To Your Health
by Gordie Grobelny, D.C.
“I have TMJ”
I hear this often enough in my practice that it warrants attention here.
First, a definition is in order. “TMJ” is not a condition, but rather the name of a body part; a joint to be exact. T = temporal (as in temporal bone of the skull); M = mandible, the jaw bone; J = joint. So it is the correct name for the jaw joint. Everyone has “TMJ,” much like having an elbow or knee. To have “TMJ pain and dysfunction” is a different story altogether.
TMJ syndrome can be painful and go unnoticed early on. To check for possible TMJ syndrome indicators, observe yourself in the mirror, open and close your mouth slowly. It should open wide enough to fit your first three knuckles of your dominant hand into the opening; (bend your knuckles to allow them to go into your mouth). The opening and closing should be straight even and smooth with no clicks, pops or grinding.
Those of you who have, or have had, TMJ pain/dysfunction don’t need to be reminded of how difficult and frustrating it can be. The TMJ is a very complex joint and is influenced by many other structures in the body. If they are unaware of all of these factors, it can make it difficult for physicians to treat a patient with TMJ. As a patient, when you understand some of the basic factors of influence, you can begin to ask the right questions of your therapist and yourself.
Neurologically, the TMJ involves about 30-40 % of the sensory motor neurons of the body. Think about that; consider your whole body and then imagine that of the total neurons for sensory motor, input/output, the jaw occupies 30–40%! It must be important, or one would hope that nature did not just goof up!
Not surprisingly, the TMJ is a complex joint that allows a rotational motion coupled with a translational (sliding) movement. It has a cartilage disc and specific design to allow this movement. The muscle of the jaw can affect the joint as well as affecting the bones of the skull. The bones of the skull have an inherent, specific, repetitive movement (in sync with this is the movement of the sacrum and out to the rest of the body). This movement is related to the production and absorption of cerebral spinal fluid. If this motion becomes aberrant or restricted, it will affect the function of the entire body, especially the TMJ. The movement of the base of the skull is mirrored by that of the sacrum. If the movement of the sacrum is interfered with, it will affect the cranial movement and then the jaw.
Let’s go even further and think about the feet for a moment. The feet have 25 bones each. That is 20% of the bones for the entire body when you consider both feet. Not to mention the beginning and ending of acupuncture meridian on the feet, it makes sense that foot problems (yes, even wearing improper shoes) affect the pelvis (sacrum) and hence the TMJ.
The jaw opens and closes some 1500 to 2000 times per day for chewing, talking, yawning, etc. Pressure is placed on the teeth during swallowing. In fact, the effect of swallowing places cumulative force on the teeth some two times that of the effect of chewing. In applied kinesiology there is a correlation between each tooth and an acupuncture meridian, organ/gland and specific muscle group. It goes to show that the bite alignment not only affects the jaw joint directly, but it places adaptive stress on the body as a whole which then reflects back onto the TMJ again.
There is a small “U” shaped bone sitting on the Adams apple called the Hyoid bone. This bone is like a mini gyroscope. It mirrors the mandible and is suspended by muscles; it has no direct articulation with other bones, but connects to the skull, mandible (jaw bone), sternum, clavicle (collar bone), scapula (shoulder blade) and cartilage of the larynx. An imbalanced pull from any of these muscles will cause compensation in the mandible, head-on-neck position, pelvic muscle/bone alignment, and cause, once again, direct TMJ issues as well as those body compensations which reflect back at the TJM.
The upper cervical spine (atlas, axis) have direct influence on the TMJ and visa-versa. The muscles of the TMJ have a meridian association with the stomach meridian which is invariably affected by emotional stress.
The small intestine also has an indirect effect on the TMJ through its acupuncture point “listening place,” which is the end of the meridian right in front of the ear.
With all of these connections what should one do? Holistic practitioners who cover all the bases - structure, chemistry energy and emotions - will have the best chance uncovering the multi layered causes of “TMJ syndrome.” I recommend physicians trained in kinesiology and certified by the ICAK (International College of Applied Kinesiology) as a good place to start if you require healing assistance for symptoms of TMJ Syndrome.
If interested in prevention, remember to relax your mind and breathe deeply to release the tension in your jaw, as well as your neck and throat muscles. I have personally found that learning to use one’s singing/speaking voice properly is helpful. To use the vocal chords without influence of the neck/throat muscles is a skill taught by practitioners certified in “speech level singing" (sethriggs.com). Try it and you may be amazed at how great your whole body feels.
The Return of the Alchemists
Part Five: The Great Work
by Raoul Tollmann
In part four of this series of articles, we’ve started to peek into the laboratory of the practical alchemist. We found edible calxes of metals that have lost their characteristics of a metal, and we found elixirs made with a secret solvent called ‘spiritus mundi’ or ‘Spirit of the World.’ We’ve concluded our last lab tour with my promise that this time around, I will discuss the highest form of laboratory alchemy, the Great Work, or the manufacture of the Philosopher’s Stone and its liquid cousins, the Oils of Metals.
