For years I was able to write off my intuition as imagination. I would have incredibly powerful thoughts, images, and feelings, but I always told myself, "Oh you just have a vivid imagination." And it's true. I've always had a vivid imagination. As a kid (and sometimes as an adult), I channeled that into stories and poetry I wrote, silly songs I made, or funny comments and jokes. When I played with friends, I was always the one leading the fun with games I made up on the spot. 

And then there were the imaginary friends. They came and went from my young life; children, adults, people of all colors and shapes. People with funny accents. And animals. Lots of animals. The thing was, all of these friends of mine were even more vivid to me than the alive people I was surrounded by. They popped in when they felt like it - early morning, middle of the night, at school. And when I went new places, I met new friends. Some places, like when I was in the hospital for a week following an emergency appendectomy, had way more friends than others did. But I learned my friends were upsetting and off-putting to the real people in my life, and so I kept them to myself.

I was also a vivid dreamer. I still am; I always have been. As a child my dreams were so vivid that when I woke up, I often couldn't remember for a few moments whether the dream was real or the me who was in my bed waking from the dream was the real one. I remember one dream so vivid I got out of bed in the middle of the night, walked downstairs to my parents' bedroom, and told them I was ready to go home now. I remember how upset I was that they wouldn't take me home or even acknowledge that I wasn't home.

I learned quickly there was a right time and a right way to share my imagination, and there were most definitely wrong times and wrong ways.  And so, while my imagination remained just as vivid as it always had, I kept it to myself unless I could find a "positive" way to express it in the "real" world. I also discovered that how I thought about it changed; what had once felt like such a natural part of me now felt like a deep, dark, dirty secret that I needed to suppress and make go away so others wouldn't think I was weird.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I was labeled an "anxious child" as soon as I was school aged. I was filled with fears and anxiety all of the time. I cried easily, and when I was around groups of people, such as in school, my emotions were all over the place. It was like emotions zoomed through me, tumbling and jumbling all together, one on top of the other, wrapping around each other in a messy cacophony. 

My thoughts also tumbled and jumbled, with one thought layering over another. My mind was never quiet. I could be doing my math in class and thinking 20 other things at once. My senses were also overactive. It was as if I could hear people down the street playing music, feel even the slightest change in air pressure or temperature, or smell someone smoking a cigar from miles away. Physically, I also felt strange sensations moving through my body, sometimes several at once. A quick pain in my big toe that happened whenever a certain teacher was near. A sore back arose whenever I was in my first grade classroom until the day my teacher took a leave of absence to have back surgery. Pain to the head. Pain in my teeth. Pain in my stomach. Some of it was fleeting, coming and going as people approached and then walked away, and some of it lingering and setting into my body.

The only place where all of that noise was quiet was in my bedroom in my house on a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood. In my walk in closet at the very back, there was a quiet, dark nook behind the chimney where I could go and sit and just be. There, I could escape into my dreamy world without the noise of random pains, strange sensory input, and layers and layers of thoughts. My imaginary visitors still came while I was in my bedroom. My "imagination" still kicked in. But the rest was blissfully peaceful and quiet, and I could channel my vivid imagination into writing or daydreams. I could focus. If I wanted to escape even that, I could do so by taking a deep dive into a book. I became a lifelong reader and writer as a way to shut off the noise and focus my mind.

I'm certain a psychologist would read the above and offer a diagnosis or two; something such as ADD, sensory integration disorder, a mood disorder, or even schizophrenia. But the truth is, I was none of those things. What I thought was my imagination was natural, unmanaged psychic ability running rampant through my life.

As I got older, I developed strategies to manage my vivid imagination. I was able, for the most part, to suppress it and keep it at bay so I could at least give the appearance of being normal. In suppressing it, I was able to focus and block all of the information out as background noise. I did very well in school and then went on to college where I discovered that living in a dorm with so many people around constantly made it far more difficult to suppress the noise of my imagination because I had no safe, quiet space to which I could retreat as I'd had with my childhood bedroom in a single-family home in a quiet neighborhood. It was in college that I started running. I went to college in Eastern Washington, and I would run for miles in the early morning or evening, venturing far out along roads winding through wheat fields just so I could have some peace and quiet. On the weekends, I often hopped on my bike and headed out to a nearby wildlife preserve where I could be alone with my thoughts and feel blessed peace.

I managed in this fashion for more than 30 years. It was an imperfect science, but I learned to find spaces of relative quiet and calm where I could recharge, but it was difficult. I struggled with anxiety and my health was a mess, my body filled with constant aches, pains, and illness. It wasn't until I started to explore the spiritual, metaphysical, and paranormal that I started to make sense of my life and all of the experiences I'd had since I was a child. I began to realize that what I'd believed all of my life was my imagination was actually intuitive information. And as the realization dawned, I started to test this theory to see if it held water. What I noticed was that when I actually focused in on the thoughts and the feelings and the sensations, I received very accurate information about all sorts of things from aches and pains other people were experiencing, to deeply understanding others' emotions, to receiving accurate information about people who had died or things that were happening in the world. 

As I started to recognize that what felt like imagination was, in fact, intuitive information, I developed genuine strategies for sorting, processing, and working with that information. I also developed strategies of self-care, spiritual hygiene, grounding, discernment, and energy work that were healthy and constructive. I learned to channel all that information into healthy outlets, how to act on information that needed more exploration, and how to release information that was just there because I was there to receive it. 

With that understanding and effort, the last 15+ years of my life have brought profound changes for me. I no longer struggle with anxiety. I am able to be calm and focused. I am genuinely happy and feel a sense of purpose and joy for the life I have been gifted with. But it took work to get here, undoing years of social and religious conditioning about the acceptability of my gifts. It took me several years just to acknowledge my gifts to other people and be exactly who I was in their presence without trying to hide my gifts or worrying about they might perceive me as crazy. 

With some people who have been very close to me my entire life, it's still a work in progress. While I don't hide my gifts and it's clear by reading practically anything I write that I have embraced my gifts and believe in them 100 percent, there are some relationships where it is still never acknowledged. I don't hide it, but they don't particularly want to know either. I'm okay with that. I am who I am, and I have the gifts I do. I love them and accept them regardless of what they may feel about my abilities, but I won't hide them or feel ashamed or embarrassed that the Source has given me these gifts any longer.

