Tag: Health

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Stand Down: Healing Touch For the Veterans on the Delta

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The Healing Touch Community in the East Bay is very committed to supporting the Veterans. One of the ways we give back to the Vets is bringing Healing Touch to the Stand Downs.

Stand Downs are held all across the country. They are one to three-day events that provide services to homeless veterans. They provide food, Social Security benefits counseling, shelter, clothes, haircuts, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, various health screenings, and much more. Often there is also massage, Chiropractic treatments and, as you might have guessed, Healing Touch available.

Last Saturday, I participated in the Stand Down on The Delta at the Contra Costa Fairgrounds. Here is a link to an article in the Contra Costa Times that gives you an idea of what the Delta Stand Down was like.

The whole event was so well organized. I just love that. Our Healing Touch coordinators are beyond amazing. There must have been twenty emails preparing us for the event. We had all the information we needed: directions to the grounds, where to park, where to get our shirt and badge, what to wear, what to bring, good snack suggestions – we were prepared!

Being in a healing space from 9 to 5 was quite extraordinary, as well as intense, and all that preparation came in handy. The coordinators were always on patrol in the Healing Touch tent, encouraging us to take breaks, eat snacks, stay hydrated and take good care of ourselves.

The healing sessions lasted about 30 minutes, and on Saturday, the day I volunteered, there were about nine healers. Some Healing Touch Practitioners signed up for both days.

It is wonderful to do healing work in a group. Even though the sessions were one- on-one, it felt like we were all working together. It was an incredibly loving, healing, and supportive environment for the Veterans.

Healing Touch Coordinator Suzanne Mittica wrote:

“I am always amazed at the generosity of spirit, the unstinting extension of personal skills of just darn nice people who volunteer for the many tasks of a successful Stand Down. It doesn’t matter what role we play in the rest of our life, we become the many with one purpose: to show the vets someone cares.”

I would like to thank Healing Touch Practitioners and Stand Down Co-coordinators Nancy Khlafallah and Suzanne Mittica. They spent the last year getting this event organized. Also thank you to Assistant Coordinator Cindy Durant and Helper Maryanne Mitchell.

I posted this video on how beneficial Healing Touch can be for Veterans once before, but it is such a good video, I had to post it again. I can’t link it directly from my blog, so after you click on the video box, then just click the word “YouTube” at the bottom of the video. That will take you right to a YouTube video you can easily watch. This video pretty much sums up why I volunteer at Stand Down:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hBnDb4EWxE&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop

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Healing In the Hospital

Window at John Muir Hospital

Energy work has been an incredible support for my clients when they are in the hospital. After years of healing in hospitals, I am still amazed how remarkably helpful Healing Touch and Reiki can be in these stressful situations.

A few months ago I worked with a young girl immediately after extensive back surgery. Her mother, who did not have much experience with energy work before this, was instantly on board with hands-on-healing. After one of the follow-up sessions, I showed her how she could clear her daughter’s energy field: I just demonstrated for her one very simple Healing Touch technique. Her daughter was very sensitive to the pain medications she was being given, and I knew even five minutes of this simple clearing technique throughout the day would help her immensely.

I want to say right away that I am not a Certified Healing Touch Instructor. I cannot “teach” Healing Touch, but I can “show” a mother a simple technique that may keep her daughter from getting nauseous. I also made it very clear that all healing is self-healing, and her daughter was the only one who could heal herself. I told the mom “just try the clearing and let go of the outcome.”

Here is part of the email she sent me weeks later:

“THANK YOU SO MUCH for all your work with my daughter and me!! Wow – talk about things just coming together at the right time!! I love your energy and spirit and that you were able to do those sessions was so awesome. Also that you took the time to show me how to try to work on her was amazing!! I’m not sure how well I did, but there were some super tough times during our hospital stay. It gave me something concrete to do to try and help my daughter. You were so kind to share that with me!!!!!!! You truly have an amazing gift!!!!

We all have this amazing gift of healing, right at our fingertips.

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10 am through 8 pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California

 

 

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Healing After Surgery

Healing Room
Healing Room

As Healing Touch Practitioner Janna Moll writes: “Clients tend to come in batches”*

The latest wave of clients in my healing practice have been contacting me for pain management and healing after surgery.

Post-surgery sessions are where I have seen people cynical of energy work join the Healing Touch fan club. I had friends who would roll their eyes at me when I talked about the benefits of energy work, yet after a post-surgery session they enthusiastically starting referring clients to me.

The most obvious effect of an energy session after surgery is the reduction of physical pain. For ankle and knee surgeries, clients have said they had no pain. It’s quite amazing.

Another incredibly wonderful thing is the clearing of anesthesia from the body, helping reduce nausea and headaches.

The third factor that I find immensely helpful is that Healing Touch helps my client relax and let go of anxiety. This helps them sleep so much better.

