Happy New Year! To say goodbye to the old year and ring in the new, below are the top ten most-read blog posts of 2011. Enjoy! Read moreQuestion: Why don’t I feel like the energy work that’s been done on me in the past isn’t working like it should? Read more
Note: I did not write this and haven’t been able to track down who the author is, but for me 
it is very appropriate! Enjoy!
Greeting friends,
Just a note to let you know we are hoping to see you Thanksgiving Day. But…Martha Stewart will NOT be dining with us this Thanksgiving. I’m telling you in advance, so don’t act surprised. Since Ms. Stewart won’t be coming, I’ve made a few small changes:
Our sidewalk will not be lined with homemade, paper bag luminaries. After a trial run, it was decided that no matter how cleverly done, rows of flaming lunch sacks do not have the desired welcoming effect.
Once inside, our guests will note that the entry hall is not decorated with the swags of Indian corn and fall foliage I had planned to make. Instead, I’ve gotten the kids involved in the decorating by having them track in colorful autumn leaves from the front yard. The mud was their idea.
The dining table will not be covered with expensive linens, fancy china, or crystal goblets. If possible, we will use dishes that match and everyone will get a fork. Since this IS Thanksgiving, we will refrain from using the plastic Peter Rabbit plate and the Santa napkins from last Christmas.
Our centerpiece will not be the tower of fresh fruit and flowers that I promised. Instead we will be displaying a hedgehog-like decoration hand-crafted from the finest construction paper. The artist assures me it is a turkey.
We will be dining fashionably late. The children will entertain you while you wait. I’m sure they will be happy to share every choice comment I have made regarding Thanksgiving, pilgrims and the turkey hotline. Please remember that most of these comments were made at 5:00 a.m. upon discovering that the turkey was still hard enough to cut diamonds.
As accompaniment to the children’s recital, I will play a recording of tribal drumming. If the children should mention that I don’t own a recording of tribal drumming, or that tribal drumming sounds suspiciously like a frozen turkey in a clothes dryer, ignore them. They are lying.
We toyed with the idea of ringing a dainty silver bell to announce the start of our feast. In the end, we chose to keep our traditional method. We’ve also decided against a formal seating arrangement. When the smoke alarm sounds, please gather around the table and sit where you like. In the spirit of harmony, we will ask the children to sit at a separate table. In a separate room. Next door.
Now, I know you have all seen pictures of one person carving a turkey in front of a crowd of appreciative onlookers. This will not be happening at our dinner. For safety reasons, the turkey will be carved in a private ceremony. I stress “private” meaning: Do not, under any circumstances, enter the kitchen to laugh at me. Do not send small, unsuspecting children to check on my progress. I have an electric knife. The turkey is unarmed. It stands to reason that I will eventually win. When I do, we will eat.
I would like to take this opportunity to remind my young diners that “passing the rolls” is not a football play. Nor is it a request to bean your sister in the head with warm tasty bread.
Oh, and one reminder for the adults: For the duration of the meal, and especially while in the presence of young diners, we will refer to the giblet gravy by its lesser-known name: Cheese Sauce. If a young diner questions you regarding the origins or type of Cheese Sauce, plead ignorance. Cheese Sauce stains.
Before I forget, there is one last change. Instead of offering a choice between 12 different scrumptious desserts, we will be serving the traditional pumpkin pie, garnished with whipped cream and small fingerprints. You will still have a choice; take it or leave it. I hope you aren’t too disappointed that Martha Stewart will not be dining with us this Thanksgiving. She probably won’t come next year either.
Wow, I had such a fun time in Birmingham, Alabama last month! I taught my SimplyHealed Training to a great group of people. Many traveled to get there; one woman came all the
way from New Zealand and another came all the way from Scotland!
My fab assistant Melinda-we finally got to meet in real life!
A good thing to remember
A better thing to do
Work with the construction gang
Not the wrecking crew.
Dale Carnegie said, “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most do.” Do you find yourself falling into critic mode more often than you’d like? It’s easy to do. We live in a society of critics. It sometimes seems much easier to be negative and critical of everything from the latest movie to our neighbor’s choice of hairstyle. But we can learn to resist this impulse. It’s destructive not only to our fellowmen but to us too.
