Shining a Light for You to Live a Life of Love
SPRING 2016
PUBLISHED QUARTERLY
on the cover
“Love Rocks” Photo Courtesy of Char Jung
Find all issues at issuu.com/projectlightandlove
F e at u r e s 4 Learning to Balance
written by Christi Jarland, Mentor, Reiki Practitioner
17 BE You Event
written by Gail Pederson, RN, SPRN, HN-BC
Interview with Char Jung, Spiritual Mentor & Teacher
8 Teachable Moments
18 BodyTalk is Whole Healthcare and
written by Jennifer Hamende
Consciousness Based
11 The Art of Inviting Happiness:
Reiki Principles and Daily Life
written by Tone-Lise Stenslie, Certified BodyTalk Practitioner
20 Clearing Your Space 101
written by Jennifer Moldenhauer, Crystal Reiki & Tuning Fork Reiki Practitioner
written by Char Jung, Spiritual Mentor & Teacher
written by Michele R. Anderson, LMT, CCSP, CTNC
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Absolutely Everything!
written by Cheryl Plannert, LMFT
6 Integrative Pain Management
12 Disengage Stress Using the ABC Tool!
15 EFT - Emotional Freedom Technique for
22 Energetic Accountability
written by Tara Argall, MEd, LPC, CBT
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Welcome to Project Light and Love!
Welcome to the second issue of Project Light and Love! This magazine highlights holistic and complementary therapy practices in North Dakota and surrounding areas. I feel so blessed at how well received the Premiere issue was, and I want to take this opportunity to thank all of those who played a part in making this magazine happen. First off, thank you to the contributors, whose wealth of knowledge and insight has made this magazine so inspiring and unique. Thank you to those who have placed ads, not only are you proudly declaring your existence in this
beautiful state, but you are enabling me to provide this publication free of charge to the readers. Thank you to my sister-in-law for creating such a beautiful layout for the magazine and the ads and for bringing forth her wonderful ideas. Thank you to my mentor and friend, Char Jung, who started me on this journey and continues to teach me so much. Thank you to those of you who have delivered the magazines and who have kept them at your place of business and shared with friends. And lastly, thank you to the many strangers, friends and family members who have encouraged me, inspired me, and guided me on this journey to create this magazine. I am truly humbled at the support. I am excited at how many new people I am meeting and discovering while researching topics for Project Light and Love. North Dakota has so much to offer! This issue is filled with inspiration, motivation, and encouragement. My wish for you is that you are able to find many words on these pages that speak to your heart. ~ Michelle Lytle
Ways to Get Involved: 1. Write an article regarding a holistic/complementary therapy you provide. 2. Advertise your services in the magazine. 3. Be a distribution point for the magazine.
Michelle Lytle projectlightandlove@gmail.com P.O. Box 374 Jamestown, ND 58402-0374 Graphic and design by Crystal Lytle
Project Light and Love Printing by Image Printing, Bismarck, ND
This magazine contains the opinions and ideas of its contributors. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the magazine. The reader should consult his or her medical, health or other competent professional before adopting any of the suggestions in this magazine or drawing inferences from it. The authors and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this magazine.
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Learning To Balance By Christi Jarland
Do you remember when you learned to ride a bike? How did you decide to learn? Did someone just start putting you on a tricycle, and as you grew you yearned to graduate to training wheels and then two wheels? Maybe two wheels was really difficult for you to master and you worried those folks whizzing by on two wheels had something you just didn’t. Learning balance and trust in living your soul centered life can be similar. On the outside, it might look like some people just have it all together: they meditate and focus on love and gratitude and all that good stuff, and their life looks so easy. However, most of us have our own versions of training wheels and sidewalk crashes along the way, no matter what stage of spiritual growth we’re currently rolling through, and the learning has happened in a progression which hasn’t always been linear. At the beginning, my clients are often like that kid that has to walk but wishes to ride a bike. They see how releasing struggle and moving toward heart-centered living could be so much easier, but the soul equivalent of “walking” is pretty safe and familiar, and they’re good at it, even if it’s not always the most fun or efficient way to get around. The entry point is a desire for more flow. 4
Training Wheels When the desire to roll along more easily rises up, people often start to seek tools, teachers or practitioners to increase their awareness and help them learn to get more connected to themselves on a soul level. At first this may involve dabbling in a variety of things that all act as training wheels. They may pick up a meditation CD or a pretty crystal that catches their heart. Classes and books on spirituality, energy healing or self-help may call to them. Perhaps they try a session with practitioners in a few areas of connection and healing, such as reiki, reflexology, acupuncture or another of the many avenues available to explore turning inward. Ideally, through this exploration most people find some tools and modalities that feel like a good fit, and the desire to go deeper and expand grows. This is often a good time to enter into a relationship with a practitioner who can be that hand on the seat of their soul cycle as they get their wobbly start; ready to release old ways of being and truly glide along in a more balanced way. Within this kind of relationship, a safe container can be created to explore ways to release stuck-ness through continued support and learning to rely on Divine wisdom
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and intuition. Whatever methods are employed, the main goal is that you find yourself increasingly pedaling along without even thinking about it, just using your innate wisdom to remain centered and upright. If you do ride a bike, you remember that feeling, right? At first, any distraction would send your front wheel wobbling and all of your attention and energy would be spent on frantically getting your balance back. Then one day you noticed you were just riding along and staying upright wasn’t your main focus, you just felt how to do it. That is what soul work can bring through; the ability to stay centered in how you desire to be and feel, with day to day situations having less power to throw you off. Once you’ve reached that stage, life is just more even keeled. Those things that once could easily send you off kilter may still be challenging, or may have lightened. Either way, you are secure in your ability to navigate, so particular challenges aren’t as much of an issue. You are more able to slow down and feel through your body and heart what is needed in any situation. They say you never forget how to ride a bike, right? Life rolls along in much the same way riding bike does. A rotation of easy pedaling, coasting pell-mell down hills, and sometimes chugging along with so much effort up a hill you’re not quite sure you’ll ever reach the top. Reverting back to old behaviors can be a signal you’ve reached a new edge of exploration and learning. This doesn’t mean that the tools you’ve collected and earlier learning was ineffective. Working through a big challenge can make it quite difficult to keep up enough speed or strength to balance. You might even find you’ve returned to walking for a bit, or maybe for so long you think you’ve forgotten how to find your balance. This usually isn’t the case. Because you’ve already been on the path of listening to your soul’s calling, you’re more able to get back to balance or know when and what kind of support to seek when you need it. I’ve noticed with mentoring clients that this free flowing relationship with what support feels right begins to fluctuate even from session to session. That is what deep trust and listening to intuition looks like. Perhaps where once
