2023-SutraRelaunchBlog-featured

What the Spiritual Science of Ancient India Can Teach Us Today

“Live each moment completely and the future will take care of itself.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda

Today, as miracles of technology are shrinking our world and bringing us closer together, the global village is growing before our eyes. Yet the challenges are growing, too, with climate change, conflict, and resource scarcity demanding more of the human heart, mind and soul than ever before.

What will it take to become worthy citizens of an enlightened future? How will people build the spiritual strength they need? Many have already discovered that the sacred wisdom of the past holds the key.

The spiritual science of ancient India has re-emerged in a modern setting with remarkable tools for navigating the path ahead!

When asked for advice by a fellow entrepreneur, tech giant Steve Jobs recommended a trip to India. As a teenager, Jobs had discovered the book Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, master teacher from India and founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles. Jobs made a trip to India during his years of developing his iconic computer company, Apple, and gained a new realization of his purpose and his future in the home of one of mankind’s earliest and richest spiritual traditions.

Jobs made a point of rereading Yogananda’s book of spiritual wisdom once every year. Those who attended the memorial service for Steve Jobs when he died in 2011 each received a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi in a plain brown box. It was a gift from the heart of the best advice for living that Jobs had ever found.

In the twentieth century, the arrival in the West of teachers like Yogananda sparked interest in the spiritual traditions of Eastern philosophy and religion. Practices like yoga and meditation opened new avenues of self-discovery, healing, and spiritual awakening, just as quantum science began to open new vistas in the study of energy and matter.

Today the healing and empowering influence of the ancient wisdom of India is spreading like a breath of fresh air into classrooms, boardrooms, homes, and meeting houses. Technology is bringing the principles of yoga and meditation, mindfulness, positive thinking, and compassion into the everyday world of everyday people.

From celebrities attending yoga classes to school boards approving daily meditation sessions for young children, the practice of mindfulness is growing in popular culture, offering a new lease on spiritual life for millions. The opportunity to embrace this ancient wisdom has come at the perfect time.

It was my great privilege to live and study in India where I discovered the power of this ancient wisdom tradition. My personal quest for knowledge and spiritual training led me to India to explore what I knew was available there. The spiritual science of ancient India holds secrets about human life and the Divine that speak to a modern world overwhelmed by the increasing pace of life, the rapid change, the flood of information, and danger on a global scale.

The message of community, life purpose, and personal connection to nature and the Divine has never been more needed. In my work today, I see a huge blossoming of interest in the study of energy healing and amazing growth in the rate of initiations into higher and higher spiritual levels. Spirit is aware that our world is in a true state of crisis, so we need as many conscious people as possible who are willing to be of service.

What is it about the spiritual science of ancient India that offers inspiration to everyone who seeks it? What does this wisdom hold for anyone today looking for personal growth, fulfillment, happiness, and purpose?

I’ve got a free webinar coming up next week which offers an opportunity to discover the ways this wisdom of the ages can help you create a richer, fuller, and more meaningful life. The pursuit of wisdom involves taking an active role in study and learning and includes these important steps:

1.  Gain knowledge about the nature of life in the context of thousands of years of tradition. Learn how to think about your life in the most honest, productive, and compassionate way.

2.  Face your emotional ebb and flow and decide in what ways your emotions are hindering or healing you. Learn to make choices that center and calm you and move you in the direction of joy, harmony, and contribution to a loving world.

3.  Make peace with uncertainty and change in the world while recognizing the unchanging space within. Strengthen your connection to the Divine.

4.  Learn to create personal well-being through self-awareness and a positive outlook. By honoring the divine gift of life, you express gratitude and radiate love and kindness that all can share.

5.  Recognize the unity of all creation. Your compassionate service helps build the common good even on the smallest level.

If you’re attracted to this kind of learning, or you’re curious to learn more about mastering your spiritual life through the wisdom traditions of ancient India, join my free webinar on Thursday, December 14th 11am PST or register to receive the replay >>>

2023-PerpetualThanksgivingBlog-featured

Perpetual Thanksgiving

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” –Marcel Proust

It has been a tough few years. You have most likely been affected, to a greater or lesser degree, by powerful forces, including a pandemic, wars, and economic uncertainty sweeping the globe. However difficult this time has been for you, is exactly why it’s so important to reflect on all you still have to be grateful for.

And while we gather for Thanksgiving feasts, it’s important to go beyond the dinner, and go back to the true meaning of Thanksgiving . . . and give thanks.

Gratitude is more than a quick thumbs up for the pumpkin pie; true gratitude is a path to the divine. Henry Ward Beecher, the 19th century clergyman and social reformer who always focused on Christ’s love, said: “The unthankful heart discovers no mercies; but the thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.”

The ancient root of the word gratitude, gwere, means “to be in contact with the Divine.” Gratitude is a way to unleash a flow of positive energy in and out of your heart, and to open to the love of the universe that is available to fill you. Gratitude can transform your mood, shift you into your Higher Self, and connect you to Spirit.

So what do you have to be grateful for amidst the fears and worries of all that is going on in the world?

Start with your health. It may not be perfect, but you’re alive and breathing. Thank you, thank you for the chance to still be here, to appreciate the stark beauty of a winter sunset, the smile of a happy child, the ability to give praise.

Maybe you’re grateful for having a week or a month or, thank God, a year of sobriety under your belt. Being thankful for one day at a time is a good practice for everyone.

You may have loving pets that provide you true companionship. Their unconditional love (in the case of dogs) and noble tolerance (cats) of your perceived flaws are certainly worthy of thanks (and treats). Being grateful for their safe and non-judgmental love opens your heart effortlessly.

Gratitude is how you make your heart sing. When you are occupied with remembering those who have helped you along the way during this past year, your heart is happy. It’s interesting to note that you can’t be feeling grateful and unhappy at the same time. And as Piglet long ago noticed (thanks to A.A. Milne), “…even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”

I recently reconnected with an old friend and spent an hour doing something utterly frivolous: singing! Seriously, just the two us, singing to each other over Zoom, doing hilarious, impromptu duets, and laughing at our mistakes and off-key moments. It is easier than ever to connect with close friends, even if they are a great distance away. So, let’s all be grateful for Zoom!

Like everything else, there is a spectrum of gratitude, ranging from being thankful the sun is shining to down-on-your-knees, head-bowed gratefulness when your life or that of a loved one is spared. It includes your attempts to be grateful for those who have made your life more difficult; that challenge can humble your ego and give you the opportunity to raise your own vibration.

When you are filled with gratitude, you are connected to everyone and everything in the web of love that sustains the universe. Giving thanks for all that you yourself are, for the people, plants, and animals in your environment, and around the world, brings you into the present moment and into the presence of spirit. In the words of Shakespeare, “O Lord that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.”

Above all, dear student, my heart is full of gratitude for you, for generously sharing your spiritual journey with me. We are one in Spirit, and I am grateful for your companionship and support as, together, we walk toward home.

2023-ForestBathingBlog-featured

Forest Bathing – A Must-Try Therapy for Healing and Wellness

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears, does it make a sound? That’s an old Zen koan, an unanswerable or paradoxical question used to go beyond the intellect and help open the student’s mind to greater internal truths of spirit and intuition. But you don’t need a Zen Buddhist master’s koan to benefit from the Japanese practice of Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing.

It doesn’t refer to sitting in a bubble bath in a grove of trees, although it definitely feels like it! Forest bathing is simply being in the presence of trees, doing nothing but hanging—not hiking, not taking photos with your phone, not talking. It’s simply being with the trees and letting your nervous system attune to their presence. The trees and all members of the plant kingdom are the highest consciousness on our planet; they instinctively know how to soothe us, how to heal us.

The Scientific Backing for Nature Therapy

According to an EPA survey, we spend 87 percent of our time indoors, plus another 6 percent in our cars. That doesn’t leave much time for the restorative benefits of the great outdoors.

One study showed that gallbladder surgery patients who just looked at trees through a hospital window had a faster recovery time.

The Japanese have spent millions of dollars to study the effects of forest bathing on the mind and body. A professor at the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo measured human NK (natural killer) cells in the immune system both before and after forest bathing. NK cells respond rapidly against viral infections and protect against tumor formation; they are a vital part of a healthy immune system. During the week following a forest visit, NK cell activity increased significantly, and positive effects lasted for a month after a weekend in the woods, including less inflammation, improved mood, better ability to focus, more energy, and better sleep.

You know how the air in a forest seems fresher than city air? That’s because trees emit essential oils (called phytoncide) to protect themselves from germs and insects. When you inhale phytoncide, it improves the functioning of your immune system.

Another Japanese study measured stress factors before and after a 30-minute visit to a forest. They found lower concentrations of cortisol, blood pressure and pulse rate went down, there was more parasympathetic nerve activity (rest-and-digest system) and less sympathetic nerve activity (flight-or-fight responses). In other words, hanging out with the trees makes us humans less stressed.

Trees are not only good for your body, they are also good for your spirit. Another study showed reduced hostility and depression after being with the trees, or as one researcher put it, “therapeutic landscapes.”

As a regular practice, forest bathing can deepen your intuition, increase your ability to communicate with the land and various species, increase your life force, and overall sense of happiness.

Forest Bathing Clubs

In San Francisco, there are hundreds of members of the Forest Bathing Club Meetup who forest bathe once a month to take a break from the stress of constant technology—your computer and phone and invasive social media, emails, and texts.

There are even certified Forest Therapy guides.

