Terra Nova Healing Blog

This week I also created a Facebook page for my work.  I’m offering discounts on sessions and packages until the end of February 2010 when you join the page.  A regular $200 session is available for $120 and a package of 4 sessions, regularly $600 is now $400.  I’ll be offering more discounts and free sessions in the future and will be announcing them on the facebook page, so if you’d like to take advantage of that, you can join here:

www.facebook.com/TerraNovaHealing

A friend and I have been recently experimenting with having me do energy-readings on video.   This is the first one we’ve done:

Energy-Reading a Relationship Entanglement

I just finished reading ‘The Paradise Paradigm’ by GD Allport, which I picked up very randomly when I was hanging out at the democratic school where I run a homeschool drop-in. It was a fairly quick read, and I felt that it needed either a shorter (more concise) or a longer (more in-depth) format, but it fell in so synchronistically with where my head’s been at, I wanted to write something about it.

Here’s my quick summary of the main ideas:

“Extreme sensitivity to early conditions” is a hallmark of complex iterative systems like the human brain. This means that the character of each adult was shaped primarily by their experiences in the earliest months and years of their life. Early experiences colour later experiences, to the degree that enough “bad” early experience will cause almost every later experience to be perceived as negative.

Mistreatment & traumatization of babies, children and their mothers is considered normal in our society. There is little awareness or compassion for their suffering. This gives rise to many of societal ills, including violence, addiction, crime, illness, war etc. The way to a world full of compassion, health, freedom and prosperity is through giving high levels of support and love (which includes freedom from coercion) to pregnant women, infants and children. So we need to change the paradigms we have around raising & educating children to make this support systematic & automatic. We will do this by making the connections between early care and healthy adulthood, & between healthy adulthood and a healthy society, explicit and well-understood.

I agree with this thesis — all the work I’ve ever done backs this up, and it’s a big reason that I’m now focusing on issues around conception, pregnancy, birth and parenting. It’s also part of my obsession with the Reggio Emilia approach to education. I find modern medicine, especially in it’s attitude towards pregnancy and birth, to cause unnecessary pain and stress for women and young children. I’m also not a fan of a lot of mainstream parenting ideas, although I realize finding alternate ways of parenting are difficult and North American lifestyles don’t make them easy.

Many times working with clients, where emotional issues are resistant to traditional and alternative therapies, I’ve found the answer in healing traumas (usually multiple) occurring during their first few years of life, or in the womb. Working with healing trauma from my own life from before age 6 has been huge, significant amounts of it triggered by parenting my own child.

Most of us have been exposed to statistics documenting how those who experienced child abuse, have a likelihood of becoming abusers themselves. If you’ve ever read books like Alice Miller’s ‘For Your Own Good’ or researched the sociological roots of cultures of violence, it’s very clear that we end up reliving and revisiting upon others, in some form, traumas experienced pre-verbally.  In ‘For Your Own Good’ Miller makes the connections between Hitler’s “Fatherland” and his own tortured relationship with his abusive and cruel father; she also shows how his vision resonated with Germans in general because of the harshness of the typical German upbringing. She critiques our oppressive Western history of child-rearing, calling it ‘poisonous pedagogy’. I think it’s also in that book, that she talks about how surgery in early childhood is often associated with violence in later life.

When looking into anthropological studies of peaceful cultures, the things that seem to make the biggest difference are loving child-rearing practices and how much the emerging sexuality of adolescents is accepted by the community. Lots of affection for children, extended breastfeeding and carrying, are all things that set people up for valuing connection and positive relationships with others.

Attachment parenting research shows that the fundamentals of self-esteem are based on whether and how an infants needs are met. If a mother isn’t able to meet the baby’s needs for food, care, or attention, the baby internalizes this as a non-verbal belief: “I don’t deserved to get my needs met – there must be something wrong with me.” The fields of pre & perinatal psychology and infant mental health are beginning to provide scientific background to the idea that babies feel and are aware, are active participants in their birth and care, and can be depressed or show signs of trauma. Dr. Fredrich Leboyer’s ‘Birth Without Violence’ (also mentioned in ‘The Paradise Paradigm’) was a pioneering work in the 1970’s that helped sensitize many people to the importance of gentle birth practices, and the positive impact it can have on people’s quality of life.

Rebirthing was also pioneering in making the connections clear — Rebirther Sondra Ray has talked about how people relive their births all the time without realizing it — people born via c-sections will have knife collections, or re-experience their birth traumas in other ways in daily life, such as recurrent accidents or relationship patterns. Leonard Orr, the originator of Rebirthing, called the first conclusions you made about life and yourself, as a newborn, your ‘personal law’ — supposedly all subsequent beliefs build upon that fundamental imprint. People will go through life with attitudes they formed in the context of how they were emotionally received at birth or what was happening to their mother.

