THE BODY GENIUS

The body is intelligent

It knows what to do

We underestimate it

And we abuse it

In fact we toxify it

Which makes it harder to hear

And then we wonder what’s wrong

And we want to fix it

But first we must fix our thinking

And learn to work WITH the body

Not against it

It is not the enemy

Despite what we are led to believe

It is the greatest miracle we know

And the keeper of our existence

It is the utter genius of nature manifested

And it is not easily overpowered by mind

Everything the body brings up is a doorway

It may bring up fear, or anger, or shame

No matter, see each emotion as a doorway to freedom and to love

Embrace this body, you are not getting another one

And be done with this foolish notion that it doesn’t matter

Or that the modern notion of war upon nature is intelligent.

My Kindle Book, The Power of Illness, is now $0.99

I have made the cost of my book ‘The Power of Illness to Change Your Life,’ as low as Amazon will allow.

They will not allow me to make it free so $0.99 is as good as it gets.

I think you might enjoy it. It is the story, at least some of it, of how I healed naturally from a serious case of Inflammatory Bowel Disease, despite doctors and professionals assertions that healing was impossible.

It is a pretty wild and reassuring story with some good pointers if that is what you are looking for.

Here are some reviews.

Great book. Fully explains the journey of healing, describing all the alternative therapies available to heal holistically. I have tried to lead a spiritual wholesome healthy lifestyle, and sometimes things change, and we are further from where we started or wanted to be. This book has given me the push to get healthy again and look after the body and mind. Highly recommend it.

Kavi writes with so much passion, insight, respect and care for the reader.
His book is part biographical, part information and guidance. I have learnt a huge amount from reading this book and the writing style is very easy to follow.
This truly is a book for everyone – whether you are well or unwell. If you are considering buying this, do it! You will not regret it!
A truly inspirational book, to be read again and again.

Give it a try. I want everyone to understand that healing IS possible, it’s not some figment of the imagination. I do not care what doctors say, they were wrong in my case and they might be wrong in others cases.

We are in delicate and disturbing times when immune integrity matters more than ever. I had to deal with exactly that. And it has helped me and healed me.

Please please please download my book. It is not perfect and it’s not a ‘how to’ manual. It’s an inspirational message that we have more capability than we are told. But we must take power over our bodies, emotions and thoughts.

Everything (Including Illness) is Included in the Spiritual Journey.

I spent nearly 10 years seriously ill, from about 2004 to 2014. I had major chronic autoimmune illness. I won’t share the details but enough to say it was dramatic, not life threatening but totally debilitating, and it completely shattered my ability to live a ‘normal’ life.
I wrote a book about the experience called ‘The Power of Illness to Change Your Life.’

http://a.co/d/3ShFibv

It also invited me into the deepest inner journey of my life.
I see that period of my life as an entirely transformational one.
I cannot begin to tell you how deep it was. It was total. It took me to every part of myself, every unexplored area, every vulnerability, every attachment, every fear.

It demanded I resolve all past grievances and traumas. It urged me to accept the prospect of death, or a life of permanent illness.

It took me to rage and anger at my past, at myself, and at God
.
And of course it had a huge impact on my relationship with Amoda. She hadn’t signed up for a relationship with this. To her utter credit she just rolled with it and allowed me to have my inner journey, supporting where and when appropriate and encouraging me to dive in deeper.

I took absolutely no medication despite the frantic advice of the specialists and doctors. To some, to many, that was irresponsible. To us it was necessary. I followed nature, I followed intuition, I followed some instinct that said, ‘This will heal, you will heal.’

It was tough, warrior-like tough. I have been on my knees, on the floor. I have given it all up to god, I have surrendered my body for the peace of love and had that prayer answered.
I have embraced the human journey with all its fragility and its temporariness.

And I am not one of the spiritual ‘nondualists’ who want to deny the existence of the body and cast it aside as unimportant. I am not one of those.

I say love the body. Love the life. Find out for yourself what it means for consciousness, for the soul, for the spirit, to be in the form of a temporary vessel that will inevitably perish.

