There are so many people suffering from anxiety at this time. The pain of anxiety is isolating. I know when I feel the most disheartened over current events, I feel the most alone.
My daily meditative practice is the Universal Ishaya’s Ascension as taught by Neika Supriya Whittemore. Yet, in the last few weeks, I have found starting my meditation with the practice of Tonglen to be extremely beneficial.
Tonglen connects me with the compassion I feel for others who are having the same experience I am, and in feeling the compassion I have for others I am able to also hold that state of compassion for myself. Self-compassion is a powerful, comforting healing energy. *
Below is a video (under eight minutes) on the practice of Tonglen by Pema Chodron.
May you find as much joy and healing from this practice as I have.
*The word compassion is used in different ways by healers and teachers. The state of compassion experienced here is a heartfelt, emotional connection.
Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California. She is available for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork Monday through Friday.
I have to warn you right away; this is really a nerdy post about the subtleties of energetic healing. Since many of my readers are Energy Practitioners, I decided I would go ahead and share it anyway.
There have been times in my healing practice when I have sensed a client entraining with my energy field. There are probably many types of entrainment, but this is the physical synchronization of their body rhythm to mine.
I didn’t even know what entrainment was for the first five or six years after I first experienced it, when it first happened I just thought of it as a healing connection of some kind. Then I read about entraining in a science/healing journal and realized I had distinctly experienced it in healing sessions.
I feel physical entrainment happening in sections during the healing. I feel it in my arms and then in my client’s arms, then around my legs and then around my client’s legs, then around my hips… on and on, in no particular order. It is subtle, yet distinct from other energetic alignments.
This has only occurred a handful of times, sometimes for only a minute or two during a fifty minute session, yet it felt a little peculiar the first time I noticed it. It is such a physical connection, rather than an energetic one. In a funny way, it feels a little more personal.
The only time entraining happened for a whole session was during a healing with a woman whose husband had been out of town for the three days. When I felt her body physically entraining to my body, I remembered she had told me it was difficult for her to sleep at night when her husband was away. I realized she must be entraining with him at night, and when he was not there she became energetically “wobbly.”
The client was emotionally and physically out of energetic alignment when she came to the session, but after the session, she left grounded and much calmer.
Healing is the process of assisting others in rebalancing and relaxing their energy so that they can heal themselves. Entrainment is just one of infinite possible ways balance and healing can happen in a session.
See, I told you this post would be pretty nerdy.
Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork. 510-601-9632
This week I would like to share with you a quote from Sandra Ingerman. Sandra is a Shamanic practitioner, author, and world-renowned teacher. I have been watching Sandra’s online videos and reading her latest book “The Book of Ceremony.” I have been greatly inspired by her ideas and practices, and I think you will be, too.
Sandra has been using spiritual methods to heal the waters of the world and reverse environmental pollution. This quote is from her online article, Medicine For The Earth, about her work with clearing toxins from water. I highly recommend reading the whole article.
“It is important to note that in our ceremonies we do not try to manipulate the environment. We do not pray for the water or send light or healing energy to the water. We do not focus on the water containers on the altar of our circle. We change ourselves by transfiguring into divine light, perfection, and oneness with the understanding that our outer world will reflect back to us the inner changes that we make. This way of perception goes back to the ancient and esoteric principle of “as above, so below; as within, so without”. We simply radiate our spiritual light as a star radiates in the night sky. When we allow our light to shine our outer world reflects back to us our divine nature.
When we are in the presence of a great spiritual healer healing just happens. These people do not use methods or techniques, they heal by the love and light they radiate.”
Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork. 510-601-9632
Even though this post is technically not about healing and energy work, a miracle is a miracle, and it needs to be acknowledged.
Here is what happened:
I was seeing a client early mornings at the Oakland Kaiser hospital a few weeks ago. The hospital is only a ten-minute walk from my condo, so I often saw her at 7 am because that was the only time I had available. It turned out to be a great time to have a healing.
After one of the treatments, I realized I was starving. I have to strategically plan my meals on my workdays because I am often hungry after a session.
So there I was, in a hospital, the worst place I could think of to eat, and I was ravenous. So I walked into the cafeteria just to see if I could find a bag of nuts or something pre-sealed with all ingredients listed, so I would not be poisoned with artificial additives or MSG.
That’s when I discovered the miracle.
OMG.
The Kaiser Oakland Hospital Cafeteria has plant-based fresh food. Nutrition facts listed on the salad bar. THEY EVEN HAVE URBAN REMEDY!!!!
Was I really in a hospital? When did eating in a hospital become healthy? Am I the last to know? Is it just the Oakland Kaiser hospital? Can you find plant-based food in Walnut Creek? Is the Richmond Kaiser cafeteria this healthy?
