A Healer's Journey

Fear is an Energy

2012-01-28T16:33:00.000Z

Fear is an energy. It can save your life, it can also be debilitating. If we didn’t have fear, we would do silly things like jump off the roofs of buildings thinking we can fly, or run in front of a train because we feel invincible. The truth of the matter is, we are not super-heros and so fear keeps us safe. Reasonable fear, healthy fear.

Fear can also be unhealthy, and unreasonable, based on our experiences from life. We could be afraid of ice skating because we fell once and broke an ankle. We could be afraid of going out for a walk late at night because we have decided that it is too dangerous and something bad will happen.

The line that we draw deep inside between healthy fear and unhealthy fear depends very much on how we experienced life. We can take some time to recognise the existence of this line, and then we can actually redefine it. But it can take a lot of hard work.

If you feel called to do this work you can try this idea: Write down a specific fear that you have that you feel is unreasonable. Look at it and remember a time when you felt it before, earlier in life. If possible, go right back to the first time you felt this way. Once you have done this, you can expand on the memory, and trace the feelings to their source.

Take a cold, hard look at the fear, and at the memory you hold. Do they match? Are they reasonable? Can your adult mind rationalise today that what you have been holding onto for so long is actually something that was given to you from another source that was possibly resentful of your talents? Or worried about your safety?

Now you have established where you stand with this fear, write down the benefits of moving through it. For example, think about how much fun you will have being able to go ice skating with friends, or how great you’ll feel after going for a walk, even if it is dark outside.

Breathe out the old fear and let it move through you and into the earth.

Take your power back and let it go.

You can do anything you want to.

Which Level of Reiki do I need?

2012-01-18T15:35:00.003Z

I had a phone call today about my Reiki workshops, and I thought it would be good to write a piece about the difference between the levels of Reiki.

Reiki Teaching and Reiki Practitioners in Ireland do not undergo any statutory regulation. Therefore there are many different types of Reiki courses (and Reiki practices) avaiable out there, some of which include things that are not Reiki (such as Angels, Crystals, Mediumship, etc).

I've been on the committee of Reiki Federation Ireland for more than a year. RFI are an organisation that promotes high standards of Reiki practice and teaching. As part of my role on the RFI committee, I have helped write Standards and Guidelines for Reiki classes in Ireland.

I ensure to provide my clients/students with the highest possible standard of Reiki practice, I am transparent in how I teach, and if other elements enter the Reiki training due to the nature of the group, we discuss them as appropriate but do not necessarily incorporate them into the classes.

Everyone can bring in their own beliefs, work in their own comfort level, and leave with a knowldege of how to work with energy to heal themselves.

The following is a summary of the Reiki classes that are available, based on Reiki Federation Guidelines. Whether you take your classes with me or with someone else, it is important for you to be clear about what is involved in each level and where you are going, before you embark on any Reiki training.

Reiki Level 1
The first level of Reiki teaches you how to use Reiki for self-care. It enables you to work with people you are comfortable around, such as family and friends. You can stretch your practice to your pets if you so wish, you can use it on plants, and on food. We discuss all of the ways you can bring Reiki practice into your life as a Level 1 practitioner. My level 1 class is a Friday evening, and all day Saturday. During this class you will be initated into the Reiki light (connected), you will learn how to work with Reiki, and after the class you will get a manual and a Level 1 Certificate.

If you wish to continue using Reiki on yourself and your family and friends, it is not necessary to continue with any further Reiki courses.

Reiki Level 2
After you are confident working with Reiki, you may wish to deepen your relationship and your knowledge. Level 2 is taught by me over two full days, and are usually over a weekend. I recommend at least 4-6 months between Level 1 and Level 2 for you to grow in confidence in your ability as a Reiki practitioner. During Level 2 you will learn the Reiki Symbols, and you will be shown how to heal people from a distance.
After level 2 the Reiki light will become much stronger and more focussed in your body. During this class you will be initated into the Reiki light at level 2 and after the class you will get a manual and a Level 2 Certificate

Traditionally at this stage, people are able to treat the general public and deem themselves Reiki Practitioners, however it is recommended by Reiki Federation Ireland to take the Reiki Practitioner Module before formally opening your doors to the public.

Reiki Practitioner Module
Reiki Federation Ireland has introduced a new class which is of benefit to anyone who wishes to become a professional Reiki Practitioner. In this class you become familiar with the needs of clients, you grow in your confidence as a practitioner and learn about the standards and guidelines set by Reiki Federation Ireland in order to uphold a high standard of Reiki. You will also learn about what is involved in setting up your own business and the legal requirements of being in private practice.

If you are interested in taking this class please let me know.

Reiki Master Level
To deepen your Reiki practice and to obtain the Reiki Master Symbol, Reiki Master level is a beautiful gift which opens further doors of development and discovery in the healing arts.
I teach this class by appointment only, please contact me if you are interested in attending a level 3 class.

Reiki Master Teacher Level
Once you are established in your Reiki practice and feel the call to teach others Reiki, you can take the Reiki Master Teacher class. This can take up to 6 months to complete depending on who you are training with. During this class you should be invited to re-sit all the levels again, as well as undergoing special Reiki Master Teacher Training.
If you take this class with me we will cover teaching training, class planning, and how to give an attunement. An extensive list (compiled by Reiki Federation Ireland) will be given to you so that you fully understand what is necessary to cover in each class once you decide to teach it yourself. And you will get plenty of practice!

For more information on the teaching guidelines, you can visit www.reikifederationireland.com
Contact me if you have any questions, or would like to see my class schedule: abby@abby-wynne.com

How did you come to practice Reiki? What has your practice given you?

2012-01-06T11:28:00.000Z

Pamela Miles asked these questions on her blog, and it made me really think about what Reiki has brought to my life. I’d like to share my answer here, with you.

I never was inspired by anyone in particular, never had aspirations to be “like” anyone. Many people around me admired political figureheads, businessmen or Spiritual leaders. I never know what all the fuss was about! They were all just people to me, people who did extraordinary things, yes, but they all had to bathe, they all had to go to the bathroom, they all had to eat. I felt there was nothing magical about that.

The first person I ever met that evoked the thought in me: “I want to be just like her” was a Reiki practitioner called Ruth. I went to see her during a difficult time in my life and I was always upset, emotional and unbalanced when I arrived in to see her. She was the antithesis of me – calm, centred, peaceful, she seemed to glide around the room without her feet touching the ground. She had a beautiful smile and when she looked at me she was really there. I mean really – when you looked in her eyes, she was there. Me, I was always racing ahead into the future making plans, I’d loose my temper easily, I would go from being so happy I could cry, to being so sad that I would cry and I certainly was never able to stay in one place for too long.

After I experienced the magic of Reiki with Ruth I decided I needed to be able to do it for myself. My first Reiki class was an experience I’ll never forget (not necessarily for the right reasons but that’s another story – these things make us better teachers!).

I believe that it has been my practice of Reiki over the last 15 or so years that has brought me to the space of being able to be fully present, being patient and tolerant, being empathic and able to hold a safe space for my clients to become emotional and clear their own issues without becoming sucked into them myself. I am finally, now, the way that I perceived Ruth was during that time. It was a long journey to get here and I will always be grateful for the lessons I learned along the way.

I’ll be teaching Reiki level one in February 2012, over a Friday evening and a Saturday. It’s a remarkable experience and one that can really impact on your life for the better. If you are in Dublin, Ireland, and would like to come to class with me, you can email me: abby@abby-wynne.com or visit my website to find out more.

New Year's Resolutions? No Thanks!

2011-12-31T09:41:00.000Z

I think people make mistakes when they create New Year's resolutions. They always seem to cause pain - what you want to give up, stop doing or begin to do. But in the best of faith, we make too many resolutions, overstretching ourselves to the max, all with good intentions of course. And then by February (or earlier) these new resolutions fall by the wayside, and we're back to where we were.

Resolutions cause pain, pain comes from resistance. Why is this the case? Inside ourselves we are actually struggling against something, against being the best we can be perhaps? (“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. " ~ Marianne Williamson)

I’ve decided not to do resolutions for the last few years now, and I’ve got that “need” out of my system. However I’m looking at the end of 2011 in a different way than I usually do and asking myself –“What energies do I want to invite into 2012?”, “What energies can I leave behind in 2011?”

Everything takes energy, and it takes energy to do this work too. Seth Godin calls it "The Dip" and he says "people that lean into the dip, seek out the dip, and do whatever they have to do to overcome it are the ones that excel in their work". “The Dip” according to Seth, is the difficult period that we have to get through before our path flows smoothly upwards and towards our goals.

I'm quite a private person - I've not really disclosed anything about my personal life in the year and a half I've been in private practice (and on Facebook!). But I'm going to today. Because I'm making this work real for me and it might help make it real for you, too.

So I face my Dip and ask the following questions:

What Do I Want To Leave Behind in 2011?

My tired, self-sabotaging energies, the old ones that don't let me reach my peak, the ones that keep me down in a space of self-depreciation.

What Do I Want To Invite Into 2012?

New, bubbly energies that say "It's ok to feel great", "It's good to be alive and at your peak performance"... Ones that say "Look how many more people you can help when you are fully awake, fully clear and in your Zone". Ones that say “step into your light and be the light that you are”.

That's all. No diets, no exercise regime, no pressure. Just a shift in my internal energy. The rest will sort itself out. Once I believe truly and deeply within, that I do deserve to feel good, to be at my best, that it is OK to be happy and in my peak zone, I will naturally want to look after myself better so that I can stay there. Eating the right food, going for walks, a yoga class or the gym will follow naturally because it feels right, not because these things are something I feel I have to be doing. And I anticipate that this change will be long-lasting.

Why not try it for yourself - instead of saying "I will go to the gym more often" or "I will give up sugar and flour" why not look at what you are resisting? What it is that you're afraid of? That's the hard part, that’s the Dip. And you don't have to do it today. (Phew!) Even just deciding "That sounds like it might have something in it, perhaps I'll give that a go" could be enough to get a new process starting inside of you.

Have a wonderful New Year. Lots of love to you all, Abby

Have a wonderful New Year. I have a good feeling about 2012. If we made it this far, we're on the road to happiness already!

We're in December Now

2011-12-02T09:48:00.002Z

When my alarm went off this morning I was surprised that it was so dark. Over breakfast I told my two eldest children that we have to make every effort to stay in a good, positive frame of mind now that the amount of light in the day is reduced. I bought some music yesterday for that very reason, Mega 100 top dance hits of 2011. I will play it in the car, I have it on my iphone and I'll put it on in the kitchen and we'll dance. Rhianna, Britney Spears, Cheryl Cole, in fact even the X-Factor music is good because it's got positive vibrations through and through.

I've just put the new music on as I'm writing this, and it's already bringing my mood up. Dancing now as I write! Shaking off the negative and focussing on the fact that there is only one month of days shortening until the shortest day, December 21st, and then the days start to grow longer again.

What else can we do to bring more light into our lives during this time?

ANYTHING that makes life that little bit easier for us. We'll be setting the heating to automatic over the weekend so that it comes on at 6.30am and will warm the house for when our alarm goes off at 7.30. It's much easier to get out of the bed when the house is warm, and wonderful to have warm water to wash ourselves in. I give thanks that we can pay our bills and know that we may be luckier than some. But this small thing is something that some of you may also be able to do, to bring a more positive start to your day too.

Nice food - food you like that makes your body feel good. Good, hearty soups, hot drinks, spicy orange flavours to warm the heart and allow the heart to open and fill you with heart light. Hot drinks don't always have to be caffeine drinks, there are some amazing teas out there that feel just as good to drink - my current favourite is three ginger tea.

Exercise - I just joined a gym. My last gym membership finished two months ago and I decided I'd not need to join another gym, I can walk every day, and do yoga. I got a yoga app for my iphone and I've used it once. I've not even gone for one walk! So I know what I'm like, and I know I feel better when I have exercise. Rather than feel bad and punish myself for not doing what I said I would do, I say to myself “Ok, that obviously isn’t going to work, let’s go back to the gym!” So I'm going for my first gym visit today in two months and I'm looking forward to it. Do something you love, that works for you. And if it doesn’t work, don’t get angry. What do you LOVE to do? If you are a walker then go walking! A jogger, go jogging, a swimmer, go swimming. If you can't do Yoga without a class but love yoga, for the next two months, treat yourself to a class. You will feel so much better for it.

Have fun – watch movies that you love instead of ones you think you should watch. Stay away from heaviness in the media: switch off the radio if the adverts are wrecking your head or if it is all bad news, don’t watch the documentary on starving children in Africa or the latest state of the economy. Your watching won’t change the situation but it will change you. Stop posting stuff up on your wall or spending time reading articles about adversity and depression and start looking for positive articles to read. Spread those instead. Have a laugh, tell jokes, meet with people that you like and start asking yourself what makes you happy. If it’s do-able, then do it!

Release heavy energy - Do something for yourself to raise your energetic vibration. If you've never tried it, energy healing can sound daunting, but only because you've not experienced how amazing it can be. But for those of you who have had sessions in the past you know how good you feel afterwards. It's like peeling off a layer of tiredness, of exhaustion, and opening up your heart to feel and see the colours of life again. Do it!

The run up to Christmas can be fun for some, lots of food, parties, Christmas lights and of course, the holidays themselves. For some it’s not so much fun, family times are not always happy times depending on your circumstances. But for everyone, no matter how much love they have in their lives, the days after the holidays right up until mid-February can be really, really difficult.

It is so important to look after your health, and that means Mind Body and Spirit. Invest in yourselves. Wrap yourselves in whatever you need to, to look after you, the same way you would look after your child, your best friend, your dog. We need that.

Now is an Emotionally Tough Time

2011-11-19T14:34:00.000Z

I know things have been rough for all of us of late; it’s not easy when the media is shouting out about economic difficulties, government failures, religious irresponsibility and people being attacked on the streets. In fact, it’s just plain rough full stop. And even worse, the old trauma, the old pain, the stuff you thought you already dealt with? It’s back and it’s biting you bad. You thought you already sorted it out, but it’s caught you in its hook and you’re drowning in it.

It can be even harder when the person you love is upset as well; the ideal partnership is when you feel bad and they are there for you, but when you both feel bad at the same time, wow. There is no reprieve when it feels like you are both drowning together.

What is actually happening?

The whole of human consciousness is shifting right now and raising its vibration. When the vibration is raised, the bad stuff sifts out, and (hopefully) falls away. If you are sensitive to energies you will pick up on it, both the rise in vibration and, unfortunately the lower, negative vibrational energies. And to make sense of what you are feeling you interpret it all through your body, through your personal experiences. We understand how to work with the heavy stuff more than the lighter stuff so we go for that like a magnet and the problem right now is that the bad stuff you are picking up on resonates with your old stuff. “Oh no here we go again”.

