The Healing Friendship

John O’Donahue’s  profoundly moving, elegant  and beautiful ‘Anam Cara’ describes the ancient Celtic blessing of the ‘Soul Friend’.

This doesn’t have quite the same meaning as the ‘Soulmate’, which seems to reflect the modern preoccupation with finding our ‘other half’ than the more turbulent and ultimately enriching waters of intimacy encountered between true friends.

The Anam Cara would be the one who listens to all your troubles and joys and witnesses the events of your life, whether mundane or phenomenal. In finding this person, says O’Donahue, ‘an ancient belonging awakens and discovers itself’.

One of the deepest longings of the soul is the longing to be seen and yet it is increasingly difficult with our fragmented lifestyles and multi- faceted roles to maintain a cohesive sense of self at the centre of all our activity.

Are we a mother, husband, boss, business person, teacher, daughter or lover right now? Can we switch off our motherly self long enough to be a wife? Can we allow our child-like desire for fun when we are in a position of responsibility?

The longing to be seen is the desire to be understood beyond our role-playing, in all our contradictions and complexity, both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ together; to be witnessed without judgment. We live in judgemental times, in which watching celebrities fall from grace makes the rest of us feel better, and feeling physically less than perfect, emotionally imbalanced or spiritually disconnected can make us feel like failures.

So everyone could do with an Anam Cara-  the one who lets us be who we are even on the bad days and still accepts us. But as many of us live far from our roots, away from kith, kin and old friends, it’s harder than ever to connect with and sense this whole self.

It’s said that psychotherapy, coaching and counselling wouldn’t exist if the role of the anam cara were alive and well, and though it’s a service now and we pay for it, rapport with a trusted coach or therapist can fulfil this need to be seen.

Being seen, witnessed and ‘allowed’ is a healing experience. Speaking without censorship, hearing our own thoughts spoken out loud is liberating and sometimes even shocking, but always a relief, always enlightening and always the source of our own wisdom.

Seeing, sensing our wholeness, the sum of all of our small selves enables us to orchestrate them better, give them space to move around, honour their individual needs and understand their ‘troubles’. Seeing the bigger picture enables us to make decisions we have put off for ages. We become the conductor instead of someone in the audience being drowned in sound.

The true intimacy of the Anam Cara is possibly more necessary than ever in a world that relies on the internet for communication, computer games for entertainment and celebrity for inspiration.

The Healing Power of Words

On the journey to manifesting reality, one of the key stages is in the written or spoken word.

When we write or speak our thoughts, we are making what has previously been in the realms of the invisible (or spiritual), visible (and well on the way to being physical) for the first time. We are creating a spoken or written ‘vibration’ which is the blueprint for the physical form that is eventually created.

For this reason, it’s especially important to be aware of the words we choose and use when speaking of something for the first time, either to ourselves or to other people.

The wonderful writer and teacher Florence Schovell Schinn  said, ”We cannot always control our thoughts, but we can control our words, and repetition impresses the subconscious and we are then master of the situation”.

…and “You will form the habit of giving attention to every thought and word, when you realise their importance”

Words are symbols: vibrations that are shorthand for the complexity of feelings that create our reality.

Some symbols are universal or archetypal but others are more personal: there are words that seem neutral to some of us and yet  loaded with emotion to others. Think of how the lyrics of a song are imbued with more than usual power when put to evocative music, or how your name spoken in a certain way or by a particular person can instantly make you feel cherished or anxious!

In ‘The Language Codes’,  R Neville Johnstone says that since we all live in a Quantum Field, everything is vibrating. Whenever we emit a vibration by speaking a word, that vibration programmes the field. ‘The Language Codes’ asserts that since we have been brought up in a dysfunctional environment, we have been taught a dysfunctional language and most of what we say is dysfunctional.

Johnstone uses the example of the word ‘need’ in the context of ’’ Dear God, I need something”. That’s what we ask for and that’s what we get: the prayer is answered instantly (and indeed we do need something!).

The spoken word carries with it the power of creation and it is at least 80% more powerful than silent words of manifestation. Its vibration is carried through every cell and atom of one’s Being.

Constant verbalisation of the same thought form causes it to become a Driving Force within one’s energy field and embodiment, with its resultant manifestation into matter.

Thus if one wants to manifest certain experiences into one’s reality, verbalisation is the recommended means.

The written word has an equivalent power to the spoken word and both can be called ‘manifesting verbs’.

