Spiritual awakening

A Powerful Tool for Healing and Spiritual Awakening

by Energy HealingFeaturedSelf Love
Spiritual awakening

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” –Rumi

Are you ready to step up in spirit? Whenever you’ve asked yourself the eternal question, “Why am I here?”—what answer seems to filter back again and again?  “You are here for a reason.” There is no doubt about it. You are conscious and aware in a special way that allows you to feel joy, love, awe, and delight—as well as pain and sorrow. Given these powerful qualities, you must be here on a mission!

Your presence on this page, reading these words, reveals that you know an important secret about your life. You are traveling somewhere. There’s an important kind of growth and transformation that calls to you. You are seeking the opportunity and the means to expand your consciousness, your connection to that vast force field that is the Creator of All That Is, Source, Spirit, or God.

You are part of this omnipresent unified energy field, even if you can’t always see or feel it. Everyone experiences a yearning to connect to that Source, with the ultimate goal of reaching ever-higher levels of consciousness that bring us closer and closer to manifesting that God-force within.

Spiritual awakening

In my work as a spiritual teacher and energy healer, I have the privilege of facilitating this universally longed-for expansion of consciousness. I try to do it face-to-face whenever possible—making it even more thrilling! Growing in consciousness opens the doors for each member of the human family to travel their own path to universal harmony and peace. Each advance in consciousness gives you another glimpse of the infinite, the unconditional love you long to connect with.

Whatever your particular journey has been up until now, rest assured that nothing happens in your life that isn’t part of your Divine plan. Everything will serve your highest purpose in some way. Take a moment to re-imagine your story, to see the obstacles and traumas and challenges of your life as the necessary foundation for your spiritual development.

Ask yourself what may have prepared you to develop the gift of being able first to heal yourself and then possibly others. Where do you stand right now in your spiritual growth? Are you focused, sensitive, compassionate? Do you frequently spend time in nature, meditation, or prayer? Have you begun to work through the wounds and emotional issues from your childhood? The list of possible experiences, qualities, and skills you already possess to help you is endless. Real healing power is inside you; it just needs to be awakened, nurtured, and practiced.

What have I seen students experience as they achieve another step toward their full spiritual awakening? Each step you take to advance your spirit brings you closer to the life you were meant for, the purpose you are here to accomplish. As you uncover and heal your wounds and clear your negative energy patterns, you reveal your gifts and build your power to use them. As you work to grow your consciousness, you will experience greater appreciation for life, higher self-esteem, more compassion for others, heightened awareness of your purpose, a greater curiosity for learning, a sense of elevated spirituality, even greater awareness of the world we all share and the need to heal and care for our shared planet.

Spiritual awakening

How does this spiritual advancement take place? This may sound basic, but there is nothing without love—for the self and for others. Coming together with a common purpose as we do at my live events fosters this love in amazing ways. You can make yourself ready for a spiritual step up with the practices of energy healing, including meditation, prayer, journaling, forgiveness, and being of service. Meditation and prayer put you directly in communication with Source, while journaling puts you in touch with your own emotions and, along with forgiveness, helps you keep clearing out negative energy. Spirit has a purpose for those who are dedicated to being of service to others.

I have found being present with others to be one of the most powerful tools for healing and spiritual awakening. I love offering live events where many can pursue their spiritual paths in community. Remember the Bible verse, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Mathew 18:20). Your connection to Source grows in the presence of other like-minded seekers. Helping others on their journey is one of the most powerful ways to grow in spirit.

Here are some of the advantages you’ll experience when you join a live event for spiritual study:

Spiritual awakening
  1. Support. The healing energy of many hearts focused together gives you strength and a feeling of unity of purpose. Your efforts seem less difficult when others are working beside you to resolve their challenges.
  1. Selflessness. Feeling that it isn’t all about you is profoundly healing. Others have struggled and suffered, too. You’ll build compassion and experience the joy of releasing ego-centered fears, doubts, and blocks to forgiveness and acceptance.
Spiritual awakening
Spiritual awakening
  1. Learning: You aren’t alone in the challenges and desires you face. Others have worked through problems like yours and achieved amazing results. You will see what is truly possible for you in the example of others who offer a healing role model for advancement and opportunity.
  1. You might also find some wonderful new friends as you work together to step up in spirit. Meditating and praying together satisfies the desire of every heart to connect to Oneness and magnifies the positive healing energy sent forth into the world.
Spiritual awakening

If you’d like to attend such an event, where you are surrounded and embraced by a warm healing energy, consider joining us for the next Deborah King Center retreat. It’s happening in Scottsdale, AZ on Sunday April, 30, 2023 – Wednesday May, 03, 2023, and will provide you an incredible, likely life-changing, opportunity to connect with a community of like-minded healers and seekers of truth, to gain transformational knowledge, and to create memories that will last a lifetime. Click here to learn more >>

event Deborah Arizona
self care self love loving yourself

Self-Love Affirmations: My Five Best Lessons

by FeaturedSelf Love
self care self love loving yourself

How often have you been given a compliment by someone, only to shrug it off in your mind? Perhaps it is a close friend praising your exceptional cooking skills after you have prepared an elaborate meal, or, maybe it is a complete stranger that oversees you drawing in your sketchbook at a coffee shop one Saturday afternoon and is in awe of your natural talent.

You have no reason to doubt the sincerity of the admirer, so why do you not take the compliment to heart?

Imagine how it would feel to believe others when they praise you.

Now, go one step further and think about how — if you fully accepted these positive and empowering messages about yourself — you would interact with the world. The sky would be the limit on what you could accomplish!

Positive affirmations for self-acceptance

One of the most important challenges in life is being able to say, “I love myself” — and believe it.

I know that in my own life, learning the lesson of self-love was the key to actualizing my life purpose.

Years ago, my husband, Eric, and I were in a mountain climbing accident; he almost died from his head injury and couldn’t work for many years. I blamed myself for the accident and, already a poster child for addiction and other self-destructive behavior, my own health started to deteriorate. It wasn’t until I hit a wall that I  made an important realization: not only did I have to forgive myself, but I also needed to start liking myself.

I started the practice of saying positive self-love affirmations, which helped me more fully love, accept, and forgive myself.

self care self love loving yourself

Positive affirmations are a powerful form of prayer and they work because it is your beliefs and ideas about who you are that manifest into your real life. Carrying around guilt and shame is exhausting and self-destructive: negative beliefs are dense energy that drag you down and are likely the culprit at the root of your physical and emotional problems. When you stop thinking about yourself negatively, you release all that heavy energy and are able to transform your life into one of happiness. And being happy and healthy is your birthright.

As I learned to love and forgive myself, an entirely new world of healing bloomed before me. Not only did I learn to heal myself, but I also discovered how to help others through energy medicine. Suddenly, the message of self-love became a beacon on my road to fulfillment, joy, and service to the world.

Here are the five best lessons I learned about self-love affirmations and learning to love me for me — and how I use those lessons in my energy medicine practice:

  1. Forgiveness comes first To put it bluntly, my childhood was difficult: my father sexually abused me and my mother was completely devoid of the ability, at that time, to make me feel loved.The grief of my difficult childhood resulted in self-destructive patterns as a young adult, and it was only when I began to forgive myself — and later, others — that I began to heal.Forgiveness is the cornerstone of any effort to rebuild, recover, and renew your journey to the light. When I work with students today, the first thing we address is dispelling any buried feelings of guilt, grief, self-blame, or self-doubt that is preventing positive healing energy from entering their lives.It’s important to note that repressed memories are very common among trauma victims and remembering the exact details of what caused the shame isn’t necessary for healing. Rather, it’s only necessary to want to be cleared of the shame and to move onto the next phase of the journey. Start with the self-love affirmation, “I have been forgiven.”
self care self love loving yourself
self care self love loving yourself
  1. Retrain your brain You may not realize it, but if you constantly have negative thoughts about yourself it’s because you trained your brain to think this way. Now, that being said, you probably didn’t purposely train your brain to think negatively — most people struggling with self-love are in their current predicament because of a specific situation.In order to go from negative to positive, you need to become more aware of your thoughts. Spend a few minutes each day observing and identifying patterns in your thoughts. When you begin to understand where your negative thoughts originate (or how thoughts decay from neutral to negative), you can now interrupt your thought process and interject a positive self-love affirmation. Repeating this process over time will rewire your brain and you’ll start to have more confidence in yourself.  self-love affirmations will start to materialize.Start daily self-love affirmation practice where you tell yourself that you have the “right stuff;”  be specific about what that stuff is and it will start to materialize.
  1. Being grateful –> more blessings Having an attitude of gratitude in every area of life brings more to be grateful for. All the positive thoughts and emotions that enable you to serve others with love stem from a sense of reverence and thankfulness.Seeing each day as filled with opportunity and promise helps you grow closer to the open-hearted, open-minded, and loving spirit you were born to be.Feeling gratitude even for those experiences that are difficult and painful is an act of faith. I came to realize that my early life challenges prepared me for the depth of understanding and connection that guides my healing work today.
self care self love loving yourself
self care self love loving yourself
  1. Love connects us all The energy that holds the universe together is unconditional love.Extend that love to yourself, with affirmations like, “I really like myself just the way I am!“And pretty soon, you’ll be able to extend that love to others as well.
  1. Let your laughter ring I love to laugh and am always looking for opportunities to do so. Laughter is healing and reflects a confident belief that all is well. As a beloved child of the Divine, you are here to be a joyful explorer of life. When you laugh, you are reducing pain and stress, building immunity, and lighting up the world for yourself and others. Being a role model for joy is a powerful teaching tool. Your faith in the power of healing love shines forth when you send a ripple of joy out into the world.
self care self love loving yourself

Turn the light of love toward the precious life that is in your keeping. Begin or revitalize your own affirmation practice of loving and forgiving yourself. Do the healing inner work that will set you free to love and serve others. You are wonderful and you are worthy—and the world is waiting for your healing joy to come forth!

