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25 Mar

The Lessons of Uncertainty and Loss

An Excerpt from Seeking Jordan by Matthew McKay, PhD

The sound of truth, like some harmony that only the wise can hear, rings out in the spiritual salons and in the clerics’ quarters; it is heard from the high pulpits and after eating peyote.

But the sound of truth — the words and rhythms — is just a seduction. The emotion of certainty is just an emotion — no more true or false than any other. The mind says yes because the mind fears what it can’t predict or explain.

The mind seeks the exquisite relief of order and linearity. It seeks the Great One who can finally explain our pain, our waiting in the dark. The mind is always ready to say yes because it is wired into us, into our hunger to make sense of this place.

The idea of truth deceives us. The light holds a million versions of the truth — no one of them complete or whole. Each is the partial wisdom of one moment, looking across one vista. Each is a moment of great vision and a lie, because certainty seduces, and in that certainty every other vantage place is lost.

We seek certainty because it is the antidote to fear. We seek certainty because it’s the one thing impossible to find here.

But certainty is more dangerous than doubt. From conviction come razor-edged rules. Beliefs born of certainty harden and become swords of emotional violence. They cut and wound. They kill love because love — above all — accepts. It softens around each necessary flaw.

Certainty divides the world into what is true and false, rejected and embraced. It is the defense of the righteous, the self-willed. It is what war — in every form — is made of.

So this is certain: there is no certain truth here. And the certainty we think we find is often damaging; it is never the last word. It is never complete.

While doubt is painful, it is not a curse. Jordan has told me that doubt and uncertainty are necessary to our development as souls. They create a rocky field where things grow that can be found in no other place.

***

Sitting at my childhood desk once again, I meditate as I prepare to speak with Jordan. Behind the glass mask, a candle emits blue light. Outside, a susurrant breath of wind pushes through the redwoods. Finally, from some internal stillness, I ask Jordan why doubt and uncertainly are a necessary part of our life here. His answer comes in just a moment. Jordan explains:

Certainty is not a healthy state for souls — incarnate or discarnate. There is an immense amount we don’t know. All learning must take place through the lens of doubt, which is why each thing we learn should be held as a mere hypothesis.

Doubt lies at the root of hope, and it is the experience of hope that makes seeking possible, that drives the quest for new knowledge and wisdom. So doubt motivates learning, the quest to enter what is unknown, the determination to turn darkness into light.

The doubt of incarnates, isolated as we are from our soul groups and guides, is especially painful. Nothing is certain; nothing is verifiable. We can’t even know with certainty whether the physical world is an illusion of consciousness. And while I can tell you that the physical universe exists in space and time, my words can’t prove that you aren’t dreaming. Where can we go for the truth? There is no one to ask except gurus, who are often lost themselves and may be making things up.

Here’s something important: the doubt of incarnates is crucial to the growth of all consciousness. That’s because seeking, in an environment where nothing can be proved or verified, creates openness to all the infinite possibilities. We are unencumbered by any absolute knowledge, so we can soar to imagine endless possibilities.

Paradoxically, discarnates are limited by vast, seemingly incontrovertible knowledge, which makes it more difficult for them to imagine the dark, unseen corners of the universe. We come to Earth (and other worlds) to know nothing and to imagine everything. With no certainty, with only intuition and the scientific method to guide us, we can reach past the observable bones of the universe to think what has never yet been thought and to ask what has never yet been a question. That is the gift of living in this uncertain place.

We have used our experience of not knowing to seek wisdom since souls began inhabiting bodies. We have sought truth through myths and allegories, through epic stories passed down from our elders, through beauty, and through endless observations of what works and what doesn’t. We have touched truth partially; we have at times sensed something enormous, just beyond the edges of thought. We have given all that we sensed and saw and imagined to collective consciousness — without any certainty of what was true or false.

 

That is what we do here.

# # #

Matthew McKay, PhD, is the author of Seeking Jordan and numerous other books. He is a clinical psychologist, professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, and founder and publisher at New Harbinger Publications. Visit him online at http://www.SeekingJordan.com.

Excerpted from Seeking Jordan: How I Learned the Truth about Death and the Invisible Universe. Copyright © 2016 by Matthew McKay, PhD. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

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25 Mar

Why Things Happen

The ones who hurt Jordan go on, while his days with us slip farther and farther into the past. What was the plan, the purpose, in his leaving so early, in the middle of a passionate life?

In the beginning I tried to explain that rendezvous — between Jordan and his murderers — as chance, as a random convulsion of fate where men who are prone to violence happened to cross his path. And I have imagined them as victims too, poured from families and neighborhoods that breed trauma. I have imagined them, impoverished of other opportunities, using violence as an instrument to prove themselves or meet basic needs.

I have tried to explain violence — and the moment Jordan died — as the poet W. H. Auden did: “Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.”* But while that statement is absolutely true — as I know from my own work with trauma victims — I less and less believe it as the reason for losing my son. That’s because the matrix of cause and effect is only the most obvious explanation for events.

If I let go of my pen, the force of gravity will make it fall. Cause and effect. If a child is raised in a brutal, treacherous environment, attachment theory predicts he or she will struggle with emotion dysregulation, as well as with aggressive or impulsive behavior. Again, this would appear to be cause and effect. However, falling pens don’t make choices. Our human ability to choose — through some degree of free will — tangles the web of cause and effect. Causes become harder to trace.

To understand why Jordan was killed I’ve had to go back to the question of why we are here. In fact, I’ve had to go even further, to the purpose of the material universe.

Jordan tells me this:

The purpose of matter — whether in the form of circling planets or the human body — is to help consciousness grow. All of physical existence serves this purpose. Consciousness creates matter and the laws of the universe. Then it manipulates and lives in physical worlds in order to learn and evolve. So every event is an opportunity for souls to grow.

There is no tragedy; there is no loss. There are just events we learn from.

We select lives based on what will probably happen in that life, and what those experiences will teach. So our lesson plan determines the body, family, and environment we enter — including major relationships, challenges, and crises. But things don’t always go according to plan, because of choices — our own and those of the souls around us. The possibilities at the moment when we select a life are often changed by the counterforce of free will.

The matrix of cause and effect, stretched over time, collides with hundreds of choices by dozens of nearby souls. As a result, what we signed up for may look very different thirty, forty, or fifty years into a particular life. To add to the uncertainty, lessons that go unlearned must be presented again in new circumstances. And karmic challenges that have finally been faced and surmounted will be dropped from the lesson plan, with new learning opportunities to replace them.

 

How much, I ask Jordan, of the lesson plan for a life actually happens?

