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Excitement over bacteria and
later viruses, over inoculations and antibiotics, tended to shift
the focus of medicine from constitutional type and predisposition to
disease to treatment. While this was a great loss for psychology and
psychiatry, it was an even greater loss when one considers the
impact of such theories on immunity.
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Brief Bio

My earliest memory of astrology goes back to the age of
three when I accidentally let go of my helium balloon and watched it
soar. I wanted it back; my father took and hose and turned on the water
and brought the balloon back down. Some nights later, there was a simply
enormous full moon so I asked my father to get it. He said it was too
high; I said, "Daddy get the water." Matter of factly, he said the water
wouldn't reach. I said, "Daddy get a yadder." I pronounce "l" until I
was twelve so, but the clues to my past life identity were lost on my
parents. Valiantly, I asked my father to get a "yong yadder."
Events can linger in one's memories forever,
but this one has been particularly worthy of reminiscing because it
turned out to be prophetic. My father went on the design the Surveyor
Moon soft landing device—and I became the person my horoscope suggested
I would become: an odd combination the intensely focused Mercury/Mars
conjunction in Virgo on the 7th house cusp opposite my Pisces
rising.
As early as I can remember, I read
the astrological column in the newspaper and by the time I was six or
seven, I saw invisible waves in the ethers and every person I met was
riding one of those waves into incarnation. The point on the wave
corresponded with a date and I was able to guess people's
birthdays.
Not knowing that astrology could
become a profession, I went on to major in Asian Studies and development
economics, to complete an entire incarnation or two by age 30, and to
start a new life as an astrologer. On the way back to Hawaii from years
in Asia, I stopped to see my father. One day he said, "I suspect you
will be leaving soon." I asked how he came up with that idea. He said,
"Because you have used up all the scratch paper in the house." He asked
what I had found so interesting. I explained it was his ephemeris, not
really an easy book to copy! I told him I had no idea that everything I
had been figuring out from what people told me could be so easily found
between the covers of a book. He was more interested in whether I found
the math daunting. I explained that I had only kept one thing from my
job on Wall Street and that was a very handsome slide
rule

It was my turn to ask questions. As it turned
out, he had become very interested in astrology; I had had no idea how
interested until he explained that after my mother divorced him, he
looked for insights in Jungian analysis and astrology. He was
particularly fond of the quote attributed to Isaac Newton in addressing
a skeptical Edmund Halley, said: "I, sir, have studied it; you have
not." My father was consulted by other scientists at Hughes Airport, Jet
Propulsion Laboratories, and other such erudite places where presumably
the Carl Sagans would outnumber the astrologers mightily.
Those discussions took place in 1972. My
father, a man whose entire life was involved with the cutting edges of
science: airplanes, then rockets, then satellites, and at the end the
construction of an artificial sun, died of a pacemaker failure, a little
technological problem that he himself would have found if it had been in
a missile. I only mention this because a famous Vedic astrologer, Mr. K.
N. Rao clearly saw his death in my horoscope and the astrological feat
that most impressed my father was Grant Lewi's prediction of his own
imminent death, knowledge he used to buy life insurance just before his
death at the age of 49. Lewi died of a cerebral hemorrhage, something
that was only anticipated by himself, not his
doctors.

