initiate

Access Higher Realms for Guidance: Your Leadership Role Right Now (Part 2)

initiate

Are you ready to step into your purpose as a leader — so you can LIVE your soul’s deepest desires, and help us heal our world?

In Part 1, we started exploring how you’re being called to step into leadership right now and I shared a quick, powerful practice for tapping into the guidance of your eighth chakra.

In Part 2, we’ll build off of the foundation we created together, and I guide you to tap even beyond your eighth chakra to find the unique mission of your soul — your true life purpose that’s calling you to step into action now

We’ll start with a revisit to your 8th chakra — the epicenter of your entire chakra system. Then we’ll tap into your 9th, 10th, 11th, and we’ll even discuss the 12th chakra — the seat of all-knowing awareness.

The 8th chakra for wisdom & higher perception

In the video below, you’ll sense your 8th chakra as a light-filled orb. This is the first transpersonal chakra, associated with the origin of enlightenment and ascension.

Here you can sense that you’re connected to a large community of higher beings, because this chakra takes you beyond your singular self. The 8th chakra connects you with higher spiritual perceptions and wisdom. Here you develop a new spiritual awareness that can bring great changes to your professional and personal life as you go beyond yourself and into your desire to help heal the planet.

Your 9th chakra for tapping into your karmic blueprint

Next I introduce you to your 9th chakra, where all the abilities that are related to the Christ light energy are waiting for you, to be used in both your inner and outer worlds. This chakra is about four feet above your head — and it’s a joy-filled center that sparks the light in all the cells of your body.

The ninth chakra holds your karmic blueprint, as well as the key to the destiny of your soul. You become aware of all the knowledge and the various skills you have acquired in all your experiences and in every lifetime.

As I guide you into this chakra, you’ll take a look at three principal life blueprints: the creator, the healer, and the teacher. You’ll see which one you hold as your main blueprint — the one that you’ve developed the most throughout your lifetimes. As you’ll discover, your karmic blueprint determines your destiny!

Your 10th chakra for tapping into your deepest, highest skills

The power to manifest is within your own subtle energy body. It’s not about affirmations or visualizations — it’s about drawing Divine, Soul energy from the higher realms, into the physical realm.
Through your 10th chakra, you can start to manifest your desires and bring into the world the skills and knowledge you learned in your past incarnations.

The 10th chakra is also responsible for divine creativity — the ability to bring all facets of your life into harmony and to bring manifestation into every area of your life.

In this video practice, I guide you in a meditation to heal your 10th chakra. I show you how to release the energy blockages by dissolving fear. I also share a mantra to use for balancing the masculine and feminine within your 10th chakra and your entire energy field.

The 11th chakra for going beyond the physical world

At the level of the 11th chakra, you start to go beyond the laws of the physical world, like gravity or space/time, and start to use other siddhis—advanced powers.

This chakra contains your spiritual library — everything you need to be both human and divine. It holds all the connections you need to activate higher spiritual abilities such as teleportation, telekinesis, the instant manifestation of thought into matter, and bi-location and travel outside the limitation of time and space. Of course, this is a very advanced chara, and these gifts will not manifest until the 12th chakra begins its opening.

The 11th chakra has all the connections you need to activate the higher spiritual abilities, such as teleportation, telekinesis, the instant manifestation of thought into matter, bi-location and travel outside the limitation of time and space.

Of course, these will not manifest until the 12th chakra begins its opening. These skills are meant to prepare you for your existence after ascension. It is the new path your soul will follow in its newest form, while still in your physical body.

The 12th chakra for merging with the cosmos and all-knowing awareness

At the Monadic level of the 12th chakra, you are merged with Cosmos and all-knowing awareness. You will be thrilled by the brilliance of this 12th chakra, located about 20 feet above your crown chakra; it’s like a sun vibrating with swirling colors.

And like the sun, it burns hot and bright, since it is the source of your power and strength as well as your capability of manifesting change in both physical and nonphysical reality. All the energies of ascension reside here, which can speed up the ascension process in all the chakras below the 12th. You can also develop control over the elements when the 12th starts to open.

Here is the entrance to the vastness of the cosmos. If the 11th chakra is not wired correctly it can cause problems in the 12th chakra. And blocked energies here can cause issues with out-of-body travel, random healing skills, spontaneous inner visions in the midst of normal living, and even being able to have objects appear and disappear. This happens when the blocked energy is strong enough to bust out and pours too much energy into the 11th chakra where these skills reside.

In this video, I guide you in meditation to help balance the 12th chakra and calibrate your entire energy body at a high spiritual vibration.

If you are interested in guidance, so that you can find balance in all aspects of your life, reveal your life’s true purpose, and become your most powerful self, the doors are currently open for our exclusive Lifeforce Energy Healing® Master-in-Training Certification Course

New Year 2020

Do New Year’s Resolutions Really Work?

New Year 2020

Bringing in 2020! With the beginning of this new year, you have been given a new start, a fresh slate, an opportunity to kick off the next twelve months of your life with hope, love, and healing. But New Year’s resolutions may not be the best way to turn over a new leaf.

The Reason So Many Resolutions Fail

For many people, a fresh start involves making New Year’s resolutions—goals or promises to yourself for improvements. Many common resolutions include losing weight, getting a handle on an addiction, saving more money, or moving up in your career. The problem is that many New Year’s resolutions are externally motivated, arising from outside you – from your parents, or partners, or society, and are therefore set up for failure from the get-go.

Resolutions that are born out of a need to please others rather than being born from a deep desire for yourself are often not realized. How can they be? They don’t reflect the true you. And yet, when you abandon them, the cycle of self-blame and shame makes you feel worse than if you’d never made any resolutions at all! Does that sounds like a good way to start the year—with a vow that is unrealistic from the start because it’s inauthentic and only makes you feel worse when you don’t meet it? You deserve better.

Focus on Intention

So this year, I’d like you to break the cycle of bound-to-fail resolutions and instead, make non-resolutions that are less about the end result and more about the journey. Rather than trying to plan goals, focus on intention. What is the reason behind the goal? That’s what you need to pay attention to. When you are clear on what your purpose is—your intention—it’s much easier to make decisions that support that purpose.

For example, let’s say your resolution is to lose weight. When you make a resolution, it’s usually a simple statement: “I will lose 20 lbs this year,” without a crystal clear plan in place. If you use energy healing techniques to dig deeper and understand the emotions behind the weight gain, your chances of success increase exponentially. Thinking about why you want what you want, why it has not yet happened, and how you will move toward your desired result are essential for transforming yourself this year.

