I wrote this meditation for my Meetup group's discussion group on Sexuality and Spirituality.

Sit back in your chair as comfortably as you can. Place your feet firmly on the floor if it feels appropriate to do so. Take a deep breath in, and simply let it go. Take another breath, and as you let it go, start to release any fear, tension, or stress in your body. For the next five breaths or so, think about all of the things that are stressing you out: your job, your partner, your lack of partner, your bills … whatever it is, just acknowledge that it is a source of stress in your life… Now take a deep breath in, and on the exhale, release all of those things. They will be waiting for you again when we finish. But for now, they can wait while you focus on you, your energy and your sexuality.

As you take your next breath, find your tailbone in your body. This is the location of your base chakra, the place where safety and basic needs are met. It is where your kundalini or your life force energy rises from in your body. This chakra is often portrayed as red or black. On your next inhale, feel your tailbone, strong and secure at the base of your spine. On your exhale, visualize your tailbone shooting roots down into the ground, connecting to the Earth and all its infinite power. Feel the strength of this bond between yourself and the Earth. The Earth is steady and secure beneath your body, holding strong and supporting you in any way you need. As you continue breathing in and out, feel the pure and clean energy of the Earth entering your body as we move upward through all of our other chakras.

Slowly shift your attention to your second chakra, your sacral chakra. It is located below your belly button in your pelvis. It is a bright orange color. Take a deep breath and focus on the Earth’s energy climbing up from your tailbone into your pelvis. Feel it slowly moving around, bringing strength and vitality to your organs. Your second chakra is the home of your creativity and your reproductive abilities. It is the place of your sexuality, and for many, it is the place of abuse. Keep breathing in and out, seeing that positive Earth energy fill your pelvis. Let the energy bathe your second chakra, strengthening and calming it. We will be working extensively with this chakra tonight as we discuss our sexuality, so let it feel as strong as it can to approach this work without fear. No matter what condition your second chakra is in tonight, it is still sacred and it is still a vital part of you.

Slowly allow your attention to move up into your third chakra, the solar plexus chakra. It is located above your navel, and it is associated with the color yellow. Breathe in and out of this area, slowly and deeply. See the Earth energy continuing to spread its beautiful tendrils throughout this area, calming it and bringing it light. Your third chakra is the home of your self-esteem, an area that is often damaged by negative sexual experiences and inaccurate sexual demonization by our society. Take a moment to let your third chakra and your entire self know that even if you have been hurt, even if you don’t feel good about yourself sometimes, you are still an amazing being. You are still perfect exactly as you are. Your third chakra has the power to strengthen and help you find the way to realizing your most positive sexual self.

Moving upward again, your heart chakra is located in your breastbone. It is a bright Irish green, and it is radiating with love. Let the Earth’s energy rise up into your heart and strengthen your love both for yourself and others. Feel your heartbeat in your chest, spreading your energy throughout your body with each breath you take. As you take your next deep breath, just allow yourself to spend a few moments pondering the feeling of love. Love is the emotion motivating sexual activity for many people. Your heart chakra is also the place that feels the hurt so deeply when love comes to an end. Breathing in again, feel the Earth’s energy spreading compassion for you and your loved ones, those from the past, the present, and the future. Know that the strength within your heart to keep loving will always be there, no matter how deeply you may have been hurt in the past. At the core of your being, you are love, and you are here to share that love with others. That love is a reflection of the divine in all of us.

The next stop on your body is your throat, the home of your fifth chakra. It is portrayed as being a brilliant blue. It is the root of your communication, of being heard and of speaking to others. This is the part of you that vocalizes your love and your pain that you have experienced in life. Breathe deeply, feeling the Earth’s energy coiling around your voicebox, soothing it, strengthening it. As you breathe out, send out all the frustration that may be pent up in your fifth chakra. Let go of all of the times you didn’t say what you wanted to. Let go of all the times someone didn’t tell you the words you wanted to hear. Feel the energy calming those stuck words in your throat, helping them feel as though they do matter even if they were never spoken or heard.

Slowly let the Earth’s energy rise up to your third eye, your sixth chakra, located in your brow above your eyes. Its color is either an indigo or purple depending on how you see it. This is your place of intuition. Let the Earth’s energy fill up this area, reminding you how connected your body, mind, and spirit are to all others who are a part of this world. Your intuition comes both from within and without. Take a few deep breaths, reminding yourself that you can trust your intuition. It is that voice that tells you whom you can be with and whom you should distance yourself from. Your intuition is what leads you to lovers and sexual experiences. It helps you find those whom you are meant to walk with in this world.

And finally, bring your attention to the top of your head, your crown chakra. This seventh chakra is often portrayed as a bright white light. Visualize the energy of the Earth that you have brought up from your tailbone, through your pelvis, your solar plexus, your chest, your neck and your face now reaching the top of your head. It joins with the bright white light that is shining into your body through your crown chakra. As the energies from below and above unite with the energies within, know you are a powerful and strong being who is connected to the life force around you. The power of the Earth and the beauty of the heavens come together in your creation. You are a product of a man and a woman, of divinely created sexuality. No matter the conditions of your conception, it began in the second chakra of two people who were themselves sexual beings. All the children walking the Earth now are the results of sexual genesis even if there was technological assistance involved. We are all beings who rose from sexuality, and we are all beings who live sexual lives. We are meant to embrace this sexuality as a part of the divine that resides within us.

Take a few more moments to feel the energy moving through your body. You are holy. You are filled with life force energy. You have the ability to share this powerful gift with others, both platonically and sexually. You are a gift to this world and to all of those who are lucky enough to have you in their lives. You are an amazing sexual human being. You bring the divine to everyone you meet every day. Believe in this power that you have. Even with your flaws, even with your humanity, you are still divine, and you are still perfect.

Take a few final breaths, feeling any anxiety releasing on your exhales. Prepare yourself to join us when you are ready. As you open your eyes, take a few moments to write in your journal on the topic sentence, “I am a sexual being.” You might record any thoughts, feelings, or emotions that may have come up for you as we did this meditation. You might also record any feelings you have around being a sexual being.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

​(This is another really long post. Apologies in advance!)

On September 25th, I attended “An Evening with Spirit” hosted by James Van Praagh. I had read his most recent book, Adventures of the Soul, earlier this year, so I was intrigued by the idea of hearing Van Praagh speak when my mentor alerted me to this event. The event was held at Unity Church of the Hills in northwest Austin, just 10 minutes from my home.

As I have had issues around disability accommodation in recent months (in particular trying to see another psychic medium), I was concerned about being able to access this event without challenges. In particular, there were no paper tickets issued for the event. Instead, one had to show one’s driver’s license to gain admission. I feared that this would mean a huge line at the door to get in, and right now, I am not physically capable of standing for any extended amount of time. Thus, I contacted the ticketing company through their website the week before the event. I received no response. A few days before the event, I tried contacting the organizing company through their website. When I didn’t get a quick response, I tried calling the church. A volunteer named Joan answered the phone, and she responded with compassion and friendliness. I felt completely welcomed by her. She didn’t know the answers to my question and the paid staff was in a meeting, but she called me back within an hour with answers. She told me that there were benches in the lobby and that there would be church volunteers in the lobby who could assist me if I needed help with the line. I would be able to hand one of them my driver’s license and they could get me checked in. I felt so relieved by this information. 

When I did eventually get a response from the organizing company, and it was far from adequate. The email I sent read, “I sent a message last week through your website but never heard back from anyone. I require disability assistance for the event and need to talk to someone who can assist me.” The woman who responded said, “The church is fully handicapped accessible, but we are not equipped to provide personal assistance.  What kind of assistance were you looking for?” That response is a “no” in advance of knowing what I need which legally is the wrong answer under the ADA. Public events like this are required to provide reasonable accommodations. I was not asking for personal assistance, but the woman responding made assumptions before finding out the situation. My response to her was, “‘Fully handicapped accessible’ is relative; it actually doesn't encompass several of my disabilities. What that means in most cases the building is wheelchair accessible. I am mobility impaired but not in a wheelchair and need different accommodations.” Mercifully I had already talked to the church who had given me a compassionate response unlike the event organizers who said no in advance of finding out what I needed. This is the kind of thing that is VERY frustrating for someone who is disabled and has found the strength to ask for the help that they need to attend an event.

