It’s been a very long week. My two-year old son has been sick.  It started with a 103+ degree fever that left him lethargic, turned into an upper respiratory cold and ear infection that made him hyper-emotional and all-around uncomfortable in his body.  The primary thing that settled him all week was laying cuddled in bed with his neck propped at just the right angle in the crook of my elbow.  Of course there were plenty of times where I was jumping up and down trying to find the right remedy to calm the coughing or to appease his endless requests for juice, something to eat, a different kind of juice, something else to eat (because of course nothing tasted good), etc. etc.  I’m sure all parents know the kind of week that I am talking about.  Exhausting and heartbreaking.

A couple of nights ago, at the end of the day, as I we laid down in his bed together – with my arms around him and his body at just the right degree of uprightness to stop the coughing so he could fall asleep – I let the extreme tiredness begin to creep into my body too.  However, my mind wouldn’t stop running around in circles with different things that I could possibly try tonight, or tomorrow, that would help him to feel better and get through it all the faster.  I was totally stuck in my mind and that “doing” mode that it’s so easy to get caught in.  As soon as I became aware of where my mind was on auto-pilot, I said “Wait, you know what to do.  This is what you DO, little miss healer.” I was immediately brought to the concept that everything is energy.  I got out of the thinking loop and went to the place that every cell in my body knows as reality and where my mind, with a lot of training, has learned to trust.  I asked myself “What is the way to heal this, energetically?”  Well, with LOVE of course.

I instantly accessed that place deep inside my chest – that is so easy for me to find these days, unlike 4 years ago when it was nearly impossible to find that frequency within my body no matter how hard I tried – and began to consciously work on letting it expand outwardly.  I visualized it filling up my whole body, begin to spread around my son, and then all through the room.  I held that feeling and intention for as long as I could.  Whenever my mind started to wander I would bring myself back to that place.  Soon, he was sleeping calmly and I crept out of the room.

As we laid down together tonight I immediately brought myself into the love space and felt grateful.  While my son was falling asleep, I contemplated how amazing this life is and how what we really are here to do is learn about the healing energy of love.  Why is it so healing?  Because it is our true source and when we are connected to that there can be nothing amiss.  I also let the fleeting thoughts come in about how love can cause so much pain, such as what we experience during a heartbreak (loss of relationship, death of a loved one, etc.). I was immediately aware that this is ultimately healing in it’s own way, and the souls we go through these experiences with are our greatest supporters (as we are theirs) in our spirit’s quest for understanding true love.  We experience pain to help us clear that which no longer serves us on our journey, just like a fever helps us to clear a virus that is affecting our physical body. Pain urges us to continue forward in our journey by demanding that we let go and move toward a more brilliant light – never ending steps on the ladder towards the highest love.  Experiencing darkness so we can truly see the light.

When my son uttered “mommy love you” as he drifted off to sleep I felt a surge in that energetic space that I was holding us in and immediately felt validated.  Perhaps I’m doing something right on this current journey that I’m on – otherwise known as the great love lesson called mommyhood.  Happy Mother’s Day to me!

Every soul we cross paths with has a reason for showing up in our lives. We encounter people and situations to help us grow and evolve. For anyone who has ever had a pet they know that this holds true for those furry creatures that we share our time and space with.

I have personally been blessed with some very special pets that have been amazing teachers. I’d like to share a journey I took with two amazing little chihuahuas. It starts when I had an undeniable urge to get a chihuahua puppy. My partner at the time thought I was a little nuts since we were both large dog fans. When I just couldn’t squelch the desire, and he finally tired of the begging, he agreed to explore the possibility saying, “I know you have very strong intuition and if there is some reason it is telling you to go down this path, let’s see why.” Little did we know what kind of  journey we were about to embark upon.

After some time searching, and not a whole lot of luck, for an adoptable pup at a humane society and calls to every puppy ad in the paper we finally received one sole return call. The man had one puppy left from a litter of 3. When we looked at the photos online it didn’t fit the “perfect picture” we had painted for what we wanted, but after such a long search and this being the only result that returned, we agreed to make the 2 hour drive the next day to meet the dog.

