Positive News & Interviews

Here it is, our biggest and best issue so far. With 8 extra pages of content and an incredible selection of articles from a wonderful team of writers, you would be mad to miss this. We’ve got articles on Love, Nutrition for Fitness, Sustainable Societies and Natural Beauty, as well as tips for Growing Your Own Food and listings of life-enhancing events all over Ireland. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

Ask for it in your local Health Store or Holistic Centre anytime from Monday 14th onwards. Alternatively, if you’d like to guarantee your copy, you can subscribe online at www.positivelife.ie to have it and further issues delivered directly to you front door.

From all of us here at Positive Life, we hope you have a great read and an amazing Spring.

As a preview to the Feel Good Factor seminars that will be held throughout Ireland in March 2011, Patrick Holford and Dr Gill Hart look at some of the factors that can help you “Feel Good” again!

If there is one thing that is emerging in our modern-day understanding of psychological health, it is the link between our thoughts, feelings and physical sensations and our body’s biochemistry. What we think changes how we feel, and vice versa. Feelings are accompanied by physical sensations, but all of these are associated with corresponding changes in our internal biochemistry. Biochemical changes affect how we feel and think. Knowing this, the obvious deficits of conventional psychiatry are that a) most diagnoses are only based on the results of questionnaires about psychological symptoms, and b) most treatments are based on giving chemical drugs (hopefully alongside some psychotherapy). This approach doesn’t take into account the biochemical side of the equation where making dietary changes – a more effective, less expensive and less invasive approach – can pave the way to feeling good while avoiding the use of man-made drugs with their often worrying side effects. Sounds good doesn’t it?

When you feel tired, depressed, stressed or anxious, chances are you wouldn’t consider that your digestive system or a food you’ve eaten could have anything to do with it. But the gut and our emotions are linked. In the same way that nervousness can upset the tummy, foods that don’t “agree with us” can upset our mind. Most strong emotional feelings are felt physically somewhere along the digestive tract. We feel them in our gut and often experience them affecting our appetite and our ability to digest properly. The digestive system acts like a second “brain” producing factors that literally “cross-talk” with the brain. Your second “brain” reacts every time you eat a piece of food. The gut lining, which makes up a surface area about the size of a tennis court and the thickness of half of a sheet of paper, is the interface between you and your food, and is programmed to react against anything eaten, just in case it is a foe.

Most people don’t think of food allergies and food intolerance as having the potential to affect mood and behaviour. Yet it has been known for a very long time that reactions to foods can cause chronic fatigue, tiredness, low mood, poor concentration, anxiety, hyperactivity (ADHD), panic attacks and lack of motivation in susceptible individuals. 99% of the time, the job of a healthy immune system – which is more active in the gut than anywhere else – is to switch off that reaction so you can enjoy the food you’re eating without your body fighting it. The convention is that a food allergy is caused by the release of IgE antibodies which target the offending food producing rapid symptoms. But there’s another kind of antibody called IgG that doesn’t cause immediate reactions and that is implicated in hidden or delayed onset food allergies (often called food intolerances). In one survey of over 5,000 people who had taken the YorkTest IgG food intolerance test and avoided their suspect foods, more than 3 out of 4 reported a noticeable improvement in their symptoms. For those with psychological symptoms, the improvement rate was 81% and for those specifically with depression it was a staggering 92%. For those with panic attacks, all 15 sufferers benefited from the dietary changes, and of the 436 participants in the study suffering from fatigue, energy levels improved noticeably in 87% of them. On reintroduction of the offending foods, 92% got a return of symptoms. The conclusion? Well, the chances of this test working to help you “feel good” again are very high if you have these kinds of symptoms.

Moving on, one of the most important processes in the brain and body is called “methylation”. You consume about ten tons of food in your lifetime, and this somehow turns into YOU – a salty soup of chemicals all connected together. Think about when a fire alarm goes off; amazingly you are able to make more adrenaline and take flight in just 0.2 of a second; how does the body react so quickly and keep everything in balance? Well, this is where “methylation” is important. To get a bit technical here (sorry!), methyl groups, that are made from one carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms, are added and subtracted from other molecules in your body in order to make the substances it needs. YOUR ability to “methylate” – there are something like a million methylation reactions every second – is therefore vital to your health and wellbeing. Methylation is linked to a number of mental states and conditions. Faulty methylation is now known to predict depression, affect concentration and the ability to stay in touch with reality.