So giving conscious thought to what you say before you speak enables you to know what you may be manifesting. Beware of phrases like ‘I’m sick and tired’, ‘I can’t’ and ‘I’m no good at….’: they truly are self-fulfilling declarations.

No need to panic though in case you’ve just had a less than romantic thought about your spouse or wished your boss to the other side of the world: thought forms in themselves are dormant! It is not until a driving force (or emotion) is continually placed behind the thought form that it has the Power of Creation for good or ill.

Resources: ‘The Language Codes’ by R. Neville Johnstone

‘The Game of Life and How to Play It’ by Florence Schovel Schinn

Healing with your Personalised Foods

 

Would you like to find out which foods help you burn fat and metabolise food more efficiently?

And which ones are indigestible and are either toxic to your system or stored on your body as fat?

 ‘The Genotype Diet’ by Dr Peter D’Adamo is his latest research and book, that’s not so much a diet as a bespoke eating plan.

Much of its appeal lies in simplicity as well as discovering what your body thrives on and what it finds difficult to digest according to your genotype.

Dr D’Adamo’s  very famous ‘Eat Right 4 Your Type’ was recently voted one of the ten most influential health books of all time by a respected industry publication, and now after some ten more years of research, he has broadened and deepened ‘Eat Right…’ alongside science’s cutting-edge discoveries in genetic research: epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the science of how genes respond to environment, creating differences that we can then pass onto our children. The prefix ‘epi’ means ‘after’, so yes we have a genetic blueprint that predisposes us to various health factors, but these can be stabilised and even improved (or made worse) by eating foods and living life in ways that support or compromise our constitution.

In the book, Dr. D’Adamo uses the analogy of our genes being like the piano keys – but epigenetics  being the composer:

“The melodies and harmonies you can write for those 88 keys are seemingly infinite, even if they never stray outside the basic range of the piano. That brings us back to the GenoTypes  – they are the six basic melodies that we humans have come up with as our 30,000 genes interact with the environment. So now we can look at the following formulation:

30,000 genes + prenatal experience + last 100,000 years on earth = 6 GenoTypes.”

With this new science and building on the framework of ‘Eat Right…’, Peter developed the concept of the Genotype and identified six GenoTypes ( known as, Hunter, Gatherer, Teacher, Warrior, Explorer and  Nomad) by doing statistical analyses of how genes, disorders, and physical traits are known to cluster together. 

The book’s format allows you to carry out various measurements (jaw-line, proportion of leg to torso and fingerprint shapes amongst others ) to determine your type (some of them are tricky to do on your own so you might ask a friend to help!)  

Dr D’Adamo is also interested in how his work is experienced and his website is fully supportive, with a member’s forum, an easy-to-follow list of food for each type along with recipe suggestions and lots of real-life testimonials and experiences to encourage and inspire people who are starting out with it.

Visit www.genotypediet.com for more information.

De-Cluttering for the Soul

Healing is about clearing out old energy – de-cluttering for the soul.

As a child I was taught never to go to sleep on an argument and to say my prayers every night. But I didn’t always stick to that because I didn’t know why I needed to do it or the wisdom behind it.

Now I get it!– we are meant to use our free will in part to self-correct. Keeping a check on our thoughts and actions so we can notice any stuck emotions that need to be released, is nature’s way of keeping us happy and our energy flowing freely.

Healing is meant to be simple. It is an inbuilt safety feature in nature and is just an acknowledgment of the emotions, thoughts and feelings that may have got ‘stuck’ in our energy system at the time they happened. (Not all stuck emotions are negative – we can get stuck on memories of joy, bliss or excitement just the same).

Expressing or even simply noticing (consciously admitting) the words or emotions of a memory fully, acknowledges it and allows us to let go of something we have held onto and that may be stopping us from moving forward in ways we would want.

LETTING GO….

Letting go allows us to forgive – this is the Healing, because it reunites us with something we have rejected, disowned or overly-identified within ourselves and makes us whole again.

Forgiveness is not about letting anyone off the hook, it’s about deciding or choosing to let go of the energy of something – usually something difficult. Then it can’t ‘pull’ on you emotionally anymore.

Forgiveness is admitting all the feelings around something, good or bad, ugly or beautiful that may have caused us to get stuck. These feelings don’t belong to the person or situation that seems to have ‘caused it’, but to ourselves.

