Emotions | Keri Krieger

July 1, 2015July 13, 2015 by kerik_admin

Don’t Panic about turning 40 – 6 ways to keep your 40th birthday in perspective

On August the 5th in a few weeks time I will have been here on planet Earth for 40 years.

Turning 40 for most women is a big crazy cue to have a complete breakdown and start questioning their lives and everything they have ever done. I’ve seen it many times which is why as I approach my own 40th I’m keeping things in perspective.

I’m treating it as a pretty amazing privilege that not all people get to experience, and I am choosing my language very carefully. I and not 40. I have simply been here for 40 years. The ageing process of our bodies is not exclusively tied to the years you spend spinning around the sun, its just one factor.

Here’s 6 things that I am being mindful of as I approach my birthday to keep the crazy at bay.

1. Gratitude

Seriously when did we get all hung up about being past it and not express gratitude and amazement at the fact that we get to live a big long gloriously full life? Start a gratitude diary or before you go to sleep each night cast your mind over 3 things that your grateful for.

2. Don’t compare

Your unique life journey and your unique set of skills and experiences aren’t going to look like anyone else’s. Every book on the shelf of life is a TOTALLY different story. Own this and back the heroine in yours… she’s doing a great job! It has been helpful to remind myself of what I truly value and see how I am cultivating these things in my life. My commitment to Love is no exception.

3. Ignore the popular cultural stereotype we are often sold.

I went looking on pinterest last night and searched turning forty positive. Do you know how many pins I found. One. Thats right, in all of pinterest town there is ONE pin that puts a positive spin on turning 40. So I dug a bit deeper and found this little gem from Sheryl Crow and even she was struggling! Look away from all the memes telling you that its all over and find some inspirational women your age doing great things and keeping it real. They can be famous like Megan Gale and Angelina Jolie, both turning 40 this year or gorgeous women in your circle who are creating their own reality of the aging process.

4. So you didn’t have a baby.

Your worth as a woman and a human isn’t determined on this event. (Despite the social pressure of epic proportions) There will be many reasons that this wasn’t in your life path. There may be a great deal of grief over this for lots of different reasons. I know for myself that even though its been a conscious choice of mine not to have babies there is still a sense of grieving those alternate life possibilities that never eventuated. Let yourself have this process. Your unfolding into a new phase of your life, and its going to be delicious!

5. Check in with your limiting beliefs.

Yes there are different stages and phases in our lives where our priorities change and our bodies work differently. We need to take good care of our health for sure, but be gently and lovingly aware of what you may be telling yourself. Many of these beliefs may not even be yours. This interview with Dr Christine Northrup discusses just this.

I recall a conversation with a girlfriend of mine two years ago discussing the fact that bang on 40th her eyesight went. She proclaimed with such commitment that that is just what happens. Everyone she knew got glasses on their 40th birthday and that was that. With a big sigh she told me to wait and see. Well see I am and instead of checking my eyesight I’m checking in with my beliefs. (I’m not an affiliate of this book and yes its a 20 min video but the gems of wisdom from Dr Northrup are PRICELESS)

6. Take the pressure down.

Really.

So for anyone in this age bracket and especially us Aussies… this should really make you laugh. 1 for its oh so cheesy iconic 80’s references and 2 because its truth, sad, tacky, 80’s truth.

All the ‘by now I should haves’… or worse ‘at my age its all over’… enough!

Take. The. Pressure. DOWN.

Single by choice or circumstance, know that love and connection is always available to us.

The sun the moon and the stars are still ours to orbit with.

The pull of the tides ours to travel on.

Keep your heart wide open your boundaries intact, your love clearly visible of all to see shining through our eyes.

Ours is a different story.

Sing your song with pride.

March 31, 2014 by keri

Women On Fire

Its been tough.

Its been amazing .

Life has taken you to your edge more than you ever thought possible, the thoughts dreams hopes and fantasies of your youth got gritty and edgy and dirty and you thought and prayed on more than one occasion “Fuq I hope I get through this.”