Positive changes like this make me so happy. I see this as the manifestation of a huge shift in consciousness. I just had to share it.
Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork Monday through Friday. 510-601-9632
I always get a little excited when I try to describe a Clarity Breathwork session. It still amazes me how every breathe is so different. I have been breathing privately and in small circles for over thirteen years, and I have never had the same experience twice.
I want to thank the person that took the time to write such a wonderful testimonial, although I have to say, I do believe meditation is worth the effort. 🙂
“Initially I chuckled at Jeri’s enthusiastic promises that the breath session we were about to experience would be the “Best thing that we ever experienced.” I chalked her words up to desire to support participants and assuage any anxiety, along with her genuine love of the work. But by my 4th group session, I knew she spoke from truth! Every breath session I had with Jeri WAS the most amazing experience I’d ever had. All just different varieties of AMAZING.
Nothing has gotten me out of my head and into a state of trust and connection to LIFE/Universe/DIVINE than her clarity breathwork sessions. I think AMAZING things happen because Jeri is a MASTER at holding a supportive space and allowing miracles to happen. Forget the efforting of meditating or investing money in drug-induced states and just go breathe!”
The next circle is Sunday, October 27th, 2019 at 10 am to 12:30 pm, at Back to Life Physical Therapy, 403 49th Street, Oakland, California. This is a small intimate circle, limited to six people – a perfect way to experience Breathwork for the first time. You can sign up here: https://backtolife.net/event/clarity-breathwork-circle-6/
Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork Monday through Friday. 510-601-9632
As a Reiki and Healing Touch Practitioner, my thoughts are a tangible part of the fluid, living intelligence that is the healing space.
Much of the time there are no thoughts during a session, yet when they appear I have learned that they can give me valuable insights into the nature of my client’s healing process.
I remember when I first realized this. Many years ago I began a healing with a new client, and as soon as I touched her leg I instantly started having thoughts about my own childhood. I started thinking about how much I had longed for a dog when I lived in a place that did not allow pets.
I was very judgemental about thoughts that came up in my sessions, especially when I first began my healing practice. Why was I thinking about myself and my childhood? Why was I not focusing on the healing session, the client, and experiencing the healing compassion of sacred space?
When the session was over, the client shared with me how much she had been longing for a relationship that had just ended. She had finally realized in the treatment that even though her heart was broken when her boyfriend broke up with her, he was not the partner she really needed in her life. She had released the longing she had been carrying for months. She told me how clear, grounded and grateful she now felt. A great weight had been lifted.
When she said the word longing, I realized that was the exact energy I had noticed when I had thoughts about not having a dog. My thoughts were obviously a part of this mysterious healing process. I was amazed.
Again I understood that if I really wanted to support people with Reiki and Healing Touch, it was time to let go of my judgments and expectations of what should happen during a healing session. I needed to just pay attention to what was actually occurring.
I would like to point out here that even though “I” was thinking personal thoughts, there was no emotional attachment to the thoughts. Even though the energy of longing was appearing in the space, I was not feeling longing. It’s difficult to describe. Kind of like a kinesthetic awareness of a cloud floating by in the sky, except I am both the cloud, and the sky, and the observer all at once.
Sometimes when I begin a session my brain starts firing off like the 4th of July. There is so much stimulating mental energy and monkey mind in the healing space that sometimes I even see little sparks around my eyes. When this happens, I know whoever I am working with is rebalancing some intense mental energy and I feel a direct connection to it. This connection makes it easier for me to hold, channel and just be present in the healing for as long as is necessary.
There have been so many sessions in which my thoughts have been greatly beneficial to the healing. This could be a very long post if I tried to write about them all. Once I let the belief go that I should not have thoughts, everything became so much easier and I could hold a much more powerful healing space for my clients.
Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork Monday through Friday. 510-601-9632
I have an intelligent, very conscious animal-loving friend who is a holistic healing practitioner and speaks three languages.
She is the person I ask to edit my posts for this blog when I am trying to write about the more mysterious nature of energy work. When I am worried I am getting too far out in left field.
This friend also has a very fine-tuned new age bullshit meter, so if she likes the post, I don’t have to worry that I’m being too woo-woo.
Last year she went to a highly respected meditation/coaching conference and came back with an amazing observation.
The workshop was in a beautiful retreat center surrounded by trees, with large windows in the main gathering space. When the thirty participants were meditating in a heart-centered circle, she noticed the strong winds outside stopped. Everything became calm. It happened several times over the course of the five-day workshop.
