Brad Fennell

And so I came crashing down!

2012-02-08T22:44:00.000-08:00

As I came crashing down off my kids’ new motorbike a few things came running through my head. Firstly, this is going to hurt, and it did. Not in a major get me too hospital sort of way, no, more of a, this graze is going to hurt like hell and leave me swearing through my clenched teeth as I wash it off scenario. Realistically though my pride took a bigger hit than my body.

I love, care and cherish having my children in my life, they mean the world to me, but in that moment when gravity was drawing me to its fateful conclusion I thought, “ I’ve got to stop bleeding for my kids”.

It’s a metaphor. I’m learning. Somewhere in the “we” there has to be a “me”, it’s just a thought, one worth having before we next draw blood. It's a little less painful that way.

Directions

2012-02-02T20:35:00.000-08:00

No job is the wrong job, unless it’s the wrong job for you. No path is the wrong path, unless it’s the wrong path for you. No life is the wrong life, unless it is the wrong life for you.

Fortunately life doesn’t give up, and continues to drag us in the way that we know we must eventually go.

Find your dreaming, or you may just die!

2012-01-24T21:40:00.000-08:00

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

Edgar Allan Poe

I know, it’s a little dramatic, but it needs to be. It’s happening around me and in me, it’s collective. Sure, it probably won’t happen tomorrow, but when we keep going against ourselves it catches us.

And death becomes our guiding light trying to awaken us. I know it can sound strange but its finality raises the stakes of this game.

The morning rises with things to do, but I stop to sit with the status quo, and a spark of life is extinguished.

You know when the way you’re doing it is killing you; when it goes against your path, you feel it.

I’m not saying it easy, it’s anything but, I have responsibilities too. But in the end it’s a balancing act, as we are called to follow our needs, our nature, our dreams.

It’s patterned into our problems and joys; the things we love and hate, guiding, pushing, pulling, but mostly directing.

In the end it’s up to us; the choice is ours.

Sure it can be hard when you’re set in a pattern of yesterday, the way it was, but this is serious, there’s an end to this play.

And change is happening like it or not as our lives and dreams call us in.

Calling us to awaken to our dream.

How to make the world a better place, One garden at a time. Ps. We are giving stuff away.

2012-01-18T00:32:00.000-08:00

So over Christmas I got thinking about how to make 2012 more interesting than ever. And then while on holiday we got a little too much sun. Not over the top lobster red, but a little more of the summer rays than we would have liked. So we went to the garden and grabbed ourselves a piece of Aloe Vera. If you have never used Aloe Vera on sun burn then you must, it’s extraordinary. And that’s when I got an idea…

I realised that the world will be a better place when every home has an Aloe Vera plant. Even if all you have is a small veranda, you can stick it in a pot and it will work. If you live in hotter regions like we do in Queensland it’s essential, you have no choice. Suddenly you have your own pharmacy at hand, it’s not mixed with alcohol or other preservatives, and it just keeps growing. Seriously, if you live on the Gold Coast it will grow like crazy.

So if I want to make the world a better place what do I have to do? Then I got it. I went out to the gardening shop, got some little holders to put some dirt into and grabbed some baby Aloe Vera plants from our garden and stuck in a hundred of them. That’s how you have a good time on holidays!

Now what? I’m about to give them away to anyone who wants them. Not quite yet, but very soon. So as soon as they are ready I’ll give you a yell and come in and grab one and change your life. You don’t have to come into Studio Qi for a treatment, just pop in and say hi and there will be one waiting for you.

And then we’ll make the world a better place. See you soon. Brad.

Implementing a new life skill

2012-01-15T15:30:00.000-08:00

This morning I created five blog posts in my head, and that was just before breakfast. Ideas seem to come so fast at times that I can miss them as new thoughts fire up and leave me missing the previous three. I think that we’re all like that once we get going.

So here’s a new life skill that I’m starting to implement:

Before I go to Facebook, Twitter or any other number of time consuming websites, I have to do, make, construct or produce something creative. It’s not that those sites don’t give me inspiration, knowledge and thrill, they do, they enrich and stimulate how I feel, but if that’s all I’m doing I’ve missed the creative angle and a vital piece of the puzzle.

