I would like to report that when I refer to “prevention” I mean prevention against illness. But I don’t mean that at all. I mean prevention against prevention.

Unfortunately, in its effort to separate itself from Holistic Medicine, Mainstream Medicine – or more simply, government supported by Pharma – has declared prevention eventually illegal.

Eventually illegal. It’s an absurd thought, but it happens a lot in our society.

For example, here in California – where I often reside – it was illegal to talk on a handheld cell phone while driving, but not to text on one. Of course, everyone knew that eventually texting and driving would not be legal. But for a few months anyway, it was not likely to kill anybody because it was only eventually illegal.

Most likely this abject silliness in societal belief systems was an offshoot of some authoritative strategic planning: People riot when asked to change too quickly.

Fortunately, as every good scientist knows, incremental change is adaptive and can therefore make any kind of horrific event increasingly tolerable. This is because the adjusted comparatives shift the proverbial bar of acceptability. In other words… we get used to it.

So, whenever the powers that be want to enforce major changes, they know enough to “get us used to” one legislation before introducing another.

Applying this to the texting analogy, since it wasn’t illegal, we could pretend to have faith in the law and believe that texting wasn’t likely to actually kill anybody. But alas! Eventually illegal, eventually, came about. And then, remarkable, as our toys were taken away and we returned our eyes to the road it was hard to believe that anyone had dared to text while driving in the first place.

I know there are probably loads of people still texting and even more who knew it was dangerous before it was illegal. But my eventual point has more to do with the politics of prevention, than safety and prevention themselves.

You see, I am in the unique position of working with autism using the therapy (or stress reduction training modality) of neurofeedback world-wide.

Those of us working with this very exciting brain teaching tool are board certified under either the natural therapy spiritual healer model or the mainstream medical model.

As for me, I am board certified in both. This should mean that I’m double knowledgeable in the art and science of my chosen profession. In fact, it doesn’t mean that at all. What it means is that I’m better prepared than the next gal to not be sued. Either that or because of the clash in concepts of the legal and professional ethics within the two boards, I’m more likely to be sued. I’m not sure which. Unfortunately, there is no real way to discern the correct answer to that question.

When I first began working within the mental health field I was naïve enough to believe that the rules and laws pertaining to patients and clients were based upon what was right and/or wrong for said patients and clients.

However, it occurred to me that if such a thing were true, both Holistic Medicine and Mainstream Medicine would have the same rules to follow.

Instead, the rules for ethical operation are opposite in each. To correctly follow one is to break the rules of the other.

One says I MUST ask intake questions, while the other says I am NOT allowed to.

A little incongruence is one thing, but when government hides a global conspiracy to make Holistic Health Care eventually illegal and it’s hidden right under our noses in the form of public records, well, that’s a whole other kettle of political pollution.

So, in case the hiding spot was effective and you aren’t in the know, here it is: There is something called the Codex Alimentarius Treaty (http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp) and it hides under the premise of good work and a verbose ambiguity in its presentation of the facts. At least on this website, anyway.

The problem with such a written presentation is that it’s too boring to maintain one’s attention long enough to not fall asleep while reading.

Thus, instead of the uninitiated eventually coming to understand what the Codex intends on making eventually come to pass, only those who are already educated on the subject will take the time to comprehend the Treaty’s objective.

This leaves the entire subject either obscure or open to interpretation of others, whom we then accept as experts simply because they seem to have read the damn thing. Thus, we endorse their opinion on the matter in order to have one and seem informed.

According to one of the boards that certified me (effectively becoming my expert on the subject), various governments gathered together and collectively agreed upon a plan of action whose intention is to eventually close down the alternative health care field. I have no idea if this interpretation (http://www.ntew.net/codex/treaty.html) is true or not, as the Codex documentation is too dry to discern. But it certainly is unnerving.

Though I can’t be sure of the truth, I do know that global governments wanting to prevent prevention in order to protect prescripting so that they can enrich the pharmaceutical industry, thereby eventually lining the pockets of their political campaigns is plausible, probable, and even extremely likely.

Fact is, the alternative healthcare field is harder to control than mainstream medicine with its tightly fisted licensing boards. And, historically, groups who are harder to control are seen as enemies by any government body trying to control them.

Thus, I suppose it is logical that my expert’s view of the situation is correct. Global governments will most likely want to make alternative and unlicensed healthcare eventually illegal: As soon as we get used to the idea!

Originally, the timing for “illegal” was set at 2005. However, the date has since been pushed back. Perhaps all that ambiguity is to blame. Ambiguity often leads to failure.

Normally, I’m very non-political and don’t write or talk about things like this. I focus on what I can do rather than what I can’t, and go about the business of helping rather than complaining.

But this issue is closer to home than I might like it to be. A few years ago I had a staph infection which led to lung surgery. It was Mainstream Medicine that saved my life.

