Wendy

I’ve been thinking about Wendy a lot lately.  I met her through a mutual friend 20 years ago, shortly after my daughter was born and I became a mom.   She was very generous with gifts and gave me ornaments and Christmas decorations as the years went by.  We spent many summer days together at the river and ocean, attended lots of birthday parties and other celebrations together.  We took lots of walks.  She was an integral part of my community.

I was really struggling with pelvic pain in those days, especially during my pregnancy with my son and in the year after he was born.  During a particularly rough spot, Wendy referred me to her psychic teacher who had a gift for helping people heal from pain and other physical ailments.  I went to see her psychic, loved her, and studied with her for many years.

At a birthday dinner for Wendy, with just her women friends, she went around the table and said what she appreciated most about each friend.  When she came to me, she said that I was the friend she could talk to about her spiritual beliefs and the psychic perspective of life.  I felt really special and honored.  Later, after I began giving psychic readings, Wendy was a regular client and would often refer her friends to me.  We were sisters on this spiritual pathway and Wendy validated me again and again.

Over three and a half years ago Wendy was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.  I felt privileged when she turned to me for spiritual healing and support.  She died just after Thanksgiving in 2008 at the age of 47.  Before Wendy died I witnessed her heart open immensely.  I witnessed her let down her protection and share her heart with her larger community.  It validated her true spirit and allowed her to deeply connect with people in a way she never had before.

I got to watch up close and personally how Wendy left this life and went into spirit.  This has solidified many of my beliefs and gave me new information about the afterlife and how we are all spiritually connected.  I witnessed moments when she experienced bliss.  In her last few weeks I helped guide her into the bliss of the divine.

It’s from the bliss of the divine that I still feel Wendy’s tremendous support of my own life path.  Her support and my relationship with her is a continuing inspiration to do my own healing work and to offer my expertise as a healer to other people.  The last birthday gift she gave me, a couple of months before she died, was a heart mosaic on a rock with the word “Luv” on it.  I treasure it.  I have a ceramic cup which she painted an angel on.  Another gift is a large ceramic tile hanging above my desk with the picture of a beautiful fairy in a flowing dress cuddling with two white doves.  She said it reminded her of me.  As I begin my path into the year 2012 it’s with Wendy’s gift of continuing inspiration and validation that I walk upon my own path of healing and spiritual work offering it in bigger and more open ways to the world.

These changes can be on the physical, mental,  emotional, or spiritual levels.  Sometimes there is an emotion which just needs to be felt, sometimes it’s a change in my thinking, sometimes it’s a way my body needs to be moved, and sometimes it’s a deeper spiritual connection which needs to be made or the need for bigger changes in my outward life.  I don’t know until I explore it.  My mind can guess at it, but until I connect with it on the level it’s coming from, I can’t know the true message within it.

You might already have a willingness to look at the areas of your life where you are stuck or which could be better.  But it’s easy to get lost in there.  It’s easy to get stuck on the surface or in the outward perspective of it.  It can be so uncomfortable or so in your blind spot that even in your efforts to move closer to it you get scared and then retreat.  We are so used to fleeing from the uncomfortable things.  Our mind tells us it’s dangerous, our body resists, our emotions increase and we get the hell out!  Then you are back where you started without that deeper knowledge about yourself which you know is the key to healing your darkness.

There’s this weird thing you need to know about me.  I like exploring dark places.  I especially like exploring your dark places with you.  And I’m good at it.  I’m an experienced guide.  I have also been guided by my teachers, those who have gone before me, into my own darkness when it was too scary to go there on my own.  I have spent the last 27 years exploring my darkness on all levels and I have been so liberated by my exploration of my own darkness that I am very motivated to guide you in yours, too.  Because it’s in the darkness that you find the buried treasures.  The very thing you are most resisting is the place where you find the most healing.  Nobody else can do it for you, but we can certainly guide you there to find your own nuggets of inspiration to lead you in your right life.