That doesn’t mean they didn’t have a part in it, just that only we can decide whether or not to allow that energy to stay around us. Talking to a trusted friend, a therapist, a priest,  the wall or your dog can help you heal as long as you are totally honest about all the emotions that are stuck and allow them to dislodge and move freely again.

I read somewhere that breathing in and out is (usually) effortless, as is eating, digesting and eliminating food and water, yet our experiences, (only another form of ‘intake’ or food) often leave us with emotional indigestion.

It seems that only humans with their ‘free will’ suffer from this. If an animal has a fight or an accident, it doesn’t sit and feel sorry for itself, plot revenge or waste too much time feeling pleased with itself, but instead literally stands up and shakes off the energy of the incident and moves on.

Sometimes it can seem impossible to forgive or let go, sometimes it can seem wrong if someone we love, including our self, was hurt. Holding onto the pain of difficult words or actions can keep the energy of an old incident alive and real, helping us hold up the banner of our hurt and letting it become our ‘story’, a part of our self-image and so we little by little we turn into statues, defining ourselves by the emotions of the past.

If forgiveness seems too hard, or if it’s ourselves we need to forgive (and we are usually harder on ourselves than anyone else would be) but you want to let go of feeling guilty, angry, hurt or generally bad, just having the willingness to forgive even if we don’t know how it can happen, is often enough to allow a softening of the jagged, emotionally charged energy of old feelings, freeing us to life in the now.

The Inner Elf

  

Dear Friends,

  

My own Inner Elf gets very happy at this time of the year,  not just because I’m a Taurus myself

but because Mother Nature seems finally to get her gladrags on after a long time of sitting around in her dressing gown.  

Being outside is exciting again: trees and shrubs start to look bushy and fluffy, refreshing showers leave everywhere so greeeeen and makes me want to jump up and pull cherry blossom from the trees like I did as a kid (I do try to restrain myself  now more’s the pity)…..

  

Springtime kind of has this effect on everyone, getting us thinking about  the long, light evenings ahead, our new projects, colourful clothes and travel plans.

   

The Inner Self is what Linda Goodman called the Inner Elf – a so-called ‘Elemental’ or Nature Spirit.

 This part of us has the amazing intelligence and power to do all sorts of things for us without our even having to ask: all of our automatic physiological tasks, habits, skills,emotions, memories and short-hand responses are remembered for us by this amazing ‘Genie’.

All we need to do is call up what we want with a command (thought or words) from our Conscious Mind and the genie, the Elf, does our bidding.

It is a non-judgmental Elf, doing whatever we bid, whether we unwittingly ‘ask’ for something  negative or something positive. Its job is only to serve and obey.

The ‘Master’ is the Conscious Mind. Its job is decision-making, goal-seeking and information gathering.

It sifts through available information to help us decide what we want, but then having given the mental or spoken command for it to be done to the Elf, the Subconscious, the Master sits back and relaxes.

Well that’s the theory.

In practice, we are so hell-bent on being in control of  HOW we reach our goal, that we find it difficult to trust and let go of the reins.

We keep going back, we turn our thoughts over, we worry, obsess and generally confuse our Inner Elf with mixed commands, procrastination and anxiety.

When we receive the confused results of our mixed messages, we then proceed to berate our(s) Elf, put our(s) Elf down and help it feel just as bad as it’s possible to make someone feel.

Is it any wonder that eventually we feel out of sorts, anxious,worried, perplexed or confused?

Maybe we need to relearn who does what and let everyone do their own jobs and then don’t forget to say Thank You!

The Elf loves praise

The Elf works best without interference: having no sense of past, present or future and no understanding of  deductive logic, the Elf works in tandem with the Higher (s)Elf to produce miracles for us if we will but allow it, leave off controling it, get off its back by stopping the worry or the anxious thoughts that only confuse it by giving a new ‘command’.

The lovely ‘fairy tale’ of the Elf and the Shoemaker gives us a fantastic metaphor for the power of our own Elf to help us achieve our goals. The Shoemaker had no idea of how his work was always completed by morning, he just knew what he wanted to be done and miraculously it just happened.

I hope you are enjoying the Taurus time of the year and remembering the power of your own Elf to help you mine your inner crystal store and bring it to the surface where you can enjoy its treasures.

