Finding peace through nature

Hot weather is just around the corner and many of us are starting to get spring fever. We start cleaning out our houses and garages and emptying out old flower pots from last year's riches, scouring and scrubbing them in preparation for new annuals or perennials. We get outside a little more now, walking or hiking at a nearby park or lake, and take in the sights of what mother nature has to offer.

The next few weeks, I encourage you to focus on the tiny miracles that occur right under our noses. Watch the trees in the backyards start to bloom and burst into their full green spirit. Celebrate the re-birth cycle! As I take a time from my own day to see each little bud appear on a tree, I am reminded life is like that little bud. I am also trying to get out a little more as each day passes...and by viewing this tiny miracle, you too can go through a form of rebirth and regeneration.

As I venture out each day, I am continually awed by how mother nature takes care of things. Bulbs that were planted last fall are starting to rise from the ground, peeking out to stretch toward rays of warm golden sunshine. Each garden center begins its quiet bustle as customers gather new seeds to purchase so they can nourish their own families with fruitful bounties later this spring, summer and fall.

While the weather warms and I can bask outside enjoying the simple, peaceful sounds and sights of nature, inspiration creeps up on me as I watch the children as they play outdoors. Young seedlings in the earth can also remind us of the freeing, peaceful energy that is so childlike. I like to see how the last leaves in the trees fall and skip through the grassy hilltops on my walks, just like a child skips through its playful mornings or afternoons. And maybe when no one is looking, I can explore a little more of nature and see through the eyes of a child...taking in its beauty and miraculous gifts it bestows on us throughout the season.

Digging hands in the earth and feeling the mud between bare fingers shouldn't be reserved for children and dedicated gardeners or farmers. It should be a therapeutic activity we all can enjoy as the sun warms our backs and the breeze tickles our noses. Whether you are planting or just remembering, nature is always with us, beckoning us to take in some of its splendor.

Next time I go out along my neighborhood trail or up on the mountains, I will be sure to bring along a trash bag to collect anything someone may have dropped...either on accident or on purpose. Just because I didn't do it, doesn't mean I can't bend down and lend a hand to mother earth in healing from someone else's mistakes. After all, I believe that if we each clean up our own little part of the world...the beauty and magic of nature will always be there for me and my children to enjoy. And that peace is worth sharing with everyone!

Being yourself

Know the importance of you. You bring infinite gifts to the world and you are important and special. Without your unique talents and abilities, the world would not be the same. The world exists around you as you make it so. Think about this carefully. You make your own world and fill it in ways you see fit. Love yourself for qualities you possess and gifts you have to offer or share. They may be spiritual gifts, a word here or there, a nod or a silent agreement that all is good with the world. Being at peace with yourself starts with your own thought process.

Visualize it as so and it will be. The power of your healing mind and thoughts turn into action throughout the world around you. Don't just take my word for it though.

To see the simplicity of your own powerful healing mind, try it by visualizing it. By incorporating daily visualizations into your own routine, you will see your life transform.

The following is one visualization to try. It is best if someone can read it aloud to you slowly as you sit or lay peacefully, focusing on the rhythm of your own breathing:

I am lying down on a deserted beach. It is beautiful outside and there is a slight breeze coming off the waves of the ocean. I hear the ocean waves pounding the sand and the sounds of sea gulls calling each other as they dip down toward the ocean and soar high in the air. I let myself release tension with each wave that comes in from the sea and onto the sand.

I feel the tension release from my fingetips as I slowly trace lines in the sand with them. I am listening to the sea and smelling the sweet, salty air. I am releasing all sights, sounds and smells that are negative. I am only hearing the ocean. I can only smell the ocean. I can only sea the ocean. I feel it surrounding me like a peaceful blanket.

I let go of the stress from my facial muscles and neck as the ocean breeze crosses my face. I feel all of the stress melting away. As it leaves, I feel my shoulders and arms relax. The smell of the ocean brings back positive memories for me as a I unwind and settle into the peace it brings me. My chest and abdomen relax as I hear the pounding surf. I release the tension in my low back and abdomen and down my legs. I am slowly coming to peace with the surf and can feel all of my feelings ride the tide as I listen to the waves.

