Shift Your Focus

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An article I was reading in Prevention Magazine recently highlighted that all too often we easily focus on the bits of our appearance we don’t like – till that is all we see. Then we lose confidence and want to hide. Well, let me tell you how you can shift your focus and gain a new resourceful perspective?

View Of Self
The article suggested “step back” from looking in the mirror close up. Do it. When you step back you get a different perspective, you see the whole.

A close up view, of course, only lets you see bits, various parts, of your face for instance. So you see lines, sags, and skin tone. When you step back you see face proportions, sparkling eyes, nicely shaped brows, great cheeks, strong jaw, shapely lips etc.

Close up you use left brain’s speciality for detail. Step back and right brain’s bigger picture specialty comes into play more. Now you get some perspective on your self-criticism.

This is much kinder to your psyche and is much closer to the reality that others see. You are not bits or parts. You are a whole being and no one part is the only part that matters. A confident, animated, and interested face and expression is always a winner, especially when you focus on discovering something special about the person you are looking at – and in the mirror that person is you.

APPLY THIS USEFUL & EFFECTIVE STRATEGY

See the Stressor
This strategy works well when you have a “picture” of a stressful situation, issue or person.

Evaluate the Effect
Note where you represent the problem to yourself when thinking about it. Does your mind’s eye see the picture close up? to your left? to your right?

Note how you feel when looking at the upsetting picture or scene. Where is the discomfort or stress registered in your body? Do you breathe shallowly? Is your chest or throat tight? Does your tummy churn? Do you get pain in the body or tension in your neck? Check your jaw for tension, and also your arms, hands, throat, chest, tummy, legs, toes.

Now mentally push your mind’s stress provoking image further away from you, out into the distance, an arms length, bit further. How do you feel now?

Bring the image close in again. Check the impact on body sensations and tension level. Note the differences.
Again push the image further away, check impact. Is it less stressful out there? If your breathing is more relaxed and body tension less, that’s good feedback from your body.

Push the picture further back still, till the image is very small and there is no tension or very little in your body. Leave the image there for now.

Connect With Your Resources
Now is the time to consider how you really want to feel in the situation or with that person.

Do you want to feel calm, clear headed, resourceful, focused, confident, present, relaxed, prepared, whatever?

Recall a time when you were experiencing all of that.
If you can’t recall a time create a picture of you with those attributes. Use someone you know with those attributes as a role model, put yourself in their shoes to feel what it is like to have those attributes.

Colour the picture with a positive colour, for you, bright yellow, soft pink, beautiful purple or vibrant red, whatever makes you feel the attributes more vividly and connects with the resources within.

Bring this resourceful picture close in until you, the colour, and the resourceful picture are one. Breathe in the colour and scene. Feel the impact on yourself. Enjoy the feel. It’s inside you and right through you now. The colour glows all round you.

Now look out and bring in the previously stressful scene and check the impact. Bring it in closer slowly and monitor its impact. At any time you can stop the picture where it is and draw breath, and breathe out the resourceful colour all round you again. Continue to bring in the picture till you feel your resourceful self, calm, relaxed, confident, totally present, prepared for whatever.

Holding your resourceful state is the secret. It has more energy than the issue or problem and allows you to apply your creative problem solving ability to handle the issue productively.

When your resources are bigger and stronger than the problem there is no problem. It’s just something to sort out and move on.

Keep It Happening
Remind yourself of the resourceful colour whenever you need as you breathe in and shift your focus.

Cheers
Anna

Energy Medicine


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Chinese Traditional Medicine, the use of Acupuncture and Chinese Herbs over thousands of years, has gradually become more accepted, even among doctors. Acupuncture uses needles made of two different metals. These are inserted into the body at specific points, depending on the health state of the person in need, and act as electrical conductors to help the body discharge or redistribute blocked energy or recharge depleted energy. This is energy medicine.

Kinesiology

A whole new branch of energy medicine sprang into being in the 1960s combining the knowledge of the Chinese meridian energy system with Western understanding of anatomy and physiology. This became Applied Kinesiology.
Chiropractor George Goodheart created Applied Kinesiology when he combined his knowledge of the body and muscle systems with meridian energy influence on internal organ function. He also added the work of Chapman and Bennett to activate lymphatic waste clearance and influence blood circulation.

John Thie, fellow student and colleague of George Goodheart, assembled key strategies for muscle and meridian balancing and made this health care system available to lay people the world over. And so Touch For Health kinesiology was born and did its part to help more than 10 million people in over 40 countries since early 1970s.

People round the world have learned the ever-growing variations of Kinesiology and applied their new found knowledge at home, in the playground and in class rooms, in offices and in clinics. This has been one of the fastest expansions in natural therapies and over 120 different specializations of Kinesiology have developed worldwide in the last 40 years.

Power in Your Hands

Can you imagine how powerful it is to be able to settle down stress reactions, lift tiredness, lighten your mood and reduce your pain, all by touching a few points that change the energy flow in your body. Energy Medicine was revered by our ancestors and continues to be a blessing in our times. And science is progressively discovering why and how it works, giving it credibility in the eyes of more and more of the world’s population.

Touch For Health and Three In Once Concepts kinesiology have proven to be valuable foundation programs for every day folk to gain a personal experience of the life changing impact of moving energy in their body. It is a most wonderful experience to be all het up about some issue, or feel anxious about a coming event, and have that just dissolve with an energy balance.

