Author: drcarolhead

We’ve bought a raspberry farm

by drcarolhead, posted in Community, Health

I haven’t been blogging recently but thought I’d share my big news that I’ve bought a raspberry farm with my sister and her husband. The farm is located near Deans Marsh in the Otways and is just lovely. I’ll be moving there in August, so leaving Phillip Island and starting a new adventure.

Phillip Island Health will continue to be run by Mel Rose so patients can choose to support her by staying at the clinic. Sadly, the laser acupuncture will not be available, but patients can go to Safflower clinic in Newhaven if they want to continue their treatment (the practitioners at Safflower use needles rather than laser.)

I will miss the island and the practice and all my patients but I’m looking forward to this new challenge. It has been a dream of mine to own a berry farm.

Thank you to all the patients for supporting Phillip Island Health; I hope you will continue to support Mel and the practice.

On another note, I’m still working on my book – Heal Yourself: Unlock your natural healing potential. I hope it will be published by the end of the year but as usual it is taking longer than I planned. Hopefully once the move is over I can get it finished.

November News

by drcarolhead, posted in Creativity, general practice, Stress

I have been very busy the past few months and so my blog posts have been few and far between. Now that things are settling down a little I hope to be blogging again more regularly.

I’ve been working hard at Phillip Island Health two days a week and we are so busy that I am no longer taking new patients. This will give me time to look after my current patients and continue my writing.

I have been working on an online course – How to reduce your stress in 4 weeks.

Are you overwhelmed with life and its busyness but don’t know how to stop? Are you stressed out most of the time? Do you want to lead a more peaceful existence in touch with what really matters? Then this four week course will help you reduce your stress and live a more relaxed life. You will also find out more about yourself and what really matters. The course will be available in December.

I am also working on my new book which is about healing from a holistic perspective. This book will look at how individuals can help themselves heal from any illness and will also look at how we can help heal the earth. I am still deciding on the title.

My previous books – Holistic medicine – beyond the physical and Tools for Transformation are available in the clinic for $25 and $15 respectively. Or via my website – drcarolhead.com.au for $30 and $20 incl postage in Australia.

Next week I will have more details about my new online course.

Stress and the Autonomic nervous system part 2.

by drcarolhead, posted in Health, Meditation, Stress

Last week I wrote about how to dial down the sympathetic part of our autonomic nervous system (ANS) to help with stress. This week I want to write about activating the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). This is relatively easy but unless we have decreased the sympathetic drive it is often like putting a band aid on a laceration that requires suturing. It might help a little but eventually we need to treat the root cause, which is the sympathetic overdrive. No amount of meditation and mindfulness can help in some situations and especially if we are burnt out or have adrenal fatigue we need to address the stressors at the same time as activating the PNS

To activate the PNS the following will help.

  • Meditation

Meditation is great for calming the sympathetic system and engaging the parasympathetic instead. If you’re like me you might get a little anxious in formal meditation! “I’m not doing it right, my mind won’t stop thinking, I can’t concentrate on my breath because I’m worried about something that has happened to me.” Sometimes our brains are just thinking too much.

I prefer a walking meditation or a guided visualisation exercise. But many people find formal meditation very calming and centring. Any form of meditation helps you get in touch with your inner self and its wisdom.

  • Mindfulness

Mindfulness is about focussing your awareness on what you are doing in the present moment. It involves being aware of what is happening right now and not thinking about the past or future. It is like meditation in that it calms the mind and helps to de-stress.

It is relatively easy to incorporate mindfulness into everyday life. You can do the dishes mindfully; paying attention to what you are doing rather than being off in your head thinking about everything that you think you need to be worrying about. You can eat mindfully, drink a cup of tea mindfully, exercise mindfully, you can do any activity where you focus your awareness on that activity.

Mindfulness helps us live more in the present moment.

  • Spend time in nature

Getting closer to nature and the earth helps calm the ANS. It helps if we connect with nature mindfully. Sometimes I go for a walk along the beach but am so much in my head thinking about everything that I hardly pay attention to where I am. When I realise this I try to bring my awareness to the waves and the wind and the sky and my brain starts to calm down a little. Of course even when my brain is in overdrive while I walk I am connecting with the earth but when I bring my awareness to my surroundings and am present this is even more grounding and calming.