I invite you to allow me to guide you within yourself, to hold the space for you to explore what the darkness holds for you.  My light will help shine the way.  I’m experienced in exploring the dark places, I have lots of awesome tools for unearthing what is hidden, and I promise this is the key to your liberation too!  If you feel inspired to delve into the darkness and you want someone to go with you, contact me for a complimentary 30-minute consultation and we can explore how I can best serve you as your guide.

Connections with family and friends are my priority at Christmas.

I don’t know about you, but I suspect some of you would rather skip Christmas.  I know the feeling.  There is so much about it I would rather not deal with, especially spending money on gifts and taking time decorating.  I just want to do my life without the inconvenience of taking my time to deal with this holiday.  I have dreams of taking a two-week vacation somewhere tropical and completely blowing off Christmas!

Two years ago I took a life coaching telecourse on making Christmas traditions work better for me.  The liberation I found was realizing that I don’t have to carry on the traditions I don’t like.  A lot of what I was doing for Christmas was for my husband and kids.  When it came down to it, I didn’t want to deal with the Christmas tree or decorations.  I didn’t want to do lots of baking or sing Christmas carols or listen to Christmas music.  I especially didn’t want to feel the pressure to buy lots of gifts just because that’s expected.

When my kids were little, being the good mother that I am, I carried along the Christmas tradition for them.  Even though part of me wilted at the prospect of all the shopping (no, I’m not a shopper) and wrapping of gifts (I’d rather be doing something else).  I went ahead and did it anyway because it was expected.  And I had the Christmas depression to go with it.  Because all this fuss did not make me happy.  It triggers me.  It makes me feel like I don’t have enough and I’m not good enough.  It strains my wallet and my energy.  It makes my body hurt.

Two years ago I let it be known that I would not be the one to put up the tree and decorate or put lights up outside.  I would not do holidays traditions just because that’s how it’s always been done or what’s expected.  I would only do the ones I want to because it’s important to me or that I enjoy them.  That year the kids took over getting the tree and doing the decorating.

This year I didn’t even start my Christmas shopping until a week ago!  While shopping on Saturday I felt the old icky feeling of needing to just buy stuff, no matter whether the recipient wants it or not, just so there are more presents under the tree.  I noticed that unsettling and energy sapping feeling that this is not how I want to spend my money or time, not really. That was my clue to get on home.  It also made me take notice and get curious about where that feeling was coming from.

One of the exercises from the Christmas telecourse was to write a paragraph about how I wanted to feel after the holidays.  I read it again and I still want the same feelings.  For me this time of year is about celebrating the return of the daylight and the nurturing of the light within us all.  My intention is to go with the flow, keep my heart open, enjoy the connections with family and friends and have fun.

There’s nothing in my intention about giving the most or best gifts or having the best decorations or spending lots of money.  I will make an effort to get some token gifts to honor the holiday, to enjoy my family and friends and then get on with my real life!  I don’t have to skip or shun the holiday, but I can approach it in the way that feels better for me.

What Christmas traditions get you down and how would they work better for you?  Please share them with me on my blog (click on the comments link under the blog on my website).  And have a great Christmas!

Shine your own uniqueness

I learned a new word this week.  Inimitable – So good or unusual as to be impossible to copy; unique.  In my learning to live my life in a more validating and authentic way, I’ve learned from my teachers their way doing it.  I’ve received three major teachings and in each case I did my best to copy what my teachers were doing successfully in order to find my own success.  Each time I studied hard and long and really applied myself.  I wanted to be my teachers.  I wanted their life.  I thought if I studied and tried hard enough I could master their methods, think and experience life the way they do and then call it my own and be successful like them.

But each time I got to mastery with the methods it fell flat.  I compared myself to my teachers and when I found proof I was not doing it their way or what I could see as their mastery, I fell short.  I had to keep looking to them for the next step and I tried so hard to do it right!  Except even though I was doing everything right, from what I could tell, I could never get it right because I’m not them.  I could never have the same success they have had.

