He wasn’t sure how bees carried pollen on their legs, but he knew that a friend of his had collected 150 lbs of honey last year from one hive. He spent £1700 setting up his hives, but one colony died in the first winter from lack of water, so he had to spend another £220 on a new colony sent to him through the post. He talked about queen bee wing-clipping, queen bee exclusion and if all else failed, pulling her out and stamping on her if she wasn’t performing well enough – whatever that meant. All this talk made me sad. Although bees are highly intelligent and social insects, to this man, they are obviously just another thing that needs to be tamed and controlled in order to produce the maximum yield possible.

I am going to start keeping bees and I am going to attempt to keep them in the most natural way possible. The bee man has now made me even more determined to do it. I have been reading The Barefoot Beekeeping Book by Phil Chandler and trying to learn as much as I can about non-invasive bee keeping. I want to get this right. Because I see beekeeping as a very spiritual practice, I am going to make my beehive and instead of spending £1700 on getting colonies in and getting all the equipment, I am going to leave the hive empty and allow the bees to move in of their own accord if they want to. I am lucky in that respect, the farmer next door keeps 18 beehives on the slopes above our house and we have thousands of bees around us during the summer months – adequate time for them to check out my cosy beehive and adequate time for them to make a decision about moving in there when they swarm with a queen into a new patch. I am not even bothered about taking any honey for the first few years, not even bothered about disturbing them, I just want to co-habit their space, watch them as they go about their business, hear the hum of the hive and get to observe their different moods and whims. I would like to sit and talk to them and in return I may get to learn a little more about how they interact with the world around them. Eventually I would love them to start talking to me.

I wasn’t too impressed with the bee man, although I am very excited about my own bee venture; I can hear their humming in my body already and the anticipation of golden-honeyed summer days in my garden haven is delicious to imagine.

Unlike the bee man, I view the bees as equals, if not higher in status than myself when it comes to the natural order of things. I see them as mythical and magical beings, I see them as guides and guardians and blessed helpers. They helped me to heal my wounded body and soul. They just help.

I wonder if they would like to come to stay for a while with me?

On my flight home, I was reading an interview with Oprah, where she talked about author Toni Morrison saying that what every child wants to know is, ‘Do your eyes light up when I enter the room?’ This is the gift my mother still gives me and I’m so very grateful.

This is what it boils down to, this is it. Does your child feel that he or she is loved by you not just because you say ‘I love you’, but really by knowing it deep inside? Perhaps he or she sees a glazed expression on your face when they enter the room because the trials and tribulations of your life are taking you over so much that your mind is not focusing, really focusing, on the joy that has just entered the room. This applies not just to our children, but everyone we encounter in life.

It is all about letting the love flow; feeling it emanating from you to others. It is all about clearing away the pathways in you that block this love. It sounds very corny and obvious, but how many of us really work on unblocking the flow every day?

Jean talks more about her mother:

I’ve just returned from spending Christmas with my 93 year old mother and my heart is still full. My mother’s always been an amazing woman. When she was 89, I took her to one of the foremost acupuncturists in the world, and she was proclaimed to be a very rare case– a woman of that age whose spirit was still completely bright and vital.

Things have changed over the past year, and her spirit has dimmed considerably. She’s no longer able to live on her own, and is not often even fully conscious. But when she looks at me, there’s such light in her eyes, and such pure love, that I just feel totally cherished by her.

When I read this passage I smiled and felt such love. It is true, there is something about people who live to a ripe old age, (despite the fact that some of them may drink or smoke or have gone through the toughest times – wars, physical endurance and such like) that shines through their often crumbling bodies.

I do not think I ever truly experienced this pure love as a child. My mother often looked at me with loathing in her eyes; I was not good enough, I did not behave myself or I went against her wishes. It wasn’t her fault of course, I think my parents were just too wrapped up in their own problems, their own heartaches to let pure and present love shine through to us kids. It’s a crying shame how some people can become so blocked, and do so without realizing it. The sad thing is that this blockage is so easily transferred from one generation to the next, unintentionally and unconsciously.

