Are we pushing too hard?

In recent times more children than ever before are being directed to my practice door. Normally the isssue is some form of anxiety and I can't help wondering if today we simply push children too hard.

Continuous testing for exams, peer pressure to conform as well as the expectations of parents all seem to come together to form a toxic blend that generates this anxiety.

It's unlikely that anyone of us will have the capability to change the way that our society is pushing children but we can give them a coping stategy.

I have found that for children of 9 to 14 years, teaching the child a simplified form of Gary Craig's Emotional Freedom Technique can be incredibly helpful. It provides a way to reduce fear and anxiety very quickly and easily at the point where the anxiety is experienced, for example as the child is about to sit an exam.

Or, just perhaps, we parents should learn to be more relaxed and less pushy with our children, it would certainly help.

Follow this link for much information direct from the EFT website. Why not give it a try, the resources are free.

Why do we dream?

"Why do we dream?" was the question posed by the BBC Horizon TV program last night. It was a fascinating program that investigated this most hidden of mysteries.

Many people are now aware that Rapid Eye Movement or REM periods during sleep indicate that a person is dreaming but now studies have shown that we also dream between these REM episodes. What was most interesting though was that the nature of the dreams in REM sleep appears to be different to the dreams in non-REM sleep.

When test subjects in REM sleep were woken up, their dreams seemed to be of a negative or doubting nature whilst when woken in the non-REM dream periods, the sleepers reported a greater number of positive emotions.

One researcher postulated that this may help explain some forms of depression. The idea being that a person with depression would be entering the REM stage of sleep more often and therefore staying in the negative mood for longer periods during sleep. Whether this is a cause of depression or a side effect of it was at least to this viewer unclear.

It was a fascinating program though, you can watch it again using the BBC iPlayer service (this may not work outside the UK). Follow this link for the program's iPlayer page.

Health and the harmonica

I talked about harmonicas yesterday and I found a snippet about how playing the instrument can help improve breathing for those with pulmonary conditions. It seems that playing the harmonica exercises all the right chest muscles to improve breathing.

Follow this link to check out the video story from a medical centre in the USA.

The power of music to heal

I have a love of music and especially the harmonica. It's not that I'm a great player (I'm not), but I enjoy the creativity of playing and the joy of listening to others play.

So I take an interest in other players and teachers on the web and one of those is Adam Gussow. He sells teaching products on line and has a testimonial page for those who have used his products. This testimonial really caught my attention

Hello Adam,

My name is Yohan and I live in Quebec, Canada, in a small city calles Ste-Sophie not to far from Montreal. I am writing this e-mail to say thank you for all the time you are taking and all the videos you are making for Youtube. I have a little story for you if you have the time to read it because my harmonica maybe saved a man’s life.

I am a paramedic here in Quebec and have been for 4 year now. I love my job and love to help people the best I can. Once in a while I even save a life. A few months ago I was looking an instrument to play. I’m not rich so I thought the harp would be nice and not to expensive. Not only that I can prictice on the job when I’m not on a call. I bought a C harp and started to listen to your videos on Youtube. The minute I started I loved playing and now the harp is always on me whereever I go. After a few months of playing I can say that I am an ADVANCED BEGINNER to INTERMEDIATE player. Now here is the story. A few weeks ago I was on the job and it was a boring day. It was raining and we had no calls. Me and my partner are just sitting in the ambulance on the verge of falling asleep. Finally the dispatch calls us for a man wanting to end his life and we are called to help the police who are already there. We get to the man’s house and all we hear is yelling. The police and man are almost fighting. The man who is in his late 50's does not want to go to the hospital and all he wants to do is die. As the man sees me and my partner walk in he is even more pissed off. The man is not armed he is just sitting in his couch and he dose not want to leave his house but he said he want to commit suicide. (I don’t know how it works in the states but here in Canada it is illegal do commit suicide and I can’t leave the man there knowing what he will do when I leave.) After 10 minutes of yelling between the police and the man, I reach in my pocket and pull out my harp. I look at it, bring it to my mouth and start playing... I started with Oh Suzanna and then other song that I learned by ear. When I started playing everyone stopped yelling. My partner was looking at me with this big question mark on his face saying what the hell are you doing? After a minute or so the police and the man had big smiles on their faces. Then I stopped playing put the harp away and everyone was looking at me. The man looks up at me and said that he had not smiled like that in years. I then tell him that music always dose that to me too and if he wants to talk about it on our way to the hospital I would love too. I did not think i would work but the man got up took his jacket kissed his wife and told her he would be back later. Everyone had the same question on their mind including me, what in the world just happed. All this yelling just few minutes ago, a little harp, and now everything is calm and the man is coming without a fight. As I sat with the man in the back of the Ambulance the man told me he use to play in a small band years back and me playing brought back lots of memories. We talk about other things for we had 45 minutes ride to the closed hospital. I told him he was not alone and dieing was not the only way out. When we got to the hospital the man thanked me. It was probably the most sincere thank you I ever got in my life. I will never forget the way that man looked and smiled at me. Did i really save his life? I dont know. Did he get help? I dont know. The only thing I know is that he did not do it on that day.

