Beliefs like this are so easy to accept as our reality, and yet so limiting to our healing process. Discover more beliefs that can limit your healing at: http://misahopkins.com/beating-the-odds-free-special-report/

In a sense, we could say that all illnesses are meant to be and are reflections of our karma or God’s will. That could include age-related deteriorating eye-sight, broken bones, skin rashes, or the flu.

So, perhaps the real question we are asking is whether it is appropriate to do something about it. When you put your particular illness or chronic condition along side fairly common ailments, it provides a whole new perspective doesn’t it?

If we deem it to be acceptable to have a doctor set our broken bones, discover the cause of a rash and treat it, take care of ourselves when we contract the flu or buy glasses to correct our vision, isn’t it equally appropriate to find our solutions for more serious conditions?

There is yet another aspect of this question that can cause great internal confusion. If an illness is God’s will or karma, then you probably hold a belief that there is a purpose or lesson involved that you need or want to understand. By-passing that service or lesson misses the potential gift of the physical challenge.

Let’s address this dilemma first in terms of karma and then in terms of God’s will. If there is a karmic lesson involved, you might want to ask yourself this question, “Do I believe that I must play out the drama associated with this illness until I die in order to bring my karma into balance?”

If your answer is, “Yes,” then you have determined what is required and do indeed need to live with the illness until you make your crossing. Spiritually, you are getting ready for the final and wonderful freedom that death brings, so letting go of anything that could encumber a graceful and beautiful crossing needs to be released. In your spiritual practice you will want to find compassion for any regrets and resentments that may be related to your illness and your life. The compassion frees you to be more present to Divine consciousness.

However, if your answer was, “No,” you might want to ask yourself this question, “Do I need to understand the origin of my karmic lesson in order to be freed from the role I am playing?” If your answer is, “Yes,” then you want to focus a great deal of your healing attention on understanding the karmic basis of your illness and finding compassion for your past life and present-life choices.  The compassion and understanding will free you from your karma.

If you do not believe you need to understand the origin of the karma in order to be freed from it, you will want to focus your attention on methods of releasing yourself from the karmic wheel. In this case, your direct your spiritual practice toward freedom from your perceived limits, regardless of whether or not you remember the origin of this karmic limit.

All responses are appropriate, because your beliefs are shaping the experience of your reality. The key is to be truthful with yourself and what you believe, so that you can respond appropriately to your actual beliefs. Responding to beliefs you don’t have, but think you should have won’t help you. You’ll see changes when you respond to your true beliefs.

Physical suffering calls us to greater compassion for ourselves, whether we go deeper into the suffering, release ourselves from it, or become freed from it when we cross over. So you have the liberty to choose what feels right to you because ultimately it all leads to compassion, and compassion heals the body and soul, and opens a doorway to Divine awareness.

Let’s look at illness as God’s will, serving a purpose for yourself and others. You might want to consider asking God what purpose this illness is serving for a greater good. Then become an observer of Divine will in action.

Notice how your illness affects the lives of those you love. What are you learning together? How is each of you being challenged to be and hold more than you ever would have dreamed? In what ways is your faith or capacity for love stretching beyond its normal boundaries?  Notice how deep, profound and constant love is being required.

Become an instrument of love. Challenge yourself to love everything—the pain, the discomfort, the limits, frustrations, blessings, joys, freedom from pain—all of it. Why? Because doesn’t God ask us to learn how to love without limits? Doesn’t illness push us beyond the boundaries of how deeply we might have thought we could love?

It is difficult to be in on-going pain and find the energy to show kindness toward another. It is challenging to be a tired caretaker, yet continue to be gentle with the person you are attending. Suffering calls us to our greatest expression of compassion and love—toward others and ourselves.

Become the love God asks us to become and quietly observe how your service transforms you and those around you. Notice how healing treatments have the greatest potential positive effect when they are received in love. God’s influence is profound in an environment of unconditional love. Since God’s nature is love, God is most welcome in a body, mind and spirit that you are loving.