The evening of the event, I arrived at the church at 6:57 for a 7:30 pm event, and when I drove up to the parking lot and a volunteer attendant, I held up my disabled permit. The volunteer had me stop and roll down my window. He informed me that all the disabled parking was already taken, and I felt my heart sink and my stomach clench in a panic. However, he quickly remedied the issue: The parking attendant “created” a disabled spot for me by having me pull on the grass next to his own truck not far from the door to the church. Had we been in Central Austin, I would have been concerned about getting towed for such a maneuver, but I decided to trust this man. On my way out, I noticed that he had done the same for several other disabled attendees who arrived later than me. Clearly the church was aware of the problem of having more disabled attendees than spots and had worked through this issue before. I was grateful.

Walking into the lobby of the church, there were six volunteers standing at podiums, each with a portion of the alphabet. That meant that there was absolutely no wait, and I did not have to stand for any length of time. I went straight up to the “G” person, was checked in, and got my wristband to enter the auditorium. It was that simple. Once again, I was so grateful. While I wanted to browse the offerings in the lobby including an amazing looking gift shop, I knew I had to sit down and save my energy just to get through the night. I pulled out a book and read for a great deal during the wait for the event to start. The people in front of me were pretty heavily saturated with fabric softener, and the woman had on some perfume as well, but I was doing ok. Another woman was wandering around looking for a seat, and I invited her to sit next to me as I could tell she wasn’t loaded with fragrance. While my skin felt mildly irritated from the fabric softener in the air around me by the time I left, overall my body did well handling all of the chemicals it faced that evening. I was so pleased with how my body did under circumstances that would have left me in horrid pain for days afterward.

James Van Praagh was a far more entertaining speaker than I had expected. The person who introduced Van Praagh noted he has been doing this for thirty years, and when Van Praagh took the microphone, he noted, “Thirty years. Wow I am old. And I’m still short.” He called himself a comedium (a comedian plus a medium). Van Praagh said that he works in the Light, but he also has to keep it light, and his humor throughout the evening did help prevent the event from becoming overwhelmingly deep and depressing. He also noted that life on the road is just him and the dead people, so he has to do something to amuse himself. He made puns on sicko, psycho, and psychic as well. I agree with him that spending so much time in contact with the spirit world definitely gives one a different perspective, and it has changed my sense of humor as well. I find many things funny that I never would have laughed at before.

While most of the evening was talking with souls on the other side, Van Praagh also presented some philosophical and spiritual ideas. He said that the two biggest illusions most of us have is a sense of separation and death. We are all one: We are drops in the same ocean. In addition, death is not an end. It’s just a change. The spirits are still alive. They refer to us as “the living dead” because so many of us don’t actually live our lives but instead act out of fear. In addition, Van Praagh stressed that thoughts are real things. We create our own heaven or hell based on thoughts and vibrations. Most importantly, Van Praagh brought a message of love, stressing how important it is that we love and be guided by love.

By this point in the evening, my heart chakra was hurting terribly. I couldn’t figure out why. I was in a good mood and was feeling so blessed that I had actually made it into the event without any major problems. However, when Van Praagh mentioned empaths, I wanted to do a facepalm. Der! It wasn’t my heart hurting. It was everyone else around me who was wanting so desperately to hear from their loved ones. I was picking up on that and feeling heartache. I worked to boost my shield a bit and offered thanks that I was not in a place of personal pain and grief as so many clearly were.

When Van Praagh asked how many people had been to a reading with a psychic medium before, I wasn’t sure what to do. I ended up raising my hand. I’ve never been to a reading with another psychic medium, but I talk to the dead on a regular basis myself and I receive messages for other people. That counts, right? A large number of people there were first timers, and it was obvious from the energy in the air that many were very excited to be there.

Van Praagh took questions from the audience before he began receiving messages from the spirit world. Someone asked if they could set up signs with a loved one before that person died so that they could know that the other person was around. Van Praagh said that it was absolutely possible, but it was easier in some ways to do it after the loved one died. In that case, one would simply ask the loved one to send butterflies or raccoons or whatever to show that the loved one was around them.

Someone then proceeded to ask a question about reincarnation which led to Van Praagh wandering a bit in his answer. However, it was the most interesting thing for me all evening. Van Praagh very much believes in reincarnation. He believes we are souls having human experiences. This is only one world, one communication. In comparison to the rest of the Universe, the Earth is only a grain of sand on the beach. Van Praagh also believes that only 20% of the soul is in the body, and 80% is outside. He thinks this is how one can experience several lifetimes simultaneously. He believes that we are experiencing far more than what is going on in our bodies right now and we just aren’t aware.

Before Van Praagh began receiving messages from the other side, he emphasized that what he does is a three way conversation between the other side, him, and the audience. It is communicating in different language that is thought based, and it is very different than spoken language. He was the translator for all of us. I realized why he gave such a strong preface once the readings were under way because Van Praagh often makes comments to the spirits saying things like “slow down” or “I don’t know.” He definitely serves as a channel, often speaking in the first person as if he were the spirit who is coming through. I found it fascinating to watch him work.

Also before beginning receiving messages for loved ones in the audience, Van Praagh lead the group in a mediation which was a great way to calm the energy of the room a bit. However, this was the one and only time during the evening where I strongly disagreed with what Van Praagh did and said, but that is influenced by my personal experiences. I can understand that others who have walked a different path don’t see the world in the way that I do, and Van Praagh’s experiences may be very different than mine. The meditation was based on the idea that the heart is the center of the soul, and idea I had no problem with. However, in the middle of the meditative exercise, Van Praagh encouraged people to let spirits around them merge with their bodies so that they could feel their deceased ones’ love for them in a deep and personal way. As someone who had many unhappy and unhealthy souls attached to me which we had to clear in my journey to health, this made me cringe. I don’t invite others to randomly share my body space if I don’t know whom I am working with, and most people in the audience had no idea whom or what they were inviting in (though they certainly wanted to feel the love of family and friends). Unless the setting were one where I knew that everyone was properly grounded and shielded, I would not lead an exercise like that because of the negative consequences it could have for less than spiritually prepared individuals.

From there, Van Praagh began receiving messages. In between messages, he would often take a metaphysical break, talking a bit about important topics related to what he had just related from the other side. Some of his wisdom included:

• Memories create our experiences.
• Prayer is unconditional love. It doesn’t matter what words come out.
• LIfe is a series of choices: We can act out of love or fear. When we work from a place of judgment, that is a place of fear, and that creates a false ego.
• After we die, love and thoughts live on. After death, we all have a life review when we discuss what we did and didn’t do with others who were part of our lives. We judge ourselves in the life review.
• We are works in progress.
• We should give unconditionally even if we know we’ll never get it back.
• We shouldn’t waste time. We should make the most of it.
• Van Praagh feels the movie Ghost is very true about presence of the dead. Also based on that movie, Van Praagh wants us not to think of our loved ones how they died. If we think about their deaths, we make them die every day. Instead, think of how they lived.

I didn’t take a lot of notes on the messages he brought through, in part because I was so captivated and in part because they felt very private even in a room of 500 people. One of the most poignant was a widow whose late husband came through. Their love for each other was palpable even across the divide. When the husband told her that he cuddles her in bed every night, the whole room let out a sigh because it was such an emotional sentiment. In another message, Van Praagh was bringing through someone who had committed suicide with a gun. When he said that, eight people stood up, to which Van Praagh made a comment along the lines of, “Oy. Texas and its guns” which caused the entire audience to laugh. When Van Praagh added that this person had a collection of guns, only two people sat down. Clearly Texans do love their guns. The other memorable message for me was a twenty-something son coming through for his mother (and his father who was not there). The young man was an empath who didn’t know how to deal with the energy he was feeling in this life which lead to him eventually overdosing. On the other side, he was helping animals who had crossed over alone, another comment that deeply moved the audience on an emotional level. Van Praagh asked the mother to remember this side of her son, the young compassionate man who rescued animals, not the man who died an unfortunate early death.

For me, the biggest takeaway from the evening was to be reminded how I am so blessed with my metaphysical gifts to be able to connect with the dead. It has given me a sense of power over death that many others don’t have. Watching people who don’t have such strong gifts connect with Van Praagh’s help was deeply moving, and it made me realize how much I undervalue on a personal level what I can do. I also realized during the evening that I really didn’t have anyone I *needed* to come through. For a moment I thought my paternal grandfather might be coming through because Van Praagh was in my area talking about one of the health issues that my grandfather had and that he was a veteran of WWII, but as he progressed, it was clear that it wasn’t for me. That was fine by me. I am comfortable with where my loved ones are. I’m fairly certain that my daughter has reincarnated, so I didn’t expect or need to hear from her either. Anyone else I might want to hear from, I have. As a result, seeing others connect with ones they needed to get closure with was a far more powerful gift than receiving a message for me.

