Pamela Miles

Self-Care through Health, Happiness, and Spirituality

We are our first responsibility. If we don’t take care of ourselves, how can we care for or help others?

Articles on self-care through health, happiness, and spirituality.

Take One Every 20 Years

Healing, Self-care

A client came for her second healing session yesterday. She enthused about having had the best sleep of her life the night after her first session.

Which was 20 years ago.

She looks much the same as she did then; I would easily recognize her on the street. She’s a smart, sensible, accomplished professional woman, a wife and the mother of two adult children in a close knit family. She’s involved in her community. She’s engaging company, and a good person. The family seems financially secure.

Clearly she’s made a lot of good choices in her life.

And then there’s the sleep thing.

If something gave you the best sleep of your life, and it was legal, and you could afford it, would you wait 20 years to repeat?

It’s easy to say, “Of course not.” But I wonder.

I wonder how many good things I haven’t followed up on for who knows why.

What about you? What goodness lies waiting for you to bring it into your life? And what are you going to do about it?

A Dose of Farmer

Lifestyle, Nourishment, Self-care

End of summer slows Manhattan’s relentless pace.

Greenmarkets overflowing with produce grace the sidewalks of my neighborhood four days a week. Other days, I venture beyond walking distance just to stroll past the stalls, oogle the veggies, and hang out with the farmers.

Here in the concrete jumble, my family eats the same food the farmers’ families eat. Some of these farmers have been feeding my family for a quarter century.

I love that.

These small farms are not certified organic; that’s an expense only agribusiness can manage. These farmers are heart and soul wholesome, people who choose life close to the earth.

Market conversation adds its own pleasure. Jeff and I commiserate over lost artichokes, then he brings my attention to papalo, his words dripping with care, enthusiasm and humor.

Franca remembers we like romano beans and throws an extra handful into the bag. Pam alerts me the crème fraîche is nearly gone.

A mom notices my voice in the crowd and grabs my arm from behind. We hug and fill in the years. Our kids have grown but somehow we look the same.

Food, hugs and conversation intertwine in a nourishing trifecta.

For a few days, I too slow down to enjoy life’s harvest, pondering nothing more momentous than whether the Yankees can slide into another post season.

Who’s in Charge of You?

Creativity, Practice, Self-care

“Hello-o,” I sang into the phone.

“Uh, umm, hmm…who is this? Is this the person in charge?” the caller asked, perhaps flummoxed to reach a human breathing rather than a recording.

“I’m Pamela,” I said, “and yes, I am in charge of Pamela.”

We laughed.

Putting yourself in charge

That simple truth was funny at the time, but it’s no joke.

Daily spiritual practice puts you in charge of yourself. Any spiritual practice will do. Practicing consistently — every day — makes the difference.

Consistent spiritual practice opens the moment so you can see the choices you can make right now. You know, those choices, the ones that make it more likely what you want will actually come to pass.

Those choices are how we co-create our lives, how we build our happiness and health. When we don’t make those choices, we default to whatever is already in motion, whether we’re aware of it, or not.

Response-ability

No, we’re not in charge of the universe. I for one am grateful for that.

Being in charge of myself is a good fit, something I can actually do. It’s inspiring, empowering and enlivening, a responsibility I can live up to.

Uncertainty

Practice, Self-care

“In a way, the certainty of death was easier than this uncertain life.”

You might be surprised to learn that sentence was written by a doctor, a 36-year-old neurosurgeon, eight months after a diagnosis of widely metastatic cancer, in a New York Times Opinion piece.

He knew “widely metastatic” meant inoperable. He knew the statistics, and he knew statistics are numbers out of context: conventional medicine has no way to know what a statistic means for any particular person.

Which means all he knew was that he will die at some point, likely sooner than he had expected to nine months earlier…. Read More

Digesting the Holidaze

Nourishment, Self-care

The season of indulgence is upon us.

For many Americans, the frenzy starts with Halloween candy, and gets worse before it gets better. For some, it gets a lot worse. But it doesn’t have to.

What can you do to maintain sanity, health, and self-respect during the holiday onslaught?

Here are a few simple actions to consider. Implementing even one will help, especially if it’s the one that keeps you from sliding down your favorite rabbit hole of excess…. Read More

Conventional Medicine and Traditional Medicine

Healing, Self-care

The symptoms suffered in a healing crisis are the same symptoms suffered in disease. Disease states can be dangerous.

What’s a practitioner to do?

Healing crisis is a fixture of traditional, natural medicine.

In order to understand healing crisis in the context of today’s health care, let’s compare the paradigm of science-based conventional medicine with that of pre-scientific traditional medicine (sometimes referred to as alternative medicine)…. Read More