HOLISTIC NEW ENGLAND
FALL/WINTER 2020
You Are The Cure
Astonishing Remote Healing Success: Interview with Eminus Mirus Founder COVID Reflections D Celebration of Autumn Menu D Don’t Be Afraid to Die When Good Vegans Make Bad Neighbors D Yoga for Arthritis D A Language for Grief
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2 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
REWARDS & RECOGNITION
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FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 3
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ADVERTISING INFORMATION Phone: 508-278-9640 x 5 E-mail: advertise@spiritofchange.org PUBLISHER & EDITOR Carol Bedrosian Phone: 508-278-9640 x 5 E-mail: carol@spiritofchange.org ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Wendy Watkins Phone: 508-278-9640 x 5 Email: wendy@spiritofchange.org
Departments Features
WEB EDITOR
Fall/Winter 2020 • Vol. 34, No. 143
Laurie Johnston Email: laurie@spiritofchange.org
34
CONTRIBUTING COLUMNISTS
Departments
Features
Eric Linter, Astrology
Musings
Celebration of August Menu
Ritu Kapur, Yoga DESIGN & PRODUCTION
by Carol Bedrosian.................................. 6
Starspeak
by Anne-Marie Fryer Wiboltt......................................................18
Samantha Angeli
by Eric Linter........................................... 10
When Good Vegans Make Bad Neighbors
Amber Routten-Mitchell
Journal of Natural Healing:
Wendy Watkins
Humming for Health
PRINTING
by Kathleen Nagy.................................. 14
GDI, Inc, Hanover, MA
Yoga Poses For Health: Yoga for Arthritis by Ritu Kapur.......................................... 16
Directories
A Language for Grief by Colleen Leonardi.................................26 Don’t Be Afraid to Die by Bob Olson........................................... 30 Cellophane Hearts: Book Excerpt from Tell a New Story
Macrocosmically Thinking by Trish Whynot • On the Fast
Calendar.............................................52
Copyright ©2020 Spirit of Change. All Rights Reserved. Spirit of Change distributes 50,000 magazines throughout New England semi-annually (Fall and Spring) and accepts paid advertising as an advertising service. Responsibility for the products, services or claims of our advertisers rests solely with them; advertisers are liable for any claims made against Spirit of Change Magazine as a result of their advertisement. The information in Spirit of Change is intended as a sharing of knowledge about holistic health for educational purposes. Health care decisions requiring medical advice should be made with the help of your health care professional. Subscriptions are $20.00/4 issues. Article and artwork submissions are accepted for review and will only be returned if accompanied by a SASE. To receive bulk shipments of Spirit of Change to distribute to your clients & customers, please email carol@ spiritofchange.org.
by Carrie Rowan.............................................................................32
COVID Reflections...............................................................................34
Yoga Guide......................................... 17 Online at: SpiritOfChange.org
by Mark Mathew Braunstein......................................................22
Track with the Coronavirus from Vywamas channeled by
Holistic Logo Directory.................. 54
Andrea Seiver • Catalyst for Change by Alison David Bird
Holistic Specialties Directory....... 60
The Cicada by Julie Rost • Rights of Nature by Thomas Linzy
Classifieds......................................... 61
Downtown Ghost Towns by L.W. Oakley • A Verse for Our
Advertiser Index...............................62
Time by Rudolf Steiner Astonishing Remote Healing Success: Interview with Eminus .
Cover Art
“Butterfly with Cala Lily in Cosmic Space” Jozef Klopacka
4 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
Mirus Founder Ethan Borg by Carol Bedrosian................ 40
Upcoming in Spring/Summer 2021
Stepping Into Nature AD DEADLINE: JANUARY 31, 2021
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FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 5
MUSINGS
BY CAROL BEDROSIAN
COVID-19:
The Great Accelerator
W
ithin just a few short months, the mysterious and deadly novel COVID-19 virus managed to attract the attention of every human population on Earth. Not since the last great pandemic in 1918 has the attention of humanity been gathered with such urgency. As humans around the world are adjusting to living with uncertainty as the new normal and a slower pace of life, we are also finding a keener awareness and receptivity to important messages and issues: environmental protection, social justice, family bonding, and disease immunity, to name just a few. Many have called COVID-19 the Great Accelerator in helping humanity create better ways of living. UN Environment Program Executive Director Inger Andersen declared, “Nature is sending us a message with COVID-19. We have pushed nature into a corner, we have encroached on ecosystems. We need to take care of nature.” Sonia Shah, author of the 2017 book Pandemic, notes that human activities are increasingly intruding on wild habitats and “building roads between wild animals and human bodies…making it much likelier that a previously harmless microbe will cause a devastating outbreak.” Our short-sighted environmental choices can be directly linked to infectious disease outbreaks. For example, the West Nile virus outbreak of 1999 was preceded by two decades of steady habitat loss for a diversity of avian species like woodpeckers and rails, which are unreliable carriers of West Nile. Instead, local bird populations swelled with the more environmentally hardy robins and crows, which are choice carriers of the virus. Fewer rails and woodpeckers, plus more crows and robins, equals more West Nile. Likewise, the loss of forest habitats means bats are roosting closer to our homes, where we are more likely to come into contact with pathogen-infected guano, while the numbers of chipmunks and opossums — top tick predators preventing the spread of Lyme disease — have shrunk drastically over the past half century. According to Shah, “150 species are going extinct every day. And the species that are remaining have to squeeze into these tiny fragments of wildlife habitat that we leave for them.” Shah approvingly notes that the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), which currently sits at the center of so much controversy and confusion surrounding COVID-19, has launched the One Health approach, a global movement recognizing the interconnectedness between people, plants, animals and their shared environments. The CDC website notes that One Health is not new, but has become more important in recent years because of the many factors rapidly changing in our environments, including COVID-19. If it feels like humanity has reached a threshold, perhaps it’s because we have. We can’t go back — we can only go forward — but this precipitous moment of change allows us to 6 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
redirect our vision for humanity’s future and write it into our history. The pandemic has especially highlighted the vulnerability of our healthcare system, which offers little for the prevention, treatment or cure of this novel coronavirus (and how many other viruses yet to come?) The exclusive focus on a hastily-produced vaccine — with questionable effectiveness, unknown side effects and potential annual boosters — as the sole solution to this global crisis has sown confusion and doubt about the integrity of the information and the institutions issuing these directives. This is especially alarming for those of us who are successfully using alternative healthcare methods to treat and prevent COVID-19, including homeopathy, energy therapies, hyperbaric oxygen treatment, hydrogen peroxide, nutritional supplements, sound healing and much more. These potent and completely safe, life-enhancing, and sometimes life-saving treatments have absolutely zero side effects, yet in many cases have been labeled COVID-19 “disinformation,” censored and removed on various internet platforms because they conflict with the CDC and UN World Health Organization vaccine-only narrative. Are we to believe that there is only one solution to any problem, especially one as large and complex as a global pandemic involving billions of people? What is the likelihood that any COVID vaccine could be administered sufficiently before the virus has already morphed into a new pandemic-strength strain, requiring re-vaccination of the entire global population again? And again. And again. This scenario disempowers all of humanity collectively and only makes sense for a privileged few who will profit. I refuse to accept this human destiny. Instead, the presence of COVID-19 among us is our cue to begin telling our new medicine story now. You are the cure. A universal healing framework exists, and your body is already plugged into it. You can get treated today just by asking for it. The biggest obstacle to receiving this treatment will be suspending your own disbelief. A lengthy examination of one such modality, Eminus Mirus (EM for short), begins on page 40 this issue. And if ever there was an apt new modality in the days of COVID-19, EM is it. With instruction offered online and all treatments provided remotely, EM is well suited for a global pandemic. A smoldering quest to authenticate my passionate belief that we are self-contained healing units has fueled the past thirty-five years of publishing Spirit of Change. This vantage point has provided me with a front row seat, both as a journalist and participant, in exploring alternative healthcare of every kind. Just as we are able to feed ourselves, groom ourselves, procreate and even kill ourselves through completely natural means, why would we not be able to heal ourselves the same way? It is only logical that humans would be inherently self-equipped to fully succeed at everything needed for life on Earth. Just because
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we haven’t yet discovered en masse how the healing part works, doesn’t mean we won’t. Just over 100 years ago it was inconceivable that we would one day drive everywhere in automobiles. Projections are that by 2030 the majority of vehicles on the road will be driverless and fully automated. Now apply that degree of transformation to a future vision of healthcare. Why not consider the possibility that a large portion of our healthcare can be accomplished remotely, and is accessible anywhere, to anyone, at a fraction of current healthcare costs? We can learn to access it ourselves, share it with others, or allow others to access and apply it for us. While this vision is radically outside-the-box of what we currently experience and believe about healthcare, nothing less will do for such a global transformation in medicine. Who hasn’t imagined miraculous healing powers our bodies might possess? Now is the time to rewrite our medicine story as humanity begins to define its new post-COVID norms. “Whatever you believe you can do, begin it,” the maxim states. And then start building. Transformation of this magnitude does not happen overnight, nor does a completely new system of healing emerge fully developed. In EM, launched in 2013 and profiled this issue, new treatments are regularly added to the compendium, while others are combined or simplified to continually streamline and refine the process. “It’s hard to build a dynamic medicine system with room to grow, and tend to the landscaping at the same time,” laments EM founder Ethan Borg. While sending healing energy treatments with EM might seem a little cumbersome to learn and use at first, it was incredibly empowering for me to have spent the summer EMing away plentiful bug bites with the Self-Diagnosing Itchy Bug Bite Treatment instead of suffering with weeks of scratching and drawing blood. In addition, I have found that other complementary treatments I use are more effective while I am using EM, prompting their more frequent use. I attribute this to an overall increase in yin/yang balance in my body that is the foundation of EM; however this cannot replace the great relief experienced through hands-on healing and other unique forms of alternative medicine. No matter what form of medicine you use, the bottom line is that you effect the cure, not the tool you use. Just as a carpenter uses a hammer to build a house, the carpenter is the builder, not the hammer. It’s your body that either heals or doesn’t heal, whether through EM or surgery or hypnosis or herbs, it’s still your body that effects the cure. I envision the day when parents will teach their children how to heal themselves as naturally as they pass on basic food prep and toilet training skills. It's more important than ever that we publicly share information about new medicine and healing without fear of censorship. The ominous trend towards shutting down these conversations online is no different than the narrow-minded persecution Galileo faced 500 years ago when revealing that our solar system was Sun-based, not Earth-centered. The United Nations, for example, recently enlisted 10,000 digital volunteers to rid the internet of what they consider false information about COVID-19 via the Verified initiative, and to disseminate only what they say is “U.N.-verified, science-based content.” This makes it all the more important for us to become aware of who we are electing for our local, state and federal representatives during this upcoming election cycle. Take time to read up on candidates and their health freedom views. They will be the ones who decide if restrictions are to be placed on disseminating alternative health information, or even whether certain holistic practitioners can be allowed to practice in your town. We need alternative practitioners more than ever before, so it’s vital to codify these health freedoms into law. As this issue of Spirit of Change goes to press, Massachusetts Senate bill S.2634 is under review by the Joint Committee on Ways and Means. This bill, An Act providing for consumer access to and the right to practice complementary and alternative health care services, would protect unlicensed holistic health practitioners from being charged with practicing medicine without a license and would assure consumer access to their services. This proposed legislation has come a long way in the past year and a half — from its initial drafting through sponsorship by numerous Senators and Representatives and favorable passage by the Joint Committee on Public Health. The good news is that the bill enjoys strong support and the legislative session has been extended due to the pandemic. The bad news is that coronavirus pandemic has stalled the progress of the bill as countless COVID-19 bills are considered by the legislature. Please ensure that this bill — so vital to both holistic health practitioners and consumers — moves out of the Ways and Means committee and onto the floor for a general vote. Urge the Chair of the Committee, Senator Michael J. Rodrigues, to pass the bill out of committee as soon as possible. Make your voice heard by calling him today at (617) 722-1114 or emailing him at Michael.Rodrigues@masenate.gov. Carol Bedrosian is the publisher of Spirit of Change Magazine and an EM Level 4 student. www.spiritofchange.org
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FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 9
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Astrological Forecast
Fall/Winter 2020
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A
s September’s calendar page opens, the historic triple conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto continues to transform our lives and institutions. This momentous Capricorn stellium has pushed businesses and governments to the breaking point, costing millions of people their livelihoods as well as claiming thousands of lives. Government and corporate malfeasance are now rampant. Systemic racism and police brutality are receiving long overdue attention. Minority voices are being heard. A new focus on being involved, informed and actively working towards a new national agenda is emerging. While those in power exploit their positions for personal gain, months under lockdown and self-quarantine have led countless souls to disengage from the treadmill of a job or school. This is good time to reflect upon the purpose of one’s life. The essential workers are this era’s new heroes. The full depth and lasting impact of today’s once-in-a-millennium alignment is yet to be understood. During the six-month forecast period, significant astrological shifts occur. In December, Jupiter and Saturn both leave Capricorn and enter Aquarius, the egalitarian sign of friendship and community. For millions of unemployed people, the struggle for survival hinges on government action. Hopefully we’ll soon see new political alliances struck, ones that support peace and harmony between people and nations as well as socially responsible, environmentally sustainable business models. As 2021 begins, the rare configuration is losing intensity, much like a pressure cooker letting off steam. Due to the enormity of our societal problems, they won’t disappear overnight. The Covid-19 pandemic has wracked our
world, leaving people stressed beyond comprehension. Fear and uncertainty are now facts of life. Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius, on the other hand, inspire communities to deal with the ongoing challenges of inequality. The July 4, 1776 Independence Day chart features the Moon in Aquarius. This placement has contributed to the idealism woven throughout American history. Aquarius is known as a tolerant, freedom-loving sign. In a nation’s chart the Moon represents its people. Expect to see a far more motivated citizenry, with innovative plans coming to the forefront. Complicating progress are tense square aspects between Jupiter and Saturn to Uranus. These “question authority” configurations persist throughout the winter. Debates will be lively. Various new approaches will be tried and then replaced by different strategies. It’s worth remembering: every change carries a measure of risk. Just as the Founders did, people of vision and principle must proceed with faith in their ideals and the belief that “a more perfect union” is attainable.
SEPTEMBER 2020
We’re in full Moon fever mode as the month begins. Minds and senses are hyper alert. Excitement is palpable. Anticipation of better times is encouraged when Uranus aligns with the Moon and Sun on September 2nd. Timely Mercury aspects promote “can do” thinking during these early days of September. Mixed trends on Saturday, the 5th complicate holiday weekend plans but moods rebound nicely, and Labor Day is notably joyful. Going back to work or school is most appealing as the Sun forms a trine to scholarly Jupiter on Wednesday, the 9th. Mars, the God of War, turns retrograde in his own sign of Aries that evening. Don’t force the pace or any other issues as the Virgo Sun nears an opposition with Neptune. The challenging aspect is exact the afternoon of Friday, the 11th. Mistakes and misunderstandings are likely. After a quiet weekend some relationships flourish while others could see a parting of ways around Tuesday, the 15th. The Virgo new Moon on the 16th has steadfast support from Saturn. The stabilizing influence bodes well for projects launched at this time. Work extra hard at “to the point” communications the week of Monday, the 21st. Autumn begins with the fall equinox and the Sun’s entry into Libra on Tuesday, the 22nd. Emotions could boil over around the first quarter Moon phase of the 23rd. Venus and Mars harmonize on Monday, the 28th, offering a respite from worries. More ominously, retrograde Mars tests Saturn the next day, and with Jupiter and Pluto hovering close to the Ringed Planet, the specter of a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections looms large.
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OCTOBER 2020
We begin and end October with luminous full Moon energy. Wednesday, the 1st features the Harvest Moon in Aries. If possible, extend an olive branch and make peace. An unexpected turn for the better could dramatically improve some partnerships. Relationships are less secure the following week. Mercury tests Uranus on Wednesday, the 7th, trying patience and even the most open of minds. Mars’ square to Pluto on Friday, the 9th is a two-edged sword, highly motivational but also prompting aggressive tendencies in less evolved souls. Libra is known as the sign of peace and beauty but it can also spotlight a lack of harmony. This mid-month period is filled with ups and downs, at best a challenging scenario. Feelings are passionate the morning of Saturday, the 10th. Fortunately, the evening features a lovely trine between Venus and Uranus, a harbinger of friendship and good will. The Sun squares Jupiter Sunday morning, leading overbearing folks to pontificate, boast and point fingers. Quietly confident voices are heard in the night, and again on Monday, the 12th. Jupiter is sextile to Neptune early Monday morning. Dreams sweetly flow by. Kindness and compassion support fence-mending and true understanding. Mercury’s noon hour sextile with Venus also aids poets, lovers and peacemakers. Tuesday, the 13th brings more complications. The Sun is opposite Mars while both stars test Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn. Mercury turns retrograde in Scorpio. Runaway issues, the pandemic, corporate corruption, politics as usual and environmental insecurity may feel overwhelming. Personal challenges feel intense. The Libra new Moon of Friday, the 16th underscores the work that needs to be done. Formulate your game plans the weekend of the 17th and 18th. From Monday, the 19th, through Saturday, the 24th Venus in Virgo makes a series of trine aspects to Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn. Alliances are firmed up. Networking and mobilizing are facilitated. Economic outlooks are more hopeful. The Sun enters Scorpio the evening of Thursday, the 22nd. Pre-election controversies are at a fevered pitch this week but the question voters ask, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” has a clear answer. People are ready for change as Halloween brings a “blue” full Moon in Taurus, and the Moon stands conjunct freedom-loving Uranus.
NOVEMBER 2020
A sobering square between retrograde Mercury and Saturn dominates the 1st. The solemn aspect holds firm until Friday, the 6th. Mindsets are realistic and dutiful, ready to make short-term sacrifices in exchange for long-term stability. However, Tuesday, the 3rd’s Election Day stars suggests there will be most likely be numerous voting controversies. Just after noon, Mercury resumes forward motion, leaving the door open for confusion as well as incorrect tallies impacting vote counts. Alarmingly, the Gemini Moon’s evening square with Neptune is another harbinger of skullduggery. Expect complaints from both parties. Whoever comes out ahead in federal and state elections, it will take time to get used to the newest reality. By Monday, the 9th we’ll all have a clearer idea of what and who we are
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FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 11
FALL/WINTER ASTROLOGICAL FORECAST Continued from page 11
dealing with. Jupiter conjuncts Pluto on Thursday. the 12th. Extraordinary feats are possible. Applied talents, hidden gifts and will power can make a huge difference. The Scorpio Sun fosters unity, learning and purposefulness as mid-month nears. On Sunday. the 15th the Moon is new in Scorpio and we begin a fresh achievement cycle. Partnerships endure pressures and strains. It’s hard to ignore differences of opinion while Venus is in square to Pluto, Jupiter and Saturn. Divisions loom large while Mercury opposes Uranus on the 17th, but out of adversity new ties are born. To minimize friction, focus attention on mutual needs and interests. More changes soon follow. The Sun arrives in Sagittarius on Saturday. the 21st. That same day Venus enters Scorpio and the Moon enters Pisces. Get your bearings before setting a project or anticipated adventure in motion. At the onset of Thanksgiving week many clever ideas surface. The holiday unfolds under stressful lunar squares. Social distancing and travel delays can feel onerous. Don’t overcook the dinner! On Friday. the 27th one person’s stroke of genius may fail to impress a key partner. Give others the time they need to think things over. A weekend break from routines can be refreshing. The full Moon in Gemini on Monday morning. the 30th is eclipsed. Stay humble. Even the cleverest of plans are likely to be revised as additional facts come to light.
DECEMBER 2020
On Tuesday, the 1st Mercury enters Sagittarius, infusing minds with welcome optimism. Loving spirits receive another boost when Venus trines Neptune on Saturday night, the 5th. Ordinarily this would be a fabulous auspice for a party or concert. Given the void-of-course Leo Moon and the reality of social-distancing, it may be time to watch a movie, have a Zoom gathering or listen to music. In most cases, hearts are open. Creative souls flourish. The last quarter Moon on Monday, the 7th calls for recalibrating plans and commitments. It’s time to cut losses and let go of ineffective ideas and relationships when the Sagittarius Sun tests Neptune on the 9th. Don’t be overly concerned. New projects and like-minded soulmates soon fill any gaps. Follow your passion on Thursday, the 10th. Enjoy the weekend but be sure to take it easy on Sunday, the 13th, an ideal time for a rest. The midday Sagittarius new Moon/solar eclipse of Monday, the 14th is the appropriate moment to launch new endeavors. Take a few minutes to meditate. For tuned-in souls, eclipses come with sharpened self-awareness. A splendid supporting cast of planets is ample reason to proceed with confidence. However, be ready to adjust your thinking and plans as emerging conditions may dictate. The winter solstice is a powerful day. The Sun enters Capricorn the morning of Monday, the 21st. Jupiter is conjunct Saturn at the first degree of Aquarius. Eyes turn to the future. The Aries Moon reaches the tense first quarter phase that evening. Out of the darkness of the year’s longest night comes inevitable rebirth. Mars is at odds with Pluto this week so expect birth pains but forging ahead is the only option. Proceed with caution. Momentum builds as Mercury and the Sun align with Uranus, and the aspects are excellent from Thursday, the 24th through the moonlit 27th. A lunar sextile to Neptune adds sweetness and magic to the Christmas holy day. The final full Moon of 2020 is exact Tuesday night, December 29th. With the Moon in Cancer, sentimental feelings surface along with memories of those we’ve lost. New Year’s Eve brings a celebratory mood. The Moon is in fiery Leo but testing lunar angles with Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus warrant observing common sense rules and precautions, especially after midnight. Happy New Year!
JANUARY 2021
The first aspect of the New Year is promising. Mercury’s magical early morning sextile to Neptune has dreamers thinking they’re on cloud nine. There are simple pleasures to enjoy the first weekend of 2021. Sunday preparations for going back to work or school hold an air of excitement. Mercury conjuncts Pluto on Monday, the 4th. Minds have laser-like focus. Powers of observation are acute. Applied intelligence and psychological insights can be profound. With Moon in discerning Virgo this is a great day to be at one’s job. Having been in Aries since late June, Mars finally enters Taurus on Wednesday, January 6th en route to a momentous conjunction with Uranus. Sidestep an argument that evening. Mercury arrives in Aquarius the morning of Friday, the 8th, joining Saturn and Jupiter in the early degrees of the sign. The trio are at odds with Mars and Uranus, an explosive setup that requires consummate self-control as well as the will to persist. Friday evening sees 12 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
Venus entering Capricorn, defusing some tensions while the Goddess of Love and Beauty harmonizes with Mars and Uranus. Unexpected partnerships make news. Mixed trends are with us much of the month. It feels a bit like follow the bouncing ball; up and down we go. Saturday, the 9th brings pleasures as well as new commitments that have staying power. Good news as well as loving ties are enjoyed on Monday, the 11th but beliefs may be tested and plans left in shambles as early as the following morning. Mars’ grinding square to Saturn wears patience thin on the 13th. Venus’ trine to Uranus lightens hearts that evening. Fulfill an obligation while the Sun passes by Pluto on Thursday, the 14th. More volatile trends proceed to take hold. On Sunday, the 17th Jupiter’s square with Uranus sparks fireworks over differences of opinion and moral values. The Sun reaches Aquarius on the 19th, energizing Saturn and Jupiter but also adding fuel to continuing squares with Mars and Uranus. That explosive Mars/Uranus duo makes their exact conjunction on Wednesday, the 20th. Be as careful as you possibly can while performing routine chores, especially while using machinery of any type. Of note, it will be amazing if Inauguration Day goes off without a hitch. On Friday, the 22nd opinions continue to be sharply divided as Mars squares Jupiter that night. Play kiss and make up over the weekend. Venus forms a soothing sextile with Neptune Saturday afternoon and the evening is perfect for taking a vow or renewed ties as the Sun aligns with Saturn. Karma could well be in play. The Aquarius Sun’s square with Uranus underscores all that is uncertain. The aspect, exact on Tuesday, the 26th, may require quick thinking and a change of plans. Detours and alternate routes lead to unexpected blessings. While not without its challenges, the full Moon day of Thursday, the 28th offers potential financial gains, friendships made, as well as excellent learning opportunities. The Leo Moon forms a power packed T-square with the opposing Sun, Saturn and Jupiter. These stars also test Uranus and Mars. Leaders may shine but any misuse of personal position or power is liable to set off a firestorm of protest. Even as we digest the dramatic events of the full Moon a new wrinkle appears. Mental Mercury turns retrograde on the 30th, good reason to slow down and reflect on where life is taking you.
FEBRUARY 2021
Venus joins the crowded live-and-let-live skies of Aquarius on Monday, the 1st. Five of the ten major planets are in the freedom loving sign. The Aquarius Sun is at odds with Mars early that same morning. We can’t always get what we want. Sometimes we must compromise. As the song goes, we get what we need. It is the waning Libra Moon that offers comfort. Awareness and consideration of others helps ease friction between competing factions. The Scorpio last quarter Moon of Thursday, the 4th precipitates a great deal of soul searching. It’s a good time to re-evaluate individual goals and the effectiveness of tactics. Different opinions could lead to a break-up on Saturday, the 6th. Choices have to be made. Mercury’s retrograde may bring up numerous second thoughts and regrets during the mid-month period. Welcome reconnections may also occur. The afternoon of Thursday, the 11th sees a fresh activity cycle launched with the new Moon in Aquarius. Think big as six planets gather in the forward-thinking sign. Long ago and far away friends may also frequently come to mind. Happiness blossoms as we near the upbeat 14th. Valentine’s Day reunions are another possibility. Rethinking and backtracking may be a necessity when Saturn squares off with Uranus on Wednesday, the 17th. The aspect pits cautious traditionalists against more adventurous, progressive souls. A major political realignment could be brewing. Somewhere Earth is shaking. The Sun slips into Pisces during the pre-dawn hours of Thursday, the 18th. Imminent change and perhaps a subtle foretelling of spring is detectable. The daylight hours are getting noticeably longer. The month ends with a busy week. Mercury resumes forward motion the evening of Saturday, the 20th. After a brief period of mental recalibrating, certain matters can now be more easily cleared up. The waxing Moon facilitates the pro-active phase. Also helping the forward push is Mars’ empowering trine to Pluto the night of Wednesday, the 24th. With hard work much can be accomplished. On Saturday, the 27th glorious moonlight and celestial energy max out with a silvery, post-midnight full Moon in Virgo. The Moon sails serenely overhead. For a little while the sky is at peace and all seems well in the world. Eric Linter offers a complete range of astrological services including readings and classes. Contact him at stars@ericlinter.com or by telephone at 508-541-4115. Read his Daily Forecasts on the Spirit of Change homepage at spiritofchange.org.