This time it is different.

We need to work with the times instead of against them. No more going back with a trawl to dredge through your old issues to find out which stone was left uncovered, which part you have not dealt with. You must believe that you HAVE dealt with you own, old stuff (if indeed you have!).

If you have not done your work already, then now is the time. There is no escaping it –go for it with zeal and the knowledge that the work you do now will be so quick and easy compared to how things worked in the past. Get help if you need it, things can move too fast these days for us to be able to make sense of it alone.

Reassure yourself, and your partner if necessary, that you have done the work and that your body is just picking up on the resonance of the energies around you right now. Those energies resonate with abuse, depression, violence, pain, grief. And of course they do - look at the abuse that is going on around you in the world right now. But it is not yours. Breathe and let it go. You don’t have to go back and do the work again. I promise!

How to get through this:

It’s not always so easy to find the positive things in life. So if you are a couple drowning in negativity right now, hold onto each other and let it all flow through you. Or if you don’t have a special somebody, connect in with the beautiful Mother Earth and Father Sky by feeling your feet on the ground, your head open to the sky and ask to be held. Trust me, this works. Do it and see for yourself.

Make a list of good things in your life and let the old stuff go. Remind yourself of where you have been, what you have achieved and where you plan to go. If you can, make a list of goals for the future and streamline your energies into those, instead of into your pain and grief.
Take some time out to nurture yourself – make a cup of tea, read a delicious novel, go see a movie. Go for a walk and kick some leaves about, jump into a puddle. Call an old friend, bake a cake. Do something that you love, while breathing out the difficult emotions.

Take the day off the computer! Listening to other people can add to you confusion, picking up on their energies can exacerbate you own process, so switch off, and switch off the phone too. Send love to anyone who is pulling on you, either say it to them directly, or do it in your mind, and then shut down for the day.

We’re in a time of quickening, where everything happens faster and this is happening to many, many people. Remember, this is a huge time of change and it is vital for you to focus on the positive and let go of the fear.

Now go pour yourself a cup of tea and smile. You’re doing great!

Calling all Reiki Practitioners

2011-11-10T11:37:00.000Z

Image by Tara Moorman

I was working on the Reiki stand with my RFI practitioner friends in the Mind Body Spirit show in the RDS when a distressed woman came up to me. She asked me if she could see me for Reiki, and I said "yes of course", as you would.

I brought her over to the chair and she stopped and rustled in her handbag looking for something. I waited patiently, but she took a long time and as well as wondering what she was doing, I noticed that her hands were shaking.

"Are you ok?" I asked? "I just had an aura photograph done" she said as she pulled out a document from her bag and started leafing through the pages "I was told that I was a twin in the womb, my twin died and he is still with me in my energy field - look" she handed me a blurry aura photograph that I couldn’t read, of course, as I'm not au fait with aura photography. "The man just took the image and he said I had to get Reiki straight away to get the twin removed".
I was shocked, disappointed and of course, sympathetic for this poor woman who was obviously shaken by her experience. I said to her "Reiki doesn’t do that - do you know what Reiki is?" She didn’t. And neither did the Aura photographer, apparently.

This is a big lead in to a simple point - communicating Reiki is so important, but before we can communicate we need to have an understanding of it. Pamela says - "I don't encourage my students to take Second degree. I'm happy to teach them if they practice First degree self-treatment every day for 3 months at the very least, but that's only if they feel a draw for it. I'd rather have someone practice First degree every day for life than become Second degree practitioners, feel overwhelmed, and stop practicing because Second degree practice is more complicated."

It's time to really take the time to look at what Reiki is to us. Not to be afraid to separate out the extra things we do - Aura Soma, Massage, Angel Therapy, and fortune telling, and to say that we also offer them. That we can give a combined treatment with Reiki and Angel Therapy if our client so desires. So that more people like the Aura photographer learns about how beautiful and simple Reiki can be.

And if you are wondering what happened to the woman at the exhibition, I told her that she needed some time to come to terms with what she had been told, that I could help her with her predicament as I am a trained Shamanic Practitioner as well as a Reiki Practitioner. I suggested in my best counselling voice that perhaps she should sit down, have a cup of tea, and let her energies settle before she decided to do anything else.

Affirmation Meditation to Change your Vibration

2011-11-04T14:16:00.000Z

As Above, So Below

For me, life is about being authentic; walking your talk, talking your walk. It’s so important to be true to yourself, to who you are. I have a client who proudly told me that she looks in the mirror every day and says “I love you” to herself. I asked her “but do you feel it?” She looked at her feet, and admitted that she didn’t. “It’s ok not to feel it,” I said, “but it’s not ok to pretend that you do”. She looked back up at me with interest. I continued “Wouldn’t it be better to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning and say ‘Hey, I’m ok’, and really feel it, right deep inside you?”. She smiled – she got it. As above, so below. What you say and do on the outside mirrors exactly how you feel on the inside. Authenticity.

So let’s work on this idea together. I have put together a list of affirmations so you can find one that best suits where you are now with yourself. Try an affirmation from this list and see how it feels right down deep to your core, in your stomach. Is this one the right one for you? Does it feel right below, as well as above? If not, try another one, and another, until you find one that fits. Feel it in your heart and notice how your energy changes. How the vibration of your body changes, when you say and feel these positive words.

The next part is to ask for any energy in your body that does not resonate with the words you have chosen, to leave your body now, as it is holding you back. Say it out loud “Please leave now”. Breathe in the energy of the words, say them again, and feel them deep inside the core of your being. Breathe out the energy of negativity, of self-doubt and fear. Anything that doesn’t match the certainty you feel that you are how you say you are. Feel the flow shift in your body as negativity leaves and flows down your legs, through your feet and into the ground.

Do this affirmation meditation for a few days and clear, clear, clear what doesn't belong. Become the energy of that. When you feel called, you can come back to this list and see if you can upgrade your affirmation to one that has a higher vibration to the one you chose the first time around. Then do it all again.

Affirmations:

• I honor and care about myself
• I am a divine being worthy of love
• I am ok with myself
• I am good enough
• I accept myself for who I am
• I like myself
• It's good to be me
• I deserve to be happy
• I deserve love
• I am open to receive love
• I am open to receive joy
• I love being who I am
• I love my life
• I am grateful for everything in my life
• I am happy and proud to be who I am

You can of course make up your own affirmation – I’d love to hear it, and I’d love to find out how you got after trying out this exercise. Please leave your comments here, under this note!

Remember you can work with me now long distance. Contact me on abby@abby-wynne.com to find out more.
Namaste,
Abby

Happy Hallowe'en

2011-10-28T11:12:00.002+01:00

Hallowe'en in Ireland these past few years has gone all American - big, expensive fancy costumes, lots and lots of lights, spiders and webs, and houses decorated to the max. It wasn't like this when I was growing up, all we used to do was build and burn a bonfire, dip our faces into buckets of water to catch apples (hated doing that), eat brack and choke on the cheap ring wrapped in baking paper, paint our faces black and red and ask door to door to "Help the Hallowe'en Party". I always thought that was a political party! But it was an Irish tradition that has been replaced with the American "Trick or Treat".

For me Hallowe'en has always been a time when the veils between the worlds are at their thinnest. Another name for Hallowe'en is Samhain, and that translates as "the day of the dead". A Celtic festival honouring the passing of the souls of our ancestors, a time where it is believed that the spiritual and material worlds touch for a moment, a time of greater potential for magic.

The Celts believed that the normal laws of space and time were held during Samhain and a window or a portal opened which allowed the dead to cross the veils into the land of the living. So if you are feeling the need, do ask the universe for extra protection and feel the energies around you become more solid and stronger. In the old days, just in case there was confusion with the opening of the portal, Jack O'Lanterns were made to help guide any lost souls back home. In those days turnips were carved out and candles placed inside them, but I do think pumkins are a lot easier to work with than turnips!

Take some time this year to honour the dead, those you know and those you did not know in body. Honour yourself too, where you are on your journey of life, how far you have come, and recognise how much work it has taken to be here, now. If you want to do a small ceremony, you could create an alter, light a candle in honour of the dead, perhaps one for yourself or for your family. You could say a prayer for healing, ask for help with something that is troubling you or send love and light from your heart to the world to help raise the vibration of Mother Earth. And of course, you could follow the ceremony by eating something sweet!!

Autumn 2011

2011-10-04T14:54:00.002+01:00

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog entry and I discovered that when I don’t read, don’t meditate or don’t breathe mindfully, I become blocked and I’m not creative.

Only yesterday I started to do all of these things again, and something must have shifted because as I’m back here writing my blog again and I didn’t even plan it!

I think that what is going on in the world can get in between us and our hearts so easily. When this happens we stop living, and turn into survival mode. This is a natural thing to do – in order to survive, we must disconnect from our hearts and buckle down and do whatever it is we have to do. Learning: When I’m in survival mode, I forget to do the things that I love.

When we go into survival mode our bodies shut down and our minds take over. We do only what we think we need to do, we get tired, exhausted even, when this is ongoing we lose our zest for life. The smallest things annoy us, we forget to eat properly, we get caught up in what is on the news, comparing ourselves to other people and getting angry at the small things. We get trapped in a vicious cycle which gets smaller and smaller until it’s all that we see. Survival. Not living. Not growing – we were made to grow.

Autumn can do that to us – somewhere inside us is the primal animal that needs to store up all the food and prepare to go to sleep for several months. We pre-empt winter and some of us start sleeping a little early.

Seeing what we do is one thing but then changing it another - do we have to do it this way? Can we break out of survival mode and live? Even in the autumnal months?

I’m going to try it – I am making conscious decisions about how I want to think, how I want to relax, and how I spend my time. Instead of getting caught up in the energy around me which is heavy, sluggish, tired, exhausted; I am disconnecting from that and connecting into my inner wisdom.

If I need to I’ll write it all down and burn it. I’ll use a structure that someone else created until I can make it my own – a class, a guided meditation cd, a book with affirmations in it. I need to re-light that spark in my heart that allows me to grow and expand.

We can’t do the things we love if we are surviving. The time to live is now.

Laughter is the Best Medicine

2011-08-27T14:02:00.002+01:00

It has been shown that laughter actually affects human physiology!

Laughter reduces pain by producing endorphins which act as pain killers and strenghtens our immunity. Endorphins also reduces cortisol (the stress hormone) and allows the body to return to a more relaxed state. Laugher allows us to change our perspective on life by making our problems seem smaller, if only for a few moments. It opens up creativity and allows us to overcome fear.

So it's healthy to bring more laughter into your life.
Here are some ideas as to how you can do this:

1. Collect things that make you laugh - it could be a folder on your computer filled with cartoons, jokes, funny emails that really make you laugh, hang funny pictures on your wall where you will see them, keep a joke or two in your wallet to keep the mood light.

2. Do some of the things you used to love as a child - go to the park and go on a swing, go down the slide, go to the zoo or aquarium, go to a kids movie and eat lots of popcorn! The sky's the limit.

3. Lighten up your work environment - bring in a toy or stuffed animal you like, something that makes you smile when you look at it. (I have a mini darth-vader on my computer, and I've got lots of pictures of Stitch everywhere - he's a great energy to have around!)

4. Invite some friends over for a sleep-over party - keep it fun, pillow fights, eat junk food, stay up all night telling scary stories! Or have a "come as you are party" with one rule only - keep it funny. You'll all work off of each other and the energy will heal and energise all of you.

5. If you're in a stressful situation, step back from it and imagine if you were a character from your favourite tv comedy - what would they do? (How would Phoebe or Fraiser handle it?)

You do have a chioice. Invite laughter into your life, and see where it brings you - just for a change. See where it goes - does it help? Do you feel better? Does it take the "edge" off? And know, that even though it might feel silly at first, it actually does help reduce stress in your body and that in itself creates a better perspective and clarity to handle any situation.

Love Ourselves, Heal the World

2011-08-25T21:58:00.002+01:00

We are in extraordinary times. Tonight a group of women came to my centre, and I was more than certain of what we needed to do. For the first time in a Reiki share, I had only one plinth set up, and we all concentrated the whole of the group's energies so we could have an intense healing for ourselves, and for each other.
As I set up the room this evening to get ready, I realised that it is truly the end of the summer. That the world has shifted, again, and that the energy is affecting all of us in one way or another. I have been under a dark cloud for the most part of a week, and nothing could shift it until I had the realisation that it was not mine. The energy of the earth is on the move, shifting and changing, bringing up the darker, heavy stuff. The old stuff. The original wounding. Why I was insisting on going back to work I had already done over the past five days was confusing to me but I got trapped in my old patterns, I was hooked like a fish who took the bait. Until today.
So I write this for you. If you have already done your deep shadow work, this is not your time to revisit and re-do. Go gently and easy on yourself and treat yourself well and know your work has been done, that it is the shifting of the energies of the great mother earth, and that we are being carried along for the ride. As you read this you know if this applies to you.
And if you have never done deep shadow work, then now is the time for you to look under the cracks, under the stones, the recesses, to let the skeletons out and to lift up that carpet and release the dustballs to the wind. You will know if this is you. You can get help, remember -you are not alone. People have done this before and are familiar with the stepping stones across the river. There are helping hands out there to guide you across and to the other side.
And for all of us, breathe. Talk about how you are feeling. Know that we are all changing, that we will get through this if we open to and hold ourselves in a space of love.

Love ourselves and the healing will happen. Love ourselves and we heal the world.
www.abby-wynne.com

Give a Gift Today

2011-08-09T14:16:00.000+01:00

Times are tight - face it, we're watching every penny. It's not all bad, we are demanding better service, better quality and are learning about the feeling of gratitude (I'm so grateful I can pay my bills...).

There are gifts you can offer that don't cost you a cent, and they are gifts as much for yourself as for someone else. I thought I'd just take the opportunity to remind you of what they are.

1. The Gift of Listening: Really listening, not thinking about what you are going to say next, not jumping right in with your opinion. Being still, being fully present and listening. You might learn something!

2. The Gift of Affection: Give a hug, a kiss, hold someone's hand, and accept the affection coming back to you. Small actions demonstrate the love that you say you feel for something - don't tell me you love me, show me!

3. The Gift of Laughter: Share funny stories, find the happiness in a situation and bring joy wherever you go. Even if it is difficult at first, remember that a smile is catching. You can even sense a smile down the phone! It benefits you as well as the people around you and you will find a new lightness in yourself as the laughter releases heavy emotions.

4. The Gift of a Kind Word: Telling someone they look really well, that the food was tasty, or that they did great in something, can make a big difference to someone's day.

5. The Gift of a Favour: What you give out will come back to you ten fold, maybe not from where you expect it. So "Pay it Forward" and if you can, do something nice for someone and expect no direct reward. Just feeling the energy of kindness and love passing from you out into the universe is a reward in itself.