As I've written this, there's been a persistent voice in the back of my mind telling me this: "Tell them this is a portrait of a psychic child. Tell them to understand this so they can help their own psychic children through non-judgment, guidance, and unconditional love because it is a challenging and lonely path to walk as a child when the people around you are unable or unwilling to understand you." 

And so, I acknowledge the voice by sharing that with you, since that wasn't where I thought I was going with this blog post. I was going to point this out: psychic information very often feels like imagination, so I offer this suggestion: Sit with it. Feel it. Allow it. And ask yourself how the information can serve the highest and greatest good. Then, act on it or release it, but don't ignore it. Never ignore it.

Even if it is imagination, it comes from somewhere. Look at all of the art, beauty, and advancement that has come from "imagination" and ask yourself this: where did these truly spectacular ideas come from? Did they originate in the firing of neurons responding to chemical signals in the physical brains of humans, or were they somehow Divinely inspired, coming from a source of higher intelligence into the energy field of a human creator who acted on it to create great beauty? 

We belittle imagination, telling people things like, "Oh it's just your imagination" as a way to calm them or make them think differently. However, there is no such thing as "just imagination." Imagination is a higher function. It's a force for creativity. If it feels like imagination, it's probably inspiration. Don't let anyone talk you out of it. Don't let anyone take it away. Don't dismiss it yourself. Your intuitive self has things to tell you, and listening can not only change your life, but it can serve the highest  and greatest good for the universe. 

Many people who take my dream interpretation class mention they have trouble remembering their dreams or they don't feel their dreams are meaningful.

The truth is everyone dreams, and everyone has symbolic dreams, which occur during REM sleep. However, not everyone is able to remember their dreams because they can be so ephemeral. If you don't record your dream as soon as you wake up by writing it down quickly or speaking it into a voice recorder, there's a good chance you'll forget it or details of the dream will slip away quickly.

It's unfortunate because dreams are an excellent source of wisdom from a higher source. They can provide guidance or alert us to issues in our subconscious that we need to bring into consciousness so we can deal with them and heal. Dreams are an important tool for people on a spiritual path seeking guidance and growth.

There are some things you can do to support meaningful dreams and dream recall. The first is to state your intention nightly before you go to sleep. Every night as I drift off, I say, "Tell me what I need to know." For me, that's enough because I have always dreamed vividly and had good dream recall. 

Others may need a more clearly stated intention such as, "Tonight I will receive guidance in my dreams and when I wake, I will remember them" or something similar. Keep a dream journal or a voice recorder next to the bed, and as soon as you wake from a dream that seems significant, write it down. If you wake in the middle of the night, even a few descriptive words of things from the dream can be enough to spark recall. Then, in the morning, write everything you can remember from your dream in your journal and see if you can translate what the dream is telling you.

Another great way to remember dreams is to place amethyst next to your bed, under your pillow, or between your mattress and box spring. Amethyst can trigger meaningful dreams and help you remember them. Cleanse your amethyst once or twice a week using smoke or another method. 

Finally, try this essential oil blend. If possible, put it in a roller bottle with chips of amethyst and an amethyst roller ball. Apply to your third eye before you go to bed, massaging it into your forehead in a counterclockwise direction (clockwise dispels, counterclockwise draws or nourishes) as you repeat your affirmation for dreaming and dream recall.

Dream Serum

• 1 ounce sweet almond oil
• 5 drops lavender essential oil
• 3 drops clary sage essential oil
• 4 drops sandalwood essential oil

Shake well before each use. Store in a drawer out of direct sunlight.

One of the great things about Reiki is it flows through you and not from you. However, many people drawn to Reiki and other forms of energy healing are empaths. Empathy is a form of psychic ability in which you feel the physical sensations and/or emotions of others as if they are your own. In general, empaths may have difficulty differentiating between a physical sensation or emotion from another person and one that is his or her own. This can be confusing, so it’s important you begin to recognize and acknowledge your empathy and work with it as you do energy healing.
 
Empathy is a gift for an energy healer or Reiki practitioner because it allows you to be more tuned into your healing partner and provide a more intuitive and personalized session. However, if you don’t manage it carefully, you may wind up taking on any negative energy from your healing partner while transferring some of your positive energy to them. This is one reason grounding and breaking the connection following an energy healing session is so important for both you and your healing partner. If you've received energy from your healing partner, you don't want to carry it with you throughout the day or into your next session. 
 
In my First Degree Reiki classes, I teach my students to run their hands under cold water and touch the floor after a session to release the energetic ties between practitioner and healing partner and for grounding. This is an effective practice. However, as you begin to work more intuitively and allow the energy from your healing partner into your own energetic space in order to create a more focused and personalized healing session, it becomes even more essential to practice good energy hygiene in order to maintain your own energetic boundaries and well-being.
 
Learn to Differentiate Your Energy from Theirs
First on your agenda is discerning what physical or emotional sensations are yours and which are your healing partners’. Some techniques for doing this:

• Notice if this has come on suddenly. If it has, and it has nothing to do with you, chances are it’s theirs.
• Ask in your mind, “Is this my feeling?” You may hear yes or no, you may feel yes or no, or you may get some other signal to tell you whether the sensation you’re experiencing belongs to the other person.
• Briefly remove your hands from your healing partner and mentally put up a shield by pushing a bubble from your core to surround you completely. If the feeling goes away, it belongs to them. Remove the shield and return your hands to your healing partner.

 
Ground or Push Out the Energy
Once you have read your healing partner's energy and understand what it is telling you, there’s no need to hold onto it for even a second longer. Therefore, once you’ve acted on the information you’ve received from your healing partner, you should ground it or push it away from you. Because you receive lots of information during a healing session, you may need to do this multiple times throughout. To do this:

1. While still working, notice your feet firmly planted on the floor. See roots growing from your feet deep into the center of the Earth and spreading under the ground.
2. Now push the energy or the feeling down your body and legs, out through your feet, down the roots you've planted, and into the Earth where it is grounded and neutralized.
   
3. Alternatively, visualize the energy as dark shadows and watch it drift out of your body and away from you and your healing partner into the air, where the energy in the room neutralizes it. 