I am grateful that I was able to make this event. I appreciated having such a great experience with Unity Church of the Hills which has made me quite willing to go back to other events there. I was thrilled to watch Van Praagh in action. I didn’t attend the rest of the events that weekend, but I am sure they brought a great deal of healing, hope, and education to those who did.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I am still at a point in my recovery where my health (or lack thereof) occasionally overrules my desire to participate in events. Most of the time, it’s no big deal. I just don’t end up going to whatever Meetup or festival I had in mind. It’s disappointing, but I understand that it is still my reality. The bigger problem comes with buying tickets for events that will sell out before the night of the activity or performance. I’ve unfortunately had it happen to me more times than I would like that I am not able to use a ticket for an event that I really wanted to attend. It feels like insult added to injury. It is hard in that situation to find happiness for others when not only am I in pain, but my body is denying me the chance to go to a live event I really wanted to go to. One of the ways I find to soften the blow is by finding someone who really wants my ticket and giving it to them.

Several years ago, Susan Piver was in Austin for a small discussion on meditation. As the evening approached, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to attend. As I was getting ready to find a friend to give my ticket to, Piver sent out an e-mail stating that there was a waiting list for tickets, and if anyone knew they couldn’t attend to please let her know and she would issue a refund so that someone else might use that ticket. I thought that her offering a refund was incredibly generous, and definitely not something most people would have done. I had already made peace with losing the cost of admission, though. So when I e-mailed her letting her know my spot at the evening was available again, I also let her know that I didn’t need a refund and I would prefer she gave my spot to someone else, asking them to pay it forward in return. She was happy to do so. Thus, even though I was disappointed not to attend the event, I was left with a feeling of happiness knowing that someone who had wanted to attend was not only getting to attend but was attending for free, and hopefully in turn that person would be passing on the love to someone else in the future.

This week, my practitioners and I have opened up a new level of healing for me. As we clear out a bunch of stored trauma from my body, I am going through very intense pain in my psoas muscles and my lumbar vertebrae where the psoas attach to the spine. Despite having seen my acupuncturist, craniosacral therapist, massage therapist and chiropractor on Tuesday and Wednesday, my back was still spasming and making life a little (ok, a lot!) less enjoyable. I am not enjoying this process, but I know that once this trauma is removed from my body, my health is going to be able to move forward immensely.

Wednesday night, though, I was having to accept that I was not going to be able to attend Stephen Jenkinson’s lecture promoting his new book, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, on Thursday night. I have been talking about this event for weeks to people I know because I was so excited about it. Our society does death so poorly, and I was looking forward to hearing someone speak who clearly understands that there is a good way to die. As I was struggling with my reality, an e-mail from the organizers of the event came in. It stressed the level of parking difficulty for the event. I pretty much knew I was sunk at that point. I sent an email asking if extra disabled parking had been allotted for the event because of the population that the talk was likely to draw, but I got no response. I was going to have to show up over an hour early to get parking next to the event rather than a few blocks away, and then the event itself was two hours long. Combined with the hour commute, it would have been a four hour evening. I knew my body simply could not do it in the condition it is currently in.

One of the people whom I had discussed the event with was my backup massage therapist. The tickets for the event had been sold out for quite a while when I talked with her about it, but I could tell she was very interested in it. She talked about a similar course she had taken that really enabled her to just be with her aging grandmother on her last visit. So when I accepted the fact that I could not go, she was the first person I thought of to offer the ticket to. She fortunately had no plans and was happy to take the ticket off my hands. She looked for a copy of one of his other books for me, texting me before the event started, though there were none to purchase. We’ve ordered some of his books from Canada, and I’m looking forward to getting together with her to hear more about the evening. Her getting to attend the event helped lessen my pain of not being able to.

Time passes, and speakers often returns to Austin. Susan Piver will be in Austin at the end of November to discuss her new book, Start Here Now. I am determined to be there this time! I’m going to be reading Stephen Jenkinson’s books which I have ordered, and I will watch his Griefwalker video online. While I was disappointed to miss events like these, knowing that someone else got to enjoy the event instead really helped soften the blow for me.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC ​

 wrote this meditation for the closing activity of a discussion group on jealousy for the Meetup group I lead, Your Personal Healing Journey of Austin. This meditation was inspired by and adapted from “Rejoicing” in The Meditation Bible by Madonna Guading, pages 192-3. This meditation focuses on the third and fourth chakras. It also works with the mind-body-spirit connection between our emotions and our organs, more specifically love-heart and gallbladder-jealousy.)

​**

Settle into your chair. Shake out any part of your body that feels tight or uncomfortable. Take a deep inhalation, and set your feet firmly on the floor, exhaling as you do. Focus on how strong the earth feels beneath you. Continue breathing in and out at a speed that feels natural and relaxing for you. Visualize the powerful energy of the earth slowly rising up into your body. First you feel the energy in your feet, and then it moves slowly up your shins. It crosses over your knees and into your thighs. Eventually feel the energy from each leg join together in your pelvis. Take another deep breath in, and let it out again.

Now feel the earth energy rising in your abdomen. Slowly it moves up above your belly button and into your solar plexus region. Stop here for a minute and let the energy permeate all of your third chakra. This is the seat of your self-esteem. It is the location of your gallbladder, the organ that controls resentment and jealousy in the body. Take another few deep breaths in and out so that you are certain that your third chakra is buzzing with the powerful energy that the earth uses to support us.

Next, move the energy up upward into your heart chakra and breastbone area, the seat of love and compassion in our bodies. Let the energy permeate your heart, warming it and awakening it. We will be drawing on this area later to help us let go of some of our jealousy.

Feel the energy continue to rise in your body, spreading upward through your throat and inside your head. Allow the energy to massage your scalp and then move back down the outside of your neck and soothe your shoulders…. Release any burdens you may be carrying in this area as the energy moves through…. Slowly the energy continues to descend your biceps and triceps, your elbows, your forearms, and finally reaching your hands. Feel any excess energy dripping out of your fingertips, taking along some of your stress, your fears, your pain, and your jealousy with it.

Bring your attention back to the rest of your body, noticing how much more relaxed you are now than just a few minutes ago when we began. You were able to make radical change happen in a relatively short amount of time just by focusing your attention and positive energy to the areas of concern. You always have the power to make this kind of change in yourself.

Now take a moment to reflect about someone or something that you have felt jealous about recently. It might be a romantic partner, a friend, a family member, or a co-worker. It might be a financial gain, a new client, a promotion, a new baby, a lover… whatever the jealousy is about you that triggers unwanted or uncomfortable emotions in you. Take a moment to contemplate whatever it is that brings out the green-eyed monster in you.

As you think about this jealousy trigger, simultaneously focus your breath and energy on your gallbladder which is located below your right breast. Breathe in and out as though your gallbladder was another nose or mouth on your abdomen. Let the energy of the breath move around your gallbladder, soothing and calming it in its jealous state. Feel the healing happening in your body as your breath helps remove the physical and emotional toxins within you.

Ask yourself why you are holding this jealousy toward this other person or other thing. Why do you want what they have? What about it appeals to you?... Would having the same thing help you to get something you want? ... What is that goal that you desire so badly?...  If you had the thing that is making you jealous, would it actually make you happy?...  If so, how long would your happiness last? ... Continue to breathe in and out through your third chakra, allowing your breath to calm and heal your gallbladder.

Question whether or not your jealousy is serving you in a positive way. Is it helping motivate you toward achieving a personal goal?...  Or is it just causing you to wallow in your own selfishness and pain? ... Can you transform your jealousy into something productive? ...  If so, how would you go about making this transformation? Take a moment to think about how the jealousy could become something positive in your life.

Take a few more deep breaths in and out of your third chakra. Let your jealousy release on the out breath, sending as much of it out of your body as possible. Thank it for serving you, but let it know that you no longer need it in your body…. When you come to a place that you feel comfortable doing so, shift your attention to your heart chakra, across your upper chest and centered in your breastbone. Feel the warmth of your heartbeat in your chest. Feel your lungs fill with oxygen each time you breathe in and out. Feel the love that naturally resides in this area of your body.

Now comes the most difficult part for most people. As you think about the situation that has made you jealous, try to feel happiness for that other person. Instead of feeling jealousy, attempt to come to an internal place where you can release your pain, your insecurity, and your selfishness. Focus on the joy and happiness that the other person most likely feels…. As you cultivate this feeling of generosity, send the other person your blessings on their situation. Telepathically let them know that you celebrate their good fortune with them.... Allow the love in your heart chakra to spread throughout your abdomen, helping pushing out some of that jealousy in your gallbladder in your solar plexus chakra below. Release as much of your jealousy from your gallbladder as you can, replacing it with the joy and happiness you feel for the other person. Let those love-related feelings drive out the jealousy....  As you do so, feel peace settling into your body instead of jealousy and pain....

