We have this idea in the Western World that ‘dis-ease’ is some sort of frightening threat to our wellbeing and disruption to our everyday life with symptoms that must be stopped, as soon as possible, so we can carry on as normal.

Whilst there are some diseases that can kill us if left unchecked and the Western Medical model is an essential part of our toolkit to keep us whole, healthy and well, it is not the only tool in the bag and health is not just about the physical.

We rely far too much on the allopathic input and too little on our selves. My studies on Transpersonal Psychology, Yoga, Healing – Sound, Spiritual, Reiki and Shamanic models, as well as in psychotherapy, Counselling, the therapeutic relationship and all manner of approaches to psychological wellbeing in particular have led me to understand that we humans are both creatures of habit and, in the main, more than willing to hand over our personal responsibility to those we deem have more learning/knowledge/experience/authority that ourselves. It is how we are trained from nursery to university and on into employment.

However, modern medicine is rooted in a mechanistic, materialist and often reductionist world-view. In other words, medicine views us as meat machines, perhaps with a little emotional energy present. Also, it values the physical and mental aspects of us, but still, even in this era of understanding the placebo effect, largely underestimates the value of our emotional and spiritual lives with regards to their effect on our health and wellbeing. When I say spiritual I mean not religious, but relating to meaning, purpose, our values and our sense of belonging, connection and community.

Despite this generalisation about the medical model, which largely holds true, the tide is beginning to turn. It seems that we are going through another renaissance – a transformation which will radically alter the future of medicine, of health and of psychology.

Already psychological understanding and practice are changing and embracing tools such as mindfulness, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Compassion based therapy, as well as others that stem from traditional spiritual approaches to consciousness, healing and wellness (despite a complete lack of acknowledgement of the Transpersonal Branch of psychology, which has been studying and exploring these practices since the 1960s).

These ‘new’ therapies are becoming mainstream due to their efficacy in transforming mental and emotional health, which also then affects our physical wellbeing. These practices originate in Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Shamanic and other traditions that work with mind, emotions, consciousness, will and our spiritual sense of connection to something greater than ourselves. Psychology itself has its roots in Jewish Mystical practice, in fact most effective modern practices that help us to improve our health holistically, such as yoga, mindfulness and meditation, which can really improve our health on every level have their foundations in ancient spiritual traditions.
I am on a healing journey, a process of transformation, one that is represented to us in all the fairy tales from Snow White to Cinderella and in the myths and stories of nearly every nation on earth. The journey to maturity, to health, to death is represented in these tales. The psychological journey to health has been described as a descent into the ‘long dark night of the soul’. It is the falling apart of the self, the breakdown of the ego’s defences, entering into the unknown territory of chaos and rebirth, typified in Joseph Campbell’s archetypal model of the Hero’s Journey. It is one that is reflected in nature by the caterpillar changing into a butterfly. In order to be reborn as a butterfly the caterpillar must die, must dissolve into a genetic soup and reorganise itself around a new pattern that its’ soul contains the template for. This is a beautiful metaphor for our healing journey.

Science is beginning to catch up with this eternal wisdom. Soon health will not be seen as illness and cure, but as a journey like any other with ups and downs and many tools to use along the way. Tools to created harmony when we are faced with dischord.

As John Beaulieu, N.D., Ph.D. states in his essay on dissonance; ‘Nobel prize winning physicist Dr Ilya Prigogine discovered the importance of dissonance while investigating chemical systems. He termed his discoveries “order from chaos”. Prigogine proved that for a system to change and go into a higher state of functioning it must first pass through a state of disruption or chaos. The sonic term for chaos is dissonance’.

He also points out the ‘crucial role dissonance plays in living systems evolving into higher levels of order or resonance’. So, the challenges and trials in our lives can cause us to break down and become ill and descend into chaos, where we can then reorganise ourselves into a new higher level of functioning or we get sicker and die. On the Hero’s journey there are helpers and trials. The Hero always has to ask for help, and be willing to receive it. And follow the advice and support of the helpers, because as we know we cannot fix a problem using the same level of consciousness as that which created it.

We see this truth about dissonance reflected in music as well. Dissonance in classical music moves the melody and comes to a resolution.

I learnt around 20 years ago that imbalance can occur at any one of the several levels of our being – energetically it can manifest in our subtle bodies as a stressor at an emotional or mental level, where it can be ignored (as we are often wont to do) sometimes for years before if finally manifests as a physical symptom. Or, we can get a physical problem, say in an accident, which can then cause mental/emotional issues.

An example: Not a real one, a hypothetical example.

I am afraid of and shamed by father as a child on a regular basis – in order to protect myself from these painful feelings I unconsciously hunch my shoulders when I get yelled at. Over time this becomes a pattern of feeling and behaving until I do it every time I see him or hear his voice. He is an authority figure, the primary one in life. I now have learnt to fear being shamed and humiliated by authority figures and as I grow up I project this onto my teachers at school, then my boss and other authority figures in my life and I encounter lots of these as I age.

Over the years I have unconsciously hunched my shoulders and bitten down my anger, suppressed my feelings of powerlessness and given my power away to Doctors, Lawyers, Judges, bosses, anyone I perceive has more power and authority than myself.

I give my power away to these people (my solar plexus chakra becomes weak and unbalanced) as I block my own flow of power and authority, confidence and self esteem. I develop anxiety (also solar plexus) which leads to stomach ulcers and by the time I’ve hit middle age I have chronic neck, back and shoulder pain from the tightening up I’ve done to ward off the perceived threats of humiliation.

Eventually I have a bad neck, upper back, shoulders, IBS and ulcers, an alcohol issue (I think it calms me down and helps me relax my aching body) and am unable to speak up for myself when I need to.

