Late Autumn Update

Here it is, early December, and the salmon are returning upstream to lay their eggs and die, providing food for our local eagles and nutrients for all sorts of creatures in our little river. With a plentiful food supply, the eagles have returned, gracing our skies with their aerodynamic forms and occasional acrobatics. As I sit at my makeshift desk, looking out a picture window, I see two bald eagles perched high in a favorite cottonwood tree that overlooks a bend in the river. I’ll never forget the day my son had been outside with his buddies playing and came inside excitedly proclaiming he’d found an amazing tree with incredible energy. No wonder the eagles love it.

Earlier this morning, I saw an eagle fly low over the river, between the trees, missing the branches, looking for a bite to eat. It was followed by a second one, its white head flashing as it popped out from behind trunk after trunk. Another eagle, gliding high, suddenly appeared as it flew right over the house, heading away toward a large field and a number of favored perches.

As I got up to fill my cup with water, movement caught my eye. And when I turned to look, a deer was walking out of the woods and up the back yard, followed by another and another. In total, six deer sauntered up the yard, stopping for a nibble on the apple tree and blackberry plants. Just because someone decided to clear trees and build a house here forty years ago, doesn’t mean the land isn’t the deer’s. They still wander around their territory, foraging for food, getting drinks from the river and streams, and bearing their young.

Other than usual daily life and gearing up for Christmas, I’m still dealing with the effects of a very significant Kundalini Awakening. Feeling tired and fragmented presents challenges I’m getting used to dealing with. It’s not “normal” for me, yet it’s a temporary, daily normal… until it’s not.

I’m slowly returning to doing healing work and seeking out intuitive counsel. It’s been about a year and a half of very challenging times. And I’m finally on the upswing.

My beautiful teenage son is now taking a medication to help quell anxiety and panic attacks, and as much as it’s helping some, a higher dose doesn’t seem to be helping more, so here we stay. For now. Re-addressing medications for ADHD has left us knowing they don’t help. After trying several different medications and classifications of meds, we’re done with them.

His education is happening at home, and will likely continue at home through high school, as much as just about every other week I wish I could put him back in public school and lift the burden from my shoulders. Working with a student who has learning disabilities, has trouble maintaining focus, and who is triggered into anxiety at the drop of a hat, where school is involved, is hard enough. Now imagine it’s your own kid – and he’s a teenager. Yup. Not easy. But we’re doing it. Week by week, day by day, and sometimes minute by minute.

There’s this thing called Matrix Energetics, that’s a consciousness technology; sort of like a healing modality, but different. When a person works with a practitioner, the practitioner uses a combination of steps they’ve learned, with intuition and intention, to allow change in a person’s consciousness. To help shift the way a person experiences the world, immediately.

Often times, the immediate shift is significant enough that a person will temporarily lose consciousness while their brain reboots. It looks a bit odd to see a bunch of people slowly passing out, being caught by “catchers” in a seminar room full of students, but I assure you, it’s quite fun. And there’s nothing quite like feeling anxious about something one minute, and feeling parts of your body dissolve as the anxiety disappears in quite literally a few minutes. Magic!

My son has consented to having a Matrix Energetics session when he’s on Christmas break. It will be over the phone, working with someone I know is talented in this area, and I’m very excited to see what changes. With this type of work, we’ll set an intention for his anxiety to become reduced, but you never know how much it will be affected.

When I took my first M.E. workshop in 2012, the founder/teacher shared a session he did with a child who had Sensory Processing Disorder. The child was so severely hypersensitive to touch that he couldn’t tolerate his mother holding or hugging him. At the end of the session, she was able to hug her son comfortably. This was all done without the practitioner physically touching the boy. The boy’s consciousness had been permanently changed. It was miraculous!

Modern medicine’s current treatment for this same condition is brushing. An occupational therapist works with the child, using a soft bristle brush, physically brushing the skin on the arms, legs, and back, to desensitize it. It’s a temporary fix. As much as my son tolerated this therapy, his skin is still hypersensitive to certain fabrics, wearing long pants, and light touch. Fortunately, I can give my son a bear hug.

