Simplicity, Tribes and Potatoes: What do they have in common?

It isn't a joke. It's my recent reading list. Simplicity, tribes and potatoes are the subjects of three different non-fiction books I just finished reading. I had jotted down the titles on a sticky note as a reminder to write reviews for you. As I looked at the list, it occurred to me that the combination of books, itself, had a different story to tell. That these three disparate books happened to convene on my nightstand at the same time seems rather odd, but it perfectly illustrates the trio of forces I'm forever working to simplify and balance in my daily life: professional, parenting, and personal.

The Books

1. Tribes, by Seth Godin: This is a brilliant little book about turning ideas into movements and stepping up as a leader. Reading it inspired a major shift in perspective for me, and the ripple effects are ongoing.
   
   
2. Simplicity Parenting, by Kim John Payne: I can't say enough wonderful things about Kim John Payne. In this book, Payne makes a compelling case against the "too much, too soon, too fast" pace of modern life that we've come to accept as normal, and how this accumulated stress shows up in our children as a variety of behavior disorders. His solution is to aim for simplicity in our family life in four key areas: de-cluttering the home environment, (I'm already a freakish minimalist, so we're good on that one) establishing rhythms and predictability, (working on that) maintaining balanced schedules, (trying) and filtering out the adult world (yep, TV really is brain poison).
   
   
3. Potatoes, not Prozac, by Dr. Kathleen DesMaisons: I wouldn't have ever discovered this book by its title, since antidepressants are not my thing, but it's actually a book about sugar sensitivity and healing sugar addiction. Now that? That's my thing. She lays out a 7-step plan for naturally balancing your brain chemicals and beating sugar addiction.
   
   

The Connections

If we use the letters I assigned to each of the three books, A, B & C, and plug them into this handy Venn diagram*, I can illustrate what these all have to do with one another.

• A-B: Right after I finished reading Tribes, I began reading Simplicity Parenting, and decided to check out the website. Lo and behold, either Kim John Payne had just read Tribes too, or it was an interesting bit of coincidence, but darned if this wasn't the perfect example of Godin's principles in action! Payne was taking his ideas and turning them into a movement – something that went beyond selling a book. He was setting up trainings for Simplicity Coaches to help them help families. He was encouraging community groups to form around Simplicity Parenting so parents could support one another in their efforts to simplify. Word was spreading fast, and within six months, the book was already in its third printing. Just as I was pondering how I would implement what I'd learned from Tribes, here was a model right in my niche. Handy!
  
  
• B-C: What might Simplicity Parenting have to do with sugar addiction, you ask? I think the connection is two-fold. First, the science Dr. DesMaisons reveals behind sugar sensitivity is fascinating, and just might explain most of my character flaws. In brief, sugar sensitive individuals happen to have low levels of serotonin, blood sugar, and beta-endorphins, (yes - all three!) and this triple-threat chemical imbalance results in all kinds of unpleasant behaviors and feelings, not to mention sugar cravings which only throw things further out of whack. I'm convinced I'd be a more patient, happy, and serene mama if my brain chemicals were better balanced. I'm working on that. (I'm still on step 2, so I have a ways to go, but so far, so good.) Plus, speaking for the universal "we," when we're happy, we don't need to look outside of ourselves for fulfillment; we don't have the need to fill each day of the week with play dates, or buy our kids more toys, or fill our houses with more stuff, or watch TV to escape. Implementing the pillars of Simplicity Parenting is a lot easier when we're happy and at ease with ourselves.
  
  The second connection between these two books is that in exploring my own reactions to sugar, I'm becoming even more aware of Lucas' sensitivity to sugar. I noticed early on that it made him crazy-annoying, and so we already avoided obvious sugars like candy or even fruit roll-ups. But I'm learning to give him more protein at each meal and to cut out the carby snacks. We're replacing crackers and such with whole food snacks like apples, which hit the bloodstream slowly and steadily over time, and carrots, which give him the satisfaction of crunching on something. Eliminating the over-stimulation of sugar and processed foods, especially if a child is sugar-sensitive, is one more way to reduce a child's stress level and bring their behavior back into the normal range.
  
