Soar With Dragons to Genuine Joy (part 1)

  What do you think is the most popular category for re-pins on Pinterest and for responses and shares on Facebook?  Inspirational sayings, right?  As a culture, we are starving for uplift.  How did we end up in this place?
Part of it is a reflection of economic realities.  Prior to the Reagan years, labor and management had a more equal balance of power.  With the near-demise of labor unions, the real wages of most Americans have dropped sharply, more and more of us have only part-time or contingent work with no benefits, we are working longer and have very little realistic hope of a dignified and comfortable retirement.  Having economic fears and anxieties simply means that you’re aware and paying attention.
Our health is a legitimate concern as well.  For the first time in history, life expectancy and overall health measures of adult Americans are declining.  Our young adult offspring have less hope and opportunities.  [If none of these categories apply to you, have compassion and generosity for the rest of us.]
In a reality where glib “don’t worry; be happy” platitudes are lacking in wisdom as well as empathy, how can someone like me insist that Happiness is the goal of ALL of my programs?  My answer to you:  Blast away all the external Barriers to joy that you possibly can and then learn the Secret Sauce that allows you generate joy internally.
So why am I such a joy advocate?
The first reason is physical health.  Anxiety and worry depresses your immune system, raises your blood pressure (which damages kidneys and arteries and leads to premature death and an end to sexual function), and wrecks your skin.  If you want to live longer, stop wasting money on supplements and potions and practice Reiki, EFT (tapping), meditation and daily movement.
The second is that joy is infectious.  All your other problems start easing, when you approach other people with a glow.  You can talk your bankers into outrageous rule-changes, you can encourage discounts and more-time-to-pay from nearly everyone, you can blind hiring managers to your flaws and weaknesses, and you can convince everyone else to have hope for their future as well.  You can even have the faith to commit to healing of long-festering problems (with me) if your expectation for your future changes.
How do you shift yourself away from dwelling on all your legitimate sources of dismay?
Well, you don’t want to ignore reality.  That is one beef I have with some less-than-wise proponents of Positive Thinking.  Did you know that in the 1950’s, the early advocates of civil rights for women and minorities were accused of fostering disloyalty and even treason because they were bringing up “negative” views of American society?  Don’t ever, ever allow a preference for a positive twist on your situation to morph into suppressing your first duty to tell yourself and others the truth about your life.  Black Lives Matter.  Women’s lives matter.  If this is “negativity,” then thank god for it.  Walk away from anyone who tries to suppress or muzzle your grasp on Truth.
But joy can be part of Truth, too.
Carve out time in your day, every day, for joy.  Joy is your natural state when you are fully present in your body, in your reality.  Stress comes from moment-by-moment time travel to the past and the future.  So -
Ø  Stop rushing from place to place, so you have time to breathe deeply and look up at the clear blue sky or the new daffodils or the cute dog walking your neighbor.
Ø  Have less things on your to-do list, if you have to, but make time for Reiki, tapping (EFT), yoga and meditation.
Ø  Give yourself time to breathe and be still, accomplishing nothing tangible, unless you count better physical health, sharper thinking and – joy.
 As one of my inspirational pins reminds me, “It’s just a bad day, not a bad life.” [On Pinterest – SoaringDragon]
And make time, at least once a week, to be creative.
Ø  Get some inexpensive ($5) watercolors or acrylic craft paints from the craft store, some painting paper or cheap canvases and swirl some colors around.  It’s called abstract art.  Don’t show it to anyone or ask anyone for an opinion.  If you get a negative remark, tell the person to shut up.  When you let go of the desire to “do a good job,” and get others’ approval, not only do you create great art – because “great art” is anything that is an authentic reflection of your feelings and your vision - but you will feel such an intense upwelling of pure joy, it will take your breath away.
Ø  Build something.  Get craft supplies or a kit and make something.  It doesn’t even matter what.  It is the PROCESS of the creation that reduces stress, gives you new insights into your life and makes you bubble with joy.  I used to build furniture.  I still build and create useful objects every week.  You can get addicted to stained glass and mosaic kits.  That is my fun time, and if you try it, you, too, can contemplate giving up your TV.  Go to Michael’s or Joann [never Hobby Lobby], just walk around and when something catches your heart, don’t talk yourself out of it, second-guess or shame yourself.  Buy it. Take it home.  Try it out.  Keep going into mindfulness, to keep the critical voices at bay.
 Ø  Embrace colors.  Color has amazing impacts on your brain.  Painting the prison walls calming colors really does reduce conflict.

