January 29, 2023 • 17 mins
Guest Host Lisa Garr and Guest Ed Tick discuss how to heal illness through healing the burdens in our lives. Ed also gets into dream incubations and his healing journeys to Greece and Vietnam.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Welcome back to Coast to Coast AM. I only cigar
and my guest is ed Tick and he has a
new book out called Soul Medicine Healing through Dream, Incubation, Visions,
Oracles and Pilgrimages. And before the break and you were
talking about the healing well spinal stenosis and how a
(00:24):
lot of the diagnosis you were getting were to do
the injections and various symptomatic effects. How did you get
to the base of the soul medicine part of it?
Could you give us an example? Sure, I can give
about many, all right, So one matter is what we
were saying earlier that we need our healers to listen
(00:48):
deeply to us, to not just ask what our symptoms
are and give automatic responses through surgeries or through medications.
Here's a drug to take care of the symptom. So
when we wipe out the symptom, we're actually wiping out
the messages that our souls are giving us, that our
(01:09):
spiritual centers are giving us. Symptoms are symbols from our
center through our body trying to tell us what is
going on. What's wrong when we haven't been listening, or
when for a long time, our lifestyles and practices have
accumulated and we've ignored our true deep needs. So back
(01:33):
to my spinal spinosis. As I shared, most medical professionals
just listened to the symptom and wanted to give injections
and surgeries, and I refuse that. I refuse that and
kept looking for help and support. Only one physician in
(01:53):
all of my searching said to me, I don't want
to hear the diagnosis. We don't even know if the
diagnosis is right. Please sit down and tell me your experiences.
So he wanted to hear how I'm experiencing the symptoms
in my body, and we also wanted to hear how
long I've had them, how are I related to my
(02:15):
life story? When did I first notice them? And how
do I deal with the pressure and stress? So he
was the only position of five years of searching that
did any disinte But beyond that, I want to talk
about how I've learned about well, just real quick? Did
(02:37):
it help? It did? Was that an effective result for
you to have that? What was the result of the back?
The result of that was for me to say, oh,
I actually don't have stenosis. He said that after years
of searching and so many professionals saying, because we looked
(03:00):
at your MRI, that's what you had. No, Actually, I've
had spinal degeneration for decades, but it never broke down.
And what helped was what are you experiencing why now
in your life cycle as the pressure built up so
much that you're registering this as a disability, and what
(03:25):
do you have to do with your life to lighten
your burdens. So the deep talking affirm that I was
going in the right direction of looking at my whole being,
not just treating the symptoms. I'm going to jump to
something else, to dream incubation. Yes, I did have dream
incubations about this condition, and some extraordinary things happened that
(03:50):
are almost unbelievable. So as we said, dream incubation occurred
when people remove themselves from the mainstream and why and
on healing pilgrimages or to holistic health centers and remove
themselves fasted prede focused on whatever need is coming through
(04:13):
their body and their their lives and asking for help
from the divine. So I lead as we're sharing tonight,
I be doing journeys to Greece. I also lead healing
journeys to Vietnam, and I've been working with our veterans
in these manners holistic healing a post traumatic stress disorder
for decades. That is fascinating. I want to talk with
(04:33):
you about that where we can where you can go
there and we can put them together. I'm going to
share a dream incubation that I actually experienced in Vietnam
about healing my spinal stenosis. Okay, okay, So this is
put all the world traditions together into their universal components
(04:54):
and symbols. I had a group in Vietnam. We were
in the Mekong Delta, in very remote area. We were
staying for several nights in actually in the little compound
of a Vietcong veteran who has become a friend and
his helpless help American veterans heal. So he has a
(05:14):
compound built on stilts right above the Mekong River. I
was sleeping on a cot there with my sphenosis. I
was that it was bad that time. I was on crutches,
I couldn't even walk upright well. One night sleeping on
that river and hoping and praying for some relief from
(05:38):
my pain and my struggles. I had a dream that
a giant snake, like a four foot long snake, came
out of the river, climbed up the pilings, climbed up
onto my cot and bit me in sank it's things
right into my left side. And even right now as
I tell you that story, I can heel in my
(06:01):
thigh where that dream snake fit me. So that from
the Escopian tradition, I was asleep at night unretreat in
a remote place, and a snake crawled up like a
congiant Conducius and wrapped around the filings and climbed up
out of the river and up onto my cot and
(06:21):
then bit me. What I experienced I, as I shared,
I was work walking on crutches. Then when I woke
up that morning after that snake by dream, I had
no pain, I had no struggle. I didn't need the
crust of it, didn't need the crutches at all. I
was dancing. I was climbing mountains again. I was dancing.
