I just came across this article I wrote five years ago. I don’t think I published it, but in thinking about how I wanted to teach the two Workshops in 2018 on COMING BACK TO BALANCE, I can see that this is an amazing primer on how to work with oneself on some of our seemingly unremitting problems.

I had horrific headaches for over 15 years. While I kept some of the pain at bay with nutrition and energy medicine, emergency surgery finally took care of the tumor which only was found when I collapsed. A large tumor in my sphenoid sinus (pituitary) had got infected and had to be removed.

I am rigorous now at keeping yearly check-ups to make sure that the tumor has not returned.

And I also want to say, because I do not spend much time in the article saying this, that my tumor was mostly caused by 7 years of a painful and tumultuous marriage. My emotions were volatile, and I was mostly pretty unhappy. ONE CANNOT GET WELL WHEN EMOTIONS are not handled. It is impossible. In fact, my teacher, Herman Aihara, told us that all cancers were 80% emotional. Whether this is true or not, my own work with cancer has shown me that all illness is emotionally based. Body is a reflection of mind. Period.

Please take a few minutes to read this. It is pretty dense, obviously unedited. Take what you like and leave the rest😊

Then check back to the CALENDAR OF EVENTS FOR 2018 for Southern Fried SPIRITUALITY™. The first Workshop will be held in June, and the second in November. Look for the dates and information at www.SouthernFriedSpirituality.com.

Headaches, a Brain Tumor and Energy Medicine

By “Gopita” Katharine Manning, ©2013

In reading about David’s (*note: This is David Feinstein, PhD., Donna Eden’s husband), ordeal with a brain bleed (subdural hematoma) and his alarming symptoms, including an unremitting headache, I wanted to share my experience from December 2010 with a supersized headache and my subsequent trauma and surgery resulting from the same.

I was returning from a trip back east to see my Dad in South Carolina – and this is just an aside – but he was in a nursing home due to a fall and a subdural hematoma! – which had left him a bit addled in his 90th year of life. He is and was otherwise healthy, but the fact that he survived a fall down the rickety stairs in his 1700’s home in Georgetown surprised everyone, and his brain bleed left him in need of care. This actually was a blessing, because my sister, brother and I had wanted him in assisted care since Mom died in 2008. At any rate, most people don’t even survive a subdural hematoma, but my Dad and David apparently do! Both Mom and Dad had met Donna and David in 2008, and my Mom had adored David, calling him “the Hunk.” And I like to remember when David commented on those rickety stairs he and Donna walked down that day in March, 2008, 5 months before sweet Mama died.

But when I returned back home to California in early December, 2010, I had one of the worst headaches of my life. I am used to headaches. I have had migraines most of my life, but this was a severe and unremitting headache, even worse than the worst migraine, and it wouldn’t go away. The most unusual point was that I had done all my tricks: energy medicine, alternate nostril breathing, strong painkillers; nothing was working – in fact, it continued to get worse. I was in terrible, terrible pain. I was walking unsteadily and my eyesight was compromised. One morning a client walked into the waiting room of my office, and I began to scream. It was like it wasn’t “me” screaming, but the only thing that seemed to ease the ferocious pain in my head, it seemed, was the sound coming from my mouth and throat.

As my client helped me into her car (no time for an ambulance) and got me to Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, my memory became foggy, but I do remember a beautiful black policeman running up to my client’s car and scooping me up in his arms and carrying me tenderly into the Emergency Room. I remember having the thought that I was going to reach for his gun and shoot my head, and that would take care of the pain, but I had become unable to move my arms or legs.

I was diagnosed with meningitis and it was later discovered I had large benign tumor behind my sphenoid sinus. My sinus had been so chronically infected and this had been the cause, it was theorized, for many of my terrible, terrible headaches.

I was kept in the neurology wing of Huntington Hospital on IV medication and a strong painkiller for 4 days and then scheduled for surgery a few months later, after the infection remitted.

In February 2011, a two- hour surgery removed the tumor. The surgeon went through my nose and found the tumor between the sphenoid sinus and pituitary gland. The photos are incredible, and very gross. The tumor is pus-filled and the size of a golf ball. It was beginning to impinge on my pituitary gland, and could have become cancerous. The fact that my brain became infected had become a blessing, because the tumor may not have been found otherwise.

The tumor was comprised of a fungus called “aspergillum.” This is actually a bread mold, and is the cause of a severely compromised immune system. Or, a severely compromised immune system caused the tumor. My surgeon told me that this had “been with me” for many year – probably 10 – 20 years!!! And since I have had a love affair with fungi (!) and especially with all sorts of damp, cold internal problems, I wondered if this was not a residue of the severe bout of histoplasmosis which had apparently infected me when I had lived in the Tennessee Valley region in my 20’s. Histoplasmosis is a fungal infection which comes from birds – pigeon poop, to be exact – and this had entered my lungs, caused a severe infection, but I had remained alive, although I suffer from pneumonia on a bi-yearly basis to this day. And my pulmonary function is laughable. The disease was diagnosed years later when I had a chest x-ray which showed striated scar tissue on my lungs indicating an old disease process.

When I was a young girl I was always getting fungal illnesses!! I couldn’t go to college on time because I had picked up ringworm from my horse. And now, I had a severe aspergillosis. I stopped reading about it because it was so scary!!

Chinese medicine diagnoses illnesses according to damp/dry/hot/cold/windy/ etc. I have a very cold, damp condition, not unlike many people. And to make matters worse, I live in Southern California, which exacerbates my condition, due to the extremely dry, windy, hot conditions. What does a “fire” element like me d