Roads to Wellness

Strengthening your Energy Field

2011-12-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

There's a great story in Yulia Lerner Cohen's book on Energetic Boundaries that I would like to share here.

It's about a young woman who is attempting to discourage a co-worker from inappropriate advances, verging on the sexually harassing, but not quite. She already has said please do not, or I don't appreciate this, and other things. Mr Happy doesn't get the message. He's not dangerous, just annoying and disrespectful.

She had been taking martial arts classes. When she asked the sensei what she should do, he told her to perfect a block, turn and kick move. A move that could break the man's ... nose.

"Oh no!" she said, "that is way too strong, I don't want to do that".

"Come back when you have practiced", he insisted.

Thirty days later, she demonstrated the sequence perfectly for her sensei. Good, he said. Go to work tomorrow with the assurance you can stop him when he harrasses you again.

The next day, at work, instead of the usual inappropriate pat, nothing happened. He simply stopped, deflected by her invisible shield. Her strong energy field was enough to repel him, without words, in a way nothing else had before.

Learn to strengthen your energy field. There are lots of ways!

Listening to Your Own Wise Self

2011-12-12T08:00:00.001-05:00

It was Wayne Dyer who first brought my attention to the wisdom of the early morning, with a quote from Rumi. Do not go back to sleep, when you are awakened in the pre-dawn, the Rumi quote goes.

Since those years long ago of listening to Wayne Dyer, I have learned from many sources, including my own, about the wisdom of the early morning. Those of us who have learned to listen are greeted with messages and information we cannot find elsewhere. The proficient among listeners have written volumes of information from the other side.

Everyone can learn to listen in this way, as I have probably suggested before. A good start is to be aware of our waking thoughts, for the remnants of dreams, especially those that seem to offer parables, convey information from a deep wisdom outside our logical brain.

Perhaps I can tell you of a recent dream, since I think it's a good example of how we get information, so I will make a note here. You can try this, if you keep pencil and paper handy. The dream was about a painter, was all I could grasp when I awoke, but when I picked up pencil and notebook, I was brought clear images of a house, a house painter, and some dialogue, that flowed right in when I wrote it down.

In this dream, I am asking the man what kind of painter he was. Are you a blue painter? A red painter? A yellow painter? (Ah, just see that even in the dream I am brought primary colors, how funny!)

No, no, he is saying, I am a painter. I can paint whatever colors the house needs. Regardless of what is going on out here in the street, I create sanctuary within, by painting the house with the colors it needs. What a wonderful concept. Of course, I could go on about the many obvious meanings for me. My intent, however, is to show you a simple way to begin learning how to listen to your 'deepest wisdom' as it is commonly referred to.

So I am wondering if a new habit of turning off the radio, the morning news, first thing, as you come from your sleeping self to your waking self, is even a possibility for some of you? We now know that the faculty of listening - to yourself, to your own wise self, and even to others - is diminished by an overdose of electronically generated music. Hmmm. Here's a parting thought about our ubiquitous noise, music and news. Our understanding of how random noise, even unfamiliar or familiar music, can aggravate stress levels is now augmented by the news that it also will cut us off from ourselves and from help from the universe... I guess we could all ponder that for a while?

Be still, in the morning, and listen to what comes in ...

Connection and Authenticity

2011-12-11T17:19:00.002-05:00

Even the research shows that achievement does not make us happy, but that connection, love and authenticity - being able to be yourself under all conditions - does.

I grabbed this fantastic picture from a facebook friend, who will be pleased I am spreading it here. Music lovers and activists for peace faithfully mark the anniversary of John Lennon's death, on the 8th of December. This event, like the tumultuous ones since, including September 11th, we are learning, do not just happen "out there", but also happen as an image constructed and felt in the depths of our visionary minds. The boundaries between our inner and outer worlds are far less clear cut than we at one time knew, and we are more profoundly connected to this world and its inhabitants than we could ever have thought. Pain holds us captive, not in our intellect, but in our memories. The good news, in the world of quantum physics, is that we can change our perception - past, present and future - and our big subconscious minds do not know the difference.

With some irony, it is in our imaginations that we do in fact change our inner and our outer world. So go ahead, then. Imagine. Imagine all the people, living life in peace.

The very good news is that we now have the tools to recreate, within each of us, a world of no conflict, no sadness, and no anger. We can all, regardless of age, through our subconscious mind change our past and grow up to be happy. This is the new power of the quantum consciousness techniques such as holographic memory resolution. We can still remember, but the pain is gone. Without having to wait 31 years or more, but now. In the world of quantum physics, there is no time and space. We can condense healing, we can condense or stretch time.

Ah, getting a little too strange here, so better be signing off,

Positive affirmations and behaviour change

2011-12-11T09:12:00.000-05:00

The notion that improving your life involves change is never clearer than in the world of success coaching, that brings in millions of clients and dollars every week across the English speaking world. We learn about the need to take risk, to bring in change, to write out and repeat positive affirmations, positive attitude, and more affirmations.

While there is truth to "I think I can" and "I am strong", this is not the full story of what goes on in our wonderful, creative and complex sub-conscious mind, a mind that never forgets anything, ever.

Affirmations have the power to change the outcome of specific events, true. When physical prowess - speed, stamina or strength - are at stake, positive affirmations have a physiological impact on us. So do negative thoughts.

Sports psychology is based on developing positive attitude and strength in adversity. Something called applied kinesiology changed the face of sports psychology in the late 1980's with new learning about how our thoughts change our muscle strength. The encouragement of "You can do it!" actually does help win a race. The electrical firing of our muscles - measured in the spindle cells of the deltoid muscles, actually, in the original research - responds to thoughts. (And some of you still have trouble believing we are a great bundle of luminous bioelectrical energy connected to the universe around us?)

So it is true that positive affirmations and positive thoughts have the power to change our lives. Sometimes, however, when we want to change our lives, the physiological part is not enough. There is an equally large body of literature related to the lack of the effectiveness of positive affirmations under certain circumstances. You can positive affirmation yourself until you are blue in the face, as my friend Russell once said to me, with little impact on the outcome of certain aspects of your life. If there is a deep ingrained pattern of something that creates a roadblock to success, regardless of how much positive affirming we do, our lives may not reflect what our conscious brain wants us to do. There are blocks in the sub-conscious that do not respond to positive affirmations. I know about that, because this is my specialty.

When you really, really, really want something, and you just cannot make it happen, no matter how many millionaire mind events you attend, there is an underlying situation that needs addressing. There is something blocking the way. Sometimes referred to as beliefs, and always trauma based, as we know now, these blocks to success and happiness literally create a smudge in our biofield of luminous light that are impervious to positive thinking. Once we clear away what is in the way, then the positive affirmations will take us in the direction we want. My specialty focuses on clearing the way, with a powerful toolbox of techniques to remove the roadblocks. Watch your life take off after you do that!

As I mentioned, I know about such things, because it took me almost a decade of searching to find the answer to my puzzling inability to change in certain areas. More precisely, I should say it took six years of positive psychology and affirmations with little impact on certain areas of my life, and two months of wow - before I could begin to see my own dreams come true. I am currently fast-tracking to where I dreamed of going years ago.

Many of the gurus in the success business have such bright energy, especially some of the young up and coming bright lights. May I invite those of you who try hard but spin wheels to contact me for a short course in personal obstacle clearing, so that the way is clear to a path of success?

Wishing you success in finding ways to clear the way,

The Universe Smiles

2011-12-06T21:44:00.000-05:00

This morning, very uncharacteristically, I woke with ... guess what? A headache, migrainous. Now, the posts of earlier this week were in relation to other people's headaches. I super rarely get a headache, much less a migraine. Maybe twice a year.

So the universe was smiling as I was brought an issue obviously ready to heal, through a headache today. Guess I am supposed to illustrate how the migraine removal process goes with HMR. Sitting quietly, tuning into the headache pain, I suggest that this headache pain flow out of me. What does it look like, outside of me? I see clearly, as you will find you begin to do too. First, a kind of shiny sludge pool with fluid edges, a few inches high. That's the beginning of unraveling this headache. I wait until all the headache is outside of me, and then I invite all the people who contributed to it to line up behind. Who do I see? Predictably, we see family members - not because everyone is bad, but because a small child's psyche is fragile and anything may be perceived as upsetting, even an argument between strangers. So I see family members. This is normal. The next step is to give back to them all the parts of this shiny sludge that belong to them, and watch what happens. Your subconscious makes all this up, using images that are sometimes bizarre, as it works on the healing process. I am beginning to feel much better; the nausea has left as has the pounding. I'm still light sensitive, especially in the left eye.

So now I feel a pain over the left orbital bone, above the left eye. This one is like a croquet mallet, smashing the bone. Yup. If we ask, the answers come. I am about six this time. Just ask for the age... a number comes into mind. A croquet mallet, not a very nice thing, and a whole lot of fear, and dark surroundings. I can go between feeling flat, almost dead emotions, to great fear, in a moment. I can back up and see where this is, and what is happening. I find that I am in a kind of ditch, where I can see the stones and the rough top edges with tufts of long grass. This one is not such a happy scene; I am somewhere in the woods with a round wooden club swinging at me, I suppose. I can stop the images and back up or move forward if I begin to feel fear, and just observe. Well, this one is obviously not from this lifetime, and I rapidly replace the image with a wonderful one of riding in a sleigh, Dr Zhivago style, and can see the white animal skin over the sleigh side, as I happily whisk along. No ditch. Once I have moved the frame colours of this scene through, I am calm and notice that there is no pain at all over the left eye as before. I then receive more information that this is somewhere in Russia, during the Bolshevik revolution, where I was a small child and did not make it to adulthood. Who knows? So strange, but I learn a lot of nasty up close history this way.

Now I have a burning sense inside the eye, that manifests like an ill fitting glass eye, still over the left side. I am about four years old. The rest of the details show themselves, and I can replace this picture with a happy one, even changing the people in the original scene. As I always say, the subconscious is a strange place. Once I have resolved this scene, the migraine is gone. Within about an hour, no drugs. So strange, isn't it? This is the world of Holographic Memory Resolution. Memories of trauma big and small are stored in holonomic fashion, in a part of the body like a shoulder, a knee, or chest, until they are resolved. Hugely effective, releasing pain, emotional pain, and painful memories. Leaving us with a new outlook, new ways of thinking and new behaviours, in a single session.

I am off to do something else. Be well, and please find someone who does this technique locally if you can. You can resolve phobias, eliminate migraines, and so much more.

Migraine and HMR

2011-12-05T21:47:00.000-05:00

There is lots and lots to say about migraine, that truly elusive problem that afflicts millions of people every day. I will edit and add to this post at another time, but I wanted to leave you with a really short post. I have worked for pharmaceutical companies doing opinion research on the causes and remedies of migraine, as well as studied for many years all the various remedies that are offered in alternative medicine.

Two strategies work well, in my experience: Chinese herbs - the prescribed kind, dried natural herbs from a Chinese pharmacy with a traditional diagnosis by a trained practitioner - and HMR. I am sure there are western herbs too, and of course magical essential oils that work through the quantum field.

As it happens, through the work of HMR, we discover that migraine, unlike headache, is almost entirely emotional in origin. The origin may be years and years ago, of some kind of painful emotional situation that resulted in a first migraine. The subsequent migraines are then relives of the original event and migraine. Just saying. This is what we have learned from the more than 16,000 cases of HMR that yield the most fascinating meticulously described information about such things. There may be fifteen memories associated with one migraine, but through HMR we can work through them all and then, well, no more migraine. Just saying.

HMR refers to Holographic Memory Resolution, the technique developed by Brent Baum for resolving trauma lodged as frozen memories and traumas in the energy body.

There is amazing information accessible to everyone now, on the internet, and more of the strange stuff you may read in alternative health is true than you might think.

Be well, and please do think outside the box.

Oh, headache, please go away

2011-12-05T21:34:00.000-05:00

Headaches. Not the jolliest of holiday topics, but pertinent all the same, since the fast tempo of the season and holiday parties can lead to that most common of human afflictions, headache. When you reach for a headache remedy, if it is a commercially prepared one, you are contributing to the problem. Sad but true. A pharmaceutical drug of any kind is treated in the liver, where congestion may lead to, you guessed it, more headaches.

Causes of headaches are usually classed as environmental, dietary or allergies, hypertension and stress.

So the naturopath in me wants to provide you with a few guidelines. First, some physiology. The large intestine and the liver are intimately involved in headache generation.When our bodies accumulate toxins, we are more susceptible to headaches. So make sure you are well hydrated and that constipation is not a factor. Sleep at regular hours. Next, the food and drink choices. Why we know that excess alcohol in the system (in the liver, actually) leads to headaches but not that different food combinations do the same is beyond me. Headache may be linked to consumption of cheeses, aged cheese especially, and chocolate. These foods tend to block the system and leave residues that contribute to the body's toxic load. We are also told that the headaches from wine are not from the good grape, but from the preservatives. We could then remember to avoid foods with preservatives in them, too.

When we observe ourselves and note when and what we eat, there are often patterns emerging that show us where to cut this or that food or make changes in our routines. Regular meals and regular elimination are important factors for managing headache. Complicated? Yes, a little. The good news is that today, we can use applied kinesiology to determine what is causing the headache, and then avoid that substance if possible, or treat the food sensitivity. And we can try two relatively simple approaches: detoxifying and eating clean.

Now for the non-food contributing factors. Headaches are linked to stress, emotional upset, and blocked energy in the meridians, especially the liver meridian. Our Chinese patent friend, the Smooth and Easy Wanderer, is a great remedy for headache: it addresses blocked energy in the liver, relieving mood swings, anger and headaches. The herbs in the formula smooth the liver's energy, eliminating headaches.

Emotional upset - "You're giving me a headache" - is at the root of many headaches. If you observe yourself, you may notice the headaches coming on right after an argument, or when you feel blocked from expressing some emotions that want to come out. I should add that an argument you are not involved in but that you observe also may result in you getting a headache (we learn this from HMR).

Three essential oils are handy to have on hand as headache remedies. Lavender, for calming, peppermint, for stimulating, and rosemary are particularly known for headache relief. Rubbing in combination on the temples helps. Essential oils are beneficial and avoid the risks of synthetic drugs.

Many herbs are recommended, including of course lavender, peppermint and rosemary, but also thyme, valerian, cayenne and chamomile. These support liver function, and ensure good elimination.

Here is what I do if a headache comes on. First thought: constipation. Eliminate wheat, especially bread flours, dairy and meat. Make a brew of licorice root, dandelion, aniseed, yellow dock. Begin a short course of Hsaio Yao Wan. Second thought (and sometimes when the headache just comes on out of the blue) is to emotional origin. I use the light in my hands to encircle the headache zone, and gently coax it to the front of my forehead. From there I can spiral it off, usually, into the blue, shaking off my hands. Seriously. Try this, it often is all you need to do. Third, use an HMR protocol: tune into it, find its shape and size, and see if I can source its origin. Then flood my head with some kind of colour, until the headache disappears.

Okay, I know I don't always have the most accessible remedies when I present them like this, but you can learn all these things. Donna Eden in Energy Medicine has an easy to learn routine for headaches too, called the Crown Pull, to remove stagnant energy from your head. A quick reminder of the Crown Pull is the stretching of the scalp out from the midline from forehead towards the back of your head. (Written up in more detail in an older posting). She also suggests the Headache Press for relief from chronic headache. (I'll describe that another time. You can always look these things up online.)

What I like to do is offer a few ideas that may be outside the box for you, but that are old hat for energy practitioners. And that work. So please chuck the OTC remedy and try TCM or Energy Medicine or HMR. The fixer uppers that work long term.

Yours in health,

Transitions

2011-12-01T20:20:00.000-05:00

A new month, December, brings with it new energies, and, according to my astrologer friends, an end to the great heaviness and stuckness that characterized so much of November. Must find out more about astrology for myself, sometime, but in another decade. Not now.

Sometimes I go to my bookshelves to a book that beckons to me, and take it off the shelf. Every once in a while, this book is one that I bought months or sometimes years before, but have not yet read. I have a friend who taught me years ago to trust my instincts about such things, to go to a section of the library or bookstore, and wait, without looking, for the instinct to go left or right, to find a book someone on the other side wants us to know about. Dowsers use pendulums; anyone can use body dowsing, or body leaning. In any case, sometimes I later find myself drawn to such a book in my own bookshelf, long after buying it.

And so it was today, that I was drawn to a bookshelf, a book, a page and then a passage.

To become something else, you have to stop being what you are now; to start doing things a new way, you have to end the way you are doing them now; and to develop a new attitude or outlook, you have to let go of the old one you have now. Even though it sounds backwards, endings always come first. The first task is to let go. ~ William Bridges, Transitions

I used to use a pendulum to find such things, with a question to my guides; now I tune to my own inner wisdom, and allow those who help me constantly to whisper truth to me.

In our culture, the emphasis on success often leads people to choose careers and paths that are not those that really interest them and make them happy; we are seeing an increasing number of people seeking transition coaching, life coaching, to help them through the changing and developing inner self trying to make sense of their position, and often trying to escape. Bridges makes the point that not only do people become stuck in careers they no longer find satisfying, but also and equally importantly, they learn that thier own imaginings and longings are inherently not to be trusted. Learning not to trust our inner voices and longings may lead to a life of confusing direction, always unsure of what we really want.

We are conditioned by our upbringing. Most of us learn a tough work ethic, to 'suck it up' in the vernacular, if they are not happy, and to quell our desires in the interests of fitting a round peg into a square hole. Such as do hold such a course may envy or disdain those who took risks, regardless of outcome, to fly out of the box. We all make jokes about mothers worrying about children who end up wealthy and famous doing what they love that seemed implausible at the beginning.

Each phase of our lives has a shape. Goethe famously spoke about the shape of a decade, but most native traditions use a cycle of seven years. Our age can be counted through each seven years of learning, spiritual growth, giving back and so on. This is the shamanic tradition. What is in our energetic field becomes matter within seven years, for better or for worse, the energy healers learn.

Endings must be dealt with if we are to move on with whatever comes next in our lives, Bridges says. When we cannot let go of the past, we are handicapped going forward.The new beginnings begin with the releasing of the past.

I encourage you to think of where you might be stuck or what you are hanging onto that no longer serves you in your life, as you move through it. You cannot go back, you can only go forward. Choose wisely what parts of the old life you bring forward with you. Ensure you leave behind what needs to be left behind, once you have dealt with it.

Whether you are entering a new relationship, career or phase in your life, ending an old one, hanging onto a finished one, or waiting for your new one to start, you are always in transition. Your great subconscious will help or hinder your progress, so try to ensure you have cleared out what you wish to leave behind. If you would like some help with that, you know what to do.

Yours in wellness, in all aspects of your life,

BodyMind healing – with Brain Gym

2011-11-29T22:20:00.000-05:00

The connections between mind and body are far more ancient and profound than many people realize. If we manipulate the body, we change the brain. Most of us know that smiling creates a happier mood – this one works through the effect on the heart and on the brain, through the smile muscles and specifically through the vagus nervous sytem. Okay, whatever. Smile, and you will feel happier.

The connections between weird body parts and the brain are less well known. Take the tendons of the calf. Okay, where I am going with this is to Brain Gym, the amazing Educational Kinesiology techniques developed by Paul and Gail Dennison, Californian educators, more than a decade ago. Back to the tendons. It seems that our ancient bodies naturally shorten the tendons of the feet and lower legs in the presence of danger. This is called the tendon-guard reflex. If you study physiology, you may know about this, but the application by the Dennisons is unique and so interesting.

If you manipulate the tendons, you see, gently stretching them, you alleviate the brain’s perception of danger. It’s a kind of biofeedback mechanism, if you like. When you flex the tendons, you also relax the stress response and, here comes the interesting part, integrate the front and hind brain, releasing the creative parts of the mind. What you get is not only improved posture, or flexibility, but instantaneous effects in the brain that are immediately usable. Strange but true.

What you end up with is more creative writing ability, more expressive speech and language, increased ability to communicate and respond, better attention span, and improved social behavior. While you may not see all of this immediately, you will see improved expression and language, pretty quickly. And you can use this to improve your own creativity of expression. I said this was weird.

Before I leave this post, I need to explain how to do it. This is what you do, from the Brain Gym technique: sitting with one ankle over the other knee, put the fingertips on each end of the calf tendon, of the calf muscle, and gently find any taught spots, kneading them until they melt and soften. While holding these spots, apart, slowly and methodically point and flex the foot, extending it up and down. Repeat with the other calf and foot.

Go on, try it. Especially if you are trying to write something creative or preparing a presentation. Your whole brain is activated and the job becomes much more fluid, much easier. As I said, this stuff is weird.

This is Brain Gym for creative writing ability and expressive speech and language skills, and called the Footflex.

Go look up Brain Gym and see what your body can do for your mind!

You are kind. You are smart. You are Important.

2011-11-27T21:25:00.002-05:00

You are kind. You are smart. You are Important.

These pillars of self-esteem, transmitted through the voice of a loving nanny, to her small charge, echo throughout the engaging film that is The Help, that shows us far more than a political or social view of civil rights and southern lifestyles in the 1960’s. It weaves through the childhoods of children brought up by others, thankfully, children rescued, or not rescued, from neglectful and dysfunctional parents. The words so intentionally spoken and repeated, in the mesmerizing southern drawl, show the potential for healing through the creation of a loving bond and a solid sense of self. They are used to calm and heal in the face of abuse.

Many of us, in the real world, grow up with enough trauma – due to miseducation, neglect or misguided punishment by our parents – to create slightly damaged goods, as popular culture puts it. We all have traumatic childhoods to some extent, although to be fair, not like the ones in the film!

The Help does prompt reflection on the power of words. The only thing a child truly needs is unconditional love and affirmation from a parent or close caregiver; rare are the instances that children get this consistently. Many parents in another generation didn’t know; many now don’t understand the importance of this key point. Parents focus on time and discipline and performance. You didn’t have to live in the 1960’s in the south to grow up without the pillars of self-esteem that create healthy relationships and fulfilled lives.

I was drawn to feel empathy for much of this film with the tiny Baby Girl, primed for a life of grim absence of love, once her loving real mother, her kind and capable nanny, left.

Humans love or harm each other through their tone of voice and intention. The words “You are kind. You are smart. You are Important.” are the affirmation of love from caretaker to her young charge, in the presence of neglectful parents.

Words of affirmation, encouragement and validation build a bond of love that transcends time and space. When we recognize the power of our words, we become more attentive to what we say, to where we invest our creative energies of speech, and how we use our words.

We all need to tell ourselves every day that we are important, that we are wise, and we are loving. As go our words, to and from each other, and to ourselves as self-talk, so go our thoughts and our creation.

We learn as practitioners of trauma resolution how a voice raised in anger – from a distant and forgotten past – becomes a pain in the heart and ears of a young listener, imprinting itself for years to come and setting up triggers for fear, anxiety and insecurity. Words become energetic objects, or metaphors, in our energy fields, palpable and observable by objective viewers, and not figments of the imagination. The scientific theory of how this happens is through the concept of energy transduction. The energy of words, one form of energy – frequency, pitch and tone of speech – is captured auditorily, interpreted within the brain, and translated into a pain or physical sensation within the body.

Quantum physics and trauma therapy both offer lessons about the power of words, the importance of tone of delivery and of the loving act of listening or observing, with loving eye contact and attentive intention. And yes, like speaking, listening is a profound act of love, just as is looking in the eyes, providing undivided attention and speaking kindly. As humans, we have the power to change others, just by being in proximity. We also have the power to choose to be hurtful or healing, angry or loving.

A final word: people sometimes ask about the spiritual part of healing, when they understand the physical and emotional elements. Our Baby Girl will have a new sense of self when her spirit is restored to its original brightness through trauma work. Of course, all this is in my imagination. It's just a movie. But my subconscious doesn't know the difference, and so I am waiting for the adult Baby Girls of the world to knock at my door.

Go listen attentively to each other, then, and see where it leads you. And choose to be loving.

Calming Your Enteric Neurons with Probiotics

2011-11-25T22:45:00.014-05:00

When I was reviewing earlier posts, I came across the happy blog entry about Rejuvelac. I say happy, because I was noticeably less anxious and noticeably less hungry as I used it. Like many things, the Rejuvelac habit comes and goes with me. I take other whole foods or supplements, kind of rotating through my ideas with the products.

I was reminded of the changes in mood, however, when I came across this article in an evening ramble looking at healthy eating lifestyle, that took me to GMO's and then Aspartame, and finally this little interesting post. Ignore the reference to mice, and think human. These little mammals do a lot of hard work testing human health issues.

This is from the Mercola site, fabulous source of health information.

The probiotic known as Bifidobacterium longum NCC3001 has been shown to normalize anxiety-like behavior in mice with infectious colitis.

A study found that chronic colitis was associated with anxiety-like behavior. Treatment with B. longum was found to reduce the symptoms, and to also positively affect hippocampal brain derived neurotrophic factor.

According to the study, as reprinted on the website Green Med Info:

“As B. longum decreases excitability of enteric neurons, it may signal to the central nervous system by activating vagal pathways at the level of the enteric nervous system.”

Okay, to translate that for my human friends, this means that digestive help from probiotics and enzymes not only help digestion, but calm anxiety. I'll edit this tomorrow, with more on probiotics. Looks like I'll be finishing up November posts with more down to earth nutrition information. Go with the flow - I just write about where my big computer brain takes me in the moment.

Be well, and go with the flow. Yours in health,

Directions for Making Tang - Chinese Herbal Tea

2011-11-24T08:47:00.000-05:00

So, you went to Chinatown for herbs, the real, dried herbs. So you need a consultation to find out what herbs to take. Many people settle for the patent formulas, in boxes, for things like cough or cold. Or Chrysanthemum tea, for sore throats and colds.

You want the real herbs, so you ask for a consultation at the back of the shop. You are going to have your pulses and tongue read, among other measures. The trained Chinese herbal practitioner, with years of experience, will have sized you up in many ways that are beyond Western medicine, without instrumentation. Here are the things you can expect:

You sit in a chair opposite a narrow desk, while your file is prepared. Your name, which usually you write yourself, and phone number, for the filing system (that are kept by month or sometimes by phone number are the start of your file. The paper is most often plain old looseleaf paper. The multiple pages of your file will be stapled together or even put together with a paperless staple - a tear and fold system - that can be used anywhere, even in the most remote villages, when staples are not at hand...

Your blood pressure will be taken, and duly noted at the top of the page, with the date. You are asked for your complaints - fatigue? cough? constipation? stomach pains? - and these are duly listened to, so that the first thing to be treated is what you came for, but the underlying problems will also be addressed, from the beginning. In truth, you could say nothing and be treated, for most of the diagnosis is done via pulses and tongues.

Now for the Chinese diagnosis process. Your 'shen' or level of vital energy will already be noted from your demeanor as you come into the office - color of your face, animation, breathing rhythm, posture, gait and voice. Soft voice, rapid speech, loud voice, red face, pale face are all indications of underlying conditions. You won't want to hear this, but you also have a distinct odor that gives off clues.

The next step is the pulse and tongue diagnosis. The weathered experienced face across the desk will remain silent, and it is best if you do as well, while the pulses are taken. There are thirty-six measures in the pulse that are like reading braille for the Chinese medicine practitioner. Thirty six, all read through the fingers, 18 in each wrist. The health of your liver, pancreas, heart - all through the nature of the beats of the deep pulses. Descriptors (I only know the English for these) such as full, empty, wiry will describe what is going on inside your body. This takes a few minutes, as each one is read, and then little notes made in the file. The last thing is to read your tongue. You are asked to 'show your tongue', after which an uncharacteristic expression may flee across the normally calm expressioned face opposite you. All is written in the tongue, that contains the condition of the digestion, the heart, the liver. Your tongue may be pale and flabby, with a light white coating, which means depletion of some kind, or cardinal red, with thorns, and white spots, which means heat or extreme depletion, depending on the state of the coating (moss).

I find this fascinating, and always have. Oh, and the expression opposite you will just be an involuntary 'oh' of how westerners get themselves so depleted, for example, which in the Chinese community would be caught at a much earlier stage.

Based on this minutious examination, your herbal formula will be written in your file. Each herb for warming, cooling, dispersing or tonifying a specific organ system is noted carefully. This herb for the hot stagnant liver, that one for coldness in the stomach, this one for wandering thoughts or lack of concentration and so on. The last thing is the quantity of each, little notations beside each herb.

