Guides & Guidance Pt. II - Pain as a Guide?

So, let’s get back to the part of guidance that is more physical: pain. As I mentioned before, pain and discomfort are low level forms of guidance. But just because they are low level, doesn’t mean they are not telling and effective. Now, by low level I mean that your body doesn’t have to be attuned to high levels of energy information in order for you to get the message. My stomach hurts, I have a stomach ache. This may sound simple, but when you are talking about our society, you will find barriers to even this form of guidance.

Have you ever known anyone to break their foot, ankle or toe and then walk around on it for a day or week or more before they ever make it in to see the doctor? How could they be walking around on an injured or worse, broken limb? This may sound far fetched but I can actually think of at least three different people who ignored their bodies in this way. One of the major factors is our legs...most people aren’t connected to them. So, when you talk about feet, most people are even more disconnected with feelings in their feet.

These days our foot coving technology has gotten so evolved, we sometimes don't realize what's going on down their until the end of the day when we take off our shoes. Then suddenly we realize how exhausted they are and how much they needed some attention.

By desensitizing ourselves to the lower half of our body we’re doing many levels of disservice to ourselves. Speaking specifically of the major chakra centers, where do you think we are going to pull red energy from if we cut ourselves off from our lower half. By disconnecting to this area we cut ourselves off from several essential types of energy production. Are we generating enough red energy? In our culture, red is taken to mean "danger" or "warning" but these associations are not absolute in all cultures. And in fact, our culture needs to bring back red and begin associating it with positive things instead of pairing it with danger and caution. In terms of the energy you generate from your body, red is a very positive energy and color. It means life or life force. Red energy is important for the growth of new cells which we are doing all the time. If we are not producing a healthy amount of red, the chance or re-producing unhealthy cells becomes much greater. This is why diseases like cancer or even rheumetic disorders like arthritis are diseases that are associated with a disfunction in red energy. There are many diseases in our culture that are associated with our inability to embrace and produce enough red energy.

Let’s focus on disease for a second. How does disease begin? Well, of course there are a number of factors. But many people in the energy healing field currently believe that disease is caused by your emotions, which is not quite accurate. You see, I’ve known this for quite some time but for some reason, I have also at times been guilty of attributing disease directly to emotions when really the connection indirect. First, let’s start with energy. A primary role of the energy we generate every day is for use in creating new cells as I mentioned already. Every day, cells die off and we replace them by generating new ones. In about two years we replace just about every cell in the body. Problems arise when we don’t have enough energy to create new healthy cells. So, when we expend an excess amount of energy on say, stress, anger, jealousy, dread, fear, or maintaining an unhealthy body, we tend to fall in to disease patterns that align with our genealogy. So, it’s not automatically a death sentence to come from a family prone to high blood pressure. But if your family has a history of high blood pressure and you are overweight and in a high stress profession, then you will be much more prone to develop the disease. The disease must already be in the genetic make-up. And then, once an ideal environment is created for it to manifest, then we get the disease. And we create these environments by starving our body’s ability to create healthy cells by misusing our energy.

I'll give you another example. Heart disease and obesity was easy, but let's also stay in the 4th chakra area. And let's look at something more prone to affect women instead of men. Have you ever known a mother who had a difficult time stopping her role as a mother? I'm not just talking about moms who still care about their children after they've grown up and have their own families. That's most moms. I'm talking about ones who can't stop mothering and excessively worrying for their grown-up children who have their own families and/or own lives. They worry and stress about their children all the time. What disease do you think they will be more prone to? Let's put it in more physical terms. What cells in the body do you think will get starved of energy, if a woman or mother is overusing her nuturing qualities? I'll give you another hint, and this goes for men and women. Where do you automatically pull something small and cuddly like a baby or a puppy or a kitten to when you pick them up? Did you know why? Because you actually surround them with the energy from your heart chakra when you hold them to your breast. And what do they feel when they are there? Warmth, protection, love... And how healthy is it to be in an enviornment like that, especially when you are young and haven't finished growing?

More later...

Reiki vs. Energy Healing

This has been a long time coming. And although I don’t think it will settle any disputes, I do hope to clear up some misunderstandings regarding my lineage, experience and current practice with respect to Reiki and energy healing. My students are the ones who have been most curious in this regard, but most get my company line during class.