(06:42):
I was dancing through the streets of the Vietnam, singing
and completely pain free. So this is an example of
a spontaneous dream incubation on issues I've been working on
for years while I was on a healing journey trying
to help others, and it came in this ancient esclepion
(07:04):
form that of course I immediately recognized because I've been
working in this tradition right right. It also taught me
that my body can do this, that yes, in fact,
this is a holistic problem, not a physical deterioration. When
a medical professionals have been told or telling me that
(07:24):
I was chronically disabled and I'd probably end up in
a wheelchair, but the dream showed me that no, that's
not the case, and I can somehow be in better
balance with my life, with my burdens, and I can
learn to walk again and dance and climb mountains, which
I now can do. And you still that lasted for you?
(07:47):
I think it's for five years later and I'm fined. Really,
I can climb again, I can hike and climb mountains again,
and I have very little pain. I'm not saying that
we don't also have physiological conditions and challenges, right. I
do have neuropathy in my seat, so I have reminders
(08:11):
that my body was afflicted and changes have happened in
my body. But beyond that, I don't have issues, and
I'm very happy and I'm doing well well, and that
also it has to do with the Vietnam and the trips.
Were you in the Vietnam War? No, I wasn't. I'm
(08:32):
that age. I'm seventy one. So I was in college
during the Vietnam War and I was protesting it quite passionately.
I wasn't. I wasn't a leader. I was in the
front lines of the protest movement. And now you bring
groups there to cause healing. Right, they're really struggling with
(08:53):
PTSD from that war. Right. Oh, yes, I've been. We
can connect these the Greek in the Vietnam these wars
and traditions as well, if we can go in that direction.
But yes, I've been working with our veterans from Vietnam
since the late nineteen seventies, before post traumatic stress disorder
(09:14):
was even a diagnosis. Wow, I'll put this together with
our Greek studies. It's really fascinating. So I worked. I
began in the mid to late nineteen seventies. I was
working as a psychotherapist with our veterans for about eight
or ten years. I realized that as the problems of
(09:35):
post traumatic stress disorder are so deep, so comprehensive, that
ordinary talk therapy was not going to be enough to
heal them. Right, I went to Greece. Actually, this is
way back nineteen eighty seven, after about a decade of
work with our veterans, I went to Greece to study
the ancient citizen warrior tradition. There, warfare was endemic to
(10:00):
their culture. That I assume that and to world's history.
That I assume that other cultures from other times and
places must have had comprehensive ways for bringing their veterans
home and healing the wound we call PTSC. Well, in
my lifelong work in these traditions, I've learned that what
(10:24):
the wound we call PTSD has been part of civilization
and part of violence and warfare forever. The word trauma
itself comes from ancient Greek. It is an ancient Greek
word that meant to stabbing or a piercing wound, like
from a spear or an arrow or a sword. But
(10:47):
to the ancient people, the piercing was to the soul
as well as to the bodies everything. When we are wounded,
when we are violated, the origin of the word violence
violates our being. Every part of us is wounded, not
just our body, but our minds, our hearts, our souls
as well. So I was going to Greece to study this.
