My dad had a lot of Clark Griswold in him. In fact, I'm relatively certain his Clark Griswold-like characteristics were so pronounced they were mentioned at his funeral. Every year during the holidays, he and my mom packed the family into our Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon (complete with moon roof and "wood" side panels) and drove off in search of the perfect Christmas tree. We hunted Christmas trees in rain, fog, snow, Nor'easters, and below freezing temps. We were dedicated with my dad leading the charge, and we drove triumphantly home with our fresh cut tree strapped to the car's ski racks. During the holidays when I was growing up, we always had a live, fresh cut Christmas tree adorning our living room in the little blue house on Broadway. One year to my sister Jenny's displeasure, it was a tree she had planted and nurtured in our yard over the years, but that's another story for another day. 

Fresh cut Christmas trees were a holiday tradition I sadly didn't carry on with my family. Given how lifelike artificial trees have become in the past few decades, we've always had one of those instead. I didn't have to vacuum up needles or worry about fires like my mom did, but we never went tromping through the woods or a Christmas tree farm with the kids, never strapped a tree to the top of our car, and our house was never scented with the aroma of evergreen. 

As the holidays approached this year, I wasn't certain I was even going to decorate my artificial Christmas tree. I've viewed the holidays with some trepidation this year because it is my first without my dad. Our kids are grown and don't live at home anymore and making the effort of hauling out our tree and schlepping it downstairs, digging out our ornaments, and hanging them seemed pointless and like a lot of work I just didn't feel like doing.

My dad has been gone for 10 months now, and I have coped with my grief in stages. His illness and death were unexpected, sudden, and brutal in their intensity. In many ways, it still doesn't seem real that he is gone. Yet he is. 

My first stage of grieving was numbness. I had other people to worry about, work projects to take care of, classes to teach, books to write, and more. In those early months my grief bubbled up occasionally, but I was always able to tamp it down and refocus on my task at hand instead. During that stage I wrote a tribute to him, accepted and thanked people for their condolences, tried to comfort my family, dedicated a book or two to him, and congratulated myself on being okay. I was so numb I didn't realize I wasn't. 

In the next stage, I started to process. I allowed my grief and took the time to acknowledge it. As I am given to do, I did much of my processing in writing with tears streaming down my face. During this phase, I also spent a lot of time doing things I enjoyed. I traveled multiple places with Jim and with friends. I went on several boats. I wrote a lot and communicated with my readers via this blog and social media. I taught a multiple classes. Unfortunately, my dog Sofie became ill and died during this time, as well. I thought I handled it pretty well. 

In mid-October, I realized I was exhausted. I'd been struggling with an ongoing health issue since May when I accidentally ingested gluten while traveling (I have celiac disease and eating even trace amounts of gluten can send me into a health and inflammatory spiral that lasts for about six months). I felt drained of life force energy. I've always been even-keeled, emotionally and spiritually energetic, optimistic, and generally relaxed and happy no matter what is going on in my life, but I noticed even the smallest things sent me into a flurry of stress. My ability to cope was gone, and I felt spiritually, emotionally, and physically depleted. All I wanted to do was sleep and go somewhere to spend weeks away from all people recharging my batteries. I took some time off from teaching my classes (I will resume in January), stopped writing blogs and working on books or projects, spent almost no time on social media, and spent less time around people. There was a period in late October and early November after we returned from a trip to Nevada, Arizona, and Utah where I didn't leave the house for about ten days because I was so ill and depleted, and I felt I just couldn't "do people." I emerged briefly to attend the Port Gamble Ghost Conference the week before Thanksgiving because I'd committed to do so months ago, but then I returned home and into my self-imposed exile. 

It was during this period I started to dread the holidays because there was a big, dad-shaped hole right in the middle of them. Jim's car broke down and he had to work over Thanksgiving, so I was unable to travel to be with my family. I sat home with the dogs all day on Thanksgiving and pretended it was just any other day. In fact, it's only been in the past week when I've started to peek out of my hole, get out into the world, and feel as if I am coming to life again. It turns out that while the exile felt awful while I was going through it, it was exactly what I needed to recharge my batteries.