Here are a few ways to figure out what you want your intentions to be for this year and how to go about making those intentions a reality in your life.

  1. Practice energy healing.
    Energy medicine is the single best thing you can do for your emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. Energy healing expands your awareness, brings you into closer contact with Source and your higher self, and helps to clear your chakras and energy field of any negativity that might be causing you problems. (like not being able to lose weight) Energy medicine gives you the tools you need to get to the root of your problems so that you can address the cause of your bad habits, or the self-sabotaging or addictive behavior you’d like to change. Attending healing courses and working with a spiritual teacher is a great jumpstart to healing yourself, and journaling, meditation, and being of service are a few of the other methods of self-healing you will learn in energy medicine that will help you clear your chakras and reveal the real you. Uncovering the real you that lies underneath the expectations from others that so often color your resolutions is just one of a million life-changing benefits of practicing energy medicine.
  2. Find your true purpose.
    With energy healing, you will be more and more able to connect with your higher self, who intimately understands the deepest parts of you and knows your life purpose: the reason you incarnated in your body at this time. Your life purpose is the driving force within your soul, and lining up your intentions with your soul’s plans is the best way to speed up your spiritual progress, heal yourself, and actually manifest your intentions. Try journaling about your true feelings, wants, and desires, writing down your most honest thoughts, and see if you can’t discover an intention for the new year that comes from you and not from anyone else. Trust your intuition, which is from your higher self and your guides, the best source of guidance.
  3. Consider adding rather than subtracting.
    So often resolutions are about stopping something, which can feel limiting and may make you resistant. But adding something positive feels happy and fun, like Christmas all over again. Perhaps your intention is to lose weight in order to get in better shape so you have more energy to do the things you love, so try adding a walk after dinner each night, before TV time. Maybe you want to intend to be happier or more fulfilled, so try scheduling in one thing you love to do for an hour each day, or join a group of people who have similar interests.

Remember, do not feel bad if you “fail.” You can’t fail at trying! Or rather, failure is part of trying, it is a part of the process of succeeding, so when you intend to improve your life you aren’t making a vow that can be broken, but rather a choice to move toward a new way of interacting with one particular part of yourself or the world. That simple fact gives you hope and decreases self-blame, and is why intentions are so much more effective long-term.

I hope you’ll try intentionality rather than resolutions this January so you can enjoy a happier, healthier, more light-filled year ahead. Happy New Year!

Perfect Christmas

Christmas is a time when you get homesick

Perfect Christmas

Are you looking forward to a holiday right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, with the whole family singing around the piano or enjoying a spirited snowball fight before gathering, rosy-cheeked and glowing, around the holiday table? Or are you dreading long days of forced togetherness, the rehashing of old grievances and the airing of new ones as your family falls into its old, dysfunctional patterns? For most, holiday gatherings with family fall somewhere between the two scenarios. These three tips will help you to navigate though the family minefields, large and small, with your spirit and sanity intact.

 

Put the power of forgiveness and unconditional love to work for you:

 

As a spiritual teacher, I encourage my students to give themselves and those around them the gift of forgiveness and unconditional love. This holds especially true during the holidays.

If you know in advance that you’ll be seeing a family member who has wronged you, take the time to forgive them before the event. Close your eyes and imagine the person standing in front of you. As you breathe in, silently say, May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe. May you be peaceful and at ease. This powerful Buddhist exercise, called “Metta,” dissolves anger, resentment, and guilt, and will help you to feel more loving and in control as you journey “over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house.” When you arrive, don’t undo the good you’ve done by telling the person that you have forgiven them—that will only bring the old issues back to the forefront and put them on the defensive. This processing is for your benefit. Simply send them love, and move on!

 

Stay outside of the emotional fray, and celebrate your own spiritual progress:

 

The holidays are not the time to resolve old issues, or confront other people. Enjoy the time with family, and set the limits that you need to keep yourself healthy emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

 

Take care of yourself. Take walks outdoors, meditate and consume alcohol, sugar, and caffeine in moderation. If you’re tired, give yourself permission to leave a family event early. You’re not obligated to stay till the bitter end. Fighting and drama tends to escalate as it gets late, especially if the alcohol is flowing. If there is family drama, step out of the fray and observe; pretend you’re watching a play, rather than allowing yourself to be pulled in.

 

 

Finally, capture the holiday spirit by looking outside of yourself and your family circle:

 

Are you trying to recapture the breathless excitement and holiday magic that you remember from your childhood? Or do you have old, traumatic memories of the season that you’re desperate to replace with happier ones? As an adult, you can experience the very best of the holidays, the spirit of joy and love, but you might not find it wrapped in a box, or around the table with your extended family. For many people, the formula for a light-filled season includes not just family time, but time spent alone and time spent helping others.

 

Gandhi said that the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. Don’t depend on the “big event” to fill you with the holiday spirit. If, despite your best efforts to forgive and forget, an overdose of family time is causing you to dwell too much on past hurts and disappointments, shift your focus outside of yourself. Figure out a way to help others, and by doing so, you’ll nourish your own spirit. Serve holiday dinners at a homeless shelter, deliver gifts to the lonely or sick, visit a nursing home to sing carols, send cards and packages to the troops, and remember what the holidays are really about—bringing more light into the world.  Doing that is a sure way to fill your own soul with the spirit of the season!

Give Gratitude

Kick off the Season with a Big Helping of Gratitude!

Give Gratitude

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”  ~Meister Eckhart (13th century mystic)

For me, Thanksgiving has always signaled the official start of the holiday season. The holidays can be busy and stressful, but the spirit of Thanksgiving holds the key to getting them off to a serene and joyous start—and that key is gratitude! This year, I encourage you to take a deep breath before diving into the festive chaos to reflect and give thanks for the blessings in your life. Don’t stop when the pies have been eaten and the turkey dishes washed and put away. I challenge you to foster the habit of gratitude throughout the season – and resolve to keep it alive through the New Year! 

Why is gratitude so important at this time of year?

Gratitude is all about expressing appreciation for what you have, instead of focusing on what you want or think that you need. During the holidays it’s easy to get sucked into the consumer frenzy. Frequently pausing to acknowledge the blessings in your life will help you put things in perspective and enjoy the spirit of the season!

Gratitude is good for the mind, body and spirit!

Gratitude increases your levels of happiness and optimism, and improves your relationships with others. Studies have shown that gratitude makes you healthier too! Keeping a gratitude journal and verbally expressing thanks allows people suffering from emotional or physical problems to reduce the severity of their symptoms, sleep better, and improve their overall quality of life.

