Healing Hands

Imagery and kindness…

December 12, 2010 by Carol Leave a Comment

Often clients have told me that they can’t do guided imagery because they “can’t visualize.” I find it ironic, because the truth is, we are all absolutely expert at what I call ‘negative imagery.’ Sending our bodies messages that they obediently respond to; “I’m clumsy, I’m fat (and I’ll always be fat!), I have a bad back, a sensitive stomach, that medicine will make me nauseous, I’ll never heal…” the litany of negative thoughts and negative imagery goes on all day.

So what if we could harness this ability we all seem to have and creatively use it for health and healing? What if the messages were positive and health-promoting, instead of critical and judgmental? What if we were actually kind to ourselves?

My friend Bernadette Hunter wrote a wonderful blog recently called “The Surprising Link Between Kindness and Performance.”

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short attention span theatre…

July 17, 2010 by Carol 1 Comment

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!) We have to be in constant contact with our 183 closest friends, but we want to keep it to 140 characters or less. We text instead of talking, message instead of writing, tweet because the world as we know it will cease to exist if everyone doesn’t know what we’re doing at least 5 times a day!

I must confess, I am dipping my toes in the murky waters of facebook these days, and trying to understand the draw, and the meaning of it all. A few times, I have gotten involved in a very interesting conversation thread with some pretty cool folks. But so much of the chatter seems to be just that! Chatting for the sake of keeping up some strange, fragmented sense of contact and connection. I find myself yelling at the names on my computer screen “Don’t you have anything better to do? Just pick up the damn phone and have an actual conversation with an actual person!”

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Enlightenment and flossing…

July 4, 2010 by Carol 1 Comment

A friend just sent me this zen proverb “After enlightenment, the laundry.” And I thought, “and after every cool, cosmic, transformative experience, you still have to floss…”

We search for the peak experience, for the magic bullet, the Answer, the Way… Even if it existed, there’s still the regular Stuff of life; laundry, flossing, and no matter how many times you cut your toenails, you still have to do it again!

If only we could be content with the Yin and Yang of life, the excitement and the mundane, the epiphany and the falling back into our old unconscious habits, inhaling and exhaling, transformation and cleaning up dog poop. Our eternal search for transcendence makes us glorious – our stubborn denial of the mundane stuff of life makes us like ostriches.

What’s your favorite contradiction? And is it really contradiction, or is there really Yin and Yang, in-breath and out-breath, light and dark for a reason…

~Carol

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Self-Esteem: do I deserve to be happy?

September 24, 2009 by Carol Leave a Comment

We started with ‘what is happiness?’ for this season of the “Profound Paths to Health, Healing and Happiness” teleseminar series, but then I thought it was important to go back a step. So my second speaker was Dr. Joe Rubino talking about self esteem, what he calls “the most under-rated ingredient for success and happiness in life.” Understanding our self-esteem and how it has been compromised or damaged through our lives helps us clearly see what blocks us from our full potential, our full joy. Am I worthy of health, healing and happiness; do I deserve to be happy?

It is fascinating to look back at the messages we got, what we internalized, and especially the stories we have told ourselves and made into our creed. Humans take “what happens” and make stories about what it means. It’s what we do, in our search for meaning, and we all do it very well! But then we are stuck with living out of a story made by a 5 year old or 3 year old or even a teenager!

There are many ways to find these old stories and clear and heal them. I love the way Joe Rubino guides people through this process, I find it simple and clear and empowering. If you think old stories and messages are holding you back from the health and happiness you deserve, or if you question whether you even deserve them, look more deeply into your self esteem. You can find new possibilities, new freedom in this healing process.

You can check out Joe Rubino’s book and get a free copy of “Seven Steps to Soaring Self-Esteem” at The Self-Esteem Book

Yours in Peace, Carol