Self Help

 I have mentioned a couple of times in the past that I attended a 14 day Ayurveda retreat a couple of years ago. I loved it and did what they told me to do for the period of time I was there. I felt great! 

When I came home the effects lasted for a period, much like a good holiday has a lasting effect for a few days or weeks. But, it wears off. Life takes over.

When I began to see a chiropractor a month ago, based on a glowing recommendation, I noticed the charts around the wall and it didn't take much effort to connect the beliefs of a chiropractor with the beliefs of Ayurveda.

It was this experience that led me back to the notes given to me on discharge. I am Vata Kapha in terms of the energy systems, with a Vata imbalance. This could be described in many ways but to use my own words, I tend to be on the go, a bit scattered in my approach at times, in my head. I am capable of being grounded, spiritual, able to be still (that's the kapha in me) but there's this tendency to have an imbalance of too much Vata.

In Ayurveda terms much of this imbalance can be sorted out through food choices. I recall they were a bit dismayed at my tendency to eat salad at lunch. This was all cold food (adding to vata). I think I ignored/rejected their warnings because in the West eating salads is seen as such a good thing that I felt they had to be wrong about this. Besides, I love salad.

I now know, and in my defense they didn't explain much at the Retreat but rather just told you what to do, that much better choices for someone with a Vata balance is the nourishing choices of soups, dhals, curries, soft fruits like berries. Eating three meals a day is also encouraged along with warm drinks like tea. I've reverted to this way of eating and I have to agree with them that I do feel better nourished and thus more grounded.

The chiropractor, after taking x rays and photos and feeling all around my body, prescribed at least half an hour walking a day - am loving that. When I come home I do my exercises and after a month he took more photos and said I had made a great deal of improvement and now had upper strength to work on.

Living the day in alignment with the sun and the moon is considered the right way to live and in one week I have had six great nights of sleep and one night where movement and noise awoke me in the middle of night. There was that Vata imbalance showing up...lots of active thought that I had to calm down with oceanic breath to get back to sleep.

It's taken quite some time but what I have come to see is that it is vital that I go my own way in terms of a daily practice. I am meant to rise before 6 am, before the sun, but I am definitely not close to that yet. Still, I rise earlier than usual and go walking. I get to bed earlier too but there is still improvement to be made. I am meant to be in bed by 10 pm and I want to get there because it is the right thing for me.

All this, by the way, is in line too with the self-love notion of daily caring for oneself. When one has nourishing foods, meditates, does some yoga, walks, self massages, this is a way of providing oneself with self care; love.

I think the stars aligned somehow with all this self care. I received an email alerting me to a volunteer position (and maybe funding to pay later) with a woman whose organization is providing care to people with a new cancer diagnosis, getting them  meditating, and I instantly sent an offer for my time. This really excites me.

I can't deny that I would have loved a marriage where my husband and I were aligned: awoke together, for example. But, he insists on being up very, very late and I can't do that and nor is it right for me. So, I have reconciled myself to doing what works best for me and seeing the benefits.

At the Retreat it was groundhog day. Every day was the same. I reveled in that. I reveled in living my life in a villa on my own, dancing to the beat of my own drum; receiving the touch I so needed, every day for 14 days. Yet, I also need variety. 

I think that's where the Vata Kapha comes into it. I need to be grounded in daily practices but not so grounded that there is inertness. I need the daily practice of walking and yoga; achievement for the day of one sort or another, but not tiring myself to exhaustion. It's feeling into the body and getting the cues of what the body needs.

One final thought: My chiropractor is a committed, honorable, knowledgeable and experienced practitioner who talks a lot. I only have to ask a question and I get a whole lot of information about the human body in evolutionary terms. Remember we used to be animals and then became upstanding humans? Well, there is research being done right now to try to figure it out but it seems we might be evolving back into animals. All this looking at screens, particularly phones is bending us forward and creating mayhem for our bodies down the track. Why not get outside and take a good look around you, the way people used to do? Your body will thank you.

No more 'trauma' study

For a couple of years now, I have been drawn to material - books, articles, podcasts and videos - about overcoming trauma. I wanted to know everything about the topic; what made for trauma, what trauma looked like and most importantly how to overcome trauma. 

This material is out there in abundance and I inhaled my share of it. I didn't want to leave any stone unturned. It felt to me that I had to keep reading and watching because what if the gem that I was searching for was forever lost in material left unseen and unread?

One day not so long ago, I noticed that I had no interest in reading any more of it. If an email had the word 'trauma' in it, I deleted it. I had lost all interest in the subject material. I remember once reading that if this day came, that was a very good thing.

This is not to say that I in any way turned away from the need for trauma recovery in the lives of many people. That's a journey many people must make.

It is to say that the good news is that there is an ending point for the journey of trauma healing.

When things happen quite suddenly as this happened to me, the wish is to go back and write down the recipe and then print it for all to have. 'Recipe for ending the need for any further trauma recovery'

Alas, I don't know why I reached this point, except to say that I got bored. It felt like the material was on repeat and that everything was saying the same thing, just another well meaning person giving the material their own unique flavor.

Maybe I just reached a point where I knew what I knew and I didn't need to know any more.

For what it is worth to you, I offer this:

- At some point I came to see that the narrative I had built around my life was a bit of a fabrication. I had a lot of unprocessed feelings to unearth and investigate.

- On investigation I came to see that the nurturing and care I needed as a child, I didn't get.

- The lack of nurture led me unconsciously to seek out nurturing as an adult.

- At the same time, as so many people in my situation do, I chose a partner in life who sought out success (like both my parents), which meant he wasn't nearly as available for nurturing experiences as I would have liked/needed.

- This situation led to suffering which led me to explore myself and to ask how I could help myself.

- Exploring my nature led to a consciousness that I hadn't really had a childhood and that my 'inner child' or younger self was stuck. I befriended the smaller part of me and this process started to make a shift in how I was feeling. In order words, I starting nurturing myself.

- I befriended myself through bodywork - yoga, especially yin yoga and restore yoga were especially beneficial, but so too were other modalities. Shaking is a great way to start the day!

- I acknowledged that my situation was as it was. My husband has no foreseeable plan to give up working hard at his desk. Regular holidays, now that that is possible, is a requirement. He is as he is.

 I think it was an understanding too that I must recover; must make my peace with the circumstances. My body was showing signs of distress such that I found myself at a chiropractor and week by week, I am getting strong again.

For some time there, maybe a year, it was very noisy in my head. It took a while to realize that I had a vicious internal critic who was blaming me for everything. Once I realized what was happening, and the craziness of accepting that blame, she completely settled. I think you have to talk back to internal critics.

Now, I see it all as I see the way the planet has come to this moment in time. It's not the doing of one person or three people but the unfolding of a long history that spans back generations. It's many, many decisions, each one leading to another decision, leading to this.

This makes acceptance entirely achievable.

Did I ever tell you about my psychiatrist acquaintance? We met in retreat and she told me she thought she must have murdered her little brother...until the child that was never acknowledged as once being in the family wrote to her and told her the story of his mother and what she had done. She closed the practice down. Since the mystery was solved she no longer needed to look for answers in the world of the brain. She wasn't the bad person she thought she was after all.

That's a bit how I feel. Why go on reading about trauma when you have followed the path to its logical end?

Now, I look at the world through different eyes. I made it. I am strong. My days are to enjoy.

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