So, in less than a month, my son will play around with a Matrix Energetics practitioner. (Using the verbiage of playing keeps the vibe of the session higher and keeps people open to the possibility of the highest level of change). One of the things about this sort of session is, effects might be immediate, but like the ripples of water emanating from a pond after a rock’s been thrown in, more change can happen in the days following. We’ll see how it goes.

In the meanwhile, I await my own inner shifts and changes while life goes on.

I hope my Jewish readers are having a warm and happy Hanukkah. And for those gearing up for Christmas and other holidays, may you find moments to connect with happiness and joy. I particularly love Christmas music, so here’s some Little Drummer Boy for you to enjoy.

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Hypnosis For Healing

Most people think of hypnosis as something used as a party trick, to make people cluck like a chicken or make a fool of themselves. And some people use hypnosis as a way to quit smoking, lose weight, or enhance sports performance; implanting suggestions into the subconscious mind to help change behaviors. While these are all done, I’ve found hypnosis to be a very powerful healing tool. A way into the unconscious mind to help make change from the inside out.

As with all forms of healing, not all hypnosis is created equal, and not all hypnotherapists are skilled at doing the work I’ve been doing. There are different techniques and schools of thought, and every practitioner comes to the modality with their own skill set.

So what is hypnosis? It’s a state of relaxing the body, while the mind is aware and focused. One of the first things I learned about hypnosis is you can’t do something against your will, while in a hypnotic state. And you can open your eyes and come out of it any time you want.

Hypnosis is a wonderful way of connecting with our unconscious mind, bringing things up to full consciousness or full awareness. Once we’ve become aware of something, we can create change if that’s what’s wanted. Or we can simply be aware of something that had been buried in our mind.

As a healing tool, I’ve been using hypnosis to look into things that trigger emotional discomfort and pain, but are things I can’t just leave or stay away from; like situations that come up between me and family members. And I’ve used it to look into and create healing around chronic physical illness, like GERD (acid reflux disease).

Not only has it been a comfortable and effective tool for healing emotional and physical woes, but it connects me with higher wisdom. Intuition. The part of me that’s always connected with God, Source, Guides, Guardians, Ancestors, Angels, and every part of the unseen world that supports me in life. The part that has a 30,000 ft. view of life.

Sure I’ve had readings from clairvoyants to help me see the bigger picture of something going on in my life, and their advice resonated with and enlightened me. But there’s nothing like tuning into greater wisdom yourself. Not only becoming aware of the bigger picture, but embodying it. Knowing it not only in your brain, but feeling it in every cell of your body.

The difference between watching and experiencing, between reading about something and knowing it. The difference between seeing someone eat a juicy, ripe apple, and doing it yourself.

Using hypnosis, I’ve been able to create all sorts of inner change, which in turn rippled out, affecting my outlook on life and my health. It’s created a lot of inner peace.

Healing work often connects me to parts of myself that exist in a state of discomfort, pain or upset. Parts that have been stuck; stuck in time. I’ve seen these parts as younger versions of myself, as a toddler, a child, or a teen, or saw myself from other lifetimes because something wasn’t healed after death.

Some of the past lifetimes that came up during healing sessions had a common theme of something that wasn’t healed after death, a fear that stuck with me into this present lifetime. The fear of being killed because I had clairvoyant abilities, was one such theme. I could see that people around me didn’t understand what clairvoyance was and were afraid of it. I knew too much, and that in and of itself was threatening. I was killed again and again.

Going through a Kundalini Awakening, part of the process has been a repeated opening of my awareness in life. It’s hard to describe if you haven’t done any healing work. But an example of a shift in consciousness or awareness,  is when a person has been raised as a racist, meets their mixed race grandchild for the first time and can’t help falling in love with it, despite their beliefs. They have an epiphany they’ve been racist and what it means, their heart melts, and they experience a shift in consciousness, letting racism go.

Healing work opens our heart to the world and to ourselves. Kundalini energy has been cranking my heart open wider than is sometimes comfortable, and is allowing unconscious beliefs to bubble up to be shifted and healed. This process has also helped my innate connection to inner wisdom and my higher self grow.