You see, I now think we have to create, I think it’s who we are and how we change the world, our world.

It’s a flip!

It used to be research first create later, but that’s just too risky a move. I’ve ended up researching till the cows come home and we have no cows.

Now it’s create now research later.

That way the work gets done.

Beginnings

2012-01-12T21:02:00.000-08:00

So I hibernate, unplug and drop from the world of everyday things.

Because I must, we all will in time.

And run barefoot in the shade of the suns setting light.

I meet dugongs at the end of this world that speak of things not of this time.

Masks are removed to be again reinstalled.

Though this time their sit will tilt a little more.

As finally we become the practitioners of weird.

And our journey begins.

Beginnings, endings, beginnings.

Endings, beginnings, endings.

Beginnings, endings, beginnings.

Sometimes what we need is a dream

2011-12-12T15:32:00.000-08:00

You know, there are big questions and little questions. Like, what to have for dinner? That’s a little one. And, what career should I spend the rest of my life doing? That’s a big one. I know, just because you start out on a journey doesn’t necessarily mean that your path won’t fork, but I had a time in my life when which direction to take left me feeling more than a little stuck.

You see I had just started in one direction when another was placed before me. Do I finish the old or start with the new? There’s no easy answer as I talked myself in and out of twisted pros and cons.

Then I had a dream:

I’m standing upon a tower constructed of bamboo when I notice an old Chinese man staggering down a dusty road with his walking stick. Feeble as he first appears, he carries with him a wise cunning. He approaches my structure and vigorously begins to shake it until it comes crashing to the ground, me along with it. As I lie in the dust a smirk comes to his eye delivering me a moment of fear as I realize more is still to come. He walks over to me and places a large wide shallow bowl of green powdered herbs before me. Quickly he reaches into the powder and throws the herbs into my face.

With this I’m suddenly awoken from the dream and clearly know what to do next.

My path is acupuncture. Its ideas, theories and practices will send my worldview crashing to the ground and deliver out of the dust a new paradigm.

And that it did.

Sometimes we just can’t reason the answer out.

Sometimes what we need is a dream.

What if you Brought all of Yourself to Dinner?

2011-12-06T21:46:00.000-08:00

There’s always someone better than us when we put our individual components under the microscope.

There’s better climbers than me, lots better, a lot better slackliners, most gymnasts would find my level of competence ridiculous, most mountain bikers would see me coming in a few hours later, some acupuncturist understanding of neuroscience leaves me with my mouth open, there’s better writers whose structure is always right, better dancers who’s moves don’t raise a smirk and those that have lived wilder lives than mine.

Get too up-close and focused on the fine details and you can end up feeling a little less.

But then:

You can pan on out and take another look as you combine it all altogether: I know no other acupuncturist, speaker, writer, climber, slackliner, mushroom drinker, herb eater (medicinal that is), wild at hearter, inner worker, childhood adventurer, tree climbing, passion freaking, life designer, like myself, anywhere, and I’m only getting started. That combination is just too hard to find, I don’t even know how I found it, and it’s certainly not replicable. It’s just not a franchise model.

When you put all your stuff together, all the accumulated bits that have been gathered over your life, what you get is gold. In isolation it’s a note but together it’s a song. Gather it up over a lifetime and you have your self a tune, one that has never before been played.

Your gift is not your secluded parts; it’s all of you that you bring. Suddenly you’ve got yourself something remarkable, a freight train that just won’t stop.

Now what’s left is to get on with the stuff that matters, the stuff that means something, to you. Now you get to bring all of you to the table.

Care or I’ll leave

2011-11-30T20:56:00.000-08:00

It’s a new world, now we can choose!

It’s no longer a threat, it’s just the way it is.

I’m talking to our bank and they just don’t care. I mean they genuinely couldn’t give a stuff, they’re too big.

Our phone and internet company leaves me on hold after the confusion of 5 computerized questions for 15 minutes to change a direct debt, that’s to pay them. I have to wait; they’ll charge me a fee if I don’t. They don’t give a stuff, not really, they’re just too big.

Our big phone company gives us what they assure is a great winning deal on our business phone, we change to the little guy and suddenly were saving $200 a month, interesting.

