Category Archives: Body, Mind & Spirit

Phoenix Rising Star on Moving Beyond the Old Ways

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MESSAGE FROM THE MEDICINE WHEEL

By Phoenix Rising Star

Oh my. What a year 2012 is turning out to be! A lot of predictions are coming true.

Solar flares. More intense ones than before.

Interruption and breakage in computers, digitized formats and microchip devices.

Emotional turmoil.

Death.

But also, there seems to be an increased awareness and desire for truth.

Giving us greater opportunities to go into our hearts.

So far, and I know I’m not alone in this; I’ve had a wide variety of symptoms that have led me to believe I have the ‘Ascension Flu’.

These symptoms include:

* unexplained nausea

* weight loss

* weight increase

* sometimes both weight loss and increase in the same day!

* nervousness

* super-sensitivity, physically and emotionally and every other way

* mood swings

* body temperature changes

* pain, sometimes phantom, never lasting long

* and a feeling of having one foot in quicksand and one in the elevator.

Oh, did I forget to mention short term memory loss????????

We’ve known that 2012, Ascension, or whatever you want to call this time period, was coming. We’ve known this for quite awhile. There’s no excuse not to recognize it, or the fact that like it or not, we’re in it. And that we chose to be here at this time. Right now.

Somehow I guess I figured that because I chose to be here now, I wouldn’t have to experience the symptoms, the challenging changes, or feel like I had to cope.

Wrong!

I’m here now, thick in the middle of Ascension Flu and feeling like I’m going crazy.

I realize this is the chance for going into my heart, but some days I can’t seem to let go of my haunting fear long enough to do that.

One day, when I was feeling really badly,I went to Mother Earth – to connect deeply, send my love, receive hers and to connect with all the directions through the teachings of the wheel – the Medicine Wheel. Named because traditionally it is a place of healing, of knowledge and awareness, and a place where we can more easily open ourselves to the messages from spirit.

I was feeling fear, negativity, self-judgment, pain, sorrow, you name it; all nameless and formless, but insistently there regardless. Welling up and overwhelming me.

I felt so desperate by the time I got to my place in nature that I forgot how to make a wheel.

Confused I looked around a flat area and wondered where to start.

All of a sudden one rock selected itself to be the center, all that is.

From here I could figure out the cardinal directions of east, west, south and north.

I found a stone for the west, the place of transition, and began to open the wheel.

I stopped aghast at what I was doing.

In the tradition I was taught, the medicine wheel should be opened from the east.

What was I doing?????

I recalled one of my teachers talking about her teacher. He told her, ‘Always open the wheel from the east, the place of new beginnings.” One day to her surprise, he opened the wheel from the west, the place of transition. And a week later, he passed away.

Oh my God!

Did this mean I was dying? Maybe that would explain so much pain and fear! Old cellular memory needing to be cleared before I crossed over!

I hurriedly corrected my opening to the wheel and opened from the east.

I moved immediately to the west.

What?????

What was I doing???????

I’d gone to the south, and in my mind called it the west.

Oh my God!!!! Is this more confirmation I’m dying?

Well, if so, I’m in it now.

No stopping here.

I corrected my direction of the south and managed to chuckle that this direction opens our intuition and feminine receptivity.

Ha!

I went again to the west, in a clock-wise fashion. And then to the north. Where I froze.

I couldn’t remember what the north represented. I knew the animals were white: white buffalo and polar bear. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember anything else.

I stood there and stood there.

Nothing came. No idea whatsoever.

Eventually I had to move on.

In the tradition in which I was taught, one walks counter clock-wise around the circle to release energy and clockwise to energize the new energy.

“Thinking” I was releasing, I found myself walking clockwise. It was only when I turned to go in the opposite direction that I realized what I was doing.

What was I doing?????

I couldn’t believe this! I’ve never felt so messed up before. Not just short term memory loss, but loss of conscious awareness.

This was positively weird.

I went to the center andasked for a message from spirit.

I received my message:

“You are not wrong, misguided, incorrect, or at fault here. You are truly acting on a deeper level of inner guidance. This guidance is what is essential to master the old lessons of the third dimension, such as fear, judgment, negativity, etc. In order to master these lessons, the old ways of learning from and releasing them must be changed. The old ways are not working anyway, so why keep trying them?

“Listen to your guidance and do things differently.

“Go into your heart. Feel love. Express love. Send love. Anytime you feel the old feelings of fear, judgment and negativity, keep sending love until that’s all you feel is love.

“Energize with love. This is the new way. This is the only way that will work to help you on your path to ascension, to the next dimension. If you choose to stay in the fear, or not to energize with love, you are choosing to stay in this dimension. And will have to come back to re-learn this another time. By choosing love, you are choosing to move beyond this dimension into the next. Which do you choose?”

