Give presence

Christmas is approaching.
As we grow up and get older, things become less and less important and we realise that the most important things are not available in shops.

I teach music and I am lucky because many times the parents are sitting here with us at lessons. Most of them keenly follow every minute of the lesson. Proudly watching their child reading music, decoding the beautiful mystery of a new melody as the black notes are scattered on the staves. Making sense of these dots is like a snake charmer, inviting the melody to come to live note by note. It is one of the most wonderful skills one can have. It opens up a magical world both for the player and the listener. What a wonderful way to spend time and create something out of nothing!

In this technology focused and fast paced world even parents forget to connect with their children. Sitting behind us many times they spend the whole lesson playing on their phone, answering texts and disconnect from what is happening in the room.  Missing an opportunity to catch the magic, the moment when learning takes place, when a piece is played first time with both hands, when a composition finally performed first time without a mistake and when the dots come to live and the piece is not just played correctly but comes to live from feelings and expression, when real music is born.

No Facebook posting or text message can compete with these moments. These moments will never return. Just like the first words and the first steps of a child.

As a teacher, I am very much aware of the change in the energy in the room when we all focus on the player. We are all one, our energy united. There is harmony in the room and the player is supported. But when someone in the room watches his/her phone and is disengaged from the work that takes place, the circle of energy is broken. It is extremely destructive to both of us. It is very hard not to ask the parents to put down the device and focus on the work. To make them realise that they are missing an incredible opportunity to connect with their child on a very different level.

It is an every day problem. We are more connected than ever and at the same time more disconnected from each other, from our friends and families and from society than ever. People are more lonely than ever. The depth of our relationships and connection to other human beings have tragically  changed. Connecting to another person and listening, truly listening to another has always been an Art. The knowledge of the few. Now more than ever. A person, who truly listens and pays attention is very powerful.

What we teach to kids is very important here. How we relate to our loved ones and to our friends carries a very powerful massage about our values. The approaching school holiday and Festive Season is a wonderful opportunity to connect again. To connect and to spend quality time the right way. Having some "no technology" time is scary at first. But if certain days or hours can be limited to quality time without devices, the rewards will be huge and Christmas more wonderful than ever!

When we look into someone's eyes, listen to them and connect on a deeper level, we send a very powerful message. That they are important to us and we want to connect and put them first. Nothing is so precious than your presence. Your true presence. So this Christmas, give presence!

Benefit of Sole - Pink Himalayan Rock Salt Sole

Sole (pronounced so-lay) is an ancient Ayurvedic liquid solution for flushing toxins from the body. It’s one of the most basic and accessible remedies available to humans, is simple and cheap to create and allows for a quick detox flush of the entire digestive tract, not just the colon (like colonic irrigation and enemas). It’s also a natural method of detoxification.

Traditionally made using Himalayan salt crystals, sole, when taken daily can:
* Balance pH levels in the body, bringing you to a more alkaline state
* Flush heavy metal toxins such as mercury and lead
* Increase energy and restful sleep
* Clear skin conditions such as acne, eczema and psoriasis
* Improve circulation and reduce fluid retention
* Improve mood and reduce anxiety
* Increase hydration.

Sole is made by dissolving unrefined salt in water, creating a charged molecule (or electrolyte). Electrolytes are important for maintaining hydration and assisting the kidneys to maintain fluid balance. Professional athletes and even marketing campaigns will often use the electrolyte angle to promote certain drinks (think Gatorade, Powerade and even coconut water).

The electrolyte bit is completely relevant. The additive/preservative commercial bit is crap. Just think of how much money you can save by making your own version of an ultra hydrating, completely natural and healthy drink!

To make sole

Making sole is really easy, all you’ll need is:
* A large clear glass jar with a lid
* Murray river salt flakes or Himalayan salt crystals (definitely NO table salt)

* Purified water

Fill the jar with the water and start by adding 1 tablespoon of salt. Stir until dissolved. Repeat this once or twice per day until no more salt will dissolve in the water. You’ll know when the water is completely saturated because the salt will no longer dissolve and undissolved pink salt crystals will be visible at the bottom of the jar (this is why you need to use a clear jar).

