Emotions extended from Mindful SChools

...keep me in your heart... WtP

Sweet Darkness by David Whyte

Deer as Spirit of Mother Christmas

http://gathervictoria.com/2014/12/04/doe-a-deer-a-female-deer-the-spirit-of-mother-christmas/

Solstice blessings!

"One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires ...causes proper matters to catch fire...Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it.

If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

Do not lose heart. We were made for these times."

~Clarissa Pinkola Estés

art by sanguisGelidus

 — with Jen Marie, Jacqueline Plachta, Jean Bowen and fanona grac

morning Qigong

http://beginnersmeditation.info/blog/2015/04/morning-qigong-start-your-day-with-the-first-movements-of-baduanjin/

Solstice Blessings CEP

Solstice blessings!

"One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires ...causes proper matters to catch fire...Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it.

If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

Do not lose heart. We were made for these times."

~Clarissa Pinkola Estés

art by sanguisGelidus

JSJ opp fingers and toes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW_89k7MsOI
back, hospital, CA toxins  etc

Death All is well.

Written by Henry Scott Holland (27 January 1847 – 17 March 1918) was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford

reflexology points

20 illustrated quotes Lisa Congdon

http://www.buzzfeed.com/aaronc13/20-beautifully-illustrated-quotes-from-your-favorite-authors#.xiaPr05aka

Jin Shin J hand

jin shin resource videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN5GkX63Crk  intro
Robin McKay
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Jin+Shin+Jyutsu+holds&view=detail&&mid=D22A20256D770F98EA09D22A20256D770F98EA09&rvsmid=D22A20256D770F98EA09D22A20256D770F98EA09&fsscr=0
8 mudras for higher consciousness   MeaHutchinson

Rumi quotes

You have no idea how hard I've looked
for a gift to bring You.
Nothing seemed right.
What's the point of bringing gold to
the gold mine, or water to the ocean.
Everything I came up with was like
taking spices to the Orient.
It's no good giving my heart and my
soul because you already have these.
So I've brought you a mirror.
Look at yourself and remember me.

~ Rumi

Winter protocols colds, flu, immunity

http://energymedicinenow.com/energy-medicine-moment/immune-boosting-protocol-for-winter/
Janie Chandler
http://energymedicinenow.com/watch/  other videos

http://acutakehealth.com/acupressure-library  for acup ideas

Client begins face down:

Gently rock the client

Open the head, neck and shoulders using massage and/or myofascial release

Spinal Flush

• Make one lingering pass along the posterior neurolymphatics (spinal flush)
• Put a few drops of essential oil blend along the spine, and distribute evenly with fingertips. Cover again with shirt or sheet and…
• Make a second lingering pass along the posterior NLs (spinal flush)

Feet

• Use fascial release around ankles, tops of feet, bottoms of feet with special attention to the spleen channel, from the big toe to above the ankle
• Deeply massage the gaits, heels, and the outside edge of the foot
• Twist and pull energy off each toe
• Apply 3-4 drops of essential oil to your hands, then apply to both feet, top and bottom, paying attention to the space underneath and between the toes
• Cover with sheet or socks and apply warm packs to the feet

Back

• Hopi Technique (optional)
• Sweep energy from opposite shoulder to hip and down the leg, repeat other side, repeat several times (essentially creating a big X on the back)
• Back hook-up (hold sacrum and power point, then mid-thoracic and power point, then power point and crown chakra)

Client turns face up:

• Replace heat packs on top of feet
• Massage occiput and head, pull out ears
• Hold powerpoint/third eye hook up
• Gently hold neurovascular points on head (main, and/or spleen above the ears)
• Work neurolymphatics on front using firm pressure (under collar bone, along sternum, central at armpits, under breasts, to the side of breasts, under ribcage, down outside of legs, up inside of legs)
• Clear Houston and Ileocecal valves
• Smooth energy down to feet
• Optional – sedate Kidney meridian if they seem especially toxic
• Strengthen spleen using acupressure points
• TW/Spleen hug with rocking
• Optional – (depending on time) Black Pearl or Brazilian Toe
• Smooth energy down from head to feet
• K1 Wave/ hold K1
• Ample figure 8s throughout the aura

Give client the immune-boosting beverage you’ve prepared.