Check to see if there are such clubs near you. If not you can go on your own – or use this as an opportunity to start your own and club and build a community.

Trees in Myth and Religion

Many myths from around the globe tell of a “world or cosmic” tree, where the roots, trunk and branch represent the underworld, earth, and the heavens. The bible mentions the “tree of life” as well as the “tree of knowledge of good and evil.” The Buddha reached enlightenment while sitting under a Bodhi tree. Druids worshipped in sacred groves of trees. And Kabbalists celebrate the 15th of the month of Aquarius (on the lunar calendar) as the birthday of the trees.

It’s said that even spiritual teacher, Krishnamurti, found his enlightenment in Ojai under a pepper tree.

A number of trees have always been regarded as sacred. The willow tree is associated with the movement of water and the moon, so priestesses of the Goddess Hecate of the Moon use willow water as part of their magic. Celts considered the oak, apple, birch, and ash trees as sacred, with the ash tree known for healing and enchantment. The largest yellow oak in the U.S. (in Oley, PA) is 500 years old and is said by the Delaware Indians to have the power to heal. The Bodhi tree of India is a symbol of Buddha’s presence, while the banyan tree with its unique aerial roots represents eternal life. The bible mentions the Lebanese cedar 75 times.

Take Advantage of Nature’s Free Therapy

Trees help us physically by providing oxygen and shade to the planet as well as shelter and habitat for animals. Like all living things, trees have an energetic vibration and aura. Their grounding energy comes from having roots that reach deep into the earth, and give trees their vibration of security and stability.

So bathe your body and spirit in the forest (or your local city park) as you mingle with the trees. Go ahead and have a moment and physically hug a tree. Release any negative energy (as well as all those EMF’s you absorbed from your TV/laptop/phone!) and let them travel down the tree’s roots and get recycled by Mother Earth. At the same time, you’ll absorb the nourishing energy Mother Earth sends up through the tree’s roots as you rest against the tree’s trunk beneath its leafy branches.

For one moment, no need to do anything, just be. 😊

Interested in learning more about natural and holistic approaches to health? Your greatest source of truth for your wellness is yourself and your intuition (along with some accurate information). Register for this free webinar with Deborah to tune up your Medical Intuition abilities >>

2023-8thChakraBlog-featured

5 Things You Need to Know About Your 8th Chakra

You probably already know a bit about the seven chakras that are focal points of energy on your body. But did you also know that there are more than a dozen more chakras beyond these seven? No kidding! These higher or spiritual chakras are the links between your personality and your higher self, and when activated, allow you to access to an expanded universe, increase your spiritual awareness and compassion, and free yourself from the weight of karmic residue.

Ideally, your chakras are open, moving energy in and out between your personal energy field and the larger unified field. With proper self-care and maintenance, you can keep your energy flowing and prevent your chakras from becoming blocked by emotional baggage. Journaling, meditation, and working with an energy healer are all good ways to keep these energy centers clear and open, so you can move on to opening the spiritual chakras.

The first spiritual chakra is located approximately two feet above your head. If you’ve ever seen paintings depicting holy figures with circles of golden light around their heads, you’ve seen a visual representation of the love and light that flows from activated higher energy centers. But this glow is not only available to holy men. Here are the five most important things to know about what activating your 8th chakra can do to help you live a truer,

  1. Connect to Your Higher Self

    Your 8th chakra is the doorway between your immortal soul and your earth-bound personality. When I teach students how to activate their 8th chakra, I teach them an exercise that leads to a meeting with their higher selves. If you’ve done the requisite self-work—through meditation or energy healing or other methods—you should be able to talk to your higher self and ask her the questions you most want answered. Your higher self can give you access to the Akashic records, help you find your true life purpose, and remind you that you are a perfect being made of love and light. Opening your 8th chakra and stepping through the veil that separates your earthly self from your eternal soul will open your eyes to the vast space beyond physical plane boundaries.

  1. Clear Your Karmic Residue

    Karmic residue sounds pretty gross, and it lives up to its name. It’s the leftover karmic energy that builds-up after lifetimes of clinging to the same patterns. These tired and worn-out routines keep you rooted to this planet. Since your 8th chakra is the gate that leads to the divine, it is the last chakra that holds the human information that is not needed or desired in the expanded universe of an opened 8th chakra. Residual energy sticks around, waiting for you to clear it out once and for all before you move on to connect with your higher self and beyond. Activating your 8th chakra can help you shed those patterns that keep you reincarnating and are not useful any more, release that icky karmic residue, and connect with the greater spiritual universe that starts with your higher self.
  1. Uncover Spiritual Gifts

    As your connection to the greater spiritual community grows with an activated 8th chakra, your awareness expands, and you may find that you develop new abilities. Perhaps you’ve always been intuitive, but with an open 8th chakra, you’ll discover your powers of intuition increasing. Other latent talents may reveal themselves as you continue to widen your 8th chakra, including astral travel, telepathy, clairvoyance, and even energy healing. At first, these new capabilities may seem overwhelming, but please don’t worry! Your higher self would never bestow these gifts upon you unless you were ready. Taking healing courses or other spiritual workshops, and working with an energy healer or other type of spiritual teacher can help you control, manage, and develop your newfound abilities.
  1. Learn Your Soul’s Purpose
    The 8th chakra is like the record room for your soul’s contract, which is another way of saying your life purpose. Your soul enters this world with a goal, which has to do with learning lessons in order to evolve. Your soul’s purpose is always clear to your higher self, but may not be as obvious to your personality once it incarnates onto the physical plane. It takes the activation of the 8th chakra to get in touch with your higher self enough to be let into that record room for a glimpse at your soul contract.

    After your 8th chakra is activated and open, don’t be surprised if you begin to feel like you need to shift your focus, especially if you have spent years ignoring your true passion. That nagging voice that tells you to follow your true path is really your higher self offering guidance, nudging you to get to work on whatever your soul is meant to do while in this body at this time.
  1. Experience Divine Love and Spiritual Compassion

    When you start to understand that you are truly a soul living temporarily in a physical body rather than a body with a soul, your capacity for deep compassion and divine love begins to blossom. As the 8th chakra expands and this knowledge is fully absorbed, you become more spiritually compassionate because you now know that everyone else is on the same journey. Each soul plays its own important role in the interconnected community we’re all a part of, and by activating your 8th chakra and peeking at that huge spiritual tapestry, you experience true unity, which is followed by unconditional love from the Divine. Once you feel the power of divine love, you will reflect that love in your actions and it will spread like ripples in a pond. Imagine what the world could be like if everyone had golden halos from their open 8th chakras beaming love and compassion. It starts with you.

If you’d like to learn more about your 8th Chakra, watch this video. You’ll also want to check out my Secrets of Chakra Wisdom course, an on-demand course you can move through at your own pace.

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Blessings for a New Beginning

“And suddenly you just know…It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.”  

—Meister Eckhart

September makes a perfect time for new beginnings. Your spirit recognizes the coming of a fresh new season. The relaxation of summer is fading and the excitement and promise of new challenges begins to take shape ahead. Coming soon is harvest-time, a time of centering and gathering and achievement. Remember the back-to-school feeling of stepping forth in new shoes with a clean slate and high hopes for yourself? You may not be going back to school this fall, but doesn’t your spirit still long for the new adventure that represents?

Here’s how I’m feeling this September and I am thrilled to tell you about it. I feel the rise of a great love and also an overwhelming gratitude. I feel incredibly blessed to be where I am and doing the work that has been given to me. I have my purpose and my path in the work of energy healing. As a Master Healer, I am privileged to teach an ever-increasing community of loving hearts who want to heal themselves and then the world. Their spiritual expansion fills my heart with joy and carries me further along my path as we heal and thrive and grow together. Hope and happiness and peace lie ahead for us all as we join forces to make our world a better place.

What an exciting prospect! The healing power that you have within is infinite. You can begin your healing within, and as your consciousness awakens and expands, it will begin to radiate forth and touch all those around you, your community, your world. Isn’t it a dream worth pursuing—to heal, thrive, and grow beyond all the boundaries and barriers you may have imposed on yourself?

More and more people are awakening to their own healing gifts, finding their amazing power for love, forgiveness, and gratitude. More and more people are stepping into the light and becoming the healers they are destined to be. What is your gift? Have you developed it to its full potential? How are you using your unique life force to heal the world right now? And if not now, when?

What are your plans for a fresh start, a new beginning, a real renaissance for your spirit in the months ahead? Here are some steps you can take to ramp up your own program for healing your world:

Be Empowered by Nature. A simple walk in the park, the fields, the woods, or on the shore will allow you to observe and enjoy the nurturing, healing force that is Nature at work. You are a part of that natural energy that colors the leaves and drives the wind, the sunlight, the rush of sparkling water.

Build a Community. Find a band of fellow students who want to study and explore the power of loving energy to heal our world together. Notice how some people make you glow in their presence? Gather up those kindred spirits and spend some time working on your mutual expansion of mind and heart.

Meditate. This mind-calming, soul-soothing activity is spreading like the light of the sun at the dawn of a new day. I overheard a lady say in a restaurant last night, “It’s pretty much the best thing you can do—for anything you want to accomplish.” A sweet understatement for the most important way to create a solid spiritual foundation for your power to heal yourself and your world.

Journal from Your Heart. Ask for the wisdom and the courage to search deep within and tell it truly. Journaling can help you bring forth your true purpose through manifestation. You can call to you the people, opportunities, and experiences your Higher Self is guiding you to discover

Learn to Give and Accept Unconditional Love. If you hope to heal yourself and your world, you will need to work with the kind of love that created you, the world, and everything in it. We come from the Divine Love that is the Source of All. That love is the wavelength we need to be on for all the good we wish for—for ourselves and others—to appear.

