forget your watch

DSC07999I did not take a watch on our recent camping trip.    It really did not matter what time I woke up and climbed out of the tent, what time I sipped tea and ate breakfast, what time I went biking or ate lunch.  You can actually tell pretty accurately by the sun's standing in the sky and the quality of the sunlight about what time it is  - not that it really matters when you're on vacation.  It is nice to just let yourself float through the day by your feelings of hunger or need for rest or activity.DSC07998 The accounting of time and its equation with money rob time of its magical qualities - and us of our connection with nature.  Charles Eisenstein wrote that John Zerzan thought "Clocks make time scarce and life short."  Remember when childhood summer afternoons stretched languorously and lazily into eternity?  I am sure it has happened to you that you had to get something specific done in a fairly short amount of time - and managed somehow magically to accomplish it within that tight timeframe.   Swedish children's book author Astrid Lindgren wrote in The Children of Noisy Village that it is those endless Christmas Eve afternoons that are responsible for our gray hair because those afternoons stretch on forever and ever and ever.  And you might have seen Salvador Dalí's famous painting of the stretchy clocks.

Salvador Dalí's  1931 "Persistence of Memory"

It's Labor Day  week-end.  Put your watch away and enjoy time without counting it.

 

we are nature

UntitledThat we have come to think of ourselves as separate from nature shines through when we say "let me take a walk in nature," or when we refer to nature as "outside."  And of course it shines through in how we treat nature - we have not been kind to it lately.  As a society we have come to view ourselves as superior to nature, as separate from nature; we dominate and control nature, and "use" it for our enrichment.    I believe this behavior arose from disassociation and fear - what indigenous person would fear nature?  How absurd, they live with it, in it, as part of it, from it.  We Westerners of industrialized nations need to relearn to live with it, understand it, be kind to it, embrace it, and work with it. What is "nature" actually?   The 1970s gave rise to the idea of the Gaia principle, the idea of earth as one enormously complex organism that encompasses everything from rocks and rivers, to plants and minerals, animals and humans.  While the Gaia principle excludes elements outside of planet earth (the planets, the cosmos) it is a step in the right direction of a more encompassing understanding of our embeddedness in earth.  Native American Chief Seattle supposedly said something like "whatever you do to the web you do to yourself." We are part of nature, we are nature just as much as trees, mushrooms, mice, wales, clouds, the sun, or our consciousness.  And because We Are Nature we need to relearn to honor it, and we need to learn responsible stewardship of it and ourselves as part of this enormous and intricate web.

amazing intent

Intent is the creative energy we use to put thoughts or ideas into action.  The stronger the intent the quicker we can make the idea happen (wavering slows the process down or even brings it to a halt).   One could say that intent solidifies thought. DSC07339We are currently building a house.  For the longest time this house only existed as an idea.  But as we kept working at this idea we put processes in place to solidify it and make it appear in the physical realm.  We bought property, we imagined how we'd like to live, we sketched floor plans on paper, we thought about what we'd like the house to look like, we hired an architect, then a contractor, we got financing, and now this house we imagined for so long is actually emerging from the ground.  Our ideas are becoming reality. photo[1]

Thought creates matter is what they say.  In a way it's quite magical.  If you can think something up you can create it.  Imagine the possibilities!!!

and now about aromatherapy

various essential oils Here is another gentle holistic therapy that acts on the entire body/mind/spirit continuum without side effects (unlike allopathic medications, which alter the body chemistry to counter-act symptoms and do so with side effects).  Aromatherapy, in contrast to homeopathy, which I wrote about recently, is a very ancient healing modality dating back thousands of years.

Essential oils are distilled from different plant parts and are massaged into different body parts, inhaled or even ingested.   Many essential oils have anti-viral, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial and anti-parasitic properties, and may be excellent substitutes for antibiotics and other drugs with side effects.

two of my most used oils

I put a few drops of tea tree and eucalyptus oil in a bowl of hot water and inhale the steam for treatment of viral or bacterial infections of the respiratory tract.  Lavender oil (diluted in water and sprayed on) heals scar tissue and burns.  When my children had ear infections, I dripped a bit of warm (not hot!) olive oil with a drop of tea tree oil (or garlic, oregano or cinnamon oil) into the affected ear, put some cotton in it, and repeated this a few times a day.   The ear infection usually cleared without the use of antibiotics. My daughter swears by a drop or two of lavender on her pillow to sleep well.  Instead of commercial mouthwash I rinse with a few drops of peppermint and tea tree oil in water after brushing my teeth (tea tree is  anti-bacterial, peppermint is anti-inflammatory).  When my children had colds I used to put a diffuser in their room overnight with a few drops of eucalyptus and tea tree oil.

an essential oil diffuser

The sicker our body and our emotional health, the lower the frequency of the body.  Different essential oils have different electrical frequencies.  A properly trained aromatherapist can realign the body's "out-of-tune" frequency through a combination of different oils and different application methods on different body locations.  This is obviously much more complex than my little home remedies.

Please take a look at these links for further inspiration and information:  University of Maryland Medical Center on aromatherapy, www.aromatherapy.com, and health.howstuffworks.com.

On a different note, essential oils, such as citrus oils (lemon, orange) or herbal oils (rosemary, thyme) can be used in cooking and baking (cinnamon oil) by adding a few drops to cake or cookie dough or salad dressings for example.

Happy healing and happy cooking!

 

what about homeopathy?