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reiki was requested every time in order to get to that space where deep clearing or awareness could happen, now the same client will slip into process “on the fly”, so to speak. Being able to sort through intense emotions or triggering interactions in real time is a symptom of being back in sync with your natural balance. Are you freewheeling? Which stage are you in? Have you recently grabbed some spiritual training wheels? Have you been on this path for a while; familiar with what intuitive hits feel like for you and easily navigating life? Are you on an uphill climb, learning even more expansive ways of loving and relating to all that life offers? Throughout this magazine there are many resources for support and learning to assist you in your holistic, soulcentered journey. My wish for each person who has found this publication is that it is part of the divine serendipity that puts the right thing in front of you at just the right moment. May you find the support that is a perfect fit for you, so that you may be evermore loving and whole-hearted in your approach to life, spreading that energy to your entire circle of influence. Hi there, I’m Christi. I’m a mentor to women ready to release what feels stuck and live a life that feels good. Sometimes that looks like formal reiki and/ or crystal healing. Other times those things and more show up freeform while we work in symbolism and metaphor and heartfelt conversation. All that really means is I help you to reduce tension, relax and remember how to tap into what you already know. Because being open to navigate life as your best self is good for the whole planet. cj@figureitoutwithcj.com 701-269-5783
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Integrative Pain Management By Gail Pederson, SPRN, HN-BC
I Hurt! In my practice as a Holistic Nurse, it is probably the most common words I hear. We work hard, don’t lift right and some of us are getting older. Pain, acute or chronic, can cause major disruptions in your life. Back pain affects most people several times in their lives and is probably the most common chronic pain syndrome. Things like arthritis, fibromyalgia and migraine headaches are other common afflictions people deal with. An increased awareness of the serious adverse effects of pain medications is mitigating pain management today. We are changing our interventions and understanding of the pain syndrome. There is an alarming, escalating rise of accidental overdoses, and dependencies with prescribed and unprescribed opioid use. NSAIDS (Ibuprofen, Advil or Aleve) and the toxicity of Acetaminophen/Tylenol type pain relievers can wreak havoc with the kidney, liver and circulatory systems. Limiting your use of these over the counter medications is recommended for anyone. Utilizing non-medical interventions for pain relief prior to or in conjunction with surgical interventions or medication use can improve outcomes and lead to more productive lives. The much misaligned VA medical system is doing something right with its approach for veterans in pain. They are being offered non-pharmacologic interventions to cope with their symptoms of pain and it is working! First, let’s get a little understanding on pain and its psychosocial implications. Here are two definitions of pain: Allopathic (Traditional) medical definition: Localized sensation of hurt, or an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage. Nursing diagnosis definition: A subjective experience including both verbal and nonverbal behavior. I like the nursing diagnosis. I feel I cannot tell you how bad your pain is, therefore, I cannot judge you or the emotional response you have to being in pain. If you say you are in pain, you are in pain! I think most of us have experienced being asked on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad our pain is. The other side of that is the happy to sad faces. I feel that shows the emotions of a painful situation more realistically. Chronic pain can bring on anxiety, sleeplessness, depression, lack of self-worth, feelings of loss of control over your life and many more consequences. Your response to pain can hyper sensitize your nervous system, essentially 6
increasing your stress response, which increases your pain. Derailing this response is vital to take control of your pain management. Part of taking back control is understanding and coping with these reactions. Integrative Medicine (and what I feel needs to be addressed) pays attention to factors such as obesity, nutritional status, exercise, unmanaged stress, social support, coping skills, and ergonomics. This recognizes and encourages the innate capacity of our own bodies to heal, using self-care strategies. You take control over your situation. So what can you do to decrease your pain that is non-pharmacological? Lots! Nutritional support. One of the most pervasive reasons for pain is inflammation. This is where a nutritional intervention may be beneficial. An anti-inflammatory diet, such as the Mediterranean diet is important. High in vegetables, legumes, fruits, whole grains, fish and healthy oils, it helps decrease inflammation in the body. The anti-inflammatory pyramid created by Dr. Andrew Weil easily explains it at http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART02995/Dr-Weil-Anti-Inflammatory-Food-Pyramid.html. Another strong correlation in pain (and inflammation) is your microbiome…your gut bacteria. A high processed diet, which a person in pain probably eats more of, out of necessity or convenience, can create a leaky gut situation, sending out more toxins to your tissues…..increased pain, increased inflammation. Cutting out dairy and gluten may also be beneficial. Taking a good probiotic, yogurt or something like Kefir or Kvass is recommended, besides changing your diet. Your grandparents knew what they were doing when they made sauerkraut, barrel pickles and other fermented foods! Herbal remedies such as Curcumin and Turmeric are proving to be powerful anti-inflammatory agents. There are ample recipes for turmeric tea and other preparations online. I do have to mention medical marijuana since North Dakota will hopefully see this on the ballot next fall. Stress is a powerful pain inducer. How you are handling your stress can create or exacerbate pain. Which comes first, stress or pain? It’s a good question. The following interventions can be used to help you gain control of your pain and pain responses. Aromatherapy is an easy intervention. Peppermint oil is one of the most beneficial oils to use. It can be used directly
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on the painful site followed by a massage with a carrier oil. A drop of peppermint oil under the nose (above your lip) can derail the pain impulse coming up your spine. It slows the hypersensitivity of the nervous system that pain creates. Another great oil to decrease pain is lavender oil. It can be used in combination with the peppermint oil to induce greater relaxation. Meditation, Imagery and relaxation techniques can reprogram your pain response. A technique I utilize called Interactive Imagery puts you in control. Examples of this can be visualizing a “pain meter” turning down your pain, water washing away and soothing the area, or just con-sciously paying attention to the area which is causing the discomfort, to be soothed away. Tension causes increased pain response. Learning breathing techniques, progressive relaxation or autogenic training can reduce your sensitivity to pain. Energy based therapies, such as Healing Touch or Reiki can bring the energy body, and therefore your physical body, into balance. The theory for this is that if your energy body is not in alignment, pain is created. Healing Touch has specific pain management techniques for migraines, back pain, acute and surgical pain. These therapies allow your body to heal itself. In my work with people who take prescription medications, I have found the energy field to be very dense and not able to retain the balancing of the treatment for very long. Biofeedback is a tool to increase your awareness of muscle tension therefore, reducing your pain. Yoga, Tia Chi and Chi Gong raise your awareness of
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your body, improve muscle tone, posture and balance. These practices also calm the mind and divert the pain response. The repetitive movements create a meditative state. Hypnosis and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help you deal with the psychological aspects of pain. These can be deep seated responses. Pain, for some people gives them an identity…it works for them. Sorting your emotions and understanding your responses can decrease your hidden ties to pain. I am sure my list of interventions is incomplete. I hope it will increase your stock pile of tools to manage pain. The origins and responses to pain are complex. Breaking down the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of pain can allow you to respond with grace and lead to healing outcomes. Learning to cope with pain can be empowering and lead to greater quality of life. If I can help you sort through and develop a plan of action for pain management, please contact me. Gail Pederson, SPRN, HN-BC is Board Certified as a Special Practice RN in Holistic Nursing. Her business, Be Well Healing Arts, pllc is open by appointment. It is located at 123 3rd Street, NE, Valley City, ND, 58072. To make an appointment or for questions please call Gail at 701-490-2132. Find Be Well Healing Arts on Facebook. Photo: Heather Rae Photography
