Healing Steps

Healing Steps

This campaign is a response to a long-term illness and the goal of the campaign is to raise initial funds for producing a series of short (15-20min) videos that offer a shared space for people with long-term illness and chronic pain. The purpose of these videos is to introduce simple practices for self-care and healing as well as share my own experience of living with long-term illness with people who are living in similar situations.

Background I have been sick with covid-19 and long covid for altogether 25 months now and at this point still continue having daily symptoms that greatly affect my ability to function normally in every-day life. During this period the symptoms have varied from being very severe to somewhat milder. I have not been hospitalized at any point so I´ve stayed home though at times it has been a real challenge to manage even small every-day life tasks. Long-term sickness changes and re-arranges everything in life. What seemed to be small before is suddenly quite challenging or even impossible to do. Working has not been possible for me at all during the past 25 months but slowly my ability to do things is improving. Right now, though knowing that the situation can change on a daily basis, I am able to do short periods of activities with lots of resting in between. I want to find myself doing meaningful things with respect to my physical condition and that is where the inspiration for doing these short videos came up.

Like many others with long-term illness especially while living alone, I have been struggling a lot financially. Amazingly, around 90% of long covid patients have been rejected to receive sick-leave support from the officials, so we are basically not exisiting for the society. It is very hard to find ways to cope with all the every day life costs and health costs that keep piling up as the sickness continues. So this project is also about finding help for my financial struggles for few months as I am not able to work normally.

There are so many people who are in similar condition, dealing with chronic pain or unknown illness, isolation, facing fear of uncertainty and this kind of vulnerability that touches many areas of ourselves and our lives at once. One of the big challenges of a more severe illness, especially if it is yet unknown, is to receive the support and help that one needs – both physically and mentally. Though in my case it has been difficult to find any help from the general health care system for this condition, I have felt very fortunate in terms of my professional background in body-mind practices and the spiritual education, practices and the guidance that I have been able to receive continuously over the past 15 years and especially during the sickness. I feel rich with different practices that have supported me greatly in dealing with and transforming the experience of long-term illness as well as other challenging conditions in my personal life and the way I experience the challenges of this world at large.

No matter what the diagnosis is, the common need to be seen, heard and supported is the same. These videos can provide another drop in the ocean of different ways to find relief while going through an illness, especially for people who do not have many self-care tools and practices to support their condition.

Content The videos consist of sharing my own "healing steps" in everyday life - the ways I have found relief both physically and mentally during my sickness - simple moments of somatic movement, energy work, touch, breathing practices and short meditations or mind practices. Rather than introducing any specific method, the videos are more about working with some of the core principles that are common in different methods that I have studied and practiced - principles like working with the elements in our body and in the outer environment, certain energy points and areas, healing touch, natural alignment of our body and our energy and basic principles of open, warm and caring awareness that we can develop towards ourselves and our pain. L ess formal ways of practice, creativity and space for each person´s own experience is emphasized. The idea is to create a space for sharing experiences, reflections and practices in an open format rather than particularly teaching or diving deeper into any specific method.

Each video is about 15-20min long and within the three months I would like to produce around 10 videos .These videos will be published in a YouTube channel established for the project. I will also create a section for the videos in my webpage and they will be out first in Finnish language and then in English.

Finances In the first phase, funding is raised through this crowd funding campaign. The campaign covers the first three months of part-time work (500€/month) and the costs of a proper tripod and microphone for a mobile phone camera (100€).

I am open to develop this project further to see which format would serve the purpose best. It might mean continuing to produce these kind of videos, writing a blog or offering online- practice sessions or workshops that are more specific - the main point is to share and connect through activities that are free of charge or donation based for the people attending. This project might have a life of its own after creating the first videos and I am open to see where things would naturally go from there.

My professional background is in somatic dance and somatic movement methods that work with body-mind connection. I am also trained as an instructor/educator in Japanese Shindo®-bodywork method that is based on the meridians and includes both self-healing practices as well as treatments. I´ve been working in the field of well-being and creativity over the past 20 years with different kinds of groups and individuals in various settings. I´ve been studying and practicing Tibetan Buddhism for the last 17 years and since 2008, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche has been my main teacher as I have been deepening my study and practice in the Bon tradition. As a part of my practice, I have been an instructor of Tsa Lung Trul Khor (Tibetan Yoga) since 2012, instructing open classes and courses through Ligmincha Finland.

Webpage (in finnish): www.elonvoimaa.fi