Just in time for the holidays, I am having a winter sale with big savings on all Kootenay Flower and Elemental Essences until December 31st, 2011.

Essences are great for helping reduce stress and make wonderful gifts.

Some suggestions are:
For those who feel a little blue this time of year – Brighten Up
If you are “running on empty” all the time, Adrenal Support may help (but also look at your caffeine habits!) Or if you are needing that extra oomph for a short term, Endurance can get you through those few days of Christmas shopping. And if it all gets too much and you have reached your boiling point, reach for Pressure Release. Immune/Vitality may help keep those winter colds at bay and Rejuvenation for recovery after becoming depleted.

Elemental Essences such as Balance, Boundaries and Focus could help smooth out the stress of this busy time of year. Single essences are also great for their individual properties or to make your own blends.

Place your order through the website and save 35%
Regular shipping prices apply.

Wishing you much love and happiness!

Tap Coaching

The Emotional Freedom Technique is a powerful tool you can use to coach your life in the direction you desire. Often, from common cancers like breast cancer to even rare forms of cancer like mesothelioma, a prognosis will send us spiraling down into overwhelming feelings of depression and fear–and certainly all of us have deep-rooted pains and concerns completely unrelated to our cancer. EFT is a revolutionary therapy which is completely natural and can be performed anywhere. When used in conjunction with loving touch therapy like Healing Touch & Intuitive Bodywork, EFT can help you redirect your life for more positive, holistic living.

EFT therapy uses ancient acupressure points and various mental exercises to desensitize, motivate, and recharge your body and mind. It’s a fascinating way to gain greater understanding over the way your own body works, as well as to obtain insight about the workings of your own mind. If you have painful events in your past, present, or even on the horizon, EFT is one of the best therapies available today to help you learn how to handle them. The link will take you to a great site with a tapping script to address the feelings many have after receiving their prognosis.

Healing Touch & Intuitive Bodywork is loving, intentional touch therapy which accesses and refocuses energy from the world around you into your own body. This therapy feels wonderful, and can be overwhelming at first–however, our bodies never give us more than we can handle, and your body will offer up issues for you and your therapist to deal with when it knows you are ready. You can address injuries new and old, or strictly focus on your aggressive disease mesothelioma that is triggered from asbestos exposure. Healing Touch & Intuitive Bodywork is a great way to address emotional concerns as well. If you have had troubling emotions, experiences, or memories, they are stored within your body just as much as they are present within your mind. A trained specialist can help you access these feelings and memories, and will guide you through the process of meeting and accepting them. Healing Touch & Intuitive Bodywork can be marvelously focused, or you can use it to cast a wider net and target more general feelings. Whatever your needs may be, this revolutionary touch therapy provides you with loving support, and non-judgmental understanding. You will be better able to relate to your body, your past, and those around you.

The Emotional Freedom Technique and Healing Touch & Intuitive Bodywork are some of the most powerful gifts you can give yourself or another. When paired with a traditional regime and healthy lifestyle, these therapies can refashion your life into the one of your dreams. Stop suffering in silence and experience the change with EFT and healing touch therapy.

My husband, son and I went on a geocaching tour. If you haven’t heard about geocaching, it reminds me of the scavenger hunts I used to go on as a kid. You get GPS coordinates from the Geocache website then using a GPS device, go to the coordinates and find the “treasure”. There are little containers where you log that you have found it and sometimes people have left “travel bugs” – little trinkets that others take and leave in a different cache and log the travel on the website.

Wilson Creek Falls

Beaver Lake

Here is my son holding one of the little guys.

Frog at Beaver Lake

Here’s a few more of them.

And more.

And even more!

All those frogs!

Apart from the frogs, there was a healthy population of insects – especially dragonflies. We also saw a snake and the guys came across a very large toad. Unfortunately I didn’t see that one. But is was a magical day all in all. I highly recommend doing that tour if you are ever in the beautiful Kootenays. Here is the link if you ever want to check it out!