Ø  Learn a new skill.  I keep telling people that crochet is so simple, children learn it easily.  I can crochet in the dark, with my eyes closed, while watching scenery go by on a tour bus, because it’s a simple tactile task.  With crochet, you can create stuffed animals, a nifty protector/carrier for your smart phone, purses, clothing, housewares galore.  My smart phone carrier has compartments for phone, charger, USB, earbuds, a credit card and ID.  I can use it as a purse for short trips where I don’t need a gazillion ID cards.  Knitting is fun and leads to the same bumper crop of clothing, gifts and beauty.

There are literally thousands of cool things to learn – and learning something new brings joy.   Sign up for something on Coursera, The Great Courses, Udemy or another learning site.  When you are learning, your pre-frontal cortex lights up, and when it lights up, so do your joy circuits.  And your Pride in Yourself circuits.  You deserve to feel that good.  Learn something.  Konnichi-wa!
 People like the Dalai Lama, who encourage you to seek joy in the midst of your troubles (while also having compassion for your legitimate pain and difficulty), are your true North Star if you want a life that soars.  You deserve to soar with dragons.  Take action today!
 Who Am I?I’ve been where you are, thinking that I could only truly harbor joy in my heart when every desire of my life was being fulfilled.  I learned better, and so can you.  We’ll start by clearing away the fixable external problems. Victoria Leo offers programs guaranteed to blast through your barriers to bring you physical health, peace of mind and soaring goddess energy!  Is your career or dreams of entrepreneurship keeping you up at night?  Do you need freedom from worry and lack of faith in yourself?  Do you need physical health?  Every program also teaches you how to generate joy from within.  There IS a secret, magic formula and I will teach it to you!

Victoria offers both science-based and spiritual solutions that really work! Visit www.soaringdragon.biz and choose the program that will transform your life.  You deserve to soar with dragons! Victoria’s Facebook group Healing Minds, Healing Bodies welcomes you, as does her blog SoaringDragoninJapan. You can find her books on Amazon, Nook, Kobo or at your local bookseller.
   

Just had a breakthrough? Know your power? Consider this.....

If It's Powerful and Transformative, Does It Have to Take A Long Time?

I was reading a book on addiction  today, and realized that amid some very valuable content, I also learned something very important about myself.

No, I'm not a serious addict!  I have a hard time saying No to yarn sales and Kindle videos, but....  The learning was in aid of my profession, honest.

What struck me was that this counselor only knew about the action plans of cognitive-behavioral therapy and the rewards of behaviorism - both very valuable for helping drive transformation! - and never, ever mentioned the most powerful and quickly-transformative technique of all.

Clinical hypnotherapy with someone who's been through a long, thorough training and assessment program is the closest thing to magic we have in behavioral change.  As I read about the year-long processes the poor sufferers had to endure, I wanted to reach through the page and shake the author.  

Now, don't anyone misunderstand what I am saying!!  I am NOT arrogantly and stupidly offering the Miracle Cure that so many consumers today sign up for.  There are no Miracle Cures in behavior change.  If you were emotionally and/or sexually abused in childhood, yes, indeed, it will take years of hard work to craft a new mind, heart and emotional core that is equivalent to who you would have been if the abuse had not taken place.

However, if we're not talking about that extreme, I CAN turn your life around in a 90 day intensive program.  People with weight or physical pain issues can change direction.  Writers can banish Writer's Block forever.  You can blast through a whole slew of barriers in 90 days, and never see the dang wall go up again.  With skilled hypnotherapy, problems are gone for good.

Hypno works so well because it goes so deep, right to the source of the problem that is causing you the surface difficulty.  All my programs can wipe problems away permanently because they use a powerful mix of hypno, Reiki energy healing, spiritual healing, tapping (EFT) and professional life/health coaching. 

Spring is coming!  Tis the season for hope and transformation.  Don't hold back because you don't believe a solution can be this easy - just 30-90 days.  It can.  You could be free of your nagging problem.  Why not be?

Visit www.soaringdragon.biz and look at how quickly and thoroughly your nagging headache of a situation could disappear.

Why Care About a Math Holiday??

Math is beauty, it is poetry, it is love made manifest in equations. It is relationships of area, of motion, acceleration. It brings moving heavenly bodies together and might even do the same for human beings. When I see all these interdependencies in a an almost-infinite cosmic web, I think "what could be more glorious or more spiritual than math?"

Happy Pi Day! (3.14 every year!)

The Spiritual Road to Weight Loss - Live Webinar 3/23 6 PM Pacific Time

Have you been struggling with your weight? Does it seem impossible to get results that last? Are you TIRED of counting calories and constantly telling yourself NO? Do you feel like a failure? [You're not. Your strategies are ineffective, that's all.]