To top up sole so you have a continuous supply, keep adding water and salt so that there is always undissolved salt crystals at the bottom. This is how you will know that the liquid is completely saturated.

Using sole

Sole is added to water to make a sole solution, which can be used for various purposes. I personally add one teaspoon of sole to a glass of water each morning. I drink this on an empty stomach and it acts as a detox flush. Sole can also be added to bathing water to relax muscles and can be applied as a skin cleanser for conditions such as acne and psoriasis.

The mystic world of Chinese Medicine

I have been struggling with some back problem for a long time. I am familiar with most alternative methods of healing as I am not  a big believer of Western Medicine when there are more gentle alternatives that are non-invasive and no drug related. 

I developed a very good relationship with chiropractic treatments and I took forty sessions since April to achieve an improvement that was much needed. However, the pain that I went through with healing and re-aligning my spine was pretty taxing on my daily life. Because I was much less active than normally, weekly yoga and every second day swimming were out of question for a while as it just aggravated my condition, I started to develop terrible muscle spasm. I was using one side of my body much more to protect the other side. 

I started to live on painkillers and daily use of deep heat cream. I was not fan of these things and tried not to overuse them but sometime the pain was just unbearable. 

Just before the holiday a dear friend, a mum of a very talented student of mine, suggested to see an acupuncturist to manage pain. Even my massage therapy was an agony and did not help enough, I was ready to try anything. 

My first visit to my acupuncturist was an eye opening experience. I have had acupuncture in the past, just once but not with a Chinese doctor. It was in Hungary, in my hometown but was not followed by more visits. 

This Chinese Medical Centre was a very modest place, like most Chinese places. Simple and functional. My Chinese medical doctor, is a highly qualified, extremely approachable and knowledgable professional. She is an expert in neurological disorders, pain management (this is what I needed!), internal and gynaecological diseases. She has been practicing Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine for more than thirty years here and in Germany. 

While I was waiting, I had to fill in a new patient form. My doctor was attending to another patient. In the waiting area there were many shelves with hundreds of bottles of Chinese herbs and big bottles of strange looking things like roots and seeds. The whole area had this active messiness that comes from being used all the time. In the middle stood a scale that had papers on their plates. Doc Fei had a list in her hand and started to measure one after the other many different herbs. Once there was the required weight on the paper, she folded the paper towel containing the herbs and poured in to the bottle that contained the required mixture. This went on for minutes, selecting the herbs and measuring them one after the other. I have never seen anything like this. It was pretty amazing. 

When it was my turn, Dr Fei invited me to her room and started to take a very detailed history. She also took physical examination that is part of Chinese traditional examination like looking at the tongue and taking the pulse. Dr Fei was the third practitioner who said that my body was absolutely exhausted. Despite that since April I have been resting much more than ever in my life!

She took my pulse on both hands.  I was amazed to discover that there are twelve different ones, six in each wrist. These pulses are measured by checking the regularity of the beat in three different places on the wrist at a superficial and deep level. In the right wrist there are heart, small intestine, bladder, gall bladder, liver and kidney pulses. In the left wrist there are pulses for the colon, lungs, stomach, spleen, 'triple heater' (the body's thermostat) and 'heart protector (the body's emotional defence system). The pulses give information about these twelve main meridians in the body.

Once she established enough about my condition, she asked me to strip off and lay down on the treating table. She had traditional bamboo cups to do cupping. She used a cotton ball dipped in alcohol then lit fire and with that she created vacuum sticking the cup to my skin. I really liked that feeling! Then she inserted a few needles at different points of my body, including my leg, hips, back, neck and even the top of my head! I hardly felt anything! There was one point on my back that was sensitive when she inserted a needle into my spine and I cried out! During the whole procedure I started to feel more and more relaxed. Dr Fei also used a little heater to direct heat to certain part of my body to keep it warm during the procedure. For the time all the needles and cups were in place, I was almost sleeping. The needles stayed in place for a long time, maybe 20-30 minutes. Dr Fei checked on me frequently. As the vacuum started to release, the cups fell off. Then she removed the needles, massaged the whole are then moved to massage specific points on my forehead. 

