In these turbulent times of political and racial divisiveness, one human experience is the great unifier: Loss. We cannot avoid it, individually and collectively, especially if we are engaged with the world through our work and media information choices. We see fires ravaging communities of trees and people, floods disappearing whole ecosystems and devastating towns, and humans suffering through the terrors of pandemic illness and death on every continent. Whether these losses are personal or witnessed, our awareness of them can positively impact what we think and feel and share with others. Recognizing shared losses puts us in touch with our common humanity. As difficult as loss is, it makes it possible to expand our sense of connection to others, no matter where we are in the world.
When I was living in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, deep in the heart of Canadian First-Nations, Indian Country, I did some volunteering for the Native Centre by supporting their Traditional Pow Wows for a couple of years. I learned a lot from First Nations organizers and volunteers, loved the slow pace and long silences of meetings, and felt blessed by the irrepressible joy of a people who identified as Earthlings. My experiences confirmed what I’d known for some time: our first allegiance is to Mother Earth.
Our sole provider, without Her gracious bounty, we die.
This Earth Day, as we see the fragility of our food systems through the COVID-19 lens, let us walk upon our patch of ground with reverence and thanksgiving. Before this crisis, it was easy to forget our Earthling dependencies. Now, we are more aware than ever before of our interdependence upon the greater-than-human contributions to our human lives.
Take the time to thank a tree for this life form’s many gifts. Hold soil in your hands. Think of worms, those tireless workers who aid all farmers and growers. Drink water with awareness of its rare and vital gifts to all of life on our home planet. Listen for birds. Call out thanks to the sun.
Delight is one of the most accessible supports for our personal health and well being. May we delight in what our First Nations Brothers and Sisters call All Our Relations as we express our gratitude for what is offered to us daily by our benevolent Earth Home.
For more about this year’s Earth Day, spend some time with
Recently, Netflix brought the film version of Richard Wagamese’s healing story, Indian Horse, to the small screen. As a Canadian living in Vermont, I was excited to find a story from home offered to the world of viewers able to luxuriate in small-screen viewing during these traumatizing times. Richard Wagamese is a man for these times, and Indian Horse, in print and on screen, reminds us that we are ever on a healing journey.
Story, as powerfully as dance and song, helps us to find and to move the hurt nesting in our bodies and psyches from its hidden places in our viscera and our embedded beliefs. Story loves us into wholeness by showing us that others too have suffered unspeakably and somehow find the grace to speak, to sing, to dance. Story, more than any of the arts, allows us to acknowledge and witness our pain and to claim our ability to move through the worst of what has happened to us to a place where healing can seep in, through images, through kind eyes, through a fellow being’s courage to tell and to heal.
I posted Indian Horse on my Resources / Books and DVDs for Inspiration page because of its timeless ability to help us to remember we are ever in flow and flux and not stuck in the worst of what has happened, even when this sense of being stuck in the worst feels permanent. Richard Wagamese tells a story about the worst that has happened, and also about the way through the worst. This is why he is a teacher for all of us, for all time.
During this time of collective trauma, of growing compassion and empathy, of restrictive movements and expansive imaginative leaps, may you find the stories that nourish all your broken places, to make you sing, and dance, and tell stories for yourself and others. We are all needed to help us move along our healing path together. Never forget this: Your story is the medicine that will always support your healing journey.
As we move into the next few months, practicing self care may become more challenging. As the human nervous system responds to real and imagined threats, we become more hypervigilant because our Sympathetic Nervous System is activated, compelling us to fight, escape, and even go numb or dissociate. First responders, medical personnel, agency employees serving high-risk populations, and traumatized children and adults are often so highly vigilant that personal and professional crisis-management reactivity becomes a way of life. Whatever our personal circumstances and professional commitments, when we are constantly expecting the worst, we run the risk of serious health challenges.
Helpful in returning our Sympathetic Nervous System to a state of calm is the simple act of bringing the hands to the head and gently and steadily allowing them to travel to the heart. If we are in a place where self-touch is restricted, especially of the facial area, we can place our hands a few inches out from the head, then follow the same slow, steady path to the heart. When at the heart, allow the hands to rest, one over the other on the chest, and open, like butterfly wings, at heart level. Breathing deeply, we can begin our meditation on trust – in the self, in others, and in our ability to work together as we open to the guidance that will help our families, our communities, and indeed, the entire world, to find peace amid the chaos of uncertainty.