Based on Peter Levine’s work of Somatic Experiencing, Sharon has developed it further. STR addresses all forms of trauma, old or new and compliments many other modalities. It supports the release of long held patterns due to trauma and helps re-organization the nervous system to a state of resilience.

STR connects the emotion that results from trauma, to the felt sense in the body. The emotion is from the past, but what is felt in the body is present, and helping a person connect the sensations in the body with the emotion support the release of the trauma. When the rational part of our brain (frontal brain) becomes curious about the felt sense in the body (generated from our instincts in the hindbrain), processes become available that help discharge the previously frozen trauma state held in the nervous system. Neuropathways are opened and the held pattern can spill out gently rather than going into overwhelm.

In the 3 day workshop we learned verbal skills to help connect the body sensations with resources, setting boundaries, creating “re-dos” and softening a fall/impact. We saw a demonstration of the technique, then practiced. As I said above – Wow! In just the practice sessions most of the participants felt changes in our body – softening, relaxation and other sensations as the trauma began to melt away.

This is one exercise to help you strengthen the mind/body connection with resource:

Close your eyes and think about something that makes you feel empowered, successful and that you enjoy.
Sit with that image for a moment then notice what you feel in your body. Tell your body that you recognize these sensations.
Now think of something in your life that has been bothering you. What body sensations are you aware of now? Again acknowledge to your body that you notice these.
Now come back to your empowering image and feel the release of tension.

There is much more to the actual exercise we worked with, but hopefully this gave you a sense of this type of work. It is very powerful and when followed by biodynamic craniosacral work, the releasing and unwinding in the tissues is further enhanced.

Sharon will be coming to Nelson again June 17th to 19th to repeat this workshop. You can register with Myrna Martin through her website.

You can also read more on trauma and resourcing on this blog.

Blessings!

FES is another company that makes Pink Mallow Essence. During one of their trainings, a clinical psychologist, Dina Martinez, had this insight into the essence: “My imaginative perception is that they are “catching” the light of the sun in a very pure way…This radiant light force is so special that the leaves (their arms) can divide and spread, able to “relate” or “touch” surrounding plants. Their gesture is a constant, invisible, unending movement among neighboring plants….like a very gentle, peaceful, respectful minuet, in which the “touching” consists only in “taking of the other by the hand” for several moments, then letting go, dancing some more…. This expresses the quality of the Mallow essence, “Soul flourishing through friendship and social exchange.” It is a minuet dance in which people touch their souls in a constant, gentle, very gratifying way; within a rhythm, a contact, a mutual correspondence.” (The whole article can be found here)

I love reading other peoples insights into the same essences I have made. Sometimes they are so much the same and other times they seem very different, yet there is a golden thread that weaves them together. Each essences has many facets and the insight depends on the angle from which you are seeing it.

With Pink Mallow, I found it helpful for aging gracefully. For going through transitions with grace and ease. A friend once said after going through a transition in her life that it wasn’t easy, but it was with ease. It was so great to hear the difference between ease and easy. Transition can be difficult, but when we can be with the change, rather than resist it, it can be done with ease. And tying in Dina’s insight, any transition is easier with support and resources, which for many are friends, family and social network (and I don’t mean Facebook or Twitter).

If you would like to try Elemental Essence’s Pink Mallow Essence, you can order it on my website, or check out other producers of this wonderful essences.

Sharon Porter was one of the speakers. Sharon is a Mind/Body Practitioner who not only does biodynamic craniosacral therapy, but also does Body Psychotherapy, Energy Medicine, Polarity Therapy and Somatic Trauma Resolution. I was very impressed with the talk she gave at the conference and she left me wanting more information. So I am very happy to say that Sharon is coming to the Kootenays to put on a 3 day workshop on Somatic Trauma Resolution on the Bodywork Table.