Daily Energy Routines

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv3DNaLh9VE  imaginal health Prune Harris

DER Donna end of 2015  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di5Ua44iuXc&sns=fb

http://midlifegoddess.ning.com/video/donna-eden-s-daily-energy-routine-official-version?xg_source=activity

madison king
http://midlifegoddess.ning.com/video  17 videos
do the foot  https://www.facebook.com/287253251377558/videos/483840175052197/?video_source=pages_finch_main_video&theater  and belt flow  yin yang flow

Once you are comfortable, take a few deep breaths and do the Teddy Boy Sweep [see description below] to calm down the Triple Warmer energy.

1. Now close your eyes and just focus on what you can HEAR – keep your breathing natural. Peel back the layers of what is going on around you and you will be astonished at what you start to hear. Remain with this for 2 minutes and if distracting thoughts come into your head don’t worry, just gently take yourself back to the sense of ‘hearing’.

2. Keeping your eyes closed, focus on what you can SMELL for a few minutes
3. Still with eyes closed, TOUCH something. Again, 2 minutes.

4. Focus, for a couple of minutes, on something in front of you and really SEE it.

5. If you are outdoors, ‘FEEL’ how the environment touches you: feel the breeze in your hair, the sun on your skin, or the rain on your face…. Bring ALL your attention to the sensations.

6. Bring your focus to your body, mentally run up it from your toes to the crown of your head and FEEL each and every part of it. This is not easy and sometimes when I do it I can’t ‘feel’ a thing, if this happens to you, just remain with it, sooner or later you will begin to ‘feel’, begin to reconnect with every cell in your body.

This reconnection is vital for our health and wellbeing. All too often we live in our heads and disconnect with our bodies, an alienation that can ultimately disrupt every system.

When you have mastered this ‘feeling’, take it a step further and isolate a particular part of your body and focus your sense of ‘feeling’ on it. I personally isolate my spine. Leaning forward slightly in the lotus position, to stretch it. I use my mind and feel along it vertebrae by vertebrae, really experiencing the sensations. If there is stiffness or pain, after a while it will begin to diminish and release. Don’t forget your breathing!

OPTIONAL - End by doing:

o a few Teddy Boy Sweeps [see below] and
o The Classic Hook Up [see below]
o tap your 3rd Eye to ‘tap in the feeling of peace and joy’ – by doing this, you will remember it more easily when the going gets tough.
o The yogic balance pose sit crossed legged and reach behind your back to clench your left wrist with the right hand, fingers of the left hand straight with index finger and thumb touching to form an ‘O’. Close your eyes, left up and lean forward from the hips so that you feel a stretch but no pain. Tune into your body and bring your attention to wherever you feel your body is in need of help. This is a great exercise to do by itself at the beginning or end of day.

Another benefit of coming to your senses is that by putting them through their paces they improve and ultimately, it may take a long time, once they reach optimum efficiency the other more esoteric senses begin to develop and emerge into the open.

A QUICK FIX

When you are walking to work, standing in a queue or doing anything mundane, such as ironing or making the bed, bring all your attention to what you are doing and what you can SEE, HEAR and SMELL. It will bring you right slap bang into the ‘present’ in a most enjoyable way.

Learning to live in the present moment is one of the most difficult things for us to do but there is an immense freedom when you begin to let go of brooding over the past and worrying about the future – you begin to bring back joy into your life.

This exercise is a slight variation of Donna Eden’s Covering the Eyes (www.innersource.net). It is perfect when we want to calm down Triple Warmer, begin to bring balance to her[1] and therefore reap the benefits of her working more as a Radiant Circuit than a lone maverick causing mischief. Also, as TRIPLE WARMER is KEEPER OF THE HABITS …. It will encourage good habits rather than bad.

It strengthens Spleen meridian so instantly our immunity and ability to process foods and emotional challenges is increased.

Thirdly it activates the Regulator Flow which is a ‘strange flow’ that helps us regulate and adjust to changes in our lives.  Us Healthy Goddesses are indeed trying to create a permanent shift and change so Regulator is a useful ally to have by our side.

We’ll start with Reactivity Pose

Go into Teddy Boy Sweep

Trace Regulator Yin

Trace Spleen

Hands over heart

With a smile

Repeating an affirmation such as:

Today I’m calm and strong, I make wise choices with ease. All is well.

