Sensing

Autumn is a calling.

If nostalgia could be a gift, it would unwrap the glorious memories of childhood, moments of being held tight by your first love, and of dreams not yet realized but still vibrating with hope.

The leaves are at their peak of beauty before swaying to their death.

The air smells of apples and wood smoke.

I've been out harvesting nostalgia; collecting memories that buzz in the middle and then reverberate each time I smell the same season's breeze or catch the same angle of sunlight. In my hot tea before bed I stir these thoughts of wonderment as the honeyed steam rises up.

The summer's floral display is changing into spikes and burrs and puffs. The tree trunks are showing shades of gray and black hardly noticed before. The skies are furious and haunting with clouds only October can boast. I've been watching closely. I gathered a thick bushel of the sweetest goldenrod flowers, small bundles of sweet everlasting, and hug-fulls of my dreamy mugwort. I have many magic potions from my summer's course, glistening on my countertops in shades and textures not unlike the autumn trees.

The last of the determined flowers have bloomed. I admire with sharp feelings the unusual juxtaposition of pink flowers, colored trees, and October snow. I am grateful for Elderberry elixir and my Monday hot soup tradition.

Grateful for working in a place where the land speaks to me, and the people are wise and humble. For where else would I learn how to respectfully dress a groundhog?

Grateful for the copious boughs of Thuja that I made into oil.
And while my Anima Medicine Woman Mentorship is coming along, it brings many surprises with it. It's going slower than I planned, and with different emphasis. I envisioned spending much time on herbal learning, but in fact I am spending more time on my own healing, paradigms, and sensory gifts. I work slowly in general, not because I am slow, but because I take in an enormous amount in each moment and that requires time and assimilation. I am allowing myself to be slower with less punishment. One of the delicious benefits is simple observation and receptivity. This has been perhaps the most exquisite Autumn I have ever seen; the colors are beyond spectacular. Is this because of weather and patterns? Or is it simply because I am watching so carefully the turning.....

from greens.........

to pinks............to golds..............
I am awestruck by Autumn this year. Despite my very busy schedule, (and my ruthless hatred of winter present or pending) timeless moments have blessed me often.

Like the day the bobcat walked through.

And the day we found fresh black bear scat in our front yard.

And the day we took a twilight hayride through sacred land.
And prayed and laughed in the corn maze.

And the day the honey came.
The Anima pulses through me a little stronger each day as I write and rewrite myself. I'm inviting back in my muse and prepared to let her take me over, trusting she won't let me fall. I see her in the flowers of the boneset, the breathing mist on the river, the cascades of leaves everywhere. I see her in the innocent eyes of my dance and herbal students. She is leading me again to poetry, to movement, to feeling. She guides me to before; before the chopping and blending, before the herb articles are written, before any assumptions are made.

She seduces me into the bittersweet nostalgia of receiving beauty right now.

~~~~

Feet planted firmly in the hurt

I sprout tendrils from the dirt

Grounded heart

Receptive mind

I open to the gifts I'll find

In waves of curling shadow grief

Surrender into risk

~is relief~

In bowing prayer

Twisting faith

In moving love, my heart is safe.

Gene Found Thats Responsible For Sensing Pain

Today's post from sciencedaily.com (see link below) is actually another step in the current progress of gene therapy towards handling extreme pain. In this case, researchers have identified a gene that blocks pain-sensing nerve cells in a tiny minority of people who cannot feel pain. The emphasis has always been on researching those cells that do transmit pain signals but this could be equally important in leading to ways of genetically blocking selected pain signals in the future. It's a complex subject but this article explains it quite simply and gives us hope that scientists really are on the verge of major breakthroughs when it comes to treating neuropathic chronic pain.

'Pain sensing' gene discovery could help in development of new methods of pain relief 
May 25, 2015 University of Cambridge

A gene essential to the production of pain-sensing neurons in humans has been identified by an international team of researchers co-led by the University of Cambridge. The discovery, reported in the journal Nature Genetics, could have implications for the development of new methods of pain relief.

Pain perception is an evolutionarily-conserved warning mechanism that alerts us to dangers in the environment and to potential tissue damage. However, rare individuals -- around one in a million people in the UK -- are born unable to feel pain. These people accumulate numerous self-inflicted injuries, often leading to reduced lifespan.

Using detailed genome mapping, two teams of researchers collaborated to analyse the genetic make-up of 11 families across Europe and Asia affected by an inherited condition known as congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP). This enabled them to pinpoint the cause of the condition to variants of the gene PRDM12. Family members affected by CIP carried two copies of the variant; however, if they had only inherited one copy from their parents, they were unaffected.

The team looked at nerve biopsies taken from the patients to see what had gone wrong and found that particular pain-sensing neurons were absent. From these clinical features of the disease, the team predicted that there would be a block to the production of pain-sensing neurons during the development of the embryo -- they confirmed this using a combination of studies in mouse and frog models, and in human induced pluripotent stem cells (skin cells that had been reset to their 'master state', which enables them to develop into almost any type of cell in the body).

PRDM12 had previously been implicated in the modification of chromatin, a small molecule that attaches to our DNA and acts like a switch to turn genes on and off (an effect known as epigenetics). The researchers showed that all the genetic variants of PRDM12 in the CIP patients blocked the gene's function. As chromatin is particularly important during formation of particular specialised cell types such as neurons, this provides a possible explanation for why pain-sensing neurons do not form properly in the CIP patients.

"The ability to sense pain is essential to our self-preservation, yet we understand far more about excessive pain than we do about lack of pain perception," says Professor Geoff Woods from the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research at the University of Cambridge, who co-led the study. "Both are equally important to the development of new pain treatments -- if we know the mechanisms that underlie pain sensation, we can then potentially control and reduce unnecessary pain."

PRDM12 is only the fifth gene related to lack of pain perception to have been identified to date. However, two of the previously-discovered genes have already led to the development of new pain killers that are currently been tested in clinical trials.

"We are very hopeful that this new gene could be an excellent candidate for drug development, particularly given recent successes with drugs targeting chromatin regulators in human disease," adds Dr Ya-Chun Chen from the University of Cambridge, the study's first author. "This could potentially benefit those who are at danger from lack of pain perception and help in the development of new treatments for pain relief."

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Cambridge. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:
Jan Senderek et al. Transcriptional regulator PRDM12 is essential for human pain perception. Nature Genetics, May 2015 DOI: 10.1038/ng.3308

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150525120428.htm