One Simple Step To Restore Calm And Focus

One Simple Step To Restore Calm And Focus

One Simple Step To Restore Calm And Focus

–by Nancy Hausauer

These are unsettling times for most of us. So much is in flux and so many of us feel vulnerable. It can kick up anxiety, fear, and worry and wreak havoc with our ability to think clearly and make good decisions. Here’s a one-step process for restoring calm and focus.

Simply do this: Bring your awareness into your body.

Here’s an analogy. A hectic or worrisome day makes most of us want to return to our homes. Home is where we can center and regroup. Our bodies are the earthly home for our energy, and returning our awareness (which is energy) back to the physical body operates the same way.

Sometimes our energy is flying all around. It’s in the past, it’s in the future, it’s with loved ones we want to visit and can’t, it’s all over the place. You probably know the feeling. But if we bring our attention to our body, our energy comes together. It consolidates and focuses.

Our Bodies Are In The Present

When our awareness/energy is in our body, it’s also in the present, because our bodies are very much in the now. The present is almost always the place of least suffering and most calm. It’s also the place of creativity, power and connection to higher wisdom, intuition and inspiration.

Technique For Bringing Your Awareness Into Your Body

There are many ways to bring awareness back to your body. Here’s one to try.

• In a comfortable seated position, shut your eyes.
• Bring your awareness to your feet. Just sense your feet and notice what you notice. Many people feel a kind of tingling or alive sensation when they do this. (This is your energy!) Hang out here for a while. If you’re short on time, you can stop here, taking some belly breaths until you feel yourself calming down and your energy becoming grounded and centered.
• If you have more time, bring your awareness up your legs and throughout your entire body. Again, stop and enjoy this feeling for a while, taking some deep belly breaths as you do. Especially check in with any places that feel contracted and allow your awareness to rest there compassionately for a while.
• If you want to keep going, you can expand your awareness to your subtle energy field as well. (Remembering that your field is three-dimensional.)

You can do this pretty much any time and any place to bring more calm and focus to your day. (Probably not when you’re driving, though.)

Wishing you peace, Nancy

The Stance Of Courage

“Deep trust in life is not a feeling but a stance you deliberately take. It is the attitude we call courage.” — Brother David Steindl-Rast

We Are Called To Rise

We Are Called To Rise

We never know how high we are

Till we are called to rise…

–Emily Dickinson

Advice For Empaths In The Time Of Pandemic

Dear friends,

I know that so many of you are empaths, and I want to reach out to you in particular in these times, when there is so much suffering and it is so close to the surface of our collective awareness.

I am an empath too, and the past weeks have been difficult. As empaths, we have naturally porous energetic boundaries. We let a lot in, especially emotions, and there are so many emotions swirling around right now. Sadness. Fear. Anger. Some joy too, though, and wonder at the kindness and generosity of some of our fellow humans.

Having been through more than one empath crisis over the years, I have learned ways to manage the overload that can come with being an empath…..most of the time. In this COVID-19 crisis, I go back and forth between being OK and having my energetic container pretty much blown. When that happens, I’m swamped with the suffering of others, and it’s hard to function in my own life. I struggle to regain my footing.

Then, as is so often the case when we are in crisis, I need to remind myself of what I already know. I’m sharing it here in case it will be of help.

Advice For Empaths In The Time Of Pandemic

• Remember: it’s OK to step back. It’s not a requirement to take on others’ suffering.
• Breathe consciously.
• Stay in the present. Return to the present when you have strayed.
• Exercise daily.
• Get out in nature daily.
• Take frequent breaks from the news. Or take a complete break from the news and ask someone else to keep you abreast of any essential developments.
• Create things.
• Find ways to laugh.
• Notice beauty. Create beauty. Be grateful for beauty.
• Support and develop your third chakra to help you shore up energetic boundaries and tend to your own essential needs.
• Practice pulling your energy back to yourself and keeping it contained within yourself. Here’s a centering exercise to help you do that.
• Practice focusing more of your energy in your sixth chakra . This allows you to still feel compassion while providing distance and perspective so that you don’t actually absorb other peoples’ energy into your own energy field. Here’s a method for doing that (#1 on the list).