I hope you join me in making this September the season of new beginnings for your body, mind, and spirit. Your gifts are needed for the future of our world. We are one vibration, one field, one energy, with love as our connection. How mindful are you of the healing influence you could have on the world? As poet Mary Oliver asks, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

And if you’d like to know if this is actually the ideal time, astrologically, for you personally to have a new beginning, consider booking a private Vedic Astrology session with one of the world’s most renowned experts on the topic. Book a call with Dr. Sisira and see what the stars have in store for you >>

2023-BTSBlog-1

Learning How to Heal: It’s Back to Energy School Season!

Do you have a favorite back-to-school story? Did you ever embark on a path of learning that changed your life? Maybe even saved your life? Many years ago when I was seeking a way out of the sorrowful and frightening mess that my life had become, I discovered something beautiful—a door to my destiny. I had a learning path that I never suspected was waiting for me.

I needed healing in mind, body, and spirit. I had been burning the candle at both ends (and in the middle!), running so fast from the pain within that I didn’t see the life-threatening dead end that lay before me. When I was told I had cancer, I already sensed that I had an even more serious problem, a spiritual deficit that negated everything else in my life. Who was I and where was the happy and meaningful life I was born for?

You know my story. At the moment when my downward spiral was about to consume me, I discovered the power of Energy Healing. I sought treatment for my illness because I realized how precious my life was. Lying under all the pain and abuse I had both experienced as a child and inflicted on myself as an adult was love. I loved my life and I loved the world around me. And entwined with that love was work I was meant to do. Could I save myself and find my work?

When Energy Healing treatments helped me rise back up in hope and health, I had to know more. What was Energy Healing, where did it come from, and why did it work? Why did I feel like I had come home when I embarked on years of study and exploration of this incredibly powerful healing modality?

Fast forward through my decades of study, prayer, practice, and experience to the present moment. I look back on my learning path with such gratitude and give thanks for the opportunity I was given to work as a Master Energy Healer. Has my path been exciting and joyful? You know the answer. There is nothing that feels better than growing your connection to Spirit, developing the unique gifts you have inside, and using that connection and those gifts to help others.

Why not use this season of learning and back-to-school promise to try the Energy Healing path for yourself? You never know where it will take you, but I can tell you that the experience of healing yourself from fears, doubts, old wounds, and hidden trauma is only the beginning. You will learn to become the best version of yourself by exploring who you are, what you want, and why you are here. Uncovering your highest self, the best version of you, is a mighty responsibility. Your connection to All That Is makes you a vital link in the chain of life. Your contribution to the unconditional love that connects us all is needed for our world to heal and thrive—even survive.

The study and practice of Energy Healing both saved my life and opened the door to my work as a Master Energy Healer. If you decide to join me on the path of study I’ve followed and now teach, you’ll learn all the ways you can bring light, spirit, energy, and unconditional love back to every area of your life…and the whole world. I’ve taken everything I’ve learned over the last thirty years of study and practice in ancient healing techniques, meditation, vedic arts, shamanic rituals and so much more, to bring you the very best way to bring lasting, positive change into your life.

The study of Energy Healing helps you awaken your mind, body and spirit to the truth of your life purpose. It will forever change the direction of your life. Your transformation will also change the lives of everyone around you. This awakening allows you to step into the very best version of yourself – one without fear, doubt, anger or regret – and to move forward in your life with joy, resilience and abundance.

Are you ready to become the beacon of light and love you were meant to be? I’ve now shared my healing work with tens of thousands of people from over 50 countries around the world. The results of sharing this knowledge and seeing it flower continue to amaze and uplift me. Try to imagine how it would feel to live with greater awareness and the presence of heightened clarity, guidance and wisdom:

How would your life be different?
How would you feel?
How would you look?
What decisions would you make?
What would become important?
Who would you reach out to help?

Energy Healing is really about illuminating the pathway to your true potential. One you couldn’t have achieved – let alone been truly aware of – if you hadn’t taken that important first step of study and exploration. To learn about Energy Healing is to feel its power in your own consciousness, and even to become the healing influence on others and the world that you are destined to be. Along the path of learning, you’ll find the direction, support and community you’ve been searching for and watch your healing gifts blossom before your eyes.

In our infinite universe, the opportunities for growth, expansion, healing, and empowerment are as vast and varied as the members of the human family themselves. What you have within holds the key to your future. Begin your own journey of exploration today…

and create the joy-filled and extraordinary life you deserve.

If you’re attracted to this kind of learning, or you’re curious about energy healing click here to discover more >>>

2023-VedicAstrologyBlog-featured

Using Vedic Astrology to Guide our Spiritual Journey

The Karmic Wisdom of the Stars

Today, I would like to tell you about Vedic astrology. Vedic astrology is not separate from Vedic philosophy or Vedic meditation, (both of which I teach), but entwined with both. Many Bollywood celebrities believe deeply in the power of Vedic astrology, and it is threaded throughout Eastern culture and spirituality today. Teachers and sages continue to give it serious study around the world, and the line from now to the dawn of Vedic astrology can be traced back for thousands of years. 

To begin with the words of the spiritual teacher Yogananda, “Astrology is the study of man’s response to planetary stimuli. The stars have no conscious benevolence or animosity; they merely send forth positive and negative radiations. Of themselves, these do not help or harm humanity, but offer a lawful channel for the outward operation of cause-effect equilibriums which each man has set in motion in the past.” As we shall see, this is very important to understand. Because when we talk about Vedic astrology, we are also talking about karma.

Vedic astrology first emerged in India between 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. Ancient Indian astrologers looked to the stars for guidance and navigation. Jyotisha, which translates roughly as the “science of light,”  helps us understand how karma influences the present. The seven chakras of the human body correspond to the seven main planets in the Vedic system. We can draw upon Vedic astrology and its insights to guide us along our spiritual journey.

Astrology is thought of as the “eyes of the Veda.” Vedic astrology is not just about daily predictions but is integrated with meditation as a means to approach the divine. In practice, Vedic astrology is mathematically sophisticated and requires extensive study to master. Some family lines in India can track their lineage as teachers of astrology back for centuries.

Vedic astrology needs to be studied on its own terms and within the long history of Vedic philosophy. Still, it can be helpful to begin with comparisons to one’s own culture and traditions. Western astrology began in the Hellenistic period, which dates from the death of Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.E. to the start of the Roman Empire in 31 B.C.E. In other words, while not as old as the Vedic tradition, Western astrology is also really old.  Western science may frown on astrology, but it still has much to teach us if we are willing to learn.

Western astrology uses the tropical calendar, which is based on the 365 days it takes the Sun to pass from vernal equinox to vernal equinox. A tropical year is divided into 4 seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Western astrological charts are based on the planet’s fixed positions.

Vedic astrology, on the other hand, uses the sidereal system, which looks at changing, observable constellations. The sidereal system dates to the time of the Pharaohs in Kemet, over 7000 years ago; a little older than Western, for sure! A sidereal year is the time it takes a planet, say the Earth or Mercury, to orbit the Sun once with respect to fixed stars. In Vedic astrology, the birth chart for an individual reflects the exact position of the planets over the place of their birth, at the precise moment of their birth.

Now it starts to get very interesting. The tropical system and the sidereal system drift apart by about 1 degree every 72 years, and a sidereal year is 20 minutes longer than a tropical year. This may seem inconsequential, but it has a huge effect on the results of the two systems. Nevertheless, Western and Vedic astrology both have twelve signs, and the meanings ascribed to the signs have some similarities.

However, your sign in Vedic astrology will likely be different from what you are used to. One of my students, for example, was born on October 25. In Western astrology, she is a Scorpio (Vrishchika in Hindi). In Vedic astrology, she is a Libra (or Tula in Hindi). Vedic astrology would also point out that your rising sign is more important than your Sun sign.

This is all quite complex, which is part of the reason that some Indian universities offer degree programs in Vedic astrology. We can only consider the broad outlines of the two systems today. However, hopefully, this brief introduction to the differences between the two systems will demonstrate how distinctive Vedic philosophy is.

Before we move on, I want to say a quick word about one more astrological system. In the early 20th century, K.S. Krishnamurti, one of India’s most noteworthy astrologers, developed a system called KP Astrology. Many consider this to be a modernized version of Vedic astrology; it is, in fact, simpler to use and integrates certain aspects of Western astrology. I do not have time to go through the key differences now, but I just wanted to mention this and emphasize that we are talking here about ancient Vedic astrology, not the KP version.

In the Vedic tradition, astrology works with meditation and other devotional practices to guide us as we walk our spiritual path toward Enlightenment. Parashara Rishi, a Vedic sage, is the father of Jyotish Shastra, Vedic astrology. Parashara Rishi wrote the Vishnu Purana—the first 19 Puranas—and established the fundamental principles of Vedic astrology. Roger Gabriel, an expert in this field, puts it well when he wrote that “Jyotish helps you understand the effects of an external Universe on your life. Meditation brings you the realization that the Universe is within you; that you are the Universe.”

Vedic astrology, meditation, and ayurvedic medicine are interwoven in a holistic system that seeks balance in the mind, the body, and the spirit. Daily pop horoscopes are fun, but Vedic astrology is a serious approach to understanding cause and effect as it influences you throughout your lifetimes. All of them. Which brings us to . . . karma.

