Dear , 

Hello and happy Tuesday! Welcome to the first newsletter of 2014. This edition of Satori e-news is about a week-ish late to arrive into your mailbox due to some unforeseen circumstances (all about that later) and the sheer fact that January, somehow, just swooshed by almost unnoticed.

As promised, Satori's focus for year 2014 is DETOX, CLEAN UP, DE-CLUTTER.  Read on to learn how to listen to your liver (and ditch those menopause woes), and upgrade/detox your thinking.

Let's start with some numbers:

Your intestinal lining is renewed every 7 days.
Every 14 days you get a new liver.
In 2 years 99.8 % of cells in your body are exchanged for new ones.

Now stop and ask yourself: why is it day after day, month after month, and year after year I continue to build myself ineffective lungs, sluggish liver or bowel, unhealthy joints, deficient muscles? Why, even after altering my diet and changing my exercise, I still struggle with being unwell, day in, and day out?

The answer is simple: you lost your memory of wholeness.
You forgot what it means to be healthy. You started living from a mental blueprint of ill health.

Illness, especially chronic illness, has an insidious nature. More than any other adversity, illness tears at the very fabric of our beings. Beyond physical discomfort and limitations, it alters our mind.
Unless you carefully attend to the seed of fear illness plants in your mind - what if it doesn't go away?... what if it gets worse?... what if it comes back?... - you will forever continue to live from a place of fear and ill health. Weeding the fear is not an easy task, for its roots grow deep and spread wide across the framework of your psyche. Every incident, ache or pain, no matter how small, continues to erode your trust in your health, brings on a sense of panic and fear, and sends you into mental, emotional and physical tailspin.

You can't build a good house with a faulty blueprint.
You can't build a healthy body from faulty believes.

Are you ready to give your new you resolutions a good fighting chance? Let's start by re-drawing your mental blueprint! Join me for an open conversation about our existential fears, ways to address, cope and manage them, and, of course, a group meditation with a like minded community.  Just the group "OM BATH" is worth the registration price!

Meditation Class
When: Sunday, January 26, 4 - 5:30 PM
Cost:  45$ + GST
Register on-line or e-mail me to reserve your spot

Here is a blog post I've written last November - it talks about how we build those faulty belief systems. Please read, share and leave your comments:)

Now, as you are reading along, you are probably thinking "when the heck we are going to get the menopause woes already?"
I know how you feel! Here goes....

Those of you who have read  " Healthy Innards and Regular Poops" - New Year's edition of Satori newsletter  - are now aware of intrinsic two-way connection between our postural muscles and the health of our organs. This edition will serve as a sequel to that first introduction to organ health, and also a deeper inquiry into mind-body unity.

As you know, I live with a congenital gallbladder disorder - as in my gallbladder likes to get cranky from time to time.  I get it - it is only fair - everyone gets cranky from time to time. With this last attack
I really understood how my mental fog and emotional crabbiness is connected, affected, and informed by liver and gallbladder health.

~ hot flashes

~sweats - every time I moved I was drenched

~headaches that moved from one side of my head to the other, and lodged themselves behind my eyes

~ hypersensitivity of smell and sight - I felt irritated by light even with sunglasses on; oh, and don't let me get started with smells - I felt like a hound with a very developed flair!

~pain in the right shoulder and right elbow

~ neck pain that started on the left side, and then spread to the whole neck and upper back area

~ periods of dizziness

~rapid heart beat and heart palpitations - especially in the mornings

~extreme (and uncontrollable) irritability - I felt downright murderous at times, and, even with all my training, there was no way I could either control or manage my temper

~most of the time I felt both righteous - as in I was the only one who knew what and how, and angry that others didn't rise to my sky-high standard

~ fatigue and insomnia, which, of course, go hand in hand, and come with the territory

~ and, in addition to all that loveliness, my bowel backed up, too.

Now before you start feeling all sorry for me (and, more importantly, people who were around me), please understand that all my health - related adventures force me to learn more to heal myself, inspire me to write about what I've learned, and ultimately make me a better informed teacher who is able to help and also empathize with every one of her students. That's why you keep coming back, isn't it?

When I say "I know how you feel," I REALLY do!

