Do you believe everything happens for a reason, or that nothing happens to us by chance? Biological beings are electromagnetic in nature. We have an electric side and a magnetic side. Our electric side is our yang selves, our doing, acting selves, the masculine polarity/left brain/right sides of who we each are regardless of gender. And our yin, receiving, accepting sides are our magnetic sides, the left side/right brain, the feminine. Yin energy has just as much power as yang, but it is an indrawing power. Our feminine sides, our magnetic selves, draw experiences, which explains why we do not live in a random universe.

We draw, or magnetize, exactly what we need to experience in order to grow. And this is why, even if I can’t see it, even if something “justifiably” enrages me, I know I have some responsibility for drawing it to my reality. This is how I “create” my own reality, regardless of whether I like or am conscious of what I have created. I only “choose” my reality consciously insofar as my magnetic/emotional essence is conscious. So often these parts are subconscious due to being chronically denied, but still consist of magnetic emotional essence drawing realities. Here, consciousness is “out of the loop”.

Many of us are so electric in so much of our consciousness that when we haven’t actively executed an action and obtained an obvious result, we tell ourselves we couldn’t have had responsibility. Culturally we are still in the process of learning that magnetic essence draws experiences “out of thin air”. This is how pain is self-created (though never consciously desirable) although most people don’t accept this as a truth. We feel justified in blaming others because when “they do it to me” it’s all “their fault” and none of ours. When in blame, we are righteous victims only. This is a distortion our world has been running on since the beginning. The truth buried in unexpressed, magnetic emotions “underneath” the blame can give us significant clues as to where our responsibility lies. But, in most cases, we can’t access it unless those emotions are vibrated. In order to come to balance in any given conflict, we must first intend to discover what our responsibility is.

Pleasant experiences reflect the accepted, vibrating, conscious parts of self; unpleasant ones reflect the unaccepted, nonvibrating, unconscious parts. When we draw pleasant experiences we feel joy, enthusiasm, passion, etc and hopefully we express those — they are just as important to accept and express as the hard feelings. With unpleasant ones we are likewise called upon to express our true response, be it terror, grief, hurt, rage, etc. When we don’t express our natural emotional response we get a more intense experience than last time. The magnetic essence, just a little more intensely denied and impacted than it was, now needs a stronger experience in order to overcome resistance and trigger itself into life. Living things have a vibration, and dead things don’t. The dead parts of ourselves, judged so long ago to be unacceptable and wrong, can come back to life, but until we undeny them, they sit still in the dark, awaiting acceptance for the treasure they have to offer.

Growth comes from taking risks and making changes. Staying more or less permanently in one’s comfort zone makes it a “coffin zone”. I don’t want parts of me to become so deadened into routines and patterns that nothing ever shifts, as I slide inexorably into various levels of death. I try to keep swinging at something currently out of my reach, in order to continually infuse my life with vitality.

Transformation is possible, but not without major growth at all levels of our being. My path for the past fifteen years been one of constant change. I needed the stability of routines and known courses until I was thirty in order to have a “launching pad”, and to see that the path I walked in those years is no longer my right path. I had to experience what I didn’t want in order to know for sure what I did want. I thank my parents for giving me the gift of a baseline level of stability for those first two-plus decades so that I could build the courage to make many eventual changes, not having burned out on changing constantly in childhood. Parts of me would like more comfort and stability now, but finding the right balance between comfort/stability and change can take time to fully manifest. There is nothing inherently wrong with comfort and stability as long as risky choices and refusal to compromise one’s deepest desires are added to the mix.

Only you can know the changes you need to make. If you desire greater fulfillment you could ask your “deeper” or higher self to bring you visions of what your secret desires are, hidden from your conscious awareness. If you do get visions emanating from your buried desires, I wish for you the courage to reach for and manifest them.

‘Chakra’ is sanskrit for ‘wheel’. We all have seven major energy centers or chakras, vortices or wheels of energy located at key points from the tops of our heads to the bases of our spines. When a vision comes, it may come from one of two directions; descending from your topmost chakra at the crown of your head – or beginning deep in your root chakra and rising up towards your upper chakras. If it “grabs” you, it will pass through your heart chakra, the midpoint, where you will notice whether you love the vision or not. If you do love it, and want to give it life, it will travel on towards the remainder of your chakras to ground and manifest. In the process, it will run smack dab into your judgments and fears of why it can’t happen, couldn’t possibly come true, all the reasons it is not a viable vision for you, etc.

We all have imbalances in various of our chakras. These blocks/imbalances make manifestations come out differently than we envisioned them. The imbalances stem from chronically repressing our emotional responses to various triggers, as well as being physical manifestations of denial such as ongoing addictive behaviours.

You may encounter frustration and fear as well as various other physical and emotional obstacles around making your visions come true, and perhaps find heartbreak that they haven’t happened already. You can allow those feelings to express to the best of your ability and acceptance, so that your beloved visions can manifest in all the ways you originally pictured them. In doing so, you’ll be joining the healing and dealing tide rising on every shore of the planet.

Everybody wants and needs outside support and encouragement to make changes toward a fulfilled life. Fulfillment in this context, despite past associations with the term we might have learned regarding finally arriving somewhere, really means “being on my path in important ways, doing what I came to do.” When movement and change is occurring and flow is happening we are being fulfilled. When we are fulfilling ourselves, we have energy for life. Fulfillment may look like actualizing one’s goals, getting a strong head of steam and progress on creative projects, or making healing breakthroughs from past traumas and patterns that are affecting our present moments. It may look like finding one’s right mate, changing career, attracting greater abundance of (fill in the blank) or moving to another place on the planet to which we’re drawn.

This is hard work, some of the hardest work we’ll ever do. Often when we start to enact changes in our lives, we find ourselves faced with all manner of dissuasion from partners, friends, or family members. Outer resistance such as this reflects inner resistance to change and growth, judgments we’ve bought and internalized as “reality” that tell us we are not able to shift, it’s too hard, too much work, don’t have the time or talent, too much negativity in the space – the litany goes on. Instead of fulfillment of our Selves, we are “self-fulfilling” negative prophecies, and we turn out “right” rather than happy (fulfilled).

In the absence of 100% validating, positive inside and outside support (Word up! Nobody has this), we manifest or encounter psychic and/or physically manifested obstacles, reflecting in exact measure the relative strength of our inner barriers to fulfillment. Instead of moving forward, we can get discouraged, feel “set back”, slow down or stop when we meet these obstacles. The obstacles are inevitable; it’s important to see them as part of the fulfillment path. They already existed inside us before we started changing something. If they weren’t there we would already have manifested our lives in an exact match of our visions and heart’s desires.

