Creative Meetups: Action Learning for Health and Healing

Creative Meetups are provided by the Health Story Collaborative (HSC) to enable participants to reflect, connect and gain support from other people who are also living with chronic illness or disability or are carers.  The free Meetups, currently facilitated by Jennifer Harris on the Zoom platform, provide a stimulus for writing “to access and release emotions, personal stories and creative spirits”.  They form an avenue for healing through the mechanism of narrative therapy.

Alice Morgan, author of What Is Narrative Therapy?, maintains that narrative therapy can take many forms.  For instance, she suggests that it can involve “particular ways of talking with people about their lives and the problems they are experiencing”.  In essence, it involves people sharing their stories orally and/or in writing to gain insight into the meanings they ascribe to events, experiences and current situations (such as a physical or mental health condition).  Jodi Clarke points out that we carry multiple self-stories including those related to “self-esteem, abilities, relationships and work.”  She maintains that the process of “putting your narrative together” (however, this is created) enables an individual “to find their voice” as they explore  their life experiences and the meanings they attribute to them.

What is action learning?

Action learning can be described in simple terms as a cycle – planning, taking action and reflecting on the outcomes (intended and unintended).  It is used worldwide in public, private and not-for profit organisations and communities to create positive change and empower people to be the best they can be.  It can be undertaken by an individual by themselves (as I have done with my tennis playing over the years) or, more often, as part of a group or “action learning set”.

Creative Meetups and Action Learning

Creative Meetups and action learning have a core assumption in common.  Alice Morgan expressed this well when she maintained that narrative therapy assumes that “people have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments and abilities” to resolve their own challenging situations – an assumption that underpins the process of Creative Meetups.  This is also a fundamental assumption of action learning (AL).  

Reg Revans, the “Father of Action Learning”, charged with improving the mining industry in the UK, got mining managers together to solve their “here and now problems” in the mines.    He also got nurses in Intensive Care Units together to work on their challenging situations.  In an action learning context, participants are often described as “personal scientists”.  Some academics in universities, tied to the concept of universities as the sole repository of “expert knowledge”, had great difficulty accepting this core assumption and would actively oppose the uptake of action learning – it challenged their firmly held beliefs about knowledge creation and dissemination.

Creative Meetups and action learning have a number of other elements in common and, in the final analysis, both seek to create positive change in a situation (either individual or collective).  Some of the shared elements are as follows:

  1. Peer support – a fundamental principle is to treat each other as peers – with no acknowledged hierarchical difference.  There is a recognition that we are “all in the same boat” – each facing challenging situations.  Reg described this element as “comrades in adversity”; more recently, people have termed it “comrades in opportunity”.  In essence, it involves providing mutual support irrespective of our work role, status, social position or experience level.
  2. Collaboration – participants work together towards a common goal (e.g. health and healing or team improvement) and willingly share stores, resources, and insights for mutual benefit.  People are unstinting in their sharing – often recommending or loaning books, highlighting helpful websites or identifying relevant expert people.
  3. Don’t know mind – participants adopt a “don’t know mind”, not presuming to know and understand another person’s situation.  Reg suggests that if you think you understand something fully, you are not only going to get yourself into trouble but other people as well.   Adopting a don’t know mind – not jumping to conclusions or interrupting another’s story with your own (erroneously assuming they are same or similar) – enables a person to tell their story in an unfettered way, opening up the path to healing and recovery. 
  4. Honesty – the conscious exploration of what it means to be honest with oneself (owning up) and with others.  This opens the way for improvement and change.  The process of writing in Creative Meetups helps participants to identify false self-stories and unearth truer and richer stories that open up new avenues for their lives and their relationships. Action learning, too, enables the development of honesty.  Reg, for example, recounts an action learning program involving industrial executives in Belgium who, after 18 months of action learning, identified “What is an honest man and what do I need to become one?” (they were all men) as the most significant question they wished they had asked at the start of the program.  He maintained that the pathway to learning and change involves “admitting what you do not know”.  Reg also maintained that if you are going to do “something significant about something imperative”, you will come up against how you define yourself and your role.
  5. Reflection – reflection is assisted by writing and sharing.  The more we reflect, the more it becomes a way of life.  Frequent reflection-on-action can result in the ability to reflect-in-action.  Reg suggests that reflection is best done in a group because when we reflect alone we can tend to reinforce our existing assumptions and maintain our blindspots.  He argues for diversity in the reflective group – diversity of culture, nationality, profession and orientation (business/not-for-profit/community).  The Creative Meetups provide a rich diversity in terms of location (participants are from different countries and cultures) and health/caring situation.   Participants can gain insight gratuitously when others share their reflections from their different perspectives.
  6. Questioning – the willingness and ability to ask “fresh question” to open upinsight into a challenging situation.  Reg describes this as “questioning insight”.  This approach involves “supportive challenge” – challenging assumptions to enable a person to be the best they can be.  Alice Morgan highlights the role of questioning in narrative therapy because we can often develop negative self-stories.  Both action learning and Creative Meetups (narrative therapy) cultivate curiosity.
  7. Action taking – action learning involves learning through action undertaken with others where possible.  Creative Meetups promote writing as taking action to become open to  the healing power of storytelling.   The writing can take any form, e.g. prose, poetry, dot points.  Action is also reflected in the changes in behaviour undertaken by participants as a result of insights gained through writing and sharing.
  8. Facilitation – to design and manage the process of sharing.  In Creative Meetups, the facilitator provides stimulus material (e.g., a story, music or poem) to enable participants to write and share.  In action learning, the facilitator guides the process of planning, acting, reflecting and sharing.  In both situations, the facilitator is not a teacher.  Their role is to create an environment that promotes safety, trust, openness and sharing – their metaprocess goal is to develop a learning community.   

Creative Meetups, in promoting writing and reflection, are helping participants to grow in mindfulness which is described by MARC (UCLA) as “paying attention to present moment experiences with openness, curiosity and a willingness to be with what is”.   Both action learning and mindfulness contribute to positive mental health because they increase self-awareness and heighten a sense of agency (belief in the capacity to have some control over our inner and outer environment).  In cultivating mindfulness, both approaches help people to develop resilience, compassion and creativity. 

Reflection

I initially joined the Meetups with a view to writing my stories in prose but have found that the stimulus provided by the discussions and my recent reading of Kim Rosen’s book,  Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words, has led me to write several poems about my health story and the process of the Meetups.  Kim’s identification of the transformative elements of a poem continues to provide a pathway for my poetic expression.   I used her elements to analyse a poem I had written called For the Love of Tennis that enabled me to express my gratitude for being able to continue to play tennis despite a diagnosis of “multiple-level spinal degeneration”.

Following a recent Meetup, I unearthed my feelings about my chronic condition of food sensitivity/allergy resulting from Long Covid-induced Mast Cell Activation Syndrome.   I was surprised about the intensity of my feelings of frustration and alienation that I had not previously given voice to.   The poem, The Inflammatory Thread in My Life, provided a creative outlet and release for emotions I had kept “under wraps” and not expressed to anyone, including myself.

In a previous post, I shared a poem, Compassionate Listening, that I wrote following a Creative Meetup where the stimulus input included an excerpt from Joni Mitchell’s performance of Both Sides Now at the 2024 Grammy Awards.  To me the poem reflects the stance of participants of the Creative Meetup in being able to engage in deep listening, provide active support of the storyteller and reflect back not only the feelings expressed but also the intensity of those feelings. 

