Saying goodbye to the old and surrendering to the flow.

 The last few months of 2023 were intense to say the least. I experienced so many different emotions and had some interesting experiences. 

My body has been doing strange things. I have been told this happens during the menopausal transition and boy, did it kick my ass. I wondered whose body this is? What used to work and help with weight, stress and general health just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. Pushing too hard just isn't working and I am tired. 

I have had to surrender and trust more than I ever have before. The BIG lesson of trust has been a doozie to say the least.

How does one surrender after a lifetime of discipline and structure. I really felt like I was being tested. My body was asking for time to adjust, time to rest and time to heal. I had some trouble listening. I rely on exercise to help me feel better and relieve stress. I was not allowed to exercise for 6 weeks and it was tough. I had to create a new routine and I discovered that I was not very good or disciplined in doing so. I missed not exercising and at the same time felt relief that I did not have to take 2 hours out of every day to do so. I have to say goodbye to the idea of perfection.

I told you my emotions were mixed and all over the place. You would think that I would use that time constructively. In my opinion, I did not. (and now looking back, I still accomplished quite a bit) And I am reminded that I am really hard on myself and clarity of my achievements is not a strong suit. It comes from a history of always fighting and striving to be and do better and, I must admit, the belief that I am not enough. Those inner child wounds do seem to show themselves when we pay attention and we get to heal them and soothe our inner child. I did get to do some great work in this area in 2023. (grateful) ☺️ 

Now to get back on track...

I felt disconnected from source and my intuition (I wasn't really but it sure felt like it) I felt like my body had betrayed me and I discovered that I actually betrayed my body. It has been working so hard for me to keep me healthy and be the best that it can be regardless of my daily mental negative onslaughts. I was not kind to myself or my body and I know many of you can relate to that. Why do we do that?

Loving my body unconditionally is my new goal. I am waking up with more gratitude and in awe of the 100 trillion cells that work tirelessly and beautifully within this expression that is me.

It has dawned on me that I need to go with the flow of my body and nature. It is winter here now and thus hibernation is actually the natural status. I am sleeping a lot longer and needing more rest and this did cause me some stress initially. 

 I did a healing journey (mushrooms) and experienced major releases and clearings, which takes a lot of energy and time to integrate. I am constantly being shown that gentleness, surrender and trust is needed now more than ever. The world is in turmoil and I know that it is important for us as healers to be strong, clear and balanced. Taking the time to rest and restore is very important and necessary for the wellbeing of all. (yet another well learned lesson)

After Christmas an opportunistic virus surfaced and challenged my Immune system. I was like: "what the hell?"....I guess if we do not listen and slow down enough the Universe and our body will create a situation that forces us to do so. (I always tell my clients this)  I was obviously still in the old habit of pushing and expecting to be further along my healing and integration journey than I was.  Those old habits have a way of showing themselves and we get the opportunity to stare them in the face and choose to let them go or not. Time to say goodbye to you dear habit!

Fortunately the new year according to the Chinese calendar starts in February and it gives me the rest of this month to integrate and fully recover. I am listening and resting when my body calls for it. I am not judging myself for sleeping 9-10 hours a night. I know this too shall pass and the work will get done.

I am using this time to do some exercises in clearing out mental clutter and physical clutter. I do wish to enter this new year with more clarity and love.

I love reflecting on beliefs that no longer serve me and what I wish to focus on and bring into the new year. Who do I want to be and how do I wish to show up for myself and my community? How do I wish to show up in my business. What do I wish to accomplish with Spirit this year to help heal and bring more love and peace to humanity and earth?

This is going to be an amazing year and I am finally ready to see and be seen. I am willing and ready to share all my gifts with the world and to create the Love and wholeness I wish for all. I am practicing to stay in the NOW.  I am open to receive. I am curious and willing to learn. I know that I know nothing. I surrender to the flow. I surrender control! (this is huge for me)

What are you ready to create this year? What is your dream? What are you willing to give up to grow?

Long term Impact of Childhood trauma...

 

Long-Term Impact of Childhood Trauma Explained

Pauline Anderson

May 02, 2023

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/991452?ecd=mkm_ret_230506_mscpmrk_psych_anxiety&uac=149193PV&impID=5403082#vp_1

Dysregulated stress systems may help explain why childhood trauma has such a dramatic and enduring psychiatric impact, new research suggests.

"We already knew childhood trauma is associated with the later development of depressive and anxiety disorders, but it's been unclear what makes sufferers of early trauma more likely to develop these psychiatric conditions," study investigator Erika Kuzminskaite, PhD candidate, Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam University Medical Center (UMC), the Netherlands, told Medscape Medical News.

"The evidence now points to unbalanced stress systems as a possible cause of this vulnerability, and now the most important question is, how we can develop preventive interventions," she added.

