On healing, utopia and simple joy
Dear friends
As I write, summer seems to have come, gone – and come again. In May, during that glorious spell, I, like many others, started to feel lifted in some way. We take it for granted sometimes that our moods are affected by so many things – the weather included, but it’s not often acknowledged that these subtle relationships between our bodies, minds and environment can have a profound effect on our health. In this letter I highlight a book, champion some beautiful new ambient music and reflect on the potential for joy and healing in our world and in the awareness and sensitivity of the ‘fey’ child inside us all.
Recently I read a simple and wonderful book by psychiatrist, Dr David Servan-Schreiber, entitled ‘Healing with Freud or Prozac’. Actually the book isn’t anti-therapy or anti-anti-depressants, but highlights the recent evidence showing that the body and emotional brain are a lot better at ‘self-healing’ than was previously thought. Stress, anxiety and depression are social, environmental and biological phenomena, he tells us, and with awareness and insight – drawn from what he calls the new ‘emotion medicine’ – we can begin to heal ourselves.
Joy and healing are available to us in other ways. Most of us know the powerful and profound effects of music, poetry and art on the spirit and the soul, and one of the things that we seem to have lost in our culture is a sense of the innocence of creativity. When the Romantic poets were writing, their poems were paeans to landscapes and ideals – to ‘utopia’. As we have lost this idealism, so this has become deeply damaging for our culture, for us as individuals and for the planet. Continue Reading »
