Have you ever had a dream that has come true? Have you somehow managed to glimpse into the future whilst you were asleep? If so, you are not alone. Studies suggest that about 1 in 4 people have had a precognitive dream at some point in their lives, with a recent survey suggesting that figure could be as high as 60%. Although premonition in dreams is notoriously hard to prove, if you have had it happen to you, then you are clearly going to be more convinced by the phenomenon.   

I’ve had it happen to me several time in my life and once recently I was even able to produce proof that it can happen with the help of a betting slip! It was May last year and as a long-suffering Tottenham fan I was quite excited when my team managed to get to a European final for the first time in over forty years. The night before the match I had a very clear dream that Tottenham were going to win 1-0 and Brennon Johnson was going to be our scorer. When I awoke, the dream was still very clear in my mind and although I’m not normally a betting man I thought I’d check the odds and at 40 to 1, I thought it was worth a flutter. At some point during the first half, it looked as though our opponents Man Utd had scored an own goal but as the camera zoomed in it showed the ball just grazing the toe of Brennon Johnson and he was awarded the goal. Against all odds (well 40 to 1) Tottenham managed to hold on for the 1-0 win and I was a winner at the bookies. 

I’m not sure how a sceptic would try and explain this, but they’d probably pass it off as just a coincidence. I however I feel that there must be more to it than that. The chances of this scoreline and scorer were slim but clearly possible at 40 to 1. But what must have the chances been of me having that dream the night before? I have had a million dreams in the past, but I’ve never had one about a football match, let alone one which gave such specific and accurate details. The actual probabilities must have been astronomical. So, what is going on here? 

The modern Western perspective of dreams is heavily influenced by psychologists such as Freud and Jung, and dreams are largely seen as a kind of night-time therapy. It is thought that when we are asleep the mind is able process daily stresses, integrate memories and shine a light on our sub-conscious feelings. But that doesn’t explain how we might dream of the future. 

The Chinese medical view on dreams is slightly more complex as our soul is seen to be fragmented and spread throughout the various organs. Dreams are seen as a way that our organs can communicate with our higher soul and are largely split into two types, Po dreams and Hun dreams. The Po are the aspect of our consciousness that resides in our Lungs and are known as the Earthly spirits. They are very much of this dimension and are involved with the tangible day to day living of life. Po dreams therefore are generally of this ilk, organising and making sense of daily experiences, in a way probably not too dissimilar to the Freudian theories. The Hun on the other hand reside in our Liver and they are known as the Heavenly spirits. They are the aspect of our consciousness that communicates with the realms of ‘heaven’ or the finer frequencies. The Hun are particularly active at night and Hun dreams communicate to us divine information through imagery and symbolism.  

So, what of my prophetic football dream then? Surely there can be nothing more mundane, more of this earth than a football match. This would indicate the involvement of the Po. But the fact that I accurately dreamt of the future meant that the Hun were also involved, as their very nature is to transcend space and time. It’s intriguing that they bothered to concern themselves with something so trivial as a Tottenham match – or maybe they were just trying to get me to write this article so that you too might take a punt on your dreams.  

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When I was growing up my Mum volunteered for the local RSPCA for many years. She would often be going out at all hours to rescue some animal or other that was in need. Quite often that animal would end up back at our house for a while and sometimes, if no one else wanted them they would stay on in our menagerie of waifs and strays. My Mum was, and still is, a true animal lover and because of this the animals clearly love her back. But there always seemed to me to be more to this story than meets the eye, because often many animals would have the uncanny knack of seeking her out when they needed help. I’ve seen many an injured creature calling out to her to be rescued, from a sheep stuck upside down in a farmer’s field to an electrocuted stork in Florida – I’ve even seen a lost parakeet land on top of her head in a swimming pool. No matter what the animal was, they all seemed to know that they could trust this human, and that this one, out of all the others that were around, would be the one that could help them. And they were right. 

Some of this affinity with animals has certainly rubbed off on me and possibly because of this when I was younger, I had a strong pull to follow a shamanic path. The first time I went to university I studied social anthropology and I was fascinated by the fact that shamans throughout history and throughout the world have always had the ability to communicate with nature. They would often seek out certain animals to receive messages and guidance from the spirit world. This idea appealed to me, so I would try and experiment and I practiced sending out telepathic messages to animals to see what would happen. It turned out that over time certain birds would often answer the call and crows and especially magpies would seemingly appear out of nowhere and share messages and information with me. One time, I swear a few of us even managed to call a humpback whale who came to say hello off the coast of Ecuador. 

