This reminder is so helpful, and Gangaji (gangaji.org) transmits the message so beautifully.  As always, I am interested in how this is useful to us, in how it may be applied, and in what that might look like in day-to-day life.

In one example of how this works, we can so easily get caught up in the minute details of life – all the to dos, the comings and goings, the stress, the joy, the sorrow, the triumph – that we loose perspective, we think we are these happenings, and we become defined by them.

When we are defined by the details of life, we become attached to how these details look and feel. We want our lives to be ‘happy’ and ‘good,’ and we become upset when our lives are ‘sad’ or ‘bad.’  We are judging our lives, and so we are judging ourselves. When life is good and easy, we are proud; we feel we are doing something right. When life is bad and hard, we judge this as ‘wrong’, and become hard on ourselves to make it ‘better.’ We are caught in a cycle of pain and suffering because we are identifying with being good, which doesn’t last forever, or being bad, which we judge as wrong.

I quote the words above to highlight that these are words of judgment that are not widely treated as such. Though we use them in objective declarations, they are in fact words to describe subjective qualities. If this does not resonate with you, consider the feelings of anxiety and excitement, and pay attention to your body the next time you feel either. The physical sensations of both emotions are quite similar, though we judge the former to be ‘bad’ and the latter to be ‘good.’

What if, in a moment, we could notice we are judging a feeling, and rather than let that judgment stop the emotion, just allow ourselves to feel?  We are sad and so we cry – we let the tears and the sobs flow, and notice that relief comes from allowing the flow of energy.  Can you remember the first time someone told you not to cry? Perhaps it was someone who was uncomfortable seeing you in pain, and so they had you stop. You learned in that moment that it was not ok to cry, that it was wrong to feel what you were feeling.  As adults, we have the opportunity to give ourselves the freedom and permission we perhaps never had as children: emotional freedom, freedom from judgment, freedom to explore who we truly are and what we truly love.

And so we come full circle back to Gangaji’s message. Let us give ourselves the freedom to be, without judging or being attached to what it is that we ‘be.’  And as we ‘be,’ let’s ask, “who is this be-ing,” or “who am I.”  Experiment with letting go of the labels, which cause you to judge, which in turn cause you suffering.  (I am a successful [read: good] attorney.)  Play with the idea that you are the awareness of that which you are aware of.  As Gangaji says, “Let all self definitions die in this moment, let them go, and see what remains.”  And above all, enjoy and enjoy and enjoy, because whatever the true nature of reality may be, enjoying it is great way to experience it!

Healer and former faculty member of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing (BBSH), Jonathan Bessone writes:

“As it was explained to me, tens of thousands of years ago, hunters would sweat out as much as possible and then smoke themselves prior to going out hunting. It was a method of disguising their scent as a predator. These sweating and fumigation rituals gradually became associated with a wider definition of ‘purification’. The sweat lodge and sauna evolved out of these neolithic (or earlier) practices. Smoke containing various plant oils does drive away or confuse bloodsucking insects, why not vampires? Sage, in particular, has alellopathic qualities – it inhibits the growth of other plants near it. You could say it is a plant with strong boundaries. Assuming you use a plant for smudging, your personal relationship to the spirit of that plant also comes into play. The same would be true of a mineral, such as salt, or, uh…soap. In a larger context, smudging and incense burning [are] symbolic actions which normally have multiple layers of meaning at different levels of reality. Symbols, used with conscious intention, are immensely effective in the astral world. Smudging accesses visual and olfactory cues, as well as the kinesthetic cues of the action itself. The olfactory, in particular, is powerful because it links directly with the limbic brain, strongly associated with memory, as well as our chakra/endocrine system. So when you smudge, you are accessing multi-sensory memories of all past experiences of smudging, perhaps event the morphogenic field of all of the smudging rituals throughout history and pre-history.”

Amazing, thank you Jonathan!  For more info and to link up with Jonathan, click here.

