Welcome to the “in2thelight” blog-ezine with Penny Mckay
March 2009

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
                                                                             Marcus Aurelius

1. Feature article – Imagine, Your Incredible Immune System
2. Personally yours…… Meditation, “to be” or “not to be” that is the question
3. Link to the BBC’s Fight for Life – “Asthma Attack”
4. Yoga yarns – Tales from the yoga mat and the TYA Foundation Course.

PLUS -      
Book worms ~ reviews  S.U.M.O (Shut Up, Move On) by Paul McGee
Kids corner ~ Considers Immunisation and asks “Does one dose fit all?”
Have you heard of………?  Karen Knowler, the Raw Food Coach

NEW this month -
Energetic Antics ~ ways to channel intention and energy to enhance every day living, focus on food (yum yum!)

AND finally -

1. In the pipeline………. Local workshops for March include T’ai Chi, Chi Kung and healing

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Imagine, Your Incredible Immune System

In this era of consciousness we are continuously evolving on all levels.
Many of us are experiencing these deep shifts and changes within us via our external world and the powerful events that we are witness to, at this time.

But as we deepen consciously and spiritually where does that leave us physically?

The past two winters have seen a truly incredible amount of cold and flu viruses that are rife. It seems as if no-one is being left untouched by illness in one form or another.
Our immune system is the body’s first line of defence when we encounter viruses, germs and bacteria. This systems intelligence kicks in silently and automatically when it encounters anything it considers is a threat to our survival.
 
But perhaps no one immune system is being left untouched for a reason and our physical body and our immune system are in a deep process of evolving too.

In the mind, body field it is a well known link between depression and a lowered immune function which makes a person more susceptible to illness. Any form of pro-longed stress, whether work related, financially related, family related or health related will also take its toll on the immune system. Perhaps you are managing the stress of some of these, even all of these or perhaps the reality is, you are not managing them at all.

It is our immune system that heroically carries the weight of our responsibilities or crumbles beneath the strain.

Our perspective on what we witness influences our view of the world. If we see events as only negative then that negativity is all we will see, it will impact not just our external world but our internal world too and this means we will pay the price physically.

If we can bring that conscious, spiritual view to what we see then we set ourselves free to welcome a lighter, brighter perspective and we are free to live that perspective in the physical body that perfectly reflects this. Our body becomes the lighter, brighter living proof of that lighter, brighter perspective.

In some cancer clinics patients are actively encouraged to use positive thoughts with supportive imagery to visualise their immune systems overcoming the cancer cells. A cancer client I once worked with visualised a column of white light flowing along his spine (like a neon tube, he said) and out through his nervous system to the whole of his body to further support the conventional treatment he was receiving. His remission was confirmed. 

In a nutshell, if you are unhappy with your world then your body will reflect this but if you are happy with your world it will reflect this also. 
The key aspect of this reflection in your body is your immune system. Your immune system is the body’s balance between health and illness, it keeps you not just well but alive and every thought you have can influence this balance either way.

Does your body still seem to be just as it was?
Have you considered where your body may be at in amongst all this conscious spiritual growth?
Are you missing an awareness of supporting the whole of your growth through supporting the body too?

Let’s see by briefly exploring your relationship with your immune system.  

1.What is your first feeling and what are your first thoughts when you get ill or tired or run down?
Anger? Frustration? Self pity?
I haven’t got time to be ill; I’ve got to work; I’ve got kids to get to school; They’ll think I’m weak; I’ve just got to get on with it; I mustn’t make a fuss.

What if instead of choosing these thoughts and feelings you stop for a moment and acknowledged them and allowed your immune system to perfectly reflect where your thoughts are? Are you in the happy clappy place or in the doom and gloom place?
What thought or feeling could you change in that moment?
Do it!

2. What is your first response when you get ill?

Reach for the Benylin, Ibuprofen or Antibiotics?
I must get better as quickly as possible; I can’t put up with this blocked nose; I haven’t got time for this.

What if instead of reaching for medication that will suppress your illness you consider being with the symptoms and consciously supporting your body through its processes.
Consciously supporting your body means doing just that but take it deeper than this and look to change any unsupportive patterns.
 
As a starting point on this journey it could be useful to look at and change some or all of the following:-
Are you drinking enough water to keep your body hydrated?
Are you eating enough fruits and vegetables to keep up your vitamin and mineral levels?

