Release “What if?” or “Why me?” All is perfectly divinely orchestrated with perfect timing and perfect outcome for ultimate healing of yourself, the earth, and all before you. Rest within perfect yin and act in the world when you are inspired to act. Listen and feel the field around you that is a constant source of support for all that you are destined to do and become. Guidance and support surrounds those who are ready and able to listen with an open heart. Relax into all that is. There is nothing else to experience right now.

The wild wonder of Nature awakens me.
The vital voice of Earth sings me alive.
The elemental rippling within Creation rouses me.
I am fully embodied within Earth’s Great Green Body.

I remove the veil that shrouds my visibility to others.
Fortified within an armour of Light, I let my soul radiance shine.
My dedication for the Spirit rays forth for the world to see.
I am serving the world with my deep devotion.

I am willing to encounter adversity.
Descent into my soul’s depths forges the fire of transcendence.
Soul trial becomes Soul triumph within me.
My tears become diamond jewels of light for the world.

I learn to listen to my own voice.
I trust my inner knowing.
I find the confidence to follow what is right for me.
My light is a source of Truth for others.

I am the only one who can be me in the world.
Everything is waiting for my gift.
I will shine with the Holy Spirit of inspiration.
I will ignite my creative flame of Love for the World.

Cosmic Light beams its blessing into my Body.
Earthly Being pulses its vibrant Life-Field around me.
I feel this resonance of Light and Life weaving within my Heart.
I am nourished and sustained for my work on Earth.

My current blend of flowers in order of appearance:  Green Bells of Ireland, Monkshood, Glassy Hyacinth, Cerato, Columbine, Almond. Affirmations by Patricia Kaminski, Flower Essence Society, www.flowersociety.org

Deep gratitude goes to my artful tour guide through the flower realm, Jane Ellen Blossom of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Check out her and her wonderful supportive services at Transitional Integration.

What is the highest truth about alignment with the earth? Alignment with the earth is a natural process. Consider that your body comes from the earth and will return to the earth. As you live on it, consider all that nourishes you from the earth and nature. It is your only true source of support and life energy. All else is transient and can come and go at the whims of yourself and others. You have surrounded yourself with many things that you think are nourishment and necessary. Consider what is in your life that is truly not keeping you alive and thriving.

Take time to consider, connect and communicate with the earth, all of nature and your body this season. Your wise body is always informing you of all that you need to know to claim radiant health. Are you listening? Consider all that is stagnant within and around you that is untapped energy not available for your health or living your dreams. Consider releasing all that you do not have to time to take care of. Consider releasing all that does not nourish you on a deep soul level, physically, emotionally or spiritually. The further removed from the earth that something is, the less nourishment and energy it can provide to your body and your life. As one, your heart, body and soul are continually kept alive by an infinite matrix of energy and life. Are you enhancing or diminishing this generous support? Radiant life and love is always present for you when you are open to receive fully and abundantly.

Are you ready to express gratitude for your ever-present source of life energy from the earth?

Are you ready to create healthy soulful spaces within and all around you to receive optimum and abundant life energy?

What would it take to release all that no longer serves you?

What would it take for you to start living your heart’s desires today?

Author Michael Pollan recently inspired me when I heard him say, “What happens on our plates is the most profound effect that we have on the natural world.” Obviously what we eat makes a big difference to our wallets and our waistlines but we often don’t consider that our most profound engagement with nature is through the food we buy and eat. Our daily food choices impact our internal and external landscapes more than anything else we do.

The farther a food has traveled from its source, the less life force it offers. Locally-grown foods, unaltered by processing, satisfy you and your taste buds. Fresh raw vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, and seeds are on the top of the list, ideally organic.  Wild-caught fish and free-range beef, pork, and poultry also offer sustenance. However, did you know that the United Nations has determined that livestock production is responsible for 20% of the greenhouse gases that are part of worldwide global warming, more than cars, planes, and all other forms of transportation put together? Also worth considering from the Environmental Defense Fund:  if every American replaced just one meal of chicken per week with vegetables, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads.  You don’t need lots of variety or quantity at every meal to eat a balanced diet. It’s more important to eat variety throughout the week and across the seasons.

Also consider the garbage generated by your choices. Tons of food packaging sit on our earth and float in our precious water sources. Consider filtering your water if needed and hydrate your thirsty cells throughout each day from a glass or stainless steel container. The earth will breathe a sigh of relief when we commit to no more non-decaying plastic. Consider primarily eating foods that have a life cycle, decaying back into the earth just like our bodies and all of nature.