I remained unsure what I was going to do about Christmas. I still had no intention of putting up a Christmas tree or decorating. Then, I was chatting with my friend Teresa last night about old family Christmas traditions and we started talking about fresh Christmas trees and how much we loved then. In my tentative journeys back into the world, I noticed a few places had living Christmas trees, and I had been feeling a pull towards them. When I was talking to Teresa, it struck me exactly what I wanted to do for the holidays. I decided to buy a small living Christmas tree in honor of my father. If the ground isn't frozen, I will plant it on the first anniversary of his death (2/1). If it is frozen, I'll plant it as soon as I can. In this way, I feel like my dad is still a part of my holidays. 

Today I went to Home Depot and was gratified to discover they had living Christmas trees. I chose a small spruce and got some tiny lights and ornaments and brought it home to decorate.

The photo to the left is my living Christmas tree tribute to my dad. The star on the top is a stained glass ornament my dad made for me. I had forgotten I had it, but when I found it I was delighted because it was perfect. (Those are my citrus trees in the background. They are wintering indoors in a south facing window where they can stay warm and get lots of sunlight). 

I've written a lot about grief in 2018, and I've shared much of it with my readers. My grief has manifested in many ways throughout the year. At times I've ignored it and soldiered on and at times I've acknowledged and allowed it. I've found the times of allowing have felt more healing to me than the times of ignoring. Go figure.

I know many people are facing a holiday season without a loved one. It's an experience most of us will share at some point because death is the great equalizer. It inhabits all of our lives with the memory of those who were once with us in body but no longer are. Your grief may feel raw and fresh, or it may have mellowed with time, but times of family gatherings and tradition often serve to highlight those who are no longer with you.

However, if you can find a way to honor them in your holiday rituals, it may help. Whether it's getting a live Christmas tree and later planting it in your yard in their honor, buying ornaments that capture their essence and hanging them on your holiday tree, rejuvenating an old family holiday tradition, remembering them in prayer or meditation, donating to their favorite charity in their name, lighting candle in their honor, or something else that reminds you of them, it can help you heal. Create a new tradition for you and your family that honors those who have left you. Do something that captures their spirit and makes you smile. And as you do, open your heart and listen. You just may hear them whispering to you and realize that while they are physically no longer there, they have never left you. 

Sometimes people ask me if energy healing is merely a placebo. My response is this: "That can definitely be part of the process."  However, when I give that answer, it requires more explanation because I may be using the word placebo in a way that's different than how others perceive it.

In medical terminology, a placebo is defined as any type of medicine containing no active ingredients, no active medicines, and should, by its very nature, have no therapeutic effect. It's a sugar pill. However, scientific studies have shown repeatedly that some people respond to placebos and get better anyway. In fact, in many cases a placebo is just as effective or more effective than the original treatment minus the side effects. So if it's just a sugar pill, but it has the power to make people feel better, what's going on? Are the people merely gullible hypochondriacs who weren't sick in the first place? 

Here's how I view a placebo: whether it's a pill, a crystal, an affirmation, a visualization, or something else altogether, a placebo is an intention. When someone takes a sugar pill believing it is medicine, they are doing so with the intention to heal whatever it is that is ailing them. And so, that sugar pill becomes an intention that links body, mind, and spirit and can set the healing process in motion. 

If, along with the intention to heal, the person taking the pill also has a belief the placebo will genuinely bring about healing, then it shifts their thinking about whatever illness they are treating with the pill. That's because in taking that placebo, their thinking shifts from, "I am a sick person," to "I am a person doing what I need to get well." This simple shift in belief is enough to create small physical, spiritual, and emotional changes because a thought or belief that is more positive (even just slightly more) than the previous thought or belief still brings about a slight rise in vibration, and that slight rise in vibration can bring about another slightly more positive thought or belief. In this way, someone who truly believes in a placebo can experience incremental change in their experience of a physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual condition and instead of spiraling downward, they can begin to inch their way upward.
 
Does that mean there's nothing to energy healing other than the placebo effect? Of course not. With energy healing, the vibration of the energy healing modality entrains with the vibration of the person seeking healing (the healing partner), and the healing partner adapts to a new, higher vibration. This process is even more powerful when combined with a sincere intention and belief the energy healing will serve the healing partner's highest and greatest good. So while the placebo effect may be part of any shifts or relief the healing partner experiences, it isn't the whole story. The energy healing combined with intention and belief provides a quicker, more powerful path to wellness of the body, mind, and spirit than either would alone. 

