June 5, 2010
The newest version of the groundbreaking classic Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom by Christiane Northrup, M.D., is now available (for preorder before May 25) in bookstores across the United States. I share in Dr. Northrup’s joy and excitement when I tell you that Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom is now an essential guide for how to truly flourish in a female body, not merely avoid disease. In fact, the new Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom is an owner’s manual designed to teach you everything that can go right with your body.
The first edition of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom was published in 1994 and was based on Dr. Northrup’s many years as an OB/GYN physician. Her medical training was based on the concept that the female body is a minefield and everyday occurrences, like the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause, can only be spoken of in the language of pathology and discomfort.
For 16 years, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom has remained the veritable bible of women’s health and an international bestseller. Now, it has been completely rewritten! World-renowned and much-beloved women’s health expert Dr. Christiane Northrup shares the latest developments and advances that will maximize your potential for living well in your bodies today.
Inside you will discover:
- New material on sexuality—and how to have a more fulfilling sex life.
- The spiritual and scientific principles behind healing from terminal illnesses, and how you can utilize these principles for your own health and the health of others.
- Vital information about how to truly dissolve PMS and ease menstrual cramps.
- Extraordinary facts on Vitamin D—and why it is crucial for breast, cardiovascular, and immune system health.
- The importance of the preconception diet and how to greatly decrease your risk of birth defects.
- How to birth naturally, despite the current induction and C-section epidemic.
- All you need to know about thyroid function, including proper blood tests.
- Life-saving facts about cellular inflammation—the root cause of all chronic degenerative diseases—and how to prevent this condition.
- The essentials on the “fountain of youth molecule”—and how to enhance your levels of it for vibrant health.
You can purchase Dr. Northrup’s beloved classic everywhere books are sold. Purchase at your favorite local bookseller or online in paperback from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Borders and in hardcover from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Borders. To read an excerpt, go to www.drnorthrup.com.
Tags: Christiane Northrup, new editions, women's bodies, women's health, women's wisdom, Writing books
Posted in Healing, Life, Writing books | Leave a Comment »
June 1, 2010
Now that the weather is (hopefully!) staying warm, planting season is here in earnest. Everyone in this rural area spends Memorial Day weekend farming like mad, no matter the size of their land. As the tomatoes, lettuce and delicata squash settle into the earth and send down roots to grow strong, we have a chance to do the same for ourselves. We can move into summer paying attention to grounding ourselves.
One of the major benefits of being grounded is that we are able to stay firmly in our own place rather than being blown around by other people or events. The perfect example is the martial arts master. Often in movies he is depicted as a small, wizened, old man who works, say, in a Chinese restaurant as a dishwasher. Unbeknownst to the owner and others who, from the audience’s viewpoint, ought to know better, the gentle man is a top-notch practitioner. One evening, bent on vendetta against the restaurateur, large thugs crashes into the restaurant through the kitchen. The old man is in their way. They try to shove him aside. They cannot. They get madder and shove harder. They cannot budge the old man, who is still looking like a feeble dishwasher. They try to pick him up. They yank his arm. They cannot get past him. First they look perplexed, and then they get scared.
Even without vanquishing bad guys, grounding keeps you solidly placed, so that you don’t feel buffeted or thrown off. This is a boon when giving speeches, when making dinner for a passle of tired children, when your boss wants fourteen things at once, or when the news makes the world sound like a scary place. It involves connecting with yourself, your energy, and also contacting the earth beneath your feet. It is an interchange of energy that provides strong benefits and results.
Connecting with the earth allows you to regain regain perspective. If an emotion has ballooned out of all proportion, the feeling settles down to its real size when you gain perspective by feeling your body in contact with the earth. Grounding helps you process painful feelings by helping you see that they are not as all-consuming as you feared, and by keeping you connected with reality in the present.
Gardeners know how grounding it is to plant and tend the earth. We can teach ourselves to ground wherever we are and reap the benefits of being calmer and more settled. Breathe!
(from Uncover Joy, chapter 5, Grounding)
Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything – except itself. ~May Sarton, Plant Dreaming Deep, 1968
Gardening is about enjoying the smell of things growing in the soil, getting dirty without feeling guilty, and generally taking the time to soak up a little peace and serenity. ~Lindley Karstens, noproblemgarden.com
Tags: being present, Breathing, grounding, growth, Joy, mindfulness
Posted in Be Present, Clearing Old Energy Patterns, Crucial Skills, Energy Medicine, Energy Work, Grounding, Healing, Life, Mindfulness, Setting the Stage for Change, Uncovering Joy | Leave a Comment »
May 15, 2010
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day give us a chance to thank parents who cared for us, offered helpful advice, kept us safe, and guided us to be the best we can be.
