Dad's book legacy

Dad's book had robins on it.

The day before my Dad found out he was dying, I gave him an early Christmas present. I had been at a Xmas fair that day sharing my essential oils with people and I had bought a lovely homemade covered A5 book from a fellow stall owner. 

I returned home and found out that Dad had been to the hospital and because they thought he had an infection they had kept him in. I went to visit with my Mum and thought it would be nice for him to have his Christmas present early as he was an avid writer. 

Little did I know that the only thing he would write in that book would be his 'bucket list' after he got his terminal diagnosis.

One of the things on his list was to get his most recent book finalised and published. He never got to see the finished product but he knew it would be published before he died on Saturday 25th January 2020. 

He wanted it to be free to anyone who wanted it and he managed that too. The icing on the cake for him was the fact that my daughter Indie's drawing was used on the cover. 

My Dad started his writing career coming up with Letten courses for Scripture Union but later on in life, he put pen to paper and wrote various storybooks. Since his death, Mum and I have catalogued what copies we have left of his various books and so here is a chance for you to get your hands on some copies if you would like.

I am going to tell you a small bit about each book and how much the books are including p&p. Any money that we receive over and above costs will go towards Dad's wish to help his Grandson, Zack, go to Kenya (hopefully Summer 2022) to honour our ancestors. 

If you would like to read more about Zack's adventures you can visit my post that talks about it here. There is also a newspaper article about it here. If you would like to donate directly you can here. If you shop online you can also help for FREE here. 

Sophie's World was my Dad's last book. It is about Sophie who's Grandad has just died and is wondering what death is all about. 

The irony of this being published after my Dad's death was not lost to my daughter Indie, who designed and drew the front cover and then lost her Grandad (and her first grandparent.) 

It is 14 pages long and was written to help children or younger people deal with the death of a loved one. 

My Dad wanted this to be free to anyone who needed it so this is £2 for p&p in the UK. If you would like a copy please contact me or pay via Paypal here adding which book/s you would like with your postal address.

My Dad wrote Sally's Angel for his, at the time, five grandchildren (his publishing company was called Bizz-B books using the initials of those 5 grandchildren!) 

It starts "Discovering that you can see angels is not an easy way to remain calm on a hot summer's day. To find your first one propped up against a bollard on a traffic island in the middle of the High Street makes it even worse. That's what happened to Sally Jenkins, who was 11 years old and loved in Burlington."

The rest of the book follows the adventures of Sally, and her friends when Sally discovers that she can not only see but talk to Michael, the angel. It is a story full of the magical and often extraordinary world that children can live in. 

This book is 44 pages long over 7 chapters and is priced at £4.50 with p&p being an extra £2. If you want both this and Sophie Wonders the p&p goes up to £2.50.

Again if you would like a copy please contact me or pay via Paypal here adding which book/s you would like with your postal address. 

Then there is The Seeker and The Guide, a wonderful book of reality and dreams, surprises and reflections, memories and meaning. It is a book that takes you on a wonderful journey of discovery. It is 77 pages long and is priced at £5 excluding £2 p&p. I would say that this is more pitched at adults but believe that an older child would find it interesting and enlightening.

Anyway again let me know if you would like copies of any of these books or just pay via Paypal here adding which book/s you would like with your postal address. 

If you want this book and Sally's Angel then postage and packing is £2 but if you want all 3 books it is £3. Any other combinations would need me to work out how much p&p would be. 

There are limited copies of the books but at present, we have over 50 of each so please share this page with others if you can think of anyone who would like copies of any of them. Thank you so much for reading.

Here's the beginning of The Seeker and Guide to whet your appetite.

A Seeker came to the Guide's door and asked where he should begin his journey. "What is your destination?" the Guide asked. "I do not know anything except that I must begin to travel in order to discover another way," the Seeker replied. "Then we shall begin from here" said the Guide. "Look at yourself and tell me what you see."

"I see one who has wandered for many years," said the Seeker. "I have been to all manner of places and have seen wonderful and amazing sights. I have owned houses and valuable things, taken a wife and fathered children. I am very well off and want for nothing. But in all of this, I recognise that I have discovered no clear path. I have grown older but have nothing more to say except that I have been to more places and acquired more things. 

