2024 has been a year of profound change. It came after a particularly challenging time, call it a Covid hangover, or delayed-onset pandemic fear. Call it a midlife crisis or burnout. It was probably a combination of all those things.
Between 2022 and the start of 2024, I fell pregnant with my second baby, walked away from a seven-figure business that I had wholly linked to my identity, weaned my first baby, caught every sickness known to man, did several very confronting personal development events, had a massive breakdown around money and how strongly it was linked to my sense of worthiness, birthed an entirely new human, gave up my rental and moved my family back home to my mums, had my business books fucked by my accountant and was fired by said accountant when the error became obvious, sold my share portfolio (my only asset) to pay for the above mentioned boo boo, personally wrapped up the entire Phhnix suite of companies and ran my life savings down to almost zero.
2022. Lost.
Throughout all that, and the many more smaller events that make up a human life, I admit I felt very much like a victim. It all felt out of my control, like I was on a freight train hurtling towards total destruction, which, in a way, I was. I lost myself completely, but I also found myself and a new type of strength and love that I didn’t know existed.
Towards the end of 2023, I was already making a few small changes in my life. I started swimming at the beach daily. I had set an intention to start exercising again and began with a modest two sessions a week. I created my Awareness Journal and started using it. I implemented some systems in the kitchen and started taking food more seriously. Every change felt big and hard at the time, but each has resulted in huge shifts and untold amounts of momentum this year.
Today, I am the happiest, most grounded, most grateful, physically fit, strong, emotionally mature, and regulated version of myself that I have ever been. Although I have days where I spiral, and days I feel less than okay, they’re now few and far between. And I don’t need to bypass them when they do arise. I’m so safe and comfortable in my body that I’m able to feel the feelings and quickly come back to my truth and trust. I come back to love.
Healthy and happy. This week.
This month, the start of Spring 2024, feels like an emergence from a very long winter. A winter that started in January 2022 when I had the first inkling that my life had veered off track and needed some major course corrections.
There is so much about that ‘winter’ that I never shared. It was an unprecedented time of going inward and shying away from the attention my Instagram account had always afforded me. I shared bits and pieces in lucid windows, but by and large, I internalised much of what I went through. Feeling powerless over my life was not quite congruent with the version of myself that had started and grown such an impressive social media following. THAT Lauren was a force to be reckoned with, an unstoppable and insatiable woman who bent reality to her liking with pure force of will.
From great heights, I fell. I lost every pillar of my identity in those two years. Every part of me that I thought I needed in order to be loved and accepted fell away. The money. The success. The attention. The business. The travel. Even the creativity.
From great heights, I fell.
But in the quiet that existed once these things fell away, I slowly found myself. And then I realised I had never been lost at all. Those things didn’t define me. ME. A being of such love and power. Coming home to my true self, not the false self, was a privilege that I’ll never be able to put into words accurately. But I am going to try.
Over a series of ten emails, I’m going to share stories of my winter and articulate the ten most profound changes I’ve made in my life that have helped me on my journey. Some are easy, like the one I’ll talk about today. Some require deep commitment and a strong desire to change. All of them have contributed to the Lauren that stands proud and present today.
Life is beautiful. This week.
I’m loosely going to share in the order of perceived importance, which makes water (today’s topic) number ten on the list, and I’ll work up to the biggest ‘needle movers’.
But don’t be fooled. It’s tough to gauge how much of an impact any one thing is making on your physical and mental health, and all ten are suggestions to pay attention to. I made many other changes in my life that didn’t make it to the top ten, but I’ll try to name-drop a few as I go.
Let’s talk about water. Or rather, switching from drinking tap water to spring or filtered water.
This might seem minor or inconsequential to some of you, but let me explain more.
I grew up on tap water. My mother has told me most of my life how lucky I am to have fluoride in my water to have strong teeth. Luckily, I DO have strong teeth and never had a cavity. Of course, my belief naturally developed that the fluoride in my drinking water was the reason why I had never had a cavity. (Considering my fear of the dentist, you can imagine how attached I was to keeping my teeth that way > by drinking tap water.)
Our lives are nothing more than a series of stories. You might call them beliefs. I had a belief that tap water was good for my teeth. I had a STORY that tap water was good for my teeth. But this is a subjective truth. If you were to break down every single story (belief) that forms your perspective of the world, you would find that very few of them are truly true. For a story to be truly true, it needs to be true for everyone on the planet every single time. My coach, Sand, used gravity as the only example of a story that is true for everyone on the planet.
