Everyday Cycles of Renewal

Each in-breath you take is a renewal of your being, an infusion of fresh air, permeating every cell of your body with life-giving oxygen, circulating the life force (also known as chi) through you. Each out-breath is a release, a letting go of airborne toxins and stale energies from your body, a cleansing, making way for the next inhalation. This cycle of inhalation and exhalation is life itself.

Can you slow down and tune into your body for a moment? As you inhale, pay attention to the flow of cool air into your nose, your airway, your lungs, then on the exhalation as you empty your lungs, notice the warmer out breath flowing over your tongue and teeth and lips, and out of your mouth.

Your breath is an everyday miracle of renewal that cleanses and refreshes your being, then releases what is no longer needed.

Sunset Evergreen
Photo by Nicola Tasic on Unsplash

As you prepare for sleep, your brain slows down and withdraws from daily worries, anxieties, looping and spinning thoughts. This rest period allows for deep repair, for fresh new energy to enter, an opportunity for the renewal and resetting of your mind and heart as you wake to the new day. As the old energies are released, space is made for new thoughts, new ideas to enter your consciousness.

Your sleeping body repairs itself at the cellular level, reweaving the inner energy of heart and mind. All systems are renewed and refreshed as you sleep, surrendering consciousness, allowing the bed to support you, letting go of your thoughts and any resistance. You wake, refreshed, renewed, energized, ready to move, live, create!

Cycles of Renewal. You Inhale, exhale, Inhale. tides ebb and flow and ebb again. Seasons move through their yearly cycle. Underground life wakes when conditions permit, roots stir and seek nourishment, seeds germinate and begin to grow and send out shoots reaching to the light. They grow to maturity, flower, produce seeds, then decline and die. All the while, seeds and roots rest underground, waiting for spring to warm them so they can begin the cycle once again.

It is possible to consciously let go of the stale, stagnant, unneeded energy, attitudes, beliefs, and negative patterns in our lives. Then we can renew ourselves with fresh energy, attitudes, activities, and inspirations. This is an unfolding process that takes time, focus, and patience. It is a vital cycle of renewal in our lives like inhaling and exhaling, sleeping and waking. It is called healing.

You can set an intention to bring fresh new inspirations and creative ideas into your life when the timing is right. Let them percolate in your heart and mind. Let them energize you. Let them bring you life!

Then later, when you feel stagnant, tired, or stale, gently release and surrender what you no longer need in your life and make room, once again for the fresh and new.

Care for Yourself as an Empath

Empath, Empath Care, Energy Healing, Healing Touch, Health Tips, Storytelling, Wellness Tips

Are you an Empath? Do you pick up and feel the emotions and feelings of others?

While walking through a beautiful wooded park, observing wildlife and listening to the birds, I felt the calm and peace of nature. Later my route took me past a high school parking lot. There I noticed lots of trash and bits of refuse littering the ground, some of it in the woods closest to the parking lot. There were fast food wrappers, dirty cups lids and straws, smashed plastic bits, unrecognizable items, dirty COVID masks, plastic bags…

Feeling angry about the clutter, I started picking up these items, one at a time. I held them in my hands, as I hadn’t come prepared to carry such a large volume of junk back to my own garbage can.

My peace and calm of earlier dissolved into frustration. Thoughts flashed through my mind …“How could someone be so thoughtless? How could this trash continue to pile up week after week…? Why don’t people clean up after themselves?…”

Eventually I couldn’t hold any more trash in my two hands, so I had to leave most of the debris behind, and make my way home. I felt angry about having to clean up after others who should know better… frustrated by my walk being weighed down and cut short by the junk I picked up.

All this dirty, useless, and smashed stuff I carried home in my hands diminished the quality of my walk and my time in nature. When I got home, I felt more frustrated, even after I threw away my two large handfuls of non-biodegradable waste.

Later I realized, as much as I wanted to, it was not my job to clean up the woods and and parking lot single handedly. I could come back with a box full of 12 garbage bags, clean up, haul them home to my garbage can, then come back the next day to even more debris. This was not my problem to solve. Clean up has to be the shared responsibility of those who generate the trash.

How does picking up litter and trash thrown out by others relate to living as an empath? Bear with me for a bit…

Emotions are energy! Our thoughts and feelings are all energy that can be picked up by sensitive people and empaths. The auras, or energy fields of empaths seem to be more porous than the general population. In this way, empaths pick up the energetic debris of strong emotions others toss out into the world or deny in themselves. (Like litter in a parking lot others don’t even notice.)

We pick up the energetic imprints of unexpressed emotion and strong feelings, and are weighed down by them as we carry them with us through life. (Like me carrying others’ refuse home with me.)

