retinal perspectives

you don't need to change

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exactly as you are

goodbye to the blue lotus

The name, that is, not my blog.

I named this blog the blue lotus because I wanted a name that symbolized the holistic nature of wellness. To me, the lotus flower represents that concept perfectly.

That being said, I am leaving my current position at the end of April so that I can focus on my Reiki practice and photography, but I don't intend to use "the blue lotus" as my business name. (Truth be told, I am saving that name, for a future use.) I plan to do business as myself.

Since I am rather fond of my current blogs, and don't want to abandon them just yet, I am slowly turning them into a "website" of sorts, which means that it is time for "the blue lotus" name to disappear.

It is a beautiful name, so I thought it deserved a proper good-bye.

Good-bye, dear name. Enjoy your rest.

how do I

During a conversation today, I realized the next step in my healing journey. I need to be able to look at my scars and see the beauty in them.

Yeah .. not really seeing how to do that one. Ok, so I have grown somewhat used to them. And ok, so I don't hate them anymore. And fine, I don't think they're horrific. But see the beauty? Really? (And why can I totally do this for someone else but I can't do it for me.)

Anyway, it made me curious whether anyone else has struggled with this and has ideas or thoughts to share. I feel like I must not be alone - because it can apply to anything really. Scars. Perceived flaws. That one "problem area". You name it.

the wait is over

happiness is

I still haven't gotten around to writing down all the things that have changed for me since I started practicing reiki. But I was driving home from work one day and it occurred to me, as it often does now, how very happy I am. It's not a loud, boisterous, "OMG, I am so happy" kind of happiness; it's a quiet inner sense that all is right with the world. Aside from the cat allergies, which I have talked about ad nauseum, and the issues resulting from a childhood burn, that might be the biggest change.

The funny thing is, I always thought I was a happy person. (And most people that know me think that I am always happy.) As it turns out, what I was was cheerful and generally optimistic - and that is not always the same thing. I was also very disconnected from my feelings, especially feelings that are not considered positive, and very good at hiding those feelings from others. Under the surface, there was a strong current of unhappiness.

Looking back now, I recognize all the periods when my unhappiness overwhelmed me. When I was in one, however, I thought I was just career minded or lazy or anti-social. I can also see how those periods kept getting longer and longer. The longest one lasted over a year - up until I moved to Oregon. They didn't go away once I moved, but they were much shorter in duration, which I think is partly due to how much I love it here and how at home I felt immediately. (Hence the reason I will never argue that a change of scenery is no help at all because you always take yourself with you. It may be true to some degree but, in my case, it certainly helped.)

Anyway, all of this is not to say that I never get sad or worried or anxious or unhappy. Goodness knows I do. But underneath it all, I really am happy.

clearing the clutter

For the longest time, I wanted to clean out my email account. There was mail to be filed, mail to be answered, mail to be deleted. Every time I tried to get a handle on it, it felt like the problem got worse instead of better. It was immensely frustrating.

One Saturday, I attended an Office Spa Day. During the event, I figured out my most bothersome organizational challenge and cleaned and cleared out two closets - including 12 months worth of shredding - in the process. I was so pleased. Later that weekend, without even thinking about it, I sat down at the computer and cleaned out my entire inbox. Somehow the physical clearing prompted another clearing.

Lately, my mind has been all a jumble. It felt like things were piling up. I tried to think of a blog post. I had nothing. There were lots of pieces of things, but it all felt useless. I tried to work on something for my business. I had nothing. It felt like my body was following my mind and growing sluggish and inactive.

It occurred to me that maybe I could look around and see if anything was piling up physically. It certainly couldn't hurt, right? I found my purse - which turned out to be full of receipts. (I hate when this happens, there is nothing I dislike more than a cluttered purse.) I found my laundry basket - which has been waiting for me to do a load of laundry for three weeks now. (I kept meaning to do one, but then would get sidetracked.) Last evening, I spent an hour cleaning out my purse and doing the laundry. Interestingly enough, my mind feels much more clear.

So who knows .. there may be something to this new idea of mine. At the very least, it may provide an incentive to clean more often.

when in doubt, trust yourself

you do

why hello, my need for perfection

I practice this thing called Dance of Shiva, also known as Shiva Nata. I love it. Actually, I am rather addicted to it. That is, if you can be addicted to something that you don't practice daily.

I was a very sporadic (and I do mean sporadic) practicer until I went to a retreat in January where we practiced daily. At the end of the week, I saw the effect that regular practice had on my body and mind. After that, I was committed.

Dance of Shiva has levels. The DVD includes practices for the first three levels, and I know what the fourth and fifth levels are so can attempt to work them out on my own. The idea is that once a level is no longer difficult for you, you move up.

{This will probably not make sense unless you practice it, so I will keep it short.} I tend to skip around a lot. I spent some time on level 1 but never mastered it, played with level 2 for a shorter period of time, and now bounce around between level 3 and 4 and 1. Basically, I spend most of my time flailing.