Using Salt to Clear Your Field

Other invaluable advice was on the use of salt as an even more powerful dislodging tool.  Healer, and former dean and faculty member at BBSH, Dean Ramsden (to link to Dean’s awesome and informative site, click here,)  shared the following:

“Smoke from some vegetable products like sage can help clear a room, but I don’t find them as close as effective as either salt or running water of some kind, if you are looking to clear lower Astral influences. For native traditions where salt is scarce or overly valuable (like plain First Peoples, or Native Americans) sage or sweet grass can help a lot, but NaCl [salt] remains the champion of Astral clearing substances. Salt seems to disrupt the etheric boundary tension that allows lower astral to attach to living beings, a little bit like a mild electric shock. Add in a good ritual, or powerful intention, and throwing salt at the lower astral will beat a sage stick or incense any day of the week. Additionally, Magnesium Sulphate salts [Epsom salt] pull a lot of astral gunk out of our system, as the magnesium is absorbed into the cells and slowly “ejects”lower astral out of the body. In a nutshell: NaCl is for hard core, instant results, and MgSO4 for deeper, more long-lasting results.

Supermarket salt has lost some of its potency sitting in Aisle B. Plus, adding iodine to it cuts the effectiveness considerably. Ideally, you make your own from sea water, or – failing that – Sea Salt from a small health food store. But it depends how much astral work you are doing, of course. When I was teaching at BBSH I washed my hands in Sea Salt at the end of every day, or we had the Teachers burn Epsom Salts and use the blue flame it emits to dislodge the gunk, after Astral Healing work. But, in a regular healing practice situation just make sure you have a long shower after work (running water disconnects the lower astral from you, again by changing your etheric body’s electrical charge).”

Such great information, thank you Dean!

How to Clear Your Field with Salt

• Bathe in Epsom salt
• Dry rub pEsom salt on your body in the shower before you get wet
• For a more spa-rific experience, make your own wet scrub with salt and sesame oil to use in the shower

How to Clear Your Room Using Salt

Please use caution with the following method.

• Create a solution of Epsom Salt and 70% alcohol in a small pan with a lid.  Coat the bottom of the pan with salt and pour 1-2 capfulls of alcohol.
• Holding the pan away from anything flammable, light it with a long match, or throw a small lit match in the solution.  The flame will be blue or non-visible, so handle with care!
• Walk around the room, allowing the flame and salts to draw in lower-frequency energies.
• Clear the space until the flame is out or until you put it out with the lid of the pan.  Dump salt into the sink and rinse the pan.

Do you have other methods of clearing that really work for you? Please share!

Though they are different, I use creativity and productivity almost interchangeably, because when we are creative, we are productive. How are you going to articulate 2Q trends in Japan as they relate to fund performance? There are as many ways to write an investor letter are there are to depict a tree on a canvas.

Let Go, Plug In, Let Flow

If you are tired of struggling with the creative process, it’s time to design a pre-creation ritual: a series of actions that stimulate the senses and get the blood pumping. Just as vocal chords and muscles are at peak performance when warmed-up before use, creativity is more readily accessed when we take a few simple steps before diving in. This needn’t be dramatic or overly time-consuming: the fifteen or thirty minutes you take to do this could save you a day of unproductive suffering.

#1 – Let the River Run (Body)
Creativity is a flow of energy, and when we are easily creative, it is because that flow is running abundantly through our body. So check in – are you feeling the flow? How does your body feel? The first step in this process is to be honest about being stuck. Are you uninspired? Have you been staring at a blank screen for too long? Stop what you are doing and step away from your medium.

To paraphrase Mantak Chia, chi is always running through the body like a river, sometimes it flows strongly, other times it drips along. Rather than forcing chi to move, we can focus on releasing the blocks in the body that are impeding the flow. To do this we need to move and stimulate the body. What are some fun and pleasurable ways for you to change the pace? Maybe it makes sense for you to get physical – take a quick jog, dance to your favorite song, “shake it out” in your office. Maybe you prefer more specific stimulation – a quick self-massage with energizing essential oils, or dry-brushing your body to awaken the skin and lymph system (start at your appendages and brush in toward your heart). Are you a coffee person? Explore using caffeine as a tool – assess whether caffeine will provide a needed spike in energy, or tax your nervous system. I’m a fan of Yerba Maté tea: the caffeine acts as a tonic for your muscular system rather than a stimulant for your nervous system.

