Category: health

I am not going to whinge and whine in 2023 but…

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At some point in your life you have to take a long hard look at yourself. That point for me is now. I am sorry if I am not making any sense but I am too busy trying to be so many different things that I am not being the one thing that I most need to be… ME.

No surprise there, I know that I am not the only one. I would ask you to leave a comment down below if you can feel me, if you get what I am saying, if you know where I am coming from but the truth is that if you know any of those things then you won’t leave a comment. You may nod your head knowingly but you will then scroll along with your life.

I get it. I can’t touch you. I don’t touch you because I don’t even touch myself. (I don’t mean in the biblical sense) I mean touch my heart, smell the air, the flowers, sniff the salt of the sea, none of it. I barely have time these days to walk my poor old dog, never mind spend any quality time with those around me, not even me.

As I do every year I set out to improve myself. Last year I did. I created a new business, I worked at a wages job earning a regular income while I stayed up late at night working on what I call our future finances. Last year I wrote a new book during NaNoWriMo, I published a new book and some other stuff..

I didn’t start eating properly, exercising regular, sticking to a regular yoga practise, using my aromatherapy oils daily, my crystals or my tarot and do not even get me started on my much attention I didn’t give at all to Reiki! Fuck all of that shit I am too busy!!! I have to make plans, work schedules, family schedules, cook and clean the house, care for the dogs, go to work, pay the bills, create, create, create. I have to prove myself, be the best at my game. I have to know everything. I have to read blogs, books, listen to podcasts and more books, take courses and watch everything. I am fifty two and I have fallen behind.

I don’t have time for counting calories, carbs, nutrients, exercises and reps, I no longer namaste, my soul does not soar, my feet are not grounded, I don’t feel supported my mother earth and father sky has long left the building. I cannot remember the last time I went to bed at the same time as my husband, well a time that we went to bed together when I wasn’t so tired that my lights were out the second my head hit the pillow.

Honestly I cannot think about my relationships with others right now. I don’t have the energy to heal the rifts that have come between me and those around me for no other reason other than my constant state of busyness. I have to give to me now. My cup, my bucket, myself is empty.

Don’t get me started on menopause, my older aunt is here now with a vengeance and sometimes I just want everyone to shut the fuck up.

My blog, in case you forgot the title, is Body Peace Writer. It is what I once strived to achieve. Before I was in a car accident, before my heart was broken and before the pandemic. I wanted to merge my life as an alternate therapist, yoga teacher and writer. I wanted to live one big happy namaste, eight limbed, rakeed up, crystal cleansing, essential oil lathered writer.

I was so sure that 2022 was going to be my year. You know to get my shit together. But I developed a hip issue, it has a fancy ‘itis’ word attached to it but I am pretty sure it is because I am overweight and sit on arse all day. I am a writer. What else am I going to do when I am not at my day job? I sit and snack while I work to keep myself awake. Then when it is finally time to sleep, I can’t. I take a pill, then it is hard to wake up- you know the cycle if you have read this far.

Currently I am on – hormone replacement therapy, anti-inflammatory, norgesics; analgesics; antihistamines; metformin and anti anxiety meds. Most of which started after the car accident. Most of which I suspect I wouldn’t need if I lived my true existence.

There is no perfect scenario where I am going to fix myself. I can’t runaway to a health farm or retreat in a cave in the mountains of Nepal. I have a life to live here, I have responsibilities here and work to get done away from my wages job. I have to find a way of integrating all that I want with all that I can do. There are only so many hours in a day and I have to use some of them for being a better friend to me.

Of course you and I both know that I would have never started writing this post if I had not already started on a plan. I have to squeeze some good shit into my everyday. I have found a healer, yoga teacher, mentor. I have had two sessions with her and a couple of weeks dotted with some decent crying times. The first week she sent me home with crystals, the next aromatherapy blends all designed to heal my heart and send the negativity away. Next week she is giving me an energy healing and I start weekly yoga classes with her on Wednesday. So its a start. It is a push in the right direction. I am not looking to push bad things out of my life, I am aiming to bring more of the good things in. I am searching for a balance I can live with.

I love a chai latte with a bar of white chocolate on the side, perfectly cooked salted potato chips in a buttery roll, chocolate at room temperature and cheese boards, and none of these things will be left behind any time soon.

Namaste beautiful writers, it all starts with the little things. Wish me luck!

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Stepping Into 2022

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It has taken a while for me to get my head into my 2022 goals. I have sat, thought, pondered and journaled about what it is I want to achieve. Recently I have spent my mornings at the beach in Rockingham where we are taking our two dogs for their morning swim. the weather is hot, and our aging shepherd Annie loves to swim. We know we will have to say goodbye to her soon and try to make every day a good day for her. I guess I have been distracted.

