A Real Magazine. News, Writing, Interviews from LadybugBooks.com.

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Peyton Manning in the Corner

We are not football fanatics at our house. While Brian and I were dating, he went to school at Georgia Tech. In two years, we never attended one football game. Joel and Emily do Tae Kwon Do and dance as their "sports" so we aren't even involved in peewee football. To keep updated for conversations in the generally football crazy South, we do occasionally watch enough of big games to be in the know.

The main game that we catch highlights from is the Superbowl. We didn't even have a remote favorite to watch this year so I just tuned in at half time and in the last fifteen minutes. The kids were watching with irritation because it was a switch from whatever they had chosen.

They instantly perked up when a time-out was called. It was in those last minutes where a win for the losing team was remote but still possible under fantastic circumstances. I thought for a moment that my football-challenged children had caught the fever. Instead, they both had wide-eyes and were shocked that Peyton Manning (the one football player that even I know) had gotten a time-out.

The other television program was forgotten as they begin discussing what he could have possibly done wrong, where he was going to take his time-out, and how had he heard his mom on the football field. After I stopped giggling, I had to explain from my limited football knowledge base that he was calling a time-out to figure out his strategy and to stop the clock.

The time-out may have been more interesting because we have had 8 snow days since the first of the year. That means both kids are at home together. Emily doesn't like sharing that time with Joel and I don't have vast teaching resources or time to compile enough stuff to keep them both from getting a little bored. Bored inevitably equals time-out. Suffice it to say there have been a lot of time-outs in our house, public places, and the cars. In Joel's classroom, his teacher even uses time-outs. The kids are so off-schedule that there have been more than the usual time-outs there too.

I read somewhere that mommies and daddies should be able to get time-outs too but that the time-outs could just be time away from the craziness. For kids, the time-out period can be measured by age. Emily probably should get a four-minute time-out and Joel would get eight minutes. That rarely happens as we usually count to a designated amount. They do not like to be removed from the action and do their best to keep themselves amused even facing the wall. In my case, I am thinking that thirty-nine minutes anywhere quiet might be a good thing.

After we had an in-depth discussion about Peyton Manning's plan for the game rather than his punishment, I took note of the winner and loser of the game and stored the information away for water-cooler conversations for Brian. As I met up with moms the next day, I told them about the time-out corner and Peyton Manning. It was the perfect symmetry. I still can't get the image of Manning's mom standing on the sidelines calling him down with one finger wagging and her mouth counting down his punishment. The kids are still under the impression that a grown-up can in trouble from time-to-time. At that moment in the game, Manning was in trouble. They went on to lose. He probably got a time-out from his coach instead.

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Lynn Andrews

A Shaman's Challenge for the New Year

As a twenty-first century shaman, I live an everyday life in the Western world but my world view is drawn from ancient roots. It is born of the teachings of Mother Earth as they have been understood, practiced and handed down through a line of shaman women that is many milleniums old.

It is a world view that is based on the wisdom of the ages, thousands of years of study and observation by shamanic peoples everywhere of the way energy moves throughout the universe, observation of the cycles of energy that move across Mother Earth and the great balance that exists in the natural world. Even today, in the crush of a modern world that has turned its back on Mother Earth in so many respects, shamanic peoples across the globe continue to study and practice her ancient wisdom, applying what she teaches them to the ever-changing stresses on their environment.

This earth is a great schoolhouse, and it has been my great privilege and honor to learn and work with a sisterhood of shaman women for nearly four decades.

It is the understanding of my teachers that we come onto the physical plane to learn lessons that can only be learned in the physical world. We come into this life seeking enlightenment, yet it is the one thing we seem to fear the most. Our beautiful Mother Earth is in a great muddle right now because of our fear. We are faced with more calamity today than at any other time in human existence, and our beautiful earth is suffering for it greatly because of the careless and reckless ways we live upon her.

It doesn't have to be this way. If we would but let her, Mother Earth can teach us everything we need to know to live well and in complete harmony with her, today and for thousands of years to come. Her rhythms are the rhythms of energy and power as they flow throughout the entire universe with timeless constancy. As shamans have always known, when we get ourselves right-sized on this earth, we are able to move into this flow. That is when the great blossoming and magical synchronicities of life actually begin to happen.

Our modern understanding and relationship with the cycles of Mother Earth and with life in general is a very mixed bag. We have moved from living in harmony and balance with this earth to harnessing some of her awesome power in truly wondrous ways, yet we often don't have any sense that we've gone too far until things we don't know how to fix begin to fall apart. We do the same thing to ourselves and to our societies. Through advances in our technology and the great flowering of human ingenuity and creativity, we have all of possibility at our fingertips. Yet we fill our lives with so many distractions that we end up putting on headphones to drown everything out instead of allowing ourselves to be inspired by the wonders of life that are around us all the time. We are even surprised when it gets freezing cold in the winter and blazing hot in the summer, and we build on the floodplains only to wonder whose fault it is when our homes fill up with water?

