Centering Tools

Accept Your Heart

The Essential Guideline to Healing and Wholeness

The heart as a metaphor carries a number of critical dimensions.  It exists as an inviolate spiritual center, meaning no matter what happens to its bearer, it has the capacity to continue. 

To me the essential guideline to healing and wholeness is to hold true, no matter what, to accepting your heart.  The central challenge is to know what your heart feels, wants and needs; and then commit to staying true to these guidelines.

The Spiritual Center of Unconditional Love

We have been taught for countless millenia to do the opposite, accepting the delusion that this is necessary in order to survive.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Hearts as metaphors are spiritual centers of unconditional love that are supremely reality-based.  By that I mean that hearts have the capacity to know all the dimensions of acknowledgment and consideration that really exist - emotional, mental, physical and spiritual.

Opening Our Intuition

Hearts carry a significant dimension that we have also been taught to fear, manipulate and deny - our intuition.  To recover our innate intuition offers an additional whole advantage to understanding and choosing beyond the analytical, with its own guidelines, style of communication and particular function. 

Here is an exercise for you to try:

Open Your Spirit

Settle back, allow your body to take a most comfortable, relaxed, aligned and supported position, close your eyes, and take several deep, regular, cleansing breaths.  Imagine your breath is your released, free innate spirit.  For these next several breaths, each and every time you inhale and each and every time you exhale, say the word "spirit" to yourself. 

Imagine your breath deepens even more.  For these next several breaths each and every time you you inhale and each and every time you exhale, say the word "open" to yourself.  Then for these next several breaths, when you inhale say the word "spirit", and when you exhale say the word "open" to yourself.

Receive from Your Heart

Imagine you are allowing and directing your spirit to open, and that your opening spirit is your intuition.  Simply enjoy the experience and this inner journey. 

Ask your opening spirit to lead you into your heart.  Experience all that unfolds and speaks to you here, allowing it to bring you, in its way, to a place that feels like a place of completion.

Offer Your Gift in Return

As this occurs, imagine your heart asks you to accept it unconditionally as an central expression of love, with your opening spirit as the bridge.  When you're ready, say to yourself, "I accept my heart", and see what happens.

Then slowly and easily allow your flowing breath to bring you, in its endless, easy rhythms, back and back to full, waking consciousness, and open your eyes.  Record all that's happened here.  

What's Next Within the Larger Scope of Meaning?

Consider how all that has happened for you now has been a process of healing and integration.  What wants to happen next?  Allow your open intuition to respond, and record whatever occurs.

We live in a peaking, intense, extended time of transformation and opportunities to grow and integrate in expansive ways beyond what has been possible before.  May we all accept and welcome the challenge, and may it lead to our own and the world's wellbeing.

More Rules to Live By

Necessary Skills to Navigate

Life offers many rich dimensions of challenges, joys, crises, successes, failures . . . and so much more . . . all opportunities and necessities for us to develop corresponding skill and capacity to navigate for healing, development, and, yes - survival.  Which brings me to join the ever-growing list of individual and group attempts, be they educational institutions, philosophies, or religious organizations, to further formulate, through reflection, Rules to Live By.

Without further ado, as the saying goes, here is what strikes me as the essential rules to live by, spurred on by what current clients are presenting as their personal challenges, as well as my own and my family's - and let's not forget our presidential election, fast-approaching - as well as all related national, even global challenges.  Here they are, in no particular order:

Eleven Rules for Mastery

1.   Stay as integratively well as you can, which means in greater balance and corresponding stability, involving your  body, mind and spirit, and care for yourself accordingly as a central priority to live your life.

2.   Know what it is to feel real peace, and take that sensation as the necessary standard to recognize and implement correspondingly real resolution for whatever problem it is that you happen to be experiencing.    

3.   Unconditionally, and on an ongoing basis, communicate your feelings to yourself; and then listen some more to your subsequently and freely-emerging intuition, well-keeping a commitment to yourself to honor it by acting on its direction, however it occurs in any aspect of your life.

4.   Through this, admit to yourself, as it may arise, your deepest fear.

5.   Ask yourself without expectation at least once a year what your heart's desires are, and write them down from a place of trust and acceptance, which allows you to release them to begin to energetically manifest, along with your corresponding commitment to carry out an equal call to action.

6.   Unconditionally accept yourself and others just as they are.

7.   Acknowledge that all demands for guarantees and controls are delusions, and do not exist in the world as your only path to true freedom and responsibility.

8.   With your full ability to do so, seek to partner with life, understanding it is an infinite sea of unfolding, present moments that you must be equally present in.

9.   Life demands that we live it courageously, and holds us fully accountable for that.  It calls this karma.

10. Never try to manage or fix anybody or anything other than objects in need of repair, acknowledging the central truth that none of us have this power.