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TEACHABLE MOMENTS By Jennifer Hamende
A few years ago, I had the privilege of being part of a multi-author book titled Move Towards Love. I am so excited to share with you, the readers of Project Light and Love magazine, my personal journey of self-discovery, healing, and gratitude. The following excerpt was taken from my chapter in the book, which I titled Winds For Change. I will be sharing the rest of the chapter with you in the next publication. One of the greatest things I have learned is to stay in Present Moment Awareness (PMA). While staying present the Universe has given me Teachable Moments to understand my life and an opportunity to change my story, move toward love, and navigate the winds for change. Even though this is my journey, we are all one, and the teachable moments are universal. WINDS FOR CHANGE Does Spirit talk to you? Most importantly are you open and willing to receive the message being sent to you? Spirit is always trying to communicate with us; sometimes the messages are soft and subtle while other times they are loud and obvious. You never know when messages from Spirit will show up, and if you are not connected to Spirit you may be missing important messages that are being sent you. I received a Divine message from Spirit while I was visiting a rock shop in Salt Lake City. Hanging on a wall was a sign that read, “Sometimes when faced with the winds for change we find our true direction.” The message on the sign was two-fold; first it validated the name Winds for Change, which ironically was the name I had recently chosen for the healing center I was opening up, and second, I chose the name Winds for Change because I wanted the name to be an extension of my own personal journey. The phrase Winds for Change symbolizes an opportunity to turn negative adversities into positive experiences. Spirit continues to guide me to people who are teaching me the tools that I need to forgive while releasing all the old negative thought patterns that have been holding me back from my true innate self – to be the healer of oneness. CHANGING WINDS My belief is that when we experience adverse events in our lives they happen for a reason; each hurdle provides us an opportunity for personal growth. I call these events “teachable moments.” It is very important to be open and willing to look at our experiences from another perspective. When I started to work on healing myself I started to
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raise my vibration. I realized the less I fed the fear that surrounded my thought process the easier it is to climb out of the pit of hell that I had created for myself. My journey to spiritual enlightenment has shown me that I no longer have to be defined by my stories in a negative capacity; they are just a part of my journey. We can redefine our stories by positive thoughts, words, and deeds – after all I did choose these experiences when I came into this physical body. I truly believe when faced with winds for change we find our true direction. I am being called to be of service to others so they too may rediscover their true selves and the innate gifts they hold. TEACHABLE MOMENT: The lessons for this part of my healing transformation were I am capable of turning adversities into abundance and I need to heal myself so I can be of service to myself and others. August 2012: The topic of a healing center came up during a conversation with a good friend of mine. We were discussing how our city would really benefit from a healing center as there are so many of us seeking this type of spiritual help. Long story short, one Friday morning I awoke to a booming voice that said, “Get off your ass and do it.” Spirit sure knows how to get a person’s attention. Immediately I phoned my friend and shared with her the message I received. Her response was, “You better get off your ass and do it then!” My journey to find a place for a healing center had begun. While I was looking for a place I found myself struggling to come up with a name for the healing center – it needed to speak to the community as well as my own personal journey. TEACHABLE MOMENT: The lesson for this part of my healing transformation was patience. The right space as well as the right name would come with divine timing. September 2012: My friend and I attended Sunny Dawn Johnston’s Healing Retreat in Flagstaff, Arizona. During this retreat I did a lot of journaling as a desperate act in hopes of finding me among the mess I had created for myself. However, the experience was amazing even though there was pain around my progress. TEACHABLE MOMENT: The lessons I learned during this part of my healing transformation were: I did not truly love myself and I am a chronic fixer. My need to help and fix others was my coping mechanism to avoid fixing my own issues.
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scared. I was different. I was not normal. Somehow I did not fit into my family. A major piece of my puzzle was discovered. The more we talked about the events that surrounded my birth, the more I was able to uncover the feelings I had been holding onto for 46 years. It was my own fear that fed my perception and was affecting my ability to fit in. Social demands continued to feed into my already fragile state of mind and I became a perfect breeding ground for negative energy. The older I got, fear, shame, and guilt reared its ugly head and I became very critical of myself. TEACHABLE MOMENT: The lesson for this part of my healing transformation was it is easier to understand the choices that affect my life when I decided to move my life towards love, not fear. PERCEPTION (WHO IS TO BLAME) I have always been referred to as the “dreamer” in my family. I lived my life in what some people would call “fairyland” and I felt more alive and safe in that world than in the world I was born into. As a child I had endless conversations with the man on the moon; I shared my joys, fears, as well as my deepest darkest secrets. Even though I had family and friends, I felt very alone. I was in so much pain on the inside that my physical body began to manifest real physical pain(s). Unconsciously, I became an excellent manifestor at a very young age; however, not in a positive nor productive way. My negative thought patterns were keeping me in a place of low vibrational energy. I started manifesting negative behaviors (drug addiction, promiscuous sexual behaviors, being married to an abusive husband) as well as illnesses (migraine headaches, cysts on my ovaries, severe leg cramps, rheumatoid arthritis) because of my dis-ease with myself. My stories and thought processes kept me at this low vibration and therefore I endured years of pain and suffering. For a while, the famous line “if only” became another significant piece of my story. I even went so far as to blame my parents for my unhappiness; my life was ruined because of the choices they made. To my surprise I could no longer blame others when I learned that the real person responsible for the things that were happening in my life was me. Instead of learning to protect my power, I had learned how to give it away, because I perceived that I was not enough and I did not deserve anything better. Where did my negative self-perception come from? FEAR! I AM MY OWN TEACHER January 2013: I found myself drawn to attend another healing class from Sunny Dawn Johnston; this time it was a five-day intensive certified Mind, Body, Spirit (MBS) practitioner course. Sunny’s MBS course really opened me up and allowed me to take a closer look at whom I really was and who I was pretending to be. As part of the course work, we had to write a letter to ourselves from our body. The following is the letter I wrote: Dear Jenn, I have seen you through many, many situations; our body is getting tired of supporting you. It takes two to exchange energy within this body and for more years than I can count I have been doing all the giving and not receiving much back. I am getting tired and worn out
