Do you ever feel that life starts to take on a pace of its own, perhaps getting more and more hectic and robbing you of any peace of mind, as you keep running raggedly to keep up?

Does there seem to be an endless list that needs attending to….and if that list should ever get depleted, your mind compulsively invents several more “vital” things to add to it?

I know I felt that way a lot and it led to overwhelm and exhaustion, not to mention feeling cheated out of the sweet satisfaction I had done enough at the end of the day.

Then, one day, during my morning meditation, I started to use my hypnosis and energy awareness skills to amp up my experience of the life all around me.  Out of this experimentation comes the Merging with Presence mini-meditation.  Each time I do it, I am recharged and enlivened.  The overwhelm leaves, my energy increases, and I experience a joyfulness to be alive.

Each mini-meditation lasts only a few minutes, so you can do it several times a day to create spaciousness in your life. The results are delightfully cumulative.
Begin to inhale into your belly, slowly and fully, with long exhales.  Look around slowly until you find something beautiful, natural or pleasant to look at.  Let your eyes be soft as you look at it and start to see it, as if for the first time.  Notice how it moves (such as tree blowing in the breeze) and  become aware of the color and shape of it. Notice how the light plays on its surfaces and the details about it you may not have noticed before.In your mind, tell your duties that you will be back with them shortly, that you are going to recharge now. Let your thinking process know that you won’t be needing it to judge, analyze or evaluate anything for a few minutes. It can take a break also.

1. As you look at this chosen object, feel yourself where you are: becoming aware of the support of the surface beneath you, the temperature in the room, the breeze on your skin and the feel of your arm touching your body, etc.  Become exquisitely present right where you are and with the object you are looking at.
2. Expand your energy from the center of you outwards until it reaches and touches the thing you are looking at so fully. You can do this easily by imagining it.  Energy follows thought, and using the expansive aspects of your breathing to feel your own aliveness will make you aware of the energetic nature of what you are focused on.  Feel a connection as you breathe and look.  For me, this is where I start to feel the miracle of my aliveness in a visceral way.
3. Now listen to the sounds around you and allow them to present themselves to your ears in a way that is fresh and original.  You may notice that you are very focused and spacious at the same time, experiencing this Now moment in a new way.
4. As you continue breathing purposefully and into your belly, begin to notice any scents.  Don’t label what you smell, just experience it.
5. Gently let your eyes close and fully feel your body in this moment and in this way. You may notice a rising of soul feelings such as deep appreciation, gratitude for living, honor of being part of something so real or any other feelings.  Let them come.  Partner them as they move through you.
6. Bring this Presence awareness back into your life by returning to what you were doing with a new acceptance but without the angst.  Experiment with staying aware of your breath and the spaciousness as you engage again with your tasks.

Let me know how you do with this meditation!

Blessings, Laura

Laura E Taylor, Divorce Recovery Coaching, ©2012

I have recently had the opportunity to review Eckhart Tolle’s work again, and it has been so worth it.  I read The Power of Now when it first came out and loved it but also found it difficult to STAY in the present at first.  As time passed, I received more inspiring and helpful information.

Michael Mohoric, the Tibetan Qigong Energy Healer (www.QigongEnergyHealing.com) that I am working with, recently told me his story of overcoming a spinal cord injury using his Qigong methods.  After experiencing his work, I was reminded of my first Qigong Teacher’s message to us in one of his Instructor training classes: “if you forget everything else, just remember that Love heals.”  (For more info, http://www.springforestqigong.com/index.htm.) This concept is core to Qigong’s power to heal and so my question to Michael was “What’s your take on how to get into that place where you feel the peace and calm that evokes healing love?”

He suggested I read Tolle’s book entitled “A New Earth,” which I have done over the last two days.  I’m sold.  Eckhart speaks so clearly and succinctly about our individual and collective emotional pain-bodies, derived from a life-time (or several) of being hurt, and how they kick in to keep us unconscious of a better, more loving way to live.

