Over recent weeks I have been finding what feels good with Adrienne, on her Youtube Channel. Recently I have started to channel my inner olympic-gold-medal-winning-high-diver for my take on the halfway lift, just to find something new and I liked it! Doing what you like is fine, imagining a big yellow sun ball for a root-to-rise is good for the soul. I heart the precious space I carve into my day for instruction and flow with Adrienne, it’s quite magical. And it helps with everything else. This summer we were findingwhatfeeledgood with Adrienne in the park and on beaches, before swimming in the delicious apple-crisp-green and slush-puppy-blue sea. I’ve always wanted to be able to do-yoga! And every now and then my bum levitates above my knees for a few split-seconds of crow pose! I did the 30 Days Yoga Revolution with Adrienne, and the Beginner’s videos. It feels good to be a beginner.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” in Psychological Review. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans’ innate curiosity. Touching the top of the pyramid is spirituality. Yoga with Adrienne is the new order! And reiki – I went to see Kelly Harvey at the Natural Health Clinic for a glorious and nurturing spiritual awakening. All of this led to me going to the Meridian Clinic in Guernsey for a course of Colonic irrigations, as my gut chakras were kaput. No amount of googling could say if colonic irrigations were good or bad. Sometimes, the only way to really know what feels good for you is to try it out for yourself. Having the guts to be brave and experimental is tough. I often feel a manic panic rattle around my bones when I follow the feedback and try to find out what can make me feel better. Especially when I look back on the weird and wonderful things I have tried this year.






A few years back I quit smoking [insert slow hand clap here] Everybody is vaping now, nobody smokes! Am I right? Vaping is pretty disgusting too. I was nursing a nicotine addiction with electronic cigarettes for a very long time [insert a shameful number of years here]. I had enrolled on a beginner’s yoga course at the start of the year, because I was vaping I couldn’t ‘find my breath’ and commit to the practise. I had to respond to that sign, that my breath needed serious attention. And so, I went to see Tammy Lodge at The Cure Clinic to get quit! And it worked, incredibly and amazingly brilliant! After my one and only ‘stop-vaping’ hypnosis session I got home and immediately put on my rubber gloves to throw all of my vaping paraphernalia into the bin (because they were toxic and they belonged in the landfill). And that was the end of that. I did have two roll-ups in fits of desperate, craving-rage (smoking those two seedy rollups was a divine experience) during the course of the weeks and months that followed, but on the whole I think that’s a pretty stellar achievement. Nil vapes since seeing Tammy at The Cure Clinic, Guernsey. The deep hypnosis was magical and made quitting a habit that’s harder than heroin, kinder and less painful. I also used some obnoxious medication – Champix. Half a pill of Champix every other day worked for me. The cravings dissipated gradually and then suddenly they were gone. The Cure Clinic was lifechanging. But it doesn’t happen overnight! I had 7 sessions of counselling and 8 sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy this year too, to be the best that I can be. I have turned myself inside out and upside down, and I hated it, loved it, hated it, loved it! Whenever I feel mawkishly uncomfortable and like I could easily slip out of my skin and try to hide in somebody else’s for the rest of my life, I know that I am getting closer to finding the sweet spot of change… The worse it feels, the better, somehow. And then the cycle repeats. Going round in circles, taking things deeper. It’s all good for the soul.

And now, the next farewell will be to sugar. Sweet sister of mine, sugar. surreptitious soulful and syrupy saint of dopamine-goofy smiles, sugar. I tell myself that I’m not a sugar monster. But I am a dark chocolate fiend. I read somewhere that you crave chocolate because it has the exact same composition as breast milk… And I crave chocolate, a lot. I love it! And anything with nuts and dates. And honey. I love honey. And I tell myself that I am not a sugar monster. Give me more dark chocolate, dates and honey? Everything that is processed contains a f**ctose or a syrup.


Well, over the next few weeks and months I am coming clean. When I’m lying in the foetal position with a hose pipe up my b*m, and Badrul is saying ‘it’s really pouring out now’ I think about how it came to this. Two too many courses of antibiotics this year? Too many raw brownies from The Raw Store? Work stress? My hatred of ab/obliques exercises? Too much emotional eating? Feeding my winnie-the-pooh paunch with too much creamy sugary cr*ap? It’s definitely not the bottle of wine I down each night before bed or the 12 cans of coke I guzzle each day because I don’t live like that, that makes it harder because on the surface my diet isn’t bad. The other day I made a banging vegan butternut squash lasagna. I love courgetti. I binge on rice cakes (I like chomping, so the more jaw stretches and neck exercises I do, the better for me). I don’t drink dairy milk or eat shovel sized portions of cheese – it makes my sinuses fill with mucus. I keep a food diary but sometimes I’m blind to my own evils.



Old ways won’t open new doors, embracing the freedom to be experimental with taking better care of yourself is divine and disgustingly uncomfortable, in equal gloriusly sunny measures.
“I saw God
Just one big shiny flash
God
You’re secret’s safe tonight
God
So much, so much to lose
God
So glad that we’re alive” (Hole, Hit So Hard)
“In the hospital, we see addiction every day. It’s shocking, how many kinds of addiction exist. It would be too easy if it was just drugs and booze and cigarettes. I think the hardest part of kicking a habit is wanting to kick it. I mean, we get addicted for a reason, right? Often, too often, things that start out as just a normal part of your life at some point cross the line to obsessive, compulsive, out of control. It’s the high we’re chasing, the high that makes everything else fade away.” (Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy)
“And you’re like a nineties Jesus
And you revel in your psychosis
How dare you?
And you sample concepts like hors d’oeuvres
And you eat their questions for dessert
And is it just me, or is it hot in here?
And you’re like an nineties Kennedy
And you’re really a million years old
You can’t fool me
They’ll throw opinions like rocks in riots
And they’ll stumble around like hypocrites
Is it just me, or is it dark in here?” (Alanis Morisette, No Pressure Over Cappucino)