New Leaf Mentoring … new thought. new health. new life.

Posts tagged ‘trust’

The Hips Don’t Lie


A friend and I were recently talking about how the body manifests very specific aches and pains that always coincide beautifully with the emotional and psychological issues that are happening at any given time. Take for example the condition of Sciatica. Both my friend and I have had to deal with this issue from time to time in our lives. At times it is just a niggling annoying ache and at other times it is debilitating and crippling barely allowing for any kind of movement at all. So – yes, we did something that wretched our poor backs out of alignment, causing the sciatic nerve to become pinched as it travels through the hip and yes, we can take an anti-inflammatory along with alternating hot and cold packs every 5 – 10 minutes and yes of course we can and will do our stretches that open up the hip-joint and gently allow the pieces to all slip quietly gently back into the proper position eventually creating restored balance and relief of pain. But why? Why does this happen when you’ve done nothing out of the ordinary, and why is it that it is so damn frustrating? I know one thing for certain  – the hips don’t lie – and they like every other part of your body they have a story to tell!

When a body part isn’t functioning at it’s best there are always many parts of the story that we need to try to pay attention to and try to accommodate in the healing process if we want to get to the root of the problem. We need to pay attention to the details, specifically to the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of the issue. This is a truly holistic approach to health. When we approach any health issue from a whole perspective we come to know many of the details that will create awareness and most often prevent reoccurrence of the same issue. Mind you, that said, there are certain issues which do recur for us because they are our life issues. They are issues that we will continuely have to keep dealing with from many points of relevance if they are our life’s work. For instance a genetic disease, a chronic recurrent condition, or a syndrome that creates specific limitations that have to be considered everyday. Although the same principles apply, for now we’ll just talk about the daily, ‘accidental’, transient incidents that come and go easily without long-term ramifications. Like sciatica.

So this is how it works:

i) get your journal – that’s that book/pad of paper where you record all the happenings relating to your personal growth – this is a journal moment! Speak/write clearly and fast; not prettily. Do not edit yourself, say what comes to mind, use the vernacular that emerges do not worry about proper grammar, nice language or being politically correct – just call it as you see it. The words that spontaneously spill out of you have a truth all their own. For instance: ‘Sciatica is a pain in the ass! I can hardly move one foot in front of the other’ is much clearer when trying to get to the truth of the thing than saying ‘Sciatica is an intensely painful sensation beginning in the buttocks radiating down my left leg toward my ankle’. Your doctor might prefer this way for diagnosis but we’ve already determined what ails us physically, now we want to know the nitty-gritty of the thing!

ii) Identify all related information – take a look at the body part that is affected, what is the result in the functioning of the part due to the problem, how should the body part normally function and what is being restricted? What could you do before and what can you do now? How does this condition affect the way you live the rest of your life? What does it stop you from doing? What do you have to do to make it stop hurting? What does it permit you to have? In other words – how does it serve you?

iii) Now feel it out. What emotions are stimulated by the problem? Are you frustrated, angry, self-pitying, grief-stricken, beside yourself, worried, whiny? Are you being melodramatic? As you move your body – what happens to the emotions you feel? Move slowly making tiny deliberate micro movements. Pay attention – often there are unresolved emotions locked into old injuries that have never been released. The body will hold on to the emotion in those areas until the day comes when it’s time to release them. A renewed injury may serve simply to remind us to revisit the issue and get it gone! Be careful not to stuff away any emotion that may arise. Keep journaling – even through your tears!

iv) What do you think or believe. Notice your mental reactions to the emotions and to the pain you are feeling. Where do your thoughts take you? Do you tell yourself not to be stupid or weak? Do you listen easily? Does a memory suddenly flash into your mind of something you’ve long forgotten? We tend to live our lives in patterns and rituals – do you remember other times when you had the same experience? Did the injury or pain begin on the anniversary of something? I had a client once who suffered migraine headaches every year around the same time each Spring for approx 10 years- eventually it was discovered that they actually coincided with her mother’s death 15 years earlier. They had had a very unhappy relationship and there were many things that were left unsaid with her passing. After a very emotional outpouring of past resentments and betrayals she discovered that not only did she love her Mother very much but that she was also punishing herself for not having made amends before her mother died. This was her way of suffering in atonement for her guilt of not setting the record straight before her death. The migraines never came back.

