Every year, I skip making New Year’s resolutions and instead meditate so my spirit guides can give me a theme word that will guide my year. In 2023, the word was movement, and given that I got out of Texas, that came true in a huge way. In 2024, the word was healing, a word that has been guiding my life for more than 20 years and will continue to do so until I die.

​This year while I was waiting for the Unitarian-Universalist Christmas service to start at Sage Chapel at Cornell, I decided it was a perfect time to meditate on what the new year would bring. I began grounding, and as I did, I felt bones from human bodies. I knew that there were remains interred in the chapel, but I wasn’t sure where. I also started hearing “two in the front.” I have never experienced feeling the human remains of others like that, and it was utterly bizarre. When I got home, I Googled yet another search to make NSA wonder what I’m up for, looking for where the bodies are (in Sage Chapel).

As I related this to another psychic this week, she laughed hard and said, “I don’t need to know what the internet says. You know where they are. You need to TRUST your intuition more.” I laughed, and confirmed that the internet had said that the crypt is in the basement, so I was likely on top of it. There are ashes of two people interred in the chapel itself upstairs. But I also told her that there was more to the story.

The first word I heard from my guides was “patience.” My response to my guides was not one of appreciation, but more of a “We’ve been working on that lesson for 50 years, and I’m getting tired of it!” :)

The second word I received and was told was the most important was indeed “trust.” This trust is partially around three specific things in my life, trusting that the Universe is taking care of me and will show me the way as the time is right. It is also trusting in myself, my gifts, my abilities, my strength, and my soul.

The final word was “hope,” having optimism that the Universe is going to be bringing me amazing things this year. Hope is what keeps me alive. I needed the reminder that even though various things are seeming muddled right now, I should have hope that they will change for the better.

So here’s to 2025 being a year of patience, hope, and most importantly, trust. May this year be better for all of us than we can possibly dream of.
 
© 2024 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance

A few weeks ago on Sunday, May 15, 2022, there was a total lunar eclipse with a blood moon that was visible in Austin, Texas where I live. It peeked at 11:11 pm locally.

However, even in the hours leading up to the eclipse, I could feel something was "off." As Star Wars fans might say, "I felt a great disturbance in the Force." I was so restless. I couldn't find anything to watch on Netflix despite having hundreds of items in my queue. I couldn't figure out which sewing project to work on. My general anxiety was through the roof. When I finally remembered that the eclipse was happening, I texted a sensitive friend in California. I asked if they were feeling it, and they responded in the affirmative. They had been experiencing a lot of restlessness that day as well. At that point, I texted my children who are scattered across Texas to let them know that if they were feeling additional anxiety or if any of their friends were, the eclipse was hitting many of us hard.

I went out to watch the eclipse at its apogee shortly after 11 pm, but I couldn't stay outside long. The metaphysically dark energy attached to the eclipse was too much for me. On a visual level, it was beautiful and I had a fabulous view from my driveway. However, watching it was increasing my anxiety, so therefore it wasn't in my best interest to keep watching. I quickly went back inside.

As the eclipse waned, my anxiety lessened, and I finally was able to go to bed and sleep. The next morning, I saw a health practitioner who is a sensitive person, and I asked if they felt the eclipse. They hadn't remembered the eclipse was happening, but their anxiety had been at its height all weekend. They shut down several projects they were working on because they couldn't focus. They were so relieved to find out that it wasn't just them having issues!

On Wednesday, I talked to another health practitioner of mine whom I had suspected was highly sensitive. I told them that the eclipse had been bad for me, and they responded, "It was really awful. That got the week off to a very bad start for me." Once again, our experiences as sensitives overlapped. 

If you are a highly sensitive person, meteorological and geological events like eclipses, solar flares, earthquakes storm fronts, and hurricanes have the potential to really affect you. Many sensitive people are fully aware that the full moon impacts them, often causing sleeplessness in those who are sensitive to it even if they are in a room with blackout curtains. I am fortunate in that I'm not usually impacted terribly by lunar events, but this one hit me hard. Solar eclipses and solar flares, on the other hand, can be very difficult to handle for me personally.

I have a sensitive friend in my neighborhood whom I'll often text as storm fronts or hurricanes are in our area to see if they are feeling the same thing I am, and 95% of the time, we're on the same page about the impacts of what is going on. If you are a highly sensitive person, it's important to have friends who are sensitive, too. When you are feeling terrible and can't control whatever larger cosmic event is happening to make you feel off, it helps to know others are feeling the same as you. Discovering that you aren't alone in what you're experiencing is so affirming. The unity with others can alleviate the feeling that you are losing your mind, and it really helps to know someone else is enduring the same type of sensations as you. That knowledge also brings with it the relief of knowing that, "This too shall pass."

Ⓒ2022 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

As I’ve mentioned before, the best healers are those who have been wounded and who have worked to heal their past. These healers continue to work on healing on deeper levels throughout their lives as they grow as individuals. If you find a healer who claims to be perfect and to have resolved all their issues, run in the opposite direction. They are deluded. We’re all human, and we’re all in need of healing our entire lives. Almost none of us reach enlightenment on this plane of existence. 

I am continuing my own healing because I practice what I preach to my clients. Lately, I have been working on some very core issues in my life. Like many people, I had a miserable childhood which included a lot of abuse (physical, emotional and sexual) and neglect. I was very different than many of my peers as a child, and as a result, I endured bullying, especially in the late grade school years. When I look back on my childhood, it’s not with fondness. It’s with painful memories and gratitude that I somehow managed to survive. 

Recently, a new issue surfaced during therapy. I’ve got a list of core issues which I have been working on healing in different ways over the years. However, as we approached one of my core issues, a new underlying issue suddenly popped its malicious head out of the woodwork for me to heal. Both my therapist and I were taken back by its appearance, yet it made sense to us in light of my other issues. 

When I came home from that therapy session, I created a flower essence blend for myself just as I do for my clients by using my intuitive guidance and my stock of 600+ flower essences. I then labeled the blend, “I Deserve to Exist.” I’ve learned that The Universe doesn’t observe subtlety when it comes to healing. We need to clearly state exactly what it is we’re working on and what we want to achieve.

​I had known previously that I was an unplanned and undesired pregnancy. Even though I was born in the post-Roe v. Wade era, my somewhat Catholic mother chose to continue the pregnancy. However, on top of not wanting a child, she also did not want a girl. The firstborn child was supposed to be a male, one who could carry on the family name. I grew up knowing that I was not wanted nor was I the right sex. On a subconscious level, I quickly learned that others fundamentally did not want me to exist.

Throughout my childhood, many people tried to make me disappear. They put masks on me, trying to transform me into the kind of person they felt I should be. In order to survive as a child, I conformed as best I could to their demands. At the time, I assumed their judgments meant I was imperfect or wrong. I tried to be perfect. As a teen, I started realizing I wasn’t being true to myself. As an adult, I've had to shed all of those prior expectations in order to find my true self. In retrospect, I have learned that others were not allowing me to be me because of their own emotional issues, not my imperfections.

Lately as I have been clearing out emotional baggage, I’ve simultaneously been clearing out physical baggage, too. I’ve been purging many of my childhood items that I still had packed away in boxes by giving them away on my local Buy Nothing Project list. I’ve experienced great joy in giving these items to others who can enjoy them. Some are getting to reclaim items identical to those which brought them happiness in their childhoods. Others are passing them on to children who can happily play with the toys rather than the toys sitting unused in boxes. 

This morning I had a healing session with one of my practitioners who uses NET. Unprompted by me, she used the term “mask” with me, and I began to laugh. I told her that my afternoon plans included smashing a mask I had created as a child; I had set the mask in my garage before I left home for the appointment. My healer got goosebumps as we talked about it.
​
So when I got home, I smashed that mask. I was utterly surprised how easy it was to break the ceramic with a hammer; it was like using a knife on warm butter. Symbolically, that’s probably true of many of our masks. While they appear to be sturdy and strong, hiding us from the world, the reality is that once we choose to remove them and be ourselves, they crumble quickly. ​

​The only piece of the mask that refused to smash was the nose. When I am doing psychic readings for clients, I see noses symbolically to represent wisdom. To me, that was a reminder to keep the wisdom of my childhood. I learned a lot through the pain I endured, plus I do have some happy memories. Those are the things that I should retain. The rest can be broken and discarded.

I received a free advance reader copy of Driven via Netgalley in return for an honest review.

When we think of heartbreak, most of us think of losing a romantic love. Yet the pain of losing a loved one to death is every bit as devastating – if not moreso—than the heartbreak of a lost romantic love. Both losses can launch us into a deep spiraling grief that consumes us, body, mind and soul. Melissa Stephenson vividly brings that raw emotional pain to her writing. The death of her brother Matthew is one of the primary storylines running through Driven: A White-Knuckled Ride to Heartbreak and Back. She describes the horrid experience all of us go through in the early days of a loss, waking from a sleep to remember that a loved one has died and our world is no longer what it was: “It’s a vicious cycle: the forgetting, the waking, and the fresh wave of grief and nausea that crash over me as I remember.” As her deep grief continues Stephenson describes the ensuing depression: “My life feels like roadkill, a mess beyond fixing, only my brain won’t stop thinking any more than I could talk my heart out of beating. I live because my body does, a black hole incarnate.”

These emotions are the brutal reality of what we experience when someone we love dies. Stephenson also isn’t afraid of exploring the thoughts that most of us don’t want to admit we have around death. She talks explicitly about wondering what Matthew’s life-ending wound looked like, a deeply personal thought that most would hide in fear that they would be judged “too morbid” or even worse. Yet all of us have these questions and thoughts about death even if we won’t admit that we’ve thought about them. As Stephenson reflects on her brother’s cremation, her vivid imagery shows clearly how the details surrounding his death invaded her mind:

Many years ago, I met a woman through a local internet mothering group who had been diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. Doctors had given her six months to live, and she was determined to prove them wrong. She lived-- truly lived-- for another four years before her death. The woman (whom I’ll call K) entered a healing path even though she was going to be dying in the near future. She was determined to lengthen her life as much as possible. K undertook many holistic healing protocols. Among her discoveries that helped her to find more happiness and more health was facing whom she really was. After two heterosexual marriages that ended in divorce, K finally realized that she was a lesbian. By “coming out,” K found happiness that had been missing all of her adult life.