During all of this, I was waiting for the perfection monster to strike. The voice that says, "You're not getting it so you may as well give up. Other people have gotten this by now. You're behind. You should have gotten this already. You need to be perfect."

It never did. I was so excited. I thought that maybe it was because the Dance offers you the freedom to get it wrong. But the thing that I did wonder about was why I felt the need to spend so much time on the higher levels, when I hadn't mastered level 1, and wasn't really spending the time trying to master it. Then, I listened to a Dust off the DVD teleclass and Havi reminded us to check our patterns. In that instant, I knew that the monster was there all along; I just didn't recognize it.

Back when I got the DVD, I wrote a blog post that explained why I was intrigued by it. To quote part of it, "I am a recovering perfectionist. Confession: the idea of something being hard forever and ever sounds horrible. Just horrible. If I can't figure something out quickly, I get extremely frustrated and tend to give up (occasionally I even cry or whine, just ask my sister)."

There it was - the reason I was jumping around so much and not taking the time to really master level 1. I knew it was going to take time, and it was going to be frustrating, and I was going to feel like I was the slowest person ever, and sometimes it would even feel like I had taken two steps forward and three steps backwards. As a result, I was avoiding it altogether.

So, I am playing with that pattern. I am still spending time playing with the higher levels, because it's fun and I enjoy it, but I am also taking the time to practice level 1 over and over and over again. It is taking time to really learn it. And sometimes it is frustrating. And sometimes I do feel like I am the slowest person ever. But it is also deeply satisfying, because when I am practicing level 1 now, it feels like I am really practicing self-kindness.

in the beginning, there was love

love without end

a goodbye, or a hello

{I fear this post may be long. You have been warned.}

When I tried reiki, I did so out of curiosity. Some people may want to try it for that reason. Some people may want to know how it can help them in order to decide if they want to try it.

The thing I have learned about reiki is that I can't direct it. It goes where it is needed and helps you figure out what you need most. I have no idea what that is. You may or may not have an idea. In other words, I can't say, "This is what it will do for you."

Since I can't give you specifics, what I'd like to do instead is share experiences and stories that will give you insight into the kind of things it might help with. At some point, I will try to share other people's experiences and stories. For now, I will share mine. Actually, almost everything I have written about thus far is related to my experience with reiki.

But - to be specific - here is one story about my experience with reiki.

When I was six years old, I had boiling water accidentally poured on me in the sauna and I spent a long time in the burn unit in Ann Arbor.

After that, saunas were not happy places. Except I grew up in northern Michigan. The land of the Finnish. Saunas were a staple. Every Saturday, we'd visit my grandparents for a sauna. Every Saturday, I'd sit huddled in a corner of the sauna, staring at the stove and hot water barrel, watching and waiting for something bad to happen. I never felt safe until I was back in the dressing room. But I could never tell anyone how scared I was.

Later, my friends had saunas, and they were hard to avoid. Especially since things like baking in the sauna + jumping into a freezing cold lake were supposed to be fun. I pretended they were. 

In the beginning, I tried not to think about it at all. I certainly couldn't talk about it. As time went on, I figured that it happened in the past and I certainly should be over it already. I mean, it was a long time ago. And it could have been worse. And there were people starving.

Then, I discovered reiki, and started giving myself reiki treatments every night. Slowly but surely, all of this mess came to the surface. All the pain and fear and guilt that I had spent 25 years trying to ignore was suddenly right there, staring me in the face. It was like this gigantic knot that was tangled up with every single thing in my life. To say that facing it wasn't fun would be an understatement. It felt more like I was falling apart and I had no idea what to do.

So I did the only thing I could - I kept giving myself reiki treatments. Sometimes I would go and get one from someone else. I had lots of crazy experiences during reiki treatments. Once, I felt a wave of intense heat everywhere the water hit; that was neat. I cried. A lot. (I got used to crying in public.) I saw a few people for various alternative-y treatments. They would ask how I felt about the accident. I would tell them. It got easier to talk about it. I had insight after insight. The fear and guilt began to dissipate. Slowly, the knot began to unravel.

For much of the time, it felt like I was falling apart. But the thing I started to notice was that every time something hurt, it would hurt for seconds, sometimes minutes, and then it would end. It felt clean. Healing. And afterwards, always, I felt lighter. More free.

It's been a year and a half, I think, and things are much better. The fear, at least, is gone. I ended up trying a sound healing which was amazing and helped the last bit of it leave. The knot is not completely unraveled - maybe it never will be. And you know, that's really ok.

It's funny .. all those years, I wished that the accident had never happened. That I was me, but without the memories and the scar. But it did happen. It's part of me. It shaped me. And now that I am on the other side, I am profoundly grateful that it did happen. I can't even be sorry that I spent all those years discounting the validity of my feelings. Painful as this healing experience was, I learned so much about myself in the process.

In the end, it is this experience that - more than any other - taught me that whether I understand how this energy thing works or not, there is something to it. When I say that I believe it works because I have seen what it has done for me, this is mostly what I am thinking about.