A shift in energy can change emotional wellbeing, can strengthen internal organ function, can increase tolerance to a larger range of foods, can make relationships flow more smoothly. As stress dissolves our natural nature of curiosity, imagination, inventiveness and problem solving comes to the fore. I encourage everyone to attend at least one Touch For Health or Three In One Concepts workshop.

First Hand Experience

I wouldn’t tell you to go and learn Touch For Health if I hadn’t proved the benefits first hand. I proved it to myself first by helping my son get better when doctors said surgery was the only way to go. This was a drastic and distressing option, yet watching him suffer and have a restricted life was even more distressing. If you are a parent you might relate to what I was going through at the time.

What is it that helps you know whether you should find another way for you or your child to be well? You don’t have to decide now, I told myself. We took time out as a family and eventually decided I would continue learning Kinesiology and use that to help my son. And he gradually got better. Where doctors saw no way of strengthening his genetic weakness, nutritional supplements, herbs and kinesiology worked the miracle I was praying for. This is the every day miracle of the body’s capacity to self heal when given the right internal conditions.

Touch For Health Workshops 

So why is it that some people don’t see the value of discovering and learning how to bring out the best in themselves, the best in their body, the best in their mind, the best in their children? Touch For Health does just that, with simple, easy to apply techniques that activate the body energy systems and turn health issues around gently. Would you like to see better energy and health levels? Would you like to feel more energetic and vibrant? Would you like to help others feel better too?
I don’t know if signing up now is what you want to do. Would you like to see more about Touch For Health kinesiology and its benefits? Would it surprise you to know that you don’t need to have any background in health or how the body works to learn Touch For Health and get results straight away?

Imagine what would happen if you knew how to activate the body communications systems and enhance cell repair programs, increase energy, support the body’s healing mechanism, reduce stress, improve posture and stop pain.
The body is very willing to respond if you know how to communicate with its balancing programs. That’s what Touch For Health can teach you.

The next Touch For Health introductory Workshop is coming up 4th & 5th February 2012. Reserve your place now. Lock in your commitment before Christmas gets you side tracked.

Go to the Touch For Health notice with this December News and sign up now. As soon as the kids are back at school in 2012 its your time to learn how to empower your kids and yourself too, using the TFH strategies for health, for learning difficulties, for stress relief, for food testing, for sports performance.


Sign up now. You’ll be glad you did.

Cheers

Anna

The Energy That Powers Our Planet Powers Our Health Too


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Energy Medicine or Energy Therapies are terms being used by a growing number of natural health practitioners. What is this about? How does it work? Is it real?

Well actually, it’s undeniable. The energy that powers our planet powers our health too.

“Scientists have shown that all matter has some magnetic properties. And each of us does emit some strange sort of live magnetic energy field that can be demonstrated with special imaging techniques. This also seems to vary with our state of physical and mental wellbeing, much like the ancient Chinese concept of Qi.”
Quoted from Magnet Therapy, The Pain Cure Alternative – A Scientifically Proven Method That Really Works!
by Ron Lawrence MD PhD &Paul Rosch MD FACP &Judith Plowden.

Some vital force powers everything in our universe. Our ancestors recognized this and discovered ways to engage this energy for healing. This vital force is active in all living systems, in our planet Earth, in every plant and animal, in every cell of our body. In the past this energy was too subtle for crude instruments to read, but today we have sensitive technology that can measure this power, this force, this all pervading energy.

The terminology of the ancestors may not be the same as our scientists use today – but it seems we humans from the early times in history and we of the present are acknowledging existence of the same subtle energy and tapping into its benefits. The ancient tribal ways and the new tribal ways are overlapping and integrating more and more as we explore ways to be healthy physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Learning to be in sync with, and to align with this energy may hold the secret of longevity and optimum health.

Electro Magnetic Basics
Whenever there is a flow of electric current a magnetic field forms at right angle to the flow. All magnets have a north pole at one end and a south pole at the other. The terms north and south, negative and positive only relate to direction of the flow of current. Even when a magnet is cut in half, each half into half again, each part still has a north and south pole at either end as the flow of energy direction is the same in each separate piece.

By day the positive polarity of the sun dominates, and by night the negative polarity of planet Earth dominates. The Chinese call this yang and yin energy, day and night energy. Western scientists call it our circadian rhythm. Most people refer to it as our body clock. All recognize it as a natural rhythm of Earth and essential to keep us all healthy and well, a rhythm of expending energy during day time activities and alternating that with rest and sleep at night to regenerate energy and the physical body tissues.

Positive and negative polarity and the ability to attract the opposite is what makes our body systems work, what allows repair to cells. It’s also what makes it possible to power our homes, offices, factories, and our transport systems. It’s what drives our communications, radios, TVs, and computers. It is the basis of what powers and drives our body’s inner life and our outer life style.

Electro Magnetic Diagnostic Tools
Modern medicine uses ECG, Electro Cardiograms, and EEG, Electro Encephalograms, as diagnostic tools. The same measurements can be taken in magnetic values using Magneto Cardiograms and Magnetic Encephalography. MRI, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, is in common use today in hospitals and research trials.

So medicine uses both readings of electrical activity and magnet fields of the body and its organs to determine the wellbeing of our brain and organ functions.

Greater use of both these forces can be made to aid healing and maintain health. Electrical currents have been used to heal “un-healable” bone fractures. These are fully documented by the medical researchers involved. Yet this type of investigation has been neglected or derailed in mainstream research as pharmaceutical companies finance only biochemical activities of the body and, understandably, will not support research into natural remedies or natural phenomena for people’s wellbeing.