This may sound fantastical to some, but I don’t think that is actually anything special. I’m sure anyone can do it if they put their ‘mind’ to it and truly believe that it is possible. Many people who have had a close relationship with a pet or even a wild animal would have had experiences that could lead them to believe that inter-species telepathy is truly possible. It seems obvious when you see a murmuration of starlings moving as one, or a pack of lions on the hunt that there is some kind of non-verbal communication occurring between these animals. We humans have only relatively recently set ourselves apart from the animal kingdom. A lot of this separation was achieved through the development of language and the subsequent growth of the frontal lobe brain. However, this may have been to the detriment of our other senses, including telepathy, and our ability to communicate with animals directly. 

Obviously, this is all something that is quite hard to prove with the Western scientific method, but not impossible. There is much anecdotal evidence that suggests dogs know when a particular member of the household is about to come home, but one pioneering researcher Rupert Sheldrake has scientifically proven that this is the case. He set up cameras in a house and showed beyond doubt that many dogs have the ability to know when their owners are about to come home, even when they return at random times or in different cars. Sometimes even just the owner just thinking about coming home is enough to elicit a noticeable response in the dog. 

Many of you reading this will be highly sceptical that telepathic communication with an animal is possible and I’m also sure that there are many of you who practice it successfully every day. Either way, getting to know and trying to understand our feathered and furry friends can only be a good thing for all involved. 

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In the latest series of the Telepathy Tapes podcast we encounter a young non-verbal autistic girl called Nina Meehan. Nina was born in Fairfield Connecticut and for sixteen years she was trapped inside her body unable to speak. Doctors told her parents that Nina lacked the cognitive ability to properly communicate and her mother, Raquel, had given up hope on ever being able to connect fully with her daughter. However, when new tools and technologies became available, Nina learnt how to ‘spell’ out what she was thinking on an iPad. The first thing that she spelled was, “I am Psychic” and the second thing was “I communicate with plants.” 

As Nina became more competent at spelling, she began to explain to her parents that she also had the ability to diagnose people’s health by reading their etheric energy fields. She would recommend a particular plant that would then help heal that person. A good example of this came early on when her sister Natalia became ill with a compromised immune system. Nina advised her to start taking the herb astragalus to help rebuild her immunity. Obviously, Nina had had no formal education about herbs and no one in her family had either, so it is very interesting to note that astragalus has been used for thousands of years within Chinese medicine as a lung tonic specifically used to boost immunity. When asked how she knew which plant to administer she would reply ‘the plants tell me.’ 

As fantastical as this may sound this is clearly not a new phenomenon. Tribal elders, shamans and medicine women from around the globe have always said that they had the ability to commune with plants. Often, they would go off into a trance, sometimes with the help of a psychedelic plant, to discover the cure for someone’s particular ailment. It’s quite possible, probable in fact, that this is how humans originally discovered which plants had certain curative and healing properties. It is often presumed that medicinal knowledge was gained through trial and error over the millennia but our ancestors, shamans and people like Nina would argue that it is through our lost ability to communicate directly with plants that we have been given this invaluable information. 

A quick google search on the Western scientific view on plant consciousness, gives the impression that there is no evidence to suggest that plants are in any way conscious. However, if you start to dig a little deeper you discover that this may not actually be the case. Back in 1966, a CIA interrogation specialist Cleeve Backster, was training policemen in New York how to operate a polygraph or lie detector. The instrument usually measures the electrical resistance of the human skin, however one morning, on some strange hunch, he decided to attach the electrodes to the office potted rubber plant. What he discovered was nothing short of revolutionary. 

Backster decided to try what he calls ‘the threat to well-being principle, a well-established method of triggering emotionality in humans.’ In other words, he decided to torture the plant. He had the idea of getting a match to burn one of the leaves and to his astonishment, the moment he had this thought, the pen on the polygraph machine began to spike. Just the mere thought of intending to harm the plant was enough to produce a dramatic change in the machines tracing pattern. Backster went on to perform many more experiments including one where he was dropping live shrimps into boiling water (typical bloody scientist!) and each time he did so, a stress response was recorded by the plants polygraph read out. 