The other thing I need to mention in any discussion of healing is this: for most people, healing doesn't necessarily mean what they think it does. Many believe healing is an absence of symptoms; however, symptoms are your body's fire alarm. By the time symptoms come along, there has been an energetic imbalance of some type for a long time, and removing the symptom merely turns off the fire alarm, even if there's still a fire burning.

Likewise, healing isn't always what we want it to be, and when we have a specific idea of what healing will look like for us, we may limit the power of the universe to work on our behalf.

Healing means achieving a state of energetic balance in body, mind, and spirit that serves the highest and greatest good. Sometimes, illness is what serves the highest and greatest good for that person in that moment. In these cases, energy healing removes energetic blockages and allows for the fullest expression of what serves the highest good. Sometimes this means physical, emotional, or mental wellness, and sometimes it means allowing the full expression of whatever circumstances currently exist to help someone come to terms with some aspect of their life and achieve more peace, understanding, and compassion. 

Energy healing can and often does have an aspect of the placebo effect to it. However, the placebo effect isn't necessarily a bad thing. Instead, it can be a way of unconsciously shifting thoughts and intentions to help you find new, higher vibration beliefs that ultimately support healing. 

Click on the image for my November newsletter. 

This is a piece of chrysocolla, azurite, and malachite with chrysocolla druzy. There's a lot going on in a single stone. I've been struggling to be able to get a good photo of this crystal for you since there's just so much to it.

Chrysocolla is a stone of communication, as is azurite. Malachite, on the other hand, is a heart stone that is known for bringing about transformative healing. All three get their color from different copper concentrations, which is why the three of them often occur together in a single stone. 

Stones like this that combine malachite with chrysocolla and/or azurite are a great way to communicate in a heartfelt manner; thee energy of the malachite keeps you heart-focused while the energy of the azurite and/or chrysocolla helps you share your truth from the heart. A great affirmation for meditating with this stone is, "I speak my truth with love." And in so doing-- kindly and compassionately communicating your truth--you can facilitate your own healing transformation.

As you meditate and affirm, hold the stone to your heart. Visualize the energy of the stone filling your heart and then swirling upward into your throat to give power, strength, and compassion to your voice. Try this type of meditation any time you have an important communication coming up with someone where you want to be able to share your truth in a loving and compassionate manner, such as during an intervention, before a counseling or talk therapy session, making up from an argument, or even just chatting with your children or a loved one.  It's also a great stone to use during any type of negotiations or when sharing difficult news with someone. 

Do you have a happy place? Maybe it's somewhere you visualize going that makes you happy. Maybe it's a feeling you distinctly recall. Maybe it's the sound of a certain song or the way you feel after meditation. Think about when you feel your most peaceful, balanced, and joyful. Or just when you feel at your most positive. What if you could capture that any time you wish?

Great news; you can. There's a simple technique in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) called anchoring, and you can use it to recapture a positive feeling whenever you'd like. But to do that, first you have to get the positive feeling in the first place.

Many people can think themselves there. Think of someone you love dearly; a friend, a family member, a partner, a child, or even a pet. Think about them and start to feel them deeply. Allow the glow of that good feeling to spread throughout you. Alternatively, think of your happy place, a beautiful memory, or your happy song. Use whatever you can to get yourself to that place. For me, any of the previous techniques work, or I can also do this after I've meditated or engaged in any physical activity that gets my endorphins flowing.

Once you have that positive feeling, come up with a unique gesture while you still inhabit the sensation. Make it a unique (to you) gesture; not one you perform daily. It could be tugging on your right ear with your thumb and forefinger, or making an "OK" sign with your left hand, for instance. Make it a specific gesture. And, while you are still in the feeling, make the gesture several times. As you repeat the gesture, do it exactly the same way each time. Do this until the intensity of the positive feeling begins to subside, and then stop. Alternatively, make the gesture and continue to hold it in position until the intensity of the feelings begin to lessen.

Now, any time you wish to return to that place of positive feeling, repeat the gesture exactly as you did it. That's it. It's effective and easy to do.