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www.lighthealing.com FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 13
JOURNAL OF NATURAL HEALING
Humming for Health By Kathleen Nagy
I
am a musician and sound healer. My ears are my dominant sense for the intake of information. Visually, I am not very interested in detail. Looking at something intensely is work for me whereas listening to the fullness of the composites of a sound are for me, a delight. I experience the world more through my ears than my eyes. That’s just me. I like to play with sound. It has helped me with many physical and emotional challenges over the years. Around the age of 40, I was diagnosed with asthma. I had to take medicines that made me very jittery, which I hated. So, I decided to experiment with humming sounds. I thought that if I could find a note that really vibrated my lungs, I could try toning that on a daily basis to see if I could stop using my inhalers. After humming for a while, I found the note! Toning it felt really good to my lungs. I discovered that when I hummed this sound for 20 minutes a day, I no longer had to use my inhalers. My asthma eventually went away, and I didn’t have to hum that note anymore. That’s what made me a believer in the power of sound for healing. Much later I found out that humming has actually been studied for its health benefits. There are worldwide studies that prove humming lowers heart rate and blood pressure, increases nitric oxide, increases lymphatic circulation, increases melatonin levels, releases endorphins, and releases oxytocin. I have also used humming to energize my underactive thyroid and to boost my immune system. Humming, like toning, is using an unconscious, natural, human bodily process — consciously. When we hum, all the vibrations stay inside our bodies. It’s like an internal body massage, increasing circulation and oxygenation, a main ingredient for all healing. Humming also increases nitric oxide — a molecule we all possess naturally. Nitric oxide energizes our cardiovascular, respiratory, and immune systems. It causes expansion of our blood vessels, which increases blood flow and lowers blood pressure. Specifically, humming instantly increases nitric
14 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
oxide in the nasal passages. This is vitally important in our struggle against this novel coronavirus. The sinuses are where this virus lingers for days before it infects other tissues in the body. Nitric oxide is antiviral, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. Humming while exhaling increases nitric oxide creation to fifteen times the amount created when we normally and quietly inhale. Dr. Deitrich Klinghardt, famed Swiss doctor of medical neurobiology, studied this as much as 15 years ago and found, “Nitric oxide produced in the nasal passages is part of the defense system against bacterial and viral infections.” He suggests whenever no one is listening to you, hum to prevent or treat COVID-19.
I am a vibrational expression Of the Infinite Eternal Becoming aware of itself Within the heart of matter. Before I knew any of this information, I used humming to enhance my immune system. I did a meditation every day for 10-15 minutes that kept me healthy for many years. I did it not because I had any logical reason for doing it; I did it because it made me feel great and that was good enough for me. When I felt a scratchiness in my throat, like I was coming down with a cold, a couple of hours later after humming I would notice that feeling was gone, and the cold never manifested. It was because my immune system was so pumped that it could fend off viruses and bacterial infections that were inhaled, like COVID-19. To put it succinctly, matter vibrates, sound is vibration, and therefore sound affects matter. You just need to discover
the right sound for the specific piece of matter. What is the right sound to boost your immune system? It’s a simple gliding up and down a C major scale, using your voice to hum from middle C on the piano (256Hz) up to the octave above it (512Hz). While you hum, you are gliding up slowly to include all of the notes that are contained in the space between the low C and the high C. It sounds like a slide whistle or penny whistle. Then you take a breath and glide back down to the lower C in the same way, sounding all the notes contained in that octave. It’s that simple. If you have no way to find the sound of middle C, there are plenty of tone generators online that can play it for you, or you could use a chromatic C-to-C pitch pipe to find the note. Finding the note that truly vibrates your sinuses is very powerful. Put your fingers on either side of your nose and hum up and down until you find the sound that really vibrates your nose and sinuses, and keep humming it! Adding intention to the hum makes it even more powerful. Speaking a thought or sound makes it tangible. The thought is no longer invisible and silent. Speaking it gives it substance — a body. It takes up space and exists. Creation stories throughout ancient traditions, including Christianity, identify sound as the primal creative force. Using the consciousness of the breath as a carrier for heartfelt intention expressed through humming is a profoundly useful sound healing technique that can be very beneficial to your health. Kathleen Nagy spent 18 years performing in symphony orchestras playing the French horn, teaching music education and directing musical theater productions. For the past 20 years she has been a BioAcoustic Research Associate specializing in Voice Energy Analysis and Acoustic Biofeedback for sports or muscle injuries, and now specializes in teaching people how to hum the sounds that are good for their bodies. Download a free immune boosting mp3 at thesoundlady.com.
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FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 15
By Ritu Kapur
N
4
Yoga Poses For Arthritis
early 54 million adults in the US are affected by arthritis, based on 2019 statistics offered by the CDC. That’s approximately one in every four Americans, making it one of the most common chronic health conditions. Arthritis can cause joint pain, swelling, stiffness and limited movement, and can therefore significantly limit your ability to perform your work and enjoy daily activities like walking, gardening, sports, dancing, or other favorite pursuits. Most Americans do not get enough physical activity, a factor that contributes to higher rates of obesity and health problems like arthritis. Yoga offers a beautiful way to exercise gently and mindfully that is enjoyable enough to do regularly. For the person with arthritis, yoga improves joint flexibility and range of motion, improves balance, increases oxygen to the muscles, builds muscle strength, and improves blood circulation to distant body parts. Yoga also creates the mind-body connection and decreases anxiety with the use of deep breathing, skills that can be used to significantly reduce mental and physical pain. Before starting a yoga regimen, it’s important to talk to your yoga teacher about your limitations. Students (and teachers!) should be very aware of these limitations and safety concerns at all times during your yoga practice. In addition, discuss what type of modifications might be appropriate for your unique condition. Be mindful of any pain or discomfort you experience and avoid overtaxing any joint that is painful. You may consider taking one or more private classes with your teacher before going into a group class to be sure that all of your individual needs are recognized and addressed. Many yoga teachers are now offering their classes via online platforms, so many experienced instructors have suddenly become more accessible to you! It does not matter where you live; you can work with them from the comfort of your own home, where they can give you exact instructions in real time based on how you are doing.
The M and M’s of Yoga for Arthritis MOVEMENT “Use it or lose it” applies to arthritic joints as well. Too much rest or staying in one place can increase stiffness leading to loss of movement in the joints. MODERATION Rest and moderation of movement are crucial when you are dealing with arthritis in any joint in your body. MINDFULNESS Meditation can be your pillar of strength and can help you deal with symptoms of arthritis in a more peaceful way. Start with these four simple yoga poses that are easy to do and allow you to move multiple joints at the same time. Progress gradually to more advanced yoga poses when you feel ready. Modify the poses as needed by using blankets or small bolsters to make each pose completely comfortable. If you feel sharp pain while doing these movements, stop immediately, carefully read the directions again and try them again later or on another day. Be mindful about the difference between a good stretch and pain. Stretch should feel good and pain does not.
SHOUDLERS AND NECK
Illustrations by Jeffrey Longo
• Sit at the edge of chair with your spine straight. Stretch your arms by your side with the palms facing up. • As you inhale, look at your left hand, then slowly and gently turn your head as you exhale to look at your right hand. Do this 3-5 times, creating just the right amount of stretch in your neck and arms. • Slowly lower your arms and bring both hands behind your lower back to hold the hands together. As you inhale, open your chest and shoulders and look up towards the ceiling. As you exhale, gently bring your chin down towards your chest. Do this slowly and gently 3-5 times.
16 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
NECK AND THE SPINE
• Sit on the edge of a chair with no arms so you can widen your legs with your feet comfortably flat on the ground. Make sure the chair is sturdy and does not tilt forward. • Rest your hands on your knees, tilt forward a little and look ahead. Inhale and lengthen your whole spine and neck forward. • As you exhale, tuck your tailbone, round up your spine and bring your neck down as if you are trying to look towards your navel. Repeat this sequence of two movements 3-5 times in coordination with your breath. • On the last tucked-in position, let your head and arms hang down towards the floor. Feel your neck lengthen as you create more space in your cervical spine. Gently and slowly move the neck side to side a few times. Starting at the base of the spine and raising the head last, slowly uncurl the spine back to an upright position sitting in the chair. Take a few deep breaths.
KNEES, ANKLES AND FOOT
• Sit in a chair with both feet comfortably resting on the ground. Pick up your right foot and place it on your left knee.* • Take 5-10 long, deep breaths as you sit like this, stretching your hip and knee and ankle joint. • After some deep breaths, rub your foot with both hands, stretch your toes and move your ankle in a gentle circular motion with your hands. • Repeat on the other side. *If you are unable to bring the foot up to the knee due to pain, try stretching the leg out in front of you, either bent-knee or straight, and do ankle movements up/down, sideways and in circles.
HIPS AND SPINE
• Find a carpeted space or use a yoga mat with a blanket on top and lie down on your back with your knees bent. Use a blanket for head support. Tuck your tailbone so you can feel your lower back resting on the ground. Feel your middle and upper back resting on the ground as well. Allow your shoulders to rest toward the ground. • Slowly bring both knees to your chest and clasp your hands around them like you are giving yourself a big hug. Gently rock side-to-side for one to two minutes massaging your spine on the ground. • Allow each hand to rest on its respective knee. Move both knees away from each other in opposite directions in a gentle, small, circular motion, and then bring them back to center again. Repeat five times. As you get used to this motion you can make the circles a little wider. This is an excellent movement for hip joints to decrease tightness and increase range of motion. Notice how this feels in your lower back and your shoulder blades. • Lie down quietly for some more time with your knees bent or your legs straight on the ground. Simply take some time to listen to your breath or follow with some of your other favorite yoga poses.
Ritu Kapur is an occupational therapist and Yoga teacher, and the owner of Sohum Yoga and Meditation. She offers weekly group classes and private yoga classes via Zoom. She has offered weekend and day-long yoga retreats for the past seven years and looks forward to resuming that schedule in the near future. Visit www.sohum.org or email ritu.kapur@sohum.org with questions about yoga.
YOGA DIRECTORY
Yoga at the Ashram, Millis, MA
MASSACHUSETTS
Bridgewater
Bliss Through Yoga, Inside Physical Therapy U, 75 Scotland Blvd., Bridgewater, MA 02324. Offering Svaroopa® Yoga, Embodyment® Yoga Therapy, group and private classes. 508-331-3564. blissthroughyoga@ comcast.net. blissthroughyoga.com Maha Yoga Center, 992 Bedford St. (Rt. 18), Bridgewater, MA 02324. Yoga all levels, Hatha, Ashtanga, meditation, massage. Yoga teacher training (Yoga Alliance). 508-697-3273 mahayogacenter.com
Haverhill
Harmony Integrative Bodywork. Sessions include half bodywork and half one-on-one yoga to bring harmony and balance back to your body. 76 Merrimack St, Suite 102A. 978-771-0377. www.harmonyintegrativebodywork.com
Holden
Opening Lotus Yoga. 465 Main Street, Holden, MA, 01520. All levels. Kundalini , Hatha, Vinyasa, Yin, Restorative, Certified Yoga/Ayurvedic health coaching. 508-829-7435 openinglotusyoga.com.
Leominster/Central Mass Area
Yoga Anita. “Calm the mind, stretch the body, invigorate the spirit.” Yoga and Meditation. Group, private, schools, corporate, workshops. In-person or online. www.yogaanita.com. 978-227-8297 Include your studio. Next ad deadline is January 31, 2021. email advertise@spiritofchange.org
www.spiritofchange.org
Opening Lotus Studio, Holden, MA
Millis
Yoga at the Ashram, 368 Village Street, Kundalini, gong relaxations, concerts, workshops, healing circles, retreats and teacher trainings. www.YogaAtTheAshram.org. 508-376-4525 The Yoga Studio. A tranquil, welcoming healing center. Daily classes for all levels, private yoga therapy, and 200/500 hour YTT. First class free. 508-376-8508. theyogastudiomillis.com
Princeton
FrogPond Yoga Centre. Classes in the tradition of Raja Yoga for all levels of practitioners. 200 and 500-hr classes are ongoing. frogpondyoga.org
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Virtual
The Core Connection offers a variety of alignment-based yoga classes ranging from Yoga Sculpt and Funky Flow Yoga to Yin and restorative candlelight yoga. Virtual classes available. Visit www.thecoreconnection.com. 508-393-8086. SOHUM Yoga and Meditation is an online platform created by Ritu Kapur, an Occupational Therapist and Yoga teacher offering many weekly online classes, private sessions and Yoga retreats. www.SOHUM.org. Ritu.Kapur@Sohum.org
Westborough
Mountainbrook Yoga. Eileen Nikopoulos, RYT 500 is a skilled and experienced practitioner of the yogic arts, yoga for pelvic health and postpartum yoga. www.mountainbrookyoga.com. 508-591-FLOW. Westborough Yoga for transformation, healing and spinal health. Offering Svaroopa yoga, meditation, private Yoga Therapy and Embodyment. Contact Michelle (Kamala) Gross, 508-341-6424 westboroughyoga.com
Worcester
Worcester Yoga Center. Ann Bissanti. Over 30 years teaching experience. Trained in India by B.K.S. Iyengar. 21 West Street, Worcester, MA. 508-829-6300. worcesteryogacenter.com
NEW HAMPSHIRE
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FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 17
Celebration of
Autumn Menu
BY ANNE-MARIE FRYER WIBOLTT
Groups large or small will enjoy this colorful autumn menu excerpted from Cooking for the Love of the World. As a teacher and mentor, I always strive to awaken wonder, reverence and enthusiasm toward the living world in young and old. The way to achieve planetary health and harmony is to bring alive, in every human heart, the glory and splendor of the world. To create a living relationship with the world is a most essential part of our lives and diets today. As I marvel at the beauty and mysteries unfolding everywhere around me, I have come to know with certainty that real, natural foods reveal the magnificence of the creative spirit. I also know for sure that what I cook and the way I prepare the meal is a continuation of these divine creative processes and have a profound impact in my life, the life of humanity and Earth. For this understanding I am very grateful. Wonder and reverence were awakened early on in my life. I had the privilege to create an intimate relationship with nature from the time I was very young. I grew up north of Copenhagen in Denmark next to enchanting woods, wide-stretching fields and a few miles from lapping ocean waves. My family lived in a community setting with a multitude of other families and children in all ages. As a baby and toddler, I napped in a carriage outside yearround. My kindergarten was an outside forest kindergarten with no physical address. The teacher strolled from door to door and picked up all the children along the way. We walked into the ever-changing woods and played among the fairies, trees and bushes. Our play toys were rocks, sticks, moss, puddles, acorns and whatever else we found. With these natural toys there was no end for our creative imaginations. In nature we were free to be, move 18 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
and develop at our own pace. As a youth in Denmark, television was not much of an option. Instead my sisters and I played with friends outside rain or shine. It seemed like all weather was good weather when dressed well. We walked or biked a mile to school every day. After school the outside world and the seasonal changes in their entire splendor continued to frame all our games and activities. After finishing high school, I moved to Copenhagen to attend college. During that time, I began to explore my individuality, freedom and creativity as a young woman. Many questions came to birth in my heart. I had a feeling of longing — longing to know and to understand. Who was I? What was the source of my existence? I felt the stirring of a purpose or direction in my life, what was it? While working as a system analyst at IBM and later teaching computer science, my soul felt ignored and starved for real life. I felt a genuine unhappiness and a deep sadness hovered around me. Although both jobs were interesting, challenging and well paying, it wasn’t what I was longing for. I was in an emotional upheaval and despair. This inner turmoil, the yearning to find answers to the questions I was carrying and the desire to really feel and experience life, led me on a new journey that embraced nature in a different way. Through the art of cooking I began consciously to reconnect and deepen my relationship with the world and nature spiritually, creatively and physically. Working in the kitchen gives us an opportunity to deepen our relationship with the world through the food we cook. We can look at the ingredients as if we are seeing them for the first time and attend to them, as
we would with close friends. When we create genuine interest for what we are working with we engage our senses. It is through sensing that the wisdom of the world reveals its nature to us. We are accustomed to think we have five senses; seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. In reality there are seven more: the sense of balance, movement, speech and thought as well as the sense of self, life and warmth.1 Notice that when we work in the kitchen we constantly apply and exercise our inner sense of balance. We orient ourselves in the world and relate this sense of balance to cutting styles, cooking styles, colors, etc. As we move our hands over the surfaces of vegetables, we feel a sense of movement and how our own inner movement relates and resonates harmoniously with the movements and processes that created the foods we are preparing. All kinds of curves, textures and contours are expressed to us. We perceive the unique yet universal language articulated by the foods and dishes we cook. Our sense of thought also engages during cooking. By immersing ourselves in the creative processes our thinking becomes like the life forces we work with; mobile and living. We clearly have a sense of life. Not only do we sense our own well-being, whether we are tired or comfortable, we also sense the life of the food we cook. We have an inner sense of warmth when we eat spicy foods or a hot soup and feel warmth by sharing our meal with friends and family. Lastly, we have a sense of self, of our spirit-nature and the spirit-nature of others. We nurture this sense through the fact that we are able to imbue and change the quality of foods with our own activity. When we bring consciousness into sensing, cooking becomes an enriching, living, soul/spirit experience of the living world. Attentive and open within sensing, begin to look with wonder at the foods needed for the meal. Observe the structures, the rhythms, and follow the patterns into the slightest details. Keep your eyes on the ingredients as if you were touching them with your gaze. Run your eyes up and down, around and inside. What are the movements and gestures of these foods and what secrets do they tell? Without intellectual speculation, look through a magnifying glass and admire the work of nature. What beauty to behold! Cut an apple horizontally, right through the middle where it is broadest and discover a beautiful five-pointed star. Nature is full of these awe-inspiring surprises.
Celebration of Autumn Menu Invite friends for this meal. There is plenty for 8-12 people to taste a little of everything. The kvass for the autumn refresher is made weeks in advance. The pickled onions are best if allowed several days to mature but can be done in 1/2 hour. Soak the rice and walnuts separately 6-8 hrs. Make the stuffing for the squash. Bake the squash, turkey and zucchini muffins. Proceed by preparing the tempeh and the rest of the vegetable dishes, dressings and sauces.
KVASS AUTUMN REFRESHER
Begin the celebration with an autumn refresher that has zest and body. It is made with kvass, a traditional Scandinavian and Russian fermented drink. The kvass needs 5-10 days to ferment, so plan ahead. Kvass is delicious as it is — sweet 1
Our Twelve Senses by Albert Soesman. Hawthorn Press, 1999.
continued on page 20
On behalf of the Oneness of all existence, Millie brings you ...
A Human’s Purpose This book is for anyone: Without Reservation
Awakening to Native American Spirituality and the Ways of Our Ancestors Randy Kritkausky In this powerful story of spiritual awakening, Randy Kritkausky shares his journey into the realm of ancestral Native American connections and intimate encounters with Mother Earth. Detailing his encounters with ancestral spirits, the natural world, and animal teachers, such as Coy-Wolf, he shows how anyone can spiritually reconnect with their ancestors and Nature. ISBN 978-1-59143-384-2 • $20.00 288 pages • 11 b&w illustrations • PB
Gemstone Guardians Cards and Your Soul Purpose Margaret Ann Lembo This deck and guidebook set helps you discover your soul purpose with the assistance of the inspiring gemstone guardians. Pairing an archetypal career expression with a vibrationally matching crystal, the 44 full-color cards have been specifically created to inspire thought from higher levels of awareness and help shine light on your unique path. ISBN 978-1-64411-067-6 • $19.99 Includes 44 full-color cards and 128-page booklet Boxed Set
— Over 1,800 books for the Mind, Body, and Spirit — InnerTraditions.com • 800-246-8648 • Available Wherever Books Are Sold www.spiritofchange.org
• Searching for the deeper meanings in life and death • On a spiritual path who wants to understand themselves • Who wants to understand others more profoundly • Who wants to create a love and joy filled life • Is open to new ideas and concepts that infuse love into all aspects of your being “For most of my life I was searching for purpose, not understanding the challenges and losses I have experienced. After reading A Human’s Purpose I have gained more clarity than I can state. I have a whole new outlook on life and death. It was life-altering!” ~ Kim W.
Millie is an old soul that will steal your heart
www.AHumansPurpose.com FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 19
Celebration of Autumn Menu Continued from page 18
and slightly sour. Triple the recipe and use a gallon jar instead. The kvass stores in the refrigerator for weeks. Experiment with adding different herbs to the kvass during the fermentation process, such as thyme, rosemary and small amounts of ginger. 1 quart water 1/4 of an apple, sliced 1 thick slice sourdough bread, cubed and dried completely 1 tablespoon sauerkraut 5 raisins Place the bread and water in a pot. Bring it to a boil. Let it cool before adding it to a 1 1/2-quart size jar. Add apple, raisins, sauerkraut and more water, if necessary, to fill the jar. Seal the jar with a tight-fitting lid. Cover the jar with a towel and let it sit at room temperature for 5-10 days. If the weather is warmer, the kvass will be ready quicker. The finished kvass is a little fizzy and has a sweet and slightly sour taste. Pour the kvass through a strainer. Discard the bread mixture and store the kvass in the refrigerator. Serve in decorative wine glasses.
STUFFED HERBED BUTTERCUP SQUASH
Buttercup squash and other round hard winter squashes are best to use for this dish. If you use store-bought seasoned bread stuffing, follow the directions on the package and omit everything for the dressing except the oil, celery and onions. 1 cup walnuts 1 large buttercup squash 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or butter 3 large onions, cubed 3 celery stalks, diced 1/2 teaspoon sea salt 1 tablespoon dried and crushed basil 1 tablespoon dried and crushed thyme 1 tablespoon dried and crushed oregano 10 slices whole wheat sourdough bread cut into 1/2 inch cubes 1 cup water or soup stock Soak the walnuts in water for 6-8 hours. Drain and chop the nuts fine. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Wash the squash. Cut a lid off the top of the squash and scoop out the seeds. Save the lid. Heat a large pot and add oil or butter. Sauté onions and celery over medium heat for three minutes, then add salt and herbs, and sauté for three minutes. Mix bread and chopped nuts into vegetable mixture. Add water or stock while gently blending it all together. Place stuffing loosely in the squash. Put the lid back on. Add the rest of the stuffing to a baking dish and cover. Bake the squash and stuffing. The stuffing in the baking dish will be done after 30-40 minutes and the squash in 1-1 1/2 hours. Time it so both are done at the same time. Baking time depends on the size of the dish and the squash. Stick a long needle into the middle of the stuffing, pull out quickly and feel if the middle is hot. Take both out of the oven and let sit for 15 minutes before serving. 20 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
ROASTED MAPLE TURKEY
If the turkey is frozen, thaw it slowly in the refrigerator for several days. The roasted turkey is deliciously crisp, juicy and simple to make. It is cooked in an oven bag to secure the flavors and moisture. Serve any liquid remaining in the bag diluted with water, seasoned with salt, and thickened with just a little cornstarch for a sauce. 1 medium size turkey 1 teaspoon sea salt Juice of 1 lemon 8 tablespoons maple syrup 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 2-3 apples, cored and cut in chunks 1 cup prunes soaked in water 1 tablespoon flour Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Rinse and dry the turkey well. Rub sea salt into the turkey, then lemon juice and maple syrup, and finish with the oil. Fill the turkey with apples and prunes. Place the bird in an oven bag for baking, shake one tablespoon flour inside the bag, seal and cut a few holes in the top. Bake the turkey for 1 1/2 - 2 hours. Use a meat thermometer to determine if the meat is cooked all the way through. Cut the bag open and bake for another 15 minutes. Let the turkey rest for 15 minutes before carving it. Place the pieces decoratively on a plate.
ZUCCHINI CORN MUFFINS WITH OLIVE BASIL DIP
The olive basil dip is delicious as a dipping sauce for any bread. To make the corn flour more digestible, mix the dry ingredients, except the baking soda, with the wet ingredients and let rest for 6 hours. Mix the baking powder with a little flour before adding it to the dough right before baking the muffins. 1 1/2 cup blue or yellow corn flour 1 1/2 cups of whole-wheat pastry flour 1 teaspoon sea salt 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 1 egg 3 tablespoons butter or extra virgin olive oil 1 cup water 1/2 cup apple cider or juice 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar 2 cups grated zucchini 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil 1 teaspoon sea salt 1/4 cup finely minced basil Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Oil a 12-cup muffin pan. In a large bowl mix corn flour, pastry flour, sea salt and baking soda. In another bowl whisk together egg, butter or oil, water, apple cider and cider vinegar. Pour liquid ingredients into flour mixture and mix well. Quickly stir in the zucchini. Pour batter into muffin pan and bake for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes. Mix olive oil, salt and minced basil. Serve in a flat dish as dipping sauce for the muffins.
