Reiki in Philadelphia

Managing stress is my number one strategy for being happy, healthy, and creative. It’s my long-term plan for healthy aging and what keeps me sane in a chaotic world.

Let’s start with what I actually mean by “managing” stress. I’m not talking about avoiding it altogether. As if! While I do make targeted efforts to minimize external stressors (by saying no to voluntary tasks that don’t bring me joy and being mindful about the amount of sensory stimulation I expose myself to), it’s not possible to avoid it completely. Certain kinds of stress, such as some challenges and physical exercise are even beneficial.

I’m also not talking about tropical vacations or spa days. These may or may not be helpful in managing stress, but they are too few and far in between to be relied upon. If you experience stress on a daily basis, you need a tool in your back pocket ready to go at all times.

What I am talking about is working with the stress that occurs in your life to prevent the potential damaging effects on your body and psyche. It’s not so much the stress itself that’s the problem, but the way your body instinctively responds to it, specifically via the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn (or the 4 Fs) mechanism. When you get stuck in a perpetual state of hyperawareness and survival, you’ve got all the ingredients necessary for chronic pain, fatigue, tension, anxiety, depression, illness, and burnout.

Why? When your primitive brain perceives a threat, it responds by preparing to run away, attack, hide, or … (insert other survival strategy that would have made sense to a cave dweller, but is not so much helpful to a modern day person) to survive. It deliberately shunts life force energy to the extremities, the heart and lungs, and senses. Digestion, detoxification, cellular repair, elimination, fertility, sexuality, focus, clarity, creativity, and all systems that are not essential in a crisis go offline. It’s not a problem when this happens occasionally, but many of us live in this state of having nearly all our energy usurped for action that never actually occurs.

Learning how to activate your body’s natural antidote to the 4Fs will allow you to experience more ease, vitality, joy, and peace despite outer circumstances. You can learn to become the eye of the hurricane rather than reacting to every dumpster fire that those around you might be starting, fanning, or lamenting. (I’d enjoy having more company here in the eye of the hurricane! There’s plenty of room for you in here.)

Popular culture would have us believe that turning to alcohol, comfort foods or social media is such a remedy. This is a myth. While there’s nothing wrong with mashed potatoes, wine or Instagram, in general, these are tools for distracting ourselves and have absolutely zero impact (make that zero positive impact) on how your body metabolizes stress hormones. They might make you feel better for a quick minute, but the 4Fs remain unchanged.

Instead, I’m inviting you to try something different. Something somewhat radical. Something that will actually help you feel better, not just feel less.
1. Notice. The first step is paying attention to your inner landscape, so that you can recognize when one of the 4Fs gets activated. This means slowing down, tuning in, and developing a relationship with yourself so that you can recognize when the survival urges kick in. I’ve yet to meet anyone who learned this growing up, so it will take a bit of practice. Believe me, having access to this early warning system is immensely beneficial.
2. Breathe. Breathing into your belly and gently extending your exhales sends a signal to the nervous system that you are safe. Adding an audible sigh is even more potent. Unless you’re in a business meeting, that is! Getting fired is unlikely to help your stress level.
3. Shake. This is what animals do in nature, but generally we humans are too self-conscious to allow this impulse to manifest. It might not be appropriate in the situation you find yourself in, but as soon as possible, make your way to a private space, such as the restroom, and shake it out. Start with jazz hands, turn it up, let that movement spread to your arms, into your shoulders, neck and head. Let it flow down into the hips, let your knees jiggle, and and maybe lift and lower your heels, letting them thump on the floor. Keep breathing and keep shaking as long as time allows or until you feel a shift in your body.
Once you’ve turned off the alarm bells, it’s much easier to move to the next stage: prevention. Now that you have a strategy in place for dealing with stress in urgent situations, I’d suggest a follow-up; creating a daily practice to build up your resilience, a preventative strategy to minimize the amount of time you need to recover from an activated 4F situation. There are lots of ways to do this, and the only “right” way is the one that works for you and is enjoyable enough to keep you coming back.

Massage, Reiki, meditation, mantra, yoga and nature are tools that give me tremendous benefit. You might already have some tools ready to go or a list of things in your head that you’ve heard about and would like to try. Once you get out of the chronic survival mode that 21^st century living seems to inspire, you’ll have a much better chance of following through and implementing any plan you make.

