yellow seahorses in a dreamy violet lagoon

Last Friday I witnessed a pretty horrible incident at work with an abusive and threatening colleague. Not nice, especially in my last week of working there, but hey. I'm out of there now (last day was yesterday) and off to big up my creative business (after a week or two off - I'm exhausted!)

The evening of the incident I saw my massage therapist and I was pretty shaken, but she calmed me down by making me think of yellow. Yep, she's just that good that it managed to make me calm down almost immediately. Clever Charlotte!

One would generally assume that telling someone to think about yellow might make them imagine a sunshiney day or some pretty flowers maybe, but when I was told to surround myself in yellow I could think of nothing but seahorses. Not only could I think of nothing but seahorses, but they were in a beautiful purple lagoon, naturally!

For almost an hour I imagined them swimming about having a jolly old time, and by the end of the session I was more relaxed than I have been for months. Good ol' seahorses make everything better!

{yellow seahorses in a violet lagoon}

black poppies and dandelion clocks

With the ongoing crazy pressure in my little brain box, I thought perhaps I should see my holistic lady about trying to make it go away. I figure a lot of the pain is down to tension in the muscles in my neck, so I went for one of my therapeutic neck massages.

As usual, she played me some soothing music to help me relax and told me to take deep breaths and imagine I was in a field full of flowers. A little creepily, all I could visualise were black poppies and dandelion clocks. She asked me to imagine the redness of the poppies, but they were only very rarely red in places, the rest of them were totally jet black. The bluebells and violets she asked me to imagine were impossible, and all I could see, other than the poppies, were the seeds of the dandelion clocks floating away on the breeze. It was a little eerie, but really quite beautiful.

I was inspired to make a treasury of pretty things after the session:

I think they complement each other really nicely, what do you think?

orange you glad...?

For the first half of my massage therapy session last night I was asked to concentrate on the colour orange. Orange is supposed to relate to creativity and ideas, and they are things I have never really had a problem with - I have hundreds of ideas, just not enough focus or drive to put the majority of them into action.

I have always found orange the easiest colour on which to focus and be absorbed by, and for the most part my orange-imagining was easy enough... until I started thinking about Ariel, the Little Mermaid.

Oh dear, that was enough to distract an already pretty distractable girl from the task at hand. My breathing went all wonky as I tried to get images of Ariel's beautiful orange hair and greeny-blue tail out of my head, but it was hard. So I gave up and just let my mind wander, imagining orange and azure things. I got my breathing almost back to normal, but yet again my thoughts had turned to mermaids.

No unicorns this time, but hey, mermaids are still pretty good.

{cinnamon and azure treasury}

breathing in the blue

Last week I had another session with my holistic therapist. I haven't been doing great lately - I'm finding I have no problems at all with creativity and inspiration (in fact the ideas just keep on coming, yay!) but I'm still finding it hard to get motivated and I'm certainly going through a bit of communication crisis at the moment, whereby I'm finding I can't actually do it.

Ever since that stupid anxiety attack I've become very wary of my breathing, in particular how shallow it seems, and how much effort it is to actually take in a long deep breath. Post A&E I went to see my nurse (she is Irish and awesome) to have a breathing test but she said although my breathing wasn't great, I wasn't asthmatic. That's good at least. It does, however, mean that I have to go back to the hospital for another chest x-ray, as neither of us can work out why my breathing is suddenly such an issue.

Be, Do, Breathe by satchelandsage

Since I have a tendency to worry, I wouldn't be surprised if it's totally anxiety-related, as in, I'm not breathing properly because I'm scared that I won't be able to breathe again and I'm over-analysing my breathing, making it seem like there's a problem when actually it's probably fine. I would hate to go to the hospital and waste their time if there's nothing wrong with my little lungs and it's all actually psychological, but I guess it's better to be safe than sorry.

In my session we talked about the breathing issues, and I tried some deep breathing exercises before getting on to the main part of the session. I was asked to concentrate on the colour blue as it is associated with the throat and with communication. I had to imagine being surrounded by absolute blue-ness and let myself be absorbed into it and enveloped by it, letting it fill my lungs and chest. It didn't take long to start breathing blue into my system, and to be totally taken over by it.

It was probably the most relaxed I have ever felt, and it was easy for me to focus on the correct colour, for once - I imagined a shimmering, opalescent sea with mermaids frolicking in the waves and on nearby rocks. It was incredibly exhilarating and yet also incredibly serene, and as the session was drawing to a close I didn't want to leave this little paradise I had created for myself, I wanted to stay and make friends with the mermaids.

Sea Friends by Andrea Gutierrez

unicorn therapy

Since my little "episode" last weekend I have been trying all sorts of things to relax my body and mind, and generally calm myself down. I have had a pretty straightforward week at work, with just the odd bit of tension, but have had to cancel a few social engagements which always makes me feel a bit guilty.