You might begin to notice that serving the greater purpose of becoming unconditional love, frees your energy to more fully receive healing. Your love of God within you attracts the treatments and healers that serve you best. Or your love will help you transcend your pain until you are ready to be welcomed on the other side into God’s arms.

Whatever our beliefs about our illnesses, physical limits provide us with opportunities to discover the profound depths of our capacity to love. My own experiences have taught me to search the beliefs that limit my ability to love and love the process I am experiencing, because that’s where the freedom truly lives.

The greatest mysteries to healing in life are right here in front of us, part of us, each and every day. The reason we do not recognize them is because we are so busy surviving. We rarely slow down long enough to notice the spirit of life hidden within every living thing.

You do not have to wait for a healing miracle to magically occur. Healing moments and miracles occur as you dedicate time and space to simply be in the presence of life. By creating quiet moments of reflection and meditation, you increase the odds that intuitive wisdom, insights and healing energy can actually get through to you.

The inner stillness that creates the opening for healing doesn’t just happen. You must be willing to create time and put effort into becoming still. In the stillness you become witness to yourself, your guidance and to the gifts that life is offering you. In order to assist you in slowing down, one of the very first things to do is to create safe space for yourself. Here are some ideas for creating safe space:

Make Privacy a Priority
In order to create deep and meaningful experiences, you will find it helpful to attend to your needs for privacy. It is difficult to engage in the depths of stillness when you surround yourself with multiple distractions, so I recommend creating space where those are at a minimum if at all possible. For example turn off the stereo and the telephone. Ifyou are meditating, you are not answering the phone, so you might as well spare yourselfthe disturbance of it ringing.

Create a Quiet Space or Incorporate Background Noise
If you are living in a metropolitan area, where it is nearly impossible to escape loudnoise, then it is probably best to practice meditation in such a way that you allow thosesounds to become part of the background. With practice, your senses will become moreattuned to nature and your inner landscape and less attuned to human-made sounds.

Notify Others
When living with others, you might want to post a note on your door or notify your family or friends that you are taking some private time and need to be left undisturbed fora certain period of time. Unless there is an emergency, it is probably best not to give into the temptation to respond to any outside interruptions. Your relationship with theDivine is an integral part of your journey in self-awareness, deserving your complete and uninterrupted attention.

Choose a Consistent Time of Day and Amount of Time
You may want to set a timer for a specified period of uninterrupted time. In this way, you and everyone in your home knows that this is your private time, until the timer goes off. Consider setting your sacred time for a specific time of the day, every day. Consistency will help you learn to let go of the mental distractions that usually, naturally arise, and it will make it easier on friends and family to know when to expect you to be needing privacy.

Start Out Slow
Start out slow. If the longest you can be still with yourself is 5 minutes, that’s great. Begin there, and slowly add more time. The idea is to increase serenity, not become frustrated with yourself about what you can’t do yet in terms of being in the stillness with yourself. If it is helpful to listen to a soothing or sound medicine CD for 20 minutes or so, incorporate that into your stillness practice. If your mind gets quiet while taking a hot bath, pour that hot water into a tub and sink in. If you prefer to be out in nature, find a place to be and go there. If it helps to gaze at a candle or follow the movements of your breath, do what works.

This is your time for stillness and there is no right or wrong way to approach it. Do what works for you. Once you get used to having this private time for quieting your mind, you can become present to the mind itself. In time, you will discover how to witness the mind itself and day-by-day invite it to become more and more quiet. In this quietness, there is opportunity for you to receive the guidance you need to be led to healing choices and options that are optimal for your healing.

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Maybe you begin using positive affirmations because you believe in the power of positive thoughts, but in the back of your mind and heart, fear creeps in and tempts you with the worst. Then comes the flood of questions:

• What if I do everything I know to do and I still don’t heal?

• What if I chose the wrong doctor or healer?

• What if the treatment doesn’t work?

• What if the condition is more powerful than my positive thinking?

• What if there are conditions you just can’t heal?

• What if the miracles don’t happen soon enough?

What we are really asking ourselves is, “ What if I suffer?” “Can I endure it?” “What if I die?” “Am I ready?”

