Author: VKM

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Alcohol Addiction

Dangers of Non-Alcoholic Beer

Spring is here!

What do you associate with spring? We here at Villa Kali Ma think of many sweet and lovely things: cool green grass under our bare toes, the morning sun, and fresh winds in the blooming trees.

Spring signals the return to the vivacity of sleeping creatures. It’s a humming, alive time of year. The season of birds, bees, and…uh oh, BBQs!

That’s right, spring marks the beginning of the season of outdoor gatherings. Of course, they’re fun and wonderful too, but outdoor gatherings can be surprisingly hard to navigate.

Family, friends, groups, the renewing energies of fun in the sun after months of indoor time – these are potentially tricky for people in a personal change process.

For any on a path of recovery from trauma, mental illness, and/or addiction, this 2024 brink-of-spring moment is a perfect time to pause and reflect on set intentions, and strategize:

How can we best keep to our true heart’s intentions of sobriety, self-love, and sanity, in the face of many triggers and distractions? What temptations to self-destroy should we realistically prepare for, during this seemingly bright season? How can we keep a joyful, heartful life front and center?

Want a non-brewski?

This spring, you might get offered a non-alcoholic beer at a gathering.

Non-alcoholic beer is a type of beer with little to no alcohol content. It is intended to mimic the smell and taste of beer, without the same levels of alcohol.

Many household name beer brands offer a non-alcoholic version of their product, intended to serve the market of people who are trying to reduce their alcohol intake without having to give up the pleasures and social purposes of drinking beer.

Non-alcoholic beer is sometimes thought of as a safe alternative to alcoholic beer, though this isn’t true for women who have a history of alcohol addiction, nor for women who are pregnant. Before assuming that non-alcoholic beer is a safe choice for you, it’s probably best to inform yourself as to the full picture!

What is non-alcoholic beer?

Non-alcoholic beer is created in the same way as ordinary beer, through a fermentation process called brewing, which converts sugars into ethanol and carbon dioxide. In non-alcoholic beer, an additional step is added to the process, wherein the alcohol is removed or reduced at the end.

The process of making a beverage created through fermentation has less alcohol is achieved by filtering the alcoholic liquid out, and then adding sugars, flavorings, and carbonated liquid back in.

From a sheerly nutritional standpoint, non-alcoholic beer is not a healthy beverage, due to the re-addition of sugars and “flavors”, many of which are artificial, added through chemical processes or compounds.

The carbohydrate content of non-alcoholic beer is higher in comparison to alcoholic beer. Carbohydrates are considered by nutritionists to be problematic in excess (hence the widespread dietary recommendation to consume less carbohydrates). Because of the extra sugars and flavors, non-alcoholic beer tends to have more calories than true beer.

What are the possible dangers of non-alcoholic beer?

There are two big dangers of non-alcoholic beer for women, especially those of us who are walking a path of recovery from traumatization, addiction, or mental health struggles.

1. Oops, May Contain Alcohol

The term “non-alcoholic” is misleading. By law, a product can still be called non-alcoholic even if it has up to .5% alcohol by volume. If it is marketed as being fully “alcohol-free”, a product is required by the FDA to be at 0.0%, with zero detectable levels of alcohol in the product.

FDA regulations notwithstanding, critics of non-alcoholic and alcohol-free beer have noted that around 25% of products tested independently come up as having higher alcohol content than reported on their label. There is a realistic chance of the presence of some small percentage of alcohol in non-alcoholic and even alcohol-free beer.

What’s the big deal? Well, for those with an addiction history, any, even a very tiny amount of alcohol can awaken an insatiable, relentless craving for more, which inevitably leads to one place only.

2. May Be A Road to Relapse

Any amount of alcohol can reorient the body to crave alcohol again. It is a property of addiction that a woman’s body and brain are irreversibly changed so that even after many years of sobriety, a tiny trace amount of alcohol will trigger the body to want more alcohol.

What typically happens then, is that a person finds herself drinking non-alcoholic beverages in excess, because the thirst for alcohol and all that goes along with inebriation has been stirred. It is then only a matter of time until it will occur to the drinker that non-alcoholic beverages aren’t doing the trick, and a normal beer will start to seem like a good idea.

We think that our wise mind will stop us in time, and occasionally it does, but we can’t rely upon it. Because of the ways that alcohol addiction distorts thoughts, induces intense bodily craving, and erases personal willpower, we will very likely change back to our Addict selves, once the alcohol has been reintroduced.

The other thing to consider is that alcohol and drug relapses can be triggered just by associations, memories, and behavior even without the presence of actual alcohol. Just hanging out “having a beer” (even a fake one), can be enough to open the door to our personal demons again.

Relapse begins long before the actual choice to put chemicals in our bodies again, (as thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors reminiscent of our using or drinking days), so it’s always a good idea to keep one eye on what we’re doing and why.

What are the dangers of non-alcoholic beer during pregnancy?

Because non-alcoholic beer contains some level of alcohol, it represents a risk for fetal alcohol syndrome, and it is not advised for pregnant women for that reason.

There is no established safe level of alcohol consumption for women during pregnancy, and the birth defects associated with alcohol consumption during pregnancy include low birth weight, physical and facial abnormalities, and neurological impacts on the child.

What are alternatives to non-alcoholic beer?

Each woman needs to decide for herself, and no one can do your consciousness-transformation work for you. However, we can always listen to the wisdom and experiences of others and take heed.

At Villa Kali Ma, we recommend staying away from non-alcoholic and even supposedly alcohol-free beer, for the simple reason that it’s not worth the risk.

We have to behave in ways that match our truest and most important intentions and priorities. If being healthy, sane, and sober is a priority for us, then we will naturally shy away from something made to be similar to alcohol by smell and taste.

When hanging out with other people who aren’t on a path of recovery, we need to keep our wits about us, not go foggy and numb, as much as we might want to.

So rather than resorting to saying yes to a non-alcoholic beer this BBQ season, we can take care of ourselves with these three tactics:

1. Set your hang-out plan in advance

Make a less-is-more plan for hanging out, with intention. Decide ahead of time, when in a calm frame of mind: What is a sobriety-safe amount of time to participate in this social gathering? Then stick to your plan no matter what, even if you end up having a better time than you feared.

If your plan goes well this time, and you can have a socially connecting time while staying reasonably centered and mindful, without getting overly triggered during or in the days following the gathering, you can always try hanging out for a longer time the next gathering.


2. Hydrate with Healthy Beverages

A practical hack is to decide to be in charge of bringing a special healthy, hydrating beverage with you to the gathering. Bring plenty for yourself, and others too.

Many delicious, healing tonics can be mixed up with mineral water, fresh limes and lemons, herbs, ginger, and sugar-free juices. Get creative!

For inspiration, you may like some of the ideas here 19 Non-Alcoholic Drink Recipes. For the yogis among us, following the trail of Ayurveda can be rewarding: Ayurveda Drink Recipes.

Sometimes just the fun activity of creating a special offering for the group can be a positive way to focus your energies and stay purposeful and aware. You could also choose to bring a fun party favor to be handed out to people or make a healthy snack.


3. Bring Sober Fun

The “now what do I do?” anxious social gathering moment sometimes precedes an ill-fated choice, made in a sudden blurt just to fill up the awkward space!

Feeling like we don’t belong, making small talk, worrying about what people think of us, and other social discomforts are real triggers.

One cure for this is to bring an activity you would enjoy doing, such as a frisbee or a soccer ball, and bust it out when you need something to give you a positive focus.

A little more investment, but also a lot of fun, are group games, like 20 questions (How to Play 20 Questions), or Celebrity (Celebrity: How to Play the “Celebrity” Party Game).

For inspiration, you can browse team-building games like these:  17 Fun Icebreaker Games for Adults and see what you could adapt for your gathering.

Villa Kali Ma can assist women with alcohol addiction

At Villa Kali Ma, we’re dedicated to helping women recover from addiction to alcohol, drugs, and self-destructive behaviors. We also treat the underlying deep pain and disconnection that leads women into those traps in the first place – the tragic effects of traumatization and mental and emotional suffering that take so many of us off the path of a joyful life.

We want every woman to thrive and to grow up fully into her true big beautiful self!

