What Katy Louise Did...

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Katy Louise writes about health, wealth, happiness and relationships, and the spiritual insights she gains along her path. She is currently editor of Top Sante magazine (www.topsante.co.uk). Prior to that she was editor of Bodyfit magazine (now Your Fitness www.yourfitnesstoday.com) and the launch editor of Soul&Spirit magazine (www.soulandspiritmagazine.com). Katy is also a certified Fitsteps and STOTT Pilates instructor. She is the go-to girl for all matters relating to health, wellbeing and spirituality.

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Why menstruation should be celebrated!

Did the title of this blog catch your eye? Did you wholeheartedly disagree with it? Well, I'll admit I do to, at the moment at least. But this coming weekend my deputy and I are heading to Glastonbury for what promises to be an incredibly enlightening workshop run by a lady who calls herself the 'Flying Witch', all about how to get in tune with your menstual cycle and come to view it as a positive, energising thing in your life, not a negative 'curse. 

The Flying Witch
The 'Flying Witch' (real name Gabriella Guglielminotti Trivel) says on her website that women need to learn how to get in touch with their inner feminine power, and how to use understand and use their cycle to their advantage. The testimonials on the site were enough to convince me that this was a lady I needed to meet, and from whom I could probably learn a lot. Being a real head-based person, I want to get in touch with that inner intuition and feminine knowing, that I am sure is buried deep insied me somewhere. Maybe Gabriella is the one who will help me tap into it! And if it helps me understand my feelings and emotions, then so much the better.


Natural childbirth
The whole subject of periods and even natural childbirth is one that fascinates me at the moment, having read a book by Ina May Gaskin all about natural, drug-free childbirth, and how much better is it for the baby and for the recovery of the mother. Ina May has been a midwife for somethind like 40 years (I forget the specifics) and I felt that what she wrote about in the book was the truth: that birth has become so sterile and treated as an illness, i.e. 'what can go wrong', where as it is actaully a totally natural process that most women can go through without intervention. Having also subsequently watched One Born Every Minute, and heard plenty of negative comments from other women I know, about how dangerous birth can be, I think it is a sad state of affairs that we have gotten into in the West. Women are so divorced from their bodies and their natural processes: they just want to drug themselves up and get it over with (and yes, I admit I have not had a child so how can I comment on such a thing, and by the way I am not judging anyone for the choices they make - until I go through it myself I dont know how I will respond). But I just felt strongly that there needs to be a cultural shift back to the way things used to be, when women gave birth at home with midwives who knew what they were doing. Where it was more relaxed and the woman was respected and worshipped, not drugged up hurried along because her body was 'taking too long' to do its job.

Period power!
Another lady who inspires me is Dr. Christiane Northrup, whose wisdom I was listening to on a Hay House audio CD the other day. It was one with Wayne Dyer - Tao te Ching expert - and I forget the name of the CD now as it's at home, but Dr Northrup is also advocates the work of Ina May Gaskin, and in getting women to become more in tune with their bodies and be wary of Western medicine.
I could go on about this subject for ages, but suffice to say that my journey on the path of discovering the 'power of my periods' will begin this Saturday, Fenbruary 26, in Glastonbury (where else!)

Information
I reckon it's going to be a great workshop so I wanted to share the details. Visit
www.flyinginspiration.co.uk to find out more. It costs £75 for the day and is at Healing Waters retreat centre (www.healing-waters.co.uk or call 01458 835859) though she also runs the workshops elsewhere.

Monday 21 February 2011

Find your soul mate!


Can you find love on line??? this is the subject of a talk I have just listened to on the Soulmate Summit website (see below for details). The Soul mate Summit has been going on since Valentines day and is on for another couple of days and it’s basically daily seminars on line about relationship and dating advice – basically how to prepare yourself for love and find the best kind of guy for you (or girl, but it’s mainly aimed at women).
I’ve just listened to the seminar by Evan Marc Katz, all about online dating and how to set up a great profile that will make you stand out from others, and get great results. And I wanted to share a couple of really important points he made, which are actually about the dating process, not so much about online dating specifically. 

Get smooching
1) Decide what sort of dates you want to have. i.e. are you really happy with afternoon coffee dates? Evan says kissing is an important part of determining chemistry, and how can you kiss someone if it’s the middle of the afternoon in a cafĂ©? He suggests trying to arrange things so it’s a Friday or Saturday night, so you don’t have to worry about work, and letting the man make the arrangements. He is by no means advocating falling into bed with someone on a first date (he goes into this in more detail) but says if you can’t even kiss someone – if you want to, that is – you might miss out on knowing whether they are right or not as you can often tell a lot from a kiss.

Be still, open and receptive
2) He says that as a woman, you have to stand still with your arms open (metaphorically) and let the men come to you. That’s right – don’t run towards them when you sense one is coming to you, i.e. taking the man’s role, and don’t run in the opposite direction, hoping he will chase after you and this will create more attraction, i.e. as in what The Rules advocates. Instead, be open and receptive to love, and if a good man comes along he will make the effort with you and it will be easy. If something is not easy and you are over analysing his behavior, why he hasn’t called, making excuses for him, etc, it’s probably not going to work out. 

Put in some ground work
3) If you want to meet a guy, put in around half an hour a day onto online dating, just like you would spend half an hour doing hair and make up, or making a meal etc. make it a part of your routine, get a great profile, and realise that a guy isn’t; going to just miraculously find you if you just hang out in all the same places and with all the same married friends. You do have to put in some effort, usually, to be available to men. So if you do this, he says, you will definitely find someone by the end of the year. 

Oh and he also says not to be so choosy, as we can get incredibly picky when it comes to looking through on line profiles and often rule people out who might be great for us!!!

Again, I’m sorry I didn’t share this earlier as the summit has been going on for at least a week already. Personally, I am in no place to be giving out relationship advice (as my friends will attest to!) but the people on this seminar programme know what they are talking about. So take note!!!

Visit www.soulmatesummit.net/event. Marc’s talk will probably only be live for another few hours (they are all only available for 24 hours) but there will be more tomorrow.