How to Grow in a Desert? Focus Your Energy

flowers in the desert- source

      There is a desert, the Atacama, that stretches from Peru to Chile, where parts have not seen rain since record keeping began.  The only moisture available comes from a dense fog known as camanchaca, formed when cold air associated with ocean currents originating in the Antarctic hits warmer air. The amazing thing is that this harsh climate supports more than a million people.  Both plants and people survive by harvesting the camanchaca fog.
         The plants are low growing, having hairy leaves and many branches to provide the most surface area for the fog to condense upon. People do something similar. They use fog nets, fine mesh screens that capture the fog and allow it to condense.  This provides enough water for the people, but also their animals and crops to survive.  Scientists are developing man made structures to to the same thing. I have included some fascinating pictures of fog towers in development.  The final towers will be 400 meters tall!

Alberto Fernández and Susana Ortega's fog tower- source

            I learned about this fascinating place several years ago, and as with so many things, promptly forgot.  At Friday's yoga class, in the middle of savasana meditation, it popped up in my mind (sorry Wendy).  Recently I have been told by several people that I need to narrow my focus.  The reason I am not seeing the success that I desire is that I am giving too much passion to too many projects.  I have been sending out energy like fog in the desert, plenty of water, but all it nurtures are a million tiny plants.  Even before this advice, I had been thinking maybe it is time to stop taking the next class and playing around with the next bit of healing technology.  I really like reiki and yoga, with a little help from the BioGenesis tools and the crystals.

fine mesh to capture the fog

      It is time to pick one of two affirmations and set them up like fog towers in my own personal desert.  At first, even thinking about doing this was a bit daunting.  It is easier for me to see a few steps than the ultimate objective.  In this instance clarity came, not in a flash of insight, but in realizing what I don't need to work on.
       A friend had offered me a book about deathbed wishes (you know... I wish I had - spent more time with my kids- had a relationship with my family- worked for charity etc, etc, etc).  All of these desires are great, but they are what I spent the first half of my life working on.  In staying home with the children and focusing on family and church work, these areas feel strong.  What I need to work on is what everyone else does in their twenties- business and health.  Once I figured out the focus, the affirmations began to arise.  One is very strong and the other is still a bit murky.  I know I have it right when I can look myself in the eyes in a mirror as I say the affirmation out loud.
        Like the fog towers in the desert, my two affirmations are already beginning to collect energy.  When I arise in the morning, they are my fuel.  Before beginning my yoga practice, they are my intentions.  Even as I clean house, it is toward these affirmations.  With these in mind, I drink the cool clear water of progress rather than wandering in the fog.

How Did I Become a Liberal?

   As the election approaches there is more political news than I care to follow.  Each candidate from dog catcher to president is saying what they think most of us want to hear.  There is something lovely that comes from all this strife, however.  Each bit of news and each commercial opens an opportunity to look inside, to notice what we really think about issues and how we arrive at these conclusions.
    I have arrived at a stunning conclusion.  I have discovered that, at heart, I am a liberal.  Not a Democrat. Not a Republican.  I find value in both parties.  I find problems in both parties. The greatest value I have found however, resides inside.
  What makes this such a shock is that all of my life I have been a closet (or not so closet) conservative.  I'm not really talking politics, more of a life philosophy.   Though it constantly surprises friends, I have a really hard time changing.  My mind says "Yes! Go out there and learn something new.  Be different." but my inner most heart says "Change in scary.  Even if this is bad, it is the bad I know..."
  This is the year I have dedicated to the affirmation, "I am willing to change."  It takes conservativism and throws it out the window. Aak!  There are times that I wonder if it is such a good idea, but I found a very interesting article that expresses my inner motivations in a way that I have no words for.   Though he is talking about politics, the feelings expressed are why I feel change in all aspects of our lives is so vital.

