Taking Health into your own Hands - Murray Goodchild

I’ve been doing the Wim Hof breathing as a daily practice now for about 2 months and I have to tell you, it’s life changing.I work as an acupuncturist. A colleague once described how I work as “surfing the Chi”. I make my living based on my ability to sense and influence energetic changes in the human energy field and I wanted to lend that perspective to describe the effects of the Wim Hoff breathing technique.My hope is that you feel inspired to give it a go.

If you’re not familiar with Wim Hof, he’s called the “Iceman”, a name he earned by performing incredible feats of cold endurance. He holds the world record for being immersed in ice for almost 2 hours. That’s an impressive feat but what’s truly astounding is that he’s been able to teach others his methods which have been clinically proven to enhance the immune response.


In a clinical trial, 10 out of 10 of the participants who trained with Wim were able to negate the effects of the E.coli Bacteria upon injection using his breathing techniques, which would typically cause food poisoning symptoms.Online there is plenty of information if you want to learn more. The short description of the technique I’ve been practicing is cyclic hyperventilation followed by breath retention. Importantly, the breath is held at the end of the out-breath.


Here’s my take on how this brings benefit. When you hyperventilate you charge up the body with oxygen. You then hold the breath. The important thing to realise is that the body will not be evenly oxygenated throughout. In the same way that in a house, some rooms get used more than others, in the body some areas get more oxygen than others. Areas where we hold stress, tension and fear will be low in oxygen simply because there’s no room. Try fitting an apple into the palm of a closed fist. As you hold your breath, guess which parts are going to start screaming for oxygen. Yep, the tense, stressed and fearful parts. Holding the breath beyond comfort becomes like stretching a rubber band, between these areas and the breath gateway. The longer you can hold the breath the more powerfully the oxygen floods these low oxygen areas when the breath arrives, because by this stage the body has prioritised them as the most critical. The oxygen becomes like aid work supplies being air-lifted to those most in need in a crisis.

Clinical trials have revealed the ability of this technique to influence the autonomic nervous system and the innate immune response, which were hitherto thought to be beyond the realm of conscious control. The technique of breath holding on the out breath is known in some yogic traditions as the death breath. At a certain point when holding the breath, in a relatively short period of time, one encounters the reptilian mind whose primary concern is survival. We don’t usually approach our reptile because it contains some unpleasant truths about our drive to survive. It’s the one that lifesavers protect themselves from when rescuing a drowning person. They know the predictable response of a drowning person is to pull the rescuer under in order to get a breath. The reptilian mind’s priority is to stay alive at any cost.

According to Wim, after 30 big breaths, the body has enough oxygen to last well beyond 2 minutes of breath deprivation, so it is more indicative of the habit patterns of the reptilian mind to want to breath than it is necessity.
When you feel how powerfully the reptilian mind grips the body insisting that you finally breath you understand how capable it is to overwhelm our rational mind. When the human directs his/her will towards training the reptile our unexamined drives can start to be shaped rather than given free range.This offers multiple benefits.

Personally, I have started to find I have more courage to share my perspectives in ways such as this essay, on social media and in person than I previously did. I feel more robust, less reactive and overly sensitive. I think I’m becoming more dependable and my fitness and stamina has improved, I assume because of increased lung capacity. I’ve experienced both physical and psychological benefits. I’ve observed that the thoughts I have influence how long I’m able to hold my breath. As a rule, the more fearful I am the less time I can hold. From this I can observe which thoughts and attitudes empower me. I can also look to practice my equanimity to thoughts that scare me.


This method is a great tool for mental and physical wellbeing. In the current crisis, tools that can empower us to take more responsibility for our own health are a valuable thing indeed.


In the current stage 4 lockdown, acupuncture is permitted for emergency care and in stage 3 is permitted as usual. It can be extremely helpful in helping you find your feet in these uncertain times.

Contact Murray on 0405 455744 for enquires and bookings.

"This is mushroom land!" said Ossian today in the forest

"This one is my favorite mushroom. It looks like a flower."

"Happy mushroomsssssssssśssssssssssssssssssssssssss"

I like this fungus

I liked cooking the mushrooms on the mushroom fire

Miaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam

Winter beauty in the garden

It is a pleasure at that time of the year to walk in the garden and still enjoy bright colors, and seeing the bees buzzing around.

My weekly winter ritual is to harvest and dry mainly calendula, yarrow and comfrey.

Winter is also a time of decay.

Our beautiful Zinnias, queens of our summer and autumn are now decaying and transforming to seeds

I am reminded of the beauty of each part of the cycles, each part playing their important role for the equilibrium of nature and life.

As we are part of nature, we need to remember - as the flower returns to seed and dormancy, us too human, need to come back to our essence and stillness.

PEACE Farm Tomato Festival is on 23rd Feb 2019

See this video made by last years Carpe Diem interns, Kate and Ella

Raspberry leaves tea

Did you know that you can make a delicious (and medicinal) tea with raspberry leaves?  