Whatever I am feeling, happy, sad, good or bad, I am allowing myself to feel and for those feelings I want to touch, they can ride a wave in from the ocean. If I want to keep a certain feeling at bay for a while, I will leave it out there to ride waves while I take in the peacefulness of the ocean. When I feel able, I will allow those feeling in or keep them at bay for a later time.

With each wave, I feel peaceful and able to release the negativity. I can get lost in the abyss of the cool, pleasant ocean.

When you feel able, slowly bring yourself back from the ocean with three deep cleansing breaths. Inhale in the positivity you have been searching for through your nose and exhale the negativity through your mouth. Repeat this sequence twice. As you feel balanced, flick any remaining negative feelings from your fingertips and slowly open your eyes to embrace your day.

Plants heal

Many cultures believe that every plant is considered useful and with its own beneficial properties. While some would say that many plants contain healing qualities, others believe they may only be considered useful in gardens as "ornamental plants".

The value and energy of each can depend on who you talk with concerning plant origins, uses and powers. The mystic or herbalist may explain the importance of all plant life and healing ability. For example, plants like spearmint might relieve your cold symptoms, a physical ailment, while the supposed "ornamental" rose garden you lovingly care for each day helps you relax each evening as you admire its unique beauty and scent. There are healing qualities by plants in all of our senses, many of which we may not even know about or are no longer attuned to understanding.

While scientific advances have culminated its own strength in society, the supernatural concepts that historically were applied to plants were diminished with the dawning of pharmacology and allopathic medicine. With the onset of such medicine, powerful components of plants have been extracted or isolated, removing it from its original healing modality. While a family may have grown its own plants for its own use when first coming to settle in America, as an internal or external source of healing energy (or both!), much has been lost with the current gains in newer medicinal practices.

Careful review of history and how traditional western medicine like anatomy, physiology, chemistry and botany were derived can be traced back to herbs and plants tended and categorized by the Greeks and Romans. Before the Dark Ages, they gained knowledge of herbs and plants from their experiences, travels and encounters with the Chinese, Egyptians, and Arab nations. Unfortunately, during the Dark Ages in Europe, much information regarding plants was lost. Thankfully, during this time, herbalism continued in other places and trickeled back to Europe during the Crusades.

Even as the United States was developing in the seventeenth century, it was common belief that all plants had healing benefits. This included healing of the body and the mind. Was there a better psychic connection with plants in the past? Have we turned our backs on its healing energy of our psyches? Has the mystical side of plants diminished and been replaced by manufactured drugs in a clinical setting? I'd like to think we still believe in the magic of plants and their healing abilities. For example, how magical is it to see a seed you planted in soil grow and sprout into a seedling, transform into a small sapling and one day, become a large tree in your backyard that provides shade from the summer sun? Does the tree have its own healing quality besides the scientific explanations of providing us with oxygen and shelter from the summer sun?

Components of plants are being isolated and extracted into medicine for treatment based on scientific facts. Usually, we never see, touch, or smell these plants. We don't visit these plants in the wild or tend to them each day. While I am not disagreeing with the healing component of these plants being ingested in pill, lotion or potion form, I recognize that with powerful drugs and treatments, side effects evolve. Some of which are in our own bodies...others which manifest in our world...through scarcity of treatment modalities, overprocessing of a plant making land surrounding it infertile, to rampant consumption and waste without necessity.

When you walk in a park or through your own garden, I encourage you to reflect on your own family history and any ailments that may have been treated by your grandmother, grandfather or their mothers and fathers. Families learned the healing benefits of plants as they tended their own over the years. Treatments derived long ago and passed down from generation to generation have been lost as farmers' children decide to pursue another field of work. Many crops and foods are now mass-produced through methods of science and machines.

Information from our ancestors and plants that they grew in their own fields or outside their kitchen doors is most likely a memory as we reside in suburbia with our manicured grass lawns. As the organic movement for farming and the increase in homeopathic medicine and natural healing "comes back" or as some say, evolves, I encourage you to look back at the past, especially your own, so you can harness the healing importance from your own history and that of the plants in your life and those of your ancestors. 

