Shin Shin Kaizen

What if making change gets to be really easy… Would that make it more desirable to you?

I first came across the concept and practice of Kaizen in my Compliance Executive days, (many moons ago). I spent some time working in a company that had many arms to its business, one being manufacturing high end frames and casings for artwork and many other interesting things.

The Kaizen (改善) approach was introduced to manufacturing processes to help them become more efficient. Kaizen is a Japanese word that means small and continuous (good) improvement.  It was made well known in manufacturing as part of ‘lean manufacturing’, an approach developed by Toyota to reduce waste and defects whilst promoting productivity. The approach carries guiding principles based on inclusivity, curiosity, contribution and empowerment (beyond the scope of this share, but check it out if you are curious) which in essence, boil down to being actively present and aware of every part of the business whilst holding the belief that everything can be improved…..

Kaizen resurfaced as part of my Reiki studies. If you haven’t yet come across Reiki, it is a hands on healing system based on the teachings of Mikau Usui a Japanese teacher who rediscovered this ancient hands on healing potential through his study of scriptures and dedication to inner understanding. Reiki was brought to the west by Hawayo Takata and her teachings helped to support the exposure of the healing method outside of Japan.

The Reiki system consists of an integrated approach to changing one’s life which I learned as I moved beyond receiving Reiki sessions from a Reiki practitioner into studying. Level 1 Reiki is anchored in self healing (and sharing Reiki with those closest to us) which means daily self healing sessions, meditation and contemplation of the Reiki Precepts. It is from the Precepts (Codes of Practice) that the sentence shin shin kaizen Usui Reiki Ryoho is taken.  The translation loosely invites in the idea of small and continual improvement of our minds (spiritual, mental and emotional) and bodies using the Reiki system as a way to attain true happiness and connection with our true nature.

A daily life long commitment to be with ourselves, to be aware of our habits, our automatic reactions, the places we hold ourselves captive and play small all the while knowing that through this level of awareness we have a choice, we have another way to approach ourselves and our lives.  We have the option to be curious, we have the option to be tender, compassionate and kind, we have the inner resources to contribute meaningfully to who we want to be and how we want to be that way.  This is a beautiful concept and approach to the inevitable human desires - finding happiness, purpose, meaning, fulfilment, following dreams and living a life that feels good to us, for us.

Because life offers so much distraction, minutes, hours, days, months and years can pass us by without us realising the incremental shifts we acquire until what we notice in our habits, or physical experience, or persistent thoughts, emotions and beliefs becomes overbearing and we want to ‘sort’ ourselves out right away… but that is not always possible. So many components intertwine to create who we are everyday that despite the idea of immediate resolution being enticingly attractive, it is not only not sustainable, it short changes us on the magic of getting to know and understand ourselves more deeply.

Presence and the awareness presence makes available is so simple and yet so life affecting and altering. Being with ourselves, noticing the little things in the misplaced moments where we shift into safety mode and pick the thing, thought, action, reaction, feeling that has always been there (even if we don’t like it, and we don’t really want it) changes everything. The little things add up to big things over time that add up to a lifetime of unwanted things if we lose connection with ourselves. So knowing that the same can be not only true, but powerfully true and effective in the reverse is the stuff of dreams.

Taking responsibility of who we are and choosing to say yes to simple, small changes every single day knowing that they may not rock our world overnight, but with dedication, devotion and commitment they amount to a tidal wave of effective and maintainable change on all levels of our being is delicious and it gets to contribute to a lifetime of intentional, deliberate living that shapes who you are…. Are you in?

A Little More by Design

Human Design is a system that was first shared with the world through Ra Uru Hu in 1987. It is called the ‘Science of Differentiation’ as it shows how every single one of us is uniquely gifted with talents to share with the world. Synthesising ancient wisdom systems of Western Astrology, The I-Ching, The Kabbalah Tree of Life and The Chakra System with modern quantum physics to help us understand the particular energy we are imprinted with roughly 88 days before our birth and at the time of our birth.

The map of a person’s energy is presented through a BodyGraph Mandala which is a detailed picture showing where we receive consistent and fixed energy through our physical body in our energy centres of which there are nine in Human Design, and it also shows us how the particular flavour of the energy in our centres is expressed through us in the combination of gates and channels present in our design. The BodyGraph is an intricate graphic of colours and shapes that is very intriguing and confusing to make sense of at first, but it holds some fascinating insights into who we are.