Compassionate listening strongly reflects the ethos of HSC where Healing Story Principals (such as Micheal Bischoff) sought to support people “to tell and listen to stories in ways that are healing, connected and empowering”.  The support and connection underpinning Creative Meetups and action learning promote health and healing.

Reflecting on the process of Creative Meetups and my long-standing experience with action learning in multiple contexts, I was inspired to write the following poem:

Where is “There”?

When you share your innermost secrets

and I say, “I’ve been there!”,

where is “there”?

It’s not where you have been

with your unique experience and perception.

I’m not inside you looking out,

I’m outside you looking in.

It’s like the glimpse of the Bay

that I get from my back deck.

It’s not the Bay!

It’s only a tiny window

on a complex ecosystem.

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Image by Xavier Lavin Pino from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Life After Death and Spirit Communication

Mark Anthony, JD, has written a landmark book covering life after death and spirit communication.   The book draws on his research, personal experience, stories of other people and quantum physics.  The stories that Mark reports in detail are drawn from people who recount their Near death Experience (NDE) or their Shared Death Experience (SDE) as well as the stories that arise in his work as a “spirit medium”.  Mark is described as a “psychic explorer” and is known as the Psychic Lawyer®, being an experienced, Oxford-educated trial lawyer.  

He conducts “spirit communication sessions” face-to-face around the world and live on television and radio.  His goal is to enable people who have lost a loved one to  better manage their grief through receiving assurances from the person’s spirit on the Other Side. Mark’s book incorporating the latest science and illustrative stories is titled, The Afterlife Frequency: The Scientific Proof of Spiritual Contact and How That Awareness Will Change Your Life.

Life after death – the survival of consciousness

Quantum physics has demonstrated that everything in our world, including our blood cells and beach sand, are made up of quanta, “subatomic particles of electromagnetic energy”.  Einstein maintained that “everything is energy”.  The Law of the Conservation of Energy states that “energy can neither be created or destroyed”.   Since everything is made up of quanta, Mark contends that “everything is energetically connected”.

Consciousness, often referred to as the “soul” (our individuality shaped by our experiences, personality, knowledge and other attributes) is described by physicists as “the quantum electromagnetic field within the brain”.    In his Afterlife Frequency book, Mark explains how he developed the concept of the electromagnetic soul, drawing on history ranging from 4,000 years old Hindu beliefs, through Leonardo Da Vinci’s scientific research, Buddhism beliefs, the work of Sir Isaac Newton and the present-day research of Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona. 

Given that energy cannot be destroyed but only “transformed from one form to another”, Mark and world leading scientists, contend that as we are energetic beings, “the energy of life transcends physical death”.  The electromagnetic soul thus lives on after death and exists in another dimension at a higher energy frequency, no longer constrained by the limitations of the human body.  Mark affirms that the electromagnetic soul is neither created by the brain nor extinguished on its death. He draws on an analogy developed by Professor Hans-Peter Durr of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics to argue that “at death the electromagnetic soul is uploaded to a higher frequency” and joins what he terms “collective consciousness”.

Spirit Communication

Mark makes the significant point that spirit communication does not come in a direct form like text messaging.  Sometimes the message is received in the form of metaphors, feelings, images or symbols.  This means that interpretation of the message may not be immediately available to the medium or to the person for whom the message is intended.  Mark explains that the understanding of the message by the intended recipient may take hours, days or even years.  Eventually, at an appropriate time, the meaning in the message becomes clear as the associations connected to the message are identified and understood.  Mark gives examples of this time lapse in understanding by people for whom he has performed “readings”.

Mark contends that despite the fact that we are not all mediums like him (who is a fourth-generation medium), we are each able to communicate with spirits.  He explains that the pineal gland in the body, also called the “psychic gland”, enables us to receive higher frequency transmissions.  As Mark explains because we all have the same “physical apparatus”, “everybody has the ability to have a psychic experience”.

Barriers to spirit communication

In a chapter titled The No, No, No, Syndrome, Mark identifies a number of barriers that people create that effectively block spirit communication.   He draws on many examples experienced during his spirit communication workshops or phone calls to explain the nature and impact of these barriers.  For example, people may be so anxious or fearful that their thinking becomes clouded; they may be so emotive (wanting a communication desperately and subsumed by grief) that their emotional state acts as a “deflector” of the spirit communication; or they may overthink or “hyper-analyse” the message during the communication.  Mark argues that feeling should predominate during the communication, analysis should come after the message is received.  He suggests that inviting not demanding, and feeling not analysing, is the way to effectively receive spirit communication.  Spirit communication also requires patience because messages received can have multiple levels of meaning.

How to become receptive to spirit communication

Mark maintains that we can each develop what he calls spiritual situation awareness so that we are “capable of getting in sync with afterlife frequency”.  This awareness enables us to detect spirit communication in the form of “signs” and be able to interpret and act on them.

He suggests that one of the easiest ways to develop the requisite awareness is to begin by paying attention to our immediate world through our senses, what Jon Zabat-Kinn calls Coming to Our Senses. We can start by listening to sounds in our immediate environment and then expand our attention to take in sights, smells, tastes and touch.  Through this process we can eventually develop natural awareness and what Mark calls situation awareness, a trait highly developed by emergency services personnel.

Mark contends that we can take our awareness to a higher level moving beyond awareness of our physical environment to awareness of “what is happening around us energetically”, what he terms spirit situational awareness.  He proposes a 4-part technique that builds spiritual situational awareness over time.   The technique he describes in his Afterlife Frequency book is called the RAFT Technique:

  • Recognize  
  • Accept
  • Feel
  • Trust

Mark maintains that with practice we can develop unconscious competence in recognizing, accepting, feeling and trusting the signs and messages received through spirit communication.  We can also progressively remove the blockages that would otherwise interfere with the communication and our understanding of what is being communicated.   Mark explains that practice is necessary because we can unwittingly block the “energetic impulse” communicated by a spirit which would, without the blockage, create a connection to the electromagnetic field of our brain.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop our natural awareness, our spirit situational awareness and our receptivity to spirit communication if we choose to do so.   Mindfulness with its focus on paying attention purposefully, can enrich our lives on many dimensions – physical, psychological and spiritual.  The benefits of mindfulness are far-reaching and encompass the totality of human experience.

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Image by Đức Tình Ngô from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Recovering from the Shock of a Relationship Breakup

Dr. Michael Acton, psychologist and relationship expert, spoke about the shock of a relationship breakup at the 2023 Mental Health Super Summit.  He suggested that a relationship breakup is like a car wreck – there is not only shock but also confusion. 

The natural and common reaction is to leap into another relationship for comfort and support.  Loss of a relationship can be very disorientating and incredibly disturbing.  People lose a sense of who they are while others in their relationship circle no longer know how to relate to them (particularly when they only knew the individual as part of a couple).    Some people in the circle choose avoidance, a few offer emotional support.

Michael likens the impact of a relationship breakup to being “lost in a dark tunnel”.  He suggests that disorientating shock occurs even for a person initiating a breakup.  The initiator can be frozen by indecision, alternating between “staying’ and “leaving”.  Indecision can then permeate every aspect of their life and especially their work environment and work tasks.

Michael provides specific advice for people in a toxic and narcissistic relationship in his book, Learning How to Leave: A Practical Guide.  The book is designed to empower sufferers of abuse from toxic relationships whether they are in an intimate relationship, a business relationship or in a family where domestic violence or coercive control exists.

