Your Creative Compass
I am convinced that our hearts are made to heal. Instead of carrying around habitual suffering, our hearts can be cleaned of the hurt that we have lived through. Not only does this free us up to be more full of life, but the whole process can be enjoyable when we use artistic expression as our means of healing. My musical journey has been a simple practice that changes old pain into compassion and bliss. For me, songwriting has been a discipline that I call cardio spelunking. It is a deep dark adventure to retrieve bright treasure, and it would…
4 Ways to Open Yourself to Healing
I share my miraculous transformation from surviving to thriving to inspire you to do the same. After being diagnosed at age fourteen, undergoing eighteen surgeries and 40 years of a disabling neurological disease, I stepped out of the medical box and opened to the world of spirituality and alternative healing modalities. I began to trust in the unknown forces of nature, the energy field and quantum physics. I learned to allow the flow of grace to nurture and heal me. Healing was a process of releasing old messages stored in my DNA. I learned what it meant to have the…
Healing Your Pain
If I only had a few shards of wisdom to leave this world, I’d go straight for the bull’s eye. What’s life about anyway? I think it’s about being happy. However, that road to happiness includes learning how to heal pain and connect to that source of healing. It’s learning how to experience your version of God (or whatever you want to call it). It all begins in the mysterious world of the subconscious mind, the place where our pain is harbored. All emotion is born to be experienced. When we experience emotion fully, it will vaporize and dissolve into…
6 Steps To Release Tension and Start Healing
Often people get sick because they stress, push and abuse themselves. Most people are not taught how to love themselves. In fact, they are taught that to listen, care for and honor themselves is selfish. Many people spend their time trying to please others and eventually hurt themselves, which causes resentment, stress and sickness. Often, until you really get angry, discover the cause of your sickness and let it go, you cannot heal. That is exactly what happened in my case, I got angry because nobody could help me and then I discovered that I had the power to tune…
A Radical Approach to Healing Your Pain
A friend of mine is having a lot of back pain and she hasn’t been out of her house in days. She is hyperalert around her pain and is afraid to do anything. The pain has so affected her life that she told me if it doesn’t get better soon, she feels like “checking out.” I invited her to consider the possibility of opening to the healing of being with her pain rather than always resisting it. I explained that so often we amplify our physical pain through our resistance to it, not realizing that we create more pain by trying…
How You can Recognize Fear and Be Present
Allowing yourself to be exactly as you are is such an important part of awakening. Author Jeff Foster, who is an amazing voice of consciousness in the world, talks a lot about acceptance and allowing. He says, “You do not have the power to accept this moment. You do have the power to allow it. This moment does not ask for your acceptance. It is already the way it is.” Jeff is saying that whatever is showing up in your life has already been accepted by life. It is all okay because whatever is happening is exactly as it should.…
As Is, I’m Here
During a weekend recently three big challenges came up for me and and I used one of my favorite mantras over and over again, “As Is, I’m Here.” Saying “As Is” reminds you of the willingness to allow yourself to be exactly as you are in this moment. It invites you to let go of struggling with whatever is (your usual mode), so you can move into the place of healing that comes from allowing yourself to be exactly as you are. “I’m Here” reminds you to be keenly attentive to what is, in a way that invites your heart to be open to…
Welcome Yourself Exactly As You Are
Welcoming means accepting yourself exactly as you are and also accepting life exactly as it unfolds. It is the ability to allow all of it, including all the parts of yourself and your life that you don’t like, and letting it all flow without getting hooked into the stories created by your mind. Welcoming is not trying to make your life any different than it is. Easier said than done, right? I know it's not always easy to welcome and accept life, especially your challenges, because you have been conditioned to continuously judge yourself and others. This is the inner voice…
How You can Find Healing that Lasts
How would your life change if you trusted that your challenges are a part of your journey home – back to yourself and back to Life – instead of feeling that your challenges are here because you have done something wrong or you are being punished or God fell asleep on the job? What would happen if your illness, your difficult relationship, your demanding boss, your compulsions, and maybe even your troublesome dog were showing up in your life to help you heal? The healing you long for comes when you discover how to play the warmer, warmer/colder, colder game. Remember that…
Allow Kindness to Heal Your Struggling Self
With the return of my son’s cancer, I have had lots of opportunities to be with fear and despair. Sharing this journey with my son has taken me to a deeper level of presence than I have ever known. My body has been a very dear friend throughout this fierce process, especially my belly and my breath. Whenever I am caught in the fear-based mind, sometimes all I can do is soften my belly and allow a deeper breath. The belly is one of the best biofeedback mechanisms we have. If it is tight, we are up in our…
How To Use The Mantra, “Just This Much”
If you watch your mind, you will see that it goes into the past or future all day long. It especially loves to go into the future and when it really gets activated, it moves from a whole different place. It will convince you that that you can’t do it right, or you can’t do it at all, or something bad is going to happen, and the thoughts go on and on. These thoughts are just not true because we don’t know what is going to happen. All we have is this present moment, but you can begin to see…
How to Honor Your Survival System
We all created a finely-crafted survival system to bury or numb our pain when we were young. We had to, as it was absolutely necessary for survival. Life was too scary, and we didn’t have the skills to meet ourselves in our hearts. Our survival system can include compulsions, such as drug and alcohol abuse, shopping, work, sex, the Internet, busyness, self-judgment, and chronic worry. I think about all of those years that I shut down the pain with food, drugs and alcohol. In one year alone, I gained 97 pounds. I would have died of the pain if I…
How To Let Your Brilliant Being Shine
I recently came across one of my favorite poems, My Brilliant Image, by the fourteenth century Persian Poet, Hafiz: One day the sun admitted, I am just a shadow. I wish I could show you The Infinite Incandescence That has cast my brilliant image! I wish I could show you, When you are lonely or in darkness, The astonishing Light Of your own Being! Hafiz is telling us that the astonishing light, the brilliance of our own being, is already with us. We are filled with great light that permeates everything. Brian Swimme, Evolutionary Philosopher and Co-Collaborator of the documentary…
We Love You (Poem)
On this World Suicide Prevention Day, and every day, may we send our love out to all who are hurting... We Love You Child, I don’t know Why you experience such pain And even though I’m grown up I have no way to explain- Yet I can tell you from experience That life unfolds in stages And sometimes on our journeys We just need a few more pages- So please know you’re supported Even though you feel alone- And talk to someone that you trust Or call them on the phone- And know no matter how you feel You…
Love and Stars (Poems)
We are all written in the stars... Love Unending We grieve for those we’ve never met Yet still have touched our hearts For in this world of chaos We’re consoled through the arts- For art shows us in our humanness Our condition is the same As death does not discriminate By class, or faith, or fame- So let’s create with great passion The world we want to see Appreciate each other For all we came to be- And breathe our love into the world Until our final breath For love and soul complete our whole And love does…
The Catalyst
At first I didn’t know why I felt so poorly. I thought that it might just be due to my new job filled with travel, deadlines, and an ever-changing focus. My stress-levels increased while my exercise decreased. My eating habits became poor as processed, prepackaged convenience foods and the perceived need for caffeine became the norm. Even when I tried to eat better, the weight still kept coming on and my digestive system was erratic. I began to have health issues with seemingly no source. My menstrual cycle was horrendous with heavy flowing for weeks, not days, excruciating pain piercing…