The big challenges and major events usually occur. This is because the waves of probability are so strong and because they intersect from multiple sources. But events with a lower probability are often erased by decisions we make. For example, souls born in the 1920s and 1930s had an almost 100 percent probability of facing World War II. Where they lived and how the war might touch them wasn’t likely to change. But choices they made responding to countless life events could change their circumstances — even to the point of altering the likely span of their lives.

In short, the big stuff is set. But as the force of probability diminishes, our individual wills have more effect on what happens. This much is always true: whether events occur as planned or are affected by choice, the purpose of everything is to learn.

# # #

Matthew McKay, PhD, is the author of Seeking Jordan and numerous other books. He is a clinical psychologist, professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, and founder and publisher at New Harbinger Publications. Visit him online at http://www.SeekingJordan.com.

Excerpted from Seeking Jordan: How I Learned the Truth about Death and the Invisible Universe. Copyright ©2016 by Matthew McKay, PhD. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

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25 Mar

All Together: The Living and the Dead

An Excerpt from Seeking Jordan by Matthew McKay, PhD

At the funeral, all eyes are on the coffin. As if the one inside was the victim of misfortune, struck down by some malicious fate.

Death isn’t bad luck, because there is no difference between the living and the dead. The one in the coffin is doing the same thing as the one grieving in the pew: loving and learning.

There is no difference between the living and the dead because the young have already been old, already taken a last breath, already watched planets die and galaxies collide. The one in the coffin is finished with this play. That’s all. And has taken everything learned back to “the whole,” back to the light.

The mourners go home. And while they grieve, the departed one is in the circle, greeting a brother from one life, or greeting a father, a daughter, a friend from others. Greeting a lover who left early, and a lover who in another play was left behind. Greeting the ones who were teachers, who were antagonists, who were protectors or protected. Greeting the one who ended a past life, who was a murderer.

The circle is always complete. We are always in it, and the funeral is an illusion. While souls actually experience no separation (just as Jordan is still with me), most human minds believe that the loss of the body is the loss of the person. And that if something cannot be seen, it isn’t there.

The human mind, having amnesia for all past lives, identifies each person (soul) with a single body. And if that body/person can no longer be seen, it is assumed to be gone. Lost.

But that isn’t the case. Jordan’s soul is right next to me, guiding me as I write this. Souls do not leave us, and the circle does not break just because that brilliant collection of molecules called a body is put in a box.

I know this, yet still I sometimes feel alone. I ask Jordan, and he explains:

The illusion of separation is perpetuated by religious images of the afterlife — an extraordinary realm so different from our planet that its inhabitants seem unreachable and lost to us. But again, it is the human mind creating fictions.

Images of the afterlife imbued with religious constructions of god and fantastic beings (for example, archangels and demons) are inventions of priests and holy men who attempted to make the journey while still embodied on Earth. Often aided by drugs or assaults on the body (including pain, sleeplessness, sensory overload, or deprivation), they saw in the “afterlife” what they wanted to see, what they feared seeing, or simply what their minds created in an altered state. The Tibetan and Egyptian books of the dead, the Upanishads, and the visions of countless mystics are examples of these journeys.

The Christian image of heavenly hosts singing god’s praises is also just a lovely hallucination. Such images — clouds and harps and angels at the gate — create hope. But paradoxically, they place embodied souls further away from those in spirit, making it seem that discarnates are in a place that’s sublime, distant, and inaccessible. These invented images hide the fact that departed souls are as much with us now as they were in life — perhaps more so, because now they are present as soon as we think of them. Telepathy covers any distance, instantly bringing souls together.

Souls in spirit love us as much as ever, think of us as much as ever, laugh with us at the absurdities of life, feel concerned about our pain, and celebrate our good choices. There is a simple reason for this. The relationship between living and departed souls is as deep, as vibrant, as committed, and as much in the present moment as ever it was on Earth.

This seems true to me. I am more in contact with Jordan now than I was at any time from when he left for college at eighteen until he was murdered at twenty-three. I consult with him often — about everything from family issues to personal choices. I send and receive messages of love and encouragement. And we are writing this book together.

I cannot hold or kiss my boy, which is a tremendous loss. But I can talk to him anytime, anywhere. There is no barrier — in this or in the spirit world — that can keep us apart.

 

The Struggle with Doubt

The only thing now standing between us is my own doubt. The doubt visits often, whispering that my conversations with Jordan are wishes rather than truth, and that all he has taught me is a fabrication, my own thoughts attributed to him. When in doubt, I withdraw. I seek him less. I feel frightened that I’ll discover something false in what he says, which will destroy my faith in us.

The doubt is unavoidable. I’ve learned that I must live with its whisperings even while I listen to Jordan. The doubt never leaves, because in this place absolute truth is hidden from us. Mother Teresa wrote that most of her life was spent with no sense of the presence of god. And whether or not the god she thought existed is really there, this dialectic remains: the quest for truth and the uncertainty are inescapably one experience.

Jordan says we are like shortwave radios, tuned to the frequency of some distant voice. Through the static, we pick up a phrase or two. We try to sew that into some coherence, but we have caught only a part of it. Through desire or projection, we may supply the missing words and get most of it wrong. But still we must listen.

I’ve learned one more thing about doubt. My need to send Jordan love and feel his love in return is bigger than doubt, bigger than the uncertainty and loneliness of living here without being able to hug my boy.

# # #

Matthew McKay, PhD, is the author of Seeking Jordan and numerous other books. He is a clinical psychologist, professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, and founder and publisher at New Harbinger Publications. Visit him online at http://www.SeekingJordan.com.

Excerpted from Seeking Jordan: How I Learned the Truth about Death and the Invisible Universe. Copyright ©2016 by Matthew McKay, PhD. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

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21 Mar

Feeling Lonely? Talk to a Woman.

Based on the book Stop Being Lonely. Copyright © 2016 by Kira Asatryan. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.NewWorldLibrary.com

Article based on the book Stop Being Lonely. Copyright © 2016 by Kira Asatryan. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.NewWorldLibrary.com

Guest Blog by Kira Asatryan.

If you’re human, you’ve felt lonely – at least once or twice. If you’re a straight woman, you’ve likely craved the tender embrace of a man when this loneliness hits. Women know the road to happiness isn’t paved with men, and yet they’re often our first thought when we’re feeling unnervingly alone.

Men make us feel wanted. They make us excited about the future. It’s only natural to find comfort in finding a potential mate.

But women should know that a vast (and growing) body of research suggests that men – comforting as they may be – are the less skilled gender when it comes to creating meaningful connections… the type of connections that alleviate loneliness.

