Tag: healing

Three: It’s a Jungle out there

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At international departures, Cape Town, a father bribes his daughter with a lollipop to “kiss uncle on the mouth”. The gateway to abuse. I’ve been there. Always having to ‘be nice’, to not offend, I still don’t always recognise it until in hindsight when boundaries have been violated and trust already fractured. It happened last year in India with an 80-year-old man I saw as a father figure, until he threw me out of his home when I denied his lascivious advances. My son called it, told me how obvious his angle was. I felt foolishly naive.

And it happened again this week in the spice garden. Well regarded and highly respected, I wanted to meet the almost 70-year-old herbal medicine doctor. At 50, his wife was run down by a train and he retreated to a cave on a barren hill where he has lived the past 17 years. Slowly slowly, sherpa style, he began by planting a simple vegetable garden to sustain himself and gradually expanded the planting, integrating his holistic medicinal knowledge. An area of regular landslides and death due to receding vegetation is now jungle once more. I caveat this with an ‘allegedly’ at the end of each statement as what followed gives me cause to doubt. I get a tour of the spice garden and a pulse reading and feel inspired to return as a volunteer to help him reach his target of adding another 8million trees to the 2million already planted. And then he hugged me and told me I would have to dedicate three hours a day to sex and that my energy was causing him to want to do things to me with his tongue. Confused, I busied myself in the herbal shop, got financially exploited for remedies I don’t trust are the real deal and fled in the getaway tuk tuk back to Kandy. Trust … boundaries … total weirdness … that’s life, although it shouldn’t have to be.

The benefit of approaching menopause is the transition from fertile body to fecund mind. I am driven more into the space of exposing sexual harassment; not remaining quiet; not protecting anyone regardless of how incredible a human they are (allegedly). Even when it still feels awkward and uncomfortable doing so, I want to work towards flicking off the ‘nice switch’ in the moment of feeling violated.

“From earth”, is the new retort to men more interested in my marital status than my birth place. I add, “my wife is taking care of my son.” A happy boundary. Despite my occasional need for a facetious push back, I have found the Sri Lankan people to be engaging, kind, helpful and super chilled. Safe I am.

Navigating a new country is like learning a new language. And Madugalle Friendly Gamily Guesthouse has become a familiar language. This is a new comfort zone. I consider canceling my trip to climb Sri Pada to stay two more nights … but there is also the tensile force pulling me to challenge myself on whether I have in fact found a new way to engage with this relentless downpour and climb 7km up 5,500 steps to almost 2,500m, a 1km ascent with a gazillion pilgrims … starting at 3am to summit for sunrise. This all sounds mad, right? 

Linda Goodman sums me up in her Sun Signs tome I discovered as a teenager when I had lost myself in the dysfunction of my family system. “Why walk when you can run?” is the single line adhered to my psyche. I use this as justification for my special kind of crazy.

One last delicious curry—green beans and sweet potatoes—at Mrs Madugalle. A walk for a final coffee at Natural Coffee Kandy. It’s still closed. And rain comes tumbling down … in drops, then sheets, then buckets. The coffee is worth it; waiting in the rain isn’t. The people are short enough for the countless umbrellas to take out an eye and the eaves drip exactly where the walkway is. I arrive home wet. Packed and as ready as I’ll be, the only thing to do is get to Vegetable Garden House in Nallthaniya, ten minutes walk to the start of the 5,500 step climb.

I’m great making choices when I have no choice. Confused the first time I heard this, I learn to let go of regrets and accept that I also have to do certain things just to know I don’t want to do them … which means often I have to just go with the (moment)um and know a fail is as good as a win. Not brave enough for the bus, not scared enough for a taxi … the tuk tuk always comes out top. I order a PickMe. I enjoy the road tripping and so far I have had super friendly humans behind the handlebars.