11. Know yourself as a unique expression of the divine, and act accordingly to the best of your unfolding capacity in the world.

Will You Experiment?

These eleven rules to live by in this "round". in numerology is defined to be the vibration of mastery.  What do you think?   Willing to experiment and let me know how it all goes? 

This is time of pivotal transformation, and I believe we are all hugely and centrally experiencing our own particular versions of this supreme challenge.  That is the essential rule of life.  It is set to continue to bring forth transformation.  How else can flow continue?  

Note I have categorized this blog entry as holistic healing.  Following these rules will produce the wonderful result of holistic, or body-mind-spirit healing.  That's how transformation occurs, and all corresponding successes and related empowerment and development can then follow.  

Full Circle

That which Supports and Completes the Greater Whole

Healing is about completing and extending a circle of beingness.  It is about restoring greater balance that brings real resolution, peace, and acceptance - elements that form the end stage of grief. 

It has been said that all core healing is about completing the stages of grief.  There are no missing pieces in a full circle.  Everything present supports and completes the greater whole. 

Listen to What's Missing

That is why we're so bothered when we feel a sense that something is missing in our lives.  That sensation is a thing to listen to, and to honor. 

A shortcut to identifying what is truly missing from our lives is to dare to bring forth your heart's desires.  Late this spring I was excited to go away with a friend to Niagara-on-the Lake, a pretty little Victorian town near Niagara Falls in Canada, which hosts a world-renowned Shaw plays festival every year, lasting from April through November. 

The Real Meaning of the Bucket List

My friend and I went for some wonderful spa treatments and much accompanying ambiance at a perfect setting to "get away from it all".  We were most successful in meeting this much-needed goal, which, as happens in full circle reality, brought us right into our spiritual centers to explore, through watching a popular movie in our most comfortable hotel room, called The Bucket List, with two of our favorite actors, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

They both play older men who end up being most unlikely roommates in a hospital, from very different walks of life,  who are informed that they are dying.  This news becomes a catalyst to catapult them into becoming soul brothers, who well facilitate each others' transformations into whole, expanded, courageous human beings who are free and empowered to live in just in the moment, their fully adventuring lives. 

The Only Choice We Have

They make a "bucket list", which is a list of what their heart's desires are that have been missing from their lives that they commit to completing before they "kick the bucket".  Thanks to the character Jack Nicholson plays, they have virtually unlimited financial means to complete their lists, critically supporting each other's ability to carry this out.

Is this not multidimensional healing and spiritual development?  We really only have one choice in life - to live it courageously or to turn away from it.

Becoming Greater Than We Have Been

The times particularly demand living courageously.  I think we are so far gone today, as the world reveals the depth of devastating impact we've had on it, that we can no longer get away with turning away. 

As I think about it, turning away unravels circles, and our primary spiritual healing and development directive says we are meant to  "come full circle", becoming greater than we have been through finding that which otherwise we know is missing.  Have you made a "bucket" list?

Dare to Create Your Full Circle of Heart's Desires

My bent is to call that a "Full Circle" list, and, on that note, invite you to settle back, take a couple of deep, cleansing breaths, and imagine how easily your light, opening breaths can carry your freed consciousness right into your heart.  Ask your heart center to tell you what it sees is missing from your life, and then take a few moments and record your ensuing "list".

Then draw a very large circle on a blank sheet of paper, and put every item on your list wherever it seems to want to fit anywhere inside the circle.  When you've finished, settle back once more and gaze at your drawing.  How are you feeling?

Our True Spiritual Contract

Record your sensations, and any insights which occur.  I would additionally refer you to a book written by Stephen Levine over a decade ago called A Year to Live, which is a how-to guide and spiritual commentary inviting the reader to commit to spend a year carrying out a  spiritual contract to live as if that was the last year of their life.

Each moment we are given is a shining moment, a literally "once-in a-lifetime" gift that will never come again, to be honored and savored.  We own our moments, and are meant to express courageously, and with maximum possible consciousness, our corresponding desires, understanding them as each exquisitely full circles of completion.      

Integrative Health conference this October

I posted this in news and events as well, but here is more detailed information about the Dr. Jeffrey K. Harris Memorial Integrative Health Care Series event. You may also download the PDF below - it contains both the registration form and the schedule of events/list of presenters.

Download 2008_conference_brochure.pdf

Download 2008_conference_brochure_side_2.pdf

What (quoted from the 2008 brochure available as a PDF above)

Integrative Medicine focuses on the whole person, mind-body-spirit, with a strong emphasis on empowering patients to make long term and lasting changes that support healing and optimum health. Dr. Jeff Harris brought this tremendous spirit to all facets of his personal and professional life, as a profound gift of integrative healing for all who had the benefit to know him. He leaves this as his legacy for us all going forward, and we dedicate this conference to that model of astute, accepting caring. This seminar will introduce attendees to the current movement towards integration of traditional western medicine and various healing modalities with emphasis on patient centered and highly individualized care.