My Pandemic World

I am not about to complain about my experience with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. I have been lucky. I sit here in my home in West Australia, double vaxxed and healthy, well as healthy as I can be but more on that later. It is easy to be complacent, our government has been tough on those reluctant to be vaccinated and this has caused the predictable back lash in the community. I should specify that it is six percent of the population now in Western Australia that are not vaccinated, and that is fine, it is their choice. My only wish is that they wouldn’t be so aggressive about their position, that they wouldn’t use fake science and hearsay to back up their claims. I trust the science and the empirical evidence that tells me, quite clearly that I have a better chance of surviving COVID when vaccinated.

Our borders are due to open soon, and travelers from around the world will be coming back to Western Australia for whatever reason, and history shows with open borders the virus will run rampant. I want myself and my family to have a fighting chance of getting through this pandemic, isn’t that all any of us want?

Good Reads Challenge

I have registered for a Good reads challenge, and I have committed to reading fifty two books a year! Four books down – follow by reading journey here…. (Insert links to good reads)

Dissolve by Nikki Gemmel

With the exceptions of Nikki Gemmel’s successful television career and award winning novels, I could have been reading my life story. The names and places are different but the emotions are all there. if you are a women, writing or following some other creative pursuit, read this book.

Writing Goals for 2022

I am sharing my writing goals here to help me to stay accountable. I can’t remember who it was that said ‘No one cares if you don’t write,’ and that is true. People are if you don’t shower, make dinner and wash dishes, but not one other person in my household at least cares if I don’t get my arse in the chair and write!”

Love Heals the Heart – is the third book in m multi-protagonist series – Shades of Love. This book is currently under going final edits and should be released in March/April.

Theodore Bear Goes to Karate – my first children’s book and a big departure from what I usually write, its a lot of fun and I am learning so much about illustration and writing for children. I plan for this book to be released in July.

Body Peace Writer Retreat – is a book I have been planning for a long time, years. It will combine my yoga, reiki, meditation and aromatherapy knowledge, with everything that I know and have tried about writing and unleashing the muse, in what ever form your inspiration takes. This book will guide you through creating your own retreat, at home and will be filled with tips, exercises, yoga sequences. etc..

I would then like to write a fourth book in my series that follows on from Love Heals the Heart.

I want to write another book, I want to journal more often, to meditate and grow the repertoire of work that I can do. This includes an expansion in the social media marketing that I do to include tik tok… don’t laugh. Well at least not until you follow me here: https://www.tiktok.com/@vanessamckayauthor

Financial Goals 2022

As I type this my books are selling weekly in their ones. I want this change, I want to move my writing from being my number one expense to being a sustainable income that I build on year after year over the next decade. I plan to do that by sticking to all of the above.

Health Goals 2022

I want to resume teaching this year, it is hard in the COVID climate so I am looking at creating classes on Patreon as a way to generate a small income while helping other writers look after their bodies from the safety and security of their own homes. The big upside to Patreon is that students can take the classes whenever it suits them and often as they like so watch this space as I bring this plan to fruition.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe and I will be back with an update and more photos soon. xx

Spring!!

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Not that you would know it but here in Perth we are two weeks into spring. It is thirteen degrees outside, raining and windy. If it wasn’t for the leaves returning to the deciduous trees in our garden it would be easy to miss the recent turn of the seasons. I am trying not to whinge, summer and its hot dry days will be here soon enough. (I popped out at lunch to snap some shots of the garden, and was blessed with blue skies)

My aim for this month is organisation – I know, try not to laugh out loud. It feels like every year I run the gauntlet of trying this way and that to become more efficient, more productive, more, more, more… The truth is that I end every day exhausted and I never feel like I have done enough work. Then I remind myself, my family is safe, the house is clean, some work got done, and I can wake up and do more tomorrow. When did we become so hard on ourselves? Who ever told us that we have to get it all done, NOW! I am working on a balance of being gentle with myself without slacking off.

YOGA

This month has been cold and my arthritis has been flaring up and cramping down. So my yoga practice has been working on treating every joint in my body to some movement and attention. It helps, particularly around midday when I have been sitting at my desk typing for a couple of hours. A daily practice doesn’t have to be time consuming or even interrupt your day. Here are a few exercises that I try to do several times a day without leaving my desk:

Yoga Journalling

As a writer you probably already have a tonne of journals and balk at me attempting adding another one to the pile. I call this section yoga journalling but you can do it in your everyday notebook, journal, diary, scrap of paper, phone notes – where ever you choose to write. When I began training as a yoga teacher we were told to journal after every class to record the valuable insights and epiphanies we were sure to have, and I soon realised that all my writing belonged in the one place, I do not have the patience for chopping and changing journals according to the pants I am wearing. So I use my stock standard Molskine notebook for everything, including shopping lists – All writing it good writing? It doesn’t have to be fancy or form a starting point for my next novel, it just has to be put down on paper for me to review at sometime in the future.