Would you like to be happier every day? Regularly expressing gratitude can help you improve your “set point” for happiness. The idea of a set point comes from research showing that people return to their characteristic level of happiness a short time after experiencing unusually good and unusually bad events. The research on gratitude, however, suggests that by embracing gratitude people can move their happiness set point up – resulting in more optimism, joy and good health!

How can you cultivate the “gratitude habit?”

Are you taking the time to give thanks every day? If giving thanks isn’t second nature to you, or if you are experiencing a “dark night of the soul” and can’t find much to be grateful for, here are some ways to let the light of gratitude into your life:

  • Schedule time for gratitude! For a few weeks, make a conscious decision to conjure up grateful thoughts before you go to bed, as soon as you wake up, or before meals. Soon you’ll notice that thankful, positive thoughts pop into your head at these times, unbidden, lifting your spirits and taking the place of worry, stress, and fear!
  • Keep a gratitude journal! Take five minutes every day to jot down a few things that you’re grateful for. Put pen to paper and let the words flow! Be creative – you’ll find that you have a lot to be thankful for!
  • Say thanks in the form of a prayer! Give thanks to a higher power when good fortune strikes. When you find a great parking spot, have a pleasant interaction with a stranger, or have a successful day at work, acknowledge the event with a quick prayer of gratitude!
  • Remember people in your past who have made a positive difference. If you can, let them know with a quick note, call or Facebook post. Even if it’s not possible to contact them directly, take the time to remember them, give thanks, and mentally wish them well!
  • Give thanks to the world around you. Beautiful sunsets, a peaceful walk in the woods, or a starry night sky can inspire awe and gratitude. When struck by the beauty of nature, repeat the words of e.e. Cummings, “i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.”  It’s a great way to give tribute to the wonders around you!
  • Be thankful for the challenges in your life that have shaped you into the person you are. When you tackle a difficult task or handle a confrontation successfully, give thanks to the people and events that have made you strong in mind, body and spirit.
  • Don’t forget your pets! When your pet greets you at the door or curls up next to you on the couch, take a moment to thank them for the unconditional love and joy that they bring to your life.

It is easy to forget to say thank you when our lives are so busy – but that’s all the more reason to take the time! When you experience a loving moment with a friend, family member or pet, admire a lovely view or savor an accomplishment, make it a point to pause and whisper a quiet word of thanks. It will lock that positive experience in your consciousness, and make you more receptive to recognizing the next lovely moment when it comes along!

As an energy healer and spiritual teacher, I focus on sharing ways to bring more light and joy into your life. I recommend that you practice meditation, journaling and healthy living, as well as cultivate the habits of gratitude and forgiveness. These practices will enlighten your own life, and let you spread your light to everyone around you!

Limiting Beliefs

Heal Your Limiting Beliefs (But First Discover Them!)

Limiting Beliefs

Do you ever feel like you are running in place instead of moving toward your goals and dreams? Like you’re pounding away on a hidden treadmill going nowhere. Clearly, something is holding you back, when your path seems to be blocked, and chances, you are blocked by limiting beliefs you don’t even know you have.

What’s a Limiting Belief? 

Just like 15th-century Europeans who believed that the earth was flat, you may have unexamined beliefs that are incorrect. Such beliefs may be limiting you, holding you back—especially those that stem from fear-based thinking. Fear is always limiting, as opposed to opening, expanding and freeing. When you start to look closely at your personal beliefs, you may be surprised to find that some actually close doors rather than open them. Limiting beliefs can stifle your vision, your potential, and your power. You won’t set sail to explore the world if you’re afraid you might fall off the edge.

Where Do Your Beliefs Come From?

Typically, your most important beliefs are unconscious. You haven’t examined them because you don’t even realize they exist. Over 90 percent of your core beliefs originated in childhood, coming from your parents or caregivers, school, and culture. These subconscious views run the greater part of your life and shape your potential to be happy or unhappy, rich or poor, healthy or not so much. You have inherited what you believe, most of which is unconscious, and all of it dramatically influences your life.

Do You Know What You Believe?

Questioning your beliefs is an exercise well worth the effort. It’s part of the process of self-discovery needed for spiritual growth and healing. It will free you from all kinds of limitations in life, including fear and living according to what’s right for someone else but not for you. You’ll want to ask yourself: “Where did this belief come from?” and “Does it still work for me, or is it limiting me in some way?” If you think that an idea no longer fits you, ask yourself what might suit you better.

Here are some of the personal “belief” areas you’ll want to examine:

Religion – this is usually the primary limitation for people when they want to expand their consciousness. What, if any, childhood faith were you raised in? Do you believe in the tenets of that faith now? Do you practice them? Are they fear-based? Are you aware of unconscious beliefs from your early education about religion that may be negatively affecting your life today? Also, consider your beliefs about the religions of others. Do you automatically reject others or their thinking because their religion is different from yours, even if you give only lip service to your own?

Politics – So many people automatically exclude everything from the “other side,” assuming that no good can possibly come from it. Do you automatically decide that everyone who opposes your viewpoint is 100 percent wrong? How much do you expose yourself to the beliefs of the other camp? If very strong feelings arise when you look at this area of belief, consider it closely and make sure that love and not fear is ruling your outlook.

Social Values – Where do you stand on the right of women to make decisions about their own bodies, the death penalty, gay marriage, social welfare programs, and other important topics? I always try to read well-written pieces on both sides of every issue and then consciously recheck my position. Have you thought through your own views on these issues recently, or do you automatically determine that there can be nothing of merit on the other side?

Race – We’d all like to think that we’re blind to skin color, but the truth is that we inherit racial prejudices from our family of origin, our schools, and our country—and these are very hard to delete. Bring your feelings into the light and really examine them.

Money – I can almost guarantee that if you have money problem, they can be traced back to certain beliefs you inherited from your family of origin. What are your beliefs about abundance and your own relationship to it?

Relationships – What subliminal or even overt messages did your mother and father give you about interpersonal relationships? How healthy is your relationship to yourself? Is your self-talk positive and empowering? Do you believe in your worthiness and potential? What about your relationship with a significant other?

Why Is It Vital to Question Your Beliefs?

Most of your preconceived beliefs are unconscious unless you make the effort to shift them into your awareness. Here’s why it’s important to bring all of them into your consciousness:

  1. Your unconscious beliefs may inhibit you from becoming all that you are meant to be. It’s nearly impossible to expand and grow, to take in new information and make new choices, when you are confined to operating solely according to preexisting ideas.
  2. If you want to work comfortably with others, you’ll need to be able to accept their beliefs and treat them with the same respect you would your own.
  3. A person with a lot of fixed beliefs is acting from fear. Being afraid to give serious thought to the activities and opinions of others means that you are judging them without really giving their ideas your full consideration.

