Lorie Eve Dechar - The Alchemy of Inner Work

The Alchemy of Inner Work shows the reader, through the author's transparency and lucid presentation, how notions of soul and subtle body are necessary for the only healing that mattersa return to wholeness. The book vibrates with years of experience and many lifetimes of engaging the alchemical mystery of the creation of a Self that has a body. I highly recommend it to both the general reader and therapist alike.

Nathan Schwartz-Salant, PhD, author of The Mystery of Human Relationship

True health is more than the elimination of symptoms; it is a reconnection of our bodies with our souls and spirits. This understanding is urgently needed in our world. The Alchemy of Inner Work is a magnificent book, a gift for all who seek to transform suffering and disease into well-being and wholeness, for themselves and for others. It is the right book at the right time.

Michael J. Gelb, author of How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci and The Art of Connection

More pertinent today than ever, Lorie Dechar's Alchemy of Inner Work skillfully weaves the timeless wisdom of the Tao into a life-changing journey, touched with the intimacy of clinical experience. Combining myth, medicine, and magic, the book both comforted and challenged me, as it worked its way into my cells to transform me as only true alchemy can. What a masterpiece!

Randine Lewis, author of The Infertility Cure and The Way of the Fertile Soul

The Alchemy of Inner Work is a book for anyone who wants to awaken the inner healer to transform individual suffering. The book provides meditations and user-friendly tools to support readers in achieving a needed shift in consciousnessthe key to alchemythat can heal lives and help save our planet.

Dr. Lorne Brown BSc, CPA, Dr.TCM, FABORM, CHt, author of The Acubalance Fertility Diet

It is a pleasure for me to endorse The Alchemy of Inner Work. My sincere hope is that everyone will read this treasure trove of essential inner knowledge. This book is a magnificent accomplishment.

Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and The Power of Prayer

LORIE EVE DECHARwithBENJAMIN FOX

This edition first published in 2020 by Weiser Books, an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
With offices at:
65 Parker Street, Suite 7
Newburyport, MA 01950
www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2020 by Lorie Eve Dechar with Benjamin Fox

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57863-686-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover design by Kathryn Sky-Peck
Interior by Debby Dutton
Typeset in Weiss and Proxima Nova

Printed in the United States of America
IBI

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter

To the unseen world that speaks to us
through a mystery.

And to Diana Chava and her generation,
who we do the healing for.

In order to communicate the spirit of Alchemical Healing, I share stories about my own life as well as case studies drawn from my thirty-plus years of clinical practice. Except for accounts of my life or my life with Benjamin, the stories I present are healing fictions, composite tapestries, woven from the threads of a variety of patients' experiences. My goal has been to offer a Body Felt Sense experience of the medicine while honoring the sanctity and privacy of the very personal work that happens in the treatment room. It is my hope that the people you encounter in these pages will be familiar to you as aspects of your own self, or friends you know or might have known, while remaining figments of the magical, mythical world of the imagination.

Alchemical Healing is not meant to be a replacement for diagnosis and treatment by a Western medical doctor or treatment by a licensed professional acupuncturist with years of advanced training, but it can support you in engaging with your own health care more effectively.

Part One
Modern-Day Alchemy

Part Two
Entering the Laboratory

Part Three
Discovering Gold

There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists.

Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

A young patient came to my office after having been hospitalized for an initial diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. At eight years old, he was doing his best to make sense of the experience, but he was having a hard time emotionally and his parents were worried.

He just isn't himself, his mother told me when she called to arrange the appointment. He isn't sleeping and he's lost interest in playing with friends. We think he's having trouble getting over what happened. We've heard you work with this kind of thing and we're hoping you can help.

Although insulin was now keeping my young patient's body functioning, another part of him still needed healing. This level of healing required more than acupuncture, more than herbs or medication. My patient needed a deep part of himself to be seen, heard, and related to. He wanted help transforming an overwhelmingly difficult experience into something meaningful, an event that he could potentially learn and grow from.

There were many hard feelings that he would clear through our conversations, but mostly he wanted me to know about the bad stuff had happened to him and how he thought things could have been handled better.

He told me about the sharp lancets they used about a million times to draw his blood, the things with prongs that went into his body, the special patient clothes he had to wear, and the pouches of fluid that hung over his bed. But the very worst part of the whole thing, he told me, the very worst thing of alland here he gave a hard, world-weary smilewas the Ducky Band.

The Ducky Band was a thing they put on your wrist, like the thing they put on merchandise in a store so you can't walk out with it. The band goes on with your name and what's wrong with you and it doesn't come off so you can't walk out even if you want to.

I know they are trying to help you, he said, but it feels terrible and they should know that. They put this band on your wrist and it's uncomfortable and it makes you know that you are sick. And then they stick this little yellow duck on it, because you are a kid, so they think this supposedly cute duck is going to make you happy, but it doesn't. A yellow duck doesn't make it all better.

One experience like that, he said, well, it takes about twenty of what I do with you to make it go away. Twenty, maybe even fifty, I don't know. But I think they need to understand because they forget how it feels inside.