  
• C-A: Finally, Potatoes not Prozac and Tribes; Really? There's a connection? Absolutely! I was so jazzed after reading Tribes that I launched into a flurry of journaling activity and a whole new take on my writing and my mission. (More on that later.) I was passionate, focused, and confident that I was the one for this mission! Not-coincidentally, I was just coming off of being sick, and so I'd been eating well to get well for about two weeks. (Plus, I'd been taking the flower essences!) That meant I hadn't been eating chocolate of and on all day, every day, as is my norm. Once I felt better, I went back to my beloved chocolate in its many luscious forms, and lost some steam … and focus … and confidence. This cycle felt all too familiar to me. That's when I started reading Potatoes not Prozac and discovered that passion, focus and confidence, among many other things, are in short supply when you're dealing with sugar sensitivity. By consuming so much sugar, I was pretty much short-circuiting my progress on ANYTHING. By implementing Dr. DesMaison's seven steps, I hope to get my brain chemicals back in balance so I can fully implement what I learned from Seth Godin and step into my work with confidence and clarity.
  

Pulling from the wisdom in all three books, I feel like I have the tools I need to keep my professional life oriented toward meaningful goals while creating more simplicity and balance in our home life. Plus I'm gaining more energy, clarity, confidence, and optimism to help me stay on track with both of those now that I'm easing myself away from sugar addiction. This was a triple-whammy kick in the pants. Yes!

Do you find any of your current book combinations intriguing or insightful? Or is it just me - and the fact that I woke up at 3am this morning and decided to write instead of go back to bed? I'd love to hear from you!

Cheers!

Alexis


 
*Created by Matts Halldin

A Decision about Preschool … and then some

I've been grappling with a decision about Lucas and preschool. Even though he attends a fabulous Reggio-Emilia school, I've been ambivalent about the whole idea since before the school year even started. He's been there since September, and this ambivalence has come and gone, come and gone. I still love his school, don't get me wrong. The problem has more to do with feeling over-scheduled and rushed, getting sick ALL THE TIME, and the realization that we're hopping in the car to go somewhere five-six mornings out of the week.

Prioritizing: Pilates or Preschool?

Granted, preschool is only two of those mornings. This is a matter of prioritizing. Two to three of those other mornings we are off to the YMCA for my beloved Pilates class. The thought of giving that up feels fat, lazy and isolating. We all know one another in this very social, supportive class, and the teacher is fabulous. Lucas is loved and appreciated by the wonderful gals who work in the Kids' Club there, plus he gets to play in the very nice playground after my class. So … Pilates stays. On Sunday mornings, we go to The Unity Center, where I work in the nursery. Again, this is a place where Lucas is adored by many and he walks around freely like he owns the place. He plays his guitar on stage with the band every week, and then heads off to the preschool class where he knows all the volunteers. This is our spiritual community, so it's also exempt from the chopping block. Unity stays.

If I didn't want rush to get in the car with Lucas every ding-dong day, then cutting preschool seemed like the only reasonable option. I considered what he was gaining from being at school, and weighed that against what he'd gain by having two more mornings a week to take it slowly, honor our home rhythms, and spend more time enjoying these precious early childhood months together. I started to feel like I needed to reclaim that time with him while I still had the opportunity to do it.

What about My Time?

What about my writing time? My me time? How would I cope without it? I had to admit that the decision to put him in preschool in the first place was mainly for that reason. It was for me, not him, and I began to feel selfish. Not that I don't think it's important to honor myself. I absolutely believe it's important to honor our own needs and do what we can to get those needs met so we can be happy, whole, and grounded. But there are ways of meeting those needs without sacrificing the time-sensitive needs of my son. He's not going to be three forever. This is a rather small window of opportunity in which I can provide this safe space for him to be a young child, unrushed and nurtured. So I decided to trust that I would find a new way to allocate my me time. I would resume writing at night. I would do a little work while he played independently. I would adjust my expectations to a slower progression toward my goals, and commit enjoying the pace.

The Decision

I had the chance to try it out when he got sick again (again!) last week. I pretended he was already out of preschool, and we slowed way down. He helped me with the breakfast dishes, even though it took five times longer. We worked in the yard together, played Candyland, folded laundry and swept the floors together. He played in his room with his imaginary friends while I did some work in the office. Our week was peaceful and happy, and the house ended up really clean! I thought, "This is it! This feels right! I'm doing it. I'm taking him out of preschool!"