As we are reaching the limits of absurdity of our Western healthcare system,  as in outrageous costs (see NY Times on the outrageous cost of medical procedures here vs. other countries), ineffective treatments, reimbursement nightmares, being treated like a number, dangerous side effects, to name just a few issues, more and more people are turning  to what they call "CAM," complementary and alternative medicine. Over the next few weeks I will present a few of those alternative therapies as a matter of inspiration.  I can't hide my bias for homeopathy, coming from Germany (where it comes from), and having grown up in France and Belgium (where pharmacies' awnings declare whether they carry homeopathic remedies, which many of them do, because it is a commonly accepted treatment method over there).

homeopathic over-the-counter remedies

Over on this side of the Atlantic homeopathy is oftentimes still poopooed as "nothing more than diluted water" out of sheer ignorance - but then there will always be skeptics until they open up their minds to new possibilities.

Homeopathy, like for example aromatherapy, works on the subtle energetic level.  The remedies realign and rebalance our frequencies (the higher your frequency the healthier and more joyful you are, the lower your frequency the worse your health and also your disposition and emotional wellbeing).  Homeopathic remedies come in dilutions so minute, that the original substance cannot be detected in them.  However, the pill or the water the pill has been dissolved in, has been imprinted with the subtle information of the original matter it was made of such as mineral or plant.  Strangely enough, the higher the potency, the more subtle the dilution - and lo and behold, the more powerful the effect.

Over-the-counter remedies, like the blue ones shown in the first picture, can be helpful.  They come in the lower potencies.  But the real help comes by seeing a homeopathic practitioner, preferably someone who is also an MD, and who determines the appropriate remedy via conversation to understand your symptoms, character, disposition, moods etc.  S/he may prescribe some of the higher potencies shown in the second picture, that should only be taken with appropriate instruction from a qualified practitioner as to how often to take them.

high-potency remedies prescribed by a homeopathic practitioner

Homeopathy is powerful, yet very gentle, and has no side effects whatsoever.  It is as effective for many physical symptoms as it is for emotional ones, such as depression, anxiety or eating disorders.   How the healing proceeds depends on many factors.  Oftentimes, I have taken a homeopathic remedy and after a few weeks the symptom has simply subtly disappeared.  Other times, the effect can be almost immediate.  It does happen, too, that other issues or symptoms disappear as well, or that you feel better in ways you would never have been able to anticipate.

Once, while I was still doing Taekwondo, I began taking a remedy.  A few days later I had to do a wood break.  My subtle energy had risen to such a level that the wood broke a split second before my heel actually hit the wood!

Please check out the American Institute of Homeopathy, The North American Society of Homeopaths and the National Center for Homeopathy for more information.  Happy Healing!

put your money where your values are

In the spring we switched our electric energy supplier to Viridian and chose 100% renewable energy (they also have a 20% renewable energy option).   Viridian is a socially responsible (another worthwhile value) power company that supplies clean energy from local wind power. I found that cheaper is not necessarily better, because this is no longer my only value and consideration when making a purchase.  Oh - I do admit that I buy things at Walmart - where else can I get sewing thread, school notebooks, cotton socks, a sink stopper, pens and envelopes, marshmallows for our camping trip all in one place?  And at Trader Joe's (lots of inexpensive organics).  But then they have certain values attached to them, which I buy into.  Walmart (the new Woolworth) offers lots of different utilitarian things in one place (important since I live in the country and have few specialty stores), and Trader Joe's means organics for the masses.

I am conscientious about what I buy and where I buy it:  meat from local farmers (or venison from our own fall harvest), produce from food coop, local farm stands, or the farmers' market, organic grocery staples in bulk from the coop, eggs from a friend or a local farmer, clothes for myself and my daughter mostly from local second hand stores, pet supplies from the local pet store for the corn based cat litter (and I make my own cat food), 100% recycled copy paper for the office: from Staples (only place that has it), 100% recycled toilet paper and paper towels from Trader Joe's (lots less than the local supermarket), to name just a few choices that indicate clear values.

Imagine what would happen if 80% of Americans stopped buying GMO corn and soy products? And remember, if you don't buy organic they'll keep spraying the pesticides that are killing the bees, which are our main produce pollinators (!!!). So be aware of what values you fund, or don't fund with your purchases.  Cheap is not the only value.

Also see a similar post on voting with your dollars.

healing is shifting

"Doctors don't dispense wellness, they suppress symptoms," Dr. George Wootan, a pretty enlightened family practitioner from West Shokan, NY, said recently during a talk I attended.  There you have my gripe with allopathy, the Western medical healing paradigm.  Suppressing symptoms is not healing because it maintains the same underlying thought patterns. A friend recently posted something like this on Facebook:  "Has it ever happened to you that all of a sudden you see something in a totally different light, and you wonder how it happened, and why you did not see it in that light all along?"  A shift has happened.

Some of these shifts happen gradually over the years, some of them happen suddenly.  Eckhart Tolle describes such a sudden shift early in his first book The Power of Now.  After years of dread and depression he woke up one morning and suddenly the world looked bright and beautiful to him.

True healing comes from within.  It arises out of shifts in thinking, in consciousness.    I believe that almost all ailments are due to emotional hang-ups - such as negative thoughts and beliefs, emotional trauma, or past life residues.  When you clear these, through your own work and intent, or with someone's help, the energy channels open up and the shift happens, all by itself.