Dumping Braveheart

Recently I've had the misfortune of being hounded by a Scotsman, Braveheart, I managed to pick up at the Byron Bay Blues Fest over Easter weekend. I know that's a loaded sentence so let me define a few of those terms:
1. "pick-up" means I actually laughed at him because he was wearing a superman suit with a pillow for faux muscles, we shared a few jokes and he managed to get my number out of the 9 Smirnoff Blacks I'd consumed; and
2. "hounded" means he has literally sent dozens of text messages and emails asking me how I am, giving me random bits of knowledge etc etc. to the point where I was wondering if we'd ever manage to go on a normal date.
It screams quality already doesn't it?


We had brunch once a few weeks ago now and it was fun, I enjoyed his company, was going to go on another date if asked. But I never technically was. He's one of those guys who is so non-committal I was beginning to think he just wanted to see what I was up to for no particular reason. He would send texts like "Plans for the weekend?" but then no advancement on that except text messages at 2am saying "this is super fun, you should be out!". As I said, totally random and I was already unimpressed.

He'd managed to finally get his kilt together after weeks of random communication and organise for some tickets for us to see some comedy the other night and I agreed because I thought he was worth at least another drink to get to know him better (he must have done something right with the brunch). Then the unthinkable happened. He actually tried to scab a lift off me! To the date!

Unfortunately this was the death nell for old Braveheart. For all the pissing about and then scumming a lift off me, on the other side of town too, was all too much for me and I let him know it. Cancelled the date via text stating that perhaps he should take his mate instead! Honestly,I know I've dodged a bullet with this one! He may have been the one that was hung, drawn and quartered in this instance but I'm the one whooping "FREEEEEDOMMMMM!!!!".

Is a visit to a psychic on the proverbial cards?

Today my work colleague (Saffa T) asked me if I liked psychics, to which I replied vehemently "NO! I make my own destiny!!". But, upon speaking with her further I found out she has had an amazing experience with a psychic she visited a year ago. As a general rule I'm skeptical of people trying to make a quick buck for themselves, and I'm also weary of taking advice on board from a complete stranger. And let's be honest, whenever the word "psychic" is mentioned I bet you immediately think of an old woman with a wart on her chin, a scarf around her head and a crystal ball on a small round table in a tent (well I do!!). But Saffa T assured me that this girl was completely the opposite and the real deal so, curious, I've checked out her website and am thinking about booking an appointment with her.

My interest lies in discovering my life's purpose more than anything else and perhaps this Helen Thomas will be able shed some light on a certain path I'm yet to take. Saffa T says she's more of an earthy angel type that promotes self-nurturing, cups of tea and walks in the garden rather than delivering a trembling warning of your impending doom according to a musty old piece of glass.

I know there is a great divide between believers and non believers but is it something that helps us or hinders us? If we receive a prediction, is the very expression of said thing the catalist for us to be drawn to it through simply thinking of it? I can think of a number of circumstances where this would be beneficial for me but at what point does the value of actually seeing someone then come in (Helen rakes in $100 for 1 hour...)? By that same rationale I could tell myself things all day but would they necessarily come true? And if everything everyone ever thought of materialised I think the world may just self combust.

I am a subscriber to the notion that your thoughts create your world, your outer circumstances so I can understand why people who have visited psychics often find "coincidences" or the predictions manifesting in reality. But how do you then explain the little things they just seem to know about you that they couldn't have known at all. My Sherpa does something similar when he "reads" my body through examining where I am storing tensions etc.

Whilst I realise this post is getting into deeper issues beyond it's scope I can't help but wonder about the true power of psychics and their impact on those that "tempt fate" in seeing them...

Yoga = OUCH

At the suggestion of my Sherpa I attended my first Vinyasa yoga class on the weekend. I’m willing to give anything a go once so I donned some trackies and thongs and rocked up at a hall in the back yard of an old apartment block in New Farm.

The hall had vaulted ceilings at the end of white walls with mats laid out on the floor and a Buddha statue in the corner, or was it a krishnu, Vishnu voodoo thingo? (Sorry people I still have my L plates on with all of this). A diminutive Japanese lady took her place at the front of class and started us off on our poses. Her voice calmly guided us to focus on breathing with gentle instructions for the matching sequence of movements, all the while conducting herself with a fluid gymnastic precision that would score her 10 out of 10.

Luckily I’m a classically trained ballerina (though I haven’t done a proper arabesque in a good 12 years) so I could hold balance and keep the poses without looking too awkward. But I can tell you I was totally sweating up a storm by the end of it! Whoever said yoga is less of a work out than pilates is absolutely lying through their teeth!

Four days later I’m still embracing the pain and yet strangely looking forward to more punishment this Saturday. Somehow going through motions, the sequences with the breathing does actually feel like the spiritual experience it’s meant to be and I’m thirsty for more.

Namaste.

Lemon Tree very pretty...