Check out our many offerings for women, including inpatient and outpatient treatment options, on our facilities page.

Categories
Earth Day Tips for Mental Health

Earth Day Tips to Honor the Planet and Mental Health

Can we be psychologically healthy, happy, and fulfilled while treating the planet with disrespect? Can we live well without any love in our hearts for Mother Earth?

Do we value the mineral components, the elegant math, the obvious benevolence of the life mysteries that give rise to our physical bodies?

Can we really live any longer without honoring the earth which affords us, that makes it possible to be conscious beings in human bodies at all? What do you think?

We at Villa Kali Ma feel it’s common sense to try to practice deep, loving respect for the natural world. The planet is, as the common wisdom goes, our real mother – the generous, yielding being who births, sustains, and feeds us throughout the entirety of our lives.

From nourishing sunlight to oxygen, to life-giving water, to the many astonishing, fearsome, and adorable kingdoms of creatures we share the planet with – planet Earth is just right for us. Planet Earth gives us all we need for a meaningful life of beauty, inspiration, play, joy, and significance.

Without a happy, healthy planet Earth – without blooming roses, cleansing rains, whale songs, crystal caverns, aloof and secret forests – what would human life be?

What is Earth Day?

Earth Day is a yearly event dedicated to celebrating our beloved home, planet Earth. Started in 1970, Earth Day grew from humble beginnings within the grassroots environmental movement, to now include the participation of almost one billion people annually. Through activities, themes, and awareness campaigns, the day is celebrated globally as a coordinated event involving almost 200 countries around the planet.

Who established Earth Day?

Earth Day was created in the spring of 1970, as a response to protests by nearly twenty million Americans involved in the ecological movement.

Senator Gaylord Nelson, of a sympathetic mindset, founded Earth Day then as a way to acknowledge the voice of the people, and to bring government attention to how we might work together to protect the earth from environmental ravages.

When is Earth Day?

Earth Day is on April 22nd, every year. In 2024, Earth Day falls on a Monday.

Why do we celebrate Earth Day?

The Earth, her ecosystems, and all her lovable inhabitants are excessively harmed by some severely dysfunctional aspects of how human society is ordered. A tiny percentage of the world’s population has an outsized effect on the whole planet.

This small group of unwell people manage to do a lot of damage because they hold the vast majority of the economic and political power. They use their positions to serve themselves, blatantly abusing their power and privilege to make decisions in our name while actually overruling the heart wishes of the majority.

In the guise of corporate entities working in public-private partnerships with government – people who hold office and other less visible functionaries – these unwell people pursue self-serving goals without regard or remorse for the lives of ecosystems, plants, animals, and human beings. The rest of us participate, though we are not asked for our permission.

Now more than ever, our most fundamental need – for a naturally healthy, life-sustaining home planet – is under threat. A great time to take the original spirit of Earth Day into our daily lives!

How can women honor Earth Day with mental health in mind?

Personal mental health and the health of our home planet are two facets of the same diamond. Whenever natural life is supported to bloom and thrive, everybody wins.

As we see it here at Villa Kali Ma, recovery of our own true natures – which means freeing ourselves from the legacy of harm done to ourselves, and our loved ones, getting ourselves out of victim consciousness and into creative authority – is part of being able to stand up against the encroachers and heal the world.

To do that, we must detoxify our minds from poisonous beliefs that told us we are no good, and clean our bodies from the chemicals they sold us.  We need to do the work to heal our emotional wounds and move on to the business of activating our true soul purpose and potential. We do all this so that we can work together to get planet Earth back into the hands of people who will treat her with respect, love, and care.

Any woman who awakens her consciousness to free herself from the inner oppressions of trauma, addiction, and the internalized lies that generate mental illness in our minds and hearts, can become a worthy steward of our planet, one of the ones who knows.

A meditation for Earth Day

Here is a meditation prompt for you to celebrate Earth Day and your mental health together as one. May it bring a little bit of joy to you today, sister!

Begin by preparing your body to meditate, breathing deeply for 12 long, slow breaths.

Bring relaxation to every section of your body, starting with the crown of your head and moving the energy down to your feet. You may want to picture yourself under a hot shower, spreading warm relaxation down your body.

When the body feels pleasantly relaxed, gently bring your focus inward, towards your center. Connect with your core for a few moments. Feel love for yourself. Say hi.

Now start visualizing, imagining seeing yourself, looking at you as though from the outside. See that you seem happy, the happiest you’ve ever been or felt.

Looking at yourself, you see that you are energized, vital, and alive. You are brimming with life. You look loving, soft, open, and grateful, lit up from within like a Christmas light.

Now make the light inside you stronger, like turning up a dimmer switch. As the light intensifies, it illuminates you from inside, and makes you transparent, like a lantern.

Looking at yourself glowing like a lantern, fully transparent with a strong source of light, like a sun, inside you, notice that there are tiny bubbles of light moving upwards and around inside you, like little fizzy-water bubbles of happiness circulating inside your body.

Turn the light up even more. Expand the sun at your core until it takes you over – all of your body inside this light. You are a human-sized star, a small sun.

Now imagine another person, someone you love, comes walking towards you. As they slowly approach, see that the glowing light inside you is reflecting on them, lighting them up, warming them. The closer they get to you, the more lit up they are. The more lit up they are, the more happy and relaxed they seem to be.

As they come within a few feet of you, looking at you in your sun form, see that a small blob of your light leaps from you into the other person, like a sun flare. This sun flare is harmless, but warm and energizing. It is causing them to start to be lit up from the inside too, like a spark from a fire setting them ablaze. This is a friendly, warming, loving light, that brings happiness and health to them.

See them fill up with flames of light. See them smiling, happier than they’ve ever been, glowing, and filled with moving fizzy light particles just like you.

Now imagine many people, crowds slowly walking towards the two of you. As they approach, each of them is affected the same way as you just affected the person you love. The light in you jumps over to gently, lovingly pop them into incandescence, like a light being switched on, or a pilot light on a gas stove.

Each person that you affect, in turn, affects another, so that the crowd of lit people grows ever larger. More and more people pop into lit-up, bubbly, smiling sun star bodies.

Imagine the momentum of this light-ignition of human suns taking over your local area, like popcorn popping now, every person popped into sunny brightness.

From your local area, gradually expand to light up every human who lives in your state. To your whole country. To your continent. See this spreading sunny starlight glowing, connected by every single person in the whole world, 8 billion Christmas tree lights lit up.

See that there is no human being left out of this lighting, the freshest newborn babies and the oldest person alive, are all alight.   

Finally, imagine that each of these happy, fizzy, glowing, smiling, alive, radiant beings is sending their igniting light down into the heart of the planet. See the planet pop into one giant sun of light, too. Stay with this image for a while!

When you’re ready, decide to say goodbye to the image, and allow yourself to return to your ordinary state of consciousness carefully. Wiggle your toes, feel your body, take some breaths, and return to now.

What did you experience?   

Villa Kali Ma helps women be mentally healthy and strong

At Villa Kali Ma, we hold that honoring Earth Day helps us love our own human selves, as we are the Earth’s children.

Loving our own selves helps us be in a condition to at last treat our kind mother, the generous Earth, the way we long to in our most private and true hearts. With proper love and appropriate reverence for the mysteries, with immortal gratitude for the nourishing source that gives rise to our very embodiment!

Does that sound hard? Maybe it is. It’s a lot easier with help, sister! Come work with us, and we can do it together, side by side.

From our inner sun to yours, Happy Mother Earth Day!

Categories
Spring and Mental Health

Spring and Mental Health

Human beings are Earth creatures, assembled from the same materials that the rest of our planet is. Our bodies are tuned to exchange information with the natural world, through transmissions of frequencies.

Just as a wave on the Pacific Ocean ripples energy towards the shores, we are awash in energetic waves, most of which we cannot detect consciously with our ordinary senses.

These waves come in many languages – the imperceptible humming of sunlight, the silent songs of stars located lightyears from us. These vibrations surround us and create our forms.

The natural laws of the physical world are sustained through this constant circulation of energy as waves. The waves carry information – such as the shape of the wave (which rules how it will look to us, what it will sound like to us) – from particle to particle.

We cannot separate our experiences from the communications of the natural world. These waves of information rumble past our synthetic materials, transcend our traumatized nervous systems, and benevolently haunt the halls of our bodies with memories of our natural belonging to the family of all living beings.

