3 Videos to de-stress a Busy Life (and more resources)

It's so busy-busy in December.  But you need to stop, do 5 Breaths and the rest of the 5 Tools in 5 Minutes to maintain good decisions, and to maintain joy.


https://youtu.be/0uBe29Cx7XQ

https://youtu.be/mOXKJxct_KY



Looking at the stark color differences the day after rain turns to snow.  The bright white against the deep green, you see the big outcomes from small changes in elevation.  And our "Small decisions" can have equally large impact in our lives. There are tides in the affairs of our lives that can lead on to victory... Be mindful of every breath you take, the decisions you choose, and do the 5 Tools every day.  The small investment of time yields a huge crop of  joy, clear decisions, health [the ultimate goal!] and even income.

https://youtu.be/pRmk0FS8Lb8

For more resources:

www.soaringdragon.biz

New books:

https://www.amazon.com/Red-State-Blue-Heart-Victoria/dp/1974032272/

Humor, inspiration, thought-provoking essays on how to make American culture healthy and kindly

https://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Meals-Minutes-Less-Transformation/dp/1979815445/
101 Healthy Meals in 5 Minutes or Less

https://www.amazon.com/Busters-Healthy-Longevity-Through-Barriers-ebook/dp/B01MZ4HNRZ

101 Stress Busters

Online classes

5 Tools in 5 Minutes/Day:  Strategic Self Care for Entrepreneurs & Other Busy People
https://blastthruthosebarriers.thinkific.com/courses/106742

Kick Dieting to the Curb
https://blastthruthosebarriers.thinkific.com/courses/76428

http://blastthruthosebarriers.thinkific.com/courses/pain-free-without-drugs

5 Reasons Why You Need and Deserve a Retreat....

I’m just back from a 4 day in-home spiritual retreat.  Phone and internet OFF.  No nasty political news.  None of the things we all react to.  No bills, no hassles, no external demands.  

For 4 days, I took guided hypnotherapy journeys with Belleruth Naperstek CDs, and my own specific journeys, and I posed issues to myself to resolve through insight-journaling – pages and pages of insight and solutions and pain and sunlight at the end of the battle.  Exercise taking care of ¾ of an acre on the weekend, when my usual gym classes don’t run; no diminution of my traditional good sweat every day.  Healthy eating. 5 hours of Reiki energy healing every day.  A long, detailed visit with angels, goddesses and the Runes. 

The results were as amazing as always: insights and ideas for action pouring from my pen; powerful journeys that left me lighter of the barriers and darkness that bedevil our lives.  Staring into the abyss, alone with myself, until the abyss started to yield answers.  Inviting levels of unexpressed pain, because it’s through pain getting out of our bodies that we become free.  Realizing how much there is yet to do. 

Engel’s book on traumatic shame is must reading for anyone who has experienced childhood abuse or neglect, especially, although it is also a factor in adult traumas as well.  The emphasis on being strong can be so cruel when circumstances are truthfully that no one could be physically strong enough, or emotionally strong enough (unless you’re a sociopath). 

My work involves powerful transformations through reaching skillfully into the deep unconscious to change, eliminate, add beliefs and conclusions that are absolutely not accessible through ordinary (surface) means like affirmations and “thinking positive.”  So the healer needs to take time to heal herself from time to time.

I recommend these concentrated retreats!  Find a friend or relative who needs a house-sitter for a few days and hole up.  Nix the social media.  Say sayonara to the news.  Turn it all OFF and listen to the sound of your heart and soul.  

After you stop screaming, the insights will come tripping lightly or exploding into existence; each breakthrough has its own sound and flavor.  But they will come.  Get Dr. Naperstek’s CDs or get a session with me.  Bring some creative exploration from my new book 101 Stress Busters for Energy, Joy and Healthy Longevity.

You’ll be glad you did!

Have you Heard?? Moderately Overweight Is Healthier Than Being Slim!

Except that it's not true.....

There was a big flurry of reporting about a meta-study that seemed to indicate that being a bit chub was better than being slim. A bunch of doctors thought that there was an unseen factor at work: many illnesses cause loss of weight. Were some of those slim people really ill with things that only showed up later ?

New study says yes: if you eliminate the people who recently lost weight due to illness, and just look at longer-term trends, then the "advantage" of moderate chub disappears and you are left with the same message that we've been hating.....

Overweight kills. It takes years off your healthy potential lifespan, either by making you ill & miserable or by killing you outright.

We're not talking about 10 pounds for a woman of average height. If you are over 60, 10 pounds has a very small impact on mortality or morbidity (getting sick with a serious disease), and even at a younger age, it's not worth heroic measures to get that gone. But DON'T LET IT GET OVER 10 POUNDS.

I know that many of my clients and friends are sick of the weight/fat issue. Fair enough. But I have to keep banging on about it, because my work is about facts and truth. I have to tell you what is true, not what you want to hear, as a matter of ethics.

