Living Energy Blog

“A Message from 2011: I am unused, unspotted and without blemish. I stretch before you three-hundred-and-sixty-five days long. I will present each day in its turn, a new leaf for you to place your imprint. I am the New Year. Each hour of every day, I will give you sixty minutes that no one has experienced before. White and pure I present them; it remains for you to fill them with sixty jeweled seconds of love, hope, endeavor, patience and trust. I am the New Year, I am here. Make me your best creation. HAPPY NEW YEAR from the year 2011. ”

From Carol Ann Ciocco
website: www.threemoonocean.com

1) Resolve to do something positive for yourself regularly. 

 Think about what makes you the happiest and most joyful.  What are you doing during these times?  What can you do to create this feeling on a regular basis?   Think about the situations that make you the happiest, make a list, keep it handy, refer to it often and consciously choose to create more of these situations next year.  Commit to do something nice for yourself every day!

 2) Give thanks often. Gratitude nourishes your soul. 

 Giving thanks sets energetic patterns in motion that help create more of the same.  When you express gratitude, you move into a feeling of love and away from fear.  When you are in a state of love, you are open to receiving more of the same.  You can even give thanks in advance … for things that you know (or trust) are already on their way to you!

 3) Create the energetic space for what you want by consciously choosing it or choosing the essence of what it brings you.

 Let go of what you don’t want.  For instance, suppose you wan to lose weight.  Think about why you want to do so and what the new you will be like.  How will you feel as you make progress towards your goal?  How will you feel when you reach it?  Rather than losing weight, perhaps you really want to be lean and strong.  Think about how lean and strong really feel.  Think about the essence of your goals.  The sense of  lean and strong is positive and evokes healthy feelings.  Let go of feelings of struggle.  Look beyond the physical and examine the essence or the feeling of what you are really after.  Tune into those feelings often.

4) Let somebody do something nice for you. 

Often we find it easier to give than to receive.  Resolve to receive more often.  Be willing to accept help and assistance along the way.  If someone offers to help you out, consider accepting the help or letting them know what would be beneficial to you.  Take charge and look at various options for meeting your goals.  Make things happen for yourself.  Getting away from your situation, even for a brief period, allows new ideas and options to come to you.  Think creatively. 

 5) Count your blessings. 

Notice the small things that happen all around you every day.  Take delight in them and realize that everything happens for a reason: notice who calls you, when a convenient parking space opens up, when money arrives at just the right time.  There are no coincidences.  Small things turn into big things.  

 6) Leave the past behind.

When looking at the attitudes, behaviors or situations that you want to leave behind use a ritual to enlist the help of the subconscious mind. Our subconscious understands imagery and symbolic communication. Design a ritual such as writing out all that you wish to release on slips of paper, put them in a box or coffee can and burn them. The importance lies in the meaning and feeling that the method has for you so make it personal!

 7) Create rituals for what you would like to see in your life.

The same holds true for the positive that we wish to attract to our lives. We can use symbols, rituals and imagery to gain the cooperation of our powerful unconscious mind to achieve our goals. This is one of the reasons hypnosis can be so effective in helping people change.

 8) Choose well

Make sure your goal and timeline are really manageable and that you truly have the desire to create it!

 Remember: Change and creating new situations, attitudes and behaviors is a process not an event. When we keep this in my we can be kinder to ourselves as well as take both small steps and slips in stride. In addition, we are most effective when we use a positive approach that builds on strength. To focus on what we do not want, are trying to eliminate or on how far we have to go weakens us.

It’s that time of year again … when we reflect on the events of the past twelve months, think about where we are and where we want to be, and set new goals. 

Exploring answers to these questions may help you to make more effective resolutions:  

What were some of your high points during the last year? 

Did you do anything in particular to make them happen or did they simply come together easily and effortlessly for you? Explore the qualities of each type of situation specifically and the circumstances involved to get a clearer picture of what works well for you.

 How can you create more of these situations or feelings in the coming year? 

What are the things that you would like to leave behind as you enter the New Year? Take some time and make a detailed list of these. Keep adding to the list over several days. Done in this way your list will help to inform and clarify not only what you wish to release but also what you hope to bring to yourself.

Next time: 8 Ways to Set Resolutions That Stick!

Very clever!

 Tis the season…children caroling in the snow, families gathered round the hearth, visions of sugarplums dance in your head….or do they?

 What if your images are less Currier and Ives and more Dali-esque? What if your experience of this season falls far short of what is “supposed to be”? That can leave you even more bereft than the original Scrooge dialogue running rampant in your interior!

 We often experience our feelings as missiles from a malevolent universe and totally out of our control in spite of pop psychology’s assurance that we choose our feelings (We do but it is a complex process and a story for another day).

 When you are feeling down, discouraged or sad, that little piece of knowledge falls just a bit short of helpful. And if you are a normal functioning human being you just may have some intense reactions to the messenger who tries to “help” you with this kind of reminder!  BUT, if you were down and now you are angry, that actually can be a good thing!  Why? Because when you are down, sad, despondent etc. your energy is frozen, depleted or inaccessible and the anger is a sign that something has shifted, opened up, or thawed out.  Anger can be a very positive and motivating emotion at times.

