How Families Affect our Energy -- and a few tips for staying sane this holiday season

Every Sunday, my boyfriend and I do our weekly grocery shopping at the local co-op. Today was no exception, except that it seemed like all of Seattle agreed to meet at the co-op at the same time. Cans of pumpkin were hoarded into cards, along with cranberries, organic turkeys, potatoes, yams, pecan and pumpkin pies and lots and lots of wine.

Obviously, people are preparing for Thanksgiving. And my guess was that the more wine in the cart, the more they're spending it with their family.

Don't get me wrong -- I love my family with every ounce of my heart. I call both my parents and my sister weekly to talk about the trials, tribulations, successes and joys of each week. I feel blessed that my family is an integral part of my life and one of the only regrets I have about living in Seattle is the large distance between us.

My family also creates some of my most difficult spiritual and energetic challenges, and it is the energy that is most difficult for my clients to work through as well.

Raise your hand (come one, humor me) if you've experienced something like this: the holidays come around and you get really excited to see your family. You can't wait for mutual show and tell, the family traditions and rituals, and spending time together. For the first couple of days, everything feels amazing and you're so happy you made it. Then, after a little while, a melancholy sort of feeling sets in -- you start to feel a little down, perhaps frustrated, and maybe you start to question some of the choices you've made that aren't the same as your family's. For me, the overall feeling I get is of feeling stuck and confused for no reason that I can pinpoint.

Sound familiar? (If not, you're more rare than a unicorn underneath a rainbow of miracles. Good job, you).

When I read clients who have just spent a lot of time with their families, I often notice that their energy field is clogged with family energy. This is energy that says, "These are our family norms/belief systems/standard operating procedures. You've deviated from this program. Here is a reminder to get you back on track." Clients feel stuck because this energy is laying on top of their own innate energy and acting like a control.

You can think of it like a computer virus. You've got all of your energetic programs running smoothly, exactly the way you want them. You're creating your own way in the world, setting your energy high and manifesting your dreams, then all the sudden your software starts to act a little weird. Everything slows down and before you know it, you're not controlling your computer anymore -- the virus is.

Our energetic field is responsible for our whole reality. It is an intricate and elaborate system created from our belief systems, karmic patterns, past time information, present time thought patterns, emotions and creativity. We can compare our energetic field to a computer system -- a healthy energetic field is running completely on its own energy in order to create its reality, just like a healthy computer system is running only on the programs we chose for our operating system. An unhealthy energy system is one running on pre-programmed ideas or lies hidden as truths, just like an unhealthy computer system is stuck or inefficient because of crap software that we don't really use, viruses, spy ware and malware.

So, back to how family energy can act as a virus.  In order for a virus to be effective, the person planting the virus must intricately understand the system, and the system must have a weakness in order for the virus to be successful. When we are born, we knew very little about how to survive in the world. We looked to our parents to supply us with information about how the world works. In essence, we actively allowed our families to program our energetic system for us. We had to -- our survival depended on it! But it doesn't any more. Part of becoming an adult is separating from ideas and beliefs that we don't resonate with, which often means a continual separation from the energy that was pre-programmed into us and a move to reprogram our energy system with our own ideas and values.

This is how energy healings work. When I work with a client, I'm basically helping them wipe their energetic hard drive of anything that's contributing toward ill health, feeling stuck, or otherwise not serving them so that they can replace those energies with their own creativity, beliefs and personal power. When we stand in our own energy, we feel better, more ourselves. Our self esteem increases and we are able to have more certainty about our life path.

It's relatively easy to clean the energy body of foreign energy, especially of co-workers, friends, acquaintances and even romantic partners. These energies are more like extra programs that you download from the internet -- they may benefit you in the short term, but eventually they can start to cause problems. When they do, you can just uninstall. But family energy works more like a virus because that's the energy you started your life with. Family energy understands your system completely because it created your first belief systems, emotional patterns, thought patterns, and the basic, underlying story you have about your life. That story creates energetic pictures about who we are at a base level. Family energy recognizes these pictures and says, "Haha! You're still mine! You have my blueprint! You've deviated a bit, but it doesn't mean you don't recognize me! Match me, match me!"

I am in no way saying that our beloved families are consciously malicious (at least, mine aren't -- you can decide that for yourself). The impact of family energy is unconscious on the part of the family members -- it's more like their love, hope, worry and fear are more easily channelled into our sensitive systems. Family energy just works differently in our bodies than the energy of others. As one of my psychic colleagues said the other day, "You can learn and grow as a psychic, and move more and more energy and become less and less reactive to people and situations around you. But when family is involved, all bets are off."

So what can we do about it? Before I go into a family situation, I take extra time to get grounded, set my energy, hold my vibration and take extra self-pampering tools with me. I check in with myself throughout the visit to notice if I'm still holding my vibration. I set up extra energy readings and healings with my colleagues.  And I always try to employ the two best tools of all -- neutrality, and lots and lots of amusement. This holiday season, I suggest you read through my old posts that include these tools and try them for yourself.

If all else fails, at least you've got the wine  :)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Tool #4: The First Essential Step to Healing: Havingness

As we start to move into the holiday season, we often start to think of all the things we're asked to give. Give thanks, give presents, give time, give energy, give give give give give. Don't get me wrong, giving is great! When done in the right attitude, it helps us cultivate gratitude, which helps us find more contentment and ultimately, joy.