6. The Gift of Gratitude: Just spending time listing down all the things you are grateful for, and allowing the energy to come into your body can be a healing, cleansing experience. You can share this with someone else by listing the things about that person that you are grateful for - why not splash out and make a handmade card, and write it inside of it!

7. The Gift of Creativity: We all have a capacity to create, when we are surrounded by negativity this is one of the first things to become repressed. Promise yourself to clear out the negative thought patterns and allow yourself to create some new, positive ones that will lift your spirits up and the spirits of those around you.

I hope you find something here that motivates or inspires you to do something different today, to share a gift with a close friend, or to gift yourself something you have been missing. Remember, we are here, now, that is why it is called the present. Ok, maybe I'm not such a good comedian, but hey, if I was, you wouldn't be reading this!

What is Shamanic Reiki?

2011-07-28T21:54:00.001+01:00

Shamanic Reiki is becoming a very popular treatment in my practice. I thought I would expand a little bit on what it is, without going deep into how it works! It is beautiful, gentle, deep and can be just what you need to move into the next stage of your life journey. And the amazing thing about it is that it travels well! You can avail of a Shamanic Reiki session with me, no matter where you are in the world. Click here to visit my website and find out more about Distance Healing.

Reiki is a beautiful way to relax and open your body, release emotional energy and feel rejuvenated and revitalised. Shamanic Energy Healing opens up the body and enables you to remove blockages that have built up over years of repressed emotion and negative thought patterns. By blending both together you have a powerful, yet gentle healing modality which transforms deep emotional pain.

There are many Shamanic techniques that can be incorporated into a Shamanic Reiki session. Within a Shamanic Reiki session you may experience cutting of ties, soul retrieval, power animal retrieval, ancestral healing, energy extraction, aura cleansing and more. All of these techniques wrapped in the gentle, nurturing healing Reiki energies allow for a deep healing experience.

You can relax on a plinth during the healing, fully clothed, just the same as for a Reiki Session. I place my hand on or over your body at certain energy points, where I am called to work. Sometimes I may need to use sound from a rattle, crystals, I may need to burn sage or use high vibrational essences to embrace and deepen the healing work.

Most clients like to drift away surrounded in a gentle healing energy bubble, to be brought slowly back to their body, connecting with the earth when the healing is complete. If you like, you can actively take part in the healing, helping to shift your own blocks, release memories or past traumas. There is always time afterwards for discussion, grounding and sometimes homework may be given.

There is no need for talking during this work, I do not need to know your issues, or the stories. If you would like to share them with me however, I am a qualified psychotherapist and am available to talk. However the beauty of Shamanic Reiki is that the energy does all the work.

If you come to me for a Shamanic Reiki session, you will experience something unique and magical. No two sessions are the same. These are beautiful techniques that must be experienced to be believed!
Contact me to arrange a session on 0876593626 or email me on enquiries@abby-wynne.com

Who is Doing What to Whom??

2011-07-25T16:32:00.000+01:00

There are many different ways of working with a problem once you can figure out what the problem is. Usually, the problem is about how you are reacting to something in your life that does not please you. For example, a client of mine told me that she no longer wanted to see her father because she felt that he was holding her back. I asked "How exactly is he holding you back?" and she started explaining it to me. As we unravelled the story it became clear that it wasn’t anything in particular that he was doing or saying that was holding her back, more so it was about how she was after seeing him. How what he said to her seeped into her veins and affected how she was, bringing back memories, back thoughts and back old energies so that the day after she would see her father, she would be agitated and then by the third day she was right back being openly angry at things she thought she was over. And she would then take it out on her daughter by losing her temper too quickly. She would then get angry at herself and feel like all the progress she had made with me in session was lost.

So I said to her "Let’s clarify the situation. Your dad is holding you back because three days after seeing him you are angry at things you thought you had already worked with?" and then she got it. "He isn’t holding me back is he? I am". At that moment the energy in the room changed, as it so often does when there is a shift in consciousness, with a breakthrough. She got it, only when the client sees this can something be done about it.

My client took it very well, she was glad because she also realised that she doesn't have to cut her father out of her life completely in order to move on. And instead of feeling she has to change something about him, which is next to impossible, she was glad that she can take control of her response to him through being aware of it and choosing to react in a different way.

She decided that her solution was to take a break from her dad for a few weeks, to clear the energy around their relationship, so that she can be around him again and not react in a way that is damaging to her. By taking a break allows her to rebuild her boundaries without him in it, to clear the emotional energy around her old issues and to reaffirm that she has dealt with the old stuff and is ready for the new stuff. “Bring it on” she said with a wide grin.

The key is this - to be aware, every step of the way, of who is doing what to whom. Her dad was just being her dad, not doing anything different to anything he had ever done, at any time of his life. She was allowing the anger in, she was allowing it to build up and bring her down - therefore her reaction to seeing him was what was holding her back. Not him directly. Who will she be without this anger? Will she recognise herself? This is something for another day.

Don't Give Up

2011-06-10T10:30:00.000+01:00

Don't give up

you can hold the light, even if you feel alone.
those who see it will fly towards it when they are ready,
those who can't take the brightness,
will try to snuff it out.
don't despair

tend to your light,
keep it bright and strong.
fill the light with love, with hope, with dreams....
dance in your light,
grow, expand and know to
keep dancing no matter what.

trust that there are other lights,
together they dance in the darkness,
perhaps unaware of the others
dreaming and hoping for a brighter world

on a blog page like this one
many lonely lights come together,
regardless of geography, space and time.
we recognise each other, and smile a great relief
feel the grief and release it all and know
they we are not alone after all

We breathe in each other's spark
our lights strengthen and glow
for one more day

(image by: http://eon-lucid-dreams.deviantart.com/art/Hold-the-light-13105270)

Laws in Action

2011-06-02T14:24:00.000+01:00

I've heard it said over and over again - you attract in what you put out. This is the Law of Attraction. An actual law, like the law of the land. You live in the land, you obey the rules or you go to jail (or pay a hefty fine!). We don't have to like it, but it exists. Like the Law of Gravity - what goes up must come down (a pretty obvious one this). How about the Law of Thermodynamics - this explains what happens in a container with water when you add heat. We might not have studied thermodynamics, but we have experienced water, with added heat in a container. And we know that the more heat we add, the more likely it is that the water will boil.

We might not have ever known how and why water boils, but we do know that it boils. And we boil water frequently, sometimes 4, 5 or 6 times in a day, depending on how many cups of tea or coffee we enjoy. So it is a Law in action, a law that appears in our daily life, even if we have no awareness of the physics of the energy behind it. And let's face it, how useful would it be to truly understand the physics of heat and water, if we're not scientists?

It follows to say that if the Law of Attraction is an actual law, like the Law of Thermodynamics, we don't have to actually know how or why it works, but to accept that it does exist, working away in the background. What if learning how to use this Law brings us more satisfaction than a cup of coffee ever could? Or even several cups of coffee? Would it be worth working with it directly in that case? Let's look at it in terms of energy and see if it makes any more sense.

To use this law we have to firstly accept that what we send out into the world, we get back, in an energetic way. So to simplify it a bit, we can say that the energy of happiness going out, results in the energy of happiness coming back. And I do believe that's true; you smile at someone, and the most natural thing for them to do is to smile right back to you. That also applies to anger - the energy of anger going out results in anger coming back. I think many of us have experienced this too. Anger breeds anger, being angry at someone makes them angry at you, also. So we're warming up with this.

So how else can we use this law, now that we are gathering proof? Does it work with material objects too? They're made of energy. If we give away something of value to someone, do we gain back something of value in return? Well, I can sift through my experiences of giving things away, but because there are so many experiences in between, it is difficult to directly correlate objects being gifted back to me specifically with an item that I gave away. This is where understanding the Law of Attraction gets a bit fuzzy. This is why people say "Naww that Law of Attraction, that's a load of ....."

I understand. But it is a defined, accepted Law. So what do you have to loose? I'd write more about it now but I'm going out to gift a cup of coffee to a friend. And I'm not waiting for something back in return, but I do know that something good will be winging its way to me because of that kindness. Let me know if you want me to explore this subject further!

Patience

2011-05-04T17:42:00.001+01:00

My computer is very slow. V E R Y S L O W. I’m waiting and I’m waiting, the ideas are coming thick and fast but my computer has not even started up yet. I’m dawdling, I’m checking Facebook on my iPhone while my computer is still organising itself. And then it finally stretches and yawns and turns to me with a smile and says “Windows Update is now installing, 1 of 35, 2% complete”

AAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH

I walk away. Breathe and calm down. Then I come back, go into Start> Programs> Windows Update. I switch off Windows Update (are you sure you want to do this? Oh yes). Then I get a flag in my taskbar with a big red X through it. You are a bold girl you switched off Windows Update. How could you? This computer will not run properly unless your updates are set to AUTOMATIC. We will not be responsible for the outcome if you leave your updates switched off. In fact, we cannot guarantee that a virus will not come in and destroy your machine if your Updates are off. (Not that they could guarantee it wouldn’t happen anyway).Now I am stuck having to look at this flag with a big red X through it now, as if I need reminding of how “bold” I am.

But something has freed itself up in my machine and it seems to respond better now. In fact, it’s stopped yawning at me and is sitting up straight, eyes wide open, saying proudly “Where would you like to go today?” Ah yes, the old way. When Operating Systems were not these clunky objects that take up half of the RAM of your machine and insist on filling the rest of the space with updates for Microsoft Silverlight (what is that anyway?) or some type of Networking Server thing (do I need this?). Of course, then there’s the vital Security Patch and the System Pack that, once installed, causes the printer driver to suddenly become unrecognisable to the computer and no longer can we print out anything. Anything at all. I once had to buy a new printer because I updated my Operating System.. but that is another story.

Ok. I can breathe a sigh of relief now that the Updates are switched off. But that still leaves the problem of the modem – it is even slower than the machine was with the Updates switched on. And every so often I get the message “there is a computer with the same IP address trying to use the same internet connection – what do I do?” and then it disconnects. How could there be two computers using the same modem? It’s a USB modem; it only has one USB connection, which is going into only one computer. I give up.

Why am I writing all about computer stuff when I’m an energy healer and psychotherapist? I’m also human. I also use computers and I also, from time to time, lose patience with things. Mostly with my computer; but with my children too, with myself for forgetting things, with drivers on the road for changing their mind and changing lanes, or stopping suddenly. And I give out. I swear, I curse, like we all do when we lose patience with something. But I do not hold onto it. I let it go, practically immediately. So that I don’t go over conversations in my head again and again ( I should have said... I should have done... I should have....) I say OK, what’s the learning from this? And I take the learning, and throw away the rest. So that I don’t immerse myself in the energy of what it was that I didn’t enjoy, didn’t do or didn’t anticipate. But immerse myself in the learning, and forgive myself for making a mistake, or for being tired and having a short fuse.

If we can let go of things in this way, we become less afraid to make mistakes, and then, perhaps, we can take more risks. We can go deeper in the work, go stronger out to sea, and closer to our destination. It might only be a little boat we are paddling, but there is a lot more room in that boat for forgiveness than for impatience, intolerance and “should have done”s.

Making Time for Joy

2011-04-19T17:02:00.000+01:00

Somebody just walked past my centre, he was hunched over in his determination to get to where he was going. He was holding a wooden frame, possibly a door frame, he must have been a carpenter going to a job. What I really noticed was how he did not look in front of himself; his eyes seemed to be completely focussed on the path in front of his feet. I’m wondering, if he was told he had 1 year left to live, would he be walking the same way?

Someone walked past the centre yesterday, crying. Crying and walking and not spending time with the tears, but practically running from them. My heart went out to her; it was as if she was running away from herself, from her pain. We seem to be always going somewhere else and never here, in this moment, where we are now. Forgetting the fundamental thing – we are not the emotion; we are only feeling the emotion. And it will pass, whether it is joy or pain. We are familiar with pain, with suffering, but less familiar with joy. We need to call it in sometimes to remember what it feels like.

I thought I’d write up a meditation here for you to try, to call in joy into your life. But you have to put aside some time to do it. Please add a comment below if you tried it and found it useful, or if you have something you would like to add. I do not profess to know all the answers. But I do know that if we don’t treasure the time that we have, we don’t value the most important thing that we have. And if we do not take the time out to feel joy, or pain, we cannot be fully present in our bodies and experiencing life to its fullest degree.

Meditation - Taking some time out to call joy into your life

Read these notes before you do this exercise so that you can do it uninterrupted.

Find a quiet space where you will not be disturbed for as long as you are able to devote to this exercise. Make sure your phone is off, you are sitting comfortably and that your feet are on the ground.
Become aware of your body. Bring your thoughts right down and into your physical body. If it helps, you can start by feeling any tension you may be carrying. Take a few minutes to scan through your body from your head to your feet, feeling the tension and letting it go.
Move your awareness into your heart. You can do this by making note of where your focus is on your body, and drop the focus down from your head, to your neck, to your chest, and into your heart.
Imagine that you have a room in your heart where you hold your memories, regrets, celebrations, sadness and joy.
Open the door to your room in your mind and step inside. Look around your room and acknowledge what sort of state it is in. Is it dark, dusty, cluttered? Is it bright and fresh, a joy to sit in? If you have trouble visualising, focus on your feelings – how does your heart feel – tight, locked up, clear, open?
We are going to invite joy into your heart room. To do this, you have to make some space for it first. You might want to tidy up the place first, you can imagine you have a vacuum or a mop, see yourself cleaning the windows, dust the shelves so that you spruce up the place a little bit.
Sit with your heart room now – does it feel any different inside there?
You can do some emotional work if you wish - find something in the room that you might not have seen for a long time – an old teddy bear, a photograph, a piece of silk. Hold it in your hands. What does it remind you of? Who do you feel while you are holding it? Breathe in the feeling of love, of loss, of joy, of sadness. Breathe it out. You are not the feeling, it is in you and let it move through you. Place the object back down where you found it.
Move to the window and open it. See the sunshine outside and let it warm your face. Get a sense of how you are in your room, standing there at the window, feeling the sunshine on your face.
Say the following (or words to this effect) “ I am clearing a space in my heart to let in the joy. I am clearing space in my heart to let in light. I am allowing myself to feel joy and happiness in my life. I deserve to feel joy and happiness in my life.”
Wait and see how your body is feeling now. Open your heart and wait for the joy to come in.
Imagine a butterfly, or a bird, coming into your room. It is so beautiful; it hops or flutters around you and is full of the joy and the happiness you seek. It moves closer to you and rests on your shoulder, on your hand. As it flies about your heart room, it brings more light in and everything seems to become clearer, stronger, and brighter. Allow the sadness to melt away and open your heart as joy seeps in and brings a new colour, a new light and a new strength into your room.
As it moves around the room, the bird/butterfly dissolves and its energy becomes part of the room. Feel your room reaching a higher vibration in its energy, in the strength of the colours in there.
Feel the changes that you just made - allow the joy to penetrate your body, flood your chest and wash over you, smile with your eyes, with your mouth, invite it into your stomach and your legs, feel the joy tingling all around your body.
Give thanks for the experience and know that you can come back again anytime and open your heart to joy. If you work with angels, you can give thanks to your angels and ask them to open your heart even more so that you can allow joy into your life more easily.
Sit in this new energy for a few minutes and let it burn away any heavy energy that you no longer need to hold in your body. If you want to dance around in your heart room, do this with joy and happiness. Know now that there is magic here, waiting for you to connect with it.
When you are ready, you can close the door of your heart room behind you.
Become aware of your physical body, the sounds around you in the room where you are sitting, feel the chair or the floor beneath you and the earth beneath your feet
Open your eyes

Grounding grounding grounding.....

