Has someone or something needled you lately?

What hidden truths about yourself did your reaction reveal?

Inner sensitivities can be powerfully provoked by the jab of an unwelcome goad.

Feeling needled can trigger painful reflexes.

That’s because what needles you the most is often what you most need to learn.

The person or issue causing you the greatest discomfort is time and again the essential pinprick that stimulates your deeper self-growth.

You hamper your own growth by hostility towards to the very needling that can teach you more about yourself.

Well, an annual celebration in Japan today offers some unusual encouragement.

Translated into English as the Festival of Broken Needles, Hari Kuyo is a memorial service for broken, rusty, and otherwise worn-out needles held on February 8 (or December 8, depending on the region).

Discarded needles and pins are brought to shrines and temples where they are blessed for the years of usefulness they provided.

They are then stuck into a slab of tofu and released from service.

Hari Kuyo traditionally celebrates the day when seamstresses in Japan were permitted to enjoy a rare holiday from their daily duties.

The softness of tofu absorbs, not only the sharpness of needles, but also the pent-up sorrows of a life spent sewing for survival.

Hari Kuyo presents the opportunity for a moment of relaxation and gratitude:

A welcome awareness that a life filled with needles might not be so hard after all.

Sticking needles into tofu symbolizes a shift in perception that transforms your habitual reaction to the provocations that needle you.

Whenever you take what needles you personally, you amplify your pain.

Your life lesson becomes that much more difficult.

But habits are simply energetic responses that have settled into fixed patterns.

Changing the vibrational frequency changes the pattern.

This change in frequency starts with a shift in your perception.

How would it be if you stick what needles you into soft tofu?

Rather than be goaded yet again into your habitual response, you choose instead the softness of acceptance.

As the needling finds its mark within, you bless it for the hidden truth it triggers.

You thank the pinprick that stirs an unresolved issue into your conscious awareness.


I am not a seamstress, but Japanese acupuncture is part of the energy medicine and spiritual healing services at Energy Doorways.

The two photos show used acupuncture needles in tofu, along with some colorful Japanese pins.

Receiving acupuncture treatment is another way of transmuting the stab of needles into a positive experience that redefines the flow of your energy patterns.


By accepting and thanking what needles you, you free yourself from the perspectives that confine you.

Your hidden truths can surface to transform your pain.

Like the participants in Hari Kuyo today, you hold the power to release the fixed patterns and worn-out needles that no longer serve you.

So next time someone or something needles you, why not have some inner tofu ready?

The wound is the place where the light enters you – Jelalludin Rumi

Today I would like to invite you to join my Mount Fuji Energy Resonance, a distant healing event I am presenting free from Yamanashi, Japan.

Many of my blog readers and newsletter subscribers feel drawn to personally contributing to healing vibrations in Japan in the wake of last year’s 9.0 magnitude earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident.

By collectively sharing Mount Fuji Energy Resonance, my vision is that we can join together distantly not only for vibrational energy within Japan, but also for unfolding and amplifying our inner healing energies.

In more than 20 years of energy work in Japan, I have experienced firsthand the special vibrations supporting me in the healing services I offer in my private sessions and teaching courses here at the foot of Mount Fuji.

Through distant resonance with these powerful earth energies I hope you, too, can more deeply access your own creative and spiritual energies in 2012.

Let the beauty we love be what we do – Jelalludin Rumi

MOUNT FUJI ENERGY RESONANCE

What is it?
A collective distant healing event presented free by Catrien Ross in Japan

When is it?
February 8, 2012
Mount Fuji Resonance will be presented at three different times to accommodate world time zones. The actual event will last about 15 minutes, each time.

Who can join?
Modern mystics, healers, energy workers, and anyone, anywhere, who feels drawn to being part of Mount Fuji vibrational energies at this time.

How can I join?
To register your long distance participation and to receive Mount Fuji Energy Resonance preparation exercises, please email the following information to info@energydoorways.com

Your Full Name
Your Email
Your Country
Your Preferred Time (Please choose your time from ①②③ below):

① February 8, at noon, Tokyo Time
② February 8, at 2 pm, Tokyo Time
③ February 8, at 8 pm, Tokyo Time

Why join?
May this shared moment of Mount Fuji Energy Resonance ground and expand our vibrational energies in 2012 for healing not only Japan, but also ourselves.

As we move into the new year with grateful awareness, please accept this Mount Fuji Energy Resonance event as a little healing gift from me at Energy Doorways in Yamanashi, Japan.