In the afternoon I felt terribly relaxed. I was sure that I will be sleeping like a log. For my greatest surprise I had a twelve-hour sleep after my first treatment. That was rather unusual. For decades I have been operating on four-six hours sleep. If for nothing else, for the quality and length of my rest the treatment was worth! Fortunately, the pain management and muscle spasm aspect of the treatment worked too, so I will be going back regularly!

Other positive outcome just after one session was that I was feeling more energised again, gaining back some of my speed and more relaxed muscles!

I had no chance to finish this post so I am continuing today. I had my third acupuncture session. The benefits are even more obvious. Don't expect miracles but nice and steady improvement in all areas. Continuos good sleep, very different from the short bursts of restless sleeps in 1.5-3 hours blocks with Facebooking between! In myself I feel much more the way I used to feel. My energy is returning and the speed of my actions is increasing. More and more of my spastic muscles are getting under control. No need to mention that at the same time, for long months, I have been taking nutritional supplements directed by my naturopath based on a hair analysis and other examinations. The more I work with my wonderful Chinese doctor, the more appreciation I am gaining about this ancient healing profession. The last months I have been exploring different alternative healing options and I must say, I am very grateful for this incredible experience, despite the unpleasant set backs. Thanks to the Internet and my circle of friends who recommended their medical connections, I established an incredible medical team around me. Working with them taught me a lot about myself, about my body, about having options and finding the right solution to heal and hopefully for prevention and anti-ageing. The more I allowed my body to guide me, the better decisions I made and I feel that the closer I get to where I want to be. 

Someone could say that the last six months or much more have been hard. Yes, but it taught me to stay positive and be grateful every single day! 

"A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and outcomes. It is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results." Wade Boggs

Sea today

I live near the sea and one of my favourite passtime is to have a walk on the beach. In good weather I like to swim in the sea and in bad weather I just pull up in the car park and watch the ever changing colours of the sea and sky. Frequently, I try to read but nature is much more exciting! Today is a good example for the incredible and quite dramatic colours of the sea and the sky. I just can't get enough of it! You know that photos never really can give back the real feel of the sea but here is one to enjoy the colours and the drama! 

Ice bucket challenge 24/7

Perhaps many of my readers will not share my opinion on the following topic I want to write about. However, in the craze of the last weeks I got to the point that I wanted to express my opinion. Can't be silent about it anymore.

Two of my students, a sister and brother, both study in expensive private schools today proudly showed me the video recording of their Ice Bucket Challenge published on social media, naming their friends to follow their example within 24 hours.

While I understand the 'raising awareness' side of this challenge, I think it is more to do with 'look how cool I am', I am brave enough to pour a bucket of iced water on my head, I survived it and it gave me a reason to finally film myself and put it up on social media. For me this is like bungee jumping. Just an adrenalin rush.

One of my thoughts was that this craze will only continue until a kid dies. I don't believe that pouring iced water on your head is particularly good for you. Don't misunderstand me. I come from a country where minus 20C is normal in winter and one of my favourite health regime while I lived in Finland was to spend time in the sauna then jump in the frozen lake. This is just a normal pass-time, social activity and a health regime in many Scandinavian countries.

The other that made me quite upset is that pouring a bucket of iced water on your head is just a dare, just fun for most of these people who participate in the challenge. This is not raising awareness. It is just fun, if you jump, I jump type of game. A celebrity who filmed himself doing it in a bath tub even stayed in the iced bath to show how cool he is.

What they don't realise is that for many of the people who live with the disease or live with chronic pain this challenge is an insult. Nobody can imagine what it is to live with the disease. Nobody can imagine what it is to live in pain every minute, every day, every week, every months of your life year after year. Nobody can imagine what it is to live your life in pain not knowing if it will ever end, live your life in so much pain that you want to end it. Nobody can imagine what it is to not being able to live the life you used to or live the life you want to because you are stuck in a body that does not serve you anymore.

People who participate in this challenge only get an insight what it is to live with the disease or live in constant pain if they keep pouring that iced water on their head 24/7 but that none of them would dare to do that. None of them would cope with it.

Donate money if you want to help. So please, respect those who live with the disease and live in pain, stop insulting them with your adrenalin rush games. What's more, please stop wasting clean water for this nonsense. In many parts of the world that bucket of clean water would save lives. Get a grip. Get a life.

Do old beliefs serve us?