If your plate is overflowing and you just want to lie back and receive some nourishment and healing, that’s exactly what I do for my clients. Reiki and gentle massage are both incredible remedies for chronic 4F activation. You could schedule a remote Reiki treatment from anywhere in the world or a Reiki-massage or in-person Reiki in Philadelphia if you’d like some support managing stress and moving beyond survival mode. Or get on the mailing list to be informed about upcoming classes and learn how to heal yourself with Reiki.

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Three Simple Ways to Manage Stress

Managing stress is my number one strategy for being happy, healthy, and creative. It’s my long-term…
ohmygosh! I just found this article buried in my files. I wrote it four or five years ago while serving on the Health and Wellness Committee at my local food co-op. I have since learned that my personality is not a good match for committee work, but still the words I wrote then ring true today.

Cultivating Wellness

Just as we all have our own gifts to share with the world, we each have a unique recipe for cultivating our own wellness. There are countless paths to choose from. While it may seem like an impossible feat, every action taken towards wellness brings us closer to our goal. If we are willing to pay attention, our bodies make requests for the nutrition, movement, rest, connection, and pleasure they require. Sometimes these requests arrive as symptoms informing us of having lost our way.

As an adolescent, I suffered from low back pain that ranged from uncomfortable to debilitating. It interfered on a daily basis with my activities, and looking back it was one of the best things that ever happened to me! It may sound absurd, but this seeming tragedy changed the trajectory of my life in a dramatic way that led to tremendous growth. When western medicine was unable to help me, I sought out alternatives. I began to understand that wellness was something that I could cultivate with my behavior and thoughts.

Understanding health as more than just the absence of major disease, I began to explore techniques that would improve my comfort and vitality. I discovered the joys of yoga, affirmations, and meditation. I soon realized that spending an hour in the morning practicing self-care set me up for feeling centered and energized throughout the day. I became interested in nutrition, the concept of food as medicine, and an anti-inflammatory diet. I enjoyed so many benefits from receiving bodywork that I went on to study massage and Reiki.

I’ve noticed that choosing activities which bring me joy are easily incorporated into my daily routine. Those that I think I should do but dread have no staying power. I’ve experimented with a wide variety of wellness therapies over the past two decades and have learned that will power is limited, but devotion to fun, harmony, balance, freedom, and vitality comes easily. Just as symptoms alert us when we have strayed from our wellness path, joy points us in the right direction.

Over time my back pain dissipated and now occurs as a message from my body that something is out of balance. When I feel that first twinge of discomfort, I’ve learned to slow down and check in with my thoughts, words, and actions. Where am I not honoring myself, my values, my health, or my intentions? How can I take better care of myself? Rather than ignoring or suppressing this valuable clue, I investigate it as an effect pointing me toward an unhealthy cause.

Remember the Chinese proverb, “A thousand mile journey begins with just one step.” Why not begin today?

Cultivating Wellness

ohmygosh! I just found this article buried in my files. I wrote it four or five…
Reiki has a growing reputation for successfully supporting cancer and surgical patients. Yet it has many additional uses. Taking a Reiki 1 class is an easy, affordable way to gain instant access to healing, cleansing, renewing life-force energy. All at your very fingertips! As the ability to practice is transferred from teacher to student during an initiation called an attunement, it’s not dependent on any special skills or specific lifestyle. You don’t need to be psychic, enlightened, or identify as a “healer” to practice Reiki.

While many clients are content to receive professional treatments, many others desire more consistent relief. I’ve compiled a short list of the most common reasons for doing so that I hear from students. If you can relate, you might consider signing yourself up for a class! It will reduce your dependence on a practitioner, enabling you to receive healing on a daily basis.