There is a Swahili word – Mamatoto (meaning mother-baby) – that expresses the idea that mother and baby are not two separate people. That is my experience as well — young children and their mothers are one energy system. Babies feel what the mother feels, and her experiences and attitudes are imprinted on them as part of the basis of their own personality. When I pair this with the knowledge that most cases of domestic abuse start when a woman is pregnant or soon after she gives birth, it is a frightening testament to how our culture feels about life and the care of a child’s psyche.

Vulnerability is not valued – it’s considered a liability. So what does that mean for our most vulnerable members? Especially at the time that they are most sensitive, and being set up with the subconscious beliefs that will inform a lifetime of choices?

We know that the majority of a child’s learning takes place before the age of 6. Research into early learning gives us evidence that if a child is parented in an authoritarian way, their brain is wired to work along models of dominance & submission. That greatly limits how our society can function: hierarchical organization becomes the one system that works for people who only know top-down models.

Something that I know though, from working with energy, is we can repair damage and re-find those lost psychic pieces and potentialities that trauma takes away. We now have many tools that can allow us to access the subconscious mind. And of course, more whole people raise more whole people – the personal changes then become political choices that we make to support ‘wholeness for all’ as a paradigm. We can choose nurturance for our children from the very beginning.

Birth pioneers such as Elena Tonetti-Vladimirova offer frameworks to reset your limbic (emotional) imprint so that you aren’t limited by trauma and less-than-nurturing experiences as you came into the world. Rebirthing can do similar, using breathwork (getting in touch with memories of your first breath) as the entryway. You can also use EFT or certain kinds of bodywork to release trauma.

I do deep intuitive healing work based on whatever is coming up for you around your children, where I can bring in higher perspective, insights and energy shifts that facilitate positive outcomes. If you are pregnant, this is a great time to start examining your beliefs and early imprints, as giving birth is subconsciously informed by your experience of your own birth. Raising children gives us so many opportunities to shed intellectual, emotional and spiritual limits – parents around the world are realizing they can approach it as a personal growth path, and evolve into those paradigms that produce paradise.

I made a decision a few weeks ago to focus my work more on all aspects of conscious parenting.   I’ve been doing healing work for about 12 years now (9 for money) and just found I wasn’t learning as much as I once was.  So I wanted to niche down into something that I could get excited about all over again, and offer me more opportunity to expand my own awarenesses.   It also fits more into who I am now, who my community is, and the other projects that I’m working on.  It’s been coming for a long time — I’ve been thinking about shifting my focus for the past few years.

As parents, especially mothers, we are at the intersection between nature and society.  This can be a difficult place, if our society isn’t in harmony with nature.  Having a well-developed integration of body/mind, can make the difference between being frustrated as a parent, and being able to claim that experience as a transformative enlightening growth experience.  A big shift is happening as many parents are realizing that they can apply the ideas of consciousness, compassion, interconnection, and law of attraction to their relationships with children.  Birth can be empowering; painful family patterns can be broken; we can stay heart-connected with our kids instead of using our power over them to get them to obey.    And most of the work to get there is all on the inner level.

I’m building a new site just for the conscious birth & parenting work I’m doing.  I just got on twitter (what an interesting world) as @embodiedwisdom, which is the name I want for this new focus.  I am still available for other types of sessions, it’s just that my marketing will be directed to the conscious parent community.

This week I’ve done a session with a woman who is pregnant, another who wants to be pregnant, and another person who’s father is getting close to passing.  It’s fascinating to be peering into the doorways of life, to see how these decisions get made…

The man who is getting ready to pass, I could see how he had already partially left, in that he wasn’t feeling much in his body & didn’t have much control over it, but his awareness was still there.   And as long as there weren’t too many medical interventions that got in the way of the avenues he still had to connect with his family (who was being very attentive), he wasn’t in any hurry to leave.   But if his awareness were blocked (say through anesthesia) or the connection with the family was interrupted alot, then he’d feel more like ‘what’s the point in staying?’ and would go sooner.

With the women, I got to see how relationship dynamics work with having children — energetic agreements that allow pregnancy, how complex it can be sometimes – the communication that does or doesn’t happen. Makes me feel more forgiving towards my ex, or at least make more room to be objective in my assumptions.

I also started with a new energy-reading student, which is always fun,  did some tuning in today for my energy-reading mentor ( a little ride into the interdimensional realms and land of time mavens), got some really positive feedback from clients, and have been posting and sharing all about my love of the Reggio Emilia approach on wisewaysofwomen.com.  A happy week!