The pessimist-conservative can stand athwart history and yell stop, confident that change will only make things worse.  Liberals, however, have to wrestle with the- yes, sometimes naive- desire to make things better.  We see consumerism and call for ad-free public televieion programming. We see environmental depredation and call for carbon taxes... Our answers may sometimes be wrong, but they express a faith... in man's ability to improve his lot.- excerpted from "Old Glory" by Nick Baumann in Commonweal Magazine

    In this season of great change, I hope you find your  inner liberal, your belief that the world can become a better place.  This place of optimism allows for healing and growth.  Be Blessed.

Confused? That's a Good Thing

            I have had a very frustrating afternoon!  I'd bet many of you have been here as well.  So far, two clients have cancelled, I'm having problems with some office stuff I paid a lot of money for, etc, etc, etc.  I could go on, but you probably would click on to the next website.
             When I just sat down to think about it, I couldn't get a handle on what is wrong.  Is it just me?  So I ran myself on the Nu|vision.  This is a program that scans your energy field to assess your overall well being (for more information contact me using this link).  The item that really resonated with me was this phrase...

Healing Process Sign - Confusion, breaking down of old emotional patterns. This can be experienced as chaos because of the unfamiliarity of true emotional reality

     It was like looking at the fall foliage.  The photo on the left is a picture of one of our maple trees.  When I look at the top leaf (representing my afternoon, of course), it is pretty ugly.  There are spots of yellow, green, red and orange.  It is all pretty chaotic.  The background leaves are a little nicer, but in this photo it is hard to ignore the "in your face" leaf.
      When you step back a bit, like the photo on the right, the leaves tell a different story.  The different colors look more like the change of seasons and less like leprosy.  The tree is in the process of change, becoming even more beautiful than it was in the summer.  As I stood in the sun on a beautiful fall day, rather than being inside with my clients, parts of the afternoon started to feel nicer.  I love the sun, being barefoot in October, taking pictures, writing blog posts.  So there are some good things going on in my chaos.
             I know 10 years from now, I'll be able to really step back and see the big picture. All the change that 2012 has brought into my life will have a bit of perspective.  It's like looking at my old journals.  Each time I get the old ones out, I think "I believed that?" and "That was my response?"  I'm always grateful to be where I am now, never wanting to go back to the past.
              Until then I need to be patient, continually remembering this year's affirmation, "I am willing to change."  One day I'll see this afternoon like this, a beautiful blaze of glory....

I Am Willing to Change! Part Two

  (So yesterday I left you hanging, I was having a bit of a time getting the photos off my phone.  Fortunately, the photos are beginning to trickle in.)
     The longer I practice reiki and other forms of healing, the more I have realized that the body resembles the earth.  In the mid 1800's as Pasteur developed his germ centered disease theory, Prof Louis-Claude Vincent took very similar data and came to slightly different conclusions.  Yes, streptococcus bacteria causes strep throat, but Vincent says if the body is out of balance, it creates a home to nurture disease.  The longer I work with healing, the more I agree with Vincent.  As a college student, any time I was tested, I had a positive strep test without ever getting the symptoms like my friends.
     In creating our new "park" in the back yard, we followed the same steps that I recommend to clients who have long term health issues.  Begin by identifying what you would like to change.  In my yard, it was a work intensive garden that had no comfortable place to sit and enjoy.  In my life it is a laundry list of little symptoms that add up to hormonal imbalance (yes, I know, shocking for a 45 year old....).

    In yesterday's work, I showed pictures of the ground work being laid, but couldn't show you what we decided to save.  Here you see two of the three trees that we saved while putting in the patio.  It is like looking at my own body.  There is a lot of living in this body to create the hormonal imbalance that I am experiencing.  Do I want to give up my past and become a high school student again? Absolutely not. I keep my past, put it in perspective, then create something wonderful out of it.

       Notice how carefully the ground is being prepared.  The forms have loads of reinforcement and gravel is only in the low spots (on the right of the picture).  This is like the preparation work we do in healing.  Keep a temperature log (to see if your body runs cold), check your pH first thing in the morning (to see if your body is acidic).  Take Chem X or Metal X to get rid of the metals and chemicals that prevent healing.  Then it is time to create the life you want.