The findings were presented at the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) 2023.

Elevated Cortisol, Inflammation 

The study included 2,779 adults from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA). Two thirds of participants were female.

Participants retrospectively reported childhood trauma, defined as emotional, physical, or sexual abuse or emotional or physical neglect, before the age of 18 years. Severe trauma was defined as multiple types or increased frequency of abuse.

Of the total cohort, 48% reported experiencing some childhood trauma ― 21% reported severe trauma, 27% reported mild trauma, and 42% reported no childhood trauma.

Among those with trauma, 89% had a current or remitted anxiety or depressive disorder, and 11% had no psychiatric sequelae. Among participants who reported no trauma, 68% had a current or remitted disorder, and 32% had no psychiatric disorders.

At baseline, researchers assessed markers of major bodily stress systems, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the immune-inflammatory system, and the autonomic nervous system (ANS). They examined these markers separately and cumulatively.

In one model, investigators found that levels of cortisol and inflammation were significantly elevated in those with severe childhood trauma compared to those with no childhood trauma. The effects were largest for the cumulative markers for HPA-axis, inflammation, and all stress system markers (Cohen's d = 0.23, 0.12, and 0.25, respectively). There was no association with ANS markers.

The results were partially explained by lifestyle, said Kuzminskaite, who noted that people with severe childhood trauma tend to have a higher body mass index, smoke more, and to have other unhealthy habits that may represent a "coping" mechanism for trauma.

Those who experienced childhood trauma also have higher rates of other disorders, including asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Kuzminskaite also noted that people with childhood trauma have at least double the risk of cancer in later life.

When researchers adjusted for lifestyle factors and chronic conditions, the association for cortisol was reduced and that for inflammation disappeared. However, the cumulative inflammatory markers remained significant.

Another model examined lipopolysaccharide-stimulated (LPS) immune-inflammatory markers by childhood trauma severity. This provides a more "dynamic" measure of stress systems than looking only at static circulating levels in the blood, as was done in the first model, said Kuzminskaite.

"These levels should theoretically be more affected by experiences such as childhood trauma and they are also less sensitive to lifestyle."

Here, researchers found significant positive associations with childhood trauma, especially severe trauma, after adjusting for lifestyle and health-related covariates (cumulative index d = 0.19).

"Almost all people with childhood trauma, especially severe trauma, had LPS-stimulated cytokines upregulated," said Kuzminskaite. "So again, there is this dysregulation of immune system functioning in these subjects."

And again, the strongest effect was for the cumulative index of all cytokines, she said.

Personalized Interventions 

Kuzminskaite noted the importance of learning the impact of early trauma on stress responses. "The goal is to eventually have personalized interventions for people with depression or anxiety related to childhood trauma, or even preventative interventions. If we know, for example, something is going wrong with a patient's stress systems, we can suggest some therapeutic targets."

Investigators in Amsterdam are examining the efficacy of mifepristone, which blocks progesterone and is used along with misoprostol for medication abortions and to treat high blood sugar. "The drug is supposed to reset the stress system functioning," said Kuzminskaite.

It's still important to target unhealthy lifestyle habits "that are really impacting the functioning of the stress systems," she said. Lifestyle interventions could improve the efficacy of treatments for depression, for example, she added.

Commenting for Medscape Medical News, Luana Marques, PhD, associate professor, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, said such research is important.

"It reveals the potentially extensive and long-lasting impact of childhood trauma on functioning. The findings underscore the importance of equipping at-risk and trauma-exposed youth with evidence-based skills for managing stress," she said.

No conflicts of interest were reported.

Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) Conference 2022: Abstract 78. Presented April 14, 2022.

Trauma, longevity and health

Recently Andrew Pelequin wrote this interesting article in the Longevity Journal. I may not agree that this is true in all cases as I have experienced many of the childhood traumas mentioned in the article and have not suffered from the many consequences...HOWEVER, I have had extensive work in the trauma release department through energy balancing, counseling, meditation and lots of deep internal work to let go and heal these traumas as I am so very grateful that I chose to go on the healing journey and dive deeply into what and why I think, act, speak and behave the way that I do.

I investigate every response or trigger I experience and see it as an opportunity to heal.

I am by no means perfect as I believe healing is still part of my journey within and health is what I chose on a daily basis. Some days I hit the goal and some days I miss and on those days I give myself grace and kindness.

I hope you find this article as interesting and thought provoking as I did.

Seek help when you need it. IT is NOT a sign of weakness. It is a sign of immense courage and it is a BIG step in taking your power back and choosing health and wellbeing for yourself and your circle of life. 

In one study conducted by the CDC of nearly 14,000 adults [1], more than 50% had at least one type of childhood trauma (or Adverse Childhood Experience, a.k.a. ACE), while more than 25% reported more than two types of trauma.