Vedic astrology as a philosophical system cannot be separated from the concepts of karma and reincarnation. A Vedic birth chart not only lifts the veil on your future; it shows you how the arrangement of the planets at the moment of your birth reflects all that has come before. In other words, it shows you your collective karma from previous incarnations. Whether positive or negative, these reverberations shape you as you continue your journey in this current body.

Karma has many layers in the Vedic system. Sanchita Karma is the accumulated karma of all your past lives, both good and bad. Pralabda Karma can be thought of as the “unfinished business” of your previous lives, which you need to confront in this lifetime. Kriyaman Karmais is the new karma you are generating, right now, every moment of every day, through our thoughts and actions. And, finally, Aagmi Karma is the karma of future birth for those of you whose journey continues into yet another lifetime. 

Let’s pause for a moment. The idea of karma can be difficult for Westerners to accept and even disturbing to some. Contemporary and secular Western values put a great emphasis on individual agency. The notion of past lives and collective karma often agitates those who believe that life should be largely under their control.

Karma, from the Western standpoint, also sometimes seems to contradict the notion of free will, which underlies everything from who we marry to our legal system. Taken simplistically, some observers may wonder if karma does not “blame the victim” and allow offenders to go “scot free.” If karma extends thousands of years and multiple lifetimes into the past, how can any of us be sure of what justice is today?

But let’s go a bit deeper. Vedic philosophy is distinct from Western philosophy. We do not want to simplify too much and the study of either of these systems requires dedication and effort. But we also do not have to put everything into a binary model of either “good” or bad.” Perhaps it is better to sit with these beliefs for a long time and resist the urge to judge. Wisdom does not happen in one day, or even one lifetime. 

So, without simplifying too much or proposing a false equivalency, let me note that the principle of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Luke 6:31)” has a lovely resonance with the principle of karma. By the way, I am not the first to note this. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—yes, the guru who instructed The Beatles in the practice of meditation—discussed this more than once, even on the Larry King Show.

My point is this: Vedic astrology does not absolve us of agency or free will. Sanchita Karma is eternal, but the other layers of karma can be changed. The birth chart maps our karma and points to areas wherein we may have challenges in this lifetime due to accumulated bad karma. But it also points to possibilities for growth and happiness. In either case, apart from our Sanchita Karma, we continue to steer the ship, within the boundaries of the planetary influences at the time of our birth.

In the slightly paraphrased words of Snei Joshi, a Vedic astrologer, “The Vedic horoscope of a person is like a businessman’s balance sheet at the beginning of every year. It represents the total debt and total credit accumulated by the soul in its past lives.” We are not absolved of the responsibility to use the wisdom of the stars in making good choices and attending to our spiritual wellbeing.

Which is why to talk of Vedic astrology is also to talk of Vedic meditation. Om is the sound of the universe at the very beginning, at a time stretching so far back into the mist that we label it eternity and try to understand. Through meditation, we can let go of our attempts to confront Enlightenment “head on,” and truly connect with that which is eternal, divine, everlasting. 

In Vedic astrology, the mantra selected by a spiritual teacher like myself resonates in your body and corresponds with the three fundamentals of life: Creation, Preservation, and Destruction. When you align your meditation practice with the insights contained in your astrological chart, you will begin to see the unity between thought and deed, action, and reaction, the past, present, and future. You will move beyond this moment to connect with all that has come before and that which will be, and finally achieve transcendence.

Now, none of this is going to happen today or tomorrow. It may not happen in many lifetimes. But the essential point is that meditation works with Vedic astrology to guide you along your unique spiritual journey. The past exerts a strong influence on what is possible in the present, but you are not a prisoner of past choices or a victim. You are not given a free pass to stumble around and chalk-up everything that happens to “karma.” Instead, drawing upon the knowledge contained in your birth chart, and devoting yourself to daily meditation and your mantra, you begin to move from darkness towards the light. If you are not yet meditating with a mantra that has been selected for you, you can do so here>>

Swami Vivekananda, the seer who we can thank for introducing the Vedas to the Western World, captures all of this in a very simple but profound way. He taught that the mind is everything. As many have said, “What we think, we become.” This is why Vedic meditation and astrology are inextricable from each other. The insights of your birth chart are not a prison sentence, but rather a way to connect the vast complexity of karma to your real, lived life. You have choices to make and work to do.

I hope that you have found this introduction to Vedic astrology helpful and encouraging. As noted, Vedic astrology is an ancient system, and we cannot master it in one session or even one lifetime. And yes, just as in the West, Vedic astrology can be used for what we might call “pop” purposes, but that is simply a byproduct of our times. Vedic astrology has enriched thought and culture immensely, been a core component of Vedic philosophy across oceans of time, and continues to be taught and used today.

Through serious study and meditation, each of us can apply this wisdom in our own lives. Vedic astrology, coupled with a devoted meditation practice, has the power to bring us that much closer to Enlightenment.

And because so many people have asked, we are going to be introducing Vedic Astrology in depth, beginning with a FREE event, which you can register for by clicking here >> 

2023-HowtobeofServiceBlog-retread

How to Be of Service (And Why It Matters)

The best thing you can do for yourself and the planet is to be of service to others. You can practice every energy medicine technique in the book: journal your deepest feelings until your wrist hurts, meditate twice daily, pray, connect with Mother Nature, clear your chakras, release your limiting beliefs, etc., but if you aren’t being of service, you are not fully living in the light.

Being of service doesn’t have to include the big gestures you might be thinking about. You don’t have to quit your job and give up your life to join volunteers in a far-off area to help disaster victims, or donate your life savings to charity. You don’t have to work at a food bank or with at-risk teens, unless you want to. Being of service is not only about what you do, but also about how you do it. True service means that you are doing what you are meant to do, and doing it with compassion and love.

Understanding that service is both attitude and action helps you to see that the opportunities for being of service are constant in everything you do. Let that car into the lane ahead of you, smile at the tired-looking bank or grocery store clerk, offer to help someone with their hands full carry their drinks at Starbucks. These gestures may seem small, but each one sends a ripple of love out into the universe. And chances are, you will have uplifted the person you helped and possibly inspired them to also be of service, further stretching the reach of kindness and love. Enough ripples create a wave, and selfless service is the first step to spurring a wave of deep and boundless love to wash over the world.

Here are a few additional tips for how to be of service:

  1. Chop wood, carry water.

     

    This is the phrase I use in my energy healing courses and workshops to help teach my students that being of service does mean you have to do the work, get your hand dirty so to speak, whatever that means for you. Anything you do that gives of your time and energy in order to benefit someone else, as long as you do it with love and without expectation of reward, counts as being of service.

For you, this might mean planting trees in a neighborhood park, or walking dogs, or playing violin on a busy street corner. Perhaps you’re a birthday party clown or a food server or a window washer. Service can be any deed or action that elevates others. After all, that clown is making kids laugh, a restaurant server helps to feed customers, a street corner musician gives a little art to brighten the day of passersby. When you do your work from a place of light, that light radiates to everyone you interact with like a beacon of hope, compassion, and love.

  1. Figure out how you would like to help.

    It’s really hard to act out of love if you’re miserable, and serving others while resenting the work or the people will fill you with negativity rather than love, which doesn’t actually help anyone. So take the time to do some soul searching and think about how you would like to serve others. Try not to think about what your parents or partner think you should do, and as much as possible, shut down any self-doubt that tells you you aren’t capable of doing something, and really focus on getting in touch with your true feelings about what you want to do.

Journal about it, mull it over, ask your guides, and I bet you’ll find that the way you want to serve takes advantage of your unique gifts. You were given your gifts for a reason, so use them! If you’re great at organizing, or wonderful with children, or can paint portraits, or are a born counselor or energy healer—these talents are the way to serve authentically and without resentment or irritation. In this way, being of service can help to awaken and strengthen your special skills as well as help to heal and uplift others.

I’d like to mention here a rarely discussed truth about being of service: it’s okay to enjoy it! There seems to be the misconception that service must be somber and joyless, but who wants to be helped by someone who is all doom and gloom? Joy creates joy. If you are joyful in your service, everyone around you will be buoyed up by that happy energy, too.

  1. Check your ego at the door.

    Expectation of reward is the greatest obstacle to true service. There are two types of giving: that which seeks recognition, and that which serves in silence. If the reason you are serving others is so that you will be seen serving others, you are feeding your ego and not feeding the greater good. If you want to be known as a “good-doer” more than you actually want to do good, then you are not truly being of service. Even those in healing or helping professions, like doctors or therapists or teachers, are only really being of service if they do those jobs in a compassionate, selfless manner. A doctor who helps others solely to advance her personal power and greed is not embracing the attitude of love true service requires.

Focusing on others without thinking of yourself is what makes service a spiritual practice; the process forces you to step outside your small selfish Earthly self and think of the greater interconnectedness of all life. As a spiritual teacher, this in an important lesson I teach: since the universal field encompasses us all, what you send out into the universe comes back to you, so sending positivity to others improves your own life as well. And, as a bonus, when you stop worrying about your own progress and success, that’s when Spirit rewards you with exactly that.

If you are interested in this type of learning, please check out my LifeForce Energy Healing.
2023-HaraLineBlog-featured

Hara line: The blueprints of your life’s purpose

You, my friend, have been born countless times. And you will continue to be born countless times. Each time you arrive on Earth, you are here to learn deeply personal lessons that will help you on your path to enlightenment.

Whether you choose to learn some or all or none of those lessons is entirely up to you. That is your freewill.