Tuesday was conference day at his school. My plan was to tell his teachers then that I would be taking him out of school at the end of the month. We arrived that morning after a week of missing school, and Lucas burst through the gate and eagerly ran out onto the play area outside his classroom. On the outdoor picnic tables were giant ink pads and chunky stamps with papers and pens. Against the wall was the sand table – today filled with cornmeal, a few large beans and sifters. (Sometimes it contained water, sometimes sand, sometimes shaving cream … it's always a surprise.) While I waited for my conference, I watched him gleefully go from stamping the heck out of a sheet of paper, to playing cars with a friend on a three-story car structure, to sifting beans and cornmeal, to riding a giant tricycle around the playground. When one of his teachers came to the door to call me in, he gave her a big hug, and then ran back off to play.

The Other Decision

I sat inside at the tiny table and didn't tell his teachers a thing.

In those brief moments outside, I had changed my mind. The bottom line was that he loved being there. He was getting the routine and rhythm he needed on these two days a week in this beautiful, play-based, child-centered environment. This was yet another place where he could be himself and feel loved and nurtured, and you know, you can't have too many of those. Finally, my ambivalence about preschool was changing into acceptance and appreciation. It only took seven months!

Slowing Down Anyway

I had learned some valuable lessons over the past week about how we handle our time together at home and the effects on our relationship. With a little advanced planning (and enough sleep) I can slow our days down, even if we're still getting in the car five days a week. I can allow more time in the morning for snuggling, story or circle time, and washing dishes together before we head out. I can move through my tasks more deliberately and attentively, just like I'd been doing over the past week, setting a tone of peace and calm, rather than racing through everything to fit in one more chore. I can involve Lucas in as much as possible, so cooking, setting the table, and cleaning up are fun things we do together, instead of my jobs where I need him out of my hair. It's really just about moving through our days with a more grounded, calm, intentional energy.

My Childhood ≠ Lucas' Childhood, So Watch Out, Lex!

As I dropped Lucas off at school this morning, another parent asked me if we'd like to have a family play date sometime. I thought it sounded fun. It sounded like community. It occurred to me that up until now, I had been holding our roots close to the surface, ready to transplant ourselves at a moment's notice, as was my lifetime habit. I hadn't gotten involved, hadn't helped in the class, hadn't reached out to other families. I felt like I was on the outside, looking in, and this was a VERY FAMILIAR place for me to stand. Suddenly I had a thought: Could this whole ambivalence have really been about my own nomadic childhood? Could I have been unconsciously preparing to set Lucas up for that very same cycle of unfinished school years and lost friendships? Wow! You see, I have no idea what it's like for a child to stay in one place, one community, for very long. On the surface, of course that stability is what I want for Lucas. But beneath, I was still running some very old, very buried tapes, and I was superimposing them on Lucas. Maybe this is what those memories of Lina were meant to bring up. It's yet another example of my own childhood baggage posing as current issues for Lucas. It takes real vigilance to catch this. I almost missed it.

I know I jammed a lot into this post: preschool and the purpose it serves our children; our children's needs for simplicity, routine and slowing down, and how we make that happen in our busy lives; and finally, how we unconsciously superimpose our own childhoods on our children, and how challenging it is to be aware of when we're doing it. I'm sure I'll expand on each one of these themes at different points in time, but today, they all wanted to share this one space together in this one story.

I'd love to hear your comments on any one or more of these themes! Have you struggled with the idea of preschool vs keeping your youngsters home? How do you maintain peace, serenity, and rhythm in your home, or is that still eluding you? Have you ever noticed when an issue turned out to be more about your past than about your child's present? How do you make certain you're keeping the two separate? I love hearing from you, wise readers! Thanks for the connection!

Cheers!

Alexis

Meditation Avoiders Anonymous

Something magical is unleashed in my life when I take my own advice to meditate and journal daily. Yes … DAILY. I've said it time and time again, these practices are crucial to my wellbeing, and support me in ways I always find surprising and refreshing. I don't know if this ever happens for you, but even after writing about the amazing impact these practices have on my life, I invariably lose my consistency for one reason or another. Then, when all hell breaks loose because I've lost touch with balance, perspective, intuition, peace, and often health, I desperately crawl my way back to my practice, and find myself pleasantly astonished to so quickly and easily regain what I had lost. Oh hey! How about that? Waddya know.

