What return on Investment are you getting from your body?

If you consider your body as a bank account, that when you are born is in surplus, and the currency is Energy. This bank account has a cap on  the maximum amount of energy over the course of your lifetime but the withdrawals that you make have a significant impact on quality of life, and these withdrawals can be counteracted by investments back into the body bank account.

The body is the physical machine that carries you around all day long every day. When this machine is plugged in all day, resources are constantly being downloaded and so energy is being used up.

Withdrawals of energy from your physical bank account include those natural functions like urinating, defecating, for women - giving birth/menstruating, and then the less automatic functions that withdraw energy from the physical body are sex (particularly the ejaculation/orgasm), most physical exercise that leaves you red faced, over-eating (especially meat that requires an immense amount of energy to digest), over-sleeping,  holding your breath.

The mental faculties that withdraw energy are thinking which include planning, reasoning, worrying, hoping, general mental busy-ness and  emotional ups and downs, over-exerting, investing in outcomes that impose time lined pressures.

All these activities reduce the amount of energy in our bodies which becomes a fertile ground for disease as the worst case scenario, milder symptoms that are the warning against disease, and as generally not feeling inspired, energised or vital as the basic day to day symptoms.

These activities might appease the mind, because it is a function of what you are doing, and what you want to be doing, what you are used to doing your whole adult life, and so feel comfortable, familiar and therefore are unquestioned...they give a certain amount of energy back to the bodybank account because what is wanted has been received, but for the most part the result is still a deficit.

If the return you are getting on your investment is headaches, constipation (not defecating atleast once a day is medically constipated), tired, heavy, lethargic, aches and pains, depression, anxiety and worry, generally ill at ease,  then your investment is not working for you.  If you are managing your investment with pills, drugs, or recreational avoidance techniques, then your investment is not working for you.

Most of us are managing our symptoms rather than changing our habits to get rid of the symptoms entirely.

What investment can you make into your health and vitality?

 What to change for your health: what you eat, how you eat, and how much, how you breathe, how you exercise, what exercise is giving/taking away from you, what you think and how you think, when you relax and how you relax.

Physical choices for health and wellbeing: eat lightly. A vast subject but as a first point of changing some habits, start to eat less meat a week, practice eating for your physical hunger rather than delicious taste sensation, eat a smaller meal at night and earlier in the evening, avoid stimulating ingredients at night like garlic, chilli, tomatoes, fried foods, so that sleep is enhanced.  Get to bed and asleep before the second wind hits, learn to relax both body and mind properly, learn to rejuvenate your body by breathing properly.

Exercising properly is about rejuvenating and repairing your body with exercise. Exercise that leaves you red faced and gasping for air is not healthy and is not serving you. Moderate your exercise to a pace and challenge that will increase your energy levels rather than deplete you further. Because most of us are living on adrenalin highs, our exercise choice becomes a factor of that adrenalin high and so it has to be harder or faster to keep the body operating at the levels you are living at.

Stop wasting energy on mindless running around, practice the art of doing nothing, stop thinking, stop worrying, stop your mind when you need to allow it to rest and repair, make choices that allow your body to operate like a well oiled top quality machine. Learning to relax properly, where body and mind shut down entirely is a great rejuvenator to body, mind, emotions and Spirit.

Everything you choose has to be in balance with your other choices. If you choose a hard and fast lifestyle then your exercise choice needs to be slower, more replenishing. Often what creates the balance is the choice that feels counterintuitive.

“When you feel skew, mostly, that is when you are straight” This is a mantra for a yoga teacher observing students in class...we have become so out of alignment with ourselves that we have lost touch of what being in balance is, normal and comfortable for us are just a sign of adjusting well to be out of synch. Often to get back to balance we have to go through a process of unlearning what we think we know, take the crooked uncomfortable path, to find the straight and narrow...the path that keeps us hooked into the magic of the Universe, plugged into the flow of life. That is balance, that is aligning with the nature of things.

