I can choose today to receive the higher energies of Love to heal and strengthen me.
I can forgive myself for mistakes. As I grow and learn more, I move more gracefully with life.
True forgiveness opens my way to health and healingand emotional freedom.
Little vampire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Modern Day Vampires
Modern day vampires are not thieves who come in the night and drain our energy. Today they are right out in front of us—on our desks, night stands, in our living rooms, pockets and pocketbooks. …techno-vampires!
There are also non technological vampires in our lives that we must attend to if we are to reclaim our time, energy, attention and sanity! Below are some of the common sources and some suggested strategies for taking charge of these energy drains. Also let us know how you may have approached some of these issues to safe guard your precious life (force).
Screens
We all have multiple screens that occupy us throughout the day—we even carry many of them with us!! Computers, TV, Kindles, phones, I Pods…it can feel as if there is no escape!
The true escape is to become conscious and committed to YOU—your time, energy, values health and peace of mind.
Screens have a curious quality. They suck us in and keep us fixated while our energy is being silently drained away through our eyes, attention and effect of the technology and the noise it creates within our energy fields, as well as within our minds. Preliminary research is suggesting that we get a hit of feel good chemistry from some of our on screen behavior which makes it act much like a substance abuse issue!
There are many good things about screens. It is a matter of managing our relationship with them.
Taking Your Energy Back
You are susceptible to energy drain from a screen every time you turn on, tune in, or log on.
Solution
Awareness and insight can lead to moderating your use.
Setting a timer can be helpful if you are playing computer games or surfing the net
Keep a list of your goals and values handy so you can remind yourself what is really important to you in terms of how you spend your time.
Be aware that if you spend time depleting energy and not rebuilding it, it will not be there to fuel your dreams, health or goals. Develop a reminder for this that is in frequent and easy sight.
Solution
If you find yourself de-energized by a project or a person in your life, question your motives for remaining, resolve it so you can find the door out and you can move on. We are all different. What depletes one person will energize another. Your energy is not a negotiable item and you have the right, responsibility and deserve to determine what is correct for you.
Notice the people and projects that fill you with energy and commit to developing more of those in your life.
Solution
Make a list…make a plan including when and how you are going to take care of the issue and then follow through. As much as this may pain you as you change your habit, in the end you will have more energy as you will have eliminated a very insidious drain. The enhanced energy you feel will become a new motivation.
Solution
Make it a rule to only handle something once and set up a system for that can work.
Set up a system where every request does not reach you: get off lists, use voicemail delete, have a barrier between you and requests.
Solution
Cultivate the ability to attend to your present moment and the task at hand.
"Visualization of the Heart Chakra" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The focus of the lower self or mind is on the areas of life and experience that are the province of the first three chakras. Unbalanced energies here manifest in preoccupations anchored in fear, misdirected passion, power struggles and identity problems.
The heart chakra provides the possibility of opening to an inner space where we can connect with wholeness, learn self love and acceptance and embrace the duality of life rather than being caught in the separatism of the ego with its judgments of good and bad, black and white. It is in the heart that we have the ability to move beyond the judgment and analysis of the intellect into acceptance, compassion and wisdom.
Development of the Observer Self is of great help in moving from lower chakra preoccupation (ego-outer world) to the deeper and broader perspectives facilitated through the heart chakra. This is not just a change in ideas about things; it is a shift in the level of consciousness to a more inclusive, deeply felt connection with self, other and life itself. It is essentially a change from living in a reactive way to the outer environment to living from the inside in a more compassionate and proactive empowered way.
Living more from this space results in a greater state of coherence of our energy, more inner peace and greater stillness of mind that allows for more conscious creation in our lives.
This shift is not an event, but a process that takes place over time. The process proceeds more rapidly as you clear lower chakra issues and practice bringing in the frequencies of higher awareness. Development of the Observer Self helps you to be better able to move into higher awareness at will. Meditative practice helps expand the ability to dwell in this state, and there is an eventual shift so that more and more of life can be experienced from this perspective.
Emotions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Impact of Thought and Emotion
Thoughts, emotions and feelings of all types are a major part of our human experience. They (along with free will and judgment) differentiate us from animals and other life forms.
As humans, we have a wide range of emotions. We are meant to feel. If we are to be healthy, fully express our authentic nature and bring the best of our selves to the world, then we must be emotionally intelligent which includes not only appropriate expression of feelings, but also the ability to let emotions move fluidly and easily through our systems and not repress them or get stuck in them!
Knowing how to work positively with all our emotions builds our energy and helps us move more rapidly and simply toward the lives we desire. We hold memory all throughout our body-mind … no experience escapes our notice. Our life experience is imprinted through our energy–our chakra and meridian networks-into the nervous system which in turn triggers our biochemistry that affects the cells and organs of our body.