But where do those lessons come from? Who plans out these lessons? You do! Between reincarnations, your souls plot out your lessons and hopes for your life, imbuing them into your Hara line, for when you make the great trip back to Earth.

But sometimes it’s difficult to see that blueprint, isn’t it? It’s not like you have a physical checklist of your lessons that you need to walk through. Instead, it’s imbued into your energy field, and tapping into that energy field isn’t necessarily easy to do.

That’s what I want to teach about today. Today, I’d like to teach you about the Hara line, and how you can align it to ensure you’re accessing your life’s purpose.

The Hara line is an invisible line that runs through your body, just one level energetically below your human energy field. It starts down near the base of your spine, around 2 inches from your navel, and runs in tandem along with your spine upward to the top of your head, reaching higher and further into Source.

It’s parallel to your chakras, but at a level deeper. This deeper level is all about intentionality and purpose, as opposed to the chakras, which control your physical and spiritual health.

When your Hara line is in alignment, you have a direct connection to Source, allowing you to seamlessly ascertain your higher purpose – those blueprints that your soul worked so hard on in between your reincarnations.

So, if you’re feeling confused, if you don’t know what your purpose is, if you’ve been asking, “what do I need to do with my life?” — you may have a distortion in your Hara line.

If you’re feeling stuck, or unable to comprehend the reason that you’ve been placed on this Earth, then I encourage you to watch this video. Everyone has a purpose. Everyone has a reason for being here. Realigning your Hara lines allows you to understand that purpose. Understanding is a gift, one that will fill you with renewed happiness and fulfillment.

So, let’s straighten out that Hara line. Follow along with me in this brief video where I show you a simple way to align your Hara line, allowing you to access that amazing source of purpose.

Join me now

If aligning your Hara line proved positive for you, then I encourage you to join me at our Open House where you can get an unprecedented look behind the scenes of my LifeForce Energy Healing advanced program. Our Open House will help connect you with fellow healers, learners, and your higher self – presenting you with sacred insight and wisdom that I know you’ll want to receive.

Join our Open House. Wednesday, June 14th, 2023 at 2pm Pacific.

Hope to see you there!

2023-SoundHealingBlog-featured

Sound Healing Methods: 7 Ways to Raise Your Vibration

Sound is one of the most powerful healing modalities in energy medicine; not only does it have the capability to help you reach your core frequency, but it also connects you to your higher energies (and, thus, Source). One of the best things about the many different sound healing methods available is that you don’t need to be a natural musician or have special training — all you need is your voice and a few basics about sound therapy. The key to using sound successfully is finding the particular technique that will help you achieve your healing goals.

If you were to ask 20 different people to describe the concept of sound, you’ll likely receive 20 very different answers. For example, someone who enjoys going to live rock and roll music performances may describe the emotional side of sound because of a musician(s) ability to communicate strong feelings with the audience by singing a verse or playing a guitar riff; another person may enjoy live music and find it emotionally powerful, but describe sound it in a completely different manner as they prefer the sweet sound of a violin playing a classical concerto.

Despite being extremely subjective, the healing capabilities of sound are universal. Sound not only helps you relax (and therefore decreases your stress levels), but it also can move through any energetic blockages you may be experiencing — including some physical blockages! If you, or someone you know, has ever tried to pass a kidney stone you are aware that it is an extremely painful ordeal (I’ve heard women say it makes childbirth feel like a walk in the park). When the stone is too large to be passed out of the body, doctors utilize a procedure called lithotripsy that uses sound waves to literally shatter the kidney stone into smaller pieces that can then be passed more easily.

While the application of sound in modern medical procedures is groundbreaking, we often forget about the tried-and-true ancient sound healing wisdom that our ancestors have been using for thousands of years. After all, the ultimate goal of sound healing is to reach a place of oneness, where pain and darkness are absent and there are only peace and love. Before I dive into the exciting world of sound therapy and the many different methods you can use to heal, it’s important that you experiment with each method (even if you are drawn to one particular practice over another); just like sound itself is subjective, each of these healing methods have individual strengths that you may find useful in different situations.

Sound healing techniques and exercises to help you fine-tune your vibrational frequency:

  1. Achieve Balance with Voice Toning Exercises

Your own voice is a powerful healing tool for shifting your mental, emotional, and spiritual processes. Toning is the sound of your vibrating breath—a sustained single tone, with no words, no melody or harmony, and no rhythm. It often uses the sound of Om, which is said to be the very first vibration that became sound. It represents the union of body, mind, and spirit all in one. The “oh” part of Om vibrates at the level of your solar plexus chakra, thus helping you resolve issues around your identity and purpose, while also boosting your self-confidence. The “mm” part of Om is like humming with your lips closed and is the most powerful sound for bringing you into harmony with Source.

Try it now.

Ommmm…

Incorporating toning into your sound healing toolkit will help you breathe more deeply, giving your body and organs more oxygen, and opening your energy flow — so you stay healthy and can live a long, peaceful life. When you do this toning exercise (or sing or chant), it doesn’t just help you — the sound frequencies that pass through your lips go out into the world and lift up your family, friends, coworkers, and all of humanity!

  1. Connect with Source by Chanting

Chanting is the rhythmic singing of sounds or words, and it is commonly used as a spiritual practice. While certain types of chanting can be highly complex (such as the great responsorial and offertories of Gregorian chant in the Catholic tradition), it can also be straightforward (as kirtan from India). There are chants in African, Hawaiian, and Native American cultures as well as Vedic chants, Qur’an readings, Baha’i chants, Buddhist chants, chanting mantras, and psalms or prayers in Christian churches.

Kirtan — which is call-and-response chanting — is part of India’s devotional tradition called bhakti. The names of God or mantras are chanted to the accompaniment of the harmonium, tablas and other drums, and hand cymbals. It was Paramahansa Yogananda who originally introduced kirtan to the West in April 1926 — to a group of over three thousand people who joined together at New York City’s Carnegie Hall to chant Guru Nanak’s “O’ God Beautiful” together.

Yogananda wrote, “Sound or vibration is the most powerful force in the universe. Music is a divine art, to be used not only for pleasure but also as a path to God-realization. Vibrations resulting from devotional singing lead to attunement with the Cosmic Vibration or the Word.”

Many people feel silly or embarrassed when chanting, but I hope you’ll give it a try at least once and see if it’s the right sound healing method for you. We often engage in kirtan at our retreats; check out our retreat schedule here, and come to the next one, in person or by stream!

  1. Chakra Sound Frequencies for Healing

Consistent sounds, especially pure vowel sounds, relate directly to the unwavering energy of Source. A mantra is a word or a phrase that is repeated frequently.

For example, if you kept repeating the seed syllable of Om, you would be doing a mantra. When you are repeating a syllable, word, or phrase, you “hear” its sound and sustain that sound silently in your head. The mantra vibrates throughout your body, mind, and emotions. Repeating a mantra can help you cope with post-traumatic stress disorder, help you chill out if you’re in a traffic jam, and accompany you on hikes or during your time at the gym. If you don’t already have a personal mantra for use in meditation, consider enrolling in my Vedic Meditation™ course and I’ll give you your own personal mantra to use in your sound healing exercises.

While mantras work on your whole being, sound healing for the chakras is called chakra tuning. Ancient Egyptian priests used vowel sounds to resonate with chakras, while Aboriginals from Australia and shamans in Native American traditions use toning and repetitive sounds in ceremonies to correct imbalances in the human energy field.

From a physical perspective, the simple act of chanting “om” or “aum” actually causes the release of melatonin, endorphins, and nitric oxide, relaxing your blood vessels, reducing your heart rate, and slowing your breathing. The result? A calmer, more relaxed you, courtesy of sound!

  1. Sound Healing Instrument: Singing Bowls

There are two main types of singing bowls: Tibetan singing bowls (good ones are made of bell-metal bronze, a combination of copper and tin, while cheap ones are brass and have lots of impurities) and crystal bowls made of quartz crystal. Tibetan bowls are most frequently used to sound a tone at the beginning and end of a meditation session. The sound of these bowls brings a deep sense of relaxation and opens your chakras. Singing bowls were traditionally used in Asia, and the history of making sound with bronze bowls may even go back thousands of years to the Bronze Age.

You produce sound from the bowls by using a mallet moved around the outer side of the bowl’s rim, much the same way as when you run a wet finger around the rim of a glass to make it sing. The sides and rim vibrate, creating a sound that has a basic frequency and several harmonic overtones. The sound waves released by both types of singing bowls emit a pure radiant sound that reaches up to the Divine. These pure tones create a vibrational sound field that resonates with and reharmonizes the chakras and the parts of the body associated with those chakras.

Healing through sound combined with the power of crystal possibly goes as far back as the legendary land of Atlantis. Even today crystal singing bowls are sometimes referred to as Atlantean bowls. Crystal magnifies and transmits pure tone. It’s one of the reasons quartz crystal is an integral part of telecommunications.

Crystal bowls are similar to robust radio transmitters, sending energy out into the atmosphere. The pure tones can activate the brain waves that send you into an advanced state of consciousness and can affect different areas of the brain, releasing hormones and neurochemicals that can lessen pain, overcome addictive tendencies, boost willpower, and pump up creativity.

You can find singing bowls on Etsy, certain bookstores, or health and wellness boutiques (including some yoga studios).