Apparently experiments like these have been replicated many times over, so it would appear that there is at least some evidence to show that plants do have a kind of awareness that we can’t explain within the western scientific model. However, consciousness itself is something that is very difficult to define, let alone measure and we may have to broaden our definition of it drastically if we are to begin to understand the true nature of nature. In the meantime, as ever, I shall defer to the Taoists who believe that there is consciousness first and then there is the physical expression of it. Under this model all things are possible.  

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 As a practitioner of an ancient medicine that believes there are mysterious pathways of conscious information that flow undetected throughout the body, it is not much of a jump in reasoning for me to believe that there are pathways of conscious information that flow outside of the body as well. In fact, this idea is the very basis of much of ancient Taoist philosophy, and it is known as Qi. 

Qi can be translated in many different ways but one that I often find useful is ‘vibrational waves of information’. If we use this as our definition, then we are clearly awash in a sea of Qi. Everything that we experience comes to us in the form of some come kind of vibration, be it light hitting our retinas or sound waves being detected by our ears. We are continually interpreting the world around us by deciphering and making sense of these different vibrations. However, the human experience of reality occurs in quite a narrow bandwidth of the full scale of frequencies that exist out there. For example, the human ear can pick up vibrations typically ranging from 20Htz to 20,000Htz but there are many sounds outside of that range that we can’t hear.  And the same applies to our vision and other senses. Could it be that those who have so-called telepathic or psychic abilities are just picking up a slightly different bandwidth? 

The non-verbal and autistic children and young adults from the podcast ‘The Telepathy Tapes’ that I have written about recently would certainly think so. They have demonstrated uncanny abilities to communicate in ways that still defy scientific reason, but nonetheless it is still happening and on a daily basis.  Since these non-verbals have begun to be able to tell us what is going on for them, it is apparent that they very rarely talk about their brains, but much more frequently about the heart. More often than not it is the person that they are closest to that they are able to communicate telepathically with most effectively and love seems to be the key for them. It is via the heart that these phenomena take place. 

This is somewhat similar to Chinese medical theory in that the brain is rarely talked about, and the Heart is all-important. The Heart, not the brain is seen to be where the spirit resides, and it is known as the emperor of the body. So important is the Heart that it has two acupuncture meridians through which it can be treated, whereas the brain doesn’t really have one of its own at all. The brain therefore is often just seen as some kind of radio receiver (or possible transmitter), whereas it is the Heart that tunes us in to our desired station. Another theory of Taoism that fits in with this is that there are seen to be two ‘minds’ that exist within the Heart. The first is the congenital mind, the one that we are born with, and the second, the acquired mind, is the result of every experience and interaction we have throughout our lives. We continually build these layers of the acquired mind around our congenital mind which forms our sense of self. 

I would argue that our congenital mind is one that is already telepathic. It is the part of ourselves that is closest to the oneness of the Tao and is yet to be encumbered by structures and limitations. It is yet to have belief systems imposed upon it that restrict its limitless potential. We were all at one point born non-verbal and it was only after years of people speaking around us that most of us learned how to do it. It would seem that many of those who never learned how to speak have never lost this telepathic ability. 

So what of acupuncture then? Well in one sense the meridian system can be seen as a set of gutters that draw unwanted energetic detritus away from the Heart-mind. Emotions, traumas and strong experiences need to be kept away from the Spirit to keep it safe, so they are funnelled out through the channels. In a way opening and clearing the meridians with acupuncture can be seen as shedding unwanted layers of the acquired mind so that the original, congenital, closer to the Tao mind can be revealed. Acupuncture therefore has the ability to help us reconnect with our true and higher selves. So in answer to the question ‘How can acupuncture make you more telepathic?’, one might answer – ‘How can it not?’ 

The post How Can Acupuncture Make You More Telepathic?  appeared first on Glastonbury Acupuncture.