To free yourself from limiting beliefs that keep you “running in place” instead of growing into your greatest good, give some thought to your beliefs. Find out where you really stand. Free yourself to be open-minded and self-determined, think what you want to think, be in the driver’s seat of your own consciousness!

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Stay Connected! How You Can Keep the Faith in Challenging Times

When asked about the certainties of human life, how would you answer? The comedian in you might reply: “Nothing is sure but death and taxes.” It makes a clever quip. When you think deeply about it, though, you might say that the greatest constants are change and challenge. Cycles of change are built into the cosmos—from the seasons to the tides to the movement of the stars. And challenge? What are the challenges you face every day from the small mishaps in your personal life to the global scale tragedies you hear about in the news and witness on television?  Even if change and challenge are constants in our world, it doesn’t mean that you can’t live your life with a joyful and open heart. All you need is to create some powerful constants of your own!

What’s constant in your life? It’s all the things you love, all your values, and all that you believe in. You have a unique set of gifts and talents, and you are here to use them. Exploring who you are and what you can do is the first step in preparing yourself to embrace change and weather challenges. I have faced a dizzying array of changes and challenges in my life—things I never would have believed possible. Somehow all of them have fed into my spiritual growth and development and opened the true path I am meant to follow in this life. Just in the last twelve months, I’ve experienced everything from physical challenge (falling off a cliff!) to heart-wrenching changes (wrapping up a decade of weekly contact with my online Hay House Radio listeners). The changes and challenges of my life have made me the spiritual teacher and energy healer I am today. The same can be true of you as you open the door to your own true calling.

The challenging times you face today—and the world is supplying plenty of them—can become the components of your spiritual growth and your joyful future. As you pick up the pieces that change creates and meet the challenges ahead, you shape the future. By finding your constants and using them to stay connected to all that helps you heal, thrive, and grow, you fulfill your unique destiny. Your ability to face challenge and embrace change can become the keystones of your spiritual toolkit.

Here are some ways you can stay connected in challenging times:

Maintain your spiritual practice. What keeps you grounded in uncertain times? When your day (or your life) is threatening to go off the rails, what do you do to pull it back together? Here’s where your deep knowledge of your beliefs and values comes into play. Meditation is an ancient practice used to calm and focus the mind and bring your complete self into balance and peace. If you have a meditation practice, lean in and see if there is even more joy and comfort to be found there. If you still need to create your meditation practice, find an experienced teacher to guide and support your efforts. Your yoga and exercise regimens also offer the chance to ground and center yourself. Prayer is another way to reach out and connect yourself to Source energy. Do you dance, sing, write, paint, or use other creative activities to stay connected? Tough times are no time to postpone your spiritual practice. Its purpose, after all, is to help you through such days. Plug in to the ultimate power of Source!

Let the truth set you free. Part of discovering your loves, values, and beliefs is being completely honest with yourself. A daily journal is the best tool I can recommend for opening your heart on paper, for giving yourself permission to be truthful. Over many years, you may have built up layer upon layer of stories about yourself—many for your own good as you perceive it. How many of these stories are true? Do they really serve you any longer? You can use your journal entries to record your feelings as they occur and examine them to test their truthfulness. Have you been honest with yourself? Discovering the truth about your feelings and coming to terms with them gives you the power to forgive yourself and others. Forgiveness, based on your truth, opens the door to the healing power of self-acceptance and self-love. Clearing the channel for connection to your inner self helps you connect to others and to Source.

Join hands and serve. The changes and challenges you face in your life can be the tie that binds you to a community of like-minded friends. Your challenges can also equip you to be of service to others who are feeling the wounds that you have already survived. When you make spiritual study, classes, and workshops part of your practice, you cross paths with seekers on the same journey who become part of your healing community. Joining together in community strengthens your power to form life-sustaining connections and also to serve the world. No matter what seems to be going terribly wrong in the world at large, imagine how good it feels to spend a morning packing lunches for the homeless, teaching an adult learner to read, or visiting a nursing home patient who never leaves her room. By simply joining hands at home, you help build connections that can heal the world!

For the past 10 years I have been so fortunate to share my love of all things energy healing with you on my weekly Hay House Radio show. While this Tuesday will be my final show at Hay House… it’s absolutely not a goodbye.

I’ve been busy at work building a platform and a show format that will revolutionize the way we can connect and interact: face to face, on a weekly basis and available for you to listen and watch live or on your own schedule in a variety of formats.

If you want to stay connected, click here >>>

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Stuck in neutral?

hard choice

Well, I’ve finally gotten around to writing about procrastination. I guess there’s a reason I often repeated Scarlett O’Hara’s words in Gone With The Wind: “I’ll think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day.” Indeed, we all do it. We put off till tomorrow what we don’t want to face today. It can go on indefinitely. There are, however, consequences to not moving forward in your life, to not embracing change. Emotions get buried deep inside, trouble ensues.

What’s interesting is that procrastination doesn’t come from laziness. Believe it or not, that “lazy bum” who can’t get off the lounge chair in front of the TV has a lot in common with the spiritual seeker who frequently blows off meditation practice. It all comes down to self-love: loving yourself enough to get into gear and do what you know you have to do in order to be the person you want to be.

So how do you start the ball rolling? How do you finally get off the couch and walk into the rest of your life? That’s what I’ve just written about in a blog for The Huffington Post. You can read it and comment there http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-king/what-if-tomorrow-never-co_b_9088122.html?utm_hp_ref=gps-for-the-soul&ir=GPS+for+the+Soul.

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Are Limiting Beliefs Blocking Your Abundance?

When someone says “money,” what comes to mind? Do old messages from your childhood pop into your head: “Money is the root of all evil,” “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” “Wait until YOU have to earn the money”?  Whether money talk strikes fear in your heart, pain in your gut, or gives you a splitting headache, few people are immune to some emotional reaction to the green stuff. Those very mixed feelings are part of the reason so many people today are struggling with their financial health. Instead of digging for oil in the back yard to bring in more of that “filthy lucre,” why not dig into your deepest beliefs? You can get to know the real nature of wealth and discover the satisfying give and take of our abundant universe.