For energy healing practitioners, this is a great technique to teach your healing partners. At the end of their session when they're in that relaxed and positive state, teach them the technique and tell them they can return to that feeling anytime they wish by repeating the gesture. Allow them to choose a gesture that is specific and meaningful to them.

One word of caution to practitioners: Sometimes a session stirs up old, stuck negative energy, and your healing partner may be processing old negative emotions at the end of and after a session. When I observe this happening, I try to continue with additional energy until it passes or initiate a visualization to help them feel safe and peaceful, but sometimes it may take a few days for all of the emotions to process. If you observe this is the case at the close of a session, don't teach anchoring because that is not a feeling your healing partner wants to return to. Instead, wait until a laster session when your healing partner is in a positive and relaxed state.

I'm super excited because next week I'm teaching a class in Portland that offers so many energy healing techniques in a single class, you'll hardly know what to do with them all (but don't worry - I'll show  you)! We originally planned to offer the class as an advanced Reiki class, but I realized anyone can use these techniques regardless of whether they are attuned to Reiki. So, as of now, anyone is welcome to take the class. Yay!

What will you learn?

Touch Techniques
• Tapping
• Stroking
• Gazing
Healing Hands 
• Handout: Finger Meanings
• Handout: Fingers and Hands
• Handout: Fingers and Emotions
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) 
• Handout: EFT for Practitioners
• Handout: EFT for Healing Partners
Polarity Therapy
• Handout: Polarity Elements
• Crystal and dorje polarity techniques
• Gazing tracing polarity technique
Quantum Touch
• Sensing energy
• Basic QT technique
• Spinning or moving energy
Crystals
•Handout: Crystal Lattice Patterns
• Handout: Crystal Colors and Chakras
• Crystal opacity 
• Handout: Sacred Geometry and Crystal Shapes
• Handout: Crystals and Sacred Geometry – Grids
Sacred Sound
• Tingsha diagnosis
• Handout: Body outline for diagnosis
• Starting a session with tingshas
• Bell and dorje session
• Using singing bowls
• Selecting singing bowls
• Handout: Sacred Sound Healing Instruments
• Handout: Chakra Mantras
Clearing Chakras
• Crystal or dorje technique
• Gazing technique
Aroma
• Handout: Aromatherapy
Affirmation and Visualization 
• Consultation
• Introducing it to a session
• Setting it using NLP
Creating a Sacred Space for Energy Healing
Practice
Q&A

Sounds good, right? You'll walk away with handouts describing most of the technique in simple terms with lots of graphics. You don't need your own equipment (but you can bring some if you have it). I'll have equipment there you can try and practice with. Register here. I'll also give the first five people who contact me through my contact form here a coupon code for $15 off of the class. Hope to see you there.

​My dad died on February 1 of this year. I don’t say that to garner sympathy but merely as a statement of truth. I say that because my dad no longer walks this earth, and that is my new reality.
 
He is not the first person I love who has died, but he is certainly the closest. His illness seemed sudden, although it had likely been around for months. In late October, he got a cold. He still had it at Thanksgiving, although his doctor assured him it was just a virus that was lingering. After the holidays when the cold was still there, his doctor grew concerned and sent him to a specialist. On January 10, he was diagnosed with late stage lung cancer and was in a severe amount of pain. No treatment would prolong his life. He entered hospice the last week in January and died after a few days. My mother, sister, nephew, husband, and I were all by his side as he breathed his last breath.
 
Over the past few decades, I’ve developed into a pretty chill person. Especially in the past five or so years, I’ve been an anxiety-free, happy-go-lucky, roll-with-the-punches kind of gal unless something extreme has happened. Perhaps not surprisingly, that is also the period in my life where I’ve hit my stride as an intuitive energy healer and psychic medium. Living what I believe is my life’s true purpose has smoothed my rough edges and given me a broader perspective about life and death. It’s allowed me to move into my authentic self. I’ve communicated with hundreds of spirits of people who have passed, including some I love. I’ve offered comfort to people who are mourning the loss of loved ones. So I guess somewhere in the back of my mind, I believed that when one of my immediate family members died, I would handle it with a similar level of aplomb, understanding, and even-temperedness.
 
That didn’t happen.
 
