After all the traveling it took a while for me to feel settled again. I love to go places and explore and was missing it. The perfect solution: I’m renting a studio which is conveniently located in downtown Santa Barbara and I house- and pet sit every month for a few days. Slowly I’m getting to know all kinds of neighborhoods in Santa Barbara more intimately, especially when walking the streets with a dog. And I feel like I’m away.  I was taking care of Carly this weekend, who was a bit puzzled by the puddle. It has been raining – a rare occasion and blessing for California.

A perfect day for an interesting book. I found one in the library the other day:
Non-fiction, however totally intriguing – it ‘captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences” (book flap).  HeLa Cells are still alive … even though cancer caused Henrietta Lacks to pass away in 1951, virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Today, as I’m writing this blog, October 31st 2016 is the celebration of the Day of the Dead. May she rest in peace.

I started to think about my cells, wonder how many cells there are – the smallest unit of life which can replicate independently. I searched the Internet. On http://www.smithsonianmag.com I learned that there are about 37.2 trillion cells in a body! As you might know my mother struggled all her life with depression and physical symptoms which sparked my interest in the body-mind-emotion-spirit connection and available healing modalities – more in my book My mother could not heal because she had been holding on to negative memories, eventually causing a severe imbalance in her physical and emotional condition. Every cell in our body is a storehouse of information on all levels of our being. Our DNA  is the blueprint for the design of our body, the carrier of our genetic information and our cellular memory. Our  cells/DNA “remember” all of who we have been in past lives and all we have been in this life up to the present moment. They constantly take an inventory of our experience and update our cellular memory. 

Studying Shamanism I learned about soul loss … the source of this loss to our essence is a product of early trauma, the result of confronting some perceived physical, mental or emotional threat. In order to survive this real or imagined threat to our survival a part of our soul or essence becomes suppressed. To come back to wholeness we need to administer to the separate wounded part of ourself …  through the body, through the breath.  Our breath is the key to grounding, recovering our bodily senses.

I started the day by teaching a Yin Yoga class and later I taught Nia. What a lovely way to celebrate with a community which has been together for over a decade. May you find some time today to breathe, to dance, to be out in nature and to light a candle and honor your ancestors.