Letting Go - A Sample Ritual

 We all have things in our life that are outmoded, no longer useful or just a nuisance. Letting go of difficult people, things or situations can be a process that takes time. If you have something you want to change, performing a ritual for 'letting go' can make it happen quicker and easier. Using string or cotton, tie one end to yourself and another to another person representing someone or something you wish to be released from. Call out your discomfort and feelings of control and entrapment. Cut the tie that binds you and speak about how free you are and use affirmations 'I am free'. 

For more information: http://www.wisebrain.org/LettingGo.pdf

Kathleen Ball PhD - Templars in Brazil.

 Dr Ball was filming in Alto Paraiso de Goias in the 700 year old Brazilian caves that reveal the presence of the Poor Soldier Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. She has met tribal people from the area who have Templar ancestors. 

The first part of her research won many awards and was acclaimed by prestigious organisations for highlighting aspects of the unknown history of this area. She is also raising awareness of the difficulties facing these people who live close to the land and who suffer many deprivations. For more information, read on: 

Can You Be an Ocean Elder?

Queen Noor of Jordan is speaking about how pollution of the oceans affects everyone's health and how we must not be complacent in handing on to the future generation, a planet that can sustain life. Everyone can play a role in creating a healthier planet. Many countries in the Middle East are affected by water issues and climate change. 

Indigenous Kogi Shamans

Perhaps you have never heard of the Kogi people or knew that they regard themselves as the Elder Brothers to the rest of the world? However, the leaders of this tribe from Colombia, who are known as the “Mamas,” spoke out in a BBC documentary back in 1990. From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers’ Warning was directed by Alan Ereira, and was made as an urgent message for the people of the world, in the hope that big changes would be made.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy

 

What is DBT? This video explains!

Richard Bandler and NLP

Richard Bandler is the co-founder (with John Grindler) of Neuro Linguistic Programming and here he is speaking with a person who has painful memories. His attitude is more comedic than therapeutic but it demonstrates the method that is used to wipe away a memory. This approach is not specifically classed as a 'therapy'.

Craniosacral Specialist

 

Hugh Milne is Scottish and was born into a family of Osteopaths (his mother, father, grandfather and 2 uncles). Became a highly successful private specialist in Kensington early in his life but was hearing the voice of Spirit and became interested in psychodrama, gestalt, rolfing and other therapies and personal growth disciplines. Travelled to Bombay and met Bhagvan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) and spent seven years as the guru's bodyguard, in India and in Oregon. He returned to UK to become a writer, spiritual teacher and specialist practitioner.  

Pulsing

What is Pulsing Therapy? 

Pulsing as a style of massage with soft movements and rhythmic rocking. It gently releases tension, harmonises, energises, and nourishes. It is bodywork without being painful. It is powerful yet soft.

Rhythms are the breath, peristaltic digestive rhythms, the heart beat, the rhythms of sleep and wakefulness, brain rhythms, hormonal, endocrine and many others within the body and mind.  

Pulsing was developed in the mid 1970s by Curtis Turchin who was originally a Postural Integration therapist. He took some aspects of the Trager Approach to create a stretching and lifting style of bodywork to rock the client's body in order to release tension and stress. It is Rhythmic and meditative. Ideal to relax hyperactive children, Aspergers and other disabilities.  Releases tension! 

Carl Jung - Helping Psychology

Extraversion-Introversion is a key component of what makes up the human personality. More aggressive and gregarious individuals are generally referred to as extraverts, while introverts tend to prefer solitude and worry less about being social. By no means are introverts lonely people, they simply prefer to socialize and work in smaller groups. Extraverts live to meet new people and constantly expand their circle of friends, and they often do this quite actively.

“Codependency No More” Book Extract

Codependency Patterns: Think they are responsible for other people, for other peoples feelings, thoughts, actions, choices, once, needs, well-being, lack of well-being, and ultimate destiny. Feel anxiety, pity, and guilt, when other people have a problem. Feel compelled to help a person solve a problem, such as giving unwanted advice, giving suggestions, or fixing feelings. Fear when the help isn’t effective. Anticipate other peoples needs. Wonder why others don’t do the same for them. Find themselves saying yes when they mean no, doing things they don’t really want to be doing, doing more than their fair share, and doing things other people are capable of doing for themselves. 