• Rub your hands together and shake them off to get rid of any old, stale, tired energy. Place them over your heart.
• Close your eyes, feet firmly on the ground and take a few seconds to get grounded.
• Smile
• Breathing is natural (to you) throughout
• Put your index finger and thumb into a circle (think AOK)
• Place these over your temples and fingertips will naturally fall onto the forehead where they cover powerful, calming neurovascular points.
• Close your eyes and take a few breaths in this position.
• If you are uncomfortable with the thumb/index finger on your temples, just use your thumb (see diagram).
• Pull your fingertips out across the forehead to each temple then up over, down behind the ear, down the back of the neck and come to rest on the ‘necklace’ line.
• Press in here for a couple of seconds before pull both hands off the front of the neck and shake your hands off.
• Bring them back to the third Eye area between the eyebrows
• Close your eyes and connect into the area
• Trace a heart around the outside of your face
• Trace down the front of your throat
• Land on K27 points and buzz them
• Cross your arms like a genie, with little fingers nestling in the elbow crease
• Bring both arms up the top part of the arm until they are resting in Pharaoh position
• (Think of these ancient rulers sitting with crossed arms over their chests)
• Pull hands over chest to land on either side of breasts
• Give them a wiggle and think Marilyn Munroe!  Smile and for this one change the affirmation to OH! I’M SO BEAUTIFULand give a little laugh and wiggle your hips.
• Travel down the front of your body and squeeze the sides of your feet.
• Place fingers on the medial (inside next to air) side of the big toes and trace all the way up spleen meridian: up the front of your body, out a bit up over the ribs, into the armpit and down to the edge of the ribs
• Bring your hands over your heart area
• Take a few seconds to connect to your heart and a feeling of Love and gratitude

Make this the start and finish of each day for a week and see how you feel.

For the Regulator portion, if you are not sure – go on THE VIDEO TAB  and there is a clip of me doing it in the back yard!  

Madison King Calm Emo Cravings

Find a quiet corner in your home or go for a walk in nature and pick a safe, peaceful place to sit.

Ideally sit in the Lotus pose, but if this is not possible for you, find a comfortable position where your spine is straight. A straight spine is vital so that energy can more freely flow up and down the spinal column and therefore out to the entire body.

Once you are comfortable, take a few deep breaths and do the Teddy Boy Sweep [see description below] to calm down the Triple Warmer energy.

1. Now close your eyes and just focus on what you can HEAR – keep your breathing natural. Peel back the layers of what is going on around you and you will be astonished at what you start to hear. Remain with this for 2 minutes and if distracting thoughts come into your head don’t worry, just gently take yourself back to the sense of ‘hearing’.

2. Keeping your eyes closed, focus on what you can SMELL for a few minutes
3. Still with eyes closed, TOUCH something. Again, 2 minutes.

4. Focus, for a couple of minutes, on something in front of you and really SEE it.

5. If you are outdoors, ‘FEEL’ how the environment touches you: feel the breeze in your hair, the sun on your skin, or the rain on your face…. Bring ALL your attention to the sensations.

6. Bring your focus to your body, mentally run up it from your toes to the crown of your head and FEEL each and every part of it. This is not easy and sometimes when I do it I can’t ‘feel’ a thing, if this happens to you, just remain with it, sooner or later you will begin to ‘feel’, begin to reconnect with every cell in your body.

This reconnection is vital for our health and wellbeing. All too often we live in our heads and disconnect with our bodies, an alienation that can ultimately disrupt every system.

When you have mastered this ‘feeling’, take it a step further and isolate a particular part of your body and focus your sense of ‘feeling’ on it. I personally isolate my spine. Leaning forward slightly in the lotus position, to stretch it. I use my mind and feel along it vertebrae by vertebrae, really experiencing the sensations. If there is stiffness or pain, after a while it will begin to diminish and release. Don’t forget your breathing!

OPTIONAL - End by doing:

o a few Teddy Boy Sweeps [see below] and
o The Classic Hook Up [see below]
o tap your 3rd Eye to ‘tap in the feeling of peace and joy’ – by doing this, you will remember it more easily when the going gets tough.
o The yogic balance pose sit crossed legged and reach behind your back to clench your left wrist with the right hand, fingers of the left hand straight with index finger and thumb touching to form an ‘O’. Close your eyes, left up and lean forward from the hips so that you feel a stretch but no pain. Tune into your body and bring your attention to wherever you feel your body is in need of help. This is a great exercise to do by itself at the beginning or end of day.

Another benefit of coming to your senses is that by putting them through their paces they improve and ultimately, it may take a long time, once they reach optimum efficiency the other more esoteric senses begin to develop and emerge into the open.

A QUICK FIX

When you are walking to work, standing in a queue or doing anything mundane, such as ironing or making the bed, bring all your attention to what you are doing and what you can SEE, HEAR and SMELL. It will bring you right slap bang into the ‘present’ in a most enjoyable way.