Marjorie will be presenting (two times) alongside others in the medical and integrative health community.  This is a phenomenal opportunity to witness expert presentations given by yoga teachers, reiki masters, and medical experts.

Some of the additional speakers/topics this conference will feature include:

• Lisa B. O’Shea
  Certified Qi Gong Therapist and Instructor.
  Private Practice in Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Meditation,
  Nutrition, and Qi Gong Healing.
• Sanford H. Levy, MD
  Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at SUNY
  Buffalo. Board certified in both Internal
  Medicine and Integrative/Holistic Medicine.
  Fellow of the American College of Physicians.
• Charlotte A. Wytias, RN, MS, FNP
  Program Manager, The Springs Integrative
  Medicine Center.

To see the complete list, simply download the brochure!

Where

 

Rochester General Hospital
TWIG Auditorium
Saturday October 18, 2008
8:00 A - 5:00 P
1425 Portland Ave.
Rochester, NY 14621

View Larger Map

When

Saturday October 18, 2008 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Registration/cost

**Make sure to register BEFORE October 1st.  Prices (USD) include two meals and snacks. Mastercard/VISA accepted.

 

Early Registration	No CME: $50.00 CME: $105.00 Mastercard/VISA accepted
After Oct. 1	No CME: $60.00 CME:$125.00 Mastercard/VISA accepted

 

To register, click the PDF download link above and fill out the registration form. Send the form to

MCMS 1441 East Avenue

Rochester, NY 14618 (Attn: Ginny Ruderman)

Pharmacology of alcohol and a useful tool: blood alcohol calculator

Alcohol is so widely used that its legality can be thought of as somewhat independent of its mostly alarming effects on the body. It's important to understand alcohol from the physical perspective to appreciate its psychological component.  In this post I will address the basic pharmacology of alcohol. I think this is an important piece to understanding alcohol in general. 

There are also a couple of blood alcohol content level calculators that are available online that deserve mentioning - they are free and relatively accurate so long as you have an idea about how much you're going to drink. 

The basics - alcohol is not merely a depressant

Alcohol is a depressant.  This represents a significant portion of our understanding of it, at least on a day-to-day or conversational level.  However, it is a unique depressant given its euphoria-producing properties.  Euphoria, characterized by a sudden onset of excitability and confidence (possibly over-confidence) is quintessentially indicated not in depressants but in psychostimulants (that is, "speed").  Thus for alcohol to have euphoria-producing effects is hardly intuitive.

How is it that alcohol causes euphoria if its a depressant?

A quick review of empirical literature on the pharmacology of alcoholism contains frequent indications that "the exact mechanism is not known" - though that saying is hardly specific to alcohol per se. 

In any event, alcohol influences the activity of at least four major neural systems: the NMDA receptors, GABA receptors, Dopamine receptors, and the opioid receptors. There are certainly additional effects, however it is the influence on the dopamine receptors that interests us here because it is likely that system which is responsible for the euphoria associated with alcohol.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that, when manipulated, can be associated with diverse behavioral effects including addiction, euphoria, pleasure, psychomotor repetition, and cognitive enhancement.  Alcohol appears to influence dopamine receptors in the limbic system.  If you think about the times when alcohol has made you apt to be more emotional than what you consider to be normal, this might be a physical explanation. 

What are some tools for monitoring alcohol's influence on me?

Of course the most important thing about alcohol is that you know its effects.  This goes beyond simply knowing how it behaves as a drug.  It also requires proactive action that indicates such knowledge is being put to use.  A simple awareness of your blood alcohol level (BAC) will suffice.

You can use a blood alcohol calculator online so that you can prevent a problem.  As long as you know roughly how much you're going to drink its reasonably accurate. 

Another tool in this regard is your friends and family.  If someone you know voices a concern about your habits, try not to take it personally.  Chances are they are simply concerned.  They may not be as accurate at estimating your BAC, but they may provide what makes it possible for you to think about that in the first place.  Social support is absolutely key in managing alcohol and alcohol-related health concerns.

Additional resources

Global status report on alcohol

Applying Pressure: The History and Efficacy of Reflexology

By Danielle Grilli, content director of rVita.com

My first brush with reflexology was on a soccer field.  Sitting on the sidelines, watching my big brother kick the ball around, my little 8 year old head began to ache something terrible.  One of the soccer moms, a nurse, took my hand and began to squeeze the area between my thumb and index finger; several minutes later, my headache began to dissipate. At the time I thought it was magic but she corrected me saying, “It’s not magic, it’s just reflexology.” 

