Belonging and the Family

Sentient beings share the instinct for survival. On our own, however, we cannot survive. Relationship is the underpinning that assures survival, from newborns to the elderly.

Babies are cared for because they are ‘like us’. With the same DNA, parents find themselves instantly in relationship to their children. When parents fail to bond, the safety of the child is in grave danger.

For survival, therefore, the ego’s impetus is to ‘belong’. We belong when it is clear to everyone that we have an equal right to whatever nourishment and protection the family can afford.

How do we assure our membership?

As newborns, the status of member-in-good-standing relies less on our behavior and more on the ability of our parents to accept us. As toddlers, children, and young adults, our membership becomes increasingly dependent on adhering to the rules and customs of the family.

Consider a 7 year old who steals a candy bar at the grocery checkout. When mom discovers the transgression, if she admonishes her child and has him return the candy bar with a confession to the clerk, it’s a simple lesson that says, “In this family, members don’t steal.”

Conscience

Thus is conscience born. Conscience is not an inborn universal moral code. Conscience lets us know for each and every action we take (or just consider taking) whether that action will strengthen our membership or put it at risk. Feeling self-righteous or guilty is not a function of the rightness or wrong-ness of an action. It is a sign that the action adheres to or violates a guideline of behavior in our group.

Equal Status

In a healthy family, everyone born into the family belongs fully and equally with every other member. This is true even if a child continually violates family proscriptions. The thief is as much a member as the surgeon. Healthy families understand this. In others, individual children may never be treated as a full member, or the rules for their ‘belonging’ destroy their opportunity to flourish.

A simple example is the family that says, “You aren’t one of us if you are gay.” Or a second wife who says (aloud or in her heart) to her stepchildren, “You don’t belong here, go away.”

Another example is the half-sibling who says, “My dad had other children but they aren’t part of our family.” These children belong though they may not share both the same parents. A great deal of damage is done when the ‘second’ family denies the first and treats earlier children as though they are ‘second-class’.

Adoption

Adoption also calls for caution and, especially, for great respect for the biological family. Children belong to their biological family and that cannot be denied. Moreover, whatever the reasons the biological parents gave up the child, they have sacrificed to the benefit of the adoptive parents. For this alone, the adoptive parents owe the biological parents respect.

Adoptive parents do great harm when they believe that through adoption they become the parents of their adopted child. In fact, they become caregivers, nurturers, teachers, but never are they the parents. It is better if adopted children can know their true parents and have access to them. Adopting a child without acknowledging their origin robs a child of his soul.

How To Meditate

There are many forms of meditation. This approach is as much for the beginner as for the more experienced practitioner. It is simply ‘noticing the flow of your breath’.

Begin sitting comfortably in a chair with your feet flat on the floor. Place your hands on your thighs, palms down. If that’s not comfortable, try placing one hand inside the other with palms toward your belly.

Now turn your attention to your breathing. Nothing to do here. Just notice. Does your lower belly expand as you inhale? Does your breathing happen just in your upper chest? Still, you have nothing to do but notice. You have no goal or purpose other than to keep noticing your breath.

If you are visual, you can watch your breath in your mind’s eye. Picture your lungs and the in and out movement of your breath.

Then, notice the sensations as the muscles of your torso rise and fall with your inhalation and exhalation. Notice the flow of air into your nose and through your nasal passages on its way to your lungs.

You can even listen for the sound of your breathing.

An ideal amount of time for a beginning practice is 20 minutes a day. Doing this, you will likely notice a greater calm and better sleep almost immediately. Over time, your intuitive skills will also increase. Even as little as five minutes a day will yield results, though not as noticeable or as quickly.

If you have questions, email me.

A Meditation to Quit Smoking

This meditation practice will help you quit smoking. It is a powerful tool. First, develop a basic meditation practice of 20 minutes a day for 2 months. To do this see my web article titled How to Meditate: A Beginner’s Text. The meditation outlined in that article focuses on breathing. It will strengthen your ability to effectively utilize the technique below.