Yet on the outside you looked for all the world like a woman coping with amazing adversity with grace poise and determination. The option of collapse just wasn’t on the cards there was too much riding on your success.

And even while people complemented you on your ability to get the job done, at home on your own you doubted your very ability to get up and do it all again the next morning.

You read books on self help Echart Toile and Brené Brown have been your bedtime companions, you bought yourself flowers, walked the dog fed your kids and kept the toilet paper stocked up. And Did. It all. Again. The next day.

You were hungry, you still are hungry, craving a desire for nourishment deep in your bones deep in your very soul that wakes you up every day, eyes on the horizon putting one foot in front of the other.

You gratitude prayer is your mantra, its your daily bread and butter whilst you put together that proposal and dream up the next step of your evolution.

Its been tough but the light is getting brighter, YOUR light is getting brighter.But hell it would be great to not have to do it all on your own.

A tribe, A team that has been there too. Has been there in the dark as you watched all that you knew and love vanish and yet you still drew breath.

You danced you swam, you made some very questionable decisions, repeatedly!

You learnt you experience you picked yourself up and fell down another rabbit hole!

Your not happy with the status quo, the mundane you can deal with but settling isn’t part of your vocabulary. Its not that you want lots of attention and ego stroking, just to give yourself the permission to fucking BE all that you are, permission to speak your truth and live your dharma, the role, the story, the magic that only you dear woman can sing into this world. I hear you!

The peak of your youth is just behind you, but you have never felt more at home in your body, more quietly confident, the fire in you is rising, the magic, the sex the power that is yours and only yours is simmering almost ready, you feel it yes?

I’m calling out to you women, high and low, good god I’d love to meet you how I’d love to have you on my team and share my story with you.

To sit around this virtual fireside and support each other and journey together that is my wish, is my heartfelt spiritual directive.

In ancient times we had a place, a collective and a space to weave and share and dream and birth our stories in this world. To laugh and be deliciously wicked and wild. Dear one this is such a space. Come sit and play and laugh and heal.

Healing that will set your world on fire.

in Coaching / Elemental living / Emotions / Feng shui your heart / Life magic 0 comments

March 15, 2014 by keri

Primal Po meets Modern Man

From the archives is the post all about the Po. The alchemical spirit of the lungs and how we can incorporate this ancient wisdom of the most primal aspect of ourselves into our modern worlds .

I have all these incredibly intellectual ideas and theories to share on the soma; the physical body, and its responses and how the Po is an expression of the innate wisdom of our cellular bodies. And I”m sure I’ll get to that at some point… there is an endless amount of information I can share from this elemental point of view.

What I am really feeling tonight when I think about the Po is the gentrification of the body and the senses and how thats effecting our health and our relationship with our bodies wellness. Oh is that all… the ‘gentrification’ of the body!!

The Po is experienced through our senses, taste, texture, scent, sight. Its the automatic functions of our bodies like breathing and peristalsis (digestion). Its experienced in that space between our skin (our awareness of where we start and stop) and the outside world. Its the animalistic aspects of our functioning bodies and our psyche.

Its all the bits we have no control over yet constantly inform our likes dislikes and urges.

And as highly functioning modern upright people, we have a few issues with these urges and tastes don’t we? ( This is where the gentrification bit come in ) Our minds and intellect, and our hearts and dreams would have us operating from an almost utopian platform. We have been culturally disciplined to detach and suppress the so called less attractive aspects of our bodies and minds. There is much that still today we wouldn’t dare discuss ‘in public’ . And yet much of these taboo subjects include basic bodily functions that are quite essential to our wellbeing and survival ( think poo and sex ).

So what happens when we suppress the Po and ignore the innate wisdom of our bodies and trust that connection between the body and the mind? Pain and ‘psychosomatic’ symptoms ranging from stress-related skin disorders, eating disorders and chronic undiagnosable pain.