FRIED CRISPY TEMPEH
Tempeh is a fermented soybean product. I make it fresh at home. Tempeh is very nourishing and tasty and readily available in health food stores. Fry the tempeh in two batches if necessary. The fried tempeh is seasoned with umeboshi vinegar, the brine of the fermented Japanese umeboshi plums. The umeboshi vinegar adds a tasty sour salty flavor to the crispy tempeh. Instead of umeboshi vinegar, use 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar and 1 teaspoon salt or 4 tablespoons tamari soy sauce. 1 1/2 pound tempeh, cubed 1/4 cup extra virgin olive or avocado oil 4-6 tablespoons umeboshi vinegar Heat a skillet, add the oil or butter and fry the tempeh over medium heat until golden about 4-5 minutes. Make sure the heat is not too low or too high. Turn and fry the other side for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and sprinkle with umeboshi vinegar while still hot. Serve warm at room temperature.
GREEN BEANS WITH BUTTER GARLIC
Seasoned with butter and garlic, the green beans complement the meal well. Use extra virgin olive oil instead of butter. 2 cups green string beans, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces 1/4 cup water 1/4 teaspoon sea salt 2 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon garlic granulate or 1 clove fresh garlic, minced Place the beans in a skillet with the water and simmer for 3-5 minutes. Uncover the skillet and let the green beans cook until all liquid has evaporated. Season the beans with salt, butter and garlic. Simmer for 1 minute. The beans are done when they have a bright dark green color, and are tender, but not overcooked.
COLLARD GREENS WITH ORANGE DRESSING
Collard greens taste delicious when steam boiled. It brings a sweetness and roundness to the tougher autumn greens. If the collard greens are very bitter, boil them whole in 1 quart of water and then cut into diagonals. 1/2-1 pound collard greens, finely cut on diagonal Place the greens in a pot with ½-inch water. Bring the water to a boil. Turn down the heat and steam boil the greens for 5-30 minutes. Use a shorter time if the collard greens are to be tender but still crisp, and longer cooking time for a nourishing, buttery soft and warming dish. Serve with the orange dressing. Orange Dressing 1 cup orange juice 1 tablespoon grated orange rind 5 tablespoons apple cider vinegar 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 teaspoon sea salt In a bowl whisk all ingredients together. Let the dressing sit for 1/2 hour. Before serving whisk it again.
HOLIDAY ROOT MEDLEY WITH ROSEMARY
Cook this holiday root medley over medium heat. If the heat is too low the vegetables will be mushy. Season the dish at the end of the cooking time. 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 cup carrots 1 cup turnips or celeriac 1 cup parsnips 2 pinches sea salt 2 tablespoons rosemary 1-2 tablespoons water 1 teaspoon sea salt Clean the vegetables and cut into very chunky matchsticks. Heat a frying pan. Add oil and vegetables. SautĂŠ over medium heat for 3 minutes. Add a few pinches of salt and rosemary, cover pan and continue to cook until vegetables are done. Turn vegetables occasionally. If the vegetables get too dry add a couple of tablespoons of water. Season the root vegetables with salt, cover the pan and continue to cook for 1 minute.
SPICED CRANBERRY CHUTNEY
This dish offers a bittersweet flavor, a bright red color and zesty warming spices to the meal. 2 cups cranberries 1 cup apple juice 1/2 cup diced apples 5 dried apricots, cut in quarters 1/8 teaspoon sea salt 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon cloves 1/4 teaspoon allspice 1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger juice Clean and rinse cranberries. Place them in a saucepan. Add apple juice, apples, apricots and salt. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 10 minutes. Season the cranberries with cinnamon, cloves and allspice. Let simmer for 5 minutes. Add the ginger juice, mix well and serve hot.
TAMARI PICKLED ONIONS
Many firm vegetables can be pickled using this method. If they are cut thin, a light pickle can be done in hours. The longer the vegetables pickle, the stronger they get. Use the brine afterwards as seasoning in soups. 2 cups loosely packed red onions cut in crescent moons 3/4 cup unpasteurized tamari soy sauce 3/4 cup water 3 tablespoons vinegar Place the onions in a pint jar. Mix tamari soy sauce, water and vinegar and pour over the onions. Let the onion pickle for 1/2 houror up to three weeks in the refrigerator. One tablespoon of pickled onions is one serving. Excerpted with permission of the author from Cooking for the Love of the World: Awakening Our Spirituality through Cooking by Anne-Marie Fryer Wiboltt. Goldenstone Press and Heaven and Earth Publishing, 2008. Visit www.cookingfortheloveoftheworld.com. www.spiritofchange.org
FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 21
Good s n a g e V
WHEN
MAKE
Bad Neighbors Photos and text by Mark Mathew Braunstein
M
y new home borders a deep forest, so an array of wildlife makes their rounds to my backyard as I watch them in wonderment. They visit not to put on a show for me, but to search for after-dinner snacks in the compost heap of scraps generated from my vegan kitchen. Viewed from my window, my unannounced dinner guests run the gamut from herbivores to omnivores to carnivores. While I adore them all, I harbor a deeper affection for the local deer and rabbits because, as strict herbivores, they share my own tastes. I call them the home team. The visiting team of bobcats, foxes, and coyotes are also welcomed. While they hunger for a yummy bunny, they are not averse to making a free lunch out of whatever plant-based
foods that they can lay their paws on. When they patrol my compost heap, they are on the prowl for mice and chipmunks, not lettuce and tomatoes. In the absence of rodents, they simply settle for produce. They are not strictly carnivores. In my neck of the woods, the only unwavering carnivores are a pair of hawks. When times are tough, the hawks swoop down for a landing on my lawn to snag earthworms. But no self-respecting hawk would stoop any lower on the food chain. While the perch for their earthworm vigil is just thirty feet from my desk, I have yet to witness one plucking even a single blade of grass. From my desk, I can spy on their nest when trees have shed their leaves in the fall. In the spring, the hawks right before my eyes unabashedly perform their mating ritual countless times while cavorting in the treetops. Yet during summer, their nest seems to remain empty.
Good Neighbors
To my right and left, my neighbors are pairs of humans who perform their mating rituals in privacy. On my left, the husband and wife are empty nesters. On my right, the middle-aged couple’s nest is full. Their household consists of two pre-teenagers, a dog, a cat, and three cars. I am painfully aware that fifty years ago when the forest was flattened and subdivided into our yards, all the wildlife were banished from their ancestral homes. As reparation, I have taken a vow that no further razing will make way for my own children, because I have none. In this propertied community, no white picket fences cordon off our front yards because no fences of any kind define our boundaries. Our oversized parcels of land assure that ample distance alone buffers us from one another. My kind of social distancing. I usually can’t hear my neighbors’ raised voices or loud music or idling car engines or barking dogs, so I feel confident that they can’t hear mine. Especially not my barking dogs, because I have none. Punctuated with trees and shrubs but otherwise nondescript, our front yards wear uniforms, like some students do in private school. In contrast, our backyards show our true colors, like after school when those same students peel off their uniforms to don their street clothes. My backyard features that famously plundered compost heap, a fresh meadow of wildflowers and wild raspberries that the forest has been busily reclaiming from lawn, and a vegetable garden. If some of my human neighbors lack gardens, it is because their backyards are crammed with humanmade edifices such as gazebos, tool sheds, dog enclosures, add-on garages, dry-docked boats, built-in pools, basketball half-courts, and sprawling patios centered around fiery altars shaped as clay ovens or cooking grills. When an ill wind blows my way, I can smell steak sizzling on my neighbors’ barbecues. They are sending smoke signals announcing, “Animals beware, omnivores dwell here.” Evidently, we humans run that same gamut from herbivores to Continued on page 24
22 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
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FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 23
Good Vegans Make Bad Neighbors
Continued from page 22
omnivores to carnivores as does the vaster animal kingdom. It would be a far stretch from the truth to imagine that among wildlife the prey get along with the predators. But as a human herbivore, I do get along with the wild omnivores and the human omnivores alike. I am a good neighbor to all, and the humans next door are good neighbors to me.
Trick or Treat!
I act especially neighborly to the children of the town. On Halloween night, while marveling at their imaginative mostly homemade costumes, I enjoy interacting with the little kiddies, even the ones posing as scary skeletons, witches, and werewolves. Some plainclothes parents come tagging along with their very youngest and smallest. To speak up for their shy and quiet children, the parents sometimes are the ones who invoke the rallying cry of “Trick or Treat!” This can lead to my brief exchanges with the moms and pops, and I enjoy those discourses even more than with the underage ghosts and goblins. To participate in the festivities of Halloween night, I must pay a modest price of admission. The cost of the treats. I dare not dispense sugar-laden candy, as that would be more trick than treat. I wish I could bestow freshly picked apples, like when I was a child, but nowadays cautious parents look suspiciously on any booty not factory-sealed in cellophane. I could buy foil-wrapped bitesize goodies made only of dried fruits and nuts, but those cost a pretty penny for a tiny morsel. Also, my nod to nutrition would likely go unappreciated. Though an elitist who snobbishly shuns salt as much as sugar, during my first few years living here I doled out potato chips fried in cheap motor-grade oil. Which oil is worse, I pondered, cottonseed or canola? And which condiment is worse, salt or sugar? Only a hardcore and headstrong vegan turns every food choice into a troubling moral dilemma. Because less salt and oil sully popcorn than the chips, I have settled on dispensing snack-size bags of popcorn. Their shouts of joy attest that the junior ghosts and midget goblins delight in my standout handouts. Some repeat offenders even proclaim how much they look forward every Halloween to knocking on my door. One day, not on Halloween, my next-door-neighbors on my right came knocking. In a reversal of Halloween, the daughter and her mother were going door-to-door selling Girl Scout cookies. In a further reversal, both of them were out of uniform. The daughter was silent. I don’t remember exactly what the mom said, except that it wasn’t, “Trick or Treat!” She invoked the name Girl Scout cookies, a magic charm to some, but not to me. “I avoid white flour and white sugar,” I interjected, and not apologetically either. The quick-thinking mom then politely suggested an alternative. I could make a donation to convey free boxes of cookies to neglected veterans aging away in VA hospitals. “I would not want to be responsible for feeding white flour or white sugar to someone else,” I countered, again unapologetically. “I feel sorry for you,” she replied, without any hint of sorrow in her voice. End of conversation. Tactfully not speaking it aloud, I thought, “I feel sorry for daughters whose mothers feed them white flour and white sugar.” 24 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
While mother and daughter never again returned to peddle their cookies, the daughter and her brother still come knocking on my door every Halloween. Popcorn must be an irresistible treat, especially on Halloween night.
Stuffed
Armored in our cars, the mom and I continue to smile and wave hello while driving past each other’s front yards. And from our backyards, the dad and I call out each other’s name to shout hello and to sometimes approach closer to chat about the weather or to chuckle about the crabgrass and clover that invade his front lawn from mine. Or maybe I’m the only one chuckling, because every few years I reseed that clover. To my left, my next-door neighbors are a retired couple who I notice in their backyard mostly during summer. Through gaps in the bushes, I glimpse the wife seated on their deck while absorbed reading a book. Her outdoor reveries are rare. I more often see the husband, as we both are vegetable gardeners, his honored crop being tomatoes. While puttering around in our gardens, we are too far away to engage in conversation, so we just shout each other’s names and wave friendly greetings. Last week, for his third time ever, he ambled over to me to strike up a conversation. After an exchange of pleasantries about the weather and gardening, he said his wife had made some extra stuffed cabbage. “Would you like some?” A recollection of the stuffed cabbage from my mother’s home cooking flashed to mind. A cabbage leaf rolled around chopped meat. The opposite of taxidermy. Rather than a dead animal stuffed with cotton, the cabbage leaf stuffed with a dead animal. “I’m a vegan,” I explained, as though stating the obvious, as if almost everyone were vegans. “Does it have meat or fish or milk or dairy or eggs in it?” I recited my list somewhat routinely, like when querying a waiter in a restaurant that serves meat. Unprimed for my question, my neighbor fell silent, perhaps dumbfounded. Without answering, he indecorously walked away. In hindsight, I realized that his offer was a gesture of camaraderie beyond being merely good neighbors. And I muffed it. No “No, thank you” from me. Not even the subtle sarcasm of the colloquial “Thanks, but no thanks.” Was my lack of decorum the thoughtless and reflexive response of a self-righteous animal-rightist? Did my reply stir in him a bitter memory of an incident with some cantankerous vegan more strident than even I? Did that incident irritate or embarrass him? Did I irritate or embarrass him? Should I care? If our bodies are our temples, should I mind my manners but not my manors? In our society of the flock and the herd, eating a vegan diet is branded as extremist, while patronizing farm animal abuse is accepted as the norm. Everywhere I look, ads and logos promoting meat eating assault my senses. Throughout this narcoleptic nation, every food store and nearly every restaurant reinforces the very idea of meat. Every day we get shoved down our throats a barrage of food porn. Burger King and Dairy Queen. KFC and BLT. Franks and beans. Burgers and fries. Spaghetti and meatballs. Bacon and eggs. Stuffed cabbage and turkey stuffing. Thanksgivings for which turkeys have no reason to give thanks. A porterhouse from the slaughterhouse. Caviar without caveat. Eat, eat, eat. Buy, buy, buy. Kill, kill, kill. I close my eyes. In the school or workplace cafeteria, the odors of crematoria fill the lunchtime air. The smoke wafting
from my neighbors’ barbecues offends my olfactory nerves. My response is visceral, not rational. Aromas that make meat eaters’ mouths water instead make my stomach churn. When I shop in supermarkets, which is seldom, I avoid like the plague the mass graves of the meat departments. Same for the cadaver freezer in the health food store. Upon reflection, I owe no apology to my neighbor for my curt reply. He is a highly educated professional. The industrialized atrocities of the factory farm and the disassembly line of the slaughterhouse are no longer secrets hidden from the public, and no longer from him. What’s his shaky excuse for eating meat? Apathy? Maybe. Apoplexy? Surely. Nutrition? Flimsy. Hunger? That’s more honestly. Habit? Of course. Ignorance? No longer. Why not eat just that round and perfect head of cabbage the way nature intended, without the accoutrement of meat? Maybe, just maybe, my neighbor’s wife had an overriding reason for stuffing that cabbage with meat, and her husband a valid reason for eating it. If so, I can learn it only from them. Maybe later this summer, if he ambles over to my yard to present to me some vine-ripened tomatoes from his garden, I will ask him. Unless I amble over to his yard first, to offer him from my garden a head of unstuffed cabbage.
Mark Mathew Braunstein, a vegan since 1970, is the author of five books, including Radical Vegetarianism (1981, Lantern Books revised edition 2010), and a contributor to many holistic health magazines, including six times previously to Spirit of Change. For a free PDF of Radical Vegetarianism, contact the author at: www.MarkBraunstein.Org
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FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 25
Multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora)
A
Language
FOR GRIEF
Encounters with life and death as a deep ecology artist-in-residence at United Plant Savers
I
Photos and text by Colleen Leonardi
t’s a green day in early June with blue sky above and 379 acres of botanical sanctuary below. These Appalachian foothills at United Plant Savers (UpS) in Rutland, Ohio rise and drop with enough horizons to watch storm and sun coexist. The fortitude that brings me here is some brand of the divine comingling with animal desire, driving me to commune with a pulse stronger than my own — the land a body to be with. My intellect wants to understand the language of plants in order to speak something other than sorrow. My heart wants to find my father. He slipped out of his body when his heart failed one May morning three weeks ago, and now I wander through my life fatherless. In the spring of my first year on Earth my father would take me outside. On the forested hill that was our home, he would settle me in the Vermont clover and let me nibble on the weeds. Any instincts I have for the wild come from him. UpS is a sanctuary for the wild. As a deep ecology artist-in-residence, I’ve come here to ask the land permission to work with me. Hard to believe that what is most essential and vital about the planet needs a sanctuary. Yet to walk the land here is to feel what makes nature more than a place. It possesses a beingness, and I have come here to be. Grief breaks you open to the terror of loss and the beauty of love. I have come to crawl on my hands and knees in the clover, swim naked in Heart Pond, whisper and cry to the moon at night, and listen to the plants speak their language. I want to become creature to feel past my grief and find friends who will not judge me for how deep my emotions run. Surely here in the forest where living and dying are perpetual, what is verdant will offer some poetry to uplift my loss. Surely, the wild at UpS can cool this madness, I think, as I walk the meadow. I can name this plant, blue false indigo (Baptisia australis), I think, as a bumblebee circles the flowers, entering and exiting the violet canals up and down the stalk. I cannot name this one, daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus), a small, plentiful, and hairy flower with light pink petals radiating from a sunny center. Here is multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora), I marvel, as sunlight washes over the white body of one rose, the sight holding me still, long enough to then notice the redbud (Cercis canadensis), which blossomed magenta on my first visit, before
26 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
my father’s death. Now its apple green leaves are spongy with life, the magenta gone. I weep into the meadow. Will this land receive my tears? Will they help more flowers grow? I see the shape of a heart in each leaf of the redbud. Hiking deeper along the ridgeline to the wildflower hill, I look out over the meadow. Dusk settles around us. A big bush of wild olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia) rises up along the path. I turn past it to head to Heart Pond, and a warning shoots through its leaves. As prehistoric as the bush is big, I slowly back away from the animal cry and take the same path down the ridge to the yurt. A wild sound I cannot identify, a small terror now lodged alongside my grief, yet curious, as perhaps there is a creature on the land with me that is more frightening than the pain I bear within. Perhaps on this milky, stormy night we will meet at midnight, and it will be the bigger shadow to my grief. Perhaps I will let it eat me. A mist envelops me. Up the bend in the hill that leads to the yurt, the black night thickens. I say a little prayer for light. . Looking up at the ceiling of the yurt from my bed below is dizzying, a basket-like weave in the way the beams join together at the central axis of a skylight. The circular structure makes me feel like I’m inside a drum, but when the wind blows at night with all the windows open and rain falling, the drum is at sea. It’s morning. Today, I’ll walk the Medicine Trail. The power has returned after a sudden outage last night, and so did a wolf spider (Lycosa), her eyes glinting above me as she hides in the elbow of a beam. I let her be for a while, flashing my high-beam headlamp her way. “Sovereignty,” my dad would say in his all-knowing way. “Do you know what that means?” I would say, “No,” and roll my eyes. “Every being is sovereign. And my sovereignty depends on your sovereignty. You take away my sovereignty by trying to control me, and you’re taking away yours.” I would agree, a teenager not yet understanding what I was agreeing to. Yet now, with both the wolf spider and my father above, I am beginning to understand. If I destroy her, then I breach the contract that makes us both us, and perhaps some nimble, spinning, fertile aspect in me, too. If I take her, then I trespass against not just her but the law of sovereignty, a natural law like gravity designed to preserve the wholeness of each and every being, element, and place on the planet. If I kill her, I create a tear in the fabric of this forest, a wound in what, for now, is my home. If I invite her to leave, I maintain the law of sovereignty. So I do, if nothing less than as an offering to my father that Butterfly weed I am trying to understand. As big as my hand, (Asclepias tuberosa) she hops like a toad when nudged out of the yurt. The Medicine Trail is a 5-mile wooded hike through protected, hardwood, Southeast Ohio forest, the lip of Appalachia. It’s home to goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius), black cohosh (Actaea racemosa), blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides), and over 500 native plants of the region. Before European settlers claimed the land, what the Western world now calls the Native American Hopewell culture lived here. From 100 BCE to 500 CE, these First Nations people created a home in union with the forest. Today, trees fallen stay, plants propagate on their clock, and insects and animals habituate and rest as instinct dictates. The forest is wild, the way a forest should be, and one of the few botanical sanctuaries of its kind in the U.S. Walking the narrow path, web after web breaks over my face, a sign the trail hasn’t seen anything the height of humans in a while. UpS narrates some of the plant life for you, so I stop at a small tree to read a laminated information sheet tucked in a wire basket. The name: black haw (Viburnum prunifolium). It is a twiggy, unassuming tree with finely toothed leaves. The base twists up into three branches that diverge towards the taller trees in the canopy. In herbal medicine, plants carry signatures, meaning the way the plant looks, how it is designed, is an indication of its medicine. Yarrow flower (Achillea millefolium), for instance, a multi-faceted floret with tiny buds woven close together, mimics the medicine it provides of knitting wounds back together. Named after the Homeric hero, Achilles, who healed soldiers with it, yarrow is purported to both cleanse and close wounds and stop hemorrhages. Native Americans used yarrow for spider bites. “Historians estimate that 46 different tribes used yarrow for as many as 28 disorders,” writes Porter Shimer in Healing Secrets of the Native Americans. A language to plant medicine, then, is how it is designed to reveal all it knows. www.spiritofchange.org
Continued on page 28
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FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 27
A LANGUAGE FOR GRIEF continued from page 27 Standing before the black haw, I wonder what of its signature speaks to me. I learn that the tree bark was used to prevent miscarriages in early folk and European medicine. “A cousin of cramp bark (Viburnum opulus), but possesses more depth,” writes herbalist Matthew Wood in The Earthwise Herbal. Then the passage parts into how the bark was used by slave owners in America for female slaves who attempted abortions with cotton root bark (Gossypium herbaceum) while under ownership. Black haw is said to soothe uterine cramping. Slave masters had a vested interest in procreating, refusing to let mothers take their unborn slaves from them,
Redbud (Cercis canadensis)
GLOSSARY OF GRIEF MEDICINE (in order of appearance)
BLUE FALSE INDIGO: The violet one that reminds me of my father’s favorite color, purple BUMBLEBEE: The yellow and black one who lives in the flowers and puts the honey in my heart DAISY FLEABANE: The littlest ones who show me how to be joyful WILD ROSE: The white-bodied ones, offering sweetness for my song REDBUD: The first-flashes-of-color-in-spring tree, who marks the forest with tiny flames the color of fuchsia to bring back the blood in our veins WILD OLIVE: Where the doe hides, where raindrops bead on leaves, where I get lost WOLF SPIDER: The nimble, glinting, fertile one who both terrifies me and teaches me how to spin and hide BLACK HAW: The medicine tree, who lives in myth by both water and land, and tells me to story her RED CLOVER: The fullest blossoms in spring who feed the bees and tickle my toes when I walk the meadow VETCH: The common ones the shade of the inside of a shell who fill the meadow with bee and butterfly food BUTTERFLY WEED: The bright-eyed ones who warm to an orange midday and turn what is vital in them into food for the bees and butterflies. FAWN: The baby who leaps quicker than the wind when found yet knows how to play dead DOE: The mother who knows how to nest and hunt, who eats the forest to feed the fawn MILKWEED: The ones who turn from green to pink orbs in one season and then stiffen into seed pods the size of little boats for the fluff that becomes more milkweed BUTTERFLY: The flying one, the one who teaches me how to fly
28 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
often violating and raping them to produce more offspring. An 1886 report in the British Medical Journal by John Henry Wilson states, “On some of the plantations in America, it is the popular belief a woman cannot abort if she be under the influence of black haw, although she may be taking medicine with a criminal intent.” Chills run through me the way ants run up and down the black haw. The history of slavery mixed with the medicine of this plant is overwhelming. A breeze kicks through the forest. The black haw’s leaves flutter. My imagination opens. I feel the indescribable wailing of women, strong and vital, giving birth to babies they know will become slaves, women tortured by their wombs as workstation. I hear the cold hack of axe meeting bark as slave owners take medicine from a tree. Medicine doled out and given not as an option but as a prescription. My own memories of suffering through an abortion bleed through me still. My father was the only one I told about it, a refusal on my part to invite women family members into the crisis so as not to face the motherly state I was forsaking. Now instead of carrying a child I carry grief. “Black haw is an opening medicine,” writes herbalist Erika Galentin, “indicated for those who tend to face the world with clenched fists.” The signature of its slim, leafy stature offers lightness to open the blood vessels, releasing its patient from resistance. And it is true. I am a fist of grief, shaking the universe down from its mountaintop for taking my father from me too soon. Our love wasn’t perfect. His Sicilian melancholy, dramatic lectures, and addiction to motorcycles and the lifestyle they engendered drove me crazy some days. Still, 64 and gone, and now I stand a woman alone. My black haw medicine, however, is not for my body, not now. Can a tree be a victim, too, I think, like I was? Can extraction be forgiven? Can signature be spiritual? Black haw tells me to story her, to story us. I walk the wildflower hill again, the one where the prehistoric sound lives. It is dusk. Tiny pom-poms of red clover (Trifolium pratense) bounce in the remains of a breeze. Vetch (Vicia spp.) leans, full of bumblebees. Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) ablaze in the dying light attracts butterflies and moths. The space in my broken heart makes me buoyant, enchanted by the Medicine Trail, the black haw. And then I see her, a fawn (Odocoileus virginianus) curled into a circle of stones, camouflaged against the mossy rocks and so still my animal instinct senses death. Yet her ears are pricked and the longer I look at her the more she moves, her belly breath a scant billow among the tall grass. Witnessing what is wild turns one invisible, as if your body must become tree to gain passage to the realm where sleeping fawns lie. Yet a friend once told me deer know when they are being watched. Stand and stare at one, and you will see. Still, I want to know the fawn’s mother is near, so I stare and stare and the fawn stares back at me with never a blink. Then I hear the doe, not the gentle crush of hoof meeting mud, but that prehistoric, wild olive cry, a warning to stay away from her child. And so I leave. Birdsong marks the morning. Another wolf spider has come into the yurt. This one is smaller and faster, I suspect a child of the mother spider I encountered yesterday. I spend my morning chasing it back into the woods, all my time with the forest floor beginning to wear on my psyche. I crave light, open spaces, sunshine, so I take myself to Heart Pond. Despite my walking stick, my body still trembles like a tear dropping, upright only by virtue of
its fall from the great eye of some bird or ancestor weeping above me. Perhaps I am my father’s tears. Heart Pond bears traces of some form of algae on the surface, so I forego swimming and sit on the wooden raft tied to the shoreline. Before leaving, I massaged rose and jojoba oil over my heart, a ritual for what is broken to slowly bring back some original sweetness. Its fragrance fills the air around me. Fish pop in the pond. A single dragonfly darts out past the marshy edge close to me, then back into the trees. He continues like this, back and forth, as if he is trying to tell me some secret, and I refuse to listen. Then a butterfly dances into view and lands on my hand. When I walked up to Heart Pond several were flitting around the milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). Surely this little friend is just passing through, I think, but it continues to stay with me. What begins as a few tickles becomes hundreds of kisses. The butterfly taps, licks, and senses my right hand with its antenna over and over again in minuscule steps so that its butterfly breath somehow blesses every skin cell. Its touch is gentle, vital, and the more it kisses me the more the kisses become electric. A single caress soon elicits a rain of vibration up my right hand, past my shoulder, and straight to my heart. Palm, fingers, wrist, knuckle, this butterfly has fallen in love with my hand, or perhaps the rose oil, but no matter because a smile the size of Heart Pond moves into me, and then tears fall, into my hands, my walking stick, the splintery wood on which I sit. The butterfly does not leave me. It stays. No doe to keep me away, the pond quiet with no wind to move its current, we stay for nearly an hour in an embrace I can only name as kinship. I cry and call his name, Poppy. Poppy, I miss you. And then my childish heart, the one who knows the taste of Vermont clover, who feels her father as the fawn feels the doe, knows without a doubt the butterfly is Poppy. The creature is a spiritual signature for the story my father knows I have yet to write, the sovereignty I have yet to embody, the languages I have yet to learn, the mother I have yet to become. There are plants we cannot name, only learn to love. “Sovereignty,” he would say. “I cannot teach it to you, my dear daughter. You must go out and claim it for yourself.” References Cook, W. (1869). Viburnum prunifolium, Black haw, Sloe. Henriettes Herbs. https://www.henriettes-herb.com/eclectic/cook/ VIBURNUM_PRUNIFOLIUM.htm Dawson, Adele. (1991). Herbs: Partners in Life. Rochester, Vermont. Healing Arts Press. Email from Erika Galentin, MNIMH, RH (AHG) Shimer, P (1999). Healing Secrets of the Native Americans. NY, NY. Ten Press Wood, M. (2009) The Earthwise Herbal. Berkeley, California. North Atlantic Books Wilson, JH. (1886). Viburnum prunifolium, or Black Haw, in Abortion and Miscarriage. The British Medical Journal. US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2256801/
Thank you to Evan Schlarb, Michelle Ajamian, and Brandon Jaeger for guiding and protecting me during my stay at UpS.