We are governed at deep, cellular levels by the same ancient, reliable rhythms and cycles that tell birds when to sing in the morning, trees when to shed their leaves and the wind when and where to blow. Our bodies instinctively respond and relate to nature’s laws.

What is the connection between spring and mental health?

Spring is a season in the solar cycle which affects nature greatly, as everyone knows. It’s a time of invigoration, stimulation, and energizing.

Spring was considered the New Year in ancient civilizations, before the Julian calendar we use today was adopted. Spring is the start of the astrological calendar, which tracks the ancient migrations of visible stars across our night sky. For plants and the animal kingdom, it’s a time of new beginnings.

What happens to us humans in the spring? How does this time of emerging from the inwardness of winter into the outwardness of new leaves spiraling toward the light affect us? What wisdom is captured in the folkloric illness referred to as “spring fever”?

The feverish increase in energy that floods us in spring can show up as a sudden desire to initiate new things, to embark, to begin. Spring fever may show up as moodiness, feelings of intense restlessness, and a loss of balance.

The persistent warming of the sun, the more generous hours, and the greening – all showing us our own capacity for rebirth, our own spiritual fertility – can stir us up, light the fires of yearning deep within, fill our sails with auspicious tailwinds.

Spring is not a time of stability. It is a time of sparks, initiations, and fire. For some of us, it’s when the soul callings and stirrings we swept under the ashes in winter start knocking on our doors with surprising insistence. Projects want to be dreamed up. Locations need to be visited. Ideas need to be acted upon. Love becomes urgent.

For those of us whose spirits are on the mercurial side, spring can be a rough time, of choppy seas, rises and falls, stops and starts. A season of unpredictability and potent activations.

Like all transitions from one phase of life to another, spring can put us in states of wobbly, uncertain vulnerability as we navigate our passage through narrow straits.

What mental health disorders peak during the spring?

The disruptive unrest of spring that shoots up in us naturally can create some practical difficulties in our self-care and mood management. We must keep our heads on straight, and keep our energy and inspiration levels from leading us into paths we know better than to walk.

For people with a history of substance abuse, we need to mind that the carefree, reckless feelings of springtime stay with a kind, patient hand. It’s not wise to give ourselves over to sweeping and sudden urges or forget where we come from. Nature requires respect, after all, for her dangerous side.

Spring is a wonderful time to redouble our efforts at mindfulness, to see if we can witness the riot of life energies inside, without getting pulled into identifying with one or another side of our nature.

For people who are prone to mania, such as those of us with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, it’s important to know that mania has been observed to spike in the spring, bringing an uptick in agitation, impulsiveness, and grandiosity.

For us, springtime should be a time of paying extra attention to compassionately observing our thoughts and moods, using our centering tools, and diligently guiding ourselves to stay seated in the grounding containers of our bodies.

Why do these mental health disorders occur during the spring?

Research into why certain disorders (chiefly mania, addiction, and some variations of seasonal affective disorder) spike in the spring is inconclusive so far. One pet theory is that the natural increase in sunlight combined with the sudden jump in light exposure due to daylight saving stimulates changes in hormone production, sleep, digestion, and all of the laws of the body that are affected by circadian rhythms.

The powerful, life-force-activating effects of the sun’s rays, while positive and healthy for our neurobiology, disrupt our previous balance and raise our level of energy, kind of like a gust of fresh wind that disorders a pile of papers on our desk.

The challenges of springtime may be largely a question of returning to balance again and again, as we integrate the influxes of change. We can think of spring as a time for holding onto our hats in a strong wind, while nature powerfully recharges our bodies, minds, and souls with potent life force energy.

Villa Kali Ma helps women be healthy in body, mind and soul

Here at Villa Kali Ma, we work all day every day on how we can help restore women to flourishing. Every day we investigate how we might work together towards a common good for women. How can we reactivate the vibrant soul fires, natural mental health, creative vitality, and effortless joy of the women of planet Earth?

We take what we’ve verified, through science, study, and hard knocks, and teach it to other women. We work always to recover ourselves and the women we help, from the burdens and shackles of trauma, addictions, and suffering. If this sounds like what you need, give us a call, sister. We’re here in every season.

Categories
Stress Awareness Month

April is National Stress Awareness Month

This April, we invite you to celebrate National Stress Awareness Month along with us here at Villa Kali Ma. Join us as we explore how and why to stay out of the stress zone.

Why is Stress Awareness so important?

Stress is toxic to the body, mind, and heart. It is also bad for relationships, childrearing, and society at large, making us all less empathic, connected, and aware. Stress has many, many negative impacts on human life and is epidemically widespread.

It is a sign of our unwell culture that being stressed out is practically regarded to be a virtue. It’s as though the more busy and unavailable we are – the less time and presence of mind we have – the more we signal to the world how hardworking, responsible, and civic-minded we must be.

We may be effective, dedicated people. It’s also true that those who operate in a state of constant stress are agitated, scattered, disconnected from our empathy and creativity, and tunnel-visioned.

We may be excellent at executing, delivering, and getting things done on schedule. We may hold everything together under great pressure. We may deserve to be saluted, sure, for our hard work and sacrifice!

But while we grind our bodies and souls down in the name of supposed productivity and efficiency, maybe we should take a moment to consider what neuroscience tells us about the biology of stress.

In reality, stressed people are drastically less able to access intelligence, compassion, social awareness, and creativity. People who are in a relaxed, comfortable state, who are regulated in their nervous systems, have access to a greater pool of insight, intelligence, and innovation.

“Stressed” is actually a form of being triggered. Stress is a state of nervous system arousal, or fight-flight-freeze, just like what happens during scary, soul-damaging events.

The connection between daily life stress and traumatic stress, through the use of the word stress, is important. Regular stress, though fluid and episodic, has the same freezing, agitating, and anxiety-inducing effects that, if solidified, turn into one of the most serious mental health epidemics we face as a species.

So join us, friends, in our exploration of dissolving stress!

Three Types of Stress

Stress comes in different degrees, but it always affects the mind, body, and soul negatively to some extent.

There are three categories of stress used to think about levels of stress: Acute Stress, Episodic Acute Stress, and Chronic Stress.

Acute Stress

Acute Stress describes the one-time stress spike that we are all familiar with. If we almost get in a car accident, or almost miss our connecting flight, we might have a stand-alone experience of acute stress.

During acute stress, we suddenly are filled with unpleasant-feeling energization – our hearts pound, our breathing shallows, and quickens, we sweat, and our muscles tense up in preparation for sudden physical action that may be necessary to prevent something bad from happening.

When Acute Stress is over, it’s over. But in order for it to be over, we need a time of restoration and recovery, usually only possible once the danger to which our nervous system was responding with fight-flight-freeze has truly and completely passed.

If we never manage to return to full, total safety – and reset our nervous system, musculature, lungs, heart, and brain chemistry – then we may carry a residue of that stress forward into the future. That lingering feeling of danger is a form of trauma.


Episodic Acute Stress

Episodic Acute Stress starts to develop when we frequently or regularly go into Acute Stress in such a way that it becomes our default state. We may form a habit of responding with stress if we are in a work environment that seems to require it of us, or when faced with challenges that are overwhelming to us.

Very often people start to use substances or numbing behaviors to try to manage the symptoms of Episodic Acute Stress. As Episodic Acute Stress, a habit of being stressed all the time progresses, it may turn into an anxiety disorder.


Chronic Stress

Chronic Stress is the long-term state of stress that is maintained by many in our ill world. It is connected to nervous system exhaustion, stomach disorders, and heart disease, among other illnesses galore.

Chronic Stress results from the accumulation of many smaller stress episodes, over time. Chronic stress rigidifies us into stuck patterns of thinking, feeling, and relating to others that are disconnected and unhappy, and which make us sick in our bodies and souls.

How Can We Manage Stress?

1. Change Your Stress Mindset

The trouble with stress begins with the fact that we believe stress keeps us safe or makes us productive.

When we’re running across the airport trying to get our flight, we think we won’t feel ok again until we catch that flight. As if our life depends on it!

This is also true when we’re trying to get our work done in time for a deadline or speeding across town to pick our child up from school as though we need to be in emergency mode in order for the world to run.

