Self-Compassion – Luxury or Necessity?

Posted on June 9, 2017 by Greendoor Relaxation

Sarah comes in through the door, I pour her a water and I ask, “How are you?” She replies, “Aww, not that great. I have been feeling really down for the last two weeks. So much has been going on with my family, and at work, too. It all feels futile. I have failed in so many ways. I just can’t handle all these conflicts and problems anymore.”

I don’t usually see clients when they feel good or are at the top of the world. Instead, they normally come back when something has happened and they need to work through a conflict, often both an outer one as well as an inner conflict.

Life throws us these curve balls and the Inner Critic voice we all have loves nothing more than to beat us up in the face of adversity. It pipes up especially loudly when we feel we have made a “mistake” or “failed” in some way. We didn’t get the grade we were aiming for, we are being laid off from a job or are not being hired for a position we have applied to, the person we would like to date rejects us or our marriage is struggling, we are experiencing fertility issues or our teenager is acting out, we have received worrisome health news or are trying to lose weight with little success, and the list goes on and on.

The “I’m not good enough in some way” story is almost universal. We all struggle with it at some point in some way. How much we struggle is largely based on the experience we had with our caregivers during childhood. Were they compassionate, empathetic and able to love us unconditionally? Or did we have the experience that we were loved when we were “performing according to certain standards and ideals, and that love was withdrawn or guilt was applied” (Dr. Kelly McGonigal), if we didn’t meet the expectations.

The sad news is that most parents did not know how to raise their children with unconditional love. And we cannot even blame them because what we have not experienced ourselves is hard to pass on to the next generation. Sarah, for example, had an emotionally absent father and a harsh mother, who preferred her younger children and had unrealistic expectations of Sarah as the oldest. No matter how hard Sarah tried to please, she could never win her parent’s attention and full love. When she was 18, she married to get out of this cold home. Unfortunately, that marriage didn’t last, as Sarah naturally brought her childhood issues around love with her into that relationship. She tried to be perfect and to please, but never felt that she was good enough. The failure of the marriage, however, added to her list of regrets and mistakes, which all seemed to prove her unworthiness.

Receiving conditional love as a child is the breeding ground for pathological perfectionism and the feeling that we are never quite enough. The good news is that we can still heal those wounds with self-compassion and the compassion of others.

Our feeling of lacking in some way is very old. When we go back and remember moments of self-esteem deflation, we realize how early this started. The qualities and criteria, however, which allow the Inner Critic to collapse our self-esteem, have changed through the different developmental stages and can be quite arbitrary. The Inner Critic will always find something to criticize. Ultimately, that critical voice is the internalized parental or societal voice. It has the power to completely deflate us and affect our mental, emotional and physical state.

Smaller or bigger Inner Critic attacks are not only very common but brain research has shown that self-criticism and self-judgment are the default setting of our brain. When we are not focused on doing something specific, the Inner Critic is running its programs of comparison and categorizing into good and bad. Sadly, most of the time that voice is not all too friendly with us, which has direct effects on our health. “We know that people who are highly self-critical, who are never good enough, are obviously at increased risk for depression. And depression reinforces those feelings.” (Dr. Kelly McGonigal)

Nicola Hermanto, a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology at McGill University, published a study in 2016 that looked at adults in Canada, England and Portugal and the relationship between self-criticism—so in other words a lack of self-compassion—and depression. This study did not just find a high correlation between those two factors, but they also found that the fear and inability to receive compassion from others contributes to depression. Feeling unworthy of receiving compassion, or being suspicious of other people being kind and caring, increases the link between self-criticism and depression.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.
Without them humanity cannot survive.
– Dalai Lama

If we all have a default tendency to be self-critical, the one thing that becomes a necessity to counteract that Inner Critic voice is a loving, compassionate Inner Parental voice. Part of that process is the ability and willingness to receive kindness, empathy and loving support from others.

Subconscious belief changes therefore need to address the issue of deserving and receiving, as well as beliefs around making mistakes and embracing failures as part of life, instead of a sign that there is something deeply unworthy and shameful about us.

Once we have changed some subconscious beliefs about our own worthiness, it becomes easier to practice self-compassion or inner compassion. True self-compassion means feeling a “sense of love or self-acceptance or inner acceptance even in the moment of self-esteem collapse” (Dr. Ron Siegel). When we have this sense of okay-ness, or sense of value and worth in the world, we can lovingly re-parent ourselves. With love for ourselves in moments of crisis, we can ask, “What’s good for me in this situation? What is the self-loving thing to do or think right now?”

Another very powerful piece of work in practicing kindness and gentleness towards ourselves is self-forgiveness. Often the most important work is to forgive ourselves for our past choices and decisions. We don’t need the forgiveness of others nearly as much as we need our own. We can alter our relationship with ourselves by releasing those harsh judgments and self-critical thoughts that keep us imprisoned within that sense of not being valuable, not being good enough. Moment by moment of inner compassion, we are healing our sorrows and wounds and ultimately changing our entire life.

If you are enjoying my articles, you can follow Greendoor to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to click the “follow” button in the right-hand corner of your screen.