If you're already growing raspberries (or know someone who is!), remember to harvest, dry, and brew yourself a wonderful cup of tea.

It’s wonderful to be able to harvest it from the garden, to drink a potion of vitamins and minerals and to feel a stronger connection with the plant.  

Benefits:

The leaves are rich in potassium, iron, magnesium and b-vitamins.

Red raspberry leaf tea is a natural remedy for women’s health including menstrual support, pregnancy, childbirth and menopause.

How to Harvest & Preserve Red Raspberry Leaf Tea

The leaves are best harvested in the spring before the flowers emerge. 

Choose young, bright green leaves. 

Collect raspberry leaves before the plant blooms.

Harvest mid-morning after the dew has evaporated and before the sun is hot to preserve the oils and flavor.

Spread the leaves out on a screen and allow them to dry naturally away from dust and sunlight.

Or you can gather the leaves by their stems, tie the ends, and hang them to dry.

Depending on the humidity, drying usually takes 2-3 weeks.

You can tell when the leaves are dry, by crushing a leaf or two. It should crumble easily.

Try not to crush the rest of the leaves to reserve the flavor until you are ready to brew your tea.

Once dry, store leaves lightly packed in a glass jar away from direct sunlight.

From the market garden.

On a whole we feel it’s been a great season for the market garden.  

We have had some stunning crops throughout the season with some of the favorites being the late carrots, dill, sweet corn, Chinese cabbage and the consistent crisp salad mix.  

The long dry period late summer and autumn gave our autumn and winter crops a bit of grief such that our cabbages, Japanese turnip, broccoli and cauliflower yields have not been so great.  As a testament to the diverse CSA seasonal veggie box model, we have still been able to provide a great value and a  range of veggies each week.

Winter boxes will be a little less abundant for the last few weeks and the last box will be on the 24^thof July.  As hard as it is not to see our crops reach their full potential and make it to our valued customers place , we have to accept that we can't “win them all” and plan to improve for next time.  

In terms of box numbers, demand continues to increase and at times we have had a small waiting list.  More and more people are seeking out farm direct veggies from the Jing Clinic in Lilydale and Upwey food hubs which has been great.   

A massive thanks to all our members and special acknowledgement to our members who made the time to come to help out on a Tuesday and for the hands on the land days. This connection and participation is at the heart of our CSA model and it really warms my heart and gives me a boost to see big smiles on our member’s faces getting out on the land!  

Thanks again for playing your part of the CSA and we hope you can join us next season when we start back up again in late December.

Why is balance so important in relationships?

You’ve probably experienced being thrown off balance and you grab onto anything within reach to stop you from falling.

This is what it’s like in relationship when you don’t take care of your own  balance. We grab at, clutch and cling to those around us in an attempt to stabilise ourselves. The problem is that everything around us is inclined towards movement (unless it’s dead, in which case it’s probably time to let it go). When we’re depending on someone or something to stabilise us we tend not to appreciate it moving on us.

In the case of a relationship we’ll be compelled to, in some way, influence, control or manipulate another in order to maintain some semblance of stability.
Of course, it’s not going to create long lasting stability. Everything changes and we must perform our own balancing act and in doing so, leave others free to develop their own balancing abilities. Of course it’s hard to let others go sometimes, for example, one’s own children as they head off to forge their own path in life but at this stage you can only hope that you’ve sufficiently modelled how to stand on “one’s own two feet” well enough that they’ve become proficient enough at it by then. The more we cling the more we limit others’ opportunity to grow and learn and practice. 

So if you’ve been sufficiently interested in the subject presented here to read this far you might be wondering in which context I’m using the term “balance”. “Does he mean mental balance, emotional balance, physical balance....?”

Well the amazing thing about balance is that it crosses all these divisions, meaning that physical balance effects emotional balance effects mental balance, etc....and because that’s the case, balance always points back to the centre.

What centre? The centre of your universe. You. Just below your belly button. The expression, “to contemplate your navel” is a bit of a backhanded way to refer to someone who likes to meditate. But in light of what we’ve been talking about but in another light it’s actually not a bad idea. To pose the question in relation to anything, inverted Commers where is my centre in this? Is a very fundamental question in reaching confidence debility insurance within oneself in a changing world where things often move in and unpredictable way

In therapy sessions people commonly experiencing stress and doubt in relation to situations in which they are facing. Sometimes there is an appeal and the client for some advice on the matter. The best advice I can give in any case is to invite encourage the person to find a balance in the face of the challenge course when you can find your balance with something you are not dependent on the outcome the surfer does not need to know how the way the scanner ultimately crash so long as he can maintain centre of balance. So what is the golden nugget, the secret to maintaining one’s balance.? Well I don’t think anyone can answer this question for anyone else but the best I can offer is to say that asking the question is the first step. Because when we asked the question we move the focus away from controlling another’s actions and look towards Our own Centre for the answer