2/11/2014 0 Comments It ain't easy bein' green...Any of you remember Kermit the frog singing ‘It ain’t easy bein’ green? (If not, here’s a reminder: Kermit the Frog)
And I remember this song around this time of year when the days are short and cold nights long, and I start to question why I live where and how I do. My husband and I live in a house in the woods which we’ve retro-fitted to be as green as possible. We’ve got a woodburner with a heat store that provides our hot water and heating when there’s no sunshine to top it up via the solar panels. We’ve got just enough woodland to, so far, fell, chop and season our own wood. We’ve topped up the insulation (floor, walls and ceiling) as much as we can, given the limitations of the building, and have double glazing throughout. And while that sounds great, when it’s been raining for what feels like six months and you’ve got to go out in it again to get more wood for the fire, it can really make you wonder if you made the right choice getting rid of that oil-fired boiler! Having reflected deeply on our decision to go quite so green, I’ve seen that there’s two ways to approach it. Some people change their behaviour and then find that they have to face up to the aspect of themselves that prevented them from doing that before. For example, my desire for comfort and an easy life (particularly when I’m tired or sick) is sometimes challenged by our living situation. The other way is to work on yourself, and then watch the behaviour naturally change, watch how what was once a chore becomes a simple pleasure. In our case there’s been a bit of both going on, we’ve both changed and adapted and our living situation has also rubbed up against us and forced some of that change to happen quicker than it might have done otherwise. But when the spring arrives and the whole valley becomes vibrant and full of life, the bulbs burst through the ground and into flower, the ferns unfold and brambles daringly start to spiral out from the woods in every direction… there’s no going back to an ‘easy’ life for me.
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1/6/2014 0 Comments Why change is so hardEver wondered why it’s so often hard to change direction?
And then, just occasionally, when we decide to take a new path it just happens just like that, with great ease? Well it’s down to a bit more than a lack of willpower (although of course that helps). Doing a recent assignment for my MSc in Coaching and Mentoring, I came across the model of adult development developed by Robert Kegan[i], an American developmental psychologist. In this he differentiates between technical change, where we can just choose a new behaviour, and systemic change, where in order to change in one particular area of our life we have to make shifts in other areas, too. So in order to become a more confident communicator, relate better to others, or exercise more, we might need (in no particular order) to sacrifice the need to be liked and admired, let go of the importance of feeling independent, or learn to acknowledge our anger. This might seem unrelated to our original goal, but he has designed a clever process whereby the connections can be made. It’s always worth first seeing if we can simply change, and if the goal we have does not enter into any of the murky psychological interrelationships within us – either because it’s an area that is not complicated for us or because we’ve already done the wider work on ourselves – then this can be successful. This is when we decide to change… and it simply happens. But if your willpower alone won’t get you there, then systemic change is the only option. The trouble is, it’s not usually a comfortable ride! And this why so many intentions to change fail, because when we meet the tricky stuff it’s so easy to give up. But… and here’s the positive side, systemic change often leads to far greater benefits than simply meeting the original goal. To give you an example from my life, I first started doing yoga because I didn’t want to suffer from back pain, and fifteen years later I have a very healthy back, but yoga has completely changed my perception of myself and brought a me deeply rewarding sense of wellbeing. In another example, I found an executive mentor five years ago to help me with high levels of stress at work, and today I love what I do and am rarely stressed, but to get here I had to turn completely on its head the reasons why I work and who I was ultimately doing it all for. So if you’ve set New Year’s Resolutions, know that if you’re struggling it may be because your goal is serving as a ‘Trojan Horse’ that can open you up to greater, systemic, whole-person change. All the things I offer – coaching, mentoring, mindfulness and yoga – offer an invitation to make this change. You don’t have to accept the invitation, and it’s not always necessary to go that far, but if you really want to open your hamstrings then just possibly this might involve unravelling and facing up to the key holding patterns in your life as well as your body. If you want to become the leader you always felt you could be, it might involve looking at some of your unconscious beliefs about who you are and bringing them out into awareness where they can be examined and changed. So if you find that willpower is not enough, and you’re open to systemic change, I might be able to help. I offer:
[i] Publications by Robert Kegan: The Evolving Self [Harvard University Press], In Over Our Heads [Harvard University Press] 11/2/2013 0 Comments Where lies the truth?'The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off '- Gloria Steinem My last post made me think a lot about truth.