2011-03-31T11:56:00.000+01:00

It is the end of March already. Spring is in the air, the buds are coming out and tulips are opening in my garden. Life is not easy, but having the longer days and the flowers shining their heads towards the sun has helped put a “spring” in my step. But it does not mean that our problems are less, in fact, they actually are becoming magnified for some of us, and depending on our attitude towards them, they have the power to end our lives. Two people that I know are in hospital suffering from psychotic attacks, but worse still, 4 people have ended their lives in tragic circumstances.

I am thinking about all that is going on, you can see my post – what the heck is going on with all the energy – but that is not the end of this process, we are mid-shift. Lately, the clients that have been coming to me are displaying all sorts of terrible symptoms, but ultimately all they need is grounding. The work we end up doing is grounding, grounding, grounding. That is worth writing about here, in case it helps someone who is reading this.

Why is grounding the answer? Because there has been such an influx of light to the planet since last December, those of us who are not grounded find it extremely difficult to contain it. And it doesn’t stop at the personal, but the cultural is affected as well. The tsunami in Japan, the new war in Libya, the rebellions in the Arab countries, are all connected to this influx of light. Extreme circumstances, but we battle with this every day in this present time.

To boil it down to simple terms, we are being asked to choose between love, or fear. Choosing love means that we draw our attention away from things that scare us, things that upset us or make us smaller than we are. We choose love and open our hearts, expand to the possibilities of life and release all materialistic needs. Those of us who are here, reading this, finding circles of people who resonate with our thoughts, are vibrating love, and holding space for the others who are still covered in blankets of darkness. We are finding new friendships in the most peculiar places, taking to strangers about abstract concepts and spiritual terms and we are surprisingly getting validation.

The world is going through a shift, through a rebirth. We are the lucky ones, we are still here, we are standing our ground. Holding space for others to shift and grow into the new expanded beings of light that we are becoming. If you find that life is getting top of you – get back on top of it. Remember this – in order to contain the light, we need to be rooted to the ground. Strongly rooted like the tallest of the tall trees, their roots delve deep into the bedrock of the Mother as they stretch their tall limbs up to the heavens. Become that tree.

Letter from Sandra Ingerman regarding Japan

2011-03-17T11:47:00.000Z

March 16, 2011

Our hearts expand as we embrace the enormity of all the pain being suffered by the people and all living beings in Japan who have been impacted by the earthquake and the tsunami.

When we feel that our hearts are breaking as we watch levels of suffering in actuality our hearts are expanding allowing us to be stronger and deeper channels of love and light.

As a shamanic community we ask our helping spirits and the helping spirits of Japan to send healing and peace to those in need.

Let us journey deep within ourselves transcending our egos and experience the vastness of our spiritual light and love and transmitting radiance to Japan.

Move out of a place of pity for the suffering you see and focus on the strong spirit of the people, all of life, and the land itself. In this way you project strength which leads to a foundation of support for all in need.

Let us sing songs of love and healing to the earth, the waters of the world, the air, and to the element of fire. Go outside and sing!

The day the earthquake and tsunami occurred in Japan was when astrologically the planet Uranus moved into Aries marking the beginning of a cycle that will effect us for the next 84 years. The planet Uranus in astrology is seen as the planet of earthquakes and unexpected and sudden change.

We have already been seeing extreme environmental, political, and economic changes. And it does seem like a way of life on this planet continues to dissolve.

We have not been living in a harmonious fashion on this earth. And the elements of earth, water, air, and fire are mirroring back to us our extreme way of life.

As a collective we have been feeding the energy of change with how much discussion has been going on about big changes that will occur as we continue to move towards a new evolution of consciousness.

Think about how many millions of people have been reading books, listening to lectures, and having discussions about earth changes coming. Reflect on the energies you have been feeding. As a collective we have been feeding the energies of dissolution, discreation, and dismemberment.

It is time for us focus on what we have learned from our shamanic work:

Shamanism is a practice of direct revelation. We should all be strengthening our personal connections with our helping spirits so that we can ask for guidance of how we can help to alleviate pain and suffering as we experience such life changing events in our own lives and the world around us.

We need to strengthen our spiritual connections so that we can always be open to receive spiritual information when we need it.

Spend a lot of time in nature connecting with the elements and the heartbeat of the earth. Reflect on how you can live a shamanic way of life that embraces beauty, harmony, honor and respect for all of life. When we as a collective start to live a harmonious way of life we will see the elements around us reflect back a state of harmony.

Learn to read the omens that nature will continue to show to help guide you.

We must learn to honor the rite of passage and initiation that humankind is going through. We are experiencing levels of death on many levels. Shamanism teaches us that death is not an end but rather is a transition.

In the bible it says that without a vision the people will perish. Shamanism teaches us that we are the dreamers of our world. Part of living shamanism as a way of life is to be able to surrender to our deep spiritual wisdom and be the dreamers to help birth a new vision of a healthy way of life. We need to be able to hold a vision that the collective can move towards as the old is dismembered. Reflect on the vision you want to be projecting into the world right now and make changes to your vision to lead to a desired outcome.

Build up your spiritual muscles! You cannot be a shamanic practitioner without living a shamanic way of life.

Let us together hold the planet in love.

Remember that the media moves on after covering environmental, political, and economic events. People and all of life are still suffering the effects of the earthquake in Haiti and in New Zealand, the oil spill in the Gulf, the floods in Australia, the extreme weather in the U.S. - these are just to name a few. People in the Middle East are still fighting for freedom.

All of life needs us to be a channel of light, love, and spiritual healing. We are one collective. We are not separate cultures, separate countries. We are going through an initiation together. Let us do our work and live our lives in a good way. That is how we can be in service to the whole.

Sandra Ingerman, Board Member, Society for Shamanic Practitioners
image from http://www.tonicarminesalerno.com/gallery6.htm

Stand in your Power

2011-02-10T10:23:00.000Z

Standing in your power - what does this mean? If you have heard the phrase before it may resonate with you but you might not have got the full understanding of it.

I am an Energy Healer and Psychotherapist, I get many clients who come to me distraught because they cannot stand in their power. They are afraid to take the leap down into the depths of themselves and find their true voice, their inner strength. They are afraid sometimes to even acknowledge they have dreams because knowing they exist would mean that they may have to do something to achieve them.

When you feel heavy with life, weighed down by it, that which is most familiar becomes comfortable, even if it hurts like hell over a period of time. It is “easier” to choose the warm bed, the miserable silence, over battling it out in the workplace to improve your situation, or fighting it out with you family. The thought of the struggle you would have with you own beliefs about yourself can lead you to unwanted behaviours such as excess alcohol, drugs or worse. But again, it is “easier” to go down that road, if less rewarding. The hardest thing to do is to ask for help, to admit you need help, to talk to someone and tell them what is going on for you. In doing that you may have to take all the pieces out and spread them on the table and it can be overwhelming looking at them all.....

So what is “your power”? Choosing to avoid looking at things takes power, but it is more powerful to own you voice, to recognise your dreams, to become hopeful, to move in a direction, to believe in yourself. Standing in your power is when you become aware of when your body tells you something is wrong, and to take action on it. It gives you a new respect for the people around you and enables you to see the good in everyone. Standing in your power - to be brave enough to say "I don't understand" or "I don't know how I feel about this yet" and to not feel like you have to fit in with the crowd. To be powerful enough to connect with a tree, with a bird, to smile at a stranger. To be able to walk strongly in your body, sure of your step but perhaps unsure of the final destination. Fulfilling yourself without needing somebody else to be a certain way. Becoming responsible for your own happiness. This is standing in your power.

From your place of power, you can embrace the concept that everything is supposed to be just the way it is, is for the highest good of all. You can ease into the idea that there is great learning to be had from difficult experiences, and then bear them all the better when they do happen because you know you will be stronger for it. In your place of power you are taking that leap in the knowing that the closer we are to standing in our own power, the closer we are to being our true selves, the more in alignment with Spirit we are, and we are loved, protected and held in that space.

It's not about being in a position of power, of having power over others. It's about knowing ourselves, knowing when there is something wrong doing something about it, even if it means asking for help. It means being responsible for our selves, knowing the difference between doing what is right and what is not. Shamanism is a wonderful way to connect in with your true self through the energy of all that is around us. It teaches ways that have been lost over time, bringing us closer to our true powerful selves. Shamanism was hidden for years in the west because of the empowerment it gave people. It's coming back into our lives now in a big way, as the culture embraces the idea of standing in a place of power, as we embrace life and the idea of a life's purpose. We will never know all the answers, but we can learn what makes us happy. We may never do all the things that are out there just waiting to be done, but if we can connect to ourselves and find out who we are, and live to that, what more is there to ask for?

---

I am teaching a workshop called "Introduction to Shamanic Healing" this February 26th in Ranelagh, Dublin. Contact me for more information abby@abby-wynne.com, www.abby-wynne.com.

Imbolc - St Brigid's Day - The Pagan Festival of Lights

2011-02-01T11:28:00.002Z

Celebrated on the 1st of February, the pagen feast of Imbolc is the festival of Spring, the coming of fertility back to the land. Another name for this day is Candlemas, the Christianised name for the holiday.

Imbolc means "in the belly" of Mother Earth. It is a time to remember that deep in the earth lie the dormant seeds of new life and creativity which will soon be making their way upwards and outwards. A time to celebrate renewal and rebirth, out of the darkness, comes the light. Candlemas has as part of its tradition, candle making and candle burning, bringing in more light.

St Brigid is also known as the Goddess of fire - a group of ninteen priestesses kept a perpetual flame burning in her honor. She was the patroness of smithcraft, poetry and healing, especially midwifery. There is debate as to whether St Brigid was also the Celtic Goddess Brid. The Cross of St Brigid seems to represent the sunshine, with rays of light coming from it, in shape of the arms of the Catholic Cross. Some people say she had two sisters, also called Brigid, so they could pass the blame from one to the other I'd imagine! Another name for Brigid is Bride, and a woman being married is a "bride" in her honour.

The Catholic church could not call Brigid a demon as she did many good works during her life so they made her into the patron saint of smithcraft, poetry and healing. The holiday of St Brigid is chielfy marked by kindling sacred fires, since she symbolises the fire of birth and healing, the fire of the forge and the fire of poetic inspiration.

A Candlemass tradition held by Witches to this day involves placing a lighted candle in each and every window of the house beginning at sundown and allowing them to continue burning until sunrise. If you like making candles, Candlemas Day is the day for doing it. Some witches covens hold candle-making parties and try to make and bless all the candles they’ll be using for the whole year on this day.

Other customs for this day include weaving “Brigit’s crosses” from straw or wheat to hang around the house for protection, performing rites of spiritual cleansing and purification, making “Brigit’s beds” to ensure fertility of mind and spirit (and body, if desired), and making “crowns of light” (i.e., of candles) for the high priestess to wear for the Candlemas Circle, similar to those worn on St. Lucy’s Day in Scandinavian countries.

Spend some time today acknowledging where you have been all winter. Recognise the seeds of creativity that lie in you, whether they have been dormant during the dark, cold days, or have been active in you. There is more to come. Give thanks to Mother Earth for holding us all so sweetly during the winter, and know that as the sunshine shines down just moments longer every day, there will be a re-birth of creativity, of life, of joy in all of us. Let's invite it in!

Our Energetic Signature

2011-01-22T18:39:00.000Z

When we are born we come into this world vibrating at a certain frequency. It is our "energy signature". Our vibration is a measurement of the speed our energy flows around our body, the speed and direction of our chakras.. This relates to how fast we process ideas, emotions and situations... It is something that we cannot measure yet we know it exists. You can tell the difference between the days you wake up happy and excited about life, and those days where you just cannot seem to get out of bed. Our vibration changes depending on our moods, but overall we have a baseline vibration that sets the scene for who we make friends with, who we hang out with, how experiences shape us and how we deal with relationships. For example, when we go and learn new things, or have life experiences, our vibrations change. We spin at a higher or a slower rate depending on the size of the lesson we have learned, or how well we are coping with life. We notice how our environment vibrates when we do not match our surroundings anymore. We all discover at some point of our lives that people we used to feel comfortable with or have things in common with just don't understand what we are talking about, they don't "get us" anymore. We have "grown out of them", but in energetic terms it is because we spin at a different rate than they do, we process things at a different speed and we can see a different "bigger picture" to them. We leave them behind or we slow down. Slowing down doesn't feel good, and there are so many people out there afraid to step away from what no longer serves them and embrace their true spirit. Because doing this challenges our relationships, challenges where we choose to live, what we choose to do with our career... Once we achieve learning we expand, we change our vibration, and we cannot go back to the way things were. Nothing will ever be the same again.

It is incredibly difficult making lifestyle changes such as changing job, it can be heartbreaking breaking up with a partner and moving house can be the most stressful thing you experience in your life. If you feel like you are suffocating staying in the same place, you will have to make the changes or you will get sick. And once you make the changes, you attract in new people who match your vibration, a new career that stretches and challenges you, a new life that uplifts you and feels better than where you were.

Through my years experience as an energy healer I am finding that more and more people are becoming aware of their own vibrations. They are accepting and are willing to work with it instead of against it. They are finding new language, exploring new ways to enhance their lives, to increase their vibration, and are happy about it. I thought I would write about some ways that you can increase your vibration for you to try out yourselves, and if you do it with a body-awareness, you can see exactly how it affects you, feel how good or how strange it feels. And most of all, you can use these to learn new ways to look after yourself.

Asking for help: If you are feeling ill or low or sad most days, you can go to a vibrational healer. Vibrational healing works to clear through energetic blockages at all levels - physical, mental, emotional and spiritual - to rebalance a person energetically at all levels.