The entire night I couldn’t sleep. I was stressed that this wasn’t a good idea. We couldn’t really afford to buy a puppy – and I would much rather adopt one from a humane society – and besides that, something was just nagging at me. In retrospect, I now recognize that feeling as some resistance, that I was already aware of on some level, to the huge amount of personal growth I was about to emabark upon.

When we arrived at the man’s home the next day it was love at first site – is true that our wishes always come back a little different than we had envisioned.  Besides, how could you not be immediately enamored with a puppy, any puppy, the size of a tennis ball. He was so soft, cuddly and sweet. As we went outside to “discuss amongst ourselves” whether or not we should take the little guy home my partner, who was a lover of wine, said “His soft coat reminds me of the smoothest glass of pinot I’ve ever tried.” Um, yea. How can you say no to that? On the drive home I remember locking eyes with this little guy and being instantly in gratitude that he had come into my life.

We decided on the name Diesel.  I was in a bit of shock at first with how hard it was to care for a puppy. I remember thinking one day, in frustration, “What was I thinking? It’s like having a baby!” And I wasn’t exactly ready for that. However, amidst the challenges of potty training, finding someone to watch him when we went out of town, etc. an intense love for this little creature quickly grew.

Fast forward to when Diesel was 9 months old and we started to notice that he was sleeping a lot more than normal. A few more days go by and he starts shaking and whining. We took him to the vet and they didn’t think it was anything other than feeling a little under the whether. We continue to helplessly watch him not be comfortable in his body, have little appetite and sleep away the days. Then one Saturday afternoon, while taking him out to the bathroom he collapsed in the hallway. The doctor at the emergency vet noticed some swelling in his joints and they wanted to keep him overnight in order to stablize him and run some tests. It turns out he had juvenile onset of immune-mediated polycystic arthritis. An auto-immune disease similar to rheumatoid arthritis. This was very rare for dog, especially a chihuahua, to get. The news felt devastating, but in retrospect, it was a perfect unfolding of events.

We started him on pain medication and steroids, which I knew were not going to be good for him in the long run – but they seemed to be the only thing that made him comfortable and bring some life back to his sweet little personality. I was always someone interested in alternative modes of healing and I became obsessed with researching non-traditional methods to help him. My passion for healing was more intensely sparked than it ever had been before. I had always, in the past, flirted with ways that I could become a healer but I never followed through with any of them. Now, I had this little creature depending on me to find help for him. In my research and experimentation which included, homeopathy, pet psychics, healing crystals, science and consciousness conferences,  meditation, recommendations from friends,  theology schools, books about clairvoyance, etc. a syncrhonistic chain of events began to unfold. It led straight (although I couldn’t see that clearly at the time) onto my current path and helped me to embody my gifts as a clairvoyant healer.

Diesel passed away just a year after he came into our lives. I happened to be on the road at a Science and Consciousness conference when it happened and didn’t experience his passing in the physical. When I returned, I was suffering in my sadness and decided to take action and enrolled in a class called “How To Heal Yourself”. That ended up being a life-changing decision for me. I know Diesel had come into my life to help me heal myself – and in doing so showed me how to heal others.

A month after Diesel passed on there was one especially sad day for me. That night I had a clear dream about him playing with a small white, happy-go-lucky dog. This little creature manifested in the physical the very next day. I saw him in the paper, and again, it was love at first site. We called the breeder and they told us that dog was no longer available, but they had others.  I couldn’t tell you why, as I was still very much attached to the idea of Diesel and felt somewhat like a cheater, but I was driven to go take a look. When we arrived the little white dog came bursting down the stairs and seemed thrilled to see us. The man thought it was odd that this normally shy dog, was jumping so excitedly all over us. He had intended to keep the pup for himself, but he couldn’t deny the connection.  And that was it – he was mine. Again, driving home I locked eyes with this little man and felt something move inside of me. I couldn’t help but observe the simple physical differences between this dog and Diesel.  Diesel was a dark brown dog and this one bright white.  As I often like to think now, you can’t have the light, until you’ve experienced the dark. Wow, what a metaphor I was living!  As I welcomed “Q” (the letter that was formed perfectly on his back with two cute gray spots) is for Quantum into my life, it was inevitable that more growth was on the way.

