8/23/12—Knowing Where to Seek Healing

Today's Draw: Umiarkowanie (Temperance) from the Tarot Maroon. Is there someone, someplace or something in the natural world that is undeniably healing for you? Are you the source of anyone's or anything's healing? What stories do you have of natural energetic exchanges that resulted in physical or emotional healing?

I've been dying to tell you the story about Magick Moonbeam, my dog, all week of Energy Week. And, at first blush, this card doesn't *technically* allow me to do it, but I'm going to do it anyway, darnit! I'm going to bend the meaning to suit my purposes! This is my blog! MINE, I say!!!! *collapsing under the stress of holding a good story in too long*

OK. So Temperance is about balance. But it's also the card of alchemy...the blending of one thing into another to create a third thing. When we temper steel, we harden it. As a diabetic, when I temper a measured enjoyment of carbs with high fiber and protein, I sort of stabilize the impact having, say, an ear of corn, will have on my blood sugar. So that, in itself, is an energy exchange...between the fiber and protein and the sugars. 

Anyway, this stabilizing effect is the window through which I'm going to walk to tell the story about my baby girl dog. And it also occurs to me my boy Kizzie plays a role, too. More on that later. 

I know reiki, which is a form of energy medicine. Energy medicine is becoming more and more mainstream as doctors like Dr. Oz speak of it benefits. Basically, a trained practitioner uses their energy to help heal you, either physically or emotionally. I've heard stories over the years of broken bones snapping back into place, cancers being healed and the healing of issues that modern medicine has failed to heal. Personally, I don't think anyone should rely on energy medicine alone. Or modern medicine alone. I think tempering one with the other is your best bet. 

Magick knows where to look for healing.

I'm not a good reiki person. I never practice or try to develop it. But once you have been "attuned" to the energy, it's inside you. Anywho, there is one situation in which I occasionally whip out my reiki skills...when Magick Moonbeam has hiccups. I cure them for her immediately simply by putting my hand on her belly and calling up my reiki energy. She's always very cooperative, but up until the other day, she has always allowed the healing to come to her. 

So the other morning I'm laying in bed, half awake, half asleep. One arm is cuddling Magick while the other is just flopped to the side, palm up. And Magick gets hiccups. Without missing a beat, she stands up, walks to my other hand, positions herself above my palm and squats down so her belly is touching my hand! I couldn't believe it! Like the hummingbird in the card, she knew where her source of sustenance came from and went to it—instead of waiting for it to come to her!

She knows my energy "heals" her. She knows which hand I use. She knows what part of her body I send the energy to. Her ENERGY seeks my ENERGY to heal her. She knows both intellectually and energetically that there is a tempering effect that passes between us. 

Kizzie's healing energy just radiates from his body. 

So that's my story. And now the Kizzie thing. Kizzie is the big furry one. And he has amazing healing energy. I'm sure if you hooked me up to monitors, you'd see many energetic systems in my body—beyond just blood pressure—change significantly for the better when he's in my arms. 

My motto with Kizzie is "a cuddle a day keeps the doctor away". So we schedule the snuggle time. But I also seek it out whenever I'm upset. I can't even describe it, but the effect is instant and entirely energetic. He has an amazing tempering effect on me. And just like Magick knows where to go to heal those hiccups, I know where to go when I'm feeling stressed. 

Someone once gave me a really good example of how living beings, especially humans, are programmed to heal ourselves and others. She said "when you bump yourself or get a scratch, what is your first instinct?" Well, our first instinct is to place our hand on the boo boo until the initial pain goes away. As children, our mother's kiss on a scratch would somehow make it feel better. We are instinctually programmed to use our energy to heal...to heal with touch. 

So what about you? What tempers you? What energy do you seek out as a guaranteed source of healing? If you're not really sure, start observing. It may be an energy exchange between you and nature or the ions in a hot bath with salts. And what are you a source of healing for for others? These energetic connections, while not widely recognized in the mainstream, are nonetheless real and integral to our health. 

4/3/12—Respecting Your God

Today's Draw: Page of Wands from the Mary-El Tarot. Do you think having faith in God makes people stronger and more successful? When you look at your daily behavior, do you treat ALL others as you would have them treat you, or is this a practice reserved only for the few, or only for those who return the favor? Do you think Christ's forgiveness makes it OK for people to ignore his teachings and his examples?

Today's card talks about the power of belief and how faith helps people pursue and achieve their divine purpose in life. No doubt most of us would agree with that statement and each of us would identify our own version of the higher power as the one to believe in and the one to have faith in. I know I did when I first read the statement.

But then, just for kicks, I googled "celebrity atheists" and look at what I found. Richard Branson, Lance Armstrong, Bill Gates, Ricky Gervais, Howard Stern, Julianne Moore, Woody Allen and James Cameron are on the list, to name a few. Those aren't "kind of" successful people. They're not people without a view of their "divine purpose". They're people at the very top of their game. They're philanthropists. And they don't believe in God. Any god. 

I saw a blog today by a Catholic woman who felt her child had been possessed by something.  Turns out her massage therapist received a reiki treatment and infected her child with the devil. A reiki treatment. Given to a massage therapist. Who massaged the mother. Possessed the child with the devil. In the blog comments, others chimed in about the witchcraft performed by healers and the devil-worshiping rituals involved in becoming a reiki healer. 

Ignorance is everywhere. And, in my opinion, people shame themselves and their god when they perpetuate lies out of their own fear of the unfamiliar. 