The truth is, no matter what challenges are in front of us, it’s better for those challenges themselves if we return to feelings of peace, goodness, and safety right now in our own bodies through the conscious choice to relax and de-escalate our nervous systems. This is almost always true (true life-or-death emergencies being the exception).

If we want to not be stressed, we will find ways not to be. This choice, to value the state of regulation, comes from the recognition that our child may be mad if we’re late to pick them up, but what our child really needs is our loving, connected humanity and empathic, creative attention.

Bosses will always want us to do more, and faster, but what will actually help them with their jobs, whether they know it or not, is for us to be in a condition where we can perform from the top of our intelligence.

And so, so many things are simply not within our personal control. In these cases, stress does not do a single thing to make that existential fact different. Finally, some outcomes, while achievable through stress, aren’t worth the health damage.

We have to be in charge of ourselves, make our own decisions, and live with the results. Begin with deciding for yourself what energetic mode of living you want to be in, most of the time, and do your best to be in that state, somehow, in some way. It doesn’t have to be black or white – no stress ever – but it can be a radical goal (stress zone more than 25% of your life? Yeah! Go for it!)


2. Practice Stress Awareness

A big part of stress management is pausing to take stock, tuning into our observer awareness of what state we are in at the moment.

The easy part of stress awareness is this: stress feels bad and regulation feels good.
The key question to explore is – how do we feel in our bodies?

Regulation feels wonderful. It doesn’t mean you’re asleep on the massage table, nor are you amped up.

It does mean you can feel your muscles, your weight, your delicious body-ness. It means your breath is soft and full, and you have the presence of spirit to notice the people around you and their vibes. You softly take in the visuals, sounds, and vibrations of the world. Thoughts are easy and clear. Regulation often shows up like a little smile at the corners of your mouth, a flicker of happiness in your heart, just because.

Compare this with the stress state. What state are you in right now? What state do you want to be in? Can you imagine making that your daily priority?


3. Use Tools to Change States

Once we start to notice when we’re stressed or regulated, and how much nicer and fuller our lives feel when we’re regulated, we will naturally start shifting ourselves from stress to regulation, more of the time.

There are many, many tools for practicing shifting gears!

Below are five state-shifting tools we at Villa Kali Ma always recommend:

Five State-Shifting Tools

Lean on Mother Nature

Go outside, even if it’s bad weather. Being outdoors is a nervous system regulator. Just a few minutes of sunshine, fresh air, the sound of rain, and even sensing the sleet or the shiver of snow, help the body retune. Nature reminds the body who it is (and the mind will follow the body).


Breathe

The easiest nervous system hack in the world is to lengthen the out-breath so that it is double the duration of the in-breath. For example, breathe in for a count of four, and breathe out for a count of 8. If you do this ratio of in to out breath for 12 breaths total, your body will trigger the nervous system regulation process. Then you just have to get out of the way of it.

There are many, many other variations of breathwork that will help! Here is a short post on three kinds of helpful breathing.


Walk it Out

Walking provides bilateral stimulation to the nervous system, which is regulating. It is also regulating to move the body in any repetitive, rhythmic way (which walking does naturally). A brief walk of even only 10 minutes will reset your nervous system and create greater feelings of safety, ease, and pleasant sensations in the body. Longer walks are even more regulating!


Make the Body Comfortable

Regulation feels like happiness at the body level. Get in the habit of seeing if there is anything you can do to make the body feel better (though of course, we don’t mean through substances or destructive behavior).

What the body needs might surprise you – it isn’t always to relax more in a couch potato way. The body often wants to stretch, move, mix up the energy, and change the scenery. She might want to get outside, touch something from the real world, or interact with someone face to face. Ask your body what would make her feel good, and listen.


Use Your Imagination

Close your eyes and visualize being in a place that feels great. Maybe you’ve been there in real life, or maybe it’s a place you make up for yourself. Follow the creative power of your imagination to go inward into a picture of safety, pleasantness, and joy. Sitting on a sparkly silver beach under the stars by a crackling bonfire? Walking in a pine-scented forest full of snow? Yes! Whatever feels good.

Villa Kali Ma Can Help You With Your Stress

Here are 3 reasons why we at Villa Kali Ma think stress awareness matters:

  1. Stress is extremely unhealthy for the physical body, and is linked to many serious diseases and causes of death (such as heart disease). But joyful, connected, heart-based, wakeful living is perfectly healthy!
  2. Stress is a major trigger for trauma, mental health imbalances, and addiction relapse. Self-love, becoming who you’re really here to be, and walking positive paths of living are protectors of all that’s unfathomably good and precious in you!
  3. Stress is psychological pollution that affects all of us. Recovery is a gift to all! We are each some spark of the spreading light of waking up that is gradually rising in humanity. Waking up to how wonderful life actually is, in its true, organic expression!

We all have the right and the capacity to remember what we once knew by nature – how to live right. We can help you figure it out, friend.

Categories
Gender-Specific Treatment

The Benefits of Gender-Specific Treatment

What is Gender-Specific Treatment?

Treatment of drug and alcohol addiction can be significantly more effective when women and men are separated into same-sex cohorts, sort of like all-boys or all-girls schools.

Being placed in a cohort of peers of your same-sex has many positive impacts on recovery, especially for women.

When sharing vulnerably about the deep hurts that give rise to self-damaging behaviors, it is helpful to be among our gender, at least for certain chapters and phases of our recovery lives.

Gender-specific treatment programs like Villa Kali Ma’s are built to take into account the differences in life experiences that generally exist between men and women.

For example, many more women than men have experienced sexual assault, incest, and childhood sexual abuse. Certain co-occurring mental health issues, like self-harm and eating disorders, occur more frequently in women, as well.

Independent of specific trauma history or diagnosis, each woman has a personal understanding of what it’s like to be a woman in a man’s world, and all that that entails for us. Likewise, many topics that affect men would be harder for men to share in the presence of women.

Recovery thrives in an environment of sisterly or brotherly love, rather than romantic, sexual, or even marital love, which tends to be more complicated and fraught. The cure for the loneliness of addiction is in fellowship, belonging to a community of peers.

For women in early recovery, our complicated feelings, wounds, desires, and preoccupations about the opposite sex get in the way of our ability to focus on recovery. Wounds around the topic of men are present for women who are not attracted to them as sexual partners, too. (Though the LGBTQ+ community may find they feel even greater support among similarly-identifying recovering addicts. There are LGBTQ+ specific AA meetings offered in many cities for this purpose, which can be attended as supplemental support).

In sum, it is generally more protective for women starting or restarting their healing path to be in an all-female space, where they can learn what it’s like to be supported as a woman, by women.

What are the benefits of gender specific treatment?

Gender-specific treatment offers many benefits that positively support treatment goals like sobriety, healing of traumatization, and stabilization of mental health.

Gender-specific treatment is usually more tailored and more customizable to each woman’s experience and has special recognition of the types of underlying issues that feed into an addiction pattern.

1. Addresses Gender Specific Topics

In the case of women, sexual trauma is a huge topic, so a gender specific treatment program will be ready to address the sexual traumatization that is so likely to be a factor.

Topics like motherhood, financial independence, and domestic violence are also of high importance in gender specific treatment for women.

In general, women often have safety needs to address and are vulnerable in a way that is specific to women.

Facilities that are dedicated exclusively to the treatment of women, like Villa Kali Ma, will naturally focus more on topics that are important for women to be safe and to recover their power to protect, love, and care for themselves.


2. Improved Relatability About Substance Use

One key part of recovery is shared experience, and relating to one another. Through the mechanism of holding up a mirror to each other, we are able to recognize the presence and influence of addiction affecting us.

For an addict starting her recovery, it’s important to hear many stories in which we recognize ourselves. When we have that “Yeah, me too” moment, that relating is what helps build the bond of community connection.

The bond of relating not only helps us feel less alone but helps us recognize the real danger of the foe we are collectively facing, in part through seeing it reflected in another person’s life. Through this mechanism of relating to one another about a specific kind of experience, we can also be spared many tragedies that might have affected our lives too, if we kept going with our disease.