I meditate in this way because I have learned that we are all connected through invisible energy fields. Rupert Sheldrake, author of Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home, has studied these fields in depth, calling them Morphogenetic Fields, now commonly known as Morphic Fields. He uses this term because his research has proven that the energetic fields around us organize and generate our physical lives.
Indra’s Web
When I first heard the term morphic field, I immediately thought of Indra’s Web, a mythological concept describing how the entire universe is woven together through invisible interconnections. Evidence for the existence of our invisible interconnections is found in the concept of entanglement in quantum physics, what Einstein referred to as “Spooky Action at a Distance.” Spiritual leaders point to this scientific evidence of entanglement as an explanation for answered prayers.
Our invisible interconnections are especially comforting during these times of social distancing. Drawing the energy from our worst-case-scenario thoughts to our steady, reliable hearts as we meditate on trust allows each one of us to contribute to peace and calm at a time when we need it most.
In our highly monetized consumer culture, many have become accustomed to instant gratification. ‘Trusting the process,’ a highly valuable attitude when involved in creative projects and problem solving, has been lost when dealing with everyday frustrations. We’re encouraged to be the ‘right-now’ culture, whether we’re young, middle-aged or old. In this world of constant promotions and immediate-gratification demands, we have misplaced something essential to our humanness: our delight in free time. Continue reading Waiting . . . and EFT
Those of us called to teach, who flush with the pleasure of a student’s hard won insight or accomplishment and who do all we can to stay true to our purpose to lift and to launch others into the magic of new knowledge, new skills, and new relationships, are often shocked to feel our passion for work we believe in unequivocally drain away. And yet this ebbing of passion happens, these days more than ever before, even among the most committed teachers. We often learn the hard way that powering through the pain we feel on our students’ behalf can lead to Compassion Fatigue so debilitating we feel forced to leave rather than further our relationship with teaching and learning. Happily, there is now an effective remedy for teachers’ professional exhaustion.
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.
With polarizing influences screeching in our ears like nails on a blackboard, it is easy to be caught up in the drama and forget to turn off our devices and sit in silence as we invite the natural rhythms of the world to bring us back to centre. One of the most effective techniques for building resilience in the long term and self regulating in the moment is to step outside onto a grassy patch, focus on a tree, and simply offer our appreciation for its being present to us. Resilience and self regulation are the secret to joyful longevity, loving and respectful relationships, and successful, sustainable business enterprises. Tapping to clear all resistance to daily resilience and self regulation practices helps us to develop nourishing self-care practices that ensure positive experiences in the moment and positive experiences over time.
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.
Once we commit to making positive physical changes, several helpful concepts support our intentions. The first concept concerns respecting and communicating with each aspect of the body we are conscious of judging negatively. When we find ourselves grasping the flesh of the upper arm, or belly, or some other body area as we make a critical comment, it is helpful to think of this physical part as coming forward for peace making. I say this because every specific part we reject about our flesh serves in some way to increase feelings of safety. This may sound counter-intuitive, especially when we are convinced that it is wrong or bad to be “fat,” or “lazy,” or even ill. However, when we reject even the tiniest part of the Self, we are in some way doing our very best to prevent similar rejection from others. Many of us learn self criticism as young children and then make our way in the world repeating this criticism as a way of short circuiting those we feel might criticize us in similar fashion. Tapping can help us to resolve our fear of criticism from others and at the same time, support us in making the long and winding journey from head to heart.
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.
Here in the west, one of the most challenging changes many of us undertake is the challenge to practice healthful, conscious eating choices. Bombarded with invitations to indulge our sweet, fat, and salt teeth, we succumb to all manner of foods that may comfort us in the moment but that torment us after the fact. No matter how diligent we are with exercise, we learn fairly early that no one outruns a bad diet. Hence the diet industry’s colossal financial success in the face of it’s equally colossal failures with the majority of folks who do their level best to attain their healthiest body weight through one “guaranteed” diet system or another. EFT can help us to make peace with our food behaviours, not as a magic bullet or with “fool-proof” meal plans, but as an aid to understanding what drives our ability to override our common sense and even our will power regarding what and how we eat.