My own war on words

In a previous  blog I wrote about words...but it came from a place of fear of what someone's words could do to me, and to caution against using words lightly, disguised as an invitation to live deeper than words.

I had a fear of the damage of words and also a knowledge of their uselessness as a form of communication....but the fear was strongest.

I recently had a 36 hour war of words with someone I love. Everything including the kitchen sink got accused and dismantled into a list of its shortcomings, failings as a kitchen sink, and betrayals for being a kitchen sink. The list however was not a nice neat excel document - it was a hurricane of abrasive kitchen sink cleaner and while rub it did....there came a point where what was exposed was the rawest most vulnerable heart of the hurricane, but there was only peace and quiet!

Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never harm me. This adage has often perplexed me - particularly at a time of writing a previous blog on words. The contradiction of be careful with your words, be integrous with your words but hell words can't hurt, then, could not be reconciled.

What went down the drain in the war of words is the sensitivity to their punch. One might think that here I suit bruised to the bone because someone has accused me of so many things, but actually I am liberated.

Hour 1 - 10 of said kitchen sink war....throwing the dirty dishes around
I am not sure I heard everything, and at first I couldn't.
pain, anguish, distress, words cutting like paper and relentless. resistance is the primary feeling in my body as both mind and body contract away from the words trying to hide and squirm from them

Hour 11 - 20 of exposing the soft tissue of a kitchen sink...
pain, outrage, how dare she, a defensive stance is taken and that defensiveness might even look like an attack, and vows of disowning the kitchen sink are made. Avoidance and needing to get out of this quagmire of hateful hurtful things is primary and what you resist persists, so the more I avoid, the harder and faster the onslaught is.

Hour 21 - 30 of past the softtissue of a kitchen sink is iron...
and the tap of an equal and opposite onslaught opened to full blast and no holding back. Aaah, the freedom in speaking unedited thought. The luxury of saying what I think instead of couching between kindnesses to care for the other's ego. Ahimsa's warning to not cause violence to another gone and forgotten. This is a blameful reaction (karma's equal and opposite action sent right back), an attack because if you can so can I. In the thick of it, it is the ugliest moment as the heart that is as black as the night is exposed...

Hour 31 - 36 Metal is buffed and shining...
a mellifluous glow of realisation, that I am not harmed by another's words or intent to harm. I am also free because I got rid of  my own thoughts that were harrassing me from within...just dying to get out and being suppressed by some spiritual idea that to speak might harm and therefore be the death of my good intent. The moment was a surrendering to what I found myself in, surrendering to ego, relaxing my spiritual vows of goodness to give free reign to thought...

better to let the thought go before it is an alien tree in my brain, but since that didn't happen, this was a delicious experience! If you can't let go of a thought, you can neither suppress it, for suppressing it will only let it haunt you...it felt great to express myself and my thoughts without a care to the other's level of hurt. I am sure some things I said cut deep, but I now also know this...the speaking of the thoughts was about me, not her, and so the purpose of the speaking was for my healing not for her hearing...

I have long had the philosophy that if you want to really understand somethings' affect on you, overdo it! I have practiced this with meat when trying to become a vegetarian, I have practiced this with sattvic diet of the most stringent kind when looking to understand foods' affect on my mind and emotions. The lessons are learnt in the all encompassing experience of one thing, almost done to extreme, as the lack of extreme dilutes the presence of knowledge. hmmm.

The words that still cut deep after 36 hours I realised were the ones that I had wounds about. The others I realised were necessary to be spoken as part of a cathartic process for the other.

The words that cut deep are my responsibility to heal. The words that didn't I cannot hold against anyone for speaking as they showed me that I am whole.

The words that cut deep show me that somewhere inside myself I have a belief system that is in conflict with what is being said, or they show me that I am trying to hide or pretend to myself about something.