Governments allow pharmaceutical companies to decide what will be researched and what will not. This is not independent but very biased investigation of methods to keep people healthy. Actually none of the research is to keep people healthy or well, only to keep them going. No pharmaceutical research is aimed at wellness or resolving cause of ailments, only at drug dependency for a lifetime once commenced, in spite of all the known and documented side effects. Most doctors readily submit to and promote that approach. It is a massive industry.

Any discoveries of how to become well, rebuild strength and resilience and stay well comes from lay people, often parents, scientists, and health professionals, who turn away from the standard medical approach, who refuse to see drug dependency as the only answer to maintaining and sustaining life. Doctors who seek wellness for their patients using natural or alternate approaches are often persecuted and prosecuted. But gradually public demand is forcing change on the medical industry.

Change From The Ground Up
All medical drugs, without exception, have side effects. Statistics show that Number 2 cause of death in USA today is the direct result of treatments by a physician and it is expected to reach Number 1 officially in the near future. Some estimate it is already the top cause of death. A statistical study shows “that more than two million American hospitalized patients suffered a serious adverse drug reaction. Over 75% were dose-dependent, which suggests they were due to the inherent toxicity of the drugs rather than to allergic reactions.” No statistics were available on the number of people suffering adverse effects that were not in hospital.

People are turning to all forms of natural therapies, from massage, to acupuncture to chiropractic to kinesiology. Along with natural therapies go diet improvements, supplements and herbs, plus relaxation, meditation and regular exercise, and of course a focus on breathing and water, to aid healing and improve health. The move across to this wholistic approach as a first option to resolving health issues, and away from drugs, has gained momentum.

Negative side effects of drugs are no longer acceptable.

Energy Medicine and Electro magnetic therapies have a growing following and are being sought out as preferable to medical drugs. Energy medicine has gained acceptance through acupuncture, kinesiology, hands on healing such as reiki and other therapies. Electrical devices that read energy imbalances and transmit a frequency for rebalancing are in common use by doctors and specialists in Europe, and magnets are being used also, a modern version of using lodestones in ancient times.

The power to draw out or disperse “evil influences” is being modernized.

Cheers
Anna

Low Back Pain – the Emotional Cause

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You’ve done your best to sort out the physical side of your low back pain, yet the pain persists. Now what? As with all pain, low back pain can have an emotional cause. A persistent stressful thought or attitude can keep the pain active.

The word “emotion” explains what is actually happening. E-motion is energy in motion. Your painful emotions create energy movement resulting in physical changes in your body that can create physical pain. These changes can range from barely discernable to obvious and extreme, from tension as muscles tighten up, to going “weak in the knees” as muscles just collapse, from posture a little off centre to totally displaced, from a slight discomfort to severe pain.

Pain is a warning. Something is not right. Low back pain can be the result of cumulative influences that have put strain or demand on the low back muscles. What you do to correct that and be pain free depends on what caused the pain in the first place. Previously we considered some physical causes of low back pain and what to do to resolve that. So now lets look at low back pain and the emotional cause.

We talk of a broken heart, having a gut full, of being torn apart, feeling unsupported or let down. Our language is full of sayings of emotions being powerfully experienced in specific parts of the body causing physical distress and pain. We commonly acknowledge that emotional pain goes with physical pain, and that psychosomatic refers to the psyche, the mind, and soma, the body, so we know through our own experiences that the two are linked.

Yet in the medical world solutions are primarily aimed at treating all pain as if from a physical cause, using medication or surgery.

Scientific Breakthrough
Candace Pert, world famous scientist and author of Molecules of Emotion, has done the groundbreaking research to show how our emotions and body interact. She shattered some cherished medical beliefs about emotions being experienced only in the brain, and went on to discover the scientific breakthrough that shows molecules set into motion by emotion have specific receptor sites throughout the body, not just in the brain. These emotion molecules dock in at cellular receptor sites and change the activity in the body organs, in the muscles and other structures, giving scientific credence to the truth that emotion can be experienced, as the saying goes, as “a pain in the neck,” among other places.

Her conclusion was that the body and mind are one, what happens in the brain is happening in the body too, something natural therapies practitioners have known and addressed in their practices for centuries.

Ancient Knowledge
Centuries before our Western scientists worked out that emotions can create physical pain the Chinese had already worked out a co-relation of which emotion effects which organ function and the influence on the meridian energy system. Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture work with a system of energy pathways, meridians, that support all body functions, and with Five Element energy flow patterns of these meridians to understand where energy gets blocked when there is dis-ease or pain. They teach that pain is blocked energy and that releasing the energy block and reinstating flow will reduce the pain.

More recently, in the 60s George Goodheart, a curious and motivated chiropractor, looking for more ways to relieve pain, matched body muscles to meridian energy flow to organs, adding a further dimension to the Chinese traditional insights of organs and emotions. And so Applied Kinesiology was born and has spawned many expressions of kinesiology to give relief to human pain on all levels, physical, mental, emotional, and biochemical.

John Thie, a student and colleague of George Goodheart, created Touch For Health kinesiology to give every day people a way to work with and maintain their health and physical structure. He recognized we all need tools at our fingertips to deal with the day-to-day stresses of life. TFH has been taught round the world, and brought empower and relief to thousands of people.

Kinesiology works to reduce pain and aid healing because it taps into the body’s own resources, the meridian energy flow, the communication between body and brain through the nervous system and, as Candace Pert clearly identified and tracked, through the body’s biochemical messengers.
The word “tap” is very appropriate for Meridian energy balancing.

