Freedom from M.E.
Supporting you in your journey to recovery...
Issue 2, June 2008
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Quote of the Month
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"Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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You're receiving this newsletter because you joined our mailing list or signed up to the Interactive section of www.FreedomFromME.co.uk
To change your subscription please follow the link at the end of this email.
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Welcome to our June 2008 newsletter...
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It's been
another crazy month at The Optimum Health Clinic. Niki has just returned from the 15th International Symposium for Functional Medicine
in San Diego, USA and has brought back with her some extremely exciting updates and
developments to the nutrition protocols at the clinic. She has also furthered relationships with
other leading researchers in the field, with some future exciting conversations
on the way. We've also just launched our
brand new document that we mentioned last month, "M.E. in the 21st
Century: You are no longer a mystery."
Copies will be sent out by post in the next month, so if you are not
sure if you are on The Optimum Health Clinic postal database, please drop a
quick e-mail to caroline@TheOptimumHealthClinic.com
with your address details.
Anna is going to
be away for a month from mid June volunteering in Indonesia,
training local support workers in trauma techniques she has been involved in
developing through the clinic. She is incredibly
excited at the challenge, and we are very proud to have been able to support
her in this exciting project. If you'd
like to follow her travels out there, you can read her blog at http://www.volunteerindonesia.co.uk/blog/
Talking of
charity work, we are in the final stages of setting up a charity affiliated to
the clinic, to undertake research demonstrating the efficacy of integrative
health treatments. We are currently
raising funds to set the charity up and cover the various legal fees. Anna and Lois (our webdesigner and manager of
Secrets to Recovery) have rather generously offered their lives in support and
will be jumping out of an aeroplane on July 16th!
And, because this is actually Anna's second parachute jump (see this
month's feature article), I'm trying to convince her that surely to raise the
stakes this time she should do it by jumping headfirst! Watch this space!
Personally, I
consider this my idea of living hell, and have therefore taken the rather
cowardly step of pledging a free copy of either Learn to Relax or The Sleep
Inducer for all donations over £20 instead.
Therefore, if you are willing to sponsor the two of them for £20 (or
more!), you will have the privilege of supporting the almost certain injury of
two OHC staff(!), receive a product worth £30, and be supporting an extremely
important cause at the same time! For
more information, and to sponsor them, please visit www.freedomfromme.co.uk/cdih.
Finally, we have
our last "Meditation for M.E." group before September starting on 1st
July. The groups run by conference call,
which means you can effectively learn to meditate from the comfort of your own
bed! To find out more please visit www.MeditationForLife.co.uk or
e-mail Linda@TheOptimumHealthClinic.com
for more information.
Have a great
month,
Love and warmth,
Alex and the
Directors |
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| This month on Secrets to Recovery - Message from Lois
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Last month's
Secrets to Recovery was one of the best months we've had. Many members found Simon Limpus's recovery
story especially inspiring, and also a testimony to the fact that you don't
have to be the perfect patient to make a full recovery!
Last month also
saw the launch of the clinic's new protocol, with the first ever call with Alex,
Anna, and Niki on one call together, discussing the integration of
psychology and nutrition. Remember,
if you join now, you'll have immediate access to both of these sessions free as
part of your membership through the Secrets to Recovery archive.
This month's
free clip is from the end of Simon's interview, where he and Alex talked about
the struggle of M.E. compared to rowing across the Atlantic!
We've got
another great month of calls in June. The following call is already available, and proving a popular download from the Secrets to Recovery Archive:
 June 3rd 2008 7:00pm
For many M.E. sufferers, the difficulty of their situation is greatly
compounded by the varying reactions of those around them, often
ranging from disbelief and scepticism, to sometimes outright
judgement and rejection. In this interactive Q and A session
with members, Alex talks about how best to deal with
these situations.
And to come later in the month:
 June 17th 2008 7:00pm
Putting too much pressure on ourselves
and pushing ourselves too hard is a very classic M.E.
pattern, and one that many M.E. sufferers struggle with. It's
not only a predisposing factor (in OHC terms called the
Achiever Subtype), but also a factor that perpetuates
the illness and can significantly delay recovery.
In this first of a new series of Secrets
to Recovery calls, where we will be going through each
of the Subtypes outlined in the recent clinic report, "M.E.
in the 21st Century," Alex and Ashley will be talking
about the impacts of this pattern, along with using techniques
from EFT and NLP to help members free themselves from
it. They will also be referring to the impact of
beliefs on the Achiever Subtype, and teaching a process
to help change beliefs (which has never been taught through
the clinic before!).