Loving Yourself: The First Step to Healing

What is self-love? What is it not?

In this audio seminar, New York Times bestseller and spiritual teacher, Deborah King, will guide you through this important first step of your healing journey. The type of self-love that lights up your soul and illuminates your life isn’t found in a poem, a relationship, or silly a Hallmark holiday — it’s found in care and compassion and will make you stronger and healthier, so your life shines fire bright.

Learn more
2023-5ElementsYourBestseller-featured

The Five Elements of Writing Your Bestseller

by BooksFeaturedSelf Love
Write your bestseller book

Writing is a calling.  We may write because we have an important story to tell and cannot rest until it is out in the world. Or we may write because we want to help others who are struggling with similar challenges or traumas in their lives. Writing is connection; it is a way of saying, “I am here and my story matters.” Bringing your unique book into the world can be like launching your child into adulthood. You must finally let go but you also watch carefully and pray that others are kind.

From a more pragmatic point of view, A. A. Milne also noted that  “Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.” Writing is one of those human endeavors, like music, dancing, or painting, in which the sublime and the practical often collide.

Write your bestseller book

To be a writer is to be an artist. To be a successful writer is also sometimes to be a businessperson, entrepreneur, marketer, public speaker, and all-around jack of all trades.

Few of us can do all these things well or consistently, without burning out, which is why I love to streamline and share what I have learned through trial and error with other writers. Here are five elements to writing a bestseller that I believe every writer needs to consider.

These five elements do not have to be done in the order I discuss them here. In fact, you will often find yourself jumping back and forth between them during the writing process. However, each element is crucial to the success of your book.

  1. Preparation
    The preparation stage requires a quiet, relaxed environment. I encourage the authors I work with to meditate briefly before this stage. You want to center yourself, relax your breathing, and invite your Muse to come closer and abide with you.

    During preparation, you probably already have an idea or a message that you are passionate about exploring and sharing. You have a burning desire to get the word out about an experience or trial or tribulation that has happened to you. If you choose to write fiction, you want to build a world that no one has even seen before and make that world real to your readers.

Write your bestseller book

If you are a niche writer who wants to write about healing or coaching or music or space or nature, or anything else that inspires you, you must marinate in the subject for a long time before you start putting words on paper. Doing the work to become versed in your subject can be challenging but rewarding.

If you write fiction, you should prepare by reading other writers in the area you want to be in, to see how published writers create books that speak clearly and powerfully to the reader. If you’re an entrepreneur, the preparation stage includes reading market research to understand how your book idea compares to other leaders in your field.

At the preparation stage, you become an apprentice of sorts. Like an eager student, you want to absorb every bit of information you can find about your niche and the topic that calls to you to write.

Write your bestseller book
  1. Incubation
    In this stage, as the book continues to marinate, you may start to dream about the topic or receive flashbacks or intuitive hits about the topic even when your mind is elsewhere. Your subconscious will be actively turning over ideas, often without your knowledge, generating insights, questions, and decisions. Incubation is a crucial stage because it can take a significant amount of time and can’t be rushed. You need to trust your incubation process and give it time to flourish.
  1. Insight
    Once your Muse or Higher Self has decided it is time to move forward, the first classic sign of creativity tends to appear. In the Insight stage, don’t be surprised if you have frequent “A-ha” and “eureka” moments where everything starts to fall into place.  Your Muse might also kick you in the side and urge you to “Get on with it!”

    The creativity element happens most frequently when you are doing something rote or mindless, such as taking a shower, walking the dog, or sitting in traffic. The previous two elements – preparation and incubation — have been busy moving you along the path to this moment of utter joy and clarity. You feel intensely motivated.

Write your bestseller book
Write your bestseller book
  1. Evaluation
    The evaluation process is not always easy for creative people. Writers can be an odd combination of fragility and ego. We may have a hundred different things we want to say but we know we don’t have time to elaborate on all of them, so we pare down our story to a manageable single topic or storyline.

    Yet doing so can be hard. Writers from William Faulkner to Steven King have described the evaluation stage as “killing our darlings,” since pruning ideas, paragraphs, and even whole chapters feels awful. Bear in mind, though, that you aren’t really killing them. If you find yourself paring your book frequently, it likely means that you have another book in you. You can save some of your words for later.

In this stage, we also need to evaluate our idea from our Ideal Reader’s perspective, not our own and find those parts of the story that can be deleted without losing the golden thread that ties the book together.  Ask yourself, “Is this idea or topic or story an outside-the-box novel idea, or am I beating a dead horse, saying things that have already been said before a thousand times?” Eventually, you will reach the point where you can confidently say, “these are the ideas and stories and quotes that have the most merit so I’m going to use them.”

  1. Elaboration This stage is where the writing begins. You may find yourself returning to previous stages as your book evolves, but if you have done a thorough job of preparing, incubating, contemplating, and evaluating, you are now ready to write. So, take up your pen (or laptop) and begin.
Write your bestseller book

These five elements are essential to the process, but there is so much more that goes into achieving bestseller status. Truth be told, it can become a bit overwhelming unless you have an experienced helping hand to guide you along the way. That is exactly what we offer with the Deborah King Publishing Services. We help you go through our proven, step-by-step process to go from zero to book launch. And you can learn all about it by clicking here >>

2023 Happy New Year

New Year, New Light: Five Ways to Make This Your Best Year Yet

by Energy MedicineFeaturedMeditationSelf Love
2023 Happy New Year

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties. —Helen Keller

What makes it feel so good to turn the page on a new calendar year? The open days ahead are waiting to be filled with exciting new adventures, voyages of learning and discovery, meaningful new connections with fellow human beings, the joy of serving those in need. It’s the hopeful promise of new beginnings. The calendar waits for you to chart a course and the possibilities are endless and exhilarating!

There is just one vital ingredient necessary for creating a joyful new chapter in the book of your life. It’s both an awesome responsibility and a glorious opportunity. You have the power to make what you will of your new year. Will it be bright with love, laughter, hope, happiness, faith, and dreams? Only you can decide.

You know it’s true that your mind and thoughts have a say in the future. You are a creator of this world. You came here to contribute to the betterment of all. There are a vast number of ways that you can serve to lift humanity out of the lower energy frequencies that feed fear, greed, and violence. It is in your hands to generate a better world through the power of your heart in alignment with a focused mind. When you align with the love in your heart, you immediately begin to see life with new eyes.

How can you make yourself ready to turn a new page and create new beginnings? Meditation and prayer put you in direct communication with Source. Journaling will put you in touch with your own emotions, and along with forgiveness, will help you keep negative energy from blocking your way. Strengthening your connection with Source is the first step to creating the purposeful and meaningful life of your dreams.

As a light-filled spark of the Divine, your soul longs to experience good and to help others do the same. By focusing on the positive and the good, you’ll be able to bring more of it into your life.

Here are five ways you can shine new light on your life and make this your best year yet:

2023 Happy New Year

1. Focus on positive thoughts – Use your powerful creative mind to imagine all the good things that could happen, rather than fearing what could go wrong at every turn. Look at yourself and your endeavors with the eyes of a kindly parent who hopes every good thing will come to their beloved child. Create a dream of your happiest, most purposeful life and nurture it. Use affirmations to reinforce your goal of always thinking positive. “Wonderful new doors are opening for me all the time.”

2. Seek out positive people – Build a circle of like-minded friends. Look for people whose spirit lifts you up and inspires you. Have a beautiful dream and gather together with those whose dreams match yours and who offer support and encouragement. Who is living a life you admire? Who is doing work you love? Who is teaching what you long to learn and how can you become a student in that field? Open new vistas by attending courses and workshops that will expand your life’s possibilities.

2023 Happy New Year
2023 Happy New Year

3. Speak positive words –Words have power so use them to your advantage. Use your words as affirmations to create self-respect, confidence, and good will. Speak kind words. Practice kindness in order to feel good and be a comfort to yourself and others. Be a role model for loving, respectful behavior. Be “for” something rather than “against.” Mother Teresa declined to join a march “against” war but said she would be happy to support a march “for” peace. Read the work of a spiritual teacher you admire to help build your vocabulary of positive words and ideas.