Learning to live in the present moment is one of the most difficult things for us to do but there is an immense freedom when you begin to let go of brooding over the past and worrying about the future – you begin to bring back joy into your life.

This exercise is a slight variation of Donna Eden’s Covering the Eyes (www.innersource.net). It is perfect when we want to calm down Triple Warmer, begin to bring balance to her[1] and therefore reap the benefits of her working more as a Radiant Circuit than a lone maverick causing mischief. Also, as TRIPLE WARMER is KEEPER OF THE HABITS …. It will encourage good habits rather than bad.

It strengthens Spleen meridian so instantly our immunity and ability to process foods and emotional challenges is increased.

Thirdly it activates the Regulator Flow which is a ‘strange flow’ that helps us regulate and adjust to changes in our lives.  Us Healthy Goddesses are indeed trying to create a permanent shift and change so Regulator is a useful ally to have by our side.

We’ll start with Reactivity Pose

Go into Teddy Boy Sweep

Trace Regulator Yin

Trace Spleen

Hands over heart

With a smile

Repeating an affirmation such as:

Today I’m calm and strong, I make wise choices with ease. All is well.

• Rub your hands together and shake them off to get rid of any old, stale, tired energy. Place them over your heart.
• Close your eyes, feet firmly on the ground and take a few seconds to get grounded.
• Smile
• Breathing is natural (to you) throughout
• Put your index finger and thumb into a circle (think AOK)
• Place these over your temples and fingertips will naturally fall onto the forehead where they cover powerful, calming neurovascular points.
• Close your eyes and take a few breaths in this position.
• If you are uncomfortable with the thumb/index finger on your temples, just use your thumb (see diagram).
• Pull your fingertips out across the forehead to each temple then up over, down behind the ear, down the back of the neck and come to rest on the ‘necklace’ line.
• Press in here for a couple of seconds before pull both hands off the front of the neck and shake your hands off.
• Bring them back to the third Eye area between the eyebrows
• Close your eyes and connect into the area
• Trace a heart around the outside of your face
• Trace down the front of your throat
• Land on K27 points and buzz them
• Cross your arms like a genie, with little fingers nestling in the elbow crease
• Bring both arms up the top part of the arm until they are resting in Pharaoh position
• (Think of these ancient rulers sitting with crossed arms over their chests)
• Pull hands over chest to land on either side of breasts
• Give them a wiggle and think Marilyn Munroe!  Smile and for this one change the affirmation to OH! I’M SO BEAUTIFULand give a little laugh and wiggle your hips.
• Travel down the front of your body and squeeze the sides of your feet.
• Place fingers on the medial (inside next to air) side of the big toes and trace all the way up spleen meridian: up the front of your body, out a bit up over the ribs, into the armpit and down to the edge of the ribs
• Bring your hands over your heart area
• Take a few seconds to connect to your heart and a feeling of Love and gratitude

Make this the start and finish of each day for a week and see how you feel.

For the Regulator portion, if you are not sure – go on THE VIDEO TAB  and there is a clip of me doing it in the back yard!  

essential oils from livingtraditionally

http://livingtraditionally.com/the-real-truth-about-essential-oils-that-nobody-talks-about/ly

do terra   http://livingtraditionally.com/essential-oils/

from Clarissa Pinkola Estes When Evergreens Walked the Earth

Dear Brave Souls:

WHEN EVERGREENS WALKED THE EARTH

I think we are
like Scots Pines
Green and beautiful
cones of perfect
spiral labyrinths.

But then
the wither sets in,
the long needles
wave making a scratch
sound, only
dry and dead
can make.

Then skaggy
looking,
frowsy,
thinspy,
shed wrecked,
saggy socked,
soup too cold.

But/ and
then
bright
green
new
candles
again.
Then green
lush
cones
again.

Who
is to say,
and I mean
no disrespect,
that
we are not
the green Cristi
who was once
a majestic
evergreen tree
who lived,
died,
came back
from the dead.

And somewhere
in the BC times
or shortly thereafter
some forgot
tree and Being
were one...
and separated them
as the Being
dying
on the tree.
And the tree
not returning
to Life
and all exhorted
to wait til the Being
returned
perhaps yet
some thousands
of years
hence.

And who is to say
we cannot remember
how it once was
and understand
the radiant lesson
again,
and not
be waiting
and waiting
and being good
waiting
for the 'return,'
but daily
nightly
being,
being,
Being
in full creative spirit,
Being The Return.

