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By Carol, on May 25th, 2011
The CDs of my new guided imagery meditation Releasing Stress, Finding Peace just arrived! I am so thrilled to have this concrete product of months of work finally in my hands. It has been a vision of mine for a long time to create a guided imagery meditation on letting go of stress, and finding that elusive connection with the deep place of peace that dwells within us.
I think it is my favorite piece of work – and working with the very gifted composer Dennis Yerry of the Hawk Project (who turns out to live right down the road from me!) brought it all together.
So I am shamelessly saying “if you know anyone who is stressed, buy them a copy!” The toxic and damaging effects of stress are so detrimental to body, heart, mind and spirit. Take a quarter of an hour to let it go and re-balance your system. It is available on mp3 and CD on my website, and you can listen to a sample right here:
What do we do about stress? We try to manage it, control it, adapt to it and tolerate it. (more…)
By Carol, on February 18th, 2011
One of my favorite teachers, Byron Katie, talks about loving what is; letting go of our innate, knee-jerk reactions of “I don’t like this, this is not what I want, this situation, this person, life should be different,” and just being present and accepting what is. Living in the Northeast this winter has been an interesting exercise in acceptance, in learning to be with what is, in this case snow, snow and more snow!
In my EFT work, a common tapping phrase that I use is “even though I have this problem, I can accept myself, my life just as it is.” Even though it is not what I might have consciously chosen, I can accept it anyway, and accept myself and my skillful and not so skillful responses to life, just as they are. (more…)
By Carol, on January 30th, 2011
Health and healing are like life – filled with mystery and complexity and change. It makes the whole question of analyzing symptoms, getting diagnoses, of fixing and curing things quite complicated.
Richard Bach wrote, in his remarkable book Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah “Every problem has a gift for you in its hands” and I add to that, and every illness and symptom has a lesson. So when we look at our health, what do we see? A bunch of random symptoms and complaints, sent by a random and perhaps not very kind Universe to bug us and make our lives more difficult? Or perhaps a quirky constellation of opportunities to learn and grow and transform. (more…)
By Carol, on November 15th, 2010
What do imagery and meditation have to do with dogs? I share my home and my office with 2 wonderful large dogs, who as I write this are lying in front of the woodstove, basking in the warmth and feeling safe and content. But I also have an inner dog, who lives deep in my brain, in that ancient mysterious part of the nervous system that we humans share with all mammals. (more…)
By Carol, on September 9th, 2010
A young friend of mine recently got involved with a young woman who lied to him about being over 18, and her father had him arrested for Statutory Rape. And in one moment, he was abruptly shifted from living his life, filled with hope and possibility and a future, to living in a frozen space of fear and uncertainty. Fear is like that – it can sneak up in an instant, flooding your veins with icy panic, and filling your energy field with a dark fog. (more…)
By Carol, on August 1st, 2010
Lately I’ve been involved in a very interesting conversation about creating safe space. It came up in talking about working with clients, but it really applies to our lives as a whole. How do we create safe space for ourselves?
And what I find particularly interesting, is how do we create safe space for our bodies?
I don’t mean wearing a seatbelt, and picking up broken glass before you step in it! I mean how do we give our bodies the opportunity to relax, to feel the sense of safety that allows us to let go of the stress response that keeps us vigilant, ready for danger, ready for confrontation, or ready to run. How do we allow our bodies to be at peace? (more…)
By Carol, on July 17th, 2010
Twenty years ago, I loved the comedy show called Short Attention Span Theatre. Lately, I keep being reminded of it… what has happened to us? Our culture cultivates and rewards having the attention span of a gerbil (I never lived with one, but I am told they are very fickle with their focus.) (more…)
By Carol, on June 20th, 2010
I offered my guided imagery meditation “Breathe in Peace” as a free download on the Self-Help Giveaway that Dr. Joe Rubino is running, and got some interesting feedback on it.
(You can get your free download by going to the giveaway here: Self-Help Giveaway just say ‘no thanks’ to the product offers and go straight to the gifts, my gifts are usually on page 2)
In the meditation I say, “…This is your time, now, to take care of yourself, to be gentle with yourself, to give yourself patience and compassion, to give yourself the peace and safety that lies deep within your heart…” (more…)
By Carol, on June 2nd, 2010
My “Profound Paths to Health, Healing and Happiness” teleseminar series completed its fall series in December. I jumped right into completing my new guided imagery meditations, “Opening and Completing Your Day,” a set of morning and evening meditations that create an energetic container for your day.
It’s something I’ve wanted to create for a long time. In our busy lives, with electric lighting and 24/7 access to everything we have lost our connection to sunrise and sunset, lost the sense of a real container that frames our work lives, personal lives, and our time for rest and turning inward.
To me, containers are sacred vessels that give necessary form. (more…)
By Carol, on May 29th, 2010
“I can’t sleep, I just toss and turn for hours” is such a common complaint in my office these days. Thirty years ago, when I began my private practice, I was working in New York City, and seeing a lot of people in high stress jobs. But curiously, people slept OK. Now I work in a peaceful rural setting in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, and insomnia or other sleep disturbances are disturbingly common. What’s happening?
STRESS! That’s what’s happening. We live with a level of chronic, un-remitting stress that our bodies were never designed for, and we are paying the price with stressed adrenals and elevated cortisol levels that keep us wakeful when we should be sleepy. Stress hormones were supposed to be released when the proverbial tiger was jumping out of the tree to eat us, not when we sit in traffic, worry about the economy or stress about our work, relationships or the state of the environment. Now, so many of us have constantly elevated stress hormones, and that is a real problem (for many reasons!) but especially when it’s time to wind down and relax for sleep. (more…)
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