To Begin

Sit quietly with your feet on the floor. You may find it helpful to close your eyes but this isn’t necessary. What is necessary is that you focus your attention on the inside of your mouth. Notice the sensations in your mouth. Your tongue pressing against your teeth and touching the roof of your mouth. Let your attention slide to the back of your mouth where you can actually feel the hole of your throat.

Some Background

This section of your throat is called the pharynx. It is about 5 inches long. Picture it like a short piece of red garden hose. At the end of this short piece of garden hose, the hole separates into two. The front hole is your windpipe or trachea.

Your windpipe is also short, maybe 4 inches. It is lined with tiny hairs or cilia that beat constantly to trap dust and debris, sending them back up into your throat to be swallowed or spit out.

The Practice

Now take your time and drop your awareness from the back of your throat into the inside walls of your pharynx. Notice the sensations inside that short piece of ‘red garden hose’. Stay with this part of your body for 15 or 20 seconds, until you really ‘get it’.

Then, continue dropping your sensory awareness down further into the trachea itself. Focus on the walls of the trachea. Can you sense the hairs, like tiny dust mops throughout this inside passage? Remain focused on your windpipe until the desire for a cigarette dissipates.

When To Use

Practice the meditation several times. Then, when you quit smoking, begin using the practice as soon as you crave a cigarette. Stay with the practice until the craving passes. Return to your regular activities until the urge to smoke strikes again.

When this happens, repeat the practice. Initially you may have to engage in the exercise every 10 minutes, depending on how frequently you are used to ‘lighting up’. Over a few days, your need to practice will diminish with your craving for tobacco.

You may notice some side effects such as a sore throat. What you are doing with this exercise is stimulating the inner tissues of your windpipe with your attention. Far better than with smoke...

Breathe Deeply & Move to the Rhythm of Life

Oxygen is critical for life. Without oxygen you will not live for more than a few minutes. Yet most people use less than a third of their available lung capacity.

• Your breath is the primary fuel delivery system to every cell of your body.
• Deep breathing tones and massages every organ and muscle.
• Deep breathing stimulates your immune system and is necessary to expel toxins.
• Breathing assists in the stimulation of the biochemicals that enhance your mood and brain function, including your ability to learn, focus, and remember.

This circular-breathing pattern opens up the flow of your energy and super-oxygenates your body. Here is how you can harness the power of your breath for your well being:

• As you inhale, let your lower belly expand.
• Continue to inhale. Your abdomen will lift, and finally your chest.
• When you can not take in more air, move smoothly from inhaling to exhaling, without pausing.
• Allow your exhalation to occur on its own: a simple letting go. Don’t push your breath out or hold it back. As you exhale your chest will collapse first followed by the abdomen.
• Without pausing, begin to inhale again.

Ancient Japanese teachings asserted that learning to breathe consciously in this deep fully connected manner was essential to achieving enlightenment.

Morning, Noon, or Night. Begin your breathing practice with 100 breaths a day!

Meditation for the Body, Mind, and Spirit

There are many forms of meditation. Used appropriately - meaning the practice meets the present needs of the individual - all are self-healing processes. They access the innate healing power and underlying wellbeing of the individual through altered states of focus. The focal point may be the Spirit, the Mind, or the Body.

Most often, it is the mind that spurs a person to begin a meditation practice. The pace and pressures of daily life create a frantic storm of thoughts that exhaust us. Seeking mental respite and peace, one is brought to consider meditation. Unfortunately, the best known forms of meditation evoke resistance precisely because they attempt to tame the wild mind. Slowing the mind appears impossible and is even physically repugnant. Who wants to sit quietly in the face of the urge to jump out of their skin?

Meditations of the Spirit

New meditation practice may be more easily undertaken with meditations of the Spirit. Spirit here refers to the Life Force or Divinity that resides within every person as breath. Breath is both sacred and mundane. Mundane because we need pay no attention to its presence. Breathing is involuntarily within us every moment we are alive. Yet, breathing is also connected to the presence of the Divine Within. When breath departs so does our spirit. The human being we have known ourselves to be ceases to exist.