Hearing this internal message actually melted my anxiety, self-recriminations, judgment, fear and everything else.

I was able to send love to myself, finally.

I sent love to all beings feeling fear, judgment, and everything not love.

I sent it without expectation of what would happen. I sent it because I could.

And I felt peace for the first time since December. Or maybe even before that.

Peace and harmony.

Now I know what to do to alleviate the Ascension Flu.

Go into my heart, into the center of all that is, and feel love.

Send love.

Be love.

Energize with love.

That’s all.

In Peace,
Phoenix Rising Star

 

PS—What is the teaching of the north?

Purification.

 

About Phoenix Rising Star

Phoenix Rising Star

 

Phoenix’s Credentials:

Flower of Life Facilitator

M.S. Counseling

Clinical Hypnotherapist

Integrated Energy Therapist, Top Master Instructor since 2006

Reiki/Seichem Master

Medicine for the Earth Facilitator

Angel Therapist

S.H.E.S. Minister (Spirit Helpers and Earth Stewards)

 

For more information on Your HeartWalk Center in Sedona, AZ, see their website:www.sedonaheartwalk.com

For more information on Integrated Energy Therapy, see their website: www.learniet.com

from:   http://www.spiritofmaat.com/mar12/message_from_the_medicine_wheel.html

 

Dr. Seuss & The Rhyming Brain

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Oh, the Places You’ll Go with Seuss’ Rhymes in Tow

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 02 March 2012 Time: 10:59 AM ET
A screenshot from the move "The Lorax"
The latest of Dr. Seuss’ creations to hit the big screen, “The Lorax” was released on March 2, 2012.
CREDIT: Illumination Entertainment/Universal PicturesTrailer

“I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-am.”

Dr. Seuss, the children’s book author born Theodor Seuss Geisel 108 years ago today (March 2), knew how to craft a catchy rhyme. But these rhymes aren’t just child’s play— research suggests that rhyming is built into our brains, and is even key to helping children learn to read.

“If you hear one word, words that rhyme with that word will get activated” in the brain, said Michael Wagner, an experimental linguist at McGill University in Montreal. “It seems like this is one of the factors that explains why rhyme seems to work so well and is so pleasing to us.”

The rhyming brain

Indeed, Dr. Seuss’ playful rhymes have pleased generations of children and their parents. “The Cat in the Hat” (Random House, 1957), for example, has sold more than 11 million copies. The evidence suggests that Seuss knew his audience: Rhymes are very compelling for young children, and their brains seem to process them even better than they process the meanings of other words.

In one 2004 study, researchers read lists of words to young children and then asked them to recall and recite the words they’d heard. The words on the list were all related: A child might hear “nap,” “bed,” “rest,” “peace,” “wake,” “dream,” “doze” and “snore,” for example. When adults take this test, they often inject the word “sleep” into their recitation, despite the fact that it appears nowhere on the original list. The litany of sleep-related words has tricked their brain into assuming the word’s presence.

Young kids responded differently, however. Instead of interjecting new words based on meaning, 5-year-olds added new words that rhymed with the words on the original list. A kid who heard “nap,” for example, might throw in “gap” or “sap.” In their brains, the rhyme overrode the meaning. [11 Facts About Baby Brains]

As children grow older, they seem to grow out of this tendency. Eight-year-olds in the study added mistaken words based on rhyme at about the same rate as they did mistaken words based on meaning. Eleven-year-olds responded just like adults, adding in false words based on the meanings in the original lists.

Reading in rhyme

In fact, rhyme is crucial to learning how to read. When we speak, we think we know what a hard “C” sounds like — “Kk” — and that we represent that sound with a “C” symbol. But consonants change their sound depending on the vowels that follow them. Prepare yourself to say “cat” and compare that with the shape your mouth takes when you start to say “cot.”

What this means is that kids have to learn, to borrow a Seussian phrase, that a C is a C, no matter the vowel. The process of learning this is called “phoneme awareness,” and rhymes help kids figure it out, said Miriam Cherkes-Julkowski, an educational consultant who works in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Arizona.

“Rhyme is the first step in actually segmenting out an individual phoneme-level sound,” Cherkes-Julkowski told LiveScience. “When you say cat/fat, what you’ve done is you’ve pulled the C away from the A, you’ve pulled the F away from the A. … That’s a big accomplishment.”

In other words, rhymes are the framework that helps kids understand the pieces of a word. The part of the word that’s key is the “rime,” the syllable that starts at the vowel and goes through the end of the word.

