By Lisa Cherry, on November 17th, 2011%
What is The Healing Crisis?
Therapists often talk about The Healing Crisis which can occur after treatments, particularly Massage and Reflexology. Not everyone will have this happen as a result of a treatment but if you do, it’s good to understand what is happening to you, that it is OK and that it is a positive thing.
The Physical element of this is whereby the body is attempting to eliminate toxins faster than it can do so and is trying to cope with stored toxins that may have been in the muscles and fascia and that have then been released into the blood stream through being released during the treatment.
The Emotional element of this is where unresolved emotional stresses or traumas are stored in the body through being supressed. The body becomes a ‘cupboard’ for unexpressed, pent up emotion. Once released, the body can clear itself of all the negativity. The body is asking you to let go of the emotion you are holding onto. An emotional release is most likely to surface in any Healing Crisis.
Symptoms
Everybody can react differently but generally, these may include:
- Lethargy
- Headaches
- Extra need to go to the toilet
- Dehydration
- Muscle aching
- Nausea
- Unexplainable/uncontrollable crying
- Feeling ‘low’
- The best ways to deal with this are:
- Drink lots of water
- Be restful
- Listen to your body
Understand that this is a good thing and it probably won’t last more than 48 hours!
If you are seeing a Therapist for Treatments, then you probably already understand that you are taking responsibility for your health and wellbeing and working preventatively to maintain a sense of balance and feeling of ‘wellness’. Everybody will have a different reaction to a treatment depending on your own physical and emotional condition. The Therapist can therefore not take responsibility for the way that your body reacts to a treatment. We can, however, work together to ensure that you have the right treatments for you and that you have treatments at a time where you can go through The Healing Crisis as calmly and as comfortably as possible.
. . . → Read More: The Healing Crisis
By Lisa Cherry, on November 1st, 2011%
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qQ5V1ICXI8″>Katherine
The clocks have made their way back an hour, the evenings are now dark and I’m starting to notice people catching colds, feeling rough and coughing their way through conversations. As a self employed, single parent, being ill isn’t really an option for me so I have learnt over the years how to make sure that I am strong and healthy and able to cope with what life sends me.
So how can you look after yourself during this time? Or more importantly, how do you maintain a healthy and robust immune system, because that is essentially what will protect you from illness?
Poor diet, lack of self-care and nurturing, not listening to your body when it’s tired, stress and emotional angst, will all leave you open to picking up colds and flu.
These are my practical top tips for looking after yourself this Winter:
- At least once a week, and certainly if you feel symptoms coming on such as headaches, aches in general, sore throat and sniffles, drink some Manuka Honey and lemon in hot water with a splash of Ginger and a smidgen of chilli. Katherine Jenkins swears by it and always drinks her own concoction before she sings to nurture her vocal chords and stave off illness.
- Wash your hands. Simple but true as germs linger on all the door handles and escalators and stair rails.
- Go to bed by 10pm at least twice a week and rest your body and soul. The importance of sleep cannot be underestimated.
- Make time for yourself. Whether that’s your monthly Massage Treatment, reading a book or spending some time alone with your own thoughts. This is true all through the year, but Winter is a time filled with stressful situations. The uncontrollable weather, the memory of a bereavement from the Winter months gone by and with Xmas and all of those prolonged family engagements, this can all prove very stressful to manage.
- Understand the rhythm of Winter. It’s a calm time, a time to do projects that you wouldn’t entertain at any other time of the year. Sorting out your photo’s, making a scarf (wish I was good enough to make a jumper!), cleaning out your cupboards or learning to paint. This is the stuff of Winter.
- I asked Natali Knibbs, Qualified and Certified Nutritionist, what we can do from a Nutritional perspective and she suggests the following:
Immune supportive diet:
- High in colour-the power of phytonutrients
- Oily fish and EFAs
- Quality protein
- Low in sugar, sat fats , alcohol etc
Garlic: Include raw fresh garlic in your daily cooking.
- Anti-bacterial, anti-viral, antifungal
- Potent anti-oxidant
- Try use 4 cloves daily to fight infections
Reishi & Shiitake Mushrooms
- Potent anti-oxidant
- Help immune system to recognise and attack harmful invaders
Supplementation:
Echinacea
Echinacea can help prevent and treat colds and flu, but don’t use it for longer than 2 weeks at a time – always have a break of at least 2 weeks between. Echinacea doesn’t actually kill the bugs, but improves the ability of our immune systems to defend itself against attack.