For some people, however, these holidays are painful. Yes, everyone has things to work out with their parents, otherwise what impetus would we have to grow and evolve as adults? But for lots of folks, all the ads for flowers and restaurants remind them that their childhoods were not supportive or safe. They have had to spend years recovering from abuse and trying to build strong and positive senses of themselves.
Whether you were blessed with wonderful parents, the regular human kind, or had to struggle with serious problems in your family, here’s a suggestion to help you feel the blessings of Spring.
For the lucky ones, what characteristics do you most value in your parents?
And for the challenged ones, what did you most want from your parents that you did not receive?
List those traits that you think personify wonderful parenting.
Now, for the next two weeks, choose one of those traits and give it to yourself. It works best if you clarify what you will focus on, rather than generalizing and then falling short because you expect too much of yourself or did not have a model for good parenting.
Be your own best parent. Treat yourself kindly. Hold your hand (metaphorically speaking – might be hard to do for real if you’re lugging a briefcase and two bags of groceries) when you cross the street. Have empathy for your reactions. Guide yourself gently through troubles. Give yourself milk and cookies. Put your arm around yourself for no reason at all.
Before you go to bed each night, write a love note to yourself. Tell yourself what you’re proud of yourself for doing during the day. Remind yourself of your good qualities. Comfort yourself for difficulties. Give yourself the kind of before-sleep benediction that a kind, loving parent would.
Go to sleep with those messages in your mind.
As you integrate the first attribute, you may want to focus on another one.
Then see what blossoms in you as Spring progresses. Notice if your own feelings of lovingkindness grow, if you feel more sunny, more relaxed, more supported. And make each holiday an acknowledgement of your wonderful Self-Parenting. Happy Spring!
Worry: a misuse fo your imagination. Anonymous
Tags: abuse, change, feelings, releasing painful feelings, self-parenting, self-support, spring, Trauma
Posted in Creating The Life You Want, Getting Free of Toxic People, Holidays, Life, Releasing Anxiety, Setting the Stage for Change | Leave a Comment »
May 11, 2010
Jack’s boss criticized him in front of his entire team. By the time he got home, he was not only fuming, he was tight and agitated, planning how he’d show her that he was on top of his game, and on top of the project. The problem was, for the next week, he tried so hard that his tension undermined his performance.
Many of us have spent too much of our lives feeling threatened, so we unknowingly take criticisms, or difficult interactions as more danger than they may actually be. It’s human nature to clench and scrabble, trying to find some hold on events. It can be as if we are trying to hold onto our sense of our lives, and of ourselves as stable. But the clenching takes our attention away from dealing with the situation, so we are less effective. While it is an automatic reaction, it doesn’t help our cause.
What needs to come in, at those moments when our fretting is keeping us up at night, is trust in our experience and our practice of new ways of being. Paradoxically, what keeps us safe and makes us effective is to let go, to allow our survival to be a matter of faith, something that we take for granted (not easy to do for those with trauma in their background), to float on the surge and swell of the event, rather than trying to make the water be still, or to grab onto something for dear life. All that gets us is a fight with the water and more tendency to sink.
Here is where the value of learning to ground and center comes in. When you can identify that reaction of trying to get a grip, developing an internal, kinesthetic sense of your self and your energy body allows you to let go and trust that you will continue to exist. Then you can focus on seeing the event clearly, assessing best action, and doing it. You have more time to notice that it is not life-threatening, that it may be obnoxious or inconvenient, but you can feel good about being able to swim through it.
When Jack became aware of his trying to feel in control again by clenching, he realized that his boss’s criticism had triggered memories of feeling humiliated by his father, who had laughed at him in front of his drinking buddies. Reminding himself that his boss was not his father, Jack was able to turn his efforts to breathing, reconnecting with his felt sense of his body, and be aware of his feet contacting the earth, even in meetings. Rather than resent his boss, he tried assuming that his job was safe. As he felt lighter, he suddenly saw his project from a new angle and got an idea that improved it and open up new options.