When she asked the facilitators about the effects of the meditation on the wind, they wouldn’t comment on the phenomenon. Each one just shrugged and said, “We don’t talk about that.” or “That’s not something we address in these workshops.”
The truth is that every time we gather together and meditate, pray or share a healing session, we are affecting everything around us. I will go as far as to say that the peace, the love, and the healing energy we feel in the session also affects the whole plant.
We are all connected.
I know my healing practice has directly shifted my neighborhood around my office, just by listening to the sounds outside before, during, and after my healing sessions.
I was inspired to finish and publish this post by a post called The Ripple Effect of Happiness, written by New York Reiki Practitioner Nathalie Jasper on her blog Dive Into Reiki. Natalie has also written a wonderful book: Reiki as a Spiritual Practice: An Illustrated Guide: Self-healing protocol, meditations and other simple tools to deepen your daily personal practice. I really enjoyed her observations in the healing session – check it out.
So, since you are reading this post now, you know that it passed my friend’s woo-woo meter test.
Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork Monday through Friday. 510-601-9632
This week I thought I would write about my Clarity Breathwork sessions. Several people have recently asked me about Breathwork and several clients have had significant breakthroughs during their sessions in the last few weeks.
Breathwork is amazing.
WHAT IS CLARITY BREATHWORK?
Clarity Breathwork is the practice of circular, connected breathing for healing and attaining higher states of consciousness. In a breathwork session, you lie comfortably and fully clothed on a massage table and breath deeply for fifty minutes. As oxygen fills the body and raises your physical vibration, anything of a lower vibration falls away.
This includes old emotions, past trauma, unconscious beliefs, and habitual physical patterns in your body. I am fully present and at your side throughout the session to guide you through the breathing process. I may ask you questions to help you clarify any emotions, thoughts, and energy that may come up. I may also, with your prior agreement, gently touch your legs and feet to help you stay grounded and focused on your inhale.
Clarity Breathwork is the perfect tool for releasing unconscious imprints held in the mental, emotional, and physical levels of the being. Clarity Breathwork connects you with a higher aspect of yourself so you can let go of shame and blame, and move into self-acceptance, compassion, and love. I have found Breathwork to be an incredibly powerful tool to access and release pain, trauma, and chronic conditions in the physical body.
Are you ready to make some changes, yet don’t even know what those changes are? Clarity Breathwork may be the perfect way to expand your consciousness and open to new possibilities in your life.
“I feel whole and energized again. I had no idea how much fear and hopelessness I was carrying inside.”
-Client after her Breathwork Session
Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available for Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday.
I just had to share this video. It is a testimony to the goodness of the human spirit. You can watch it for free on Amazon Prime. I do not promote Amazon Prime, but this documentary is so uplifting and heart-opening, I would categorize it as emotionally medicinal in these times.
Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork Monday through Friday. 510-601-9632
People often have the idea that when they come for a Reiki/Healing Touch session that they are not supposed to think during the session.
Especially thoughts about their job, bills, family responsibilities, and political events. They have come to experience a quiet mind and get away from habitual mental monkey-mind.
That usually happens; the mind becomes calm right away. Yet, often I notice that early in a session my client’s eyebrows become tightly squeezed together, and I know their thoughts are running rampant through their brain. I can feel them fighting their thoughts.
I encourage my clients never to resist their thoughts.
The brain was made to think, that is its nature. We often come to our healing session feeling tight, tired and anxious, which is why we need the session in the first place. When we begin to relax and let go, it is very common to feel more life-force energy moving through our body. Especially when we have been under a great deal of stress.
As our organs, fascia and muscles fibers loosen, more blood can get to all the cells in the body providing oxygen and releasing toxins from the blocked and once tight areas. More internal healing energy can move more freely and abundantly the body. When that extra energy moves into the head it stimulates the brain, sometimes causing more thoughts than ever. I have found this is especially true when the neck unwinds.
Thoughts are not problematic, it’s the attachment to the thoughts that causes us to suffer. Attaching to thoughts can cause us to believe that the present moment is not perfect and complete and the healing process is not unfolding exactly as it should be unfolding.
I suggest to my clients that they imagine themselves sitting on a riverbank watching their thoughts float by. This is a great way to be fully in the moment without having to resist or internally fight their mind. This is a great visualization technique that allows the mind to slowly relax.
One of the many wonderful benefits of Healing Touch and Reiki treatments like this is that almost always the client has so much more energy after the session. They also usually report that they are sleeping much better and have much less fatigue.
Jeri Lawson has a full-time healing practice in Oakland, California. She is available for Healing Touch, Reiki, and Clarity Breathwork Monday through Friday. 510-601-9632
♦