Difficult as they may be, if you ignore these questions, they are just going to keep coming up until you honor them. If you give the fear power, what you fear most will be the likely outcome. If you try to leap over the fear, it still gnaws at you, no matter how many affirmations you do.

Fear is a natural and reasonable response. Fear is a survival reaction—a protection mechanism. Fear is healthy when someone runs a red light and your fear causes you to slam on the breaks before hitting the offending car. Fear is good when your baby is about to roll off the edge of a bed. Fear can cause us to take action quickly when immediate response is needed. But prolonged fear does not help you heal. Fears can lead us to the worst possible conclusions long before those conclusions are ever likely happen.

Before I found an endocrinologist that could help me with my hormonal imbalance (As a woman, I was producing as much testosterone as a male in puberty.) I was extremely depressed with fear because no doctor had been able to help me and therefore, I concluded, there was no cure. All I could see was pain and hopelessness, but in desperation I uttered a sincere and tearful prayer for help. I stopped trying to figure it out and opened my heart completely to Divine intervention.

Help came, literally, within minutes through the support of a friend that suspected what was going on for me and referred me to a doctor that could help. Divine intervention has many faces and mine came in the form of a good friend and a knowledgeable doctor who was used to treating severe hormone imbalances.

The minute I had hope, the fear was gone. What I understand now is that hopefulness is something you choose, not just something you get when it looks like you have the right doctor, healer, treatment or therapy. True hope comes when you face the fear with its worst potential outcome and surrender the fear.

If you meet the fear with compassion, understanding its reason for existence, and hold the fear in your compassion, the fear soon dissipates, naturally. It won’t work if you only hold the fear in compassion to get the fear to release because that is a form of by-passing rather than honoring the significance of the fear. But inner peace naturally follows when you honestly meet your fears with loving regard.

The minute the fear no longer persists, your energy is free to live from hope. Because your actions and choices are made from the hope and conviction that you are healing—healing occurs. Illness and injuries demand that we open to more of our inner power and our connection to Source in order to discover our best paths to healing. Our bodies can awaken spiritually right along with our consciousness through our healing journeys. That choice is ours to make.

Certainly, sometimes we do not shift enough physically fast enough to heal before death calls us. But if we do not compassionately face our fear and instead allow it to be a pervasive force in our lives, we may very well manifest our final release before it is truly necessary. Once we have made peace with our fear of suffering and death, we have more access to the life force energy within that will now be free to address our healing.

When I first discovered the concept of surrender in regard to healing, I thought it meant giving up, as in admitting defeat or that it meant not putting any more effort into my healing. However, I soon understood surrender within the context of healing was more akin to giving up the fight and the need to figure out what my healing journey should look like. I discovered that struggling to become well was no way to become well at all.

I read advertisements now about the fight against AIDS or cancer, or other debilitating conditions and can’t identify with the concept of fighting against an illness. Fighting is an energy that inherently implies conquering or working against something rather than with it.  I have experienced far more healing by working with a condition than I ever did when I was choosing to conquer it.

Surrender in healing is about letting go of the need to conquer or figure out how to fix yourself.  Surrender rests in divine wisdom as the guiding light to your wellness. Surrender is an act of opening to the lessons the illness or injury can bring into your life. It is about creating space for unexpected insights about the best course for your ultimate wellness and happiness. Surrender is the art of letting go of the struggle to become well and sinking into wellness itself.

Illnesses occur for reasons. Perhaps we have exposed ourselves to too many toxins, either through our environment, our water, our habits, or our food and drink. Maybe we have deep emotional pain that is manifesting as pain in our bodies. We might be empathic, and picking up the sorrow and anger of people around us or we might even be connecting to the lack of balance on the planet and manifesting that lack of balance in our own bodies.  Viruses or bacteria may be having their way with our bodies, or we may be stressed beyond our bodies’ abilities to cope.  There are so many potential causes, and frequently more than one cause, that we can wear ourselves out trying to figure it all out and heal at the same time.