I first came across Human Design 7 years ago during my Breathwork training in Italy. One of the trainers was studying Human Design and offered to look up the Aura Types of the participants. He told me that I was a Projector, quite a rare aura type making up 20% of humankind.  He also shared general characteristics of Projectors that rang true for me at the time, and I enjoyed having the information. Over the years that followed I brushed with Human Design on and off because of the synergy between the work I was doing and the Human Design system. I later found out that both my daughters were also Projectors much to their delight as the Projector Aura Type is not designed to work  ;) 

Every time I endeavoured to look a little deeper into the system I became overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information, and much of the language that was used  - it was very specific and not what I would describe as readily accessible. But everytime it called me back I delved a little deeper into understanding what some of the terms meant. Words such as ‘Authority’, ‘Strategy’ and ‘Not Self Theme’. Unlocking each part of my particular code helped me see deeper truths in what my design showed about me. Then during lockdown life the calling to look into Human Design came too many times for me to ignore. 

It began with my ‘experiment’ with my design. The premise of Human Design is that along with giving us a detailed and very individualised ‘user manual’ to who we are, we are also encouraged to not just hang onto this information at a conceptual level, but to put in to practical application by actually ‘living’ our design in real life experimentation on what it feels like to listen to our spleen, or pay attention to our sacral authority or take the time needed to come to our decision if we are an emotional authority. We can also go deeper and pay attention to how we feel when we come into contact with family members for example so that we can become aware of the conditioning effects of others’ energy on us.  It is said that growing up in the energy of others will have an influence on how we experience and express our own energy. The more heavily influenced we are by conditioning the more we will be disconnected from and misaligned in our energy causing us to display the lower level expression of our design - the low or shadow expression. The more we decondition from the effects of external influences and energies the higher and more true or closer we will move to the gift expression of our unique design.

I found it deeply interesting the way these concepts of energy were expressed and how there were parallels in the idea of conditioning energy and the correlations that may exist with trauma.

The more I learned the more interested it became in me seeing more of how I operated in my own design, but the fascination deepened as I looked into my girls’ designs - that really blew my mind!

As the 3 of us are Projectors I could see the parallels between the way we saw life and interacted with the world around us, the little patterns and levels of energy we had which on face value I could have previously attributed to the fact that I raised them.  The detail of the information goes too deeply to ignore however.

As I started to learn about their individual authorities in comparison with mine and each other’s I was so intrigued. I have splenic authority which means I have present moment intuitive hits about what feels right and true for me. I have learned over the years that I am to ignore these whispers at my peril; this also means that I will just ‘know’ what is right, right now.  Nialah on the other hand needs time to make the correct decisions for her because she has an emotional authority. So for her, the only correct decisions come when she is able to feel her way into what feels correct for her. That vital piece of information changed so much in my understanding of our dynamic.  Because I reached my best truth spontaneously, I had expected her to be able to do the same and I would often ask her things off the cuff and not understand why this would fluster her….  The mantra for the emotional authority is - ‘there is no truth in the now’.

When she learned what having an emotional authority meant it was a relief for her, her process was articulated in a way she didn’t know she needed confirmation of in order for it to feel ‘normal’ and accepted.  Having her validated also brought me into her world, I could now adapt my style to accommodate her and this helped to smooth our interactions. The things I needed to have her considered input with, I made sure to give her the space and time she needed to work things out. 

Nikkie’s authority - ego projected made so many things jump into place it was quite wild! The ego projected authority is driven to make decisions that they have the heart and will to commit to, if they don’t feel it, it’s a no go. This had been translated into Nikkie using language which was expressed as her not ‘caring’ to do the things she didn’t want to. To me that sounded incredibly selfish, and yet it was according to her design and the way energy flows for her, the completely correct and desired way for her to act. Having this insight allowed me to look completely differently at her process and give up the frustration I felt because she was indeed honouring what felt right to her.

I continue to delve more into the magic of HD through my own experiment, my reader studies and the joy of learning my daughter’s designs.

If you would like to find out more about your Human Design Blueprint please visit this page here

What is The 'Work'?

Have you heard the phrase “you have to do the work”?    What exactly is this work that one has to do?