If someone says to me 'you are a miser'. And I am but hate myself for it then the words will sting. If I am a miser but don't care, or if I am not, the comment will slip like water off a ducks back, as the comment is mirrored back to the speaker and a beautiful indication to me that the speaker has an issue with miserly behaviour on one level or another, and it is his not mine to deal with.
If someone says I am fat, and I take offense, then I have an issue with my body image. It is not they they are being cruel, it is that they are inviting me to become whole.

Imagine a society that could not take personal offense at everything...through a process of healing our words. Imagine a society that could speak freely, without having to tailor thoughts for fear of offence or causing pain..
Imagine.
To me it feels like a breath of fresh air!

lies and truth, both reality

WHEN SOMEONE LIES

I wonder if this has the effect of a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil?

REALITY....
according to Vedanta is defined as only that which pervades every circumstance
making what we feel, hear, see, taste, touch unreal
and therefore what we say and do also unreal

And so, just because we said it, doesn't make it true, just becasue we lied it, doesn't make it a lie
just because we believe it, doesn't make it true, just because we know it is outrageously not the thing we uphold as truth, doesn't make it a lie

rollercoaster is not for one

The rollercoaster can't be travelled alone

Whe you decide it is time for a trip
It is here I need to gather my wits
because if I am not awake or alert
I might jump on for the ride and probably get hurt

Your rollercoaster ride exists because
I bought a ticket and said I would
let me go through with it
the fee is the cost of experience
an expensive earth shattering dance

what happens if I don't get on with you
I'm preserved the fear but also the view

on a cushion knee to knee

I sat on a cushion knee to knee with someone else

and elbow to elbow with rows of someone elses
and stared into eyes I didn't really know
and felt the gaze looking back into me

no words were expressed but a million things said
no escape was allowed but a million places visited
as the mind intially tried to hold up certain illusions and pretences
in a game it couldn't win

so the walls came down
and something was lost
and in its place something found
the power of the unspoken moment
and the insecurity of what was said without realising it
or wanting it to be said
and the peace that comes with surrender to the truth of who you are without words

and the being watched as if no one is watching
because as I am not there watching your eyes,
so you are not there watching me
the showing of the self as if this self was me
because in my eyes looking outward for 31 minutes
me is lost and you is lost
and what is found is trancendence

its a love I haven't felt before
not for you,
or for me,
but for the space that we hold when we are honest
and vulnerable
and watched and brave
and being without words

"Life not literature matters most" Erica Jong

Words are a web of distraction and intrigue
designed to occupy space
to create an image
to manipulate
to elevate
and between the speaker and listener a third reality known to neither exists!

Between voice giving life to thoughts
and ears, mind and intellects interpretation
You have a broken telephone

Add emotion and the telephone is smashed into bits of decomposing communication
Imagine I dared speak without words
listen without fear
to what is beyond words with someone who actually wants to see and hear
with me
not at me

A meat cleaver is to meat
what words are to communication

Words mask fear
are used as a substitute for loving
and exacerbate the human condition of loneliness
my words separate you from me

Words are the cloak I dress myself in
to hide what I'm really experiencing
to dazzle you with the fancy footwork of my intellect
to distract you from what I am really feeling
words are not alone in their crime
words are the sword
but emotions are the hands that wield the sword
words can cut and protect
but are essentially impotent,
and emotion is not what I am feeling
it is the charge that I place on my words to hide
my essential being

words,
the eject button pushed to activate
your get out of here free card
but free has a price
and eject is a return flight
right back into a repeat scenario
hope you get it right
this time

"Without illusions we die. without illusions there is no energy, no enthusiasm for life. Se we have to be replaced by the young who have fresh illusions" Erica Yong, Of Blessed Memory

Tastes so good

THE ADDICT EATS DIRT

I recently met my addict again...stimulant addict that it. She craves and chases the next high...so that every experience, every meal, every outing becomes an ordeal of expectation to surpass the last high, or in desperate times, to atleast get a high.