In my work as an energy healer and spiritual teacher, I encounter many people who feel they are doing everything right but still not succeeding. Given the fact that money is a reality of our society and everyone needs some to survive, having negative beliefs about it is a serious problem. Look closely at your beliefs about money. Ask yourself how you feel when you think about your finances. Sometimes fear and worry bubble up, even in people who have plenty and are unlikely to run out any time soon. Fear of not having enough comes from being told in childhood that “we can’t afford it,” “we never have any money,” and “we can’t pay our bills.” Hearing these negative messages as a child could make the richest man on earth become a relentless hoarder later in life.

Uncovering these early beliefs is the first step in healing them. You might find that you are afraid of money.  What if it has a harmful effect on you or your family? You might have a conscious or unconscious belief that money is wrong. This might lead you to sabotage any opportunities to increase your wealth or to “lose” or throw away any money that comes to you unexpectedly. You might have the hidden belief that money corrupts and that the low-profile of poverty is safer emotionally and spiritually. Try to identify any emotional patterns that are limiting your relationship to money. Look closely at your feelings about money, understand their roots, and decide if healing these beliefs will help you reach your dream of a successful life.

And what is this successful life you dream of? How would it look and feel? What aspect of this successful picture is it that brings you happiness?  Maybe for you success would be opening a preschool for underprivileged kids or starting a business to employ at-risk youth? Maybe it would be starting a community garden or forming a jazz band with the musicians in your city. Maybe success would be putting your kids through college without debt, adding on to your house to take in an elderly family member, growing the most beautiful petunias on your street, or painting a mural on the community center wall. By focusing on what you would love to do, you create the positive energy that attracts abundance and the possibility to make it real. From my practice of energy healing, I have learned that realizing your dream of success actually has little to do with money and everything to do with energy!

Creating abundance in your life is all about the energy you put out into the world. When you feel good about what you do, you attract positive energy that affects everyone and everything around you. Even if you are working at a job you don’t particularly love, try putting love into your work and see what happens. You are in charge of the attitude you bring to the world. If you are working in customer service, give that cranky customer your best attitude and see if you can convert them to courtesy and compassion.  The energy you put out is the energy you will get back. Put out an abundance of positive energy and see what happens!

Try these Abundance Affirmations for prosperity and peace of mind:

  1. Money flows into my life with ease.
  2. I am wealthy at this very moment.
  3. I have all the money I need and enough to share.
  4. Money comes to me in unexpected ways.
  5. I am financially secure and feel good about my life.

If you want to learn more about using energy healing to improve your finances, find out more about your chakras and how clearing chakras opens the door to more abundance, joy and peace in your life.

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Make Peace with Mercury Retrograde

Here you are, in the midst of it yet again. Your computer is acting weird. Your smart phone is even weirder. Your car is making a strange sound. And you just chipped a tooth. What else can go wrong? Well, from September 17th through October 9th, anything is possible because it’s once again Mercury retrograde!

Mercury goes retrograde around three or four times every year, and you’re sure that during this time everything that could possibly go wrong will go wrong. How did this association of trouble during Mercury retrograde begin? Ancient astrologers were very skilled in their observations. Because Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun, it has a much shorter orbit around the Sun than Earth does, and there are times when it looks to Earthlings like Mercury is going backwards.

The Roman god Mercury was considered to rule some very important human activities. Mercury was believed to oversee all types of communication, including negotiating, buying, and selling. He ruled all contracts, agreements, and other documents, as well as the realms of transportation, shipping (including mail), and travel. Technology and machines—from computers to kitchen appliances to cars—are also under his care. Any change in Mercury’s appointed rounds could be seen as occasion for trouble.

Are you one of those people who attributes spells of mental confusion and forgetfulness to Mercury retrograde, blaming the stars when you lose your keys or glasses or lock yourself out of your house? Do you really need to hide under your bed until Mercury goes direct once more?

At some point, it would be a good idea to examine if it’s your own fears and negative expectations that color your experience of Mercury retrograde. Or do you want to believe that the stars are throwing extra trouble your way?

What if instead of running faster to escape the effects of Mercury retrograde, you slow down, refocus, and take a closer look at your life? Think how often you simply blast through your days, hardly noticing where you are and what you are doing. You get to work and realize you scarcely remember driving there. You can’t remember what you had for dinner or what you did last Tuesday. You set your coffee down somewhere and have no idea what happened to it. You enter a room and don’t remember what you came for. These are signs that you are not present in the here and now.

Would you make as many missteps or misplace as many things if you were actually paying attention to the present moment? Mercury retrograde is the perfect time to step back and look at your days with the focus, respect, and gratitude they deserve.

Here are seven things you can do to help make this Mercury Retrograde a different kind of experience:

  1. Reconnect with your inner self. Reach for greater awareness through the practice of meditation. The more you meditate, the quieter your mind will be. You will be able to be present and feel your feelings.
  2. Is there some area of your life that needs healing? Consider working with energy medicine to rebalance and refocus.
  3. Practice being flexible. Reframe obstacles as challenges. Embrace the unexpected as a spiritual reminder from the Universe.
  4. Practice forgiveness—of yourself as well as of others.
  5. Allow plenty of time when you do something so you are not rushed. That way you will be able to bring more awareness to every situation. If you tend to be flighty, learn how to get more grounded.
  6. Keep repeating your mantra. It will calm you and give you a more spacious outlook on life. If you don’t have a mantra, I will give you one when you learn to meditate with me.
  7. Are your present actions in keeping with what you believe in and what you really want? Think about where you are putting your time and energy. How can you live in closer alignment with your deepest values? 

With a higher level of awareness, with greater presence and attention to life, with energy healing, you will be able to overcome many of your fears, doubts, worries, and negative expectations. The more you expect positive experiences in life, the more likely you are to find them—even during Mercury retrograde!

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What If’s

Have you ever had to prepare for a natural disaster? My friend had moved to Florida and was facing the threat of her first hurricane. She described rushing around to Costco, Home Depot, the supermarket, the drugstore, the gas station—busily getting all the supplies on the Emergency Kit lists. Even four days before the hurricane was due to arrive, all the stores were out of D batteries—the ones needed to power lanterns and fans (nothing like summer in Florida without air conditioning when the power goes out). In the midst of her frantic efforts, she realized she was doing more than simply preparing for whatever might happen, she was also reacting to the situation with fear.

It wasn’t so much the missing batteries (she eventually found a few), but the lack of control when facing Mother Nature on a rampage. Oh, she could make sure she had enough peanut butter and bread and granola bars and plenty of water to survive for days without cooking, but what if her roof blew off? What if the house flooded? Would alligators be roaming around? Water moccasins?