Are you doing any “supportive” activity to help your circulation and boost your immune system?
This could be an uplifting beach walk but preferably not a full on gym session as an intense workout does lower your immune system for a short time afterwards.
What about meditation, yoga or T’ai chi?
Current studies continue to confirm that these types of activity are immune system enhancers.
Are you asking for help in whatever way that may be to support you?
Consider complementary options such as reflexology or homeopathy.
What about rest? (Rest? What’s that? I hear you cry)
Through sleep and periods of rest the body’s systems are given the opportunity to rest, repair and replenish also. If you are continually on the go your immune system also has to be continually on the go.   
What about you time?
You matter. If your world is all about everyone else, at some point you will hit a deficit in your system. Your body will show you how much you matter by stopping you in your tracks and making you take you time.
Do you have any unfinished business?
Deal with anything that you feel is unfinished or unresolved, particularly past events. This may mean taking action directly and going through the process of letting go. When you harbour and dwell on unhappy thoughts and feelings so does your body. If you’ve been dwelling and harbouring them for years then so has your body and ill health will not be far behind! 

Be aware that there is always a flag when your body will tell you all is not well. It’s up to you to notice it and take action on it.
It may be a drop in energy when you were made to stop for a moment. Perhaps you even commented on it to yourself, oh that was a bit strange or that felt a bit odd.
Will you continue to choose to ignore it?

It is time to integrate what you are learning consciously and spiritually with your physicality by actually taking responsibility for your body and your health.

How healthy or how unhealthy you decide to be is up to you.
It’s a conscious choice and involves not just mind and spirit but the body as well and
it’s a conscious choice to do what is necessary and make the changes to remain well and happy for you.

Our immune system builds and strengthens through being allowed to do what it is it was divinely designed to do. Protect us, yes, but ultimately support us through this incredible period of growth and we would do well to support our incredible immune system in return.

LOL

P.S. This month’s link just shows you the incredible intelligence that governs the immune system. This footage is about life or death and the part that the immune system can play in this process. I find it both terrifying and awe inspiring and I wonder what we would be capable of if we could harness even a fraction of this body’s intelligence at a conscious level.   
 
  
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Personally yours……

Meditation, “to be” or, “not to be” that is the question.

The other day I was out running and I found myself wondering about meditation.

(Before I go any further, though, I must clarify that although I paint a picture of athleticism with the word running, I am more of a trotter/jogger in terms of speed. I mean I do go faster than a brisk walk but I couldn’t quite give Paula Ratcliffe much of a “run” for her money!)

During the first ten minutes of running my mind is usually full of conversations. Those I have just left at the house, things I need to do, clients, friends and blah blah blah!

But it’s one of those incredible things that happen, for me anyway, for after about ten to fifteen minutes of running, my mind becomes clear.
I’m convinced it’s something to do with the repetitive nature of the whole experience. There is the rhythmic slap, slap, slap of my trainers on the concrete and the swoosh, swoosh, swoosh of my arms as they move back and forth against my body. At some point my breath settles in to this lovely manageable pace of breathing whilst running and then my mind surrenders. There is nothing, nothing to think about except for being completely with this and in this “body experience” that is running.

Then floating out of the nothing there drifts up a train of thought. Out of pure clarity there is “just an idea” emerging and this time the idea was about meditation.
(I hope you noticed I hadn’t actually lit a candle or assumed the lotus position at any point!)
I was actively engaged in a running meditation!
 
Now, there are many types of meditation sitting, standing, lying, walking. Well actually any activity that you are fully engaged in could be deemed as meditation. So this got me to thinking, we lead such busy lives these days and many a time I have the heard the cry, “I wish I could find the time to meditate but there is always this to do or that to do, and I have to have a special place to meditate and I don’t have the space and the phone will ring or a member of the family will come in” and so on and so on. There are always many reasons not to meditate and this is the reality of our way of living.
So doesn’t it follow that our form of meditation could embrace our reality rather than try to remove us from it? (That is bearing in mind that it is all an illusion!)
 
A friend and I often joke at how easy it must be to be a student of meditation, tucked up in a little cave somewhere or enclosed in an Ashram, where everything is set up for concentrating the mind. We agree the greater challenge lies in incorporating a means to meditate “out here” in the world with all the fantastic distractions this brings.

So, without further ado, welcome to “washing up” meditation. Welcome to ironing meditation, shopping meditation and making the lunch meditation. You can even engage in washing the car meditation too!

Now I don’t want to make light of meditation but in a way I do. It is an important factor of our overall well being, but what I’m saying is this. It doesn’t have to be another reason to beat yourself up, it doesn’t have to be regimented or fixed, and it doesn’t have to be a means to failing because you don’t light a candle when you do it. Seek to find a more creative option.

So next time you really want to meditate but you have a ton of stuff to do first, choose one thing to do and do it with full awareness, make the stuff your meditation.
Here’s how.