On the day my father was diagnosed, I stopped eating. I couldn’t. I tried. I’d take a bite of food and nothing would go down. I barely slept. I threw myself into work. And in my darkest moments, I was convinced I didn’t remember how to swallow. I’d try to swallow and panic would set in until I was able to relax myself enough to do it. Then, as soon as I did, it would start all over again. I was terrified I was going to choke on my own saliva. I knew intellectually these were all manifestations of anxiety arising from the stress of my dad’s illness and worry about my mom, but even knowing and understanding that didn’t matter.
 
By about January 15, doctors told us my dad probably had six months left. It was plenty of time, I thought, that we could get together and say everything we had to say. My sisters and I planned a weekend with my parents at the beginning of February where the five of us could spend time together as a family. In the meantime, I threw myself into my work, taught my classes, and accepted any project that came my way to keep my mind busy. During that two weeks, I wrote two books if that tells you anything about how frantically I worked. You have lots of time to do stuff when you stop sleeping and eating.
 
Early in the week before we were supposed to spend the weekend with my parents, my mom called and said dad was going into hospice to get his pain under control. It sounded like he would be put on some medication and return home, just as he had the previous week when he was hospitalized for the same reason. Still, in my heart I knew my dad would enter hospice, and he wouldn’t return home. I hoped I was wrong, but I didn’t think I was.
 
The next day, mom called and told us if we wanted to see Dad, we needed to come now. Unfortunately, my younger sister had a flight from Hawaii where she lives in a few days and was unable to change it. My older sister, my husband, and I dropped everything and headed to my hometown where we sat with my mom and dad in hospice.
 
My father was minimally lucid when I arrived. He had short periods of wakefulness, but he was heavily drugged and would quickly drift off to sleep. It was difficult to understand what he said when he was speaking. In one particularly lucid moment, he opened his eyes, looked at me, said, “Hi Kar,” and then asked me, “Am I dying?” I told him yes because what else was I going to do?
 
It quickly became apparent that even as heavily medicated as he was, my father was still in significant pain, so meds were raised to try and control it. He slipped away then; he was out of pain and still with us but not really with us.
 
On Thursday evening while my younger sister was still on an airplane, Dad took a turn. Something changed. His breathing was different – more erratic. We knew it would be soon, and all of us stood by his side and talked to him. We told him it was okay to go, that mom would be okay, and that we would all be okay. We told him we loved him. Well, at first just my mom and my sister did because I was overcome. I couldn’t speak the words in my heart, but then as I got my emotions under control, I was able to tell him the same thing.
 
After a short period that seemed like forever, something in the room changed. I felt something – someone there. I knew his loved ones had come for him. I turned to Jim, signaled this would be Dad’s last breath, and then watched as he took it. I felt him go.
 
My dad died. I didn’t want to let him go, but I knew we had to. Life is not the same without him, and my world is forever changed.
 
We lingered for an hour in hospice as they took care of Dad’s body and friends came to offer love and support. When they took him to the funeral home, Jim and I staggered back to our hotel in a daze. All the way, I heard my dad chattering at me, but I assumed it was just wishful thinking. He was telling me what he was experiencing, and I was happy to listen, but for once I didn’t believe I was actually receiving psychic communication. I just thought I was doing what I needed to do to comfort myself.
 
Back at the hotel, Jim left to get something out of our car while my dad’s voice still chattered in my head. I said, “I wish it was really you, but I know it’s just my mind.” And then someone physically yanked my hair hard, and my dad’s voice said loudly, “Hey! Listen to me. I’m here.”
 
And so I listened. What he said was between us. And in the back of my mind, I still didn’t believe I was really hearing it.
 
The next several weeks were numb. I went to the funeral. I took on more and more work. I taught my classes. When I tried to speak of my dad, I broke down in sobs. And when I was alone, my dad would come to me and talk. I didn’t know if he was really there; I couldn’t trust my abilities because I knew what I wanted to believe would supersede what was actually happening. I felt him visit regularly. And although I didn’t believe he was there, on the off chance he was, I talked to him. Doing so gave me comfort.
 
I told him that to get through to my mom and sisters, the best way was to communicate in their dreams. I told him I missed him, I loved him, and I wished I could have had more lucid time with him before he died. I had full conversations every time I felt his presence even though I was sure he wasn’t really there, but I just wanted him to be.
 