It’s difficult to know how to release them once they’re in our energy fields. Some of us may not even realize the feelings weighing us down belong to others. Even if we know these are not our feelings, we may feel it’s our responsibility to carry them with us. We may feel that we’re helping others by picking up and feeling their strong emotions. But this is not the case!

Try these easy exercises for empaths.

Ask two questions: When you feel a strong emotion that seemingly came out of nowhere, ask: “Is this mine? Does this belong to someone else?” Notice and trust your intuition about the origin of these feelings.

Ground with Earth Energy. For best results, Make this a daily practice. You can walk barefoot on the lawn or beach, massage your feet, top, sides and bottom, or rub your soles with a stainless steel spoon. These will open the energy vortexes in the soles of your feet and help you draw in Earth energy. When you are grounded, you can also discharge energy that you discern is not yours through your feet. It helps to visualize this unwanted energy draining into the Earth.

Strengthen your Aura. To keep your aura more “tightly woven” and less porous, build energy in your hands by rubbing your palms together. Then, begin making figure eight crossover patterns with both arms, as wide as they can reach. Let this be a rhythmic motion, allowing your body arms and hands to swing in arcs back and forth in the soothing figure eight motion.

Then you can do smaller crossover figure eight patterns with your fingers and hands, paying special attention to the energy field surrounding you, close to or on the body Let your intuition show you where. I always feel better after tracing figure eights on my upper chest and heart area. Once again, it helps to do this daily.

More Resources:

If your empathic gifts feel overwhelming, book an appointment with me, either in person or distance, and we’ll go over easy energy techniques to help you discern what is yours and what belongs to others, and to set strong boundaries to keep your energy clear, grounded, and resilient.

From time to time, I offer a Self Care for Empaths Class. Watch my class page for upcoming dates. shamanichealingofames.com/classes-with-betty/

For more on living well as an empath this is a great book: The Empaths Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People by Judith Orloff, MD

Calm for the Holidays

Energy Healing, Healing Touch, Life Tips, Uncategorized, Wellness Tips

Part of this post appeared originally on Askgrandmothercottonwood.com, my channeled blog, on December 18, 2018.

Dear readers, please take some time out during this holiday season to rest, relax, and take loving care of yourself.

In this season, there is so much busyness that can fuel anxiety and stress– rushing, doing, trying to beat the clock, meet the deadline, make the holiday celebration perfect, trying to please one and all, beat the crowds, put on a magnificent feast.

You run yourself ragged and you wear yourself down! You override your body’s natural rhythms and needs, pushing yourself over the limit of endurance. Another word for this is “stress”.

Can you pull back, breathe, regroup, rethink, and slow down?

An Easy Calming Exercise…

Take a few moments to Find your center of gravity. It might be your heart, your upper abdomen, lower belly, or at the base of your spine near the tailbone. Feel your inner power and balance here, your connection to the earth. Now Bring your awareness to your heart and breath. Breathe deeply for a few minutes as you hold both palms over your heart. This will help calm you naturally. You can also add toning or humming on each out-breath. Find a pitch that resonates in your heart. This feels good and adds to the calming effect.

Tune into your innate wisdom. What is most important to you this year as you celebrate your holiday? What can you let go of? For your health and sanity, let go of the elaborate expectations and preparations that you do not enjoy! Let go of extra events and “must-dos” you have to squeeze into your busy schedule.

If others expect things you do not want to deliver, let them do the work, take the time, make the effort.

What activities will satisfy your soul and connect you with love to family and friends without leaving you overwhelmed and depleted?

Do those things! They can be free, simple, and easy! Play a board game, sing songs, read a book together. Go for a walk, have a heart to heart conversation.

If the holiday stress gets to be too much, please consider scheduling a healing session (distance or in-person) with me to help bring yourself back into a calmer state of body mind and spirit.

Remember the real heart of the season; gathering with those you love and enjoying each other, greeting the sun, celebrating the rituals of your chosen religion, and creating light, love and warmth together.

Restore Your Energy With This Simple Technique

Energy Healing, Healing Touch, Health Tips, Wellness for Children, Wellness Tips

When you’re feeling anxious, frustrated, unsettled, or lethargic try doing figure 8s large and small. Move your arms, hands, fingers, hips, or body in the 8 pattern to calm, soothe, and reweave your energy patterns.