As a sure fire way to relax my little body, I decided to make an appointment to see my holistic therapist. She is I.N.C.R.E.D.I.B.L.E. I started seeing her a while ago now, when my shoulders and neck were in lots of pain and I couldn't work out a way of making them stop by myself. It was pretty much my last resort as nothing I had tried was helping, and by that point I was spending most nights in a sobbing pool of pain.

I have to be honest: initially I was sceptical, and it was the word 'holistic' which put me off. My little head had, apparently, assigned hippie-ish connotations to the word, which made me suspicious and apprehensive, and I simply didn't trust it. I'm not sure quite where this came from, and after doing a bit of reading realised that holistic just means "as a whole": physically, mentally and emotionally. I probably should have worked that out for myself. The other major concern of mine was that I hate people touching me, especially on my back or neck. This has been an issue since I was very young and, if anything, has got worse as I have got older. The weird thing is that I love hugging people, even strangers, which involves quite intimate touching on the back, but I cannot stand any other back-touching. I get goosebumps just thinking about it. Fortunately, I had known Charlotte as a friend for a few years, so although she was now entering a new role in being my holistic therapist, I already had a lot of trust in her. Plus I figured it might help me get over it after all this time.

At the start of our first session we sat cross-legged on a duvet spread out on the floor of my studio (I love that my studio is big enough to fit an entire duvet spread out, and forget how lucky I am to have that sometimes) and discussed what I wanted from the session. At first it was a bit weird trying to describe what I wanted, and I felt as though I should be more formal. I didn't know how to approach this new relationship, patient to holistic therapist, and I didn't know what to expect or what I should say, so I nervously jabbered on about my shoulders hurting but not really understanding why, even though I did kind of understand why. The main objective of the session in my mind was just for my shoulders to stop hurting, I couldn't think of anything emotional that I felt needed healing, I just wanted the pain to stop... yeah, like anything is ever that simple!

In our sessions she uses aromatherapy oils (my favourite being geranium oil - which is apparently very balancing) and starts by
asking
instructing me to imagine various things (it changes every session): imagine being somewhere calm, relaxing and safe, imagine a journey to somewhere you feel safe, and sometimes just to imagine specific colours, or the entire rainbow spectrum one colour at a time. Sometimes in my "safe places" I am in a cave by the sea, or on top of a cliff overlooking the sea, and often in my "calm and relaxing" type imaginings I am riding a unicorn and galloping through pink candy-floss clouds. I had never realised how much of a girly girl I am before this... crazy subconscious.

Unicorn and rainbow by LaurajeanLaurajean

After lots of deep breathing, and visualising/attempts at visualising, she starts massaging my aching, knotted muscles. Occasionally it kind of hurts, but it feels like a necessary, almost satisfying pain and I know that it is helping so I just try to ease into it and breathe through it. Towards the end I have to stop myself from falling asleep - her voice is so soothing and my muscles are so relaxed, I just feel like a gloopy pile of jelly.

In our most recent session I was instructed to visualise the colour red: the deepest red I could imagine, and to let it surround me, envelop me and embrace me. Oddly, I'm not very good at the colour-imagining stuff. You would think being a visual artist that colours should come easily, but the only colours I am good at visualising are orange, yellow and blue. Even greens, my favourite colour in the world, are a huge struggle.

So, red: the first thing I thought of was a dragon's eye, then the dragon's eye became a beautiful sparkling ruby. After that I imagined a sea of red Skittles (oh what a silly mind I have) and finally, a volcano. Now, I suppose a lot could be read into that if you were choosing to psychoanalyse me, especially the volcano bit, but she doesn't psychoanalyse me - she spiritually analyses me. I was curious as to why she had chosen just the one colour, rather than the rainbow that we often do, and she explained that red was the colour that represents the core chakra and that it is the base colour. If I find it hard imagining the base colour, it means I am not able to open up to the others (which all have their own attributes), or emotionally sound.

To end the session we do stretches and evaluate. With my love of lists and OCD tendencies, I greatly enjoy the evaluation part. I am sometimes given tasks, which if I fail to accomplish makes me feel as though I am letting her down, so I always try really hard to complete them. Sometimes they are physical things like drinking more water, remembering to stretch every day, remembering good posture, to stop sleeping in the middle of the day (I do love naps) and sometimes they are more mental or emotional tasks, like writing in a journal, making mini tick lists every week so I don't get bombarded by too many things, drawing something every day, breathing deeply etc.

I genuinely never anticipated that I would get so much from these sessions, but they are one of the most positive things in my life: they help me better understand myself and my limitations, they help me by giving me an outlet when I need to get stuff of my chest, they act as a mini-escape from the stresses of everyday life, they help focus and they motivate me, plus they stop my physical pain. Charlotte is warm, accepting, knowledgeable, informative and non-judgemental. She is a fantastic listener, a fantastic massage therapist and a fantastic friend.

If you would like more information about Charlotte or her massage, her website is here. I highly recommend her if you are a blocked creative-type or just need to relax. This is in no way a sponsored post, I do genuinely see her every fortnight for massage therapy and she is amazing at what she does!