For many years I dismissed the possibility that there were things to be thought about which did not depend upon what I could buy or afford. Now I'm not so sure. I see others who ought to envy me but they only look at me with sadness. They should look for my approval and friendship for I could benefit them but they seek their fellowship elsewhere. They seem to say to me 'there is another way', and it is this that I wish to find"

The Guide pointed at the river which ran through the valley in which his home stood. "There are" he said, "some in this village who have never left its boundaries. When they come to the banks of this river you could ask them where this river comes from and where it goes, and they would tell you that it is a mystery. If I told them that the river begins in the hills fifty miles from here they would be no wiser, and if I said that it flows into the sea, it would mean nothing to them. So it is with the Way you seek: it is a mystery."

The Spark: a mother's story of nurturing genius by Kristine Barnett

The Spark is the true story of Kristine Barnett's battle to stop her son Jacob, who was diagnosed with autism, from disappearing totally into his own world .  Find the book here at Amazon.

Kristine Barnett's son Jacob has an IQ higher than Einstein and a photographic memory. At nine he developed an original theory in astrophysics that may earn a Nobel Prize. But Jake's story is all the more remarkable because his extraordinary mind was almost lost to autism.

When the experts wanted to restrict his behaviour - staring at shadows on the wall, stars, patterns - Jake withdrew into his own world. But against all the advice, Kristine decided to follow Jacob's passions - his 'spark'. The results were beyond anything anyone could have imagined.Dramatic and inspiring,The Spark is about the power of love and what can happen when we tap the true potential that lies within every child.

What I love about this book other than the remarkable story, is the fantastic struggle the family went through to allow their autistic son to develop in the way they believe he needed.  Trying to find any child's 'spark' is the main reason that I home edcuate my children.  It is much easier to facilitate a child finding their 'spark' when it isn't being squashed by going to school with being 'told' what to do and spending more time at school than at home or out and about.

Anyway here are the quotes I found the most inspiring from this book:

The typical therapy with austistic children is to focus on the lowest skills, such as, feeding a cookie to a puppet or tying shoe laces.  "So instead of hammering away at all the tasks there kids couldn't do.  I thought we'd start with what they wanted to do."  p68 (hb)

I have to agree here that is amazing what children learn when left to their own devices and also the sporadic nature of learning such skills as tying up shoe laces from learning about knots or learning reading from having to follow instructions on a computer program (both things that my children have done.)

"Harnessing the children's passions may not have been the conventional way to work with them, but it was very much the way I'd always worked with my daycare children."  Luckily Kristine Barnett's own mother mirrored with behaviour to Kristine and her sister, Stephanie.  Kristine's sister was an artist who wanted to do nothing more than draw.  When Stephanie was failing at school, her mother stayed upbeat ""If you don't do art, nobody cares.  But if you can't do math, everyone 's up in arms." she remarked once, "Why is that?"  I found the comment a little surprising, given that she as an accountant and loved numbers herself.  But she knew Stephanie."

That is the crux of the issue.  The mother knew her children.  She could see what they were interested in and harnessed that passion, knowing that finding your passion leads to happy children and then happy adults.  Kristine's mother could see that some brains can do sum and some brains find art easier to do (and school maths confusing.)  What she showed Kristine is that "everyone has an intrinsic talent, a  contribution to make, even if it comes to an unexpected form."  School doesn't always help, enhance or even nurture that talent because academic subjects only cover a very, very small section of people's talents so there has to be a different way in which to tap into that talent in each and every child.

"I have always encouraged the children in my daycare to lean into their passions, and over the years I saw how astonishing the results could be when they have the opportunity and resources to do so." She saw how the kids would flourish because of the attention they gave to the activities they loved and how doing what they loved brought all the children other skills as well.  

It is great reading a book which ends with the author reporting that a kid who she had been told would not amount to anything was told "he can do anything he wants" and that she believes that that is a ceiling that every parent and teacher can set for every child and that all of us can set for ourselves. She wanted everyone to believe that her son's story is emblematic for all children.  

"If you fuel a child's innate spark, it will always point the way for far greater heights that you could ever have imagined. It's hard to trust your child to find his or her own path, especially when we're told every day by professionals that children must fit into rigid boxes. We all want to give our kids the best opportunities we can, which is why it feels like such a disservice if we don't push them in the "right" direction. Celebrating your children's passions rather than re-directing them, especially when those passions don't line up neatly with a checklist for future success, can feel like jumping off a cliff. But a leap of faith is necessary if you kids are going to fly." 

Find the book here at Amazon

Loving and letting be..

My Dad has been conducting a spirituality course with myself and a bunch of my friends over the last 4 weeks and last night was the last one and it turned into a really interesting conversation about "what is love?" and "does love sometimes need to be tough?" and other such interesting questions.  It resonated a lot with me because only last week I started giving my 9 yo dd more space to explore the way she interacts with her 12 yo brother and I found it a really hard thing to do.  Like a lot of parents I always want to children to be happy and to get on with each other but I began to question myself:

Does my desire for that to be the case stop either of my children from being themselves in that relationship?