Colleen Leonardi is a writer, editor, and teacher. She is currently an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. This article originally appeared in Journal of Medicinal Plant Conservation, Spring 2020. www.unitedplantsavers.org
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FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 29
Don’t Be Afraid to Die
An Unexpected Discovery While Investigating the Afterlife
E
ver since I can remember, I’ve had a fascination with death. When my wife, Melissa, and I began dating, she gave me a book titled Don’t Be Afraid to Die. That is especially weird because she was 11 years old and I was 14. But even at that age, I knew there was something to learn from this subject that nobody wanted to discuss. Heck, when I was 10 years old and my grandfather passed, nobody even told me right away. I just happened to notice his room was empty for a week, given that he was living with us at the time. Not until I asked where he was did anyone tell me what had happened. When I was 34 years old, my father died. It was 1997, and for the first time in my life, I wondered if there was life after death. Where did Dad go, if anywhere? I was a private investigator at the time, and Melissa suggested I use my skills as a private eye to investigate the afterlife. It was at this time that I realized that my fascination wasn’t with death; I was fascinated with beyond death. I just never had enough experience with death to make that connection. My investigation of the afterlife led me to have extraordinary experiences. I’ve experienced spirit communication with mediums, past-life regressions, between-life 30 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
Photo: Melissa Olson
By Bob Olson
regressions, after-death communications, spirit communication using hypnosis, as well as interviews with people who’ve had near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, deathbed visions, dream visitations, and so much more. I’ve now investigated life after death for over 20 years. During those two decades, I have often heard the comment that I should focus more on life than I do death. What many people don’t understand is that my investigation of what happens when we die has taught me as much about life as it has the afterlife. I can honestly say that my experiences researching this field have made me a better human being. I’m more loving and more compassionate, and I feel a greater sense of inner peace and purpose than I ever did when I never gave the afterlife a second thought. And I attribute this transformation to the knowing I gained about life and death from my research. This knowing did not occur as one event. It came as a process. More importantly, it was a subtle process that enveloped me gradually as a result of my experiences. Said another way, what I learned about life during my investigation of the afterlife was less intellectual and more experiential. Rather than memorize information, I instead
became aware of an internal wisdom that I never before knew existed. I didn’t notice it right away. I first recognized this wisdom in my behavior. I was responding to life in a new way. I was making choices differently than I once did. Without planning it or expecting it, my spiritual experiences stemming from my research of life after death had changed me. And before I knew it, I discovered that my work inadvertently had taught me how to live a fuller life with greater love, joy, and inner peace regardless of whatever drama or chaos might be happening around me. I’m not sure at what point it happened, but when I came to know that the purpose of life is to have experiences — which can include negative experiences — and I shifted my paradigm of God from entity to energy, I stopped looking at my challenges in life as signs that I was unlucky or was being ignored or punished by God for some reason. Now I saw myself as a spiritual being on a human adventure where everything has purpose, even when bad things happen, because every moment is an experience. I’ll never forget one story told by a near-death experiencer, which is the perfect example for understanding how our souls think about human suffering. Her near-death experience had pretty much ended, and she was waking up after a terrible accident. She was in a dreamlike state of mind — half in the spirit world and half in the physical world — when she realized that she might be blind in one eye due to her injuries. Because she was still straddling the ethereal veil, this woman recognized that her soul was quite excited by this possibility of being blind in one eye because her soul had never had that experience before. Her soul wasn’t concerned, fearful, disappointed or frightened. It was enthusiastic about this possible new experience that it had not yet known in any other lifetime. Before I began investigating the afterlife, I might have thought that this idea of our souls being excited about an experience that could involve suffering was appalling. Because I believed that life was meant to be only light, laughter, and lollipops, I would not have been able to wrap my mind around this concept that life is about experiences. But now that my research has taught me otherwise, I am free from the suffering that comes from interpreting challenging experiences as punishment, bad luck, or being ignored by God. And while this change in perspective will not eliminate all suffering, it certainly reduces the mental and emotional anguish that comes from these beliefs. My investigation of life after death has taught me that experience is what happens to us, and it is our free will that gives us the choice of how to respond to what happens to us. Take any experience that most people would consider negative, and I can find you one person who reacts to that experience as a victim and one person who reacts to that experience by making the best of it. The first person will experience more misery than the second, and all due to a single paradigm shift. Because of my fascination with death and what follows it, I now understand why Source and our souls allow such tragic events to happen. And I also understand the spiritual depth of these people who keep smiling in spite of their suffering. They inspire us, of course, but even more, they exemplify the power of our spirit. These people respond to life with love, which is all that our souls know in the spirit world. And they remind us through their freewill choices that we can be joyful and loving in the face of challenges, too. I don’t know how I would respond to every tragic possibility in life, but I know that my investigation of the afterlife has given me a greater chance for making the best of what happens rather than falling into victimhood. Even in my daily life, I live with less fear and greater inner peace when faced with challenges. My understanding of why bad things are allowed to happen to innocent people — children included — helps me to focus my compassion on their suffering rather than get paralyzed by blame, fear and judgment. And so I believe that learning about life after death does teach us about life, which is why I encourage everyone to investigate the afterlife on his or her own. Without a doubt, learning about the afterlife comforts our grief after loss. But I never would have guessed that it could also teach us to be kinder, more compassionate and loving human beings as well. As to my unexpected discovery that life is about having experiences, both positive and negative, well that’s just an added bonus — a bonus that can change your life for the better. Bob Olson is the author of Answers about the Afterlife: A Private Investigator's 15Year Research Unlocks the Mysteries of Life after Death and The Magic Mala: A Story That Changes Lives. He’s also the host of Afterlife TV and founder of BestPsychicDirectory.com. You can read more at www.BobOlson.com. www.spiritofchange.org
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Cellophane Hearts
ABI
A book excerpt from
Tell A New Story
20
04
By Carrie Rowan
SI N
CE
The day I decided to question my own beliefs about my story is the day that I set myself free.
O
ne of the things that helps me to approach life and all relationships in my life from a positive mindset is a little acronym I picked up from a parenting class I took while back: ABI stands for Assume Best Intentions, and it really stuck with me. When you assume the best of others instead of the worst, it allows you to be more empathetic towards them. Practicing compassion and giving it more freely to others makes it easier to give it to ourselves. When we assume that someone acted out of best intentions, our minds stay open to possibilities instead of fixating on stories about what someone did wrong — stories that we may have unwittingly made up anyhow. When we don’t have all of the answers about something that stresses us out, our mind very craftily makes up a story about what might have happened to fill in the blanks. The problem is that it usually fills it in with something worse than what really happened. We can see the mind doing its job to protect us from the worst case scenario; however, this hardly helps us get what we want. Instead of enhancing our relationships, it impedes our desire for connection and trust with others. When we assume the person we are in relationship with has negative intentions, we automatically tune them out and start to break down the relationship. There is a tendency to start to judge and blame them based on the story we are telling ourselves. On a side note, assuming best intentions is different than accepting bad behavior. Setting definitive boundaries is always part of any healthy relationship. Nonetheless, when we constantly question the intentions of others, we put our relationships at stake. Assuming best intentions puts you in a mindset that will bring out the best in all your relationships and help you cultivate an environment of trust, understanding, and compassion, which is all we really want anyhow. Let’s apply this to our stories. When we assume that our own intentions are pure, we can look at our stories with compassion. We can be the witness and get curious to find out why we were telling a certain story in the first place. Take a look at one of your stories, one that you’ve determined makes you feel like a victim or just makes you feel negative after you tell it. One of the stories that I used to tell myself is that I was a fool for leaving my successful corporate career to become a musician. I was only three years into my music career when we started a family. Suddenly, I was juggling children with the seemingly impossible task of becoming “something” in the music business. But what did that mean anyhow? At points, I felt I was so deep into my music career and had invested so much time and money that I couldn’t leave. I would blame myself for trying to follow a dream that was obviously impossible. Everyone told me how hard the music business was and that you couldn’t make any money in it. We were in the middle of raising a family and I had these beautiful children who needed my attention, yet I still quietly beat myself up for
32 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
feeling stuck and unsuccessful because that was the sucky story I told myself. Now, this story didn’t look true to most people who knew me. I had a husband who loved me, two beautiful children, a nice home, and a good life. Inside, though, it was very real. You can see that this was less than productive or inspiring. Sometimes I got so down about it that I wondered if I should just hang up my guitar and quit. Then along came all the crazy tragedies: when I was pregnant with my second child my older sister died, and eighteen months later, my dad died suddenly and so tragically. It was then that I really turned to the music. It became so cathartic to write in my journals, and these entries turned into my songs, which turned into my first full length album. It wasn’t about being “successful,” because what did that mean anyhow? I still remember my husband sitting me down when we first decided that I would take this challenge on. He said to me: “Honey, you need to define your own level of success. Don’t let anyone else tell you what that means. Define it and don’t forget what it means to you.” Those words still ring in my head on days when I forget. I’m not sure I would have gotten through that messy era of my life without being able to pour myself into my music and create something that didn’t exist the day before. I took a blank page and made it into a rhyme, which turned into a song, which morphed into a tapestry of songs that would be an offering of hope to others who needed it. I used to tell people that my Almost Home CD felt like it was a piece of my heart all wrapped up in cellophane, waiting to touch the lives of whoever needed to hear it. It was then that I realized that creating music saved me — that I had been brave and successful just because I was doing what scared me and moved me the most. Getting past my fear of being a flop, and realizing that I had been successful because my definition included making a difference in other people’s lives, was a turning point for me. I had been telling myself the story that I was a fool because I was scared to really step out into the unknown; I didn’t know where it would take me. I realized that my intention with the CD and my true intention behind getting into the music business in the first place was really all about self-expression, creation, and inspiration, which are high aspirations for all humans. It was about returning to the roots of who I used to be as a child before society wrung it out of me. I forgave myself for saying I was a failure just because I didn’t recreate my corporate salary with the music business. I redefined my level of success and realized that making an impact on other people and sharing my insights and gifts with the world was far more fulfilling than the next promotion or President’s Club. I told the story that I was helping other people get through their experiences using music as my message, and isn’t that the purpose of music in the first place? If I can touch or change just one life for the listening, then my job is complete. I also had two little girls who were watching me intently. They were learning just by seeing what Mommy did day in and day out. Through the years, they observed me lugging my sticker-adorned guitar case in and out of the house to teach music classes to little ones. I started when my second-born was in preschool, and it was one of the most uplifting jobs I have ever had. I loved going to the school to bring joy to everyone in the room. It didn’t pay me a ton, but I was inspiring little ones to fall in love with music at a very young age, and that was priceless. I realized my work was changing the world one little heart at a time. Soon, I garnered more invitations from schools, and before long I was playing at libraries and bigger festivals with my music partner, Adrienne. We launched a children’s CD Let it Shine and it was welcomed with open arms by young families all over the country. We even received our first award from Creative Child Magazine! Next, it was picked up by Pandora Radio, and it made me feel great to know that we were spreading light all around the world. Do you have a story that is holding you back from following your dream or from living your best life? Do you tell yourself stories in your head that you are too afraid to let anyone else know about? These are signs that your story is sucking the happiness out of your life. Sometimes we don't even realize that these stories are running in the backdrop of our minds, day in and day out. When we spend some quiet time in self-awareness, examining our stories that we tell ourselves and others, we can start to recognize patterns in these stories. When we realize we had the power to change them all along, we can begin to tell a new and empowering story that inspires not only us, but everyone around us. Adapted and reprinted with permission of the author from Tell A New Story by Carrie Rowan. 2020, Peony Publishing. All rights reserved.
Carrie Rowan is an award-winning singer/songwriter, certified coach and founder of the STORY method. Rowan is a teacher and speaker uniquely combining the power of provocative storytelling with live music. She is also the director of advertising for “Spirit of Change Magazine,” a Reiki Master and meditation enthusiast. Rowan spent a decade working for Fortune 500 companies before jumping off the corporate ladder to pursue her creative endeavors and inspire others to follow their passions. CarrieRowan.com www.spiritofchange.org
FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 33
COVID REFLECTIONS
Macrocosmically Thinking By Trish Whynot
H
ow interesting! If you think about it, we were social distancing long before we were told to social distance. Texting had replaced phone calls. Dating apps had replaced serendipitous meetings. Before the shelter-in-place order it was common to see people walking down the street staring at their phones, completely oblivious to their surroundings and the people around them. You'd hear about kids preferring video games to playing outdoors with friends. One of the last times I was at a restaurant, pre-pandemic, there were six young adults at a table. None of them were talking with each other while waiting for their order; they were all on their phones. I’d call these behaviors social distancing. It’s only a big deal right now because we’ve been told to do it this time rather than it being our idea. So now what’s happening as society softly reopens its doors? Everyone either has to or it’s strongly suggested (depending on where you live) to wear a mask. Here again, people have been wearing masks for years. Coping skills are who we become when it doesn’t feel safe to be ourselves. Coping skills are manipulative. They are the masks we have at the ready to keep us safe when we fear being dumped on—rejected, judged, shamed, duped, blamed, condemned, shunned—for who we are. Chameleon, over-achiever, pleaser, perfectionist, strong one, to name a few. You might know what yours are and you might not but everyone has them. You needed them to get through your childhood, they are great for hiding behind, but these masks are destructive to healthy adult relationships. You can continue to figuratively wear one if you want but literally wearing one is showing us how uncomfortable a mask truly is. Metaphorically thinking, the macrocosm is a reflection of the microcosm. Personally I think
34 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
it's fascinating stuff. My heart goes out to those who are ill, those who have lost loved ones and those on the front line. Their plates are full. But as for the majority of us, we get to ponder: is it really about the pandemic? If society was already sick and this pandemic is the physical manifestation of our ill thinking, how could we help? • What might happen if we dropped our proverbial masks, confronted our fears and healed our wounded self-esteem instead? Maybe we'd emerge more grateful. • What if we stopped our proverbial social distancing and began looking people in the eye again—really connecting soul to soul? Maybe there would be less racism. • What if we dedicated more time for doing things we love, expressing ourselves creatively and stepping outside our comfort zones rather than playing it safe and protecting our pride? Maybe we'd resurface happier, humbler, healthier and more whole. A metaphorical perspective is one I can work with, which always makes me feel better. Our unhealthy operating systems were halted by a virus. It felt like we got sent to our rooms to reflect on how we contributed. Now we get to come out and demonstrate what we've learned. What will be a new normal for you worth committing to on a microcosmic level—one that will stretch and grow you in wondrous ways? Picture a world filled with people stretching and growing and expressing themselves in all kinds of beautiful ways. Let’s make it a good kind of contagious! Trish Whynot, D.C.Ed. has been practicing holistic counseling for 21 years. She is the author of “Why Me? Why Now? Why Not? Finding Opportunity in Your Obstacles,” an illustrated guide to living that expects opportunities even during challenging times. Trish utilizes meditation and assistance from the mineral kingdom in her work with clients remotely and in person. Visit her at www.TrishWhynot.com.
On The Fast Track With The Coronavirus Vywamus channeled by Andrea Seiver
A
t this time, many of you have been in the quiet of self-isolation, and most of you are without some of the activities and props that were part of your everyday life up to now. You may have suffered fear and losses, and even faced the possibility of you or a loved one’s falling ill. You may be reaching out to others or caring for them in ways you have not needed to do before. You may be connecting more with nature and your physical environment, and needing to find new ways of working and playing. In the midst of all this disruption, you are more often alone and in stillness. You’ve had the opportunity to stand aside, somewhat, from your previous everyday patterns and reflect on what is really important to you. Set aside some time every day, if you can, to go inward and reflect on what you’re learning right now. What is all this about, for you? You are being guided into seeing a deeper and broader meaning of the world, and a deeper and broader meaning of who you are in it. For some of you, this may even be your next step toward what you call enlightenment or awakening. Take time to look at the larger picture as well. Look at what this current crisis means for everyone on Earth right now. You’re all in the same boat. Many of your customary ways of doing things don’t work anymore. They may not work again. The world as you have known it before is history. You and all other humans living right now are on a fast track to — somewhere! Where? None of us guides can tell you where this fast track is going because the destination has yet to be determined. By all of you. What we can tell you is that what’s happening now, with the advent of the coronavirus, is a major speedup of change. Your old forms of thinking and ways of living are breaking down. They are no longer large enough to fit you. And new forms are emerging. This is happening now. It is happening fast. And not gently or gradually, but roughly and with chaos and losses. It has taken something as extreme as a worldwide virus to break up the gridlock, divisiveness and resistance that have stalemated your evolution in recent years. This virus and its aftermath may be the first real breakthrough that shakes up the old ways of doing things and offers you the opportunity to make other choices. This is a time for you to look for the insights and the new opportunities for change, and how you can use these opportunities to lead you into a better future. And, more than ever in human history, in these times you have the power and the knowhow to create something new. You have a chance to reinvent yourselves and your world. What would you want? You could create new forms: a fairer economy, fairer politics — a society which cares for the welfare of individuals and Earth, which you live on. You could even create a new way of being which gets you out of the trap of the winner-take-all system that has evolved in most societies on Earth today. This is your chance to have a vision for the future and join with others to bring it about. That may take some time and it may not happen all at once. It will probably be step by step. But it can be done. It really is up to you. Some of you are nostalgic for the way it used to be and want to go back to “normal.” That’s understandable. Those of you who feel this way will resist going forward and try your best to go back to the old ways. Though they were never really normal. But it won’t work — or not for long. When a chick grows to a certain size, it cracks the egg and emerges. There’s no going back. You can only let it be — or, you can actually feed the chicken. Eventually, all of you can only go forward. How soon you do that, and with how much or little pain, that is yet to be determined. By you. Confronting and dealing with a worldwide pandemic is one of the first and more dramatic stages of humanity’s letting go of old, broken forms and creating a different and better future for all of you. These are turbulent times. It’s natural to feel stressed and thrown off center by what’s happening around you. Yet, even in the midst of all the current fear and chaos, there are ways to find peace and balance in your day-to-day life, and at the same time, help along the changes that humanity needs. As you read this, the tremendous changes occurring in all of humanity are speeding up exponentially. You are all on the fast track now. But you are not alone. We guides are by your side. We hope you will ride this fast track with us. All this is your destiny, being here at this time and in this place. This is your moment. What will you do?
Gaianic Reiki
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Vywamus is an ascended master and teacher who has a special interest in helping humanity develop its awareness of the high-frequency energies available to us that consciously shape our own evolution. A practicing psychologist for 26 years, Andrea Seiver, PhD, has channeled Vywamus since 1986. www.andreaseiver.com www.spiritofchange.org
FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 35
Catalyst for Change By Alison David Bird
“Come my friend, ‘tis not too late to seek a newer world…we are one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” — Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1833 Consider now, what is it that you seek? Is it the security suggested in the reassurance of sameness? Or does the future you seek offer new horizons of expansive landscapes? Do the mechanisms that drive change hum like the sound of a well-oiled timepiece? Or do they clatter and clang like a rusty cart dragged over cobbled roads? You bemoan and complain about the way things are, so change them! How else do you think change will happen? Do you believe you will wake one morning, and simply have willed the new world into existence? That is not quite how it works. In the physical realm, action imprints intention on the manifestation field. Inaction is the same frequency as inertia; nothing changes! Someone has to get down and dirty and be the instrument of change.
programs, wounds and lower vibrations of both our individual and collective energy. The old shell becomes obvious to us when we are feeling judgmental, critical, worried, angry, possessive, rigid, controlling, fearful…got any of that? That’s our old shell. We can learn to look at it, perhaps with some compassionate horror! The great news is that we, like the cicada, will emerge — and with wings! In fact, that which delights, uplifts, enlightens and makes us feel like we’re soaring is great guidance to follow! That’s the direction we are going. And, like the cicada, it can happen quickly. Both recognition of the old shell, and the fast pace in which we all are waking up, invite us to take good care of ourselves, allowing ahimsa (non-harm) to lead the way through intentions of humility, gentleness and discernment. We can bring this forward into action via our voice and, again, take wisdom from the cicada. Most known for its sound, the cicada sings in various harmonies and rhythms that have fascinated and mesmerized people for ages. Honor rhythms by knowing when to speak and when to stay silent. Let us sing in harmony with those around us, and notice how it is this harmony that is molding, shaping and calling forth the new reality. The cicada borrows a famous quote (attributed to pacifist A.J. Muste) as it offers this wisdom: "There is no way to Harmony. Harmony is the way." Julie Rost is the founder and director of YogaLife Institute of New Hampshire in Exeter, NH, offering private yoga therapy, mentoring and teacher training. www.yogalifenh.com
What makes you unique is your ability to create with your hands as well as with your minds. When used together amazing things can happen. That’s why those of you with the warrior nature volunteered to come here, remember? What is that phrase? “Never argue with a madman or a volunteer!” You came here to be crazy mad at all the dysfunction that you see in the world! You came here to be fired-up by the corruption you witness every day, incensed by the injustice served up in the judgment of others, sickened by the cruelty and unkindness leveled at every living thing, and to be ready to defend the weak, the sick and the vulnerable against the tyranny of the power hungry. Sounds like a superhero, doesn’t it? On paper, there is nothing wrong with your society, or your establishment. Your founding fathers laid the foundations of a strong Federation of United States, as a template for a future state of United Earth! Yes, Earth, not just the USA. A catalyst is needed for the kind of change you seek, as with every period in your history that has ever been the portent of real change in the world. The pandemic timeline is not as catastrophic to the planet, or potentially destructive to infrastructures as other timelines. It is optimal. Stripping this reality back to the bare bones, it gives everyone one last chance to choose either to be in service to others, or to refuse change and remain in service to self. Yes, sudden change can smart like ripping off a Band-Aid. It will sting you to tears without a doubt, but real healing only really begins when the wound is allowed to breathe. Alison David Bird, C.Ht., is the originator of Marconics, an evolutionary energy healing system carrying the ascension frequency of higher dimensions. She is the author of "Marconics: The Clarion Call" and co-author of "Angels of Atlantis" Visit marconics.com.
