Today, I simply want to share this video discussion between Deva Premal, Miten and Dr Kennet R Pelletier, author of the forthcoming book "Change Your Genes, Change Your Life" on the topic of the healing power of mantra. This subject is very dear to my heart since I have found what they are discussing here … Continue reading Healing mantra
Sometimes acute episodes in the body can play out as so much more than just a nice metaphor of something that feels stagnant or wounded in your life. Some powerful experiences waiting to liberate and transform your life are what await just the other side of listening to what the body has to tell you; which can be one of the most transformative experiences you ever get to encounter, taking the power and the very interpretation of what it means to heal to a whole other level.
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.
It's a case of, like the old adage says, dancing like no one is watching and allowing the sacred to emerge. You will find it's that elusive feminine aspect and she will swell at being allowed the free rein to express as she chooses...no particular movements or correct postures, no positions with names, no routines to follow...just exactly as she likes to express. Allow her to have her say and she will bring all the most disparate aspects of you together into a new kind of coherence, imparting the kind of strength that is an inside job. It's a female thing; we have known about this forever and we used such movements all the time until mass amnesia caused us to forget all but what was channelled into the sparse remnants that became the separate dance modalities that are enjoyed by the few today (far outbalanced by such widespread self-consciousness that most women bearly allow themselves to move their bodies fluidly at all). This is their forebear...and she's really wild! When we break the bands that hold us so rigid and proper, so apologetic and stiffled, so self-doubting and humiliated, we spill over our own edges and such healing flows out of us that we need no other source. In fact I recommend doing even just five to ten minutes a day of this kind of free-flow dance or even just arm and hand movement to music to all women in search of healing and wholeness; self-consciousness put aside, you might be amazed at what comes up out of yourself.
A new article about OCD popped into my emails this morning and it was so compelling that I felt I had to share it with my readership here...
to fully claim my physicality....to not want to escape it, shrugging it off like an outfit I didn't choose but, rather, to feel the delight and exhilaration of it, daily, like a child that notices everything and never fails to marvel at how beautifully it all works...there are no adequate words. I would go through the whole of the journey again to have reached this point and know what I do about every square inch of this beautiful organic playground of me and how to operate it like never before, relishing its symphony of experiences and the delight of knowing how I chose to have them. It is in this overspilling love for the human bodily experience that the healing of just so many people (certainly mine) can be found and if, in any way, my experiences help to end the stalemate that has been perpetuated for just so long, between those who feel they have struggled with their own body and that they are at logger heads with it, then these words will have been worthwhile.
The heat that comes up in the mature woman reaching her power-phase can feel like a primal scream trying to gain our attention...for that is what it is. It reminds us of a time before child rearing, before strict gender roles, before many of the constructs we have turned into the hardest expectations, rules and limitations of our man-made culture....Exploring the portal that can present as pain and which is really our biggest oportunity yet; individually and as a whole.
Its become abundantly clear to me over several years that most (if not all) health challenges have their root at the level where the body thinks it is divided into two parts, classically referred to as the left and right hemispheres of the brain although, really, this divisiveness goes much deeper, as discussed in my last post (Union - at a cellular level). However, the brain is a very good place to start when it comes to healing that rift, so how do we do that? For a few years now, and with ever more attention paid by the extremely fascinated "me" that is stood back watching, my healing-urges have attempted to pull me towards activities that work by bridging the left and right hemispheres, enhancing their most fluid attempts at collaboration, so I thought I would share what a few of those practices are...which happen to include some of the most appealing activities in our human experience, from laughter to dancing to creating and more - read on:
So, if you have mystery, unshiftable, constantly morphing and moving pain affecting anything from your back to the toes and soles of your feet, to your teeth or your ears, the nerves or circulation in arms, legs or hands or those weird toxic headaches that are almost (but not quite) like a migraine and that come and go for no apparent reason, in fact anything that might seem like nerve pain, this topic might be relevant to you and the following article is the most plain-speaking introduction to the it that I've come across. If its not a recovery appoach that you've considered then, you never know, opening this door might be just what you need to get the new year off to a far brighter start.
That thing that I do most(!) mornings on my yoga mat probably doesn't bear scrutiny from anyone who attends a yoga class or really knows their stuff...its not "proper", its not pretty, its not lengthy, its just what I do (a mixture of what I've learned, what feels good, movements I've half invented); but the key is in the words "I do it". I know of plenty of yoga aficionados who still only do yoga when they go to a class. Sometimes I roll movements together so much I feel like I'm a butterfly about to take off then, at other times, I use long pauses and gravity to do the work with me, holding positions until my body tells me to stop, a method that can deliver exquisite release to some of the deepest entanglements. The sense of fine tuning what my body is most asking for, to my own rhythm, has been palpable and the real gift of home practice; being unique to me and that most-intimate inner dialogue (the one that starts with the invitation "show me what you want and I will do that" without uttering a word) and not something that could follow the rhythm of a teacher or class. A conversation such as this, based utterly upon trust, is one that never (ever) stops again but, rather, carries on spreading its magic across all aspects of your daily life. Approaching yoga in this ad-hoc way, the mat remains somewhere that I'm accomplished, doing something that its impossible for me to do wrong or badly (which is a good starting point to get to know this truth about all of life). In listening to my body, what it wants, what it calls out for (today...which may not be the same as yesterday), I do something that is a central tenet of what yoga is all about and that takes me into that same hallowed space where the alchemy of yoga really happens. Like a meditation or a pause for breath, a moment of grace in a life that can be physically challenging, a demonstration of pure self-love and of listening to what my body is telling me, I get there...all on my own.
Living whole 