You Can Call Me Master

Just For Today

I will not anger.

I will not worry.

Honor your parents, teachers and elders.

Earn your living honestly.

Show gratitude to every living thing.

Four years after receiving my first Reiki treatment I recently received my own initiation to Reiki Master. I flew up to New York to meet with my mentor and begin the two day process to receive the attunements to the Master level. I had absolutely no idea what to expect.

After receiving my level 1 and 2 advanced I felt something had “shifted” as soon as I did my first self-practice. They say after you are initiated you are “empowered” to practice Reiki and that was certainly corresponding to what I was feeling. Yet it was only through my daily practice in the months to follow that first training did I truly feel all the benefits of Reiki. One session made me feel great, but a few years of daily practice changed my life.

As the day unfolded I found myself writing down the same phrase over and over again. “All work and no play make Jen a dull girl.” Just kidding. What I wrote on my hot pink moleskin notebook I brought along to jot down any gems of wisdom that came to me, (Reiki is taught orally so you really are not required or encouraged to note take), was “A daily practice of Reiki is my commitment to healing.”

To begin the healing process you have to decide whether you are trying to “feel Better” or trying to heal long term. If you want to feel better, you get a massage, have a drink, go shopping, take a pill, enjoy a spa day or read a self-help book. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things if you want a quick fix. However If you want to heal yourself for the long term have to be committed. It takes time and dedication to heal. I didn’t even know I needed healing when I first started this process. I just thought I was learning a new modality. But miraculously over time I found that this new lens I was looking through had started to put things into focus that I couldn’t even see were blurry before.

After the Master initiation I expected to feel “Reikfied” on a whole different level. For me that is a more balanced, relaxed state. Nice and easy. I usually explain the feeling Reiki gives me by telling people to envision themselves in their favorite weather.

For me that is sitting in a beach chair looking at the blue ocean, it is 76 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze and all is right with the world. Since Reiki goes where it needs to go and does what it needs to do, it had something else in mind for me that day.

As I sat in the chair to practice a few moments of self-Reiki after my Mentor had finished with the attunements I felt my heart start beating faster and faster. A feeling of anxiety grew from the bottom of my belly and rose up like wildfire burning up through my chest into my throat and eventually encompassing me entirely. I was wracked with emotion and fear. I opened my eyes and started breathing deeply and evenly trying to calm down. It was if every buried fear I had ever pushed down to the depths of my heart over the course of my lifetime has risen to the surface. Pandora’s box was opened and I was stricken with panic. I collected myself as best I could and made my way across the hall to the discussion room where my Master was waiting for me with a big grin on her face. I don’t think she quite expected dilated pupils and white knuckles.

“Something very strange has happened!” I looked to her and she motioned for me to sit down. As I shakily made my way to my seat she said, “Before you tell me what is wrong I want you to realize that sometimes during attunements you can experience quite a shift. Perhaps you have unlocked some things that had been suppressed for quite a long time. As soon as she said the words my breathing started to regulate and I immediately recognized that is exactly what had happened. Nothing Earth shattering was brought out of my memory banks. Just all of the everyday fears, frustration and worries that we keep tempered down because its just easier just said, time to go! I had turned the light on in the attic and mice were scurrying.

Occasionally during a Reiki session you will feel a twitch or heat where the practitioner’s hands are or have been and sometimes you feel the urge to swallow or your stomach starts rumbling. Reiki is like a snowflake and no two sessions are alike so sometimes these things happen and sometimes they don’t. However the Master attunements were so powerful for me that I had no room left for these buried hurts and I felt my soul purge itself of the waste I had been carrying around with me.

Nothing in my life has changed except the lens I am looking at the world through. And it ain’t really rose colored. Because healing doesn’t mean now I will float through life happy, calm and full of peace without a care in the world. I am a human being after all. I will still get frustrated and have fears but I have the ability to come back to my practice and accept, not change, but accept whatever is happening and move on from there.

It is my hope that now that I have the ability to initiate I will be able to help others make their own commitment to healing. Reiki is a wonderful way for anyone to reconnect to who they truly are.  Not what other people’s perception of you is but rather the balanced and whole person we all truly are. Mothers, Fathers, kids, whole families, people in the business world, absolutely anyone who through the course of everyday life comes out of balance, (so everyone!), would benefit from being able to practice Reiki on themselves and their loved ones. (Even pets love Reiki!)