Well that is pretty much the story. I am not much of a storyteller so I told it the best that I could. From what I learned from you helped another man. I want to thank you again and keep up the good work!

--Yohan, Quebec

I could discuss how the music was a trigger that took him into a more resourceful state or talk about the power of music to heal, but I think the story itself is eloquent enough.

Can you repair and re-use your experience?

This morning I finally got around to looking at my HiFi CD player to see why it was not working correctly. It didn't take long to realise that one of the children had helpfully posted a 5p coin through the cooling slots of the case. I guess it looked just like a money box.

Coin extracted and dust removed, the CD played correctly and a big bill was avoided.

Today I also made the weekly visit top the local recycling facility (otherwise know as the 'dump') to drop off the cardboard and plastic containers that the local council will not take away on the recycling collection.

Whilst I was there I noticed the amount of electronic goods, some of them apparently quite new being tossed into the dumpster.

I'm sure that just as in my own case, some of this equipment could of have been repaired and re-used but we seem to have become the throw away society.

All this set me to thinking about how we use our experiences and how perhaps we dismiss past experience as being now longer of relevance. Just maybe though, instead of tossing that old experience into a virtual dumpster, it might pay you to dust it off and see if it can be reused in a new way.

Perhaps something you did for charity or fun in the past could be the basis of a new career. Perhaps a skill that you no longer use but still have could be taught to someone else?

Can you repair and reuse your experience in new and more profitable ways?

Do you really want to treat children this way?

I came across a quite horrific piece of reporting today when I discovered that Electro Convulsive Therapy is still being used and worse it is being used on children as young as 4 years old.

This brutal treatment has been in place since the 1930s and although it has been refined a little over the decades (with sedation to prevent the pain) it still seems analogous sticking a long needle into the brain, stirring it around and hoping for the best.

It is used by psychiatrists as a last resort when all other drug and talk based therapies have been exhausted, at least that's what I thought. This blog post seems to indicate that far from being a last resort it is being used routinely in Australia on young children.

ECT causes permanent brain damage, it destroys memory and cognition skills, are they really saying that this is the best way of dealing with a child?

It may be useful; to remember that doctors are fallible too and it's not that long ago they would recommend certain brands of cigarettes as being 'good for the chest'. In other words they get things wrong.

I struggle to believe that drugs or ECT are the only treatment options open to these children; what is their diet like, what is their family life like who is caring for them in the fullest sense of the word?

There really has to be a much better way than this.

Who needs to destress?

A while ago I produced a 7 minute de-stress video and launched it on both YouTube and Google video. You can see it here.

What is interesting is that YouTube has the ability to show the demographics of those who watch the videos (assuming people don't lie about their age and gender of course). Of those watching the video, 76% were male and 24% female, the vast majority of those watching were in the 45 to 54 year old age range.

I had assumed that the male / female ratio would have been flipped around the other way if I went by the ratio of clients in personal therapy.

I could theorize for hours on why this might be so but perhaps it is as simple as guys wanting to fix their problem for themselves and ladies being willing to work things out with the help of someone else.

I would welcome any insights into this from the blog readers.

Even more reasons to celebrate the sun

It has been recognized for some time that low light levels in the winter months can be responsible for lowered mood and even depression.

This syndrome even has a name SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder and special lights can be bought that mimic the effect of natural sunlight.

Natural sunlight is also responsible for the production of vitamin D. This vitamin is responsible for strong bone growth and a lack of it can cause rickets. Recent research though also shows a very strong correlation between a lack of vitamin D and the onset of Multiple Sclerosis.

MS is a chronic, disabling neurodegenerative disease. It strikes most often during early adulthood and seems to affect women more than men.

According to the Times newspaper, there is now hard evidence to link the “sunshine vitamin” and a gene that increases the risk of MS, raising the possibility that the debilitating auto-immune disease could be eradicated.

George Ebers, Professor of Clinical Neurology at the University of Oxford, claimed that there was hard evidence directly relating both genes and the environment to the origins of MS.

It seems that Vitamin D may be especially important in pregnancy for those who have a genetic vulnerability to MS.

What are the potential solutions?

• Get more sunshine, especially in winter so the body can create more vitamin D.
• Eat more fish or fish oil supplements that are natural sources of vitamin D
• Ensure that your diet is also mineral rich (calcium and magnesium) so that the vitamin can be used by the body
• Understand that eating more grains tends to reduce vitamin D in the body

It seems that today we have yet another reason to worship the sun.

2 Hours of play speeded up

This will remind you that life should be about more than making money to pay the bills (although that's important too).

This is two hours of play from a 9 month old baby speeded up into just 2 minutes. The adult interventions have been edited out.



Now, didn't that make you smile?

Deadlines, actions, activities...

Sometimes one's thought are a jumble of impending actions, must meet deadlines and 'tick the box' activities.

That's the time for a 'time out' moment.

I am having one of those this morning, my normally structured schedule is taking a 'time out' so that I can sort the wheat from the chaff.

I feel an urge to tidy up the desk, throw out redundant paperwork and generally regroup. I also feel the need to do this slowly.

Now I have given myself permission to do this, please excuse me while I go and rip up some old paperwork.