Goldenseal: Strengthens the mucous membranes and great taken together with Echinacea. It’s a powerful immune boosting herb, with the potential to target viruses and bacteria directly.
Good multi-vitamin with Anti-oxidants and Vits A, C, the B- complex and selenium
Fish oils: Fish oils are a good source of Omega 3 fatty acids, which are important for all aspects of health including immunity. Oily fish such as mackerel and sardines are the best sources of omega 3’s. Sadly not many of us consume enough of these foods and therefore supplementation with fish oils is helpful.
******
Rather disturbed by the News this morning regarding the amount of deaths that occur in the elderly population during the Winter and how fuel poverty will increase the numbers dramatically, it’s also a time of year to think about how you can be helpful in your local community. It’s well known that kindness, thinking of others and helping other people makes us feel good and that’s’ got to be the best boost of all!
Make this the Winter that you don’t have to feel rubbish. Taking some simple steps will ensure you have a healthy immune system, a healthy Winter and a lovely time. Enjoy!
. . . → Read More: Avoiding Winter Flu…
By Lisa Cherry, on October 28th, 2011%
In a recent blog, I explored Holistic Health and what I mean when I use that term; the way I understand it and the way I believe it is understood. A natural progression on from that seemed to me to be an exploration of what wellness is and how we understand it.
What I do know is that we all have the power within us to have a feeling of wellness. A feeling of happiness, of enthusiasm for life and a sense of energy is something that we can all work towards and experience. How?
- Understand yourself holistically as a whole person with many areas of your life that need to be balanced. You are not ‘stress’ or ‘lethargy’ or ‘a bad back’, you are a person operating in society in a relationships at work and at home. You have your spiritual, physical, emotional and mental aspects of yourself to keep in check. See where the imbalance may be and that will give you a lot of information to help you work through whatever is presenting as the problem.
- Self-esteem and self-love is everything or as Louise Hay taught me, the cornerstone to everything. Without it, there is nothing because there is no connection with yourself. If this aspect of yourself is poor, work on it and work on it hard. The use of daily affirmations, positive loving relationships, eating wholesome food and allowing yourself some time to reflect in solitude so as to improve your relationship with yourself and connect spiritually, are all a good start.
- Take personal responsibility. When you are wrong, say sorry, learn and move on. Don’t say yes when you mean no. Don’t relive scenarios over and over again punishing yourself for the past and concerning yourself with the future. Keep your side of the street clean so that you can look at yourself in the mirror every day. Forgive yourself….often. Perfectionism is just another form of self-loathing.
- Live consciously! Value the food you eat, the trees you pass, the people you smile at. Photography is a great way of living in the moment and seeing something from a different angle. It’s a conscious activity. Care for your environment. Care for the people around you. Turn off the TV and sing or dance or bake a cake. Come alive and stop getting lost in the misery of soap operas…..created I believe to quieten the masses.
- Enjoy yourself. Enjoy your sense of connectedness to yourself, the Universe and all people. Have fun. We are here for such a short time. Make your goal that of making a difference to the world, to the people around you.
Your wellness is your responsibility. No-one is going to bring it to you, fix what’s broken, give you a magic pill to ‘make it all better’. The power to do that is within you and no-one else. You can choose this right now. You can choose to take a continuing series of short steps one day at a time and give yourself the life you deserve, being the very best that you can be.
. . . → Read More: What is Wellness?
By Lisa Cherry, on October 10th, 2011%
I’m often asked what Holistic Health is all about so I thought it was time to give a little background as to why the treatments I offer are holistic.
“Holistic” comes from the Greek word “holism”, meaning “all, entire, total”. When I talk about “holistic” health I mean I treat the body as a whole, rather than dealing with its individual parts. Conventional medicine often only deals with symptoms without discovering the root cause. The body is a complex mechanism of systems, cells and organs and it’s often the case that the cause of a disorder is not necessarily the body part experiencing the symptom. Alongside this is the understanding that along with the body, we also have to nurture and heal the mind and the spirit.