For women who are sober now, it’s an important part of staying sober to regularly hear about, and bear compassionate witness to, the pain and negative consequences affecting another woman because of alcohol or drugs. In this way we also remember the adage, “There for the grace for God go I”- that could be me, too, if it weren’t for my sobriety.

In the case of recovery from drugs and alcohol, men and women tend to have rather different patterns of use. A lot of times men and women won’t relate to each other as strongly, in terms of shared experiences and recognition of addiction at work in our lives.

Generally, women’s substance abuse may appear to be less overtly, and problematic than men’s, as it tends to be less externalized in visible ways. Men are twice as likely to engage in binge drinking than women. Women are less likely to become violent when they drink, to get in physical fights or car crashes than men are.

While men often relate to using drugs or alcohol to deal with issues relating to anger and aggression, women may relate more to using drugs and alcohol specifically as a way to cope with fear, panic, and anxiety (a disorder that is diagnosed much more often in women than men). Women are also more likely to become addicted to prescriptions that suppress the symptoms of anxiety and trauma, such as sedatives.

In the end, these differences can impact the ability to relate and recognize addiction at play in one’s own life, and to also connect to the emotions, thoughts, and stories that are shared in recovery circles.

Being in a group of women who all know what it is like to be addicted to substances and to face the many challenges specifically associated with being a woman in this world, can powerfully amplify the feeling of unity.


3. Better Relatability in General

Beyond relating about the actual patterns of use – sharing stories like “I once did this while under the influence…” – it’s also an important part of recovery to just deeply relate to the underlying emotions, thought patterns, and even societal roles we have borne because these wounds and burdens are directly related to how and why we use substances.

Here again, men and women are different, facing different kinds of challenges and using different strategies for coping. For example, only women know what pregnancy is like, how menstruation affects our mood, and how important emotions and close bonds of relationship are to our sense of identity.

Only women know first-hand the special pain associated with being valued primarily for our appearances. Women experience the invisibility around emotional nurturing we tend to provide automatically for others. Women who have tried their hand at leadership or competing in a male-dominated field understand the ways that women’s authority is resisted in the world.

Among women we understand better the special challenges of dual roles, having to be sexually attractive to all men, and participate in sex whether we want to or not, but on the other hand not be too promiscuous or sexually empowered. We know what it is like to be groomed from birth to be tolerant of all manner of body boundary breaches, and yet never, under any circumstances, be seen getting angry.

The wounds that exist in women’s relationships with each other – the hidden competition, the mean girl social trauma we may carry, tend to be largely comprehended only by another woman, who knows just what we’re talking about.

All in all, certain aspects of a woman’s path to healing may be best supported by a period of time spent in a communal healing effort, by and for women.

Villa Kali Ma Offers Gender Specific Treatment for Addiction, Trauma, and Mental Illness

At Villa Kali Ma, our treatment programs are all gender-specific. We exist specifically to serve women.

We specialize in healing, re-empowering, unearthing joy, and restoring the rights of all women, everywhere, to be our true selves here in this world, freed from the heartbreaking pain of addiction, trauma, and mental illness.

Categories
Family therapy

Alcohol and Relationships

For many women, relationships are at the center of our lives. Partners, children, family, friends, and community are sources of meaning, joy, and purpose.

Being there for our loved ones, strengthening bonds of connection over time, playing, and even showing up for the hard stuff nourishes our hearts. The peaks and valleys of our lives – the reasons we have to laugh, be comforted, and try again – are almost always connected in one way or another to the loved ones in our lives.

Of course, women suffer in our relationships too. The lifelong balancing act between union with others and the need to be authentic generates a lot of rich, interesting tension. Boundaries are fertile ground for an alchemy of forces that meet with unpredictable results.

But overall, the relationship space is usually something we are willing to show up and struggle for. The value of connection, closeness, kinship, loyalty, and togetherness is something we cannot deny, so we try our best even when it’s hard.

What are the impacts of alcoholism on relationships?

Many kinds of harm can erode the bonds of affection through which we are linked to others. One key trouble that affects many women in their relationships is alcoholism.

Alcoholism, or any substance addiction, has a devastating impact on our ability to give and receive love. Addiction atrophies the fibers of connection between people, resulting in isolation. Worse, it tangles us up in knots of enmeshed, unhealthy dynamics.

The impacts of alcoholism and other addictions on relationships have been well documented. Since the start of the 12-step recovery movement almost a century ago, there have been healing groups offered both for the people who have the addiction and for their intimate partners and loved ones.

Why is it that a support group is needed not only for the people manifesting the physical symptoms of addiction but also for their loved ones? It’s because addiction affects everyone who has a relationship with the addicted person. In almost all cases, the people closest to the addict develop a kind of illness, called codependency.

What is alcohol addiction’s impact on family finances?

One impact that addiction has on a family is to be detrimental to finances. Alcohol and other drugs cost money, and the priority an addict places on procuring the substance over everything else can be a significant financial weight.

A person who should be a team player on the side of her family becomes a draw on the family resources. With time she is less able to contribute positively to the family abundance.

In addition to eating up an unfair amount of the family budget, addiction creates other costs, in the form of lost jobs, healthcare (including, but not only, treatment for their addiction), and legal fees.

Frequently, the addicted person makes poor financial decisions when under the influence, and may go on spending sprees or gamble. She may use savings set aside for children or other family members’ needs for addiction-related matters.

Addiction makes even the most kind-hearted person selfish and self-destructive, undermining our ability to delay gratification and act in ways that serve the interests of our family.

What is the connection between alcohol abuse and marital problems?

Substance abuse brings marital strife. Typically, the non-addicted partner in a marriage is understandably distressed to witness and be affected by their partner’s downward spiral.

When there are children involved, the non-addicted partner struggles to protect the children from the many negative impacts of the disease, as well.

A partner to an addict has to cope with addiction’s many trust-destroying, hurtful effects on the relationship. Things like broken promises and betrayals, dysfunctional ways of relating (such as denial of the truth and consequences of the addict’s behavior), and nasty, abusive treatment are commonplace.

Most partners get pulled into trying to manage or heal the behaviors of the person who is caught up in an addictive cycle. In some cases, the affected partner may make excuses for, and clean up after the addict, feel compelled to hide the truth from the outside world, and even ask their children to tolerate behavior or keep family secrets. In other words, the partner of an addict is pulled into a very difficult dance of shame and helplessness themselves.

What are the impacts of alcoholism on children?

The effects of alcoholism on children are tragic and long-lasting. Children are very vulnerable and whatever goes on in their home life during formative years necessarily sets the stage for the rest of their lives.

The presence of addiction in a family system, if untreated, all but guarantees that the psychological wounding that almost certainly underlies the parents’ use of substances in the first place will be passed on directly to the children as well.

Children who grow up in a family where one or more of the adults have substance abuse problems will sustain trauma of some kind.

Although in their hearts people with addiction love their children and mean no harm, it is impossible for people who are addicted to substances to provide the full spectrum of physical, emotional, and relational needs for children to grow up with a healthy sense of themselves and their place in the world.

Children who grew up in families where addiction was present struggle with lifelong low self-esteem, shame, feelings of guilt, over-responsibility, and tendencies to partner up with people who will further invalidate their emotional needs for safety and dignity. The lack of boundaries, attention, care, and appropriate emotional connection that they experienced in childhood will feel like “love” to them, and it can take a lot of emotional and psychological work to evolve beyond the glass ceiling set by the base reality they grew up with.

Adult children of alcoholics, or ACOAs, are at risk of becoming addicts themselves and also of marrying addicts when they grow up.

What is the connection between alcohol misuse and domestic violence?

There are many connections between alcohol abuse of other substances and domestic violence. Although alcoholism does not necessarily lead to domestic violence, in a majority of domestic violence situations, alcohol addiction or another substance addiction is involved.

Tendencies towards violence, abuse, and in general, uncontrolled impulses and displays of aggression are aggravated by substances and addiction. Alcohol can turn someone who might have otherwise been able to keep their aggression in check into a frightening abuser.

Treatment for families struggling with alcoholism

It is highly supportive for families with addiction to receive some kind of support for everyone in the family.

Addiction is a family disease, so everyone in the family system needs help. It’s important to understand though, that non-addicted people in the family will have a hard time recognizing that they are involved in the addiction. It will seem to everyone in the family system as though it’s the addict who is the problem, and there may be a lot of understandable feelings of resentment in the beginning.