This comes with love and hopes that you will remember what I call the 'night between two days' does not last, but passes. That it is not the life/death cycle. It is the Life/Death/Life cycle. Truly. In many many forms. To each her own. To each his own. As each sees fit, as each finds their own ways,
Dr.E.

CODA This poem was written in the 1960s when I was wondering about those in history, often dictators, kings, queens, 'royalty', clergy, war mongers, greed masters who had tried to take from all our native heritages-- that iridescent idea: that is, the reality that Creator and all of Creation are One, instead saying only this one side, ever separated from all of Creation, all of Nature---

and attempting to convince, punish, shriek, shame, cajole,condemn, all into not seeing the Unity that brings New Life every every every day and night. In cycles. Life/death/life, as I would write many years later.

Too back in the early 60s when I was a teenager, I saw, I thought, that this separation of most Radiant Being from all of Radiant Creation was then used as reason by far too many to slaughter more humans, animals, make clear rivers into filth flowing, pour mine tailings, poisons, sewage into the waters that nourished the animals and birds and fish, and without regard for estuaries or homelands for animals,

began plating over the earth, clear cutting her trees and clearing her natural grains and grasses, and laying down eyeless and earless brick armor across the land so the soil could not breath, and with smokestacks galore, neither could the humans breathe clear and clean.

Im of a mind still. The same. Some things remain the same as the angels whispered to us when we were helplessly listening as teens, to everything that was love....

image: wikimediacommons, public domain

the peace of wild things, wendell berry

Taining as a Warrior Pema Chodron

December 2, 2015

TRAINING AS A WARRIOR

Our patterns are well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wishing for them to be ventilated isn’t enough. Those of us who struggle with this know. Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we’re telling ourselves and question their validity? When we are distracted by a strong emotion, do we remember that this is our path? Can we feel the emotion and breathe it into our hearts for ourselves and everyone else? If we can remember to experiment like this even occasionally, we are training as a warrior. And when we can’t practice when distracted but know that we can’t, we are still training well. Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on. 

How to Be a Poet Wendell Berry posted by Parker Palmer

Finding Your True Home within Your Life John O'Donohue

FINDING YOUR TRUE HOME WITHIN YOUR LIFE

Each one of us is alone in the world. It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness. Most of the activity in society is subconsciously designed to quell the voice crying in the wilderness within you. The mystic Thomas a Kempis said that when you go out into the world, you return having lost some of yourself. Until you learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise of society will seduce you into false belonging, with which you will only become empty and weary. When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen. Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging. This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality. In a sense this is the endless task of finding your true home within your life. It is not narcissistic, for as soon as you rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows begin to open outwards to the world. No longer on the run from your aloneness, your connections with others become real and creative. You no longer need to covertly scrape affirmation from others or from projects outside yourself. This is slow work; it takes years to bring your mind home. ~~ John O'Donohue, Eternal Echoes

Tolle on Death and Eternal video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ft1rYcht0c

Vagus Nerve info

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/viva-vagus-wandering-nerve-could-lead-range-therapies

I am not old, Samantha Reynolds

I Am Not Old
I am not old…she said
I am rare.
I am the standing ovation
At the end of the play.
I am the retrospective
Of my life as art
I am the hours
Connected like dots
Into good sense
I am the fullness
Of existing.
You think I am waiting to die…
But I am waiting to be found
I am a treasure.
I am a map.
And these wrinkles are
Imprints of my journey
Ask me anything.
- Samantha Reynolds, www.bentlily.com

Blessing Bags

Have you ever heard of a Blessing Bag? Read below and make a few. Keep them in your car and when you see someone on the street corner, give them one. I knowthere are lot people who panhandle for a living but there are also those who are really down on their luck and could use a few necessities and a huge Blessing. Give it a try.......you will love the feeling it gives you just knowing you made someone very happy heart emoticon

BLESSING BAGS!!

Gallon Size Ziploc Bag – This is key for several reasons:

Helps to keep everything together & in one place so they can easily access the supplies in their bags/backpacks
Keeps the items from spilling/leaking onto their personal items in their bags
The bags can later be used for other storage options within their bags – storing toiletries, snacks, etc

Hand-Warmers – we put a couple packs in, especially during the winter, but even for those chilly evenings in the spring/summer/fall these would be very welcome. We buy a pack of 40 at Costco for around $15 ($.38/pk) & then we have these on hand for blessing bags as well as camping, winter sports, etc.

