For every wolf that roams

So with her blessing I left home and moved in with my best friend and her family. While moving out was the best thing I could have done for myself, it created a sense of homelessness and isolation that took years to overcome. The truth is, until about five years ago, I felt like a visitor everywhere I went. Since I didn't have much guidance, I started to make poor choices in my teens, but by the time I was 18, I'd straightened out and decided to go to college. The language of this article has greatly influenced the way I look at my own inner landscape--making meaning in my life and creative work by looking at it as a centering practice. Richards offers us two concepts that I weave into the articles of this article: CENTERING AS DIALOGUE CENTERING AS TRANSFORMATION I'd also like to note the importance of DECENTERING ourselves in situations where it is more generous to step back. To not have a say, to give space to communities or individuals who are asking for it. To me, getting to our own centers gives us more clarity in how to decenter ourselves, whether that is in conversations pertaining to race, class, privilege, or humanness, in any way. We must also find the ways where we are not the center. This article is not about becoming the center, but understanding that we are a tiny part in the vast universe where the center lies. That getting to our own center allows us to see our own humanity with humility and grace, making adequate space for ourselves, and spaciousness for everyone else. Although through some combination of rebellion and procrastination, I didn't actually read Emerson's essay until more than ten years after that talk, I did come to a similar turning point in my life as the result of taking my first personal-growth workshop. Emerson wrote about people's fear of trusting themselves. He saw that so much failure and misery in the world was a result of people failing to trust their own judgment. Yet the ironic thing is: We are always making our own decisions. Either that or we make our own indecisions, which often lead to worse consequences than active decisions.

In a way, not making a decision is a decision, too. If we let others decide for us--then we've decided to let others decide for us, and that's also our own decision. And while it's fine to delegate decisions to others when they have more information or experience than we do, often we simply do it out of habit or out of fear that our own decision wouldn't be good enough. Have you ever had a thought or idea but kept it to yourself or not acted on it because you didn't trust its worthiness? I've accepted it, and as I did with the actual torch during the relay in Halifax, I'm holding on for dear life. I'm using it to light my way and (God willing) my children's way--and I hope I can also use it, even in a small way, to light a path for others as well. Think of the torches we all may carry. The possibilities are immense. Even if you're not in the public eye, you can make a difference. What path will you light with your torch? What mark will you leave? What purpose will you find in your dash? This article is a compilation of personal milestones. Transitions. It turned out that Todd was allowing himself no time to relax and had set no limits on his son's access to him, even though the boy was clearly old enough to amuse himself on his own for awhile. Sensitive to being his son's only parent, Todd had set up a dutiful lifestyle devoted to his son, determined to make up for the lack of a mother figure in the home. It had never occurred to him that he could consciously change his lifestyle in a small, but crucial way by simply telling his son that he needed some time each night to unwind and spend by himself. Now if his son forgot and interrupted his quiet time, Todd reminded him of their talk and the boy went off to find something else to do. As long as Todd honored his essential need to have a little bit of time for himself, there was no more yelling and no more guilt. Setting these limits on our energy is mandatory for a lifestyle that can support and nourish our true self.

This includes listening to our bodies, our muscular tension and our physical needs for rest and sleep. When these body-based cues begin begging for attention in the form of excessive fatigue, irritability, or illness, it is important to ask ourselves how we might be allowing our lifestyle to run us instead of the other way around. Tricia, one particularly alert and psychologically insightful client, used to ask herself when she began to feel bad physically, Why did this happen? What did I do to bring this on? Sometimes referred to as reactive depression, this type of depression makes it hard to respond or adjust to life after the stressful experience. Atypical Depression: Despite its name, atypical depression is actually one of the most prevalent forms of depression. This subtype of depression is characterized by weight gain, excessive sleeping, and fatigue. One of the main things that distinguishes it from typical depression is that a person still has mood reactivity, which means they are able to respond to positive events with a bright mood. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): SAD is a type of depression that corresponds with changes in seasons. Usually, people with SAD will experience increased fatigue, negative thinking, and moodiness in the fall and winter, and decreased fatigue, negative thinking, and moodiness in the spring and summer. Postpartum Depression (PPD): PPD is distinguished from the baby blues experienced by nearly 80 percent of people who just gave birth, in that the symptoms are much more severe and last at least two weeks. PPD symptoms begin during pregnancy or after the birth of the child and are experienced by nearly 8 percent of people who have recently given birth. Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD): PMDD differs from PMS and common mood fluctuations during the menstrual cycle in that it includes more serious forms of anxiety, irritability, intense mood swings, and physical symptoms that greatly interfere with a person's life. This diagnosis is currently not widely accepted or used. Women are given very little information about menopause. It isn't taught in schools, GPs don't get training in menopause management, it's not discussed in the workplace, and even among friends it's rarely discussed openly. When I frantically tried to find information online, it quickly became apparent that the pickings were slim. Information on websites felt dumbed down to include only hot flashes and a few mood swings. The reality can be so very different. Historically, women have been hugely underrepresented in research;

