when I was 24 I began on my slow journey to health.

I was a recreational drug user, away from a daily addiction and instead just here for the obsession of breaking myself down into smaller and smaller pieces.

one positive thing I did was to, one shopping date with some school classmates from my teenage years, go into a meditation shop in London and purchase a book. I still haven it, actually. I took a card as well, and sat in the meditation room downstairs (iykyk) for a few moments, touching an inner peace I remembered from attending church or singing in choir.

despite the modern building, that feeling is old, reverent, connected and present.

and my addiction shifted. Instead of counting down the days to my next binge I was counting the pennies to spend on a yoga class or steeling the courage to show up for a meditation group (I never did.)

I downloaded an app that encouraged me to take a mindful breath with a koan-like contemplation or affirmation.
meditation for me was where this started. And that is why this practice never leaves.
you can meditate when you’re happy, sad, exhausted, full of energy, well or ill. For one minute or four hours, it is a practice and one that relies only on your willingness to try.

and the card?

”dive into an ocean of rest; rest is best”

I don’t know if I still have it, but it is to this day now one of my foundational philosophies for being. Embodiment and presence can’t be without rest. You don’t know yourself until you know your body, and if you’re jumping out constantly into the next challenge and adventure you never allow your body to properly rest.

because, and I think so much of the narrative that we grew up with if you were a child in the 80s or 90s, what do you mean “we can have it it all?”

what do you mean?

all of what?

as a woman my capacity for presence is completely shattered by my cycle. It is a very tough practice. Yoga cannot be the same daily whilst in my own embodiment. I can, like the indigenous shamans, call on the spirits of men or other animals species to do things outside of my own capacity.

but as a menstruating woman, but greatest challenge and my path to inner power is rest.

rest is best

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I’m not just a yoga teacher btw. I am obsessed with health, on my own health journey. This has lead me through the teachings found in Chinese medicine, western medicine and Ayurveda as well as through my own personal practice as a movement and meditation teacher.

I’ve looked into all diets, all exercise forms and everything I can think of and here it is:

Lipodema or lymphoedema is the symptom, not the illness.

The body protects the vital organs by pushing toxins out to the extremities and diluting them with water or fat, which is stored wherever it can go quickly first.

With lymphodema the problem is bloating of water, which means for sure the kidneys are overloaded. It means they have stopped filtering properly and are simply pushing toxins out to your extremities.

With lipodema you have both water and haphazard fat deposits, which is where there is toxic waste, probably in the gut, that is thrown out with fat and deposited into the closest available fat cell as far from your organ body as possible. Where this is disorganised, since the hormone that directs how fat is stored comes from your bones, this points to a bone injury, or deficiency. As there is water weight too, the kidneys are also affected.

These happen when you have been poisoned through injury, lifestyle or illness.

The kidneys will fail as the last in an organ chain, as your food or liquid is first filtered by the liver and anything inside you will require an immune response in case it is contaminated. This involves your spleen and parathyroid.

So in lipodema (and let’s include lymphodema here for arguments sake) your filtering organs are struggling, or partially failed and so has your immune system.

How does this happen though? It could be too large a toxin (anyone who has been drugged or overdosed can suffer dire consequences, even with moderate recreational use), too little recovery or deficiencies in your organs.

Deficiencies speak to malnutrition which comes from a poor diet or a gut that is not taking in nutrients correctly. So like in all complementary medicine the first thing you need to do to heal lipodema is fix your guts.

Since soft tissue and organs can take a couple of years to replenish themselves, this would take a few of years of focused eating and healing to just heal the gut. This by itself might restore the balance in the body.

Liposuction removes the ugly appearance but causes more problems. Since we don’t regenerate fat cells, without enough storage space if you when you overeat you have nowhere to put excess fat which can cause tax on your organs. You might struggle with your gall bladder which cannot produce enough bile to cope with the fat you eat in your diet versus the amount of fat cells that might need to be utilised if go any reason you don’t immediately use the energy from fat.

I would never recommend liposuction but I know a lot of people have it and it really means you have to address your diet and be very careful what you eat – a low fat diet becomes a daily need, not a weight loss plan.

Lipodema, since it contains the toxins or poison of wherever you had at the time, can be very slow to shift as you cannot lose the fat or water quickly and your organs must process and metabolise the toxins one small shift at a time. I would guess that to reverse stage 1 lipodema would take around five years of dedicated effort.

and I’m sharing this so you know, that working with me is not just a class, it relates to a system and holistic understanding of existing in a human body

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