“This rime with an ‘i’ becomes really, really critical in reading,” Cherkes-Julkowski said. “By prepping kids to pay attention to that part of the syllable, the vowel through the end, you’re also prepping them to orient through print.”

Most of the time, reading isn’t taught with a focus on the rime, Cherkes-Julkowski said. Kids might learn to read phonetically, sounding out letter by letter. That’s not always best, especially for kids with dyslexia and learning disabilities, she said.

“No human being who is a reader reads left to right,” she said. “You can’t do it.”

Take the word “rage.” If you start out with the R, you get an “Rrr” sound. Next, you have an A, but is it a long or a short A? There’s no way to know until you get the next letter — a G. “Aha,” you might think, “‘Rag!’ It’s a short A.” But now you hit that E, and it changes everything. Even the G doesn’t sound the same anymore.

In other words, even when we’re not rhyming, we’re focused on the rime. Many kids can figure this all out with a phonetic reading approach, Cherkes-Julkowski said. But for kids with dyslexia, learning to pay attention to the rime is the key to reading.

“It gives the child the information that he or she needs that, ‘Aha, there are some patterns, and the patterns lie within the rime,'” she said.

Shelley Lacey-Castelot, the director of Connecticut-based Literacy Solutions, an education consulting group, agreed.

“I have a number of students who were unable to learn to read any other way than through rime-onset,” Lacey-Castelot told LiveScience. “These students aptly label this instruction amazing, life-saving, miraculous.”

As for Dr. Seuss, he was ahead of the rime-reading curve.

“He nicely sets it up for them,” Cherkes-Julkowski said. “He introduces it to them in a fun way before they ever have to make sense out of print.”

from:    http://www.livescience.com/18787-seuss-rhymes-reading.html

The Joy of Rescued Pets

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Dr. Patricia Fitzgerald

Wellness Editor, The Huffington Post; doctor of acupuncture and Oriental medicine; nutritionist; author

Happy Tails: Amazing Stories of Rescued Pets

Posted: 02/29/2012 8:48 am

It was love at first sight. When I went to my local animal shelter more than six years ago, I thought of it as a first step — I was planning on researching carefully all of my options, visiting several shelters and rescues, and taking my time to find my new canine companion. Ten minutes later, I was on the phone with my husband, explaining why we had to bring home a 7-year-old Beagle-German Shepherdish-looking mutt with advanced cataracts named Charlie. He was found as a stray, so I had to wait a week until he was available for adoption in case his owner came to claim him. I visited him every day, leading up to the day he was available. I was super nervous and couldn’t sleep the night before, worried that other people would want to adopt him, too. I had already become so attached!

When we went to the shelter the next morning (a half an hour before they opened, just in case), I remember worrying that everyone else at the shelter was also there to adopt Charlie. After all, he was the cutest dog ever.

Boy, was I naïve! Like so many things in life, you don’t know until you know. It didn’t really occur to me that older dogs at shelters are often the last ones to be adopted, if at all. I also didn’t know that most animals don’t make it out of shelters alive.

It turned out that nobody else had come to adopt Charlie, so he was mine (for all of $28.00, including a microchip and shots, and he was already neutered). That same morning, my husband fell in love with an 8-year-old adorable Beagle-Bassett named Simba. We left that shelter that day with two dogs, and it has been a love affair ever since!

The decision to be a pet guardian is an enormous one. There are many factors to consider when deciding what kind of pet to bring home — large or small, young or old, dog, cat, or tortoise — and especially where to find your new animal companion.

According to the ASPCA, there are between 5 and 7 million animals in shelters across the country. And of those, 3-4 million will be euthanized — that’s 60 percent of dogs and 70 percent of cats. Most of those animals are euthanized simply because there is no one to adopt them. And yet, despite this overwhelming need, 15-20 percent of new pets are purchased from breeders, while only around 10 percent are adopted from shelters.

And it’s not just mutts who suffer. On Valentine’s Day of 2012, a Pekingese was named Best in Show at Westminster — which, sadly, will likely mean pain and suffering for thousands of Pekingese in years to come. Each year, Westminster contributes to Americans’ desire for purebred puppies — often bred in inhumane puppy mills. Then, sadder still, millions of these dogs end up housed in shelters after their novelty wears off, and are eventually put to sleep. Over a quarter of dogs euthanized in shelters are purebred.

This tremendous need may be the best reason to bring a rescue pet into your home — but it’s far from the only one. There have been literally hundreds of studies showing that pet companionship is good for humans — from a physical level to a spiritual one. Recent studies have shown that pet owners have lower levels of risk factors for cardiovascular disease, spend less on health care, and have stronger immune systems. Beyond that, pet ownership contributes to physical fitness, sociability (so easy to talk to a stranger who is walking a dog), self-esteem — and pure joy and bliss.

