Indholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2022 #239 i Odyssey Magazine

Adjective rousing; quickening: an awakening interest Noun the act of awaking from sleep; a revival of interest or attention; a recognition, realisation; or conning into awareness; a renewal of interest in spirituality, especially in a community; a revival. In life, in the sunrise of life, we think and plan much for tomorrow, we look forward to tomorrow and then it dawns on us that, in doing this, we often miss out on the incredible things that are happening for us today. Planning and looking ahead become so all-consuming that we miss out on the peace, love, joy and abundance that are available to us right here. Right now! As we awaken we celebrate our sunrises, every single one, embracing our path and our purpose so that every fibre of our…

Community “Small wonder that we stand confused, alternately arrogant and frightened, chaotic in our purposes, in the midst of social changes which seem beyond our control. We are facing a combination of paradigm shifts which may be more powerful than anything the world has known before. The possibilities, both the disruption and for creative living, are enormous.” Carl Rodgers Carl Rogers was a humanistic psychologist who is best known for his client-centred approach to therapy. He believed that people are innately good and that the therapist's job is to create a safe environment in which the client can explore their feelings and thoughts. Rogers felt that it was important for therapists to be genuine and authentic to build trust with their clients. His work has been influential in the development…

Do you obsess over money? Keeping it firmly under control? Wanting to know its every movement? Jealously guarding it? Accounting for every cent? Laying out its path into a fully scripted future? Or do you ignore money? Pretending it's not there, that it's not important to you, even as you secretly yearn to have it in your life? Maybe you use money without a moment's thought and then regret it, discard it without a second glance, blaming it for all your troubles. Consider the significant others in your life. How would they react if you behaved in the same way? Would they stick around for more, or would they leave you? Everything exists by virtue of relationship, everything is connected and money is something we are in relationship with too.…

Spirit Other than air and water, food is the thing most critical to our survival. Desires around it get imprinted on us from an early age. As infants, our relationship with food is enmeshed with our parents. When the infant cries, mom pacifies baby at her bosom. As a toddler, food is used as a lure or as a reward or punishment. As growing children, many of us were shamed into eating everything on our plate because of the ‘starving children in Africa’. Is it any wonder that we have such complex relationships with food? Somewhere along the line the ‘essence’ of food gets lost and, in many cases, food becomes a crutch or a substitute for unmet needs. Food may insidiously become an addiction without us even being aware…

African Botanicals Yet ethnobotany - the study of the relationship between people and plants - affects our lives minute to minute. From the food we eat, to the teas and tonics we drink, incenses and essential oils we use to relax – all come from plants. Thus, plants are working behind the scenes in our lives; day to day we rely on them for health and wellness, but many of us have forgotten their important role because most of us moderns no longer grow or gather our own plants for food, build our homes or make our own furniture from trees, or take psychoactive plants for religious purposes like our ancestors did. So in this way we have become disconnected from nature and plants. This is where ethnobotanists do important…

Cilo Cybin is in the final stage of listing Africa's first cannabis special acquisition company on the JSE in Q3 of 2022. Cilo Cybin's service offering combines biohacking, biotech, and pharmaceutical methodologies to effectively address an individual's wellness, performance, and longevity goals. Biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies both produce medicines, but the medicines made by biotechnology companies are derived from living organisms while those made by pharmaceutical companies generally have a chemical basis. Biohacking on the other hand is the constant pursuit of better heath, performance and longevity through the use of technologies, apps, devices and supplementation. Odyssey magazine's Debra Robins caught up with Gabriel Theron, the founder of South Africa's Cilo Cybin Pharmaceutical Ltd. to find out more. How did Cilo Cybin come about? Started off on my bed looking…

OLD THOUGHT, NEW THOUGHT Old thought-beliefs dictated that the mind has no influence on, or control over, the body, its cells, or its many physiological and biochemical functions. This has been refuted (and still is) by a multitude of scientific studies, anecdotal evidence and personal experiences. The mind has complete influence over the body. We have to choose every moment to change our minds from health-harming thoughts to health-enhancing ones, moving from subconscious mind with past programming, based on past experiences, to superconscious mind, with higher awareness to guide and govern our lives and cellular expression. It becomes clear that what we think, could possibly make us sick or well, happy or unhappy. As Albert Schweitzer said: “We doctors do nothing, we only encourage the healer within.” That is, our…

Parenting At last the great day had arrived and the Chief Gnome was inspecting the first group of snowdrop fairies. Each fairy was wearing a beautiful, new, frilly, white dress and each had wings which (after many hours of polishing during the winter months) shone with all the colours of the rainbow. In a few minutes now, they would all venture back onto the earth plane to begin their work for spring. When they had all been inspected, the Chief Gnome announced that they could all fly away to the earth and begin their new duties. He was very pleased. Their new dresses, spun from finest spider webs, were even better than the previous year and their wings sparkled more brightly than ever before. ‘There certainly was a good harvest…