To actively ground yourself will decrease the electrical charge in your body which helps relaxation and healing. To do this you need to be in direct contact with the earth; walking barefoot, sitting on the ground or hugging a tree are all good ways to earth yourself. You can also buy earthing devices, which may help if you live in an apartment or can’t get out to actively earth yourself.

  • Deep breathing

Many of us breathe on a shallow level. This is both a result of being anxious and wired, and a cause. If we do some deep breathing, into our bellies, this activates the parasympathetic system and slows things down. Some people just don’t know how to breathe deeply so if you find it hard to take a deep breath and feel your belly expand then you might need to practice. It is best to practice when you are feeling calm.

Lie down with your hands on your belly and slowly breathe in through the nose. Let the air expand your rib cage and feel you diaphragm descend and your belly expand outwards against your hands. Slowly breathe out feeling your belly descend and your chest compress. Let these deep breaths flow in and out with your belly rising and falling. You might like to sigh the breath out your mouth and feel the stress leaving your body as you do so.

Once you have mastered the deep breathing you can do some anytime. Taking a few deep breaths will calm you if you’re anxious or hurried. Even when you’re not anxious it helps to take deep breaths to centre yourself and bring more calm into your day.

  • Relaxation

Any form of relaxation can turn on our PNS. I don’t mean sitting in front of the TV with a glass of wine although this may help for some people. I find the best way to relax is to lie on the earth and just sink in. Other people like to do relaxation exercises and there are many of these available on phone or computer. Or you might like to just lie and listen to calming music while you relax. Combining relaxation with deep breathing is great.

Whatever way works best for you will help in your healing. And if you’re busy just stopping for a few minutes to consciously relax will bring some calm back.

  • Exercise such as yoga, qi gong or tai chi

Yoga, Qi gong and tai chi are all wonderful for calming the SNS and activating the PNS. They work with the energies of the body and help us balance our ANS. There are so many options available to practice these programs that we really have no excuse for not incorporating them into our wellness routine. Classes can be taken locally or online and the benefit from even a few minutes a day is that our nervous system becomes calmer almost immediately.

  • Rituals

Many rituals can have a calming effect. Lighting a candle or incense in a mindful manner can be a useful ritual that gets the body ready to relax. A warm bath before bed or for children the ritual of a bedtime story calms the ANS down. You can make up your own rituals and they have a way of imbedding in your life so that as soon as you begin the ritual the body knows it is relaxing.

  • Sleep

Sleep down regulates the SNS and up regulates the PNS so I have put it in both lists. Sleep is just really important to healing and particularly if stress is a big component of your illness it is vital to be sleeping well.

  • Play more

Not many of us spend much time playing as we get older. But play is wonderful for decreasing stress especially when we do it mindfully and pay attention to the play rather than what else we think we should be doing.

Playing with children helps remind us that play is a great way to learn and also to relax. There are many ways to play including board or card games (although not those that make you highly competitive which activates the SNS) and creative play such as pottery, woodworking, painting, sewing and other crafts.

  • Music and dance

Both listening to and playing music help activate the PNS. Although some music, such as hard rock or heavy metal may stimulate the SNS in some people. It’s the same with dance, which mostly activates the rest and relax response but if it’s too hard rock or the like it may stimulate the SNS for some of us.

Most of us know which music and/or dancing is good for us to de-stress with. I have found that my stress levels are much lower if I listen to music when I drive rather than talk radio or podcasts. We seem to want to fill our lives with information and don’t always take time to just listen to music. Try to just sit and listen to some music rather than doing something else at the same time.

Dancing is a wonderful release and we can do it by ourselves and just move to music any way we want. Some people take classes or go to dance groups but for many people this adds an extra stress to their life – either making life busier or adding a competitive nature to the dancing.

  • Calming herbs

If we need more help calming our SNS down and ramping up the PNS then sometimes herbs will help. Simple everyday herbs such as chamomile tea and lavender oil have been shown in some trials to help with anxiety and stress. Other herbs also shown to be useful are passionflower, kava, lemon balm and valerian. Growing these herbs in your garden is also great and their plant spirits will help bring calm. Picking their flowers or leaves and placing them in your house is a lovely way to bring more of their spirits inside. Of course you can purchase teas or oils and these will help but a close connection to the actual plant brings a greater intensity of action.

I hope you can use some of these techniques to help bring a greater sense of calm to your life and lessen the stress. Just remember to work on ways to decrease the stress to begin with rather than just managing the effects of stress.