If the situation really is threatening, you will have more chance to survive if you can see best options by letting go of the grip that constricts your energy. No matter what, if you ride the wave, you still have your self, and a firmer sense of your being, as you move through the crisis and come out the other side. And it won’t turn into one of those events that adds to old trauma or old beliefs that you can’t survive. Rather it will build on the truth that you are good at body-surfing.
Tags: anxiety, being present, Breathing, constricted breathing, crisis, Difficulty completing projects, emotions, finishing projects, handling criticism, mindfulness, Self-doubt, stress-reduction, tension, Trauma
Posted in Breathing, Centering, Creating The Life You Want, Crucial Skills, Energy Work, Grounding, Life, Releasing Anxiety, Trauma, Uncategorized, Uncovering Joy | Leave a Comment »
May 1, 2010
A free and full life is not without crisis and difficulty. Some trouble comes to us all. But, do we have to be contorted and arrested by those sorrows? It takes determination to remove the distorted lenses that have affected our view of life, making it look as if our old pains repeat over and over. All of us who have gone through horrific times have been handed the assignment of coming to terms with what happened rather than being diminished by them.
How do we deal with crisis and loss in such a way that we remain self-supportive and confident, having come to some peace with what happened? How we deal with pain and loss is directly related to how much joy and richness we are able to allow ourselves to experience. It is possible to reassert our sovereign place in our own story. Optimally, we’ll resolve suffering and integrate what we learned, and know our own value, moving forward more connected with ourselves and with life, with a larger sense of who we are, and with more sensitivity and empathy.
In order to free ourselves from the effects of stubborn old baggage, including trauma, we need to introduce movement into the frozen portion of the brain where overwhelming hurts are shut away. Energy is what breaks up the ice and makes things move. Our energy systems can be trained and augmented, so that we move beyond old, self-defeating beliefs and can turn our attention to what is positive and supportive. We can then lessen the power that the memories have over our emotional well-being and then include them in the story of our lives in such a way that they add meaning and depth to how we define ourselves, rather then diminishing us.
Energy Dynamics are helpful for anyone wanting to change their view of life and to feel better in themselves, not only for those who have survived seriously damaging experiences.
(from Uncover Joy:The Path Beyond Pain, Trauma, and Self-defeating Patterns, chapter 1, “Joy is Possible”)
It is the place of feeling that binds us or frees us. Jack Kornfield
Tags: change, emotions, feelings, growth, hurt, Joy, releasing painful feelings, Trauma
Posted in Clearing Old Energy Patterns, Creating The Life You Want, Emotional Issues, Energy Work, Healing, Life, Trauma, Uncovering Joy | Leave a Comment »
April 15, 2010
When we breathe without paying attention, we stay alive. Good thing. But when we learn more about the breath and begin to practice different patterns consciously, amazing things happen. We can release tension and heal long-standing pain or weakness. We can greatly reduce anxiety, and change our automatic reactions to stressful events. We can develop new awareness and build a new relationship with ourselves, feeling more confident and empowered. We can enhance physical and mental performance, rev up, calm down, release stress, clear out stagnation. Rather than something we take for granted, breathing begins to look more like an art, a science, the basis of a more advanced relationship with our physical and emotional selves.
The biggest barrier to effective breathing is that we freeze our diaphragms. When we are startled, shocked, or scared, we gasp, a reflex triggered by an adrenalin surge. As a survival mechanism, gasping draws air quickly into the lungs in case we need to act. Energy is pushed upward as well. Vision sharpens, blood rushes to the head and heart for apprehending danger, for thinking, and preparing for fight or flight.
The problem comes when our systems stay in a mode of chronic over-arousal due to modern life or past unresolved stress, so most of us severely curtail our breath by keeping our diaphragms stiffened in the gasp position. Our awareness of our bodies, feelings and of other aspects of the environment are limited, as their energy stays stuck in our heads.
Try this: Free your diaphragm: When you breathe into your belly, your diaphragm is relaxed.
To see if your diaphragm is released, place your fingertips together, index to index, middle to middle, etcetera, not including your thumbs. Place the tips of your tented fingers gently with your index fingertips just under where your ribs flare out and your little fingertips by your waist. Take a deep breath and focus on breathing down into your belly. See if you can feel your diaphragm muscle push past your index fingers to your middle and then maybe to your ring fingertips. The muscle is expanding.
Then release your breath. A relaxed exhalation involves no effort on your part. Your diaphragm simply contracts to its original resting position. You can feel it move up to your index fingers again. Keep practicing until you can feel this movement. Notice what breathing feels like when your diaphragm is freed to move.
