Emotional Energy in the Body

In the article, Take Charge of Your Health, located in her online library, Caroline Myss says that:

Everything that is alive pulsates with energy and all of this energy contains information. Your physical body projects an energy field that extends as far as your outstretched arms and the full length of your body. It is both an information center and a highly sensitive perceptual system. We are constantly 'in communication' with everything around us through this system.

Within your energy field exists emotional energy, which is created by your internal and external experiences. These experiences can be both positive and negative, fleeting or long-lasting:

• Past and present relationships
• Profound or traumatic experiences and memories
• Belief patterns and attitudes, including all spiritual and superstitious beliefs

Your emotions reside physically in your body and interact with your cells and tissues.

Emotional energy contributes to the formation of cell tissue, and forms an energy language which carries literal and symbolic information. In this way, your biography--that is, the experiences that make up your life--becomes your biology. Your body contains your history--every chapter, line and verse of every event and relationship in your life. As your life unfolds your biological health becomes a living, breathing biographical statement that conveys your strengths, weaknesses, hopes and fears.

Every thought you have travels through your biological system and activates a physiological response. Some thoughts--like fear--are like depth charges, causing a reaction throughout your body; a loving thought can relax your entire body. Some thoughts are more subtle, and still others are unconscious. Many are meaningless and pass through the body like wind through a screen.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts on how to use this understanding of emotional energy in the body to release energy drains and re-fuel your life!

The seven habits of highly successful people

In 1989, Stephen Covey published a book called The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People which become a classic over the years. While Covey wrote about these habits in terms of workplace success, I believe these habits can also be applied to personal goals, especially health and well-being.

Here's my summary and interpretation of Covey's ideas:

1. Be Pro-active. Choose how you respond to situations instead of reacting from a place of fear, stress or emotion without thinking about what you'd like to achieve first. This is where you anticipate difficult situations or challenges to your state of wellness and brainstorm solutions. For example, I keep an allergy health journal where I have tracked over the years which foods, exercises, and healthy habits work well for me in managing seasonal allergies that I can refer to anytime I'm feeling stuck about how to increase my energy or lessen symptoms. This also refers to stepping back and taking a few deep breaths to think about your priorities instead of reacting in the heat of the moment. Training your body to relax with breathing is a simple and easy tool to shift you from "reactive" to "proactive".
   
2. Begin with the End In Mind. Set long-term intentions and use visualization and affirmations to manifest them. I talk about how to do this in my post about creating healthy habits here.
   
3. Put First Things First. Prioritize your time based on your long-term intentions. Make time in your schedule for all tasks that will help you achieve your important goals, and save seemingly urgent, less important tasks for later if you have time. This means scheduling time for personal healthy habits, self-care, rest and relaxation first.
   
4. Think Win/Win. Seek out mutually beneficial solutions to problems that solve not only your needs but others or all parties involved. Talk to your friends, family and co-workers about your wellness intentions. Seek out ways to support each other's intentions.
   
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. Listen closely to other's concerns first before responding and talking about your own as a way to increase the likelihood of clear communication.
   
6. Synergize. Work with others in creatively collaborative ways that value differences, problem solving, innovation, and strengths. There are so many ways you and your friends and family can work together to help each other achieve health goals, and perhaps even go out into the greater community to encourage and inspire others too.
   
7. Renewal. Keep your energy and productivity up by taking care of yourself first through a carefully chosen lifestyle. The key to wellness is a balance of rest, relaxation, nourishment, movement, purpose and awareness.
   

10 tips for creating habits

1. Give your new habit it at least one month of practice to form
2. Decide ahead of time when to fit it into your schedule and make an appointment with yourself
   
3. Make it routine. No matter how you are feeling or what is going on in your life, practice your habit during the scheduled time even if that means you only do it for 5 or 10 minutes instead of the whole block of time.
   
4. Assess how it's going weekly and adjust it to better fit your life as needed
5. Pick something you enjoy doing - don't add a chore to your life
6. Get support from family, friends and co-workers
7. Find a buddy to do it with
8. Make a list of all the positives that this new habit brings into your life and refer to it when discouraged or frustrated
9. Anticipate ways you might resist your new habit and brainstorm ways to overcome them.
10. Honor your physical, mental and emotional state. Don't force it if you are really struggling. Evaluate what is making it hard for you.