Although the exact origins of reflexology are unclear, it is believed that the practice reaches as far back as ancient Egypt.  Evidence of use can also be found in China, North America and in other areas of the ancient world.  Modern reflexology as we know it has its roots in Zone Therapy which was established by Dr. William H. Fitzgerald in the early 1900’s.  Several years (and theoretical adjustments) later, in the 1970’s, the International Institute of Reflexology was established.

As a therapy, reflexology involves the application of pressure to specific points in the feet, hands or ears.   Not unlike Acupuncture points, reflexology points are thought to coincide with different energy channels in the body.  As a result, it is believed that the application of pressure to a particular point stimulates the muscles, organs, and nerves that lie along that zone, or channel, allowing them to function more effectively.

As regards the efficacy of reflexology, the jury’s still out.  Although several studies have shown reflexology to be beneficial in the treatment of conditions such as premenstrual syndrome, recurrent migraines, and high blood pressure; to date, there have not been enough successful results to unequivocally prove its efficacy for any given condition.  That said, as with many CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) treatments, reflexology is personalized and trials are few and far between so it is difficult to determine how effective it really is as a system of treatment.

Science aside, I can say that I have never had to take a pain pill for a headache.  The first thing I do when I start to feel a impending headache is squeeze that point the soccer mom showed me all those many years ago and – just like the magic I thought it was – the pain disappears into thin air.      

References

1. rVita: Alternative Therapy
2. T Oleson, W Flocco, "Randomized controlled study of premenstrual symptoms treated with ear, hand, and foot reflexology" Obstetrics and Gynecology, Vol 82, No 6, Dec 1993, 906-911.
3. "Headache and Reflexological Treatment" by E Brendsstrup & L Launso, publ. by the Council Concerning Alternative Treatment, the National Board of Health, Denmark, 1997.
4. B.S.M. Frankel, "The effect of reflexology on baroreceptor reflex sensitivity, blood pressure and sinus arrhythmia", Complementary Therapies in Medicine (1997) 5, 80-84
5. http://www.reflexology-usa.net/
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexology

A Moment

The Surprise of Opening

The world opened yesterday for, as Forrest Gump said, "no particular reason".  I was driving along in my glorious new car, which is the first car I've picked out just because I like it - not to haul kids around, not to carry babies, but because it made me smile and feel young again.  The skies were finally parting from days of rain and gray clouds to a clear, bright blue. 

I parted with them, beyond my gray, humdrum, errand-focused mind attachments to simply being present as I whizzed by . . . full-bodied geese all in a row, parents and little fuzzy goslings lined up at the rim of a manmade pond . . . bursting new leaves everywhere on lined trees, brilliantly green as they reached across the old Erie canal path . . . lilacs finally fading, ever-so-slowly, still extending their soft perfume through the cool air . . . the streaming sun lighting up the world . . . people's radiant smiles as they strolled along narrow sidewalks, faces turned upward . . .

The Real Secret of Core Healing

It's all so fast, these moments of our lives, and we miss the most ordinary miracles as we drag along  in the wake of our speeding days the conditioning of do, do, do, or the world will come to an end - and then we miss  . . . everything.  Through the gifts of meditating, journaling, and reflective listening we also recover our capacity to be simply, wholly present in a space of unconditional opening, that fully translates into the whole rhythm of loving and being, loving and being.  Then we flower.

When we can recover and allow that rhythm to unfold we can heal, return to center, let go, transcend, and finally own, as we realize ourselves to be spiritual beings of multidimensional consciousness, fully able to partner with reality.  We do know how to do this.  We were born knowing how to do this. 

Are You Willing to Rehabituate Yourself to Be Fully Present?

And yet we face a significant, core challenge in saying whatever corresponding course draws us to accept the spiritual journey to find our way, having decided to rehabituate ourselves to realign with our universe no matter what it takes.  It could require giving up faulty belief systems, releasing judgment and predetermination, and admitting that we really don't know what the next moment will bring.The surprising truth is that's okay, because we'll either survive or we won't - and we'll know "when we get there". 

I felt myself heaving a great sigh of relief when I parted from fixation and separation from the present and simply returned to take my rightful place as a member of the real world.  This is a world of spirit come to life, and it is our birthright to exist in it.

We Have Everything We Need to Be Whole

Additionally, it is all we really have, and all we can ever offer to anyone.  Yes, it requires courage to shed the wounded ego wrappings that muffle, stuff, and separate us from our birthright.  What doesn't, regarding healing and development?  What other real choice do we have to support these primary ends when faced with these challenges?  When are we not faced with challenges to heal and develop?

We are here to support each other, and to tell the truth about what we and the world we live in are capable of providing.  In these troubles, unstable times of great challenge, we are intensely moved and greatly capable to defining and exploring this new paradigm of being as the foundation of holism and multidimensional healing.  