This seminar will give you some body-based ways to talk and move clients through the discharge of trauma-bound energy that arises when doing bodywork.
It will cover:
• Physics, energetics and neurology of overwhelm
• Somatic Principles for healing trauma
• Basic tracking language that keeps the client aware of internal sensations to open neural pathways for discharge of shock
• Teasing out frozen defensive responses that have a definite movement or verbal expression
• Softening a fall or blow
• Three-stage discharge of Imagine, Prepare, Do to get the most out of an impulse
• When “getting under it” may suppress the Inherent Treatment Plan and cause a deeper freeze
• Dyad exercises and Demonstrations
• Handouts will be emailed to registrants before the workshop

The course will be held at the Kutenai Institute of Integral Therapies.
1502 Stanley Street, Nelson, BC, V1L1R3
Telephone: 250-352-7224 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              250-352-7224      end_of_the_skype_highlighting (H), 250-352-1655 (O), Fax: 250-352-7237
Myrna Martin is the contact person and registration forms can be found on her website.

Sharon is available for sessions at $80/hr on Wed., Feb 23 at Marion Mazzocchi’s (2542 Hwy 6, Slocan Park BC 250-359-6867);
Feb 24 and 28 at Kutenai Institute in Nelson. Please book sessions through Sharon at porter.sharon4@gmail.com or, call: 310-821-8212 up to Feb. 21st or 970-946-4879 after Feb. 21st. Students who would like a trusted fellow student to sit in on their session to learn, take notes, video, etc. may do so. Sharon also does Skype sessions from CA.

When I first interviewed Dee she said that Mary did not sleep, but that she herself was fine and not feeling stressed. She has another daughter, 7 years old, who is very calm – nothing like Mary. I asked Dee what her pregnancy had been like to which she replied that it was good and she had delivered in hospital with a midwife. Nothing had gone wrong, not like with her son.

Dee then went on to tell me that she had lost a baby 18 months prior. She and her husband had been planning on immigrating to Canada and just waiting for the baby to be born so they could put the name on the immigration papers. Her birth was attended by a midwife (in Britain), but not the midwife who had seen her throughout her pregnancy. During labour, Dee felt something was wrong. Her midwife did not take her to hospital and her precious son died during birth. There was a thorough investigation into all those involved and the sequence of events that led to his unnecessary death; with the midwife at fault and nothing more they could do they proceeded to come to Canada.

They arrived in the winter and her husband was set to start his new job, only to find out that the place he was to be working at had blown up 2 days prior to him starting. She was also dealing with reapplying for their work visas as the laws had changed since they had 1st applied and as there was no job, they thought they may have to return to Britain. They had moved into a house and she was dealing with moving a household overseas and unpacking. Dee stated that somewhere in all that, she got pregnant.

Having heard this story, I asked Dee if she had been worried about the baby while she was carrying her. She was not worried about the pregnancy but was fearful of birthing. She said that in the end the birth was lovely and she has a wonderful healthy daughter. Dee also said that Mary is very watchful and wakes at the least noise. She slept for at most 2 hours at a time since birth and wakes in an anxious, fearful state.

For the first few months I worked only with Dee. She felt the sessions were helping her relax and although Mary wasn’t sleeping any better, Dee was better able to cope with the lack of sleep. Dee was able to feel settled for a few weeks, then was ready for another session.

As I was still a student (in cranio) working with Dee I did not feel comfortable working with infants at that time. In July Dee and Mary returned after a number of weeks since the last session with Dee. She was very stressed as Mary was still only sleeping 3 hours at a time and very little overall. Dee was feeling that it was stressful for her, but also for Mary as she never seemed to get into a deep restful sleep. I said that I would give Mary a session and we could see if anything changed.

Mary was asleep in her car seat when I worked with her. Even in her sleep I could not make physical contact with her as she would jump and pull her foot back and start to wake up. I worked with my hands about 4 inches from her feet. During the session I felt a great deal of anxiety surface, then a relaxation in both my and Mary’s bodies. She felt much more settled following. She woke after about 25 minutes and looked for her mother, but not with the hyper-vigilance I had witnessed before. I asked Dee to let me know if she noticed any difference over the next few days.