My inner knowing has been nudging me to take everything I have learned, internalize it and present it all in an integrated way that is true for me.  I’ve come to the realization that I am my own unique self and that is how my soul wants expression.  Each of my teachers was expressing herself in her most authentic way.  That is what attracted me to them.  When I try to express myself in the way I observed their expression it comes across as fake or inauthentic and it’s hard for people to believe me and connect with who I really am.  They perceive me as veiled, hidden.  They can’t see a reason to connect with me or even recognize an opportunity to connect with me.  When I hide parts of myself, I can’t connect with people in an authentic way, which feels invalidating to me and to them.

When I come from the place of integration, incorporating all of who I am and what grounds me, coming from my own unique perspective, then I can fully align with myself and I can be seen and validated as well.  By embracing my spiritual beliefs and being open with them, I allow the whole of me, with all my unique qualities to be seen.   In turn, this allows other people to see me and gives them the opportunity to more deeply connect with themselves.   This is where true healing happens.

The Gift

I have a gift I’ve been resisting accepting.  I’ve also been resisting sharing my gift with you.  You see, my gift is all about helping you heal and I haven’t known how to share this aspect of it.  I have resisted because some people can’t relate to or appreciate my gift.  Some people have preconceived notions about whether it’s real or not and some people even think it’s evil.  But I know it’s real and it’s been a huge part of my own healing.

When I was ill with chronic pain, after I tried every other avenue available at the time, one of my dearest friends referred me to her psychic who had a gift for helping people heal their pain.  I went for a reading and learned that I was an out of control psychic healer.  My energy was all over the place, I didn’t have good boundaries and I was unconsciously trying to heal all those in need with my own energy.  That’s a great way to feel like crap and lose yourself!  Thus began my psychic studies.  I was hooked.  I loved this stuff and could not get enough of it.  I stayed a devoted student to my beloved psychic teacher for almost ten years, until she retired from teaching.

My gift is that I can read energy.  I can look at people psychically and read their energy (with their permission) around different aspects of their lives.  I get images and describe them and, if appropriate, I tell them how they can work with their own energy so they can have a better experience, be more comfortable in their bodies, clean up stuck energy and align with who they really are.  Everybody is intuitive and anybody can learn to work consciously and correctly with energy.  I almost cringe to call it psychic because that word seems to mean so much more and has such a stigma to it that I don’t relate to.

Behind every illness or discomfort there is an energetic property.  When we can get the message of what that’s about, then we can take concrete steps to address it.  Sometimes it’s a simple as getting the message, other times there are emotions which need to felt, and other times there are agreements that need to be changed.  One way to work with that energy is to recognize its source and to make conscious changes to how we want to relate to it.  This can bring tremendous relief and freedom on all levels: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

I’m in the process of integrating my energy reading skills with life coaching and mind-body coaching skills.  I’m brain-storming on ways to best offer this integrated approach.  Be on the look out for my future class offerings where I will teach you how to get the messages from your own body, clean up your energy, be more connected to yourself and others and create peace and balance in your life.

What I noticed was my  body tensed up in habitual places and created pain and discomfort.  It’s almost like my body has a mind of its own and I have no control over it.  I can intend to go with the flow and be comfortable, let family and events be what they are, no problem.  But my body has another agenda.  It automatically goes into protect mode when I subconsciously sense other people’s discomfort.

These are subconscious survival habits.  We learn these survival habits when we are quite young.  Survival habits are also called protection.  As small children we learn to hold our bodies in certain ways so that we stay out of harm’s way or to be ready to protect ourselves.  Those of us who are very sensitive to other people’s energy will feel other people’s fear, anger or sadness or other forms of discomfort and it activates our fight, flight or freeze response.  Most of the time we can’t fight or flee so we freeze.  This creates muscle tension which can result in pain, fatigue or other discomfort or illness.  What is happening at the visceral level is we feel the tension in those closest to us which our bodies translate as fear because we sense from them there is something wrong sending us into high alert ready to defend ourselves from the fearful thing.

