I used to go ice bathing.
It was 2008 or 2010. I can’t remember exactly because back then I couldn’t barely remember my name, let alone yours. It wasn’t called ice bathing back then, just Penelope doing her crazy in the freezing Atlantic Ocean, rain or shine, friends waiting on the shore.

It was my trauma resource.
I didn’t call it resourcing back then either … or trauma. I was in survival mode, pulled to the icy ocean so I could feel anything other that the searing emotional angst that ripped through my being … until I could breathe again with the assurance that just as I would warm up again after this swim, so too would I recover from the pain of grieving. I have heard grief expressed as a fantasy broken and I guess that’s what my trauma was — the shattering of so many illusions.

There was no method to it, no breathwork or timing or discipline required. These elemental healing practices are inherent in all of us but we have mostly lost our intuitive knowing of which particular element to work with at each moment and, therefore, get enticed by fads and peer pressure. 

Fortunately there was none of that for me and the compulsion to get into the water drew from the blueprint all I needed in order to work with the cold water. I would walk gradually and meditatively into the water, inch by inch, observing every part of my body and both sensation and response. As the numbing moved up my body, I would push through the water with strong determination, breathing forcefully and calming my mind to the reality that this too would pass. I hadn’t done my first Vipassana yet — that came two or three years later — but of course we all inherently know the law of arising and passing away, we mostly just choose to ignore it as an inconvenience.

Once my breathing had calmed in alignment with my mindset, I would gradually lay on my back, head submerged and limbs outstretched. My heart rate was generally fast, as was my breathing, as my head went from shock to numbness too. Floating there the whole world would disappear as I became euphoric and gradually my whole system went into a state of complete tranquility, merging with the water as my healer.

The water healed my trauma, as it continues to do so to this day. I work with all my emotional turmoil through what I now see as elemental alchemy — some days it’s ice, others it’s heat … and on others I like to climb a mountain in gale force wind or driving rain. Still on other days, I like to sit indoors and simply breathe, chant and observe all the sensation in my body.

As a Craniosacral Therapist, Integral Coach, Meditation Teacher and, most recently, a qualified Mountain Guide, I would like to invite you to connect with yourself through the elements so that you can more effectively integrate the full capacity of who you are.

If you need guidance, you can contact me for one-on-one sessions either in person or online.

What we give our attention to becomes our purpose.

When we are constantly distracted by making a living, we have no capacity to make a life. We then have what is called a midlife crisis which is nothing more than suddenly having time and capacity to allow into consciousness that which we were born to do … and potentially recognising that we failed at that.

Then misery and breakdown occurs because the psyche doesn’t want to acknowledge that all that life was wasted — it’s a kind of cognitive dissonance that makes us hang onto the illusion of the bullshit we have been fed because allowing the knowing of that truth would cause us to choose suffering in the face of our irreversible mistake … and the mass societal gaslighting.

This can literally kill some people, or it can break away the shell of one’s understanding of who one perceives oneself to be.

You can get stuck in the constructed reality that says it’s only normal if you sacrifice most of your life in the pursuit of fulfilment through possessions and money just so you can retire when you too old to use it on anything other than medical care. Or you can lament this perceived waste of life and truth. 

You get to choose to break through or be broken open … the point being that you get to choose. 

And rather than living the lie or the victimhood, you get to Start Again!

My life is proof that it is never too late to start again. I admit to having broken open on a few occasions — life’s longing for me to live into what gifts I bring cleaved me open like an oyster so that I could brandish my pearl. That was the beginning of both the hero journey and the true ego journey — the treacherous and tortuous paths that taught me to hold lightly that which I bring because as is evident with a baby who is born with fists tightly closed, so too is it evident that in death our palms lay open … we can hold onto nothing so let it flow through your fingers like the river of chi flows through your spine.

When I work with clients, it gives me access to all those parts of myself that also need work, development, acknowledgement or just simple noticing.

Recently, there has been a calling for me to look beneath the story I have of being ADHD. This story comes with my inability to sit still, my drive to go running daily and my incapacity to focus fully on any given task for extended periods of time. And I also know that when I have to I can … which means there is more beneath the surface. There is ALWAYS more beneath the surface.

I speak a lot about letting go of certainty of anything in favour of allowing whatever is in the blindspot to emerge into the light. And this goes for allowing what’s underneath each story to fully reveal itself.

So, looking in the mirror of the work I have been recently doing with clients, I sense into this disease around rest; this guilt and self-judgement that comes with not doing, doing, doing; this feeling of not deserving time out lest I become lazy, lethargic, unmotivated. I am debilitated by my need to rest sometimes because of all my strong inner critic (in IFS terminology this would be one of my managers keeping me safe from feeling all of the above) telling me I’ll never do anything ever again if I take a moment off from being busy physically or mentally – even the act of meditation has become a doing rather than a being for me. She’s a fierce inner critic and I have been ignoring her to my own detriment; using my ADHD label as justification to keep moving in all layers of my being and, when I stop, getting stuck in a freeze state terrified of being caught out being all the nasty judgements she assigns to me.

