My Healing Journey - a practical antidote to modern world - connections and slow living

Short Report on My Travels to Ireland and Great Britain

My latest trip took me to Ireland and the UK, to meet with people who have had similar ideas to me about creating sanctuaries or recovery retreats where newly diagnosed people can go to get help and support to begin their journey of recovery.

As

Gary Sharpe

of

Gary Sharpe's Articles

says

“We should have recovery or respite centres where people who have been diagnosed with a chronic illness can go at the point of diagnosis, be looked after, for say the first 6 months, where they can totally destress, and learn all the stress reduction and symptom reduction techniques to carry them forward.

Instead of just abandoning them and cursing them with the nocebo effect of ‘you can’t get better’.

This has been a dream of ours for some time.”

The main purpose of my trip was to explore ideas and collaborations with like-minded people, to make this dream closer to reality.

I first visited Irene Treacy of Helping People with Parkinson’s in the beach city Tramore.

Irene reports:

“Was great to have Lilian Sjøberg stay with me for three days last week, we really covered lots of ground in relation to Parkinson’s and I learnt loads from her.

Not just with Parkinson’s but Lilian helped me see ( and work through) how my previous traumas have effected my behaviour in the past and helped me identify my own triggers that I can now easily recognise and prevent in the future. Sometimes we just can’t see the wood for the trees and as Dr. Joe always says ‘Awareness Precedes Change’.

I have done years of study on trauma and self development and Lilian’s visit helped me see this from different perspectives.

Lilian’s work has added an extra dimension to mine, and my work her’s. We really compliment each other in both our different knowledge and style of teaching. We both seek the same outcome and have both similar and different approaches to achieving these.

I’m delighted to say that Lilian and myself will be doing some work together in the future and she will be joining us for Parkinson's Retreats.”

From there I spent time walking in Wales, Anglesey before traveling to England to visit Gary Sharpe, who I have been helping via remote therapy work to significantly reduce his symptoms (Gary has a Parkinson’s Disease diagnosis).

We had many stimulating discussions, including formulating ideas on how we can proceed with his recovery, finding out how his symptoms relate to mammal instincts responses, and imagining our concept of a sanctuary for newly diagnosed people with chronic illness.

I was able to accelerate Gary’s progress through intensive therapy and coaching, combined with being “hands-on” through two modalities I am trained in, Emotional Freedom Technique, and Rosen Method. This helped us gauge just what might be possible through an intensive in-person recovery retreat.

My trip was also a way for me to test my own progress in regard to stress resilience.

I practice what I preach, and have been applying my stress-reduction techniques to myself for some years, helping myself to become a healthier, much calmer, and more talkative person. This was an inter-rail trip where I made no definite plans beforehand, so it was a big test of how to stay calm during unexpected happenings.

I was indeed tested when bus drivers in Ireland would not accept my inter-rail tickets. But I was rescued two times by locals who could explain how also their children used this worldwide offer. I was tested when a local pub audience invited me to sing in their traditional Thursday song evenings… (yes I sang the Danish National Anthem, and got praise for this).

In Anglesey, I was tested as there was no food to buy except Fridays and Saturdays, and when hiking, I followed very lonely paths, where hardly anyone came.

I found out I definitely prefer hiking in groups.

Do I dare walk down a path, where no one will find me if something happens? Do I dare to pass the cows to the gate? I did it :-)

I got on the wrong train, bypassing the town where Gary lived, and ended up in London, and also when I arrived at St Pancras on my way home, and found I couldn’t get a Eurostar ticket for three days. I was not phased by this incident, and remained calm, whereas once I would have totally panicked.

In fact, I turned this into the good and used the opportunity to fit some more travel in.

A detour to a rainy Dover, where I could not find a BB. So I walked the endless rainy way to the ferries and went to Calais, where cheap hotels were scarce as well.

I met some travelers, had dinner with them, and after their advice followed them to Lille, France, and found not only a beautiful old town and an amazing France Hostel chain (thepeoplehostel.com), a small sanctuary in itself. So I stayed there for 2 days.

This travel was indeed not only a test for my progress in overcoming my lifelong introvertedness. It was also to consciously challenge it. To get the message out I need to develop more extrovert skills.

Indeed, I found that I really enjoy this form of traveling. Sleeping in hostels, dorms was a form of being together with people even while sleeping, and talking to other travelers on the trains. Much better than short-flight travel, where you stay in modern stress.

In a dorm at "the people hostel" after a rainy day, and at a campsite visiting Gary - I prefer that to hotels, for a lot of reasons

It has for the last 7 years been a very lonely journey to find out all this knowledge about chronic conditions, trauma, body memories, and healing, and how to spread the ideas.

Connecting with Gary one year ago helped enormously. As we have a common understanding of Parkinson’s as a stress-related disease, it is a big step forward to reach more people. This year, visit Irene and get an idea of how her on-location retreat works.

That is why I need to travel to meet people in person.

So the more you interact with posts, the more you help me to get new ideas about what to post.

That is my reward to feel and see that you are all interested.

Please write and comment so we can connect and discuss.

In regard to previous posts:
What do you think?
What have you learned?
What have you benefitted from?
What have we forgotten to cover?
What do you not agree with?

It is time to dust the old ways of being human.

Building relationships, talking in real life, and breaking down the isolation modern life has brought us. Yes, we can live independently, but it is not healthy for us, our marriage, or our children.

If friendly people are always nearby you can seek help regardless if you are young or old.

Time to combine the healthiest and most natural parts of the past and present.

We do not need medication, we need to get stress down and use our ability to form friendly relationships.

Dear pledging people:
If you want to support me and Gary Sharpe, the Member’a Area (above button) is a way with a monthly payment of $16 and can also be a gift for a loved one with a disease or who is stressed. It has taken Gary 7 years of his own struggles and life experience. It has taken me 5 years of experimenting with clients and test cases, researching survivor stories, and studying to acquire this knowledge.

We need to find out if this knowledge is welcome in the world (and we need to start employing people so that we can make more content and help more people.)

See also this

The Antidote to Suffering in the Modern World