Operation Warrior Wellness.org is GRATE for Veterans and All with Trauma in Past, Present AND FUTURE!

I was pleased to see on CNN this morning, that it is mediTation instead of mediCation -- or in addition to but with the potential to do medication changes -- for our veterans now, thanks to the David Lynch Foundation's program titled "Operation Warrior Wellness".  

I did my internships at the Denver VA in 1996, including the psychiatric ward, and I have written in the past about my experiences there.  I had started doing mindfulness meditation years before, perhaps around 1990, when my health had collapsed into what is now called chronic fatigue syndrome.  So it seemed 'non  progressive' to me, what I saw in my internship.  For the care they were providing, it was done VERY well -- but it was like they hadn't gotten the memo about anything that the rest of the country had caught onto in recent decades and the rest of the world has known and practiced for thousands of years sometimes. 

"Letting the mind settle" is part of cultures and religions around the world; somewhere along the line 'meditation' was perceived and then broadcasted by 'teachers' that people listened to, as being something that was contradictory to Christian practice.  This unfortunately had something to do, I think, with the delay in our Veteran's having this important tool in their toolkit to rebuild their lives with as much wellness as possible.  

One of the words I wanted to bring up that they mentioned on the TV interview is 'resilience'' --  something that Dr Paula King, our 'resident psychologist' at Lumigrate.com from the beginning and to this day, pointed out was one of my foremost postive tools or characteristics.  And I'd never tied it to my long-standing meditation practice.  She is certified in Heart Math, which has a gadget that you connect to a computer and you can see how a person's heart is beating.  I had someone use me as a training subject about 10 years ago, when I had gotten away from my meditation regimen, and they were amazed at how rapidly my heart was beating the way they want it to be beating in HeartMath. In just a few minutes I was where most people area after a few sessions. Again, that I KNOW was from having my meditation practice in the past literally 'integrating into' the fabric of my being in a way that I could draw upon it when needed and it was 'right there' just as if I had been 'practicing' the day before!  

Something I learned in my VA internship was that the people who had the highest rates of PTSD were ones who had not had good coping skills when they went into the military. And now that I've learned about the extensive Adverse Childhood Experiences research, which I have also covered at Lumigrate if you wish to Search on ACE or childhood trauma, I understand much more about why it might be that so many civilian women who have fibromyalgia diagnosed have something in common with 'the boys' from Vietnam*.  

So whether you are a Veteran or not, I hope you check out this link, and realize that we have much in the mind forum here at our website.  I hope I have encouraged a little bit of interest based on my experiences and that if you are a veteran, you are going to benefit from this PROGRESS in what is available to you! www.davidlynchfoundation.org/military.html

Live and Learn. Learn and Live Better! ~~ Mardy

* My boyfriend in the past was a Vietnam veteran who had PTSD among his service-connected conditions, and on Veterans Day he would go to a bar, order a shot of tequilla, and say 'to the boys' before doing the shot.  Only time of year he generally had a shot of anything. And so that is now my tradition too. I hope that someday I will come to understand what he was not wanting to tell me about why that was his 'salute', as it was rather unlike them. There was also a song popular back then, "Desperado" which reminded him of something from his past that he would not talk about. It has been my honor and pleasure to learn from each of these wounded warriors and I hope they all can work their way toward wellness from wherever they are on the wellness/illness continuum.)