In her 2018 article Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick, Maya Dusenbery discusses a study from the early sixties. Observing that women tended to have lower rates of heart disease until their estrogen levels dropped after menopause, researchers conducted the first trial to look at whether supplementation with the hormone was an effective preventive treatment. The study enrolled 8,341 men and no women. Today women may be getting more of the attention they deserve: as recently as 2016, the National Institutes of Health deemed that any research it funds must include female animals, removing the male bias in scientific studies. In December 1951, an impoverished student at the University of Chicago named Eugene Aserinsky decided to take his eight-year-old son, Armond, to his lab to take part in a novel sleep experiment. He scrubbed Armond's scalp, taped on the EEG electrodes, and left him to fall asleep. Aserinsky then went next door to record what happened. For Aserinsky this was a do-or-die moment. He was 30 years old and living with his newly pregnant wife in a converted army barracks. They were so poor he could barely afford the HP payments on his typewriter, let alone heat their home. He needed a breakthrough with his research, and soon. Since no one else had yet bothered to use an EEG to study someone sleeping through an entire night, Aserinsky had decided he might as well begin with his young son. Nothing very exciting happened for the first hour, but then he noticed that his machine had begun to record a sudden change in brain activity. On the machine, it looked as if his son Armond had woken up. If you were to turn your paper cup upside down, it would look like an octopus with all of the streamers hanging out of the larger opening. Instruct children to deeply inhale through their nose and then exhale through the smaller hole in the cup (the one you cut). The streamers on the other end will dance in the air as the children breathe out. Note: Keep an eye on the deep breathing to make sure that the children do not cause themselves to hyperventilate. Should you ever witness hyperventilation, have the individual breathe out slowly for a few cycles before resuming their natural pattern. Emotional Awarenes s

Emotional awareness can be one of the most challenging areas for a child to master. Human feelings are nuanced, and we do not always say what we mean. Through these exercises, you can teach your child about all of the modes of expression. Show your child that complex moods are possible. Only you have the power to reclaim your brain, and although this article will show you how to do that, you need to take the necessary steps. In fact, you have already taken a great first step by picking up this article - It's up to you to take it further, take the next step, one of many, and actively create a better quality of life for yourself - you CAN do it, it starts here. Just as hundreds of my patients have done before, just as Leanne managed to do it for herself, so it is for you too. Leanne's Story As mentioned above, Leanne came to me in a bind. In her late 30s, she had been diagnosed with a whole bunch of health issues on top of her experiencing chronic pain, crippling and severe anxiety, and chronic fatigue that destroyed her ability to cope with the demands of day to day life. With her permission, I have included the retelling of her night-and-day transformation from her first-person perspective, which has been edited for length and clarity. I remember walking into The Strong Health Institute one day in August of 2019. I wore one of the few outfits I could still fit into--stretchy pants, a t-shirt, and no makeup. I had reached a low in life that I had never experienced before. In the subconscious, it retains transient knowledge where it can be manipulated. The 1974 model of working memory by Baddeley and Hitch is today's most widely accepted working memory theory. Working memory has a phonological loop for maintaining verbal data, a visuospatial scratchpad for monitoring visual data, and a central executive for dispersing focus between them, according to Baddeley. Phonological loop It is the duty of the phonological loop to deal with auditory and verbal knowledge, such as phone numbers, names of individuals, or general comprehension of what other people are talking about. We might loosely assume it's a language-specific framework.