Two days later Dee sent me an email stating that Mary had slept through the past 2 nights. Dee felt that Mary was less anxious and her fear on waking was gone. What a change for not only Mary, but her whole family! Since that time I have continued to work with Mary. She is much calmer and although she doesn’t always sleep through the night, she goes back to sleep without much fuss. And of course Dee is feeling less stressed as she is more rested.

Trauma is a far more serious form of stress and never involved the good things in life. Wiktionary defines trauma as: Any serious injury to the body, often resulting from violence or an accident; An emotional wound leading to psychological injury; An event that causes a great distress.

Recently a person dear to me was involved in a serious car accident. As well as the physical trauma, there was the emotional trauma to deal with. The physical sores were helped initially by analgesia and then by bodywork. The emotional wounds were more of a challenge. Interestingly, the things that were not being dealt with before the accident but also not causing major problems (yet) became major issues and the push needed to get some help and look at whether or not she was on the right path. The accident brought things to the surface creating an opportunity for healing on many levels. The availability or inner resources and outside support makes the differences between being a victim or the victor.

Whether trauma comes from a car accident, a difficult birth, abuse or shock of any kind, if we are unable to deal with it at the time, there can be long term consequences. Trauma may not be just one large event, but may also take the form of continual stress that leaves us in a continual state of hyperarousal.

Our body is an amazing thing. We have innate mechanisms that protect us from danger. I am sure that most of us know about the “fight or flight” response, if not from the physiological understanding, then from a personal experience. Here is a scenario that is often used in describing this response:

Imagine you are walking through the jungle. Suddenly you hear a noise. Without even thinking you go into an active alert state. Your senses become heightened as you scan for danger. When you realize it was only a bird, your body returns to an active alert state. But what if that noise is a lion? Your body immediately releases adrenalin and cortisols needed to increase heart rate, blood pressure and rate of breathing. Your pupils dilate, your mouth may get dry and you may break into a sweat. All these things your body does in a split second to provide muscles with more oxygen for you to flee the area or to defend yourself – in other words – for survival. This is a good thing! And if you were able to be successful in one of these 2 responses, once you were again feeling safe, your body would return to an active alert state without any trauma – you may even feel empowered!

Another scenario however happens when our natural physiological response to danger becomes overwhelmed. That is when we are unable to fight or flee. The same response is elicited. The energy having nowhere to go becomes trapped in our body and we freeze and may even dissociate. This can also be a great defense mechanism! If we switch this scenario to a lion and antelope, the antelope would normally flee from the lion. If it is in a situation where it can’t, it knows that it can’t fight so it freezes and dissociates. The lion may decide that the antelope is carrion and choose not to eat it, or it may drag the antelope to its den to eat later. This gives the antelope time to reassociate and escape. Reassociation is the key to passing through traumatic experiences. Unfortunately for we humans (in this case anyway) we have a cortex – our higher brain centre which can override our instinctual response.

In our society, we are not likely to be chased by a lion. We are far more likely to be in a minor car accident. We have the same response in our body, but rather than fight or flee, we would call the police and get insurance details, leaving our body with no way to discharge the energy. This similar reaction can happen in stressful situations at home or in the office when a response is activated but it is not appropriate to fight or flee. In his book “Waking the Tiger”, Dr. Peter Levine likens this to stomping on the accelerator and brake at the same time. This can leave us in a state of traumatisation which is not only psychological, but also as physiological. The body remembers and leaves the traumatized person in a state of hyperarousal and inducing the freeze state when danger is perceived. This is why a small thing may illicit an over the top reaction and until we develop the resources to deal with traumatic experiences, if they become restimulated, we can become retraumatized and go into overwhelm once again.