What is this? Some kind of selective memory? IT WORKS LIKE THIS EVERY TIME, ALEXIS. Get over the surprise. It's not a coincidence!

Humans.

One of these days I'll start and never, ever stop - probably when I stop eating chocolate, which may or may not ever happen. There should be a 12-step program for people who are addicted to frequently neglecting their meditation practice.

My name is Alexis, and I forgot to meditate again.

In the meantime, I'll just keep writing about it and hope that it sinks in for me at some point. That said, here's what's been working for me.

Journaling has always been an important way of processing thoughts and safely exploring my emotions. Lately, it's become an integral part of my meditation practice. The meditation part is about getting grounded, clearing my energy, and activating my chakras. This helps me open up to source energy, intuition, divine wisdom, or whatever you want to call it. It's all really the same thing. Then … I open up my journal and I write. This is the receiving part. This is my way, I suppose, of hearing guidance.

I often have written conversations with my higher self, Spirit, intuition, God, guides, angels – whatever word happens to feel comfortable for me on a given day. It helps me to answer myself in the second person. Sometimes, it's as simple as:

Me: What do I need to know today, Spirit? What will help me stay connected, open and inspired?

Spirit: Don't eat any more of that chocolate.

Me: Yeah, well, except for that.

Spirit: …

(On that particular day, I chose to ignore the advice, and paid the price of feeling scattered and accomplishing nothing.)

Another time, I asked for guidance about some new ideas I was tossing around related to the direction of my writing. Spirit said, "Focus on your own happiness and then notice what flows from that. REMEMBER THIS." and then, "Notice Lucas – how he's counting, cuddling, socializing, storytelling, loving. Notice how food affects him."

For whatever reason, this exchange launched me into a flurry of fast and furious writing, outlining, planning, and pondering that formed a very exciting seed of new things to come with my writing. More on that later.

Yesterday, I was pondering whether or not I should attempt to interview Kim John Payne, an amazing speaker and author who writes about Simplicity Parenting and Social Inclusion. He's coming to town at the end of this month, and I'll be going to see his lecture. I could feel the self-doubt emanating from my pores, and so I decided to have a conversation between Spirit, my inner critic, and finally me.

Critic: Why would Kim John Payne spend time giving you an interview? Who are you to him? You don't even have your new blog concept reorganized yet.

Spirit: He'll do it because you asked him. You are a bright spirit and he can sense that. The blog will take shape in time.

Critic: You don't even know how to do an interview. Your questions are lame.

Spirit: You are smart. You can figure it out if you give it some time and effort.

Me: Okay, so Spirit, can you help me come up with some questions?

Spirit: Sure.

And within five minutes, "we" had my interview planned and written. It may take another journal conversation or two to work up the nerve to ask him for the interview, but at least I'm prepared now.

The journaling and the meditation go hand in hand. When I journal without meditating first, it's more like a normal diary: "Lucas is napping. The weather's been lovely but we've been stuck inside all week since he's been sick. Blah, blah, blah." It's more difficult for me to get in touch with that higher consciousness when I don't clear out my energy and quiet my mind first. Although, if something specific is bothering me, I can get on a roll pretty quickly. For instance, all of the healing work I did around Bossy-boss Lina was made possible simply by putting those first pestering thoughts to paper and following their lead.

Since I got sick last month, I've been meditating daily and I've filled half my journal already. I feel grounded, focused, connected, and prolific! So, are you ready to join my Meditation Avoiders Anonymous group?



Cheers!

Alexis


 

Listening to What’s Keeping us Awake at Night

Over the last couple of weeks while I was in my cave, and despite being totally worn down with a sinus infection, I found myself lying awake at night watching scenes from my childhood play across my mind, particularly ones featuring my domineering best friend, Lina. I hadn't thought of her in decades! The first night, this little mind-movie was a curiosity. The second night, it was somewhat annoying. On the third night, I finally said, "All right, all right! I'll get up and journal about it already!"