If we had dealt with the father issue during childhood none of these illnesses would have occurred. If we deal with this root or core issue now, the rest can be transformed and released and slowly the body will come back to balance and heal itself. But instead we get medication, muscle pain cream, meds for ulcers, tranquilisers for anxiety and others for our IBS and we still have all the emotional issues that keep us stuck in these behaviours and reinforce the blocked energies that should be in balance, the powerlessness that keep us stuck in the same habits and we continue to reproduce all the symptoms as well. Now that’s CRAZY!

We distract ourselves from feeling, we don’t allow ourselves to deeply explore our inner worlds, we do all we can to avoid the underlying pain of powerlessness, unworthiness, shame, guilt, unloveableness, or whatever core fears we have about ourselves. This avoidance prevents us from healing and transforming ourselves. When we can’t see our demons we can pretend they aren’t there… and eventually they will get us!

But instead of facing our fears, our monsters and demons we are taught that it is better to distract ourselves from the silence and stillness that lead us to our pain. We reach outwards instead to things to fill us up, numb us out, stop us from feeling. The louder our pain calls to be healed the more powerfully attractive our distractions appear to us, until they become addictions. Sexual addiction is actually the most common and least dealt with – in the forms of pornography, promiscuity, adultery and the thrill of serial monogamy without commitment, friends with benefits, they are all often used as ways to avoid real intimacy – InTiMaCy – In to me see – the vulnerable, authentic self which we avoid we can’t let others see either – in case they see how crap we really are (in our minds at least).

Other more obvious distractions and addictions are drugs and alcohol, retail therapy (although therapy is the wrong word, this doesn’t help, it harms), computer games, television, gambling, partying, work, noise, loudness, busy-ness.

A sabbatical can be a time to fall apart, into yourself, into chaos which can allow us to discover our authentic self, our whole self, our true needs, desires, gifts and find our balance and wholeness, and the template to remake ourselves.

I believe that this ‘illness’ or dis-ease that I have is my soul calling out to me that it is time for another butterfly effect. I have done it before – it can take a few transformations along the way as we move from one stage to another. We are somewhat more complex and have greater potential for creativity than a simple butterfly, so one transformation is not usually enough. That’s why we go in 7 year cycles of change. I will speak more about that later. During each transition I have become more myself, that means more calm, confident, peaceful, joyful, radiant, creative, loving, compassionate, empathic, soulful, a better wife, mother, friend, healer. Maybe, when I have finished this stage I should run ‘butterfly effect’ retreats – to share tools for transformation! I shall have to meditate on that.

This has been a tough week. I drove up to Wirral Thursday for my Friday morning appointment with the Uveitis clinic at St Paul’s in Liverpool. It always takes me a few hours to land back there. It’s about 135 miles, that’s about three and a quarter hours from the farm in Wales, where we spend most of our time, to our home in Hoylake, where our sons still live.

My son Kris agreed to come with me to the clinic, as the tests etc. leave me with wide open pupils, light sensitivity, blurry vision and a feeling of vulnerability, so it’s really helpful to have someone to walk with me and keep me company. this time, it turned out was to be a long one.  About 5 hours there. It was the usual eye test, then anaesthetic drops, pressure test, some other sting-y drops, then the drops that make your pupils huge, so that the light hurts them and the doctors can see what’s going on inside. the also took my blood pressure again.  It is always low. Today it was 98/60.

This time they told me that all the tests had come back clear except for three things. One showed that I have had toxoplasmosis in the past, either from cats, sheep ticks, or possibly dogs. this may have been the cause of the scarring in my right eye. The second and third were markers for possible inflammatory arthritis. so, to establish that they wanted to photograph the blood vessels at the back of my eyes to see if they were inflamed. To do this they must canulate me and inject yellow dye from shellfish into my blood. This is called a Fundus Fluorescein Angiography to asses retinal circulation.

I was canulated by a lovely Russian lady called Dasha. I was really scared about this procedure. I don’t think I’ve had it done before and was really nervous, nauseous at the thought and a bit fainty! I had to look away while she did it.

I was even more scared when they put the dye in, but I hardly felt a thing. Then I had to stick my face against this huge camera machine, which shone all sorts of lights into my eyes and took pictures. this culminated in the decision to refer me to a rheumatologist regarding inflammatory arthritis. An appointment will come soon.

One thing I learnt from all this is that fear is really scary. As is the unknown. I really was afraid, vulnerable, anxious. I really needed to use my breathing techniques and meditation and grounding tools in order to stay calm and present. I also missed being able to leave my body at will. Anyone who has been abused is a master of dis incarnation. Until I began yoga and really grounded myself and fully entered by body I was able to disappear whenever I didn’t want to feel what was happening to me. I can’t do it any more. I’m glad really, but still, now and then it would come in handy. None of it was as bad as I expected. Though my eyes were sore for a couple of days and I was very wobbled and discombobulated for a day or so, until I was given some healing.

The next day I went off to mid Wales for my Sound Healing course, which was brilliant and I got some really deep healing from the teacher, who got me back to normal very quickly when we teamed up to practice toning scales into the chakras. It was an incredible experience.

One thing we learned was to focus sound and that we could use a crystal wand as a laser to increase the power for certain types of issue. I hadn’t worked with crystals for ages, but decided that this was something I really wanted to try. When I got home I arranged to meet up with a friend Dido, who is helping me choose the right supplements to assist my healing. she has recommended 1000 milligrams of vitamin C as calcium ascorbate, three times a day with food and Kyolic garlic with each meal as well. She happened to have a crystal wand waiting for me, a very powerful one, she said. A singing, Lemurian, Isis, elestial laser. how beautifully synchronistic.

Well, when I got it home I smudged it with Palo Santo, a sacred perfumed wood, instead of the traditional sage smudge. I prefer the palo santo. Then I smudged the case I spent all morning making for it to live in. Then I charged it up in the sunlight, programmed it for healing and then set about getting to know it and introducing myself to it and it to me. I meditated with it on each chakra. I had first done some sound healing on myself using musical intervals, toning and chanting, so my energy was clear and grounded.