African Botanicals African traditional health practitioners worked tirelessly with the national Department of Health between 2003 and 2010 to officially recognise and formalise our healing work. The pinnacle of this process was that former President Thabo Mbeki assented to the Traditional Health Practitioners Act No.22 of 2007 in a landmark parliamentary ruling. The act allows government to regulate the work of all traditional health practitioners in South Africa and to deal with misconduct by healers. A special Directorate of Traditional Medicine was established within the Department of Health and the at least 10 per cent of the national health budget was reallocated to this directorate. An Interim Council for Traditional Medicine is also in place since circa 2008. We argued that we, as healers, could not be regulated by the…

Mind While there is still no known cure for Alzheimer's, new research and trials from France reveal that it is possible to slow down its progression, ameliorate some of its direct and secondary effects and improve the quality of life for those suffering from this degenerative condition - all through the sense of smell. Citing years of clinical evidence, Jean-Pierre Willem, MD, shows how Alzheimer's is critically bound with the sense of smell. He explains how the olfactory system is tightly connected to the limbic area of the brain, which holds the keys to memory and emotion and is the area of the brain most severely afflicted by Alzheimer's. He reveals how one of the very first signs of Alzheimer's, long before any noticeable memory loss or behaviour change, is…

African Botanicals the Cian McCelland Story Today secrecy is a thing of the past, now licensed growers of cannabis can freely grow their crops in the open in South Africa's warm, sunny climate. Discover what the chief executive of Druids Garden, Cian McClelland - who is a qualified Inyanga or traditional doctor - and his team of South African cannabis farmers are mixing in their modern-day pots. “We have been using a cannabis asthma pump for seizures because you're not smoking so it's a lot healthier; it's dispensed to people for quick relief of pain, fits and all sorts of things. We are primarily interested in extracting the cannabinoids, which are made into medicines.” The global cannabis market is projected to be worth 200-million US$ by 2030 and in South…

Health Size of the nanoscale Just how small is ‘nano?’ In the International System of Units, the prefix ‘nano’ means one-billionth; therefore one nanometre is one-billionth of a metre. It's difficult to imagine just how small that is, so here are some examples: • A sheet of paper is about 100 000 nanometres thick; • A strand of human DNA is 2,5 nanometres in diameter; • There are 25 400 000 nanometres in one inch; • A human hair is approximately 80 000 to 100 000 nanometres wide; • A single gold atom is about a third of a nanometre in diameter; • On a comparative scale, if the diameter of a marble was one nanometre, then diameter of the Earth would be about one metre; • One nanometre is…

1. Eating too much sugar gives you diabetes Since diabetes is a condition characterised by high or low blood sugar, many people wonder whether eating sugar can cause it. While it's true that eating large amounts of added sugar in your everyday foods may increase your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, sugar intake alone is just one piece of the puzzle. And when it comes to Type 1 diabetes, it's not about eating too much sugar at all. Sugar can't give you Type 1 diabetes because it is an autoimmune condition – which means that your immune system destroys the cells that produce insulin. So does eating too much sugar give you diabetes? No. That said, it does increase your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Studies have found…

“Writing Unbound was a healing journey as much as it was an expression of my counselling work up to that point. The theme of being unbound always appealed to me as I found my clients having that feeling of being trapped, caged or bound. Many of them felt disempowered to heal or move through their problems hence feeling bound. The book describes the loss of my late wife and the tools and healing I gained to become unbound from that experience. Many cancer widows have found the book helpful from this point of view. The themes in Unbound deal with returning ourselves to our core essence and living more from that place of authenticity. Understanding how we flow energy through our thoughts, heart and body dictates a lot in relationships…

Parenting As a stepmom, who has just emerged from parenting through this age group (Bethany is 21 and Amber is 18), I know that there are so many teens out there that struggle to find an exercise modality that they enjoy, especially if they aren't sporty or competitive at school. Teenagers are often misunderstood, with so many people failing to consider the physical and psychological intricacies that are specific to their adolescent phase of life. Teens naturally have a fragile self-esteem and a heightened sense of self-awareness as their bodies undergo so many developmental changes. This self-consciousness is heightened by the evergrowing rise of social media - depression, anxiety and eating disorders are massive and growing problems in the teenaged generation as a result. Because teenagers spend so much time…

Wars have gone on since ancient times with an aggressor on one side and an invaded land on the other. Humans are no different from animals in this case. Based on an objective analysis, it is doubtful whether the modern person, despite all technological progress, uses intellectual intelligence – one of the pillars of the homo sapiens species. History has been written in blood, i.e. constant conflicts that have no end. So how can this viscious cycle be broken? The answer rests in using the higher principle – logically distinguishing between good and evil and controlling one's thinking using one's conscience. The higher principle is the solution to the famous quotation of Shakespeare's Danish Prince Hamlet, “To be, or not to be – that is the question”. If humanity as…

