There’s no doubt about it, I meet some interesting characters in my work and I don’t know if it’s the shape of my face, the size of my ears or the cut of my jib, but they often seem to open up and tell me a lot about themselves, their lives and their beliefs.

Just recently, against the background of declining numbers wishing to marry and parliament having a kick-about on the subject, I had one such remarkable conversation with Life coach, oxygenation expert and musician, Ruth Gilmore, who firmly believes in the power of marriage and she told me why. Ruth has had an extraordinary life - certainly by my measure - with more tragedy and trauma than most of us have to bear.

She’s an extraordinary lady, but to her absolute credit, she doesn’t quite see it like that. As is often the case with people who have experienced the sort of shocks in life that would have many of us curled up in a ball for weeks, months, if not years, she seems to have developed a beautiful, philosophical outlook based on the “tragic” events of her life.

One of the things that really got my attention in our, at times intense exchange, was her assertion that she “loved everyone”. More than getting my attention, I have to say this comment got right under my rather uncharitable skin. How on earth can anyone love everyone?

Believe her or not, looks like Ruth is getting there.

“I believe love is a gift from God, unconditional and always there - ready to flow in abundance - to and through us,” she told me. “I do not believe we have the right to limit its flow towards others and I do not think it is up to us to decide if someone deserves it or not. What right have we got to play God?”

Interesting. But, as we all know, life isn’t quite like that. You may, by now, not be surprised to hear that Ruth has got that figured too:

“We may have issues with others which prevent us from being able to pass that love around freely and abundantly,” Ruth continued, adding: “yet are those issues really with others or with our self?”

“Have we allowed circumstances from the past to dictate how we feel about someone now? Why bring the past to the party?” she asks.

Ruth has realised that this rationing of love allows her to now understand what her mother was often saying to her as a child: “I will always love you but I may not always like you.”

With regard to relationships, Ruth has realised that this awareness is not always used by the significant others in her life. They, (and to my shame, I realised I do this too – could be a man-thing) use a very different principle of withdrawing love if they do not like her in a given moment.

“For me,” says Ruth, “this makes it very hard to understand what makes the other tick because if I have to censor what I question or what I feel in case the other does not like it, and withdraws love immediately as a consequence, then how can these issues be explored and how can we grow?”

Good question. See what I mean about her extraordinary view of life?

“That is why I am in favour of marriage rather than living with someone. To me marriage is a commitment to constantly ‘love’ one’s partner and knowing that the love is constant. You have the freedom of being able to ‘question’ anything without having to phrase it in a certain way or reduce the feeling as you have to do with others,” says this loving life-coach who tackles these big issues in the songs she writes too.

“I have experienced such a marriage and it is fab,” she heart-rendingly added.

Ruth realises that this understanding is not one shared by many and may account for why so many want to live together instead. But here’s one woman who won’t be throwing out the baby of eternal truth with the bathwater of social trends.

Postscript: I have since heard that Ruth is getting married on July 7th. Congratulations!

The idea of going for a scan can create anxiety. Whether for the purposes of routine screening or to double-check a medical suspicion, scans also tend to be rooted in the physical body. So the idea of a metaphysical or holistic scan – to look for energetic blockages – caught my interest.

It’s Kimberley Jones, a Torquay born and bred Art Historian turned healer and artist, who offers this insightful and unusual service under the banner of Quantum Coaching and Healing, and for anyone remotely interested in the connection between the emotions, the mind and health – she’s a must-see.

Sure I was intrigued to learn that Kimberley “reads” bodily energy with her hands and can feel colours - red, blue and green - which reveal different types of energetic information all over the body. But I was relieved to be greeted by a very normal looking and sounding person when I went for my initial consultation.

“I have sensed ‘energy’ since I was a child - although I wouldn’t have called it that,” Kim told me when I quizzed her about her background. “I just knew what people were thinking and feeling.”

“Growing up I found my sensitivity made it hard to be in the world so I started numbing myself with alcohol and cigarettes at a very young age. I convinced myself I could get a respectable job and perhaps be a ‘businesswoman’, whatever that meant,” Kim revealed.

“Nothing satisfied me and I moved jobs regularly. I buried my abilities deeper and deeper until I forgot about them. I got more and more stressed,” added Kim whose mother it turns out was also highly psychic.

Following her mother’s death in 1997, Kim started experiencing violent psychic events and her abilities were blasted wide open again, far stronger than before.

“I went into a ’spiritual emergency’, a crisis that often leads to a breakdown of some kind,” Kim told me. “I also became physically unwell. Diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 2000, I became unable to function in any normal way and had to stop work.”