I have been doing this for years, since 1987, when I was first exposed to it, and before I studied myself, and then throughout the years as a practitioner (using only patent formulas like most Western practitioners) since 2004.

Your herbs are then weighed and packaged, and off you go. You need a ceramic pot, also sold in the shop, for boiling them up. One package makes one or two days' herbal tea. Soak for at least two hours, then boil for two, first on high, then on simmer. Your demonstration may be in a back room with a tiny burner, first pointing to hot, then moderate heat. The amount of water is usually 6 cups. This will make two cups of tea if boiled long enough, a little more if shorter.

Drink the herbal tea, the tang, in a draught two hours after eating and two before bed. A healthy Chinese schedule is to have finished supper by 7 and take the herbs by 9. I always notice a difference the following morning, immediately, when I have a new formula. Oh yes, your formula will change as you go, every two weeks or so, as your condition improves.

Hope this helps for those of you in the beginning of this journey. Enjoy! The bitter taste of the herbs, by the way, is part of the healing process - forget where I know this from, but our entire body kind of perks up with bitter roots and shoots, energetically. Quite the opposite from its reaction to white sugar. But that is a discussion for another time.

Do something good for yourself every day,

Finding more about Chinese Herbs

2011-11-21T19:29:00.005-05:00

My latest fun in Chinatown is a new batch of colorful herbs, including the yummy Caulis Spatholobi(Ji Xue Teng), for nourishing the blood. When I say yummy, I suppose I am referring to the tonifying action, because they don't taste yummy, they have a calming and restorative action in the body.

As usual, as the guinea pig, I experienced the calming feeling within 12 hours of downing the herbal tea. Drink in the evening, wake up the next day feeling different. I could write a book about this, but there are already many more detailed books than I would ever write already on the market, and this is a huge topic that most people don't want or need. What I like to do in my coaching practice is expose people to the notion of looking after your health through the experienced people who know about such things.

Here is a link to a really informative and colorful site on Chinese herbs - my favorite things... Just putting this link on the blog. http://www.drshen.com/chineseherbs.htm

Many people find that ordering herbs over the internet is practical, if they know what to order. A little scary, if you don't, except for Yin Chao, the Chinese version of Tylenol for colds. That's why a trip to Chinatown is educational, because there you are likely to find a traditional doctor who consults, in the traditional way, for very low cost, and then makes you a herbal formula, as I have written about many times.

When you go into a health store, you will also encounter trained sales people who will help you with herbal formulas for this and that. Either way, I believe everyone benefits by learning more about what to do in a health or herb store.

Part of empowerment, of taking charge of our health, when we can. November is a good month to take charge of your immune system - by boosting your vitality before the winter comes. Herbs help do just that - the tonifying action boosts all of our vitality in good ways.

Go exploring in a health store or a Chinese herb store !

More Words on Gluten Intolerance

2011-11-17T20:45:00.000-05:00

Skip this post if you are not interested in naturopathic detail – we are going to get technical. Many people who have gluten intolerance have been diagnosed by the medical profession, but have not had a chance to connect with a holistic nutritionist, of whom there are many. This is the kind of thing we learn, and help our clients with.

This, may I remind everyone, is a general overview – generalizations, intended for educational purposes only and is not intended as treatment or diagnosis. Phew! I occasionally put that at the end of some posts but this time I’m going into nutritional detail. Part of the fall energy of consolidating and getting serious, where the flightiness and expansiveness of summer gives way to more focused, grounded thought processes.

While many of you may not be interested in reading further, you may want to know that, like the statistics on depression, the statistics on gluten intolerance are telling us that we will all be affected, through a family member, friend or colleague – if not directly affected ourselves – within a few short years. And no, it’s not life threatening, but it affects vitality and other aspects of lives.

Stress is a major contributor to gluten intolerance as it is to most diseases, lowering our immune system and making us vulnerable to infections of all kinds, that weaken our resistance and precipitate food sensitivities.

Over time, exposure to the large gluten protein that is not digested properly damages the walls of the intestines. When this happens, nutrients from all foods are not digested properly. Other factors at work, some of them dating to before the gluten digestion intolerance, exacerbate the problem. More damage can be done by long term mental stress, heavy coffee drinking or other intestinal infections. Think graduate students and you have a pretty vulnerable target group; although we note that many young people in high stress professions today have already learned to avoid coffee as an unnecessary stressor. Good for them, since that will help a lot of things.

What happens next, then, can contribute to a kind of malnutrition. The weakened digestive system, that usually now is sensitive not only to gluten but also by this time to lactose, has trouble absorbing nutrients.

What we have is weakened digestive fire, depleted stomach Qi, a middle burner problem. Think of an old-fashioned brazier, little fire grill, where the middle burner is all things digestive; the lower burner is all things reproductive; and the upper burner is all things bringing in energy from outside the body through the lungs.

Whatever the causes, now, the Traditional Chinese Medicine approach would be to tonify the energy of the middle burner. Enter the herbal remedies from the Traditional Chinese Medicine diagnosis and herbology system, that are based on identifying and addressing patterns of disharmony. It offers help in the form of 3,000 year old herbal remedies and nutritional approaches.

The other aspect at play in the case of gluten intolerance and the middle burner low digestive fire in the TCM approach is to avoid cooling that burner. Over the millennia, the Chinese have developed a system of classifying the thermal properties of foods that nowadays anyone can access over the internet. So in our situation here, we want to avoid cooling or mucus forming (damp) foods, Chinese classification style.

When all this is going on, there are often mood symptoms that appear, such as irritability, aggressiveness and mood swings. This is the hot liver, that literally gets bogged down by all this, called liver stagnation.

Stay tuned for more food and herbal therapies. Be well, and listen to your body,

Accessing Inner Wisdom in the Morning Quiet

2011-11-16T09:12:00.000-05:00

Listening to your inner wisdom is a habit that takes practice and patience, like all others. I have been taught to ask for information, and then wait for a response. I often find that the intention to receive information results in a flood of help the following morning. What seem like dreams, especially morning dreams that are sometimes just beyond our grasp, contain the most precious information from our wisest counsel.

It is best if you can train yourself to awaken in the quiet, as though in the woods, with only the sounds of nature. Your thoughts at awakening have many gifts for you. (A different dynamic in families with younger children, I know, for another time. Children bring everyone wisdom, if we just listen).

I was prompted to buy a new book this week – a title that was sitting in my ‘later’ list on Amazon. This one, you need this one now, an inner voice suggested, as I was purchasing something altogether different. Okay, so I added $14 to my order. As it turns out, exactly what I needed to move the process forward, but that I had no idea about last week when the instruction to order the book came in.

A whole world of wonder can unfold when we pay attention to thinking beyond usual, analytical thinking styles. Inner wisdom pays attention to little nudges from within, to hunches, educated guesses, or subtle sense perceptions. Having an experience that confirms inner knowing allows us to become more receptive and trusting.

– Dorothea Hover-Kramer, founder of ACEP

I have been teaching workshops on how to develop our intuitive abilities for some years now; I found the wise suggestions by this gentle teacher very instructive. Some of the things Dorothea suggests for accessing our inner wisdom are:

1. Doing something nonverbal – get out colored markers and blank paper when we feel scattered, to shift ourselves to a calmer, more centered state. Art has long been known to rebuild self-esteem.

2. Learning to banish self-doubt – learning to trust our hopeful inner voice, and turning off the inner critic; the older we get, sometimes the more likely we are to hold vast repositories of self-doubt that we have carried throughout life; this self-criticism hobbles our capacity for enjoyment and creativity.

3. Recovering the playfulness so necessary to our human spirit is possible when we release energetic blockages. Our true beautiful inner selves can emerge from within. Adults easily forget the fun of playing – with words, paint, singing – and benefit by being taught how to play, and how to rediscover parts of ourselves that have been there all along, the creativity, the poetry, the play.

4. Journaling or writing – one of my own avenues to self expression and enjoyment – can also be a great tool for nurturing the self-reflection that increases self-understanding and self-acceptance.

The topic of self-talk deserves more attention. We know today that the old saying about talking to ourselves has been superseded by the awareness that such talk is necessary for emotional health, and a normal development that can be encouraged. New theories of personality also reveal that we are all a sum of parts, everyone of us, and that inner dialogue can be very helpful in a myriad of ways, from decision making to lowering our stress. We all need to learn to speak kindly to ourselves, first.

Just as we can easily crush someone else’s idea, so can we crush our own. A single negative word is taken to heart like no positive; this is fact, no matter our training and intentions. We all need to increase the positive feedback we provide to ourselves and others. Our inner critics can sabotage just about all innovative or helpful thoughts and suggestions.

One of the most powerful things we can do for ourselves is to acknowledge our parts, and learn to see the inner critic for just that – a voice, usually a parental voice, with the job of tempering our individuality and fragile sense of self as a child. (This is most often done ‘out of love’ through mimicking previous generations’ parenting practices, and not out of malice; we all mimic our own parents’ styles until we learn better ways).

I started off by saying that we have access to a vast library of wisdom through our early morning thoughts and our early morning recollections of dreams. Even when we do not dream, or do not remember our dreams, we can glean the wisdom by letting the quiet thoughts come in at the start of the day. Harvesting this wisdom, daily, is easiest if we do a few simple things. First, whether you remember a dream or not, on awakening, do not move at first. Allow the thoughts to form in the daytime, quietly. Keep a pen and paper by the bed for this precious information. Even if you do not dream, ask for information, and you will be rewarded with wisdom.

When we actively ask for information, it comes. More than seven years have passed since I first learned to access wisdom in this way. Most of us who do, have a profound sense of the wisdom from within being wisdom from without, and from the all-connectedness.

I have found it helpful to acknowledge this, and have a practice of gratitude for the information that flows to me. I won’t say more here, but I do encourage you to say thank you, out loud, when you receive information. More will be flowing in, more often, when you do.

Happy listening,

What's Up with this Gluten Thing?

2011-11-15T08:48:00.000-05:00

When I was a child, the only time I heard the word gluten used was by frustrated bakers trying to create a good loaf of bread. Gluten is the name of one of the proteins found in grains – in the glutinous grains, to be exact. It is tough and elastic, found in wheat, rye, barley and oats. Where we hear it everywhere today is in conjunction with the word intolerance. Gluten intolerance. What people who cannot digest it have … and their numbers are legion, from tiny tots to senior populations. (Oats are somehow different, so the intolerance part does not extend to them).

Elsewhere I have written about the American fact of life, our denatured foods, including breads; my French baker friend told me that the flour used in commercial bread would not be a legal constituent of bread in Europe: the stripped grains, the bleaching process, the devastation of the vital nature of these once wholesome grains has created one of the most processed foods on the market. (Wait a minute – I say that about homogenized skim milk, too, and a bunch of other things, so I overstate. There are a lot of denatured foods out there.) So buying a good quality bread, using natural, organic flours, is hugely important. Oh, and did I mention pasta? Also too often made from poor quality wheat.

So, what’s the big deal? is always the question I ask. The big deal about gluten intolerance is that, like corn products, wheat products especially are in everything. Just about everything. And if you are intolerant, you have digestive problems, that over time create other health problems.

I am fortunate to live in a part of the world where organic and natural products are making a big impact. A growing population of increasingly health-conscious thirty-somethings and older sustains this market; the growing population of natural health practitioners, including holistic nutritionists, herbalists and doulas spread the word. Here we have access to information, just as we have access to wonderful artisanale breads, organic granolas, natural honey, goat’s milk and goat’s cheese in abundance.

One odd thing about gluten intolerance is that there is a difference between wheat sensitivity and gluten intolerance; you can have either or both. In other words, some people are intolerant of wheat, gluten or no gluten. And as I mentioned, oats are exempt from the equation: oat gluten does not cause any of us problems.

Today we have lots and lots of products that do not contain either wheat or gluten on the market, albeit expensive, and an impressive range of wheat-free pastas, like rice pasta and rice noodles that have been a staple in other parts of the world. A growing range of gluten free breads are increasingly available. You can buy gluten free flour and gluten free brownie mix. The jury is still out on whether one should not just avoid these grains altogether, but there is money in providing alternatives.

When my daughter developed this sensitivity, in her teens, the medical profession could not determine what was causing the abdominal pains and distress. Today, the diagnosis would be swift. She has largely overcome the intolerance through vigilant dietary restrictions for a long time, and energy work to release the allergies to breads and pastas. (Allergy elimination techniques). It seems that her digestive system has almost completely healed, years later, so she has few problems. It wasn’t easy. (One of the outcomes was my developing interest and knowledge in natural and whole foods, which was born during my first year of motherhood, and led me to Laurel’s Kitchen, way back then).

What happens if you do not find out what is causing the distress? Misery. The symptoms are very unpleasant, since they occur every time we eat, and stay in the system for 24 hours. Do the math, as the kids say. Gluten intolerance becomes a chronic digestive disorder, causing pains, distention, weight loss, muscle cramps and spasms, diarrhea. From eating the staff of life.

I suggest you learn more about what you are eating, your daily bread, as the bible says. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, food is considered medicine, and in the West, we are painfully learning that our modern food can be bad medicine as well as good. Learning how to watch out for the suspect or not-food items matters.

Now my writing and editing friends will want me to replace not-food with non-food. There is a difference. Non-food is, well, pencils and Tupperware; not-food is what looks like food, but isn’t made for human consumption. There’s a difference. (And while you're at it, please throw out - yeesh, I mean recycle - the plastic containers).

More next time,

Uplift with Connecting to the Ages

2011-11-14T10:27:00.022-05:00

Could not resist putting this photo up to remind myself to go above and view the big picture, which is something that being in the wilds of Arizona helps us do. We feel small in the large universe, instead of large in our own agendas and daily problems and to do lists.

Originally I was going to put up a photo sent by my friend Alex, a lovely one of Cheyava Falls, when I was reminded to get my own photos of the Canyon. A little natural beauty at any of the time lifts our spirits, but now is especially appreciated as the winter days grow shorter until the solstice.

If you are not near the Canyon, why, there are uplifting views all around, especially when you head out of the city, away from narrow street and tall buildings,into the country where the sky, clouds and sunsets play a larger role.

Be well, and find something beautiful to uplift your spirits today.

Liver, Chinese Style

2011-11-13T20:55:00.000-05:00

While we know that coffee not only will not help us sleep, but will keep us awake, and that opening a window will not help keep us warm on a cold wintery day (if you have experienced such thing, which some of you have not), we most of us know nothing about the Chinese subtle energetic properties of foods. So I want to talk about the Eight Principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

I’m a holistic therapist. It’s a fuzzy term for someone in the helping professions who addresses the whole person, taking into account the ‘presenting complaint’ and having a toolbox that may include nutrition, lifestyle change, subtle energy practice, and holistic counseling.

So, big deal? Well, the big deal relates to the fact that someone coming in with what seems like a psychological issue (my own experience, years ago) is often treated by first fixing up the physiology before addressing anything much else. Example: sad, angry, irritable – treat by cooling the liver first. Seriously? Seriously.

We damage our emotional and physical health by eating what are called unrighteous foods. Ha, silly sounding term, meaning we have a constitutional framework that we are mistreating. Oh boy, that sound complicated too. Put most simply, we are eating foods that exacerbate the condition. Like, I need to go to sleep, just hand me a cup of coffee. That one, we all know. But the larger picture is not common knowledge.

Chinese medicine is all about subtle energy, that we can think of in terms of vitality and what we also call energy in the West. If you are tired, the Chinese approach is absolutely not about handing you a cup of coffee, that we use as a picker-upper in the West. The Chinese approach is to figure out not so much what is making you tired as what is blocking the energy you can tap into normally. A different approach. It is about making the lungs more healthy, to grasp lung Qi (pronounced chee), or the stomach or spleen (pancreas) more healthy, to create stomach Qi.

What to do about this or that pattern of symptoms is based on something called The Eight Principles. The first two are quite simply stated as if hot, cool; if cold, warm. So we warm up when there are symptoms of cold, and cool down when there are symptoms of heat.

The minute I hear someone angry about something, I start thinking about what they are doing that increases their anger, and what they are not doing that could decrease the anger. You want to feel less angry? Most of us know by now that it is not about changing the other person. Our goal is something called the neutral reaction.

We can get there in several ways. One is by releasing old hurts, old memories; a second is about cooling the liver heat, so that we actually feel less angry. There are others…

I talk a lot about releasing memories, but I do not always start there without providing some physiological help in the form of Chinese properties of foods to eat for calm emotions. No red meat, no complicated foods, no hot peppers, no coffee is the logical list. The not so logical list is the one developed over the centuries in the Chinese tradition.

For example, any kind of tremor in the limbs is a sign of something called deficient liver blood (do not panic, just a way of speaking about a condition where the action of tonifying is needed). For symptoms of deficient liver blood, then we learn to eat things like lamb, marrow bone soups, black beans, all cooked foods instead of salads, and to eat regularly without skipping meals. No cold foods, no ice cream. This will also help with other symptoms of the disharmony pattern connected with the liver such as blurred vision, numbness in the limbs, muscular weakness, muscle spasms, cramps, brittle nails, floaters in the eyes, insomnia. This is just some of the list of symptoms of the larger pattern of disharmony. So. Eat more lamb stews, then, like the Irish, with cooked carrots...

I’m just saying that Chinese medicine helps us stay vital and healthy so we can do all the things we want to in life. And I have to put in the disclaimer that this is for educational purposes. If you have access to a Chinese herbalist in your area, you can also get herbs for your health conditions. All this comes under the umbrella of natural remedies, holistic therapies: eating lamb and drinking herbal concoctions with names like Dang Gui Four (si wu tang)… Here's some of what goes into my herbs to keep me healthy.

A holistic therapist, then, will educate us about tonics, herbs and essential oils, while working on emotions, the memories of the past that contribute to the anger, the cords that hold the disharmony between people, and guilt and other emotions that contribute to the upsetness with self…

Be well, and look after your liver, Chinese style. I wonder if a google search will bring this line up in a recipe hunt?

Mark the day

2011-11-11T20:51:00.001-05:00

I cannot let this significant day go by without a small nod to my astrologer friends, and all those of us who 'do' numerology. Today, the 11th day of 11th month of 2011, will not come our way again.

With a lot of deep wisdom to share, I am sure, alas I have to scurry off, just marking the day. No day comes our way again, ever. So let each day allow us to bring sunshine and hope into another's life, let each day be a chance to greet with compassion, love wholeheartedly, and spread joy.

I'm off to raise vibrations elsewhere. Now if only I could remember all this when the going gets rough.

There are friends I am missing, loved ones far away, and some who have left this year. Some dearly missed. As I feel the emotion come up, I take my own advice and surf the wave of sadness that comes up and is gone, almost as quickly as it comes up.

Holistic therapists who specialize in emotional clearing joke about the biblical saying, and so it came to pass. Emotions too, are meant to come to pass, and not to stay. Just saying...

So the 11 in numerology, in the tradition I learned, is special, on its own and with a reduction to the single digit 2, signifies togetherness, invisible arms spread. Twoness.

Fitting also, although not by design, today the day of invisible arms is Remembrance Day, where we feel the invisible arms of loved ones gone, even if we are too young to have known any from the Great War, or do not know anyone lost or fought in more recent wars. We thought the end of war, did we not, in 1945?

I never know where these rambles take me until I sign off. So I have to go, and won't go into being at the front, in the Great War, or being whisked off into captivity, in the Second World War, both occurrences that are very easily retrieved from my really bizarre cellular memory. I won't go there, not now, as the kids say.

Again, signing off. Go do something good in the world.

Archeology of Anxiety

2011-11-09T14:58:00.000-05:00

Like the onlookers of the animated version of Lord of the Rings, I thought I had narrowly averted disaster, like Gandalf at the edge of the cavern, until the flick of the dragon's tail caught him up and swept him down to an uncertain fate, at best. Okay, I exaggerate. Nothing like that. But I did think I had averted something that came up like the dragon's tail to kick me off balance this weekend. My heart sank, my energy went to heck, and I found myself in high anxiety, reeling from the blow. Unable to write, think, or be myself for almost 24 hours, a hollow grin as I tried to shake off the energy of the surprise.

Bad news hits us at a visceral level, and is not about cognitive changing the way we think about it or any of those things. These things literally knock the wind out of us.

Writing about it today is possible because I am fortunate enough to know about and have access to energy work, my own or others'. So I am right as rain, as they say, despite the recent shock.

The history of why I went into a tailspin, fortunately not publicly, but at least privately, is impossible to know - unless you do energy work of some kind, in which every thing and knowledge about every thing is possible. To find the history of why I was feeling so dreadful (literally dread - full) is in the metaphors stored in my energetic field, that takes a little energetic archeology to find, dislodge and release.

The why I go into a tailspin has something to do with my physiology, that in other writings I talk about. Anyone who has recovered from burnout or cancer treatment will have a faulty emotional junction box, with less resilience to the perceived jolts and swings we receive daily. The how to get out of it fast is my specialty, so I had better be proficient about it.

So... here is what we find. Strange, all of it. Corroborated by another energy worker are the images I see and feel, and the dramatic shifts, return to calm.

First, I look inside, to find where in my body the terrified feelings are lodged. Because I have practiced this technique for some time, I am able to trust what I am getting intuitively, and clearly see the image I am presented with. A black stitched leather glove, around my heart. Lovely. When we 'get' the images, they are not as frightening as the racing feelings we are having, just so you know. The next scene is equally unpleasant, but reassuring too, since I now have some of the root of my problem.

The stitched leather glove is some horror thing, like the Aztec on the ladder in one of the Indiana Jones, reaching in for a heart, or a sacrifice thing, when a perfect young girl is ... well, you can imagine the rest and probably thankfully don't want to. As soon as I have the image, why, I go back in holographic time and space, in my big subconscious mind, and change the image for something nicer. Hmmm. Not hard to come up with a nicer scene. How about Avatar, when ceremony leads to blue green loving in a large connected group. Yes, better than the Aztec ceremony thing, hands down. So I then replace the image. Literally, delete old image, replace with new. I can really get into the blue green Avatar thing, thank you James Cameron.

So I 'run the colors' of that image. While I flow those colors through my body, I realize that the energy of love and connectedness is flowing right along with the peaceful love of the blue green. Done.

Bizarre, I know it is bizarre. It was to me too, and is now wonderful, because I experience how amazing the shift is.

Because our hearts are connected to our faces (the polyvagal theory - literally the nerves of the heart are reflected on our faces), my face shifts too. Where I was feeling tense and hardly able to smile, my usual countenance has returned. Big smile, easy laugh.

There is no moral to this story. Before I had finished with the archeology, I had (through HMR - holographic memory resolution) dislodged a black gundgy thing like a nasty insides of a golf ball with all the long stringy elastic, and a hard icy cold 18Th century shot ball, from a scene on a kind of frigate, and a kind of sharp metal clamp with a bunch of metal shards. Nice! All gone.

The subconscious is a strange place. All these things are palpable to another energy worker, so it is not all in the imagination. We actually create them inside, or have the memory from other times. Enough said, must get on with my daily routine.

Be well, and embrace the strange.

Antibiotics - not so good for us

2011-11-06T20:20:00.000-05:00

A couple of articles in the weekend paper caught my attention this week in the Viewpoint section. The one that caught my eye first was about how pythons digest their prey, and how their internal organs double in size while they do that, then return to normal. The article offers implications for heart health, and information about how cells can respond to certain fatty acids and increase dramatically in size. I was mostly interested from the viewpoint of a child reading Le Petit Prince, where the picture of a hat is, well, a python digesting.

The second article, though, entitled Antibiotics Could Make You Sick, affects a lot of us. As a trained natural health practitioner, we are schooled first and foremost in the concept of healthy gut flora. The bacteria in our gut is responsible for health and disease processes with profound implications.

Antibiotics. A lot of the market research that I have done over the years has been pharmaceutical in nature, so even from that point of view I learned of the dangers of the development of antibiotic-resistant 'bugs' as they were called in the media, that invade hospitals and resist the treatments medicine is used to using.

Antibiotics, that have saved millions of lives, billions of lives, probably, over the decades since their discovery, but when used to treat ear infections, bladder infections and other common afflictions on a regular basis, erode our health.

They affect the health of the gut flora. We have all been told to eat yogurt, to replenish the bacteria lost when on a course of antibiotics. My work in market research allowed me to help develop the marketing communications platforms for yogurts with 'active acidophilus' and other 'good bacteria', so I was schooled in that from a commercial point of view too.

The article in the paper points to research done on the relationship between gut flora health and the enzyme that promotes the feelings of hunger, ghrelin. Body fat increases when antibiotics are given to children for common ear and throat infections, for example. The what that happens is less significant than the fact that our natural balance is affected. Every time an unnatural, potent remedy is used, it takes a few decades before the research is in on 'what else' is going on that is not so good. Natural remedies are mostly just that: natural herbs and plants that have been used with good effect for thousands of years on the human body. There's a difference.

In my household, the medicine cabinet has alternative products for common ailments. We use Yin Chaio for colds and flu symptoms, that puts a cold away within 24 hours by boosting the immune system and increasing the energy of the lungs, we use Hsaio Yao Wan for headache, PMS symptoms or hangover from any toxic combination of food or drink. We have the most delicious Fruitillary Loquat Syrup for coughs, that strengthens the lungs while it soothes the mucus membranes. We use Arnica gel for aches and bruises. We use Oil of Wild Oregano for all infections or possible infections, the most potent antibiotic and antiviral substance there is. A tiny drop of that under the tongue zaps any sore throat within hours, naturally. We have flower essences (like Rescue Remedy) for emotional upsets. I still have a bottle labeled Rescue Redemy, made for me by a classmate friend when we were in natural health classes together.

Naturally, we need to say that you should not do this or that without the advice of your physician, in Canada, like in the US, for liability, so I also should say that the opinions on this blog are for information purposes and are not meant to replace your doctor's advice. Except when I am really sick, I go straight for acupuncture, that helps within 24 beautiful hours without drugs. With the state of our healthcare facilities these days, we could find ourselves waiting for 24 hours in a hospital emergency room in my neck of the woods these days, for a prescription of antibiotics we then need to go fill at the local drug store.

Just saying, that's all. Be well, and try to learn more about natural remedies that do not have side effects or countraindications. Your intelligent body will thank you.

A Stressful Incident is Captured Indefinitely

2011-11-05T22:11:00.000-04:00

Stress, trauma and pain are perfectly and indefinitely preserved in an altered state of consciousness that protects us at the moment of impact, overwhelm and shock. We are protected until such time as we can release the original pain from the subconscious mind.

Not me, nothing to do with me, may be your reaction. I have led a perfectly normal life, and this does not apply. Or not for me, you say, for I have carefully hidden away the overwhelming feelings and do not want to open up any of that now, not me.

And so we carry bravely on, trying and sometimes succeeding in hiding the bad times in the past, putting on a brave face. We carry on until something happens, some event that causes us to react in a way that we had not intended, that we have no control over. We have been triggered. Triggered by an event from the past, prevented from embracing the present. We carry on, until the mild pain we experienced becomes a chronic pain, or a more intense pain, preventing us from enjoying the present.

If any of this sounds familiar, do read on.

What if? What if we could access these states of consciousness where our stress and overwhelm are stored? I don't want to do that! I hear you say - I already have enough pain, or enough emotional pain. What I mean is what if we could access the root causes of that angry outburst or that sore knee, the root causes that are so perfectly stored in the altered state of consciousness, the trance state that protected us at the time and continues to protect us now? What if we could access the root cause and painlessly remove it.

This is how it works, this memory accessing and removing process, the one that I have been training in. First, the normal busy logical active brainwave of thinking is turned off, as the technique induces an Alpha-Theta brainwave state that lets the conscious mind relax. Like instant meditation, instant relaxation. This part is done by a trained practitioner, a little like hypnosis, only a milder, lighter trance state that allows you to be fully conscious of everything around you. Then the Theta brainwave state provides the capability for the mind to amplify the visual and sensory access to stored imagery in the subconscious. This allows us to locate, describe and then transform the the memories, all the while avoiding any relive of the experiences.

This combination of energy psychology and somatic psychology produces dramatic shifts in consciousness as the memory fragments are resolved. There is a discharge of pain, and usually a surge of energy, or of heat, as the body's energy changes and the memory fragment resolves.