Healing Circles

Ending Cycles

It is amazing what can happen in the course of a seemingly ordinary day - like today.  I slept in after unwillingly being up late, choosing to forget again that when I have a cappacino at 7pm, as I did to top off my daughter's birthday dinner in an Italian restaurant we both love, I lose about half a night's sleep. 

Speaking of birthdays, I guess it's more than time to admit I'm not getting any younger despite the fact that I am more peaceful and happy - different than my younger years - than at any other time in my life these days.  I'm also hugely concerned about so many things in the world, as well as being "in the thick" of my own personal shifts.  The paradox for me, which I feel is quite synchronisitic with where we are nationally and globally, is that I know within the next couple of years a very long cycle for me is coming to an end, which I'm very glad about. 

The unfamiliar universe awaits, and that's more than okay with me.  My fantasy is that the world as well would do a lot better to approach this great shift with this heartfelt vision and clear attitude, and we would all be greatly eased because of it. 

One Unfolding Day

The rest of the day . . .  involved not one but two trips to the supermarket, which set me up to most synchronistically "run into" a woman I have known for a long time who is critically ill with cancer.  She has found her way to being completely, simply honest about all the implications she faces and the effect on those around her.  It is no surprise to me, given who she is and what her consciousness has become, that she has the most tremendous, longstanding support from staunch friends that I think I have ever seen.  I continue to energetically transmit to her on an ongoing basis.

I also went for a long walk with my daughter, who has spent essentially the weekend, with a little more to come, celebrating  her sixteenth birthday, roaming one of the most beautiful, oldest flowering parks in the nation.  We had some very serious, heartwrenching things to discuss regarding a most challenging situation that has fortunately greatly evolved and eased since last fall for us both. 

I became aware of such intense discussion as a great paradox against the backdrop of the most vibrant display of colors I have ever seen after countless visits to Highland Park, so named for the profusion of lilacs presented there.  Today they were not yet in bloom, but the daffodils, tulips, magnolias, and cherry blossoms were, so brilliant, so exquisitely beautiful that I felt greatly priviledged to be able to witness and receive their glowing energy as we wandered with so many smiling others.

Facing Spiritual Reality

This has been a week of love and loss, beauty and caring, warmth and upset.  I returned home this week and fell all over myself playing "catch-up", an additional dimension in a number of ongoing layers. 

I think what today has taught me is that the simple circumstances of each unfolding day contain all the elements that compose healing circles.  One supports and clarifies and enhances the next, and because they are there, we must simply admit and declare and accept and allow ourselves to be fully present in them all, and share with ourselves and others easily, trusting in our own capacity to not survive - but continue to simply be present, for that is enough because it's real. 

Power is something else.  Power is offered to us through all the elements we experience through each and every day of our unfolding lives if we are able and willing to accept each dimension for what it is, and release our ego's demand to have a short answer that will be the current delusion to what guarantees survival - the real short answer is:  there isn't any.

Beauty, peace, happiness, camaderie, the full array of brilliant and present and accepted emotions, and all synchronistic surprises - yes.  I believe we live now in an intense time propelling us toward a great unknown.  We can only face this great challenge with our willingness to seek and speak the truth, and unconditionally love and respect ourselves and each others - for we are all equal.

Blessed be.    

 

Rhythms

Plugged and Unplugged

I think, untampered, days are designed to open up like flowers.  They each offer a universe of multidimensional feasts to the senses, teeming with rich, multifaceted life on this flowing earth plane. 

I have spent the past 9 days visiting my son and his partner, my daughter and son-in-law, and my 6 month-old grandson in New England.  I've seen great cities, forest-ringed ponds, and rock-strewn,wild ocean shores.  I've seen history greatly matched with the current HBO special, John Adams, about the founding of our country, and yet continued to be very much plugged in to the world with its equally poignant, peaking political struggles.

One short Day Far Beyond the City

Day-to-day life doesn't care about all this.  It just flows and grows within its own unfolding rhythms. 

A few short miles from the bottlenecked east-coast interstate I lay on great warmed rocks, casually placed as if strewn by a careless giant, alone except for the ever-pounding surf gently spraying its salty foam before me in small explosion after explosion.  The overgrown trail hasn't even sprouted  rose buds, only prickles that easily grab and entangle my hair as I hike, but the radiant sun high in a cloudless blue sky promises spring, and it seems to me the ocean laughs and rejoices.

Nearby my youngest daughter, soon to come of age, stands triumphant on the highest rock, arms outstretched to touch the bright blue sky, laughing at the crashing waves far below.  We just took a day, a great day to see what the newly-opened earth was up to, even far from the rest of our family who live so close to land's end. 

Unending Treasures

The next day I'm knee-deep in my grandson's lopsided smile as we sit in an old, slanted Adirondack chair in a tiny closed yard surrounded by peaked houses, in the midst of the vast metropolitan spread.  Birds don't care about all this - they just sing, and my grandson continues to turn his head seemingly by degrees as he listens intently to their trilling chorus.