I first learned about the figure 8 energy pattern in Donna Eden’s book, Energy Medicine. Eden describes the Celtic Weave, (figure 8 patterns) as both an exercise and an energy system. The system “laces through all your other energy systems and creates a resonance among them… It holds your entire energy structure together… As an exercise, it connects all your energies so they operate as a single web.” (Eden p. 200)

One big benefit of the Celtic weave/figure 8 is that it helps a person’s “energies cross over from each hemisphere of the brain to the opposite side of the body.” Where “energies are not crossing over properly in a person, such as in dyslexia, and learning disabilities, severe immune dysfunction and almost all illnesses” doing figure 8s can help. (Eden p. 201)

I worked at a public library for many years, doing hours of cataloging daily. When I was feeling out of sorts, tired, or depleted, unable to concentrate, when I needed to restore my energy, I would go into the restroom and spend a few minutes doing figure 8s. I found the large pattern using the full reach of my arms to be an ideal exercise to wake me up and energize mind and body.

To do the large eights, like I did at the library, extend your arms fully, make wide sweeping figure 8s, crossing the pattern over the center of your body, letting your legs and hips sway in an 8 pattern, like a dance.

Smaller 8s over the heart and high heart area (between heart and collar bones) on or off the body help to calm and soothe. Tiny figure 8s are called “fairy flows” and some find them helpful to ease grief when traced over the heart. It is as if you are stitching your energy back together.

When you or your child feel confused or fuzzy or seems to have scrambled energy, try horizontal 8s on your forehead, starting at one temple and crossing over to the other. You can do this directly on the skin or a few inches off your forehead in your energy field. This can help bring clarity to the mind when focus is needed.

Figure 8s large small, up, down, sideways, are good for you and your energy! Teach your kids to do them too. They will love it.

Resources: Eden, Donna; Energy Medicine:Balancing your body’s energies for optimal health, joy, and vitality; 2008.

5 Calming Energy Tips for Parents and Kids

Energy Healing, Healing Touch, Health Tips, Wellness for Children, Wellness Tips

Have you ever noticed that when you are anxious, upset, or unsettled, your little ones, even your tweens and teens are often fussy, upset, and anxious too? There is more than a little truth in this pearl of wisdom – ‘When Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.’ ( You could substitute ‘Daddy’ in this old saying too.)

In a household, everyone lives within a sea of energy. Everyone’s personal aura (or energy field) overlaps and picks up information from everyone else’s energy fields.

Because of this, children sense the energy of the emotions, thoughts, and feelings you are radiating. Sensitive children may also absorb them and take them on as their own.

Children sense the mood of each person around them picking up on impatience, joy anger, fear, depression, unhappiness. In this way they are learning from the adults and other children around them.

Energy doesn’t lie! You can’t pretend to feel something you don’t feel on an energetic level in order to protect or shield your children from these emotions. If you try to put a happy face on your sadness, anger, fear, or other emotions you might not want to share, your kids will see right through that. They will be able to sense the disconnect between what they are experiencing about you and what you are communicating to them on an energetic level.

Ways to help…

If your kids are nervous, anxious, upset, fussy, first take stock of your own energy and take care of yourself. How are you feeling?

Where do you feel your emotion in your body? Is your heart tight, your throat constricted, your stomach full of butterflies, your gut unsettled? Are you nervous, anxious, stressed, unable to sit still or focus for any length of time?

Have your kids do this too. This can help them develop emotional literacy skills.

First, bring your awareness to your body and locate your emotions (throat, heart, etc). Give them loving attention while breathing deeply. If you don’t have time to do this practice, move on to some of these calming exercises and try the emotional processing when you are ready.

Do these yourself, then teach these easy exercises to your kids! They can help you calm stress and anxiety so you will be more on top of your game, more present in your body, and your children will react more peacefully to your calmer energy.

Getting Grounded

Pretend to be a tree with deep roots. Breathe in the Earth’s energy through your imaginary roots. Let it fill your feet legs hips and trunk, then reach your branches up to the sunlight. Take several deep breaths pulling the air from your deep roots to your stretching branches over head. Imagine soaking in the sunlight through your leaves to fuel your growth and pulling water up through your roots to nourish you.

Heart hold and tone:

When feeling stressed or anxious, hold your heart chakra with both palms on the center of your chest. Let your awareness drop down into your heart. Take a few deep breaths while holding your heart. Now continue holding and make an AH sound at a pitch that you can feel in your heart. Keep going until you feel a shift in your energy, or mood.

Figure eights:

Make figure 8s with your arms, swinging them out and around and crossing the center-line of your body. Swing your hips too if you like. Draw them in the air in front of your head, your neck, your upper body, lower body, legs, feet. Make them any size you like.

for areas of pain or tension, try Tiny figure 8s directly on the body using your fingertips. you can also draw them large on a chalkboard, whiteboard or sidewalk, using your whole body and getting your arms into it. Kids love this! This also helps strengthen your aura. (Eden)

Calming head hold:

When the fight or flight response kicks in; when you feel panicky or fearful, hold your forehead with one palm, and the base of the skull with the other. Hold and breathe for several minutes until you feel calmer and able to think more clearly. (Eden)

Self hug – two variations:

Put the fingers of your right hand in your left armpit. Hold your right bicep with your left hand. Hold and breathe while for a bit until you feel a shift in your energy. Switch sides and hold again. (Levine) Another variation – hold the outside of your elbow with one hand and with the other hug your opposite side under breast level about midway between your waist and armpit. Switch and do the other side. ( Eden)

Sources: Eden,Donna; Energy Medicine: Balancing your Body’s Energies for Optimal Health, Joy and Vitality; 2008.