On a wider, societal level, rescued pets have been the catalyst of some profound healing of the hearts of those often marginalized. A great example is K9 Connection, a California-based group that came up with an innovative way to tackle two problems at once — alongside the millions of dogs and cats euthanized each year, there are thousands of teenagers who take their lives each year. At K9 connection, at-risk teens train homeless shelter dogs. Dogs who were doomed for death are adopted into loving homes. The impact on the teens is profound as the healing power of the human-animal bond does its work.

The healing that takes place at prisons across the country which have programs pairing rescue dogs with inmates is extraordinary. Shelter dogs are saved from euthanasia and given training, and the prisoners benefit from the companionship, responsibility, and the satisfaction that they are helping to save the life of such a beautiful, vulnerable creature. Some prisoners report that they had never had the experience of unconditional love until they started training a rescue dog.

Some groups that facilitate these amazing programs include Project POOCH, Prison Tails, and Paws in Prison.

Nationally, rescued pets are becoming increasingly visible. Since the world’s first viral video of a kitten doing something adorable was posted on YouTube, it’s been well recognized that watching cute animal antics is perhaps second to none among our favorite activities. This year at the Super Bowl, Budweiser capitalized on that love, running a commercial with a tiny dog named Weego, trained to fetch beer. However, their interests were in more than just selling six-packs: Weego was a rescue dog, and the commercial raised more than a quarter of a million dollars for the Tony La Russa Animal Rescue Foundation. Moreover, it’s done a great job drawing attention to how great rescue pets can be; Bud Light’s Facebook page tells the story of Weego, and has gotten amazing engagement from tens of thousands of people, sharing stories about rescue pets.

from:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-patricia-fitzgerald/pet-adoption_b_1308093.html?ref=mindful-living&ir=Mindful%20Living

Deepak Chopra on The Brain & Consciousness

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  • Deepak Chopra

Author, ‘War of the Worldviews’; Founder, The Chopra Foundation

A New Era for the Brain — Guiding Your Own Evolution

Posted: 03/ 1/2012 8:20 am
 One of the great abilities of the human brain is to boost itself into a higher function. No one can explain how this happens. By the time early humans discovered fire and simple tools like the wheel and lever, our brains were already the most complex structure in the universe. We then proceeded to use this structure in unprecedented ways. Somewhere in our DNA was the potential for higher mathematics, for example, even though Homo sapiens existed for 200,000 years without tapping that capacity.

The reason that we are able to accomplish huge, never-ending leaps needs to be solved. If it can, then a new era will open up for the brain. The key is not materialistic, to my mind. One needs to begin, in fact, by turning away from the brain, whose intricate workings have mesmerized researchers for three decades, ever since the development of feasible brain scans. Such advances are fascinating, but we run the risk of sitting around a radio as it plays Mozart, staring at how the transistors work while imagining that we are uncovering the secrets of music.

Once you stop staring at the brain and start exploring the music it plays — i.e., the richness of human thoughts, feelings, images and sensations — a simple truth emerges. There is something more complex in the cosmos than the human brain: the process that makes the brain work. This process involves consciousness. It is our mind that is using the brain, not the other way around. (I would argue that the brain is a creation of the mind, a physical projection of consciousness. But that argument can be set aside for another day.) If we could understand the process that underlies the entire brain, instead of focusing in reductionist fashion on bits and pieces of brain function, doors would suddenly be flung open.

Let me suggest a beginning.

What we already know are a few fundamentals that apply to everything happening in the brain. Some functions are already confirmed by brain scans; others arise from deduction, working form observed facts to larger principles.

1. The process always involves feedback loops.

2. These feedback loops are intelligent.

3. The dynamics of the brain go in and out of balance but always favor overall balance, known as homeostasis.

4. We use our brains to evolve and develop, guided by our intentions.

5. Self-reflection pushes us forward into unknown territory.

6. Many diverse areas of the brain are coordinated simultaneously.

7. We have the capacity to monitor many levels of awareness, even though our focus is generally confined to one level (i.e., waking, sleeping, and dreaming).

8. All the qualities of the known world, such as sight, sounds, textures, and tastes, are created mysteriously by the interaction of mind and brain.

9. Mind is the origin of consciousness, not the brain.

10. Only consciousness can understand consciousness. There is no mechanical explanation that suffices, working from facts about the brain.

This list bridges two worlds, biology and philosophy. Biology is great at explaining physical processes but totally inadequate to tell us about the meaning and purpose of our subjective experience. Philosophy delves deeply into meaning but has made only tentative forays into the brain. Both worlds are needed to understand ourselves. Otherwise, we fall into the biological fallacy, which holds that humans are controlled by their brains, or the philosophical fallacy, which treats experience devoid of its physiological connection. Leaving aside countless arguments between various theories of mind and brain, the goal is clear: We want to use our brains, not have them use us.

