Gretta is very devoted to her spiritual path. It is extremely important to her to move through her life as a loving and compassionate person. She has a big heart and is always doing nice things for other people. It was, therefore, deeply upsetting to her when she would find herself suddenly irritated, angry, or blaming toward someone. Yet as hard as she tried to be consistently loving and compassionate, the anger and blame continued to surface.

As we worked together, Gretta discovered that, as important as it was to her to be loving and compassionate with others, she was rarely loving and compassionate with herself.

Did you do sparklers as a kid?  

Remember that sense of delight? It is your true state and when you embrace it, you embody your wholeness. 

We all possess the capacity to heal ourselves.

The greatest thing you will ever learn to do is to realize there is only one of us here. We actually are all the people we've been arguing or bonding with.

We are all of the circumstances, all the trials and tribulations, and all the victories and inspirations that have ever occurred. We are all of it.

The art of a fulfilled life is the art of "letting'':
letting in, letting out, letting go. - Ernst Ferstl

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My whole life, I craved love and perfection. The stakes were so high that I find it hard to relax.  I need to do it all. But it's not easy to carry this heavyweight upon me. Always worrying about love, career, or health. Doubting my own self-worth, ability, and strength. Choosing the wrong people to fall in love with always confirmed they were right about me. I was not worthy of their love and attention. I talk too much, I am too loud, I take too much space. On a career level, I doubted, too. Am I good enough? My dream was to become an artist. I wanted to sing, act, model, and write. Do I sound well, do I overact, am I pretty enough, do people like my writings?

Resolving Inherited Trapped Emotions With Energy Healing

Scientists have long speculated about the possibility of emotionally charged memories being passed from one generation to another. In a famous experiment, researchers administered uncomfortable electrical shocks to the feet of mice that were, at the same time, exposed to a powerful odor. The scientists observed that the offspring of these mice became extremely wary when they smelled this particular odor, even if they had never smelled it before.

Stress is toxic to our health, contributing to heart disease, depression, and many other physical and mental ailments. Research shows that mindfulness meditation is a powerful tool to help reduce anxiety, depression, and stress! The stress-reducing power of mindfulness is amplified when we combine it with self-compassion.

In the human experience, grief is unavoidable. Why is it sometimes so hard to acknowledge, honor, and feel the grief?

Often, grieving can seem scary and overwhelming and so what we tend to do is avoid it, deny it, suppress it, numb ourselves from it and try to move on. This only keeps us stuck.

Creating and claiming the future you desire begins with asking yourself who you need to become to live your dream life. 

If you close your eyes and see the future of your dreams, what is different about you? Have your values changed? How are you spending your time? Who have you become?

Many of us suffer from deep childhood wounds, others of us are scarred from life in general. Given the state of the world, we’ve all been traumatized on various levels.

And, we all have individual things that “trigger” us into feelings that impact our mental stability where we are reminded of past trauma or previous negative experiences and we suddenly feel unsafe, endangered, frightened, overwhelmed, etc.

We have all been brought up to believe that different externals are responsible for our happiness and safety. I was raised to believe that happiness and safety came from being in a relationship, from having good things happen, and from having control over the good things happening. My parents were not into things like houses, cars, or toys, so I never learned to connect my happiness with things. But lots of people do.

For example, Allen connects his happiness to people, things, and outcomes. As a result, he is constantly pulling on others for attention and approval. He is addicted to buying things and his garage is cluttered with his toys. And he can't be happy until he "finds the perfect job," and "makes more money." Because he connects his happiness and safety to all these externals, he is always trying to have control over getting what he wants. Trying to have control keeps him from being in the moment, which is where real happiness and safety exists.
 

People I work with often ask me to explain the difference between wounded feelings and core feelings – the existential painful feelings caused by others and by life.

One way of understanding this is that our core painful feelings - loneliness, heartache, heartbreak, grief, sorrow, helplessness over others, and fear of real and present danger - all reflect external reality.

Nearly everyone I know right now is grieving someone or something.

The number of critical illness diagnoses, family and friends dying from cancer, love lost, and so much more seems to be at epic proportions.

The other day I found this beautiful post on my Facebook feed and felt compelled to share it all of you who may be in state of grief. I hope you find some solace in this.

Living with a Broken Heart by Gary Sturgis – “Surviving Grief”

Remember what the Tin Man said in the “Wizard of Oz” after he finally got a heart….

“Now I know I’ve got a heart because it’s breaking.”

Release Repressed Emotions to Feel Better Fast

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Have you stopped to think how much your emotions influence your health and well-being? I discovered this myself in very dramatic fashion about 15 years ago.

Like many women, I was exhausted, frazzled, and over-committed while caring for my family — but I wasn’t caring for myself. I kept pushing hard, and pushing down my emotions. Depression and apathy had a grip on me that I couldn’t shake. I did not realize how much I was suppressing my feelings until it hit me like a lightning bolt one day.

Losing someone you love is never easy. Saying goodbye to a parent is like bidding farewell to a piece of your soul.

Everyone grieves differently, and there’s no timeline for when you should start feeling better. However, the world doesn’t grind to a halt to let you mourn as much as you wish it might. You need to nurture yourself during this time. Here are five healing tips to help you get through a parent’s death.

1. Give Yourself a Break

If at all possible, give yourself time to mourn before resuming your regular responsibilities. Doing so can prove challenging, depending on your circumstances.

If your employer won’t grant you time away, or you can’t afford to take it, clear your calendar of any responsibilities you can safely shed. Talk to any organizations that you volunteer with to explain your absence. If you were planning on something like going back to school, postpone it if possible.

Are you curious about wholeness and true healing? 

Do you desire to “heal” something for yourself...be it physical, mental, financial, or maybe a relationship? Do you have a desire to support people you love, the planet, or shifts happening for humanity right now?  

It's a common desire...the desire to heal. It's what we've so often been taught—something needs fixing. The truth is, you, we, are already whole. There is nothing to heal. 

The frustrations and the angst that continue to rise for so many are energies that have been stored on the inside—packed away in the subconscious. We were previously able to override those energies that felt uncomfortable, any sense of dis-ease. However, overriding those energies doesn't dissolve or integrate them to reveal wholeness or resonance. 

For wholeness to happen, we have to land in the Soulful Self, in the truth of who we actually are.  

Kendra had been depressed on and off for the last three years before consulting with me. "I've tried various medications and they help somewhat, but I still feel depressed. I've tried psychotherapy and it also helps a little but not enough for me to feel happiness or peace inside. I hate feeling this way and I just don't know what to do."

The first thing that I did to start Kendra on her Inner Bonding journey was to help her create a personal source of spiritual guidance. I asked her to make up a being who was very loving, wise and powerful to whom she could turn, in her imagination, for help and guidance. Kendra made up an older Indian medicine woman whom she called Elder One.

Next I asked Kendra where in her body she felt the feeling of depression. "In my heart and stomach. My heart and stomach often feel so heavy and sad."

"Kendra, imagine that your feeling self, the part that is presently depressed, is a child within. How old is this child?" She told me she thought the child was around six.

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The Intentional Spirit encompasses the expansiveness of the West because we often find ourselves here when we’re in the middle of something—midlife, mid year, a project, a night, or a crisis. It feels like we’re lost in a desert without water, wondering where we went wrong. How did we get here?
 
Instead of looking back to where we began or forward to where we hoped to be, we know there is another way. The Intentional Spirit looks inward at the patterns we carry and— like the trees in autumn shedding leaves—we too let go, surrender, and release things limiting beliefs, persons, places, etc). All the rules we thought we needed are gone. In this time of introspection and healing,  we begin to develop our own principles and values or successful living.