#2 – Get Electric (Spirit)
Once your body is open, use the energetic power tool of grounding into the core of the earth through your first chakra and plugging into source energy through your crown chakra. For step-by-step instructions on plugging in, see my blog entry “Happy Living and the Importance of Being Easy.”

#3 – Active Creation (Mind)
Your body is open, your spirit is flowing, now let’s address the mind. The mind can be our worst enemy and harshest critic, stopping us from doing a project before we’ve even started. Our destructive self-talk is any number of, “it’s not good enough,” “don’t expose yourself in that way,” “you’re not worthy.” There is nothing about this conversation that is helpful, and we need to start to create despite it. To get into action, put proverbial pen to paper and just start talking. Whatever your medium, give yourself freedom to doodle, do it sloppily, bang around with it. As you get the flow going, you can see the expression manifesting and eventually refine it. There’s no sense in editing something that does not yet exist.

The Theater of Life

Along with the above actions we can take to stimulate the creative process, I find it can be helpful to keep the following points in mind, as life does not get put on hold because we need to be productive.

#4 – Even at the Center of Fire there is Cold
It’s a Prince lyric, and I think it’s a great metaphor for the yin and yang of life. As light is defined by the absence of it, so there is contraction and expansion, and ebb and flow. Where are you in this cycle? Did you just experience an expansive period of productivity and activity? If so, honor the energetics of this dynamic and allow for the integration of everything you just experienced. Are you trying to move mountains today when your energy is going towards your big event tomorrow? We inhale, and we must exhale in order to breathe again; there’s nothing to judge in this dynamic, there’s nothing wrong here.

#5 – Compassion is Key
Though we may have an understanding of why we are stuck, we probably don’t like it. When we enjoy what we do, we want to do more of it; we want to see the finished product out in the world. And if we don’t enjoy what we do, then we at least feel satisfaction or relief in a job done. The self-awareness piece is this: can we love ourselves even when we are not producing, can we have compassion past the “shoulds,” can we sit with ourselves in the stillness of no activity. This takes some discipline, but it’s a useful skill: it’s so painful to be at war with oneself. (For a step-by-step, see “Freedom through Self-Love.”)

#6 – Sacred Vessel
It might help to think of yourself as a vessel for divine creation. When we create, we are gifting the world with the manifestation of the specific creative energy that comes through us individually. From this perspective you can relax, receive, and play with how the divine wants to express itself through you.

And finally, because inspiration can hit in any moment, be prepared! Have a notebook nearby, keep a recorder by your bed, make notes on your ipod during your morning run.

Do you have something that helps you to get into the creative flow? I’d love to hear about it!

Happy Creating!!

“…if we can change either the magnetic field of an atom or the electrical field of the atom…, we literally change that atom. We change the stuff that our bodies and this world are made of. And it appears that the human heart is designed to do both, to change both the electrical field and the magnetic field of our bodies and our world, and it does so in a response to the emotions that we create between our heart and our brain.”

The first of two main aspects of the work is addressing discomfort, illness or dis-ease in the physical body with direct energy work. The body is surrounded and interpenetrated by an electromagnetic energy field, and over the course of my four-year training, I acquired a toolbox of skills that enable me to work within this field to effect change in the physical body. The human energy field is comprised of interpenetrating layers of varying frequencies that vibrate at a higher frequency than the body. Because of this, disease or illness can be detected and interacted with in the field before it manifests in the body, and we are not limited to treating the symptoms as they land in the body.