It’s not just the anticipation of a natural disaster like a hurricane that can send us spinning in circles of “what if’s.” Have you ever found yourself facing some sort of threat? Maybe it’s having to see your ex at an event you’re both invited to. Maybe it’s hearing a doctor say those words, “You have cancer.” Maybe it’s coming face to face with your abuser. For me, it was watching my husband fall off a mountain. What if he was dead? What if I fell trying to get to him? What if? What if?

Think of how often you have had thoughts of “what if.” Can you feel the fear behind those thoughts? What, exactly, are you scared of? Try to pinpoint the fear behind the tape looping inside you of “what if.” Examine it. You will find, at least in the previous examples, it comes down to a fear of death (the “you have cancer” scenario), the fear of pain and shame (as in facing your abuser), or the fear of humiliation (meeting up with the ex). Note that all your fears are based on what might happen in the future, not what is happening right now.

The fear might be fed by what has happened in the past. Perhaps a parent or sibling has died of cancer. Perhaps the memory of past abuse overshadows the present. Perhaps the betrayal that led to your ex becoming your ex is a sharp reminder of the pain and humiliation you felt back then.

So there you are—stuck between the past and the future. Can you stop long enough to enter the present? In the here and now, you are fine. And who knows what will happen? Perhaps the cancer is slow growing and easily treated. Perhaps your old abuser will seek your forgiveness. Perhaps your ex, instead of tearing you down, will express gratitude for all he got from the relationship.

When my husband, fell off a mountain we were climbing and sustained a critical brain injury, our lives changed. We lived in a certain quietude, without television or other electronics that were too stimulating for him. His situation led me deeper and deeper into the study of energy medicine, as there was no conventional treatment for his situation, and deeper into the quiet of contemplation. As I watched in horror as he fell from the mountain, I had no idea that fall would eventually lead me from law to alternative health, to ultimately teaching energy healing, and to you.

Here are some possible results of other “what if’s.” What if being diagnosed with a deadly disease leads to your reinventing your lifestyle and getting much healthier all around? What if facing your abuser gives you a sense of self-confidence you never had before? What if meeting up with your ex bolsters your self-esteem?

So what should you do when you find yourself caught in a “what if” moment? For me, meditation, is always the answer. Sit quietly, focused on the mantra I selected for you. (click here if you don’t yet have one, and want me to choose one for you). In that space, there is no past or future, there is only the present. Rest in that space. Now you can make your preparations for whatever “hurricane” may be threatening your peace of mind, without fear.

By the way, that hurricane my friend was facing? Turned out it was nothing but a garden variety tropical storm.

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I’m Sorry, Forgive Me

Usually when we speak of forgiveness, it’s about forgiving someone else for a wrong they have done to us. It makes us feel good about ourselves, that we are “bigger” than whatever they did, or at least more at peace internally. We say “I know you did that outrageous thing to me, and I’m still reeling from it, but I want to stop repeating and repeating it in my head, I want to move ahead with my life, so I am willing to forgive you.” But what does it mean to ask forgiveness of someone for a wrong you have done to them?

Are you looking to be forgiven so you can put an end to your own pain and regrets, or because you want the other person to feel better about you since you were willing to apologize and ask for forgiveness? Or does it mean that you sincerely repent for whatever thoughts, words, or actions you directed at that person and you are making every effort to clean up your karma?

When you are the one who has been wronged, forgiveness means you have decided to let go of your resentment and anger and bitterness over past deeds and you are letting go, however reluctantly, of fantasies that revolve around revenge. You know the ever popular “I’ll lose 20 pounds and show up at the event wearing a sexy black dress and he’ll be sorry we’re not together anymore!”

But what about when the shoe is on the other foot? When you are the one who made the mistake, did the horrific deed, had the dark thoughts? What if you slept with your best friend’s husband? Do you think you should be forgiven for that betrayal? “Oops, I must have been out of my mind” doesn’t quite cover it. What if, in a past life, you really cursed someone because you wanted their power, wanted their things, wanted what they had and you didn’t? What kind of karmic retribution might you be calling forth?

Unfortunately, your negative thoughts, words, and deeds follow you life after life until you have “paid” your debt—balanced out the scales in some way. By being a “good” person, you learn to examine your actions and your beliefs; by offering up your errors in a sacred way to the Great Mother and asking for her mercy, you improve your karma. There has to be some process of transformation. The energy you waste trying to assure yourself that whatever you did just wasn’t so bad can instead be used to create positive change.

As you know from energy medicine when you hold onto dark emotions, when you bury them deep in your subconscious and deep inside your body, things can go wrong in your life. Relationships falter and fail, money issues pile up, your health can take a nosedive. So it really does matter that you do something to acknowledge, at least to yourself, what you have done, so you can erase the negative tape loops in your head.When you acknowledge what you have done to someone else, even inside yourself, you can use a shamanic technique to cut the cords to that person and free up your energy.

Forgiveness can be a bit tricky. It doesn’t imply forgetting what you did. You don’t even have to formally ask forgiveness of the other person, make peace, and both go happily along your respective ways. It’s more a matter of persistent internal work, done with focused intent. You have to look at yourself really honestly, step back from the image you usually display to the world, and acknowledge the darkness within you. You can go back to childhood and see how your patterns of thought and behavior emerged. You can go deep in meditation and ask your spiritual guides and angels for help. You can ask for help from counselors, therapists, or learn about energy healing so you can start to get your energy flowing in a positive direction.

Mark Twain once said, “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” Know that beauty can emerge from pain, and redemption can arise from the ashes of your transgressions.

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Wish it Was Yours? 3 Ways to Fight Envy

Envy is more than feeling a little green. It can manifest as a parasite of darkness that burrows into the pit of your stomach and gnaws away at your heart, or it can be a full blown disease, compelling you to act in rash, harmful, or even dangerous, ways in order to get something someone else has. Envy is physically, emotionally and spiritually damaging, causing stress, depression, anxiety, and ruining your chances of happiness.

 Dissatisfaction with Yourself

Envy is the desire to have what someone else has. It’s the desperate need for something, a need that hinges on not being happy with yourself and your life the way it is. Envy can ruin your chances at happiness, because as you’ve learned through energy healing, if you are not happy with you, if you are not living your authentic life and expressing the being you came to this earth to become, then you can’t be happy at all.

Envy Wears You Down

Even if you are consciously unaware of its negative effects, envy wears you down, eventually causing resentment and bitterness, and even a sulky attitude of feeling sorry for yourself that makes you no fun to be around and limits your ability to see the good in your life. This emotional negativity can create dysfunction in your chakras and energy field and, if left unchecked, can eventually cause physical symptoms.