THAT’S MY STORY AND I AM STICKING TO IT (OR AM I?) Everyone has a story; I am no exception to the rule. I love sharing my stories – the good and the bad, as well as the ugly. We collect stories throughout the course of our lifetime from conception to death. Our stories are triggered by events that leave positive and negative impacts on our lives. Our ability to get stuck in our story depends on where a person is energetically. Most of my stories were fearbased, which resonates at very low vibration energy. For as long as I can remember, I have always felt that I had something to prove to the world and I was put on this earth to accomplish many great things, but my choices keep getting in the way. I constantly second guess myself and look to others for approval and validation. Fear is such a powerful and emotional word and I believe that fear has kept me stuck in what I call the “merry-go-round” effect since the day I was born. During my healing journey I discovered that behind all the facades was a scared little baby who believed that she was not good enough and that she did not fit in. November 2012: I had an eye-opening experience on perception when a friend introduced me to the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). This technique is also known as muscle testing or applied kinesiology. During my EFT session I discovered that my perception of myself became skewed around a particular event – my birth. After testing many scenarios we finally came up with the answer – because of my advanced gestational age, my birth was far from normal. I was not able to breathe on my own because of fecal matter in my airway. I was born with Meconium Aspiration Syndrome (MAS), which is a complication that occurs when a mother carries the fetus past the 40-week gestational period and the meconium obstructs the airway. I was literally suffocating and fear was instilled in me the minute I was born. I believe I was fully aware of my surroundings when I was born – the sense of urgency and my mother’s reaction, as well as the reaction of the hospital staff left such a negative impact on me that my perception of myself became skewed at the moment of my birth. I was Spring 2016 Project Light and Love
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and I don’t know how much longer I am going to be able to keep supporting you. I need your help! I have sent you many messages that energy flows better when we work together and for some reason you feel that you have all the power to take all the energy and not replace it. There is no equal exchange of energy. I give, you take. What kind of partnership is this? Your solution to your blockages is to just cut them out of us. Do you not know what you are doing to us? You’re slowly killing us. All you need to do is to speak kindly to us, feed us good food, and move this body; this would show me love. Let others live their life and just concentrate on healing and taking care of us. I promise I will keep doing my job but I can’t do it alone. We came into this life together with a reason, the rate we are going we will not be able to continue to carry out our soul’s purpose. So, for you, me, and the Greater Good of the Universe please pay attention to us. Don’t worry about what happened in the past, you have stressed out our body long enough, focus on the now, so we can have a future. I would have thought that the messages I have sent you just in the last year alone would have gotten your attention: possible cancer of the eye, gallbladder, breast, and abdomen, lesions on the brain. We can’t even enjoy sex because of vaginal dryness and we are full of scar tissue. You have given me nothing but selfish prayers, medication, and surgery. You can cut the parts of me: gallbladder, all your female parts that are trying to get your attention, but this will not stop me from continu-
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ing to raise your level of awareness. How did you like the last curveball that I sent you, we were having liver problems; now we are having problems with our blood. I hope you hear this message loud and clear. I have sent you another cancer scare. I am throwing you a life line - are you going to take it and make us better, or are you going to throw in the towel once again, it’s up to you! Love ~ Your Body TEACHABLE MOMENT: The lesson for this part of my healing transformation was it is really hard to deny the things we do to ourselves when you see them in writing. Being open to the experience has allowed me to take my challenges as an opportunity to see my life from another perspective. Until the next edition of Project Light and Love… may you find comfort in knowing that you are not alone in your journey. Sometimes when faced with the winds for change we find our true direction. Jennifer Hamende is a Certified Reiki Master, Certified Mind, Body, Spirit Practitioner, Certified Himalayan Singing Bowl Sound Healer, Master Toe Reader, and owner of Winds for Change Creative Healing Center in Fargo, ND. She has also studied in the fields of Sociology and Gerontology. Winds For Change Creative Healing Center 3402 15th Street South Suite ~ B, Fargo ND 58104 Cell: 701.412.8102 Email: windsforchangellc@gmail.com Website: windsforchangellc.com www.facebook.com/Windsforchangellc
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The Art of Inviting Happiness: Reiki Principles in Daily Life By Jennifer Moldenhauer, Reiki Practitioner
Reiki is a Japanese form of energy work that promotes relaxation, energy/chakra balancing, a sense of well-being and spiritual, mental and physical healing. Reiki can be given while seated or laying comfortably. The environment is often serene with soft lighting and music. During a session, universal energy (which is the life force of all things), or “chi”, is directed through the hands of the Reiki Practitioner and into the person receiving Reiki by gently placing the hands lightly on or just above key areas of the body. People receiving Reiki report feeling a sense of deep relaxation, ease and letting go of stress. Reiki practitioners live by five principles which offer a simple, eloquent guideline. These principles are considered the Secret Art of Inviting Happiness and are as follows:
Do Not Anger
A Tibetan monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, teaches us anger is not a state of being, but a gauge that lets us know we feel something is wrong and need to find solutions. Anger is not an excuse for violence or hatred; it is a call to thoughtful action. When we do not become anger, we don’t need to be fearful of it. It can show us what we need to grow and what we still need to learn.
Devote Yourself to Your Work
“Devotion is a place where you don’t exist. Life just flows through you as a certain sweetness and beauty.“ ~Yogi Jaggi Vasudev Work is what we do from the heart to fulfill our purpose. In this busy society it is easy to lose oneself in the toil and labor of work. We need to reconnect to what we believe in and who we wish to become and apply that to what we do as devotion.
Be Kind to Every Living Thing
Kindness changes how we respond to everything. When someone is kind to us, it restores our faith in ourselves and humanity. When we are kind to others they feel a greater sense of security and happiness. Kindness can spring from the smallest effort but its effects can be quite significant. As Mother Theresa said, “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” These principles can be followed by anyone, at any time, in any place. One can keep all five in mind as general rules to live by or take time on each one to meditate and focus on as a way for self-improvement. May you be filled with loving kindness, devotion, ease of mind and compassion. ~ Namaste
Do Not Worry
Worry is our mind inventing the worst case before anything has happened. It affects our sleep, health and our ability to plan for better outcomes. Dale Carnegie advises us to be honest about the problem and think of ways it can be resolved rather than all the negative outcomes. If we take the time to look at the root of worry we may find it was never real to begin with.
Be Filled with Gratitude
The most potent solution to fear and negative emotions is gratitude. When we stop and think of what we are grateful for, we find strength to overcome obstacles and find a renewed sense for miracles in life.
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Jennifer Moldenhauer is a Crystal Reiki and Tuning Fork Reiki practitioner serving Jamestown and surrounding communities. For more information and to learn about events and classes, please call (701) 269-2162, follow me on Facebook or stop by my website at www.simplesacredtrue.com.
