Stress is Good?

Of course, I am someone who works with the mind and knows the mind can do miraculous things. Sometimes I can forget that it is important to question assumptions underlying our belief systems. For example, I have not questioned the theories on stress. I have read and believed that stress is bad for us all. And of course, if we believe stress is bad for us could stress be otherwise? I say not because our beliefs totally influence our reality.

So, I have not questioned the assumption that stress is bad for us until today when I watched this video. What if the effects of stress fall within the area of mind where placebos also reside. Could stress not be all that stressful if we believe it isn’t? The video below is interesting because it seems that if you don’t believe stress affects you negatively it won’t. Ah, the power of belief.

Consciousness and Energy

For a long time I’ve been wanting to do “energy healing”. I have discovered recently that I can have that integration. I first began energy healing in my late twenties. On and off since then I have been willing to do so while being shy about it. Shy because most people do not grant the existence of energy healing.

Recently I have combined the hypnotherapy (conscious) with the energy with two clients open to the experience. I am writing this because I am now publicly announcing that this integration is available. Both clients reported very positive experiences and I feel this is the future of my service.

I am writing this tonight because one client wrote: “I’m feeling so much better since our appointment. I have energy! Been cleaning and
“Tying up loose ends”. Checking off my list! Of course I keep making new lists!!!”

I am a certified Reiki healer and I have adapted aspects of that modality to blend with my Hypnotherapy and my decades of “Ricki” healing. I am using the cranial sacral method of making contact via gently holding the feet. I have noticed deeper trance states as a result. I’ve also noticed strong lasting post trance benefits.

I am thrilled to merge consciousness and energy into a synergistic powerful healing tool. In my past consciousness and energy was just a concept having to do with manifesting in three dimensional space. Now it is an action.  💜

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The Common Cold

It seemed like the feeling in my head, sinus, and throat could be allergies. But, on the third day there was complete certainty, its a cold. Starve a cold, feed a fever, or so they say. I decided to try a modified version of a remedy that comes from the Edgar Cayce archives. On the hour, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda.  My version is to combine the baking soda with an Airborne as often as I think of doing so. Hour on the hour would be better, I suppose.

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Considering the mental issues with colds is something I must do. Most people believe that a cold lasts about two weeks. In other eras most believed the earth was flat. Truth is an evolving story. The belief in anything has immense power in the life of the believer. (On my News and Studies > page in the medical section, are several interesting articles on placebo studies.)

A belief in a two week recovery period ensures that a two week recovery period will have a much higher probability of extending to two weeks. In essence this is a nocebo effect (opposite of the placebo). When a person believes there is another possibility of rapid recovery, that too has a placebo effect.

The theory that underlies all of this is that our bodies can be between acid or alkaline balance. Alkaline is better because the cold virus does not like alkaline environments. The regular baking soda, combined with a mostly alkaline diet, will change the ph of our body. This is an easy test with ph test paper readily available at most drug stores.
A list of alkaline and acid producing foods here >.
Details behind the science >

It is very helpful to go to bed as soon as you realize you have a cold. Flat on our backs with few distractions some say is the purpose of a cold. To lay there living in our minds for a while between sneezes and blowing of the nose may offer an opportunity for learning something about our lives.

I hope this day finds you well.

Intuition

More than three years ago I had a woman come and see me. She was having trouble with life. We talked for a long time. She rested her feet up on an ottoman between us. I asked her if she would like to go into a trance now and would it be okay if I directed energy into her body by holding her feet. It is the only time I have ever held someone’s feet during a session. (Having a Reiki Healing Certification and being a Minister allows me as a Hypnotherapist to appropriately apply touch and I do so very sparingly.) Our session went well and I think I have seen her once in the many years since.