This is where surrender can be helpful.  If you need to know the root cause, you can ask for guidance and surrender the machinations of your mind to a stillness and peace that will provide you with the insights you need. If you need to establish a clear course of action, by opening to divine awareness, you can allow yourself to be led to the perfect healer or therapy. You can welcome insight to come to you in meditation, through your dreams, and your own intuitive perceptions.

You can even speak directly to the illness or injury. Ask it to reveal its lessons to you and what it needs in order to return your body to balance. Not all illness or injuries are bad. Sometimes, they are actually gifts we are giving ourselves to help us slow down, relinquish our stressful lives, release limiting beliefs, open to receiving greater love, teach us to quiet our minds, and settle down our emotional reactions to life. If we are willing to surrender the fight and receive the gift, the healing often follows naturally, with effort, but without struggle.

You can surrender in trust to the approaches you have been guided to utilize.  If you know you have been divinely led, there is no need to struggle or fight against anything. You can rest in the treatment or person you have been led to discover. By surrendering in trust you are living in faith with the Divine. The more you trust, the more revelations will come to you.

As you surrender, love for the totality of who you are—including your challenges and your perfection—is revealed to you, and it is all part of this journey of loving awareness. Isn’t the totality of you worthy of knowing it is fully loved? Surrender in healing is not at all about admitting defeat. In the journey of healing you have the opportunity to fully surrender to allowing yourself to be completely loved in the arms of the Divine.

Tags: self healing

This entry was posted
on Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 at 8:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.
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It took me a lot of years to figure this one out. I grew up in a family that practiced cynicism like a religion. Nothing was exempt from our familial cynical eye. Anything that wasn’t part of our family’s dogma was suspect and therefore, frequently ridiculed during the family meal or late night discussions.

I thought cynicism was a normal part of life. It seemed to be a family practice that had been handed down several generations, and was so natural that it didn’t occur to me to question it until I went to college to become a special education teacher and later, as I delved more deeply into my physical healing. I discovered that positive thoughts, feelings, and expressions were far more effective with my students and in reinforcing my healing choices.

Cynicism has a way of presuming, “I’m right and you are wrong.” It is full of negativity that is harmful to the people or events you are being cynical about and it is toxic to you when you are one being cynical. Here is the deal. If you are being negative about someone else or something else, you are in the negative energy.

It is completely possible to question or consider the validity or veracity of something or someone without being cynical and therefore, negatively critical. I gave up on constructive criticism years ago, because I think the concept begets negativity and cynicism, and ultimately that isn’t constructive. You create a toxic environment for yourself and others when you are being cynical and disease gets fed in a toxic environment.

Let’s say that you just started a new healing therapy and it is not entirely comfortable for you to incorporate into your life. It requires some significant change, so you complain about all the ways in which you must adjust your habits and your life. How much benefit can you derive from the therapy if you surround it with negative thoughts and feeling? It sets up a breeding ground where part of your psyche has permission to sabotage your efforts. In very little time, you are likely to discover that the therapy you have adopted is not working well for you, so you have cause to give up on it and look for something else.

If, on the other hand, you recognize that you are going to need to make some significant changes and you do so willingly with a positive disposition, your choice becomes an active commitment to your well being, which your psyche recognizes as positive action on behalf of wellness. Even if the choice is not easy to implement immediately, your commitment and positive attitude are speaking to your subconscious. This creates an environment where your entire subconscious and conscious mind can align in the direction of your healing.

After years of dedicated, personal self-healing, and having observed hundreds of people in their healing process, I discovered that the negativity of cynicism has no place in the healing journey. Cynicism is a way of saying that you and others are never good enough. It is like saying the Divine presence in each person isn’t living up to your expectation. How can you accept Divine intervention in your healing if you are criticizing what the Divine brings into your life? When I finally realized this, I stopped being cynical and the healing had space in which to emerge. I was finally really trusting.

People heal when they are positively focused with love and clear intention to heal. They release themselves from the bondage of their anger and frustration, into the peaceful inner spaces that allow healing to occur. If I had known that when I was growing up, I might never have adopted the habit; however, as an adult recognizing its harmful nature, life and healing has been a lot easier without the limitations and toxicity of cynicism.

