As I’ve jokingly told friends, “Some people sleep with men. I sleep with rocks.” When my kids help me change the sheets on my bed (since my mobility often limits my ability to do it on my own), my daughter always knows to ask, “How many rocks are there hidden in the sheets?” The usual answer is that I’m not sure. It’s always an adventure emptying out the bed to see what I’ve been stashing away in there like a squirrel over the previous week or two. All jokes aside, one of the primary ways I use crystals is to change my metaphysical energy while I’m sleeping. I fall asleep with rocks near my feet, near my pillow, in my hands, or alongside my body. It can be less than pleasant to wake up during the night to a jagged object attacking you, but aside from that minor drawback, crystals can work amazing changes in one’s metaphysical energy during sleep. If you subscribe to the school of thought that I do, crystals raise one’s vibrations and help change the way one’s body and soul interact with the world. I’ve had several deep spiritual experiences falling asleep with crystals in my hands, especially during my afternoon naps. Early in my work with crystals, I had gone to Nature’s Treasures during one of their sales. I found myself standing in front of one of the clearance tables for a third time, and even my daughter noticed that I couldn’t stay away from the purple fluorite that was there. It was $3, so I figured, “What the heck” and bought it. About three weeks later, the fluorite seemed to be calling to me as I was going to bed, so I grabbed it and fell asleep with it in my hand. Two hours later, I awoke to a violent jolt as something flew out from my body. When I looked up, and I saw an entity leaving my body. It appeared to me like a digitized bat-like creature, but as my mentor has taught me, our minds don’t really know how to process evil when they see it. So the bat was probably the best approximation of what my mind could do with something it was seeing outside its normal view. That happened on a Tuesday afternoon. On Thursday morning, I went to see one of my healers. I told him, “I’ve spent the past 36 hours thinking about this, and I don’t think this could have happened, but here’s what I experienced.” His response? “That happened.” And it did. It was my first experience with seeing something on another level of existence, but not my last. On a different occasion, I fell asleep with a piece of Atlantisite (pictured above) in my hand. I was hoping to get some insight on time I spent on Atlantis in past lives. However, what I ended up seeing was a past life with a friend of mine in Wyoming hundreds of years ago. I awoke from my nap hearing Native American chanting and drumming in my room. I couldn’t understand why the neighbor was listening to that music so loudly until I finally figured out that the neighbor wasn’t the source of the music. I allowed myself to receive information at that point, and I saw the first of three past lives I’ve seen so far that involve this friend. In this particular message, I also got some information on his current life health issues. I sent him a text about it, and he wanted more information, so I did another session that day to gain further insight. In turn, these past life experiences have led to some intense and powerful mutual healing sessions with that friend. If you are considering working with crystals at any point, I highly recommend sleeping with them in the bed with you. As I’ve found out time and again, it can create a life-changing experience. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance (This is another really long post. Apologies in advance! As always, I am not a medical doctor. This information is based on my personal experiences and should not be substituted for medical diagnosis or treatment. Please speak to your health care providers about your personal situation.) I have had lifetime IgE mediated allergies to pretty much any non-food item that I get tested for. I was first skin prick tested at age four, and then again at age 21. Trees, grasses, weeds, dander, dust, molds… all of it makes me miserable. Lyme has increased the severity of my allergies as well due to the impact on my immune system. Once again, this is one of those areas where my situation is severe enough that natural medicine can help, but it alone is not enough. The best way to think about allergies is using a glass of water. Pretend that glass is your immune system. If you are someone who is genetically prone to allergies as I am, our glass is always half-full. If you live with pets whom you are allergic to and/or aren’t diligent about dusting, add some more water to the glass. Then add in a dose of seasonal pollen, and your cup will begin overflowing, as will your sinuses. Austin is a particularly miserable place for allergens as we don’t have a single month all year where something isn’t high in the counts. So what can be done aside from OTC and prescription allergy medicines and nasal sprays? There are quite a few other things to try that fall under the categories of Western medicine, natural options, lifestyle changes and adaptions, and dietary changes. Western Medicine I've found that most over the counter allergy medicines don't have enough oomph in them for me. Claritin worked for a while, but then stopped. Benedryl works well for me and doesn't make me drowsy, but it's not very long lasting. I have switched to long acting prescription medications. I'm on an older prescription medicine that has a generic and which seems to work quite well for my body. Many years ago I did allergy shots; they too were incredibly helpful until my immune system went completely wonky. Then they made things much worse, probably because of preservatives. It is possible to get preservative free allergy