Such Meditations of the Spirit include Transformational Breathing and Kundalini and Yogic breathing exercises. Each of these processes focuses on the breath. Breathe in, breathe out. Pay attention to your breath. Some have the practitioner breathe in a circular pattern. Others prescribe counting on the inhalation, holding a breath and counting for the exhalation, etc. The monkey mind is diverted by putting the mind to use until the process takes over and puts the mind to rest. Thus, a healing state ensues. Breath is so powerful it can unseat trauma from the body cells and seat significant and empowering insights into the body cells.

Meditations of the Mind

Meditations of the Mind call for the mind to focus in a specific way. The simplest are the mantra meditations. In mantra meditations the monkey mind is put to work repeating a simple word or phrase again and again. When the practitioner realizes his attention has wandered, he simply returns to the mantra.

My favorite Mind Meditations are two. The first is an ‘open listening’ meditation. In this meditation, the practitioner sits, waits, and listens intently for the voice of the universe. He doesn’t know what he will hear. He waits patiently with open ears like a soldier waiting for orders, or a researcher waiting for a pattern to emerge from chaos. This is an exquisite form of meditation that can be put to specific purpose. For example, open meditations can be used to ‘sit with’ a plant or even a passage of spiritual text, in order for the subject to reveal itself. A plant may reveal its medicinal purposes, or a text may reveal its hidden meaning.

The second of these meditations I find so useful is the Dzogchen meditation. In this meditation the practitioner takes his attention into the gaps between his thoughts, dropping down through his thinking to the well spring where thoughts are formed. This extraordinary meditation induces powerful feelings of joy.

Meditations of the Body

Finally, there are what I call Body Meditations. These meditations are attentive to the body. The practitioner drops her awareness down into the interior of the body, noticing its physical state: what hurts, is tense, what gurgles, etc. And, having thus centered her attention in the body itself, then widens awareness to include emotions that may be present as well. Then, simply continues to notice the shifting sensations and feelings for several minutes. A variation on this meditation can be especially helpful in times of unease or mild anxiety.

Other Body Meditations utilize movement. These practices include walking meditations in which the practitioner pays such close attention to the lift, motion, and placement of each foot, that eventually each microscopic shift of bone and muscle is conscious. This type of movement is highly disciplined and isn’t appropriate for everyone. Not all movement meditations, however, require this level of control. Other spontaneous movement meditations are equally powerful. In these, the practitioner takes his attention inside the body. Then, mindfully aware, allows the body to select its movement in a profound unwinding and healing process.

Meditation practice is a personal exploration. As noted above, different forms are best suited for different individuals at different times. In my practice, I teach all the forms of meditation noted here – and more. My own practices evolve and shift depending on my needs. If you are looking to begin a meditation practice that is a fit for you and your needs, I would be happy to work with you.

Namaste,
Sandra Egli, Th.D.

In recent years, many alternatives to traditional medicine have been gaining mainstream attention. Dr. Mehmet Oz a leading proponent of integrative medicine considers energy healing to be the new frontier of alternative medicine and the future of "mind-body medicine." Alternative medicines, Dr. Oz says, deal with the body's energy—something that traditional Western medicine generally does not. "We're beginning now to understand things that we know in our hearts are true but we could never measure," he says. "As we get better at understanding how little we know about the body, we begin to realize that the next big frontier … in medicine is energy medicine. It's not the mechanistic part of the joints moving. It's not the chemistry of our body. It's understanding for the first time how energy influences how we feel."

The Oprah Winfrey Show
Feb 13, 2007

Energy Healing and Reiki

by Dr. Sandra Egli

Did you know that a pain in your foot may signify that you don’t feel able to stand up for yourself? Or, that chronic pain in your lower back may indicate financial worry or the feeling that your life is out of control? And, overweight may stem from the need to energetically protect yourself?

Welcome to the fascinating world of the holistic human being, where everything we think and feel is integral to our bodies and our bodies are an integral aspect of our minds and spirits.

This is my world and my profession is energy healing.

