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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 4, 1994)
just out ▼ novtm bsr 4, 1994 ▼ 19 ark Bans is a young gay doctor. He describes himself as a chiro practor, but the word merely scratches the surface of his work. He is a holistic practitioner. His list of clients reads like a medical alphabet. People come to him for AIDS, back injury, cancer. They credit his care with helping them heal. His pioneer ing treatments blend chiropractic care, neuro-emo- tional technique, and what some clients describe as psychic healing. Bans is not comfortable using the term ‘psychic’ to describe what he does. “I don’t say that I’m psychic, but I can’t deny that somebody would interpret it that way, either.” Bans said his ability works like an antenna picking up energy. He channels this ability into his treat ments, confining it to specific diagnostic proce dures. ‘‘We are all connected,” he said, “we’re just not always open to it or aware of it. We all have threads that interlink each one of us with one another. That’s because we’re all made of the same energy and from the same source. We all have these abilities. In growing up, we tend to discount them or to learn that they’re not real and to not take them seriously. The word ‘psychic’ can take away from the experience.” The experience is different for each client. Bans lets each client’s body tell him what work needs to be done. He tunes in to the individual’s body through an old chiropractic method called kinesiology, or muscle testing. “It involves asking the body itself. Each person comes with their own instruction manual. We’re all individuals. We all have different issues and problems. I don’t dictate what gets done—the person’s own body does. Whether it be emotional, physical, mental, spiritual...I merely ask the body what it wants, and I do it.” Although “doing it” causes clients to report healings of ailments ranging from carpal tunnel syndrome to cancer, Bans does not take credit for the cure. “I work on making people more whole in their process. I can’t heal them, I can only help them heal themselves. A person’s primary place of healing comes from within, and, in my own belief system, it is interconnected to a higher power. That’s what I tap into.” Bans uses muscle testing to tune in to the emotional components of illness. A human being as a whole has many components—physical, men tal, emotional, sexual, spiritual. If one or more of these components is out of balance, disease will occur. Bans observed, “A problem is often a mani festation of several components. When you break it down into just a physical thing, or just an emo tional thing, you don’t get a full healing. You only heal that part of it which you treated. So you don’t necessarily get the root cause—or all of it—you just get part of it. This work allows us to get in and work on all different levels so your healing is more complete.” While the emotional aspect of disease is little acknowledged in Western medicine, the 5,000- year-old Chinese medical tradition correlates body organs to emotions. This ancient and effective form of medicine states that each body organ stores specific emotions. When emotions are not prop erly processed, the organs involved cannot effi ciently process their specific physical functions, so the entire system breaks down. These blockages manifest in disease. Neuro-emotional technique is a tool used to uncover and release the emotions that have been stored since early childhood. Muscle testing is a stimulus-reflex response. An arm is often used as an indicator muscle. A healthy or unhealthy stimulus is introduced to the body, and the body reflexively responds with strength or weakness. For example, a person may hold a vegetable in their hand with their arm outstretched. Another person pressing down on that arm would find that the arm holds strong. If that vegetable is replaced with a glob of lard, the arm will go weak when the other person presses down. Likewise, positive words or pleasant thoughts will cause the arm to remain strong. Dishonest words or Healing energy M A holistic practitioner tunes in to the body to help his clients heal themselves ▼ by Risa Krive , talk, which probably sounds strange but it really isn’t, because our bodies tell us lots of things— we just don’t pay attention to them. He’s pulled up some really important issues that I’ve taken to my therapist and dealt with. He’s really helped me to get on a spiritual kind of path that feels comfortable for me. It helps me to live better with AIDS.” A woman who described h erself as a “mainstreamer” working in a conservative busi ness spoke about her experience with Bans. She was suffering from excruciating earaches, head aches, and jaw fatigue associated with temporal mandibular joint syndrome. “I was seeing a reg ular physician who was a specialist in TMJ, but 1 was not getting any relief,” she said. "I left Mark Bans’ office after one visit and 1 was driving down the highway and I realized in a flash that I was pain- free for the first time in three years. It was that fast and that remarkable.” Bill described "a congenital problem in my lower back, where two of the lower vertebrae have something missing between them. It had become very painful. I’d wake up in the morning and I felt like an old man, all stooped over. That completely cleared up over a period of three to four months of treatment.” Bill added,“His work also helped me heal my relationship with my father. We communicate much better now.” lan is studying to be a chiropractor. “I’m currently alive today because of neuro-emo tional technique,” he declared. He was diag nosed as HIV positive in 1984. He ignored the issue for five years, while his T-cell count plummeted to Mark Bans 316. He began a program of neuro-emotional tech nique, with a different practitioner. He later contin let go of it. But the subconscious mind thinks, ‘I the arm to go weak. ued with Mark Bans. Alan included nutritional Muscle strength is affected because the body lived this lifestyle, and now this is what I get, this supplementation in his health quest. Without using senses positive and negative stimuli through the is what I deserve.’ If you’ve got the conscious AZT or any prescription drugs, his T-cells have millions of nerves that connect through electrical mind saying, ‘I want to live,’ and your subcon climbed up—to 449 in May. He stated, “I’m the scious mind saying, ‘Forget it, I don’t deserve it,’ impulses to the brain. healthiest today that I’ve ever been in my life.” you’re not working completely and wholly to “Your brain keeps track of everything,” Bans Alan is currently a medical technologist. He wards healing. There’s a part of you wanting to live said. “It controls your digestion, your hearing, has been testing blood in the laboratory for HIV and a part of you not wanting to live, and you’re not your eyesight—everything in your body. It knows, and other diseases for eight years. He said, “My at your best possible optimal space to do whatever like a computer, what’s being strained, what’s message is that being HIV positive is no longer a it is that you need to do. We work on getting rid of doing good, what’s a problem and where. All we death sentence. How many people have been ex things that sabotage you, out of self-anger, self do with the muscle testing is get in touch with what posed to HIV and their bodies have fought it off blame, self-hatred.” the problems are and how to effectively deal with and eliminated it immediately— we don’t have the (Several other doctors who treat clients with them.” data, but you’d have a hard time convincing me HIV and AIDS agree that internalized homophobia that it doesn’t happen. It’s just like any virus— you often interferes in their treatment. It has also been get a cold, it runs its course, and it’s gone. The test he Chinese originally mapped the flow of reported as a widespread factor in the phenomenon electricity through the nerves. These path that’s positive is an HIV-antibody test. It’s not the of unsafe sex currently practiced by many young actual virus. All it means is that your body has been ways of energy within the body are called exposed to HIV and it has made the HIV antibody gay men.) meridians. Each meridian corresponds to a differ Bans encourages his clients to process the emo to protect itself. Unfortunately, even though the ent organ. Each organ is thought to hold specific antibody is there in the body to destroy it, this virus tions and experiences he helps them to recall emotions—the kidneys hold fear, anger is often mutates so rapidly that in a lot of people who through various means—seeing a therapist, writ held in the liver, self-esteem, in the spleen. The ing a jo u rn al, eventually come down with AIDS, their bodies organ points are used riding a bike. He aren’t able to eliminate it. But theoretically you as a flow chart to dis could have the virus, your body could fight it off, does not include cover which emo counseling in his and for the rest of your life you’ll have that HIV tions are being held. work. He helps antibody because it’s just a means of protection if These emotions you were ever to be re-exposed to the virus. You’d release the emo have been stored tion by directing already have the antibody in place to fight it. So for since early child me, in therapy, we didn’t necessarily focus only on the client to cre hood. They are part ate a mental pic HIV, we focused on my body’s health and ability of belief systems that ture of the emo to maintain and regain health. You release the full were established by tion or experience and to hold that image while he potential of your body’s healing powers by getting the young child lacking power, experience and stimulates the sides of the spine with an instrument rid of the emotional blocks and nutritional and perspective. These beliefs, and the body reflexes that looks and sounds like a stapler. The nerve chemical blocks. You create room for the body to that correspond to them, obstruct the natural flow receptors on the surface of the vertebrae corre have perfect health again.” of information and movement. spond to the various organs in the body. The theory “Most of how we perceive life goes back to the Bans reflected, “The issue of healing is diverse. is that sensory input at those levels will dislodge early stuff we learned,” said Bans. “Problems in Some clients get well. Some of them may be the emotional complex that was brought up to the relationships go back to childhood. We react to our wanting emotional healing before they pass. I surface and held in the client’s mind. world based on the old programming instead of don’t know, and I’m not the one to say. I have consciously living life now. We work on getting clients come in working on HIV who are still pparently, it works. Bans’ clients attest to old belief systems up and out, so you are free to live walking around doing great, no problems, and this. Wayne has been seeing Bans regularly. your life fully here and now.” some who came to me late and their bodies are He shared his experience: “Mark has been a One concept that Bans frequently encounters is getting weaker, but they’re still hanging on. They’re very important component of my process of living self-hatred among gay men and lesbians. He treats finding a peacefulness about their life, a settling of with AIDS. He does some chiropractic work on many gay men who are HIV positive or who have things, a coming to terms with things. The quality me. The basic thing I go to Mark for is for my body AIDS. He finds that internalized homophobia is of life and of the spirit is so much more at ease, so to talk with him about issues that are unresolved often an unacknowledged issue involved in deal how do you define health and healing— it depends and that I need to work with my regular therapist ing with HIV. Homophobia is internalized at such on which aspect you’re looking at. But I’m not the on. When you go to a regular therapist you can hide an early age that the grown-up person does not one in charge of defining what that is. I’m here to lots of pain. With Mark you’re letting your body do whatever I can to help.” A T “A person’s primary place of healing comes from within , and\ in my own belief system , it is interconnected to a higher power. That's what I tap into. ” A