While it’s important that the addicted person is held accountable for the truth of their impact, it’s also important to understand that families can only heal when the other members of the family are supported to be responsible for holding boundaries of safety around themselves and to also stop participating in any enabling behavior which makes it easier for the addict to stay ill.

What is uncovered in family therapy is always a surprise, which ultimately leads to transformative healing all around. Family members are brought closer and made stronger than ever as a unit, as they are led to discover how each loved one has been holding a piece of the family’s heartache.

It’s also important to know that family therapy for addiction is probably the most powerful thing that can be done to combat addiction. The more family members can commit and show up for family therapy, the better. Family therapy can be shorter term, and a lot can be accomplished in a few sessions with some basic goodwill and love among the family members. However, it only works with a sincere desire to recover, all around.

Villa Kali Ma helps women with addiction and relationships

At Villa Kali Ma, women are our specialty. We know how important matters of the heart are, and how addiction hurts our hearts and the hearts of those we love most.

We at Villa Kali Ma are here to help teach paths of healing to women, the tried and true ways that nurse broken hearts back to health and reunite us in the relationships we’ve always valued, even when we didn’t know how to do it right.

Categories
Bipolar disorder treatment

7 Reasons Why World Bipolar Day is Important

Villa Kali Ma Helps Women with Bipolar Disorder

At Villa Kali Ma, we help women with mental health struggles recover lives of meaning and freedom. When trauma and addiction are a factor too, we help address all three things.

We support women to heal using a combination of the Western scientific medical model and alternative, holistic modalities like Ayurveda, yoga, and breathwork. We are fully equipped with the latest in cutting-edge trauma treatments, methods like EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, and brainspotting, to help each woman unravel the imprints of the past and get a fresh start at living.

Our facilities are dedicated to women who are currently under the thumb of addiction, trauma, or some variant of psychological disorder. We guide each woman we treat to ignite the fire of self-love in her heart, so that she can find the strength to undergo the transformations that are necessary when any of us want to experience deeper happiness and connection.

What is Bipolar Disorder?

Bipolar disorder is the label given to a specific kind of experience had by a portion of the population. Bipolar is a notoriously painful condition that’s associated with a heavy load of mental and emotional suffering. It is also noted for being linked to people with very bright gifts of creativity, invention, and vision.

Bipolar disorder used to be called manic-depressive disorder. It is the umbrella term for a group of psychological conditions entered in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5).

There are three types of bipolar disorder listed in the manual: Bipolar I, Bipolar II, and Cyclothymia.

Bipolar disorders feature manic episodes or periods of amplified energy. The eventual mood crashes following a manic episode are called depressive episodes. As the name suggests, people with bipolar disorder experience both ends of the pole – extremely elevated moods and extremely low moods.

The different kinds of bipolar disorder are distinguished by how intense the manic episodes are.

Bipolar I may be diagnosed when someone experiences an extreme manic phase lasting for at least one week. A depressive episode may or may not follow, but the mania could be so acute that the person ends up in the hospital.

Bipolar II is diagnosed when someone has a hypomanic episode of several consecutive days, paired with a very serious depressive episode. Hypomania is like mania, but not as pronounced or dramatic.

Cyclothymic Disorder is diagnosed for people experiencing recurring mood shifts between hypomania and depression over a minimum of two years.

What are the Symptoms of Bipolar Disorder?

What is unique about bipolar disorder, among all the mental health disorders, is the presence of mania.

Mania is an extremely elevated mood, or feeling “up”, with high energy and intensity. During times of mania, we can have a lot of inspiration and ideas and may speak very quickly or feel we can’t keep up with the influx of energy into our minds. We may have a lot to say on many different topics and feel a need to speak rapidly in a ceaseless verbal outpouring, to try to capture or express all we are witnessing in our thoughts.

We also will likely behave impulsively, becoming more reckless, and doing things we wouldn’t normally do if we felt calm and grounded. We may take actions that are dangerous because we are experiencing unusual levels of optimism.

Mania is usually coupled with grandiose thoughts and fantasies about our abilities, as though our egos have suddenly inflated, and we can lose touch with reality and the limits of our human bodies.

It’s important to understand that all human beings experience ups and downs in our energy, inflations, and deflations of our self-image, and rises and falls in our moods. For people who have mania to a disordered degree, though, it can be quite dangerous for them. Spending sprees, gambling, sudden big life decisions, acting inappropriately at work, drugs and alcohol, and risky sexual behavior often go along with a period of mania.

It is a key part of the bipolar experience to suffer intensely during the depressive stage of the cycle, when all that went up, comes down again. The plummeting energy and mood, along with the loss of good feelings about oneself and one’s abilities, is devastating and rough to endure. Suicide is a lure in these times, against which our bipolar loved ones need to be protected, as the depths of darkness are truly harrowing.

7 Reasons Bipolar Day is Important

Every year on March 30th, World Bipolar Day is honored, as a way to raise awareness about the needs of people with bipolar disorder. By expanding our collective understanding of what bipolar disorder is and how it is experienced from within, we can help sufferers and loved ones get the support they need.

Here at Villa Kali Ma, as always, we have a holistic way of thinking about how we can enfold, heal, and celebrate the women among us who have these traits and patterns. We want every woman with bipolar patterning to know of our deep, fond compassion and our willingness to share in the experiences and burdens these brave women carry for the collective.

Here are our thoughts, on why an annual day of reflection on bipolar disorder may be a good practice for us all.

1.Compassion

Compassion is healing. Compassion gently erodes the build-up in the heart that keeps us in separate streams of life, not touching each other’s experiences.

For the person who has compassion in her heart and the person who is able to be lovingly seen, understood, and accepted, compassion is a boon. Compassion dissolves the walls of separation. People with bipolar disorder stir my compassion, what about yours?


2.Understanding the Bipolar in us All

We are all mirrors of each other. We are made in different forms, with different purposes and missions here on earth, and no one is completely the same as another. Still, what we carry, we carry for all.

People who carry the bipolar experience are doing so on our behalf. Rather than turn away from suffering that is hard for us to bear, let us stay connected, stay present, and see the bipolar in our own nature as well.

Don’t we all move through life on a path with peaks and valleys? Don’t we all know the burning intensity of the light and the chill of a deep shadow falling on the soul? We are all part of the whole, and when we embrace those who seem to be on the extreme edges of human experience, all benefit from the reunion.


3.Heal our Bipolar Collective

As a collective psyche, we are clearly disordered. We are split into factions, sections of privilege or pain. The light and the shade duel in our body politic, in our species, in our cultural identities. We are pressured by the booms and busts, inflations of fancied superiority, and the heavy pains of being made to be less than.

Why? And how can we, as a group, soften the extremes, come into balance, come to the center place that seeks no overpowering nor fears the soft underbelly? In remembering we are all, all sides, all things, and all qualities, we can unite the polarities of our collective.


4.Save lives

People with bipolar disorder are at a higher risk of suicide. The tragedy of suicide hurts the tissues of human connection for generations, and we need to do everything we can to prevent it! Through greater awareness and understanding that some of us humans will feel that dark call, we can help hold each other safe.

Each person considering suicide has fallen prey to the illusion that their individual life doesn’t matter to the rest of life, but it does. We can help such a person remember that she is our kin, kin to all of life, and needed by all. We can help them feel less alone, and understand that we are willing to share in the pain they feel is theirs alone.


5.Reduce Stigma and Marginalization of the Mentally Ill Among Us

The stigma around mental illness is supremely unfair and widespread. How is it that people who are already suffering more intensely than the rest of us, also have to be blamed, scapegoated, pathologized, misunderstood, and treated as a problem that should go away?

It is incredibly cruel to marginalize those whose suffering makes them feel alone and unworthy, already. Let’s just stop that, and instead get on board with loving all humans as we are right now. It will be uncomfortable for us some of the time, yes, as it is for them almost all of the time.


6.Acknowledge Pain

Many people just don’t know what it’s like to suffer as intensely and unremittingly as people with bipolar disorder often do. Without the experience, it’s easy to judge or not engage.

Let’s raise awareness and understanding, to bring the truth of the presence of pain in our world out into the light.

