BY MICHELLE CLARKE

St. Jamestown is the north end of one of Toronto’s oldest neighbourhoods, Cabbagetown, snuggled between Castle Frank and Sherbourne. The home riding of Canada’s first Female Woman, Caribbean Descendant, and a neighbourhood that I myself frequented growing up and had many high school friends from and in and around that downtown.

The City of Toronto has acknowledged it the most diverse and densest populated neighbourhood in the GTA! Diversity and density are terms that people often ascribe to academia or politics, but these terms should be in our day-to-day vocabulary, as the world around us changes due to the neglect from the pursuit of modernization and industrialization of mass scale productions and natural resource extraction projects. We know that those changes will be experienced in our local communities.

St, Jamestown isn’t the exception, but because of its 20,000+ population compacted into nineteen apartment high-rise apartment towers and four low rise buildings built in the 1960’s, plus many other houses, and small apartments between Bloor, Castle Frank and Sherbourne Streets make the living environment and experience of members more difficult. Climate change is displaying how it affects people living in high-rise towers, still recovering from a massive building fire and struggling with also being one of Toronto’s poorest and overlooked communities.

Yet what I found instead as I led the Research and Development Knowledge Hub  Knowledge Hub, Community Climate Action  for the Community Climate Action project is that St. James Town was full of untapped and overlooked potential of people with high skills sets, education and work experience. ReThink Sustainability Initiatives (RSI), Trinity Life, The Government of Canada and The New Common focused on the City of Toronto Targets and factors that highlight and intensify climate change impacts and health related emergencies focused on St. James Town.

This includes three Climate Action Ambassador Training Workshops, and Green Careers Mentorship and Training Workshops (which I participated in and contributed to); with upcoming “Collaborative Climate Solution Discovery Workshops, Building Assessment Workshops, with On-going Communication Activities.” Community Action in our neighbourhoods is usually focused on gun violence and gangs, it is important for now and our future generations to start effectively addressing how our immediate living environments are also affected by ecosystem changes.

DR. VIKAS PURI

A Means to physical and spiritual health

Do you know how healthy you are?  Are you aware that your spine holds the key to your overall physical, emotional and spiritual well-being?  Chiropractors and Yogis understand this, and both provide a means of tapping into your own innate healing potential. This article explores this common thread.

The Yoga Sutras, a text written by the ancient sage Patanjali circa 400 CE, lays out an eightfold approach to Self-Realization. The first two steps involve the “do’s and don’ts” that build our spiritual character. The third step is asana (correct posture). This is followed by higher and deeper states of breath and life force control and meditation until the soul unites with Universal Spirit. Yoga literally means “Union”.  As the wave becomes the ocean, so does individual consciousness unite with Cosmic Consciousness.

According to Yogic Philosophy, for the soul to consciously liberate from the cycles of life and death, the Yogi must consciously raise the life force (Prana) from the lower energy centers (chakras) of the spine to the top of the head, from where the soul will emancipate.

The movement of life force through the spine and out to different body parts is also an important element by which a Yogi can heal the physical and emotional body.

For these reasons, asana (correct posture) is the precursor step to pranayama (life force control) according to Patanjali.  Life force cannot flow efficiently, if at all if there is an impediment due to improper posture. The spinal nerves through which the life force flows, become pinched, which prevents self-healing, or spiritual advancement.

This is the reason ancient sages of India had created Hatha Yoga, physical exercises, to increase spinal flexibility, and improve posture, for the purpose of being able to sit for long periods of meditation and stay healthy in body, mind, and soul.

100 years ago, a healer named D.D Palmer, a native of Port Perry, Ontario, discovered the power of proper spinal alignment after he delivered the first ever chiropractic adjustment, a spinal manipulation, to a deaf man named Harvey Lillard. Harvey’s hearing came back, and the modern science of chiropractic was born.

In reality, it was a reconfirmation of the Yogic Philosophy and Science discovered thousands of years ago. Proper life force movement, through correct posture, is necessary for healing.

Chiropractic philosophy states that there is an innate divine intelligence within us, which fails to express itself when there is interference in the spine. This interference is known as a subluxation.  Subluxations are physical manifestations of stress (physical, chemical, and emotional), resulting in improper spinal alignment, and loss of proper nerve function, reducing the flow of vital energy and communication from the brain to the body. This leads to various mental, physical and emotional symptoms and disease.

Subluxations were known to ancient yogis and modern chiropractors. Health, defined as: “a state of optimal physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual well-being, and not just the absence of infirmity or disease”, presupposes a need for proper posture and spinal alignment.  It is the means for our life force to be directed by our innate intelligence, through our nervous system, to various parts of the body in order to function and heal.

Chiropractors remove these subluxations by way of chiropractic adjustments, helping restore your health, and enabling the Yogi to assume the proper posture required for his/her spiritual practice (sadhana).

Discover the yogic-chiropractic means to better physical and spiritual health today!

BY DR LYDIA THURTON

Somatization is when your body takes emotional pain and creates a physical problem. Patients will have all kinds of diagnostic testing only to be told that everything is normal. More than 80% of patients with dizziness, chest pain and fatigue have no medical explanation.

Patients are frustrated when they are told that a physical symptom is “all in their head.” To them, it discounts their experience and makes them feel crazy. This is not true at all! Your body is trying to talk to you in a way you understand. Everyone understands physical pain, not all of us will acknowledge feelings of sadness, grief and shame. Many of us are taught to disconnect from our emotional state, stuff down our feelings and put on a brave face. When we do this for a long period of time physical problems can result.

Think about your upbringing, with your parents. When you were sad or fearful, were you praised for identifying your emotions? And comforted? If not, then you probably have a tendency to avoid feeling and pretend that things are fine when they really aren’t. Most of our emotional reactions are learned in childhood. It is important to be honest with how emotionally intelligent your household was growing up.

If you have children think about your reaction to their emotional pain. This is especially critical for young boys. I feel much of the violence in our world is perpetrated by men who are hurting emotionally. And have no safe outlet.

Physical abuse or sexual trauma puts people at increased risk for somatization. If you have trauma in your history your body may use somatization as an ego defense mechanism. Defense mechanisms protect our minds from having to re-experience painful events. Instead of reliving the abuse you suffered, the body turns that pain into a sore back, or period cramps, or digestive upset. You are still experiencing pain, but body pain feels safer to us. Mental, emotional pain is much more unpredictable and complex to treat.

When a condition starts out of the blue take stock of your life. Are you upset at someone and biting your tongue? Do you feel powerless? Do you feel disrespected? Are you heart-broken? If you have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression or another psychiatric illness you are at increased risk to have your body talk to you. Digestion, sleep and physical pain are all very real consequences of mental illness.

When emotional problems are the cause, often illnesses will be in multiple body systems. For example, stomach cramps and headaches, insomnia and heart palpitations, painful sex and nausea. Symptoms can be vague and ever-changing. It can be very frustrating and scary for the patient because they know something is wrong but they hit a dead end with every test.

If this sounds like you, take an honest look at your emotional state. There is no shame is having emotional pain. Being a caring, compassionate human being means that there will be suffering and hurt. The more truthful you are with yourself and others, the better off we all are. If your body is talking to you, try your best to listen.