Then, after turning on my iPod to the global Ah tone by Johnathon Goldman, I put the crystal on each chakra in turn and tuned in while the Ah tone softly hummed away in my ears. I felt great heat and cleansing and opening in my lower three chakras and my heart chakra. I saw gold light and sensed a pyramid at the brow chakra and the soma chakra and white light at the crown. I left my body, expanded right up and out from the crown and as I did something happened in my heart. My heart started beating a weird rhythm like morse code. I could feel my left breast as if something were tapping the inside, really odd sensation. I felt something fundamental was changing inside me at a very deep, almost DNA level. I began to feel very clear, open, transparent. I felt a bit scared at the continuing pounding in my heart but I knew it was ok, so I said to myself “it’s ok, relax, I’m not scared”, and I simply surrendered.

I don’t really know what is going on here, but I do know that the energies on the planet are changing and we can shift too, as long as we don’t fight it. So, I follow my inner guidance, my intuition and ask for support from my spirit guides too. I don’t really need to understand any more, I’m quite comfortable with the mysteries of the cosmos and being part of that.

I was very tired quite soon after dinner and went to bed early. I’d had a headache and nausea a bit, not sure if it was the sun or the autoimmune thing, but I was really tired. I woke up at four in the morning because the dog was barking, got up for a pee and when I got back to bed I turned to look out the window at the stars. Something happened then that has only happened this powerfully once before in my life – As I turned to the stars immediately a HUGE golden shooting star fell across the sky just within the frame of my window. The last time a shooting star encounter happened so strong and clear as that was to do with my mum in December 1991. This made me think of her again. She died in April in 1991.

I had done several hours of sound healing work on myself. It certainly shifted something. This morning I woke up brimming over with pain. I felt furious and overwhelmed by everything and everything made me cry. I released lots of old pain and cried over and over. Then I did more sound healing work afterwards to soothe myself and finally felt great relief. I think that much of this crying was releasing old grief. I felt headachey and a bit nauseous again today, my eyes were sore too and tired.

Some people believe that autoimmune disorders are related to unhealed losses. that they are a result of too much stress, in whatever form that might take, anger, betrayal, years of doing or being in situations that are stressful. I am tending to agree with this. My feeling is that this is for me about living in situations that stressed me out for years, and that I am now re-visioning my life, hence the eye issue.

I really do feel that these things are not illnesses that we need doctors to remove symptoms for us. I believe that they are messages from our body showing us where we are out of balance and that by removing the symptom without getting the message and changing our life we will get ill again until we find the way to find balance and wholeness.

The shooting star, the crystal and its powerful effect, the incredible sound healing all leave me impressed again by the mystical cosmos, the perfection of all that is and the beauty of this adventure we are all part of.

 

Today my lovely friend Rose told me that she’s started reading my blog and feels that it is really powerful. “I don’t know why you haven’t got millions of people coming to you for healing”, she said.

“I know”, I replied. “I’ve spent the last three years running myself ragged trying to let ht world know I’m here, trying to share the 25 years of knowledge, experience, training and research I’ve done in tools for healing, growth and transformation and it’s like no-one wants what I’m offering! No-one cares! I’m trying to share something, or in business terms ‘selling a service’ that no-one seems to want. Or, as my wise and loving husband put it, “No-one knows they want it!”

I went deeply into my body’s response to this… how would it feel having ‘millions of clients?’ as Rose put it. Eeek! My body screamed.  Okay then, how about 4 or 5 clients a day? Eeek! My body screamed.  Okay then, how about just 1 or 2 a day? Eeek! My body still screamed. 3 or 4 a week? No?

Then it hit me!  I’M NOT READY!

I’m too tired. Too ill. Except ill is not the right word. It is just ‘not ready’. I am transitioning – not the ultimate one into death, but a double/triple whammy even so.

1. The menopause – a powerful transition into Personal Power.
2. My children are no longer living with us and we are adjusting to that.
3. This auto immune thing.
4. Trying to make a living from Healing/Transpersonal Psychology.

WOW. All of these are BIG TRANSITIONS and all of them are moving me towards my next goal/stage in life, which is TRUE AUTHENTIC EMPOWERMENT or living my SOUL’s life.

This means coming into a deeper level of living, moving into GREATNESS, MASTERY if you will, Mastery of my own authentic way of living and sharing my gifts with the world.

This is not mastery in the sense of becoming a master teacher, or guru, but the master of my own healing process/journey towards wholeness. It is the passing through the doorway from EGO ATTACHMENT to AUTHENTIC SOUL POWER. The last few bricks are tumbling from my wall and I’m going to be able to shine my light fully as I energy from behind it.

During this part of the process I am dissolving into chaos right now, like the caterpillar dissolved into genetic soup – in order to transform into a butterfly.

I believe that the Uveitis is my signal to withdraw from the world and focus on the dissolution and re-integration process so that I can become WHOLE, wholly and Holy my Self.

I believe that this is our mission in life, our meaning, our purpose. This is the mission of our soul. To find our true light, our skills, gifts, our joys, our passion and radiate them out into the universe for the highest good of all.

So….. here I go. Into my soup. I will continue to share this process as I go along.

And I am FEELING EXCITED!

04/04/15

When will I ever learn?

Maundy Thursday I was tempted by an Easter bun from the organics. Hand crafted by my friend Tess, who bakes the delicious organic spelt and rye breads I eat. Well, actually it was my hubby Si who bought one. Then I said get me one too. Still have lots of WILLPOWER but no WON’TPOWER at all. It was delicious, but very heavy and doughy.

I woke in the night anxious, as I usually do after wheat. Or was it the red wine? I drink red wine every weekend and only if I have a bit too much does it affect me adversely. It’s my special weekend treat.