According to the study, there were seven types of trauma:

1. Physical abuse
2. Sexual abuse
3. Psychological abuse
4. Living with members of the household who were drug addicts, alcoholics, or substance abusers
5. Witnesses violence against their mother
6. Living with members of the household who were ever incarcerated
7. Living with members of the household who suffered from mental illness or were suicidal

People who had experience multiple types of traumas during their childhood experienced a number of seriously negative long-term effects, including:

• Higher alcoholism risks
• Higher drug abuse risks
• Higher depression rates
• Higher suicide attempt rates
• Higher rates of STDs
• Severe obesity and reduction in physical activity
• Higher rates of adult diseases, including liver disease, chronic lung disease, cancer, skeletal fractures, and heart disease

All of these contribute to accelerated biological aging, leading to the breakdown of the body at a much faster rate than would be expected of the chronological age of those in the study.

Another meta-analysis from 2020 [2] further reinforced the theory that “early life adversity” (in the form of those types of trauma listed above) led to accelerated biological aging.

Combing through data from more than 50 studies, the meta-analysis examined various aspects of biological aging that were caused by trauma, including:

• Telomere shortening
• Increased DNA methylation age
• Cortical thinning
• Reduced functional connectivity between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex
• Accelerated pubertal timing (among children going through puberty)

These are concrete biomarkers that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that trauma can contribute to increased biological aging.

It’s important to understand that many of these things begin to show up during adolescence and young adulthood, sometimes even as early as childhood. As the study’s senior author said in an interview [3], “The fact that we see such consistent evidence for faster aging at such a young age suggests that the biological mechanisms that contribute to health disparities are set in motion very early in life. This means that efforts to prevent these health disparities must also begin during childhood.”

How to Deal With Your Trauma

The American Psychological Association [4] offers some effective strategies for helping you (and your children, if they have been exposed to adverse childhood experiences) cope with trauma you may have suffered in response to traumatic events.

Be patient. Your body can’t heal from mental or psychological wounds any faster than from physical wounds. On the contrary, traumatic events may taken even longer to heal from. Give yourself time and space to recover, and be patient if recovery doesn’t happen overnight.

Face what you’re feeling. Hiding from or ignoring the feelings won’t make them go away; you’ll just end up leaning on unhealthy coping and ignoring mechanisms. A bit of avoidance is normal, but don’t let it go on too long or it will begin to affect your life in far greater ways than the trauma itself.

Get help. Whatever you’re going through, you need to know you can’t heal alone. Just like you’d go to a doctor for a physical wound, you need to seek professional help for the wound to your psyche. Talk to a therapist, counselor, psychologist, or psychiatrist.

Lean on your friends and family. Fight the urge to withdraw and isolate; that’ll only make things worse. Instead, rely on your social connections for support during the difficult time.

Traumatic events don’t have to affect your longevity or ruin your life. The damage they cause can be temporary; it’s up to you to take the steps that will lead you down the path forward to recovery, both in body and mind.

Regulate the GUT microbiome with Long-term deep meditation

I love this article from News-Medical life sciences by Emily Henderson B.Sc

It is so wonderful that there is so much research going into meditation and that It is becoming more mainstream. I have loved meditation for years and practice it daily. It helps calm the mind and body and now we have regulation of the gut microbiome that supports immunity and better health.

Long-term deep meditation may help to regulate the gut microbiome for better health

 Regular deep meditation, practiced for several years, may help to regulate the gut microbiome and potentially lower the risks of physical and mental ill health, finds a small comparative study published in the open access journal General Psychiatry.

The gut microbes found in a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks differed substantially from those of their secular neighbors, and have been linked to a lower risk of anxiety, depression, and cardiovascular disease.

Research shows that the gut microbiome can affect mood and behavior through the gut–brain axis. This includes the body's immune response, hormonal signaling, stress response and the vagus nerve-;the main component of the parasympathetic nervous system, which oversees an array of crucial bodily functions.

The significance of the group and specimen design is that these deep-thinking Tibetan monks can serve as representatives of some deeper meditations. Although the number of samples is small, they are rare because of their geographical location.

Meditation is increasingly being used to help treat mental health disorders, such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, traumatic stress, and eating disorders as well as chronic pain. But it's not clear if it might also be able to alter the composition of the gut microbiome, say the researchers.

In a bid to find out, the researchers analyzed the stool and blood samples of 37 Tibetan Buddhist monks from three temples and 19 secular residents in the neighboring areas.

Tibetan Buddhist meditation originates from the ancient Indian medical system known as Ayurveda, and is a form of psychological training, say the researchers. The monks in this study had been practicing it for at least 2 hours a day for between 3 and 30 years.