Around the same time, I was friends with a woman, C, who was in a national internet support group for people with illnesses like mine. We were in and out of each other’s lives via email for quite a while. As we both walked our healing paths, C made a personal discovery. While C identified as pansexual, she’d had many relationships that ended unhappily including a recent divorce. It wasn’t until C realized that he was actually a man named J that deeper healing began for him.

As I watched these two people find happiness as a result of the deep work that chronic illness prompted in their lives, I began to question what was holding me back in my personal healing. Given what both of these two people discovered about themselves, the first things I questioned were my gender and sexual orientation. After much introspection and internet research, I discovered that I was a heterosexual cisgender woman, exactly what I had identified as all my life. Thus, I made no amazing life changing discoveries about my sexuality as my internet friends had done.

I remained puzzled for many years about what was holding my healing back. If it wasn’t my sexuality, then what was it about myself that I needed to find? In my case, it turned out that it was my spiritual self than I needed to rediscover. I had spent the past five lifetimes trying to deny, repress and ignore my metaphysical abilities. Because I grew up in a family in and then married and divorced a man this life ​who aren’t believers in the metaphysical, it didn’t feel safe for me to be my true self. However, a major illness in this lifetime forced me to to come to terms with my metaphysical gifts and my need to use them for healing myself and others.

For many people facing chronic or terminal illness, finding oneself is one of the challenges that can help alleviate a great deal of emotional pain and suffering. Because our emotional pain often manifests as physical pain in our body, finding oneself can sometimes bring improvement or even remission of one’s physical misery. Regardless of its impact on one’s physical symptoms, being true to oneself always brings happiness that was previously unknown in this life. There is nothing comparable to being able to say, “This is whom I am. I am proud of me, and I love being me.”

© 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

Last week I received a message through Meetup from a (now former) member of the group I lead there. It was titled, “too expensive.” She wrote in the body of the message, “I thought that this meet up was free. Asking for 10.00 every time healers, myself included come together to do work for the planet is a little much to as of people. Too bad money trumps light workers from coming together and doing there work together as a community.” (All errors are from the original author.)

This person was one who had been a member of the group for about four weeks but who had not attended any of the actual meetings. She’s an owner of a local retail store in a non-spiritual field but is not a professional lightworker from what I can find on the internet. I have never advertised the group as totally free, so that was her error for which she was holding me accountable. I have advertised meetings as costing between free and $25 with most being $10. Clearly she read what she wanted to in that sentence.

As I mentioned this to my kids, they asked, “Don’t you have to pay for the space you are meeting in?” Correct! My high school aged children were able to do the basic math of running a meetup group in a way that this business-owning woman could not. Meetup currently charges $180 per year for the first group one runs (and two “free” ones after that). One then has to find space to meet in. Many of the “free” spaces around town require a minimum member of attendees and/or a minimum purchase of food that is often unhealthy and/or filled with gluten. Since 75% of my group has issues around food (including me with gluten and egg sensitivities), that type of option doesn’t work well for us. Many public places also don’t allow for privacy which is necessary for the type of group I lead. Hence, we meet in private spaces to create an atmosphere that is appropriate to the healing work we do. Finally, I do a lot of reading and prep work for the group and give out handouts. All of that creates expenses as well. Even the federal government recognizes that business expenses exist and allows them to be deducted!

If this woman had actually attended my group, she would realize that it isn't actually a group of lightworkers coming together to heal the planet. It's a personal growth group as one might expect from the name, "Your Personal Healing Journey of Austin." People are getting my guidance in a group format for a hugely discounted rate. Instead of paying $100 per hour, they are paying $5 per hour to learn from all I can teach them. That’s a pretty hefty discount and makes my resources and guidance very affordable to those who can’t afford to work with me on a private basis. Most similar groups in Austin charge anywhere from $10 to $25 per session with the majority being in the $10 to $15 range. I am definitely not pricing outside of the market value. Furthermore, if one stops and thinks about it, $10 for two hours of guidance that leads to extensive personal growth is a bargain compared to spending $10+ for two hours to see a movie which one may or may not benefit from at all.

I have encountered others like this woman before on other healers’ sites and discussion groups, so I was prepared for this to happen to me. They subscribe to a false ideology that believes that energy workers don’t deserve to be paid for the work they do. If they do deserve to be paid, then it should be an absolute minimum, and the healers should be struggling to get by. Only unholy people should be comfortable in life. Those who are truly sent from God will live on miraculous multiplication of fish and loaves just like Jesus did. These judgmental people somehow think that energy workers’ electric bills and rents also can be paid with holiness (and not money) as well.

All of that is simply not true. Everyone deserves to be paid a living wage. I am a huge believer that the minimum wage needs to be $15 or greater in metropolitan areas where $15 an hour isn’t enough to support a family. That’s $600 per week or a little over $2400 per month. In Austin, finding a two to three bedroom apartment or home for a family is hard to do for less than $1200 per month in the suburbs; closer in it’s impossible. Clearly a single parent won’t be able to take care of a family on that amount without public assistance even if s/he/ze is working full-time.

The same is true of an energy worker who, when it all boils down, is a worker trying to pay bills just like the rest of society. We all work in different ways as we’ve been gifted. Some of us are teachers. Some of us are engineers. Some of us are salespeople. And some of us work with healing and energy. If the healer is a doctor, s/he/ze will bill starting at $300 per hour. Psychologists in Austin charge anywhere from $75 to $150 per hour. While people may grumble about these rates, no one doubts that these healers deserve to be paid for their work. So too, do energy workers deserve to be paid for their time, energy and skills.

As I have discussed this incident with other healers I know and respect, we’ve all come to the same conclusions. Those who truly need sliding scale and reduced fees approach us with very different attitudes and behaviors than those who are just not willing to pay for the healing work we do. Every one of us has stories of people who have pleaded for sliding scale or free work and then have shown up in a brand new car or had stories of exotic vacations taken weeks before or made exorbitant purchases that are clearly beyond the means of someone who actually can’t afford but desperately needs healing work. The bottom line is that they don’t want to budget their funds in such a way as to pay for what they need. Hence, they want their healers to earn less so that they can live a more luxurious life, not realizing that by not paying their healers the full price of their services, many of those same healers then have to make cuts to their own budgets to accommodate the person asking for financial help. It is completely different than people who are truly low income and in desperate need of help but who cannot possibly stretch their budget any further.

When healers don’t charge for their work, they create an energy imbalance in the universe. All of our transactions with others in life involve an energy exchange. You massage my back, and I rub your feet. You give me groceries, and I give you money. I help you solve problems with your health, and you give me money. In the olden days, you might have given me two chickens and a gallon of milk instead. In other societies, it was a handful of sea shells. However, in our society, we use money as a currency of exchange, and it has come to represent our energy exchange. Every healer I know and respect agrees that there must be an exchange of energy in every single transaction in order to keep things balanced. When interactions occur without an exchange, one part of the equation becomes imbalanced. Hence, as healers, we do charge for our work as we feel is appropriate to the situation in order to keep balance in our lives. In some cases, $5 is the appropriate amount. In other cases, it’s more. All of us do need to charge something for every exchange, though.

I hope one day this misguided woman will understand her value and will start charging for her services to others just as she does for the objects she sells in her storefront. I hope she will also come to understand what kind of imbalance she creates in her life by asking others to give to her for free when she offers nothing but a verbal barrage in return.

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

Yesterday I spent several hours dealing with what appeared to be battery problems on my car. I drive a 16 year old Toyota minivan which has generally been an amazingly reliable vehicle with one exception: It eats batteries. My current battery is a 60 month battery that has about 24 months on it, so I know I am approaching replacement time. The full replacement warranty is for 36 months, and in the past, I have had one die five days after the full warranty expired. As far as frequent repairs go, however, this is one that is actually relatively cheap since it’s usually prorated if not covered completely. One of our previous cars ate CV boots which were $100 each at that time; those got old to repair.

A fairly common problem among those who are energy workers and/or highly sensitive people is that they accidentally drain batteries. Many people see this happen with their watch batteries, though now that more people are using cell phones instead of watches, it is less of a problem. Someone I know blows out headlights on her car on a regular basis. Anything that involves energy or power is at risk for being drained by an energy worker, though obviously most of us are not doing this intentionally. Lately, I’ve started noticing a pattern related to my emotions and when electrical and/or battery problems happen in my car. So one of my upcoming personal challenges is to figure out how not to let my emotions and the energy they release impact the electrical system on my car!

Whenever my battery dies on my car, it’s always an interesting experience to see how I get help and who offers it to me. In yesterday’s case, my ex-husband was off work for Indigenous People’s Day (or Columbus Day if you believe the local calendars), so he came to help me. The holistic health office I was at when my car refused to start had two receptionists, one of whom had a Prius and the who had a half-dead battery which she had jumped on Friday. Neither was really a realistic candidate for helping me jump my car, but they were both very kind to me, helping find a wrench when we needed to remove my battery. All of the other practitioners were in sessions with clients or patients, so clearly they couldn’t help me.

As my ex-husband was jumping the car, I was sitting on a nearby staircase, and an elderly woman came by. She smiled at me and said, “I’ve been there.” That is the bottom line of it: All of us have been there with car problems at one time or another. To me, it’s never a bad idea to help someone out jumping a car if you are in a safe location and have the time and ability to do so. It feels like a deposit in the karmic piggy bank for the next time your own car dies. A year or two my yard guy’s car battery died in front of my house. I was happy to turn my car around and lend him my jumper cables to jump his car.

What surprises me is when people refuse to help for non-existent reasons. It really shouldn’t because it’s simply another indication of the narcissism and selfishness that is abundant in our society. When my car battery died three years ago in August, I had a horrible time finding someone to help me jump it. I was stranded at Zilker Park outside of Barton Springs pool with all three of my kids in 100 degree heat. My ex-husband was out of town, and his car was at the airport parking lot. I stood by the exit and asked everyone exiting if they could help. A few people were very apologetic as they refused, and I do understand. Sometimes you really do *have* to be somewhere. The oddest refusal, though, was a man who said, “I have a brand new car so I can’t help you.” I wondered if I were a gorgeous young 20-something in a bikini if his new car excuse might have melted away. Finally, one of my kids’ camp counselors, a college student with a beat up old car, quite willingly helped me jump my car. She was incredibly understanding and helpful, and I will be eternally grateful to her for assisting that day.