We live in a beautifully unique time in human evolution where through the mistakes of the generations before us, the passing down of ancestral traumas from our forefathers and mothers and the dawning in us of the possibilities of a change in our inner landscapes we are understanding that the way things have always been does not have to be the way things will continue to be – enter the Work (not to be confused with the same titled system of enquiry created by Byron Katie).  In short, the work refers to the application of ourselves consciously and consistently to our inner terrain in order to effect a change in how we feel and do day to day life so that we may experience life in a manner that is unrestricted from the pains and entanglements of the past and open to a sense of freedom that may have been the stuff of dreams until we embark on the arduous adventure of dealing with who we are.

In Western cultures and societies we have been deliciously separated from a sense of who we truly are because our sense of identity is so neatly wrapped up in what we do, the type of status we attain in our occupation, appearance, pay packet, postcode, accumulation of toys and where we dine and holiday.   So much of our time and mind is consumed in consuming because that is what the point of life has been talked up to be directly and indirectly.   As babies our parents thoughts about our futures will in part have been concerned with the type of schools we would attend and how well we would be educated through the system, perhaps they will have started funds for us to be able to attend university at the end of our further schooling so that we could get a good education which will ensure that we can get the best type of job in order to secure a steady income so that we would be able to buy a house and repeat the cycle with our children.  If education was not the way of our family thoughts may have been focused on how and where we would work to be able to earn and create a stable income so that we could consume as an indication of how well we had attained and improved on previous generations. If we were lucky along the way perhaps we would do well at work, holiday, consume and upgrade our gadgets and maybe be happy.   Happiness is a definite wish that every parent has for their child – ‘I will be happy if they are happy’ yet how much attention, effort and time is spent in actively understanding and cultivating what this happiness looks like in reality?  How is it tangible?  And how does one work toward it?

Formal education based on my reflection and what I have witnessed through the experience of my children is heavily focused on the provision of in many senses ideas abstract to our humanity and day to day living in order to provide a basic understanding on how we ought to live and the knowledge we need in order to do this.  Much of the themes are not necessary given in order to support a human in day to day life challenges and survival let alone thriving.  Whilst the knowledge of Macbeth’s plight in English is curious and has moments of brilliance my application of it to my life has only come up in relation to helping my daughter understand the work for her studies. (I am not knocking Shakespeare at all; I have a healthy enjoyment and regard of the works of the Bard.)   There is nothing on the curriculum which lends itself to dealing with the practical aspects of managing life – financial planning, savings, practical health and wellbeing and mental and emotional health and wellbeing. Yet at this time we are witness to the highest rates of mental health issues in a generation, figures given by mental health.org.uk state that there has been a rise from 1 in 10 to 1 in 9 children aged 5 – 15 years with a mental health disorder that is or emotional, behavioural, hyperactive or other and when young people up to the age of 19 are included in the figures this gives a rise of 1 in 8 or 12.8% children or young people.  The biggest contributing disorders are linked to emotional health – the rise in anxiety and depression which rose from 3.8% to 5.8% between 2004 and 2017 in the 5 – 15-year age range.  [When compared to the] it begs the question as to why some of life’s practical and real skills are left vacant from the timetable.

When we look at the stats in adults mind.org reports that 1 in 4 people will experience mental health problems in a year and 1 in 6 people will experience common mental health challenges like anxiety or depression in a week.  Stress has become a throwaway part of the vernacular a relatable expression of how life is doing us, with the to do lists and activities, the switched on, tuned in, on the go-ness that we have slipped into in order to keep up and do the right thing.  This is often fuelled on by the voices we hear in our incessant self-talk.  Voices that urge us onwards and into the next part of life pushing us in directions that are driven by our fears, self-deprecation, undermining and unkind words – the words that often belong the others – most of them whom have been well-being and well-meaning offering these words up as warnings and careful guidance and yet they have served to cause us to stall and second guess ourselves because they were not really connected with what we were doing – but instead where unchecked projections of their authors directed as us re-perpetuating cycles.  Or again words thrown at us because of the pain and unintegrated feelings of their hosts which then went to haunt us throughout our lives.  It is these experiences which we continue to live day to day that everyone is privy to whether or not they are aware of it; they become the silent foundations of the epidemics of ill mental, emotional and ultimately physical health.