Wellness Assessment

Wellness Assessment
Rate how true these statements are for you - Always, Sometimes, or Never

• I feel in control of my life.
• I am optimistic about the future.
• I know I can change m life when I decide to.
• I love my work.
• My home environment is relaxing and comfortable.
• My work or school environment is enriching.
• I have a belief or value system that sustains me.
• I sleep at least 7 hours a night.
• I wake up refreshed and rejuvenated.
• I have down time or quiet time every day.
• I have regular hobbies or pastimes.
• I have chronic muscle tension or aches & pains.
• I am often anxious, overwhelmed, or tense.
• I feel stressed or burned out.
• I have family or friends I can count on.
• I have a rich and rewarding social life.
• I eat healthy, wholesome foods.
• I eat regularly, not too much or too little.
• I have as much time for myself as I need.
• I am in excellent health.
• I am happy with my body and fitness level.
• I exercise regularly (at least 30 min 3Xweek).
• I have no debt.
• I have few worries or concerns.
• I am not addicted to caffeine, smoking, drugs or alcohol.

What do you think is keeping you from feeling great at this time? Has this improved or worsened over the past 6 months to a year?

What have you already tried to overcome the challenge outlined above?

What do you think it will take to help you feel better?

What would you like to accomplish?

Call me at 617-429-1793 or email me for a free consultation on how a wellness program can help you feel your best!

Solutions for Stress

Do you need to reduce your stress?

Wellness begins with understanding the challenges that prevent you from feeling great and then learning simple healthy habits that fit into your lifestyle to overcome them and keep you feeling your best all the time.

Feeling your best is about creating the right balance of awareness, relaxation, nourishment, and movement in your life, and this is what you will learn how to do with the step-by-step wellness program I’ve created to help people like you feel great!

How does it work?

First, we meet for a free consultation to briefly assess what’s keeping you from feeling your best and discuss what areas you want to improve. (You can preview the wellness assessment we'll use here.) Then, I show you how we can help you meet your goals, and you choose the wellness package that best meets your needs and fits into your life.

For the duration of the package, we meet regularly, and you practice techniques, receive personalized instructions and homework on how to create the right balance in your life for feeling great. Want to know more about the techniques used in the wellness program? Look on my website here.

Why get a personal strategy for reducing stress?

Some people know what to do to feel their best all the time. The rest of us need to learn! After becoming a corporate burn out, I spent six years studying world cultures and various health modalities to learn how to become and stay well. Once I learned the secrets and time-tested techniques to maintaining wellness, I dedicated my life to helping others to quickly learn how to become and stay well too.

You don’t need to study for many years like I did! A personalized wellness program will give you all the information, tools and techniques you need to feel your best! The rest is up to you!

Creating healthy habits that stick with you

There is a wise woman adage that says that if we give ourselves all the nourishment that we need, our bodies will cleanse and heal on their own. I very much believe in this adage, as I have seen it work in my own life and countless times in others. Our conscious minds think they run the show, but really the part of you that is aware of thinking and feeling is just one aspect of a greater intelligence in your body and mind. When you focus your mind on healthy, enjoyable habits, everything subtly shifts to bring them into being. The bad habits fade away without you even realizing because your attention and energy is fully engaged in the positive feedback of the wellness you are creating.

So, how do you create healthy habits that stick with you? Choose a habit to add to your life that is enjoyable and simple such as adding an extra hour in bed every night. While you're at it, figure out what problem this new habit is going to solve. Once you've identified what you don't want anymore, be sure to frame the desire in terms of what you do want. For example: "I am going to create a healthy habit of sleeping 8 hours a night because I am tired of feeling tired all the time" can be transformed into "I am well rested and energized all day long" or "I sleep 8 hours a night, and I am focused and productive all day".

This is called a positive affirmation, and it is the secret to creating healthy habits that stick with you. It works because whatever you focus your energy and attention on is what you manifest in your life. By keeping your attention on what you want instead of dwelling on what you don't like, what you're afraid of, or what you feel bad about, you are training your body and mind to notice all kinds of opportunities to act on your new healthy intentions.

