2019 - GLOBAL AND LOCAL - EARTHCARE AND PEOPLECARE

Have a wonderful year in 2019 everyone!
I hope you can join in our regular Free Thursday Remote CranioSacral Energy sessions from wherever you are - they're 21.15 to 22.00 pm, UK time - they've been part of a fascinating year of exploration for me in 2018. There's lots of areas I want to explore more this next year...
HIGHER DIMENSIONALITY?

Maybe space and time themselves can be enfolded like these cerebellar cortex cells - so that by choosing to function at a higher vibration we can make connections that transcend our normal concept of space-time

Your Hand Bone's Connected To Your Chest Bone...

One great thing about getting more of your food locally is that you can find yourself climbing trees a lot more. It's wonderful spending time in woodland, looking after fruit trees, and brilliant getting higher up into trees and seeing the world from that tree top point of view.

Direct-from-the-orchard fruit tastes so much better than that supermarket stuff  and climbing is such great exercise. We're designed for it, with that super mobile shoulder joint.
STERNOCLAVICULAR JOINT
The next time you're hanging by one arm up in a tree you might find it fun to ponder for a moment on the fact that the joint that's connecting your arm to your body is actually the tiny sternoclavicular joint.

There's no joint connecting your shoulder blade to your body, just lots of different muscles.

Then, still hanging there, think about your hand for a moment, and the billions of years of development that have enabled us to interact with our environment with such strength of grip and delicacy of touch.  

REMOTE SESSION THURSDAY 20th DECEMBER 2018
After tuning in, I'm going to focus on the connection of our hands to our hearts, taking it a step at a time: heart centre, sternoclavicular joints, shoulders, elbows, wrists, palm energy centres and fingers.
Have a great session wherever you are.

Rippling Light

It's just coming up for a year since we moved in to our flat here in Perth, and what a brilliant year it's been. It's been so good to be near to my kids and grandkids and some of my oldest friends again, and back in familiar places, some of which haven't changed a lot since I was a kid here myself.
It's also been brilliant to get back into the way of treating people in the hands-on way again and swapping treatments with old and new friends who like to explore and extend what they're doing. This has opened up a whole new appreciation of CranioSacral Therapy and treatment in general for me. (How crazy to be starting out afresh at the ripe old age of 65...) This in turn has led to whole new realms opening up in our remote treatment group sessions, particularly to do with effects going on within the cerebrospinal fluid itself. I'd always thought of its flow as being quite simple, but not at all.

The more I focus into the fluid itself, the more I find new patterns appearing. At the physical level, I've been feeling an expansion and contraction of the sacrum which seems to be part of the system for pumping the fluid around our central nervous system, and many more rhythms beyond the basic ebb and flow we learn about in the basic Upledger courses. There's the longer tides observed in Biodynamic CranioSacral Therapy and also a mini-rippling effect I've noticed myself, which I think may be interruptions in the flow caused by the trebeculae within the arachnoid membrane, acting like tiny bridge supports and stirring up and activating the flow just as a full size bridge support in a river does. It's all such a mind-bogglingly amazing bit of design at the physical level, and then there's the energetic level.
It's been very interesting to bring some of the effects I've noticed through treating people remotely into hands-on treatments, especially in the way of switching from a physical to an energetic focus, or having both at once. Holding an energetic awareness of the fluid has been amazing, like holding a tube of light with reflections rippling all around it. It feels like being in touch with the core of the energy flow through our being. So that's probably going to be the starting point for our next remote group session on Thursday 13th December, join in if you can 21.15 to 22:00 pm UK time, or tune in with the session at whatever time suits you.

Free Remote CranioSacral Energy Treatment - 15th November 2018

FOCUS - HEALING FOR GAIA

Photo from the Gaia Trust

For this session I'm going to focus on the Earth as one huge organism on a journey through an immeasurably more huge and unfathomable Universe. With so many Earth systems threatened, what's the best way for each of us to use our time? How do we go about making the radical changes in our way of life that are urgently needed?
A group of us here in Perth, Scotland, are actively developing ways to do just that and have just launched our own back-to-the land project, check out our blog here: One World Future Farm.
YOU'RE SUPPORT MOST WELCOME!
If you would be generous enough to support us with some money there's a button for donations on the home page - thank you in advance!

THE MUSIC OF THE HEART

I've been exploring the various different rhythms of our heart and circulation and I'm getting the idea that you can best understand them in terms of music. I got an idea that the four valves of the heart work together a bit like a barber's shop quartet whereas the chambers have a deep resonance more like those enormous Tibetan horns.