Compassion can seem the most powerful at times when it appears as help with the little things. Sparing a little battery juice and five minutes of your time to help someone start a reluctant car is one of those acts that can make a huge difference in someone’s life. Whenever we can, it seems like the kind and human thing to do to help others in whatever way presents itself.
​
© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When I first enrolled at UT as an undergrad, one of my hopes was to blend into the crowd. I had graduated from a class of 51 at a small Catholic girls' school that had about 600 students in grades pre-K through 12. Everyone seemed to know everything about what you didn't want them to know. At one point as a senior I went to the business office to drop off a tuition check, and the women working there commented on something going on in my life. I didn't know these women's names, but they knew what I thought were relatively private things about me.

Thus, I figured by enrolling in a university with approximately 50,000 students, I would be able to disappear into the crowd. Surely no one would know whom I was there. I took a few "weed out" classes my first semester: huge lecture sections which required students to perform well enough to survive the college experience. They were meant to fail those who couldn't handle advanced work in the future. My government class was one of them. It wasn't a class I wanted to take, but it was a degree requirement. After the first exam, we had to go up to the various TAs and claim our blue books. As I said my name to the TA who had my paper, she looked at me and said, "Oh. You got the highest grade on the exam." My response was not what the typical response would have been at that point. The one word that went through my head was "CRAP!" I wanted to blend into the crowd, not be easily identified by a TA who had never met me before. This was exactly what I had been hoping to avoid!

As I have gotten older, I have noticed something that has changed greatly in my world. I'm now an overweight, middle-aged and disabled woman. When I am attending events in person, I seem to disappear from the sight of those around me, especially middle-aged men. Some days I start to question if I am even visible even though I am pretty sure I am still in flesh and blood form. There's a popular story in natural healing communities about the arrival of Columbus' ships in the West Indies. Supposedly the only natives who could see the ships were the shamans. This was because the other natives were not used to seeing something that their mind could not identify. Rather than seeing the ships as something unusual or different, the natives saw nothing at all. While I'm skeptical about the authenticity of the story, it illustrates a powerful point: Some of us only see what we want to see. All other things disappear. Thus, as I am a woman who is not in my prime of beauty or fitness, parts of society would prefer not to see me and often try to avoid me.

I experienced this most recently at the event I attended last Friday night. I have attended this group once before about two years ago, I think. There are over 1000 members on this group's Facebook page, so it's not a small membership. I had forgotten that they have the awful custom of calling out newbies and focusing attention on them. While I realize that many people think this is a great way of recognizing and welcoming new members to make them feel wanted and to get them to return, for introverts it is often undesired attention. Once introverts have found the strength to attend a new group of people they don't know, the last thing they want is to be singled out for attention. However, one of the leaders asked during a momentary break who was new there that night. One of the young men was, and he was happy to engage with the leader. The leader then moved on to the man next to the new attendee who was someone who had not attended in a long time. After that, the leader looked around at the remaining people who happened to be all female and said, "All of you are regulars" or something to that effect. I was puzzled. While I was grateful not to have been singled out for attention, I was also surprised at how I had once again managed to disappear from the sight of this man. 

This is not an unusual occurrence in our society. There are many people whom our society would prefer not to see. The homeless, the disabled, and many minorities are at the top of the list. These groups make many feel uncomfortable. A lot of people think that by avoiding their gaze, these "undesirables" will vanish if not literally, at least long enough to pretend they don't exist. As an overweight, disabled, middle-aged woman, I've unfortunately experienced this "disappearing trick" many try to play with me in hopes that by avoiding my gaze, they won't have to admit that I am there. It's a sad state of affairs when our society wants to pretend that many people who are a part of our human family don't exist. Those people are there, and no matter how much you try to ignore them, they will not go away. The only thing individuals prove by diverting their gazes is that they have much personal work to do in the area of acceptance.

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

There’s no profit in jealousy. ~Quark, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

In Season 6, Episode 7 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, one of the leading characters named Quark is dealing with jealousy. He is a Ferengi, a species known for believing that “earning profit was the sole meaningful goal in life, superseding all other endeavors.” When one of the other characters teasingly asks Quark if he is jealous, he replies, “There’s no profit in jealousy.”

Quark is right according to the theory of scarcity and abundance thinking. This theory promotes the idea that if you see the world as having a deficit of time, energy, or products to meet everyone’s needs, then your world will be defined by scarcity. You will struggle to have enough in your life because you believe that the world is that way. In contrast, those who believe in abundance will find that there is always enough of whatever they need. So a person who is jealous and operates under the motivation of jealousy who be viewing the world through a scarcity model of thinking, and as Quark warns, that person would find no profit.

As I have been working on preparing a meeting on jealousy for my meetup, I realized that one of the ways in which I have dealt with jealousy in my life is through a scarcity mentality I previously held. I was raised in a family that was raised by those who grew up in the Great Depression. My grandparents had to leave school after eighth grade graduation to get jobs in order to help keep the family fed. The whole nation was living in a time of scarcity. As anyone who has known people who lived through the Depression knows, many of them did not let go of their fear and scarcity mentality even in later years when finances were stable for them. Those who were in fear of losing their money again were often very conservative-- if not downright stingy-- with their money. They passed this scarcity mentality on to their children (the Baby Boomers) who passed it on to their children (Generation X, my age grouping). As the Millenial Generation comes of age, we  are finally seeing the legacy of the Great Depression no longer having the same influence on today’s young adults as in previous generations.

However, I never really had thought about the scarcity mentality as being a part of jealousy. To me, I always labeled it insecurity. Yet one of the major roots of jealousy is insecurity. People are envious of others for having things or talents that they might never have. Those who are feeling insecure become jealous when they don’t work through their true fears. For example, I see insecurity and jealousy manifest as a scarcity mentality among many of the alternative healers in Austin. I have watched one healer greedily scarf up any resources I am willing to share with her and others in our circle so that she can build up her files, yet she is unwilling to share any of her resources publicly. I have experienced an intuitive publicly demeaning me during a meetup so that she could look like the more gifted psychic. In another situation, I had a healer refuse to acknowledge my part in a joint healing we did because it was more than his ego would allow.

All of this is nastiness is insecurity rooted in the scarcity mentality: Individual healers are not able to accept that there is more than enough work in the world for those who are talented and willing to give their best to their clients and patients. The fears are rooted in ego, not grounded spirituality, for the fears show no trust in the Universe. If the healers are on their correct path, then they will receive all the work and financial support that they need to be happy in life.

Every once in a while I do feel the green-eyed monster rising up in me, especially when I see other people whom my ego has judged to be less talented than me achieving things that seem way beyond their abilities and reach. I have to pull back on my own reins and remind myself that different people are on different journeys in their lives. Each of us are meant to experience different things at different times. When I see people flocking to a healer whom I know is dangerously misguided, I have to remember that that healer is teaching his/her/hir clients an important lesson in life, one that I might have already learned but which other people still need to grasp. For me, the lesson at that time is to remember that there is abundance in the Universe, and that I am walking the path that I am meant to walk. 

I believe that if we put faith in the Universe and if we follow our intuition and stay on our correct path, then we will often find abundance. That doesn’t mean we will never experience times of drought or pain in our lives, but when we do, those times of drought are often meant to help us grow and change in ways that will eventually bring us greater abundance than we could have imagined. Keeping our egos in check and in the words of our teachers, “keeping our eyes on our own papers” will help us to grow and prosper rather than wallowing in jealousy, fear, and insecurity.

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

This is a topic I’ve written about before, and it’s a topic I’m sure I’ll write about again. However, it’s incredibly important, and it’s something I see abused regularly in the metaphysical community.

Common sense and metaphysical ethics dictate that those with metaphysical gifts should not check out other people on a metaphysical level without their permission. On one level, as an empath, I can’t help but feel people’s emotions, especially when they are poorly shielded and highly emotional. If they’re having a bad day, I will likely know. That is what they are broadcasting, and I don’t have to do anything to ascertain that information just like I don’t have to do anything but look at them to tell they are wearing an orange shirt and blue jeans.

However, on a total different level, many metaphysical practitioners and healers are able to talk to higher powers to find out more personal details about another being. If I wanted, I could ask higher powers why the person above is having a bad day. If someone on the other side is willing to talk, I might discover that he has been fired or the woman he has had an affair with is leaving him or his best friend just died. Regardless of what the reasons are, I would have just crossed over into unethical behavior. All of that is none of my business. I am doing nothing less than prying into a situation where I have no reason to be. If that man had asked me to contact higher powers on his behalf to understand where his depression was coming from, then it is ok for me to do so.

I recently had another metaphysician take it upon himself to check out my metaphysical state and then send me an email with details about what he had discovered was “wrong” with me. He did not have my permission to do so. I am well aware of the issues he discovered; they are something I’ve been working on for months with other healers to change. The result of him doing this and telling me, though, was that I felt like I had been violated. I let that practitioner know that he was acting unprofessionally and unethically (and this was not the first time I've had to tell this practitioner similar things). What he did is no different than a stranger leering in someone’s windows: Just because he’s capable of pressing his nose up to the glass to see what’s going on inside someone’s house, it doesn’t make it the right thing to do. The next step from there is to just go inside someone’s house and check things out because they left their doors unlocked so they must not have wanted people to stay out. Yet all of us know that there is a societal expectation that we don’t walk into other people’s houses without their permission even if the door is unlocked. It’s rude, and it’s an invasion of privacy. Even if the door is open, unless there's a trail of blood that you can see or someone screaming for help, rules dictate that you don't just walk in. The same is true of checking out someone’s metaphysical body (which is their spirit’s house for the time being) without explicit permission. Even if you have the best of intentions, it's still wrong.

The lesson here is really simple: Don’t check out people’s metaphysical state without their permission. Period. Full stop. I wish more people involved with metaphysics would learn to follow this basic rule of courtesy and ethics.