A couple of months later I decided to move more in the direction of my dreams. I got offered a job in Santa Fe, NM working with children in an afterschool program. Although not in a healing capacity, it would be the perfect next step in the direction of my long-term vision in working with kids. I moved with 10 days notice and dived right into a new way of life.  I felt so happy and free. Thank you Diesel. You had come into my life to show me the way into a lighter, brighter, path.

Prior to moving I had continued my self-healing training at a center in Boulder, CO and was just about to drop into their advanced Clairvoyant training. I left without attachment, thinking,t “Oh well, done with that, I’m not really psychic anyway.”

Ha, boy-oh-boy, what did I know?

To be continued …

“How can you ever worry when you have seen your soul – your strength, your beauty, your golden wings. Jump into the abyss and you will fly.” - Deepak Chopra.

I came across this tweet on Twitter today. It is a basic concept that I have embodied with heart and soul for many years now, however the way Mr. Copra phrased it on this day has struck me particularly hard because of how it is worded in a manner that paralleled a dream I had the night before last.

It was a very intense and clear dream. I was the passenger in a car driving on a beautiful, scenic and windy road. The driver was not recognizable to me in my consciousness, but I know she was a friend. In the back seat, my son was strapped into his carseat content and happy. We came around the corner to an amazing landscape of stark white snow and a wide open lake lay below the cliff in front of us, completely frozen over. Everything was icy-white with underlying tones of earth-brown. We were in awe and the driver said, “See, isn’t it beautiful?”. Just as I was about to agree, the road suddenly ended and we were catapulted off the cliff, headed straight into the icy abyss below us. I was struck with this immediate knowing that we were not going to survive. I right away had the thought that I needed to use my spiritual tools, most importantly energetically grounding myself and my son. It was instantaneous, this surrender and knowing that everything as I had known it was about to completely be gone. The sense of calm that came over me as I acknowledged this was surreal.

I began the imaging around the grounding of our physical bodies as we were simultaneously crashing into the rocks below and quickly plummeting into the icy water. When we entered the water it began to have a golden glow. Then, all of a sudden we were rapidly being sucked into this beautiful golden light and it was as if we were speeding through a luminescent, multi-tone, golden tunnel – just like a high-speed tram. It kept occurring to me how amazing this was, and it wasn’t scary at all. I was excited to see what would happen next.

Next, I am on the shore of that same lake, a shift of seasons later because all the snow is gone and everything is mud-brown, like it often is in the spring as the winter snow starts to melt. I am accompanied by one of my close friends from college, and he and I are going to start searching the shores of the lake for the car and our bodies. He pointed me in the direction towards the cliff I remembered cascading down, and he set off in the other direction in case the wreckage had been carried downstream. I remember thinking how odd it was that I was searching for my own body, and the scene of where I had died.

As I began my quest I came across these giant machines digging into the hillside, scraping the cliffs away and completely changing the structure of the valley the lake was held within. The machines were having a hard time doing their tasks, as the landscape was very set into place. They were gyrating and getting stuck as they worked, but also relentless in their tasks – creating a terrible mess as they went. I quickly got into this state of panic that I would never be able to find myself (my old body) because if these huge machines couldn’t navigate their way and were just making things less and less recognizable, how in the world would I be able to get around – let alone find any parts of myself that might completely be buried or hidden underneath the water.

Wow, can you start to see all the millions of hidden meanings within this dream?

I remember finally coming to a resolve that it was okay, and that I didn’t need to find the old parts of myself. I wasn’t losing anything by letting go, and I knew that everything was perfect right there in that moment. I realized that it was perhaps a waste of energy to continue looking for those old pieces of myself. Ones which I had, actually, quite peacefully let go of when the time had come. I went to find my friend to tell him we could stop searching. I had everything I needed right there – my spirit was in tact, I was refreshed, happy and healthy.