Then focusing into the blood flow itself, just as there's a slower rhythm within the cerebrospinal fluid than the craniosacral rhythm itself, there seems to be a series of longer and longer tides within our blood's circulation, the long tides of the heart, with a music that takes in all frequencies, like the sea on a pebbley shore.
If you'd like to set your intention to explore all this yourself during the Free Remote Session coming up on Thursday 1st of November I'd be fascinated to hear what you find. And if you'd like to ask for help with a health issue as well or instead that's cool too! At the end of the day, aren't all our health issues at least partly heart issues?

Getting Ready - The Song of the Earth Energy Centre

When you're getting ready for the sessions, I suggest that you get comfortable, use deep slow breathing to help you to relax, then focus your attention on each of the on-body chakras, in no particular order, and imagine them all flowing into one. Then connect with an Earth energy centre about three feet below your feet and a cosmic centre about three feet above your head, allowing life force energy to flow both up and down through you. (There's more complete notes about the process on the Remote Treatment page).

A beach fire from long ago... *

I've been finding recently when I focus on the Earth energy centre that I get a really strong image of a fire on a beach, flickering flames and gathering darkness - it feels like a scene from long ago. I get a feeling of being part of a wandering group, maybe of hunter-gatherers on some sort of seasonal, cyclical journey, resting by the shores of a great lake during a long journey. 

I'm reminded that our crazy industrial way of life is only a few hundred years old and our agricultural lives just a few thousand, we've spent many more thousands of years, most of our human existence, wandering, exploring, foraging and following herds.

So I suppose that's maybe why I often feel so disconnected from industrial life and from the Earth.

Bruce Chatwin writes beautifully on these lines in his wonderful book, "The Songlines." 

*PS the photo "from long ago" is from Bored in Vancouver.

Remote Sessions - Tuning In

I host Free Remote CranioSacral Energy treatment sessions every Thursday, 21:15 to 22:00 UK time, here's some tips to help you join in from wherever you are in the world, I hope they'll people to join in with any or all of the other groups doing amazing work too:

SET YOUR INTENTION
I think this is the most important step. You can ask for help with a particular concern or for a general boost, try saying something along these lines quietly to yourself:
"I would like to connect with the Free Remote CranioSacral Energy group session, please may I receive help with my ...(condition)... or ... please may I receive a general health boost."
BREATHING
Slow deep breathing helps. If you know any yogic breathing techniques that will help too.
KEEPING STILL
I find it's helpful to get as relaxed physically as possible, whether lying down or sitting, maybe doing some tensing and relaxing of muscle groups, then it's helpful to keep physically still and imagine the body becoming more and more a body of energy.
DIFFERENT GROUPS, DIFFERENT ENERGIES
There's lots of different groups working remotely now, which is brilliant. I sometimes ask to join in with whoever is sending at the time without knowing who it is, which seems to work fine. The different hosts all have different skills and experience but at the end of the day I think they're all connected to the same source - like different flavours of ice cream. 

Vortices in CSF

An idea came to me during the last remote group treatment session, on the 13th Sept, that there's maybe something going on within the flow of our cerebrospinal fluid, CSF, that's a bit like the vortices discovered by Leonardo da Vinci in his work on the flow of blood within the heart.

Leonardo's findings...

.. and 500 years later

Our CSF flows through a space between two layers of the dural membrane system, the pia mater and the arachnoid membrane. My idea is that the trebeculae within the subarachnoid space stir up the CSF in a similar way, creating mini vortices and currents within currents. So my plan is to take that as a starting point for our next session, this Thursday the 20th.

Free Remote CranioSacral Energy Treatment Sessions - LATEST NEWS

FREE SESSIONS - ALL WELCOME TO JOIN IN
I've set up the Free Remote Group CranioSacral Energy Treatment sessions for the next year, you can join in via Facebook. No problem if you don't have internet access or aren't on Facebook though, as I don't need to know if you're joining in, (think of it as a kind of radio broadcast... without the radio...) More about the sessions here: Remote Page.

If anyone knows who created this brilliant picture? I use it for the Remote Group sessions as it has just the right sort of energy about it. I'd love to know who the artist is.