(11:08):
I went to Well, it's a place called the pros
and Epidaurus in the English spelling, and it was the
principal healing sanctuary of the ancient world. I didn't know
that at the time. I went to see ancient theater.
It has a huge fourteen thousand seat theater in the
ancient world that still used every summer for ancient theater festivals.
(11:37):
The night I went, the play The Trojan Women was
in performance. The Trojan Women was by Euripides. Euripides had
been a general in the Athenian army. He wrote this
play to protest what the Athenians were doing during the
Peloponnesian War. He was actually protesting atrocities that the army
(11:58):
was committed, even though he had been a general and
very devoted to his people on his service. All right,
So I saw that play in the ancient sanctuary and
at night by torch life. Nothing was really performed in
(12:18):
the ancient way. It was extraordinary during that play. That
play demonstrates all the wounds of war. It happens after
the Trojan War, when the Greeks have defeated the Trojans
and they're sacking the city. They're taking all the women
away as prisoners and as slaves. They've killed all the men,
(12:39):
they're killing off the children. So we see all of
the horrors of war portrayed on the stage in the
most intense dramatic form, with very, very moving poetry. I
experienced that we used the word catharsis earlier. I experienced
catharsis in that play. The word anathema. It's also ancient Greek,
(13:01):
and the Queen of Troy was screaming from the core
of her being anathma. War is anathema. It's against the theme,
against the way, against the order of life. It's destructive
and reverses everything. Well, it's hard to describe what I
experienced in the theater that knife, but it changed my life.
(13:23):
I went to that play as a healer for Vietnam veterans.
I realized through that play that all wars, from all
times and all places are the same. It's not primarily
about politics or economics in the moment. It's about the
horrors that we do to life and how we turn
our creative energies, our resources each other against the life
(13:47):
force itself. And nathema is the soul wound that anybody
feels coming out of war. I've gone into the theaters
thinking of myself as a psychotherapist of Vietnam veterans. I
came out of the theater saying, no, I'm called to
address and heal violence trauma anytime, in any way, in
(14:10):
whatever form it comes. And all wars and acts of
violence are essentially the same, the archetypal They recur again
and again, and they have the same themes throughout history,
and so I was kind of called to address and
heal all of this, and that cathartic experience I had
changed my attitudes and my values and my understanding of
(14:34):
warfare and the human relationship to it forever. And it
also taught me what theater can do that thense healing experience,
and it also propelled me as I said it. The
theater was at the principal healing sanctuary, and so I said,
I don't know anything about this healing tradition, and I
(14:54):
don't know why theaters are here, so I need to
research this. And that's when I began researching and using
the Yescopian tradition and applying it to everybody's healing. Means.
The theater essentially is just like the dream incubation because
it's a dark space and it hits these images that
are supplied for you. But if you go deep enough
(15:17):
into it, you could get your own healing. As you
just did, as you just described exactly, and that's what
you do with story as well. Encourage people to tell
their stories as fully, as symbolically, as emotionally as they
possibly can, and that itself, they put their story together,
(15:38):
the different puzzle pieces of their lives, and they achieve
healing through catharsis of the varied emotions and through the
expression and through making it public through sharing, not just
keeping the stories locked up inside us. So exactly what
I t yes, and that's what theater does for us. Yes,
it does. This is so fascinating because I mean, I
(16:01):
will just coincidentally, my father's not only a doctor, but
he was also a Vietnam vet and he also had
these experiences of PTSD regardless of his ability to heal it,
and went through the typical neuropathy of the Vietnam tragedy.
Because of Agent Orange. And I know that there had
(16:23):
to been just as much damage that was done to
the Vietnamese people and their land by killing all the
foliolage and the forestry and the people, and the devastation
that happened there. It is a universal theme. As you mentioned,
war is harmed to all humanity in that case and
(16:46):
it was. That's an incredible humanitarian perspective that you saw
and that you take people there is your story continuing
to play itself out over and over again, and that's
a perfect example of how stry heels. Listen to more
Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one a m.
Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot com
(17:09):
for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Welcome back to Coast to Coast AM. I only cigar
and my guest is ed Tick and he has a
new book out called Soul Medicine Healing through Dream, Incubation, Visions,
Oracles and Pilgrimages. And before the break and you were
talking about the healing well spinal stenosis and how a
(00:24):
lot of the diagnosis you were getting were to do
the injections and various symptomatic effects. How did you get
to the base of the soul medicine part of it?
Could you give us an example? Sure, I can give
about many, all right, So one matter is what we
were saying earlier that we need our healers to listen
(00:48):
deeply to us, to not just ask what our symptoms
are and give automatic responses through surgeries or through medications.
Here's a drug to take care of the symptom. So
when we wipe out the symptom, we're actually wiping out
the messages that our souls are giving us, that our
(01:09):
spiritual centers are giving us. Symptoms are symbols from our
center through our body trying to tell us what is
going on. What's wrong when we haven't been listening, or
when for a long time, our lifestyles and practices have
accumulated and we've ignored our true deep needs. So back
(01:33):
to my spinal spinosis. As I shared, most medical professionals
just listened to the symptom and wanted to give injections
and surgeries, and I refuse that. I refuse that and
kept looking for help and support. Only one physician in
(01:53):
all of my searching said to me, I don't want
to hear the diagnosis. We don't even know if the
diagnosis is right. Please sit down and tell me your experiences.
So he wanted to hear how I'm experiencing the symptoms
in my body, and we also wanted to hear how
long I've had them, how are I related to my
(02:15):
life story? When did I first notice them? And how
do I deal with the pressure and stress? So he
was the only position of five years of searching that
did any disinte But beyond that, I want to talk
about how I've learned about well, just real quick? Did
(02:37):
it help? It did? Was that an effective result for
you to have that? What was the result of the back?
The result of that was for me to say, oh,
I actually don't have stenosis. He said that after years
of searching and so many professionals saying, because we looked
(03:00):
at your MRI, that's what you had. No, Actually, I've
had spinal degeneration for decades, but it never broke down.
And what helped was what are you experiencing why now
in your life cycle as the pressure built up so
much that you're registering this as a disability, and what
(03:25):
do you have to do with your life to lighten
your burdens. So the deep talking affirm that I was
going in the right direction of looking at my whole being,
not just treating the symptoms. I'm going to jump to
something else, to dream incubation. Yes, I did have dream
incubations about this condition, and some extraordinary things happened that
(03:50):
are almost unbelievable. So as we said, dream incubation occurred
when people remove themselves from the mainstream and why and
on healing pilgrimages or to holistic health centers and remove
themselves fasted prede focused on whatever need is coming through
(04:13):
their body and their their lives and asking for help
from the divine. So I lead as we're sharing tonight,
I be doing journeys to Greece. I also lead healing
journeys to Vietnam, and I've been working with our veterans
in these manners holistic healing a post traumatic stress disorder
for decades. That is fascinating. I want to talk with
(04:33):
you about that where we can where you can go
there and we can put them together. I'm going to
share a dream incubation that I actually experienced in Vietnam
about healing my spinal stenosis. Okay, okay, So this is
put all the world traditions together into their universal components
(04:54):
and symbols. I had a group in Vietnam. We were
in the Mekong Delta, in very remote area. We were
staying for several nights in actually in the little compound
of a Vietcong veteran who has become a friend and
his helpless help American veterans heal. So he has a
(05:14):
compound built on stilts right above the Mekong River. I
was sleeping on a cot there with my sphenosis. I
was that it was bad that time. I was on crutches,
I couldn't even walk upright well. One night sleeping on
that river and hoping and praying for some relief from
(05:38):
my pain and my struggles. I had a dream that
a giant snake, like a four foot long snake, came
out of the river, climbed up the pilings, climbed up
onto my cot and bit me in sank it's things
right into my left side. And even right now as
I tell you that story, I can heel in my
(06:01):
thigh where that dream snake fit me. So that from
the Escopian tradition, I was asleep at night unretreat in
a remote place, and a snake crawled up like a
congiant Conducius and wrapped around the filings and climbed up
out of the river and up onto my cot and
(06:21):
then bit me. What I experienced I, as I shared,
I was work walking on crutches. Then when I woke
up that morning after that snake by dream, I had
no pain, I had no struggle. I didn't need the
crust of it, didn't need the crutches at all. I
was dancing. I was climbing mountains again. I was dancing.
