Spreading the Word

Thank you to CrossFit Nickel City for hosting my Athletics and Energy Healing workshop.  To interact with talented coaches and fellow athletes while exploring pain in the mental/emotional dimension was a pleasure.

Pain and Energy Healing Interactive Workshop

Join me at CrossFit Nickel City (Virginia and Tenth Streets, Buffalo) for an interactive discussion on the messages our bodies send us in the form of pain.  We will explore sources of pain, check out our own energy fields, and peek at the spiral path of healing.  We will get to know our bodies, minds, and pain better so that we can interpret injury and affliction with the aim of using what we learn to eliminate pain, improve athletic performance, and prevent future discomfort.

12:00-1:00 Free and Open to the Public
RSVP - wellvibrations@gmail.com

Just Relax, Man

Summer is short here in the Northeast.  It seems every year I have all weekends from June through August booked well before we even hit the solstice.  This means that summer can be relaxing, but it can also be rushed and overwhelming. On a really hot and sticky day (like today in Buffalo), just to eat your vegetables can be daunting (oh, the chopping, slicing, and chewing!).

If you are lucky enough to have air conditioning or not, being alone can not only make you feel cooler, but also calm the fires of the mind during a hectic work (or play) day.  We always talk and hear about the "little voice" inside our heads, but our heads (more specifically, our brains) can talk us into anything, whether is it positive or negative for us.  Our bodies, on the other hand, use their voice to warn us. They speak to us every day through aches and pains, rashes, and even broken bones.  Our bodies are the physical messengers for what is going on emotionally, energetically, and psychologically.  In solitude, a "non-meditation" such as the following will center you and bring awareness to possible causes of any negative feelings.

Quick, Calming Non-Meditation (Nonitation?)
Sit for ten minutes and do absolutely nothing. Look at your phone or watch periodically if you need to mark the minutes, but just hang out with yourself, in your body.  Sit inside your body, as opposed to in your head, that customized PC that keeps going and going.
Notice any part of you that feels off, different, sore, or is in some way asking for attention.  Try and make connections between it and other body parts, emotions, or behaviors.   If you want to keep going beyond ten minutes, be my guest.
Do this for a few days to discover which sensations recur, then use your brain to think about possible origins of the most bothersome.

Anything your discover can be useful in your healing and will definitely be positive for taking charge of how you feel.

Whaddya Expect?

I'm good at a few things:  Baking scones, taking tests, packing for trips.  I find success in those activities without much effort, and I have come to expect good results with each attempt.  Running, however, does not have an "easy" button for me.  I am decent at it, but I have to work really, really hard not to suck.  If nothing else, for my training efforts this winter I'm going to have the strongest ankle muscles in running history (doesn't that just scream sexy?). 

When I was running Wednesday evening, my lower legs (for what felt like the 100th time) were straining to trod over the still uneven street and sidewalk surfaces that through the preceding weeks had been doused in snow and scraped, shoveled, semi-salted, and otherwise razed to create a potentially dangerous sort of race track.  In instances of physical challenge such as this, my inclination had usually been to fixate on the pain, worry about possible injury, and complain and fret until my next run when the pain would return, migrate, or lay dormant, waiting to strike (ahem, give me an excuse to bonk) during a race.  All this led to constant worry about any activity becoming the culprit of my next injury.  I had not only accepted running in pain (something always hurt when I exercised), but I came to expect it.  I had actually, without consciously trying, lowered my expectations to meet my injuries.  I had let the injuries become part of who I was, and they shaped my running identity.  I felt like I just wasn't put together for running, like I was a runner in a non-runner's body.  But I kept running. 

Back to Wednesday night:  The muscles around and above my ankles were burning with the effort of propelling my lower body over footprints, ice chunks, and garbage, but when my brain started down its old path of "this is bad"-ness, I got indignant and stopped in my tracks.  It was there, on Niagara Street, that I decided enough was enough:  I gave my bossy brain an energetic bitch-slap.  This winter running was going to STRENGTHEN my legs, CONDITION my heart and lungs and PROPEL my fitness to a new level.  No more hurting, no more fretting, and no more feeling sorry for myself, like a misfit toy, over how I was put together (and of course, I couldn't help but clear my chakras, too).

I had kept running through the pain because of what running could give me - stress release, calorie burning, a feeling of accomplishment, but I wasn't giving to the running.  I'm not talking training intensity or fidelity, I mean attitude and appreciation.  I needed to expect more from myself, rather than relying on running to provide me with an escape and a size 2 butt.  To put a spin on JFK's words:  Ask not what your running (or teaching/parenting/basket weaving) can do for you, really examine what you can do to improve your efforts holistically.  We can raise our own vibrational frequencies to meet our high expectations, and then we will feel more accomplished and be prone to continuing the cycle.  For me it was like stepping out of a snow bank and onto a sunny boardwalk.  And, it inspired me to write this post. Expect more like this one out of me - I do.