Ascertaining your “methyl IQ” is very important. Luckily there is a method available that makes this easy: the finger-prick blood test from YorkTest that measures the level of the marker homocysteine in blood – the higher your homocysteine level the more likely you are to feel low and de-motivated. The good news is that raised homocysteine levels can usually be brought back to normal levels by simple dietary changes and/or supplementation with B vitamins. However, everyone is unique and differing metabolic, environmental and particularly genetic factors make it difficult to determine individuals’ nutritional requirements without assessing levels of homocysteine first, and then monitoring dietary changes to ensure that acceptable homocysteine levels are reached. Lowering your homocysteine level improves mood (that’s proven), so where are you on the “methyl IQ” scale? Maybe it’s time to find out.

Patrick Holford will be giving Feel Good Factor Seminars in Belfast, Dublin, Galway, Cork and Wexford from 9th – 14th March. Visit www.patrickholford.com or call +44(0)2087891040 to book tickets.

For more information about the YorkTest food intolerance and homocysteine tests and services, visit www.yorktest.ie or call 01 2022701.

Embodiment Dance

By David Mooney

When I dance I feel at home. It is a space for me to find healing and plant seeds of my deepest wishes. Dance is the ground in which I find solace when my heart is breaking. It is the ground for my spirit to soar. It is my spiritual practice.

When my father died, dance was one of my strongest supports. Through dance I found the courage to open my heart to him before he died, something for which I will always be grateful.

As a child I was quite disembodied. There were very good reasons for this, some of them cultural wounds, some familial and some ancestral. I spent my teens and early twenties externally searching for these ‘missing parts’ of myself. The further I searched outside, the stronger they came knocking internally through stress, depression and a deep sense of disconnection and isolation.

Within these very wounds lay maps to healing. I found my way to movement practice in 2002 and it was a revelation for me. I began what is now a lifelong journey as a student and teacher of this work.

Mine is not a unique story. I am sure some of you reading this may recognise this sense of dis-ease in the body. With contorted messages of the body being ‘sinful’, instances of sexual abuse and a culture of self-medication through alcohol, it is not surprising.

More people of all ages are finding their way to the Embodiment classes I teach and to the Funky Seomra. Movement is medicine, and conscious embodied movement is, in my view, a very strong medicine for our culture.

I love dance with all my being, and teaching this practice is one of my most effective ways of saying “Thank you” to life and to the dance.

dancefree.ie

Abdominal Acupuncture

By Niamh Hooper

It’s a little known fact, but reflexes corresponding to every organ and part of your body are located in your abdomen. While for many that may be merely another piece of useless information, for the Chinese, this discovery has led to the development of what is now regarded as the most powerful acupuncture treatment for internal, difficult to treat, chronic and acute conditions.

A specialist style of healing, Abdominal Acupuncture treats the whole person through the insertion of extra-fine shallow needles into the abdomen. With the organs so close to the surface, it often provides immediate relief.

Developed over the past two decades in China, Abdominal Acupuncture has now arrived in Ireland.

Specialising in this gentle yet very effective technique is Acupuncturist Seán Hooper who trained and worked in the discipline in the Jiangsu Province Hospital in Nanjing, China under the tutorship of the world-renowned expert in Abdominal Acupuncture, Dr Han Yan.

So what makes Abdominal Acupuncture different to other treatments out there?

“By its very nature, Abdominal Acupuncture taps into, harnesses and guides one’s ancestral or pre-natal qi and, in so doing, can easily treat many conditions ranging from those associated with the organs, emotions, pain, and it is also especially appropriate as a natural fertility treatment,” says Seán. “I was delighted to get a call the other day from one of the couples who came to me for fertility treatment with their happy news that they are expecting their first baby.”

During a session in Seán’s Zen-like clinic, a client remains fully clothed with only their abdomen exposed. Following the insertion of the needles, a heat lamp is placed over the stomach to enhance the treatment while providing concentrated warmth and comfort.

Seán’s expertise and gentle way has drawn to him a clientele that includes people from life’s many walks from babies through to the elderly.

To make an appointment with Seán Hooper, call 0851461916
www.hooperacupuncture.com

Reconnective Healing

By Lauren MacLennan

Reconnective Healing is a life-changing experience (accessing a new spectrum of healing frequencies of energy, light and information) that transcends energy healing and healing techniques, allowing true healing on every level and in all aspects of life.