(06:42):
I was dancing through the streets of the Vietnam, singing
and completely pain free. So this is an example of
a spontaneous dream incubation on issues I've been working on
for years while I was on a healing journey trying
to help others, and it came in this ancient esclepion
(07:04):
form that of course I immediately recognized because I've been
working in this tradition right right. It also taught me
that my body can do this, that yes, in fact,
this is a holistic problem, not a physical deterioration. When
a medical professionals have been told or telling me that
(07:24):
I was chronically disabled and I'd probably end up in
a wheelchair, but the dream showed me that no, that's
not the case, and I can somehow be in better
balance with my life, with my burdens, and I can
learn to walk again and dance and climb mountains, which
I now can do. And you still that lasted for you?
(07:47):
I think it's for five years later and I'm fined. Really,
I can climb again, I can hike and climb mountains again,
and I have very little pain. I'm not saying that
we don't also have physiological conditions and challenges, right. I
do have neuropathy in my seat, so I have reminders
(08:11):
that my body was afflicted and changes have happened in
my body. But beyond that, I don't have issues, and
I'm very happy and I'm doing well well, and that
also it has to do with the Vietnam and the trips.
Were you in the Vietnam War? No, I wasn't. I'm
(08:32):
that age. I'm seventy one. So I was in college
during the Vietnam War and I was protesting it quite passionately.
I wasn't. I wasn't a leader. I was in the
front lines of the protest movement. And now you bring
groups there to cause healing. Right, they're really struggling with
(08:53):
PTSD from that war. Right. Oh, yes, I've been. We
can connect these the Greek in the Vietnam these wars
and traditions as well, if we can go in that direction.
But yes, I've been working with our veterans from Vietnam
since the late nineteen seventies, before post traumatic stress disorder
(09:14):
was even a diagnosis. Wow, I'll put this together with
our Greek studies. It's really fascinating. So I worked. I
began in the mid to late nineteen seventies. I was
working as a psychotherapist with our veterans for about eight
or ten years. I realized that as the problems of
(09:35):
post traumatic stress disorder are so deep, so comprehensive, that
ordinary talk therapy was not going to be enough to
heal them. Right, I went to Greece. Actually, this is
way back nineteen eighty seven, after about a decade of
work with our veterans, I went to Greece to study
the ancient citizen warrior tradition. There, warfare was endemic to
(10:00):
their culture. That I assume that and to world's history.
That I assume that other cultures from other times and
places must have had comprehensive ways for bringing their veterans
home and healing the wound we call PTSC. Well, in
my lifelong work in these traditions, I've learned that what
(10:24):
the wound we call PTSD has been part of civilization
and part of violence and warfare forever. The word trauma
itself comes from ancient Greek. It is an ancient Greek
word that meant to stabbing or a piercing wound, like
from a spear or an arrow or a sword. But
(10:47):
to the ancient people, the piercing was to the soul
as well as to the bodies everything. When we are wounded,
when we are violated, the origin of the word violence
violates our being. Every part of us is wounded, not
just our body, but our minds, our hearts, our souls
as well. So I was going to Greece to study this.
(11:08):
I went to Well, it's a place called the pros
and Epidaurus in the English spelling, and it was the
principal healing sanctuary of the ancient world. I didn't know
that at the time. I went to see ancient theater.