If you enjoy the ‘Earthbaby’ image and would like a hand-finished personalised print for a Taurus, Virgo or Capricorn Elf in your life, please contact me at www.vickycoombes.com or  visit www.visualhoroscopeart.co.uk for other personalised art  and more details of how to order.

  

  

    

How We Get Programmed with Negative Stuff

If something makes you react with a negative emotion, your subconscious, or inner child, has basically come up against something you are doing that is inconsistent with the previous ‘rules’ its has worked with.

The subconscious, is an unimaginably powerful computer, carrying out orders (consistent thoughts) given by its master (your conscious mind).

Some teachers have likened the subconscious to a child, as it wants to please and gain the approval of its parent (our opinion of ourself or self image).

Others have called it a genie: our wish is its command, so we have to be careful what we wish for!

Finally, it is often compared to the engine room of a great ship: it is the energy and power that carries us forward and yet it has no sense of direction of its own. (Hence the saying: If you’re going nowhere, that’s where you’ll end up).

Without setting our direction by creating intentions or goals for ourselves, we drift aimlessly and may even inadvertently be heading for rocky waters.

So it’s as well to know a bit more about how the subconscious receives the information it acts on, and how, out of all the different sources of information availabe to us, it decides what can be filtered out as irrelevant and what is important.

Basically, the subconscious is ‘imprinted’ by three factors: an authoritative source, intensity and repetition.

What we hear or see from someone we accept as our authority, such as a father who we might experience as omnipotent, is given far more weight than if we heard the same thing from from a less powerful (in our child eyes)source.

If what is said is also intensified though being shouted at in an emotional way, or is being said in front of other people adding a good dose of humiliation (!), it  is given even more importance.

If what is said is repeated enough times, it’s yet more strongly imprinted into the subconscious mind.

Years after this ‘programming’ has stopped happening, it may still be influencing all kinds of behaviour because the subconscious has no sense of past, present or future and still acts on this information as if it is still ‘true’ now.

So where we may have set conscious goals in our lives and yet seem to sabotage ourselves or to come up against anxiety, procrastination, stuck-ness or any other negative emotional state that stops us progressing, we can be sure that the subconscious is just trying to do its job and is acting on old orders.

Changing the programming can sometimes be straightforward and easy and sometimes requires more of a three pronged attack, but it can be changed.

Being able to move forward and develop is what we do naturally as humans and anything that chronically stops that from happening, creating negativity and stagnation ultimately goes against life itself.

The subconscious creates a pattern of self-image from these intense and repeated emotional imprints, that become ‘set’ as reality unless we challenge them.

Its work is to stick to this pattern for us, not allowing anything inconsistent with it to stay in the system. 

Working on the self-image is thus how real changes can begin to happen.

Inner Child

When we’re stuck with a feeling that seems to stop us from moving forward, we can know it as an emotional block, a negative feeling, or whatever, and we can take steps to move it out of the way as though it’s something outside of us, like a fallen tree in the road. A job to be done, a problem to be solved, that seems not to belong to us. 

This can work, but it might pay to understand those feelings as emanating from and expressing a part of ourselves that has a ‘personality’ of its own.

 These emotions can seem separate, distant, somehow physiologically removed from who we are now and all the more disconcerting for it. 

But they are the ‘voice’ of a vibrant and living part of us that has the power to help us succeed or stop us in our tracks.

As a coach, working with healing methods has opened up an amazing world of possbilities beyond more conventional coaching tools. I work with Theta Healing in particular as it’s the fastest way I know to clear the emotional blocks that stop us from moving towards goals.

I worried that clients wouldn’t be happy with the terminology and sometimes strange ‘offside’ approach of healing techniques, but they turned out only to be my worries: people are all too happy to work with what produces the fastest positive results.

I also found it difficult at first to understand the ‘geography’ of consciousness and for a while, avoided using healing techniques as I had become unclear about ‘where’ I was… was I working with the subconscious or the Higher Self at this moment…… and did it matter as far as getting the best result was concerned?

I needed to know more about how energy flows (bear with me because I’m not an expert on energy healing and this will be familiar to anyone who does) so as to be working with people in the most effective way.

After a lot of searching, reading and studying lots of techniques and theories, I found the answers I needed via a friend who lent me some books on an ancient psycho-spiritual system called Huna. 

Huna teaches that we have a  threefold of spirits -  lower,middle and higher, – which correspond to the subconscious, conscious and superconscious minds (or Higher Self).