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

I do not serve the world by false humility. I serve the world most by humbly accepting that God uses me, because God uses everyone and everything to serve the process of universal healing. ~Marianne Williamson, Enchanted Love

I very firmly believe that I endured all my health, psychological, emotional and spiritual issues in this life in order to force me to become a better person. What I have been through in the past 41 years has changed me radically, especially in the past 12 when I was forced to start healing old wounds on a much deeper level than before. I am certain that one of the purposes of this life was to heal my soul of much damage it had accumulated across lifetimes.

Yet I also am positive that I went through all of my trials and challenges in order to become a healer so that I could help others heal in ways that aren’t generally possible in our culture. Western medicine flounders around with so many misdiagnoses and with drugs that mask symptoms rather than curing problems. That’s not to say that it doesn’t do some good, too. However, there are many people in this nation who are very well-medicated but still in horrendous pain.

Earlier on the evening when I wrote this post, I questioned whether or not it becomes egocentric to tell others, “I suffered so that you might heal.” In a way, that sounds very Christ-like, and I certainly am not a god. Yet on another level, it is the simple truth. I developed my metaphysical gifts so that I might heal myself and then in turn heal others. I believe that is part of why I was put on this planet in this time in this form. To not use those metaphysical gifts to help others reduce or eliminate suffering would be a waste of my life in my opinion.

However, I’m also very conscious of the dangers of ego combined with healing professions. One of the most perilous things in energy work and healing work is practioners who are coming from a place of ego. When these practitioners forget that they are merely instruments of higher powers and instead believe that they are powerful in their own right, trouble often emerges for both clients and the healers. Spirit does not tolerate that type of ego, and it often induces a scenario that resenbles the famous phrase about pride coming before the fall.

As I enter a new phase of my healing work with others, I am constantly reminding myself that while I am an amazing person, I would not be the gifted healer that I am without the help of those who support me on the other side. My ability to receive healing messages greatly depends on the other side being willing to send them, too! I am grateful to the higher powers who support me day in and day out as we work together to bring about positive change in the world.

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

My maternal grandmother died 24 years ago today, or at least that’s what the record books say.

Her death started in the week beforehand when she was taken to the ER in the middle of the night for congestive heart failure (CHF). The type 2 diabetes she had for the 10+ years before her death is an established risk factor for CHF. She was given six months to live at that point. My mother (and possibly her siblings) decided with the doctors that the best thing for my grandmother to do was to have heart surgery. However, surgery on patients with diabetes has higher risks than on the general population. My paternal aunt, who was an RN/BSN, warned me that doing the surgery was the wrong decision because the risk of stroke was so high. She told me that if we were lucky, my grandmother would die from the stroke during surgery. If we were unlucky, she’d live in a vegetative state for many years with her newly repaired heart. I repeated this information to my mother who discounted and ignored what I said because she was certain her decision to do the surgery was the right one. Her words were along the lines of, "No. This surgery is the only chance your grandmother has."

The night before the surgery, almost all the adults in the family (including me at age 17) gathered in my grandmother's hospital room. She had given birth to six children, five of whom were there along with several spouses and two other grandchildren. The room was quite crowded, but it was filled with laughter. It struck me as such an odd gathering since the family never really got together except for weddings, funerals or major holidays. I left earlier than most of the crowd because I had to be at work at 5 or 6 the next morning. As I left, I had the distinct feeling that it was the last time I would ever see my grandmother alive.

My paternal aunt was correct in her assessment of the situation as my grandmother had a stroke during the surgery but survived. She was in a coma for several more days before she died. What I didn’t expect was that my premonition was correct, too. When I went to the hospital a day or two after the surgery with my boyfriend, my mother was the only one in the room. We were already estranged at that point, so it was an awkward situation. I went and stood by my grandmother’s body, but I could tell her spirit was already gone. As I left, my mother ever-so-helpfully told me, “You know this is likely the last time you’ll see your grandmother alive, don’t you?” My mother was always right (in her mind) as she has narcissistic personality disorder, so I had learned quickly as a child that there was no point in ever trying to tell her otherwise. I simply nodded my head while inside my brain I was screaming, “She’s already gone!”

I don’t know how one tells that the spirit is gone in a patient in a coma, but I do know that I was certain my grandmother’s spirit was not there. The friend whom I have asked to “pull the plug” on me if I were ever in a similar situation is friends with many who have metaphysical abilities who will easily be able to tell if my spirit has already left. Knowing me, I will probably already be trying to communicate from the other side to tell them how to handle things!

My grandmother's body passed away a few days later; mercifully the time her body spent in a coma after the stroke was short. However, to me, the decision to have surgery was the wrong one. I understand why my mother (who had power of attorney for my grandmother who was already showing early signs of dementia) made the decision. My mother felt doctors were gods, and if any of them offered to do something, she would have rapidly agreed even if it was a procedure with terrible odds. She, like most others, also wasn't prepared to lose her mother yet. Many of us make decisions to try and keep our loved ones here longer because of our emotional attachments. However, death is inevitable for all of us. Sometimes the better option is not to medically intervene. In this case, my grandmother’s chance at six months with her family was the better one than the surgery that was likely to cause a stroke due to her risk factors.

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

My journey into exploring my past lives began several years ago as a fairly naive attempt at healing. I have a scar on my body that causes me a great deal of pain 29 years after the event that caused it in this life. I had read that in such cases, where nothing seems to heal the pain of the scar, that there usually is a past life issue involved. Once the past life is cleared up, the pain in the present life will often recede. I had always been open to past lives, but I had no concrete evidence to make me believe that I had lived them. Speaking with my mentor one day, I told her that I wanted to explore past lives to see if I could find the root cause for my pain. My mentor cautioned me that it’s best to do past life regressions with a human guide because of the traumatic incidents that the regressions bring up and release. We agreed to meet again in a week or two to begin exploring my past lives.

Except that didn’t happen. My spirit guides must have been laughing at our conversation because as soon as I opened myself up to seeing my past lives, they began showing them to me. I didn’t need a human guide to assist me; I was perfectly capable of seeing the past lives on my own with the help of my spirit guides. I’ve seen dozens of past lives at this point in my journey, and yet I know there are many that I still haven’t seen. Some of the deaths that I have seen include:

• Being executed by an elephant crushing me in the far East for having given birth to a deformed child
  
• Drowning myself as a shaman because I felt I’d failed my village when a natural disaster occurred in the Maryland area
  
• Being thrown off a cliff as a child sacrifice in a central American culture
  
• Being poisoned with hemlock by my wife (I deserved it!) in Germany
  
• Dying in a hurricane in the Gulf Coast region
  
• Having a friend kill me after I fell from climbing on a pyramid as an adolescent boy and ended up partially paralyzed and in immense pain. His mercy killing was a gift to me.
  
• Being killed by my jealous mother in a Native American culture
  
• Dying from polio in the 16th century in France
• Being shot to death during an accidental spy interception during World War II in Germany
• Dying from lung disease due to a mining accident in South America

Seeing the previous deaths your soul has encountered is very difficult. None of those are easy events to contemplate, but when doing past life regressions, one can actually end up reliving the traumas of the deaths. In the case of trauma that happened in Ireland about five lifetimes ago, I actually had to relive the events leading up to and including my death. I was on my massage therapist’s table, and she was working on my diaphragm. It had been rigid for several days, and nothing seemed to be able to loosen it up. As a result, my breathing had been constricted. In a split second, my massage therapist was able to get into my diaphragm and release it. When the release happened, I was transformed into the moments before my death. I watched a crowd rioting around me, and an angry man with sandy red hair and a red beard came lunging at my abdomen with a pitchfork. The pain was unbearable, and the emotional agony was even worse. The situation in Ireland ended with me being burned at the stake as a witch. Back in the present day, my massage therapist could tell whatever was going on with me was horrific. This was by far one of the most awful deaths I experienced, and it was one which stopped me from using my metaphysical gifts for several lifetimes.

Despite the painfulness of learning about these deaths in past lives, I have also been able to find freedom from inexplicable fears in my life through learning about the past lives and releasing the traumas from them which I was holding onto. I was able to figure out that some of my claustrophobia and dislike for spelunking comes from the mining cave-in that eventually lead to my death. I discovered that my fear of heights especially along cliffs was due to having been a child sacrifice. My strong dislike of guns in this life came about from having been shot to death in my life during World War II. Simply bringing awareness to the roots of my fears helped loosen their hold on me.

What’s most obviously not on that list of deaths is the event in a past life that caused the scar that gives me so much pain in this life. There are some lives for which I haven’t seen the actual deaths because they aren't necessary to heal. Sometimes the trauma that sticks with our souls results from our experiences in our lives. Traumatic incidents from those lives have included:

• Seeing a murder in Versailles
• Losing my fiancé to typhoid fever and my lover to beheading for political reasons while never giving birth to much desired children during that life
• Enduring sexual abuse across many lifetimes
  
• Being mentally ill and involved with an abusive husband
  
• Being enslaved in Egypt after my abusive homosexual lover abandoned me
  
• Marrying an abusive man who damaged my legs to keep me from running away from him in Egypt
  
• Being a Roman soldier in at least one, possibly more lives
  
• Being abandoned by a friend to die in the woods though I survived
  
• Being a brutal raja who learned the pain of war and loss the hard way through the death of my son in India (the only life of royalty I’ve seen)
  
• Being a transgender person on a Pacific island in an era when transitioning wasn’t possible 
  
• Being a brutal general who tortured innocent women and children in Mesopotamia
  
• Being a medicine man who took advantage of the women of his village simply because he could

All of these events didn’t kill me, but they were traumas, and one of them is part of what has created the ongoing scar pain on my body in this life. You’ll also note that there were many lives where I could easily be described as a horrid person. That’s true for all of us. As we learn how to become good people, we experience all sides of issues including being perpetrators, victims, and witnesses. Somehow our souls carry those experiences along with us between lives. The traumas continue to add up over the years, stored in our reincarnated bodies, unless we work to release them. For me, healing from Lyme has actually turned out to be a major journey of releasing these lifetimes of trauma in order to allow my immune system to function better. I honestly don’t understand how we can store the pain from previous traumas, lives and deaths in our bodies. However, I know that I have experienced it time and again in my journey to health. 