How to deal? We need help. Help takes many forms – one is supportive friends, partners and family members who believe in us, encourage our healthy risks, receive or witness us when we vent, offer analysis and solutions when appropriate, and take responsibility for their own stirred emotional responses to what we are trying to do. If this kind of help isn’t organically forthcoming, we need to seek it and ask for it from our support network, or elsewhere. This in itself is a challenge for many people, especially but not limited to men who were raised with do-it-yourself conditioning. The above forms of help are only a brief list of examples; sometimes we need more or different kinds of help. Sometimes the scope of the help we need is a more integrated approach, something more formal and tangible to help us access and stay present on our fulfillment path.

“The guy’s a fierce competitor…hates losing…great to watch him play.” Sound like the description of any athletes you’ve read about or known? The competitive drive, while well and good in the structured, rules-centric arena of sports events, is not so welcome between friends, family members, co-workers and lovers. “Competition is good, but NIMBY (not in my back yard).”

The drive to come out on top, to be right, to sell the most widgets, or to have the best spot is one we all struggle with sometimes. Some of us deny that we have such a drive, always giving over to somebody else who wants what we want. Others, talented and experienced at competing and quicker than most, take everything they can every chance they get, trumpeting “I got here first, to the winner gets the spoils”. We want to be right so we can feel good about ourselves; we tell ourselves we like to debate or are good at winning arguments. We also want to be right so we can avoid feeling wrong, which deep inside can equate to feeling bad about ourselves, unworthy, and even endangered. “If I’m wrong, what will happen to me?”

Some of the most beautiful epiphanies in life are when we can admit to one we were competing with that we made a mistake or were out of line, without making ourselves wrong for having done so. Humble moments following the heat of battle (either subtle or overt) are paradoxically moments of great strength and love.

Looking under the hood, we see several root beliefs and imprints causing us to repeatedly and habitually dip into the chaotic waters of competition. The scarcity judgment many hold is a big issue. “There isn’t enough, so I better go get mine now before s/he does”. People with a sense of entitlement are oft-admired and yet this sense can come by having competed ruthlessly and won, then forgetting having done so; or worse, justifying past heartless competitive behaviour by blaming, belittling or finding fault with the vanquished in some way. These are folks who as children or young adults were never taught limits or boundaries around overriding others to get what they want. Or, they had things given to them without being taught the need to appreciate what abundance is and from whence it comes.

Every strong feeling in the book gets stirred by competing, whether we like competing or not. In order to balance the reality of living in a competitive world we have to come to terms with these feelings and express them by the fullest means at our disposal. The cost of denying how we really feel about competing and why we compete or don’t compete and what drives all of it is that history will be doomed to repeat itself until we end the denial of our feelings. Ultimately, we need to reveal these feelings to God or Earth Mother or Great Spirit, whomever we each call Deity. We need to show how we really feel about why we so desperately need to be right all the time or why we don’t have enough love or money or resources, about “living in a dog eat dog world”. Are we enraged at Him/Her/The Universe for not bringing enough? We need get real. At that point, we can start to gain understanding about how we can come to balance with these heavy issues.

How do you know when emotions you feel are yours or someone else’s? You can’t necessarily know until after they express, when greater understanding is available. Either way, it’s going to be a “real” expression. You still have to vibrate the anger, fear or grief out of you (i.e. express it in sounds and/or body movement), whether it’s yours or not. Sometimes an empathic person might hold the emotions of another: someone else in the room, maybe a friend, or perhaps, their partner’s . Often, it’s a woman holding the emotions of her man. Generally speaking, this is because a woman’s energy field tends to be more magnetic in nature, whereas a man’s tends to be electric.

An example: a man is always haranguing his wife, a habit which lasts over the course of years. He lectures, bullies, and intimidates, but never really expresses his rage, just sort of “gives” it to her (and she literally holds it “for” him, but it’s really his all along). Finally, she snaps and screams at him and just keeps screaming. She’s trying to “move” the rage back out of herself to him, but he in all likelihood doesn’t recognize that what she is doing is trying to give back to him what was never hers in the first place. Some of it might be hers, but a lot is his.

Ideally, what occurs to rectify the imbalance is that when an exchange of strong feelings gets initiated by the woman, the man does not battle her and perpetuate the war; he instead receives her and has an appropriate response. That response could be his own expression in sound or just compassionate, silent receiving and validation of her feelings. If he can “own” his anger at that point, he will not rise up louder and bigger than her and send a volley of words back. If he feels guilty in response to her anger, he must ultimately recognize that any anger he might feel in response is quite often rage toward his own guilt and is not really about her, despite superficial appearances. Many of us have guilt, both denied guilt and conscious, that says we “deserve” to hold the toxic waste of someone else’s denied stuff.

If all emotional energy could freely travel to its rightful owner by saying a prayer or a ritual, we could all release other peoples’ emotions just by visualizing it happening or saying words with that intention. In most cases, it’s not that simple or easy. Emotional energy is very magnetic and in order to get the stuck energy moving freely, it needs to be vibrated with sound or strong energy of some sort. It needs to be expressed in some way, though not necessarily in raw sound. Some may be able to let it rip in words and feel lighter as a result.

I went through a long period in my early years of emotional healing being terrified of rage. I quickly learned I was frightened of my own unmoved rage. I had to have enough movement of pure, unfettered rage expression in raw sound to make friends with the vibration of deep anger. This helped me stop feeling victimized because another person in the room was angry. The more I owned my own unprocessed anger, the more I stopped feeling afraid of someone else’s rage and of “taking it on”.

In my very first Healing and Dealing Article, I mentioned shallow breathing in passing as a key contributor to “various long-term nasties”. But breathing is so important to our health or lack thereof, it’s worth a lot more airtime than a fleeting paragraph or two. You can go a few days without water, weeks without food, years without exercise but go a few minutes without oxygen and you will die. According to my research, as far back as 1947 there were studies done that showed that normal cells can easily convert to cancer cells when chronically starved for oxygen. Lack of oxygen resulting from an overly rapid and shallow breath rate can contribute to heart disease, strokes, depression, sleep issues, fatigue, premature aging and nearly every malady known to humankind.

The stress and pace of modern life, as well as its conveniences, have in many of us led to decreased outdoor activity and increased work inside the home, coinciding with an increase in exposure to pollutants. Restrictive clothing such as tight waistbands, belts and bras compromises the ability to breathe fully and effortlessly and can contribute to digestive, elimination or gynecological issues. These factors combined with the subconscious fear of triggering the emotions stored in our body help create shallow/rapid breathing patterns. Cultivating an intent to face the emotions that can be stirred by continuous proper breathing helps.