The Cicada
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By Julie Rost
he cicada shell stopped me in my tracks. This “cause to pause” has become a signal to me that I need to listen. Some wisdom is trying to come in, but I must open my mind, allow quiet, and focus my attention upon studying the energy at hand. The shell made me laugh, in light of one theme of our Yoga Philosophy Course. We are studying how to prepare for a New Reality, which begins with how to shed the old ways,
36 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
Rights of Nature By Thomas Linzy
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etween the forest fires, plagues, and locusts, it’s beginning to look like humanity has finally breached the “seventh seal,” initiating a showdown of biblical proportions. Unlike the holy version, however, this time humankind has only itself to blame. In a statement released in June, leaders at the United Nations, World Health Organization, and World Wildlife Federation International declared that “pandemics such as coronavirus are the result of humanity’s destruction of nature ... the illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade as well as the devastation of forests and other wild places are the driving force behind the increasing number of diseases leaping from wildlife to humans.” Will the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 be the tipping point for humanity – the point at which we realize that our incessant bulldozing of the natural environment must end because we are destroying ourselves along with it? Probably not. If a vaccine comes along, it’s likely that the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic will recede in our memories just like the 1918 Flu Pandemic. The phrase “returning to normal” can already be heard on the lips of governors across the U.S., from Oregon to Florida, and elected leaders in-between. Returning to normal, of course, means returning to an economy fueled by the belief that endless growth is possible, that the planet exists solely to fuel our iPhones, our data centers, our new Space Force, and our seemingly endless fascination with the Kardashians. Taking steps to recognize that nature, and yes, the planet itself, has certain rights; and empowering those who care about nature to step in to legally defend the rights of rivers, oceans, forests, and mountains in front of courts and environmental agencies, would be one big step for nature, one small step for humankind. Beginning in 2006, cities, towns, and counties across the U.S. began passing local laws recognizing the legally-protected rights of ecosystems to “exist, flourish, regenerate, and be restored.” They were driven by specific threats of siting toxic waste dumps, fracking for shale gas, corporate water withdrawals, new high voltage power lines, and aerial pesticide spraying. In 2008, the people of Ecuador created a new precedent, overwhelmingly ratifying a new national constitution recognizing legal rights of nature, or Pachamama. Over the last five years, courts in India, Colombia, and Bangladesh have declared that rivers and other ecosystems have rights, and political parties across the globe – including the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in the United States – have declared their support for rights of nature laws. Tribal nations have also led the way. The White Earth Nation of Ojibwe has adopted a law recognizing the rights of manoomin (wild rice), and the Menominee, Yurok, Nez Perce, and Ponca Nations have adopted laws and resolutions recognizing the rights of rivers and other Continued on page 38
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FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 37
Rights of Nature
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Continued from page 36
ecosystems. As they have expressed, this represents both an issue of sovereignty, as well as an alignment of tribal laws with long-held indigenous respect for nature. In the end, this is the beginning of a long journey to rediscover our place on this planet. As Derrick Jensen, an environ-
mental author, writes, “If we wish to stop the atrocities, we need merely to step away from our isolation. There is a whole world waiting for us, ready to welcome us home.” Thomas Linzey is a Senior Legal Counsel at the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER). centerforenvironmentalrights.org
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Downtown Ghost Towns By L.W. Oakley
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And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822
he downtown cores in many big cities are poised to vanish or become shadowy ghost towns of the past because of the global pandemic, worldwide recession, and the end of the office era. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people travelled like herds of cows, flocks of birds and schools of fish to and from work in the crowded core of big cities. But they didn’t walk, or fly or swim to get there. They came and went in subway cars, railway trains, express buses, street cars, ferry boats, water taxis, air planes, and of course, automobiles. And if they didn’t bring their germs with them, something worse happened; they brought them home at night. Think of the risk of infection from one typical journey from home to work in downtown Toronto, similar to my daily routine years ago when I worked for Alcan Canada in a glass office on the 30th floor for of the Royal Trust tower at King and Bay at the very heart of Toronto. With a laptop over one shoulder and gym bag over the other, you leave your high-rise apartment or high-priced condominium and take an elevator that stops on almost every floor on the way down to the front door. From there you walk to a crowded bus that takes you to the subway, where you take an escalator underground. If you missed your subway train or couldn’t get on because it was too full, you didn’t worry, because you knew another one would be along in a few minutes. After leaving the subway you walk underground past coffee shops and shoe stores to the elevator in the air-conditioned skyscraper that you work inside of, and never leave all day, except to take the elevator back underground to the crowded food court, where you eat a green salad from a Styrofoam container with a plastic fork. The trip home at night is the same as it was in the morning, but in reverse, except for a one-hour stop at the gym, where you spend your free time running in the rat race on a treadmill, while plugged into an iPhone listening to musical escape songs with lyrics by The Boss like this: Oh, baby, this town rips the bones from your back It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap We gotta get out while we're young 'Cause tramps like us Baby, we were born to run
38 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
Because of the pandemic most of the office workers now work from home. The workforce has shifted from downtown work pens to suburban bedrooms and basements. Information technology allows workers to connect, communicate and be productive by e-mail and Zoom calls. They don’t have to run the gauntlet for an hour each way between home and work while exposing themselves to an invisible virus on buses and streetcars that are standing room only. Like social distancing, working at home may be the new normal when the pandemic ends. Employees can stay safe and save time and money by remaining at home. They may not want to return to overcrowded downtown COVID-19 epicenters where they once worked. Employers may not want them to, especially if it means they don’t need to rent office space, hire cleaning staff and pay insurance premiums. Of course, some big companies may not survive and recover from the economic decimation caused by COVID-19. Big league sports franchises like the Toronto Raptors, Maple Leafs and Blue Jays are also located downtown. They probably will lose millions of dollars due to the impact of social distancing requirements on their large venues with tens of thousands of seats. Other downtown Toronto tourist attractions like Ripley’s Aquarium, the Hockey Hall of Fame, Roy Thomson Hall and the entire theatre district including shops, bars, hotels and restaurants will incur large decreases in revenues and staff from which they may never recover. What will happen to all those multi-million dollar skyscrapers and big expensive buildings if they become unsustainable and obsolete? Herds of cows can’t graze inside their uninhabited office stalls, flocks of birds can’t nest in their deserted hallways, and schools of fish can’t swim in their empty underground malls and parking lots. No one wants to buy an unkept fifty-story eye sore. No one wants to see an empty old dinosaur that was once a baseball stadium with a retractable roof that was closed to block the sun and stop the rain. No one wants to be reminded that we once built big ivory towers with gold-plated windows over green fields. There’s only one thing left to do. Knock them down and take them away. Maybe the herds of cows and flocks of birds and schools of fish will return to graze and nest and spawn in a place once considered a center of civilization.
L.W. Oakley is a retired accountant living in Kingston, Ontario. He is the author of Inside The Wild, and was born and raised in the east end of Toronto.
A Verse
For Our Time We must eradicate from the soul All fear and terror of what comes towards man out of the future. We must acquire serenity In all feelings and sensations about the future. We must look forward with absolute equanimity To everything that may come. And we must think only that whatever comes Is given to us by a world-directive full of wisdom. It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely, to live out of pure trust, Without any security in existence.
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Trust in the ever present help Of the spiritual world. Truly, nothing else will do If our courage is not to fail us. And let us seek the awakening from within ourselves Every morning and every evening.
— Rudolf Steiner
www.spiritofchange.org
FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 39
Astonishing
REMOTE HEALING Success
EMINUS MIRUS founder ETHAN BORG discusses how treatment at a distance works Interview by Carol Bedrosian
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s I limped through the halls of the Massachusetts State House one day back in March 2019, lobbying support for our safe harbor health freedom bill, I stopped to rest on an antique wooden bench with my colleague. “It’s plantar fasciitis and posterior tibial tendonitis that keeps flaring up,” I explained, pointing to my left foot. “I think I can help you with those,” she said. “Most likely it’s a pathogen.” The old, invisible pathogen, eh, I thought quietly to myself. She described a form of remote energy healing she worked with that could be effective in reducing or eliminating any number of conditions, symptoms and pains, such as the hypothyroidism for
40 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
which she was treated and no longer required medication. Yet she wasn’t even going to touch or examine my feet. How effective was that going to be against a long-standing condition, when I’d already tried years of various therapies? My relief was never more than temporary. Nevertheless, once I returned home I looked up the website she recommended, www.eminusmirus.com, and signed up for Level 1, which was free, and effortlessly gave myself my first Eminus Mirus treatment. Right away, the self-help element flashed at me like a neon sign of something that could be very valuable in my quest to heal my own body. I decided to give EM (pronounced like the letter M) a try. I
You can't change fate, but you can inter vene. When people finally come to me, they usually are coming to me because that's the end of their need to suffer in that way. – Ethan Borg emailed my colleague a description of my symptoms along with permission to treat, and sent the payment. Then I waited for the results. I desperately wanted the treatment to work because I was living with constant ripping pain in my left instep, but I was skeptical. Healing is not magic; it touches on flesh, blood, bone and pain. How could this invisible, remote treatment possibly fix my feet, my tendons, and my planter fascia, inflamed and causing me so much pain? I was about to find out. Much to my surprise, in less than a week, I noticed intermittent times of complete pain relief in my feet, and within several months I found myself walking pain-free all day for the first time in seven years. I needed to know more, so I advanced to EM Level 2 training. I learned that Eminus Mirus is an energy healing system created by Rochester, New York-based acupuncturist Ethan Borg, whose deep passion for studying Chinese classical medicine led him to an astonishing discovery about Universal Qi. Like the concept of life force energy within Reiki, Universal Qi is the database of all information about all energy at any given moment in time. Ethan, a former computer programmer, discovered that this infinite Universal Qi database was accessible and programmable, and that he could create for his patients within Universal Qi, energetic healing tools to balance the Five Elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water — upon which all healing within classical Chinese medicine is based. The result was the development of over a thousand precise, replicable treatments for an untold number of health conditions, with new treatments continually being created. To use the tools, an EM practitioner simply asks Universal Qi to deliver a specific treatment/s, and Universal Qi responds, much like filling a prescription. Only this pharmacist, with the infinite wisdom of all past, present, and future energetic effects on your body, will never dispense any remedy with negative side effects; it only dispenses what you specifically request that is in your highest good. But first you must know what to request, and then formally request it. This ask-and-you-shall-receive dynamic suggests that we exist within some larger harmony or matrix intentionally designed to support our well-being and health, but that our engagement is entirely voluntary. According to Ethan, most disease is infectious in nature, so EM treatment protocols include symptomatic relief, as well as identifying and eliminating specific pathogens associated with Rickettsia, Staphylococcus, etc., — there are hundreds — that correlate with a condition. It’s actually the toxins these pathogens produce that are responsible for the symptoms we feel. EM treatments target these pathogens, as well as their toxins, treat the symptoms, and the remarkable result is healing — either from a distance or delivered to yourself. It is likely you will not feel anything at all during treatment. Some treatments act quickly, while others are delivered as a series over time. After my Level 2 training, I used the EM Bone Spur Treatment to dissolve a painful bone spur I’d had on my right palm for ten years. It took less than a day. I now have a tool to reliably quell hot flashes on demand with the EM Balance Yin and Yang Treatment applied to my Gland Array. Over time, I learned I could use the EM Arthritis Treatment to eliminate sharp joint pain in both thumbs by also requesting treatments www.spiritofchange.org
to clear hydrochloric acid and heal fissures in those tissues. But some of the treatments I delivered to myself or others were ineffective, or provided only temporary relief. With 15 books and over 50 hours of video, learning how to use the EM treatment tools successfully is a little bit like learning how to cook in a foreign language. You can begin it, you have some intuitive sense of how it works, but you must study and practice a great deal to become skilled in requesting advanced treatments from Universal Qi. While you will be rewarded with many healing results using EM, not all your treatment requests will be precisely aimed. The greatest success comes with access to the more comprehensive tools and treatments only available with attunements to Levels 3 and 4. In addition, sometimes treatments will not work because they cannot be delivered to that person at that time. “You cannot change a person’s fate,” Ethan notes, “…only if it’s the end of their need to suffer in that way.” There are certainly plenty of us walking around with suffering we’re ready to let go of, but EM is so radically outside-the-box, it just seems too good to be true. Yet that’s precisely what we need — a completely new way of thinking about healthcare that embodies potentials we are just beginning to explore. Why not consider the possibility that healing does not have to hurt, and can be accomplished without touching the body, accessible anywhere, to anyone, at a fraction of current healthcare costs? Who hasn’t imagined miraculous healing powers our bodies might possess? We feed ourselves, groom ourselves, procreate and birth ourselves. Why would we not be able to heal ourselves? Now is the time to rewrite our medicine story as humanity begins to define its new post-COVID norms. “Whatever you believe you can do, begin it,” the maxim states. Perhaps it is true that some things have to be believed to be seen, so I decided to ask Ethan to explain how Eminus Mirus remote healing works. In a phone interview conducted during the height of the pandemic lockdown, I found it galvanizing to hear Ethan’s calm, clear and reassuring account of the origins and future of EM. CAROL BEDROSIAN: What led you to work with energy as a form of healthcare? ETHAN BORG: I was a very mainstream kid. I grew up in a family with a physician as a parent, and happened to be quite good at science. I had every expectation that I would go into Western medicine as a career. I was pre-med at college. Unfortunately, right before I went off to college I might have gotten a tick bite camping out one night. I woke up the next day just feeling wrong. Within a short time I was diagnosed with mononucleosis. Epstein Barr virus is one of the co-infectors commonly found with tick bites, but this was before Lyme disease was a very well-known problem. As a consequence, when I went to doctors there was no conversation about that at all. I was put on prednisone as a way to get the energy I needed, which in retrospect, was a terrible idea. But when you're 18 years old and you're about to go off to college, it sounded like a Continued on page 42 FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 41
It's incredibly cool that you could ask Universal Qi to treat energetic wind in the gallbladder meridian and it will do it again and again and again in a standardized way.
Remote Healing
Continued from page 41
great idea. It devastated my immune system. I think I probably had Lyme disease, because the next several years were very bad for my health. Basically I was suffering from chronic fatigue that lasted for seven years of my life. I found myself developing urinary tract symptoms, digestive symptoms, allergies I never had. The list kept building and I kept going to more Western doctors and getting the same diagnosis, which was, “It’s in your head.” I now understand when doctors say that, they have hit the wall of what they understand. But I found myself thinking, “It's not in my head. It's very physical.” So I rejected that, and I realized if the doctors weren't going to help me, I was going to have to solve the problem myself. That began a path of exploring things that were, at first, just slightly off from a Western medicine perspective. I started to look at vitamins and minerals, which back then was voodoo. So I tried things out myself. I would try one vitamin at a time to see if it would give me just a little bit of an edge, more energy. I went through all the vitamins, all the minerals. In the end I had a notch more energy than when I started, so that kept me on the path of exploring new things. My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, encouraged me to try acupuncture. Perhaps like most people, when I first heard about acupuncture and people putting needles in my body, my response was, “No way. There's no chance I’m going to let them do that!” But she wanted to open her windows during spring. For me, spring was a terrible allergy season and I was in great suffering whenever we opened the windows. But she was also in great suffering because she grew up in a rural area where she got to live in nature, and she was feeling very cut off from nature, so she was prodding me to try something new. Ultimately I agreed I would try Chinese medicine. At first, I tried herbal medicines because that was closer to Western medicine, like taking pharmaceutical medicine. But I didn't realize that you have to approach herbs differently from Western medicine. I assumed they would work right away, like Western medicine, but herbal medicine often takes time to build up results, especially when treating allergies, which could take months. In retrospect, I was put on the correct formula for helping with allergies, but back then it didn't work fast enough for me and I gave up on it pretty quickly. Since my wife wanted to open up the windows, I finally said I would try the acupuncture and went to my first appointment. When I left the office, I felt a movement of energy in a clockwise circle around my abdomen. It made no sense from any Western perspective of anatomy and physiology how I could feel something moving in that orientation in that part of my body. This was a great moment of excitement for me — that energy was real, and there was something to this ancient Chinese medicine concept. Within a few sessions, the lactose intolerance that I had developed in college completely went away, as well as all the allergies I had. I stopped carrying my asthma inhaler around. A huge, tremendous shift occurred, but I was still suffering from chronic fatigue that didn't entirely go away. I realized I was still interested in medicine — Chinese medicine. So in 1989, I enrolled at the New England School of Acupuncture and gobbled up everything they could teach me. They have a Japanese track, where you learn Japanese acupuncture in addition to Chinese acupunc42 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
ture, and an herbal track, where you learn Chinese medicine. I chose to do both tracks, so I did thousands of extra hours of education and ended up with a Masters of Acupuncture in Oriental Medicine. But when I was done, I had three years of education, thousands of extra hours, yet I still felt somewhat clueless because there is so much theory, and I knew that I was just at the beginning of understanding it. I applied for and won a fellowship for studying the classics of Chinese medicine. What I was surprised to discover in my year of studying the classics is that the original text, called the Neijing, is all about looking at Chinese medicine as energy medicine. That blew my mind, because if you know anything about history, Chinese medicine was essentially rewritten in the 1950s by Chairman Mao. He wanted to Westernize and modernize Chinese medicine because he wanted to show that he had something equivalent to Western medicine. In doing that he created something that I think is a misnomer — calling it Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) — when in fact, it wasn't traditional. It was basically a rewriting of classical Chinese medicine to be more formulaic. So if someone had asthma, there are certain points you would use. If someone had back pain, there'd be certain points you would use and those points would always be used, which is not how classical Chinese medicine works. Classical Chinese medicine is more individualized. You figure out what the unique problem is and ask, “How do we deal with that?” It blew my mind to find that the classics were looking at things in a very different frame, which is that qi — energy — is real. Fortunately, I had also done the Japanese track in acupuncture school where you try to feel that qi, and was already thinking about it as real. It wasn’t a complete rewrite of my mental model, but it was an eye-opener for me that I needed to be thinking of things in a new way, not as a Westerner. I needed to think about how energy makes up the physical world and how, if you modify that energy, then the physical world will also change. So I decided to have a motto in my practice, and the motto was, “I'll do what works.” I'll be open-minded to approaches if they are more effective than what I have been doing previously. Because ultimately, as a clinician, the only thing that matters is my patients feel better and their complaints go away. If I'm not successful at that, how can I be successful in my practice? I started to explore energy in new, unique ways. I started to look at the Chinese five element theory and feel the energy of those elements. I actually got to where I could palpate it and I could feel the subtle differences. I started to explore the models within Chinese medicine using pulse diagnosis within this five-element perspective, and I got quite good at pulse diagnosis from an energy-first perspective. My practice started to move much more towards energy medicine, but I still hadn't made the big shift to treating people without needles. I had a thriving practice in Frederick, Maryland, and things were going great. Then I met a woman named Karen Custer, a therapist and lifelong intuitive. Upon meeting her, I was feeling energy coming off of her in a way that I had never felt from someone before, and I said, “What are you?!” [Laughs] She told me she taught classes on being able to mimic other people's skill sets energetically and how to treat people long distance. It was in one of these classes that I suddenly had an epiphany. If I just added a few pieces
to what she was saying, something made sense within Chinese medicine, triggering an “aha” moment of how medical qigong works. Qigong was the initial martial art. It’s all about balancing your energy. It's all about health. When you're out of balance, you bring back balance by moving energy within your energy field. Medical qigong is slightly different in that it is a non-touch way of moving other people’s energy. I've always been interested in this model, but it never made sense to me. I couldn't figure out how you could actually apply it. I did take some classes on medical qigong, and I went to see medical qigong practitioners from China when they would come to the U.S. and demonstrate their work, but it never quite made sense to me until I had that aha moment. It all has to do with the concept in Chinese medicine — that also is in Reiki — which is Universal Qi. The way I describe Universal Qi is to think of it as the database of all information about all energy at any given moment in time — for instance, the energy in your hand, what orientation it is, down to the most minute unit of energy. Our bodies exist in layers and layers of energy, and Universal Qi knows what's happening with each individual unit of qi in each layer of energy at any given moment of time. It’s beyond what a human being could possibly imagine keeping in your own head, this incredible knowledge of where energy is. I realized that using Universal Qi I could move someone else's energy from far away. Universal Qi was a conduit. It wasn't just a database; it was in some ways programmable. During the dot-com era, I was a programmer, so suddenly I could connect the dots that there are ways I could actually program within Universal Qi how to move people's energy, and to do it at no cost to my own energy, and to do it at any distance. Distance doesn't really matter at all in medical qigong. That aha moment basically was the beginning of me doing a lot of what I call programing, and creating a whole new model within Chinese medicine. CAROL BEDROSIAN: How do you program Universal Qi? ETHAN BORG: Within Chinese medicine, we have concepts that don't necessarily align together very well. We have a concept of interior and exterior meridians that are related to each other. We have a concept of a circadian clock where different meridians are related to each other. And we have a concept that we call the six divisions, which relates to how organisms attack the body, with different relationships to different meridians associated together. I struggled with this idea that we have different relationships with the different meridians, and I had another epiphany that they all snap together like puzzle pieces creating a grid. That grid was basically describing feng shui. Most people think about feng shui as putting something red in a southern wall that will increase fire qi in that space, which might increase life and make that space happier. Or if I put a silver dollar under a plant, that might increase my riches. That's not how I look at feng shui. My model is how energy aligns around us and how within that alignment there are countless angles of energy that I called “tissue angles.” The reason I called them tissue angles is that when I finally clicked this grid together, and took what the classics of Chinese medicine were saying about the alignment of energy, I saw that it was talking about different angles of energy within this grid. If I manipulated the energy at a certain angle, it would resonate with the specific tissue in the body — different angles resonated with different tissues. The whole point of a medicine is that it is standardized so that it works again and again. If you have the same scenario, you want the same intervention to work each time you use it so that you can rely on it. There are a lot of methodologies that cannot provide a standardized, repeatable effect where you have confidence in it. So in order to have that kind of standardization, I borrowed the concepts of programming, which is all about logic. If A equals B, and B equals C, then A equals C. I applied that kind of logic and thinking on a level of complexity and depth to: What are the five elements? How is the problem constructed out of the five elements? What interventions within the five elements gets that problem to deconstruct? If you understand the itty-bitty detail of that, then you can, essentially, construct a tool that can be used each and every time you see that same problem. So I constructed tools. For example, an eye twitch is caused from what we call energetic wind in the gallbladder meridian. (I’m simplifying things for this example.) I would create a tool that gets rid of wind from the gallbladder meridian. I would construct something that: one, can essentially eradicate energetic wind; and, two, makes sure it goes into this channel. On a very basic level that would be the programming; each and every time I use the tool, it always will look for wind to deconstruct in the gallbladder channel. This is a different level of thinking than acupuncture theory. It's essentially its own form of practice because it has its own set of tools apart from other facets of Chinese medicine. CAROL BEDROSIAN: What is a tool? Are you creating this mentally, psychically? ETHAN BORG: I’m literally defining to Universal Qi… CAROL BEDROSIAN: You’re talking, you’re thinking it. ETHAN BORG: Thinking it or saying it. www.spiritofchange.org
CAROL BEDROSIAN: Your tools, then, are created mentally by your thoughts. ETHAN BORG: By your words. The words matter because, ultimately, this is a leap of faith. Talking about Universal Qi is talking about a greater power than yourself. Some people will call that God. I don't think Universal Qi is God, but some people call that God. I view Universal Qi as a construct that is within this reality, and that has this particular role and job of organizing the energy. If you can tell this construct, which is a greater intelligence than ourselves, what you want it to do, this grid or intelligence will go ahead and do that. Why it would do that based on our little pea brains or our requests is a whole different theological conversation. But it's incredibly cool that you could ask Universal Qi to treat energetic wind in the gallbladder meridian and it will do it again and again and again, and it will do it in a very standardized way. Step-by-step and day-by-day, I was so passionate about this practice, learning more and more about the energy field and these angles of energy, and how I could manipulate them. It got to the point where I really could differentiate, say, the capillaries inside the sclera of your eyeballs. I could manipulate just that energy, as opposed to with acupuncture needles, where it's treating systems of energy. Let's say I put a point in the acupuncture liver channel. That point will eventually affect the eyeballs because the eyes relate to the liver in Chinese medicine, but that point would activate energy throughout the liver and all the components of the meridian and the organ. And a little sliver would get to the eye. And of that little sliver, a little sliver would get to the sclera of the eye, and a little sliver of that would get the capillary of the eye. What I discovered is that I could immediately, with my new method and model, treat just the capillary of the sclera of the eye. And that is hugely beneficial as a clinician. When someone says, “I have a lot of redness in my eye. Can you help me?” Before, I would say, “I probably can help you.” But now, with this new model I can say, “Oh, yeah, I could totally treat that. I can immediately affect it.” There's a branch of acupuncture called Acutonics, where people use tuning forks to treat people instead of needles. For years I thought that was complete garbage, but while I was at a conference someone had a table there demonstrating Acutonics. Since they were letting people try it on themselves, I used the fork and applied it to a certain angle of energy that I knew about, just out of curiosity. Within 30 seconds, I found myself itching all over my body intensely. The itching lasted for at least 30 minutes. At first I thought, “I would never use Acutonics or a tuning fork. That's crazy!” Then I took a step back and I thought, “Well, why was I itchy? Oh, because I was treating a point that was related to the skin. And, oh, I used a wood qi tuning fork that would increase wood qi and that would increase itchiness. I suddenly realized that tiny little intervention had a huge impact on me. I needed to take this seriously. So I bought tuning forks, and I started to treat my patients with tuning forks instead of with needles. But I was not using Acutonics; I was using these tissue angles that I had worked out. And my practice just went through the roof. People could feel the energy very easily. It was very clear how powerful it was to each and every person that I treated, and it catapulted me into another plateau in terms of the success of my practice. But it came at a cost. The cost was that it was hard to do the energy work I was doing with the tuning forks because the model was sophisticated. I had to physically move the tuning forks up/down, which is the Heavenly plane; north/south, which is the Earthly plane, and east/ west, which is the Man plane. However it took a lot of effort to treat each individual given the amount I wanted to treat. Around that same time, a gentleman named Masaru Emoto came up with a theory about water memory. In his book he showed pictures of water molecules seen under an electron microscope that looked beautiful if you said something happy around them, and they looked terrible if you said something terrible. This implied to me that water could be used like a storage system, like a hard drive. So I decided to do an experiment. I took a vial of water and I treated it as if I were treating a patient for a specific problem. Then I took just one drop of that water and put it on my skin. Immediately I got treated by what would have been at least five or ten minutes of physical labor for me. And that blew my mind. I just couldn't believe that I could compress a treatment so much, because now, if I simply made enough vials of treatment, I could go from treating just five things in a session, to treating a hundred things in a session, a hundred problems. That compression became very exciting to me, and a recurring theme of what I wanted to do, which was to compress as much as I could. If I could compress three months of treatment into a single session, a person who needs three months of treatment might get one hundred percent better after single session. Obviously, my goal was to be as successful with my patients as quickly as possible, because that made me feel like I was doing the work I was meant to do on this planet. Around this time, I decided to move back to Rochester, New York, where I grew up, and I started my practice here. Just before I moved, I wondered whether instead of putting treat Continued on page 44 FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 43
What I realized early on in my career is that if you don't know how to treat infectious disease, you're going to be unsuccessful.