 
Step Under an Energy Waterfall
Likewise, especially if you’re empathic, you will always need to ground and clear energy after a session, so you don’t carry the energy of your healing partner’s dis-ease with you into later sessions or as you go about your day. To do this, after your healing partner leaves and before your next session, use the exercise above. Then, visualize a Reiki or energy waterfall pouring down from above and filling your aura, chakras, meridians, and entire body with beautiful, pure, life force energy. This will remove any energy you've taken on and replenish any you've inadvertently given away.

If after this, the energy still feels connected or strong, consider a more powerful personal energy clearing, such as a salt bath or crystals. 

A few years ago, I got conked on the head. Hard. I spent a good part of the remainder of the month in the fog of a concussion with frequent headaches and plenty of confusion. That, combined with a few other minor inconveniences life throws one’s way from time to time left me feeling a little flat, slightly down in the dumps, and not quite my normal sunny, optimistic self. The energy in and around my house and my person stagnated, and when I finally emerged from the fog of my bonk on the noggin, I realized my thoughts and energy from that period left my energetic environment  muddled.
 
So, like any normal, rational person who never does anything that seems strange to other people, I decided it was time to clean up my energetic environment and recharge it so my home, personal energy, and surroundings were filled with my more customary positive energy. I engaged in several cleansing rituals that returned my home to its pre-head bonk energetic state.
 
Negative Energy Spirals
While I’m sure we’d all prefer life was constantly sunshine, rainbows, and unicorn farts (which I am told look like rainbow-colored glitter), that isn’t always the way things work out. Sometimes life gets you down because stuff happens. You suffer financial setbacks. You have an altercation with someone. A toxic person comes to visit and befouls your positive vibe. Someone you’ve known for years suddenly starts acting like a middle school mean girl. Someone you love is ill or dies. You experience a health issue. There can be all sorts of things that can change your personal energy and the energy of your environment.
 
In the midst of all of these normal day-to-day setbacks, it can be difficult to be a sunshiny, happy, positive thinker all the time. 
 
I believe thoughts become things. We are creative individuals, and the way we think and speak creates and shapes our reality. But when things start to go poorly, it’s easy to get stuck in a pattern of negative thinking that energetically contributes to more things going badly. Without intervention, it can become a downward spiral. Negative thinking begets negative outcomes, which causes more negative thinking, which leads to more negative outcomes….and on and on it goes. It can be difficult to recognize a downward spiral as it happens, and breaking the pattern may be even harder.
 
Beyond Environment
Negative energy spirals hurt more than the environments in which we live. They also harm us. Negativity permeates our subtle anatomy (our energy systems). When it does, it weakens our auras, making it easier for harmful energy to move through it and into us. Once past our aura, the negativity can set into our other subtle anatomy, our chakras and meridians, creating imbalance and blockage that can lead to physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional dis-ease (lack of ease that often results in illnesses of the body, mind, and spirit).
 
Enter the Cleansing Ritual
I believe there’s magic in the cleansing ritual, but maybe not for the same reasons other people do. While I know the methods that follow can help shift energy and vibration, the other reason they work is perhaps even more important: intention. Engaging in a cleansing ritual sets your intention to convert a pattern of negative energy to a positive one. It symbolically shows you (and the universe) that you recognize the negative spiral you’ve been in, and you’re ready to begin consciously creating positive energy once again. It is a starting point for you to once again engage in conscious creative positive thought, word, and action.
 
What Cleansing Rituals Are Not
You’ve probably heard that if you want to get rid of ghosts or evil spirits, you can burn sage. This is an example of a cleansing ritual. And by the way – I burn sage. I burn the heck out of that stuff. But burning sage doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to get rid of ghosts or negative spirits. Rather, it is a way of clearing out negative energy patterns and creating a space where you can then fill it with positive energy.
 
What Cleansing Rituals Are
Cleansing rituals aren’t about other souls and spirits. They are about you and the energy of your environment, and they are about your own focus and intention. They are a starting point for creating a new pattern of energy within your mind, your space, and your environment.
 
Types of Cleansing Rituals
Cleansing rituals are largely symbolic, and intention plays a huge role in them. Therefore, while there are some very common cleansing rituals – like the aforementioned sage burning – I recommend people rely on instinct and engage in rituals that create an energetic shift for them. In other words, if it feels right, do it.
 
Burning Herbs & Incense
Many people are familiar with the ritual of burning herbs or incense. Sage is a commonly burned herb, believed to clear away negative energy, leaving room for positive energy to enter. When I burn sage, I always follow it with burning something that invites positive energy, such as palo santo (my absolute favorite), lavender, or sweetgrass. You can also burn incense that invites positivity, such as Nag Champa (my other favorite).
 
To burn incense or herbs, either place the burning herbs in the middle of a space to fill it, or walk with a burning bundle around the space. When I want to cleanse my whole space, I walk around the perimeter of every room in my house with a burning sage bundle. I wave the smoke into every corner, closet, and cupboard, taking time to go around each door and window. Then, I follow doing the same thing with a smoldering stick of palo santo or a burning braid of sweetgrass. I also use the smoldering palo santo stick to draw Reiki symbols by all entrances to my home: doors, windows, vents, and drains to invite Reiki energy to fill my home.
 
How you go about this ritual or whether you use burning herbs is up to you. What’s important is you do so with the intention of creating positive energy within your environment.
 
Crystals to Cleanse and Energize Spaces
Another way of cleansing is sprinkling or deliberately placing crystals around your environment. I buy crystal chip beads and toss them about and also use a few strategically placed larger crystals. Typically, if I’m strewing crystals about, I’m doing it outdoors in my yard where it won’t get sucked up by the vacuum. Larger crystals I place in various locations in my yard and home.
 
There are many types of crystals you can use depending on how you wish to shift the energy of your environment. While going into every crystal is beyond the scope of this blog post, I will share a few of my favorites.

• Black tourmaline (and other black stones) absorbs negative energy, keeping it from entering your environment. I currently have black tourmaline chips sprinkled around the perimeter of my property to block negativity from entering.
• Citrine invites prosperity. Placing citrine in your wallet, cashbox, and in the southeast sector of your home or a room can invite prosperity.
• Smoky quartz invites positive energy and shifts negativity to positivity. I have smoky quartz chips sprinkled all around the perimeter of my yard to transmute any energy that comes onto my property into positive energy.
• Rose quartz invites unconditional love into your home. I have strategically placed pieces in my home and yard.

