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Using a Pendulum to Tune-Up Your Chakras

by ChakrasEnergy HealingFeatured

One of the most remarkable tools of energy healing is the pendulum. If you think of a pendulum as the hypnotist’s pocket watch swinging back and forth or the driving mechanism of a grandfather clock, you have part of the picture. A pendulum is simply a weight suspended from a fixed point so it can move freely—back and forth or around and around.

In energy healing, this small, symmetrical object hanging by a cord can be used to increase your sensitivity to energy flow by acting as an amplifier, helping you access the unified field, as well as your higher self. A pendulum can help you find the location of a chakra energy center and check its healthy activity level.

When you’re first learning to use a pendulum, I recommend one made of wood (preferably beechwood) with a conical shape. This will be best for giving you the information you’re looking for from chakras without distortions. Carry your new pendulum around with you for a few days in a little pouch or your pocket so it begins to resonate with your energy. The first step in using your pendulum is to bless it. You’ll want to do this before each use. For example, you

might ask for your higher self and all the higher beings that are prepared to assist you to influence the movement of the pendulum as you work. It is the movement of the pendulum that will guide you to the information you seek, so you will want to be sure you are open and available to assistance both from your own higher self and your spirit guides.

When you’re ready, your pendulum can provide valuable feedback for good health when you use it to check chakras, which are focal points of energy in the human energy field. The pendulum amplifies energy and can help you locate and gain information about the chakra’s functioning. Here’s where the chakras are located:

  • First Chakra – at the base of the spine
  • Second Chakra – halfway between the first chakra and the waist
  • Third Chakra – halfway between the navel and the breastbone
  • Fourth Chakra – in the center of the chest
  • Fifth Chakra – in the middle of the throat
  • Sixth Chakra – between the eyebrows
  • Seventh Chakra – at the top of the head

 

Begin by having your subject lie down on her back, on a surface at the best height for you to stand in a straight and comfortable posture beside her. Kitchen counters are ideal! With your posture straight and your arm extended a little forward from your body, suspend the pendulum over each energy center, about four inches above the chakras. As the pendulum starts to move, note the direction of its movement. Is it clockwise, counterclockwise, elliptical (irregular), or not moving at all? Write this down, and then move up to the next chakra.

Here are a few ways to interpret the meaning of the pendulum’s movements:

  1. Clockwise movement indicates that the chakra is open and the feelings governed by it are well balanced and full.
  2. Counterclockwise movement indicates possible blocked energy or negative experiences with the feelings related to that chakra. Whether the circle is larger or smaller also tells you whether the energy is flowing nicely or restricted.
  3. An elliptical swing indicates a right- or left-side imbalance of energy flow in the body, perhaps due to overusing either the right masculine side or the left nurturing side.

But what if there is no movement at all? This might indicate that you’re holding the pendulum above the wrong place on the body. If you try again and are sure you are in the correct location, it can indicate that blockage is present.

The size of the chakra is not the size of the circle that the pendulum makes; rather, the size of the pendulum’s circle is a function of your energy field combined with both that of the pendulum and the subject.

It’s important to remember that the health of your own energy field has a direct impact on your effectiveness in reading the other person’s energy centers. Don’t be discouraged when you first begin, if you find that you can’t even figure out where the chakras are. Practice, practice, practice. It won’t be long before you’ll start to see results.

To learn more about your chakra energy centers, join Deborah on an 8-week journey to explore the Secrets of Chakra Wisdom. And if you’re ready for pendulum work, you can get a beautifully balanced, beechwood pendulum right here.

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Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Last: Does your list reflect someone else’s agenda?

by FeaturedRelationships

Are you looking for some special inspiration as the New Year approaches? Dreaming of new beginnings and powerful transformations, but wondering just how you’ll make that happen?  It feels wonderful to think about the prospect of a fresh start, but do you really want to put yourself on the spot with that same old list of resolutions that never quite work out? Your angels can help! Now is the perfect time to call on the angelic realm for help envisioning a bright future. Those heavenly messengers who love you unconditionally, know your deepest feelings, and have only your best interests at heart, are waiting to hear from you.

How will the angels help? It’s all about finding your truth. The main reason those lists of New Year’s resolutions make you feel worse rather than better is that they usually reflect somebody else’s agenda. Before making such a list, do you ask yourself what you truly want? Do you commune with your soul to find out what is the best next step for your health and happiness? Do you say you want to lose weight, earn more money, or buy a new car because those goals will elevate your spirit? Or are these someone else’s ideas of fabulous feats for the New Year? If your heart isn’t really in these unexamined goals, no wonder they are so hard to achieve.

Your angels can help you look within and discover the true feats of spiritual growth and healing that will make a difference for you in the year ahead including:

  1. Focus on spiritual growth.
    Life is busy and spirituality may be something you sometimes set on the back burner. Your angels remind you that spirituality is a precious and pressing concern. Without making time for your spiritual routines and healing practices, you are doing yourself a great disservice. Daily meditation, journaling, taking healing courses, getting outside to connect with nature, staying grounded—these activities are things you need for your health and wellbeing.
  1. Make a fresh start.
    Letting go is one of the major tenants of energy healing, and it is a valuable practice at this time of year. Your angels can help you let go of detrimental behaviors, toxic relationships, limiting beliefs, and negative voices. With all that baggage dropped, you can start the next year of your life with a clean slate, a blank page to fill with what you want, what is best for you and your life purpose. Clearing out all that negativity opens up space for fresh positive energy to fill up your chakras and energy field, uplifting you and carrying you toward the light. All angels are angels of energy healing and can help restore your whole being back to its optimal state.
  1. Give so you can receive.
    To help yourself, you need to help others. It’s as simple as that. Your angels can help you find ways to be of service, heal your soul, and grow your spiritual consciousness. Being of service is a daily practice, a general selflessness, a shift in perspective so that you are thinking of others before yourself. The angels offer a beautiful example of selfless giving and help show the way. The more you practice, the better you get and the better you feel.
  1. Build Your Angel Contact Time.
    Encourage your angels to communicate with you more frequently by maintaining a daily practice of meditation, which opens you up to the heavenly realms by expanding your awareness. Other ways to increase your ability to connect with your angels are spending time communing with nature, keeping your negativity in check by expressing your emotions, and attending healing courses, especially my course on angels of energy healing, to make sure your energy is flowing freely. Just like with any practice, the more you contact your angels, the easier it will become. Soon, you’ll be interacting with your angels every day and enjoying the blessings of their loving attention.