However, staph infections are contagious and when my whole family began suffering with abscess after abscess, Mainstream Medicine could offer nothing outside of lancing (surgical) and thousands of dollars of gut wrenching antibiotics.

We spent the money. We took all the time and the advised precautions, but still we continued to grapple with infection upon infection over a two year period. Finally, I researched the problem on the internet only to find that mega doses of garlic and a five-dollar contraption (make from a nine volt battery, alligator clips and a piece of copper pipe) could cure us, every one of us, in five days—for good. I tried it. And it WORKED!

My family and I have had many such occasions to discover that health lies in the hands of alternative approaches to medicine. Nowadays, just as in my business, I am certified in both arenas of medicine.

So, in my home do I embrace the two?

I use Holistic Medicine for health maintenance, Mainstream for emergencies, and the internet for diagnosis and alternative solutions.

I, and you, are able to access these solutions due to the laws about freedom of shared information given to us in the past. With these laws intact, the internet, magazines, newspapers, television and books have been birthed.

Though I don’t normally “go political,” I felt remiss to not bring the problem to light somewhere. This is a new era with too much for any one person to know. I’ve come to believe that healing myself is my responsibility. My provider is simply one of the tools I use to do that with. But if some of those tools are removed, I may not be able to do my job.

So prevention has politics. And those politics are preventing us from preventing our own ill health or possibly demise. That is something we should prevent from happening.

I am engaged in the cause of preventing global misinformation from leading to an increase in maladaptive behaviors within the autistic community. I am busy. Therefore, I am going to delegate this objective to you.

Eventually illegal doesn’t always prevent eventual problems, illness and death. Sometimes it causes them.

When my children were young (eight kids aged 19-9) and my grandson was a newborn I took the entire family (plus a sound man) on a magical mystery tour of the penal system in North America. At that time four of my six adopted children were autistic.

Now you may think that traveling through Canada and the United States entertaining in prisons, jails and half way houses is a peculiar choice for a mom to make but then I am a bit peculiar, so I guess that makes it, in a peculiar sort of way. At the time I needed to create a more bonded family unit (Two of the adopted six were new arrivals — teenagers with biological families tugging at their sense of loyalty.) while still making a living in order to feed and cloth the brood that barely knew each other. I also needed to put some adventurous new thing in every single day in order to stimulate interest in external reality and encourage mental flexibility in my autistic sons (This was my own idea and counter to everything I was being taught but seemed peculiarlarly logical to me. And since three of the four autistic kids eventually came off the spectrum maybe peculiar logic is the answer to autism.).

I was looking around for ideas when I noticed that my teenagers had become enamored of the idea that they might be “bad girls’ destined to write books while serving time in solitary confinement. (It was a period when movies were romanticizing prison, my children were not outside the influence of Hollywood.). Knowing that a captive audience was a good thing for me I decided to hone my family’s performance skills by creating a show and then donating our time while traveling from correctional facility to correctional facility. I made the bookings. Since it was costing them nothing they were happy to have us.

I wrote, directed, produced and starred in the play whose inflated intention it was to save prisoners lives by teaching them that you can always make something good out of something bad. I also wrote, produced and sang on a CD in order to have product to sell. We would need gas (hence we often convinced truckers at truck stops that they couldn’t live without my music) and money for hotel fees and groceries. I would use my credit card for the hotels and packed up the CD’s for everything else. Away we went.

This story deserves to be a book, perhaps it will be someday but for now I want to share some highlights:

We were robbed of our sound equipment in New York.

We were late to Sing Sing and almost caused a riot.

We were taped for National TV in Stony Mountain.

We broke down in Houston missed our show in Dallas.

No Dallas meant no CD sales so our sound man left.

We were saved by truckers in New Mexico.

We were stars in Phoenix.

We were robbed once more, this time in Vegas.

We did our last American shows without shoes.

We were redressed in Calgary.

On the final leg home — after four months of travel – all the children were sleeping in the back of the van. I was driving down the highway in Northern Ontario when the sky lit up with a beautiful display of Aurora Borealis. Everything danced in muted greens, golds, pinks and yellows.

I pulled over on the side of the road and crawled onto the roof of my vehicle to watch. It was as if the universe were setting off spiritual fireworks in celebration of our return. I was breathless with awe and happy to be appreciated. One by one the kids woke up and joined me. Our own personal sky dance went on for hours. We watched until well after sunrise.

As we did this we were mostly silent and worn out with wonder. Then, as the sun began to glow and drown out the Northern Lights, conversation poured from us in unison. Even the autistic kids shared, in their own peculiar fashion. We were verbally tumbling over each other transported by the joy of all that we had survived and become privy to, each of us was excited to add our own personal vision to the pot of personal epiphanies.