 Your emotions influence and impact your health and well-being in a big way.  Esther and Jerry Hicks describe an emotional scale in their book, Ask and It Is Given (Hay House, 2004).  David Hawkins, M.D., PhD has a similar one within the “Map of Consciousness” in his book Power vs. Force (Hay House, 1995, 1998, 2002).  Feelings such as fear, grief, depression and despair are low on both emotional scales.  Anger calibrates higher than blame on Hawkins’ map.  Thus if you are blaming people for your situation and you can shift into feelings of anger, you’re improving! 

 During the holidays you may simply feel overwhelmed with all that you have to do.  Try to consciously shift your feelings into frustration, irritation or impatience.  You’ll actually feel better and you’ll have moved up the emotional scale. 

 If you are feeling pessimistic or even bored, thinking of a time when you were content, hopeful or even optimistic will lift your spirits.  Remember the situation and try to get into that feeling state. What was happening and how did you really feel?

If you’re already feeling optimistic, you’re doing great!  You can move into an even stronger emotional state by being enthusiastic about what you’re doing, being eager and happy.  Passion is stronger than happiness.  As you discover your passion, you’ll most likely follow it by feelings of joy, empowerment, love and appreciation.

 We experience a variety of feelings everyday.  They run vast and deep.  Chances are you have different feelings for different events and different people.  For instance, you might be bored at work, tired of doing the same thing day in and day out.  Once you’re home you might feel discouraged that you can’t do anything about your situation, that things will never change.  Since discouragement is lower on the emotional scale, the time you are working and feeling bored, is actually a better state for you!  Similarly you may feel one way with your family and a completely different way with close friends.

 This brings us to another point that can be trouble. Sometimes we want to move from one end of the spectrum to the other, E.G. from sad and despondent to joyous and ecstatic. This is not likely to happen all at once, and of course that only adds frustration, inadequacy and feelings of powerlessness to the equation.  Does this give you an idea of how emotional spirals grow?  Whatever you are thinking and feeling takes precedence!

 One way to move out of a slump is to acknowledge your feelings, really feel them without holding on to them. Sometimes just letting feelings be, taking the label off, relaxing, breathing, letting go of resistance can be all that is needed.  After all it is resistance that causes pain.  This process of acknowledging your feelings can help release the intensity of emotions that seem to hold you powerless in their grip.

 The next step is to see what is possible in terms of moving up the ladder of feeling. Don’t try to leap to joy or bliss but ask what feeling could I now realistically conjure up through memories, images, or fantasies?  A slightly better feeling is all that is needed to help you shift into a better frame of mind.  In fact, if you can get yourself into a better feeling state and stay there for as little as 17 seconds several times a day, you’ll be making progress.

 The Institute of HeartMath has discovered that consciousness is enhanced, stress is reduced and health is improved with a simple technique that uses a heart focus to dispel troublesome emotions. The technique is called Attitude Breathing. This method helps to synchronize body, mind and spirit and provides inner ease when we are out of synch.

 The method is performed by bringing your attention to the center of your chest, the heart chakra, and feel as though you are breathing in through that space; the out breath is focused through the solar plexus and you may want to feel as though you are releasing an unpleasant feeling with the exhale. Then, when you feel at ease and comfortable with that, you can switch to using your breath to increase feelings of gratitude or appreciation in the heart area. This may sound simple but there is some very complex energetic and neurohormonal activity that is triggered which has profound ramifications throughout the bodymind. All very interesting but more important…YOU WILL FEEL BETTER!

 Give yourself a special gift this year that doesn’t cost any money.  Give yourself the gift of feeling better.  Practice Attitude Breathing.   Feeling slightly better is all it takes! 

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From The Shift Network: Return of the Light – a Winter Solstice event on Saturday featuring several members of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers. It will be a free teleseminar event focused on prayer, healing and wisdom for the world at this time.

Winter solstice is often celebrated by indigenous people’s as the start of a new year. It’s also a time of ritual focused on the returning of the light. We mark this turn of the seasons with a ritual circle featuring several members of The International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers and leaders of The Shift Network.

The International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers was created six years ago and represents the fulfillment of many prophecies. Chosen to represent the world’s indigenous peoples and many sacred prayer lineages, these grandmothers are a source of great wisdom and blessing, reminding us of deep spiritual truths and calling our attention to what is most important.

They work together on healing our planet through prayer, ritual, community and engaged activism on pressing social and environmental concerns.

This is a unique opportunity to connect with members of the Council virtually. The Shift Network is honored to be hosting this virtual gathering, which is completely free. It is the third in a series, at each quarterly turning. Registration will give you access to the two previous recordings as well.

Click here to register for this free call: http://theshiftcouncil.com/

We will be posting a series of aura imaging videos as examples of the effect of various stimuli on our energy. Here is the first one that demonstrates the effect of normal activity versus a meditative state on a person’s energy field.

We are taking a break from our radio show to focus on completing our Caregiver Burnout Prevention program and book. You can access a year’s worth of programs and download any of them to listen at your leisure until Dec. 31, 2010.   Use the link below or go to: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/living-energy-works

Each program focuses on a particular theme having to do with energy, stress, higher consciousness, change, power of the mind, co-creative abilities etc. There is also a meditation/relaxation/imagery technique for you to experience at the end of almost all programs. The technique is specifically focused on the theme of that program. There are several interviews with authors that have great topics and insights to share as well. Enjoy!

” Peace is like the sun that is always shining in our heart.” (Buddhist saying)

Our personal energy, our inner sun, is often obscured or distorted by the clouds of stress. We can develop the skills and ability to keep our sun shinning more often than not through a deep commitment to our own self care. Make sure you are on your “to do” list!