And the more fun you're having, the easier everything else is, including eating kale and working out every single day, if you choose the path of health and longevity. I put together a whole lotta fun in 101 Stress Busters (Amazon or your local bookseller) and I have some very relaxing journeys (FREE) on the Classes tab of soaringdragon.biz.

Make your life joyous, whatever life path you choose!

FREE Resource: Meditation Videos

Are you feeling tired, stressed, frustrated?  Of course ypu are, from time to time or most of the time, depending on your circumstances.  If you're thinking I'm going to ask you to sit quietly and "think about nothing" as one of my clients put it - nah.  [My new book 101 Stress Busters has lots of walking meditation and active visualizing meditation, along with 86 really fun and very powerful creative arts that will induce relaxation among other important medical changes.]  

Slowing the adrenal cascade improves your blood pressure which protects your sexual health, as well as protecting you from deadly strokes and kidney failure.  It also protects your brain from loss of memory and general dopiness - powerful medicine for everyone from full-time parents to small business owners and entrepreneurs.  

If you're an entrepreneur, it WILL boost your income - giving you great new marketing ideas, boosting your energy to work, and wiping out the worries that sap your productivity. 

How about taking 45 seconds to a minute and a half to contemplate a really beautiful natural scene while you take 5 slow, deep breaths?  Here are some examples:

https://youtu.be/aGuUCEoSfD8

https://youtu.be/teQds4mz_C8

https://youtu.be/Bdz_UmDXFvs     for entrepreneurs

https://youtu.be/wYAmJyOfsMw

https://youtu.be/T7KSbv8cXag     end of day, gratitude

https://youtu.be/hLbwlDiYduY     walk in the woods

Join my mailing list for inspiration, to get first crack at free beta test enrollment of my new online classes, and special offers just for subscribers.  email victoria@soaringdragon.biz

www.soaringdragon.biz

Creativity to Boost Your Sleep!

My regular readers know how enthusiastic I am about creativity.  My class on using Creativity to Cleanse and Clear Specific Chakras (on learnitlive.com) is a big hit.  I use specific creative exercises whose action is to clear blockages in a specific chakra.  It's been a happy all-day class and I recently experimented with dividing it into chunks of a chakra or two, for people who digest big changes slowly.  I also include specific creative activities in all my really powerful transformation programs. 

Why?  Do I just like the idea of the whole world painting, drawing, coloring, making things with wood and cardboard, building kits, making mosaics and collages, and on and on?  

No, I'm not really addicted to paint.  I'm addicted to alleviating suffering.  Getting into your unconscious mind is the fastest, most powerful route to ending problems.  [I also use thinking-oriented, cognitive-behavioral techniques, but they only work if you already have an accurate idea of what really is the problem, and that is NOT usually the case.  My entrepreneur friends, you don't just need a tutorial on the new magical marketing tool in order to instantly have a million-dollar business.  Nope.]  

And how do you get into your unconscious mind when you don't have me in person or via video to guide you?  One way is deep meditation.  Another is listening to a journey with Belleruth Naperstek.  And another is to get yourself engrossed in color, shapes and the feel of creation in your hands.  My friends, you will never feel so close to god-like powers as you do when you step back from a work you created and realize the spine-tingling awe of "I MADE that.  From nothingness."  When you look at something you did and you feel deep into your DNA that you LIKE it - and you love yourself.  When you look at something you made with your own two hands (or whatever you have), and you feel deep in your DNA, "OMG, NOW I understand why I have always had trouble with taking charge, swimming, speaking in public, being praised, failing to excel at anything I try, ."

THAT moment of either pure joy or transcendent enlightenment is the real purpose of a consistent creativity practice.

So what about sleep?

After you have taken warm milk and melatonin, you turn off your blue light electronics, you have a bed that is not too hot or too cold, and you have made sure that you weren't arguing about politics or other aggravating topics for the two hours prior to bedtime, if you still can't sleep, start reiki-ing yourself.  Don't know reiki?  How about tapping?  Meditation of the Ommm and breathe style.

And if you haven't learned any of that, after you made a note for tomorrow AM to go to www.soaringreiki.biz and sign up to learn, then it's time to get up and pull out the pencils.  [Painting at midnight requires you to wash your brushes.  If you live with people who will be disturbed, go the colored pencils on quality paper route.  Same effect!]  Breathe deeply.  Close your eyes, call on your spirit guides, your goddess guides and helpers [another class at learnitlive.com, very powerful and fun.], or your Wise Adult, take a walk at the beach, or along a forest trail, and tell them all about it.  Then start to draw, without waking up your conscious mind at all.  Just let your "feelings" guide you to colors, shapes, and effects.  I have glitter glue sticks, animal eyes and all kinds of magazines, for pictures.  Whatever hair-brained idea pops into my mind, I breathe deep to make sure I'm not thinking, and then I let myself do it.  The results can be quite extraordinary!