Earth and body-healthy foods do not harm those who are planting, raising, distributing, or selling them. Imagine a world where you know where your food comes from and all who come in contact with it. Not everyone can plant a garden and grow their own food, but you can support the farmers and gardeners around you.  Spring is the perfect time to venture out to local farmers’ markets, explore our many co-ops, and consider Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs). Invest up front in local farmers who deliver sustainably grown foods direct to you.

Drink in the life-sustaining energy of pure unaltered foods that are in colorful abundance all around you and check inside. Your body knows exactly what it needs for optimum health. Insist on delicious nourishing whole foods that are created with care from healthy plants and animals, are grown and harvested with methods that support our earth, and are produced and sold by people and companies with integrity. Offer gratitude for each healthy choice, and your body and the earth will continue to generously support you in return.

Published in Whispers of Spirit, June 2009. Whispers of Spirit

You are a child of God. You are God with unlimited power.

You are supported by all that is true and pure. Release all that does not feel right to you. You are destined for all that you desire and all that you desire will be yours. What is yours comes to you with delight and gratitude. Open your body to receive all nourishment that life is offering.

Do not live from a place of lack or wallow in what does not appear to be currently present in your life. All life energy exists without creation or destruction and all that you need is already present. As you open more fully to all that is around you and as you give to the world, more can be and will be naturally received by your body and your soul.

Energy is efficient. Creating more space allows for more energy flow. Constriction restricts energy flow.  Consider what is decaying, dying or dead in your life, all that no longer brings you joy or lights your soulful heart. Why do you cling to that which is no longer provides energy? New pure life energy can only flow into open clear space, within your body, your home, your community, and your world. How can you create space? How can you open to all that is waiting to be given and received? Are you ready to release all that no longer supports joy and love within your own wild precious life?

“Every night as you sleep, you have the option to let go of what has hurt you, what has lessened your light, what has landed in your heart, and fly to the stars and dance in the heavens, and be birthed anew on the sunrise.” Gillian MacBeth-Louthan (May 2009, http://tinyurl.com/6hj73c)

The wide arms of the Life-Mother hold me.

I rest into the splendid depths of Her body.

I feel the beauty and bounty of this communion.

I am embodied within the nurturing Mother of all Life.

The Mother of the the World illumines my heart.

My pain of separation is mended through her Mothering Mercy.

I embrace the wide circle of human family as my family.

The Matrix of the World Mother grows spacious in my Soul.

I celebrate the joy and juice of bodily life.

I am succulent with possibility.

I take risks to manifest my magnificence.

I will share this rich radiance with others.

I open my Self to include the needs of others.

I allow my heart to share freely with others.

I grow through Giving of my Self.

I am the only one who can be me in the world.

Everything is waiting for my gift.

I will shine with the Holy Spirit of inspiration.

I will ignite my creative flame of Love for the World.

Flowers in order of appearance:  Madrone, Splendid Mariposa Lily, California Peony, Star Thistle, and Columbine.

Affirmations by Patricia Kaminski, Flower Essence Society.

Deep gratitude for my artful tour guide through the wise world of the blessed conscious flowers:  Jane Ellen Blossom of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Check out her and her wonderful services at Transitional Integration.

Focus and tune in every day to what foods make you feel vibrant, radiant and healthy. These will also be the foods that will create and maintain your perfect healthy body at its ideal weight and shape.

Here are 12 things that everyone can truly thrive with:

1) Commit whole-heartedly to eating only whole real healthy food.

2) Drink pure filtered water throughout your day, flavored with real lemon if desired.

3) Nourish and detoxify daily through eating plenty of these veggies, ideally fresh, raw, and organically grown:  artichokes, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, chorella (a nourishing sea vegetable that is great for detoxifying the brain) cilantro, garlic, green tea, kale, parsley, and watercress. You can eat great volumes of these healthy veggies and not gain a pound!

4) One teaspoon of any of these spices will boost your antioxidant power:  cinnamon, ginger, oregano, red peppers, rosemary, thyme, turmeric, and yellow curry.

5) Eat enough plant-based fiber and protein throughout the day to keep your blood sugar stabilized, including some low-fat protein with breakfast every day.

6) Use extra virgin olive oil as your main oil and boost your metabolism at the same time.

7) Take whole food supplements and consider working with someone who is trained in Nutritional Response Testing to find out what supplements your body really needs. (Contact me for a recommendation.)

8)  Eat early and often. Eat something healthy every three to four hours. Avoid eating two to three hours before bedtime.

9) Don’t eat much when you aren’t truly hungry. Eat just enough to avoid swings in blood sugar. Eat only until you are gently satisfied, not full. Wait 20 minutes before taking seconds. Check inside:  are you still hungry?