What do you do with your positive affirmation? Every morning when you start the day, spend three to five minutes envisioning your affirmation. It works best in the morning before your mind is full of all the things you need to do during the day. This can be in bed before you get up, in the shower, or as I did during my commuting years, on my way to work. Take a few deep breaths to focus and bring your affirmation to mind. Imagine or visualize yourself doing and being in this new way. Really try to see, hear, smell, and imagine it in all details. Try to feel it in your body. Then get on with your day.

Just like riding a bicycle

You know how you can learn how to ride a bicycle or ice skate as a kid, and then not do the activity for many years but somehow as soon as you try it again you remember how? That is because our bodies have fantastic memories, and you can use this to your advantage to feel your best. Remember how you practiced riding your bike or learning to skate over and over again until it was easy? What you were doing while you were having all that fun was programming your body with all the muscle movements needed for the skill of bike riding or ice skating. In the same way, you can train your body so your muscles learn the skill of deep relaxation, which can serve to alleviate stress and tension when life gets hectic or tough.

These Reiki packages are designed so you can simply and easily program your body for deep relaxation. At your weekly session, your muscles and mind practice relaxing deeply, and it sure feels great while you do it! Each time you come in, it becomes easier and faster to release tension, just like how each time you practiced riding your bike or ice skating it got easier and more graceful. Since it takes at least 30 days to create a new habit, I recommend choosing a four week discounted package as the "beginner course" in training your body to relax. I also offer eight week packages at an even more discounted rate for those serious about programming their bodies and minds to relax deeply.

Here's the best part about these packages - during our weekly sessions we train your body and mind to associate certain cues with releasing tension, relaxing and rejuvenating. So by the time our relaxation training program is complete, you will be able to cue your body to relax anytime you notice you are starting to feel stressed or tense. It's just like riding a bicycle!

Reiki training registration form

Find out about Reiki training or register for an upcoming program here.

Fall Cleaning

I don't know about you, but my summers are busy! There are so many fun things to do, that I don't want to stay home and keep my house organized and clean. The weeks rush by in a bustle of activity, with piles of mail, laundry, and projects waiting for me to give them attention. Now that summer is winding down, I am ready to begin my annual Fall Cleaning.

I'm sure you've all heard of Spring Cleaning to freshen the house and your body after the long, dark cold months. A Fall Cleaning is similar - the goal is to let go of any excess junk that's piled up over the summer, tend to things that have fallen by the wayside during the fun summer months, and set up some healthy habits to carry me through the holiday season. It requires a bit of examination of all areas of your life that contribute to your health and happiness to see if there is anything that needs attention. For most of us, these include your home, your health, your lifestyle & habits including diet and exercise, your R&R time, and your relationships.

There are (at least) two ways to approach Fall Cleaning. The fast way is to make a mental checklist of your life priorities, and then quickly review the state of your home, your body, your energy levels, and your relationships to see if how you are spending your time and energy is in alignment with your priorities or not. If you find a few things that aren't optimal, consider making some changes over the next couple of months.

The more in depth approach is to get out your trusty pen and paper and make some lists. For each aspect of your life (relationship, diet, exercise, health, home, work, etc...), make three columns labeled Energizing, Draining, and Needs Attention. Then for each aspect of your life write down everything that comes to mind that is energizing, everything that is draining your energy, and everything you've put off that needs attention (procrastination drains your energy too!)

Once you have a clear picture of what's contributing to your well-being - congratulate yourself and continue on with these healthy habits! Then look at what's draining you and needs attention and make some time to address them. I

Checklist for letting go of clutter

Getting rid of my stuff is hard to do! If it were easy to do this, my house (and probably yours) would not be so cluttered and overstuffed in the first place! How do you decide to whether it's time to let go of something or not?

The technique I've developed is using a quick priority checklist. Here's what you do: Make a list of your top priorities for your home or office. Mine are comfort, breathing room, easy to find, and currently useful in my life. What are your priorities?

For each item that you are evaluating - run down the checklist. Does it meet any of your criteria? Yes, then keep it. If it doesn't, let it go. It is only taking up space and contributing to unnecessary complexity in your life.

In fact, this checklist comes in handy when you're considering investing in a new item. If it doesn't meet any of your criteria - then don't let it become clutter!