Medicinalmeadows

THE PLACE WITHIN


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Solar heat at 49

In my 49 life I am I am experiencing anxiety. This anxiety and me have a history coupled with PTSD. Recently I don’t always know what my physical body is telling me. A mix of anxiety, grief, overwhelm and menopause. This is my story from this week.

I was setting off in the car to visit a relative in hospital. I got into the car, the temperature read 38 degrees, I felt sick, hot, was it just heat? was it a hot flush? or was it anxiety! My thoughts jumped from one to the other, the truth of it ( which came later) was that my body had remembered something.

I needed to get out of the car and feeling like a failure and disappointed at letting others down I had to just stop and “Get out of the car”! Soon after as I cooled down I realised that I know this feeling, this reaction, it is when the body remembers. It is remembering a date, a past situation or a trauma. My body was not only messaging me to take a break but signalling patterns into my awareness. The body remembers dates, places, and the places can reignite triggers and the triggers can “fire up” to remind us that something from the past needs attention. Just like a fire starting in the shadows of our internal cave growing stronger so we go back, look, witness that situation again. The “issue” is that it comes up uninvited, unawares but the body has this internal storage that seems to just remember without the mind being involved.

As I uncoiled just enough for me to remember and figure this all out. I can give myself a break.  At this time of 49 I am considering that these “anxious” remembrances or triggers are relating to the menopausal symptom called hot flushes. They are literally fired up in my face. The date of my “heatwave anxiety” corresponded to a past trauma that my mind had not acknowledged. My mind hadn’t connected to the date and place but the body did.

So what is a hot flush? At the time of a surge, are we actually in the spiritual sense going through a fiery upgrade?  Are we actually re-membering ourselves? By that I do mean collecting our bones, our divided parts, which have been lost over time. Are we pulling ourselves back together in a newly fashioned way, a mature way?

To me this was a good reminder that my mind may think it is taking the lead with the logical stuff but my body is attuned to all that has been and will continue to message me from spiritual to physical body as I go forwards. In the wise words of Caroline Myss, the greatest power we have within us is the position we energetically hold as our power station, the solar plexus. This is the intuitive energy centre that messages us from “gut instinct”, or intuitiveness. We all have the ability to connect to the gut instinct and sometimes this power centre messages us in stronger ways. Is the menopause really a firing up of the solar plexus, our solar energy? Is the gut instinct being attuned? This chakra centre as it is known is after all the centre of our personal power, the seat of our inner compass. If I am actually having a solar upgrade then surely this is a positive thing for my mature years ahead!

Maybe, just maybe what is occurring in my menopause years is a gathering of my inner ability to discern all around me to assert my personal power. If this is the metaphysical change to the wise elder, then baptism by heat to burn away the old and transition into a new relationship with selfhood is what is occurring. The soul lesson is forging our life force, literally by forge or force, or both, a consolidating of past and present as our personal identity in full acceptance. Maybe I need to remember that it is my shadow and my light that make Gold.


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Personal Power

Today’s word was Integrity. The message is about the power of our solar plexus. When we see a situation or challenge through to its completion we create wholeness. Not just a beginning and end to the scenario but an energetic alignment occurs. We build self worth through these earthly experiences. These challenges exercise our internal warrior and the end point is where we value the journey. So the questions for the solar plexus alignment are;
What achievements have brought you individuality?
What creations have brought you a sense of personal power?
What freedoms have you created?


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The Sensitive Gardeners

To walk in a room, even a familiar space is difficult sometimes with illness, emotional pain and anxieties looming in the ether. Walking into a new place a new space is challenging. There are unpredictable energies spilling into the space, free floating unregulated matters of people we may not even know.

The issue for Sensitives is that they walk into a space and identify with the energies. A new environment has a collection of thoughts, feelings and needs of others. To the Sensitive this is like a room full of passive energy emitters. The Sensitive sits within this uncomfortable space, muted and bearing up, it is a necessary part of living. You may think why do they go there? Well they have to. Whether it be a training course or a waiting area, they work hard, they need to maintain their own energy but still appear sociable. They have arrived are constantly regulating their own energy systems, including the nervous system and so many other levels in between. To them this world can be exhausting!