Angelika
Life Coaching, Belief Changes & Forgiveness Work
905-286-9466, greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

Haunted By the Past

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Greendoor Relaxation

“I don’t need to forgive”, Maria said. “I have moved on and built my own life. My father is the one who left us for this woman. He was always a selfish man. He doesn’t deserve to see me or meet his grandchildren. He will only hurt us again. Also, my mother would be so upset if I forgave him…”

Maria came to me with relationship issues with her husband and children and with depression. As much as Maria claimed that she had let go and moved on, she was still emotionally and energetically hooked into the past. She, understandably, was afraid to get hurt again. She felt the need to continue to punish her father for something that happened 25 years ago. She only had contempt for him and his second wife. She hadn’t ever grieved the loss of her father or forgiven him. She loved her mom and felt that she owed it to her mother to hang on to the hurt and anger.

Maria was looking at forgiveness from the traditional point of view, and was asking, “Why should I be the one to forgive? What he did was disloyal and wrong. My mother and I were the ones who were hurt.” She blamed him for her pain and for what he did to her mother. In her eyes, he abandoned and wronged them. They were the victims.

New Thought Forgiveness looks at forgiveness quite differently. When we forgive, we are not excusing what the other person did. However, when we know that we are always co-creators of our reality, we need to question the idea of perpetrator and victim. This view of forgiveness acknowledges that anger, hurt and shame of past events affect us emotionally, mentally and physically in the present, often on a daily basis. We can choose at any time to move from being a lifelong victim into freedom. In order to achieve that freedom, we need to drop into our hearts and ask our heart’s intuitive wisdom and guidance, “What is there for me to learn or overcome and what gift does this situation have for me? How can I take responsibility for my own feelings and beliefs?” And most importantly, “what do I need to do to be free and joyful again?”

When we forgive others, we free ourselves from allowing the experience to adversely affect our life in the present. When we truly forgive, we reclaim our power, the power to decide if and how that past event will affect each moment now. Forgiveness and letting go allows us to get on with living a joyful life, the life we were meant to live. “Until you forgive, you still have an energetic connection to the past person or event.” (Dhebi DeWitz)

Gregg Braden explains how forgiveness allows us to clear out our anger, judgments, and pain regarding specific events in our lives. And Dhebi DeWitz summarizes in “The Messenger Within”: “It does so without condoning the action, pardoning the behaviour, or absolving what has happened. It simply acknowledges that the event occurred. Forgiving does not mean the other person is no longer held accountable for his or her actions because those do have consequences. Nor does it relinquish responsibility.

It simply means that when we bless and forgive the people, circumstances, and events that hurt us in life, we are acknowledging their existence, and by doing so, it allows the hurt to move out of our being.”

Energetically, we have kept the people we have not forgiven imprisoned within us. As their prison guard, we have bound ourselves together with them, instead of letting them and the incident go. The others are unaware we have put them into this jail inside ourselves. The only ones who suffer are us by putting ourselves into that prison with them. No matter what they have done or didn’t do, people will always experience energetic consequences. The law of cause and effect always works.

Maria had to admit that a lot of her energy and her thoughts directly or indirectly revolved around what her father had done. Each time she visited her mother or spoke to her on the phone, Maria silently blamed her father for her mother’s depression. Whenever she had a fight with her own husband, Maria found herself calling him selfish and thinking “Typical men! They are all the same!” All this was pain she was giving herself based on the experiences she had and the beliefs she had learned growing up.

Forgiveness is a choice to release, to let go, freeing up the energy that binds us into the past and blinds us to any other perspective. We can choose to let go of the old emotions stored in our body and establish new, more supportive beliefs. Forgiveness is for our own healing. It releases us from energy patterns that contribute to emotional and physical pain, to illness or to energy drain. Hate, anger, hurt, sadness, shame and other suppressed emotions affect our overall health.

The reason why it is usually not enough to simply decide to forgive is that forgiveness is not an intellectual process. The conscious decision to forgive is only the first step. Forgiveness happens at the level of the heart and includes our subconscious mind.

One such process of letting go is the “Blessing of Forgiveness Process”, developed by Dhebi DeWitz from The Heart And Soul Academy, which includes three parties:

One such process of letting go is the “Blessing of Forgiveness Process”, developed by Dhebi DeWitz, which includes three parties:

Those who inflicted the suffering
Those who suffer
Those who witnessed the suffering

Forgiveness of Others:

Forgiveness is not for the other person. The real reason we forgive is because we don’t want to suffer and feel hurt every time we remember what they said, did or didn’t do. Have you ever considered that nothing anyone ever does is because of you (Don Miguel Ruiz)? What somebody did to you has absolutely nothing to do with you, but only with them.

Maria’s father did not leave her because she was “not enough,” but because he was longing for love and his own happiness. The actions of the offending person are a result of the beliefs and learned behaviours of that person at that time. People are dealing with their own inner anguish and turmoil. Maria’s father did not know how to improve the relationship with her mother and did what many people do: he moved on to the next relationship. The actions that hurt Maria were a reaction to the suffering that played out in her father’s own mind, and that he acted upon while involving Maria and her mother. He simply acted based on his perceptions that his marriage was over, on the pain that he carried within him from his own childhood and on his longing for love and happiness.

Once we have this awareness, it helps us to not take what the other person did personally, and then—with the understanding that we are all human, and with compassion for the other person’s perception—it will lead us to true forgiveness. By forgiving others, we are still acknowledging the existence of their hurtful actions, but by doing so with heart-consciousness rather than the mind alone, we allow the hurt we have taken in so deeply to be released from our body. We can rationalize all we want, but until we forgive in our heart, the person, event, or circumstance has the power to haunt us. On the other hand, when we truly forgive, it frees us from the limitations we have placed upon ourselves, and allows us to live in greater joy and happiness.