A few months later, I was at the Oregon Ghost Conference, where I teach and speak every year. I was surrounded by psychics, and I told my dad on one of his visits, “If you’re really here and you’ve really been coming to me, please communicate with one of my psychic medium friends and have them speak to me privately, giving me some kind of information so I will know I truly have been communicating with you.”
 
My friends Seth Michael and AuroA were giving a gallery reading that night at the conference. So far, nobody had said anything to me from my dad, so I thought that probably confirmed what I knew, which was my conversations with and visits from him were all in my mind. After all, my dad when he was alive was skeptical about psychics, and my abilities were a subject we just didn’t discuss much, if at all. So I had zero expectations at the gallery reading; I was there to support my friends.
 
I stood in the back of the room watching people getting messages from loved ones when I heard my dad’s voice say to me, “Watch this,” as Seth and AurorA were transitioning from giving messages to one person to another.
 
Then Seth started making a horrible coughing noise – one I’d heard before. “This man is making me feel so much pain and like I can’t breathe and he sounds like this,” Seth said, making the strangled noise again. It was the exact noise my dad made as he was in hospice dying.
 
“He says, ‘I gave up the ghost,’ and laughs,” Seth said. “He says, ‘I willed himself to die.’”
 
Seth was communicating with my father, who thought my ghost stuff was amusing and often made the joke of “giving up the ghost.”
 
And so, in front of a ton of people, my dad who I always thought was slightly embarrassed by the whole psychic and ghost thing communicated with me. The content of the message didn’t matter as much as the fact he was there. He was also letting me know by communicating through Seth that all the communication I believed to be my imagination was, indeed, real. It brought me comfort, and it also released something. It was the start of my true grief process.
 
I always believed that as a psychic medium I would handle the death of loved ones well, as my belief and understanding is people never really leave us and love never really dies, that they are there looking over us and loving us in spirit form. I’ve shared this information with many people, and I’ve felt it viscerally as I do.
 
But when my dad died, I forgot all of that. Or for a while, I stopped believing it. I became trapped in numbness where I felt safe. There’s not a word deep enough to describe the raw depths of my pain at my dad’s death, and it wasn’t a feeling I was willing to allow myself to experience or process. The part of me who had comforted so many people by telling them their loved ones were still there was deeply ashamed that when death became that closely personal, I somehow lacked the power of my convictions. I was angry at myself for grieving so deeply and unwilling to allow my grief because of my belief that consciousness survives death and my dad wasn’t really lost. I believed I was supposed to grieve a certain way, or that my grief should somehow be less because I could communicate beyond the veil. My pain grew sluggish and sticky. I was mired in it because I refused to allow myself to move through it since I didn’t believe given what I knew about the human soul, I should be grieving at all.
 
Instead, I processed in bits and pieces. I’ve had times where I’ve broken down, times where I’ve been numb, and times where for just a moment, I have a glimmer of understanding that what I believe about life after death is true. But those moments of knowing were ephemeral, and they slipped away before I could grasp them with desperate hands. 
 
In mid-August, we gathered to scatter my dad’s ashes. We chartered a boat filled with family and friends and traveled to the San Juan Islands. On the way, we saw porpoises, and when we arrived at the spot, there was an unexpected pod of migrating orcas.
 
All of my life, I’ve dreamed of dolphins, porpoises, orcas, and whales. They come to me in dreams during difficult periods, and I always wake from the dreams knowing everything will be all right, and all is as it should be. So it was no mistake they were there that day when we scattered my dad’s ashes. They were there for him and from him, and they were there for all of us.
 
As my older sister and nephew poured his ashes into the water where the orcas swam, the ashes made a beautiful pattern in the sea. And I did something I was unable to do at his funeral. I allowed myself to feel the depths of my grief and I cried. I told my dad good-bye, and I let him go. And underneath, I felt something else, as well. I felt gratitude I’d had my dad for 52 years and for the father he’d been, and I knew I never truly would have to let him go because he was a part of me.
 