This entry was posted
on Friday, September 10th, 2010 at 10:56 am and is filed under self healing.
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Recently, I had a dream in which I was shown that I had two significant options—cancer or my life. Dreams have now become my early warning system, and I’m grateful to have been warned. What I did not do was panic. I knew fear would only aggravate what was happening in my body and I was being given an opportunity to create greater physical balance and spiritual awakening. I decided to greet the opportunity with love and compassion.

After being still and present with the information for a day, I called a friend who is familiar with my dream patterns. She listened carefully as I shared every detail I could remember. She then made it clear to me that this was indeed a warning and added that her intuitive impression was that I would be able to bring myself into healthy balance quickly.

Before I had received this dream, my husband followed his intuitive guidance to purchase a means for alkalizing our water, sure that my body would respond well to greater alkalinity in our water. He was right. I could feel an immediate physical response, and I was certain his insistence on making sure we had alkaline water in our house was no accident.

I also called my doctor to ask her what I should be considering as I approached my healing. She reminded me that high acidity is a breeding ground for cancer, encouraging me to eat more raw foods, oxygenate my body, drink the alkaline water, and utilize light therapy (which come naturally to me when I am doing my sound medicine, because I literally see the colored light frequencies that my body needs).

Realizing that cancer can have many root causes, I decide to leave no stone unturned, as I evaluated any:

repressed resentments;
exposure to toxins;
excess acidity in the body;
lack of oxygenation; and
diet.

My observations with friends and family indicate to me that cancer tends to manifest in areas of our body that are most vulnerable. From the dream I knew which area of my body has the greatest predisposition for cancer, and that is where I began my concentrated healing focus with sound medicine and compassionate meditation. My favorite meditation for bringing compassion to healing is a Creation Meditation and can be found here: http://www.newdreamfoundation.com/forums/index.php?topic=75.0

In addition to the sound medicine; compassionate, focused meditations and alkaline water, I began exercising more frequently and affirming oxygen absorption, eating more raw foods, and checking my complaint department for unacknowledged anger, regret, resentment or any form of self-abuse. I applied myself to creating immediate balance physically and emotionally.

Spiritually, I dedicated myself to experiencing greater self-acceptance and self-love. I caught myself when I started to complain about something or make a negative judgment. I would stop myself, asking what was right about the situation. While it can be good to realize what is not working, I knew complaining was only exacerbating the issue. Recognizing what was also working allowed me to make any necessary changes with more balanced and compassionate perspective.

Just days later I had a dream showing me that the potential problem was moving out of my house. The good news is that the potential cancer gave me motivation to maintain a more balanced life, as well as open to greater Divine love. I look forward to the next dream showing me my house is clear.

Tags: cancer, self healing

This entry was posted
on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.
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Knowing how to approach your self-healing process can be a real quandary, particularly if you don’t have a favorite and specific energy healing modality. You can spend a lot of energy just figuring out how to think of self-healing in a general context.

Recently, one of my readers asked a really great question regarding a general approach to self-healing. It was significant enough that I sent it to several of my colleagues for their consideration and comments.

Here is what was posed to me. The writer wondered what I thought about an approach to healing where you never think about your body, but instead have thoughts that made you feel emotionally good, and as a result your body would automatically realign itself. Since I have historically chosen to lovingly focus on the area of my body needing attention, I wanted some additional insights to this query. Here are a couple of responses I received.

Dr. Valerie Olmstead, NMD wrote me with this observation about holding positive feelings and trusting the body would align to those feelings, “Yah, of course! If, that is, one is intending alignment.” This is an important distinction. If you are feeling good emotionally, but not holding an intention for the body to align to that feeling, you might make very little progress physically.

If we take this a bit further, the concept proposed to me seems to assume that good emotions and physical discomfort cannot exist together. This seeming assumption opens up another question. Is it possible to be emotionally happy and still be in physical distress?

