Positive Health Online

Even were we not now living through perhaps the greatest period of financial turmoil since the Great Depression, February is typically the time of the year when the high from all the Xmas and New Year celebrations may have turned to feelings of overwork, deluged responsibilities, fear of indebtedness and not enough money to pay the bills.

Humans have basic biological needs, as do all other creatures, and as such, we all need time to rest during wintertime, recharge our batteries and burrow down under the duvet so that when spring arrives, we have renewed energy to feel re-born. Alas, life doesn't flow in such wonderfully scripted colours; rather we are afflicted with illnesses, pain, money problems and feelings that we are down a hole and need to swim to the top for air.

As real people, with the same physical, emotional and financial problems as PH readers, I and my partner Mike have always shunned the phoney, perfect life, do-good and gorgeous caricatures that sometimes pass for celebrities in much of the media. No, instead, we appreciate the authentic, perhaps gritty, sometimes counter intuitive and always original and true authors, practitioners and articles which will help to enliven and enrich our lives, even if we aren't always in the best space to read them.

This Feb Issue 155 of PH Online is publishing some truly unique and original features which I hope will be a tonic and inspiration to us all:

Tobias Kaye, in Sounding Bowls: Craftsmanship, Art and Spirituality, introduces us to a whole new craft – definitely out-of-the box:

"...ten years before I dreamt of making an instrument, were already steeped in music. I saw the flow of melody in a line of curve and sought to make shapes that would express an 'innate harmony'. ...Truly, I would not have known where to go or what to do with this effect had not a composer friend told me straight that something needed to be done. Weeks of brainstorming produced no usable results. I had given up when one night as I was doing my meditation, into my vision came a wooden bowl with a string stretched across the inside..."

Michael Levy – The Point of Life: It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time speaks eloquently about original and individual ways in which we can live in the current noise- and chaos-afflicted world with depth, silence and wonderment.

"When we expand this realization, we understand that everything in life is at the centre of the Cosmos...In the centre of infinity. No longer do we measure our self-worth in a distance, a possession or a difference from anyone else. Moreover, we see ourselves as a central player in an infinite field of pure potential. In other words, we are all wholesome beings, central to the whole-sum of all things."

Steven Saunders – Enlightenment and the Real Matrix

"In an age of many false gurus, doing the ego-trip with followers and worshippers; in an age where a few people have accidentally escaped the matrix, but clearly do not know how to help others to also escape, although they can write books and talk about how great it is to live in the now; in an age of so much spin and manipulative language patterns, how can deep truth and messages from the awakened ones get through?  In the playground a child says, "they made me do it, it's not my fault".  The child is punished for speaking the truth of emotional projection.  It is the adults who have lost their way."

Handan Satiroglu – Noise – Turn Down the Volume of Daily Life

"On a recent vacation at a quaint fisherman's village on the Lycian coast, I had a brief encounter with silence. As the afternoon drifted into a balmy, warm evening under a lavender sky streaked with hues of orange and pink, I watched the waves gently lap against the rocks, catching faint breaths of sea-salt in the early autumn breeze. As I dreamily poured into my thoughts, an inner question rose with unprecedented force: When was the last time my thoughts were not punctuated with the shrill of man-made, mechanic sounds? I couldn't recall."

Dr Daniel Penoel – The Foundation of Quantum Aromatherapy describes how real clinical application of essential oil energies requires a quantum leap of understanding in their structure and function.

Dr Sam Shohet – Digestive Disorders takes us on a holistic journey on the many facets which comprise our magnificent digestive system, from Chinese and Western medicine perspectives.

Anne McIntyre – Coleus forskohlii / Plectranthus barbatus – A Unique Healer - says that she has been in practice as a herbalist for about 25 years, that she has only recently come across Coleus.

Alyssa Burns-Hill – Weight Management Problems? alerts us that "Insulin resistance (pre-diabetes) is a major undiagnosed problem in the UK, and it often goes hand-in-hand with weight gain around the middle that really won't budge."

Glenys Underwood – Reflexology to Help Sub-Fertility relates a Case Study with a happy outcome of conception, pregnancy and the birth expected in April 2009.

Mr Amir – Atlas Asymmetry: The Overlooked Phenomenon relates how he discovered the far-reaching consequences of alignment of an asymmetric Atlas, and has combined this with his already pioneering orthodontic treatments.

And Carole Preen – Neuroskeletal Re-Alignment Therapy describes how this treatment gave her patient back his life, pain-free.

I also want to send best wishes to two authors in this issue who are recovering from recent surgery – Joseph Knight – Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and Carole Preen – Neuroskeletal Re-alignment Therapy.

We all may be feeling low at this time; however it behoves us all to patiently wait for better times to return.