I was slow to discover The Idler (there’s an obvious joke in there, but I won’t stoop to it) and its founding influence Tom Hodgkinson. Sure, I’d heard of it and him, but it wasn’t until something stirred in my waters yesterday, that I felt an urgency to visit www.idler.co.uk. Once there, my eyes went straight to Tom’s book - How to Be Free. I immediately called Waterstone’s, Exeter, who said a copy had just come in and they’d put it by. Within minutes, I had it in my hands and I was/am still enthralled. In a word: vindicated.

Names and keywords like John Seymour, Satish Kumar*, Eric Gill, Schumacher, Ruskin, permaculture, mulching and cooperation as well as Tom’s obvious hatred of CCTV, banks and watches struck an immediate chord and re-arranged years of random references into a recognisable constellation of vision and hope. I’m even thinking of taking up the Ukele.

And this afternoon, Tom popped up again on a BBC Radio 4 show - Nowhere Fast? - quizzed by (Read on …)

Some way into a ‘guilty pleasure’, fry-up breakfast in a supermarket this week, I was upstaged by a more nutritionally reckless individual – a schoolboy tucking into a pot noodle accompanied by a cola drink.

I’d caught sight of him as I was reading with great interest, the work of another newspaper columnist, bemoaning the fact that most people don’t understand the significance of Easter and just make good use of a couple of work-free days – oblivious to any spiritual significance.

The combination of the nutritionally-challenged youth and a spiritually-challenged nation got me thinking, and excuse me if this is sounding like a sermon, but as sure as food is nutrition for the body, spirituality is surely nutrition for the soul – or whatever you choose to call that hidden, yet deepest part of yourself.

Put another way: as sure as what we put in our mouths builds our bodies; whatever we put into our hearts and minds builds our ‘being’. And to push the analogy further: if it’s junk food we eat, it’s likely we’ll build a junk body, prone to disease and lethargy; and if we starve or compromise ourselves spiritually, it follows that we might feel a bit empty and lack the resources to face the facts of our lives with strength and courage.

Going back to my brother in print, he seemed to take it further by suggesting that our general lack of understanding in the Easter department caused a national crisis of character. And whilst I’m with him on the idea that putting worship before - or at least within - bank holiday-based leisure might make the world a better place, I’m not sure that you necessarily need to be a Christian to be an upstanding pillar of the community.

And anyway, why should living a good and principled life be confined to one church-going day of the week, or even a couple of bank holidays a year?

But let’s return to the way we nourish our souls for a moment and consider the folk - a majority according to a recent BBC report - who “believe in God, pray and think of them selves as ‘Christian’, despite not going to church”, those who are “believing without belonging”, as well as those who follow the world’s other spiritual diet plans, the many millions, if not billions who get their soul sustenance elsewhere.

Let’s remember that church-based, corporate Christianity is a means (not the means) to an end. And of course that end is not an end in itself. You cannot be a Christian, or any moral position, once and for all. Like any true spiritual practice it lives or dies in the moment, and the challenge to live what you believe to be right and true, is there in every second and opportunity of your living life.

On the matter of shrinking congregations and the “curse of apathy”, maybe the churches aren’t empty because we are becoming an increasingly god-less lot; maybe they’re empty because we are ‘cutting out the middle-man’ and finding our own, new ways to connect with the divine. For me, worship is gratitude, contemplation, meditation, awe and love; what better time than a Bank Holiday weekend - free from the stresses of every-working-day life - to remember to do these things?

But insiders don’t share my positivity about ‘disintermediation’ – the aforementioned side-stepping of the middleman that’s happening in many areas of our daily lives like the Internet, where consumers connect directly with manufacturers, upping convenience and cutting costs.

Recent research by Christian charity Tearfund, says 26 million adults claim to be Christian, whilst 32 million have no connection with church. Terafund’s President Dr Elaine Storkey, a Christian academic and broadcaster, seems to think it’s a sign that people want everything - including Christianity - on their own terms.

She says: “People are used to instant gratification, they are used to having what they want, when they want without putting in too much effort. Having a connection with Christianity is not a problem for most people; it’s when something is asked of them that they start to struggle”

“Some sort of ‘vague Christianity’ acts as a way for people to keep their options open, they don’t have to think too hard about life and aren’t pushed outside their comfort zone,” says philosopher Dr Julian Baggini, adding to the idea that most ‘believers’ are part-timers or are in some way cheating.

I’m not sure. In my experience, more and more people are seeing themselves as ‘spiritual’, rather than ‘religious’ and for the churches it’s a problem of ‘market-share’ because they just don’t get it. Modern spirituality, though understandably critcised as “having things your own way”, is a much taller order than generally portrayed.