Maybe you covet someone’s body, clothes, lifestyle, partner, Facebook likes, relationship, fame, or bank account. Perhaps you try to hide this behind a false smile, or even try to convince yourself you don’t feel it. But deep down, you know when the green monster of envy has crawled into your mind with its need for what it perceives to be better, creating a loop of dissatisfaction and self-sabotage that can ruin your life.

Keep Envy at Bay

Is it possible to attack the green monster and emerge victorious? Absolutely! Here are three ways to combat envy, so you can be free from its destructive clutches.

  1. Be aware of envy’s presence.

Awareness is always the first step; in energy medicine, in personal growth, in life. The trick with envy is to become aware of it when it rears its ugly head, and then acknowledge what you wish you had and why. Be honest with yourself. Spend some time journaling or vloging about your wishes and goals, identify the accompanying feelings and any underlying disappointment in yourself, and figure out why you want the thing you’re longing so desperately for. When you dig deeper, you can discover what you’re really seeking so that you can work toward that goal in a fair and ethical manner that will take you to it.

  1. Avoid comparisons.

You can never win the comparison game. As a spiritual teacher and energy healer, I have seen countless students who have worked themselves into depression or illness trying to reach the highest rung on the ladder—or find the perfect partner, or the fittest body, the biggest paycheck, etc.—but they never get there because there is no end. The truth is there will always be someone who has more of what you want or something better than your version. That’s the dirty little secret to envy: you can never reach the goal.

Instead, compare you to you. How have you grown? What personal goals have you accomplished? Where are you now compared to six months, three years, ten years ago? Focus on how far you have come, on what you have, and where you are still planning to go. Walk your path to the light without worrying about where anyone else is, and you’ll automatically feel less envious.

  1. Be more grateful.

Gratitude is the antidote to envy. Since envy is a dissatisfaction with yourself, recognizing all the good in your life and that will make you more aware of how lucky you really are. You are here for a purpose—with your unique gifts, your special skills, your exact way of spreading light to others.

Remind yourself of all the blessings you have been given, all the reasons you have to be thankful for this life you live every day that no one else gets to experience. Don’t take your time on this planet for granted. When you appreciate your talents, your loved ones, your divine spirit, you realize that you don’t really want to live like anyone else. And once you’ve realized that your life is exactly the way it’s supposed to be, there is no reason to be jealous of others.

If you are interested in this type of learning and want to find out more about how energy medicine can change your life and open the doors to happiness, please check out my LifeForce Energy Healing Course 

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A Simple Secret

How will you learn the secret of life? Not, I assure you, by Googling it. Vast amounts of information are available to us via the Internet, but no website or app will be able to bring you into harmony with your inner being, which is where you have to go in order to really know who you are and why you are here.

So what do you have to do? Unplug and go outside. It may seem like a contradiction that in order to connect with your inner world you should go to the outer world, but there is something special that happens when you go out into nature. Our bodies are made of the same substance as our Mother Earth. When you are in her presence, when you can feel the sand between your toes and hear the waves crashing on the beach, when you walk through the dappled light of the forest, when you taste the sweet seasonal fruits, you are finding your core.

The cold and snowy winter is over. The spring flowers have bloomed. It’s summertime—the season to eat, sleep, and dream outdoors! Read more of my thoughts about this simple secret of life on the Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-king/the-secret-of-life_1_b_7493966.html

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Do You Love Your Job?

Do you love your job? Now I don’t mean that you love every second of every day of your job, but do you have a career that fulfills you? Do you wish you did?

How much of your time do you spend working? With the nine-to-five work day a thing of the past, the expectation for professions is constant connectivity—that you’ll answer email and take calls at night and on weekends, that you’ll travel and bring projects home. If you’re going to spend so much of your life working, shouldn’t it be at a job that you care about and find fulfilling?

What Is Keeping You from Leaving?

Ideally, your work will also line up with your true soul purpose, but at the very least, your job should never get in the way of you reaching your spiritual goals and living the life you were born to live. If your job is shrinking your soul and squeezing the life out of you, what is keeping you in that position? If you’re in a job you don’t hate, but isn’t feeding you on a deeper level, why do you feel you must stay? Whatever your situation, if you’re not fulfilled in your work, what is stopping you from leaving and pursuing the job that’s right for you? The root answer to this question for most of my students is usually fear or shame creating an imbalanced third chakra.

Your third chakra, or solar plexus chakra, is the seat of your personal power, your will, and your purpose, and when it’s functioning optimally, you will have a strong drive and sense of personal empowerment, which makes it easier to seek what you want in your career. The third chakra is associated with the element of fire because this chakra gets you fired up and ready for action; your personal internal combustion engine propelling you onward and upward. No wonder it’s hard to be in the right career if this chakra is dysfunctional! If you can’t take action to turn your desires into reality, it’s impossible to move toward discovering or attaining your dream job.

Shame Will Always Sell You Short

The biggest obstacle to this upward momentum is shame, which blocks the energy of the solar plexus chakra and traps you in self-sabotaging thoughts of worthlessness, inferiority, and helplessness. Shame focuses on your perceived value and how well you’re doing compared to expectations—others’ as well as your own—and it will always sell you short. Shame and the resulting third chakra distortions can keep you from reaching your true potential and finding your dream job, but you can fight back with energy healing.

Energy medicine clears, charges, and balances your chakras and energy field. A strong third chakra will allow you to overcome inertia and get moving, turning energy into achievement, and giving you the will to free yourself from harmful thoughts and behaviors that limit your ability to succeed.

Here are a few ways to strengthen your third chakra, reduce the influence of fear and shame, and get the career you’ve always wanted!

1. Release the shame.

Shame can almost always be traced back to childhood, when you were admonished for failing to control your natural impulses. Did your parents ever say you should be ashamed of yourself? Were you called fat or stupid, lazy or ugly? Were you made to feel that you weren’t worthy? Do you still hear a voice in your head that says you’re not good enough, that you’ll never be as good as your sister or brother, that you just can’t do anything right? That’s shame, and it prevents you from pursuing your goals.

In energy healing, you do not need to relive or even remember whatever trauma or behavior set up the shame cycle in your life in order to release it. Energy healing courses can teach you the tools you need to process negative emotions, beginning with journaling and meditation, so you can let go of those nasty tapes in your head. Shame creates a gap between the mind and the body. Releasing the shame will free you of any self-sabotaging behavior and allow your newly-healed third chakra to take positive action to move you forward, not just in your career, but in your life.