Oxygen is the key component in the production of ATP, the chemical basis of energy production in the body. Deeper, slower breathing increases production of ATP. Increased oxygenation also improves blood quality, aiding in the elimination of toxins. It especially improves overall brain function and pineal/pituitary gland rejuvenation. Skin becomes smoother and stress load on the heart is decreased (thanks in part to greater lung efficiency), resulting in lower blood pressure. Increased diaphragmatic range of motion “massages” the heart, liver, pancreas, stomach and small intestine, stimulating blood circulation in these organs.

The website holisticonline.com describes the “perfect breath” in good detail. It starts with a “lower” breath inhalation that begins in the belly, and proceeds upward through a middle, intercostal breath (the lower ribcage expands to the side), completing the inhalation in an upper or high-ribcage chest expansion. Exhalation reverses this direction, and ends at the bottom of the exhale with a key component – what I call an inner hug, where the lower ribs give a gentle squeeze to the diaphragm. This squeeze not only eliminates the last bits of old air in the bottom of the lungs, but when the ribcage relaxes, the next breath begins automatically! This is where effortlessness can begin. Be in no rush to begin the next breath; pausing at the bottom of the breath for a few seconds brings its own benefits, particularly the resting of Body’s systems. Although oxygen uptake occurs on the exhale and thus slow outbreath is recommended overall, sometimes my body likes to just “let go” the air all at once, without pushing. Allow Body to do either, just because you feel to in the moment.

If executed properly, this breathing style is effortless. Strain and deep breathing do not go together and will likely result in significant “forgetting” or a subtle giving-up by Body if you are pushing yourself. Practice and perseverance will help turn relearning into a new integrated Body function with a huge upside. Try taking the breathing test a few times across time out on breathing.com, another “inspirational” resource, and see if your scores improve. Mine have. Don’t be afraid to care!

The breakneck pace of summer in a tourist economy, or anywhere where speed of life means slipping unconsciously into ways of eating that don’t serve us, requires a balancing time of reckoning for Body. Breaking old consuming habits is a wonderful way to cool down the pace, enhancing our lives and helping us feel good about ourselves.

Fasting gives Body a much needed break from the constant work of digestion, and helps initiate a cleanse of the entire digestive tract. There’s nothing like a fast to break up embedded daily routine (what will you do with all that extra time normally spent shopping, cooking and eating?), dissolve cravings, and court epiphany. Fasting brings periods of detoxification for Body (including mental fuzziness) as well as periods of euphoria and great clarity and energy.

There is no “right way” to fast. Simply going without food for a number of days will help to give Body a break from all the digestion energy she normally expends. Some people fast using supplements and lower bowel tonics, others drink copious water and diluted fruit juice. If significant constipation arises, try taking a spoonful of psyllium twice a day in a large glass of water - or a teaspoon or two of Aloe Vera juice. Master Cleanser, aka “hippie whiskey” is a popular fasting aid, composed of a blend of water, lemon juice, cayenne and a dollop of maple syrup. Whether you choose a fasting/cleansing routine or simply listen closely to what your body wants to do in each moment, heavy liquid intake is a key component in helping cleanse the digestive tract.

Ritually entering a fast helps build and strengthen intention. The new moon , particularly a fire or earth moon (especially Virgo) is a wonderful time to begin, constituting an energetic clearing of the decks and the beginning of a new cycle. It can help to bring other types of intentions to such a ritual, such as intentions for change, healing, or new gifts and desires to manifest in your life. I prefer to fast sometime in the fall and/or in the spring; the extremes of temperature and energy output don’t seem to call for Body to fast in summer or winter.

It is every Body’s choice, moment by moment, as to how long to fast…even a day of fasting can help, though I like a three day minimum. I know of folks who’ve done month-long fasts and felt great. However long you choose, when refeeding time is nigh, introduce foods minimally and gradually build up in volume over the first few days. Notice how your mouth has been resensitized (and how desensitized it had gotten just previous to the fast!). It’s a great time to learn to eat slowly and mindfully, paying close attention to when we’ve had enough, including Body in our food choices, and becoming more aware of how we take in nourishment.

Sexual interaction isn’t only for pleasure and union, it is also a crucible for the deepest and most needful healing and dealing possible. What happens when we find ourselves partnered with a survivor of sexual abuse? Having been in that role myself, I find that the pattern seems to be that the preponderence of pleasure and true union eventually gives way to much time spent in the crucible. (For readability’s sake, I’m going to use feminine pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’ to indicate the survivor, and ‘he’ and ‘his’ for the partner, with an understanding that in many couples the genders are reversed or the same.)

There are some key points for partners of survivors to take in deeply. First is that the survivor has been violated in the deepest point in her being, often more than once, and is likely at some point during any given sexual interaction to be triggered into a physical or emotional memory, even if she has already done a lot of recovery work. Because sexual violation touches the core of the individual, the recovery can last a lifetime.This reality does not preclude loving and joyful sex, but can include indefinitely ongoing triggers that arise across time.

Secondly, the partner’s natural sexual desire can also serve as a memory trigger in and of itself for the survivor. Survivors are hypersensitive to the slightest presence of sexual need or hunger in anyone coming on to them. In the right circumstances, this is no problem, but any hesistancy at all on the part of the survivor as to whether to engage can possibly result in her partner “wearing the face” of her abuser, in an emotional or visceral sense.

The most important word for the survivor and her partner is ‘no’. For the most healing result, the partner of a survivor needs to back off sexual advance or interaction immediately upon hearing the word or even the intimation that the original reception to sex has shifted for the survivor. Anything else, such as her partner’s ignoring or negotiating with the survivor’s desire to stop, or his delaying stoppage, results in a reconditioning of the old wound.

The upside of the partner’s impeccability is that the destroyed trust in the core wound of the survivor can rebuild more quickly if she can learn to trust that her ‘no’ has power. This is a necessary stage towards complete recovery for the survivor so that loving and fulfilling sexuality can manifest as the norm. The partner can help the survivor, and in turn, himself by assisting the potential of this manifestation with such impeccability.

Equally important for the partner is his ability to safely and appropriately express feelings of angry frustration, grief, hurt or terror and judgments that “it will always be like this”, “I don’t think I can stand being thwarted like this forever”, etc. It can be terrifying for the survivor to experience her partner expressing or even having such feelings, but is often quite necessary for healing to occur on both sides of the equation. It is crucial that the emotions here are handled responsibly, which is most often a difficult task.

Closing the sexual gap between lovers means expressing and being honest and upfront with feelings on both sides, no matter what those feelings involve. Because of the depth of the issue at hand, this process can be akin to handling dynamite or nuclear waste safely, yet it must be done, no matter how many missteps, for overall evolution to occur in this most sensitive of relational arenas.