The World Health Organisation (WHO – www.who.int) describes health as ” more than simply the absence of illness. It is the active state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being.” In other words, being healthy involves your entire self being balanced. That perfectly describes holistic health, where a person is seen and treated as a whole being rather than as someone with an illness.
So why is massage a holistic health therapy? To answer that, you need to understand what effect massage has on the body. When soft tissue is massaged – for example, the back and shoulders – the physical manipulation relaxes the muscles and releases tension, but the effects go deeper than that. The act of massage stimulates the nervous system and sends electrical signals around the body. These signals have a wide range of effects, including healing damaged muscle tissue, stimulating circulation and draining the lymphatic system, which helps clear waste products from the body. Massage also stimulates the production of endorphins, which act as natural painkillers and mood elevators, and reduces the levels of stress-causing hormones.
Massage has been found to be one of the most effective treatments for musculoskeletal problems including back pain, arthritis and sports injuries. However, because massage stimulates circulation, it can also be used to treat other physical problems not connected to the skeletal form. For example, researchers at the University of South Florida (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16267371) found that massage lowered the blood pressure levels in hypertensive people. In Korea, The Red Cross used skin rehabilitation massage therapy (SRMT) on burns survivors and found that the damaged skin healed faster, the scar tissue was healthier and side effects such as pruritus (itchiness) were decreased in those patients that received the treatment. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17435407)
Massage is also very effective at balancing the body’s emotional and mental state because it stimulates the release of hormones essential to our well-being. This means massage can help treat a wide range of other disorders, such as stress and depression. The University of Miami (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15809216) studied a group of women with breast cancer and found that those women who received regular massage treatments had lower levels of stress, depression and anger than those women who had been given relaxation exercises to do, or who had been given no treatment for their emotional symptoms.
So at Holistic Health, we work together, where I use massage, combined with other holistic therapies such as Aromatherapy, Reiki and Reflexology, to benefit your physical, emotional and mental health, enabling you to have a renewed sense of well-being.
. . . → Read More: What is Holistic Health?
By Lisa Cherry, on September 1st, 2011%
One of the first things I ask my clients is “what do you need today?” Such an important question that a lot of people don’t know how to answer. Such a simple question that in itself, can be very enlightening as to how a person is feeling in their life. They might not know what they need. They may not have ever thought about what they need. Some people are uncomfortable with the thought that they need anything at all. We all have needs and we all need to stop and rebalance ourselves sometimes because there are areas in our lives that have become unbalanced.
If you are coming to see me, you have a need that you have identified. Whether that need is for a better feeling of health and well-being, to improve poor sleeping patterns, or you are over tired needing an hour of self-focus. You may have stiff shoulders, or you are just plain old worn out with everything because life feels to much, we can work it out together.
This working with all areas of a person is known as an Integrative approach that looks at every aspect of ourselves. By undergoing this exploration we often find that the symptom is not the cause! Within this process, you have an opportunity to think about where you are, a chance to reflect upon what’s going on for you in all areas of your life. By asking you what you might need, I can then create a bespoke treatment that will ultimately give the biggest benefits and results that continue for far longer than the hour we spend together.
We can explore what oils I might use dependent on whether you need to relax, be calmed and soothed or be invigorated. We can look at your emotional needs and establish whether you need to talk, be silent, or be in a deep state of relaxation.
We might do Reflexology to get the body back into a state of balance or a massage with all of it’s healing, soothing, and/or invigorating abilities with endless benefits in it’s own right. We can maybe use some Reiki in the treatment if the deepest relaxation and healing is needed. Or maybe Hot stones which are fantastic for loosening up stiff muscles with the heat itself being very comforting. The treatment incorporates whatever is right for you on the day you come and see me.
So spend some time thinking about what you need today. Whether it’s to make sure you get your appointment with me in the diary, or it’s 10 minutes reading or walking or doing a breathing mediation. Maybe you need to cook your favourite meal or see your best friend for an overdue catch up. Whatever it is, do it! Because if you come and see me for a treatment, I’ll only give you something lovely to do for yourself for Homework anyway!
. . . → Read More: What Do You Need?