Reduced to an example of food, as stimulation hits the tongue, so the tongue celebrates, of course - we are designed to need to feel good - and so the tongue convinces me that I feel good because it is enjoying the taste. But  then, if the next meal can't compete, there is resignation and frustration and sometimes a desperate search for something that will give the same pleasure.

Then I went to a yoga workshop...and am relieved to play in Joy and Feeling Good without a need to chase anything, because it is hard work to get there which on some level eliminates that craving...but also because it is real and infinite...the joy of being in my body, surpasses any externally created experience I can have.

However, an externally created experience is like popping a pill, an immediate high and this instant gratification becomes the temptation that leads even the best of us astray from the more difficult inner journey....to feel good through yoga/meditation is hard work! It is a daily commitment - not just to asanas - but to celebrating the body and life!

A friend recently lost a loved one, and I also watched the birth of another friends baby...death and life.
Being confronted vicariously by Death reminded me that the body is just a vehicle for the Soul, and without the Soul, it is lifeless and empty!
This absolutely tempted me into thinking that well, if it is so separate from the Soul, why not abuse it? Only to realise that it is only separate from the Soul on death. Prior to death it is a temple through which we are here to experience Life. Though the addict in me realises that most of my addiction takes more and more energy away from Life and Living and pushes me closer and closer to death. Over-eating, smoking, drugs, alcohol, not sleeping enough, sleeping too much...all these things that are not in balance with Nature, are speeding us toward death.

Or you can be hit by a bus...but that death is different. Abusing substances, in search of stimulation, is a slower less obvious form of suicide! There is no dignity in that kind of death, and no real celebration for Life.

Yes death passes us onto another life....(depending on how we lived this one)...so what does it matter, this life? I am given custody of this life I think...so perhaps I should cherish living. Take care of the simple things like my health, and open up to grace where the magic of living can really happen.

Observing a most courageous woman give birth struck many chords with me....there is a ritual or sacred process as unnatural as it appears to the observer...that makes birth a rite of passage. If we weren't meant to hold this birth as sacred, it wouldn't be such a sacred experience - the magic of cultivating new life, and delivering it to this world, to give it custody of itself, and learn to let go. Magic!

I realised you also have to be fit for life! This body is loaned to us for some purpose...and we underestimate the magic of this journey...which starts in the womb and is all taken care of by some higher power. Nature so divinely instigates these processes - of birth, of some kinds of death, and on a more simple level of sneezes, or evacuation of the bowls, but we no longer trust in Nature. To live Life...without incurring additional cost to the body or mind in the destruction of addiction, is a sacred journey that might bear zero fruits for the labour...

that is FAITH.

Popping Candy, cool like life

Snap, crackle, pop, rice crispies only not.

Full of tartrazine, no fibre to be seen.

In my mouth, an electric storm,

I want to control it, but it journeys on its own,

from tongue to ears confuse



Hop, skip and jump, I want to play like the candy on my tongue

Feels like frivolity, carefree Duncan dance

Choreographed with no rules,

a way to live my life

Open mouth liberates changed experience

Music made with popping instrument

Death when lips touch, silenced



Thank God the packet, not infinite, has more

My mouth laughs

My mind races to reason

whirls for a moment as

Pop ‘n sound distract to non-sense

To end, the shutters of joy close

Aftermath, sugar induced mimic of play

What my mind doesn't know won't hurt it

So on New Years day I woke up. I went to the kitchen to prep as I was serving on a Vipassana course. Chop, chop, chop and for fun we baked! (anyone still with me?). Then to a meditation. All very innocent really, except for 3 days I had been in a routine of serve, eat, meditate, sleep, and the night before I had changed rooms with someone at her request. I had wanted my own room so the opportunity seemed like one to jump at. I over-ruled the little voice saying well, I am actually quite settled and happy where I am surrounded by wall of curtains and other close bodies asleep.