Michael also maintains that grief models such as that of Elisabeth Kubler Ross are not adequate to describe the shock of a relationship breakup.  Unlike the loss of a loved one through death, a relationship breakup means that the other party still retains “agency” and can continue or initiate abuse physically, emotionally and/or financially. 

Physical violence can be threatened by well-meaning relatives of the separated partner.  The separated partner can also control mutual funds, or “take them (their former partner) to the cleaners”. One of the more emotionally exacting and potentially damaging action the separated partner can take is to withhold access to their jointly conceived children.

Michael is currently working on a book with a new model to address relationship breakups, Fork in the Road (available in 2024). 

Jelena Dokic’s relationship breakup

In a previous post, I discussed the physical abuse Jelena suffered at the hands of her father and the coercive control he exercised over her and her mother.  What was the greatest shock for Jelena was the sudden breakup of her relationship with her partner of 19 years, Tin Bilic.   In 2021, Tin, who was with his father in Croatia at the time, announced by a FaceTime call just before Christmas Day that, “We are done”.  Jelena describes the shock, pain and hurt she suffered as a result in her second memoir, Fearless: Finding the Power to Thrive

The shock of the breakup with Tin left Jelena in disbelief – she could not comprehend why the breakup occurred (no explanation was given).  There were no precursor major fights.  The shock of the relationship breakup was intensified because Tin had been “her rock” since 2002 – he stood by her at her lowest point in 2005 when she was “overweight, depressed, bankrupt and on the verge of ending her life”.

Jelena described Tin as the kindest person she had ever known (taking after his mother who had been a real support for Jelena with her kindness, respect, belief and model behaviour).  The permanent separation occurred after five months of temporary separation occasioned by Tin having to support his father who was in grief following the death of his wife Slavia in 2019.  The  uncertainty and trauma being experienced by Jelena at the time were compounded by the extended COVID lockdown in Melbourne..

Recovery from trauma: Jelena Dokic

Jelena acknowledges that she is still a “work-in-progress” following the multiple traumatic events she experienced in her life.  However, she has been able to overcome the disabling effects of trauma and has established herself in a new career as an international Tennis Commentator, author and public speaker. 

Jelena has been proactive in dealing with her trauma.  Following her relationship breakup with Tin, she sought therapy from a psychologist and he has proven to be a “lifesaver”.  Additionally, she identified a range of factors that helped her on her healing journey:

  • Supportive people – In Jelena’s early years as a junior tennis player, Lesley Bowrey was a tremendous support showing her kindness, belief and respect (while sharing a strong “work ethic”).  Tin himself and his mother, Slavia, were kindness personified and helped Jelena restore her self-belief.  Tom Woodbridge provided tireless support for her transition to author and Commentator and provided emotional support following her breakup with Tin.  Jelena frequently acknowledges the positive influence on her healing of the supportive people in her life.
  • Daily morning routine –  Jelena described the “mindful pause” that she takes for 45 minutes each morning. This routine involves stopping, savouring a cup of coffee, and admiring nature, especially the sunrises.  She learnt from Slavia to savour the “simple things in life”. 
  • Expressing gratitude – Jelena is very conscious of the research that demonstrates the healing effects of gratitude.  She writes in her gratitude journal on a weekly basis about the things in her life that she is grateful for (and re-reads the journal daily to remind herself of these blessings).  She also writes on a post-it note each week identifying three things that she is grateful for (and displays the note on her fridge as a reminder).  Jelena maintains that “practising gratitude brings calmness and joy to my mind and my life”.
  • Writing and public speaking – Jelena reiterates the healing power of storytelling and credits her storytelling in her memoirs as a major factor in her trauma recovery.  She notes in her memoirs that her storytelling in her public talks and presentations is not only healing for her but also for others who are experiencing trauma. This vicarious benefit is reinforced every time she meets people in public who have read her memoirs or listened to her talks.
  • Practising kindness – Jelena has a whole section in her Fearless memoir on “happiness, healing and kindness”.  She emphasises the power of kindness to “change lives and the world”.  Jelena acknowledges that she has had to teach herself how to be kind to others and to herself (given the family violence she experienced and the devastating impact on her self-esteem and self-love).
  • Empathy – Jelena in her generosity has used her resources and contacts to advocate for sufferers-survivors who have experienced what she has gone through – child abuse, body-shaming, family violence, social media trolling, eating disorders, and mental health issues.
  • Meditation and mindfulness – Jelena indicated that she practices meditation to achieve calmness and overcome anxiety.  Her other practices such as her “morning pause”, walking in nature, connecting to animals in a sanctuary, all contribute to her capacity to grow in mindfulness.  In many ways, Jelena puts into practice the principles for happiness and resilience promulgated by Hugh Van Cuylenburg in The Resilience Project: Finding Happiness Through Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness (G.E.M.).

Reflection

Jelena provides a source of inspiration for many people through her storytelling and her courage to work on her healing from trauma.  She demonstrates that as we grow in mindfulness we can shed our negative self-image, develop compassion and overcome life’s challenges.   We can learn to overcome our maladaptive responses and restore our self-image. 

The Health Story Collaborative provides the resources, encouragement and support to help you to write and share your health story.  I have found the free, monthly Creative Meetups (Writing for Expression and Healing) to be a very supportive and inspiring group who are proactive in oral and written storytelling to improve their health and overall wellbeing.  The group is non-hierarchical involving people with different levels of writing ability and a variety of health issues (including trauma-related illnesses and Long-COVID induced disabilities).

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Image by Avi Chomotovski from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

A Mindful Approach to Memoir Writing

Hay House Publishing recently provided a Book Writer’s Bootcamp which was held over 4 days with two hour Zoom sessions each day conducted by Reid Tracy CEO and Kelly Notaras (a 20 year veteran of the publishing industry – including a role as VP and Editorial Director for Sounds True which specialises in spirituality publishing).  Reid and Kelly covered a wide range of topics associated with book writing including identifying your audience, deciding the genre of your book, the “hook” for your book, basic research, developing an outline, the roles of editors, deciding your perspective (first, second or third person or a combination) and getting published.

Both Reid and Kelly make the point that once you get started as a writer, you never know where your writing will take you.  Kelly is a very experienced editor and she eventually started her own business, KN Literary Arts, where she offers book coaching, writing support, editing and assisted self-publishing.   Through her website and YouTube channel, she offers free, ongoing advice and encouragement for authors.   Kelly is also the author of The Book You Were Born to Write: Everything You Need to (Finally) Get Your Wisdom onto the Page and into the World.

Adopting a mindful approach to writing your memoir

Memoir writing requires mindfulness – being conscious of what you are doing in the moment and why you are doing it.  It entails dealing with your thoughts and feelings as they occur (rather than pushing them aside).  You have to be mindful of your audience, understand their needs and distil the wisdom of your life for their benefit.  Throughout, you need to be patient, be prepared to be immersed in your focus and allow time for the book to germinate (after developing fertile ground through mindfulness).  Writing will demand openness to the lessons learned in your life and in the act of reflecting and writing.  Below are some things you can do to develop a mindful approach to writing your memoir.