I don’t feel that now that I have accomplished this level of practice that I have done it all. I truly feel that this is only the beginning for Reiki and me. I am filled with gratitude and excitement that I can pass along this miraculous gift to others and look forward to being a part of their commitment to heal themselves.

Just For Today

I will not anger.

I will not worry.

Honor your parents, teachers and elders.

Earn your living honestly.

Show gratitude to every living thing.

Lose Weight Eating Tacos, Ask Me How!

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil. –Aristotle

 This blog has nothing to do with losing weight while eating tacos but I find that people stumble upon my blog from various Google searches so I thought if I wanted to get information out to a lot of people at once than I should probably give it a title that people would potentially search for. And come on, who hasn't searched for a way to lose weight while eating tacos? What this blog is really about is nutritional empowerment.

All this Mansanto talk has inspired me. I shared a link on Facebook that my friend Amy posted (Holla Amy) about an article  concerning Mansanto and Whole Foods working together. After a 12-year battle it looks like our heroes have caved to the evil empire and have agreed to grow genetically engineered alfalfa. A scary prospect for certain considering the nutritional value of corn and wheat are now under scrutiny. What will be left for us to eat?

Parents of young children are concerned about whom to trust and what do we do now?  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/ronnie-cummins/the-organic-elite-surrend_b_815346.html

Trust the same people you could rely on 100 percent before you found out this information…yourselves.

I don’t look at this article as being frightening even though it is telling us potentially frightening news. I choose to look at it as an opportunity for some positive change to happen.

It is like when you have to clean out your attic and you go up and it actually doesn’t look that bad and then you turn the light on and there is mouse poop everywhere. Oh no! I should have kept the light off, and then I never would have known!  So we get this information but all that has changed from yesterday is now we know.

All of these problems our kids have from peanut allergies to ADHD and obesity are all because their little bodies can’t handle the synthetic food we have been feeding them unbeknownst to us for years. Our own magnificent systems battle enemies foreign and domestic.

So you think you are buying healthy food for your family and really is has been genetically engineered so it isn’t real. We are literally tricking our bodies by giving it what we think is a healthy choice but really it’s a synthetic so the body goes into defense mode.

This has been happening for a long time now. The only thing that is different is that now we know. Nothing has changed except the light bulb was turned on. Were you afraid of this 5 years ago when you didn’t know about it? Nope, but it was still happening. The only difference is now we can do something about it! Yay! Not scary but opportunity.

We have ALL gotten so used to things being easy or at least easier when it comes to food. Nuke that easy Mac, viola! Dinner is served. Maybe I’ll make a salad…Naa, to much chopping.

So sorry all you Mom’s of little kids, the light bulb was out at my house when my kid’s were little. I had four kids and a busy life and I thought it would have been silly not to take advantage of how easy it is to make dinner in 5 minutes flat. Now that it has been turned on, we can’t go back to the dark days. So things will take more time and effort. Parents will have to make things from scratch and know the ingredients. No easy way out anymore.  It is not going to be easy getting home from work and thinking up what can I make for a quick dinner? It will take becoming really organized and planning meals. It will take time and effort. You may want to start a garden even a little one in your kitchen where you plant your own organic seeds. Then you know exactly what you are getting! www.heirloomsolutions.com 

Sounds exhausting? At the very least daunting? I know but taking control and accepting the accountability and responsibility of what we feed our babies and ourselves will empower you. Empowered people are not afraid. It will be worth the effort, I promise. Nothing worthwhile comes easy if you are doing it right.

I am envisioning this beautiful picture of whole families becoming closer and happier together all from just changing how we eat. It took an hour to prepare the dinner but we did it together and now we are sitting down and eating whole food that makes us balanced and happy. And don’t worry about the 4 hours of homework because now that you are eating the real food, your kids won’t have the learning difficulties they had been struggling with then everyone's anxiety level goes down. You will have a calmer, happier more meaningful life. Ahhh, insert deep breath here.

Thank you Mansanto, with out you a lot of us would have never have known just how good and beneficial whole food really is. It is not until we are sick do we appreciate our health. Get more information on what you can do at http://thenaturelyceum.org