If we let it be and partner and rejoice in it, life embraces us and sweetly leads us to its treasures.  But we have be able to survive first, and be given space and opportunity to surrender to what's naturally real - not to mention, of course, centrally be willing to be present. 

Meet the Challenge to Survive

It really doesn't take much, said Henry David Thoreau, who, over a century and a half ago, spent a year in a small hut overlooking the pond I walked earlier this week writing his memoirs, as a guide to restoring rhythms.  He reminded us that we otherwise "lead lives of quiet desperation", which I believe is the price we pay for being out of touch with who we are and what we are, minus our attachments and conditioning.

A year was his choice, and an amazing choice it was - such a guide to us all, who continue to so greatly profit by his sacred record, On Walden Pond, which reads like a flowing meditation.  A day was my choice, and when I return next week to my home so far away from here, and my work, it will be an hour or two as many times a week as I can grab. 

Perhaps I'm greedy, but I don't think so.  I'm just trying to survive, knowing long ago without my rhythms my Self is gone forever.

For You

The only way to know yourself is to know your rhythms.  How ironic that when we settle back in a comfortable, supported position, close our eyes, and tune in to our deepening breath, we enter our sacred center from which we can then radiate outward in corresponding essence partnership with the natural world.

So here, of course, are my recommendations - today's Top Ten:

1.  On as regular a basis as you can prioritize, get yourself out in nature for an hour or longer.

2.  Every day spend five minutes or longer simply being fully present and singularly focused on your regular, deep breaths.

3.  Spend fifteen minutes or longer each day observing the world you live in with all your sense fully "plugged in" - see, hear, taste, touch, smell.

4.  Let yourself be lovingly touched by life - animal, plant, human, earth, air, water, fire - beyond judgment.

5.  Be greatly honest with yourself and others.

6.  Listen unconditionally to your feelings, and watch them release themselves like waves beyond your ego-driven interference, miraculously offering their meaningful gifts to you.

7.  Spend five or more minutes every day sitting outside, empty - by that I mean, not thinking or doing anything.

8.  Sit by a body of water as regularly as possible.

9.  At least once a month, take a half-hour and record your worst fears, asking your restored rhythmical self to accept and, through its endless flow, release them as You Will.

10. Every day, say to yourself 10 things you love about life, and take a moment when you've finished to settle back, close your eyes, deepen your breath, and say,  "Blessed Be".

(Picture downloaded from Wikipedia Commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Henry_David_Thoreau.jpg)

Compassionate Touch Therapy

The Key Word is Compassion

This year I have put together a series of continuing education staff development programs for several Rochester area nursing homes and their staff caregivers, on an integrative approach I've synthesized for energetic healing called Compassionate Touch Therapy.  What is it, and how can it better help us support and center ourselves and others whom we care for and about?

The word compassion, according to the Tibetan definition, means detached loving.  The Tibetans also say compassion represents the highest emotion we're capable of experiencing.  To be loving without agenda, expectation, and judgment requires a space of inner detachment, which is not uncaring - it is openness - like the openness of a sacred channel.

The Foundation of Energetic Healing

When we can energetically open ourselves as a channel for universal life force energy, the Source which enlivens and sustains us endlessly, we can, in a hands-on way, transmit this energy fully to wherever we centrally focus our meditative intent.  The synthesis of Compassionate Touch Therapy integratively and holistically combines basic elements of Reiki and Therapeutic Touch with a foundation of energetic healing that I have created within my Centering practice.

The steps involved that I've created are both simple and, within the challenges of typical day-to-day life, difficult.  These are centering, building, transmitting, separating, and returning to center.

Five Steps to Completion

Centering is an inner-directed, meditative approach that involves entering your own sacred stillness through allowing your breath to unfold to its deepest, fullest extent in order to let go and let be.  This is how we come to center.

Building is how we position our hands, understood to be transmitters for healing, with our inner-directed spiritual intent from our center, to open as a channel, and allow universal life force energy to fully flow and build.  We are then in full position to transmit.

Transmitting flows from whatever particular position the hands are placed in, with ongoing intent to promote maximum healing responses from a place of letting go and letting be.  This occurs through a light touch, holding the hands in each particular position for as long as one is intuitively moved to do so - generally anywhere from thirty seconds to several minutes.

Separating is what I call "the clean break" which occurs when the healer comes to know, from an inner place of heightened awareness, that the treatment is complete, and simply withdraws their hands and focused intent from connected positions, with a sense of blessing and release.  Separating is always fueled by a sense of trust and acceptance of higher outcome.

Returning to center is the final inner-directed act to return, after separating, to one's own sacred inner center, continuing to experience on the inner planes of consciousness, letting go and letting be.  All healing occurs within a sacred spiritual circle that allows us to fully experience the divine universe of integrative, endless, multidimensional body-mind healing.