Stress and the Autonomic nervous system

by drcarolhead, posted in Health, Stress, Wellness

This week’s blog is about stress and the autonomic nervous system and is based upon part of the book I am currently writing – How to Heal.

We are all hardwired with a two-part autonomic nervous system. Autonomic means that part of the nervous system that is not consciously directed and that is responsible for bodily functions such as breathing, heart beating, digestion etc. This autonomic nervous system (ANS) has two parts – the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is responsible for the so-called fight or flight response. It acts to quickly get our bodies ready to tackle a threat by fighting or fleeing. To do this it increases our heart rate and blood pressure. It constricts our blood vessels to route blood away from unnecessary functions such as digestion and to the skin and directs it to our muscles and brain. It opens up our airways and dilates our pupils. It also makes our hairs stand on end and causes us to sweat. The SNS promotes the release of the hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline. All these actions get us ready to fight the threat or to flee (or is some cases to freeze).

The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) on the other hand is responsible for the rest and relax/digest response. Here we wind down the stress response and recharge. The PNS decreases our heart rate and blood pressure and dilates the blood vessels. Our breathing slows and our digestion increases. Our pupils constrict and our skin gets warmer (greater blood supply). The PNS causes release of the hormone acetylcholine. All these actions enable us to rest and digest or to feed and breed.

Of course, this is an oversimplification demonstrating two ends of the spectrum. The two parts of the ANS work together to keep our bodily functions balanced. We need both systems in balance. The trouble is in Western society the SNS is often in overdrive and the PNS is in under drive. While we don’t have the physical threats such as lions and tigers we have perceived threats and emotional and mental stress that trigger the fight or flight response. This causes a continual release of adrenaline and noradrenaline, the activating hormones that keep us on edge and lead to chronic over stimulation. This can lead to increased levels of cortisol and a cascade of physical symptoms such as increased heart rate, increased breathing, digestive problems and sweating. All of these are the same as when we are in a physical threatening situation yet when it is a chronic situation with no balance from the PNS we get anxiety and physical issues.

This week I will write about decreasing our sympathetic drive and next week I will write about increasing our parasympathetic drive.

How to decrease sympathetic drive – fight or flight

To decrease the sympathetic drive we have to examine our lives and make changes. Easier said than done. We need to look at everything in our life and try to make the changes that decrease our exposure to stress. This includes exposure to stress in its various forms – physical, emotional and mental. We need to decrease this exposure as much as we can. There are some simple ways we can do this.

  • Slow down, take more time to do things

Slowing down is against our western nature but is one way to decrease our SNS drive. In particular slow down when you’re eating; don’t make it a race to finish your meal. Pay attention to the eating and savour the food. This will help you digest better as activation of the SNS causes blood to be shunted away from the gut and the digestive processes. Taking time to eat helps the digestion.

Taking life more slowly generally will help deactivate the SNS. Avoid having to rush to get places; leave more time than you need so that you don’t become stressed.

  • Don’t multitask, do one thing at a time

Doing one thing at a time naturally slows us down and lets us be more mindful of the task at hand. Trying to do more than one thing at a time will leave you feeling pressured and increase your stress.

Do one thing at a time and pay attention to what you are doing. Be mindful of the task at hand then move onto the next task. If you’re feeling stressed by all you have to do make a list and prioritise and then tackle one task at a time.

  • Do less

Our lives can just be too busy. I remember one year when my kids were younger we were having a very busy year and Christmas was approaching. The silly season loomed over me like a monster with event after event we had to attend. Or I thought we had to attend them all. And then the kids got chicken pox and we weren’t able to attend all the events. No one cared that we had missed them all and our Christmas ended up being much less stressful. After that I consciously made the decision each year to wind back the Christmas activities and spend more time at home. Even now I try to avoid all the Christmas busyness and too many parties and instead spend time with close friends and family.

Start saying no to things you don’t want to do. Try to let go of the busy life and replace it with more relaxing time. Let go of doing and spend more time just being.

  • Avoid stimulants

If you’re too busy and stressed out then avoiding stimulants will help down regulate the SNS. Caffeine, nicotine, amphetamines or other stimulants will rev up the SNS and put you into overdrive. For many of us we take stimulants to combat a lack of sleep and relaxation and to do more than we should be doing. Ease back on busyness and the need for stimulants decreases.