We are engaging the body's inner wisdom. We are allowing the body and the bodymind to heal itself. Fascinating information is revealed and released safely and without pain or reliving the original experience.

I know I have written about this before, but the Holographic Memory Resolution technique and huge body of information is so fascinating that I cannot help but continue to offer explanations so that anyone reading this will begin to understand that we all can do with some assistance in this regard.

Without infringing on confidentiality, I can recount stories from the growing HMR lore, or memories that I have released in myself. Every memory reveals a clue to the mapping of the sequence of illness, the history of a pattern, problem, or physical illness.

It is freely admitted, in the integrative medical world now, that memories and emotional trauma are at the root of just about all illness. Long ago, I learned about the bones storing our memories - this from Peter Goldman, of the Sound Light White Lodge in the U.K., osteopath, teacher, channeler and healer. At the time, back in 2004, I would not have been able to imagine myself doing the work of releasing the memories that harm us in this way on such a wide scale. Peter was teaching sound healing, using tuning forks, which is also quite magical but not as accepted by the 'suit and tie' psychological community as is HMR.

Formally, a description of HMR is that it

... allows expedient access to past memories and enables resolution of the painful emotions associated with these events without having to "relive" such experiences. The hallmark of HMR is the empowerment of the individual's own "Healer Within."

Practically speaking, what happens during a session is at once poignant and sometimes amusing as we dig out the strange objects that accumulate in our energy field. Here are some examples of what we find. (Oh, before I describe any of them, I need to say that the practitioner can feel them, the pain of them, in her or his hands during a body scan, and most of us can see them as clearly as the client describing and seeing them herself or himself. The empathic abilities of the practitioner we learn to direct to our hands - send our intelligence to our hands - so that we can feel and sense without experiencing the pain in our bodies. With some of my clients, I often feel the pain of the object in my body, that I am learning to 'turn off'. It does not have to be 'wierd', but in my case it often is!)

Okay, so this is what we find lodged all over the place. It's an interminable list, but I will provide some examples to give you an idea. When we are yelled at, or when we see things that shock us as children, we often store those memories as objects over or behind our eyes. So during the process of HMR we get rid of a whole slew of things, from baseballs to mechano sets to broken bits of glass and china; our subconsious is an endlessly creative place, it would seem...; some of my favourites, and a lot that I have personally dug out of myself, with help or now on my own, are the nasty medieval instruments of war and torture. Not kidding. And cannon balls. So I have had pikes in my back, arrows in my neck, cannon balls smashing my knee. You name it, we find it.

You know, I don't really know about how all this gets into our fields. In a recent example, from someone who has given me permission to tell, a pain in a joint turned out to be partly due to a disappointment, years ago, in baking a pie. The pie did not turn out; she was disappointed in herself; her dismay lodged in her subconscious as a dashing of her dreams of presenting the pie (who to - the Queen?) on a lovely china plate; we pulled out bits of smashed blue and white Doulton china plate from the joint in question. Go figure. And the pain was reduced.

So I hope you get some sense of my fascination with this work, my passion, my mission, my joy that allows me to help people in such an effective way. In the future, I have no doubt that I will be traveling to countries experiencing traumatic events, as part of a team of trauma specialists without borders. So I was told, this past summer. Meanwhile I am doing my best to be the trauma without borders specialist in my own city, one person at a time, moving us all forward to turn potential happiness into real, manifested and purposeful lives of true happiness.

Be well,

Breathe When You are Stressed

2011-11-03T15:56:00.000-04:00

We often remind one another to breathe when we are upset or stressed. It is in fact the act of breathing out that kick starts the parasympathetic nervous system, to calm us down.

The notion of surfing the urge to be angry, upset, cry or explode is a useful one to apply along with the gentle reminder to breathe, breathe out.

Elisha Gold, PhD, yesterday on the NICABM mindfulness webinar series, offered us a simple acronym that he uses to help those in distress (emotional distress).

He has called it STOP. A convenient cue word that we all can use. STOP: S for stop, stay still, do nothing; T for take stock, take time, a moment; O for observe - observe the rush of emotions, without taking action; P for playfully withdraw and see the big picture.

To this I add my favorite Donna Eden technique, the modified Wayne Cook Hookup - where you cross your meridians over each other, bringing your energy in from explosive or excited dispersement, and take the time to breathe for 90 seconds. The short reminder here, for those who already know or use it (we always need to remind ourselves of these things) is to cross ankles, then cross wrists and arms by making what as children we learned as "here is the church, here is the steeple", then quietly breathing with tongue at top of palate and bottom of palate with the inbreath and outbreath, quietly like a light switch. Search Donna Eden in this blog to find fuller instructions.

While we may have difficulty with both of these techniques when we are really "riled up" as an older generation would have said, if we practice them from time to time, they will come to us more easily when we need them.

Like mindfulness meditation, the HookUp and the STOP techniques will all have the effect of giving our bodymind the space it needs to slow down, ground, and come back into our more logical mind.

Uh oh, I thought I might get through a simple blog entry without having to talk about the multiplicity of mind. No such luck, for it fits nicely in with the scenario of "losing the place" as the Scottish expression goes. When we are very angry, we tend to leave our logical, managerial self behind and behave from the self that is highly volatile, a wounded child, that no longer is in the present tense, but trapped in the life or death emotions of a very early experience.

The HookUp is particularly helpful, rapidly, in a minute and a half, in bringing us back.

Not sure whether I have addressed the multiplicity of personality here or not, but the new theories of psychology have squarely embraced the fact that we operate from different selves, all the time, and that this is quite normal. The far end of the continuum is the old, frightening spectre of Multiple Personality Disorder, today called Dissociative Identity Disorder, that few people have, but that became famously part of the common lore in the television series Heroes. Most of us, fortunately, are not so fragmented, but go in and out of manager and wounded child selves all day long. All in the course of a day.

Helpful for anyone and everyone is the discipline that comes with focused activity. I am not the first writer to experience the benefits of concentrated focus on my sense of self, happiness and well-being.

Okay, for a short post, as usual, I wax long. Wax long? Like the swelling moon? Wherever did that expression come from?

Be well, and learn to put your thoughts on pause so that you can enjoy the present moment.

Urge surfing

2011-11-02T20:35:00.000-04:00

This evening I listened to a presentation hosted by NICABM with two presenters, Ron Siegel, PsyD and Elisha Goldstein, PhD on the topic of mindfulness, that helps us be in the present.

Fascinating smorgasbord of information, from showing children how to pay attention to the smell, texture and taste of an apple to teaching people to urge surf, my latest favourite expression… Just a wealth of great information. I know myself well: have to make note of it here, or it gets lost in the ethers and not easily retrievable when I want it for some random conversation or serious dialogue with someone who could use the techniques.

Factoids from tonight’s presentation:

• People are measurably happier when their minds are in the present.
• We perpetuate our problems when we allow the mind to loop our thoughts, instead of being in the present moment, attending to our immediate surroundings.
• Grounding is most helpful for anyone experiencing anxiety or panic. Breathing practices and meditation with closed eyes are not so good… they tend to become flooded with overwhelming feelings. We need to pay attention to the body, find something to touch or feel, getting a sense of the connectedness to the chair, the floor, or a visual clue. (Imagine me, in a holistic class learning to meditate with eyes closed, becoming suddenly flooded with unwanted emotion, panic, in the midst of a spiritual gathering, unaware of the hidden traumas that were about to surface but not yet cleared, before the days of HMR. Not so good.) Here is a quote from the broadcast: “People who have people who have non-integrated trauma, or who are fragile at all, do not do well with closing eyes, because they tend to amplify the emotions…” Yep. I would have had no idea what non-integrated trauma was, back then, as you may not. Just a fancy way of saying trauma that was not yet dealt with in any way, through traditional or non-traditional therapies.

Where was I? okay… Grounding exercises bring in safety. Grounding is taking in the presence of the tree, noticing the chair, noticing an object that is distal, not in the heart region, and grounds you in the safety of reality. Not breath focused. I feel like I am learning backwards, since I was fortunate to learn grounding that was so helpful, especially the Donna Eden work, before I learned any of this about why it is good for this or that.

So if you are in a small group, and someone is asking you to close your eyes and breathe, and you feel uncomfortable, tell them you learned from Ron Siegal and Elisha Gold to sit that one out. Here is the quote if you need it: If someone has an overwhelming emotion, it is better to use mindfulness by focusing outward rather than inward, with eyes open.

I have been to lots of conferences with intuitives like myself who raise eyebrows around us by not doing what is requested, like uncrossing legs, and OM-ing in a group. Doing what feels right is part of listening to your body and your wise bodymind, that would keep us all out of trouble if we were not so socialized to ignore the messages.

As you can see, mindfulness practices are a range of very broad techniques that help us be in the present tense and not somewhere in the past or future creating suffering for ourselves, as the Buddhists say.

I need to mention urge surfing - a psychotherapeutic term for allowing the sensations of say, anger, to develop, surface, and abate, without needing to act on them. Like blushing with anger, and sitting still, if you ask me. Go try this at home. They mentioned that it was useful to teach caregivers and parents, whose biggest mistake is taking personally the innocent behaviour of, um, kids.

Lots more to say, leave it for another day. I should remind that you can search within the blog and of course on the internet for names and modalities I mention. HMR stands for Holographic Memory Resolution, developed by Brent Baum for healing trauma. My specialty. I am trying to remember to tag my posts…

Kettle’s boiling. Be well,

Documenting Change

2011-11-01T22:07:00.000-04:00

Today is the first of November. The beginning of the month, a quick trip to Chinatown for herbs. I had an amusing health story this week that for most people would not have been amusing, except that I am fearless and can heal up all kinds of things on the health front. Wish my life were as easy to fix up, but that is coming, too.

For a brief moment, one day last week, I lost my concentration and balance as I was getting dressed, feeling particularly happy at the thought of visitors from out of town and an upcoming important occasion. (I repeat: happy. In the past I would have felt anxious, but now I can anticipate and feel joyful. Thank you, HMR.)

Ungrounded, I had a freak small accident, literally going off balance and tumbling, fortunately, onto a suitcase I was unpacking, soft-sided, that broke my fall. I would have laughed at myself had I not, I kid you not, fallen onto my elbow that promptly caused my fist to punch me in the ribs. Seriously, as the young people say, could you have made that up?

Struggling with the possibility of cracked ribs this week, I of course was documenting my behavior, my emotions and my pain levels. (I am my own case study and testimonial, as I insist on saying, and the universe keeps providing me with ways to demonstrate that).

My 'homework' with the HMR work is to work with chronic pain. Seems that acute pain is equally responsive to HMR... Were you not me, then, you would be in agony, and possibly rushing out the door to get some pain killers. As it was, I knew enough from the Peter Levine work to allow my body to react to the fall, the surprise of the fall. And since then have worked on that area using HMR protocols. So I should be fine, I am thinking, but I am not. Emotional lability, swinging all over the place, all week. Were you not me, you might think yourself depressed, anxious, headed for disaster. Me, though, I am aware that constricted breathing caused by the damage to the rib and the ouch! on the intake of too deep a breath causes cumulative oxygen deficits that show up as... you guessed it: depressed feelings, anxiety, and mood swings. Ouch!

Despite the setback of the ribs thing - where I could count on a few close friends to allow me to moan away about the emotional pain and anxiety coming up, knowing full well that by next week, this week, I would be back to normal - I am noticing amazing changes in myself, again.

The most interesting change is my ability to clearly recall scenes from my childhood as never before, from a quite early age. When you have trauma at any age, but especially in childhood, your memories are all compromised by the frozen emotion. You will literally remember less of your childhood. I now have access to more of my own.

The other change I am noticing is the ability to focus and to address issues that I once was eager to avoid. Changes, subtle but important. This blog is a way to document these changes, a testimony to the effectiveness of HMR. I am excited about the prospect of going more public about how the release and resolution of painful or hidden memories changes lives, dramatically but subtly, if that were possible.

Today I started writing about my childhood; I will be taking a class on memoir writing next week, just for fun, in the country. An excuse to be in the country, where I so love to be. I wanted to document the day, today, with that news, the writing about early memories that have eluded me now for years. It all feels different, again, this week. Changing, week by week. So interesting, I think, and hope that one day everyone will be able to have access to the concept I think about as emotional laundry. Long, long list of benefits...

Be well,

Your Body Reveals - Head Trauma and Visual Imprinting

2011-10-25T21:01:00.000-04:00

I wanted to write more about the information stored in the body. What we are learning through the HMR process, as I have said before, is unparalleled. I have written elsewhere about the encoding of support from our parents - or lack of it, in our legs. Our entire body is a library of memories, and its wisdom can lead us to effective ways of releasing and resolving those memories that are impeding us from being "all we can be".

If the legs are an indication of parental support, and our hips of the separation from parents, what then else do we find hidden in the body that reveals our history?

The shoulders hold the energy of responsibility, especially the part near the neck. The ears carry imprints of angry voices, shaming words, and shouting. The expression of names will never hurt me is not at all true in the energy world. We carry everything said to us.

The eyes are also visual imprinting - meaning we can be traumatized by something we see, and that will encode in the area of the eyes.

Another strange but true story about just how early our conscious self begins recording the events, at birth or even before birth, comes from the field of HMR. It is no secret that a baby in the uterus is aware of what is going on in the world outside. But just how aware has been demonstrated in, you guessed it, the therapy context. Brent Baum tells a story of a young man who had come to see him. As always, the history of trauma that is taken on the first visit covers all known accidents, incidents, surgeries and such, especially trauma to the head.

This man had one eye that had been 40 degrees off at birth, and subsequently corrected to 20 degrees through surgery. In taking the trauma history (again, this is a public case that can be talked about and written about without breaking any confidentiality), the surgery was duly noted. While working with the subconscious memories, a memory of a traumatic incident that had taken place while this young man had been in the womb was brought out.

The story of what happened was known - some violent act that the mother witnessed - but during the session, our person was able to go back to the scene and reframe the trauma. One might think that the traumatic memory was simply conveyed from the mother, but HMR reframes memories that are only related to the person in the therapy chair...

After the memory was reframed, within a short period of time, the askew eye had spontaneously moved 10 degrees towards normal position. How strange is this. The fetus in the womb then, saw, over to the right, exactly what the mother saw, and was traumatized, freezing the energy of that moment so that the eye did not develop normally thereafter. When the memory was unfrozen, the eye spontaneously resumed normal development, correcting itself.

How strange is that? All young children are vulnerable. When will we all learn how to speak softly, love fiercely, and support firmly all the young children in our lives?

I have had to reframe memories of being angry with my own children, when I did not know better or when I could do no better. We do the best we can, but in hindsight, what would we do differently?

I invite you again to reflect on how your bodymind provides information about your childhood, from the history of trauma in the body. We have all been traumatized and we have all unwittingly traumatized our children. HMR helps resolve all the memories so that we can be more enlightened and loving. It just does. I earnestly wish to spread the word.

You are welcome to ponder this awhile. I'm going to make some tea.

Your Body Reveals

2011-10-23T12:11:00.000-04:00

I wanted to write about the information stored in the body at more length. Any of you familiar with Louise Hay's work has seen a framework for what kinds of emotions may be stored where, most famously carpal tunnel syndrome, that is clearly of emotional origin. But the information we are learning through HMR training is comparable to no other for the detail and accuracy in the field.

Following the logic that frozen or disrupted energy patterns are stored in the body, from earliest age onwards, HMR teaches us of the tendencies for trauma – or of lack of support, which becomes a kind of void that is also trauma – to be stored in specific sites of the body. Here I want to talk first about the structures that reflect our early childhood and youth.

For some reason, our developmental history (history from age 0 onwards) is stored in the foot area first. So if there is some kind of trauma history (or abandonment issue – that we all have somewhere) it will show up in the foot area if it occurs between ages 0 and 3.

What does this mean? Well, if you have anything chronically wrong with your feet, including plantar’s warts, what we know is that there was not enough love and high vibration at some point during that time to create a healthy body, structure and immune pathways. In the feet. Take that information further: the left foot is normally mother energy; the right is father energy. So if mother for some reason was absent, let’s say, before the age of 3, the left foot is susceptible to injury or weakness.

This is the foot area, age 0 to 3. What is next?

Let’s say you repeatedly sprain your right ankle – a pattern you would not notice until you pay attention. What might this mean? Right ankle would normally denote something up with the male energy coming to you. Father absent at some time during the age of 3 to 5 might be at the source.

I think you could imagine a plant in the sunshine, with one leaf in the shade. The shaded leaf might develop with less resilience than the other leaves. Once the entire plant is back in the sun, and even when that leaf is gone, there is still a place on the stem where that leaf was that is weaker than the rest of the plant because it had no sun, for a while.

We all have all kinds of things, all over our bodies. To be human is to experience the full range of emotions, from abandonment, our most common, to unworthiness, to shame. We get past the initial onset of such emotions; we heal and move forward. Only we leave parts of us that are still weakened and frozen until attended to, is the point.

Right versus left: left is feminine energy, and right is associated with male energy; for some of us, left is the non-dominant energy and right is the dominant energy, so the actual gender roles were reversed. If mother was the primary caregiver and decision-maker, her energy may be imprinted in the right side and not the left.

So we are clear about feet and ankles? Up to age 5? The progression upwards, now, follows the formation and development of the structures of the body as we grow. Up the leg, towards age 21, towards the hip when at 21 we energetically leave our parents with the solidification of the hip structures. In between: calf from 4 to 9, knee from age 10 to 15, thigh age 16 to 21.

See the pattern? This is somatic psychology at its most sophisticated – the body reveals, and HMR informs. We not only think that this is so, we have it documented in thousands of case memories. When the body memory takes us to a pain in the right knee, or chronic right knee problems, we can ask what comes up subconsciously around that age. We routinely find some sort of trauma on the father side, for example.

Now before I go further, I want to emphasize that all this comprises perfectly normal patterns. We all have things like this in our bodymind. Typically, the parents were not abusive, or did not abandon their children, but the perception of lack of safety from the child’s point of view, however brief, for whatever reason, will allow a pattern to develop.

The beauty of HMR is that it locates these frozen memories and resolves them, as though the incident, or sequence of events, never happened. The light floods back into these body parts, and they no longer are the targets of injury or pain.

In sum, then, the legs reflect the support or lack of it, from our parents. Left is typically mother, right is father. Our developmental history is reflected from time of infancy, in the foot, to time of separation from home, energetically, at age 21, referred to as the transfer of power from mother or father, where I will pick up next time.

I invite you to reflect on how your bodymind provides information about your childhood, from the history of trauma in your legs. If you find any of this painful, stop; do not go into the why of it without some loving support. We are now learning that chronic pain, you see, has more to do with the memories of trauma than with the physical event itself, and can be released through HMR. At a minimum, do some tapping (EFT) on those feelings. This is the world of Energy Psychology. Fascinating, informative, effective.

Be well. Live life to its fullest.

“Tell me about the shaking thing”

2011-10-22T22:36:00.002-04:00

As I listen to my friend recount the drama of the past week, I have a sudden flash of understanding. I know clearly what has happened to her, that I am happy to explain, and rejoice with her that health is returning to the assailed body. Inexplicably, she told me, a couple of days after an outpatient medical procedure, she began shaking uncontrollably, and feeling hot, then cold, unable to regulate her bodily responses. Unable to even clearly describe her own physiological reactions, my friend begins to listen to me attentively, knowing that I have grasped the truth of what has happened. Without direct information from the medical team – who would deny that anything had been unusual, I am sure – we will never quite know what happened that day. But the physical reactions tell their own story. A story of trauma, of physiological overwhelm, no matter what the medical team would say or not say.

I am referring to the body’s natural post-trauma response, that under normal circumstances, would sadly be “treated” in a hospital setting, but that happened naturally, and thankfully, - but scarily – alone in a bed at home. Peter A. Levine, trauma specialist and leading voice in the field of psychophysiology, eloquently describes in The Power of the Unspoken Voice this natural and healing response to trauma. He describes his own response following a serious accident:

“A trembling wave of release moves through me, and I take my first deep breath. Then a jagged shudder of terror passes through my body. … In a little while, a softer trembling begins to replace the abrupt shudders. … My body continues to shake and tremble. It is alternately icy cold and feverishly hot. … Then, unexpectedly, an enveloping sense of relief floods over me. I feel myself coming back into my body. … I have the deeply reassuring sense that I am no longer frozen, that time has started to move forward, that I am awakening from the nightmare.”

Every trauma – physical or emotional – is registered in the body as stuck or frozen energy; according to Levine, trauma is “not what happens to us, but what we hold inside”, something that occurs in the subconscious, in the body’s energy field. Trembling is the ancient, natural way that the body releases trauma and restores its energy flow.

Cats and dogs do this naturally, although most of us think they are cold. They are not; they are releasing shock.

“Talking cures” do not reach the source; what we refer to as scared stiff is the paralysis or shutdown, or tonic immobility, that is the state of temporary freezing of energy that prevents “fully reengaging in life”. There is a moment, just prior to major accident or unpleasant event, when the psyche shuts down, or freezes what happens next. This moment becomes frozen in time.

When we are not able, or not allowed, or prevent ourselves from releasing the frozen energy, our bodies store it until the psyche is able to release it – until safety creates the space for releasing the energy of trauma. Most trauma for the majority of us throughout life is less dramatic than outright accident or abuse, but stored nonetheless in us until released.

As you know, my specialty is the release of frozen energy through accessing the memories of the body – of the subconscious – with the elegant protocols of holographic memory resolution, or HMR. Anyone who has had any kind of injury or accident benefits from releasing the memories of trauma. Sadly, the physical healing is only a part of the process. Indeed, we know now that most chronic pain is related to the memory of the trauma, and no longer to a physiological cause. Yes, we know a lot more than you have probably learned anywhere, unless this is your field of expertise. With what we know now, it is possible for anyone to release emotional and physical pain in ways unheard of a decade ago. Energy psychology has created a new paradigm of healing; while you may not be able to shudder away your trauma, you can certainly learn to release it through HMR. It stays with you until you do.

Be well. Learning how to release those trauma memories will move you forward to full engagement with life…

Driven to Urgency, Driving to Wellness

2011-10-21T12:00:00.002-04:00

Why is it that the grey of city life seems to breed unease, a kind of coffee-fueled sense of purpose and urgency to daily routines that keep us busy, preoccupied and purposeful, but inhibiting an ability to relax?

How many of us are unable to slow down, hardly for a moment, without a sense of leaving too many to-do lists undone? We study time management, productivity, effectiveness, goal setting.

Coffee excites the blood. It does not 'wake us up' as we think, but actually has an effect of making the blood cells whiz about, frantically. Which is not a good thing. So anyone with an underlying anxiety that shows up precisely when we try to slow down would do well to be aware of the impact of coffee on our bodies.

Free-flowing anxiety can set in at a very young age. You may not even be aware of your own level of anxiety until you somewhere, somehow, enter a place of calm that feels foreign, surprising you with the peacefulness inside.

The mindfulness training series makes the point that there is a need for so many of us to be aware of staying in the present tense, in the here and now, to lower our anxious threshold. To allow for the universe to communicate with us. To allow for the opening to intuition, the connection with all things. Learning to slow down is a learning curve, a complex one.

Access to green spaces, to the earth and the elements bring us closer to a place of peacefulness than our wired city spaces. How often do you need recharging, a connection to the earth, the trees and open spaces?

I am fortunate to be able to escape the city from time to time into the green. It has been my salvation over the years; I keenly feel a sense of imbalance when I am too long cloistered in the city. Since I am able to drive into the green spaces,out beyond the city grey and asphalt, I do exactly that. Exchanging meditation and chakra balancing for a drive ... to wellness.

Mindfulness practice increases compassion

2011-10-19T18:39:00.001-04:00

I am following a webinar called Can Mindfulness Rewire the Brain?

I have just been listening to the NICABM mindfulness series’ presentation by Sara Lazar, PhD, and discussion about neuroplasticity – that buzzword that means that the brain develops new neurons in the learning process, at any age. Weekly there is a long and fascinating discussion of the different areas of the brain and their function, specifically related to mental health. Recent research and available technology allows the use of MRI machines to measure and observe and monitor all kinds of things.

The webinar, freely accessible when you sign up for the series, is exploring the research on mindfulness, a form of meditation that has huge implications for mental health – and for mental health practitioners.

The part that I twigged to, after listening to by this time for me familiar research, was the development of compassion, that faculty that allows us to have empathy for others and that is so essential for all therapists. And, according to my recent trauma training, often absent in medical personnel, sigh. (We have to treat the trauma of medical procedures in HMR, Holographic Memory Resolution.)

Compassion is what Tibetan monks and the Dalai Lama are so obviously full of. Now, in addition to empathy, mindfulness brings us to a place where we begin to see the whole picture and connection to the universe… that was not discussed in this web seminar…

In any case, the point I want to make is that research is able to show what is going on in the brain – many brains, if it is to be considered research – when people are doing more of one thing or another. So the area of the brain that we know to be associated with empathy – the TPJ, the temporal parietal junction, the area of the brain that is important for this discussion – increases in grey matter with mindfulness. This also corroborates the reported increase in empathetic feelings for others.

In short, then, there is substantial research that the brain changes with the practice of mindfulness.

Where am I going with this? The part that excited me was the smaller study mentioned about therapists and patients, where the therapists had learned and practiced mindfulness. The study shows that the patients had better outcomes when the therapists practiced mindfulness than when they did not.

So ... if you are hunting for a good therapist, who will make a difference in your life, here is a question you can ask that may throw them off guard. Find out whether they practice mindfulness meditation…

Not sure where else I was going with this piece. Oh yes. The impact on depression, the studies show, is also considerable. If depressed patients are taught the practice of mindfulness, their outcomes are better – they are, in clinical terms, more robust and less likely to fall into the deep valley of depression when they have learned mindfulness.

Where it is counterindicated – that is, where mindfulness does not help or where it may bring unexpected and negative effects – is when working with patients with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or some sort of identified trauma history. Any interior meditative practice runs the risk of flooding - overwhelming with painful memories or flashbacks. Long retreats for this reason are not a good idea for someone with trauma history… too much focus on internal process, with undesirable emotional flooding. What works for this kind of trauma history is an outward-directed practice such as yoga or tai chi, that does not involve closed eyes, that is grounding and that creates safety.

I am sure I will get around to saying more. I find it interesting that I can go between a small snippet of noticing something in a café and writing from a therapist’s viewpoint. Hmmm. I will have to explore Internal Family Systems theory out loud sometime soon on the blog. Seems different parts of me like writing about different things ;-)...

Be well, and listen to yourself. If you do not like what you hear, go for help…

Grounding in the Market

2011-10-17T20:46:00.001-04:00

Back to the city, home from Chicago, the first thing is a trip to the market for renewing the connection with the earth. Simply greeting the people who work there is part of the best of city life for me.

At the market in the fall, the array of squashes is quite astounding.

In recent years, the heirloom vegetables have made a resurgence with the fresh, local and organic movement. Romanescu broccoli, I think it is called - correct me if I have it wrong - is one of my favorites because of its fibonacci spirals that are so evident in the shape of the florets. (You can look up the fibonacci sequence, not going to say more here). The variety of heirloom tomatoes and the wondrous array of squashes, edible and ornamental, cannot help but make you smile.

These are from the largest market in the city, a delight to visit. Being with the produce of nature, like having hands in the earth, is grounding and healthy for everyone. The original energy work, it would seem, is working with the earth and its bounty.

These squashes were the highlight of my visit, this time. Enjoy! Go make some squash soup!

Stranger than Fiction, by far...

2011-10-16T21:04:00.002-04:00

We were told a strange, but very strange story today in the advanced HMR workshop, one of the few real case studies we can talk about out of class, since the person involved went public in the media a few years ago.

This was the story of a woman who led a life on the streets - incurring every possible situation imaginable, and who somehow was referred to Brent Baum at one of his addiction clinics. Lucidly, she recounted her recollections of coming into her own infant fetus, from the spirit world, coming down as a light. Her story was that the angelic presence stopped, horrified, when she realized who her parents were. As a child, the client claimed that she was aware of her celestial self floating above her. The angelic presence was appropriately named Celeste. Remember, I am reporting what she said to Brent, so this is not my making anything up!

During therapy, she claimed that she this angelic presence floating above her, Celeste, had clearly told her that it would be impossible to ever reunite, because of low vibrations of the human lifestyle on the street were incompatible with the high angelic vibrations that we first "come in" with under normal circumstances.

