Shamay Holistic Solutions
Social Media Updates
Dear Friends!
We are exploring new ways to keep in touch, so we have updated our social media platforms.
In English, you can find us in:
- Twitter, as @tishaklemetz This account is centered in personal development, with some touches of essential oils
- Facebook, in our page Shamay Holistic Solutions. Here we publish our future events (for instance, our Reiki courses), share articles that we found interesting, and also varied information about holistic subjects and personal development.
- In our YouTube channel, we will soon be uploading a new series of videos (in English and in Spanish) about energy awareness.
- And here you have this blog as usual.
We have also added Instagram and Twitter in Spanish (see the links in the Spanish version of this blog).
Thanks for following us! 🙂
…And suddenly came the spring
I’ve been living in Sweden for 2 years and 10 months now. I didn’t start appreciating the light until I was here. In Mallorca, light was taken for granted.
(post originally posted on April 25th, 2014)
On my first summer I was shocked with the sun rising at 4 am – right into my bedroom, which had no curtains. Summers in Sweden are particularly bright.
As the autumn progressed, the days grew shorter. I got used to being in the dark. It was sad, though, to sit in the office and watch the night come at 4 pm. I appreciated cozy homes with bright lamps and heating, and cute winter lights. Now I understood why Ikea’s lamp section was so huge.
Now suddenly the days are growing longer and longer. Now at 6 pm the office is bathed in sunshine, and the sun is still pretty high up on the sky. Was winter long? It seems to have gone by in a wink. Did I really grow used to it? Or was my life in such turmoil that I barely noticed?
Coming from Spain, I marvel at nature in Sweden. The plants that lay sleeping all through the winter, suddenly break into bloom. Fresh green leaves cover the branches of certain trees while others are sprouting blossoms in white, pink and yellow. The sun shines and human life forms find their way out in the streets and parks, craving sunlight like a little plant. This morning the fountain on my way to the office was singing its happy tune, and I became aware that it had been empty all winter. And even the ducks are out taking a stroll downtown. I absolutely love living in Sweden.
Spring is here! I feel grateful. And it feels it has been very sudden.
In life sometimes it is the same. Life gets darker and we get used to it. In the middle the winter of our discontent, we may realize our discomfort but cannot find a way out. We lose track of our real dreams and goals and settle in with realities that are less than what is worthy of us – worthy of our essence, that part of ourselves which is grand and magnificent and often lays dormant… Then one day the first signs of spring start showing, but we do not dare believe it can be true. Will the light really be coming back? Will nature become green again, or is it just a false attempt and winter will still be here longer? And one day, like today, you get to say… then came the spring! Spring is here! It is true, look at all those flowers on the trees, when did they get there? Look at the sun, shining brightly at 7 pm! Is it really spring? What a miracle. What a blessing.
Today I also received the package with my course materials: in one year, I will be a Holistic Health Coach. Studying Integrative Nutrition represents a dream come true, something I have been craving ever since I said, as a small child, that I wanted to be a “baking doctor” in order to heal people through food…
This wonderful process coincides with a spiritual and emotional reawakening in me. A time for getting back in touch with my health, my emotional needs, my spiritual needs – and what a blessing, start seeing growth in those fields as well. Becoming aware of needs I had been repressing, and being able to feed my hungry being.
May we each recognize in our lives the blessings we already have and be capable of experiencing, with gratitude, the spring in full bloom in our soul, as the warm sunshine heals the wounds of the emotional winter that we leave behind. And unlike Nature, may we retain that warmth and sunshine from now on, week after week, as we grow and thrive.
I’ve been called an “optimist” by nature. Whatever the reason, I’ve always chosen to see what good resided in even really bad things. And I’ve always found it. Life IS bright, never let yourself not see it!
I’ve also come to realize that when we speak of “the light at the end of the tunnel”, we don’t realize that tunnel is twisting and bending all the time. Thus, the light may actually be just around the corner, even if you cannot see it now, as you walk in the darkness. Do not despair, the light can be so close now! Hang on!
Love,
Tisha
Sorry but no (with all my love)
I am only one of the many people who like helping others. This might be a troubled world, but there’s so many who care, many who volunteer in some way or simply have a passion for making the world a better place and not leaving anyone behind. And that’s great. That is how we get to make the world a better place, one by one, contributing with what we have, the best we can.
But offering help also has some challenges, especially when you are outside the frames of an organized volunteering activity.
Let’s talk about the help we offer to each other in our local societies.
In Reiki we learn that it’s important to have a proper energy exchange, so that the person receiving really values what is being received. It can take the shape of being paid for your services, but between friends it is most often some kind of tangible or intangible exchange.
There is a place for everything, and volunteering expecting nothing in return is perfectly fine – as such, I decide to take aside X amount of time and spend it on the cause of my choice. Volunteering, in an organized manner, has clear boundaries.
But what happens with friends or with certain groups where you recurringly help? Unfortunately, very often we are taken for granted, especially when the skill requested happens to be your day-time job as well.
I am a translator by profession, and it has happened to me repeatedly that people expect me to translate for them (either translate some minor written text or more often interpret at some event). Most people do not seem to realize how very exhausting translating actually is. And that I do not have “8 hours per day to translate”: my brain capacity is limited in a given day, so the time I take to translate a small blurb of something is time that I have taken away from my paying clients.