Dealing with your own negative messaging: Seth Godin, multi-award bestseller and expert marketer, reminds us that you have to quiet your lizard brain when attempting something new.  You naturally tend (through fear) to identify all the objections and potential problems.  You might think that “I am not good enough”, “I am going over old ground” or that “I am not good at writing”.  Mindfulness practices can help us overcome negative thinking and remove this barrier to progress.   Reid and Kelly remind you that no one has had your unique life experiences or been in your position to experiment with your insights or ideas.  You can bring your own “mindset and methodology” to existing knowledge areas (such as raising children, handling grief, overcoming setbacks).  In relation to writing skill, one of my Professors always said that to learn to write, you need to “write, write, write!”  Writing begets writing skill and I have seen this in children in primary school – by beginning with something that is achievable in the first instance and then progressively expanding their capacity.  In the early days (2016) of this particular blog with its special focus on mindfulness, I was struggling to write 300-word posts; now, after more than 700 posts, I have trouble restricting my writing to around 1,000 words (my desired length).

Identify your audience: It takes discipline and considerable thinking time to understand who specifically you are writing for.  Kelly reminds us that writing a memoir is “80% thinking time” and the rest actually writing and doing related tasks.  The more specific you can make your audience (even just focusing on someone you know or a particular small group you have had experiences with), the easier it will be to decide what to include or exclude.  If you try to write “for everybody”, you will tend to ramble and this has no appeal for, or traction with, the reader.  Kelly maintains that “the more niche, the greater the success” – the more you can target your message to a specific audience “who needs what you have to share”,  the more likely you are to be successful.

Know your genre: According to Kelly and Reid, memoirs tend to fall into three categories – (1) Narrative Memoir, (2) Prescriptive Non-Fiction or (3) Teaching Memoir.   A narrative memoir focuses on a particular period of your life (a story) and a related theme; prescriptive non-fiction focuses on “how-to-do” something, for example, writing, meditation, cooking or managing time; and the teaching memoir melds storytelling with “lessons” (e.g. through exercises or guides).   Kelly helps you to delineate these different genres by providing a free download to subscribers in the form of Three Classic Book Outlines – outlines that cover each of the three types of memoirs mentioned above.  An outline is critical for structuring your writing and determining your outline is typically an iterative process as you begin to write and understand your audience and your theme/focus.  Kelly also talks about the differences between memoirs and autobiographies in one of her many YouTube videos.

Check whether your book has resonance with your audience:   Both Hay House and KN Literary Arts focus on transformational non-fiction – this is where someone who has experienced some form of “transformation” wants to share their acquired insights and wisdom by writing a self-help book, an inspirational memoir, or focusing their book on personal growth or spiritual development.  In one of her videos, Kelly provides the Three Keys for effectively undertaking transformational non-fiction.  Besides focusing on your own wisdom (not that of someone else you admire), Kelly encourages you to take the time necessary to distil your wisdom from your own experience and to identify what will have resonance with your audience.   She suggests “teaching before you write your book” is a good way to undertake what she calls “resonance and development” – through research, identifying more completely what your audience needs.  Kelly argues that “books tend to germinate slowly” and will develop according to their own schedule, not yours.  She maintains that you need to take the time necessary to build greater resonance with your audience and to develop the insight to discern the connections amongst seemingly discrete events/experiences.  Too often, intending writers have failed to achieve the  necessary immersion in their topic/theme to achieve the required level of clarity to facilitate effective writing.  Lack of immersion will be reflected in “poor digestion” of the issues/problems being addressed and leave the reader confused and uncertain and unwilling to recommend your book.

Overcoming writer’s block: There are numerous suggestions on the Internet for overcoming writer’s block.  Some people encourage mindful walking to clear your mind and develop self-awareness.  Other suggestions include journalling (and naming your feelings about writing), speed writing or writing poetry.  Nancy Levin, author of Writing for My Life…Reclaiming the Lost Pieces of Me: A Poetic Journey, offers insights into how to explore your own vulnerability and connect with others through poetry.  Reading memoirs of others can also act as a stimulus to free up your thinking and writing (Kelly and Reid suggest that this reading research is a necessary component for effective memoir writing anyway).

Consciously overcoming the tendency to perfectionism: Both Reid and Kelly maintain that you should write your first draft of your book before you begin editing.  This avoids the tendency to perfectionism – a tendency that can create a severe blockage in your writing.  If you don’t hold off editing until you finish your first draft, you can end up in a process of continuous writing and rewriting without achieving any substantial progress on your manuscript.  The same principle applies to your efforts to write a hook for your memoir or an initial outline.  Start with a tentative hook and outline and refine them as you go – you will gain greater clarity for both as your write.

Reflection

What is very clear from the Hay House Bootcamp and related writing and videos is that in writing a memoir you are processing yourself as well as providing a resource for others.  As Kelly points out, your book itself can actually be a milestone in your own learning (or spiritual) journey.  Elsewhere, I have written about the Healing Power of Storytelling. Creating a reflective blog can also help you to discover your inner author and develop the mindfulness necessary to produce a successful memoir.

In participating in the Bootcamp, I became aware of a number of options that I have for advancing my own writing.  One is a teaching memoir based on my varied life experiences as a contemplative monk, academic, consultant, manager, father and writer.  The other is a form of prescriptive non-fiction focused on my action learning experiences.  With the former, the teaching memoir, I need to do considerably more research to fill in the gaps in my life history and decide a particular focus or theme to write about (I view this as an iterative process).  The prescriptive non-fiction option is something that I can start immediately because I have already completed the requisite “resonance and development” having conducted numerous workshops with my audience over more than a decade, undertaken PhD studies in the area, conducted participative presentations, written book chapters and articles on the topic and used this blog as a form of reflective journal.  Reid and Kelly maintain that these kinds of activities along with the use of social media provide a “platform” for your book launch.

As I grow in mindfulness by adopting different mindfulness practices, I look forward to gaining greater self-awareness, consolidating my message (in both genres) and developing my concentration and writing processes.  At the moment, I am exploring self-publishing options through the resources and guidance provided by Kelly’s KN Literary Arts and Balboa Press (a division of Hay House).

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Image by Anna from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Our Friend Kay: A Life of Openness and Curiosity

Recently we lost a long-standing friend with the death of Kay Dickie on 3 August 2023.  My wife and I have known Kay for forty years – from both a work and a personal perspective.  Her career was interlaced with both our work lives during her many interludes in the world of work.  More recently, Kay has shared her love of music with us in the wonderful setting of Stradbroke Island.  Her life was lived with a mindful curiosity that manifested her inquisitee mind and her deep appreciation of everything in life – life’s mysteries, nature, her friends and beloved dog,     .

Exploring the world of work with Kay

I first met Kay when she was Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Coordinator in the Federal Department of Social Security and I was Director, Corporate Services reporting to the State Director.    One particular case of sexual harassment stands out in my mind because it illustrates Kay’s commitment, compassion and dogged perseverance.  She had been blocked by multiple levels of management when trying to investigate what proved to be a serious case of sexual harassment.  Kay, through my agency, was able to act to unearth the issue, circumvent the power politics and prevent the harassment from continuing. 

Kay’s inquisitive mind was not easily fobbed off by managerial intransigence – it only encouraged her to explore deeper and exhaust all avenues for a resolution.  My current consulting colleague, Julie Cork, who was EEO Director at the Commonwealth Public Service Board in Brisbane at the time, commented that Kay had a profound understanding of the EEO Coordinator role and was able to articulate it clearly within her Department and in the broader Coordinator network.

Kay was a strong advocate of action learning and in her work and personal life she epitomised supportive challenge and asking fresh questions as encouraged by Reg Revans, the Father of Action Learning.  From 1991 – 1994, Kay was the Project Manager for the University of Queensland Action Learning Program (ALP) which was judged Best Practice by the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education.  Kay and I wrote a report on the first two years of the Program which was published by the Tertiary Education Institute at the University of Queensland in 1993.