But really the fearful thing is not a life or death situation we need to be ready for.  It’s just stress someone else is feeling and that doesn’t concern our lives at all except that we are in the same room with these people.  However our body and emotions don’t know that.  We just know that someone is feeling fearful or defensive or uncomfortable and we react to that by being fearful and defensive too.  Nobody is at fault here. This is just an automatic learned response coming up in our bodies that’s not working for us anymore.

How can you do it different?  Start by noticing how you reacted and why.  Decide you want to do it different and practice it (and practice it and practice it).  Limit the time you spend in situations you’re not comfortable in.  Have an escape plan.  Give  yourself permission to leave early.

In the mean time, at home, practice having a space around your body  that’s yours to be comfortable in.  Your personal space is an arm’s distance all the way around your body.  Imagine your protection outside your body around the perimeter of that personal space rather than inside your body.  This is an energetic protection.  Remind yourself that there’s nothing to be afraid of in the present moment.  Your life is not at risk.  You’re just sensing someone else’s tension.  It has nothing to do with you, you don’t have to fix it, they can have it.  Imagine sending other people’s energy back to them with your love and pull your own energy in so it doesn’t mingle with theirs, but you can stay open in your heart with unconditional love.

If you feel muscle tension in your body you can consciously relax it.  Feel the physical sensations in your own body, feel yourself breathing, be in the moment, feel your own peace, comfort and softness.  Know that there is nothing threatening you. Be conscious about what you agree to and don’t agree to and review it with yourself before hand.  If appropriate you can state your intentions to your family in a kind and loving way.

If you practice staying in your own safe space with your energy by imagining and feeling it  you can more easily do the same when you get around people and situations that feel uncomfortable for you.  For the rest of the holidays, be aware of how you are feeling while you’re with family and at other social gatherings and if you feel uncomfortable, remember to practice the new way of being where you can comfortably be who you are without triggering those old survival habits.

My inner elephant

We’re all pretty familiar with doubt.  It tends to come up when we go into new territory.  There is so much we don’t know when we step outside our comfort zone of what is known.  It’s so new and it doesn’t feel safe. We find ourselves asking “Who do you think you are?”  Doubt is a hidden expectation that you can’t do something.  It’s also a sign that you’re in uncharted territory and your automatic protection is coming up to help keep you safe.

But what feels unsafe to your protection might not really be unsafe.  It just feels like that thing your parents warned you about or the fear that you picked up from them or it feels like that previous experience you had as a kid that you didn’t know how to handle.  So you created energetic protection, which can feel like uncomfortable emotions, muscle tension,  pain or just a feeling of being off.

The practice for doubt is to find out why it’s coming up before you let it dictate your life.  When doubt came up for me recently I first became aware of it with thoughts that were questioning my decisions and actions.  Then I felt the uncomfortable emotions which came along with those thoughts.  I identified them as anger, fear and a feeling of vulnerability.  I wasn’t sure what it meant and I wasn’t ready to take any action yet, so I just stayed with allowing these emotions to be present and to be aware of the thoughts surrounding them.  It went on for days and started to feel like depression.

Of course I wanted to get out of it, for it to stop, but the action my doubt was calling for was not what I wanted to do.  So I just stayed with it and coached myself around it.  What I have found is that I can’t rush the process of making the discomfort go away.  It’s by going into and through the discomfort that I am able to identify what it’s all about, get some clarity and then be able to release the discomfort as well as know what appropriate action to take.

Through self coaching I realized that I was trying to do new activities in an old way and that just didn’t feel good and was not working for me.  As I consciously let go of the old way, I updated my grounding and set new intentions about the new way.

Then, with some help from two life coaching buddies, I discovered the struggle that was going on inside of me.  I had “the trainer” who was trying to make my body, which I imagined in the image of an elephant, do tricks, which felt degrading.  I laughed because it was like I was a whore, selling my body, turning tricks for a profit, which certainly doesn’t resonate with being in my power center.