And I realised that yes, my desire does stop my children exploring that relationship for themselves and this one example which happened last week was a point in case.  My dd wanted to watch a certain with her Dad and ds didn't want to and was trying to offer alternatives. Dd put her foot down and didn't want to compromise and so ds got upset and came into see me, with dd traipsing behind.  I cuddled ds, heard the story of what had happened from him and then from dd.  My son is an easy-going child so I could easily have got him to do something different with me and sent dd off to watch her film with my husband, but I stopped and wondered:

how long will my son remain easy-going if I let his sister get her own way a lot?
how would that work the other way round?
why am I trying to solve a problem which isn't mine?  it is my ds and dd's issue?
what disservice am I doing to both ds and dd in solving their problems when actually neither of them have explicitly asked me to?

My dd did then sort of ask me to solve this problem but looking at me with her gorgeous puppy-dog brown eyes  she has and this is where my desire to make everything ok for her normally kicks in.  However this time I didn't.

I vocalised that her brother seemed upset and waited.  And waited a bit more (whilst so desperately wanting to fix the problem by giving loads of different scenarios which could work) and watched her struggle with what she could do.  She's used to me fixing the problem for her and that is my "fault" but left to her own devices she eventually agreed to a compromise film.  If she had stuck with her original plan to watch her film, thereby excluding her brother, that would have been an equally valid choice but with differing outcomes.  She will never know and neither will I.  I do know though that my ds appreciated that his sister had come to this decision herself and when asked later he said that it felt more genuine and sincere to him.

Love isn't fixing problems whilst removing someone else's chance to fix their own
Love isn't always relying on one sibling's goodwill whilst allowing another sibling to get their way
Love doesn't mean always liking a child's behaviour
Love is letting a child grow up and learn about their relationships for themselves and letting them struggle with the consequences of their actions/words

Having just written that list it has occurred to me that this resonates with an article I read in the Independent a few weeks ago.  Read Peter Gray's article "Give childhood back  to children" here.  His premise is that children need more time to play to be happy, productive and moral citizens and that our education system is not allowing this through too little play and too much homework.  However he talks about play allowing children to "think creatively, to get along with other people and cooperate effectively, and to control their own impulses and emotions."  He states that in hunter-gatherer societies children are allowed to explore away from adults all day long thereby practising the skills they need to become effective adults themselves.  This is what resonates with me.  Children sorting out their own issues away from adults.

Again another article seems to echo a similar theme here.  As part of an experiment a school in Auckland ripped up the playground rulebook and allowed children to skateboard, climb trees and play with "dangerous" equipment such as old tyres and pipes during playtime.  The incidences of bullying, injuries and and vandalism dropped whilst overall behaviour and concentration of the children increased.  It also resulted in the school needing less adult supervision during playtime.  The Principal said "We want kids to be safe and to look after them, but we end up wrapping them in cotton wool when in fact they should be able to fall over."  Children develop the frontal lobe of their brain when taking risks, meaning they work out consequences so "the great paradox of cotton-woolling children is it's more dangerous in the long-run".

I am wondering whether the development of the frontal lobe also occurs when children are not overly supervised by adults?  Children need to make their own mistakes whether by falling over, knocking someone else over, upsetting a friend or sibling, seeing the consequences of their own actions or words, etc..

Peter Gray states that "play is a means by which [children] acquire social skills and practice fairness and morality."  When children play there is always the ability to stop playing and this power to quit is what makes play "the most democratic of all activities" because this leads to negotiation and compromise if the game is to continue.  This in turn develops empathy (the ability to see the world from someone else's viewpoint) which is essential for the development of friendships, relationships and co-operative work partnerships.

Obviously if and when children need extra help in any of this situations there are wonderful techniques such as those in books like "How to talk so kids will listen", "Parent Effectiveness Training" or in any Non Violent Communication book, which will help us help our children learn valuable conflict resolution techniques. Once learned though we are then free as parents to leave our children alone to sort out their problems themselves, which means not always rushing in to fix any issues they are having, even if we really, really want to!!

Proof of Heaven by Dr Eben Alexander

What is written on the back of the book

Internationally acclaimed neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander always considered himself a man of science. His unwavering belief in evidence-based medicine fuelled a career in the top medical institutions of the world. But all this was set to change.