How can my truth be different to yours? How do we come to accept something as truth? And, when we talk about something like EMFs (Electro Magnetic Frequencies) where there are numerous perspectives, how can we discover whose ‘truth’ is the right one? Most of us believe in there being an absolute truth about something, if only we can find it. In spiritual traditions the word Truth is often capitalised to denote this, with the caveat that until we are awake/realised/enlightened (in other words, able to see the whole picture without distortion) we won’t be able to access it. But, until that point, what do we do? Interestingly, on my MSc course we recently explored different theories of truth[i]:
So, I’d say that my view on EMFs comes from correspondence (there is enough scientific evidence to make me concerned), coherence (the ‘story’ of EMFs makes sense to me), consensus (several people I know and trust have suggested caution) and pragmatism (I get a headache if I spend a long time on a mobile or DECT phone). I’d say the last two are the most persuasive for me, and are why I wrote the last blog. But you could argue, if you believed a different truth, that I keep poor company and that the headaches are caused by something else. So let’s take the debate into another area. If we look at the link between saturated fat and heart disease, back in the 1970s there was initially some scientific evidence (correspondence) between the two. Then, a coherentscientific theory was created to explain this, which was convincing enough to create a medical consensus. So far so good. And for decades now, the ‘truth’ that has been presented to us is that a diet low in saturated fat leads to good heart health. However, at the same time that this advice was being given out by doctors, food manufacturers and many other healthcare professionals, levels of heart disease have grown exponentially. So something clearly wasn’t right. Then the medical consensus began to change, initially with controversial voices disagreeing in the wider press, and leading, this month, to the highly respected British Medical Journal[ii] publishing an article declaring that saturated fat is not the major issue, trans fats are – and that the advice that was handed out for all these years may have made the problem worse. And yet on the day I heard about this controversy an advertisement was played on my local radio station giving advice to listeners to eat less fat. So where is the truth in this matter? Have the scientists got it right this time, or are trans fats another red herring? More widely, what do we do when the truth (in the form of a general consensus) changes, or when scientific ‘proof’ is potentially decades away? Finding the truth appears to be a delicate balance between not believing blindly (ie. looking carefully, questioning what we are told and exploring the potential agendas of those who might be presenting a particular truth to us) and having enough faith to be open to what lies beyond what we can see and feel and sense at this present time. So we still need our teachers and guides, but always want to test this, where possible, ourselves. If I’ve never seen a rainbow because I’ve never looked up at the sky when there was sun and rain present, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and I can’t ever see one. And those with the experience of having seen rainbows can help me understand what the right conditions are and that I then need to look up! Then the experience of having seen a rainbow becomes mine, it becomes my ‘truth’, but I might not have got there without them. So although we want to search for our own truth, we can never stop listening to others. I’ll leave you with this quote from Chogyam Trungpa, from his book Transcending Madness: “Things do exist as they are, but we tend to see our version of them, rather than things as they really are. That makes everything that we see projections. But one doesn’t have to make a definite & absolute reassurance of that neccessarily at all. You just go along with situations, go along dealing with them. If you are going too far, they’ll shake you.” So… notice what shakes you. Just as I notice headaches when I use certain phones. And let that, informed by what you read and are told by others, be your truth. [i] Darwin, J (2010) “Kuhn vs. Popper vs. Lakatos vs. Feyerabend:Contested Terrain or Fruitful Collaboration?”, Philosophy of Management Journal [ii] http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f6340 5/24/2013 0 Comments EnergyOne drop of rain does not think it causes the flood. Spiritual practitioners often talk about and gradually learn to work with energy. This is not something intangible, if you stick your finger into an electric socket you will feel just how tangible energy is! [don’t do this at home folks].