Explore the link between thought, belief and wellbeing and illness.

Don’t be afraid of the body, and don’t be afraid of attending to it. It’s not the enemy of freedom. It’s not the shackle that ties us down. Thought and belief are the shackles that bind us.

I have learned to be free AND live fully in the body while I am here.

I eat well and healthy. I run, yes I run, a lot. I love the freedom and joy of movement. And when I can’t do it any more, I will see if I can love that. When old age arrives, I will see if I can open to it, I will seek to embrace the fear I have of form dissolving.

But I won’t deny the human experience as not ‘spiritual.’ Everything is included.

Thank you for reading!

Illness Triggers Vulnerability – Embrace it

I would like to talk briefly about how fragile we are and how vulnerable that makes us. We don’t have long on planet earth, a few decades if we are lucky, and then we are gone again into the eternal unknown. The majority of people kind of like it here, despite all the terrible things that happen, and all the suffering, the personal and global difficulties and the struggle just to live. We get used to it, we build relationships, we have family, loved ones, and attachments. That’s the nature of life.

And we expect that to last for at least 70 years, and maybe more. That’s not too much to ask, we think.

And then illness may come along and throw that idea under the bus. We might be 30, or 50, or (god forbid) even younger. In truth, in many ways, it doesn’t matter what age we are (except for the very young, and that’s an utter tragedy I can’t address here), it’s always going to be too soon, and it’s always going to mean the arrival of very deep emotions. That is to be fully expected. 

It’s going to herald the arrival of fear, and enormous vulnerability. Some of the depth of feeling will of course depend on the severity of the illness, but in my experience many of these mystery chronic illness’s trigger these fears BECAUSE they are completely unknown.

Illness knocks us sideways, and it catches many completely off guard. There is a totally new reality that arrives, a new context for everything. The truth arrives suddenly, we can call it impermanence. The facts of impermanence affect each one of us, no exceptions, but for those who are hit with illness, or even live in the unknown, this impermanence becomes a new reality. It changes everything. 

For the spouses, partners, relations, children etc, it is very hard. I know this only too well in my relationship. This marriage with Amoda my wife is our entire world. Neither of us have much family, we have no children, and we came to America and gave up whatever little we had in the UK. This is it, and we are in the boat together. To be ill triggers such a vulnerability, even guilt and sorrow. And it hits her very hard, destabilizing plans and possibilities.

But life is like this. Life is sudden and dramatic. It is disappointing and distressing. And it is impermanent. Life doesn’t play by our rules. It is unconcerned with what we want to happen and when. And the stark truth of illness bursts our illusions, sometimes dramatically and usually distressingly. 

The key to making it easier, if there is one, is to know this and to embrace it. In all my years of being ill, and walking the path of transformation, embracing the vulnerability, the let down, the heartache, the fear, anger and pain, the only way I have found is through love’s acceptance. I know that might sound new agey and trite, but when you are sick and suffering, such things begin to mean something real. Sarcasm and cynicism are the stronghold of the defensive ego that lives and dies in the matrix. They don’t make for good companions when the chips are down and we need to get real and intimate. 

Consciously embracing the vulnerability might not change anything, it might not get rid of the fear, or anger, or heal the body, or cure you, but it will open the door to a deeper acceptance of reality. That is the best we can do, and it’s the best gift we can give others. Everyone has to face the same thing. I have not met anyone who hasn’t had dreams shattered or had to face deep disappointment and heartache. It’s in everyone. And everyone will have to meet death.

But the difference between those who turn and face themselves openly and those who turn away in fear or blame, those who become bitter and twisted, is the difference between heaven and hell.

I am one who is bold and brave enough to turn and face the truth, even though it hurts like hell. I am not writing this because I have received some dreadful news, don’t worry. I do have some strange symptoms going on in my gut that I would like resolved and it’s creating a lot of discomfort and uncertainty, and we are in the US which means access to some health care stuff is more difficult (like getting a colonoscopy), but its more that it’s triggered my own sensitivity and vulnerability, and I thought I would share my insights with you.