 
I placed all my crystals after I’d done a sage and palo santo burning ritual. In other words, I put the crystals in place after the energy in my home had shifted from negative to positive. The outdoors crystals are naturally cleansed by sunlight and moonlight. My indoors crystals I cleanse once or twice a week with smoke from palo santo or incense.
 
Salt for Personal Cleansing
Another cleansing ritual involves sea salt, Himalayan pink salt, or Epsom salts. Whenever I feel myself slipping into a pattern of negative thinking, I bathe in Himalayan pink salt with a few drops of sandalwood essential oil added to the water. In this ritual bath, I close my eyes and focus on bringing positive energy into my space and person while the negativity drains from my body into the bathwater. Then, I drain the tub completely before I step out to dry myself.
 
You can also sprinkle sea salt, Epsom salts, or Himalayan pink salt around the outsider perimeter of your home after you’ve cleansed it with burning herbs. This seals in the positive energy and keeps negative energy at bay. You'll need to replace it every time it rains.
 
Inviting Positive Energy
You can also use other forms of positive energy and visualization to cleanse your environment. For example, you can close your eyes and envision white light pouring into your home, surrounding you and your home and washing away negativity. You can engage in positive affirmations. Or, if you do any form of energy healing, you can send the energy from you into every corner of your home. This is how I prepare my classroom spaces before I teach, and it’s how I prepare my energy healing space before I give someone a Reiki session. Other methods you can use to create positive cleansing energy include the following.

• Use sound rituals, such as solfeggio, singing bowls, drumming, mantras, chanting, tingshas, or tuning forks throughout a space.
• Play beautiful music that uplifts you and allow the music to fill the space.
• Spray essential oils diluted in water throughout a space or anoint spaces with herbal concoctions.
• Use prayer or affirmation to fill a space with positive energy or unconditional love.

 
Essential Oils Clear Energy Too
Like other energy healing tools, essential oils have a high vibration that can entrain with the energy of spaces or living beings to help raise the vibe and bring about cleansing. There are many ways you can use essential oils. Here are a few of my favorites.

• Put an essential oil diffuser in rooms where you spend a lot of time, or where you want to transform the energy.
• Make sprays and either spray it in a space or spritz it in the air over your head and allow it to shower down on you.
• Make homemade cleaning products and add essential oils (I put mine in a household steamer that I use to steam clean countertops, sinks, and more).
• Add them to unscented laundry detergents and dryer sheets.
• Add them to unscented shampoos, conditioners, lotions, and liquid soaps.

 
Good Juju Essential Oil Cleansing Spray
I use this spray – or a variation of it based on the needs of a healing partner – when homeowners or businesses are stuck in negative patterns and really need positive changes to occur. To use it, shake it well and then spray it around the inside perimeter of the house, building, or room.
 

• 4 ounces water
• 1 tablespoon Himalayan pink salt (or sea salt)
• 2 drops cedarwood (releases past hurts, purification)
• 5 drops lavender (promotes peace, love, and purification)
• 4 drops lemon (breaks inertia)
• 3 drops ginger (protection and success)
• 2 drops eucalyptus (banishes negative energies)

 
Spirit Crossing Spray
Sometimes, spirits request assistance in transitioning to the spirit realm. I use this spray, which contains sacred funeral herbs, to assist with the transition. Spray in the area as you continue with any other spirit crossing rituals in which you engage. NOTE: This does not force spirits to cross. It only aids them if they wish to go.
 
Mix the following ingredients in an 8-ounce spray bottle:

• 6 ounces water
• 1 tablespoon Himalayan pink salt
• 6 drops sweet marjoram (assisting in transition)
• 8 drops rosemary (traditional funeral herb)
• 4 drops myrrh (rites of passage)

Meditation Blend
This blend promotes deep meditation. Put it in diffuser with the recommended amount of water and keep in your meditation area.

• 2 drops sandalwood
• 1 drop frankincense
• 2 drops lavender

 
Psychic Awakening Oil
Dab a little of this on your third eye, either during meditation or whenever you’d like to awaken your psychic abilities. You can also put it in a roller bottle that has amethyst chips in it or has a gemstone amethyst roller to enhance its properties. Note: Always dilute essential oils in a carrier oil or water if you will bee using them on your skin or you may have a reaction.

• 1 ounce sweet almond oil (or another carrier oil)
• 2 drops peppermint
• 1 drop bay
• 1 drop juniper
• 2 drops lemongrass

 
Prosperity Diffuser Blend
To promote prosperity, mix the following into the recommended amount of water for your diffuser.

• 2 drops sandalwood
• 2 drops pine
• 2 drops cumin

 
Good Dreams
For peaceful sleep and happy dreams, mix the following into the recommended amount of water for your diffuser.

• 2 drops aniseed
• 2 drops Roman chamomile
• 2 drops lavender

 
Good Juju
No matter how you choose to cleanse your space, the most important aspect of cleansing rituals is intention. It starts with recognizing the energy in your space has shifted in a way that no longer serves you. Then, by creating a ritual that re-sets your intention to bring more positive energetic patterns into your life, you can push the re-set button and get started on a different path.

I'm a big believer in maintaining some kind of a spiritual practice. Having a practice you do most days of the week allows you time to tune in your higher self. It's essential for people working on any kind of spiritual growth, energy healers, empaths, and people wishing to develop their psychic or intuitive abilities. In other words, pretty much everyone.

A spiritual practice can help you heal past trauma, release suppressed emotions, detoxify emotionally and spiritually, and tune in to higher guidance. It can help you calm the constant stress that comes from daily life, be more focused, breathe in a way that is more beneficial to your body, mind, and spirit, and restore energetic balance. It can soothe and repair a frayed or damaged auric field that comes from being out in the world and balance your chakras and meridians so energy flows throughout and around you freely.

A spiritual practice doesn't have to mean sitting and meditating, although for many that is exactly what it means. A spiritual practice is anything you can do that focuses you on the present moment, quiets your mind, and connects you to your higher self. 