4. Take positive action—Find ways to serve others while pursuing your dreams. Whatever you love to do, make, build, or create contains an aspect of service and empowerment for others as well. Focus on making a contribution by doing something you love. What would you love to see and do? Expand your vision and understanding with a visit to a new neighborhood, a new city, or a new country. Experience a culture or cuisine that is new to you. Make a new connection with the world in a positive way. Counter negative, destructive forces in the world with a focus on those who are working to make it better. How can you help them?

2023 Happy New Year
2023 Happy New Year

5. Channel positive energy – Be a role model for well-being in the world. Spread joy and compassion. Take good care of yourself. Notice what makes you feel good. Create a happy mood when you need it—smile often, laugh, dance, sing, hike, swim, head for the playground and swing! Release negative emotions. Make unconditional love your set point emotion.

In your bright new year, you have the power to create the life you want and to help heal the world, as Gandhi said, by being the change you want to see.  If you would like to learn more about the field of energy healing and its role in building the life of your dreams, check out my LifeForce Energy Healing I Certification Course here.

And I will be so honored to be with you at the beginning of a bright new year. Join me for my weekly Facebook Live show starting January 24, 2023.

DKL live show
Light & Dark

The Cycle of Light and Dark

by Astrological EventsEnergy HealingEnergy MedicineFeaturedLunarMeditationPlanetarySelf LoveSolar
Light & Dark

I wake in the early morning hours, when I can still see the stars, to bring in the light of day with meditation. It has always been important, in all the ancient spiritual traditions, to greet the dawn of a new day, to give praise for having come through the darkness yet again.

The ancient Egyptians believed the Sun God, whom they called Amun-Ra, created and then sustained life itself, and ruled as the first king of Egypt. Each day Ra arose as a beautiful child, climbed into a boat and swept across the sky. At the zenith of the day, high noon, he was at the height of his manhood and strength. By late afternoon, he was exhausted, and by sunset he was a feeble old man. At night, he entered another boat and the gods took him through the 12 perilous provinces of the underworld, the hours of the night, when the serpent monster of darkness threatened to swallow him in his weakened state. Somehow, Ra always survived the battles of the night and emerged once more into the brilliant light of a new day. Praise be!

If you look at the cycles of your life, they are much the same as Ra’s daily journey. You come through whatever darkness strikes at your heart—whether that’s depression, or illness, or financial difficulties, or any distress or unhappiness—and, with the help of energy medicine, are born again into the light of day, where you grow stronger in wisdom and inner illumination as you get more connected to your inner Sun, your Higher Self.

Light & Dark

In the cycle of light and dark, the dark symbolically evokes negativity and the unknown, while light conveys the positive aspects. The Bible is full of light as the symbol of divine presence and salvation. Jesus became the “light of the world,” while Satan, originally an angel of light, became the prince of evil and darkness and ruled the underworld.

But many thousands of years ago, the Vedic seers in ancient India saw the cycle of light and dark in a much “bigger picture” way—as a vast cycle of time, a great spiral of creation that brings mankind and our planet close to the source of light, then we move farther away into the darkness, and finally return to the light again in great cycle composed of four yugas (great ages). These ages are based on the movement of our solar system within our galaxy—a 12,000-year “descending” time period when our solar system is moving away from the galaxy’s center of magnetism and the strongest light, and 12,000 “ascending” years when our solar system slowly returns to the point closest to the “central sun.”

Stay with me. I know this may seem complicated, but it’s worth understanding because it relates directly the spiritual awakening that is happening these days.

The four yugas are: the Satya yuga, the Golden Age with its direct perception of spiritual truth; the Treta yuga, when spiritual perceptions are less clear; the Dwarpara yuga, when humankind is focused on conquering space and electrical energies; and the infamous Kali yuga, when humanity is not able to perceive anything beyond the physical, material universe.

Light & Dark

According to some modern spiritual teachers, well-versed in astronomy and mathematics, we started to cross the threshold into the ascending Dwarpara yuga around 1700 AD, the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, and now we are finally starting to come out of the Kali yuga, which darkened humanity’s knowledge for 2,400 years. It’s the journey to more light, more consciousness, and more awakened beings on the planet.

If you’ve wondered why you have a certain pull towards spirituality now, why teachings about energy medicine are starting to enter mainstream awareness, and why so many of the patriarchal beliefs and institutions that came out of a Kali yuga mentality are now crumbling before our eyes, it’s because we are on the path back to the light. Sort of like Amen-Ra, we are waking up as children of the light. We’re taking our first steps into higher consciousness, or we’re here to guide others along in their awakening process. Enlightened beings, after all, are those who have merged with the light.

Light & Dark

As we leave the Summer Solstice behind us, it’s a good time to think about these cycles, what season comes next, and what part we can each play individually to bring the world closer to harmony, balance, and enlightenment over time.

While it may not seem like it, this is the general trend of the world (although sometimes it’s two steps forward, one step back). But we each have a part to play to make it so.

What will be your part?

If you have a hard time answering this question, consider joining our flagship Level I program, which provides an introduction and base for LifeForce Energy Healing.

Or, if you already have some experience and knowledge, dive into our most transformational, year-long Master-in-Training program. It is our most life-changing, and most exclusive, program. Space is extremely limited but doors are currently open for registration, and you can find out more by clicking here >>

Let go

3 Tips to Renew, Recharge and Clear Blockages to Your Energetic, Emotional, and Physical Systems

by Energy MedicineFeaturedSelf Love
Let go

While much of the regret we harbor inside comes from our own actions (infidelities we’ve had, accidents we’ve caused, debt we’ve gotten ourselves into) as well as from those important things in life we failed to do (opportunities unexplored, love not shared, forgiveness unspoken, once-in-a-lifetime events not attended), sometimes regret stems from something that has nothing to do with us. Something we have absolutely no control over or say in. Sometimes regret—those feelings of grief, sorrow, and remorse—come from our exposure to the world’s innumerable tragedies and devastations.

Let go

We all feel how small the world has become through the advances in technology. With a mere click of the mouse or remote control, the whole world comes into our lives and living rooms. On a daily basis, many of us witness unimaginable violence and suffering. Kidnappings, murders, suicides. Genocide, terrorism. Natural disasters that leave millions in their wake. Public figures coming to tragic ends as they lose battles with drug addiction or disease. And, of course, a national and global economy on the brink of depression. The daily news provides no shortage of things to feel empathy for, and for those who continually tune in with an open heart, this constant negative input eventually takes its toll on their psyche and physical health.

The mind-body connection dictates that what enters our consciousness also enters the rest of our being. When we take in the energy from the outside world, and attach to it emotions such as sorrow and remorse, that energy has to go somewhere. Unless we release it—which few know how to do—it goes into our body, where it blocks our energy field, causing stagnation and, ultimately, a physical or mental disease condition. I hear this complaint all the time at my energy healing workshops. I see the havoc too much empathy is having on people’s lives.

At one seminar, for example, 20-year-old Jen joined me on the stage, complaining of recurring bladder infections. Talking with her, I learned that she was a passionate, empathetic young woman who worked for an animal rescue while attending school part-time. Her frequent health problems kept her from work at times, and she regretted that she was not able to devote more of herself to saving the plethora of homeless animals.

Jen is clearly a person who feels deeply. Not only does she advocate for the animals at the shelter, but she also regularly goes to disaster zones to help animals there. As we talked about her terrible regret over the current devastation and displacement happening to people and animals in a current warzone, the picture of her health became clear.

In Jen’s energy field I picked up a great deal of bitterness, the result of frustration about all the animals she felt powerless to help. This unprocessed bitterness was the cause of her bladder problems. While her heart was in the right place—she wanted to do her part to alleviate the suffering in the world—she wasn’t aware that she was allowing her need to help overpower her ability to help, leaving her feeling frustrated and bitter.

Let go

Many people, like Jen, feel that selflessness is the only way to be a “good” person, that anything less is narcissistic or self-centered. I adamantly disagree. I see all the time the kind of toll this takes in people who come to me for help; it’s in their energy fields and in the various dysfunctions of their life, including emotional pain and, for some, like Jen, illness of the body.

Please don’t get me wrong, empathy and compassion are high virtues. They stir us to alleviate suffering and to uplift others where we can. But we all have to know the point at which it becomes too much to handle. As we’ve seen, getting bogged down in the tragedies of others, distorts our energy centers, or chakras, blocks our healthy energy flow, and lowers our own vibration to the point of disempowering us and making us susceptible to dysfunction and disease.

So, what can you do if you’ve already depleted yourself to the point of anger and resentment, disempowerment, and/or illness? The following 3 simple steps can help pull you out of a regretful state and reverse any blockage accumulating in your energetic, emotional, and physical systems.

3 Ways to Renew Your Energy

Take time for yourself. We all need time for ourselves, time to just be—to relax, unwind, socialize, play. We need time to enjoy being alive without an agenda of getting something done. Otherwise, life tramples our boundaries and some of our essential needs go unmet. Talk about the perfect recipe for anger and resentment! Bottom line: Before we can give to others, we need to first fill our own wells.

