Parkinson’s

What is Parkinson’s?

Parkinson’s is a mobility disorder (mobility = ability to move spontaneously). The disease has the following symptoms:

• trembling of muscles (tremor), such as hands, head, legs, chin, tongue
• Stiffness of the muscles (rigor or rigidity)
• slowing of movement (bradykinesia), difficulty starting
• movements (akinesia) and lack of automatic movements (rigidity)
• posture and balance problems, sometimes falls when the disease lasts longer
• Freezing of the legs while walking (freezing). The feet seem to stick to the floor.

Vicious circle

The person with Parkinson’s faces stress during the day that he or she cannot resolve. This stands in the way of healing. In the resolution phase, tremors reach a peak. But because the disease does not go all the way to total resolution, they then reappear in a conflict-active phase. This creates a vicious cycle in which symptoms continue to worsen. Thus, in Parkinson’s, conflict active and resolution phases constantly alternate.

Conflicts

HeartConnection asks questions of the person diagnosed with Parkinson’s. This is how we find out the story of the cause of this disease. What is the underlying stress (the conflict) that can cause Parkinson’s?

• You have been in a situation where you have been stuck or you have a fear of getting stuck.
• You have been in a situation where you could not move, dared not move or did not want to move.
• You want to do something, yet you don’t or you can’t. You have an idea, but you fail to manifest it. You are stuck, so to speak.

For example

A loved one passes away, but you don’t want to let her/him go. Or you want to hold her/his hand during the passing, but you don’t do it out of shame for what those around you might think.

A father hit his son with a belt. When the son pulls his hand out of father’s once, his father threatens to hit him with the belt if he does it again. Later, as a young adult, the boy wants to hold his girlfriend’s hand, but he cannot. He doesn’t know why. Ten years later, his girlfriend leaves. He misses her greatly. A few months later, he is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

A married couple breaks up; he has a mistress. The husband and wife continue to see each other “for the children. But when he calls, she prefers not to answer the phone. She lives a life of despair, hesitation.

From Practice

Tremors: the story of Lana

Lana, 56, tremors, asked her personal question during the HeartConnection One-Day event
Lana regularly shakes her head, but she does not feel this herself. This came about after the death of her mother five years ago. Her mother died from a six-month lung cancer trial. At first she did not feel sad about this, but after some time she misses her mother. Or rather, she misses the mother she didn’t have. In retrospect, Lana would have liked to have done better, to have stood up more for her mother in relation to her domineering father. Lana had wanted to be nicer to her mother. More questions, more listening, and so on. She missed conversations about feelings and emotions with her mother.

But where did her tremors come from? Her father suffered extreme tremors for the last 15 years of his life. His whole body shook, twitched and moved uncontrollably, especially his head and arms. Later, he also suffered a tia. Lana has fears of developing tremors like her father. What did her father go through? Where do these movements come from? Where did her father get stuck?

The movements of the body indicate that the muscles want to “break free” from a situation, skip away, run, flee. But from a person’s subconscious programming, this cannot be done.

Lana’s father Cees is from 1928 and he lived to be 87 years old. Cees was twelve years old when the war began and lived in the Jewish Quarter. Jews were trapped in this ghetto and from there were detained in camps. Daily he saw the transport of Jews to and from the Jewish quarter. They were five years of terrible fears and grief. He saw how his friends were deported. He felt his greatest fear when, during a raid, his father Cor was rounded up. But because Cor had Cees’ little brother with him, the Nazis did not take father Cor. However, there was continuous fear in the family of being detained. After the war, Cees does not feel understood. He experiences fears of being arrested himself.

After the war, Cor is in the pub every day. Son Cees (Lana’s father) has to pick him up from the pub every day from his mother. Not a fun time. Father was stuck in a family situation he wanted out of? Cees developed severe tremors from the age of 72 for the last 15 years of his life.

This is a first big step toward telling the story of Lana’s tremors, as a symptom of Parkinson’s. Lana attends Heartconnection trainings and each time she receives insights into her processes.

Parkinson’s disease: the story of Lieke

Liek, 54, diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, asks her question during the lecture in Lisse. Lieke is 52 when she is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. At the time, she has two jobs. One of those two jobs is filling a large dishwasher. With her right arm, she closes the machine each time, a mechanical movement. Her second job is career counselor, but that doesn’t earn her enough to make ends meet. Daily she asks herself, “Is this really my way?”

Suddenly she cannot move her right arm. After a DAT scan of the cerebellum and a check of her dopamine levels, she is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Even though, according to Lieke, the scan showed nothing and her dopamine levels were good. She is therefore surprised by the diagnosis. Obsessively, she has been searching the Internet for all the symptoms of Parkinson’s for two years now. That doesn’t exactly make her happy. Her right arm has recovered, she says, but in relaxation she feels her arm twitch. She sits relaxed on a chair and we see nothing moving. Interesting.

We ask about her greatest pain. All her life she feels rejected by her father. Her biggest pain was when she was 10 years old and had to see a dietician because of her father. At 12, she was treated for excessive hair. There are regular moments in her life when she feels shame and feels stuck in a situation she wants to get out of. She experiences powerlessness, misunderstanding, sadness, rejection, fatigue. Even during the period when she reluctantly closes the dishwasher every time.

Through sharing her story, she recognizes several times that she has been stuck with herself, but more importantly that she felt stuck. Now she feels hope and relaxation. Happy, surprised and touched, she goes home.

Trilling & family tree

During our trainings, you will learn that humans think in culture, but our bodies respond biologically. Interestingly, animals shake themselves after an exciting situation. Shaking and trembling is the biological response to stuck, unprocessed events in the family tree. The symbolism of shaking and trembling then is: this person wants to shake off the family burdens.

Parkinson’s: the story of John

During the HeartConnection Training, John (56) asks his question. July 2016, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. John has the following complaints:

• his right arm-hand is trembling
• pain in his right shoulder
• little muscle tension in his right foot with tingling
• pain in his right groin.

Where are you stuck?

We will look at where John is stuck in his life. John is constantly concerned with the future, feeling anxiety about his functioning, fear of deterioration. What will the future hold for him? His symptoms are getting worse and certainly not better. He compares himself to some fellow villagers. Things are going very badly with that. Financially there is a lot of tension and uncertainty, he is now receiving 50% benefits.

Accident little daughter

John is 53 when he is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Three years before that, at age 50, his wife went to live separately. For John, this is hard to comprehend, unacceptable even. He is angry, disappointed, alone. He is an inside man and doesn’t talk to anyone about it.

What else happened? When John was 39, his daughter of two years crashed. John has his own business and at the time he worked with five men in the back of the yard. His little daughter came to watch, he picks her up to lift her over a plate and hands his little daughter to his father. But the plate is not fixed, John gets off balance and the plate falls over, onto his daughter. The five of them lift the 600-kg plate, but it is too late. His daughter passed away.

Connecting-melting-letting go

His little daughter died from the movement of the plate, from becoming unbalanced. A terrible event. John is going to connect-melt-let go with this painful event. After a few minutes, he suddenly calms down. He understands the story of his Parkinson’s. The pain from his shoulder disappeared immediately. He also feels more strength in his right foot and rest in his arm. He is impressed by the speed of this recovery. I advise him to attend as many HeartConnection days as possible to connect more and more with himself. This is a first step.