Over time, however, things apparently changed, with the release of trauma and the gradual lightening up of her human vibration. She announced to Brent one day that Celeste was now ready, that her vibrations were high enough for her to do this. I am just reporting...

We are somewhat dumbfounded in class as Brent tells how he then witnessed a great shuddering and shaking, his client before his eyes transforming, as Celeste entered the human body. Starting from the head, the shuddering and shaking progressively halted, while the rest of the body kept shaking. When all the shaking had finished, Brent's client announced, calmly, that Celeste was now reunited with the human body. I am, as I say, just reporting.

Her subsequently lucid and calm presence and astounding story has been in the media, so I can tell this strange story. HMR raises vibrations through its memory resolution process. Obviously.

Written in haste, as the cafe is closing...

Somatic Cueing

2011-10-14T21:52:00.000-04:00

Okay, one more thing about HMR. The technique involves scanning the body, with hands that become more and more sensitive to energy. We learn that our entire history is literally there, in our muscular and skeletal structures and nerve plexes.

Pain and even history of accident to shoulder, foot, knee - all are related to developmental stages of our lives.

More another time. Cafe is closing...

Again I say, listen to your body. Its wisdom will heal many things if we allow.

We assume pain is physiological, but it may be memory

2011-10-14T21:49:00.001-04:00

This week I am attending an advanced training workshop on HMR, Holographic Memory Resolution. I am bathed in stories about the resolution of chronic pain, migraine and other conditions through this memory mapping technique that is being learned by psychologists and others in the helping professions.

Some of the stories are astounding, all are interesting. A quote from Brent Baum's text, abridged:

When a physiological trauma like a car accident ... occurs, the event can become bound within an emotional trance state which will preserve the pain symptoms intact despite the healing of the physiological body. ... The emotional trance state induced bears with it the capacity to maintain the trance-created illusion of the pain syndrome intact [and] ... will defy the interventions of surgery, acupuncture, medications, bio-chemical intervention ... causing the pain to recur at the predicted intervals.

There are over 16,000 documented HMR cases that include the successful resolution of pain syndromes such as PMS - where the trauma of the first period is re-activated, resulting in the same cramping and mood shifts that acccompanied the original experience; sports trauma - where excessive stress to the body, the last push of a marathon, induces pain that is ignored; the body then holds somatic memory related to the injury, despite physiological healing.

Brent Baum regales us with anecdotal evidence in support of this incredible technique. Post-partum depression also responds to HMR: there are indications that this may be due to early trauma, where a child 'part' is activated by the birth of a child that triggers subconscious panic from the wounded 'parts' that are still actively in frozen trance.

What appears as manic-depressive illness also responds with a reduction in mood swings and intensity of swings, suggesting that trauma underlies the illness, and can be resolved through HMR.

The hallmark of HMR is enhanced access to the wisdom of the bodymind that provides the mapping of memory patterns. HMR stimulates the nervous system to spontaneously and safely map its trauma history - all the bumps and bruises that are encoded meticulously by the subconscious - and provides the way to solutions. The nervous system directs attention to the sites of memory encoding. What we need for this release is the ability to imagine a safe scene.

In short, as I have said elsewhere, the technique allows for locating of sensation in the body - the lump in the throat, the tension in the neck - and then the access to early memory that is then cleared.

It's amazing stuff, that is all I can say. Speechless? Well, hardly, but you get my drift.

Be well - and listen to your body,

Car Crash Story

2011-10-12T19:57:00.000-04:00

A postmedia news story in our local paper caught my eye recently, about a teacher from Ottawa whose car crash injuries have stayed with her for years, including the emotional angst and not just the physical pain.

The story starts with the quote "you mean this isn't going to go away?", about the loss of her teaching profession due to the pain and fatigue, and headaches.

The techniques I use are not well known enough for the word to get to her about all the energy psych methods of releasing a lot of the heartbreak and physical distress from such incidents. Car crashes have been the subject of energy psychology seminars, because 'we' have so many ways of helping.

The work I specialize in, the HMR, that releases traumatic memories, is truly remarkable for the effect on such injuries, physical as well as emotional.

When I read in the article that seven years later her head is still on an angle, the way it was turned at the moment of impact, I had to put something in this blog. There is frozen energy, exactly at the moment of trauma, or more precisely, at T-1, the millisecond before impact. HMR releases this frozen energy, with all the emotional and traumatic pain. The injury may seem entirely physical, but has a large component of energy that is literally immobilized in fright, energy that energy psychology techniques can release.

Headaches are often a reliving of the first headache, which is why modern medicine cannot 'find' the cause and eliminate them. This is what HMR can do. HMR is highly effective in eliminating migraine and headache, permanently.

Just saying. There is help out there, from the holistic world, for such things. HMR sessions would be a great start. There are practitioners of this non-invasive technique in Canada as well as the US.

Be well, and find ways to release your frozen energy. They are out there. Go look up Peter Levine and Brent Baum for more depth on this...

Not EFT but SET Simple Energy Techniques

2011-10-12T11:08:00.000-04:00

Recent 'success stories' from friends and clients prompt me to put a text from Steve Wells on here in its entirety. I'm sure he won't mind! SET involves meridian stimulation, constantly, while talking or thinking about an issue, with no specific wording or pattern, so it is great for generalized anxiety about just about anything.

From Steve Wells:
http://www.eftdownunder.com/SET.html

A Basic Overview of SET:

• Simply Tap on the Energy Points: SET at its core is a very simple process of tapping on energy points on the body for emotional and physical relief. You can also rub or simply touch and lightly "hold" the points.

• No Specific Order Necessary: There really is no need to tap on the points in any particular order, or even to use all of them. You can usually get results just tapping on any 4-5 of the points as it seems the "energy system" is all connected. You can tap on the upper body points, the finger points, on any or all of the points. Up to you.

• Finger Tapping: You can tap on the finger points using the thumb as the tapper = Using the thumb to tap on the finger points of the same hand, including the ring finger, "going up and down the points." This is easy to do and non- fatiguing once you get used to it. It is very easy to integrate into your routine and is also something that can be done in public (under the table or behind your back if you prefer).

• Focused Tapping: When tapping, focus on "whatever you are aware of" in the mind (thoughts, beliefs, memories, worries) or body (feelings, intensity, bodily location) while you tap. There is no need to use a set-up statement or repeat a reminder phrase, as used in EFT. You can get results by just adding the tapping to whatever you are aware of, then continuing to tap whilst noticing how your thoughts and feelings shift, until you experience relief.

• No need to be clever. You can often get benefits from tapping without focusing on anything in particular while you tap. Forget about having to be your own therapist and seeking to identify your "core issues". Just the tapping alone, if you do enough of it, can often bring beneficial results.

• Continual tapping for "energy toning": The sheer amount of meridian stimulation is often a key factor in gaining results. We have clients tap continually during our therapy sessions and we also encourage daily continual tapping at home. This seems to have the beneficial effect of toning down the body's natural reactivity and reducing your overall stress and arousal, as well as stimulating the flow of positive life energy and allowing you to access your creativity and optimism.

• Accept Whatever Comes: Let your thoughts and feelings come while you tap. Accept every thought and feeling and allow even negative thoughts to come but add tapping to their presence.

Again, Steve's website is as above for more on his approach. I use SET and other energy psych techniques, including Donna Eden's work, as you know from reading this blog!

Energy psychology is becoming more accepted everywhere, as I am finding out with the rest of you. Not too strange anymore, I hope! So like many energy psychology practitioners, I like to teach the basic techniques in a learning situation especially, when the first contact with the technique brings immediate results.

Change Within, Change Without

2011-10-07T22:08:00.001-04:00

I was told a great story today about how shifting our energy can create things we desire in the world around us. A friend, newly initiated to Energy Psychology, was taught how to use Energy Psychology to begin the day with positive energy, saying affirmations out loud related to health, finances and other areas of her life. This was her 'very first' go around with changing her energy with intention, using Energy Psychology.

Shortly thereafter, the phone rang with a windfall of thousands of dollars, forgotten by a relative in a dormant account. Wow, my friend thought - this stuff really works!

Indeed - this is what we have been saying for years. This stuff really works. We change the energy of our biofield, our meridians, and release any dissonance with receiving all the positive blessings this life has to offer - and our lives change.

Check. One more convert!

The best known of the energy psychology techniques is EFT, offered freely to the world by Gary Craig over the past few years, now under the steady helm of the statuesque Dawson Church. I learned EFT several years ago, and love to show people how to use it to lower the intensity of emotions - its most common application - at public events like funerals.

If you gently tap your collarbone, one of the points used in EFT, you can stop yourself from crying, for example, or being overwhelmed by emotion. It is used in a therapeutic context, as well, alongside many other techniques such as SET (simple energy technique) that is done constantly, without special words, while talking about anything upsetting, with dramatic results; TAT (touch and breathe), and others.

One of my favorites is something known as the butterfly tap, officially known as WHEE, which entails a simple crossing of arms, as our instinct sometimes prompts us to do, and then gently tapping, alternating hands. This one is hugely effective. Most of the techniques work through stimulating the meridians, like self acupuncture, some say.

Intuitive practitioners use whichever one will be most effective in a specific situation with a particular person.

This week the EFT Pain Summit has been going on, with thousands of people listening to how to use energy psychology for physical pain. If you haven't already, I would suggest you explore the different techniques on YouTube, where they abound, and see what helps you in your every day life to move energy through and release subconscious blocks to all kinds of things. And then, why, use it to create abundance and love in your life.

As people are discovering, one by one and in droves, it works.

Solar Flares

2011-10-06T23:36:00.000-04:00

Several of my highly intuitive friends have been complaining of physical and mental disturbances this week, like insomnia, headache clusters and emotional lability.

We are irrevocably connected to astral energy, no matter what rational thinking would have us believe. From the time and date of our birth to the movement of the planets, the stars rule our lives, our destinies and even our relationships.

Hindus and other cultures have arranged marriages, not only according to social status and (largely in the past, but still now) caste, I think, but also according to astral charts. Dates for weddings and other significant events are planned with the help of the astral charts. This is a subject I have skirted around for years, and had no intention of writing about here, but the solar flare impact on the energies of earth, including us, prompted me to say something.

Like many holistic fields, astrology is too 'way out there' for many people, who would say they do not believe in it. This past summer I was present at a Tibetan astrology seminar where in the course of an hour, we were presented with some pretty hard evidence of the impact of astrology on the lives, as the charts of famous people reveal. If I were not knee deep in so many other interests, I would follow my nose and learn more about this. Not this year!

Holistic practitioners use birth dates and the field of numerology to determine a lot about someone without having to ask. Add to that a body scan - like quantum touch, where the energy fields speak to us, and a large dose of intuition from body language and much more, and you will realize that the holistic practitioner is already reading a lot of things before you present them with any 'complaints'. ..

We have all been affected by the recent solar flares in one way or another. Things may level out this week.

There are too many fascinating subjects out there. How can anybody ever say they are bored? Life is so interesting.

Gaze upwards, and sense the big picture, wherever you are.

The Courage to Follow Your Own Heart

2011-10-05T22:08:00.000-04:00

This quote from Steve Jobs deserves to be on everyone's bulletin board. It is on mine. Genius and passion-driven visionary, he passed from us today.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. “Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Your Body Knows Before Your Mind

2011-10-05T15:28:00.001-04:00

I was somewhat surprised to hear Jack Canfield talking about using the body to help make decisions.

Canfield is a huge name in success coaching. He offers a method to obtain clarity on decisions we have to make that includes ranking various criteria such as excitement, effort involved and potential financial gain on a one to ten scale. This is widely used in business to evaluate large commercial outlay of funds on new projects.

When making personal or business decisions, Canfield suggests making a simple grid or excel sheet, but then also to compare each item against the other as though you could only do one of them for the rest of your life. Which would you choose?

The webinar was all about achieving clarity in order to be able to focus. What was interesting to me was that he mentioned the use of Applied Kinesiology for decision making, which is what I know as the 'underground' method used initially by chiropractors to determine the body's subconscious response to health issues.

As a master dowser, I have used these techniques for years to determine many things. Muscle testing is most commonly thought of as 'stretch your arm out' where a weak response means no and a strong response means yes, according to your body and your subconscious.

The second method he mentioned was body dowsing, where you can teach your body to lean forward for yes and backward for no, that we use for testing most commonly whether a food is good for us or not.

I was happy and surprised to hear this mentioned to an audience of over a thousand business people on line during his seminar.

For those of you who do not use these techniques, I say with more conviction, now: Learn to ask your body for answers and solutions!

The Body Remembers

2011-10-04T22:41:00.000-04:00

To be touched by the revelation of love or scientific discovery is among the greatest and most wondrous blessings of being alive.

If for no other reason, the sometimes poetic and funny prose of Peter Levine's treatise on releasing trauma from the body is a terrific read. Honestly, this is at once an informative and mind-expanding volume that reads, not unlike the amusing style of Richard Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, like a good novel.

The quote above is from In an Unspoken Voice, where Peter Levine goes on to mention that a particular year was remarkable for the science, but a "dud for romance" during his graduate studies.

The story of how the human body has the ability to heal itself from deep trauma, and the history of trauma, especially as defined by the successively brutal wars, is fascinating, as he takes us from what during the Civil War was called Soldier's Heart, through Shell Shock, to the clinical and distance-creating term of post-traumatic stress disorder. As Levine puts it, a cold and clinical expression for the physiological condition that persists when one has been repeatedly exposed to death. What is sadly obvious, is to be in a war on the lines goes against the very substance of being human.

Our bodies reveal what our subconscious has stored. When this is life-threatening, like in a near encounter with death - especially repeated incidents, the effects are debilitating as we know.

That there are techniques that are becoming more widespread to heal the pain of those who suffer is welcome news. Spread the news that help is available... for all kinds of manifestations of panic, anxiety and stress-related disorders. New ways of releasing and resolving the deeply hidden trauma are here.

With the wish that this be academic information,

Enough said.

Pain Relief World Summit

2011-10-03T11:46:00.000-04:00

Just remembered quickly that the pain relief world summit starts this evening. You can register for free. Just google the title and you will be able to listen all week to experts on energy psychology talking about how their techniques help with resolving pain.

Be well, and listen to your body,

Brent Baum on Aware Talk Radio

2011-10-03T11:43:00.000-04:00

Aware Talk Radio is where you can find Debbie Papadakis' weekly broadcast from Toronto, where she interviews therapists and healers, making podcasts available after the fact. So I was reminded that she has an interview with Brent Baum, author of The Healing Dimensions and developer of HMR. He is the clinical director of Cottonwood and certified addictions counselor, and CHT, certified hypnotherapist, website healingdimensions.com. Brent Baum also works at Dr. Andrew Weil's clinic that is part of Miraval - the world famous wellness spa where you can access a wide range of therapies, including something known as equine therapy.

Debbie's interview followed a training weekend I attended in January of this year with Brent, which is where I met Debbie. Brent works with trauma survivors who live with mental illness and addictions, and is teaching his technique to therapists everywhere - from Japan to Spain - to empower them to help people to stop reliving the same traumatic memories over and over again. The effectiveness of the work is being documented.

In the interview, Brent talks of how he developed the technique was developed when he realized how his family was attracting people with substance addictions. If you have at least one parent who was emotionally unavailable, you may set yourself up for this kind of relationship.

You can listen to the interview at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/aware/2011/01/18/debbie-papadakis-brent-baum-discuss-breakthroughs-in-resolving-trauma-in-the-bodymind. Have not figured out how to paste a live link, sorry! The easiest thing is to download the file (tiny link at the bottom of the play screen of Aware Talk Radio) and then play with Nero or other, where you can toggle past the intros if you like, or repeat parts you want.

Brent's technique also addresses migraines and other chronic health issues with dramatic results. His techniques are extremely effective since he combines a light energy touch to the nape of the neck, while using a talk protocol to unearth and release painful memories.

We freeze sensory data at the millisecond prior to overwhelm. There are two kinds of trauma, there is single instant of trauma, where the body freezes the trauma in the body at the moment of overwhelm, and something he calls Level II, where multiple incidents (daily, in families with dysfunction, for example) over time creates frozen memories that are triggered by present day events, but where the body reacts from the sensory data frozen years ago.

We store it in our body, the sadness behind our eyes, the lump in our throat, and sometimes people have such a pre-history of trauma, that one small event becomes a trigger for a cascade of trauma incidents, and we are back at the moment of trauma, where one tiny holographic fragment will trigger the whole thing. At 911, of course, people went amnesial, deaf, and we learned unfortunately a lot of how the body reacts to trauma.

Brent has reframed memories from many survivors of global trauma, including war survivors and others, where the history is not changed, but the images of the horrors are released, and replaced by positive images.

The significance, of all this, is that there are several techniques, including Psych-K, that some of my colleagues study, for releasing early trauma. HMR is amassing an impressive track record in the areas of migraines, physical pain, and of course addictions, anxiety, panic and grief. I am my own testimonial - my life has changed dramatically with HMR (which is why I began incorporating it into my practice) despite years ... and years ... of other bodywork, subtle energy work, and other amazing therapies.

The results are incredible on a very large scale - there are more than 16,000 documented cases - where the intensity of the events is not only reduced, but gone.

We learn, furthermore, that the images on the retina of every event are stored within the body as a three dimensional holographic image. So what we see is perceived within our physiology. It not only occurs "out there", but inside ourselves. The child who witnesses a traumatic event internalizes the energy within their own physiology.

So when I find other Brent recordings that are free to listen to, I will upload links, and meantime you are invited to listen to the interview.

The power of quantum perception teaches us that what we watch, we take into our bodies, so be aware of what you see. Your immune system goes down with graphic reality television stressful situations. We need to rewrite all the textbooks...

This is hugely effective with addictions and migraines, which are both trauma based. Not everyone knows this in the helping professions, yet, which is why it would be good to find yourself an HMR therapist who knows about the frozen energy.

Written in haste today, to be revised later. This week I am into studying and writing up a paper, as you can see, with the new energy from the Chinese herbs, actually, helping me get to my own "round to-its".

With love and gratitude to all who read these posts - I do see my statistics, yes - around the world,

Your heart's not on your sleeve

2011-10-02T21:29:00.000-04:00

Reading Stephen Porges' heavy tome, The Polyvagal Theory, that changed the face of somatic psychology a decade ago, reminded me that we have an old expression that is not accurate. Wearing your heart on your sleeve, meaning of course that your emotions and how you are feeling are clearly apparent, is not exactly accurate. It seems that the nerve system of our brain controls the heart with the same nerves as control the face and head. (That is, the evolution of our neuroanatomy has linked the neural control of the heart to the neural control of the face and head).

In practical terms, we see this in infants, where the face literally "lights up" when loving mother appears. What we know, is that the heart "lights up" too.

When we are triggered by a memory that activates the cascade of freeze - not of flight or fight - our faces "drop". Literally, our jaw drops. It seems that our heart - literally, heart rate, blood pressure - also react at the same instant, with physiological events creating accelerated heart rate (flight/fight) or massive drops in heart rate and blood pressure. (The mechanisms of fainting from fright, which is related to mammals' ability to feign death).

Significance for us? Listen to yourself, listen to others, observe faces: an expressionless face, or flat intonation, are signs of trauma, of a person not feeling safe. These things are alienating and hamper social engagement, so the very thing the person is lacking - social closeness - becomes more unattainable. Compassion is easy when we think someone is needing help; if we sense something that makes us feel alienated, such as an unresponsive face, we have more trouble being compassionate.

These are all ancient mechanisms. When you take acting classes, voice lessons, or go to yoga, you are strengthening your heart and opening your heart to love and emotion. Hmmm...

It's pretty heavy reading, this deep trauma neurobiology stuff. So interesting, though, to learn that there is science behind the "gut feeling" we have from infancy about different people. How we perceive someone, when we are not using the logical visual and behavioral cues, is different from the perception I studied in psychology and marketing. How we perceive someone from our ancient brain, based on much more subtle cues, Porges terms neuroception. Perception, from the ancient brain that we ignore but that runs the show whether we like it or not. Neuroception.

Oh, before I sign off, the polyvagal theory links the evolution of the neural regulation of the heart to our emotional expression, facial gestures, vocal communication and responsive 'appropriate' social behavior. Just in case you wanted to know. Heavy going, as I said.

A smile offered and a smile received really do gladden the heart...

Be well, and do something kind for someone,

Rejuvelac and Better Digestion

2011-10-01T10:35:00.001-04:00

Before I head out of computer range today, I wanted to add a note about a yet-another-healthy thing that I am able to do for myself and enjoy, now that I am not needing to indulge in emotional eating. Eat and drink for health, for fun, education and enjoyment, of course.

Imagine if when you were alone, your thoughts went to healthy things instead of to chocolate or pastries or chips. If your need for comfort food, then, was replaced by a simple desire to feed this lovely human body for optimum health and vitality. I know, most of can't even imagine that. But listen up, for I have made this transition easily, finally, with the help of the emotional clearing that comes with what I have been doing for myself lately.

The local brand here of something called Rejuvelac is Rejouvencelle. Both - and possibly many other brands - are made from wheat berries, to which almost no one is allergic, and highly beneficial for digestion and overall health.

Just wanted to note that since I have found a good local supplier of Rejuvelac, I have grown to enjoy its mildly sour taste. You take it a couple of times a day, about an ounce. You can almost feel the digestive enzymes getting excitedly happy and the B12 and other vitamins cheering you up...

The wheat berries are soaked and mildly fermented, kind of the western equivalent of fermented soy, I suppose, but in the family of molecules, unlike soy, that are beneficial to the health of a western ancestral gut. (Every time I dash off a short post, it seems to get longer...)

Almost everyone is now sensitive to the potent cocktail I jokingly refer to as cheeseburger: from over consumption of poor quality, popular foods such as those in the wonderful American cheeseburger, we have all developed sensitivity, allergy or intolerance.

Enter the lovely wheat berry and wheat grass. Imagine that you can have the original food that made our ancient ancestors stand up and pay attention. (Felt the need to insert a smiley face, not available in this blog software...) By this I mean it was energy dense food for an evolving brain, perfect for the development of man. And you can enjoy it too, with the two essential products of wheat that supply endless nutrients without causing any allergic reactions.

Please know that I say a lot of things that need a disclaimer such as do not do this or that without consulting a qualified health practitioner... It makes sense to eat organic produce, though, especially the greens. Artichokes for example are easily obtainable, even if you don't have access to wheat berries.

But wheat berries, wheat grass and fermented derivatives are really, really good for us. Energizing and nourishing.

Back to the cheeseburger. Most Americans have developed sensitivities (allergy type reactions)that are so ingrained we do not notice. Some lucky people have noticeable reactions, so learn to stay away. These over processed denatured foods include "American dairy cheese" which is far different from European goat cheeses, for example, and the awful wheat bun, that directly assaults the immune system and is responsible for making us sleepy or giving us random runny noses and most important of stopping natural function of the gut, plus of course sugar in the condiments and last, meat that has been shall we say treated in ways that affect our whole system, I think, including physical, emotional, and spiritual, believe it or not. No, I am not going all Oprah on you. Meat eating is a choice, for most of us. But what we do tend to eat does not resemble food that creates health, especially the notorious commercial hamburger, the details of which I will spare you.

So. Where was I? Enjoying the renewed energy and vitality of eating and drinking those natural and original wheat products while cutting out the cheeseburger elements. And yes, I could eat a cookie, and probably will, sometime this week. Not an issue for me, since I do not have a demonstrable response to floured wheat in small quantities.

As you well know, it is all a learning process. We are, as my friend Susan from Colorado says, the perfect workbook for where we need to go next.

With gratitude and blessings,

What is Memory Resolution?

2011-10-01T09:14:00.003-04:00

Memory Resolution refers to methods for eliminating frozen, painful memories from the subconscious. The past few decades have brought tremendous advances to the field of psychology, to "modern psychology" which has moved far beyond the classic talk therapy approach.

There are several effective methods of resolving painful frozen memories that we now know are responsible for many, if not most, of our aches and pains and dysfunctional behaviors. You may hear more about these various methods from the field of energy psychology, somatic psychology or subtle energy modalities.

The one I am trained in requires little participation on the part of your rational brain. It deals with the subconscious, and part of the training is to learn to bypass the critical, logical mind. Ergo, not talk therapy.

Some of the new branches of psychology include those used by coaches, like neurolinguistic programming, and those used by therapists, such as "the tapping" or emotional freedom techniques. The alphabet modalities, as a friend of mine refers to them, of EFT and others, that are highly effective and easily made fun of.

The research is however beginning to catch up with their dramatic effectiveness, which took everyone by surprise. (I am referring to the difficulty in conveying credibility to techniques that work but that have not developed through long arduous processes that take years in the laboratory to define. That they took the psychology community by surprise was due to the speed at which they spread by word of mouth out of the university setting. They work.

Trained psychologists have been flocking to learn them in recent years, to assuage the frustration of their classical practices where their clients inch forward, painfully. These new techniques, when combined with therapeutic training, have no parallel for their helpfulness. What some see as problematic is that they can be taught to every trained therapist, and this includes trained therapists from the holistic field as well.

Holographic Memory Resolution (c), developed by Brent Baum, is one of these new highly effective techniques. To your emotional pain - whether from grief, anxiety, depression or anger - the line of questions are not about who or what or why, but simply along the lines of "where do you feel that in your body?" And we remain with the bodily symptoms in the subconscious while resolving the memories. The critical, sometimes endlessly looping rational brain is moved out of the equation, and only observes. With a single session, transformation begins. The pain recedes, resolved,not managed - permanently. And yes, this means the physical shoulder pain, too.

Sigh, like all the "new" psychology techniques, this one sounds too good to be true. Expect more, I say. We are in a new era of quantum understanding. Expect miracles, today, as my friend Joan from California would say. Because that is what can happen, as I see every week.

Yours in health,

All complaints have an emotional aspect?

2011-10-01T08:37:00.000-04:00

While it is easy to see the link as it is made in Chinese medicine, between emotions and physical symptoms, what do I mean by the blanket statement that all complaints have an emotional aspect?

Do I mean that if you stub your toe, that there is an emotional aspect to that? Or my stiff neck or shoulder blades? Or my back pain? You may well ask. Yes. Precisely

Take the case of the stiff neck. In Chinese medicine, this is an area also "ruled" by the liver, that is responsible for the health of the tendons. Fix up the liver syndrome, and the pain goes away. When you treat the liver, you are also treating anger, overt or repressed. So could we not take our bodily symptoms and relate them to emotions that we are not expressing? Absolutely! And then treat the emotions? Yes, there are techniques to do that. The field of body-mind psychology, somatic psychology, definitely includes the body in addressing emotional symptoms.

If we use a combination of Chinese herbs and Memory Resolution techniques, for example, we hit the cycle of anger / neck tension with a one-two punch, resolving not only the neck pain but the underlying repressed (not intentional, I assure you) emotions.

It's very effective. Felt compelled to write this short side-bar to add to the topic of the last post, while the subject was open!

Yours in wellness,

Hsaio Yao Wan

2011-10-01T08:22:00.000-04:00

Any discussion of Chinese herbal medicine invariably turns to the patented commercial formula, Hsaio Yao Wan, or Free and Easy Wanderer, a herbal formula for addressing excess in the liver and deficiency in the spleen-pancreas. This very common Chinese formula is for treating a very common western syndrome in the world - and is well-known in the way that aspirin might be for westerners. Thousands of years of Chinese herbal wisdom have been boiled down to this easily obtainable over-the-counter formula.

What is liver excess? Do you know anyone with an explosive nature, easily roused to anger - by shop clerks or slow drivers, for example? If your answer is yes, then this person has a liver heat syndrome going on! If in addition to the uneven lashing out in anger, the person also seems impatient or easily irritated or simply generally what we call irritable, there is a gall-bladder imbalance as well. The syndrome that we know as PMS, which involves emotional and physical symptoms is the perfect example of a readily treatable pattern of symptoms that responds beautifully to Hsaio Yao Wan. It is commonly known to treat depression, too.

A woman in my Chinese herbal shop was surprised that I trusted Chinese herbs, as she put it. Of course! I have not only studied them for seven years now through teachers and texts written by highly respected American herbalists like Michael Tierra, L.Ac., O.M.D. and Jake Fratkins, but experienced their benefits, sometimes quite dramatically, myself. I love how the mind part - the emotional aspect - of my physical complaints resolves so beautifully as I not only feel better but feel better! (All complaints have an emotional aspect which we have largely ignored in the west until recently.)