I have experienced this kind of pure love more recently however with my husband, whose eyes always light up when I enter the room. He is so wise and open, not affected so much by negative issues. He helps me in my own clearing work as I imagine his sparkling love working through me to wash away blockages from my own body. In a way, he has been my lifeline.

When we can at last feel this pure love running through us, there is no way we cannot shine with love for others, it is a spiritual law of the universe. You can tell these kind of people at a distance, something emanates from them that is very attractive, I don’t mean in surface looks but through the life that comes from their eyes. It is something that cannot be faked, which is why as people age, it becomes less common to see. My children show it when they are enjoying themselves with no worries, they are completely in the present and it is often their love which I focus upon when I am going through my healing sessions with myself.

So you now see why this small phrase ‘Do your eyes light up?’ is hugely significant for me, it represents everything that I am striving towards in life, everything that means ‘all is well in the world’ – it represents complete peace. The French have a wonderful expression for it, which I like to use a lot: joie de vivre and if that is the only thing I get to experience from now on, then my life will have been worth it.

Thank you Jean.

I just took a look at Robert Bezanis‘ site and found some really very nice statements about face reading which made me smile:

• The face should not look older as it ages, looking older is a function of organ breakdown.
• All wrinkles, acne, moles redness, irritations and dry areas indicate organ weakness.
• The face should not have acne, accident or sickness scars like chicken pox.
• If some part of the face is red then this indicates that the associated organ is heated due to stress.
• All white graying hair is a function of weak kidneys. Hair colour often changes back.

I really believe that my grey hair will change back to black one day. Funnily enough, I went grey when I was 21 when my brother was diagnosed with a brain tumour and given three years to live. In regards to my last post, perhaps the traumatic emotions I felt towards the situation subsequently took root in my kidneys (part of the endocrine system and associated with the need for love, security and  safety) or perhaps it started much further back than that and the episode with my brother was only the straw that broke the camel’s back. Whatever it is, it feels like a huge and tangled tree that I am scrambling down in order to get back to the root of the imbalance.

Behind every physical symptom lies an emotional blockage….go back to the issues of the heart and work on the deepest part of yourself first.

No, it is absolutely necessary to look even deeper, to turn inwards and work on all the negative emotions that my cells may have absorbed over the last 42 years of my life here on this planet: that time when I was 5 and my mother threw a marble out of the window, telling me how disgusting it was (it had just passed all the way through my digestive tract) leaving me to spend hours grubbing around in the bushes trying to find it. That time when I was 9 and felt guilty for spilling blue/black ink all over my mother’s new white carpet. That time when that boy dumped me for that pretty girl when I was 16. That time when I was 6 and I asked my aunt if I could have one of the goldfish from her pond and my mother slapped me for being rude. That time when I was 32 and I felt guilty that I had not been there in the hospital when my father died. That time when my best friend went to move onto another table at school when I was 8. That time yesterday when I felt bad about telling off my daughter in front of the caravan salesman.

Scientists have recently discovered that memories are literally ‘held’ in every part of our bodies, not just our brains. When we say we have a ‘gut feeling’ about something, then we are absolutely correct in feeling what we are feeling. I also feel things in my bones, in my heart and in my blood. Along a similar vein, there is a shamanic tradition called the Path of Pollen which is a gynocentric based method of healing –  the womb is addressed as the primary seat of knowledge in the body.

We store everything in our cells, no matter how small or trivial, no matter how huge or traumatic and sometimes the less significant can cause the most blockage. It is all there, like a sophisticated film reel of our entire lives. There it sits, blocking every single cell’s ability to perform the tasks it urgently needs to do within the body: endocrine system regulation, immune control, bone building, blood purifying, heavy metal removal, hormone balancing, melatonin production, seratonin production, nutrient absorption, lymph drainage, breathing, thinking, moving and a million and one other functions.

Addressing the obvious (and not so obvious) symptoms in our bodies makes no difference, even though on an immediate level we may feel wonderful. But this wonder will only last if we also address the negative emotions that block our cell functions. A test was done by scientists where cells from the roof of a person’s mouth were scraped away and put in a test tube. The person was asked to hold the tube and think positive thoughts. The cells were then analysed and it was shown that their functions had increased. The test tube was moved progressively further and further away from the patient and the test repeated; the same results were found even after moving the test tube over a mile away from the person (from The Healing Code).