And so I did. I had a vague sense that there was a key hiding in these memories that would unlock a particular door of healing that I needed at this moment in time. I wondered if these memories were being triggered by the flower essences I was taking. After all, one of them was supposed to assist in clearing old energies, and my relationship with Lina was certainly old energy. The other one was to support me with self-love. I didn't immediately see any connections between Lina and my current life, but I've learned enough over the past few years to trust where this was heading. 

The 40 ot 6
When I was seven years old, Lina became my best friend simply because she was the only girl in a five mile radius … plus I was afraid she'd beat me up if I said no. Her first words to me when we moved in were, "Get off my property or I'll come after you with my Dad's 40 Yacht Six!" I obviously had no idea what a 40 yacht six was, only realizing later that she meant a gun, and maybe it was supposed to be a 30 ot 6, not 40, but it scared me nonetheless. There was an introductory period in which my play time was shared between Lina and Willy, the other young neighbor on our 4-house, dead-end road in the boonies of Brush Prairie, Washington. It wasn't long, though, before she gave me the ultimatum: Willie or her. There was to be no sharing. She was a monogamous friend. I didn't see much choice at the time. Willie was cut out of the equation and Lina and I became exclusive.

The Forts
Sure, there was some fun involved. We were forever building forts and tree-houses. Every tree in every surrounding field – and there were dozens – was modified in some way by our creativity. Most of the forts were made of plywood sheets propped up by scraps of two by fours jammed into the dirt and the tree trunks at just the right angles. 

Once we became experienced fort-builders, we decided to try our hand at building a two-story structure with pilfered wood and nails, and a little engineering help from her older brother. We were ultimately mistrustful of the rickety, homely thing, though, and abandoned it shortly thereafter. 

For each fort, we formed a club. Lina was always the de-facto president and I was always the secretary. Though I secretly dreamed of the presidency, I knew I would never attempt a coup. 

The Barn Jump
And that's about where the fun ended. The rest became a daily exercise in pushing down my fears and hoping I didn't get killed. She was forever stretching my limits. Everything she wanted to do felt dangerous to me; heck, voicing a contrary opinion felt dangerous, but I went along with her anyway, and kept my fears and opinions to myself. She once convinced me to sneak into a stranger's barn with her, and then, when we heard someone coming, her solution was to jump out the upper window onto a thinnish pile of hay below. I was scared to death to jump, of course. It was a long way down. But she got my mind spinning on what kind of axe-murderer was on his way up the stairs, and so I jumped, landing on my back and knocking the wind out of my body. I thought I was done for. She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me toward the barbed-wire fenced we'd climbed through, with me sucking as hard as I could to get some air back into my lungs.

This was a normal day for us, and I mostly hated it.

On the days we weren't out trespassing, we'd hang out at her house. Occasionally her mom or her dad was there, but usually there were no adults. Her teen-age brother, Mike, was often hanging around, lying on the dark couch in the dark living room, listening to rock music on his headphones. Lina and I would make Top Ramen or else eat taco seasoning right out of the packet while skimming her older sister's racy books that had the word "sex" in them. 

The Near Train Wreck
This might seem relatively safe and innocent, but in retrospect, it's incredibly disturbing to me that I was allowed to spend so much unsupervised time over there as a youngster. You see, I'm pretty sure her father was drunk most of the time. Once, a few of us were in the car while he was driving through town. There were railroad tracks everywhere in Brush Prairie, and in the '70s, there weren't gates or flashing lights at the crossings – just wooden signs. You had to be train-aware. We were approaching a crossing and could hear the train whistle blowing pretty loudly. We all looked up to see the train quickly approaching, but Gene wasn't slowing down. We began to yell for him to stop, and he shouted, "Shut up! I know what I'm doing." We shot across the tracks right in front of that train. We barely avoided getting smashed to smithereens. 

The Car Crash
Her mom wasn't much better. In another driving mishap, "Sadie the Lady" (that's what she liked to be called) apparently didn't see all the cars stopped in front of her. She slammed on her brakes while steering toward the side of the road, which at the time was piled with ash from the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Ash is some slippery stuff, and it shot us out across the center line into oncoming traffic. Sadie swung us sideways to avoid a head-on collision, and a car slammed into my side of the car, somehow causing the door to swing open. Lina and I were in the bench seat in the back - not wearing seat belts, of course. I remember that door flying open, and Lina flinging herself across the seat to grab me and pull me on top of her so I didn't fly out of the careening car. It was yet another near-death experience with my best friend.