I’d like to expand on the practical uses of the 10 principles listed above — they would be merely intriguing if they remained abstractions but incredibly practical if they lead to the next phase of human evolution. That phase involves using the brain better, something that human beings excel at. We are driven to greater creativity, complexity, imaginative leaps and unknown horizons. “Better” doesn’t mean more efficiently, the way technology improves a computer. In fact, by giving technicalities over to machines, we left more room for using our brains outside technology. In a world where every sort of calculation is done automatically, at the push of a button or the stroke of a keypad, assigning the brain a more evolved role poses the hugest challenge.

In the following posts I’ll suggest a new synthesis that takes the most basic aspects of brain function — feedback, self-reflection, homeostasis and multi-dimensional consciousness — to show that the era of higher brain function has arrived, awaiting only how you and I choose to participate.

from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/brain-mind_b_1304000.html?ref=mindful-living&ir=Mindful%20Living

Women’s Rights and the Blunt Amendment

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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

U.S. Senator from New York

 Standing Strong Against the Extreme Blunt Amendment
Posted: 03/ 1/2012 10:12 am

In recent weeks, I’ve said repeatedly that I was dumb-founded that in 2012 we are actually debating whether women should have access to contraception. I had no idea I’d be even more dumb-founded today, when, instead of coming together to fix our economy and strengthen the middle class, the Senate is considering a measure so extreme that it would allow any employer — religious or secular — to deny their employees coverage of any preventive service, including contraception, mammograms –anything the employer deems unfit to be covered.

Let me say this once and for all: the power to decide whether to use contraception or any other preventive care service should be up to each individual woman, not her boss.

Of course, the Blunt Amendment is just the latest attack on women’s health from the far right wing in Congress. Whether it’s their attempt to defund Planned Parenthood or to roll back a common sense preventive care provisions in the Affordable Care Act, make no mistake about it, this concerted effort to reduce women’s access to essential preventive care demonstrates a callous disregard for the health and safety of women.

Attacks like these are why Senator Boxer and I started One Million Strong For Women, to build a grassroots movement of Americans fed up with the far right’s attempts to undermine women’s health. We’ve been joined by several champions in the Senate including Senator Schumer, Senator Reid, Senator Franken, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Murray, the DSCC as well as over 260,000 of you. I hope you’ll add your voice today as well.

Let’s be clear. Neither the recent controversy over the HHS contraception rule or this week’s Blunt Amendment has anything to do with religious freedom. You don’t have to take it from me, just ask Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In the majority decision of the 1990 case Employment Division v. Smith, Justice Scalia wrote, “We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting that the State is free to regulate.”

The extreme amendment Republicans are bringing up for a vote makes it clear as day — this is a political and ideological overreach — not a religious issue. The fact they want to exempt all businesses from providing any preventive care for women is outrageous.

Please know that we will not stand for these attempts to undermine the ability of women to make their own decisions. If our Republican colleagues want to continue to take this issue head on, we will stand up as often as necessary to draw a line in the Senate and oppose these attacks against women’s rights and women’s health.

I hope you’ll join us at OneMillionStrongForWomen.com.

It is time to agree that women deserve access to preventive health services, regardless of where they work. And it is time to agree to get back to work on legislation that can create jobs and grow the economy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-kirsten-gillibrand/standing-strong-against-t_b_1313090.html?ref=impact&ir=Impact

Jean Houston Meditation to Access Higher Self

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From Jean Houston:   http://www.jeanhouston.org/:
 
In the busy swirl of everyday life, it helps every now and again to
take a few minutes to be reminded of who you really are.
 
There is an exercise we do in my online course to access your
Higher Self. I’ve gotten so much feedback about it, that I wanted
to share it with you again.

You have a deep purpose and a guiding force for becoming all you
are capable of being.  You may sense this as that inner strength
that directs your actions. Or that inner voice, the intuitive
voice, that calls to you when you’re at a crossroads in
your life.

“This is the path you should take,” it tells you. Often, however,
it tells you with emotions and feelings, and the words come later.

Some call this guiding force the Higher Self. It is the deepest,
holiest, most whole part of you.

Would you like to be able to access this Higher Self at any time?
What if you could actually stand face-to-face with that most
soulful, wise force behind all the good in your life?

In this e-mail, I’m going to give you a meditation that will enable
you to get in touch with your Higher Self, your guiding force, your
voice of destiny. It’s simple and yet so powerful.