So, a few months ago a longtime friend said she had talked with this client about that session long ago. I immediately went into a a thought pattern of fear. I was afraid that she may have said my holding her feet during that session was wrong or creepy or something. Being human I do care about what others think of me even though I would like to be free of caring.

captura-de-ecrc3a3-2012-01-02-11-32-40Imagine my surprise when I learned that she had been suicidal at that session and since that session had had no suicidal thoughts. I was very happy about her and a little troubled that I would be worried about being appropriate. I am revisiting this topic because of someone I know having taken her life recently. My experience tells me that truly suicidal people can hide that intent very well, much better than those crying out for help. Without my intuition would this woman of that session years ago still be with us? I don’t know. I do know that she credits that session with her choosing life and that I was compelled to add energy healing with her.

Being a therapist can be a difficult thing. Sometimes people come to simply prove that the last resort, hypnosis, can’t help them either. My intent is to help. It can be difficult to balance the training, theories, and intuition. I see all of us as spinning tops, and most of us wobble off of our centers. We are caught in complex patterns and habits that have recent or distant causes. We are comfortable in the familiarity of those habits and patterns even when they do not serve us well.

At this time in my life, I am considering scaling back my practice or taking a sabbatical, maybe I’ll write, or do more study and research, I am not sure. If we are alive, things are changing. That is true.

As an additional thought, is it possible that happiness is only attainable when we Love Allow And Accept?

Thoughts are Things, Thoughts are symptoms

“Thoughts are things and become crimes or miracles” says my favorite mystic.

According to Louise Hay (I have her book “You Can Heal Your Life”) physical symptoms are evidence of what is going on in your unconscious mind and how you really feel deep inside. I often look at the back of this book to pages of symptoms. Each symptom is connected to an attitude, and these attitudes we have are at the root of our physical problems.

I like to lscoreook at the body as a symphony. Each organ, bone, gland, nervous system, all parts having different unique sounds like the many instruments of the world.When we are in balance with physical nutrients and mental peacefulness, then all is well.

And when we are not we are surely headed for physical imbalance — illness.

 

 

Or you could think of them as each having their own color.

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When attitudes become negative the sounds become flat or sharp, raspy or sharp. The colors become muddied or changed in some way that no longer blends with other colors. I am thinking about this because I see how it happens in us and why we have such difficulty being aware of our creations. And even when someone becomes aware of their creations and the how and why, it is often difficult to create a new and healing habit.

PS  Here is more on this subject. Coincidentally, a Science Alert article was published three days after this blog post.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

“The patterns we predict with the harmonic waves on the human brain can be compared to the musical notes composing a complex musical piece; the building blocks of more complex patterns of brain activity,” said lead author of the study, Selen Atasoy.

“Our results show the shape of the brain matters, in the same way that the… shape of a Stradivarius violin matters if you want to produce an exquisite sound when the strings are vibrated,” added Pearson. “Interestingly, the same kinds of harmonic waves are thought to explain other self-organising phenomena in nature, such as the patterns that sand forms when sitting on a vibrating metal plate, or the development of biological patterns such as the stripes on tigers and spots on leopards.”

You can read the article here >

New Theory of Addiction

It is reasonable to ask about the way we think about addictions. Just take a moment to reflect and you see how pervasive the behavior of addiction is within people. We attribute powers to the substances and behaviors, physiological effects that leave the addicted one helpless in their grasp.

What if none of this is so? What if it is all about human connection? What if human connection is part of an overall pleasant environment, a pleasing home?

A recent study confirms this and it did so by questioning the scientific method used in the original studies with rats. The researchers didn’t consider the “psychological” effect on the rats confined in cages.

Along comes a new study where the rats are given a “Disney Land” environment to live in and now they prefer the water over the drugged water.

The study is interesting.

Read more here >

Meditation

DSC01666v3_700w“Everything about your life is predictable–driven completely by your habits of thought, emotion, and behavior. In fact, you really have only one choice today: Whether or not you will meditate.”

Or, meditate in the presence of someone trained to help you relax mind and body, to interact with your subconscious mind and assist you in changing habits. The hypnotherapist as an advocate for you, and as a means to learn how a deep meditative state feels.