I have had many clients over the years that start developing health problems after a certain age just because their parents and grand parents did. They unconsciously believed that there came ‘an age’ where you just naturally started to fall apart – after all they had heard it said millions of times. When they realized the pattern they were able to quickly re-establish themselves as healthy, vibrant and pain free. We are all programmed to believe certain things about our selves and our bodies from body image to function that are not necessarily true in real life yet we create conditions and circumstances that seem to validate the opinion. Learn to become really aware of what you ‘think and believe’ about yourself. Every pain has a story that hasn’t been told yet. Be patient with yourself and the story will reveal itself.

v) Let Love and Forgiveness flow. Every pain also represents a lack of faith in your perfection and gives credence to a weakness. Your divine nature understands you are perfect and accepts every opportunity as one in which to learn and grow. When we stop learning and growing we experience pain. Ask yourself what have I lost faith in? Why do I want to stay stuck in this moment rather than move freely forward? When we are in pain we have lost an ability to love ourselves in some measure. Ask yourself why? Are you willing to love yourself back to health? Are you willing to believe that you are worth loving as you are? Can you practice forgiveness and acceptance toward yourself. One client was experiencing recurrent bladder and urinary infections every few months for no apparent reason. After doing the steps above she realized that she had been ‘pissy’ to all her loved ones causing grief and hostility whenever she spoke. She was behaving this way because she had lost a sense of her own purpose and life direction and was creating small conflicts everywhere to stay distracted rather than face her own perceived inadequacies. Through love and forgiveness directed at herself she came to find an enjoyable path and she stopped creating painful infections and interactions.

The Truth Will Set You Free of Pain

Does this seem like a lot of work? – it’s not actually. Discovery of the truth really happens very quickly once you learn not to be afraid of it. When the ego can step down for a moment and not defensively protect it’s right to feel pain we can learn to really just get over it!

So Sciatica – well – it turns out it’s a matter of integrity – do you walk your talk?  As you are growing and learning are you still walking your talk? Low back issues are related to support issues and usually support issues related to money. Our hips are our gross motor functions on how we move forward in the world. Our knees and ankles are finer motor skills relating to manoeuverability but our hips direct our movement forward in life. When we have sciatica we are choosing to ignore a vital piece of our truth and usually are trying to push ahead or through a situation without considering the whole truth. Our conflict appears in our inability to take a step that is in harmony for our highest good or in alignment with our highest truth. Our sacrum represents the cradle of our life, our security and our core strengths, when we ignore our fundamental truths and are acting outside of our core truth we experience a mis-alignment which causes our bodies to shut down in pain. Usually it’s the feminine softer issues that are being ignored as the masculine energy power drives us forward toward a plan contrived in the mind. Depending on where the bulk of the localized pain is felt will give further clues, ie; low back relates to financial support issues, rear buttocks relates to ability to move freely, knees to choices and decisions, feet to ability to step forward etc. AND…It’s so damn frustrating because you KNOW intuitively that you aren’t living in your truth! There are many books available as fine resources to help you with clues – one of the best is Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life or Heal Your Body.

Generally speaking these types of problems are easily solved with self loving supportive treatments like, stretching – which gives permission to move safely, hot/cold packs, baths and wraps – for nurturing and contact, and just plain listening to what the body has to say about what ails you. The body doesn’t lie and it is intimately connected to all the happenings of your life. Every thing that has ever happened to you is stored in the cellular memory bank that is your body. With enough patience and self-directed loving kindness we can access our stories, belief systems and fears simply by listening well – just like you would for a best friend.

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Healing, Metaphysics

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Enter the Fool


I have a lot of friends who are fools – I mean down to the bone foolish. I love them.There is never a dull moment when the fool comes on the scene! Over the years I have come to cherish the fools and try to emulate them as often as possible. I have learned to not let appearing foolish stop me.