“The one thing that had a strong effect on me during these years was healing. Whether spiritual healing or Reiki, each session led to a huge improvement in my condition and my reawakened extra-sensory abilities.”

“Eventually I was strong enough to start my own research and training, using myself as my own guinea pig,” she explained. “I began by studying Reiki and am now a Reiki Master.”

Soon after Kim trained in “energy mastery” and the “energetics and spirituality of business”, followed by a voluntary apprenticeship to a leading European re-birthing therapist, which enabled her to learn more about how pain, both emotional and physical, is just energy held in the body’s energetic fields.

“This is when I started to see and sense how energy behaves in and around the body according to what we are thinking. It was a huge breakthrough for me,” she said.

Kim has now developed all of her learning into a system called Quantum Coaching and Healing where she uses her abilities as an “energy intuitive” to scan people’s energy fields and offer guidance and healing according to what she finds.

“I have found this cuts through to a truth that is validated by my clients time and again,” she told me. “People are regularly referred to me by their psychotherapist or body work therapist. Your energy fields never lie. They always speak the truth about the deep issues underlying anything you want help with.”

Kim reckons our masks, inherited beliefs and attitudes are like our ‘words’, and she calls the real us revealed by our energy, our ‘music’, claiming that if our words and music don’t go together we get imbalance and eventually dis-ease of some kind.

“I see my job as something resembling a choir master, bringing your words and music together so you can sing your own unique song in the world with health, confidence and joy,” says Kim who also offers support to those highly sensitive to the energy of others at work or at home.

Her Quantum Coaching and Healing sessions involve clients lying down fully clothed and relaxing on a treatment bed. Kim then passes her hands over and around your body sensing energy fields as though she has “eyes in her hands”.

Kimberley’s approach – after an initial and thorough pre-treatment discussion - is a really interesting blend of off-the-beaten-track energy work and hi-tech methodology. Lying on her treatment table, I was at first aware of her ’scanning’, but soon drifted off into a much-needed snooze, comfortable in the safety of her already-healing space.

Before I fell into too much of a slumber however, I saw how Kimberley transcribed the sensations felt and ’seen’ through her hands into coloured shading on an outline of a human body – representing me and my energy on this particular day - on her laptop screen, for later interpretation.

It must have been around 30-40 minutes, when I felt Kimberley’s healing touch on my arm inviting me to rejoin the conscious world. A little fuzzy still, I returned to the consulting area to be greeted by a pretty map of my metaphysical energy and to hear Kimberley’s insights, findings and ideas about what it all meant.

Depending on what is needed, Kim uses healing, visualisations, breathing, relaxation techniques and energy meditations, drawing on her toolkit of training and experience combined with intuitive and psychic sensing.

She’s good and she’s accurate. Coming from a very loving and supportive place – and not in any way ungrounded or annoyingly new age – Kim really gave me something to think about and a number of useful tips to help me through what she saw as my energetic blocks. I’ve always thought the body never lies, and Kim’s energetic extension of this theory takes things a convincing step further.

Kimberley Jones’ Quantum Coaching & Healing is available in Totnes and Netwon Abbot. Call 01803 868282 for more information or a consultation. Or visit: www.quantum-coaching.co.uk

A Totnesian (Totnes - “funky town” in Devon, UK) friend of mine, having heard a radio phone-in that posed the question: “Can healthy eating make you ill?”, told me he didn’t get through, but was ready to say: “most definitely YES! I live in Totnes and I know”.

Totnes is surely - when it comes to healthy living and foody fads - the “been there, done that and spilt organic, free-range, raw gravy down my T-shirt” capital of “worried wellness”.

But it’s not a joking matter. OK, well it’s only partly a joking matter, because a ten-year old idea - orthorexia nervosa - has resurfaced in the midst of the healthy living revolution that we are all being pushed into.

Look around and you’ll see there’s no escape. Supermarkets have harnessed the sales potential of organic and healthier produce, the government and NHS are urging us to eat more wisely to ease the public purse, kids in school have been programmed with the 5-a-day mantra and of course my living - like the livelihoods of most holistic practitioners and pundits - is based on healthy living and eating concepts.

I have to say I can’t blame you if you are sick of it.

That said, you’re probably not as sick as some of the aforementioned Totnes folk and those who may actually be dealing with orthorexia nervosa, because they really are sick; that is if you concur with the founder of this condition, one Dr. Steven Bratman.