We create wonderful metaphors for the ways that the seasons of this earth mirror the seasons of our souls, from the exuberant spring of youth through the winter of our transition into elderhood. But curiously, this is where our understanding of the cycles of Mother Earth seems to end. I would like to challenge and inspire you to break these old bad habits and grow wise and steady in the seasons of Mother Earth, beginning right now.

The natural world supports and sustains life with four very distinct seasons: Winter, when icy storms send plants and animals into hibernation as earth prepares herself for new growth; Spring, when the seeds of new life begin to unfurl their limbs; Summer, when that new life bursts into full bloom and thrives; and Fall, the time of harvesting and of letting go so that life can return to hibernation and preparation for the new cycle that is to come. There is a time for new beginnings, a time to nurture those new beginnings to fruition, a time for the fullness of life, and a time for death and the return of all things to their source, to the Great Mother, in preparation for the next cycle.

It is the same with human creativity and manifestation. Anything you will ever do well has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Know that. It is your blueprint for success.

Every act that you create begins with a dream. Never doubt this: if you can dream it, you can do it.

The season of winter which is upon us now is akin to spiritual hibernation, the time for going within to dream with Great Dreaming Bear and explore your inner landscape. It is the time to discover the next step on your great journey of life and dream your new life into existence. These are vital steps, ones that you do not want to miss: the time for discovering the great dream for your life and evaluating where you have been, where you are and where you are going next in furtherance of that dream.

What is it that you want to do? Make the time and take the time to take stock, evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, the resources you will need and what no longer serves you. Winter is the time for discovering the target in front of you and pulling back your bow. It is the first step of the rest of your great journey through life. Then, when you aim your arrow in spring, you aim truly into the central essence of your life and what it is you are trying to accomplish.

When you begin to flow into the seasons of the Great Mother, you suddenly discover that you are no longer fighting against life, that you have more energy and enthusiasm than you ever thought possible. This is my shaman challenge for you, that you discover the great flow of energy that Mother Earth teaches us every day of our lives, so that you can flow with the cycles of energy in the universe into a life of spiritual harmony, abundance and joy.

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The Connection Between Emotional Eating and Binge Eating

Emotional Eating is the association with food and emotions and this association can destroy one's self image. They can be pleasant or unpleasant. The quantity of food consumed can be small or large.

Binge eating is related with a large quantity of emotional eating-akin to stuffing one's face-finishing the whole bag of potato chips or the quart of ice cream. Binge eating is also usually connected with a non nutritious source of food.

However, most people do not understand that their eating is emotionally based. They just think that they have an eating problem. Or they have come to accept that they are genetically predisposed to overeating. Thus overeating is just some vague problem.

Of course they know the answer to the problem is to cut down on the quantity of food they consume. But, the only approach they know is to look in the direction of diets for a diet does cut down on the quantity of food.

And of course there are so many different diets-all aimed at a different theory to reduce hunger and make dieting palatable.

There are two basic mistakes with dieting that leads eventually to the binge that ends the diet. The first mistake is that dieting is associated with a scarcity mind set. The individual is constantly thinking about what he/she can't eat, must give up, or do without. This mind set contributes to anxiety which feeds an emotional rollercoaster for which they are unprepared.

The second mistake is that diets only focus on awareness of food. Not that awareness is bad, in fact awareness is good. However, awareness is only a viable technique for handling habitual eating-eating out of habit and never addresses the issue of emotional eating. And because we have so little training in effective techniques to handle emotions, one is totally incapable of handling the emotional component of say "feeling bad about one's self."

Inevitably one fighting the battle of the bulge will have occasion to feel badly about oneself-it's simply common nature that something will happen where he/she will not live up to expectations and bang-there's a feeling of rejection, upset, remorse, disappointment� Being ill equipped to handle these most basic of feelings leads one to eat something-usually something sweet. This only compounds a self loathing feeling which leads to eating more of sweet and the pay off with the compound interest of a self hatred binge. Every bite is, "It tastes so good but I must stop." And ends up with, "what the hell, I'll eat the whole damn package."

It's a cover up of the base emotion of disappointment, rejection, upset, remorse� and until one learns the basics of handling emotional eating, one stays stuck in the cycle of dieting and binging.

An effective approach to conquer emotional eating involves asking important questions "What is missing here? Why are you not getting the results you've been promised?" It is clearly insane to keep dieting when the results are so poor. It's more important to gain a grasp on how to stop emotional eating--eating emotional stress than it is to read the scale. Besides focusing on the scale doesn't empower you to be a better more enlightened person, whereas learning how to overcome emotional eating empowers you in all aspects of your life. If you're a sales person, you'll be a better sales person. If you're an assembly line worker, you'll be a better assembly line worker; a mother, a better mother, and so on. Overall, you'll build self worth and find that what you really want to eat is far more nutritious and less in quantity than you ever before imagined possible.