Our bodies only ‘language’ is our nervous system and its through this system that it will try and get its messages across to us. They sound something like this.

“Hey, you up there! ” (patient pause for response) “Hey! We don’t think you should be eating that… (another patient pause) HEY!!!! (huddle together for a brain storm) I know, we’ll create some pain, that’ll do it. (patient pause) Damn it they just took a pain killer….. hmmmm Ok Ok I’ve got it, some red skin that always gets them ok GO!

Ok so this isn’t exactly scientific but you get my point. The bodies wisdom; the innate cellular wisdom, that gut feeling, intuition, or a ‘sense of knowing’, does actually need to be heard occasionally! Or, quite simply there are consequences. Now this doesn’t mean that we have to go all primal and throw out all the other functions. The other spirits have their place.

Ideally they work together. Depending on our own make up and our cultural learnings some are going to be more easily integrated than others. Myself, I live in this visceral world of experiencing life through the Po. I probably give this spirit way too much free rein! What does that look like?

Senses, texture and environment are paramount to the Metal element. There are always scented candles burning and fresh flowers and my house has always been full of animals (lets not mention the bats here ok). I work physically with peoples bodies. I have a bathroom full of more oil and lotions than any one body is ever going to be able to absorb and I spend almost more time in the ocean than on dry land. In winter this is replaced by the bath tub (Tonights blog is proudly bought to you by Embody Bath Salts). Textured cushions, natural fibres, LOTS of colour, really I could go on and on. If this sounds like you and your saying, well thats every modern woman surely, I’ll tell you sadly this is not so.

This genuine external expression of the Po is matched with an internal nourishment and respect of that animal instinct. The ability to ‘check in’ with our bodies and interpret its metaphorical language. This I believe is becoming quite a rare ability as we seek to cover up, pretty up and medicate the aspects of ourselves that we don’t like, don’t ‘fit’ or are fearful of. To bring that full circle and back to the bodies I spend my day working with, this results in disharmony. Disharmony of mind and body expressing its self in pain and inflammation of increasing severity.

As I read this I realise this really is my primary function with my treatments. To work as an interpreter for the body and to translate the pain and inflammation that my clients are experiencing so they might heal themselves. What can you do to nourish your Po? Well, any of the above is great, experiencing your senses, in what ever way is fun for you. (You don’t have to turn it into the extreme sport as I tend to do)

One of the easiest ways is to simply ‘check in’ with you body. When I think this or eat this how do I feel? more or less calm? more or less tight in my shoulders? BREATHE! yep just slowly calmly breathe. You’ll be surprised to find just how often your holding your breathe.

To finish off, here is a quote from one of my favourite books “Five Spirits” that so beautifully articulates the place I wish to take my practice.

By Lorie Eve Dechar. Lantern Books 2006

“When the acupuncture needle penetrates the surface of the skin, there is a moment of silence, an emptiness, a wondering and not knowing. When the metal needle meets the living body, there is a silence, a pause …before the tiny whirlwind spins and the qi redirects its course. For thousands of years, the intentions of healers and patients have met in that single breathless emptiness, that turning point of the soul that is the moment of transformation.

Perhaps, as we open to another form of consciousness, the present silence of our world will become that empty turning point, that breathless moment of change. Perhaps, if one by one we humans reclaim our vision of a living cosmos imbued with intention and intelligence and illuminated by wisdom, we will become like ten thousand silver needles penetrating and healing the body of the earth. Then perhaps , through healing our planet, we will heal ourselves and hear again the songs that the stones of the earth are singing to the clouds of heaven .”

in 5 elements / Elemental living / Emotions / From the Archives / Health 0 comments

November 27, 2013 by keri

Qi Follows the Yi – Part Two

Ah Yes! The good ol’ a picture tells a 1000 words!