There are many, many forms of vibrational healing, such as:

Hands-on healing modalities like Reiki and Seichem
Flower and Vibrational Essences
Acupuncture and Acupressure
Reflexology
Shiatsu
Sound Healing
Colour Therapy
Crystal Healing

Again, some of these things will attract you, some will not be your thing. Explore with an open mind, and check in with yourself afterwards if you are not happy - was it the practitioner or the actual practice? Is it worth another try or did it really not work? Did it work and is it something you would do for yourself when you need to? Maybe write down in your diary every 3 or 4 months to go see someone in a healing capacity for a "boost" or a "recharge" and just do it! You will notice the difference in your energy levels and your attitude towards life.

Maintaining the vibration: Going to a healer is wonderful when we need some help, but if we do not maintain ourselves in our daily life, we can slow back down and drop to a lower level vibration without even realising it. It is ideal if you can incorporate some practices or rituals into your day so that you can spend time maintaining and caring for your energy signature.

Here are some powerful and fun ways you can increase your own vibration, anytime you have the space (or make the space) to do it:

Spend some time in nature connecting to trees, rivers, rocks, sky.... actually feeling an energetic connection rather than just walking quickly through a park
Meditating using chakra colours, breathing, mantras... connecting to the earth and to the sky... clearing your mind and focussing on positive instead of negative
Playing with animals and children, not thinking about "adult" issues but really stepping off the level of adult and stepping into your imagination
Letting go of emotional baggage - releasing it using fire ceremony, writing a note and burning it, breathing it into a rock and throwing it into a river... use your imagination here too!
Knowing that there is something bigger than all of us and surrendering to it - taking a step back from your level of importance in the world and knowing that everything happens for a reason. If you can do this - wonderful!!
Reclaiming your power - you can do this by using mantras ("I can do this" "I deserve happiness" "I can and I will") shout them out loud and feel your body resonate with them because you truly mean it.
Forgiving yourself and/or others - letting go of the pain that holds you back from your life is one of the things that has the biggest effect on your vibration.
Honouring and nurturing yourself - light candles, have a bath, go to the movies, meet a favourite friend, play your favourite music.... just discovering how to honour and nurture yourself can be great fun too.
Using an object to hold the energy of the space where you want to be (for example using jewellery, crystals or images as a reminder that you can be where you want to be, that goodness is out there in the world and it is waiting for you)

It is useful to look at what lowers a person's vibration so that you can stop or change your behaviour/the situation. You can lower your natural vibration if you become caught up in the following:

Holding onto old emotional hurts, such as resentment, bitterness, grief and sadness
Not forgiving yourself and/or others
Putting yourself down your list of priorities
Holding back from speaking your truth
Not addressing stresses and frustrations
Needing everything to be exactly right
Making judgements on others or on yourself

There are many more things we can add to both lists. But I hope at the end of this note you feel a little more in touch with what works for you and can incorporate some new joy into your life to help you raise your vibrational level.

If you would like to talk about how you can raise your vibration, you can organise a one to one Energy Healing session with me in Ranelagh, Dublin. Contact me through my website www.abby-wynne.com

(picture from: http://www.nowgasm.com/)

How to energetically burn away what no longer serves you

2010-12-29T10:00:00.002Z

Today is the 29th of December and I woke up feeling - Yes. It is time to decide what to put in the fire. It is coming to the end of 2010 and it is a wonderful time to let go of the old, of what does not serve us, and embrace the new.

New Years resolutions are great, we say "Next year I will loose weight, I will be a nicer person, I will exercise more..." And we do. Until about mid-January or February! When we slip back into our old ways. So here's how to do it energetically. It lasts much longer, and we can do it again and again, we don't have to wait until the New Year to burn what we do not want to carry in our lives.

How to energetically burn what no longer serves you:

Focus in on something you no longer want in your energy body - it can be an emotion, it can be a behavioural pattern, it can be a stuck-ness. Feel how it feels to feel that - let it flood your body and lock into it. Really feel it strongly in yourself. Then, you can do either of these two things:

Place a stick right up to your lips and blow the feelings right out of your body and into the stick. Repeat it until you feel an energy shift.

Write it down on a piece of paper. Fold it up and blow the feelings right out of your body and into the paper. Repeat until you feel an energy shift.

You can burn the stick or the paper in a fire, preferably outside, and with it the energy you have extracted from your body will actually burn away. You can also light a candle, and burn the paper in it or in a tin bucket if you don't have access to an actual fire(this obviously won't work with the stick!).

While you are watching the paper/stick burn, it is time to invite in the new. Focus on what it is you would like instead of what you are letting go of. As the paper/stick burns, say to yourself "I am releasing xxxxx, which no longer serves me" And again blow out any remains of that feeling you have. Now say "I invite and welcome xxxxxx into my life"

So you could blow out anger and frustration into the stick, burn the stick, say "I am releasing my anger and frustration which no longer serves me. I invite and welcome love and joy into my life"

Try it out! And you can continue this process, long into the Springtime, with no fears of breaking any type of resolution at all. Nice! Have a wonderful New Year, wishing you all peace, love and joy for 2011.

Christmas Cheer or Christmas Fear?

2010-12-19T19:16:00.002Z

There are only six sleeps until Christmas.....

I have been quite busy in the rush up to Christmas. I have had two brand new clients book me for next week and several of my regular clients have made bookings which will keep me working right up to Christmas eve. I know some of them are stressed out about shopping and cooking, some are stressed about buying presents or meeting their in-laws. Some are stressed because of drinking too much at a work party and saying/doing something they completely regret. Some are stressed because their loved ones have passed away at this time of year and the memories come back to haunt them. And some of them are panicked because they are going home to see their parents, brothers and sisters, and that brings up huge trauma for them.

What a strange time of year. A time of celebration and love turns into a time of stress, trauma and panic. Not just for some, but for many people.

I have come to discover that the majority of the issues that people panic over are about being judged by someone else. I truly understand that if you are bereaved during a Christmas time, there isn't much you can do about it only bear with it, feel the pain, honour it and your loved one and let it go as best you can. But the judgement thing you can work with. Most certainly you can work with that.

By placing a value on somebody else's judgement of you, makes their judgement powerful. If that person has constantly judged you all your life, based on your clothes, your hair, your job, what you say, how you walk, what you eat.... the thought of being around them takes your personal power away before you even begin.

But who gives them the power to do that to you? You might not like this answer. You do. You made a choice somewhere down the line, that this person was important, and what they say or think is important. And we have a natural tendency to look for approval, so that sometimes it feels like this person's ideas are more important than yours. So when they say something bad about you, you believe it. And feel bad. And get stressed.

Yes we do not choose our family, we choose our friends. But sometimes we have no choice but to be surrounded by family, by all types and all flavours of personalities. Some we get along with, some we cannot bear to be around. Particularly at this time of year, being with family can be a huge source of stress. So if it helps at all, realise that you do not need to make the choice to value other people's judgements of you. You do not have to accept it deep in your heart, and wear the badge of hurt. Consciously ask yourself "Am I walking blind and accepting someone else's judgement of me right now?" You can say "I choose to discard this judgement of me as it is unhelpful and hurtful."

To be able to filter out the judgements that you receive, you have to know your own heart. You have to be able to recognise when a judgement is coming at you, and where it is coming from. Perhaps an understanding behind the person making the judgement would help, or an understanding as to why you had been willing in the past to accept what this person says as the truth.

Once you know your heart, nothing that anyone else says about you matters that much anymore. If you find yourself stressed this Christmas, give yourself the best present of all. Pledge to yourself that you will get to know yourself that little bit better this coming year. That you will connect into your inner wisdom, connect into your own heart. Learn more about who you REALLY are. So that you can BE who you really are. And that is the key to letting joy and light in. Nobody can take that away from you. Not even a judgemental family.

Blessings for a warm, safe, and joy-filled Christmas break.
www.abby-wynne.com

Time to Open our Vocabulary

2010-12-05T12:59:00.000Z

This is day 8 of the snow in Ireland. We are not used to it, not one bit! In fact it has never snowed this side of Christmas for 17 years, and never recorded as being this cold since records began.

I heard once that the Eskimos have one hundred words for snow, and today the snow outside is definitly different than it was yesterday. I would describe it as a light, powdered snow that started melting and then was suddenly frozen, with a layer of crisp ice on top. So I looked up the Eskimo words to see if there was one word that I could use instead of 20, and I found this list. I particularly like number 7 and number 10, as they have one word that describes something that we would take several words to do.

1) Snowflake
qanuk 'snowflake'
qanir- 'to snow'
qanunge- 'to snow' [NUN]
qanugglir- 'to snow' [NUN]

(2) Frost
kaneq 'frost'
kaner- 'be frosty/frost sth.'

(3) Fine snow/rain particles
kanevvluk 'fine snow/rain particles
kanevcir- to get fine snow/rain particles

(4) Drifting particles
natquik 'drifting snow/etc'
natqu(v)igte- 'for snow/etc. to drift along ground'

(5) Clinging particles
nevluk 'clinging debris/
nevlugte- 'have clinging debris/...'lint/snow/dirt...'

(6) Fallen snow on the ground
aniu [NS] 'snow on ground'
aniu- [NS] 'get snow on ground'
apun [NS] 'snow on ground'
qanikcaq 'snow on ground'
qanikcir- 'get snow on ground'

(7) Soft, deep fallen snow on the ground
muruaneq 'soft deep snow'

(8) Crust on fallen snow
qetrar- [NSU] 'for snow to crust'
qerretrar- [NSU] 'for snow to crust'

(9) Fresh fallen snow on the ground
nutaryuk 'fresh snow' [HBC]

(10) Fallen snow floating on water
qanisqineq 'snow floating on water'

(11) Snow bank
qengaruk 'snow bank' [Y, HBC]

(12) Snow block
utvak 'snow carved in block'

(13) Snow cornice
navcaq [NSU] 'snow cornice, snow (formation) about to collapse'
navcite- 'get caught in an avalanche'

(14) Blizzard, snowstorm
pirta 'blizzard, snowstorm'
pircir- 'to blizzard'
pirtuk 'blizzard, snowstorm'

(15) Severe blizzard
cellallir-, cellarrlir- 'to snow heavily'
pir(e)t(e)pag- 'to blizzard severely'
pirrelvag- 'to blizzard severely'

So to describe the snow today outside my door I guess muraneq with qetrar (soft, deep fallen snow with a crust on top) although I am sure that my grammer leaves a lot to be desired.

Whats the point of all this you ask? Here goes - the observation bit.

When you wake up in the morning and someone asks you how you are what do you say? I'm ok, I'm good, I'm depressed... in fact just sticking with depressed, how many different moods are there within depressed that could be compared to the many different types of snow? Are you in a thick, heavy, black depressed mood, or are you feeling only slightly grey? I'm not being facetious here. In Ireland we have 500 cases of suicide a year and the majority of such deaths come from people who have depression. It is much more familiar than snow to us. And when we are depressed, do we feel like talking about it? Do we want to string together 20 or so words so that the person who is asking can get a real sense of what it is we are feeling? Or do we even have the energy to do that? So why no words for it?

I could go on about the lack of words for what type of happiness we may be feeling (to lighten the mood) or what type of anger. But I won't. It is time to open up the vocabulary that we have and come up with words or terms for things that DO exist. Things like depression which people have been hiding under the carpet. Hey folks, it's here, it's real and it's killing the nation. And yes, things like happiness too. But the reason why I feel that is not so urgent is because with happiness comes light, and with light comes energy, and with energy comes the ability, the desire, the motivation to share and to explain.

If someone felt heard by someone else, the urge to end it all might be alleviated for just a few hours longer. And if they felt heard and seen by someone else on a regular basis, perhaps the symptoms might alleviate a little bit. Just enough so that one morning, they wake up with a glimmer of a smile on their face, and a tiny bit of hope for the day.

Winter Reiki

2010-11-28T08:50:00.000Z

I put out an offer on my Facebook Page yesterday. Wow.

I am still reeling from the number of people that have asked me for distance Reiki. For themselves, for their loved ones, for people they know who are in pain. Armed with a long list yesterday I was in class with Reiki 2 students, and we sent the distance healing Reiki symbols out into the ether, and I sent it out to my friends on Facebook! And today, again, I will do the same.

I am so heartened to see the uptake on my offer for distance healing. All of these responses coming from a trust in me to do the work, and a faith that Reiki does work. The latter being the most important piece in the puzzle for me. The need to believe in something in all of us is huge. But to know that what we do believe in does work is something magical. If we knew logically that Reiki worked, we would be working within limitations. The fact we do not understand it gives us a magical quality where anything seems possible.

This is just a small post of gratitude. To thank Spirit for this most beautiful Source Energy. To thank everyone who is connected to me, even if only in a small way. To thank everyone who is bringing Reiki closer to people everywhere.

The Devil in the Choices

2010-11-22T15:16:00.000Z

I love the movie "The Devil Wears Prada", not because I love chick flicks, or have a thing for Meryl Streep. Not because I am a fashion advocate or long to be up there in the world of fashion. No, I love it because it is a story about making choices, whether we realise we are doing it or not. For those of you that may not have seen it, Andrea (played by Anne Hathaway) is a lovely, kind and generous person. She is offered a job as assistant to a top fashion executive, and in trying to keep her boss happy, she stops having time for her friends, her family and starts spending money on clothes that cost more than the rent of her apartment so she could fit into her new world. One day she is faced with a choice so large that it practically smacks her in the face and wakes her up. She realised that she was making little choices time and time again that lead her down a path, away from her friends and towards a person who was cold, heartless and soul-less, and she was on track to become that person herself. In putting her job first and herself last, she also chose to place her family and her boyfriend last. Of course Andrea makes the right choice, quits her job and follows her hearts true desire in the end, takes the leap and we all come out of the movie still quite liking her.

So why talk about a 2006 movie today? Well, we are in a time of "crisis" according to the media. Ireland is in severe financial trouble and has asked Europe and the International Monetary Fund for a loan, quite a substantial one at that. The UK is going to help too, and Sweden has offered a hand out as well. There is talk on all the radio stations and on the television about how terrible things are, how our children are going to bear the brunt of the government's stupidity, how we need a general election NOW. It would be easy to get carried away with all of that, just like Andrea got carried away.

There is no need to put ourselves last and the anger, fear and anxiety first. Whether we do or we don’t, we still have to get up in the morning and do whatever it is we have to do in our world, in our day. So we actually do have a choice, whether we realise it or not - do we lose ourselves in the anger, frustration and worry that the media seems to want us to join it in? (yes, Devil like behaviour if there was such a thing) or can we step back, breathe and thank Spirit for what we do have?

We have ourselves, we have a choice. We can sing when we wake up in the morning, instead of cry. (or be silently grateful for the new day, which is my usual choice!) We can become the creative people that we are and make presents for each other with whatever we can afford, and give them with love, rather than lament the material things that we cannot afford to get, or give, this Christmas. We can tell our children that this is the way things are, that they have a choice in it too, or we can tell them they are inheriting a debt that was forced upon them by an incompetent government and their life will be a miserable one as they work to pay it all back.