An overly simplified illustration of how disease in the field might manifest in the body is in the building of a table. You need a table, and so you think, “I need a table.” The more you want a table, the more you think about it, the more you are motivated to make it happen. At some point, you sit down and draw the plans for the table, and then you go to the store to buy materials. Finally, you find yourself on your living room floor following your plans and building a table. And then, what was once just a thought has turned into a surface for your coffee. The disease process can occur similarly – the more we create imbalance in our lives (and avoid clearing it), the denser the imbalance becomes until it manifests in our bodies. This leads into the second main aspect of this work, which is bringing conscious awareness to why we feel unbalanced, unhappy, or ill.

To show how the disease process works, we’ll start from the beginning, of life. As children, we are full on. We are bright shining lights, living fully in and from our essence. Our own divine source-energy is flowing through us, and it feels so good. We are uninhibited, we are in pleasure, and we are in love. Love is within us, all around us, and we want to give and receive love to and from everything in our world. And then something happens, an event where our life force is cut. In a minor example, we drop a glass and are reprimanded by a parent. In a major example, a parent leaves the home as a result of a divorce. In that instant of trauma, we stop breathing, and in doing so we disconnect from our life force. An energetic block that consists of the pain of the trauma is created and stays in the body until we release it, oftentimes decades later.

Unexamined, the energetic block can eventually manifest on a physical level. The body may hold or compensate for the lack of flowing energy; organs may be affected, as they are energetically undernourished; the structural system of the body may be affected as the muscles are strained. Areas of the body may be recruited to do jobs other than their design; physical symptoms of the imbalance appear.

The block can also manifest emotionally or mentally. In the case of the child of the departed parent, he might long for an intimate relationship, and yet he is always the one to end things with his partners. What he doesn’t see is that his inner child is running the show, always ensuring that he finds irreconcilable differences with every partner so that no one can ever get close enough to hurt him like he was hurt when he was a young boy.

Healing of the body, mind, and soul happens when we are willing to explore our symptoms and why they have appeared, whether they are manifesting as a herniated disc or a miserable love life. When the original trauma happens, the pain can be so intense that it feels life threatening to the child, and so we make a decision in that moment to never feel that pain again. It is a decision that subconsciously informs our behavior as adults until it is brought to light. Rather than feel that pain again, the child decides that, for example, he will never allow himself to be vulnerable with another person, or that he will run his energy in a way to avoid or compensate for the block, and we live as adults like this. The error in this programming is that it actually just creates more pain: by keeping us away from people we feel isolated and lonely, by compromising the flow of our energy we have physical pain.

As we explore the symptoms with the help of a healer or facilitator, we dig deeply and uncover the original trauma. We then have the opportunity to feel the feeling of the original wounding, which moves the block through the body and allows the energy to transmute back into our own original life force energy. As an adult, the feelings of the original trauma are not nearly as painful or overwhelming as they are to the child, and releasing this blocked energy feels like a huge relief. It is in this way that we get back lost pieces of ourselves, it is in this way that we come more fully into self-possession and our own personal power. This is the process of re-connecting with our own life force, allowing us to feel ourselves more fully, to be in the juice of life.

As we shine light on the blind spots of our psyche, we empower ourselves to take back our lives. Patterns that have eluded us can shift, we can create what we want rather than feel like the victim of an uncontrollable life. Most importantly, we allow shrouded parts of our essence to shine again. We feel relief; we feel pleasure coursing through our body again; we are inspired and inspiring, and attract more of what we want into our lives.

Blessings on your path, everyone, and may we all have the courage and support to uncover what we don’t know we don’t know about ourselves.

When I started working for myself, I became aware of two fundamental problems with this way of operating. The first was that it wasn’t highly effective: my projects, though they ultimately got completed, suffered a series of fits and starts and setbacks that left me frustrated and exhausted. The second problem was that I was in constant physical back pain. Was there a way to work that didn’t cause chronic tension in my body? Was there a way to find some sort of flow or current in my work? Was there a gentler yin to the forceful yang that I had known all my life?

Ease and flow is available to us. In fact, I see it as somewhat of a birthright. We have energy coursing through us at all times; we deserve to know how to tap into and utilize this energy for our benefit. And when we do tap in, and when we feel the pleasure of this current in our bodies, we have the opportunity to walk through life creating from inspiration, meaning that what we do is an authentic expression of that which lights us up. We begin to create outside of survival mode. We construct a pro-active rather than re-active reality, and at that point, we are experiencing the Creator within. Hello bliss!

