Ivanhoe - A Xmas Story

 Beneath a sky dusted with December frost, open the pages of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, and step into a Yuletide feast of chivalry, adventure, and a smoldering ember of Christmas cheer. Forget sugarplums and reindeers, for here, amidst ancient castles and sun-dappled forests, knights dance with danger, outlaws sing carols of rebellion, and a love story unfolds as poignant as a whispered prayer on Christmas Eve.

Our hero, Ivanhoe, returns from the Holy Land wrapped in mystery and shrouded in shadows. Discarded by his own father, betrayed by his king, he becomes a lone wolf, a wraith haunting the snowy English countryside. Yet, his heart, though battered, still glows with embers of goodness, waiting to be fanned into flames by the spirit of Christmas.

Ethical Shopping Decisions

"Shop wisely from ethical sources, and only buy what you need. Recycle, renovate and repair" 
Many goods made for the Western market are made using poorly paid staff from poor countries with bad human rights records. We must consider paying a little more for the purchased item in order to give a reasonable wage. In the past, children in India were paid in pennies, some as young as seven years old. They were tied to carpet looms to stop them from running away! When you can, buy Fair Trade Products that give producers a living wage. You might want to complain to the shop owner if goods are wrongly labelled, such as many real fur products which are labeled as fake fur because real fur is cheaper than fake fur! You can write to trade magazines also with your preferences and concerns and also tell your MP who might be able to assist with new legislation.

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. 

The Winter Winds Bring Me Home

The cold winds of winter have arrived. When I stepped out side my front door, I was at once blasted awake by the duality of sharp crystallized air and the blindingly brilliant sunlight. My husband and I decided to go for a short walk and it was clear we would need to dress in layers as the temperatures would vary widely from open fields to protected hollows. Out of the depths of the hall closet, I retrieved last year's winter paraphernalia of scarves, hats, and gloves. Adorned with all these accessories, I decided to leave my binoculars behind; after all the migrations were over and these were only backyard woods.

Carl Jung - spirituality

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist who trained under Eugene Bleuler and was associated and trained with Sigmund Freud. Jung’s school of Analytic Psychology continues to be popular. He is accused of collaborating with the Nazis in WWII where he acted as a psychiatrist and promoted Hitler and Mein Kampf. Despite having a reputation for endorsing astrology, after an initial belief, he rejected it. 

Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology.  He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart throught the world.  There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul. -- Carl Jung (from "New Paths in Psychology", in Collected Papers on Analytic Psychology, London, 1916). 

Music for Sleep

 

Recommended music for sleeping.

Solutions for the Journey to the New World!

The Power of Resilience in a Time of Extremes

If you’ve ever been on a journey of any kind, then you know the routine. To prepare for the trip, you first get an idea of where you’re going. You check the weather conditions, study maps, and then pack what’s needed to keep your routines alive while you’re traveling.

The key here is that when you know where you’re going, you know what to take. And when you find yourself going somewhere you’ve never been, you prepare for the unknown. It’s this simple idea that’s at the heart of this book.

Our Journey

We’re all on a journey, and it’s a big one. Our journey is leading us to a place no one has ever been. There are no travel guides or Internet trip advisors

Sociopath!

What is a Sociopath? 
We have all heard this word, but many of us do not know its meaning! 
A sociopath is someone who has the hallmarks of extreme selfishness, lack of empathy and lack of conscience. Sometimes the word is used interchangeably with the word 'psychopath' and the words 'antisocial personality disorder' is also often used by professionals. They appear in all walks of life; doctors, lawyers, accountants, politicians, etc., etc., and are manipulative, impulsive, unkind and mean, they have a sense of superiority and entitlement, are judgemental and often bully others into submission. They are also narcissistic and think or speak about themselves in exagerated terms. It is thought that 3 - % of the population have this defect in their character. There is no suitable medication to treat it. Anger management can help.

How To Breathe!

Why do singing lessons need to discuss the way to breathe properly? Isn't breathing just part of being alive and something that we do all the time without even thinking about it. While we all breathe, not everyone breathes properly, and one of the secrets to singing success is being able to breathe properly.

Proper breathing is one of the key aspects to learning to sing. Breathing correctly affects the quality of your voice tone and also helps you sing long notes when you need to. One of the most common mistakes made by people when they first sign up for singing lessons is that they think that breathing for singing is the same as breathing for, say, aerobics or regular activity.

Christian Salvation by Tim Heaton

In the season of Lent, the 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Day, it is traditional for Christians to embark upon a course of Bible reading, study and meditation as a way of preparing themselves in mind and spirit for the great festival of Easter. (The six Sundays of Lent are excluded, hence the popular understanding of Lent as matching the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness.)

One of the best-selling Lent Courses of all time (and currently #1 in popularity on Amazon UK) is Tim Heaton's "The Long Road to Heaven", which uses the brilliant film "The Way" starring Martin Sheen as a springboard into discussion about Christian understandings of salvation. In the film, Sheen plays a bereaved father walking the Way of St James to the shrine of the Apostle at Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain - carrying his son's ashes.

Heaton's book ends with a short story called "El Camino", which is reproduced here, and which Church Times, the world's leading Anglican newspaper, said "could stand alone as a powerful and moving allegory of salvation."

Loneliness Book Extract: Ben Lazare Mijuskovic

Extract from 'Loneliness: In Harm’s Way*'  I attended this symposium and these are the verbatim notes of a talk at Brunel University, London on 30th October 2015:  The speaker wished to convey four things: (a) that all human beings are innately and universally lonely; (b) why this is so; (c) the consequences of loneliness; and (d) what can be done about it - its remedies!

         "The twin principles I propose to defend are that all we feel, think, say, and do occurs between two emotional and cognitive poles in human consciousness, between the solipsistic insularity of loneliness and the intentional desire to transcend it by attaining intimate attachments. The two terminals of consciousness constitute the dynamics of repulsion and attraction, which continually guide us through our passions, thoughts, and actions. After the biological drives for air, water, nourishment, sleep—and before sex---are met, the most insistent psychological need and motivational drive in human beings is to secure an intimate relation to other self-conscious creatures, whether animal, human, or divine. In effect, I wish to replace Freud’s principle of libidinal energy with the anxiety of isolation.

Sound Healing

 Music as Medicine is an ancient art and is both enjoyable and life enhancing. By listening to healing sounds, we can realign our energy systems, reduce stress and increase health

Humanistic Psychology

The basic principles behind humanistic psychology are simple:

1. Someone's present functioning is their most significant aspect. As a result, humanists emphasize the here and now instead of examining the past or attempting to predict the future.
2. To be mentally healthy, individuals must take personal responsibility for their actions, regardless of whether the actions are positive or negative.
3. Each person, simply by being, is inherently worthy. While any given action may be negative, these actions do not cancel out the value of a person.
4. The ultimate goal of living is to attain personal growth and understanding. Only through constant self-improvement and self-understanding can an individual ever be truly happy.