I'm not writing about reiki today, but I will say this. There is no religion in it, there are no devil-worshiping attunements and the only god I've heard mentioned by a reiki practitioner is Christ and Christ's energy. And angels like Michael. And the white light of heaven. Though not all reiki practitioners are Christian, most have a healthy respect for Christ, his teachings and his healing abilities. Most healers I know give very freely of themselves to help people. To see them characterized in such a way is repulsive to me. It comes from ignorance and fear, not from anything Christ ever said about healers. In fact Christ tells us to "heal the sick" and says that those who believe in him, will do greater things than he did.

That said, what I am writing about today, though, is that it's time for the judgment and stereotyping and hating to end. Really, it is. And if your neighbor isn't willing to be the first or even go along with you, do it anyway. We ALL fancy our beliefs to be the right ones. We ALL think our faith and love gets us ahead in life. We ALL have misconceptions. We ALL judge. But only a few of us will be the leaders who will stop the madness and actually follow the teachings and examples of Christ or Buddha. Why not make yourself one of those leaders?

Here's how you do it. If your god is loving, love. If your god is forgiving, forgive. If your god is accepting, accept. If your god is inclusive, stop rejecting. And if your God is humble, stop acting superior. And if you don't have a god, love, forgive, accept, include and be humble anyway, just because it's a gracious, cooperative and loving way to move through this world. Sure, we'll always disagree on things and have opinions and whatnot, but it's time to stop fighting over god in god's name, and using his teachings to justify fear-based, ignorant, hateful, marginalizing, judgmental, nasty and holier-than-thou behavior. That's just disrespectful. 

1/31/12—Healing With Energy

Today's Draw: The World from Tarot of the Sidhe. Have you ever had an energy healing session? Do you believe that humans can transmit universal healing energy to each other? Would you be surprised to learn that 15% of hospitals in the US offer reiki and Dr. Oz says it's his favorite alternative medicine?

The World card is about completion and wholeness...the ending of a successful journey. In this particular one, Emily Carding's image evokes the perfection and wholeness of God, nature and the universe. It speaks to a divine force or power that has come to you as a result of your spiritual journey. 

The spiral that overprints the tree in this image gave me an immediate impression of something. The same spiral is on the backs of her cards and, even though it's upside down and has more turns, it's very evocative of Cho Ku Rei, which is a symbol used in Reiki. 

Reiki (RAY•key) is a form of energy healing that channels universal life force and concentrates it for use on healing others. While this may sound like BS to some of you, it's becoming more and more accepted by the mainstream medical community. Dr. Mehmet Oz is probably the most well-known proponent of reiki and one source I found said it's now being offered in about 15 percent of hospitals nationwide, including the Cleveland Clinic, Children's Hospital in Boston and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Some of you may know the phenomenon better as "laying on of hands". Reiki is similar, but without all the drama.

Whether your issue is physical or emotional, reiki can be used to help heal it. Before anyone gets their panties in a knot, no responsible reiki practitioner or doctor would recommend you stop traditional care in favor of reiki. Reiki is usually used as a supplement to medical care. 

Reiki symbol Cho Ku Rei.

In a typical reiki session, you would visit a practitioner in their home or office, lay down on a massage table, then the practitioner would move their hands over parts of your body (usually not touching you) and send you the healing energy through their hands. What you would feel would most likely be intense heat wherever their hands were. An interesting note to reiki is that it works whether you're in the same room with the practitioner or not, so it can be transmitted over distance.

You become a reiki practitioner by being "attuned", which just means that a reiki master gives you the energy. There are three levels of reiki attunement, Reiki 1, Reiki 2 and Reiki Master. It is a skill/ability that is passed down, person by person, and there is great reverence and ceremony in the passing down. It doesn't belong to any religion, but it can be considered a spiritual practice. It is certainly always approached with that sort of reverence and respect.  

So, back to Cho Ku Rei. There are many symbols reiki practitioners use, whether they picture them in their head or draw them on their hand with their finger, to address different circumstances. And the Cho Ku Rei symbol is like the light switch that turns the power on. 

There are many different kinds of energy medicine other than reiki. Each month I receive two energy healings, each of which is intended to help me maintain an emotional and spiritual balance...like recharging my spirit. One session is a form of reiki and I get that over the phone, the other is a form of music energy healing I receive in person. No matter how I feel entering these sessions, I feel much better upon leaving them. They do shift my moods. And the one I do over the phone....she used to live locally, but moved. There is no difference in the effect now that we do it over the phone.

Magick Moonbeam swears by reiki for curing hiccups.

I've never used energy healing for a physical issue, but I once took a class from a man who had his own form of energy healing that he taught. I was more skeptical back then, so I asked him to do something I could feel. He put one hand behind me at my ribs and when he put his other hand in front of me, I SWEAR it was like he threw a baseball through my gut. I didn't imagine it. He sent a ball of energy through me so intense I could not only feel it, but I could tell you its size and shape. It made me catch my breath. Since then I've become attuned to reiki and have taken a few other energy healing classes. 

Anyway, in this past weekend's post, I said that once you create a space within you to allow for new possibilities, you begin to see and recognize things you didn't know were possible before. If you're not familiar with energy healing, maybe this is a good time to consider it, along with other alternative healing methods like acupuncture, guided imagery, meditation or therapeutic massage. If you're not getting the results you want from traditional medicine or treatment alone, it may be worth the try.