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Disengage Stress Using the ABC Tool! By Michele R. Anderson, LMT, CCSP, CTNC
There are many definitions of stress out there. For the purpose of this article, we will be talking about the negative definition that most people think of when they hear the word “stress.” This type of stress is a physical condition or thought pattern you experience that causes you to feel that the demands placed upon you exceed your resources. This type of stress sets off certain physical, physiological or biochemical responses in the physical body where the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis plays a role in the activation of the sympathetic nervous system referred to as the “fight or flight” response. What happens when you experience stress… There are three possible stages you go through when you experience stress, depending on your ability to adapt and your energy reserves. The first stage of stress is the “alarm stage,” where your body mobilizes itself by releasing a number of hormones in the body. A myriad of automatic responses begin to occur that set off the “fight or flight” response in order to deal with the perceived physical threat. Your heart rate and blood pressure soar to increase blood flow to the brain and body. Blood sugar rises to furnish fuel for energy, and blood is shunted away from the digestive tract to the muscles in your arms and legs to provide the needed strength to either fight or run away fast. This worked very well for our ancestors who were presented with life and death stressors, like run-
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ning from a saber-tooth tiger. The second stage is referred to as “resistance stage,” where your body adapts to the challenge and begins to resist it. The length of this stage is determined by both your body’s inherited and stored energy reserves as well as the intensity of the stressor. These factors are the reason why the same stressor can affect one person mildly while affecting another severely. Your body is built beautifully to be able to meet any type of an acute stressful challenge. Once the stressful event has passed, it takes your body about 90 minutes to completely recover. At that time the Parasympathetic Nervous System would turn on and your energy would be reverted to “rest and digest.” When you remain in a constant stress state, your body’s acquired energy continues to be used and you depleted your energy reserves. When you have prolonged exposure to stressors (also called chronic stress), you can end up in the last stage of stress called the “exhaustion stage.” It is in this stage where illness begins to show up in a big way, such as: • Excess stress chemicals accumulate in your body (cortisol, epinephrine, toxins, and oxidative stress) • Hormonal imbalances (experienced as adrenal fatigue, thyroid disease, low energy, exhaustion, frequent cold/flu)
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• Illnesses such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, autoimmune disease, and aging • Your brain isn’t able to function normally so you may also be experiencing brain fog, making choices out of fear, anger and frustration • Weight gain, bloating or other digestive issues • Reproductive hormone imbalances and/or fertility issues When you have used up all adaptive energy, eventually you die. Where the problem lies… The problem is the nature of modern man’s stressors. Most of us are not experiencing the occasional incident with a saber-tooth tiger that threatens our physical well-being. More often, stress is a normal part of life and the stress response is activated daily from mental and emotional stressors like worrying about how we’re going to pay our bills, a conflict at work, coordinating transportation for our kids, getting stuck in traffic, chaos at home, etc. Unfortunately, your body still reacts in the same way by triggering the “fight or flight” response and often now several times a day instead of occasionally. According to the American Institute of Stress, here are some startling stress statistics (from 2014) for the average American living in the U.S.: • Over 70% of Americans regularly experienced physical symptoms and/or psychological symptoms caused by stress. • 1/3 of Americans feel that they are living with extreme stress. • 48% feel their stress has increased in the last 5 years. • 76% cited money and work as the leading cause of their stress.
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• The top 7 causes of stress for Americans in order are: job stress, money stress, health stress, relationship stress, poor diet/nutrition stress, and stress from media overload. • 48% reported lying awake at night due to stress. • The top five most common physical symptoms experienced are: fatigue, headache, upset stomach, muscle tension, and change in appetite. • The top 3 most common psychological symptoms experienced are: irritability or anger, feeling nervous, and lack of energy. What Can You Do to End Chronic Stress… Over time there is a compounding effect that stress takes on our body, mind and emotions. And often we ignore what’s happening because we haven’t been taught how to deal with this new type of stress. We assume it’s just part of life. As we ignore the stress and its effects, it begins to accumulate and have a compounding effect. It creates a loop of physical pain or illness in the body, causing us to have more thoughts about what’s happening in our physical experience. The more we think about what we’re experiencing (especially when we don’t want to experience it), the more emotional stress we feel. This, in turn, triggers the fight or flight response in the brain causing us to hold more tension in the body. This tension in the body creates more pain, and retriggers thoughts and emotions, and the fight or flight response. It becomes a continual pain-stress loop that actually holds all of this disharmony in your body and its energy field. So what can you do to interrupt this pattern of stress? We are often told to “stop stressing” or “just eliminate what’s stressing you out.” Because this pattern is so primal and
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almost automatic, it’s like me telling you to just quit your job, stop driving to work, or quit the relationships that are pushing your buttons. Realistically, that is not going to happen and a better suggestion is to teach you how to de-stress when your fight or flight response gets triggered. I’ve been a body/energy practitioner for more than 15 years. The clients I see who have the most physical tension in their body are the same clients who have the most mental-emotional stress. Their personal energy field is full of chaotic and often heavy, stuck energy. They don’t realize that they are sending out energy to each of these experiences that they are managing and they are not fully present in their body. I can just about guarantee that if you have a physical complaint or you suffer from mental-emotional stress, you are disconnected from being fully present in your body. I learned a really simple technique from Dr. Kim D’Eramo of the Institute of Mind-Body Medicine that she calls the Instant Elevation Technique. She refers to it as the “ABC tool” and the reason I like it is because it’s easy to teach and it’s easy for clients to remember. It works wonders to interrupt any pain-stress loop pattern running in your body. The first step is Awareness. And the best way to bring in awareness is to bring your attention into your physical experience. What is actually happening in your physical experience? Where is the pain at or where do you feel the discomfort in your body? Really connect with those physical sensations. The second step in the process is Breathe. That means taking a few deep breaths and recalling the energy you’ve scattered outside of you (to all those experiences you’re managing) and bringing it back into your physical being. I help clients do this by taking them through a visualizing technique while they are deeply breathing, imagining magnets of different sizes in the head, chest area, and pelvis that are drawing their energy back down into their body into their power center. It’s amazing how slowing down your breath - inhaling and exhaling deeply and fully – allows you to let go of tension and brings your energy back into your body.
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The third step is Choose. Once you’ve brought your awareness into your body, into present time and you are breathing slowly and deeply, you are calming your nervous system. From this state, you are able to shift out of reaction response (where your primal brain is triggered to act swiftly and according to past experiences) and you are able to access the thinking area of your brain. It is here that you can shift out of “automatically responding to what you don’t want” and shift into “choosing to take action based on what you do want.” Obviously, when it comes to stress triggers, especially those that are deeply ingrained as thinking patterns, you may require additional instruction on how to release these thought and emotional patterns. I teach classes on how to go more deeply into that for people who are interested. But a great starting place is using the ABC tool in the moment to interrupt that fight or flight response that is derailing your life. I challenge each of you to try this technique and let me know how you do with it. I would love to support you in this journey. Please post your questions and comments for Michele at www.facebook.com/essentialwellnessnd.