 

Well Vibe, in a Nutshell

For those of you who appreciate brevity, here is what Well Vibrations offers in a nutshell.  I will paste segments of this post into my info pages as well. 

Total Body Analysis (TBA) focuses on supporting our anatomy and physiology while detoxifying Disease Causing Agents such as chemicals, heavy metals, bacteria, emotional stress, food allergies, and genetic mutations.  The remedies initiate and facilitate physical, psychological, and emotional healing. 

Energy Coaching sessions aim to bring our energetic vibrational frequencies to their highest (healthiest) point through eliminating limiting subconscious beliefs trapped in our chakras (energy centers).  My technique is based on Dr. David R. Hawkins' research in his book Power Vs. Force.  Click here for a cool chart:  http://www.dharanipitaka.net/2011/2008/teachings/DavidHawkins-PowerVsForce.pdf   This is not a talk therapy session and the client does not need to divulge personal information or share painful emotional memories.  Energy Coaching facilitates setting achievable goals (in running and in life) and taking steps toward realizing our greatest potential.  In addition, we can support injured tissue to allow healing while continuing to run happily! 

These two approaches work harmoniously and together provide the most complete (and speedy) path to eliminating the issues that hold us back as athletes, professionals, partners, and parents.

Why Can't I?

Can't is a strong and overused word.  I've said and thought it a trillion times, but in only a handful of those instances has it been true:  I can't make it at 3:30 on Wednesday because I have to work, yes.  I can't start my own business because I don't have the time, clearly no.  

When I was wrestling with the notion of running my sixth marathon this spring, knowing the time and energy commitment, and my husband said, "Maybe you should wait and train over summer vacation.  You like to do a lot of other things on top of teaching and running," I snapped back:  "You like to do a lot, too!" (he is training for his eleventh marathon, swimming, teaching, and fathering).  His response resonated like a Medieval church bell:  "I can handle training and teaching; when I get tired, I don't get mad or take it out on other people."  

True, I haven't trained for a marathon during the school year since 2002, before children, and have avoided it since - until that conversation.  "Well why can't I, then?" was my retort, more a statement than a question in that moment.  Ever the husband, Mike either evaded or was alluded by the rhetorical nature of my reply and shot back:  "Yes, why CAN'T you?  You're the one making the remedies, doing all the energy healing stuff."  It was his emphasis on can't that struck me. 

I had been so focused on helping others to heal and release their energy blockages that I had overlooked practicing what I preach:  Pick a goal, right your chakras, dissolve your negative beliefs, detox your bod, and just DO it (Nike pun intended).  I had also, as usual, targeted problems preventing me from doing and having it all:  What if I get too tired?  What if my kids are cranky and I have to get them dinner before an evening run?  What if my butt gets vacuumed to the toilet seat at 5 am and I miss my 400 meter interval session?   I was living excuses in my mind instead of finding solutions.  I began to use my own protocol for clearing negative beliefs and chakral densities until I could clearly see what I needed to and COULD do:  Not only run the Buffalo Marathon on May 25 (along with Mike, although he will be running much more swiftly), but also start a blog about my busy spring adventure while declaring that I am trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon.  To put it all out there is very motivating (and a bit stressful), but I am excited to bring you www.runvibrations.blogspot.com. Best of all I can handle it, knowing that the doubts and excuses that may arise are simply manifestations of dark energy and can be conquered through the energetic healing mechanisms of the universe.  I have found the dragon slayer and uncovered the "can" in myself, and I bring it to the world for anyone who wants to shed the shroud of self doubt and step (or run) up to a better life.

Who Are You?

There are sick people and well people and some in between.   That's a fairly obvious categorization.
However, to be sick or well is not a real-time descriptor but rather state of being, a mindset.  I am not saying that illness is all in one's head; I am not saying that an individual chooses to have leukemia, AIDS, or cystic fibrosis.  I am stating that there are vastly different ways to approach and heal disease. 
Have you ever known someone diagnosed with a serious or terminal illness who becomes a model for living?  Someone who looks at disease as a life challenge and emerges as a happier, more whole being because of it?  Is that "diseased" person sick or well?  By my definition, he or she is a shining example of a well person.   She might not have begun her journey through illness as a well person, but learned that extracting positive meaning from disease is a path to survival. 
Conversely, maybe you always pass your yearly physical, have normal blood work, and take your vitamins, but are continually waiting for the next sinus infection, dreading a tickle in the throat, or constantly nursing an exercise-related injury (isn't that elliptical supposed to keep you healthy?).  If you're worried about getting sick or give up and chug Nyquil when your nose runs, chances are you are more in the "sick person" category.  Not because you like being sick, but because you haven't realized your body's healing potential - that it wants to be well and can do almost anything to get there.  If you let it.
Some of us can be the terminally-diagnosed patient who learns, grows, and heals beautifully through her own doing, and some of us need a little help just getting out of bed each morning.  That is why I have started this blog and a Total Body Analysis practice, to help your body allow itself to heal through providing the energetic frequencies it needs.  Together, we can learn to be in tune with our bodies and allow ourselves to enter a state of wellbeing.  Sometimes this involves just a remedy, in other cases we need to do more emotional energy therapy in order to release the negative frequencies which bind us to illness.  But the potential is there for each and every one of us.  Who do you want to be?