In most ways I’ve been taking good care of myself this week. We’ve had fish and veg, or just veg every day. Fish stew, fish pie, mackerel on toast, veggie cheese soup (with goats cheese) and one chicken roast with a ton of steamed veggies.

I’m still having oats for breakfast most days. It’s delicious with coconut milk! I’ve not had a good week though for health. Yesterday, (after the wheat?) I woke up and my fingers crackled with arthritis. That’s new. I’ve had some sharp pains like pins in my right eye a couple of times.

I had lowered my doses of Serrapeptase from 6 a day to 3 a day, but then they were going down so fast and our income is so low that I dropped to 2 a day. Which is nevertheless 480,000 icu, still a hefty dose. But I also dropped the Immunkoplex to every other day.

Not a good idea. Improvements stopped. I’ve done a 35 – 45 minute workout every day this last week. Nearly got that dance routine sorted. And made sure that I got a sweat on and my heart racing as well as did warm up and cool down stretches and yoga. So all muscle pains gone. EXERCISE is like THE MOST IMPORTANT thing we can do for ourselves. As I meditate afterwards for like 20-30 minutes straight after my workout I can almost literally feel the endorphins flood my system. It feels so good in my body after exercising. I can feel how blissed out my whole system gets and meditation after exercise is wonderful. Really creative. I get all my best creative ideas during dancing, yoga and meditation.

Although I said I would stop work I simply can’t do it. It’s not in my nature. Plus, we all need meaning and purpose in our lives. So, actually, there is still quite a lot for me to do and there are several reasons that I need to keep my creative juices flowing. My healing work is my driving force. Hence this blog. I still have one healing client I am working with and also my PHEW group every second week in Wirral.

I have three new work things on the go at the moment as well. I have some young people needing some Holistic Wellbeing tools, so I’ve been working on handouts and a short day long programme to share the practices with them.

I also have a three-day shamanic workshop running in June on Life, Death, Transformation and the Process of Dying. I am simultaneously co-leading and getting trained myself. I have been putting together promotional words, posters, bookings and letters to prospective participant organisations.

Finally, I am going with Jan, my co-lead from this shamanic workshop, to Italy in June, just a few days after the workshop. We are going to Milan for the first ever Transpersonal Festival where we are going to be delivering a workshop and presentation about our shamanic and sound healing practices. I am also brewing ideas for that – we will need a powerpoint presentation for our talk, then an interactive workshop session afterwards. I will be preparing the powerpoint presentation myself, so I need to keep those ideas flowing too.

All great stuff. Exciting. All my ideas come while I am in the flow state – dancing, doing yoga, or meditating. All of these practices are really YOGA – which means UNION, or being one with.

Dancing we are one with our body and the music. Yoga we are one with the body and the breath. Hopefully also, we are one with our soul during dance and yoga, but not everyone is open enough to their authentic self for moving like that. Biodanza helps teach us how to dance our soul! I’ve done a few sessions of that. Also, 5 Rhythms is a wonderful dance/meditation practice that I have done many times. These both help us dance our soul’s energy rather than getting stuck in our ego’s self consciousness, where we care what we look like. When we dance from our soul it is all about expressing how we feel, how we flow, how we roll! It’s nothing to do with what we look like, how others see us, or what anyone else is doing.

During meditation (moving or not) we are one with our breath and our WITNESS consciousness, or Higher Self or Soul (we can experience the Soul as that pure awareness that lies behind the mind, that contains the contents of our mind) – at least if we can shut the chattering monkey voice of the ego up for a few minutes. If we are meditating deeply we completely lose all sense of having a body. If we go even deeper we become one with the Self which is peace, stillness, silence. There is no mental chatter, no emotional resonance. Just deep abiding peace and awareness.

During each of these practices we are in what is called the FLOW state. Where we tend to lose our sense of separate EGO self and become one with a more flowing, open, peaceful state that is outside of awareness of self, time and space.

We get into this flow state when we are being creative also. If you paint or sew, crochet or weave, surf even!!! you can enter this flow. It is a very healing state. Our brainwave patterns change and the resulting effects on the whole system are healing; body, mind, emotions and energetic system are all balanced in this state.

So, I’ve been well enough to dance, meditate, do my yoga and lots of gardening – we have hundreds of seedlings and tiny plants going out into the polytunnel during the day and coming in at night this Easter weekend.

But there is definitely something up. I’m flat. I am having to force myself to do all this dancing, computer work, gardening. My energy is really low. My joints feel more achey and arthritic than usual. My wrists and ankles feel weak and sore again and my eye seems a little more cloudy than before. Not as bad as when I began, but worse than it was ten days ago.

I have ordered and received (within 2 days) more Immunkomplex and Serrapeptase and I’m going back to a higher dose. Plus, I will do less computer time. I’ve blogged less as I’ve been increasing my computer time to do the Death and Wellbeing work. My overall computer time is creeping up again. I’m sure this doesn’t help. I’m going to spend the least amount of time on here as possible and therefore keep the blog to maybe once a week, or twice if there’s a lot to tell.

Let’s face it. At the moment, no one is reading it anyway. So all this time I’m giving to help others via this blog is at this point blowing in the wind, so to speak. But, I will keep going. Just in case. There may be one person who sees this and it helps them. So I keep on keeping on. I do feel that there must be some point to writing it. I must keep on top of it because when I do find what is at the heart of this auto immune thing I will need this record of this journey. I must remember that and use it to motivate me to get on the computer and write.

Until the next time Adieu and I wish everyone out there receives blessings of peace, healing and love.