Let go
Let go

Tune out some of the negative and tune in more to joy. Go on a “news diet,” cutting down on the amount of death and destruction you take in and adding in its place something lighter, like play. While it’s important to know what’s going on in the world (which you can do, by the way, by skimming Internet news sites for about two minutes), you don’t have to witness the replay of every mass shooting or every moment of COVID news. Instead, add to your day some laughter and joy. I watch one rerun of Seinfeld every night an hour before going to sleep to get my laughter quota and to take a few minutes to relax my mind. You’d be amazed at what a powerfully renewing “therapy” this is.

Uplift the planet by raising your own consciousness. Instead of trying to rescue the world in person, which will eventually deplete you, try uplifting the world by raising your consciousness. The easiest ways to do this are through journaling, meditation, and prayer. Writing in a journal helps you clear out your emotions on a daily basis. It’s great emotional hygiene!

Let go
Fifth Chakra

The Key to Get What You Want in Life: 5 Ways to Strengthen Your Voice

by ChakrasEnergy MedicineFeaturedSelf Love
Fifth Chakra

There is a very specific element of your personality that is vital to getting what you want in life. Not developing it, or even suppressing it, actually holds you back from becoming the person you were put on this Earth to be (and makes you vulnerable to the whims of others!). This element is: your voice!

Finding and using your voice is an essential part of living the life you came here to live. Your true voice is guided by your higher self, who knows your life plan and can whisper advice that will lead you down the path you were meant to take. Your voice is also one of the main ways you express yourself to the world, so what you say is really important. It should come from an authentic place within you.

Fifth Chakra

If you have trouble speaking up for yourself, or find your voice is too small to be heard, you may have distortions in your fifth chakra. As a spiritual teacher and energy healer, I can’t tell you how many people come to me with issues that stem from dysfunction in their throat chakra and corresponding problems with its ruling principle of communication.

Many students in my energy healing courses, especially women, worry that speaking up for themselves is the same as being aggressive or confrontational, but it’s not! We all know those types of people who make a fuss about everything, constantly complain, and are always getting riled up and in other people’s faces for even the smallest things. No one wants to be that guy or gal. But there is a big difference between picking fights and refusing to let yourself be railroaded. You deserve to be heard, and energy healing can help you not only find your voice, but train it to be strong.

Here are 5 ways to strengthen your voice:

  1. Practice.

    One of the best ways to make your voice heard when it counts is to practice speaking up when the stakes aren’t as high. For example, if you want to ask your boss for the raise or promotion you deserve, practice saying a few versions of your main points. This can be to the mirror, or to yourself in the shower or your car. You can even practice with a friend or partner who feels safe to you. The point is to get used to the act of asking and speaking up for yourself in a comfortable environment first, so you are better prepared for the real thing.
Fifth Chakra
Fifth Chakra
  1. Listen.

    This may seem counterintuitive—to strengthen your voice by not speaking—but your throat chakra is the seat of your inner guidance, the wise voice inside you that always gives advice tailored to you and in your best interests. Your job is to listen to this voice so that you may act in alignment with your soul’s purpose. How can you express your true self if you’re unsure who that self is? Listening to your inner voice can help you find the real you so you can speak as the real you. In fact, routinely ignoring your inner guidance can cause it to eventually stop guiding and create problems in your throat chakra.
  1. Tell the truth.  Lying is the greatest obstacle to a heathy, vibrant fifth chakra. Even little white lies can be detrimental, especially if they begin to pile up, which is what tends to happen to lies. Telling your truth is the most important—from coming out to your family to admitting to your partner that you have feelings for someone else—because each lie that comes out of your mouth allows a little bit of darkness to enter your energy field. Lies can only take you farther from the light, but the truth will set you free.
Fifth Chakra
Fifth Chakra
  1. Journal.It’s not always possible to tell the truth directly to someone else. Sometimes the potential fall-out is not worth it, or sometimes you’re just not ready, and that’s okay. But in those cases, it’s essential that you write your true feelings in your journal. You need to have a place for those emotions and thoughts to go in order to release them before they get stuck in your chakras. Your journal is the place for one hundred percent honesty. As you become more and more comfortable expressing yourself in your journal, it will become easier to express yourself out in the world.
  1. Believe in yourself.

    If your voice is timid out of fear, remind yourself that your ideas are valid. Your thoughts have value, your suggestions are worth mentioning, and your truths are yours to express as you see fit. People will believe in you when you believe in yourself, and your confidence will command their attention. Remember that your voice is an extension of you, so if you’re strong, your voice will be, too.
Fifth Chakra

The benefits of strengthening your voice go beyond the ability to ask your boss for a raise or speak your mind to your overbearing sister—though, those are great, too. These tips will help to strengthen your fifth chakra, which helps to heal and charge your energy field and your whole being. That’s the wonderful thing about energy medicine and your chakras: they hold the key to healing your mind, body, and soul, while making practical improvements in all areas of your life.

If you’re interested in learning more about your energy field and your chakras, check out my free Chakra Wisdom video training series.

Self mastery

Self-Mastery: Ten Keys to Achieve Success in Every Areas of Your Life

by Energy MedicineFeaturedSelf Love
Self mastery

Today we’re going to be putting our virtual spotlight on a fascinating topic: Self-Mastery. What is it and how do we achieve it? Self-mastery is a path, an orientation you choose for yourself and your world.

First, you have to get rid of the incorrect belief that self-mastery is about controlling your basic impulses. That’s not the case: instead, it’s about getting to know those parts of you intimately, and then going beyond them. Once you do that, the natural process of inner development will take place

Self mastery

Carlos Castanenda’s teacher, Don Juan, said “A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything needed for the amazing journey that is his life. What counts for a warrior is being alive. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete.” 

Although you may refuse the call to adventure, developing your innate capacities is your destiny. Ignoring your destiny can bring depression and anxiety. Embracing this destiny leads to freedom and to your highest expectations.

So stop and ask yourself: What is the biggest obstacle you’ve already overcome? Was it getting into college despite the obstacles? Or was it raising a child on your own, without much help from a partner? Or how about taking care of an aging parent? Or perhaps you’ve lost a job and then gotten back on your feet? Or maybe, like me, you’ve dealt with a challenging health problem? If you think back to what you have already overcome, you know you already have what it takes to be in self-mastery!

So, let’s talk about the two drives inside of you:

First, there’s the drive toward growth – it’s easy to see it in a baby, who is focused on learning to walk and talk. Now look at the adults in your life: Some are committed to developing new skills. There are self-actualized people in virtually every field, from physics to music and the arts, from philosophy to computer science, from politics to sports. But there are also many people who are simply surviving; they are not embracing the opportunity, it seems, to work toward their highest potential. You will hear them say things like, I never have time. I’m too tired. Or, and I hear this one a lot from my students, I don’t know what I’d be good at.

Self mastery

So what is blocking their growth? The force opposing growth is the drive for safety. The need for safety keeps you where you are now, afraid to take chances. This safety seeking side is afraid of the new and the untried—the very things your growth side is eager for.

Self mastery

Abraham Maslow, a famous psychologist, said: “You must want to be t he best, the very best you are capable of becoming. If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life.”

To reach a level of self-mastery that will make you a real powerhouse in your own life and in the lives of those you want to enhance, I’ll share ten keys to help you break through whatever resistance you may be experiencing.

Self masteryThe first key is to acknowledge the resistance you’re feeling but to do so with love and compassion. Every change brings resistance, even positive change. So, give yourself a little time to realize you’re beating yourself up because you’ve been standing in your own way for so long. Give yourself permission to move away from self-blame into the winning game. I remember doing that very thing when I was young and wanted to master energy healing; I first had to get out of my own way. To quote Napoleon Hill, “Out of resistance comes strength.”

Self masteryThe second key is to create a compelling vision of the life you want to lead or the next goal you want to achieve. The operative word here is compelling. It has to be a vision that is so clear and attractive to you that you can already see and feel it as though it’s already been accomplished. You practice actually feeling the way you’ll feel when it manifests in your life. It has to be powerful, like the tractor beam on Star Trek. Your intention is the tractor beam. By the way, Nasa is currently working on a Star Trek style tractor beam, a gravitational beam emitter, so let’s not retire that delicious image just yet!

Self masteryThe third key is to commit to long-term practice and persistence. Transforming your life and reaching cherished long-term goals requires constant practice and persistence. By dedicating yourself to forward progress, you are rewiring your brain to make the changes you need to achieve whatever it is you want. Whether you want to learn music or a language or meditation, you’ve got to practice/practice/practice! As Walt Disney famously said, “If you can dream it, you can do it!” And the biggest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that our aim is too low. Consider for a moment the persistence of Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani girl who persisted in her goal for girls’ education in Pakistan despite being shot, now that’s resolve!

Self masteryThe fourth key is to expect yourself to take a few steps backwards along the way. On the road to self-mastery, back-sliding is part of the journey. You won’t get everything right the first time. So, when backsliding happens, practice self-kindness, self-acceptance and self-compassion so you can kick-start your progress again. I did that with a host of things I wanted to learn, from skiing to mountain climbing to learning a foreign language. When you fall off your diet for a day or a weekend, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. You’ve just backslid. Like who hasn’t! Start again. Start again and again, as many times as it takes to reattach to your compelling vision about what your life will be like when you’ve succeeded. I only quit drinking once, and I succeeded, yay for me, but I quit smoking, I’ve gotta admit, 32 times, before I got it right.