That said try this small exercise –

Scheduling…

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Lately it feels like each week I come up with a new way of scheduling my work load to get the most out of my time. The only thing I don’t schedule in is time to re-write my schedule for the coming week. It pays to be flexible and I am curious how others stick to their writing timetables.

As a newly published author I was unprepared for the additional work load that I now have to undertake, the marketing, the email list building, the author platforms and the writing and editing of more books on top of my daydreaming to develop ideas, listening to podcasts, reading craft books. I have a plethora of up coming story ideas each more delicious than, well, anything I have just mentioned.

It is true that we writers need to practice grit and determination, but I ask you how can you maintain writing and working into the abyss with so little feedback and compensation?

I has taken me years to finally convince not only myself, but my family that this is it. I am a writer. Now I am asked appropriate questions by my family such as ‘How is the book going?’

When strangers ask me what I do, I no longer hesitate. I am a writer. It feels both good and a little fraudulent especially when I have to say, ‘No you haven’t heard of me.’ In fact my book Allison is lost at number 898,195 on Amazon (paid in Kindle store). That is fine, my long awaited writing career is a slow burn. I have five more manuscripts written and travelling through the editing, polishing and publishing process. In the meantime I plan to work on content marketing and more writing. Yes it is a leap of faith, but my books are okay, my books will get better and so will I.

Will it always be such a struggle to schedule, to find a way of doing everything that I want to write, read, listen to and watch?

Back in 2018 I was the victim of a hit a run. A truck ran a red light and ploughed through my car. I survived but it left me with ongoing neck and migraine issues, mix that up with arthritis and carpal tunnel and there is a lot going on that makes my job, any job really, difficult. Manageable yes, but when you are in the flow of writing a story, your characters are talking to you, the plot is evolving, working and you can see it all coming together. You missed lunch, your midday meds and finally you have to get up because you can no longer ignore the urge to pee. But now your knee is locked and your hip is stuck, your back hurts, there is no way of getting from your desk to the toilet without pain. Why? because you are an idiot.. (by you I mean me) You ignored scheduled breaks, time limits and self care.

I am not the only one. I hear this so much from the people around me, the non-writers, the tradespeople, the office workers, the business owners, the teachers and the doctors. Why is self care so difficult? Do we expect too much from ourselves, is the world too hungry and eager to have it all now? Are we too keen to please, to keep up? Do we not realise that we are leaving our most valuable commodity behind? No job, no matter how wonderful is worth treating ourselves poorly.

My schedule is simple and I am semi-confident that this is the one that I will stick to. Each day I have designated an hour to working on new material, and then each day I have allocated two hours to work on an area of my business:

MondayTuesdayWedThursdayFridaySat
1hrWrite WriteWriteWriteWriteAdmin
2hrMarketingEditingStudyEditingBloggingAdmin
MoveKarateYogaWalkYogaWalkWalk

The above table is a simplified outline of my current working timetable, I use calendar on my iPhone to set the times and ‘day topics’ and Reminders to make notes on each of my projects. I can add new projects to my to do lists here as they come to mind across the board. Now I am not wasting time going through my notes worried that I forgot something and all my information is on hand. Overall it has been a productive week with limited mobility issues.

The table above doesn’t show my scheduled breaks, I set my timer for 30 minutes and get up and move around, even if it just to do the laundry or vacuum and make a cup of tea, it keeps me moving and working.

Thank you for reading, I am now going to take this beautiful lady for a walk.

Healthy Happy Writing!

What is Reiki?

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I have been asked this question many times from both interested seekers and casual observers. Reiki is difficult to define as you will discover on your own Reiki journey. What it is to you and what it is to me may be two different things with the exception that we will both be aware of the fact that Reiki is a manifestation of love.


Reiki is Universal life force energy: What does it mean?
Is it a gift of energy from the universe? Perhaps. I do not discount the common rhetoric defining reiki this way I do however challenge its simplistic aloofness. When you give and receive a Reiki treatment with the true intent of healing the wounds of the soul and body you will feel love.
What is Reiki? It is love with the intention of healing.