I am learning to only do for others if I really feel like it. I know that’s counter to what many people say is loving. I naturally want to give to others, though, so it’s not like I don’t go there much. I go there often, because it feels good. I just intend to do it when I really want to, and that’s partly what re-integrating my true feelings in each moment is about.

There are many judgments against putting oneself first. In perhaps all societies, people on the whole don’t tend to put themselves first much, and certainly not without being stigmatized. The very act of putting oneself first too often is harshly put down and written off as “selfish, irresponsible, self-absorbed and unloving.” “Putting yourself first leads to chaos, anarchy and nihilism” is another popular judgment. Rarely is anyone commended for following his or her own truth if self-firstness is a common personal practice. (I prefer the word “self-first” to selfish.)

The only sustainable way for a human being to give that doesn’t produce backlash is to give from a full or at least filling cup, and from pure desire to do so, not from some belief that “it’s the right and loving thing to do” by somebody else’s standards. I love to give, and I am very good at it, but I can no longer give from an empty or nearly empty cup. That way began to kill me, and I want to live forever.

Societies have never tried nor condoned giving to oneself and loving oneself first, and taking care of oneself in order that one can take care of another. The plan of free will in a functional society needs to be repercussion-free for pursuing free will. Instead, because of emotional body denial, guilt is king and everybody is prone to taking guilt-based actions.

We in western culture live an illusion of freedom, but we’re not really free. We’re time slaves, economic slaves, slaves to rules and strictures, inequities and enforced controls overseen by an external global power who has very specific agenda to curtail freedom while diabolically repeating like a mantra that it is protecting and preserving freedom instead. At the collective level, this is the outer reflection of rules curtailing freedom to act as we see fit, originally caused by inner denial of free will. We often deny ourselves what we really feel like doing with many should’s, frozen fears and judgments.

One way to start undoing this imbalance is to try allowing what we feel like doing and see what happens. At first, long-denied personal desires may rush forth and begin to act as selfishly (in the traditional, imbalanced sense) as judgments held against them say they would if allowed to be free. These judgments and intertwined emotions must be released for the desires to find eventual balance in their manifestations. True balance does not sacrifice personal desire and the self, nor does it override and abandon loved ones nearby who are dependent or need help, but finds the middle ground. When we’ve had enough experience and triggered releases, fears and judgments around sacrifice and selfishness can disappear and stop fueling the macrocosmic reflection.

I AM a whole universe, contained within myself. I AM life. I desire life. My desires and my life force and essence are priceless. When I give to myself, I AM giving to the All by vibrating self-love across the psychic realms, across the hologram that we exist in.

Personal computers enhance our lives in many ways; convenience, ease of networking, commercial and creative advantage. Lots of home computers means lots of people often sitting in one position for lengthy periods. Balance being the key to a healthy lifestyle, we need to proactively take steps to counter this additional sedentary factor.

There are some easy ways to heal and deal around the uneasy marriage of body and computer. Stiff shoulders and necks are a major issue among computer users, especially in the part of the trapezius muscle just inside the topmost/innermost section of the shoulder blade, between the blade and the spine. Chronic tension in this area can lead to calcification, or the building of bone tissue in the muscle, which can lead to a multitude of problems.

Suggestions: 1) Type with your hands low. Your hands on the keyboard should be no higher than about one inch below the level of your solar plexus; any higher forces your shoulders to stay poised above their lowest possible resting point, creating unnecessary tension. Stay aware of what that lowest resting point is, and either use a shorter table, pillows to raise yourself up, a taller chair, or the keyboard on your lap. 2) Take regular breaks to raise and lower your shoulders in superslow motion. Start at the bottom of the lowest resting point of the shoulders and very gradually raising your shoulders as high as they will go (up around your ears), then very gradually lowering them to the lowest resting point again. Repeat this motion several times, the slower the better. 3) Undulate in your chair from time to time. I know that sounds weird, but try it…move from your trunk and at all your joints, all at the same time; for greatest benefit, move as slowly as you can. Bodies need to move often to stay happy. 4) Get up at least once every 30 minutes to move around. 5) Get regular bodywork.

For the men: Sitting a lot in an office-style or any hard chair can mean more prostatic stress. Nearly all men run into prostate issues at one point or another, and not just the elders among us. Notice the flow of your pee; is it strong from start to finish? If not, or if you seem to have the urge to go a lot even if you’re not drinking many fluids, it’s time to deal. For the full-meal-deal, locate on your body what the ancient Chinese referred to as “the million dollar point”, or the soft tissue just underneath and adjacent to your anus. While sitting in your office chair, put the middle and ring fingers against this point and use your body weight to allow yourself to sink onto your fingers, as deeply as you can without it hurting. Rotate your fingers three times clockwise, then counterclockwise, repeat both directions about five times, then switch hands for comfort and do it all again. If it’s easier, you can stand up or lay on your back and perform the move that way. This is a do-it-yourself prostate massage, a great proactive tool for keeping your prostate healthy and disgorging any trapped fluid buildup in the gland. This is best accomplished with clothes but not through jeans.

Other ways to support a healthy prostate include kegel-style pelvic floor squeezes, again best done slowly (ask a mother what kegels are!), occasionally and intentionally squeezing off the flow of pee, ejaculating at least semi-regularly, and being moderate with wheat, refined sugars, alcohol and caffeine.

The movie “The Upside of Anger” features dramatic, familiar manifestations of acted-out rage: doors kicked down, sharp, blaming words exchanged, cars driven too fast, bodies striking other bodies. We were also shown cold, expressionless, commanding rage delivered in others’ faces, revenge fantasies featuring horrible things happening to another and all manner of attempt to hold back the rage charge from escaping. In the climactic moment, I fervently hoped that finally Hollywood was going to allow a full expression of primal sound to escape the main character’s lips.

Alas, I was disappointed at the cinematic reflection of our society’s refusal to “let the air out of the balloon through the original opening,” instead trotting out all the old cliches of what anger is and does. Emotions were allowed to subside and go back to sleep, with the occasional leaked tear. Sigh. At least no one pretended they weren’t angry! I imagined anger filling the balloons of our emotional bodies to the bursting point, with an ever-ready pin to bring havoc and destruction instead of safe release and epiphany.

We’re all connected, not just in spirit, but in emotional essence too. When you or I hold back rage, the pressure added to the Big Balloon intensifies somewhere else, through some “far distant” and weaker point in the “balloon skin”, and then – POW! Of course the balloon forms again – weaker this time, more easily poppable. When “popping” occurs, someone gets hurt; sometimes us, sometimes “the other guy”. We watch the outer reflection of our inner collective anger in places like Iraq and Palestine, and all over any news service. Not knowing what else to do with it, we shove our anger into others with blame, the rage never evolving through appropriate expression, just getting passed around.