To find out more about joining Secrets to Recovery, just visit the website at www.SecretsToRecovery.com and if you have any questions just e-mail me.
Lois Thorpe,
Co-ordinator of Secrets to Recovery
lois@TheOptimumHealthClinic.com
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Jumping into the Unknown by Anna Duschinsky (Director of Pscyhology)
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 I have ALWAYS wanted to skydive. Well, actually, I have always
simultaneously wanted to skydive and been really rather terrified of the whole
thing. Which is why when I was recently abroad and a friend said, 'let's do
it!' a part of me was saying YES and a part of me was running in the other
direction. Sound at all familiar? I know
that this is something that I used to do and feel much of the time when I was
ill, and it is a state that I know many of our patients are working with.
We often say to people that there are only really two states a human being
can be in, one is stress (or fear) and one is healing (or trust/peace). When
you look at M.E/C.F.S/F.M., one of the key things that is happening is the body
is getting 'stuck' into a state of fight/flight/freeze, which over time causes
the system to burn out and prevents effective healing from happening. If you
think about what fight/flight/freeze is, it is the state of the body being in
alert to a threat - and if we live our lives as if there is a constant, unknown
threat, then of course, we live in perpetual fear.
Think about our reaction to the illness itself; M.E often feels like
something unpredictable, uncontrollable which is happening TO us, and of which
we are the victim. It can feel like it strikes at random, and we often don't
understand what is happening or why. Understandably, then, we often develop a
very strong fear response to the illness and its symptoms - we go to any
legnths to avoid feeling ill, we avoid people who are ill, things that have
brought on symptoms, and these things and situations become fearful for us too.
If we have had food allergies, the food becomes a fearful thing. For a long
time I was actually AFRAID of wheat - or certainly what it might do to me. I
was afraid to write things on my calendar, JUST IN CASE; I thought if I wrote
it down, it might not happen.
So as we work towards getting well, one of the key things that we look at,
that we need to face, is this fear. Because of course, the very act of being
afraid of something will CHANGE our body's very real physical response to being
in that situation - and being in a state of fear and stress about a food, or a
situation, is as likely as anything to CAUSE worsened symptoms, and lower
energy. Catch 22 - you fear it, and so your body responds by being in a
fear/stress state....so you feel worse, so you fear it more!
When we are getting well, a huge part of that process is learning to trust
- and learning not to fear the illness. As a patient on the 90 Day Programme
recently confided, 'the best thing', she said, 'is not being afraid of M.E. any
more.'
So what do we do with this fear? As I sat there, pondering a jump from a
plane, I knew one of the things I needed was to understand what would be
happening - to make it less of an unknown quantity. With an understanding of
what is happening, we can regain control, and a sense of empowerment - and in
M.E. this brings a sense of working WITH our bodies and with our symptoms, not
fighting and fearing them. And once that happens, things can really change.
The next thing we need is the right tools - when I spoke to a friend who
has sky dived a good deal and asked for advice, he helpfully said 'take a
parachute'. (I had thought of that actually!) And of course, parachutes and a
little training really do help! So
having the right toolkit and resources - the right approach - is very
important. As is support, I decided that jumping tandem might be a good way to
go - find someone who knows more about what to do than you!
And finally, there comes that moment where, well equipped with
understanding, tools, resources and support.....it's your turn to take that
leap of faith and jump into the unknown. And you know what, it wasn't half as
scary as I thought. In fact, it was one of the best feelings I have ever had,
and I intend to go on to train in solo jumping - now there's a turn around for
you!
Maybe you aren't jumping out of a plane any time soon - but whatever it is
for you, just remember that even the
scariest situation can be overcome with the right toolkit, and what you were
scared of might just turn out not to be so scary at all.
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Product News
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As mentioned above, if you are willing to sponsor Anna and Lois for their
parachute jump on July 16th for £20 or more, you will receive a free copy of
Learn to Relax or The Sleep Inducer.
However, you must do so through www.freedomfromme.co.uk/cdih
and not through the main OHC website.
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And finally...
Please do forward this e-mail to as many as people as you think might be
interested. Especially if they might be
interested in supporting the charity or receiving the CDs as a thank you. The heart of the matter is, the more money we
can raise through the charity, the more we can ultimately speed up integrative
health being available through the NHS.
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| Warm wishes,
The Optimum Health Clinic Team
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