<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side one <&>0:51 i don't actually like the term new age but people recognise the term new age and they understand um where we're coming from when we talk about that er i understand it as er being responsible for yourself being selfsufficient as well voc for your health your happiness wellbeing spirituality and also er understanding the purpose of being here <.>w would you call the new age for YOU anyway a a a spiritual movement yes i think so yeah it's a turning towards god people might have another name for god <,> whatever they see as their force? <.>wha what do you mean by god i see god in everything in nature? <,> um like god is voc just in everything um is it a force a life force an energy <{><[>a person <[>yes yeah <,> creator and that creating is still going on <{><[>it could still be happening <[>oh i think so yes i think so yeah wonder where your spiritual journey began did you <&>2:00 voc where did you go sunday school and all of those things and church go to church <{><[>and things <[>yes well my family <.>w is anglican um i still think of myself as anglican and my father went to church every sunday and we were made to really feel guilty if we didn't go to church every sunday with him er which i began to resent <,> i found church to be quite boring it seemed to have a set pattern every week and the sermon seemed to always be about people that don't come to church and <,> things like that it probably didn't but that was my perception of it at the time and my sister and i used to play a little game during the sermon and we'd look for a word that started with a and then we'd look for a word that started with b and we'd see how far through laughs how far through the alphabet we could get by the time the sermon ended tut which wasn't very good i did go on later <.>t to teach sunday school and went to bible class and all those things so i had a a religious um tut upbringing <&>3:00 has this not <{><[>continued i mean you've left it behind <.>ha now have you <[>orthodox yes i found er when we got married i really i left the church really then didn't go back to church we went um for christenings and weddings and things like that <,> but not um organised religion so what's your attitude to <{><[>er the <.>ch voc orthodox religion now <[>clears throat i think it has a place um i feel we're all heading for the same direction whatever that might be when we die we're all heading the same the same place and religion is just a part of er <.>th new age is a wide vision and religion is just a part of that so you left um the church or organised religion behind um where did your life journey take you i mean <.>w you've had some major turning points i understand in your life um where did you go <{><[>next <[>we <.>ha we had some turning points um i found that when my daughter was two er and she's now <&>4:00 seventeen so fifteen years ago she was sick for a whole winter she had bronchitis back to the doctor onto antibiotics well for a week back to the doctor same for the whole winter tut and the doctor said to me there's nothing you can do and it'll probably develop into asthma <,> and i thought no kid of mine's gonna have asthma there must be something i can do <,> and at that time there was two homeopaths in new zealand and one of them was in titahi bay which was near where we lived at that stage and i took her along to him and um he took her off milk and onto goats milk and different homeopathic things and that was the big changing point because we looked at our diet and we looked at health we really got interested in health i think it takes a crisis to make you look at at at whatever and i guess a lot of people have different crisis crises through their life which make them look at different aspects <,> so that was a big change at that stage <&>5:00 too around about that stage i really wanted to be out of wellington wanted to move out of there but i couldn't encourage my husband to to make the move and um <{><[>i got <[>why was that i mean what was going on for you at that time i don't know but i just didn't feel happy where i was <,> um <,> i couldn't really put my finger on it but i just knew i didn't want to be there <,> and i went down and down and i <.>w had <,> years of valium and anti depressants trying to make myself feel better <.>a and in the end <,> he did realise that we needed to move and we headed north and we moved to hamilton <,> tut and that was great <,> for a while the weather was better the weather was really a big pattern because i like to be outside and in wellington you just don't have much opportunity to be outside and that was good for a while but then i could see the same old patterns coming back coughs and i knew if i wasn't didn't get out of hamilton i was gonna end up in the same <,> boat um of course when i look back it <&>6:00 was i needed to look at those <,> at those patterns and work out what it was that was that was the problem but at that stage i wasn't aware enough to realise that it was inside me <,> wasn't something external as well can you tell me what you think now what the problem was um tut i probably didn't want to face my myself <,> i knew i wasn't happy but i didn't know why i wasn't happy <,> i didn't know where to turn to find out why i wasn't happy now i <.