When  these three minds or Selves are integrated, we are whole and act congruently. When we have emotional upsets, our conscious and subconscious minds are not working together and by correspondence, neither can we hear the voice of our Higher Self. 

It feels true that when we are upset we can’t get inspired either – a double whammy: but sorting one out automatically helps the other to start flowing again too.  

Incidentally, this is a model that works on many levels and strands of it can be found in all the major religions and indiginous cultures.

The conscious and superconscious mind are subjects for future blogs, but for now, as so many people are working more consciously with their Inner Child, the subconscious of the Hunas is worth exploring, as its characteristics resonate with those of the Inner Child.

The Subconscious Mind.

The way our energy flows is (roughly speaking) that our subconscious mind remembers and stores everything that has happened to us, either in our physical body from our experiences (in this lifetime), or in our DNA from genetic and ancestral memories (past lifetimes). 

It is hugely powerful and quite simple, having no deductive intelligence (can’t work things out), it  just carries out orders – the orders of the conscious mind – our thoughts.

So it’s a small step to understanding that the ‘orders’ need to be supportive of our forward motion (goals), or we can only keep repeating what we have done before.

The subconscious is simple and child-like: it wants to please. And yet so often, having brought us exactly what we asked for, it ends up being berated, criticised or put down by its parent (our conscious mind having negative thoughts when things don’t go how we want them to!)  

Not surprisingly, in areas of our lives where we have experienced difficulties, this ‘child’ who gets it in the neck when we are annoyed or upset with our Selves may now have become non-cooperative, stubbornly silent, mischievously naughty, fearful or lacking trust in us.

In this problem area of life,we continue to experience difficulty because the thoughts we have (the orders we give) are criticisms of our Selves.

Thinking of your own childhood and the ways in which you can remember you needed but could not get something from a parent, you may find ways in which you neglect or criticise your own small Self now.

It’s only by ‘working with’ this child-like part that we can heal and acknowledge whatever stuck feelings may be stopping us from moving forward. No healing can take place, no real change can take place, without permission and trust from the Child. No amount of cajoling, reasoning or ‘taking it by surprise’ from our adult self, our conscious mind, can shift it from its stubborn and defiant point of view until a proper relationship has been begun.

And how do we begin to relate to this part of ourselves? How do we communicate, make ourselves heard and how do we hear his/her messages to us? This is a personal experience but there are threads common to everyone:

• The subconscious receives ‘orders’ through your feelings – no amount of affirmation or ‘positive thinking’ will work unless your words are loaded with positive emotional association so that you evoke the feelings you want whn speaking the words.
• If you are feeling upset, get quiet as you would with an actual child, and ask what the problem is, reassuring yourself you have done your best and acknowledging the emotions that are there.
• Whilst the job of the subconscious is to remember everything, it has no sense of time: past, present and future are all one place.
• It also can’t tell the difference between something that’s actually happened and something that you are strongly imagining: anything that has a feeling is real for the subconscious. 
• The quality and type of emotion you are attaching to what’s in your mind is what you are ‘asking’ it to bring for you.
• The subconscious ‘child’ responds fastest to what it can receive through the five senses rather than through the written word (unless the words are laden with emotion). Thus if you want to train your subconscious positively, surround it with your favourite music, fragrances, the aroma of delicious foods, beautiful surroundings and sensual textures to enhance your ideal visualisations.
• The subconscious is said by Huna teacher Enid Hoffman to be like a vine, with each thought being attached to several others like a bunch of grapes. We know the subconscious works by association, so finding out some of your own associations can give innsight into why specific situations or people or events can trigger particular feelings or emotions.

What matters is to begin to relate to the part of you that works so hard to bring everything you ask for. 

Saying thanks to your ‘self’ is the fastest way to get your inner child to feel good and bring you more of the good stuff, just as it would be with an actual child.

even armed with all the positive affirmations and vision boards you can put together, the subconscious is a sensual creature, responding best and easiest to the five senses:

Use music, pictures,

Every Goal is about Feeling Better

People come to coaching with some kind of goal or intention, whether or not they are aware of it to begin with. Goals can be grouped into three types: past, present and future, but no matter what the orientation in time, every goal has one thing in common: the desire to feel better: whether that means losing bad feelings or gaining more good ones.

Feeling better means feeling happier, more connected, more joyful and more able to make the contribution we know we have in us to make, whether for ourselves alone or for for the benefit of others too. It is a constant human desire that never leaves us even when we feel so low that it’s difficult to find the desire to fulfil its call.