As an energy healer and spiritual teacher, I can’t praise too highly the value of healing your soul this year and calling on your angels for help. If you make heart-felt, authentic resolutions, reflecting your spirit, all your other plans and goals for a Happy New Year are likely to fall into place.

Ready to connect and commune with your angels of energy healing? Guidance, support and unconditional love are already yours – all you have to do is ask, recognize the signs and interpret the messages your angels are sending you right now. Find out more…

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Winter Solstice Carries Angel Messages Meant Just for You

by AngelsAstrological EventsEnergy HealingFeatured

One of America’s best-loved holiday traditions is settling in on a cold winter’s night to watch the classic TV special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” When Linus recites the famous Bible passage from 2nd Luke, a magical transformation takes place.

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” —Luke 2, 13-14

We hear an angel choir singing and the Peanuts kids’ humble celebration turns holy. Aren’t we just like the beloved cartoon children? As the winter solstice approaches, we wait for the arrival of heavenly messengers and open our hearts to receive their gifts.

According to wisdom tradition, the winter solstice brings the realm of the angels closest to the human plane. Angels are “bending near the earth,” as the carol says. Just as the Northern Hemisphere of our planet reaches the shortest period of daylight and the longest night, the angelic realm leans in, ready to listen to our hopes and dreams and offer us the hope and healing we seek.  When we reach the winter solstice on December 22, 2015, we’ll see the sun peak at its lowest point in the sky. The term solstice means “sun stands still,” and for a fleeting moment, the sun actually seems to pause in the sky – a signal to the world that the long night is over.

As a spiritual teacher and energy healer, I encourage you to honor the winter solstice by taking advantage of this special season to listen for your angels. You can reach out to them during this time of rest and reflection and listen for their messages. Tune in to your “angel awareness.” Have you had an experience with an angel who offered life-changing advice? Was there someone who appeared to you during a difficult time and offered comforting words, support, or a fresh look at your situation? It could have been an angel helping to steer you down the path you are meant to travel. Recall the times in your life when you received a message of love and healing from an angel. Messages take all shapes and forms, but an angel is always there.

Angels are higher beings living on higher planes, and the more time you spend connecting with them and their angelic vibrations, the higher you travel on your own path of light. It is also true that the internal spiritual work you do, including healing courses and workshops, meditation, and processing your emotions, will help strengthen your ability to contact and interact with angels. An angel’s purpose is to spread love, and they do this by healing, protecting, guiding, and sharing divine love with you so you can experience the deep soul knowing that you are loved. You are loved beyond your wildest dreams, and you are loved unconditionally. Once you’ve experienced the high angelic realms where you can hear the heavenly choirs singing their celestial music, your heart will expand as it fills with love and your inner light will radiate kindness, and you will begin the process of becoming an ambassador of that light and love to others.

The winter solstice has always been a good time to deepen your meditation practice. You can diminish your personal darkness and increase your light as the world enters the annual return to longer, brighter days. Just as the ideal time for daily meditation is in the hours before dawn when the world is still, so is the deep of winter a time of stillness. Use this quiet time of reflection to soothe your spirit. Reach out to your angels during this sacred season. With knowledge of the future and your true heart’s desires, the angels provide accurate and incredibly helpful guidance that is always worth following. Although angels live in the higher planes where they are able to bask in the glow of God’s love at all times, we are lucky that they are willing and able to lean in and carry that love back down to earth, and into our hearts. Enjoy this mystical and hopeful time of year by listening for your angels!

The world in solemn stillness lay,

To hear the angels sing.

Learn more about connecting with your angels of energy healing during this special time of year.

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Vanity Sizing

by FeaturedWomen

Vanity. A lot of emotion gets packed into that word.  Even as a spiritual teacher, with my sights focused on energy healing and raising consciousness, I fret about my pants getting tighter. When I was in college, I was a size 2 model. In order to maintain that image of perfection, I lived on cigarettes and vodka. Food? No way.

Just yesterday I was having a one-on-one with a Level 7 student  and I gently pointed out to her that her recently gained 25 lbs. that she was bemoaning might be “her new normal.”  Who among us women over 40 hasn’t had to deal with a weight gain and a clothing size increase? While teaching a few weeks ago at Turks and Caicos, I asked the audience a rhetorical question: what are we going to do when we aren’t on an island and over-shirts aren’t in style?

So what does any of this have to do with being spiritually inclined? For one, you may think that if you’re trying to be more spiritual, you shouldn’t be concerned about what you look like. Not true. You need to care about the image you are presenting to the world. You want to make a good impression— at a business meeting, at the ashram, at the family reunion. You want to be desired, to be liked. (Unfortunately, you also want to have your chocolate ice cream, your lattes, and your pizza.)

Spiritual discipline is based on renunciation—you give up some portion of your ego (where I-me-mine is the center of the universe at all times) for the realization of unity consciousness. You concentrate on being mindful, being here now, instead of finding new ways to escape your reality. You start to recognize the ways in which your chakras and personal energy field are impacted by your thoughts and feelings instead of thinking every problem in your life is due to external circumstances.