The best known form of energy healing today may be Reiki, which comes from the Japanese tradition. Yet, every culture, ancient and modern has traditions of energy healing. These many forms include Christian traditions of ‘laying on hands’ and Chinese Qi Gong and Tai Chi which are self healing modalities. The Japanese history of cultivating the life force, or ki, is called Kiko. Kiko is training to promote health and is closely aligned with medicine, fine arts, and martial arts such as judo, karate, aikido, and kendo. Kiko is the origin of Rei-ki which is specifically for self-healing and also used by healers who pass hands over a patient to identify energy imbalances and promote healing by restoring balance.

The theory of energy healing is that just as you have a heart that pumps blood and a stomach designed to digest food, you also have many types of energy each with a specific purpose.

For example, one type of energy holds emotions. When you experience a sensation such as anger, it is a form of energy. In fact, anger is intended to put us into action to change what we don’t like in the world. When we don’t use our anger constructively for change, when we suppress it, the energy isn’t released and affects the body.

The result can be any number of physical ailments from a simple headache to very serious illnesses such as diabetes or cancer.

A question to begin your own self healing is: Where in your body do you store unexpressed emotions such as anger?

As an energy healer, I work with my clients to discover, or unlock, the hidden connection between their bodies and their emotions to facilitate healing throughout the body, mind, and emotions – at the level where healing is needed.

Each of us has an individual pattern of energy, including genetic strengths and weaknesses from our families. However, some illnesses seem frequently to result from similar circumstances or traumas.

One that I find interesting is Fibromyalgia. I have worked with this condition numerous times and perceive it as a form of Frozen Terror. People afflicted with fibromyalgia have often (not always) suffered a severe emotional or physical shock. Subsequently, an energetic block forms in the Cerebrospinal fluid.

The initiating cause may be something as straight-forward as a car accident or as horrifying as having been held as a hostage.

Healing warrants attention on every level. When I work with fibromyalgia I often recommend physical treatment (hot tubs and massage as well as energy work). I also work in with my client to release the emotional trauma using altered states. The specifics of the treatment are dependent on the guidance I receive for each client.

Anxiety and panic attacks appear to me also as a form of terror that occurs in infancy or early childhood, then is suppressed for many years and eventually surfaces in the form of panic attacks in adulthood. Anxiety seems especially related to the fear of annihilation, or death, and for this reason can also surface in the elderly as the unconscious mind faces mortality.

Chronic Fatigue seems to occur most often in people with very high performance expectations for themselves. These people often work into the late night hours, undertaking major projects that keep them busy until 2 am, and then jump out of bed by 5 for another performance-oriented day. Eventually, the body and the soul reach the point where they can’t go on. The greatest lesson for the sufferer of chronic fatigue is to let go of their conviction that they can and should be going full steam ahead 20 hours a day. Recovery from chronic fatigue occurs only by honoring the body and living a slower paced style of life. Such a philosophical shift can take years to occur.

Memory problems (Alzheimer’s, Dementia, etc) are conventionally thought to be the result of plaque buildup in the brain. Yet, recently, research through autopsies have shown that elderly people with only mild forgetfulness can have plaque accumulation as severe as any Alzheimer’s patient. How can this be? Energetically I suspect the distinction is related to underlying emotional blocks as well as physical factors. These emotional factors may be related to depression or perhaps to lessons of the heart.

Depression can be related to many underlying causes, including family genetics and ingrained energetic patterns (sometimes learned). These problems can be exacerbated by eating and sleeping habits. Nonetheless, depression is a condition where the energy system seems stuck, with little energy movement. The good news and the bad for people with simple occasional depression is to move. Move to the beat of music, get out and walk, take up aerobics or Chi Gong. Unfortunately, when we are down in the dumps, movement is generally unappealing.

Depression can also be a sign also of Family Wounding, often passed down for many generations. In these cases, special forms of healing may be warranted to heal the family tree.

In my experience, many wounds are familial, afflicting one generation after another. The member who commits to personal healing can generate a healing effect that radiates throughout the family.

In my experience, there is no illness or pain that cannot benefit from energy healing work, especially when the individual is ready to work with healing at every level. You don’t need to believe in energy healing for it to make a difference. What is needed is the desire for healing and the intention for what is stuck to get moving again.