  • Avoid excessive exercise

While moderate exercise can switch on the PNS and tone down the SNS, excessive exercise will fire up the SNS. If you are suffering from burn out or if stress is becoming a problem and you are an over exerciser then winding back the intensity of exercise may help. For those people who are not suffering from too much stress then excessive exercise may not be a problem but it may pay to use some of the ‘rest and relax’ techniques to help balance the body.

  • Sleep more

Sleep is the time when our bodies wind down and relax and repair. Getting enough sleep is really important and if we are highly stressed it is even more crucial. 8-9 hours is optimal and being asleep between 10 pm and 2 am is best for restorative sleep.

Stay tuned for next week’s blog where I will write about increasing our parasympathetic drive.

Coronavirus

by drcarolhead, posted in Community, Coronavirus, Health

I have returned early from my locum in Broome due to the coronavirus and possible implications for travel. I didn’t want to get stuck in Broome or be away from my family and friends. My parents are elderly and at risk and I wanted to see them and convince them to stop their social activities for the time being. It’s good to be back home.

What can we do to stay healthy?

  1. Stay at home. This is the number one for a reason; this reduces transmission of the virus. Only go out for essentials – food and work (work from home if you can). If you do go out stay two metres away from other people.
  2. Hand washing and hand sanitising – this is especially important if you go out but should be part of your normal routine.
  3. Eat as healthily as you can. This may be hard if there is less access to fruit and vegetables but a good diet can help boost the immune system.
  4. Stop smoking. The complications of coronavirus seem to be worse in smokers.
  5. Supplements – I suggest Vitamin C (1000mg), Zinc (20-40mg) and Vitamin D (1000IU, unless you know your vitamin D is low in which case take more). These are all essential for the immune system.  Zinc lozenges have been shown to reduce cold symptoms so if you get sick try to use these if you can get some and take more Vitamin C. Of course if you have iron or B12 deficiency it’s important to supplement these as well. A general multivitamin may help if your diet isn’t too good.
  6. Herbs. Your local naturopath or health professional can suggest herbs that boost the immune system. We don’t know if any herbs can target coronavirus but no doubt there will be some. In the meantime I am taking an immune booster that contains Astragalus and olive leaf.
  7. Exercise is still important and we can do home routines – there are many options on the Internet. For the moment we can also go for walks, runs or cycles if we stay two metres away from people and don’t touch surfaces that may be contaminated.
  8. Be kind to yourself. This is an opportunity to take life more slowly and look after ourselves. We can start new creative projects, learn to play that guitar in the cupboard, plant a vegie garden, play board games as a family, prepare meals more mindfully. Look after yourself in whatever way you think will help.
  9. Be kind to others. Life will shrink back to family and close friends and our local community. We will have to look after each other as best we can and if we approach this crisis with love and kindness instead of fear we will come through this together.
  10. Be present. Take time each day to find gratitude for what we have. Enjoy the sunrise or sunset. Reflect on what this pandemic is asking of us all. Don’t give into the fear.
  11. Connect with the spirit of the earth. Sit on the grass or on the beach. Walk barefoot. Garden if you can. Watch the weather, the sunrise and sunset, the stars at night, the moon cycles. Contemplate what the earth needs from us.
  12. Prepare for change. Like any major world event this pandemic will bring about great changes to our way of life. Let’s all work together to make those changes positive. How can we look after the earth better? How can we look after our communities better? How can we be more loving towards ourselves and others?

We are at a turning point and we can only hope that we rise to the occasion and not descend into panic and chaos. We can each take personal responsibility for this. Let’s live our best lives in this time of uncertainty and do what we can to help others. Let’s pull together as a community and not give into fear. Let’s choose to love.

Stay safe

Carol

The trouble with conventional medicine

by drcarolhead, posted in general practice, Health, Holistic medicine, medicine

I began this blog because I was disillusioned with conventional general practice and medicine in Australia. This disillusionment was part of the reason I recently retired but is it all the fault of general practice or a more global problem of contemporary life?

After all conventional medicine saves many lives and has made great advances in the last few decades. If you have a heart attack or a stroke or serious bacterial infection, medicine can, in many cases, save your life. For many cancers now the treatments can prolong life and sometimes cure. So what do I have to complain about?

I have been a GP for over thirty years and in that time I’ve seen many changes in medical therapies yet chronic diseases continue to have a major impact on many peoples lives and mental illness seems to be at epidemic levels. Obesity, diabetes, depression, anxiety, hypertension and other chronic illness all seem to be increasing at alarming rates.