I was thinking that I should start to write about some of the little tools I use or have used myself.  One thing I’ve been wanting to mention is using lists as a self-help tool and a way of focusing attention/intention – this is pretty common now, with the ubiquitous ‘gratitude’ list now a law of attraction standard (always a good choice), and BOPA (book of positive aspects) being a favourite of Abraham-Hicks followers, but I have been using them in my own idiosyncratic way for a decade or more.

Back in 2002 I started holding small manifesting groups, and started using the lists there as an opening or ‘get to know you’ exercise.  At the end we sometimes did lists of blessings we were sending to each individual, having spent the meeting finding out what they were working on creating.

I find it very powerful to do manifesting or energy shifting lists with another person who is also really into it.  Hearing their list items triggers ideas for you and it can be fascinating when you try to make lists for each other, especially if you know each other well.

A friend of mine and I developed list-making into a fine art – we made up lists for every occasion and used them create great things. The first thing we would always do upon getting together was try and tune into what type of list we needed that day, talking about how we were feeling and what our goals were.  If my friend or I were down, the other person might do a list for us, to help pull us out of the dolldrums or explore what we were resisting.  It was a great way to get caught up, and find out what the other person was currently dealing with in their life.

Some examples of lists:

• good things that have happened in the last week
• reasons I’m pleased with myself right now (good for when you aren’t really that pleased with yourself)
• a success list (big or small) – really interesting to hear what people consider their successes to be
• times that life magically supported me, or signs that life is supporting me and wants the best for me
• things I’ve gotten for free lately
• examples of abundance in my life
• lists to cultivate certain qualities so for instance: things that make me feel secure, times when I’ve been able to be playful –> Try this one!  What type of energy or feeling do you need right now?
• choosing someone you find challenging and doing a positive list about them, for example:  if you have a difficult relationship with your father you could do ‘gifts my father gave me’
• reasons I continue to believe that I can have what I want
• times you’ve triumphed over adversity
• people you really appreciate and why
• unique things about yourself
• the ‘ideal partner’ list – try having someone else do this one for or with you
• material items you own that you just love, and what feelings they give you, or what they are associated with
• things you appreciate about your home or about your body
• ways in which you already have, in some form, the things you are wanting to have or create
• do a gratitude list about your ideal life, as if you are already living it (ie I just love living in Hawaii and making a living as a dolphin communicator!)
• things that help you be in tune with yourself
• things you learned from a difficult experience
• advantages of a current difficult experience

You get the idea.  My friend and I used to have a hilarious time walking around the city running errands and doing the gratitude list about your ideal life (which we used to call ‘as if’), but in the form of a long mutual admiration conversation – “Wow, your husband is just such a gem.  We loved coming over to your new place for brunch on Sunday.  What a great cook, and you must be so happy to be getting those amazing massages from him everyday!”  It was all made up, and it just collapsed us into hysterics because we could go on for hours like this.  Store clerks thought we were nuts, lol.  We talked about the book tour she’d just been on, and the CD I was busy recording.  Pure fun.

Another powerful experience involving lists came for me was when I had a blessingway just before my daughter was born.  All of us there used our intention to project a word/feeling into a stone that was passed around the circle, which represented a quality or energy we wanted to gift her with for life.  Her father gave her Love, I gave her Wholeness.  Other people gave her things like Peace, Resilience, Laughter, Tenderness, Freedom, Trust, Magic, Courage, and Joy.  It was like having 20 fairy godmothers in the room.  I have the list written down, and one day I will give it to her.

I’ve been busy lately with a bunch of different community-based projects.  I’m not sure exactly why I’m feeling motivated to do these things (and all at once), but I thought I would tell you a bit about them.  Part of my motivation probably has to do with just being more able to do projects like these because my daughter is now 4 yrs old.

One project is that I’m slowing gathering the resources to create a (free) health and healing group for single mothers.  At some point, I’m going to try and do a post about why I think this is necessary, and about the format I think would be ideal.  As one part of that project, I created a new site:

www.single-parent-resources-toronto.com.

Another is I’m starting (also very slowly!) the process of creating a chapter of Many Mothers in Toronto.  The original organization is in the US – www.manymothers.org – and they support people to create postpartum support networks in their own communities.  Once the network is set up, volunteers visit a family with a new baby for the first three months of the newborn’s life, usually twice a week for two hours.  They do things like light housekeeping, holding the baby while the mother takes a nap or shower, prepare meals, or do activities with older siblings.  They can provide a listening ear, and information about community resources.