Bag of Quarters – These are nice to include for washing clothes at the laundromat (we just put them in a snack-size Ziploc bag to keep them contained in a smaller area

Bottle of Water – Mini water bottles work great so they don’t take up too much space or if you can fit a regular size water bottle

Band-Aids – these are something that may often be needed but may not be something they would be able to spend money on or think about having.

Baby Wipes – a small pack of baby wipes would be a great one to include to help with feeling clean & fresh

Hand Sanitizer – another great option to help them feel cleaner

Wash Cloth – buy an inexpensive wash cloth to include

Toiletries:
*If you have a lot of items to include in your bags, travel-size toiletries work great

Toothbrush
Toothpaste (travel size if you have a lot of items to put into your bag)
Floss
Soap (we bring home soaps from hotels if we don’t end up using all of them)
Deodorant
Shampoo/conditioner (these are also great products to save from hotels if you don’t use them as they’re the perfect size for these bags)
Comb
Personal hygiene items if you’re making a kit for a woman (tampons, pantiliners, pads, etc)
Sunscreen (depending on time of year)
Chapstick
Personal Items:
New Socks
New Underwear
Inexpensive gloves
Non-Perishable Foods:
Granola Bars
Energy Bars
Tuna/cracker packs
Trail mix
Raisins
Peanuts
Fruit cup/ applesauce cup (& include a spoon)
Gum/hard candy
Hot Cocoa/Spiced Cider Mixes or on-the-go coffee mixes
Courtesy http://www.thriftynorthwestmom.com/blessing-bags-assemble-…/

Thanks for SHARING MY POSTS!!!

Sciatica

aw a little of uncomplicated sciatica as a PT---the piriformis muscle is usually involved. Magnesium protocol, Mag-a-hol spray, if acute, use ice for 48-72 hrs, if chronic use heat---15 min to get physiological effect, do not use heat over 30 min, then it becomes a irratant to the nervous system. For EMM---spinal flush, trace/flush bladder and gall bladder, make sure kidney open, find where each body holds emotional residue with painful body, and breathing techniques---i teach to breath into the chakra, gather the pain, exhale from the chakra sending it to the universe to make new life---I teach to do all chakras--just some ideas.

 Turmeric - lots of it. Look up herbs for nervous system. Feet burning too? Wear tight/diabetic socks. Sleep in gym shoes. Tell yourself, "I'm okay. I'm fine

Messenger Mary Oliver ..."my work is loving the world..."

Veterans Yoga resource

http://www.veteransyogaproject.org/practice.html

awesome resource for Energy Medicine charts, M, NV, etc

http://www.jemi.website/basic-guide-to-strengthening-your-meridian-energy.html

acid basic balance chart

Dear Men and Women by John Hall Wheelock

Alice Walker quote heart ...so open that the wind blows through it...

this comment from Alice Walker and i liked the imagery, the consciousness of what she describes about heartbrokenness...She speaks of Heart in the sense of heartfulness. I love how resilient words are, how they can be used like an artist uses paints. I know the process she describes, as do most of us. hmmmmm

Alice's reference to Pema Chodron and the wind blowing through ones heart-that is the sensation that feels unavailable to me when i think of war. What i find is almost a constant opportunity lately to breathe, calm, connect and hold openness, stillness. I am getting insights into how the past few years' experiences have taught me what it is to feel the moment, rather than "other sensations" that are future/past/fear/control based.

Alice Walker(reply to an interviewer): You know, what are hearts for? Hearts are there to be broken, and I say that because that seems to be just part of what happens with hearts. I mean, mine has been broken so many times that I have lost count. But it just seems to be broken open more and more and more, and it just gets bigger. In fact, I was saying to my therapist not long ago, "You know, my heart by now feels open like a suitcase. It feels like it has just sort of dropped open, you know, like how a big suitcase just falls open. It feels like that."Instead of that feeling of having a thorn through your heart, that feeling Pema Chodron talks about in tonglen meditation, you have a sense of openness, as if the wind could blow through it. And that's the way I'm used to my heart feeling. The feeling of the heart being so open that the wind blows through it. I think that is the way it's supposed to feel when you're in balance. And when you get out of balance, you feel like there's no wind, there's no breeze, there's just this rock and it has a big thing sticking through it. I don't know how you get from one feeling to the other, except through meditation, often, but also activism, just seeing what needs to be done in the world, or in our families, and just start doing it.