The Energy Changes

These days I am calling the energetic personal field the energy garden, this is the internal landscape, because Sensitives are good cultivators of their gardens too. They do the weeding and tend to their spaces daily. The energy garden was once an unseen field, but now, in the current climate it is a well known plot. The change has arrived. Gone are the days of a mysterious energy as a collection of past experience, past lives and traumas. The Sensitives right now are aware of what is in their garden. They tend to it. The old ways of trying to connect to the akashic records, the auric debris or find blocks in the energy bodies is over. This is new upgraded, intelligent design. And the ones who arrive in our future generations are more advanced that this. Maybe they arrive with a greater capacity for their gardens and wouldn’t that be just the treasure humanity needs on this planet?!

For now, my statement here is this, care and support the Sensitives around you. I invite you to consciously be aware of thoughts, feelings and emotions of the Sensitives around you. They are adjusting to a new wave of consciousness that is asking them to step up to a new challenge, to new practices, to work collectively in some way in the future. 

If you could be a good neighbour and help those Gardeners a little more. And if you need some assistance with your garden, please ask for some help from a Sensitive Gardener who as willing to cultivate with you.

You won’t be sorry, your garden will blossom.


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Internal Gardener

The gentle garden is a message that we are the creators of our reality. Recent months have been teaching me focus and deliberate direction. In order to create my world I need to be in the mind of the deliberate gardener, the Internal Gardener.

I am learning to bring my attention into intention. My garden can not thrive without care, nurturance and planning. I am now aware that weeding is necessary, cleaning out and trimming back is a requirement to allow the Light to shine on areas that I want to have growth. I am even daring to dream in my garden of next year. In order to do that I need to make space, clear an area and select what I wish to grow. Including the research around direction, season, and climate.

The gentle gardener is a new alignment for me, I am the Internal Gardener.


#guidance #intuitive #spiritualcoaching #theenchantedmaporaclecards #colettebaronreid #cottagegardens #spiritualgardener #spiritualgardening #internalgardener


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Mature 49

49 is not what I expected. I started my working life as a medical professional then turned holistic and spiritual practitioner and so far this week my practice has been my saving grace.  I have navigated my own selfcare treatments from Reiki to calm my nervous system to Reflexology to regulate the endocrine. It is a rollercoaster of a role to witness our elder’s needs from lightbulb changes, medication dosette boxes, emergency calls and missing wheelchairs.

I have called upon my spiritual allies to help in many varying degrees from negotiating contracts and holding space for my Mother as she feels she is losing her friends to dementia. Then there’s my Fathers loss of mobility and fragility. My faith in the wise and well ancestors have been my allies in the subtle realms only too willing to be called upon.

I lean to the ancestors, after all I am them, my bones and facial features are theirs, from them I am born. The role of the carer is a difficult one to navigate. It arrives at a time when I myself am changing. I go through a multitude of transitions being a 49 year old woman, self employed spiritual business practitioner, a wife, a friend, a listener and a menopausal shifter.

Whilst navigating the elder’s care needs in an ever-shifting NHS and social care system I am trying to figure out the menopausal fatigue and wonder if my symptoms are from too much or too little evening primrose right now. I am pulled to “clean house” of the unfinished business I have stacked up. The courses, submissions, assessments and the continuing professional development that is a feature of all our professional pursuits these days. I am always reading 4 books and far too tired to complete any. Then there is the cleaning out of the emotional and energetic baggage of old worn out perspective and my inner archetypes all shouting for some deep witnessing.

This thing they call menopause is a maturing of the old ways, the inner pathways, a realisation of what has worked well and what has not. Call it menopause, call it a life review if you dare! It is the wise one willing me to tune inwards and not be so outwards when the world is wanting me to be all things. This crone inside is trying to be birthed into a new way of navigating the here and now. So while we nurture those around us, the message deep within is “Who is nurturing you?” Birthing is painful and changeful. It can’t be pushed down or ignored. So no wonder I am feeling the fatigue of this gestation from menstruation.

