A book by Elżbieta Pękalska, PhD
For the woman who has tried everything and still does not feel like herself.
Currently being written — coming this Autumn/Winter.
How this book began
I became the mother of three sons within fifteen months. My twins were born prematurely. They struggled to grow, had hearing difficulties for ten years, and faced multiple health problems. My eldest son was a high-needs child too. The arrival of twins who needed so much care was hard for him emotionally.
The doctors did what they could, but it was not enough. I cuddled and carried them a lot in slings, and then I began massaging them.
At first, I did not know what I was feeling, except that touch was soothing. With time, I began to pay attention: a belly that was hard one week and soft the next, a back warm on one side and cool on the other, or skin that changed colour and texture days before a cold arrived. At night, I studied everything I could about massage, touch, and holistic therapies. During the day, I practised on the bodies I loved most.
For five years, I massaged my boys every day. For another seven years, I did it most days. Thousands of hours of listening through my fingers. Slowly, I began to notice not only symptoms but also patterns, and how those patterns changed over weeks and months.
What surprised me most was how uneven their progress was. For a long time, things stood still, or even went backwards. Then, almost suddenly, things would shift, with a little more strength or resilience, a new ability, or a child more at ease in his own body. I began to recognise these stretches of progress and regression and understand them not only mentally, but through my hands.
Almost always, the first step was not to give more, but to take something away - to release tension. Their bodies seemed lacking, but that lack was a side effect of holding too much.
Most of us need to start with release, while we think we need to supplement.
Years later I saw the same turning in the women who came to my clinic, many of them carrying a bag of supplements and a sense that something in them was missing. LESS is what I learned, first from my children and then from them, written down.
A return to the body
It starts with one supplement, one protocol, one expert who seems to have the answer. Soon there are more, and more. The shelf of supplements, approaches and techniques grows. The effort grows with it. Yet your own sense of what helps becomes harder to hear.
LESS is an invitation to stop adding and start listening to the body beneath the noise.
The map
Healing moves like the seasons. Chinese medicine has read the body through them for more than two thousand years: autumn draws in and lets go, winter rests and stores, spring rises, summer opens. In LESS, the four movements are not the seasons themselves but the passages between them. Each movement begins in one season and carries its qualities as it moves toward the next, opening a new path.
Autumn into winter · Lungs
It begins in autumn, with the lungs and the long exhale: putting down what the body no longer needs to hold. It carries autumn’s cooling and letting go as it moves towards winter, back and down, making room for a new path.
Winter into spring · Kidneys
It begins in winter, in the deep reserves of the kidneys: warmth, rhythm and rest restored beneath the surface. Then it lifts towards spring, the first movement up from the ground.
Spring into summer · Liver
It begins in spring, with the liver moving again. Feeling and direction return and reach towards summer, even when, from the inside, it feels like going backwards.
Summer into autumn · Heart
It begins in summer, in the warmth of the heart, and moves towards autumn, where that warmth meets the body’s own knowing. You trust what you feel and act from yourself rather than from a protocol.
Then the cycle turns again, each time a little deeper.
Inside the book
LESS follows eight women through my clinic. Helen arrives with seventeen supplements. Others come with pain, exhaustion, grief, or the feeling that they are losing themselves. Their stories are composites, drawn from many years of practice, and in each of them you may find a piece of your own.
Along the way, the book walks through four layers of who we are, the physical, vital, emotional and mental bodies, and how each one can be reached. Small practices sit between the chapters, simple enough to try the same evening. For readers who want the science, the appendix sets out what research has found about acupuncture, fascia, the nervous system and the stress response.
It is written to be read twice. The first time for the story. The second time for yourself.
Book, companion practices and further resources for the woman ready to stop searching and start listening.
Still being written — coming this Autumn/Winter