And those who can, either through natural sensitivity or through practice, deeply sense the energies running through our bodies and see how these are affected by the world around us, are pointing out a potential crisis looming. This is in the form of electromagnetic fields (EMF). EMFs are a form of radiation, like that used by a microwave oven, which are increasingly pervasive in our lives. It is what your cordless phone uses, your wifi uses, your mobile phone uses, albeit in different frequency bands. The latest frequencies to be used, and most likely to be damaging to human health, are the frequency bands that are used by smart meters (that expensive box the electricity company is trying to replace your old meter with) and the 4G mobile network. The telecoms companies boast that 4G signals can go through concrete walls. So the highly delicate and extraordinary human body is really not an obstacle. And the increase in exposure to these crude forms of energy is increasingly affecting the intricate energetic balance of the human body. Have you noticed you or your family are sleeping badly, getting headaches, finding yourself more stressed and agitated over recent months? This might not be caused by your life and your reaction to it, but by the fact that you are being bombarded by hugely strong 700-2600Mhz frequencies for most of the day – the 4G network has been up and running for months and superfast 4G launches in major cities this month. There have been plenty of scientific studies (some listed below) which urge extreme caution in increasing our exposure to EMFs. The defence from both telecoms companies and the government agencies (the 4G spectrum auction brought in over £2billion for the UK government) is that there are safety limits and these are not exceeded, and they quote their own, industry-funded studies. But, given that this is all so new and there are no long term studies, who really knows what is safe? Couldn’t the tobacco industry find doctors who, as late as the 1950s, would publicly state that smoking was not bad for you? Wifi and mobile coverage are now almost universal in our homes and workplaces, and increasingly common in public spaces. What are the long-term effects? Some of the younger generation will have been bathed in these frequencies all of their lives. The World Health Organization has classified EMFs as a ‘probable carcinogen’. Others in the category are lead, vehicle exhausts and DDT. Why do we know those other things are no good for us but not EMFs? Up until now we have had some control over how much we were exposed to EMFs – we can choose to use our mobile phones less, turn our wifi off (at least at home), and go back to corded phones – but with the imminent smart meter and 4G rollout unless we wish to relocate to the remotest parts of the UK we will have no choice but to live within these frequencies 24 hours a day. So… do you want to have the frequency of your morning meditation resonating in your body through the day? Or perhaps you’d prefer the video stream of the teenager watching RnB videos who is passing in the street outside, or the angry videoconference going on in the office next door? Do you want your sleep to be peaceful and a hugely healing space to support you during your day? Or do you want your neighbour’s porn download to pass through you and your children’s bodies at 3am? Even when nobody is using the network, the frequencies will be still operational, just in case. We have a choice to make. Either we make a stand and demand caution, or we will have to find out what happens when the subtle energies in our bodies are overrun by these grosser, machine-made ones. Perhaps we’ll evolve beyond it, and it’s going to trigger a huge step upwards and forwards for the human race. But what it if doesn’t? Are we willing to take the risk? I’ll close with a quote from my meditation teacher, Burgs, who is one of those people who can directly feel what is happening within our bodies: ‘Whatever breakdown in the human mechanism that may have been caused by the switch from a natural to a processed diet, or from a rural life to an urban one, or even from the hydrocarbon toxicity we are all now exposed to, all of this pales into insignificance against the violence that is being done at unseen levels to the very fabric that underpins all life, by the constant exposure to EMF radiation and its derivatives…’ If you choose not to be complacent:
Resources: For more information and to join the discussion, read the conclusions at http://www.bioinitiative.org/conclusions/ for EMF links to fertility issues, some cancers, autism, childhood development issues and more. Or join the ‘Dangers of Wifi’ or ‘Cables not Wireless’ Facebook Groups, see http://citizensforsafetechnology.org/, try the links below or Google EMF radiation and see what comes up. Video about EMF radiation affecting health, particularly of children: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_wxM6IAF1I Laptop and wifi use affects human male sperm motility and increases DNA fragmentation: http://ipv6.ppk.itb.ac.id/~dikshie/misc/wifi-andrology.pdf Cordless phone usage affects autonomic nervous system: http://www.teslabel.be/PDF/Provocation_Study_Using_Heart_Rate_Variability_Shows_Microwave_Radiation_From_Cordless_Phone_Affects_Autonomic_Nervous_System_M_Havas_2010.pdf Recent scientific experiment showing detrimental effect of EMF on frogs: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20560769 1/10/2013 1 Comment Rotten applesToday I found a rotten apple tucked deep in a corner of my handbag.
I can’t tell you how many times recently I’ve gone through that bag either looking for something I need – like the car keys or my phone – or to sort through the mess of receipts, shopping lists, snack wrappers, hair clips and so on which seem to congregate rapidly in that space. And yet, despite upon occasion drawing out something damp and slightly sticky, the apple must have remained hidden for weeks. This incident happened just after I’d finally cleaned up some mouldy windows in our house that I’ve avoided dealing with for months. And the two things happening together showed me just how easy it is to feel that I’ve done the job of clearing out the past, that I’m sorted and over the events and issues that pushed my buttons in the past. And yet, even at that moment, there’s something rotting and mouldering right under my nose. Our subconscious works like this. If we don’t pay attention to the hints that arise in those damp and sticky moments (situations where we react strongly or inappropriately, in our dreams, or in the people, tasks or places we avoid), we’ll never find those rotten apples. And now that my handbag has been washed and is drying in the airing cupboard I can see all the contents of my bag laid out on the kitchen table, and can sort through all the other unnecessary stuff I’ve been – quite literally – carrying around with me. It feels, this new year, like a time to dust out the corners, to clean up the mould and let some fresh air in. To find those rotten apples, laugh at how I’ve hidden then from myself in plain sight, and place them in the compost so they can provide nourishment for something new to grow. |
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