Thoughts and feelings affect the energy throughout all our systems, but perhaps most important is how they connect deeply in the heart and help shape our experience of the world. Our thoughts and feelings are two primary ways we manage our energy, but they don’t necessarily always work in unison.
We are very capable of thinking one thing and feeling another. We can “know” something in our mind and experience it a totally different way in our heart and body.
Cellular memory is imprinted more through how we feel about something than through how we think about it or how we rationalize it. As a result, we have the feeling police deep inside: the body knows your truth! This is why it is so critical to clear the patterns and beliefs of the past – not because we are bad or have sinned and need to set our records straight, but because through our lack of knowledge and awareness, we have created obstacles that block our health, well- being and happiness.
Cosmic Consciousness (Photo credit: Rainbow Gryphon)
Our five senses draw our attention to the outer physical world. When we have a predominately outer directed focus we look for our inner needs to be filled through material sources. This is usually a short lived and unsatisfying solution. This orientation also tends to lead to blame, criticism, judgments, and compulsivity (repetitive behaviors expecting a different outcome).
Being outwardly directed tends to produce reliance on a spiritual being external to ourselves. We beseech this Greater Being to bestow favors upon us –and we continue to define ourselves through the physical, roles and material possessions. This way of being is one of limited consciousness. Paradoxically, it is a mind set that both begins and ends in fear. An outer focus leaves us up one day down the next with no center to hold on to.
Life is change. Consciousness that is attached to the outer world does not help us to move with the cycles of change. In addition, it does not help us to increase our capacity to function in the world in a meaningful way that leads to peace, joy & happiness.
Our sixth sense draws our attention inward and assists us to truly find the means to resolve issues, release struggle and longing and receive the true fulfillment of our deepest desires. This inner path allows us to examine thoughts, feelings and beliefs that lead to problems. It opens the way to creative problem solving. Expanding our consciousness beyond the physical and material world awakens you to who you truly are. From there you can transcend limitations, expand creative ability, and step into true power, tolerance, understanding and vitality.
Proper alignment and attunement of the energies of body, mind and spirit provides us with a clear and present awareness. This awareness allows you to know what is good for you, as well as to attract to you those things that assist you to be happy and healthy.
You can become more conscious of what robs you of your natural healthy state and eliminate the sources of your struggles. Instead of learning just another technique or take on another method of learning that feels like a burden, you can identify the roots of your reactions and difficulties and change them permanently.
One of the things I especially like about becoming attuned to our personal energy is that it helps to bring us into a mindful, “present moment space” where we can develop a new relationship with our bodies and minds to create health and happiness from the inside out! Energy work also helps to bring balance to life, and allows purpose, meaning and wisdom to emerge from within–the only place it can truly come from! Learning to be more in touch with your personal energy can also aid you in riding the waves of life more gracefully. We have an innate capacity for joy, pleasure, harmony and a balanced spiritual toughness that goes largely untapped. These inner capabilities can help us to find pleasure in everyday life.
As a culture it seems that we are grappling with yearning for deeper meaning and that can only really emerge through deeper connection within ourselves, to each other and the world. Learning to quiet our minds, make friends with our inner world through energy and consciousness provides the means and the path.
“In this way, without any intent to shape others, we simply have to be authentic, and a sense of mana, of spiritual light and warmth will emanate from our very souls, causing others to grow — not towards us, but towards the light that moves through us.” Mark Nepo, The Energy of Being Real. http://www.ijourney.org/?tid=563 .
When we are authentically ourselves we enter a flow and strong vibrant energy courses through us providing the possibility of just being. Our culture has taught us so many things about roles, false faces, what we should feel and want that we have lost touch with this more natural and authentic way of being.
When we shed the shoulds, coulds, oughts and mights and simply let ourselves be, there is an energy, an aliveness, a rightness about it that can lead us to all that we typically look outward for.
Have you had a moment where you felt that flow? How can you bring more of it into your life?
EFT-tapping points (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
EFT is a great tool that I use personally as well as with clients. One of the things that I like best about it–besides its effectiveness—is that people can learn it easily and then have a technique that is always available to them.
The following is an article by Nick Ortner published in the Huffington Post. It is an excellent summary re: the research and practice of EFT.
Breakthroughs in Energy Psychology: A New Way to Heal the Body and Mind
By Nick Ortner
Yoga, meditation, massage, acupuncture, and herbal remedies; these are just some of Eastern medicine’s contributions to our decades-long search for ways to live well with fewer pills and less-invasive health care. Toward that end, I’m excited to report that there are promising new findings in the field of energy psychology, specifically about a practice called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), or tapping, that is taking our search for holistic solutions to an exciting new level.