Meditation is something that appears throughout this website. Simply because it is so important in integrating the whole of each person.

Meditation is taught throughout the world and is a tradition in most spiritual and religious traditions (a google search brought up 130,000,000 results. I have a page on this website that shares two meditation techniques. Link>

“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks-to-a-better-brain/

123 Years Old

DSC00743v2Every life has its share of experiences, ever changing, ever emotional. For a while my mind has remembered a story I read about a woman in France who lived to be one hundred and twenty three years old. Now of course, people would ask her for her secret to this long and healthy life. And before telling you the secret, I must add, she smoked, she smoked for about one hundred and ten years.

Her secret was simple, and I paraphrase, if she could not do anything about something that is happening somewhere, she would not stress about it, she would stay calm. I believe her calm allowed her body to be in harmony, to flourish, for a body to flourish, there must be peace.

 

Giving and Receiving

rocks_280wThere is a continuum, a yin and a yang, if you will. And in this continuum we call a universe is the curiosity of our consciousness, our self-awareness, our relationship to all we encounter. And in this relationship we ascribe meaning to everything. We humans appear to be the only beings on this planet that have this capacity.

In that capacity to choose we confirm our free will. We live in continual exercising of free will as we go moment to moment. Moment to moment we effect the creation of ours and others futures from our thoughts, words and actions. Thoughts words and actions create in our bodies emotional responses Those emotional responses within us vary depending on the nature of the thoughts, words, and deeds. We ebb and flow like the seasons.

We search for happiness in many different ways. Happiness is elusive for most. We have wonderful glimpses at varying times in our lives and then it dissipates. Holding on to happiness may seem like holding a gallon of water pouring into our hands. It drains away disappearing into a thirsty earth.

It is not a new theory that giving, helping, being of service is the most certain way to find happiness. It also helps with getting along in this world. A recent New York Times article on an Author and Professor Adam Grant, adds to the happiness factor, the getting ahead factor of giving or “instant karma”. This is an eleven page article http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/magazine/is-giving-the-secret-to-getting-ahead.html

Maybe there is an answer. Enjoy!

Pain

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Emotional pain and attachment to life

October 9th 2012

There is no pain worse than emotional pain. Some news about our selves, our friends, our loved ones, or the story of some stranger having a struggle with life, these evoke strong emotions.

One such emotion is a loss of selfhood. A loss of selfhood occurs throughout life. There are many transitions that contain loss, this category of loss includes; becoming a teenager, graduating school, becoming an adult, becoming a couple, any body issue, and, ultimately the dying process.

Becoming a teenager is the loss of childhood, turning 20, the loss of teenage category. Sometimes the loss is a person and usually begins with the loss of the old and gray, or grandparents, great aunts and uncles. There is sometimes the loss of self due to a dis-ease moving from the formulative state of thought into three dimensional matter. Even a cold or the flu has its origins in the way we think and how that thinking impacts our body.

When some part of us is lost, there is a pause, an unusual state of mind. Our “mind” functions differently. You might call it a trance or shock. Now we apprehend everything differently. Things sound “different”, things seem “different”, the world appears “unreal”. We may come to realizations, we may react in fear, either way, it is an altered experience, that is to say, it is again, “different”.

At any age the threat of loss of some part of our selves is very much a reminder of our eventual passing from earth experience. This happens to all of us. We wear out or rundown, we slow down or pass rapidly, and this is a subject that brings most of us pause.

Every life has changes and challenges and the optimum possible reaction is acceptance. The opposite of acceptance might well be attachment. Acceptance has no fear. No fear means no anxiety, no worry, no anger, no saddness. Acceptance is peace, calm, understanding, farsighted, an expectation that the journey is always leading to greater opportunity to radiate outward these attributes.

How to be accepting with each change and challenge. This is truly the mastery.

Such a mastery is the desire of an inner part of us as we reach for selflessness. Selflessness, the desire to help.