First off, it may be confusing that I list Rosalyn Bruyere (who has no Reiki affiliation as far as I know) as one of my teachers and yet, I still promote and teach Reiki. I agree that might seem a little confusing. But several fields cross train styles and methods. And in fact, if you look at massage training, most of the top schools teach solid foundations in several different styles of massage, like Shiatsu, Swedish, Trigger Point Therapy, Deep Tissue, Thai massage, etc. The advantage of studying multiple styles of anything is for me to learn the bigger truths. And of course that never comes quickly or easily. And if we stop learning then the bigger truths may never come.

For me the reasons for my cross training mostly have to do with desire and opportunity. In 1999, once my eyes opened to energy healing and energy theory, I began reading several books on the subject. I refer to the time prior to this experience as my sleeping years. Now I am awake. One of the first energy books I read, Hands of Light, by Barbara Brennan, had such an impact on me, I had to trace Barbara’s journey to find her influences. Barbara sites Rosalyn as one of her early teachers. Once I found Rosalyn, I knew I had found my teacher. I felt an incredible feeling of being grounded as I read through her materials. In fact, her book, Wheels of Light wasn’t as mesmerizing in its details as it was in its spirit. Although I just had only the one book of Rosalyn’s, I found out where she was based (which was very close to where I had just moved) and then I began keeping track of her teaching schedule and looked for opportunities to train with her in SoCal. Unfortunately, for the first few years I found it difficult to take her classes. The ones she offered in and around Sierra Madre were mostly week-long intensives, which were difficult for me to attend with my schedule at the time. Finding a Reiki school with a schedule I could work with proved to be much more accessible for me. Though through misfortune and circumstance, Rosalyn later threw me a bone (so to speak) which proved to be a treasure. More on the treasure in a moment.

It was early 2000, after I had just moved back to California was when I really discovered Reiki. I had moved to California to start a record company with my music partner. After getting settled in SoCal, I made a resolve to find an energy healing school and to learn hands-on energy healing as soon as possible. I was already realizing that energy healing was my life work and I wanted to get started yesterday. While searching for schools, I came across Reiki and a school that was very close to where I had just moved, High Touch Healing Arts (HTHA). I remembered hearing about Reiki from a friend when I was living in NY. He had just learned the technique as a part of his massage training program. That was back before I was awake. It was the modality he enjoyed using the most. I really didn’t know much about it other than my friend liked it, and it was some kind of energy healing method that employed laying-hands as the primary administering technique. So, now that I realized "energy healing" was it's own field (ha!), I was now able to have a better understanding of what my friend had told me back when I was asleep. And not knowing much, I figured Reiki was as good a place to start as any.

So, as I went through Reiki level I, just a few months after waking up to the world of energy, I'd already read a half dozen books on energy AND I had already chosen Rosalyn as one of my teachers. Still, I planned to take Reiki seriously and complete every class the school I found offered, which meant I could become a Reiki teacher within a couple years. My Reiki teachers were very experienced. My main teacher, Irma K. Sawyer (the head of the school) had been teaching for 13 years when I took Reiki I with her. So that means she’s been at it for about 20 years by now. Her school offers teachings in traditional Usui Reiki, as well as other Reiki methods and other energy healing modalities.

Despite a good Reiki foundation, I was cursed with this incredibly western way of thinking. I needed facts, data, and most of all a science to back up all these incredible things I was studying. I'm sure that is one of the reasons I gelled with Rosalyn and Barbara so much and why Hands of Light, struck me so deeply. Barbara, a former NASA physicist had a way of organizing the information. It was also obvious she was creating a contemporary language and a very detailed method for describing the energy phenomenon. She must have felt she had to because science had yet to do it. That was completely understandable and at the time it was exactly what I needed. I still recommend her books and school to many people who ask me about energy. Rosalyn, an electrical engineer, similarly had a scientific way of thinking through and explaining ideas. But she also seemed to reach through time bringing ancient ideas to life with her descriptions and correlations. And that is precisely what we are supposed to be doing in the new age. We're supposed to rediscover the lost ancient teachings. Doesn't anyone else remember the prophetic basis to the hippy movement? They sang it right to you. It's about moving from the age of Pisces into the age of Aquarius. A Q U A R I U S S S S! Okay, more on the great ages and how they relate to where we are and where we've been later. Much later. The point is, we should be looking for people ressurecting the ancient mysteries. Not inventing them. Not that inventors can't be genius and hugely important. But when it's possible to find people practicing ancient methods that have been handed down over centuries or even rediscovered, then we had better pay attention.