I became a medical astrologer. The tale of how
and why this came about is on the audio cassette called My Personal Quest; it
is far too long to recount here except to say that I was not motivated
by the desire to predict illness or death but rather to explain why some
people develop certain illnesses and others develop other illnesses. I
have always been curious and capable of very prolonged concentration and
probing; but what I found in 1970 was that there were precious few books
on medical astrology and none of them were particularly
adequate.
What I am saying here is that interest in
constitutional type and predisposition to illness began thirty years
ago; it has been the main thrust of my work. There were phases to this
work that can best be summarized by a cycle in the 70s that was focused
mainly on stress—as it is shown
in the horoscope—and the revelations of a fairly extensive period of
clairvoyance that contributed to my work on astroendocrinology.
In
December of 1979, I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I lived for
twenty-one years. While it might be a little simplistic, the 80s were
colored by a fascination with two subjects: past lives and the
continuity of memory through what are normally perceived as drastic
interruptions, birth and death. This work became part of my book on Lunar Consciousness.
The other interest was Ayurveda. I began studying with Dr. Shrikrishna
Kashyap in 1980. Shyam had been a yogi in the Himalayas before marrying
and moving to the West. He is an extremely gifted healer, but what he
imparted to me was enough of an understanding of the elements to develop
an astrological interface to the ancient wisdom of India. Two great
works emerged from these studies: the second volume of a
textbook series and Kitchen Doctor, an audio cassette series
and a web site of the same name.
For all
intents and purposes, the 90s could be called my cancer decade. To the
best of my knowledge, I have not myself had cancer, but I spent the 90s
researching an alternative approach to treatment of cancer, developing a
major web site for
patients and another for practitioners, and working on some deep metaphysical
issues that became a lecture, Fate: Destiny or
Karma?
In
presenting this history, I realize I have offered a summary by decades
whereas my usual cycle is a seven-year one. In any event, I have
followed a precedent when naming this site. Just as there was a cancersalves.com before there was a cancersalves.net, there has been an astroheal.com for
some years already. It's a very large web site with one section open to
the public and another, Cybernine, for students of The Astrology of
Healing. In this case, however, I am doing the reverse in that .net is
for the public, but it is the more serious site and the one that will
present in depth material as opposed to interesting articles and a
bulletin board.
While this bio is long for a web page, it omits a lot, a book
on Immunity, and
several more web sites, but it's enough for visitors to realize that
material such as you will find on this site doesn't just come out a book
that someone spends the weekend cribbing. It's the result of many years
and probably even more lifetimes of dedication to a facet of health that
has been hugely neglected since the advent of the germ theory of
disease. While no one denies the existence of microorganisms, the
assumptions made about disease were vastly altered when a little
creature was deemed responsible for causing approximately similar
symptoms in all infected by that species of pathogen. Excitement over
bacteria and later viruses, over inoculations and antibiotics, tended to
shift the focus of medicine from constitutional type and predisposition
to disease to treatment. While this was a great loss for psychology and
psychiatry, it was an even greater loss when one considers the impact of
such theories on immunity. Failure to understand susceptibility was
accompanied by almost total neglect of the immune responses, to the
extent that because there is really no such thing as an immune system,
at least not in the sense that there is a skeletal system or a
reproductive system, means that even the term chosen to represent a host
of varied immune responses is sort of ill-fitting.
It has not been my goal to repair the damage
done to medicine by twentieth century tunnel vision. Rather, I have
personally focused on a few points that are noteworthy.
First, I have purged the astrological
vocabulary of archaic terminology by representing the elements
intelligently. For instance, I call them elements rather than humors
and I do not refer to red and white and yellow and black blood but
rather physiological functions and psychological biases.
Second, I have adapted some of the five
element theories of India and China to the four elements of astrology;
however, in doing so, I am not suggesting that there is no fifth
element, simply that it is not manifest in the same manner as the four
denser elements.
Third, I have developed incredibly
sophisticated ways for determining constitutional type and elemental
balance using either the horoscope or medical history.
Fourth, I have created strategies for
eliminating the effects of elemental imbalance that involve all parts
of life: food, herbal medicine, life style, and even shamanic
integration of the psyche.
So, why not write a book? The answer is
simple. My experience with the Internet is that it works as an effective
means of communication. It also appeals to the desire people have for
information in a nutshell. There are perils to reducing a megabyte of
experience to a 5k web page, but people who are interested can come back
as often as they like. Therefore, I have priced admission to this site
at the cost of a book and made membership lifetime, like owning a book.
Enjoy your visit.
Ingrid
Naiman
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