We have a lemon tree on our back deck that is now bearing about 8 incredibly large lemons that are just now ripening. It’s excellent feng shui…

The Quiet of the Dawn

We’ve just had ANZAC day here in Aus. It’s always a day of remembrance, being thankful for our beautiful, free country and the men and women who gave their lives to keep it that way. There’s always a BBQ or just a day of relaxation. But this year was a little different.

This year I made the pilgrimage (dad has dubbed it so) to Gracemere, just West of Rockhampton to watch my Grandad march in the ANZAC parade. Now, Gracemere is a small country town with a pub on a hill (the very same pub Grandad got busted for being drunk in when he was 18 years old when the legal drinking age was 21), an RSL, a chicken shop, a bakery, a newsagent, a post office and a school. It appears to be a sleepy little place but in the cool dawn of ANZAC day hundreds of people descended upon the main street to watch the assembly, seemingly out of nowhere.

3:30am was our wake up call but I’m fairly sure Grandad doesn’t sleep much any more and was over excited to have our company. As a result the house was roused at around 2:30am for ‘green coffee’ and Vegemite on toast. As other family members rocked up we made our way out the front stairs and into the cool dawn to the shrill of the bagpipes cutting crisply through the dark air; a call to action as Grandad said, a call to assemble, a call to war. And as an aside, bagpipes are usually loud sqwarky things to me but on this occasion their clean, strong sound was moving, haunting.

As we took our positions to watch the beginning of the march I saw my Grandad, his medals glinting, performing his Parade Master duties gathering everyone together and giving the order to march. I wondered then at the memories this stirred in him. What it felt like to actually be staring at your life down the barrel of a gun, the men next to you, the enemy in front of you. He has seen so much and in that moment I felt it, I felt for him, I felt grateful for him, I felt proud of him. He is what we are thankful for. Men just like my Grandad who had the sheer courage to fight for the freedom we enjoy in this moment. For our freedom of speech, our freedom of choice.

The service was succeeded by rum and milk shots at 5am (a shot of courage before you storm the battlefields I’m told) at a little old shed type structure they call the RSL with wall to wall war memorabilia, photos and a captured German machine gun in a glass case above the billiard table which Grandad reckons is still in working order.

Gunfire brekky, beers, bush tales, war tales, sunrise, beer, more beer, crown and anchor, bush songs, bush flies, the coal train, 29 degree sun, beer shared with “China”, “The Captain”, “Uncle Win”, “Prez”, “Jack Russel” (yes, short legs) and the “Miracle Baby” (Grandad: “you could fit a bloody wedding ring over its leg when it was born!!”) and us the folk from the city. Exactly what I expected.

ANZAC day has taken on a different meaning for me now, I feel in tune with its purpose. Each year I will make the pilgrimage up to see Grandad march in his quiet, solemn reverence and each moment I will enjoy the greatest gift he has given me; my free life.

Lest we forget.

Session #3 with the Sherpa

Last night was Session #3 with the Sherpa. We went through the same bodywork, massaging all the tension points to release the pent up energy. It’s a truly cleansing experience and I beleive it’s a combination of psychosomatic therapy and musculoskeletal therapy that the Sherpa performs on me. I think I’ll explore these two therapies in further detail in posts to come. For now I’ll just explain the session.

Again I wasn’t sure what to expect having been told that each session is different than the last but I rocked up with a sense of purpose, knowing that this is exactly what I am meant to be doing for myself right now. I did less crying this time round. It’s fascinating the way that one minute I’ll be laughing at the pain I’m feeling when the Sherpa trigger points the inner arches of my feet and the next minute this overwhelming urge to cry comes over me when he loosens my calves and my back. I don’t know where it comes from but it leaves just as suddenly as it arrives. It’s so subtle that I only know I’ve cried because of the calmness I feel after I’ve stopped and my body has obviously released that energy through the act of the cry.

The Sherpa also felt it was time to teach me the beginnings of getting acqainted with myself again through showing me a breathing technique, the primary weapon in my arsenal against fear, anxiety, confusion and depression. Again, breathing techniques aren’t particularly groundbreaking, but in this moment, guided by the Sherpa, I was able to capture a glimpse of what it means to be calm and comfortable in your body. I know that I can visit this ’place’ often, as often as I need and know that underneath everything is this eternal, calm life force I can draw upon. I think this is the foundations of meditation and in fact I was invited to join in for a session. I managed to sit through an hour of just breathing and despite my right leg getting a little uncomfortable I was surprised at how it had a calming effect immediately.

Phew! Pretty heavy going! Or should I say “light” going?

Sherpa

As mentioned I've been going to see a guy. Not just any old guy but a seriously gifted and amazing guy, about my new journey into myself. Actually, the journey really started with a visit to him who I call my Sherpa. He is a smaller guy, with almost elvish qualities; a lightness to his step, innate calmness and vivid, knowing, crystal blue eyes.

Initially I thought I was going for a run of the mill massage with a bit of a phsycology session of talking and analyzing and that was about it. But what I got was so much more; the word "Hope" springs to mind.