And all sorts unconscious beliefs brought about through conditioning and societal values are coming up for review. They’ve been rocketing up or bubbling up, and as they reach full consciousness, they are healed. Changed.

After taking a break from hypnosis work for about a year and a half, it was time for assistance again. This time, working with someone new. As much as I loved working with the hypnotherapist I saw for four years, she’s moved on and is now very busy teaching hypnosis. Because I’ve been going through a Kundalini Awakening, it felt right to find someone who has experience with working with people going through very challenging spiritual awakening issues. And the Universe delivered.

Distance is no object in the world of spirit. And thanks to the internet, distance is no longer an obstacle to having a hypnosis session, enabling me to connect with a beautiful soul on the other side of the world. 

During our session, I wanted to address challenges lately with being exhausted, feeling fragmented, and having great difficulty connecting with my inner guidance. (The level of exhaustion feels a lot like depression, yet I know I’m not depressed). Many people meditate to connect with their inner guidance, yet I’m not one who can sit quietly with my eyes closed without falling asleep. I often need a guiding voice. Hence, hypnosis.

Because this was the first time having a session over Skype, I was nervous. Nervous I wouldn’t be able to relax and reach the state of mind where magic happens. However it quickly dissipated once we connected. After our brief hello and get-to-know-you part of the session, because we’d previous emailed, my hypnotherapist was aware of what I wanted to address, and she’d formulated a few questions to be asked.

Once the induction was complete and I was relaxed, we dove into connecting to higher wisdom, something I’ve been struggling with. Right off the bat something came up. I could see a crowd of wise beings in spirit who were all there for me, waiting to connect with me, but there was a huge wall of glass between us. At the same time, I noticed my heart was beating faster and fear started to come up. (Experiencing fear while in hypnosis is very different from experiencing it during full consciousness. You can either connect into it and feel it, or move away from it and merely observe it).

Initially, I was connected into the fear and began to cry. After being directed to float above the fear, I knew it was coming from a young part of myself. When asked why she was upset, she answered, “My heart hurts.” She said it was all too much. She said, “I can’t do this.” This, meaning life. It’s too hard, too much pain. Life hurts too much. She was two.

The little one went on saying, “They’re being mean to me.” They being a few family members. “Why can’t they just love me?”

My hypnotherapist worked with me to help this little one become happy again, to help shift her energy and let go of her pain. All it took was for me to tell her I loved her, and she melted into my arms. Reconnecting with my adult self. Without too much effort, the little one was once again happy and eager to get on with things.

Looking back to the crowd of beings in spirit who had been behind glass, I now saw the wall of “glass” melting like ice. With access to wisdom, the questions began.

When we asked why I’d been feeling so fragmented, ungrounded and unfocused, there was an unconscious fear that came up, that kept me stuck in those feelings. Suddenly, I heard, “Oh Baby, you’re not crazy.” It was my mother. The one who struggled with bipolar disorder, and who did indeed go crazy a few times. And when she was first hospitalized when I was a teen, I struggled a bit to keep my two feet on the ground. As much as I knew I wasn’t mentally ill back then, and know I’m not mentally ill, the process of inner change I’ve been going through has been extremely mentally challenging at times. Extremely.

Having that unconscious fear brought to light has helped it shift. The teenager in me who fought so hard to maintain her sanity while the world around her went mad, is letting it go, allowing me to move through significant changes more easily.

We asked more questions, came up against other forms of inner resistance, worked our way past them to create more healing and connected with more wisdom. Before I knew it, our session wound to a close and when asked if there was something else that needed to be addressed, the answer was no. What we’d done felt complete.

What I’ve learned from using hypnosis, is everyone has access to information/wisdom tailored specifically for them. We actually get it all the time, and call it intuition or listening to our gut. Using techniques like meditation or hypnosis allows us to access this information more easily and at a deeper level.