If you’ve heard me speak in the past about the 3 Keys to
Discovering and Living Your True Purpose, you know that the
Activation Key #2 to discovering your true purpose is opening to
your larger role in the world by shifting from your “small” self to
your Higher Self.

What is a small self? The small self is the self whose emotions and
moods fluctuate every day based on external circumstances: whether
or not you got praise at work, whether your partner said,  “I love
you,” whether you ran into traffic on the way to run errands, or
sometimes because the weather is too hot or too cold. It is the
self that is mainly concerned with the “I” of the ego, the concerns
of status and comfort.

The Higher Self is the self beyond what’s happening in the present
moment, the self that is in alignment with All That Is, with the
divine, with the cosmos. It is timeless, formless and limitless.
The Higher Self is the universe inside of you.

By shifting from your small self to your Higher self, you can
access the truth of who you are and begin to experience your unique
purpose. You can see beyond the everyday concerns of ego to a
higher calling, to seeing the world’s pain and need, and seeing
what your role is in relationship to healing that pain.

When you live from the place of the Higher Self, you live a life in
which abundance is scooped from abundance and still more
abundance remains.

How can you experience the Higher Self consciously, at will, at
more than just those fleeting moments when you sense the greater
intelligence working through you? You can do it through this
meditation, which I’m about to share with you.

This meditation will require a completely quiet and undistracted
space. Maybe you can do this now, or maybe you’ll have to set aside
some time later in the day or first thing in the morning.

==============================================
A 5-Minute Audio Practice to Access Your Higher Self

==============================================

Please visit the special audio page to listen to and download
this powerful experiential practice.

LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD NOW <<

To your higher purpose,

Jean

Two Sleep Cycles a Day May Cure Insomnia

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insomniaWhile residents of the Southwest, Mexico and Spain are no strangers to the midday ‘siesta’ prompted by high daytime temperatures, today’s industrial societies suffer by not having enough time in the day to do everything they feel is necessary and instead bank all their sleeping time at night, often cutting that time shorter than the recommend 8 hours.

However, the ‘First Sleep, Second Sleep’ practice was apparently well known to humans prior to the 17th century. The onset of industrialization and expansion to the New World caused a curb in in favor of a single 8-hour sleep period through the night supposedly to boost productivity during the day.

Hugh Pickens offers his summary of the phenomenon and recent studies showing how two sleep cycles a day can cure insomnia and improve your day-to-day life.

BBC Article

Wikipedia: Segmented Sleep

Jim Self on Ascension Symptoms

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Ascension Symptoms

As we move through the Shift, changes are happening within our bodies. We are altering how we see the world around us, and increasing our body’s ability to hold Light. As we alter the electromagnetic frequencies in our physical and emotional bodies, many of us are beginning to think differently about ourselves. Depending on how we hold resistance in our body, and where we argue for our limitations, we will experience physical and emotional symptoms from time to time.

These are known as “Ascension Symptoms.” Seeking the advice of a professional is always a wise thing to do when one is unsure or concerned or needs information.  However, do not be surprised if, after a number of visits, your physician or health practitioner tells you, “I can’t find anything wrong.”

You are becoming a being that holds higher, faster frequencies of consciousness.  You are changing. You are reducing the density in your body. The best solution I have found to date is to relax, enjoy yourself, and know that this readjustment phase will be over soon. Let yourself drool.

In the meantime, the following questions outline some typical symptoms that people have been reporting. I hope the answers will give you some peace of mind.

ACHES, PAINS AND GENERAL PHYSICAL DISCOMFORT

I seem to be experiencing a lot of physical discomfort lately in different areas of my body.  I am getting aches and pains in places that I can’t relate to any specific activity or exertion. Can you give me some idea of what might be going on?

As I’m sure you know, all physical discomfort is related to being energetically off- balance. As we make changes to heal energetically, the places in our bodies that hold the old patterns may talk back to us. As the charged block is dislodged we may feel the effect, kind of like an old log getting jogged loose from the log-jam in the river. And, of course, putting your attention on anything will only amplify it.

Here are some exercises that will help:

1) Use the Grounding Cord. Attach it to the ache and ground or drain out the energy. You might find it helpful to imagine the ache as a color.

2) Use the Rose Tool. Imagine the ache as a color. Collect up the energy/color with the Rose, then move the Rose away and explode it.- releasing all that ache.

3) Spin your fields…

HEADACHES

I never used to suffer from headaches, but this past year, I’ve been getting them as often as twice a month. The pain is excruciating. Is this something I should be concerned about, or does this have something to do with all the solar flares we have been getting?

