Simple Energy Clearing

Two days ago I opened a package from one of my regular suppliers.  As I was checking the invoice and package contents I began to feel unwell.  I was not sure if I could go back to work.  Should I call the evening client and other engagement?  Soon after, sanity broke out and I began to wonder, what had changed?  Only the new materials. A little simple energy work later and I was back to work.

                The best thing about energy clearing is all it takes is a trained will. There are lots of fun tools out there that make clearing quicker or automatic, but they are not necessary.  In this case, I put my hands on the new items, let the reiki flow through them and said the Lord’s Prayer twice.  About half way through the second prayer, I felt the negative energy break up and dissipate.   If you are working with larger amounts of negative energies it is important to cut all cords and send the negativity to Jesus to be healed.  One time I had forgotten to permanently cut the cords with no possibility of return and the energy returned to me as I was telling the client about her houseclearing.  It is a mistake that is so memorable, you only make it once.

                My favorite automatic tool is the BioGenesis Pyramid.  They make two different types, the multicolored pyramid and the eight sided pyramid.  They are placed at a high place in a room, on a shelf or mantle.  Your work is done.  The pyramid will cleanse and train the space into greater harmony.

                In one very clear example of this working, the house’s previous owners had a very stormy relationship with everyone, between the couple, the children, the neighbors, they even fought with the pets, a dog and a cat.  The house was drenched in quarrels and miscommunication.  For the first several years that the new owners lived in the house, some of these problems began to grow in the new family.  After introduction of the pyramid, tensions began to ease.  After long-standing use, a pattern began to develop of times of peace followed by times when long standing issues are brought up and resolved.

                Remember, the automatic tools are nice (I like them so much I sell them myself), but they are not necessary.  If you stay present and focused, you can retrain your environment to become a place where you are comfortable living.  Set some intentions, say a few prayers and live the life you desire.

8 Best Ways to Exercise Your Brain

Here it is the most asked about list from 2011, for my students friends and fellow meditators in one easy to access list. From How God Changes You Brain by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman, the eight best ways to exercise your brain (finally an excuse to yawn freely in public):

8) Smile- “The mere act of smiling helps to interrupt mood disorders and strengthen the brain’s neural ability to maintain a positive outlook on life.”

7) Stay Intellectualy Active- “Nearly every age-related cognitive disability is related to the functioning of your frontal lobe.” Interestingly enough, math and crossword puzzles don’t seem to help, but reading, writing, playing chess or going to a museum do.

6) Consciously Relax- “[Deliberately] scan each part of the body to reduce muscle tension and physical fatigue.”

5) Yawn (!)- “It quickly brings you to a state of cognitive awareness.” There are many studies cited in the book, but my favorite is anecdotal. I was driving home from an all day Speech and Drama competition on a narrow country road, full of twists and turns (and ateep drop offs). I was exhausted and always have a hard time seeing well. I was so afraid, I just started yawning over and over to see if it would help. It did improve my awareness and even my perception of the road. Best of all, I am still here to write this post!

4) Meditate- “Visualization, guided imagery, and self-hypnosis are specific variations of meditation and are equally effective in maintaining a healthy brain.

3) Aerobic Exercise- “Vigorous exercise strengthens every part of the brain.”

2) Dialogue With Others- “Dialogue requires social interaction, and the more social ties we have, the less our cognitive abilities will decline.”

1) Faith- “Faith is equivalent to hope, optimism, and the belief that a positive future awaits us. Faith can also be defined as the ability to trust our beliefs, even when we have no proof that such beliefs are accurate or true.”

Enjoy!

How to Use Pendulum

                I first learned to use a pendulum in 2008. It is impossible to be more precise because it literally took the entire year.  The darned thing just wouldn’t work for weeks, then only in fits and starts.  Looking back on it I waver between impressed with my persistence and embarrassed by the insanity.

                There are many methods to teach pendulum use and theories behind how it works.  This technique is from The Pendulum Book by Hanna Kroeger.  She has chapters about how and why the pendulum moves.  My purpose is to guide a beginner in its use.

                First, embrace beginners mind. This is an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject.  A child first crawls, learns to stand then gradually moves on to walking and running.  When the baby falls on its soft diaper, sometimes he is frustrated, but often he laughs.  Think of beginners mind as a cushion to fall back on when you fall.