I know from personal experience, that it is possible to be emotionally happy and physically ill or uncomfortable. I have witnessed this in others as well. For example, imagine that you are quite ill and someone you love comes to visit you. You might feel your heart leap and reach your hand out for them. Perhaps you automatically sit up to hug them, and increase your pain level for having made the effort, yet feel love and happiness just holding them in your arms.

Consider a time when you were in discomfort and someone said something that caused you to laugh. There you are feeling pure joy and delight, while simultaneously saying, “Ouch,” because the laughing itself caused you to feel more physical discomfort. So positive emotions and physical pain are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

If you have ever been ill or in chronic pain for an extended period of time, you know how difficult it is to keep your emotions in a positive place. The illness and pain seem to scream at you to pay attention to your body. If you could actually maintain focus on positive emotions, ignoring the demands of your body, and your intention was clear that the body was to align with the positive emotions you are feeling, I could see how this approach might be effective. Having been in intense discomfort, I’m not sure I personally could do it.

My friend and shaman, healer, Maria Mar, made a significant observation about positive emotions and their helpful or limiting roles in healing. “There is a lot of ‘feel good’ that is ego-bound. It is lodged in what I call the Second-hand heart. The one that carries the emotional scripts, expectations and dramas. That kind of feel-good is not healing or re-aligning and it is usually part of the attachment to the dis-ease.”

Maria makes it clear that just having positive emotions may not lend to ultimate healing, if the good feelings are caught up in the very ego attachments that helped to create the illness to begin with, or contribute to the illness’ ongoing existence.

This is a powerful distinction. There are certain positive emotional states that do contribute to healing and others that, depending upon your personal attachments, may not be helping you heal. Let’s say that you are deeply in love with someone that is leaving the intimate relationship you have had with them. Your heart is aching emotionally and physically. If you are attached to receiving intimate love from only that person and you have an attachment to how that love must be reciprocated to you, you have a drama of expectation wrapped around the positive emotion of love.

You can literally develop chest pains, high blood pressure, loss of weight and more in an attempt to keep beliefs about your version of what that love must look like and feel like alive in your life. This is not the kind of belief or positive emotion that will help you heal.

In my own experience, not attending directly to the part of my body that is speaking loudly to me usually results in it yelling louder through more pain. Yes, I can remove myself from the pain for a period of time through a form of meditation that takes me into states of bliss, but when I am more grounded in my body, the part of the body in pain wants attention.

Rather than not attending to the pain, it has been my personal preference to go into it. That’s right—into the pain, illness or discomfort. By being present to the sub-textual message my body is carrying, my body relaxes into a state of healing freedom. By being present in loving compassion, without judgment regarding its existence or reason for being, the motivations and needs behind the pain are acknowledged, and then heal naturally in the presence of centered, loving compassion.

Is it possible to heal in the manner suggested by my reader where you do not attend to the body and rather hold positive emotions so that the body can automatically align? I imagine it is possible, provided your intention is very clear and your emotions are based in loving compassion, rather than bound to emotions that are actually part of the healing trauma. And your thoughts and beliefs (conscious and subconscious) are in the right positive framework. If any subconscious need is being met by the illness, the condition will prevail, regardless of what your feelings might be.

In my experience healing personally and as a healer supporting others, I have discovered that beliefs, feelings and intentions must all be in alignment. If any one area is caught in the drama that contributes to the illness, some subconscious or conscious need is being met by the illness, and your healing is not likely to progress.

May I suggest that while the concept presented holds some truth, it is probably not complete in and of itself. Other factors need to be considered in creating a holistic response to illness and the creation of health. That said, if I were going to focus on one positive feeling with which to invite my body into alignment, I would choose compassion. Feelings—emotional and physical; positive and negative—held in compassion, lead us to truth. Freeing the self into the truth beyond the attachments and dramas provides the greatest opportunity for healing at every level.

This entry was posted
on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 2:16 pm and is filed under self healing.
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This morning, as I was meditating, I had one of those special moments of awakening. As I was in the moment, I remembered that the last time I had a profound experience of awakening, I tried to cling to it, thinking, “I want life to be like this forever.” The moment I attached to the experience, it stopped.