Your First Yoga Class

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People often ask me if my Yoga Classes are hard? Let me set you at ease, they are not.

My classes are as challenging as you need them to be on any given day.  After you have been practicing for a while  you see that your body will often react differently from one class to the next, even throughout a single class from one side to the other.  When you look close enough, no two poses you do will ever be alike. It is my job to guide you into practicing poses safely and within your limits, it is your job not to let your ego push you past those limits. I design my yoga classes to meet you where you are and you must always remain where your breath is. ( we will discuss this more in class 😉)

Arrival: please try to arrive five-ten minutes before class starts, I will need some information from you before we start and we can talk about your expectations and any concerns that you may have.


What to wear: leggings or loose comfy pants on the bottom.  Please be comfortable, which you won’t be if you are fidgeting around trying to keep your arse covered.  Yoga is not an Instagram fashion parade, it is one place where you must dress for comfort over style.  You may like to bring socks for our meditation at the end of class but we will practice in bare feet for safety. If you are prone to cold feet and are uncomfortable you can buy Yoga Socks with special grips on the soles.

On the top, layers are good to peel off during class if you get too warm and you can reapply for meditation. Best not to wear anything that falls over your head during forward bends.

Please refrain from wearing perfume during class, a clean body and a roll of deodorant is all you need.  Chemical smells are distracting when we practice and may cause headaches and sneezes in your fellow students.

Eating before Class? It is better not to eat within a couple of hours before class, but if you must, enjoy something light such as a piece of fruit and a herbal tea.

What to bring: a mat, a drink bottle, a blanket and a small cushion for your head. If you do not have a mat let me know I always carry a few spares and you are welcome to use one while you are deciding whether or not yoga is right for you.

Savasana Meditation: Don’t leave class during Savasana, our final pose. It is your time to relax, time for your body to reset and adjust to any changes our practice has brought.  I  will often  use a singing bowl and Reiki to set an atmosphere of serenity as I guide you through a meditation while you simply focus on your breath. Leaving at this time is disruptive, if you must go early please ensure it is during our Savasana preparation time.

Okay so with the basics out of the way, trying new things can be scary.  Coming along with a friend helps but that is not always possible and even with a friend your negative internal dialogue can still kick in.   Let me try to put your mind at ease.. no one is looking at you.  Not one person is class is bothered about your size, your tummy, your butt, lack of flexibility, lack of physical stability, if you wobble, shake or even fart!  Yoga is an internal practice.  Throughout class, I encourage you to turn within, to focus on your breath and to draw your attention to what is happening on your mat.  Yoga class is your sacred space, to let go of stresses and worldly worries, Yoga time is all about YOU.

If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me.

Namaste 🙏

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Lemon Essential Oil

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https://youtu.be/VlEai508pmo

About Lemon Essential Oil

Lemon oil is mainly made up of Limonene, a popular ingredient in many household cleaning products.  This essential oil is derived from the rind of a lemon and is a great natural alternative to many cleaning products we use regularly around our homes.

Lemon essential oil has so many uses in and around the home.  Here I will mention a few that I practice at home with much success :

  •  Add a couple of drops stirred into a cold class of water for a refreshing drink.
  • Same to a cup of tea with honey.
  • Use as a flavoring to food both savory and sweet.
  • Surface Cleaning – add a few drops to a spray bottle with water and use to clean benches in your bathroom and kitchen.  Smells amazing.
  • Mix with olive oil and use with a soft cloth to polish furniture.
  • Use neat on sticky goo, to dissolve and clean.
  •  Add a few drop around spider entries, along with peppermint oil lemon oil is a natural spider deterrant.
  • 10 drops in an atomizer to refresh your home and clear out any left over cooking smells.
  • I also use 10 drops in the rinse tray of my washing machine cycle will freshen up our families karate uniforms after a hard nights training.  Use on any other laundry for that matter, lemon oil leaves the washing machine smelling great.

Precautions

Lemon essential oil is non-toxic and not known to be an irritant.  However it should not be applied neat to the skin (can cause burning) and should not be used even diluted prior to exposure to the sun and it is phototoxic.

Storage

As a citrus oil, lemon oil is prone to oxidation caused by temperature changes.  It is a good idea to store your lemon oil and other citrus oils in the refrigerator if you do not have another balanced temperature storage solution.

Purchase Lemon Oil

LEmons

Click here Purchase doTerra Lemon Oil 

doterra lemon oil
Lemon Oil

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions about essential oils, their use and where to purchase.  Look out for my book Essential Oils at Home, filled with all you need to know about safely using essential oils at home. Coming soon.

Originally published on BodyPeace.Yoga