Usually headaches are caused by other people and other energies being in your head. When you are intentionally clearing your space, including the Center of Your Head – this energy sometimes resists being thrown out and it may bump around even more… kind of like that log jam. As they are getting knocked loose, the logs may bump around for a bit or get stuck in new ways until the water (energy) washes them away. Using the Rose Tool to clean out the Center of Your Head will help. Be sure to use this tool even if you don’t have the headache. Practice when it doesn’t count. Please be patient and use the tools daily. Those people and that energy may have been in your space for a very long time. It may take a few rounds of Rose work to release them and send them along their way. Back to their own heads.

ELECTRICAL BURSTS OF ENERGY

I have been feeling strange bursts of heat in my feet. It almost feels like little hot spots that get activated by a sudden surge of electrical energy.

Congratulations! It looks like this electrical energy you are experiencing may be great validation that energy is moving through your space at higher and brighter levels. Whatever spiritual and energy work you are doing is calling forth more light into your life.    Now the trick is to get out of the way and allow it! It is as if you are now suddenly running 210 volts of electricity through wires designed to only allow 110.

A suggestion: In order to allow the flow to move without discomfort, you might try opening up your feet chakras about 10% more. Just pretend and imagine them opening in any fun way that works for you. You can also put your attention on your leg channels and open those a bit more too.

DESPAIR AND DEPRESSION

Why do I often feel despair?

Those feelings of despair may have many causes. Here are two possibilities:

Firstly, the energy is not yours, but is coming from those around you. Many people who don’t have tools are feeling the Shift and responding to it with despair. Many others, like you, who are sensitive, are picking up on it. It doesn’t matter if this is the cause of your despair or not. Simply use the tools that you know work so well to clear that energy out. Pretend it is a color to make it easier and more neutral to work with.

Secondly, it is possible that you are remembering Home, and as the noise and drama surrounding you gets louder and more intrusive, the contrast between what you notice around you and what you remember as Home is vast. That

Phobias, Fears, & Spiders, Oh My!

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If You’re Afraid of Spiders, They Seem Bigger: Phobia’s Effect On Perception of Feared Object Allows Fear to Persist

ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2012) — The more afraid a person is of a spider, the bigger that individual perceives the spider to be, new research suggests.

The more afraid a person is of a spider, the bigger that individual perceives the spider to be, new research suggests. (Credit: © M.R. Swadzba / Fotolia)

In the context of a fear of spiders, this warped perception doesn’t necessarily interfere with daily living. But for individuals who are afraid of needles, for example, the conviction that needles are larger than they really are could lead people who fear injections to avoid getting the health care they need.

A better understanding of how a phobia affects the perception of feared objects can help clinicians design more effective treatments for people who seek to overcome their fears, according to the researchers.

In this study, participants who feared spiders were asked to undergo five encounters with live spiders — tarantulas, in fact — and then provide size estimates of the spiders after those encounters ended. The more afraid the participants said they were of the spiders, the larger they estimated the spiders had been.

“If one is afraid of spiders, and by virtue of being afraid of spiders one tends to perceive spiders as bigger than they really are, that may feed the fear, foster that fear, and make it difficult to overcome,” said Michael Vasey, professor of psychology at Ohio State University and lead author of the study.

“When it comes to phobias, it’s all about avoidance as a primary means of keeping oneself safe. As long as you avoid, you can’t discover that you’re wrong. And you’re stuck. So to the extent that perceiving spiders as bigger than they really are fosters fear and avoidance, it then potentially is part of this cycle that feeds the phobia that leads to its persistence.

“We’re trying to understand why phobias persist so we can better target treatments to change those reasons they persist.”

The study is published in a recent issue of the Journal of Anxiety Disorders.

The researchers recruited 57 people who self-identified as having a spider phobia. Each participant then interacted at specific time points over a period of eight weeks with five different varieties of tarantulas varying in size from about 1 to 6 inches long.

The spiders were contained in an uncovered glass tank. Participants began their encounters 12 feet from the tank and were asked to approach the spider. Once they were standing next to the tank, they were asked to guide the spider around the tank by touching it with an 8-inch probe, and later with a shorter probe.

Throughout these encounters, researchers asked participants to report how afraid they were feeling on a scale of 0-100 according to an index of subjective units of distress. After the encounters, participants completed additional self-report measures of their specific fear of spiders, any panic symptoms they experienced during the encounters with the spiders, and thoughts about fear reduction and future spider encounters.

Finally, the research participants estimated the size of the spiders — while no longer being able to see them — by drawing a single line on an index card indicating the length of the spider from the tips of its front legs to the tips of its back legs.

An analysis of the results showed that higher average peak ratings of distress during the spider encounters were associated with estimates that the spiders were larger than they really were. Similar positive associations were seen between over-estimates of spider size and participants’ higher average peak levels of anxiety, higher average numbers of panic symptoms and overall spider fear. These findings have been supported in later studies with broader samples of people with varying levels of fear of spiders.