Rather than following dogma and doctrine, the people I know - who might say they are more spiritual than religious - are well-read deep thinkers, open to discussion and put things into practice that make sense to them at the deepest level. Their lifestyle choices are conscience-driven and they see the ups and downs of life as an education that allows personal development and spiritual awakening.

I think the image of a secular UK where everyone has embraced consumerism as their modern-day God, is misplaced. ‘St Pixels’, an internet church complete with daily prayers, readings and a chat room for its online congregation proves there’s a timeless human need that longs to met in new ways. Whether religious or spiritual, I maintain we’re all looking for God – to be nourished spiritually - each in our own way; however strange, shallow or fickle it may seem from another’s point of view.

As a promoter and fan of holistic, complementary and alternative therapies, I’m often irritated by those of a scientific, rational and evidence-based mindset.

The fascinating thing about such people is their assumed authoritative attitude - often an arrogance - that thinks if something can’t be proven by scientific and rational means, it can’t be much good.

There’s a lot of it about and I’m sick of it. The most galling aspect of the holistic and rational divide is how the rationalists control the terms of engagement – somehow making anything ‘unscientific’ or ‘’unproven’, of little value.

So obviously flawed when you stop to think about it, rationalism has nonetheless reached Emperor’s new clothes proportions - with people still rushing for fast-acting, ‘scientifically-proven’ and ‘evidence-based’ medical solutions despite such disasters as Vioxx, Seroxat and Thalidomide.

Religious in their scientific views, many rationalists are not happy about facing the sort of challenge that alternative medicine deals with on an everyday basis. Whether you like him or loathe him, just consider the kicking organic and complementary whipping boy Prince Charles got just this week on TV for speaking out and suggesting that conventional medics abandon their “conventional mindsets” on health policy.

Another supreme example of scientific arrogance comes in the form of Ben Goldacre, who, in his Guardian ‘Bad Science’ column, dishes out “satirical criticism of scientific inaccuracy, health scares, pseudoscience and quackery”.

An ardent critic of popular nutrition and lifestyle gurus like Gillian McKeith and Patrick Holford as well as anti-immunisation campaigners, homeopathy and iridology (and many other things that are - on his terms - hard to ‘prove’), Goldacre epitomises the brittle worldview that denies people of their own valuable personal knowledge and positive experience.

He and his ilk, those to whom ‘not scientific’ seems to mean ‘not true’, need reminding that the word science comes from the Latin “scientia,” meaning knowledge. We all know things - and by the Webster’s Dictionary definition that says science is “knowledge attained through study or practice” - we are all scientists.

Sadly however, we’ve been scared off being by countless boffins who have made us question what we know in our own experience and instinct to be true, with their expert-status, use of jargon and unquestioned power.

Our own fear and laziness too have allowed them to smother our instincts; having us going against our own judgement, headlong into counter-intuitive medical interventions and prescriptions.

“To anyone who’s interested in science,” says Goldacre, lauding his self-elevated medical status over us and characteristically going for the messenger and not the message,” it’s simply offensive to find newspapers and television channels filled with people who adopt a cloak of scientific authority … ‘Dr’ Gillian McKeith has a non-accredited correspondence course doctorate from the United States and a primetime show on Channel 4 television.”

I’m no fan of Gillian either, but sadly for Ben, growing numbers of people seem to be excited and inspired by taking a pro-active interest in their health, experimenting with food and diet. The same is true in holistic therapies - where despite the lurking, (again rational) spectre of government regulation - many are finding that ‘feeling’ better is a worthwhile validation, even if no costly trials back them up. They just know.

Maybe Ben is so shrill because the scientific stranglehold that has kept people in the dark - and arguably unwell - is loosening a little.

“They misrepresent, from their position of dominance in the mainstream media, what scientific evidence for a clinical assertion would actually look like,” says Ben. “The entire field is based on a small palette of simple academic errors.”

“But most offensive to me, as a hard working NHS doctor, is the way that media nutritionists assume the moral high ground, as if they were somehow the source of all that is right and good in the management of lifestyle risk factors for cardiovascular disease and cancer” he adds, sounding like his monopoly is being challenged.

Sorry Ben, but the people I meet and know don’t care about these breaches of your lofty scientific rulebook. They’re too busy living their lives, taking their chances and trying stuff out in the real world. I say more power to their elbows and less to prescription-pad protocol, even if it is ‘evidence-based’ and ‘scientifically-proven’.

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!

