Saturday 16 January 2016

The Hidden Messages in Water - book review

The Hidden Messages in Water by Professor Masuru Emoto is not a book about life coaching per se.  However, I have used it on most of my group trainings delivered to health professionals, managers, community workers and service users.

The Hidden Messages in Water is essentially a masterpiece of positive thinking.  The book promotes positive awareness through a scientific methodology based on Professor Emoto’s many years of research into water crystals. 

The author demonstrates his science through write-ups of experiments and particularly through his outstanding microphotography of water. The author’s scientific contention is that everything in the universe is in vibration, including humans. Vibrations affect everything in the known world and this includes the effect of human emotions. Emoto uses microscopic photography of water crystals at the point of freezing to show the different formations that occur when the water is subjected to a range of human moods, verbal address and art forms, particularly music. When Emoto started the photographic research in 1999 at the suggestion of a colleague, he admits that the results astounded him. Putting a bottle of water on a table and playing different music at normal listening levels showed a wide range of crystal formations.  'Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony' (the 6th) with its bright and clear tones, resulted in beautiful and well-formed crystals. Water exposed to violent heavy-metal music resulted in fragmented and malformed crystals at best'.


The reason I have used this book for life coaching is mainly because of the utterly beautiful photographs.  A well-formed water crystal captured at the point of freezing is a phenomenal picture.  I usually have a crystal slide as part of my PowerPoint presentation.  I refer to Emoto’s research briefly and have the book on display. I use this because I feel the photographs illustrate aspiration, independence and the power of positive thinking and planning.  For these reasons alone, the book allows me to create a framework for mental health training that incorporates aspiration, hope and recovery rather than the continual emphasis on diagnosis and support.

Friday 8 January 2016

Lemmy didn't drink! Milk!

Lemmy didn't drink! Milk!




Direct Payments and Personal Budgets

NHS Choices has an excellent feature on Direct Payments and Personal Budgets, including Mary's story.

Mary suffers from personality disorder.  She has used a personal budget to generate more independence for herself and gives a powerful testimony about how direct payments have been crucial to her wellbeing.  Mary has also been able to drop one drug from her medication as a result.

Wednesday 6 January 2016

A Career in Mental Health?

Care and support are not the only models or frameworks for mental health recovery. The establishing or re-establishing of what Dr. Pat Deegan refers to as 'valued social roles' can be held back by a mental health system that often encourages the client to choose 'a career in mental health' (Pat Deegan).

A career in mental health means living longterm on benefits and longterm marginalisation from mainstream life. A career in mental health will identify symptoms, diagnoses, medication and team support but will often leave out aspirations, goals, priorities.

Where access to mainstream is encouraged, it can often be through projects or programmes which take place in special settings or are designed for people with mental health conditions. So the marginalisation continues.

A genuine return to mainstream can only take place in mainstream. This is where the role of the life coach or bridge builder comes in. A client who has worked with a mainstream bridge builder identifies goals and priorities for him or herself. It is the bridge builder's job to signpost or link the client up with mainstream venues appropriate to the client's life choices. The amount of support a client may request from there on is determined only by the client not by the life coach.

Saturday 2 January 2016

Feedback and Feedforward

Chinua came to me in my role as mainstream bridge builder at a time when the company had just had positive news from the local council.  Direct Payments or personal budgets were being extended to cover anything deemed useful as part of a person's recovery pathway.

For a team of social inclusion bridge builders this was great news.  It meant that clients could apply for mainstream activity, rather than being prescribed very limited funding for strictly care-based provision. If they preferred to use their own funds, that was fine. If personal funds were not available, a new strategy was open to us.

Chinua told me that his key worker had already sorted out some direct payments for him.  I was intrigued to hear what this might be. Chinua told me that it was ten pounds a month set aside for him to go to the local cinema. 'I think we can do better than that', I said.

Since we had already completed a wheel of life together, I knew that Chinua had prioritised the study of DJ-ing and music production as the main plank of his goals and action plan. It was an activity he had done in the past and he wished to take it up again.

I told Chinua that the new direct payments system meant that he could start on this activity as soon as he wished.  He only needed to choose a local studio and as his bridge builder, I would give as much or as little support as he requested.  If he didn't know of a local venue it was my job to signpost him to the places that I worked with in my role as an arts life coach.  If he preferred to do his own research for a suitable outlet, that would be fine too.

In the event, Chinua did not take up any of these options.  In fact, I didn't hear from Chinua for a long time, some months in fact.  This happens a lot in mental health, particularly for clients with a long-term condition.  People go off radar and even calling them on three or four occasions yields no result. Sometimes this can be due to a relapse, a change in medication or simply by the client's own choice.  It is usually nothing to worry about.  Everyone is at their own stage in the journey.

When I did finally hear from Chinua it wasn't until about six months' later.  His key worker had invited me to attend a review with Chinua at his flat.  It must have been cancelled without me being informed because when I turned up there was no-one around apart from a scary but thankfully harmless rottweiler.  A day later I happened to encounter Chinua on the street on my way home.  He seemed well and I asked him how he was getting on.  'Oh I'm two terms into my music production course at South Thames College mate', he informed me.

I was delighted with this news.  Chinua had effectively 'mainstreamed' himself without my help which in my opinion is a perfect coaching outcome.  It turned out that the course was an undergraduate B.A. programme which Chinua went on to complete.

My next meeting with Chinua was eighteen months later when he independently enrolled as part of a film and music project for which my company had gained funding.  If you want to see Chinua's work (under his real name)  as part of the production team, check out the film 'Mister Fox's Night Out'