The herbs sold in America are approved by the FDA and manufactured under approved conditions. The track record of Traditional Chinese Medicine spans thousands of years. Chinese herbs resolve the underlying conditions of our chronic and acute ailments, rather than just targeting the symptoms.

There are many brands of this Chinese patent herbal formula. Jake Fratkins’ book is available on the internet. Hsaio Yao Wan is commonly available in every Chinatown pharmacy, which is a treat of itself, for the curious.

Be open to global teachings is my wish for you today - open mind, open heart, healthy body.
Yours in health,

Look after Your Body

2011-09-30T12:55:00.000-04:00

All this emphasis on balancing and creating vital energy through Chinese herbs recently reminds me to mention that the ultimate goal is a healthy body-mind in all its aspects. Holistic practitioners were the pioneers of treating the body-mind, I think, marrying the work of the body workers and nutritionists with the work of psychologists. A pioneer in making the links between bodily processes and the mind is Candace Pert.

The new generations of energy psychologists work with subtle energy and with psychotherapeutic process, for a powerful combination that addresses everything from anxiety to pain. There is an upcoming energy psychology virtual conference on pain that I will provide a link to next week.

Energy psychology works with the Subconscious mind, with the Subconscious, the 95% of our mind that directs our behavior and records our every moment, from conception to the present,and the body's energy fields. While I am on this subject, I would like to mention a very readable and information packed work by Candace Pert that helps everyone understand the connectedness of all the body-mind systems.

Time for lunch - off to feed the body. Mind has had a workout today...

Be well,

Bringing clarity to the subject of how our bodies store in

Whole herbs have a different action from any kind of pill

2011-09-28T11:12:00.004-04:00

Looks like the change of seasons has brought on a renewed interest in Chinese Medicine - I find myself drawn to the herbs and therefore talking about them more. As I do that, my friends bring me questions and problems, that I feel driven to address. No sooner do I hear symptoms that initiate a liver heat discussion than the next day find myself faced with someone bringing up kidney deficiency. Western medicine has no answers about how to boost your kidney energy, for example that to one degree or another affect almost everyone in the west. This is entry level information for a TCM specialist.

I have met many passionate herbalists over the past few years, but few who are specialists in the Chinese herbs where my training lies. They are so accessible and affordable, which sets them apart from western herbs. And the classical combinations have been used for millennia. Uncommon knowledge in my neighborhood. Even my teachers have taught us about the over the counter or mail order herbal formulas, but not about making a herbal formula from scratch. Box cake versus scratch cake, Indian spice mixes versus Indian herbs ground from fresh...

I once read that taking a pill is far different from taking the whole substance. It seems that the body responds right from the sensory nerves in the mouth to healing substances and diminishes their impact if that sensory part is missing. The bitter taste, in particular, is essential to the health of the liver. I will have to see whether Hsaio Yao Wan is available as a Hsaio Yao not wan (not in pill form) package...

Not every one needs to be an expert in all this, it is true, but an awareness is a good start. Perhaps there is a health food store near you with experienced herbalists who will help. The right tea or herbal mixture for your constitution from a health store with a qualified practitioner is a good start.

Bless your food and drink, whatever you choose,

Original Sweet

2011-09-28T10:34:00.001-04:00

The original sweet, before the cane sugars were introduced, was not that far different in the west from in the east. All the fruits are naturally very sweet, as everyone knows. Anyone who counts glycemic (sugar) content, which I also understand but find less than useful, also knows that beets, carrots, sweet potatoes, yams and potatoes are also considered sweet, from all points of view. The Chinese approach is also to consider anyone who we would think of as overweight, and curtail the sweet foods too. Such body types are referred to as having conditions of sluggishness and dampness. Different approach, same advice…

All of these are wonderful foods, especially the vegetables, for their soothing actions on the nervous system. In Chinese medicine, the sweet flavors help the transitions between seasons.

According to Chinese principles of healing arts, too much sweet food damages the kidneys and spleen-pancreas. Sweet overconsumption is linked in this tradition to edema, tumors of any kind, weakened bones and hair loss. Sweet foods build the yin of the body, the tissues and fluids, and strengthen weakness, deficiency and benefit the dry person as well.

There are many foods in the sweet flavor group that are healthy for everyone, as one might expect, since the root vegetables, grains and legumes are in this category. Rice, oats, and other grains are staples; nuts and seeds like walnut, pine nut and sunflower seed are warming and good for the cool or deficient constitution.

As you can imagine, one of the first things to establish is an idea of your own constitution, that then allows you to select foods that are most healthy and will bring you back to balance. Some of the characteristics are quite easy to identify, and so you can begin to eat for your own constitution – all of which will make you feel much more energetic and healthy.

If there were a magic wand to be waved, it would be the introduction of the bitter flavors into the western diet and the curtailing of the sweet flavors. Many of our troubles stem from excessive consumption of the sweet and altered tastes we have come to associate with western food: the omnipresent muffins, bagels, cookies. Yikes, I had better not enumerate them, since many of us associate them with images of being loved, something from the oven as the Pillsbury ad goes, that replaces all notions of healthy food …

Bless your food, at a minimum, I say…

September Sweet Flavor

2011-09-26T11:28:00.001-04:00

The sweet flavor in Chinese dietary therapy is the most harmonizing of all the flavors and as such appropriate not only at harvest time but at any time. This sweet flavor is not at all what we think of as sweet with our somewhat corrupted taste buds and addictions to chemical sugar, sigh, in the west.

Until I learned how to calm my own emotional nonspecific anxiety, I found that nothing eased the nagging feeling like western sweets, myself. The backlash from cookies and muffins was part of the cycle of eat sweets, repeat, that I am so happy to say I have finally moved away from, especially with my latest batches of herbs. So I do understand, believe me. Sweets are traditionally also celebratory foods, that help us celebrate joy and excitement and love - all the emotions we do want!

But the importance for us lies in the underlying reasons we think that the sweet flavor will appease the emotions we don’t want. This is an ancient voice calling us, drawing us to the sweet flavor, which filled us at one time with a peaceful sense of contentment. The ancient voice is now greeted with chemical non-food in the form of modern cakes and cookies.

Be wary. As I have said to many, and say again to you: before you eat it, make sure it is food!

Yours in health,

The Equinox

2011-09-25T08:26:00.000-04:00

In Chinese medicine, the fifteen days surrounding the equinoxes are considered special times for the Earth Element. In this period of late summer, the rhythm of the Earth makes a significant change, as the Earth's axis reaches a seasonal milestone and the cycle of expansiveness moves into the inward, cooling and more contractive energy of the fall and winter.

This is a time for reflection, and of drawing in the yang – outward – energy, and moving towards the yin – inward – energy of the fall and winter. The earth experiences a significant shift. Can you feel it?

I am very sensitive to solar wind, solar flares, change of season – just as you all are, or were, at some point. It is felt by every living thing on the planet, only some do not notice. The sudden inward energy that has drawn me back to my writing is stunningly strong, without any intention on my part. The yang of the summer expansion has past; the yin of the new season is upon us. I sense it first, like noticing the dusk before glancing at a watch. As I am drawn to write, I then realize the Equinox has passed, and we are moving with a different energy, towards fall and winter.

Here is a simple explanation from timeanddate.com of what happens during the equinox:

During the September equinox, the sun crosses the celestial equator and moves southward in the northern hemisphere. The location on the earth where the sun is directly overhead at solar noon is known as the subsolar point, that occurs on the equator during the September and the March equinox. At this time, the earth’s axis of rotation is perpendicular to the line connecting the centers of the earth and the sun.

This change occurred at 9:04 UTC or GMT, as I knew it, on Friday September 23, in the pre-dawn of 3:04 a.m. New York time. So we were into this new energy on Friday… and now it is gathering momentum. Can you feel it? The contractive energy, I mean?

Perhaps you have had these fleeting thoughts: yesterday I might have run around, but today mysteriously, I would rather stay put! This is the equinox, the Earth Element energy, at work!

Listen to your body, listen to your heart. You are more attuned to nature than you think!

Be well, and flow harmoniously with the seasons,

Seasonal attunement

2011-09-24T19:38:00.000-04:00

Regardless of where you live, the seasonal variations due to the earth's axis in relationship to the universe has a profound effect on growth and well-being. As summer ends, we gradually adjust to the coming fall and winter seasons. Here in northern North America, we are blessed with prominent season changes. We can consciously prepare for the more inward looking time of winter through dietary changes to our meals. Our South African, Australian and New Zealand friends are doing the opposite!

My friends make fun of me because I seldom eat salad during the winter months. With the endless availability of fruits and vegetables out of season, we have dulled our sense of what is proper to eat during cooler months. Proper sounds old-fashioned, and is meant to, because the older translations of the Chinese dietary therapy treatises are maintained to this day with the slightly archaic language. Here is a relevant example: "The Sages nurture their yin in the fall and winter in order to follow the rule of rules" ... in today's vernacular, if you want to be healthy and you draw on the wisdom of those who have gone before, in other words, you need to nurture the yin part of your nature. The Yin/Yang concept represents the opposite energies that in western medicine are can be explained through the adrenal function.

The Yin/Yang opposites are akin to our parasympathetic nervous system (controlling functions we do not need to direct, such as digestion and circulation) that is the Yin function of substance and maintenance, and the sympathetic nervous system (controlling the stress response and immune system, the Yang or "active" nervous system that is triggered by outside stimulus).

Chinese medicine, through dietary and herbal therapy as well as acupuncture and acupressure, aims to restore balance to our physiological self. I am known to say, by way of explanation of Chinese dietary principles, that in the west we have remembered two things to do when we are feeling cool: close windows and put on a sweater! We have totally forgotten in this culture that there are obvious things to do if you are feeling cold, if you tend to feel cold when others feel warm. Eat warming foods! What on earth is that, you may ask? (Uh oh, I sense a couple of female friends wishing they could turn on the cool, actually!)

Chinese treatment for everything is a balancing act: counter cool with warming action, counter full, hot or excess with cooling, dispersing action. I am somewhat afraid that I am so familiar now that I will fail to see what is not easily understood to those new to the topic. So I shall return to what kinds of foods are great to eat as the winter season comes upon us, by way of example.

To attune to the impending cooler season, those of us in northern climates need to become more yin and contractive.

The fall is the season for foods with a "gathering" and drying nature, and here we turn to the "sour" flavor of food, which is less frequent than the other flavors in western cultures.

Here is what benefits you will derive from the "sour flavor foods": they "collect and hold together the dispersed, capriciously changing personality, they are active in the liver, where they counteract the effects of rich food; they help digestion by dissolving minerals for better assimilation of nutrients, and they help the lung function. They ar also proper for organizing scattered mental patterns!

Such fun, I think, is this whole tradition. It is not hokey, either, but brings amazing results. So strange, too, I think, since we have lost this way of thinking in the west and have focused entirely on the appearance, texture and taste of foods. Yes, I watch the cooking shows too. What is sweet, wins...

So here is a list of sour foods - try them when you are needing to concentrate:

lemon, lime, pickles, sauerkraut, sour plum, crab apple and hawthorne berry; vinegar (which is also bitter); leek (which is also pungent); and all of the following which are both sour and sweet: aduki bean, apple, blackberry, grape, mango, olive, raspberry, tangerine, tomato. Add to that list dairy such as yogurt and cheese.

Be sure to focus your eating on seasonal produce, too, as harvest time is here. At first, we eat the tomatoes, the peppers, the summer squashes and the fruit that is ripening now, and later, we will be eating the root vegetables and the winter squashes. If your sweet tooth has gotten you in trouble, now is a great time to eat lots of orange fruits and vegetables, especially the round squashes, too, at this time of year.

I take a light-hearted look at all of this, and find it fascinating, but there are no shoulds for any of us. Wholesome foods will surely make us more healthy, and support the richness of the spiritual self that needs this physical body for existence in this dimension. Ha! Found a way to put something spiritual in, before the end of this post.

Be well, and enjoy the contractive nature of the fall as it comes upon us!

Roots, seeds and oyster shells for balance

2011-09-24T14:53:00.003-04:00

Here is a little more on the herbs themselves. In Chinese medicine, a vast array of herbs and animal products such as antler bones and oyster shells are used, each one documented for thousands of years - at least 5,000 years, with very specific properties.

The main difference between Chinese medicine and Western medicine in this regard is that the roots, seeds, and shoots are used in their entirety and combined in ways that elegantly and perfectly support the body. A herbal formula typically has a major action - the emperor herb - and then supporting herbs - the generals and others, usually between ten to fifteen herbs in total. You can purchase herbs in pill form too, such as the magical Hsaio Yao Wan for PMS and emotional lability (it addresses something called liver heat or fire), or the Yin Chaio for colds.

Personally I love the real thing. The full energy of the ingredients is present, and with the wisdom of the plants themselves, addresses the human body and energy system and creates health from imbalance.

The Nei Jing, the Emperor's Classic, tells us what to do: if hot, cool, if congested, disperse... the energy is the primary target. All kind of complex but fascinating.

My batch will contain Goji berries, Red Dates, Oyster Shell, Os Draconis (Dragon bone), Polygonatum and Fructus Citri among others. I watch it being weighed out and packaged up. Oyster Shell for calming the mind, addressing insomnia, Red Dates for kidney (vital energy) support, and so on.

My favorite topic, actually. I have always said that this would be my career had I twigged to how passionate I would feel about these herbs at an earlier age.

Yours in health,

Harmonizing for the coming season

2011-09-24T14:08:00.000-04:00

As the seasons change, and Indian summer passes, our bodies begin the natural contraction process leading to the winter months. The energy of summer - hot, expansive - gives way to the fall energy. Harmonizing our bodies to the seasons is a lot easier with some help from the wonderful plant kingdom and especially from the roots and bark from herbs in the Chinese tradition.
I am blessed to live not far from a large Chinese community where herbalists are common. My Traditional Chinese herbal doctor has been practicing his trade for 30 years. His wife supports the business with chiropractic and massage. Between the two of them, my health gets a terrific boost.
If you have never experienced a Chinese pulse and tongue diagnosis, I invite you to try it... The pulses reveal the conditions of the entire body, and detect the slightest problems. Way too interesting and personal to share here! But amusing to me, although we have a small language problem... I typically have issues with everything, but nothing that would show up in conventional western medicine. Such as a slightly hot liver (the excess from the recent wedding I attended) and always a deficient pancreas (me, not the wedding, from the sugar tooth for so many years that I have finally conquered recently).
A single course of 10 day herbs creates noticeable change. I am on the second lot here, with happy doctors who are pleased that I have responded so well. My 'shen' (countenance, the brightness of face and energy) is much improved, as well as my request to address the deficiency that was beginning to cause insomnia. Sleeping like a log again, which is part of what keeps me healthy and energetic.
Get back to wellness and energy - find a TCM herbalist in your city and have fun!
Yours in health,

Classical Ragas

2011-07-15T06:04:00.000-04:00

The diminutive sitar player Hasu Patel has been teaching and playing the Sitar in North America, living in Ohio, for thirty years. She is so tiny, brushing the five foot mark, I think, that she is a lovely caricature of human perseverance as she carries the huge sitar, which at the IIIHS conference fortunately is carried for her...

In her presence we are awed. There is such joy and wisdom and knowledge of music and the instrument in the tiny package of humility that is Hasu Patel! She sits on a special soft rug on the floor in the Delta Hotel conference room. When you first enter the room - late, as I did - the disembodied voice speaks from what seems to be an empty podium at the front. And there she is, smiling, radiant, tiny, sitting on the floor with her cherished instrument.

She laughs as she explains how her father, a physician, made all his children, boys and girls together, which was rare in those days, do yoga asanas every morning before breakfast. And she still smiles as she recounts how her young fingers bled when she was first learning the instrument, and how her teacher sent her home, time and again, only to have her father support her, comfort her and then send her back again to persevere the next day.

Her students, of which there are many, many, go off to have brilliant careers worldwide. Her sons, physicians now, call her before she has a speaking engagements to make sure she is at her best and does not disappoint ... and tell her to call them afterwards to let them know she has not. Her audience, rapt with wonder,hardly remembers to breathe, as she speaks, plays and teaches.

The scientific research done on the effects of certain types of music, of which the classical Raga is one, is substantial now, thanks to the work especially of French and Belgium researchers in recent years. Sunflowers grow to several times their usual size, as do all plants exposed to the vibrations of certain musical sounds.

I say certain, because the tuning of modern instruments about a hundred years ago - a fact that most people are unaware of - changed innocently from 432 Hz to 440, and by so doing changed the healing impact on the natural world, including us. Modern western music now soothes us, or uplifts us, but no longer heals us at the cellular level. The more ancient forms of music, including Gregorian chants and the enduring Peruvian music and classical Ragas all have the original tuning that supports vitality and growth in nature.

If you want to increase your vitality, spirituality, connection to all things and profound peace, play some classical Indian music. A lot.

And oh, yes, while I am on the topic, go listen to some birds. It seems that random bird song, as was common in the world until a few decades ago, has the same effect on us. Go figure.

Yours in wellness and vitality,

Sushanna of the North

It changes you

2011-07-15T05:31:00.001-04:00

At the annual IIIHS Montreal conference this week, Dutch cardiologist Dr. Pim van Lommel presented his scientific work, the largest documented research study on NDE, or Near Death Experience, conducted in a network of European hospitals.

The findings of research conducted with survivors of life-threatening situations are all consistent with a number of common factors, such as being in soft light, feeling joy, seeing ancestors who come to greet, and sometimes a sense of sadness on returning to be resuscitated in an emergency room. The stories of very young people and their wonderful drawings of playing amid rainbows or angels above their own sometimes very detailed bodies on a hospital gurney surrounded by hospital staff are particularly poignant and moving.

The profile of the survivors of experiences in extremis, such as drownings and cardio arrest also have several significant factors in common. I was surprised to learn that the NDE experience and resulting changes in the survivor were not limited to emergency room situations. The definition of NDE, according to Dr. Lommel's study, has as much to do with the shift in perception of the survivor as the nature of the event itself. Someone who has been frightened enough to think that they were about to die also experiences the same subsequent changes in outlook and perception as the ones who see the white light.

The profile of changes is most notable for the increased intuitive ability, onset of clairvoyance, clairaudience or clairsentience, sensitivity to everyone and everything, including noise and bright lights, sense of infinite compassion and absence of the fear of death. Huh,I thought. When did that happen?

Yours in wonder,

Sushanna of the North

Doing something good

2011-07-15T05:10:00.000-04:00

This week I have been at the IIIHS Conference in Montreal, a gathering of spiritual, scientific and psychic leaders from around the world. Shayk Abdul Haaq, most spiritual and inspirational Sufi leader, with a gentle combination of humour, wisdom and humility, sat for an hour in a small venue of the Delta hotel conveying his channeled blessings and imparting the Sufi view of the world. Shake off the ego and listen to the word of God, align yourself with the work and service that is wanted of you in this lifetime.

What is your view of happiness? asked a young Israeli woman, listening attentively to this great man.

Pausing to wait for his answer, Shyk Abdul Haaq , habitually adjusting his robe and cane, stroking his beard and always with the customary Allah be praised phraseology of gratitude and kindness, finally brings us this reply:

When you do the service of the Lord, when you are a vehicle for serving in the way that the Lord wants you to be, and when the ego shrinks small enough to allow you to listen to the inner voice and be of service, why, then, happiness is a byproduct of that, he finally says.

With many Allah praise his names and many pauses to wait for the information that his Lord conveys directly to him for us and in this setting, he enchanted us with his grace.

The small room was crowded to the ceiling with the presence of a multitude of angels. I can see and feel them, with a rush, when they all come in. An experience not to be traded for any other and filling me with awe and my own customary reaction of some tears when in the presence of Divine Grace.

Pretty lovely random thing to have happened upon, on a Wednesday evening in July, I muse to myself. He did also speak of the importance of the year end in the Muslim year, during which it is important to do some especially kind service so that at the holy gates you will have something to say when asked what good you have done in the world.

I am relieved to realize that without thinking about it, I have begun to bring to life a new dream of bringing healing to the world. I have been woken this morning with that realization and with the planning of it in my head. Allah be praised, I think. It has begun.

A reading with the famous psychic Mikel Lazarallde yesterday heralded my travelling and teaching that is yet to come.

All duly noted this day in July 2011.

With gratitude to all the beings who are responsible for our every breath and every purpose and every action, and with a signature that is how they refer to me up there,

Sushanna of the North

Relationships

2011-05-06T17:48:00.000-04:00

Adlerian psychology is all about fitting into the social fabric. About creating community, relationship and finding one’s place in the world. We begin with our earliest relationships with our nuclear family. How our parents and caregivers treated us is the foundation of how we in turn relate to others. The process of growing up in community is a formative one that shapes our future relationships with others – our expectations, our sense of self within community, our triggers.

We acquire our coping skills instinctively from birth to age six. What works (or does not) at a very young age, no matter how inappropriate at an adult age, will stay with us ... unless we intentionally learn better coping skills. Unless we have some kind of education or help to understand how we behave, how we react, how we manifest our wishes and our disappointments, we are at risk of forming new unhealthy relationships. The recent marriage of the young heir to the British throne, William Arthur Phillip Louis – from memory, I think – to the young Catherine Elizabeth was watched by several billion people around the world. Half of them wondering whether she will endure where her commoner predecessor did not, in this marriage into monarchy. Will they have support to build a healthy relationship that endures over the years? Or will they fall into the blame game, like so many couples around the world, seeking to change the other?

One of my favorite bookshelf companions, Harville Hendrix’ Getting the Love you Want provides profoundly life altering views of how and why we develop relationships the way we do, and what to do about making sure we create healthy ones. I smile, even as I put the book title out there, because I know too much about real people and real relationships, I suppose. This book may be useless as a guide for couples, unless they are creating a conscious bond between them, because one may find it first. The other, reacting naturally as most couples do, may instinctively reject its content... It is a fantastically good omen for a good relationship, I would also guess, if two young people independently studied or read it before they met. It does make good reading for anyone who want to create healthy relationships.

The most important message we can learn about relationships is this: we can only change ourselves. The holistic approach teaches us that a personal change often has a deep shift and an impact on everyone in the relationship, just from one making a change. The local newspaper carried an article by a local psychologist that put forward the novel idea that marriage is for one to support the other, so that both become the best they can be, echoing the marriage vows of April 29, 2011. Since we are daily fed sensationalist news about conflictual marriages and divorces, so many people acquire a jaundiced attitude to the whole question of joined together. Last Friday's ceremony seemed strikingly anachronistic in terms of the prayers and vows, as though the British Royals are bound and determined to ensure that this one lasts. They can be beautifully happy, for a lifetime, just like The Queen and Prince Phillip, if they want to, is the truth. They seem genuinely in love. Let's hope they stay that way.

Be the best you can be: if you don’t much like who you are, get help… that is part of the growing that will help the world. Do not cajole, avoid sarcasm, be loving and caring, humble and forgiving: be the best you can be. Now we will all watch this new marriage unfold, with the blessing and sunshine of the universe, hoping it will stand the test of time, as they say.

Wellness Woman

Weekend Therapist

2011-05-06T10:29:00.002-04:00

A holistic therapist is never off the job, no matter what she is doing. The concept of weekend therapy and weekend therapist to me implies someone who perhaps does all kinds of different things – parenting, gainful employment, singing or sports – but whose passion is related to helping people.
The term therapy in its broadest sense can be applied to any form of treatment for a disorder or illness, and covers mental, emotional and physical aspects. A therapist without professional accreditation can be a consultant, educator or coach. I am a little of all three. For a time I wished that I had completed the full training to be an accredited psychologist. No longer, for now, I am in the company of psychologists who are having to sign off from their professional orders to practice what works, or at least strange things that work.
The ultimate combination of therapist and practitioner who effects change, in my view, is the Energy Psychology practitioner. This innovative field opens the door to ideas and techniques that facilitate change in ways that classically trained psychologists do not have access to.
My personal dilemma is that I have considerable training in several fields. As a holistic practitioner, I have had to learn how to see this very combination as a precious set of helping tools that most people have trouble even imagining. For in fact, I have tools to help for just about everything that holds us back, makes our energy low, makes us sad or upset – and, even more complicated, for my personal definition of me – for physical ailments using natural remedies as well.
When I started my training, I would have been called a natural health practitioner. The term is too limiting for what I do now. Many of them limit themselves to nutrition or acupressure and – sadly, for my personal definition of me – do not address the energy field, the subtle energy field that affects the emotional spectrum the way I do. My tool set ranges from Traditional Chinese Medicine to emotional trauma therapy. Whatever is holding you back from health, success and happiness – I can help uncover. And then, well, treat. Simple. But in our reductionist society (where we take things apart to examine them instead of stepping back to look at the big picture), I am supposed to choose.
My friend Werner would say to bundle everything up and explain that I work with subtle energies. That way, I can help people in all my roles – as an educator, a natural health consultant and a holistic therapist too. Weekend therapist.
So weekend therapist it is – as though I just have a few ideas for you of how to help out with this or that. It will have to do. The big picture is much more magical, and can be just as magical, no matter what the label!
See the big picture. Be the best you can be.

Wellness Woman

Getting even may not be the best choice

2011-03-22T21:29:00.001-04:00

Sometimes we feel that we want to somehow let people know they have wronged us, or we want to recoup sums of money owed when we realize with a shock that we stand a small chance of getting paid or repaid.

"I just feel that my universe is out of balance when [that guy] owes me money. It's not even the money, it's just that I want him to know that he is wrong." Confided a friend to me the other day.

Hmmm, I thought. Doesn't sound like such a good plan to me. And then I got to thinking why. Here is what I came up with, with the obvious help of my guides, my wise guides. "Someone write this down" was what I thought afterwards. I am always and still surprised to find myself wise.

This has to do with abundance, so listen up.

Let's say someone – a business partner – owes you three thousand dollars. It's not fair; he owes it squarely, legitimately, but hey, he's a bum and has gotten irritated and decided just not to pay. I had that happen a few years ago with a dot com fly by night where all of us were uh, - trying to think of the polite expression for got screwed here – were defrauded sums of money. Mine was less than ten thousand, but others lost fifty thousand dollars of invested time and funds.

So let's say this someone owes you money. Of course you are angry. Now, here is the thing. Unless it is your job, as a lawyer, to go after such people, if you decide to get even, this is what you may actually be doing.

You may be sending a message to the universe that is precisely what you do not want to. If you are angrily pursuing the large amount of three thousand dollars, are you not saying to the universe that this is a LARGE amount of money? That this large amount of money and the thought of "teaching this person a lesson" are important?

The universe will support you, no doubt, but not how you might think. The universe will support two things: that YOU think this is a large amount of money, and that changing the behavior of this other person is more important than changing yourself.

So you will be presented down the road with another occasion to prove exactly this. That three thousand is a large amount of money, and that other people are more important than you are.

When, as the images I get, in fact you might just be on the verge of receiving two hundred thousand. But no, three is large, you said. Hmmm. So the two hundred turns back into what you think is large. Three. And the other image I get is that you will have many, many instances where you will have the thought that 'the other guy' needs teaching a lesson. Lots of crappy things happening to allow you that thought.

Not really what you might want in your future.

Thank you guides. I get it. Do YOU?

Be well, and be wise,

Wellness Woman

Hoarding

2011-03-19T17:37:00.001-04:00

I did go to the most enlightening talk about OCD and hoarding this week. We all have a little of this strange compulsion, it seems, just the scale topples for the pathological extremes we see on television. I have lots to say and report. No time now, though. Tomorrow? Later?

Be well and do some spring clearing out, everyone!

Wellness Woman

Feels like a tweet

2011-03-19T17:25:00.002-04:00

I can hardly believe the date - here it is 13 days after my last post. Yeesh! My life on the ground has been turning the gerbil cage these past two weeks without a moment to spare. The feeling of imbalance has been tempered by the occasional reconnection into my healing work, but overall this human being is beginning to feel the old frazzle creeping up.

For those of you unaware of how I came into the holistic field in the first place, it was through a burnout, years ago, where the dysfunction toppled the functional aspects of my life. I am so plain happy these days that I forget that even then, I am vulnerable to imbalance and must take a step backwards and reboot my systems for staying on course.