Levine, Peter A.; Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body; 2008.

7 Benefits of Energy Healing

Energy Healing, Healing, Healing Touch, Spiritual Healing

Scientists studying the nature of reality know that everything is composed of energy including our bodies and environment. Every human being has an aura which is an energy field surrounding us, similar to the atmosphere surrounding the Earth. Energy healers can sense the subtle energy, the auras and chakras of other people, through touch, sight, or other senses.

At a subtle level, our aura, chakras, meridians, and other energy systems support our physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental health. If our energy is not flowing freely or is out of balance, we will eventually feel it in our bodies and we may become ill in time.

Here are 7 of the many benefits of energy healing.

Calming for stress and anxiety –

Energy healing is wonderful for natural stress relief, for calming the nervous system and helping your body and mind relax without the use of drugs. It is not a cure, but helps ease anxiety and quiet distracting mental chatter, gently re-patterning your energy system into healthier habits.

For stress relief, I clear stale energy from your aura, open and balance your chakras using gentle touch, allowing your energy to flow more freely. Special attention is given to those areas of the body where you hold the most tension allowing for relaxation and release of the stresses you’ve been holding onto.

Relief for fatigue and energetic depletion.

Energy healing is chakra healing. Your chakras may be compromised – not spinning properly- therefore not able to pull in the energy your body mind and spirit need to feel fully alive, energetic and healthy. Opening and balancing your chakras can bring new energy and vitality to your life and areas of the body affected by blocked chakras.

Energy healing is also aura healing – The electromagnetic energy in a healer’s hands along with a strong intention for healing can help clear the aura of stagnant energy, allowing fresh energy to flow and respond more freely to the ever changing conditions of your life.

Holistic care (mind body spirit, emotions) for high stress transitions or major changes in your life – a move, divorce, new job, new baby, or the loss of a loved one.

Energy healing techniques, such as mind clearing, chakra spread, chakra connection, heart chakra healing, and many others can help during times of high stress by calming anxiety and feelings of uncertainty and fear.

These techniques promote relaxation, release of energetic “clutter” and emotional pain. Energy healing can help you feel more energized and clear during uncertain times.

Heart chakra healing and energy clearing for times of grief, times you feel broken-hearted or overwhelmed.

This does not make grief or strong emotions magically go away, but helps you experience grief and strong emotions with less depletion in mind body, spirit and emotions. Energy techniques can help you feel more present in your body and help you navigate this difficult time with greater calm clarity and grace. During these sessions, I hold sacred space for you to be and feel what you need to feel.

Support for trauma care and emotional release.

When you are healing from trauma, an energy healer can be part of your support system – along with your medical doctor and counselor, therapist, massage professional, etc. An energy healer will gently re-pattern and clear your energy so it remembers how to flow freely, how to be balanced and open.

My energy healing practices allow for the safe release of emotions and stagnant energy relating to the trauma in my peaceful supportive and sacred space. This work helps you gently release the tangled energies of the past over time, and move on with your life.

Subtle energy assessment, healing, and clearing for times you are not feeling well and your doctor can’t find anything wrong.

This happened to me – I had a chronic sore throat and fatigue one summer. My doctor did many tests over weeks and couldn’t find a reason for my condition.

An energy healer was able to help me get back on track by opening and balancing my chakras, especially around the throat chakra, and clearing blocked energy in my aura. I was sensitive enough to feel the imbalances in my system while it was still in my subtle energy field. This was before the condition progressed to the point where the medical testing would have discovered something measurably and physically wrong.

If no-one believes your story, if you are not taken seriously, if you know something is wrong but the medical professionals can’t figure it out, consider energy healing as a complement to your doctor’s care.

Complement cancer care with aura clearing and chakra balancing.

Using energy healing techniques, I help clear and balance the aura and chakras of cancer patients after chemo treatments and surgery (which can be very hard on your subtle energy systems). Energetic pain relief techniques can provide an easing of pain without extra drugs.

Energy healing can keep your energy flowing after and between treatments, supporting emotional release, mental, spiritual, and emotional health. Finally, with deep listening, I hold sacred space for you as you work through your healing journey.