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Michele Anderson NTS, LMT, CCSP To receive more information on releasing stress and repatterning your thoughts, visit www.EssentialWellnessND.com. And if you’d like to contact Michele privately, you can email her at www.essentialwellnessnd@ gmail.com.
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EFT - Emotional Freedom Technique for Absolutely Everything! By Cheryl Planert, LMFT
In the darkest places of our soul, when we are alone and feeling forgotten and see no way out, what do we do? We are blessed in this world today, to have so many tools at our fingertips. Therapists and medical practitioners certainly have their place. But nowadays we know the connection between stress and disease. We know that many of our ailments source in deep-seated emotions. And we realize that many answers to peace lie within. The idea of epigenetics, as coined by Bruce Lipton, informs us that much of our negative states and conditions are NOT based in genetics, but in the atmosphere of our own negative thinking and feeling. Louise Hayes has built her career on creating affirmations, and most recently, mirror work, to reprogram the conscious mind with rich and powerful affirmations that change how we think about ourselves. “I love myself, unconditionally, right now,” she tells us to declare a dozen times a day. Changing our self-talk can certainly be an effective tool, but how do we hope to get to the unconscious emotions and beliefs that we can’t even see? Can they be teased out and neutralized, so as to forever change not only our self-talk, but also the negative damage that exists from all of our imperfect childhoods? Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) professes that yes, we CAN, in several minutes, change our feeling states, such that we are able to move through procrastination, low self-esteem, see-red anger and even depression.
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Sound like a miracle? Well, having experienced this myself only minutes ago, I can tell you that it does feel a bit miraculous. The concept is simple. Gary Craig, founder of EFT, tells us that the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy or nervous system. If we find a way to smooth that disruption, while applying the effects to our emotional states with intention, then it appears that the emotion vanishes into thin air. It may return, but that simply means that not all aspects of the condition or situation in question have been effectively dealt with. Chronic depressions and addictions may take days, even weeks of applying the system called “tapping”. But even these chronic behaviors and states, can be effectively neutralized, says Gary Craig (http:// w w w. e m o f r e e . com). Gary Craig does give the standard disclaimer, however, that EFT is in its experimental stages as a selfhelp technique, and users should seek the advice of qualified physicians and health professionals regarding its use. So how easy is EFT to use? I told you I just experienced EFT a few minutes prior to writing this paper, a paper I’d been procrastinating on writing for several months. Although my excitement and willingness were high, my old perfectionistic tendency to hold off for fear I’d do something wrong or incomplete or not good enough, was fully present to block me. This comes from old wounds sustained by a well-meaning and loving mother who wanted me to “do no wrong”. In the process of being her child, I felt blamed, belittled and overwhelmed with the simplest of decisions. I’m sure many can relate – perfection-
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istic aims can be crippling. They can lead to headaches, digestive problems, nail-biting and more serious disorders of anorexia and bulimia. Stress, whether induced from inside or outside, can rob us of our precious talents and strengths. And most of us just “live with it”, shoring up with food, shopping, cleaning, talking, etc. It’s no wonder in our competitive society, that so many of us are addicted to self-soothing, but destructive means – all to feel better.
ability, and the crushing defeat I felt. I changed the reminder phrase at this point to “my innocence” and cried as I let go of old reactive, self-defeating emotions. I then changed the phrase to “I forgive myself for dragging my heals on new projects” and tapped several rounds, as I felt my spirit start to uplift. I ended with “I forgive my mother – she was doing the best she could”. A feeling of deep peace came over me at that point and I immediately felt compelled to write.
I reviewed the literature, found dozens of forms of EFT, but chose Gary Craig’s simple format, which you can find online for free. 1. Identify the issue: in this case, my mother’s critical voice. Which by now, had turned into my own selfcriticism.
Scientists tell us that we use only about 10% of our brain’s capacity. Could it be that our old self-defeating emotions (and we all have them) wind our energies down? We’ve all heard of the dumbing-down that comes from commercials, tv shows, nutritionless food, environmental stresses, etc. And we may feel helpless in the face of these real distractions. But we CAN do something about the state of our inner worlds. We CAN do what Gary Craig calls, The Personal Peace Procedure, where we go after old memories that still cause us pain, and one-by-one tap them down to emotional zero. I, for one, feel blessed from having this simple technique at my fingertips. It can literally put a smile on your face, and help get you back in touch with what you are meant to be doing.
2. Test the intensity and number it from 1 – 10: about an 8 for me. 3. Go through the one-minute Set-Up Phase: I repeated 3 times, “Even though I’m criticizing myself as my mother did, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.” I did this while tapping on the karate-chop point. 4. Tap on the 9 EFT energy-meridian points while using a reminder phrase: I used “my perfectionistic, selfcritical nature” and several others, as noted below.
Thank you for your time, and happy tapping! Freedom is another word for EFT!
5. Test Again: Down to zero for me, in about 3 minutes! The results? I was able to whittle out this paper in about 20 minutes, without breaking, organizing as I typed. My literature review did take about two hours, but I did that prior to applying EFT. So what happened here? I was whirled back into being a small child who had tried to put the dishes away for my mom. She came in and said nothing about the fact that most of the dishes for 6 people were in the right place, but one bowl was out of order and her scornful response was, “You should have known that, Cheryl!” As this memory came to me, I re-experienced my shame of not knowing, my vulner-
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Cheryl Planert is a Marriage and Family Therapist based in Beach, North Dakota. She uses the creative arts of movement and art and a variety of simple tools, such as EFT, Young Living Essential Oils, yoga, meditation and journaling to help people move through depression and anxiety in order to reclaim access to their strengths and talents. She can be reached at: cherylplanert@pacbell.net
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BE You Event Interview with Char Jung
Char Jung, owner of Doorways To… in Jamestown, ND is holding a special event this summer. The following is an interview to learn more about this special opportunity that will pamper your soul. What is the BE You event? An event set for 30 - 48 hours of time focused strictly on You. Not taking care of anyone but You. All focus is on You. No one else. Actually paying full attention to one’s Self. The reason I’m repeating this is that this is really hard for some people to apply it in their life. What inspired you to create the Be You Event? Everywhere we look we are seeing and hearing; “Be your authentic self! Speak your truth. Be real. Take care of you first, etc.” Well, if you’re a caretaker of another person, be it that you are a parent, or you take care of an elderly parent, or anyone else that needs your help, or your job/business is taking care of people this is really hard to actually incorporate into one’s life. First, we don’t even realize how important it is to have some alone time. Second, we have no idea how to go about it or what to do with time focused on our Self!