Ever since I grasped the importance of perspective, it’s been like some magical veil has lifted. I still have a lot of attachment to some stories in my life – the formative ones like vegetarianism or what constitutes intolerable and cruel behaviour in others, but mostly, I’m open and flexible to learning and experimenting with myself.
And so, I switched from tap water over the last couple of years after someone told me fluoride shrinks the pineal gland. I can’t say that I believed what they said at the time, but it seemed harmless enough to make the switch. I erred on the side of caution and then learned more later. And learn I did.
The pineal gland is a pinecone-shaped gland located in the centre of the brain. The job of a gland is to secrete hormones directly into your bloodstream that carry messages and coordinate bodily functions. The pineal gland is responsible for melatonin production and is linked to the circadian rhythm and sleep.
On a more spiritual note, the pineal gland is linked to the third eye chakra. And the third eye chakra is linked to our intuition. Intuition transcends thinking. Thoughts lie. We are said to have up to 80,000 individual thoughts a day, and most of them are repetitive and carried through from childhood ‘programming’. (More on that later).
My intuition is the reason I am where I am today.
So how does intuition transcend thinking? You might have a thought, “I left the stove on”. A thought like this could come about because of anxiety, hyper-vigilance, fear or controlling tendencies. Some people spend their lives in fearful thought patterns like this. I vividly remember sharing with my psychologist that I feared my family would die in a car crash if they went out without me. This fear originated with a thought. A thought that lied.
No, intuition is an entirely different thing. It’s an inner knowing. A BODY knowing. It’s the knowing I felt when a stranger gave me directions to a remote river when I was out taking photos one day. RUN – my body screamed. And I listened. It’s the knowing I felt when I quit my job to pursue Instagram as a business. My thoughts said, hell no. My body said you must.
We ALL have intuition. The more time you spend in your body, as opposed to in a busy mind, the more access you have to it. The more you listen to it, the more it speaks to you. It’s your intuition that whispers to you, “There is more for you in this life”. Have you heard it?
My body is where truth lies. Intuition, safety and a strong sense of certainty and knowing.
Whether the pineal gland is linked to my intuition or not, and I believe that it is, I’m not taking any risks when it comes to protecting it. At any rate, protecting my pineal gland is also protecting my body, so that’s obvious.
Tap water is heavily treated. To make it SAFE, you might say. And sure, yes. The chemicals that are added to tap water do make it safe from potentially harmful bacteria, but the chemicals that are added to tap water do have an impact on our bodies. Bodies that are made up of 60% water.
Don’t take my word for it, though. Do your research. In the worst-case scenario, tap water shrinks and damages your pineal gland, leads to calcification of the pineal gland, might be linked to Alzheimer’s disease, and disconnects you from your third eye chakra and intuition. Best case scenario – tap water is safe and may cause fewer teeth cavities.
I’m not willing to take the risk of the worst-case scenario. And that’s not even factoring in the recent reports on cancer-causing chemicals found in the Australian drinking water supply or the terrible state of our water pipelines.
I drink a combination of boxed Spring water, and Kangen filtered water from a friend. I may explore buying my own Kangen filter in the future and possibly even becoming an affiliate. We’ll see.
I have a 25L drum that I fill with my gorgeous friends beautiful filtered and Kangen treated water.
I drink my water at room temperature. As much as I love cold water, I once had a very long and very costly session with a naturopath and the most significant thing she stressed to me, far surpassing the dietary advice, was to steer clear of cold water.
And I drink ENOUGH water, at least a litre a day.
There’s more I could share, The Theory of Water Memory, first discovered by Japanese doctor Masuru Emoto is compelling stuff. (Book: The Hidden Messages in Water). There’s said to be great power in praying over your water before you drink it and being more intentional in general with anything you consume in your body.
But to me, water is an easy win. There’s the minor inconvenience of transporting water into the apartment rather than simply turning on a tap, but a little inconvenience never killed anyone.
In fact, I’d say that a lack of it is killing our spirits. Inconvenience, discomfort, challenging the ego … these are the foundations of a much more interesting life.
So my advice would be:
- Stop drinking water straight from the tap.
- Alternatively, drink filtered water, rain water, or bottled water if you must. (There are implications for bottled water, such as microplastics and sustainability.)
- BONUS: Be intentional when you drink water. Praise it. Thank it for its life-giving properties. Be GRATEFUL for the abundance of water in your life.
I love you.
**Originally published to my email database on the 12th of September, 2024**
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