Photo by Puwadon Sang-ngern on Pexels.com
1. Managing stress and anxiety. Aside from the fact that these maladies are highly unpleasant, they’ve also been linked to an increasing number of life-threatening diseases. Relaxation is becoming accepted as much more than an indulgent practice available to the likes of Hollywood divas frequenting day spas, but also as a wise investment in one’s health.
2. Reducing chronic pain. Relieving stress reduces inflammation, which in turn reduces chronic pain. While arthritis, for example, might not be curable, many people with this diagnosis are able to reduce, or even eliminate, the pain with consistent treatment.
3. Healing trauma. As if enduring a traumatic event is not terrible enough, it has long-term effects on the nervous system, causing survivors to live in a state of near-constant fear. Repeated activation of the physiological relaxation response can rewire the hair-trigger alarm systems of those struggling to acclimate to life after trauma.
4. Releasing limiting beliefs. I’ve yet to meet anyone who didn’t pick up any limiting beliefs in childhood which prevent them from living their greatest, most joyful lives. Statements that begin with, “I never…”, “I always…”, “I’m just the type of person who…”, “I’m too this or too that” become ingrained in the subconscious, preventing us from pursuing our dreams. With diligent application, Reiki can help us rewrite our inner scripts and uncover our true power.
5. Recovering self-esteem. For anyone who has developed a sense of insecurity due to past experiences, it’s hardly news that this way of being can be debilitating. By connecting folks to their deeper selves and inner knowing, innate self-esteem that has been fragmented or covered up can be reclaimed, allowing for greater personal freedom and contentment.
6. Cultivating clarity. Often students don’t know exactly what they are seeking but do have an acute awareness that something is missing from their lives. Reiki can help put them in touch with intuition, a sense of knowing that is much deeper than the intellect. For those who feel stuck in health, career, or relationship, developing clarity can reveal the way forward.
7. Healthy aging. There’s a common misconception in our culture that everything just starts to fall apart after age 40. Sadly, this is coupled with a sense of resignation and hopelessness. I’d like to argue that neglecting and abusing one’s body does cause increasing damage, and for many people, 40 years is the tipping point when such mistreatment can no longer be sustained. Reducing toxicity and inflammation while stockpiling life-force energy can go a long way to promoting better health through middle age and the elder years.
8. Support through a difficult time. Relocation, new parenthood, death of a loved one, divorce, and other big life changes are highly stressful. Reiki can provide comfort through challenges that might not be avoidable, but don’t need to be downright incapacitating.
9. Letting go of unwanted emotions. Resentment from old hurts can be a consistent drain of one’s energy and trigger undesirable coping mechanisms such as overdrinking, overeating, overworking, etc to numb the pain. Letting go of justified anger can seem impossible without external support. Yes, someone might have done something careless or even cruel in the past, and you might have suffered as a result. And at some point, you might choose to stop any needlessly suffering despite the damage that was done. Reiki can help find the inner resources and resilience to let go so that you can move on.
10. Frustrating or inadequate results of medical treatment. Many people show up in my office after having run through the gamut of medical tests and procedures that simply haven’t provided the desired relief. Because Reiki works on the mental, emotional, spiritual, and energetic realms in addition to the physical body, it can often foster balance where modern medicine is unaware that balance is lacking.
11. Enjoying optimal health, happiness, and productivity. While Reiki isn’t a magical cure-all, it does help everyone access the greatest health available to their unique selves. Sure, I remain sensitive to wheat products and susceptible to type 2 diabetes despite my daily practice. That’s unlikely to change in this lifetime. But within these parameters, I enjoy the best health possible for me. Experiencing optimal health goes a long way to being happy and productive. It builds a strong foundation upon which we can then layer creativity, connection, vitality, and success.
12. Discovering and aligning with your soul’s calling. Once all the above concerns get sorted, it’s so much easier to hear the still, small voice within guiding you toward the plan your soul has for you. When there are fewer distractions from aches and pains, petty grievances, unnecessary triggering of the fight/flight/freeze response, limiting beliefs, outdating coping mechanisms, debilitating insecurities, and upsetting negative self-talk, there is so much energy freed up to explore our heart’s desires and innate talents which are keys to uncovering our unique mission for this lifetime. It’s in there somewhere, and Reiki can clear out the muck that stands in the way!
I could keep going, but this seems a good place to stop.

Reiki 1 Certification
12 Reasons to Learn Reiki

Reiki has a growing reputation for successfully supporting cancer and surgical patients. Yet it has many…

Three Simple Ways to Manage Stress

Cultivating Wellness

12 Reasons to Learn Reiki