For some of you this will resonate, you know this place, you are doing this already. Others may be sure that none of what I just said applies to them: there is simply no room for ‘inspirational authentic expression’ within or after an exhausting day at work. This may be true: your job may not be particularly creative or inspiring to you, and there may be little energy at the end of the day for anything other than crashing on the couch. But joy is still available to you. You can still be easy about how you do what you need to do; you can still bring a sense of flow to your tasks. Cultivating this might be particularly useful if you feel regularly mentally and physically gnarled by stress.

So how do we start to let go, to welcome ease and fluidity into our daily functioning? Let’s start with the body. If we can be easy in the body, then our mind will follow (picture yourself post-massage). If we can be easy in the body, then we are moving through life pain-free. With the absence of pain in the body, we are able to be present with What Is, and that can be a pretty delicious place to be. What will you create from there?

#1 – Just do it
The fun thing about cultivating something as potentially abstract as ‘ease’ is that you can practice it anywhere. So just do it. When you notice you are holding in your body, let go. Clamping your jaw on the subway? Release it. Furrowed brow? Let it go. It doesn’t have to be dramatic, it can take one second. The beauty of practicing this way is that it’s not a ‘to do.’ Once you decide that you want ease in your life, you will automatically start to notice when you are not easy. It might be all the time, that’s ok, just take it moment by moment. And if you choose not to ease up in that moment, that’s ok too.

If this sounds like a joke and ease is a needle in a haystack to you, there’s help. CranioSacral specifically targets unwinding in the body. Energy work, bodywork, Contiuum, yoga, take a class or see a practitioner. Give yourself the gift of knowing what relief feels like so that you can find and re-create it for yourself.

If you have chronic pain or tension due to an injury or structural misalignment, one-on-ones with the appropriate practitioner is a must.

#2 – Move through inner space
Play with deliberately creating more ease in your body and start to expand the places that already feel good. Find a place in your body that feels pain free, spacious. Gently breathe into it. Without forcing, allow it to expand. Witness the movement with your inner eye. Imagine that this expansion is light-filled from within. Sit and watch and be with what emerges. You may want to move your body according to where the breath, light, and space are traveling. You may have some sounds or words for what you are experiencing. Get your amoeba on.

The body can start to unwind as you allow it to express itself through sound and movement. You may be surprised to notice that your chronically tense spots feel better.

#3 – Access the flow
If you can use the tools above to get your body to a place where you can sit comfortably for five or ten minutes, then you can access your own divine flow of energy. Simply put, this feels awesome, like a surge of power flowing through your body. The steps to do this are at the end of the article. Try them, practice them, and if you need more help, come to one of my workshops.

#4 – Allow it to work for you
From here you can start to use ease and flow as tools. If you don’t have any experience with this, once you start playing with energy and tapping in, you’ll know what I mean. It’s simple, and profound. Allow the flow of your energy to inform creative projects, or call it in when you are feeling stuck and need to be productive. Relax into it and enjoy what comes.

You have options in how you operate – where do you need structure, and where do you need fluidity? Where do you need to stay the course, and where do you want some flexibility? It’s not about having or doing one over the other, it’s about finding what balance works for you, what makes you most productive, what has you be most happy.

What is offered above is just one way, and it is only the beginning. As we know, there are many ways, and each of us will have our own amazing experiences with bringing into our lives what we want and need. It will look different for all us what, which is part of what makes life so rich.

Happy exploring!