By Lisa Cherry, on June 21st, 2011%
When that time in your life comes hurtling towards you, screaming at you that life cannot go on like this, the pain so great that it takes you to your knees forcing you to plead in your aloneness for help because you cannot take anymore, it won’t feel like it but it is indeed a wonderful thing.
This juncture, this fantastic turning point, comes in many different guises. A breakdown, a divorce, a bereavement, constant battling with food drugs and/or alcohol, living with depression, these are all clear messages that something has to change, that your life isn’t working for you, that your choices are causing you harm and you haven’t been listening to the endless messages you’ve been receiving.
However it comes at you, it hits hard but there is another way, a path that is about personal responsibility, self-love, self-investment and consciousness.
I have had to surrender many times but my first and most powerful surrender came at 20 years old through the glass of a whiskey bottle. The beginning of the life I was meant to lead rather than the life self-hatred had shown me was about to begin.
I have learnt that there are a few things that will help us when we start on a path of recovery or when we are going through pain and change.
- Be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself. Sleep well and eat fresh food, regularly through the day.
- Nurture yourself. By this I mean, walks in the countryside, visits to the seaside, reading a nourishing book, spending time with people you love and who love you.
- Start living in a state of self-awareness. Along with what my previous points, this is the time to start taking responsibility for your life, health and wellbeing. Personal growth and self-acceptance have amazing impacts on yourself and those around you.
- Make your health your business. If you’ve been suffering from depression and taking endless pills and then more pills to quell the side effects of those pills and you still feel the same, then maybe it’s time to approach life in another way. I am absolutely not advocating stopping doing anything without consultation with your GP, but there are lots of people who manage a host of issues holistically through diet, complementary therapies and preventative strategies rather than reactive ones.
- Stress management is so important. Again, think preventatively and ensure that you have time allocated to yourself whether it’s for long lunches with friends and family, walks that put you in touch with nature and your spiritual self, meditation, massage, reading. Whatever it is, book an appointment in the diary with you!
This is just the beginning, and living responsibly, lovingly and pro-actively will eventually become a way of life. Not looking after you will no longer be an option. Not having your healing time will feel wrong. Surrounding yourself with people you love and who love you, eating lots of fresh wholefood and taking responsibility for your health will define you, not the label that brought you to a place of surrender and change. This point is the beginning, the beginning of a journey that will take you beyond your wildest dreams…
. . . → Read More: There is another way…
By Lisa Cherry, on May 22nd, 2011%
People often ask me what Parabens and Propylene Glycol are and why they should be avoided. I chose to use Neals Yard as a Therapist as it’s what I choose to use for me and my family. This is why I use Neals Yard products because they say No to:
Parabens
Animal Testing
Synthetic fragrances
Propylene Glycol
Silicones
Mineral Oils
So why should we be cautious around Parabens, particularly when challenging companies where this is present in their products. Companies that use them often quote that there isn’t enough evidence to prove them problematic or that there is only a tiny ‘safe’ amount being used.
The reality is that parabens are made in a lab and therefore have nothing natural about them at all so a company that claims to use Natural ingredients, for example, would have a Paraben free policy. The Danish Government have banned them in products for children. They are a cheap synthetic preservative and can cause allergic reactions and have been found in breast tumour tissue. They are also associated with turning male fish into female fish when washed down the drain! There is so much debate and discussion on the internet and if you google ‘Parabens’, you’ll find several heated debates, research and discussions. Neals Yard, as do I, choose to take the precautionary route and feel that nothing has been proved in favour of its safety or of its absolute danger.
As for Propylene Glycol, it’s derived from petroleum. Its a cosmetic form of mineral oil that is found in automatic brake and hydraulic fluid and industrial antifreeze. In the skin and hair, propylene glycol works as a humescent, which causes retention of moisture content of skin or cosmetic products by preventing the escape of moisture or water. The Material Safety Data Sheet warns users to avoid skin contact with propylene glycol as this strong skin irritant can cause liver abnormalities and kidney damage. So why would you put that on your skin, hair and family? More to the point, why does the Government let us?
I shall stick to Neals Yard…but don’t take my word for it. Look at what the ingredients are in your everyday products and then google them. It doesn’t make for nice reading…
. . . → Read More: So what are Parabens and Propylene Glycol?
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