One morning in 2008 he fell into a coma after suffering a rare form of bacterial meningitis. Scans of his brain revealed massive damage. Death was deemed the most likely outcome. As his family prepared themselves for the worst, something miraculous happened. Dr Alexander's brain went from near total inactivity to awakening. He made a full recovery but he was never the same. He woke certain of the infinite reach of the soul, he was certain of a life beyond death.

In this astonishing book, Dr Alexander shares his experience, pieced together from the notes he made as soon as he was able to write again. Unlike other accounts of near-death experiences, he is able to explain in depth why his brain was incapable of fabricating the journey he experienced. His story is one of profound beauty and inspiration.

Extra Stuff

Here is a big piece that debunks Dr Alexander's claims which is worth a read to get the other side of the story.  Whatever you think about the book though I found it easy to read because it was interesting and I feel it says enough to make one consider a different viewpoint.  Also I felt it linked very well to the Jill Bolte Taylor TED talk (here) that I mentioned in a previous blog post about spirituality (here) where brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor talked about what it was like having a stroke. 

I have put some of the quotes from Dr Alexander's book beside quotes from Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk below to give you a flavour of both.  After reading them if you are interested in buying Dr Alexander's book click here.

Quotes

Dr Alexander	Dr Taylor
p30 - "When you got to a place where there's no sense of time as we experience it in the ordinary world, accurately describing the way it feels is next to impossible.  When it was happening, when I was there, I felt like I (whatever "I" was) had always been there and would always continue to be there." p70 - "In the worlds above, I slowly discovered, to know and be able to think of something is all one needs in order to move toward it...The more familiar I became with the world above, the easier it was to return to it."	"I’m realizing that my hands looked like primitive claws grasping onto the bar [of my cardio glider]. I thought “that’s very peculiar” and I looked down at my body and I thought, “whoa, I’m a weird-looking thing.” And it was as though my consciousness had shifted away from my normal perception of reality, where I’m the person on the machine having the experience, to some esoteric space where I’m witnessing myself having this experience."
p31 - "I wasn't even animal,  I was something before and below all that.  I was simply a lone point of awareness in a timeless red-brown sea."	"But then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful there."
p34 - "Modern neuroscience dictates that the brain gives rise to consciousness - to the ind, to the soul, to the spirit, to whatever you chose to call that invisible, intangible part of us that truly makes us who we are - and I had little doubt that it was correct."	"[The]left hemisphere is a ... place [which] thinks linearly and methodically...[and] thinks in language. It’s that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world - it’s that little voice that says to me, “I am. I am.” And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me “I am,” I become separate. I become a single solid individual separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you. And this was the portion of my brain that I lost on the morning of my stroke."
p40 - "The girl's outfit was simple, but its colours - powder blue, indigo and orange-peach - had the same overwhelming super-vivid aliveness that everything else in the surroundings had.  She looked at me with a look that, if you saw it for a few moments, would make your whole life up to that point worth living, no matter what had happened in it so far...It was something higher, holding all those other kinds of love within itself while at the same time being more genuine and pure than all of them.  Without using any words, she spoke to me.  The message went through me like a wind, and I instantly understood that it was true....  [translated into earthly language], I'd say they ran something like this: "You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever." "You have nothing to fear." "There is nothing you can do wrong." The message flooded me with a vast and crazy sensation of relief.  It was like being handed the rules to a game I'd been playing all my life without even fully understanding it."	"I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be."
p72 - "The primary hurdle that most NDE subjects must jump is not how to re-acclimate to the limitations of the earthly world but how to convey to what the love they experienced out there actually feels like...We can only see what our brain's filter allows through.  The brain - in particular its left-side linguistic.logical part, that which generates out sense of rationality and the feeling of being a sharply defined ego or self - is a barrier to our higher knowledge and experience....we need to recover more of that larger knowledge while living her one earth, while our brains are fully functioning.  Science doesn't contradict what I learnt up there..but far, far tool many people believe it does."	"I immediately drifted right back out into the consciousness, and I affectionately referred to this space as La La Land. But it was beautiful there. Imagine what it would be like to be totally disconnected from your brain chatter that connects you to the external world. So here I am in this space and any stress related to my, to my job, it was gone. And I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and the many stressors related to any of those, they were gone. I felt a sense of peacefulness. And imagine what it would feel like to lose 37 years of emotional baggage! I felt euphoria. Euphoria was beautiful"
p82 - "To say that there is still a chasm between our current scientific understanding of the universe and the truth  as I saw it is a considerable underestimate...  The physical side of the universe is a speck of dust compared to the invisible and spiritual part.  I believe that [spiritual] is a word that we cannot afford to leave out [of a scientific conversation]."	"And I look down at my arm and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can’t define where I begin and where I end. Because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall. And all I could detect was this energy. Energy."
p95 - "Even though I had forgotten my life down [on earth], I had remembered who I really and truly was out there.  I was a citizen of a universe staggering in its vastness and complexity, and ruled entirely by love."	"I’m still alive and I have found Nirvana. And if I have found Nirvana and I’m still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana.” I picture a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at any time. And that they could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace. And then I realized what a tremendous gift this experience could be, what a stroke of insight this could be to how we live our lives."
p102 - "descricbing what it felt like is challenging in the extreme, thanks to the bottleneck of linear langauge tht we force everything through here on earth, and the general flattening of experience that happens where we're in the body." p117 - "My mind - my real self - was squeezing its way back into the all too tight and limiting suit of physical existence, with its spatio-temporal bounds, its linear thought, and its limitations to verbal communication"	"Because I could not identify the position of my body in space, I felt enormous and expensive, like a genie just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through the sea of silent euphoria. Harmonic. I remember thinking there’s no way I would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body."
p36 - "I adored that simplicity - the absolute honesty and cleanness of science.  I respected that it left no room for fantasy or for sloppy thinking,... This approach left little room for the soul and the spirit, for the continuing existence of a personality after the brain that supported it stopped functioning," p131 - "The sense of being ... above linear time - of being above everything...feeling the intensity of unconditonal love."	"We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are — I am — the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you."
p150 - "On the subatomic level, however, this universe of seperate objects turns out to be a complete illusion...every object in the physical universse is inteimately conneced weith everyth other ibject. Infact, there are really no "objects" in the world at all , only virations of energy, and relationships"	"And I look down at my arm and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can’t define where I begin and where I end. Because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall. And all I could detect was this energy. Energy."
p154 - "To truly study the universe on a deep lvel, we must acknowledge the fundamental role of consciousness in painting realist...Fathers of the field of quantum mechanics realised it is impossible to seperate the experiemnter from the experiment, and it explain reality without consciouness"	"riding in an ambulance I curl up into a little fetal ball. And just like a balloon with the last bit of air just, just right out of the balloon I felt my energy lift and I felt my spirit surrender. And in that moment I knew that I was no longer the choreographer of my life. And either the doctors rescue my body and give me a second chance at life or this was perhaps my moment of transition."