  Start with the remedies you need (for our garden it was a lot of concrete).  Remember your long term goal, because the remedy may cause a bit of havoc.  This truck broke off many limbs of by fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus), but look at what started to grow....

         Another part of the healing process is detox.  The body gets rid of things that no longer serve.  This can be through excretory processes or through emotional release.  Though I have done this many times with my body, I was absolutely horrified when the concrete truck cleaned it's chute into my back yard.

     I went into my house so that I didn't have to watch.  It was all cleaned up by my excellent contractors, but the process was awful.  It was like watching pus being drawn out of an infected wound, necessary in the long run, but difficult in the present.
    Of course, the patio is still in process.  The concrete has set enough to walk on, but there is still clean up and beautification to do.  For our park we need benches and flower pots and a fire pit (and anything else I can dream up).  Again, just like healing.  I've finished the first round of remedies to remove some underlying causes, now it is time for the next.  I leave you with a picture of the brand new patio with a 20 year old bench.... It's not beautiful, but it is great to sit on in the morning and drink hot lemon water.

I Am Willing To Change!

     Everyone got it right!  2012 is a year of Great Transformation. This is the time to use my favorite Louise Hay affirmation, "I am willing to change." Now, I'm not a believer in the end of the world, but I know that my world is changing remarkably (with one child in college, the other going next year and lots of other changes, one could say it is the end of my world as I knew it). Think R.E.M.

    Our entire house and property is in a state of upheaval.  We brought home furniture from our trip to New Jersey.  It is all lovely and fits into the house much better than I expected.  However, it has necessitated rearranging almost every room in the house.  Two rooms are completely finished.  I love them.  Those others, not so much.  They will be great soon (or as soon as I get to work).  The funny thing about this change is it is just work, not upsetting, just irritating in the fact that the living room is full of books and the parlor with pictures and our bedroom with.... (you get the picture).
   To add the cherry atop the sundae of change, we have been trying to find a contractor to put in a back patio for us the whole spring and summer and Friday it finally happened. On Friday morning our back corner looked like this...

  It began life about fifteen years ago as a beautiful English style garden, complete with vegetable patch.  When the kids were small we would spend hours in the back yard playing and gardening.  As they grew and life happened things have changed.  Since I knew we would dig the whole thing up, this year I didn't pull a single weed and boy does it show.  The only things we wanted to keep were the three redbud trees I had planted to honor my dad.  He died in springtime just as the redbuds peaked.  The last week he was alive I put over 700 miles on my car just driving to and from the hospital and dropping the kids off with friends.  That week I spent a lot of time admiring the redbuds along the 275 loop around Cincinnati.
      So, we were changing, getting rid of things that no longer served us (the garden) while keeping the things we loved (the trees).  Sound a bit like energy healing and growing up?  When we set off to make a change for the better, the first thing we need is the proper tools.  If you've ever had a session with me, you know I use my Nu|vision computer system, Biogenesis tools and healing crystals.  To fix this backyard, we needed 6 men and a Bobcat.

   In under an hour, my once beautiful, now weedy English garden was a pile of refuse. Though I kept portions of all the plants, it was hard to see the remainder discarded.  It is like when a child goes to college.  It is good for both you and your child.  Usually there have been years of straining the bonds of civility.  It doesn't make driving away with the adult child in your rearview mirror any easier.  Fortunately we have pictures from all the Easter egg hunts and good times that were had in the garden (when it was a child as well).

   Acknowledging that is time for a change can be challenging, but this spring we decided what we were looking for was more of a park than a garden.  Wouldn't it be nice to have a place that was restful and beautiful, a place where we could entertain and enjoy? Absolutely.  The tear down is the first step.  Friday we ripped off the band-aid.