Trying to change your life with only willpower and "inspiration" is a losing strategy. It will work for a while, but it can't transform your life. The complete Spiritual Path program WILL! The key to success is using the right tools, in the right way, consistently and with intentionality. Once you have your first experience of blasting through the barriers that are keeping you from success, you will never look back - never return to the old, ineffective strategies.

“Spiritual” means a connection to the transcendent, which has an infinite number of forms. This class harnesses spirituality to unlock the door to PERMANENT weight control.

If you have been able to achieve permanent weight control, great; keep doing what you're doing. If you haven't, it's time to admit that what you're doing isn't working for you, long-term, and commit to a new program that really works.

Join a group of dedicated seekers who are tired of the old shame and blame game and are ready to combine effective action with joy. You can do it! This is the road to success.

Pre-requisites

A firm intention to follow the program

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8440/The-Spiritual-Path-to-Permanent-Weight-Control-Blasting-Through-the-Barriers#

Can Auroral Energies Really Be Channeled?

I just spent a week in Fairbanks, Alaska, with a spiritual healer who is positive that our healing work is stronger there because we channel the energy of the auroras. I'm thinking perhaps it's just because the natural beauty makes us so filled with happiness - and that's what is making the distance healing I do so much more powerful.

There's some support for the latter hypothesis: happiness makes us healthier, so it's plausible that it would make a healer more effective. But what about the auroral energy? Any ideas?

Perhaps it's both factors at work.....  It's only Western philosophy - the Cartesian duality belief - that says there is only one answer to all of life's questions.

Have Courage and Be Kind: What do you do if you didn't have a Golden Childhood?

 Have you seen the 2015 version of Cinderella?  Wonderful movie isn’t it?  The theme – Have courage and be kind, and all will be well – stunned me when I saw the movie in the theatre, because it is exactly what my mother taught me.

Think about it.  So much of what “happens” to us is really the result of a lack of courage on our part.  We stay in harmful situations way too long, allowing ourselves to be more deeply hurt, because we are afraid of the unknown that lies outside of the Known But Awful.  We stay in jobs.  We stay in relationships.  We let ourselves stay connected to toxic people of all types.  We stay in toxic places, that suck our souls dry.  Why?  Lack of courage.

We fall into mistakes because we lack the courage to thoroughly examine a proposition before we commit to it.  We tell ourselves that we are following our heart or our intuition, but what we’re really doing is telling the universe that we don’t matter, that looking out for ourselves with a minimal Due Diligence is wrong, because we don’t have the right to stop a slick sales pitch in its tracks and examine it very, very closely.  If we really mattered to ourselves, we wouldn’t care who got pissed off.  We would move toward what is good for us, move away from what isn’t healthy, and smile kindly while we say “No, thank you,” which is a complete sentence. 

Ella exhibited both kinds of courage.  And many kinds of kindness.

And most lovely of all, the movie reminds people like me, who work every day to uncover, clean out and repair the effects of childhood damage in beautiful adult souls, of the importance of what parents and teachers do.  If you are a parent or teacher, don’t ever believe that the hard work you do every day is thankless.  It isn’t.  Adult Ella was able to endure her harsh young adulthood of emotional abuse and neglect because her core belief in her own value and goodness was never breached.  That “golden childhood” of parental love, appreciation and delight inoculated her, for a long time, against the slings and arrows of an outrageous fortune.  The wickedest adults could not make her bitter, angry and resentful, her soul shone in the darkest times, because she had a bone-deep belief in and memory of love.  Her youngest years protected her soul from shriveling under the heaviest hammer blows of adversity.  THAT soul is what the prince/king could not live without, and which gave him the courage to “become his own man.” 

That shining soul is the gift that those of us who’ve had a golden childhood carry with them, the armor that keeps them safe forever after.  The rest of us have to work harder – for years or decades, depending on the damage – to build that same deep, shining soul, that has courage and kindness as its north star.  When we do, we don’t have to battle against resentment, envy and uncertainty any more.  When we know, at the deepest level of our hearts, that we are lovable, then whether others do or don’t doesn’t determine our own behavior.  And then we become the hero/ine of our own glorious story, inspiring everyone around us.  We become the candle that lights up all the dark, scared candles around us. 

If you wonder if you’ll ever have Ella’s kindness and courage, know that there are healers like me in the world, who have the skills and the determination to help you become a person who can light candles all around you, a person with a genuine, rock-solid certainty of their own value, and the deepest humility about themselves.  You can do it.  We all can.  For those of us without a golden childhood, it can be a long, hard trek, but the mountaintop is reachable.  We really can all be Ella.  Blessed be.