I recommend finding the practice that clicks with you. If it's something you don't enjoy or stress out about doing, it will never be sustainable. Some suggestions for a spiritual practice:

• Work in the garden or with plants
• Get out in nature and walk or jog
• Meditate
• Pet your cat or dog
• Ride a horse
• Follow a guided meditation
• Visualize
• Spin a hula-hoop
• Give yourself a hands-on Reiki or energy healing treatment
• Listen to soothing music
• Gaze at a candle flame or a crystal
• Engage in a movement practice such as gentle yoga, tai chi, Nia, or qigong
• Dance or move in a way that feels pleasurable
• Work on a hobby
• Sit on the beach and watch the water
• Play singing bowls
• Play a musical instrument
• Drum a steady beat on a hand drum 
• Contemplate a zen koan
• Give yourself a daily I Ching reading and contemplate the meaning of the passage
• Pull a daily tarot or oracle card and contemplate its symbolism
• Interpret your dreams when you wake up
• Say a prayer
• Place your hands over your heart and focus on love.
• Chant an affirmation or mantra, counting them on a mala or rosary
• Choose a daily random Bible verse or a verse from another book of wisdom and contemplate it
• Lie on your back on the ground and look at the stars
• Cloud watch or try to make the clouds dissolve

Try to engage in a spiritual practice most days of the week - about 5 - for 10 to 20 minutes each day, or more if you're really feeling it. It doesn't need to be the same practice every day. For example, one day you may do Qigong, another day you may meditate, and another day you may sit and play singing bowls. That's how my spiritual practice goes. In that 20 to 30 minutes I've set aside, I engage in something spiritual. I've committed that time to nourish my soul, but as a wanderer I love variety, so I do different things on different days based on what my intuition tells me I need. 

You've probably heard it takes 21 days to establish a habit. Research shows this isn't exactly true. In fact, it can take as long as ten weeks to make something habitual. So establishing your spiritual practice and getting it set may take a bit longer than three weeks. But it's necessary for your growth as a soul that you do. Setting aside time for yourself everyday helps you to make your own growth and healing a priority. It is the best way to detoxify from life in a stressful world and connect to higher guidance, allowing you to inhabit your life with more flow, grace, purpose, and joy. 

For all the ladies of a certain age (or partners and family of ladies of a certain age who want to help), if hot flashes are a thing in your life right now, I've found something that works amazingly well.

I was at Celestial Awakenings in Vancouver, WA yesterday (one of my favorite crystals stores - they also have a Portland, OR location on Stark) chatting with the store's very helpful owners Jeff and Kim. I started to have a hot flash and asked them what they recommended for hot flashes. Jeff handed me a piece of indigo Gabbro (also called blue Gabbro and Magic Merlinite), and as soon as I held it in my receiving hand (which is my non-dominant hand), all of the rising heat drained from my body. It stopped the hot flash dead in its tracks.

It was a pretty neat trick, so I bought a piece. Every time I felt a hot flash rising for the rest of the evening, I grabbed the Babbro and BAM - hot flash thwarted. 

Jeff suggested holding it in my hand while I sleep, putting it under my pillow, or placing it between the mattress and box spring. I know myself. Nothing is going to stay in my hand all night, and it probably won't stay under my pillow either. Jim offered to put two-sided carpet tape on my hand and stick the piece of Gabbro to it, but I had visions of all sorts of things I would wake up with it stuck to my hand in the morning, such as my dog Monkey. Instead, I put the Gabbro between the mattress and box springs. I typically wake several times during the night to throw off covers (hot flash) and then again to put covers back on when the hot flash becomes a not flash. It only happened once last night. 

Now for the geology geek bit:  indigo Gabbro hasn't been mined for long (a few years). It comes from Madagascar, and it is an igneous rock with a chemical makeup that's pretty much the same as basalt. There's Gabbro in the earth's crust, especially the oceanic crust. While it forms as one rock, it is made up of several crystalline minerals including chlorite,  serpentine, magnetite, feldspar, muscovite, and pyroxene in a silicate (quartz) base. 

Physically, along with hot flashes Gabbro may be helpful for other heat conditions in the body, including fever and inflammation. Spiritually, Gabbro is a stone of balance. It helps integrate the dark and the light inside of you, so it's a good stone for meditation and shadow work. It can help to bring balance to your life between the physical (body and mind) and the ethereal (emotions and spirit). It can also help unify and integrate other aspects of the yin and the yang (duality). It's a good stone to have if you're doing integration or balancing work of any kind in your life.

Finally, a quick reminder. If the Gabbro is working hard for you, don't forget to cleanse it. For people in the throes of intense hot flashes (or similar conditions), I recommend cleansing it daily with smoke or sound. The cleaner energy will help it help you more efficiently. If you're not using it as much, a once a week cleansing when you cleanse your other crystals should suffice.

So this happened today. I have some Reiki students who are far away, so I correspond with them. Today, I was writing a letter to one of my students and responding to some queries. I finished the letter but kept thinking about something he had asked me that I didn't feel I had answered to my satisfaction when I started to get a persistent message.

As background, I actually believe much of what is in my books and blogs is channeled. I can always tell something is coming via channel because I get a feeling of pressure in my ears and a persistent thought starts pushing in my brain until I sit down and write it. A few times, sitting down and writing it took several days with only sleeping, eating, and basic personal care until I had written a whole book. I'm sure my family and dogs love it when that happens.

Anyway - that occurred this afternoon, and when I was done, I had a meditation. I sent it to my student, but I also want to share it with you because it may help others as well. 

*Begin channeled information*
 
You dread the density that is part of being embodied. That’s why you’re feeling resistant to grounding. It’s because Earth energy is dense, sticky, and slow moving, and the body is dense and vibrates slowly as well, and you desire only high vibrations and lightness. You feel the density holds you down and keeps you from realizing your true potential.
 
To understand that even in a body, and even grounded, and even on Earth, you are not as dense as you believe, you are to listen to the space between the breaths as a meditation. When you focus on breath, notice the space that is neither breathing in nor breathing out. Focus on those spaces and see how vast they really are. Notice that even in those spaces which are neither inhale nor exhale, you are there, and it’s vast and wide open. Home is in those spaces. Your essence is in those spaces. So while you feel “confined” in a body, you carry Home inside of you in those spaces that are neither inhale nor exhale. You are in a body but not of the body, but the breaths can’t exist without the spaces and the spaces can’t exist without the breaths as long as you are embodied.
 