For my first session with the Sherpa we talked for over an hour yet it felt like such a brief moment. We touched on some fairly deep issues during that time but what was so poignant for me was that he picked up on precisely where my thought patterns were and conversed with me on that same level so that everything made sense. I was so moved and felt strangely at ease in his presence. Those who know me well understand that it takes a while for me to get to know someone new, to open up and truly be myself around them so this was a novel experience for me, on many levels.

The second session with the Sherpa was again an incredible awakening. We did "body work" and for those who have never heard that term before I completely sympathise (there is a whole world out there devoted to body work in all different forms of therapies that I have yet to discover). Essentially the Sherpa kneeded the blockages in my body that were holding tension and bad energy. Now I'm not going to go into the theory of this for this post but lets just say I'm only just beginning to realise how my body truly works and how destructive I've actually been to it over the years.

I left this session feeling tingly and teary. The massage had dredged up and released blocked energy that had been lying dormant, needing an escape for an incalculable time. And I felt releif. That I've found a way to understand myself that makes sense to me, that I believe in. That I've found someone who understands me too and could finally begin to guide me through myself, to myself (hense the name Sherpa).

For the last week suceeding my second session I feel a little lighter. I'm noticing subtle changes in my body, I no longer feel bloated and I think I've lost a kilo or two without even being aware of it. I'm not craving cigarettes and I don't get the urge to binge on chokkie cake very five minutes. There are subtle changes in the way I think and feel too. I am watching my thought patterns, keeping tabs on them and when I am dedicated I turn my thinking around to a positive affirmation.

Session three is happening tonight and I am so looking forward to some more cleansing.

Willingness to change

Most people have heard of a book called “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise L. Hay. If you haven’t, I suggest you get acquainted, if like me you are interested in why the things that happen to us happen.

I have been feeling recently as if the past has been repeating on me a little, having found myself in a situation that seems very similar to one I’ve already had. And let me tell you, this situation wasn’t the best. In fact, it was the single most disappointing experience of my life, and now to have it recurring on me raised a number of significant questions: what am I doing that is creating these situations? I am the common denominator in this so what is it in me that needs this situation? How is it that I can subconsciously create a situation my mind tells me I don’t want? How can I be so misaligned? And importantly, what can I do to fix this imbalance and harness this power for positive outcomes instead of negative ones?

A wise man once said that to expect a different outcome from doing the same thing is insanity. I know I had to change my life, my mind desperately wanted to change my circumstances so I knew I had to look inside and change my core values and the way that I treat myself and feel about myself.

In this vein then, reading Hay’s book was a watershed moment for me. Up to this point I had read a number of incredibly powerful books over the years; I carried Eckhart Toll’s “The Power of Now” in my bag to work everyday in London, my dad had given me “As a Woman Thinketh” by James Allen years ago. But I feel that “You Can Heal Your Life” provides something more for me right now. It explains the dynamics between our thoughts and feelings towards ourselves and then goes on to provide the next step of explaining how to go about creating the change you want through affirmations and other exercises.

Hay makes it real. And simple. She links physical disease with thought patterns to the extent that we are all accountable for our own state of health. This alone is an interesting concept to me and one that I’m excited to do more reading around.

The book holds so many valuable lessons but for now I am focusing on the willingness to change. The willingness to release any old patterns of thought. The willingness to change my way of speaking and the way I express myself, as only then will I be able to create the change in my outer physical circumstances.

These notions have been around for absolute centuries. Ghandi in his incredible wisdom said “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. But I feel like we get so caught up in “internet mode” (everything and anything and anyone available at any time = life overload) that we forget these basic truths.

In my own situation it is obvious that with the repetition of this particular situation I have not actually instilled any change, despite trying my best efforts. My aim has been all wrong – I need to change what is inside me and how I feel about myself to be able to attract a different, positive result. To work on this, it is as simple as affirmations. In particular the affirmation “I am willing to change”. I’ve been saying it over and over, first thing in the morning, in the mirror to myself, at any moment in the day. And I feel like I am willing to change. To take the next step.

Journey of a different kind

It seems that assimilating into Brisbane life has proven far more difficult than I originally anticipated. There have been many moments of personal crisis, crying, feelings of loneliness, confusion and outright despair. A lot of dwelling on the past and obsession with the future, not near enough living in the NOW.

Last Thursday was a watershed moment for me when my thoughts all started to pile on top of what is already a hectic white noise in my mind, to the point where I just could not focus on any one thought. It became distressing and eventually I had to let it out some how. As I was on the verge of tears, very bravely holding back as much as possible as I was at work, I had a thought. A friend of a friend had mentioned a few weeks ago that she had been to a wonderful masseuse and that I should go. For some reason in this moment of crisis this thought came to me and I fished out the number of a lady named “Barb”. After speaking with Barb for some time she had determined what treatment I needed and had arranged my appointment for 3pm that day.

At that moment I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew I just had to do something, anything, to rid myself of this turmoil. So in desperation I delved into the unknown.

The following entries will tell of the journey I am about to embark on. This is a different journey to the ones I have had previously on a physical level. It is a journey into myself, and yes, into the unknown. It is exciting and scary at the same time.

I feel as though I am standing at a point in a road where the dirt becomes paved.