Remote Healing
Continued from page 43
ments in the water, what if I put treatments in Universal Qi? So I started to explore this other concept of programing within Universal Qi and I started to treat people not with water at all, but to send them energy through Universal Qi. And again, I could compress even more treatments; I could do far more in a single session. When I moved to Rochester, I knew this was the moment when I would start to treat people without any tuning forks, without water. I'm just going to be treating them with, effectively, my own version of medical qigong. And my practice went beyond anything I could possibly imagine. I am very fortunate that I have so many people who want to get treated with this method. It blows peoples’ minds to be able to treat someone without touching them, and to be able to feel, as a patient, the incredible power of how much changes in a single session or within a few weeks. Major shifts are happening. We're at this point in America where Lyme disease is a terrible problem. I started receiving lots of referrals from Western medical doctors because my treatment of Lyme patients is so successful. The root of many problems is infectious in nature. The methodology that I created was from the very beginning focused on treating infectious disease. What I realized early on in my career is that if you don't know how to treat infectious disease, you're going to be unsuccessful time and time again. From the very beginning of my work, I was thinking about how to attack organisms and get rid of them in the body. With Lyme disease rampant, that became a gigantic part of my work. But there’s a lot of need; I couldn’t possibly treat enough people in my career to make a dent in the need that is out there. So as an extension of my own treatment, I thought, “What if I started to teach people how to do this? Instead of me treating thousands of patients in a year, I could treat ten thousand, one hundred thousand.” So I decided to start teaching other people how to do this. The methodology that I teach is called Eminus Mirus. We shorten that to EM. Eminus Mirus is Latin for “astonishing at a distance,” because most people who experience this are usually quite astonished at both how much changes, and that I could do this or you could do this from thousands of miles away. I worked on this method in 2012, and I started to teach people in 2013. At this point, there are hundreds of practitioners of Eminus Mirus in levels one through four. The first level is free and very basic so that people can experience it, and then it goes up to a fourth level, which is very complex and all about Five Element theory and its expression in all its various ways. So it starts very simple, but it gets very deep, as far as people are interested to go. I decided that the first level should be free because Universal Qi is not mine; it is something that is universal. It has that name for a reason. I don’t have ownership of that. Everyone should have access to Universal Qi through this methodology if they are open-minded to it. It also gives people an opportunity to get past the fear of the unknown. I think that everyone should have a healthy skepticism. There are so many promises being made by so many people, that I made EM Level 1 free so there's no commitment in money; it's just a commitment of your curiosity. As a consequence, we've had hundreds and hundreds of people do EM Level 1, and hun44 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
dreds do Levels 2, 3 and 4. When I came out with this methodology, I really didn't know that people would be enthusiastic about it. I didn't know if this would be a fad that people might be interested in for six months, and then forget about. But I found that people who I taught back in 2013, most of them are still using it, which is incredibly gratifying to me. Many people were already in alternative medicine in some form. After learning EM, they have found a way to merge and meld this methodology with their practice that they also love, for instance, massage therapy, acupuncture, Reiki and other types of energy work. This is because EM is very complimentary to other therapies in many ways. Eminus Mirus is based on classical theory, which means that the roots of it go incredibly deep. They are 10,000 years deep. As people explore their own practices, often those roots connect somewhere. It can be very exciting to see that work in Reiki can be used with EM. Or shiatsu. There are connections made, and then the theory somehow integrates to become a beautiful kind of construct. Each person is basically creating their own version of EM because they're doing their own organic work within themselves. CAROL BEDROSIAN: Can you use this to create negative tools that would hurt people? ETHAN BORG: This method, Eminus Mirus, is programed in Universal Qi. It is defined as a methodology within Universal Qi that has very specific rules. One of the fundamental rules is that you cannot harm someone with EM. Specifically, you can't harm someone in a way that would kill them, would hospitalize them with a life-threatening condition, would cause a stroke, or an aneurysm, or cause debilitating or chronic harm. You cannot poison someone, cannot drug them with some kind of recreational drug. There are rules designed so that EM is — from the very beginning — about doing no harm. If someone actually has the intention to do harm, that request is completely ignored, and if someone unintentionally would do harm, that is ignored. Before a treatment is even sent to a person, the programing in Universal Qi assesses whether that treatment would kill that person or cause a stroke or an aneurysm or any dangerous outcome. If it would, it doesn't send the treatment at all. So from a very basic level, Eminus Mirus is designed to do no harm. I've been using this methodology essentially since 2006, and no one has died from EM, or had an aneurysm, or a stroke. The safety mechanisms work. Having taught so many people how to do EM, seeing that those safety mechanisms are working time and time again, that's really thrilling. That was a really, really big concern of mine, actually. After I started teaching EM Level 3, I suddenly realized that this is one of the most intense and most powerful things that I've ever come across, and I started to wonder if I should be teaching people a methodology this strong. So I stopped promoting it, not because I don't love it and think it is amazing, but I also had to go through a period of assessing whether it was appropriate for me to give someone such a powerful tool. On the other hand, I’m seeing that no one has gotten harmed and that therefore the safety rules within EM are rock solid and working exactly how I intended. That is very important to me. That's the only reason why I can teach it. I didn't want to put anything out there that could be damaging. I only wanted to do something that would essentially heal as many people as possible. Continued on page 46
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FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 45
If you just have that one premise — that organisms more regularly infect together than they do alone — then it completely changes how you approach something like COVID-19.
Remote Healing
Continued from page 44
CAROL BEDROSIAN: You mentioned infectious disease. Is there a treatment in EM for COVID-19? ETHAN BORG: Whenever we talk about infectious disease, we are referring to pathogens. In EM we always say “the pathogen I associate with...”, and then we say the organism, because we're bridging two fields. We're bridging classical Chinese medicine, which talks about pathogens, or what we call Gu and Chong for parasites, versus the Western defined organisms — Streptococcus, COVID-19, etc. Essentially what I do is bridge the gap and I identify the pathogen that associates with the organism. I'm finding the pathogen within Chinese medicine that's associated with COVID-19. The model within EM is very sophisticated in terms of infectious disease. I would say even more sophisticated — and this is a big claim — in many ways than Western medicine. What we see in EM is that infectious organisms regularly co-infect together as colonies. If you just have that one premise — that organisms more regularly infect together than they do alone — then it completely changes how you approach something like COVID-19. Western doctors are asking, “How do I stop COVID-19?” From my perspective, it is, “How do I stop all of the organisms fighting along with COVID-19 that can keep COVID-19 persisting and recurring in someone?" I identified several of these co-infectors. I had other EM students identify some of these co-infectors. Together we have been able to come up with a fairly comprehensive array of organisms that we see attacking together. I've constructed — and programmed within EM — treatments that attack these pathogens. Every organism produces toxins — what we call pathogen toxins — that are the actual cause of the symptoms that we have. When an organism strikes inside the body, it’s not the organism itself that creates symptoms — it's usually the toxins that it produces. To understand the pathogen is not enough. You also want to understand what it's going to do inside the body, what it’s going to produce. For instance, COVID-19 produces an array of hormone isomers, “mirror image” forms of hormones that cause fever. These toxins will get into the red blood cells and cause a fever that keeps coming back every day again and again, usually at dusk. That's a problem in Chinese medicine we call heat in the blood, and that's one of the symptoms that people complain about with COVID-19. They can’t shake the fever. It just keeps coming and coming. It’s very draining after more than a week of recurring fever, for some people, two weeks. The level of specificity within EM is so powerful that we're actually able to go into the red blood cells and get rid of that isomer of fever-causing hormone. That can stop the fever; that can help cool down the body. So, yes, our response is more sophisticated to something like COVID. We don't just want to know one pathogen, one organism. We want to know the set of pathogens, how they relate to each other. So we have a concept called a life cycle, in which one organism promotes the growth of another organism, promotes the growth of another one. In terms of COVID I'm seeing a daisy chain of blooming, where one organism wakes up the next one, wakes up the next 46 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
one, wakes up the next one, and it will start the cycle over again. We don't see that commonly with infectious organisms, that the end of the chain wakes up the beginning of the chain. I think that is one of the reasons why this organism is a pandemic and so terrible. It just spirals down and gets worse and worse each time it goes through the daisy chain of organisms. I have found great success in treating people who I see these pathogens in. One of the treatment services that I provide is what I call broadcast energy blasts. This is me treating many people all at the same time. I created one for protecting against COVID and have about two thousand people on my anti-coronavirus blast. It's free. [Sign up at www.broadcastenergytreatments.com] CAROL BEDROSIAN: How many people could you treat at one time with a blast like that? ETHAN BORG: There's really no upward limit. It's really an issue of ethics and what is appropriate. There's more going on in our lives than just the physical experience. There's also a spiritual experience that everyone is having. You have to honor that. CAROL BEDROSIAN: What spiritual experience is this? ETHAN BORG: Let's say some terrible thing happens to a person. They're driving in a car and they get into a car accident. If they didn’t get in the car accident, they wouldn't have ended up in a hospital. And if they didn't end up in the hospital, they wouldn't have had amazing care from the doctor and nurses, and as a consequence, they wouldn't have decided to go into the medical field. If they didn't go into medical field, they wouldn’t have saved thousands of lives. So would it be right to intervene and stop the car accident from happening? CAROL BEDROSIAN: So you have to have people's permission. ETHAN BORG: That's built into Eminus Mirus. You need consent. You can't treat someone unless they agree to it, because you don't know what their fate is and you don't know what their spiritual path is. Even though you might be like me — someone who wants to heal everyone of every problem they have and stop the suffering — if you don't have permission, you might be interfering with something much bigger than yourself. In terms of what I can do with the broadcast healing, it’s limited more by people's spiritual path than anything else. You can't change fate, but you can intervene. When people finally come to me, they usually are coming to me because that's the end of their need to suffer in that way. This is painful for me because I just want to stop suffering. But if you have that concept of karma, then to intervene on something that you're not supposed to intervene on can be terrible for you. That's always playing in my mind when I’m working with people is that fate is supreme. Programmed into EM is that if the treatment would violate someone’s fate, it doesn’t get sent at all. This is something that Universal Qi knows that we don't. Universal Qi knows the state of energy at every moment in time, forwards and backwards. It knows the moment I die. It knows two hundred years after I'm dead. It knows this moment. It knows two hundred years before this moment. It knows where the energy is, and all of the meaning of energy, such as the motivation behind things that people are doing, and what their needs are. Most of us think that we should be the captain of the ship. Really it’s better if we let Universal Qi be the captain, and we just be the navigators and say, “Let's try going in this direction.” And if the captain says, “No, we're not,” then we don't go that way. That is built into EM: even Continued on page 48
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MASSACHUSETTS Heather Smith, RN, LMT Arvigo® Practitioner BeGrounded Massage Framingham, MA • (508) 963-4931 info@begroundedmassage.com www.begroundedmassage.com Melissa Belliard, LMT Arvigo® Practitioner Haverhill, MA • (978) 771-0377 harmonyintegrativebodywork@yahoo.com www.harmonyintegrativebodywork.com Rebecca R. Susi, LCMT, SpBAP Certified Arvigo® Practitioner & Advanced Pregnancy Practitioner Bolton, MA • (508) 410-1138 rebecca@rebeccasusi.com www.rebeccasusi.com Marissa Farrell, LMT Certified Arvigo® Practitioner, Doula Stepping Stone Wellness, 316 Washington St. Wellesley, MA • (781) 898-4083 www.steppingstoneacu.com Susan Cotta, MSPT, CST-D Certified Arvigo® Practitioner 566 Wilbur Ave, Suite #5 Swansea, MA • (508) 982-1100 www.unlimitedpotentials.com Sheila A. Fay, Lic.Ac. Advanced Arvigo® and Pregnancy Practitioner Watertown, MA • (617) 905-6664 www.sfayacupuncture.com Erica Grossman, LMT Certified Arvigo® Practitioner & Self Care Instructor Stepping Stone Wellness, 316 Washington St. Wellesley, MA • (781) 898-4083 www.steppingstoneacu.com Noreen Cerqua, LCMT Certified Arvigo® Practitioner Walpole, MA • (508) 397-8287 www.WombCareAndConnection.com Christine Lee, RNCS, Lic. Ac. Certified Arvigo® Practitioner & Self Care Instructor Balance and Healing Center Southborough, MA • (508) 596-4680 acuchrisrn@aol.com
THE ARVIGO INSTITUTE, LLC • PO Box 189, Antrim, NH 03440 603-588-2571 • office@arvigotherapy.com • www.arvigotherapy.com FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 47
Remote Healing Continued from page 46
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though we might want to help in a certain way, if it’s going to violate something very important to that person, then it won't happen at all. That treatment won’t be sent. CAROL BEDROSIAN: Can EM potentially cure anything? ETHAN BORG: Because everything is a construct out of energy, it can cure anything, potentially, forward in time. A lot of people have tried working on sending treatments backward in time, and that has done nothing. So, we can't undo COVID-19 backwards in time and hope it never happened. But we can, I think, intervene on just about every health crisis that people have, potentially, so long as it doesn't violate fate. But also a lot of problems — and this is where I really struggle at this point in my career — are very sophisticated problems. With EM you want to get down to the nitty-gritty details if you can. Trying to figure out all the component parts to something like A-fib takes years and years of treating lots of patients to really figure out from an energy perspective all of the programing that would be required for that. So I'll have these moments where I've been working on a problem that I've made no progress on for years, where I suddenly have an aha moment and I can say, “Yes, that's the missing piece of all the pieces that I've been working on. I can finally treat this.” In my experience I can treat pain pretty well, but I can still have someone come in where the treatments that I have defined are not hitting that person's pain. Yes, I think it can treat anything, but it's limited in some ways by our own knowledge. I try to use Universal Qi to construct things outside of my knowledge and the knowledge of other EMers, and sometimes that's acceptable and sometimes it’s not. I don't know why that's the case. Can we treat anything? There's no reason why we couldn't, but it doesn't mean that we are able to yet, at this moment in time. CAROL BEDROSIAN: Can EM treat genetic disorders? ETHAN BORG: One of the great things about EM is that we can take Western research — for instance one of the problems with COVID-19 is cytokine storms. We can take that information and immediately construct a treatment to treat cytokine storms. In Western medicine it might take five years to do all the research and create a tool that is a safe tool. We can do that quickly, but we're also limited in that if Western medicine doesn't really understand the problem and the problem is sophisticated, we may make assumptions based on what the science is thinking right now that are wrong. For instance, I think genetic theory is obviously right on some levels, but I feel it's far more sophisticated than the Western world thinks it is. As a consequence, I think that we're running off assumptions that are not 100 percent right: genes can turn on, genes can turn off, that these things can be controlled by circumstance, by emotion. At this moment in time, we do have treatments that are constructed with the hope that they'll help genetic issues, but I don't have a lot of faith in them yet. I’m working on it! The operative word is “yet.” If 2013 was essentially the birth of EM, a hundred years from then it's going to be far more sophisticated than the tools that we're using now. CAROL BEDROSIAN: Is that because other people are also working on it, or that you're working on it? Obviously, you’re not going to live forever. ETHAN BORG: In EM Level 4, there’s a programing guide to teach people how to program EM. CAROL BEDROSIAN: Is there any danger to other people re-programing the safety or effectiveness of EM? ETHAN BORG: This is where the analogy of programming
breaks down. A computer doesn't care how it is used. But this is not true of Universal Qi, a higher intelligence to our own. Universal Qi has a vested interest in the energy it controls. I believe people are a bit like monkeys. We will take any new tool and bang it against things to see what it can do. I believe Universal Qi knows this about the human spirit. EM was built literally from day one with a “do no harm” motto as a core fundamental feature, a pillar upon which the entire method is built. There’s no one maker of Western medicine. It's something bigger than a person. I think the potential of EM is that it is bigger than a person — that's my hope — so I constructed it with the idea that I will teach you how to do the program so that you can create tools I've never created, and you can teach people how to use your tools. There could be a whole ecosystem of tools that are specific to categories that could exist in EM but don't yet for different types of fields. EM can be used for plants and EM can be used for animals. There's no version of EM for farming and livestock, but there could be. One hundred years from now we probably will have a more sophisticated version of it, and hopefully each year as more knowledge of anatomy and physiology comes out, there will be more sophistication in the tools. For something that is genetic, maybe 20 years from now it will be, “Oh, yeah, no problem.” But today, I think the right approach is to say someday we will have a solution, but today we're not quite there yet. CAROL BEDROSIAN: There is an attunement to access Levels 2, 3 and 4. Are you the only person that can give attunements? ETHAN BORG: At this moment in time, yes. I have talked to the community about creating structures of governance and control on a basic level, and we just don't have enough people that are interested in that yet. The people who started out in 2013 are usually pretty sophisticated in their methodologies, but they may be clinicians, not people who want to do guidance. Ultimately we need to have some committee or some form of governance that would take on that role with standardization of education and certification. At this moment, it’s still very much run by me. But I have a bigger vision than that. It feels really fulfilling to be the creator of something that people are enjoying and finding value in. But my goal is to create something that is bigger than me that can outlast me. If I am successful, there will be that kind of governance structure someday. However, I also want people to be skeptical. It's the healthiest way to go. And I want people to be open-minded. That's why I made Level 1 free. The first level is for those people who are open-minded enough to take a chance on something. There's no cost to them. There is the freedom and opportunity to do something without anyone knowing about it but you. You have the liberty in taking a kind of leap of faith, seeing if it works or not. The people who I have taught EM to grow fastest when they learn this model together. There is great sophistication on anything built on any rail of Chinese medicine. I have Continued on page 50
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If 2013 was essentially the birth of EM, a hundred years from then it's going to be far more sophisticated than the tools we're using now.
Remote Healing
Continued from page 48
tried to take the language and make it more modern and contemporary, using modern ideas, constructs and metaphors to try to make it as simple as possible and accessible to everyone. What I find is that the people who are learning together in groups learn and gain confidence faster with the bouncing off of ideas and creativity with each other. Ultimately what I want is for people to think about EM kind of like jazz. You can riff off each other. A lot of people get stuck on me as the creator and what I created. What I want people to do is to take this creative work and also be creative with it, not to look at it as stone, but as something that is to be explored creatively. Where I see people get stuck is that they want to emulate my success so much that they want to emulate me. Then they get stuck on whether they're doing it right. I didn't have anyone to emulate and I had success. To have a path already built for you means that success is already built in for most people in most situations. They just have to start riffing and playing their jazz with a little bit of guidance. CAROL BEDROSIAN: You must have encountered tens of thousands of people over the past decade who disbelieve EM can work until they experience it for themselves. What have you learned from facing this constant skepticism, and do you have any favorite patient stories that come to mind that illustrate this? ETHAN BORG: Even starting with acupuncture I had to have a bit of a thick skin, because when I went into acupuncture it wasn’t where it is today, where there's a lot of acceptance of it. Twenty years ago, it was getting there, but still people were talking about whether they believed in it or not, as if it was a belief system. So I already had a little bit of a thick skin in order to do the work I was doing. No matter what you do, it's a little bit hurtful when your life work is looked at as a belief system or a scam or some kind of placebo effect. You just have to push through that because there are plenty of people who are open-minded. Even though not everyone is open-minded, there are people who are in need, and need creates open-mindedness. That's one of the things that I found with acupuncture; if someone didn't believe in acupuncture, ultimately they still came to me because their need was so high. Nothing else was meeting that need and they were willing to take a risk. Unfortunately, we are all going to face health crises, and those crises are sometimes going to be beyond what the medical care you’ve already received is capable of handling. There are two kinds of people. There's the one person who, when they face that, gives up. And then there's the other kind of person who when they face that says, “I'm just going to keep trying things.” There's nothing you can do about people who give up. From my perspective, that's their fate and they are supposed to make that choice, and you're supposed to honor it. I certainly have family members who do not think what I do is legitimate. I have many friends who don't think what I do is real. I actually lost friendships when I went into Chinese medicine because they thought I was crazy. I still feel some of the pain that I've lost friendships just doing things that have so much meaning for me; there's no way I would do anything else. A good example of a skeptical person is one whose whole family was suffering from Lyme disease. She was in Western medicine, and she felt like her family was dying from Lyme disease. I had come out with a product line called Qi Infusions. I was energizing oils using the principles of EM, and selling them in health food stores. The product was successful, and I came out with one that treated Lyme disease through its associated pathogens. I want to be clear that I wasn’t treating Lyme disease; I was treating pathogens associated with Lyme. This person came across the product and thought, “What a crazy person and what hubris they have to think that they could come up with a product for a problem medicine has stumbled with for years to address.” She asked if she could have coffee with me, so we did. Then she 50 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
decided to take a leap of faith and have one of her family members seen by me in my clinical practice, who had a profound immediate benefit. Then one by one, each of the family members came to see me, and each of them got better completely. At this point, none of them feels they have Lyme. In fact, this person was so profoundly affected by this approach she became one of the first students of EM, and now is one of the most successful. So, yeah, there can be a profound shifting and freeing when you have just a little bit of open-mindedness. CAROL BEDROSIAN: I envision EM as something that parents will someday teach to their children as naturally as they teach food preparation or toilet training skills — how to keep themselves healthy. ETHAN BORG: That would be awesome! My kids know when they fall to treat themselves with the Acute Injuries Qi Infusion. If they burn themselves, they immediately send the EM Burn Treatment to themselves. They already have this down. I've heard this from other practitioners who have taught their kids and the kids have gotten this kind of stuff really quickly. There’s so much less skepticism in kids’ minds that they pick it up even faster than we do. CAROL BEDROSIAN: Do you have any concerns that Western medicine might feel threatened by the success of modalities such as yours that bypass the need for more expensive surgery, diagnostics and drugs? ETHAN BORG: There's a concern about what you can say within any kind of locality, what you can call yourself, whether you can call yourself a healer or someone who helps, or whether you're sending treatments or whether you're sending energy. There are legal issues that are different from state to state and country to country that caused me to change some of my language, so there is some concern on that front. I think that Western doctors will look at EM at this moment in time without much attention for two reasons. One is that EM is incredibly small; we're not at the point where it’s a household name. It's not a Reiki; we're not even on the radar. The number two point is that doctors are in such crises right now, they are seeing their houses on fire every single day. And I mean this with great compassion: my dad is a physician. We have such chaos with the insurance system, with crisis upon crisis of what we're doing with Obamacare and so forth, that I just don't see that we are anywhere near their radar of concern. Maybe ten or twenty years from now, if Eminus Mirus continues to grow and becomes the kind of thing that people are talking about, then yes, we may have an issue where certification and what people call themselves becomes a very big issue. But I think most people who practice any alternative medicine in any locality know that they have to be sensitive about what they say based on the regulations in their state. Some doctors are going to look at any kind of alternative medicine as a danger to their patients. I don’t feel there's going to be a broad kind of attack on Eminus Mirus practitioners anytime soon. If we get there, hopefully we'll be organized and have some tools and standardization that can reduce the skepticism of how people are being treated and have a counter argument to be made against that. Do I think we will someday get to a point where people take notice of Eminus Mirus widely across the globe? I think it is possible. As I see it, Universal Qi made this medicine and I was just a conduit. Whether or not it grows into something big is equally up to Universal Qi. I am simply happy to enjoy the ride as far as it will take me. Chinese herbalist and acupuncturist Ethan Borg, L.AC, is the creator of Eminus Mirus energy methodology. For more information visit www.eminusmirus.com. Carol Bedrosian is an EM Level 4 student and has published Spirit of Change holistic magazine since 1987. www.spiritofchange.org
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CALENDAR OF EVENTS SEPTEMBER 9/1 — REGISTRATION FOR THE CONSTELLATION APPROACHTM ONLINE IMMERSION PROGRAM BEGINS. Faust Family Constellations presents The Constellation Approach™ Immersion Program, which is designed to take each student through a personal journey of transformation in relation to their family and ancestral lineage, as well as to lay a solid foundation for anyone who wishes to learn the art and practice of Family Constellations. Through the processes of Family Constellations, energy medicine and evolutionary Soul work, you will have the opportunity to experience all aspects of your life and heritage in a safe, healing and supportive environment of a group of like-minded individuals. Enrollment is available now! Classes are October 2020 through May 2021. Visit https://www.faustfamilyconstellations.com/immersion2020-2021/ 9/9-9/30 — INTRO TO MYSTICAL CARD SCIENCE WEBINAR. 4 weeks. 7pm-9pm. Discover the forgotten astrological language of the playing cards. Learn about your birth card and how to make mind-blowing predictions using math and intuition. https://www.karynchabot.com/mystical-card-science 9/12-11/7 — LIVE ONLINE MINDFULNESS-BASED STRESS REDUCTION (MBSR) COURSE. 8 weeks, Saturdays 9-11:30am. Mindfulness is a way of learning to relate directly to whatever is happening in your life. MBSR is an 8-week program that provides you with tools to help you cultivate greater mindfulness in your day-to-day life. Each session is highly participatory, and the training encompasses a wide array of mindfulness practices, including sitting and walking meditation, mindful eating and mindful communication. Cambridge Health Alliance, Center for Mindfulness and Compassion. $650. Full BIPOC scholarships available. (617) 591-6132. cmc@challiance.org. www.chacmc.org 9/13 — WOW SCHOOL OF HOLISTIC PROFESSIONALS. Become a Holistic Professional, facilitate treatments with clients and/or teach. Step into mastery, utilize advanced tools/techniques. Learn how to build a professional practice, market your skills, etc. Certificate Reiki MT, Multi Dimensional Healing MT. CEU’s avail. One Sunday/month for 8 mo. 10am-5pm. $1199 Women of Wisdom. (508) 230-3680. womenofwisdominc.com
52 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
9/19 — CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY VIRTUAL CELEBRATION OF PARAMHANSA YOGANANDA’S ARRIVAL. We invite you to celebrate Yogananda’s arrival to the West through our online virtual retreat: The Yogananda Centennial Celebration, live from Boston, Massachusetts. Paramhansa Yogananda first stepped foot in America on September 19, 1920, at the Harbor Pier in Boston. The virtual retreat will take you through the most important landmarks of Yogananda’s time in Boston, as he built his work in the US from the ground up. The half-day 3pm-9pm celebration will include music, meditation, inspirational talks, storytelling, film, virtual pilgrimage. Info and registration: yogananda100.eventbrite.com. Presented by Ananda. 9/26 — REIKI I CERTIFICATION. Virtual via Zoom. Libby Barnett, MSW. 41 years experience. Reiki Energy Medicine author. Notebook, pin, certificate awarded. Credit cards accepted. CEU's/contact hours. Call (603) 654-2787. www.reikienergy.com. Reiki II: 9/27. 9/26 — HEAVEN & EARTH PSYCHIC PARTY. 11am5pm. Heaven & Earth, Derry, NH. Join us for readings, refreshments, and relaxation! If angels, crystals, mediumship and psychic readings sound like fun, come celebrate with us! Reserve readings at www.heavenandearthstudio.com. 9/26 — YOUR IDEAL LIFE BEGINS TODAY with online life-changing intuitive development training with internationally renowned medical intuitive and master healers/teachers Sue and Aaron Singleton. This exceptional 7-module program initiates healing that enhances all aspects of your life. (978) 834-0341 or www.theWayToBalance.com.