From there, you can start to notice other spaces. For example, start with your heart. Notice the space that is your heart, but notice the space that is not your heart: the space inside of it, the space outside of it, the space in the muscle and outside of the muscle, the space in the blood and outside of the blood, the space in the vessels and outside of the vessels, and then the space all around it. Shift your focus back and forth – the space that is physical you, and the space that isn’t physical you but is still part of you. Notice how much space there truly is and how little matter there truly is. You can do this with any part of your physical body. With a hand, a foot, an ear, your nose, your liver…it goes on.
 
You can do it with pain. Pain, no pain. Notice where the pain is. Notice the spaces and gaps in the pain. Notice where the pain isn’t. Notice the pain’s edges: where it begins and ends. Where it intensifies and fades. Notice the pain is mostly empty space with vast distances between points of pain. Notice where the pain dissolves into NO SPACE until it is no longer there at all.
 
You can even do it with a thought or belief. Notice the edges of the belief or thought. Notice the vast open spaces it contains. Notice how the thought doesn’t have a sharp edge, but rather fades away particle by particle until there is a lingering of tiny bits of that belief. Notice how the thought dissolves into NO SPACE until it’s no longer there.
 
As you do this--notice the spaces and shift from the space of matter to the space of NO SPACE--you’ll realize that while part of you dwells in the dense and physical, you aren’t trapped here. The dense and physical is your partner and your vehicle, much like your car. It helps you to accomplish what you came here to do so you need to care for it and maintain it, but you can always, even embodied, return to the spaces between to experience the NO SPACE that is home. Ground after each such meditation and carry the knowledge you gained with you as you go about your day. You still need to partner with your body so you can do what you came here to do.
 
*end channel*

I am frequently asked about weight and weight loss after my classes, online, and when I appear at events. Today, I realized it's not something I've discussed in my energy healing books, which is strange when you think about it because according to NIH, 2/3 of the adults in America are either overweight or obese. It may even be doubly strange I haven't talked about weight in the context of energy healing because I often write about body image and health nutrition in my other work, particularly my cooking blog and cookbooks.

At one point, I would have described my own journey as a "struggle" with weight and told you that while it wasn't something that I necessarily felt defined me, it has certainly been a lifelong issue with which I continue to contend. I have gained and lost what I can only imagine are hundreds of pounds over the course of my life, and often my self-image of the moment was tied in to how much I weighed or what size I wore; or, as I thought of it, where I was on the yo-yo.  I even had a body positivity essay I'd written called "How Being Fat Set Me Free" published in a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. 

However, as new research has come to the fore and I've worked to heal my own spiritual, physical, and emotional, and energetic issues, how I think about and understand weight gain, overweight and obesity, nutrition, body image, and health have shifted completely. And so I want to address weight in a very honest and compassionate way based on not only my understanding of nutrition and health, but also from the perspective of energy healing. Buckle up - this is going to be a lot of information.

I want to start by saying this: If you feel weight and body image has been a defining struggle in your life, you are not alone. It is something many people ask me about after my energy healing classes or in the messages they send me. They usually ask privately and quietly, looking around to make sure nobody else can hear them. As an empath, I often sense a deep feeling of shame from them as they ask. Trust me. I get it. It took me years to come to terms with my weight and even now, when I look at pictures, I sometimes cringe because I am heavier than I would like to be.

Weight is a painful issue for many. Being overweight is one of the last acceptable prejudices in our society. I spent years seeking medical diagnosis of a condition I knew I had from physicians who were unwilling to listen to anything I had to say from the moment I walked into their office as a fat woman. It took me more than two decades to even have a doctor be willing to order the simple blood test I needed to diagnose my Hashimoto's thyroiditis in spite of the fact I knew what it was due to my family history almost immediately when I started experiencing symptoms (and I fiercely advocated for myself). No matter what my health issue was for which I sought care and treatment for nearly 25 years, the diagnosis was fat. I had a cold because I was fat. I had kidney stones because I was fat. I sprained my ankle because I was fat. A bug flew into my eye because I was so fat, how could it miss me? Try as I might to advocate for myself, because of this dismissal from virtually everyone I encountered in the medical field, I felt deeply ashamed.

I've spent years studying health, nutrition, energy healing, weight, autoimmune disease, and many other subjects. I believe nutrition, movement, health, and physical habits are just as important a part of honoring our soul's path as spiritual practices and energy healing. There is a deep, unbreakable connection between body, mind, and spirit and when we experience imbalance in one, then there are imbalances in the other two as well. The result is dis-ease: a lack of ease in the body, mind, and spirit. This is important to understand for all conditions, and particularly for issues associated with weight.

When you consider this interconnectedness of body-mind-spirit from a weight perspective, it becomes even clearer. The best way I can explain it is from the perspective of my story, which I'm sure is similar in many ways to some of yours.

My Story
I've always been a curvy girl. Even when my body fat was extremely low when I taught aerobics and competed as a bodybuilder, I still had boobs and a butt. It's just my body shape (I'm an hourglass), but in the 80s as I grew into my adulthood, curvy girls weren't fashionable. The body type back then was aerobically fit, flat, and extremely slim. Because of my body type, I often felt fat, and people often commented that I was "overweight" (I wore a 1980s size 7 which is probably about a 3 to 5 now). ​​ Media images perpetuated the message that my perfectly healthy body was somehow gross and aberrant. 

Because of this ambiguity about my weight, I developed the belief I didn't deserve to eat. When I ate anything, I felt powerful shame for my weakness. And then I spent hours exercising just to counteract an apple. Perhaps not surprisingly, by the time I was in college I had an eating disorder. I mostly didn't eat. When I did I threw up and exercised fanatically. I came home from my freshman year in college the thinnest I'd ever been as a 1980s size 0 to 3, and for the first time ever, people started complimenting me on how my body looked. 

​And so, I developed a belief about my body and food. Eating - any type of eating - was bad and shameful. I was not entitled to eat. Think about that. I developed the belief I was not entitled to provide my body with nourishment. When I ate with people and they expressed envy at how little I ate, I felt virtuous. If I did eat something on the "bad" list and someone made a comment such as, "I don't know how you can stay skinny and eat a cookie," I was embarrassed and ashamed. I had created and embodied a pattern of thoughts that continued to plague me for decades.

