In many ways, looking back at 2017, it looks like I did or "achieved" next to nothing (and I'm not the only person to be saying this) and yet...sometimes, when we take a breather, its the most important thing we can be doing. Some thoughts on some of the powerful things that I feel I got out of a the long slow breath of 2017; perhaps you too.
How do you reconcile a desire to "tread softly on the earth" and all your particular health requirements and preferences with the unpredictability and other variables of travel when you go on holiday? And what is a holiday or vacation meant to do for you? La Vimea is a unique "biotique" hotel in the South Tyrol that helped me to find out what was possible to achieve now and (hopefully) even more easily in the future...
It was one of the first things I asked myself about vata dosha when I first read about it; since it is all about lightness, wind and air, does it make us vata types more susceptible to electro-sensitivity than people with other dosha balances? Several weeks into asking myself that, I am convinced that, yes, it does...
I've been pondering humanity's troubled relationship with alcohol more deeply than ever, this last 18 months, since I stopped consuming it myself. Partly because the clarity of hindsight has allowed me to newly appreciate, and own, how alcohol was the bane of my life for just so many years; really, its consumption underlay some of the very worst experiences (and behaviours) of my life. In fact all of my biggest traumas except those relating to loss of a loved one had their foundations on a rock bed of alcohol-induced behaviours including some monumentally poor decisions and mindsets that had very far-reaching effects. The most pervasive of these was as a result of how alcohol imparted a subtle yet deadly sense of self-loathing that became deeper, more innocuous, year-on-year; only to be remembered like a faintly ringing Pavlov's bell each time I took another drink and thus snowballed into even more self-denigration with each occasion. I know these things for sure - the path to recovery requires that you take back your personal power, your responsiblity for your own health and that you unconditionally love (and respect) yourself; none of which are consistent with what alcohol, voluntarily, does to the body each time we consume it....
Travelling away from home can be an extra-challenge for those of us with health challenges and sensitivities of any kind because it takes us out of our routine. It's not so much the distance but the upheaval that can be difficult to cope with (on top of the extra tiredness that comes with travel) when you probably have well-established survival tactics in place at home that enable you to cope pretty well with your health most of the time. Booking a holiday can feel a bit like planning to blow all that carefully created homeostasis to pieces in the name of having fun and there have been times when I wonder why I do it; is it even worth it (the answer, by the way, is yes). Changes in sleep arrangements and diet can throw health into disarray when maintaining that balance has become a finely tuned thing.
Fibromyalgia is a shorthand code for “not designed for this world”, a label for being a misfit at a very deep biological level; but not because we are faulty but because the world isn’t ready for us yet or, you could say, we arrived early. It's a bucket title for those who are way too … Continue reading Out of this world
I want to recommend this short video to ALL my female readers, which is not the angle-in on the topic of breast health that you probably expect or are used to hearing but its very-much MY way and I can relate to all the experiences Dr Northrup talks about in this (below). Its time - … Continue reading Remembering how to receive
By virtue of its key role - preparing for an egg - oestrogen has come to stand for and embody a protective urge. It dominates the process by which we prepare for and protect that egg before its release into the world; it safeguards the hoped-for pregnancy yet only travels as far as the threshold of that potential being realised, stepping no further forward with it, like a mother stood waving at the door. It knows only "hold" and "protect" as its inner mantra - and this is oestrogen in a nutshell, without frills and, yes, generalised down to its very essence as we all know that not every egg leads to the realisation of a new beginning, nor do we want it do. Yet there is a very real truism in this stereotype of oestrogen as the egg-holder, the homemaker, coddling her creation tightly to her bosom because, when a women is in her oestrogen phase, this is what a woman tends to do and there is very real evidence that she becomes single-minded, withdrawn and less independent during that phase. To quote Leslie Kenton (Passage to Power: Natural Menopause revolution) "She is more willing to adjust herself to the needs of others. When oestrogens are running, women like to attract a mate not so much to draw him into her body as to comfort, admire and care for her. Her ovaries seem to be smiling - 'whatever you want, I'm happy to give' they seem to say". She continues: "A few women who by nature are high oestrogen producers feel quite dependent on others for approval, and for the definition of their being". Any wonder that so many doctors, even some husbands, have been so keen on advocating oestrogen hormone replacement in order to maintain this personality type in favour of its alternative, the independent, outward-thinking woman...
Creating a ritual of self-care really works; it grounds that loving intention into a series of favourite acts that really work for you and which can be recalled, almost without having to think about them, when you most need them. When you wake feeling awful, when your body feels less-than, you might hardly know where to start with the desire to make that feeling better except for the ritual you have practiced and engraved into your life at times when you feel much better, feel most celebratory and playful. By reenacting these sacred ceremonies dedicated to YOU - and doing so often - you anchor them into the "ordinary" fabric of your experience and can quickly draw on them, adapt and make use of them when they are most powerful of all; which is at times when you feel you have lost that loving thread, lost your sense of appreciation for all that you are, have fallen off your physical perch. At the altar of yourself, you get to gently reenact a series of self-loving acts that brings you back online with yourself and remind you - like a softly spoken "I love you" in your ear - that you are cherished and deeply cared for, that what you are feeling matters, that there is no thing beyond this intimate pause in space-time claimed for yourself that is more worthy of your attention than you at this or any other moment; because, in your life, it all starts and ends there, in the infinite capsule of your consciousness watching the experiences of life unfold. Once experienced - and repeated over and over in the ritualised form - this feeling can never be lost and holds the power to transform any experience that could ever present itself to you, be that external or even pain in your body. What a gift to yourself on the path to self-empowerment and joy.
Living whole 