10) Reduce anxiety and stress with walks, naps, baths, movement, dance, meditation, music, play with your kids or pet, or enjoyable conversations. Keep a ready mental list of whatever makes you feel good and nourished without unconsciously grabbing food for comfort.

11) Intend to move 15 to 45 minutes per day to keep your blood circulating and help to shrink your fat cells. Search for movement and exercise that feels fun to you.

12) Plan to get seven to eight hours of essential sleep every night. Don’t plan on “making up” sleep on the weekends or on your vacation. It’s not possible. Your body will keep struggling to “make do” and will put on a happy face but sooner or later your body will force you to rest and restore through an accident, illness, or disease. That is not the preferred path!

A good way to enjoy the food you eat and to avoid overeating is to pay attention to the present moment. Take a moment for gratitude and life-enhancing conscious breathing before eating or drinking anything. Eat and digest consciously. Choose to eat food that you enjoy and that will provide true and lasting nourishment for your body. Honor your body today for all it does for you moment by moment, often without encouragement or support!

Create a Home Altar

The physical center of your home is the perfect place for a home altar, or you may wish to create sacred space in a more intimate private area. We create altars often unconsciously as we intuitively arrange photographs, flowers, candles, books, art objects and mementos on coffee tables, fireplace mantles, dresser tops, window sills, desks, and even next to our computers.  This practice of deliberately grouping valued objects is an outer manifestation of whom and what your heart holds dear.

Each holy space created at home or work can serve as oasis of gratitude where the important aspects of your life come into focus. It is a place where you can pause in stillness to sort through your values and desires, and get to the heart of what you really want in your life. Allow yourself to reflect on your deepest dreams every time you pass by these sacred spots. When you gratefully honor and align your inner and outer heart centers, you unify and balance all things within you, your home or workplace, and your life. This alignment creates a serene, peaceful field of energy that nurtures all residents to feel less stressed, more balanced and be blessed with infinite healthy energy.

Create an Atmosphere of Gratitude

Gratitude is the highest vibration that we can live within. To live in a state of gratitude, despite what your world currently looks like, will indeed start to rearrange all that is around you. The loving energy of gratitude will clear and purify all that is within you and surrounding you. Anything less will not find you. Feel gratitude for even the hardest of life lessons or the most challenging person in your life right now. Every experience comes in the service of soul learning and clearing all that no longer serves you. Stubbornly holding onto feelings of loss or deprivation will prevent the flowering of all new life that is continually being offered. Your mind may argue with who or what is knocking at your door, but your heart will recognize its teachers and graciously invite them in. Practice noticing all that is infused with healthy energy within yourself, family, friends, animals, plants, flowers, trees, nature, and the earth?even the spring winds that are gracefully bringing life and love towards you.

Honor Your Heart and Your Home

Our hearts beat in unison with those we love and your home is the container for this love and gratitude. Honor your home and all those you love as you honor yourself. All that is of love and light will flourish and all that is no longer needed will not be sustained. Unlike humans, nature does not judge what is being offered nor do flowers hesitate to bloom in the world. Your heart is your ever-loyal guide towards creating a healthy home and life. Allow yourself to open fully to the rewarding richness of loving energy that surrounds you. Drink deeply and often from all that life desires to give and to receive…to your heart’s delight.

Published in Stressfree Living, April 2009, as “Getting to the Heart of the Matter: Align Your Heart with Your Home.”

Spring is the perfect time to release all within and around you that is not supporting life. What do you no longer need to carry into spring? How about all those outdated stories and beliefs that you tell about yourself, and to anyone else who will listen? Or how about releasing a long-standing reluctance to forgive someone in your life, past or present? Budding and flowering nature encourages and inspires us to consider new potential within our bodies and our lives.

Get curious about everything and everyone that makes you feel alive and nourished. Your life force is not only supported with generosity and love but also by true healthy foods. Your body intuitively knows what it desires for nourishment. Practice whole-heartedly listening to what your body wants this spring, whether it is real food, nurturance from another human or animal, gardening, or just soaking in all the beauty and flowering abundance all around you.

You have most likely heard ”You are what you eat.” Can you also believe “You are as healthy as your kitchen?” If all within your kitchen is alive with life force, you will embody and be a reflection of that empowering energy. All that is not created from the earth can not ultimately fuel your body, your health, or sustain the planet. As you nurture and honor your body, you also nurture and care for the earth.