I was External Consultant and Mentor for the Program Team in the first five years of the ALP Program which eventually ran for 9 years.  The program – its philosophy, processes and outcomes – was the subject of my PhD published in 1996, Action Learning for Professional and Organisation Development: An Action Research Case Study in Higher Education.  The PALS Model developed as part of my PhD research was published in an article I wrote for The Learning Organisation Journal 2002, Creating innovation and synergy through a parallel action learning structure.

Kay was also Project Manager for the 1995 National Research Project, Action Learning in Vocational Education and Training.  The project involved 9 researchers, including myself, and produced four major reports which became the foundation documentation for the nationally accredited Certificate 4 in Change Management – Action learning.  As part of the project, Kay and I undertook a series of interviews of managers who had introduced action learning into their organisations.  This research included an interview with the CEO of Kinney Shoes (Australia) that had nearly 500 stores throughout Australia.  Kay and I collaborated with a number of other researchers on the project to produce Volume 3: Applied Principles for the national project.  This volume incorporated cases studies developed through our interviews.

Curiosity about energy and consciousness

Kay was a prime mover in organising the ALAR National Conference in 1996, Energy Switch: the possibilities offered by action learning, action research, and process oriented methods.  Dr. Bert Cunnington provided the plenary presentation on the topic, All you need is love: the loving, learning organisation.  Bert maintained that organisations needed to move from “the negative energy of fear, doubt, and competition” to the “positive energy of love, faith, collaboration and creativity.”  Bert referred to the research that highlighted the high incidence of illness and the related job dissatisfaction in organisations.  He contended that the solution to dealing with the stresses of current organisational life lay in the 4 C’s – challenge, commitment, control and connection.  The emphasis here is on stimulation through challenge, commitment to meaningful work, individual self-efficacy and agency and connection through social support (within and outside work and family).  Bert’s presentation is documented in the ALAR Journal under the title, Dedication- to Dr. Bert Cunnington (Vol 2 No 2 – pages 3-17).

Kay was fascinated by consciousness and the relevant insights from quantum physics and frequently referred to energy as a key element of life.  She cited Albert Einstein’s perspective, “What we call matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses”.  Einstein’s perception that “everything is energy” that can only be changed, not destroyed, opened up Kay’s horizon on consciousness and spirituality.  She agreed with Einstein’s statement, “We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us”.  Kay reflected what Einstein said of himself, “I’m passionately curious”.  On her 76th birthday, three months before she died, Kay reflected, “the older I get, seeking is the only game in town”.

Reflection

Kay began exploring quantum physics and energy when she was undertaking a Masters Degree.  Like Margaret Wheatley she was keen to learn what quantum physics meant for organisations and her own personal life.  Margaret explored the writers in the area in her ground-breaking 1992 book, Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organizations from an Orderly Universe.  Margaret’s quest and challenging questions, mirrored Kay’s search for understanding.

Cliff Bunning, Kay’s supervisor, explored in depth how quantum physics relates to developing our spiritual life.  In his 2011 book, The Direct Path to Self-Realisation and Beyond, he maintained that “all feelings good and bad are basically the same energy…flowing in the opposite direction”.  He suggests that positive energy can be generated by expressing gratitude, being forgiving, giving positive vibes, having a pet, feeding your mind with positive information, connecting with nature regularly and “following your heart”.

Global leadership coach and biophysicist, Ginny Whitelaw, contends that leadership in organisations is about resonance.  In her book, Resonate: Zen and the Way of Making a Difference, she maintains that the role of a leader is that of an “energy concentrator”, achieving “synchronous vibration” with followers through listening, mindfulness practices such as Tai Chi, connecting with the energy of nature and accessing our positive energy force through deep breathing.

Kay exhibited positive energy derived from her deep love of nature, her extended social network, and her positive outlook on life.  She drew energy from everything around her and especially the waters and trees of Stradbroke Island.  She once commented, “I need to be near water, otherwise I shrivel up”.  Her life was a simple life that made a difference in the lives of the people she interacted with.

Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), defines mindfulness as paying attention to our present moment experiences with openness and curiosity and a willingness to be with what is. Kay epitomised mindful living.  As we grow in mindfulness through our own connection with nature and all that is positive in our lives, we can also make a real difference through the positive energy and vibration that we emit.

While composing this blog post, I came across a song, Curiosity Abounds, by Modus Operandi.  Their instrumental album that this song is drawn from, Organic Exploratorium, involves “Discovery backdrops and positive soundtracks filled with the promises of education, research, the future”.  The album includes other songs like Curiosity in Planets, Inquisitive Minds, Reality Beckons, Explore the Unknown, Another Day to Explore – all of which resonate strongly with Kay’s outlook on life.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Dealing with Guilt and Shame on the Death of a Son or Daughter

In the previous post, I wrote about how storytelling helped Tiffany Barton deal with grief and loss on the suicide death of her son, Cosmo.  She talked about her letter and poem, Young Death, that Nick Cave published in his book, Faith, Hope & Carnage.  She expressed gratitude that Nick’s wife, Susie Cave (née Bick), allowed him to share her “guilt and shame” in his book because it helped Tiffany “so much to know I wasn’t alone”.  Tiffany also stated that in sharing her own story publicly in the Weekend Magazine, she felt “some relief from pain” and “some forgiveness”.  Her experience and that of Nick reinforces the wisdom of Annie Brewster in her book, The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma and Loss.

Forgiveness: Release from guilt and shame

The latter part of Nick’s book is devoted to forgiveness and the idea of making amends.   He indicated that he and Susie were “looking the wrong way at the wrong time”.   He suggested that everything they do now is designed “to seek forgiveness by making amends”.   Tiffany related to that statement and indicated that her public storytelling was designed to help anyone else who is also wrestling “with guilt, shame and self-loathing” as a result of the suicide death of their son or daughter. Nick devotes a whole chapter (chapter 15) of his book to the theme of “Absolution”.

Nick found recording the Skelton Tree album in Brighton particularly challenging as he had to drive each day past the cliffs were his son Arthur died and past the Church where he was buried.  Even moving to Paris to finish the recordings did not assuage his sadness or sense of guilt.  What did effectively provide some form of “exoneration” and inner peace was the Andrew Dominik’s documentary, One More Time with Feeling.  The documentary captures the final recording sessions of Skeleton Tree by Nick and his band, The Bad Seeds, following the death of his son.  It also incorporates Nick’s reflections and those of his wife, Susie.   Nick explains that the documentary seemed like it did something for Arthur – “bring him back into the world”.   It served as a form of release for his own sense of helplessness and guilt and enabled him to experience “a kind of peace, an internal silence and calmness”, even when driving past the cliffs where Arthur died.

Finding forgiveness in working with clay

Nick found his way to forgiveness not only through his music but also through working with clay and developing figurines “in the Staffordshire style”.  He became obsessed with this project pursuing it intensely because he was totally absorbed by it and experienced flow through the deep concentration involved.  Nick found the process therapeutic, permeating his dreams and consuming much of his time when he was awake.  He indicated that part of the attraction of working with clay was that the process was “something very direct and elemental”.   Nick found that the medium “felt liberating, also very healing”.