>c now i have the resources perhaps to be able to look at why things aren't working and deal with them but in those days i didn't i didn't know i suppose this is where the new age is is a mushrooming business now and there's different ways that you can <,> you can do that um one of my favourite ways is to actually go to my runes <,> and um <{><[>ask a question <[>tell me tell me what runes are <&>7:00 laughs runes are an ancient viking um it's an oracle they call it an oracle it's not a fortune telling thing but <{><[>um <[>is it actually er little stones <{><[>with marks on them <[>they're little stones yes right they're little stones with symbols on them and you ask a question and pull one of the stones from the bag and then you look up in the book and see er what you need to er maybe address at that stage and i still find those very useful <,> if i'm stuck with something like quite recently we had a lot of negativity seemed to be coming at us and i couldn't work out what it was that was the problem and why why it should be happening when i was trying to do good laughs and that just helped me get back on track <,> so you might do it through tarot cards a tarot reader you might do it through um tut a psychic er the runes maybe just even going and sitting in the garden or sitting on the beach you know it doesn't have to be a magical special thing um just whatever whatever <&>8:00 you can if it works best for you to tune into yourself that's what works so i didn't have those tools then i didn't know where to look i had noone to guide me um <,> tut there was a lot of negativity around and it wasn't really i guess till i could see that it was that that i needed to deal with <,> that i was attracting to myself <,> what was happening so in a sense you were MAKING your life unhappy yes i was yeah i was dwelling on the negative <,> instead of making the best of my situation voc do you think this was something like voc you know the label suburban neurosis <{><[>was it was it something that you were going through <[>yeah absolutely yes i think so yes i was at home in the suburbs with two preschool kids and young children um <,> and yes i didn't really enjoy those years at all <,> i love my girls now that they're voc independent laughs it's really great yeah tut <&>9:00 so you went from hamilton to auckland <,> <{><[>to live <[>we moved to auckland yes and um it was really amazing i must have known that that was where i was going to really find find myself i felt like we went home we still had rough times when we got there <.>th houses were very expensive and we looked at something like a hundred and forty five houses in the first couple of months and voc because housing was just so dear and what we could afford voc it was a bit hard to laughs accept tut um <,> so there were still tough times but i really wanted to be there i felt that i that was okay i could cope with it then <,> about um oh six months after we moved there i attended a class we'd got a bit away from the health in those um <,> <.>i intervening years and i attended a class that was run by a naturopath and it was a ten week class and every week we went along and we learnt something new tut and that was really great and the last week um we talked <&>10:00 about louise hay now louise hay is is very big in the states she believes that you create your own reality and that for every physical <,> illness that you might have there's a a metaphysical reason of why it's happening um for instance heart attacks and heart problems are that there's no joy in your life <,> so by looking up her book if you've got say a sore right arm or a or a left finger or whatever she has a reason of why that might be occurring <,> she's had a lot of success with aids people er in the states so she's very well known for that as well i mean does she <,> help with cures for aids or is this <{><[>claimed or <[>well i don't know if they can be cured but they can be put into a <.>re um <,> recession so she's keeping them well a bit longer so she's saying <{1><[1>that um these physical manifestations of ill health um <,> have what you <.>s i think described as <{2><[2>metaphysical reasons spiritual reasons or psychological reasons <{3><[3>perhaps <[1>than usual <&>11:00 <[2>have a metaphysical yes <,> um <[3>yes the mental a mental thought pattern quite often it's a thought pattern <,> yeah cos we actually get sick from the outside in so if you're depressed or you're overtired or overstimulated or worried if you don't deal with that <,> symptom you it manifests itself physically somewhere in your body <,> i work with bach flowers and flower essences and they work on the mind and the emotions <,> so if you can get to that stage you can actually prevent yourself from getting really sick <,> it's like if you listen to the whispers you don't need to hear the shouts <,> but we <.>d often don't listen to the whispers if we're a bit tired we'll often push ourselves a bit further and a bit further when you say you work with bach flowers and essences <.>w <.>w can you tell me that in lay terms i mean what are bach flowers and essences <&>12:00 they're made from the flowers of plants different plants each one has a different property and um they're picked while the dew is on them and they're put in a glass container with pure water and the action of the sun the sun's rays take the vibrations it's a vibrational medicine some people would claim that um what you're playing with is magic <{><[>really word <[>laughs hey life's magic laughs it's not black magic though i wouldn't i wouldn't <,> <.>da dabble in black magic <,> rituals and um <,> tut and putting spells on people and things like that but but life is really magic it's so exciting to what extent would you say that these <,> well somewhat strange things to many people anyway um are simply metaphors or symbols or or or ways of changing yourself they help you to voc i mean what's your <{><[>voc how can i put it <,,> what you're really doing is working with your own imagination <&>13:00 <[>clears throat yes yep and er these things just help you to do that they're sort of <{><[>signposts rather than doing anything in themselves <[>yes coughs yes well we're all we're all supposed to be well all the time that is how we should be and we're not because our bodies have just got out of balance in some way so what we're doing with any of these things like like i guess naturopathy or massage or tarot cards or the runes looking at why we're not quite in balance and getting ourselves put back into balance so that we are well <&>13:30