So why is it so hard to give up vanity about the way you look? I think of it as “vanity sizing” in the mind. The manufacturers of the cultural obsession with physical appearance have made you feel that you have to be as thin as all those photo shopped models in magazines and actors on the screen. Yet everything in your life conspires against you being able to reach that goal. And the older your body gets, the harder it all is. Plus, what good is an hour in the gym when it’s followed by a quick stop at Starbucks? How can you even get to the gym when you work all day and pick up pizza on the way home because you have no time to cook a decent dinner for your family before you deal with your kid’s science project? Or you’re stressed out over paying your bills, or your health, or your lack of a love life, or the fact your pants are too tight—which certainly deserves another chocolate chip cookie.

When you find yourself caught up in this type of thinking—the size 16 reality of your day-to-day life versus the size 4 fantasy ideal your vanity would like you to achieve—what should you do?

Call upon your Higher Self.

Your Higher Self is who you really are. She encompasses all the virtues that stem from higher consciousness. She knows your higher purpose in life—the reason you incarnated in your particular body, with all its seeming faults. She’s the one who is with you lifetime after lifetime. So relax. Be who you are. Sit quietly and pull down the bright white/gold light from above your head (your Higher Self is really quite lovely) into that fabulous body of yours. It’s fabulous because it is the vehicle for getting to know your own divinity.

With the way things are going these days—with toxic chemicals turning rivers orange, with icecaps melting and oceans rising, with fierce typhoons, fires, and floods, with fracking causing earthquakes, with oil spills destroying habitats—maybe we all need to pay more attention to Mother Earth’s body than to our own.

Until then, buy pants in the next size up!

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Discover the Secrets of Chakra Wisdom!

by ChakrasEnergy HealingFeatured

What do you want to change in your life?

Are you overwhelmed and looking for more peace? Are you unsure of your future or which life path is right for you? Are you seeking healing, spiritual enlightenment, or deeper satisfaction? Chakras are your secret weapons against living a life full of discontentment, disconnection, and fear. With the wisdom gained through opening these powerful energy centers, you can transform your behaviors and attitude to better live in alignment with your higher self and true soul purpose, and become the light bearer you were meant to be.

The Solution to Your Problems

Nearly everyone is searching for something these days. Many of my students come to me feeling generally underwhelmed with their careers or their relationships or their sense of purpose, and they don’t understand why they just can’t seem to get out of their slump or improve a certain aspect of their life. Others have an illness or injury that refuses to respond to traditional medicine, or something intangible like depression or weight gain or insomnia. Does this sound like you? Whatever particular problem is plaguing you, when you unlock the wisdom of your chakras, you’ll find the key to solving it so you can be on your way to a healthier and happier future.

In Sanskrit, the word chakra means wheel or vortex, and that’s what a chakra is: a spinning wheel or vortex of energy, pulsing and pushing energy in and out between your personal energy field and the universal field that interpenetrates all things. This energy exchange is necessary for your health as that new fresh energy cleans, balances, and nourishes you. Without it, your chakras and your energy field become weakened as does your psyche and body. Healthy chakras keep energy moving, therefore keeping you healthy.

Energetic Nourishment

Think of it this way: your energy field needs nourishment just like your body does, and the universal field provides that necessary food. When your chakras become blocked or distorted, you don’t get enough nourishment from the universal field, and just like when you don’t eat enough good food, your energy plummets, you become mentally foggy, your emotions go haywire, and you can eventually get sick.

Energetic nourishment is especially important because what happens in your energy field is reflected in your body. That’s how energy healing works: when you heal the energy field, you also heal the body. By correcting distortions in your chakras, energy healing can heal anything from headache to heartbreak, from diabetes to a broken ankle, from obesity to cancer. That’s how I was led to energy medicine: a cancer diagnosis that woke me up and helped me discover my true calling as a spiritual teacher.

My First Energy Healing Experience

I was a hard-charging attorney in my twenties, climbing the corporate ladder without regard for my health. I was addicted to the alcohol and pills I’d used to try to bury an abusive childhood, and I suffered from depression, eating disorders, and eventually, cancer. Unwilling to start with invasive treatments, I got permission from my doctors to explore alternative therapies and I had a spontaneous remission at the hands of an energy healer. I felt the cancer leave my body—that’s how powerful the healing experience was for me on that table. For confirmation, my doctor ran some tests, and sure enough, the cancer was gone.

I was so amazed and intrigued, I began studying with shamans, seers, and healers, learning as much as I possibly could about chakras and how energy affects health. The more I learned, the less I was surprised by my remission. Medicine men and women and healers around the globe have been practicing energy healing for centuries, and our early ancestors were in tune with their natural energy healing abilities as well. These healers and spiritual teachers understood that chakras hold the keys to your physical, emotional, and mental well being, and your spiritual growth.

What Happens to an Imbalanced Chakra

There are seven main chakras that roughly follow a line from the base of your spine to the top of your head. Each chakra governs different areas of your life and is connected to different parts of your body. When a chakra is blocked, the arenas corresponding to that chakra will become affected.

For example, the throat chakra is the source of your authenticity, the place from which you speak your truth. If your throat chakra is imbalanced, you may have difficulty speaking your mind and expressing your feelings, and may find that you are easily manipulated by others. If the chakra stays dysfunctional for long enough, physical symptoms like problems with the thyroid, neck, jaw, teeth, gums, or mouth can develop. This is why energy healing is so important—keeping your chakras clear, charged, and balanced is the best way to maintain your health.

The Higher Chakras

There are also the secret higher chakras, starting with the eighth chakra, through which you can gain access to higher planes, psychic abilities, and eventually Source itself. In my thirty years of study and practice I have been led by Spirit to become intimately familiar with these higher chakras through advanced states of meditation, and now I want to pass that knowledge on to you!