The research suggests, in fact, that women are better at providing the types of interactions that reduce loneliness – even for other women.

According to a study in which 96 college seniors recorded and rated every social interaction they had over a 2-week period, both male and female participants felt less lonely after talking to a woman.

As psychologist Carolyn E. Cutrona succinctly puts it, “…the amount of time spent interacting with females was a strong negative predictor of loneliness for both males and females; the more time students spent with women, the less lonely they were.”

So, my question to you is: should we be prioritizing time with women over time with men when we’re feeling lonely? Below are good reasons to give this some consideration.

Women Excel at “Getting” People

As I discuss at length in my book Stop Being Lonely, the foundation of an interaction that reduces loneliness is the feeling that you’ve been understood by the other person. When you believe the other person “gets” you – or at least an aspect of you – you instantly feel more seen and known… a precursor to feeling more connected.

While men are certainly capable of getting to know women and eventually sparking this “feeling seen” sensation in them, there’s good reason to believe that women spark it faster.

First of all, women are generally more comfortable sharing personal information than men are; men tend to be socialized to hold their private lives closer to the vest. This matters because – in an interaction – once one person reveals something private, the other person is much more likely to reciprocate with their own private revelation.

The reciprocal willingness of women to share private information – or “self-disclose” – builds upon itself when two women are interacting. Double the women may mean double the understanding.

In addition, female-to-female relationships tend to grow more consistently than female-to-male relationships, in part because women’s brains are better at remembering this personal information that’s been revealed and retrieving it at their next interaction.

According to analysis of over 1,000 brain scans, women’s brains are more wired for social skills and memory – a combination that’s excellent for retaining details about another person’s private life. In the words of Ragini Verma, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, “Women are better at remembering things. When you talk, women are more emotionally involved – they will listen more.”

 

Women Notice and Validate Feelings

To be less lonely, you need to feel at least somewhat understood by the person with whom you’re interacting – but that’s not all. You must also feel like that person cares about what you’re revealing. They must seem (at the very least) interested in what you’re sharing, or the potential connection will fall flat.

In other words, if the person you’re confiding in doesn’t appear to care about what you’re saying, confiding will feel like a mistake. You’ll feel like you took a risk, made yourself vulnerable, and it backfired.

The key to making someone feel cared about is emotional validation, and – surprise, surprise – women are better at it than men. While our society has long assumed that women are more fluent in emotions than men, it’s only recently than science has started to prove that that is the case.

In a 2009 study conducted by researchers at the Université de Montréal, live actors simulated facial expressions in front of a group of male and female participants, and the participants were asked to assess the emotions they had seen on the actors’ faces. The female participants were better at distinguishing between emotions – particularly the negative emotions of fear and disgust.

Perhaps even more intriguingly, all the participants “responded quicker when emotions were portrayed by a female rather than a male actor.” This implies that women are better at both identifying and expressing emotions.

But caring isn’t just the ability to name what someone is feeling; it’s also the ability to respond to that person’s feelings in a supportive way. And a 2015 study published in the journal Psychological Science found that, under moderate stress, women were better at being supportive of others than men were.

While men “made more negative comments and had more negative reactions” to their partners when stressed, “stressed women continued to offer positive support to their partners.”

 

Are Female-to-Female Relationships Undervalued?

While all this research may earn women some bragging rights, my goal here is not to imply that women are the better gender – not even socially. I could write an equally convincing piece that extolled the social virtues of men.

My goal is simply to pose two questions: First, are we women looking too intently at men to alleviate our loneliness? And second, are we undervaluing our relationships with women?

Actually, I think there’s a third question in here, as well. Are we women, at times, confusing a longing for connection with a longing for the company of men… or vice versa? While these two desires may masquerade as one another, they are decidedly different. And if science tells us anything, it’s that one of these two desires can be fulfilled by women.

Based on the book Stop Being Lonely. Copyright © 2016 by Kira Asatryan. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.NewWorldLibrary.com

KiraAstrayan1_cKira Asatryan is a certified relationship coach and author of Stop Being Lonely: Three Simple Steps to Developing Close Friendships and Deep Relationships. For more relationship tips, visit kiraasatryan.com and follow her on Twitter @KiraAsatryan.

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12 Jan

Our Story

By Nicole Azzopardi, author of The Alchemy Cookbook

We tried everything to help our little girl who seemed to be in pain and distress from birth.

Complications at her birth led to an emergency caesarean for which I am very grateful for and most probably saved both of our lives.

However, within days of being discharged from hospital my caesarean wound had become seriously infected and I was given five days of IV antibiotics, followed by two weeks of oral antibiotics.

I noticed after that first breastfeed that my little one had somehow been affected by the antibiotics in my milk, despite being reassured by doctors that treatment would not affect the milk. She screamed and screamed, seemed very colicky and had great difficulty sleeping and settling.

At just three weeks old our daughter had a herniated navel from screaming. She was clearly in agony. I told everyone in the health profession I could, but no one could help us. I was told this was very common behaviour of an infant.

So alone, we struggled on, severely sleep deprived, our baby projectile vomited, her poos were loose and green, she barely slept, had severe colic, her eyes seemed so wide. None of the parenting tricks and tips that were kindly shared with us seemed to work.

At six months we started solid foods as per government guidelines. The usual weaning food of ground white rice made our little girl so constipated that she screamed the house down. A litany of unsuitable nutritional advice followed and I took it all on. Desperate and frightened and sleep deprived.

We spent months on paediatric waiting lists. We went through three paediatricians with limited relief and every alternative healing modality imaginable.

At 11 months old our daughter was diagnosed anaphylactic to egg, nut and sesame. Thankfully, this finally gave us, and the medical world, some clues and direction about the appropriate course of action.

Yay! Finally people were realising that I wasn’t crazy! Our baby needed help as I had been telling them all along. Avoiding these foods in my breast milk helped our daughter instantly and enormously.

However, while we followed a traditional Mediterranean wholefood diet, we also became aware that Stevie was highly sensitive to the naturally occurring chemicals in fresh foods. The salycilates, amines, glutamates found in fruits and vegetables were all identified as affecting her ability to sleep and her mood.

By the time Stevie was 14 months old she had become oppositional, aggressive – would be awake for hours in the night. The so-called night terrors escalated. We gave paracetamol and ibuprofen almost every night thinking she had to be in pain.

We had no idea how to help our little girl.

Recognising a gut in distress

A few months later our daughter’s tantrums had become longer and more frequent.