We stop for king coconut and tea. The road is good to begin with and then I understand better why taxis command such a high fare. The roads become potholed and corrugated and there are entire sections of wash away down the mountainside. I feel the bus may have been a stretch too far for me and am grateful for my wise choice. Eventually I hear the voices of all the bugs over the sound of the tuk tuk engine; I see waterfalls and hilltops; I see tea plantations and rice paddies beside dense trees and forest foliage; I see life. NOW we are in the jungle! The first 80km build the anticipation and I keep feeling like I must be there already but with the state of the flooding, the last 25km take as long. Huts, tea houses, shops and lodges hang precipitously from the cliffs. I see the remains of homes not lucky enough to escape the recent deluge. Four and half hours after setting out, the lush and comfy Vegetable Garden House stretches out into a field. It grounds me. No vertiginous sleeping. I commend myself on another excellent choice.

There is a fire in my chest. The doctor warned of a potential healing crisis and, if this is it, I’m going to be just fine. The past months are burning off me now and the two weeks I have been away feel endless and infinite. Before departure my body was in a condensed state of dis-ease and I developed a pathology that causes me to hold my breath. My diaphragm gets stuck; my soft centre curls in on itself … I can get to the precipice of blacking out. As with the packing process, I am paralysed by the phobia of taking up too much space. If I hold my breath will I shrink? I consider if this is why I push myself on runs and hikes. Is it the only time I fully breathe?

Tonight I practice breathing. Tonight I climb. Tonight I allow the jungle to breathe for me.

The Magic of Holistic Intuition

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I don’t believe in methods. They lend themselves to prescriptive formulas that override each unique individual’s drive to heal their distinct injury, wound, trauma, addiction, illness or dis-ease … yes, we all have these lurking in the shadows of our beings waiting to be brought into the light as the gifts we bring to the world.

The holistic model incorporates all modalities and can be used to tailor-make fluid healing protocols that include a variety of specifically selected therapies for whatever an individual is focusing on at any moment in time.

Healers and Therapists don’t fix you; they hold you in a space of self-care and self-repair. This makes the most important precursor to any healing journey the guiding of a client to somatic self-communication; to touch into their inner oracle that will serve as their true guide and practitioner so that the healer or therapist is a critical partner on the path to healing and integration but not the navigator.

Having grown up in Durban, I was a ’quick-dip-in-the-ocean-when-I’m-baking-hot’ kind of person when I moved to Cape Town three decades ago. But 13 years ago, my intuition led me to the cold water. I was breaking apart my seemingly safely constructed reality and leaving my husband. And I was doing it sober, sugar-free and unsupported.

Besides the obvious trauma that comes of such a massive life event, it brought up all the traumas that had created my particular love pathology and attachment dysfunction and set me up for marrying him in the first place. Cold water became my meditation place, my breathing space, my calming clearing clarifying container where I could feel my outer edges, free-float, and learn that everything passes away with present moment awareness … and there’s nothing like immersion in ice water to bring you instantly to the present moment.

Since then it has become my go-to … a new lesson in how pushing into the edges of a discomfort zone can initially lead to more discomfort but will ultimately lead to a new comfort zone.

I have used many modalities through the various life events and trigger points and have, as such, been constantly reminded that what works for me in the moment doesn’t necessary work for me in a future moment and, therefore, doesn’t necessarily work for anyone else in the format I practice it.

#ice bathing isn’t for everyone; #dance isn’t for everyone; #running isn’t for everyone; #yoga isn’t for everyone; #craniosacral_therapy isn’t for everyone; #talk_therapy isn’t for everyone; #gyms, #steams, #saunas aren’t for everyone … and the list goes on and on and on.

No one — least of all me — would have imagined skinny little cold-averse Penelope would have gone running for 20km before floating in ice water until hypothermic … and no one — least of all me — would have imagined that hyperactive, inflexible yoga-averse Penelope would be currently registered to go to India next year to study #Transformational_Yoga and #Integral_Meditation.

So, no, there are no methods, no formulae, no prescriptions to finding wholeness and healing … there is only you … and what your being is seeking invariably moves towards the very thing that’s seeking you.

Find the Pause

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‘In between the stimulus and the response there is a space and in that space is our power and our freedom.’ ~ Viktor Frankl

Habits cut us off from ourselves because we tend to use them to escape ourselves so – as with breaking any habitual behaviour – pause as you move towards it and, in that pause, feel into the sensations in your being that give you the cues and clues around whether it’s really what you want to do or whether it’s simply a way to not do what you don’t want to do.