I’ve not blogged for a few days. After my feeling crap at the allotments I gapped out pretty much for the rest of the weekend. Saturday night I had a chat with my friend Shiatsu Clare about our proposed Shiatsu session for the following morning and my proposed trip to visit my aunt. Clare suggested that I was not well enough to buy and cook up a Sunday roast and then troll over to Manchester after my shiatsu. She felt I needed to be the one being looked after instead of doing the looking after. That made me cry a bit, as being in a family of three men if I get ill they don’t nurture me, they sort of panic and get mean with me. Perhaps a little scared, like if mums not taking care of us what will happen? so we must be mean to her until she gets her shit together and gets well again. Therefore, I’m not used to being looked after since my mum died and that was twenty four years ago.

So, I cancelled my trip. Auntie Pat’s sweet and loving response to my not going made me cry a bit more. I do love our visits. I’m sad not to be seeing her, but like me she doesn’t ‘hold’ with the flu vaccine and I don’t really want to pass on this vile virus either. I did, however, go for my Shiatsu. Clare and I are swapping healing with each other. I give her healing in return for Shiatsu. It’s a good deal as  holistic therapy is not a calling that makes you rich. so neither of us could afford each other if we had to pay.

When I got there Clare’s house felt like home to me. Our tastes are so similar. I felt really relaxed and comfortable. It was my first visit to her home and my first Shiatsu with her. It was FAB! I felt very light hearted and funny after the treatment. I don’t mean weird funny. I mean comedian funny. I nearly wet myself laughing giggling with her after the session. It was great. The rest of the day I rested, except for making dinner.

Here is what I’m taking now to treat myself. Aside from the Shiatsu, which showed up my overwrought immune system and a huge well of unexpressed grief. Which, by the way, my person centred art therapist and counsellor sister said, is one of the suggested roots of autoimmune disorders. Unexpressed grief? Causing illness? Who would have believed it? Well I, for one. It makes sense to me. I’ve an ocean of unshed tears in me. Every sad song I hear helps me release a bit more grief, but there is so much more to be healed.

I treid to run a deep grief healing retreat a couple of years ago called Wounded Woman, for women who needed to heal their grief from anything; miscarriage, bereavement, divorce, abuse, abortion, the wretched state of humanity, you name it. There’s a lot to cry about.

No one came. feeling grief isn’t popular. People don’t want to go there. but there’s a LOT of people, especially women, getting auto immune diseases. Perhaps we should go there a bit more and support each other in doing it.

If you want a Wounded Woman retreat to heal your unexpressed grief let me know. I’m still up for it. so, I’m taking….

Vitamin C – 1000mg three times a day with food.

Serrapeptase – 25000iu, one tablet three times a day on an empty stomach. I lowered my dose from six a day to three times a day this week. For two reasons. After the really high doses of the first three weeks To get control of the inflammation, I’ve lowered to a maintenance dose to keep on top of it. It seems to make sense. Also, it’s expensive. Expensive is a relative term and the second reason. It wouldn’t be expensive if we were both earning, but neither my hubby or I are employable at the moment and our business is in the toilet. People just aren’t buying retreats and I can’t manage healing clents at the moment. So, for us right now the supplements are expensive. I will work out the daily and weekly cost of this treatment and add it to the blog when I remember to do that.

Immunkomplex – 20ml in 200ml of Apple juice with my evening meal, as suggested on the bottle.

Lastly, the steroid eye drops. One drop four times a day. It’s made the inside of my eye turn from a healthy pink (like my other eye still is) to a sickly yellowy White. I’m not feeling happy about using these drops. Si is persuading me to continue with them until I next go to the Uveitis clinic on 17th April. I’m doing what he says. He’s a wise man.

This week I am now also taking cough medicine, as for two nights running I was up in the night coughing so hard, for so long and without any shift of mucus that I tore my throat, and my ribs and diaphragm feel as bruised and sore as if I’d been kicked down the street by a bunch of football hooligans. My chest was itchy and burning (I mean my lungs, not my tits) for days, with a constant annoying tickle. The spasms from coughing wore me out and were so violent I kept peeing myself and had to sit on the loo half the night as I coughed my lungs out. I coughed so hard I thought I was going to blow a gasket in my brain. it left me with a pounding headache each time. It has taken two days, or maybe three, certainly half a bottle of Robitussin, to finally looosen the mucus. Hooray! It’s finally coming out.

So, today, as an experiment in healing myself, I will be playing a lot it emotive music and letting some tears flow. Maybe that will help clear my eye. plus I will be back on the Fame workout. I really missed it not being well enough on Mondsy or yesterday, but now the cough is shifting and the pounding headache is gone I’m up for it.

Inner thirteen year old – here I come!

 

It has been a good few days. I’ve felt almost back to normal, just a bit spacey and tired. Until Wednesday. I worked Mother’s Day at the Botanic Garden of Wales running three sound healing workshops during the day. I had gone the day before to set up and so in the day I just had to do what comes naturally to me. Healing and facilitating. Nothing challenging or strenuous. A calm, peaceful, relaxing and rewarding day for all. Especially for the flu bug that hitched a ride in my nose!

Tuesday night I lay awake half the night with a throat so hot, raw and sore you could have filed your nails on it. I was shivery and sweating, headachey, in fact every joint ached , the worst being my neck, which felt as though it couldn’t hold my head up. In the morning, knackered as I was and still feeling rough as the foot file my hubby uses to shave his hard skin, I spent the day in bed. I watched 5 episodes of the Big C back to back.

The day before I had been feeling fine. We planted tons of veggie seeds including cabbage, broccoli, aubergines, 8 different kinds of beans from dwarf French to borlotti , runners to fine climbers. We planted beetroot, cauliflower, marigolds (medicinal) and cornflowers. We were getting on with things. But yesterday really took it out of me.

Today I’ve been guzzling organic cider vinegar with honey in salad dressing and in hot water as a drink. Both incredibly good for flu and colds. I awoke with a headache again, so I’ve taken it easy and not bounced. No way could I bounce the day before either. I’m pissed off about that, as I was really getting that Fame routine off pat. Never mind. It will still be there tomorrow. I’ve had a wander around the fields with the dogs, gone shopping, made a salad and planned a veggie curry for dinner, which I will do in a bit and I’ll wash the pots and clean the kitchen a bit.