During the dream I was trying to consciously figure out what had happened between the two scenes.  What I came to, was that it was as if I had woken up in this place vibrationally below where I had been – above on the cliff being an enlightened state, among loved ones, where I could see the beauty in all, and below being back in the physical world, with an old friend, and a bit of chaos that was causing some resistance and fear within me.  It had the thought that it was like I was returning (as I dived off the cliff above) to help others find skills, and new ways of seeing the world, that I had already learned about. I enthusiastically, and without fear, had come to help people navigate the new landscape that was quickly being changed by things much larger than us (in this case, the metaphor is the machines). I told my friend that I had lots of tools to help people do this.  Now fully aware of my “wings” and with a new sense of duty, I had an understanding and a certainty that I could stay (energetically/vibrationally) above what was happening around us, be in charge and help everyone through the changes.

My interpretation, in a nutshell: Things are about the change for me, in a very big way. It’s time to let go of everything as I know it. I no longer need to search for, or fear, old parts of myself. I have tools to move forward, and it is my time to reach further out into the world and empower people with self-healing abilities that will help them as the energetic, moral, and structural landscape of the world shifts. As I jump into that abyss, with calm certainty, I will undoubtedly take flight. And I can easily find calm within that awareness, and allow myself to take the leap.

Stay tuned for changes to come!

A regular practice in my life has been remembering to consciously breathe. Yea, yea I’ve never actually forgotten to take those simple breathes that supply oxygen to my cells – but doing it in a very intentional manner is one of those things that was actually shut down during my childhood.

When I was younger, I clearly remember some of the adults in my life taking big exhales during times of stress, and being the empathic child that I was I quickly absorbed all the “yuck” they were exhaling as if I were an extra absorbant sponge. As one might guess, it didn’t feel so good. I remember at one point making a conscious decision that I would try very hard never to make noise when I breathed so as not to affect others around me.

Fast forward 20 years and I quite frequently found myself feeling my body all locked up, headachy, stiff, unenergized, etc. It took me several years to realize part of why I felt so terrible was because my breaths had turned into shallow inhales, and only when absolutely neccessary. Eventually, I finally made the connection that the decision I had vividly made when I was a child, to take silent breaths, had turned into something so much more. I had completely pushed any consciousness out of the way I was feeding my body what it needs to support not only my cells, but also my spirits’ ability to connect into my physical being.

When I started my meditation practice and began taking classes at the Center I would frequently hear the teachers taking loud intentional breathes to incite the students to do the same. This was something I resisted, even then, sitting in meditation giving to no one other than myself. Once I began thinking about being a teacher I remember thinking “Yea, but I’m not going to take those loud breaths for everyone to hear, I just can’t do that!”

During my clairvoyant training our class was going to have a group breath session led by Juli Somers, and I was in so much resistance to it that I actually, unconsciously, manifested a 102 degree fever and had to miss class. Once I finally started to put things together I realized how much I dreaded allowing myself to release during intentional breaths, especially when there were others around, and I decided to schedule a breath session with Juli. This was an event that changed my life. These sessions, where one releases whatever they are holding at an unconcious level, via guided and intentional non-stop breathing for an hour, quickly became very addictive for me. I utilized this form of release throughout my pregnancy and am so thankful for how it helped me to move through things that I was working on during this time.

Even today, as I understand how important the breath is for the mind, body, spirit connection’s health, I still find myself holding on and resisting those glorious lung movements when things get frantic. So, daily I am trying to catch myself when I feel my chest contracting and take a pause to take a deep breath in and then loudly exhale.

Unlike when I was a child surrounded by those wise adults who knew that they needed to purposely breathe to work through their stress, but unwise in the knowledge that they were blowing it right into my path, I strive to breathe in an intentional manner. I utilize my energy awareness tools, to ensure that I am not expelling what I am releasing to those around me who might unknowingly absorb it, as I did when I was a child.

My intentional breathing has now become something that actually evokes delightful giggles from my son. Hooray for breaking old patterns! Ahhhhhh…..

This is an interesting summary of a transition I seem to be going through lately – I love the analogy:

Down below the surface of a quiet pond lived a little colony of water bugs. They were a happy colony, living far away from the sun. For many months they were very busy, scurrying over the soft mud on the bottom of the pond. They did notice that every once in a while one of their colony seemed to lose interest in going about with its friends. Clinging to the stem of a pond lily, it gradually moved out of sight and was seen no more.