The trainer represented the voice of authority inside me who is connected with my social self and my father’s expectations of me.  The emotion was anger and fear with some sadness and was attached to my teenage rebel self who objected to having to do what my father wanted me to do in the way he wanted it done.  Once I became aware of this inner struggle I was able to understand what was going on and why and then I could see how to get those three parts of me to come together as a team and work towards the same goal.

The result was tremendous relief and a clear sense of direction!  The uncomfortable emotions subsided, the muscle tension released and I had a clear vision of what action steps to take next.  I was able to let go of what my social self (the trainer) thought was the safe path by letting go of doing “tricks” the way I see other people doing it.  That’s just not authentic and I get to do it my way.  I got the trainer on board by letting her ride the elephant and give gentle advice for where to go next instead of being in front of the elephant with a whip trying to tame it.  I get to move in the direction of fun and play while I integrate all of who I am and all of my experiences to set a clear foundation for my next creative steps to be done in a new, more resonant way and which my essential self can get really excited about.

So next time doubt comes up, take some time to feel it, examine what it’s about, ask why it’s coming up for you and how it’s here to help you.  Once you fully understand how it’s here to serve you, you can move on into clear action.  If you get stuck, reach out for help.  There are lots of people who would love to help you, including me!

A nice cup of tea

What I love about a cup of tea are the feelings associated with it.  There’s comfort in it.  It warms me inside.  It slows the pace of the day.  It takes me into a moment of rest.

I must admit that I’m the daughter of English parents.  I started drinking tea as a toddler when my mother would add a bit of black tea to my milk bottle at my insistence.  Whenever there was an upset, my mom would make us a nice cup of tea to help us feel better.  If we were cold we would have a cup of hot tea to warm us up and if we were hot we had a cup of hot tea to cool us down (not sure how that works).

A nice cup of tea is a symbol of love, comfort and connection.  As a kid I drank tea with milk and sugar at least three times a day.  We’d have tea with breakfast, in the afternoon after school, and after dinner.  Tea drinking was a daily ritual I shared with my family.  What goes even deeper is the association of warm, sweet milky tea with mother’s milk and the love, comfort, nourishment and connection of breast-feeding.

I didn’t drink any tea for many years because I associated it with irritable bladder syndrome (urinary frequency and urgency).  What I know now is tea did not cause my bladder issues.  It was the muscle tension created by my resistance to feeling emotions and the resulting myofascial pain which referred pain into my bladder area.  Even when I was off of tea for health reasons, I drank hot water and felt a similar comfort in it.  When I was well enough to add black tea back to my diet, I felt like my old self again.

Now at breakfast I drink loose leaf organic black tea with no milk or sugar made in my infuser tea-pot (with the tea cozy my mom knitted on it) in a porcelain teacup and saucer.  In the afternoon I have a cup of green tea or decaffeinated black tea in a mug.

For me, a nice cup of tea holds love, comfort, connection and rest.  It’s a daily ritual which brings my awareness into my body in present time.  It allows me to pause the day for a few moments to slow down and gather my energy before more activity.

I’m interested to hear how you bring comfort into your day and what it means for you.  Please share with me by clicking on the comments link below!

Learn to appreciate the peace and beauty in each moment.

You are frustrated.  Fear is coming up.  Your body hurts.  Your mind is racing and spinning stories.  You are discontented, not wanting to be here right now.  The thing that you want so bad feels out of reach.  You don’t want to feel how you are feeling right now.  You are second guessing your decisions or actions.  If only you could get that thing you really want, you would feel better.

Do you recognize yourself in any of the following stories?:

• If only I had the guy and was in a committed relationship I would be happy.
• If only the pain would go away, I would be content.
• If I just had the right job, I would be okay.
• If I could just lose a few pounds, then I would feel good about myself.
• If my kid would just do what I say, I could stop worrying about him and relax.
• If I could just get to that goal, I could prove myself and I’d be okay.
• If I could be who everyone else wants me to be I would be secure.
• If my husband would just tell me he loves me more, I wouldn’t be so needy.
• If it wasn’t raining I wouldn’t be so depressed.
• If I had just passed the test, I could be at peace with myself.
• If I just had more money, I would be happy.
• If I could just fix myself I would feel really good.