With love from the foot of Mount Fuji.

Catrien Ross
Energy Doorways
January 28, 2012

Did your dragons stir in you today?

As the Year of the Dragon begins in 2012, how many of you are unleashing inner dragons you have so far restricted or ignored?

Is their unruly roar now spurring you to reexamine your values and how you live your life?

What energies do you sense arising as you become more dragon aware?

In Japan, it is difficult to deny the existence of dragons – they are everywhere you turn.

Gushing water at shrines, enlivening the wooden beams and ceilings of temples, snaking across kimono silks.

Their ubiquitous presence expresses the dynamic shift at the heart of any creative or spiritual endeavor.

Unlike the dragons of Western lore, benevolent Asian dragons symbolize nature’s innate intelligence and regenerative resilience.

Perceived as the bringer of welcome rains, the dragon is also associated with auspicious unfolding, personal power, and creative abundance.

The pearl of wisdom clasped within the dragon’s claw offers seekers a key to inner knowing and contentment.

Wingless, serpentine dragons traverse the clouds, untrammeled in their freedom, inspiring us likewise to transcend our limitations.





The above photos show my close friend here in Yamanashi, the potter, Tosetsu-san.

Thirty-five years ago the appearance of dragons in her dreams compelled her to commit her life to clay and giving form to dragon inspiration.

Today, at the foot of Mount Fuji, she still perfects her craft – an intricate pottery weave that has become her trademark, along with a dignity of dragons found in temples and private collections all over Japan (for information about her pieces contact info@energydoorways.com).

Tosetsu-san and her dragons embody proof of the enormous power you access when you tap your own courage and passion.

Showcasing this wonderful friend today on my Energy Doorways blog is a perfect celebration of the Year of the Dragon’s arrival in 2012.

If dragons represent our deepest fears and desires, then freeing them begins the miracle of transformation.

As your inner dragons stir in you today, are you brave enough to listen?

Have you ever listened to a tree drink water?

Putting your ear to the trunk of this old Japanese oak, you can hear water being drawn up from the roots.

In the aftermath of last year’s 9.0 magnitude earthquake, my leaning into this tree, feeling its life force, helped my body recover from its physical disorientation.

Even before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, followed by the nuclear accident, several life-changing situations had arisen for me in Japan.

Then what was a triple tragedy for so many Japanese people served only to highlight those personal changes even more vividly.

In the most profound sense, something has forever shifted.

So much of what seemed to matter no longer matters so much.

How do you ground yourself when the ground beneath your feet is shifting?

If you can, you seek a more supportive direction, a more solid orientation.

One key is simply to celebrate being alive.

To know that your own life energies are available to empower you.

To sense that, akin to the old Japanese oak, water and blood course through you, supporting and sustaining you.

Since March 11, more than ever I appreciate being in Yamanashi, also known as the home of Mount Fuji, in what for me is the heart center of Japan.

How often do you acknowledge the influence of your environment on the personality you express?

For more than 15 years my outer and inner worlds have been shaped by living in the foreign culture I encounter here at the foot of Mount Fuji.

What I am become today is deeply connected to the cycles and rhythms of my daily life in the countryside of Yamanashi.

The Japanese oak in the photo is a quercus crispula in the midst of an ancient beech forest hidden in Aokigahara, or “sea of trees.”

For some, Aokigahara is a pathway into death – it is now a notorious suicide location.

For others, its hidden attractions are perceived as a continued source of inspiration and recovery.

In your response to life’s situations and events you reveal who you are.

This Energy Doorways blog is bilingual, published in both English and Japanese.

The Japanese blog features the activities of Energy Doorways in Japan, such as healing, teaching, and publishing.

The English blog is my means of sharing insights and inspirations from living in Yamanashi, and the personal growth lessons learned.

Since March 11 last year Japan has survived more than 6,700 aftershocks.

Things are shaking still.

What one person learns about evolving through challenges can be shared across cultures and borders.

Yamanashi, with its stunning natural beauty, has been the physical location underpinning my life lessons so far.

My hope is that what inspires me from the foot of Mount Fuji will inspire you, too.

Meantime, what are your own hopes for recovery and personal growth in 2012?

There have been deep changes, some of them very difficult, in our lives here in Japan.

Many of you who visit this blog regularly have been warmly supportive, even writing me personal emails just to stay in touch.

I appreciate this so much.