shots if you work with an allergist who is aware of chemical sensitivities (which unfortunately, is not most of them). Allergy shots take a while to kick in so they don't provide immediate relief. Natural Options There are various herbal compounds that can help. Many of them contain nettles which, ironically, I am allergic to. Most of my practitioners recommend D-Hist. This supplement requires that one does a higher loading dose for several weeks and then drops down to a regular daily dosage which may then need to be increased again during times of seasonal attack. Another herbal remedy I have successfully used is Bi Yan Pian which is for the lung meridian and helps with allergies and asthma. They are very tiny, easy to swallow pills, and they helped my oak induced asthma quite a bit until I started reacting to them. Check with your acupuncturist or Chinese medical practitioner before taking them, though. Body work can help many with allergies, especially acupuncture and chiropractic adjustments. Unfortunately, they don’t give me much relief. The Allergena homeopathic drops that are available locally at People's and Whole Foods are amazing. They work in the same mechanism as allergy shots. They helped me greatly for a while, but my immune system also freaked out about those eventually. These would be easy to give a young child with a health care provider’s supervision and approval. Because of how they work with the immune system, it is recommended you begin these before seasonal allergies get bad. That means if you have trouble with cedar fever, now is the time to start the drops before the pollen begins in about six weeks. One group of local chiropractors will make an energetic homeopathic for allergens. They muscle test using local allergens to figure out what you are allergic to and then create the homeopathic. Then, you take several drops of the homeopathic daily. This helped so much when it was working. Then it just flat out stopped working as my immune system figured out how to defeat it, but for the year of relief I got, it was really helpful. if your allergies suddenly become much worse, you may want to talk to your alternative health care provider about adrenal fatigue. Extreme amounts of emotional or physical stress put a great deal of pressure on the adrenal glands which in turn can make allergies worse. Lyme has done this to my body as well. I know many who swear by lavender essential oil for allergy, but this is not something I have experienced success with. Neti pots are popular with many people who have allergies. They allow one to use salt water to rinse out the sinuses. Getting the right angle is crucial to making sure you don't choke on the solution, but once you figure it out, the process is really easy and can be quite soothing. Keeping eye contact with yourself in the mirror is part of what helps get the angle correct. I recommend NOT using tap water not because of the very rare risk of bacteria that can kill you but because the chlorine in the water can be very irritating to the nasal passages in someone who is sensitive. Unfortunately, I'm one of the people who finds that using a neti pot makes things worse for me in the long run: I hypothesize that the water in my sinuses actually promotes fungal growth which creates additional pain and misery. As a result, I've given up on using one. Neti pots are available at Whole Foods and People's Pharmacy locally as well as at many other health stores and online. Lifestyle Adaptions and Changes For some people, including me, spontaneous nosebleeds are a side effect of allergies. It’s not a lot of fun to wake up in the middle of the night with blood dripping out of your nose. Mine are always caused by mold, but for others, different allergens can be the culprit. Some people find that using a humidifier helps reduce their nosebleeds. If you take this approach, be sure that you are cleaning the humidifier frequently and well so that it doesn't contribute to the mold and allergy problems. When it comes to dust, it’s a neverending battle. Dust allergies are pretty common amongst those with allergies and asthma. Vacuuming well with a high powered vacuum should happen weekly in any area with carpeting in order to minimize dust. Getting rid of the carpet is best in the long run if you own your home. Line drying laundry is actually not good for those with allergies because it means all your linens and clothes are picking up more pollen. Use a dryer with heat to kill the dust mites. Bed linens need to be washed weekly if you have dust allergies. If I don't wash my linens weekly, I pay for it. At my worst of my illness, I had to wash the linens every 3-4 days. Any stuffed animals that a child with allergies sleeps with also need to be washed on a regular basis. The dust covers that you can get for pillowcases and mattresses really do help, too. I avoid the vinyl ones because they off-gas some nasty chemicals which is not good for the immune system or the body in general. I also find it necessary to wash my hair any time I’ve been outside to minimize pollen on my body and allergic reactions. Opening the windows, even on gorgeous days, is unfortunately not an option for me as it just makes my allergies much worse. I am allergic to pet dander. I love cats, but I cannot be around them without being miserable within 30 minutes even on antihistimines. I’d love to have a cat as a pet, but as I’ve told my kids, if we get a cat, we’d have to get rid of me. I am also allergic to dogs, but I can tolerate some breeds better than others. I had beagles and beagle mixes all my life as they are one breed I do better with; long-haired dogs like golden retrievers are miserable for me. If you have pets and someone in the household is allergic to them, the pets should stay out of the