It has a huge fourteen thousand seat theater in the
ancient world that still used every summer for ancient theater festivals.
(11:37):
The night I went, the play The Trojan Women was
in performance. The Trojan Women was by Euripides. Euripides had
been a general in the Athenian army. He wrote this
play to protest what the Athenians were doing during the
Peloponnesian War. He was actually protesting atrocities that the army
(11:58):
was committed, even though he had been a general and
very devoted to his people on his service. All right,
So I saw that play in the ancient sanctuary and
at night by torch life. Nothing was really performed in
(12:18):
the ancient way. It was extraordinary during that play. That
play demonstrates all the wounds of war. It happens after
the Trojan War, when the Greeks have defeated the Trojans
and they're sacking the city. They're taking all the women
away as prisoners and as slaves. They've killed all the men,
(12:39):
they're killing off the children. So we see all of
the horrors of war portrayed on the stage in the
most intense dramatic form, with very, very moving poetry. I
experienced that we used the word catharsis earlier. I experienced
catharsis in that play. The word anathema. It's also ancient Greek,
(13:01):
and the Queen of Troy was screaming from the core
of her being anathma. War is anathema. It's against the theme,
against the way, against the order of life. It's destructive
and reverses everything. Well, it's hard to describe what I
experienced in the theater that knife, but it changed my life.
(13:23):
I went to that play as a healer for Vietnam veterans.
I realized through that play that all wars, from all
times and all places are the same. It's not primarily
about politics or economics in the moment. It's about the
horrors that we do to life and how we turn
our creative energies, our resources each other against the life
(13:47):
force itself. And nathema is the soul wound that anybody
feels coming out of war. I've gone into the theaters
thinking of myself as a psychotherapist of Vietnam veterans. I
came out of the theater saying, no, I'm called to
address and heal violence trauma anytime, in any way, in
(14:10):
whatever form it comes. And all wars and acts of
violence are essentially the same, the archetypal They recur again
and again, and they have the same themes throughout history,
and so I was kind of called to address and
heal all of this, and that cathartic experience I had
changed my attitudes and my values and my understanding of
(14:34):
warfare and the human relationship to it forever. And it
also taught me what theater can do that thense healing experience,
and it also propelled me as I said it. The
theater was at the principal healing sanctuary, and so I said,
I don't know anything about this healing tradition, and I
(14:54):
don't know why theaters are here, so I need to
research this. And that's when I began researching and using
the Yescopian tradition and applying it to everybody's healing. Means.
The theater essentially is just like the dream incubation because
it's a dark space and it hits these images that
are supplied for you. But if you go deep enough
(15:17):
into it, you could get your own healing. As you
just did, as you just described exactly, and that's what
you do with story as well. Encourage people to tell
their stories as fully, as symbolically, as emotionally as they
possibly can, and that itself, they put their story together,
(15:38):
the different puzzle pieces of their lives, and they achieve
healing through catharsis of the varied emotions and through the
expression and through making it public through sharing, not just
keeping the stories locked up inside us. So exactly what
I t yes, and that's what theater does for us. Yes,
it does. This is so fascinating because I mean, I
(16:01):
will just coincidentally, my father's not only a doctor, but
he was also a Vietnam vet and he also had
these experiences of PTSD regardless of his ability to heal it,
and went through the typical neuropathy of the Vietnam tragedy.
Because of Agent Orange. And I know that there had
(16:23):
to been just as much damage that was done to
the Vietnamese people and their land by killing all the
foliolage and the forestry and the people, and the devastation
that happened there. It is a universal theme. As you mentioned,
war is harmed to all humanity in that case and
(16:46):
it was. That's an incredible humanitarian perspective that you saw
and that you take people there is your story continuing
to play itself out over and over again, and that's
a perfect example of how stry heels. Listen to more
Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one a m.
Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot com
(17:09):
for more
The Best of Coast to Coast AM News
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.