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

Earlier in my life, I was part of a beagle rescue group in Austin. I loved fostering dogs, and at some time in the future, I hope to be able to return to fostering. Right now, though, it’s not an option for me for many reasons. However, I do what I can to support animal rescue in other ways. I have my Amazon Smile set up to benefit Dogtoberfest Austin (which in turn supports local dog rescue groups). I donate to local shelters when I have extra funds. Most importantly to this post, I will donate my metaphysical services to those doing animal rescue when I have availability in my schedule. At times it can be helpful to have insight into rescue pets especially when it’s hard to figure out their needs since the animals can’t communicate verbally with us.

Recently two women in a group I’m part of rescued a stray cat. The cat was a cutie, one whom I wanted to snuggle up with the moment I saw his picture. One of the women was debating adopting him herself, but she was concerned about how the cat would get along with her cat as well as the potential medical expenses he would have. They knew that the cat had a broken leg which needed to be reset to heal properly. Beyond that, they had little information on the cat’s origins or needs.

The first thing I heard as I tuned in to higher powers was, “There’s more wrong.” I then saw a series of symbols that were confusing and which I had a hard time translating. What I learned after I gave the healing message to the woman who requested it was that these initial symbols likely represented her parents. There were parallels between her parents and this cat that I couldn’t understand at the time. This is something I would not likely have figured out as I didn’t have the details about her parents to make that connection; I also didn’t expect that connection in a message about the cat.

I also felt like one of the symbols was indicating that the cat had a secondary parasitic infection. As I read down a list of common parasitic infections in cats, I was able to pinpoint that the infection was likely some kind of protozoan infection. This is not unusual: we dealt with multiple worms and parasites in our two dogs over the 13 years they lived with us. Both were rescues and came with a few extra critters we hadn’t expected.

As I continued through the message, I kept getting hit by what I would call “cancer vibes.” I don’t like that sensation, and I don’t want to be passing on potentially life-threatening information to clients if I am not absolutely certain of what I’m being told from the other side. I knew for many years before it happened that one of my dogs would die from cancer (and thymus cancer eventually led to his death), so I know what it’s like to live with that kind of information. In this healing message, I was being told that this cat would eventually face cancer. The estimate I got was many years down the road, but as I’ve said before, time estimates are often not accurate when it comes to information from the other side. I wasn’t happy about having to pass this information on to the client, but I was certain I needed to.

The other bit of relevant information that I received was that this stray cat and the potential adopter’s cat would get along well, but I had a huge amount of concern that the stray might pass on something to the adopter’s cat. This is a risk all animal foster parents take, and it’s why most of them keep their own pets fully vaccinated. Rescues often bring disease with them due to the neglect they’ve undergone in their previous living situations. The fact that I was getting this warning wasn’t too unusual in my mind.

I passed on the information to the woman involved in the cat’s rescue. She meditated on it and decided that the best decision for her and her cat was not to adopt the stray. Instead, she surrendered him to the local animal shelter for them to help him. A few days later, she got back to me with information I hadn’t expected: The stray cat had feline leukemia virus, a virus that eventually causes cancer in cats. It also weakens the immune system and leaves cats prone to secondary infections such as parasites. It’s spread by close contact with other cats with the virus; her cat would have been at risk had the stray joined their home.

It’s always amazing for me to get feedback from clients once they’ve understood what the message I received is actually about. In this case, I wish that I had been wrong about what I had seen. However, the good news is that the stray cat was able to get into a sanctuary for cats with major health issues. He will live out his remaining time loved and cared for.

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

(*I use the gender neutral pronouns “ze” and “hir” in this post for further protection of the client mentioned. I look forward to the day when the MLA and other language authorities will designate an official third person singular neutral pronoun aside from “it.”)

In season 2, episode 18 of Star Trek: Voyager, an immortal being named Q arrives. This particular Q has been the bane of many Starfleet officers in the recent series for his antagonistic behavior towards humanity. In this episode, he is trying to convince Captain Janeway to not give asylum to another member of the Q continuum. Janeway proposes a deal to Q, who responds:

It says a great deal that a conniving and manipulative being such as Q is upheld for not being a liar. Truth-telling is a separate virtue than many of the other things Janeway accuses Q of being. In our society, liars are not well-respected for the most part. Perhaps this is because the Ninth Commandment in the Judeo-Christian tradition is “You shall not bear false testimony against your neighbor” which is translated to “You shall not lie” in more modern editions of Exodus. One could also argue that the Ninth Commandment arose because Jewish society already put such a strong emphasis on truth telling.

In my own life, I’d never realized how important the truth is to me until suddenly I was confronted by many lies. Throughout my relationship with my now-ex-husband there were many times that he neglected to tell me the full story about something. In our Catholic upbringing, this would be considered a sin of omission: failing to take the honorable path when one is clear on what that duty is. However, with our separation, my ex-husband’s behavior switched to sins of commission: knowing that an act is wrong but doing it anyway. In this case, he began intentionally telling me half-truths and lies (and felt completely justified in doing so). Suddenly I realized how vitally important honesty is to a relationship and how much I had valued his previous honesty now that it was gone. My respect for my ex-husband and my desire to maintain a friendship with him suddenly dissolved because I want and need my friends to be honest with me.

Personally speaking, I don’t lie. I’m not able to do it. Anyone who knows me well enough will even be able to tell clearly when I’m only telling half the story by my body language and my energy. I’ve been rightfully described on many occasions of being honest to a fault: if you don’t want to know the truth, then don’t ask me a question. I will gently tell you that yes, that dress does make your butt look large. I would never volunteer that kind of information to anyone but my closest friends without being asked, though!

Within my practice, this truth-telling is also vitally important to me. I have a great sense of honor in keeping my word. I believe confidentiality as vital to my relationships with my clients. I’ve noted in many places that the only reasons I will break confidentiality is if I am ordered to by a court of law or if there is a high risk to someone involved (such as calling Child Protective Services about an abused child). Recently, I had to break client confidentiality for just such a reason: the client was a danger to hirself* and/or others. My body was literally shaking when I spoke with the person to whom I referred the client and hir major issues. I was fighting back tears through it all, and afterward, I did cry. There was absolutely no question to me that I was doing the right thing in breaking confidentiality to get this person the help ze needs in a life-threatening situation. However, it was still devastating to me personally to have to break the confidentiality that person had placed in me. My word matters to me, and I recognize clearly that a person who doesn’t honor hir word is not trustworthy. I hope one day that the client will be able to understand why I did what I did for hir. For now, I know that getting hir help is far more important than me keeping hir secrets.

Even as large parts of our society are moving away from a religious based moral guidance system, lying remains a despicable trait in our society with good reasons. False promises fall into this category of lies. Balthasar Gracian has written, “A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity.” Lies are that powerful.  A person who tells the truth is seen as having a very redeeming quality and in turn is trustworthy as a person. This is the standard to which I hold myself.

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

In season 2, episode 8 ofStar Trek: Voyager, a telepathic alien attacks the Federation crew using mind control techniques. By rendering the crew catatonic, the alien is able to paralyze the spaceship’s movement forward in the galaxy. The alien was able to read the crew’s deepest fears and desires and use hallucinations involving those emotions in order to render the crew unable to function. The entire crew except for the young telepathic Ocampan (Kes) and the holographic doctor succumbs to the alien’s mind control. Kes and The Doctor are left to save the crew from this paralyzing menace.

The way in which Kes manages to overpower the telepathic alien is through a metaphysical concept known as mirroring. When the alien directs toxic thoughts at her, Kes bounces the toxicity back at the alien as though she were a mirror. It’s a very simple concept to understand, and it actually is not incredily difficult to practice either. One simply visualizes a mirror around oneself and asks that any negativity that is sent towards oneself is returned back to the sender. It may take a while before one is able to make the mirror effective, though practice makes perfect.

Initially this was a spiritual defense tactic which I thought was bordering on immoral. I don’t like the idea of causing other people harm. I would never intentionally use metaphysics (or “magick” as many prefer) in order to put negativity on others. Therefore, I had difficulties with the idea of potentially hurting others through mirroring. I still struggle with it at times. However, the way I found peace with the concept of defensive mirroring is through the proverb of “reaping what you sow.” Based on this idea, one should never be putting out something that one doesn’t want coming back to oneself. Thus, if I don’t ever want anyone to intentionally put pain on me, I should never intentionally put pain on others. Anything I do choose to send out in energetic form, I should be aware that it could come back to me. Those who are willing to engage in the sending of negative energy need to be recognize it may come back to them.

I still prefer not to use mirroring as my primary defense method. I maintain high metaphysical shields, especially in public, and I often ask my guides and angels to help protect me. I keep my vibrations as high as possible so I don’t attract negativity. It is very rare when I set up a mirror defense around me as I don’t want to do harm to others even if they’ve sent harm out towards me. However, as a method of last resort, a “return to sender” on an energetic package can be quite effective.

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

When I was a teenager, I decided that I wanted to have two sets of boy-girl twins. That way I could enjoy have four children without having to be pregnant four times. Of course, life doesn’t always work the way we plan it. I was right that I was not the type of women who enjoys pregnancy. However, I did manage to have one set of boy-girl twins.

During my first pregnancy, I held out hope until fairly late that I might have twins, but my midwife was confident that I was having a singleton whom my intuition had correctly identified as a girl. My second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage at 5.5 weeks. With my third pregnancy, I had my hCG levels drawn very early, and they were normal. I elected not to have thetriple screen done at 14-16 weeks because of the high chance of false positives. My then-husband and I would not have terminated a pregnancy because of Down Syndrome, so we didn’t see the point.

My third pregnancy had not been easy, but my first had not been either. Carpal tunnel syndrome started for me at 10 weeks instead of the 20 weeks it had started at in the first pregnancy. Morning sickness was only seven weeks instead of 10, though. I was tired quite a bit, but that helped keep me on the couch working on my dissertation. One day while I was laying there on the couch at about seven weeks, I had a passing thought about "when the babies arrived." I mentally stopped myself, not sure why I had thought about my impending arrival in the plural, but I shook it off and went on with my dissertation work.

A few weeks later, I was driving on an entrance ramp to the highway when the thought went through my mind out of nowhere, “What if they are conjoined twins?” Again, I told myself I was crazy. There was nothing wrong with my baby, and I was only having one, not two. When I went to prenatal yoga a few weeks later, my instructor asked me if I knew the sex of the baby. I told her that it was a boy, but there was something else going on that I couldn’t pinpoint.