I found myself nearly underlining everything in the book because I loved what was said so much.  He speaks so eloquently and poignantly, I find it challenging to replicate but here are a couple of key exercises to switch out of the egoic pain-body that will hopefully whet your appetite to read the book:

1. Start to observe your thoughts.  Look out for the ones that take you down.  Look out for the ones that blame others for your woes.  These thoughts only bring us down further.  We are so much bigger than these negative, egoic thoughts.
2. Practice observing the present moment, rather than the past or future.  Ask yourself what your body is feeling right now.  Look around the room- what do you see?  Stay focused on it for a moment or two longer than you usually do.  By doing this, we engage our Higher Observer- the bigger us.  Tolle says this eventually lessens the grip of our egos.  I know this to be true.  I’ve practiced for a while and find it easier to stay in the bigger picture of life and my part in it.  A big bonus: This is also where inspired insight comes from- perhaps guidance about your next step.
3. See if you can feel the inside of your body.  See if you can feel its aliveness.  Focus quietly on the buzzing sensation inside your core.  Tolle says this aliveness IS the bigger part of who we are.  I see this ‘place’ as offering hope not just for myself but for all of us on this planet- where we find solutions that don’t come by just thinking about the problem at hand.  A pretty powerful technique.

Let me know what you discover.  And may you have a good day, Judy

Michael Mohoric, the Tibetan Qigong Energy Healer (www.QigongEnergyHealing.com) that I am working with, recently told me his story of overcoming a spinal cord injury using his Qigong system. After experiencing his work, I was reminded of my Qigong Teacher Chunyi Lin’s message to us in one of his Instructor training classes: “If you forget everything else, just remember that Love heals.” This concept is core to Qigong’s power to heal and so my question to Michael was “What’s your take on how to get into that feeling of peace and calm that evokes healing love?”

He suggested I read Tolle’s book from 2005 entitled “A New Earth,” which I have done over the last two days. I’m sold. Eckhart writes so clearly and succinctly about our individual and collective emotional pain-bodies, derived from a life-time (or three) of being hurt, and how they kick in to keep us unconscious of a better, more loving way to live (versus one based repetitively on pain and struggle.)

I found myself nearly underlining everything in the book because I loved he said so much.  He speaks so eloquently and poignantly, I find it challenging to replicate but here are a couple of key exercises to switch out of the egoic pain-body that will hopefully whet your appetite to read the book:

1. Start to observe your thoughts. Look out for the ones that take you down. Look out for the ones that blame others for your woes. We are so much bigger than these negative, egoic thoughts.

2. Practice observing the present moment, rather than the past or future. By doing this, we engage our Higher Observer- the bigger us. Tolle says this eventually lessens the grip of our egos. I know this to be true. I’ve practiced for a while and find it easier to stay in the bigger picture of life and my part in it.  The present moment is also where inspired insight comes from.

3. See if you can feel the inside of your body. See if you can feel its aliveness. This aliveness IS the bigger part of who we are. And I see this ‘place’ as offering hope for all of us on this planet- where we find solutions that don’t come by just thinking about the problem at hand.  A new Earth, yeah?

Let me know what you discover. Warmly, Judy

He tells the story of Paula and her journey out of her divorce experience. I thought you might be encouraged by it. There is so much to learn from his gentle way of being, whether you’re going through a divorce or any other tough time.

“For weeks I listened to Paula becoming more mindful of her divorce, with all the attendant grief and anger and fear. She practiced holding her body and her painful history in compassion. Finally Paula was ready to go back to the most painful scene of all. I asked her to close her eyes and remember the night her father left. She was three years old, wearing a light blue cotton dress, standing at the top of the stairs listening to her parents fight. Then she saw her father grab his suitcase and, without looking up at her, storm out of the door and out of her life. It was agonizing. “He didn’t even look at me. He didn’t say anything to me.” When I asked what this little girl was thinking, she said, “I did something wrong; there’s something wrong with me. Otherwise he would have stayed.”