But would you really feel better?  When you get there, will there be some other thing in the future that you are thinking about and wanting  that will keep you from being who and where you really are right now?

In all our striving we can forget to just be present with who we are and where we are right now.  Our fears totally come up when we are worrying about getting to our goal out there in the future and we forget to appreciate the moment.

We get so caught up in what is not happening, or what we are experiencing right now is not happening how we planned it, that it disconnects us from ourselves in our current experience.  Our mind can totally hijack us out of right now.  The mind is so astute at writing stories about something out in the future being so much better than here.  There is always something that needs to be improved upon before we will be satisfied.

The problem is, if you even get to your dream that you believe will complete you, that feeling doesn’t last.  It’s just a moment in time and then things change again.  That planned happy moment doesn’t last, or maybe it didn’t even happen.  Or it happened, but you didn’t feel the way you expected.

You’re probably getting my drift by now, that when you are disconnected from the present moment with future thinking or resisting feeling your emotions in your current experience because it doesn’t feel good, you are not fully present.  When you are telling the story of woe over and over, you are kicked out of being fully present right now.

When you are engaging in future thinking, it’s common to have fear come up because since you aren’t there yet, you don’t have all the information and you can’t predict everything, so it can feel scary.  The practice is to wait until you get there and trust that in the moment when you have all the information you will know what to do.

A simple way to come back to present is to feel your body.  The body is always in present time.  It’s the mind that gets out into the future or back into the past.  Sit or stand in a comfortable position and close your eyes (if you can safely).  Feel yourself breathing.  Become hyper aware of your breath moving in and out of your body and how it moves your body.  Then focus on your feet and feel them get really heavy, feel the physical sensations of your feet and feel your connection to the earth through your feet.  Then feel your hands and  get extra sensitive with your feeling sensations in your hands.  Note what temperature they are and feel what they are touching, feel that you have energy in your hands.  Then bring your awareness to your breathing, feet and hands all at the same time for a few breaths.  After you’ve had some practice with this you will feel calmer, more focused and relaxed in the moment.  The practice is to keep focusing back to the here and now.  It’s the only place we can ever be.

Do you have other ways of bringing your awareness back to now?  I’d love to have you share them with me by clicking the “comments” link below this post.

It’s a good practice to check in with your body and find out if it has any information about why you have the discomfort.  I have ample evidence that this is effective because of my own pain relief and as well as other people’s.  It puts the power back in my hands to allow me to make changes my body feels good about.

Recently I checked in with my body about the recurring problem of my hands going numb while I sleep.  I wake up in the night and feel like I’m wearing a skin glove as I clench and unclench my fist to get the feeling to come back.  I’m sure this has something to do with my chronically tight muscles and myofascial pain syndrome.  I could freak out, go see the doctor and do something drastic to make it go away, which may or may not work.

Instead, I checked in with my body to find the energetic message about the numb hands.  I’ve been practicing this type of mind-body inquiry for pelvic pain and other discomfort for a while, but I hadn’t used it for this before.

What I found out from my numb hands was I have been somewhat disconnected from my creative flow, which is represented by my hands.  Once I re-establish my own creative flow and feel my power to create and connect I can teach this to other people too.  They way to practice this is to consciously connect my hands with my creativity and feel it, believe it, do it, own it.  In the meditation I imagined my hands with a mist of rainbow energy moving out of the fingers.  I brought this wisdom into my day by setting the intention that I would feel the creative energy in my hands and own it as I create.

Rather than thinking of my numb hands as needing to be fixed I perceive it as a message from my body about how to relate to it and as a result, I’m empowered to see myself in a better, integrated, more expanded way.  The information put me back into my confidence and power, and out of the fight or flight response which is created by worry, calmed my mind and body, and made for a much better day!

If you are curious about how to identify the causes behind your pain and discomfort, contact me for your complimentary 30 minute consultation and learn how I can support you in your healing.