As we draw near the end of our meditation, expand your newfound sense of gratitude and joy to help others who are struggling with the same types of jealousy that you have felt in your life. Send good thoughts to all of those who are creating suffering in their own lives though jealousy. May all of us choose joy and happiness when someone else has a reason to celebrate rather than bitterness, envy and jealousy. May we all respond with full hearts. May we all learn to work from a place of love and compassion that recognizes that each of us is meant to do different things in our own time. Just because someone else has something you do not have does not mean that you will never have it. Rather, you are working on different lessons in your life, the lessons that your soul needs the most. You will eventually be in a different place in your life, but for now you are blessed to be where you are. Say a word of thanks to any higher power you choose to acknowledge sharing your gratitude for all that you do have in your life right now and all of the blessings that you are surrounded by each day. You are truly blessed in your own right....

Take another few deep breaths...  and slowly open your eyes when you feel ready. Take a moment to write anything in your journal that you would like to remember from this meditation.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(I wrote this meditation for an outdoor labyrinth walk which will happen on September 27, 2015 in celebration of the fall or autumnal equinox. The labyrinth we are walking is situated in an area surrounded by trees and a wet weather creek. The bird section of this was inspired by “Love and Attachment” in The Meditation Bible by Madonna Gauding, pp. 270-1.)

Take a moment to close your eyes if you feel safe doing so. Depending on how you are sitting, allow either your tailbone or your feet to make contact with the Earth. Feel the energy and strength of all that is below you. Take a deep inhalation in, smelling the fresh air that surrounds and supports you. Exhale, releasing not only the carbon dioxide from your lungs, but also beginning to let go of anything that is burdening you. Take several more deep breaths, inhaling the nourishing oxygen and exhaling all that no longer serves you.

As you settle into a more relaxed state of being, take a moment and listen to the world around you. What do you hear? Are there crickets chirping? Cicadas humming? What about wind in the trees? Can you hear the trees rustling? What noises has nature brought to join us in this evening of reflection?

Now, whether you can hear birds or not, imagine a beautiful bird lands near you. Take a moment to look at this bird and appreciate its beauty. ...

What type of bird is it? ...

What color are its feathers? ...

How big is it? ...

Is it watching you, or is it watching something else? ...

Is it still or moving? ...

Ask the bird if it has a song to sing. If it does, take a minute to hear what it has to say. Is its song soft or loud? Smooth or rough? Calming or alarming? ...

Take another moment to just sit and observe this bird, this beautiful miracle of creation that shares the planet with us. As you watch this bird, allow your heart to be filled with joy. Know that the bird is enjoying being in your presence as much as you are enjoying its gift of presence to you.

Suddenly, a breeze begins to blow. As it does, the time for the bird to depart has arrived. Even though you have enjoyed your time with the bird, both of you recognize that you must move on to other things now. In your heart, whisper words of departure to the bird and allow it to fly away, unrestrained by anything that might have kept it close to you.

You are now alone in nature again, though you are not truly alone. The trees and their leaves surround you. The Earth is firm beneath your feet. You hear the rustle of other friendly creatures in the woods, and you know that even though your aviary companion has flown, you still are part of the greater creation around you. Take a moment to offer gratitude for the time you got to spend with this bird, even if the time was short. No matter how long the encounter was, it still was a blessing to experience.

Just as the beautiful bird has left you, so too is it time to let go of other things. Autumn is a time of reflection and release. The crops are harvested and processed, and the fields will lay fallow for the winter season. The trees, too, know that this journey around the sun has come to another turning point, and they release their leaves to help nourish the earth as the leaves decay. Soon their bare branches will be resting their arms for the winter, preparing internally for the spring that will always come again.

Take a moment to think about what you need to let go of in your life. Perhaps you are still clinging to a dream that will never take place. Maybe you are having trouble letting go of a lover whom you wish was still with you. Even though you know the spirits of your loved ones will always stay close to you, you may be clinging to their memory and wishing they were still here with you in bodily form. Yet for everything, there is a season, and now is the season of letting go. In your heart, you know what it is that you don’t want to let go of. You know that clinging to whatever this is does not serve your higher good. You know that the best way you can serve yourself is to release this and allow yourself to move forward into the next season of your life.

Before you let go of whatever it is that is holding you back, take a moment to offer gratitude for it just as you did with your encounter with the bird. Know that even if you are letting go of a dream that never came true, whatever this is that you are releasing did serve a purpose in your life. Maybe it gave you inspiration or hope. Maybe it provided you with love and security. Maybe it just taught you soul level lessons that you needed to understand. Regardless of its purpose, whatever you are releasing did serve you in some way, and offering gratitude for that service will make it easier to release….

The time is now nearly here for you to walk the labyrinth with your topic of release in mind. One by one, we will slowly enter the labyrinth, walking at our own pace. We will each be walking together yet separately just as in life we are together yet on our own. Take care as you walk to notice any rocks, holes, or other obstacles that you may encounter, and just as you take slight steps to detour around hazards in life, do the same on your labyrinth walk. Know that you can never get lost in a labyrinth. There is only one way in and one way out. The destination is long and winding. You will come close to the center, to the goal, only to be taken away from it again. Keep walking your path at your speed and reflecting on whatever you need to let go of. This journey is about you. Open your heart and your mind to receive any information that your higher self, your spirit guides, your angels or your higher powers might be providing for you. They will often provide comfort and wisdom as you let go of whatever no longer serves you.

As you walk the path, you may smell fresh rosemary that I have scattered along the path. Rosemary is used in spiritual healing “for inner strength, for self-confidence, for mental clarity, for focus of intent, to break apathy and inertia, for protection, for purification, for cleansing of sacred space and ritual objects, for spiritual awareness and understanding, for memory, to assist transition into the spirit realm, for funeral rites, and for rites of passage.” Know that the rosemary is supporting, blessing, and cleansing your journey of release.

When you get to the center of the labyrinth, you can leave whatever object of nature you brought, be it flowers, herbs, or fruits. Whatever you place there is an offering of thanksgiving to the Earth and to higher powers for supporting you in your journey in life. It is also symbolic of leaving behind whatever issue you that is no longer serving you.

You may stay in the center of the labyrinth as long as feels right for you. When you determine it is time for you to leave, then simply head back out the way you came in. Again, just as it was on your way in, your departure is about the journey, not the destination. Take your time on the way out, feeling the strength of the earth beneath you. Hear the nature around you. Listen for insight from your higher powers and guides that may help you in this process of release. If you encounter another group member along the journey, simply step to the right side so each of you may pass peacefully and in silence. When you reach the exit of the labyrinth, you may take some time to journal about your experience both meditating and walking the labyrinth.

Now, as you feel ready, open your eyes and prepare for your journey of letting go.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When I originally started my business, one of my first clients asked a very pertinent but surprising question during our initial discussion. I had suggested to her that she might want to try meditating, and she responded, “I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of meditating, but how do I meditate?” The question caught me off-guard, because for me, that is a question like, “How do you tie your shoes?” I don’t think about tying my shoes. I just instinctively do it, though when I was four and learning how to tie my shoes, that certainly wasn’t true. It took a lot of practice before the action because intuitive. Likewise, meditation is something that I just do. I don’t think about it. So being forced to stop and describe the process was more of a challenge for me than I expected.

Since then, I have read many books and e-books looking for a great introduction to meditating to recommend to clients. Many of the books have been truly awful, loaded with the egos of the authors or with dogmatic approaches to meditation that don’t allow for individual differences or challenges. Meditation: A Beginner's Guide (original title: Seeing The Wider Picture) by Charlotte Parnell is the first book I have thought did a fabulous job with how it described meditation, intuition, and the benefits of both. I’m a bit puzzled as to where or how I recently acquired this book since I have a new hardback copy and it’s not in print any more though lots of used copies are available on the internet and a digital edition is available as well. The book really needs to be edited both to reflect the new title and to correct many minor grammatical errors through the text. (A better new title would likely have been Meditation: A Beginner's Guide to Seeing the Wider Picture thus eliminating the inconsistencies with the title references throughout the book.) However, once one understands what on earth the author is talking about when she refers to the (old) title, the book progresses in an easy to read fashion. 

Among the topics Parnell covers successfully are journaling after meditating, frequency of meditation, atmosphere, position, breathing, relaxation, visualization, self-healing, and benefits. All of the topics are covered in a non-judgmental way that encourages the readers to explore their own experiences and find what is right for them. While Parnell gives a variety of options with regard to every topic, she makes it clear that what works for one person may be wrong for another, something that many other authors can’t seem to grasp. Parnell sees the importance of meditation is in its ability to open us to our higher selves and a higher state of being; she acknowledges that a belief in a god is not necessary for this though the book is very spiritual (not religious) in tone. She also covers a bit of the basic info about grounding and protection, topics that are often avoided in meditation books but which are vital to metaphysical safety.