After Paula held this grief-stricken three-year-old child in compassion for a time, I asked her to imagine that she could enter the experience of her father standing at the door. “When you become him, how does your body feel?” I asked. “Awful. Tight, rigid, like I could explode. I’m terrified. I’m stuck in a terrible marriage that I didn’t want, in a dead-end job. We fight all the time and I’m losing my life. I have to escape. I have to run away, to save my life.” “And now as you pick up your suitcase to go out the door, do you know that your daughter Paula is standing there at the top of the stairs?” “I do, but I can’t look at her. I can’t. If I see the look on her face, I could never leave. I love her so much, but if I don’t leave I’ll die. I have to get out.” Paula began to weep for her father and for his fear, for everyone’s pain.

As we sat quietly, I asked Paula about the story that she had told since this day, that she had done something wrong, that she was unlovable. “Who made up this story?” I asked. After a pause, she replied sheepishly, “I did.” “Is it true?” “Not really,” she said, and half smiled at me. “Are you sure?” I asked. She laughed. We talked about whether she wanted to keep repeating the story and pattern of unlovability. “Who are you if not this story?” I asked. We looked at each other in the stillness of the heart, outside of her fears, outside of time. We sat together in the sacred beauty of the present that contains all stories and yet so much more. Paula began to feel free.”

Using Meridian Tapping is another tool to release one’s emotional pain. Laura and I use it frequently in our practice as it works so well. Give us a call if you’d like help to move out of your pain and on to your lighter, freer life ahead.

Wishing you peace, Judy

We both realized at about the same time that we needed to become more forgiving of ourselves, and self compassionate, in order to completely heal ourselves at the core level. It’s not the commitment to a strict diet, debt-reduction or exercise regime that will make us happy, we’ve discovered, but rather the commitment to finding a way to just give ourselves a little love when we feel we’re going down that old road of not feeling good enough.

I used to get exercise because I wanted to be thin for my first husband. He valued my thinness, which I never quite felt I achieved to either of our standards. Eventually I began to resent not being liked for who I was (or liking myself for who I was- crazy, huh!) I knew exercise was good for me and I wished I could have done it just for the love of it but that never truly happened until the ability to get exercise was taken away from me, as it has been with this lyme/polymyalgia rheumatic/whatever problem I’m dealing with now- all my docs have different theories.

It’s funny how life presents you with challenges (we’ll call them, to be generous) so you can learn the lesson- the lesson of love. Self love or love for others. I don’t think I would have appreciated the ability to move so much without it being taken away. The pain and stiffness in my tendons and muscles forced me to realize how lucky I’d been to be able to move in comfort, let alone be able to run 5 or 10 miles. Part of the lesson, in regaining my mobility and health, has been to learn to give myself loving messages. The other part has been to give myself the gift of time to practice qigong (chee-gung), China’s ancient healing modality. I learned to teach qigong four years ago and could dictate the moves to you in my sleep but I valued DOING 8000 things a day more than what I’d heard the actual, consistent practice of daily qigong could give me. As a good friend, Joy, once told me “You do it ‘til you don’t do it anymore.” And that’s the case with me, giving up another onion layer of the old, egoic me for the compassionate me I am underneath.

The self love exercise that follows and the practice of qigong are the tools I am using to not only feel physically better but to achieve that warm glow and peace of mind that only these kinds of energy practices can give. Once I got started I felt like a million bucks and wondered why I ever dragged my feet for so long. Now I look forward to taking some gentle time for myself to connect with the Big Loving Source. I feel my batteries recharge and life gets fun and awe-filled again.

So, here’s the self-love exercise. Choose someone like Rebecca to be your texting or emailing buddy! Agree to take a look at your ‘self talk’ this week. When you find yourself saying “I’ll never have this” or “I can’t do that,” see if you can replace that thought with “I love myself” or “I forgive myself for having thought that for so long, and I love myself right now.” You’ll probably be crap at it the first week but that’s what your buddy is for. They’ll be crap at it too but one of you will remember to send a loving message and it’ll make the other’s day. Then you’ll want to do that for them and visa versa. Then you get better at it and so do they. Then it starts to become a bit of a habit and then a more consistent habit and there you go.

Have fun rediscovering your authentic self and let me know how it goes.

Wishing you peace of mind, Judy

Deep within me lives a song yearning to be sung. A song so sweet and beautiful that in its very expression, the illusion of separateness from the Divine dissolves, revealing the radiant glow of Oneness.