The dictionary states: tap – any device for controlling the flow of liquid from a pipe or the like by opening or closing an orifice. Acupuncture points are the entry to the energy flow lines, and acupuncture, acupressure, kinesiology neurolymphatic points, neurovascular points among other correction points can control the flow of energy through meridians, opening or closing special connections, increasing or reducing the energy flow, there by reducing pain effectively.

Fight or Flight Muscle Pattern
We are all familiar with fight or flight reaction to a life threat. Emotionally that is anger or fear. With anger the muscles of the upper body power up with extra energy and blood to physically fight, to defend or attack an enemy or opponent. With fear triggered the blood is primarily shunted to lower body so your legs can take off in flight, run from the enemy. Prolonged state of anger or fear will lead to muscle pain and internal organ disruption. But these are not the only emotions that are triggered up when pain is on line.

Each different emotion will produce its own pattern of energy use and muscle reactivity, redirecting energy from less needed muscles and focusing a concentration of energy in the muscles required for action.

Specific Emotions
Pain will trigger emotion in each of us. Unfamiliar pain may trigger fear or concern. A recurrence of an old pain may trigger dread of going through it all again. Long standing chronic pain can trigger frustration or anger that no solution has been found. Or it could trigger feeling sorry for self, that pain is an unfair burden. Or there may be guilt or regret over a lack of implementing lifestyle changes required to help sort out the pain. Certainly, pain can block joy.

The pain may be in the same area in different people yet be caused or exacerbated by different emotions. Each emotion will have its own pattern of under working muscles and over working muscles that shows in our posture and gait. This is the body language that we read to get a sense of how a person is feeling. The energy change occurs first, then the muscles show the distribution of energy with some muscles tensing up and others releasing.

Low Back Muscles
Muscles associated with low back pain, when related to Chinese Five Element meridians and emotions, tell their own story. The multilayered muscles each side of the spine are activated by Bladder Meridian and are affected by fear and anxiety. That’s your major back support and is often too tight and inflexible or not evenly balanced.

The psoas muscle, attached at the inner low spine and to the inner leg, is supported by kidney energy flow, and is also related to fear and anxiety. Another low back muscle, quadratus lumborum, allows you to bend sideways and is an indicator of large intestine energy flow, and goes with grief, guilt, regret.

These three muscles are all linked to elimination of body waste and toxic material. If we do not clear out the bladder and bowel regularly the concentrated toxic contents will create havoc producing health symptoms and pain in the low back. The corresponding emotions, fear, anxiety, dread, and grief, guilt, regret, can disturb the efficient elimination of the body, and conversely, poor elimination can predispose emotional sensitivity to fears and regrets.

And same as for when you do not eliminate toxic body matter, fear, anxiety, dread, grief, guilt, regret, elimination related emotions, can play havoc in your emotional wellbeing, affecting personal and work life. The emotion, the organ disruption, the stagnant meridian and the painful muscle are interconnected expressions of the same experience.

Other low back muscles relate to reproductive system, to blood sugar balance and their emotions and can also contribute to low back pain.

If the organ function is stagnant, the energy is stagnant and the emotions can be stagnant too. Stagnant means not enough movement, motionless, stale, sluggish, torpid, foul. When you face up to the emotion and move through it the meridian energy too moves freely again, supplying the elimination organs and clearing out physical waste, taking pressure of the organs and relieving the stress and pain in the low back.

There is no point in ignoring the wholistic nature of human beings. The best results are achieved when we address all three aspects, the physical, the mental/emotional, and the nutritional/biochemical. Addressing low back pain and the emotional cause is part of recovery.

“I’ve come to believe that virtually all illness, if not psychosomatic in foundation, has a definite psychosomatic component,” writes Candace Pert. And so does pain.

How do we address the emotional side of pain? This will be covered in a separate article.
Cheers
Anna

How To Reduce Stress, Improve Self-Esteem and Lift Your Mood, Easily

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How can you easily reduce stress, improve your self esteem and lift your mood? Well the answer is: with green exercise. Uh huh! What’s that?

Before I tell you what green exercise is I can tell you it has benefits. Evidence shows it leads to positive short and long-term health outcomes, reduces stress, bolsters your self-esteem and elevates your mood. So if it’s easy to get health benefits with green exercise, I want to know more.

Research from ten UK studies involving 1252 participants shows it pays to do things, some form of exercise, outside in the garden or in the park, any place that has green living plants. And, this multi-study analysis assessed the best dose of acute exposure to “green exercise” required to improve self-esteem and mood.

Dr Jo Barton and Professor Jules Pretty said, “Dose responses for both intensity and duration showed large benefits from short engagements in green exercise, and then diminishing but still positive returns.
– Every green environment improved both self-esteem and mood; the presence of water generated greater effects.
– Both men and women had similar improvements in self-esteem after green exercise, though men showed a difference for mood.
– Age groups: for self-esteem, the greatest change was in the youngest, with diminishing effects with age;
– for mood, the least change was in the young and old.
– The mentally ill had one of the greatest self-esteem improvements.
This study confirms that the environment provides an important health service.”

So we can thank the Department of Biological Sciences at University of Essex, Colchester in the UK for that research project.

Being a keen gardener I would have thought the benefits of being outside in fresh air, among the plants that deliver oxygen to us, would be obvious to all. But it seems not every likes to have their nose in the bushes.

The psychologists at Essex University have shown that just a small dose of nature, just five minutes, every day creates health benefits in measurable quantity.