                A pendulum can be any weight on a string or chain.  Many people use crystals, Hanna began with her wedding ring. For our purposes, I’ll describe using my pendulum, see the picture above.  If you’d like to buy one, drop me an email.  They are $21.19 with tax, plus shipping.  Hold the ring at the top of the chain in your dominant (right hand if you are right- handed) hand between thumb, forefinger and middle finger.  Bring it over the middle finger of the non-dominant hand (left middle finger if you are right handed) and ask “Show me my yes.”  Whatever motion the pendulum makes is your yes.  There is not one universal yes and no.  Each person is unique.

                To discover your no, hold the pendulum over your non-dominant index finger and ask “Show me my no.”  Again, whatever motion the pendulum makes is your no.

                If the pendulum stays dead still, put it aside and stand with your feet apart.  Stretch your left arm to the north and your right arm to the south and stand this way a minute or two.  Hanna says that this will increase the magnetic forces flowing through you from north to south.  After you finish, brush down the body with your hands several times, from head to feet.  Now try your pendulum again.  Most importantly, be patient.  It will come.

                How to improve? Like everything else, practice.  Hanna recommends starting with organic and conventionally grown fruit or vegetable and ask the following questions. Hold the fruit or vegetable over your solar plexus and ask:

                “Does this fruit have a toxin in or on it?”

                “Can this toxin be neutralized or removed?”

                “If I soak the fruit in cider vinegar, will the toxin be removed?”

                “If I set the fruit on a Soma board for 10 minutes, will the toxin be neutralized?”

                Move on from there, play a bit, and develop your confidence.  Learning to use the pendulum can make your life so much easier.

The Force is Strong in this One

               So, you’ve taken your first reiki class, now what to do with your new found abilities? And when do you start feeling the reiki like your teacher said you would? And what about the next class level?

                Expanding your reiki capabilities is no different than any other skill.  As Lily Tomlin said when asked “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice!”

                I heard the best piece of advice yesterday from one of my students.  We were talking about learning to use a pendulum and the importance of daily practice.  Her suggestion was link it to a habit.  It can be anything you do daily from brushing your teeth to washing the dishes to scooping the cat box. Decide you will do a bit of reiki each time you make the bed.  Actually, I use the reiki to clear the bed as I make it each morning and the basement as I clean the cat box.  Put reiki into the food that you cook.  Start small with just one habit, give the reiki each day for two weeks then expand as far as you like.

                One of my favorite ways to practice is to pick one thing in my life that I would like to support, or change for the better, and give it reiki for 10 minutes a day.  This practice began last year during the Lenten season and completely remade the relationship that received the reiki.  What a gift that was.

                Like-minded people make doing anything easier. Find a reiki share.

  It is one of the few places where you are not the only crazy person in the room.  It is an opportunity, with little or no cost, to both give and receive reiki, not just whatever friends and family members you can talk into a session.  Each person uses reiki in their own unique way so it is a great way to learn other techniques.

                Years ago, I left my Reiki 1 class slightly irritated about the ease and confidence of JoAnn, my teacher.  It felt so unapproachable and progress so intangible.  Now using reiki is like breathing, an automatic thing that can be done intentionally.  Someday I may just practice reiki in Carnegie Hall.

Ah... Savasana

  

              Meet Joy. My cat, playmate and the world’s best yogi.  Her savasana (corpse pose) is so perfect we have been calling her a resident of the boneless chicken ranch for years.  Gary Larson’s cartoon showing chickens with no bones draped around the barnyard like Dali’s melting clocks has always defined what I look for in corpse pose. When I lay down or talk my students into corpse pose, that look shows the feeling we are all looking for.

                How hard can it be? Even my cat can do it. Turns out savasana can be very hard indeed.  When we stop moving the body, it frees the mind to roam. 

                Five minutes of savasana for every 30 minutes of practice is the accepted minimum.  It allows your practice of asana (poses) to penetrate the body and all levels of consciousness.  In the quiet you learn what you have learned.  A few tips to improve this practice.

               Relax the body- Find a quiet position on your back with your palms facing towards the ceiling.  Cover up if it is cold.  Beginners (or say, me, after 8 years of teaching!) find it easier to settle with two 10 lb sandbags positioned in the creases of each groin to settle the heads of the femur bones.