I remember many years ago sitting in the office of my then tax accountant working on that year's tax return. He was a trumpet player in his free time. He looked at me and told me that I need to smarten up. My tax accountant told me that I need to create royalties. I remember, I looked back at him like he was an alien. How could I create royalties? I was a conductor, university lecturer, aural and music education specialist! Not a song writer or composer!

However, just today I received a message from Amazon to update my details because they want to deposit USD $151.87 to my bank account for my books. This message inspired me to log in and check my payment from iTunes too, after my songs and albums. More royalties from there, too.

So much has changed in a decade....My tax accountant definitely has managed to put the bug in my head about the need to produce royalties....

Since his advice, I started to write books and publish them as eBooks which gave me total control over my intellectual properties. I started to write songs and similarly, I managed to publish them such a way digitally that I enjoy the full benefits of my own works.

But what is more, I started to look for business opportunities that bring royalties, create passive income. While as a musician I manage my own music studio and get paid based on the hours of lessons I teach, I managed to find and build a business that not only pays for my efforts now but also rewards me for my team building efforts forever and on many levels. The magic of duplication is the best kept secret of the business world.

A lot has happened since that advice from my tax accountant but forever I am grateful to him. He has managed to change my view of the world, my thinking when it comes to business and finances, but most importantly, he has changed my life and definitely he has changed my future.

It took a long time to get my head around what he said and to find a way to follow his advice. With his advice he challenged everything that I grew up with. He challenged all our conditioning, everything that our parents, our education and society taught us. Most importantly, he challenged the idea of getting a good job and working hard. It took a long time for the penny to drop on what "Work smarter not harder" means.

However, it looks like the seed that he planted is alive and is growing. The rest is now just question of time and increasing the activities that generate these royalties both in music, writing and in my businesses.

The most important that my tax accountant taught me is to challenge the age old beliefs and to look things with fresh eyes. Too many beliefs simply don't serve us anymore.

Return to Sanity

"My patient, Jim, worked ads an orderly in a mental institution. Jim's job included calming down and restraining difficult and sometimes violent patients. he usually got the upper hand, but sometimes the inmates won. He'd come in for an adjustment and scratched up, bitten and subluxated.
"A sucker punch, Doc. I didn't see it coming. She really surprised me."
But he did more than fight inmates. He also took more manageable patients out for walks and drives.

One evening, Jim appeared for his appointment with a tall, good-looking and very wary eighteen-year-old.
"Hi Jim, who is your friend?" I asked.
"This is Larry. He's an inmate. He was committed about eight months ago by his family. He's been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic - hears voices. His condition hasn't improved and he's on lots on meds (medications).
"Want to give Larry an adjustment?"
Larry let me palpate his neck and even agreed to lie on his side fort an upper cervical adjustment. His atlas was out. I positioned the drop headpiece and set it up on his neck. I probably won't get another chance to do this, I thought to myself.
The headpiece dropped down and Larry jumped up. It looked like he went from lying position to a standing one with no intermediate positions. "What did you do to me?" he yelled.
"I, uh, I adjusted your atlas, it was out." Not my finest patient lecture.
"It felt like you stuck a sword through my head, " said Larry.
I turned to Craig for some kind of help but he was doubled up in laughter. "Funniest thing I've seen. You should see your face Dr Tedd. "
Eventually he came up and put his arm around Larry. "Hey, he does this to me all the time. Let's go get some pizza. See you in a couple of days doc." They drove away. I never saw Larry again.

Jim came in two days later, "How's Larry?" were the first words out of my mouth.
"Oh yeh, I meant to tell call you doc. They've cut back Larry's meds. He suddenly seems better. The psychiatrists are convinced the drugs finally started working." Jim laughed.

Jim came by the next week with more news, "Larry was taken off all meds today. The voices have stopped, and his family is coming in tomorrow to bring him home." "He's back to normal? No more strange behaviour?" I asked. "Well, there's just one thing that's upsetting the staff." "What's that?" "He keeps telling people he wants to be a chiropractor." Tedd Koren, D.C.

A great story from the book Chicken Soup for the Chiropractic Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Dr Fabrizio Mancini that I saw on the bookshelf of my wonderful Chiro Dr Kingsley and he was kind enough to lend it to me.