And if there’s something in life that needs to change and it’s become an issue, hypnosis might be the tool to use. It’s a wonderful one to create magic and transformation. Letting go of chronic fear, frustrations, anger, regret, jealousy, sadness, and other pain can change a life. Hypnosis is far more than a mere party trick, it’s a powerful healing tool.

Autumn Interlude

It’s been quite a while, I know. Life has been… well, how can I put it? It’s been a lot of putting one foot in front of the other, with an occasional pause. And moving forward again. Are things running as smoothly as I’d like? Absolutely not. Are there still issues and kinks to be worked out? Yup. Such is life when being changed from the inside out.

On the parenting front, Little Man will be sixteen in less than a month. I can barely believe it! Homeschooling is still happening: it’s slow going, but it’s going. We’ve found a medicine that helps keep panic attacks at bay, and began a second medication trial to address ADHD: a revisit to an ADHD trial we did six years ago when he wasn’t taking anything for anxiety. A trial that ended badly, so quite honestly, if things don’t go well with the ADHD meds, I won’t be surprised. So far we’ve tried one medication, which didn’t go well. On to medication #2.

Despite the challenges my son lives with, he’s an amazingly caring teen who is wise beyond his years in many ways. I have a feeling he’ll hit his stride in his late twenties to early thirties.

This past weekend, we had some stormy weather that knocked out our power Saturday night. And after torrential downpours Sunday morning, the skies cleared for a few hours; just long enough for Little Man and I to venture out to our favorite local pumpkin patch. Enjoy a few photos of autumn at the pumpkin patch.

 

 

A Shaft of Light

Just a quick update today, shortly before our school year begins next week. My teenage son, Little Man, who lives with a number of life challenges, has been doing a medication trial for crippling anxiety for the past several months. The anxiety wasn’t always crippling, but became so a few months after he turned 13. Something about puberty and middle school amped up his anxiety to the point that he completely melted down and I had to take him out of school.

After making a few different moves, including doing a year of unschooling and looking into naturopathic, holistic, and energetic healing, last year it became obvious that my son really needed help in the form of medication. One of the biggest reasons I put off looking into pharmaceuticals, was I know the power of energy healing. And I hoped we could find something else to help my son that he could use on an as needed basis, that was short acting, like taking CBD oil (that helps many people who live with anxiety).

Plus, because my own mother depended on medication to keep her mental status on a somewhat even keel (she was bipolar), I know that as people age, a medication that worked for them for years, often times eventually no longer works. And it scares me as a parent to think about my son’s mental health being dependent upon medication, and the thought of him not able to find one that works. Or his not being able to afford what works (as happens with far too many people).

That said, right here and right now, my son needs medication. And after spending the past several months trying a few different ones, it looks like the one he’s taking is just beginning to show progress. FINALLY!!

Does he still have anxiety? Yes. Does he still panic and have his brain melt when it comes to school work? I don’t know yet. We’ve taken the month of August completely off from school (to give us both a break).

But he’s beginning to show the first signs of progress in far too long. He’s doing therapy and will continue to do therapy. And over the next few months, we’ll increase his dose to find the best level for him.

The center we’ve been working with addresses more than only mental health issues in kids and adolescents: they do educational testing and connect people with tutors as well. As much as Little Man had educational testing a number of years ago, and saw a tutor, now that he’ll be on medication to control anxiety, we’ll be revisiting things like tutoring.

When I mentioned to his therapist that Little Man had already done tutoring and it ended after about five months because of anxiety, she asked if he’d been tutored alone or with other kids. Apparently, it could be helpful for Little Man to be tutored with another student. So the spotlight isn’t always on him, and so the students can help each other from time to time (which is a great confidence booster). Plus, now that his brain is being helped by a medication, it should make a big difference as well.

Light is beginning to shine back into our lives, even if it’s just a shaft. That’s all it takes. Just an opening to let it in.

Angel Wings

This morning was a tough one, as many have been this past year. Not because there’s anything going on in my outer world causing my mornings to be tough, but because my inner world is going through a lot. A ton. Enough to kill an elephant. Good news is, by afternoon time and evenings, I’m usually feeling better. Sort of reminds me of dealing with morning sickness when I was pregnant with my son. Except with him it was all day sickness for the first few months. Gradually, I felt better in the ?mornings ?evenings? I can’t remember which; but I began to feel better on one end of the day, and by month four or five, I no longer felt queasy.