It is the meditation and the energy within the embrace of the mountains I previously christened Profile Mountains that must have been the catalyst. From the female dorms you can see human faces profiled at different angles and sizes and sexes along the profile of the mountains themselves. Very awesome. It is like having a grandfather or mother holding the space for you as you travel inward. It can’t have been the peace and quiet of meditating, because even to take a nap felt like work – to squeeze in the most amount of time in a short hour of zzzz was pressure to fall asleep, deeply, quickly. You can imagine how well that worked?

The new room was less than desirable for many reasons, and I realized that sometimes we get what we want but we were better off with what we got. Note to self, don’t want.

And the meditations (3 hours of 1 hour each) on day 2 which was New Years Eve were all excruciating as it seemed my mind would just not shut up, and my emotions were hovering dangerously close to that thing called anger…at someone in particular – maybe 2 someones, whose names I shall keep to myself to protect the innocent. I have since committed to figuring out how to let my emotions come out safely when they need to instead of being stoic. A deliciously frightening challenge. Do something every day that scares you, right? Enter, the weeping willow?

So meditation on Day 3 arrived with much trepidation. An hour. More emotional blackmail? And well, this is what I love about Vipassana, yes, there was more, but today was the unraveling of yesterday. Or rather, somewhere in yesterday I had processed so much that today was fresh, new, realized! A new kind of emotion surged up in my body, a whole body BORED. Then a whole body SMILE that couldn’t help but erupt on my lips. And a decision. Somewhere between bored and decision something happened. Bored is not necessarily the right word for what I experienced…it was boredom not with the situation, it was boredom with my year of decision making, none of which had really served ME, boredom with myself as I knew me, and an apparent idea of what I wanted (we see this theme again of what you want and what you need are not necessarily the same, and former not necessarily true, accurate, or good).

So, somewhere between boredom and SMILE I made a decision. A decision that made so little sense that I had to spend the rest of the day trying to let my mind catch up with this decision that seemed to have skipped the compulsory (?) hierarchical stopping places on the way to being made. But as I sat, completing the hour, I knew the decision was absolutely not negotiable. But, I will have to explain this decision, I will have to come up with reasons, I thought?

I love that meditation is so many things…

So, then I chopped, allowing a space for this decision to percolate. (If you wondering what the decision is, it really doesn’t matter – but broadly, is a decision to make different kind of decisions, because staying within the familiar of what and how I chose in the past hadn’t worked for so long, it was time to try alternatives as risky as they seemed). And, I looked forward to the next meditation session where I hoped that somewhere in my being, I would galvanize my own strength to stick to new guns. And all the while, my mind was trying to catch up with the decision. How could I have made this decision that my mind didn’t even know about?

And then, I sent out some feelers to people who know me, one opposed the decision with all the internal dialogue I had already thrown at it, another supported the decision with all the internal dialogue I had interjected in amongst the first internal dialogue (yes I know, it sounds schizophrenic!). And somewhere my mind caught up, and the decision was made. The wheels of the Universe started to spin in new ways that proved to me it is right to do crazy (nonsensical) things sometimes, because what makes sense is only the box we have created for ourselves.

And since then, making new decisions on a daily basis, has proved to spark new experiences completely. In the old, my faith in life had started to diminish, my faith in magic and faith in serendipity, in all the right things arriving at my door at the right time. This was because I was controlling the exchange with more firepower than at the Berlin Wall. The Universe respected the barbed wire I put up.

Without the reinforcements keeping the Universe out, I have noticed an amazing abundance, that somewhere I knew about, but had started to believe happened to others.

It all makes so much sense, and then I speak with someone who doesn’t see what I see of threads connecting magic to me, nor who believes in the Universe and it’s big hand that responds to us, and I am tempted back into that ‘safe’ world of control where I alone create opportunities…until it is decision time again, and almost counter-intuitively, I make it going against the ways of pro’s and con’s and all the old valuations I used to apply, and make it from a place of non-thought.

My mind can catch up later.

2011, welcome! Universe, welcome! Magic, welcome!

