Youth

Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.

Anon

On sunday, very briefly, I met a lady who exuded confidence, creativity, passion and vitality. She must have been in her late fifties but what lingered with me long after she had gone was that I had just met a young girl in an older woman's body. It was amazing - we spoke only for about twenty minutes but she was like a breath of fresh air: attentive, interested and interesting.

Oh, if the world had more people like this who had really come alive. When this is all over, when I am able to sleep peacefully again, this is something to aspire to. In fact, that's the wrong way round - it's already something to aspire to.

Travelling

Just because there is no destination in sight,
that does not mean the road is not worth travelling.

Chinese Proverb


I love this quote. It has got to be one of my all-time favourites; my mantra even. When we lived in Godmanchester, we had a silk wall hanging I bought in China with these words written in beautiful Chinese script.

It makes so much sense to me, on so many levels. And as far as my insomnia goes, the destination had never been in sight. Okay, so I might, unsurprisingly, be hoping for improved quality sleep at the 'end' of all this. But there have been so many bends and curves along the track; speeding ahead only to hit a brick wall and then to go into reverse. But I do often think, now more than ever, that my sleeplessness has not been one of those things that has just 'come about'. It's been trying to tell me something. It still is.

Creativity and Openness

It took me four years to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to paint like a child.

Pablo Picasso


What a different place the world would be if we could all be as creative and open as children. Sometimes, I try to come up with 'creative' solutions to my insomnia, like writing through the frustration or absorbing myself in an activity which will help me to feel more positive. As for being open, I suppose this is where trying anything and everything to get to the bottom of my sleeplessness comes in.

I've been through so many ebbs and flows with this - sometimes thinking that this is a problem I have for life and I just need to get on with things and deal with it as best I can. But then at other times I think NO! I am a healthy, thirty-two year old woman and it's just not normal to go through nights on end without sleeping. The latter state of mind is where I'm at now. It's not normal and there is, I now firmly believe, a reason behind the anxiety which is preventing me from sleeping.

I may never be the best sleeper in the world but I do believe I can reach the stage where sleep becomes less of an issue and more of a normality. So here's my pledge to myself: To keep being creative, to keep being open to everything that is suggested to me. And let's see what happens. I think I've nearly cracked something.

Within

Man struggles to find life outside of himself, unaware that the life he is seeking is within him.

Kahlil Gibran

.....because it's within us all - the treasure, the dreams, the will, the spirit and the memories that can enslave us or, if we choose, set us free.

Feeling

We can make our mind so like still water that beings gather about us to see their own images, and so for a moment live a clearer, perhaps even fiercer life because of our quiet.

WB Yeats


I've been doing Reiki for several months now as well as a great deal of questioning and soul searching. There are some strange, unsettling memories coming up for me at the moment which I'm trying to figure out if they're connected to my insomnia. I think they probably are, but how to reconcile the two? Since a few days ago, in the evenings I've been taking myself off to my room for about an hour and using the silence to take the Reiki a step further and work on various 'chakras' (energy points) which are related to different emotions. My hope is that, little by little, I'll start to get inside these memories and 'feel' them again. Someone once said that 'to feel is to heal' and I'm sure there's a great deal of truth in that. We are all very good at boxing uncomfortable incidents up, putting lids on them and storing them away. We are taught to 'deal' with things; to 'be brave'. But if we don't allow ourselves to express the emotions, painful though this can be, these memories will only come back to haunt us in later years.

Mother Tree

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you don't know what it will bring back; a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.

Anais Nin


Since arriving in India back in March, here's how I've reached the stage I'm at now:

When I first got here, I made a pledge to myself: You have a serious problem sleeping (I didn't know why, but this is the way it was) and you must give everything and anything a go to improve it whilst in India. This is your chance. Acupuncture and the like were all very well, but I was effectively playing £45 each time I wanted a night or two of decent sleep. How could I possibly sustain that? And after all, what I really needed was for someone to help equip me with the tools to help myself - I could hardly give myself acupuncture when I needed to sleep.

So...I got to India. I went to see an Ayurvedic doctor who proposed a course of Ayurvedic cleansing and treatment yet without having asked me many questions about myself or looking at my case holistically. I'm sure this isn't necessarily representative of Ayurveda but in any case, I was put off. I did however try some Ayurvedic medicine to help promote sleep but this didn't work.

Then I went to meet a man who taught me some 'fail-proof' breathing techniques. He said even the worst sleepers in the world can't be immune to these if they do them every night...but they didn't work for me and after a month or so I stopped doing them.

Around the same time, I discovered a place called Mother Tree, a healing centre for women. Here I found a group of women who truly, genuinely and passionately want to help people and it's here that I've done art therapy, reiki and now hypnotherapy. The doors are always open and the key element of TRUST is present.

I feel like a walking dictionary for complementary therapies at the moment and sometimes the old me looks at myself now and gives a bemused chuckle. But these eight months in India have been more important for me than I can possibly express and it is Mother Tree that has set me on the right course for my journey of healing and understanding.

Being

In sitting, just sit.
In walking, just walk.
Above all, don't wobble.

Zen Philosophy


It must surely be one of the greatest conundrums and challenges: how to be in the present. How to exist, breathe, remain and live in the present. Because it is human nature to remember the past and to imagine the future. And there's nothing wrong with this, but so often my mind is like a 'chattering monkey' (I can't remember who coined this but it's a good description). The times that I manage to still this chatter and breathe into the beauty of the present moment are like drinking pure, clear water.

I've done an awful lot of wobbling over the past few years since being entrenched in this insomnia 'problem', and not really heeded the lessons that it's been trying to teach me. But then again, you have to be ready to listen don't you and finally, finally I feel like I'm reaching that place. And only by coming to this place and really 'being' in it, no matter how painful it is, can I achieve release from it.