Building Bridges Through Loss: Three/Aging, Vulnerability, and Activism

My lovely mouser, Prince Meadowlark, who has been with me for sixteen years, recently reminded me of aging’s toll on the four-leggeds of the world.  I’m used to thinking about the human experience of aging, ageism, and vulnerability, but his current challenges with sight and mobility remind me that animals too experience the erosion of strength and sensory acuity that leads to feelings of helplessness. Animals, however, require our expanded sensitivity to their well being and suffering.  Beyond a plaintive meow, this wonderful companion cannot describe his fears, his heartaches, his frustrations over the circumstances robbing him of agency, and so, as his designated person, it is on me to interpret his needs, to meet these as best I can, and to comfort him when his experiences prove frustrating.

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Seasonal Blues – The Cultural Connection

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the ACEP website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

This time of year, many of us feel the anguish of being alone, not because our solitude is painful or undesirable or the result of accident rather than choice, but because our materialistic, ad-driven culture emphasizes family connections in its hard-sell of goods that bespeak waste, environmental degradation, and the conflation of need and desire.  Linking these goods to a return of Light is an irony hard to miss.  The altruism of giving, something naturally linked to the celebratory feelings of Illumination and Rebirth, is nowhere more evident than it is at this time of year despite the commercialization of our lives.  Tapping can help to calm our frustration and helplessness in the face of rampant consumerism and at the same time help us to feel connected to the energies of Regeneration that are so potent as we begin our slow journey into
Winter.

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Learning to Love Your Feet

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the ACEP website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

When my grandmother was in her late eighties and her annual appointment with our family doctor loomed, she always made sure she was wearing slip-on shoes, the easier to display her feet and so begin their conversation about her current state of well being and quality of life.  Taking care of our feet through exercise and bodymind health practices is paramount if we want to be as autonomous as possible as we age.  In spite of the vital importance of foot care, I’ve met many people who hate their feet, don’t like to touch them, and cram them into shoes that do not fit because they believe style is more important than foot mobility and comfort.  We may be able to get away with a little foot abuse when we are young, but as we age, our feet become more and more important to our overall well being.  Tapping to overcome our feet prejudices and even podophobia, an intense fear of feet, helps us to positively relate to our feet and increase our well being as we age.

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Loss and Pain

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

In the northern hemisphere as we enter the ninth month of the year themes of loss abound.  Although at this point the changes in colour are subtle, we know in our bones that slowly but surely we are losing our connection to the Earth’s green mantle, the vibrant quilting of plants, shrubs, and trees that makes us feel good to be alive whenever we take a walk down a treed street or set off for a taste of the wild on hikes in the woods.  The season of autumn, so poetically called fall, impacts us in profound ways because it mirrors the many personal, community, and world losses we are experiencing each day.  EFT, when used as a daily comfort tool, can help us to navigate the transition into this season of loss by helping us to lessen the physical and emotional pain that often accompanies this change in the seasons.

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Transforming Ageist Thinking

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.

We hear a version of the following every day:  “I’m too old to change . . . to begin something new . . . to pursue a treasured dream.”    The words may be ours, but our beliefs about aging are very much rooted in family and cultural beliefs.  The over-the-hill syndrome is as toxic as any sexist remark and the sooner we relieve ourselves of the burden of belief in an inevitably medicalized old age, the happier and more productive and satisfied we’ll be.  How do we age joyfully, energetically, passionately, courageously?  Daily tapping can revolutionize our attitudes to aging, and, with psychologist Mario Martinez’s supportive research, help us to see ourselves as potentially successful centenarians instead of customers for adult diapers at seventy or eighty.

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Still Alice: A Look at Alzheimer’s Disease from the Inside

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.