I have found the same to be true in regard to healing. I remember times when I would suddenly feel completely well. I would attempt to attach to it as though I could squeeze that feeling into my body forever. Then minutes later, I would be uncomfortable again and wondering why nothing ever worked.

In reality, something was working. I could feel my wellness. It would have been appropriate to acknowledge how I was feeling and give thanks for it. Where I created an impediment was when I tried to grab on to it and make my body and mind submit to wellness, rather than allow it to simply be.

Energetically this is similar to cupping water in your hand and then squeezing your hand. Of course, the water immediately runs out of your hand. However, if you keep your hand cupped, the water lingers. When you are in a true state of acceptance, the water stays in your hand.

Attempting to make healing happen or hanging on to those moments of wellness doesn’t work. It must be allowed to simply become you. You surrender to the wellness and invite it in openly to have its way with you.

Getting overly excited doesn’t work very well either. Some years ago, I was healing a cut finger—eyes closed, singing to the cut to seal it. At one point I opened my eyes and saw that my sound healing was working. I got very excited and thought, “Oh, this is easy!” From that moment on nothing happened.

I asked my elder and teacher what had happened, and she explained that the moment I got excited, I was basically expressing my disbelief and doubt. She told me that you don’t get excited when you know it is going to work; you just do it. Healing is a matter-of-fact reality when you know, without doubt, that it will happen.

Dr. Artistotle describes the phenomena of excitement and ego quite well in this article: http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/how-does-perception-affect-healing. As he suggests, sometimes even positive thinking isn’t the kind of positive thinking that helps you become well. He suggests letting go of the “emotional roller-coaster” of being extremely excited or extremely depressed will help accelerate healing.

If you find yourself attempting by matter of will to grab on to healing, impressing it into your being forever; or getting excited and over-confident at the first signs of actual wellness, like me, you are probably going to discover these approaches don’t work, and your healing process actually slows down or can even come to a complete halt.

It is far better to open your heart and body to being well. Then graciously notice when you are feeling better with gratitude. You can feel pleased and grateful, enjoying the moment of your wellness, without trying to grab hold of it or becoming overly excited by it. When you can simply allow wellness to be fully accepted in the moment—letting it settle into your bones—you will discover moments of wellness occurring more and more frequently, until that is your natural state.

Tags: alternative healing, healing secrets, holistic healing

This entry was posted
on Thursday, August 5th, 2010 at 5:43 pm and is filed under self healing.
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Intuition is one of those elusive concepts that many of us know we should be using to enhance our opportunities for healing, but often, don’t quite know how to access. I remember a friend that had been a meditator for many years asking me how he would know when his intuition was speaking to him.

I was taken aback. I had assumed that because he had been an active meditator at one time in his life, that he would automatically be open to and recognize his intuitive wisdom, but that was not the case.

Because he did not have a relationship with his own intuitive insight, he spent countless hours researching about various allopathic and alternative approaches to the treatment of his medical condition, and made logical deductions about which of those treatments gave him the best chance of success—all without the benefit of his intuition.

I can’t personally imagine a more challenging approach. Had I been him, I would have been constantly wondering if I had made the right choice. When I base my decisions on good research and intuitive guidance, I don’t worry about whether or not my choice is right because: 1) I trust my intuition to put me on the right and best path for me and 2) I trust my research will show me how to get the most out of the path I have chosen.

Intuition can be profoundly subtle, and that is one of the reasons we miss its messages. Many of us have not been taught to recognize our intuition when it is speaking to us, so we can feel as though we are intuitionally challenged, and as a result, lean more heavily on our deductive reasoning.

Even if we do recognize it, if the message doesn’t seem logical, we may disregard it. Have you ever had one of those moments where you were arguing with yourself and finally chose the more logical course of action, only to discover later,that the part of yourself you were arguing with actually had a clearer picture about what was going on and what you needed to realize or do?

Whoever coined the words, “the little voice in the back of your head” did a great job of describing the subtle nature of intuition. It can be so faint that intuition can be very easy to dismiss. To get the intuitive message, you really have to become aware of the subtle responses your mind and body make in regard to questions, dilemmas and concerns about your health.