OCTOBER 10/2 — MEDIUMSHIP, INTUITION AND DREAMS WITH JOHN HOLLAND AND KEVIN TODESCHI. Psychic medium John Holland and Executive Director of Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. Kevin Todeschi join together for this online event. You’ll gain a deeper understanding and insight into the unique relationship between your dreams, intuition, and the afterlife. This evening will largely be dedicated to psychic and mediumship readings from John and dream interpretation readings from Kevin. www.circlesofwisdom.com 10/2-10/4 — READ AND PLAY MUSIC IN A WEEKEND! World famous seminars now live online! The Understanding of Reading and Playing Music Seminar turns beginners into musicians, revitalizes and inspires even pro musicians. (781) 599-1476 or sallee@understandingofmusic.com. understandingofmusic.com/sign-up-form/ 10/3 — DANCING JAGUAR SPIRIT CAMP ONLINE TEACHER’S TRAINING BEGINS. Learn how to help children and teens connect to their authentic selves, learn how to trust their intuition and honor their truth. Meets for six consecutive Saturdays. For information and registration visit www.dancingjaguarinspirations.com. 10/10 — REIKI MASTER CERTIFICATION. Virtual via Zoom. Libby Barnett, MSW. 41 years experience. Reiki Energy Medicine author. Notebook, pin, certificate awarded. Credit cards accepted. CEU's/contact hours. Call (603) 654-2787. www.reikienergy.com. 10/10-10/24 — HEALING FROM THE BODY LEVEL UP™ MODULE 1: CLEARNING TRAUMA AND HEALING PTSD. Achieve stellar, faster, easier therapeutic results. Online training includes three Saturdays 9-6pm, plus prerecorded content. 35 CE credits available. Judith Swack, PhD. (781) 444-6940 or info@hblu.org. www.hblu.org. 10/15-10/18 — LEVEL I HAND ANALYSIS CLASS. Starts at 5 pm October 15 and ends at 4pm October 18. Burlington, VT. Are you a healer, counselor, coach, artist, entrepreneur? Adopt a fresh new assessment tool to uncover the core consciousness required for you and your clients to live a life of both meaning and success. Early bird discount ends September 19! Janet Savage, Master Hand Analyst. (802) 279-8554. HandTales.com.
10/24 — REIKI I CERTIFICATION. Virtual via Zoom. Libby Barnett, MSW. 41 years experience. Reiki Energy Medicine author. Notebook, pin, certificate awarded. Credit cards accepted. CEU's/contact hours. Call (603) 654-2787. www.reikienergy.com. Reiki II: 10/25.
NOVEMBER 11/14 — REIKI I CERTIFICATION. Virtual via Zoom. Libby Barnett, MSW. 41 years experience. Reiki Energy Medicine author. Notebook, pin, certificate awarded. Credit cards accepted. CEU's/contact hours. Call (603) 654-2787. www.reikienergy.com. Reiki II: 11/15. 11/19 — LIGHT BODY TRAINING INTERACTIVE AND INFORMATIONAL LIVE VIDEO. Join us on LoveLight Illuminations Facebook Live as we discuss this powerful training program and answer all of your questions! 5-5:30pm. Embark on your accelerated spiritual journey with Mother Mary’s powerful light body training, called Mastering This Life Program. https://www.facebook.com/lovelightilluminations/live
DECEMBER 12/5 — REIKI I CERTIFICATION. Virtual via Zoom. Libby Barnett, MSW. 41 years experience. Reiki Energy Medicine author. Notebook, pin, certificate awarded. Credit cards accepted. CEU's/contact hours. Call (603) 654-2787. www.reikienergy.com. Reiki II: 12/6.
UPCOMING 2/15-2/22, 2021 — ACTIVATION AND INITIATION RETREAT WITH LOVE AND SHAKTI ENERGY IN INDIA’S ANCIENT CAVES. After 8 successful retreats, Bhavna has designed this special retreat to transform your life in an amazing spiritual sojourn and rejuvenation that will clear and purify your lifetimes of trauma while meditating in these caves. Visit www.bhwellnessgroup.com for details. 3/27-3/28, 2021 — HOLY FIRE III, REIKI I & II CLASS. Our Reiki I & II class is a thorough and comprehensive combination of Western style and Holy Fire Energies. After completing this class, you will be able to give Reiki treatments to yourself and others. Bena Phillipo, Holy Fire III, Reiki Master/Teacher. Sacred Resonance Healing. (508) 303-0366. www.SacredResonanceHealing.com. 5/15-5/16, 2021 — NEUROINFLAMMATION AND AUTOIMMUNE IMMUNITY with Caroline Gagnon. Identifying and calming the places where inflammation has settled chronically in the body can enormously improve health and wellbeing through the use of herbal remedies. Boston School of Herbal Studies. (617) 417-8686. www.bostonherbalstudies.com.
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10/2, 2021 — 2nd ANNUAL STURBRIDGE HERBFEST. Classes, vendors, food! Join us at the Sturbridge Senior Center, 480 Main Street, Sturbridge, MA. 9:30-4:30. For more info or vendor applications contact Salli Greene at Alternatives for Health. (508) 347-2111 or sargreene@ gmail.com. www.sturbridgeherbfest.com. 11/13-11/14, 2021 — 14TH ANNUAL SPIRIT OF CHANGE MAGAZINE NATURAL LIVING EXPO. Royal Plaza Trade Center. 181 Boston Post Road West, Marlboro, MA. Saturday 9-6; Sunday 10-5. Featuring 250 exhibits, 90 workshops, readings, shopping and fun. Enjoy the healthy food courts for delicious breakfast, lunch and dinner meals throughout the weekend. Too much to see and do in one weekend! Plan to attend both days! www.NaturalExpo.org. 2/24-2/26, 2022 — 15TH EVIDENCE-BASED COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE CANCER THERAPIES CONFERENCE. West Palm Beach, FL. Natural cancer strategies, lifestyle issues and holistic/alternative treatments. www.annieappleseedproject.org.
ONGOING ECK LIGHT AND SOUND SERVICES ON ZOOM sponsored by the Massachusetts Satsang Society on the first and third Sunday of the month starting at 11am. Check eckinmass.org for monthly themes or contact Mark at resa_in_ma@yahoo.com. BI-MONTHLY OPEN HOUSE EVENINGS AT WOMEN OF WISDOM. September 11, November 20 and January 8. 118 Washington St., North Easton, MA. May be held on Zoom. Preregister for a link at (508) 230-3680 or womenofwisdominc@gmail.com. www.WomenOfWisdominc.com THE ECLECTIC INSTITUTE OF AROMATHERAPY AND HERBAL STUDIES offers hands-on courses in Aromatherapy. Learn to work with essential oils safely and effectively. Introduction to European based Aromatherapy beginning in Conway, MA on Sept. 27; Arlington, MA on October 4; and in NH on October 24. www.aromatherapyandherbalstudies.com. WELLNESS ROUNDTABLE HOLISTIC PRACTITIONERS NETWORKING GROUP. Please join us at our virtual monthly meetings, second Wednesday each month Sept-June. A welcoming community working for the greater health and wellbeing of all. Contact Ritu.Kapur@sohum.com. FREE DAILY LIVE ONLINE MINDFULNESS AND COMPASSION PRACTICES. In light of COVID-19, our Center for Mindfulness and Compassion is offering free guided daily online practices. These practices are secular and open to all. Over 20 teachers are offering sessions in mindful movement; bringing kindness to our stress, anxiety, grief and fear; supporting care giving during this difficult time, and expressing appreciation and love for each other. Midday and evening every day. Free. Offered in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Cambridge Health Alliance, Center for Mindfulness and Compassion. (617) 591-6132. cmc@challiance.org. www.chacmc.org
FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 53
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Questions? Astrologer Eric Linter has answers. Changes in relationships, career, health, finances or spiritual practice are inevitable. Eric’s clarity will help you stay on the right path. His insights help you better understand and appreciate life’s challenges. His clients say Eric Linter is “profound and enlightening” and “one of the best astrologers on the East Coast.”
Let’s explore your natal chart to validate and celebrate your knowing. Your recorded session becomes your ever-enlightening companion as you navigate this new era of your life. Nikki Davis, MA, is a passionate and caring Holistic Therapist skilled in counseling, astrology and a variety of healing arts. In her 30-year practice, she also blends natural remedies and products for skin, body and soul. Visit HolisticOasis.com to schedule a FREE 15-MINUTE CONSULATION, and a warmly interactive session.
on current issues and lifelong questionings. By accessing the deeper order of your life, you gain transformative insights into the evolutionary meaning of particular challenges and new perspectives to direct your choices. My background includes an MS and PhD in Esoteric Psychology and Philosophy. Jungian psychology, Eastern and Western Traditions are key foundations in my approach. I have been in practice for 25 years. U Astrological Consultations U U Psychospiritual Counseling U www.astrologicalpsychology.com 617-524-7072
Eric, a professional astrologer for 25 years, works with individuals, couples and businesses. Specialties include career moves, personal creativity and karmic relationships. Consultations are available in person, by telephone, or on cassette. Eric also offers classes, lectures and appearances at parties and special events. For more information and to schedule a private session, contact Eric by email or call: stars@ericlinter.com
Centers SCHOOLS OF WISDOM
Celebr
ating
Years! 24+
Women of Wisdom HOLISTIC HEALING CENTER
Usui, Holy Fire, Karuna Reiki Hypnotherapy G BARS G Massage Crystal Healing G Past Life Regression Integrated Energy Therapy Akisni G Inner Child Healing
Illuminating Light Healing Center Kristen Stone an intuitive psychic and spiritual medium who gives keenly profound and accurate psychic readings. Her readings cover all aspects and get to the root of the soul’s need for healing.
Holistic Practitioner and Professional, Earth Medicine, Angel Alignment, Wicca Akashic Soul Mastery, Hypnotherapy, Mediumship, and Animal Communication; Training for Reiki, IET, Gaiadon Heart, etc., plus workshops daily GIFT SHOP
Unique Jewelry G Healing Tools G Statues Crystal Bowls G Ritual Items G Angels Mediums or Psychic Readings Hours: M-F 10 am-8 pm, S/S 10 am-6 pm 118 Washington Street, N. Easton, MA womenofwisdominc.com 508-230-3680
Reading Types: Psychic, Tarot Card, Mediumship, Universal Readings, Oracle Cards, Crystals, Spiritual Counseling Healings Offered: Usui Reiki, Karuna Reiki, Crystal Sound Healing, New Paradigm M.D.T. Spiritual Mentorship: Make 2020 a year of learning, transformation and healing led by Kristen Stone, Meets twice a month. www.illuminating-light.com • 508-818-0675 407 Old Colony Rd. (Rte. 123), Norton, MA 02766
Classes, Certifications & Schools SPIRAL ARTS Spiral Arts is dedicated to providing rich experiences in the Expressive Arts as a deep path to personal discovery. Through unique workshops, personal coaching, and
The Art Ashram, Spiral Arts encourages spiritual exploration, healing with art, creative expression, intuitive art-making, and opportunities to find meaning on your personal path. No art experience or talent is necessary – you already have everything you need inside you! Dr. Patricia Wild www.spiralartsforlife.com 603-340-4566
X 508-541-4115 X
“I learned more from one session than I did from 5 years of analysis.”
54 Spirit of Change FALL/WINTER 2020
- J.G., Cambridge, MA
Change the world by being yourself. — Amy Poehler
GREATER RHODE ISLAND
HYPNOTIST
CERTIFICATION TRAINING
AFFORDABLE HERBAL EDUCATION THROUGHOUT THE YEAR
NEXT COURSE DATE: JANUARY 16, 2021
You will learn:
❖ Intensive
1 How to hypnotize
7-Month Herbal Apprenticeships
❖ Advanced
1 How to use hypnosis to help clients
Training – Levels Two and Three
❖ Aromatherapy
make personal changes
❖ Lyme
1 How to turn hypnosis into a profitable
Certification – Two Levels
Disease Practitioner Training
part-time or full-time business Instructor John Koenig has practiced hypnosis in Rhode Island since 1998—his work featured on national television and author of The Hypnotic Coach.
Certified Instructor John.Koenig.Hypnotist@live.com GreaterRhodeIslandHypnosisTraining.com 401-374-1890
Massage | Aesthetics Polarity | RYSE Ipswich • Plymouth • Westboro You deserve an education that honors who you are and who you are becoming. A great education is spiritually transforming: You overcome your limitations and realize your highest potential, at the same time you learn the foundation and skills to succeed. Excellent education is not by chance; it comes from years of listening to employers, graduates and students to find the best way to teach the most valuable information to make you successful. As a leader in energy medicine and
Eclectic Institute of Aromatherapy and Herbal Studies Instructor Linda Patterson offers over 20 years of experience in the science, art and principles of herbalism and aromatherapy.
New England Institute of Reflexology & Universal Studies ~ Now teaching throughout New England ~ www.walkinbalance.com v 508-317-3044 v
www.spiritofchange.org
100-Hour National Guild of Hypnotists Approved certification course
Herbal Apprenticeships ❖ Advanced Training Aromatherapy Levels One and Two www.bostonherbalstudies.com Arlington, MA ❖ 617.417.8686
Includes 1 year FREE NGH Certification upon graduation
energy based education since 1980, Nancy Risley recognizes that your education is a transformational healing process. As a successful therapist, author and teacher, her vision is to help you realize your dream of work that is creative and supports all aspects of who you are. Whether you work in a spa, clinic, or have your own business, you gain the required skills to create satisfaction as well as increased flexibility, control and income. The next step to fulfilling your future is to call for a no obligation, information interview with our Admissions Representative. We look forward to meeting you and learning about your future.
UPCOMING HERBAL CLASSES
October 4, 2020 – Aromatherapy Level One with Linda Patterson May 15-16, 2021 – Neuroinflammation and Autoimmune Immunity with Caroline Gagnon
Coaching
Carolyn McGee Soul Clarity Confidence Expert k Are old worn out patterns and thoughts
getting in the way of your bliss? k Do you sense your superpower of intuition
yet not take action on the messages? k Are you spending precious energy second-
guessing your decisions?
To reconnect with your Intuition, open the flow of your Divine Guidance to tap into your inner clarity for more confidence and abundance, I invite you to start with my “Soul Clarity System Bundle.” Clear your energetic blocks to a joyful and abundant life, trust your intuition, take inspired action, and feel confident with every life and business decision. For more info, visit Carolyn McGee, Soul Clarity Confidence Expert, at CarolynMcGee.com
Programs take from 4 to 12 months, depending on your schedule: Full-time, mother’s hours or part-time evenings. Accredited. Licensed. Financial Aid available for qualified students. 800-262-8530 v www.spatech.edu
Ongoing certification courses offered throughout the northeast including: ✴ 7-Month Herbal Certification ✴ 4-Month European-Based Aromatherapy Introduction ✴ 4-Month Advanced Aromatherapy Course ✴ 3-Month Conscious Nutrition Course ✴ Palmistry a tool of diagnoses www.aromatherapyandherbalstudies.com 978-297-4502
v
v
v
ED LANGAN LIFE Wisdom Psychic
calming manner have helped thousands of clients transform their lives. The Guides will answer questions about money, relationships, finding your soul mate, finding your life’s purpose, or any aspect of life.
Law of Attraction Expert
Ed also teaches workshops. See website for details.
Master Coach
“My session with Ed was not what I expected. It was exactly what I needed, and I feel so much better.” Working with Ed is unique and powerful. His psychic ability, coaching skills, and
EdwardLangan.com facebook.com/edlangan.byb info@EdwardLangan.com v 508 316-4574
Colon Hydrotherapy
Approved Continuing Education in Reflexology, Massage, and Reiki
Experience colon hydrotherapy in a safe, relaxed environment using state-of-the-art FDA registered equipment.
Integrative techniques strengthen foundations and create a balanced treatment style
Stephanie Dumas I-ACT Certified Colon Hydrotherapist, Owner
NCBTMB provider
Our goal is to act as a bridge between complimentary and conventional medicine through the training of qualified holistic practitioners. Join us!
Coaching sessions are in-person or by phone.
Lexington Medical Building 16 Clarke Street, Lexington, MA Cleansing for the body, the mind, the spirit
stephanie@healthyspiritcleansing.com 781-860-5116
FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 55
Consciousness Transformation Andrea Seiver, Ph.D. Channeled Readings Classes Have you spoken with an ascended master recently? Vywamus, channeled by Andrea Seiver, is a master and teacher who is working to help all humans make the shift into the higher levels of consciousness. Readings with Vywamus cover your life work, relationships, past lives, and other
issues with his characteristic warmth, humor, and practical advice. Channeled Classes and Spiritual Tutoring help you personally evolve and begin to live in a state of higher consciousness. Evenings with Vywamus: Vywamus shares his energy and discusses your questions on topics of general interest. Donation $10. Other Classes: Learn to Channel • Advanced Channeling For information, contact Andrea at 617-332-1541 • www.andreaseiver.com Available Now! The Next Big Bang: The Explosion of Human Consciousness A Vywamus Book Read more at www.andreaseiver.com
The Great Cosmic Teachings Of JESUS of Nazareth to His Apostles and Disciples, Who Could Understand Them With Explanations by Gabriele For the first time in the history of humankind, the Absolute Law of God is given to His children, with true-to-life explanations. For example: In all of infinity, there is only one principle: Sending and Receiving. Or: To waste energy, is to weaken soul and body.
The Free Universal Spirit is the teaching of the love for God and neighbor
www.Gabriele-Publishing-House.com Toll-free number: 1-844-576-0937 PO Box 2221, Deering, NH 03244 / Or at Amazon.com
Counseling and Therapy Astrology Therapy The sky reflects the chaos and tumult of this time. We’re transforming rapidly, gaining a deeper understanding of who we are. How are the “Pandemic Planets” revealing your soul? How is our world crisis your opportunity to liberate your deeper nature, and activate your gifts? Astrology illuminates this journey in a beautiful and amazing way.
Let’s explore your natal chart to validate and celebrate your knowing. Your recorded session becomes your ever-enlightening companion as you navigate this new era of your life. Nikki Davis, MA, is a passionate and caring Holistic Therapist skilled in counseling, astrology and a variety of healing arts. In her 30-year practice, she also blends natural remedies and products for skin, body and soul. Visit HolisticOasis.com to schedule a FREE 15-MINUTE CONSULATION, and a warmly interactive session.
Center of the Heart Whole Health Integration
Joan Holzman, Psy. D. Lic. Psychologist, Lic. Marriage and Family Therapist Dance/Movement Therapist From the time we are very young we take life’s experiences to heart. Over time we may forget our core, hurts and feelings, but they remain with us. Our heartfelt experiences help shape our sense of self and our interactions with others.
Holistic Counseling Concepts Trish Whynot, D.C.Ed. Doctor of CORE Education Author of “Why Me? Why Now? WHY NOT? Finding opportunity in your obstacles.” Dr. Trish Whynot’s approach is a blending of personal growth and spiritual wisdom incorporating ASAT™ C.O.R.E. Counseling, meditative techniques, and wise guidance that comes through the Mineral Kingdom.
I offer a variety of modalities such as: EMDR, Sandtray Therapy, Relaxation Techniques, Therapeutic Movement & Psychotherapy to help heal our core issues and attain a more integrated sense of health and well being. I look forward to meeting you. Client Comments: s Sandtray – “Sand tray therapy helped me see my life more clearly.” s EMDR – “I had insights I never had before.” s Therapeutic Movement – “It was great to feel the freedom in my body after working with you.” 42 Thoreau Street, Concord, MA 01742 978-369-6138
Get to the root of physical, social and financial problems. G Learn approaches to living and loving that expect opportunities even during challenging times. G Thrive on the wisdom, compassion and understanding gained from life experiences and open to an array of extraordinary futures. G
“What impressed me about Dr. Trish Whynot was her ability to see through the chaos of life’s web and identify the root cause of any problem.” — Bob Olson, Afterlifetv.com Workshops and Sessions Available In Office, Phone or Skype Pittsfield and Windham, NH trish@trishwhynot.com www.TrishWhynot.com G 978-314-4545
Barbara Madden Johnson
“Barbara has a unique gift. She really helped me find the person I was meant to be buried under the layers of what people wanted me to be.”
Certified Master Hypnotist NLP Practitioner Energy Medicine Practitioner
You can do this. You can find peace of mind. You can make positive changes permanent. You can heal your body, mind, and soul. You may not know how to connect to the part of you that knows the way, but that part of you is still in you. Barbara will help you reconnect and guide you on your unique healing path.
Barbara brings a rich blend of deep experience as a clinician, clinical supervisor, college administrator, and professor. She helps individuals resolve health issues, including learning disabilities, dyslexia, immune and auto-immune diseases, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and depression, as well as issues relating to career, identity, relationships, and more recently, gender identification.
– Sheryl C., Boston, MA
Be at your creative potential now. Barbara Madden Johnson, MA, CAGS, LPC 617-484-1716 u UcanEmerge@aol.com
Few things can help an individual more than The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
to place responsibility on him, and to let him
The second best time is now. — Chinese Proverb
know that you trust him. — Booker T. Washington
56 Spirit of Change FALL/WINTER 2020
PATH TO THE PRESENT Diane Spindler, LMHC, LMFT Healing and teaching for over 25 years h Relief of PTSD and depression h Elimination of phobias h Reduction of anxiety, panic attacks,
unexplained body pain, nightmares, flashbacks, and dissociation
Holistic Psychotherapy Lori Miller-Freitas, LICSW Get to the core — Transform your life! You are on this earth to be happy and realize your true potential.
Psychotherapy clients have reached a point where they know why they feel badly, but don’t know how to release these bad feelings that keep them attached to their old stories and in the past. Using Gentle Reprocessing and other leading edge therapies, I help clients let go of these old stories so they can move on to a happier future. If you’re a veteran, a first responder, a victim of physical, mental, or sexual abuse, a victim of a disaster, a person with a traumatic background, a person who has anger issues, or a person who is afraid of public speaking, this process could be for you. h 508-886-0007 h
www.GentleReprocessing.com
Brainspotting A neurobiological tool for releasing traumatic/emotionally-charged issues within the brain. Holistic Psychotherapy Clinical Consultation Using extensive professional experience to resolve issues related to: Trauma, Grief, PTSD, Anxiety and Phobias.
EMDR R BSP R Hypnosis R Reiki
Certifications: LICSW, EMDRIA Approved Consultant, National Board of Certified Clinical Hypnotherapists. Visa/MC acccepted.
I use a combination of traditional, body centered and energy therapies to increase the speed and deepen the level of holistic healing.
294 Pleasant St. R Ste. 103B R Stoughton, MA www.eaglespirittherapies.com 781-297-2003
HELPING PEOPLE
live better lives
GLENN BIGONET, M.A.
Mental Health Counselor Clinical Hypnotherapist
Glenn Bigonet brings a rare level of compassion, acceptance and hope to his work. As a relationship specialist, his clients report increased connection, intimacy, better communication, and more joy. In addition, he is skilled at helping clients with trauma, abuse, anxiety, depression, addiction, grief, self-esteem, anger, and co-dependency.
Initial consultations are free.