Losing Your Pounds of Pain and The Secret

Well I have finished two of my books for this year - the Horse Boy and Losing Your Pounds of Pain and am feeling rather pleased with myself.  This blog entry is about the second book (I may return to the Horse Boy some other time.)  It is a book I bought a long time ago and only realised when I added it to my list of books to read that was written by my favourite Oracle card producer Dorren Virtue.  As you an see to the left I have 10 packs of her cards as opposed to 3 that aren't and even one of those was produced by her husband and so is sort of the same.










They are beautiful cards though all of them as you can see here.  These cards are from my favourite pack Mermaids and Dolphin Oracle Cards.  Anyway if you want to see more of her stuff go and see her Amazon page here.

Anyway back to the book.  It is about breaking the link between abuse, stress and overeating.  It was a really interesting read even though it concentrates a lot on binge eaters which I don't really class myself as.  It still had lots of helpful hints for losing weight and why we carry the weight we do.  The basic premise is that when you release emotional pain from your formative years, your appetite normalises because you aren't filling an emotional void with food.  We are designed to be light in body and spirit and food is meant to be fuel for daily energy and nothing more.  If we are searching for a sense of self, peace of mind and self-acceptance and cannot find them because of past pain then this can lead to over-eating or other unhealthy habits e.g. addictive behaviours or depression.  There is the need to transform FATS - fear, angers, tension and shame (leading to over-eating), into FATS - forgiveness, acceptance, trust of self (nice acronym.)

A very interesting idea she same up with was when we dismiss any childhood pain as not really a big deal, put your own child in the same situation and see how you feel about them being treated the same way you were.  This acknowledges that intellectually remembering someone (or remembering something from an adult perspective) is not the same as emotionally remembering something.   I have done this in the past and when I replaced me with Indie at the same age my 'not a big deal' became a much bigger deal than I thought.  This type of visualisation really works.

When you acknowledge that there are reasons for your addictive behaviour it then becomes easier to take control and realise that the childhood pain needs to be felt and let go of.  There is talk of dream journals, meditation, affirmations, taking note of any memory that keeps recurring as something that needs looking at, stopping before engaging in the unhealthy behaviour, exercising every day even if only for 15 minutes.