A New Definition of Healing

Healing continues, and can be easily reactivated for greater and greater sustaining results with each determined cycle of Compassionate Touch Therapy.  Energy, said Einstein, can be neither created nor destroyed, and, being subtle and in a constant state of motion, can "get through" anything. 

So Compassionate Touch Therapy reaches - touches - beyond - and is without limits in its potential scope.  This is our capability and our highest function as spiritual beings of enlightened consciousness adventuring on the earth plane, transcending even fear and woundedness.  Perhaps that is the real definition of healing.   

Freedom From Stress

We have known for nearly two generations that stress is a physiological response to change, that we perceive on multifaceted levels - by that I mean emotional, physical, psychological - as a threat to our survival.  In receiving this threat within our internal systems, we are called upon to respond in only two ways: to “fight or flight.”   

Our body quickly mobilizes to give us added strength and speed, which expresses as rapid heart rate and shallow, rapid breathing.  This changes the oxygen and carbon dioxide balance in our systems, which causes our veins and arteries to constrict, making it more difficult for the circulation of blood, oxygen, and elimination.  Accompanied with these basic responses can be sensations of both physical and psychological pain which serve as further warnings and directives to separate one from what is perceived to be the source of the stress, or threat.

Physiological symptoms associated with the stress response include headache, stomachache, constipation, diarrhea, chest pain, shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat, sweating, chills, palpitations, blurred vision, and impaired hearing.  Psychological symptoms include depression, confusion, anxiety, denial, avoidance, inability to make decisions, panic, paranoia, projection, violent/aggressive behavior, fear, hyperactive behavior, inability to perform tasks, procrastination, impaired judgment, narcissistic behavior, sleep disturbance, nightmares, and convoluted thinking. 

Like Pandora opening the box and meeting all the ills of the world, the stress response, only initiated by our basic need and right to insure our survival, carries us into terrible “stuck points”.  That is why so many books, courses and approaches have been offered to free the Self from this response, which is what this chapter is about: clearing a space within yourself and disconnecting these systems, or turning off the “red alert”. On an electromagnetic level the stress response ties up our energies, forcing us to communicate along rigid signal lines that are fear-based. We must evolve those “fight or flight” patterns in order to create a significant shift into a safe space.

Exercise I

Write the word “STRESS” at the top of a clean sheet of paper.  Write whatever words or phrases come into your mind, one word or phrase to a line, in response to this word, until you have run out of ideas.  Now look over what you have written.  This is a picture you have painted of the part stress continues to play in your life, as well as your response to these stresses, and how you have identified the source of the threat to your survival.  What do you think about this map?  Write down your responses. 

Exercise II

Your response is your beginning dialogue with your inner self about your stress response.  This is designed by your inner self, the center of your being, which is free from stress, to direct you through this gridwork “up and out”.  Just stay with your feelings for a few moments. Now imagine that somehow your feelings carry you to a safe place of beingness.  What happens inside you through this experience?  Record your insights.

Top 10 Reasons to Meditate Every Day

Ten Ways to Connect to the Divine

Here are my top 10 reasons to meditate every day:

1.   Clear your head

2.   Take a "power nap"

3.   Be in touch with your amazing spirit and the Source

4.   Unleash your creative potential

5.   Hear amazing insights from your intuition

6.   "Zone"

7.   Release physical, mental, emotional and spiritual stress

8.    Get away from it all

9.   Allow your breathing rhythms to fully regulate themselves

10. Give your body and mind a complete oxygen bath

And there are so many more . . .

What's Simplest, Fastest, and Still Gives All These Benefits

You can meditate in less than a minute.  Try this Centering exercise:

Settle back in a comfortable position with arms and legs uncrossed, close your eyes, and count three full, deep, easy breaths to yourself.  Now for these next several breaths as you inhale, say the phrase Let Be to yourself; and as you exhale, say the phrase Let Go to yourself.  Be as fully present with all that happens as possible, and when you feel complete for now in this experience, gradually return to full, waking consciousness and open your eyes.

How Do You Feel?

See what comes up inside you in response to this question, noticing all your sensations.  Fifteen minutes of meditating has been said by Dr. Herbert Benson, author of The Relaxation Response, to provide the equivalent of a full night's restful sleep. 

I remember years ago a client telling me that he had no time to meditate when I told him about Dr. Benson's recommendation to receive the full benefit of this miraculous relaxing and recharging self-help and healing practice.  I asked him if he had 5 minutes a day.  He smiled and said "Yes", and has told me that since then he loves to tell everyone he meets this story.

Are You Worth 5 Minutes A Day?

This is the question I most often ask clients when I recommend this simple yet transformational guided meditation.  I also add there are no side effects, it is FREE (and what in the world other than breathing these days is?), and there is no required certification, higher level degree, or additional equipment necessary than your own amazing mind and central will.

