Barbara Wootton - Clinical Hypnotherapy

Hello Everyone,
I’ll be closing this group at the end of the month as, after 25 years, I’m retiring from therapy practice.
If you or someone you know needs therapeutic help, please can I refer you to the British Society of Clinical Hypnosis website where you’ll be able to find a properly trained therapist in your local area.
With very best wishes to you all,
Barbara Wootton. 👋❤️👋

https://www.theguardian.com/me-and-my-national-art-pass/2023/nov/17/from-developing-our-brains-to-keeping-us-healthy-the-positive-effects-of-art?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR1bXBBXOzkt88laBWJ2v-vQKJxawwWqA7GsSyNAQpRM_VtZC2eqwrYa2XY_aem_AfaBMYIu5TxyW_9oXX3MjUXqxjOdlfU8y5SuT_4D9_9q-PYCO9qmwV7vClDoe468X0ndfMYsc3dtzaUduDBbBmbA =1700483898

From developing our brains to keeping us healthy: the positive effects of art Art is often seen as a luxury but, just like exercise and meditation, researchers are coming to believe it’s fundamental to our mental and physical wellbeing

"If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete." -The Buddha

The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, "A serious misfortune of my life has arrived." I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet... wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. Those feet that I saw as "my" feet were actually "our" feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time. ~Thich Nhat Hanh

(Book: No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life [ad] https://amzn.to/40Mj7So)

(Art: Photograph by Nell Dorr)

‘Women have another option. They can aspire to be wise, not merely nice; to be competent, not merely helpful; to be strong, not merely graceful; to be ambitious for themselves, not merely for themselves in relation to men and children. They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment, actively protesting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society’s double standard about aging. Instead of being girls, girls as long as possible, who then age humiliatingly into middle-aged women, they can become women much earlier – and remain active adults, enjoying the long, erotic career of which women are capable, far longer. Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived. Women should tell the truth.’
Susan Sontag - The Double Standard of Aging (1972)

Annie Leibovitz - portrait of Susan Sontag.

“All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother.

Each of us spent five months in our grandmother’s womb, and she in turn formed in the womb of her grandmother. We vibrate to the rhythm of our mother’s blood before she herself is born, and this pulse is the thread of blood that runs all the way back through the grandmothers to the first mother.”

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Isn’t that a truly remarkable fact!

Written by Layne Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women

Artwork ~ "Triple Goddess" ~ © Amy Haderer ~ www.mandalajourney.com

Motherhood's Brain Blueprint: How Pregnancy Rewires Us - Neuroscience News Researchers have delved into the neurobiological evolution during pregnancy and postpartum, shining a light on brain changes and maternal behavior.

The Super Blue Moon capture over the Sidney Lanier Bridge in St. Simons Island, GA.

📸 Kyle Morgan

It is true that they seem to have a problem for every solution. If you are one of them - reflect, unlearn and reprogram yourself. Try it. You won't regret. ~ Gloria* Allure x Alchemy

//📷picturesource Mike Lux Chocron//