Why are we getting sicker?

Why is medicine failing to make us healthier?

Of course there are many reasons for this but the primary one is that medicine generally looks for the quick fix to treat our illnesses. Give the patient a pill or a combination of pills and that will fix things. Cut out the offending part or bombard the body with toxic drugs. Of course these treatments often work in the short term but for mental health issues and other chronic diseases they rarely make a long lasting difference. What makes us sick is often our lifestyle yet medicine has failed to address most of our lifestyle issues.

Some of these issues are related to social concerns that doctors feel powerless to address. Problems of loneliness, isolation, lack of community and too little contact with the natural world are difficult to solve. Together with poor diet, busy stressful lives and lack of activity these issues shape our health in dramatic ways. Yet many patients aren’t willing to look at these issues preferring instead the quick fix of a medication. And many doctors go along with this because there is so little time to address the core issues of why so many of us are sick.

The most significant problem is that we have not yet adapted to modern life, which leads most of us to be under chronic stress. Our diets are nutrient poor and we just don’t do enough physical activity or sleep enough. Many of us work in jobs we dislike for enough money to maintain our over consuming lifestyles. We eat too much, we do too much and we have forgotten about the importance of good relationships and community ties. We also have forgotten about our connection to the natural world and about finding joy in our lives.

So why is medicine meant to address these greater issues?

I believe that doctors should be interested in changes that lead to better health and medicating patients rarely leads to permanent change. It just greases the wheels of a huge pharmaceutical industry. Doctors need to name the problem and in many cases the problem is our addiction to our modern lifestyles. It is our contemporary lifestyles that are leading to much of our disease. There are no quick fixes but changing our lives can lead to much better health outcomes and much happier patients.

Of course people don’t need doctors to make their lives better and healthier. Everyone can make changes to their lives that will improve their health and I will write about these in a future blog. But changing medicine to help people address these issues is important. Naturopaths, traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, chiropractors and other complementary practitioners do not fail to address lifestyle issues with patients yet GPs and specialists too often just pay lip service to changing lifestyles while medicating the problem. A colleague of mine has started a clinic to help people try to cure their Type 2 Diabetes. Another clinic I have worked in has long appointments and tries to address the patient’s health holistically. Yet these are the outliers; most GPs spend 10-15 minutes with a patient and this time pressure leads to many of the problems.

The issue of course is how do we change a system that is so entrenched? I think we need to try a multi pronged approach.

First, patients need to educate themselves about lifestyle issues and their importance in treating disease. They need to demand this knowledge from their doctors.

Second, patients need to stop expecting quick fixes for chronic problems; people need to take responsibility for their health and make appropriate changes.

Third, the Medicare billing system needs to change so that there is not a financial disincentive to spend more time with patients. The Royal Australian College of GPs (RACGP) could spend more of their time and energy lobbying for these changes.

Fourth, the influence of pharmaceutical companies over doctors needs to be identified and discussed by the community and the media. Further regulatory changes need to be made to counteract the influence wielded by these goliaths.

Fifth, medical education needs to focus more on the importance of lifestyle issues. Nutrition and preventative strategies needs more emphasis in both under and postgraduate medical education.

Finally we all need to examine our own lifestyle choices and acknowledge their dramatic impact on our health and wellbeing.

 

 

#medicine, #general practice, #medication, #lifestyle

Listening to the calling of our heart

by drcarolhead, posted in Health, Holistic medicine, Transformation, Wellness

Listening to the calling of our heart.

Our hearts are always calling to us. They try to get us to pay attention to longings that we often bury beneath our everyday existence. We bury such longings and ignore the callings because to listen would be to go against all we have learnt about fitting into society. For society does not pay heed to the callings of the heart. Society pays heed to the callings of the ego and the mind; to mortgages and secure jobs, to school work and university degrees; to being a good child, a good spouse, a good parent.

I listened to an interview with John Mayer the other day and he spoke about knowing that he was a musician and writer from a young age and following that calling knowing it was what he was here to do. Sometimes I wish I’d had that clarity of calling at a young age. But for most of us life gets in the way and our hearts get burdened with expectations. We expect we will follow a certain path only to find that it is not what we thought; that we do not arrive at a place where our hearts are filled with joy, love and abundance. We glimpse such places along our path – maybe when we fall in love, or have a child or begin a job that we love. Yet somehow we can’t hold onto that place within us that is trying to show us how to live.

