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Hi Jacqui, of course I can. Sorry for taking a while to respond but it has been Bedlam here .

Before I discovered John Sarno I was a great admirer of the work of Candace Pert (Sarno references her in The Divided Mind). Candace evolved from a thoroughly scientific background to a point of understanding how our emotions (neurochemicals, peptides etc) were the mediating factors in the nervous system. She created two audiobooks called Your Body is Your Subconscious Mind and To Feel G(o)od. In these she described the mindbody connection and how and why complementary methods ranging from massage to hypnosis help us heal. I have always been passionate about gentle healing methods so her words really chimed with me.

In caring for my partner, as well as our elderly parents, and recovering from something myself I came to see that the key to healing was to nurture. We heal when we nourish our bodies, hearts and minds and sicken when we deny them.

Modern life is riven with suffering and alienation, noise and busyness, concrete and cyber-lives. All things that stoke the sympathetic nervous system into constant activity, constant vigilance. True and deep healing comes when we realise that this is not our natural state. Our bodies are designed to predominantly spend time in the parasympathetic state with the occasional necessary flip into the sympathetic. We don't even realise how wired we are. It becomes habitual.

Too often I read of people pushing and fighting in their attempts to heal. I find this further engages the sympathetic branch. I also find it too masculine in energetic terms. I am a very feminine woman and I shun most of the current cultural beliefs surrounding gender. An integral part of my healing has been to cherish my warm, sensual, juicy, fruity, curvy, ripe, playful, sexual, mothering, emotional, earthy self. I believe we bloom from nature, from the womb, in the same way that flowers blossom and trees burgeon. We are made of the elements of the universe. We are nature.

"What the mystic has always told us about the unity of all life, and what science is telling us about quantum coherency and the non-locality of space and time, is sounding remarkably similar." - Susan Raven

We heal when we follow natures laws. Sleep when it is dark, eat God-given foods that grow, when we move, love and touch things (@Lily Rose ~ "An experience on the other hand, can be denied and even forgotten, but it cannot be inexperienced. Experience changes you forever". - Eliot Cowan. My sweet Lily Rose is an experience that changes you forever).

Indulge me, I am in a poetic mood. Ironic then that my battery is about to go kaput. And so...

Sleep has been the single biggest factor in my healing. It has helped me in itself and had also calmed my aggitated nervous system. David Hanscom's writings verified my personal experience and clarified exactly why it was the missing element.

I eat nourishing foods. I love to cook and care for people.
I spend as much time in Nature as I can. Candace Pert suggested that for every hour you spend online you should two hours in Nature. I find this to be exemplary advice.

I swim. I practice Yin Yoga. I cloudwatch. I read novels (research finds that within six minutes of settling down with a good novel, that the parasympathetic nervous system begins to engage). I listen to music. I love my people. Hold them, tend to them, let them know that they are loved, and they reciprocate fully. I am myself.

An expanded healing program is whatever works for you. It is an acknowledgement of your deep and true nature. Of your wildness (civilisation is madness - Freud). It is respecting your body and cherishing it, not sacrificing it to hubris. It is to be fully alive in whatever ways that means for you.

Plum x