Emotions, vocabulary Jorge Matos, Jr on Energy Medicine Exchange FB

emotions, feelings, vocabulary Jorge Matos, jr Energy Medicine Exchange FB

More Emotions, Feeling, Words from Jorge Matos Jr FB

Emotions Vocabulary

More words, emotions

I though the earth remembered me....Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me, she 
took me back so tenderly, arranging 
her dark skirts, her pockets 
full of lichens and seeds. I slept 
as never before, a stone 
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
-Mary Oliver

magnesium

Magnesium is one of my main squeeze therapies for many common women’s symptoms. Here are just a few of the ways I use it that you might find helpful, so save this email to your desktop for future reference! 

For menstrual cramps: 800-1200 mg magnesium glycinate daily for 3 days before your period starts, and for the first 2 days of your period, 

For restless leg syndrome: 600-1200 mg magnesium citrate before bed, 

For constipation: 400 - 600 mg magnesium citrate before bed, or up to 600 mg magnesium citrate twice daily until it starts working, which should be in a just a few days after starting it, 

For eye twitches and other muscle twitches of cramps: 1200 mg magnesium glycinate daily until the symptom is completely gone, then 600-1000 mg daily for several months, 

And for difficulty falling asleep: 600-1200 mg magnesium glycinate before bed.

It’s also one of the go-to remedies in my migraine prevention plan, which I share with you here in this week's new article and video. This plan has helped many of my patients to overcome chronic migraines - and I hope it brings you tremendous relief, too.

Aviva Romm, md

Feelings vocabulary wheel

Breakage by Mary Oliver

for the traveler JO'D

For the Traveler
– by John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening a conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.

When you travel,
A new silence goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

birthday blessings JO'D

May you awaken to the mystery of being here 
And enter the quiet immensity of your own presence. 
May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses. 
May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers beckon. 
May you respond to the call of your gift and find the courage to follow its path. 
May the flame of anger free you from falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and
Anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift
Woven around the heart of wonder.
~ John O'Donohue

Someday we will all die...

modern phrases from Shakespeare

Friendship by David Whyte

FRIENDSHIP

is a mirror to presence and a testament to forgiveness. Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn. A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them. An undercurrent of real friendship is a blessing exactly because its elemental form is rediscovered again and again through understanding and mercy. All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die.

In the course of the years a close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other as much as ourselves, to remain friends we must know the other and their difficulties and even their sins and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, the leading creative edge of their incarnation, thus subtly discouraging what makes them smaller, less generous, less of themselves.

Friendship is the great hidden transmuter of all relationship: it can transform a troubled marriage, make honorable a professional rivalry, make sense of heartbreak and unrequited love and become the newly discovered ground for a mature parent-child relationship.

The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a constant force in human life: a diminishing circle of friends is the first terrible diagnostic of a life in deep trouble: of overwork, of too much emphasis on a professional identity of forgetting who will be there when our armored personalities run into the inevitable natural disasters and vulnerabilities found in even the most ordinary existence…

Friendship transcends disappearance: an enduring friendship goes on after death, the exchange only transmuted by absence, the relationship advancing and maturing in a silent internal conversational way even after one half of the bond has passed on.

But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

...

From ‘FRIENDSHIP’ in
CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment
and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.
© David Whyte & Many Rivers Press
http://davidwhyte.stores.yahoo.net/newbook.html

...

Looking Together
Carmel, California January 2015
Photo © David Whyte

As Memoirs of a Geisha unfolds, the young Chiyo, having been bought into slavery by the matron of the geisha house, and unceremoniously told of her parents’ death, kneels in a pulsing, fetal heap of tears on the hard wooden floors of the okiya. As the scene peels open, Chiyo describes a poem at the local temple in her village called “Loss.” The poem “has three words, but the poet has scratched them out” for “you cannot read loss, only feel it.”

In writing this I have struggled to find a structure for the narrative to follow; grief has no structure, and it cannot be read. It is as C.S. Lewis cites in A Grief Observed:

“In grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?”

Henceforth, this piece will be structured by feeling. If it feels disorienting as you read, that’s because loss is disorienting. If it feels confusing, that’s because loss is confusing. If it feels uncomfortable, that’s because loss is uncomfortable. But, as I have found, and as I am finding on my best days, if I can sit with the disorientation, confusion, and discomfort of loss long enough, it can lead me to a greater appreciation of life and that the spiral C.S. Lewis describes can indeed bend towards the sun.

http://www.onbeing.org/blog/memoirs-of-a-griever/8000

These people are unafraid of walking with me through the mess of life, and are comfortable enough to let my dad’s stories live on in our conversations long after his life ended. Whether they are aware of it or not, these human beings normalize my story, and subtly invite me to feel whole in their presence — whole as a person who, for the rest of her life, will be learning how to miss and remember someone.

