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While we all vary in terms of what kind of touch we need, studies have long shown that expressions of affection — whether you give or receive them — have real and measurable health and wellness impacts on our physical and mental health. A variety of touches — from hugs to handshakes, a pat on the arm, back or head, kisses on the cheek, or hand-holding — can:

• Calm the nervous system
• Boost the immune system
• Activate oxytocin, sometimes called the cuddle hormone, that’s critical for bonding, especially between a mother and child at birth. Research shows oxytocin also affects our general well-being, induces calm, and enhances relationships.
• Reduce the stress hormone cortisol
• Lessen pain, improve healing, and lower blood pressure and heart rate
• Improve mood and reduce stress, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, loneliness, isolation, and more

“We understand touch as essential. It’s a universal need and natural method of communicating joy and intimacy,” “Touch is powerful on so many levels. For many people, it is a source of healing relief. For others, it’s an attempt to comfort.”

By Jennifer Clopton. How to cope when covid steals loving touch and hugs

I came into this world with the name Louise Newbegin.

I think it gave me a certain view of life, a curiosity and slight excitement about the next moment. How fortunate is that!

Every moment can be seen as a new beginning, another chance…how wonderful!

May we welcome the endless possibilities of the Present Moment and New Beginnings🙏

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ John O’Donohue ~

Anne –

Being an enfeebled 82 year old meant that radical educating and action were down the pan. Change its Vehicle !

Into the empty space dropped the website inspiration…any topic…any place, could be explored.

And to make the idea HAPPEN … there is our daughter Sally.

I have delighted in this powerful means of getting to know each other and marvelled at her skilled editing of the material which I find.

Sally –

At first …. TIA was a collaboration with my mum to capture wonderful legacies of her projects past. Soon developed into its own creation – very happy times working together – her, with her unique creative eye and enthusiasm for finding interesting content and encouraging friends and colleagues to tell their inspiring stories. And me, uploading the website. We’ve created a real treasure and shared journey – will be ever precious to me.

The chaos theory has never worked for me ! When I dive into the ocean and see an octopus unfurl its limbs, rippling luminescent lights across its skin, or watch a bird heading south for the winter with a secret inner navigation system directing it to fly thousands of miles towards the sunshine, I cannot believe that this has evolved by chance or random luck.

There must be an organising force that orchestrates all life force and co-ordinates this life experience we all share together. There is nothing about our Universe that looks random. I sense a loving presence that is logical and kind. I feel each individual has the freedom to create, and that we are so free, that we can create freedom and joy or we can create suffering and bondage.

So how is this creation orchestrated ? The law of attraction.

In my job working with families I had lots of restrictions on what I could do or not do… call them professional boundaries, maybe for the right reasons, but most of the time fear generated “what if this goes to court… cover your back “.

In the end of March this year someone contacted me about a Closed Case. This young mother, who suffered from mental health issues, was struggling with two children under three and one 12 year old. Her parents couldn’t help her because of Covid19 and their age and health issues.

I contacted a few organisations and explained the situation. Thereafter, hot meals were delivered every day for the month of Ramadan and also milk and groceries were delivered every week.

This helped to reduce her anxiety and improved her sleep. She is now helping people over the phone passing INFORMATION on how to get help.

Cover My Back or Cover My Face !

I was kicked into action to research this edition’s theme of MIGRATION by a friend’s unexpected outpouring of grief and fury . We were sitting in a circle at our long-established Support Group. When we got to M’s turn in the “go- round”, she erupted, boiled! Tears in her eyes, flushed cheeks, piercing voice decrying the chaos in Kos…. destitution , hopeless future for migrants and Greek inhabitants alike.

AND the intransigence of EU countries….their politicians and inhabitants.

“ Hold on to our affluent security”.

I absorbed this greatly loved and respected friend’s voice of compassion, of injustice recognised, and I determined that my mind should enter the migrants’ world…from the blessed place in which my Family has LANDED.

An Oak tree has been growing near our boundary for at least 60 years. Its roots reach underground towards my neighbour’s 100 year Oak.

And for sure, the trees’ fungi enmesh soil and stones as they journey across our gardens’ divide.

Unseen connections, little considered in daily living. The underground underworld, my friend and I recently realise, also vibrates through the inner underworld of us two insomniacs.

Both of us can see the Oaks …shining last week in the moonlit gardens. We may think about one another. We note the availability of connections.

Letter to Ascot local press

Sir / Madam,

Amazingly, I witnessed the demo outside my hospital window, at Frimley Park Hospital this week. Recovering from surgery…pretty rough and in pain…there was a great hullabaloo outside. Tottered to window. There were my long-time mates from SHH ( Save Heatherwood Hospital), together with members of UNITE & UNISON.

I was so hugely touched to see them: comrades of some 11 years campaigning for Heatherwood and the NHS.

Spent all day speaking to everyone who came into the Ward…20 or so,including a Matron. Checked that they knew what the demo was about and understood implications of the imminent WOS : Wholly Owned Subsidiary for 800 or so workers.

Back in bed, I cried. So full of love and appreciation for the demonstrators.

Such LONG TERM, STEADFAST, FOCUSED ACTION.

VIVA

Anne Yarwood

Member Voluntary group Save Heatherwood Hospital for 16 or so years.

July 2019

Cos what is love – a word, the feeling of you ?

Something we dream or the things that we do ?

And who am I – these thoughts, this feeling, my views

A fragile form or a dreamer like you ?

Are we so different, defined ?

Where is the borderline ?

When we are like water, like trees

We have a name, an illusion of identity

Of boundaries, of borderlines

But my dreams are yours and your fears are mine

I hope we wake up from this dream of being different, defined

When we are only space and time

Emily Maguire (https://emilymaguire.com/biog/) is a singer-song writer, poet and composer. The International Society for Bipolar Disorders awarded her the 2019 Mogens Schou Award for Public Service and Advocacy.

Since time immemorial, people worldwide, including those from our own native wisdom traditions, have held water to be sacrosanct. Humans have long held pilgrimages to sources of streams, doused themselves in holy lakes, made offerings on riverbanks and shores of oceans.

These were not wanton acts of blind worship but reverence to a deeply-known recognition of humanity’s dependence on water and a keenly-felt gratitude for nature’s benevolence. Until quite recently these habits have been forgotten and almost lost.

By resuming these rites, we can start to re-kindle a sense of intimacy with the natural world and an appreciation of the interconnectedness of all life. By deeply caring for and paying attention to our waterways, we grow motivated to defend and protect their right to flow, unimpeded by pollution.

“The way we see our world shapes the way we treat it….if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water…if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity – then we will treat each other with greater respect.”