Vision? I read outside in the sun today without my specs at all. so there’s an improvement! I blissed out in the sun, despite Si having one of his depression days. As he did his Eeyore impression I soaked up the sun and birdsong and reminded myself that I am the peaceful aware witness and that all the drama, the stuff of thought and feeling that disturb the inner mind peace in Si and myself are just the ramblings of the maniac ego, which I listen to at my peril.

The wind in the trees and the birds make much more sense.

11/03/15

We’ve been away back to the Wirral for a couple of days. Mainly to do our PHEW group; the Personal Holistic Emotional Wellbeing group, where we offer various tools for holistic wellbeing, focussing largely on harmonising spiritual and psychological energy patterns. These tools include chanting, meditation, visualisation, shamanic journeying and healing, drumming, toning, the use of singing bowls and tuning forks and these meetings provide a confidential space for healing, sharing, support and personal growth.

I’ve stopped all work except this group for now. I don’t need much energy or mental acuity to run these twice monthly events, and they are as much a healing experience for me as for the rest of the group.

Mental acuity, or lack of is my issue at the moment. Things are changing with some rapidity. One of the symptoms described on the Uveitis website is cognitive impairment. No kidding! I had previously put this all down to the menopause…. The forgetfulness, the terrible memory all round, the word salad, the weird stuttering, the confusion, double bookings, overwhelm, inability to multi task. Inability to make decisions. Inability to think!

But now there is not only one reason for COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT there are three!

1. Enough said here really… I don’t use meds for this. Obviously. If you have read this far, it is clear to you that I prefer other methods of working through life’s changes and challenges than a pharmaceutical approach.
2. Uveitis/Autoimmune issues. What can I say?
3. ASCENCION/Consciousness raising/Vibrational uploading…

Well here’s the RUB so to speak. I believe, (as do many other people who I consider to be wiser and more intelligent than I) that the menopause, and perhaps also autoimmune disorders, have more to do with vibrational frequencies of CONSCIOUSNESS changing on the planet and within our species than ‘illness’.

My ‘sense of knowing’ about this journey to health that I’m on told me that the purpose of this experience was an inner shift that needed to happen. Many of us healer types are recognising this at this time. Many of us are ‘getting ill’, experiencing times in our lives when we need a time out to upgrade the software, so to speak.

 

Here’s an analogy of what’s going on – I think.

My inner experience of this shift, occurring as it is during the menopause, as my children are becoming independent adults and an autoimmune issue messes with my system is one akin to putting a new operating system into a computer.

People’s computers and their heads got really messed up when they installed the new operating system that followed Windows 8, or whatever it was. I can’t remember it right now – not my fault – I have cognitive impairment! People wanted to go back to the old operating system, where they knew how things worked and where everything went. Suddenly it was all different, confusing and messed up. It took some time to readjust to the new system. No doubt faults occurred and things were lost, discovered and new opportunities turned up too, I’m sure.

I understand that this upgrading of software may be what it occurring here on earth RIGHT NOW! Our consciousness is upgrading. The thing is, that this is not mainstream thinking. This is not the zeitgeist! We are not all on the same page, running on the same hardware, never mind on the same operating system. We are not all running Leopard on apple macs. Some of us are still on Windows 94 on our Dells. Many people are clinging on to the old model and are completely closed to the new software available. So much so that they are medicating themselves up to the max in order to keep in control, keep working, running on that little hamster wheel round and round, not getting to anywhere special because we’ve all forgotten where we were supposed to be going in the first place.

There are so many ways to resist this change. Just as there are many ways to surrender to it.

We surrender to the change through letting go; relaxing; feeling our emotions; following our hearts; opening up to our intuition; listening to the wisdom of our bodies; listening to the wisdom of the elders, through their mystical and wisdom traditions.

We resist the change by tightening up our muscles; suppressing our emotions; ignoring our intuition; keeping our minds busy busy busy; stressing ourselves out; watching tv; constant noise and music and DISTRACTIONS…

We resist the change by shutting ourselves off from our INNER TRUTH and guidance by drinking too much alcohol; taking illegal drugs; work addiction; porn addiction; retail therapy, that is actually consumer addiction; taking proscribed ‘legal’ drugs, or medication: we are becoming addicted to sleeping pills, porn, anti depressants, booze, sex.

So, eventually a dis-ease will manifest, and if we are paying attention we can take this opportunity to GO INSIDE and GO DEEP into the quiet, into the stillness, the peace, the wisdom and silence in order to find what we need to heal.

And, because we are all different. Because we all vibrate at different frequencies, play different tunes, we need different medicine.

I also believe that this process should be SUPPORTED and ENCOURAGED with assistance from anyone around us who is compassionate, loving, and knows us well. But mostly it is a journey we must take alone.

The most important thing is that if we wish to be WHOLE, HEALTHY, BALANCED, HARMONIOUS and at PEACE with ourselves and our world, we need to take the first step and GET ON THE HEALING JOURNEY PATH.

 

So, here I am on the path. The PHEW group evening was beautiful. There was some deep healing work done. Some of us released some old pain energy and we all bathed in beautiful, balanced healing energy. We chanted together, I drummed for everyone, we meditated together, breathed together, shared our feelings, opened our hearts, trusted one another and co-created a compassionate community space. As I said, it was beautiful.

I drove back to Wales the next morning. There on the doorstep waiting for me was the Immunkomplex. Yey! I drank diluted it in the nearest thing to apple juice I could find (it needs to be diluted in juice in a ratio of 1:10), which was cider. Close enough. You drink it once a day with or after a meal. 20ml in 200ml of juice or a drink of your choice. Don’t panic, it wasn’t a strong cider. I only drank 200ml of it. Si drank the rest. It tasted ok. A bit like I’d just licked out the inside of a health food store, so not gorgeous, but ok.