Bratman, a Colorado-based physician came up with the term in 1997 to denote what he considers to be an eating disorder characterized by a “fixation” on eating healthful food. From the Greek orthos, meaning”correct or right” and orexis for “appetite”, this doctor describes orthorexia as “an unhealthy obsession with what the sufferer considers to be healthy eating. The subject may avoid certain foods, such as those containing fats, preservatives, or animal products.”

Though not officially recognised as a condition it seems in psychiatric circles and criticised, in the early days, by those who feel that focusing on healthy eating is generally beneficial and does not indicate a mental imbalance, it must surely now demand greater examination.

“Twenty years ago I was a wholehearted, impassioned advocate of healing through food. Today, as a physician who practices alternative medicine, I still almost always recommend dietary improvement to my patients. How could I not?“ wrote Bratman, nearly ten years ago in the October 1997 issue of Yoga Journal.” A low-fat, semi vegetarian diet helps prevent nearly all major illnesses, and more focused dietary interventions can dramatically improve specific health problems. But I’m no longer the true believer in nutritional medicine I used to be.”

“Where once I was enthusiastically evangelical, I’ve grown cautious. I can no longer console myself with the hope that one day a universal theory of eating will be discovered that can match people with the diets right for them. And I no longer have faith that dietary therapy is a uniformly wholesome intervention. I have come to regard it as I do drug therapy: as a useful treatment with serious potential side-effects,” he added.

“Many of the most unbalanced people I have ever met are those who have devoted themselves to healthy eating. In fact, I believe some of them have actually contracted a novel eating disorder for which I have coined the name “orthorexia nervosa.”

Saying “diet is an ambiguous and powerful tool, too complex and emotionally charged to be prescribed lightly, yet too powerful to be ignored,” Bratman makes a powerful point. Food is powerful medicine. But more powerful and seriously disease-forming are obsession, anxiety and guilt - that evil three headed trio - which sadly lurks in the slipstream of any advice and guidance we are given about healthy eating and living.

I say run any such information past your own instincts, intuition and intelligence. Trust yourself and your body; do your best. And don’t beat yourself up. But above all, get and have a life!

As soon as I saw Randy Gage had written this book, I had to get a copy. And believe me I wasn’t disappointed!

If you want to be free - in health, mind and wealth - “Why You’re Dumb, Sick, and Broke and How to Get Smart, Well, and Rich!” by Randy Gage is a great place to start - it’s inspiring. If you buy it and don’t like it - I’ll refund you your money!!

Enjoy!

Get it here: click

Amazon synopsis: This title adopts a no-holds-barred approach to overcoming negative beliefs to attain success.

This practical, yet inspirational book combines timeless principles of wealth-building and success with no-nonsense guidance on how to succeed in today’s complex, competitive world.

Brash, thought provoking, and always entertaining, Randy Gage explores all the issues that affect personal health, happiness, and prosperity. Holding nothing back, he takes on the educational system, organized religion, dysfunctional families, and a culture of victimhood and entitlement, revealing how all these forces conspire to keep most people dumb, sick, and broke.

Then, Gage reveals how to break the cycle with a powerful action plan that will help readers get smart, healthy, and rich. This insightful book offers solutions for eliminating negative beliefs and behaviors, and replacing them with positive thoughts and actions to br! eak the cycle of victimhood forever.

Readers will discover how to turn motivation into action, think like the rich, and understand the virtue of selfishness. The modern world conspires to keep us dumb, sick, and broke; Gage offers straight talk on how to escape mediocrity and seize greatness! Randy Gage (Miami Beach, FL) has been dubbed “the Millionaire Messiah,” because he believes it is a sin to be poor, and you are meant to be rich.

His own experience rising from a high school dropout to a multi-millionaire uniquely qualifies him to share this message of abundance.

Get your copy here: click

OK, it’s not an obviously health-related question, but if you bear with me, I’m sure you’ll end up agreeing that television does have a deep impact on our wellbeing.

It’s come up as an issue because I have just discovered that the average American home has more TVs than people. One of my great heroes of health, Dr Joseph Mercola reported on his website this week that “taking into account the epidemic of obesity along with the frightening exercise debt that’s harming America’s health, it’s no surprise to me, based on data reported by Nielsen Media Research, the typical home has 2.55 people and 2.73 TV sets.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I like watching TV, even though I don’t have one at the moment. (I’m like the telly-less kid who becomes an anti-social moron when at a friend’s house – instantly attracted to the hypnotic, moving pictures in the corner of the room). But this interesting statistic inspired me to take a deeper look.

In my research, I spoke to an American acquaintance, Kathy Westphal who created www.trashyourtv.com - a website that urges you to “Trash your TV for a happier, healthier life!” She told me that the average American watches over four and a half hours of TV a day. Now as Brits, we’re sure to be catching up and I sincerely hope we never reach the complementary statistic she shared that Yanks spend only 38 minutes in “meaningful conversation with children”.