Worst is the feeling when I have been making an effort to do simultaneous interpreting for someone at church or elsewhere and they were not even paying attention – perhaps get distracted checking their phone for messages! I end up exhausted and upset.
That’s what can happen when friends and acquaintances want to use your professional services for free, with no energy exchange at all.
More people will relate when I apply this to us who are therapists of some kind. In particular if you are a coach or psychologist, where you get paid to listen to your client’s problems. What happens when a friend comes and needs to be heard? In an optimal friendship situation, the exchange is mutual: we talk about you for about 50% of the time, and then we talk about me for about 50% of the time. In specific periods, one of the parties may have more things to share or discuss, but as long as it varies, it’s fine.
The problem occurs when a given friend needs 90% of the shared time, on a regular basis. If there is no exchange, the person giving often ends up feeling drained, exhausted, and often with a feeling of being abused.
So what can you do to prevent such a situation? Setting up boundaries becomes a necessity. Decide that you will turn off your phone at a given hour in the evening, perhaps take a whole day off every week, or more. Do listen to your friend in need, by all means, but if the problem is large, try rather to empower your friend by giving him/her tools to deal with the issue, or even refer to a professional (or another professional rather than yourself who might be too close to help, as a friend). And if the problem is “chronic”, then make sure your friend is not just complaining about it, but is also taking steps to actually deal with the situation. We all need to vent, but venting alone will not fix the issue.
Constantly “helping out” can be like giving the fish to the hungry person – but teaching them how to fish is the only solution in the long term.
Learning to say no is sometimes a heart-breaking experience, but remember your first duty is towards yourself. Remember the instructions we are given in the airplanes, about putting your own oxygen mask first and then helping your own child? Well this is in fact the same. If you give and give, never recharge your batteries and never rest, you will burn out. And then who is going to help the others? You need to recharge your own batteries first, and be mindful of your strength and capacity! The world will be better off with you helping “a little” but over many years, rather than you helping “a lot” and then nothing, being burned-out. You can only love your neighbor if you love yourself! Please, do take that much-needed time for your own meditation, yoga practice, or “recharging exercise” of your choice. Then, and only then, can you be a long-term tool to help people around you.
May you be inspired to make the right choices!
Find your own rainbow!
Essential oils in lung health
In early 2012, two different people contacted me at the same time, telling me that some patients with Cystic Fibrosis in Germany had improved their breathing (lessened shortness of breath) and their lung capacity, while helping fight their bacterial infections by a simple process of inhaling steams of lavender essential oil. That is, the old-fashioned procedure of boiling up a liter of water, pouring a few drops of essential oil in it, and breathing the steams under a towel, during some 10-15 minutes.
This triggered a research that has enabled me to help improve many people’s lives by now, including my own.
I started by inhaling lavender essential oil, steamed, for a few months myself. Lung capacity improved a little, but perhaps more importantly, my resident lung bacteria (Pseudomonas aeruginosa) went from resistant to all antibiotics to sensitive to more than half of them, in just 2-3 months.
As summer came and steams were not an option anymore, I started exploring other ways of administration, as well, and learned to apply essential oils in multiple ways, for multiple purposes and health problems.
As time went by and I had to buy new bottles of oil, I tried many brands available in stores in Spain, noticing to my great surprise and puzzlement that although they all said “100% pure essential oil from Lavandula angustifolia” the smell was different in each, and moreover, while some made me breathe deeper and better, others gave me a cough and discomfort. Why was this?
I finally was able to settle for some good brands that felt good to my lungs.
It would not be until 2015 when I plunged into studying the chemistry behind essential oils and the laws that govern what can be written on the label of the product. To my dismay, I found out that as long as an oil has its 4-5 main constituents in the right percentages, by law the label may say “100% pure essential oil” when in fact it has been completely synthesized in a lab! Each pure oil, when extracted from a plant, has hundreds of constituents, so the fractions of them obviously do not have the same effect, especially if our purpose is improving health, and not merely obtaining a nice perfume.
I soon started sharing my knowledge of essential oils in health forums, especially those related to cystic fibrosis. One of my personal projects is communicating health approaches from around the world to Spanish speakers, in a separate blog I have (in Spanish). I find it extremely satisfactory, especially when the users live in countries with little health care, when they report back that by using the oils as I suggested they have been able to avoid/reduce antibiotics and stay in better health over the past few years.
In December 2015 I had the experience myself, of applying essential oils in a variety of simultaneous ways and totally avoiding an antibiotic treatment (which otherwise are frequent in Cystic Fibrosis), increasing lung capacity at the same time in a rather remarkable way. I was thrilled to have found something so effective!
Finding out the myriad of powerful uses of essential oils, being as they are the most concentrated form of plant medicine, I am now passionate about sharing knowledge about them. If not for you or your immediate family or friends at present, you never know when someone may fall ill: I would like you to know, at that point, that essential oils can help! So that is why I am teaching these short classes, since January 2016: to give some basic information and help you make an informed decision about this wonderful health tool, and be able to give you guidance in case you want to buy them to use yourself.
Wholly natural, 100% pure, organic, pure power straight from Nature – and they also smell divine! 🙂 Isn’t it wonderful?