I’ve just released a beautiful free 3 video teaching series that contains the best of what I’ve learned about chakras in my three decades as an energy healer, spiritual teacher, and seeker of the light. In the first video lesson you’ll explore the mystical higher spiritual chakras I just mentioned, and how you can begin the process of activating them and moving toward an amazing awakening of spirit. In the second and third ones, you’ll learn all about the main seven chakras and how you can make them work for you. Hope you enjoy these videos!

Click here to view the Free Video Training>>>>>>>

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What’s Missing from Your Yoga Practice?

by Energy HealingFeatured

Yoga is currently one of the most popular forms of exercise in the world. Celebrities tout its benefits on late night TV shows, corporations, schools, and even jails have instituted yoga programs, and there is a whole business dedicated to designer yoga clothes and accessories. There is even baby yoga! But this popularity makes sense when you understand how valuable a tool yoga is for your wellbeing. Yoga improves digestion, immune function, flexibility, strength, joint pain, anxiety, sleep, sex, focus, memory, self-esteem, inner peace, and connection to Source, just to name a few of its dozens of benefits. But if you want to get the most out of yoga, consider adding a missing ingredient that will take your practice to new heights: Ayurveda.

In Sanskrit, the word “yoga” means “to join together” or “union,” and comes from the same roots as the word “yoke,” as in two things yoked together. In yoga, the yoking is in reference to the union of mind, body, and spirit. The word Ayurveda comes from the Sanskrit roots Ayu, meaning “life” and Veda¸ meaning “knowledge” or “science.” So Ayurveda means the “science of life.” Some scholars suggest that Ayu doesn’t just mean life, but even more specifically, the state of being in which mind, body, and soul are joined together and there is total integration. This unity and connectedness is the goal of both yoga and Ayurveda—and energy healing—and every step toward that unity dramatically improves your quality of life.

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What Is Ayurveda?

Ayurveda is a system of medicine that’s over five thousand years old, even older than traditional Chinese medicine. This “science of life” originated with ancient seers called rishis. These enlightened men and women sat for hours in deep meditation, communing with what they called the “Cosmic Consciousness,” and what we in energy medicine call the universal field. This unified field or Cosmic Consciousness or Source or whatever you want to call it holds the past, present, future, and all information in existence, and these rishis returned from their meditations with beyond-earthly insight into the world. They turned this insight to the human body and “discovered” the healthcare system of Ayurveda.

The rishis in their infinite wisdom discerned that the energy from the universal field manifests itself in all matter—including humans—as five basic elements: air, fire, water, earth, and ether or space. Within the body, those basic elements come together in different combinations to make up three biological or metabolic bio-energies, which Ayurveda calls doshas. There are three doshas: the space and air elements combined to form the Vata dosha, the fire and water elements combined to form the Pitta dosha, and the earth and water elements combined to form the Kapha dosha. Each person has a unique mind-body constitution, or prakruti, which means “nature,” that is their body type. Your prakruti is based on which dosha(s) are most prevalent in you.

These doshas are super important, as they are the bridge between the body and mind, the spot where your thoughts turn into matter, and here, you can see the first signs of health problems and treat them before they develop. Ayurveda is a lot like energy medicine—it’s why they can work in tandem so well—as it is the imbalances in the energy that cause physical problems. By following Ayurvedic principles and rebalancing the doshas, you can restore your body to health and reestablish the mind-body-soul connection.

How Do Ayurveda and Yoga Work Together?

Just like Ayurveda, the governing principle of yoga is balance, and both traditions have healing properties. They have even been called “sister sciences.” When yoga was first brought to the west, Ayurveda was left out, even though both practices were born out of the larger tradition of Vedic knowledge in ancient India. When you bring these two modalities together again, you’ll understand why they were made to be yoked.

Yoga on its own is not a system of medicine, but rather a spiritual practice and type of treatment. It heals, but does not diagnose. For that, you need a system of medicine which has a clear understanding of how the body and energy field work. That’s what Ayurveda does—allows you to understand the cause of the problem so you can assess, diagnose, and then treat.

Think of it this way: energy healing is a system of medicine just like Ayurveda. An energy healer can sense your problems and chakra blockages and suggest a course of treatment, which can include meditation, journaling, grounding, chakra clearing, etc., but you need that umbrella of energy medicine to first evaluate and diagnose your issue and then recommend the curative measures. Directed efforts are more effective, and that requires a diagnosis.

This is how Ayurveda can take your yoga practice sky high—by tailoring your yoga therapy to address the issues identified through Ayurveda, you turn yoga into a targeted healing machine for your unique constitution. There are yoga postures that correspond to specific doshas, and once you learn those, you will be amazed at how much more you’ll get out of your yoga practice. You’ll come away feeling more refreshed and with a deeper internal peace.

Touch Heaven & Earth

This doesn’t mean you can’t take your regular yoga class. People who have different prakrutis are in classes together every day. What you can do is alter your poses to address your personal needs. Attitude and intention go a long way in all these healing therapies—yoga, Ayurveda, energy healing—and yoga is a place to follow through with your intentions. Your body and spirit are different from everyone else’s so why should you do your asanas the exact same way? Aligning your practice with your Ayurvedic constitution will boost your results tenfold.

So if you’re a Vata, try practicing more slowly and deliberately; if you’re a Pitta, try to relax into your asanas and avoid overheating; if you’re a Kapha, challenge yourself! Go for those tough poses. If you don’t know your dosha, consider working with a spiritual teacher or taking healing courses or an online quiz. And if you don’t already practice yoga, I encourage you to start! Like meditation, it’s most effective when done regularly.

Let me leave you with this idea: Ayurveda is the physical health counterpoint to the spiritual act of yoga. Yoga is for reaching higher states of consciousness and Ayurveda is for reaching balance on the physical plane. Done together, you can touch heaven and earth and heal yourself in the process.