Swami Vivekananda said, “Never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and even if you fail a thousand times, do it again and again!”

Self masteryThe fifth key is to live by the principle of moderation. Self-mastery isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon. This has always been the hardest one for me: We Type-A people can find ourselves sprinting out of the starting gate at full bore, only to exhaust ourselves and be unable to proceed. When we can see that the world we want or the goal we want is just at the end of our exertions, we want to get there as fast as possible. But self-mastery takes time, and you only have so much energy. So, give yourself permission to give 75% instead of anything more. By pushing or straining yourself, you deplete yourself and it’s hard to keep your eyes on the prize when you can hardly get out of bed in the morning. Speaking of that, let me encourage you to get way more sleep than you are probably currently getting: fatigue is a deal breaker when you’re trying to achieve self-mastery. Honestly, if you can get into the habit of little 15 or 20 minute power naps, and take them before 3pm so they don’t disturb your rest at night, it will really open your creativity, plus make your life a heck of a lot more joyful and fun!

Self masteryThe sixth key is lighten up! C’mon, this is a fun key. It’s far too easy to take ourselves and our desired growth too seriously. Have fun along the way. If you don’t, your mind or body will revolt. We are human beings, not human doings. Allow yourself to be in ways that make your life meaningful and fun. Stay light-hearted. Laugh at yourself. Be playful, even as you’re evolving into self-mastery. My fav example at the moment is Alex Honnold, the American rock climber who climbed El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in just under 4 hours without a rope! Talk about self-actualized! I spent an entire summer trying to climb El Cap with a rope, with no luck, so go, Alex!

Self masteryThe seventh key is to set mini goals. There is, unfortunately, no shortcut to self-mastery. The route includes setting mini goals, or what I like to call baby steps. Baby steps take you to the next solid place. Baby steps are the steps that lie within reach. Reaching each one helps measure your progress so you can celebrate along the way. Celebrating your advancement at each step is important. Anything you dream can be yours by simply focusing on each step along the way, not the overall journey. Another great example of youthful self-mastery would be Greta Thunberg, who, despite her autism, has managed to grab the world by storm on the subject of the climate crisis. If you know her story, she took step after step to achieve her goals, and imagine the resolve it took for a 15-year-old girl to protest so loudly outside the Swedish parliament that she got the government to change their carbon emission standards. Now, that’s self-actualization!

Self masteryThe eighth key is Cultivate Your Physical Energy. Whatever road to mastery you take, you will need a healthy reserve of physical energy to get from where you are to where you want to go. Without it, whenever you backslide, or feel stressed, or whenever you need to overcome resistance, you’ll be too depleted to lift yourself over the hurdle. Your willpower will only last as long as the energy you have in the tank!

You can increase your energy by eating super nutritious food, by having 4 or 5 or even 6 little meals a day to keep your blood sugar even, by getting enough sleep as I mentioned earlier, by meditating every day, and, this is maybe most important, by doing some regular fun physical activity. It doesn’t matter if you like to walk or swim or play a sport, or prefer to do yoga, or tai chi, or dance, but whatever you enjoy, set a reminder on your watch or phone, so you have time set aside for some movement to gather more energy.

Self masteryThe ninth key is to be really honest with yourself. Making excuses is your ego’s way of deflecting blame and shame to make you appear to others as better than you actually think you are, inside. And feeling worse about yourself (ego deflation) is also not helpful. Taken to extremes, both ego inflation and ego deflation can be a problem. To pursue self-mastery, an honest self-assessment is crucial. Honest self-assessment frees up the energy that our egos are accustomed to stealing in attempts to maintain the lies that we tell ourselves. So, start by honing in on your true feelings by keeping your thoughts somewhere private, like your phone or a locked app on your laptop, where you can honestly write out your hopes, dreams, and especially your fears. Or share these really personal thoughts with someone you trust will keep them confidential – perhaps your energy medicine practitioner. And remember what Franz Kafka said: “Don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions relentlessly.”

In a nutshell, we to be really honest with ourselves about what we want, and then take risks, instead of lying to ourselves and making excuses so we don’t have to step out of our comfort zone.

Self masteryThe final key, #10, is Establish Empowering Rituals. If you’re into sports, like I am, you know how the greatest athletes have rituals that put them into a state of peak performance so they can execute at their absolute best. Or, if you’re into spirituality, like I am, chances are you’ve read all the great spiritual teachers and you know what special practices they adopt to get into that same zone. I can assure you, the zone for peak physical performance is the same zone for properly practiced prayer and meditation. But more on that another day! When it comes to self-mastery, establishing rituals to perform can be just the key you need to reach the next step in your journey. Daily practice is an absolute requirement. By making it a habit, you re-wire your brain to operate at greater and greater levels of refinement. That is what rituals are for. We engage in spiritual ceremonies, like Deborah King Live on Facebook that we engage in every other Tuesday at 2 pacific, in order to create a safe place to work through our most complicated feelings, so we won’t have to carry those feelings around with us forever.

I absolutely love what Joseph Campbell had to say about all of this: “A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of your psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you at your deepest level.” People have traditionally turned to activities like my Facebook Live, being in community and sharing through stories and prayer and song, to help us on our forever journey toward self mastery, to help us live in the daily paradox of trauma mixed with joy.

Finally, one more thought: discovering a great talent, capacity, or strength within yourself that demands nurturance can be exhilarating, but it can also bring feelings of danger and responsibility. It may demand that you stand alone, cultivating inner strength instead of seeking support from your environment. The path to growth and self-mastery is invariably difficult at times. It’s uncomfortable moving out of the known into the unknown. Even if the known is not ideal or even desirable, it’s at least familiar. And since we all have a need for safety, there will always be an attraction to staying within the familiar. So still honoring your need for safety, let me help you further on your journey into the great unknown. Enjoy practice for practice’s sake. Transform yourself slowly, steadily, daily, and next thing you know, you’ll be in self-mastery!

Attaining self-mastery first starts with truly understanding yourself on a deep level. What drives you? What’s holding you back? What emotional road blocks must you overcome to break through and achieve the life you are meant to live?

A good place to start is our bestselling course: Inner Secrets of You. It is designed to help you not only understand yourself, but also give you the knowledge (and power) to understand those around you on the deepest level. Click here to learn more about this course >>

Insanely happy

How To Be Insanely Happy (Even When Everything Sucks)

by Energy MedicineFeaturedHealthSelf Love
Insanely happy

When I was in my last year of law school, my lawyer father, on whom I doted, was in his 70s. Hearing on the family grapevine that I was in some kind of trouble, Dad came to the law school one day and took me out to lunch, telling me he had heard “I was unhappy.” Had I had a clue what I thought back then, which I did not, I’m sure I would have said I was insanely happy. After all, I was a size 4, what more could any 20-something want? Plus, I was at the top of my class; I thought Dad would be thrilled. Now, if truth be told, I was pushing a few things “under the carpet:” although engaged, I was having not one, but two affairs, I had serious issues with alcohol, drugs, and extreme sports, and, oh, I forgot to mention, I had just found out I had cervical cancer.

Over the fish course, Dad, out of the blue, volunteered, “the secret to life is simple, just don’t think about yourself. If you are always helping others, you’ll be happy your whole life.”

At the time, I thought, what does he know? All I wanted was to get done with lunch so I could get out of there and have a drink! At that moment, I was in complete agreement with the comedian George Burns, who said: “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family… who all live far, far away!”

But you know what? It turned out, “father did know best.”

Insanely happy

There’s an old Chinese proverb that says “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.” 

For centuries, the greatest thinkers have suggested the same thing: happiness is found in helping others.

So, let me ask you, how happy are you? Right this moment. Well, let’s think about it. For starters, chances are, like me, you’ve cut way back on your social life and your travels because of the pandemic. There’s a lot less getting together than before. Maybe you’re still working from home but you’ve got kids or other family members under foot. Or worse, maybe you’re alone and screaming for companionship. Or maybe your partner was laid off and you’re trying to hold it together to pay the rent and the two of you are practically at each other’s throats these days. And to top it all, maybe you’ve got some health problems that you’re worried about.

So that can mean that you are pretty focused on your personal happiness, right? Your health, your finances, your relationships. I mean, isn’t that what we’ve been taught culturally, to focus on our own happiness, right? Actually, though, focusing on ourselves doesn’t make us happy.

Now, I bet right now you want to remind me that Thomas Jefferson wrote about the “self-evident” truth of our “unalienable right” to the pursuit of happiness. Turns out, if you read about him further, that he didn’t mean you need that Tesla you’ve been dreaming about to be happy! In the 18th century, the happiness the founding fathers wanted us to pursue was public happiness. They were interested in something much bigger conceptually that personal happiness: they wanted a country that would allow all its citizens a good life.

Insanely happy

So what are the steps to that kind of happiness?

STEP ONE is giving – just like Daddy taught me.

Scientific research absolutely shows that giving to others is the path to real, permanent, happiness. In fact, the act of giving activates the same sweet spot in your brain that food and sex do. And we all know how good those two activities feel! Altruism is hardwired into our brains and giving to others does more than make us feel good; it turns out, it’s also the secret to a meaningful life.

