I set the group that gathered for the Joy Club last week some 'homework'. What was it? To discover their wellbeing 'five-a-day'. Now, we've all heard of the 'five-a-day' concept – at least you will have if you've lived in the UK in the past few years. It's a simple and popular device that the powers that be have been using to get us to eat more of the things that will keep us healthy: so a handful of dried mango pieces is, say, one of your five-a-day, where a salad - full of freshly sprouted mung beans (one point), tomatoes (another point) and lettuce (one point) might be three Read More...
Be a lamp unto yourself
September 19th, 2011 by Tonya
Speaking of the nights drawing in and seasonal affective disorder or SAD, there's something in Gautama the Buddha's words: 'Be a lamp unto yourself'. When our inner fire is fully lit we don't need an external light quite so much! One of the things that facilitates finding this inner fire, I think, is finding our joy Read More...
‘Learning to dance on a shifting carpet’
September 19th, 2011 by Tonya
As the nights draw in, a lot of people in the UK experience a dip in mood and start booking winter breaks to foreign climes. I'm not one of them. There are things you get in winter that you just don't get any other time of year. I get to wear big, soft, roll neck jumpers. I get to splash in puddles in my welly boots Read More...
The power of play
June 1st, 2011 by Tonya
As Victor Frankl showed us, choosing to play with situations in our life that we find hard to deal with (for him it was the dehumanisation of being stripped and shorn for the gas chamber), can light us up like a lightbulb and make it impossible for energies like fear to control us. I love this stuff! And this is a particularly useful skill to master at these times of social unrest, economic pressure, diminishing resources and '2012 consciousness' – whatever that year may, or may not, bring! As 'laughter leader' Kit Hammond-Stapely memorably says, 'anything you can laugh at (more Read More...
Calling migraine sufferers
February 21st, 2011 by Tonya
Was just writing a piece on serendipity and synchronicity when Harry the plumber knocked on my front door (he's in the process of fixing the pipes after a water leak). I gave Harry, who's also a Trager bodywork practitioner and enthusiast of holistic approaches to health, a summary of my weekend (I'd been on a workshop with 19 other co-counselling teachers and two of them had been showcasing some 'scientific' research they'd been doing on the role of laughter as a means of discharging shame) Read More...
The power of play
February 16th, 2011 by Tonya
Life can be a serious business. And with issues like global warming, lessening resources and severely crunched credit, it's sometimes difficult to find things to laugh about. But lightening up about the things that trouble us can actually help us resolve them. And having a good giggle can often give us the resources we need to deal with the serious things in our lives Read More...