Washing up meditation - stand at the sink with full awareness, this means notice your feet firmly on the kitchen floor. Relax your shoulders and breathe deeply once or twice. Focus on the dishes in the sink and move your hand slowly to turn on the tap. Watch the water as it fills up the sink. Notice how it moves and falls on to the dishes. Turn off the tap. As you pick up a dish notice how it feels. The hardness of it. Notice the softness of the cloth in the other hand. Feel the temperature of what you are holding. Really look at the plate you are washing, see how the fine movement of your hands enables you to both hold the cloth and clean at the same time. Breathe throughout your washing up meditation; allow any unwanted thoughts to be washed away with your soapy water. When you have finished all your dishes, take a moment to congratulate yourself on “be-ing” there and enjoying the moment.
(This type of awareness can be easily adapted for loading the dish washer, the washing machine, the tumble dryer etc, etc, etc!)
Of course if you really want to you could always light a candle!

With best intentions always.

LOL

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This month’s link – is a little involved as it is on the BBC’s website so I can’t link you directly to it. It is a strong piece of footage of a nine year old having an asthma attack but it is an incredible example of the power of our immune system. You have been warned!

Google "BBC fight for life"
Select "BBC-Health-TV and radio"
click "16July - Childhood"
"Play video clip" - it should be Arun, a nine year old suffering an asthma attack.

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Yoga yarns – Tales from the yoga mat and the Traditional Yoga Foundation Course.

Sunday 15th February 2009
Day two – Five of us returned this day to continue the journey in to deepening our knowledge and practise of yoga. Following on from our first week we explored lateral flexion (bending to the side) which enables us to move away from and return to the sacred central line of the spine. We experimented with holding Mudras which are hand positions that enhance the focus when meditating and we brought our awareness to the breath as a means to enter a point of stillness by dropping in to the pause that exists between inhalation and exhalation.
Postures – Parighasana, Trikonasana, Parsvakonasana.
What I uncovered – I do not need to “know”; to be able to let go.
Quote of the day –“Let the muscles either side of your spine be like the furrows of a field, and your breath the water that flows along them, bringing life”
                                                                          Courtesy of Arju Marchant

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Book Worms…….

….for books and authors from the body, mind, spirit genre 

This month the excellent self help book “S.U.M.O” by Paul McGee is beautifully reviewed by Anna Walker. (Thanks babe!)

Title: S.U.M.O – (Shut Up, Move On): The Straight Talking Guide to Creating and Enjoying a Brilliant Life.
Author: Paul McGee
ISBN: 1841127116
Price: £5.99 amazon

Having recently been “credit crunched” I found myself enjoying a period of
“Hippo Time” (if you read the book you will understand) and unable to find my copy of S.U.M.O, I raided the final salary cheque and purchased a new copy.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that self-help books are really not my bag at all. Those I have been encouraged to read, I have become frustrated with, within a matter of pages. I find most of the jargon they spout patronising and irritating. Therefore it was with a fairly closed mind I opened this book and then it was only because it had the words “straight talking” on the front cover (and Penny had asked me to write a review of it!)

What a breath of fresh air this book is. You could, if you wanted, read this book in a day. I dragged my carcass down to the gym just to get out of the house and drink someone else’s coffee. A couple of mornings and several skinny lattes later I am delighted to report this book contains humour and is full of down to earth, no nonsense, straight talking exactly as promised on the cover.

If you enjoy a good wallow in self-pity and past problems, then it is perhaps not the book for you, yet…..
However, if playing the victim is getting a bit dull and you feel you no longer want to wake up at 4am with a head full of regrets and “what ifs” then take a peek.

What you will find is a book that gives you the motivation, insight and determination to move on and it’s definitely worth a read. What’s even better is that part of the profits from the book goes to the charity UNICEF so you get to make a difference from the very minute you decided to buy this book.

In recounting the writing of this review whilst out for supper (I had grown bored of the gym) I discovered, I had in fact passed my original copy of S.U.M.O to a friend who was going through a particularly painful and drawn out divorce at the time.
His partner (guess who has learned to move on?) who is herself a wonderful individual (not one for Hippo Time at all) commented on the fact that she had seen a copy of S.U.M.O (which had my name on) on their bookshelf and apparently it was very well thumbed, with lots of pages highlighted. A very testament in itself and I shall say no more.

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Kid’s Corner
……a place for parents to share body, mind and spirit hints and tips for the kids.
 
Immunisations – Does One Dose Fit All?

When it comes to my child’s welfare I‘m all for the old adage that prevention is better than cure but what if, in this day and age of flu jabs for the elderly and immunisations for our youngsters, the prevention is becoming part of the cause?

My concern over the fact that my three and a half year old was to receive 5 jabs in one go led me to seek support from my homeopath. There is an actual remedy called 5 in 1 that helps the body deal with the jab! I feel I’m really lucky to have this kind of support available and we are very lucky that our son is very fit and healthy and we do what we can as parents to support this.
My thought is always to support my son through his illness by supporting his immune system. The only way that a child’s defences, their natural defences strengthen, is through being ill but more importantly through the process of getting better. 