Then, during the day when you notice tension, focus on freeing your diaphragm again. See what effect that has on the way you are in your body, and in the situation. Happy Spring!
Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours. ~Swedish Proverb
Tags: anxiety, breath, Breathing, constricted breathing, diaphragmatic breath, hurt, Joy, mindfulness, releasing painful feelings, stress, stress-reduction, tension
Posted in Breathing, Crucial Skills, Energy Work, Healing, Life, Releasing Anxiety, Setting the Stage for Change, Trauma, Uncovering Joy | 1 Comment »
April 1, 2010
Crusty New Englanders might want to pull an April Fool on you on a muddy road somewhere and tell you that you can’t get theah from heah. But if your work depends on the accuracy of your perceptions, or you are on a journey of self-actualization, you can ge3t anywhere, but only if you start from here – where you are, right now. It doesn’t matter if your goal is to enhance the joy in your life, increase productivity, communicate more effectively, be a healer, develop your intuition, or feel better in your body. True perception requires knowing where you are in space and in your physical body. You must have your awareness open, clear, and firmly planted in the present. Only then can you be accurate about what you perceive, where it originated, and what it means. Is it yours or are you picking up someone else’s emotional state? Is it an intuition, or a reaction triggered by your past? Is it a response to a preoccupation or passing thought, or is it an insight into the situation that you are exploring?
We all unknowingly try to soothe ourselves by distancing ourselves from discomfort or pain. We also get thrown off when we are not aware that we are being swayed by others. As Ramorrah said in a class in which I taught coaches to use Energy Work, “Our bodies are crucial to help us know when we’re authentic, aren’t they?” By connecting with our present bodily experience, we land ourselves in the real present, not philosophically, but concretely.
Our bodies are the locus of all the information we receive. By being willing to be present in our bodies, we connect more fully with the present moment. We also are more able to release blocks, and to countering distortions in perception, including those caused by the past. It is the most direct way to become more adept. The best way to come home to our bodies, to relieve any discomfort we find there, to increase our awareness, is through our breath.
Try this: For the next two weeks, when some discomfort makes you want to get away from your present reality, take several deep breaths instead. Stand still for a few moments and simply feel the sensations of breathing. See what happens. Muddy roads or no, you can get anywhere from here!
For breath is life, and if you breathe well, you will live long on earth. ~Sanskrit Proverb
Tags: being present, breath, foundation of intuition, mindfulness, releasing painful feelings, success, success in completing projects
Posted in Be Present, Breathing, Clearing Old Energy Patterns, Creating The Life You Want, Crucial Skills, Energy Work, Healing, Life, Mindfulness, Releasing Anxiety | Leave a Comment »
March 15, 2010
Many of us react to successes and pleasures by worrying. “Pride goeth before the fall!” we’ll mutter. Or we’ll look for the other shoe to drop, or worry that others will resent our good fortune. We may decide that we don’t really deserve the good that came our way.
Not everyone reacts this way. Some folks savor their experiences, sinking into the good feelings, exploring and relishing them. Positive psychology researchers have found that those who “derive pleasure through such strategies as anticipating positive events in the future, relishing them in the moment, and reminiscing about those in the past…Those who habitually savor are indeed happier and more satisfied in general with life…more optimistic…and less depressed…than those who do not savor. (Chris Peterson, A Primer of Positive Psychology)
If you tend more toward the worrying type, the good news is that you can increase your happiness by practicing savoring. The next time receive a gift or compliment, win an award or long-sought accomplishment, or you simply notice that it’s a beautiful day, instead of hurrying on by it, enhance your experience by trying these strategies:
- Sharing with others: You can seek out others to share the experience. If that is not possible, tell others how much you valued the moment.
- Memory Building: Take mental photographs or even a physical souvenir…and reminisce about it later with others.
- Self-Congratulation: Do not be afraid of pride. Tell yourself how impressed others are and remember how long you have waited for this to happen.
- Sharpening Perceptions: focus on certain elements…and block out others.
- Absorptions: Let yourself get totally immersed in the pleasure and try not to think about other matters. (Peterson, ibid)
I’d also suggest that savoring requires that us slow down when something brings you joy. We’ll find that we feel fuller and more nourished by life if we spend more time and attention appreciating one thing at a time than if we go for all the goodies that we can pack into an event. Kids at winter solstice holidays are a perfect example. When they receive so much, they often end up unhappy and frantic at the overload.
