Pixie Stevenson - Free Introductory Teleclass

Pixie Stevenson - Free Introductory Teleclass

How to Have Better Relationships and Live Life on Purpose. Learn why what you're wanting doesn't match what you're getting and how to begin to change it.

Weeding the Garden of My Mind « Enigma Wellness

Weeding the Garden of My Mind « Enigma Wellness

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Children Reflect Their Parents

Your child is naturally joyful. Your child is naturally tuned in to Source Energy. And as he is diving through and digging through contrast, it is natural that there would be some things that might disconnect him. Just don't let his disconnection then inflame your disconnection. Many parents have discovered that their children, for the most part, feel good when they do -- and the ornerier you are, usually the ornerier your children are. They are a strong reflection of the way you are feeling much of the time.

--- Abraham

Athletes, Injuries - My life, Really

Athletes are different birds when it comes to injuries. We're taught from the moment we play any kind of competitive sports to "walk it off". We endure pain on and off the playing field and the thought of not playing are favorite sports makes us crazy. Read more . . .

Can You See the Bigger Picture?

When people thought the world was flat, it wasn't that their thinking was distorted, (The data that they were collecting gave them that information.) it was that they were not broadsighted enough to step back far enough to see the big picture. And that's what we see with so many of you: You are so close to the reality that you are creating, that you sometimes can't see the bigger picture.

--- Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in San Francisco, CA on Saturday, July 24th, 2004

Low Back Pain

National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, just published an article on low back pain. The numbers are staggering! The article says that 4 out of 5 adults will experience low back pain at some time in their lives and it costs $100 billions (includes lost wages and decreased productivity) in this country. The article goes on to briefly discuss systematic reviews on CAM for LBP that include, but are not limited to: Read whole article . . .

Economic Problems and Compassion

This morning I read from the Art of Happiness by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D. I was searching for the meaning of compassion because in times of stress real or imagined, I know that compassion is the answer.

The Dalai Lama defines compassion as "a state of mind that is nonviolent, nonharming and nonaggressive. It is a mental attitude based on the wish for others to be free of their suffering and is asssociated with a sense of commitment, responsibility and respect towards the other."



The Dalai Lama goes on to say: "However, if people have compasson, naturally that's something they can count on, even if they have economic problems and their fortune declines, they still have something to share with fellow human beings. World economies are alwasy so tenuous and we are subject to so many losses in life, but a compassionate attitude is something that we can always carry with us."

Do you have compassion that can sustain you through good times and bad?

Photo from www.flickr.com by Jekate.
Creative Commons License

You Write Your Life

Don't you just hate this some days?

* * *

You are the vibrational writers of the script of your life, and everyone else in the Universe is playing the part that you have assigned to them.

Excerpted from the workshop in San Francisco, CA on Sunday, March 2nd, 1997

Our Love,
Jerry and Esther

Meditation & Appreciation

"That's why so many of us teach meditation. Because when you stop thought, you stop resistant thought. When you stop resistant thought, then you let it in. That's why we teach appreciation, because when you're in appreciation, you are not in the mode of resistance, and you are letting it in."

Abraham-Hicks, The Law of Attraction

Worry v. Love

You cannot worry about someone and love them at the same time. Most people mistake the emotion of worry for the emotion of love. They think that worrying about somebody means that you love them.

Abraham-Hicks

Receiving What You're Offering

Every being is always receiving that which is a vibrational match to whatever they are offering.

Excerpted from the workshop in Lincroft, NJ on Tuesday, October 15th, 1996

Our Love,
Jerry and Esther

Healthy Eating - Healthy Kids

A recent article on MedicineNet.com, Families That Eat
Together Serve Up Good Dietary Habits, compelled me to say a few words about nutrition. The article cites a study of 677 preteens and teens who were assessed and then assessed again five years later. The study found that youths who ate regular family meals experienced long-term benefits. Well, duh . . .

We as adults are largely responsible for the eating habits of our children.

Kids don't feed themselves. We feed them. More importantly, they model our behavior. If we eat junk food, they eat junk food. If we eat in front of the TV, they eat in front of the TV. If we eat processed food, they eat processed food. They pick up our likes and dislikes whether we turn up our nose at unfamiliar food or shovel food into our mouths with no awareness.

What are you teaching your children?

Photo by ccbarr.

Relationship Coaching - A Path to Clarity

Relationship coaching can help you find clarity about yourself, your behavior in relationships and how to improve them through the clarity of your example.