The heart callings have a strange pull on us and sometimes if we pay attention that pull will be an irresistible force that draws us towards our life’s work. The calling changes over time but some impulses are always with us urging us to leave secure jobs and do things that society may frown upon.

Your heart may be calling you to fall in love with someone, or change your job, or have a baby, or buy a puppy. It may be calling you to stop the busyness of your life and spend time listening to its longings. Sometimes we are so busy that we don’t pay the heart and its desires any attention. Maybe it is because we don’t want to hear what the heart has to say about our current life? Or maybe it is just that we have forgotten how to live in touch with our heart centre but rather pay all our attention to the ego mind.

The ego does not want us to listen to our heart simply because to do so might put us against society’s expectations. But even the ego may fall in line eventually. When that part of us sees that the way of the heart leads to joy and fulfillment and wealth of a type not measured by money. We may struggle with listening to the calling of our heart but once we cease the struggle we can just accept that what we need is to pay our heart more attention. Maybe then we can accept that to follow our heart’s desires is not selfish but the way we can be of greatest service to the world.

Endings

by drcarolhead, posted in Health, Holistic medicine

About ten days ago I retired from conventional general practice. It has been a long time coming but finally I had made the decision to pursue other interests. I am still doing some work in youth mental health at headspace but my focus will be on writing.

Writing is something I feel drawn towards in a way I once felt drawn towards medicine. Being a doctor is an absolute privilege and I have learnt so much from my interactions with all my patients. I have learnt all about holistic medicine from listening to people talk about their lives, their illnesses and the myriad ways in which healing occurs.

I would like to thank all the patients and staff who have supported me over the years and with whom I have forged relationships. Many patients have shared their inner most secrets with me and I feel fortunate to have been able to listen to them and hopefully help them towards their own healing. Healing is after all a natural process and as doctors much of what we do is try to provide the right conditions for the body to heal itself. Unfortunately conventional medicine is not so good at helping soul and spirit heal. Nor is it good at nurturing the patient’s connection with their soul and spirit.

While I hope I have helped some patients gain a better understanding of the importance of listening to their inner self, conventional general practice does not encourage this type of therapy. So I am glad to be leaving the system and striking out in a new direction.

I hope to continue to do one on one work in mental health but I don’t plan to return to general practice. I will allow life to unfold and see where my clinical work takes me. For now I feel called to spend much more time writing about healing and transformation and mental health issues. So this is a thank you to all those patients who have shared their lives with me over the years. It has been a privilege to be given your trust and to be a part of your journey.

 

Transformation 5 – Allowing

by drcarolhead, posted in Intention, Transformation, Wellness

Transformation 5 – Allowing.

I have spent the last year writing a book about transformation and this week I discovered that everything I had been doing in order to transform was related to the physical aspects. I thought if I transformed my physical environment and my physical body and mind that I would be on the path to greater transformation of the spiritual kind. I tried to incorporate spiritual practices into my life and believed that by doing these practices I would be able to transform myself into someone who was more authentic and more aligned with their spiritual inner self.

This week I discovered I had been approaching the whole thing from the wrong direction. So I deleted most of the book I had written and began again. I have learnt much in the past year but not what I planned. I started out with so much purpose and direction; I planned out the book and assigned chapter headings and tried to make the transformation something logical and rational and physical. Yet what I intended was to become more authentic and more aligned with spirit; to have my inner self manifest physically. My planning and logical thinking got in the way again. I allowed myself to try to control the process instead of allowing the process to unfold.

I discovered that I need to be more allowing of the natural process of life. It cannot be forced. Of course we can try to force it, we can plan and plan but what that generally brings us is more of the same. My more of the same is more dissatisfaction with conventional medicine and my general practice work. I have gone in circles with this and each time I planned a change that might make a difference and each time I came full circle back to the same place.

Now I know that my path is to find a more joyful existence where I can live my passions and help people. I’m not sure what that exactly entails and that’s where I’ve got stuck before. Trying to plan my way out, using my brain to find alternatives. Never succeeding, rather I only find more of the same. Now I see that to transform my life and myself I need to allow it to happen. This means not forcing, not searching, not grasping at alternatives. It means allowing life to unfold in its own way. It means paying attention to signs and synchronicities that show me the path to take to my future. This allowing means making peace with the present and finding joy in the life I have now but knowing that change is coming. I can feel it.