Sean O’Hagan, Nick’s interviewer for the Faith, Hope & Carnage book, was intrigued by Nick’s compulsion with the clay figurines and asked about the portrayal of the epic journey involved, a seeming allegory.  Nick responded that the figurines were not intended to be directly about Arthur but, in the final analysis, had something to do with his death – there is a gesture of atonement involved in the final sculpture that is titled “Devil’s Forgiveness”.  When asked directly whether the figurine epic is “an allegory about forgiveness”, Nick found it difficult to articulate exactly what the figurines meant.  However, despite himself, the figurines, and the story they portrayed,  spoke to him “directly and explicitly”.   He found that the “plain and explicit nature” of the figurines related to him “the larger and unambiguous meaning of his predicament”.

Nick explained that the theme running through each of the sculptures, and the underlining story, is “the need to be forgiven” which he maintains is at the centre of his life and that of Susie and, as such, acts as a “motivating force”.   Nick stated that the Faith, Hope & Carnage book, his live performances, albums (Skeleton Tree, Carnage and Ghosteen), The Red Hand Files, and his In Conversations events, are all asking for absolution – “to be released from my own personal culpability”.  He also maintained that all the work that they do – he (with his creative works) and Susie (with her “ghost-like dresses”) are asking for forgiveness and saying that they are sorry for what happened to Arthur.  In his own words, Nick asserts, “There is not a song or word or a stitch that is not asking for forgiveness”.

Reflection

It is not possible to fathom the depth of grief and feelings of guilt and shame experienced by a parent on the death of a son or daughter.  Grief expresses itself in unique ways – for some it is totally consuming and takes over their life.  For others, it seems to be a passing feeling that becomes buried before it can become an all-consuming pain.  Some retreat into isolation , others “party on” while attempting to “drown their sorrows”.

The road to self-forgiveness and absolution is a long and winding road, and often a tortuous path.  It is highly individualised as reflected in Nick’s figurine epic and Susie’s dress designs.  Each person has to find their own way through the darkness of grief, guilt and shame.  For Nick and Susie, the road to release was paved with creativity – but never dissolving the underlying sadness.

Nick mentioned that meditating enabled him to access his better, sympathetic self.  In contrast, when he stopped meditating, his life tended “to slip back into chaos, low level depression and anger”.  As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, we can progressively deal with our challenging feelings of grief, guilt and shame and find a way to support others through empathy and compassionate action, whatever unique form that takes.  Through his pain, Nick reminds us to savour the “the precious nature of things” and the world at large.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Managing Transitions with Mindfulness

In a previous post I explored the use of storytelling as a way to manage life transitions.  In this post I want to discuss a story of personal transition shared by Peggy Farah, mindfulness teacher and licensed physiotherapist.   Peggy was interviewed by Jon Waal on his Life Through Transitions podcast (Episode 48).  Her focus in the interview is tuning into your body using mindfulness as a way to manage life transitions.  She initially started her more than 20 years working with emotional and mental health by supporting children and youth who were dealing with grief, loss or critical illness – all extreme life transitions that are described by Bruce Feiler as “lifequakes”. 

Beneath Peggy’s competence as a therapist was a private struggle with “body image” – she was disgusted with her body (despite dieting) and had a “difficult relationship with food”.  It was as if she disowned her body and continuously retreated into her thoughts, becoming lost in cognitive processes – avoiding having to confront her challenging relationship with her body.  It was during her Masters study of Psychotherapy and Spirituality that she was able to use mindfulness to “reclaim her body”.

As part of her postgraduate studies, Peggy had explored the concept of “presence” and discovered the merits of Eastern religions, especially Buddhism.  She was also introduced to the numerous documented benefits of mindfulness which she describes as “deep noticing” in a way that is non-judgmental.  This opened up the possibility of overcoming her own negative self-evaluation and time spent in her “monkey brain” – in Buddhist philosophy, the concept of “monkey mind” relates to restlessness, disorder and lack of control.

Mindfulness to manage transitions

From her reading, Peggy came to understand that mindfulness could provide her with an “emotional breather”, could actually enable her to “press pause” in her debilitating negative thinking pattern.   She decided to re-focus her Masters thesis on herself undertaking a heuristic study (where she was both the researcher and subject of her research).  Her aim was to apply the principles of mindfulness and presence to her negative relationship with her own body and food so that she could gain “self-acceptance” – a fundamental outcome of mindfulness.

Interestingly, Peggy’s route to mindfulness was through her body – being present in the moment through her body (our body is always in the moment, in the “here and now” – it’s our minds that persist in exploring the past or the future).  She was able to become grounded by focusing on her feet on the floor, her body on the chair, and getting in touch with the physical sensations of her body (a process that involves a “body scan”).  She adopted “mindful eating” practices – the opposite to her previous behaviour.  She expanded her mindfulness practices to daily observation and journalling and engaging in “micro-practices”.   She became aware that the more you practise mindfulness, the more often “spontaneous mindfulness’ occurs in your daily life – you suddenly feel more present in everyday events, such as when observing a flower or leaf.

As she continued her mindfulness practise and her Master’s research on what was happening for her, she began to experience the documented benefits of mindfulness – increased joy and compassion, greater awareness (of self, others and nature), and “deepened relationships”.   She changed from being a “wound-up” Type A senior manager caught up in endless daily tasks to someone who became “anchored in the moment”.   She was able to spontaneously appreciate the shape and beauty of a leaf, to achieve real “presence” when doing yoga, and be really present to her family at the dinner table.   Previously, yoga became a catalyst for negative  self-comparison – comparing her body to that of others participating in practice on the mat.

Penny graduated with her Master’s degree in 2012 and it was not long after this achievement that she moved into her private psychotherapy practice, where, among other services she shares her own experience and learning to enable clients to heal their relationship with their body and food (thus overcoming “emotional and binge eating, chronic dieting, negative body image”).  Peggy also offers anyone a free 12-session, self-help course that she describes as the Deeper Cravings Path™ – a path to achieving a “true connection with your body and develop a peaceful relationship with food”.

Reflection

Peggy has achieved a number of significant life transitions including moving from a person who disowned her own body (despite externally recognised therapeutic competence) to “body reclamation” and self-acceptance; from an overworked and highly stressed senior manager to a calming influence in her private practice helping others achieve creative life transitions.  Peggy now sees her body as “an avenue to return to myself”.  She is living evidence of the transformative effect of mindfulness practice.

Peggy asserts that her achievements to date do not mean that she no longer encounters personal challenges or that she will be free from “lifequakes” in the future.  What it does mean is that she now has the ability to drop into her body when feeling stressed and to take an “emotional breather” and “press pause” in her negative thinking pattern.  Her interviewer, Jon De Waal, reminds us that “every thought we have carries an emotional charge”.  Thus mindfulness practice by suspending or reducing our thinking provides us with a refuge from life’s challenges.

In my current life transition from a competent and active tennis player to a person in rehabilitation for spinal degeneration, I can take inspiration from Peggy’s journey and storytelling.  As I grow in mindfulness, I can experience gratitude for the many positives in my life, persist in the process of rehabilitation and creatively develop a new identity and life story

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Trauma Recovery: A Program for Resetting Your Nervous System

Alex Howard recently provided a five-part series titled Decode Your Trauma which is designed as an introduction to his groundbreaking online coaching approach incorporated in the RESET Program.  He also provides a free three-part video series to help people to reset their nervous system after the experience of trauma.

Alex is a world-renowned health specialist noted for his work in integrative medicine, his therapeutic work and his entrepreneurial projects.  He has created a real life YouTube Series, In Therapy with Alex Howard, where your are able to join him as he works with patients in therapy sessions.  Alex is also the Founder and Creator of The Optimum Health Clinic (OHC) – an integrative medicine clinic providing support to patients in more than fifty countries, especially those suffering from “fatigue-related conditions”.