So, to recap from last month’s story, Sonny is a physically disabled young man who is
non-verbal and unable to move pretty much from the eyes down. His Mum, Andrea
brought him to see me for some acupuncture, which led us to believe that he may be
able to communicate somewhat telepathically. Having recently been a convert to the
podcast known as ‘The Telepathy Tapes’, this seemed to me to be well within the
bounds of possibility. In the Telepathy Tapes we meet many young people who are in a
similar situation to Sonny, and they have been showing extraordinary psychic and
telepathic abilities. Andrea was also a convert to the podcast, and she asked me if
there was any way that acupuncture could help open up her own psychic channels, so
that she could communicate with Sonny more readily. So that is what we set out to do.
Now, there is the acupuncture that most people know about, the type that works well
on the physical body and can cure a myriad of ailments ranging from headaches to
sciatica, but there is also the type that works at the level of the Spirit. This form of
acupuncture can stimulate higher levels of consciousness and the ancient names of
some of the acupuncture points themselves give us an indication of what they can be
used for. Names such as ‘Celestial Hearing’, ‘Heavenly connection’ and ‘Spirit Path’ all
indicate that we are working with an energy that is at a much finer frequency than the
dense physical body. It is to this form of acupuncture that we must turn to if we are
seeking to open ourselves up psychically.
So, I got Sonny and Andrea into a treatment room together and explained to Sonny what
we were trying to do – to open his Mum up to being more receptive to his telepathic
communication. Despite being severely disabled Sonny does have the ability to move
his eyebrows, with raised eyebrows meaning ‘yes’ and a frown meaning ‘no’. Sonny
confirmed that he knew what we were up to. I then got out a large book of ‘Esoteric
Acupuncture’ patterns by Dr Mikio Sankey, that are specifically designed to work with
the higher aspects of the Heart and the Spirit and slowly showed them to Sonny to see
which one he thought would be most suitable for his Mum. We went through dozens of
patterns which were all met with a frown until we reached one called ‘The Esoteric
Heart Window Pattern’. Sonny raised his eyebrows with gusto to this one.
I found it very interesting that Sonny should choose this pattern as I have long been a
fan and student of Dr Sankey’s work and it was this pattern that he encouraged me to
perform as often as possible in Glastonbury as it is seen as the ‘heart window’ of the
planet. The pattern itself consists of 21 needles laid out in an intricate geometrical
formation, utilising many strong Spirit related points. These patterns have a very
expansive energetic feeling to them, which can be enhanced further by the energy of the
place that the treatment takes place in. Fortunately, my treatment room is nestled right
up next to the Abbey wall, which is right in the middle of it all.
Once the needles were all in place I asked Sonny if there was anything else that I
needed to do and he raised his eyebrows in affirmation. I had a strong sense that he
wanted me to needle the third eye point between his eyebrows known as Yin Tang,
which he confirmed with another raise. Yin Tang is a very interesting point in of itself as
in ancient acupuncture it is said to be able to expand the bandwidth of the mind. And as
Sonny sat looking down on Andrea, he wiggled that needle between his eyebrows like
he was wielding a tiny magic wand, as if casting spells down on to his Mum from his
third eye. Which may well have been what was happening because at one point during
the treatment, Andrea heard a voice clearly in her head saying, “I love you, Mum!”

The post The Telepathy Tapes – Sonny’s Tale – Part Two appeared first on Glastonbury Acupuncture.

A good friend of mine Andrea, who first introduced me to the Telepathy Tapes podcast, has a physically disabled 18 year old son called Sonny. Sonny has a rare genetic condition that has left him pretty much unable to move anything from the eyes downwards, rendering him unable to speak. I’d met Sonny several times but it was only after listening to the Telepathy Tapes that I really started to wonder what was actually going on for him – inside his mind.

One day recently Andrea messaged me asking if Sonny could come in for some acupuncture and I managed to book him in for the following day without having any idea what it was he was wanting the acupuncture for. That night Sonny visited me in a dream and was repeating the number 27, 27, 27 to me over and over again trying to get it in to my skull. In this dream I somehow realised the importance of what he was saying and I managed to wake myself up and write the number down by my bed before going back to sleep.

In the morning I was intrigued as to what this meant and having been well immersed in the Telepathy Tapes for a while, I was long since over doubting that such things are possible. I discovered that in numerology the number 27 signifies a blend of intuition, spiritual awakening and worldly success. It’s often associated with wisdom wealth and a world-changing purpose. This sounded exactly like what was happening for all the autistic and non-verbal children that were coming to light thanks to the Telepathy Tapes. But there was more.

All of the acupuncture meridians are associated with a particular organ and each point along that meridian is numbered. Not many of the meridians go up as far as 27, and on the ones that do, the 27^th point tends to be of not much use or interest. Apart from Kidney 27. Kidney 27 is on the front of the chest and is sometimes known as the spirit’s storehouse. This name resonated as I could imagine Sonny’s spirit as being trapped in the storehouse of his body. On a physical level it has strong connection with the lungs and is used to unbind the chest, transform phlegm and alleviate coughs and wheezing. When Sonny turned up for his acupuncture session it turned out that he’d recently had a bout of pneumonia and was suffering the after effects of a tight chest, excessive phlegm, coughing and wheezing. Obviously Kidney 27 was the first point I needled and his symptoms alleviated quite quickly after the session.

