Alternative Health? is it really an alternative?

How weird. You walk up the High Street or watch the telly and its all about illness and how to get over it: this drug, that treatment. The biggest company on earth was a drugs company.

Could we get over the illness thing and be healthy? I mean as a thing, something to be. Instead of talking about "my asthma" for example, how about "my goodness me I do feel so well today." Or is it not all in the mind? Where does it start? If you want to be a doctor they start you on dead people. If you want to be a patient?

A doctor friend told me that in 7 years of training he spent one afternoon on nutrition. I was hospitalised once, gallbladder seizure from eating the wrong stuff (yes, entirely avoidable.) Doctor said I'd been eating the wrong stuff. I should eat, he said, less fried food, cut down on the dairy maybe. Hospital dinner came round, a choice of chips or roast potatos which hadn't actually been roasted but deep-fried (didn't you know?) Pudding was custard or cheesecake. When I insisted on discharging myself to go home and eat steamed veg I had to sign a form saying I wouldn't blame them if I got sick. There was no form for blaming them if I stayed in and got sick from being fed what they told me not to eat.

Not sure where I'm going with this. See you later.

Mind Body Spirit Festival - See us there Stand 51

This week is one of the big booming beautiful events in our Calendar for both Zen Shiatsu & Healing Tao. Our Stand - number 51 - is crammed with eager student-practitioners just waiting to lay their hands on heads, necks and shoulders to induce BLISS, the sensation you get when you sit on a hard stool and feel a soft touch on your body easing away the aches and tensions. We have a new stand set-up too, this year, very new, very cool, very very.

I'm facilitating three Meditation sessions a day in the Meditation Room. So many people have found real benefits from these practices in terms of confidence, motivation, energy, habit-control and stress management. I may not know your particular individual problem or situation but I do know that you have within you the resources to cope and can help you connect with the deeper levels of consciousness through meditation, a kind of sacred trance, to access those resources.

Here's the daily schedule for the Meditation Room on the 3rd Floor
1.30 - 1.45 pm Inner Smile
3 pm - 3.15 Small Heavenly Cycle (Microcosmic Orbit)
4.30 - 4.45 pm Healing Sounds
Each meditation session sets you up with a few tools to manage stress and make life fulfilling and fun. And its FREE.

We have some also free 30-minute stage demonstrations as well, on the main Stage in the Hall:
Shiatsu for Vitality at 12.30 on Wednesday 25th
Taoist Meditation at 11.30 on Sunday 29th
Shiatsu for Lovers at 5 pm on Friday 27th, just before my one-hour talk on the same subject, from 6 to 7 pm in Room T3, based on the book "Shiatsu for Lovers" (working title) by Mantak Chia and myself, due out later in the year.

AND we are offering special festival discounts of 5% off any courses you sign up for at the Festival. We take plastic! If you'd like to check out the course menus, click here for Shiatsu and here for Taoist Training.

I really hope I meet you there. Come to Stand 51 at the Royal Horticultural Hall off Greycoat Street in Victoria, London SW1 - not far from Victoria Station or Pimlico Tube. the Festival is on every day from Wednesday 25th to Monday 30th May, loads of stalls, events, demonstrations. Yes, its quite full-on but there is some lovely stuff there. Come and see what we do, hear what we have to say, find out if anything we do is something for you.