Forgiveness of Yourself:

Often, we forget that the people we most need to forgive are ourselves. We might have directly or indirectly contributed to the painful event, but even if we didn’t, we have to forgive ourselves for taking whatever happened to us in too deeply – so deep that it shut us down, kept us helpless and small, and paralyzed us from living fully in this present moment. (Debbie Ford). We also might need to forgive ourselves for judging ourselves. In which ways have you been unkind to yourself? What have you blamed yourself or judged yourself for?

Maria realized she never felt good enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, loveable enough. She was usually critical with herself, beating herself up for not being a good daughter, a good wife or a good mother. She also had to forgive herself for taking in too deeply that her father left her mother, so deeply that she never wanted to see him again and that it made her afraid to trust men, including her own husband.

Blessing of the Witnesses:

Her father left his first family when Maria was ten. Her mother refused to let her have contact with her paternal grandparents. Her grandparents were helpless witnesses to the suffering, feeling unable to do anything. Maria blamed them for not taking clear sides for her and her mother. Maria had learned from her mother that there were sides to take. Revisiting the situation as an adult and putting herself in her grandparents’ shoes, she realized their confusion and helplessness.

The people who were bystanders of the painful event, like Maria’s grandparents, carry a part of the energetic imprint of the event within them. They might have felt powerless or helpless to prevent the pain and suffering in the past and they might still suffer from their inability to comfort or help in the present. “When we bless those who have witnessed the suffering, it releases their energetic cords or connection to the situation.” (Dhebi DeWitz)

Forgiveness in all three cases means letting go of the past and cutting energetic chords which drain us. Not to forgive is a choice to remain in what is familiar, the emotional pain. “If we say, ‘I just can’t forgive’, then what we are really saying is, ‘I prefer to live with my emotional poison, with my pride and my anger. I prefer not to move from this place of suffering.’” (Dhebi DeWitz)

We might not always be able to forgive everything in one go and we might have to do a heart-centred forgiveness process or ritual several times, but the choice not to forgive at all is the choice to continue being a victim and to remain in anger and pain.

Are you interested to experience and learn Dhebi DeWitz’ Blessing of Forgiveness Process and other ways of forgiving from your heart?

Join me for this workshop:

Sunday, March 19 from 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Topic: Forgiveness

LOCATION: Mississauga

Fee: EARLY BIRD $67 (by Feb. 14), $80 thereafter

BRING A (New) FRIEND SPECIAL $59 (each)

The Blessing of Forgiveness Process is also available in Dhebi DeWitz book “The Messenger Within”.

Angelika, 905-286-9466, greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

Recovering From Our Losses

Posted on November 23, 2016 by Greendoor Relaxation

Meet Tracy. She is an attractive woman with a warm smile. Her life is busy; she works; she has two children and an elderly father. She has learned to be strong for others, to keep busy and that time will heal all wounds. At night when the kids are in bed, she has a glass of wine or two and a bag of chips while watching Netflix. The alcohol, food and TV help her to relax and to not have to feel. Lately, she finds it harder and harder to get up in the morning and to keep going. Whenever she is not busy, a deep sadness is taking hold of her. This sadness is quite familiar.

She doesn’t know when she first started to have the lack of energy and these depressive thoughts and feelings. Perhaps, it was fourteen months ago, when her mother passed after a long fight with cancer. Or perhaps when she had two miscarriages and life just went on as if nothing happened. Or perhaps it was when her first marriage ended due to her husband’s infidelity. Or perhaps it was when her own parents divorced when she was fifteen. Or perhaps it all began when her beloved dog died when she was eight. Or perhaps this grief is as old as when she moved to Canada at the age of five not speaking a word of English, and having to leave her grandparents behind.

Grief is accumulative and it is accumulative negative. Our bodies become the storage tanks for all our losses and painful emotions because we were never given the tools to appropriately process our loss experiences. Our body speaks our mind through pains or other physical issues to let us know that the storage tank is over-flowing.

Instead of listening to those physical symptoms, we have all learned to use some Short-Term Energy Relieving Behaviours (STERBS) like drinking alcohol, smoking, eating, watching TV, playing computer games, sleeping, taking meds, shopping, cleaning, exercising, working and so on to distract ourselves from the painful feelings associated with our losses. It is time to become aware of our STERBS and to address our buried emotions to gain greater happiness and health.

The grief recovery work is for losses we have experienced through death, divorce and 40+ other life changing events. Some examples are the loss of a love relationship or friendship, infidelity and the loss of trust, the death of a pet, a job loss, a move, an accident or illness, resulting perhaps in the loss of health or mobility, a miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion, physical, emotional or sexual abuse, and other life altering occurrences. Even positive life changes like graduation, marriage, or the birth of a child can be an experience of loss.

We are all faced with incomplete relationships and situations. We are all grievers in some form or other at different points in our life. In fact, grief spares nobody. The training to become a grief specialist involved deep personal healing work. After all, we can only take our clients to where we ourselves have been willing to go. As my workshop partner and I were sharing our loss history graphs, we were amazed how many similar patterns we found, despite the fact that he was 12 years younger, at a different stage in his life, of a somewhat different cultural background and of a different gender. The conclusion can only be that as humans, we all experience the same patterns of grief due to death, divorce and other losses.