“Look!” said one of the water bugs to another. “One of our colony is climbing up the lily stalk. Where do you suppose she is going?” Up, up, up it went slowly. Even as they watched, the water bug disappeared from sight. Its friends waited and waited but it didn’t return. “That’s funny!” said one water bug to another. “Wasn’t she happy here?” asked a second water bug. “Where do you suppose she went?” wondered a third. No one had an answer. They were greatly puzzled. Finally one of the water bugs, a leader in the colony, gathered its friends together. “I have an idea. The next one of us who climbs up the lily stalk must promise to come back and tell us where he or she went and why.” “We promise,” they said solemnly.

One spring day, not long after, the very water bug who had suggested the plan found himself climbing up the lily stalk. Up, up, up he went. Before he knew what was happening, he had broken through the surface of the water, and fallen onto the broad, green lily pad above. When he awoke, he looked about with surprise. He couldn’t believe what he saw. A startling change had come to his old body. His movement revealed four silver wings and a long tail. Even as he struggled, he felt an impulse to move his wings. The warmth of the sun soon dried the moisture from the new body. He moved his wings again and suddenly found himself up above the water. He had become a dragonfly.

Swooping and dipping in great curves, he flew through the air. He felt exhilarated in the new atmosphere. By and by, the new dragonfly lighted happily on a lily pad to rest. Then it was that he chanced to look below to the bottom of the pond. Why, he was right above his old friends, the water bugs! There they were, scurrying about, just as he had been doing some time before. Then the dragonfly remembered the promise: “The next one of us who climbs up the lily stalk will come back and tell where he or she went and why.”

Without thinking, the dragonfly darted down. Suddenly he hit the surface of the water and bounced away. Now that he was a dragonfly, he could no longer go into the water. “I can’t return!” he said in dismay. “At least I tried, but I can’t keep my promise. Even if I could go back, not one of the water bugs would know me in my new body. I guess I’ll just have to wait until they become dragonflies too. Then they’ll understand what happened to me, and where I went.”

And the dragonfly winged off happily into its wonderful new world of sun and air.

Doris Stickney (1982)

It’s coming up on my own personal annual holiday, one that I lovingly call “Pull Your Head Out of Your Arse Day”. I decided to recognize this annual day several years ago when I was reflecting on the odd “coincidence” that I happen to of had two car accidents on the same date. The first was when I was in High School and the second one was 7 years later.

In retrospect, I can see they both occurred around times in my life where a major transition was about to occur – but I was wanting things to stay the same and completely ignoring the little signs that I was being given to nudge me in a new direction. So what did I get instead? A big-ole-whammy (of a car accident) that forced me to change; and the fact that I had two incidents where this happened on the exact same date is more than simply coincidence. Perhaps it’s even so that I could be here today, telling you about this holiday of mine.

I have become a big fan of noticing the coincidences that spring up in my life and using them as synchronistic signs to guide me. Hopefully, taking note of them before things get to the point of needing as big of a “wake-up call”, or what I like to think of as a push in a new direction, as a car-accident. The more we can recognize and act upon even the simplest of those “Wow, what are the ODDS?” incidents the more we begin to be in the natural flow of our lives.

Syncronistic signs can come in all shapes and sizes – anything from feeling particularly strapped for cash and receiving a free cup of coffee at your favorite morning shop to running into an old friend that you haven’t seen for years right in the middle of New York City. How we interpret and utilize the sign can totally vary depending on our state of awareness at that specific moment in time, and it is often times easy to completely miss them. However, the one thing that I do know it is that the Universe is designed to carry us along our path and no matter where we get hung up on a rock in the endless river of our source energy another little push or pull will be provided to help get us moving again.

Not too long ago, I was in a situation where I was going to be pushed in a direction that I wasn’t so sure was a good idea. I prayed to God for something to get me out of it, and minutes later I was presented with a pretty big “Are you kidding me?” kind of coincidence that could have been a very EASY out; however, I didn’t recognize it in that moment and I was instead agreeable to continuing on the path that I had been resisting. In retrospect, I found myself regretting that I didn’t notice the coincidence was in fact my sign from God as a way to alter the path. However, it doesn’t really matter which direction I chose at that moment because there are lessons to be learned from the course things are on now. I believe there will be more signs and forks in the road that will continue leading me on my path – in the same direction I’ve always been headed – back to aligning with myself.

