One of my Feng Shui students has a music student who is 11 years old and living with cystic hygroma. The student asked what Professor might say about this condition, and in what ways she might be able to help this young girl. First, I looked up the condition and found the following:

Environmental causes for cystic hygroma include maternal viral infections and maternal substance abuse. There are also genetic syndromes that involve congenital cystic hygroma. These include Turner syndrome and Noonan syndrome. Some parents can be “silent” carriers. A cystic hygroma can also occur from an unknown cause. The sacs, as they fill with fluid, cause facial deformity and airway obstruction. The most common cause of death is suffocation due to a closed airway. As of today, there is no cure. Spontaneous resolution is uncommon. Treatment involves surgery to reduce the severe swelling. The surgery is risky and can damage cranial nerves, and hemorrhage is of grave
concern.

Cystic hygromas are fluid-filled sacs that result from a blockage in the lymphatic system. The lymphatic system is a network of vessels that maintains fluids in the blood, as well as transports fats and immune system cells. The lesions and sacs occur at sites where the lymphatic system connects to the venous system, most commonly at the back of the neck. Ninety percent of cases are symptomatic by the age of two years. Many babies with this condition die in the womb.

To read the full article, download a PDF copy of Cystic Hygroma.

Did you know that Professor earned a degree in Urban Planning? Once I learned this fact, I began to ask a lot of questions about neighborhoods, communities, towns, cities, and nations. I was blessed to receive information about enhancing the morality of a community, fortifying the entrance, center and corners, and restoring life to a community in decline. I continue to follow the science of urban planning, and recently came across an article titled Mental Maps and the Neuroscience of Neighborhood Blight published in Pacific Standard. I hear Professor’s whispers once again.

It seems that we have “place cells” in our brain’s that are activated when we enter an environment. It is our memories that provide information to these cells. If you hear “Watts,” you remember the riots of 1965 that left 34 dead and more than 1,000 injured in the city of Los Angeles. The dramatic news coverage of raging fires, narrated with words like “looters,” and “hoodlums,” left an unforgettable mark. We, to this day, think of Watts as the most dangerous place in LA. Yet, it is no longer the case.

To revive a community that has been repeatedly read as a landscape of blight, fear, and even violence—to repair the damage done by our memories of place—we have to “convince people to re-experience” the place, to “update” their memories and beliefs. In a sense, according to researchers, we can “hack” our mental maps to change a neighborhood’s trajectory.

In this article it was suggested that one way to do so is to focus on telling the history of each neighborhood introducing tourists and outsiders to a neighborhood in decline, drawing them back and instilling new life. They call it “changing labels.”

Here are Professor words of wisdom from many years ago:

To revive a downtown that has been decimated by flight to the suburbs, create cultural events downtown that restore the history, excite the imagination, and delight the creative spirit. Sing. Dance. Provide places for sport, relaxation, and contemplation. Remember how this happened. Introduce something new. “Redefine the neighborhood.”

He was asking us to change our mental maps—our neurology.

“Only when these origin tales are understood can these restricted zones in our mental maps start to be filled in. And only then can change really begin.”

Science is catching up, and our cities need our personal touch.

Download a PDF copy of Neighborhood Memories.