You have provided a touchstone for me during these thorny months.

One major shift is the focus of company activities at Energy Doorways.

There is renewed creative direction – a disassembling and regeneration.

And a reenergized commitment.

I will begin posting again soon, and will also be starting a more personal blog.

So I hope you will enjoy visiting again when you have time.

Today I just want to express my appreciation to all of you for hanging in there with me.

Thank you for holding me through the long silence.

Catrien Ross
September 20, 2010

Almost 1,500 years ago, Japanese samurai began perfecting the form of horseback archery known as yabusame (yah-boo-sah-meh).

On this sun-after-rain afternoon, beneath a glistening, snow-capped Mount Fuji, I join the yabusame festival my rural community has celebrated for over nine centuries.

Every year, on the April 29 national holiday, mounted archers display their martial art at Lake Kawaguchi, a three-minute walk from the front entrance of Energy Doorways, the Japanese publishing company I established here.

After a ritual ceremony at the nearby shrine, male and female archers ride out in measured procession towards the lakeshore.

Their finery replicates 13th century formal hunting costume – jaunty hats, deerskin chaps, jewel tone silks, black velvet chest protectors embroidered with gold crests, and soft leather shoes that slip into stirrups shaped like oversized, decorated slippers.

And, of course, the elegant, recurve bow, one of the longest in the world.

Although many in the West are familiar with the mystique of the Japanese sword, early samurai defined their warrior creed as The Way of the Bow and Horse.

Yabusame echoes that lost era of thundering hooves and singing arrows.

Conditions this year are especially challenging.

Morning rehearsals under heavy rain have churned the dirt track to mud, and a ferocious wind gusts.

Galloping at full tilt each archer readies the arrow for aim at targets spaced along the narrow track.

In successive rounds these are replaced with ever smaller targets – a bulls-eye board, then a wooden square, finally a suspended clay pot.

Since the archer needs both hands to load the arrow, draw the bow, and shoot, the horse is controlled with the knees, implying total trust between rider and animal.

At the precise moment of aim, the archer raises the body, twisting the bow at full draw, and releases the arrow with a special shout meant to align energy and intention.

Even in these unfavorable circumstances, with some horses slipping and arrows blown off course, several archers achieve the satisfying thwack of targets soundly hit.

Yet yabusame is not a vying for the title of the best archer.

Traditional training taught discipline, focus, and finesse.

Breathing practice harmonized mind and body under the most intense pressure, allowing the horse archer to overcome doubt and fear.

Imbued with spiritual significance, the martial art accorded respect to the divine, natural cycles, and human skill in delighting the gods.

Can such aspirations have any relevance in today’s world?

I invite you to share your thoughts about the following personal growth inspiration I gleaned from this year’s horseback archery event.

Yabusame-Inspired Actions

Identify exactly what and where your target is.

Execute every step necessary to support your aim.

Become really good at what you want to do.

Root your efforts in confidence and spiritual purpose.

Display your flair by dressing for the part.

Go all out, galloping at full tilt.

Face hostile situations with equanimity.

Recognize that authentic action yields its own reward.

Trust what carries you forward.

Celebrate the moment as all there is.

Yabusame-Inspired Lessons

It’s not about competing with others.

It’s about being the best only you can be in the present.

It’s not about winning applause.

It’s about dancing with your unique abilities and talents.

It’s not about taking home the prize.

It’s about reflecting harmony, prosperity, and shared abundance.

Yabusame-Inpsired Insights

Be what you are:

Express your passion with your true colors flying.

Act with courage:

Hitting your target requires your initial willingness to try.

Adjust your attitude:

Adverse conditions are simply that – your real test is how you respond.

Discover your inner power:

True aim arises from the certainty of centered stillness.

See the bigger picture:

When your arrow misses the mark, sense the gods are smiling anyway.

Show gratitude:

Appreciate your horse and trust teamwork – each one needs and helps the other.

Be bold:

Leave the crowds gasping with astonishment at your bravado.

Live fully, live well:

Look back and say, “I had a great ride.”

How do you feel about hitting your target at full gallop?

What other comments would you like to share?

When Gail Brenner at A Flourishing Life invited me to take part in her collaborative blog project I felt honored and thrilled to accept.

The result is four women bloggers – three in the US and myself in Japan – each sharing our thoughts today on “Getting Unstuck.”

Working with one another has been a joy of united effort and interwoven connections.