Visit Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E., NGH certified, this new year. He is a prominent figure in the field of hypnosis with his best selling hypnosis and stress management cds at http://www.DStressDoc.com and http://www.PanicBusters.com. His aim is to make it possible for anyone to manage emotional binge eating. For more information please visit www.dstressdoc.com/BingeEatingEbook.htm

Read this feature from past issues.

THIS MONTH:
Poetry Corner

A poetic conversation with poets, Robin Hiersche, Darcie Ziel, David Wiley, Dennis O'Donnell.

Darcie Ziel

	
	
Crawl Inside

Judgment comes from within,
not from without.
I'm not here for that,
not to remove that privilege from your hands.
expressive, soft, hesitant
the graceful length of them 
stirs up heat in my core.
But for all of their touching, what have you felt?
Oh, to crawl inside of you,
Warm, and dark, to know you,
or, rather, to be you.
What I possess now: a collection of impressions:
your hands existing between us on a table,
your frame silhouetted against the window 
in a bright room.
the closeness of our faces
your soft lips against my cheek
laughing eyes
intermingling sweat, and the contour 
of your ribs under my grasp
the expression of distance in your eyes
when you go somewhere that I can't come
and the openness there when you invite me in.
Hundreds of images
pasting down my experience of you.
That's why I'm here,
to share with you
to taste your hands, to touch your tongue
to crawl inside.
There are lots of things I like,
don't condemn me to be your judge.
I'm not you,
And that's not why we're here.

Dennis O'Donnell

	

I am afraid
                                            
I am afraid
of the linoleum,
the way it lies
so flat and so smooth
like the belly of a serpent

I am afraid
of the guts of the toilet,
and I know that they move
differently
when I replace the lid

I am afraid
of the bank teller,
behind the impregnable glass,
smiling, thinking,
you poor slob

I am afraid 
of the boat motor,
putt putt putting away,
burning the gas
so I can die of exposure

I am afraid
of the double axe,
that extra blade
obviously
not meant for the wood.

I am afraid
of the electric guitar,
shocking me
with a cartoon lightning bolt
that exposes my bones

I am afraid 
of the curves in the road,
of what they are hiding
behind well placed trees
and mountainsides

I am afraid
 of Jack Benny,
grinning,
waiting for the joke
to land

I am afraid 
of the light socket

I am afraid
of the end.

David Wiley

	
	
The Orient

The old man who sold hats,
with a thousand lines per square inch
connecting the vast regions of his face,
might have come, we used to think,
from another planet, or at least
from another time on Earth.

First of all, we couldn't understand his words,
although people said he spoke our language.
it was a trick, like doubletalk,
nodding and grinning, two sets of eyes,
one set focused on something far away
that none of us could ever hope to see.

He seemed to be surrounded by a nimbus,
a color never seen in comic books,
and in the trail of the glow a sound
like music gently pursued him;.
Each of his teeth was a tiny statue,
one make of gold, all the rest ivory.

During the year of the autumn flood
the old man disappeared, swallowed,
someone said, by a giant carp.
the little stand on Main Street
where he sold his hats was left alone
shrinelike in it's emptiness;
and as people passed they often stopped
to look, and even, unaware, to slightly bow.

Robin Hiersche

	
	To Fall In Love With A Poet
	
let me tell you 
a thing or two

it's always a bad idea
to fall in love with a poet,
who, just for her personal amusement
will say anything she knows
 will turn you on
and worst of all,
really knows how to put it out.

it's always a terrible, 
self destructive choice, 
and if you can choose otherwise,
you'd be a lot better off.
I'd say, run
as fast as you can
in any direction
except, of course
the direction in which
lies the poet.

she will be waiting with curious arms,
legs, mouth, mind and heart,
which you must understand
for her,  are all
renewable resources.

It's always a bad idea
to listen to a poet,
and especially dangerous
to read the poems written to you,
which is the equivalent
of being unwittingly fed
bacon
when you are a pig,
or eggs, when you are a chicken.

you are entirely better off
with a waitress or a schoolteacher
someone who will make a matrimonial deal
you can at least understand.
Flat out gold ring prostitutes
are a better trade for your time.
Of this you will become painfully aware
when you wake up for the forty millionth time
alone, 
knowing she isn't.


it's a very bad idea
to believe in a poet,
who tells lies to anyone
who asks for them,
compassionate, fantastic,
hilarious lies
about everything, all the time, 
everywhere,
to everyone---as usual, 
not just you, even in this.

 truth, beauty, life, love
the Divine; whatever;
but the poet will have a 
secret name for all of that
that you can not grasp
quickly enough ---
like water 
flowing through your hands
when your mouth is parched.

finally you will go to her
and say I really understand now,
my hands can hold all of you
and all of me is in your hands---
this simply is
we simply are
it's only we.

the poet laughs,
her voice rippling over 
the present tense 
of the verb to be
the first person 
singular

and steals one last kiss...
consuming
all
the air.

Can Georgia Pull It Off?

Why you did not get what you expected

Field Trips

B.S.