It really looks like the ‘one-eyed childminder’ could do with some careful scrutiny. The aforementioned Nielsen Media Research report tells us that the 4 hours and 35 minutes per day, up three minutes from last year, add up to 31½ hours every week - almost a second job for most people.

That works out at 5½ days per month, more than two whole months every year and by age 70 we’ll have spent over 13 years watching television!
“Aren’t there more important things you would rather be doing with this time?” asks Kathy, who holds a view supported by the TV-Turnoff Network who back an international annual TV-Turnoff Week. They claim: “television cuts into family time, harms our children’s ability to read and succeed in school, and contributes to unhealthy lifestyles and obesity.”
“On average, children in the US will spend more time in front of the television (1,023 hours) than in school this year (900 hours),” they report, adding that “Forty percent of Americans frequently or always watch television during dinner.”
US Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher said at the Kick Off of TV-Turnoff Week 2001, “We are raising the most overweight generation of youngsters in American history…This week is about saving lives.”
Of course it’s your choice. But where America leads, we tend to follow. It’s undoubtedly a health issue – if not physical, then mental – subjected, as you are to tens of thousands of adverts a year, let alone mind-numbing actual programming. I say no one can face that lot uninfluenced.
If you want to take action try Kathy’s “TV Free System” – TV rehab if you like. More at: https://paydotcom.com/r/6301/carlmunson/371966/
To join the debate about TV try: http://holisticlocal.co.uk/forums/topics/view/313

SoQi to good health
 
There are times when the phrase: “It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it” seems to have been created just for me. It came to mind most recently, when I re-acquainted myself with ‘SoQi’ therapy in my efforts to keep you abreast with the latest holistic developments.
 
No doubt about it, I’m a lucky man. SoQi is a delightful treatment that was invented in Japan, is imported from Australia, and delivered locally by complementary therapist Donna Pugh. A blissfully relaxing total body therapy, it combines the benefits of relaxing massage, improved circulation, increased oxygenation and detoxification – and as far as I know – is only available in the UK in Donna’s Paignton spa room.
 
Used extensively in the Far East and by American health professionals, The SoQi experience brings together two highly respected health therapies that are little known in this country – ‘Hot House’ Far Infrared technology and the oxygenating capability of the Sun Ancon ‘Chi Machine’. The icing on the SoQi cake, is the addition of Donna’s hands-on massage skills, which relaxed me so efficiently, I fell into a deep therapeutic slumber within minutes of laying my weary head on her massage couch.
 
The depth of my extraordinary rest may have been encouraged by a mini-workout I received on Donna’s Chi Machine, which followed a brief consultation that cleared me for take-off for the SoQi treat. The Chi Machine gently rocks the legs from side-to-side for a few minutes, suddenly stops, and gives way to euphoric tingles up and down the body – a beneficial and thoroughly enjoyable treatment in its own right. But it didn’t stop there.
 
Oh no. Onto the couch I proceeded, kicking off with a superb back massage that eased out aches, strains and pains I didn’t know I had. The deep, but gentle heat of the Far Infrared Hot House was added to the mix as my feet were massaged and I was off – sleeping like a baby, unconsciously soaking up the benefits of the SoQi technology complemented by Donna’s healing hands.
 
In actual fact, I did emerge from the blissful depths of the pure pampering on a couple of occasions – woken by my own snoring. Fortunately this was received as a compliment by Donna who soon sent me back to that unconscious therapeutic place that in my view stimulates and supports the body’s own healing processes.
 
I have to say, that I’m sure the neck massage was good too. Unfortunately for me however, I wasn’t ‘there’ to enjoy it consciously having once again drifted away leaving only my body to soak up the goodness, whilst I no doubt skipped through meadows of fresh daisies in dreamland.
 
“I was introduced to the SoQi thechnology back in 2005 by Paignton health retailer Michael Jull,” Donna wisely told me before rather than after the treatment, “and it immediately had a dramatic effect on my life. I decided to integrate massage into the process, creating a unique treatment, helping people with stress, overall well being and promoting clearer thinking.” 
 
Donna treats clients of all ages with all sorts of health challenges as well as the fully fit like me who recognise the preventative and health-enhancing power of such a lovely treat now and then. She’s building up a following of loyal regulars who are not only fans of the technology and massage, but also Donna’s brilliant value for money.
 
Originally designed for home use, my guess is that the SoQi system will be adopted by health and beauty therapists and spa owners all over the UK as a walk-in, centre-based treatment that delivers pain management, detoxification and relaxation.
 