Here we were with the big guys paying a premium, but what was it for.

This is not a complaint, no, it’s too late for that, the relationship broke down, they didn’t want to hear, I’m gone, the horse has bolted, the relationship is done and I’m changing. Occupy Burleigh has begun.

Don’t get me wrong, its not that I’m “anti the big guy”, not at all, this is not about size, what I am anti is non-caring. Care or you loose, care or I’ll leave, care because we humans thrive on it, its like air to our soul, forget it and I’m out of here.

Sure loyalty is great, you can stick it out because its what you know, I did for years, but when it’s no longer working and suddenly your saving thousands and I mean thousands, it’s time to say goodbye.

And that‘s what I like most about our modern world. Now we have the choice, now we have the Internet, now we can find our perfect fit.

A dollar is important but it’ not everything, the new economy says care, care, care, but genuinely care, authentically care, because if the relationship breaks down, if we stop talking, if we both stop winning, then, it’s over.

It was good while it lasted, but when it is done it’s done, I’m out, free at last.

Those things your grandfather taught you

2011-11-23T21:56:00.000-08:00

I was remembering something that my grandfather once said that for some reason stuck, “It’s good being old, you can be rude and get away with it”.

In actual fact he wasn’t rude at all, well generally, but as rudeness is in the eye of the beholder I guess none of us can really say. But as I tick off another birthday his words resonate with new meaning beyond the confusion that I felt as a ten-year-old.

Now being rude doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to insult everyone I come into contact with, treating another with respect, tolerance and caring seems to be more essential than ever.

But hopefully growing older allows me to become less attached to the world and care a little less for another’s thoughts as I awaken to the fact that I may not be around as long as I first thought, that being forever; then priorities begin to change.

It’s not that I’ve had a bad diagnosis, its just life, its terminal, and I’m on a quick car to the second half. That’s the sharp end when the important stuff matters.

Sure, like most of us I was trained to be polite and I appreciate this, I really do, it’s an asset in my bag and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but sometimes I’m left trapped without the key to a cage that I just didn’t build.

Now the important stuff begins, the stuff that I’m interested in, the stuff that may make you think that I’m losing my mind, actually I’ve questioned that myself, but it’s the stuff that I have to do, the stuff that screams to me, the stuff that’s switching me on, and the stuff that’s too important to care what another may say.

All the great change makers at some point have been rude to someone. If we want to challenge the status quo we’re sure to piss someone off. And that includes ourselves as we try to hold together what no longer works. I can drive myself mad.

It’s not personal it’s just crucial.

And now?

Now there’s no time left.

Now it’s time to change the world.

Now it’s time to change my world.

Thanks Pop.

The Things we Need to Do

2011-11-16T21:07:00.000-08:00

I had an interesting experience:

As a family we were sitting around talking about what we would like to change, what it was that we felt we needed. My two eldest boys, nine and seven, could freely communicate exactly what it was they hoped for. Then it was my turn, I froze and couldn’t think of anything, I was shocked when they caught me in a clueless moment. Left blank I could do nothing but laugh. They seemed to like that.

It’s interesting when you ask a child what they would like for Christmas; they generally have no problems creating a list three foot long. They rarely battle with worthiness or struggle with the financial implication of their choices; they just know exactly what it is that gives them the most amount of fun possible.

When our eldest son was six, he was definite about his need for a multimillion-dollar boat, while he didn’t get it, it did make me think. I’m not saying that you should bend to their every wishes, it’s important that they learn patience, delayed gratification and all that stuff too, but this isn’t about them, they know what they want, they’re sorted, no this is about us, we adults as we ask what turns us on, what is it that we want, what moves us in the direction that makes life the most interesting possible? It’s a terrify moment when you awaken to the fact that you haven’t a clue where you are or how you got there. Suddenly the warning bell ring and you have to drop a paradigm that no longer fits.

And so we are encourage to get what we haven’t quite got. In a moment my kids became my teachers, as children so readily can, thanks boys, challenging me to find, discover and live the most interesting life possible. It’s best to facilitate what genuinely feels good and move away from what brings us down. Yes, you need the practical stuff too, but if we ignore our joy filter everything seems to go out of whack as life becomes dull and mundane. At some point we have to turn one- eighty degrees and follow the only compass that we have, our hearts, our courage, our trust and our intuition. In the end we have no choice, it’s what we’re here to do.