Putting my journalist’s hat on, I discussed research with one of the authors of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital diet and were able to implement their recommendations of a short-term elimination diet to identify Stevie’s ability to digest amines, glutamates – food chemicals.

Working with our dietician, we again saw a dramatic change in behaviour. We knew limiting certain foods were related to her seeming much better. We were managing, she was coping better but we had not yet learned how to help our daughter heal.

At 14 months old, Stevie was weaned. I was six months pregnant with her sister Josephine and I just couldn’t do it anymore. The third paediatrician we saw recommended Stevie be put on Elecare. I tried to give it to her but she was repelled by the taste. Looking back, I am so grateful we never went down this path.

However despite ours and the medical world’s best efforts, our little girl deteriorated in the most frightening way.

Still around the age of 14 months old, she began to display autistic-like traits and would lie rigid on the floor screaming and kicking her legs, pulling at her lips, no eye contact, could not speak to us. Food items had to be placed on separate plates of specific colour. She incessantly watched one television program.

She began to say, “Don’t look at me. Don’t touch me.” She would zone out for a minute or two at a time unreachable to me in that time which I now understand could have been mini seizures.

She could not stand the feeling of clothes on her skin. There was only one dress she could wear. We didn’t go anywhere as she couldn’t stand the feeling of the seat belt on her skin. We stopped visiting people and people stopped visiting us.

Despite my mother having chemotherapy and radiation treatment for cancer where she lived an hour and a half away, we barely visited her as I knew Stevie was too distressed by the travel.

Loud noises terrified her. Use of the stick mixer or our food processor caused her to run to her bedroom, holding her ears and shutting the door.

She smashed her little head on the ground. At one point I remember her doing it on a concrete footpath without even seeming to feel it. I felt sick to my stomach watching it. I felt totally helpless.

The night screaming would happen three or four times a night for about 40 minutes at a time. Meltdowns happened many times in the day and she was very fixed on things. I learned the difference between a two-year old tantrum and this kind of meltdown. The length and the frequency of this behaviour throughout the day made me wonder and worry increasingly about our daughter’s neurological development.

At its peak, my partner James had to leave his job. He worked some overnight shifts. We had our little Josephine being woken up through the night by Stevie’s screaming as well.

Quite truthfully, I dreaded the days. I was frightened at night. I can honestly say it was truly the most horrible experience I have ever known in my life.

The difference between food allergy and food intolerance

In addition, Stevie seemed to be hungry all the time and could never get enough food. People external to us immediately assumed she was going through a growth spurt but this behaviour became extreme.

As recommended by our dietitian, I would feed her a variety of whole foods, meat, veg, fruits, seed-like grains, legumes soaked and sprouted – all freshly made from scratch – but she would eat to bursting point. Despite our best efforts, her stomach still looked malnourished, she was thin and eyes dark. She would open her bowels every four days or so and I noticed her behaviour would improve after every bowel movement. Stools were formed then followed by loose impacted stool.

Meanwhile, I was cooking round the clock but nothing seemed to be helping her. I could see clearly that the gut and brain were definitely connected in this problem and luckily physiological symptoms were always good markers of gut distress, rather than just two-year-old behaviour.

For example, if I gave Stevie foods like broccoli, avocado and miso soup, I watched as hives spread across her mouth and down her back. I watched her behaviour also deteriorate and she became oppositional and aggressive soon after eating these foods, which I later learned is a common symptom of food intolerance to the amines in the food rather than food allergy.

At first however, I panicked, wondering if anaphylactic shock was about to play out as this is one of the early signs.

I searched around for traces of egg or nuts and sesame that she had been diagnosed as being allergic to, I re-wiped her high chair and washed my own hands and was dumbfounded as I knew I had got rid of all these foods from our house for the time being.

As you can imagine, it was a totally unsustainable situation, if I wasn’t watching for the allergens that could kill our daughter in a matter of minutes, I was trying to support her through what seemed like wave after wave of anxiety attacks. Like many parents reading this book, I felt beaten and broken into a million pieces.

In the end we had nothing to lose and despite her being seriously allergic to eggs and nuts we tried the Gut and Psychology Syndrome Diet (GAPS) created by neurologist and nutritionist Dr Natasha Campbell McBride.

This wonderful doctor was forced to turn to food as medicine after her own son developed autism. She found the healing protocol she put in place for him transformed her non-verbal little boy into a walking, talking, very healthy child.

He is now a fully grown, university educated, healthy man. Inspired by her story, we leaped into GAPS.

The principles made sense. It was purely and simply a food as medicine regime and I felt that at the very least, it could do no harm.

At the age of two, Easter 2013, Stevie went on the protocol’s introduction diet and took small amounts of probiotic powder and gelatine. Every single step was tiny, painstaking in fact, but she began to improve.

Then she really began to improve.

We implemented the introduction diet as well as we could with the restriction of egg, nut and sesame.

As the diet recommended we cut out all grains and starches. We began with soups and stews using vegetables and meats that Stevie could tolerate. Pumpkin soups cooked with chicken stock, rich in essential minerals and sleep inducing glycine was a staple. The gelatine derived from these stocks were said to soothe an inflamed gut wall and plug holes created by leaky gut syndrome.

Marrow by the teaspoon, again rich in essential fats and minerals was fed to her and tiny amounts of chicken liver pate, high in Vitamin B and importantly B12 were also part of the food as medicine healing process.

We later learned through genetic testing that Stevie’s Vitamin D and B genes were not functioning. Her methylation and detox pathways were extremely compromised. This could be a major contributor to why she was suffering from autistic symptoms. Autistic children share similar DNA I was told. In addition, around 80 per cent of autistic children suffer from either constipation and/or diarrhea.

In a matter of days and weeks, the hives around her mouth stopped, sleep improved. We added digestive enzymes and a synthetic probiotic very slowly – the head of a pin a day in fact – and we watched her bowels and in turn her mood improve.

We used Japanese acupressure, applied castor oil packs and gave small amounts of digestive enzymes. We gave a teaspoon of fresh pressed carrot juice first thing in the morning to help stimulate bile.

Very quickly we were able to introduce tiny amounts of foods like broccoli and avocado, building up day by day. We introduced a whole host of fats starting with ghee, then butter, olive oil and eventually macadamia nut oil.

We gave grass fed meats, fermented vegetables, cultured dairy such as kefir using goat milk, 24-hour cow’s milk yoghurt and a range of seasonal fruits – each one responsible for restoring our daughter back to excellent health.

I started the support group www.mummacare.com around this time to offer some recipes to people also going through similar restrictions. All those posts eventually became what is now The Alchemy Cookbook – Transforming Food into Medicine.

