the Search for Meaning, Jean Shinoda Bolen reminds us the Chinese pictograph for “crisis” contains the ideograms for both “danger” and “opportunity.”

"Holistic" is Not a Technique – Eight dysfunctional stress patterns, from The Creation of Health: The Emotional, Psychological, and Spiritual Responses that Promote Health and Healing, by Norman Shealy and Caroline Myss.

Life is a Rorschach – Dr. Michael Yapko offers "learn by doing" exercises that teach you ways to look at yourself and your world that create a more satisfying and peaceful life (from Breaking the Patterns of Depression).

A Gathering of Flowers – In the foreword to the anthology Healers on Healing, W. Brugh Joy, M.D. tells us the word anthology "literally means a gathering of flowers." Richard Carlson and Benjamin Shield, editors of this remarkable collection of essays,  search for the common thread among healers and healing methods.

A Strange Blessing – "...cancer is a strange blessing that casts our life and purpose in sharp relief," wrote Hamilton Jordan in No Such Thing as a Bad Day. "Some cancer patients allow cancer to dominate and define their lives... But there are many, many more who use their illness to find new meaning in their lives."

Forgiveness is the Miracle – In Love is Letting Go of Fear, Dr. Gerald G. Jampolsky has applied the principles of A Course in Miracles to what he describes as "lessons for personal transformation." 

The Tibetans Call it a "Bardo"  – In the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche refers to a bardo as a juncture "when the possibility of liberation, or enlightenment, is heightened." My experience of this different state of mind, this totally unexpected new reality, opened my mind and my heart and began a lifelong spiritual path.  

The Only Gate is Now – my blog on breast cancer.

One-Minute Meditation: