Sometimes in life, things that are really quite sad don't appear to be so at first glance. This morning I was reading the Guardian and came across this article about the mayor of Belfast vaulting over a giant human tomato and I'm still laughing! The poor woman sustained a slipped disc when he slipped on wet grass and kneed her in the back of the head. This marvelous photo was taken the instant before it happened.

Isn't laughter wonderful? Embarrassing too in this instance, as a back injury is no laughing matter. The worse I felt about laughing at someone else's misfortune, the more I laughed. I couldn't stop for long enough to explain to my husband what I was laughing about and just had to hand over the paper to him so that he could read it for himself.

It is said that laughter is the best medicine. If that is the case, Nick and I shall be very healthy for a long time to come.

Talking of laughter, I shall be running a workshop called "Heal Your Soul With Happiness" on 7th November at The Soul Therapy Centre. I promise that we won't be laughing at the misfortunes of others on that occasion, but we will be laughing a lot. Do come and join us and have fun whilst we discover the keys to huge amounts of joy! I learnt how to teach the art of happiness from Robert Holden of the Happiness Project and Patch Adams of the Gesundheit! Institute.

The Keys to Love and Happiness

Traditional psychotherapy really can be harmful. People learn to reflect on the history of their lives but psychoanalytic psychotherapy usually screws them right back into the negative aspects of their past. Recently I treated a lovely, talented client who had been in traditional therapy for a long time, with a procession of different therapists. She thought she was not able to connect with an open heart with her partner and children because she had learned as a child to protect her vulnerable heart. I simply created a safe space for her and lead her into a soul journey type of visualisation in which I simply asked her to imagine her heart opening slowly and to its full extent, and to tell me how it felt. She said it felt amazing. I was then able to challenge her erroneous idea that she couldn't open her heart, and offered her the idea that this was in her control, she was not a victim of some supposed psychopathology, as she had just decided to do it. She held the keys to happiness and love in her own hand.

Later, her partner phoned to thank me for "a miracle", as my client was transformed, happy, relaxed and loving. It was no miracle, just righting a therapeutic wrong as far as I was concerned.

Montevetro, Geese and Educational Assessments.

This evening Nick and I visited a friend who has just moved in to Montevetro, the apartment building on the Thames at Battersea designed by Richard Rogers. What a beautiful place, spacious and airy with a great view of the River. She has two cats and they are still finding their paws in the new place, but they are as pleased as our friend is with the gorgeously light spaces. Only problem is they are tormented by the Canada geese who waddle past and jeer at them in the mornings. She gave me a present of a beautiful jacket, black silk with gold embroidery, which had belonged to her mother. I am absolutely delighted with such a lovely and unexpected gift.

I am gradually getting through my backlog of reports that I have to write: Two educational assessments and one feedback on one of my students written assignments. The difference is striking and reminds me of how radically my work has changed now from when I worked for the Inner London Education Authority as a Consultant Educational Psychologist. It is good to do assessments with adults as well as children these days, it reminds me of the old times when life was certain and only based in the physical world. Now, running the Soul Therapy Centre, my work takes in the magical world of spiritual healing and subtle energy techniques that are so fundamental to health and wellbeing.

Bruce Lipton and Epigenetics.

I have spent today at an inspiring seminar given by Prof. Bruce Lipton on "The Biology of Belief." He, along with my friend Marilyn Monk of the Scientific and Medical Network, is one of the pioneers of Epigenetics, an important branch of the New Biology which proves that we are not governed by our Genes nor by our DNA. He demonstrates that it is our deeply programmed beliefs, the patterns of thought energy absorbed by us from conception, through birth, to around six years old, that inform and shape our lives. Our subconscious mind, which accounts for 95% of all our thought activity, determines how we create our physical realities. DNA and genes serve simply as blueprints to create the protein strings that are essential for health. Thought energy provides the biochemical signals that key into the receptors present within all cell membranes, which in turn interact with other areas on the cell membranes called effectors. These then open to allow further signals into the body of the cells to effect creation and behaviour of the protein strings, and also to affect the state of the nucleus. Our conscious mind occupies only up to 5% of all thought activity.

It is the environmental energy in which the cell exists that determines the health of the cell. Perception governs biology.

Last weekend Nick and I drove over to Burwell, a little village just outside of Cambridge, to attend a workshop given by Debbie Rye, a gifted dowser and holistic therapist. She taught us how to use dowsing charts to detect and assess Geopsychic and Geopathic Stress. Fascinating. These subtle energies significantly influence the health and wellbeing of the occupants of a house and, by clearing any negative patterns, the dwellers are enabled if at all possible to return to or to maintain good health. I thoroughly recommend everyone interested in this subject to attend the next time she runs this.

This last Thursday, I was visiting some clients, an investment bank in town, and was pleasantly surprised at how much faster I could clear negative areas in their suite of offices with the help of my pendulum.

Awareness of epigenetics and how to clear negative environmental energy leads me to realise that this is surely the medicine of the future. Although there is an important case to be made for the existence of some medical drugs, it is interesting to learn that the placebo effect (ie: the thought that something will do you good) or the nocebo effect (the thought that something will do you harm) can be potent and affect changes without the need for pharmaceutical medication. It is interesting that Prozac manufacturers have found that a sugar pill placebo has 78% level of success as the real drug. It is also interesting that an adopted child of a family will be likely to develop the same diseases usually regarded as hereditary, thus demonstrating the nocebo effect - ie: that learnt negative thought patterns produce the same negative or disease conditions. Even worse, according to Prof Lipton: apparently pharmaceutical companies screen out those subjects most susceptible to the placebo effects so that they don't interfere with their new drugs research results!

Celebrations and a Daffodil

Last Wednesday, Mona, my mother, was 89 years old. The changes she has seen in her lifetime are immense! We took her and a dear friend of hers, Suzanne, to her favourite restaurant, The Ledbury. as soon as the staff realised it was her special occasion, a birthday (sugar tart & icecream) cake appeared with Happy 89th Birthday written around the rim of the plate. She felt very cherished.

We had a little drama last night. I realised that Magic must have been fighting again and suddenly had an enormously swollen cheek, so straight after dinner we whizzed him round to the emergency vet.

So we now have a very disgruntled little Magic, who is impersonating a daffodil. He must have said something rude to a big cat with mucky paws (Maybe: “Hey there, Mucky Paws! Puss off and clean up your act?”) and received a mucky smack in the face for his troubles. Anyway, it very quickly turned into an abscess, meaning he had to spend the night at the vet’s having a minor operation to sort it out and resulting in his having to wear a plastic collar for protection that makes him look like the proverbial little spring flower. We are not his favourite people at the moment. He holds us personally responsible for catnapping him and leaving him to the not-so-tender mercies of the Medivet Slasher.

Just back from a blissful holiday. We drove down to the South of France to Cassis just in time to cheer on the runners in their local Marathon (Marseilles to Cassis, 25 Km). There were some runners carrying wheelchair-bound folk and a wonderfully jaunty brass band on the quayside after the last runner had staggered into town. All the local folk turned out and cheered all the participants on, shouting "Bravo!" or "Allez, allez!" to everyone in the race. It was a very grueling race because it is all uphill from Marseiles for most of the way, then sharply downhill into Cassis.

We had stopped off in Reims (for the champagne) and Pérouges (for their special gallettes) on the way down, and returned via Macon & Épernay (for the champagne again) - so the car boot was full of bottles of Macon Villages, Pouilly Fuissé, Pommery........ I'll drink to that.

Back to work and thankful that I love my work. I have just written some feedback for the first year students' main written assignments and I feel so proud of them, they have done so well. Tonight I ran the Healing Clinic and all the students were really busy because there were so many people who came for healing. The energy that built up in the room was dazzling, and some lovely healing was taking place. Three of next year's students came and two of them received healing for the first time - and loved it! Still on the lookout for really good candidates for next year's Soul Therapy Course. Looking for people who want to develop their healing to national registration level and work in the most privileged and rewarding way that anyone could hope to do, in the service of Spirit. Someone once said that working for Spirit is fine, and the Retirement Plan is out of this world!

On Friday I met a lovely man called James Knight, who is the publisher of Hot Gossip Magazine. He likes my book, Eternal Sparrow: Poetry for love, laughter and life, and is going to publicise it in the magazine. I am extremely happy about that. Lynne, the owner of Rosie Brown Boutique, is also selling the book, as is Muswell Hill Bookshop. Charli has it on order too. People are contacting me and telling me which of the poems is their favourite, and that gives me quite a buzz. I have my favourites too, I suppose, for all sorts of different reasons.

The Sonnet, Italian Style, "The Orchid" seemed to write itself - it just flowed and the usual blood, sweat and thingummies were not needed - very unlike the haikus, so tight a discipline that at times I could hardly breathe with the effort of containing as rich a description as possible into three tiny and carefully limited lines.

The Grown Up Nursery Rhyme was fun to write because somebody challenged me to write a nursery rhyme and it just turned out to be a tad saucy. I started on the premise that nursery rhymes had to be clear, with simple language and if possible also with a nonsensical refrain (cf: Lavenders blue, dilly dilly); they have to have something magical, so I incorporated the number three by having three lines to each verse; also they have simple topics and themes so that children can easily relate to them, hence I chose two: primary colours and clothes. You can find the ever so slightly naughty result on page 54.

In later blogs, maybe I will talk about some of the other pieces....

Meanwhile, Rosh Hashana has taken up a big proportion of my time, and we have had a houseful of guests as usual. Tonight is Kol Nidrei, the eve of Yom Kippur, one of the most sacred festivals of the year. At the end of the week, I am off to Paris for Fashion Week. Vivienne Westwood's Show is on Friday afternoon, so I have to go straight there as soon as I get into town. Hussein Chalyan shows on Saturday and I am really hoping that my friend Melih will be able to get me a ticket to that one. I want to see Kinder's collection as I was unable to attend his London Show although he sent me a lovely invitation, and as always I love spending time with my friends Vicki Sarge Beamon (Erickson Beamon Jewellery), Maria Grachvogel and Aydin & Angie Kurdash (Gina Shoes). We always have a ball!