When I take my cat to the vets for an antibiotic jab the very minimum of information that is taken in to account by the vet before administering the injection is her age and weight. When I took my son for his jabs not even this was checked.

I can’t help but wonder that perhaps an immunisation that was required and worked well when first implemented ten or twenty years ago ought to undergo some kind of review as to how relevant it may or may not be anymore?
It seems to me that once you have received your basic information on what the MMR jab is, you are left to get on with it. Any alternative options, such as having them separately, or not to have them at all, are not encouraged.
Balanced information is all that I would ask so I can make an informed choice. But the appointment letter arrives, almost like a summons, and off you dutifully go to the surgery. This is usually spurred on by a good dose of guilt from the latest vague news report about an increase in the rate of measles or mumps as a result of parents who are not getting their kids vaccinated. (I’ve yet to meet anyone who hasn’t!)

I also wonder, what if my child’s immune system has already been challenged by a number of illnesses. Shouldn’t this history be factored in? I wasn’t asked about any past illnesses.
We are all very individual in our physiological make up and my child may be slightly above the recommended height and weight for his age and possibly more robust than some. But what if he wasn’t?

Mostly this experience, as you can probably tell, has left me wondering.

In addition to this, my mum, who is 70, got “caught” for a flu jab in one arm and a Pneumonia jab in the other and, for the first time ever, she developed a chest infection.
Around the same time I noticed a letter in a local paper from an elderly gentleman. He wrote of how he has always enjoyed good health and has never suffered from colds. He too, dutifully had his flu jab and within a week was floored by the flu for two weeks. He claimed to know of at least five others who had experienced something similar. He was left wondering too.

For the very young and very elderly alike it seems it is the norm to assume that their vulnerable immune systems need extra help. But what if this attitude is actually doing more harm than good in the greater scheme of our health as a nation? I wonder.

For more on kids immunisations check out www.theinformedparent.co.uk

Have you heard of………?  
Karen Knowler
Who’s she?
Raw Food Champion, coach, author, presenter plus.
What’s she in to?
The connection between our emotions and our food choices. Smoothies, juices and raw pizzas!
How do I find out more?
www.therawfoodcoach.com

Energetic Antics……
 ways to channel intention and energy to enhance every day living.

Food (yum yum!)

1. When you are preparing food, be aware of what you are thinking about and how you are feeling.

2. Think happy thoughts of nurturing and nourishment for those you are preparing it for and don’t forget to include you too!
(A friend of mine gets her daughters to blow kisses in to her cake mixtures!)

3. Having the intention to nurture and nourish can begin as soon as you are considering what you are going to eat.

4. Carry this thought throughout buying, preparing, cooking and then eating.

5. If you eat meat then spare a thought for the animal you have purchased, be considerate of the life it may have led. In these times we can all make a conscious choice to be considerate of this.

6. Give thanks to the animal and the herd for this sustenance. All this can be done silently in your head, with the power of your mind.
 
7. To further enhance the energy of any food that you are preparing either use Reiki symbols or hold your hands a few centimetres above the food and in your mind hold the intention that you are grateful for this food and enhance its “life-giving” force for all those that eat it.  

8. Take the time to enjoy and really relish your super charged dinner!

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In the pipeline……….Workshops for March

T’ai Chi, Chi Kung and healing workshop
Thursday 5th March 9.00am – 12.30pm

Bisterne village hall, Bisterne near Ringwood
The aim of the workshop is to promote harmony and joy in your life.
You will enjoy a new sense of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well being.
£15 payable in advance.
For more info www.qihealing.co.uk or call Nicole 07941 052578

REIKI / ENERGY HEALING AVAILABLE FOR DONATIONS
ON
MONDAY 9TH AND 23RD MARCH
6PM-9PM

AT BOURNE SPRING COMMUNITY CENTRE
SPRINGBOURNE
(on the corner of Holdenhurst Road and St Mary's Road - BH1 4QP)
TO BOOK CALL
07929 433552
 THANKYOU

Chi Kung and Chi healing for the wood element
Saturday 28th March 10.00am – 4.00pm

Bisterne village hall, Bisterne near Ringwood
Spring is the season of the wood element in Traditional Chinese medicine.
It is the time of growth and moving forward with projects and goals.
We will enjoy Chi Kung exercises and guided meditation to help with these goals and support the liver and gall bladder which are also connected to the wood element.
£35 payable in advance.

For more info www.qihealing.co.uk or call Nicole 07941 052578

This months images are sources from www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net and www.Freeimages.co.uk