We have power we rarely realise we possess (although nowadays is becoming more accepted); power to literally change the structure of our cells through loving thought and prayer and the power to heal others and ourselves at the deepest level. Using the power of loving thought and prayer to clear our cells energetically at the quantum level is the real foundation of our health.

This is about my first experiences with The Healing Code. I have been practising the codes for five days now. I came across this book by accident on Amazon and, as I am very interested in the spiritual side of healing, I just had to buy it.

The book itself is a very simple read and the practise also seems to be dead simple, which some people I am sure will be skeptical about. Nothing this simple could actually work! But (although not fully cited in the book) the power of thought and prayer has already been proven to be an amazing healing force within our bodies, whether it is connected to a particular religion or not.

The premise of the book (and the practise) is that we are able to literally wipe clean the negative memories our cells are holding on to (which is the root cause of all disease in the body) through energetic and linguistic focus – essentially, an enhanced form of prayer for our own bodies. The main force of healing comes through our power to LOVE ourselves at every level: physically, emotionally and spiritually.

The first time I ‘did’ the codes I was very emotional, tears streamed down my face and I felt a huge part of me release. I did the first 6 minute session and then curled up into a ball under a blanket. After nearly falling asleep under there, I heard a voice call my name, it was the voice of my mother and she sounded as if she was standing next to me, it was that clear. I woke with a jolt so suddenly that something moved me somewhere inside. My mother was not angry, she just called me, nothing urgent, just my name that’s all.

The practise asks us to think back to a traumatic time in our childhood which conjures up the same kind of emotion we feel is blocking us today and I had been thinking about many memories connected to the difficult times I had with my mother as a teenager. The voice I heard was how I imagine my mother to have been when I was very young; a voice of hope and love and certainty, a voice that had told me I had not done anything wrong. I had not heard her voice calling me in that way for a long, long time. It puts a lump in my throat right now when I think back to it. That voice was the embodiment of her love for me and it was – now I know – what I had been looking for for a long, long time. Something very simple, yet so profound.

Since then, practising the codes has not been such an emotional trip. I managed to quell my fear of flying two days ago by doing them before and during the flight and I have been able to release some buried anger I was holding onto and which tended to get discharged at my children in times of stress. Whenever I sense stress rising up in me now, I am able to mitigate it through code work.

I also had a very vivid dream about my teeth crumbling away in my mouth (a recurring dream I have) but this time, instead of being left completely bereft and without teeth, I found a full set of tiny white pearls waiting to push through and replace the old ones. This made me very happy. I have never dreamed of anything like this before.

It takes time for the release of emotional blockages to filter down to the physical level, but already I am finding it recharges and calms me and I think I am a heck of a lot more peaceful and happy even only after five days. More soon.

The book tells us how every one of the body’s individual cells remember traumas from the past on a quantum level. This is where memories of our ‘issues of the heart’ are stored. There are not many ways that we can access the cell’s memory in order to wipe the slate clean, but The Healing Code sets out to give us one way. I have always been interested in quantum science and the theory is taken one step further with actual exercises one can do to access the cellular memories; codes are then used to reprogram the memory and heal the body.

In this book, no one disease is ever addressed, instead, the underlying CAUSE of the disease is put back in balance which sets off a chain reaction within the body that results in homeostasis.

I have been doing the exercises three times a day for three days now and I will write about the changes I have already noticed tomorrow.

I was on Google Maps last night with a friend and we started looking at our houses. I was astonished to see ME outside my house sitting on a chair in the sun next to my washing line! I am wearing my favourite flowery skirt. I know exactly when it was taken as my husband was coming out of the garage when he said to me, “I just saw the Google Van drive by,” he is in the next screen shot pictured walking away from his car. My friend then proceeded to find her parents sitting outside their house in Canada both having a cigarette.