  1. The Healing Sounds of Tingsha

Tingsha is a type of cymbal used in Tibetan Buddhist prayers and rituals. In some rituals, the cymbals are used to summon the “hungry ghosts” so they can be “fed” vibrationally. Hungry ghosts are not generic ghosts, like the spirit of your dead Aunt Millie, but ravenous spirit beings with tiny mouths and enormous bellies who represent those with emotional needs that have not been met. Old legends say that hungry ghosts were greedy women in previous lifetimes who never gave away any food. Calling the hungry ghosts and then offering them food, incense, or even a prayer lessens their suffering. In the bodhisattva tradition, enlightenment is only possible after all suffering has been eliminated for all beings.

Shamans use tingsha to clear the environment of any negative or disturbing energies and to bring auric fields into harmony. They are used in meditation and sound healing in much the same way as singing bowls. Generally, tingsha cymbals awaken and initiate healing on all levels and are said to generate an opening in physical, mental, and spiritual reality.

To produce a clear, harmonic sound, suspend each cymbal by its cord, holding it firmly where the string enters the hole on each tingsha. Strike the edges of the tingsha together, usually once, by angling one cymbal at about 90 degrees to the other. Let the tingsha sound until they become silent.

  1. Sound Healing Instrument: Tuning Forks

You may think of the tuning forks that are used to tune a piano, but there other types of tuning forks that can tune your body. All your organs, glands, and cells vibrate at their own specific frequencies, and these frequencies correspond with musical notes. There are twelve keynotes in the human body, and all the parts of If your heart is healthy, it will vibrate at the note of F.

If you think of your body as an orchestra, your various body parts are all musical instruments playing at their own frequency or pitch. If you are healthy, your body will play a harmonious tune. If your body parts are discordant, you can use certain tuning forks to bring your body into alignment. When the right tuning fork is put near the organ or the chakra that is not in harmony, the sound waves will raise the vibration or pitch of that area. Tuning forks clear energetic blockages in the meridians in a similar way to acupuncture.

There are many different types of tuning forks. Classical tuning forks, the ones you’d use to tune your piano, are based on a piano’s chromatic scale. Then there are custom-made tuning forks that correspond with the twelve major organs in traditional Chinese medicine, as French musician and acupuncturist Fabien Maman, called the father of vibrational sound healing, discovered in the 1970s. He found that the pitch and timbre of musical notes had the ability to affect a cell’s shape, color, and energy. If you can tune in to the “fundamental note” of the cell, your energy field will come into harmony.

Certain tuning forks are tuned to the frequencies and musical intervals of heavenly bodies—the sun, the moon, and the planets. Other tuning forks address specific ailments and illnesses. Some tuning forks make a high-pitched delicate sound that can open you up to the angelic kingdom. Chakra tuning forks are a set of seven forks tuned to the frequencies of the seven chakras. Standard tuning forks are used for toning, releasing energy blockages, and clearing chakras or auras. Weighted tuning forks have a much stronger vibration and stay at their frequency for a longer period of time, so it is easier to feel their vibration. They work well for acupuncture-type treatments and muscle relaxation, and can provide immediate pain relief.

A very simple way of using a tuning fork is to strike it, which sends out strong vibrations through the air, and place it near the part of the body you want to heal or in the area of the chakra to energize it. Tuning forks can help provide a deep relaxation and relief from stress, promote mental clarity and concentration, increase physical energy, integrate the left and right brain, and bring the nervous system into balance.

  1. Healing Rhythms and Drumming Therapy Exercises

One of the oldest methods of sound healing is shamanic drumming, which a shaman can use to facilitate communication between a patient and the spirit world. Drumming is also a shamanic technique for journeying, shape-shifting, and divination. The shaman listens intently to find just the right sound and uses certain repetitive rhythms to summon forth the guiding spirits.

The Greek definition of rhythm is “to flow.” Various rhythms convey different meanings, while volume and tempo affect the emotional body. The sound and rhythm of the drum create the bridge that allows you to flow into the world of spirit. Before a ceremony or ritual, the shaman will hold the drumhead over a fire, heating it until the drum is at the pitch the shaman wants to use.

The sound waves coming from the drum energize the systems of body, mind, and spirit and make them vibrate in harmony.

Drumming has been shown in studies to have a positive effect on those with Alzheimer’s disease, depression, cancer, stress, and Parkinson’s disease, as well as those with chronic pain.10 For example, neurologist Barry Bittman’s study on group drumming therapy showed it could increase cancer-killing cells in the body. Psychologist Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford showed that drumming could release endorphins and decrease pain. Drumming can treat anxiety and stress, sleep issues, fatigue, high blood pressure, chronic pain, emotional disorders, and much more, as well as boost the immune system and deepen self-awareness. Drumming allows us to resonate with the natural rhythms of life.

Of course, other instruments can also be used for sound healing. There’s a very old, amusing story about using an instrument to find your perfect note, and it goes like this: In a faraway country, a man played all day on a musical instrument. This instrument had many strings, but he just sat and plucked one string over and over again. His wife said, “Dear, you have this wonderful instrument, yet all you do is play that one string over and over. All your friends have this same instrument, but they play all the strings and create beautiful melodies and songs. Why do you play only that one note?” The man smiled at his dear wife. He said, “Thank you for bringing that to my attention, and here is your answer: the others are busily searching to find their note, but I have already found mine.”

Learn more about sound healing

We will be offering a very special Sound Healing learning and experiential session at our upcoming retreat in Ft Lauderdale this September 29 – Oct 1, 2023. Come join us for this and so much more at a once-in-a-lifetime experience on the beautiful shores of Ft. Lauderdale. Learn more by clicking here >>

Living Authentic Life

Living Your Authentic Life: The Power of Energy Healing

Living Authentic Life

Who are you? As an energy healer, I often find that this is one of the hardest questions for new clients to answer. Most people respond with their job title or relationship status, or talk about their family roles (such as mother, sister, son, brother, or grandparent). These are all important identities in our day-to-day lives, but when the goal is spiritual transformation, I am asking for an answer that goes much deeper.

When I ask this question, I want to connect with your authentic self. Deep down inside, I think many of us know intuitively that we are not in sync with the life we were meant to live. There are so many ways in which our responsibilities and fears and egos pull us away from our inner essence. Over time, we lose contact with the inner self that was born into this lifetime for karmic reasons that go far beyond what we see on the surface. Few of us ever show this true self to the world.

This is my invitation to you to awaken your authentic self and nurture the spiritual light you have within. As you begin to heal, so, too, does the world.

Living Authentic Life

Seeing Behind the Mask

Many of my students are surprised when I tell them that they are living dishonestly. Reactions range from sadness to anger, yet my point is not criticism but compassion. We cannot connect with our authentic selves until we have the courage to take off our masks.

And I am here to tell you – those things are hard to get rid of! The masks we show to others began as a very early attempt to shield ourselves from trauma and pain. In our attempts to protect ourselves, however, we soon lost sight of who we really are. Reconnecting to that authentic self takes hard work and courage, but it can transform your life.

Cleansing the Throat Chakra

As an energy healer, I work to cleanse my client’s energy field so that he or she can release psychic injuries, express true feelings, and fully accept themselves. Much of this effort focuses on the seven chakras, each of which are governed by the spiritual laws of the universe and divine consciousness.

Living Authentic Life

When the fifth or throat chakra—which rules communication—is blocked, the truth becomes distorted, and we hide our true feelings even from ourselves. Clearing the throat chakra opens a channel to authentic expression. The mask behind which we have been hiding begins to dissolve and our radiant inner light shines through for the very first time.

If you grew up in a house of secrets, or if you were ridiculed and shamed for expressing your thoughts and emotions, you have throat chakra issues that prevent your real self from being heard. The process of cleansing your fifth chakra activates your inner light and allows you to examine your life choices, clarify your values and beliefs, and awaken to your life’s purpose.

Seeing Yourself Clearly

Cleansing the throat chakra is a powerful way to cultivate authenticity. Finding a spiritual teacher experienced in the Ayurvedic system and the mind-body connection is a positive step in this direction.

There are three additional steps that I believe can be very beneficial to your spiritual transformation from a place of fear to one of hope and authenticity:

Living Authentic Life
  1. Cut the lies
    That sounds a bit harsh, doesn’t it? Yet I say this with the utmost compassion and a personal understanding of how hard it can be to face the truth: allowing yourself to live with lies is virtually guaranteed to make you sick, both mentally and physically.

You must let those lies go. Now, this does not mean you want to confront every single person you know with The Truth. Telling someone that their haircut is awful or their taste in music is bad is just mean. I am talking about the big lies—about yourself, your relationships, your family system, or your job. When you stop participating in the toxicity—and I highly recommend working with a healer during this process—you find inner sanctuary.

  1. Say hello to the real you
    So many of the things we think we believe are there just because someone else put them there. As you create a space for your truest self to emerge, you will want to reconsider what to keep and what to discard. What are your values? Do you have a clear awareness of your strengths and weaknesses, light and shadow sides? What spiritual traditions resonate with you and what kind of life do you want to lead? When you turn inwards, and stay with these questions through contemplation, journaling, and meditation, you will find that connecting to your true self becomes easier and more joyous.
Living Authentic Life
Living Authentic Life
  1. Examine your choices
    As human beings, most of us naturally want to please the people that are important to us. We want to be successful, attractive, and accomplished in their eyes. We want to be seen as good people who do the right thing and conform to the norms of our respective societies.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but it is essential to examine your choices (probably more than once in this lifetime!) and ensure that the path you are on is going to get you where you want to go. When you travel someone else’s journey, or cling to old ways of doing things just because you do not want to make anyone uncomfortable, you are shutting yourself off from personal authenticity.