Journal of Change

I used to be an avid Journal writer...until one day I stopped. The story is a little long, and this is how it goes: I lived in New York for 6 years and in my process of packing up the life I lived there to move to East Timor, and then eventually home, I had to clean out a lot of stuff! My journals were a strong contender for the keep pile, but I decided it would be cathartic to have a bonfire instead. Burn the old me, make way for the new! And so on the afternoon of the proverbial bonfire – I lived in an apartment so, bonfire turned into a – tearing the pages of the journals into confetti sized pieces and throwing them away - event, I couldn’t help but read excerpts and snippets, and then whole chapters as I got drawn into the drama. Almost as cathartic as a bonfire I presume.


Page 1: 1996 - me


Page 2: 1997 - me


Page 3: 1998 - me


Page 4: 1999 - 2001 – me


I realised that I am inescapably me. Years change, the story of names and places change, but very little about myself or my reactions and 'the experienced' changed...the language changed, sometimes a little more poetic, sometimes more angry, but that is the understandable and expected vascillation of life. Or is it?


I re-read quotes that I had loved enough to re-write into a journal, and would wonder why I didn’t put into practice the message of the quote. I re-read moment by moment accounts of a situation that unfolded, with the doubts, the insecurities, the my-side-of-the-story familiarities, and a seed of realisation planted deeply.


If I was writing so much and yet, nothing in 6 years had changed – not really – then what was the point of the writing? I wondered if perhaps the writing of so many ‘realisations’ had been an excuse to not put the realisation into action. The writing of the realisation was the action. And then, revert straight back into old patterns.


It is part of a – the last 10 years of my life since leaving New York – question about whether change happens because you make it happen, or change happens because it is your destiny. Inner change I am talking about. Or do leopards never ever change their spots.


So, despite 6 years of immense trials and tribulations, winning over adversity and surviving myself in a lonely city, I seemed to be unchanged. How disturbing, or gratifying...depends on whether I like myself or not. And that depends on the day 


Today, I actually noticed that for 3 days past I have had to consistently close the cupboard door to the secret hiding place of my teenage journals which kept opening. I decided it was a clue to have a peek. Again, I am reminded, that changing some things is impossible, and it behoves me to put the language of the last 10 years of my life into action – the karma we come into this life, and the karma we are here to deal with cannot be escaped. The themes of my teenage pre-occupations were by and large the same themes of my adult preoccupations, inescapably my experience of me, mirrored back to me by the world, despite changing countries or people or wisdom with age, which I had assumed was my age-right!


A statement made by someone I met recently has taken me further into this question: “I was raised Muslim, but I am not a practicing Muslim”, he said. I was raised Catholic, and now am wondering if ingrained in my belief systems that inform my behaviours and my reactions, even as I change the language to say, the language of yoga, am I still inescapably the oldest daughter, Catholic, hormonal teenager with a family who by account of a journal entry in 1991 has not changed at all either?


So, a proud statement of “I have got it! That lesson I have learnt!” is merely a moments ego-gratification and an opportunity to feel good now for the lesson learnt, and again in 6 months for the lesson learnt, and to feel good again in 16 years for the lesson learnt! Because it seems, the lessons we are here to learn, we simply keep learning.


I am amazed at how thwarted memory is. How many times have I placed value on my memory - my ability to put facts into my head? Facts? Ask me now of my childhood and I will guaranteed convey a different story to the words in my journals. My memory NOW of who I was, what I was like at 15 is not entirely similar to the written perceived experience of 1989... somewhere in my current memories, I have added, subtracted, romanticized or deleted events, or personality traits of me or others to suit the idea that I have changed, or am not that same little girl any more. It is a matter of convenience. The axis of who I am does not change it seems, just how I rotate around that axis (nice imagery happening here) does, as the light reflects differently on a different horizon in a moment.


How we perceive things changes, and how we choose to remember. Perception is nothing to place a bet on, or to mark new strategies for life by. And without perception, what is left?