I kept to my word and completed my Reiki training by 2001. Though, if you know anything about Reiki, you’ll know that becoming a Reiki master is not about mastering Reiki. That could take a life-time. Being a Reiki master (or Reiki teacher as I prefer) only means that you can pass on the ability to deliver Reiki to others or in Reiki speak, it means you can give a Reiki attunement. Anyway, while I was taking classes at HTHA, I focused mostly on Reiki and tried to minimize my focus on other energy methods. I read several Reiki books and trained with a second teacher (also from HTHA) to broaden the information I was getting from Reiki. And throughout this process, I continued to study non-Reiki energy healing methods.

And so it goes that I have really been studying as many aspects of energy healing as I have been able to find. It’s just been the case that Reiki was was a popular and accesible energy healing modality with both classes and certification availble. So, to advertise my services, I still use Reiki because that’s my only certification besides being ordained. AND, also because a lot of people have actually heard of Reiki and may have some idea of what it is.

Sure, there are some Reiki ideals that conflict with some of my other teachers theories. But I try not to get caught up in the differences as much as I try to focus on things that hold up universally. As we remember that these practices are not new and that they are ancient healing techniques that are being rediscovered, we begin to peel away the layers of history that has eluded us from these teachings. And as we begin to understand the energy paradigm, many of our notions of the world and how it works may slowly begin to change. So, I believe the best way to approach this area of study is to remain open, flexible and willing to change.

Reiki itself has changed drastically in the past seven years since I first began studying. I’m glad I haven’t stopped my study and research into Reiki, because Reiki has been sorting out itself over these years. We were originally taught that Reiki was no longer in Japan and that Takata sensei was the only one who carried the Reiki lineage, not only to the western world, but the world. As you may have read from previous posts on my blog, we have discovered this to be untrue. Thanks to dedication of people like Richard Rivard, Frank Arjava Petter and especially William Rand, we have learned so much about Reiki that was never known.

Well, that’s enough for today...

Guides and Guidance - part one

Guides are fun to work with. In fact, in my estimation, I believe those people who work with guidance either at a conscious or unconscious level, are beginning to operate at a much higher and more effective level of performance in whatever field they’re in. So, although this blog is generally geared towards people interested in healing energies, guides and guidance are not exclusive to healers. And although my connection and experience with guidance has come through my own work with subtle healing energies, I welcome input from anyone who has made contact with guidance.

The problem with this discussion is that most people will think you are nuts if you start talking about guides or guidance. But let me ask you this? Haven’t you ever felt guided to do something without any identifiable reason and then later, once you’ve already made a commitment to the action, you find out that this was something you were meant to do? Some people call it a coincidence. Well, my teachers would all say that there is no such thing as a coincidence. Serendipity and synchronicity are words we use to describe coincidences when we begin to realize that they aren’t just a coincidence. And when it does happens to us, we feel something that transcends just being happy or simply feeling like you’re in the right place at the right time. The feeling is almost euphoric and by some has been called being in the “zone”. You start to do all the right things without even thinking about it. It’s the subtle step beyond living your life to being your life.

Does anyone remember how you got to that point where everything started to click? What were you doing that precipitated the experience? Or possibly even more important then figuring out how it started happening is trying to figure out why it stopped.

Guidance is available all the time. The first key to receiving or listening to guidance is you, or more specifically, your body. Your body is designed for detecting all sorts of information to help you live better. One of the basic ways your body communicates information to you is by pain or discomfort. Now, of course this might not seem too earth shattering when first considering physical pain, which is a physiological process. And although I will eventually delve into pain, disease and conditions, let’s first consider discomfort that doesn’t relate to a physical hurt like breaking a leg or cutting a finger. When was the last time someone, something or even some place made you feel uncomfortable? Have you ever walked into a city, neighborhood, room, bar, classroom, store, etc. and felt uncomfortable? Why? Other than physical cues, what else causes the yucky tummy feeling? I believe the yucky tummy feeling is actually a form of guidance. Guidance can be very subtle, even subconscious, and yet can still be very effective.