At 18 weeks, we went in for a sonogram to check on our baby. Given that our firstborn had died during delivery, I had spent the previous eight months researching infant loss and reading stories by other women who had lost their babies. If there was something that could go wrong, I knew about it. For many people, their first sign that something was wrong with their babies came during their initial sonogram. That knowledge was in the back of my mind  as the sonographer put the probe on my abdomen. He held it there only for a second, and then he pulled it off and flew his rolling chair over to the adjacent desk. He began frantically flipping through my file, clearly not finding what he was looking for. I began to panic. What had he seen in that second that was concerning him so much? Finally he turned to us and asked, “Do you know that you’re having twins?”

After the sonogram, my then-husband and I went out to lunch, sitting there in stunned silence as we stared at each other contemplating what we had both been told. After the shock wore off, there was only joy. The only thing better than being blessed with one baby was to be blessed with two.

I carried my twins to term, and after an exciting delivery, they joined us in the world. The first six months were very rough, but our babies were worth every sleepless night we went through courtesy of their undiagnosed silent reflux. After they turned two, life became much easier. Now, as they reach 15, my twins are still an amazing source of joy in my world. Watching their unique sibling relationship evolve over the years has been fascinating to me.

Twins are becoming incredibly common in our world with the advances in fertility treatments. According to theCenter for Disease Control, “The rate of twin births in the United States reached a 33.7 twin births out of every 1,000 deliveries in 2013.” When my twins were born in 2000, the natural fraternal twin rate was 1:85, and the identical twin rate was 1:300. Yet despite how common twins have become, our society still sees twins as something incredibly rare and special. I am grateful that I have been able to have the experience of parenting twins in this life because it truly has been a blessing.

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

Popular culture portrays psychics and intuitives in a number of different ways. Some of them accurately reflect my experiences as an intuitive to a certain extent: my perception, both sensory and extrasensory, leads me to deduce things about people that most would not be able to learn. Shows like Sherlock and The Mentalist explain part of my sensory perception of the world, though I certainly don’t function on the same level as these fictional characters. I cannot look at someone and tell that they have eaten ketchup manufactured in a certain province of China unlike the modern incarnation of Sherlock Holmes. In addition, unlike Patrick Jane and Sherlock Holmes, I can actually use extrasensory perception in addition to my highly attuned observational skills. Often it’s very difficult for me to tell which I’m using.

Patrick Jane is the title character in The Mentalist; he is adamantly against the possibility of true psychic perception having previous earned his living as a fraudulent psychic medium. However, he has incredibly powerful skills of observation which he uses to solve crimes. In one episode, Jane figures out that one of his male colleagues is sleeping with another one of his female colleagues based partially on the fact that the man is using the woman’s soap. While this might seem far fetched, I’ve been able to figure out similar things based on my heightened sense of smell. For instance, when my then-husband came home from work one day, I asked him where he had been. He responded that he’d been at work. I told him he went somewhere else that day, too. He told me no. Finally, after a few rounds of this, I told him that I could smell the other place on him and that it wasn’t a place he normally went to. At that point, he admitted that he had been to another office that day which he hadn’t wanted to tell me about. He wasn’t having an affair. He was just trying to keep some information away from me as part of a power/control move on his part. We still have periodic incidents, despite us being divorced, where I’m able to literally smell another story on him than the one he tells me.

At times, it’s less obvious to me when I am using sensory perception versus extrasensory perception. When I am observing the world, I don’t intentionally use one or the other most of the time. They’re an integrated part of my understanding of all that is around me. In one case, I determined that a friend in the group I socialized with was dating someone new and he hadn’t told the rest of us. When I related this to another mutual friend, he asked for my evidence. I gave him a list of things I’d observed including a particularly minute muscle movement that the guy in question had manifest in his neck and left shoulder. The mutual friend agreed with me that something was up with this guy, but he was convinced that there was no way that the things I had observed added up to a secret girlfriend. A few weeks later, the truth came out: Everything I’d deduced was true.

So was that muscle movement that I observed sensory or extrasensory perception? Likely it was both. I saw the movement with my eyes, but I also perceived a shift in his energy as the muscle movement happened. There was something beyond just a muscle movement. Yet I can’t easily explain to others when I experience an energy shift in someone. As an intuitive empath, I can feel people’s energy in conjunction with watching their actions and listening to the words, and the end result is often me ending up knowing more than I many people think I could possibly know.

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

As adults, almost all of us can identify a friend or acquaintance whom we would dub “a flirt.” They are the people who are constantly saying or doing things that are slightly inappropriate in a way they use to attract the sex they prefer for romantic partners. When I was in college, one of the guys in my crowd was a confirmed flirt even when he was in a committed monogamous relationship. He made women fall for him through his carefully constructed use of language. After we had graduated and moved on, I saw him again at a wedding that we were both in. He came up to me and said, “Hey, beautiful! How are you doing?” As he said it, I saw him notice my husband out of the corner of his eye. The peppy, flirtatious upbeat comments he was making were much less so by the end of the sentence because he knew it was inappropriate for him to flirt with a married woman in that way. While that might not stop some flirts, this guy did have some boundaries.

While people who are overtly flirtatious are easy to identify, those who are subtly flirtatious are much harder to understand and identify for many of us. We know who these people are: They are the people who attract others of the sex of their preference without trying. If the person in question is a heterosexual woman, she is the type who may not be stunningly beautiful or have an amazing personality, but she still has men throwing themselves at her for reasons that seem to evade our understanding. Likewise, there are guys who are “chick magnets.” Women can’t seem to get enough of them, yet these guys aren’t actually doing anything remarkable to attract their fan clubs. So why does this happen?

What I’ve discovered since opening to my metaphysicial abilities is that there is such a thing as an energetic flirt or a second chakra flirt. These are the people who aren’t doing anything obvious but still seem to attract more than their fair share of attention from potential romantic partners. The reason that they attract so many potential sexual partners is because of the energy they are putting out from their second or sacral chakra, and if one is sensitive to it, one can quickly feel and recognize that energy when around these people. Our second chakras are located in our pelvis, and they are, amongst other things, the seat of our sexuality and relationships with others. When a person has an imbalance in their sexual energy, it results in this “energetic flirt” type of person.

My first intimate experience with men with challenges involving their sacral chakras was the man I fell in unrequited love with. He is by no means an overt flirt: He never said or did anything that I could have ever interpreted as hitting on me. Yet at the same time, there was always an underlying sexual tension between us, one that wasn’t there in any other relationships with men whom I’d known previously. Because I had not come into my metaphysical gifts fully at that point, I didn’t realize that the energy I was feeling between us was not intentional on his part. Instead, because of issues he wasn’t aware of, he threw out sexual energy from his second chakra creating a sexual atmosphere without meaning to. For a woman like me who is an intuitive empath and is overly sensitive to others’ energy, there was no difference between him being an overt flirt and an energetic flirt. I fell for him in part because of his sexual energy that I was experiencing because of his poor energetic boundaries. I later found out that there were many other women who had the same reaction to him because of the energy he puts out. It wasn’t just me.

My unrequited love for this energetically flirty man was a painful experience, but it clearly taught me that when I feel that energy coming off of a man, I need to put my shields up and/or avoid him completely. There is nothing but trouble ahead if I am not careful. The next man I met who put out this sexual energy was someone whom I knew logically was not interested in me: he had published a narrow-minded rant on the web about fat people, so clearly he was not going to be attracted to me. At the same time, he was sending me a very sexual energy. The more I learned about him, the more I understood that he, too, had issues with his second chakra that he was unaware of which greatly impact his sexual and social lives. Since these experiences, I’ve encountered other men with this same issue, and I always head in the other direction. It’s not a healthy experience that I wish to partake in.

The underlying pattern that my mentor told me was there and that I have found to be true is that these energetic flirts often have been sexually abused, either in this lifetime or in previous ones. Not everyone who has been sexually abused will have issues with their second chakras putting out flirtatious energy. However, those who do put out flirtatious energy have almost always experienced sexual trauma. Their sexual boundaries were violated and broken down because of the abuse, and they don't realize that they have energetic boundary issues as a result. Most are unaware of the connection between their history of sexual abuse and all of the sexual partners they attract as well as the larger issue of difficultly in their sacral chakras. It’s only those who want to examine and work on this issue that will be able to see the pattern and then be able to heal it.

Healing sexual trauma is a difficult journey because it involves working through deep pain that we’ve often intentionally shoved away rather than processing it, but the results when one confronts the hidden issues in one’s lives and body can be dramatic. It is possible to heal damaged chakras, restore them to a positive place, and create better boundaries in one’s life so that one attracts healthier romantic partners. Changing one’s energetic flirtatiousness is entirely possible if one commits to doing so and then follows through with some powerful personal, spiritual, and emotional work.

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

Last Friday was another powerful day of healing in my world, both personally and globally. The spiritual work I have been doing on myself reached another major turning point as my healers and I released one of the deeper traumas from my childhood. As it released, I saw that the emotions from that incident tied back to traumas in another life hundreds of years ago; the past life experience involved the same soul who also hurt me in this life and many others as well.

After the trauma released from my body, I was told symbolically that this was the last thing that was blocking me from finding unconditional and spiritual love in this lifetime. In the past few years, we’ve pulled out many other energetic blocks related to other people who’ve harmed me and related to beliefs I have previously held. At one point we even had to clear away the soul of a female ancestor who lived in the 19th century in Tennessee. She had been sexually abused by four or five different men in her life, and so she held the false belief that all men are dangerous. She was trying to protect me by keeping men away from me, something I definitely didn’t appreciate even if she was doing it with the best of intentions! My mentor and I helped her crossed over, leaving me happily without my unwanted guardian.

I’ve been working for a long time to reach this point; I was starting to wonder if I would ever reach it. So the news brought me great joy. I left that healing appointment feeling pretty happy and headed to my next appointment. Before it started, I had a few minutes to check to see if my kids had emailed or texted me. They had not, but I noticed an email from a friend who said, “Just saw the SCOTUS decision! :)” I knew that could only be good news, and Googling confirmed that the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of same-sex marriages. Tears began misting in my eyes, but I had to move on to my appointment. Afterward, though, when I got a chance to read some of the articles about the announcement, more tears came streaming down my face.