Alongside the digital growth space and entry into a metaverse, coaching is at the top end of new professions in the world and a very worthy one at that, as it can support massive social change. And it is a wide-open space to those who do not know what to look for or clarity on the process of coaching. What brings one to coaching? I have a view that coaching arose as a mix of conscious and unconscious responses to a world that has shifted so radically at such high speed, and people, due to inadequate or partial human-focused, integrated and heart-centered education systems and social structures, were/are starting to feel untethered. Coaching's popular practice was stimulated by the human development movement of the 1960s to 1980s, where it was…

Body “There are times when allopathic medicine is essential to treatment of certain conditions and the universe would not have made it accessible if it was of no benefit to humankind.” Debra Robins Why ‘high horses’ and why ‘humble pies? The high horse anecdotes relate to my insatiable curiosity in the first instance and, in the second, to more than 40 years of avoiding allopathic medication with its possible side effects requiring further medication. To date I had relied on natural intervention, physiotherapy and alternative healing methods, in cooperation with a stress free immune system. In this report, high horse relates to two separate perceptions, as does humble pie. In the first analogy it relates to my aspirations to explore ideas needing an enormous amount of research, as was the…

Flower essences are water-based solutions which contain the essential vibrational energies of the flower as the water molecules store ‘the essence’. Flower essences may also stimulate physical healing, although used mainly to promote awareness of emotional, mental and spiritual imbalances. In contrast with essential oils and herbal tinctures, the plant is not disturbed. A flower essence is the vibrational imprint of a flower that has been transferred and stabilised in water. Flower essences can help us recognise, resolve, or release different conditioned ways of perceiving the world and can help us experience greater wellbeing and harmony in our lives. By creating harmony within us, we often notice distinct changes in ourselves physically, emotionally and spiritually. To begin You will need a clear glass bowl, which can hold up to 500…

African Botanicals The therapeutic use of plants is implicit within all cultures throughout the history of time. Even most of the pharmaceuticals synthesised today are derived or inspired by the therapeutic actions of common plant medicines. The majority of the most commonly used and well known herbal medicines of today stem from their consistent use in the orient - namely traditional Chinese medicines and ayurvedic medicines. Plants like Astragalus, ginger root, turmeric and ginseng are common herbal medicines used around the world today which all have their roots embedded in Asian culture. As aforementioned, many of these herbs have inspired the synthesis of modern day pharmaceutical drugs. Herbal medicines span the continents, each region home to its own unique collection of flora which can be used to treat different ailments.…

Health There is a new way of approaching health and it not only has the potential to make you look younger, but also will leave you feeling youthful, with more energy, more focus and happier. Biohacking has been defined as the “the art and science of changing the environment around you and inside you, so you have more control over your own biology” explains Dave Asprey, the father of biohacking. Taking control of your biology allows any individual to operate at the best physical, mental and emotional potential they possess. So what is involved in biohacking? Biohacking involves many different practices, both natural and technological, the former being considered at the fundamentals of biohacking. Getting the fundamentals correct, in any art, practice or hobby is essential for success and yield…

Travel Solo Retreat in a Mongolian Yurt | Gruyère, Switzerland “With this new project of spiritual retreats in the yurt, I would like to be a one-time guide for people,” says Cita Rettenmund, Owner of Chez Cita, a space she created for solo spiritual retreats in the heart of Gruyère, near Bulle. “A guide who brings them into the state of being the most noble version of themselves. Offer them a time; outside the time of our society. Offer a space that will allow them to reconnect to their spiritual being, to their being of light and love.” Here in the Mongolian yurt; in view of mountainous hills across the road, a sparse sprinkle of Swiss chalets and cows grazing in the vast green expanse, lies the ultimate setting for…

Relationships After having a wild and shadowy introduction to the world of Neo Tantra and Conscious Sexuality, I decided there had to be a better way of teaching and working with life force energy and Neo Tantric teachings! Our understandings surrounding sexuality are heavily influenced by culture, belief systems and location, making a ‘one size fits all’ approach unusable for many people. Even though it's taken a few years to explain this work to family and friends, most instantly understand the value of the work, although they are often both terrified and intrigued by what that could involve when you tell them you are an intimacy coach! I was lucky to have a 30-year career in entertainment, where I've performed in some of the world's largest musicals: Cats, Phantom of…

A peek inside any heterosexual couple's bathroom cabinet will typically reveal the fact that skincare is either for men or it's for women, not both and certainly not for anyone who finds themselves between these two binaries. The skincare industry, being the multi-billion-dollar business that it is, is full of advice. If you have skin, you'll have been fed a whole lot of information and opinions from the get-go and much of it reveals just how misguided the power behind the machine can be. The truth, in fact, is far simpler: Skin is skin. That's all. It doesn't have a gender, nor an ethnicity, it seeks solutions specific to that person's skin condition. Effectively this means that the lilac-hued tube of moisturiser with a subtle floral scent and the down-tobusiness…