Some have said that we (humans) have evolved so far away from nature and wilderness that we have lost portions of our humanity and much of our basic animal instincts. I’m not so sure. Over time, our “habitat” has become the freeways, trains and buildings where we live and work. Our habitat is now a neighborhood. An interesting study was done of train commuters to see if their commute patterns correlated to accidents on specific train lines. The study found a statistically significant correlation. The study showed that whenever an accident occurred on a specific train line, a significant population of commuters who would normally take that same line, actually avoided the accident prior to the accident taking place. They would either take a different route, a different mode (car or bus), or would change plans to come in to work altogether.

Similar studies have been conducted with similar results. If anyone’s interested in the study, I’m sure I could dig it up. Personally, I’ll share a story that has no scientific relevance, but was profound enough to really make me consider our innate ability to receive guidance. I worked in the World Financial Center for almost six years prior to 9/11, but had already moved to California by 2001. From those years I developed a large number of friends and colleagues who should have been downtown, at work, in or around the World Trade Center during the attacks on 9/11. However, as the days after 9/11 unfolded and as I obtained updates on everyone I knew who worked downtown and who might have been affected, a strange trend began to emerge. Similar to the train study, I found a significant number of my friends and colleagues weren’t even downtown at the time of the attack. Except in this case, it was as if I knew the entire fragment of the population who avoided the city that day.

One had a meeting in midtown that morning. One took a personal day and so never left New Jersey. One friend had his parents in town for the week and so had taken the day off to tour the city with them but had yet to make it in to Manhattan from Brooklyn. Another one decided to go in late that day and so was stuck on the subway when she normally would have been at work during the first crash. All of these people are Wall Street workaholic types that are rarely if ever late and almost never miss work. Another one of my friends decided to volunteer his time for a political campaign and so was also out in Brooklyn during the attack, instead of at the office, just a couple blocks away from WTC. And if you knew this guy, you’d find it hard to believe he would even be a political volunteer, much less sacrifice an entire workday to be one. And of course, not everyone I knew was so fortunate. But, an extraordinary number of people I knew and certainly the majority of them all stayed away from the WTC during the 9/11 attack. So, what’s the connection between all of these people? Is there one? It can’t be related to me, most of them don’t know each other and I wasn’t even living there at the time. They aren’t from the same age group or ethnicty, they are of no speficic religion, and most were from different companies. So, where's the connection? Okay, they were all human...

If you put any weight in scientific studies, anecdotal experiences or quite possibly even your own experiences, you may have to consider or reconsider that humans, not just the gifted ones, are capable of using guidance.

I’ve always been aware of the idea of guidance, but I used to only believe it was only available to saints, prophets, psychics or other gifted people. And certainly not to anyone I knew. And then when I really began to study energy healing, the lines I had drawn before began to blur. And now after years of working in alternative healthcare (now being called cooperative healthcare) I've begun to recognize things that have been staring me in the face all along. And the reason I couldn’t see them was because I couldn’t believe them. It wasn't even a possibility. But as I slowly began to truly imagine the possibilities, I also began to witness and take notice of reputable healers in a multiple of healing modalities using guidance as an integral part of their healing work. I had always known of a few of these people, but I hadn’t made the connection. In each case, I would always think the use of guidance was only peculiar to whatever particular healer I was studying or reading about. Like a freak occurrence or something. It’s kind of like the exception rule. Some people can keep their belief system in tact, even in the face of information directly to the contrary, if they look at the new information as the exception and not as the rule. Everyone from the most elite scientists to the biggest racists have been guilty of this “logic” at one time or another and of course some more than others. I personally think Americans (and Brits) are prone to this fallacy more than others simply because there are so many exceptions in the rules of the English language. But that’s another subject altogether.

The next thing I began to realize was that there are people in practically every profession using guidance every day. Some people even use it in their play. And many don’t call it guidance. They might call it intuition. They may say it’s listening to their gut.

Well, I’m running out of time for today, but I wanted to get this discussion started for a few reasons. First, I wanted to re-dedicate my efforts to keeping this blog current and up-to-date with whatever I’m most currently working on in respect to my path of energy healing. And guidance is the topic I’m working with right now. But also and possibly more importantly, this is a message to my guides, thanking them for all they have taught me so far, and inviting them to take a larger role in my life and with my work in energy healing. More to come…