bedroom of the allergic person. This can be accomplished in several ways. We put a baby gate up in our bedroom door to keep the dogs out but to allow us to keep the door open at night; we had to get a taller baby gate after our one beagle rapidly demonstrated his hurdling ability. If you have cats, a screen door on the bedroom door can help keep them out. Higher end HEPA filters such as those made by Austin Air and AllerAir can help with dust and pollen. Some of the lower end brands have formaldehyde in the filters which doesn't help with allergies especially in the chemically sensitive. However, at my worst, I was still reacting to even the high end brand filters. Going completely fragrance free can reduce the stress on the immune system and help decrease the impact of allergies, asthma and eczema. Synthetic fragrances can really mess with the lungs, skin and sinuses. Be aware that "unscented" actually doesn't mean fragrance free: It can mean that masking fragrances are added to cover up any odor. (This is also true with "low odor" paints which are not low VOC paints by definition: They just have something in them to make them stink less.) For me, I have to use all natural products in addition to using fragrance free products as my body can’t tolerate petroleum based products. All major brands of conventional detergents, for example, are petroleum based. Dietary Changes In order to reduce the overall stress on your immune system, eating organic can help greatly. When I began eating organic, I was able to drastically reduce the amount of antihistimines I was taking for several years. The change in diet also stopped the frequent sinus infections I used to battle. Removing foods which you are sensitive or allergic to can also help reduce the stress on the immune system and minimize the impact of airborne allergens on your body. Dairy and gluten are common allergy and asthma triggers for many people. There are also foods that can "cross-react." This essentially means that the immune system sees these foods as close to the pollens that you react to, and thus, eating those foods increases one's reaction to that pollen. There are many lists of these foods around the internet such as this one and this one. You may find that eliminating certain foods while related seasonal allergies are peaking may help your overall health. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance The archives of my inspirational mantras and thoughts are now on Pinterest for those who enjoy using it. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance See how nature- trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls. ~Mother Teresa Anyone who suffers from migraines or similar head pain will immediately understand this post from their perspective of suffering. When your head feels as though it’s being smashed apart by a hammer, silence is absolutely necessary. Most who suffer from migraines prefer a dark solitary room as they try to sleep off their misery. When recovering from an acute or chronic illness, silence can play a similar healing role. When I was at my sickest, I could not tolerate noise. When I worked on my computer, I needed silence. When I drove in the car, I needed silence. My body was so wracked with pain and my brain so overwhelmed with the constant internal stimulation that it simply could not handle the external noise as well. As my health improved, I slowly saw a return of music into my life. I started by being able to tolerate calm classical music. Slowly but surely, I returned to calm pop music as well. Even now, though, on days when I’m feeling overwhelmed, I return to silence, meditation music or classical music in the car, while working on my computer, or while in my sauna. My body needs that silence or low key energy to heal. Silence can play a similar role in emotional healing. Many of us don’t like to be alone with our thoughts: Being alone with them means we have to actually pay attention to them and confront them. It’s easier to ignore that nagging voice in the back of your head that wants you to work through your spiritual and emotional issues if one has loud music and other surrounding noises helping block it all. Silence can force us to face what we need to work on in order to heal. Spending time alone in silence can be vital to healing on all levels. This is one of the many reasons that some spiritual practices include silent retreats for days, weeks, even months. Others take on commitments of silence that last for years. In that silence, it becomes easier to hear the higher powers that surround us. We can use their assistance to heal those emotional and physical pains that are dragging us down. If you are struggling with an issue, be it emotional, physical or spiritual, try spending some time each day in silence even if it is only for a few minutes. That silence can be spent sitting next to a lake or outdoors listening to the wind blow in the trees. You might be laying in shavasana in your room on your yoga mat. You might be simply staring at a lit candle while curled up on the couch. But take yourself away from your smart phone, your computer, your iPod, your television, and any of the rest of the chaos that is a part of our lives. You may find the silence more healing than you ever expected. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance One of Amazon's daily deals for Kindle today (Wednesday, October 15, 2014) is The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D. I am currently working on a review for this book, but you can get some basic information about it from Aron's website. As she states:
The book is widely available in public libraries, but the Austin Public Library does not have it available in digital form at this time. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance When the other side contacts me, it’s kind of like hearing thoughts in my own voice in my own head. The individual energy associated with the messages, though, is very distinct, and it’s how I can get a sketch of the person/being I am communicating with. When I say that I am talking to a male energy, I don’t actually hear a deep voice most of the time. I just feel a male energy from the sender of the message. It has taken some getting used to the concept of having thoughts in my mind that aren’t my own. When some weird and wild thought comes out of nowhere, I usually realize there’s someone else on the other end of the line who has tapped into my brain. A while back, I participated in a land journey with a group I was in. This journey was a spiritual one; we actually never left the room we were in. We only made the journey in an energetic sense. In retrospect, this journey was incredibly dangerous, and I strongly believe that inexperienced practitioners of any kind should not have made the journey because the land we traveled to was so energetically toxic. This was not an adventure for beginners. In the process of the journey, I encountered a negative energy who tried to enter my body; I chased it away successfully and cut off my participation in the journey at that point. However, in the time that I was on the land, something put a metaphysical hook into me so that I could continue receiving messages for the owner of the land and so that she could get the information she needed to heal the land. My mentor and I had to remove that hook because I had not given consent for something to connect to me in that way nor had the owner hired me to be receiving messages for her. The way that I discovered that the hook was still there was interesting. I was brushing my teeth in my bathroom and was thinking about the various people that I and others had encountered on the land journey. I went through the list of people in my head, and then the thought crossed my mind, “Or it could have been the one-armed man.”* About ten seconds later, I stopped what I was doing and thought to myself, “Wait! What one-armed man?” It took me another few seconds, and then I asked, “Is there someone there who wants to talk to me?” I of course got an emphatic “YES” in response. So I switched gears and tuned in to get the message to find out what was going on (and I did pass that information on to the land owner). Every once in a while, it still throws me off when I get a random thought like that, though I’m now pretty secure and certain when I have things like that cross my mind that I am not going crazy. I just know that someone else is there who needs or wants my attention. Once I help them out, they leave me in peace. *Using people first language, the correct way to phrase this would have been “the man with one arm.” This is not my choice of words, but the other side is not always in tune with the current language of the day. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley There’s no doubt that music can create some of our strongest memories, though those songs don’t have to be sad. Some of my most powerful memories are associated with music; some of them are happy and others are less so. When I was in high school, one of my very Irish great aunts died in an accident. Before we left her graveside, one of the cousins began an a cappella version of “When Irish Eyes are Smiling.” There wasn’t a dry eye left by the time the song was done. For me, that song is now forever associated with that aunt and that funeral. Likewise, at my daughter’s memorial service, we played “Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)" by Billy Joel. Though I love it, I cannot listen to that song without breaking down into tears within the first few measures. It transports me back to that raw and painful time around her death. My high school’s song is another that brings to mind many memories. It’s more of an anthem than a pep cheer, and the woman who wrote it was attempting to make the “Star Spangled Banner” look like it required a narrow vocal range. Twenty-three years after I graduated, there is one point in the school song that I still can hear my fellow students screeching the high note because it just begged for such treatment. None of us felt much love for that song, but the memories bring smiles to my face. Music on religious retreats also has powerful memories associated with it for me. When I was in high school, I attended a TEC retreat, which was an incredibly powerful experience for me and many others. Very late one night, we were traipsing through the building holding hands as part of the planned activities. The Taizé-style chant that we sang still echoes in my mind. On another retreat during grad school, we had an evening of social activity. The group was at a rural retreat center in Massachusetts, and the outside world was cold and filled with snow. Someone had brought a guitar, and so we spent the evening inside by a fire singing all kinds of popular songs. Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville” is the one that got stuck in my brain permanently from that evening because of the laughter and joy that filled the room as we sang. It’s not exactly the type of song one would usually associate with a Catholic retreat, but such is life! We can intentionally create memories that become a part of our body by using music. One way to do this is using a particular song or album to meditate to. Our bodies and minds will then associate that album with relaxation. Then at a later time of stress, if you turn on that music, your body will (hopefully) automatically relax as much as it can. Likewise, if you play a song frequently during a time of joy and happiness in your life, listening to that song again at a later date can bring back those same positive feelings. Using music we have pre-programmed into our bodies and minds can be a great way to shift one’s mood at times when we need to find a different outlook on life. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance I'm happy to announce that Green Heart Guidance now has a Spotify account which includes numerous playlists for your meditation and listening pleasure. I am constantly updating the playlists to add additional material as well as creating new playlists. Many of these playlists would be great for massage therapists and other bodyworkers as they are 40+ hours long, allowing the primary person listening to the playlist not to hear the same song all week long. There is no real organizational order on most of the playlists as I hit the shuffle button when I am listening. Playlists currently include:
© 2014 Green Heart Guidance (This is a cross-post from the archives of my much neglected food blog.) When my twins were two, we began trick or treating with them. However, they had food sensitivities to dairy, soy, and corn at that point. If you read the labels on most mainstream candy, that pretty much eliminates everything. Furthermore, neither of them liked chocolate until recently. That was definitely not from my part of their gene pool. To top it all off, I did not want to be loading them up with artificial flavors and colors since one of them did not do well with those ingredients. So we were left in a quandary about how to do trick or treating when they couldn’t or wouldn’t eat anything they received. That first year, my solution was to plant “treats” for them at a few neighbors’ houses. Books, pencils, erasers—that kind of thing. We went to the houses, did our trick or treating, and then my son announced, “This is fun! Let’s do more houses.” Um, well, no. I didn’t have any more “safe” houses for us to go to. We lured them home to look at their new goodies instead. The next year, we let them collect candy, but we had prepped them in advance that they would “get” to trade in their candy for a new and wonderful toy when they got back to our house. Since they never really ate candy, the trade was an obvious upgrade from their point of view. They were really happy with their new toys. And so it continued for many years with their younger brother eventually joining in the fun. They would collect candy and trade it in for toys. We would take the candy they collected, put it out in a bowl on our front porch, and let the local teenagers take it away. One year the teenagers took the bowl which irked me to no end, so now we leave the candy in a paper bag. Another year the teenagers failed to take the candy at all which utterly surprised me. I offered it up on the free section of Craigslist, and within 10 minutes of posting, a local homeschooling teenager had collected it off of my front porch. I know there are other options like taking it to a local dentist who collects the candy for sending to troops abroad. Some years Mobile Loaves and Fishes has accepted donations to distribute with the meals they provide for those in need. However, with my illness, I just haven’t had the energy to do more than put it on the porch and let someone else take it away! In more recent years as the food sensitivities have waned and my kids have gotten older, we’ve also started buying organic candy from the bulk bins at Whole Foods and including that as part of the trade-in deal. They surrender most of their loot for organic candy and a game. However you celebrate, be safe. copyright 2014 Green Heart Guidance When I first opened myself up to the metaphysical, the other side tended to come to me when I was on the massage table, in my sauna, or in bed about to fall asleep. The first two were fine. The latter was not. When I’m exhausted and ready to fall asleep, the last thing I want to do is channel messages. I finally had to set up “office hours” for the other side. They are allowed to come to me when I’m on the massage table, when I’m in the bathroom (where my sauna is), or any time I call on them. But when I’m falling asleep, I’m generally off-limits. Every once in a while I get someone on the other side who won’t respect that, but for the most part, they do. However, for the longest time, I used to joke about who would be getting in bed with me that night or who would be getting into my sauna with me. It still makes for amusing stories. I was talking with my mentor one day, and I told her this guy had gotten in my sauna the previous night. I corrected myself saying, “A dead guy got in my sauna with me.” My mentor laughed and then said, “Yeah, I got that part.” I thought about it for a second, and then I said, “You know, it still doesn’t make what I said any more sensible by adding ‘a dead guy got in my sauna with me the other night.’” We both laughed about it because such is the nature of our work. You just forget at times that not everyone has dead people hopping in the sauna with them on a regular basis. :) © 2014 Green Heart Guidance (As always, I am not a medical doctor. This information is based on my personal experiences and should not be substituted for medical diagnosis or treatment. Please speak to your health care providers about your personal situation.) Flu and cold season is already upon us. My youngest brought home a generic virus from school recently complete with fever, nasal drainage, headache, body aches and gastrointestinal issues. Schools are great petri dishes for sharing such things, and this particular virus seems to be racing through the schools in our district. When I first got sick with Lyme, I worked with a nutritionist in another state. At one point, I got a cold. The nutritionist suggested I put a tablespoon or so of powdered ginger in a very hot bath. She argued in