Accessing your Cosmic Flow
- Connect to your dan tien (approx. one inch below your belly button)
- Imagine a lazer line of light emerging from your dan tien. Ground this all the way into the core of the Earth.
- As you connect with the Earth, allow her loving energy to travel back up and fill your body. Breathe and enjoy.
- Staying grounded, bring the lazer line up from your dan tien through the center of your body up and out of the crown of your head.
- Connect this upward energy into Source energy (big bang, Creator, Spirit, God).
- As you connect with Source, allow this energy to surge down into your body (ideally grounding this back down into the Earth).
- Breathe and enjoy. You are a vessel channeling divine Earth and Source energies.
From here you can sit with the project at hand or a blank slate and allow your creativity to flow.

Self-love: the practical application of it has been on my mind, in my world, in my heart. I am interested in the tools of transformation for their use in making this human experience a better one, and self-love is a biggie, like keystone or lynch pin status. A constant theme for many of us is how to feel better, even just normal, in the midst of the physical and vibrational shifts occurring in the world. Feeling grounded, centered, and balanced is a daily, sometimes moment-to-moment pursuit. We use external resources like food, herbs, oils, exercise, loved ones, and healers (helpers, coaches, therapists, body workers) to care for ourselves. Intentionality, however, goes a long way, and the efficacy of these tools is exponentially augmented or diminished according to our inner landscape. How are we treating ourselves as we sing to our ayurvedically-balanced oatmeal? Can we be gentle and loving as we stir in the cinnamon, or have we succumbed to the inner jackhammer? No amount of honey will compensate for treating ourselves like crap.

A common way many of us abuse ourselves is in the pursuit of perfection. As many of us know, overachievers can be most demanding on themselves. While there is nothing wrong with having high expectations, habitually demanding the most and the best of oneself can take its toll: it is physically and mentally exhausting, it is stressful, and it is a set up for failure. While the mind might believe it is keeping us safe by pushing us to do or be the “best”, it is really just reinforcing an old program, an unworkable code, one often bestowed upon us by our parents.

The reality is that perfection is unattainable, and if we believe we have attained it, it is un-maintainable. The cycle of perfection is a nasty dilemma. As the mind interrupts a task to demand perfection, you take yourself out of the task to try harder to do it, so you stop doing in order to try. As you continue to try, you get further away from the doing, which further frustrates the self that is striving for perfection. At some point in this process, trying hard affects the body – your muscles tense, you stop breathing, your energy stops flowing, all of which serves only to take you further away from any satisfactory ‘doing’ of the task. In order to break this cycle, one must step out of it completely.

Enter self-love – the cultivation of loving kindness towards…you! Love is a powerful energy, in fact, it is the gas in the engine of universal creation. We are generally used to and comfortable with giving love to others, sometimes even to the extent of our own depletion. While giving love to another can be easy and pleasurable, doing so for oneself can be challenging. We might feel like we don’t deserve it, or perhaps we just don’t know how to do it, but becoming the recipient of your own love is one of the quickest ways to transform a situation, especially if that situation has you pitted against yourself. The energy of self-love is the proverbial pin in the balloon, releasing the pressure of the situation and allowing you to come back into center, presence, and contact with yourself. From this place, anything becomes possible once again.

And so I encourage you to give yourself a little lovin’, especially if you tend to find yourself in the midst of negative feedback loops and unable to break out. Much of this work is simple, but not easy. Just getting to a place where we recognize the dynamic at play is half the battle. If we can take pause from there and make a different choice, we are on our way, indeed. Feel free to play with the steps below, and find the way to your own heart that works for you.

#1 – Stop the insanity
If you have found yourself in a downward spiral, stop what you are doing. If you can, change your physical location, even if you just shift a couple of feet. If you can do neither, take a pause; even in a meeting something like this is acceptable.

#2 – Release the demand
Recognize the demand and let it go, just drop like a hot potato whatever inner chatter is placing pressure on you.

#3 – Ground your energy
Bring your energy down through the center of your body and connect to the core of the Earth. Just this exercise does so much to calm and center the body and bring it out of fight or flight mode, allowing us to regain presence.

#4 – Let love flow
Feel love – for yourself, for a favorite person, for a beloved pet – and as you let it flow, imagine that the current scoops around and comes back to you, like you are pointing a finger at yourself with your love; let this sink all the way into the back of your heart. The imagery of the toroidal field of the heart is helpful here – imagine that your love is riding on that current and cycling back into you.