In the tarot the fool card signifies the innocence of mind that allows infinite trust in the universe and one’s God. Through the very energy of trusting we come to engage in life adventures that otherwise wouldn’t have been available. The fool teaches us to risk our normal conservative safe ideas for those a little more daring. He shows us how to traipse merrily towards the edge of reality instead of well back from the edge where most of our mothers would prefer we stay. He shows us how to release our critical judgments in favor of a taste of adventure.

It is the fools that guide us into tomorrow; they are the pioneers, the scientists, the inventors, the visionaries, the poets, the musicians and the artists. They are the dreamers with their faces pointed towards the heavens and their feet lightly dancing on the edge of all known reality. They see things differently and act accordingly.

It is only on the edge that a new reality can be created; it is where our vision and perspective is the clearest. Most people are too afraid to wander to the edge where a wrong step could prove disastrous. But the fool shows us that to dance along the edge of all that is safe, risking all that is dangerous, is where we find our truest essence. Here we will find our greatest capacity to love, to laugh, to trust, to feel compassion and to expand. It is at this edge where we come to understand our magnificent ability to connect with faith to the divine matrix of life. In this foolish place we learn that the landing area for the next step will be provided; is already there, in fact, even though we may not be able to see it.

So often I see people immobilized in fear, afraid to trust another in love and in business; so afraid that opportunities slide by. Too afraid to move out of their mundane lives, they choose instead to sit safely in their controlled predictable lives. When we only engage with what we can control we will continuously recreate the patterns of the past. While the past provides us with great memories and teachings it doesn’t offer us the opportunity to grow. Only stepping out bravely towards a new unknown will breathe new life into a wilting soul. The fool is not, however, about being reckless. It is about learning how to be in complete harmony with ones’ environment and being thus able to take advantage of opportunities as they present without fear of endangering ones self. The fool only appears to be reckless and careless by those who are over-cautious.

It is the inherent nature of the soul to seek expansion through experience. When we limit the possibilities for new experience we cause the soul to wither and fade. The soul is a luminous expression of vitality that yearns for new adventures, regardless of possible pain. Our soul knows that it came to life to live a plethora of experiences not just the safe and easy ones.

As we move through our days we will without doubt encounter a host of fears that threaten to limit our experiences. I challenge you to take stock of what stops you. How often in your day do you take the comfortable route, do the same old same old, and deny a new invitation preferring to sit back on the sidelines laughing at the fools having fun at the edge. Aspire to be the fool, little by little, inch your way towards the edge. Dare to peek at the life you could be having. If this makes no sense to you, make friends with a fool today, see the world through his eyes and see how light the world becomes!

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Lessons of the Tarot

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Be happy, go lucky!


Personally I lead a very quiet, ordered kind of life. It’s pretty peaceful, respectful and happy. I consider myself very lucky but that said I work hard at it and I learn a lot from listening to other peoples stories. I really believe in the saying ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ and it’s humbling to remember and remind oneself that what is in me is in you and in all living things. I don’t believe for a minute that the things that befall one unfortunate soul can’t happen to everyone equally including me. I also believe that I am equally as fortunate as anyone else. Universe is an equal opportunity provider and I’ve come to believe that the only thing that makes some people happy and some people so miserably unhappy is their outlook and approach to all the daily details. Shit happens – a lot, and to everyone. For some people though it just slides off and for others, well, it just sticks. Being happy and feeling lucky is a state of mind that must be cultivated if you want to experience it. Likewise being miserable, expecting the worse, being suspicious will absolutely bring you lots of experiences that reflect exactly that.

Lucky doesn’t just happen.  There are no mysteries in life. We live in a cause and effect universe, everything starts somewhere, and everything causes some other chain of events to unfold. We are always at the right place at the right time whether we like to see it that way or not, and you are co-creating your life in every moment, in other words; you are nobody’s victim. Have you noticed how the same people always have the same drama around the same issues and use the same words that start with ‘I can’t…’ and end with ‘do it, believe it, change it, be bothered, etc.’ and they’re always surprised by it. They’re stuck in a learning loop, in effect they can’t move on until they get this piece of the puzzle – whatever the ‘piece’ may be and so they are doomed to repeat a pattern over and over. Repeating patterns can make people feel very unlucky, but muttering frustrated laments like “this always happen to me!” will only get the next wave rolling in again.