We as a collective species clearly need to change our ways, yet we will never change in the ways that would truly help our world evolve if we deny the presence of pain.

Pain is the call to heal. Through pain, we find out what’s wrong that hurts all of us, where we have erred, where we left nature, and what we need to do to return.


7.Celebrate the Bright Fires Among Us

Let’s remember to see and say thank you for the gifts brought by those who live with intensity, passion, and pain.

Not only when they bring creative gifts into the world, but also through their insights, the transformation, and deepening of the collective consciousness, our brothers and sisters with bipolar disorder burn bright, warming and illuminating all of us with their fire.

Categories
World Happiness Day

International Day of Happiness

What is the International Day of Happiness?

International Day of Happiness is celebrated annually on March 20th. A day of honoring happiness was established in 2013 by the United Nations as part of an initiative to include the concept of happiness in how we think of human rights and liberties.

Here in the United States, we’re accustomed to the idea that happiness is something that we have a right to pursue. Happiness is believed to be a birthright, protected alongside our lives and liberty. According to the Declaration of Independence, these are our inalienable rights as Americans.

There is a lot of discussion about the imperfections of our nation’s foundations, and deservedly so. Nevertheless, it has meant that happiness was called out by name as a human right that should never be taken away, and which has to be nourished and looked out for.

As International Day of Happiness raises consciousness about the notion of a human right to happiness worldwide, as individuals we are invited to reflect on what happiness means to us.

What are the Traditions of the International Day of Happiness?

International Day of Happiness is young in years, and like most UN Initiatives, is celebrated largely through joint initiatives by action groups and organizations.

For any of us who are not involved directly in governmental and inter-governmental efforts, we can nevertheless use the day to consider what personal traditions, rituals, and activities foster happiness in our own lives and local communities.

But what is happiness? What’s your definition?

At Villa Kali Ma, we favor consideration of the multidimensionality of women. Each of us is much more than our physical bodies. We are much more than the identity that the ego tells us we are.

We are the subtle flows of emotion, the lifting fires of creativity, and the ephemera of spirit. We are our relationships, including our love and our pain. We are also nature, the planet, and the cosmos.

Given the many ways we can conceptualize a human life, what is human happiness? One way to answer this question is to consider happiness from different perspectives of being.

Journal to Expand Happiness

Take a moment to journal on any of the following questions that spark your curiosity.

What is happiness from the point of view of the physical body?

What is happiness for the ego, the part that wants to have a positive self-image?

What is happiness from the point of view of your emotions? What’s happiness for the inner child?

What is happiness for the wise mind, the inner neutral observer?

What is happiness for the soul, for the spirit?

What is happiness for the human heart, the part of us who loves others, ourselves, and all creation?

What is happiness for the creative spark inside us?

What is happiness for the part of us that wants to work, to accomplish, to deliver?

What is happiness for the part of us who is one with all nature, the planet, and the cosmos?

If these questions don’t fully resonate, what are the right questions to ask about happiness, as you see it?

International Happiness Statistics

Statistics about happiness are collected by many different projects around the world. In studies like these, we can look at how different people and cultures relate to the idea of happiness.

Statistics are always connected to the intentions of those framing the questions and to the parameters of the investigation. That doesn’t mean we can’t explore data, just that it’s probably wise to keep in mind that there will always be many ways of asking and many ways of answering questions.

If you’re interested in the data of happiness, you can explore many resources on the web that will give you different pictures of happiness and its distribution around the globe, the what and the why of it.

Our invitation today, from us at Villa Kali Ma, is to make your happiness survey and start asking people around you, start collecting qualitative or even quantitative data that will help you get answers to the questions you have about happiness.

What are you genuinely curious to know about happiness, your own and other people’s? See if you can come up with 12 questions that you genuinely want to know the answer to, and interview 12 people.

Here are sample questions to get you started thinking about your happiness survey questions:

Sample Happiness Survey

  1. When in the day are you happiest?
  2. In what circumstances do you tend to feel happiest?
  3. When you’re happy, how can people around you tell?
  4. If your only goal in life was to be happy, would you change anything about your life?
  5. What is the biggest barrier to your happiness, as you see it?
  6. Now, what are your happiness survey questions? Who will you interview?

Activities for Celebrating International Day of Happiness

The best way to celebrate International Day of Happiness is to practice happiness ourselves.

How can we cultivate happiness for other people and ourselves?

Make a list right of 12 activities that could be done to promote happiness. Let this happiness be shiny and big, whether it’s the happiness we give to ourselves (often the hardest task!) or the happiness we can give to others.

Here are teeny tiny activities I could do to create a little more happiness, right here, right now:

  1. Make pancakes for my husband tomorrow morning as a surprise and for no reason
  2. Have a 4-minute dance break in the middle of my working day
  3. Call my sister back to hear about her big news and celebrate her lovingly
  4. Go for a walk in the neighborhood without my phone and listen to the birds
  5. Collage a homemade card for my mother’s birthday and spend time writing her sincere heartfelt wishes

What about you? What are 12 tiny ways you can practice the art of creating happiness for yourself and others?

The Facts of Happiness

Facts about happiness are constantly being collected and cataloged, and a short dive into the research can surface many interesting tidbits.

It’s also worthwhile to research your happiness, to surface the surprising facts of your own life’s happiness.

Here is one way of investigating your happiness with curiosity which you can try out right now:

Sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes, breathe 3 very long, deep breaths, and relax the body. Gently softening your mind, letting it melt like butter in the sun, see if you can reach back in your memory to a moment or period in your life when you were very, very happy. Shoot for any memory of being gloriously, glowingly, luminously happy (or the closest you ever got to this). Make the memory or image as concrete and vivid as you can, recalling all the sensory details you can. Where were you, when was this, what time of day was it, what was the temperature like, were you inside or outside, what kind of an environment were you in, what were you doing, what was happening around you and inside you, who were you with?

Using this image as a reference, open your eyes to journal on the following questions:

What did this happiness feel like to your body? What qualities of sensation does this recalled happiness have? Is it warm, fizzy, or fluid? How does the feeling of happiness affect you from the hips down, in the heart and core of your body, in your head and face?

Consider for a moment that this memory is a clue to what happiness is for you. What can you learn from this clue?

Villa Kali Ma Helps Women Be Happy

Villa Kali Ma’s mission is to help women free themselves from the burdens of mental illness, trauma, and addiction. We are dedicated to helping women recover lives of meaning, purpose, and true, deep happiness.

Categories
International Women’s Day 2024

International Women’s Day 2024

What is International Women’s Day?

International Women’s Day celebrates women and girls, and all we bring to the world.

Celebrated once a year, International Women’s Day is dedicated to all the people in our lives who are living in female bodies. For all who experience life from the point of view and role of “woman”, this is our day.

Ever since the extinction of matriarchal societies, history has tended to favor men, reserving appreciation and recognition primarily for accomplishments and energies brought by people in male bodies.

There have been exceptions, of course, big-spirited women with sizable spheres of influence. Many women, from Joan of Arc to Harriet Tubman, are household names and history book legends.

Still, other women from history are less well-known but no less remarkable to ponder once we learn of their lives. In the arts, there have been many women who burned brightly enough to shine in a man’s world, defying the odds of their time to birth their contributions to culture.

Some personal favorites of history and culture are the Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola, the Christian mystic, herbalist, and composer Hildegard of Bingen, and the Pharaoh Hatshepsut who ruled Egypt for many peaceful and culturally rich decades.

More importantly, perhaps, the ordinary women of our lives have a soft force of power, even if our emotions, experiences, and life stories fall outside the narrow definitions of what deserves acclaim (according to the bias we all are conditioned with).

We women are here, bringing our gifts, whether we are seen and appreciated, or not. And though we might not be publicly celebrated, nor valued in our essential natures in the same overt ways as men have been historically, there has always been love for women, too. This is a day to remember our collective love for women.

When is International Women’s Day 2024?

March 8th is the official day every year for focusing celebration energies towards the females in our lives, past, present, and future. This year, we celebrate women on Friday, March 8th, 2024.

The purpose of International Women’s Day is to open up the lens of collective awareness to value the feminine more. We have all been almost single-mindedly focused on the value of the masculine pole of experience.