“It would appear from that result that fear is driving or altering the perception of the feared object, in this case a spider,” said Vasey, also the director of research for the psychology department’s Anxiety and Stress Disorders Clinic. “We already knew fear and anxiety alter thoughts about the feared thing. For example, the feared outcome is interpreted as being more likely than it really is. But this study shows that even perception is altered by fear. In this case, the feared spider is seen as being bigger. And that may serve as a maintaining factor for the fear.”

The approach tasks with the spiders are a classic example of exposure therapy, a common treatment for people with phobias. Though this therapy is known to be effective, scientists still do not fully understand why it works. And for some, the effects don’t last — but it is difficult to predict who will have a relapse of fear, Vasey said.

He and colleagues are studying these biased perceptions as well as attitudes with hopes that the new knowledge will enhance treatment for people with various phobias. The work suggests that fear not only alters one’s perception of the feared thing, but also can influence a person’s automatic attitude toward an object. Those who have developed an automatic negative attitude toward a feared object might have a harder time overcoming their fear.

Though individuals with arachnophobia are unlikely to seek treatment, the use of spiders in this research was a convenient way to study the complex effects of fear on visual perception and how those effects might cause fear to persist, Vasey noted.

“Ultimately, we are interested in identifying predictors of relapse so we can better measure when a person is done with treatment,” he said.

This work is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Co-authors include Michael Vilensky, Jacqueline Heath, Casaundra Harbaugh, Adam Buffington and Vasey’s principal collaborator, Russell Fazio, all of Ohio State’s Department of Psychology.

from:    http://www.chromographicsinstitute.com/wp-admin/post-new.php

Eat MORE Dark Chocolate

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chocolate

Seven reasons to eat more dark chocolate

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 by: PF

(NaturalNews) More and more health reasons for eating dark chocolate keep coming in. Many will be pointed out here, then explained further in the sources indicated by numbers in parenthesis. But first, understand thatorganic dark chocolatebrought into the market place under fair trade agreements is best.
Some of the major cheap chocolate producers use child slaves in Africa to pick cacao. The more dark the chocolate with less sugar, milk, and other ingredients, the closer it is to cacao. A range of at least 70% to 90% cacao in dark chocolate is both tasty and healthy.

Milk chocolate contains milk, which negates the health benefits, and sugar, which feeds cancer cells. Avoid it.

According to Dr. Debra Miller’s statement inChemistry Central Journal, “Cacao seeds are a ‘Super Fruit’ providing nutritive value beyond that of their macronutrient composition.” (1)

Interestingly, one doesn’t have to gorge lots of chocolate every day to get the health benefits. A little treat, like a square or two daily will support good health.

A study of almost 20,000 participants in Germany concluded that those who ate 7.5 grams of dark chocolate a day received most of the heart protection benefits of chocolate. Organic dark chocolate bars are usually 100 grams. (1)

Benefits of dark chocolate

Cardiac and stroke protection :Dark chocolate lowers blood pressure, which lowers risks of heart attacks and strokes. (1)

Reduces risk of colon cancer :Cocoa polyphenols from dark chocolate reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. This was determined in a study by the Science and Technology Institute of Food and Nutrition in Spain, which was published in the journalMolecular Nutrition.(2)

Healthy fats :The fat in chocolate does little to raise cholesterol. It contains abundant oleic acid, the type of fatty acid found in olive oil, which helps prevent heart disease and promote antioxidant activity. (3)

Enhances glucose metabolism :Dark chocolate (70% plus) candy bars inhibit blood sugar issues to help prevent diabetes and obesity. How’s that for a surprise! (3)

Improves mood :Studies have shown that dark chocolate contains serotonin and increases endorphin production. It’s a natural anti-depressant. (4)

Improves brain function :Nottingham University professor Ian MacDonald used MRI analysis to determine improved brain activity with people who had just consumed cocoa drinks. (4) Hopefully they didn’t have to undergo too many MRI scans that would fry their brains!

Eases PMS issues :Here’s a hint for husbands and boyfriends to give dark chocolate to your wives and lady friends. (5)

There you have it: many reasons to enjoyorganic dark chocolate that is at least 70% cacao.There are brands with 80% to 90% as well. These aren’t your kiddy chocolates with lots of sugar or milk or creamy nugget fillings, etc. They are semi-sweet at best.

The more bitter the better. It’s not difficult to get used to if you really like chocolate. Enjoy chocolate with the knowledge that it’s actually good for you.

From, and to Learn more, go to:    http://www.naturalnews.com/035035_dark_chocolate_health_benefits_cacao.html#ixzz1nEN1GzKE