The learning loop is of course created through the Law of Attraction. Whatever you believe in you will see manifested over and over until you choose to believe differently. Whatever you affirm will be. The universe will mirror back to you everything you expect to see or need to learn about. The conundrum however is that what we see repeated over and over is pretty hard to ignore and believe differently about. The more it is repeated the harder it is to believe that we still have the power to change it. So round and round we go.

There are no isolated, random events. Everything is connected somehow but we don’t necessarily have a scope of vision that is big enough to understand how all the pieces fit together. I have come to trust that eventually all is revealed if we wait long enough. The patterns are there to serve us. If we experience something often enough, we hopefully begin to see the way to change it as we come into better understanding of the beast. I hate seeing people struggle through difficulties and feel for their pain but I also have faith that the human spirit is indomitable and can survive fantastic perils when he is committed to living life.

Life belongs to those that grab hold of it with both hands and go for the ride seizing opportunities wherever possible to experience something new. Bravely facing life with a positive, happy and adventurous outlook will create many lucky opportunities as you go!

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Healing

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Fact, Faith & Superstition


So often when I introduce Reiki to someone new who’s never heard of it before, particularily men (it’s the whole left brain thing) they inform me they don’t believe in faith healing. So I tell them the facts. I tell them why Reiki doesn’t require ‘faith’ in order to work and also what the scientific world is now starting to understand about energy and the human body. Then they get on the table.

Having said that I have tremendous faith in my Reiki treatments; I trust them to work 100% of the time. I have faith that there will be change in the client’s life – even if they don’t recognize it right away. Sometimes the changes that come after a treatment are different than what the client expected or wanted to happen, but again I have faith that Reiki – Universal Life Force energy knows best. I also have faith that Reiki will continue to work for our highest good always whether we believe in it or not. And as much as all this faith sounds a bit airy fairy – my faith is based on 15 years of facts, success stories and ‘miracles’.

You see I really am a skeptical person, I have put my Reiki through the paces. It has never made sense to me to blindly trust something that could affect someone else. Further more, since I have no religious conditioning I’ve never had to have blind faith in anything in my life. Everything I’ve ever held faith in had to be proven at some point, before or later makes no difference. If I’m going to believe in something it has to hold water. So I tend to look for the leaks in theories, ideas, people, friendships, stories etc. of course this also extends to my Reiki/Healing/ teaching work. Some leaks can be easily fixed and are worth the effort, other leaks require a complete tear down and start over.

All the work that I do is prone to superstitious undertones. Reiki, tarot cards, meditation, metaphysics, positive thinking etc. Superstitious ideas like ‘healer’s can’t work on themselves’, or ‘ Reiki is witchcraft?’, ‘don’t ask for healing/abundance for yourself’ are taking decades to work their way out of human consciousness. And the new age has also brought a few strange ideas to the table for instance, the other day I met a lady who almost did a backflip trying to erase the word ‘fear’ out of the energy field around us when I suggested that our freedom is governed by our fears, She felt that just saying ‘fear’ would attract fear to her. Very bizarre. She had fear for the word fear…hmm, what’s wrong with this picture. I systematically avoid all superstitious belief systems and rituals based in superstition. My work is for the real world, grounded in facts, with real results.

I have a couple things though I am superstitious about. 1. I always pick up pennies, and if I sweep one up off the floor at home I don’t throw it out with the rest of the dirt. Because superstitiously I believe if I don’t pick it up I am throwing away good fortune.  2. I never throw out any cards, notes, or letters that have been signed with Love; again I don’t want to throw wishes of love away. 3. I have never thrown a book out in my entire life; I won’t throw knowledge or words away. Hmmm… maybe I’m just a packrat?….nah!

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Metaphysics

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Forever Questing…It’s the only way!