There is no right or wrong way to grieve, nor is there a time frame or normal behavior. Regardless of what you believe or what you know, when someone you love dies, it is intensely personal. It doesn’t matter if you can communicate with spirits, if you believe in life after death, or if you believe your loved ones remain with you even though they are no longer physically embodied. For quite a while, I was unwilling to allow the grief to touch me because I didn’t believe I had a right to it given what I knew to be true about the nature of the universe. But as I tried to go about life as usual, my dad kept creeping in, and so did deep sadness at his passing. Eventually, I came to a place where I could either choose to suppress it and live my life in a state of numbness, or I could lean in and allow myself to experience it fully so I could move on. I wish I would say it was a conscious decision I chose the latter, but it wasn’t. The dam burst and I was unable to continue with the numbness because it dishonored all that my father was to me. It also dishonored the authenticity of my own feelings.
 
And so I grieve. I miss my dad. I know he is safe. I know he is well, and I know he is with us, but he is not physically here. But even in his death, my dad is still teaching me things. When he was alive, he taught me to always have an open mind. By giving me Raymond Moody’s Life After Life when I was a teenager, he set me on the path to my life’s true purpose. By his own curious exploration of the universe, he set the example that made me feel comfortable pursuing my own curiosity, and even though we ultimately arrived at different conclusions about the way things worked. Without his example, I would never have come to be where I am now.
 
In his death, my dad remains my teacher. He shows me it’s never too late to learn; you can even learn things after you die. He shows me I can’t avoid grief and sadness, and my feelings are never wrong and should never be denied. And he shows me that what I believe is, in some form true – or at least true for me. When our loved ones die, their bodies are no longer there. But their souls – those live on. They move on to new adventures and possibly even new bodies, but their love for us leaves an indelible imprint on our lives, hearts, and souls that can and will never be erased.

Cleansing the energy of the spaces where you live and work and the things you use for energy healing, such as crystals or singing bowls, is an essential part of good spiritual hygiene. I recommend people cleanse the energy of their spaces at least once a week--and more if there's been negativity such as illness, arguments, stress, etc.--and cleanse tools they use at least once a week or even more if they get heavy use. For example, I cleanse the crystals I wear once a day, and I cleanse those I use with healing partners after every use. The crystals that just sit in my house and mostly look pretty, I cleanse once a week. Before we get into the hows of energy cleansing, however, I want to get into the whys. 

​Energy and Entrainment
Back in the 1600s, a Dutch scientist named Christiaan Huygens discovered that objects with different energy frequencies locked into phase when placed in physical proximity to one another. He noticed when he hung two pendulum clocks side by side on the wall, although they started with the pendulums swaying in different rhythms, they soon moved into the same rhythm. This gradual shifting of vibration to lock into phase is called entrainment, and it is a repeatable scientific phenomenon. The video below demonstrates this principle with 32 mechanical metronomes all started with a different frequency that eventually begin to move together. 

 Entrainment is an important principle when it comes to spiritual energy as well. Everything has a vibration. All physical matter is made up of tiny vibrating strands of energy; from the chair you might be sitting in right now, to the cells of your body, to the hair on top of your head. Everything in your environment is made up of these strands of energy existing in close proximity to one another. And, as we established, when two bodies oscillating at different frequencies are located next to one another, each adjusts its energy to the other so they begin to vibrate at the same rate.

​This is happening all around you all of the time. People who are sensitive to energy can feel it as it happens. For example, have you ever been somewhere alone and felt the energy shift when another person walks into a room? That is their energy and yours reacting to one another and shifting to meet somewhere in the middle. 

In an ideal world, lower vibration would always climb to meet higher vibration while the higher vibration stayed the same. But that's not what happens. Generally, when there is a vast difference between the vibration of one object and the vibration of another, one raises, the other lowers, and the two meet somewhere in the middle. So the higher vibration comes down a bit and the lower vibration raises. That's why energetic cleansing is so important. If you bring an energy tool, such as a crystal, into your environment, it will raise your vibration, but it will also drop to meet the lower vibration of other objects around it.

Energy cleansing is like a vibrational reset button. Using energy cleansing methods helps return the tools you use and the spaces you inhabit to their natural higher vibrational frequency after they've been in contact with energy of a lower vibration. By bringing them to a higher vibration and then using them in the same environment again, the environmental energy rises once again while the tool's energy drops slightly, but they have a new, higher middle to in which to meet. The goal is to keep the energy tools cleansed so they return to their original higher energy, making the "middle" a new, higher set point after each cleansing.