If you look at history, you’ll find this theory born out, time after time, culture after culture:

Insanely happy

Let’s start by looking at my field of expertise, the Vedic texts of East India. In Vedic times, over 5,000 years ago, the Vaidas, or Vedic physicians, taught that being happy in life was the key; helping others related to doing our dharma, our life work. They believed the main way to reach a supreme state of happiness was to serve the gods, the ancestors, and all living beings.

Flash forward to about 400 years before Christ, to the Greeks; they had a similar concept of happiness. Plato wrote that happiness stemmed from fulfilling our role in society and that determined happiness more than wealth or pleasure. So again, the Greeks pushed public, not personal happiness. Aristotle, a great thinker at the time, called happiness “human flourishing.” One of the prime virtues was bigheartedness, meaning charity and generosity. Yep, giving.

The Mayan civilization, which was from about 2000 years BC until the Spanish pretty much took over around 1500 AD, believed that a thing could only be good as long “as it harmed no one.” Compare that to our current corporate greed! In the Mayan language, the word “happiness” meant “having a glad heart,” and showed their central belief that the happiness of the other was critical: they greeted each other by asking “how is your heart?” And unlike our superficial “hey,” “how are you,” they actually meant it! Or think about what Chief Maquinna of the American Indian Nootka nation said after he heard about the banking system that we white people have, he said “We Indians have no such banking; when we have plenty of blankets, we give them away to other chiefs, and by and by, they return them to us, with extras, and our hearts feel good. That’s our bank.”

Insanely happy

Interestingly, history shows us that up until the 1700’s, happiness meant prosperity, thriving, and wellbeing of the whole society, not individual pleasure. So, when did society move from Jefferson’s “public happiness” to the contemporary concept of individual happiness? That happened in the 1800’s, when “individualism” became the new way to look at things. Turns out, though, that worrying about ourselves does not make us happy; giving to others is what creates joy.

So, how to get started?

First, think about giving your time. Sounds weird, but giving money is actually a distant second when it comes to making you happy. Let’s face it, our time is our most valuable commodity, whether it’s an hour of giving, or a day, or maybe, you will find out, as I have, that giving turns into a lifetime. Give whenever and wherever you feel inspired, as your happiness set-point totally depends on your motivation. When you feel somehow forced into giving, you will find it doesn’t do much to boost your happiness. Find the person, place, or thing you are most aligned with— relative, friend, neighbor, an organization, it’s whatever calls to you to help—and feel the warm glow. I remember being just big enough to get up into Daddy’s pickup when he would drive around the small town we lived in after work on Friday nights, giving away the bags of oranges he raised to those who looked hungry. And every time he would come home without his coat, having handed it to some poor soul who looked cold. Daddy taught generosity in action, not theory. During the day, Daddy took me down to the State Capitol, to his job as a Democratic Representative, working comfortably across the aisle to build programs of social justice for the poor and needy of our state. Back home, Daddy teamed up with a couple of other town leaders to build a private school. He hired a headmistress and told her to admit as many children whose parents could not pay tuition as those who could. When I became a young lawyer and joined Daddy in his small-town law practice, he taught me that for every couple of paying clients, I needed to take in someone who couldn’t pay, and help them as well. Daddy was all about giving in action, and he set the bar high.

Insanely happy

Now, let’s talk about giving money, not as powerful, but another way to increase happiness. When we see people who have lost their homes in a fire or flood or hurricane, and we send money, it sure beats, as Will Rogers put it, “spending money on things you don’t want, to impress people you don’t like.” You can also give money to any cause that appeals to you, from social justice to the environment, to whatever inspires you.

Keep in mind, we do get something back when we give, and that’s OK: whether it’s social approval or a boost in self-esteem, or a new skill, or new friends. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, it’s part of why giving makes us happier.

STEP TWO to being happy is accepting what is.

I remember waking up one morning 5 years ago in a hospital in Mammoth after I fell mountain climbing, and learning that I was going to spend a year flat on my back, with both my arms and legs immobilized. For once, unable to work much, and forced, out of the blue, to just kick back, I started listening to music part of every day. My normal type A++ personality would have never allowed that kind of seemingly purposeless activity, but thank God, over-achieving Deborah had, for the moment, been taken out of the picture. I was so happy it was hilarious!

When you look in a mirror, does what you see make you happy? How much happier would you be if you looked in the mirror and accepted that yes, you are a certain age and shape and, over time, things happen to the body. And that goes for every aspect of your life that cannot be changed. Aging is inevitable. Economic upswings and downswings occur. Loved ones come and go. Accidents happen.

When I was that unhappy young 20-something, addicted to booze and pills, I joined A.A. as the first step in my healing. What I learned there I can share right now: it’s one day at a time. I know it sounds easy but think of all the times you don’t do that, instead obsessing over what might happen tomorrow, like what if you get Covid or the forest fire gets even closer, or you never find work. You get my drift. As the Serenity Prayer of A.A. goes, “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I’ve worked my way through so many rough situations, one day at a time, from illnesses, to family feuds, to lawsuits, to a whole slew of hospitalizations, wheelchairs and walkers, hey, I’ve lost count! And I’ve been happy enough the whole time, by doing it one moment at a time. Just this week, I was helping a student with stage 4 cancer, helping her find happiness in the moment, and I totally forgot all about my own aches and pains. Let me help you raise your happiness set point right now, simply by making “one day at a time” one of your favorite mantras.

Insanely happy

Here’s a corollary to that idea, that comes from South African human rights activist Desmond Tutu, who said “the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.” If something is overwhelming, right in the moment, or even seems impossible, just use that one bite rule.

Another totally helpful trick to staying insanely happy in the moment is, believe it or not, through meditation. And I don’t mean guided meditations; they’re nice, but you need the real McCoy to get deep enough to eliminate all the stress and hassles from the day that keep you from feeling happy. These days, that means a mantra-based meditation, like the one I teach, so you get deep enough. Meditation allows your mind and emotions to quiet down and plants you squarely in the present moment. It may seem passive, but actually, meditation is an active way to clear out the imbalances of your energy system and to erase anything that may be holding you back from true happiness. It is there, sitting inside yourself, that you can come to understand your worth, your purpose, your self-respect… and allow you to feel the joy of connection to everyone and everything. It’s the real deal! I encourage you to try my meditation.

STEP THREE is to develop strong intentionality.

I teach intentionality the way other people teach reading and writing and ‘rithmetic. It’s absolutely essential to your forward progress in life. If you intend to to be happy, you will be. It’s that simple. As Abraham Lincoln put it, “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” In other words, it’s your own state of mind, not what’s happening in your external world, that determines whether or not you are happy. And the best way to enter that state of mind is by staying in the present. Not reliving the past; not fearing the future. Intend to live in the moment.

The Dalai Lama tells the story of how he became the head of his country, Tibet, when he was a teenager. And how the Chinese then overran Tibet and killed millions of Tibetans, making him run for his life. So, they took away his country, his people, and the entire plan for his life. When asked if he was angry about it, he said, “Why should I also let them take away my happiness.”

Focused attention is how you create healing; that’s what I teach in my energy healing school. There, I teach you how to use your intentionality to attract the light, then run it through your own energy field and body, and then conduct and transmit that light to the person who needs it. Remember that acronym: ACT – attract, conduct, transmit. It’s all based on intentionality. I remember the first time I actually got it to work and saw a woman’s broken wrist heal before my eyes, wow, that was a super powerful moment, and taught me the incredible power of intention. We can actually can move mountains if we want to!

What is your role? How do you shift your focus from your own problems, to what is happening with others, and actively give in a way that will make you happy?

Stop for a moment and think: What are you most passionate about? What news items really catches your attention? Which threads on social media do you notice? What is calling you? What do you enjoy doing? Do you slog through your work-day and light up with pleasure when you enter the kitchen to bake that perfect loaf of bread? Maybe you could take that passion and that bread and whip up some hearty sandwiches to take to the firefighters battling a blaze near you. That’s activating your passion. Turning what you love to do into a way to help others.

And, at the end of the day, let’s all go with the advice of Charles Schulz, the father of Peanuts, who summed it up by saying: “Happiness is a warm puppy.”

Pets
Cleanse home

8 Ways to Heal Your Home

by Energy MedicineFeaturedSelf Love

Home is where the heart is, or so the saying goes. But, what if your home makes your heart race and when you return home feels like you are standing in front of you like a bridge you’re afraid to cross…another obstacle to overcome.

It’s always surprising to me how many people don’t focus on creating a supportive space to live. Most of us don’t organize our living spaces around our well-being, like the feng shui experts of the world say; rather, we live in homes that are largely a happenstance creation that is reinforced by daily habits.

If your home doesn’t support your own healing efforts, it’s time to heal your home.

8 tips to heal your home

Cleanse home
  1. Clean out clutter It should come as no surprise that the concept of cleaning out one’s closet (both literally and figuratively) will have a positive impact on both your energy and the energy of your home. The philosophy of purging items that don’t “spark joy” can find origins in both ancient Feng shui practices and modern human behavioral studies.