These are some of the many ways energy healing can benefit you and your loved ones and enhance your well being. My clients have found this work to be effective, helpful and life affirming.

For Empaths During the Pandemic

Empath, Empath Care, Energy Healing, Healing, Healing Touch, Health Tips

If you are an empath – sensitive to the feelings vibrations and emotions of others- you may be experiencing a great weight of anxiety stress and fear from the world’s population during the coronavirus pandemic

It may feel like low level rumblings, crushing anxiety or huge fatigue. However you experience the collective angst of many millions, it is important for you to recognize and release what is not yours so you can take care of yourself.

First, ground yourself by walking barefoot on the Earth or rubbing the soles of your feet with a stainless steel spoon. Rub your hands together to build up energy, then make figure eights throughout your energy field, close to the body, off the body, larger, smaller, tiny, in all directions. This will strengthen your aura, the protective energy field around you.

Now ask that any emotions feelings and thoughts (all energy) that belong to others drain through your feet into the earth for recycling. (The soles of your feet have chakras that can take on or release energy, but that is a topic for another post.) Do this as needed throughout the day.

It is enough to take care of yourself and your families, to manage your own life, your own situation as best you can. It is not your responsibility to feel the emotions of others, to take on their fears and emotional burdens. It will not help them learn to be emotionally healthy, and it will distract you from your life and add stress and anxiety where it is not needed.

Yes, as human beings, we must have empathy for the plight of others. Caring and kindness define what it means to be human. So do what you can to help others within the constraints of your energy level, your financial means, your emotional limits and personal boundaries, your level of health and vitality, your time.

Most of all, take the best care of yourself you can. Live simply and remember the basics: healthy food, plenty of water, enough sleep, fresh air, exercise, connections with others in safe and healthy ways during this pandemic.

Be safe, we will get through this!

Are You An Empath? 3 Self-care tips

Empath, Empath Care, Energy Healing, Healing Touch, Health Tips, Life Tips, Storytelling, Wellness Tips

You are probably an empath if…

…you absorb the and take on the feelings and emotions or physical symptoms of others, making it hard to tell what’s yours and what’s theirs.

…you feel drained and/or anxious in big box stores, noisy crowds, hospitals, libraries, etc.

…you get sick or exhausted, depleted, anxious or angry after encountering certain people.

One beautiful summer afternoon I sat on my front porch reading. A delivery truck pulled into my driveway near where I was sitting. Immediately my body was flooded with high anxiety!

As I tried to make sense of this sudden shift in my emotional state, My logical brain decided the anxiety could be explained because I didn’t know the truck or the driver, hadn’t ordered any services or furniture… It was an unexpected intrusion into my peaceful day. Then the driver got out of the van, took a bouquet of flowers to my neighbor’s house and drove away.

The anxiety stayed with me even after the van left. After a few minutes of this, I decided to do some discernment and energy testing. I stood up, tuned into my body and stated “This anxiety is mine.” My body responded by falling toward the back, which in self energy-testing terms is a “no”. Now the anxiety made sense. As an empath, I’d picked up the high anxiety of the van driver.

Now that I knew the anxiety wasn’t mine, I asked this energy to drain through my feet into the earth for recycling. I had no more need to feel this feeling. It was detracting and distracting from my peaceful day. Draining the energy away works when you are well grounded, in other words, plugged into Earth energy.

This method of clearing yourself works because emotions and feelings are composed of energy. Each of us holds our thoughts feelings and emotions in our auras, otherwise known as energy fields. The stronger and more charged the emotion of another person, the easier it is for a nearby empath to pick it up. Our auras also seem to be more porous than the energy fields of non-empaths, allowing in energies others would easily filter out.

As a life- long empath I’ve learned some easy ways to keep myself clear of the moods, emotions, feelings, and energies of others that I have not specifically invited in. Here are 3 of the most helpful techniques I use daily.

Three ways to keep yourself clear as an empath.

1. Stay grounded

Two easy ways to get grounded are rubbing the soles of your bare feet with a stainless steel spoon, and walking barefoot on the Earth. When you feel agitated or nervous, when you can’t settle, ground yourself. Getting grounded allows you to plug into your power source, Earth energy, and pull this energy into your body.

Think of an electric lamp. If the lamp is not plugged in, it can’t light up, no matter what you do. When you are plugged in, your energy is more coherent, you feel anchored to the earth in a healthy way, and you can discharge excess energy through your feet.