There are days every one of us needs a pick me up. Lunch in the park and five minutes of walking can make all the difference for having a productive afternoon at home or at work. The greatest improvements in self-esteem were found in young children and people with mental illness and every age group did benefit across the board.

So a walk in the park is just what the doctor could prescribe in the future to reduce stress, improve self-esteem and lift your mood when you are feeling low. And pushing a pram, kicking a ball, skipping, riding a bike, fishing, boating, horse riding, gardening, doing farm work or any out door activity give endless scope to suit everyone. This is one form of self-medication that may be condoned and even encouraged in the future.

Sounds like common sense to me. What do you reckon?
Cheers
Anna

Surprising Results – A Client’s Story

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Have you ever had an experience that produced results way beyond what you anticipated? Well I watched facial changes happen for a client that surprised us both. So I have captured the surprising results of this client’s story to share with you. This was the result of applying Facial Harmony followed by a natural face lifting mask and reflexology to hands and feet – an exclusive rejuvenation special.

Facial Harmony Energy Release Experience
The specially combined procedures took two hours and the interactive synergy of these produced results beyond any one procedure alone, as we were to discover. And I must acknowledge, this client has done a great deal of self-exploration and was very open to discovering what this process might uncover.

On sitting up at the end my client’s first comment was “I feel like Michelin man. My body feels like it has expanded in big rolls.” This relates to the sense of energy expanding in sections as muscles the length of her body relaxed progressively.

As we talked about her experience I watched her face changing before my eyes. Often as a person starts speaking and using the face muscles after Facial Harmony, they facilitate the clearance of lymphatic fluids. Generally the muscles are more responsive, with increased mobility and range of facial expression. I watched as one cheek filled out and lifted, then the other. The bottom lip plumped out, then the top lip.

Her facial expression was more relaxed, softer, gently serene. She had been super busy with lots of stressful communications back and forth over some months due to a high level of responsibility and demand in a new position. This was on top of other projects and her usual work. So it was good to see a relaxing and softening of her features, and note the energy shift and muscle release that was happening. The cumulative stress had dropped away from her face, taking years off her appearance.

What the Face Revealed
I was able to give her insights of what was being revealed in terms of her individuality and traits, as she focused on various features changing.

Three In One Concepts kinesiology provide two workshops on face reading and how we are structured to function. It’s a very insightful and revealing program for understanding self and others and is part of workshop programs I teach. So I was able to explain the different indicators of her inbuilt strengths becoming more obvious as her face muscles relaxed and assumed their natural proportions.

The way we use the muscles of our face will make certain features more obvious. Subconsciously, and even consciously, we respond to the strengths we see in the face of others and instinctively anticipate the behaviours that go with those strength indicators.

My client’s expanding cheeks gave a younger, more adventurous appearance, which I’ve seen many times before, but what I hadn’t expected was the widening of her face. It looked like her face had structurally broadened. Width of the face through eye socket area goes with a built in confidence, and the wider the more the confidence is innate. So her natural confidence had been released and expanded.

Her jaw became more obvious. In Three In One Concepts Structure/Function program this is an indicator of inner authority. She was obviously releasing and expanding that capacity in herself as well. Her whole face was wider which goes with being seen as a confident authority. And as we tend to live up to the way people see and treat us a new phase was opening in her life.

Her nostril flare increased and this goes with self-reliance. She had certainly been engaging this ability in recent times but when the face exhibits this visually even more, others recognize and respond to this aspect, especially in a tough situation.

Her top lip became fuller. This facilitates spontaneous verbal expression. As this expanded and increased the fultrim area, between the top lip and under the nose, shortened. A short fultrim goes with taking things personally – her impartiality had reduced, so it was a good awareness to have for future interactions.
The bottom lip became extremely full though nothing had been applied to the lips themselves, just the muscles and energy round the lips had been activated. Bottom lip goes with spontaneous giving time, action, and support. She was certainly supporting a whole new group of people, so now her face was expressing this ability more obviously. Being spontaneous giving with everyone could leave her depleted so was another useful awareness for her to ensure she left time for herself too.

The area right across the forehead, between eyebrows and hairline, filled out quite obviously. This is the area of creativity and problem solving for the left brain and right brain and the midline integration of both.

The changes were remarkable and obvious – to both of us.

The Changes Continued Through The Body
Later she rang and added more as she became aware of the differences. Her smile was no longer crooked but equally expressive on the left and right. This relates to expressing inner world and outer world joy equally. A dimple showed in her cheek. It had been missing for many years and reappearing now meant she was using her muscles in a similar way to her younger years. Her smile had increased and revealed more of her teeth, so she looked happier. And even her voice range had changed when she sang.

And the changes continued. She was aware her spine had become more flexible and her back muscles softer, much pain was gone, and she felt straighter. Her hips and pelvis were more mobile. The chest pain had gone. The ache in her foot had eased and her jaw moved freely. First the top jaw had come forward and a little later the lower jaw relaxed and came forward too. Tension in the jaw can be part of holding tension in the shoulders and hips too so the jaw relaxing signals other joints to let go as well.

Her chin became more defined though the tip became less pointed, more softened. A prominent chin can indicate the ability to hang in resolutely, even in difficult times, till the required outcome is achieved. Often getting to the finish line is a matter of keeping going, another useful trait.
Release of Potential

Everything that changed was the indicating the release of her potential that had been contained and restricted by the cumulative stress of recent times and of the more distant past.