Some people get freaked out when they see themselves on Google street view. I just think it is hilarious; a snapshot of my life, yes it truly is a snapshot, look at me doing what I like best: sitting in the sun in my beloved mountain place, smiling at my daughter who is in a green towel! If you can see, there is a FOR SALE sign on the house – we were renting it at that time. Yesterday, we signed for the house and it is now officially OURS. Notice our homemade insulation on the shutters – it makes the house look like a strange brown lunar module.

The weird thing is that we are so remote – at the end of a tiny valley on a no-through road, I would have imagined our ‘street’ to have been the last place the Google Van would have driven passed. But with satellite dish blazing and 3D camera whirring, drive passed it certainly did.

Here is a list of the common ingredients found in most commercial detergents, although there is no law in place at the moment which forces companies to list every single ingredient that may be in the powder:

1. Alkyl benzene sulfonates or ABS (also linear alkyl benzene sulfonates or LAS, linear alkyl sodium sulfonates)(can cause skin irritation),
2. Alkyl phenoxy polyethoxy ethanols (also nonyl phenoxy ethoxylate or nonyl phenol) (are slow to degrade in the environment have implicated chronic health problems),
3. Artificial fragrances (do not degrade in the environment, are toxic to fish and cause skin and eye irritation),
4. Diethanolamines (also diethanolamine, triethanolamine and monoethanolamine) (potential carcinogen),
5. EDTA (ethylene-diamino-tetra-acetate) does not readily biodegrade and can release heavy metals contained in underwater sediment,
6. Optical brighteners (toxic for fish and irritates the skin which is exposed to sunlight),
7. Petroleum distillates (also naphthas),
8. Phosphates contribute to significant eutrophication of waterways and create unbalanced ecosystems by fostering dangerously explosive bacterial growth. For these reasons they are banned or restricted in many states.  Products containing phosphates should be considered unacceptable. Note: The major laundry detergent manufacturers no longer usephosphates in their formulations),
9. Polycarboxylates, 
10. Polyethylene glycol (also PEG),
11. Quaternium 15 (toxic)
12. Xylene sulfonate.

from here

Can you imagine all those ingredients coating your bed linen and then you lying on them for up to 10 hours every night whilst your body sweats and absorbs the chemicals directly via your skin? These chemicals will then naturally accumulate in your liver, kidneys, colon and lungs – during the day your clothes have the same effect.

So, I have started using plain old washing soda for my clothes. It is quite simple, I pour a scoop into my washing machine and set the temperature as high as I can for whites, using one setting lower for coloureds. If the program has a prewash, I add white vinegar to the compartment (which softens the water). So far, no stiff towels and very white tea towels. I always line dry my laundry outside in summer and in winter hang the laundry on a clothes horse near to a radiator upstairs (soon to be hanging in the stairwell).

WARNING – PLEASE READ! Multinationals like Unilever or Proctor & Gamble tell us that their products allow us to ‘wash at lower temperatures’, which they say is better for the environment. This is not true. The contents of the laundry detergent (that allows us to lower the temperature) is far, far more TOXIC to the environment than heating up the water to wash the clothes with, it is also far more COSTLY to us as consumers and far more profitable for them. The maxim: ‘Washing at lower temperatures’ is a cleverly fashioned SCAM to convince you to use their detergents. There is nothing wrong with using soap-based cleaning agents and washing as hot as you can set the machine. This applies to dishwashers too, better still: wash the dishes/clothes by hand.

Anyone still use a mangle?

That was six years ago and every so often I take a p.H. reading: my saliva is always spot on 7.25, my urine spot on 6.25, with hardly any fluctuation during the day.

The whole idea of balancing alkalinity in the body had aways baffled me, as I assumed different organs are bathed in different p.H. values and therefore the body could not possibly be either acid or alkaline in totality and furthermore it was near impossible to measure it. So, when I discovered the paleo diet, p.H. testing quietly went out of the window as I was eating so many acid-forming foods (meat and dairy) anyway and felt relatively good, I decided that there was no truth to the alkaline-forming diet after all.