It was brought to us by Dr Eric Pearl, whose work has been documented in numerous publications (including his own bestseller The Reconnection: Heal Others, Heal Yourself) and featured in the film “The Living Matrix”. He has passed on this healing ability to practitioners around the world and it has generated great interest from international medical and research communities.

Reconnective Healing is considered to be able to reconnect us to the universe and to our very essence, not just through a new set of healing frequencies but through possibly an entirely new bandwidth. The reality of its existence has been demonstrated clearly in practice and in research laboratories.

Miraculous healings have been recorded from sessions with Eric Pearl and other practitioners, including cancers, birth disfigurements, cerebral palsy and other afflictions.

Healing is a return to balance. Reconnective Healing doesn’t specifically “treat” anything. If in its presence you allow yourself to come back into balance, as many people do, then you do.

Healings can come in all forms. The best way to allow for a healing is to proceed without expectation or attachment. Place yourself on the table, relax, close your eyes and simply notice and be ready to receive.

Everyone’s experience with Reconnective Healing is unique – as Eric Pearl says: “If you are lucky, your healing will come in the form you anticipated; if you are really lucky, your healing will come in a form you haven’t even thought of, one that the universe has in mind specifically for you.”

www.TheReconnection.com
www.holistictherapyzone.com

“The seasons are what a symphony ought to be:  four perfect movements in harmony with each other.” ~ Arthur Rubenstein

Opportunities
worth embracing

Upskill for the Green Economy
Green Works offers free training to jobseekers in collaboration with the Department of Education and Skills’ Labour Market Activation Fund. The training is aimed at educating and upskilling the workforce, preparing students for growing opportunities within Ireland’s green economy. Students will benefit from a wide variety of themed courses, FETAC certificates, workshops, work placements, lectures, networking and more.
www.green-works.ie

The 10,000 Good Deeds Challenge
You are invited to join the challenge to accomplish 10,000 Good Deeds by the end of 2011. Large or small, it doesn’t matter. Self-sacrificing or not, extraordinary or mundane, it doesn’t matter. Post your Deed on the website’s wall and keep the count going. The more people who commit, the better the chances of success.
www.holistic-self-improvement.com

Prisms of Light
An Irish film director with a burning question goes to India where almost two million Westerners travel as spiritual tourists each year. “Are they running away from something or towards something?” Prisms of Light is an independent movie, funded 100% by donations from people who believe in its ethos. If you’d like to help this project in it’s final stages, visit www.prismsoflight.net

Events
worth attending

Marianne Williamson
Wednesday 23rd March
Just as there are forces of light and spirituality on the planet, so too there are challenges. But are the forces of Light mere symbol or genuine force? Is it metaphor or an actual power to be used? Now is the moment for humanity to not merely believe but to consciously apply on a practical level the awesome forces of faith and love.
www.seminars.ie

Shamanic Practitioners Course
Friday 1st – Sunday 3rd April
Here is your chance to explore the exciting and ecstatic realms beyond ordinary reality using traditional shamanic techniques from around the world, i.e. drumming and rattling, trance dancing, shamanic breathwork, ritual and ceremony.
www.shamanismireland.com

Possibilities 2011 Social Forum
Wednesday 13th April
Possibilities aims to create spaces for dialogue, reflection and action in awakening our power to overcome the problems of today and to realise the real possibilities in front of us. Up to 2000 people will gather at the Citywest Hotel Dublin for the Possibilities 2011 Social Forum. Special guest speakers include His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.
possibilities.ie

Healing Angels of the Rainbow Light
Saturday 7th & Sunday 8th May
This 2 day certified course with Aidan Storey and Dolores O’Reilly will cover: What are your chakras and where are they? What archangel relates to each chakra? What physical/emotional/mental/spiritual function relates to each chakra? How can you align each one? Also, you’ll receive the Sacred Attunement to The Angels of Divine Light.
www.spiritoneseminars.com

Personal Process & Nature’s Cycles
Various Dates in 2011
Engage your Personal Process in the context of Nature’s Cycles drawing on the Celtic Calendar & Spirituality. Residential sessions, limited to 10 people. Reflective engagement with nature, deep relaxation, guided meditations and personal process facilitation. Choose from 8 pivotal moments in Nature’s Yearly Cycle for 2011.
Call Pauline on 040446288

Products
worth trying

Himalaya Forest Honey
The forests of India are treasure troves of natural goodness. In these untouched forests, wild honeybees visit the flowers to make the purest of honey. This is where Himalaya Forest Honey comes from, the purest that you can find anywhere. It is available in Ireland through the lovely little Saffron and Sapphire shop in Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.
www.saffronandsapphire.com