I also believed that about three hours of punishing exercise a day was good. If I only did two, I was ashamed of myself. If I sat and rested, I felt ashamed. I came to believe I was no longer entitled to nurture my body and give it rest, even when it cried out for it or when it was injured. At one point, I broke my foot (I dropped a 50 pound dumbbell on it) and continued to work out on my foot because to not work out didn't seem like an option.

After college, I was certified by ACE as a personal trainer and an aerobics instructor. I worked in a gym and taught 12 90-minute aerobics classes per week. I was a competitive bodybuilder and coached a bodybuilding team, so I also spent at least 3 hours and usually more per day lifting weights. At the same time, I ate about 900 calories a day (I know because I tracked it religiously) so I could lose body fat and be competition ready. I was exhausted all of the time and terribly unhealthy, but people regularly complimented me about how I looked, how fit I was, and how thin I was. I wore a size 0. 

I clearly remember the day it all changed. I was at the gym doing my normal thing when I suddenly felt something shift inside of me. As if someone had flipped a light switch, all of the energy drained from me, and I started to shake and cry. It was as if one minute I felt normal and the next minute, I felt totally unlike myself. 

And then the weight started to come on. After the first 40 pounds, I went to see my doctor, terribly ashamed of what was happening. I remember telling him what my symptoms were: exhaustion, anxiety, hair loss, always being cold, brain fog, rapid weight gain in spite of the fact I was only eating about 900 calories a day and continuing to exercise as much as I could. This is what my doctor told me: "You're not a bad person because you're getting fat. Remember that. But you are eating too much and not moving enough. I think you must be underestimating how much you eat and overestimating how much you exercise." He didn't order tests. He didn't do a physical examination. He sent me home with a pamphlet on diet and offered me a prescription for diet pills, which I had the presence of mind to refuse. So essentially he told me a) I was getting fat; b) it was my fault; and c) I was either deluded or a liar about my food intake and exercise. And although I measured every portion, tracked every calorie, and counted every minute of exercise, I believed him because he was an authority and I was not. 

This was the pattern for the next two decades until my weight soared to over 300 pounds, I was exhausted all the time, I had exercise intolerance, and I constantly felt ill. During that time, doctors continued to berate me for my weight, tell me all I needed to do was eat less and move more and be more honest about how much I ate and moved, and not a single one ever suggested that what was happening to me might be a symptom of something else. In most cases, I had begged those doctors to test my T3 and T4 thyroid hormones because I knew what was happening to me, but they would only test my TSH, tell me it was within normal limits, and send me on my way feeling discouraged and ashamed.

As the years went on, I developed a deep distrust of the conventional medical system in our country. I stopped visiting doctors unless it was an emergency, because I knew what they would say and how they would treat me. Most could barely hide the disgust in their eyes and their impatience. I started to work with energy healing and alternative medicine concepts and studied nutrition in depth to find out what it was my body needed. I was beginning to get a picture of health and nutrition that was quite different than any of my doctors had ever shared with me, and I knew I needed to make vital changes in my emotional, spiritual, and physical self.

Then one day I ran into a friend who had shared many similar struggles. She had a sparkle in her eyes and looked healthy and happy. She'd also lost significant weight. It turned out, she had been treated by a local nurse practitioner who didn't approach health care in quite the same way. With a glimmer of hope, I made an appointment. It was life-changing.

At my first appointment, the nurse practitioner ordered what I'd been asking doctors to order for years - a T3 and T4 thyroid blood test. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it came back abnormal, and I was finally able to receive the Hashimoto's thyroiditis and celiac disease diagnosis. She told me that my health picture was complex from years of misdiagnosis and misinformation, but that we could unravel the knot. I cried on the way home from my appointment, relieved someone had finally talked to me and heard what I was saying rather than talked at me and berated me.

With my prescription of natural desiccated thyroid medication and the elimination of gluten from my diet, I noticed a substantial improvement in many of my symptoms, and I actually started to lose weight. With that puzzle piece in place combined with what I'd learned about nutrition, movement, and energy healing, I began to make real strides in improving my health and finding a place of balance once again. It took a long time, and I had to make significant changes in my beliefs about myself as well as in how I nourished my body. 

What You Can Learn from My Story
My health picture was extremely complex, and it was deeply rooted in trauma I'd experienced in my life, my belief systems about myself and food, the ways I chose to move and nourish my body, and much more. The shame I felt and my belief my body had completely betrayed me also contributed to my growing ill health and dis-ease. In my case (as in almost everyone else's case), the physical affected the emotional, which affected the spiritual, and it all looped around itself with each of these factors affecting the other to create a state of chaotic imbalance in my being. Therefore, regardless of what I did for diet or how I tried to balance myself spiritually, until I'd worked through the emotional beliefs I'd absorbed and created about food, my body, and health, I was unable to unravel the gordian knot. 

As I started to unravel it, I realized my weight issue was related not only to messages I'd internalized about ideal bodies, but also to trauma sustained as a child and in young adulthood, food choices that didn't work with my body's unique needs, lack of care when my body cried out for food and rest, shame about the biological necessity of nourishing my body with food, negative messages from the medical establishment and media, and much more. My body was the outward expression of all of the pain I was holding onto. The fat created a layer of protection that I felt kept me safe from sustaining further trauma. It was only with a combination of loving care for my body, medical intervention to diagnose celiac and Hashimoto's diseases, healing nutrition, sustainable and pleasurable movement, forgiveness of self and others, deep spiritual and emotional work on body image, energy healing work, and additional spiritual work that I was finally able to gain some level of control. And for most people with overweight and obesity or body image issues, their situation may not be exactly the same as mine, but it is likely just as complex. 