The Jailbirds
The other unsettling thing about spending time with her family was her brothers. The oldest brother was in jail at the time – I forget why. That should have given my mom a little red flag, but apparently it didn't faze her, or more likely, she just didn't know about it. Mike, the other one, always gave me kind of a creepy feeling. I chalked it up to shyness around older boys at the time. A few short years later, he turned out to be a serial rapist and murderer, and is currently serving a life sentence on top of a 60-year sentence - just to be sure he stays locked up, I guess. And I spent countless unsupervised hours in a house with him in it!!! 

The Fit
So, now that you have a sense of this friendship and the crazy family that came along with it, you might understand why, as I unearthed these memories, I became very, very, VERY angry. I was angry at Lina for being such a bossy-boss and for pushing my boundaries so relentlessly. I was angry at her knuckle-dragging family and the subtle influence they probably exerted over my budding worldview - not to mention all the life-endangerment. I was angry at my mother for allowing me to spend so much unsupervised time with Lina and for not noticing that her daughter was living in constant fear. 

Most of all, I was angry at myself for not being strong enough to stand up to Lina, for not talking to my mom about my fears, and for allowing those few years of self-capitulation to become my long-term strategy for getting by in the world. That is when I decided my voice didn't count; that I didn't count. That's when I got so comfortable with fear that it felt like homeostasis to me. That was my first experience with codependency and enabling, setting the standard for many of my relationships to come.
 
I was so mad that I cried until I could hardly breathe. As you might recall from my previous post, I have long suspected that anger is the catalyst for my sinus infections. Bingo! I had managed to get to a deep source of some of my suppressed anger. My next step was to decide what to do about it. I attempted to do some journaling around forgiveness, but it just didn't feel true. I was writing the words, but I didn't feel them. I was still too mad. 

The Forgiveness
The next morning, I called back my flower essence gal, and that's when she sent me the Dagger Hakea essence to help deal with resentment. It's really amazing how these flower essences work! At first, I couldn't let go of the anger at Lina, my mom and myself. I just couldn't find a way to honestly let us off the hook. But when I started taking the Dagger Hakea, all of that anger and resentment just disintegrated. Of course Lina was the way she was, poor thing. Look at that family! And my mom had no idea what was going on. How could she? I told her nothing, probably to protect Lina. As for me, Brush Prairie was the tenth place I'd lived in my seven years and I craved a close friend of my own. It's not surprising that I put up with the craziness and did whatever Lina said in order to keep her as my friend. It wasn't a hateful character flaw – just some understandable desperation.

The Flood
Not only did I feel a huge relief from the clearing of my resentments and my sinuses, but within a few days I was flooded with new ideas, focus, and clarity. Apparently, I'd created an enormous vacuum in my energy field, which made room for all of this great stuff that had just been waiting for enough breathing room to come on in! I was reaching decisions on choices I'd been debating for way too long - some for as long as a year! Writing ideas were coming to me in rapid-fire succession, and the sticky-notes began to cover my desk. Most of all, with the release of all of that anger, especially the self-directed part, I felt like I was finally easing up on myself, and experiencing something akin to self-love.
 
I dare say none of this would have happened if I had ignored what was keeping me awake those first three nights. If I hadn't been willing to listen to that nudge from spirit, saying in essence, "Yes. Go there. Go deep. You'll be glad you did. Trust me on this one," I would have remained stuck. I would have missed the opportunity to let it all go. 

The Challenge
So … if you're being kept up at night with seemingly random thoughts, and you roll over and force yourself back to sleep, just think of what you might be missing!

Emerging from the Cave … & Flower Essences

I knew it was coming. I could feel myself growing more and more scattered, my energy splitting up into such tiny fragments that there wasn't enough in each piece to accomplish much of anything. Overflowing inboxes, unfinished projects, and a dining room floor I didn't want to walk on. Questions keeping me up at night: Do I leave Lucas in preschool or pull him out? Should I get a part-time job? Do I want another baby? Where do I find the melodies to all those Waldorf verses? What was it again that I was supposed to be writing? How do I fit in the freelance copywriting work I've been hired to do? At what point might I be willing to put forth an iota of effort toward promoting my other book?