The principles and practices of the Optimum Health Clinic – incorporating approaches such as mindfulness, developmental psychology and NLP – have been encapsulated in a Therapeutic Coaching Program led by Alex.  It draws on the extensive experience and research of the OHC practitioners who have worked with thousands of patients.

Alex has also established Conscious Life – an online video platform designed to help people unlock their potential through courses, workshops and interviews with the world’s leading health and wellness experts.  Through Conscious Life, Alex has hosted two of the world’s leading online conferences, the Fatigue Super Conference and the Trauma & Mind Body Super Conference

The ECHO Model of Trauma

In his video presentations Alex describes his ECHO model of trauma which has four components (the name reflects the fact that experienced trauma has its echo in our day-to-day lives):

  • Events – these are the significant life events that created a trauma response in our mind and body.  They can be quite overt such as the categories of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) – “abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction”.  Alternatively, the traumatising events can be more covert and subtle such as disrespect of your heritage or where significant others disown your lineage (a situation that Ash Barty describes in her memoir, My Dream Time – A Memoir of Tennis & Teamwork).  Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey put the spotlight on the traumatic events in our life when they ask, “What Happened to You?
  • Context – Alex described “context” in terms of whether our three core emotional needs were met or went unmet.  He describes these as a need for boundaries, safety and love. In the absence of boundaries in our early childhood we can suffer from the “need to please” – where we can’t say “yes” or “no” appropriately and where we make our own needs subservient to the needs of others.  Where a sense of safety was missing owing to a violent or turbulent/unpredictable home environment, we can find that we have difficulty in self-regulating.  Where love was missing – reflected in aspects of our early home life such as the lack of presence, interest, nurturing, respect and/or care – we can feel we need to overcompensate to earn love (to always achieve or accomplish something visible and significant).  Bruce and Oprah explore these emotionally deficient contexts by asking, “What didn’t happen for you?”.
  • Homeostatic Shift – “homeostasis” in this context refers to the human capacity to maintain equilibrium in the face of an external, fluctuating environment.  Alex highlights the fact that both the physical body and emotional body are constantly seeking to maintain a “stable internal environment”.  However, trauma can upset our internal balance and lead to emotional dysregulation.  This can be reflected in maladaptive stress responses or what Bruce Perry describes as a “sensitised stress response”.   Alex draws on the Polyvagal Theory of Dr. Stephen Porges to highlight potential maladaptive responses in the form of “fight/flight” or “freeze” responses.  He indicates that “to switch off the maladaptive stress response we have to get the nervous system back to safe and social” – described by Stephen Porges as the “ventral vagal” state involving social connection, openness, and groundedness.  Bessel Van Der Kolk describes the “homeostatic shift” in terms of the “visceral imprint” resulting from traumatic experiences.
  • Outcome – the outcomes from traumatic events and the resulting disequilibrium can take many forms – dysfunctional communication and relationships, anxiety and depression, addiction, sleep deprivation, mood swings and various physical health issues.  Negative self-stories and a distorted worldview can underlie addictive behaviour and other maladaptive stress responses.

The RESET Program

Alex developed the RESET Program after more than 20 years of therapeutic experience working with traumatised people.  The Reset Model involves recognising our mind-body disequilibrium, exploring how this is being created, stopping thoughts that are harmful and replacing them with positive energising thoughts, facing up to challenging emotions to heal from them, and transforming our relationship to ourselves (both mind and body).  The program employs multiple healing modalities including mindfulness, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), somatic experiencing and the S.T.O.P. process.   In the final analysis, the Reset Program is a pathway to achieving what Stephen Porges described as the “safe and social” stress response.

Reflection

I can relate strongly to Alex’s ECHO Model of trauma, having experienced multiple traumatic events in my early childhood and adult life. My early childhood context involved “household dysfunction” as well as separation anxiety.  I feel that at times I have over-compensated for the absence of love in periods of my early life and engaged in other maladaptive stress responses.  I discussed some aspects of my early childhood trauma in an earlier blog post, Reflections on Personal Trauma.

I have progressively drawn on mindfulness practices such as meditation and Tai Chi to regain my equilibrium and build emotional resilience.  As I grow in mindfulness, I am increasing my self-awareness, understanding my habituated responses, improving my emotional regulation and learning to deepen my relationships.

I found Alex’s five-part Decode Your Trauma series enlightening, thought-provoking and energising.  He draws on his personal experience of trauma as well therapeutic experience of helping numerous people heal from trauma.  His sincerity and keenness to help are manifested through his presentation style and his sustained efforts to explain complex concepts in simple terms. The free, three-part video presentation on his website is well worth viewing as an aid to self-reflection.

Alex is also the author of the recent book, Decode Your Fatigue: A Clinically Proven 12-Step Plan to Increase Your Energy, Heal Your Body and Transform Your Life.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Assumptions Can Mislead Us About Long Covid

We make assumptions about many aspects of our lives, including about the motivations of others when they do something that has an adverse effect on us – but more often than not our assumptions are wrong.  In this era of Long Covid, it is easy to assume that we suffer from this condition, particularly if we are experiencing multiple symptoms that persist months after a Covid infection.  The Mayo Clinic, for instance, identifies a wide range of symptoms that could be attributed to Long Covid.   They suggest that seeing a medical practitioner in the first instance is important to ensure that we eliminate other possible explanations of our symptoms. They also provide suggestions about what information to record about our symptoms before we visit the medical practitioner.

I have been experiencing peripheral neuropathy (pain in my ankles and numbness in my feet) for some time after an earlier Covid infection. When I listened to Gez Medinger, co-author of the Long Covid Handbook, during the Long Haul & CFS Summit, I began to attribute all my symptoms to Long Covid.  Gez had outlined a range of Long Covid symptoms that aligned with what I was experiencing.  However, having done more research about peripheral neuropathy, especially listening to the video podcast of Dr. Shanna Patterson, a leading neurologist, I was keen to explore my symptoms further.  Shanna explained that there were potentially multiple causes for neuropathy, including structural issues.

Investigating peripheral neuropathy – an on-going symptom

I undertook an X-Ray through a referral by my medical practitioner and discovered that I did have a structural problem in my lumbar spine – degeneration of several discs and potential spinal stenosis.  The structural problems in my spine more likely began at age 12 when I was involved in a serious car accident (before seat belts were available) – our family car rolled multiple times after being hit in the side by another car and then went over a 3 metre embankment, landing on its hood.

From what I have read, tennis (especially the service action) can aggravate spinal injuries.  This was made patently obvious to me in 1997 when a disc in my lower back collapsed, leaving me with severe sciatica for 18 months (finally rectified through multiple natural health modalities such as osteopathy, physiotherapy and hydrotherapy).  I was able to resume playing tennis after these lengthy treatments once I adopted some modifications to my tennis game (especially my serve).

However, now the wear and tear on my spine is so severe that I am unlikely to be able to play tennis again without causing further irreparable damage.  Despite this loss of my favourite sport, I am grateful that I took my doctor’s advice and that of experts like Shanna, and investigated my peripheral neuropathy, rather than just assuming these particular symptoms were caused by nerve damage as a result of Long Covid (even though this could be a contributor).