The last part of the book is ten meditation exercises. I was a bit disappointed in these as many of them are very similar to each other, though Parnell explains why she keeps them so similar as a teaching strategy. Still, I would have preferred more variety in them. I singled out six of the exercises that I think would make good short (five minute) guided meditations for the Meetup group I lead.

Overall, I am delighted to find this short pocketbook which provides such a great introduction to meditation as a spiritual and healing venture. I will be recommending it to many clients who are seeking to begin a spiritual meditation practice as they work on healing themselves.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

On Friday night, I had three different activities I wanted to go to. I asked my spirit guides which was the most important for me to go to, and they had a clear answer: kirtan. Hence, I attended a local kirtan group's monthly meeting even though it was starting rather late for me and was on the other side of town.

Kirtan is a singing and meditative tradition that comes to us from India. During the kirtan, musicians lead the group in chants which are sung in a "call and response" format. Even if you don't understand the language in which the words are being spoken, it's possible to participate and benefit immensely. The intent and energy are the most important part of the kirtan. The rhythm of the music ends up creating a meditative state for many, freeing them from wordly concerns and helping them to find divine insight.

The group I was at was a small gathering with five musicians and ten community members. However, despite the small size, the music got quite loud at several points; I was thinking how grateful I was that I didn't live in the apartments above the yoga studio where we were meeting. At times, the singing was horribly off-key, and yet simultaneously it was immensely beautiful because of the spiritual energy it contained. I stopped singing and instead just focused on what the energy of the music was doing to my body multiple times during the evening. The music moved through my fourth chakra, healing some deep wounds. It then moved into my fifth chakra working on literal pain there. Later in the evening, one of the songs was able to create interesting movement in my second chakra as well.

As I listened to and felt the music that evening, I was struck by how powerful the energy of the music was. I also noted that it was the same energy I've felt in other music at previous times in my life, specifically certain Christian rock songs and Taizé chant. It doesn't matter which language we sing in or which god(s) we are worshipping: The energy of sacred music is very similar. That spiritual energy that flows from the sacred music is powerful, and it has the ability to heal. 

Even if you are tone deaf (like me) or unable to play an instrument (also like me), it is still possible to benefit from the transcendental power of song. Attending worship services, kirtans, or concerts or even just listening to music in your own home will allow the sacred spiritual energy to flow through you. If you can find the courage to sing along, the benefit may increase as you bring your intent in line with the music to help it heal you however and wherever you need it.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

About two months ago, it was rather frigid in Austin at a mere 36F. I was curled up on the couch with a quilt and a good book, but I wanted some silent music in the background. Being too comfortable (and admittedly too lazy) to get up and turn on the stereo, I decided to turn on a selection on Netflix that I’d previously seen my daughter watching. "Fireplace for Your Home" is exactly what it sounds like: Thirty minutes of a crackling fireplace. Episode two has no music, though episode one has Christmas songs heavy on a synthesizer and episode three has instrumental music. Also in the series are "Fireplace for Your Home: Cascade Mountain Stream" (30 minutes) and "Fireplace for Your Home: Winter Wonderland for Your Home" (56 minutes). The “Winter Wonderland” episode has a large variety of rotating photos while the “Cascade Mountain Stream” is just one beautiful and tranquil view.

I settled on episode two so that I would have background noise as I read. Since my asthma prevents me from being around fires, we don’t have fires in my home, but at previous points in my life, I loved watching real fireplace fires. Despite my intention not to watch this mindless distraction, I was lured from my book as an impromptu meditation began for me by watching the fire burning on my television screen. I focused on my core of my body and was given the image of my chakras being cleansed by fire. The fireplace and grill in the film became symbolic of the support I have around me as I work to heal myself from physical and spiritual wounds. I found the blackness of the smoke on the fireplace stones to be powerful and beautiful, not dark at all in a negative sense. That blackness was part of the purification and release of pain.

Continuing to watch the film, the grill holding the fire reminded me of my childhood when my family would burn fires and when I could still sit and watch them in real life since my asthma was not as severe then. I let my vision drift to different areas of the screen, watching and absorbing all the different things happening in the fire. White ash was beginning to form, and yet a deep internal glow continued in the logs. To me, this was representing the deep strength and beauty within each of us even as our bodies became tarnished with age. I began to feel the warm of the fire surrounding me, and I contemplated how the fire of our lives also spreads and glows. The flames on the tv screen were flaring up periodically in an unexpected fashion. This reminded me of how our lives often shift without us expecting them to. The popping of the fire reminded me of the noise that often comes along in our lives to distract us from our higher soul’s goals. The wood eventually began to break apart as it weakened from the flames; this reminded me of the concept of soul fractures, when traumas in our lives can cause deep rifts in our soul. The demise of the wood also led me to reflect on our own mortality and decomposition of our body. As the flames began to go dark at the end of the film, it seemed appropriately symbolic to me of how many of our lives fade out at the end.

Almost anything can become a meditation, and sometimes the unplanned meditations within our lives can be the most powerful. What I thought was going to be background noise ended up being a beautiful experience reflecting on the change in our lives as we approach death.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I have been gathering and evaluating resources for a spiritual singles Meetup group that I’ll be starting in the next month; part one of this post is here.  The following are other prayer and meditation related books that I've read lately.

Guided Imagery for Groups: Fifty Visualizations That Promote Relaxation, Problem-Solving, Creativity, and Well-Being by Andrew E. Schwartz is exactly the type of meditation book I've been seeking. It's designed for one person to lead a group of others in a silent meditation, and then the book includes some discussion questions and suggested activities to follow up the meditations. They cover a wide range of topics, and while they follow a similar structure, the meditations don't feel like they repeat each other too much.  I feel like it will be easy to adapt many of the meditations to fit my group's needs. Some of the meditations are designed to include physical movement and will need a room where individuals can stretch out. Overall, this is one of the best books I've read in my quest to find great guided meditations.

Earth Prayers: 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations from Around the World by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon is similar to Life Prayers in its format and content.  This book relies more heavily on well-known authors and poets such as Walt Whitman, Hildegard of Bingen, Rumi, Wendell Berry, Thich Nhat Hanh, Henry David Thoreau, and many more.  Because the theme of the earth is rather narrow (while at the same time being so very large), the first half of the book seems to run together in its similarity despite the editors’ attempts to categorize poems by themes.  The chapter on animals was disturbing for me, an empath who is an unwilling omnivore and former vegetarian, yet others might find it reflective and appropriate.  Overall, though, I found the book to contain many beautiful and thought provoking works.

Prayers for a Thousand Years has a very different tone to it from Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon’s other collections of poetry. The focus is on the new millennium, so much of the work feels dated 15 years later. There also is a pessimism to a great number of the prayers that left me feeling depressed by the end of the book. The problems of the world are viewed as the worst humanity has ever faced, and thus, the writings are often ones of hopelessness. While I agree that the issues of poverty, injustice, global warming, and many others are dire, I believe it is possible to write and pray about them in a way that creates positive energy for change rather than despair about the mess our world is in.

After reading the three collections of prayers by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon, Prayers for Healing: 365 Blessings, Poems & Meditations from Around the World by Maggie Oman was a disappointment. I found the included selections to be a very mixed bag. Some were wonderful and others were just odd. Some were only a sentence long. There was far more political content than I like in my prayers and meditations. The editor also included strange commemorations on various dates such as March 2nd (“English poet and author D.H. Lawrence dies in 1930) or March 22nd (“German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dies in 1832. His last words were reported to be ‘More light!’”). Certain authors and books were used far too often including A Course in Miracles, the Bible, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Rumi. The book also includes far more explicitly Christian prayers than I would prefer in a supposedly multi-cultural prayer book: If I were editing the same type of book, I would select Christian works that were accessible to all belief systems, not just those who believe in the divinity of Jesus.

The Meditation Bible by Madonna Gauding is a compact book aimed at beginners to meditation. I agree with some of the tips at the beginning of the book, but others seemed grounded in materialism such as buying special pillows or beads to assist with meditation. One only needs a quiet space and some time in order to meditate. A great deal of the book could be described as filler: Text boxes with summaries of what each meditation will benefit, generic introductions to meditations that don’t serve much purpose, repeated instructions on each meditation to get into position, and stock photos for each meditation. The book could easily have been edited down to half its size. Despite those issues, there are some great meditation ideas in here: I plan to edit and redesign quite a few of them for using with groups I lead.  