2. Strengthen your aura

An easy way to keep your aura strong and less porous is to make figure 8 patterns with your hands, fingers, arms, body. First rub your palms together for a few seconds. Now, make the eights tiny, make them huge, on or off the body, in your aura, up and down, sideways, diagonally. Let your hands go to areas that need extra attention. (This technique is from Donna Eden)

Have fun with this! Kids love it! Think of this exercise as reweaving or sewing your loosely woven aura together again with the electromagnetic energy of your hands. This will help your aura filter out the energy of others and draw in the energies of health, well being, and harmony. Figure eights are also very calming!

3. Set boundaries with other people, your life energy, your time.

You may need to set boundaries and withdraw from large events, big crowds, or stay away from certain people. You may not want to hug Grandma or a church acquaintance. It may be in your best interest to stay home from a big family holiday or reunion and wait for a time you can meet your favorite relatives one on one.

Trust your intuition and give yourself what you need. Taking care of yourself as an empath is vital! Please don’t judge yourself for needing to set boundaries in ways others might not understand. Be kind and loving to yourself and tell others no when that is in your best interest.

If you do not take care of your needs, you may get resentful, energetically depleted and perhaps even sick. Take ownership of your life and your energy so you can focus on your own projects, your own life without getting sidetracked by the strong emotions of family and random people.

Gifts of empaths

We empaths can bring great sensitivity and caring into a world that needs our gifts. We are often the healers, therapists, clergy, the spiritual advisors, teachers, the plant and animal whisperers, the artists in our communities.

Tune into your purpose as an empath. Take care of yourself. Own and honor your gifts! Share them when you are ready. You are needed here!

It is not easy to go through life as an empath! But it is possible to live your life in a manner that will truly honor your gifts and your needs for boundaries so your life experience is truly your own!

Your first energy healing session – What to expect

Energy Healing, Healing, Healing Touch

Getting to know each other

So, you’ve decided to try energy healing… Maybe you want to calm anxious thoughts, relieve stress, ease insomnia, receive support for grief… Whatever your reason for coming, you are welcome here!

Welcome to my healing room!

When you come for your first energy healing session, we get to know each other a bit, and discuss your intentions for health and healing. We zero in on your goals for this first session in particular. I ask about any concerns you have, any history you would like to share with me about your health- emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual.

Feel free to ask me anything about myself if you like. If you’ve never had energy healing, I’ll describe the process in as much detail as you want.

Remember, its normal to feel nervous before receiving energy healing for the first time!

Your comfort is important!

When you feel ready to begin, I’ll have you take off your shoes and lay on your back on the massage table, fully clothed. If you feel chilly, there are plenty of warm blankets nearby, and you can have a bolster under your knees for comfort. You can choose to use the grounding pad if you like. Soft and peaceful music plays in the background.

Permission to touch

Before we begin, I ask for your permission to touch you. If you prefer not to be touched, I can do the energy healing work off the body, in your energy field. Of course, distance or remote healing is always an option as well if that serves your needs better. (For this post, I’ll describe the session as though you are here in person)

Photo courtesy of ABMP

To begin

The session begins with me gently holding your shoulders (if you have given permission to touch). In this way, I tune my awareness to your subtle energy.

While holding your shoulders, I also ground myself and align with source energy, bringing myself fully into the present moment.

Energy assessment

Next, using my pendulum, I check your major chakras, from your root chakra at the base of the spine to your crown at the top of your head. The assessment lets me know which chakras are spinning properly and which seem sluggish or blocked. This is valuable information regarding your energetic health.

Then, using the palms of my hands, sometimes inches and sometimes more than a foot from your body, I scan your aura, also called your energy field, from head to toe. I may sense areas of heat or coolness, dense energy, a tingling, a prickliness, or lack of energy flow…an energy spike…

Communicating

During the session if you feel any discomfort, have a question or an insight, please let me know. The healing techniques can be adjusted if needed. I may have a question for you as well..

Relaxing

It’s natural to feel yourself beginning to relax as the session gets underway. If relaxation is difficult for you, don’t worry. Its a skill you can learn over time as you continue to receive healing sessions.

As you relax, I gently balance and harmonize your chakras and clear your energy field with my hands. My intuition guides me to the areas that need attention and the techniques that will be most helpful for you.

Photo courtesy of ABMP

Your experience

Each person experiences energy healing differently. You may feel energy moving through your limbs and body, a tingling, a bubbliness, slight feelings of pressure. You might see colors and even have a spiritual experience.

You might feel a need to make sounds or express a truth you’ve kept in for a long time. You may cough sneeze or yawn a few times. Your stomach may gurgle… It is all energy moving!

Emotional release

You may also experience an emotional release while on the table. This is a natural and vital part of the healing process!

This may be something you’ve been holding onto for a long time and the time is right for release. It’s important that you feel safe to experience and release emotions as part of your healing process.

