Christopher Lowman shares: “Guru’s Story” in The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, issue Number 78, Fall 2012:
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Treating Cerebral Palsy with Jin Shin Jyutsu
For the past nearly two years I have been living in poor, challenged communities in India, Kenya, and Rwanda, where I helped develop a number of small humanitarian activities that primarily benefited children.
It began in Gujarat, India, at a small leprosy community in Ahmedabad with a young boy (around age 11), Guru, who because of complications at birth, developed the brain disorder known as Cerebral Palsy (CP). He is, however, without the leprosy disease. Because a formal intervention was never introduced, it’s a case of CP as severe as it gets – Guru is unable to talk, move his body, or do anything for himself. Developmentally, he’s like an infant and will, for the rest of his life, be completely dependent on his family – especially his mom – for survival. To give you an idea, his mother is responsible for such tasks as spoon feeding Guru water, cleaning the drool from his mouth that he can’t hold in, and changing his clothes at least three times a day because of the toilet issue.
As I was going door-to-door meeting all the residents of this community I would be living in for the year, I came upon Guru, and was moved by his situation. There he was laying on the floor, very thin, hyperventilating and making a wheeze-like sound on each breath, with a fly net over his face to protect him from a swarm of flies he couldn’t swat away.
I let his family know what I do (i.e., practice Jin Shin Jyutsu), and that I was interested in coming to the home to give treatments to Guru twice per day for a few days each week. To be honest, I can’t say where I got that intensive treatment plan from, it just made sense at the time. His family without many questions, agreed.
Beginning our treatment work, what stuck out the most was Guru’s breathing difficulty, as well as a certain degree of dissociation, or being elsewhere though physically present. I assumed this was all trauma related. Having a complicated birth, then entering a body you can’t move would certainly be terrifying.
I remember using the Methods of Correction quite a bit, as well as the 10 breathing and 3 Flows. And what happened, over time, of course, was that Guru started to appear more present in his body, evidenced by his face seeming fuller, as well as by a small amount of weight gain. He started showing signs of happiness when kids who were present in the room would egg him on by being silly, or making silly noises. His breathing even calmed down.
To be continued…