This Kundalini Awakening has turned my sleeping time into work my butt off time, and I awaken every day feeling exhausted and very out of sorts. There was, however, one day back in May when I woke up feeling almost normal, feeling good. One day. Back in May. Because it was so rare, I journaled about it.

A few days ago, another healing shift in my energy field caused some muscles in my low back to tighten up, and they’re still working on letting go of whatever activated them. Not to be left out of the fun, I awoke to find more muscles in my back, this time higher up and to one side, decided to join in. So this morning was a particularly exciting time of muscle pain and stiffness combined with my usual wonky head. Yee haw! (The pain will likely pass in the next few days. I hope. All part of the process.)

Sometimes it’s hard to find the motivation to go outside when I’m like this, but the sun called, and I was able to answer. It was such a beautiful morning with blue sky, birds aplenty, and a few wispy clouds.

Exhausted, I laid down on our trampoline, relaxing in the partial shade, listening to the birds. A beautiful cloud hung in the sky until it dissolved in the wind. I can’t decide if it’s a bird or an angel. Or perhaps a bit of both.

It was a lovely distraction from myself. Thank you Mother Nature!

Struggling A Bit

This time of year marks a time of endings and new beginnings for many students and their families. The school year recently ended for most schools, and with that, students are graduating, receiving awards and certificates, and moving on to summer vacation. My son is not. We’re continuing schooling most likely through July.

We’ve been cobbling together some semblance of an education over the past few years, while dealing with his learning disabilities and mental health challenges. Late last winter, I finally made the long dreaded decision to stop working on healing my son’s anxiety, and instead, treat it with medication. It’s proving to be a rocky road, side effects slowing us down.

With Kundalini energy fully open in my body, creating massive shifts in my consciousness, my mind, and body, I’m a shell of my usual self. It doesn’t take much, and I’m thrown into an energy shift, followed by significant brain rewiring and exhaustion. Chronic fatigue – but not an illness. It’s a side effect of my Kundalini awakening. There are days when my usual optimism pops back in for a while, buoying me up. But they are so few and far apart that most days I spend a good part of them with a raft of lies flooding my head. The thing is, when I can take a breath, I know they’re fear-based lies.

“His stomach will never tolerate the meds and they’ll never work. What if there is no medication that alleviates his anxiety? What if he has to spend the rest of his life like this – a shell of himself? What if he has to try to go out into the world with what’s really about a sixth grade (or less) education? How is he going to make it? What if he’s never able to graduate from high school and is dependent on us for the rest of our lives? What if his mind permanently cripples him?”

Every time I see a post on Facebook lately about a friend’s kid graduating from high school or middle school, or earning some well-deserved recognition, instead of being happy for them, lately all it’s done is trigger fear and jealousy. And that’s not me.

I’m envious of people who have “normal” children. Kids who thrive in school. Kids who don’t have mental challenges that take them down. Kids who don’t have dyslexia and ADHD and sensory processing issues. I’m envious of people whose kids have only one challenge, not several. And people whose kids respond well to medication.

These feelings are not my “normal” at all.

And I’m envious of people who aren’t in the throes of an intense Kundalini awakening.

My internal truth is that we can make it through any and all challenges, and everything will work out. I know my son will be fine. I don’t know what fine will look like, but he’ll be fine. And even now, he has good times. Life isn’t all a struggle.

And I know that at some point, I’ll be not only fine, but better than fine. Just not yet.

Before my mind kept being put into a shredder, I had the faith to know that I don’t have to know the “how” something was going to happen. But that by following synchronicities and breadcrumbs laid before me, we’d get there.

I’ve had too many days of losing faith, struggling to remember my truth. Too many days of being hypersensitive to everything and everyone around me. Too many days of not being able to focus and feel normal. I know it won’t always be this way, but… holy crap!

Here’s a reminder to me and anyone else who’s going through tough times. In the words of Bob Marley, “Don’t worry about a thing, cause every little thing gonna be all right.”