It is the big gardening of mature life. Call it weeding for now, it is asking what am I keeping up and what do I need to let go? What is right for me and what is right now for me? 49 is full of loose ends, never-ends and the inevitable end. Right now the weeding is all important as I take this time to nurture the garden within.  As the elders take an afternoon nap, the cat does too and the 49 year olds are discerning, weeding and regulating their nervous system with left-right eye movements in the mid-day sun. One day I will be through the change, transformed and the ancestor of my family tree.

The red tent to women like me in the middle of life, becomes a life tent. It is the anchor that sits you down and holds you in.  It is a place remembered for birth and death, but it is also for the mid shifters,  for transformation. It is the place to go to in pain, in need, knee deep with the earth and discerning cries, “help me transform, shift through it all”. If you have never been inside a red tent, create one, create if just for yourself! It is the resting place and the place to let it all flow.

Here in the middle we are asked to change, do work differently,  parenting and elder care differently. Our loved ones change, societies views and expectations change, my hair colour has changed….and everyday the needs of those and ourselves change.  My own requirements move and new boundaries need to be created, what once was ok is now far from acceptable. They call this growth in the spiritual community, with grow there can also be pain. So the message for now is take it slowly, even when there are urgent moments, walk the earth with every step at a slower pace because everything is changing.


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What is Energy?


How can I see my emotions as energy? What we see on the surface is not what it looks like underneath. Seeing Emotions as Energy is to dive deep underground. The surface level is just that, the top layer. Deep within is a vast environment of essential nature, truth, libraries of stories we carry and galleries of images we have cataloged and kept. There are great algorithms that weave backwards and propel forwards. And these networks of energy I describe are just through the lense of my own enquiry. I am also connected to others, their networks and hives of energy, my ancestral stories and the generations ahead. What deep webs we weave of emotions….we are all connected…
#guidance #intuitive #spiritualcoaching #enchantedmap #colletebaronreid #chrysocolla


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Ancestral Journeys

Ancestral journeys take us deep into the raw emotions of lineage, of health and trauma of the family. Today I honoured my maternal bloodline with a journey for the menstrual cycle from menses, to motherhood to menopause. Throughout my preparation and journey the aspects of the three kept coming through in a pattern. Maiden, Mother, Matriarch needed honouring in youthfulness, in pain, in suffering, in shame and held with compassion. These times are of deep witnessing, deep love and deeply rooted in my bones. I am my ancestors after all, we are them, we have the capacity to hold a container for them and to witness our own lives as vessels of their wisdom and a releasing of their pain through our allowing.
Thank you Ancestors for all that now Is.
#guidance #intuitive #spiritualcoaching #ancestraljourneys #honouring #bloodline #redtent #redtentdoulas #redtentcollective #roots #bones #circles #mothers


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Menstrual Matters in the Current Climate

The vaccination roll out has seen menstruation reports to the yellow card scheme, which is the system to report adverse effects of any medication or treatment in the UK. “Common side effects of covid-19 vaccination listed by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) include a sore arm, fever, fatigue, and myalgia. Changes to periods and unexpected vaginal bleeding are not listed, but primary care clinicians and those working in reproductive health are increasingly approached by those who have experienced these events. “More than 30 000 reports by 2 September 2021, across all covid-19 vaccines currently offered”. (1)

The Science Media Centre on the 21st June 2021 stated that “It is vanishingly unlikely that vaccination, including Covid-19 vaccination, would have this effect, and women should not be worried that vaccination might cause problems with their periods” (2). Another report from the International Journal of Epidemiology suggests that menstrual disorders are extremely common, in its explanation to the yellow card scheme.

I have no doubt that there are “challenges”.  “Studying menstrual cycle features is challenging. Normal variation exists within women over the lifespan and between women in relation to characteristics such as history of infertility, body mass index (BMI) and exercise. In addition, menstrual cycle features such as volume, pain and PMS symptoms are subjective “(3). But my concern is that women do not go to their healthcare provider about their menstruation cycle unless they are experiencing a different pattern. Women know.