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Yoga and Energy Healing: Friends With Benefits

by Be Your Own ShamanChakrasEnergy HealingFeaturedHealthWomen

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Nearly everyday, it seems like there is some new health fad or alternative therapy saying they can help you lose weight fast or detox your system in twenty-four hours or make you happy with a pill. These quick-result claims are usually bogus, and are often actually harmful, because the way you heal yourself is not quickly, but sure and steady like the turtle. Your health is not worth risking for a magical overnight cure, and all true, effective, lasting healing takes some time and effort. But if you want to get the most healing bang for your buck, there is one healing practice that has stood the test of time and is the closest thing to a magical cure you will find: energy healing.

Health Is a Balancing Act

The mind-body-spirit connection has been well established by studies and research that illustrate that your system is a balancing act: each aspect of your being—mind, emotions, body, and soul—affects the other aspects directly. Unprocessed emotional trauma can block your chakras, disrupting your energy flow, and those distortions in your chakras can cause physical illness or injury. Spiritual depression, too, can cause physical depression—an experience you may have gone through before finding the right spiritual path—and physical pain can cause spiritual pain or lack of faith.
Think of each element of your being like a support beam in a house. When one beam cracks or fails, the whole building is weakened and becomes more susceptible to additional problems. You are like that house; when your chakras are blocked or your body is ill or any foundational part of you is somehow not functioning properly, it throws the whole structure—you—out of balance, and leaves you open to further harm.

How Many Ways Is Yoga is Good for You?

This is where energy healing can come in and save the day. As an energy healer and spiritual teacher, I introduce my students to many techniques that clear, charge, and balance their chakras and energy field and therefore heal the rest of them: journaling, meditation, being of service, forgiveness, shamanic breath work, Ayurveda, and many more. Today, I’d like to focus on one technique that is nearly as old as energy medicine itself: yoga.
This ancient Indian practice has soared in popularity, with yoga studios everywhere and yoga clothes as their own fashion trend. This spiritual practice is now done by everyone from celebrities to businessmen to schoolchildren, and most people know at least a pose or two. There have been many studies and plenty of evidence to support the wide range of positive results attributed to yoga that it’s now well known for its myriad health benefits.

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Physically, yoga improves flexibility and muscle strength, aids digestion, helps you sleep better, lowers blood pressure, ups your immune function, decreases pain, and even increases sexual performance! Mentally, yoga helps you focus, releases stress, reduces anxiety, and calms your thoughts. Yoga has also been linked to higher self-esteem, amplified inner strength and power, deeper awareness, and more peace. Plus, it can help you tone your body and lose weight. And this is just the tip of the yoga iceberg!

Yoga’s Spiritual Side

At its core, Yoga is a spiritual practice, passed down from yogis who devoted their lives to spiritual pursuits, and “yokes” the body and the soul energetically, just as does the practice of energy healing. Yoga uses movement or postures, called asanas, to revitalize your nervous system, your circulation, and your flow of prana, positively affecting your personal energy field. Yoga also emphasizes the breath, or pranayama, and uses the breath to move prana in and out from your body during the movements. The asanas and breathing are done together in a specific way to soothe and link your body and mind, clear and balance your chakras, and bring you in touch with Source.

Yoga makes a great complement to your energy medicine practice and any of my healing courses. Yoga is not just about stretching your mind and body, but about really connecting to yourself on a deep spiritual level, grounding you to the Earth and your physicality so that you have roots from which to grow your spirituality, and increasing the flow of energy within you. Yoga and energy healing both strive for harmony and balance, clarity of thought and intention, and a deeper understanding of your higher self.

In its own way, yoga is a type of energy healing, so when you practice yoga and energy healing together, the results will multiply exponentially. They’re like friends with benefits, each helping to boost the effectiveness of the other, and working toward the same goal of healing and transforming your entire being.

Blue-Meditation

Meditate Like a Star

by Featured
p, and get in time every day at the gym to keep their bodies red carpet ready? Most of all, how do they cope with the stress of their jobs, the ups and downs of their reputations, and the fact that they will soon be replaced? It’s simple… the ones who aren’t drowning in drink or drugs hold themselves together by meditating!

If it’s good enough for Oprah, who runs an entire media empire, it’s probably good enough for us! I’ve always found it truly amazing how big a difference meditation makes in my onw life, and how much more ready I am to tackle my insane schedule after I’ve spent time meditating, going deep into inner realms.

You can read more about celebs and meditation in a blog I’ve just posted on HuffPo http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-king/why-do-these-celebs-medit_b_6593894.html[/vc_column_text]

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4 Reasons to Forgive

by ChakrasEnergy HealingFeaturedTruth Heals

Forgiveness is an essential part of healing. When you have suffered a wrong, or even a perceived wrong, the resulting hurt and anger can burrow deep into your heart and energy field and begin to fester. The longer you harbor the resentment and bitterness instead of forgiving the wrong, the higher the chances that those negative feelings will cause discord in your system, creating blocks in your chakras and eventually, physical symptoms and illness. Forgiveness is not easy for anyone. Trust me, I know. It took years of intense personal work through energy healing for me to be able to forgive my father for his abuse, and my mother for her blind eye and cold shoulder. If you have experienced severe betrayal or violence, abandonment or abuse, especially from a trusted family member or caretaker, forgiveness might seem like an impossible feat. It does take courage, but you can do it, and your life will improve a hundred times over once you do.

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Here are just a few of the reasons to practice forgiveness:

1. Forgiveness makes you feel better. Forgiveness takes the power away from the hurt or wrong and helps you to let it go. As long as you hold on to resentment or anger it can manifest in your life as depression, self-blame, guilt, loss of motivation, revenge fantasies, anxiety, and other emotional and mental issues, as well as physical health problems, especially those related to the heart chakra, including asthma, pneumonia, breast or lung cancer. When you forgive, you take a large step forward in healing yourself. Studies suggest that forgiveness improves the function of the immune system, and research has shown that pain levels decrease when patients forgive inner hurts. This is because forgiveness releases the clouds of darkness those negative emotions create in your field and body, and allows for light energy to fill those holes, which charges and energizes your whole being.