The basic introductory information in An Easy Guide to Meditation: For Personal Benefits and Spiritual Growth by Roy Eugene Davis is useful and well-written with a linguistic sophistication that is missing in many meditation guides. While the short work has some good concepts, it is also loaded with judgment and opinions that aren't conducive to the ideas it promotes. The first quote that made me cringe was when the author stated, "Review your practice to be sure you are doing it correctly." There is no "correct" way to meditate. What works for you at any given time is the correct thing to do. The author also argues that, "Individuals with disabling mental or emotional problems should not attempt to meditate until they have been restored to a functional degree of wellness."  I strongly disagree with his perspective: Those under mental and emotional duress are those who often most need meditation, and it can help them regain their health. I was remaining open to the wisdom in the book until Davis demeaned my life experiences and those of millions of others by writing, 

This was very shortly after Davis had related how those who have a spiritual component to their meditation practice are more likely to continue it than those who do not!  Even if Davis chooses not to believe that contact with God is possible, his disparaging remarks about the spiritual experiences of others undermine his authority as a spiritual guide.

Meditation Basics for Beginners: Quiet the Mind, Increase Communication, Decrease Anxiety, and Take Your Happiness to the Next Level by C.B. Johnson is a very short book on meditation which offers quite a few practical strategies for the beginner. While I disagree with the author's (and many others') suggestion that meditation is best done in the morning, other suggestions Johnson lists are useful. In particular, Johnson suggests stretching before meditation.  While I would suggest yoga for those who have knowledge of it, stretching is a good and easy substitute for the general population. I find that movement of some sort before meditation can help settle my mind and quiet my body while I meditate. Like most other guides, this one thinks that meditation must be done while sitting erect with a straight spine (Hint: Meditation can be done in any position and any place). The book is realistic about meditation needing to be shorter for beginners.  Overall, this brief guide doesn't really offer any truly unique or special insight compared to many others.

Meditation Mastery: Creating Instant Positive Changes in Life by Dr. A.R. Jony is presents the idea that there are many valid paths to successful meditation. Jony understands that there are many spiritual benefits of mediation along the road to enlightenment, and each of those benefits are worthy experiences in their own right as they are part of enlightenment. However, Jony feels that one must have a perfect place to meditate (not true: the truly skilled at meditation can do it anywhere at any time). Unlike most authors on meditation, though, Jony offers a multitude of positions for the reader to try rather than insisting on sitting upright with an erect spine. While this work has some good ideas, the text is riddled with grammatical and usage errors, especially comma splices. It contains too many lists of benefits of meditation. Like many other short books on meditation, this one doesn’t have much new to offer aside from the list of suggested positions.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

As I continue my search for resources for the spiritual singles meetup that I am about to start, I stumbled upon a book that actually will be one that I recommend to many future clients, not just those in my group. Guided Imagery for Self-Healing by Martin L. Rossman, MD, turns out to be one of the best books I've read on metaphysics, and yet it's a book that specifically avoids spirituality and discussion of energy work for most of the book. Like most medical doctors, Rossman was educated in a system that puts a great deal of skepticism on the “hocus pocus” of faith based healing despite studies proving over and over again that prayer, meditation, and other aspects of spirituality can significantly increase speed and success of healing. As a result of his years of work as an integrative practitioner who understand the many aspects of healing, Rossman wrote a fabulous book that could appeal to those who are highly spiritual and those who are atheists alike.

Rossman and I use very different terms to discuss the same phenomenon; his are more neutral and mine are more explicitly based in spirituality. What Rossman is essentially describing in this book about “imagery” is using one’s intuition to tune in to one’s body to listen to what it has to say. This is the premise of most of the healing work I do:  Helping others learn to listen to what is going on in their bodies so that they can find the connections that Western medicine is missing. For Rossman’s perspective, individuals turn to their “internal advisor” or what I refer to as a spirit guide. He uses the term “imagery” for what I would describe as meditation.

Because he is grounded in science, Rossman integrates medical studies throughout the book. He talks about how visualization stimulates the brain in ways we don’t understand in order to help the body heal. As a method of comparison, he discusses how thinking about certain foods may make us literally salivate. This same phenomenon is at work, in his opinion, when we use imagery to help heal what ails us both physically and emotionally. We are able to gain insight into the issues behind our pain and then heal them by using imagery. In the case of someone fighting cancer, this might involve visualizing T-cells attacking a tumor. Rossman describes this (in what he admits are oversimplified terms) as using our right brain to heal instead of our left.

Citing studies, Rossman states that 50-75% of illness may have emotional roots. I’d say that the number is actually much higher and nears 100%. Regardless of how many people are impacted, Rossman cites the widespread emotional repression in our culture as a big part of that problem. He sees imagery as a way to get in touch with those things we've learned to repress as we avoid difficult emotional issues. The imagery he teaches people to use works to heal the people, not their illnesses. This is an amazing view not often found in Western medicine, though as Rossman notes repeatedly throughout the text, it’s important to seek medical treatment in addition to doing imagery work. The book contains chapters that deal with self-confidence, stress relief, healing and inner advisors; Rossman also adeptly deals with potential problems that may come up along the way. Some of the guided imagery sessions he creates in the text are also available on CD for use during meditation sessions.

For me, there were only a few issues with the book. What Rossman is describing is metaphysical work, yet he’s adapted it in a way to make it scientifically more acceptable to the mainstream. In doing so, he neglects the idea of spiritual protection. What he describes as critical inner advisors can sometimes be negative entities or deceased individuals who do not wish us well. The approach Rossman suggests of standing one’s ground is very effective for dealing with most deceased individuals, but for entities, one often needs more help than that to banish them. However, to acknowledge these issues would make Rossman’s book inaccessible to those who are turned off by ideas of the metaphysical realm and/or are atheists.

I found it very hard to stomach the idea of spirit guides as “inner advisors,” though the way Rossman presents the ideas is one done with respect to those of all belief systems. By taking this route, he limits what individuals can do with those "advisors" they make contact with.  I can clearly see the advantages to this, but when I recommend this book to most of my clients, I will be making sure they know how much further they can develop these ideas with an understanding that spirit guides are not creatures of our imagination. They are real, just as you and I are real. Spirit guides just live on a different plane of existence than we do. It says a lot that it’s more acceptable to a science-minded population for us to create an imaginary friend to help us heal rather than accepting that higher powers may be interacting in our lives.

Rossman is also very conservative in encouraging people to change their lives radically. I don’t have that fear. Sometimes people need to turn their lives upside down in order to find healing. Rossman also assures readers that most people don’t have to deal with the horribly deep and dark issues they've repressed; I’d disagree with that as well. I think that for true healing to happen, those issues will eventually have to be confronted. However, if one follows one’s inner guidance and works in slow steps to heal as the body and soul need to, once it comes time for confronting the major issues, most people will have done the pre-work necessary to make the confrontation far less painful than it would originally have been.

In the updated version of this book that I read, chapter 15 is a dry history of body-mind healing, and chapter 16 is a summary of the science behind body-mind healing. For most readers, these chapters will not add to their experience and I’d recommend skipping them. I suspect they are at the end of the book for this very reason. Many readers would quit reading if they were introductory chapters.

Overall, Guided Imagery for Self-Healing is one of the better books I've read on meditation and healing from a mind-body(-spirit) perspective. I've already recommended it to one person, and I plan to recommend it to several others after this review publishes and I can send them the link. I’ll also be using most of the guided meditations with my spiritual singles group as they are wonderful resources for everyone who wants to heal on multiple levels.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Lately I have been working on doing some groundwork for a singles' Meetup group that I will be starting in a few months; I will post widely when the group is announced.  As a result, I am perusing a bunch of books for the seminars.  In particular, I am looking for short prayers, meditations, and reflections on various topics that we’ll be discussing.  The following are reviews of a few of the books I have read.

The Little Book of Love by Kahlil Gibran and compiled by Suheil Bushrui is quite literally little measuring in at about 4” x 6” and having only 80 pages of content, many of which have abundant white space or dark illustrations.  This book must be aimed at young lovers because the font size is difficult for some of us who have crossed the 40 year age barrier.  Despite those issues, the book has a few beautiful quotes and would make a romantic gift or stocking stuffer for a loved one.  My heart would certainly melt to have a lover give it to me.  However, it seems to fall in the category of a “bathroom book” in my opinion: All of its short entries are easily read in brief sittings.