Grief is our normal and natural reaction to such a life changing event or loss. Grief occurs due to the conflicting feelings caused by the end or change of something familiar. It can masquerade as a powerful emotional state like deep sadness, depression or anger. Unresolved grief is almost always about us wishing things had been different, better, or more. We might have undelivered emotional communications with others. We also carry unrealized hopes, dreams or expectations. In case of the end of a good relationship, we might have had plans that never happened. In negative relationships, the end of the relationship robs us of the possibility to repair and make amends.

The grief recovery work helps to complete our relationship to the pain caused by a significant emotional loss. It helps us to take responsibility for our actions, forgive others for theirs, and to deliver significant emotional statements. It is the opportunity to say goodbye to any pain or unmet hopes and dreams. We can then feel complete, live fully in the present and focus on any existing fond memories. The grief recovery work gives us freedom and newfound joy. It opens the door to health and happiness.

Angelika

Certified Grief Specialist, Belief Change Coach and Workshop Facilitator

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

My Mother’s Pearls

Posted on July 5, 2015 by Greendoor Relaxation

Exactly three years ago today, my mom passed on. She is never far away and continues to live in our memories, in our stories and traditions. The next two generations, her children and grandchildren, carry her legacy as consciously as we can. Some of her pieces of clothing or jewellery remind us of her all the time.

One of those jewellery pieces I inherited was her beautiful pearl necklace. The string of that pearl necklace ripped last year. For her 85^th birthday a couple of weeks ago, I decided to have it restrung.

It so happens that I have also had a pearl necklace from my grandmother on my father’s side lying in my jewellery box since 2005. All my grandmother ever wore was pearls. She passed on at the age of 96, ten years ago. I decided to have her necklace combined into one with my mother’s.

My grandmother and my mother didn’t have a lot of love for each other at all. My mom’s own mother died when she was still young and, when she got married, she had hoped to find a loving and supportive mother-substitute in her mother-in-law. However, life played out differently, as these two very different women created a relationship of mutual animosity.

My grandmother was a strong, tough and smart woman, who survived the horrors of two world-wars and raised three children during that time. My grandmother always wore dresses, never had idle hands, even when she sat down on the sofa she was productive with some needlework. Outwardly, she was always in control of her emotions, polite and rational. There were clear rules regarding how to behave, and she judged others harshly for not following the rules of proper conduct. Loving kindness was not one of her strengths. Surviving in a patriarchal and fear-based society was. She had learned that the energy of manipulation would give her the power she wasn’t able to openly claim as a woman.

My mother was physically, emotionally and mentally quite the opposite of my grandmother. She was vibrant, energetic and outspoken. She was thin like Twiggy and athletic. She had no interest in being a good housewife, but loved languages, sports, dance and social activities. Just like my grandmother, she wasn’t given any higher education but she had a strong will, decided to learn Spanish and move to Spain in the fifties. She built a life of her own and supported herself. After seven years in Spain, she embarked on her next adventure of moving to Liberia, Africa, where she met my father. She lived loud; she laughed and swore from the bottom of her heart, yet was quite sensitive underneath.

Despite their accomplishments, both my grandmother and my mother were conditioned to believe that men were more important, were superior and deserved to have privileges. Men were put on a pedestal during my grandmother’s generation, yet she had little respect for her own sons. But there was a clear hierarchy in her head and the daughter-in-law was in that hierarchy below the son. So instead of having won somebody who was on her side to support her and lovingly guide her, my mother found a person who used every opportunity to put her down and to mirror her own feelings of unworthiness as a woman to her.

My grandmother used the energy she had learned was her only option: manipulation and gossip. She hurt my mother’s feelings immensely by saying mean things about her to us when my sister and I were children. What she didn’t bargain with was that being unloving and critical like that can easily backfire. Children are smart and will eventually look through the energy of unkindness and manipulation.

From what I gathered over the years of their long, painful disputes was that my mother often felt unloved, misunderstood and disrespected, and my grandmother felt just as disrespected, offended and rejected. They were the greatest teachers for each other. I am not sure how many of their life lessons they actually learned and if they ever forgave and made peace with each other in their hearts before it was time for them to go.

Yet one thing I am certain of is that wherever they are now, they do not care anymore about silly little human insecurities, sensitivities and hurts. From their higher perspective, it must be so obvious for them now how they choose to teach each other greater kindness and self-love while they were living this life.

I trust that they would not object to being reunited in one necklace in which each pearl represents each tear of anger, sadness, fear and joy which they cried as they learned their lessons as women and grew as souls. And I can do my part to reunite them in one string to acknowledge that in the grant scheme of things we are not all that different as women and even as humans. We are all the same, we are all one energy.

If you enjoy my posts, you can follow Greendoor to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to click the “follow” button in the right-hand corner of your screen.

The Perfect Mother

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Greendoor Relaxation

A client said to me this week, “I saw my mother again and suddenly realized that I could just be with her, treat her with compassion, see her as a human being. I really have stopped judging her, and am more able to love her the way she is.”

Isn’t that beautiful? Each time when somebody I am working with is healing a relationship, it touches me deeply in my heart.

Another client of mine wrote a letter of gratitude to her stepmother this week. She hasn’t seen her stepmother or her father in twenty years. Their last encounter was one full of anger, conflict and mutual hurt. The daughter has spent the last two decades blaming the stepmother for everything. Those feelings had bound up her energy in the past, and left her feeling unloved and “broken”. She felt she was victimized by her stepmother, who struggled to raise her stepdaughter with the same affection she had raised her own biological children with.