Today I attended a huge event - with all the human kind of hype, music and hordes of people... only to realize after an hour that I had probably (okay, I admit) I had not zipped up to protect myself. My energy was all over the place. I am vulnerable to OPE -other people's energy - at the best of times, which is why I have so many techniques in the first place.

Predictably this week, I have little time today for this entry, but wanted to say I am still here, just preoccupied with non-writing kinds of activities. It is spring after all. Coming out of hibernation means less time with my writing, as I enjoy the sunny and warmer days. Okay, again, not exactly true, not exactly the reason: I have less time with my writing because I am so busy with a human project, on the gerbil wheel.

Happy spring, everyone. I am still here - and actually attended something fantastic this past week I look forward to sharing. As I said, this post feels like a tweet...

End. Dinner guests at the door!

Be well!

Wellness Woman

Essential Oils are Magical

2011-03-06T17:08:00.001-05:00

The field of essential oils has been closely linked to emotional well-being, and so I attended a short presentation two weeks ago to learn more.

What I would like to do here is simply share my own experiences with each oil, as we passed them around the room to test. We were invited to smell the oils, since we wanted to test a few.

At another time, I will go into how they are used, the impact of different sources (use organic) and other things, but I wanted to record my personal experiences as an intuitive with them. I was not familiar with any of them.

So as our group leader spoke, the oil was handed around, and I took a whiff. With the first one, I felt a definite movement of energy, through the brain, the brain stem and then kind of down my neck, making me feel at once more flexible in the spine and then sit up straight, spontaneously. Turns out this one was a blend that was for grounding and centering. I quickly got the information that the sense of straightening out the spine, the action of th oil on sensitive me, had a secondary effect of feeling the flow of energy from crown to base of root chakra. I could literally feel it happening. And then I remembered that our information about yoga and meditation encourages a straight but not stiff spine, that allows the energy to flow. The result, we open to the earth and also to the sense that we are part of the universe. Turns out, as I then returned to the group and listened more attentively, that this was a combination that had spruce in it. I was feeling the tall spruce and its roots, I think.

The second oil I tried had the effect of making me feel secure. It just did. And then I got some information about the oil itself, that it somehow was able to bring all parts of us together. As I tuned to the room, I could hear the group leader talking about how this one was good for upsets. I suddenly realized that when we are upset, there is often a part of us that is reacting to something going on, and it temporarily puts us out of commission while the frozen energy reels from the event that has just happened. The information I then got was that w all hav a kind of fragmentation going on when we are upset about anything, a fffragmentation that originally was protective of our delicate state of being, but that is triggered when something happens to reactivate the old memories. And this oil combination – it was called Harmony – worked at the level of brining our parts back together again. What I heard was the word, clearly, 'defrag', that made me smile. So the parts of ourselves that don't like what ahs been going on are able to come back … kind of like a virtual holding hands, I think.

The next oil was a blend that addressed the subject of self-forgiveness. I felt a kind of swirley whirley action within myself. A participant in our group wondered why people reported feeling worse before they felt better. The information I received then was that the forgiveness was a by-product of an action at the level of the DNA, which would explain the feeling bad then feeling better. The images I had were of a spiral change at the level of the DNA, where the blackness – image of a black net-like cloud – was released from the spiral. Then I heard that the cells were releasing the blackness of shame. Once the shame was released, we are flooded with feelings that are far from positive, but that some action of the oil also prevents too severe an abreaction. The release of the black shame cloud then takes place, after which we feel much better about ourselves, obviously. Hence the action on 'self-forgiveness'. In any case, it was and always is very clear to me, even though I sometimes describe it in ways that partly use the words I hear and partly try as my adult human self to describe it for other humans.

Once again, another oil, as we moved on, with just me experiencing the technicolour cinematic roller coaster. I am used to it, and appreciate the weird information I get. I speak up (or write) now, because I have spent a lot of time as you know around clairvoyants and dowsers who get it instantly, and who sometimes get the exact same images I do.

So I have only managed to write about three of the oils, but I have to go, and this is possibly long enough and weird as well. The oils were all from Young Living, which I have heard about for years, but have a new appreciation of now. The founder of the company itself is like me a clairvoyant or clairaudient of some sort. People say he has channeled a lot of the information. I suppose he had. A few years ago, I would not even have known what he meant. But now that I do the same thing, and get information from the reference librarians up there somewhere – they just gave me the crop circle image of the Atlantean library that I must figure out how to post – so I think I have to study these oils a little more.

We have used them in our Vermont based healing group, but that is another story. For another day. Essential oils are magical. Find out about them. 'We' get that they are indeed powerful.

Be well,

Wellness Woman

EFT Summit Reminder

2011-02-23T09:48:00.001-05:00

The EFT world summit year three is happening this week. You can find it at www.tappingworldsummit.com or just enter eft summit 2011.

Just putting in a little note for everyone since it's not fun to miss something you might be interested in checking out. The event was started by Nick and Jessica Ortner as an ambitious project to interview all the big names in EFT from around the world, actually, and make the interviews available free as they happen and then for a cost afterwards. This is the third year. I just noticed that many of my friends are tuning in, like I am, a little here and there, so I invite you all to do the same.

There is something for everyone! As you get to know the Energy Psychology landscape through these interviews, the notion that we can eliminate discomfort from our lives becomes an easier concept to adopt. You hear about physical pain, emotional blocks, allergies, and the ever-so-popular topic of abundance. Easy listening. What I have done over the years is put the CDs in the car; what was time spent and possibly wasted in traffic or on the highway becomes classroom time.

Here is a snapshot of some of the names interviewed.

First, the big names, those with hugely generous websites with all kinds of things you can listen to: Carol Look (think New York therapist, abundance), Steve Wells (amazing Australian practitioner), Patricia Carrington (ivy league psychotherapist and guru); next, the body-of-knowledge contributors like Sandi Radomski, known for allergy elimination; the wonderful and gifted Bruce Lipton, who jump-started the body of knowledge about the living system and how we really learn and change.

Just a quick heads up, everyone. Listen in!

Be all you can be, everyday!

Wellness Woman

Physical ailments have emotional roots. The truth.

2011-02-20T17:14:00.001-05:00

We read a lot about physical aches and pains, and the various remedies for them that come from the natural health store. I was just reminded of this when I was looking at the Young Living Essential Oil site, and saw that you can soak in a bath with an oil to relieve achy, sore muscles and the like.

Because I am studying the HMR © work, the Holographic Memory Resolution therapeutic approach developed by Brent Baum, I have to mention that we learn the most outrageous things that support what I have learned over the past few years through my dowsing community.

Briefly, we are quantum fields. This means that anything up with us is an energetic disturbance. We learn that after seven years, an energetic disturbance in the field becomes a physical reality. I know I am going too fast, but I have to get this down today in kind of short-hand fashion so I don't forget.

Where this ties into the essential oils thing is that I know that using essential oils goes far deeper than the physical tissues. The oils work at an energetic level, you see, clearing traumatic memories and blocked energy. That in turn is what makes us feel better, either physically or emotionally.

The oils are healing and clearing, in other words.

Now, most of you are used to the reductionist medical model – where a specific molecule is targeting a specific physical ailment. So it may be a little difficult to get your head around the fact that a physical pain is due to an emotional memory or trauma operating at some level. But when you do, you understand how relief can be instantaneous.

Well, you may not, exactly, but some of you do and the rest of you will just have to hang on for a bit. If you go further back into the blog posts I know I have talked about this kind of thing before. I just needed to mention it here in conjunction with the oils.

As you can see, I have a very different perspective from most people. Sigh. Which is why I have developed the habit of writing. I avoid those funny looks, you see.

Two days ago, as I was demonstrating some very elementary Donna Eden techniques for grounding, someone came up to me and said that he didn't believe any of that stuff. That stuff, I thought to myself. Wait until he sees where my head is really at!

Be well, and go public with the weird stuff, folks, please. There are more of us out there than you think!

Wellness Woman

Essential Oils and Healing Each Other

2011-02-20T16:56:00.001-05:00

Today I was reminded of the power of essential oils to bring us into balance. The plant kingdom has long been a source of healing for humans, long before anything was written down about what helped this or that condition.

Chinese herbology, which I have studied for years, routinely offers up pearls of knowledge regarding which herbs are good for stimulating our energy, or yang functions, and which herbs nourish our bodily systems, or yin. These two broad categories are at the heart of this fascinating field.

Like most of my writing, this post demonstrates (I observe myself without censoring), that I seem to need to come into my subject from a slightly oblique angle. Today I want to talk about essential oils, not herbology.

When we use dowsing to see what or which treatments or modalities will help rebalance us or clear our fields of unwanted energies, essential oils often surface. Some of my healer friends, like myself, are able to download the perfect oil when we need to, and only need to identify which one.

Now I do know that most of you are not as way out there as I am in terms of what I seem to be able to download from the universe, most of the time, so you will have to use the real thing! And so will I, for that matter, when I am seriously unbalanced. This does happen to me when I have been upset by a something in my human day to day life, as I have said before.

So here is relief for all of us: essential oils.

If you know nothing about them at all, there is a ton of information on the internet. Derived from plants, which are far more magical than most of us dream, essential oils can help with physical, emotional and spiritual ills. We get – the we being the dowser community I am closely connected with, at any rate – we get that homeopathy is not nearly as useful or powerful. (I hear a few of you complaining, so let me add that we get that there is something about the manufacturing process today that reduces their healing properties, and that this may not have been the case a hundred years ago).

A while back I wrote about an experience with flower essences. Today I dipped into my essential oil reserves…

The point I want to make today is not to educate about any one oil, or even to tell anecdotes the way I usually do. I simply want to remind or tell you all about these accessible tools. They are of course more easy to find, order or purchase than Chinese herbs. And you can even google which ones are best for what problem. They are fabulous for emotional upsets.

Some days I get twisted into a kind of mood that comes from somewhere else. I am acutely aware of the feeling of observing my crabby or annoyed self, and all the while forgetting how to get back to my joyful self. There, I said it pretty publicly, and it is the truth. Thankfully, I have many ways to get back to the me I love to be, quickly. Essential oils will do it, instantly. So if you ever hear me on the phone grumbling to you, please do put whatever I am saying on pause, and remind me to go get out my oils. They work like a charm, with an incredible immediate shift. Honestly, I instantly forget that I am grumbling about something and remember that I was going to go post something on the blog.

Please remember we are all so healing for each other in this way. With love and gratitude for you all,

Wellness Woman

Sunday brunch and scrambled … energy

2011-02-13T11:48:00.001-05:00

So I woke up this morning wondering what I had written yesterday in my amused-with-myself frame of mind, feeling a little guilty about talking about my reaction to unfocused energy instead of letting you know what we can do about it – or even, actually, what it is. So before I make scrambled eggs this Sunday morning, let me say a few things about scrambled energy.

First, scrambled energy is at the root of all kinds of mild dysfunction. Here are a couple of great examples straight from Donna Eden's Energy Medicine, of which I have two copies, like my very favorite books, so that one sometimes has light penciling in the margin and the other is beautifully pristine as though I am hoping it will be worth thousands of dollars in a hundred years.

This may be a long post – some days I can't help it!

Like an electrical circuit board, the energy circuits of our body need to be wired and connected properly to run smoothly. Stress in our lives plays havoc with these circuits. Sudden stress causes the limbic brain (the reptilian emotional brain) to take over from the forebrain, resulting in those lovely moments of your life that you wish you could take back – the not-so-wonderful responses to events where your behavior is, you guessed it, completely irrational.

The circuits between the autonomic nervous system, the source of our automatic reactions, and the thinking forebrain that is supposed to govern our thinking processes developed long after the rest of were running around hunting mammoths. They probably need a design retooling, actually, but what can we do? This is us, the 21^st century humans with these ancient pathways in our brains and nervous systems that account for just about everything bizarre that you can think of or see on television.

As Donna Eden puts it, the wiring we are left with to deal with life as we know it is "not one of nature's showcase achievements". Restoring harmony to the energies that are at the root of much of what we experience as confusion, disorganization, depression, anger, and compulsive behaviors is her life's work. She teaches us that even stuttering and dyslexia stem from this dysfunctional connection between the autonomic nervous system and specific regions in the brain.

The person with the scrambled energy is especially aware of the impact on others when they are trying to communicate. A performer or speaker can lose their audience – fail to connect, in other words – when their energies are scrambled.

I used to experience the effects of individual scrambled energy (without then knowing what it was) when I was working as a simultaneous translator. From flowing rapid translation I went to the "participant speaking in fragments" mode in a very dramatic way. I simply could not grasp what the person with scrambled energy was saying as they veered off topic into what even then seemed like scrambled brain territory. I learned to coast for 30 seconds and then get right back to speed with the next voice in the room.

"When your energy is scrambled, you speak with a scrambled tongue", says Donna Eden.

I later understood that my ability to translate stemmed from being right in the flow of ideas of the person speaking and that I literally was capturing through my crown chakra the ideas from the other person. Simultaneous translation and learning languages are a breeze for me for this reason.

Okay, where was I?

What can you do about scrambled energy? Why, you can learn to do a modified Wayne Cook Posture. Do it before you are going to speak, do it regularly if you have processing challenges like dyslexia or a stammer. Or just when you stop grasping the meaning of words on a page.

If you feel tired and find yourself rereading words of your textbook or novel, your brain is sensing scrambled energy and is trying to slow you down!

Let's fix that right now, shall we? I truly wish everyone knew this the same way we know to put on a sweater if we are cold instead of wondering why we feel so, ah, cold?

Modified Wayne Cook Posture – the short version

This is the shortened version you can try. You are weaving your energy circuits together again by crossing the major lines of energy with each other, allowing your body to resume its natural rhythms.

Begin by crossing your ankles (you are sitting down) usually right over left, whichever feels comfortable. You will already feel energy humming, once you get used to doing this, and most people find it grounding. Next, you want to cross the meridians in your upper body in a similar way. So, cross your right hand over the left, palms down, then put your palms together: your wrists are crossing each other, you are not too comfortable, and you are ready to bend your elbows, flip your hands under and presto, you end up with the "here's the church, here's the steeple" hand position of our childhood. Clasp your fingers, with your hands now over your chest.

Again, you will feel a comforting and calming effect pretty quickly as your energy comes into balance. Breathe in slowly, in through the nose, with your tongue at the top of your mouth against your upper teeth; breathe out through the mouth with your tongue on the bottom of your mouth against your lower teeth. Do this for about 90 seconds. When you are ready, unclasp your hands and slowly bring them in front of you in a prayerful position, still breathing deeply.

This shorter version is used by Energy Psychologists to ground and center their clients at the beginning of a session, and can be used anywhere, anytime. I learned mine in Jean Talon market as I was excitedly bouncing around in the wild energy of so many people, sights, smells and sounds. It was very dramatically calming. I refer to such exercises as hitting the shut-up button, which is the effect on me. I like it a lot, personally, because I tend to get way out there sometimes when I am excited.

Some people liken it to the feeling after 20 minutes of meditation, and it takes you about three minutes max. So here's a nod to my friend Glenn for first showing me how.

Now, you can stop here, most of you. I know my friends who teach Energy Medicine extensively would want me to put a link to the full Wayne Cook posture that is used therapeutically and may chide me for the way I describe certain parts of it.

So I will just send those of you who want more information to our friend Mr. Google and ask him for Donna Eden and Wayne Cook. That ought to do it. The full version involves more putting right foot over left knee and so on. Just start with the shorter modified version and let me know how it goes!

Wishing you unscrambled energy on this Sunday morning brunch day,

Wellness Woman

Explaining who we are

2011-02-12T21:31:00.001-05:00

How many of you are doing something work-wise that is connected to who you really are? That is the dream, right? But the reality for many of us involves hiding or at least camouflaging our big nature, our connected, intuitive selves, and settling for a narrower version for our public face. Our many sides come out, piece by piece, as we navigate the 'real world' of this 3-D life we live, the one with the cars to maintain, the meals to make and the social gatherings of business friends and polite birthday parties and such.

"Let me introduce my friend", said a friend of several years, a 3-D friend of my 'other life' recently at such a gathering. "She is a great cook! And a handy person to have around when you have a problem or something up with your health". Okay. I suppose so – I suppose this is one side of me, the helpful friend to the older buddies who people my life and comfort me when I am feeling in need of companionship and a friendly meal. Not exactly the introduction of my dreams, but okay, I am used to nodding and just being under the radar. As I get a little bolder, or a little bored, though, my true naughty nature comes out, and I become the bad girl at the back of the class. Not exactly my dream me, but okay, I am amusing myself and just being under the radar. Bolder still, and a little naughtier and perhaps feeling like I am ready to leave this party and head for real friends who do know what I do and who I am, my even naughtier nature comes out, and I start to drop hints about the clairvoyance and the intuition, in a way that I find intensely amusing, although I am the only one in on the joke.

So I begin to let the weird stuff out, but not in a way that anyone would notice.

"Yes, you are complicated", I find myself answering back to a prominent writer at this gathering. A writer whom I have never met but whose energy practically spins me to the other side of the room like a blast of hot air. I can sense her energy field and see it like a ball of tangled yarn, askew and somewhat disconcerting. If you can imagine trying to have a conversation with someone whose glasses are askew, hair standing on end and eyebrows about two inches long, as you pretend not to notice, you will have some idea of what I am confronted with. This person looks perfectly groomed and perfectly normal, you see. But you may understand why my own thoughts become somewhat lighter as I attempt to disengage and move away without actually moving backwards, at least not in a way that is obvious.

When I am alone at such a gathering – meaning when I am there without any of my equally clairvoyant or energy sensing friends – I find myself reeling about from person to person, dodging the energy that I instinctively recoil from. But the sad thing is, I am very sociable and curious and observant, so do not like staying home when there is a party afoot that I am expected at. So off I go, and bounce around, until I have had exactly enough to send me out the door sharpish, which I tend to do. I usually hang around with the food staff by the end of the event, since in my experience folk connected to preparing and handling food tend to be more grounded to the earth than some of the intellectuals in the room. The professors and writers often have lovely interesting things to say about the world but sometimes have more trouble connecting to the heart, which is for me the only thing that matters.

Wishing you abundant heart connections in your lives,

Wellness Woman

Stranger than you think

2011-02-05T16:49:00.001-05:00

Today with the sunshine, I am feeling right side up after the snow plows clear the snow and the weather eases up a little. This is one easy to please human being, I think to myself. After a few days of yikes, a single sunny day with no shoveling woes is enough to make me pretty happy again, about the streets and the weather, I mean.

The challenging side of life for me is often the dealing with the day to day things, and how to blend my multidimensional way of looking at the world with what happens to me slipping and sliding up the street. (I suppose I am still trying figure out who I am, exactly. The writing helps. Glad I am hearing that the reading of these posts is interesting, too. I would encourage all of you to write, blog or not, because of the power of words, writing, and expressing ourselves in creating our lives). The other day I was reminded about how goal setting is important, but how writing down the goals and reviewing them is even more important. This is the business side of me – that loves the motivation and the goal setting literature, and the Stephen Covey principle centered leadership. I read and listen with a foot and an ear somewhere else, though, sometimes, because of my strange collection of information.

Pretty sure I haven't mentioned a woman named Jean Slatter, who wrote a little book called Hiring the Heavens. I heard her speak and bought the book. The concept is a simple one: ask. Ask the universe for help with all kinds of things. Jean's terminology for those who help is our spiritual committee. I of course all too often forget to ask unless I am with my friends who remind me just as I remind them to ask. Ask? Ask who? You may be wondering.

Let's take a quick example. Imagine you are about to write an exam. You have studied as much as you can. You have set your intention on passing the exam to achieve a specific step towards a goal. Fine. What else can you do? When you go into write that exam, you can make sure, first of all, that your own energy is running smoothly, so you can do some of the Donna Eden stuff: you can rub your K27's, for example, and thump your thymus to bring your kidney meridians into balance. Then you can do some of the brain gym stuff: you can do a few mental lazy eights, the infinity sign, to align your left and right brain. You can calm yourself down if you feel nervous by doing a little tapping, too, just maybe on your thymus or collar bone. All these things help the human parts of you be at your best for writing this exam. What are we forgetting? Anyone? (I am smiling as I remember an old teacher). So then, you ask your spiritual committee for help. You can say something simple like: angels, please help. Or guides, please help. Or spiritual committee, please help. This will bring in all the universal knowledge that you know you know, related to what you are about to do, and make it available to you for the exam.

Naturally, it does help if you are in the habit of communicating with your spiritual committee on a regular basis, and not just in cases of need or emergency. A little gratitude helps, too. I hear some of you thinking, but why would we bother our spiritual helpers for something so unimportant as this?

Here is my personal take on things. Imagine something that might be called angel television. Imagine your angels and everyone else's angels watching, on this old black and white screen, as you make yet another mistake because you didn't ask for help. Pulling their hair and getting excited the way humans do when they watch sports on television. Oh no! not like that! Your committee really loves to help you out, but most of the time universal law prevents them from doing anything unless they are asked. So what is the harm in asking? Try it.

My personal experiences are often so dramatic when I ask for help, I have no doubt of the power of asking. So I am still a little skeptical about the goal setting and the planning stuff, because I have learned not to be too specific about what I want to allow the spiritual folks to get involved in what happens. I am often inspired and get information, as you know, during the early morning or when I am connected to spiritual friends. So I get the planning, but I also get the asking part.

Honestly, I never know where my thoughts are going to go when I start to write! My guides laugh at me when I make a plan. Of this I am certain.

Yours in wonder,

Wellness Woman

Winter blue

2011-02-04T15:29:00.001-05:00

I have just finished editing a publication of some of my poetry. My head is full of the lovely winter icy blue lake scenes that inspire me to write about the big picture, and to remember our connections with the trees, the earth, the lakes and rivers.

The reality show that is our daily lives is a somewhat different picture, is it not? This past week, like much of North America, my own city has been reeling from unfriendly weather. Not the tornados of Australia, but just weather. With a capital W. From Connecticut to Halifax to Chicago, my personal circuit of friends, many of us are struggling with staying okay, feeling dragged down. It feels like a struggle. Brave face replaces glad heart, in my case. I I remember my teenage years with no cares in the world except delight at big snow for skiing and for holidays from school. Adult life catches up with me. My biggest issue this week is what to do with the car, honestly, when snowbanks stand where parking spaces once were. And yes, I would love to live without one, but no, this is not a reality with the way I earn my living.

Two years ago I had a lot of comedy mileage over digging out cars just before the plow comes along and layers a four feet bank of cement-like sludge between you and the escape to the roadway. We don't dig out cars, exactly, we dig out a nice space for the next guy who comes in; when we return, our slugging away at the heavy stuff begins anew as we try to carve our way into a now inaccessible spot half a block further away. I am getting an image of a kind of futile attempt at nest building that becomes the home of another bird the moment we fly away to find food. Silly analogy, but it cheered me up a little. Everything becomes just a little harder to do, even walking on the non-existent sidewalks.

Lovely lake and winter blue becomes city winter sludgy blues. Time to move to the country, where in my heart I long to be? Snowed in away from a large metropolis reminds me of huge snow drifts and lots of soup! Sometimes I forget that I have instant access to wherever I wish to be at any moment. All is illusion: I can go to my blue-green Caribbean sanctuary, or to a snowy mountain peak. All I need is a quiet moment to take myself there.

Last week I learned that taking a few quiet moments every day, and not necessarily for meditation, but just in blissful silence, have been correlated with happiness. People who do report being happier. Excuse me for a moment, and thank you for these moments of quiet as I write and distance myself from the immediate pressures. Do something you love, just yourself, and spend some quiet time with yourself. Don't forget to smile, which your brain interprets as "Oh! I am happy?".

Were it not for the getting and coming and going in cars, snow would be as lovely for grownups as it surely is for small people. Not sure how to turn all this around, but slowing down helps, in the sunshine.

Blessings and good luck with your weather with a capital W wherever you are,

Wellness Woman

Historically unverifiable events

2011-01-26T21:16:00.001-05:00

Hurt my knee today – and it's me, so I know that the location of the injury is always significant. Off I go to have it healed… because it hurts a lot and I know from the holographic universe that the injury is triggering old wounds in addition to being itself a bump!

Using HMR, holographic memory resolution this evening, after a day of hobbling about until I could do something about it, was and is always a revelation.

Sentence construction, I know.

So here is what we found, me and my healing friend with me on the phone: when you go into the subconscious, you are just as likely to hit events in your history somewhere as in your own childhood. We found exactly that. Two incidents, both when asked what age might you be, revealed a young adult, male, in another age. We healed up the incidents, all in holographic and space, and the knee instantly gets warm as though a heating pad were applied.

It seems, hypothetically speaking, that the new injury was jangling a bell from a similar insult to the knee incurred during the construction of a railroad about a hundred years ago. Ouch, a long railway spike, hurled from the force of a small explosion, into the knee near the joint. We run the colors and vibrations through the body, especially the legs and knees, and yikes I feel the heat, and the leg is able to wiggle where before it was stiff and uncomfortable.

The second incident took place on a ship. Yikes this time a cannon shot to the leg. So who knows? I mean it is all so strange but I am used to it, have become used to it, over the years. I just know that the knee heals, in a single session, and tomorrow I expect to be walking without a trace. Today I hobbled about something awful.

Be in awe, it is all stranger than you think.

Wellness Woman

The right tool for the right job

2011-01-23T09:33:00.001-05:00

Really short: the right tools make for more perfect work. As a small child, I learned firsthand and was taught about the difference the right tool makes, in things like carpentry and home repairs. The right glue, the right screwdriver. As I re-read my blog and spot a couple of uncharacteristic mistakes, I see the difference the right tools make in the electronic world too. All the patient formatting and re-reading on the user-friendly screen yields results that the small hypertext screen does not. I find it impossible to re-read myself in that format. And now, with the computer changes that I am about to address, I cannot change the typos I see easily. Just making the point: I have been not only slowed down, but hampered. So it is important, these small things. True, I have ambitions to do a lot of things in a day that amuse me and that add to the quality of my day. So I like fast reliable tools to do the work. Some things make blogging easier and more fun. Sigh.

Yours with gratitude and new resolve,

Wellness Woman

Chaos, unintentional

2011-01-23T09:06:00.003-05:00

As my computer slowed down, I knew that I would have to finally get myself some help. After all, despite the ideas that you can create whatever you want in life, there are limitations, especially when the physical environment around us, our working necessities like computers and cars are involved. We have the capability of making our cars and computers work better, but there are limitations, as I have said. The hard research about this potential for the living electromagnetic field to effect changes in machines has been demonstrated in the random experiments. One of the more famous early experiments involved chicks who were able to control the random movements of the feeder robots in a classic experiment of mind over matter. I don’t remember whether it was referred to as the Chick Experiment (smile, these are real baby hatched chicks, the little yellow two winged and two legged variety), and I am not going looking for it this morning on the internet. I first heard about it at an ASD presentation on animal communication research given by Marty Giesler in California in 2004. I knew I could not just wish my computer to shape up, this time, so I went for help.

Where I am going with this today, however, has little to do with my telling my computer to behave. The unintentional chaos comes about when you have a discussion with someone that goes into the blue, as though what you said was not important and the outcome would not affect your life.

The conversation I had with the computer guy, you see, was about please, please kindly would you be able to reset the few important pieces of information that help me function on my computer. Please do what is needed to maintain the careful functionality, to set them to the way they were. I then handed over my precious life in a box. Please, I said, when or if you have to reinstall explorer, can you import and reset the favorites task bar that I have painfully put together to make connecting to the eight or nine websites I use daily easy. And please, please, please, I said, thinking I was being heard, would you make sure that the sticky notes files are reinstalled or backed up or whatever, before you do what you need to. I of course had copied a bunch of the sticky note information onto a word file, mostly. The mostly is getting in my way. My recently organized electronic life, done in a futile attempt to speed up my computer as it was going in the other direction, were a proud effort – membership in my associations websites and the blog forums of my professional life, the several blogs and websites that are mine, and all the precious across the top tabs that allow me to function in my multiplicity of hats. If I were just this or just that, fine, but I am not. As I try to regain functionality of my computer life, I am not so happy, but I will survive.

Why does every website have a different configuration of a security password? And of what they want in the username box?