Call if You're in Trouble

You're driving down the highway alone and skid off the road into a ditch.  You make a quick assessment of the situation and find that you have all of your parts, and your car seems to as well.  Heck, the engine is still on.  Great.  Step on the gas, and...nothing.  You're stuck.  Next steps:  Turn on the heater and end it all in a cloud of carbon monoxide?  Too dramatic.  Call a friend to get you, and leave the car to report it stolen later?  Too risky.  Call a tow truck?  Duh and bingo!  You have roadside assistance, you are safe for the time being, and you'll be out and back on track within an hour.  A simple, economical, straightforward solution to getting stuck.
What about when you're stuck in a health issue?  If your chemotherapy or antidepressants or yoga just aren't doing the trick anymore?  How can you get out of that physical or emotional ditch?  End it all in your manner of choice?  Please, no!  Get referrals for a dozen specialists and spend time and co-pays trying to find the "real" problem?  Who has time for that?
You are reading a blog about a safe, effective, and inexpensive holistic solution to being stuck in a health rut.
Total Body Analysis and the energy therapy that I practice as a complement will gently and safely help your shiny new Mercedes (that's you: your body, mind, and spirit) creep up and out of that muddy ditch in the middle of nowhere.  And you don't need a membership or insurance - just a phone call and an open mind.  If talk therapy is your bag, we can talk as long as you like. If privacy is something you hold dear, just think about your issues and your body will signal what it needs.  It's like the mechanic hooking your car up to a computer at the shop (except we don't use wires and your energy field is way smarter than a computer).
Check out Well Vibrations TBA and energy therapy or research holistic medicine on your own.  I guarantee it'll pick you up.

Only If You're Bleeding

Call me an insensitive mother of small children, but I hate band-aids.  Their physical annoyance of getting wet, coming unstuck, and leaving dirty black glue marks, bleeds, if you will, into their utilitarian menace as a placater for all things boo-boo to children.  I feel like when I need a band-aid, it really can't hold up to the daily grind, and ninety-nine percent of the time that a kid gets to apply one, it's just to make her stop whining.
Metaphorical band-aids can quite literally squeeze my soul until a gaping, ironic wound erupts, oozing my sanity and clouding my judgement with worry over the next spirit-crushing quick fix that might adhere itself to my life.
On a daily basis for me, the most harmful band-aids come in the form of non-solutions to social justice issues in public education.  I teach English as a Second Language full time in an elementary school and I see the ill-effects of data folders, pre- and post-tests, state assessments, and New! Research-Based! language arts programs on our children.  School districts spend millions of dollars on these band-aids while neglecting the goal of a solid education:  A happy, whole child.
What does this have to do with alternative healing, you might ask.  The educational band-aid metaphor is akin to the conditioning we've undergone as a society to buy this, pop this, drive this, or wear this to make us feel - whole?  Not really.  Temporarily satiated?  Maybe.  The cyclical emptiness and emotional longing that ensue from conditioned consumerism leave us with a deep need to heal.  On our healing paths we sometimes try band-aids in an earnest effort for wholeness.  Years ago, my general practitioner, who was conditioned to prescribe antidepressants, wrote me a script for Zoloft to help my symptoms of depression.  I was conditioned to believe that a pill would heal me.  If that were the case I would not be writing this post. But that band-aid, like many, was a learning experience.  We cannot change our past actions, but we can learn to change our attitudes and shift our focus away from consuming to feel better and toward autonomous healing.  We are only human, and sometimes band-aids are necessary to get us through the day or to deal with an unexpected problem.  Those patches (like the beer I had last night - hey, it helped calm my brain to start this post), as long as we recognize their role, are a way to keep us from straying from our healing paths
(sometimes, they plain keep us from going crazy).
Perhaps one day as well, school districts will recognize the difference between a quick fix and plotting a lifelong course, and they'll shift away from programming our children and toward allowing the learners to lead in their educational dance.
For now, readers, may we know when we are truly bleeding, and when to just give our four year old a box of cartoon bandages because he's wailing in a restaurant from bumping his head on our elbow (then maybe we can finish our wine).