The work I do is mainly with highly sensitive people. Those of us who are sensitive know how to give -- it's part of our nature. Being sensitive often means that you're very aware of the emotions of others and often feel uncomfortable around negative energy. Because the sensitive body is so affected by the energy of others, sensitive individuals often avoid conflict in order to shield themselves from energy onslaught. Often times, this creates a sensitive person who has learned to give or accommodate under almost any circumstances.

But one thing that these clients often lack is the ability to receive and to own something simply in order to have it for themselves. Instead, everything they allow themselves to receive is because it will somehow benefit someone other then themselves. They feel a tremendous amount of guilt when it comes to having something that is just their own, a secret jewel just for them, just because. In healing, we have to be able to HAVE and receive healing in order for us to heal.

Sounds simple, right?

For so many of us, we practice giving on a daily basis -- that is, giving to others. What we don't do is practice giving love, affection, or attention to ourselves. One of the primary reasons I see clients struggle with healing is a failure to allow themselves to have it. This often manifests as an underlying belief in their deservedness to have or to receive.

What if we were all allowed to have everything we wanted, as long as the desire was manifested in our hearts and fed by Source energy? Guess what, we do! Our deepest desires and fears are reflected to us in our reality. The spirit knows it can have whatever it needs to learn and grow, plus the things it wants to keep the body comfortable while achieving growth. But so often, our bodies and minds have been programmed into believing that we have to be deserving of something in order for us to have it.

The spirit world doesn't work that way. It is human to say that something is right or wrong, good or bad, or that someone is deserving or undeserving. The spirit world doesn't see good or bad, right or wrong, it just sees what is. I'm sure we can all think of someone who is a total schmuck who has everything they want. That person may have a sketchy moral character, but they also have high havingness.

Havingness = our ability to have.

Think about how much you really let yourself have. I know that in my life, I have high havingness in learning experiences, good cars, keeping good friends and living in beautiful places, to name a few. Where I'm constantly working on my havingness is in my ability to receive and believe praise and in my finances.

Our level of havingness affects our health and healing, too. If you've been struggling with your health, take a moment to check in with yourself and notice how much you're able to let yourself have healing. Be honest with yourself. I check in using a psychic tool and visualize a gauge out in front of me, but you can also simply ask yourself how much you let yourself have your healing and trust the first answer you get. Maybe it says, "40%." Ouch, but you can work with that and raise it up.

In a reading, I can help you look at your havingness and help you discover what is keeping you from having your health and healing. From my experience from working with clients, I find that it often comes from a feeling of not being deserving, not being good enough, not knowing who you would be as a healthy person and being afraid to find out, being afraid of losing the attention that being ill attracts, and believing that you are a victim of your own body.

You are none of those things. You are an infinitely creative spirit in a body that you created.

Our body puts out signals to alert us that something is wrong. In order to fix it, we first need to tune in and try to figure out what our body needs from us. Next, we need to seek a treatment that resonates with us. We also need to identify and release the energy, belief systems or programs that made us ill in the first place. But in order to all of that, we must first believe that we can have our health and healing. We must first believe that we truly own our bodies.

How do we create havingness? Raising our havingness is a practice that involves understanding that we are inherently deserving of having the life and health that we desire and that when our health is off, it is our choice whether to stay a victim or take action. Taking action means more than going through the motions of healing -- it means digging deep and noticing whether there are beliefs you have about yourself that need to change and then making a commitment to changing those no matter how uncomfortable or ego-compromising it is.

When I notice my havingness is low for a particular area in my life, there are two ways I deal with it. First, I ask myself why my havingness might be low. Usually, I notice it's because it deals with an area of my life that I'm not completely comfortable in, have been hurt in, or haven't wanted to look at. Next, I ask myself, "What's my first step to raising havingness?" Usually, my body asks me to release an old belief I have. As I work on releasing it, I replace it with a positive, concrete affirmation. For example, if I have low havingness about finances and my spirit tells me it's because my belief says that making money isn't spiritual, I might use the affirmation, "When I prosper in my divinely-inspired mission, the world prospers with me."

There is a psychic tool for increasing havingness that's a bit more simple if you have a regular meditation practice. After grounding and calling back your energy, you can imagine a bubble out in front of you. In the bubble, as a gauge to appear with your level of havingness. Notice the number. Now ground your gauge to the center of the planet and allow the grounding chord to release from the gauge any energy that's not allowing you to have what you want/need. See the energy move to the center of the planet. You may be able to identify it, but you don't have to. Watch your gauge, it may have moved upward. If not, take your psychic finger and move it up to 100%.

Sounds easy, right? It is!

Well, it is unless you're not ready to release the reasons keeping you from having your healing.

Havingness is also about ownership. It's about coming to the realization that this body was giving to YOU and YOU alone. The only thing that holds you prisoner in your own body is you. Once you realize that you create your prison or oasis you can take ownership of your creation and begin to create your own healing path -- no matter how many times you've been hurt by others, used by others, given to others, your healing path can be no one's but yours. Own it!