Andrea finally realises that her boss is “not happy unless everyone around her is panicked, nauseous or suicidal.” Can we make that realisation too about the media? It just feeds their need for doom and gloom. Let’s turn it all around ourselves by choosing positivity!

"A belief is just a thought that you keep thinking." Abraham

2010-11-15T16:15:00.001Z

A belief is just a thought. A thought that you keep thinking. And thinking, and thinking and thinking, and believing, and believing and thinking. What makes us choose which thoughts we keep thinking? And why do we always choose the difficult, self-deprecating thoughts to keep us company for most of the time? Thoughts such as: "I am not good enough", "I do not deserve to be happy", "Nothing good ever happens to me", “I should not have done that” “I regret....”, and so on and so on. My favourite Pretty Woman quote says “The bad stuff is easier to believe”. It’s the way were programmed. The problem with thinking bad things however, is that negative thoughts, repeated over and over turn into anger, frustration, confusion, disassociation with the self, and in the most extreme cases, self-loathing.

We are our thoughts. You hear this often enough but what does it really mean? Thoughts become linked with emotion and then the thoughts, as you keep thinking them, trigger the emotions in your body, and keep you in a cycle, thought = emotion = thought = emotion, so that the emotion spurs the negative thought and the negative thought spurs negative emotion. This is incredibly draining energetically, and ultimately affects you so that you vibrate what you have been thinking in your energy, and therefore, become it. So how do you break the cycle if you are not feeling good in it?

We have to firstly realise we are doing it, then we have to do something about it. Take a few minutes right now to ask yourself what are the most common thoughts you repeat in your mind, about your relationship with yourself. Write it down. You are doing this just for yourself, you can burn it afterwards. So be completely honest about it. You might be surprised at what comes out. And if nothing comes out, put that down too. It’s a start.

Now you have to look at your thoughts from a third party perspective. Step away from your stories and your emotions and look at the words in the cold light of day. Do you really believe these things about yourself? Are they actually true or are they an accumulation of other people’s opinions, needs and desires? Are these thoughts actually you? Do you want to be them? Have you outgrown them?

Ok – you can then scrap the whole lot, and write it all new but a huge change usually does not work so well, even with our best intentions. So instead, change one thing. Pick one of your thoughts, the one that feels like it is the most important one such as “I do not deserve to be happy”. Say it out loud. It feels familiar to you. Notice the emotions, the energy in your body, how it flows. Now what if you take out the “do not”. We all deserve happiness. You know this deep down is the truth. How does it feel to say “I deserve to be happy”? Try it. And Again. Different isn’t it? How does your energy flow now? Do you believe it? Step into the DO and say it again “I deserve to be happy”. Run it by your heart a few times, repeat it consciously. To own this, to make it a permanent change, ask your body to put out a warning light when your mind reverts back to the old “do not” thought. Ask for a rush of energy up your spine, a pain in your shoulder, a twitch in your finger – whatever works. Catch the negative thought and replace it with the positive, new thought, stay with it and let it transform your energy, until you feel ready to go back to what you were doing.

Change one of your thoughts, and the rest of them change slowly too. “ I deserve to be happy” might manage to convert “I am not good enough” into “ I might be good enough” into “heck yes I am good enough”... But going the whole way in one sitting is too much to ask.

And when your thoughts change, your emotions change, and you change too. Bring the light in, step into your power. “I deserve to be happy”. Try it!

Feeling alone vs Being alone

2010-11-02T12:57:00.000Z

Feeling alone is very different to being alone, because we can BE alone, and yet feel connected to ourselves and to others. We can FEEL alone when in a crowd, even when in a relationship, because we are disconnected, because we cannot share our thoughts and feelings with someone we trust. Perhaps there isn’t anyone that we truly trust enough to open up to completely.
There are many reasons why we disconnect , these include loss of relationships, illness, a burden we carry such as a secret, or we are hurting from something that happened to us. It can be very difficult to open our hearts to the world and allow ourselves trust and love again.

When we feel alone we cope with it. Usually by escaping from it, working longer hours, watching movies, turning to food or alcohol. Some people rely on a pet or a hobby, or even self-help books. But feeling alone leaves a void that needs filling up, and this void becomes part of our identity the longer we live with it. We unknowingly isolate ourselves further from people as we move deeper into the void.

Feeling alone = empty and unfulfilled, feeling abandoned, increases stress levels, feeds on despair and self-doubt.

Being alone is a very different space to feeling alone.

When we are being alone, we can connect energetically with ourselves, with mother earth, with any helping, healing spirits that we work with either knowingly or unknowingly. It is a time of peace, of relaxation and an opportunity to tune into our higher selves.

Being alone = solitude, fulfilment through inspiration, freedom from distraction, nourishes our body, mind and spirit.

For all those of you out there who are feeling alone today, as hard as it might seem, know that you are not. It is a difficult struggle, it seems like you are in a pit of despair. But as you find yourself at or close to the bottom of the pit, you CAN climb up and out of it. It might feel like an impossible task, but there are many of us here with helping hands to guide you up and over the rocks and stones because we have been here before, and have survived.

How do you start? Be who you are. Say what you feel. Ask for help.
You can reach me through my website: www.abby-wynne.com

What the heck is going on with the energy?

2010-10-30T12:57:00.000+01:00

Jennifer Hough was talking recently on Facebook about the way the energy is moving in the world today. She describes (and I quote her below) how humans are going through great changes at the moment, how we are deeply effected by these changes and how the most sensitive of us are suffering the most.

The fact that I stumbled across her conversation (on Sherryl's page A Woman's True Voice ) shows how like minded people are coming together to support each other too, another kickback from the energetic changes. So with grace and with gratitude I quote the essence of her conversation here.

Jennifer says:

"In these times of great change we are going through loops, hoops and shifts that to our personality and ego, don't feel very good.........but to our higher selves are completely in alignment. We must allow the old ways, the stuck patterns to come up and out in order to thrive. THE KEY IS TO NOT ENGAGE THE DRAMA.......let it come up, but do not give it a lot of energy. It is no longer like 20 years ago.....we don't have time to analyze.....and if we do it this way, then the joy and peace....or at least neutrallity can be present"

"In fact......the more we are at peace with the 'not knowing' the more the Universe has space to deliver the unimagined.....If we try to know everything before it happens, then there is no room for the miraculous dance.....miracles by definition are not expected....or known by the mind before they happened......and your life is an unfolding miracle. Dance with what presents in front of you.....and it will start flowing....and it may not include money............be open to it happening in ways unimagined....and dance"

Jennifer Hough

So. What do we actually do with this information? Release, release, release - energetic release so that we no longer vibrate with the old things, so that we can open, open, open and invite in the new. Release the old ways, the old thoughts, the old stories. Open to new possibilities, new joys, new love. It is time for a shift in our awareness, a new awakening. It is joyful to bring in the new, to not be connected to trauma, pain and heartache. To do this we do not have to deny that part of us that was born out of it, we honour the old stories, but they no longer serve us. To do this we have to embrace ourselves, to give permission to let in the joy, to let the love in, to feel that we do deserve it.

This is our life's work. To be able to stand proud and tall, in our own power and say YES to life. Say YES I deserve to be loved. And I will start by loving myself better. Here, now, today.

And if we want to smoke a cigarette, then let us do it with joy. If we want to eat a chocolate bar, or drink a glass or two of wine, do it with joy. And release the guilt around it. The more we are aware of our bodies, our energy, our selves, we will not do ourselves or others harm. Stop questioning, stop analysing and start connecting in to our inner selves, start allowing yourself to feel good, start to truly live.

--- Picture credit goes to: http://newuniversestory.com/newstory/awakeninghumanconsciousness.html

A Moment Of Gratitude

2010-10-17T12:26:00.002+01:00

After several long and important blog posts I have had writers block, possibly because I am trying to live up to the essence of what it was that I had already posted. To maintain the intensity, the strength of it. So as difficult as it might be, I am going to throw caution to the winds and just write a small posting today :-)

A posting of gratitude - for where I am today. Thank you all for being such wonderful friends and new connections. Thank you for extending me outwards to the four corners of the world, if the world was to have corners! Thank you so much for connecting in and sharing your pain, your lessons, your fears. I am grateful for all of it and for all that is yet to come.

So sit, have a cup of tea, put your feet up. We've all done great to get this far - it's time to rest and be grateful, and to give ourselves a pat on the back. Take a moment out and breathe. Smile. Rest and rejuvenate. Because there is lots done, but always lots more to do.

Connecting with your Inner Peace and Light

2010-10-10T15:07:00.002+01:00

This beautiful meditation helps you connect to nature. Enjoy!

Begin by placing your hands on your abdomen and start to breathe slowly. It doesn’t matter if you breathe through your nose or mouth. What is important is that you take some deep breaths all the way down into your belly. Breathe comfortably for a few minutes, allowing your body to move into a deep and relaxed state. Allow your troubles and thoughts to be taken away by your breath. Feel your troubles and thoughts being transformed into pure light.

As you continue to breathe slowly and deeply into your belly, think about a place in nature that you love. It is a place of great beauty or peace. It might be right where you live nearby, or a faraway place that you have travelled to. Experience yourself being in this place as fully as you can right now. Look around you and see all that there is to see. What are the colours, the plant life, the tree life, the animals, the birds, the fish? What does the sky look like? Are there clouds or is it clear? What are the sounds of nature around you? Does the wind make a sound or is it still and silent? Is there water nearby? Take a deep breath and take in the fragrance of the fresh, clean air. What else do you smell?

Feel your body sinking into the earth. The earth is holding you, supporting you, and loving you as it does each second of your life. Feel the air on your body. What is the temperature? Do you feel the sun above you feeding you with the energy of life as it does each day? Is there moisture in the air?

Remember the preciousness of life. Being here now is your peaceful time, a time away from the hustle and bustle of life. As you breathe, allow yourself to sink deeper into the comfort of mother earth, and feel connected to nature. You are connected to a web of life, you are part of nature, part of the universe. As you breathe deeply extend yourself outwards and feel the shimmer of the energy in this web as you reconnect to it. Let the energy from this web of life enter your body, let down the boundary of your skin and open up your heart and invite this beauty inside of you.

Breathe in and feel yourself fill up with unconditional love. Breathe out and let go of your tensions and anxieties, your loneliness and your pain. You are not alone, you are loved. Feel the light of your heart glowing stronger as you let in this beautiful energy, and as it glows your body begins to disappear into the earth, it melts away and there is no longer a body there just the pure, white light of your essence of being. You are a being of pure light. Feel the lightness of not having a body, the pulsating of the energy around you and inside you, the grid, the network to which you are connected. With your mind you can create thoughts that go out into the grid and touch others that are connected, try this now. Think about how good it feels to be loved, to be pure light, and send this joy out into the network of energy to go to where it is needed most.

Take a moment to ask if there are any messages for you, if there is anything you are neglecting, if there is anything that needs attention. Listen and trust what you hear at this time is what you need to hear right now. Give thanks, and remember what you have learnt. Make a commitment to take action if it is needed. Remember that this is who you are. This being of pure light.

Choose a symbol that comes to your mind, a sound you might hear, a feeling that you feel right now, and breathe it in. Draw in several breaths and be with this object, let it penetrate your light and fill you with new energy. Now slowly, visualise your internal organs materialising again, your bones, your blood vessels, your blood, your brain, your eyes, ears, nose, your skin. Embrace this body that is yours that gives you the ability to walk on this earth, to learn, to experience. The light might feel dimmer now but know that it is inside you at all times, inside everyone.

Place your hands on your heart and breathe, slowly allow yourself to come back into the room. And when you are ready, open your eyes and experience yourself as fully present. You might notice your energy is vibrating differently to the way it was when you began this exercise. Feel your body on the floor, on the pillow, on the bed. Feel your feet on the ground, and feel the earth beneath your feet.

What is Shamanic Healing?

2010-09-27T11:51:00.008+01:00

Shamanic Healing is something that is so vast, so wide, that it makes this question very difficult to answer. I can only say what Shamanic Healing is for me, how I see it, how I use it. For everyone it is different, so it is important when you are considering going for a healing that you can find a practitioner you trust, someone you feel a connection with. Use your inner judgement – if your intuition tells you “yes” then go with that, if “no”, then find someone else to work with.

Shamans have been using their medicine for over 100,000 years, talking to the sky, the wind, the plants, the rocks and the stones. It’s about connection with Nature, communion with Spirit, respect and honour for all living things. It is about talking to energy in its different forms, on different planes, it is a practice that defies chronological time and space. In the city, we are surrounded by concrete, by glass and steel. There is beauty in it but we need to search for it daily. It is difficult to feel connected to the natural life that is all around us. We are told when we need to eat, we are told what we have to do. Because of society imposing such controls over us, we have forgotten our fundamental connection to nature and worse yet, we have become disconnected from our souls, from our bodies, and we live now mostly in our minds. Shamanic Healing starts by reconnecting us with all three parts of our selves – mind, body and spirit.

We have to break away from the deadness and the dullness and find the beauty again. We are beautiful and we forget that when we concentrate on money and material goods. We begin to yearn for what we do not have, because what we do have is never enough. When we get something that we have wanted for a long time, it disappoints us because it does not fill our need. We have a beautiful energy inside of us, you can see it when you look into someone’s eyes. We are made of both shadow and light. We have everything we need already, here; we have lost touch with it, because we have been told we need more. (How would Society run if nobody bought stuff? – it would, it would just be a different type of economy). Shamanic Healing recognises all of this and allows us to be our true selves, to dream out loud, to shout and scream and dance and be angry, to be joyous, to be whole.

Shamanic practitioners have experienced deep wounding and come from a place of strength, because they survived. They can hold the space for clients as they struggle and come out of the other end of grief and trauma, knowing that it is possible to live in a different, better way.

I understand the human soul as an energy body which is composed of different types of energies, both light and dark, mostly residing in our body. As C.S. Lewis said “We do not have a soul, we are a soul. We have a body”. Our soul holds our life experiences and depending on our personality, we hold onto some experiences more than others. We can lose pieces of our soul during traumatic experiences, and never feel whole again. We can feel both heavy in our bodies, and light, depending on our moods. I believe that our thoughts influence the balance of heavy and light energies in our bodies and through Shamanic Healing, we can release the dark, heavy energies that hold us back and replace them with lighter, bright energies that invigorate and refresh us.

I have had clients come to me that look much older than their years, and leave looking much younger, because they no longer need to spend massive amounts of their energy holding themselves together. I have had clients who have been in pain for months, years even, not knowing why, medications not working for them and them at their wits end. We find that because they were holding issues in parts of their bodies, their bodies were in pain. When they see me we talk to their bodies, find out what is going on and release the issue, release the stress and the tension and they become pain-free. I have had clients who feel disconnected from life, they don’t know what their purpose is and they cannot find joy and happiness. I have searched for and found lost pieces of their soul energies through the Shamanic Journey, and I have brought them back home. My clients who experience this soul retrieval find a new lease for life, a new desire to live, to grow and to enjoy life to the full.