The temptation is to plan and force and work out where the path will lead me so that I know how to get there by dint of will and logic. That is the way we have learnt, the way of control. Allowing is the opposite of control. It is giving up control to a higher force that lives inside us all. This force connects us all and unless we pay attention we might miss the signposts that show the way. The signs are always there but I sometimes fail to pay them enough attention.

Why is it that for years I have been dissatisfied with my work? It’s a sign that I should be doing something different. I always knew this yet I resisted the knowing. What else can I do? How can I make a living? What if I fail? I let the negative control my life. I still feel like most of my path has been on course; that I have needed to learn certain things through my work in conventional medicine. But now I know that I need to be doing something else. I just don’t know what it is yet. I need to allow that to unfold and that’s my new plan. Allow life to unfold.

Transformation 4 – the mind

by drcarolhead, posted in Holistic medicine, intuition, Meditation, Mind, Transformation

Transformation 4 – the mind.

Having begun the transformation of the physical body I decided that my next step would be to begin to transform my mind. I decided I needed to look into meditation and I came across a free meditation course that was included with my membership to a particular college. I had mostly rebelled against meditation in the past and felt that I meditated in a certain way when I exercised so I thought that was enough. I had done a little meditation and relaxation in yoga, in a hypnosis course I once did and as part of my job at times but I had never really embraced it.

I decided it was time to embrace it.

Not only did I decide to begin meditating but I also decided it was time to take up yoga again.

I began the meditation course and because I had already done some of the exercises I found myself getting impatient and wanting to jump ahead. I hated the progressive muscle relaxation practice so I skipped that week but otherwise I tried to practice every morning before work. I found it very hard to quiet my mind but gradually I began to improve.

I had been meditating for a couple of months and I was still such a beginner – my mind was reluctant to cease its chatter. Focus on the breath. Focus on the gap between thoughts. The gap between my thoughts was so brief as to be mostly non-existent. But gradually I was learning how to sit and enjoy the practice of just sitting. I was learning how to allow thoughts to come and go, noises to come and go, everything to just come and go. It was as the Buddha observed, everything comes and then it goes, nothing is permanent.

We are so used to doing and doing and doing that to sit and breathe and spend time with our inner self is alien. Initially I would sit there paying attention to the breathing and thinking way too much about what I would do when the meditation was finished. Eventually I was able to just sit and focus on my breath and try to find the gap between my thoughts. I was learning how to focus on the peaceful place inside me that has been overrun by my outer life. I was learning that the peaceful place inside of me is deep and seemingly unknown. Yet it is also the essence of myself that has been covered up with layers of ego and too much thinking.

My work in medicine and my writing are both pursuits where thinking is useful yet my mind is so full of thoughts that they crowd out the part of my brain that doesn’t think in that way. The left side of my brain thinks in words and sentences, it is the incessant monkey mind that chatters away all the time. The right side of the brain thinks in pictures and concepts and is often drowned out by the left side. I think the meditation was helping me quiet the left side of my brain and allowed me to hear more from the right.

I have written quite a bit about the way the two sides of the brain work in my book Holistic Medicine and although it is something of a metaphor it helps me pay attention to what is happening with my thoughts. When I am overrun with thoughts that often go around in circles I become aware that I am paying too much attention to my logical left brain and too little attention to my intuitive right brain. While meditation can help my quiet the left side of the brain unless I consciously pay attention to my over thinking I often get stuck in the logical and physical side of my life.

What I really hoped to achieve with the meditation and yoga practice was to become more attuned to my inner or higher self. To tune into that part of me that is connected to everything else – the source energy, universal consciousness, spirit, god. In connecting with this inner self I hoped to be able to better align my inner and outer selves in order to live a more authentic life. To keep becoming the best version of myself I can be.

After meditating for some months I gradually found myself feeling less and less inspired to practice. Somewhere I lost the momentum and ended up going backwards. I struggled to do my meditation, going some days without even sitting and trying. The days I did try to practice my mind just didn’t want to still, my body felt anxious to be up and doing. My yoga practice was also more difficult; my back got sore, my left knee hurt. What was happening?

It seemed as if my ego was fighting back, trying to regain lost ground and it was succeeding. Why did the ego feel so threatened by my new way of life? And why was it so easy to fall back into the old way of being? They say if you practice a new habit for 30 days it becomes a way of life. I had been meditating for eight weeks and doing yoga for almost four. Yet something within me was trying to sabotage my plans.