Managing the Physical Aspects of Obesity: It Is Not a Disease - It Is a Symptom
Here's something many of you have probably never heard from your health care providers, but it is nonetheless true. Overweight and obesity is not who or what you are. It does not define you, nor does it say anything about you other than this: It is a symptom of underlying medical issues. Obesity and overweight is not the disease. It is the symptom. Even if you're drowning your sorrows in a gallon of ice cream and two large extra cheese meat lovers pizzas every night before you go to bed, it is a symptom. I'll say it again because this is so important. Overweight and obesity is NOT a disease of its own. It is a symptom that is the manifestation of processes that have gone wrong in your body (often hormonal), and obesity researchers are starting to recognize this. Some possible causes of the symptom of overweight and obesity include:

• Imbalances in the hunger hormones of leptin and ghrelin
• Imbalances in thyroid and parathyroid hormones (usually hypothyroidism, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, or hypoparathyroidism)
• Imbalances in sex hormones, particularly testosterone (often as PCOS)
• Imbalances in growth hormones
• Imbalances in peptide hormones such as insulin and glucagon (often as Type 2 diabetes)
• Imbalances in stress hormones 
• Inflammation in the body from various things including autoimmune disease (read more about inflammation in this blog post I wrote)
• Side effects of certain medications (often which cause hormone imbalances)
• Results of chemical toxicity from pesticides, foods, and our environment

As you might guess from the list above, balancing your hormones is a huge part in alleviating the physical causes of obesity. Unfortunately, this can be extremely difficult because we live in a world that seems environmentally determined to further hormone imbalances. For example, many daily household products you use such as laundry detergent, shampoo, and other cosmetics and cleaning suppliees contain ingredients such as phthalates and paraben that mimic the action of estrogen in your body. These substances are called xenoestrogens, and they can wreak havoc on your body's hormonal balance. Unfortunately, xenoestrogens are in everything from processed foods to fragrances, so they are extremely difficult to avoid. Likewise, living in a stressful environment and dealing with stress on a daily basis can cause the release of adrenaline and cortisol, two stress hormones that contribute to keeping fat on your body and keeping your hormones out of balance.

So what can you do? There are several physical steps you can take:

• As much as possible, use natural, organic household and beauty products to minimize exposure to environmental xenoestrogens.
• Avoid household fragrances and perfumes, which also contain xenoestrogens. Instead, use natural essential oils.
• Ask your primary health care provider for a hormonal workup to make sure your thyroid, parathyroid and sex hormones are balanced. It's best to work with an endocrinologist for this because they specialize in hormones and will have a much deeper understanding of them than your GP. 
• Seek to minimize stress through gentle exercise, plenty of rest, meditation, deep breathing, and similar stress reduction practices. 
• Feed yourself food that nourishes your body (it's coming in a later section of this blog).
• Only take medications when they are absolutely necessary, and then only take them for as long as they are needed. This includes over-the-counter and herbal medications, as well as prescription. All have an effect on your body and hormonal balance. 
• You can also follow the environmental elimination "diet" I recommend in this blog post. 

Eat in a Way that Nurtures Your Body
Every body is different, so we all need to find ways to eat that work for us. However, one of the most important physical and emotional things you can do is eat to nurture your health. This involves a process of figuring out which foods work for your body and which don't. To discover this, I recommend a 15 to 30 day elimination diet (I've outlined an elimination diet in this blog post) followed by several weeks of testing various foods to see what your body tolerates well. Some general suggestions to eat to nurture your body:

• Eat foods you enjoy that nourish and sustain you.
• Eat plenty of organic green vegetables.
• Eat organic berries and fruits but sparingly.
• Choose produce across the spectrum of color.
• Spend time in the sun without sunscreen (10 minutes a day is fine) to get vitamin D (which is a hormone).
• Don't "drink" your food (smoothies, sweet coffees, shakes, etc.)
• Minimize grains (only once or twice a week), and if you do eat them, eat whole grains that are as close to their natural state as possible.
• Minimize legumes (once a week or less), and cook them slowly from dry or rinse if they come in a can.
• Eat animal protein every day - choose natural, organic, pastured fish, eggs, etc.
• Your body needs fat; the best sources are from pastured organic animals, organic avocados and avocado oil, coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, and fatty fruits like olives.
• Eat nuts and seeds - as minimally processed as possible without added salt or sugar.
• If it comes in a bag, box, or can or is "manufactured" in a factory, don't eat much (if any) of it. Eat as close to the source as you can - the best for you is local, organic, seasonal produce and animal products.
• Avoid soy and soy products if you have hormonal imbalances.
• For flavoring, use organic herbs, spices, and either natural sea salt or Himalayan pink salt. 
• Many people don't absorb dairy well - you should discover how you tolerate it on an elimination diet. If dairy doesn't cause problems for you, then choose organic, hormone-free, grass-fed dairy products.
• Minimize alcohol and caffeine or eliminate it altogether.
• Avoid soft drinks and carbonated beverages. Your best best for beverages is herbal tea and pure, filtered water that isn't fluoridated.
• Avoid sugar in all its forms.
• Avoid artificial sweeteners.
• Minimize starch intake.
• To control appetite, the easiest diet to follow is low-carb and moderate to high fat, which is achievable with all of the above guidelines.
• Stop listening to all the noise in the news about various nutritional studies. Instead, listen to your body. It will tell you what it wants once it's free of toxins that create cravings.

Respect Your Body's Needs
Our bodies are constantly talking to us. We've just learned not to listen to them. Think about it: when we have a symptom, one of the first things we do is take a medicine to suppress it (aspirin for a headache, for example). But these symptoms are your body's signals, telling you there is an imbalance that needs correcting. When you mask the symptom or ignore it, you are discounting your body's message, which is telling you there is an underlying cause and something is wrong. When you are tired, your body is telling you it needs sleep. When you are in pain or have a symptom, your body is pointing out an imbalance that could lead to dis-ease. It's up to you to start to respect and listen to what your body has to tell you, and then to thank it for sending you clear signals. 

• Eat when you are hungry.
• Sleep or rest when you are tired.
• Play if you feel playful.
• Move if you feel restless.
• If something hurts, stop doing it.
• If you notice symptoms or discomfort after eating certain foods, stop eating them.

One aspect of respecting your body's needs is exercise. It isn't necessary to beat your body into submission. Instead, find a form of movement that feels pleasurable in your body. By doing so, you are respecting your body's needs. 

• If you are extremely overweight, try short gentle walks, restorative yoga, or something simple and low-impact such as tai chi or qigong. 
• As your body gets stronger, try things that may be more strenuous but still pleasurable. Turn on music and dance. Swing on a swing set. Go for a walk. Try yoga or Nia. Swim or do water aerobics. 
• When your body tells you it is tired, listen to it and nurture it. Don't force exercise during exhaustion or pain. Instead, respect it and rest it until you are ready to move again.

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