Dear tender-hearted people, please take extra-good care of yourselves during these difficult times.

With love, Nancy

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“…It Is Only Kindness That Makes Sense Anymore”

–by Nancy Hausauer

I was only going to post Naomi Shihab Nye’s sublime poem “Kindness” today, but I woke up thinking of a little more I wanted to write on the subject.

Kindness is an energetic state and a basic orientation to the world as well as a way of relating to others. Whatever I’m doing, when I’m in an in-between state, I know that consciously returning to a state of kindness is a good thing to do.

Being in a state of kindness doesn’t mean you can’t also have boundaries, be tough, be angry, be strong. Perfection is not required and it’s not a failure if you slip out of it. I see it as being like presence–also one of the best default states. Staying there isn’t the most important part. The main thing is having the intention to be there and being conscious of when you slip out of it. And repeat.

Next time you’re in a state of kindness, I encourage you to pay attention to how it feels, in all aspects of yourself–energy, heart, body, mind, and whatever else you experience as a facet of yourself. Noticing it now will help you return there at other times, when kindness is where you need to be–for yourself, for others, for the world.

I am hoping you and your loved ones are both giving and receiving much kindness. And now, the poem. –Nancy

Kindness

–by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

Feeling Anxious? Here’s A Simple Technique For Relief

Dear friends, I hope you and your loved ones are well, and that you are staying safe by staying home. Last week I was a little too off-center to write a blog, but this week I’m feeling more grounded. A wonderful energy healer friend did a mid-conversation energy healing for me over the phone, and it helped a lot. (Thanks, Peggy!). I encourage you to stay in touch with people like her, people who help you feel more centered and calm.

These are anxious times for many of us. Stress and anxiety disrupt the rhythm and flow of body and energy, making our energy spiky and chaotic. (Think of choppy water, compared to smooth water.)

The following meridian-based technique can help you calm and smooth your energy when you’re feeling edgy. This is good for your immune system, too. It’s super-easy, and there’s no down-side to giving it a try.

Triple Warmer

The Triple Warmer (also called Triple Heater and Triple Burner) meridian governs our stress response, among other things. In our culture, Triple Warmer works overtime for most people even under normal circumstances–and these are not normal circumstances.

You can calm it down, reducing your sense of anxiety, by tapping, rubbing, or holding the third point on the meridian (TW3). This point is on the back of your hand.

How to Find Triple Warmer 3

To find TW3, make a gentle fist. Between the bones in the hand that lead to the fourth and fifth fingers (ring and pinky fingers), you will see a slight indentation or depression (just below the knuckle-bones). This is the spot.

How to Calm Triple Warmer by Tapping, Rubbing or Holding TW3

Tap, rub, or press this spot for about a minute. Breathe deeply (but comfortably) while you do this — nice, full breaths all the way down into the lower third of your lungs.

Then switch hands, continuing to belly breathe.

That’s it. Just don’t try to do this while you drive. (But you knew that.)

It may take 20 minutes or so for the stress hormones to clear from your body (though it works very quickly for me).

I send you wishes for a peaceful and harmonious time of rest and reflection, along with hopes that this moment of energetic upheaval may serve as an opening for the transformation that our world so badly needs.

With love, Nancy

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I’m a little frazzled with a lot of moving parts in my life right now. I know I’m not the only one. I find that I just don’t have what it takes to write a blog post right now. But I found this wonderful short video from Liz Moyer at We Heal For All that I want to share with you.

Normally Liz works helping people process climate grief. She’s turned her attention to helping folks process emotions having to do with the Covid-19 pandemic. I found this video message from her to be wise and calming. Her own sense of feeling called to slow down resonated with me deeply. I’m grateful to her and hope that you will find her short video valuable as well.

Here’s the link to the video if the embedded version won’t play for you.

Please take good care of yourself and in doing so take care of everyone else. Breathe. Ground. Center.