With awareness softened and opened to a broader perspective, we can recognize the facts of women’s role in shaping society, the arts, families, and history. We can also consider the world more from the point of view of female-bodied beings.

Patriarchy hurts both men and women with toxic ideas about what is valuable and what isn’t. We all have male and female energies in us, independent of gender, so it’s in all of our interests to love both sides fully. Men and women both can be freed and supported by shining a light on the unconscious assumption and expectation that what men do is what’s interesting and important.

Rather than being against the masculine, however, International Women’s Day is an invitation to open up to the feminine too, whatever that means to us. We can celebrate public figures and inspirational women of history who show us what’s possible, and also everyday women we know who have a positive impact on our day-to-day lives. We can take extra time to love the “yin”, or feminine pole of consciousness, that lives in us all.

What is the theme of International Women’s Day?

The official theme of International Women’s Day in 2024 is digitalization and gender. Here at Villa Kali Ma, we have our take on what about women needs attention and celebration, and we favor a holistic look at how we can bring women’s thriving to the surface.

Women are hurt in digital domains and also in the physical world. The larger question is how can we bring the energies of violence and harm towards the feminine to a conclusion, and move forward in balance with love for all.

Because as much harm as exists, there is a greater force of love and health longing to surface everywhere and within. How can we be part of a planet-wide bloom of love for women?

How did International Women’s Day get Started?

The date of March 8th was anchored into the yearly calendar in 1910 by a group of British Suffragettes, those determined women who fought to secure women the right to vote.

Why is International Women’s Day celebrated?

International Women’s Day is celebrated in part to spread awareness of the contributions of women to our world. It is also an invitation to think about the needs of women, and how we might support each other better to be strong and free ourselves in this world. When women are supported to thrive, the world is a more balanced and feeling place.

Which Women can I celebrate on this day?

International Women’s Day is an opportunity for each of us to personally reflect on the value brought to us by specific women, and also the woman we are. We can make our lists and think about who matters to us.

Each woman we admire mirroring something to us, about our nature, our longings, and our dormant courage.

Journal Prompt for Celebrating Women

Who can you celebrate from your sphere – a grandmother, mother, sister, aunt, best friend, or daughter? What about teachers, professors, therapists, healers?

Who can you celebrate from history? Which figures have inspired and encouraged you with their dashing, aesthetic, or powerful lives? Which leaders, community organizers, rebels, or peacemakers?

Who can you celebrate from the arts, humanities, or science and technology? Which female authors wove stories you could find your own experience within? Whose passionate or angelic singing voice touched your heart? Which painters, filmmakers, actresses, comedians, and performers have brought luminance to your life? Whose inventive or explorative spirit of discovery inspires your scientific curiosity?  

How can I celebrate International Women’s Day?

Gratitude Exercise to Celebrate International Women’s Day

Write a list of women who are in your life now, whom you appreciate for whatever reason. Take a moment to reflect: what do you love about them, what do you see about them that makes them special and wonderful? What do you maybe want to thank or recognize them for?

Now find a way to let them know of your appreciation and recognition of them. Feel free to get creative – a live phone call means a lot these days, and so do handmade cards, snail mail letters, poems, and home-cooked meals. All women need support, and we women have the power to give it to each other.

Villa Kali Ma celebrates International Women’s Day

For Villa Kali Ma, every day is Women’s Day! Come celebrate with us, sister. Any day.

Categories
Women’s Health Awareness Month

Women’s Health Awareness Month

A Month for Celebrating Women’s Health

This March, let’s celebrate women’s health. We at Villa Kali Ma extend to you all an invitation to contemplate what we feel health is, and how we value the health of our sisters, daughters, mothers, grandmothers, and friends.

What is women’s health? And what is women’s health in the context of addiction, madness, and trauma, those troubles that bear down on women’s souls so painfully? These are questions to ponder this month, as we consider how to protect and support the health of women everywhere.

What Does Women’s Health Mean to You?

When I think of women’s health, I think of how my sisters looked when they were pregnant. The phrase that comes to my lips is “They glowed”. They were like lanterns, bulbs of warm light, suffused with soft incandescence. They were extra beautiful!

When people say pregnant women are beautiful, in my opinion, it’s because pregnant women are so full of life and vitality that they beam out of every pore. The glow that’s in all of us living beings is turned up to the max, in a way that is hard to miss. Women’s health is beautiful.

True health flows in a woman’s being the way life exists or withers in an ecosystem, such as an alpine forest or a river valley. Health means aliveness, being flush with the flow of the life force. When life energy flows unobstructed, thriving vitality is evident everywhere, and a place feels, looks, and fairly sings of healthy energy. So too in our portion of nature, the bodies we are.

When there are poisons, blocks to the natural flow, burdens of toxicity, or stagnation placed upon our life force, health suffers in one way or another. Harmed ecosystems can be restored by removing poisons and obstructions to life’s energetic flows. It is the same with women’s bodies.

How Can We Celebrate Women’s Health Holistically this March?

At Villa Kali Ma, we relate to health as holistic, which means that it is about a kind of wholeness, or unity of being, a symphonic coordination of parts in harmony. This is in contrast with what might be called an overly compartmentalized approach, which treats health as existing in different chambers of being, without many connecting passageways.

In the West, as everyone knows, we tend to focus on the body as the site of health, which makes sense of course, since that’s where symptoms manifest most visibly. When the body fails, we are forced to change our ways.

There is chemistry and materiality to health, but in Villa Kali Ma’s opinion, health isn’t contained within chemistry and materiality. Rather it is more the way that Verdi’s beautiful arias are transmitted by, but not exactly contained within, a tenor’s throat. All we can ever be are vessels of the spirit of health. We can invite health in, or we can shut it out, through our thoughts, actions, emotional habits, and choices.

These beautiful, complex living organisms, our bodies, are only the outermost manifestations, material evidence of what lies deep within the secret hearts of our true natures. We can be in the flow and expression of great blooms of other kinds of wellness, too: emotional health, mental health, relationship health, spiritual health, and even creative health. When we are healthy at all levels and layers, we are happy.

Cultivate Women’s Health in Your Sphere this March 2024

At Villa Kali Ma, we humbly endeavor to teach women what we know about how to live in harmony with what the life force within asks of us to thrive, and therefore be happy at last. We specialize in how women can free themselves from addiction, madness, and the life-force-stopping patterns of trauma.

More than that, we show the path to living as the spirit of natural health inside us directs us. What health likes, what it doesn’t like.

What do you know about your health and what it like or don’t like? Here are some things we’ve observed that might or might not fit for you: women’s health like movement, connection, transformation, fluidity, and other things that are alive. Women’s health like authenticity, freedom, expression, and love. Women’s health like individuality, with each of us having our unique nature. Women’s health also loves bonds of unification, connection, and sharing.

Knowing what we know, we at Villa Kali Ma share how it is that each woman can live in harmony from within her personal experience, to connect directly with the spirit of health inside her. So she can bring more health to the surface of the world, and share it also with other women.

To learn how to let health fill us up to the brim, we need to change a lot. Each facet of a woman’s diamond-like nature has a role to play in the symphony of health. Our thoughts must be tuned to the high frequencies of health. Our emotions must flow the joyful, loving tones of health. The compass of our intention must be aligned to the north star of health.

Our creative, generative, working spirit must be devoted to birthing forms and structures that resound health. We must eat and drink health, laugh and play, and breathe health. We must love the health of others with our healthy hearts.

Villa Kali Ma Shows Women the Way to Health

How would you recognize a healthy woman if you saw one? What would a healthy woman look like, how would she feel? How would her presence in the room impact you? How might such a woman speak, emote, and connect with you? How would you recognize it, if the spirit of health surged to the surface in the collective body of all of all women, everywhere?

Placing my awareness on the topic of women’s thriving helps me appreciate the health of women, and makes me want to help us be as healthy as we can. As for those burdens that sit heavy on the hearts, minds, and bodies of women, I want to help dispel them.

Because women are important. When we bloom, we bring joy, radiance, and support to this world. We are soft strength, enduring power, unbreakable yielding. Just as children bring a fully unpredictable and specific joy when they are free to be their child nature, women bring a special gift to this world when we are free and well enough to bring our womanhood, too. A healthy woman, who brims with the songs of life’s wholeness, is a gift to all.

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