Silence of Peace CD
Composer and pianist, John Levine, based this work on the centuries-old use of pentatonic and lydian scales. The “spherical” sounds will bring your brain waves to the highly beneficial alpha state within 4 minutes. “Try them. They work.” ~ Patrick Holford
www.silenceofmusic.com

Angels of Atlantis Oracle Cards
Author and Master of Voice, Stewart Pearce, with illustrator Richard Crookes, has created a deck of 44 oracle cards to deliver inspiration and healing from the Angelic kingdoms. The cards represent the characteristics and meanings of the twelve Archangels of Atlantis, depicted here as light-emitting Orbs.
www.findhornpress.com

Venues
worth visiting

South William Space
A wonderful new space in the heart of the city that is choc full of potential. 6 big bright open plan rooms, perfect for workshops, yoga classes, meetings, etc., plus 1 smaller room for healings and consultations and a shop space all for rent.
www.southwilliamspace.com

Ranelagh Holistic Centre
An exciting new venture has just opened in Ranelagh. You can book a session to experience treatments (including 1:1 Breathwork and Shamanic Reiki), learn energetic protection techniques to manage stress, try a Yoga class or confide in a Psychotherapist.
www.ranelaghholisticcentre.com

Let Us Know
about yourself

If you have created a new positive project, business, product or event, let us know about it so we can share it with the world. patrick@positivelife.ie

By Olga Sheean

Imagine how brazenly you’d live your life if you could erase every negative experience you’d ever had. If you had no memory of failure, disappointment or loss, wouldn’t you be fearlessly optimistic, daring and expressive? Fear is not only the single most self-defeating factor in our lives, it’s also the most futile and exhausting. Programmed into us at an early age, fear may help keep us safe from physical harm, but it also prevents us from being fully ourselves.

All fears have appetites and demand to be fed. They’re constantly on the lookout for evidence to support their existence – and they find plenty in a society that’s filled with insecurities over money, jobs, relationships and health. Fears pervade every aspect of our lives, often cleverly disguising themselves as common sense or the most prudent option. But the good news is that they’re easy to track down because they all live in the same place: inside your head. You can choose to make them comfy and welcome or you can evict them and free up that space for more supportive guests – guests that won’t keep you awake at night, give you indigestion or discourage you from being outrageously yourself.

Since fear is based on perception, and perception is often based on limiting beliefs, our fear is rarely justified (unless you’re about to jump out of a plane and you forgot to check your parachute). It’s a legacy that gets handed down from generation to generation, but holding on to it won’t make your ancestors proud.

How to stop feeding your fears

1. Validate yourself. Since your fears live in your mind, you control how much airtime they get. Are you reinforcing your fears rather than validating yourself? Do you put yourself down, telling yourself you can’t do something, you’re not good enough or you’re bound to get hurt, rejected or worse? Do your insecurities stop you from fulfilling a dream, going out on a date or even just accepting a compliment? If you weren’t lovingly validated growing up, you need to give yourself this essential life-affirming gift. Validate yourself every chance you get – in your head and in your life. Counter all negative self-talk with a positive validation of your ability to do or be whatever you wholeheartedly choose. Feel the fear… then tell it to take a hike.

2. Banish the saboteurs. If our fears are running the show, we often resort to comfort foods, smoking, drinking or drugs – anything that will dull the pain, stress or anxiety. We put a lid on our feelings so that we can’t feel just how much it matters that we’ve failed in some way. Yet suppressing our emotions means suppressing our energy and keeping ourselves stuck in limbo. Only by removing these props can we get to the root of what’s really going on, since every emotional prop represents a thwarted potential. We may think of them as necessary coping mechanisms in a world seemingly beyond our control, but they’re a form of emotional denial and, ironically, a form of self-denial that prevents us from having – and maybe even knowing – what we really want. Break the cycle and let go of these unhealthy dependencies, let yourself feel what really matters, and get the support you need to figure out what you’re switching off, so you can start living life fully switched on.

3. Get connected. Join or start a meet-up group (see www.meetup.com), take up break dancing, buy a talking parrot, become a Big Brother/Sister, go to a comedy club – do whatever it takes to stir up your emotions and help you connect with others. Sharing yourself is another way of validating your unique contribution – and of discovering passions you never knew you had. Start saying No to your fears and saying Yes to fearless fulfilment.

For more info, email olga@olgasheean.com or visit www.olgasheean.com