At Easter 2015, we completed the two-year recommended GAPS gut/brain healing protocol and we have a very different little girl I am overjoyed to tell you.

Stevie no longer needs her epipens for a start.

Very quickly, with every visit to our paediatric allergist, tests revealed that Stevie’s allergies were leaving her.

At the time of writing, Stevie’s only known allergen is peanut, which was first registered around 10mm at 11 months old and was just 2mm one year ago.

Stevie falls into the category of the 20 per cent of people who drop their peanut allergy in their lifetime.

Scientists at the Murdoch Research Institute have only recently reported their findings from a trial that introducing probiotic to children with peanut allergy is implicated heavily in 80 per cent of the children being able to eat the food after only a matter of months.

As you can and will see, the science is catching up and there is so much potential and hope for the kind of radical and practical healing story we have personally experienced and been astonished by.

By implementing very simple changes, in some people – I stress not all – I have learned that when you heal the gut, you allow the immune system to not have to work so hard. If the immune system is not working over time it is not at risk of going haywire – sending out messages to attack the body and the brain when every day foods are introduced.

In addition, I am pleased and infinitely relieved to tell you Stevie and the rest of our family now sleep very well at night. She still wakes once or twice but with no screaming or upset. Her appetite has normalised and she loves her meals. Her bowels are very regular and healthy and her weight is bang on target. She loves cream and butter and avocado.

In the past, she could not handle even a little bit of broccoli or avocado. These days, she has enormous amounts.

She is calm and happy in the day and we as a family can relax and enjoy her. She loves kindergarten and to the outside world, looking at this child today, any of the above story would seem hard to believe.

I can assure you readers that what I am describing is a true and balanced account from a mother of sound mind and accurate perception.

Thankfully, I just happen to have the nature of a terrier dog and the skills of a journalist who brazenly rang up expert after expert, scientists, epigeneticists and paediatricians alike in pursuit of answers.

I also had the exposure and experience of shiatsu and Chinese medicine (James and I met while studying at the Australian College of Shiatsu) and we had both seen that eastern medicine had many answers that both complemented and went beyond western medicine in certain areas.

Together, James and I gathered up every last piece of our shattered, exhausted selves, we searched hard, did not leave each other’s or Stevie’s side and eventually found the keys to unlock our daughter’s health concerns.

It is my deepest wish that those reading this receive hope, courage and confidence to seek out their own answers to whatever healing mystery they are facing.

I wish you all well.

Nic

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07 Jan

How Ayurveda Saved My Life & A Harvard Physician’s Story

By Akil Palanisamy, M.D.

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
But to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain,
But for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield,
But to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
But hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone,
But let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.”

– Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize winning poet from India

I was on top of the world. I was a senior at Harvard University and had been accepted to

medical school to pursue my lifelong dream of becoming a doctor. That’s when the trouble started. While working on my senior thesis I noticed severe wrist pain with numbness and tingling in my arms. The pain got worse and began to interfere with my sleep. I could no longer type on a keyboard. I went to student health services and was diagnosed with repetitive strain injury (RSI).

I had worked hard during my college years in classes and research activities, but nothing out of the ordinary. I was used to working hard, and had a lot of energy to fuel that work. The previous year I had become vegetarian. Certainly, I was under stress but managed it with a daily meditation practice. I had a regular routine of gym workouts and yoga. The reason for my illness puzzled me.

I was prescribed anti-inflammatory medication and physical therapy, and was given extra time for writing during exams and help with typing my thesis. My symptoms abated but did not disappear. I was able to finish college and graduate with honors.

I then began medical school at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). My top choice, UCSF was considered the top medical school on the west coast and I was excited to begin. After eight years in Boston I was eager to escape the snow as well, although the cool climate in San Francisco surprised me. I began to understand the quote attributed to Mark Twain, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”

I completed my first year and was happy, although I was in class all day and studied several hours each night. My symptoms had been manageable with physical therapy but began to worsen when I started my second year. The wrist pain was intolerable at times and was accompanied by back pain that made it impossible to sit for more than fifteen minutes.

Also, a heavy and onerous fatigue began to set in, which I attributed to stress. Inexplicably, I lost 30 pounds over several months from my already lean baseline weight of 138. I could not attend lectures due to worsening back pain and fatigue. I was given extra time for exams, which helped me to pass my exams and not flunk out of medical school, but I began to struggle with severe anxiety, which had never bothered me before.

I adapted. I began intensive hand and wrist therapy. I learned to use voice recognition software. The University provided a foot-operated mouse. I dictated papers and class assignments. I studied at home using textbooks. Eventually I began to study lying down on my side, the only position that was comfortable for my back. This unfortunately led to neck and shoulder pain.

After completing my Board exams (8 hours of sitting down and typing answers to questions on a computer), I was afflicted with excruciating pain for three days. Although school had been challenging until then, I was about to start the most difficult part of medical school, the third year. This entailed long hours caring for patients in the hospital, being on overnight calls without sleep every few days and studying intensely without much time off.

I knew I couldn’t do it. I was in a state of deep despair. Here I was, after getting my degree at Harvard, pursuing my life’s passion of studying medicine at one of the top schools in the country, and I had to stop because my body was failing me. I had been in pain for so long that I wondered if it was even possible for me to get better. I had seen some of the top doctors in the country, gotten the best treatments, but continued to decline. I felt hopeless.

I asked for a leave of absence and was granted a year off. I decided I needed to get to the bottom of my illness. Three years of intensive physical therapy, doctor’s visits and medications had not helped at all. Something was missing.

My parents thought diet was a factor. They thought my becoming vegetarian was causing a problem. I believed this was not true because I ate a ton of fruits and vegetables, and ate tofu and dairy products for protein.

I had given up eating meat for ethical, environmental and spiritual reasons. I was an active member of the San Francisco vegetarian society, had organized vegetarian events for the University, and was a strong advocate for vegetarianism. I thought that my spiritual growth and meditation practice would be deepened by avoiding meat.

I had been studying Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India, for a while on the side. I decided to visit a practitioner in San Francisco. She diagnosed me with excess vata (air energy) and low ojas (vitality). She recommended some herbs and spices and dietary modifications. She suggested that I eat for my Ayurvedic body type and also incorporate some nourishing foods.

My path to recovery began with two words: bone broth. The Ayurvedic practitioner recommended it as one of the nourishing foods that could help restore vitality in my depleted body. But I was resistant. I could not eat animal products. I went back-and-forth about this for a few weeks.