I feel like I am on a soap box here, but I can’t help it. Healing Touch and Energy work are SO HELPFUL when recovering from surgery. If you are getting ready to have surgery, find a Healing Touch Practitioner or another energy worker to give you a healing as soon as possible after the surgery. Having a session before surgery is also recommended.

Many hospitals – such as the Kaiser Permanente Walnut Creek Medical Center – have volunteer programs where Healing Touch is readily available. That means it’s free!

Click here for a list of facilities that have Healing Touch. Many nurses are also Healing Touch Practitioners, so ask your Hospital if Healing Touch sessions are available. Click here for a link to Certified Healing Touch Practitioners all over the country.

Energy work makes a difference.

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California

*”Practitioner Development”  Energy Magazine May/June 2015 Janna Moll MSN, CMT, HTCP/1

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Healing Touch, Reiki and Addiction

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Photo By Savitri Palani

Several years ago I supported a client through a major surgery with Healing Touch and Reiki.

Afterwards he became addicted to his medications and, with his doctor’s approval, went off Oxycodone cold turkey. His withdrawal symptoms were severe. Very severe. I had never worked energetically with addiction before, and even I was amazed at how the energy work eased his symptoms.

The first session gave him 4 hours of relief and the second treatment gave him 9 hours of peace. After it was all over, my client said he may not have made it through the ordeal without the energy work.

When I write about specific work with a client, I always send it to him or her before publishing for permission and approval. I don’t want anyone to suddenly find an account of their healing journey online at some odd moment of the day – even if the work happened years before and I don’t use their names.

 

This is what my client wrote back:

“Wow Jeri, this post is such a time capsule. I had forgotten (or completely blocked out) that we’d done energy work associated with my addiction to the meds. In my memory it was just the surgery, but I suppose a huge feature were the meds.  It’s incredible how little of that entire event I even remember.

The only thing I would add to your post is simply that — yes in fact there was a time that somehow you were the ONLY source of relief. I remember at least that very distinctly as being relief from crazy radiant pain both immediately after surgery and months later.  I remember being frustrated by a caravan of remedies — massage,  hundreds of hot baths,  steam, acupuncture, rolfing, you name it.  Sounds like infomercial testimonial, but you remember… the energy work was kind of a miracle.”

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California

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Subtle Mental Healing and Sacred Space

IMG_4061In my healing practice, mental healing often takes the form of a subtle “falling away” of problems, obsessive thinking and worry. Sometimes my clients are not aware of the benefits of their Healing Touch session until days afterwards. This is one reason I have learned to trust that whatever happens in the session is perfect.

When giving a series of treatments, I usually ask my clients at the start of their healing if they noticed any significant shifts from the previous session. It’s often only then that they realize an issue that they were preoccupied with previously did not resurface. Frequently, being asked the question is what prompts them to realize their shift.

What actually causes the healing? I really don’t know for sure. I use many Healing Touch techniques in my sessions to rebalance my clients’ energy, yet I think fundamentally it has to do with the experience of being in sacred space.

What is sacred space? Eckhart Tolle calls it presence. In The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment he writes,

“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence.”

In my healing sessions my clients return to this presence, this sacred space, and it is in this space that they heal themselves.

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California

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Healing Touch and Anxiety

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In the last half of 2014, many of my new clients came to try Healing Touch because they were suffering from anxiety, panic attacks and/or trauma. I have to admit, even I was surprised at how effective Healing Touch has been for these clients.

Here is a testimony from a man who had been experiencing debilitating anxiety for years:

“I was suffering from extreme anxiety and insomnia when a friend referred me to Jeri.  From the very first session I left feeling free from anxiety for the first time in many months. Jeri told me that the anxiety might come back, but that with each session I wold experience longer periods of feeling calm and anxiety-free. She was absolutely correct. After four sessions the bouts of anxiety became so infrequent that I was able to transition to seeing Jeri every month or so for a “tune up”. I am also able to sleep again. Going to Jeri was a life changing experience for me and words can’t begin to express how grateful I am to her and Healing Touch.”

There are many sessions in which I sense my client has healed themselves in the first 5 minutes. Being able to HOLD the new level of consciousness, vibration, or groundedness and stay healed becomes the focus of these energetic sessions.

I have had clients that have only needed one Healing Touch session, but more often, it takes a short series of sessions. Each one builds on the next to assist my client in reaching their new level of alignment and vibration. Check out an older post I wrote: A Healing Pattern.

We have an amazing and profound capacity to heal ourselves physically, mentally and emotionally when we come into energetic alignment. We really do.

I see it happen every day.

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California

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Reiki for Dogs: Using Spiritual Energy to Heal and Vitalize Man’s Best Friend, By Kathleen Prasad

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This book has greatly inspired my healing practice, and I don’t even have a dog.