I encourage you to dismiss the notion that there are any bad “accidents” cooky “coincidences” or “wrong” choices – everything happens for a reason. There is even a something behind why you are here, at this very moment, reading this article and newsletter. Something to ponder as you flow through this wonderful thing we call life.

I recently had a dream where I was invited to attend a private meeting with many of today’s great spiritual leaders. The gathering was held in someone’s home and before things got started we were all sitting in the living room sharing what we were each going to speak about during the meeting. When it got to be my turn I was a little caught off guard, presuming I got to partake by simply listening to all the goings-on, and I said “Uh, I wasn’t aware that I was going to have to present anything”. Shock and disbelief from the entire room. I quickly chimed in, “But, that’s okay, I’ll just make it up in the moment.” A flood of relief came over everyone as there seemed to be acceptance with that answer, and it was quickly on to the next person. Throughout the dream I had that feeling – you probably know it – where, as you are taking a nap and just start to wake up your body feels all tingly, relaxed and all around euphoric; but your head feels all numb, you can’t quite wake up and are tempted to roll back over and continue sleeping.

What does this dream mean to me? Well, I took it as reinforcement that I am starting to awaken to my role as a spiritual leader, and the essence of what that will look like, in this lifetime, is just starting to manifest into my physical reality. When I catch glimpses of it through my teaching, doing psychic readings, energy work and meditations I feel amazing, my heart sings and it’s a general state of serenity. However, I’m still in that awakening phase where I’m often tempted to return to my old ways of being, and it’s oh-so-enticing to roll over and go back to sleep.

This shows up in many different ways within my life, especially in the form of self-created blocks or “excuses” to avoid exactly those things that DO feel so good as I start to come out of my cocoon. Sometimes my heart aches to know what is beyond right here in this moment; and the evil co-conspirators, the ego and my survival instincts, start to get in the way by telling me that I’ll never make it going down this path and I must switch courses by going back to what I already know. As I continue to let go of my personal demons, such as lack and persecution, while increasing my ability to connect more deeply with my spiritual knowingness, I must remind my self that there is only the now. As long as I continue to do the things that inspire me, from moment-to-moment, I am one step closer to finding my eyes more open. All will be revealed in it’s own time, and not a second sooner.

I sense that all of humankind is being given opportunities to free themselves of past-time ways of being in order to become more authentic and true to the Self. Whether it be the loss of a job that had no meaning, the letting go of relationships that don’t allow personal growth, or being confronted with other challenges rooted in the ego we are all being asked to find trust within the change. As we go through these challenging and dark times, together, we are awakening for a brighter day. All we have to remember is: make it up in the moment, that’s where the knowing can be found.

Has anyone else noticed the domino effect going on? It seems like it is just one thing after another these days – whether it be something on a global level such as the economy, or to something on a more personal level like communicating about challenging issues. It’s as if one bit of news leads to another and another. And for some reason there seems to be a shadow on the positive side of everything and the hard stuff is sitting in the wide open sunshine. The doorways are being opened for people to have the opportunity to admit those keep-in-the-closet-ego-type-things like “I don’t have any money” or “I have a problem with you”. Boy-oh-boy, I am constantly being given opportunities, at what seems like an accelerated pace, to face my demons, come to the truth of it and take action; and I am given chances over and over until I actually heal it within myself by making a shift that is inline with my spiritual knowingness.

How I perceive this is that we are at at time of immense change – a cleansing – on the planet. What goes in must come out. So all of the greed and ego that we have lived in for hundreds of thousands of years is now in reverse. We are experiencing it all, on a very intense level, as we work to rid ourselves of this methodology. On a higher, spiritual level, all of us have agreed to move into a new time here on earth – one in which we are starting the work for now, but may not even see in our current incarnations because there is so much releasing and healing to do. Eventually, everything will be less focused on the material and ego, and revolve more around our true-selves: love and light.

