Healing your Body Using Your Mind – by Guest Blog Writer Jasmine Kaloudis

Illness in any form is nothing more than our negative energies choking off so much of our Life-flow that cellular damage results. The body is not separate from the universe, so when we think a thought, the vibrations run through the body as well as everywhere else. If those vibrations are in harmony with our body’s intrinsic programming for well-being and vitality, the cells thrive. But if it’s negative energy we are projecting, the cells can’t remain strong enough and don’t perform as well.

Without the high frequency energy of life force necessary for them to survive they eventually weaken and die before their time, no longer able to replicate normally. Illness exists in a state of dis-ease. Someone has flowed more negative energy than high frequency energy. If you find a generally happy person, you usually find a very healthy person. People who are sick have shut themselves off in some degree from their own life Life-force energy by letting in negative thoughts from fear, guilt, blame, hate, worry (and the energetic resonance of those thoughts).

Anytime we think of anything, we’re flowing out some kind of positive or negative energy (feeling). Whatever we’re feeling, we’re attracting, on an energetic level. Then we live with the results. The vibration (or emotional resonance) that comes from our thoughts have the power to magnetize vitality or disease. The more thoughts we send out, the more powerful these vibrational clumps become and they start to draw into their whirling centers anything and everything of a similar vibration Like attracts like, whether it is something you desire, or something you don’t want.

To turn illness around, you must start to use trickery with your mind to shift it into creating higher vibrations (that come from focusing on feelings of gratitude, love, appreciation) to begin their process of regeneration. This is not a cure-all. It is simply a beginning. The key to reversing anything within the body is to get your focus of what you don’t like or want and get into the “feeling place”; for even though positive affirmations and visualization will help, learning to shift your own energy is paramount.

The trickery is much like writing a new script. You have to learn to consciously change the kind of energy or vibrations you are emanating since most social-conscious thinking (and feeling) is based on fear and lack. You can call this Flip-Switching your energy (vibrations). So here are two basic ways to flip-switch. You can do these at your desk (while facing a computer screen) or in the car, lying in bed or really anyplace…..so no excuses for not having a place or time to practice. (Are you committed to your excuse or are you committed to feeling better?)

1. Flow Appreciation- Focus on a part of your body that you are not happy with. If you have a bad back, then start to FLOOD your back with appreciation. Make yourself feel the frequency change in your body. Feel adoration, respect, gratitude and love pour and emanate out from you until you feel a buzz throughout your body.

2. Inner Smile Jump-Start. (Best to do this in private) Put a meaningful smile on your face, the kind of smile you’d have at seeing a newborn baby or watching puppies tumble and play. Feel it grow warmly inside of you until you’re encased in the glow of a gentle inner smile. While encased in this state, flow gratitude and love towards the part of your body that needs healing.

Just using these techniques once will not be a miracle-cure. It took a lifetime to get the thought and fear-based emotional habits and patterns you have and it will take discipline, commitment, faith and practice to heal as well. It helps to have a supportive buddy that you are practicing these with so you can check in with each other on your progress and keep each other inspired and accountable.

Throughout her 15 year yoga practice and teachings, Jasmine Kaloudis has experienced how yoga is a tool which allows us to experience our selves more fully and more richly. To learn more about author Jasmine Kaloudis, visit the website for her business, Synergy By Jasmine, at http://www.synergybyjasmine.com/.

Remembering our brilliance

It is important to remember our reasons for entering our profession. The desire we have to help others, early inspiration from some of our own teachers, a "calling" we may have felt to bring healing to those in need, a love for and fascination with people and the natural world. A passage I find uplifting that reminds me of my own gifts - and a passage I love sharing with clients to encourage them to see the best in themselves - is the following one by Marianne Williamson:

"Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God; your playing small doesn’t serve the World.  There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the Glory of God within us.  It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone, and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Reading inspirational words

One thing that nurtures my resiliency as a helper is to read inspirational writings. I have a collection of favorites (so far in my travels). Today, I want to share one with you. Here goes:


The Invitation
By Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It does not interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It does not interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
If you have been opened by life’s betrayals or
have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,
If you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips
of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful,
be realistic, or remember the limitations of being human.