So, try not distracting yourself from the joy in your accomplishments and in each moment. As Dr. Peterson says, “Don’t be a kill-joy, because it would be (your) own joy that (you are) killing.”
Tags: finishing projects, guilt, Joy, peace, Positive Attitude
Posted in Life, Releasing Anxiety, Uncovering Joy | Leave a Comment »
February 4, 2010
The more we understand specific ways in which the brain behaves, the more effectively we can counter those functions that hinder our efforts, and the more we can make better use of the ones that help us. There are several mechanisms in the neurological setup that lead to continuing to feel traumatized. We will look at how those function, and later talk about unwiring them more easily and creating some breathing room for new patterns to take hold. Since the main premise of this book is that happiness is attainable and increase-able, that you can change your experience of life, then it is important to find out that it is neurologically possible to make those changes.
It is important to be in touch with your emotions
Physicians and scientists have performed research on brain-damaged people since the 1800′s for insight into the way the brain works. When patients survived serious injuries, such as a railroad spike through the skull, doctors studied them to map the functions of different areas of the brain. Another group of patients studied were those who had brain damage that had been purposefully inflicted. These were the folks considered incorrigibly dangerous who had been controlled through pre-frontal lobotomies. The pre-frontal cortex is the seat of decision-making, of pausing and considering all options before acting, of gathering information from many sensory and cognitive areas and synthesizing it. It is the part of the brain that has been called the ‘seat of civilization,’ because the mature reflective functions occur here. In a lobotomy, the connection between the pre-frontal cortex and the emotional centers such as the limbic system were severed, so that the primitive emotional reactions would no longer overpower the not fully developed thought processes in these individuals.
The surgeries were considered successes, because many criminals went from being ragingly out-of-control to easy-going and laid-back. One very interesting and devastating side-effect occurred though, that the doctors had not anticipated: these patients were completely unable to make even the smallest decision. They could weigh pros and cons, carry on intelligent conversations about various possible outcomes, but they could not decide whether to have eggs or French toast for breakfast. (ref) Why? Because it turns out that, in order to make a decision, it was imperative to be in touch with their emotions. If their emotions didn’t weigh in on a choice, people had no way of knowing what was right for them.
The felt sense of what is best for you is the most important quality in making a choice. After all the gathering of facts and weighing of options, the real decision-maker is your sense of what feels right to you. Your emotions not only gather information from the world and from your internal reality as to the impact and importance of things to you. They also are the final word on what most accurately meets your needs and wants, on as many levels as are affected by the choice.
Traumatic events and stubborn hurts do affect your brain. People unconsciously subvocalize beliefs that come out of those experiences, such as “I will never be safe,” or “No one is there when I need them,” or “I will always be alone.” In doing so you do build more dendrites on the nerve line on which that thought is stored. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. You are not stuck with the effects of whatever hurts you have experienced.
Tags: brain function, change, emotions, hurt, neurology, neuroplasticity, releasing painful feelings, Trauma
Posted in Emotional Issues, How the Brain Works, Setting the Stage for Change, Trauma | Leave a Comment »
January 27, 2010
Shame is not the same as guilt. Shame is self-blame. Shame develops often when children are overwhelmed by events and believe, or are made to believe, that the fact that they are hurting is their fault. Shame grows when they go from feeling badly to believing that they are bad. Shame builds when people do not just see it as their fault that some event occurred, but when they see events as also proving that they are wicked. Adults who were traumatized as children often have had so little real training in working through their feelings and supporting a positive self-image that their systems run instantly to that childhood mechanism of self-blame. Over time, any uncomfortable emotion becomes a trigger to blame themselves again. So many people who come to work with me have a hidden belief that, if they have painful feelings in response to occurrences – hurt when someone says something hurtful, anger when their rights are infringed upon, sadness when they lose someone – that the emotion is a sign that there is something wrong with them. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” has such a powerful effect on people as an epithet, because it is a demand that define yourself as bad. Their only recourse is then to attack themselves as the source of pain and evil, in an effort to change themselves. And we’re back to the topic of trying to find control when the issue is really powerlessness
Tags: abuse, children, feelings, guilt, positive self-image, powerlessness, Self-doubt, shame, Trauma
Posted in Self-criticism, Setting the Stage for Change | Leave a Comment »