When we lose a sense of who we are and what we actually want in life because the external has overtaken and bombarded the internal narrative, experience and connection what we are doing starts to resemble someone else’s needs, some else’s agenda and someone else’s lives.  Our life adventure is squeezed out of our own picture we no longer have any time and space in our own story; no space to breath and exist because we are trying to keep up with a life we wouldn’t even recognise if we took the time to truly take it in.

We are not taught to be with our emotions, be with our stuff so that we can heal and leave the situations in the past instead of dragging around the baggage and projecting it forward into the present and future.  The idea of being emotional in public is shunned and rejected.  Emotional displays are just not welcome because this makes everyone feel uncomfortable – because no one wants to have their own unwelcome emotions mirrored to them.  To see another person acting out our own pain, sadness, anger or despair makes it too much to watch in front of us when we can feel the stirrings itching to escape beneath our own skin, it is much more palatable to push these feelings away, squash them down and file them away whilst we focus on being busy, preoccupied, collecting accolades and things to show just how fine we are.  The absolute antithesis of the Work.

The work is – taking the time recognising what doesn’t feel good.  Slowing down long enough to connect inwards.  Stopping all the distractions, the numbing behaviours that distance us from our true feelings, thoughts and perspectives long enough so that if nothing else we can be honest with ourselves.  These types of insights may fleetingly present themselves to us in a moment of clarity when we lose a loved one, have an accident or any other life defining moment but if we don’t let them stick around long enough for us to feel into and explore what they are trying to tell us – the deep truths, they become just another anecdote to share on the socials.  When we can breathe into our honest uncensored selves, go to the dark, unwanted, uncomfortable and sheltered places and stay there long enough to see what is no good for us, try to understand what is there, why we have accepted it into our lives and what we want to change, whilst being open to making space to feel and process whatever is there so we can move forward.  That is THE WORK

Why it is important to do the work is another convo ;) 

Root Cause

As a race we have mastered the subtle art of masking and metamorphosing past the signals and cues our mind and body try to bring to our attention.  We have curated a plethora of tools, devices, activities, tonics and tinctures that skillfully disguise the need to address and understand what has caused our discomfort and instead we have become afflicted with doing whatever is necessary to make the thing go away as quickly as possible.  This is great, because in the instant it goes away and for some time after we experience great relief, I mean who wants to be bothered with the pain and discomfort of having to deal with a headache or a cold when we can pop a pill and move it on for a while? Why not check out of our day to day experience with the seductive numbing agencies littered throughout society; whether your poison is box sets, alcohol, shopping or food (no judgement here) we are well equipped with the tools of escaping our realities.   The flaw with this type of approach in successfully dealing with malaise lies in the fact that we can only move the things we experience in our physical and emotional bodies on for so long before they work to get our attention in another way. So the occasional headache we experienced now becomes something of a regular feature. Instead of once or twice a week, we begin to realise that it is almost constantly with us because the only time we notice relief from it is in the few moments when we wake in the morning before the familiar dull ache, tightness, tension and stabbing pain spreads across our forehead.  Our ability to stave of the pressure building up by having an analgesic is becoming less and less effective, and we are having to take higher doses until we feel even the slightest relief. There is a sign amongst this type of experience that alerts us to the fact that there is something more than the headaches that needs to be addressed - something deeper that is vying for our attention. The more we look to treating or managing the presenting or exterior experience, the more we avoid or miss the fact that there remains something unaddressed - something neglected that is causing the end result that plagues us.

We can be forgiven for not being fully focused on where our disquiet stems from as we have not on the whole been taught to investigate and probe deeper.   Modern medicine and its approach to ill health will incline us to the notion of treating the symptoms without the need to understand or rectify what lies beneath.   Our focus is sharply inclined on where we are unwell, on what this causes us to experience and how we find this to be disruptive and what we can take to diminish the disturbance caused to our ability to ‘get on’ with our lives.  Weighting the focus in this direction steers us away from paying attention to and noticing the circumstances leading up to or surrounding the disruption in the first place meaning we are missing vital clues that indicate the true source of the irregularity and by doing this we are also missing vital clues about where we may not be happy, fulfilled, supported, acknowledged in our lives.   For example, we may develop a cold and put it down to the fact ‘it’s that time of year’ or ‘there’s a lot of it going around’ but if we actually took some time to pay attention to what had been happening for us in the time leading up to coming down with the cold we may determine that we were not getting enough sleep, perhaps we were burning the candle at both ends - working too hard and playing a little too hard, perhaps we were not paying attention to what we were eating or skipping exercise one to many times.   All these things add up and contribute to an outcome and when we are dealing with a particular outcome on a regular basis, the answer will usually not be outside in the superficial body, but a lot further in.