I hope you are well, and if not I hope this brought you some solace and comfort. Maybe that’s the best we can do for each other.

Much love

Kavi

Running Is My Meditation – Don’t Sit Around, Move Something!

Yesterday I did a 10 mile run. Two days before that a 6.2 mile run.

This morning I ran over the Golden Gate Bridge in the early morning sunrise.
It was utterly gorgeous and I felt such a sense of freedom.
I run approximately 25 miles per week. That’s 100 miles a month at least.
I have run 446 miles this year so far. All my runs have been in the morning.
My best running time is 11am when it’s warm, preferably sunny.
I’m 59 years old.
I am fitter than I have ever been as an adult.
I’m pretty fast for an older guy. I average 9 minutes per mile and my average length of run is 5.1 miles.
My app tells me I’m usually in the top 8% for distance run.

I am motivated for running.
For me it’s physical and spiritual. It’s even a kind of meditation.
It gets me into a zone. It helps me sweat. It enlivens me. It brings a great spaciousness to my mind.
I connect with some deep inspiration when I run.
I feel it enliven my cellular body.
It doesn’t feel like a stretch in a bad way, ever.

But it really hasn’t always been like this. In fact it was the opposite for years and years.
I was the most unfit guy ever during my 20s and 30s, and even my 40s.
It has taken years of persistence and success, and failure, to get to this point.
And still I have to persist. But I found the groove and know the rewards.

And don’t forget:
I have been through chronic illness, on a long journey that lasted about 10 years. Some of that time I ran, but I struggled with exercise. I stayed with it. When the body and nervous system is under par and stressed it’s very hard to get the full benefit of exercise. So you do what you can. I did rebounding to keep the energy flowing. I did yoga for flexibility. I did core strength exercises to build muscle. All of this you can do, adapted to your own state of health.

The bottom line is, you can’t recover or heal or find true vitality without doing something for the body.
If nothing else, walking is great! 5 – 10 miles a day will get things going. Just don’t sit around. It will kill you.
Sleep is so very important, good quality sleep. We go to bed very early and get up very early.
Hydration is very important.
Nutrition is vital.

But of all things I have seen and felt over the years, enthusiasm and motivation are the two most powerful. With those on your side anything is possible.

Anything.

Thanks for reading, see you out there!

Kavi

ps. Any runners out there, connect with me!
SmashRun – https://smashrun.com/kavi.hockaday

 

Return to Wholeness

There is a world of difference between the one who is closed and the one who is open.

The former is defended with a fortress they have built over the course of a life. They protect and attack, whichever is relevant. They carry old wounds in the physical and emotional body. Stuck energy becomes toxic and needs to be freed up. Many people don’t feel they can do this. They may prefer to stay stuck all their lives.

The second is one who has opened. They have successfully managed to return to a state of wholeness and naturalness. If you could picture them their arms are open and outstretched. They are undefended and have natural protection. They have let go of grievances and projections and no longer cling on to old toxic stories. They are in a state of natural love. Energy flows and this alone can contribute to healing.

Going from the former to the latter is the task of deep transformation. It is not easy to open a closed heart, and let love’s river flood the dry and barren land.

But it is the only real task of a human being.

• The impact of opening the heart is enormous.
• Healing can happen. Including physical healing.
• Relationships can mend.
• Compassion arises naturally, both for self and others.
• A peacefulness and groundedness can arise.
• Wisdom develops as if by itself.
• This is the return to Wholeness.

Do not doubt the power of LOVE. It is the most powerful force in the Universe.

Join my Facebook page and stay in touch every day! I always post, but not too much.
https://www.facebook.com/yourholisticmap/

 

Exercise – Movement of Energy – Is Not Optional

I feel called to talk a little about exercise. I don’t think enough people actually do it regularly.

That’s the key, regularly. There is no real point in just doing a bit here and there. It doest work. It is regular movement of energy that works and gets the the flowing going. And that is one of the keys to health.

It sounds obvious but from what I see not many people actually act on this information.