I don’t have any friends or family members who were waiting to get legally married in Texas. Many couples I know have already gone to Canada or other states to legalize their unions. However, for me, this was a victory that I had been waiting for for a long time. It says a great deal that our society is finally open-minded enough to accept that same-sex marriage will not bring about the end of the world. There’s still a great deal of progress to be made in terms of ending discrimination against those who aren’t cisgendered or heterosexual. However, this is a big and public step forward.

One part of the announcement seriously disturbed me, though. The Supreme Court decision was a 5-4 victory, a very narrow margin. Still, a victory is a victory. What bothered me most was that conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, the only African American on the court at this time, voted against same-sex marriage. Given his conservative voting record, this isn’t a surprise. Yet looking at his personal life, it is. Clarence Thomas married his second wife, Virginia Lamp, in 1987. They are considered an interracial couple as she is of Caucasian descent. Yet it was only twenty years earlier in 1967 that interracial marriage became legal in Thomas’ home state of Georgia thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision of Loving v. Virginia. Less than fifty years later, Thomas is now on the side of the privileged, those who can marry whomever they want, and he voted against letting all citizens have the right to marry their partners. To me, that was a bitter pill to swallow.

While I rejoiced on Friday with many others in the rest of the nation, the fight is far from over in Texas. Certain politicians seem to have a distorted belief that the SCOTUS decision of Obergefell v. Hodges is not the last word. Texas Governor Greg Abbott immediately issued a statement allowing state agencies to refuse to issue same sex marriage licenses on the basis of religious freedom, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has also encouraged county clerks not to issue same-sex licenses. The only county in the Austin area to begin immediately issuing licenses on Friday to same-sex couples was Travis, the liberal bastion of Texas. Other local counties are twiddling their thumbs, blaming a need to update software, and “investigating” what the Supreme Court ruling actually means for their offices. I don’t have great hopes that all county offices in Texas will be offering same-sex couples their now legal right to obtain a marriage license by the end of July. I suspect it is going to take more federal action to make it happen. In my mind, I keep seeing the military involvement  in 1957 that was necessary to enforce the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated schools.

Despite these new hurdles, I am grateful that both the nation and I have moved forward in a major way when it comes to liberating love. I hope that when the time is right, all of us will be able to find the partners we seek and will be able to decide if and when we choose to get married unhampered by the prejudiced "religious" beliefs of others.

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

In the past year, I have noticed this bizarre bit of synchronicity in my life on many occasions: When something in my life, my body, or my spiritual journey is blocked, my master bathroom toilet also clogs.  As amusing as it is, it’s also very frustrating. This weekend’s version of this parallel experience was more aggravating than usual.

I’ve spent the entire weekend (starting on Friday afternoon) feeling really off, emotionally and physically. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly was wrong, though I know which flower essence I need to help with what I’m working on processing. I’m waiting for it to arrive in the mail mid-week. Until then, all I can really do is work through the other information that my spirit guides give me which was unfortunately not much as we are in a holding pattern until the essence arrives.

My toilet clogged early on Sunday morning. Despite my best efforts, I was not able to unclog it. I tried periodically throughout the day but really got nowhere with it. Then, suddenly in the late afternoon, I heard a gurgling-popping-draining noise from my bathroom. Not more than ten seconds later, I felt a powerful internal movement within my body. I can’t describe exactly what it felt like, but it seemed like a drain opened and everything that had been making me feel like crud was suddenly gone within a few seconds. I walked into the bathroom and discovered that the same draining had occurred with the toilet. The clog was finally gone in both of us.

I was waiting for my sauna to warm up when this happened; that was the only thing that I had done. I hadn’t taken any medications or supplements that could have made me physically feel better, and it’s almost unheard of for something to give me instant relief like that anyway. The synchronistic timing felt fairly wild and too much to be coincidence. I offered up gratitude to whomever got both me and my toilet feeling better, and I headed into the sauna. There, the next unusual experience of the day happened.

When I am receiving messages from the other side, they come in two main forms. In the first, I see symbols and hear words on occasion; I’ll sometimes smell odors or feel sensations as well. It’s not a coherent transmission that I can relate to others without translation. The message is basically in code. When I receive healing messages for clients and for myself, this is the type of message I receive. The second type of message happens when I am used as a channel. This doesn’t happen too often, but when it happens, I am always left in awe. I am nothing more than a scribe at that point, taking dictation for the other side. I usually can barely keep up with the clear and coherent sentences I get from the other side. Unlike many channels, I’m not in a trance when this happens: today I was very aware of the thunderstorm outside and the increasing sweat on my body. I have never served as a channel when someone else is around, so I don’t know if I can interact easily with others when it’s happening or not.

In today’s session, a spirit guide came to me rather unexpectedly. She gave me a name that could be for a woman of any era among thousands of years and from a multitude of cultures (but she’s asked me not to share her name for whatever reasons she has). I don’t think she and I have had any other connections with each other before. When she communicated with me, she spoke quickly and fluently, transmitting dozens of mantras to me for the inspirational memes I put on my website, Facebook, and Pinterest. Looking back at some of them later in the day, I didn’t recognize some of the thoughts I had written, but that’s because I was so busy writing I couldn’t actually take time to process the words in the moment. I’ve been given mantras from the other side before, but never in bulk like this. I had spent several hours earlier in the day working on creating and scheduling the posts for July’s memes, so perhaps that activity had drawn the attention of someone on the other side, and she was just helping me get parts of August, September, and October done as well.

I am also not quite sure why the mantras followed upon the release of whatever was blocking my health, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. I know some of the mantras are meant for me specifically, but some seem as though they are meant for other people whom they will reach through my posting them on my website and other places. Regardless, when the other side gives me a gift like that, I don’t think there’s any appropriate response except to say thank you and then to create the memes they’ve given to me so clearly!

I enjoy when I channel for the other side. It’s draining physically, but it’s also exhilarating. I appreciate the experience every time it happens, and I’m always left in awe. Some day I hope to have a better understanding of why I receive these channeling messages when I do, but for now, I am grateful for the experience.

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

I have written before on numerous occasions about how emotions can be stored in our bodies. This is a universal experience for all humans, though many of us are not aware of this reality. Once we are conscious of the fact we have stored emotions in our bodies that may be manifesting as physical pain or disease, then the question becomes how to release those stored emotions in order to find health. However, just as the traumas each of us suffer and store are all unique, so too are the solutions to release those emotions different for each person and situation involved. 

So where does one start? There are many different approaches to releasing stored emotions; I am only presenting some of the more common ones in alphabetical order. The goal of using all of these strategies is to find ways to bring stored emotions and traumas to the surface so that they can then be cleared. However, before you begin trying to remove any of these stored emotions, I strongly recommend you find a good, open-minded psychotherapist to work with. Bring difficult emotions to the surface can be very painful, but the work is incredibly rewarding once you are liberated from that stored emotion or trauma.

Acupuncture: Acupuncture is a healing modality which works directly with energy in the body. Because Traditional Chinese Medicine's fundamental understanding of how the body works is vastly different than the Western model, it can be difficult for many to understand what acupuncture actually does. The best explanation that I can give is that acupuncture moves energy through the body to clear blockages. These blockages can be literal, such as a clogged duct causing mastitis, or emotional, such as fear preventing one's kidneys from working properly. 

Breathwork: One of the easiest and cheapest approaches is breathwork; this is something that can be used in conjunction with many of the other modalities listed but it can also be used on its own. The most powerful experience I had with relieving my stored traumas from my daughter's death involved only breathwork, intent and maybe a crystal or two (but I can't remember for certain). The release that happened was something I would never have thought possibly happen just from breathing and focusing on the area where I had stored the pain of her death. This is an approach that I am able to teach clients how to use, but again, as you start out, I would recommend only using it with supervision because of how powerful it can be.

Craniosacral Therapy: Craniosacral therapy is a system of very light touch that helps release energy blockages in the body. I have had some powerful releases with it. This is one of those modalities where the first impression might be that the practioner is not really doing anything, but once the energy gets moving, amazing change and relief can happen. It's been effective for physical, emotional, and spiritual pain for me. It's also very relaxing and enjoyable most of the time!

Crystals: When I was younger, I did not understand what all those hippies were doing with their crystals. A former therapist encouraged me to buy a few, and once I did, I was hooked. I love crystals of all sorts, and I've had countless powerful experiences with crystals helping change my energy and release stored trauma as a result. Crystals can take anywhere from hours to months to be effective depending on the size, the number used, the location, and the problem. However, they too can cause all kinds of powerful results. They work based on the principle that everything and everyone on earth has a vibration. The crystals help raise human vibrations to a more positive level, and in the process, stored negative emotions and entities will depart the body because it is no longer a hospitable host for them.

EFT: Emotional Freedom Technique is a process of tapping on a series of acupressure points while reciting an affirmation. The goal of EFT is to release anxiety, trauma, and negative programming while replacing it with more positive thoughts and aspirations. Many use EFT for weight loss and issues around PTSD. EFT has soared in popularity in recent years, and many other similar tapping programs have been designed. I do not use EFT personally because it is not the right approach for me, but I have had success with a self-created, intuition-based tapping process based off of the "Beginning and Ending Technique" described by David S. Walther. I use this tapping when difficult emotions are surfacing so that I can keep from entering an overly anxious and unproductive state of being.

EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is another body-mind modality that should be learned and initially practiced with a trained professional. I have never used this technique, but I know of many who have been able to use it to successfully help with severe PTSD.

Essential Oils: Our society tends to enjoy essential oils for fragrance reasons; many undereducated salespeople also falsely promise miracle cures from their use. This is not the way in which I use essential oils. All essential oils also have spiritual properties, and some are very effective in helping act as a lubricant to release stored traumas and entities. Like crystals, they can help change a person's vibrational level. I work with essential oils using intuitive guidance finding the best oil for each person and then confirming possible contraindications with Robert Tisserand's amazing tome,Essential Oil Safety.