I’ve learned to really pay attention when I have a thought that comes up in response to a decision I need to make, particularly if it is counter to what I normally would choose. I really pay attention if that thought is persistent. And I pay extra special attention when my predominant thought or the little voice in the back of my head is having a visceral effect on my body. Those are signs of intuition trying to break through my habitual thoughts, assumptions, and sometimes, through my logical deductions.

Hunches, gut feelings, tingling, or a tightening belly, for example, are more tell-tale signs of intuition at work. By becoming a more astute observer of your subtle thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, you start recognizing intuitive insights.

Your awareness of intuitive messages gets stronger as you pay attention to how your intuition speaks through you. Act on your intuition, and you’ll notice the insights even more frequently because you will have developed faith in your inner wisdom.

Tags: holistic healing, intuition, self healing

This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 at 9:26 am and is filed under self healing.
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Some of you are aware that my healing took a huge leap forward when I discovered that my own sounds could heal. So I’ve decided to share some Sound Healing Tips from time to time here at Self-Healing Secrets. Let me suggest you get on the mailing list or check back here regularly if you would like to learn some of the secrets of Sound Healing that I have taught to hundreds of healers across the country.

One of the first skills I teach new sound healers to develop is the ability to sound their feelings. Why?

Sounds express pain in a way that goes beyond what you can state in words. It expresses feelings from past lives, other realities, and from the full and total experiences of your soul’s journey. Sounding doesn’t necessarily segment into specific circumstances, as you do with other forms of healing. It goes to source feelings that have been experienced in multiple settings. Sound also gets to layers of feelings beneath the surface of what is immediately apparent to you.

With sound you don’t have to understand the reason for the feeling or where it has come from. This is not about the mind figuring anything out. This is about raw emotion being honored and recognized, so you need absolute honesty with yourself.

You must have courage when you sound your feelings. If you want real healing to occur by sounding your feelings, you must be truthful with the sounds that are longing to be expressed. Not all healing sounds are pretty. Some of them sound downright ugly.

A sound is not good or bad because it is hurtful, mournful or angry. It is simply a feeling that is stuck inside you and wants to be acknowledged. You can’t skirt the edges because a certain sound makes you uncomfortable. If a certain sound is your truth, it is your truth.

One of the great gifts that occurs in sounding your feelings truthfully is that a part of you that has been in pain finally gets to be fully understood. The outcome of witnessing yourself at such a deep level is absolute peace.

Imagine for a moment that you are the only person in the world that can truly understand the absolute depths of your pain and joy. Imagine that you become not only the ultimate person expressing that depth, but you are also the ultimate witness. Consider how relieved your subconscious mind becomes when you are witnessed with love at the very core of who you are.

Within moments, years and years of pent-up sorrow and anger can be voiced and released. You do not feed the anger or sorrow–you express its true nature in your loving truth and in doing so, those feelings are free to transform into an honest state of rest and peace.

No longer are you “trying” peace on for size. You are no longer affirming a serene reality that you aren’t feeling on the inside. You actually have released the pent-up emotions so that you can feel peace naturally.

You’ll need a private place in which to sound, unless you want to be witnessed by someone that is willing to hold space for you. I’ve had students that have driven their car to a private place, because that was the best way for them to be away from people and feel safe enough to make their sounds. The shower is another place in which many people feel safe enough to give voice to their true feelings in the moment. And still others choose to muffle their sounds in a pillow (used only for discharging negative feelings).

When you finish discharging your feelings of anger, sorrow and hurt, be sure to linger in sounds of peacefulness. It is best if these sounds come directly from you, but if you are too spent to make another sound, put on some tranquil music and bathe in the restful state it inspires. You need this last step in order to transform the discharged energy in your space and in you into balance before you continue in your day.

If you choose to apply this simple and powerful Sound Healing technique, I suggest you come back here and share your experience as a way of affirming your dedication to your self-healing journey.

Tags: sound healing

This entry was posted
on Saturday, July 10th, 2010 at 4:51 pm and is filed under self healing.
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