It’s not like we have one or two accounts, like a bank card with a pin number, duh, that of course we need to keep super secure. My online life is way beyond that. So even if I could remember the passwords no problem, or at least the variations I use, I cannot keep track of who I am – in their records. Am I my email address? Which one? Am I my name, myname, myname82 or the email address without the at stuff, or myname with at least one 938765 in the configuration? This is not the password, it is the requirements of what your username needs to be today. The password has its variations, but compared to the username, a piece of cake – yes, I am saying this publicly, because these are not my bank accounts I am talking about, but my reorder status on the vitamins I use, for example – and where I really do not see why you cannot choose who you are, the user name you always use.

What bothers me is that I did not lose all the data. I paid to have someone lose it for me.

At last count, I had twelve variations of account names and passwords, all neatly stored on those sticky notes so as not to dissolve in frustration, which I admit to doing, when I need the password at the last minute and used to be bumped off the website in order to retrieve the passwords. I love electronic sticky notes. Hokay. I think I will just have a little cry. I did not take a screen shot of my internet explorer tabs, either. Actually, I thought the computer guy heard me.

I can rewrite this later, lighten up, lose the angst. This kind of thing is the source of my comedy sketches. But before it becomes funny, it is sometimes just painful. The computer shop is of course closed until Monday, so I have no one to complain to. By the time I speak to them, I will be funny, polite, and possibly unhealthily apologetic for creating my own problem. Today I am just coping with how I bring these things on myself. I am reminded of a very old New Yorker cartoon from the seventies, maybe, that I found a couple of years ago. Duck therapist says to duck client, “Now, tell me what you feel is bringing this duck hunting into your life just now?”

Not a secret why I still quest after the secrets of the law of abundance as I confront the law of *&^%$!* and what to do about it. Writing is my solace. Should have been a, maybe once was a, could have been a minister, priest, rabbi with a flock to tend and counsel and, depending on the flavor of the religion, a daily diet of mea culpa, know I have been a sinner and deserve all this. Which of course I do not believe for an instant. But I do get discouraged with the string of small yikes when I know it is possible to have nothing but blue sky. Hence the big picture… I want to see the big picture!

Life brings surprises. We all are defined by how we face our challenges and what we do about them, I suppose. The computer guy would never understand, much less care, about how he has complicated my life and made me feel the familiar unpleasantly powerlessness that comes when others disregard our precious things. Our reactions are born from early life experiences. Small losses with momentary big impact stem from early experiences of unresolved loss. What is meaningless to others in our lives – starting with the adult caregivers, unfortunately, as we all experience in this school of earth humans – is often very core to the heart of our self esteem. That sounds dramatic, but is close to truth. We are marked by unintentionally careless regard of feelings that happens throughout childhood and that stay as smudges in our core light, gradually layered over by happy experiences, but still there nonetheless. My feelings would differ from yours under the same circumstances. How you experienced the world is the basis of your current perceptions. So for me, this small incident brings up stuff that I am now trained to sense, acknowledge and resolve. I am not dwelling on it, I am examining just enough to bring it up and out. By later today I will have resolved this small blip in my world.

What I found interesting, just as a footnote, was that as I tried to upload this from Word as usual, the configuration would not work - so another glitch in the resetting of what was. So I had to copy paste directly into the blog hypertext form, where all the formatting I had done was lost. And as I retyped the title, I unconsciously typed Chaos, intentional instead of Chaos, unintentional. The subconscious is in charge of everything but a tiny 5% of what we do. So I am obviously in a small wrong story with all this.

Love and blessings this morning,

Wellness Woman

Too busy connecting with everyone

2011-01-20T11:30:00.002-05:00

I rarely post anything during a week-day. But I suddenly realized that I had spent over an hour with my email this morning, going through and reading, archiving and deleting all the messages from the past 24 hours and my lovely resolution of having almost nothing in the inbox is in the, well, outbox.

Are we so busy connecting with everyone that we have little time to connect with real people anymore? Well, of course we are, welcome to the world of work in 2011. A year or so ago, I was so pleased with how well I managed not to be online all the time, after learning about computer EMFs and other things. And now? Like many people, I am online most of the time, and still do not get to what I thought I was going to.

Headlines in the paper, which I also do not get to often: (not headlines, for they seldom interest me) articles about the gender-changing chemicals in our shampoos and baby plastic items, article about bilingual flexible brains, article about the last name effect makes you run to the front of lines.

Writing for me at least is a few minutes with my own thoughts, with no one interrupting me in mid-sentence and no one telling me what to think. I find it relaxing. I suppose in a full-time position my internet connection would be limited and the blog writing would stop.

Try talking to yourself, it is good for your health. (Seriously, we get to reframe our lives in a healthy way when we talk to our pets, our plants and write on a blog that is largely for the people who read us because they like to, and listen to us because they just like to, like our pets, our plants. No, wait a moment, that was a joke, a little humour to make me smile.

Oh my gosh, almost forgot to mention that yesterday in the midst of renovators and stuff that took my attention from working for a short while, I flipped on the television and watched a lovely episode of Oprah. She said, standing on the top of the Sydney harbour bridge: I was born on a dirt road in Mississipi ... and today we have had a regatta with boats bearing custom sails with my name on them ... who could have dreamed this ... this is proof that there is something far, far greater than we can imagine orchestrating all of this. So remember there is a regatta out there somewhere with your name on it.

Or words to that effect. I had a little cry, which means that my guides were right there with me letting me know that of course this is true, this is true. With more time I will fix up the quote with how it really went and at which stage in the Sydney visit. She filmed in Australia for a week with an entire audience. The Australians told her that they work to live and think that Americans live to work. Over and out, have a meeting in half an hour.

Blessed you all are, out there, reading this.

With love and gratitude,

Wellness Woman

Synchronicity

2011-01-17T22:28:00.001-05:00

When you are in the flow of your life, events all around you manifest from the fabric of the morphic field. People emerge from corners you have never explored; help comes from all quarters. Sometimes I have no sense of why or why not, but suddenly realize that my life has once again fallen into or out of the synchronous flow that creates happiness and fulfilment.

This week a number of events have coincided with opportunities that I could have hoped for but missed out on at another time. I learned and confirmed that we can download the vibration of anything we are familiar with or that our body is familiar with. Short post – too much to put in here – more another time.

Last week I was taking a particular Bach flower essence for relief from anxiety related to something going on in my life and realized that I was in the car, on the highway when an errant thought crossed my mind and sent me into a rush of panic. Quickly, I asked for the essence to be in my system to calm my cellular fright, and within half a minute had instant relief. It was great, and exhilarating to see what I know I can do happen kind of unexpectedly. It worked fine!

This evening, in conversation with a new friend who coincidentally works with the energy of water and is familiar with the Emoto work as am I, told me that the body could download or reactivate the energy of a specific homeopathy remedy when asked, but in a more technical way. If you put your fingers just below the Adam`s apple, I was told, and ask for a specific homeopathic remedy that you have taken at some point, your body will create its vibration for you instantly without needing to ingest the remedy.

Download some happiness, everyone. You just have to ask.

Yours in health,

Wellness Woman

Smudges and relationships

2011-01-16T09:59:00.001-05:00

The weekend training intensive I recently attended had many moments of laughter, some prompted by the Batman concept where a smudge on your core inner light causes attraction to a similar smudge in another person's core light. The end result was as I once heard Betty Epstein joke, a string of "really bad, bad" boyfriends or girlfriends.

The smudges, of course, mirror each other and sometimes do not make for smooth or healthy relationships. But the possibilities for healing of early wounding that we witnessed and that we are learning from Brent Baum open our eyes to the great opportunities for healing our relationships as we heal ourselves.

This is similar to the work I learned in a workshop with Henry Grayson last year. He elegantly demonstrates a technique he uses with couples that parallels the new work I am learning. The basic premise is to look for the early childhood responses that are triggered by the adult relationship, and to heal the childhood wounding. Presto, the adult relationship becomes more balanced, happier and healthier right before our eyes.

So now I am drawn to mine my bookshelf for old information in a new light. The training intensive this past week regarding the new possibilities for healing childhood wounding from the earliest point possible in our lives has led to a new look through my bookshelf, where some of the books are calling out to me for a re-read. Today I have been drawn to the wonderful work on relationships written by Harville Hendrix, eagerly reading it again for new clues that open my eyes to ways of looking at every aspect of our lives.

Getting the Love you Want is a great resource for anyone in relationship or anyone who is looking for relationship. Hendrix' concept of the unconscious relationship where we yearn for our original wholeness, filling the empty or wounded parts with addictive ties to others. The batman smudges are mirrored in the partners we choose. As we regain our own wholeness (I nearly wrote feelings of wholeness, but that is not what happens), we lose the addictive drive to others and become able to create conscious relationship with others.

This all explains to me a little better the shift I am experiencing in myself, as warned this past week. With more smudges healed, a calmness I am noticing in myself is related to sensing that my relationships have shifted (not 'are changing', but have actually already shifted). I will need to consciously recreate the relationships I want; I am less drawn (no, that too is wrong, I am not drawn at all) to the relationships that were prompted by the unhealed inner smudges within myself. It is strange, and strangely centering and calming. Yikes I am a whole new ballgame, again, as happens every time deep healing takes place.

So is a healing intensive like the Gumpian box of chocolates? You never know what you're going to get? This is certainly different. I have gone from really fine to fine and almost monkian calm. This is good news if you are me since I am often driven to outward directed activities more than even I would really want to be. I feel like I am in someone else's shoes, for the very first time. Guess I am really grounded in a different way than before. Okay, whatever, as the kids might say… I did not want to be long here, because I had a computer glitch and lost a longer text, sigh, a few minutes ago, but I did want to make a point.

Wishing you speedy smudge removal yourself,

Wellness Woman

Equine Therapy

2011-01-13T20:55:00.001-05:00

As I try to step back from the fringe of the strange – the mid-air perspective that healers sometimes have of the wonderful things that we can do and that are possible for anyone to do, given a little training – I am learning to give my texts titles that are used in the normal world of therapy. Hence equine therapy, which a few months ago I would have simply called horses are healers. But today I can legitimize this writing with an entry about the topic of equine therapy, which is a recognized modality for dealing with trauma victims.

The little I know about it – the conventional side of it, that is – was learned this weekend. At a healing center in the southwest United States, equine therapy is used to help patients heal from deep abuse and trauma of all kinds. The horse, I am told, only responds to humans when they are in the here and now. It is a kind of huge biofeedback loop of a kind, where an individual begins to recognize when they are 'here' and when they are in traumatized trance, the spacey out of body experience we move in and out of all the time but which causes problems when it has become the norm. or something like that.

Not having had much chance to research, I don't know yet. But my own information about horses is at once congruent and different, for I know that horses are great big multidimensional healers. And not in a figurative sense, but in a real sense. In the international healing group I have belonged to for some time now, there are humans from Hawaii to New Zealand; there are also several dogs and one – you guessed it – horse. We have learned to call upon the healing powers of other worldly beings for help, and at times we are guided to call upon the horse for something specific. Go figure, as I have to say, for the explanation and the history is too long for here. Just wanted to let you know that horses are special, very special.

Anyone who deals with them much already knows this. What they do not know, and what I want to say, is that horses have lots of information as well as healing powers. So you can learn if you have not already done so, how to channel from a horse. My friend Russell from New Zealand is a particularly receptive channel, and amuses us with the odd things he is told by horses and dogs, all the time.

As they have said to Russell, just because they bark/neigh and eat and poop does not mean that they are not amazing multidimensional beings here on earth to help and keep company with humans. Don't take it from me, as I like to say. Go find out for yourself. You need a graphite pencil and peace and quiet near your favorite friend. You will find the voice very distinctive and sometimes amusing. Really. This is true.

Yours in connection to all life,

Wellness Woman

More Batman

2011-01-12T19:30:00.001-05:00

I just use this title because it sounds amusing and catches attention. It also conveys so clearly what happens at the subconscious level when we clear out the frozen traumatic memories of the distant past and the white light from the inner core begins to shine unfettered.

This past weekend was spent in the company of Brent Baum at one of his training seminars. Naturally I can say little about what actually happens, protecting confidentiality of everyone there, but I can say something about the nature of this gentle work that seems to just release whatever holds us back.

Here is what was explained to me about my own situation. As you know, I work pretty hard to make sure that my thoughts are positive, that I clear away as much negative energy as I know how, that I protect myself when I go to sleep (asking all and any negative energies to be converted to 100% pure light and to stay protected until my conscious mind kicks in again in the morning) and other things – all in an attempt to stay balanced and not trip the latch that sends me through the trapdoor into a trance state as it is called – a major mood swing that takes me ages (usually about an hour) to clamber back from. It happens at random moments, often when I am alone or when I hit a hypoglycemic blood dip.

What my own subconscious revealed this weekend were a series of little traumas that happened right around the moment of my birth. Now, I listened to Sandi Radomski talk about "ask and receive" on one of the EFT recordings and discussing the trauma that happens at birth that many people do not recover from. It all sounded so impossibly weird, even though I have done a week long training with her myself for the allergy elimination protocol, that I find myself skipping this track. I just don't like to think that birth trauma – her work is about decision-making – causes so much stuff in our lives.

But I guess I have to bow before the idea that our very, very early experiences here on earth do have a big impact on our lives. As Brent worked on me, my own little traumas were revealed, and revealed clearly without any intense emotions. I was just watching a little movie. It was as significant and at the same time as easy as any healing work I have done. He expressed surprise that I had not worked with this before in my healing work on myself, but there you go, I guess it was just not time. In any case, now it seems it was time.

Funny thing, when you do the Memory Resolution work, you easily, really easily connect with the subconscious images. Brent says that his presence – and the hand that is placed near the dorsal horn, (C7), at the top of the spine where it connects to the neck – allows for pure white light to protect the subconscious and conveys a feeling of safety, so that the memories that have been hidden can surface.

Whatever the mechanism, there I am sitting in a chair in front of ten other people viewing as clear as a bell the memory of being on my way out to be born. Seriously. Really clear, and not traumatic. I realize that I am not too keen on being born at all, and kind of want to go the other way. I even manage from my conscious mind I guess to make a joke of it. It is true, I do know, not told by my parents but learned much later in life, that I was a forceps birth and possibly too heavily anesthetized along with my mother. In any case, no gory details, just a mild interest as I travel back in time. The memory just comes up, you see, when it is time to heal it. Brent refers to the moment of T minus one (T-1) where you realize, just a millisecond before it happens, the uh oh event that is about to affect you for the rest of your life, it seems. The tiny moment before someone is in an accident, that protects the psyche from the dreadful moments about to happen. That is our wise self protecting us, but that is also the cause of all kinds of trouble later in life.

One of the things I did as I began to work with Brent was borrowed from my training elsewhere: I asked my guidance team to help me work on the highest priority for the highest good of all, which is how we learned to phrase help requests. The end result was that I was able to reframe and resolve this early frozen memory that has never come up before for healing in all the work I have done on myself.

Whatever we ended up accomplishing, in those brief and not traumatic ten minutes, seems to be having an effect on me this week. I feel different, and sense an energy shift at a profound level. I will let you know more as things develop.

The Batman reference is to the blot or smudge in your own subconscious that blocks a part of your inner white light shining forth and affects what manifests here on earth for you. I seem to have one smudge less.

Of course my life is changing; it is always changing. But I have a sense that I am going to be more in the right story and not the wrong story , with a nod to Stephen Sondheim, for the next little while.

Yours in light,

Wellness Woman

Brainwave

2011-01-08T09:33:00.001-05:00

I've just had a brainwave! was an expression I heard as a child, first from my mother, and then from peers. I can't think of the last time I heard anyone say such an old fashioned sounding thing. We have replaced it with duh! And ya think? And hang on a minute!

Brainwaves, though, are what are responsible for just about everything, it turns out. What we have learned though quantum physics is that the mind creates just about everything we perceive to be true in our human existence. The learning came from the observation of electrons, those tiny packets of energy at the sub-atomic level, by no means the smallest, but certainly small... The short story, which I understood more fully through the lovely prose of Bill Bryson, is that the whizzing electrons of our imaginations and cartoon images are everywhere at once; the everywhere at once only becomes 'over here!' when they are observed. In a more grown-up way of saying it, the potential of being physically present (still at the tiny atomic level) only becomes reality through the act of observation.

This is where we get the information related to 'what you focus on, grows'. We are multi-dimensional all the time, you see, and manifest those parts we pay attention to. I know, it all sounds a little simplistic for the incredible way that things actually work. But as I have been saying all along, the world of non-fiction is just as unbelievable sounding as anything I have every read in fiction.

If we create our reality, then, through what we intend to create, why are we oh enlightened ones, sometimes so far behind the maybe not so enlightened ones in terms of what our lives look like? Do not tell me you know no holistic practitioners who are struggling with the physical aspects of living a fully financially realized life. Some notable exceptions are the Deepak Chopras of the world, who have a Western life and an inner life, it seems to me, that fully match each other. (What we see from afar on our televisions and through books, I mean).

The complication is that we need to be using our conscious and unconscious minds together, and the unconscious does what it is programmed to do. My personal theory also is that many so called holistic practitioners were drawn to do what they do through some early trauma they are trying to resolve and that manifests the non-success in their lives until they fix themselves up completely. Healer heal thyself is a long journey for some of us.

Stress and trauma are stored in the subconscious. If we create unconsciously from our unconscious intentions, as Gary Zukav explains to us, we get what has been sown. In my case, there are a lot of unintentional results – I think I have planted flowers I will be familiar with, but I end up with lovely, ah, weeds I have to find out about. The better we get at resolving traumas, the more results we see that we expect.

Here is the low-down on brainwaves: our inner light, about which I also speak a lot, sends a beam out to the universe, inviting all wonderful manifestations from source. Physics measures the waves we create in different states of activity. Delta waves (0.01-4 Hertz) are emitted during meditation or deep sleep; Theta (4-7 Hertz) are emitted in other states of wakefulness, and this is the range where traumatic memory seem to be lodged or encoded. Alpha (7-14) also stores encoded traumatic memories.

Our conscious awareness is typically in the Beta (14-21 Hertz) range, where we think we are doing all of our brainwork...

The good news is that if our dense trauma related energies and memories are carried in the Alpha-Theta brainwave range, and we know it, we can find ways to resolve and heal these troubled frequencies. I do not mean that we, literally, find ways, but I do mean that we can find gifted healers who have learned how to do this, instantaneously. For it is, after all, just energy.

All this is by way of explanation of the fact that some of us not only manifest less than we intended, at times of our lives, but also manifest exactly the opposite of what we intended. And at other times, the big Delta override seems to kick in and we manifest our conscious intentions, and much more.

I am intent to carry on with learning about how to resolve the emotions within our Alpha-Theta brainwave range for this to happen. My personal override kicks in when I ask for help, lots of it, from the other side. Let me finish with a quote from a big, bright white light helper, Kryon, who has told us to ask for big picture help: Do not ask for a rose, when you can have the whole bouquet.

The many sides of me manifested as I began connecting with the bright white light presence. The Alpha-Theta side of me is still sometimes confused!

Wishing you all a bouquet,

Wellness Woman

Batman and the Law of !/%&?

2011-01-07T23:06:00.001-05:00

Manifesting abundance is less easy than it sounds – or more healers would be wealthy! Despite the best intentions, many of us have trouble manifesting what we want. Why?

We now know that 93% of our behaviours are determined by the subconscious where sadly are recorded all the good, the bad and the ugly over the years. This gets in the way of our good intentions.

Most exciting are the new ways of exploring and removing frozen energy that gets in the way of our abundance and fulfillment. We know a lot about the superconscious, about the quantum perspective and what we can do to bring in the energy of what we most desire. Dowsers have the potential for connection to all things. Let's learn how to get into the driver's seat.

We know so much more about our multi-layered mind that opens up amazing avenues for shifting energy, including the energy of abundance. It would be great to learn more about what we can do to remove some of that *!/%&*? from our subconscious and attract more of what we want!

That is just what I am about to do. And soon tell you more.

Yours in wisdom,

Wellness Woman

All distressed emotions indicate old traumas

2011-01-06T20:48:00.002-05:00

"There is immeasurable healing in the shifts of consciousness that are now occurring through our exploration of human healing potential." Brent Baum

I hesitate to speak about the concept of trauma because people think of it as so, well, dramatic and serious. It is, and it isn't. I learned long ago (eight years ago?) that finding the triggers that upset us is a cause for celebration, like going fishing for sunken treasure, because only then do we have the opportunity to heal them. Or heal the suckers, as one of my irreverent therapist friends would say.

We are all a small maelstrom of trauma, except for a few; we hide it, we get on with it; we pretend nothing is there. The serious stuff becomes hard to hide, though, and gets worse over time as I am sure I have said before. So

The potential of the new powerful psychology and healing techniques is huge: we can learn to quickly uncover things that have plagued us for decades, and then get rid of them, with a wonderful lightening and enlightening of spirit.

It is difficult for me to explain, as I travel this journey, just how aware I am and at the same time still frustrated with the healing that stubbornly eludes me. All I know is that there must be a lot of junk there for me still to be at it, after all this time! For I still am triggered by events that surprise me. Triggers, for those needing a definition, are indicators of hidden traumas and refer to events where we have a disproportionate reaction to the actual circumstance.

Where was I? I do ramble. Okay – so there is the potential for each of us to heal not only the triggers but the underlying trauma as never before. Any overwhelming life experience – typically lived in childhood and sometimes with no intent to cause harm of any kind – is stored in the cells and in the energetic field. It will trip us up in relationships and in any situation that brings back to us old wounding.

We have then an illusory sense of smallness, fear and diminished importance that interferes with any intimate or adult communication at a profound level. I watched Henry Grayson demonstrate an amazing therapeutic process in repairing relationship problems between two willing participants where he related and healed expressed problems between them using the new psychology and 'non-local mind' techniques. The process works through locating back in time to the childhood of each one the feelings experienced – or should I say re-experienced – in relationship as adults. Fascinating. When those early trauma experiences were healed, the adult relationship problems evaporated.

Holographic Memory Resolution deals with frozen energetic memories that interfere with present day life, locating and resolving them. I am right on schedule, as I head off to a training workshop with Brent Baum again. Right on schedule – as if by magic, I have developed a frozen left shoulder so painful that I can hardly move my head or lift a small bag. Right on schedule, as Brent would say. I am doing nothing about it today because I am in suspense and want to hear the full story that we will unravel together about what emotions, when and where this represents. Ouch! Sorry, just moved my head. Thank you universe, for the lovely case study homework I bring. And of course, as a little gift for Brent, I offer this plus a visible cold sore – that I get once in 10 years and never once since I began healing work six years ago. Just for Brent and the other participants, as I said. Right on schedule.

All is a perfect plan for our evolution, as Brent would say.

Wishing you an awesome experience in this dimension,

Wellness Woman

Weather events

2011-01-03T22:53:00.001-05:00

What do dowsers talk about? If you think about the big picture – meaning if you start looking at the earth as though you were in a space shuttle, or had gone to the moon – what do you suppose you would talk about? Business news becomes less important than the big questions, things you may see from space. In my small corner of the world, the questions we are asking about this week, just because that is where our minds go, are questions like Do you suppose the earthquakes this week are from the light, making the earth a different shape for some good reason? Or I wonder whether the winds and weather are the same thing as Gaia, synonymous with the spirit of the Earth, or different. I mean, the old Norse sagas of Odin, god of the wind I think, would have us think that the winds have an animus or spirit, and when they are angry, they act out. So is the strange weather a reaction to something we humans said or did?

Big picture questions, as I said.

I leave you with these thoughts, and wishes for a safe journey today or tonight, wherever you are. The floods in Australia, in Canada, the earthquakes in South America, the great amounts of snow in America – in my neck of the woods, where we are relatively safe these days from weather events, the weather has taken up most of the time usually devoted to other news. As a dowser, I often 'get' not to watch the news at all, for a number of reasons. So it has been interesting to be able to watch this weather news.

More another day. I hope you are safe, dry and warm enough in the northern hemisphere today. Or cool and with enough water, in the tropical zones. I also hope that we have not really made Earth angry, but it is too late in the day to use a pendulum or dowsing rod, so I will only do the human thing and just wonder.

With love and gratitude,

Wellness Woman

Sensing beyond the five senses

2011-01-02T20:09:00.002-05:00

Reading about other people's experiences of sensing, feeling and seeing things that are beyond the normal range of our five senses, I still marvel at the fact that so many of us can do this, I think, and so few admit to it, at least in the usual course of my day. I am reading up for the intensive program I will be taking next week with Brent Baum. His work is as fascinating to me as the best of novels, and I savor the pages that so eloquently describe the viewpoint of the clairsentient, the person who clearly feels rather than sees what is there beyond sight.

In conversation with a young couple in one of my favorite cafes today, I found myself trying to explain that their tiny son possibly had clear sight, in the same fashion that healers have it, until he grows into the age where he is told to stop making things up! But this is what we can sense or see, possibly many of us, were it not for trauma in the way. (The word refers to encoded frozen energy that settles into the body from any event that is unpleasantly surprising, and not just from the traumatic events that make it to the television screen, fact or fiction). What follows here is my own experience as well – of knowing things I ought not to, but just do.

Illness is rooted in emotion. I have studied so many different modalities over the years that work almost entirely with clearing the energy of trauma in the course of healing all kinds of ailments. So for more than six years, I too have been aware that most discomfort and illness is rooted in an emotional aspect. When the energy of the emotion is cleared, this action moves the illness in some way towards healing.

Brent Baum's stories go further than that. The discovery of the healing power of the hands, that are concentrated white light and ultra-sensitive to vibrations in each of us is a magical event. We sometimes do not fully realize what we have been able to sense or do until after the fact, the first few times it happens.

My own experiences were dramatic: the first time in a class of Healing Touch, we were asked to scan the bodies of our partner and to note what we sensed, without speaking. Expecting to find something possibly in the area of the liver, or maybe even in the lower abdomen, I was totally perplexed at the location I sensed something not right. Puzzled during my assessment, but when we were done, I discovered that I was right about the location of a previous injury that I could neither see nor have prior knowledge of. We were both stunned. (I can't reveal any more details for confidentiality reasons, so this sounds flat. But it was amazing).

My second experience was an event where I was asked to help with a severe migraine headache on an out of town trip. I just assumed I could do something, with the various kinds of training I had already had. In truth, I had no idea if what I could do would have any effect on a severe early morning migraine. But I just did my thing. With amazingly powerful and immediate results. Go figure, I thought to myself, hope they don't line up in case it doesn't work again. These were early experiences. I have moved to other modalities and do not use my hands for healing much at this time. The point is: the healing light is there and the ability to sense things are there, at least in my case. Plus all the stuff I just know about people when I focus… that has expanded dramatically over the years.

Brent Baum's early career story is even more dramatic. He was about to conduct a counseling session when a patient arrived with again, a migraine that made any working impossible. She asked him to do something about it, and so he placed his hands near her head. In his case, the hands felt pain, which he did not know at the time indicated the presence of traumatic memory. The pain subsided and then regained its intensity. While he then proceeded through the steps of memory resolution that he was developing at the time, his hands sensed intense pain and then an absence of pain as the memory was resolved through his talking and reframing process. The migraine dissolved within a few minutes, along with the sensation of pain. He found out that the migraine had been of a week's duration. There are many such stories out there – both my friends and healers Jill and Mary have countless instances of similar events that have not made it into books, yet.

Conclusion: we can, all of us, see beyond our five senses. Everyone knows it, and yet there is a reluctance to call it anything other than a hunch or to develop it fully. We deny that it means anything, and do not practice enough in the company of those who will corroborate what we sense or know. No reason. So I am off, as though to a writing workshop, a business sales meeting, to further train this ability in myself. I am just looking for more reliable results, consistency and a refresher of a powerful technique to help those who need me. What I have not quite figured out yet are the modalities for using this technique with distant healing, but I know with a certainty that before I finish the training this will be clear in my mind. I already use all my techniques over the phone. Yes, I know, I know, this is not my weekday job, it is my hobby and my passion. But in the way that others might need exercise, I keep healthy by tuning into the spooky side of myself every day. Guidance, please help! This is what I am drawn to be doing, every moment that is not actively 3-D business related. As I said, Guidance, please help!

With love and gratitude,

Wellness Woman

A New Beginning

2011-01-01T15:05:00.003-05:00

Pay attention to what you are drawn to do today, this first day of 2011, this 01/01/11.

As a writer, the quiet time that follows a busy social schedule are precious to me. The rhythm of busy-ness followed by intentional calm moments to contemplate and write are vital to my sense of balance.