I found this all quite astonishing so I messaged Jes, the local lady who is one of the main characters from the Telepathy Tapes podcast and asked her what she thought of it all. That evening whilst in telepathic communication with her old pupil Asher, she asked him how the number 27 came to me and he communicated the following:

“It came from the young man that he was due to treat. Many of us neuro-diverse people can, at a psychic level, discern what treatment would be beneficial for us, or for those that we are close to. Your acupuncturist is open to receiving that information from us.”

I was thrilled and genuinely honoured to be gently pulled in to the steam-rolling phenomenon that is the Telepathy Tapes once again. I sincerely believe that these neuro-diverse people have the power to change the world, so I was really excited when Andrea contacted me the following week and asked me if I thought acupuncture could help open up her psychic channels with Sonny so that she could communicate with him more easily. But that story will have to wait until next time….

In the meantime I encourage anyone who has not already listened, to listen to the Telepathy tapes. We have to start to recognise the full spectrum of reality. The human race as a whole is certainly facing some serious crises and we can no longer seek for answers within the mind frames that caused them in the first place. We have to look to new ways of thinking about reality and realise that some of the biggest answers may lay within the most quiet of us, and not within those who can shout the loudest.

The post The Telepathy Tapes – Sonny’s Tale – Part One appeared first on Glastonbury Acupuncture.

A couple of years ago I wrote an article about a woman named Jes who came to see me for acupuncture with the hope of trying to re-establish her psychic connection that she had formed with a severely autistic child. The story began many years ago when she was an English teacher for young non-verbal neural-divergent ‘autistic’ children. After sometime she realised that the kids were communicating with each other telepathically, and slowly they began to communicate with her psychically as well. There was one child in particular, Asher, with whom she formed a special bond with and over the years this telepathic link blossomed to such an extent that Asher was able to dictate a book to Jez from across the country. This has now been published as a book entitled – A Mind Beyond Words.

Since then this story has become a global sensation, thanks largely due to a podcast called The Telepathy Tapes. This is a series created by documentary film maker Ky Dickens. In this podcast Ky explores the possibilities of telepathy within the non-speaking community. She interviews many parents and carers of severely autistic children who have had a sense that their children may be communicating with them psychically or even reading their minds. Recent scientific advancements have meant that it is now possible for some of these children to ‘spell’, either with using a touch screen computer or something that they can control with their eye gaze. This has led to a novel situation where these non-verbal children are able to share their thoughts and the consequences of this have been staggering.

In the early episodes there are experiments where the child was put in a separate room from their mother (as the mother was usually the closest carer) and the mother was shown a four digit number. The child would then ‘spell’ out the number that they thought their mother was looking at. Some of the children tested were able to get this number correctly over twenty times in a row. This is odds of 10,000 to 1, each time, of getting right by chance alone. It wasn’t just numbers that were being communicated but also words, colours and even feelings.

As Ky continued her research she was contacted by many parents, across the States, and indeed across the world who thought they recognised these psychic traits in their own autistic children . The research grew and many more kids were tested and proven to be amazingly telepathic. It seems as though when one sense is restricted then another one can come to the foreground. However with further investigation telepathy was shown to be only the tip of the iceberg.

It turns out that many of these kids also have the ability to meet up somewhere ‘out there’ in a place that they call ‘The Hill’. This is some kind of astral meeting place where non-verbal people can connect, communicate and learn from one another. This may seem fanciful to the neural-typical mind but Ky’s research has shown that a child in the U.K was able to demonstrate specific knowledge of another autistic child in Texas. There really was no way of them getting this information other than by meeting up in some sort etheric realm.

Obviously the scientific community has been slow on the uptake and critique Ky’s methods on the ‘lack of a double-blind study’ reasoning. But maybe part of the reluctance in accepting the fact that these neural-divergent people have other senses lies in the fact of how poorly they have been treated by the medical system in the past. There is an unwillingness to accept that our western rational brain reasoning may not be the only way of thinking about the world. But we really don’t have time for the scientific paradigm to catch up, there are thousands of these kids out there now that need to be heard.

And the message that these non-verbal people are trying to convey and the one that they keep coming back to, is that in the end everything comes down to love and the way to communicate truly with one another is through the heart. At one point this year these Telepathy Tapes were the most listened to podcast in the world, so it seems that their message, is finally and thankfully getting out there.