Take the Sting Out of Stress

          Life seems to give us all more than our fair share of stressful moments. Over the years I have tried lots of techniques and remedies, but my favorites are the ones that need only a few moments to explain and can easily be taught to children.
         As always, when I was developing this class, life gave me ample opportunity to practice.  From dropping one son off at college, to fighting a body that was fighting back(yes, I knew as soon as the word fight entered the conversation I was in the wrong), to needing to confront someone about underpayment, I think I spent the whole week remembering to breathe, creating affirmations and reconnecting with the heart.  This is not for sissies!
         This video explains the easiest techniques to remember when you are stressed out.  Just remember BAM!

• Breathe
• Affirm
• HeartMath or Meditate

Please enjoy and take the sting out of stress.

From Pain to Peace

       I had the most interesting experience last night.  I learned how to relax into pain.
       For the last few months (okay, longer than that...) I have  been having a rough time once a month.  Let's just say, my friends have been teasing me about The Change.  Not being ready for menopause, I have been denying it vigorously.  What I couldn't deny was the pain that each month brought.
       Since I have been preparing for a class on stress, I decided to treat pain as a stressor.  On Monday, I wrote a post about how I create affirmations.  Last night I put it to work.
       When I described the cause of my stress, it had the words hurt, afraid, whole body and descriptions of time (more than last month, less than two months ago).  I realized that a lot of the pain was caused by my reaction to the initial complaint.  So how to relax the body amidst distraction...

     I printed out Monday's post and wrote all over the back.  You can kind of see the bubble of the zebra's words in the top left corner. The affirmation I came up with you can see on the bottom.  " I am consciously aware of the calm silence of my spirit." (this sounds awfully good, bet I read it somewhere before, maybe from Louise Hay...) I like this because it also reminds me of the calm I have cultivated when things are not as stressful.  I love to meditate, why not access it now?
    It took about 2 hours of conscious inner relaxation.  The pain was still there, but by not tensing against it, I was not creating more.  Once I got to bed, I slept easily through the night.  I also found that this came in handy when I was running this morning.  Consciously relaxing the muscles that were protesting really works!  I hope this technique will benefit you as well.  Be Blessed!

The Cosmic Baseball Bat Strikes Again

     Sometimes when I am being particularly thick-headed, God needs to hit me on the back of the head with the cosmic baseball bat to get some sense in.  Yesterday was one of those days.  I have spent the summer gathering ideas, making handouts and recording videos about different techniques to handle stress.  One would think that I am the expert.  Turns out I had a lesson to learn (or really, relearn for the millionth time!)
    It was time to take our oldest son back to college.  It was time and more than time.  We all thought we were ready; him for his freedom, us for ours. Somewhere deep in my heart I was so not ready.  In my last post, I talked about creating affirmations from negative feelings and his departure was one of my examples.  But I needed so much more than just affirmations.  I used every technique I am teaching on Saturday over and over and over.
     I went from breathing techniques to affirmations to heart math to Jin Shin Jyutsu to acupressure and then started all over again.  If you asked me none of it was working.  The day was horrible, I felt miserable and ended the day crying myself to sleep.  Pretty pathetic.
     Now comes the interesting part, the lesson in the sob story... This morning I woke up feeling great.  All that energy work that felt like pouring water onto sand (loads of work, but no lasting effect) actually worked.  My closest analogy is the dirty ring in a teenage boy's shower (are we beginning to see why I wanted him back in his apartment?)
      Each day, you go into the shower, clean yourself and leave.  Ideally all the soap and dirt go down the drain, but in real life, there is always the ring around the tub.  Think about the energy work like a microfiber towel.  If you clean up, even just a little bit, each time you go into the shower, the ring does not build up.  You still have the soap and dirt, but they don't stay and make you miserable.
     Energy work while you experience pain is just like that.  It is not surgery, cutting out the pain, or anesthetic, that numbs it.  Rather the energy helps to experience pain without leaving emotional scars.  Yes, I would like to have him around. I love him, but I'm eager to let him fly again.
      The funny thing about this experience is the timing.  I am going to be a much better teacher on Saturday because I really practiced yesterday.  Maybe that cosmic baseball bat was a gift after all.