Unresolved trauma may leave imprints in our body which leaves a person very anxious, helpless and suffering from flashbacks or mood swings. As time goes on, these effects become cumulative as new incidents become layered on top of old ones requiring much energy thus decreasing our life-force leaving us with even less resources available to help us deal with trauma. As the body gets used to being in this state it may compensate and physical symptoms such as headaches, digestive disorders, autoimmune disorders, etc. may develop.

Wow! All that because a person of authority yelled (or hit) at me when I was 5! It could be. So how do we resolve trauma held in the body? By being resourced, that’s how.

Simply put, a resource is anything that supports your health. A happy moment can be a resource as can the inner strength we draw on in times of stress. When we are resourced we have the ability to stay present and oriented when a traumatic situation occurs, rather than go into overwhelm which triggers the flight/flight/freeze response in our body.

Each of us have resources in our life. They can be in the form of physical, emotional, mental or spiritual practices and even environmental. Think of something that you love to do, that brings joy to your life: hiking in the mountains, dancing, painting, meditation, your favourite music. These can help build inner resources by connecting with the image and feeling you have when you experience these activities. Resources can also be a favourite place – a real one or one you where imagine yourself being, your loved ones – human and animal, home, laughter, a good meal, reading, your favourite blanket or just remembering to breathe! They are different for each person, but if it makes you feel good and it’s something you can draw on, it’s a resource.

Michael Kern in his book “Wisdom in the Body” states: “The process of healing is never just about identifying problems, but involves accessing the resources that can help resolve these problems.” Whatever happens in our life, we are more than our experiences. We are intelligent beings with free thought and free will. However when we go into overwhelm from a traumatic experience we can start to identify with the trauma pattern and it can shape our lives. We may drawn to people with similar patterns which may be a resource but it can also keep us identifying with the trauma. Carolyn Myss calls this woundology, other call it victim consciousness. Whatever the word it can keep us reacting the same way which may not serve us or stuck in situations in which we would rather not be in and these will keep repeating until we have to resources to heal and move on.

What are you identifying with? Do you see what is wrong with your world, what you don’t have, or are you able to identify with what is good or even OK? Here is a resourcing exercise from Michael Kern’s book. It is easy to do anytime you are in pain or feeling overwhelmed.

“Take a minute or two to consider the resources you have in your life. Close your eyes and take a little time to settle. Start to bring an image of some positive or nourishing experience into your mind. Can you think of an experience that has supported you? You may think of a place or a particular situation in which you have been. It’s probably not a good idea to use the image of a person for this purpose, because this can create ambiguous feelings. Try to find a resource that is entirely supportive. Imagine yourself in this place or situation that resources you, or with a favourite object that makes you feel good.
As you picture this resource, what is sensations do you start to feel in your body?”

Anytime you can connect with these good sensations is a resource. However there are times when it is very difficult to conjure these sensations and that’s when I find Vibrational Essences and EFT to be great resources as they work so well together. EFT starts with the bad feeling be it emotional or physical and taps on accupressure points. Gary Craig (founder) states “the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system”. And of course we know that negative emotions can cause dis-ease in the body.

So here is a basic EFT script for a bad feeling in our body. If you are not familiar with the EFT tapping points click here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

KC: Even though I have this ____(pain, burning, tightness….) in my body (or name the specific body part), I deeply and completely love and accept myself.
Repeat twice while tapping on the KC.

Tap on each of the 8 points repeating the phrase:
This _______ (pain, burning, tightness).

Take a big breath and see how you feel.
The sensation is often lessened after that 1st round of tapping, but often takes a few rounds to take it down further. And of course the more specific and creative you are the better the results seem to be.

This is a quick but often effective way to do EFT. For a more indepth session in EFT or Vibrational Essence Healing please contact me.

If you are interested in learning Reiki, I will be holding Reiki 1 classes on the following dates:
October 7th, 8th or 12th. Cost is $100.00. I will be posting more info closer to the date, or you can email me. info@elementalenergies.ca