Although SoQi’s manufacturers steer clear of making particular claims about specific medical conditions, they say that beyond the treatment’s ability to rapidly relax and relieve, the system has attracted a vast array of positive testimonials from people with Cancer, MS, ME, back problems, asthma and arthritis where other approaches and drugs have failed.

Add Donna’s personal touch and undoubted skills in the ‘mother of all therapies’ – massage, and I’ve no doubt this can only be good for you utilizing non-toxic and non-invasive eastern medical wisdom that endeavours to help the body heal itself.
 
Donna takes the increasingly popular view that by supporting the metabolism and boosting the immune system, the body can deal with many of the chronic conditions and diseases that plague the western world.
 
Many respected medical researchers including Nobel Prize winner Otto Warburg have supported Far Infrared Therapy and The Chi Machine is the culmination of nearly 40 years of research by Japanese medical doctor Dr. Shizou Inoue. There are now over two million Chi Machines in use around the world, which are said to offer the oxygenation equivalent of 90 minutes’ walking in just 15 minutes.
 
If you want to find out more, Donna Pugh can be contacted on 07747 306052

Well? What are you? You decide - go to: http://holisticlocal.co.uk/forums/topics/view/267 and tell the world…

Today’s news that Allen Carr, whose books have helped people all over the world to quit smoking, has been diagnosed with lung cancer, got me thinking.

There’s an irony here to match the death of Arthur Lydiard, who is supposed to have invented jogging, and ended having a fatal heart attack whilst out on a jog.

Add to that a lesser-known visionary Paul Benson, who started the brilliant health product company – Resonance in Totnes – who died unexpectedly from cancer earlier this year and you’re left with a rational riddle.

The rational mind says it doesn’t add up. Why bother to be healthy?

The hedolist knows that life always has the last word and interestingly, whatever you think about you get. Paul Benson himself told me that he rejected ‘prevention’ because it always kept fear of disease - and therefore disease - in the mind.

He invented ‘healthing’ instead. And yes, he still died, but I suspect he a ball on his way to meeting the grim reaper.  He probably supplied the grim reaper with anti-ageing supplements.

So, do it all: jog, smoke and max your health too. It’s not contradictory when you really feel the hot breath of death on your neck and still have a light in your eyes and lead in your pencil. If you love it; do it…

Carpe diem momentum!

And check out this hedolist’s view on daeth: http://www.felixdennis.com/frontpage.php?varid=25# click on: “On News of a Friend’s Sudden Death”

Resonance can be contacted on 0800 038 0303 tell them I sent you.

The Hedolist bigs up therapists who are raising the bar for outstanding performance in holistic therapy…

Today’s spa star is Jason Bradford, a former baker turned massage therapist with reassuringly big and warm hands. Those years of kneading and shaping dough were not wasted.

This guy deserves a gong for a thoroughly relaxing and very unusual workout that I received recently - sat in a chair. Not a special chair, mind you, Jason is a ‘para-masseur’, able to drop in with the least amount of fuss, working with the conditions he finds.

For me, there was half an hour to spare, so he grabbed the nearest chair, sat me down and went to work.

I expected to be eased and relaxed in this guy’s capable hands, because on an earlier occasion, just a little way into inspecting his diploma certificates, I lost the will to live and asked him to get on with it - such is Jason’s copious technical depth.

In practice, the man matched the quantity of his on-paper credentials with a quality most practitioners would die for.

Without wanting to sound like a Motown songwriter, I have to say ‘warm and tender’ is the phrase that comes to mind, but the biggest and surprise was to come.

This delightfully relaxing session, I soon realised, was entirely pressure-based and devoid of the stroking, kneading and sweeping moves that I automatically expect when receiving massage – couch or chair-based.

Now I know pressure sounds, well, unrelaxing and vaguely medicinal, but try Jason’s beautifully timed, leisurely and systematic ‘hold and release’ method on all of your main muscle groups and the result is under-the radar bliss.

‘Pass the drool-tray’, some five minutes into his routine, was my last recognisable thought, as this master of his art went about his business.

Surprising (in a very positive way), time and cost effective, and seriously calm-inducing, Jason Bradford’s chair routine is one to try before you die. He’s got a gift and a passion for bodywork that you can feel through his fingertips; let them find their way to you soon.

You can book him for this, and a range of other massage-based approaches to relaxation and pain-relief on: 07909 960 884

If you want The Hedolist to review your therapy style (excellence, uniqueness and delight ONLY please), email: spastar@hedolistic.com