At the heart of the film Still Alice is Julianne Moore’s portrayal of early onset Alzheimer’s Disease.  Told from the Linguistics Professor’s point of view, we see the world shrink and distort for her, as if she has boarded a tiny boat and is suddenly in the middle of the Atlantic.  It is a terrifying story and an important one, not only because it explores the ravages of personhood that is Alzheimer’s, but also because it allows us to imagine the tremendous loss family members and friends bear in watching this wasting disease erode the loving, competent, insightful, and forgiving person they once knew.  One thing I take issue with is the fictional story’s overworked irony of a linguistics professor losing her words; the true story of such a condition may be found in the film Iris, a biographical film acted with ravaging truth by Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, and Jim Broadbent about the life and intellectual disintegration of Iris Murdoch, celebrated Irish philosophical novelist.  This disease is horrifying because it robs its sufferers of the competence developed over a lifetime – whether one stays home with children, rises up the corporate ladder, makes one’s mark as an academic, or sells cars.  Alzheimer’s robs its sufferers of meaning:  how to use toothpaste . . . how to follow directions . . . how to find the way home from a familiar location and, eventually, . . . how to find the very meaning of home.

My husband and I touched hands frequently as we watched this film together.  We both wept for the imaginary Alice and for the fraying of family life the disease causes.  At the end, we remained seated, our fingers touching, our eyes moist.  It is a mature person’s film and a young person’s film; it has a heart and a soul that is deep and tender because it expands our understanding of what it is to care for someone who is losing the self to this condition we call Alzheimer’s as well as our understanding of the person who is losing the self.

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Making Sacred Promises

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.

Finding the sacred in promises we make to ourselves and others is an art.  We all know about the other kind of promises, those tossed off in the moment that we feel all right about breaking.  “Six?  Sure, I promise I’ll be there.”  And in the moment, we mean it;  we really do want to honour our promise to arrive when we say we will, because we want to show respect to those with whom we have relationships.  But made in the moment, these ordinary promises can be broken by poor planning and lack of foresight.  Then we tell ourselves, “Oh, I have a meeting at five I forgot about when I made those arrangements.  They’ll understand.”  And, most often, “they” do, especially when we send up a warning flag such as, “I’m running late.  Please start without me.  I’ll explain when I get there.”  The kind of promise that becomes sacred doesn’t start out that way.  We might initially consider the idea of losing excess weight for our health’s sake, or the idea of quitting smoking at the stroke of midnight, or the idea of exercising faithfully lightly.  We can learn to turn these considerations into sacred promises that improve our lives through the time and attention we give to them.

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Alive Inside: The Film

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website only and is in no way meant to replace experience with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.

Sometimes we get stuck in a go-to solution for life’s many challenges.  Tapping – like jogging, cleansing, yoga, meditation, and the other effective self-help tools we use to bring understanding, perspective, and peace into our lives – can leave us feeling let down because of overuse.  When this happens to me, I turn to story in one of its myriad forms.  Most recently that form was documentary film, specifically Michael Rossato-Bennett’s  Alive Inside, the story of Dan Cohen’s grace-filled efforts to bring music to nursing homes residents experiencing Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

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Death Part Two: Awash in Love

When my mother died in April of 2006, I had already discovered tapping.  In fact, it was because I knew she was dying that I sought out EFT Master Betty Moore-Hafter.  Although everything was right about my mother’s death, I felt I needed support to allow my mother to die without my needs interfering with her process.  I chose Betty, not because of EFT which I hadn’t yet heard of, but because she was both a hypnosis and age regression therapist.  I was curious to see if her approach would help me to resolve the last few energetic ties to a medical trauma my mother and I shared when she was thirty and I was two.  This surprise EFT session was magical – gentle and loving – and I left Betty’s office feeling this challenging early event had been transformed.  I have tapped ever since.  One of the earliest consequences of that session was an ability to be fully present to what my mother needed.  On my own, I could tune into my own need to celebrate her life in my own unique way.  Somehow, without writing about it directly, I wanted to express the essence of my mother’s approach to living in and leaving the world.  Awash in Love is that essence.

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Tapping as Blessing

Many who use tapping daily as a self-help tool concentrate on clearing negative personal memories, physical pain, and negative emotions such as depression, rage, fear, and anxiety.  Because it is so effective in this clearing work, it is easy to forget that we can use tapping to remind ourselves of the many blessings we enjoy in life.  Tapping with gratitude for the gifts our senses bring to us increases our sense of enrichment and wonder every moment of the day.

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