Many new mothers today do not have the extended family that once would have supported them.  I also know many women who are single parents from the beginning, and there are many families having multiple births.  Having support can reduce stress, isolation, exhaustion and the possibility of postpartum depression (often a result of the first 3 conditions!).  Encouraging women to focus on bonding with their babies is essential to the well-being of the child and also affects how easy it will be for the mother to parent that child.  In the end, whether we collectively support mother-child bonding determines the emotional direction of our society.

So okay, on to the next project:  some of you might know how obsessed I am with the Reggio Emilia theories about learning.  One of my dreams is having a Reggio-inspired community learning centre in Toronto.  I’ve been organizing a once a week homeschool drop-in at a democratic school in the East End.  One of my main purposes is to facilitate an on-going discussion about creating a community learning centre.  I’m practicing my listening and collaborating skills (a big part of the Reggio approach).

Why am I so obsessed with Reggio Emilia?  Because it’s so sophisticated in it’s way of creating structure while respecting the rights and opinions of children; because it encourages you to observe at a micro-level where you see consciousness arising and therefore witness the genius inside each child; because it avoids the dualistic pitfalls I see happening when people polarize against the oppressive elements of traditional schooling.  It’s not dogmatic – it’s open to constant evolution.  It values individual choice and the learning that happens in groups.  It’s all about creativity.  I really believe it’s the education of the future.  (Oy, I’m such an aquarius!)

Right now, part of me is interested in taking what I know from energy-reading, that way of functioning and trying to move it into the world a bit more.  As you can see, all of these projects are connected and are part of my journey around being a mother – what that means, simultaneously negotiating my needs and my child’s, how to navigate the intersection of nature and society that ‘mother’ represents, the gaps in awareness that I have found in myself and others when occupying that role.  Being a mother has pushed me farther than anything else, to reconcile what I know in my heart, with what is possible on a material level.

This is my suggestion for combining PATHS modules to deal with financial issues:

Financial Peace & Prosperity
Trauma-free
Deserving

Depending on your particular issues you could add a career specific module or Inspired Luck and Good Fortune or even Ho’oponopono Healing if there is family or cultural stuff involved. Just Relax can be good as well, if your anxiety is high or Mood Elevation, if depression is a problem.

Most people who are coming to me for sessions lately want to focus on money issues. Obviously we are dealing with survival fears on a collective level, and probably, our stuff is coming up in response to more people getting into the ideas around the law of attraction.

Wherever there is fear of survival, there is unresolved trauma. There’s also usually a loop that stops you from deconstructing the fear: your fear vibration around money causes you to keep creating circumstances that reinforce it. It’s hard to get into the zone where you can switch the worry off yet you need to do that in order to change lanes. Most people with money fear have a hard time finding the thoughts that will help them stop worrying. (Which is why Abraham-Hicks suggests just stop thinking about it, so you stop activating that vibration.)

The Trauma-free module can help you internalize the feeling that ‘the need to stress about survival is over’. The Deserving module can help you resolve issues around money, that aren’t strictly about money – ie associations with lovability, belonging, power, loyalty etc. Financial Peace and Prosperity can help you in your direct dealings with money, i.e. helping you be financially responsible.

Today I was talking to a client who’s son I’ve also worked with, and she told me this great story. I wanted to share it because I feel it represents where parenting is going, and can go. She gave me permission to tell it.

Her son tends to have emotional issues about his birthday and Christmas. She’d said to him he should think about what he wanted to do for his upcoming birthday, so that it would be a happy day for him. He came back later, very emotional and she suggested they do some EFT about it. They worked for a half hour and shhe said that worked really well. She also said to him at some point, “I know you are a very empathic person, and I think sometimes you can pick up other people’s feelings about things. So it’s easy for you to sometimes carry an issue that might be mine or your father’s.” Later he came back and said he wanted her to work that afternoon with his dad to clear the father’s issues about his own birthday!

I thought this was so great — that she was able to help him emotionally using these tools, that it could be relatively easy, and that he could act on what he knew…this was at least in part coming from his parent’s issues, and he didn’t want to carry what wasn’t his. Now who would you be if your parents could have been this conscious, and as a child, you were given permission to stay in touch with your emotional and spiritual process?

President Obama so clearly has a leo/aquarian feel.  I liked this little video because of the visual of the chart.

I just finished doing a one hour yoga class from yogatoday.com.  The internet is so cool.  I’ve been wanting to get back into doing yoga for a long time, but haven’t found the time to find a class I like and go to it.  Plus I prefer doing it at home, whenever I can swing it.  Maybe I’ll supplement doing these at home with the occasional private class.

Yogatoday.com has new classes everyday – there were four available today, plus you can browse others (really beats doing the same yoga video over and over).  I also like that they have a range of styles available.  I wanted to try anusara yoga, but there aren’t any classes near me.  I’ll have to try the ones on yogatoday!