I needed to pull my energy back together. Refocus. I really could have used a weekend away at a spa, or a writing retreat in Sedona, or even just a bit more sleep. What I got instead was a sinus infection. Hey, whatever works.


And it did. Work, that is. 


One way or another, I needed to slow down and regroup. I had noticed the signs, but was doing nothing about them, so my body did it for me. It's not the most comfortable way to go, and I don't recommend it, but for the stubborn types, or those of us a little slow on the uptake, it seems the only way to get our full attention sometimes. All I can say is I hope I catch on sooner next time.


Actually, that's not all I can say. I have a lot more to say. I have something to say about the healing properties of flower essences and the emotional healing that can occur when we are willing to do the work. I have something to say about listening to what's keeping us awake at night. And mostly, I have something to say (again!) about the power of meditation and journaling. So those will be the topics of these first few posts in almost a MONTH. Today's topic:

Flower Essences and Emotional Healing

A number of years ago, I began to get a hunch that my recurring sinus infections were related to my emotions. Specifically, they seemed somewhat related to a buildup of anger. 

When I was teaching and railing against a failing system, I got sinus infections almost continually. Once, during my last and most miserable year of teaching, I had recently recovered from being sick. An issue arose with the administrator, which, to me, felt stupid and unfair, and it had me shaking-mad. By 3pm that day, the post-nasal drip had begun burning my throat, and I was sinking into the next bout. That was when the light bulb went on.


Luckily, that very week I met a medical intuitive who introduced me to flower essences. Arcana Pharmacy, where I get them, describes them in this way: 

Flower essences are liquid, potentized plant preparations which convey a distinct imprint, or energy pattern of specific flowers…
Flower essences expand our understanding of health, recognizing a relationship between body and soul, and the interweaving of spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical aspects of wellness.

Okay, so in other words, they support you in doing the emotional work that underlies the physical problem you're facing. If you know which emotion is being tripped, you can choose a flower essence yourself. You don't necessarily need a medical intuitive to find the right ones for you, but I enjoyed that kind of support and through it, discovered layers of emotions that were affecting my physical health. Oh yeah, and I would get over a sinus infection in like, three days.


Since that time, I'd say I get about one sinus infection per year. It's a big improvement! Flash forward to the last few weeks which I described at the beginning of this post. At the first sign of that post-nasal drip, I was on the phone to the good people at Arcana, asking for flower essence recommendations. All I said was that I was starting to get sick with a sinus infection. Tiffany sent me Mycena, (technically not a flower, but a mushroom essence) which is a cleansing essence to help restore my aura, deal with unresolved emotions, and help with coming to an important decision. She also sent me one called 5 Corners, which promotes love and acceptance of self, and more joy. Sounded good!


I began taking the drops and getting as much rest as I could. I suddenly had a lot I needed to write about in my journal, a practice I'd, not surprisingly, let slide over the past month or so. I called Tiffany back five days later after a journal-induced, rage-y sort of catharsis which resulted in near-suffocation levels of stuffiness. Crying and sinus infections are a bad combination, but apparently it was a necessary step. She asked if the rage was tied up with resentment. Oh boy, was it ever! (Those details are coming up in the next post about what was keeping me awake. I don't want to distract from my point about the fleurs.) So she sent me Dagger Hakea, a flower essence that helps resolve resentment. Over the next two days, my anger and even the need to forgive simply vanished and I was able to let it all go. The basis for all that rage suddenly became a non-issue. It seems so hard until it's suddenly that easy. My sinuses began to clear up after that.


For me, the flowers absolutely support this emotional work. Mind you, I still did the emotional work. I meditated. I journaled. I went to the dark places. But the difference was that I was able to move through the dark places quickly and gain the insights I needed to put them behind me. I didn't stay stuck (in my stuff or in my sinuses). 


And let me tell you, getting out of that stuck place launched me into some huge realizations I couldn't have reached before. Decisions were made. Emotions were resolved. I felt lighter, happier, more joyful and more focused than I had in months. New ideas were flowing, and I felt capable of implementing them all.


This is the power of flower essences. 


Have any of you used flower essences? What's your experience with them? Why do you think they work? I'd love to hear from you in the comments! It's good to be back!


Cheers!

Alexis