Ego is always trying to blind us to our dual nature – the spiritual and the physical. It is trying to have us believe that only the physical is important. It would like us to believe that we are who we think we are rather than a deeper or higher self that is connected to the rest of the universe and to source energy. Ego wants us to believe we are separate beings when really we are all connected via invisible energy connections.

I had fallen for ego’s tricks. I had started to focus more on the physical and less on the spiritual aspects. Despite meditation and yoga and gratitude and thoughts of service to others I had forgotten to connect with my higher self while doing these things and had become task oriented. I was too busy doing (even though I was doing ‘spiritual’ things) and had forgotten to be. Mind you I had also stopped writing despite my aim to write every day.

As I write I begin to reconnect with my higher self and see how much I was driven to do the spiritual thing rather then be my authentic self. To be spiritual isn’t necessarily about doing spiritual things but rather about being the person you are meant to be. How could I connect with my higher self on a daily basis? Obviously the meditation was one way but it didn’t seem to be working that well. Maybe I wasn’t finding the stillness as well as I might. Or maybe it just didn’t carry on into my day’s work. When I write I connect to my higher self but I couldn’t write all day long. I had to find a way to be in alignment while I saw patients and went about my day to day life. So I took a few days off to regroup and see where I was getting off path.

The first thing I did was step right back and try to find the bigger picture of what was happening. Why was I going backwards? While ego is in control then higher self can’t be. This seemed to be the problem. How could I let higher self have control of things rather than ego.

Then one day I had the weird experience of waking up with one thought on my mind – let go. I filed it away to think about later and got up to do my meditation. I chose a guided meditation I hadn’t done in a while and found the whole thing was about letting go. I opened my Facebook a little bit later and there was a cartoon entitled ‘how to let go’ with a picture of a leaf falling from a tree.

There was clearly a message here. I had to learn how to let go.

Let go of what?

The need to control?

Letting go of our need to control our lives is critical to becoming more aligned with our inner self. Our ego would love to control everything and it has us believing that this is possible. And it is partly possible when we are fully aligned with inner self and the source of all that is.

I decided to let go of my need to control my transformation in a logical way. Instead I decided to do those things that brought me joy and happiness and not focus on the spiritual practices that I believed I ‘should’ be doing. I stopped meditating because I reasoned it wasn’t bringing me any joy at all, instead it was turning into something I felt I had to do. Yet another task to be completed each day. I stopped pushing myself to do yoga and instead just did it when I felt like it. I spent time walking in nature and time sitting doing nothing and I let go of the need to transform into a spiritual being. I already was a spiritual being and I didn’t need to meditate or do yoga to get in touch with my inner self and spirit. It was as if walking was my meditation and writing was a spiritual practice.

Sometimes we have preconceived ideas about what we should do to be spiritual or more authentic but really it’s all about being ourselves and doing those things that bring us joy. We don’t necessarily need to meditate every day or go on silent retreats or spend time in prayer. There is no right way to transform into a more authentic person only the way that works for each of us as individuals.

I was finding out the spiritual practices that worked for me. Part of this discovery was trying things that others found useful but I didn’t have to become a slave to things if they didn’t work for me. I suspect I might try to meditate again and I’m sure I’ll be doing yoga on and off all my life but as daily practices they had become a chore and they weren’t bringing more joy to my life.

Sometimes it’s good to just examine the parts of our lives to determine whether the things we do are worthwhile or whether we’re just doing them from a sense of obligation or duty. Even spiritual practices such as mediation, prayer, yoga, silence can become chores if we don’t continually examine how they are working for us.

As I began to relax into my life and not worry about meditating or getting up early or doing yoga every day I began to feel more comfortable with what was happening in my life. I think sometimes we need to just let go of all the achieving to work out what is important to us. Letting go of the need to transform into some preconceived idea of what I might look like if I was well aligned with my inner self. My preconceived ideas where more about my image of what a spiritual person might look like than how I might be if I was well aligned and authentic.

Transforming the mind is an ongoing challenge for me. Trying to pay better attention to the intuitive right side of my brain and less to the chattering monkey mind of the left side. Being aware that I can tune into my inner self through many practices – meditation, mindfulness, walking, dreams, writing, having meaningful conversations, loving people, practicing gratitude, being of service or being in nature. What I learnt most from trying classical meditation was that I don’t have to meditate to be in touch with my spiritual side and that finding joy in all my activities is more important than being tied to certain spiritual practices.