Stop stressing, start breathing
When life feels too busy, dictated by deadlines, what can you do? Joy Sable meets a therapist with calming adviice
While many young people struggle to work out what sort of career they want when they grow up, some of us are fortunate enough to know what we would like to do from an early age. Julia Hollenbery is one of those lucky people. “I’m a healer, it’s who I am and what I do,” she says. “I suppose I always had a sense of healing. My mum was a physiotherapist working from home and when I was a small girl, I used to join her. With the permission of the clients, she would give me an arm or leg to work on. She probably thought that I was playing, but I always felt I was serious, and I knew what I was doing.”
Brought up in North West London, Hollenbery was active in Jewish youth movements and enjoyed all the customs of a traditional Jewish upbringing, but a breakdown at 18 set her on a path of self-discovery. “I began a process of going to counselling and therapy and being a client. After I had clearly found the benefits of that, I wanted to train in it.”
Her journey took her to Israel, where she spent seven years — including a short time in a religious seminary — and India. During her travels she studied various healing therapies, embracing other belief systems as well as Judaism. Having worked for several Jewish organisations, she was curious to expand her views.
“I was exposed to other things so I really searched everywhere and have found ‘nourishment’ in different traditions. There is a lot of beauty in other traditions and in other places. It is beautiful to be with one’s own symbols, rituals and images and it is really beautiful to see some of the other traditions.”
Her experiences have now crystallised into a book called The Healing Power of Pleasure: Seven Medicines for Rediscovering the Innate Joy of Being. It includes ideas not only from Judaism, but from other philosophies. “I wrote it because I’ve always had a sense that there was this great beauty and ‘deliciousness’ that I didn’t see people around me living. When I wrote it, it poured out of me very clearly, and when I look back on the papers, notes and other workshops that I’ve run over the years, the message was always the same: wanting to wake people up to the ‘deliciousness’ that’s possible.
“I want people to know that whatever difficulty they are in, they can heal, survive and thrive. When one is in the midst of difficulty, anxiety and confusion, one
When everything is so fast, everything is crowding in on us, we can’t get enough breath feels lost.
“When everything is so fast, we’re chasing deadlines and everything is crowding in on us and we can’t get enough breath; we are not enjoying anything. We’ve lost the sense that we’re appreciating we’re alive, there is so much to be grateful for. There are many ways to remember the sacred within everyday life. I call it the magic — it’s just the language I’m using. When something is magical, or sacred, you’re awake in the moment with it. We don’t actually need the rabbis, or priests, or imams — it’s important that we have them, I’m not trying to discredit or dismiss them, but there is an awful lot we can do for ourselves. We can bring that power back into our lives in really simple ways.”
The book first took shape while Hollenbery was living in Tel Aviv, but the idea of writing something had been around much longer. “When I was little, I knew that without doubt, one day I would write a book; it was like an inner impulse. When I lived in Israel and I was in my mid-twenties, I began writing the first part of the book. Then a few years ago it was suddenly time to start writing and the words poured out and so, as I knew it would, the second part was written when I was ready.”
Hollenbery’s book helps the reader take a journey from “mess to magic” through what she calls “seven medicines”: slow, body, depth, relationship, pleasure, power and potency. Various chapters include learning how to appreciate the wonder of the world, creating good relationships and how to find your own unique power. Sceptics may think some of this sounds a little too New Age or straight out of a hippy commune, but it certainly appears to be working for Hollenbery, who glows with happiness and contentment. And at a time when the everyone’s mental health has come under pressure because of the pandemic, her message is increasingly relevant.
“It has been a confusing time for people, a very intense time and for everybody, whoever they are and whatever their situation is, their core fears have been amplified. Whether the cause is the uncertainty of Covid or just the ordinary circumstances of people’s lives, everybody needs to be calm and be grounded. Stop rushing through life, appreciate things: it would be richer, it would be more delightful. I think the learning from lockdown for many people has been that you don’t necessarily need to go out into the world to get enough stimulation, you can attend to the beauty in your own home, for example. It is appreciating, savouring, relishing life; finding things that delight you.”
She has some simple advice for coping during these difficult times. “On the most basic level, make sure you are getting enough sleep, enough food, liquid and physical exercise — and enough human contact. It could be going to the supermarket or the corner shop, or talking to your neighbours, but it is important to connect with other people. Whether it is a tiny conversation in the street, an hour-long heart-to-heart with your best friend or a conversation with a therapist, it is super important to stay in social contact with people.
“Being physically active is important. Maybe for you it is sport, dance, yoga, or going for a walk. It doesn’t matter what it is, but it is really important to move the body quite a lot. Our thinking gets stuck when we sit still, whether that’s sitting on a sofa or in front of a laptop. The last tip is to find some pleasure — it doesn’t matter what it is: food and drink, enjoying the garden or the dog, or the cat, putting on your favourite song. Choose to have a bit of pleasure in the day.”
She acknowledges that going to see a therapist is often not an easy decision. “There is a moment when people go, ‘I need a bit of help’. People have an instinct when they know that something is off. Something is not right with their job, with their relationship, or their body, and people who follow the impulse to say, ‘Hold on, something’s not quite right here, I’m just going to check in with somebody else’ — that does take courage.” For Hollenbery, the journey through therapy, first as a client then as a practitioner, has brought her peace. “I’m very grateful and glad to be able to live the way that I do. It is a calling. It’s what I do and I love it, but we all serve in the ways that we can, with the skills that we can.
“It is amazing to see someone walk in and their face looks one way and when they leave, they are shining, glowing, because that is what this work does. It is very satisfying to see that people have got their lives together, saved relationships that they thought were difficult, or created new relationships. It’s beautiful to know that I am making, in my small way, a positive difference.”
People have an instinct when they know that something is off. Something is not right with their job, with their relationship or their body
The Healing Power of Pleasure: Seven Medicines for Rediscovering the Innate Joy of Being is published by Findhorn Press, £14.55
Actor turned writerdirector Fran Kranz (Dollhouse, The Cabin In the Woods) impresses greatly in this muted and unfussy debut feature about the aftermath of a deadly school-shooting. Seen from the perspective of two sets of parents, Mass stars Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton, Ann Dowd and Reed Birney as four people attempting to make sense of the enormity of what happened.
Jay (Isaacs) and Gail Perry (Plimpton) are parents grieving the death of their son, a victim of a school shooting, while Richard (Birney) and Linda (Dowd) are the parents of the also dead shooter. Six years after the tragedy, the couples agree to take part in an initiative to link the parents of the perpetrator with that of his victims.
The goal is closure, but old wounds are reopened and years
of pent-up anger rise to the surface as conversations get heated.
I first came across Mass last winter as part of Sundance’s very first virtual festival programme and was floored by its simplicity and the effectiveness of its message. Kranz had seemingly succeeded, where many filmmakers had struggled over the years, by opting for a minimalistic and sparse approach.
While stories such as We Need To Talk about Kevin — Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s best selling novel — capitalised on the shock value of its horrifying events by playing with a non-linear narrative, Kranz’s film doesn’t feel the need for any extra artifice. Instead it relies mostly on four phenomenal performances and a gorgeously executed screenplay.
This is a heartbreaking tale of grief and despair which manages to tackle one of he thorniest subjects in American society right now with impressive maturity and precision. Kranz has taken the injunction to “show, don’t tell” to a brand new level, and for that he must be commended.