The face communicates much, even before we speak. On a subconscious level we instinctively recognize at first glance, to a greater or lesser degree, the innate capacity of a person we meet, and also on a conscious level, once you have had the training for your eyes to see more of the real person.
This was a surprising and revealing experience for my client and one we both enjoyed exploring in short and term long term shifts for expressing her innate strengths and preferences. Moving energy in the extremities, the face, hands and feet, had facilitated greater change in muscle activity, revealing strengths more clearly.

For Your Personal Growth
How much of your own potential is held back by the muscle patterns created by past stresses and traumas? These delightful and surprising results for one client inspired me to tell you what is possible. Facial Harmony is one way to unlock the muscle and energy patterns that trap your full range of strengths, and open the way to experience more of your uniqueness.

Make an appointment today for the Facial Harmony Experience.
Cheers
Anna

Low Back Pain – the Physical Cause

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Back pain is all too common. And the cause can be physical/structural, biochemical/nutritional or mental/emotional. According to statistics up to 80% of working age people will at some time experience low back pain and up to 90% of those cases the pain cannot be attributed to a specific illness or injury.

Research shows that up to 75% of people with back pain still have the problem one year later or it has recurred in one year. So it really pays to know what you can do to correct this debilitating issue. Lets explore the physical aspects first.

PHYSICAL Cause
You may associate back pain with lifting or carrying heavy items, or sitting too long in front of computers or TVs, or too much gardening, or poor posture. That may well be the case, but there are other contributors as well.

Muscles help each other quite naturally. In any situation when one muscle is struggling its neighbours will pitch in and help out, even though the angle is not exactly right for the helper muscles to take the whole strain. Over time the helper muscle or muscles can be over strained and can in turn become painful.

Pain is mostly associated with a tight muscle that will not or cannot let go. It may protecting an area that has been strained or hurt, or is working too hard to help a muscle that can’t do its share because it has not yet healed enough to be working again. There are further reasons for back pain.

Poor Muscle Tone
Your body is designed to engage in lots of varying movements on a regular basis, and when this happens muscles maintain their tone and capacity for activity. It’s a feedback loop system – what you use is maintained and strengthened.

Back pain can involve poor muscle tone over all with very little spare capacity for any extra physical demand making you susceptible to overtaxing your back support muscles all too easily. Even standing for longer than you are used to can lead to back pain if your posture muscles are inadequate.

Back pain can also involve specific muscle weakness such as slack belly muscles creating strain on low back muscles, a common occurrence. General posture, the way you sit, stand and walk, will often clearly show that some muscles are working too much and others too little.

Belly Hanging Out
When your abdominal muscles in the front of the body do not do their share of supporting the body’s upright stance, then that requires all the work to be done by the back muscles alone, leading to overload, tension and finally pain.

You may not even notice how tight the muscles are till the tension hits your pain threshold. A muscle can be 75% contracted for days, weeks, months, even years. You may recognize subconsciously it is a bit tight and restrict your range of movement to avoid feeling the tension, but you won’t experience pain till the muscle tension increases to 80% contracted or whatever your pain threshold is. Now the situation is obvious and you finally have to attend to the problem.

Women often develop back pain in later stages of pregnancy when their expanding belly forces them to change their posture to accommodate the extra size and weight in the front of their body. Their hormones specifically allow muscle tone to soften so the belly can expand as the baby develops in their womb.

A common postural change pregnant women will make is to take the upper body further back as a counter weight to the heavy belly out front. This shift compresses the low back area. The upper body is now too far back taking the head back with it, so the head is brought forward, sticking out like a turtle, resulting in neck tension and eventually pain here too.

The problem compounds as the normal gentle “s” shape of the spine (side view) becomes very exaggerated, compressing more on the inner curves in low back and neck and losing support and rounding more on the outer curve, rib cage and shoulder blade area. The knees are forced to lock back as a further compensation with other consequences.

Overweight people with a large belly will also take on a similar problematic posture with no tone in belly muscles, poor tone in mid and upper back, and over-toned tight muscles in the low back, often with matching neck compression.

When this is the case, no amount of medication, or herbs or supplements will make the abdominal muscles do their share of the work. The abdominal muscles need to be activated and strengthened to take on their share of supporting the body so specific back muscles can do less, thereby reducing the tension and pain. (See how to do that in separate article.)

Feet Turned Out
Muscles deeper within the body can create problems too. One example is the low back muscle designed to rotate the leg out. When it is too tight your feet point away from the midline of the body. This muscle, the psoas, is situated behind the internal organs of your belly, attached from the front of the spine and to the inner upper leg. The angle of the feet is a give away of the tension in this low back area caused by an over tight psoas muscle.

When standing each leg is held in position by muscles that rotate the leg inwards (medial rotation) and other muscles that rotate the leg outwards (lateral rotation). When these muscles have equal tone the leg is in a balanced position with the feet pointing straight ahead.

When an outward rotating muscle, like the psoas, is working harder than inward rotation muscles there is likely to be tension and pain in the low back because this outwardly rotating muscle is attached to the low back vertebrae. The vertebrae are being compressed, putting pressure on the nerves between these spinal bones.

One Hip Higher
Another muscle often involved in back pain is working when you bend sideways. It contracts to bring your shoulder towards your hip when you lean over to the side to scratch our outer knee. When this muscle is tighter on one side of the body, you may have the hip on the tighter side pulled up higher, or the whole upper body may lean a little to the tight side so your shoulders are tipping or not centered over your hips. This can certainly be a source of pain.