And we can’t let the kids have all the fun.

Influence

2011-11-01T18:51:00.001-07:00

Thinking back to my earliest of influences: family, friends, teachers all playing their role, but the greatest influence that brings me to this place is nature itself, without her I’m lost.

Bigger, bigger, bigger

2011-10-31T21:45:00.000-07:00

It’s strange you know, when I climb, it makes me bigger, literally as I hang from my arms the action opens my body, extending, lengthening, contorting and remind me to live bigger, bigger, bigger. It’s important to have access to those moments in life that open us up to parts of ourselves that we don’t ordinarily identify with. That way we can do the things that we may not have ordinarily done, and make life more interesting.

Following

2011-10-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

I just got this today:

Following life as it calls, this time with no regard for the outcome, rather actively participating in each step seems an interesting way to live. Where we end I haven’t a clue, but the ride is sure to be stupendous!

Finding the Right Fit

2011-10-12T01:28:00.000-07:00

When finding the right acupuncturist, doctor, therapist, healer or mechanic for that matter this is my number one guiding rule, trust yourself. Sure, check their qualifications, it is preferable that your doctor has spent some time at university, and by all means listen to your friends’ recommendations, that’s what probably got you there in the first place, but in the end the only thing that you really have is your gut.

Now when I say gut I mean a combination of things. You want to get all the information you can: listen to friends, read the web, check reviews. Once you have all that information and it is all stacking up then you get to go and meet the person or organization and find out if you’re a fit; just because this person has been right for everybody else does not necessarily mean that they are right for you.

Someone can give you all the guarantees and come with all the rave reviews, but in the end it could all end tomorrow. What I mean is that we never really know. In the end you have to follow yourself and what feels right.

I personally recommend other practitioners all the time, practitioners that I truly believe in, but we never really know how things will react till we put them together, before then it is just theory, there is always the x factor.

I know it’s simple, but I think it’s important for all of us to remember in this time of expanding options that we have a choice and we don’t have to stay with things that are no longer working.

That way we can spend our time hunting out those remarkable individuals: poets, scientists, artists, musicians and healers that fit, that are right for us that can follow us and leave our lives somehow changed.

Who are you?

2011-10-06T22:23:00.001-07:00

When you tell me a dream I know a little more; who it is you are, your hero at play. Our dreams awaken us to forgotten and feared lives that must someday be lived. We all have a myth, a path to follow as we do battle with our destiny. Our own rhythm has followed us from our earliest days, now as then, pointing our way home.

Nightmares

2011-10-03T16:42:00.000-07:00

Dreams are often terrifying as they expose the duality of who we are and shine light on our opposing self.

Things we need but would rather avoid

2011-09-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

As I recently peered into the medical system I got this:

Gratification for those dedicated people that work within it, that deliver a system of care that saves lives.

But I also got this:

Do whatever you can, whatever you have to today to stay out of it tomorrow. If this means dietary, exercise or lifestyle changes then do it. It’s that same old mantra “prevention is better than cure”.

Sure there are things that we can not help, life can be tricky, as that old Serenity Prayer says:

God grant me the serenity to  Accept the things I cannot change;  Courage to change the things I can;  And the Wisdom to know the difference.

But there’s stuff that we can change, stuff that with courage will change tomorrow and with grace leave us enjoying the privilege of a modern health care system, from a distance!

It's Changing

2011-08-31T22:18:00.000-07:00

Following our nature good becomes great.

This time it’s a revolution that’s time has come.

Something alchemical is occurring as lead reveals gold.

Dreaming consecutive dreams of long lost friends, awakened to a call.

Experiencing something we never expected.

A moment of contemplation answered by the eye of a cresting moon.

Something’s cooking in the background of life, momentarily revealed as the whole world changes.

For a moment in time we are one with the eternal dream.

Try as we may to force it back, something has irreversibly changed.