PASSING IT ON
Lots of people would like to pass on treatment to family members, friends or pets, again that's no problem. Here's a bit more about that:
FAMILY AND FRIENDS If you would like to pass the session on to someone who can't use their own intention to join in, perhaps because they are very ill, or very young, why not try using a surrogate, or stand-in. You might be sitting at the recipient's bedside or they might be far away
USING A SURROGATE This is how I do it, no doubt there's other ways... Set your intention to pass the treatment on.

Introducing my surrogate patient (or patients), Cosmic Ted. "I come in Paws."

Hold a teddy bear or similar soft toy, or maybe a photo of the recipient, tune in with this evening's session (not necessarily at exactly the same time) then imagine that you become a channel for the energies, and the surrogate and the recipient have merged together. It's most helpful to stay neutral, ie there's no need to try to "send healing", just listen with your hands and observe.
DON'T FORGET ABOUT YOURSELF
Remember to have treatment yourself at some point. The stronger you are yourself the better able you'll be to help others.
...AND A BIG THANK YOU...
A big thank you goes out to everyone who joins in with the sessions and thank you for all your fascinating feedback. It's been amazing and wonderful hosting them and it feels important too. I think sessions like ours will have a bigger and bigger part to play in healthcare around the world as Industrial Healthcare inevitably collapses along with Industrial Everything Else.

People getting on... or not...

I've been sorting through photos to get ready for a talk I'm giving to the Perth Organic Gardeners group about my eco adventures over the last 12 years. One of my topics is, "People getting on... or not..." Though I've been preparing it with eco projects in mind I've just realised that it's relevant for all the people who have family/relationship/work, even past life issues coming up for them at the moment.
WHEN PROJECTS STRUGGLE...
When an eco project struggles it's not usually money, time management or the weather that's the main cause, it's usually Clashing Personalities and Aims.

Try getting a consensus with this lot...

We all tend to be playing roles in our lives, consciously or not, usually since we were born, or before, as our way of getting what we need: love, friendship, food, shelter, attention etc etc. The trouble is we often think that we are our patterns and it all gets out of balance...

I know this one! Mr Helpful...

One of my own patterns is being Mr Helpful. It's great now that I realise I'm playing it and generally get some balance between giving and receiving help. However, years ago I would exhaust myself through not being able to say "no" and then feel resentful when my needs weren't met. It's a very common pattern amongst therapists.
WHAT'S YOUR MAIN PATTERN?
So whether you're working on an eco project, or in a difficult relationship at home or work, or keep coming up against the same stuff in your family or at school, have a think about your own patterns and those of the people your mixed up with... and don't forget to keep your sense of humour...
Here's a few more characters you may know, or even be sometimes:

...not always as obvious as this guy...

...the Dreamer, head in the clouds, even clouds in the head...

...the Drama Queen, oh my God! it's all going terribly wrong! SHRIEK!...

...when you're a wrench, everything's a nut...

...show us The Way, oh great teacher...

...I just can't make up my mind about whether I'm indecisive!...

....obey all yea the Wondrous Matriarch and heed the words of Her Religion...

... or smoke yourself wise...

...I've got just TWO words to say, HA and HA!...

...Rugby players often find that the strategy of using brute force and over-bearing will to push people about often works for them in real life just as in their sport! What fun...

... and that's just for starters...

Very best wishes to all at Tay Medispa!

I've been getting so busy with my gardening work, (and really enjoying it), that I'm going to give up one of my therapy days to free up more time for the outdoor life. So I'd like to say a big cheerio to all my friends at Tay Medispa, it's been lots of fun working there with my old friend Lesley Quinn and making new friends, especially Simon and Blanche. I know our working paths will come together in some way in the future and I'm looking forward to that!

Good luck all at Tay Medispa and see you very soon!

I am available on Mondays at Gareth Magee's clinic, just round the corner from Medispa in Caledonian Road. I'm also delighted to make local house calls - I know a lot of people find it difficult to travel. Either way, please just get in touch:by text or phone: 07450 332 430
or email: ianecowatt@gmail.com

INTENSIVE CARE

I've been working on the idea of extending our remote group work so that people who need a lot of help can tune in at any time. Here's my post in our Facebook group, FREE REMOTE HEALING GROUP NETWORK:

INTENSIVE CARE - 24/7/365
If you're one of the many people with serious health issues at the moment, and there seem to be so many, this group is intended to give you help. You can tune in at any time of day or night, for as long as you like, and as often as you like. The energy flow will adapt to work with any other treatment you may be receiving.
RECEIVING IS GIVING
The energy source for this healing assistance work is infinite, the more that energy is drawn in, the more it becomes available to help everyone.
HELP BY SENDING
If you do some kind of therapy or healing work yourself, please join in with the intention of allowing your skills, understanding and experience to help to modulate the flow for human help, and to help the network of all life. Understanding of energy work of all kinds is very helpful, whether it's Chi Kung, Acupuncture, Reiki, Homeopathy and so on, and also of all kinds of hands-on work, especially of the kind of knowledge of Anatomy and Physiology that a surgeon will have. The most important aspect of sending is your intention. You don’t have to “do” anything, just listen and be available.
INTENTION
You can set your intention by making a simple statement to yourself, “Please may I join in with the healing network to receive help for...”, or, “I would like to join in with the group so that whatever knowledge and experience I have is available for all”. The wonderful power of your sub-conscious mind will take it from there.

Let me know if you have any interesting and helpful experiences through joining in!

The Silvery Tay and the Silvery Wrapped Plastic Fields...

If there's an issue that's a health issue as well as an environmental one that's got to be plastic. There's been a lot of discussion recently about the alarming amount of plastic in our oceans, from the large scale of the giant island of waste in the North Pacific to the small scale of the fibres and particles that end up in fish. A study found that Inuit women who eat a high proportion of fish and animal fat in their diet may pass enough PCB etc to cause liver and skin problems through their breast milk to their babies in just a year.

The silvery Tay and the plastic you don't often see: the silvery plastic wrapped fields...

Hands-on and Remote Treatment - Latest News

Since we've moved back to Perth there's been some fascinating new developments in my therapy work - how great to be setting out afresh at the grand old age of 64... still 24 on the inside of course...

A Red Plum Branch against the Summer Moon

It's great to be seeing more patients in the hands-on way again. What I'm finding is that all the remote craniosacral energy work I've been doing over the last eight years has given me some fascinating insight into treating people in the hands-on way as well.

Tai Chi for Beginners - Weds 11 April - Inspire Dance Studio

Pretty much everyone who's come along to my Chi Kung Plus classes has been more interested in learning Tai Chi, so that's how I'm going to focus them now.
NEXT CLASS: Wednesday 11 April at Inspire Dance Studio, 7pm to 8pm.
I was looking for good images to use for posters and flyers, and some brilliant cat photos came up on Facebook. It's interesting that a lot of Tai Chi and other martial art movements come from the observation of animals: the snake fighting the crane, the "animal frolics", and so on.

Cat doing Tai Chi? Brilliant photos of cats playing by Hisakata Hiroyuki.

These classes are for complete beginners, and all ages and fitness levels. I've split the form I learned up into easy-to-learn chunks so that you will have something to practise straightaway. Though this makes it as simple as possible, and it's intended to be fun, there are many immediate benefits from learning Tai Chi: improved balance, suppleness, relaxation, better energy and much more. It might have its roots many hundreds of years ago in the mountains of China but Tai Chi is as relevant, or maybe even more so, than ever in a crazy, stressful world.

First Perth Chi Kung Plus Class

Thanks for your company everyone who came to the first class here in Perth last night, what a great bunch you are! Next class is in two weeks time, the 21st March, see you then. Inspire is a very friendly place and brilliant for teaching with its mirror wall, which makes it possible to demonstrate a move and watch people at the same time.
As well stretching and the personal and interpersonal energy work I had planned, I slipped in the Short Short Tai Chi form which I developed while I was helping Steve Jones to run and teach his Sector39 Permaculture courses back down in Shropshire.

Birth of the Short Short Form in Treflach Farmyard

Steve is really an afternoon-evening person whereas I'm more of a morning one, so it worked out well to fit in some Tai Chi before classes started, and the students found it really helpful. The courses were just two weeks long so there wasn't time to teach a full form - I learned the Cheng Man Ching Sort Form, which even though "short" still takes weeks and weeks to learn. My Short Short Form is a condensed version of it which you can pick up quite quickly but still has a lot of the basic elements and movements. You would find it a good start if you ever went on to learn a full form but will still give lots of benefits just on its own.

Movement in Stillness

One of the first things we learn in CranioSacral Therapy is Stillpoint Induction, bringing about a temporary pause in the craniosacral rhythm through light touch and focused intention.

Into the stillness,"Three Worlds", by Escher

It's a therapeutic moment for the release of restriction and readjustment, and patients find it very relaxing.