My client did not write the letter for her stepmother, she wrote it for herself. After doing the inner work, she was able to acknowledge her own feelings, but also everything her stepmom had done or had attempted to do; she was truly able to forgive her for what she didn’t do. Nothing of that needed to be written in the letter. Instead it was a simple letter of thank you to the woman who was in her life for most part of her childhood. She didn’t send the letter off to receive a response, nor for the purpose of changing or influencing her stepmother. She wrote it to clear her own energy of resentment and anger out.

Forgiving and shifting into appreciation and gratitude is always primarily for ourselves, “for-giving” ourselves love and freedom. It is also a huge step towards taking responsibility for our own life. When we finally let go of blaming others, we win the ability to respond differently to past, present and future events in our life. We gain true response-ability.

Why do so many of us struggle for such a long time with forgiving our parents for their imperfections? Why do we insist on blaming them and on feeling that they ruined or affected our lives negatively?

We have idealized images of what our mother (and father) should be like. We might all have slightly different ideas, but the perfect mother somehow should be selfless, she should take care of us, she should always be patient and supportive, she should listen well and encourage us, she should be proud of us and make us proud of her, and so much more: in short she should love us unconditionally. Media images, TV shows, movies and books often perpetuate these ideas of the perfect mother and affect our beliefs of what a “good mother” is like. These images stem from our deepest desires to be truly loved. Yet, they cause us to judge our mother and ourselves as mothers because we naturally fall short of this perfect mother myth at times. They are the source of guilt and shame instead of enjoying the love we do feel.

Most people, no matter whether they are parents or not, are still learning to love themselves and others unconditionally. The perfect mother images disregard the fact that we always mirror and trigger each other’s issues and challenges. Children trigger their parents and parents trigger their children. That is a good thing. It is an opportunity to grow and do our inner work.

What triggers us in others, what we judge and dislike about them, is really what we dislike in ourselves. As long as we refuse to give ourselves what we would like to receive from others, it is out of our reach. Only when we truly feel we are good enough, do we become just perfectly lovable the way we are. We can feel loved by others, no matter how limited their ability to love unconditionally might be.

Nobody and nothing can prevent us from truly loving ourselves. It is our job to love ourselves; nobody can do it for us! No amount of love from the outside can penetrate through if we do not take the cape of self-judgment, self-loathing or even self-hatred off.

from “What You Feel You Can Heal” by John Gray

On this Mother’s Day, make the choice to let go of the past. Forgive your mother or stepmother, whether they are alive or dead. What happened in the past is over and does not matter anymore. Realize that it doesn’t mean anything unless you give it a certain meaning. Decide that your mother, stepmother, or mother-in-law for that matter, is just perfect the way she is. Start telling your story differently, with love.

Free yourself up to love your parents without expectations or needs. Be willing to love them the way they are. Take the cape off that prevents you from feeling the love of others. Finally give yourself the gift of loving yourself the way you are.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

If you are enjoying my posts you can follow Greendoor to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to click the follow button in the right hand corner of your screen.

“You are mad-sad”

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Greendoor Relaxation

Have you ever been mad-sad? Then you are a typical human being as the alien character “Oh” discovers when he makes friends with the human girl, Tip, in the animated movie “Home”.

What is mad-sad? Mad-sad is when you get angry but deep underneath you are sad. Tip is sad that her mother was relocated and separated from her by the aliens when they invaded the planet earth. She is ready to fight the world. Her angry part has stepped forward to protect her vulnerability. When Oh discovers what is underneath her anger, he says with surprise, “You are mad-sad”. What appears to be anger is really sadness and grief for her loss.

Sometimes we are mad-sad, other times we are mad-scared. A parent might be mad-scared because their child is failing in school and they are worried about their future, or because their teenager has made a decision which has put them in danger. We might get mad scared when we are in the passenger’s seat of a vehicle and the driver has a different driving style which makes us feel unsafe. How much more successful would our communication be if we could express our fear rather than our anger? Yet, anger is an automatic response triggered by fear. It takes practice to communicate differently.

When we feel overwhelmed, we also sometimes snap faster and respond with anger. Have you ever felt really bogged down by everything you had to do and as you were busy focussing on getting some work done, another person needed something and you replied with impatience or even anger? That could be called mad-stressed.

In all these cases of mad-sad, mad-scared or mad-stressed, the anger serves the purpose to protect the vulnerable part of us deep inside. Anger is a driving force. In Tip’s case, it drives her to search for her mom. Anger also feels better than helplessness and is an intuitive response when we feel unsafe or afraid for somebody else.

The evil character of the movie from another alien race, called the Gorg, turns out to be mad-sad, mad-scared and most likely also mad-stressed. Without being aware, Oh’s alien race has stolen his babies, the entire next generation, which means extinction for the Gorg. When Oh is brave enough to face the Gorg, he realizes that this intimidating monster is really deeply vulnerable and just trying to save and protect himself and his family.

Have you heard of people who get “hangry”? When they are hungry they become grouchy or angry. To stay with our pattern, that would be called mad-hungry. There also is mad-tired. Have you ever been so tired and found that your protective defences were coming up when others are interacting with you in this state. My daughter, who works mainly overnight shifts, is not a happy camper when approached in a tired state. She gets mad-tired. Everybody in our family knows she has just reached her limit and her irritation is a feedback for us.

Next time you or somebody else shows up as angry, remember that there is usually some other emotion underneath the anger. That deeper emotion or need has to be addressed. Just as we know we need to feed ourselves when we are hangry, we also need to feed the other emotions or needs.