"Treat your body and soul with compassion and kindness.  Love that little child inside of you and be understanding when she occasionally falters."  - you cannot argue with that as an idea.  Anyway because of this book I have added a whole load of affirmations to my computer screen and because of watching The Secret I have added a wish-list screen saver as well high-lighting some of the things I want in the world.  Neither the affirmations nor the screen are very clear although you can see the gorgeous feet circle picture at the top of the screen which always reminds me of the ubuntu story.  Unfortunately I believe the ubuntu story is an urban myth but I will repeat it here anyway because it is such a lovely idea.




An anthropologist proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe   He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told the kids that whoever got there first won the fruits   When he told them to run they all took each others hands and ran together  then sat together enjoying the fruit.  When he asked them why they had run like that as one could have had all the fruits for himself they said "ubuntu."  In Xhosa culture ubuntu means "I am because we are."

For me this picture therefore signifies world peace and the desire that we all have compassion for ourselves and all other beings.  The other pictures are all things I would like in my life.  I will see if any of this makes any difference and let you know.  

I know there are many people out there who think that films and books like 'The Secret' are codswallop but I like some of the ideas in it and it has already helped my dd be more positive and see that it makes a difference so that makes it all worthwhile.

Bagels, boots, books and bathing

Bathing doesn't really cover the swimming stuff I am going to be trying to do over the next few weeks but I liked the alliteration of it all.  So I will start with the Total Immersion (TI) book - 3rd book down in the photo (link to Amazon for a copy at the side).  I have read the first 3 chapters of the book and have looked at the first few drills to start my total immersion swimming practice.  Here is a video that shows what I am heading for in the first few basic drills but here is the one that shows the 'sweet spot' which I will be trying to find on Monday when I go swimming.  I will be trying to practice it on both sides.
So the theory behind why I need to be doing all this is basically we need to reshape our bodies to be able to swim better.  It seems the 80/20 principle can be used here where the mechanisms of the stroke bring 80% of the performance whereas only 20% comes from the fitness of the swimmer.  TI advocates that your arm stroke has very limited impact on how fast you move through the water due to the fact that water is 1000 times denser than air thereby throwing a huge drag force against anyone who doesn't know the tricks of becoming 'slippery' or streamlined.  Cutting drag by improving body position is therefore the most important thing to do (as nautical engineers try to do with boats.)  This can be achieved by learning to glide as far as possible after each stroke by balancing your body correctly in the water, making your body longer in the water and learning to swim on your side (hence the sweet spot drill to learn to balance on both sides in the water.)  I'll try and let you know how it goes!!!  I am very happy however that I have read a third of the book already.
I have also nearly finished the Horse Boy (2nd book down and link to Amazon at the side) and it is a brilliant book which I would highly recommend.  It is about an autistic boy called Rowan who has an affinity for horses and how his Dad takes him to see some shamans in Mongolia to try and help with his autistic behaviours.  They filmed the whole trip so I am going to try and watch the film once I have finished the book.  There is a trailer here if you are interested.  So I am pleased that I have nearly finished this book and will be carrying on reading the Harville Hendrix one "Getting the Love You want" once I have finished.

I have finished my first craft project which I am very happy about.  I adapted a pattern I found on Etsy by Holland Designs and made these feet warmer/sock/crochet shoe things.  They are very comfy and warm and I am very pleased with them even if I do say so myself!!!  Follow this link to see some of Holland Designs here.  I have bought most of the shoe patterns and will definitely be crocheting some more soon.

And lastly but not least-ly bagels.  Dave made some bagels yesterday and I had to share how amazing they were.  So much nicer than the bagels you get in the shop so much so that I ate 3 last night for tea!! Here are my lovely children modelling said bagels for you.  I think Indie might have a career in comedy modelling!!!

books, exercise - oh dear I have too much stuff to read and links to watch!!!

 After posting my last blog entry on facebook a discussion started about the movnat and other such movement stuff.  I thought I would therefore compose another blog entry with all the videos and stuff that I have found over the years about exercise, wild swimming, barefoot running, etc.  This prompted me to go and track down all the books I have about all these things.  However I realised that I had too many books so I just gathered together a few that I have purchased and never read (or started reading but never got very far!!)  Here are the main ones which are relevant to the links I am going to put here and are ones that are probably going to stay off the shelf and get read sometime soon (maybe!)