One Hip To the Front and One To The Back
As you reach back for your seat belt to pull it forward and across your body to buckle up in the car a series of muscles down one side of your spine contracts to allow you to twist while reaching back. If you only ever twist one way these muscles can become tighter that the other side and as a result when you stand up one hip can be more forward than the other. This can contribute to back pain.

There are more possible physical causes of back pain that may have been set off by lifting or carrying something heavy in an awkward way. But whether the pain is from long standing tension and postural imbalances or from a one off over straining activity, or some accident, finding how to reduce and eliminate the back pain becomes critical as quality of life deteriorates rapidly with constant pain.

So what are your options for being pain free once more? Please see the article “Solutions for Physical Back Pain.” Other causes for back pain will be covered shortly.

Cheers
Anna McRobert

Physical Solutions for Back Pain

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There are solutions for low back pain. But first, to correct the problem and maintain long-term success, you need to know how to work with the body and not against it. Your body will always do the best it can under the circumstances you provide, so lets look at the physical side of back pain first.

Team Work
Muscle pain is rarely a one muscle problem. Muscles work in teams and every movement will have a prime mover, a leader in the action, with other team players supporting the movement. The opposite action muscles receive a signal to stop working. Muscles ideally respond to signals to switch on or off as needed.

When experiencing back pain, according to research published in The British Medical Journal, to keeping moving in spite of the pain is more helpful for long-term recovery. But just doing exercises only may not fix the problem. Exercise for the unprepared or unwilling muscle can actually make matters worse.

Activate slack muscles
If the under working muscles in the body are not receiving or sending a clear signal to the brain to be included in an exercise, then other muscles compensate automatically and the tension and pain problem can be compounded if you are not aware of what is happening and what to do.

When you use muscles regularly, the brain recognizes that activity as a request to keep those muscles in readiness, willing and able to respond as needed. When muscles are rarely used or used in a limited range with very little load, then the brain does not register these muscles as essential to your life work or life style. Muscles get attention by the brain when they are used and will lose tone rapidly when not part of your regular activity.

Muscles not used for a prolonged period, as when recovering from injury, may be dropped from the “working circuit” and will likely lose tone and muscle mass. They need to be reintroduced for the brain to reconsider how and when to include them in with other working muscles and gradually be given more duties as they rebuild and strengthen. The brain can and will build new circuitry or add to existing neural networks to do this. It’s quite amazing when you think about it.

If a muscle has been out of the working program for a while or the tone is very low, then exercises are difficult to perform and even a little effort can feel like a strain. Gently upgrading the working program in the brain with kinesiology techniques makes it easier to activate muscles so they can be exercised safely and appropriately. It speeds up building muscle mass too.

Kinesiology Solutions for Back Pain
In Kinesiology there are a variety of ways to deal with the physical cause of muscle pain. The Touch For Health style of kinesiology focuses on identifying and activating the under working muscles throughout the body first, so they can take up their share of the load and the overworking painful muscles can relax off and do less. The aim is to redistribute the demand on postural muscles and improve energy flow. This can often reduce back pain 60% if not more, just through a basic 14 or more extensive 42 muscle energy balance process.

Kinesiology correction techniques can bring immediate changes in muscles. Spinal Reflexes are applied when a muscles shows poor response on both left and right of the body. Poor activity on either left or right side only responds well to specific points that stimulate the lymphatic system to improve clearance of waste products in the muscle area. This reduces congestion and improves energy flow and the muscle becomes more responsive immediately.

Other points increase blood flow to the muscle. Running the meridian that supports a specific muscle may be required or activating cells within the muscle or in the attachments work well when the muscle has been over strained or damaged.
These are basic techniques that anyone can apply to reduce pain once they learn where the points are and the type of stimulation required.

Corrections Reduce Pain
In kinesiology the muscle response monitoring procedure can identify which muscle is under-working and which specific point or correction will reinstate the muscle responsiveness. The results are immediate and the point or points can be done at home to maintain the improvement till the body is able to maintain the improvement on its own.

Each muscle is preprogrammed to know its own job and to help out other muscles if they are failing or struggling. This is a natural compensating and supporting ability that we take for granted or don’t even recognize is happening, yet is essential for smooth and graceful as well as powerful use of your body muscles. It is a beautiful example of community work within the body.

As the body is holistic in its communications, in a TFH balance the whole system of meridian energy distribution for muscle use is checked, not just the muscles in the pain area. Rechecking the subjective pain level at the end of a muscle energy balance typically reveals reduced pain levels and a more relaxed and improved alignment of posture plus greater mobility.

Touch For Health Workshops
The body is very willing to respond to the caring touch that activates specific points which connect internal resources. Pain is a signal. This is your body’s language for something needing help and it responds to your specialized input.
There are other causes for back pain that I’ll cover separately.

You don’t have to feel helpless or stuck when wanting to reduce pain to feel better, look better and be better. Book in for a kinesiology balance and experience the impact of working with your body to gain the results you want.

Register for the next Touch For Health Workshop and discover the safe and simple techniques that can keep your back pain free and functioning efficiently and effectively, expanding your options for joyful activity at every age and stage of your life.
Cheers
Anna McRobert

Are You Easily Offended?

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What gets under your skin? Are you easily offended?

We are interesting beings, each of us with our past individual experiences and family heritage as reference points of how to live this life. Often we don’t make sense to each other at all and are a complete mystery to ourselves. There are many clues to help unravel the mystery.

Lets look at the experience of being touchy, very sensitive, easily upset, often feeling offended. According to Bob Proctor, it is linked to humility. So what’s your definition of humility?