When we feel angry the question usually is, what exactly is underneath the anger? It might be Sadness? Loneliness? Fear or insecurity? Frustration? Overwhelm?

Sadness gives us the feedback that we perceive the loss of a person, an experience or a feeling. What needs to be done to make up for that loss, to replace the experience we have lost?
Loneliness gives us the message that we have a healthy longing for companionship and love. How can we enjoy our own company more, love ourselves more and also draw in other people as companions?
Fear or insecurity means that our subconscious is convinced something is not safe, and/or that we are not good enough in some way. What beliefs can be changed to alter how we see ourselves and the world?
Frustration gives us the feedback that something that we have been doing is not working. What do we need to do differently, so that the frustration does not tip over into depression?
Overwhelm is a signal to do a reality check, to limit, to organize, to prioritize, to say “no” and to delegate.

Anger also sometimes gives us the feedback that we perceive something as unfair. The first question is: Is or was it really unfair? If not, change your perspective. If the answer is yes, find a way to make fair if the event is in the present, or let go and forgive if you are angry at something which lies in the past.

All feelings are good! Our emotions are our guidance system. All feelings and emotions give us feedback on what is going on. They are a call to action. Anger is good. It is like an indicator light that something needs to be looked at, but it also serves as a driving force to make changes.

Angelika

Belief Change Coaching, Forgiveness Work, Shadow Work

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

Unity Consciousness

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Greendoor Relaxation

If you leave a print of your five fingers on a glass or a mirror, you see five separate dots. On the level of the glass, your fingers appear to be completely unattached to each other. However, on the higher level of our three-dimensional perception, we can see that all five fingers are connected to the same hand

That we are all separate and alone and that we have to fend for ourselves is a huge illusion. Just in the same way those five dots were made by one hand, we are all connected and part of the same living system. We breathe, live and thrive as one. If we hurt part of the system, we are hurting ourselves.

“Feelings of separation that result from the feared inability to love or to be loved frequently bring illness into our lives. Illness is often a cry for help, a call for love and a deeper sense of connectedness in one’s life.” (Leonard Laskow)

The mentality of “me/us versus them” is the root of fear, anger, violence and disease. The feeling of separation, of being alone, unsupported and unloved breeds Illness. It has been scientifically proven that frustration, anger and fear weaken our immune system. If you are angry at somebody, you are energetically hooked to that person, giving your power away and allowing your emotional, mental and physical wellness to be compromised. You might as well be drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

“When the illusion of separation dissolves at a spiritual level, love allows us a state of oneness that harmonizes even the seemingly dissonant patterns of illness and injury.” (Leonard Laskow)

If we do our own physical, mental and emotional work, including forgiving and letting the past go, we can heal anything. An important part of that healing is to develop our loveability, our ability to love ourselves and others. When we exchange the “I” in I-llness with a “We”, the result is We-llness; wellness for all. Love is the impulse towards unity. Through Love and connectedness, we can heal and become whole again. We can experience our oneness, our universal relatedness.

That Healing Love is not a romantic love; it is far beyond that experience. It is an unconditional, all-accepting love for everybody. It is a love free of judgments, without expectations or conditions. It is a love which does not need to be earned or learned, it just needs to be stepped into, expressed and received. When we tap into true heart-centredness, into loving ourselves and others, we establish a link between us and everybody else. Fear completely dissipates.

I am extremely grateful to have wonderful friends and amazing fellow practitioners whose goal it is to raise the awareness for our oneness and to foster the unity consciousness. Matt Scherb of Possibility Omega s one of them. He has initiated a huge project to make the Golden Horseshoe one of the healthiest communities on earth.

Two other amazing friends are Lisbeth and Ed Fregonese who organize a fabulous Expo for heart-centred practitioners and vendors in the Burlington/Hamilton area every spring and fall.

Our next Expo is on May 31 and features Hay House author Dr. Steven Farmer as our key note speaker. Dr. Farmer also offers workshops in the week following the Expo. For more information on the additional workshops go to Stephen Farmer’s website http://www.earthmagic.net or contact his Ontario sponsor Beth McBlain 416-580-7434, beth.mcblain@gmail.com

If you are free on May 31, come out to the Holiday Inn in Burlington to join the morning speakers (limited seating, you need to register) and to meet approximately 110 practitioners and vendors who are sampling their services or products for free until 6:00 p.m. that day. Nobody else offers such an opportunity for this price. The tickets are only $25 in advance ($30 plus HST at the door) and you can buy them from me or any other practitioner who takes part in this event.

I have some paper tickets available. Contact me by phone or e-mail to purchase a ticket or click here to follow the steps on my website to purchase tickets online.

Angelika Baum

905-286-9466

greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

If you are enjoying my posts, you can follow Greendoor to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. All you need to do is to click the follow button in the right hand corner of your screen.

Spring Equinox

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Greendoor Relaxation

Spring is the season of change, of awakening, renewal and outward movement. It is a time to focus on clearing out the old and creating the new. Just as we might feel the urge to do a spring cleaning of our house, we need to clean and clear out our body, heart and mind as well.

The beginning of spring on March 20 is the perfect time to set clear intentions for the new season. Spring Equinox is the time of new birth and renewal. It is the optimum time to plant a personal garden within your being, to make a new start, to create an image in your mind of what you want to see in your life.