Imagine our rage is in a balloon, and we’re holding the balloon, two fingers clutching the cinched opening. Why wait for the bang’n’shreds when we could just let go? Letting go doesn’t mean just sending it into the Earth or somewhere else through a technique. We have to take more responsibility than that; our emotions are a part of us. Expressing anger in wordless sound “vibrates” the emotion, literally speeding it up, evolving and entraining it with spiritual understandings which are already vibrating at a very high rate. The part of us encased or entwined with old anger has been too shunted away in the dark to know what our minds and spirits know already. The vibration achieved through expression brings our angry parts up to speed. Ever notice that, having gone through an emotional time, you understand things much more deeply than before? That’s emotional essence having caught up with the rest of the self.

Letting go means allowing the raw power of the rage that wants to just scream or shout. Use a pillow if necessary to block your sound; however, anger can “prefer” unfettered sound expression in a safe space. Sometimes anger wants to stomp or smash things; allow this as much as possible while smashing things that don’t mind being smashed, such as an old tree bough on the ground. Throw soft things around the room, pound your bed, buy some 50c crockery at a yard sale and clear an area of your garage wall to throw them against - whatever works.

When you dare to release your anger this way, you’re helping undo the mass of denied and inappropriately-expressed rage across the planet, directly affecting volatile situations in war-torn areas of the world. If need be, release the judgment that this couldn’t be true. Every time we allow angry feelings to release safely in pure sound, it “goes out the hole” and eases the pressure on the Whole.

Why aren’t all of us powerfully manifesting our lives in accordance with our truest hearts’ desires? You must have heard the phrase “I gave my power away”. We all gave our power away. And those in the universe who’s “job” it is to suck up that denied power are doing a fine job of it too. And they use that power “against” us because we, at some early point many eons ago, judged against power as being wrong to have and use, unloving in fact. The judgment has since reflected to us from ‘out there’ as…yup, power unlovingly used. In our judgmental selves we’d rather be right than happy. Judgments against our own inherent power – power to draw desired realities toward ourselves, power to keep ourselves safe, etc – hold that power at bay from reaching its potential in us.

Speaking of power, consensus judgments have incredible power. When something is accepted as “reality” by a majority of people in the world, that reality is exponentially empowered to remain manifest. As individuals, all we can do when facing classic consensus judgments in ourselves is release them and feel the feelings of hopelessness and whatever else arises while attempting judgment release. Sometimes what feels like truths are really judgments in disguise, repeated and believed by so many that they take on the appearance of truth. “I have no power as an individual to change things” is one example of such a judgment.

True loving power doesn’t overpower anybody or anything to meet its agenda. The power to stand firm in one’s right role and place, saying yes or no with conviction is the first step on a long road back to recovering our trust for our deeper powers of manifestation and magic.

The following poem speaks to what has happened to this power, and hints at how we might get it back.

The Dark Before Dawn

Little boy blue has shit on his shoe

And doesn’t want to notice

He say, “it’s you who stink

And if you think

We’re letting you empower

Well, we’ll never cower

From a war in which we’ll win

We are the masters of spin

And this great country of ours

Despite the din from the great unheard

Herd, will not go idly

Into that good night.

Nope, not us…we’ll fight fight fight

Because of course, we’re right

And right wins wars, and evens scores

And more.

We say, you scurvy whore

Battle me, and you will see

Who still steals the flower of power

From the weak and undeserving.”

Fie upon that! I’ll spit in my hat

‘fore I’ll go back to being

as before, when I blamed you

as the causal bore and believed it.

Yes, that’s right, I bought that bullshit

Cuz I barely knew better.

Now it’s down to me & mine

Who are doing time

In our sheds and caves

Riding the waves

Of our emotions and devotions

To She who will save us.

So if you feel it,

make a fuss, you gloomy gus,

Guilt ridden and gone from sight

Give up going past your plight

And let’s live for today

Though it’s not all play.

The row we hoe is uneven and dark

And we are frightened

And our hearts

Have tightened

Somewhat.

It’s the dark before dawn

So quit playing the pawn

And leave their game cuz it’s

Only the same tame shame

Join us on the edge

Make your inner pledge

To piss or poop so to please the pot

Before they come and throw you off

And you scream, “why me?

The world’s gone crazy, and

I didn’t know.”

Yes you did

But you ran and hid

God help me

Let’s take responsibility

For being free

My friend Carmen wanted more information about releasing fear. She asked for an example based on a fear she had about losing her freedom in the form of money (Carmen and her partner are heavily invested in the stock market). I painted for her the following fantasy:

Imagine a stock market crash. You stand to lose thousands of dollars with slim hope of recovery. In six months you’ll have difficulty paying your mortgage, unthinkable only a short while ago. You must radically change your lifestyle, which looks like a severe cutback in your freedom.

Your days become filled with fear. If you are observant of your body’s responses and honest with yourself, you recognize the fear in your solar plexus region, maybe your jaw. You might even have a headache, feel intermittently nauseous or lightheaded. You start to feel “delicate” and uncomfortably vulnerable.

Imagining such a scenario can trigger fear in your body as if it were really happening. This would be what I call a “safe trigger”, since it’s only imagined, not really manifesting in your life. A manifestation that brings an actual reversal to your fortunes monetary or otherwise would be an “unsafe trigger”.

Manifesting a lot of unsafe triggers indicates that you have ignored one too many previous, lesser-magnitude fear triggers. In my example, the unsafe trigger would be where you actually get seriously reversed financially in order to overcome your repeatedly reinforced resistance and wake you up in that area. You had become too numb or too resistant to have anything of lesser magnitude get you off the dime emotionally.

“But what do I do with the fears when they arise? It’s so hard not to try to think about or do something else to take my mind off it all, so I don’t have to feel this fear anymore,” Carmen said.

You have arrived now at a “choice-point”. You are free to distract yourself from that fearful undercurrent with various means at your disposal. This is denial of how you really feel. Feeling hard emotions is not easy. You want to deny that you are afraid by overlaying activities or new thoughts that cover up the fear so you don’t have to notice anymore that you are afraid. Faith must be cultivated that there will be some sort of payoff in the end that will be worth going through the feelings to the other side.

Imagined scenarios are good for proactively triggering old fear. They cause the physio-emotional system to respond no differently at root than if the feared event had manifested. Our collective judgments say something to the effect of “I am causing unnecessary fear with such thoughts” and encourage focusing on something else to stimulate a more pleasurable emotional response. I don’t suggest intentionally generating fearful thoughts. Simply notice when the fearful thoughts arise organically, and once you’ve noticed them, let them arise and vibrate, don’t push them back down, cover them up or distract yourself. You can allow the feelings to come to conscious awareness and express them in sound or tears. Fear will eventually evolve into trust with enough passes through it over time.