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J. K. Rowling has brought the Philosopher’s Stone, or – as it is called on the book title in the US: Sorcerer’s Stone – back on center stage in the mystical universe of Harry Potter. Bringing it to the attention of millions of readers it is sitting there, right in the first episode of the boy hero, and even Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel, the glorious alchemist-couple of medieval Paris find their place in the story.
As with most other themes of the Harry Potter series, the issue of the Philosopher’s Stone has apparently been researched well by J. K. Rowling. But she does not reveal much about what it really is, why it is so precious, and certainly not how it is made. Just as an excellent author of fiction is expected to do, she leaves the mystery intact.
I will betake it upon myself to dismantle some of the mystery, possibly only to replace it with something that may look even more bizarre to the unsuspecting reader; but then, reality often is more bizarre than fiction!
Let us first of all make an attempt at a definition of the Philosopher’s Stone, as our starting point: We are looking at a group of artificial, laboratory-made liquid or solid substances with the property of transmuting base metals into precious ones and/or humans into immortals. In the West, the key representative of these substances is usually called the Philosopher’s Stone, while in India this is the Mercury of the 18 th Degree, and in China, the Pills of Immortality.
The modern skeptic may ask: you are kidding, right? Well, I am not. There is plenty of proof of the reality of physical transformation induced by the elixir of life, the liquid or crystallized, edible form of the Philosopher’s Stone. As for the reality of transmuting base metals into noble ones, I have performed this myself; the incalescent mercury that Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton were seeking and that modern-day alchemists have duplicated does just that. I’ve mentioned this substance in the first of this series of articles, and even though it does not qualify as a Philosopher’s Stone in the true sense, we can learn a lot from its manufacturing technique. But more about this a little later.
Right now we should have a look at one of the many independent third-party witnessed reports of a miraculous transformation, the full report of this one and a collection of others can be found in Jaques Sadoul’s book: Alchemists and Gold, New York, 1972, Putnam. On page 37, we can take a look at family papers of the Saint-Clair Turgot family in France as found and reported by Bernard Husson, concerning one of his sixteenth-century ancestors, a Councillor of State. The Councillor had a liaison with a lady who visited him daily. By way of safeguarding her reputation, she was always accompanied by an elderly equerry, Maitre Arnaud, who used to wait for her in the shop of a nearby apothecary with whom he struck up a friendship.
The pharmacist had been experimenting in alchemy for over 20 years, and one day he rushed to meet Arnaud, exclaiming: “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” The astonished Arnaud asked what he had got, and the pharmacist replied: “Why…the Stone. Arnaud, the Elixir! This morning I transmuted a dozen old tin spoons to gold. And here’s the elixir of life. (He brandished a vial containing a colorless liquid). Let’s drink some of it at once, old friend; at our age one can’t have enough of this sort of thing!” He poured out a spoonful and took it, inviting Arnaud to do the same. But Arnaud felt some hesitation and took only a few drops on the tip of his tongue. On the way home, Arnaud broke out in a cold sweat, followed by a sensation of burning fever. The lady, anxious for the life of her faithful servitor, sent for the apothecary, only to find out that he had died suddenly.
Arnaud subsequently lost his hair, his nails and even his teeth, which later all grew back. The personal physician of the Saint-Clair Turgot family later wrote down the full details of the story and made particular mention that, at the time of his writing, the equerry was in excellent shape, despite being one-hundred and twenty-three years old.
This particular elixir of the apothecary was apparently too strong for the poor alchemist himself, and as the crowning of his life he died of it. This is not uncommon in the literature of alchemy. Dosage is everything! As far as Arnaud is concerned, we can recognize typical side-effects of mercury and radiation poisoning. The elixir was apparently not very refined; it did, however, perform the complete rejuvenation of Arnaud once he recovered from his poisoning, plus the sudden introduction of massive surplus energy into his system, which showed immediately in the typical yo-yo effect of his body temperature.
Inquisitive minds may ask what this elixir may have contained and what it may have been made of. This is, quite literally, the million dollar question, but old alchemy books of the West are shrouded in mystery. Terminology such as “Our Mercury” as well “Old Saturn, black, heavier than lead” give hints, but no clear indications. We can, however, look at Ayurveda and Taoist alchemy for cross-reference. In India, there is no secret about the starting material: it is cinnabar, the sulfide ore of mercury. If we were to process it into the Indian-style philosopher’s stone, however, we would have to let it undergo eighteen stages of processing, of which some would require years to finish. There may be some shortcuts, but source books such as the Rasa-Jala-Nidhi sure do not mention them, which would leave us with a gargantuan task that may take longer than a lifetime to complete. Taoist books speak of “fixed cinnabar” as a vehicle to immortality, but give only incomplete processes. (I have referenced these sources in article number one of this series).