Deep within me there lives an eternal womb of creation, pulsating with infinite and ever expanding possibilities that respond to my willingness and direction.

Deep within me is my home, a living holy temple that embraces me with the knowledge that I have never been alone, and that the Loving Spirit of the Divine has never left me.

What, then, is it that keeps me from singing my Spirit’s song of joy and union?
What holds me away from the creation of my dearest dreams and desires?
What stops me from experiencing myself as the innocent that I am – worthy of every treasure?
What prevents me from knowing I am God’s (Divine Being’s, Spirit’s, Higher Power’s) perfect child, and that this Living Spirit is always loving me, has never left me, and, indeed, is me?

In this world of illusion and form, I have traded the real for the false, the unseen for the seen, the present for the past.  I have hovered over my fleeting creations in fear, dreading they would be snatched away. I have searched outside myself for validation and love, forgetting that all love comes from within.  I have clung to what I thought gave me pleasure or security, resisting the thrust of this Living Spirit to birth my highest and greatest self. I have been unwilling to let go of what I had, not believing or trusting that I could experience an ever greater and more joyous life.

Immersed in pain, and feeling that I have little to offer the Living and Sustaining Spirit within, I bring what little I have and place it on the altar of Love within me to be transformed:

I give my sense of loss, my yearning and longing for someone to save me from my aloneness.
I give my self-judgment, self-blame, and guilt that I am not enough.
I give my fear that I will die with my soul’s purpose unexpressed.
I give my disbelief that the miraculous could ever happen to me.
I give my sense of separation from my own Divine Self.

As I lay the illusions that have gripped me on Love’s altar, I see that they evaporate one by one in the Light of Truth. And, only Love remains.  The sweet, cherishing Love of the Living Spirit.  I am humbled by this generosity and kindness that keeps no score, holds no grudge, and knows only the truth of who I am.  This Love washes over me sweeping away any barriers to Its wholeness. I am made new, open and trusting.  In this timeless Grace and Peace I start to hear my song welling up from within.  I open my mouth to sing.

Hope this helps you, Laura

Copyrighted by Laura E. Taylor

I have a wonderful couple of business partners here in the Napa Valley. We joined forces to give powerful wellness and stress relief workshops, called To Your Health Napa, to groups and corporations when they come for their retreats at all our beautiful resorts amongst the vineyards. And the plan was to introduce our workshops on Dr. Sharon’s wellness radio spot on Kellie Fuller’s show on KVYN- Kellie in the Morning. (Catch that? As in VINE.)

Sharon Ufberg is an international leader and activist in women’s health and has 30 years’ experience as a chiropractor and integrative health practitioner. Becca Pronchick is a transformational life coach and Ananda Yoga and Meditation Instructor. Both are absolutely lovely women to boot and I’m truly honored to work with them. Ergo, my feeling of letting them down.

Luckily, Kellie and Sharon, clearly professional and experienced radio hosts, saved my butt and minimized my frozen-ness, if that’s a word. I’m evidently ‘not the first and won’t be the last’ to make a live show boo-boo.

The glitch came when I was only prepared to speak about our Napa project and not another of my focuses, the Metaphysics of Money- a topic that I know so many of us need to heal, especially in the stressful economic times we’re in. I didn’t have my one liner ready to go. (I love partnerships and found a gem of a coach in Karen Caldwell, a wealth and money expert. We combine the practical and spiritual approach to finances. By the way, we’re having an introductory workshop this Saturday in Napa and we still have 2 spots, if you’re interested!)

As I left the studio, I thought I might be consoled by the fact that not many people would hear it, given we aired at 7am, but when I talked to my husband to report in, he said “Oh that’s the commute show.” Yes, there did seem to be a million people on the road- great. Oh well, I just had to let it go and practice the stress relief tools I teach.

What did help me let it go was Sharon’s generosity to offer a recorded interview about another business focus, Divorce Recovery Coaching, a topic dear to Laura Taylor’s and my hearts. Sharon also has a radio spot on NPR. This interview went so well- I just spoke from my passion and it flowed. If NPR accepts it, that will be super. If not, I at least know I can do this. Whew. Chalk one up to being more quickly able to let the mistakes go!