Just as we are all sustained by the greater web of life, this project has affirmed the power of mutual support that can enlighten the worldwide web.

Moving clockwise from the bottom left of the photo the bloggers are:

Tara Sophia Mohr – Wise Living

Gail Brenner – A Flourishing Life

Robin Easton – Naked in Eden Blog

Catrien Ross – Energy Doorways

To read more about “Getting Unstuck” please click on the above links.

Letting Go of Loss

Someone you loved is gone.

Something you needed is no longer there.

Your heroic commitment has faded into failure.

The foundations of your existence lie crumpled beneath you.

You surrendered solutions long ago and your answer ahead seems impossible to fathom.

What remains?

Today, there is nothing and no-one.

There is only you.

Out of pain and disillusionment you admit all you once cherished is indeed lost.

Faced with emptiness, you breathe into your untapped courage.

You discover that in grasping nothing you are now free to embrace everything.

You are getting unstuck.

Letting Go of Masks

So you peel off your myriad masks to reveal the face you knew before your outer world was made.

For the first time in years you understand who looks back at you in the mirror.

You are this one genuine face.

Yet what your features reflect may be too much for those you meet.

Some will gasp, dismayed.

Others will shrink back, embarrassed by what you now expose.

Even your closest family and friends might retreat.

In your clarity of recognition you observe yourself fronting this face, no matter how discomforting.

You are compelled above all else to be the face of what you truly are.

You are getting unstuck.

Letting Go of Maps

You step around a sudden curve and the contours of your inner life open into unfamiliar territory.

You realize the poles have shifted and your compass no longer points your true direction.

Your former maps are useless.

Disoriented in place and time you can confirm only uncertain and difficult terrain around you.

What happened to the paths you once traveled?

Where do you go from here?

Mapless, you have only your intuition to guide you.

Now you must trust the honesty of your own emerging senses.

The way the land lies: how the sun falls; where the water flows.

Now you must deepen awareness of what is real in yourself and what you love.

You test your footing on fresh ground that has never been walked before.

You expand into the unknown, an authentic explorer at last.

You are getting unstuck.

Letting Go of Limits

You long to cry rivers, but your eyes burn parched as desert sands.

Your heart extends in natural connection, but your rhythms are stifled.

You yearn to share your essence with others, but you dim your response.

Your mouth fills with the truth of what you are, but you silence your song.

And then your energy shifts.

You find yourself letting go, little by little, of limits that define and constrain you.

You are getting unstuck.

Letting Go of Aloneness

Your lone voice echoes in the mountains.

A wind, too, blows through the canyon.

Birds together sing the oneness of spring.

Rain lifts in singular purpose from the Earth’s living waters.

You accept your own reconnection as a journey of transformation and compassionate wisdom.

Year after year, you have tuned and repaired this instrument you are.

Now you are become the music of your life.

And your true melody is thrumming.

So you play and you sing and you leap and you laugh and you touch and you cry and you sense and you know and you thrill with delight and you nurture with joy and you dance with inspired abandon in the landscapes of your soul’s desire.

You are getting unstuck.

Are you getting unstuck by gently letting go?

Please share your thoughts and experiences.

I just did.

Something here in Japan knocked the smile out of my life for several days.

So engulfing was the personal trauma I found it hard to sense even the slightest hint of brightness.

I lost my smile.

My innermost wisdom knows, of course, that such perception of darkness is distorted.

There can always be a doorway out to where a smile signals.

No matter how darkly I perceive my world, the reality of daylight arises in my face every morning to challenge me otherwise.

In visible manifestation, the sun appears whether or not I choose to appreciate its presence.

The light arrives in welcome regardless of my acceptance.

Embracing natural rhythms is like blinking myself out from the dimness of a self-restricting cave.

As my physical eyes open to outer realities, my inner vision, too, expands with renewed awareness.

I smile despite myself.

Once again I sense that no matter what unfolds, I need never trap myself in a shell of hardness and unfeeling that shuts out the light.

Something traumatic happened: This is a fact.

Let it flow through me.

All is darkness and sorrow: This is a perception.

Let it fall from me.

So today, please share my meditation on finding 9 powerful meanings in your smile when you don’t feel like smiling.

What the power of your S-M-I-L-E can do:

Stretch-My-Inner-Love-Energy
Smiling stretches muscles that lift your face, instantly stimulating your inner joy.

Start-My-Internal-Life-Engine
Smiling gets you going when your life rhythms are at their lowest ebb, releasing your energetic flow.