I’m bringing this up to remind us, especially myself, that every
hardship that we are currently experiencing is an opportunity for
healing, and most importantly, growth. If we can be present with what it is that seems so “hard” and try to live through it as the observer, set on neutral-release, we will be carried on the tides of change bringing us to the shores of a whole new existence. By learning techniques to become conscious in the cleansing of our old ways we will only help to propel and enhance the energetic vibration of this unavoidable shift. Just like a magnet we will attract the energy, innately found within each and every person, that aspires to do the same. There is no better form of community service at this time than to simply take care of yourself, as spirit, on this journey.

However, there is always that pesky little thing called resistance that makes it so hard to simply move through the stories as the observer, release the core of it, and tackle the next one. Well, we are all human afterall, and that is what we have known up to this point. Resistance is going to come up even more for us presently because it is connected to all that stuff we are now reversing out – it is our ego’s way of fighting against the change.

I urge all of us to be aware of what we are going through, try to release the resistance and attachment, and open up to what will be presented next. Now is the time to embrace universal spiritual principles such as grounding, having energy awareness, utilizing intuition and regularly practicing meditation techniques to connect to, and honoring, our inner-selves. Ultimately, helping to bring physical and spiritual knowingness into alignment.

Meditation doesn’t have to mean something esoteric or be some sort of practice that is out of reach or glossed over by the general public. Just as yoga has gained in popularity amongst the masses, so to can Meditation. It is basically a tool to help bring one back to the moment – free of past or future thoughts. The power of meditation for children is being recognized across the country in schools and other children’s based programs. Fun experiential sessions are being developed for children that teach simple, psychologically empowering, tools to help build a strong inner foundation to support all of life’s challenges and opportunities.

In an example of these sessions, everyday imagery is introduced as something kids can spend time visualizing to facilitate the release of thoughts and emotions that don’t feel good; help to set their energetic and emotional spaces to peace; and to serve as tools to draw upon in situations for proactive, rather than reactive, responses. Ultimately, helping them to gain coping skills, raise self-awareness, and increase personal power in recognizing and handling life’s tests. Another example is the the provision of a set-time each day where children can practice conscious breathing as a way to help them focus the mind on one simple, refreshing, act for themselves.

Meditation can empower children with lifelong skills to: quiet the mind; form practical awareness of how their energy affects others; gain understanding of how outside influences affect their energy and emotions; increase healthy behavioral choices thru reliance on inner resources; grow to maintain individuality yet thrive in groups; learn to stay in, and handle, the present moment with effortlessness; foster peace internally and externally.

Stay tuned for more articles on the progression of , and research into, children’s based meditation programs!

“It’s a true gift to have a body” is something that I have often heard over the years. Even though I could grasp the concept of coming here as a spirit to have physical experiences, often times I would struggle with really feeling the ‘gift’ aspect of it, especially when dealing with some sort of physical or emotional pain.

It wasn’t until recently, when my son was born, that this door was blown wide open for me. Throughout my pregnancy I felt connected to his beautiful spirit, but was a little bit in the dark about what it would be like to witness it within a body. Once his physicality came into my eye’s view it was amazing to me. I marvel at how I could have done this with basically no “know-how” what-so-ever. It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t have to figure out the science of how to put his little body together because I surely would have duped it up somehow. I have never been a science genius. All I know is that there is this amazing – tangible – being and he got here by my complete surrender to a higher knowing in the Universe. And, by the sheer gift of ME being in a body, I was able to ‘pay it forward’ to an old friend who I’ve likely known in many other lifetimes.

When he snoozes on my lap I love to lay my hand across his chest, where he will promptly rest his small hand on top of mine, and feel his heart beating. This constantly puts me right into a moment of wonder and awe. I can feel the tiny rhythm – actually very huge in the fact that it is pumping life through his beautiful body, which is really just a house for a spirit to have a lifetime of experiences. The heart is an incredible thing, not only in all of its physical properties and duties, but also in its relationship to the ability to feel and promote love – one of life’s most important components. I somehow took part in creating one of these magical organs for this special person that I am coming to know.

When I watch this wise old soul try to master his new little body I make the connection that we struggle with our ‘vehicles’ right from the start, and the sheer beauty of being able to see it through a mother’s adoring eyes gives me a new appreciation for all that we go through in life. Spirit within the body, and the gift of that opportunity is now quite apparent to me. I am grateful to be receiving this greater level of understanding from my new little one.