Happy Blog-iversary To Me!

WordPress let me know that yesterday was my eight year anniversary of starting this blog. Wow! Eight years!

I was looking back in one of my journals recently and saw why I began this blog in the first place. It was June 2, 2010, when my son was seven and just finishing first grade. After waiting a very long time to have a family, and being beyond thrilled to have him when I was 38, I never expected to have a child with invisible disabilities.

My son’s first seven years included speech therapy, occupational therapy, a special education preschool (for 3 yrs.) and entering school with support in place to help him succeed in school. By the end of first grade, I was no longer as much of the exhausted basket case I’d been for much of his life. Having a child with special needs creates its own level of chronic stress and exhaustion.

Feeling a bit better and on top of my game, I started this blog as a place to share what I’d learned about child-rearing with other new moms, a place to connect with other mothers of children with Sensory Processing Disorder, a place to share my love of photography and tell a sea story every now and then. This was where I created and found a community.

Little did I know that less than a year after beginning this blog, I’d have a very unexpected spiritual awakening, shifting my focus in life dramatically. I read and learned voraciously about this thing called Energy Healing and began to use it in our lives. There are posts as I learned about Energy Healing and I’ve shared some of the intimate details of my own healing.

As my son has grown and evolved, much of what were first labeled developmental delays are still with him. Some are only slightly noticeable, while others have taken center stage. Over the past eight years, I’ve shared bits and pieces of the journey with my son’s challenges.

And from time to time, my love of photography made its way into the blog. In fact, for ten years, I printed photographic note cards and matted 8×10’s and sold them at a handful of local holiday craft shows. With a few unexpected turns of events over the past two years, those days are now behind me. But my love of taking and sharing photos, particularly nature photos, will always be with me.

My blogging pace has slowed dramatically over the past year and then some, because of another unexpected type of spiritual awakening, this time affecting my brain. It’s actively rewiring my mind and body, and part of the process has been days when I can’t focus my thoughts long enough to get them down coherently into a blog piece.

As much as it’s been frustrating to not physically be able to write as I usually do, the changes to my mind will eventually rid me of a host of mental pain that once in a while pops up and makes its presence known (as it does for everyone). This is because of Kundalini energy having become activated in me. And it’s not done with me yet.

In the meanwhile, life goes on. And so does my blogging. Thanks to everyone who is a part of this blog’s community. It’s a joy to connect and support one another through whatever comes our way.

When Mother’s Day Is Complicated

Mother’s Day sometimes brings up a host of feelings for me. You see, my mother was mentally ill, and because she wasn’t properly treated until I was half way through high school, her moods would swing from the deep lows of debilitating depression, into the highs of mania that seriously skewed her outlook on life. I was raised by a mother who couldn’t be a stable and loving mother all the time.

Looking back, I know she did the best she could, and that’s all anyone can ask. But when your mother verbally cuts you down, attacking at the drop of a hat, it has an effect on a person. What I didn’t know until I discovered healing work, was how the dynamics of our relationship, especially during my early years, affected me as an adult.

I thought moving out and being on my own, geographically separating myself from my mother, was the answer. If I’m not around to be the target of her mania, I’ll be ok. It took years and some really effective healing work to not only see how my formative years were creating dysfunction in my adult life, but to change it, to heal it. To let go of the pain and dysfunction.

It sometimes makes me sad that my mother and I didn’t have a close and loving relationship as many other people have. But when I became a mother myself, it warmed my heart to hear Mom tell me what a good mother I am to my son. Having no one close by to teach me, I was left to follow my heart and be resourceful. So far, it’s working out pretty well.

On this Mother’s Day, with Mom gone now, I send her love and appreciation.

Spring Tulip Festival 2016

This gallery contains 3 photos.

Originally posted on Life Is A Journey… Not A Guided Tour:
Every April, the county where in live in Washington state celebrates the advent of spring with a Tulip Festival. It runs the entire month, but the flowers come up and…

Surrender

There comes a time when it’s ok to stop and surrender. And breathe.