None of the participants had used agents that can alter the volume and diversity of gut microbes: antibiotics; probiotics; prebiotics; or antifungal drugs in the preceding 3 months.

Both groups were matched for age, blood pressure, heart rate, and diet.

Stool sample analysis revealed significant differences in the diversity and volume of microbes between the monks and their neighbors.

Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes species were dominant in both groups, as would be expected. But Bacteroidetes were significantly enriched in the monks' stool samples (29% vs 4%), which also contained abundant Prevotella (42% vs 6%) and a high volume of Megamonas and Faecalibacterium.

"Collectively, several bacteria enriched in the meditation group [have been] associated with the alleviation of mental illness, suggesting that meditation can influence certain bacteria that may have a role in mental health," write the researchers.

These include Prevotella, Bacteroidetes, Megamonas and Faecalibacterium species, the previously published research suggests.

The researchers then applied an advanced analytical technique to predict which chemical processes the microbes might be influencing. This indicated that several protective anti-inflammatory pathways, in addition to metabolism-;the conversion of food into energy-;were enhanced in the meditation people.

Finally, blood sample analysis showed that levels of agents associated with a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease, including total cholesterol and apolipoprotein B, were significantly lower in the monks than in their secular neighbors by their functional analysis with the gut microbes.

Although a comparative study, it is observational and the numbers of participants were small, all male, and lived at high altitude, making it difficult to draw any firm or generalizable conclusions. And the potential health implications could only be inferred from previously published research.

But based on their findings, the researchers suggest that the role of meditation in helping to prevent or treat psychosomatic illness definitely merits further research.

And they conclude: "These results suggest that long-term deep meditation may have a beneficial effect on gut microbiota, enabling the body to maintain an optimal state of health."

Why are you not healing?

 Recently Dr Mark Hyman posted this on his Instagram...

"Most people don't talk about how your spirit, emotional health, your beliefs can actually help determine so much about your health.

Your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your beliefs literally communicate with every aspect of your biology, every second."                      ~ Dr Mark Hyman

If you believe and deeply trust that a certain treatment, supplement etc will not help then it won't and if you believe it will, then you are on your way to better health.

The placebo effect is real. Many people do not realize how powerful their minds are and how it basically conditions every aspect of their lives and how they respond to the world.

Our emotions are such an important factor of healing. So many different emotions get stored in the body. Fear in the kidneys, grief in the lungs and pain in the heart. Low self esteem in the gut/stomach area and stress in our adrenals, to mention just a few organ associations. It is vital to deal with trauma when it occurs, to feel all the feelings and investigate the thoughts and beliefs you have and form around events in your life because they become the lens through which you see the world and that shift in energy is what you continue to attract to your world. And you judge everyone and everything from this new viewpoint, that was created by your trauma.  Your perceptions are a mirror of your internal emotions, thoughts and beliefs.

What you believe about yourself, your world and others helps create a world in which that belief system gets validated. You have the power to change your beliefs and your thoughts. It takes effort at first because we have become accustomed to our thoughts running us instead of us running our thoughts and the same goes for our emotions. We also live our lives so attached to our beliefs. They change so much over a lifetime that it seems crazy to become attached to them.

We tend to respond emotionally and thoughtlessly to a lot of the situations in our life without paying attention to the impact it has on our being.

It is time to consider healing your wounds, becoming the master of your mind and truly investigating where your beliefs come from. You may discover that they aren't yours at all (the beliefs, thoughts) but someone else's that you decided to own and live your life as if they are factually yours and real.

There are many modalities available to help you heal your emotions, take charge of your thoughts and shift your beliefs, so that they are more in harmony with your spirit. I invite you to start investigating what may be the best modality to help you become the beautiful, healthy and happy being you deserve. It is your birthright to be abundant, healthy, happy and to share that with the world.

I love meditating and doing my own self healing and energy balancing and I practice mindfulness so that I may find the emotions that are locked in my system as well as the thoughts and beliefs that have formed around them. I do this so that I can heal and be more loving and caring and have more clarity, so that I don't spew my pain all over the world and cause more trauma for anyone else.

You may not be healing a persistent issue due to the fact that you have some underlying emotional trauma or thoughts and beliefs that are prohibiting the total release of energy there. Some people have identified themselves with their diagnosis and/or they may be receiving attention that they desperately seek and desire and therefore they continue to hold unto the ailment. (these are some possibilities)

Many of the reasons why we don't heal are things we don't want to look at or change.

Ask yourself, am I willing to heal, change and let go of that which has brought me to the imbalance, this particular point in my health, or not?

It takes courage to say yes and then act. And it is with courage that we change our lives, our health, our thoughts, our beliefs and eventually our world. Be courageous.

www.naturalhelathhaven.net