an unscientific premise that the ginger and the steam would help pull the virus out through my pores. While her logic may not have been accurate, ginger is a healing herb. It is most often used in natural healing for digestive complaints, especially nausea, colic, and gassiness. However, ginger is also believed to reduce inflammation and to induce healthy sweating which can help in fighting viruses. Ginger may interact with some medications, so be sure to check with your health care providers before using it in any substantial amounts. I find ginger baths to be very comforting, and they’ve become a part of my virus routine. When I am sick, I fill a bath with water as hot as I can humanly tolerate and then liberally sprinkle in powdered organic ginger. The ginger has a warming and stimulating effect on the skin, and I really like how it feels. However, someone else I know tried it and complained strongly about the burning sensation it caused on his genitals, so be aware that is a potential side effect. The bathroom (and most of the house for that matter!) end up filled with the appealing smell of ginger, adding in the benefits of aromatherapy. Even if the ginger doesn’t doing much for me medicinally, the routine has become one that relaxes me and brings me a bit of solace when I feel unusually miserable. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance (As always, I am not a medical doctor. This information is based on my personal experiences and should not be substituted for medical diagnosis or treatment. Please speak to your health care providers about your personal situation.) As a follow up to my post about parasites, I want to talk about intestinal parasite pain. In short, it’s awful. To give a basis of comparison, it can be as bad as natural childbirth, and in some ways, I think it’s actually worse. The uterus is a muscle that is meant to contract and push out a baby, though that’s still quite painful. The intestines are not really designed to endure violent cramping, and thus, the pain feels even more unnatural. When I am dealing with intestinal parasites, it’s miserable. I usually end up having ten plus extra soft and caustic bowel movements a day which to put it politely, irritates one’s anus. The parasites interrupt sleep. They cause nightmares when they are dying off. There’s not a huge amount to do to help with it all. I take L-Ornithine to bind with the ammonia that some parasites release as a byproduct. Both chlorella and chlorophyll also can be helpful to eliminate toxins from the parasites. But in general, even prescription painkillers like hydrocodone don’t even begin to touch the pain from the parasites dying off. When parasites die off, they cause episodes of major pain for me that would last for anywhere from one to four hours, and then my abdomen would be incredibly sore for many hours after that. With each round of intestinal parasites that I’ve battled, I have found that different things brought me minor relief. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for what would work. Each time the next round started, I’d have to figure out what would work for me that day. Most of the time, I would pray to any higher power that might be listening for sleep, and when I could sleep through it, even if it was only for 30 minutes at a time before a major cramp would wake me up, I considered myself blessed because that was 30 less minutes of conscious pain. With one set of intestinal parasites, the homeopathic blend Diarrhea made by Heel BHI gave me some cramp relief, but it didn’t help in future episodes. Neither heat nor cold on my abdomen seemed to help much, and at times it made the pain worse. Baths and showers sometimes helped and sometimes made me more miserable. At times I found that walking in straight lines helped relieve some of the pain; other times it was walking in large circles that helped. Sometimes I needed to be lying in bed as straight as could be, but other times I needed to be curled up in a ball. Yet other times I was most comfortable sitting inclined in a recliner. Frequently, listening to music was helpful in keeping me relaxed through the pain: I listened to CDs by Joshua Radin, Josh Groban, Matt Nathanson, and Celtic Christmas more times than I can count on perpetual repeat all night long. In one of the oddest solutions, I started craving chewable vitamin C tablets like crazy during one of the intestinal parasite episodes. I decided that the worst it could do was create more diarrhea, so I started sucking on the vitamin C like breath mints. Whether it was the sucking motion, the release of saliva, or the C itself, I don’t know, but they seemed to help a bit that particular evening. Parasite pain almost always struck me in the evening. This meant I spent a great deal of the time fighting them alone. On one hand, that was a good thing as my kids could be with their dad and I didn’t have to try to handle them while I was in excruciating pain. On the other hand, that meant I was fighting the pain on my own. While I had done all of my active labor with my youngest child on my own, that was in no way as painful as what I went through with the parasites. I can’t tell you how many times I prayed for a parasite doula to come help me through the pain. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance (My apologies in advance for a long post. As always, these are my beliefs, and I respect that others do not necessarily share the same belief systems. I will always work with clients using the beliefs that they hold.) When I was Catholic, I did not believe in angels. I thought they were fictional characters who helped advance plot lines in the Bible. Likewise, I thought demons were merely metaphorical. Ironically, since I’ve become spiritual and have opened to my metaphysical gifts, I now very much believe in angels and demons. When Jesus cast out demons, it wasn’t just symbolic. He actually was doing what Catholicism would refer to as an exorcism. Our world is full of dualities: Night and day, male and female, black and white, summer and winter. However, most of our world isn’t made up of these polar opposites. While the summer solstice and winter solstice exist, they are only two days of the year. The other 363 days are somewhere in between. Likewise, there are ubiquitous shades of gray when it comes to all other seeming dualities. Nothing is as simple as it seems. When it comes to good and evil, the same is true. There is good in our world, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, there is evil. There are angels, and there are demons. There are also many energetic beings which fall in between. Some of the events that finally pushed me into my spiritual awakening were seeing and hearing negative entities. These spiritual creatures are less extreme than demons, but they can wreak havoc on us and our lives. Why they exist is beyond my understanding at this point, but I know they are there. Negative entities seem to thrive on pain, misery, and chaos. They serve to prevent us from evolving and being positive. When we are in a state of unhappiness or pain, we attract these negative entities to us. They settle into our bodies on a spiritual dimension. Once there, they influence how our body functions. They can cause physical and emotional pain. They’re no joke. They are very far outside the Western medical understanding, though. When I began working to remove negative entities from my life, I either had to accept that I had lost my mind completely, or I had to change my belief system to encompass what I had experienced. I chose the latter. Negative entities are like everything else in our world in that they are made up of energy. They are evolved at different levels just like an amoeba is different than a bird which is different from an elephant which is different from a human. Some of the entities don’t have consciousness and really seem to just be balls of energetic crap, leftover refuse that needs to be cleared out of our bodies. Most seem to have some animalistic level of consciousness, but they are not very advanced creatures. They’re primitive and act instinctively. However, some are highly evolved and can communicate, laugh or speak. Those are the ones that get a bit freaky to deal with. Almost all of us have negative entities attached to us unless we have done work to remove them; most of us are unaware that they are even there. We pick the entities up in times of unhappiness or trauma. When we put out a negative vibration to the universe, the parasitic entities attach to us because they can harmonize with that place of unhappiness. They then help to keep us in that vibrational mode because it serves them well: They make it harder to “shake off” a bad experience. I believe that we also can have entities attached to us due to vibrations that our souls put out from past-life traumas. Once our body begins storing all of these parasitic entities, they drain our resources and make it easier for us to become or stay ill. Removing negative entities helps raise our vibration and makes it easier for us to heal from whatever ails us. Entities are all energy based, so therefore they must be removed through energetic work. In my work, I have used essential oils, flower essences, and crystals to raise vibrations. As we change our vibrations to a more positive state, entities will leave. The entities like being in a hot kitchen and don’t want to be around when the fire is put out. Many of the entities don’t leave easily. When my body and soul are kicking them out, I go through restless nights, sweats, and nightmares. Sometimes the entities need assistance getting released, and so I have other healers help me do this. I’m well aware that all I’m saying is far outside the mainstream belief. I understand that saying these things could get me labeled as “crazy.” I personally wouldn’t believe in these things if I hadn’t experienced them, and so I don’t hold it against others who are skeptical or doubtful. I choose to talk about these things, though, because the web resources are minimal when it comes to issues of negative entities and how they can impact our overall well-being. I also believe that talking about taboo topics is the only way to help them become more accepted. As humans, we can’t grow, change, and learn unless we discuss, debate, and explore new ways of thought. If it weren’t for Copernicus, Kepler, Galilleo and others who ardently argued for theories of heliocentrism, we might still believe the Earth is the center of the universe. Since I came out of the closet as an intuitive empath and energy worker, the “confessions” I’ve heard from others are fascinating. Others have experienced the phenomenon of negative entities or as most call them, “demons,” but are afraid to talk. One woman warned me when I came out that it’s not all rainbows and unicorns in metaphysical work. I let her know I had already figured that out! She talked to me about a family member whom she and other relatives believe to have a demon due to severe temporary personality changes. That’s just one of the ways negative entities can manifest. The spiritual and metaphysical work I have been privileged to do in this life is amazing. I have experienced things that I never dreamed were possible. However, there are darker parts of all of this such as the negative entities. Working with these darker parts can be very strenuous, but it’s also been the key to healing for me. © 2014 Green Heart Guidance |
Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.
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