2. Figure out what you want.

If you’re not yet sure what your dream job is, energy healing can help. As you practice energy medicine, you’ll become more in tune with your higher self, which will help you figure out what professional path to take. You can also try journaling about what you enjoy doing, what your skills are, what your goals are. Take a few online skills and personality tests, talk to family and friends about what they see you doing, and think about what you wanted to be when you grew up. Think outside the box, too. As a twenty-something lawyer, I never would have guessed that I would end up as a writer, energy healer, and spiritual teacher, but here I am. Trust your gut, listen to your guides, and you’ll make the right choices.

3. Take action.

The third chakra is your body’s main power center; it fuels you and creates the vitality you need to be successful. When this chakra is imbalanced, you might be unable to take any steps toward achieving your desires. It can be hard to admit or express your true dreams, much less make any progress toward seeing them come true. But you can change that with a little bit of chakra wisdom.

Your third chakra is all about action, so any act of personal courage will help to strengthen it. This means using the fire of your willpower to propel you into movement, into accomplishing your goal, rather than trying to suppress your desires or divert your energy elsewhere. When your choices are in line with your life plan—including your soul’s plan for a fulfilling career—you harness and direct your energy in the way it was meant to travel, moving you forward on your unique path.

For more ways energy healing can improve your life, please check out my new online video course www.deborahking.com/chakrawisdom

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Is Less the New More When It Comes To Happiness?

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If you’re like most, your calendar rules your day—the beep of the alarm sets off a series of start and end times to your activities: work, gym, meetings, dinners, classes, appointments, etc., until you’re so booked up that you almost have to check your schedule to see when you have time to eat!

 

The Weight of Busy-ness It can be exhausting to feel like you never have any “free time.” Maybe you feel trapped between “pick up dry cleaning at 7 am” and “plan tomorrow’s meals before bed” and are beginning to feel like you are a robot programmed by your day planner. If so, the weight of your busy-ness may be affecting your ability to enjoy your time, and therefore your life. Not to mention the damage this type of go-go-go living can inflict on your chakras and your energy field.

No Watch, No Problem Not all cultures are as time-obsessed as we are, and those that aren’t, also tend to be happier. Coincidence? Hardly! People who live in places where kindness and selflessness are valued and acceptance is encouraged—where people don’t even own watches and would have no need for a calendar—experience an entirely different reality. They live each day fully in the present moment, appreciating what they have, and are consequently full of joy. During my years of studying with seers and holy men and women in order to become a spiritual teacher and energy healer, I was able to witness this sweeping joy in many non-western cultures. One experience that really stands out to me is my time with the Nepalese. My experience there was life-altering, and opened my eyes to the happiness that comes from letting go of time and just being present.

Heading up the Mountain My husband and I were experienced mountain climbers when we went to Nepal, and I’d done a considerable amount of third-world traveling, but Kathmandu seemed like a different world altogether when we arrived. Brightly colored prayer flags waved in the breeze above us, car horns blared, and food stands grilled food right there on the side of the road at the airport. From there, we hired a Sherpa (a mountain guide) and took the scariest plane ride of my life up to Lukla—with a pilot who took a big gulp of rum right before we took off and a terrifying landing in what I later learned was the airport rated the most dangerous in the world—and started our climb up the mountain.

Sleeping in Huts Full of Joy (and Yaks) We trekked during the day for seven or eight hours at a time and at night, we’d build camp to sleep a few hours before getting up to do it all again in the morning. If we stopped near a village, which was really usually just a three-hut settlement, we would ask the locals for a place to sleep. The people were warm, welcoming, and generous, often giving us their last two eggs or the potatoes they’d dug up that very day so that we could eat.

Infectious Smiles The huts were filled with thick black smoke from the cooking fire, and animals shared the space—yaks, goats and other creatures were treated as part of the family as their milk and wool were necessary for survival. Just as we would settle in to rest, the priest of the settlement would begin his vigil, praying and spinning a prayer wheel throughout the night. As you can guess, we didn’t sleep much, but were buoyed by the overwhelming sense of joy radiating from the people around us. I was in awe of the utter delight each person seemed to have in everything—the smiles on their faces were radiant and infectious.

Like Going Back in Time Water is so scarce in these villages that the people do not bathe or ever wash their hands, so you can imagine the risk. Water boiled at that high an altitude is not potable, and as Eric and I ate the generous offerings of the people, we also worried we would be infected with hepatitis. We did suffer from horrible dysentery, that went with the territory, and remember, there are no bathrooms. There were also no beds or chairs to sit on, no showers or soap; it was like going back in time. And yet, after just the first ten days in Nepal in these conditions, my sense of time expanded. I didn’t know or care what time or day it was and I suddenly felt freer than I’d ever felt. In my new state of being, I no longer worried about sanitation or comfort or lack of sleep—I was one hundred percent present in each moment as it passed. Then, I understood the joy of the Nepalese.

Fully Present and Altered While being fully present, I was attuned to the beauty of the sunrise and sunset, the feel of the wind on my cheeks, the mountain vistas that stretched for miles, the way the clouds tumbled below our peak, the thin air in my lungs, the warmth in my blood—everything was alive and shining and I felt the same joy I saw reflected in the faces of these mountain people. Despite the fear and discomfort during this trip, I knew even as I left that I had been blessed with profound lessons about simplicity, resilience, acceptance, surrender, and gratitude.

Less is More—Lack Turned into Gain The Nepalese seemingly had so much less than what I was used to in terms of food, water, shelter, and modern conveniences, but they had so much more freedom, appreciation, love, and yes, happiness. Despite the perceived lack, I actually found the Nepalese way of life more satisfying than life back home, and brought much of that attitude back with me. Namaste! In the US I was a true Westerner—“more, better, faster” was my mantra—but when I returned from Nepal, I had elevated my consciousness to a new level of understanding about being present, and how presence leads to gratitude, which leads to happiness. With this new perspective, I was able to become an energy healer and practice energy medicine with more purpose, clarity, and joy, and pass those same gains onto my students in my energy healing courses.

Deepening Gratitude So, if you want more happiness in your life, the answer is not to do more, but less, and to be thankful for the gifts you’ve been given. Spend a few minutes each day practicing just being—stare in awe at a beautiful sunset, sit with your eyes closed and listen to tree branches sway in the breeze, pay attention to the complex flavors of your meal, play a silly game with a friend or a child. Begin a daily routine of meditation quiet your mind and body, and deepen your gratitude. When you take the time to slow down, be in the moment, and appreciate what’s around you, no matter what it is, you can cultivate the joyfulness I witnessed in Nepal, and your smile, too, can become infectious. If you’re attracted to this kind of learning, Join Deborah for her new online video course, The Secrets of Chakra Wisdom. Click here to discover more about the