Exercise is simple. All it really is is movement of energy. Energy must move or it stagnates. If it’s energy inside the body, inside the blood system, lymph system, bones or nervous system, it needs to move, period.
The lymphatic system is a major drainage system for cellular waste, but it relies on movement of energy to work. No movement, no elimination of lymphatic waste. No elimination of lymph waste and there will be build up of toxic residue in the body. That is trouble. That is toxicity in the system that cannot get out and just circulates. We call that the onset of chronic disease.

So exercise, or movement of energy, is necessary for regular health. And it is not just necessary for the body. Oh how the mind loves movement. It gets the chance to hatch ideas, dream, reflect and contemplate.

What constitutes movement of energy?

Walking, running, hiking, cycling, yoga, etc etc, you know the kind of things. Even breathing, deep diaphragmatic breathing can be a form of exercise. Rebounding is excellent.

But you have got do it often.

A little movement often is better than a lot every now and then.

It needs to become a habit, the same way not doing it has become a habit. Children do it naturally. You and I were children. We became lazy and distracted and forgot the joy of movement.

And here is my final point in this short call to movement.

Before you start you might have a lot of resistance. The mind is lazy and says ‘I don’t want to, it’s too hard, lets do it another day.’ and so on.

But if you persist, the reward is satisfaction and a warm body glow, and a sense of pride and achievement. Even if it’s small its there.

And you get to choose which feeling you want to respond to. The resistance or the possibility of satisfaction.

I know which I choose, and I do that over and over. And it has been hard for me to be motivated. But it works.

Yes of course when you are so out practice it is tough at first. But thats where your will, your desire, your determination and your warrior nature, kick in. You make it your business to keep going. One foot in the front of the other. Not just when yo feel like it.

Exercise is not something you do just when you feel like it. It is beyond that limited thinking.

Make it you business to find something that suits you. Experiment.

And persist.

If you want support with motivation or you have any other issue you feel you need support with, get in touch.
I could help you change the course of your life.

https://www.kavijezziehockaday.com/sessions/

The Body Is Always Pointing To Love

I have this statement on my website:

The Body Is Always Pointing To Love

What does it mean and isn’t it a bit woohoo and weird?
And how can the body and love be connected?
And what happens if the body gets sick and dies?

Good questions!

What I am suggesting is that the body is a reflection of consciousness and personality. It stores all the stories we have had, all the dramas of our life, and all the things we could not process during our childhood, youth or adulthood.

And that includes all the times we moved away from love’s innocence because we were afraid.

Your body is the reason you are here in this world. If you didn’t have a body you wouldn’t be here. As consciousness you owe a lot to the body you have. It is probably the greatest miracle of high tech, biological, electrical engineering we could imagine. It is extraordinary in the extreme, but to reduce it to its chemical or biological, or even electrical components is something of an insult, because it is so much more than that.

The Indians first came up with the awareness of inner energy vortices inside the body that vibrate at different frequencies and have different purposes. They called them chakras. Chinese medicine has studied and used the inner energy system of the body for its acupuncture work for centuries, and so its not new information to be aware that the body has deep intelligence that we don’t really fully understand.

BUT…you are not the body. Well, in truth, you ARE the body and your are NOT the body. Ultimately you are consciousness. But while you are here in form you are intimately connected to your body. 

And therein lies the word intimately. You as consciousness are intimately connected to your own body. But the body itself will perish and die. It will develop issues, get old, wear out. It will carry scars and wounds and let you down, and finally dissolve into the dust from which it came. Your body teaches you about who you really are. 

And since who you really are is consciousness, which is unconditional love, it is fair to say that the body is always pointing you to love.

I would actually go one step further and say that life itself as we experience it, all experience and everything that manifests, is pointing us to love, the love that is our unconditional nature.

But we miss that because we are so full of our stories and our hurts and wounds and fears and resentments and grievances. We miss the best bit of being human. And what is that best bit?

The best bit is forgetting we are love itself and getting lost in the dream and the drama, and then waking up again and finding our way home and remembering our true nature. 