To me, this is an inheritance infinitely more meaningful than a sum of money. If “rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts,” and “the only gift is a portion of thyself,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson shouts from the pages of history, then I am a lucky woman to have inherited a portion of my dad’s humanity — which lives on in my own.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes poem, song Holy Mother by Clapton and Pavarotti

http://aleteia.org/2015/03/03/video-eric-clapton-sings-song-he-wrote-for-blessed-mother-with-pavarotti/

http://themoderatevoice.com/209343/for-whomever-might-have-need-of-heartfelt-brokenhearted-beauty/

Prayer for the Living and the Dead
by cp estés

For all the innocents of our world.
May they be kept safe.
May those who have died,
remember no pain,
only beauty and Love.
For those still standing,
may all be comforted
in meaningful ways
by both visible and
invisible hands…

This comes with love,
dr.e.

Pieta Painting by George Yepes, mural artist of Los Angeles “El Tepeyac De Los Angeles” By permission. Yepes is also the painter of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, below.

Breathing and grief

http://www.drdooleynoted.com/anatomy-angel-grief-and-breathing/
http://www.drdooleynoted.com/anatomy-angel-grief-and-breathing/

This got me thinking of the anatomy of grief and breathing.
 
Our limbic system is part of the central nervous system that controls Homeostasis, Olfaction, Memory, and Emotion. 

 
Therefore, I like to say the limbic system takes us “HOME.”
 
Homeostasis involves several higher functioning systems for systemic balance, such as pH balance, blood pressure, heart rate, and other autonomic events, such as breathing.
Olfaction is the only special sense to be able to bypass the relay center. I liken it to a VIP member in the club, that can go right past the bouncer. 

 
The limbic system is also in charge of short-term memory and its integration into long-term memory. This part of the cerebrum is in very close contact with the centers for olfaction, which is why you smell something and remember where you were when you smelled it.

 
Emotions are regulated by the limbic system, also.
 
Therefore, the smell of a former love’s cologne can give you the memory of a former love. The memory can then initiate grief that changes the way that you breathe.
 
Welcome to the limbic system.
 
When you experience grief, it can actually change posturing. Then, you start to protract and elevate the shoulders, thus rounding them and decreasing the ability to build intra-abdominal pressure (IAP). That alters the homeostasis of breathing, perpetuating the cycle of grief.
 
This double-edged sword makes the grief cycle change breathing to make grief worse.
 
But if you know your anatomy and know how to properly breathe to build IAP, you can actually help manage your grief. This can help you with homeostasis, too.
 
If it’s a vicious cycle, the cycle can swing the other way.
 
When a memory triggers grief, interrupt the grief with proper IAP breathing.
 
These steps can help.
 
1. Breathe in deeply and slowly through the nose, with the body of the tongue on the roof of your mouth. Let the tongue tip hit the back of the upper teeth.
 
2. Look straight ahead, laser-focused on a target. Don’t let the eyes dart. Focus on an inanimate object.
 
3. Don’t raise the shoulders when inhaling. Fill the belly full with air on the inhale. Don’t suck in your gut on the inhale.
 
4. Let the chest rise naturally as air rushes in. Let the sternum move forward and slightly upward.
 
5. Let the sides and back of the ribs push out and back on the inhale, respectively.
 
6. Strengthen the abdomen and deliver more oxygen by prolonging the exhale. Oxygen is delivered to the system on the exhale for gas exchange. Get more bang for your inhale by prolonging the exhale.
 
7. Avoid teeth clenching and shoulder rounding at all times during the breath. Breathe more from the gut and less form the shoulders and neck.
 
8. This is not to discount therapeutic techniques, like talk therapy and emotional freedom technique. In fact, breathing can be used in conjunction with all things. After all you breathe to survive but also to thrive.
 
9. Use a new smell to help the limbic system program a new process. I like peppermint – as long as it is not associated with your grief.
 
Consider that your abdominal muscles are built for thousands of daily repetitions.

  
 They are a source of mental and physical strength.
 
Use your breath to process and overcome your grief.
 
Use the anatomy and physiology of the limbic system to help reverse your vicious grief cycle.
 
As always, it’s your call.
 
– Dr. Kathy Dooley