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What can participants expect? Upon check-in on Saturday morning each participant will receive a Soul Support Satchel of items that they will use during the Event. The 30 hours will be focused on learning how to stay in the present moment, meditations, yoga, rest, movement, naps, energy healing, and playtime. The ultimate luxury is going up to your own room at the end of Saturday and sleeping in your own bed for pure, uninterrupted rest for 8+ hours. Where and when will this event take place? This first event will be held in Jamestown, ND at the Fairfield Inn and Suites by Marriott® on Saturday, June 11th & Sunday, June 12th. The fun starts at 9:00 a.m. Saturday and ends on Sunday at 3:00 p.m. How can those interested sign up in the Be You Event? Please go to http://charjung.com/be-you-weekend/. This BE You Event will be for 30 participants so don’t delay in registering. You are important to the people in your life, take care of You so you can take care of others.
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BodyTalk is Whole Healthcare and Consciousness Based By Tone-Lise Stenslie, Certified BodyTalk Practitioner
After studying and working with nutrition for several years, I felt saturated. I was eager to work with people in a more holistic way. Thankfully, after a period of frustration the universe responded to my plea and led me to the intriguing world of BodyTalk. It was love at first sight. I learned that BodyTalk works with your own natural healing ability by providing a simple, non-invasive, and effective way to restore communication and balance within your body. All your cells, tissues, organs and body parts must be able to communicate in order for you to be healthy. Clear communication also needs to happen on an energetic level between chakras and meridians, energy centers and energy pathways affecting our body. A multitude of physical, emotional, and psychological stressors can compromise the transmission of information within and between all parts of your body and mind, including injury, toxins, lifestyle factors, and stress at work and in relationships. These are a few examples of what can come up as priority issues to be addressed in BodyTalk. As practitioners, we learn how to work with your “innate wisdom.” This inner knowing is an aspect of consciousness, influencing and synchronizing the trillions of cells in your body. With the help of a simple biofeedback system, we can tune into your innate wisdom to locate and address priority issues in the most effective way. Fundamental issues like hydration and brain balancing may need to be addressed first. However, every session is different and is always uniquely tailored to you.
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In order to restore communication and harmony, we utilize both Western and Eastern healing modalities. These include Chiropractic principles, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Osteopathy, the Chakra system, and sciences like Unified Physics and Math. Consciousness The revolutionary aspect of BodyTalk, at least from a Western point of view, is the inclusion of consciousness. This means working with beliefs, attitudes, and stored body memories that can distort your natural knowing. You can think of consciousness as the awareness that helps you respond effectively to both the internal environment within your body, and to your external environment. Every body part is associated with a natural knowing of its function. Shoulder issues may be related to challenges regarding “shouldering life”, and a contributing cause to stomach issues can be linked to intolerance or difficulty with “stomaching life”. Due to conflicting and stressful beliefs, this natural consciousness can become compromised and affect physical health related to specific areas of your body. My first dramatic experience of the connection between awareness and my body’s health happened in my late 20s. For nearly 10 years I had experienced a dysfunction of my reproductive system. I saw a couple of doctors and a specialist without getting any answers, meaning they could not find a physical cause. In connection with my job at the time, I attended an intense personal growth seminar. Toward the end of the five-
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day workshop, a subconsciously held belief surfaced: “Men are stronger than women and I don’t want to be weak.” Once confronted with this conflict, I really let it sink in that women have their own unique strength and that I could be a woman and be strong at the same time. To my utter surprise, only a couple of weeks after this insight my dysfunction completely healed, never to return again. It seemed miraculous, and now I was really curious. It dawned on me that growing up as a tomboy who wanted to keep up with my older brothers, I had come to perceive the female gender as weak. Unbeknownst to me, I had inadvertently sabotaged my development as a woman. Part of me did not want to be female, and it had a direct affect on my feminine reproductive system. There are of course many other possible causes that can mess with our reproductive system. However, addressing the conflicting belief system hiding in my subconscious mind for so long was the key for me. Had I known about BodyTalk back then, I believe a few sessions with an experienced practitioner could have facilitated what took me 10 years to heal. The BodyTalk System has since taught me much more regarding the connection between awareness and physical health. Our conscious and subconscious programming is full of dysfunctional and conflicting beliefs, with the exception of those who have done major emotional, psychological, and spiritual work. Much has been downloaded in our sub-conscious mind by the time we’re in grade school. Up to age six we’re like little sponges, designed to easily absorb lessons from our environment. This is important for
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our growth, but we also download a variety of dysfunctional messages. For example, most of us have some version of not being good enough, and not being lovable. Through a system like BodyTalk we can effectively address these stressful and limiting patterns. BodyTalk is about healing our misperceptions. BodyTalk is about finding the way back to our natural joy. Physical healing is in many ways a byproduct of this process. Warmly, Tone-Lise Tone-Lise Stenslie is a Certified BodyTalk Practitioner and owner of InJoy BodyTalk. Her office is located at Dakota Natural Health Center in Bismarck, North Dakota. She also does remote sessions. For more information or to contact her: www.bodytalkforyou.com tonelise@bodytalkforyou.com To schedule a session, call Dakota Natural Health Center at 701-258-9418 or use her online scheduling service by going to her website bodytalkforyou.com and clicking the “Schedule Now” button. Tone-Lise is a member of the International BodyTalk Association, www.bodytalksystem. com
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Clearing Your Space 101 By Char Jung
Another common question I’m asked at Doorways To….. What does it mean to Clear Your Space? Think of Pig Pen from the Peanuts comic strip. Notice that big dust cloud around him? That is his “space” or Aura. When Pig Pen walks into a room, his “space”/Aura is right there filling the room up with his dust. When he walks out of the room, some of his dust stays in that room and either you are now sitting in it or you will walk into it. Either way, it is going to merge with your Aura and affect you. Another example is when you walk into a room and you can feel the tension in the room….you’ve heard that saying, ”The tension was so thick in the air that you could have cut it with a knife.” When you clear a space, you are basically clearing the air of left behind thoughts, words, and feelings from your Self or other people. Left behind thoughts, words and feelings.…What?? Thoughts, words and feelings are all energy. These things create your space/Aura that surrounds you. If you never have a still moment and never stop thinking and talking, the energy field around you is pretty full. Hence, the Pig
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Pen Dust Ball. Yikes! How do I clear my space/Aura?!!? Let’s address your personal space/Aura first because if you don’t have a clear Aura, how do you expect to clear a room? Here are some options. Choose what resonates with you. Take a Dead Sea Salt bath. About half of a cup of Dead Sea salt in your bathtub. Soak for about 20 minutes. Make sure to dunk your whole body, head and all, under water at least two- three times. Drops of Palo Santo Oil or Lavender Oil on your palms of your hands. Rub hands together a couple times and sweep your Aura. It’s like petting an animal, but you are not going to touch your body. Keep hands away from body about 2 – 3 inches. This is a great clearing option if you do not have time for a bath or do not have a bathtub. Smoke from Sage, Sweetgrass, Palo Santo or Incense is a clearing practice used for thousands of years by just about every culture. Starting at your Heart center, use the smoke to clear your Aura. Then move to the throat, face and move down the whole body…..Allowing the smoke to roll over your skin as it floats up.