Today, in this in-between moment, I am consciously listening to where my energies need to be focused. Not in the busy holiday plans, but purposefully, in the quiet, where I can devote time to listening. Our inner, perfect wisdom can speak to us during these times of quiet. It helps us reframe our small A agenda experiences – both the eureka moments, happy moments, as well as the slights, misunderstandings and discouragements – within a meaningful larger A agenda context, embracing our full perfect self and moving us closer to peace and enlightenment.

A new direction is opening up for me, once again. I have been drawn ever closer to the world of my future, as it manifests before me. The universe is extending its hand, inviting me to step out of my current world-view and to heal all the diverse parts of my multi-dimensional self. I often speak of my intuition, that serves me well and opens me to examine those areas where healing has yet to take place. The expression make God laugh by making plans is common to many cultures. As Kryon teaches us, look to what we need for the day, and allow the rest to follow. I think, though, that this refers to listening to our inner voice and understanding the momentum and sense of purpose that comes as we gain access to higher frequencies and more subtle information. We become driven, but by our inner compass, and not by external pressures.

I am trying to say and not to say at the same time that this intuitive side of me, the part that wants me to move forward in service to others, to heal trauma within myself so that I can be of service, is calling to me strongly. Where I am drawn on this day of quiet is clearly to where my own guides want me to be: in the work related to my healing practice. For the world, this is a counseling practice, where grief and trauma can be released with new techniques that are more powerful than any we have seen before. I am especially drawn to the world of energy psychology, as you can see, but in particular to the work of two men, Willem Lammers and Brent Baum, whose techniques I am beginning to apply with emphatic success. To Willem Lammers I am grateful for providing the words that explain to me and to others what goes on within us when we experience apprehension or blocks of any kind; to Brent Baum I am grateful for showing me that the process of healing can be couched in ways that are accessible to anyone, explained within the context of traumatic induction and dealt with in a manner that makes sense and is profoundly life changing.

Today I have picked up my copy of Brent Baum's Living as Light and am surprised as I read how much of what he writes is familiar territory to me. He speaks of his intuitive abilities as a result of genetic heritage and as being trauma-based originally, and his experience, like my own, was that the messages and visions came through loud and clear as the noise and static of his own personal traumas abated with healing. He speaks in particular about the way the higher mind, the holographic mind in his terminology, perceives multidimensionality accurately and reliably, once the traumas in the way are cleared. This was my own experience too. He talks about how this holographic mind speaks to us through our intuitive voice, beyond the confines of our usual senses. How do we know about events that happen, their history, and even what may come to pass? All is there, in the All that Is. Why would anyone not like to have access to the higher frequencies and subtle information that allow us to do so? And yet, as a culture, most of us have been taught to mistrust and distrust this kind of information, and call those who do have access ungrounded and flakey.

The new quantum physics teaches us that we can observe, and by observation create; that we can create and in fact do create our realities; that we can navigate seamlessly between the mind and the matter that is manifested in our own bodies from our own consciousness; that our creative power, in all its meanings, is affected by the presence of trauma in our subconscious minds; that we can instantly heal, and instantly experience a shift that is palpable and tangible, changing our perspective instantly. Problems dissolve. The situation may be the same, but is no longer a worry, concern or sometimes not even recalled. This is the power of our quantum minds.

A passage I have read in many different sources, and that I would like to share with you here is part of my wish for you all in this new year. Once we cease trying to restrict our abilities for fear of condemnation or rejection from others, a new world opens up. I therefore invite you all to find a safe place and a safe environment in which to experience your true self in its fullest. Opening to your intuition may also require healing of deep-seated traumas you are scarcely aware of. I invite you all to look to healing them in order to open the receiver to the voices of your higher self, your perfect inner wisdom. In a Quantum universe, anything is possible.

With love and gratitude,

Wellness Woman

Holiday Reading

2010-12-30T12:44:00.002-05:00

In some cultures, book giving is a tradition at holiday time. Despite the amount of information available on the web, or now through Kindle and other electronic reading devices, little replaces the comfort of a well-worn and favorite book.

I cannot imagine reading poetry online, for example. And the page turning and page marking with a real book mark to me convey home and comfort. For work, like anyone, I am used to sourcing information electronically in searchable format. But that is work. Just give me a good book, with an index, and I am content. An index? Well, that is me: I seldom read fiction. Not that I am averse to fiction, but the stuff I like to read to me is as interesting and sometimes as suspenseful as fiction. So, for the moment, I do not read fiction.

For you, my reader, I wanted to offer a reading list of perspective-altering books for your bookshelf. I refer to these volumes as I write on my blogs, so here is the short list of the ones that I like to have on hand. Since I know you are out there, now, I welcome suggestions of volumes that have changed your life in some way, that have opened you up to the big A agenda, as my friend Louise calls it. The big picture, as I know it. And by the way, If you have a dog, I hope you have read Kinship with all Life, too, which I just remembered, a little volume published in the 1950's, not featured in the list below, an omission.

The very short list of books that changed my perspective forever include Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, Richard Gerber's Vibrational Medicine, Lynne McTaggart's The Field, and Donna Eden's Energy Medicine, Christopher Bird's Divining Hand and The Secret Life of Plants.

The trusted volumes in my bookshelf that are well worn and book-marked would not be the same in any other format than bound paper in an identifiable cover, despite the ease of finding information on the web. You can of course look up any of these authors and get lots of information electronically.

If you insist on bibliographical references, which today is hardly needed anymore, thanks to Mr. Google, everyone's friend, here are some more complete listings of the perspective altering books. Oh boy, as I paste them in, I realize they are not alphabetical, since they come from different sections of a bibliography. My drive for perfection, alas, is thwarted by the constraints of time. Happy reading!

Gerber, Richard Vibrational Medicine, (Vermont, 2001, 3^rd edition)
Bird, Christopher, The Divining Hand, The 500-Year-Old Mystery of Dowsing, (Atglen, PA, Whitford Press, 1993)
Bryson, Bill A Short History of Nearly Everything (Toronto: Anchor Canada ed., 2004)
Carroll, Lee. The End Times (New information for personal peace), Channelled Teachings given in Love, (California, 1993)
Hicks, Jerry & Esther, A New Beginning I, Handbook for Joyous Survival, channeling known as Abraham-Hicks, (Texas, 2002).
Tompkins, Peter, with Christopher Bird, The Secret Life of Plants. (New York, Harper & Row, 1973)
Silva, Freddy, Secrets in the Fields, The Science and Mysticism of Crop Circles, (Charlottesville VA, 2002).
McTaggart, Lynne, The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, (Harper Collins, 2001).
Hoffman, David, An Elder's Herbal, (Healing Arts Press, VT, 1985).
Pitchford, Paul. Healing with Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition. North Atlantic Books, 2003. 3^rd edition.

And by the way, if you have a dog, I hope you have read Kinship with all Life, too, which I just remembered, a little volume published in the 1950's, not featured in the list above, a simple omission. Go fetch! Your truly amazing dog will be so grateful.

Go forward in joy and peace,

Wellness Woman

It’s all about credibility

2010-12-30T11:12:00.002-05:00

As I prepare to end this year's posts, and look back to through the entries from this and from my other blogs, including the one related to dowsing in particular, I thought to devote the final entries to a kind of wrapping up of resources to explore and some food for thought to kind of decrease the strangeness of some of the things I write about so I don't freak out any of my business colleagues. Too late, you may joke! No, not too late, I must reply, because all this has been my passion for a reason, and does not in any way negate the business skills or the writing skills or the facilitating skills with which I earn my living.

I write about dowsing. The very word makes some people flinch, for which I am truly sorry. In America, although I hint at the fact that dowsing is far less accepted than in Europe, for example, I have hardly mentioned the instances in which not only dowsing but remote viewing have been encouraged and even taught by the government. In the military services, dowsers have been called upon to train special teams over the years and in many different settings. The Divining Hand has many of those details. The short story I want to add here is from the same well researched and referenced source, from the Epilogue to The Divining Hand.

This story is about an article that appeared in 1992 in the Harvard University alumni magazine. It seems that on the fall cover was a picture of a man, pacing the ground, holding high over his head a pair of L-rods, the earth energy dowser's tool of choice. The reaction from an indignant reader was to write to complain, adding that dowsing had never been proven to be of any value. On the contrary, the editor replied. In fact, there are many instances of helpful dowsing, but the one of interest to Harvard alumni might be the savings in time and embarrassment during renovations when an old water main – that was not supposed to be there, and was not on any plans – was struck. The significance of the photograph of Jim Clogher, an employee of the by now grateful university maintenance department, a man who had learned his dowsing from senior electricians during his training, was related to this fact. The plans for the renovations were modified, and a manhole moved six feet from original plans, all because Clogher had located the water pipes whose locations were wrong on all available plans. Plumbers and electricians used to have dowsing rods as part of their tool box, it seems, for 'as built' does not always coincide with 'as planned'. Anyone who has ever renovated or built anything might like to know how to use dowsing rods, wouldn't you think?

We are more connected to all things than you might think!

Yours in health,

Wellness Woman

Orbs in your field

2010-12-22T21:04:00.002-05:00

This is a short little entry on the winter solstice, just passed. Last night there was an eclipse of the moon, for the first time on a solstice since 1638. I missed it, again: there was too much cloud. But the lunar event serves to remind us all to look up, to get our thoughts away from the daily being in buildings and cars, from the ever-present movement of our lives, especially for those of us in large cities. The world is becoming increasingly urbanized, so that more and more of us are surrounded by other people, by concrete and structures. Did you know that concrete is globally the most used man-made material, by the way?

I don't actually know how I got to this topic, since I was going in the other direction, but I picked up another interesting fact recently that if you bless the water you make concrete with, it will do a much better job of making your end result harder and more resistant. The numbers tested by some enlightened engineer were about 18% harder, according to his tests. I am not sufficiently interested to look this up further, but I invite you to consider the implications and to go look it up yourself.

Where I was going, actually, was in the direction of looking up, to get to the subject of realizing or remembering that we are not alone, in this three-dimensional world. There are all kinds of other sentient beings living near us, among us, but in other dimensions. I have learned about a phenomenon called orbs, that appear as circular floating luminous discs in mid-air, visible usually although not exclusively in the evening or at night. They have some kind of consciousness, in these other dimensions.

Not that much is really known about them, but dowsers and healers love them: for us they signify (when you can see them) that a high vibration is present. Healers are surrounded by them; they can be photographed readily, when they are there.

Here are some facts we have learned: if you create joy, and then use a flash camera, you will see them, anywhere. I participated in a classroom where we did just that, and were able to photograph them all over the place; you cannot easily see them with the naked eye, but you can take pictures of them; no, they are not spots on the film, and not sunlight reflecting in the lens. I have also been taught to ask for them to appear, and do so. I simply ask for all the dimensions to be visible. I get great, fabulous photographs of orbs – around me and my friends. You could say, though, that our vibrations are very high: we are joyful, we are healers. Have a look at some of these beauties.

I cannot resist including two accidentally fun pictures of me: in both I am being totally spontaneous, with no thought to outcome. Please tell me you see the funny resemblance to a religious statue and to an angel. My friends and I do, and have had a great laugh.

Be joyful and go raise your vibrations!

Wellness Woman

Morphic Field and Rupert Sheldrake

2010-12-17T23:32:00.002-05:00

I invite you to think about how a baby develops from the joining of two sets of genetic material into a tiny, growing embryo.

We know about the scientific part, about the way at each stage the cells develop into more and more complex systems that eventually and 'almost miraculously' become a human baby. I don't know what is 'almost' about it all.

The earliest stages of development of the embryo, though, involve a process of something called self-organization of the cells - where seemingly entirely similar cells begin to take on different functions and eventually every highly differentiated system and process in the body. Miracle indeed.

Scientists know about how cells differentiate, in other words. But few of the biochemists who study this ask the 'real question'. The question of how the cells 'know' what to do.

This is right at the intersection of biology and consciousness. Some force is at work. We could turn to the energetic blueprint information, the one that includes the meridians; we could turn to the work of Rupert Sheldrake, too , whose hypothesis of formative causation and the morphic field has shaped the thinking of a generation of 'field' scientists. More about the 'field' another time.

Uh oh. Have to go meet the demands of the real world just now.

I hope you enjoy thinking about this. You won't find the anwers easily over the internet, though, although you will find most of the biology and the biochemisty.

Yours in health,

Wellness Woman

Babies are angels

2010-12-17T23:31:00.000-05:00

Some of my friends are new grandparents; some are new parents. As a young parent, I was awed by the tiny perfection of my new babies, with their wide-eyes and angelic gaze. Back then, I didn’t know for a certainty what I now know – that babies are angelic substance, who come into their human-hood gradually, and who, for the first six years, are extremely vulnerable to suggestion about who they are as people, learning to be human, leaving behind an angelic world.

Who can resist greeting a beautiful baby? How many of us understand intuitively that we are looking into the eyes of an angel? How few of us know that this is true, and not just an expression used to describe the tiny creatures? How I know has to do with the company I have kept over the past few years, as I explored the fringes of consciousness with intuitives, clairvoyants, psychics and channellers.

What I have learned is that when a baby is developing, during the first trimester, the forming embryo can be considered to have pure angelic consciousness. The glow of a newly pregnant mother is due to this angelic presence residing within her. Over the course of the next few months, the humanness begins to ‘come in’ and the angelic substance allows this human consciousness to take over... By the time the baby is born, all things having taken their normal course, we do have a tiny human. Mostly human. Anyone who has quietly gazed into a baby’s eyes, however, can still commune with the angel.

We are also told that many of the clairvoyants and intuitives among us are the product of a kind of arrested development: for some reason, the normal process was interrupted and more of the angel remained with the young child.

Whatever you believe, however, should not affect your receptiveness to the scientific information related to the extreme vulnerability of the psyche of a young child. Until about age six, the brain wave frequencies are different from those of older children. In fact, young children live in a world that is very impressionable.

As adults, we have to be mildly hypnotized to be as susceptible to ideas. What this means for the young child is that they see and process their environment almost like a running videocam on record, if you will, believing whatever is said to them just as though it were all true, every word. And what this means for the adults around them, then, is that we need to be very careful of what we say. No sarcasm, no meanness, no criticism.

If you tell a very young child she or he is anything less than wonderful, actually, your words are taken in like the gospel truth. On a deep level, your words are internalized. So please, adults, be loving and kind to small children. And to everyone in your life, actually. Why would we want anyone to think they are anything other than amazing and wonderful and unique?

Be kind and loving to everyone, then.

Yours in health,

Wellness Woman

Cellular light - thank you, Marco Bischof

2010-12-16T19:01:00.004-05:00

This post is from Marco Bischof's website: Marco Bischof’s book at this time is not in English: this kind of information has been in the German, Austrian and Russian vocabulary for decades.

I have not written this post. Usually I suggest you look stuff up yourself. This time, I know the source and you may not find it so easily, ja? I felt compelled to add some scientific research, so the following is a direct quote from the synopsis of Marco Bischof’s book. It is the basis of the EMF discussion and how we need to watch out for the health of those little biophotons.

Biophotons - The Light in Our Cells

What are biophotons ?

Biophotons, or ultraweak photon emissions of biological systems, are weak electromagnetic waves in the optical range of the spectrum - in other words: light. All living cells of plants, animals and human beings emit biophotons which cannot be seen by the naked eye but can be measured by special equipment developed by German researchers.

This light emission is an expression of the functional state of the living organism and its measurement therefore can be used to assess this state. Cancer cells and healthy cells of the same type, for instance, can be discriminated by typical differences in biophoton emission. After an initial decade and a half of basic research on this discovery, biophysicists of various European and Asian countries are now exploring the many interesting applications which range across such diverse fields as cancer research, non-invasive early medical diagnosis, food and water quality testing, chemical and electromagnetic contamination testing, cell communication, and various applications in biotechnology.

According to the biophoton theory developed on the base of these discoveries the biophoton light is stored in the cells of the organism - more precisely, in the DNA molecules of their nuclei - and a dynamic web of light constantly released and absorbed by the DNA may connect cell organelles, cells, tissues, and organs within the body and serve as the organism's main communication network and as the principal regulating instance for all life processes. The processes of morphogenesis, growth, differentiation and regeneration are also explained by the structuring and regulating activity of the coherent biophoton field. The holographic biophoton field of the brain and the nervous system, and maybe even that of the whole organism, may also be basis of memory and other phenomena of consciousness, as postulated by neurophysiologist Karl Pribram an others. The consciousness-like coherence properties of the biophoton field are closely related to its base in the properties of the physical vacuum and indicate its possible role as an interface to the non-physical realms of mind, psyche and consciousness.

The discovery of biophoton emission also lends scientific support to some unconventional methods of healing based on concepts of homeostasis (self-regulation of the organism), such as various somatic therapies, homeopathy and acupuncture. The "ch'i" energy flowing in our bodies' energy channels (meridians) which according to Traditional Chinese Medicine regulates our body functions may be related to node lines of the organism's biophoton field. The "prana" of Indian Yoga physiology may be a similar regulating energy force that has a basis in weak, coherent electromagnetic biofields.

The above is a direct quote from http://www.transpersonal.de/mbischof/englisch/webbookeng.htm

Marco Bischof
522 pp., more than 160 illustrations, 5 color plates, extensive bibliography and index.
German publisher: Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt.
ISBN 3-86150-095-7
World rights: Zweitausendeins.

Vielen dank, Marco,

Wellness Woman

The electronic gizmo effect

2010-12-16T18:35:00.003-05:00

I can’t imagine any of you are worrying about the effects of our electronic devices on your electromagnetic field, this biofield that keeps you together, in health. But there are in fact many reasons why you could be thinking about finding out a little more.

I can remember my mother telling me that post-war doctors told her and others to start smoking, because it was good for the nerves. They sent tons of cigarettes to the front during WWII precisely for that purpose – to calm nerves. Without meaning to be disrespectful, a cynical side of me has to add: just in case there was anyone who was not already smoking and needed to try it out. What I mean is, loving and being addicted to something doesn’t necessarily mean it is good for us. Okay, I hear you, though; we do need our BlackBerries, or our iPhones.

So here are a couple of things you can do – to have your cake and eat it too – about the noxious effects of all this electronic gizmo guzzling that we are all addicted to. Seriously – if you still know people who are not tied to their electronic devices, they possibly have a revenue stream tied to something totally different than ... than money, is the only thing that comes to mind! Most of us do need our connections. We have to stay connected; it is modern business culture. So here are some things to think about.

First, you can protect yourself from your computer’s EMF fields, which have been linked to nasty things going awry in the human body. There are little devices you can put on the computer that will diminish the effect of the magnetic fields on your own, personal electromagnetic biofield. They are not expensive and you just stick them on. Too long a discussion about why it is important and what is involved. Just do it. We are an electromagnetic field – and our health, or the coherence of our cellular processes, depends on the integrity of our field. The integrity of our biofield, to distinguish it from other electromagnetic fields.

Second, you can do the same for your phone device. Just attach a little EMF protector. They are often wafer-thin precious metal disks that are embedded with frequencies that are protective. No, not going to explain this much either. Just want to say here and now that it is important.

Third, take periodic breaks, from electronics. You know how tired you can feel after flying – the kind of spacey frazzledness we experience as jetlag? A lot of that fatigue is due to our energies being scrambled because of the extent of the huge EMF field generated by all that flying machine equipment. If hair dryers have the ability to mess up our fields, which they do, just imagine what jet engines do! Well, don’t imagine, if you don’t want to. But take a break when you can – not in mid-air – I mean move back from your computer. Go hug a tree. (Now that really helps, as documented back to Booker Washington in The Secret life of Plants, on my library shelf...)

Fourth, wear an energetic field protector, yourself. These things make a stunning difference to people who have developed extra sensitivity to EMF waves. The short story is that these little necklace things create frequencies that counter the harmful EMF waves.

When I started writing today, I didn`t know that I was headed in this direction. I started talking about staying in one piece on the road. All of the above help.

What do you do, though, when you have access to none of the above? (And you literally cannot get out of the EMF field?) You use Energy Medicine, that`s what.

It`s like pushing a reset button on your computer. You can manually bring your field back into balance, in other words, using acupressure on yourself and some breathing. If you could see it, the slowed down and blocked field starts humming again.

I have written a lot about some of the ways to re-energize yourself that work in this situation too. But do look into those devices. You can ask my friend Werner Brandmaier through his website related to EMFs – he is a pretty knowledgeable guy about all these things and a most magical source of answers to questions.

So yes, there is a whole world out there that we do not see.

Let me leave you with a little fact that may have you sitting up in your chair. There is a frequency to our cellular physiology, a very specific frequency that is 360 nanohertz. This is fact. If you mess up the frequency badly, for a long time, the cellular activity becomes chaotic. Then we have different types of disease take hold, one of them a pretty prominent one in the 21st century. If you take damaged cells and subject them to this life-giving healthy frequency, they – guess what – repair themselves, like a scab forms naturally over a small cut without our needing to do anything else. So all this mumbo-jumbo about devices and EMFs is a pretty science-based thing. And you heard all this here.

Keep your frequencies humming. Yours in health,

Wellness Woman

Our escalating face-to-device time

2010-12-16T18:11:00.002-05:00

I wanted to write about how to maintain our energy levels on the road, when I was distracted by the guy next to me texting incessantly. I moved seats. So I could write up my thoughts. On my computer. Sigh.

Text me! Call me! Send me an email! See you later! Oh boy, how the escalation of constant contact has shoehorned its way into our lives. Texting is now accepted, like cell phone talking, everywhere, just about everywhere. There was a woman texting in my focus group this week. Because she was a physician, I somehow did not feel up to asking her to stop, as I do consumers. But it was weird and I am old enough to consider it kind of impolite.

Texting – which we were doing market research on ten years ago, among adolescents – has become a global means of connection. Or distraction, depending on which end of it you are at. I was in a classical concert a few weeks ago, and a woman a few seats over spent the entire time on her BlackBerry. So big deal, I suppose, but why come out in public to something you are not engaged in? I just wonder where we are going.

If I were French, I might text all the time myself, just because the word is fun. With no relevance here, except that this is my blog and I can write what I like, I want to mention that I fell in love with the word texting in French, the second language in my corner of North America. Texting is clavardage. While I understand the word, of course, to me it sounds delicious, like Clafouti, the name of a yummy French plum tart in a Julia Child cookbook.

Who are we kidding? We live a frenetically compressed schedule, most of us, when we are involved in any kind of project work, especially multiple project work. Unfortunately, while juggling many projects at a time used to be the hallmark of senior executives in the workforce, it is obvious that just about everyone who lives and breathes in a work or an academic environment is stretched to the limits with multi-tasking today.

As human beings, we were never really designed for the amounts of stress hormones in our bodies that this creates. Worse, we were certainly not designed to be bathed in all those electronics from morning to night. So our health suffers. Will suffer. Has suffered. You are just somewhere on that continuum whether you like it or not.

We are exposed to raised stress levels that have less and less chance to come down at weekends, as once we could do. We are affected by electronic disruptions to our physiology that now are continuous so that we do not recover overnight, as once we could do. These stress levels, albeit at a low level, border on a low-grade version of being under assault, all the time. We are so used to it that we are just that – used to it. It feels normal.

Blackberry, iPhone, constant flow of emails. We have been talking about how this has increased levels of client and colleague expectations of turnaround time – and consequently stress levels – that we first experienced with the advent of the fax machine in the 1980’s, and around the same time with the development of voice mail!

When I email a business contact about something on a Saturday, because I am tidying up loose ends and getting ready for the next week, I am not expecting a reply before Monday morning. I was stunned recently to receive a reply sent Saturday evening, back to me. This happened to be from someone working for a large corporation, and not a small business.

And I suppose I am going to need auto-responder too, since I have full days when I cannot get to email, because of my profession, and I guess now I will have to let people know why I do not reply right away. Where will we be going from here?

So we call – text, email, meet, talk, write – constantly. When is the downtime? When do we give ourselves some offline time, some I-am-not-near an electronic device or computer time?

I learned recently that there are now rehab clinics for Blackberry addicts. We have known for a while about the programs and funding in place to deal with compulsive online gambling, which has attained huge proportions, and about internet addiction, that now has its own category of addiction and clinical treatment protocols.

What can we possibly do about the diminishing ‘quality time’ with others and with ourselves when faced with research findings that show that some teens would far rather text than talk – to buddies or to family. And when – more serious, we fail to find reasons why we should want to reduce our face-to-device time, in the first place?

Actually there are lots of reasons why we need to make some attempt to reduce our close-up time with devices, most of them related to health. The short story has two chapters: increased stress, and messing with our electromagnetic field. Both of which can make us sick while we are not paying attention.

So, where do you stand on the issue – do you want more information or do you want to ignore the subject? Your choice. Here's to choices, everyone.

Yours in health, from the road. On my computer. Sigh.

Wellness Woman

The Changing Face of How Emotions are Viewed

2010-12-14T00:01:00.002-05:00

From the minute you are speaking about psychology, people have images of the jokes about Freud, if you are of a certain age, and the questions about relationships in childhood, or about perhaps Eric Berne with his Games People Play. So this is all about the mind, exploring the mind, and the attempts to heal emotional angst through the mind itself. Healing or fixing a problem in the brain by the brain that has the problem is no easy task. Enter the new psychology – based on meridian therapies, psychoneuroimmunology and something called thought fields. The impossible has just become eminently possible.

Big concepts and long words. The short story is that emotions and emotional trauma are findable, accessible and treatable in new and exciting ways. Traumas, by the way – we all have them, many of them, that reside in our energy systems like frozen grey areas, preventing us from being our brightest and best. If anyone, ever, has spoken to you in a raised voice, or not answered you right away when you were looking for a loving answer in childhood, you, my friend, have a frozen trauma somewhere in your field. No need to have anything more serious than that.

Okay, well, all of us have more serious things in our past than that, too. So listen up everyone. Here is an amazing and accessible way to fix up all that old stuff and move forward into brilliance. This is energy psychology. Many different approaches are available, most of them eminently learnable. Do you have something you can`t do, something you would like to do? Energy Psychology can help. The benefits are endless for one simple reason: you can do anything you set your mind to, if you have nothing in your way stopping you. Right?

So logically, if you remove what is in your way, you can do any of the following, even if it has been an issue in the past: let`s see, how about learning another language, or learning to play an instrument or use a computer? How about getting past your fears – fear of flying, of speaking in public? Your resistance or `block’ is in your energy field, not in your head, you see. so you can remove it from your field, you see, and it is just gone.

Knowing I have too little time today and too much to explain further, in hope nonetheless that i have piqued your curiosity,

Yours in health,
Wellness Woman

Energy Systems - Who Knew?

2010-12-13T23:57:00.000-05:00

Actually, the knowledge about the body`s energy systems has been known and documented for over 5,000 years. Just not too well documented or circulated in the Western World. Too many reasons why not, but mostly thanks to developments in the medical community in the early 1900`s where anything other than the College of Physicians was not tolerated. Or something like that. The point is that many other cultures have been aware of and have readily accessed the body`s energy systems for millennia.

Our meridian therapies come from the Hindu and Chinese traditions to a large extent. But the Russians, the Inca, and the Australian aboriginal peoples have contributed to our knowledge of consciousness and the bio-energetic fields surrounding and weaving through our apparently solid physical bodies.

How and why we know so much today – and can demonstrate evidence of such is due to the development during the 1960`s of a method of indirectly observing what is happening in the mind via a physical response. This is the history of the development of kinesiology, or applied kinesiology to be more exact. At the same time, the knowledge that the body`s psychological
conditions can be addressed through the energetic meridians also was demonstrated, in the West (although practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine have known this to be the case because emotions are part of the intricate pattern of symptoms investigated prio to treatment).

If you read `Rupert Sheldrake and his work related to the morphic field, you might draw a conclusion that the time had simply come for all these interrealated ideas to emerge. Out of this blend, the new theories and modalities of Energy Psychology began to emerge. Concurrently, the field of psychoneuroimmunology, the connections between the conscious mind and physical body was also evolving.

Names you might like to investigate further, if you are interested, include Goodheart, Callahan, Diamond and Thie. Blog writing is interesting: accessible, available information that can be instantly expanded through a search engine – allowing for the mention of names without worrying whether everything is properly referenced. You just look it up, when you have finished reading on one site – on this one, today.

Be vibrant!

Wellness Woman