     Not knowing what they want or need or, if they do, tell themselves what they want and need is not important. Trying to please others instead of themselves. Find it easier to feel and express anger about injustice done to others, rather than injustice has done to themselves. Feel safe when giving. Feel insecure and guilty  Feel safe when giving, feeling insecure and guilty when someone gives to them. Feel sad because they spend the whole lives giving to other people and nobody gives to them. 

Primal Therapy

Primal Therapy is a form of psychotherapy based on relieving the repressed feelings that result from childhood trauma or abuse by giving vent to the pain through the voice, often by crying and screaming. This allows the trauma, which might have been hidden from others for a lifetime, to be fully experienced, heard, to be exorcised, and then for the person to be supported and cared for, thereby healing the pain on the past, a process of catharsis. Dr Arthur Janov (born 1924), a psychologist and therapist, is the creator of this therapeutic technique and his book which describes his ideas, beliefs and the method of this therapy is titled 'The Primal Scream'. He also his written other books on psychotherapy. He was very influential in the 1970s, especially in California, and had some very high profile clients, such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Naikan Therapy

Naikan Therapy was developed by a Buddhist monk in the 1940s. It involves self examination, looking inside and is an aid to mental health. It asks three questions:

What have I received from this person?

What have I given to this person? 

What trouble have I caused this person? 

The GROW Approach to Coaching

Milton Erickson

Who was Milton Erickson?
1901 - 1980 Erickson was a hypnotherapist who was successful due to his personal experience and innovative mind. Pacing, intense listening, acknowledgement and acceptance of the client's perception, is a vital tool to change. Respecting another's way of seeing the world! Families, work environments, politics, health, schooling, all can benefit from pacing - a person centred method! He described their ongoing experience, what they felt, thought and saw. It gave access to the unconscious mind. The Milton Model was a way in which he used vague words to produce a trance like state in his clients.

Improving Your Sleep

One of the greatest complaints physicians hear is that patients have poor quality sleep. This either comes in the form of insomnia, or feeling tired after a full night's rest. 

Mind Mapping Demonstration

Designed by the late Tony Buzan in the 1970s, this is a very useful way of collating psychological material. This video demonstrates how to create a 'mind map'. I use them all the time as a writer to organise the information for my feature articles. The most simple form is a spidergram, which has been available since my childhood days.

LomiLomi Foot Massage Demonstration

Self Actualisation Qualities

 According to Maslow, self-actualizing people share the following qualities:

• Truth: honest, reality, beauty, pure, clean and unadulterated completeness
• Goodness: rightness, desirability, uprightness, benevolence, honesty
• Beauty: rightness, form, aliveness, simplicity, richness, wholeness, perfection, completion,
• Wholeness: unity, integration, tendency to oneness, interconnectedness, simplicity, organization, structure, order, not dissociated, synergy
• Dichotomy: transcendence, acceptance, resolution, integration, polarities, opposites, contradictions
• Aliveness: process, not-deadness, spontaneity, self-regulation, full-functioning
• Uniqueness: idiosyncrasy, individuality, non comparability, novelty
• Perfection: nothing superfluous, nothing lacking, everything in its right place, just-rightness, suitability, justice
• Necessity: inevitability: it must be just that way, not changed in any slightest way
• Completion: ending, justice, fulfillment
• Justice: fairness, suitability, disinterestedness, non partiality,
• Order: lawfulness, rightness, perfectly arranged
• Simplicity: abstract, essential skeletal, bluntness
• Richness: differentiation, complexity, intricacy, totality
• Effortlessness: ease; lack of strain, striving, or difficulty
• Playfulness: fun, joy, amusement
• Self-sufficiency: autonomy, independence, self-determining.

Arthur Janov

Who was Arthur Janov? 

Arthur Janov was a Californian psychotherapist who developed the theory of Primal Therapy. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were clients. Primal Therapy involved screaming, crying and expressing early abuse. 

Internal Family Systems

Alexander Technique - Breathing

 

What is the Alexander Technique? 