Reflection

I have not fully comprehended what it means for me to give up playing tennis which has been so much a part of my life for over 60 years.  Tennis has been my escape from the pressures of daily life and a means of developing mindfulness and the associated competencies of paying attention, being in the present moment and visualisation.  Tennis has been a catalyst for savouring my competence and accomplishments. It has also facilitated reflection on my blind spots and managing mistakes.

To manage this current challenge to “letting go” of my self-image as a fit and competent tennis player, I will have to turn to my mindfulness practice.  As Frank Ostaseski reminds us in his book, The Five Invitations, that in the face of loss and grief, we have to let go of the identities that we have become attached to.  He emphasises the preciousness of life and the impermanence of everything.

As I grow in mindfulness through my daily practices, I hope to readily accept the loss of my capacity to play tennis, let go of my related identity, redefine who I am, accept the impermanence of everything and learn to savour the preciousness of life.

Alexia Chellun in her song Surrender also encourages us to “let go” and surrender our fear while opening up to harmony and our higher being.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness: A Pathway to Long Covid Recovery

Gez Medinger, creator of more than 90 video interview podcasts on Long Covid, strongly recommends visiting your medical practitioner if you have symptoms related to this emerging  illness. He also suggests that any medication should be supplemented by whatever way you find useful to calm your autonomous nervous system.  He argues that there is no recovery from Long Covid without calming the mind and body because the illness is a form of inflammation affecting multiple parts of our human makeup (as reflected in the more than 200 systems identified as being associated with Long Covid).  The illness creates pain because of over-activation of nerves in multiple parts of the body (the body goes into a fight/flight response).  Dr. Deepak Ravindran, pain management expert and Head of a Long Covid Clinic, encourages the use of gentle mind/body practices such as Tai Chi to aid the management of pain and overall recovery. 

After interviewing yoga teacher Suzy Bolt in one of his podcast interviews, Gez strongly advocates her course, Rest, Repair, Recover Programme, as a pathway to recovery from Long Covid.   Suzy’s Programme incorporates yoga, breath techniques, meditation and other mindfulness practices.  She also provides a community of people who are currently experiencing Long Covid or have recovered from it and who readily provide supportive relationships by sharing their own experience of what works for them and offering encouragement and inspiration.  The three different levels within the Programme cater for everyone, irrespective of their physical limitations or mobility issues.

Evidence of the effectiveness of the Rest, Relax, Recover Programme (incorporating mindfulness)

Of particular note, is Suzy’s interview with a course participant Joe Iddison and world famous cardiologist, Dr. Boon Lim.  In the video interview, Joe talks about his recovery journey from Long Covid with the aid of Suzy’s Programme and Boon’s medical advice.  Joe had experienced multiple Long Covid symptoms including PoTS, brain fog, fatigue and insomnia.  Boon recommended Suzy’s Programme because of the many reports he had been receiving from his patients who had recovered from Long Covid with the aid of medication and the Programme.   He indicated that he meditated a number of times each day in his busy cardiac practice.

Suzy herself had recovered from extreme symptoms of Long Covid and her capacity to launch and manage her Programmes with the aid of other professionals, bears witness to the power of her approach.  She stressed the value of her Programme in helping people deal not only with the physical side of the condition but also the mental and emotional side.  Long Covid can negatively impact your role, self-identity, work and home activities (including caring for children) – some people, for example, are so ill that they cannot get out of bed (and you can see them participating in Suzy’s Programme from their bed).  People, too, experience fear and anxiety as a result of the uncertainty and lack of understanding of the illness (from doctors, family, bosses, colleagues and friends).  Mindfulness has been shown to help people manage their anxiety.

While participating in the Programme in real time is desirable for the community connection, the Programme’s effectiveness can also be realised through accessing the resources provided after the activities have been completed live.  Suzy offers an on-demand version of the Programme, at a reduced rate, for people who cannot attend live because of family or work commitments or time differences (the Programme is offered according to the UK time zone).   Joe attests to the effectiveness of the on-demand Programme because that is the version he used for his recovery from extreme Long Covid symptoms.  He indicated in the interview mentioned above that he undertook one activity per day drawing on the Programme’s resources (e.g., yoga, breathing techniques, meditation or listening to the group discussion).

Developing a positive mindset

A key element in the Suzy’s Rest, Relax, Recover Programme is the power to create hope in participants.  This is generated through Suzy’s positivity, the community support and the video testimonials and education provided by participants and medical practitioners.  A key element in recovery from Long Covid is a positive mindset because this determines whether or not you will make the necessary adjustments to your lifestyle to aid recovery.  Debbie Geraghty, for example, shares her recovery story and emphasises the importance of being positive and tapping into something that you love such as dance, creativity, and/or connection.  

Deepak Ravindran, Long Covid and pain management expert mentioned earlier, has written a book, The Pain-Free Mindset: 7 Steps to Taking Control and Overcoming Chronic Pain, which is available in Paperback or as an e-book.  Deepak also mentioned in the interview with Suzy that he has obtained funding to support his patients to be able to do seated Tai Chi.

Reflection

The inability of many doctors to understand the nature and complexity of Long Covid has left their patients confused and uncertain.  Gez Medinger commented during the Long Haul & CFS Summit that the specialization of medicine has contributed to this.  He stated that many medical practitioners are “inadequately equipped” to take on Long Covid because it is a “multi-system, multi-factorial, multi-organ” condition.  Too often, a medical practitioner will focus on a particular symptom that they know how to address but fail to identify the root cause of the overall debilitating condition.  There are clearly exceptions to this, including Dr. Deepak Ravindran and Dr. Boon Lim.

It is important, however, to establish whether other factors (such as nutrient deficiency, undiagnosed cardiac illness or structural problems) are causing and/or contributing to our emerging symptoms.   Leading neurologist, Dr. Shanna Patterson, in a video interview podcast for the Foundation for Peripheral Neuropathy, emphasised that scientists are reluctant to attribute peripheral neuropathy to Long Covid without supportive scientific evidence (because there are many possible causes of this condition). 

However, individuals who are suffering from other identified Long Covid symptoms report experiencing peripheral neuropathy in the form of numbness, pain or tingling in their arms, legs or feet.  Shanna encourages people to explore different forms of diagnosis with their doctor to determine the type of neuropathy involved and to identify appropriate treatment options.  She indicated that blood tests, for example, can highlight whether diabetes, thyroid problems or vitamin deficiency is contributing to the neuropathy.

As I have experienced peripheral neuropathy and a mild form of post-exertion malaise, I have recently approached a medical practitioner who is very experienced and qualified both as a  General Practitioner and an Occupational and Environmental Physician.  I have undergone a series of tests for my current condition under his guidance.  I have simultaneously registered for the on-demand version of Suzy’s Rest, Relax, Recover Programme (the timing of the live sessions does not suit people living in Brisbane, Australia). 

I have a firm belief that as I grow in mindfulness – through breathwork, meditation, Tai Chi and other mindfulness practices – I will be able to calm my autonomous nervous system, develop confidence and hope and facilitate my body’s self-healing properties.  I look forward to engaging with the training provided by Suzy and her professional colleagues and learning from the experience (and success) of others who have suffered from Long Covid.  Suzy reinforces the view that breath is “the bridge between mind and body” and that we can slow both our mind and body by consciously slowing our breath.  Suzy’s YouTube Channel, with free resources such as podcast interviews with leading experts and sample classes, is located here.

Alexia Chellun’s Healing Song is very apt at this point as it incorporates the mantra:

“My body, mind and spirit are healthy”.

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Image by Zhu Bing from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

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