As children, my siblings and I were taught to question everything. My Father drilled into us to not ever just believe anything. All trust, all faith had to be earned; even then it was up for discussion. For the most part this philosophy has guided me well. Today I use this philosophy to guide me in my discovery with reiki and metaphysics and even in raising my kids. Because of this questing nature I have a hard time just blindly accepting all the anecdotal information that pours out unreservedly from spiritually minded people. It is so interesting to me how easily smart, educated people will accept the same old ideas no matter how fantastic, without ever asking ‘Really?…are you serious?‘ and believe me I have had no shortage of unbelievable stories in my life. It’s not that I’m really all that skeptical, (OK – maybe I am) but I prefer to think of it as curious. I was that kid that had to ask ‘why?’ a million times a day and I have kept asking why as my life unfolds. The really cool thing is that there is ALWAYS an answer for the why question. Sometimes the answer leads to another question that starts with ‘but if…’ and sometimes it ends with an ‘Oh! I get it!’ and sometimes hearing the answer is all you really need to recognize that you knew the truth all along. Sometimes the truth is simply the hardest thing to hear.

But I have learned that just the asking begins the unraveling of the mystery. Afterall, life isn’t really mysterious, we live in a dualistic cause and effect world and reality is built on building blocks of information. I find that the biggest block to understanding what is really going on in any situation is usually 2 fold. Firstly, we like to wear our favourite coloured glasses (they could be rose coloured or grey coloured or blue or green etc.) to make sure that everything we look at is viewed with the same shading of belief (rosy, hopeless, depressed, envious etc) which keeps life comfortable and relatively predictable; and secondly we keep our blinders firmly glued to the sides of our heads to keep our scope of vision nicely limited. By limiting what we are exposed to we think we can control the path our life will take.

Let’s face it, processing new information is consuming work. You gotta’ think…HARD even sometimes! And furthermore, sometimes those thoughts are going to land you in some unpopular place and we all know how hard that can be. We learned as kids that it is way easier being popular than different. These two popular and fashionable (and by that I mean common) accessories work reasonably well to keep the path ahead uncluttered of unexpected obstacles and doubts. Everything goes along as expected, well that is until one day it suddenly doesn’t. Suddenly, one day, out of the blue, an unexpected terror blocks the road. Death, illness, financial loss, or even extreme boredom appears and screams at us to get off the road! Take a detour! Change your mind! Change your ways! And we stall, dumbfounded, confused and before we know what’s happening we ask ‘Why?’ and the quest begins.

In that moment Universe presents to us an option. Sometimes the one road changes into a very clear forked path and we are forced to choose this way or that way. Other times it seems we are tricked to follow a different path with things that seem to glitter and shine with promises that turn out to be fool’s gold. And other times, we don’t know why, we suddenly veer off into the underbrush following some kind of white rabbit that takes us on a journey we will never forget. However it happens we will, at sometime in our lives, find ourselves on the road less traveled. If we want we can squat down on the road we are on and stubbornly refuse to budge. We can stay there, live there and eventually die there without ever having to change one single thought, peacefully polishing our glasses and re-gluing our blinders every day but this isn’t life.

Life is meant to be lived and experienced not only survived. Only a new choice will quicken the heart and spark the mind. Only choosing a new road will tease the Spirit Within to awaken with groggy interest.  And once on that new road we have to embrace that we are indeed thinking, reasoning, independent creatures of consciousness meant to exercise our inherent right to choose. Our survival will be determined by our choices, our reactions, our resistance/acceptance of the new. Our happiness determine by our bravery, commitment and creativity.

And so life is lived; questing, challenging,  defeating enemies of the one true heart, embracing the unknown, and conquering fears. We are then rewarded with riches untold, unlimited love, and strength of a thousand elephants. After we have quested we come to know the stuff we are made of. We know then that we are strong enough to ask ‘Why?..’ with the innocence of a child and the wisdom of the oldest sage.

So this blog is for asking ‘why..?.’ or ‘what if…?’ or ‘how..?.’ I am every bit as curious as I was when I was 5, except now I have a car, a computer and bigger reality. Today my world and indeed my universe is much, much bigger and so are my questions and thus my experiences.

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Healing

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