Healing Crisis... Why do I feel bad?

The beauty of healing modalities like Reiki is that they are so simple. In fact I have yet to come across a modality that is as simple as Reiki. The deep healing that comes along with such a profound system includes actual transformation of your living system which is at least a fine tuning of your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual reality. At most it is a complete healing encompassiong total system alignment resulting in greater health and well being.



The interesting part is that people just do not truly understand the way some healing works. When we are new to a path, no matter what the path is, there is a time of adjustment and self assessment. When opening the doorway to knowing the inner self and healing the inner turmoil many of us harbor within our minds and bodies it is time to make adjustments. The moment we realize that we are in need of healing many of us can envision sudden and complete healing, as if a magical wand is waived over our heads and things are simply; well, better!



After Reiki sessions you may have incredible feelings of openness, wonder, and bliss. You may notice that things that used to bother you no longer do. You may notice that life feels easier and things take on a much more beautiful elegant glow. You may notice that your aches and pains have eased and possibly disappeared! You may notice healings in relationships around you, or a desire to heal the relationships you are in. You may notice that your world is changing right before your eyes as you INTEND to usher wellbeing and happiness into your life.



Now picture if you can a bottle filled with water (that is you). Also picture hundreds of colored sands (these are emotions and experiences). When we come in to our lives we are much like the bottle of clear pure water... as our lives unfold, imagine pouring different colored sands in one after another. Our body doesn't really choose one experience over the other as good or bad to pay attention to; however it does begin to store these emotions and experiences as we begin to judge them. If you are really paying attention to this exercise you may begin to notice that the sands of our experiences and emotions start to compact together, so that the first experiences and emotions are in much deeper layers of our being than the more recent ones.



Reiki is like the hand that lifts up the bottle and begins to move it. Only the top layers will begin to move, grain by grain of sand... We might not be very conscious of the things we have stored inside our being. OR... We may be very conscious of what we are storing there as we have tried to ignore and overcome our past, and we may recognize what we have been doing is just not working.



After Reiki sessions you may also feel emotional, tired, angry, sad, or flu like. Infact there have been deep healings where people have become nauseated and run to the bathroom. Joints may ache more as the sands of our lives are disturbed and released from the body. You may not recognize yourself or the people in your life. You may suddenly not understand how your life is working or why you have the people in it that you do. These effects are just as natural and necessary as the effects that make you feel blissed out and in love with the world.



When we ask for health, healing, wellbeing, and happiness... we are asking for those things that are hurdles to that goal to be revealed to us. We are simply asking to be shown what is not working... and being given the opportunity to take steps to alter our path to a more harmonious one. This means dealing with how we want to feel and how we feel but do not want to feel. Reiki leaves no stone unturned.


I leave you with these thoughts and words to begin to possibly rekindle your desire for balance and grace through bodywork and healing modalities that offer you opportunities for growth. Happy New Year!


Namaste'

Loving what was, and is, and will be!

Here we are again... Thanks-giving just hours past and Christmas comming round the bend. Here we are rushing, laughing, playing, creating, cleaning, living... Here we are.

The New year is the most incredible day for me. I prepare in the wee months of each year to welcome in an even better year then ever before. I have spent many years cutting magazine pictures for the vision board of the comming year, hours of meditation, prayful reading, soulful journaling... even some lucious chocoholic activity seems to sneek in.

This year is even more poiniant for me. I am starting this year alone. For the first year since 1996 I am a single woman. That is not to say that I dont have loves in my life or even lovers... people that love and adore me... people I love and adore, but this year I am not tied down to the identity of being the other half of a relationship... or a committment... I am just me... This year I am committed to being wholeness... or halfness... or in a relationship with myself that I intend will bedazzle and electrify self love... self adoration... a lucious and juicy loving of myself the way only I can give to me. This year I inted that I will not only allow myself to meet my needs but I will enjoy the path with my lovers, loves, friends, family... but most of all with my solitude... with myself.

I have been incredibly lucky to have found this fabulous artist and I wanted to share her work with you. This is how I see loving of others and of myself... the energy moving around and through me. This is how I believe it should be... how I know it to be... These illustrate the incredible world of energy loving and healing....