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Now that you are clear, time to clear your car, office and home. It’s basically the same way you cleared yourself. Only this time you are going to clear an object. Room Spray. There are several recipes for creating your own room spray. Here are two of my favorites that I use when I teach classes: No Smell Spray: 15 – 30 drops of Crystal Clear drops from Petaltone Essences in a spray bottle filled with Distilled Water. Essential Oil Room Spray: 4 drops of Cinnamon oil in a 4 ounce glass spray bottle filled with Distilled Water and a cap full of Witch Hazel. There are an abundance of essential oil recipes for room sprays on the internet. Sometimes I will simply diffuse Orange Oil in a room all day. Smoke from Sage, Sweetgrass, Palo Santo or Incense is the most common way to clear a room. Start at your front door. Hold the bundle of Sage in your non-dominant hand. After the bundle is lit and smoke is flowing, hold it with a small plate or shell - this will catch the ashes (a video is on www.charjung.com showing how to clear a room). Use your dominant hand to move the smoke around the outside of the room. Holding a feather is an option to move the smoke. Let’s begin, as you are standing at your front door, or the door to your office, start to move to the left. Following the wall of the room, move the smoke by waving your hand and saying out loud or to yourself, “All less than Love and Light, all dark, heavy energies, emotions, words, thoughts are removed from this space. Everything less than Love and Light are removed and filled with Peace, Joy, Abundance, Love and Healing Light.” Say whatever words that resonate with you. Intention is the MOST important part of healing and space clearing. If you are crabby and don’t have Faith that you or your space is cleared of negative, low vibration energy... then it won’t be. Remember Pig Pen and the ball of dust around him? Whatever is around you from your words and thoughts is what you are rippling out into your space. Follow the wall through your whole house… closets and everything. Opening up the windows is a wonderful addition. There are scientific reasons as well to clearing space: The scientific paper entitled “Medicinal Smokes” and published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology focuses a scientific lens on the practice. Don’t like smoke in the house, office or vehicle? No worries! Use sound instead. A drum, a rattle, a bell, a singing bowl, or even your own singing will do. In or out of tune does not matter just as long as you are happy and filled with Love while singing. Walk around the room just like the Room Spray or Smoke option. Play a CD of high vibration healing music from Steven Halpern or Jonathan Goldman to name two out of the hundreds of high vibration artists. Set up a CD or iPod and play the music for a couple of hours or 24/7. When to clear your space and Aura? Anytime there has been an argument; sickness; a death; construction in the home or office; a feeling of stuck-
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ness in your life; an accident in the home or car; a new person added to the office or home. Some people clear their space daily, weekly or at every Full Moon or New Moon. It is completely up to you and what resonates with you. There you have it! Clearing Your Space 101. Each one of us is an antenna of energy rippling out into the world. Choose to ripple out the good stuff. ☺ Char Jung is owner of Doorways To….. and a Spiritual Mentor and teacher. Additional info about Char can be found at www.charjung. com Please email her at charjung11@gmail.com if you would like to have a workshop in your area or are in need of private Spiritual Mentoring. Sessions are available over the phone, Skype and in person. Classes are held at various dates and cities. Sign up for the newsletter at www.charjung.com for the schedule of upcoming classes and events.
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Energetic Accountability By Tara Argall, MEd, LPC, CBT
Envision with me if you will a very complex mobile (the kind that hangs on the corner of a porch with multiple chains or strings hanging from it completely balanced and all sections moving in unison). I would like you to visualize that each string hanging from it is someone in your life, friends, family members, co-workers, neighbors, animal companions and even strangers you have never met. This is the best analogy I can give to represent how we are connected to each other energetically and to the rest of the world. This interconnectedness has been called a matrix. When we are connected to something/someone we affect that something/ someone with every breath we take, with every thought we think, every action we take and with every word we utter. We are energetic beings and so our self-care whether it is the food we eat or don’t eat, the exercise we do or don’t do, the energetic company we keep (environment is powerful), the thoughts we think about ourselves and so on affects the whole mobile. When you tap one part of the mobile the whole thing moves in reaction to the initial touch. Life is exactly like that. We are energetically accountable to every single someone and thing. It is no accident that animals take on their human’s mental, emotional and physical energies. If an animal in your home is sick, I guarantee you that whatever that illness is is either prevalent in someone else in the house or
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will be soon. When we think we are only hurting ourselves by not taking care of ourselves emotionally, physically and spiritually think again. You are accountable to me and I to you. I owe it to others to be fiscally responsible with my self-care because if I am not, I affect you. Knowing this has propelled me into realizing that taking time for myself and treating myself kindly and lovingly is far from selfish. It is actually a wonderful thing I do for me and for you. When I am at my best I invite you in that same space. When we both do that our kids, families, neighbors, animal companions and even strangers are positively affected even if they have no awareness of what we are doing. If you had a tool to use to change old patterns of thought or behavior, would you do it if it meant that you could help yourselves or others? If when someone triggered you, you could energetically clear it away and then could experience that person or situation with peace and ease would you do it? I have created those tools and they are amazingly easy to use to be energetically accountable for ourselves. You do not need any fancy background or experience to use them. The Trailblazing Communications Whole Life System offers tools that we can all easily use to locate, identify and shift energy for emotional, physical and spiritual energetic self-care that
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we can use for ourselves or to help others (human and animal) be in the best energetic place that we can be. Instead of going out of your way to be selfless to care for others, first start with supreme self-care and let that spread like a beautiful wild fire of self-love. If everyone just loved themselves and expressed it daily by maintaining their own energy systems, the world would change beautifully overnight. To learn more go to www.Trailblazingcommunications. com and you can also find us on Facebook @ Trailblazing Communications. Tara Argall is a veteran mental health counselor of over 20 years, nonverbal communicator with both humans and animals, healer and artist. She is the founder and creator of Trailblazing Communications, a system that offers tools for communicating with people who are non-verbal and animals. Her 11 programs also offer the means to locate, identify and shift energy on all levels and in all areas of ours and our animal’s lives. She is known for her ability to help humans and animals work, live and thrive together honoring both of their true spirits and missions in life. You can check out her work at www.trailblazingcommunications.com and www. tarargall.com, email taraargall@hotmail.com www.facebook.com/trailblazingcommunications
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