The ICI Experience:

They say 42 is in the top 13 percent of the sample. So am I lying to myself or is this accurate? Maybe I'll find out in the next three weeks... Coming soon: My Sacred Life 30 Day Project. P.S. Chronic Monday is running late due to my being out of town for the holiday. More on that in My Sacred Life Project.

Everyday life is the prayer. How we conduct it, cherish it, celebrate it, consecrate it. ~Sarah Ban Breathnach Well I have much more planned for this Thanksgiving week post, but I am running behind in preparing to leave for Florida. My family is there and I go every Thanksgiving. So this is but a fraction of what I have planned; in case the laptop doesn't connect when we get to the hotel, or whatever! I'm finding all kinds of great new sites in my research on the healing power of art. zena musings: Creativity, Wisdom, Guts & Laziness ~ by Carla Blazek is just one of them. And this is where I read about the My Sacred Life 30 Day Project . "Sacred Life isn't really a challenge -- that sounds too strenuous -- it's really more of a softening ... into a moment, a treasured possession, a companion -- people, parts and places of your everyday life that you cherish. Whatever is sacred to you." Which is good. I had enough of challenge with my seven days of N...

Traditional Guatemalan Worry Dolls A healing doll is an alternative form of journal writing that helps to externalize your feelings. It is a doll that can hold your feelings so that you no longer have to, and it can be an active and supportive process for healing that can be used alone or in conjunction with a diary. Here are some examples of Healing Dolls by Barb Kobe : This one totally reminds me of when I'm having an IBS episode. When I was first figuring out what was going on with that, my counselor asked me to draw what I was feeling. I couldn't get it on paper and finally got some clay to depict the "wounded feeling in gut (WFIG)" that I had come to know the feelings as. "Digesting My Life" healing doll by Barb Kobe This cutie is a Guardian doll by Marla, from Barb Kobe's Medicine Doll Class . Very symbolic. Read about her if you are interested. Dawning of a New Day, Steve's Healing Doll Steve is Barb's brother, and she had his permis...

Not. So I won't have that lousy sense of accomplishment from completing the NaBloPoMo challenge. I've gone the way of my predecessor with FM who tried to blog for a month, The Princess of the Business World and Fibromyalgia . I gave it up in favor of my health. Here are some nuggets from The Princess: "Blogging more was just that, more. It wasn’t better, it wasn’t really helpful. I pushed myself to the brink." "This experiment also could’ve been entitled “how to take all of the fun out of blogging & turn it into a very stressful environment”. I burnt out. I started hating blogging." "I did discover that I’m on the right track with how & why I work. Le sigh." So she didn't really fail, she discovered she was on the right track before this particular experiment. I suppose I could say the same. I was on the right track before I discovered that blogging every day won't work for me right now. But I also discovered a few things ...

photo courtesy of unknown flickr photographer Arts and Healing Network is probably the best place to start learning about the power of art to heal. There are links to all of the movers and shakers in the art therapy field; there's an excellent newletter; the Projects section has links to ongoing projects all over the world; the Inspiration section has MORE great links; and there's a section for artists to find out about grants and to collect resurces. Arts and Healing Network is an on-line resource celebrating the connection between art and healing. Our web site serves as an international resource for anyone interested in the healing potential of art, especially environmentalists, social activists, artists, art professionals, health care practitioners, and those challenged by illness. Our hope is that the information presented here will educate and inspire. This series will attempt to provide a sampling of some of the different kinds of art therapy available, and to explain w...

National memory Screening Day Some of us with brain fog (nicely defined and illustrated for us there and here by Laura Bzowy of CFS Squared) wonder if it could actually be early onset Alzheimer's. Set your mind at ease. Just go in for the free screening on 11/13. Lots of locations available. Sponsored by

This morning when I got up I still agreed with the conclusion I came to last night, that I can't do this NaBloPoMo post every day thing. It's too much. I got on the computer to make a post to that effect and instead I did the "Clear Your Clutter, Clear Your Mind" post. I thought 'I'm so close to getting the hang of doing a quick, short, quality (QSQ) post.' Do you see the length of that Clutter post??? Anyway, I guess I'm still in the running on NaBloPoMo and still trying to get the hang of the QSQ post.

Photo courtesy of Healing Environments . I have been working on figuring out how to clear the clutter from my home, including the garage, for quite awhile now. You've probably heard about it. It's all over - not my clutter problem specifically, but that we as Americans have a clutter problem. A big one. Here are some excellent resources, if you're interested in studying up on it: From zenhabits blog, Zen Mind: How to Declutter . There are more good links at the end of that post. My other favorite is Organizational guru Peter Walsh , host of TLC's hit show Clean Sweep (ladies, why is it that my favorites are MEN? All the men in my life have just wanted me to clean up after them) who I saw on Oprah: High Speed, Low Level Clutter Purge Conquering Clutter One Room at a Time On top of the general problem, people with chronic illness have an even harder time keeping their clutter clear, simply because we don't feel well enough to do much of anything. Some resources...

This is good! Dance is my favorite form of exercise. I'll be posting more on how we can get our bodies moving in a healthy way.

It seems to me that this is one of those situations where the more you need the benefits of the practice, the harder it is to do. Like meditation. It's been my observation that the more unsettled my mind (life) is, the harder it is to just sit down and be quite for fifteen or twenty minutes. And the more we need the benefits that gratitude can bring like human growth, joy, creativity, vitality, delight, hope and connection, the harder it is to be grateful. I offer this post as a way to possibly evoke a sense of gratitude, in spite of the fact that we live with chronic illness. From Seasons of Grace: The Life Giving Practice of Gratitude (emphaisis added by me) "Gratitude — as conviction, practice, and discipline — is an essential nutrient, a kind of spiritual amino acid for human growth, joy, and creativity. Take away the daily experience and expression of gratitude, and life is quickly diminished. Like a weakened immune system , the spirit is left vulnerable to the disea...

HealthInfo Island on Second Life Yesterday I visited HealthInfo Island in Second Life for the first time. I teleported down close to the beginning of the Path of Support, then I meandered down the path, which is a line of billboards of the over 60 different support groups found in Second Life so far. A couple I found memorable are the board for the Online Schizophrenic Hallucination Demo (I'm going to have to try that) and of course the Fibromyalgia Support, but there is also a Neurological Disorders Research and Support Committee founded by Maria Mouroutsos. This is the first, and only SL group for neurological disorders, for those who have them, and for friends and family that want to learn. This group shares research information, tips on how to cope with some of the strange, and rheumotological effects, like fibromyalgia, and also to just share funny things, to help ease a little bit of the frustration. This is also the first time I've actually felt like fibromyalgia mi...

Well, here it is November 1, the beginning of NaBloPoMo. And here I go making an attempt to post every day this month. Should be interesting, especially considering the holiday and the fact that I'll be in Florida for a week. We'll see how it goes. I found this slide show on the Second Life Health Info Island page , which is a part of the Second Life Library 2.0 site . Consumer Health Information Gets a Second LIfe From: CarolPerryman , 6 months ago | View | Upload your own "Second Life is a three-dimensional virtual world that has received enormous amounts of press over the last year. In a grant-funded project, a consumer health library has been created in Second Life to provide reference and consumer health support to Second Life residents. Carol Perryman is the virtual world`s first consumer health librarian. This presentation will provide an overview of the grant-funded initiative, including challenges encountered in creating a consumer health library. Compariso...