Counseling Individuals, Couples & Families Weekly Group G Workshops Offered
Conveniently located in Wellesley. Just a short drive from Rte. 128/I-95.
www.CompassionateAcceptance.com 617-462-6642
COMPASSIONATE ACCEPTANCE
Healing and Bodywork
©
Libby Barnett, MSW, RMT Awaken Your Healing Touch Libby is a gifted, knowledgeable Reiki Master with 41 years experience. Libby learned Reiki from John Harvey Gray in 1979, and is the longest practicing Reiki Master Teacher on the East Coast. Her book, Reiki Energy Medicine, Bringing Healing Touch into Home, Hospital, and Hospice has sold over 75,000 copies in five languages. Use Reiki to create more joy, ease, and happiness. Let Libby’s warm, heart-centered approach help you take your next step toward self-love and inner peace. Reiki brings balance and harmony, supporting you doing the work you were born to do. Reiki facilitates transitions, promotes creativity and wisdom, and accelerates spiritual growth, helping you manifest your magnificence. Libby has been teaching Reiki at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health for 15 years. She has taught medical and nursing students at Harvard, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Brown, Tufts, and Yale, as well as staff at Mass General, Brigham and Women’s, Beth Israel, Mt. Auburn, Emerson, DartmouthHitchcock, Southern New Hampshire, New York Columbia Presbyterian hospitals, and social workers at the University of Maryland. Libby was featured in a Reiki segment for the PBS nationally televised series, Body and Soul.
www.spiritofchange.org
Graduates of other Reiki teachers welcome. Additional Reiki training dates can be found at: www.reikienergy.com
We are a dedicated and professional group of practitioners providing compassionate care to assist our clients on their journey to wellness. Acupuncture o Reflexology o Cupping
R Available for Rental
617-771-5119 R PortalCrystalGallery.com
Reiki Master Class: October 10
Bringing complimentary and alternative care to our community...
R Guest Presenters
Kyle Russell, Founder
Reiki II Class on day following Reiki I Class; Taking Reiki I and Reiki II back to back is encouraged.
To register or for more information: reikienergy.com reiki@reikienergy.com • 603-654-2787
R Weekly Classes
Crystals & Wellness Space
Reiki I: September 26, October 24, November 14, or December 5
One of Libby’s passions is teaching hospice staff and volunteers. Fueled by Reiki energy, their healing touch is
R Top Quality Selection
489 Mass. Ave., Arlington, MA 12 – 5 pm daily Kyle@CrystalConcentrics.com
All classes are offered virtually via Zoom:
All credit cards accepted. Social Work, Nursing and Massage contact hours/CEU’s available. Reiki Master Teacher Training info available on request.
R Minerals and Jewelry
R Meditations and Workshops
"My commitment to teach the Usui System of Reiki Healing in the authentic, traditional manner inspired me to visit Japan to retrace the roots of Reiki. I am dedicated to teaching this sacred healing art to promote health and conscious living on the planet. I invite you to give yourself the gift of Reiki. It is an easy, effective self-care tool to love, heal, and empower yourself. I look forward to meeting you and sharing Reiki.”
“Libby has a beautiful way of teaching and creates a perfect atmosphere for healing and learning.”
Crystals
Portal Crystal Gallery
enhanced, creating greater effectiveness in calming agitation, soothing pain and providing comfort. In class, a powerful slide presentation captures the essence of Reiki and highlights the latest research. Reiki stories from Libby’s extensive experience will uplift and inspire you, showing how anyone can learn Reiki. You receive attunements and practice giving and receiving Reiki. You leave class with an illustrated notebook, certificate, and Reiki pin, fully trained and certified to do Reiki on yourself, family, friends, and animals. “Hands on, Reiki’s on.”
Massage (over 10 types, including prenatal!)
18 North Meadows Rd, Unit 12B, Medfield, MA
Gua Sha o TuiNa o Therapeutic Ultrasound
holisticwellnesscenter.org | 508-359-7400 Now located in the Medfield Crossing Shopping Plaza on Route 27
Holistic Health Coaching and more!
Reiki o IET o Polarity
…and if that isn’t enough, crystals & gifts too!
FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 57
SACRED RESONANCE HEALING Bena Phillipo EM Level 4 Practitioner Holy Fire III Karuna Reiki Master/Teacher
SESSIONS AND CLASSES • Distance Healing Sessions using EM and Reiki with flexible times offered • Geobiology Land Clearing for home and property • Reiki Shares usually fall on the second Saturday of the month. They should resume in spring. • On site classes have been suspended until spring 2021. I will offer online classes if people are interested. • Holy Fire III, Reiki I & II Class March 27th & 28th, 2021 • Holy Fire III, Master/Teacher Class April 9th - 11th, 2021 • Holy Fire III, Karuna Master Class May 21st – 23rd, 2021 Sacred Resonance Healing 43 Highland St., Southborough, MA 01772 508-303-0366 • SacredResonanceHealing.com Bena@SacredResonanceHealing.com
intuitive
EM is a healing energy medicine that combines ancient Chinese systems of acupuncture and feng shui with modern knowledge of physics and anatomy. EM allows practitioners to diagnose and treat people over long distances, tapping into Universal Qi for diagnosing and treating western diseases and balancing eastern flows. My journey has led to me to my own healing practice, SACRED RESONANCE HEALING. The sacred practices, symbols and guides imbued and experienced along the way resonate strongly within. Trust and free will blend into one powerful, healing energy, which I channel and transfer to others. To touch, in order to heal: That seems to be my calling. I first answered this calling when I was in my 20’s as a deep tissue massage therapist. Exploring the healing arts in the San Francisco bay area, I came upon many practitioners who used a variety of modalities. Some combined different techniques in a single session, which worked well for me. Knowing this, I went on to learn many different healing modalities: Chi Nei Tsang, Shiatsu, Reflexology, Craniosacral Therapy, Reiki, and my latest healing modality is EM. I have had great success combining these in various ways. My journey continues. Perhaps yours will begin, or continue. Join me.
HEALING
Wendy Marks
M.Ed, C.A.S., FAPA R Medical intuitive sessions, energy heal-
ing and integrative therapy R 30 years of experience in traditional and
complementary healthcare
Nicola
Kehoe-Barbosa TRUE QUANTUM HEALING SELF-SABOTAGE COACH
Reiki Master and Teacher, Usui Reiki Ryoho
“I felt so at peace last night. I slept through the night and am still at peace this morning.” - Steff WHAT HER STUDENTS SAY:
Creating a Personal Path to Inner Healing through Reiki Crystal Reiki offers traditional Usui Reiki, Crystal Chakra Balancing, Space Healing and Clearing and Reiki Training, Shares and Classes for those desiring to incorporate Reiki into their lives and work.
“I love your space, the location, the energy of it, how prepared you were. I think you are a very professional and comforting presence.” - Bonnie
RACHEL ROSS, APRN, CNM
bringing body, mind and spirit into balance
Text or call 508-868-3624 info@BodyBalancingCenter.com
58 Spirit of Change FALL/WINTER 2020
MASSAGE THERAPY
SELF-SABOTAGE COACHING educates you on the areas you are not succeeding in and why, and provides action steps for success. info@nicolakb.com nicolakb.com V 774-343-1670
HILLSIDE HERBALS
~ Family Wellness with Herbs ~ Find herbal solutions for the whole family Shop: by appointment. Download catalog. Custom preparations also available by appointment.
206 Worcester Road #35, Princeton, MA 01541 508-827-2733 k holisticwomanshealth.com
206 Worcester Road #35, Princeton, MA 01541 508-847-8615 k hillsideherbals.com
Holistic Medical
COLON HYDROTHERAPY Detox with state of the art “Open System” providing complete privacy. F I-ACT and National Board certified.
www.BodyBalancingCenter.com
V
New: Join my online discount quality pharmacy; Fullscript.com Use my name to create an account. Get 15% off your favorite brands
R 508-353-5136 R www.CrystalReikiEnergy.com
DETOX & CLEANSE With Infrared Thera Sauna, Q2 Ionic Foot bath, BEMER
identify and heal the root cause of mental, emotional, spiritual and physical problems.
Services include functional medicine testing and well-woman gynecological care.
Find Crystal Reiki at The Gentle Place Wellness Center in Framingham, MA
ENERGY HEALING Therapy Emotion and Body Code, Energy Codes and Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique, Psych-K, NLP and more...
V TRUE QUANTUM HEALING can
HOLISTIC WOMEN’S HEALTH
Healing: Combined Modalities Body Balancing Center
own intuitive skills “By healing ourselves we create changes that have a ripple effect on the world around us.” Looking for practical guidance to create your own spiritual path? You’ll find it in Wendy’s book Your Soul’s Companion, available on her website and at amazon.com. www.wendymarks.com R 781-449-5368 wlm922@wendymarks.com
Herbal Healing
WHAT HER CLIENTS SAY:
DEBORAH STRAFUSS
spiritual health R Works with individuals to develop their
Healing and self-sabotage coaching sessions via phone or skype. See our website for more information and youtube videos.
Deborah Strafuss is a dedicated practitioner committed to the health and wellness of her clients, and a devoted teacher gently guiding her students into their own experience of Reiki through attunement and training. “Deborah is a caring professional who puts a - Brenda new client at ease.”
R Improve your physical, mental, and
Experience a holistic approach to wellness at the BioMed Center. Our caring medical and dental experts use advanced technology to treat you, and your symptoms. F
We focus on preventing, reversing, and correcting the deepest roots of chronic and degenerative disease by restoring your body’s systematic processes.
F
We offer fast, painless, and nontoxic therapeutics that follow a noninvasive prevention and healing medical model committed to personalized care.
F
We took the best bioregulatory medical technologies from around the globe and brought them into one facility, seamlessly integrating medicine and dentistry to treat the whole patient.
Learn more about our assessments, therapeutics, and integrated care packages. Contact the BioMed Center New England today to get started. 833-8BIOMED (833-824-6633) THE BIOMED CENTER NEW ENGLAND 111 Chestnut St., #1, Providence, RI 02903 BiomedNE.com
Homeopathy Experience the Healing Energy of
Homeopathy ABBY BEALE, CCH RSHom(NA) Are you looking for a smarter way to heal your body from nagging chronic issues?
Homeopathic care is holistic and individualized, taking into account all of who you are and how you experience life – mentally, emotionally, and physically. Whether
it’s depression, anxiety, women’s issues, digestive troubles, child behavior problems, or more, know that homeopathy works with your body to relieve symptoms, restore vitality, and improve your overall health. Ask about Tea with a Homeopath events or beginner study groups. All appointments currently online only. ABBY BEALE, CCH RSHOM(NA) homeopathyhealings@gmail.com HomeopathyHealings.com k 413-426-1024
Connecting to Spirit for inspiration, sustenance and support for your life’s journey Nancy guides you into a connection with spirit and your soul for guidance, healing and direction. Connect with a loved one who has passed or receive Soul messages in a session with Nancy. Ask about package discounts and mentoring relationships. READINGS AND SESSIONS IN
Spiritual mediumship Spirit portraits of loved ones in Spirit F Akashic record life readings F Group sessions and classes F Akashic Training F Soul Art F F
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Nutrition Holistic Nutrition Services, LLC BETH COLON, M.S., BCHN
Nutrition Counselor Board Certified in Holistic Nutrition Certified GAPS Practitioner Specializing in digestive wellness
Come on a journey with me to improve your health with holistic nutrition.
PROGRAMS: S Digestive Wellness S GAPS S Liver Health and Cleansing S Brain Health S Cancer Recovery S Lymphedema Management
978-340-0448 www.HolisticNutritionServices.com
Readings Nancy Johansen RN, CCH, RMT
Connecting you with your Angelic Dream Team, creating your Happily Ever After Angel Readings S Past Life Regression Angel Therapy® S Reiki S Hypnotherapy
at Angeltouche
Soulful Life Coaching Psychic Intuitive S Angel Therapy Practitioner ®
www.spiritofchange.org
Private sessions in person or distance by phone and e-mail. Classes and workshops ~ Franklin, MA Nancy@Angeltouche.com www.Angeltouche.com S 508-577-4552
SOUL ART Nancy offers sessions in the Akashic Records to open to your Soul. She will sketch while she reads. You will receive your art a couple weeks later. SOUL ART MENTORING Nancy Also offers Soul Art Mentoring over a period of time. This mentoring includes Akashic healing work, sketches to help you on your way, and a final piece of art that commemorates your Journey and gives you a vision of you on your Soul’s path. Interested in finding out more about training or mentorship? Contact Nancy for a FREE discovery session 978-835-0005 F nancy@angelscapes.net Haverhill, MA F angelscapes.net
Spiritual Practices Please contact us or visit one of these New England locations:
When we change... the world changes. Methods of achieving stability and clarity of mind become more and more essential as our social, political, and economic structures change dramatically. Raja Yoga is a simple but powerful form of meditation that can help you to develop peace of mind, resilience, and inner strength. The Brahma Kumaris is a worldwide spiritual organization, affiliated with the UN and recipient of seven Peace Messenger awards. Classes include meditation and a range of other practical tools for self-transformation. Workshops, group meditations, and retreats are held regularly. All activities are offered free of charge, as a community service.
The Greater Boston Church of Spiritualism ARLINGTON MASONIC TEMPLE 19 Academy St., Arlington, MA (off Mass Ave., easy access by T via Harvard Sq.) The Greater Boston Church of Spiritualism embraces a religious and spiritual belief blending ancient wisdom with contemporary thought. Services are held at 10:30 am every Sunday, with mediumship, live music, inspirational talks, and healing by laying on of hands.
b Brahma Kumaris Learning Center for Peace
75 Common St, Watertown, MA 617-926-1230 • bknewengland.org boston@us.brahmakumaris.org b Inner Space Meditation Center & Gallery
1110 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 617-547-1110 • innerspaceharvardsq.org info@innerspaceharvardsq.org b Shrewsbury @ ATFS Center
433 South St, Shrewsbury, MA 617-926-1230 shrewsbury@bknewengland.org b Providence
123 North Main St, Providence, RI 401-354-2693 providence@bknewengland.org b Manchester
575 W. Willow St, Ste 209, Manchester, NH 603-622-5500 manchester@bknewengland.org
As an evolving spiritual community, The Greater Boston Church of Spiritualism offers weekday evening classes in mediumship, healing, and meditation; mediums days are the last Sunday of the month; and seminars and workshops through the year. For a brochure with upcoming events, or to speak with the Pastor, call us. Visit our website for current events or more information. An affiliate of the Spiritualists United Network (SUN) and the International Spiritualist Federation
Our mailing address: 40-44 Spring St., Watertown, MA 02472 617-923-4334 GreaterBostonChurchofSpiritualism.com
FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 59
ANGELS
Ross J. Miller, psychic. Meet your angels
Directory of Holistic Specialties Fall/Winter 2020
and spirit guides. 617-527-3583. Visit www.The MysticWay.com
treatment and chamber sales for home use. www.communityhyperbaric.com. 802-472-8900.
ANIMAL SERVICES
MEDICAL INTUITIVE
Dr. Margo Roman & Associates. 508-435-4077. MashVet.com
Incomparable detail, accuracy and action plan. Compassionate advanced healing restores health. 978-834-0341. TheWayToBalance.com/medicalintuitive-readings. Intuitive Healing with Wendy Marks. Over 25 years, with long-term chronic problems a specialty. Very effective with finding root issues. Compassionate and committed. www.wendymarks.com, 781-449-5368.
MASH Integrative Veterinary Care, since 1982.
ARVIGO THERAPY
Noreen Cerqua, LCMT and certified Arvigo®
practitioner. Walpole, MA. 508-397-8287. wwwWombCareAndConnection.com.
ASTROLOGY
Eric Linter, over 25 years experience. Readings,
classes, daily forecast. stars@ericlinter.com. 508-541-4115.
COUNSELING & THERAPY
Joel Perlmutter, PhD. Licensed 35 years. Stress,
Sue Singleton, Nearly 30 years, 9,000+ readings.
PAIN RELIEF
Pat Lebau, MA, ERYT-500, Kripalu Yoga teacher, offers Integrated Positional Therapy sessions. Discover how to relieve your pain. PatLebauyoga.com
anxiety, relationships. Stow, MA and Putnam, CT. 978-897-9797
PAST LIFE THERAPY
CRYSTALS
energy. 617-527-3583. www.The MysticWay.com
Portal Crystal Gallery, Arlington Center.
489 Mass. Ave. (open 7 days, 12-5pm). Kyle@PortalCrystalGallery.com. 617-771-5119
DEPRESSION & ANXIETY
Healed in 2 Hours. Ross J. Miller, psychic healer.
617-527-3583. www.TheMysticWay.com
EMF PROTECTION
The Rejuvenizer®, protection from EMFs and other
damaging frequencies. www.lighthealing.com. 512-301-2999
EM HEALING
Sacred Resonance Healing. Bena Phillipo, EM
Level 4 practitioner. Holy Fire III Karuna Reiki Master/Teacher. Southborough, MA. www.SacredResonanceHealing.com.
FENG SHUI
Feng Shui Services of New England. Julie
Ross J. Miller. Relive past lives and release blocked
READINGS
Nancy Smith, spiritual medium and Akashic life readings. 978-835-0005. www.angelscapes.net
REIKI
Holy Fire III Training. Women of Wisdom. Katie
Malloy Ramaci. Holy Fire III Advanced/RMT. 508-230-3680. Womenofwisdominc.com Libby Barnett, MSW, MSW, Reiki Master Teacher and author. 38 years Reiki experience. 603-654-2787 www.reikienergy.com. CEU’s. The John Harvey Gray Center for Reiki Healing.
603-899-3288. www.learnreiki.org
Sacred Resonance Healing. Bena Phillipo,
Holy Fire III Karuna Reiki Master/Teacher. Southborough, MA. 508-303-0366. www.SacredResonanceHealing.com. Sacred Song Reiki and Sound Healing. Priscilla Gale, Reiki Master/Teacher. SacredSongReiki.com
Pelletier-Rutkowski, MS, RN. Consulting and education. www.FSSone.com.
RETREAT CENTERS
GHOSTS REMOVED
Haines Falls, NY. 518-589-5000. www.peacevillageretreat.org
medium, healer. Call 617-527-3583. www.The MysticWay.com
YOGA
From Your Home/Aura. Ross J. Miller, psychic
HOMEOPATHY
Abby Beale, CCH. Certified in classical
homeopathy. Online and in person. Homeopathy relieves symptoms and restores vitality naturally. HomeopathyHealings.com
60 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
HYPERBARIC OXYGEN THERAPY
Hyperbaric Vermont Oxygen Therapy offers
Brahma Kumaris Peace Village Retreat Center.
Worcester Yoga Center. Ann Bissanti, CYT. Over 30 years experience Iyengar yoga. 508-829-6300. worcesteryogacenter.com
Add your listing! Next deadline: January 31, 2021 Email advertise@spiritofchange.org.
Classifieds ASTROLOGY YOUR DAILY READING.
Visit spiritofchange.org for astrologer Eric Linter's daily word.
BUSINESS SERVICES
HYPNOSIS
SPIRITUAL SINGLES
Kathryn McGlynn, Certified Hypnotist. Past Life Regression, Soul Entrainment® and metaphysical hypnosis. Schedule your online session today for a transformative experience. (781) 340-2146. ybglum@juno.com www.hypnosis.ws
LABYRINTHS
Ready for a conscious, evolved relationship? Our amazing members value spiritual growth, yoga, meditation and sustainable living. 20 years online! Join now — Meet your soulmate. www.SpiritualSingles.com.
TRANSFORMATION In this time of pandemic, we know Love is the ark. Please check www.spirithollow.org for classes, retreats and events as we adapt to new challenges and new opportunities.
Save on your credit card processing fees! Contact Merchant Services Consulting Group in Upton, MA today! (508) 720-1514. www.MSCGNE.com
VOLUNTEER
DOWSING All About Dowsing. Discover the science of dowsing. Self-instructional DVD's, books, Original Cameron Aurameter. www.dowsing. com. (805) 649-5721. Catalog: PO Box 30305, Santa Barbara, CA 93130.
EDUCATION
Make a Difference and Become an Ascend Hospice Volunteer in Massachusetts
ONLINE HOLISTIC
Touchstone Community School is an independent school serving students in grades PK–8, cultivating a joy of lifelong learning through transformative intellectual, social, and emotional growth. Come visit us! Learning through nature and outdoors The child as an active learner Project-based learning Challenging academics Focus on physical activity At least one hour of recess daily Focus on creativity and the arts No standardized testing Small class sizes
Contact one of our Volunteer Supervisors for more information Jennifer.Fenuccio@ascendhealth.com Kelly.Bollman@ascend.com 508-229-8390
How can your mind help you? Explore goals you can achieve. Maybe A Creative Insight can help. Call (781) 599-8275
HERBAL STUDIES Boston School of Herbal Studies. Arlington and Lincoln, MA. Herbal Apprenticeships – three levels. Aromatherapy Certification – two levels. Lyme Disease Practitioner Training, intensive weekends with visiting herbalists. (781) 646-6319 or bostonherbalstudies.com. www.spiritofchange.org
YOGA Certified Yoga teacher and therapist Ann Bissanti, trained in India by B.KS. Iyengar, has studied Yoga and meditation for the past 30 years. She has taught Yoga at Leonard Morse Hospital in Natick, at various fitness centers and adult education programs, and privately. Call for more information.
508-839-0038 Grafton, MA touchstoneschool.com
GUIDANCE
Visit our website to learn more about our specialized hospice care and services AscendHospice.com
Find Alternative Medicine Practitioners, Products, Books, Magazines, Blogs, Workshops and More!
SPIRITUAL GOODS
Worcester Yoga Center
MYSTICAL BANNERS. Hand painted wall hangings and altar cloths. Sacred symbols, angels, mantras and mandalas. Divine designs with a magickal twist! Please visit https://www.etsy.com/shop/ MysticalBanners.
21 West Street, Worcester, MA 01609 WorcesterYogaCenter.com (508)829-6300
SUBMIT YOUR AD
Spring/Summer issue deadline: January 31, 2021 Questions? Email advertise@spiritofchange.org or call (508) 278-9640 x5.
FALL/WINTER 2020 | Spirit of Change 61
A
O
Alternatives for Health..........................31 Anastasia’s Health Happenings.............10 Angels Teach...........................................29 Angelscapes...................................... 29, 59 Angeltouche............................................59 Annie Appleseed Project, The...............39 Arvigo Therapy.......................................47 Ascend Hospice......................................61 Atma Buti Sound & Vibration School...7
Olson Media Group.......................... 3, 51 Opening Lotus Yoga...............................17 Optimism Plus........................................35 P
Index of Advertisers
B
Fall/Winter 2020
Balance Within.......................................48 Libby Barnett...........................................57 Beadniks..................................................10 Abby Beale...............................................59 Bhavna's Wellness Group......................11 Glenn Bigonet.........................................57 Biomed Center of New England, The....58 Bliss Through Yoga.................................17 Body Balancing Center..........................58 Boston School of Herbal Studies, The...55 Brahma Kumaris.....................................59 Mark Braunstein.....................................23
R Maryann Roefaro...................................19 Carrie Rowan............................................8 S
C Cambridge Health Alliance.....................9 Celtic Art Therapy..................................61 Circles of Wisdom..................................51 Core Connection, The............................17 Crystal Reiki............................................58 D Dancing Jaguar Inspirations.................33 Dinno Health..........................................39 E Eclectic Institute of Aromatherapy and Herbal Studies, The................................55 Kevin Ross Emery..................................25 Enchanted Fox........................................11 F FrogPond Yoga Centre...........................17
H
L
Havana Wellness Studio........................29 Healing from the Body Level Up..........64 Healthy Spirit..........................................55 Heart Space OC......................................51 Heaven and Earth Studio.......................45 Hillside Herbals......................................58 Holistic Nutrition Services....................59 Holistic Oasis................................... 54, 56 Holistic Wellness Center................ 23, 57 Joan Holzman.........................................56
Light In Time-Space...............................49 Light Unlimited......................................13 Eric Linter................................................54 Lotus Flower Living...............................48 LoveLight Illuminations........................35 Lucid Path Wellness...............................29 Andrew Lutts...........................................35
I Illuminating Light Healing Center........................................54 Inner Traditions......................................19
G Gabrielle Publishing House..................56 Arthur Gertler.........................................48 Greater Boston Church of Spiritualism.........................................59 Groton Wellness Center........................26 Gracelyn Guyol.......................................47
Bonnie Page.............................................27 Path to the Present.................................57 Pets and Spirits........................................31 Phoenix Rising Healing.........................15 Monique Pommier.................................54 Portal Crystal Gallery............................57 Pyramid Books.......................................27
J Barbara Johnson.....................................56 K Nicole Kehoe-Barbosa...........................58 John Koenig.............................................55
H
L
HandTales................................................15 Harmony Integrative Bodywork...........17
Ed Langan................................................55 Pat LeBau.................................................49
62 Spirit of Change | FALL/WINTER 2020
M M.A.S.H............................................ 25, 32 Maha Yoga Center..................................17 Kristen Mara...........................................23 Tina Marian.............................................19 Wendy Marks..........................................58 Massachusetts Satsang Society......... 7, 37 Massage Envy............................................2 Mari McCarthy.........................................9 Carolyn McGee................................ 38, 55 Metaphysically Speaking.......................37 Lori Miller-Freitas..................................57 Mountainbrook Yoga.............................17 N Kathleen Nagy.........................................38 Natural Living Expo...............................21 NE Institute of Reflexology...................55 New England Spas..................................15
Sacred Resonance............................ 45, 58 Sacred Stone Academy.............................3 Science of Spirituality............................31 Sea Glass Yoga & Wellness............. 17, 37 Andrea Seiver..........................................56 Sheepskin Mama......................... 17,59,61 Sohum Yoga.............................................17 Spa Tech...................................................55 Spiral Arts................................................54 Spirit Hollow...........................................49 Sturbridge Herbfest................................33 T Touchstone Community School...........61 Linda Tumbarello...................................38 V Tam Veilleux............................................45 Vesta.........................................................33 Volcanic Origins.....................................27 W Way to Balance,The................................63 Wellness Roundtable, The.....................32 Austyn Wells...........................................15 Westborough Yoga.................................17 Trish Whynot..........................................56 Anne-Marie Freyer Wiboltt..................21 Women of Wisdom......................... 23, 54 Worcester Yoga.......................................17 Wu Healing Center...................................5 Y Yoga Anita...............................................17 Yoga at the Ashram........................... 9, 17 Yoga Studio, The.....................................17 Your Health Matters...............................32 Your Inner Spark....................................47
www.spiritofchange.org
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