What is it that is underneath your story? Can you see it?

It’s critical that one only goes there when safe enough to do so. There is a way to go in just a little bit at a time, gradually doing deeper and deeper until you get to the core – going directly there will freak out the protector parts of you and they’ll jump in to do their job to keep you safe whilst sabotaging the work that needs to be done.

If you need help finding these parts of yourself and feeling held whilst doing this integral work, contact me on +27 (0) 741011621 or wellworthbeing@gmail.com

This refers to self leadership as well as leadership of others because until you have begun the process of self development you cannot lead others to do the same.

Through a process of elemental bathing in nature, we connect to self. Because we are made up of all the elements, the only access to full self reflection and awakening has to come through access to the earth, the sun, the streams and the fresh mountain or forest air. And through true connection to self, we can then go into our workplace or place of study and have impact on how we lead and engage with others.

The walks in nature that I guide you on will take you through a process of connection and integration. We will walk mindfully and stop for meditation and breathwork along the way. We will fully ground and find spaces in our emotional and mental bodies so that our physicality can be purified and better able to connect to our higher source. We are all connected so any work we do for ourselves we also do for the collective, near and far.

I do purely exercise-related hikes and trail runs too. Contact me to discuss individual or team events on the mountain, in the forest or by the sea.

You may not have chosen your particular path; you may have been unwittingly pushed off, or on, course by events in your life; but this is your path and only you can walk it. No matter where you are on either your external or internal journeys, I’d like to invite you on an adventure that integrates the two, by exploring your outer realities within the context of your inner landscape. Whatever the challenges you face, you already possess either the resources or the capacity to develop the correct set of resources to travel this passage through whatever you step in to meet and whatever rises to meet you.

Treat your life like a pilgrimage: follow the waymarkers; get lost; take some detours; meet new people; see new sights, and always remember to resource well with water, rest and nutrition. Travel well … one step at a time. Simply walking along narrow trails and being touched by the Cape fynbos, and deeply breathing in mountain or sea air, will infuse your system with beneficial microbes. You are changed by every step, every breath, every emotional emergence and every sight, touch and sound. Embrace the change – it is the only guarantee.

Don’t seek the path, seek rather that which prompts the looking. This is your own personal pilgrimage.

Michelangelo said he didn’t create David; he allowed David to reveal himself. He was the vehicle that allowed the image within the stone to become manifest. I see this as the gift of purpose at the core of all of our beings; I feel we are born with it. The work then is to find the catalysts that break away the compensations we have created around us preventing us from being in the discomfort of who we are.

It’s critical in this societal structure for our children to discover their unique and innate gifts whilst this covering is still membranous and porous … before all the layers have turned to stone … before they need hammer and chisel to get to the core of who they were born to be.

I am an advocate for the work of uncovering through authentic living who each of us was born to be so that our meaning creation becomes the vehicle for the gifts we can offer up.

Contact me here if you would like to do the work of soul and purpose; if you are ready to walk your path.

People use money as a tool of compliance — blackmail you into giving up your authenticity and your dreams. People bind money to love so it warps the notion of love and creates fear in the void where love is meant to be.

You’re not alone if you feel bound to a system like a family, a job or a spouse, enmeshed in the indoctrination and gaslighting around not being able to make it alone, not being able to stand on your own two feet without their financial input. There are many people who remain bound to a dysfunctional family or don’t leave a job or a spouse because the system they are in has undermined their ability to such a degree that they are immobilised by their perceived inability to survive without them. These same systems also make sure the individual doesn’t have any outside interests (no moonlighting in a work contract) or friends outside of the system who might influence them to recognise their are trapped in an unhealthy place.

We’ve been duped; we’ve got it all wrong! Progress isn’t about getting more; it’s about learning to live with less. Financial abuse is when people use money as a tool against you, to manipulate, to coerce you. It happens in families, marriages and in workplaces. Sustainability means giving stuff up so you aren’t constantly striving for more stuff and then having to support the attainment of said stuff by sacrificing the parts of your live that would essentially negate your need to attain said stuff in the first place. To create a sustainable lifestyle, find out what you value most and what matters most to you and hold those things with more reverence than the stuff you think you need to get in order to prop up your values on a pseudo pedestal. Because when things fall apart, which inevitably they always do, you will still have the things you need to sustain you — the things that money and status and cars and jobs can’t give you.

Abundance is love, kindness, joy and ease … it is a settling into the simplicity that everything is available.

“The world has enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed.” Mahatma Gandhi

#sustainabilitycoaching
#abundancemindset
#lifestylechange