    For thousands of years, feng shui has been used to balance one’s internal energy with that of their environment. As an energy healing practice, feng shui seeks to balance the physical elements of the universe, earth, and humanity – and, yes, this includes the furniture in your living room – with invisible forces that bind everything together. When there are too many physical elements, feng shui energies are unable to move naturally and freely.

  • Household clutter and mess can feel incredibly overwhelming, only adding to the stress of everyday life that already leaves many people struggling. In fact, a research study at UCLA found that stress hormone levels increased significantly in female homeowners that had a high density of household objects. Basically, the more stuff they had in their homes, the more pressure and anxiety the women felt.1
  1. Give your home a breath of fresh air
    Fresh air is invigorating and refreshing for both moving and still life. Since your home isn’t able to attend your Pranayama yoga class with you, throw open your windows and let it breathe a deep cleaning breath!For your home to reap the benefits of fresh air, be sure to open your windows every day. Yes, even if it is February and your home is in a cold climate, allowing your home to take a deep cooling breath every day will release built up anxiety and stale air, transforming the energy inside.
Cleanse home
  • Don’t let opening your home’s window become mundane and routine (like making your bed or brushing your teeth); take the opportunity to practice your own breathing techniques. Pranayama is the formal practice of controlling the way you inhale and exhale, helping you to manipulate your vital energies to activate or soothe your mood.

    When practiced regularly, Prana breathing builds life force energies and rejuvenate healing efforts in both you and your home. Every Prana breath taken does so much more than simply taking in air; you are taking in stimuli of all forms—from sights and sounds to smells, feelings, ideas, and knowledge. Prana breathing provides the initial burst of energy that sets things in motion, enhancing your appreciation and zest for life, opening your heart and mind to new possibilities, and reinvigorating your desire for relationships that illuminate your spirit.

Cleanse home
  1. Detox toxic cleaners
    When it comes time to clean the physical dirt out of your house, be sure you aren’t exacerbating the problem by using toxic cleaning agents.

    Many people are unaware of the dangers of using widely-available home cleaners that contain toxic chemicals. Whether the cleaner makes your eyes when you spray it or you have to open the windows to air out the room because of the strong smell, these reactions are not normal and dangerous. Your body is telling you the cleaning agent you are using is highly toxic and can harm you — listen!

  • Natural cleaners, like hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and vinegar, are easy to use and cheaper than most commercial chemical cleaners. And, yes, they work just as well! You can add essential oils like tea tree, lavender, eucalyptus, and lemon if you want to purify your home with a fresh scent. After all, the “scents” and “fragrances” from commercial cleaners aren’t natural; they are created from chemicals in a lab and inhaling them can be dangerous.
  1. Bring the great outdoors inside
    Whether you live in the middle of a big city or the mountains, your home will benefit from bringing some of the outdoors inside. One way to do this is by adding some green plants to your home; not only will your home will look beautiful, but it will be brighter and have better air qualify.

    Plants improve air quality by adding additional oxygen to your home and absorbing harmful pollutants, some of which occur naturally just by breathing. You don’t have to have a greenhouse or degree in botany to reap the benefits of plants. Palms, ferns, ivy, chrysanthemums, and spider plants are all easy-to-care-for plants that will improve the air quality of your home.

Cleanse home
Cleanse home
  1. Eternal sunshine of your mind
    When you fill your home with sunlight, you can’t help but feel lighter, body, mind, and spirit. With your house is illuminated, it will begin to heal and radiate the type of energy that makes you feel good. Sun on your mind brings warmth to in your heart (and remember our saying? Home is where the heart is…).

    Moreover, your new plants can’t survive without some sunshine, so draw back those curtains and let that big healing circle in the sky provide you both some natural nourishment. Like a warm cozy embrace from the sky.

  1. Turn off the TV and play some music
    If you are someone who falls asleep to the TV— or enjoys having it on as white noise in the background— try swapping it for some soothing music.

    Music is made up of vibrations, which are simply different types of energies. These waves of music will reverberate throughout your home and play a role in the positive vibrations you’ll feel as a result.

    Music can have a powerful and immediate impact on your energy and mood, both positive and negative. Classic orchestral music, with sweet violins singing alongside violas and cellos that join in harmony, promote positive healing vibrations. As a result, your body will relax and you’ll feel peaceful.

    However, music can have the opposite effect, too.

Cleanse home
  • Heavy metal and hard rock, with screaming guitars shredding chords accompanied by angsty and emotional song lyrics, have the opposite effect on energy and our bodies: you will be anxious and tense after the song ends.If you are looking for a music playlist that will help your home feel more zen (vs. Zeppelin), there are many great options on Spotify, YouTube, iTunes, Apple Music, and SoundCloud.
Cleanse home
  1. Scents and aromas
    In addition to the sights and sounds throughout your home, your sense of scent can have a profound impact on your healing capabilities and well-being.

    Different scents have the ability to instantly remind us of past experiences (both positive and negative). If you don’t have a scent that brings you comfort or peace, pick one! Just make sure that you are choosing a fragrance made of essential oils; many candles and diffusers available today are nothing more than chemicals that were created in a lab and will pollute your home’s air when burned/released.

  1. Dedicate a sanctuary for healing
    While your entire home should be a place where you feel at peace, be sure that you have a place inside that always allows you to be peaceful and serene. It can be a small nook in your bedroom, a water fountain next to your bedside, or a candle in your living room. One of the best ways to heal your home is to meditate in it.

    You may want to go a step further and fill the space with meaningful pictures and items that make you happy. When you need to rest and restore yourself, this is the space you should turn to.

Cleanse home

Start healing your home today

Many people don’t think about how they can improve the energy in their home, but having a healthy home can make a difference in your life. At its most basic, your home is a reflection of the state of your well-being, something that you can actively change if you aren’t happy with its current state. The tips listed in this article are all easy things that you can do to heal the energy in your home quickly.

And if you already find serenity and peace in your home, share some of your practices with us on our Facebook page.

Let in the Light

Follow the Light

by Energy HealingEnergy MedicineFeaturedSelf Love

Your eyes are closed. Warm, humid air nestles on your cheeks. The air feels palpable. You lie still, rocking on what feels like water, yet, oddly, you remain dry.

You open your eyes. It’s dark. Warmly dark. Enveloping dark. Above you: a warm darkness. Below you: darkness. In front and to the behind, more dark.

It’s pleasant. Like a warm summer’s night, just as the breeze dies down when the sun finally sets.

Where are you? Where are we?

We are at the beginning. The beginning of where all consciousness begins on the journey to enlightenment. In the dark.

You blink once, twice, three times for good measure. A small dot in the distance. A dot that stands out against the darkness. You can see it. In fact, it’s the only thing you can see. It is, in fact, light. Illumination. Unsure why, you find yourself drawn toward the light. Pressing forward. Pushing through the darkness.

As you lean into the illumination, your own body becomes apparent. You can feel your legs walking forward. You can now see the ground beneath your feet. Behind you: shadow. You turn your head around and see that the darkness has grown more pronounced. More defined. Delineated between what is light and where there is no light.

For the first time, you feel fear of this dark. Even though, before, the dark was all-encompassing. Now, split by the light, the dark feels stronger. You can even see yourself reflected in the dark.

This is your shadow. Notice how it grows larger as you walk forth into the light. Notice how the shadows of all the lit rocks, hills, trees, and people grow greater as the light shines forth.

The light illuminates all. That is what light does.

From the ancient religions of Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Orthodox Christianity, great teachers have understood that light is divine. Light, is the source of all life and consciousness. Thousands of years before scientists understood how stars fused hydrogen to helium – releasing tremendous energy and life-bringing light, primitive humans knew that the light was life.

And it is. Without the brilliance of light, we’d have no home for life. We’d have no plants to photosynthesize and produce oxygen. We’d have no warmth. We’d be cold and in the dark – huddled around the few sources of heat our planet produces.

But we have light, and we give thanks to the light. We celebrate Diwali, the festival of light that honors the victory of light over darkness. We celebrate Easter, where Christ, light incarnate, arose from the dead, having gained victory over death and Hades.

I love these celebrations. And I love that we celebrate these victories of the light over darkness yearly. Because while the religious events that we celebrate may have occurred once, the journey of light over darkness is continual.

And that is because the darkness is but the absence of light. And the greater the light expands, the more darkness we are able to see.

Return, for a moment, to our warm, humid darkness. Imagine you hold but a single candle. It extends a circle of light around you – just one foot wide. Around that: darkness. But how much darkness is there? It’s hard to say. From where you’re standing, it appears to simply be where the light stops – 1 foot away.

But grow that light. When the light grows to ten feet wide, we can see so much more. We see so much light! But we also see the limits of that light. And we see that the darkness expands far more than we originally understood. Now, darkness surrounds our circle for 10 feet instead of 1.

This is why we always celebrate the victory of light over the dark – because the light’s illumination is continually expanding. And as the dark retreats, more is uncovered. Our shadows grow longer. This growing darkness may give us pause – may make us yearn for the days when our light was smaller – when the world was simpler.