Do you have any stories you’d like to share of letting go of the ‘beat-myself-up’ voice?  We’d love to hear them as they’ll encourage all of us recovering perfectionists.

More about my and my partners’ services at www.JudyCameron.com.

Me, Sharon and Becca

The documentary is called The Nature of Existence. It was done by a young guy named Roger Nygard. I watched it on Netflix and it was both funny and disturbing. The gist is that he goes out into the world to ask many, many (many) people why we’re here and what our purpose is.

He interviews priests, rabbis, gurus, and waitresses, as well as professors and atheists- just about everybody- and every one of them state their beliefs about what the human race is doing on this planet. I expected more of a scientific exploration and what I got was a jumble of everyday people and their thoughts on the matter, one after the other, after the other, continuously for an hour and a half. It was a bit hard to follow. I wanted more time to absorb what each person had to say but it jumped so quickly to the next person and jumbled the serious with the downright nutty perspectives that I wanted to turn it off. But something kept me going.

I think that something was the breakthrough that was about to happen. After about an hour and a bit, I saw that each of these people was SO sure their perspective was the right one. I’m not exactly sure why I never developed such certainty about any one philosophy except that perhaps it was my mother being so sure about her outlook on life. My Mom grew up in London during the war and was deeply affected by the uncertainty of survival, what with bombs dropping every night. The way her philosophy came across, to me as a kid, was that it was the only way- her way or the highway. I now believe it was her way to feel in control of her life. Probably because of that experience, though, I developed the desire to study many different viewpoints to see which fit me best. It took a really long time but something in this movie shifted me- it solidified MY perspective.

I realized that if all those people out there could be so certain about their perspective then I could do the same. And my perspective is that the Truth is based on love, or a return to love, as Maryanne Williamson says. (Great book, ‘A Return to Love’, by the way.) Love has a lot of different names in many religions or belief systems but the essence is the feeling of love, and how much of it we feel for ourselves, situations or the people in our lives.

Yes, ‘bad’ experiences happen but it is our response to those bad things that determines our return to neutrality or balance. And how are we going to appreciate unconditional love if we don’t know what loss, despair or conditional love is?

So, given no one can really prove what’s real, right or wrong, I am now even more committed to choosing thoughts that are the most loving- the most caring- of myself and others. Or attempt to anyway. I know I still have areas where I need to be more forgiving or enlightened but I’m going to do my best to see myself and others in the best light possible. Because that’s what I think we’re here for.

Watch the trailer here

He tells the story of his Native American friend who agrees to show him how the rain dance works. They’re out in the New Mexican or Arizonian desert and it hasn’t rained in months. Gregg watches his friend walk out a distance and expects to see him start a traditional dance. Instead his friend stands quietly for many minutes, with his face lifted toward the sky and his arms outstretched, palms upward. Nothing seems to be happening- no dancing and no rain. After a while, his friend walks back to him and Gregg asks him what just happened: “Isn’t praying for rain the purpose of the rain dance?” His friend explained: “I wasn’t praying for rain, I was praying rain.”

In other words, he was imagining that his face and palms were being splashed by rain in that moment. He used all his senses to feel it, smell it and recall it. And maybe most importantly, to be grateful for it.

Gregg goes on to say that it did, in fact, rain in that location later in the day, though no rain had been forecast.

This story is yet another example of just how important it is for us to train our minds to focus on the end result we’d like to accomplish. My experience is that it’s quite difficult to do in the beginning but that it gets easier with time. Finding a friend you trust to practice with is a great start. Agree to help each other by watching what the other says in any given conversation. We are usually unaware of old ways of speaking about ourselves- derogatory comments that we’ve said since we were kids- usually verbatim what someone said about us so long ago.

Often I hear clients say they’ve spent years allowing their thoughts to control them- mostly unconsciously- and that it takes work to even become aware of their thoughts, let alone reprogram them. But there is nothing more worthwhile. Turn our thoughts around and our results eventually follow suit.