The 5 elements that I have been banging on about for practically ever work together in this 5 pointed star type arrangement. If you follow around the circle in a clockwise direction you get the nourishing cycle. This is how things work in harmony. You can simplify it if you put it into terms of what would happen in nature. For example we need water to nourish new plants (wood) so there can be growth and then in turn those trees feed fires… and on it goes around.
The star cycle that criss crosses shows us how things are kept in check. Keeping it simple as I can metal ‘controls’ wood….(metal chops down trees) makes a bit of sense right? It does get a little bit trickier when we bring the organs in, especially knowing how complex their functioning is from a western point of view, let alone Chinese Philosophy!
But keeping it simple… you know how I love to keep things simple, an example would be when we eat lots of cold forming foods, e.g. dairy and our digestion doesn’t process this effectively the Earth function of transforming our foods into fuel we can use diminishes. This affects his friend the Metal element (next in line) resulting in a build up of phlegm in the lungs, skin issues or constipation…….. kinda making sense Yes? Think children with allergies resulting in rashes.

So here we have a super fun chart of all the stuff that can go wrong when the energy is going in the opposite direction! In this picture we are looking at what happens when our negative thoughts and emotions start to get away with us!

Earlier on in this blog I talked about how our Qi (energy/ fuel) follows our Yi (thoughts/ concentration). This theory works in regards to all our mental / emotional experiences as wherever we are placing our focus and attention our energy will go. So when we experience an excess of any emotion this begins to tax the correlating organ and can set up, in long term situations, real physical pathology.

Now, I’m not one to want to bum out my readers so I’m going to turn this little chart into a silver lining. When we understand the very real interactions of these emotions and the physiological effects they are having on us we can begin to see and slowly master what we need to do in order to regulate these feelings that are not always super helpful.

I’m not saying here for a second the emotions are not an essential and necessary part of our biological vocabulary, but sometimes for a whole range of reasons real and imaginary we can get stuck in one or two of them, long after the correlating situation is long gone. Challenging situations in life can also be ongoing and without some way of managing our emotional responses these situations can and do often get on top of us.

My favourite example to explain this is by looking at the liver and the lungs.

The Liver is damaged by anger and frustration, or conversely an unhealthy liver ( one fed with chips, refined sugar and alcohol for e.g.) creates the emotional state of anger and frustration. Either way over a prolonged period of time this unhappy liver consumes more energy than can be created by its pal the kidneys and the water element and this sets up the right conditions for fear to become the predominate emotional state.

As a side note this also very simply explains how some recreational drugs damage the liver and set up the conditions required for paranoia and other fear based behaviours.

Anyway I digress…. Where do we look to balance and mediate this grumpy liver syndrome? Across the way to the lungs of course! The lungs positioned where they are above the diaphragm and above the liver on the right hand side are in the perfect spot to massage the Liver into a much better frame of mind. Slow deep breathing, gentle exercise or yoga is the ideal way to nourish this controlling cycle and re create balance in the five elements. Now I have to admit a grumpy person is not as likely to respond so well to …. darling do some downward dog…… but maybe a house rule of “walk off the grump” is a good idea?

The elements all work in their own way to regulate their counterpart;
The liver with its decisiveness and ability to create strong boundaries steps in when the the earth elements tendency to worry and obsess gets out of hand. The water element cools the fire of impatience with humility, this might be in the form of increased hydration or extra sleep, I mean, how hot headed are we when we’re over tired?
The stillness and meditative qualities of the spleen are helpful when managing an over worked water element. Remember this relates to will power and our adrenals. Each has its place and role in maintaing our overall emotional health, which in turn helps create our physical health and visa versa.

Keep this in mind next time you find yourself stuck in the rut of the same old emotional story running around our minds. Let the emotion move thorough you, and do what you can to support yourself.
(And feel free to let me know if any of this makes sense or if I need to do a little more explaining! )

Go Gently

K
x

in 5 elements / Elemental living / Emotions / Health / TCM 0 comments