As you enjoy the enlivening earth this spring, consider what might be in your kitchen that is not supporting your own flowering towards optimum radiant health. Consider these 10 things that you and your family can truly live and flourish without, creating space in your cupboards and refrigerator, room to breath in your clothes, and save some cash in the process. You may choose to make a clean sweep of your kitchen, replenish your pantry with healthier alternatives with each trip to the grocery store, or commit to one new healthy step each week.

1) Consider not buying foods that trigger you to unconsciously overeat. These are most often processed foods that are easy to grab and quickly eat when you are stressed, anxious, bored, frustrated, fearful, etc. You most likely already know what foods, what situations, and what times of day trigger you to overeat and bring on guilt or shame later on. A simple truth is that you can’t unconsciously eat what is not in your cupboard or refrigerator. Get curious about what your body and soul are really asking for and practice checking in to all your body knows and wants, minute by minute.

2) Ditto on not buying and eating overly-processed “junk” foods that are easy to eat “on the go,” in your car, in front of the television, over the sink, or while multi-tasking.

3) Intend to eliminate over time all foods containing high-fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners or laden with sugar (including sucrose, glucose, dextrose, maltose, and lactose on food labels). Get curious about reading labels and checking ingredients. In most cases, ingredients are listed in descending order by weight. The first few ingredients make up the “bulk” of the food.

4) Eliminate all foods containing hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils, i.e. “trans fats” and all refined or non-whole grain flour products.

5) Consider reducing or eliminating “foods” that you have no idea what is in it or where it comes from. Get suspicious of food producers and vendors that might not be putting your health first on their list of priorities. Ask questions while eating out.

6) Be suspicious of any ingredient that you can’t pronounce, have no idea what it is or what it does to your body, including potentially unsafe artificial additives, preservatives and coloring.

7) Consider eliminating any packaged foods with more than 10 ingredients… the more the ingredients, the more the processing, the further from the earth.

8) Try removing common food “allergies” from your diet, such as dairy, eggs, gluten, wheat, white sugar, soy, peanuts, and any thing that doesn’t seem to “agree” with you, for two to three weeks. Take note when you feel more energetic, sleep better, diminish or clear chronic sinus and digestive problems and headaches, and lose weight.

9) If this applies, reduce and limit stimulants and depressants, including caffeine (coffee, tea, sodas, and chocolate) and alcohol. Ponder all the ways you might increase energy or relax without resorting to food or beverages.

10) Try taking a free spring holiday from all foods, beverages and unhealthy habits that may instantly “pick you up.” while depleting you in a deeper way.

Give yourself the opportunity to tune in to your own wise body’s signals for hunger, nourishment, relaxation, and sleep. Get curious about your routines, habits, and all within and around that no longer supports a radiant healthy you. Use the new energy of spring to support you. What do you, body and soul, really need moment to moment?  I offer coaching to co-create a healthy kitchen that inspires and encourages you and your family towards intuitive healthy eating.

These trying times are asking us to feel and to release all that is held within and around us that is not pure, beautiful, life-enhancing energy. As with all stuck and stagnant energy, we are being asking to recognize, to feel, and to clear all that no longer serves us. Sometimes we believe that we need to hold onto our painful experiences as a sort of hero’s “survivor” badge. However, find yourself continuing to defend or to argue for your limitations and they are yours. Just as we might naturally take time with a child that needs their “hurt” acknowledged, our pain—past and present─needs to be recognized and acknowledged for the gifts brought to our lives. Continually living with our pain and unfelt emotions keeps us from realizing our true radiance that is waiting to reflect back to us abundantly.

Each person has his or her own timing and sequence for clearing all that does not support life. The best processes and resources to use are also unique to each. However, our journey towards optimum radiance may be quickened by taking daily time to listen within. Our hearts─our life force─thirst for deep rest and reflection. It is essential to your health to take time to feel what has not been felt and to recognize and honor aspects of yourself that have been long forgotten, ignored, or pushed aside in haste or in fear. Energetically clearing all that no longer serves you within can be a matter of minutes. Getting to the heart of what you really need and desire for full sustenance and nourishment is an ongoing practice.

The people, experiences, and things that are the most precious in our lives touch our hearts the deepest. Listen to your heart without judgment to know when and how to move forward in your life, perhaps closer to another sweet heart or towards a fresh adventure. Your wise heart always knows when you are finished with unfulfilling relationships, jobs, routines, places or things. Your heart’s desires are often subtle and will not necessarily be encouraged or be initially in alignment with your thoughts. Practice honoring your soulful heart, without unnecessary constraints created by past experiences and beliefs that no longer serve you. Your heart is beating right now, patiently waiting to be felt and to be heard. Listen closely and often to the small, often timid, whispers that are always nudging you towards true heart fulfillment.