​How To Cleanse
There are many ways you can cleanse tools and your environment. My go-to is to use Reiki to cleanse things like crystals and spaces where I live, work, and teach, but I realize not everyone has Reiki available, and sometimes I feel other types of cleansing are called for, as well. Some tools you can use for cleansing include:

• Sacred sound instruments such as tingshas, bells, ghanta and dorje, drumming, or singing bowls
• Incense
• Sacred herbs such as sage, palo santo, cedar, sweetgrass, or a combination thereof

When you cleanse a space, move through your space in clockwise pattern starting at the front door either sounding your instruments or wafting the smoke from your herbs or incense. At every opening to the space (doors, windows, drains), run the sound or smoke around it in a clockwise direction. Be sure to get into corners and closets, too. When you return to your front door, run the smoke or sound counter clockwise around the door to seal the energy. If you burn sage (which empties out all energy), always follow up with something that brings in positive energy, such as burning palo santo or playing sacred sound.

To cleanse any tools you use in energy healing, hold them over the sacred smoke so they are coated in smoke, or run them through the sound waves of a sound instrument. For example, you can put crystals in a singing bowl and sound it or use incense smoke around and in a singing bowl. 

Making cleansing part of your ritual can help you to maintain higher vibration with any energy healing tools you use, as well as in the spaces you work, play, and live. By attending to spiritual hygiene with this important step, you can help maintain a vibration that continues to rise. 

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So today I have something super exiting for you; a bunch of diagrams of hands and fingers. Whether you're working on self-healing or working as an energy healer, understanding how your hands and fingers--and your healing partner's--connect to various aspects of your well-being such as chakras, emotions, and elements opens new avenues to bring balance and healing energy.

The chart above shows how each finger is related to certain experiences, values, and emotions. As a self-healer, you can strengthen and support these areas of your life by wearing appropriate gemstone rings on each finger or massaging them to stimulate each pathway.

Energy healers can lightly touch or tap healing partners with the appropriate finger of their giving hand to strengthen these energies or lightly massage in counterclockwise circles with the appropriate finger of the receiving hand to absorb excess energy.

The chart above shows the associations of each finger with the elements and the chakras. For self-energy healing, you can support, balance, and strengthen the energy of each chakra or element by wearing appropriate gemstone jewelry on each finger or using sound or massage techniques on each as needed to keep the energy flowing. 

If you're an energy healing practitioner, in your sessions you can use the corresponding finger of your giving hand to provide additional energy associated with that finger (so for the thumb, you can work with your right thumb in an energy healing session to give throat chakra and ether energy). You can also use your receiving hand to decrease or balance an excess of energy (so you would use your left thumb to absorb excess throat chakra or ether energy). Additionally, you can use crystal points on the tips of each finger (place the pointed end against the tip of the finger) to balance and smooth energy flow of the corresponding chakra or elemental pathway.

The final chart shows how each finger relates to negative emotions. If you, as a self-healer, are stuck in a pattern of negative emotion, you can wear appropriate crystals (such as black tourmaline, apache tears, or garnet) on the finger of the giving hand that corresponds to those emotional patterns to counteract or absorb the negativity, or you can wear a gemstone ring on the receiving hand that holds the opposite energy of your emotion. 

Energy healers working with healing partners can use the corresponding fingers on their receiving hands by massaging in a counterclockwise circle to absorb the negative emotions, or they may want to work with smoky quartz crystal points or a dorje to draw out negative emotions by placing the pointed end against the tip of the corresponding finger and visualizing the energy flowing up and out of the crystal. The smoky quartz or dorje will transmute the negative energy to positive and send it out into the universe. 

​Tools for Healing
As with all of the other information I offer, these are additional tools you can use for self-healing or in your energy healing or Reiki practice. As you develop an arsenal of understanding and healing tools,  you can store them in your information banks and call on them intuitively throughout your healing sessions, which will allow you to create the exact healing environment needed to serve the highest and greatest good. 

You are welcome to save, use, and distribute any of these charts for yourself or in your practice provided you leave my name/link on the bottom.