Make Light of It: Creating Affirmations to Take the Sting out of Stress

What is stressing you out today? Though we try to stop, there is always the next thing.  Somehow it seems that even when things are going well, a stone is in your gym shoe.

At any time, any event can cause you stress, or not.  I have watched people deal with cancer better than I do taking my child back to college.  Surely the life threatening disease is more important, but that is the funny thing about the mind.  Deep in the lizard brain, I’m going to save him from the cold cruel world of hardship….

For me, more often than not rationality does not rule.  This means it is time to talk to the lizard brain in a way it understands, feelings.  Creating an affirmation from your stressor is not hard, just hard to remember under stress.

To develop your affirmation, first you need to figure out what is really getting under your skin.    For example, rather than saying, my son going back to school is stressful, we want to look at the root cause.  Freshman year it was the thought that my baby was leaving, but this summer it is different.  I have been relying on him for clever thoughts, using the fresh college way of looking at the world to break out of my preconceptions.  So really, hard as it is to admit, I’m afraid I’m not clever enough to blog without him (ouch!)

On to the affirmation.  My important words were afraid and clever.  So my affirmations would be something like “I am confident” or “Thoughts flow to me easily” or “I am a successful and confident blogger.”  It may change from day to day as I grow and change or it can stay the same for weeks.  I spent 8 months on “I am willing to change.”

How to use the affirmation?  Put it on your mirror and read it to yourself, looking in your own eyes, 10 times each morning and evening.  Put it on your dashboard, read it as you wait at stop lights.  Use it as a bookmark in your current book.  Find a way to make it part of your life.

Here are the steps, print this out. Feel free to use the back of the paper if you need more space.

  

What causes your stress?	Turn your words around, make an affirmation
(after you are finished, underline the Important words)	(only positive words!)

Set Your Mind Free

    If the theme this week is all about play, today's yoga class was just right.  We played around with different ways to mobilize the joints, looking for freedom rather than rigid stability.  One key to looser muscles, however, lies right between your ears.  When the mind is free, so is the body.  This is the meditation with affirmations that I used to both begin and finish the class.

Dowsing for Dipsticks: or 5 Affirmations for Using Your Pendulum

      Dowsing can be so difficult.  You get the pendulum (or sticks or other implements of destruction).  You buy the book (or check out a million books from interlibrary loan).  Let's just say I was a very slow learner. Should you want to embrace my pain, here is a bit about my journey in a January blog post.  Rereading it, I don't think I expressed how absolutely abysmal I was.
     We had a great reiki share today, and dowsing was one of our focuses.   When we talked for a while about problems and hiccups in learning to dowse, it turns out that most of us had similar problems.  First of all, when we feel uncomfortable with something, we usually find a way to make it go away.  Almost everyone kept losing their pendulum.  Most people also expressed difficulty in setting aside the ego (or desire to have the answer expected be correct).  
     This being said, remember the first questions to ask when you dowse:

•  "Can I?" (is this dowse-able?)
•  "May I?" (do I have permission?)
•  "Should I?" (is this in my and my subject's highest and best good?).  It's 

  So, in true Law of Attraction and Louise Hay fashion, we turned them into affirmations.  Here are 5 affirmations to help you become more confident in your dowsing.

• I can always find my pendulum
• I clearly get the correct answer, easily and quickly.
• I dowse myself truly.
• My ego steps aside when I dowse.
• I am connected to my Higher Power.

   Write them on the bag you keep your pendulum or crystals in.  Put them somewhere you notice daily.  Make dowsing a part of your life.  These affirmations can ease your passage.  I wish I had known everyone else struggled at the beginning.

Happy 4th of July!