2. Forgiveness is not excusing. I want to make sure you understand that forgiveness is not excusing what someone did to you. There are likely very real betrayals and traumas in your life that are not excusable, and you should not have to feel like you need to minimize what happened to you. What forgiveness does entail is letting go of the residual emotions like resentment, anger, hurt, and bitterness that stem from what happened. Forgiving means you stop feeling hostile, that you let go of any need or desire for revenge or retribution. This is not a weakness; quite the opposite, in fact. It takes a ton of strength and courage to forgive, and if you can manage it, it will speed up your spiritual progress as well as set you free.

3. Guilt impedes your healing process. Guilt is a parasitic emotion. It eats at you from the inside, churning your stomach and making you tense, and not doing you any good. The only potential it has is spurring you to own up to your mistakes as best you can and to learn from them. Then you must move on, which includes forgiving yourself. Self-forgiveness is possibly more important than forgiving others, as you have to live with yourself every second of every day. If you are constantly beating yourself up over past mistakes, that blame and anger can cause blockages in your personal energy field. If you don’t forgive yourself, you put yourself at risk. If you already have a health problem like cancer or another disease, you must remember that it is not your fault! You were working with what you knew at that time, and you cannot control pollutants or genetics or abusers. There is nothing to be gained from wishing you could change the past, and self-blame only does further harm. As a spiritual teacher and energy healer, I encourage students to learn from the disease and then move on by forgiving yourself and letting it go. It is the only way to heal.

4. Forgiveness is for you, not them. The only person who suffers from a grudge is you. Holding onto the desire for revenge, or any other hostile emotion regarding someone who wronged you, doesn’t actually harm them the way you might want it to. In fact, it backfires, and causes you tremendous damage.

When you forgive, you lift a weight off your chest that you probably didn’t realize you were carrying, but you will feel so much lighter and freer once it’s been removed. When I finally realized one day that after years of journaling, meditating prayer, and energy medicine techniques, I no longer felt any hatred or bitterness toward my parents, it was like I was reborn. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and I felt utterly uplifted.You will, too.

If you have tried to forgive and are having trouble releasing your anger or hostility, try journaling about your feelings, which sets them free from your body and energy field and allows for fresh universal energy to fill that space. I also highly recommend you take one of my energy healing courses, which will give you plenty of techniques for processing and releasing your emotions so you can become healthier and happier. Lastly, be patient with yourself. Forgiveness can be very difficult, and can take time. But it is so worth the effort to be able to be free of the chains of guilt and bitterness, and move forward in creating the life you want.

Selma

Marching to Selma

by FeaturedMovie Reviews

I saw “Selma” this weekend. This movie tells the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, that led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It does much more than give us a picture of what happened fifty years ago in the fight for civil rights. It ties in to what is happening in the US right now—to young African-Americans being killed by police, to protests that still use nonviolence as a means of being heard, and the grace and extraordinary courage of ordinary citizens who are determined to bring about justice for all.
It’s a powerful film that gives a new look at an American icon. Most people today know little about Martin Luther King Jr. other than his “I have a dream” speech and a national holiday that means a day off. In the film, we see him as the father of four children, a husband trying to make his marriage work, a gifted preacher who was an ordinary man that got caught up in a particular moment of history and did great things. But it also shows us that King did not do this alone. It gives insight into the leadership of others fighting the good fight for equal voting rights like John Lewis, a Congressional representative since 1987, who was a young leader of the civil rights movement at King’s side.

I am not troubled by the claimed factual inaccuracies (that happens with every historical film), especially in regard to the role of LBJ; it’s impossible to tell the full story of the three years covered in the film. And since it was directed by Ava DiVernay, an African-American woman, it comes from a black perspective—in itself a refreshing difference from history textbooks. Bill Moyers was recently interviewed about “Selma” and he said, “…it’s good to be reminded of a time when courage on the street is met by a moral response from power.”
It’s such an important film to see that a “Selma for Students” movement arose to offer thousands of free tickets to middle-school children across the country this past weekend as Martin Luther King Jr. Day is being celebrated.

On Sunday, Oprah Winfrey (one of the film’s producers and an actor in the film) and others from the cast along with a thousand ordinary people walked across the bridge in Selma to remind everyone that the civil rights struggles from the 1960s are not over; we are still living in a land that fails to provide equal justice for all. But the march yesterday was a far cry from the scene on March 7, 1965 when billy clubs and tear gas stopped the marchers from walking 50 miles to the capital of Alabama in Montgomery in order to get the right to register to vote. “Bloody Sunday” reminds us, yet again, that when we don’t see everybody as one, when we discriminate against others based on their race or religion or sexual orientation, blood is shed, innocents die, and hatred in the heart is reflected in leering faces like that of then Alabama governor George Wallace.

Hollywood somehow missed the boat on “Selma” by not nominating either its star, David Oyelowo, or its director. In fact, this year there was not a solitary person of color nominated for an Oscar in any acting category, the first time since 1998 that has happened—a snub that went deep since it came just before the MLK holiday. And a reminder that the Academy is 93 percent white and 76 percent male, with an average age of 63—much like the old white men in the South who tried to silence the voices of those not like themselves.

This movie is a “must see.” Do not miss the chance to understand the true nature of courage, to remember why we have to do whatever it takes to root out the seeds of prejudice from our own hearts, and to stand up fearlessly for justice and equality for all.

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Kick Off a New Healthier and Happier You!

by FeaturedHealth

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Beginnings are important. The first page of a book, the first line of a movie, a first encounter, the first month of a new year—they all set the tone for what’s to come. Think about how often the tone of your morning sets the tone for the day. Similarly, how you begin this new year and the behaviors you establish this month can set the tone for next twelve months, so you want to make it good!