What’s unique about EFT is how it combines Eastern wisdom about acupressure, or “meridian points,” in our bodies, with traditional Western psychotherapy. The practice consists of tapping with your fingertips on specific meridian points while talking through traumatic memories and a wide range of emotions. “Acupoint tapping sends signals directly to the stress centers of the mid-brain, not mediated by the frontal lobes (the thinking part, active in talk therapy),” explains Dr. Church, Ph.D., who has been researching and using EFT since 2002. Because EFT simultaneously accesses stress on physical and emotional levels, he adds, “EFT gives you the best of both worlds, body and mind, like getting a massage during a psychotherapy session.”
In fact, it’s EFT’s ability to access the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of your brain that initiates your body’s negative reaction to fear, a process we often refer to as the “fight or flight” response, that makes it so powerful. “By reducing stress,” adds Church, “EFT helps with many problems. There’s a stress component to sports performance, business and financial pressure, and most disease. When you reduce stress in one area of your life, there’s often a beneficial effect in other areas.”
Church estimates that 10 million people worldwide have used tapping, and what’s so exciting is how incredibly quickly it’s alleviating issues like depression, anxiety and insomnia, as well severe PTSD, physical pain, even illness.
At this point you’re probably thinking what most intelligent and sane people are — how is that possible? How can tapping on “meridian points” resolve serious health issues? As an EFT practitioner and the producer of the movie The Tapping Solution, it’s a question I’ve been asked repeatedly over many years. In fact, you’ll often hear me refer to EFT as “this strange tapping thing.” Fortunately, there’s very real science (and results!) behind it.
In partnership with Dr. David Feinstein, Dr. Church has been able to confirm that tapping on specific meridian points has a positive effect on cortisol levels. Cortisol, known as the “stress hormone,” is integral to our body’s “fight or flight” response. Originally designed to help us survive life in the wild, the “fight or flight” response was essential when our ancient ancestors were faced with sudden, brief danger like, let’s say, a tiger. However useful in short bursts, releasing cortisol too frequently, as we seem to be doing in response to the ongoing or “chronic” stress of modern life, may have serious, even scary, impacts on our physical, mental and emotional health. In fact, living in this kind of biological “survival mode” may be making us more vulnerable to everything from cancer to heart disease, and more.
In Dr. Church’s study, 83 participants were separated into three groups. One group was guided through an hour-long EFT session, the second group received an hour of talk therapy, while the third, the control group, received no treatment. The group that did an hour of EFT demonstrated a 24 percent decrease in cortisol levels, while the other two groups showed no real change. The EFT group also exhibited lower levels of psychological symptoms, including anxiety, depression, and others, as measured by the Symptom Assessment-45 (SA-45), a standard psychological assessment tool.
Research suggests that EFT may be so effective because of its perceived ability to balance out the nervous system, leveling off the activity of the parasympathetic and sympathetic regions. Responsible for promoting cell regeneration and relaxation, the parasympathetic region helps to slow your heartbeat, support digestion, and more. The sympathetic system, on the other hand, prepares you for vigorous physical activity by speeding up your heart, constricting your pupils, and so on. As noted in Church’s study, imbalance between these two regions is associated with a long list of health issues, from high blood pressure and heart problems (most often seen in those with an overactive sympathetic region), to depression, fatigue, and weakened immune response (in those with excessive parasympathetic activity).
In his study findings, Church asserts that EFT, which he refers to as “acupoint treatments” produces “a neutral emotional state,” which, biologically speaking, is the gold standard of health and wellness. It’s also the state of well-being people have sought to achieve for millennia through meditation, prayer, yoga, and other mindfulness practices.
Dr. Feinstein, a clinical psychologist who uses EFT in his own practice, adds that EFT is an “unusually precise, rapid, and direct for shifting the neurological underpinnings of a range of psychological problems.” In fact, he adds, “the number of therapists using EFT has been rapidly increasing over the past decade, and now peer-reviewed research is showing that their instincts have been right. Surprisingly rapid outcomes with a variety of disorders are being documented.”
The results of that documentation can (and will!) impact millions of lives in incredibly powerful ways, which is why I’m excited to share a host of new studies with you here, in future posts. In the meantime, I look forward to hearing your feedback. Are you familiar with tapping? Do you use it yourself, or know others who do? Are there specific topics you’d like me to focus on in future posts?
Nick Ornter is the creator and executive producer of the hit documentary film, “The Tapping Solution.” His new book on EFT will be published by Hay House in April 2013. To get a copy of his free eBook, “Tapping Your Way to Health, Happiness and Abundance” visit TheTappingSolution.com
Image via Wikipedia
Nature’s graceful process displays the art of “unfoldment”.
It instructs us in the art of pure being.
Nature has much to teach, but this is perhaps its best and deepest teaching.
A seedling, the beginning of form holds the promise of what is to come.