Finally, because I was using animal bones that were about to be discarded, I decided that this did not violate my principles. After a month of daily bone broth, I was about 10% better, which was the first time anything had helped in years. Bone broth is rich in minerals and gelatin, which support digestive health and help reduce inflammation. My recovery from illness began with healing and repair of my gut.

In the story of the Buddha, after practicing an extreme form of asceticism, the Buddha was weak and near death. He was visited by a milkmaid who offered him a little milk. Despite the taboos against this, he decided to accept and eventually recovered his health. He went on to teach about moderation and The Middle Way. I felt I had reached a similar turning point. I questioned everything I thought I knew about health and disease. I decided to keep an open mind. I realized that there was a lot I didn’t know about nutrition and alternative therapies.

Next, I explored acupuncture, visiting three different acupuncturists for 10-12 sessions each. I didn’t see much improvement. I tried Qigong. I visited energy healers and reiki practitioners. I deepened my yoga practice. I continued taking herbs. I improved another 20%.

Four months of my year off had passed and I was still not feeling much better. I was becoming desperate. I decided to experiment with eating meat again. I was deeply conflicted about this after three years of vegetarianism. However, I was willing to try anything to recover my health, because I knew that I could not fulfill my dream of becoming a doctor without a healthy body.

One day I stopped by the UCSF cafeteria and bought a chicken sandwich. I went to an empty classroom where I could eat mindfully. Before eating, I prayed for some sort of sign or clue to let me know if I was doing the right thing.

Eating the sandwich was uneventful. But, as I was chewing the last mouthful of chicken, I bit into something hard. Surprised, I pulled the morsel out of my mouth and realized that it was a tiny rolled-up piece of paper. I unfurled it and saw that it had a word on it. The word was “RATION”.

I was puzzled. I decided to try to make some sense of this and just think about what the word might mean. To me, a ration was something scarce and valuable consumed during a time of need. Perhaps the message was that I needed a small amount of meat in my diet to get better. To this day, I don’t know how that piece of paper got into my sandwich. It’s a mystery.

I then meditated on the decision for several days. I realized that perhaps I should try eating meat for a while to see how I felt. My Ayurvedic practitioner agreed with this and explained that certain body types may do better with animal protein. In fact, she had wanted me to eat meat after our first visit. However, she started me initially with bone broths because she sensed I would be more open to that at the beginning, based on my strong ethical convictions.

(To be continued…)

Excerpt taken from The Paleovedic Diet by Akil Palanisamy M.D. (Skyhorse Publishing) Copyright © 2016. All rights reserved

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22 Dec

Nearly 80% of Americans with Digital Eye Strain Use Multiple Screens

Report Released at CES Finds “Second Screen” Trend May Worsen Eye Symptoms

LAS VEGAS (January 6, 2016) – Nearly eight of  every 10 Americans who suffer from digital eye strain use two or more devices simultaneously, according to a nationwide survey released today at the International Consumer Electronics Show.  The report by The Vision Council, based on a survey of more than 10,000 adults, finds that 65 percent of Americans experience symptoms of digital eye strain, such as dry, irritated eyes, blurred vision, neck and back pain and headaches.

“Our eyes are not built to stare at digital screens all day, but the demands of our modern-day world frequently put us in front of a screen for hours every day,” said Justin Bazan, OD, medical adviser to The Vision Council.  “Patients underestimate how their technology use may be contributing to eye strain and do not consider ways to reduce this stress.”

The report, Eyes Overexposed: Digital Device Dilemma, finds that Americans are spending more time using devices. In fact, one in 10 people report spending at least three-fourths of their waking hours on a digital device. Prolonged periods of use appear to exacerbate symptoms as 96 percent of Americans who experience digital eye strain spend two or more hours each day using devices. A combination of factors foster the onset of digital eye strain, including the proximity of the screen, the frequency and duration of use and the degree of exposure to high-energy visible (HEV) or blue light emitted by video screens.

Device use differs dramatically among generations. Key findings include:

  • A majority of parents (70 percent) who let their children use devices for three or more hours a day, or who do not set limits, report being very or somewhat concerned about the impact of digital devices on developing eyes.
  • Nearly nine of 10 Millennials (87 percent) in their 20s use two or more devices simultaneously and 73 percent report symptoms of digital eye strain.
  • Nearly 7 in 10 (67 percent) people in their 30s spend five or more hours each day on digital devices, contributing to the digital eye strain reported by 69 percent.
  • As adults in their 40s face challenges trying to focus their eyesight at varying distances and moving between devices, 66 percent experience digital eye strain.
  • Frequent users of computers, Americans 50 and older need to be cognizant of their work-space ergonomic set up. Nearly 65 percent of adults in their 50s and 53 percent of people 60 and older experience symptoms of digital eye strain.

“When using technology, many people think suffering with digital eye strain is unavoidable, but it doesn’t have to be,” said Mike Daley, CEO of The Vision Council. “The optical industry has responded to the shift in digital habits and has developed lens technology to protect eyes from blue light, glare and other environmental stressors.”

Commonly referred to as computer eyewear, these glasses have lenses that are constructed specifically for the mid-distance range at which users typically view a digital screen, and they can be purchased with or without a prescription. The lenses and filters are customized to reduce blurriness and pixilation, decrease brightness, block blue light, and minimize glare while working in front of a screen—or multiple screens.

Adults and children should have regular comprehensive eye exams to help preserve vision and identify other potential eye health issues. During an eye exam, patients should discuss their digital device habits with their eye care provider to determine the best solutions for their lifestyle.

Below are five tips to relieve digital eye strain:

  1. Wear computer eyewear and glasses with lens options that can help reduce symptoms of digital eye strain, block harmful blue light and improve vision.
  2. Follow the 20-20-20 rule: Take a 20-second break from the screen every 20 minutes and look at something 20 feet away.
  3. Build an optically optimal workspace to mitigate outside irritants. For example, reduce overhead lighting to eliminate glare.
  4. ‘High-five’ the screen for the right viewing distance when sitting at a computer.
  5. Increase text size on devices to better define content on the screen.

To view or download a copy of Eyes Overexposed: Digital Device Dilemma, visit The Vision Council online at www.thevisioncouncil.org/DES.

# # #

The Vision Council is exhibiting at CES in the Family Tech Zone. Find us in CES Tech West at The Sands in the Venetian at booth 74853.

About The Vision Council                                                         

Championing better vision for better lives, The Vision Council positions its members for success by promoting growth in the vision care industry through education, advocacy, research, consumer outreach, strategic relationship building and industry forums. By sharing the latest in eyewear trends, advances in technology and advice from eyewear experts, The Vision Council serves as a resource to the public looking to learn more about options in eyeglasses and sunglasses. For more information, visit www.thevisioncouncil.org.  