#5 – Receive
Be easy in this moment and receive your own sweetness. From this place, have fun noticing what is new or different. What has shifted as a result of treating yourself with loving kindness? What is newly available to you?

In humble sharing and with love and gratitude, I bow to the divine in you.

NYC is a powerful town; it’s a city that attracts ambitious, driven, brilliant people. Entertainment, fashion, art, music, business, so much of what happens in these industries happens in NYC first and then influences the rest of the world. So what happens when there’s a pervasive and cohesive social agreement for love, compassion, and consciousness in the city? What will the love current of New York City feel like? How will it affect the rest of the world? Will people look at New York and truly say, “Well, if they did it there, it’s possible anywhere!”
I’m inspired, and staying tuned.

We all know: our beloved Earth is re-balancing in awe-inspiring and disastrous ways, governments are being toppled and reformed, countries attacked and occupied. Everywhere we look we experience destruction and rebirth: we witness devastation and hope in alternate breaths.

As we walk our path, we hum along with our palette of introspective work and off-the-mat yoga. We’ve all got the stresses, challenges, and thrills of our work in the world, our relationships, our bills. Dammit, we are always looking at ourselves, and happy to be doing so! Recently, however, life has just felt harder to live, maybe less hopeful, more toxic. Less easy, more smackdown.

Take comfort in the knowledge that you are not alone. And more importantly, if you think all of this is yours, consider that it is not. Everyone and everything is connected, and if you are sensitive, you are feeling the strain of that connection when emotions like grief, fear, anxiety, and loss are amplified in the world. If you are introspective, you might take this on as some discomfort of yours, some ‘issue’ or ‘problem’ that is arising from within you to be worked through or healed as part of your personal process. This pain, discomfort, depression, toxicity – it’s not all yours. When we are empathic and tapped in, it’s easy to get swept up in powerful energies; it’s okay to feel them, and important to know how to let them go.

Steps to Sanity

Below are some tools that have been most helpful to me, my colleagues and friends, and clients. They may seem rote or obvious, but they key is 1) to do them, 2) to do them often, and 3) to do them with pleasure. For the sake of brevity, I listed powerful solutions in a few words without expounding upon them: I could talk for days about what a well-timed shower does for me. Finally, as a resident of the concrete jungle of New York City: I promise, these tools work.

#1 – Get Clean and Clear
Earth energies are dense, and we need all the help we can get down here. Make it a constant practice to clear your field and your space. Seriously, all the time. Use sage, use bells, use water. Essential oils work magic to lift your vibration. Immerse yourself in Nature. Take salt into the shower and do a gentle dry rub before you get wet, let the ions do the work of clearing any gunk from your field. Do any of this often – daily, multiple times a day. Let it go, let it go.

#2 – Support Your Body
The physical body is the gateway to the energetic body. Support both by moving your body in ways that bring you pleasure. Find something that feels good, that helps you wring out stagnant energy. Bounce around, twist and stretch, feel your muscles, let your jaw and shoulders release, breathe. I love yogaglo.com – $18/month and yoga at your fingertips.

#3 – Be with Your People
Where are your friends? Where is your community? Find them, hug them, sink into them, let them rub your shoulders. Dance with them, scream with them, laugh with them. See that you are not alone.

#4 – Trust Yourself
Start to become aware of the difference between the energy that is yours and the energy that is not. Be mindful of staying out of the latter. Do this by grounding your field: connect your tan tien to the core of the Earth and notice what it feels like to be centered within yourself, connected to the home we all share, be present in the here and now. If you don’t know how to do this or want to practice in community, join my monthly meditation group (April is all about pleasure, oh yeah!).

#5 – Get Support
Sometimes we’re in too deep. Sometimes we can’t see what we don’t know. Helpers, healers, therapists – the good ones are trained to gently bring these things to light and help you clear them. Go to one, and let them help you.

I send you love, blessings, and grace in these trying and inspiring times. May the force be with you.