Ending the session

After the energy healing, I check your chakras and aura again to make sure your energy is open and flowing. Then I gently smooth your lower legs and feet, grounding you and bringing you back into the here and now. You hear a singing bowl chime to end the session.

You can slowly begin wiggling fingers and toes, gently stretching your body as you need to, and sitting up. If you like, I can smooth your back and shoulders before you step down from the table.

Now is a time for sharing our mutual experience. If you want to talk about the session and what you felt and saw you can do that now. I also let you know what I discovered during the session. There may be some homework and guidance for self care.

What to expect after the session

Its normal to feel calmer and more relaxed after your session. You may feel lighter and more energetic as well.

In the following days

One possible side effect of your first energy session may be what is called a “healing crisis”. Energy work can release toxins into your blood stream to be cleared away.

If the bloodstream gets overloaded, you may feel a bit under the weather for a day or two as the toxins clear out. Drinking lots of water and getting plenty of rest will help. Once again, this is part of the healing process.

You may also experience further emotional release in the days to come. This is normal and healthy! Sitting in meditation and allowing the feelings to come up can be helpful.

photo courtesy of ABMP

The healing continues

Be gentle and kind with yourself. The healing continues long after your session ends. If you need extra support and care, we can do further energy work. If you’re in crisis, weekly or twice a month energy healing might be needed until you’re feeling stabilized again.

Also please consider seeing your therapist or counselor if you need help processing your emotions. Visiting with a trusted friend can also help as you heal in mind, body, emotions, and spirit.

Energy healing is an unfolding process. The healing begins within your heart and mind as you set the intention to improve your health and well-being.

Sincerely,

Betty

What integrative healing topics would you like to hear more about? I’d love to read your comments!

How can energy healing help me?

Energy Healing, Healing, Healing Touch, Spiritual Healing

If you’re considering trying energy healing or new to the concept, here are a few basic facts I’ve learned over my years of doing this work.

We are all made of energy.

Our thoughts, feelings, emotions, physical bodies are all composed of energy. Our living cells respond to our thoughts, beliefs, intentions, and feelings. Our emotions send us messages important to our lives. This energy is meant to move and flow. It is the stuff of life!

When we try to bury an emotion, ignore a pain, hold on to the past, judge ourselves for thoughts we have or for feeling the way we do, our energy can get congested and build up like clouds in the Earth’s atmosphere before a storm. When this build up of stuck energy becomes overwhelming, it may lead to physical problems. Barbara Brennan who wrote the energy healing classic, Hands of Light, states that all disease and disharmony begins in the energy field.

Photo courtesy of ABMP

Layer by layer, at a pace that is right for you, energy healing helps you release these clouds of stagnant energy that have built up in your energy atmosphere, (your aura) and find clarity, balance, and harmony underneath. Many of my clients report feeling much lighter after a session.

Energy healing also works with the chakras, the subtle energy centers of your body.

Each of us has seven major chakras, each governing a different area of the body, from the crown of your head to the base of your spine. They are meant to spin freely, but if one or more are sluggish or blocked, your body is not getting the energy needed in those areas. If a chakra is chronically blocked, this could result in physical problems over time. By clearing and balancing the energy centers so they are open and spinning properly, your body has access to more energy and responds with renewed vigor and well-being.

Energy healing is holistic.

You are seen and treated as a whole person, not just a bundle of physical symptoms. Your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions are all taken into account and honored throughout the healing process. We are complex beings, and there is no one-size-fits all cure for anything! Everything is connected!

Energy healing, in partnership with your medical care and mental health care can help you reach your goals for health and well-being.

Physically, energy healing can help you gently ease pain without drugs, relax tension and stress, clear the effects of drugs after surgery or cancer treatments, accelerate healing of wounds, natural tension-headache relief , and much more. When needed, I refer clients to medical professionals.

Emotionally, the energy healing process can support you by creating a safe and sacred space for you to feel your feelings and release them when you are ready. Based on your intention, it can also calm energetic patterns of fear and anxiety. By providing acceptance for your feelings and your healing process, you are gently guided toward self love and self compassion. Many of my clients see mental health professionals as they work their way through tough emotions.

Mentally, energy healing can help you by bringing unhelpful patterns of thought and belief to your awareness. It can help promote mental clarity by calming and relaxing the mind. Many people that come to me for healing report “overthinking” or “monkey mind”. Energy healing can help you get out of your mind and into your heart and this helps you feel less anxious. Energy healing also helps bring in fresh new energy to your life, new ways of looking at your life, and new insights.

Spiritually, energy healing can help you by strengthening your connection to the divine. It can help you open up and trust the intuitive information and spiritual guidance you receive and allow you to see your life’s problems from a larger perspective. Energy healing can help make room in your mind, body, spirit, and life for growth and expansion into the person your higher self knows you to be.