It does not interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself,
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day,
and if you can source your life from God’s presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon,
Yes!!

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn’t interest me to know who you are, how you came here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me
and not shrink back.

Welcoming Whimsy into Our Lives

Life can be so serious at times. Working as a healthcare or healing arts professional – or as an educator, clergy, or caretaker – is tremendously serious work. We devote ourselves to facilitating healing in others, teaching them, inspiring them, helping them confront real life challenges and personal dilemmas. The genuine intensity of the work can sometimes influence our perception of the world and those around us, such that we may begin to see most of life through a “realistic” lens (that those outside our profession might consider “bleak” or “dour”).  The concept of vicarious trauma explains this change in our perception as an inevitable shift in worldview that stems directly from our exposure to the suffering in the world.  Working in the service professions requires a great deal of resiliency and stamina.  While the change may be inevitable, there is also much we can do to counter the effects of vicarious trauma. One very important action, I have found, is to celebrate the victories in our work. I keep letters and emails from people who have shared the story of their overcoming and their gratitude for the role our work together played in it. It’s important to remember that, while there is indeed pain in the world, there is also healing.

Another strategy I find particularly helpful in countering “the serious effect” (what I call the pattern whereby those of us engaging in deeply serious healing work become overly serious ourselves) is through allowing, welcoming, and even seeking greater whimsy in my life.  As I’m using it here, I define whimsy as silliness, playfulness, dreaming, fun for the purpose of fun alone.  No one is being “saved” when we are acting whimsically. I see whimsy as the opposite of seriousness – it offers lightness where seriousness can be quite heavy. As an opposite, whimsy has a lot to offer those of us anchored in the weight of our serious work. I encourage you to invite more play and whimsy into your life.

How do I enjoy whimsy in my own life? Silly hats help. Goofy movies can be a joy. Creating cartoon voices for the children’s books I read – well, that’s great entertainment. Whimsy to me means unnecessary by definition – and therefore really fabulously fun! One of my favorite whimsical activities happens during a monthly Creative Writer’s Meet-Up Group I host. We play a round robin story-writing game in which we all start a story simultaneously and write one to three sentences. Then we pass the papers to the next person and add one to three lines – and so on until each person’s story gets back to them. Then we read them aloud, to much laughter and amusement. These stories have no purpose other than to be fun. We don’t save them or build on them or make them to be something they are not. They are random and hilarious and fun to create. Whimsy at its best.

Today, I invite you to welcome more whimsy into your life - in any and every way that strikes your fancy.

Mindfully Choosing How We Respond to “Found” Time

My schedule for yesterday morning was full at the beginning of the week. On Thursday at 7:00 p.m., it was still full. And then I received two phone calls Thursday late evening cancelling my morning appointments. This meant that I had until 1:00 p.m. to myself to do as I pleased! As much as the business part of me sometimes groans when appointments are cancelled unexpectedly, my spirit often embraces the change in schedule.  This is also the case when things just don’t take as long as I’ve anticipated. Like the doctor’s appointment that I allotted two hours for that only took 30 minutes or the driver’s license renewal process that was ten minutes instead of the dreaded sixty. These are moments that may have us rejoicing – and moments that invite us to become increasingly conscious about how we spend our time.

When our schedules suddenly open up free time, we are faced with a choice. It is often far too easy to use that time unconsciously – to plunge the time back into work commitments or to hurry to our next destination early. But these unanticipated moments in our schedules offer us a real choice to prioritize self-care.  Perhaps we’ve wanted to go for a walk at a local park but felt we could “never find the time.” Perhaps we didn’t have time to meditate this morning and would like to devote our “found” 30 minutes to a daily mindfulness practice. Maybe we have a friend we’ve wanted to call or a book we’re yearning to read. I love viewing these “found” moments of time as gifts for myself, opportunities to mindfully choose what will enrich me most at this given time.