One report from the School of Medicine in Chicago found that “More than half of respondents to an online survey reported changes in their menstrual cycles during the pandemic, including differences in premenstrual symptoms and in the time between cycles and the duration of their bleeding”(4). Changes can be accredited to stress of the pandemic, as “It is well-known that stress can cause changes in menstrual cycles, and these changes range from shorter or longer periods to heavier or lighter bleeding, and may cause women to skip or miss a period altogether,” said study author Nicole Woitowich”.

There has been more media coverage, that may highlight menstruality to all with campaigns such as #periodpoverty, the Scottish product free provision, Red Tent Movement facebook groups and resources for online education. The University of Edinburgh has highlighted that when women have irregularities or “problems”, they know. They know the difference between ‘Typical and problem periods’ (5). The author and obstetric Doctor, Michel Odent writes in Primal Health (Ch9) that our bodies and our cycles are also intrinsically linked to our external world as well as the internal. Our stresses and strains are influential to our cycle. How can you measure tiredness as a quantity measurement? One person’s levels of tolerable activity are different from another. This is why comparisons are not as scientific as science would like. This is why we have not engaged in parameters of normal Michel Odent says, “what is normal health and how is that measured?” (6).

More recently the American Society of Gynaecologist rate the menstrual cycle as a “vital sign” in health. “ACOG and supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) advises health practitioners to consider periods as the “fifth vital sign” — meaning menstruation is as important a health indicator as changes in body temperature, pulse, breathing rate, and blood pressure (7). Other countries are participating in further investigations, such as The Institute of Public Health in Norway. They monitored 6000 women, and are now going on to research a cohort of 60,000 participants.  In this study they state that in most (vaccine) cases, the changes were transient and returned to normal in the next cycles. Here in Norway the reporting system has gone on to formulate a research study. The findings of this study will be vital to all pharmaceutical companies and all countries rolling out programmes in the future, as well as Women’s Health around the world. (8). (Menstrual changes following COVID-19 vaccination – NIPH (fhi.no)

1.(www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2211).

2.(www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-mhra-yellow-card-reporting-relating-to-periods-after-covid-19-vaccines

3. http://www.academic.oup.com/ije/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyab239/6447179

4 .www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-10-04/pandemic-stress-altered-many-womens-menstrual-cycles

5.www.ed.ac.uk/centre-reproductive-health/news/2021-news/menstrual-health-animation

6. Michel Odent 2007 Primal Health Chapter 9

7. http://www.elemental.medium.com/doctors-think-your-period-should-be-a-fifth-vital-sign-5b882c864783

8 (Menstrual changes following COVID-19 vaccination – NIPH (fhi.no)


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Garden Medicine

Feeling the duality today with the heaviness of winter and the Light returning. I am inward looking and still I change and shift to the energies entering in of spring. Hard to imagine when listening to the stormy wind outside. I am feeling blessed now I remembered my garden gifts me medicine. This is dried lavender from my garden, it smells divine. The little green vase is lifting my mood with its fresh green hue in the slight light coming in on Brigid’s Day.
#intuitive #medicinalmeadows #gardenmedicine #landscapes #innerlandscape #brigidsday #imbolc #sarahravenjewelvases #wombkeeper #wombdoula #energymedicine #plantmedicine #earthmedicine #natropathy #homemaker #professionalcarer


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Rites of Passage

Sometimes the answers are so simple, what act of self-kindness helps me heal? Cake. You see I have been gluten free for over a decade and whilst I don’t miss such things as cake or toast anymore, I do miss the occasions. For so long I have not had that rite of passage that actually does mean a lot. I have had no Birthday cake, no candles to make a wish and no celebration for another year turning around the sun. These rites are important, they are a celebration of life.
A great woman wrote that when we are born we are not born alone. We are born with a placenta that becomes our guardian angel. The physical placenta we are born with is full of richness and nourishment and to honour this spiritual passage and guardian we have a placenta cake. We keep on celebrating that life giving connection. So this year I will gratefully be celebrating my spiritual connection, my nurturing, and whole self. I can bake a gluten free cake.
Thank you #robinlim
#placentatheforgottenchakra #spirituallife #ritesofpassage #glutenfreebaking #freeefrom #doveflour #guidance #intuitive #spiritualcoaching