January sees an increase in gym memberships and dieting, an up in detox meal plans and walks. Everyone wants to be healthier, and they figure that if they start the year off right, the positive momentum will keep them on track the rest of the year.

Real Healing Comes from Within

The problem is that fad diets and other thirty-day quick fixes don’t actually heal you, and therefore can’t really eliminate the negative behaviors you’re trying to put behind you. Real healing has to come from the inside and must treat your whole being, getting at the root of the issue. If your unhealthy habits are fueled by an old trauma or suppressed emotions—and nearly all bad habits are—you won’t be able to fully conquer the habit until you’ve dealt with the underlying emotional and energetic causes. This is where energy healing and meditation come in.

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Energy healing heals all of you. It clears up emotional blockages in your chakras so they can move energy in and out between your field and the universal field, keeping you recharged and replenished. Energy healing also gives you the tools to process current emotions to prevent further buildup. Not only does meditation heal you, it also expands your awareness, and brings you closer to Source and your higher self. With the guidance of your higher self, you become able to glimpse your true soul purpose, the reason you are here on Earth, which helps you stay more closely aligned with that purpose and speeds up your spiritual progress. All these benefits and more from something that you can do from home in just minutes each day!

Meditation really is the best way to jump into energy healing, and it’s my best recommendation for how to kick off this new year healthfully and set a calm, collected, and centered tone for your 2015.

Here are three tips for successfully beginning and maintaining a meditation practice:

 

  1. Do it daily.

Meditation is like wine: it only gets better with time. It is an incremental process that re-sets your physiology and psyche. Done daily, it decreases stress, slows heart rate, reduces blood pressure, improves sleep, turns back the clock, as well as spiritual expansion and increased connection to the Divine. Twenty minutes, twice a day is ideal. Try meditating first thing in the morning, to start your day refreshed and centered. Keep in mind as you begin that every single person in the world can learn to meditate. Like anything else, with practice it becomes easier.

 

  1. Schedule it!

You’ll need to schedule your daily meditation time, just like you do your gym time or walking your dog or hair appointments. It’s that important! In the meditation technique I teach, you’ll see that I encourage you to meditate before you leave the bedroom in the morning, before the pressures of your day hit. Early morning is also the most powerful time of the day for you to connect with Spirit – right around sunrise is ideal.

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  1.  Learn from a spiritual teacher.

Some of the mainstream meditation teachings put an emphasis on simple relaxation or tell you to empty your mind while meditating. How in the world do you do that! No wonder so many people give up! Instead, in the meditation technique I teach, I teach you to focus on a special mantra I choose just for you, which allows you to float just outside your thoughts and keeps you from getting restless.

No matter what you’re hoping to cultivate in this new year, meditation can help you. It improves every aspect of your being, just like energy medicine, and with continued meditation, all the pieces of your life will seem to make just a little more sense. Meditation can help you begin this year with more balance, clarity, peace, health, and happiness. I hope you will start right now!

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Have a Happier Home for the Holidays

by Featured

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Going home for the holidays is never as simple as it sounds. Whether you are literally traveling home to the place you grew up or simply gathering together with the people you grew up with, you are probably going to interact with family and old friends in the coming weeks. While there is a lot to enjoy about reuniting with loved ones, there are also some uncomfortable emotions that arise at these get-togethers as you likely have at least one person in your family who pushes your buttons or stirs up issues and emotions that are less than joyful. But you don’t have to let it spoil your cheer! With the help of these energy medicine techniques, you can improve your relations with your relatives, and have a happier, calmer, more fun home—literally or figuratively—this holiday season.

 

  1. Embrace forgiveness.

 

Family can be a mixed blessing, and the holidays can bring up long-standing issues between loved ones. Perhaps you and your cousin had a fight about something when you were teens and neither of you seems to be able to move past it, or maybe you felt betrayed by a loved one and are still waiting for an apology even though it’s been years. Whatever the issue is, seeing the person who wronged you, especially at a time when you are supposed to feel love and joy, can be make you depressed, anxious, or angry.

 

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This year, try forgiving your loved one. Carrying a grudge is so much more detrimental to your own health and wellbeing than it is to theirs, creating blocks in your chakras and hindering your spiritual progress. When you finally let that anger and resentment go, you will feel free, like a huge weight has been lifted from your chest and heart. Through energy healing, I was able to forgive my father for his abuse and my mother for her blind eye and coldness, and I have witnessed first-hand at my healing courses the relief of so many students who muster up the courage to forgive. Meditation, working with a spiritual teacher or energy healer, and journaling about your feelings are great ways to boost the process of forgiveness.

 

It’s not always easy, but forgiveness allows you to process the trauma and release it for good, clearing out all the negativity attached to the grudge and smoothing out your interactions with the person in the future. You will probably find that your shift in attitude toward them will create a similarly positive effect towards you, and you’ll both feel better. Even if the person doesn’t forgive you back, your internal response will be less reactionary and heathier for your mind, body, and soul—and your holidays! Forgiveness is the best gift you can give yourself this year.

 

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  1. Don’t engage in negativity.

 

You probably have that family member who just likes to push your buttons to see when you’ll pop. For many of my students that person is a mother or mother-in-law, who picks and criticizes, and makes snide remarks or backhanded compliments about everything from their clothes to their cooking. Another common family dynamic that creates negativity is sibling rivalry, which can lean to uncomfortable competitiveness or nights of each sibling trying to one-up the other at every turn. Tense family interactions can be fueled by a range of emotions including jealousy, fear, insecurity, shame, bitterness, spite, and a million other feelings that are bubbling all year but often seem to emerge during the holiday season.