Flower Essences: Flower essences are a purely energetic form of healing which is part of why they along with homeopathy are not very well understood by our society. In using a direct method, flower essences are created by placing the flower in a bowl of water and leaving it sun and/or moonlight to absorb the energy of the flower. Crystals can also be added. The flower is then removed, the water is combined with a preservative such as alcohol, and the essence is complete. While this sounds like something that would be powerless, the energy in these essences can be palpable just holding the bottles. I've used many, many, many flower essences over the years for me and with my clients that have made both minor and major shifts in lives. They help change energy in the body so that the emotions can release.

Hands on Energy Work: This is not a do-it-yourself practice for beginners. A skilled practitioner is able to do manual manipulation on others' bodies to help release stored energy. I've experienced this with work by BodyTalk practioners, chiropractors, naturopaths, and massage therapists. I'd recommend finding a very grounded, very wise, very experienced person to do this as if it's done wrong, it can cause harm. I do not yet offer this service but expect to within a few years.

Homeopathy: Like flower essences, homeopathy is an energy based means of releasing emotions. Homeopathics are created from energetic vibrations of often toxic substances. Because they are energy based, they are safe to use (unless you are sensitive to lactose, though there are some lactose free ones on the market) and can cause major shifts in one's emotions and physical symptoms. I recommend working with someone who can assist and dose you properly with these substances as if you don't have the right remedy, you will be wasting your time, money and effort.

Light and Color: There are various programs and machines that work with colors and light to help shift internal energy. A more mainstream version of this are Seasonal Affective Disorder lamps. I have never used any kind of machine to do this, but I do find that I tend to pick clothes that strengthen my chakra that needs the most assistance that day.

Massage: Most massage therapists will tell tales of people emotionally falling apart for absolutely no reason while being on the massage table. This comes from the massage relaxing the body and releasing the tension and emotions we are holding. For me, I have experienced this most often with past life issues: I've seen many of my past life experiences while under the hands of a skilled massage therapist. Most massage therapists are not trying to make this happen, but it does occur. Going in with an intention of making it happen and treating your massage like a meditation time will help for the possibility to arise.

Meditation: If you aren't an experienced meditator, this isn't an approach I'd recommend as your introduction to meditation. However, once a person has become skilled at meditation, it is entirely possibly to enter a meditative state and work internally with the energy in one's body to release emotions that are stored. It is usually combined with breathwork. When I do it, I often am using crystals, flower essences, essential oils, and sound in addition. It's a very difficult process to explain, but once one knows how to manipulate energy, then one can essentially use one's mind like a shovel to loosen and scoop out the negative stored energy that one doesn't want to retain any longer.

Sound: The use of sound therapy to help clear chakras and other emotional issues is widespread; there are many practitioners who only focus on this. There are Meetup groups for it. I have playlists on Spotify which address it. One of my favorite CDs for sound therapy is by Jonathan Goldman. I can feel my energy vibrating when I play it. Most of the time, this does not create a major release for me, but there are times when it has been very effective. This is an easy way for many people to start changing their energy in a subtle way.

Tai Chi: I have never practiced Tai Chi, but like yoga, the practice is one that creates a great deal of healthy movement of energy in the body. I recommend it as a way for people who don't want to try yoga to find a physical way to get their bodies, minds and spirits working together to release negativity.

Writing:  I often recommend journaling with old fashioned pen and paper as a way of starting to bring up issues that have been submerged in our subconscious and bodies. For some song composition, poetry, or other forms of creation are more appropriate. While writing often does not usually remove the block by itself, it can bring things to the surface so that other means can be more efficacious. 

Yoga: Last but not least, yoga is a time honored way of releasing emotions. There are several groups in the Austin area that do yoga for trauma release; there are also numerous therapist who combine yoga with talk therapy. While American culture tends to see yoga as exercise, it's also a deeply spiritual practice that can change lives through its impact. It's one of first ways I often recommend to people for learning to become more in tune with their bodies.

When a river is unintentionally dammed up, one can go about releasing the block in a few ways. One can remove a key piece of the block and then get the heck out of the way as the waters will be able to flood through. One can also add more water until the sheer pressure breaks the dam. Likewise, with our emotions, when something is blocked in our minds and bodies, we actually have to work to remove it. This is not the gut reaction for most humans who would prefer to turn away from the dam. The methods above can help remove a key piece of blockage; some are gentler than others. All can be effective in helping clear stored emotions and traumas from the body in order to create more health. 

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

I was recently approached by a parent concerned about an adult child who is addicted to a dangerous illegal street drug. This parent, like almost all of us who are parents, wanted to help the child. However, I was unable to help parent by receiving a healing message for the adult child for several reasons.

The first is the most obvious: The adult child is an adult. I can not help anyone over 18 who is not incapacitated (such as with those who have advanced Alzheimer's or are in a coma) without their explicit permission. For me to contact higher powers on that person’s behalf without permission would be a serious spiritual violation. Many psychics and intuitives will do this, and it always floors me when they do. Some will actually commit spiritual assaults: in trying to show off their metaphysical abilities, the psychics will start doing a reading for someone in public without the person’s explicit consent. I know one psychic who did this at a dinner party she was at, revealing all kinds of difficult and traumatic information about another woman at the gathering. The targeted woman was understandably upset, but other women at the dinner praised the psychic for doing a good thing and forcing the traumatized woman to deal with her past whether she wanted to or not. Situations like this make me sick to my stomach because it is spiritual assault, and it creates an entirely new level of trauma on top of the original one. I would never want someone to do that to me, and I will not do it to others.

The second reason involves commitment. If people don't want to stop using whatever substance they are addicted to, they will very likely relapse; that had already happened once very recently in this situation after the adult child left rehab after only three days. Families may be able to involuntarily commit loved ones to a rehab center in some states, but whether or not people ultimately succeed in stopping their drug use depends on their own spirits and their own recovery work. (I am completely aware that relapses may happen for some people; it’s part of their individual healing process. Relapses with a desire to quit are a far different situation than continuing ongoing substance abuse without a conscious desire to stop.) In this particular case, the adult child had not yet hit the point of being able to say, “I want to be clean.” The adult child was still wanting to return to a romantic partner who was also abusing drugs. What the parent was asking me to do was find a miracle cure that the parent could give the adult child that would make the adult child see the situation clearly and would help create change. Unfortunately, I can’t do that. The person involved has to take the first step and contact me, and even then, I do not offer or promise miracle cures.

This willingness to heal is only the first part of why I can only work with patients committed to achieving sobriety. The other reason is that substance abuse drags our metaphysical energy down. Much of the energy work I do aims to raise one’s energy level up so that one can heal the traumas that have damaged us during this and other lives. If one is still drinking or using, then one is actively (though unintentionally) pulling one’s energy down. If I were to attempt to help someone who was still using, we very likely would not make progress. The positive energy changes I would be helping create would be counteracted by the ongoing substance use creating negative energy changes. It’s like a tug of war where no one is going to win. I’m not the only healer who has found this to be true: there is a therapist in town whom I refer people to who uses EMDR with her clients. She requires them to be 100% free of recreational drugs and alcohol during the time period that they work together (and not just during actual sessions). She has found through years of experience that if clients are using any kind of mind altering substance, the EMDR will not “stick” and both client and therapist are wasting their time.

If someone has reached the point of wanting to heal, then I absolutely can help them. Once that person recovering from substance abuse reaches out to me, I have literally hundreds of flower essences in my collection to help the individual with the energetic issues that contribute to the problem of addiction; many are alcohol free, and others can be adapted to evade the alcohol in them. The essences alone will not help a person to quit using; the client will also need to be working with a licensed therapist and/or support program. However, the flower essences and other techniques that I employ can help the person to address the genetic, biological, emotional, and spiritual triggers that create the addiction situation in the first place. These triggers are often deeply buried emotions and traumas that none of us want to confront. However, by bringing the triggers to the surface using energy healing, the person has a better chance for a full recovery because they will be confronting the issues that caused them to start abusing in the first place. 

The work I do is one more way to support oneself during the difficult periods of recovery. It’s not a miracle cure-all. It still requires that those involved want to help themselves. In the case of the adult child above, I was able to help support the parent with the parent’s issues around the adult child’s addiction plus give suggestions of over the counter vitamins and supplements to talk to the adult child's doctors about using in order to help facilitate detoxification when the adult child does decide to stop using. However, until the adult child reaches out to me (and to many others) with the desire to heal, the best I can do is send positive thoughts and prayers that person may find the desire to heal sooner rather than later.

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

Synchronicity plays out in our lives in interesting ways that we sometimes don’t understand or expect. We also sometimes become the channel and voice for higher powers when we don’t realize it. For me, my most recent experience of this happened on Mother’s Day.

In the past few months, I’ve become an herbal tea addict. Up until this point in my life, I wasn’t a fan, but something shifted in my body recently that not only do I like herbal teas, but I crave them. So when my kids went on vacation for spring break, I asked them to bring me back a tea mug from the Butterfly House for Mother’s Day if they saw something there that grabbed their attention. I was envisioning a mug with butterflies on it.

Two months passed, and on the day before Mother’s Day, my daughter asked me what my favorite animal was. I told her that my lifelong spirit animal is an elephant, but that I’ve been feeling attracted to turtles lately. This was a slip of the tongue: I had actually meant to say frogs. However, it was too late to take back what I had said as my daughter had replied, “Good!” I had no idea what she meant.

The next morning, I was informed that I wanted to drink hot tea for breakfast but was permitted to select a flavor. My kids brought me a cup of one of my favorites, Happy Heart tea, in my new mug. Looking at the exterior of the mug, it was incredibly simple and plain, though it had a pretty handle with polka dots and was larger than the average mug. I opened a card from one of my sons that had two scuba diving turtles on it; above them was a pirate turtle looking over with confusion. My daughter drew me a beautiful illustration of a turtle which I gave her a frame to put it in so we could hang it on the wall. And then, once my tea had cooled a bit, I went to take a sip and discovered two turtles in the bottom of my mug staring back at me.

I really had no clue that the kids had gotten me a turtle mug. The synchronicity of my slip of the tongue seems too uncanny to be just a coincidence. The spiritual meaning of turtle also is incredibly appropriate for me at this juncture in my life, so I am taking this as a sign from above to integrate the lessons of the turtle into my spiritual work. I’m grateful for the message that comes with a reminder each time I use my new mug.

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