Getting to fear “flashpoint” for the first time is not easy. We have all developed intricate minefields of resistance to expression. We have a lot of judgments running about how the fear will “swallow us”, “it will be endless”, “I’ll just be creating more of it”, etc. Those judgments need formal release. The more willing and able we are to vibrate (express) emotions with smaller triggers the more safe, or “proactive” triggers we will experience as opposed to unsafe, or “reactive” triggers.

   A wonderful organization of wise and loving people in Northern California called the Human Awareness Institute taught me a formula for interpersonal manifestation that I am still working on fully implementing in my life since I first heard it over ten years ago. They outline three steps reflecting Mick Jagger’s punchline to this article’s title: trying sometimes gets what you need.

1) Ask for 100% of what you want, 100% of the time;

2) Be willing to hear ‘no’

3) Negotiate for a win-win.

   Still, in my exploration of this map to fulfillment, I’ve found there are steps that aren’t apparent amidst its surface simplicity.

         Step 0) Take the time to discover exactly what you want. Does the person you are approaching have what you really want? We’ve all got significant inherent power and magic to manifest, but we often manifest what we think we want that turns out to not be what we really wanted. We haven’t taken the time to get to know our desire of the moment. We feel an impulse arise, and then some other part of us instantly interprets what that is, and another part is off and running to get it. Whoa, Nelly!

          Step 0a) Beware of what you don’t want. How many times does our wish begin like this: “I don’t want…” This kind of negative wish can be made to someone else or simply to the universe. What we’re really saying is, “I fear this thing happening,”, which is powered by an underlying judgment, “If it happens it will be bad and I won’t like it.” Creating from unexamined or unprocessed fear and judgments that are underneath every “I don’t want” can give us what we fear. If we process the fear and release the judgments involved, we can discover what it is we’re really afraid of. Noticing that there’s always an “I want” behind the old “I don’t want”, and then asking for what we want can then put us back on track to manifesting positively and in accordance with true desire.

     Step 0b) Process as many feelings as possible around having what you want (e.g. worthiness issues, judgments against the possibility of success, fear of asking). A successful manifestation of truest desire has the greatest possibility of occurring if emotional triggers can be allowed and expressed ahead of time.

     Step 1a) Ask directly. Notice that it always feels better when you yourself are asked directly for something; there is no feeling of undercurrent expectations or subtle manipulation. Example of indirect approach: “I’ve been thinking I don’t want to go alone to the dance.” Direct: “Would you go to the dance with me?”

Step 1b) Find/process your rage, fear and hurt around the possibility of ‘no’. Fear of hearing ‘no’ can result in indirect asking, not asking, or asking for less than 100% of what you really want. This is a key in the original three-step formula. If you aren’t willing to hear ‘no’, it’s probably wrong time for asking at all, and more process time is required first.

Step 3a) Process feelings if a win-win cannot be found at the end of negotiation. If a win-win cannot be found, how can you get what you need? Feel the core of your need deeply, express all the feelings you can, then stay aware for new information from without or within. Find willingness to hang out in the uncertainty of unrequited desire, holding a line of faith that something will shift the situation toward getting your deepest needs met. “But if you cry sometimes/you might find…”

        Rotating bodyworkers can, in the long run, maximize healing for every part of your physical and emotional bodies. My own experiences receiving massage have recently reaffirmed for me that every bodyworker has specific strengths that work for particular parts of my body, but no one has the whole thing down. For example, where one person I might see does wonders for my legs and hips, another affords my upper back and neck just the right pressure and motion to encourage maximum healing.

We tend to stay with one practitioner because they do good work overall, and there is nothing wrong with that approach. Yet, when we try a session from another practitioner, we find that certain areas of the body get addressed in new and different ways. It’s important to put the body’s overall needs ahead of long-term habit patterns. Many of you may be doing this already, but for those like myself who recently awoke to my own pattern of seeing only this person or that person for massage, only to find new healing epiphanies for various parts of my body I didn’t even realize were that much in need, I offer the possibility.

Remember that barter suggestions and asking for what you need in terms of sliding scale can sometimes be keys in finding a win for you and Body. Options that many bodyworkers are open to include partial payment combined with partial barter, or time payments with a stated end time. Not every situation will meet your needs, but keep trying. Your intent to get the healing touch you need will pay off in right timing, even if money is an issue.

    Tips for long-term Body health: to aid in liver detoxification and as a preventive measure, I like to start off my day with fresh-squeezed organic lemon juice, wedge and all, in an unsweetened cup of herb tea. Whenever I take in or do anything with an intent for health lately I’ve been cultivating the habit of either thinking or saying an affirmative statement out loud. With my lemon tea I might say to myself something to the effect of, “I am clearing myself of toxins.”

         We have to overcome a lot of negative conditioning from the media and our past about what happens to us that “we have no control over.” We can tangibly reverse this negative flow by making statements to ourselves that we can feel the truth of, believe in, and enact a positive “placebo effect.” With a gulp of the green powder drink that I consume after my morning tea, I like to say “I am taking in a magic restorative elixir of healing life force from Earth.” You can stretch this even further by saying “I drink life and the fountain of youth” every time you take a drink of water. See what comes up for you when you say this! It could be some sneering voice in your head – it’s alright. Use all the tools at your disposal to address this voice head-on.

Great Healing and Dealing Related Website: http://www.rightuseofwill.com

The author of this new site is one of my main sources of material discussed over time in this column, regurgitated through my own levels of understanding, of course. She has brought forth eight books on the kind of emotional healing and dealing that I feel is crucial in these times. The FAQ page I find particularly clear and informative.

“Well, I just assumed you knew”…”You assumed I wouldn’t be up for it?”…”I went on an assumption that we would never make it on time”…. Ahhhhhh, yes…the assumption hole. We magically transform normal homo sapiens into braying donkeys, performing this dark, calcifying wizardry on ourselves and others on a daily basis (with due apologies to our full-time burro amigos)

How often have we uttered or heard word for word recitals of the above? How often does assuming we know what is real for a given moment match what’s really happening? (What’s really happening? Hindsight will tell you!) So often after our assumptions have proven faulty, we sheepishly grin to our partners or friends, ‘y’know I was wrong about that thing’…or we polarize and say something that defends the assumption, or the reasons for making the assumption.

Either way there are a few things we did there. First, we felt we had all the information we needed to ‘safely’ make an assumption. Secondly, we were operating on old information and failed to check back in to see if it was still true. Thirdly, we were running on fear which led to making the assumption, such as fear of confronting the source of our fear, unsafety around the source itself, be it a person or place or thing, fear of admitting that we don’t know everything already, or fear of success, which subconsciously sabotages a situation in order to prove judgments such as “Nothing ever works” or “life sucks”.