Shamanic Healing for me is about finding magic in the world again, feeling that connection to yourself, to your spirituality, to life. It is about finding the voice inside of you and releasing whatever is stopping it from saying a big “YES!” to life.

The Energetic Power of Words

2010-09-15T09:13:00.003+01:00

I have a friend who is highly intelligent, but whenever she makes a mistake, or cannot figure something out, she says “I’m just stupid”. In fact, I have seen her hitting herself on the head while saying the words “stupid, stupid, stupid”. This really shocked me. I tried to show her what she was doing, reinforcing negative thoughts and putting herself down, but she didn’t get it. I told her if she fills her head with negativity on a continuous basis, it will slip into other areas of thought, other areas of her life, and overall she will have a negative outlook. It could be almost like wearing a pair of glasses that tint everything negative.

WhenI was doing research for a Radio piece on Bullying, I phoned up my children’s school to ask about their anti-bullying policy. They said that when they work with the children they don’t mention the word bully at all. Every September they hold a “Friendship week” across all the classes across the whole school. This reminded me of the famous story about Mother Theresa, she would never attend an anti-war march, but would always show up for a peace rally. It is about putting energy into the positive, not the negative: not the “bully” but the “friendship”; not the “war” but the “peace”.

Words have a vibration and an associated energy, positive or negative, heavy or light. We can use this knowledge to help heal ourselves, and the world around us. Here’s an exercise you can do to capture the positive energy of words and bring it into your life:

Create lists of words that have the energy that you want to manifest. Try to use these words throughout the day. Notice how speaking these words out loud helps you feel more positive and creative. See which ones are strongest for you, and use them more often.

You can choose the most powerful words you know and write them out on Post-it notes, print them out and put them on the wall in your home where you can see them – Love, Joy, Light, Magic, Happiness, Gratitude, etc. When you see them, stop what you are doing and feel their energy. Breathe it in, and release any negativity you might be feeling at that moment. Surround yourself with these words so that you have access to them in situations where you might experience negativity – at work, in the car, by the phone.

Remember to be responsible for your own behaviour. You can choose to respond to a situation, not to react. Let the positive energy of the words guide your response.

Take it to the Sandbox

2010-09-05T11:31:00.001+01:00

A sandbox is a safe space where you can play. Yes, just like the ones you see the kids in, they crawl in and sit in the sand, get sand up their legs, in their shoes, between their fingers (and then treck it into the house and mash it into the carpet)... Not always a clean place to be. But a safe place. A place to experiment, to build things, to create things, and of course, to destroy them. All the sand stays in the sandbox, in an ideal world!

In software development, a sandbox is the name given to an environment where new computer programmes can run without affecting any systems that are already in place. A computer programmer creates the computer equivalent of a safe space, and then they can run their programmes that are in development without the worry that there will be a knock-on effect. There, in the safety of the sandbox, programmers can discover what works, what isn’t working (i.e. a bug in the programme – or a glitch, in normal-speak). They can find and fix the bugs by running and re-running the programme until they are confident that it is working the way they want it to. Then, after the sandbox play, they can take the programme into the big wide world to start the next phase of testing its functionality.

Why am I taking about sandboxes? Well, as an adult on a healing journey, we can use them too. We can create a safe environment where we can try out new things, see what works and what doesn’t work, and play with it, tweak it, change it until we get the effect that we are looking for. Take writing for example – a writer has to write a specific piece, a blog, a play, a short story. They sit with the blank page and know exactly what they want to say (or not), but don’t know how to get the words out. Don’t know where the beginning is, the middle, maybe they know the ending but they don’t know how to get there. Then the mind kicks in – they start thinking about the audience, will they like it? Will they hate it? Will they still like me if they hate my work? Why am I bothering doing this? Then what happens.... the writer is spending too much time in their brain, and not enough time actually writing anything. That’s where the sandbox comes in.

The Sandbox = a space where you will not be disturbed + a time limit.

Whether you are a writer, a computer programmer or a wishful thinker, there are many things you can do in a sandbox that you might not allow yourself to do out in the real world – such as dancing freely, painting, singing out loud.... Even trying on a dress you’d never wear or swirling around and around in a room until you fall down breathless! The Sandbox is about connecting with the energy that you are, about getting in touch with your essence, all in a safe place. And a safe place could be in the middle of a busy street, in the centre of the city, if that’s what you want it to be.

And the time limit? Yes, you need the time limit because just as you need a place to sit while you play in the sand, you need walls around the sand to contain it and make sure it doesn’t spill out everywhere. So pick a place, decide on a time limit and set an alarm. Then what?

Well, you need to know what is stopping you in the real world before you can remove it to play and learn in the sandbox. What types of things are stopping you from accessing your full potential? Self-esteem? Old patterns of behaviour? The echoes of voices from the past telling you that you are not good enough? Voices telling you that you don’t deserve it? You shouldn’t do it? Worse still, you can’t? These things do not belong in a sandbox and so must be left outside.

Only for the time limit you have set, so don’t worry, you can pick them all up again once the alarm you have set, goes off. (Why would you want to pick them back up again? Well, hey, that’s what we do isn’t it?)

So – safe space, set alarm, then drop the voices that say no. Drop the repressed part of you that doesn’t give you permission to perform. Say “I can” out loud, several times. Give yourself permission to be you. Breathe. Open. Go into your body, feel the ground beneath your feet. Feel the light above you, and if you need to, give your inhibitions to the universe to hold for you, just for a small while. You will know when you are ready. Then jump right into the sandbox. Get messy! Throw some sand around. Get sand in your hair. Nobody is looking.

Not ready for Autum just yet

2010-08-27T12:55:00.004+01:00

Today is coming closer to the last day of August. My children are getting ready to go back to school, buying shoes, schoolbags and books. I never enjoyed this time of year and I always tried to imagine September is still summertime. In Ireland you could almost get away with that for the last few years, the weather is still good, sometimes even better than it was in August. By habit, I don't want Autumn to come in yet, I'm not ready for it. Well, over previous years I have never been ready for it. Ready for the days getting shorter, less sunlight to draw life from, darkness to make us feel that we should hibernate. Never ready for the colder, wetter weather, finding jumpers that don't make us look twice the size we are, hiding from the lure of sweets and snacks that I "need" to "keep me going".... These just some of the many Autumtime stresses I usually fight against.

This time its different. I have my own business now, I am my own boss and I just did my books - I have had more clients this month than the last few months even though it might not have felt like it! I have two workshops coming up and I am giving a talk in October. And this month, I was elected onto the Reiki Federation of Ireland, as their Webdesigner and Editor. So I will be very busy doing what it is that I love to do. It can be a huge cause of stress, being somewhere you have to be, doing something you have to do, and not wanting to be there, doing it. I am blessed that I have found my calling and I thank Spirit for helping me by opening the doors both here on the Internet, and on the ground. I trust that the money will come, as it is needed (hope someone up there is listening to that!). And instead of imaging the negatives of Autumn, I will be listening for the footfall of clients as they approach my room for a session. Knowing that when they leave, they are more connected, more grounded, and have released some of their pain. That is such a reward, being there to hold their hands as they take another step on their journey. So my Autumn might not be so bad after all!

How to Work Energetically with Trees

2010-08-19T11:08:00.005+01:00

When we are dealing with deep upset and unbalance, sometimes life feels just too big for us to handle ourselves. When there are no friends to talk to, talking to a tree can be a great help for grounding us. I know it sounds all new-agey and tree-hugging-ish but there is method in my madness! Energetically, trees ARE bigger than us, and they can handle the big emotions when we cannot.
If you want to try this, it might be good to try it when you are not deeply upset. It means that you will be doing something you are already familiar with when you do need it. I have another method for "very deeply upset" which I will mention at the end of this post.
Method:
Go for a walk to find a big, old tree, one that has a very strong trunk and tall tall branches. An Oak tree or a Scots Pine are my favourite types of tree for this work. See if it feels comfortable to be near it. Approach the tree, with your hands open and say hello. Now you don't have to say "hello" with your voice out loud, but you can do this with your energy, like Harry Potter when he learns how to cast spells with his mind. You can say things loudly with your mind and your intention, so say a big “Hello!” to the tree. Approach the tree and place your hands on its trunk, and ask it with your intention if you can work with it today.
You may feel a resounding yes, you might feel nothing. But if you feel anything negative at all, that’s a no, and please do trust your instinct on this. If you get a no, the tree might be damaged and not able to help you out today, so give thanks for the dialogue and go find another tree!
When you get a yes, say thanks to the tree and begin to work with it. How? Well, start from the ground. Imagine your energy is going to mix with the energy of the tree. Start at your feet and go down through the earth, connect into the root system of the tree and go deep deep down with the taproot. Imagine the soil, the stones, the bedrock, imagine going down further until you hit the deepest layers of the earth. When you are connected to the earth, track your body up from your feet, to your stomach, chest and neck, and then your head. Draw a chord of your energy out from your head and mix it with the energy of the tree - up up up into the sky with the tall branches, shoot it right out of your head. Just as the tree reaches up to the sun for light, you call in this light into your body, draw it down into you with the help of the tree, so you are now mixing the sun and the earth, and your energy has expanded.
Breathe that way for a while. It should feel different to how you were before you started. When you are ready, ask the tree if it will help you "dump" the emotional burden you are carrying into the earth, deep into the root system to be turned into something a little more useful for Mother Earth. (Mother Earth can transform the energy of our pain into energy of growth and nurturing for the plants and insects). With your breath, blow all your stress, anxiety, trauma through the energy chords you have generated downwards and into the earth. Ask the tree for help if you can’t do it yourself. You might get a little light-headed at this point so go gently with the blowing!
Once you are feeling better, when you are ready, draw in some more sunlight in through the top of your head. Stay like this for a while. What is great about this work is that you can do it all in a public place and people will just see you standing beside a tree with your hands on the tree trunk!.
When you feel able to, slowly untangle your energy body from the tree, disconnect completely from it (very important to make sure it’s a complete disentanglement) and once again, give thanks to the tree for holding you while you let go of whatever it was you had to let go of.
------------
Now, some people might find working with trees an easy thing to do, others may have trouble and need to practice. If you feel this is something you would like to do and are having trouble with it, or you want to try it with me, you can contact me via www.abby-wynne.com Even if you are not based in Dublin, I would be happy to talk you through it on the email.
And for that "very very deeply upset" method, you can do this in your garden: Lie prostrate on the grass, facing downwards. Open your heart into the grass, and call to mother earth to help you, to take away all the pain you are carrying so that you can manage. She will. That's why she is here.

The Mind of a Child

2010-08-16T15:18:00.000+01:00

My eldest girl today wasn't feeling well. My 2 year old daughter went up to her and put
her hand on 'Megans head "to take the sick out".
So I told her to send "the sick" up to the sky and with great delight she threw her little fist up into the air and said "go into the sky, sick". We laughed. Children are such amazing natural healers. If adults could break through the barriers of being adults it would come so naturally to them, too.

Meditation to Release Stress

2010-08-09T22:17:00.001+01:00

You can do this meditation anywhere if you have a few minutes when you know you will not be interrupted. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

Sit in a comfortable position, unfold your arms and legs and place your feet squarely on the floor. Become aware of the chair or the floor where you are sitting/lying and feel it supporting your body. Become aware of your breath, as you breathe out, release any tension in your body, feel your body relaxing from your head down to your feet. As you breathe in, imagine you are breathing in a soft pink light which fills you with peace and love.

When you are feeling secure and grounded, visualise a place in nature where you feel happy. It might be somewhere you have been already, or somewhere you have travelled to before in a meditation. Experience yourself there as fully as you can be at this moment. Look around you and see the colours, the textures, the life around you. Can you hear any noises? What are they? Can you see any animals moving? What does the sky look like? Is the air still and clear?

Take a deep breath. What can you smell? What other sensations are you experiencing right now? Can you feel the sunshine on your skin? As you breathe, give yourself permission to experience the peace and calm of being part of nature. Whatever troubles you might have on your mind, held in your body, release them into the scenery. Let the grass take your problems for a while, let the sea carry them for you, just for the next few minutes. Relax more into your body as the stress and strain trickles away from your body at this moment.

Feel your connection to the earth, as you breathe, feel a strong, solid energy beneath you holding you, nurturing and caring for you. As you breathe out feel this connection grow stronger, a beautiful sensation of warmth filling your body from the earth, and you can send stress or anxiety through this connection directly into the ground, releasing it from your body.

As you relax further, feel your own personal sun just above your head. With your breath, draw down a shaft of light from this sun and feel it connecting to the top of your head. Breathe down golden light energy and feel it trickle down your face, your neck, chest and shoulders, cleansing you of any remaining tension. Draw this beautiful light energy down your body, down your abdomen, stomach, hips, thighs and down your legs, past your knees to your ankles and over your feet, like a golden sheath. with each in-breath, feel the golden energy trickling down and over your body, and with each out breath, feel the stress and tension leave your body. Feel the energy of earth and sky mixing in you as it cleanses and purifies you.

With your breath, allow yourself to come back into the room that you are lying or sitting in. Come back with the memory of peacefulness, with the knowledge that you do not have to hold the stress in your body any longer. Hold in your body this experience and know that you can come back to this place whenever you need to. When you are ready, take your time, feel your feet, your hands, stretch and move about a little bit, then you can open your eyes. Become aware of the sounds in the room you are in, of the light, the colours and the objects around you. Welcome back home!

Contentment

2010-07-31T22:16:00.003+01:00

When can we say we are finally content? There are so many answers we need, so many questions to ask. There are plans to make, things we need to have, educational achievements to complete.

We recognise when we are not happy - when our body feels heavy, when our eyes hurt, we seem slower and everything around us less noticeable as we sink into our own sorrow. We recognise happiness and we wake up to the world around us - we see it in a glistening of a dewdrop in the morning sun, the opening of a flower, somebody else's smile.

It is funny how we become consumed inwards when we are upset or down, and we look outwards to the world when we are lifted.
So then, what is contentment? It is neither looking out nor in, it is being here, now. It is not needing anything, not joyous but not consumed by sadness either. Contentment is releasing all the questions we have to have the answers to, and instead relying on an inner peace that brings us balance, both outwards and inwards.

Transformations

2010-06-29T11:48:00.000+01:00

Last Friday I went to my children’s school’s last assembly of the year. I was a guest of honour; there were no other parents present. After the announcements, the prizes and a tearful retirement parade, the principal said that to the crowd that there was another special guest present. Then she turned to me. I felt the tears well up in my eyes. I had donated my family piano to the school several months ago and the children were going to sing a special song accompanied by the piano to say thank you.