With love, Nancy

Covid-19: Rising To The Challenge

–by Nancy Hausauer

My friends, I hope this finds you well. I am in Western Washington, one of the Covid-19 “hot spots” here in the U.S. We’re not on a lock-down basis yet, but schools and restaurants are closed and we’re strongly encouraged to stay home. With a 93-year-old mother living in an assisted living facility and being very near 65 myself, I am choosing to err on the side of caution. I am evaluating whether to see clients on a week by week basis (not this week) and staying out of public places unless absolutely necessary. I’m doing this primarily out of concern for others, especially the medically vulnerable, and out of love and respect for the medical heroes who are going to bear much of the brunt of this epidemic.

I have a large garden and spring is on its way, so I’m not lacking for beauty to fill my eyes and things to occupy my time while I’m at home, but it’s still weird, and I worry about my loved ones. My mother and her friends. My educator brother with asthma. My friends in healthcare. My flight attendant cousin. My friend who runs a popular health-foods store. And so on.

You, my readers, are from many parts of the world and all across the U.S. I know that circumstances are different for us depending on where we are. But I’m convinced that small actions taken now will prevent a lot of suffering in the near future. I thought this article explained it all clearly: https://blog.theshiftnetwork.com/node/889.

I encourage you to:

• be a leader in your community, modeling responsible, principled, compassionate behavior
• follow the public health advice of officials in your region
• practice good self-care, physically and mentally
• build and strengthen your community
• fill your senses and heart with beauty
• lift others up when you can, and allow yourself to be lifted up when you need it
• focus on what unites us (truly, this pandemic shows us how interconnected we are, and how our well-being depends on everyone else’s)
• keep your eyes on the positive potential of the situation (you don’t have to ignore its seriousness to do this)
• use the time that opens up to be joyful, to heal, to grow
• use this experience as a springboard for transformation to a higher level of cooperation, creativity, and consciousness
• re-commit to leaving this world better than we found it.

I’ll leave you a link for things you can do for anxiety: https://www.The-Energy-Healing-Site.com/anxiety-self-help.html.

Blessings and light to you and yours, Nancy

P.S. I know that not everyone will agree with this. But please don’t back come at me with comments that I’m over-reacting, that the danger is over-hyped, etc. Feel free to unsubscribe (link at the bottom of this email.

Be A Beacon of Light In Dark Times

–by Nancy Hausauer

A lot of the people coming through my doors these days are saying they are very tired, with no obvious reasons. My sense is that it has partly to do with what’s happening in the macrocosm. Dark and chaotic energies are swirling, and they take a toll on people who are energetically sensitive.

I have an energy healing exercise to offer that I think may help.

But before I give you that, I want to clarify that I don’t think our times are without hope. Hope abounds, although perhaps needing to be paired with patience and perseverance. Like winter always holds the potential of spring, dark times hold the potential for greater light and good.

Nevertheless, when we’re in the middle of dark times, they can be unsettling and exhausting. So here’s a brief energy healing you can do for yourself, while in the process helping others.

Beacon Of Light: An Energy Healing

• Sit in a comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed for a few minutes.
• Ground deeply. (One way is to imagine sending down roots from your feet into the earth.) Allow yourself to feel stabilized, supported, nourished by being deeply connected to the earth.
• When you feel stable, settled, and tapped into Mother Earth, begin to call light to yourself. Do this in whatever way is most natural for you. You can invite it, imagine it, intend it, feel it, breathe it in, dance it in, gesture it in, use a mudra. Whatever works for you.
• Sense your energy field growing brighter as you call in light. Sense it expanding.
• Anchored in the earth and surrounded by light, feel how energies that are destabilizing or frightening–energies of the storm–can not reach you.
• (If you like, imagine yourself for a moment as a large tree that small animals can find shelter in, even if the wind is howling around you. Like a mother comforting her children, allow yourself to exude calm. Acting as if calm, you will become calmer.)
• Switching images, imagine yourself as a beacon or a lantern, lighting up the darkness. Imagine that you are sharing this light with others, to comfort them and help them find their way. Again, acting as if calm, you will become calmer.
• Allow yourself to bask for a while in this feeling of greater peace.
• When you are ready, take a few moments to slowly bring yourself back to your surroundings.

In stormy times, I recommend that you do this energy healing regularly. It will benefit you as well as others.

Namaste,

Nancy

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