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The Tor – Glastonbury’s Upper Dan Tian

If Glastonbury Abbey represents the lower Dan Tian and Chalice well is the middle, then clearly Glastonbury Tor equates very well with the upper Dan Tian that resides within the head of the human body. The centre of this upper Dan Tian is situated at the pineal gland in the middle of the brain and emanates out from there, where it exits the third eye area between the eye brows. It is the most Yang of the three Dan Tian and as such it is the one closest to the ‘heavenly realms’ or higher states of consciousness.

Each Dan Tian can be seen as a kind of energetic transistor and is an area of the body where transformation can take place. The lower Dan Tian is where Jing, or our essence is converted in to Qi. The middle Dan Tian is where Qi is converted in to Shen, or Spirit and the upper Dan Tian is where Shen is converted, if we are advanced enough, in to emptiness, which is the raw essence of the Dao.

During the Nei Gong process, an energetic practice that seeks to work with body’s subtle internal systems, you always start off with the lower Dan Tian and move up from there. It is not until the much later stages that one begins to encounter the energetics of the upper Dan Tian. Initially this may take the form of a bright white light that can be perceived but there are other markers that show that this level of internal awareness has been reached.  These markers include things that many in the Western world deem as impossible such as increased intuition, clairvoyance, clairaudience, seeing auras, telepathy and other ‘supernatural’ abilities. However it must be stated that these markers are not something that should be sought out or given too much importance as they are just signs along the path that show that some level of energetic ‘gong’ or skill has been reached.

The very centre of the upper Dan Tian is often referred to as the ‘muddy pill palace’, a name that could also be used, very fittingly, for the enigmatic Glastonbury Tor that rises up out of the mud and swamps of the Somerset levels. Anyone who has ever been up the Tor when it seems to be an island surrounded by a sea of mist, can attest to its enchanting and magical nature. A place that reaches up towards the mysteries of heaven.

Like the upper Dan Tian, Glastonbury Tor has long been seen as place where different levels of consciousness can be reached. The Celtic peoples saw it as a gateway to the fairy realms, others claim it to be a passage to the underworld and the dead, whilst a modern day phenomenon has seen it become a hot bed for UFO sightings. Whatever the truth maybe, it has long been linked with the otherworldly.

And over the years I have heard many a story that seems to suggest that Glastonbury Tor can have seemingly have strong effect on a person’s upper Dan Tian. I have heard about people who upon climbing the Tor for the first time who have been struck down by a brilliant white light. I have heard of those who have spontaneously encountered past lives whilst upon its slopes, and other who have astrally projected themselves to it from far away. It has emblazoned itself upon the national and even global psyche as place of wonder and mystery and I for one will forever feel the awe of its magical presence.

The way to encounter or experience these Dan Tian within the body is to be able to hold our awareness, our attention at these certain points of our energy system. It may be possible to assist with this process if our outer world matches that of our inner world. Therefore it maybe an interesting practice to try and connect with one of the Dan Tian whilst being within the corresponding holy sight of Glastonbury’s energetic composition.

The post Glastonbury and the Three Dan Tian – Part Three appeared first on Glastonbury Acupuncture.

Last month I wrote about the three most sacred places of Glastonbury having intriguing similarities to the three Dan Tian that reside within the energy system of the human body. This month I will focus upon The Chalice Well and it being the representation of the middle Dan Tian.

The middle Dan Tian is an energy field that resides in the centre of the chest at the level of the heart. It is the energy field most closely related to our Qi and is a depository for our emotions. It is the connecting gateway between our energy and consciousness bodies. The Taoist philosophy states that if we are able to rid ourselves of too many hindering emotions then we will be able to convert more of our Qi into Shen – more of our energy into sprit. When working with this centre during Qi Gong or Nei Gong then it is not uncommon for emotional releases to occur. Emotions are like vibrations that can be experienced as they are leaving the body, but when they are cleared there is more room left for our higher spirit to be housed.

This middle Dan Tian also energetically extends outside of the body. This is sometimes known as the hearts’ field and it can be felt by those who are sensitive enough or even measured through electro-magnetic detectors. Some people have a small weak field whilst others have much stronger and more ‘solid’ ones, that can stretch out meters away from the physical body. Instinctively we can often tell the state of someone’s heart field by the way they meet and merge with our own.