I challenge you to pick a topic you’d like to turn around. Not the biggest, darkest obstacle in your life but something small, so you can have success more quickly. Start to watch your thoughts. Catch them as soon as you can. Probably they will remind you of a ‘failure’ long ago or how much you dislike your body in some way. We all have these continuous-loop tapes running and the time has come to reprogram kinder, more nurturing thoughts. Allow your friend to gently point them out to you, so you can free yourself to a higher way of being.

Then think about what your desired end result would be. Make it really wonderful. You can imagine rain splashing on your face, right? Know you will be good at this thought-shifting skill. The task at hand will be to practice replacing the undesired thought with the desired thought. We can have control over our thoughts, with practice. Take a moment to imagine yourself easily being able to shift out of a negative mind set and into a thought that will give you joy. There is such power in this- and such hope for our lives and the lives of our families. Let’s encourage each other to think well of ourselves, and see the best in ourselves. We will all benefit.

Warmly, Judy

I’m still re-reading the classic self-help book “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay. I love that she says “When people come to me with a problem, I don’t care what it is- poor health, lack of money, unfulfilling relationships, or stifled creativity- there is only one thing I ever work on, and that is loving the self. I find that when we really love and accept and approve of ourselves exactly as we are, then everything in life works.”

Most of us still hold onto some level of non-forgiveness, thinking we are justified because someone has hurt us in the past. We hurt people because we have been hurt- it’s all we know how to do. If we all had had unconditionally loving and encouraging parents, we would be spreading the wealth of love because it would be all we would know how to do. Learning to let go of our pain frees us to move forward into the natural flow of abundance. The question is how to do that. Louise offers affirmations while my favorite method is a combination of affirmations with EFT or Meridian Tapping, a technique I studied to be able to offer my clients (and use myself) to great effect.

When I flew up to Minnesota to study with my Qigong Master, Chunyi Lin of Spring Forest Qigong, for my fourth level of training, he started the course by saying “If you forget everything else, just remember that love heals.” Even then it was still an intellectual exercise for me to hear this concept. Later that year though, when my pugdog, Willie, was in the Veterinary Critical Care Unit, with a baseball-sized mass of cellulitis under his chin (that was pressing on his trachea, causing him to need a tracheotomy), I had the chance to see this concept in action. He had been on big gun antibiotics for three days with no change in the size of the tumor at all. We visited him daily and, as he breathed through his tube, he enjoyed a plain hamburger when no one was looking. But it wasn’t looking very good. I was so upset I had forgotten to use what I knew about Qigong until day four. I immediately went home and spent many hours that day practicing it on my beloved puggy.

The essence of Qigong – China’s ancient healing practice – is that the Universe is all-loving and, as we focus on the outcome we choose, as in Willie’s return to full health, the Universe (or the power of love) comes forth to do the work. I had had to be threatened with his potential death before testing this new belief system. However, the next day the vet office called to say the tumor had gone down 60% in size overnight, enough to remove the tracheal tube, and for him to heal and come home in another day. I was elated. It was confirmation to me that directed love does indeed heal.

Since then I’ve wondered if I will be able to apply this principle regularly, or to myself, given I’m dealing with lyme disease at the moment. The progress has been slower for me than my pug and I wonder if it’s because I don’t actually feel I deserve it. So, therefore, my next focus is to retrain my thoughts- conscious and, more importantly, unconsciously- about my deservedness of full health and true self love. The latest research- confirmation of ancient healing principles- shows us that our minds give us whatever we focus on. I clearly am not fully in alignment with this principle, though I’d like to be. Maybe it’s all my years working in western medicine and its insistence that it has the right or only answers. As much as I would instantly like to infuse faith in the ancient healing systems into my consciousness, because they seem kinder, more unified philosophies, I at least know that I have Meridian Tapping to help me do the work to get there, much more quickly than most techniques. And Meridian Tapping works on emotional or physical health challenges, whether we’re going through a divorce or struggling with money or releasing blocks to healing.

Let me know your thoughts. And take good care of yourself, Judy