Where the wild things roam

2011-08-25T23:15:00.000-07:00

At what point did we stop following our fire, that inner guide that showed us our way. So often replaced by our shoulds and coulds as we followed our mantra of safety. As we shifted to the realm of statistical significance did we misplace the unknown for the one that would fit? Something became lost that called us to play, like the child who runs wild and barefoot all day. That’s how we ran; it hurt but our fires burnt bright.

The beginning middle and end

2011-08-18T23:40:00.000-07:00

We cycle finishing where we first began.

It was always there.

But the journey had to be made.

This door initially opened when I first left our shores, to find myself, my direction. Unforgettable as it was I arrived back at the beginning, but somehow nothing remaining the same.

And it continues, beginnings infused with flavors of past, reminding me of T.S. Elliot:

We shall not cease from exploration 

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started 

And know the place for the first time.

We need not go, but sometimes we must, as the path leads us anew to the place where we first began.

What We Lose For Safety

2011-08-03T22:47:00.001-07:00

At times we're pulled into a system that whips control away, a scientifically proved double-blinded study changes the whole protocol and we become a stat.

Of course this is fine, except when it isn't.

Sometimes things just don't feel right to matter how proven they are. You see there is always the one; that one that just doesn't respond in the way it should, the way its meant too.

Sometimes the system goes against everything inside and we lose our inner authority.

Sometimes we give away a little too much for safety.

A new paradigm for change

2011-07-06T23:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve come from a pushing background where achievement came through goal orientated striving. I’m sure it can work, but it didn’t, not for me, not in the way that I thought that it would.

But somehow something changed and it worked out better than I could have planned, in fact I could never have really planned it.

Extraordinary.

It’s funny how change can occur; you need change nothing, change itself encircles us. Like dreams, you needn’t remember them; they work their moods throughout your day.

Suffering seems to happen when our external views get in the way of what is trying to occur. Often who it is that we’re becoming is opposed to what others and we think. Pain arises when we feel trapped by an identity that no longer fits.

We couldn’t get our new premises together, as much as we tried it wouldn’t work. When it came to designing a new house, not a chance. Push as hard as we liked it would not budge. We knew it wasn’t right but felt caught by feelings of having to do something.

We forgot that something was happening all along as life delivered us the prospect of a new life, extensions, sun soaked dreaming and holiday laughs; spontaneously.

Sometimes the only thing to do is give up and get out of the way.

The Most Exciting Research Ever

2011-06-28T23:39:00.000-07:00

It’s interesting the way we think. Recently while reading an article I became excited about the reporting of research that suggested a reduced calorie diet could reverse the markers of type 2 diabetes. Debate then ensued to whether this was a so-called cure or remission. Call it what you like, what is important is that the blood levels were back to normal.

For a disease that has been seen as incurable and progressive (it’s only going to get worse) that can be reversed by something as simple as a change in diet is extraordinary.

But this type of change is not always embraced as the article concludes with hope that further research will lead to pharmaceutical cures.

While we seem to have the answer, if a medication produced these results it would be seen a revolution, the change becomes too difficult as we search for a result that means we need make minimal lifestyle changes.

If real healing is to occur perhaps it’ll take a revolution, one in which we choose the lives that we wish to live.

Back to Where it all Began

2011-06-07T22:07:00.000-07:00

In my dreams, visions and meditations I’m often taken back, way back, to the beginning, to the big bang.

What better place to start a creative adventure; right where it all began.

If you held the seed of possibility, and you do, what then?

That moment before the critical self gets you, the moment when all that exists is pure potential.

The home of creation.

Time to escape

2011-06-02T20:17:00.000-07:00

We are off camping, because it simplifies everything, and I think that may be just what is needed.

Sometimes you just have to escape the jumble.

See you next week.

Achieving

2011-05-31T23:54:00.000-07:00

The most important work that you can do, the work that you are here to do is to build the most interesting life possible.

In a culture that embraces achievement we have to make sure that the things we are striving for are of value to us.

That’s why I like camping.

Achievement moves to a new zone

Getting a fire going, watching nature go by and listening to each other’s stories.

Suddenly you're achieving everything you could momentarily desire.

Go ahead, achieve, just make sure that you know what it is you really want.