It is also said that our Shen or our higher spirit, sometimes translated as the soul, resides in the middle Dan Tian. In fact it is said to be located in the depths of the heart, in the temporary vacuum created by its beating.

The similarities of this middle Dan Tian and Glastonbury’s Chalice Well are striking and hard to ignore. Geographically this is clear as it sits directly between the lower Dan Tian of Glastonbury Abbey and the upper Dan Tian of Glastonbury Tor. Due to its rich iron deposits, Chalice Well has long been associated with blood and a quick taste of its metallic waters will be enough to confirm this. The water springs up from deep within mother earth and has never, to any ones knowledge, ever dried up. It has been for many thousands of years the beating life blood for the people of Glastonbury. If Glastonbury truly is the heart chakra of the earth, then Chalice Well is the heart of the heart. The pulsing aorta of the middle Dan Tian.

Even the name the ‘Chalice Well’ gives us more connotations with the middle Dan Tian – for a chalice is a cup or a container…a container that holds a very special substance, one that is so revered that it was said to hold the blood of Christ himself. Clearly it has long been seen as a place where higher levels of consciousness can be reached.

It is also a very emotional place. It is not uncommon for a visitor to become overcome with emotion, sometimes even breaking down in tears when entering. It is a place that affects people on a very deep level. The well itself is depository for people’s prayers and its waters hold and remember all the wishes, the memories, the thoughts, the grief and the joys of all those thousands of people that pass through.

The energy of Chalice Well, like the middle Dan Tian also reaches out beyond the boundaries of the garden. Its waters flow out and down and underneath the rest of the town, bringing with it all those energies that it picks up as it rises and falls. A great recent example of this was the emotional out pouring that occurred when the statue of the Goddess was moved from its little niche by the well. Not only were many local people really upset by this but people from far around seemed to be up in arms and affected by it.

But the far reaching nature of Chalice well doesn’t stop just there. In a very strange and impeccably timed, interconnected sequence of events, I had the absolute honour of bringing one of the Kogi to Chalice well just last week. The Kogi are a tribal people from the mountains of Northern Colombia and they are renowned for their abilities to communicate with the Mother Earth. Their most holy people, the Mamas, are chosen from birth and are brought up in the absolute darkness of a cave. This continual sensory deprivation causes other senses to come to the fore ground, which enable these chosen ones to ‘hear’ the message that the Earth whispers to them – through the sounds of water. Their message is clear…Mother Earth is not happy with how many of us are treating her, and that sooner or later she may have to just shake us off.

This is the message that the Kogi are trying to get out to us, the ones they call ‘younger brother,’ as we are deemed as being immature in our understanding of the true nature of life.

My Shamanic acupuncturist, Wendy, went to stay with the Kogi over fifty years ago and it has always been her dream to take one of the Kogi to Chalice Well. She wanted them to come so that they could listen to what our most holy of waters might say. King Charles had recently set up a meeting with some indigenous tribal leaders from around the globe and one of those invited was the Kogi. Whilst here, somehow the Kogi remembered Wendy and after a brief meeting with the King, one of the Kogis’ spiritual ambassadors came with us on a pilgrimage to the well.

Now, you may or may not know Dowser Dave, the head gardener of Chalice Well, but we are extremely lucky to have him as one of the guardians of the well. Every morning he goes up to the two Yew Trees, (who are the actual guardians of the garden) and via his dowsing rods, he gets sent off on his merry mission for the day. Chalice Well garden actually speaks to him and through him and the energy of the place feels like it has greatly expanded through his relationship with it.

When we arrived with the Kogi early that morning, Dave explained that the night before, he and another well guardian had actually gone down in to the well to clear it out. They released the well head that was full of a thousand wishes and prayers from all the visitors to the gardens. The well had refilled overnight and the water was fresh, clean and clear. Dave then took us all on a tour of the gardens, via the Yew Trees, and via the dowsing rods, which ended up at the well head itself.

Whilst this was all occurring I was watching the Kogi and I could see that he was genuinely moved and awe-struck. In Dave it seemed he had met a long lost kindred spirit. When we got to the well, under the Kogis’ guidance we sat in silence and listened to the bubbling sound of the waters coming up from deep within Mother Earth. We all got messages from the well that day but this is a rough, paraphrased translation of what the Kogi translated for us.