Healing the fear around knowing the truth could be a key to discovering why we make so many assumptions in our daily lives. Releasing this fear and other fears is crucial in order to regularly make decisions that work for us instead of backfiring. In a quiet moment, try touching into a fear of a situation, interaction, or person and see if you can contact root fears that lead to your assumptions about them/it.

See if the fear has an energy in your body. You can release fear through sound that wants to organically emerge directly from the energy you’ve contacted in your mind or body, or through chattering teeth, shivering etc. Allowing and accepting fear’s existence is the key to true release, including allowing it to move through you however it will. Perhaps it will leave you without your emotionally vibrating it, but don’t just banish it…ask it what it needs and give it, including the right to move on. Acknowledging and/or expressing fear can release it, but banishing, or denying fear tends to split the parts feeling the fear off from the rest of the self …throwing our babies out with bathwater.

I said earlier that calcification, or mental, physical, emotional stuckness, is part of the assumption process. Assumptions spring from stuck energy in our minds and emotions, reflected in the hard places in our physical musculature. Unquestioned assumptions powered by unfelt, unaccepted fear can manifest in the body, emotions and mind as rock-solid, protected places. A friend said to me today that people who are calcified in certain areas of their being will see calcification everywhere they look, e.g. other people being the same as they were five years ago in all that they do, situations never evolving and always having the same result time after time ad infinitum, etc.

Ani DiFranco said, “dig deeper, dig deeper this time” and that is what we assumers all need to do inside ourselves if a more flowing and pleasant set of experiences is to befall us as a matter of course.

The following meditation is excellent for stilling the mind and building chi. It can be read aloud or taped and replayed. Speak slowly, leaving space for deep breathing.

1. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to open into and expand my heart chakra.

2. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my throat chakra and solar plexus chakra, in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow my physical body to relax.

3. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 3^rd eye chakra and navel chakra in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow my physical body to open.

4. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my crown chakra and root chakra in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow my physical body to let go and open further.

5. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my alpha chakra just above my head and omega chakra just below my spine in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow a wave of (grace or abundance or whatever is needed) to resonate between them.

6. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 10th chakra above my head, and upper legs, in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow my emotional and physical bodies to merge.

7. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 11th chakra above my head, and lower calves, in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow my mental, emotional and physical bodies to merge.

8. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 12th chakra above my head, and below my feet, in one unified field of loving light within, through and around my body. I allow my spiritual/astral, mental, emotional and physical bodies to merge, creating the unified field. I allow loving light to amplify and fill my unified field to the degree my being can safely receive it.

9. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 13th chakra above my head, and Earth’s crust, in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow my Oversoul and Earthbodies to merge with my unified field.

10. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 14th chakra above my head, and Earth’s mantle, in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow the I AM Oversoul and all of my lost selves to merge with my unified field.

11. I breathe in loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 15^th chakra above my head, and Earth’s core, in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow the MotherFather Source energies to meet and merge in the center of my heart, in my body.I AM a bridge between Heaven and Earth.

           Genvieve hurls insults at her partner when he says she should know better than to trust her doctor to give her the right advice for her injured foot. She runs crying out of the room. Later, she tells a girlfriend that she overreacted.

Oftentimes people believe that if their emotional response is out of proportion to the trigger at hand that they have “overreacted”. Overreaction is a popular misunderstanding about anger or hurt. It is used as a categorical label to describe a reaction misunderstood because it is not logically proportionate to the “weight” of the surface trigger. Yet children, our emotional teachers, sometimes cry voluminously at the slightest injury, taking advantage of every opportunity to offload accumulated emotional charge.

Instead of labelling Genvieve’s true response an overreaction, we could say she reacted exactly in proportion to her backlog of held emotions. The word “overreact” connotes that she was out of line for having the response she did. The concept of overreaction also reveals a widely held judgment that one’s emotional reaction should be controlled to match, but not exceed, the exact level of response stirred by the trigger at hand – input in, input out, the modus operandi of a machine or computer. The emotional body doesn’t operate under the same rules of logic as the mental body; yet, in its own world, functions perfectly logically at all times when one considers all that has been emotionally denied in our existential history.

Attempted non-reaction is not healing and dealing either. My friend Carmen wrote to me relating her attempts to suppress her initial angry response in a potential “road rage” scenario:

“What I hope is happening when I ‘refuse” to feel or ventilate road rage is eliminating the knee jerk reaction. I think we are somewhat programmed to feel ENTITLED to be angry when we perceive an insult.”

Yes, that old righteous indignation thing, where we’re “justifiably” enraged. “How dare they do that to me!” This comes from believing we have no responsibility for our experiences, another thing we’re programmed about (”everything that happens to us is random”), or we adopt a superior stance: “I would NEVER do that”. We feel entitled to strike back because of our cultural revenge imprint; miniature pitchfork devils whisper in our ear that “the score must be evened”.

Carmen continues, “It doesn’t feel like I’m burying it, it feels like I’m refusing to rise to the bait.”

As if to react emotionally at all is to overreact! Emotional responses are immediate, and natural. If your reaction is kneejerk, and you prefer a different response, then how to address that first reaction? Refusing to “rise to the bait” means refusing to acknowledge the reaction, therefore denying that you are having the reaction by enforcing calm as a secondary response. The debate is whether that first reaction is real. Instead of substituting a second response, one could address healing that initial, ‘kneejerk’ response by healing over time so that one no longer has the same over-the-top response to the same stimuli, ad infinitum. People on an emotional expression healing path are attempting this slow process of organic healing.

Healthy open expression of anger and emotions such as grief, hurt and fear seems farfetched because we live in a culture of denial, where holding them in is seen as natural. When something has been practiced for millenia, it seems that must be the right way. I disagree that it’s the right way; it does not lead to healing to hold feelings in as a matter of course. As Sinead O’Connor once sang, “Life’s backwards, life’s backwards/People, turn around”.

Some think that guilt is useful because there is a judgment in the collective subconscious that says we would run amok, giving into every impulse, no matter how inappropriate, if we didn’t have “healthy guilt” (now there’s a contradiction in terms) to keep us in check. Balderdash! Were we truly healthy, our free will choices and actions would flow freely, even impulsively, yet harm none. Guilt is not a tool or an emotion, but it takes up energetic space where emotional response is supposed to be.