ARTIST is: Julia Watkins

Breathing Reiki into my being through my energetic centers I am open to this new year and to the ending of what has pasting... Breathing and moving energy through my body and my heart center I am thankful for all the lovers, and all the love that have always filled my life and I so look forward to the even deeper and more inspiring life that is unfolding even as I write this.

I can't wait to share even more... freedom!

The Hermit

The archetype of the Hermit has been with me since I was very young.

Perhaps it was the distance that was created by a mother that was not completely whole. Perhaps it was the underlying expectation of perfection and constant striving to prove she was better than those around her, simply because she felt so lost within... so utterly useless and meaningless. Perhaps her own upbringing with a distant mother and alcoholic father created the holes within her that she strived to fill with the appearance of being perfect... of having it all. Finally, when my mother really met her children and realized there was an individuation process that didn't really fit into her idea of how life should "look", her idea that children should be seen and not heard and always do what she wanted them to, perhaps it was that moment that the Hermit came to me.

It was in my very formative years that I understood that my comfort and safety did not come from my own mother... that I had to look elsewhere... it began the lifetime lesson of lacking trust in those people outside myself. Very young I retreated within myself to a world filled with psychic abilities, the realm of the Fey, to a world that illustrated what was unseen was more real and evident to me than what words fell from the lips of mere mortals, or what i could see with my own two eyes.

As my life unfolded I kept my own counsel. Yet I also wanted so badly to be loved that I put myself in many dangerous situations. I never felt that I was worthy of this world. I felt different, broken, and wrong. I spent time alone... even when I surrounded myself with other people. I had become so adept at reading the energies around others and being what they wanted me to be, that I never had to feel as though they could see my pain and lack of worth, I learned to be a safe and strong place for the people that I loved. Knowing for them that they were completely worth the time and energy I was spending... knowing that they deserved to feel whole and safe, yet somehow I never felt met... all my hoping and knowing took a back seat to their own lack of ability to step beyond their boundaries and pain. The Hermit has always whispered in my ear... keeping to myself... keeping my own counsel... taking time away from the world to stop the feeling of rawness that being with other people had seemed to cause me to feel.

The shadow principles of the Hermit are to hide and be anti-social just to keep you safe.
As I have grown through my years... I have come to the precipice of learning my worth many times. Coming to the logical reasons that I "should" love myself, the Hermit is the part of my archetypel community that I take solace in. Giving myself time to hear my own thoughts... and I honor this. Also, I have had the great and wonderful opportunity to embrace a beautiful community of friends that have become a much kinder mirror than the keeping of my own counsel can be at times.

Even so I found myself waking up in the throes of feelings of fear this morning. Fear of my individuality, fear of my spirituality, fear that my talents are wasted working a 9-5 job.... fear of everything that is and is not happening in my life right now. I had a moment of such pristine reality when I began to dutifully question myself about the voices screaming at me of my incompetance, that my breath held still within and without me. It was a moment of clarity unlike any I have had in quite awhile... and in the yawning chasm of fear that threatened to swallow me up whole, I realized that I am still finding a way to love and accept myself. Layer by layer.

All these years of knowing the worth of strangers, clients, family, and co-workers; I am still uncovering my own worth layer by layer. As I continuously dismantle archaic thought patterns and behaviors that have long ago ceased to be important to anyone but my own ego, I have thought that I am oh so much further along than I had been. The Hermit was there, enticing me into that safe place hidden behind a waterfall of healing waters. To the safe cave within me that gives me rest and serenity... the one place where my thoughts, emotions, and spirit can rest... the place where eternal truth dwells because I am silent enough, still enough, sacred enough to become available to my own connection with divinity.

The hermit archetype has been my friend, my mentor and my security for many years and I honor that archetype for it's shadow self and for it's brilliant shining light. I honor the silence that The Hermit reminds me to take within myself to become centered and clear in my experience of life and divinity. I honor the knowledge and energy of this archetype within my life. I also honor the moment when the Hermit backs away from me encouraging me to feel the sun on my face again and experience life with more zeal and acceptance than ever before.

Each journey into the sacred cave brings more beauty and awareness and a greater yearning to become that which I so readily see in others. To recognize and feel the eternal light that shines within my own soul... that is my journey today... tomorrow.... on and on... eternal.