Over the last few weeks I am feeling ever more spacey, elated, light headed, and a bit mental to be honest. I’m just surrendering to it. One reason for this is that today, for the first time in months I could actually read the ‘use by’ date on the voucher from the Coop. I found that I could recognise people’s faces on the telly last night too. So, my vision is improving.

I’m still a bit achey – in the joints, my fingers are swolled and my rings are tight and my lungs are still hurting. I’m still snotty and stuffed up, so that would be a cold virus then.

I am back to regular dance workouts again after a few days off. Not exercising due to headaches and aching joints was ok for a few days, but after that the muscle pains started returning with a vengeance. So, back to a morning dance-athon then. I am back on the FAME workout. I totally love it. It brings out my inner 13 year old. I probably look like shite when I dance. I’m an overweight, middle aged, weak ankled, graceless and clumsy woman. But when I dance I feel like a sexy goddess and I couldn’t give a shit what I look like to anyone else. I LOVE IT!

Music, dance, drumming, singing, shared with others and also alone combined with stillness and silence to let the work do its thing, are, I think, (at least to me) essential elements to a truly authentic, beautiful, deep and sensual, well lived life. Dancing and music, as well as the more spiritual elements of chanting and drumming for raising consciousness are so important to me I can’t tell you. I find them SO HEALING and therapeutic.

I believe that at least 40 minutes a day of movement, music, stillness and silence are enough to transform any illness.

We can all find that time for ourselves. If we truly want to live well.

 

 

12/03/15

Last night, with dinner, I took my immunkomplex with Ribena, as I’d forgotten the apple juice and didn’t want more cider. It tasted better with Ribena. I felt that it was doing me good as I sat there watching an episode of Call the Midwife I’d recorded. It may be my imagination (well what isn’t really happening in our imagination, imagination is definitely underestimated in my book), but I could feel a sense of wellbeing infusing my body. Similar to the effects of exercise. All those happy hormones soothing and relaxing the system.

Anyway, this morning I wanted to really master the fourth and last section of the FAME workout video, so I put it on. I started with the warm up. It lasts about 7 minutes. Then straight to section four – the funkiest dance routine I’ve ever seen. I love it. Clumsy and graceless as I may be, I enjoyed the hell out of it and was working up a good sweat, my heart rate was up and after the 17 or so minutes of repeating the section I went on to the bar and floor section (the ballet moves that I apparently messed up so badly as a small child, where I supposedly was told I have the grace of a baby elephant) and then to the ‘dance stretches’ – which are classis yoga poses, cat, dog, downward dog, cobra, child and side stretches. I was sweating more and more during all this. I felt good, just hot.

Then I settled down for a meditate, when after only five minutes or so someone arrived, so I ran upstairs to wash and dress. Then I began to realise that I had a headache and felt pretty nauseous. I drank some water and had my breakfast, a little oatmeal with almond milk on it and a spoonful of maple syrup. Took my vitamin C and put in my eye drops – the steroid drops – the only concession to pharmaceuticals that I’m prepared to make at this point.

Getting the balance of rest and exercise is crucial to this journey. Too little exercise and I get sluggish, my brain shuts down even more and my energy drops. Also, the pain begins in my muscles again.

Too much exercise and nausea and headache.

Decision: I’d rather a few minutes of nausea and headache than a night of sleeplessness due to muscle pain.

Although, its now 3.20pm and since lunch (home made pea soup and spelt toast) I’m nauseous again.

 

This dancing, music, sound healing practice is AMAZING!

I went to dance this morning. I call this morning practice my ‘bounce’ – it usually includes 30 to 50 minutes of dancing and then yoga, followed by meditation. I put on the usual “mixed tape” – a playlist on my ipod of 115 songs ‘I can’t live without’ – and started to let myself move to the music. It was a fast beat, and despite not being well I just let my body move. My arms, shoulders, waist and hips were gyrating to the fast, chaotic beat and I began to warm up quickly. After just a few minutes, still during this first track, I could feel my right lung begin to tighten and hurt, like lightning across my chest. It was powerful and restrictive and I slowed down and began to feel into the pain. Almost straight away I could sense this was old wound to do with mum. Being hurt, being NO LOVE, feeling unloved, experiencing unlove instead of feeling love.

As I felt the agony of the physical pain I sensed that I needed to ground the pain, to give it to our universal mother and so I lay on the floor and asked mother earth to receive my pain, to compost it and turn it into honey, into love, into flowers and growth and creativity. As I lay on the earth’s body, on the floor of my living room I felt almost as if I was lying on my mother’s breast. I yearned and longed for my mum and allowing myself to feel whatever came up, without question or comment, I sensed memories arise as I moved my body, opening up the heart chakra and letting the old, unbalanced energy flow through and out of me.

I saw myself playing out the torment that mum perpetrated upon Jo and I as youngsters. It was her torment, her agony and pain and unlove that was pouring out onto me and through me and onto the dog, who was the tiny being that I perpetrated the torment on to. I saw it flowing from her to me to the dog, slowly killing my mum, slowly killing me, slowly killing the dog and burning us all up in a torrent of pain, agony, unlove…..

My mum had smacked and shouted and slapped and yelled and furied her pain, frustration, rage, powerlessness onto me and in turn I had smacked and yelled and shouted and slapped that pain onto our little sausage dog. Afterwards mum would pick me up and rock me, crying, sobbing her sorrow, shame and grief out and later, after hitting and yelling at the dog I would pick him up crying, sobbing my sorrow, shame and grief out.

All this I could feel again… my heart almost exploding with the sadness of the whole sorry pattern, the family dynamic that played out over and over again from my mother to myself and my sister, and from myself and my sister to our little tiny miniature daschund, who was the runt of the litter and died when he was just four years old from a heart condition. I now believe that my sister and I unknowingly caused that heart condition with our acting out of the broken love pattern.