‘Present’ goals are relatively straightforward to achieve: they are usually geared towards solving a tangible problem or fulfilling a task. This can involve clarifying values, understanding motivation, anchoring commitment or simply creating a timed specific plan for achieving results. ‘Present’ goals are easily achievable if there is a clear view of current reality which is free of mental or emotional debris from the past.  

Clearing up the Past

That brings us to the second type of ‘goal’ which may be less obvious on the surface: that of identifying and removing deeply-held unconscious and negative belief patterns whose roots are in the past.

 

Negative thought patterns often show up as difficult feelings:   (‘I’m fed up with feeling anxious/stuck/fearful/angry…….. and it stops me from moving forward’). These goals are about clearing up the past in order to free up some space in the now.

Liken this process to de-cluttering a room before decorating it: you can’t start the work until you’ve made some trips to the tip and charity shop, taken down the curtains you’ve hated for three years or ripped up the old carpet first…… well, you know what I mean  …  old, stuck energy just takes up the space needed for action in the present.

In this instance, a tool such as Theta Healing can help shift negative feelings very effectively, quickly creating a clearer, more relaxed, decisive and insightful frame of mind. Sometimes this work alone can be enough to help someone feel much better, since clearing difficult emotions and thoughts improves the self-image, restores self-esteem and allows natural self-confidence to emerge again.

Creating Your Future Now.

‘Future’ goals have a different feeling and may seem like out of reach pipe-dreams in the life we are currently living: but a ‘call’ from somewhere inside of us dares us to want something more than our current  belief  system allows us to have.

In his book ‘Harmony of Wealth’, writer and teacher James Arthur Ray describes the feeling of this type of goal as a ‘future pull’. We know the difference between something we just need to do in order to make our lives work better and some inner pull to achieve a dream that makes us take action in spite of our ‘normal’ selves.  

Future orientated or spiritually motivated goals are not easy, as they force us to create new habits, confronting and messing up our comfort zones, making us wake up to our true individuality and what we sense we are here to do. They can force us to question everything that has seemed certain about our lives. Listening to this inner pull and following it can evoke every feeling imaginable from excitement and anticipation through anxiety and even fear to eventual relief, joy and fulfilment.

Dream goals force us to change.

What we can be sure of is that eventually such a goal gives new shape, form and meaning to our life, gradually or suddenly changing everything we have known previously. We have no idea of what we are doing at first or what the rules of the game are and this forces us to grow beyond our old self. But the personal growth along the way, whilst often uncomfortable at the time it’s happening, is as important as the destination itself.

‘’You don’t randomly get a desire unless you also have the ability to make it happen’’ says James Ray

But how can we achieve what currently seems impossible even though we are ‘vibrationally pulled’ to do so ? Whilst our feelings stay true to the goal, our beliefs and emotions can take us through every conceivable loop from anxiety and frustration to fear and then relief and eventual joy. We must learn to cut a path through the difficult emotions and accept them as part of the territory that leads towards fulfilment.

The answer seems to lie in changing our orientation from looking for answers outside of ourselves and beginning instead to look for and listen to the voice of the inner self. The in- tuition (inner teacher) that helps  if we can allow it space and time to be sensed and heard.

 

Learning to allow, hear and eventually trust this ‘inner voice’ is how we begin to sense how to reach our destination but to get there we may need to give up some of the old ways of doing things and allow a new order to emerge that guides us, sometimes baby step by baby step, to where we want to be.

If you would like help in identifying your true goals and dreams, or finding your way through ‘unfamiliar territory’, then consider coaching as a safe and supported way to interpreting your feelings and where they are trying to guide you to.

 www.vickycoombes.com

Hawaiian Healing Words

I’m Sorry

Please forgive me

I love you

Thank You

..Possibly the only healing words you ever need to know, as its gentle, simple and loving intention erases negativity like Mr Muscle for the Soul.

Ho’Oponopono is an amazing Hawaiian Huna healing method that I came across a few years ago and then read Joe Vitale’s book, ‘Zero Limits’  on the subject, which was really inspirational. It’s such a simple thing that there’s hardly anything to it – and that’s really true. You don’t need to know much more than the words themselves and the intention behind them, but here are a few pointers of information that I have found on various websites.