In the beautiful words of The Buddha, “Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.”

When you look within, cleanse your energy field, examine your choices, and reject the toxic lies of yourself and others, I believe your authentic self will step out from the shadows into the light and shine, beautifully.

If you would like to learn more about how to release energy blockages and become your authentic self, please join me for my new online course hosted by the Shift Network, Decode Ancient Vedic Face Reading & Energetic Body Types to Heal Childhood Trauma, which begins on Thursday, May 18, 2023.

Space will be limited, so you’ll want to reserve your spot as
soon as you can.

You can do that by clicking here >>

Become an Energy Healer

Becoming an Energy Healer: Do You Feel the Call?

The world seems to be in a state of constant crisis. Between wars, pandemics, political unrest, job insecurity, and environmental trauma, the toll on our bodies and spirits is profound.

Environmentally, culturally, and spiritually, we know that there is real pain in the world today. It is easy to give in to the forces of darkness and cynicism. There is much work that must be done to heal our planet and many people are crying out for positive and uplifting solutions to their individual and shared trauma.

Become an Energy Healer

More than ever, our world needs people who want to be of service to others. The power of energy medicine not only heals us as individuals but enables us to bring light and compassion to those in need of spiritual transformation. As energy healers, we learn to help others open the door to their higher selves.

Positive change begins with you

One of my esteemed teachers, may she rest in peace, Louise Hay, often liked to say, “The power is within you!” I passionately believe this. Every time an individual chooses kindness and love over division and hate, the world begins to heal.

Do you sense that you have intuitive gifts that could be cultivated to help others find their spiritual path? Are you drawn to the light of spiritual transformation? If so, I invite you to consider becoming an energy healer.

My own journey with energy healing has taken me to many countries and I have learned from sages and shamans around the world. In my mid-twenties, I found myself adrift as the hard-charging life as a lawyer I had been living ground to halt. I knew there had to be something more to life and within me than constant struggle and pain.

Become an Energy Healer

When I chose the path of energy healing, I connected to my authentic self and aligned with my soul’s true purpose. Could this be your destiny, as well? If you feel a yearning to awaken your inner light and nurture others, then I think you may have your answer. Your higher self is calling you to help create peace in the world.

Here are three ways you can begin to shift to a higher energy frequency and activate the gift of healing that is within you:

Become an Energy Healer
  1. See Yourself Clearly and Awaken Your Higher Self
    Over three thousand years ago, ancient Egyptians inscribed the instruction to “know thyself” above the entrance to the Temple of Luxor in Ancient Kemet. Thales of Miletus, in the sixth century BCE, believed that self-knowledge was the key to enlightenment, while the Upanishads advise Atmanam viddhi, “know thyself and be free.”

This wisdom reverberates across the millennia to us today. A true energy healer must first see himself or herself clearly. The spiritual practices of meditation, journaling, prayer, and devotion can assist you to clear away trauma and ego so that you can stand in the clear light of your divine essence and gifts.

  1. Compassion for Others Begins with Compassion for Yourself
    So many of my students first come to me convinced that they are ready to change. They are “high” on the prospect of moving forward and want to see results immediately.
Become an Energy Healer

Yet with just a bit of digging, we soon find energy blockages that are holding them back from the full life they are meant to lead. When we begin to address these lower vibrations, blockages, and trauma, emotions start to tumble out with the force of those flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz.

Anger turned inward is one of the most toxic emotions that I deal with as an energy healer. When you release self-hatred, and forgive your mistakes, you open a channel to universal love and compassion. You also create a space within which your inner gifts can reveal themselves and thrive.

As Buddha tells us, “Every experience, no matter how bad it seems, holds within it a blessing of some kind. The goal is to find it.” To see yourself with compassion is to understand and to forgive; and, when you forgive, you begin to change.

Become an Energy Healer
  1. Cultivate your connection to Source Source is the primordial origin of unconditional love, compassion, and the healing light of the universe. When you cultivate your connection to Source, as you understand it, you become a vehicle for the spiritual transformation of both yourself and others. Your life’s purpose is revealed, and your divine essence is awakened.

We each have healing gifts that can be cultivated to empower ourselves and others. I would love to collaborate with you to activate your inner healer.

Please join me for a FREE event that I will be hosting in partnership with The Shift Network this Thursday, April 27, 2023 at 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT.

Space will be limited, so you’ll want to reserve your spot as soon as you can.

You can do that by clicking here >>

Lucid Dreaming

The Power of Lucid Dreaming

Lucid Dreaming

Today let’s talk about the power of lucid dreaming — it is such a powerful tool when it comes to activating our intuition. Some of you may be lucid dreaming already, even if you aren’t familiar with the term. But even if the idea is foreign to you right now, it’s possible to learn how to step into your dreams, change your story, and orchestrate your destiny, right here and right now.

Lucid Dreaming

First, what is it: lucid dreaming happens while you’re asleep but aware that you’re having a dream. You fully realize that your conscious mind is hovering over your dreamscape, and that you can think, act, and change the things that happen in your dream to get an improved outcome.

Learning how to lucid dream can take time, but once you know how to do it, you may well find that your creativity — even during the day when you’re wide awake — starts flowing more easily. You may also feel an arising sense of calm permeating your soul.

Anyone can benefit from opening this pathway to greater awareness and self-knowledge. What happens is that when you have a lucid dream, you become the director of your subconscious.

You are familiar, I bet, with daydreams. During a daydream, your mind flies off to some imagined place and you engage with it as if it as if it’s actually happening. Daydreaming is a lot like immersing yourself in an unfolding movie. It’s an act of imagination while you’re fully conscious but you become unaware of your present surroundings.

Lucid Dreaming

You can get lost in a daydream. Some people live their lives there, content to imagine wonderful things rather than taking real steps to make them happen. “Get your head out of the clouds and your feet back on the ground,” is something a lot of daydreamers heard as kids.

Daydreaming begins with a compelling thought, memory, or fantasy. From there, the daydreamer’s imagination takes flight. The longer the daydream, the deeper the dreamer becomes immersed in his or her private fantasy land.

People who daydream a lot generally find it easier to become lucid dreamers. That’s because daydreaming is a lot like practicing lucid dreaming while awake. In fact, visualization is one aspect of a robust lucid dreaming practice.

Lucid Dreaming

When you experience lucid dreaming, you can confront challenges, fears, and hang-ups to become happier in your own skin. Lucid dreaming has the power to release repressed memories and even cleanse bad karma. This is one of the reasons that the Vedic sages were so keen to develop their lucid dreaming abilities.

So, let’s start our journey through lucid dreaming with the Vedic sages, who have practiced the discipline for thousands of years. The Upanishads describe four states of consciousness. The first three are waking (jagrat), dreaming (svapna), and sleeping (suṣupti). Dreaming (svapna), resonates most closely with our Western notion of the subconscious. In Vedic philosophy, both dreaming and sleeping are considered more important, in a spiritual sense, than waking (jagrat).

While dreaming, a sleeping person frequently is required to acknowledge the vibrations emitted by past deeds and karma. Psychic unrest, events of the day, and other intense experiences may also give rise to dreams. Generally, good dreams correspond to dharma, the path of rightness, while bad dreams are adharma, that which is evil or wrong. In Vedic culture, extending from ancient times, the world itself, or what we all think of as reality, is an illusion—that is, nothing but a dream—made by the God Vishnu.

The fourth state is pure consciousness, called Turiya, which is reachable through meditation and good works. To reach pure consciousness is to truly understand the infinite and to cease from suffering and reincarnation. Turiya exists beyond dreams and beyond time.

Every culture has tried to understand the meaning of dreams so they could trigger their power to change mindsets, perceived limitations, and unhelpful life trajectories. Tibetan Buddhist monks, for example, practice Dream Yoga to strengthen their mind’s ability to detach from their bodies and move fearlessly through their dreams as active participants.

Lucid Dreaming

Ancient aboriginal cultures throughout the world have embraced the spiritual and divinatory power of dreams, too. Many of you may be familiar with dream catchers, the traditional Native American artifact that catches bad dreams and allows good dreams to pass through.

Lucid Dreaming

Here’s another example: the Māori in New Zealand, also known as Tangata Whenua, the People of the Land, believe that your spirit leaves your body during dreams, and your dreams can warn you of omens and deliver premonitions.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that dreams give us insights into the past, present, and future. Aristotle talked about lucid dreaming in his Parva Naturalia, which was written in the 4th century BC. He wrote, “often when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.” In other words, we often know we’re dreaming, and that we’re caught between two worlds, neither fully awake nor fully asleep.

Several centuries later, Saint Augustine, the Christian theologian born in Algeria, believed that lucid dreams happen when the soul briefly leaves the body to get a glimpse of the afterlife.

Early psychotherapists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries took lucid dreaming seriously, considering them a key to unlocking the human personality and desires. Sigmund Freud believed dreams let us process fragments of memories, repressed anger, and sexual impulses that hang around in our subconscious. Things that might be too painful or destructive to express in daily life can be set free in a dream. By entering the dream as an active participant, he felt that patients could rewrite the early scripts of their lives and release embodied trauma. Though many of us in the energy medicine world today have moved away from Freud, his early dream analysis was an important step along the road to understanding the mind-body connection.

Lucid Dreaming

Before we leave Freud, I also want to mention his notion of free association. Freud believed that letting patients make their own connections between their dreams and real life was a far better method than forcing interpretations on them.