Hold on loosely

Remember the song by 38 Special? The lyrics remind us, "your baby needs someone to believe in and a whole lot of space to breathe in..."

There's something about those words today that ring so true.  Children are going back to school. So many of us remember the feelings we had as kids going to the bus stop or walking to school, beginning a new year. As this happens today, I remember the importance of holding on loosely.

This morning while I packed lunches and prepared breakfast, I marveled about how my children have grown and changed in so many ways, like the shifting of the wind as the seasons change. It is such a gift that I can see how they are learning and being shaped each day. There is nothing in the world like being attuned to them in this way.

But I can remember a time when separation from my children was something I had to endure. Some of us encounter missing daily lives with those we love due to business trips that may last a few days or something more permanent like a divorce, an illness or death that separates family members from its original form and daily interaction. Others have cultural living or work arrangements that require parents to be separated from their kids or loved ones for long periods of time.

Most of us remember or experience separation anxiety when our kids walk into their classrooms for the first time. The kids feel this separation too, some more so than others.

As we turn away with a wave and a hug or a kiss, whether it is today as the kids go back to school, visit on a weekend, or see each other after months or even years, we remember that they have a piece of us in themselves. No separation in time can remove the genetic make-up that you share with them, along with the core values, beliefs, care and support you have shown them along life's winding road.

Despite distance and interference, holding on loosely reminds us that love and the kindness that surrounds it will withstand moments or periods of separation. Love reminds us that there are bonds fundamentally unbreakable because of their core.

So as we remember times when we didn't hold on loosely, when we tried to control our loved ones with our own personal opinions, schedules or values, remember to give them..."someone to believe in and a whole lot of space to breathe in..."

And of course, don't let go.

Magic

It's in the room as I wake this morning. Dawn is moments away and there is an energy in the air. Is it the release of shine from the harvest moon? Is it the memory of the sound of the waterfall and how it made me feel after a hike? Magic is in the air today for inspiration.

And so those of us that believe in hocus pocus, intuition, radar, or hunches don't necessarily fly around at night on broom sticks or worry about something that happened in Salem long ago. Instead we quietly embrace our practice, sometimes consciously and other times through other means.

A few months ago, I quietly grew basil in my office, invoking the power of the herb. Yes, I was calling for a little magic to increase the wealth of the organization. Magic can be given as well. I once gave a stone orb to a friend, offering lifelong peace and friendship. While we do not talk everyday, I can call on her and she is always there for me.

Of course the magic I believe in can be very powerful at times. But it is not unique to just me. Does everyone practice his or her magic? Is it any different from a baseball player that is on a hitting streak who refuses to wash his socks? Do you know when someone is looking at you as you're stopped at a red light in your car? How many times have you called or dropped a line to someone, after thinking about them, when they respond - "Weird, I was just thinking about you?!" Is that...could it be...magic?!?!

Magic comes in so many forms, shapes and sizes. It surrounds us. Some forms of it include the sunrise over the rolling ocean surf, the smile or friendly note when you feel as though you need it most, or the way a flower opens up and blooms.

Of course we can scientifically explain these things for the most part. But what about the essence of our feelings underneath? Haven't you experienced a simply magical day as it seems as though all the stars aligned for your benefit?
I most certainly am not disregarding the importance of how science improves our health in its own right. But what about magic? Do you let it in your life?

It is said that shaman, medicine women or witch doctors were summoned in the past to clear bad energy from a home or a village. Now we call on a feng shui specialist. But all of us have gifts in clearing negative energy in our homes and our lives. Do you recognize your own magical talents?

When you were little, do you remember marveling about a rock? Maybe it was a flint rock - and you were just excited about the thought of making fire with it. Was it magical to you that a rock could start a fire? Is it any different from the energy that emits from an emerald? It is well known that if an emerald is given as a gift it inspires and cultivates love. Are we so removed from the energy of stones that we forget about its therapeutic effects and magical qualities?