Whilst looking for the above books I found these other books that are going to be added to my books-I-need-to-read pile which has now gone beyond the 12 I said I was going to read this year - oh dear!!  Here are the ones I had already put on the list:
1. the moneyless manifesto - can be read here for free
2. the moneyless man
3. adapt: why success always starts with failure - read a review here
4. mindfulness for life - read about it here
5. six weeks to superhealth - see here
6. receiving love: letting yourself be loved will transform your relationship - would recommend any of his books - read about Harville Hendrix here
7. how to be an adult in relationship: the five keys to mindful loving - read about the author here

Anyway here are some links to the various physical things that I have found over the years:
Movnat is a physical education and fitness system based on training the full range of natural human movement abilities.  Here is the movnat youtube channel where there are lots of videos about movnat movements.  Here is a 48 minute talk by the founder of movnat and there are lots of other videos on you tube about this like this one or this one or this list.  Just search and you will find more.

A similar methodology is primal movement which is an approach to human movement that prioritises basic, natural movement.  Here are four workouts: workout 1 - the warm up, workout 2 - mobility and crawling, workout 3 - mirroring and interaction and workout 4 - putting it all together.  

And again here is an article about similar "our bodies have forgotten the movements we used to do" type idea.  Here is a list of the seven primal movements we don't do enough of any more - squat, lunge, push, pull, bend, twist and gait - with associated workout advice.

If you like kettlebells here is a primal movement kettlebell workout.  Here is a primal outdoor circuit done by a man with no top on to show off his abs!!

The Ready, Set, Go! book pictured above talks about a sprint 8 idea and the research behind it but basically  as mentioned here, Sprint 8 cardio exercise creates the maximal release of exercise-induced growth hormone by doing 20 minutes of exercise in a certain way three times a week.   This 20-minute protocol consists of a 3-minute walking warm up and a 2-minute walking cool down. The rest is 90 seconds of "active recovery" walking in between eight hard and fast 30-second cardio sprints.  The key is that the 30-sec cardio sprints have to be flat out otherwise you aren't doing it right.  If you can keep going after those 30 seconds at the same pace you need to be going faster.  This sprint 8 protocol can be done using any cardio exercise eg. swimming, rowing, knee-highs, you name it.

The Total Immersion is about learning a new way of swimming especially useful for outdoor swimming but also invaluable for any freestyle swimmer.  See a good description of what it is about here where you get to see a good example of the total immersion technique alongside a traditional freestyle swimming stroke.  I haven't read this book so will get back to you when I have!!  I do need to improve my freestyle stroke so definitely on my list of books to read.  [how many am I up to now? 16?]  There are other decent videos here and here and here that explain more and from other's perspectives.  It seems that these are well worth looking at if you are interested in swimming and you might be able to glean enough from the total immersion you tube channel to really help if this is your thing.  The trick seems to be to disturb the water less and a similar thing with Chi Running is to use gravity rather than battle against it.

The Chi Running book is something I bought before I bought my vibram barefoot running shoes.  Again I haven't read it other than skimming the pages although I did watch the following videos and try and implement some of the techniques in normal trainers.  Here is an interview with the Chi Running book Danny Dreyer and here is a video explaining the chi running technique and here is another one with diagrams.  There are other videos about barefoot running out there as well.  Like this one that gives you a brilliant illustration of changing foot fall to ball rather than heel and then changing posture.  There are some good drills in that video and some other ones in this video around the 2 minute mark.
So there is a bit about the stuff I have looked at over the years to do with improving the way my body works.  I think this has given me a kick start to look again at the sprint 8 as part of the movnat and primal body stuff.  Those different techniques seem to compliment each other as does the barefoot running and total immersion swimming.  So here's to a more natural body moving 2013.  [two posts in two days - who knew I could manage that!!!!]

New Year's Resolutions - paleo, movnat, crafts, books, super better and more

I had every good intention of keeping this blog up-to-date over the last year but it just didn't happen.  I am now in a dilemma as to what to do with it to be honest.  It was here for me to keep track on my Permaculture Diploma progress but to be honest I don't even know if I am going to try and get my Diploma anyway.  So I am thinking of just keeping it going as my ramblings about life and where I am heading on my own personal journey.  This journey includes permaculture so that means I can keep the blog title as is and just include other stuff along the way I suppose.

My other dilemma is that my blog doesn't have a specific purpose really such Attic 24's blog which shares her craft techniques and is well worth a visit if you want to do cool crochet things or my Dad's blog which shares his sermons.  My blog is much more stuff that I am doing whilst also teaching me about how to write a blog and add widgets onto the side like I have done here with the flickr pictures and on the left with the google ads widget.  So other than me writing about what I am doing and why and maybe sharing interesting things I have learnt along the way there isn't much more that that really.