As I mentioned earlier, your dreams reflect your unique journey through life. This is important because, as you begin to lucid dream, you might need some gentle guidance to help you interpret your flashes of insight. There are many pathways to understanding lucid dreams. But with practice, you can learn to trust your inner wisdom and intuition.

Lucid Dreaming

Ultimately, you have the power to make choices and to influence how your story ends in the dream state and when you’re wide awake. This is another reason that the Vedic sages paid attention to dreams; they are an aspect of karma.

Unfortunately, as they so often do, scientists initially distrusted the idea of lucid dreaming because it was hard to test. Many scientists thought of dreams as more-or-less a neural garbage disposal unit that “cleared out” our brains while we slept. But by the 1970s, technological advances for sleep studies helped bring Western science around to the idea that our brains are doing important work while we dream.

Scientists now know that lucid dreams usually occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a period of very deep sleep with lots of observable brain activity. Current evidence strongly suggests that lucid dreaming therapy will soon be incorporated into Western medicine.

Today, popular figures like actor Leonardo DiCaprio and novelist Stephen King talk about their practice of lucid dreaming, which suggests that all of us will want to give it a try. The Nightmare on Elm Street movie used the power of lucid dreaming to help terrified teen-agers overcome evil. And in the recent television hit, Evil, a scientific skeptic turns to lucid dreaming as one way to try and beat the devil. We might call this a “lucid dreaming uprising” in which our modern world is reaching for ancient wisdom to reconnect with our intuition and spiritual essence.

So, by now you’re probably wondering how to activate the power of lucid dreaming into your life, right?

Swami Satyananda Saraswati originated a twentieth century school of Yoga Nidra. In 1976, having founded the Bihar School of Yoga in the 1960s, he built a system of guided meditation that helps devotees enter the lucid dreaming state. His system draws on the ancient tantric practice of nyasa, which combines the power of touch along different parts of the body with specific Sanskrit mantras. 

Lucid Dreaming
Satyananda’s approach isn’t directly connected to traditional Vedic texts, but it does have historical precedents in the Vedic philosophy. It’s interesting to note that the United States Army and other big organizations have used the Yoga Nidra approach developed by Satyananda to treat soldiers who experience post-traumatic stress disorder.
Lucid Dreaming

There are some foods that can enhance your ability to lucid dream. Foods rich in vitamin B6 are linked with greater dream recall and intensity. One of the roles of vitamin B6 is to convert the essential amino acid tryptophan into serotonin and niacin. This conversion helps your body regulate appetite, sleep patterns, and mood. Foods that help enhance lucid dreaming include chicken, soybeans, turkey, tuna, venison, lamb, salmon, halibut, shrimp, and cod. If you’re vegan or vegetarian, good lucid dreaming foods include kidney beans, pumpkin seeds, tofu, cheese, and soy sauce.

It’s best to eat these foods and take vitamin B6 during your evening meal, just a few hours before you retire for the night.

Here are a few practical steps to enhance your ability to experience lucid dreams.

Make a dream pillow and infuse it with a meditative essential oil. It can be any comfortable pillow, and an essential oil like bergamot, clary sage, lavender, mugwort, orange, rose, roman chamomile, or sandalwood. You can also diffuse essential oil into the air using a diffuser instead of putting drops on your pillow. (Some people have adverse reactions to essential oils that touch the skin, so a diffuser may be best for them.)

Lucid Dreaming
Lucid Dreaming

Sleep in a cooler than normal room. To keep from feeling hot or too warm and uncomfortable during sleep, throw open a window or run a fan to keep your body temperature feeling exactly right for you. Studies have shown that sleeping in a cool place improves the frequency and duration of REM (dream level) sleep.

Exercise/Yoga Exercise and yoga several hours before sleep has been shown to enhance REM sleep.

Turn off all electronic devices with lit screens one hour before bed.

Regular meditation is another way to prepare your mind for lucid dreaming, as does setting your intention to lucid dream. For example, you might write in a notebook beside your bed your intention to lucid dream just before going to sleep every night as a way to prepare your subconscious. A nightly routine can also help signal your brain that you’re shifting from the waking to the dreaming state.

Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dreaming is powerful, so it can also be unsettling because there is no way to cleanse past karma in just one or two lucid dreaming sessions. So, please recognize that this technique, just like meditation, requires time, practice, and devotion. If your past trauma is intense and/or painful, it’s especially prudent to find a teacher or spiritual guide who can gently guide you through the process. Those of you saddled with post-traumatic stress disorder will want to make sure you have support in place before you try out lucid dreaming.

Finally, I must mention that the renowned inventor Nikola Tesla, mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, and author Lewis Carroll are among the many creatives and mathematicians who have drawn upon the power of lucid dreaming to unlock creativity and access the wisdom of their subconscious minds. In the final analysis, lucid dreaming, like meditation, opens our hearts to what is timeless and lets us see things as they really are, stripped of the half-truths and lies we often tell ourselves when we’re awake. In the words of Carl Jung, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” Becoming a lucid dreamer activates your power both to see the darkness and to move beyond it into the light.

Lucid Dreaming is just one skill that you can master that can help you see beyond the physical bounds of time and space and obtain wisdom from realms beyond ours. And it is one of the skills taught in our bestselling Astral Wisdom course. Learn to design the life of your dreams by mastering the out-of-body experience by accessing this course here >>

Sacred spaces

Seeking Sacred Space: Where’s Your Natural Cathedral?

Sacred spaces

“The place seemed holy, where one might hope to see God.”
— John Muir, “My First Summer in the Sierra,” 1911

Conservationist John Muir was known for his ability to find spiritual connection in the natural world. Yosemite Valley was sacred space for him, and he called it “the grandest of all the special temples of Nature….” Is there a place in nature that makes your spirit sing? Maybe you love to be in the mountains, at the beach, or in a quiet garden filled with roses. Summer is underway as the solstice ushered in the season of greatest warmth and light. Summer brings more opportunities for us to get out and connect with the natural world and grow in spirit. Contact with Nature renews and refreshes us and gives us the comfort of knowing we belong to something much larger than our small selves.

It’s our nature to seek spiritual joy in the natural world. From ancient times, people have gravitated toward places on Earth that are graced with high-vibration spiritual energy. There are many such places around the world, and people often built their holiest institutions over such power spots, vortexes or places of spiraling spiritual energy. They recognized that bathing in these elevated vibrations was beneficial to raising consciousness and facilitating spiritual development. Ojai, California, my home, is a beautiful natural setting known for this kind of spiritual energy. Many visitors feel recharged and uplifted after visiting there. North America is brimming with places that have been held sacred by Native Americans for thousands of years. Some research may reveal a number of sacred spaces in your locale.

Sacred spaces

What Makes a Sacred Space?

Beyond natural places that communities of people have found sacred over time, each one of us has a personal sacred space in nature that we love. We know it by the joy it brings. So many of us love the peace we find swimming in the waters off the western shore of Maui. Here in the silent blue world of the ocean, we delight in meeting sea turtles and sharing swim space with them. My friend, Louise Hay, loved San Diego’s mid-city urban garden, Balboa Park, with its vast array of trees and flowers from around the world as well as her own backyard garden where she grew vegetables, fruits, and flowers.

Novelist Susan Straight finds beauty in her seemingly stark hometown landscape in Southern California. For her, the date palm trees of the desert city of Indio, standing in stately rows and catching the golden sunlight and silver moonlight, are beautiful. Lines of trees that make up the date farm landscape are “like a cathedral” she says. For many people, forests of any kind, whether palm trees or giant redwoods, are a natural temple. Our eyes are drawn upward by the great height towering above us. Looking at the sky our hearts open.

Great mountain peaks also draw our eyes toward heaven. Photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams was another admirer of the Yosemite Valley and its “vast edifice of stone and space.” President Theodore Roosevelt said of camping in Yosemite, “It was like lying in a great solemn cathedral, far vaster and more beautiful than any built by the hand of man.”

Sacred spaces

Maybe the desert is a landscape you love. The desert has always been a place of spiritual connection and reflection, a place of open space and silence and starry nights.

Artist Georgia O’Keeffe loved the northern New Mexico desert for the pure light, the clear air, and the astonishing colors of the hills and the sky. The Grand Canyon is a place of pilgrimage for millions. Sunrise and sunset paint the desert cliffs for anyone who would like to watch.

Sacred spaces

If water is your love, Crater Lake in Oregon, the deepest lake in the U.S., is an especially beautiful site considered sacred by Native Americans of the region. The lake is used as a site for vision quests and other ceremonies. Lakes, rivers, and waterfalls may be part of your vision of a spiritual home.

How to Enjoy Your Sacred Space

From early childhood, I’ve had a special connection with Lake Tahoe, one of the deepest lakes in the world. The energy there is profound, and when I visit there, I sense that its water is sacred, coming from the original source. Maybe your beloved natural place is your traditional family vacation spot. Take a moment and picture your sacred space.

If you have a chance to visit a sacred space of your own this summer, intend to connect with your heart, mind, and soul. Experience the place with all your senses. Feel the ground beneath you (or the water surrounding you). Look up at the sky, the clouds, the stars, the mountain peaks and the treetops and give thanks for the beauty and the peace. Give thanks for the gift of life and the field of loving energy that all of us share.

Relationship Sabotage

5 Ways You Sabotage Your Relationships

Wouldn’t you agree that one of the most challenging activities you engage in here on planet Earth is relating to your fellow human beings? There must be a reason why TV sit-coms, reality shows, and dramas are almost always …