Women Up Top
Lisa Mitchell
"I had these ideas that women who got high up were, basically, bitches! I had this dreadful perception that they were...ball busters. I thought they were control freaks and had to be difficult people to get where they were. And that they were perfect; perfectly groomed and I imagined they had perfect cars that were clean and perfect houses that were clean..." Tania Evans, 38.
It's an urban myth (not without its exceptions) that women in senior management are essentially men in women's clothing. What Tania Evans discovered however, is that women at the top were as normal as she, and that many of the barriers women place in their career paths are in their heads rather than written into the workplace hierarchy.
Evans was "on the brink" of career change and needing a push when she came across a career development course for women called Top Steps run by the Waite Group. She'd been working as an advertising executive in the branch office of a multinational publishing company. She's a single mother who wanted to start her own business for more flexibility. On the course, Evans met a range of female executives - presenters and course participants - who changed her perception of herself and women in senior management dramatically. The myths that fed her inertia quickly dissipated.
"Presenters would let down their guard and talk about their lives, warts and all, and so people could relate to that and give their stories too," says Evans. One presenter, the Human Resources head of a multinational company with 20,000 people under her, was worried about accepting the job unless she could be home every night by 7pm to have dinner with her family. "They agreed to her conditions. I was impressed [because I realised] that all you have to do is be clear about what you want when you take a job, instead of taking it, and struggling [to fit in] and then complaining about it later." Then there was the marketing executive with a publicly listed company who explained how she managed to fit in her frequent waxing appointments.
"It's true, women are high maintenance!" Evans explains. "And she was saying, it's okay to be high maintenance. They talked about all the facets of being a woman in the workplace." One female politician spoke of her difficulty in having female toilets installed in the office and then, the issue of funding for sanitary disposal units.
According to Adrienne Dolphin, National Programs Manager for the Waite Group, many women on the course are starting to develop significant responsibility and budgets within their jobs. They might be a manager with staff or someone with professional standing but little management experience.
"A lot of the participants are looking for the opportunity to assess their options and do some personal strategic planning: looking at where they have got to, what their next moves might be, whether they have utilised the skills, do they want to diversify and putting some goals in place."
Dolphin says the barriers to their advancement, perceived or otherwise, include striking a balance between life and work, overcoming the often invisible entrenched barriers in a masculinised workplace and the undervaluing of their own skills and abilities. All these issues are dealt with on the intensive 7 week course that includes group sessions and one-on-one counselling. Evans hoped to improve her communications skills and find out more about how corporate Australia worked in order to build a business with corporate clients. She learned about the different communication styles between men and women, a psychological profile assessed her strengths and weaknesses as a communicator and presenter, and she learned how to command her own space in the corporate world. Individual sessions with a qualified career counsellor helped her to form an action plan to clarify and achieve her goals. She began the 7-week course in July 2000 and by September, had started her own public relations company. One of her first clients casually suggested a face to face meeting in Sydney; not an easy proposition for a single mother in Melbourne. "I thought, 'Omigod! Come up for a meeting?!' I had to act like I did it every day." Had it not been for her Top Steps training, Evans says, she would probably have arrived in a suit, with a briefcase, and snuck into her boardroom seat in the neatly inconspicuous manner of women who lack confidence. "I carried it off just fine. I made sure, when I sat down in their boardroom, that I 'expanded' [just as men tend to put their arms behind their heads or take up an exaggerated cross legged posture to 'own' their space]... I wore a t-shirt and nice skirt and just had a notebook tucked into my bag... and it was funny, when I ordered tea, all the guys ordered tea too and they were listening to every word I said. I was cracking jokes I was so relaxed... So I did it all on my terms, and it worked. I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to do that if I hadn't seen women in higher up positions doing it." Evans believes the course helps women who may have come to a cross roads in their career and do not know what to do next. "I think what the course does is make sure that you don't aim too low, that you expand your thoughts on what you are capable of."