Dwelling on the negative, broadcasting it outward, will lower your vibration. After all, you can’t throw mud without getting some on your own hands. Nobody likes a critic. Like the Yiddish proverb says, “A critic is like the girl who can’t dance so she says the band can’t play.”
You may have good intentions in general, but you’ve heard what the man said about the road to hell and its paving stones. So instead we can connect good intentions with creative action. Many people think that once they get the motivation they will get things accomplished. Actually, the reverse is true: action precedes motivation and begets more action and motivation in an endless positive circle.
When my kids come to me with a problem, after hearing and validating it, I usually ask (and by now they know it’s coming), “How would an extraordinary person deal with that situation?” or “If you were a super-genius, what would you do next?” In no time they have a solution figured out because the super-genius and extraordinary person within themselves gets to work and figures it out! Creativity is built into every one of us; we all possess creative powers. Be brave enough to live creatively. And the bonus of that is that when you spend time improving yourself you won’t have time to criticize others.
You can find opportunities close at hand by paying attention to the positive things that are working for you and having gratitude for them, rather than finding reasons why things won’t work. They are lying dormant waiting for the observant eye to discover them. Read more
by guest writer Wendy Minks
Have you ever stood at the beach and let the waves rush over you? Not ready to jump right in to all the chaos, you timidly walk down to where water meets sand and inch your way in. As you stand there enjoying the cool flood over your hot feet, WHAM! a huge wave comes and knocks you on your butt. Read more
In my line of work as an Energy Practitioner, I find that nearly everyone wants to know how they can feel better and how they can have a higher vibration, and also how they can maintain that higher vibration.
Many people want a formula to tell them how to keep their vibration strong and positive. They believe there must be some ancient secret or new age discovery that will teach them how to make that happen in their life.
Well, I’ll tell you an age-old, tried and proven, definitely-works remedy for a waning personal vibration. Are you ready…. Drum roll please…
~ Be kinder than you need to be. ~
Yep, that’s it! Kindness and service to others literally raises your energetic vibration! Is that answer too easy for you? Or perhaps that requires too much of you?
We all know that what you send out is what you get back. So, of course it makes sense that if you seek for happiness, helping someone else experience happiness will automatically bring it your way as well. When we help our fellowmen, not only do our deeds assist them, but we put our own problems in a fresher perspective. It’s a win-win situation!
In my youth I was taught that if you are having a bad day, the best way to ‘snap out of it’ is to do some service for another person. If I was feeling grumpy or out of sorts, or sad about something, I learned to ask myself, “What service can I do for someone else today?”
Through experience I know that the best way to forget my troubles is to unselfishly help someone else. There is something about connecting with another person that makes you feel good through and through –and who wouldn’t want that?
It doesn’t need to be something big, elaborate and time consuming. It can be as easy as some kind words to your neighbor at the mailbox, holding a door for someone, letting someone go ahead of you in a line, sending a thank you note to someone. And it can even be anonymous service, such as pulling some weeds in your neighbor’s yard while they are out (as long as you know them well enough to be in their yard. Otherwise, that could be creepy)
There’s an unexplainable miracle in helping others, that is, by losing ourselves, we find ourselves. The more we help others, the more substance there is to our souls.
By giving out you create more room to grow on the inside. We acquire more depth as we serve others—of course it is easier to “find” ourselves because there is so much more of us to find!
So, in this world we live in where everyone seems rushed, and out for themselves, and not able to see past their own problems, how about trying something that may seem a little counter-intuitive? Take a look around and be open to doing random acts of kindness for others. Opportunities for service abound!
So, to raise your energetic vibration, release some of your own worries, and enjoy more peace and joy in your life, the answer is easier and more practical than you may have thought. Just remember, you can’t help others without helping yourself, or as my grandma used to say, you can’t make a jelly sandwich for someone else without getting some of that sweet jelly on yourself!
In part one of Chakra Energy Healing I described what the chakras are. Now let’s talk about how to assess whether or not your chakras are working optimally. This list is certainly not meant to diagnose any physical problems; we are just checking the energetic vibrations of these energy centers. Read more
The purpose of chakra energy healing is to align and balance the Chakra system, which is one of our body’s electro-magnetic energy systems. It is comprised of seven spinning vortices of energy running from the root chakra at the base of the spine all the way up the midline of the body to the crown chakra on the top of the head. Read more