Smile! It's so easy.

I was out Christmas shopping recently with my determined face on and my "To Do" list in my hand when someone smiled at me.

Immediately I relaxed and started to breathe again and the effect stayed with me for the rest of the day. It was so simple and so effective.

It also put me in mind of a practice that I had long forgotten about that is explained in full in the book by Mantak Chia "Awaken Healing Energy through the Tao".

The practice is simple. You have to remember to smile both outwardly and inwardly.  The outward smile comes quite naturally after you have been practicing the inner smile.

So what is an inner smile?

Imagine a smile spreading out behind your eyes and feel all the muscles around your eyes relax which in turn relaxes the muscles in your forehead and down into your cheeks and jaw. The feeling in your face is effortless and light and if you look in the mirror you can see your smile. The effect on others is magnetic. Any anger, fear or stress they may have when they are looking at you just dissolves away.

You can practice your inner smile to all parts of your body and the message of love it sends can only be positive for your health.

It's such a happy practice.

Enjoy!

Do you want to know your reason for being alive?

Jill Windmill

Have you ever wondered why you are here on earth? Have you ever wanted to know where to focus all your energy? Have you ever wandered how you can best help this world?

You may have asked yourself these questions or others that are equally large and profound. But do you have an answer?

I have been working with CranioSacral Imagery and Dialogue techniques to address these questions for my clients.

We may not know or even want to know the big ultimate reason for being alive but wouldn't it be helpful to know what we can be doing to get a step closer in the right direction. What can I do in the next week/month/year to move closer towards my purpose or focus or reason for being?

When people come to me with a serious desire to know what to do next I invite them to ask themselves what their big question is such as "How best can I help this world?" and then become aware of where in their body they are feeling this question.

Then using Imagery and Dialogue techniques we focus on this area of the body and see what it requires. It could be there is a blockage to communication or the area is a portal through which the subconscious wishes to communicate with the conscious mind. We work towards allowing the area to feel in harmony and at peace.

It is at that point when the more immediate question can be asked. "What do I have to do in the next week/month/year to move towards that big question?" This is when the understanding of how to move forward is revealed and honed to provide a comprehensive to do list for you to practice over that period.

It is of course up to you to follow that list and return when the period is up to find out what is needed next but I am sure the joy in your heart that comes from following your path will help you in your endeavors.

Turn bad days into good days.

Peace

Do you have days when your mind just goes around and around with incessant chatter. When you have a pain in your body and you just feel low in spirit?

There are three things you can do on a regular basis that will limit the number of days you feel like that.

• Meditate
• Practice Tai Chi, yoga or Qi Gong
• Chanting

Sitting and meditating helps quieten the mind so you can think and feel more clearly.

Practicing Tai Chi, yoga or Qi Gong helps the body to open up so it can function more efficiently and it enables you to sit and meditate without getting pains in your body.  Concentrating on the moves also helps still the chatter in the mind.

Chanting helps you to breath more fully and the movement of the diaphragm helps to massage the other organs to keep them healthy. It also focuses your mind to help quieten it down.

If you are in the Brighton area why not try:

• Brighton Buddhist Centre for meditation
• Taoist.org.uk for Tai Chi classes
• www.chanting-group.co.uk for chanting practice

Have fun and feel better.

A quiet place.

A quiet place is quite portable. You can take it to bed. You can take it to any room in the house with a comfy chair. You can take it on the train or while sitting on the bus. You can have it right now.

This is the place where you quieten your thoughts, ease your breathing and become aware of every cell of your body. This is the place where you are aware of being totally alive right now.

There are many practices you can take into that quiet place and you may like to try them all to see what feels best for today.

Some of my influences have been:
Paul Wilson - The Quiet
Thich Nhat Hanh - The Miracle of Mindfullness
Echart Tolle - The Power of Now
Doreen Virtue - Healing with the Angels
Barefoot Doctor - Handbook for the Urban Warrior
Mantak Chia - Microcosmic Orbit Meditation

Enjoy your quiet place.

It's just a matter of using your imagination

Jill Windmill

Thanks to the works of Jung and Freud we are much more comfortable with the concept of the difference between subconscious and the conscious.

By the very nature of the subconscious it's mode of communication with the body and conscious mind is different from the thoughts and logic we use in the conscious mind.

So how do we tap into the subconscious and have a chat?

In Upledger CranioSacral therapy we have a technique called "Imagery and Dialogue" that we use when a client goes into SomatoEmotional Release or SER. In other words when the subconscious wants a chat it uses images.

The client sees images that can be worked with by the therapist asking open ended questions about why that image is there, how the client feels about the image and what they would like to do with the image. The images can change as the dialogue takes place and as moments of realisation are reached by the client.

A brief example.

I had a tight throat that was causing me to gag when I was lying down. I didn't know why this was happening and in this instance there seem to be no need for me to know why. My therapist began to work on my throat and I felt myself falling into my body so I was no longer aware of the room I was in. I then began to see an image of the inside of my throat. There appeared to be a build up of a limescale like substance that was sticking to the wall of my throat. I felt I should be chiselling it off and washing the powder that formed down my throat. So that was what I started to do in my imagination. I had a chisel and I hacked away and imagined a spray of water coming down my throat to wash the rubbish away. When I had almost finished my awareness came back into the room and the session ended. I was still aware of the image of the limescale even after the session and I was able to imagine going back into my throat and finishing the job later in the day. My throat felt relaxed and the gaging feeling had gone.

What is the point of having children?

This is a question I asked my mother, my mother-in-law and any other female I met shortly after I was married. No one could give me an answer other than saying its instinctive!

Well instinctively I went onto have two children and I can say there is every good reason to have children.

When they were young they opened my eyes to a selfless life that was rich in awareness of the smallest flower or pebble. They helped me to walk more slowly, to breathe and to be mindful.

Now they are adults, they are still helping me. Their questions and actions make me consider my own belief systems and principles and they encourage me to be more authentic and transparent.

None of this has been easy but what a blessing they have been and still are.

Just the tip of the iceberg.

The South Downs

The pain is in your knee and you can't remember what you did to cause it but its painful when put weight on it or bend or sit for too long.

Is it just the knee thats the problem? Does the body work in isolated compartments? I think we all realise that is not the case.

The cause of your knee problem could be traced back up the leg either through the groin or the psoas muscle and into the pelvic girdle where the sacroiliac joint could be tight or there is inelastic scar tissue in the pelvis or it could be tight in the back muscles that are pulling the pelvis and that leads up to the spinal vertebrae mid back whose nerves are associated with the stomach!

So there are quite a few physical possibilites for a painful knee but what if the tissue around the knee has been storing the memory of an event that took place in your life that you have not fully come to terms with and it envolved the knee area. For example you tripped over a mat and fell onto your knee with all your weight but at the time you were having an argument with your then husband and you were feeling threatened and vulnerable. This might have happened twenty years ago but now the knee is painful for no apparent reason. It could be that the tissue has stopped compensating for that unresolved memory and the pain is there to get our awareness to do something about it.

So whether the pain in your knee is physical or emotional Upledger Craniosacral therapy has the tools to help your body resolve those issues.

Worth a try?