Stress

Opening and completing your day…

July 2, 2017 by Carol Leave a Comment

“Opening and Completing Your Day,” is a set of morning and evening guided imagery meditations that I created and recorded to give you a way to frame your day, that give you an energetic container for your day. 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. It becomes so easy to just keep moving from one thing to the next without that delineation…now I am beginning my work, now I am completing it, now I am feeding myself, now I am resting…

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Flow…

March 22, 2017 by Carol Leave a Comment

Well, I’m finally back to writing… I’ve missed the connection with you through this newsletter, but it’s been quite an unusual and stressful year. I think for many of us. Maybe for most of us! It does keep our brains more stimulated – which is always a good thing – when we constantly have to adapt to new circumstances and the un-expected, but it is exhausting, and wearying to the spirit.

Which brings me to the concept of flow… That sense of moving with what comes, moving with the currents of life. Of letting go of resistance and going with what is. It reminds me of one of my favorite stories in one of my all time favorite books, Richard Bach’s “Illusions.” He tells a tale of these beings who live at the bottom of a river. They spend their lives clinging to rocks to resist the current of the river. And of what happens when they finally let go…

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Imagery, meditation and the inner dog…

November 15, 2016 by Carol 7 Comments

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.

My inner dog has a lot in common with my two relaxed friends; it is protective of me and it wants me to be safe and happy. It can go from tail-wagging pleasure to a growl in a nanosecond. And it can’t tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined – whether a dangerous intruder is ringing my doorbell, or the ring is happening in the movie playing on my TV.

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Tossing and turning…

May 29, 2016 by Carol 2 Comments

I can’t sleep, I just toss and turn for hours” is such a common complaint in my office these days. Thirty five 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, unremitting 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.

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Understanding Viruses: Colds, Ebola and Louis Pasteur

October 27, 2014 by Carol 4 Comments

Viruses can be uncomfortable, like the common cold or potentially deadly like Ebola. But what they share in common is the requirement for a host in which they can take hold. On his deathbed, Louis Pasteur admitted that he had been wrong to focus on waging war against germs… And he said that in fact, “the terrain is everything.” The terrain refers to the environment of our systems; physically, as well as emotionally. Is our immune system strong and alert to any invader? Or is it under constant stress and sluggish to react?

In a recent article by the Alliance for Natural Health they discuss how governments are overlooking natural remedies for Ebola. From simple basics like good nutrition and hygiene, to the wealth of natural antiviral treatments, there are so many inexpensive approaches available. Unfortunately, “inexpensive” is the operative word here. If no drug company can make money off the treatments there is little incentive to investigate them…

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Breaking My Wrist or How Long Does Healing Take?

December 23, 2013 by Carol 5 Comments

It’s been quite a year… In April as I was walking my dog, I fell and landed on my right wrist, smashing it into many pieces. I will write more about that experience at some point, but today, I want to talk about how long it takes to heal…

Obviously, as an energy worker and body worker I was out of work! How long to take off? Until my hand was totally back to normal? That seemed absurd, the first month I felt like my whole right arm was off-line. It not only couldn’t do anything, it didn’t even want to try. I remember the day, about 5 weeks in, that – without thinking about it – I reached for a glass and picked it up with my right hand. I stared in amazement. My right hand had just spontaneously picked something up! It felt like that whole part of my body woke up that day and I found myself flipping light switches, reaching for the toothbrush, picking up a fork with my right hand again. So as soon as I felt that I could minimally function with both hands I thought that was enough healing time. I was ready to go back to work.

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Where Has Carol Been? In Reality…

July 27, 2013 by Carol 9 Comments

Now there’s a complex question! The Universe has taken me on my own personal Magical Mystery Tour these past two years, complete with hurricanes and floods and other acts of the Goddess, death and more death, broken bones, amazing love and support and surprising moments of joy.

I haven’t written much because the more that happened, the harder it was to know where to begin. Some of you have known me for a long time, some are new to this blog and only know me through my guided imagery CDs and mp3s or my teleseminar. Either way you know that I choose to focus on energetic patterns, on looking at life from a larger perspective, and on finding peace in challenging circumstances. This has been a time that has challenged all my beliefs. It has been a great relief and comfort to know that they are as solid as I thought.

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Stress, Peace and Falling Leaves…

October 22, 2012 by Carol 1 Comment

The autumn leaves are just moving past peak color where I live in the Catskill Mountains. This time of year has a bittersweet quality as the trees draw their energy in; protecting and conserving it till spring. This year, there is an eerie quality, as every falling leaf, every drop in temperature, evokes how I felt last fall. This past year I have explored stress and trauma in a very personal way.

My life was changed on so many levels by Hurricane Irene and the impact it had on my home, my community and my work. Since then, I have felt myself conserving my energy much as the trees are conserving their energy now, as they prepare for winter. Unfortunately, giving up writing and abandoning my website was one of the ways that I conserved my energy !

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Tapping World Summit

May 7, 2012 by Carol Leave a Comment

The world of Meridian Tapping has grown these past several years, and I am continually finding new and exciting ways to incorporate it into my work with my clients. Balancing and releasing stress, trauma, health issues, emotional issues, limiting belief systems, fears and phobias are all possible with this powerful process of tapping on acupuncture meridian points and creatively exploring our stuff.

For an amazing taste of tapping with 20 masterful practitioners, check out the 2012 Tapping World Summit which starts tonight, May 7th. It’s a free online event and each presentation is available to hear for no cost for 24 hours, or you can purchase the recordings. Some of my favorite teachers – Carol Look, Donna Eden, Bruce Lipton, Jack Canfield and Margaret Lynch are presenting.

Give a Gift that Decreases Your Stress…

February 10, 2012 by Carol Leave a Comment

My partner and I are celebrating Valentine’s Day this weekend, so I am still figuring out the best gift. Arielle Ford, author of “Wabi Sabi Love” came up with a fantastic idea; give your partner amnesty for the thing that you most complain, argue or harass them about, and gift them with your vow to let it go. Pick one infuriating thing they do that you are chronically annoyed or crazed by – leaving every cabinet door and drawer open in the kitchen, dirty dishes in the sink, interrupting you when you are on the phone…

The gift of letting go of annoyance and irritation is indeed a gift you give yourself. We cannot control other people’s behavior – though it is oh, so tempting to try! What we can control is our own responses, and how we create our own stress as we struggle against reality. How stressful is it to be constantly annoyed by someone’s habits that may or may not ever change? How peaceful would it be to just accept that that’s the way it is and look for the gift in it.

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