“We the Kogi have long listened to the messages that Mother Earth gives to us via the water. We call our home in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta the Heart of the Earth and here you also call Glastonbury the Heart of the Earth. These two places are strongly linked and this link has now become stronger by this visit. I now have much more hope for the Earth than before because there are people like you. People that also act as guardians of the water. We often thought that we were the only ones but it fills my heart to know that there are others. It doesn’t take a lot of us to make a difference, as long as there are some of us who can still listen to what Mother Earth is telling us. There is still hope. Be still and listen to her message”

That was the profound message that has stuck with me since then. We can clearly equate the energies of Chalice well with the heart centre of the middle Dan Tian but in truth it doesn’t really matter where you are – as long as there is water. Water is the life blood of Mother Earth and wherever it resides so does she. And her message is clear…

There is still hope. Be still and listen.

The post The Kogi, The Well and the Magic of the Middle Dan Tian appeared first on Glastonbury Acupuncture.

At a deeper energetic level than the normal organ meridians there exists to what the ancient Taoists refer to as the three Dan Tian. These are energetic centres that form at the very core of our being. Dan translates as ‘red’ or ‘cinnabar’ which was seen as a divine substance, whilst Tian means ‘field’ or ‘farmland’ – a place where growth can take place. Essentially the Dan Tian are areas where we can work to achieve energetic transformation.

The lower Dan Tian sits in the lower abdomen and energetically it is the one vibrationally closest to the physical body. In Chinese medicine it is closely linked to our Jing or our essence. It is the most tangible of the three Dan Tian and its formation, consolidation and filling are first steps of the Nei Gong process. As such it is our first field of transformation and can later be used as a storehouse for our energy.

The middle Dan Tian sits at the centre of the chest at the same level as the heart. It is associated with Qi and is seen as the gateway between the energy and consciousness bodies. It is the energy centre most closely linked to our emotions and there is a large electro-magnetic field that extends out from this area.

The upper Dan Tian sits within the head and is traditionally pinpointed behind and between the eyebrows. It is closely connected with our Shen or spirit and frequency-wise it is the closest to the emptiness of the Tao. It is through here that we may seek connection to the divine.

Rising up through these three centres and connecting them is the deepest of all our meridians the Chong Mai. Sometimes known as the Taiji pillar this central channel connects us to the Yang of Heaven and the Yin of the Earth. It acts as a kind of spiritual antennae connecting us to the higher energetic realms.

It occurred to me recently, after I had visited all of them in the same day, that the three holy energy centres of Glastonbury could be seen as manifestations of a similar vein to the three Dan Tian. Glastonbury Abbey could be seen as the lower Dan Tian, Chalice Well would be the middle heart centre and Glastonbury Tor would be the upper Dan Tian. And running through them all you have the entwined Michael and Mary ley lines that act like the Chong Mai connecting all the three centres and beyond.

This analogy works quite well and can be explored further- starting with the Abbey as the lower Dan Tian. The process of working with the lower Dan Tian starts with first locating it and then building its structure so it can be filled with Qi. This is not dissimilar to what may have occurred hundreds of years ago when the Saxons would have recognised that Glastonbury was already a place of high natural energy, and they then decided to build their church structures over the top of it. The ancient stone-masons and architects would have then used techniques that would have accentuated this natural energy, in effect – building the Qi. The lower Dan Tian is a field of transformation and this definition could apply to what they were trying to achieve at the Abbey. Monks and lay people alike would have come seeking to elevate their consciousness and to become closer to God.

Locating the very centre of the lower Dan Tian in the body is the first step in being able to build it and there are clear instructions on how to do so. We first draw an imaginary line going straight up from the perineum (Ren 1) – following the path of the Chong Mai. We then imagine a horizontal line going directly back from an acupuncture point known as Qi Hai (Ren 6), just below the navel. Where these two line intersect is the location of the centre of the Dan Tian. Interestingly if you draw a line from Benedict Street church (Ren 1) straight up through the Abbey and then you draw another horizontal line, southwards from St Johns Church (Ren 6) on the High Street, then where these two lines meet you will find the crypt of the Lady Chapel and the well of Joseph of Arimathea, the oldest and most sacred part of the entire Abbey.

Now, maybe all of this is just a coincidence, and maybe my brain has become addled by having my treatment rooms nestled right up next to the Abbey wall, or maybe, just maybe the ancient scape of this land and its ancient inhabitants were actually trying to tell us something. To be continued….

The post Glastonbury and the Three Dan Tian – Part One appeared first on Glastonbury Acupuncture.