Mental Health Awareness Week

 

Count your blessings

Count? My mind is hazy. I cannot concentrate on the simplest of tasks.

Snap out of it

Snap? I have slept for twelve hours but still don’t have the energy to move.

A good meal will cheer you up

I told you I cannot eat. My throat is constricted, my stomach a mass of swirling emotions.

Turn that frown upside down 

I try. I really do, but my face feels like a grotesque mask.

If you can’t be bothered to help yourself

I am screaming for help, can’t you hear me? But the room is silent and you turn away.

 

 

It is Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK. Depression is not something you choose.

 

We have experience in teaching Mindfulness within the Mental Health field to sufferers and carers. 

Please contact us for more information.

 

A mindful government?

“Breathe and let be”. Jon Kabat-Zinn

I should imagine being an MP can be quite a stressful job and the Houses of Parliament a high pressured environment.

I think it’s fantastic therefore that politicians are being taught mindfulness techniques to allow them to stop ruminating and find a calm space within which allows them to focus on important issues with enhanced clarity.

An 8 week mindfulness course devised by Jon Kabat-Zinn is planned for February 2014. There has been great interest from MP’s eager to join the 50 who have already attended previous sessions.

Chris Ruane, the parliament’s leading advocate of mindfulness describes it as “the breath that allows us to anchor ourselves in the present”. Chris, a former primary school teacher, hopes that there will be a steady increase in MP’s incorporating mindfulness into their daily lives. “The more we can develop mindfulness in the heart of parliament and in the heart of government the more mindful policies we can develop”.

With Mindfulness being approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) for treating stress and depression it definitely has a legitimate place within the corporate setting. 

Ruane sums up perfectly “The whole pace of life has speeded up. We are all on a hedonic treadmill. You get on it in the morning and you’re on it all day long. How fast do you want to go on a treadmill? Have you got the means and mechanisms to slow yourself down or step off? I think mindfulness can help. It’s helped for me. And those MPs and Lords speak about rebalancing their lives, re-prioritising, deciding what’s important”.

If you are interested in the 8 week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course devised by Jon Kabat-Zinn please contact me for dates and prices of our next intake (please note this is also available over Skype and on a 1-1 basis). 

Is chronic back pain caused by our emotional state?

A subject close to my heart is chronic illness and pain, and natural methods we can use for coping with disabling conditions, be it dietary changes, herbal supplementation, relaxation and exercise techniques, as well as exploring the mind/body connection to ease emotional stress.

It was with interest then that I read an article today in the Daily Mail promoting a new book by a physiotherapist stating that emotional tension is “almost always the cause of chronic pain”.  The physiotherapist then explains that, in the case of back pain, even if you have structural abnormalities that show up in x-rays and scans, these don’t necessarily cause any physical pain.

It is widely recognised that when pain makes the transition between acute (short-term) and chronic (long-term) psychological factors enter the equation. With an estimated 1.6 million Britons and 65 million Americans developing chronic back pain each year (half of which is disabling) there seem to be mainly two camps. There are those who believe pain comes from structural faults and those who believe that the mind manifests pain in a very real, physical way.

Personally I don’t hold with either of those views. I have sustained structural damage to my pelvis, spine and discs that cannot be undone and as a consequence I am in pain everyday (camp one would agree with this).  However, when I am under increased pressure and emotional stress my pain levels can more than double (camp two would verify that emotions are causing my pain).

We need to recognise the mind and body as being more intricately interrelated than we can fully understand at this moment in time and offer treatments that are a correlation of emotional and structural techniques which I do via http://www.balancinghealth.co.uk/.

Alongside the holistic therapy treatments that Balancing Health offers The Happy Starfish now has a section dedicated to coping with chronic conditions (http://www.thehappystarfish.com/coping.html). I hope that the combined knowledge of contributors will lead to a wealth of information on optimising your health and dealing with illness, whatever your situation, using naturopathic methods.

We have also added an ‘About You’ section where we will publish your story to uplift and inspire others.

Please send any contributions to me. As usual bios and website links will be published alongside your piece if you wish.

“Nobody can do everything but everyone can do something”.

Spreading the love,

Louise xx