“True humility is believing the truth about who you are,” writes Bob Proctor. He says, “If you are easily offended you have a humility problem.”

I looked up the meaning of humility: deference, lowliness, meekness, modesty, obedience, self-abasement, servility, submissiveness, unpretentiousness. (Opposite was listed as: arrogance, assertiveness, pride)

I looked up the meaning of offend: hurt, annoy, displease, fret, insult, irritate, miff, outrage, pain, provoke, rile, snub, upset, wound, wrong. (the opposite was listed as: please)

If you are easily offended or even occasionally offended, it is worth exploring what that is about for you. Being offended leads to either getting angry at, or withdrawing and hiding from the “offender”.

Bob Proctor says, ”Being easily offended comes from comparing self with others.” Offended can mean feeling humiliated.

So I looked up humiliate: bring low, chasten, confound, crush, debase, deflate, discredit, disgrace, embarrass, humble, mortify, shame, subdue. (the opposite was listed as dignify, exalt, vindicate)

To take offense we feel, either inferior or superior, otherwise there would be no reaction just interaction. Reaction means re-enactment of a past feeling and its behaviour. It’s not new, has happened before, is an instantaneous replay, before any thought can occur. And the reaction can take us by surprise or be a regular and familiar occurrence.

So if you feel superior, above others, you may take offense if someone believes they are your equal, or actually value themselves or their ability more than yours, or whatever. If you feel inferior, below others, you can feel offended by everything you relate to as a criticism or put down of any kind. Feeling offended is always about relationship within self, it’s a feeling already in you waiting to be triggered.

Once triggered it’s the perfect opportunity to deal with feeling offended in a way that sets you free, so it no longer lives in you in an active form. It becomes part of your history, something you know about and lived in the past, a reference for compassion as others struggle with it, but it no longer carries charge, does not get under your skin.

Feeling offended for various reasons can be acknowledged, sorted, balanced, defused, dissolved, so it doesn’t control your behaviour. Kinesiology is a valuable tool to help you take charge, be proactive, create change, so you can choose how you want to be, how you want to behave and feel, instead of offended.

Feeling offended will always go with beliefs about self. Inferior and superior are flip sides of the same cause, the same issue. It’s all about measuring up against other people. Often we measure our self against others achievements, skills, abilities, talents or appearance. Measuring against others is about not believing that you have value and can bring value, not believing the truth of who you are. Its about believing you are more than or less than others, either superior or inferior compared with others.

Now we don’t all have the long legs of a long distance runner or a fashion model, or the voice of a famous singer, or the grace of a dancer, or the mind of an Einstein. So we are not all equal in those terms. But we’re not supposed to be. We are not supposed to be anyone else, only our unique self. And we have this lifetime to develop the uniqueness we are, to recognize our inbuilt strengths, to develop them into our personal power, choose which of our talents we can hone, and decide what we can practise until we achieve mastery in that area.

To be able to admire and enjoy the contribution of others while also acknowledging you yourself are growing and flowering and expanding the expressions of who you are and what you can contribute, is the life journey you, and all of us, take. It’s not about being like others. It’s about being your real, whole self.

Key belief to consider and embrace: we are each magnificent and life events give us endless opportunity to unravel the mystery of who we are, to discover and grow into that magnificence.

Have fun and enjoy being you.
Cheers
Anna

Bush Remedy Inspires Cancer Research

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Old wives tales, bush remedies and traditional healing plants are often the beginning of scientific research in addressing health problems. And so it is with finding an answer for skin cancer for Australians according to an article in Courier Mail QWeekend magazine 20-21 November 2010.

We have one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world with 1,850 deaths each year (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2010). Predictions are that at least two in three Australians will develop skin cancer by age 70. So it is fitting that an Australian biochemist, Dr Jim Aylward, who received his PhD in 1975 at Monash University, should be the one to come up with a solution.

During Christmas holidays in 1980 Dr Jim Aylward was shown a newspaper article by his mother, about a weed that had long been used as a bush remedy for sunspots. The story quoted a Medical Journal of Australia article about a farmer who had been diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma on his chest that disappeared when the farmer self treated his cancer, using sap from a plant known as radium weed.

Scientific research is a lengthy and expensive business, but Jim Alyward’s curiosity was tweaked. He wondered how the weed had worked, and how active it might be against other cancers. In 1981 he planted some radium weed, a common weed across Australia and New Zealand, on his father’s Sunshine Coast property. And so his pet project began, on the side, while working for CSIRO in Brisbane.

In 1997 he finally took some diluted sap to professor Peter Parsons at the Qld Institute of Medical Research who was to test this on human melanoma cells. Weeks later Jim was excitedly told it was turning melanoma cells back to the appearance of normal cells. He was ecstatic.

Aylward continued to work on the milky sap to isolate the ingredient in the weed called ingenol mebutate, which he found was “active against every sort of cancer tested, not just melanoma.” Using his own money and with backing from small investors, he came close to broke several times over the years. But he was persistent, and eventually lucky. In September 2009, LEO Pharma, a Danish multinational company, bought the process for US$287.5 million. The work he had begun in 1981 had finally paid off.

The cream Dr Jim Aylward developed from radium weed sap is likely to be on the Australian market by 2012. Just one application per day for two days he says, will make a sunspot disappear though he warns against self-treating at this stage.

“Radium weed will help conquer skin cancer,” he says, and there’s no telling what other cures are contained in the plants all around us.

Don’t you love it when “old wives” and “bush remedies” and “traditional cures” are vindicated?
Cheers
Anna McRobert