Reading Reiki For Dogs brought me back to the basics of doing energy work: connection, balance, trust, and an open heart. I highly recommend this book to anyone who practices any modality of energy work, whether you have been a Reiki Master for 20 years or are now just considering your first healing class.

I loaned out my first copy of Reiki For Dogs to a client right after I read it, and had to buy the kindle version to finish this post. I have another book on order for a gift. It’s one of those books that I find myself underlining something on every page.

Kathleen Prasad describes Animal Reiki as “learning how to meditate with your animals”. She explains how Reiki can be an animal therapy practice, as well as being a meditative practice for the practitioner. She states:

“The practice of Reiki is not just about connecting with the language of nature and using compassionate intention to support your dog; it’s about discovering your true nature, your true essence. Reiki involves more than hoping for good without bad, light without dark, happiness without sadness; it’s about understanding that both sides need to be in balance. Without one side, the other could not exist. Only when we remain in balance can we discover true healing and follow nature’s way most closely. Learning to embrace both halves of the whole of existence, both sides of the yin and yang, earth as well as heaven, our highest potential as well as our shadow side– this is the way of Reiki.”

Kathleen Prasad really gets it. Isn’t this one of the most beautiful descriptions of healing you have ever read?

She also writes how Reiki has healed her at different points in her life and shares the stories of how Reiki has greatly benefited the animals she has worked with. Kathleen reminds us how fully present animals are, without judgement or expectations. Their unconditional acceptance opens our hearts, and it’s when our hearts are open that healing can truly begin.

Kathleen has a list of exercises called “Try This” in the book. Some are traditional Reiki exercises and some are meditative techniques that Kathleen has created to work specifically with animals. These exercises are so simple, and yet so profound. These exercises alone are worth the price of the book.

Here is another of the many passages I underlined in Reiki for Dogs:

“Reiki cannot be forced upon another individual or animal; it will only flow according to the openness of the individual. In other words, each individual is responsible for his or her own healing process. What a practitioner does is simply, through practice, to learn how to create and hold a healing space to support another being.”

As I read this book, I could feel my heart opening with every page. Kathleen Prasad has reminded me once again, on a deeper level, what energetic healing is all about.

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch, Reiki and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California. 510-601-9632

 

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Advanced Chakra Diagnosis and Treatment Workshop Taught By Janna Moll

Janna Moll, MSN, HTCP/I, CMT
Janna Moll, MSN, HTCP/I, CMT

Janna Moll teaches an advanced course for experienced Energy Practitioners called Advanced Chakra Diagnosis and Treatment. I took this class about three months ago and immediately started working with much of the new material and techniques in my Healing Practice. This class is incredibly practical and significantly deepened my understanding of the energy system. I highly recommend this course.

Janna Moll is the founder and President of Energy Medicine Specialists, an organization that offers beginner to advanced practice coursework in the field of Energy Medicine. She also has a private practice in Highlands Ranch Colorado, called the Heart Healing Center. In her energy practice, she combines her training in multiple energy disciplines that include Healing Touch, Reiki, Polarity, Pranic, Reconnection, EFT, Therapeutic Touch, psychotherapy and coaching.

"Janna's Board"
“Janna’s Board”

Janna Moll studied Healing Touch with founder Janet Mentgen, and has studied with about every healer in the book. She is not shy about sharing her ideas and opinions in class, or at lunch, about what works in her practice and what doesn’t. For me, this alone was quite helpful on many levels.

 

Clarity. Janna Moll has clarity.

 

In this short post I will contain my enthusiasm for this class to three other main points:

One: This class significantly shifted my working model of the chakra system. Janna works with scientist Dale Ferg, who contributed much of the physics research in EMS courses. I am not going to go into the details here, but my perception of the chakras changed. I have to admit that this was a little unnerving the first day, yet this was the second biggest take-away from the class for me. My “new” perception of the chakra system is giving me more information in my client’s sessions.

Trading Healings Photo by Grace Gowan
“Trading Healings” Photo by Grace Gowan

Two: The healings I received in this class were exceptionally profound for me. Maybe I just really needed the energy work or maybe I was just ready to go to my next level. Everyone in the class gave and received different types of treatments all three days and I also heard many of the other practitioners say the same thing about their healings.  Janna Moll and class coordinator Grace Gowan created and sustained an exceptional energetic container for the class.

Three:  Janna Moll is a fireball. Three days with Janna Moll is super fun. I know “fun” is not a requirement for an advanced energetic healing class, but hey, three days is a long time and I think it’s important to know what you are getting into.

I would like to thank Grace Gowan in Sunnyvale for coordinating this class. Grace will also be coordinating the Advanced Hara Diagnosis and Treatment for Janna in 2015. Dates will soon be posted on Janna’s website.

I can’t wait!

Jeri Lawson is available for Healing Touch, Reiki and Clarity Breathwork sessions Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, in the Temescal Area of Oakland, California. 510-601-9632