It was then that I finally heard it: a bonded family composed of rag tags and misfits, happy to be alive.

Have you ever been about to throw up, or about to wet yourself because you were stuck in a traffic jam, or needed to rip your clothes off and jump in a cold shower because you were having a heat flush? When that was happening did you find yourself unconcerned about the needs of those around you? And if so did that mean you were lacking in empathy? Why of course!

You were lacking in empathy. In that moment, your focus was full. Of course once you emptied your bladder or your upper intestine or got out of the shower you became open to others again and your ability to empathize returned. But what if your focus was always full?

What if your every waking moment was spent handling one sensory assault after another or vestibular dysfunction or social challenge? What if every time you looked at someone you were asked to do something that indicated you cared about them? How would you deal with that if your focus was already full trying to keep the edges of furniture from wiggling when you walked? Would you avoid making eye contact? If that were the case you just might be labeled autistic.

According to science though the brain is a great multi-tasker it can only consciously focus on one thing at a time. Thus if you are having difficulty walking, or talking, or seeing with your eyes… if you are feeling ill, or tired, or crawling with bugs … if you are reading, or writing, or computing math … you are likely to be lacking in empathy. Empathy comes – only – when we focus on the person for whom we are to feel it. That is the power of movies. Gaining our focus, enhancing it through darkness, music, close-ups and silencing our cell phones. Even my adopted autistic kids could empathize at the movies, if they didn’t have to pee, or eat, or wear head phones to filter the

loud noises. Then as they healed (I use neurofeedback and specialize in helping autistic kids heal) they became less riddled with social confusion and sensory distress. And as they became less riddled with social confusion and sensory distress they empathized with anyone, who could hold their focus.

Once focusing on others had emerged well… After some practice with the uncomfortable emotions empathy can endow upon the empathizer, my children (and all the children I work with) became kind, helpful, just bought my mom tires for her car kinda kids. They not only began to express their concern and embrace empathy, they did it daily.

So back to the question ‘Do autistic people feel empathy?’ No probably not, when they are busy, which is most of the time. And neither do you.

But of course we can feel it. And so can they.

Global autism expert, Lynette Louise, raised eight children –six adopted, four of whom were on the spectrum of autism– she was able to guide all but one out of autism and into independence. Lynette travels internationally, performing and speaking on the subject of autism and the efficacy of neurofeedback (biofeedback for the brain). She is the author of the inspirational and honest new book MIRACLES ARE MADE: A Real Life Guide to Autism and host of the show A NEW SPIN ON AUTISM: ANSWERS!

1 – Every child likes to shop – their way. If shopping has proved stressful you likely had an agenda. So when you take your kids shopping, take them shopping – not you. Do this for all your children–not just the autistic child. Admire their choices as you let them choose the gifts they want to buy. So what if they buy their sister a so jar of mustard? Maybe they think that is a good gift. Instead of simply redirecting them, try to understand why.

2- In other words give control – your children spend their days being ordered and shaped so let go on the holidays. Let them just be autistic (or fourteen) for a change.

3- When you plan outings give them a say (non-verbal kids can point or make noises to help guide you … most kids do better when they have a voice … even a non-verbal one) how long and where and who will they see…

4- Make the car your friend. It’s familiar and smells like family so if they need a space to pull themselves together in, use the car. It goes everywhere!

5- Eat in unison. This means that if they have a special diet either everyone picks their favorite foods and your ASD child feels happy with that or everyone eats the special diet. Way too often the difference in the diets drives the kids to tantrum.

6 – Give gifts that THEY want NOT toys the educational department approves of. For example, if your child loves baby pillows give him a refrigerator box full of them. If he wants that every year so be it. Those other toys come from our wishes not theirs. So those other toys are not gifts, they are lessons.

7 – Don’t invite problem people. Leave that for everyday life – that way holidays are a holiday – for all of you.

8 – When you do go to events, your children may have discomfort so let them bring a favorite sensory comfort toy (or if it’s a sibling bring a best friend).

9- Make a memory that they want, not that seems appropriate. Take pictures and paste them in a book that day… that way they have something to hold on to till the next time the rules evaporate J

10 – Put decorations like trees etc up the night before so you can dedicate the day to the holiday. Decorate together and find beauty in the child version of decorative … keep things low and edible (like popcorn strings for the trees and cookie ornaments) and have the siblings all pitch in to create and devour.

11 – Wrap gifts in fun stuff like comics and bubble wrap and toilet paper and streamers and pillow cases and bags that you decorate and then wear on your heads …

12 – Avoid blinking lights that mesmerize and singing toys that surprise unless the child has indicated happiness for such things.

13 – Laugh, play, make a mess and do holidays the autistic way… after all, Xmas is for kids.

Remember, you can’t teach a child to relax and enjoy family unless you do. Happy Holidays!