Still crying I stood up and began to dance to the next track that came up, allowing my body to express itself through my movements, not thinking, just feeling into my body. Letting go of my mind, my thoughts, my sense of anyone or anything other than the energy within. This time it was the sacral chakra that needed to let go of its pain… I let my hips and pelvis move, I bent my knees more to feel closer to the earth and then found myself on my knees. Immediately, as tears poured down my face I began to do the back stretches that I do every day to keep my spine supple. They open the sacral chakra. I moved from cat to dog, to cobra, to downward facing dog, to child to cobra to dog, over and over until I felt ready to stand and dance again. All the time tears running, my heart releasing its hurt, my pelvis opening, softening, my sacral chakra rebalancing and my body wholing and healing itself.

I had the most incredible visceral experience that mirrored the teachings I have learned about us being a spirit having a material existence. This was a deep and beautiful sensation of my body really being this wonderful vessel, a vehicle for my soul’s expression. All the emotions, the movements of energy within my system as being fluid, flowing, my whole body, mind, emotions and soul being transparent, being currents, being one amazing light and sound show, being a constellation of particles of energy held together simply by my consciousness.

Once I felt the session was complete I sat in meditation for another 20 minutes or so. I worked my way around the medicine wheel, invoking the directions and asking help to move through this process.

 

 

04/03/15

Not such a great day today. Woke with a headache. Sore eye. Stayed in bed late and didn’t ‘bounce’. I made a vegan roasted veggie soup and veg and fish cakes with last night’s left over salmon – a good anti inflammatory food! Then I went shopping to get some ‘alternative medicine’ – PYCNOGENOL a natural anti oxidant from pine tree bark.

I had done a shamanic journey to ask what I needed for my eye and I received an image like this…

I wondered if it was a sun.

Si thought I needed vitamin D.

Di thought it was my sacral chakra.

I thought it looked like an egg yolk.

When I was in the healthfood shop the Mulberry Bush in Lampeter, where I went to get some alternative medicines I mentioned Zell Immuno Complex to Andy the owner there and he googled it. The box had on it this image…

Here is the image I saw – the one that looks like an egg yolk. And the images of medicine below is where I saw the ‘sun’  about a week later….

I ordered it on the internet as soon as I got home. 2 boxes.

The website that sells this product is called REGENTERATIVE NUTRITION and this product is especially recommended for auto immune issues. My friend Val had recommended this to me a few days earlier and I hadn’t yet managed to find it. Because it didn’t occur to me to just google it. Silly me.

 

So, now I am awaiting a LARGE order of Serrapepase from Vitacure.co.uk in Liverpool to arrive, and the Immunkomplex from Switzerland (should take about a week) and I have bought more Pycnogenol from Mulberry Bush. The first lot came from our Hoylake Healthfood shop Honest to Goodness. I like to share my shop between the two – I’m a loyal customer to both small, local businesses in my two home towns.

Roasted loads of leeks, peppers, onions, carrots, celery and a few tomatoes and made a soup with them. Enough to last 3 days for both of us.

05/03/15

NO BOUNCE today.

Oh dear. As I was doing some research I came across information about Pycnogenol – and discovered that it is the WORST thing for auto immune issues – it makes them worse. I immediately stopped taking it and wondered if that was why I had started getting worse again. I had a headache again all day yesterday and its here again and my ankle is feeling weak and achey again.

I know when things are getting worse – symptoms, head ache, weak aching neck (hardly hold head up) wrists, ankles, painful hip joints. Tired. Nausea.

After a rest day with just a little cleaning I realised it was full moon. I rang my Sound Healing teacher (I’m doing a diploma in sound healing as there are lots of things I don’t know about yet, such as using tuning forks and harmonics to heal) to ask for an extension on my case studies, as I’m not well enough to work. He said no problem.

We talked about using the power of the full moon and the energies on the earth from Sirius at the moment, and I decided to work with these for my healing and the highest good for all tonight during the full moon.

At 8.00pm on the full moon we always do transfiguration a healing practice, joining in with others around the earth and we did that. It was really deep and peaceful. Si lit a fire and we smudged ourselves, the space and our drums with copal, sage and palo santo. We did our transfiguration by the light of 3 candles and the fire. Then we drummed and journeyed for healing for ourselves and for all of life.

It was a beautiful, peaceful and healing evening.

 

 

06/03/15

I feel so much better today. I’ve typed up this blog and will put it up in a minute when I’m done typing. Then lunch.

Veggie day today. Veggie day yesterday too. Si cooked up some lentils to add to the soup to make it a bit different. Had it with wholemeal spelt sourdough bread yesterday. Despite feeling crap, I managed to make a lovely sabji – spicy Indian cauliflower, potato and paneer cheese dish with rice and peas for dinner.

The Serrapeptase arrived in the post and I upped my dose of these, plus remembered what Di had said about 1000mg of vitamin C three times a day with food, to increase antioxidant action. I drank water every time I passed a tap.

Today I am feeling much better. Did a long dance this morning – the FAME workout, most of it. Then 40 minutes of meditation and prayer.

Today we are having the last of the roasted veggie soup and then aubergine curry with the last of the sabji for dinner.

Do I feel better because of the healing/drumming, the Serrapeptase, the water the vitamin C? I think all of it. HOLISTIC thinking. ENERGY VIBRATION physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects must be attended to.

 

So, no stress. MENTAL Calm, peaceful, do only what needs to be done, think Peace and quiet.

PHYSICAL Food, water, supplements. Exercise, dance and chant and sing, JOY and endorphins.

EMOTIONAL Love, peace, meditation, calm, breathing

SPIRITUAL meditation, joy, journeying, prayer, GRATITUDE, LOVE, APPRECIATION all bring healing and balance.