Quiet Mind: One Minute Mindfulness by David Kundtz offers approximately 180 short reflections for the reader.  This time the font is in a readable size!  Focused around the idea of finding quiet and peace in our crazy lives, the author approaches a wide range of topics from death to road rage to the arts to walking, all in two short pages a piece. The spirituality is non-denominational and refers to many different traditions throughout the book. I found most of the pieces (though not all) to be engaging and worth reading.  It’s an even better bathroom book than The Little Book of Love in my estimation!

Guided Meditation Scripts for Beginners by Amy Meyers and Sharon Whisler is a short e-book available in Kindle format for $2.99.  The book is great in some ways and disappointing in others.  The meditations are repetitive:  The four breathwork meditations are actually all the same foundation with a little more added on each time.  The chakra meditations don’t feel powerful enough to me to actually realign one’s chakras: They seem more suitable to simply bring attention to each chakra.  Many of the love meditations feel more like writing prompts than guided meditations, though one could argue that journaling can be a form of meditation.  However, several of the meditations will be perfect for me to use with my group.  For the small investment, I feel like I likely got my money’s worth.  It’s just not a book I would generally recommend to others looking to find guided meditation scripts.

The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year by Caitlin Matthews is a compilation of 365 daily readings.  While the title asserts they are meditations, I think reflections or mini-history lessons are the more apt descriptions in many cases.  Some of the reflections are excellent; others are very weak, meandering through topics Matthews seems to have forced together in a way that doesn't feel natural.  Many of the readings were not engaging or thought provoking for me.  The topics also began to feel repetitious by the end of the year with multiple days focusing on topics such as trees and the grail.  The suggested “meditations” at the end of each reading are often actions, and some of those actions would take days or even months to complete.  While I appreciate those readings that were excellent, I felt overall the book was a weak effort.

Like many others, I am a fan of the poetry of Rumi.  There are many collections out there, so when I ordered The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing by Rumi and Coleman Banks, I had the expectation that this would be a book focused primarily on love.  In reality, only part of the book focuses on love.  Other sections focus on topics such as drunkenness and animals.  While I appreciated the academic tone of this book with helpful prefaces and footnotes, it simply wasn't what I was looking for. (The cover on the edition I received is also nowhere near as beautiful despite this being the promised edition.  It's a plain orange jacket.)

In contrast, Rumi: A Spiritual Treasury by Juliet Mabey was exactly on the mark.  A physically smaller book, the poetry contained in it is more accessible to the general population.  I loved the contents which actually focused on excerpts of spiritual poetry by Rumi.  The book is divided into various chapters on different aspects of the human relationship with God.  While the book is written in a traditional male perspective of God that doesn't fit with my personal beliefs, I was still able to enjoy its contents.

Finally, I thoroughly enjoyed Life Prayers from Around the World: 365 Prayers, Blessings, and Affirmations to Celebrate the Human Journey by Elizabeth Roberts.  The collection is grouped by topic rather than daily prayers as one might expect from the “365” in the title.  While it includes prayers and thoughts from many traditions, earth based spirituality is prevalent throughout.  The collection has many thought-provoking poems as part of these prayers.  Topics covered include all parts of the life cycle, moments of grace, justice, crisis and more.  I was captivated by most of the included works from start to finish.

I will be posting more meditation and prayer book reviews in April as I've got a stack of several more on my coffee table that I am working my way through!

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(I received a complimentary copy of this work from Hay House via NetGalley.  The opinions here are my own and are not influenced by anyone.)

I’m a fan of many of the Hay House authors, so seeing that publishing house associated with a new book induces me to try an author I might not have read otherwise.  In most cases, I’m pleased with the selections I read from Hay House.  This was not one of those cases.

In Love Never Dies: How to Reconnect and Make Peace with the Deceased, Jamie Turndorf, Ph.D., explores her newfound connection to the spirit world after the death of her husband, former Jesuit priest Emile Jean Pin.  As a former atheist, this new world of spirituality is an adventure for Turndorf, one she approaches with the blind enthusiasm of a young child after she conquers her initial misgivings.  After her husband’s unexpected death from a reaction to a bee string, Turndorf is surprised to discover her connection to her beloved Jean continues through their deep spiritual love for each other.  She writes that together they have a ministry to help others in processing death and connecting to those in the afterlife so that all involved may continue to grow and heal.

Love Never Dies does have a few good qualities.  It is simply written making it accessible to the popular masses.  The book also has the potential to comfort many in the first and last sections where Turndorf describes her experiences and the experiences of her clients as they reconnect with their deceased love ones.  The book brings up an incredibly large number of questions for a book group to discuss around life, love, healing and death.

From there, however, the book simply falls apart.  It’s repetitive and poorly edited starting with the weak rhyming poetry at the beginning of each chapter.  Turndorf proudly declares that she hadn’t checked out the “competition” before writing her book making it an all original work.  While there are merits to an untainted narrative, those merits are outweighed by the negatives in this book.  Turndorf’s lack of vocabulary to discuss concepts such as synchronicity weakens her arguments and presentation immensely.  The result is a book that feels like an amateur falsely pretending to be a professional.

Turndorf also is blinded by her own narrow experiences regarding the metaphysical world.  She only sees what she wants to see and doesn’t consider that there are possibilities beyond the definitive answers she purports to reach.  For example, Turndorf declares that demons or negative spirit entities might exist though she’s doubtful about it.  She thinks that if negative spiritual beings do exist, Jean protects her from them always.  Any experienced psychic, intuitive or medium who has worked extensively with the metaphysical will cringe at this naïve view:  In his Hay House publication Infinite Quest: Develop Your Psychic Intuition to Take Charge of Your Life, John Edward speaks extensively on the importance of spiritual protection when one is working with the other side.  Turndorf’s inexperience becomes dangerous as she guides readers into murky waters without life jackets.

Furthermore, Turndorf blindly believes that all the departed are willing to work on their faults and help their living loved ones heal.  This, too, is a declaration of an inexperienced practitioner who is, in my words, blinded by the white light.  Other gifted mediums such as me are able to encounter spirits in all their essence, seeing their soul level faults which do not miraculously heal upon entry to the afterlife.  Many souls choose not to work on their own healing in the afterlife, no differently than their course here on earth.  In those cases, Turndorf’s advice risks connecting hurting individuals with souls who will continue to emotionally and spiritual abuse them from the other side.  This is not only ignorant, but it’s dangerous and is the last thing a psychologist should want for clients.

Even on a much simpler and less dangerous level, Turndoff offers bad advice to those wanting to begin meditation as a means to connecting with departed souls.  Setting up beginners with the task of meditating for many hours is going to defeat many people before they even get out of the starting gate.  It’s far better for beginners to slowly introduce themselves to meditation to reduce the risk of perceived failure and to encourage successful future experiences which may eventually be longer.

Turndorf’s faulty logic is so convoluted at times that it is difficult to follow.  Throughout Love Never Dies, she contradicts herself on larger philosophical issues.  Turndorf presents the concept that things that happen more than three times are a scientifically valid result. Unfortunately, she fails to recognize that even if something occurs three times, it’s still possible to misinterpret information about those results.  Throughout the book, I feel she often misinterprets her experiences because of her lack of experience and narrow-minded views.  For example, Turndorf declares many times that we avoid loving fully because losing a loved one is so painful.  However, there are other possibilities for why we might restrain our love that she never even considers.  It’s possible that we don’t love fully because we don’t know how to.  It’s also possible that we don’t love fully because we don’t believe we deserve love.

This narrow perspective continues as Turndorf obsesses over her theories that she is metaphysically gifted because of her premature birth and three month NICU stay away from her mother.  She writes about high fevers and illness predisposing people to being able to being open to spiritual contact, yet she fails to examine the role of her own experiences with Lyme Disease in regards to her metaphysical experiences.  As a practitioner who has had Lyme and who works with many others who have Lyme, I would argue that the vast majority of people who deal with chronic or late disseminated Lyme Disease are those who are metaphysically gifted.  A little research outside of her own bubble would help Turndorf to see these other possibilities. 

As the book progresses, I found Turndorf’s words to her clients and to her readers to be cruel and potentially damaging.  I cringed as Turndorf relates how she said to a newly bereaved parent that “she could view this recent loss as a gift from the spirit.”  While this lesson is true on some levels, the way she phrased this to a parent who has recently lost a baby is heartless at best. 

Furthermore, comparing our pain to others’ is not beneficial.  Telling ourselves “it could be worse” demeans the pain we are experiencing.  Turndorf writes, “When we see someone in pain, we’re being invited to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and give thanks for the problems we have that pale in comparison.  Another person’s difficulty reminds us that we could have it so much worse.”  What she fails to contemplate is that some of her readers (including me in my not so distant past) will fall into that category of having things “so much worse.”  Having been told many times by others that they could look at my life and realize how good they actually have it, I can speak from experience that such an attitude does not help the person undergoing the trials.  The heartless response simply makes their pain increase.