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21 Dec

VALSPAR FORECASTS 2016 COLORS OF THE YEAR

(CHICAGO, IL – OCTOBER, 2015) – The color experts at Valspar, the nation’s most widely distributed paint brand, have sized up the prevailing consumer lifestyle influences – those impacting culture, design, fashion, food, media and technology – and translated them into four inspiring color palettes predicted to trend in 2016. In addition to calling out 24 highly livable hues, the Valspar team also for the first time is recommending the perfect white – typically a preference for trims and ceilings – to complement each palette.

“At Valspar, we believe a fresh coat of paint is one of the easiest ways for people to change their homes for the better,” said Sue Kim, Valspar Color Strategist. “But with so many colors to consider, it’s nice to have a little help on the often stressful color selection journey – even when looking for the right shade of white. Choosing a white for doors, trim, ceilings or even a wall can sometimes be harder than choosing a color, so we are simplifying that this year by highlighting four of our most popular. Our goal is to provide consumers with knowledge and confidence to make choosing a color they love easier and less time consuming.”

According to Kim, the four 2016 trend palettes are defined as Comfort Zone,Simply Perfect, You Do You and Good Company. The suggested paint colors are drawn from Valspar’s vast portfolio of hues available at Lowe’s, Ace and independent paint retailers nationwide, and are perfect for interior, exterior and small project applications.

COMFORT ZONE

Busyness has replaced leisure as a status symbol. Schedules are filled to the brim, millennials are constantly plugged-in, and lines are blurred between work and leisure time. The Valspar Comfort Zone palette offers an antidote to this fast-paced lifestyle, with a selection of soft, calm colors that balance and restore the mind, body and spirit. “These muted mid-tones counter-balance busy living and are perfect for creating a restful yet stimulating environment to unwind, relax and recharge,” said Kim. A chalky white (Gray Palisade 7006-2) blends quietly with the comfy colors.

SIMPLY PERFECT

The movement toward simplified living that’s focused on fewer choices and enjoying the luxury of less inspired the Valspar Simply Perfect palette, a versatile, stylish set of grays that work well in any setting. “There’s no question that gray is the dominant shade of the decade and today’s default neutral,” said Kim. “We curated this palette to six of our most liveable grays to simplify selecting a foolproof neutral that effortlessly refreshes your space and seamlessly coordinates with your décor.” A clean white (Pale Bloom 7002-8) is the perfect accent for any of these go-to grays.

YOU DO YOU

Different is the new normal. Going against the grain is encouraged and applauded, often with the phrase ‘You Do You.’ It’s a mantra leading to this trend palette of expressive and uplifting zingy brights. “Generations Y and Z are fueling a broader acceptance of individuality, challenging stereotypes and standards of beauty,” said Kim. “These confident, spirited hues encourage you to express yourself in full color anywhere you’d like whether it be a full room, an accent wall, trim or furniture.” A pure white (7002-6 Du Jour) anchors the boldness of these brights.

GOOD COMPANY

Consumers today have high demands for transparency, integrity and authenticity – the fair trade movement and farm-to-table organic food trend are prime examples. This trend is interpreted in the Valspar Good Company palette, a collection of rich, familiar and enduring artisanal shades inspired by heritage and handcrafted products and materials. “These deep, pigmented colors evoke a connection to our heritage. We trust the tried and true and that is why they are so welcome in our homes today,” said Kim. A linen white (Totten’s Inlet 7006-9) enhances the natural richness of these tones.

The Valspar 2016 Colors of the Year are available in interior and exterior formulations as well as many of the brand’s specialty paint products including Furniture Paint, Spray Paint and Chalky Finish Paint.

To download a copy of all the Valspar color palettes of 2016, click the pdf here.

Valspar: If it matters, we’re on it.®

Valspar is a global leader in the coatings industry providing customers with innovative, high-quality products and value-added services.  Our 10,500 employees worldwide deliver advanced coatings solutions with best-in-class appearance, performance, protection and sustainability to customers in more than 100 countries. Valspar offers a broad range of superior coatings products for the consumer market, and highly-engineered solutions for the construction, industrial, packaging and transportation markets. Founded in 1806, Valspar is headquartered in Minneapolis. Valspar’s reported net sales in fiscal 2014 were $4.5 billion and its shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange (symbol:VAL). For more information, visit www.valspar.com and follow @valspar on Twitter.

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15 Dec

The Critics in Your Head Are Not You — or Your Partner

An Excerpt from Succulent Wild Love by Susan Ariel, Rainbow Kennedy and Dr. John Waddell

You have a constant stream of thoughts running through your mind, and we use the term “inner critics” to describe the thoughts that criticize you or tell you that you should be ashamed or feel guilty if you do what you want to do.

When you were growing up, basically well-meaning people taught you when to feel shame and guilt, and criticized you to get you to do what they wanted. Part of the information you took in about how to function in the world included these beliefs about who you “should” be and how you “should” behave.

After a while, these external voices became inner voices. And in many ways they were helpful. They reminded you what the rules were so you could avoid getting punished. They motivated you to achieve things so the people with authority would reward you. They protected you in a world where everyone was much bigger.

Now that you’re older, you have the ability to evaluate what is genuinely best for you and no longer need to rely on others to do that for you. But these clusters of beliefs are still in your head and often demand that you listen to them and do what they say.

They aren’t as useful to you now as they were when you were small. In fact, they can block you from taking actions that would truly nourish you. They were given to you by the authorities in your life based on their view of the world, one that isn’t necessarily best for you, especially the adult you.

Listening to these voices without questioning them, the same way you did when you were small, leads to unnecessary guilt and shame, and decisions that don’t serve who you are now. Additionally, in a relationship, if your partner echoes what your inner critics are saying, those criticisms can have tremendous power to affect you.

For example, if your partner says you should become a mountain climber to get more exercise, chances are this would not echo an inner critic. Few of us have been told that we need to climb mountains to be better people. If you had an interest in climbing, you might look into it. If not, you would simply ignore the suggestion, though you might wonder why your partner would encourage you to do this.

But if your partner says you should do something that echoes what an inner critic has told you — for example, that you should lose weight or get a better job or stop playing video games or eat differently, just to name a few common inner-critic beliefs — your response would likely be much more emotional.

You might be upset with your partner for saying that. You might feel defensive or down on yourself and pressured to do what they said. It would look and feel like your partner evoked those feelings, when in reality it was your inner critics. Sometimes even mild disappointment from someone whose opinion you value can be experienced as severe criticism because it empowers your inner critics.