        Happy Fourth! I wish for you much fun, beer and sunburn.  Isn't that what celebrating the fourth feels like?  I'd love to hear about what it feels like to you, just click on the comment below and fill me in.

        The Biogenesis Masters Conference is going on each night from 9-10pm.  Though the hour feels wrong (it is being delivered from Hawaii, here is a picture above), the information and techniques are great.  One of the phrases we were meditating on is "Movement is by means of attraction."  After hanging up from the conference, this just kept resonating in my mind, setting off scores of thoughts.
         The Law of Attraction is a very popular idea, but why is it that so many adherents are so unhappy and unsuccessful?  As Abraham says "Where's my stuff?"  It makes me both laugh and say "Yeah, where is it?" at the same time.  I'm a positive person, right?  Well, maybe not in all areas.  As I talked about last Wednesday, somewhere deep inside I was unwilling to change.
         If you think about it in yoga terms, when most of us forward bend, we actually stick our stomachs out on the way down.  The protruding belly gets in the way of that forward motion.  Coming up halfway, drawing the belly in, then continuing down gives a much fuller expression of the forward bend.
        Better yet, the settlers gave up hearth and home to move to the colonies that became the United States.  The Founding Fathers gave up familiar political institutions to create the Constitution of the United States, a document I swore to support and defend nearly two hundred years later when I joined the Navy.  If movement is by means of attraction, what do you need to give up to attract the desired movement?  The joy is in the discovery.

Reiki and Affirmations

2012.  A time of great change.  Everyone agrees.  It doesn’t seem to matter if you are trying to fix the Euro or following the Mayan calendar.  This is the year to take us all by storm.

This morning I heard a wonderful piece on Nora Ephron, an American filmmaker and author who died today.  I don’t have the exact quote but she was talking about how aging is one of those things that you think happens only to other people.  What a surprise when that is not true.  I feel the same way about 2012 and the Great Transformation.  Wasn’t I just going to observe it?  Turns out, it has been more like standing in a tunnel with an oncoming train.

With each challenge, opportunity also enters.  This year of great challenge has lead to experimenting with reiki and energy work like never before.  Some of my old tricks are not enough to keep up with where I am going, so I have been trying new things like using reiki to empower affirmations.  In the past I have used affirmations from Louise Hay’s book You Can Heal Your Life (Gift Edition)  and in giving attunements, but I have never used the same one for more than a few days.  This year I have given my affirmations quite a workout.

Change has always been difficult for me.  I’m the one searching out the new thing, trying the next step, but there is a well of reserve within me.  Have you ever gone to preschool and watched a child pulled away from the parent, apparently inconsolable?  If you watch them for a few minutes, soon the tears dry and the child engages in the classroom.  When it comes to change, I am both the child and the teacher trying to pull the child away.  Let’s just say it’s hard to play both sides at the same time.

Over the years I have sent loads of reiki, taken remedies and meditated, trying a variety of solutions.  Each of these has only been marginally effective.  When I tried Access Hanna Express, I was given the affirmation “I am willing to change.”  When I read it, I had the same feeling as putting on a great pair of jeans or my most comfortable shoes.  It fit perfectly.

I began work with it about a week ago.  I could feel the energy shifting as I said it aloud and gave it energy.  The first thing I noticed is that it would resolve minor physical complaints, like a stomach ache I didn’t know that I had until it went away.  The little things that the body does to tell us we are going astray.  The big confirmation came yesterday.  Tuesday is yoga day for the blog, so I teach a class in the morning, then tape and post a YouTube video of some aspect of that class in the afternoon and evening.  As I was watching one of the takes for the video, my first thought was how good I look. Now, just between you and I, my flaws are many and varied, but they were not my first impression.  Rather than finding faults, I saw strengths. 

That little affirmation, 5 short words, changed a major bias.  Our society is obsessed with perfection; the perfect face, the perfect voice, the perfect demonstration.   After years of standing in the mirror saying “I love you” to myself, it turns out, I do.  What a great place to be.