If all of these issues aren’t enough, I found Turndorf’s basic psychological advice to be weak at best.  After 30 years’ experience in practice, she is not a novice.  She earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from California Coast University in 1994.  She is a nationally known psychologist using the pseudonym “Dr. Love.”  However, her personal relationship with Jean raised many flags for me as a reader and life coach, beginning with the fact that she was 21 and he was 58 when it began.  Turndorf claims that she and Jean had a perfect spiritual love, yet the aspects of their relationship she shares demonstrate a couple that struggled to love each other in their earthly forms.  She asserts that Jean was “one of the world’s true mystics” but he didn’t know he could be so close to her in spirit form.  This doesn’t build his credibility or hers.  Even Googling her late husband (who died in 2006, after the advent of the internet) does not turn up the abundance of hits one would expect from a man whom she claims was a one of the 50 most holy people to have lived in the eyes of the Dalai Lama.  As she describes their relationship after he “left his body,” Turndorf sees her late husband’s love as fulfilling her and becoming her own love.  Almost all psychologists would argue that seeking to use another’s love as a replacement for self-love is not a healthy approach in the long term.

Finally, in one of the experiences at the end of the book, she details of a client named “Mo.”  Turndorf uses guilt to trick Mo into working with her deceased husband.  This woman clearly has spent a lifetime being manipulated by others who prey on her overactive sense of guilt.  A healthier treatment option might have been to work with Mo to recognize her issues around guilt until she regained the self-esteem necessary to work on herself out of self-love.  The ends did not justify the means in this treatment.

Turndorf seems to think grieving is the only reason people need to connect to Spirit and those on the other side.  As she presents the issues in Love Never Dies, she fails to see how other tragedies can be more devastating and more impactful that grief.  Her narrow-minded and uneducated views result in a book that will help facilitate discussion about important topics but which ultimately may give some very bad advice to vulnerable readers.

(Attached below is a PDF of questions that could be used for book group discussions.  Feel free to alter or edit these questions for your own personal use in a group discussion or journaling.)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

At one point in my life, I was telling someone that I had a hard time going to a certain yoga class because the voice of the instructor made me want to climb up the wall.  She accused me of being too picky and just trying to come up with excuses not to go to yoga.  I disagree with that view completely.  If you watch the video linked above, you’ll understand what I mean.  This is an extreme example to make a point.  The video above is narrated by the Daleks, a fictional destructive extraterrestrial life form from the Doctor Who television series.  The Daleks are meant to incur terror in the viewers’ hearts:  Thus, their voices are not sweet and loving.  They are ten times worse than fingernails on chalkboards in my opinion.  I can only listen to about ten seconds of the above video before I have to shut it off or I will start popping blood vessels.

Even though this video is an extreme example, the same thing is true at other levels.  It’s possible for someone’s voice to grind on your nerves when you are listening to a guided meditation or attending a yoga class even if you really like the meditation or class itself. While the most spiritual and able of us could block out that annoyance, most of us don’t have that kind of strength.  We get distracted and annoyed by it.

So why set yourself up for such a challenge? I don’t see a good reason for a beginner to do so.  I highly encourage people to find verbal guidance which they find soothing and relaxing rather than stressful.  For this reason, I have many, many guided meditations on my Spotify playlist.  That particular playlist is not meant to be listened to from start to finish.  Instead, it’s meant to be a sampler.  If you’re looking for a new guided meditation to work with, the playlist offers you the opportunity to listen to various artists for free with no commitment.  You can hear their voices and styles, and then you can find something that works well for you. 

When beginning meditation, it’s really better to start with a challenge that is welcoming such as a guided meditation that you enjoy rather than torturing yourself with something that will drive you away from ever trying again.  Since many of us turn to meditation for relaxation and de-stressing, shouldn’t we do everything we can to find something that helps us achieve that goal?

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

When I put the Russian title of this video into Google Translate, I was highly amused at the "Lap Dance" translation.  This video actually shows an artist working with wet clay on a wheel which is definitely an artistic lap dance.  There are three short segments in this one video.  I enjoyed the first and third more than the second, but all are beautiful in their own way.

Any connotations aside, this video is a beautiful way to engage in a slightly more active form of mediation. It only took a few seconds of watching the wheel spin to a slow and almost mournful music before my body relaxed and moved into a different state of being.  For me, this transformation into a meditative state happens fairly easy now though I recognize for others it is far more of a struggle.  Just stare at the amazing patterns changing on the wheel and let it be the center of your consciousness.  Let whatever your body is holding onto relax into the music.  Breathe deeply if you remember!  If not, your body will keep doing it for you anyway.

During the first section of this (through about 5:30), I got very lost in the concept of "the thread of life."  Trying to articulate what I was feeling and understanding is hard for me, even re-watching it.  The concept I was seeing, feeling and experiencing was along the lines that when we pull on our thread of life as we move forward, we unravel our past, yet that thread of our past creates the path for our future.  I have no idea if that translates into anything sensible to anyone outside of my own brain!

I was focusing on the patterns that appear in nature during the second section (approximately 5:30-9:30).  I was "seeing" shells and flowers in the artist's work and was reminded of the amazing natural beauty at miniscule levels.  I was also reminded of the idea that there is organization even in chaos.

In the final section of this (9:30-end), I felt like I was getting a stream of messages and reminders to go with each layer she carved on the wheel.  I just jotted them down as I kept staring at the wheel and receiving more messages:

• slow but steady creates incredible beauty
  
• patience
  
• complex beauty arises from simplicity
• mandalas are a gift
• leaves offer healing power
• creation thru destruction
• healing through change
• building on the past
• circles are amazing
• losing oneself in one's art
• the power of beauty
• perfection in imperfection
• mental impressions are often tricks of visualization

Reading back over the notes a few hours later, it is fairly powerful for me to see what messages were streaming through my mind without me really being too cognizant of the process.

I'm sharing these phrases and sentiments for others to get an idea of what meditation might look like for them.  There is no right or wrong way to meditate.  There are no right or wrong messages or thoughts or emotions.  Your meditation experience is yours alone and will never match that of others.  For me, this is what meditation looks like some days.  Other days, it is completely different!

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

There are a lot of misguided ideas about what meditation is or what meditation should be.  Most people who aren’t familiar with meditation visualize it as sitting in a contorted but very upright position with one’s eyes closed.  In that position, they expect that the active brain shuts off and the person meditating easily experiences nothingness or amazing divine insight.  For most of us, not so much.  Meditation takes many different forms.

A while ago I was messaging with a friend about jellyfish and meditating on them.  Both of us have had jellyfish show up in visions for us recently as animals whom we should work with.  The Star Stuffs website says the meaning of jellyfish is as follows:

Jellyfish speaks of simplifying your life. Go with the flow of the current and allow things to take their course. Trust the process. She shows how to rest in the earthly realm and not to rush. Life or mind chatter too hectic? Take a walk, get close to nature so you can see the world in a better light. In communication, your words and actions may sting others, however unintentional. She will help balance this forwardness with compassion. Jellyfish asks you heal the painful past. What is hurting your spirit? She assists in tackling challenges of the mind, body and spirit. She will help identify the areas for you - because it is time. Jellyfish may be very transparent but she shows the heart's truth, if you will follow it. This includes the pain and growth that may arise in the journey. 

For me, I am working through a lot of past life traumas that were not healed well (or at all) in those past lives.  This is my second chance to heal them.  Jellyfish reminds me to allow this healing to happen as it is meant to and not try to force the process.

The friend and I were discussing how one would meditate on jellyfish.  I suggested that one could put on some ocean music off of Spotify and then just picture oneself swimming with the jellyfish. Of course, that is ignoring the fact that any music with water sounds in it makes me need to pee.  I then decided to Google “youtube jellyfish meditation,” and I stumbled upon the amazing video above. For five minutes, I just sat there watching the jellyfish gently moving through the water.  The tension drained from my body.  I could feel the stress melting away.  It was amazing.  It felt so good.  Every time I turn that video back on and just stare, I feel so much more relaxed. 

Watching that video, even though it doesn’t fit the stereotypical vision of meditation, is still meditation.  The goal was achieved of helping me release tension from my body.  While I didn’t find any major spiritual insight while watching the video, I felt far less stressed and worried from watching it.  I’ve bookmarked it amongst my favorites and plan to return to it each time the jellyfish returns to me in my visions so that I can remember its message of going with the flow.

© 2013 Green Heart Guidance