Having a pop at media nutritionists seems to be in vogue right now.
In a message to the BMJ (British Medical Journal), the UK’s top nutrition doctor, John Briffa, has come not exactly to their defence, but changes the focus, challenging Dr Ben Goldacre (a high-profile nutritionist critic) and dieticians about their “higher ground”.

read more | digg story

UK man complains his wife is too tired to make love. He (Ross Appleyard) claims: “How can household chores be more of a priority than sex?”
As the old saying goes Ross - when your finger points, three more are pointing back at you.
Get a grip mate and be a real man - make yourself more attractive than the housework…

read more | digg story

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

Testing times for a former Olympian got me thinking about men and spirituality this week.

It seems Jonathan Edwards - acknowledged as the world’s greatest ever triple jumper - has had a ‘crisis of faith’, leading to him to quit as a presenter of BBC’s Songs of Praise programme, because he is no longer convinced of God’s existence.

In the same week, with Robbie Williams checked into a Californian rehab unit, on his 33rd birthday, on account of his alleged addiction to prescription drugs and the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition under the media microscope over alleged drug use years ago – I’ve been pondering what used to be called “moral fibre”, male role models and where men, in particular, might look in times of personal trouble and turmoil.

With these “weaknesses” revealed, what’s of most interest to me, is not that these men are having a crisis - that’s understandable; it happens. But given this public airing of doubt and vulnerability, the question I have, is: where do they turn? Because who - among men - IS leading the way, with strength, courage and wisdom, leaving an example worth following in their wake?

Looking at key figures in society, one could seek help and vision from the prime minister, but most probably wouldn’t take it right now - he’s about as role-modelable to young men as Bernard Matthews is to a would-be vegan.

And what about royalty? Surely, once long ago, the first place one might look for leadership. Well, with a female monarch at the helm for over fifty years, holding sway over her often-ridiculed eldest son, young men may not get much help there either.

So it’s to the boardroom, sports field and entertainment screens and stages that we must look. And I can’t say I’m impressed. Are you?

In those environments, once the somewhat shallow markers of extreme wealth, winning streaks and fame have been removed, I can’t think of anyone that remarkable. Is it me? Or are men lost right now?

I’d say that in their worship of material gain, competitive thrust and celebrity status, modern men have turned their backs and ultimately lost contact with the noble, spiritual qualities that are so desperately needed in our society.

What with women tending to do better in the work environment (when allowed) - queens, as they are, of multi-tasking and taking a motherly overview of things rather than being supremely task-focussed and single-minded as men often are, it’s time men looked deep within instead of going without.

Isn’t it time for a return to gentlemanly standards of conduct? To courage, honour and service – rather than the selfish, self-serving behaviour that seems to have possessed the male of the species at every level of our world from street-level “chav” to finance-world fat-cat?

Looking beyond material madness, religious dogma and social mores – as it seems Messrs Williams, Edwards and Cameron have been invited to do – men could learn a great deal from the great men of mythology including the enlightened Buddha, the inscrutable Samurai and noble Knights of the Round Table – all men with a spiritual awareness that still holds an attraction.

With no great male role models coming to mind in our own times, perhaps it’s time we looked into history if we are to create a masculine future we can be proud of.

I got The Secret last year and shared it with my friends. Though excited at the time - we loved it and got very fired up - some months later, I see no real change in my buddies - if anything their old cars are older; they are still in the same houses they’d rather not be in given an option and they still need me to buy them a pint from time to time. You get the idea.

Don’t get me wrong, my love affair with American-style personal development programmes isn’t over and this isn’t a bad case of sour grapes. It’s just that - as the pumped-up vapours of passion-driven law of attraction and manifestation energy have evaporated - the good sense I’m occasionally fortunate to glimpse has returned to the landscape of my perception.

And no, I’m not criticising The Secret as some others are because it’s not right to not work hard to get what you want or because it panders to the most basic, materialistic urges in pseudo-spiritual new-agers. No, not either of these; because focussing on your intentions - for as long as is required to make them manifest - IS hard work; and wanton satisfaction of your most basic wordly desires can work wonders for spiritual development (see: “Buddha”).

For me, The Secret fails humankind (yes), because it creates wanting. Whilst posing as a way to happiness, it creates the exact opposite - a state of mental unrest and longing - however pleasurable or modest.

When we want, we are no longer content in the moment where we belong - where all happiness is. Put another way: you can’t be happy later on in your life (when all that stuff you are busy manifesting shows up); you can only be happy now. In this moment - NOW!

And by the grace of God (or whatever other thing you beg to or praise in your worst and best moments respectively) that is only right. All have access to the joy of the moment right now - whatever their circumstances - regardless of what the future (and past) hold.

So please don’t wait to be happy - when pay day comes or when the mother of all manifesting gives birth a la Secret - do it now.

Love that strawberry!

Check this out: http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/…jan07_booklet.pdf