When the emotional energy is discharged in a good cry or some creative arts, you'll be able to sleep.  Sometimes I take a few minutes to write down the insights into my journal for later cogitating as well as feeling.  But with the emotional burden lifted, I drift away.  

Bliss.....

Stress and the Joys of Dessert - and Pasta

Stress releases what we popularly refer to as adrenalin, and cortisol.  Wonder why you can't lose weight?  Too little sleep and too much cortisol.  That is why a primary component of my Weight Loss packages (www.soaringdragon.biz) is attention to methods of FAST, EFFECTIVE providing comfort and relief from whatever is driving that flood of cortisol.  As the Dalai Lama and others point out, when you are calmer you can determine if it is something you can do something about - and most of the time you can do SOMEthing.  So go do it.  Or it's something beyond your powers.  Then really, truly let go of being upset about it.  Move on.  Focus on what you can gain in the future, not what you lost in the past.

And sometimes it just means that you have to hang on, and try again, in a different way.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, a hero is no braver than an ordinary person, they are just braver for 5 minutes longer.  Amen.

So when you tell me that you are "too busy" for an inexpensive Reiki class, or tapping training, that you can't take time to exercise or learn breathing exercises, and I know that you are choosing instead to give yourself comfort in the way you always have - with food - think about this:  You can learn nearly all of the above in an 8 hour day with me.  And the only effect will be longer life, stronger body, heart and soul - and effortless relief from the effects of stress for the rest of your life.  What POWER in your hands.  Continuing to medicate your feelings with sugar, dessert and pasta shortens your life, weakens your heart and soul, and comforts you for at most an hour.  

You deserve more than that!  

Don't you?  When getting real power is so easy?  

Call or email for a FREE Getting Unstuck session (not a sales pitch) and see what power you can put into YOUR hands!

A FUN Human Anatomy Quiz - with answer key and a prize for you!

This is a somewhat different quiz in that you get a huge discount on my comprehensive 18 hour CD (MP3) How Your Body Really Works if you miss at least one of these.

Please note:  the real answers here are based on anatomy and physiology as known to science, printed in A&P textbooks as proven by science/medicine.  Ideologies may disagree with facts, and if you do, just move on.  Facts and opinions can't argue with each other; they are fundamentally different things.

Quiz 1: 

1. High blood pressure causes irreparable kidney damage; it shreds the gentle structures in the glomeruli of the nephron. Once your kidneys are wrecked, you die.  Get your blood pressure checked.  Get it under control.  I have ideas....
2. Nope.  Bone STORES calcium.  It is used by your nerves, to transmit impulses, and by your muscles, as the final GO signal for muscle cells to contract when ordered to by a nerve.  This is why if you drink sodas, don't exercise, don't get enough calcium, magnesium and vitamin D, your bones will weaken.  The nervous and muscle systems are life-or-death (think about your heart and diaphragm), so bones will give up calcium to preserve them.
3. Metabolism and other chemical reactions only occur in a narrow pH range.  Bones, see previous answer.  Kidneys release hormones and respond to hormones to release more water or release more ions, to change the pH of the blood.  Your lungs will pump deeper and faster to get rid of more CO2 if there is too much acid in the blood. Carbon dioxide is the major contributor to blood acidity under normal conditions; it dissolves in the blood as an acid (not really carried by hemoglobin like they told you in 4th grade).
4. The brain neurons that control thirst are right next to the ones that control hunger.  The incoming sensory neurons can terminate in the wrong place very easily.  That is why you should always have a nice glass of liquid when you first feel hungry - in case it's really thirst.


Quiz 2
1. Your sympathetic nervous system needs to send a signal to your adrenals and release the adrenal cascade on a millisecond basis to save you from death and danger.  Your parasympathetic nervous system has a much harder job: "mopping up" all those stress chemicals through biochemical means takes hours.  That's why you can flare up in an instant but take much longer to completely calm down.
2. Vitamin K is an essential element of the blood clotting cascade.  A serious intestinal disease, by disrupting Vitamin K production by specific bacteria, can make you more susceptible to uncontrolled bleeding from cuts, internal hemorrhage, etc.
3. Cortisol signals your fat cells to hold on to fat. We evolved in a world where "stress" equaled starvation, not a corporate power grab or nasty in-laws coming to visit.
4. They are talking about System 1 (see Kahneman) or (almost the same) the limbic system, which pre-processes all sensory incoming data, and then decides whether it thinks it can handle it solo or whether it needs advice from the pre-frontal cortex and other System 2 structures.  No, you don't have separate brains.  We have the same structures as other primates, other mammals, even as far back as reptiles in some cases, but all of these have evolved in their connections and are unique to humans in that sense.  The whole reptile/human dichotomy is of limited utility.  Read Thinking: Fast and Slow, and learn to talk about System 1 and System 2.  Or buy my CD.

If you won the right to the $5 CD, go to www.soaringdragon.biz to learn about it, and then call 253-203-6676 or email victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com with questions or guidance on how to order.