The life force of the seed does not fret about its process. It does not wonder how it looks. It is not concerned about what obstacles may be encountered in its journey forward. It does not seem to care or be impatient regarding how long it will take until it blossoms into final form.
In nature new life gracefully moves through its process, at times moving rapidly…at times moving so slowly it almost appears as though growth has ceased. At all times however it unabashedly takes what it needs from the sky, the earth, the wind and rain….and they in turn seem grateful to provide.
A seedling simply perseveres, growing along according to its own unique blueprint so it eventually becomes what it will be within its own design.
This process of new life unfolding embraces many stages. In none of these stages does the seed weigh or measure its progress or bemoan its fate. The seedling does not seem to worry that it is not deserving of the sunlight, that it is not good enough to drink the rain. All phases and transitions are simply part of the journey to the full expression of the seed’s true nature. The tiny life form takes what it needs, adapts to shifts in environmental changes and perseveres, growing according to its own blueprint….. moving steadily onward toward what it will become…ITS SELF.
The seed travels onward through its life cycle toward ripeness when its mature fruit easily and freely drops to earth in a willingness to change yet again— the life cycle continuously renewing.
We can learn to live with the same grace, beauty, fullness and seamless dancing spirit.
Today I’d like to share a story that illustrates how energy work can help to relieve physical and emotional symptoms, help access higher wisdom/solutions and create a center of personal power.
Some time ago I was working with a woman who was anticipating a meeting with her boss that she feared would be extremely difficult. She was experiencing a lot of fear and apprehension about the meeting in general, but her first concern was that she was so highly charged about the encounter that she would become emotional, cry and lose her credibility with him. She was feeling it was crucial to convince him of several points that were counter to what he was going to be presenting and her emotionality would not allow her to clearly present her case.
We began working with Emotional Freedom Technique to deal with her fear and anxiety.
Her feelings cleared but she was still in a physical posture of holding in and holding up – so we moved to centering, creating the global mind-body awareness, did a quick adjustment to her energy flow using the basic flow technique, with the addition of a crossover technique that balanced the left / right flow of energy. This all took less than five minutes. I do have to add, however, that this person was used to working with me in this way although she was out of practice.
After this adjustment she reported that she felt calmer, safer and more grounded. My observation was that the tense posturing was gone, her face relaxed and her color improved. As we just let her settle into the new feelings in a quiet moment, she all of a sudden startled and said, “OH, all of a sudden the thought came in that I don’t need to convince him; all I need to do is listen and decide what I will and won’t participate in.”
Notice that the thinking mind had very little to do with this until the end!
I did not tell her that she needn’t be afraid, she was a competent professional, the company needed her, she was not in danger of being fired, and so on. I did not talk about or interpret her posture – how it was a reflection of a maladaptive pattern that was weakening her energy flow, making her feel worse – nor about how, when our energy becomes ungrounded, we feel anxious, creating a feedback loop that feeds on itself and gets worse.
All those things may be true, but they are cognitive and generally have little impact on shifting out of emotional states or upon our ability to access higher level functions. We’ve all had the experience of being told that we needn’t be feeling what we are, the facts don’t support it—and yet we do! We need methods to remedy the difficulties that address our inner realities in order to be able to come back to outer reality in a way that is effective.
As it was, not only did this client find her own solution in a moment with incredible clarity, but she went off to the meeting feeling strong and powerful because the awareness she needed came from within.
It is exciting, awesome and beautiful to watch the process of a person settling into their authentic self and be able to live from the inside out …to be able to inhabit their lives in a way that empowers and sustains them. Using energetic techniques that address mind, body and spirit allow us all to reach this center more quickly and easily than mere cognition alone. The Living Energy Works approach can help you as well— to move out of emotional distress, release stress, access greater well being and higher consciousness for more elegant solutions to problems, as well as to live more simply and creatively!
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Belonging is a fundamental concern for all of us. It is also an issue that often needs some compassionate care.
The root chakra is the first chakra that is active when we are born. This center develops mostly through non-verbal means. We sense the attitude of our caretakers – how they respond to our basic needs for food, shelter, touch, safety and belonging. How we are treated during this time has a tremendous influence on what gets registered in our body-mind regarding our capacity to experience safety and have a sense of belonging in the world, as well as on the physical vitality that supports our entire being.
Fear is the predominant feeling of an imbalance in the root chakra. Disruptions of energy in the root chakra typically show in fears regarding survival and security, problems with food and money, and difficulty with grounding and manifestation of material needs.
The issues here are often not easily accessible through conscious or verbal means. Methods that bring unconscious material into conscious awareness need to be coupled with strategies that help go to the root of the issue and help to erase the fear and inability to relax, and help create the necessary infrastructure feel safe , are particularly effective when working with the energies of this chakra.
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