               Relax the mind- If you want a mind like water, you have to remove the dams.  Give your problems over to something or someone else.  Problems tend to cluster in two areas- stuff to do and stuff to worry over.  I have found David Allen’s GTD system takes care of helping release the stuff to do pile.  Give your concerns over to an angel and let the angel hold onto it for the time of savasana.  If you can, leave your worries with the angel because fretting just wastes your energy.

             Get outside help-  One of the biggest helps to relaxing the body and mind is to put weight on your forehead, covering the third eye.  When I can’t go to sleep at night, I use my hand, but for savasana a sandbag can be your best friend.  Place a heavy eye bag on your forehead or a full size sandbag half on the forehead and half on a block.  Then let the hot brain cool under the weight.

          Give these a try.  I’d love your feedback on what works for you. Click on the Ask Me Anything button to share. With practice you, too, can be a resident of the boneless chicken ranch.

Singing the Perfectionist Blues: Lessons in Humility and Good Enough

                There it sits.  Staring at me. The world’s ugliest quilt.  My friends prized race t-shirts and childhood clothes turned into garbage.  Poorly cut and sewn, with added accents of day-glo turquoise and orange.  And I said I would fix it!

                After two months of planning, deconstruction and re-cutting, I began to rebuild.  And discover more problems.  No amount of interfacing makes polyester double-knit easy to sew.  No amount of prayer can put fabric back on the poorly cut t-shirts.  No amount of rearranging is going to change the color palette.  So what is a perfectionist to do?

                Get Back to Basics- Return to the original goal.  The quilt’s owner wants something warm to snuggle under with good memories, not an award winner.  I need to see the fabrics through her eyes and love them to life.

                Accept Good Enough- These fabrics will always be 79’s vintage, often laundered.  I’m not going to get the perfect corners.  Seams will not meet, no matter how well pinned.  And this is perfect.  I have never loved a perfect house, it feels too cold.  This will be a warm, comforting quilt.

                Breathe- When it doesn’t look right, I resolve to breathe.  Nothing that happens here is disastrous.  I can rip apart and re-sew, or grow to love what it looks like.

                Each Saturday I come to the machine, just like coming to the mat in yoga.  I bring the perfectionist mind that I have honed for so many years.  I come to be humbled and to learn that “good enough” often is truly good enough.

Here they are, the squares waiting to teach me more....

New Year, New You

                Eat right.  Lose weight.  Exercise.  Practice gratitude.  Save more. Find love. Volunteer.

                Every year the gyms are packed in January, but by March you have your own row of treadmills.  We all have observed this.  Unfortunately, I’ve seen it from both the still at the gym and the back to the couch potato sides.  Why is it the things we want so much are so hard to get?  The short answer iswillpower.  Roy F.  Baumeister and John Tierney wrote the book on it: Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. 

                This book is so interesting I couldn’t put it down.  It is full of scientific studies backing up some very interesting conclusions.  There were so many studies I was wondering how any college student makes it to class rather than participate in a research study.  The good news is all those college students have something to teach their elders- willpower is like a muscle and can be strengthened by continuous small exercises of self- restraint.

                Researchers Mark Muraven, Roy Baumeister and Dianne Tice discovered that having the subject work on posture (forming a good habit) was far more effective at increasing willpower than working on maintaining a positive attitude.  Turns out that after two weeks of exercising self restraint, the subjects increased their willpower stamina.  Think of turning your 5k run into a 10k in only two weeks.

                This sounds good, but how to move from lab to life is a good question.  I’m testing out a few methods.  My favorite so far is Habits Pro, an iPad app.  You can enter any number of habits you’d like to form.  Mine range from the mundane- make bed, take vitamins- to the sublime- use BioGenesis tools to create and send 10 minutes of reiki to my students.  I know the cats have appreciated me keeping up with their box. 

There are two features that make this app a success for me.  With the app closed, there is a red badge in the upper right hand corner that tells me how many more tasks I have left (though many days I’d appreciate a green badge saying how many I finished instead). Also, as each habit is checked off either yes (big green checkmark) or no (big red x), there is immediate feedback.  The feeling of a gold star in the copy book is great!