A bunch of weak people, even in numbers, aren't strong. Get a whole bunch of confused people together and see how much clarity comes out of it. In other words, you just can't add one more confused person to the pot, and expect to get any more clarity… One—standing outside of the confused group—who is clear, is more powerful than a million who are confused.

Abraham-Hicks

Excerpted from the workshop in Albuquerque, NM on Wednesday, September 1st, 2004

Vibrational Alignment

Never mind what-is. Imagine it the way you want it to be so that your vibration is a match to your desire. When your vibration is a match to your desire, all things in your experience will gravitate to meet that match every time.

Excerpted from the workshop in Boca Raton, FL on Sunday, January 12th, 1997

Abraham-Hicks

Joy Is the Purpose

You have been oriented that you must pay a price in order to get somewhere, and in the process, you’ve come to believe that getting there must be really important, therefore, it must be your purpose. And we say, but if you’re not getting to joy, then you’ve gotten nowhere. Joy is really where you’re going.

Excerpted from the workshop in Boca Raton, FL on Saturday, December 13th, 2003

Abraham-Hicks

McDonalds Meal Deal

A few days ago, I found myself on the way to the grocery store with an empty stomach. Rather than going to the store hungry and spending an extra hundred dollars, I went to McDonald's to grab something to eat. Sorry to break the myth but "yes" I occasionally eat at McDonald's and I am not a vegetarian.

At the counter I ordered a filet of fish, a small fry and a small lemonade. The woman waiting on me asked me if I wanted to make it a meal.

"Is it small?" I asked.

"No, it's medium."

"I just want a filet of fish, small fry and small drink."

"Would you like a meal?" She asked again.

Again I declined.

The next person in line was a darked haired man in his thirties. He ordered a filet of fish sandwich without the cheese, small fry and small drink.

"Would you like a meal?" the woman asked.

"No, thank you," he declined the offer of the larger meal at a better price.

The only remarkable thing about these events is this: that man and I were the only two people who had a normal BMI. Everyone else around us was at least 15-30 pounds overweight. Is that because we both ate filet of fish sandwiches? Are they the most nutritious low fat item on the McDonalds menu?

The answer is no.

Sometimes the secret to maintaining a normal weight is to resist the urge to take advantage of the better deal meal.

It's About Perspective

We are all one Energy Stream, but what makes the separations or distinguishes the differences is perspective. You are a unique and individual perspective.

Excerpted from the workshop in Los Angeles, CA on Sunday, January 31st, 1999

Our Love,
Jerry and Esther

Who Is that Pain in Your Neck?

When I was young, there was a saying, "You're a pain in the neck!" Believe it or not, some clients do come to me with a pain in the neck that has a name.

One woman came to me in severe pain. She couldn't turn her head from side to side. Not too far into the therapy session, she revealed that her neck hurt after getting into an argument with her husband and sleeping on the couch.

Years ago, I was at a party and did some impromptu work on a young man who had neck & shoulder pain. To me it was obvious that the mental and emotional worry about his responsibilities in life was hurting his shoulders. The pain in his neck was his mother, whom I had observed hovering over him and trying to direct the details of his life.

The last time I had severe pain in my neck is because I was mad about cleaning the guest bathroom. I was mad most of the day and went to sleep mad. I woke up the next morning and couldn't turn my head. It took three massages and I had to be willing to change my mind about the situation.

If you have a person in your life who is the "pain in your neck", the solution is not expecting that person to change to make you feel better. The solution is to change your mind and change your expectations of that person.

How to Be an Effective Parent

The most significant thing for a parent to contribute to anyone, is their own Connection and their own stability. An effective parent is a happy parent. An effective parent is a parent who laughs easily and often, and who doesn't take things so seriously.

Excerpted from the workshop in Albany, NY on Monday, October 1st, 2001

Our Love,
Jerry and Esther

Aromatherapy - Jasmine

Most people who come to Cedar Hill Massage love the scent of the tealight candles that burn softly in the waiting area and the treatment room.

The scent that fills the rooms is Jasmine. It's the only scent that I'm attracted to at the moment.

The tiny white blossoms are hand picked at night. Isn't that romantic. It makes me think of the Arabian Nights. It feels my home with a subtle exotic scent appropriate to the serene setting.

As it turns out Jasmine is a very therapeutic oil used in aromatherapy. It is also one of the more expensive aromatherapy oils. Jasmine's healing properties include:

• antidepressant
• aphrodisiac
• relaxes nerves
• lessens PMS
• menopause
• relieves muscle spasms

Jasmine is not only one of the more expensive aromatherapy oils, it is also hard to find candles scented with Jasmine. When I mentioned how hard the candles were to find to Kathy Moling of Law and Benson Old Country Store in Lithopolis. She special ordered them from Yankee Candles just for me to use in my massage therapy room.