Which leads us back to taking a closer look at Western alchemy. Once again, we need to remember the underlying philosophy of alchemy that we’ve discussed in the last article: The human is seen as a microcosm, reflecting the stars and planetary energies of the macrocosm in the human energy body. The earthly representatives of these stellar energies are metals and minerals. In alchemy, the understanding is that planets and stars undergo an evolution and that in conjunction with this evolutionary procession, their representative metals undergo a metamorphosis from base metals to noble metals, which is considered to be a process that takes eons in nature but can be sped up in the lab. The goal of the Great Work in alchemy thus is the creation of an agent that can capture and then induce the needed energy to speed up the metamorphosis of either molten metals in the crucible or of the living human being.
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The agent that is capable of taking up and transmitting this energy is Mercury, also known as the Messenger of the Gods. Regular mercury, however, does very little for our purpose. It needs to be processed or ‘charged’ or ‘impregnated’ as they say in Ayurveda and, if it is supposed to be turned into a medicine, its toxicity needs to be eliminated.
The above mentioned incalescent mercury is such a rare creature. Here is how it is made: Antimony as the giver of surplus energy gets alloyed with silver, and this compound can then be amalgamated with mercury. The mercury gets distilled off, is cleansed of its toxic components with ammonium chloride, gets re-amalgamated with the alloy and distilled again. This repeated distillation and amalgamation is called cohobation in alchemy. After nine cohobations, my incalescent mercury was ready for transmutation – it transforms itself into pure gold when poured into a red-hot crucible. When amalgamated with sulfur in mild heat, we get an artificial cinnabar that is edible, but this substance does not induce a miraculous transformation such as the one of Maitre Arnaud. Clearly, antimony is not the right starting material for the philosopher’s stone, Western style. But this process is very valuable for introducing us to a technique how to charge up or impregnate regular mercury! Based upon this understanding, we need to search further for a starting material that provides enough surplus energy to be transmitted into our mercury.
The story of Walter Lusic, a Czech immigrant who came to Washington State shortly after WWII, will lead us further. Walter Lusic was an alchemist who knew how to make gold, and he eventually teamed up with several professors of the department of inorganic chemistry at a local university. Together, they built a gold-manufacturing plant on the property of an associate in Seattle. Records show that they sold hundreds of pounds of precious metals to a well-known smelter. I had the pleasure of meeting one of Walter’s former associates who showed me a pretty large-scale transmutation, but who never took this matter as big as Walter and his university chemist friends did. They all eventually paid a very high price. I have been told they died of leukemia.
Even the man I met had developed leukemia, but one alternative clinic in Mexico provided him with a treatment that allowed him to stay alive. The gold-makers had apparently no inclination to explore the medicinal side of the Great Work, and so their story is, in my viewpoint, one of a tragic irony. They tried to keep things very low-key and of course no-one was ready to divulge anything of the process. Over the years, however, some information seeped out and it became clear that they were working with radio-nuclides as the real starting material. Their collective death by leukemia is an indication supporting this conclusion, too.
My further investigation of the matter has revealed that today, as a secondary spin-off, there is a company in Canada that attempts to market a process to deactivate radioactive waste. They transfer the surplus energy of the radioactive material and ‘pump’ it into mercury, which takes it up, but does not become radioactive itself. Rather, this mercury can then transmute metals into gold, but it could also transform humans into super-humans, a feat that the contemporary gold-makers do either not understand or dare to consider.
Ultimate irony: the tons of DU or depleted uranium that the US military has dumped onto Iraq would suffice to produce more gold than needed to purchase every single square mile of Iraq, plus then pay for everyone’s lunch for the rest of their lives.
The prevailing state of affairs on our planet, however, does generally not support the sublime; and so, depleted uranium will possibly have to stay an agent of death and destruction for some time instead of becoming the centerpiece of a resurrected technology: alchemy, a technology that could lift up our entire culture towards unknown heights. But as long as even the neo-alchemists themselves die of leukemia instead of enjoying eternal life, there seems to be little hope.
I also understand that it is not in everybody’s stars to now run out and put a lab together and start experimenting with mercury and uranium. I hope, however, that my words will inspire those few colleagues who have been on the wrong track so far and who have the capability and the equipment to work with these materials.
For everyone else, we will take a closer look at inner alchemy in the next article. Yes, tantric sex is on the menu, as well as medicinal chi gung and other surprises!
Raoul Tollmann grew up in Austria. The son of two university geologists, he was introduced at an early age to the mineral kingdom. A near death experience at age 14 put him on the spiritual path; his natural scientific bent eventually led him to apprenticeship under two contemporary alchemists. In 2001 he founded AlchemiaNova, a company that produces his alchemical gem elixirs and noble gas waters. For more information: alchemianova.com
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