This piano had been in my life for as long as I can remember. My grandfather had given it to my mother as a wedding gift. It had sat in my house for the last few years but I never felt that it was really mine. It held many memories of my life, as it sat, silent in my living room, gathering dust. This piano that I listened to for years as my mother practiced on it while I was a child, this piano that somehow brought beauty into a traumatic home, this piano that I tried to avoid playing for many years.... my mother’s piano, became for a moment, my piano.

When the day came that the school took it away, I felt a new, clear space in the house. I had not realised that the memories were embedded still in that piano for me. And now, with a few hundred happy faces staring up at me (“she’s the one that gave the school the piano!”) I felt a mixture of relief, pride, sadness and joy. Knowing that now this piano would become alive, bringing joy to many children, teachers and parents, set something free inside of me. It was my piano, if only for a moment, and then it was gone.

That is what this work is about. Recognising the story, honouring the story, feeling the sadness, but then letting it go. Transforming the pain into something of use, into something beautiful. Transforming it into something that will touch others, something that we can begin to value in ourselves as having worth. Being of worth. Worthwhile. The piano was my issue, but it is gone now, and the pain I unconsciously held onto is not gone, but transformed.

Why do I need a Counsellor?

2010-06-16T12:35:00.000+01:00

The solutions to most of our problems are within us, but sometimes they are hidden. Counselling is a space that you can use to explore your issues and problems safely, with gentle guidance from a therapist to help them find the “light inside”.

Each person is different, and even though we all have similar needs in life, our life experiences can affect how we perceive ourselves, other people and our situations. By getting to know you, a counsellor can point out patterns of thinking that might be stopping you from seeing all sides of a situation clearly.

Sometimes, to make life a little bit easier, all you need to do is become aware of a problem that you might not have already seen before. Sometimes, you might have a decision to make and counselling is a great opportunity to explore different angles and different options that you might have, before making a decision. And sometimes, decisions are made for you that you might find difficult to live with. Counselling is a good place to come to learn how to change your attitude towards something, to make it work for you instead of against you.

Above all, Counselling is a safe, confidential space that is there to help you improve your life situation. Working with a Counsellor happens at your pace, your timing. You take home what you put into it. And you will find, by forming a relationship with your counsellor, that in this world it is good to know that you have another form of support in your life to carry you through the difficult times.

Fear

2010-06-06T12:47:00.000+01:00

“The thing you fear most has no power.
Your fear of it is what has the power.
Facing the truth really will set you free.” - Oprah

We heal ourselves with great risk. Risk that we change, and lose the familiar parts of ourselves, so that we no longer recognise ourselves. Risk that our friends and our families no longer recognise us either, and no longer wish to be around us. But we remain stuck with a fear of changing at great risk too, risk of getting sick as our bodies hold in our anxieties, our anger, our resentment. Risk of "going postal" because we could begin to resent the people we love, the job we are in, and one day we wake up and implode. Or worse, explode.

Fear serves a purpose, yes. At its best, it holds us back and makes us think about what it is we need to do, before we jump right in and do it. At its worst, it prevents us from taking the leap and we remain in a box that no longer fits us, twisting ourselves up into knots in order to stay in a space that we have already outgrown.

Facing the fear involves realising that it is the fear itself, not the actions we need to take, that makes our heart race, our blood boil, our stomach tense. How do we move from this? I suggest we pour out a cup of tea and invite the fear into the room to find out what it wants from us. Talk to it, thank it for the warning. Ask it what would happen to you if you stay where you are. Ask it what would happen if you take the steps you are thinking of taking, the ones that scare you so much. Ask it to become your ally in your life's journey, to hold you when you are making a mistake, and to walk with you instead of against you. Things are difficult enough in this world to be fighting against yourself as well. And when you do this, the fear is then seen, it feels recognised, validated. It softens, and delivers a message to you that you might not have considered before.

Like Oprah says, its the fear that has the power, because you are giving it that power. Turn fear into a friend, and you can do anything.

Take a Trip Down The Road Less Travelled

2010-05-23T16:37:00.003+01:00

It used to be that the majority of people would go through life unaware. Asleep. It was more of an existence than a life well lived. Phrases like "the rat race", "nose to the grindstone" were descriptors of the working week and expectations were low. "Thank God it's Friday" also used a lot, and the weekend a time to get mindlessly drunk, overeat, watch movies and generally escape and burn off frustration built up over the grinding week.

Times are changing. You could say, this type of lifestyle couldn't go on for too long anyway, but it has done. So what is snapping people out of their sleep-like trance with life? In my opinion I imagine that sharing our experiences on a more intimate level is a big cause of this shift in consciousness. The Internet is a great way to express oneself, as I am expressing myself to you, on this blog. Facebook, Twitter etc are bringing people together with common interests who may never have otherwise met. And a thirst for knowledge. People, once they see there is more to life, want to know what the more is. It's like spreading gossip, only in a good way. Reiki, for example, is now acceptable in some hospitals in the States, for both Staff and patients. More and more people here in Ireland are going to counselling and psychotherapy, whether to save a relationship or to improve their relationship with life. Things are opening up now and people are coming out of hiding. Like the abuse victims. It's because one person has the courage to speak out, it inspires the next one, and the next one. Suddenly everybody is talking. It is so wonderful to see people who want to heal themselves and to heal others too.

Some of us have been on this healing journey, famously called the road less travelled in a poem by Robert Frost, for a while now. Some people for so long perhaps they feel that it's over, their work is done. But the work is never done as long as we are here to tell the tale. Some of us are just beginning to wake up, and it is overwhelming once our eyes open, to take in all the new possibilities that nature has to offer. And some of us are still sleeping and possibly fighting against the waking (and getting sick from it). Some people possibly will never wake.

If you take one thing from this post today I hope it is this: we are all on our own journey. No one journey is the same and we cannot presume to fully understand anyone else’s' but our own. Understanding our own journey is a life's work in itself. So I imagine the road less travelled, also called the road towards enlightenment, becoming busier as more people begin to wake up. It's a beautiful thing, and even more beautiful is the thought that those of us on the road already can lend a helping hand to those of us just beginning.

Open your heart next time you see someone who irritates or angers you and let the anger dissolve. This person may not have yet woken, or may be struggling with a thorny bush or a slippery stream on their journey. Together we can heal each other. Together we can heal the world.

That mantra just doesn't work for me!

2010-05-09T21:42:00.001+01:00

"I cannot be fat and serene, and I don’t want to be. Thin by itself is not necessarily well, but OA is teaching me how to be both thin and serene." -Lifeline Sampler (p. 339) from Overeaters Anonymous Website

Oh my god!! I cannot be fat and serene? Surly that's exactly where the problem lies? Not allowing yourself to be serene and accepting of your body at whatever state it is currently in, is a recipe for disaster (excuse the pun). If we can learn to accept our bodies as they are, them serenity follows. The need for emotional eating dissipates when we are serene, that cream cake just doesn't look so appealing anymore because we feel content and do not "need" it. If we are not binge eating, weight loss will happen. Therefore it takes the pressure off being on a diet, off of losing weight. Losing weight then no longer dominates our lives, our thoughts, our every thinking moment. Imagine what that would be like? To wake up in the morning and feel happy?

So to say that you cannot be serene in your current physical state is like a prison sentence. You are committing yourself to unhappiness. Why not say something more like "I deserve to feel peaceful, I deserve to be happy, no matter what my body shape"? That is a greater truth. Or say "I choose to be content in the body that I have, today". For this to truly work you have to create your own mantra. We are all doing the best we can, let's be a bit nicer to ourselves.

Is it better to have loved and lost?

2010-05-03T15:28:00.005+01:00

I read the story of Marcia and Seneca today. During the time of Caligula in Rome, Marcia lost her son just before he turned 25 in a war. Three years after he was killed, Marcia was still as grief-stricken as she was the day she found out. Seneca was a philosopher who sent Marcia a letter saying "The question at issue is whether grief ought to be deep or neverending".

Feeling grief deeply is allowed and should be more commonly recognised as a need in life. But we have to give ourselves permission to grieve. All too many times this is not the case, and people carry the weight of bereavement around for years not really knowing or understanding what it is that keeps dragging them down. Feeling a deep grief for a short amount of time is healthy, and after an appropriate amount of time (but it is dififcult to define appropriate), we pick ourselves back up and continue our journey of life. Feeling grief forever is not what we are supposed to do.

One of the side effects of feeling grief in our bodies is a feeling of being alive. We block everything else out and just are our feelings, and this can be addictive as it is nice to shut the outside world off for a while. When grief is prolonged, it seeps into our bones and becomes our identity. We form new habits around it, it is like a warm, familiar blanket, maybe not too comfortable, but safe, in a strange kind of way. When prolonged grief has occured, having the ability to lift the blanket of grief aside when the time comes, can be incredibly difficult.

This is where shamanic work is so powerful. In a graceful way, shamanism helps you shed the heaviness, embrace new light and move on with your life. It does not mean that you never felt the grief, no, instead it means that you are somehow different, changed, because of it. You can leave the heaviness behind and live your life in a transformed way, all the better for having met, loved and lost.

You can find out more about Shamanism on my website, http://www.abby-wynne.com

Taking a moment?

2010-04-19T14:53:00.002+01:00

We all have hectic lives running from pillar to post. Perhaps that's why we like to stop for a moment to sit and sip a coffee. But do we really stop when we do this? I see many people in cafés with phones out, laptops, newspapers… These things intrude on our lives, whether we know it or not. They invite third party information that we may not have asked for into our few moments of peace.

So why do we do it? It's almost as if even spending a few moments by ourselves, completely alone, is an impossible task. Can we just simply sit, and be with ourselves?

Next time you find yourself sitting alone with a cup of something hot, or cold, see if, for the duration of the drink, you can leave the phone and the laptop behind. Just for as long as it takes you to drink your delicious beverage. And then, if you can, notice if you actually feel like you managed to get a moment to yourself today.

The Peaceful Warrior

2010-03-29T21:52:00.000+01:00

There is much agression and pain in the world today. We can attract it even if we are not looking for it, aggression and pain can be a great distraction from looking inside at our selves. The peaceful warrior lives and practices truth. By being true to our selves, we do not need to engage in aggression, as we are comfortable with who we are without having to justify it. Peaceful warriors need no enemy, they step away from agression. Peaceful warriors learn where balance is and they learn how to dance with whatever comes.

We become what we think

2010-03-17T14:28:00.002Z

"The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. And the habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care. And let it spring from love, born out of concern for all beings." Buddha

Seeing with your heart

2010-03-09T21:14:00.001Z

Somebody wrote "It will become visible to you when you can see it." See what? We see too much these days, children play vicious computer games and kill kill kill, we see violence on the streets and we don’t help anymore, we see pictures of children dying in Africa and we don’t jump in to rescue them. Seeing has to become numb because we cannot act on everything. But it is then almost as if we have forgotten how to open our hearts, to see through our hearts. It is not something we can do all the time, 24 hours a day, because seeing with our heart can make us vulnerable. But it can also make us more human. It also helps us see inside to our own heart, to love ourselves. This seeing with our heart, opens our eyes, and we can once again be part of the journey of life. So for those of you who doubt, hear this:

"He who fears must love over his fearing, for love be the sun that dispels that shadow." - Patience Worth

Getting out of a vicious circle

2010-03-03T20:58:00.001Z

I just watched the final episode of Operation Transformation and it left me wondering... What happens next for the leaders? 8 weeks of media attention, vigorous exercise, commando training and eating plans.... Of course they lost weight, its inevitable with all that support and attention. But what now? will they keep it up? Or flop out over the next week or two with the anti-climax, then go back to old habits?

And what about the rest of us? Without access to personal trainers, nutritionists, the army or motivational coaches, how can we do it alone? It seems like an impossible task to lose weight without all that support. But it doesn't have to be. There's a trick to losing weight, and it starts with a decision to make a change. Just one change at a time is all a person can successfully make.

I suggest that diets don't work. The secret to successful weight loss is understanding how we got where we are in the first place. What emotional issues underly our eating habits? What, in fact, are our eating habits? If you want to lose weight, and you are serious about it, then keep a food diary and be honest about it. What did you eat, when, and what was going on for you at the time. Do it for a week and see if there is a pattern... do it for a month and go deeper into it. You might learn something about yourself in the process, and the food will start to look less appetising.

Make a change for life, not just for a few weeks.

Making Time

2010-02-22T22:36:00.000Z

Most of us go through life rushing from one thing to the next. We are constantly making plans, we even eat quickly, without tasting our food. Time, there never seems to be enough of it. It's easy to let things go past, until soon, we loose touch with friends, forget to play with our children, even loose touch with ourselves.

A few years ago I realised that it is not a question of not having enough time, but a question of how we choose to spend the time we do have. It is time to make time work for us. My language changed. Instead of saying "Sorry, I don't have time", I started saying "I'll make the time.." Time to play with the kids, to visit a friend, to write a letter. Let us make time work for us instead of feeling its working against us. At the end of the day, time really is all that we have, and we cannot buy it back.

Paying interest to trouble

2010-02-17T16:19:00.000Z

I tend to write things down when I hear them if they resonate with me. I collect these sayings in the notes feature on my phone, and go back to them when I have time to pick them apart.

Recently in a movie, I heard someone say "worry is interest paid on trouble that hasn't happened yet". I liked that, and noticed, as I wrote it in that another quote I had collected recently was very similar. It said "our greatist fears come in anticipation"

It resonates with me right now as I feel like I am in a transition, between where I am and where I want to be. And thinking about all the things that could go wrong had been causing me anxiety. It's the same as the quote - the idea of spending my energy on trouble that hasnt happened yet, causing worry. Interest is something I pay to a bank with much reluctance, so why should I pay it to trouble? Anxiety comes from fear of something that hasn't happened yet.. It may be based on past experience, but, again, its anticipating trouble, that hasnt yet happened.

Before I read the quotes I realised what it was that I was doing and I stopped doing it. I felt a relief, and after a while, the worry and anxiety subsided .Finding the quotes validated the work for me. I would much rather spend my energy on something positive - like making plans for the future instead of worrying about them. Bleeding energy into worry takes away from what we have to work with. Its time to change our attitude and reclaim our energy.

Taking the first step

2010-02-13T21:19:00.001Z

I was helping a friend set up her website, she plans to teach personal development and reiki. I was chatting to her about how useful a blog would be, in that she would get more coverage for her website, it could be a great marketing tool, and a spin off would be that she could use the blog as a portal to speak to people about what she believed in.

Then I realised - I have not done this yet.

So here I am, taking the next step on my journey, and the first step for this blog. It makes me contemplate the idea of first steps. Instead of looking at the length of the road ahead, I'm taking a moment to appreciate where I've been. The first step - It's about having faith in yourself that you can do whatever it is that you intend to do. So I say out loud, I have faith in myself and I start here, now, today.