Since I was forced to couch - serf for almost two weeks, I did what I could under the circumstances - research.
Here is what I have found out :

Liver is a real chemical plant. It works as a poison control center to filter out any toxic substances that come into your environment. That includes filtering toxins out of foods, drugs and liquids you ingest; ridding your body of toxic fumes you've inhaled when you put that fresh coat of paint in your room or got your hair dyed; processing toxic chemicals you've put on your skin (check the label on you body lotion); removing viruses, germs and other undesirables that entered your body; balancing your blood chemistry, aiding digestion of fats, and ensuring regular elimination.

Here is a kicker: one of liver's tasks is to eliminate estrogen - that's why so many of my symptoms resembled those of menopause (my liver couldn't do her job well), and that's how I started to connect the dots. Hormonal imbalances (PMS, peri-menopause, menopause), and estrogen peaks that usually accompany those imbalances literally intoxicate the liver. It becomes sluggish and congested, unable to fully attend to its daily tasks. Increased volume of toxins in the blood irritates the liver even further, locking in into the vicious circle of digestive system disturbances and poor liver function.

Intoxicated liver tires the body more than usual - you can just barely keep up your daily activities, with minimal energy, and more than that seems impossible to you. Your liver will look for energy whenever it can find it - so not only your physical energy, but also intellectual capacity will suffer. Liver dysfunction doesn't entail real depression, but it gives you a feeling of being drained, unhappy, unloved, inadequate and lacking drive.

You sleep is interrupted by several wake fazes. When liver is overworked, it heats up - this can experienced as night time hot flashes and sweats, as well as waking up between midnight and 2 in the morning and feeling mentally/emotionally buzzed - oh how I loath that feeling!

Sleep brings no rest, so waking up in the morning is a difficult task, and you learn to rely on a coffee or two to get yourself going.

You might feel dizzy, as if wrapped in cotton, due to inflammation of the mucous membranes inside the inner ear that is caused by poor liver function.

Congested liver will irritate the sensory nerves that transmit pain to your right shoulder and elbow. In fact, women in their early fifties are particularly prone to right shoulder arthritis and right elbow tendonitis because menopause predisposes them for this problem.

The job of bile (liver's secretions) - well, one of them, anyway - is to lubricate your bowel and promote regular elimination. Surely you can surmise what happens when either your liver or gallbladder backs up and bile is not injected properly into your small intestine.

In energetic terms - this subject can be a whole separate newsletter on its very own and most certainly will be a topic of conversation in LIVER DETOX retreat (read below) - liver is directly and unequivocally connected to the third chakra, and therefore your belief in yourself and your capacity to cope with and overcome challenges.

The list can go on and on, and I haven't even touched on liver - emotions connection.
By now, I'd imagine, you get the picture.

To learn more, and more importantly, to learn how you can help yourself (and for those of you in health-related fields - how you can help your clients) please join me for spring R&R LIVER DETOX retreat.
We'll put pieces of the puzzle together, so you can begin to recognize signs of liver imbalance, understand how liver affects your physical and emotional health, and what can you do (and there's a TON) to alleviate PMS and menopause symptoms, shoulder pain, neck stiffness, digestive disturbances, sleep issues, and improve on a million of other glorious things liver is responsible for.
 
~we"ll revisit "Moving From the Organs" practice in relationship to the liver
~work on liver and gallbladder meridians during the yin segment of our practice
~delve into more vigorous movement to mobilize and sweat out the toxins
~we'll draw on Ayurvedic roots, and talk diet, sleep, supplements, attitude and emotions - all the essential pieces that comprise holistic approach to better living 

This event is heading for a sell-out, so please register early to guarantee your space! Be sure to join LIVER DETOX retreat on Facebook to stay tuned to all retreat updates, healthy liver tips, info-bites, and recipes. And, of course, if you prefer to work on your organ or structural health in private, one-on-one appointments are always available and are the best choice if you have complex or chronic issues.

Spring R&R Retreat: Liver Detox
When: Friday, February 28, 6 PM - 9 PM and Saturday, March 1, 9:30 AM - 6:30 PM
How much: 139$ + GST
On-line Registration

If on-line registration is not your thing, you can also register by e-mailing or phoning me @780.512.7573
Oh, and there are few spots available in Weekly Detox Class on Sunday evenings - please drop me a line if you are interested:) See you on the mat!