See-Miracles-In-Life’s-Environment
Smiling helps you perceive the world through new eyes, reconnecting your sense of wonder and gratitude.

Spark-Motivation-Into-Limitless-Enthusiasm
Smiling spurs you to begin again, reigniting the innermost fire that fuels your visions.

What the power of your S-M-I-L-E can be:

Simple-Mindfulness-Inviting-Life’s-Embrace
Sometimes you smile because things are just what they are, and through all of it, life is good.

Splendid-Magnificence-Illuminating-Love’s-Essence
Sometimes you smile because such compassionate generosity suffuses the heart of love.

Shared-Moments-Inspiring-Laughter’s-Expression
Sometimes you smile because good feelings tickle links to the best of yourself and community.

Special-Magic-Invoking-Luminous-Enchantment
Sometimes you smile because sudden knowledge stirs awareness of extraordinary dimensions.

Your S-M-I-L-E contains unique significance and the energy of transformation:

So-Make-It-Last-Eternally
If a bell can reverberate forever in the universe, why not your smile, too?

Are you finding powerful meanings in your smile when you don’t feel like smiling?

Please share your thoughts and let’s S-M-I-L-E together!

Where intention goes, energy flows.

In a future post I will expand this idea within the context of Oriental Medicine’s 5,000 years of applied knowledge about the body’s energy cycles.

But today I offer a simple exercise that demonstrates the link connecting your mind, your real power of intention, and your energy flow.

Have fun with what I call Stretching Your Potential:

Stretching Your Potential

• Stand or sit comfortably.
• Look at the palms of your hands.
• At the bottom of your palm, where your hand joins the wrist, is a horizontal line that resembles a baseline, as it were, of your palm.
• Place your hands together in prayer position, exactly mirroring the position of this baseline, one palm against the other.
• Look at your fingers.
• You will see that either your left or right hand is slightly shorter than the other.
• Separate your hands.
• Focus your attention totally on your shorter hand.
• Say, either within your mind or aloud, “My fingers are longer, my fingers are longer.”
• Mentally direct your power of intention into your shorter hand.
• Take a deep breath in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth.
• Repeat the words, “My fingers are longer, my fingers are longer.”
• Now place your palms together again as you did before, exactly mirroring the baseline.
• Look at your fingers.

What do you find?

Are you surprised?

Focusing your attention stimulates the real power of your intention to direct your own energy.

What holds true for this simple exercise is equally true for the more difficult tasks you set yourself.

You already have within you all the power you need to manifest your intentions.

It is that straightforward.

It is that authentic.

You can direct your energy flow exactly as you want, at any moment in your life.

Whether your goal is immediate or long-term, stretching your potential is powerfully and relevantly possible.

How do you feel about this simple exercise?

Do you notice anything different about yourself afterwards?

And knowing your intention is a real power already within you, how else will you stretch your potential from now?

I welcome your reactions, so please join the discussion with your comments.

Have a wonderful day stretching your potential!

How about you?

Are you alert to the vibrations reviving your passion and purpose?

Spring flowers broadcast frequencies that sing to your indifference, stirring you with renewed motivation.

Their vibrations spur your spirit’s shift from winter rhythms to the freshness of enlightened inspiration.

Spring also awakens you to the rippling of a myriad sentient beings.

Your sensory experience, encountered in every breath, defines you, reflects you, confirms you and supports you.

In the same way, the vibrations you broadcast reach outwards to affect each person you meet and each circumstance around you.

You live in a sea of vibration that resonates in your cells, informing your DNA and transforming your choices.

You do not know when vibrations arrive from afar to influence you.

You do not know how widely your own vibrations reach.


Manifestation taps the power of this vibrational continuum.

Your first impulse for creation takes shape within its energetic vortex.

Where intention goes, energy flows.

Your intentions unleash creative changes in the energy field that surrounds you.

Positive intentions combined with positive actions excite energy to move in desired directions.

Why should this be so?

Is it because the underlying principle of the universe is the joy of co-creation?

Is it because you share accountability for expressing the abundance of this creative intelligence?

Spring flowers flaunt their splendor, unabashed in their magnificence.

How about you?

Do you celebrate the forms and colors of your personality and character?

Do your dreams astonish with their boldness?

Do you unfurl your talents to a delighted world?

As spring vibrations quicken within you, how are you reviving your passion and purpose?

In Japan, I welcome the ripples of your response.