"Eat This, Not That" - Book Review

"Eat This, Not That" is on Amazon.com's Hot New Releases List. It's the latest book on dieting and weight loss. This is my review of that book - sort of . . .

A friend of mine asked me if I had bought the book (which I haven't nor will I) and showed me her copy. I flipped through it briefly and was amused by its content. The one thing I liked about the book is that the pages I looked at reminded me of a well designed, entertaining website. They were bright, colorful with appropriate subheads and brief text. Just the kind of attention deficit disorder reading that I like.

After a few moments, I handed the book back to her saying, "I usually don't eat any of those foods anyway."

Here's my free "Eat This, Not That" advice:

• Cook your meals at home.
• Eat fresh, whole foods.
• If it comes in a box, don't eat it.
• If it's handed to you through a window, don't eat it.

The bottom-line on dieting and weight loss is that on a physiological plane to lose weight you're going to have to cut down on your calorie input and increase your calorie output. On the spiritual or emotional plane, can you fill the hunger of your heart with something other than food?

Do You Carry the Weight of the World on Your Shoulders?

"When you take the problems of the world on your shoulders, your body doesn’t feel good. It’s just that simple. Leave the problems of the world to the individual problem-makers of the world, and you be the joy-seeker that you are."

Excerpted from the workshop in Philadelphia, PA on Monday, May 3rd, 2004

Our Love,
Jerry and Esther

Neck Pain from a Mind/Body Perspective

Nine times out of ten the neck, back & shoulder pain that I treat with massage therapy and stress relief techniques is caused by mental stress or an old habit of thought.

When we carry other people around with us mentally and emotionally in a negative cloud of worry, sooner or later physical pain is going to follow. It's usually around the neck, back and shoulders. Even if the pain is made worse by working at computer all day, the underlying cause is usually worry.

Neck Pain

Louise Hay says that neck problems are probably caused by "refusing to see other sides of a question. Stubbornness and inflexibility." Too often we are unwilling to believe that there can be any other way than our way. We become unwilling to believe that "letting go" mentally and emotionally opens the door to true caring and unconditional love.

From that mindset our neck stiffens as we refuse to see the other side of the story. We become like a horse with blinders on who can only look straight ahead.

Sometimes during treatment sessions, the pain in the client's neck disappears before I actually touch her neck. Because she relaxed into her body and became willing to release the painful thought, the pain in her neck resolved.

You would not believe how many times I've treated clients for a "crick" in their neck caused from either sleeping on the couch away from their spouse or simply from going to bed mad.

Next post on neck pain: Who Is the Pain in Your Neck and What to Do about Him/Her.

*Photo by This Year's Love, Creative Commons License

My Life - a Snapshot

After finishing a coaching call this morning, I walked down to the barn to touch base with my husband and our 25 year old son.

When I peeked through the workshop door, I found them with their backs to me, their heads together and bent over a chain saw they had taken apart for maintenance. They didn't hear me and continued working as I watched them.

My heart swelled with appreciation of the moment.

Rather than disturb them with even the sound of a female voice in the sanctity of their space, I turned and walked back up to the house.

Bioidentical Hormones - As Seen on Oprah

One of my clients asked me what I knew about identical hormone replacement therapy. She said she had seen something on Oprah's website and thought it was endorsed by a doctor.

When I went home that evening I asked my Dr. Husband about bioidentical hormones made from organic sources. He all literally roared and snorted! "WHAT DO YOU THINK HRT'S ARE MADE OF?!" He roared. "Bioidentical isn't even a word in the medical books. It's a marketing term created by pharmaceutical companies."

Smart woman that I am, I backed off saying I hadn't researched it and would get back to him after I did.

Actually, the endorsement wasn't by a physician. It was by an actress, Suzanne Sommers. Oprahs site also addes information from Dr. Christiane Northrup:

"Dr. Northrup, author of The Wisdom of Menopause, helped navigate the HRT maze, breaking down the basics of menopause, perimenopause and bioidentical versus synthetic hormones. "'Bioidentical' means it matches exactly the molecular structure of the hormone that your own body produces," she said. "[Synthetic hormones are] made from horse urine and are natural for a horse, but they're synthetic for a human body. … It has completely different effects, [but] many women do well on these."

When I reported back to Dr. Husband, he snorted and roared some more. "They used to be made of horse urine. That's ridiculous. Originally, insulin came from pig urine. If you were diabetic would you refuse to take it?!"

