RESOURCES THAT HAVE MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD TO ME

Dear Folks,

PLEASE NOTE: If this entry interests you, consider checking out the blog by reading the first post FIRST. The info is cumulative and will make more sense if you read them in the order they were written. 

In this post I would like to share a few of the books and resources that I am finding to be invaluable in my journey of self-healing. Though I am oriented toward physical, stress-related pain in the shoulders, neck and head these resources are of a core quality, in terms of self-healing emotional issues as well. Now, I’ve done LOTS of great techniques and had lots of sessions with dedicated practitioners, and many of them offered wonderful gifts.

The ones listed below are simply my most useful endeavors- - the ones that have given me the tools for deep and transformative self-healing. Personally, what I look for, in a good session or book, is something that contributes, noticeably, to my ability to heal myself. When I find that I am going back, over and over again to the same practitioner and not obviously increasing my self-healing skills, I usually move on. Especially when we are talking about stress-relat5ed chronic pain, it’s really up to you, baby, to do it to it. No one can possibly inhabit your body for you, or even spend enough time ministering to you to make real progress. Taking full responsibility for self-healing is a bottom-line decision, and one I made about five years ago. Wow! What a diff! I used to be desperate about being healed (can you help me???) and now I can hardly believe how much fun it is to be healing myself.

That said, I want to be clear that when I use the term self-healing, I don’t necessarily mean healing myself by myself. Not at all… these great resources (below) have helped me to heal myself, and even more ultimately: the Cosmos (God, Jesus, Consciousness, etc.) heals me. Healing myself is a scintillating blend of engaging the energy (identifying frequency: taking action, making a choice), flowing the energy (tuning: cultivating something new, practicing, adjusting), and surrendering to the energy (resonance: allowing myself to merge with the All and be transformed, be healed, be one, be whole).

HERE’S MY RESOURCE LIST:

BOWEN BODYWORK: remarkably subtle and, for me, it initiated my ability to, for real, to embark on healing myself. This work started to tune me, when I didn’t know how to do it for myself yet. Nancy Pierson (Arkansas) is a great Bowen practitioner.

ROLFING: the dedication of two practitioners I worked with, over a period of a few years allowed me to connect to ground, with conscious energetic awareness. This opened the door for me to develop Self-Tuning by beginning to free stuck fascia, which freed me to feel energy for real. Jennifer Updegraff (Arkansas) and Kevin Dunn (Austin, TX) are great Rolfers.

SELF-TUNING: this ever-evolving practice is my way of being with myself, sensing myself and cultivating a filled-with-light (ahhh, resonance) presence of infinite kindness and miraculously natural self-healing breakthroughs. Since I began to Self-Tune (about 3 years now) I’ve moved my pain level from approximately 90% down to about 5%, and it continues to dissolve, to this day. It’s also great fun to do. Someday I may write a book on the subject, and for now, I simply teach people as they let me know they are ready to learn.

CRAIG WILLIAMSON’S BOOK: Muscular Retraining for Pain Free Living taught me how to gain facility with engaging core muscles to move myself in ways that are releasing, restorative, and transforming. It’s one of the keys to Self-Tuning. By being able to isolate and engage my core muscles with conscious awareness I am now able to identify frequencies in my body-mind, and this puts me at choice in a whole new way about how I inhabit my body.

ANTHONY & MOOG’S VERSION OF THE I Ching, called I Ching: Oracle of the Cosmic Way: this book has given me source material- - a space of harmony - -from which to receive guidance, on all levels, that always shows me how to release the old ego lies and return to authenticity of my inner truth. This version of the I Ching brings it into the twenty-first century, new-paradigm awakening mode, and their method of clearing away old concepts is brilliant. I use it all the time, and am constantly amazed at the precise information and surprisingly-transformative wisdom that my intuition can supply, when I know how to tap into it and let myself shift out of the painful old conflict mode.

DENNIS LEWIS’S BOOK: The Tao of Natural Breathing has been my Bible for restoring breath to my body-mind. I work with a few pages every day, rather than reading it straight through. This book has a profound chapter about self-sensing (as does the Williamson book), eloquently sharing much of the awarenesses that took me years to develop through my Self-Tuning practice. Lewis studied extensively with Mantak Chia, the Taoist master who was teaching meditation decades ago. Indeed, I have done his meditations (The Microcosmic Orbit) ever since I took a three-week course in the early ‘80s, and it has been a guiding light to being able to move energy through my body with conscious love. I have a real thing about breathing (as do many of us), and even though I’m a trained singer and flutist my breath had continued to be tight and strange until I started to get serious about regaining natural ease. Being able to breath naturally is not only a cornerstone of mental and physical health, it’s one of the great pleasures of life.

LES FEHMI’S BOOK & CD: Dissolving Pain is the simplest, most potent way I have, to date, discovered how to shift my state from one of being stuck in pain to being free again and feeling good. The guy’s a genius innovator and now, with this latest book, he’s graduated to awe-inspiring levels of teaching others how to use his Open Focus techniques to shift brainwave states from being in “fight or flight” to peaceful, spacious, and filled with light. Feeling resonance (feeling space) is his specialty. It’s a glorious thing to be able to work at this basic level of self-mastery, because when you can shift your brain state into synchronous waves, you embody resonance as your context for being, and that feels real goooood.

DEBBIE TINDLE’S BODYWORK: her gift is to melt fascia and, in the process, teach me how to do it for myself, facilitating me being able to, finally, release contraction throughout. For someone with chronic stress-related pain, many kinds of modalities that may work well for others often don’t work for them. I couldn’t hold an adjustment/improved relaxation because my underlying fascia was like cement and it binds things up, pulling me back into the same old painful contraction. Now, when I Self-Tune I have ways of applying what I’ve learned so that I myself can release, little piece by little piece, stuck fascia. (I call this technique “inner stretching” and I’ll talk more about that in a later blog.) Doing Fehmi’s Open Focus exercises, also, melts fascia.

There it is. Each one of these modalities has been a piece of the puzzle, contributing truth to the mind, freedom to the body, and surrender to cosmic transformation. Healing any condition requires a full-spectrum approach, because we are, after all, full-spectrum folks – aren’t we? We have minds, bodies and energetic systems, and to generate permanent, far-reaching healing every aspect of our beings is asking for recognition, and the chance to play its part.

That’s why I, personally, required Bowen to initiate the healing journey … Rolfing to awaken my body to new possibilities of ease and flow …  fascia-releasing bodywork to melt stuck fascia … muscular retraining to create intimate connections between mind and muscles … Self-Tuning to commune within and take every healing assist I receive and make it my own … Open Focus exercises to train my brain to flow synchronous waves in my daily life as well as through the places that have hurt for so long … I Ching clearing techniques to process and transform emotionally-laden ego lies out of my body and being … and healing breath work to regain my natural ability to breathe fully and freely . It is so tremendously satisfying to be cultivating life tools, going deeply into each of them, and watching myself become more me, more healthy, more peaceful, and more awake to the realities of what’s so and the joy of it All.

Learning how to inhabit my body and being, how to be incarnate in love and light, is for me, simultaneously the process and the result. Enjoy!

Ready, willing & able to heal…

Laurel

P.S. I am aware that the syntax and artistry of these posts are not perfectly sculpted prose, and I trust you’ll understand and forgive. Frankly, if I waited until I was willing to, essentially, write a book, you’d probably never get to read a thing I wrote. Going beyond rabid perfectionism and terminal always-preparing mode is, for me, a major coup!