Anyway the CKs (my collective name for me, my hubbie Dave and my 2 kids) have had a quiet festive season with a few days seeing family and the rest of the time just chilling about the house.  It was our first Xmas with a real tree which we are now deciding whether to keep for next year or chop and burn in our woodburning stove.

Dave got a planner/thicknesser for Xmas and is busily thinking up things to do with it.  He is designing some furniture for our new kitchen which is due to be started in March - woohoo!! Here is his first piece of planed/thicknessed wood.

Over the last 3 months I have been attending a local Rosemary Conley class.  It is the only weight loss class I would go to because it actually includes a fitness class as part of the fee.  I wanted a kick start to get fitter and have done this class before.  I am combining this with some paleo exercise ideas such as the sprint to lose weight idea which I have put to good use over the last few months using my treadmill and rowing machine.  I have also been looking into natural movement as a way to keep my body in balance.  I would love to do their training course in London in May but will probably just keep watching the you tube videos and incorporating some of the stuff into my every day life.  Chopping wood and moving it around for the fire has really helped but would love to do more.  I am still doing shovel glove movements with my sledgehammer whenever I remember and am sure this is having a positive effect on my muscle density and general fitness levels.  Going to have to buy Dave a sledge hammer of his own now though because he used mine for breaking up tree stumps and broke it (see above.)  I can still use it for my exercises though.  I am also still hula hooping although at the moment there isn't anywhere I can easily practice that is big enough.  The plan is to change the spare room into a gym/exercise room which will give me enough space to hoop to my hearts content.  This is a work in progress though but is getting there as Dave built these new shelves for me to put a TV/DVD player on and to store weights etc (see below in between the rainbow blinds.)  We are getting there slowly.

I have managed to lose half a stone with the Rosemary Conley class but more interesting (and satisfying to me) is that I have lost 3 to 4 inches from my waist, hips and widest parts (as designated by Rosemary Conley.)  One of the fab things that you get when you join a Rosemary Conley class is this tape measure seen here with these fun clips.  You get a big clip which is your starting measurement and then you move the corresponding coloured little clip when you re-measure yourself.  It gives you a fantastic indication of where you have come from size wise and is a much better evidence I think of increased fitness levels and weight lose (via inches) than purely the scales.  You can get one of there magic measures direct from Rosemary Conley here for £3.50.

Anyway I thought I would share my New Year's Resolutions here as another gauge to see how well I do keeping on top of the things I am trying to do.  I have decided to break it down this year so that I have more of a quantifiable set of resolutions so here goes:

Finish 10 crafty projects - with the emphasise here on finish.  I probably have more than 10 unfinished crafty projects already on the go so this should be an easy one to achieve if I can actually keep on top of it.
(To the left is the start of my skywalker shawl that I am doing via one of the craftsy online classes.  These people are well worth a look as they have some great cheap online classes here and you can get money off if you like them via the knitting club on facebook here.)

Read 12 books (and don't buy any more until I have finished at least 12 of the ones I already have.)  Again I probably have at least 12 books I bought this year that I haven't read as yet so again this could be quite easy if I actually manage to stick to it.  I am thinking that I need to pick the 12 books and put them on a shelf somewhere to remind myself that that is my task.

Reach a healthy BMI score which I reckon for my height is 154 pounds which is 11 stone.  Well I am 12 and a half now so that should be doable although a challenge for a chocolate loving, cake loving foody like me but it is always nice to have something to aim for and I told you all now so I will be more likely to stick to it.  I am also using the Super Better website to help me here.  This is well worth a look for anyone who tends to procrastinate or who likes goal setting.  You can set anything as your super better goal and add your own 'bad guys' (things that stop you achieving your goal), add your own 'allies' (friends or family who will help you) and there are quests and boosts and stuff much like in a computer game to help you along the way.  The lady who designed it gives a great TED talk here to explain why she created it and it is free so all good.

I then have a whole set of puzzles that I got years ago as part of one of those weekly subscription magazine deals and I haven't even opened most of them.  I resolve to sort them out so I can keep the ones I want to use as part of my Maths tutoring business and I will get rid of the rest.

There are then other vague ideas like buy a woodland, get the house sorted, de-clutter more, set up my Maths tutoring business, etc., etc., etc. but I will leave those for another blog post I reckon.

Anyway here's to 2013!!