 

Whenever possible, don’t engage in the drama. If your sister says for the fifth time that her mashed potatoes are better than yours, or your father-in-law mentions again that you paid too much for your house, just let it wash over you without soaking into your skin. Use the energy healing methods you’ve learned to maintain an emotional distance, call upon the calm and peace you’ve gained through meditation and grounding, and use your expanded awareness to view the situation from a place of love and forgiveness and just let it all go. Don’t snap back, but instead change the direction of the conversation or say something like, “Thank you for your opinion.” A fight can only escalate if both parties participate, so if you take a step back, the negativity will usually fizzle out.

 

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  1. Focus on renewing your healthy relationships.

 

Just as you have someone in your family who enjoys making you feel bad, I’m sure you also have at least one person in your family or friend group who makes you feel loved and appreciated. Focus on those positive, affirming relationships! Cultivating healthy relationships is an important part of feeling good about yourself and keeping your chakras and energy field clear and charged. When you surround yourself with people who have similar values, and who respect and appreciate you for who you are, your energy field doesn’t get drained the way it does around negative Nellies.

 

So let those in your life who support and care for you know how much you appreciate them at your next family gathering. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate gesture—though chocolate never hurt anyone in moderation—but take a moment to show or tell your loved that they’re important to you. Remember, they are probably feeling some of the same tensions you feel during these family get-togethers, so a nice moment with you is sure to life their spirits. This also engages you in the practice of gratitude, which will help shift your perspective into the positive.

 

However you spend your holidays, and whoever you spend your time with, keep in mind that the true purpose of this season is to spread light and love to others, through your words, your actions, and your attitude. Be the light you want to see and it will radiate out and then reflect back to you, creating concentric circles of light and love that extend far beyond you and your family and bring happiness for the holidays and joy to the world.

 

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True-Love

True Love is Closer Than You Think!

by FeaturedRelationshipsWomen

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Around Valentine’s Day, retailers from Macy’s to Rite Aid start selling love-themed gifts in displays with red and pink heart decorations and images of diaper-clad cupids with their love bows and heart arrows. Bouquets of roses and ads for lingerie, champagne, and chocolates are everywhere. It’s enough to make even the happiest of couples feel pressured to act more romantic. And for those of you who are not currently in a relationship, this candy-coated holiday may leave you feeling more sour than sweet.

But true love is closer than you think. You only need to look in the mirror.

Many of those I help ask me how they can find love. As a trained Energy Healer, I often sense a blockage in the fourth chakra—the heart chakra. With a bit of probing I discover that my client is still affected by a past break-up or rejection, an abusive partner, childhood traumas, and many more emotionally charged events that have settled in their energy field.

Take my student, Paula, for example. I sensed in her energy field a toxic residue from a previous relationship. She had been cheated on repeatedly and lied to by her last partner, a man who finally stomped Paula’s heart into dust and left her broken. That emotionally abusive man also left a psychic wound that prevented Paula from trusting or loving anyone, including herself. As long as that wound went untreated, she would not be open to accepting love, despite how desperately she wanted it.  As I helped to heal her heartache, I asked Paula two life-changing questions: Do you love yourself? Do you feel worthy of love?

Tears poured out of Paula’s eyes as she shook her head, no, and she is not alone. It’s amazing how many people answer no to both questions, often in a choked whisper as they realize what this means. How can they ever hope to find love without first loving themselves? How can they allow anyone to love them if they don’t feel they deserve to be loved? Like Paula, these poor students’ hearts are literally frozen; no wonder they can’t find love.

If this sounds like you, please don’t despair. You can still learn to love, and love better, by first learning how to love yourself. Here are five easy steps you can take right now to begin to find your one true love: yourself.

1. Know You Are Worthy of Love

This is the first step. You have to believe that you are loveable, that you deserve to be loved. In my healing courses and workshops, I help you understand that no matter what your mom or dad or first crush or high school boyfriend or first partner said or did that made you feel unworthy of love—they are wrong. I cannot comment on their issues, but I can tell you that you deserve love. You are already loved by the Divine, constantly and unconditionally, and knowing this is the gateway to being able to accept love first from yourself, and then from others.

2. Forgive Your Imperfect Self

We are often more willing to forgive others for their mistakes than ourselves. Many of my students are their own harshest critics, making lists of perceived failures and other reasons they are “not good enough” to be loved, and creating a self-perpetuating cycle of rejection and loneliness. You are not perfect, but no one is. Forgive yourself for those past errors, accept yourself for who you are, and live with positive intentions.

3. Practice Self-Love

This might sound strange to those of you who were taught that loving yourself was the same as bragging; that you were selfish if you took care of your own needs first. But love is like emergency oxygen masks in an airplane: just as you must put on your own mask before assisting others, you must love yourself first in order to love others next. So begin each day by practicing self-love. Breathe love in before you get out of bed. Use a journal to keep track of moments you’re proud of, or make a list of your strengths. If you keep a gratitude list (which I highly recommend) be sure to add things about yourself you are thankful for. Love yourself as you are—an imperfect being moving toward the light.

4. Work on Your Spiritual Development

Connecting to the infinite love of Source will help you connect to earthly love as well. Begin with a daily practice of meditation and not only will you begin to experience a sense of calm and peace, you will also attune your body, mind, and soul to an energy that can begin to clear your emotional blocks. Developing your spiritual practice, whatever that means for you, can open your chakras so that you can accept the love that is sure to come your way.

5.  Get Rid of Toxic Relationships

Toxic relationships are like black mold to your energy field. Once that negativity gets a foothold, it will spread and spread until it has choked off your access to the light. And like with black mold, it’s not enough to clear away each flare-up, you need to cut it off at the root. If possible, remove yourself from the abusive partner or friend who disguises insults as compliments.  If elimination is not possible, protect yourself spiritually by creating a psychic shield.

The truth of the season is that you are your one and only true love—so indulge in a little soul pampering and be sweet to yourself. Let Valentine’s Day be a catalyst for your own self-love rituals. You may even want to take yourself on a moonlit beach walk or buy yourself a special outfit. And if you want it, external love won’t be far behind.