As we all try to negotiate the hussle of modern life, I know personally there has always been a little voice in my heart asking why, what is beneath and around all this striving and playing the game?  I can’t help feeling that what we are searching for is ourselves and a spiritual path that makes sense to our deepest cells of intuition.

In direct opposition to our modern culture where we look outward for validation and guidance and we care for our appearance in order to be accepted, in Taoism the exact opposite is true.  We look inside ourselves and we strive for a greater understanding of ourselves in order to understand the world and our place in it; the outer world is only known in relation to our inner point of view.

Self cultivation is the basis for knowing the Tao… Acupuncture, and the healing it enables, is a perfect place to begin this journey.  It is only by being in harmony with ourselves that our body can heal itself, which this is the basis of acupuncture.  The needles connect to our spirit opening up pathways to access our own well of understanding, knowing and healing.  When we truly connected to our spirit we are truly connected to the Tao…

Genius! Somerset Maugham was clearly well versed in the power of resistance as well as the no. 1 tool to overcoming it; hard work, discipline and beginning, regardless of how you feel that particular morning.

I believe that resistance is fueled by fear; fear of beginning, fear of creating, fear of being criticized, fear of putting yourself and your art out there in the world…the list goes on. It has taken me so so long to learn that this fear never disappears; however much ‘work’ I do on myself, it will be sitting at the end of my bed every morning waiting to do battle.  With time however, I do believe you become more accustomed to its presence and I now accept that I will feel it before doing pretty much anything that involves putting myself out there.

This subject is really close to my heart as I have lived in fear for most of my life; fear of looking like an idiot mainly and fear of getting it wrong.   Admitting this is hard, especially as someone who used to chuck herself of mountains in a previous incarnation as a professional skier! My fears at the time were completely different and in many ways far easier to handle.

I was fearful of avalanches, of hurting myself (again), of dying, yet none of these fears were enough to stop me putting my skis on and getting out there day after day.

How is it then that the fear involved in writing and creating is so overwhelming it stops me from sitting in front of my computer and lures me into a myriad of procrastination?  I have become a complete sucker to resistance!  How is writing a few articles and putting myself out there more scary than facing a designated ‘death zone’ and ‘no fall zone’ in freeride competitions?!

I have recently finished “The War of Art” by Stephen Pressfield and was inspired to kick the resistance at exactly 8.30am every morning by just starting and seeing where that takes me.  So here goes!

However, as we all know, today living mostly in cities, leading work driven lives with numerous responsibilities and pressures from all sides; friends, family, work, this is nearly impossible. We don’t have a culture of changing our lives in order to live more appropriately within the demands of a season – in the Winter our jobs still start and finish at the same time as the rest of the year and we might cut our social life down a little but in the main we tend to live a consistently busy life and all this can strain our kidneys leading to tiredness, thinning hair and nails, lack of drive and motivation and even mild depression

Apart from these obvious drains on our Kidneys we have another new robber of kidney energy; social media and smart phones.  While this obsession might seem quite innocent on the surface it is draining our kidneys with every adrenaline hit a post or a like, email, text, whats app message etc gives us.  Not only does this act as a constant drain on our Kidney energy in the form of overstimulation it also denies us any moments of peace to stare out the window and daydream accessing our deep innate wisdom that resides in our Kidneys.  We need that to nourish our spirit and have ideas and dreams that we can covert to reality in the Spring!

With this in mind here are a few tips as we near the end of the winter to boost your kidneys so you have enough energy to jump into Spring and start giving birth to all those projects you have been dreaming of during the winter!

Tips:

• Cut your social media use to specific times in the morning and evening so as to avoid mindless browsing
• Keep your phone in your pocket when on the bus using the time to daydream looking out the window – give your brain a rest!
• Eat warm foods; soups, stews and cut out ice and cold raw foods
• Make some black sesame tea – recipe here
• Look to include red and blue foods; blueberries, blackberries, beetroot etc
• BOOK IN FOR SOME ACUPUNCTURE!!!

There are many things that are good for the Kindneys health which you can read here, but a simply way to boost them is by drinking Black Sesame Tea:

• 1 cup black sesame seeds
• 2 soft dates – pitted
• 3 cups water
1 cup homemade almond milk or almond-sesame milk (see recipe below)

1. Boil the sesame seeds and dates in some water for 30 minutes

2. Add some homemade almond milk and continue to boil

3. Optional you can strain the liquid removing the sesame seeds and dates or you can whizz them all up together to make a thicker, frothy drink

4. Add honey to taste if the dates aren’t sweet enough for you