Moving from being guilt-ridden to being healed is a process, and in an environment where free will is encouraged, there will be mistakes along the journey to attaining balance. Using guilt to keep us in line has not served humankind, for there can be no self-acceptance of all the facets of ourselves if guilt is in charge. There is no loving light in the voice of guilt. It can sound right intellectually, but feels wrong to our emotional body. Guilt takes a kernel of truth and uses it against us with a hurtful twist or thrust to it; this unloving tone is one way to recognize its presence, especially if we are chronically swamped in guilt. We’ve lost sensitivity to be able to tell the difference between guilt and love.

Guilt divides us by turning parts of ourselves against us, separating us from Spirit and each other, triggering hopelessness and a sense of futility which leads to depression, addiction, and other chronic nasties. Guilt uses hindsight against us, saying we should have known because of XYZ, we should have done this, we were wrong not to do that. Its voice can disguise itself, often “reflected” to us from others outside us wagging subtly and overtly disapproving fingers our way. If guilt is synthesized down to its most basic message, it is saying we should be doing better than we already are. If self-acceptance is the key to healing, guilt is utter lack of self-acceptance, and in and of itself, not useful in the healing process.

Guilt’s presence, however, is a signpost that buried emotion lies hidden underneath it, and this emotion can be sleuthed out, and ideally, subsequently expressed and released. I need to notice how I really feel when guilt’s voice speaks to me, and then give into that emotional response, not just in words, but in sound and tears, in a safe space. When authentic response is given to every stimuli, as fully as possible, the space for guilt to stay or enter closes and one’s personal will becomes more and more free over time.

Conversely, the more I deny my true response to emotional triggers, the more guilt enters the space and speaks to me from outside and inside myself, and in the worst case scenario, runs my life. When guilt gets projected outward onto another person or situation, it comes out in the form of blame. If I find myself blaming another, or others blaming me, it can usually be traced back to guilt, either theirs, or mine reflected to me by them, or both. Noticing and acknowledging guilt is the responsible first step in disarmament during any personal war, and as mentioned, can then be released with the true expression of the emotions it conceals. The more we can disarm and own our sides of our personal vendettas, the more we as individuals, the microcosm of the planet itself, can disempower warmongering on the large scale.

The ideal pace for the body to receive healing touch is very slow. Bodies can move quickly, yet speedy physical movement can sometimes lead to staying in one’s head, a sense of rushed anxiety and even injury. This can become a self-perpetuating cycle. The massage table is a perfect place for body to cycle down and become re-imprinted with the health benefits of deliberate movement. Ideally, a healing touch practitioner aids this slowing down process with an unhurried application of the hands. Don’t let guilt, caretaking, or habit prevent you from switching practitioners, even if the relationship is long-term, if your practitioner does not help you adjust the pace of your life downward — or for any reason at all.

Becoming a good receiver is crucial to maximizing the pleasure and health benefits of bodywork. No matter what modality, an optimal bodywork session is one in which you the client are loosely, non-mentally focused and aware inside your body. To facilitate this “locus of focus”, talking should be kept to a minimum, centered on moment-to-moment needs and requests. Feel free to make lots of those! A bodywork session is a time to allow all your immediate physical needs to be addressed, and a good practitioner welcomes your petitions for water, kleenex, lighter touch, or another moment or two on that foot. If your practitioner initiates conversation and you notice that you are not as able to stay present in your body, let her know that you are finding conversation distracting. If she persists, make that session your last with that person – a bodywork practitioner must aid you in becoming more embodied, not take you out into your head.

Find yourself endlessly spinning thoughts and visions during your session? It’s an organic occurrence, as bodywork connects the mind, spirit, emotions and body more efficiently than during untouched moments. As best you can, remind yourself that you can pursue that picture of the ideal job possibility or tough issue with your spouse after your treatment, and return your awareness to your body, breathing deeply. Slow, effortless breathing, especially the outbreath, aids in muscle relaxation and is most called for during deep tissue massage of a particularly tight or painful muscle.

My first masseur (the masculine form of the popularly but malapropriately applied feminine form ‘masseuse’) back in 1989 gave me a guideline that I continue to repeat to my clients to this day: “Never help the practitioner”. Raising your head or your legs to aid in pillow adjustment is a no-no: worst case scenario has just-released muscles spasming worse than before from being forced to go from a state of deep relaxation to one of sudden contraction. Become “heavy-limbed”, and allow the practitioner to move your body parts for you – practicing surrender of control does a body good.

Sometimes a bodywork session will stir old emotions as a result of a particular area being touched, rocked, massaged or otherwise manipulated. I recommend taking advantage of this by fully allowing vocal, non-verbal expression in moans, sighs, cries, tears, and involuntary jerking (also known as kriyas). A sensitive practitioner will ride this wave with you, compassionately yet matter-of-factly supporting you in those moments; another reason to switch practitioners if this is not the case.

Nearly every receiver finds her or himself at one time or another having a sexual response to non-sexual healing touch. This can be embarrassing or confusing, but such a physical response is perfectly normal. Significant sexual energy is stored in hips, buttocks and legs and can spontanously begin flowing during a session when those areas are addressed. If this happens to you, continue deeply breathing, stay in your body, allow your response to run its course without comment, and the responsible practitioner will do likewise.

Within nearly every adult human lies the ability to bond and join with another adult at the deepest possible levels through sexual union. It is this ideal that keeps many of us searching for the perfect coupling to bring us the bliss we have heard about, that we dream is possible, and that we even fleetingly achieved one time, one night, years ago with somebody who isn’t even around anymore. True magic and power, the ultimate creative rocket fuel, is inherent in our sexuality, but in most of us it sure doesn’t feel that way. Some of us feel sexually depressed, asexual, ho-hum or downright averse to sexual interaction. On the other end of the continuum lie those of us intensively driven to attain this bliss, scrambling past one lacklustre or okayish orgasm after another in a desperate urge to finally find it, never stopping to feel the emotional backlog accrued along the way.

Two main patterns (with variations) of adult sexual wounding can be isolated. Firstly, having sex when we don’t really feel like it, caving to either internal or external pressure. Or, moving too rapidly into sex and, once engaged, towards orgasm. “Too rapidly” means suppressing feelings of wanting to take one’s time, or succumbing to old habits of impatience or need for the orgasmic jolt (different from the oneness of union alluded to earlier).

The main agents of wounding involved here are sexual guilt (“I’ve been saying no a lot, I should give my partner a ‘yes’ this time”, or “I don’t want to hurt him/her”), sexual terror (“I don’t DARE say no again”, or “I’m afraid to slow him/her down, I’m afraid of their anger, I’m afraid of the backlash”), and sexual rage (“aren’t you finished YET?!”, or “c’mon c’mon it’s going to be so good, let’s keep GOING…what’s wrong?! What do you mean, you want to stop?”, or bodily pounding, acting out a d