What do you need to plant the garden of your soul? It is very simple. What are the qualities you most want to manifest in your life? What are your goals and dreams for a joyous future? What would you like to feel and experience? These are the seeds to plant in the garden of your being. Maybe you want to plant the seeds that lead to abundance and prosperity? Perhaps you want harmony in all your relationships? What about planting the seeds of health and wellbeing deeply within your heart?

Once we have made decisions and have set clear intentions, we need to come up with the necessary action steps to clear out the old and bring in the new. Spring naturally gives us an extra boost of energy by increasing the endorphins in our body, which we can turn into actions. That might be to exercise more and lose weight. This is the perfect time of the year to give up or reduce refined sugar, smoking, alcohol, or drugs of any kind.

It is also a fabulous opportunity to detoxify our emotions and mental state. Spring is a call to let go of emotions, like frustration, anger or resentment. They do not serve us. Anger and resentment energetically bind us to the past and to people we do not really want to be connected to.

Can you forgive your parents for their struggles and acknowledge they did the best they could? Can you forgive your siblings for what they said, for what they did or didn’t do? Can you forgive your ex-partner for how he or she has hurt you? Can you forgive the ex-business associate for their greed? Can you even forgive the doctor who has made mistakes in a procedure and caused you pain and grief?

Holding on to resentment, anger and judgment is affecting every moment of your day, every hour, every minute and is ultimately robbing all joy from your life. You are giving the people you have not forgiven power over you. Trust that what goes around comes around and that the Universe has a way to take care of justice through Karma. Decide that it does not matter anymore; make the choice to let go and forgive.

We have a 30 minute Spring Equinox CD for sale. Please contact me if you are interested in this CD recording.

Angelika

Life Coaching & Forgiveness Work

905-286-9466, greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

Receiving Guidance

Posted on February 17, 2015 by Greendoor Relaxation

Oracle cards are an ancient method to receive guidance. They can help to answer questions we have about an issue we are faced with and to access our intuitive wisdom. Based on the spiritual Law of Attraction, certain cards show up which are related to what our soul already knows but we are not able to see clearly, because it is just on the edge of our consciousness. The cards help bring forth that inner knowing into our conscious awareness. They provide insights into those previously submerged thoughts, feelings and beliefs which we need to become aware of and work with. The insights can show us which thoughts and beliefs we might want to alter so that we can make choices which are congruent with our soul’s purpose.

One of my favourite card decks is “Messages from Your Animal Spirit Guides” by Stephen Farmer, who is going to be our key note speaker at the 2015 Burlington Wholistic Wellness Expo on May 31. Farmer is a shamanic practitioner, minister and psychotherapist and the author of several books about spirit animals, also called totem animals or power animals. This beautiful illustrated deck of cards features different animals and gives us a brief message from each of them. The accompanying guide book includes a longer description on how to interpret each card’s general meaning.

You can use oracle cards like these on your own, or in a group. Centre yourself and set a clear intention or ask a clear question. The question can be very specific or open ended like “What do I need to know right now?” One way to receive the answer is to shuffle the deck. Sometimes a card seems to fall out. Trust that “coincidence” that this is your card. If no card “jumps out”, stop shuffling when you get the intuitive sense to do so. Then pull a card either from the top of the deck or anywhere in the deck that you are guided to draw from. As you look at the card, pay attention to the first thing that comes to mind. Which parts of the card’s message resonate with you and how?

Last weekend, at our monthly PSYCH-K® practice group, which I offer for the students of Darryl Gurney’s classes, we used Stephen Farmer’s card deck to receive additional insights on which beliefs everybody might want to change. Three cards showed up more than once which was interesting as the participants worked together in groups of two. The same subjects re-emerged for everybody to pair up in teams with a matching topic. Some of the cards which showed up were the boar, the blue heron, the walrus and the bumblebee.

The boar encourages to “face your problems head-on with confidence and courage, and you will emerge victorious”. It’s a call to dig in and rummage around until you have discovered how to solve the current problem you have. Then you need to take immediate action to remedy it. Emerging victorious could be to either having conquered the problem or having changed your thinking about the situation, or both. Possible statements to balance might be “I deserve to get what I want” or “I always succeed in my endeavours” or “I am confident in my decisions”. Obviously each individual situation somebody is facing will give this message a personal aspect of what supportive beliefs are needed.

The blue heron asks to “make a stand for what you believe in and do what feels right in spite of any judgment or disapproval from others”. Trust your deepest sense of knowing what the best action is for you. Don’t rely on others telling you what to do or on their assessment of you. Possible beliefs to change might be “I care less and less what other people think” or “I trust my own opinion and feelings” or “It’s ok for me to displease others to be true to myself”.

The walrus warns to “remain vigilant about the current situation; pay attention to signs and omens, and let them dictate your choices”. Watch, listen and feel. Be aware of your dreams and other messages. You might want to journal and watch out for repetitions. Does it feel like a certain career situation or relationship is a call to set clear boundaries and to make new choices or changes? Possible beliefs to balance might be “I release all fear and attachment to a specific outcome” or “I trust the guidance I receive” or “I make conscious choices”.

The honeybee advises to “let compassion and forgiveness be your top priority in this situation”. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, it does not mean saying somebody was wrong or right, it does not mean loving a person, it just means to release and free up the energy we have bound up with the feelings we have about a certain person or situation. Forgiveness requires that we acknowledge and accept responsibility for our judgments and that we release them. To forgive means to go beyond right and wrong. Sometimes we forget the most important person when we forgive: ourselves. Possible statements can be “I forgive… (insert person’s name) for … (insert what they have done or didn’t do)” or “I forgive myself for… “

Forgiveness

is the gift that you give yourself

that frees you from the pain

that you gave yourself by judging others negative.