So what will you do the next time a few moments or a few hours open up in your life? As for me, when my morning opened up on Friday, I chose to sleep in later than usual, enjoy a leisurely morning, and do a little reading.  I felt refreshed, replenished, and a bit inspired as a result. I highly recommend it.  

When to shovel and when to hire a teenager to do it

I just finished shoveling my driveway and sidewalk and cleaning off my car. As I sit down inside to rest my body and dry off from the freezing rain that has plastered my hair to my skull, I wonder, “Was shoveling the best use of my time this afternoon?”

Now I’ll admit that there are many measures for determining “best use,” and no two people will reach the same conclusion for any given thing. In looking at this particular choice, I can consider time (an hour that could have been spent doing something else), money saved (I did it myself rather than paying someone), the potentially beneficial exercise I gained by shoveling (I say potentially because my I suspect my “form” was off and, while my heart got a good workout, I insulted my back), and the prediction that we will be getting another 4 to 10 inches later tonight so the whole thing will likely need to be done again. While it is true that I got some exercise and that, if I need to run to the emergency room in a hurry, I now can, I suspect I could have done something else more enjoyable, productive, or soul-uplifting with that hour. Yoga, talking with a friend, meditating, finalizing program details for an upcoming workshop, even taking a nap – these may have all been better ideas. So why did I do it?

As awake and enlightened as I aspire to be, the truth is that I am as perfectly flawed as the next person and vulnerable to the same irrational rationalizations. I looked out the window and saw that my neighbors' driveways were already clear. I looked on Facebook and read posts from friends busy shoveling.  Although I had already decided to hire a teenager to shovel me out in the morning – after all the snow eventually falls – I allowed myself to be swayed in what I perceived to be the court of public opinion. If everyone else got out there in the snow to work, I “should” get out there too.

Maybe not. Maybe next time I can make a different choice and refrain from listening to whatever “should” is trying to catch me under its spell.  I can give myself permission to do exactly what feels right for me in that moment, choosing to relax and enjoy the day or to shovel as feels right, and trusting that the plan I have to practice good self-care is absolutely the right plan for me.  

So, what now?  That hour is over, and I’ve already embarked on a new one – chuckling about the whole thing, suggesting to myself that I’ll call a friend next time, and feeling gratitude that this silly situation inspired me to write this blog.  

Celebrating Personal Milestones

Yesterday, I had the great privilege of hosting a dinner party for a dear friend who wanted to celebrate her ten-year anniversary of being mania-free.  Having struggled with Bipolar Disorder throughout her adult life, this was a significant milestone, and we were thrilled to applaud it. We gathered as a community of friends, shared delicious food, and made toasts to honor her and the mindful care she has given to her health and wellbeing over these years. A truly gracious, humble, and amazingly resilient woman, my friend made a point of recognizing all of us – her circle of friends – for our presence and support in her life over these past ten years. She reminded us of the importance of community and the power of friendship to sustain us during even the darkest hours.

One of my friend’s greatest gifts is her ability to laugh at the absurdities in life, and we enjoyed doing just that during our fun evening together. She can talk about her mania with humor and perspective now, and we all marvel at how incredibly healthy she is today in contrast, knowing full well that her steadfast dedication to her wellness has created that reality. Witnessing her mindful attention and devoted care to the stabilization of her illness over the years, I have been awed and inspired. What a phenomenal model for resiliency!

I absolutely love that she set aside an evening to honor this important milestone. How often do we allow our personal victories to go unnoticed, perhaps dismissing them as not important enough to merit recognition?  How many opportunities have we missed to celebrate our own achievements and experiences of overcoming? Often, we are simply grateful that the hardest times are no longer upon us and want to move on – before really honoring our strength, resiliency, resourcefulness, and the support in our lives that made the transformation possible.  What if we were to change that and begin honoring our milestones? How might our lives be enriched?