The Three-Day Detox
Margaret Ambrose
We all laughed at Seinfeld's Bubble-Boy - the kid who was so allergic to the modern world that he was forced to live in a plastic bubble - but in a strange way, he was onto something. OK, maybe living in a bubble is a bit extreme - as was his foul mouth and bad temper - but the way we on the outside are poisoning ourselves, chances are the Bubble-Boys of this world will live longer, healthier lives than the rest of us.
Of course, if your life was going to be spent confined to a home made of Glad Wrap, perhaps you wouldn't value longevity so much. A better option, says Penelope Sach, naturopath and author, is to regularly detox. She's developed a three-day detox program that doesn't require forking out big bucks for a stay in a health spa, but will help rid your body of toxins, and a maintenance program that will help you avoid them in the future.
Why we need to detox
We need to detox, says Sach, basically because we are living in a poisonous environment. Toxin is a substance that is poisonous to the body, and says Sach, "toxins are everywhere in our daily living." Some toxins are self-inflicted - such as alcohol, sugar, cigarette smoke - and others we have little control over - such as toxins that form in the intestine because of poor diet, or toxins that breed on our food before it even reaches our mouths. Some toxins enter our bodies through our environment -like lead from car fumes, mercury from dental work, and toxins from medication, preservatives, additives and detergents - the list is seemingly endless.
Our bodies do go part of the way in combating toxins. "Our bodies are amazing," says Sach. "They do detox every single day. If you don't have kidneys you die; if you don't have a liver you die. These organs are like washing machines and filter systems. But the problem is what's happening in our living patterns. We're eating a lot of fast food; we're eating a lot of take-away food that has a lot of preservatives and additives and sugar; we're consuming alcohol; we're consuming medications a lot more; and young people are consuming more recreational drugs. So what's happening is all this is putting extra load on our bodies. The way that you see it is that people's blood tests come back perfectly, yet they say they are feeling run down, sluggish and run down."

The detox myth
Ever since we started poisoning ourselves with air pollution, food additives and processed meals, the concept of detoxing has become big business. There have been liver-cleansing diets, colonic irrigation, and juice-only diets, to name a couple - and not all have turned out to be good for you.
"Look at the example of colonic irrigation that was very much the craze in the '70s and '80s," says Sach. "Under the right circumstances and control, irrigation can be useful. However, I know several cases where it has been completely overdone, resulting in the bowel wall losing its natural and protective flora. The famous Pritikin diet of the '80s eliminated all fats from the diet to avoid cardiovascular disease. Dr Pritikin later realised that natural fats in certain foods are absolutely essential for our health and well-being."
In Sach's latest book, she has devised a less extreme method of detoxing. "I have focused on a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables, but especially vegetables," she says. "A lot of detox books focus on fruit, which is very, very good for the body, but now we have so much sugar in our diets that if you detox with fruit, like we did in the '80s, it can throw your body out even more. So I brought in the alkaline foods, the vegetables, which are a wonderful way to detox. They're the antioxidant foods and they're also very soothing to the bowels. When you detox, you need to do so with nutrition, and the best nutrition."
"It's very sensible and that's what I wanted to get across - sensible detoxing," she says. "I've been a naturopath for a long time and I have seen a lot of fad diets. To start off with, people don't stick to them, they can be quite dangerous to the body, and they are not practical to our lifestyle in the 2000s. So I've given them the three day detox, which is quite practical when you work, and using it as what I call a springboard for a healthier living patterns."
Who should detox
According to Sach, you may be in need of detoxing if you experience regularly more than three of the following symptoms:
• Fatigue
• Lethargy
• Moodiness
• Irritability
• Sleeplessness
• Anxiety
• Vagueness
• Poor memory
• Poor concentration
• Stomach aches
• Bloated stomach
• Indigestion
• Sluggish bowel
• Blocked nose
• Excessive mucus
• Sore muscles
• Aching joints
• Blotchy skin
• Itchy skin
• Persistent skin problems
• Pimples
• Bad breath
• Furry tongue
"I don't encourage people who are elderly to detox," warns Sach. "And I don't encourage children under the age of 12. But certainly if your blood test comes back and there's nothing sinister - flu, viruses, colds and major illnesses - and you do know that you haven't been eating properly, then you are a perfect detox candidate."