But that is not quite the whole story, there IS something in it, but not in the way I had initially thought: the truth is, we are individuals and therefore need an individual acid/alkaline diet; some of need acid forming foods, some of us need to alkalinise. I found this out this morning as I read an interview with New York metabolic typist, Dr Gonzalez:

RC: There are many books in health food stores which say that the underlying cause of disease is that we are all too acid, in large part because of a meat-based diet, and need to push our body towards a more alkaline state by eating more fruits, vegetables, almonds, millet, etc.

NG: That is absolutely incorrect. Sympathetic dominants tend to be more acid, parasympathetic dominants tend to be too alkaline, and balanced people tend to be somewhere in between. Sympathetic dominants do well on alkalinizing foods like fruits and vegetables. Parasympathetic dominants need acid forming foods, of which red meat is the most powerful.

Since discovering metabolic typing at the end of 2011, most of my world view has completely changed. For the first time in a long while, actually since I started my journey into nutritional research, something makes complete sense at last. The confusion has been replaced by growing joy that I now have a way to pinpoint exactly what I should be eating according to my body’s needs, not groping around in the dark.

I looked up Dr. Gonzalez after being told by a close friend that her sister-in-law was making trips to New York from the UK twice a year to visit him. She had been diagnosed with bone cancer and after three years of following Dr. Gonzalez’s metabolic diet, which was created specifically for her (with supplementation and cleansing protocols included), she was in remission, 5 months pregnant with her first child AND in the best of health. Here’s more from the interview:

RC: How do you determine which part of the nervous system is dominant, and why is that important to your therapy?

NG: Because out of that we are able to determine which diet and supplements will suit the patient best. Their sympathetic or parasympathetic dominance tells me what kind of program they need.

RC: Let’s say a person comes to you who is parasympathetic dominant, and you put them on the wrong diet, will you make things worse?

NG: You can kill them.

RC: Even if it is a vegetarian diet that is low in fat?

NG: Parasympathetic dominant people need red meat three times per day. Putting them on a vegetarian diet is like raising a lion on hay.

RC: Are there personality types associated with these different types of autonomic dominance?

NG: Sympathetic dominants are aggressive, type A businessmen that get up at six and get more done by noon than the rest of us do in the whole day. They are very ambitious, smart, and energetic in the morning. Parasympathetics would like to sleep until noon, and are very creative. Artistic ability tends to be in the parasympathetic side of the nervous system.

from here

I guess we have a little bit of a mutual appreciation society going on here and it is great.

I recently went to a life coaching course, not because I really thought I needed it but just because I was quite intrigued to find out what exactly happens on life coaching courses. Well, amongst other things (other fantastic things, which I found out I actually needed) I was reminded of the fact that gratitude makes us happy. People who are in a happy relationship or marriage and who are contented with their lives are less likely to suffer from a heart attack, I just read the other day.

And then we have the end of the day bedtime thing – the ‘I love you because….’ kind of thing. It really works; it is so powerful to be grateful. But it only works if we really mean it, it does not work if we are saying it to benefit ourselves. The true way is the selfless way.

During one of the life coaching sessions we sat and told each other one by one what we admired about the other person. We were all women and we knew each other before the coaching group and we all spilled our hearts out to each other, it was wonderful. Every time I think back to that morning, I feel uplifted and ecstatic. Why does this not happen more in our lives? It is a crime. It is a crying shame that people go through life not knowing how wonderful, how radiant, how sparkling and joyous they are. I make sure I tell my children how wonderful they are regularly. It should be mandatory for our friends come together and tell each other what they admire about each other. We should all have the right to know and we should all have the right to be thankful for our lives, we should all have the right to thank other people.

I am thankful for my husband, my family, my health, my sparkling body, my new house, my mountain friends, my two rabbits, my fresh water running from the tap. I am thankful for the dawn I wake up in, the dusk I go to sleep in, the brilliant sunshine I play in. I am thankful that I can see the stars at night, that I can run barefoot in the rain and I have a warm body beside me in bed. I am thankful that I wake up again and again and again every morning. I am thankful for having this chance to dance, to love, to laugh, to find fascination in everyday things. I am thankful that I heard the cries of my two newborn babies. I am thankful that I stroked my father’s hair on the day he died.

I am thankful that I am thankful.