Evolving Cosciousness - the Quadrune Brain

The idea of the Triune Brain, ie that our human brains are an enfoldment over mammal brains which are in turn an enfoldment over reptile brains, can be really helpful in explaining how people's behaviour can revert to something less than human, for example, when we feel threatened, scared, get drunk or if someone threatens someone close to us.

Thinking about how whales and dolphins are in a way more evolved than humans in that they have returned to the sea, maybe there's a Quadrune Consciousness we're already tapping into

Integrated Healthcare

All of us complementary therapists working here at Tay Medispa in Perth, Scotland, have been talking a lot about integrated healthcare - how to work even better together as a team at our clinic, and about how to link up with the other complementary therapists and clinics in and around Perth. And above all, how to get better communication going with all the people working here in the NHS, (for readers outside the UK, the NHS is our wonderful welfare state national health service), so that people know much more about what health support is available, how each service can help and when the various different treatments are most appropriate.

MUTUAL SUPPORT - by working together, the individual members of the reciprocating roof enable the whole structure to cover a very wide space with no central supporting post

We seem to be in a strange situation at the moment, having a mostly over stretched NHS and mostly under utilised complementary sector. I heard recently of people waiting two years for operations in this country - I'm sure that at least some of those people could be treated successfully with complementary therapy, gentler on all systems and available immediately. I offer a free initial 30 minute consultation, a great opportunity to find out more about CranioSacral Therapy and whether it might help you, to see the clinic and to find out about all the other treatments available at Medispa.
So I guess I'm going to carry on meeting up with people, opening the channels, giving demos and talks and generally explaining what we do.
TOPICS COMING SOON: A few tales from my own experiences of giving and receiving healthcare, NHS and complementary, the best and the worst.

!! NEW !! - Chi Kung PLUS - Classes and Tuiition

I developed Chi Kung Plus through showing clients exercises, to help them deal better with stress and as a general health boost. Chi Kung Plus is easy to learn, calming and fun, and highly effective. The exercises combine traditional Chi Kung with my complementary therapy experience, especially of CranioSacral Therapy. More here: Chi Kung Plus.

I'm available for small classes of two or three people and individual tuition here in Perth at Tay Medispa and currently sorting out a venue for larger classes.The studios at Inspire look great, one of them has a mirrored wall which is really handy for teaching, and there's a good friendly atmosphere there.
Chi Kung Plus is great for starting the day on courses or for a break in a stressful working day - please get in touch to talk about holding a class in your course programme or at your workplace.
email: ianecowatt@hotmail.com
mobile: 07450 332 430

ENDLESS BEGINNINGS

It's brilliant to be working hands-on with patients again here at Tay Medispa in Perth, Scotland. Recent experiences have made me think about how to help people at an ever deeper level, with hands-on and remote patients, individually and in groups.

The tides of life.

ENDLESS BEGINNINGS
The subtle rhythms we work with in CranioSacral Therapy, certainly in the Upledger way I'm familiar with, are generally quite short cycles of seconds or minutes. I'm also aware of longer rhythms, the "tides"...

FLOW

FLOW

A lot of a treatment session, hands-on or remote, is about assisting FLOW - whether it's of energy, ideas, blood, lymph, cerebrospinal fluid, air, nerve impulses, blocked emotions and patterns...

Something I've got interested in through treating patients in the hands-on way recently is the flow of development, from the embryo to the adult; and in the adult, the flow of renewal of tissue.

CONNECTIONS

Ruth and I are loving being back in Perth, and enjoying all the facilities of city life. We miss some aspects of our years in the backwoods but it's wonderful to be linking up with some of our oldest and greatest family members, friends and colleagues and to be making brilliant new friends too.

The number of synapses in the human brain is larger than the number of galaxies in the observable universe

CONNECTIONS
I've just started working at the excellent Tay Medispa clinic here in Perth, and it's a fascinating time to be joining the team. I think the helpful potential for making fresh connections in healthcare is enormous.

ONE-TO-ONE REMOTE THERAPY SESSIONS

I'm available for One-to-One remote treatment sessions of CranioSacral Energy Work for patients anywhere in the world. Sessions are 45 minutes long, with email or phone discussion before and after as required. More about my remote work here, and do please get in touch to find out more: ianecowatt@gmail.com.
COST, including discussion: £55

I also host a regular Free Remote Group CranioSacral Energy Treatments, most Thursdays via Facebook, all welcome to join in: Remote Treatment Page.