Using the Inner Critic Care System, you will be able to identify the thoughts in your head that speak critically to you or evoke guilt and shame, so when others echo them you can address your inner voices directly rather than trying to change the other person or having them dictate what you should do.

It doesn’t work to deny, repress, or ignore inner critics — if you do, their messages will only get louder and larger inside your head and project outward. Self-critical dialogue is extremely debilitating, not only in love relationships but at work and as you go about living your life.

Once you are able to deal with your inner critics effectively, you can look into others’ suggestions if they appeal to you, ignore them if not, and realize that their opinions and desires have more to do with them than you. You will be less affected by others’ judgments about you and be able to respond to them more harmoniously.

It isn’t that you might not want to make changes or improvements in your life, it’s that you don’t need to be bullied or criticized into doing so. Knowing how to manage inner critics and care for yourself at the same time will give you tremendous advantages in every area of your life.

Your inner critics don’t just criticize you, they also criticize everyone around you. Not only do you need to live up to their standards, often so does everyone else. So you might find yourself speaking for your inner critics and making judgments about your partner. And if their inner critics match yours, your partner is likely to respond defensively. You might even get into a big fight, when in reality it’s the inner critics in each of you fighting with the other’s.

The idea is for your adult self — we call it your Aware Self — to be in charge of your decisions, not your inner critics. Most of us start out so merged with our inner critics that we can’t see them. We might say things like, “That’s just the way I am, I’ve always been that way,” or, “I know I have flaws and should do better,” or, “Loving just isn’t easy for me — I always find faults and flaws in whomever I’m with.”

If the idea of inner critics is brand new to you, your first opportunity is to become aware of them. Begin to notice your inner dialogue. Is it critical of you or anyone else? Anything that implies that you or someone around you “should” be doing something different, or that you (or they) are bad, wrong, flawed, or unlovable as you are, is the voice of an inner critic.

Often, our thoughts move so quickly that we miss them. The easiest way to know that an inner critic has turned on you is by how you feel. If you’re angry at someone for criticizing you, if you feel that you should be different, if you feel down on yourself, and especially if you’re defending yourself — these are all signs of inner critics.

You can work from the feelings back to the thoughts. Allow yourself to be aware of the uncomfortable feelings and see if you can connect thoughts to them. They could be something like, “You’ll never find love,” or, “You should be better,” or, “You always ______.” The words “should,” “never,” and “always” are particular favorites of inner critics.

# # #

SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) and Dr. John Waddell are the authors of Succulent Wild Love. SARK is a best-selling author and artist, with sixteen titles in print and well over two million books sold. Dr. John has been helping individuals and couples lead happier lives for over 30 years through his clinical psychology practice and metaphysical teachings. Visit them online at PlanetSARK.com.

Excerpted from the book Succulent Wild Love ©2015 by SARK and Dr. John Waddell.  Printed with permission of New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

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19 Oct

Entering Your Inner House

An Excerpt from The Book of SHE by Sara Avant Stover

It’s time to learn how to take care of yourself. I mean really take care of yourself. The most profound self-care practice we can do is right under our noses. It’s an internal practice, so simple and obvious that we often completely miss it. When we bypass this step, no amount of external pampering can nourish our depths when we’re feeling depleted, afraid, overwhelmed, or insufficient.

Self-care is just this: lovingly meeting ourselves exactly where we are and allowing things to be as they are. When we can hold ourselves in this way, our inner world starts to become softer, gentler. We start to trust our own basic goodness, and we even come to learn that irritation, aversion, doubt, and resistance aren’t to be evicted through our self-care; they’re to be allowed and included by it.

Devoid of our loving presence, our bodies become more like haunted houses than goddess temples. How did we end up this way? Trauma has frozen inside. Our bodies house all of our old memories, sensations, thoughts, and emotions. Scary, unpredictable, too much, too little: At some point in our lives, our bodies became scary to inhabit. They craved foods that make us fat, sex that makes us “bad,” or pleasure that makes us “selfish.” They grew hair in inconvenient places. They bled through our pants and stained our sheets.

Deep down in our bodies’ depths roam the ghosts of unhealed trauma, abandoned creative passions, sensual desires, intuition, and the true power that comes from who we are, rather than what we do. Our bodies aren’t indentured servants here to labor for us until we take our dying breath. They are sacred chalices, home to our SHEs. The chalice, a metaphor for the Divine Feminine, is the lake, bowl, vessel, womb, or grail. We are not only embodied as but also governed by circles. Within this roundness, we house the entire universe — each season of the sun, sea, earth, and moon. We are microcosmic containers within which the miracle of life can grow, flourish, and decay. Our bodies help us live out the unique contribution we’re each here to make in the short time that we have. Our bodies always tell the truth and hold the information we need to thrive.

The confusion we harbor about our embodiment has reached epidemic proportions. We’re all living in a time that values spirit (masculine) over matter (feminine). These two qualities exist in everything and are independent of gender. Each man holds feminine, or yin, qualities, just as each woman holds masculine, or yang, qualities — in different degrees. When we appropriately balance these two poles, we become integrated human beings.

The well-known yin/yang symbol from Taoism illustrates how the coessential polarities of masculine and feminine energies intermingle and flow together to create a balanced whole. Yin is inside, slow, passive, dim, downward, female, moon, while yang is outside, rapid, active, bright, upward, male, sun.

Masculine awareness ascends. It rises up and out of the body, seeking spaciousness and the bird’s-eye view (think meditation, quantum physics, and the compartmentalization and mechanization of “the body” in Western medicine). Feminine awareness descends. It moves down and into the body, all the way into the heart of the earth (think belly dancing, Mother Teresa kissing lepers in the slums of Calcutta, and the use of medicine spirits in plants to heal the body). Ultimately, we need both to truly thrive as individuals, and as a society. We need both dancing and sitting still, penicillin and echinacea, splitting the atom and activating our compassionate hearts.

Since we’ve all inadvertently prioritized the “up and out” (masculine) current, we need to remember how to go “down and in” — not just as a concept, but as a felt experience. When we inhabit our bodies, we feel like we’ve come home. Embodying our womanhood needs to be a full-time affair.

# # #

Sara Avant Stover is the author of The Book of SHE and The Way of the Happy Woman. A pioneer in contemporary women’s work, she has been featured in Yoga Journal, Newsweek, and Natural Health and on ABC, NBC, and CBS. Visit her online at http://www.thewayofthehappywoman.com.

Excerpted from The Book of She: Your Heroine’s Journey into the Heart of Feminine Power ©2015 Sara Avant Stover. Printed with permission of New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

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