Ho’Oponopono means ‘to make right’ and its acronym of SITH – (Self-Identity through Ho’Oponopono) is a way of recognising that we create everything in our lives including the errors we see in others.

Whatever we can see outside of ourselves is a reflection of our internal state for better or worse (we perceive what is within our own reality) and therefore forgiving others without condition allows us to heal ourselves at the same time.

Ancient Polynesian cultures held that prayer for others results in healing the self too and is therefore much more effective than praying for the self alone.

Thus, any criticism or argument that comes up in a relationship can be an opportunity to heal ourselves, and just by noticing what’s ‘wrong’ with the other person we heal the ‘wrong’ in us too.

Dr Len Hew who is perhaps more responsible than anyone for bringing Ho’Oponopono to the attention of the world, famously ‘cured’ an entire ward of patients with severe mental illness by reading through their medical notes and applying the Ho’Oponopono prayer to each ailment.

Ho’Oponopono is about taking full responsibility for your life experience.

In applying the healing prayer to any situation or person, you are also cleansing yourself.

As you request it, it is done!

I’m Sorry, Please Forgive Me, I Love You, Thank You

For more info on this healing technique, please go to www.hooponopono.org

Belief… or Superstition?

“When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer; superstition ain’t the way.”

Stevie Wonder.

Superstitions are unquestioned beliefs: ideas we accept as true without knowing where they come from. Any ‘belief’ that we don’t connect with wholeheartedly is worth questioning as it may not support who we really are. It might be someone else’s belief that really has no personal meaning or worth to us. If it makes us feel bad, then it’s usually because it’s not our true belief.

If a belief is inspirational it makes us grow: inspirational beliefs benefit many people, not just one. An inspirational belief connects us with our individual purpose, the heart of who we are. It feels loving, expansive and generous and we can do wonders with it.

If a belief is confining, it can be self-limiting or even make us feel bad. Likewise, limiting or negative beliefs affect many people, not just one, causing potentially one and then countless people to feel bad, less than who they truly are and weakened. Limiting beliefs stem from a disconnection from our heart centre. They can literally give us heart-ache and we feel hurt when we think about them.

A belief that limits us is one we have never questioned or that we have assumed is correct because to say otherwise might go against the grain of our group. We must occasionally be brave enough to stand up for our true beliefs: what makes our heart sing.

Then others might feel that they can do it too: we are all individuals with different things that make our hearts beat louder and stronger.

So why don’t we do more about it?

Because unquestioned negative beliefs are silent: we don’t know they are there. The only way to know is in the results of your life: just look at what you consciously say you want, versus what you actually have. The difference between the two represents the power of your unconscious to hold you back from where you want to be.

We are driven by our feelings and our feelings are made up of hundreds of thoughts associated together – some good, some not so good. So when we say we want to get a better job, or move to a different town or change our relationship, we really do want to, but the worrying feeling underneath is always capable of stopping us from doing anything about it. It has the final say.

Of course, not all unconscous thoughts are negative, and sometimes we hold ourselves back for very good reasons, but it’s worth finding out why that is too. These positive reasons can show us our deepest, most dearly-held values.

Becoming conscious of unconscious thoughts is the only way to really know yourself, to get back to your heart, your true self.

There are loads of ways to do this: the more challenging (perhaps more satisfying?? – but longer) is to meditate each day, preferably morning, noon and night, and each time you find yourself thinking a thought, ‘step back’ to look at what it is, without judging yourself. Just see which thoughts come up and perhaps afterwards make a note of them. Then you can find out what you are telling yourself on a daily basis. Which thoughts are ok with you and which not?

The easier, quicker way is to work with a hypnotherapist or a theta practitioner or anyone else trained to shed light on what has long been in the dark. Theta Healing practitioners are trained (using the technique of kinesiology) to help people quickly and easily discover the unconscious thoughts that may be holding sway. It can be entertaining – or sometimes quite incredible – to find out what you are really thinking. Doing both ways yields the fastest results.

Of course the point of unconscious thoughts is that they are unconscious, so you don’t know what they are until you find out: (you often believe you have thought the opposite )and then there is a moment of relief too, because there is an instant recognition of why things keep turning out the way they do up (until now)

Superstitions are not just old wives tales- they can be the reality of our lives unless we decide to change them.

If you would like to know more about theta healing or book a session, please go to www.vickycoombes.com or learn how to do it for yourself (or your family )at www.suehealy.com