While Detox outlines specific programs for coming off poisons such as alcohol or cigarettes, the most frequent ways we are poisoning ourselves are through the food we eat and the environment in which we live. Here are some simple steps designed to help rid yourself of these poisons.
Food substances detox
• Make a vegetable soup from parsley, onions, carrots, turnips, zucchini, broccoli, and cauliflower. You can eat the vegetables if you like or mash them up in the soup. Drink a large cup of the soup every two hours.
• If you crave fruit, substitute one piece of either orange, apple or pear with the soup.
• Drink two glasses of carrot juice, mixed with beetroot or a green vegetable per day.
• Drink at least two litres of filtered water per day, having one glass every hour.
• Rest for at least two hours a day.
• If you feel too fatigued or headachy, eat steamed veggies every three hours.
Environmental pollutants detox
Day One:
• Alternate drinking one glass of carrot juice and one glass of orange juice every hour.
• During the day eat raw salad made up of green lettuce or rocket, grated carrot and beetroot, and half an avocado. Make a dressing of one teaspoon of olive oil and the juice of half a lemon.
• For dinner make an anti-oxidant soup consisting of carrot, pumpkin, broccoli, cauliflower, onions and garlic.
Day Two:
• Follow the same regime as Day One, but you are allowed to drink the soup during the day, as long as you don't mix it with the juice.
Day Three
• Continue to consume the same foods as Day Two and add the regular consumption of Dandelion and St Mary Thistle teas.
Look to the future
Of course, there's little point in cleansing your body if you're just going to load it up with more poison, which is why much of Detox is focused on maintenance. "In most detox books there's a big hole," says Sach. "None of them tell you what to do after the detox. People would come to me and say, "I have been on a six week liver detox and now I am starving and going back to all my old habits. A detox should be a springboard to get you to a healthier lifestyle."
"There's no way in reality that people are going to stop all junk food in their lives - they're not. But if you do a detox for three days, you can get yourself back on track. Doing a small amount regularly is better than doing it in one go, and then not keeping at it. It's like exercise - a small walk every day is better than doing heavy exercise for one month every year."
Detox by Penelope Sach is published by Penguin and retails for $14.95. You can find our more about the author by visiting her website: www.penelopesach.com.au.
TheLounge recommends that everyone should seek the opinion of their medical practitioner before embarking on any health program, including detoxification.
The Importance of Breath
Complied by Toni Eatts
Although breathing is an automatic response in your body, the way you breathe greatly affects your general health. This is because all the cells of your body need a constant supply of oxygen to perform the process of metabolism, which provides your body with energy. Blood pumped by the heart picks up the oxygen in the lungs and carries it to the cells then returns to the lungs with carbon dioxide, which is breathed out of the body.
During exercise your rate of breathing increases as your heart pumps faster to bring more oxygen to your muscles. You are probably aware of these changes. However, your rate of breathing also changes according to your emotions. If you are calm your breathing is gentle and rhythmic. If you become angry or frightened your breathing will speed up. If you have long-term stress, you can develop a hyperventilation pattern of breathing, where the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide becomes disturbed (your body actually needs a proper amount of carbon dioxide to make use of oxygen).
In Eastern terms your breath is your connection to the "life force" - the Ch'i, Qi, Ki or Prana. If you breathe poorly you will have poor energy levels and feel more tension. That's why physical disciplines such as yoga and Tai Chi pay so much attention to your breath and how you can enhance it.
Most of us, however, are not very effective at breathing. We breathe well enough to live but not well enough to really flourish.
If you are not breathing properly you are starving your cells, muscles and organs of the thing that makes them work. Little wonder that so many of us suffer from stress, fatigue and depression - all of which can be helped by improving the quality of breath. Lack of exercise, over-exercise and stress are the major factors that disturb breathing.