So, I ask you today, can you want whatever it is without judgement and shame and then work with it in your imagination in a way that gives you a sense of deep inner peace?

Can you get to the essence of it to find the love that resides in it … your own presence … the presence that already exists within you. Because you are not a drop in the ocean but the entire ocean in a drop – you contain the entire universe in the atoms of your being so you have the capacity to bring forth exactly what it is you need right now.

Love yourself into healing – commit yourself into healing – trees need the wind to create a hard core … so use these winds of change to create your own solid core of worth, compassion, love and care.

My Work is my Art

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Art is not decorative; it’s what causes change.

I don’t hand you your health nor do I provide you with the answers. What I do is hold you in a space of non-judgement, mutual respect, trust and freedom of expression so that you can drop into an integrated state of being — mind, body and heart — and discover that you are already healing and you already have the questions that are guiding you towards the answers … just keep journeying and they will lead you back home to you; to your innate wellness and to your true vitality.

Craniosacral Therapy and coaching are the mediums that I use. What’s your medium that you use as the vehicle of translating your gift into a language your audience can hear?

If you can see your work as your art, what are you creating today; what change are you effecting? 

The Grit Becomes the Gift

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Most people have heard the ubiquitous story of the oyster and the pearl but not everyone has heard the full story. Myth says that the oyster must first be dredged from the bottom of the darkest ocean and the shell pried open in order to retrieve the pearl. And then, to retain its lustre, it must be polished and kept warm against the skin and its beauty shared with all the world.
The symptom is the grit the psyche uses to create the gift and your gift will shine with a radiance in proportion to the depths you had to dive into your shadow self and the effort you needed to expend in self-development and introspection in order to attend the wounds your being was calling you to heal.
Yes, the sand becomes a pearl … but not without effort, courage, frustration, agitation, patience, willpower and struggle. The oyster isn’t intentionally creating something of beauty; it is merely managing pain in the best way it can to not only survive but to thrive.
So too, when the body alerts you to a wound, work with it … not with expectation of something better, but simply with the acknowledgement that it can be no other way for now.
Step by step and breath by breath be guided to those aspects that can be dredged out of your emotional depths. Work diligently and patiently, work with tenacity and curiosity. And don’t give up because this is the polishing – to ripen and become what you need to be in the world
And once you have recognised what you have brought into the light, find your tribe and share your gift and always remember where and how you received it. This is your initiation and your obligation so that we can all learn and grow together.

Don't try and be Happy

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These times we are traversing present us with unprecedented challenges with no real reference points to provide a safety net or anchor point of stability. It can send the most resilient of us into overwhelm.

I am not a believer in false positivity and inauthentically striving to be happy. I am a believer in being present for whatever presents itself and in fully showing up for it.

If anxiety wants your attention – or fear, or anger – be present for it as though it’s a small child that’s scared, crying for attention, in need of some reassurance. Pick it up and really connect with it to find out what it wants … then wrap it up, comfort it and put it to bed.

If you’re trying to be happy all the time, you probably won’t be happy – it’s like giving the baby a pacifier and waiting for it to figure out it hasn’t actually gotten what it needs … all those ignored emotions will keep vying for your attention.

But if you let go on your fixation with happiness, the fullness of all that you are will be able to emerge and guess how that’s going to make you feel?

Yeah …! Happy :)

What is it that I do …?

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We are programmed to put our power in the hands of others — the so-called experts, who are given carte blanche to decide our fate based on the very limited perceptions they have of our unique individuality.

I have explored all avenues for someone to show me what my life purpose is but I have never expected anyone else to decide who I am and what I am here for.

Through techniques including astrology, Enneagram, chakra work, Tarot, numerology, Vipassana, body work, art medicine, dance and plant medicine journeys, I have explored my inner landscapes like a true nomad and I have gathered fragments of my psyche, physicality and emotional makeup to stitch together the essence that is me.

Craniosacral Therapy — in the form that I practice it … not prescriptive but functional — bringing in all the aspects of my own journey — is my superpower.