The Alexander Technique is a simple and practical method to focus our attention on everyday activities and use our body properly. Frederick Mathias Alexander (1869-1955) was an Australian therapist who showed how bad habit reflect on our health. (He spent some time in London UK where he treated actors to stand and move well, breathe properly, add to their energy and ability to perform to the best of their ability. Aldous Huxley was one of his patients. He also visited America and developed an international reputation.) When our body is subject to stress or habit, it develops 'body armouring' which can be relieved through exercises, self-awareness and repatterning. It has no side effects.

Person Centred Therapy

 

What is PCA? 

Carl Rogers (1902-1987) was the founder of Person Centred Approach otherwise known as Client Centred Therapy and this developed into Student Centred Learning and additional practices. He developed this method of counselling and therapy to counteract a patriarchal, dominant and overbearing and sometimes abusive power dynamic that therapists and teachers had in the past. He came from a Christian background in the USA and researched the data in order to find out which type of therapy helped the client to recover most from neurosis and even more serious mental illness. 

November goddess

Haliya is offered to us from the Rockpool’s 2924 Moon Goddess Diary. She is a masked goddess of the moon and of moonlight, who was worshipped in pre-colonial times throughout the Philippines. She’s symbolises the strengthen potency of women who would gather in sacred ritual to dance and sing at each full moon, circling around a tree and summoning this goddess until the light was returned once more to the land. She and her brother were both incredibly beautiful with a luscious dark hair and eyes as dark as midnight. They travel down to earth and bathe in freshwater lakes. The moonlight and the beauty becomes so radiant that the next day, flowers would appear from the muddy depths of the lakes, covering the surface of the water in bold pink flowers. Legend, has it that this goddess wore a mask of gold shielding her incredible beauty from those around her. She has come through to support you this month, giving you the courage to stand radiant and proud and recognise your divinity As you learn to embrace the goddess that resides within you, you can remove your mask and learn to radiate your profound beauty through the world. Her mantra is: I am learning to lower my barriers and embrace the beauty that is within me. Her totem is the lotus flower. Remember her on 15th November. 

Oracle card reading for November

The first card is number 11 and is titled ‘Elephant’ and is taken from Animal Voices by Chip Richards with the keywords ‘Responsibility, Cooperation and Empathy'. Elephants have one of the closest and most loyal family groups in the world. They live together for up to 80 years. They baby-sit each other’s off-spring and if a mother is unwell, others bring food and protect it until it is well again. When an elephant dies, the others cover it with brush and branches. Passing herds stop to offer respect – even if they did not know the individual. Elephants bring great blessings. Their trumpet reminds you that you are a force for good in the world. Ask for help when you need it and look for ways to help others. Take time to say ‘thank you’ to someone who has helped you. Return the kindness by helping them where you can.

Paradox of Choice

What is the paradox of choice? The more choice we have, the more difficult the decision. 

Pilates

What is Pilates?
Exercise which lengthens and stretches the body using all the muscle group is both relaxing and health giving. Pilates practitioners have an individualised programme for their specific needs. There is an emphasis on body posture and balance and on good breathing technique. The method began in Germany in 1880 when Joseph Pilates pioneered this health method due to his physical frailty as a child. He was interned on the Isle of Man where he devised this method of health and eventually worked as a boxer, circus performer, self defence teacher and body builder. He worked in Germany with Rudolph Laban , setting up,his first studio in New York.

Join the Wildlife Campaign

You can get involved with saving the wonderful species of animals and plants that have graced our planet for millennia. Many species have inspired humans in inventions, such as radar from bats, and aerodynamics from birds. Many plant and animal species have provided potent medicines and more research is ongoing to use plant and animal chemicals for health. 

The two major threats to our planet’s animal species are loss of territory and slaughtering for body parts. We can support their protection by challenging the fashion industry, confronting the lies presented as ‘traditional’ medicine, stop the decorative uses of body parts of hunted species, and by campaigning against taking animals from the wild to keep as pets in extremely poor and unhealthy conditions. 

All species on our planet are interdependent, when we lose one species, the loss has a knock on effect where others also become extinct. 60% of the planet’s mammals, birds, reptiles and fish are endangered and on the verge of extinction. Goodwill Ambassadors are coming forward, such as Aiden Gallagher, Nadya Hutagalung, Wang Junkai and Dia Mirza.