That is the best bit. It’s worth all the effort of being lost.

But finding your way home to this exalted, yet utterly natural, state, can be tricky. It takes persistence, great humility, and warrior-like guts. And sometimes a guide to point the right direction.

I like to think I am one of those guides, a pointer in that direction.

My website: www.kavijezziehockaday.com

A Warning About Toxic Emotions – They Kill

I watched my Mother decline and fall over a long period of time.

She was hit by a nasty auto immune condition – Rheumatoid Arthritis. That was on top of the onset of Osteo Arthritis.
It was savage. It really started in the 1980’s and continued to tear her body apart until she succumbed to the stress of medications and disease in 2002 and left her body.

She had two hip replacements, and had a bad reaction to one of them and developed an internal ulcer that was agony.
I spent many days over the years in and out of hospital visiting her. She wanted to die often, and often was in such pain it was very tough for her, and for me.
I cannot even begin to know how she coped. Her body twisted over the years as it does with RA and it was a sorry sight to behold,  all mangled and bent.

I did my best to encourage her to adopt a healthier lifestyle, but she wouldn’t and couldn’t. Her emotional wounding and trauma was deeply embedded in her body due to my parents very toxic and damaging divorce in the 70s from which she never recovered. She carried this resentment and bitterness until her dying day, unable to process the hurt and the pain and the anger. I think she really felt betrayed by the masculine, and did not have the inner resources to transform her own story or suffering to anything healing.
It was terrible to witness, and awful to feel so helpless to it all.

But slowly as I developed a deeper self knowledge and wisdom I gained some distance and compassion. I realized that my real job was not to try and change her, heal her or even help her.

My job was just to love her. And I did that. For the last two years I practiced just loving her. Just reminding her that she was ok whatever was happening and that love was the only thing that mattered, ever.
And even though there was pain and torment, there was love even in that. I remember just sitting in the front room of her little house holding her deformed hand as she crunched and moaned and grimaced in the pain of the physical and emotional body, and all I could do was say ‘I love you and I’m sorry.’

Eventually her body couldn’t do anything more and I received a call one day to tell me she had died. I was sad and happy. Sad to know the story of her life and how hard it had been, and happy to know that release meant freedom to fly back home.
She taught me so much, and she loved me so much. And I still think about her all the time and wish I could take with her and see her smile and hear her infectious laugh.

Why have I said all this? Because I really want to spread the word, and even shout the word from the rooftops, that old wounds, particularly resentments, bitterness and grievances left un-dealt with and hidden ALWAYS cause a cascade of trouble in the body and will never completely disappear, but will likely return to haunt the bearer in later life.

There is just no getting away from that fact that these emotions, suppressed, are highly dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the bearer, and it is our responsibility to ourselves and our community to deal with them, and support others to do the same.

It is very hard to deal with the pain of the past, but it is even harder to carry it around as a curse and allow it to pollute and poison everything we do, including relationships with other and the world.

Please let my own story be a warning to you and those you love. I myself heed her lesson and made it my mission to heal myself and let go of the past, consciously and truly. And that was one of the greatest acts of healing I have ever done.

Thank you for reading..x

Your Body is a Story You Must Read

Consider this:

Your body is a story. It tells the story of your time here on earth. It contains information about you that, if one could read the ‘body book’ properly, would reveal so much about who you are it would be incredible. 
It contains your experiences, and particularly it has held on to the experiences you couldn’t process effectively at the time they happened. It has held on to them in the muscles and tissues, in your posture and positioning. 
It holds your thoughts about yourself and the world. 
It holds information about your ancestors and where you came from.

Your body is actually a blueprint of your personality. It is a map of YOU.

BUT only the relative, earthbound you.

It doesn’t tell anything about who you are as consciousness. It doesn’t say anything about the timeless, eternal, silence that is your true nature. It can’t. Form cannot explain the formless. 

So there you are, two things in one. That is the quintessential paradox of the human being. Being two things, one of the relative world and one of the absolute world, and each containing and pointing to the other.

Your purpose is to carry both, honour both, and know both.