Calm for the Holidays

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

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.

7 Benefits of Energy 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.

How can energy healing help me?

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.

 

energy healing 6

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.

energy healing photo

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!