Magic is in all of us and if practiced with kindness and a mindful spirit - it will transform and enrich your life. Most likely, magic has been in you and your family for many generations. How you choose to use it is your decision as its essence is a reflection of your soul.

So, as the incense and candles burn and the cat curls up in your lap, bask in the energy surrounding you. You just might remember how much you missed it and (sh!) how much you really want to experience it more often.

Being present

It's important to recognize our presence in each moment. So often people try to attain a goal or make up for lost time, focusing on the future...or trying to recreate the past...forgetting about the present. After all, it is just that...a present.

Relishing in the moment, in the present, allows us to focus on the energy at hand. If we are believers or if we are open to eastern medicine, we may recognize how living in the present can have a positive effect on our organs. Similarly, any imbalance in our energy flow can be a result of our emotions that may result in a depletion in our energy, our chi, our own flow.

There is no separation of our physical selves and our emotions. Yet western medicine encourages us to see a therapist for our heads and someone else for any physical ailments. Why the separation? We cannot separate our physical and mental well-being. It is whole and uniquely ours, with our own "blueprint" so-to-speak. This reflects in the iris of our eye and our thumbprints. Our spirits and mental interpretations when it comes to living are no different.

Is it any surprise that while one form of western treatment may work for one test group it does not work for another? Are there long-term studies you can review to make careful decisions when it comes to practicing good health? Or are you relying on the latest potion, lotion or contraption to heal you?

What type of impact occurs to our bodies and our spirits from the air we breathe, the water we drink, the foods we eat, the careers we choose, and the people that surround us? We are all unique and should be treated as such.

Could your feelings from long ago surface and be exacerbated into an illness? Some believe if you supress anger it can lead to trouble with your liver. Another thought is if you do not release your sadness or grief through tears, it can place undue stress on the lungs. Could this grief and perhaps repeatedly conditioning to repress it have an effect on our emotions? Could people try to "numb" the emotion through overindulgence of alcohol, drugs, tobacco?

Could people perhaps incorrectly channel their emotions...when they want to cry for being denied a raise, a woman learns to choose the wrong emotion and become angry instead? Could a boy who is rejected and saddened as a youth grow up to drink, smoke, or gamble?

Growing and challenging ourselves through being present is one way to help alleviate some of these buried emotions that may be present within us. Do you know who you are? Or are you pretending to be someone you are really not? Have you always wanted to be an artist but were persuaded long ago, for one reason or another to be an engineer? Do you stay in your career for the money or the recognition or perhaps the lifestyle you have become accustomed to living, while not your truest desire that would enrich your soul? Who we are matters underneath it all. If we are afraid to know ourselves, what holes are in our spirits as well as our bodies?

Begin to heal today. Live in the present. Recognize our feelings and those of others and express loving kindness. This will enrich our presence day by day, moment by moment.

Following five element theory and learning how your own energy peaks and flows throughout the day could help. Running, doing yoga, or working out might be best done in the evening, when your kidney energy is peaking, say from 5-7 pm.

Being aware of your own self and relying on your intuition is key in beginning or continuing your own transformation...your own healing. Accept yourself and others around you as the world is filled with such wonder, light and life. What comes with self-acceptance and love is a rich guide to a fulfilling life.

Carpe diem!

Nature's energy

Nature surrounds us. If we are fortunate enough to live in a climate or experience a season with a window open in the morning, we can hear birds singing as we wake. Nature stirs us from our slumber; but do we rise to its calling?

Do you hear it? Or have you seasoned yourself to put it in the background, telling yourself you'll listen...but a little later? Nature is in front of us daily...each moment we are surrounded by its peaceful energy.

See the bird as it sits in the fountain. The sun is setting as it cools off in the late summer sun. The adults pass by it without a glance. The kids look up. They watch and wonder. The bird flies off as the children point to tell their parents.

Did you miss the bird and its energy? It is stopping to cool itself...replenish its own energy. Do you still have the childlike wonder to see and experience nature? Will you slow down to remember or learn of its energy? It is waiting for your grasp. It is here for you to experience and interpret into your own essence and daily life.