Photo courtesy of ABMP

This work does not provide an easy pill that will magically take your problems away. It is an unfolding process that works in divine time – when your heart and spirit are ready. The healing begins within you when you hold a strong intention to heal your life.

Energy healing is not a substitute or replacement for your mental health care and medical care. It can complement your care along with other forms of integrative healing such as acupuncture and massage.

You can’t escape from your energy. To heal your life, you must transform it!

For more information or to schedule a session go to my contact page and send me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

Blessings for your journey!

The healing gift of Compassionate Depossession

Energy Healing, Healing, Shamanic healing, Shamanism, Spiritual Healing, Spirtual Guidance

Compassionate depossession is one of the cornerstones of shamanic healing. Spirits who are trapped in this dimension and can’t move to their rightful home can cause problems, at times quite unpleasant.

With the help of my spirit guides, these beings are located, contacted, and helped to cross safely to the spirit world (or what I call “the light”). Possession is a common occurrence in our culture where the spirits of our deceased are not often thought of or cared for after the body dies.

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Who are possessing spirits?

Some spirits or “suffering beings” are not able to find their way to the light after death. For instance, if a person died in an accident or during a violent act, they may be confused, disoriented, lost, and afraid. Others may choose to stay behind to help loved ones, or because they are afraid to move to the next dimension. Suffering beings I’ve worked with have come from many sources including war zones, hospitals, crime and accident scenes, funeral homes, and old buildings.

What is possession?

When a suffering being is attracted to a living person they may become attached to that person’s energy field. The attached suffering being can become something like a parasite, feeding from the host’s energy and sapping their strength and overshadowing their energy. When this happens, the host can experience any number of symptoms. They may feel that they have thoughts, feelings, compulsions, and emotions that don’t belong to them. They may experience fuzzy thinking, emotional problems and addictions. They may feel that they’re going crazy.

A win-win healing scenario.

During a compassionate depossession, the suffering being, or possessing spirit is contacted, their story is brought to the light, and they are respectfully and compassionately removed from the host’s energy field and sent to the light (or their version of heaven). After the removal, the suffering being will not be able to return to the host or any other person. The suffering being wins by getting “unstuck” and moving forward with their spiritual journey.

The client wins because this work clears them forever of the heavy overshadowing energy, the emotions thoughts and feelings of the suffering being. The client often feels lighter, and more centered in their own body, more in control of their own mental, physical and emotional health. Their energy is no longer being sapped.

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I share this information with you because I have seen the powerful results that occur when suffering beings are removed from a person’s energy field and sent to the light. Compassionate depossession can be a potent life changing healing experience.

If you feel in need of compassionate depossession for yourself, please contact me through my website contact page. I will be happy to visit with you and we can decide how to proceed. This work can be done via distance healing if you live out of the central Iowa area.

I close with the words of a client after her own compassionate depossession experience. She had suffered from anxious thoughts for most of her 70 years:

“Fear is no longer my go-to emotion!”

Calm yourself in a few minutes

Energy Healing, Healing, Healing Touch, Health Tips, Wellness Tips

Are you feeling anxious?

Here’s an easy way to relieve stress. All you need are your hands, your heart and your voice.

pink water lily

Find a quiet comfortable place where you won’t be interrupted. Put both hands on your heart and breathe deeply from your belly. Soften and relax your body. Let any tension in your belly, chest, shoulders, neck and jaw and face melt away with each out breath. If you are frowning, let the muscles of your brow relax. This helps calm your mind.

Now tune in and ask your heart what it wants and needs today. The answer may come in the form of a picture in your mind, a memory, a song title, a sudden inspiration, an emotion, a feeling, an insight, a knowing. You may know right away what the answer is, or it may take a little longer for that to be clear. Listen deeply, don’t rush. Your heart is wise beyond the intellect and will never steer you wrong.

After a few minutes begin making an AH sound, keeping your hands on your heart chakra at the center of your chest. Let the sound resonate there. You might have to adjust the pitch up or down to feel it in the heart. Continue making the sound and feeling the vibrations in your heart until you feel calmer and more peaceful. (Do this step silently, or leave it out if you need a quick stress reliever at work.)

Making sounds that vibrate in the body, also called toning, helps calm and relax the mind, body and spirit. It’s fun to experiment with toning for each chakra, and for areas of your body that are tense or uncomfortable. Sound is energy, and it can be directed to any part of your body. Play with the sound of your voice and allow it to relax you.

For more information about toning see Jonathan Goldman’s books about sound healing including: The 7 Secrets of Sound Healing (2011), The Divine Name (2015), and Healing Sounds (2002). Also, check out his website at healingsounds.com.