I rest my case, and your well-being, on your willingness to set your breath - and yourself free.  Happy experimenting!

   

Info on herbal medicines

Herbal medicine is something that interests me but it isn't an area of specialization. I've got some anecdotal experience with them.  For instance, my son took some Chinese herbs for  type 1 diabetes and his control became noticeably tighter.   

Some of you may share an interest with me in herbal medicines, and I've only just begun to harness the internet to gain additional insight into this area.

One informative site is www.herbalheals.com.  It has a ton of articles and covers a wide array of topics relevant to herbal medicine.  Topics range from the general ( 'how to buy herbal medicine') to condition-specific (e.g. herbal remedies for Alzheimer's).  The site also contains information on herbal medicines for the treatment of high blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes, anxiety and much more.

It's easy to navigate and the articles are well-written and easy to read.  Certainly a "user-friendly" site, so feel free to check it out.

The Power of Journaling

Get Serious Through Journaling

September is such a significant month.  It is the dividing line between the quarter of Summer and The Rest of the Year.  We "take a fall" into Fall as the weather begins to turn away from the full bloom of summer to Get Serious.

School restarts, and we are moved to initiate, with an eye toward bringing to fruition, our goals.  In centering, self-healing and empowerment terms I can think of no better time to initiate your own journaling practice for maximum benefits.

Journaling Transforms Lives

The ancient art of entering and staying in a reflective creative space for no other reason than to attentively and unconditionally listen to any part of yourself that is moved to speak to you about anything at all has, in the past couple of decades, been indicated more and more through body-mind research to initiate and extend innate healing responses.  Examples have included improved recovery of many chronic and life-threatening diseases, including cancer, heart disease and post-traumatic stress syndrome.

In my Centering practice I have seen significant transformation occur in many clients who journal, resulting in experiencing key insights, empowered choice-making and central resolution in their lives.  Here are the guidelines I recommend:

Simple Techniques for Healing and Empowerment

1.  Journal every day.

2.  Keep it - meaning your expectations and your requirements of yourself for journaling - short and simple - write for a minimum of 5 minutes, and include how you feel.

3.  Draw.  I mean it.  Drawing is not just for designated artists, children or architects.  Remember our earliest languages were pictures.  Also remember the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words"?  Draw diagrams, stick figures, or whatever shows beyond your judgment how you feel.

4.  Record any snippets of dreams you remember.

5.  If you want extra guidelines, adopt my "fill in the blank" list, completing any or all of the following sentences:

I need

I wish

I'm scared

If only

In my heart of hearts I think

If I could let go of ____________ I would

How Journaling Profoundly Improves Self-Esteem

Here are the life-transforming messages your subconsious receives from consistent journaling with these essential guidelines:

I'm worth writing about and committing to.

I accept myself unconditionally.

I am completely open and honest with myself.

I listen to myself with respect and attentiveness.

It is not necessary for me to always know what to do - it is enough to simply express myself.

What powerful affirmations we've just created!

Of course, for my final, very serious, "welcome to autumn" empowerment recommendations, I can't help inviting you to read the above five italicized sentences while looking at yourself in a mirror every day.  See what kind of miracles you can create!

Happy landings, and please tell me all about your adventures.  Better yet, tell yourself...every day.

 

Quick ways to relieve stress

Here are a few quick exercises to relieve stress; my family, friends, and clients have used them with a lot of success.  The beauty is, they are very simple to do and require little in the way of time.

List the past:

Making a list about 'stress' can help you look at it in a different light.  Ask yourself this question to generate your list: If you could let go of any parts of your past, what would you let go of?

Review your list:

Then, study that list because it probably indicates something about your stress-tendencies.  For instance, if you put "money" as your first item and "sports" as your 15th item, you can assume that "money" is more related to your stressful thinking than how well your son's baseball team performs! 

Visualize:

Now take a few deep breaths, close your eyes, and imagine yourself holding up a mirror through which you are able to see whatever inner wounds exist. Now open your eyes and draw a picture of yourself, showing all these different places of woundedness using any colors that you wish.

Locate and Learn:

Now once more go inside yourself. See these places of woundedness, and see how each place seems to connect to a person and/or place which is a part of your past. When you come out, make a list of all the connections you have seen.

The art of repetition:

repetition is powerful as a marketing technique (the average consumer needs to be exposed to something 7 times before they buy it!) and a spiritual technique to relieve stress.  Close your eyes and focus on the meaning of words as you repeat: "I let go".  Say it again, and again, and again.

Have a question about any of these? Feel free to email me and I'll get back to you ASAP.  I can also direct you to additional resources that both my clients and I have found extremely useful.  I've been doing this sort of thing since the late 1980's, and despite how much the world's problems have changed, these methods tend not to!