For those of you who have been faithful followers of my blog since it started in 2009, for my most recent followers, and for everyone in between, it’s time to make it official: I will not be blogging at 350orbust.com any longer. Although I did say goodbye back in July of 2013 (see Shift Happens post), I couldn’t quite bring myself to stop blogging entirely. So my posts became sporadic until four months ago when I stopped posting entirely.
I haven’t stopped my climate activism, just shifted gears. One of the reasons I had no time to pay attention to 350orbust was that I was writing a book. Unfreeze Yourself: Five ways to take action on climate change NOW for the sake of your family, your health, and the planet is now published and available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
If you are a follower of my blog and would like a peek at the book, especially if you are interested in reviewing it on the Amazon or Barnes & Noble websites, send me an email at 350orbust@gmail.com. I’m happy to share it.
I’ve also been exploring the connection between personal and planetary healing for the last several years, spurred on by my own experience of climate trauma, the deeply distressing experience of bearing witness to the suicidal behaviour of our society. It is hard to look at the data science is giving us about the urgent need for action on the one hand, and observe the obliviousness, if not outright hostility, of people to the climate crisis on the other.
In his best-selling book The Body Keeps The Score, Harvard psychiatrist and trauma specialist Dr Bessel van der Kolk discusses how traumatized people often disassociate from their bodies. A massage therapist described to me how a paramedic stressed by difficult scenes he had witnessed at work was initially unable to feel her hands massaging his limbs. Dr van der Kolk’s work confirms that this disconnection from the body happens when what we have been through is too painful to feel.
At this point in history the majority of us have collectively disassociated from the body that sustains life, the Earth. Our individual bodies can’t survive without the water, air, and food that the Earth provides us. Yet as a society we are filling the rivers, oceans, land, and atmosphere with toxins. This suicidal behaviour is painful to bear witness to. I believe that most of us are traumatized by what is happening to our environment, whether or not we realize it.
~Unfreeze Yourself: Five ways to take action on climate change NOW for the sake of your family, your health, and the planet
Besides publishing a book and contemplating starting another one, I’ve also launched a wellness practise, Tapping Courage, offering neurofeedback, meridian tapping (EFT) & therapeutic touch. I have been a therapeutic touch practitioner for several decades, and neurofeedback is an intriguing modality for me that is producing exciting results with my clients. It is tapping, however, that has helped me the most with the emotional toll my climate work has taken on me. One of the great things about EFT is how accessible it is; it can be learned by anyone with 10 minutes to spare (go to EFT pioneer Gary Craig’s website emofree.com for lots of free resources) and there are thousands of videos on YouTube that will take you through a tapping session. If you are interested in learning more, feel free to check these resources out.
As a healing facilitator, I offer one-on-one guided tapping sessions online via Skype. In these sessions I show people who feel hopeless and despairing about, or traumatized by, the ecological crisis how to release their pain and fear and allow themselves to care deeply about themselves and the world again. If this sounds like something you may be interested in, you can contact me by email at tappingcourage@gmail.com, visit the Tapping Courage Facebook page, or go to www.TappingCourage.com.
Blessings to each and every one of you reading this. I wish you courage on the journey.
“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold…Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.” ~ Helen Keller