Angelika 905-286-9466, greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

If you are enjoying my posts you can follow Greendoor to receive an e-mail notification whenever I post a new blog. Click the follow button in the right hand corner of your screen.

The Number One Quality of a Healer

Posted on January 30, 2015 by Greendoor Relaxation

What is the one quality that all successful healers have in common? Science shows it is Love. Now, what does that mean?

Love is a very misunderstood word. It is a, “portmanteau” or “suitcase word”, a word which is an umbrella for so many different feelings. We open up the suitcase with the label “Love” and we throw all sorts of things in it. We use it from “I love chocolate” to “I fell in Love” to “I love God”.

Leonard Laskow & his wife Sama

Leonard Laskow, MD took love into the laboratory and experimented with bacteria and cancer cells. His definition of this complex vibration is:

“Love is the awareness of relatedness

and the impulse towards unity.”

(Leonard Laskow)

What we love, we want to become one with; that could be food, nature, another person. There is a movement towards unity. Unconditional Love means unconditional acceptance and moving into resonance with something or somebody. Dr. Laskow found that going into resonance heals because unconditional love resolves duality to unity. The key to healing is becoming one with whatever you want to heal rather than to fear it, repress it or fight it.

When you strike an A tuning fork and bring it close to another A tuning fork, that second tuning fork will also begin to vibrate. Similar frequencies vibrate with each other. Just as one tuning fork vibrates with another we can also be in that resonance with each other.

Resonance is not an example of love. You can be angry with somebody and be in an angry resonance. However, when you are in a loving state, resonance is always present.

Love doesn’t create unity but it reminds us of what we tend to forget: That we are all connected, we are all one! This is a time of remembering our oneness. Love is awakening to oneness at the deepest level. We live in a world of apparent separation and Love reminds us of the illusion of separation.

In the lab, Dr. Laskow discovered that he had the greatest impact by coming into resonance with the bacteria, or in other words, total unconditional acceptance of the bacteria’s existence, without any judgment.

Dr. Laskow then introduced an intention into the field of coherence. Coherence is a stronger form of resonance; he explains that he became “like a human laser”. Love plus an intention reduced the growth rate of bacteria by 50% as opposed to the control group,

Everything that we resist, persists. Bacteria resists being killed or destroyed, but there is no resistance when they are loved.

With cancer cells, he explored different intentions. The most powerful intention, which brought the greatest results was for the cancer cell to “return to the natural order, harmony and growth rate of its pre-hyper active cell line”. Instead of focusing on killing the cells, he focused on them becoming what they originally were.

The more energy or feeling is put into an intention the more effective it is. Another interesting find was that by coupling a thought form with an image the results were doubled. He was able to reduce the growth of a cell by 40% instead of 20% when he added an image to the thought. He was also able to stimulate the growth rate by 15% with thought plus imagery.

The bottom line of all the experiments is: Love plus Intention have a real impact on cancer cells and therefore on healing.

Based on his research in the lab, he developed his workshops and called this technique of Healing with Love, HOLOENERGETICS®. Holoenergetics means healing with the energy of the whole, which is greater than the sum of the parts.

Dr. Laskow concluded that if separation is an illusion, it must take energy to keep the illusion up. If all this energy is released by bringing people back into wholeness, all the energy is freed up for healing. The energy of love is released and facilitates the healing. Love is not necessary for physical healing because the body knows how to heal, but at times just the release through love is sufficient for physical, emotional and mental healing.

Holoenergetics teaches a particular breathing technique to go into a whole brain state, in which both hemispheres of the brain come into a beautiful place of balance. He also teaches how to breathe into the space at the back of your heart and become an observer from that place. The practitioners learn to transpersonally align with another person from heart to heart. The most important quality for the practitioner is to develop and to hold that field of coherent love.

Holoenergetics includes tracing of an emotional or physical issue. Through the tracing process, we go back to the root cause of when a separation happened, either through an experience or an interpretation of a situation which crystallized into a belief of being separate, not good enough and so on. In the process, the experience and the limiting beliefs are cleared out and then replaced by what we really wanted to feel and believe at that time.

My personal favourite is the Holoenergetics Forgiveness Process. I have written many blogs on the healing power of Forgiveness. In this process, it might seem like you are forgiving the other person but it’s all really about you. Truly letting go of the energy of anger, resentment, sadness or hurt frees you up for your own healing, evolution and growth. And within that process, the most important person to forgive yourself is your younger selves. Judgment and anger at ourselves is what separates us from our true essence and veils what we are at the core of our being: Love.

Are you curious about Holoenergetics?

Darryl Gurney is finally teaching a Holoenergetics class again in the GTA:

Holoenergetics Workshop

Friday, March 6 – Sunday, March 8, 2015

HOURS:

9:00 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.

LOCATION:

Milton or Mississauga

EARLY BIRD: $575 or ($550 when you bring a friend)– if $150 deposit received before February 12, $650 thereafter (Prices include tax)

Who is Your Instructor?

Darryl Gurney

Greendoor Relaxation

Hypnosis, PSYCH-K® , and Life Coaching

Category Archives: Forgiveness & Letting Go

Self-Compassion – Luxury or Necessity?

Angelika
Life Coaching, Belief Changes & Forgiveness Work
905-286-9466, greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca

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