Stop and think about it. There are no hormones that come from outside of your unique self that would not be synthetic to your body. Molecular identical or not, hormones from any source outside of you will be synthetic.

I'm not saying anything about conventional HRT therapy or bioidentical hormones. All I'm sayin is be aware and educated about who is telling you what so you can make informed decisions. Whatever you choose to do, listen to your body - listen to your heart.

Alternative Medicine & Health Insurance

This morning I received an emailed update from NCCAM (National Center on Complementary & Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institute of Health). The update included an announcement about a Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public that is being held in February by the Institute of Medicine. The meeting will discuss integrative medicine and its roll in patient-centered care and its role in patient's wellness and healing.

Many people are excited that NCCAM is there to do research on alternative and complementary medicine. Even more people want insurance companies to start covering massage, acupuncture, reflexology and other forms of CAM.

I have mixed feelings about it, mostly hesitant. Is that really a good thing?

As a healer, what I've noticed is that my clients who pay for their own alternative healthcare and take an active, responsible role in their healing, do better than the clients who refuse to get a treatment because their insurance company won't pay for it.

My other question is, "Do we really want the government and insurance companies involved in alternative and complementary medicine?" Sure, CAM providers would like to be acknowledged and be elevated out of the witchcraft, charlatan status but do we really want to jump through all the hoops that will be created by government and insurance company regulations?

The upside to all this is that government/insurance company involvement will set standards of education, training and care for CAM providers. The downside is that government/insurance company involvement will set standards of education, training and care for CAM providers.

One of the common characteristics of an effective healing session with a CAM provider is presence, connection and the flow of energy between the provider and the patient. How can you measure that? Who gets to decide the standards? How will healing energy be quantified?

Free & Easy Self-Care

Neck, back & shoulder pain is the most common complaint treated by massage therapists. The pain can be caused by some sort of trauma like whiplash from a car accident, but usually it's caused by the daily stress of working in an office environment in a sedentary position all day.

In an earlier post, I talked about my belief that chronic neck, back & shoulder pain would turn into fibromyalgia and that self-care could prevent a diagnosis of fibromyalgia.

One of the simplest and cheapest ways to begin self-care is to focus on your breath. Breathwork, breathing in deeply and exhaling completely with focus, is used in many meditation practices. You don't have to label it meditation. Just breathe.

It's free and easy.

Chevy Avalanche - Like a Rock

This is an ode to my husbands truck. It's a black 2002 Chevy Avalanche.

The truck (as it's called) used to be a shiny black, city truck. Real dirt had never been in the bed. The once pretty boy toy is now a working farm truck. Once I got it so muddy, the repairman had to wash the undercarriage just to work on it. Then they had to wash their garage.

Two years ago my husband missed an evil "S" turn on a country road and hit a utility pole. He didn't walked away without a scratch but the front end of the Avalanche was wrecked. He had to pull part of the bumper off just to get it to the body shop.

Last winter one of our girls got a Ford F150 stuck in the snow in our lane. My husband hooked a logging chain up between the two trucks and we dragged the Ford out of the snow.

This winter, everyone is snowed in again. Our daughter called because their power went out. My husband just drove twenty miles south to bring them to the farm.

Our Avalanche has been true to the old Chevy truck commercial where Bog Seger sang "Like a Rock".

I love our truck.

My Last Day At Fairfield Center for Health & Healing

Today was my last day at the Fairfield Center for Health & Healing (FCHH). I said 'goodbye' to some of the staff and some of my clients and assured them that I wasn't abandoning them. There are many good massage therapists at FCHH.

Although there were people who hugged me tearfully, when I walked out the door I felt such a sense of relief.

It felt like freedom.

When it's time to go; it's time to go.

Fibromyalgia - An Idea for Prevention

Fibromyalgia is a disease of unknown etiology. What does that mean? That means that "they" don't know what causes it. They do know symptoms can be triggered by stress.

My idea is that fibromyalgia is preventable.

Women are diagnosed more with fibromyalgia than men because women are the caretakers and the nurturers. Women are also more in touch with their emotions and spiritual self. I believe that people have cellular memory, especially women. Negative emotions in reaction to stress are remembered at a cellular level. This is especially true if the story of the stress is retold frequently.

Too often, clients come to me who have suffered with neck, back and shoulder pain for years. Usually, they're extremely stressed about someone or something in their lives. My idea is that if that pain in the neck, back and shoulders along with the stress that caused it, that it will eventually turn into fibromyalgia.

Preventive actions for fibromyalgia would include nutrition, exercise, bodywork and relaxation response training.

Please let me have your comments.