Ancient cultures have for ions explained and accepted the mind/body connection for what it was and is, an inexplicable fact of humanity.   The knowledge that what happens in our hearts and minds will affect and influence the experience in our bodies in a way that in order to find a treatment for the “issues in our tissues” , we must also address what happens in our hearts and minds.   Regardless of the school of ancient wisdom that you subscribe to, there are parallels which indicate the power of thoughts and emotions on the energy flow and movement in the body which in turn will sway physical manifestations in the form of pain, illness, dis-ease and dis-comfort.   In the infinite wisdom of science and technology we have sought to distance ourselves from aspects of traditional healing that have yet to be measured and quantified, but that have consistently yielded outcomes because of a fear we continue to cultivate about the unknown. The arrogant ‘intellectual’ quest of being able to acknowledge and accept only that which can and has been measured and proven overlooks a multitude of benefits that exist in practises that have not yet, or cannot be measured but the continuing feedback is they work because they do, not because we understand them.  This linear thinking despite the advantages it possesses also holds back from delving into our humanity keeping the level of interaction and conceding of how we function as human beings almost at a robotic level of output over everything, when of course we are much more intricate and complex than that. In fact when we consider the research available on how influential visualisation is to the human experience; how by playing over an upcoming event in our mind’s eye we will begin to trigger muscle reflexes, take on bodily response necessary for it to be so, introduce hormones into the system that suggest it has already happened, we can begin to understand why the mind is so important to our physical environment.  Athletes, top performers in business and entertainment use visualisation to help enhance their performance and ability to achieve their desired goals, now before there were studies into the idea of visualisation as a performance enhancer - it was and is still referred to as - the Law of Attraction (there are other components that make this up, but the art of envisioning what you want before you have it - thus attracting it to you, is central to this practise and inescapable fact of human existence) the idea that the research somehow legitimises these lores of life diverts us from accepting other human truths in lieu of awaiting the evidence.

The placebo effect is another huge indication of the sheer weight and power our mindset, thoughts and beliefs have over our physical existence.   The skill of being able to change the response to ill health experienced in our bodies by taking a sugar pill we BELIEVE to contain the medicine we ‘need’ to heal us is sheer alchemy, an aspect of our magical and miraculous abilities as humans that has been measured and shown by science again and again, yet it is somehow relegated in importance and not used to be harnessed for our own growth, wellness and healing potential.  The whys and wherefores about why at this time this is the case diverts from my intentions for this piece - what is most important to remember and hold onto is the fact, just as by thinking, belief, feeling and imagining we are able to make positive and wanted changes to out health and wellbeing we can conversely by having unchecked, unmonitored and unhealthy thoughts, feelings and emotions create physical conditions which cause harm, pain and deterioration.  When our bodies are repeatedly working to get our attention by presenting physical dis-comfort - we owe it to ourselves to look beyond the superficial challenges that inconvenience us and look deeper to understand what caused us to create this outcome in the first place. This approach may butt against conventional paths to medicine and dealing with illness, yet they will be the most powerful available for us to ensure that we are able to effectively treat what we are dealing with.  We give away the power over our bodies to our minds because we perhaps don’t realise, have never been taught or don’t appreciate just what we hold between our ears and within our hearts to influence and determine our experience. We also throw away our power on the notion that someone or something outside ourselves can save us, sort us out, heal us and make it go away; and while there is much value in obtaining and soliciting outside support in our times of need, the real and significant work stems from our own ability to put and maintain our own work.  It’s not always easy or fun to put the graft in and do what needs to be done to be done, to do and feel better, we have put a lifetime’s work into unconsciously getting ourselves, thoughts, habits, expectations and bodies to where they are, so reversing this is not going to be an instantaneous thing. It will require consistency, application, dedication, facing up to difficult and challenging truths, pain, discomfort, loss, blood, sweat and tears but it is THE way to truly move forward and evolve away from our limitations and what is our human experience about if not overcoming that we thought or expected to holt us in our tracks?