When these moments feel overwhelming, when the pull of the darkness feels so warm, I want you to do one thing: find the light. Find the tiny, pin-drop light that was there at the beginning. And hold that light true. That light is your compass. Stand in the light. Sit in the light. Lie down in the light. Bask in that one dot of light, until it overwhelms you with safety and security.

And when you’re ready, walk toward it once again.

It’s a long journey, and the shadows the light raises may be imposing. But the light is life, and by journeying through the light, your true self will be illuminated.

Follow the light, bathe in the light. Come celebrate the light with me.

If you’re a guy or a gal ready to bring more light into your own world, and into the world of those closest to you, join Deborah for a transformational seven week journey as she helps you Awaken the Divine Feminine – an energy source essential for light…and enlightenment. Click here to join the journey now.

Divinely humble

The Price of Pride: Pinkerton the Pig and Jesus on a Donkey

by Divine FeminineDomestic AbuseFeaturedSelf LoveTrauma and ViolenceWomen

“Who would care for a sand witch?”

That’s the opening line of one of my favorite children’s books. Hey! Adults can love children’s books too!

It’s called Me First, and it tells the story of a pig named Pinkerton who has to be first for everything. I know we all know somebody like that in our lives.

Anyway, in his haste to be first, Pinkerton thinks he hears someone asking if he’d like a “sandwich” (you know, lunch), while in reality it is a Sand Witch: a mysterious magical creature asking if he will take care of her.

Of course, in his haste to be first, he gets trapped being the servant of the Sand Witch, who ultimately teaches him that first is not always best.

It’s a cute story for growing minds, but the lessons it teaches can resonate with us through life: humble yourself, be kind, first is not always best.

I’ve been thinking a lot about being humble these days as we head into Spring, and with Spring, major holidays for the Abrahamic religions: Passover, Easter, and (later) Ramadan.

In all of these religions, we see the common theme of humbling oneself, as well as the dangers that befall those who choose pride.

Let’s take a look at the Passover Story. Moses leads the Hebrews out of captivity, eventually leading them into the promised land. Moses, a man who humbled himself before his God, was vested with great authority and power in order to save a people, who had been toiling under the crack of Pharaoh’s whip without mercy.

But take a look at Pharaoh for a moment. Here’s a man who when Moses says, “let my people go,” decides “absolutely not.” “Your people are my property.” Pharaoh considered himself to be a living incarnation of Horus, a powerful Egyptian God, and rejected any attempt by this foreign God, to mettle in his affairs.

What happened as a result? Famine, plague, pestilence, death. After every curse, Moses begged Pharaoh, “let my people go,” but this prideful, arrogant man could not humble himself before this foreign God, no matter the might this God showed. Pharaoh, blindly, thought himself to be greater. Ultimately, he and his armies were swept away in the Red Sea and drowned as divine punishment for his inability to see reason and accept defeat with grace.

This is the price of pride. This is the price of looking at the divine and saying, “my way or the highway.” Pride cometh before the fall.

As an inversion of this story, I am struck by the true humility that the Christ showed in his ministries. This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday, a day that Christians mark when Christ rode into Jerusalem.

How did Christ ride into Jerusalem? On a donkey.

I need you to get in the mindset of a citizen of Jerusalem back then. The Messiah was a promised figure who would restore Jerusalem’s independence. He would come in as a conqueror and expel the invaders who had Israel under their yoke.

What do conquerors ride in on? Horses.

Here’s a man – a man who calls himself the Messiah, the savior, who rides in on an ass.

What? That’s not what the Messiah is supposed to look like!

Less than a week later, Christ is executed – crucified for blasphemy. At first glance, you might think, “I don’t get it. He humbled himself and he was still killed. You exalt yourself, you humble yourself; death still comes for you.” In response, I’d ask you to look deeper.

The death of Christ is a sacrifice: it is an inversion of a man who carries the highest god-like vibration, sacrificing for his fellow man. It is the ultimate act of humility. This act of selfless sacrifice was done for humanity, and in the process, the Christ ascended. The lesson: selflessness and humility are righteous. They who exalt themselves shall be humbled. And those who humble themselves shall be exalted.

The Muslim month of Ramadan, coming up in April, is a month of fasting and introspection. The fasting is done to achieve taqwa, or fear of God. Fear meaning awe and reverence. An understanding that the divine is greater than we are, and yet that we encompass it. And this understanding draws us closer to the divine.

No matter your creed, we all understand that these tenets are universal: the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Think of how many leaders and politicians we’ve seen whose pride has consumed them. Governor Cuomo? Last year, he was the Covid whisperer, with his talks being the fireside chats of the pandemic. Now, he’s battling an inquiry that he deliberately miscounted Covid deaths and sexually harassed employees. He thought he was untouchable. Now, he’ll be lucky if he sees out his term. Or consider “Ellen” who has lost over 1 million viewers, or over 40% of her audience, after acknowledging that there was significant misconduct at her business. So much for branding yourself as the “Be Kind Lady,” a lofty title indeed.

I too have had this very dynamic happen: who among us has not had the experience of pushing ourselves to the top, only to later fall to the bottom, where we have plenty of time to master humility.

Pride cometh before the fall.

I invite you all, as the warmth of Spring melts away the dark of Winter, to keep these truths aloft: those who exalt themselves shall be humbled, those who humble themselves shall be exalted.

Or, as Pinkerton would say, first is not always best.

Breathing like ocean waves

Divine Utterance

by FeaturedMeditationSelf Love

How nature reveals the hand of our creator

Breathe in. Breathe out. What do you hear?

You hear the sound of your breath.

What does your breath sound like? Breath sounds like breath.

I was thinking about how “breath sounds like breath” as I was walking along the beach, listening to the waves crash on the sand. They have a push and pull. A roar and a groan. Like your breath. In a way, it is your breath. The oceans produce some 50 to 80% of the oxygen in the air – allowing you to breathe. It’s amazing. The oceans are the lungs of your world. You breathe in what they breathe out.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breath itself is an act of transference. Oxygen is brought into your blood and carbon dioxide is returned to nature. The oxygen in your blood is used to break apart chemical bonds in your cells, providing you with energy. It’s the fuel that powers you. And the waste, carbon dioxide, you transfer to all of the plant matter around the world that use carbon dioxide as their fuel. Transference.

This transference is fascinating. Because while your inhale and exhale breaths are opposites, they facilitate the inhale and exhale of others. You are taking reciprocal breaths with nature. In short, your breath out and the ocean’s breath out cancel each other. There is no opposite. There is just breath.

Breath sounds like breath. Breath is breath. It just is.

Sanskrit, the oldest language in the world, spoken some 5,000 years before Christ, gives us the yogic mantra, Soham, which literally translates as “I am [s]he” or “I am that.” In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad there is a verse that describes how, at the beginning of the universe, the Self became aware of itself as “I” (slightly modified):

In the beginning this universe was the Self alone…
[S]he, the Self, reflected and saw nothing but the Self. [S]he first said,
“I am.” Therefore, [s]he came to be known by the name aham.

The name aham indicates that God experiences itself subjectively as “I.”

In the Old Testament, when Moses meets the burning bush in the wilderness some 3,000 years before Christ, he asks, “Who are you?”

The response is “I am that I am.” Not “I am God” or “I am the creator.” Just “I am that I am.”

Jesus said some 2,000 years ago, “Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58)

Why would the “I am” define itself this way?

The sound of your breath is the same concept. Call it God, call it the creator, call it the universe’s divine force, whatever it is, it is so all-encompassing that it cannot define itself except by itself.

We call this tautology. Defining something by itself. I am that I am. Breath is breath.

Breath is breath. Why do I keep bringing this up? It’s because we can see the shadows of the divine tautological creation all through nature. In the ocean. In your breath.

The ancient Sanskrit word for God – Soham – describes God in two syllables that mean “I am.”

Two syllables. Two beats. In-out. In-out.

Like your breath. Like your heartbeat. Like the ebb and flow of the ocean’s waves. The name of the creation is reflected all throughout nature in these push-pull moments of transference and creation.

I thought about this as I finished my walk along the beach, as I listened to the roar of the ocean reflect back the divine utterance. I thought about how each heartbeat and each breath we breathe are unconscious prayers, connecting us to the source of eternal creation.

Isn’t it magnificent? The sound of our breath is the same sound of our ancient, divine verb “to be.” And that ancient divinity reveals itself as “I am that I am.”

What this means is that the act of being yourself is divine. Existence is all-encompassing. This is why we see the word Soham reflected back through all of our existence. Our breath and our heartbeat reflect back “I” and “am,” which means “existence.” It means “to be.” And our heartbeats and our breath are the key fires of our existence. Each breath sings “I am. I exist.”

I am that I am. Your existence is boundless. Any attempt to define “I am” for yourself, with anything other than “I am,” will be confusing.

Don’t let yourself be defined in confusing terms. Don’t allow yourself to be boxed in by any definition that removes a single element of your boundless self. Instead, listen to your breath.

Each breath you take, repeat the ancient phrase, Soham, “I am that I am.” You are what you are. Embrace your limitlessness. Embrace your divinity. God is within you.